A culturally eclectic weekend...

28 May 2016

We are off to Cardiff today.  The carefully planned idea is to see the RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is on a national tour working with various local amateur groups, there tonight, and to visit the Doctor Who Experience tomorrow. 

This seemed like a brilliant plan - until I discovered that the BBC version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Russell T Davies (and with consultancy on jokes from David Tennant) is being broadcast on Monday.

Oh well, I like visiting Cardiff anyway, and the long drive down the M4 is an excuse to listen to the Big Finish Tenth Doctor and Donna audios.

Update: it turned out that there was major congestion on the M4 so we turned off, and went to Bowood House to see the rhododendrons, which are looking a picture at this time of year.  (I don't suppose many Doctor Who blogs bring you information like this.) 

Doctor Who is getting a bit like Casualty,  Doctors,  Holby City  and The Bill - one of those ubiquitous series you can play actor bingo with whilst waiting for the play to start.  Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream was played by Ayesha Dharker (Solana Mercurio from Planet of the Ood). Sadly, Chu Omambala (Major Blake from The Christmas Invasion), who was due to play Oberon, was indisposed, so his part was played (very well) by his understudy. Other Doctor Who connections among the cast were Peter Hamilton Dyer (Embery from Remembrance of the Daleks) playing Egeus and Laura Harding, playing Hippolyta, who has been in several Big Finish audios.

Tomorrow: The Doctor Who Experience.

My Top Ten Christmas Specials: No 6

Voyage of the Damned

What could be more Christmassy than a disaster movie starring pint-sized pop princess Kylie Minogue?*

Well, quite a few things really, but big budget disaster movies (and Bond films) used to be a centrepiece of Christmas family viewing before we had a Doctor Who Christmas special.  I enjoyed this, but couldn’t help thinking it was a rip-off of my favourite computer game (and the only one I ever managed to win), the brilliant Starship Titanic by former Doctor Who script editor Douglas Adams.  According to The Writer’s Tale, this was an accident, and plans for the episode were well advanced before the similarity was discovered.  The finished episode would have been better if they had included the insane parrot from the game, though.

*I understand that one is legally required always to refer to Ms Minogue as a ‘pint-sized pop princess’

Christmas Factor: 2/10

Victorian/Dickensian Factor: 0/10

June 2007: losing the plot....

2 June 2007

The Family of Blood was potentially a great story, which was spoiled only by the unnecessary sequence of the Doctor punishing the family. It would have worked perfectly well either to have them die in the explosion of their ship or alternatively to live out their remaining existence as humans without access to their alien technology which was destroyed with their ship. However, the sequence of the children shooting the scarecrows, with the hymn playing in the background, was truly moving, as were the final scenes of Latimer and Hutchinson in the trenches, and then the old Latimer at the Cenotaph.

 9 June 2007

Blink had a lot to live up to, being written by Steven Moffat. As an exercise in writing an episode without much use of the lead actors, or CGI effects, it was exemplary, though it was disappointing that he failed to get in a line about bananas.  At times it seemed a bit like an episode of Coupling, but there is nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t stand out as the best of the season, as Moffat’s earlier episodes have done, but it is so much better than Love and Monsters.

16 June 2007

I found Utopia rather like old-fashioned Doctor Who (quarry, savages, well-meaning scientist etc.) but in a good way, and it was good to see Captain Jack again.

20 June 2007

To Leeds for business meetings. In the hotel bar afterwards, one of my colleagues started enthusing about Saturday’s episode and how good it was to see Captain Jack again, much to bemusement of the others, who started reminiscing about The Archers in revenge.

23 June 2007

The power-crazed loon in charge has now completely flipped. I don’t mean the Master, who was always thus, but Russell T Davies. Has he completely lost the plot? Any plot?

 

April 2005: the new series continues

Saturday 2 April 2005

Find two month old copy of Doctor Who Magazine.  Russell T Davies’ column has a lot in it about the fun he and David Tennant had on the set of Casanova, doing Doctor Who in jokes.  Was the writing already on the wall?

Watch The End of the World. This is really good.  It’s a bit rushed – they could have stretched it to two parts easily, but the effects are great.  And we get to see the fabled Moxx of Balhoon, if not for long.

Watch live version of Quatermass.  After a few minutes, husband remarks that David Tennant is supposed to be in it, but he hasn’t seen him yet.  “No,” I reply, “I think he’s playing the doctor….”

Sunday 3 April 2005

Watch double bill of Enterprise.  O look, the planet Earth is being destroyed.  Again.  But Doctor Who’s exploding planet effect was better!

Watch BBC3 repeat to make sure.

Yes.  Definitely more impressive.

Monday 4 April 2005

Doctor Who still ahead of Ant and Dec.  Keep up the good work.

Saturday 9 April 2005

Russell T Davies has said that Christopher Eccleston was never going to do more than one series.  The end of the final episode was apparently meant to be a big surprise.  This doesn’t surprise me much (see 2 April above) but how on earth can they have imagined they were going to keep that secret?

Watch The Unquiet Dead.  Aaarrgghhh!  It’s actually frightening.  Some of the lame jokes could usefully have been edited out though -“happy medium”, indeed!

Saturday 16 April 2005

Oh dear!  Nice spaceship crash, shame about the pig and the farting aliens.  Jackie Tyler’s reaction to the Doctor was quite amusing though.

Saturday 23 April 2005

Definitely better than last week.  I can’t believe they were allowed to get away with the ‘massive weapons of destruction’ line this close to an election though.  Presumably no one in politics (except Tim Collins?) is expected to watch it. 

Sunday 24 April 2005

On the subject of politics, off to the West Midlands to assist friend’s doomed campaign. Am horrified to discover that her children haven’t watched Doctor Who yet.  What sort of parent is she?

Saturday 30 April 2005

The one with the Dalek.  Apparently we are supposed to feel sorry for the Dalek at the end.  I don’t.  I’m too busy wondering when they decided that Dalek mutants were now to be a fetching pinky-mauve instead of green.