Escape Failure

31 December 2019

I booked a visit to the Doctor Who-themed escape room, Worlds Collide as part of my Who-fan husband's Christmas present. As we were in Stratford to see King John the night before, a visit to Oxford's Westgate Shopping Centre on the way home seemed perfect.

Unfortunately, it did not go well. The experience was one of several at the venue, and it turned out that the two of us were the only ones booked for that time.  Our task was to save the world, as the Doctor was busy.  We failed.

The Doctor Who content was actually pretty minimal.  There was a briefing from the Doctor at the start, and a few familiar looking artefacts, but it was mostly just puzzle-solving to find six thingies which would help us to do something and fix something (no spoilers here). There were no further broadcast messages or clues from the Doctor - just a walkie talkie to contact our gamesmaster for clues.

Husband became very bad-tempered when we got stuck.  It gives you an idea, if I say that later that afternoon we assembled a flat pack console table with more success and a great deal less sulking.

We ended the year watching Extremis, The Pyramid at the End of the World and The Lie of the Land in order to calm down.

Christmas (not so) special

24 December 2019

For the second year running, there is no Doctor Who Christmas Special.  This must be strange for some, but for those of us who grew up with classic Who and lived through the drought of the 1990s, the idea of a Doctor Who Christmas Special still almost seems something of a novelty. Christmas Specials were for Morecambe and Wise, not our favourite Saturday teatime behind-the-sofa viewing.

However, in 1981 something very like a Christmas Special was aired - not Doctor Who, but a spin-off featuring two favourite sidekicks: K9 and Sarah Jane Smith.

In an attempt to get in a festive mood, I decided to watch K9 and Company on DVD.  I'm sorry to say that it really isn't very good.  In fact, it's terrible.

Let's start with the plot.  Sarah returns from working abroad for Reuters to spend Christmas with her aunt Lavinia (the famous scientist - remember?) at her, er, manor house and market garden in the Cotswolds.  But Lavinia has vanished, apparently on a book tour of the States, leaving Sarah to look after her cousin Brendan, home for the holidays from boarding school, and to open that mysterious crate that arrived a few years ago. The crate turns out to contain a gift from the Doctor.

Naturally, since it is set in the countryside, the plot involves a lot of suspicious villagers and a pagan cult. As the solstice is coming, there are rituals to perform.  The annoying cousin Brendan provides suitable human sacrifice material, leading Sarah to a frantic dash around all the churches within a five mile radius to find him before midnight, only for K9 to point out at the last moment that there is actually a chapel in the manor grounds.

And Aunt Lavinia?  Is indeed on her tour of the US.

 It could have been good, but somehow neither the script nor the editing seem to work. Who really cares about the pH of soil at Christmas?

I think I will stick with The Christmas Invasion  in future.

Judoon... nowhere near the moon

Friday 25 October 2019

To the Natural History Museum after work for 'Lates: Doctor Who - Science in the Fiction.'  The clever hook for the event was combining the art installation Museum of the Moon with the natural inspiration for the Judoon, first seen in the episode Smith and Jones. The website offered a photo opportunity with the TARDIS, screenings of Smith and Jones, science stations and a talk from Millennium FX.

We arrived at the Museum to find a skating rink and Christmas tree outside.  In October. Signage in the Museum was terrible, but we eventually found the Museum of the Moon, and took photos with TARDIS that had been placed underneath it for the event. 

We struggled to find the rest of the event.  Eventually a member of staff  told us the screening of Smith and Jones was in the Attenborough Studio on one side of the museum and the talk with people from Millennium FX, Naturally Monstrous in the Flett Theatre on the other.  We were just too late to be admitted to a screening, so had a cup of tea and snack before joining the queue for the Naturally Monstrous, which was already going down two flights of stairs.  I think the staff were taken aback by number of people queuing. I suspect if they had realised how popular it would be they would have had a booking system rather than first come, first served. We did manage to get in but others were not so lucky.

The speakers were two special effects artists who had worked for Millennium FX to create the Judoon and Silurians together with one of the curators, whose day job involves studying ear wax from killer whales.  The idea was to discuss how the natural world provides inspiration for monster design.  Whilst the Judoon are clearly based on rhinos, there are modifications.  The eyes are in front, rather than at the sides, so that the Doctor can look them squarely in the face, and the jaw moves in a different way. Millennium FX had brought along an animatronic Judoon head, which they operated whilst the interviewer was speaking.  Other monsters are not so clearly based on a single species: the Silurian design was inspired by inspired by bearded dragons and chameleons.

When it came to questions at the end, the Panel were asked which animal they would like to see a monster based on next.  The curator, suggested killer whales would also make good space police (being already black and white, they wouldn't need a uniform.)  The special effects experts suggested it would be good to base a monster on a chimpanzee as 'there hadn't been a monster based on an ape.' From which we can probably deduce that the Ogrons aren't making a comeback any time soon.

Dark Sublime

17 July 2019

This year’s birthday theatre trip was  perfect for a Doctor Who fan of a certain age: Dark Sublime - a play in which Marina Sirtis of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame stars as Marianne, an ageing actress known for her role in a cult British sci-fi series (and also Emmerdale) who strikes up a friendship with a young fan, Oli, played by Kwaku Mills.

The eponymous series occupies a space somewhere between Doctor Who and Blakes Seven.  Sirtis’ character Marianne played Ragana, a scenery-chewing villainess in the mould of Servalan. Her best friend in real life, Kate, is played by Jacqueline King, aka Sylvia Noble.  Their friendship is tested when Kate begins a new relationship with Suzanne, played by Sophie Ward¸ and Marianne seeks companionship from the star-struck Oli (and an assortment of snacks -frazzle or foam banana, anyone?) The plot involves Ragana's search for a 'shadow ruby' whilst being pursued by a motley crew of misfits in a malfunctioning time machine.

Studio 2 at the Trafalgar Studios is a very intimate performance space - from my seat in the front row I felt that I was in Marianne’s living room.  I also had a clear view of the rest of the audience, some members of which could identify with the subject matter even more closely than I could. After the interval, when we became the audience at ‘RubyCon’, a convention organised by Oli, it was strange to see Louise (Leela) Jameson, Katy (Jo Grant) Manning and Annette (Margaret Slitheen) Badland in the audience hooting with laugher.  Writer Michael Dennis portrayed the convention perfectly.  I swear that Oli’s speech about the computer console prop being for selfies only, and not to break things off as it was only a fan-made replica was almost word-for-word one which I heard Andrew Beech give at Panopticon 2003. 

The action is interspersed by flashbacks to scenes from the series, with another Doctor Who connection provided by Mark Gatiss, who somehow found time between his many other commitments to record the Voice of Kosley, the ship’s computer.

All in all it was an affectionate reflection on fame and fandom, with a feel-good happy ending.  What better way to spend a birthday?

Time Lords on Gallifrey are a bit rubbish, really, aren't they

Last weekend my other half decided we should watch The Invasion of Time, the Fourth Doctor's second visit to Gallifrey.

Unlike Sarah Jane who was unceremoniously dumped in Croydon/Aberdeen because non-Gallifreyans weren't allowed, Leela is taken along for the ride. Perhaps the Doctor forgot about the strict immigration laws, after all he had other things on his mind. Those other things make for an intriguing set up.  For the first two episodes of this six-parter the Doctor is acting strangely, to say the least.  I can't remember seeing it on original broadcast but it must have made for a very unsettling fortnight, wondering why the Doctor was acting so out of character.

Eventually it transpires that the Doctor is being watched by the Vardans, who can monitor his thoughts, and he has to frustrate them whilst appearing to play along. The Vardans initially manifest themselves simply as shimmering sheets of tinfoil, so it is a disappointment when, finally secure in their objective, these all-powerful beings finally show their true selves to be humanoids in rather boring uniforms, who are surprisingly easy to defeat.

But just when everything seems to have been sorted out, a twist introduces the final two episodes: the Sontarans, and everything gets a bit weird, with a long chase through the interior of the TARDIS for no apparent reason, until the Doctor and K9 manage to save the day.

What were the Time Lords themselves doing whilst all this was going on? Not a lot. Chancellor Borusa spends the middle of the story shut up in the President's Office and the simpering Castellan throws in his lot with the invaders. Only Commander Andred seems to do anything positive to fight back, for which he is rewarded by getting shot in the arm and marrying Leela (those immigration rules must definitely have changed.)

We need to talk about UNIT

There has been quite a bit of fuss about the call centre scene in Resolution and the 'suspension' of UNIT.  This is being taken as either a political comment on Brexit or one on government spending cuts more generally.

To my mind the Brexit theory doesn't stand up.  UNIT is not, and never has been an EU organisation. Originally, it was an offshoot of the United Nations (the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) with its headquarters in Geneva.  On occasion, the Brigadier would go direct to Geneva when the British government was proving difficult.  In more recent years, whilst the UN connection has gone (it is now the 'Unified' Intelligence Taskforce) we have seen even more of its international side, with Martha working for its US base in The Stolen Earth. The government cuts argument doesn't really work either.  The implication in Resolution seemed to be that UNIT was a British organisation, whose 'international partners' were re-evaluating their financial commitments, not that the British government had cut their financial contribution.  I think we could easily conclude that the organisation has simply tightened security and forgotten to let the Doctor know the new password.

Irrespective of the reasons, I am not sorry to see UNIT being dropped from the series for the time being.  It had become too big and powerful.  An organisation with the resources to fit out an aircraft carrier like the Valiant, or set up Osterhagen stations across the globe, or establish a 'Black Archive' with memory wipe technology and anti-TARDIS shielding has little need of the Doctor. It's a long way from the days when UNIT HQ seemed to be run by a Brigadier, a Captain, and a Sergeant, with some canon-fodder privates, and the nearest they got to sophisticated hardware was when the Brigadier asked Benton to 'lay on a chopper.'

New Year's? Resolution

January the first so time for a Resolution - the first New Year airing of Doctor Who since The End of Time Part II (which did not go well.) 

It started well with the legend of the ancient vanquished enemy, divided into three parts and buried at the ends of the earth (or Sheffield, whichever is further.) All was going well until those pesky archaeologists started digging in the sewers beneath the Sheffield Town Hall. Which brings me to my first quibble.  Those sewers looked amazing.  The council are really missing a trick if they aren’t offering guided tours.  But leaving that aside, the archaeologists made two fundamental errors - leaving an unknown thingy under a UV lamp, and wandering off alone, which provided a classic Doctor Who set up, though it did take them quite a long time to get around to it.

Sadly, things lost their way a bit in the middle of the episode.  We had the brilliant concept of a Dalek mutant hitching a ride like the Old Man of the Sea, but everything stopped for what seemed like ages whilst Ryan and his dad had a chat in a café, and his dad tried to sell a dodgy oven to the café owner.  There could have been a bit more subtlety with the oven. We definitely got the message that it was going to come in useful later. 

Meanwhile, back at the action, the mutant had found a workshop and cued the music, just like in an old-style episode of Top Gear, though the finished casing looked rather better than most of Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May’s efforts at customisation. I really liked that scrapyard Dalek casing. A pity that it was not robust enough to withstand a combination oven.

But this story was not really about the Dalek, but about family, and Ryan’s relationship with his father.  There’s nothing like the possibility of being sucked into space with an angry Dalek mutant to provide a resolution to a family rift.

All in all, a good story which also looked good, but was let down by the pacing of the script.