Who Do's and Don'ts

Since its return in 2005, Doctor Who has provided viewers with an ever-growing list of commands. Quite are few are prohibitions - mostly things that we must not do in order to be safe from monsters, though a bit of personal prejudice might be creeping in at number 5.

1.       Don’t blink - from 2007’s Blink.  If you do, the Weeping Angels will get you.

2.       Don’t step in the shadows from 2008’s - Silence in the Library.  The Vashta Nerada are lurking in the shadows - any shadow.

3.       Don’t breathe - from the Twelfth Doctor’s debut story, Deep Breath.  If you breathe the Half-Faced man will get you.

4.       Don’t look - from the 2014 story Listen.  Perhaps the scariest command of all, don’t turn round to look at the monster you think is behind you.

5.       ‘You must not watch this’ advice concerning the 2015 episode Sleep No More that I wish I had heeded.

6.       Never eat pears - the Twelfth Doctor’s parting advice to Clara in 2015’s Hell Bent.

7.  [Late addition] Don't pop bubblewrap - as we learned when the Thirteenth Doctor visited Kerblam!

It’s not all don’ts though.  There are some things which are positively encouraged:

1.       Smile - your life may depend on it if there are any Emojibots around.

2.       Always take a banana to a party.   Not only are they a good source of potassium, you might invent the banana daiquiri a few centuries early, as the Tenth Doctor did in The Girl in the Fireplace.

Warning: If you are thinking about New Year Resolutions, this is not the list you need.  But don’t forget your banana on New Year’s Eve.

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?