Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Cloister-fuck

Ah.  The cloister bell.  The dull clang of that harbinger of doom inevitably warms my black and shriveled little heart.  It may only get a few seconds of screen-time, but as soon as I heard it, I knew bloody well that I wanted to incorporate the word "cloister" into the title of my review.

Well, I'll have you know that coming up with a clever title based on the word "cloister" isn't easy.  Especially if you're not exactly sure what a cloister is.  One might assume it refers to that which "cloists", but that leaves me in much the same dark. Or perhaps it's a comparative...the opposite of "less cloist".  I imagine that somewhere in England there's a city called "Cloister." Of course, they, no doubt, spell it "Cloicester", or some such.

Regardless of meaning, there's just something about the shape of the word that doesn't lend itself to entertaining wordplay.  My options were fairly limited in both agent-noun form ("Cloisters Rockefeller") and conjugated verb form ("Jesus Cloist!")  Needless to say, given the end-result,  the deciding factor was "which one is most crass?"  I suppose that was predictable, on some level.

That's one of the best things about this "blog": Everyone has their own highly-individual style.  No two of us are alike.  We're like foul-mouthed, sarcastic snowflakes.  Frank's reviews are all "Look at me!  I can read!" with their French intellectuals and a clever allusion to "Finnegan's Wake" under ever punctuation mark.  Stuart is generally giddy about anything the producers throw at him, and posts within seconds of the episode airing.  Damon's are compact diatribes about bus toilets and the future regenerations of his curries.  My reviews are long, rambling, nit-picky things where I bitch about where everything went wrong, even if I liked the episode, and try not to sound as intellectual as Frank.  And they're always late.

The point here is something about how we all fall over ourselves to make sure that whatever we write in our reviews, we make sure we're not just saying what's been said before, and if we do, we try to do it in a new and original way.  Unfortunately, the current production team on Doctor Who, especially Russell T. Davies, could stand to learn a little from this approach, because there's a lot of times when I feel a bit too much deja vu during certain episodes.  Either that or it's food poisoning.

It's too bad this was the Doctor-lite episode, or I might have just dropped the whole "cloister" thing and gone with "Gurn Left."

Doctor Who: Turn Left

Copyleft:

I'm not sure if this found its way over to the side of the pond that you lot are on, but over here during the 80's we had a disturbingly popular sitcom called Family Ties, based on a premise something along the lines of "conservative teenager has lefty hippie parents."  Now that the programme has been off the air for twenty years or so, my recollections of the programme are somewhat hazy, but one thing that has managed to burn itself into my unwilling mind is that Family Ties was infamous for its overuse of one of the more unfortunate narrative devices to ever hit the world of television: the clip show.

I imagine some of you are familiar with the concept of the clip show.  The producers, rather than coming up with an entire episode of new material, would recycle most of the material from previously-aired episodes, and wrap it all in what is generally an appallingly weak frame-story.

How clever!

Well, I think Turn Left is officially Doctor Who's first clip show.

Admittedly, the frame-story is probably significantly better than the average version, where the family sits around their living room and reminisces about various events that happened over the course of previous episodes.  Nonetheless, much of the exercise comes across as an attempt to reuse footage and special effects from myriad (mostly RTD's less-well-scripted) episodes from the last couple of seasons.  Even when they didn't actually use recycled clips they feel the need to play the name-dropping game with Sarah Jane and the Torchwoodians and that lot, and then they make extensive re-use of their favourite gimmick, the far-too-ineffective exposition-by-television-news-channel.  To bring it all back around, at the end we get flashbacks to clips pulled from this same episode...but, get this...they're backwards!  How clever!

Bar sinister:

It can probably be argued that most narratives are only as good as their villain, and Turn Left, at least in the outermost frame story, comes up short here.  Chipo Chung's portrayal of the fortune teller is woefully marred by at least a couple of deficiencies. 

First, she's so clearly, telegraphically evil that I'm surprised that the makeup department didn't outfit her with a goatee she could stroke malevolently while she salivates at the prospect of Donna turning her car to the right.  The end result was sort of the bastard stepchild of Anthony Ainley and Sarah Parish voiced by Frank Oz.  Donna should almost certainly have been more suspicious about her insidious "chan reading is free for red hair tho."  Then again, she's a bit thick in this episode; look at the whole labour camp thing.

I'm not sure which I find more disturbing...Chung's mildly offensive caricature of Chinese people, or her mildly offensive caricature of Evil people.

Secondly, her  portrayal comes across as some sort of cartoon version of a Chinese person, complete with an atrocious accent.  Mind you, this broad ethnic plastering is sort of par-for-the-course in the episode, with Joseph Long's stereotyped Italian ("Mama!  Is people!  Nice-a people!") and Loraine Velez's evil-eye-giving Spanish Maid similarly difficult to endure.

I'm not sure which I find more disturbing...Chung's mildly offensive caricature of Chinese people, or her mildly offensive caricature of Evil people.

Not all the blame for the fortune-teller fiasco can be laid on Chung, however; Davies' script didn't give her a whole lot to work with.  Lines like "Turn right and never meet that man...turn right and change the world!" almost demand to be followed by an evil cackle, though instead we just got the opening credits, and while I fully expected the fortune teller's last line to be something along the lines of "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!", what we got instead ("You were so strong!  What are you?  What will you be??  What will you be??") makes me wonder if Davies' owns stock in foreshadowing.

Dung Beetle:

No, I'm not talking about Paul this time.

It's too bad that the Mill blew its entire budget on computer-generated banners and lanterns, and one small mushroom cloud, because it sure would have been nice if the beetle weren't such utter rubbish.  I mean, really...why a beetle in the first place?  My theory is that they opted for the beetle because they happened to have a big rubber one lying around in the prop department.  We get lots of unconvincing scenes of beetle-puppet gnawing at Donna's hair.  (Now, I can see the appeal of gnawing on Donna's hair...I'd consider doing it myself...but somehow it would have been more effective if it just sat there attached to her instead of groping her ponytail.)

The beetle scenes weren't helped any by Catherine's least-convincing performances of the episode.  Maybe she's just not cut out for abject fear; she's far better at trying to be brave even when she's afraid...or maybe the rest of this season has made the terror out-of-character for her.  I was unimpressed by Donna's franticly chasing her own tail while trying to see the beetle on her back, complete with thundery little sound effects that I can only imagine are supposed to indicate how quickly she's snapping her head around trying to see it.  The rest of the special sound also hindered my beetle-appreciation; the clichéd chittering, scuttle-y beetle-sound that played on the soundtrack whenever the beetle was even hinted at got old before it even started.

Port Forwarding:

The entire episode, of course, was carried, if you will, on Donna's back, like a big, rubbish beetle.  While we get a little more of the old shouty Donna near the beginning of her new life, and as mentioned the screamy "get this thing off my back!" Donna certainly wasn't the high point of Tate's Donna Noble career, most of what works about Turn Left works because of her.  The ever-increasing hints that she's going to have a spectacular exit-stage-left at the end of the season are getting to me, because, as you're well aware, I think she's the best thing since sliced bread.

I can see the appeal of gnawing on Donna's hair...I'd consider doing it myself...

Nonetheless, ominous omens are afoot, mostly focusing on her specialness.  From the "most important woman in the universe" to realities bending around her, we're being set up for some spectacular reveal about Donna...let's hope it's good; they've already brought back "Bad Wolf" for the denouement, and you know what rubbish that is.

Between the flashbacks and the foreshadowing I think I'm getting motion sickness.

Tate's work stands in marked contrast to Billie Piper's strangely affected performance.  While Tate's missteps result from her being too into the character, Piper's alien characterization of Rose is strangely fascinating, if not spectacularly convincing.  From her bizarrely poor attempts to play nonchalant when she runs into Donna to her inability to tear her eyes away from the thing on her back to her ominous declarations set to spooky music, she spends most of the episode looking like she's off her meds.

Left Behind:

No...I'm not referencing the ridiculous Christian Dispensationalist movies staring Kirk Cameron...this is just the part of the review where I run on about random nitpicky things I can't think to put anywhere else.

Donna tells the fortune-teller "It was on Earth.  This planet called earth...miles away."  I'd say other planets are definitely something you want to keep "miles away" from your own.  If they're any closer than that you're in trouble.  And why assume a person from a planet colonized by Chinese people has no awareness of this "Earth."?

I learned from the credits that Donna's friend who kept staring at her back was named Alice Coltrane, no doubt in honour of the late, great jazz musician.   Too bad they didn't find a way to use some of Coltrane's music in the episode; it would have been better than the pop music Murray Gold scattered throughout much of the ending.

Between the flashbacks and the foreshadowing I think I'm getting motion sickness.

It finished, of course, with that lengthy fan-serving trailer.  I like to think of it as a clip show for next week's episode.

Rose tells Donna that the day she chose to "turn left" was a day she "...wouldn't remeber, it was the most ordinary day in the world."  This seems odd, since the entire premise of the episode hinges on the fact that she remembered it.

Where can I get a ridiculously large "Leeds" stamp?  This entertained me, for some reason...

When parallel Donna first sees the TARDIS she says "What's a police box?"...what...hasn't she ever seen Doctor Who?

Two Left Feet:

It's getting to be a bit of a tradition for us to generate somewhat schizophrenic reviews.  We, apparently, want to have our cake and eat it, too (what else does one do with cake?)  We either heap our love and affection on the episode and then mercilessly eviscerate it, or vice versa. There always seems to be a significant portion of the episode we love dearly (Hi, Catherine Tate!) and a whole lot of bollocks that rubs us the wrong way (Hi, plot, dialogue, rubbish science and Freema Agyeman!)

I blame the writers.

No...I don't mean those of us writing the reviews; we're doing the best with what we have to work with.  I mean the writers of Doctor Who.  And maybe the producers.  And script editors.  Here's the problem...even a hollow, manipulative, heavy-handed slab of fanwankery like Turn Left is simply sodden with brilliantly conceived character moments and It almost makes me think that if RTD were saddled with, say, a good producer and script editor, he'd have the makings of a good writer.

There were tons of little things in the episode deserving of praise.  The dropping of Donna in Sutton Court was, I'm pretty certain, a clever reference to the Doctor's failed attempt to return Sarah Jane to South Croydon.  I also appreciated the observations about the U.K. teetering on the brink of fascism.

Predictably the Donna/Wilf moments were some of the strongest.  Of particular note is the exchange "You're not gonna make the world any better by shouting at it!"/"I can try!" and their thoroughly defeated reaction to seeing the Adipose on television is a wonderful contrast to their enthusiasm about aliens in the "proper" universe.

C'mon.  Do us a favour.

There was effective comedy: Donna's thinking the Titanic crash was a sequel; "Don't tell me...the hospital's back!"; Rose's recognition of the meaninglessness of "it seems to be in a state of flux."

Rose's ambiguous lack-of-response to "Were you and him...?" said more than any answer she could have given.  There were, shockingly, a couple of moments where Jacqueline King's Sylvia almost seemed human. Effective tear-jerking all around.  Even the special sound people have something to redeem themselves: the nuclear shockwave was a brilliant touch.

Why can't you people be more consistent?  C'mon.  Do us a favour.  Throw us a bone, here.  Those nice people over at Torchwood generally have no qualms about serving us a steaming plate of crap umpteen times a year.

Decisions... Decisions... Decisions...

What is it about the career path of Doctor Who assistants after they leave that draws them, like a particularly randy moth to a largely perverted flame, to roles and appearances that are so removed from their previous personas? Carole Ann Ford's first gig after leaving the show was to star as a prostitute in an episode of Private Eye. Katy Manning suffered from an horrific wardrobe malfunction with a Dalek. Billie Piper's exit strategy featured the salacious sexploits of a call girl - a vehicle for Piper's singular talent that reached the parts of teenage boys that had Torchwood looking on with envious eyes.

Catherine Tate's agent is, even now, on the look out for casting calls for the television movie event Unrequited Lust - The Nora Batty Story.

Doctor Who: Turn Left

The peoples of the world are confused. First the island of Japan burned and the sushi was ruined. Then it was raw fish all round. First someone purporting to be a door-to-door Target novelisation reading service for the blind travelled the world. Then she didn't. First Billie Piper could annunciate properly. Then she couldn't. First the bees started to disappear, then came the turn of natures other greatest pollinators, the orthodontists...

Repatriated back to the estate of Dick Emery.

Once upon a time there were two shows I needed to watch with subtitles on: Rab C Nesbitt and The Wire. There is now a third, Doctor Who. What the hell was going on with Rose's teeth? She appeared to be constantly engaged in a titanic tussle with her gnashers as they made a bid for freedom. What has she had done to them? Has she had them straightened? Stretched? Whittled? Inflated? Coated? De-coated? Grouted? Gouged? Electroplated? Drained? Buffed? Waxed? Painted? Annexed?

Or was she living in mortal fear of having them repatriated back to the estate of Dick Emery?

Time sucking beetles are one thing, but the most far fetched part of the entire tale was the fact that Rose managed to enunciate those two words clearly enough for Donna to not only remember them but then repeat them to the Doctor. The script could have taken it's own left turn at that point:

"But she told me... to warn you. She said... two words"
"What two words? What were they? What did she say?"
"Bath Rolf"

Even the Imperial Leather's not going to get us out of this one.

The welcome return of Bath Rolf. Personal hygiene challenged Australian around entertainers, galloping across the cosmos, threatening the very fabric of reality with their deadly body odour. Even the Imperial Leather's not going to get us out of this one...

There is very little else to say about Turn Left that hasn't already been said, aside from the vast wafts of Crime Traveller I was getting from the jerry-rigged time machine cum changing room that the TARDIS had been turned into. Even Donna's clunky timepiece reminded me of the one Holly Turner and Jeff Slade had to strap on before leaving the confines of their time machine.

And following on from her time in Secret Diary Of A..., Piper's probably more accustomed to the world of strap ons now. Let's just hope Tate learns from the lessons of history and doesn't make the same choices that so many before her have...

Good Wolf, Bad Wolf

Doctor Who: Turn Left

Did you catch the trailer for next week's episode? Boy howdy, it was a long one, clocking in at nearly fifty minutes.

Because seriously, that's all this was. A big, honking, beautifully acted, poignant, moving trailer for the two-part finale that we'll be getting. And that list of glowing compliments doesn't let this episode off the hook for being what it is: A gigantic trailer. I mean, it's true that Utopia had it's trailer-ish elements as well, but this is something else. That episode was at least built upon its own original story, while this train wreck of an episode just lazily feeds off of the plot points of the past two years while blatantly (and openly) recycling material from earlier this series.

And Billie, you wait your turn. I'll get to you later.

There were things I liked about this episode, and I shall list them now. The biggest thing is Catherine Tate, and in the spirit of this episode I shall express my opinions about her performances by copying and pasting sentences from reviews I've already posted. "But dammit, Tate, what’s wrong with you? Can’t you throw me a bone once in a while? Give me something to complain about? Why can’t you be anything less than lovely?" "Even most former TateHaters have to admit that Donna's return benefits both her character and the show." "Donna, meanwhile, has my unambiguous approval as I mentioned earlier." "It turns out I like Donna better! If you'd told me I'd feel that way a couple of months ago (hell, a couple of weeks ago), I'd have had a difficult time believing it." "I continued to appreciate Donna's presence to the point that it's getting tiresome to write about it. She's excellent! I can't complain about anything."

See? I can reuse my material too! Now where's my OBE?

To say that this is Tate's best performance is no small compliment, I think. But credit is also due to Bernard Cribbins and Jacquline King as Donna's family. The former had me at hello, and the latter has finally won me over.

And that's about it.

I don't quite buy Rose's current characterization as the cool, calm Harbinger of Crisis on Infinite Whoniverses. Yeah, I went there.

You know, it's funny. Just a couple weeks ago I was talking to someone and I mentioned something to the effect of, "one of the very few things that would permanently end my Doctor Who fandom is if Billie Piper were to be cast as the Doctor." And, sadly, the day has come when that statement has been put to the test. Because that's exactly what has happened in this episode: Billie Piper has almost literally become the Doctor. She talks like him. She plays his name game. She bosses UNIT around. She travels in time and finds a companion. And she acts generally nothing like Rose Tyler. Anything likable about Rose (or, for that matter, anything unlikable about Rose) has been stripped away with this ridiculously neutered performance Billie Piper gives. I mentioned to a friend that I thought this was by far the worst performance Piper has ever given in Doctor Who, which he countered by bringing up the Deus-Ex-Rose-Tyler ending of The Parting of the Ways three years ago. Yeah, okay. That was probably Piper's worst moment, but looking at her performance in the episode as a whole, some of her better moments were present as well. I'm referring to the scenes during which she despairs of ever seeing the Doctor again, after he has sent her home. BIllie Piper was at the top of her game in that episode and thinking about it just makes me even more displeased with her performance here. I don't quite buy Rose's current characterization as the cool, calm Harbinger of Crisis on Infinite Whoniverses. Yeah, I went there.

And don't even get me started on all the flipping name-dropping. It's been done to death in the spin-offs with oblique (or occasionally direct) references to the Doctor himself. But when they do the reverse here it just seems cheap, like Russell is trying to draw momentum from outside sources to propel the episode when it would make more sense just to concentrate on the story of the episode. Oh wait, what story? I feel dirty comparing this episode to Midnight, but the mentions of spin-off characters gets exactly the same complaint as my complaint about the Rose cameo last week: it's meant to be tantalizing but it's just distracting. Couldn't we have left that all for the trailer, where it's meant to belong? Oh, wait, I forgot: This whole episode is nothing more than a flipping trailer, combined with a lame rehash of the story of Doctor Who for the last two seasons. Except for the most important part, ie, the return of the Master (yes, yes, I know, it makes sense).

SHIT. SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT.

At this point in the review writing, I had some friends over and re-watched the episode and entirely changed my mind about it. I flipping love this episode! Shit! What am I going to do with the nearly-complete review that I've already written?

And I'm not even interested in discussing the beetle aside from working in a reference to Donna eventually casting it of as though it were Pete Best. 

My points still stand with regard to Billie Piper's performance and the need to name-drop for the sake of giving the series some forward momentum (obviously intended to psych the viewer for the guest roles next week). And I'm not even interested in discussing the beetle aside from working in a reference to Donna casting it of as though it were Pete Best. But what I said was wrong for a few reasons.

First of all, how ridiculous was I to brush off Tate's performance as I did? I didn't even really say anything meaningful about what must be the best performance by a companion since the revival of the series. Hell, maybe the best ever. Donna is my favorite companion out of the ones who will be appearing over the next two weeks (yes, that includes Sarah Jane, who is probably number two). The fact that she is leaving the program at the end of this series makes me somewhat glad that the program is taking a year off because I admit I'm afraid it will be a poorer show without her. She significantly raised the bar for the show and this was the top of her game. The only pity is that Donna will not carry with her the experiences she had in the parallel universe. Unlike Martha's experiences in the negated timeline and Donna's married life on the Library's computer, or even John Smith's romance with Matron Redfern, all of which are remembered as actual experiences, this serves no such purpose. No character has been developed in any meaningful way, not even Donna, who barely remembers it all.

Which is why, I suppose, this felt so empty to me at first: It was all a dream and we were aware of this from the beginning. This episode served two functions: it built the Rose hype to its climax and it delivered some exposition about the final two-parter. Neither of which were really necessary, which makes me wonder whether this episode was written simply to give Catherine Tate something to do while David Tennant was busy filming Midnight. I'm not going to talk about whether Rose's new characterization works or whether her return is worthwhile at all; that's something I'm going to save for my review of the finale, because only then will I be able to form an opinion that's any better than the knee-jerk one expressed above.

Damn. And for once I thought I was going to get to write a negative review.

So ultimately, none of that other stuff matters at all because this episode is driven entirely by the engine that is Donna Noble: the raw emotional power of Tate's performance, the character's unique role in the story of the relationship between the Doctor and Rose, The best performance by her family to date, and it must be said that she is helped by some challenging and entertaining material by Davies in his best script since last week. Seriously, though, now that I've given this episode a bit more of a chance, I do have to admit that, in its own, weird way, it serves as a fitting "companion" to last week's episode. The relationship between the Doctor and his companion has never been examined quite this closely. Midnight was not just a companionless story, but rather a story about companionlessness, and what it means to the Doctor without a companion. Turn Left, then, is the opposite: a story about what a companion is without the Doctor. And then, of course, there's the two-part finale, which features a small army of companions.

Damn. And for once I thought I was going to get to write a negative review. But there's hope yet! And if the next two are good, I might end up having to wait for Torchwood.

Vote: Turn Left

Here are the results for the tenth blog poll, for Turn Left:

• 89%: Superb - Sliding Doors
• 11%: Not Good - Sliding Bores

The twelfth, and penultimate, Doctor Who poll, for The Stolen Earth, will be online later tonight following the broadcast of the episode.

Right Said Threads

Doctor Who: Turn Left

I don't want to piss on anyone's chips, but Turn Left just didn't do it for me. I'd love to give it a big hug, I really would, but there's something relentlessly mechanistic and soulless about this episode that makes it difficult for me to like, let alone love. And while the acting is undeniably impressive (Tate is fantastic, yada, yada, yada), the direction is solid and the premise is morbidly fascinating, I just can't get worked up by endless scenes of people not really dying.

Yes folks, Turn Left is 45 long and dreary minutes of people dying - but only temporarily. And this week it isn't just one of our heroes gently nibbling on the bullet, only to recover just in time for the credits to roll, oh no!: everyone pops their clogs this time! It's one big exercise in faux death and destruction because, as everyone knows by now, there's nothing better than a nice fake death to give those tear ducts a good old work out, safe in the knowledge that everything will be alright in the end. Ahhhhh. So, the Doctor is dead. Martha is dead. Team Torchwood are all dead, except for Jack who still gets to transform into an giant omnisexual head in a jar. Sarah Jane Smith, Luke, Maria and Clyde are all dead too, which is no mean feat when you consider that they haven't even met each other yet. Even the bloody Queen is dead! Will someone please pass the f**king tissues!

All of this is due to a frankly preposterous twist of fate that feels as if it's been designed solely to silence Catherine Tate's detractors, even though she managed to shut most of us up weeks ago. I get it: Donna Noble is a mighty fine companion - one of the very best - but turning her into the most important sentient being in the whole history of creation? Methinks Russell protests too much...

Will someone please pass the f**king tissues!

First of all, we have to accept that the Doctor is killed by a fit of pique, which is a bit much in my book. We also have to swallow the notion that only the right kind of gobby redhead yelling "Stop!" at precisely the right moment will save him with from his own self-absorption. The temp who took Donna's place must have been bloody useless! She was probably cheering the Doctor on as he committed genocide and suicide at the very same time; a quick cutaway of Patsy Palmer in a bridal gown yelling "Kill 'em, Doc!" would have been great but, alas, it wasn't meant to be. Not in this universe anyway.

All of this results in the death of, well, just Her Majesty the Queen! Because, as we all know, only the Queen and Bernard Cribbens were in London on the day the Titanic slammed into Buckingham Palace, and even he gets away this time! Phew. OK, so the radiation poisoning must have played havoc with house prices and America did get its arse kicked by the Adipose (oh, the humanity!) but you have to look on the bright side: at least Japan hasn't been roasted alive this time.

Having said that, I did enjoy the darker aspects of this episode. Donna's mum being revealed as the spiteful cow I always suspected her to be was a nice touch, while the country's inexorable slide into a fascist dictatorship (probably because the cabinet had been infiltrated by giant rock monsters, giant scorpions, giant wasps, a head in a tank and, er, witches) was sporadically effective, especially considering the timeslot. When the magnificent Bernard Cribbens sees history repeating itself I could imagine parents up and down the country having to explain to their children what concentration camps were; actually, forget the kids - Donna was too thick to realise what was going on as well. "Where are you going?" she cries, as if she's the last person on earth to figure it out. The greatest companion ever, eh? Hmmmm.

But It takes a brave man to mix Threads with lite-entertainment and, sadly, Russell is that man. On the one hand you have a family show bravely hinting at what the systematic breakdown of society might actually look like (but without all that raping, looting and people being sick on themselves) but it doesn't take too long before events are thrown into sharp relief with cheap jokes ("go feed whippets") and comedy stereotypes.  For one horrible moment I actually thought that Steve Pemberton was back and the Nobles were moving in with Pops from The League of Gentlemen. "Come in! Take-a da seat on these-a boxes of-a Maverick bars!"

However, I have to admit that there are some interesting distractions. The fact that UNIT somehow managed to cannibalise the TARDIS into a rudimentary Heath Robinsonesque time machine was a very cool idea (if a little bit sad) but the briefing given to Donna was completely ludicrous. Doesn't UNIT have anything about the Blinovitch Limitation Effect in its files? Didn't anyone consider that Donna's initial plan to have an argument with herself in the street would probably result in a temporal catastrophe that would put this alternative f**k-up in the shade. Amateurs! And what is it with Rose's habit of forcing people to jump in front of oncoming traffic to save the time lines? It's fast becoming a habit.

Doesn't UNIT have anything about the Blinovitch Limitation Effect in its files?

Sadly, Billie's return to the series, after months of teasing foreplay, failed to give me the fangasm I'd been craving. I'd been waiting for her to show up for such a long time that by the time he finally jogged into view it didn't feel all that special any more. I've seen Sontarans get better reveals in the 1980s, and even when Rose does arrive she's so obviously wrong that most of my family thought she was an impostor sent to trap Donna, and who can blame them? What the hell was going on with her jaw? It's an utterly bizarre and perplexing performance from Piper that demands at least twelve volumes of fan-fic to explain. Maybe Pete's World is infested by really bad dentists? Who knows?

The climax to the whole shebang just made me laugh.  Forget the beetle, I'm talking about the return of Bad Wolf. Will Russell attempt to explain it to us one more time? Will it makes sense to anyone other than him this time? Sure, it feels kinda exciting but can anyone really explain it? And if Rose really wants to warn the Doctor that she's back then why aren't the two words spoken to Donna, "Rose Tyler"? What is this, an episode of 3-2-1?

So, there you have it. Another death, another spare. How many more times can they pull this stunt?

Get Back

Doctor Who: Turn Left

Donna Noble wasn’t the only one changing direction this week. While the temperamental temp was dooming the world with a casual flick of her indicator, Russell T Davies was slamming on the brakes, locking the wheel and executing a complete 180. Or at least that’s how it looked, as the man who never wastes an opportunity to remind us how vulnerable the average Who viewer is to the lure of ITV’s big shiny floors went charging pedal to the metal through four years’ worth of backstory, collecting spaceships, spin-offs and supporting players from Sarah Jane to Sarah Parish like bugs on his windscreen.

Only last year, Rusty was still claiming that only a small percentage – two million, tops – of his audience were regular viewers, while the rest was made up of casual floating voters who wouldn’t know a Polyphase Avatron from an egg sandwich. Turn Left – and series four in general – suggests the big man has either decided to give these fairweather followers the finger, indulge his own fanboy fantasies and leave Moffat to deal with the fall-out or, more likely, has come to his senses and realised there’s a hardcore audience of at least five million who would stay in and watch this show even if a nuclear-powered replica of a giant ocean liner was about to land on their heads.

And who among those five million didn’t secretly punch the air every time they spotted some throwaway reference to another episode, character or distant outpost of the franchise? (There were more of them than you might think, too: I know I felt particularly pleased with myself for noting the tragic irony of Private Harris declaring the Doctor dead, knowing, with benefit of hindsight – or is it foresight? – that the Doctor isn’t, but he almost certainly is.)

A healthy dose of retconning’s all very well, but dignifying Voyage of the Damned with this sort of dark apocalyptic vision is a bit like making a Holocaust drama out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks

And that’s fine - there are perfectly good evolutionary reasons why we get such an endorphin rush from spotting these allusions and being able to piece together the evolving jigsaw puzzle in our heads. It’s to do with tribal allegiance, status within groups and the fact we’ve been hard-wired since the Pleistocene epoch to see every familiar face – or webstar or lunar hospital – as safe and secure, and every strange new thing as a potential threat. (Or something like that – look, you don't really come here expecting hard science, do you? The important thing is that cheering when you recognise a bit player from Smith and Jones, or a passing reference to The Time Warrior, doesn’t make a you a geek or a fanwank obsessive – it just makes you human.)

Turn Left, then, crosses hefty chunks of Sliding Doors with a dose of Love & Monsters, a dash of Father’s Day and a sprinkle of – well, everything else, really – to create what looks suspiciously like the first volume of a three-part Doctor Who Greatest Hits collection. Which is all terrifically exciting, so long as you remember that, just as greatest hits packages rarely come without their fair share of ropey filler, it’s impossible to travel back through this show’s history without tripping over some of its more maddening inconsistencies.

I’d dearly love to have seen the tone meeting for this one: “It’s gritty, tragic, hopeless; filled with dark shadows and a sickly sense of foreboding. Oh, and the Titanic lands on Buckingham Palace.” Because even the most causal viewer must have trouble reconciling scenes of refugees, internment camps and mass slaughter with that frothy festive nonsense with Kylie and the Queen. A healthy dose of retconning’s all very well, but dignifying Voyage of the Damned with this sort of dark apocalyptic vision is a bit like making a Holocaust drama out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

And yet, somehow, it works. Well, most of it works. This episode has so many ideas that some – like the gratuitous implication of gassing immigrants, which only served to cheapen a very real atrocity - are bound to fall short. And some elements seem only to have been included in a bid to paper over previous mistakes and inconsistencies (while haplessly throwing up a few more into the bargain – wasn’t London supposed to be deserted during VOTD, for starters?). But it’s always better to have too many ideas than too few and, in Turn Left, Davies’ scattershot imagination fires new (and, indeed, old) faces, locations, concepts and mysteries at us like an ADHD-afflicted Raston Robot who's missed his Ritalin shot.

According to this week’s Confidential, this was supposed to be “the cheap episode”. From that, I can only conclude that David Tennant is trousering the bulk of the weekly budget because, that bloody beetle aside, this certainly didn’t look cheap. I know the sfx were recycled, and every clip from the archives is a few quid saved but, even so… It seemed to have a massive cast – including every vaguely Chinese-looking person in Wales – and about a hundred different locations: Surely they’re still more expensive than a couple of minutes of CGI from The Mill?

In an episode filled with flying ocean liners, killer fat and the ghost of Earl Mountbatten haunting the Boat Show, Rose’s voice was by far the oddest element.

(Oh, and while we’re on locations, don’t think I’m going to let that cheeky Manc take on my home city of Leeds pass without comment. Suffice to say that, for all Donna’s horror and those redbrick terraces straight out of Life On Mars, if you’d turned over to BBC Two straight afterwards, you’d have seen Andrew Marr wrapping up his History of Modern Britain from “the Knightsbridge of the North”, and holding the city up as an icon of 21st century style and prosperity. Or empty consumerist Temple of Mammon, depending on which way you choose to slice it. But the point is it’s not all whippets and rickets and outside crappers. That is all.)

What’s striking about Turn Left is how, even though David Tennant is the beating hearts and wheezing-groaning engine of this show, he wasn’t really missed. And you can put that down to Catherine Tate, who was amazing. Again. Funny how easily we take that for granted now, isn’t it? And interesting how, now we’ve been assured of her versatility, and her character’s innate likeability, we can sit back and safely enjoy watching her resurrecting the strident, shrewish Donna of The Runaway Bride for a tour-de-force encore.

And then there was Rose - or Roshe, as she now appears to be known across the entire interweb. I mean, what was that all about? I know Billie has admitted struggling to find the accent again, but what on Earth – any Earth - made her think a speech impediment was the answer? In an episode filled with flying ocean liners, killer fat and the ghost of Earl Mountbatten haunting the Boat Show, Rose’s voice was by far the oddest element. Still, I guess at least she’s good for recycling old Sean Connery jokes (“Shall I meet you at 10ish?” “Tennish, I thought we were playing golf!”). And sorry to get all Closer on you, but who was Billie’s stylist on this - Neill Gorton? It’s all very well rhapsodising about the Doctor’s “great hair”, but you might want to sort out that Croydon facelift ‘do’ yourself, luv. (Incidentally, I don’t think it’s so much that Billie’s teeth have grown, as some have speculated, as that the rest of her face has shrunk around them, with the result that she could now, as my old mate Bobby used to say, comfortably eat an apple through a five bar gate. Hopefully those pregnancy cravings should sort her out – she was certainly looking a lot healthier in her Confidential interviews. I know, I know - it’s like Loose Women in here sometimes.)

All that aside, it was still a treat to have Billie back, even if she was reduced to playing a supporting role to Catherine Tate and the continuity researcher. It would have been all too easy to construct an entire episode around Rose’s return but, as we’ve discovered, RTD just has too many stories to tell right now – stories about mothers and daughters (and wasn’t that scene in the hallway - “S’pose I’ve always been a disappointment” “Yeah” - the bleakest, most brutal in Doctor Who’s long history?) and grandfathers and destiny and darkness and death and triumph and hope. It’s a big, bold vision that, for all its occasional over-reaching and over-ambition, has never looked bigger or bolder. Until next week anyway.

Next time: RTD breaks out in a cold sweat when he realises he’s neglected to find a place for K-9 and Company’s Bill Pollock in The Stolen Earth.

Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre

Doctor Who: Turn Left

In William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, where 'nothing is true, and everything is permitted' insects are symbolic of authoritarian control. They allow the central character access to the alternative dimension of Interzone. It's clear that Russell T Davies' hallucinatory Turn Left, whilst a wholesale revision of his ideas for the entire series, is concerned with Donna Noble's own fateful journey into the Interzone of her own life and times with the Doctor. Her possession by the time beetle also gives Davies an opportunity to boldy offer up a kind of 'state of the nation' address and a rather pessimistic view of humanity that he first articulated this year in Midnight.

He views contemporary society as a global village under constant attack and in Turn Left he takes many of the submerged political subtexts in his work for the series and sets them centre stage. His argument here is that we must not be blind to significant and insignificant actions and he illustrates this by removing, from the entire Donna Noble narrative of The Runaway Bride and Series 4, the active symbol of the Doctor. When you take the Doctor out of events unjustifiable choices become a reality and chaos ensues. Davies is not only echoing Edward Lorenz's Chaos Theory and the predestination paradox of It's A Wonderful Life but he's also taking the personal context of an episode like Father's Day and giving it a universal scale.

...she plunges into a regressive history where, metaphorically speaking, she will never pass on into the future.

The end point of history (and here I'm going to use a bit of Baudrillard so those of you with a nervous disposition around French postmodernist thought had better skip this paragraph) is seen here as a collapse of universes vast and small - from the breakdown between worlds that allows Rose to intercept Donna to the very bleak loss of hope within the Noble family itself. Baudrillard argued that by the end of the 20th Century we no longer actually believe in utopias and that historic moments, like 9/11 for example, only petrify our societies further. Our sense of forward progress, a belief in history continuing was, he believed, just an illusion. In Turn Left Donna is forced to turn away from history 'in progress', with none of the crises of her adventures having been resolved, and she plunges into a regressive history where, metaphorically speaking, she will never pass on into the future.

Donna understands that, as the stars go out, her own history and her death, have become unavoidable. She must go back into history in order to reclaim it for herself and the Doctor.

Davies also postulates, cleverly, that the effects of Donna's history go in two directions: not only does it put an end to time in the future, where the Doctor declares it to be the 'end of the universe', but it also exhausts itself in the obsessional revision of the events of the past, from the Racnoss invasion through to the Sontaran stratagem. The ultimate revision is the crash of the Titanic into Buckingham Palace and the footage of which Donna is convinced is from a 'sequel' and thus a clever in-joke on Voyage Of The Damned itself by Davies. Donna's wrong turn is equivalent to a non-occurrence of memory - equivalent to a non-occurrence of current history. As part of this non-occurrence we hear of the deaths of Sarah Jane, Martha Jones and the remaining members of Torchwood. It's almost as if Davies is saying that Donna wipes out the very series and stories he created for them too. This destruction of history does have a final trajectory and it reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's story, The Nine Billion Names of God which is in the same way about hastening the end of history as a result of recording the many names of God. In the story the stars go out, one by one, and in Turn Left, Donna understands that, as the stars go out, her own history and her death, have become unavoidable. She must go back into history in order to reclaim it for herself and the Doctor.

As we see the consequences of a hopeless and, could we even say, Godless world where the Doctor is dead, Davies script concentrates on the smaller drama of the Noble family. We see Donna as she was in The Runaway Bride, bolshy and gobby, and yet the Doctor's demise and the arrival of Rose still ensure that she is transformed into one of the bravest characters the series has ever seen. As this journey progresses, the Noble family become representative of an audience struggling to make sense of a modern world where human rights are abused and eroded ('we can't even vote'), immigrants are deported or held in camps, nationalism becomes an excuse for oppression ('England for the English') and the relationships between family members shatter through poverty and a lack of faith in each other. I think here that it is worth highlighting the brilliant performances from Jacqueline King as Sylvia and Bernard Cribbins as Wilf. Just as Love And Monsters superbly expanded the character of Jackie Tyler, this script allowed us to see an emotionally drained Sylvia and a disillusioned Wilf. Cribbins was particularly moving as Wilf recalled the use of labour camps during wartime and his fear of history repeating itself. Particularly effective is the scene with Sylvia, in close up, seemingly shell shocked by events, contrasted with an out of focus Donna who resigns herself to her complete redundancy - '...suppose I've always been a disappointment'.

Piper wasn't as impressive, unfortunately, and seemed to spend much of the episode trying to break in a new set of teeth.

And then we come to Catherine Tate. She was stunning. Her ability to articulate the choices that Donna must make, from the mother-daughter arguing that informs her possessed self to take a different direction to the final sacrifice where she throws herself in front of the lorry, ensured that the entire episode was a completely satisfying emotional journey for Donna in and of itself. Her conviction that she will make a difference by traveling back in time and won't die is full of inevitable tragedy and her chemistry with Billie Piper for that scene was spot on. She also provided much of the humour in this bleakest of episodes, the scene where she's sacked and packs up her desk being particularly funny. Piper wasn't as impressive, unfortunately, and seemed to spend much of the episode trying to break in a new set of teeth. However, by the last half she had improved and was effective as a symbolic Doctor like figure working with UNIT and trying to get Donna to accept her fate. The scenes on the bench and in the circle of mirrors were superbly played - 'the whole world is stinking...'  and 'I'm nothing special' with the ' You're gonna die'  coda giving both actresses some very poignant moments to play.

As these events for the Noble family play out and Donna continues to meet Rose, we are kept aware of the time beetle's presence through some chillingly evocative sound effects and the reactions of people around her. However, the animatronic version of the creature isn't terribly convincing and this was further compounded by the comparison to the Metebelis spider in the accompanying Confidential. Slightly worrying that an effect from 1974 is better than one in 2008. Murray Gold's music was also understated where it needed to be, often quite funereal, and made use of established themes for Rose and Bad Wolf. The music for the scene where Donna enters the circle of mirrors - 'it's a time machine' - was particularly effective and shows that he's back on form and that bit of military fanfare as the Italian neighbours are driven away to the camps was a little stroke of genius.

That final Bad Wolf revelation provided an immensely satisfying punch to the episode and a solid segue into the finale as well as building up the meta-narrative of the last four series. Turn Left can't simply be dismissed just as a fanwanky prelude to the two part finale or as a budget saving, empty clips show. It's far, far too good for that. In fact it doesn't put a stroke wrong, Piper's uneven performance and 'Ringo' the beetle aside, and very beautifully emphasises the power of the absent Doctor as a unifying force for good, protector of humanity and of history itself, the equally special qualities of Donna as his companion and the sheer scale of Russell T Davies bravura gameplan.

Future Perfect

Before the episode aired, I’d already decided upon what I thought was the perfect structure for this review.  I was going to write about my second day of university, evening actually.  There was a party in the student hall (which was co-incidentally located in Leeds) and I’d spent most of the night talking to these four French girls because having been at an all boys school for the previous seven years, having not had much contact with girls and deselecting languages from the agenda before my GCSEs, I didn’t see the point in using my time that evening to chat to the English men who all seemed to have packed together at the other end of the common room getting drunk.

I would have described how at the end of the night I, the gentleman I am, walked all of the girls home across campus, and when I reached the final room, the final girl, Katerina invited me in.  I would have cutely revealed that since I’d spent seven years at an all boys school hadn’t had much contact with girls and deselected languages from the agenda before my GCSEs, that I’d meekly told her that it wasn’t the kind of thing we did in our country (which in hindsight also sounds like I’d dropped through a time warp from the end of the 19th century) and that it wouldn’t be right.

On this basis of this I was going to attempt to write the review as though I had actually gone into that room, done all of the things exactly one week later my imagination thought might have happened when I realised what I’d done.  As if going into that now mysterious room might have been the start of a romance which would have opened my eyes in more ways than one, turned me into the cosmopolitan man about town, hung around with a completely different crowd at university and wouldn’t have inextricably returned to Doctor Who in the late nineties meaning I’d be writing reviews for this blog.  It would have been a comment on the whole ‘Left Turn’ aspect of the episode, the Sliding Doors/It’s A Wonderful Life/Buffy: The Vampire Slayer’s The Wish/The Family Man/Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Yesterday’s Enterprise’ facets of Russell T Davies’s script.

Then I watched …

Doctor Who: Turn Left

… or more specifically the climax, and my brain exploded.

Oh yes, as soon as Donna said those two magic words, I began shouting, ‘Aaaah! Aaaah! Aaaaah!  Bad Wolf!  Bad Wolf!’  You know that video of those two girls on the couch during the reappearance of the Master last year that turned up on You Tube?  That was me.  I shouted so hard, I actually began to get chest pains, and believe that if I hadn’t calmed down in time for the trailer, through which I mostly just tittered, there might have been a puddle of something which rhymes with squee on the floor.  I don’t remember being this excited during the old series when I was a child.  Not even when Tom turned to Peter or it was revealed that Bertie Bassett was a wrongen after all.

In other words, don’t expect anything much from me on the subject of this episode, no great insights or moments of inspiration.  The critical parts of my opinion organ are currently splattered all over the cushions and beginning to smell.  At this point if I was asked to review the new Coldplay album, I’d probably give it five stars, write ‘well cool’ underneath and eat another chocolate chip cookie.  Excitement makes me want to snack it seems.  I’m listening to a Pussycat Dolls cd as I write, for goodness sake.  This episode might have been rubbish for all I know, but those final few moments, the signs of Bad Wolf everywhere, the Doctor realising the monumental task ahead, the fact that we haven’t yet seen everything from the mid-season trailer, the …

I’m agreeing with the Dolls that I wished my girlfriend was hot like them

Well, you’re here, I’m here, and I’m agreeing with the Dolls that I wished my girlfriend was hot like them.  Or Katerina.  On the face of it, Left Turn seemed like it was going to be a fairly standard lope through the tropes of the aforementioned narratives, Rose fulfilling the role of Clarence the angel guiding Donna through all of the changes which occurred because she decided to turn right.  There was certainly an element of that, especially as our old friend explained to our new one how important she was to the universe, and Donna making much the same sacrifice as the Enterprise-C in giving herself up for the sake of the timeline.

Unlike those stories though, this wasn’t a learning experience, a repulsive human being (George Bailey and Captain Garrett excepted) gaining insight into what their life could be like so as to make them enjoy what they have and make them a better person.  Which isn’t to say that Russell wasn’t averse to utilising the kind of orientalism you’d often find in a high concept Eighties fantasy film like Gremlins or Big to bring about the terrible tremors in the timeline (perfectly evoked by Chipo Chung’s exotic turn).  About the only thing which didn’t work in the episode was the giant obviously plastic beetle that might as well have been bought in a Museum gift shop, but even that was saved from total deplorability by the Doctor’s invoking of the Trickster from The Sarah Jane Adventures as an explanation, giving the prop a weight it hadn’t shown in any of its previous scenes.

About the only thing which didn’t work in the episode was the giant obviously plastic beetle that might as well have been bought in a Museum gift shop

Such tales are never about the methodology and entirely about outcome, and the entertainment was in seeing the effects the major events of the past couple of series would have had on the population of the world had our hero not been abroad.  This was intricate and mostly very well thought out, particularly in the non-appearance of the Master who it’s finally acknowledged would still be chan stuck as poor old Professor Yana tho had it not been for the Doctor’s appearance in the far future.  For every potential plot hole an explanation was forthcoming – not enough time to regenerate, not enough cars in the country with ATMOS fitted, indestructible Jack transporting to the Sontaran homeworld. 

About the only hiccup I could find was that Sarah-Jane and friends, according to Invasion of the Bane, don’t unite until early 2009 which makes their death in the hospital premature and we didn’t find out how the adventures set in the past would have turned out without the Doctor’s presence.  Why also no mention of celestial bodies threatening to smack into the Earth every couple of weeks or the kidnapping of children.  Such things can be blamed on this being a corrupted timeline or as the Doctor says, time has a habit of sorting itself out around these kinds of paradoxes (something he managed to explain without using either the words ‘timey’ or ‘whimey’ or ‘web of’). 

no mention of celestial bodies threatening to smack into the Earth every couple of weeks or the kidnapping of children

Other than that it was almost as though Russell T Davies had a copy of Ahistory next to his keyboard as he typed, reminding him that Sarah once wrote for the Metropolitan and the alternative world that Rose became trapped in was a couple of years ahead and so should the barriers fall down she’d have an insight into the outcome of events.  The return of such figures as Morganstern for a couple of lines filled in the kind of gaps which often occur in episodes like this when actors aren’t available.  It’s not unlike a US show produced by John Wells – in e.r., incidental hospital workers established as working in County General  during earlier seasons would reappear later in much the same positions (often even though their career had taken off in the meantime). 

If there are multiple dimensions though, and the Tyler girl can skip between them, are the rest all without the Doctor?  Shouldn’t there be one teeming with timelords even, after a more positive outcome for the time war?  One in which the Eighth Doctor’s still trying to regain his memory after his latest bump on the head?  According to the boards, Russell and Paul recently had lunch, and we all know what that means.  Much discussion of the wig. 

even Montoban had to see the Space Seed again

Wouldn’t one of those do if she was desperate?  Well, no, because Rose is loyal to her Doctor.  Billie Piper might be embarrassed at having had to watch a couple of episodes to remind herself of how to approach the role (even Montoban had to see the Space Seed again) but I think that once the hair and make-up returned everything else fell into place.  The character’s older now certainly, and far more technologically and scientifically minded and developed a certain Torchwoody bite but she’s still much the same girl who lost the lottery money in the basement of Henricks.

Even if as almost everyone I’ve seen online suggests her accent has changed and she’s had some dental work, Piper demonstrated the strength that has developed within Rose through independence and has self-consciously appropriated some of the mannerisms of her old friend, her experiences in the intervening years playfully hinted at, the muted television special suddenly looking like a genuine loss to the franchise.  Perhaps now that he’s got a moment to himself, Russell will turn it into a novel.  For my money, it’s a more successful recall than Martha who has actually seemed to regress into being a more typical companion in the intervening time.

it doesn't strike me that Billie even wants to go back even for a short time

In other words, when I commented previously:  "I can't even believe I'm giving this house room, but even narratively speaking it's a joke and would annoy me even more than Catherine Tate's appearance is bugging other people. It cheapens the close of Doomsday for a start, plus it doesn't strike me that Billie even wants to go back even for a short time. It'd be like Sarah Jane Smith turning up for Tom's regeneration in Logopolis. Yes, I know they asked Liz but she didn't want to do it and I suspect Piper would be anti too even to commemorate David's 'era'. Once again, balderdash and piffle."  I was wrong, the minxes and it somehow didn't manage to overshadow the current incumbent or lessen the impact of the end of season two.

Donna cries again, and with good reason.  As her world falls apart, she has much the same realisation I had in the early noughties that I was trained for nothing and she noticed too that predictably at the first sign of trouble, Britain has become tough on immigration.  That Catherine Tate was brilliant goes without saying; throughout this series she’s been called upon to deal with potentially even more emotionally complex material than either of her predecessors and surely must have won over her doubters by now, even if this is the third week running that the ‘proper’ Donna, the one who’s travelling with the Doctor, has hardly got a look in. 

even if this is the third week running that the ‘proper’ Donna, the one who’s travelling with the Doctor, has hardly got a look in

But the secret weapons in this episode were the guest cast.  Bernard Cribbins and particularly Jacqueline King as Sylvia, who brought an extreme amount of darkness to what has up until now been something of a one-note character, a reminder of Donna when she was still The Runaway Bride.  That shot from the hallway of the house outwards focused just on her face was devastating, a single word demonstrating just how broken the human race had become.  If the lights can fall from her eyes? 

In the end, Turn Left was the darkest episode of Nu-Who that Russell has so far presented, joyously wrecking his cohesive universe and murdering much loved characters in both directions.  Even Donna’s sense of hope in committing suicide was misplaced as Rose hinted what we’d all suspected – that the character’s surname is likely to become a job description.  It seems too that some of the budget saved in setting episodes in country houses and spaceship cabins is being spent in these final three. 

the watch word during tone meeting was ‘mundane’

The hopelessness of the family’s nomadic existence would not have worked as well without so many scene changes, and director Graham Harper has that rare ability to eloquently direct action sequences and character moments with equal fluidity.  Perhaps rightly the watch word during tone meeting was ‘mundane’ as the plot played out across some ultra-realistic, not mention grotty settings.  The audio landscape of the episode recalled most of the major music of the past, with Rose’s theme writ large and intermingling with Donna’s and those some will still probably have a pop at Murray’s emotional crescendo, this is one of the few episodes in which his talents helped to bind the episode together.

On then to the climax and post-coitus trailer.  To install Bad Wolf again at this critical stage was orgasmic, Rose’s deployment of them at Donna’s ‘death’ recalling her appearance at the scene of her Dad’s sacrifice recalling Father’s Day (oddly enough, there was also once a magazine called Turn Left published by Cornell University).  At the dusk of the old age, Russell is clearly going to be referencing all of the hints and red herrings not only of this season but since Rose, loose end upon loose end tied together so that Steven can move forward with a largely clean slate (with only his own ideas left hanging).   

pshrr and nrrr

It turns out that every tabloid and internet rumour you read was probably true, even the ones were you thought pshrr and nrrr and ‘That’d never happen…’, playfully tossing out the rule book on making accessible entertainment, the closing couple of episodes should be of the kind written by fans for fans and repaying our loyalty for the past four years.  Even Harriet Jones is there, though who is that old woman standing between the Judoon?  Old Rose?  Old Donna?  Gelth?  Agatha Christie?  At this point, anything is possible. 

Though I still think Davros and the Daleks are a red herring in the style of the gamestation, the army of ghosts, and Mr Saxon (just look at the episode they’re appearing in) masking something even more terrible.  During Confidential, a clip from ‘Dalek’ of the Doctor describing the Last Great Time War was played out.  For once it sounded more like “the war to end all wars” and given the propensity of the series towards World War I motifs, will we be looking at Time War II next week? 

Look – I think my brain’s grown back.

Next Week:  The Dalek Invasion of Earth 2009, as directed by Robert Altman.

Turn On, Tune In

The Doctor Who News Page reports that unofficial overnight figures show that Turn Left got 7.0 million viewers (a 35.1% share) and won its timeslot against ITV1's natural history epic Animals Do The Funniest Things (which was watched by 3.2 million).

Beetlemania

Doctor Who: Turn Left

Let the fangasms begin.

Bad Wolf, Morgenstern, the Trickster, shout-outs to Martha, Luke and Clyde.  Those alone should have been enough to leave your die-hard Doctor Who Forumites gasping for air, and your fanwank haters reaching for the Gaviscon -  let alone the additional returns of UNIT, the Titanic, the Christmas Spider and You-Know-Who.

But all the continuity on display shouldn’t overshadow the most important thing about Turn Left.  That it was an absolutely phenomenal piece of television.

First things first.  Catherine Tate.  Over the course of my involvement with Behind the Sofa, I’ve been happy to admit how wrong I was with regards to her returning.  Yes, we’d all heard about the RSC training, but after suffering through that pantomime performance in The Runaway Bride,  it was clear a lot of fans - myself included - feared another Bonnie.

How wrong we were.

This was a tremendous turn from Tate, as we see a very different Donna - one clearly undermined and almost downtrodden by her mother’s disappointment in her. Who remains wrapped up in her own little world, even as the rest of the universe collapses in around her. Donna not meeting the Doctor might have killed him physically, but it also killed her spirit.

Her finest scene in this episode?  There’s so many to pick from, but for me it’s that moment when realisation slowly dawns, as the foreign family sharing the refugee home in Leeds is sent to a ‘labour camp’, what that actually means besides her own family having more room.

She’s never been less than great this season, and here she was on another planet

You see it in her eyes, the shattering of that selfish reality she’s wrapped around herself, and it’s replacement with the harshness of their new, Threads-lite environment.

Given the hype about Rose’s return, this is very much Donna’s story and Catherine’s performance.  Partners in Crime aside, she’s never been less than great this season, and here she was on another planet.

As with the previous Doctor-lite episodes, the chance to do something experimental and out-there drew the best from a talented scribe.  Russell’s script, revisiting the world without Donna’s influence on the Doctor, was a genuine joy, taking the big Earth-based set-pieces of the last two seasons and turning them up to 11.  It almost redeemed the Voyage of the Damned.  What was a ridiculous premise - a spaceship replica of the Titanic hurtling towards Buckingham Palace - became a chilling, hideous concept, as a mushroom cloud rose on the horizon.

Graham Harper’s skilled direction also helped.  Joe Ahearne, Euros Lyn and Harper have helped define a visual style for these key episodes, and as with Utopia last year Harper’s energy takes a great script and makes it rollercoaster stuff.  Can you imagine what this man would be like doing a season of 24?  There’s not enough adrenaline in the world to keep up.

Often, in fact, there was a feeling of Sam Raimi about the direction, especially as the Bad Wolf revelation kicked in, and we crash zoomed into the posters and banners around the market, each one hammering home the point.  Harper’s due his bus pass in two years - let’s hope the producers don’t pension him off prematurely.

So that was the good - and let’s not be mistaken, there was lots of good to go around here.  But there were two big problems with the episode.  Two huge problems.  Two massive, ginormous problems.

We all know the Doctor Who stories where a pisspoor monster model has come close to ruining things

Specifically, the oversized beetle.  And Billie Piper’s teeth.

So let’s take the former first.  We all know the Doctor Who stories where a truly pisspoor monster model has come close to ruining things.  By and large, most shows get away with it, but the same time these moments have an effect.  They serve, even just for an instant, to take you out of the moment.  It’s breaking kayfabe. Yes, we already know it’s not real, it’s just a fiction, but getting it hammered home like that has a corrosive effect.

The giant rat in The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the nearest analogue to Turn Left’s beetle.  Just a big, ugly, dumb, fake moment, where the ambition and concepts of the script are largely let down by the production’s limitations.  And the reveal of the beetle is the same.  It just looks rubbish.  It looks like the sort of prop they’d use to dress the set on I’m A Celebrity... no, worse - On Safari.

As for the second problem - what the hell happened?  Seriously?  Charlie Brooker on Screenwipe talked of a great game you can play with Billie Piper’s face, trying to work out what part is the biggest.  But the truth, the answer, is that it’s plainly her teeth.  Somewhere between Doomsday and Turn Left, La Piper’s teeth seem to have grown an inch, leaving her with a Simpsons overbite and Langford lisp.

Piper’s performance was... interesting.  She talked in Confidential and during interviews of having a crisis of confidence going into the part, and having to buy a bunch of box-sets to relearn the character again.  Unfortunately, it seems to be the box set of Secret Diary of a Call Girl rather than the chavvy saarf Laaahndaaner that we dumped on a beach in Norway (or Wales) last time.

She wasn’t bad, by any stretch.  And since the character was supposed to have moved forward, clearly, then it makes sense that she sounds different.  But what was notable was how pale a performance it was when put up against Tate.  Piper was seen as a revelation when she joined the show initially, for a generation used to seeing her singing, dancing and getting hammered with Christopher Evans on a grand tour of the world’s best public houses.

In fact, one of the harshest, and most unfair, criticisms of Freema Agyeman was that she was no Billie Piper.  Well, on this evidence, Billie’s no Catherine Tate.  And that’s a phrase I never envisaged writing.

SFX’s smouldering sex kitten of science fiction, Jayne Nelson, wrote on her own blog how this episode was the most nu-Who has ever felt like Buffy and I can see where she’s coming from - specifically The Wish, where we see life in Sunnyvale if Buffy had never arrived.

But what’s remarkable too is how unafraid the episode - and the show itself, to an extent - is to embrace itself and it’s other franchises, despite the age and demographic gap involved.  So we get the Torchwood team and Sarah Jane’s adventurers namechecked casually, as if everyone should know exactly who they are.  We get references to the Trickster and his brigade, from The Sarah Jane Adventures and the Doctor Who website. 

And most importantly we get the feeling that Russell has turned this show, rather than a franchise for the BBC to milk and exploit with lots of spin-offs, into a remarkable, cohesive world where everything that happens has implications, even if it’s years down the line on another branch of the line.  It feels almost like a reward for paying attention all these years.

Still, it all sets up perfectly for next week’s episode, which judging by the throw forward we got at the end of Turn Left, will be An Audience Without Craig Hinton.  Is Doctor Who going out on a high?  You bet.