Two for the Price of One

28 December 2017

I have watched Twice Upon a Time a couple of times now, but am still trying to decide what I think about it.

As a regeneration story, it works well. Unlike previous regeneration episodes, the Doctor knows from the start that he is dying, and the focus of the story is how he comes to terms with his impending regeneration(s).

There are some wonderful performances, particularly from Mark Gatiss as the Captain, as he realises the implications of the Doctor's passing reference to World War I. David Bradley is wonderful as the First Doctor, though the script perhaps overdoes the sexism a bit.  Simply asking Bill to make some coffee would have been more in keeping than the lines about cleaning the TARDIS and the threat of a smacked bottom.

As a Christmas Special, I'm not so sure. Yes, it's snowy, and Christmas comes into it, in the form of the Christmas Truce, but the mood is scarcely festive.  On one level the story is all about impending death: the Doctor's, the Captain's and those of the members of Testimony, even if it comes with a typical Steven Moffat 'no-one actually dies' sort of twist.

I'm not even sure about the nobody really being dead bit.  When we last saw Clara, she might not have had a heartbeat, but she was off, zooming around the universe with Ashildr/Me, and Bill was similarly last seen flying off with Heather.  If they are both part of Testimony now it seems rather more final.

All in all though, it's time for a change, and it will be fascinating to see what Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker will bring to the series.

Top Ten (and a bit more) Christmas Specials

Only two sleeps to  Twice Upon A Time  so I  have updated by league table of Christmas Specials.

1	The Christmas Invasion	2005
2	The Unquiet Dead*	2005
3	A Christmas Carol	2010
4	The Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe	2011
5	The Runaway Bride	2006
6	Voyage of the Damned	2007
7	Last Christmas**	2014
8	Doctor Mysterio	2016
9	The Next Doctor	2008
10	The Husbands of River Song***	2015
11	The End of Time*****	2009
12	The Snowmen	2012
13	The Time of the Doctor	2013

.

A week to go....

Sunday 17 December 2017

With just a week to go before the big day (the broadcast of Twice Upon a Time) I decided to prepare by watching the DVD of The Tenth Planet again.

A couple of things struck me:

1. This is one of those stories where Polly doesn't seem to do much apart from make the coffee.  I wonder whether she was called Polly because her role is to put the kettle on?  I hope that the Thirteenth Doctor doesn't start making the tea.

2. The Doctor doesn't really do anything at all in this story.  He even spends one whole episode asleep. (Or is this because he has nipped out round the back to play with number Twelve?)

I can't wait to find out. 

Meanwhile I am warming up by watching old Christmas Specials.  The Christmas Invasion is still the best.

Still not Ginger!

Monday 17 July 2017

So the new Doctor is going  to be Jodie Whittaker, with whom the incoming showrunner has worked extensively on Broadchurch.  She is white, thirty-something and not ginger.  I may have been just a tiny bit wrong about the gender*, but apart from being female the casting seems completely in the usual pattern and therefore unremarkable.

So, leaving aside the competing and equally blinkered views of 'finally, a woman!' and 'it's ruined and I'm never watching again', what are we to make of the casting?

Firstly, Jodie Whittaker is an excellent actor. Her role in Broadchurch mainly involved a lot of emotional angst as a grieving mother, so it will be interesting to see how she deals with the more quirky aspects of the Doctor's personality.

Secondly, the publicity photos remind me quite a lot of Romana 2. (I mentioned this to my German colleague at work, but he had never heard of the Time Lady in question.  I am disappointed in him.) Will the Thirteenth Doctor actually turn out to be rather like Romana?   And if so, can we have a K9 substitute?  An electric parrot or a talking cabbage would be good.

Thirdly, will we now get a new male companion?  The last two series have ended with a female companion of the Doctor flying off to explore the universe along with another female character (Clara and Ashildr/Me last year and Bill and Heather this year), so two women flying around the space time continuum has been done. Perhaps Chris Chibnall could find a way of reintroducing Rory? It is important to have some sort of gender balance in the TARDIS.  If all else fails, Captain Jack will do nicely.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to Christmas.

*I'm open-minded about this.  I don't see any need for the Doctor to change gender, but don't mind as  long as it has been done in order to take the series in new directions and explore new stories, rather than as a gimmick or to appease the feminist lobby. 

At last ....

Saturday 15 July 2017

There is a popular conception that ladies of a certain age are glued to their TV sets at this time of year, guzzling strawberries and champagne.  Well, I'm sorry, but whilst I don't mind strawberries(though raspberries are much nicer), I HATE TENNIS IN GENERAL, and WIMBLEDON IN PARTICULAR. It's even worse than netball.

This leaves me in something of a difficulty given that the casting of the new Doctor is supposed to be announced after the Men's Final.  How can I be poised and ready for that, without having to watch the beastly tennis?

I may just have to hide until it's all over.  Meanwhile, here are my thoughts on the casting:

People I would quite like to see as the Thirteenth Doctor:

• David Tennant (still hoping for that waking up in the TARDIS shower moment)
• Richard Coyle
• Kris Marshall
• Alex Hassell
• Edward Bennett

People I would not like to see as the Thirteenth Doctor:

• Wee Jimmie Krankie
• Olivia Colman
• James Corden
• Noel Fielding
• Mary Berry

I still think it will be a 30-40ish male actor who is just beginning to get known on TV (so none of the above, really.)

All will be revealed tomorrow.

Pink for the Stegosaurus

9 July 2017

The Dinosaur Invasion is the first story I can remember seeing.  Or at least I don't remember seeing it as much as discussing having seen it, whilst watching Death to the Daleks (or 'the one with the hearthrugs, as my mother called it - sadly ahead of her time.  She could have had a great career writing episode titles for Friends.) When I married into fandom, I saw it again on a somewhat grainy off-air VHS tape. 

Memory plays strange tricks, though. I could have sworn that on the map of the dinosaur materialisations stegosaurus were colour coded pink. But watching the DVD whilst ironing yesterday morning, I realised that it was actually 'pink for the pterodactyls.' I have been living a lie all these years!

If you make allowances for the primitive (or prehistoric) special effects, this story stands up quite well.  True, Sarah does behave with annoying stupidity at times, when she once again picks completely the wrong person to ask for help, but then this is as far as I am aware, the only story until Mawdryn Undead where one of the series regulars is actively working against the Doctor.

Today we watched The Stones of Blood.  This I found genuinely creepy on first viewing, and it remains my favourite from the Key to Time Season. Earlier this year we visited the Rollright Stones, which were used for location filming (with a few polystyrene additions.)

WHO cares?

5 July 2017

There is still an incredible amount of speculation in the press about the identity of the next Doctor. The media seem convinced that she should be a woman, and keep suggesting names of various female actors (or comedians) who then have to issue a denial.

It seems to me that this is an impossible situation.  If a woman is cast, then the media will immediately seize on any decline in viewing figures (which are declining anyway, along with those for every other TV programme as viewing habits change) as the fault of the 'Woman Doctor.'  If  they don't cast a woman, and I still think it will be a thirty-something male who is not yet quite a household name, then Chris Chibnall will be blamed for lack of gender equality.  Which is ridiculous. Why should there be any need to change the Doctor's gender in order to prove some sort of political point.

I'm beginning to wonder if the only answer is Eddie Izzard.

Little House on the Solar Farm

Saturday 1 July 2017

After a very nice celebration lunch we were home in plenty of time for the Doctor Who finale, hoping that it wouldn't turn out to be a disappointment that spoiled the day. I've  found that with two-parters the set-up is often better than the conclusion. So was that the case here? 

There was a lot to enjoy, particularly the situation with Missy and the Master.  Missy is in two minds about whose side she is on "fortunately one of them is unconscious."

But the scene soon shifts from the creepy hospital to floor 507, where settlers are protecting the children in a homestead straight out of The Waltons. Bill is having identity issues (though I wonder why she has more problems with the 'Cyber' than the 'Man'). Meanwhile Nardole is proving useful, though he is something of a Marmite character.  I have warmed to him, but my other half described him as 'like K-9 only without the charm.'

All in all, it becomes apparent that the situation is without hope, but the Doctor has to try, because that is what he does, and Peter Capaldi gets to deliver another moving speech.  The Master and Missy manage to cancel each other out in a glorious moment of self-destruction.

Ultimately, though, the ending with a deus ex machine,  or more literally dea ex lacrimis, was a little disappointing, and rather too similar to the last series, with a companion who is sort-of dead surviving to fly off round the universe with a female companion.

The final moments bode well for Christmas, though.  Roll on December!

Extenuating Circumstances

A while ago I pointed out that my university colleague and I had concerns about the personal tutoring arrangement between Bill and the Doctor.

It's all a bit academic (see what I did there?) now that she has been 'repaired' but I wanted to return to the question of Bill's essay on free will that was 6 months late, owing to the invasion of the Monks. I'm afraid that invasion by zombie monks does not count as an extenuating circumstance under the terms of the extenuating circumstances policy, and even if it did, a six-month extension would be out of the question.

If the alien invasion is preventing Bill from engaging with her studies, she really should interrupt her registration.

Not only a Doctor Who geek, but a university regulations geek.  There is no hope for me.

World Enough and Time

Monday 26 June 2017

We missed the broadcast of Saturday night's episode owing to a prior engagement watching David Troughton (The Curse of Peladon and Midnight) playing Titus Andronicus  at the RSC. After an extremely gory evening, we settled down on Sunday morning to watch World Enough and Time.

Having enjoyed the previous two episodes, I didn't have particularly high hopes, particularly as I find season finales tend to be a bit disappointing.  I have seen online reviews suggesting that the episode was ruined because two of the biggest shocks had been made public in  advance.  Well, maybe, but the chances of keeping them secret would have been about the same as those of the Daleks taking up charity work.  On the other hand, Bill's fate was a genuine shock. And despite the leaks, I failed to penetrate the Master's disguise.  How could I have been so dense?

The idea of dropping Missy into a typical Doctor-type scenario to see how she got on was inspired.  I can't wait to find out what happens next week.   Unfortunately, next Saturday is a significant date, the sort of date that you might go out to celebrate.

Fortunately the husband has already thought of that.  "I've booked a table for lunch" he told me.

What Have the Romans done for Who

Saturday 17 June 2017

Bill is an expert on  the Ninth Legion. 

Of course she is.  New Who companions have a thing about the Romans. Amy's obsession with Romans became part of a trap for the Eleventh Doctor, and the Tenth Doctor took Donna to see the Colosseum, or would have done if the TARDIS hadn't gone slightly off course and landed them in Pompeii on volcano day.   

Bill is also an excellent student.  She is prepared to argue the point with her tutor, and to undertaken her own first-hand research - even if she has make use of a handy time machine to do it. But her hypothesis about the fate of the missing legion turns out to be slightly off target. She didn't allow for the effects of a dimensional gateway and some light-eating locusts. Must try harder.

Rona Munro's long-awaited return to the series was an enjoyable and largely traditional story.  The Doctor and his companion split up and gain the trust of opposing groups who eventually join together to defeat the larger threat.  There's nothing wrong with that.  To my mind, Doctor Who is at is best when dealing with relatively small scale stories such as this.  Whilst there is a threat that could consume the whole planet, confining the action to a single isolated location makes it easier to suspend disbelief than an epic with updates from all over the world.

Meanwhile, a reformed Missy is back in the TARDIS.  I have a bad feeling about next week....

It's the Macra incident all over again

10 June 2017

After the fairly ho-hum Monk trilogy, I had high hopes for Empress of Mars. Mark Gatiss is at his best when writing Victorians, and this was a typical Boys Own adventure tale of derring-do and serving the British Empire .... only on Mars, in a Tomb of the Cybermen sort of setting.

Of course in every regiment there is a bad apple or two. In this case there was the pilfering soldier (helpfully called 'Jackdaw') and a Captain who was a really nasty piece of work, probably because he rejoiced under the name of Neville Catchlove.

It was Catchlove, rather than the reanimated Ice Warriors, who was the real villain of the piece, though the Ice Warriors had a particularly unpleasant way of killing people.  The hero was a cowardly Colonel, brilliantly played by Anthony Calf, who redeemed himself with an act of selfless heroism that saved the day.  The Doctor didn't actually seem to do all that much, apart from attempting to negotiate between the species.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS, with Nardole on board, had decided to return to Earth. I'm not entirely sure whether this was simply a 'separate the Doctor from the TARDIS to stop it being too easy' device, or whether the point was to engineer a situation in which Missy would be released from the vault. 

However, the highlight of the episode was not Missy in the TARDIS, but the sound of the first friendly alien race with whom the 'e-mail' rigged up by the Doctor for the Empress made contact.  As soon as I heard it, I shrieked 'Alpha Centauri' before the interference on the viewscreen cleared to show everyone's favourite hermaphrodite alien, and definitely ahead of my husband (the 'proper' fan.) Just like in Gridlock where I identified Macra from a single waving claw.

It's all thanks to the Monks

Saturday 3 June 2017

*Spoilers*

I didn't write much about last week's episode because I really didn't like it that much.  I've mentioned before that I prefer self-contained smaller scale stories to big story arcs and the whole planet mobilising against a threat.  I particularly don't like the idea of the Doctor being made President of Earth.

Anyway, tonight's episode picked up events six months later, and our hero has apparently turned into a sort of modern day Lord Haw-Haw, broadcasting about how the wonderful Monks have always been there, shaping humanity's progress.  I wonder how they got on with the Fendahl, Fenric, Scaroth and all the other aliens who have been guiding humanity over the millennia?

Ha! Trick question!  Because of course they didn't get on with them at all, as they weren't really there. It is all a lie. Martha still knows this, but struggles to keep her grip on reality.  Of course the Doctor must be a prisoner, and being forced to help the Monks, mustn't he?

Until the end of the scene on the prison ship, the episode promises much. But having thrown everything at what turns out to be a gigantic fan wind-up, it rather runs out of steam after that.  There are some obvious parallels between this episode and Last of the Time Lords. Both start from a point where the earth had been taken over by aliens at the end of the previous episode, and the action starts some months later with the companion, the  being in the aliens' power. The ultimate resolution, using the alien's telepathic gizmo against them, is also the same.  And they both feature the Master (or Mistress.) The one significant difference here is that Missy is not responsible, and having (almost) turned over a new leaf, she provides the Doctor with the clue to the Monks' weakness.

All in all, despite great performances from Pearl Mackie, Peter Capaldi and Michelle Gomez, I found this rather dull.

Faith and the Doctor

Saturday 27 May 2017

"When I'm on a date, don't under any circumstances put the Pope in my bedroom!" Martha's ruined date was a moment of humour in an otherwise disturbing episode.  But what other programme would use the pontiff for a throwaway line like that?

This got me thinking about religion and faith in Doctor Who. Before I start, I should make plain that I am an agnostic whose  only real belief is in what Jerome K Jerome called 'the cussedness of things in general' and is otherwise known as Sod's Law.  (Yes, I did put the garden furniture out on the hottest day of the year to date and the weather changed.)

Faith and belief is not always positive in Doctor Who.  For a start, there is the faith/belief versus science and reason theme which appears in many stories (Meglos, The Face of Evil and The Mutants) to name but three. More recently, the whole tenure of the Eleventh Doctor was defined by a story arc in which events are manipulated by a religious order whose primary belief is that the Doctor must be prevented from answering the oldest question on the fields of Trenzalore.  On a smaller scale, faith (in anything) proves lethal in The God Complex.

In contrast, faith proves helpful in holding back Haemovores in The Curse of Fenric, and in Last of the Time Lords the Master is ultimately defeated by a form of faith in the Doctor, magnified by the Master's own Archangel network.

Tonight's episode, in contrast was not about faith, but about love, or at least the Monks' need to be loved.  With the bleak ending, we need hope next week.  Is the Monk trilogy actually based on 1 Corinthians 13?

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13.13 New International Version)

Think of a Number...

20 May 2017

So tonight we found out what, or rather who, is in the vault, and  why the Doctor made a vow to guard it.  To be honest, it was not too much of a surprise. I suspect most people had guessed at the end of last week's episode. 

For now, the vault remains sealed as the story of its occupant was told entirely in flashback. These flashbacks were intercut with the main business of the episode.  How the two actually relate to each other was unclear. Perhaps we will find out next week. Or perhaps not.

Meanwhile, Bill has brought a friend home.  It was all going so well until the TARDIS lands in her bedroom, along with an unexpected passenger. This silliness, and the obvious Dan Brown homage aside, I was enjoying the episode until it weirdly segued into The Matrix. Very odd.

Bit of Politics there...

Saturday 13 May 2017

Eagle-eyed viewers of tonight's episode Oxygen think they may have detected a few political points and are asking on social media when Doctor Who got political.

Well, it has certainly had episodes with political references since the Pertwee era, if not before. These are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are many more.

• Environmentalists versus capitalism in The Green Death.
• Joining the Galactic Federation (Common Market) in The Curse of Peladon.
• Decolonisation in The Mutants.
• Margaret Thatcher in The Happiness Patrol.
• Tony Blair's 'dodgy dossier' in World War Three ('massive weapons of destruction', indeed!)

Politics aside, I thought it was a  very good episode.  I hadn't been looking forward to it, space zombies not really being my thing, but there was a very real sense of jeopardy.  This was not the sanitised space of Star Trek,  but a hostile environment, which is trying to kill you.

There were some nice touches,  such as the moment when Bill came face to face with her first blue-skinned alien.  And we didn't have an ending where everybody lived and the TARDIS crew escaped unscathed.

Looking forward to next week.

Knock, Knock

Saturday 6 May

Tonight's episode was apparently named in honour of a joke so old that we were telling it in the playground when I was at primary school. Are 'knock, knock' jokes still a thing in the 21st century, or as they as dated as Angel Delight and blue PE knickers?

Bill is moving into a house share and the Doctor is helping.  Is this the first time  that the TARDIS has been used as a removal van?  But whilst she is happy to have assistance with transporting her things, she really doesn't want the Doctor interfering in the normal part  of her life and embarrassing her in front of her new housemates.  You don't get rid of the Doctor that easily, though, and it turns out the suspiciously cheap house is not at all normal.

It looks nice enough and has large rooms and lots of potential.  It's surprising that it hasn't been snapped up by a property developer - all it needs  is central heating and rewiring. Or does it? Something nasty is lurking in the woodwork, and it isn't just deathwatch beetle.

This was a classic creepy (or creaky) house story.  It reminded me of the X-Files episode War of the Coprophages,  but with added Scooby-Do, even down to the sinister caretaker, sorry, landlord, played brilliantly by David Suchet.  Scooby-Who, perhaps?

Under the Dryer

Saturday 6 May

"You'll never guess what we were talking about at the hairdressers just now!" I exclaimed to my husband Neil as I came through the door.

"Daleks?" He ventured.

"How did you guess?"

Now, although I am a lady of a certain age, I'm really not that interested in the sorts of things women are supposed to obsess about: spas, facials, manicures and all other sorts of female pampering leave me cold.  But even I need to get my hair cut occasionally (three times a year, whether I need it or not.)

So there I was, casually listening to my stylist chatting about what her partner was likely to be making in his shed whilst she was working, when my ears suddenly pricked up as she said: "I've got a life size Dalek in my spare room that he made."

"Me too" I replied, "but mine's inflatable."

So I related the tale of Derek the Departmental Dalek, and she told me about Darren the Dalek, who was back home after being loaned to Aylesbury Museum. Her partner, Neal, had built him after a friend bet him £20 that he wouldn't be able to make one.  It's made of plywood and fibreglass and can even talk, nod and light up.

I now have Dalek envy.  But you have to admit it's a lot more interesting than "where are you going for your holidays?"

Thin Ice

30 April 2017

*Contains mild spoilers*

In last night's episode the Doctor and Bill find themselves at the last great Frost Fair on the river Thames. But something nasty is lurking below the ice....

In a way this episode could also have been called The Beast Below if that title had not already been taken. There are some other similarities with that story in that both involve a giant creature being abused by humans. But unlike the starwhale, we learn little of the nature of the monster in the Thames.

The real monster in Thin Ice is, it turns out, not a giant creature, or even an alien, but a human (though not humane) being, Lord Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe was very much a pantomime villain, but whilst the allusions to slavery and imperialism struck me as a little heavy-handed, we had the opportunity of seeing the Twelfth Doctor give another of his rousing speeches, whilst demonstrating an impressive right hook.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode far more that last week's.  The frost fair, complete with elephant, was well-realised, and this time the Doctor and Bill had people with whom they could interact throughout the episode. If there was something of a fairytale ending, what is wrong with that?

Personal Tutoring

Friday 28 April

As a university administrator, I have been worrying that the current series may give a slightly unrealistic impression of what can be expected from a personal tutor. One of my colleagues has been doing quite a lot of work recently on personal tutoring arrangements, so I asked for his views on the Doctor's arrangement with Bill.

It turns out that there are quite a few problems:

• Giving tuition to a non-fee paying unenrolled student (unless the Doctor went back in time to sort out Bill's UCAS and Student Loan applications)
• Favouritism
• Teaching outside core hours (tutorials at 6.00 p.m.)
• Daily tutorials, which are not scalable in today's mass higher education system and are not sustainable from a resource point of view
• 'Field work' undertaken without a risk assessment or ethics  approval
• MASSIVE health and safety concerns

His conclusion?  "Mind-blowing educational experience notwithstanding, this clearly calls for a solid bureaucratic crackdown, BUT if ownership of the bigger-on-the-inside technology reverts to the university* then  all is forgiven."

* This would depend on the university's intellectual property policy.

Thanks to Dr Arne Hofmann for kindly giving me permission  to post this.

Smile!

22 April 2017

Smile  is another one of those episodes where perfectly normal behaviour suddenly becomes perilous, as in don't blink!, don't breathe!, stay out of the shadows! but to my mind is rather less successful than such stories as Blink and Silence in the Library.  I may be rather biased, as unlike Bill,  whose face is always 'doing expressions' when she doesn't want it to, my face tends to look naturally glum, whatever I am thinking.  Often what I am thinking is homicidal thoughts about the passing strangers who interrupt my perfectly happy thoughts by calling out "cheer up love, it might never happen!" so a world in which you have to smile or face being composted was hardly likely to appeal much.

It started well, with the Doctor sneaking off in the TARDIS with Bill whilst Nardole was making the tea, and the futuristic city looked fantastic.  However, there was something not quite right about the pacing.  A large chunk of the episode involved Bill  and  the Doctor exploring on their own, without all that much happening, and then the ending,  once the colonists awoke, seemed oddly rushed.

It seemed rather out of character to me for the Doctor's first instinct to be to blow the city up, rather than to fix the robotic malfunction.  Even if he believed that the colonists were arriving in a separate ship, what did he think would happen to them when the colony ship arrived to find a bomb site rather than a functioning city?

My biggest problem though was with the whole 'smile' thing.  The mood badges were placed on the back.  The implications is that they sensed mood (like those mood rings that used to be popular), so how would a faked forced grin make any difference?

Overall,  some nice ideas, but could have been so much better.

Vote Dalek!

19 April 2017

Those of you who pay some attention for what passes as the real world these days may have noticed that there is going to be a General Election in the UK on 8 June.

Back in 2005, when the show had only just returned, Russell T Davies was able to get away with a plot involving aliens taking over 10 Downing Street and trying to provoke a war on the basis that (faked) aliens had 'massive weapons of destruction' that could be deployed within 45 seconds* the Radio Times ran with a cover, during a General Election campaign, which said 'Vote Dalek.'

Well, I was tempted. Very tempted.  So when it came to the County Council ballot paper, and I really didn't care much for any of the candidates, I may, just possibly,  have omitted to put an X against any of the candidates, and written 'vote Dalek' at the bottom of the ballot paper.**

I don't recommend this as a course of action (imagine if everyone did it and we ended up with Davros in charge) but if you really don't know who to vote for, it is better to make the effort to turn out spoil your paper and register a protest than to stay at home and be counted as apathetic. Remember that the candidates (or at least their agents) get to see the spoilt papers.)

Women fought long and hard to get the vote.  It is important to use it.

*This was highly topical at the time.
** Of course, I could have imagined the whole thing. 

Rumours, rumours

Sunday 16 April 2017

The internet is alive with rumours that Kris Marshall is going to be the new Doctor.  Whilst I would quite like to believe them, they all seem to come from one rather flaky report in the Mirror so I shan't start celebrating yet.

Apart from anything else, when he left Death in Paradise, Marshall was quoted as saying that he wanted to spend more time with his family.  Whilst Cardiff is obviously closer to home than Guadeloupe, I hardly think the hectic Doctor Who filming schedule would leave him with that much family time.

The Pilot

Saturday 15 April 2017

After a long break from our screens, the Doctor has returned in an episode that is in many ways reminiscent of Rose. It was very much about introducing the new companion, Bill.  If first impressions are anything to go by, she will be good. Her initial reaction to the TARDIS ('like a posh kitchen') was hilarious. But it occurs to me that I need a new kitchen soon.  I wonder whether the other half would be more convinced if we went for a TARDIS look?*

The episode is called The Pilot.  It turns out that there is something lurking in the university that needs a pilot, and Bill inadvertently becomes involved.  But the title has a double meaning. The episode is a sort of reboot, and the focus is on Bill's initiation into the TARDIS rather than the wider peril.

It turns out that the Doctor has been hiding out in a university, rather like Professor Chronotis in Shada. As a university administrator, I'm glad he didn't choose mine.  I bet he never gets paperwork in on time and is really annoying in meetings (if he turns up at all.)  I wonder if he is research active for REF purposes? What sort of feedback does he get in the NSS? 

As a  Doctor Who fan, I am disappointed that he didn't choose my university.  After all we have a Cruciform, the inventor of the Panopticon and I could have loaned them a spare Dalek if they needed one...

*Edit: he has now seen this post and says he wouldn't.  But I bet he would really.

How Doctor Who Changed My Life

Yes, it's true, Doctor Who has changed my life. 

Or at least marrying a Doctor Who fan changed my life. By that I don't just mean the Daleks in the bathroom and the ever-expanding DVD and novelisation collection colonising all the available storage space.

No, marrying a fan all those years ago brought about a sequence of events that has led to my paddling a canoe on the Orinoco, travelling on the Trans-Siberian express and extolling the virtues of High Wycombe on local radio, as well as becoming far better acquainted with the works of Shakespeare than ever seemed likely. 

You see it's like this. I happened to be a member of Mensa.  (Honestly, it's not that difficult - I got sucked into doing the test after entering a competition when I was 17 and thought it would be a good thing to put on my UCAS form.) After we were married, my husband was looking through my magazine, and noticed that there was a Doctor Who special interest group, so persuaded me to sign up for it.  Fast forward a year or so and the Doctor Who SIG  was seeking contributions for Future Imperfect, multi-author  story for the 30th anniversary, and my husband wanted to join in, so he joined Mensa as well. (I told you it wasn't that difficult!)

Before long, he heard that there was a vacancy for editor of the newsletter for the Travel special interest group, and as he was getting interested in desktop publishing, he volunteered. After a while he put together an anthology of some of the best contributions which was published for charity.  Through the special interest group he got to interview Hilary Bradt of Bradt Guides, attended one of their travel writing workshops and later went on to win a travel writing competition.

Next, he decided to write a travel book himself, based on the places that Wombles were named after (Doctor Who is not the only programme from our childhoods that has made a big impression.) He didn't want to travel alone, so Muggins became assistant researcher and photographer, as we travelled up the Orinoco, by train to Tomsk, walked in Bulgaria, ate French food in Cholet etc.  You get the idea. Despite the fact that I ended up paddling a dugout canoe while he remained safely on dry land 'looking after the camera' I can't really complain about this, as I have a nagging feeling that I might have been responsible for the original idea.

The next project is a guidebook of our local area for Bradt.  This time I am not only assistant researcher and photographer, but co-author and exhibit A, as I have lived all my life in the area and can trace my local connection back for centuries.

Meanwhile, as is obvious from the rest of this blog, I decided that the best way to live with a Doctor Who fan was to become one. As regular readers may have inferred, I became particularly keen on the Tenth Doctor, as played by David Tennant.  So it was not surprising that I wanted to see his Hamlet. A few years later we went to see David in Richard II.  I saw from the programme that the RSC was embarking on a cycle of the entire repertoire of Shakepeare's plays over a six year period, and thought that it would be good for my general education to see them all. Now I'm a Patron of the RSC and we visit Stratford several times a year.

It's possible that some of these things might have happened without Doctor Who but I doubt it.

Why is it always the mothers?

Having recently had to attend to a few domestic emergencies involving my own mother (I've reached the disconcerting point in life where you find yourself looking after your parents rather than vice versa) I've been thinking about the role of mothers in the Who family.

The Doctor's own mother of course remains a mystery.  There have of late been the odd enigmatic moments, most notably in The End of Time Part II where viewers are led to wonder about the identity of a female Gallifreyan, but nothing definite.

The classic series did not focus on companions' family backgrounds to any notable extent.  Sarah Jane had an Aunt Lavinia, Jo Grant had an (unseen) uncle who pulled strings to get her into UNIT, but mothers tended not to feature at all. Presumably the idea was that the companions needed to be free from family ties so that they could set off on adventures in time and space without having to worry about the folk back home.

When the series returned in 2005 it was a different matter.  The family background of the companions became part of the story and the first three companions all very definitely had mothers.  And they were not impressed by the Doctor.

Who can forget Jackie 'if you're a Doctor, stitch this!' Tyler making plain her views about the Ninth Doctor's role in Rose's life?  Admittedly she had mellowed a bit by the time of his regeneration, being ready with pyjamas and offers of tea and sandwiches.  Not to mention curiosity about his physiology 'what else has he got two of? Ultimately her reward was a reunion with her husband Pete (or at least the version from an alternate universe.)

Martha's mum, Francine, was also initially suspicious of the Tenth Doctor's relationship with her daughter, and expressed her feelings at the end of The Lazarus Experiment with a clip round the ear, leading the Doctor to ponder that 'it's always the mothers.' It was not until the family were rounded up and imprisoned by the Master that Francine realised she had got wrong.

The Doctor's relationship with the mother of his next companion was not much better, although she avoided physical violence. Sylvia Noble's first meeting with the Doctor occurred when he appeared with Donna at the reception after her mysterious disappearance from the wedding in The Runaway Bride. She was not particularly pleased to see him again in The Poison Sky. But at least she wielded her sledgehammer on the window of the car in which Wilf was trapped, rather than the Doctor. Unlike Francine and Jackie, her opinion of the Doctor didn't change that much over time.  'I think you'd better go' she says coldly after he brought an unconscious Donna home in Journey's End.

Is it any wonder that the Eleventh Doctor chose companions who did not have mothers? Although in a typically Steven Moffat timey-wimey turn of events, one of them did turn out to be his own mother-in-law.

The Twelfth Doctor's companion Bill also has no mother, only a rather disengaged foster mum.

Of the Thirteenth Doctor's companions, Ryan also has no mother, only a grandmother and an estranged father, but in Yaz's family we see a bit of a return to previous form with a mother who really, really wants to know who the Doctor is and how she knows her daughter.

It remains to be seen whether this theme will continue in the New Year Special.


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Less than a week to go....

Sunday 9 April 2017

Less than a week to go now, but life (day job, book to write, elderly mother, lawn to mow etc.) has prevented me from poring over every detail of  Doctor Who related news in the run up to the new series.  

I have read the episode previews in Doctor Who Magazine, but that's about it. I'm looking forward to seeing how the new companion turns out.  Oh, and I did see that massive spoiler that was  around last week, but I'm trying to forget about it.

Meanwhile, the speculation about the next doctor continues.  Today comedian Lee Mack has thrown his hat into the ring. Weirdly, I could actually imagine him doing it quite well. After all, Jon Pertwee was mostly known for comedy roles before he became the Doctor. But it won't be him.  I'm still banking on a 30-40ish male actor who is just getting into TV roles but is not yet a household name.

And one more thing...

Sunday 12 February

I just thought of another thing about Doctor Who that really winds me up: celebrities  who claim to be massive fans of the programme, just because it is popular.*   In the last ten years it has not been possible to read an autobiography without some reference to how much X enjoyed watching Doctor Who.  I don't believe a word of it.  Where were all these people when it got cancelled?  If you weren't there in the 1990s, pathetically grateful for Bill Baggs Video and Virgin New Adventures, it doesn't count.

Those who weren't even born in the 1990s are excused...just.

Ten Things I Hate about 'Who'

11 February 2017

Today's Times included a column by Giles Coren in which he argued that what brings couples together is not shared likes, but shared dislikes.  I'm not sure that shared likes are as disastrous as all that. After all, I have survived 26 years of marriage to a Who fan. But the article ends with a list of his own 'dislikes', which got me thinking about the things I don't like about Doctor Who.

1. The Sixth Doctor's coat.  Uncontroversial, this one, I should think. Poor Colin's episodes would have been much better appreciated if viewers had not had to contend with being dazzled by an amazing technicolour dreamcoat that even Andrew Lloyd Webber would have balked at.

2. Over-bright lighting. This was a particular feature of the Eighties episodes. Whilst there is no need to go the full X-Files and have most of the action in pitch darkness, a bit of gloom would help to hide some of the deficiencies in monster costumes (and the Sixth Doctor's coat.)

3. The current credit sequence with the naff-looking clock.  Bring back the time vortex, preferably with the rock version of the theme tune.

4. Excessively long story arcs.  I don't want to have to wait until the year after next to find out what caused Amy's crack.

5. Lame jokes about Daleks and stairs. Daleks can levitate up stairs perfectly well, as has been established at least since Remembrance of the Daleks.

6. Gallifrey.  The Tenth Doctor's description of it to Martha in Gridlock was wonderful, but the reality is a boring place peopled with unpleasant, small-minded hypocrites. And the food doesn't look to be up to much, either. Now that it has been found, could it please be lost again, pronto?

7. The press asking the current Doctor when he is going to leave, almost as soon as he has started.

8. Fantasy Doctor casting.  As soon as it is known that the current incumbent, fed up by being constantly pestered by the press about when he is going to leave, finally gives in and announces the date, the name of just about every celebrity in the country gets linked to the role, even those who aren't actors.

9. Is it about time there was a female Doctor? No. Not even Olivia Colman, fine actress though she is. The speculation every time is just boring.

10. Nothing.  I love Doctor Who. 

Let the speculation begin...

Sunday 5 February 2017

So Peter Capaldi will be leaving at the end of the next series. 

Cue the usual speculation about the casting of the next Doctor, and the possibility that it might be a woman this time. Well, I'm sorry if I'm a traitor to my sex, but I think the Doctor is a role that should be played by a male actor.

I mean, we don't have a female James Bond, Sherlock Holmes or Batman, do we.

It isn't as if the series doesn't have strong female roles now.  River Song and Missy can both give the Doctor a run for his money, and female companions have moved on  a bit from twisting their ankle in a quarry and screaming a lot.

A different planet...

Saturday 7 January 2017

The husband has spent his Christmas vouchers on filling all the gaps in his First Doctor DVD collection. Some of these were stories that we previously had on the VHS tapes we disposed of.

We decided to start with Planet of Giants as it was short (only three episodes, as the original episodes three and four were edited into one.) I don't think it is one of the better stories.  It seems to be an example of what Doctor Who might have been  like if the production team had stuck to their original brief of including educational material about history and science and had  not introduced ‘Bug-Eyed Monsters’ (aka Daleks) early on. The TARDIS crew did their best, but the supporting cast, playing a civil servant, an unscrupulous businessman and a misguided scientist, seem to have been parachuted in from one of the patronising schools' programmes I remember seeing as a child. I don't know about Giants, but the supporting cast definitely seemed to be on a different planet of some sort.

I believe this is the first story to carry an explicit environmental message, but it's no Green Death.

In other news, we eventually cracked the DWM Christmas quiz, managing to answer 47 out of 50 questions - a personal best, as we normally only manage about a dozen.