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.

The Return of Doctor Mysterio

26 December 2016

Well that's another one over (Christmas specials, that is.)  I'm not sure yet what I think of The Return of Doctor Mysterio, having only seen it once so far.

On the plus side, it has returned to the Russell T Davies approach of a pastiche of a popular holiday blockbuster film (see The Christmas Invasion and Voyage of the Damned) rather than visiting yet another alien planet of the Dickensian Christmas people (see A Christmas Carol, Time of the Doctor and The Husbands of River Song.)  On the negative side, I'm not a great fan of superhero movies.

Another good point is that Matt Lucas' Nardole was considerably less annoying than I had anticipated.  In fact, I found myself looking forward to his appearances. I was less pleased to see the reappearance of the aliens with the zip-up heads and gloopy brains.  I think that they are uncalled-for when the nation is digesting its Christmas dinner.

I'll need to see it again a few times to come to a final conclusion, but I watched The Christmas Invasion again afterwards, and I can exclusively reveal that it is still number one.

My All New Top 10 (and a bit) Christmas Specials

Sunday 18 December 2016

Two years ago I did a series of posts on my top ten Doctor Who Christmas specials.  There have been two more since then, so an update is in order.  I am still finding it weird that Doctor Who now occupies the Morecambe and Wise spot as the traditional Christmas Day entertainment for all the family (and the Prime Minister.) However, it's been 11 years now, so here is my revised ranking, with 2014's Last Christmas and 2015's The Husbands of River Song slotted in.

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	The Next Doctor	2008
9	The Husbands of River Song****	2015
10	The End of Time	2009
11	The Snowmen	2012
12	The Time of the Doctor	2013

* Yes, I know that this was technically not a Christmas Special, but it should have been.
**My new team member thinks this one is terrible, but at least it's properly Christmassy. We do agree about Nardole, though, so I'll let him off.

***Marked up for the Rudolph's nose car alarm gag

****Marked down for excessive continuity references and Matt Lucas.

There is still no change at number one.  How can you beat David Tennant, revived by a cup of tea, saving the world with a satsuma whilst still in his pyjamas, then having time to bring down the (female) Prime Minister before tucking in to turkey and all the trimmings?

I wonder which one is Theresa May's favourite?

PS Has anyone ever managed to solve the Watcher's Christmas Quiz in Doctor Who Magazine?  This year I don't even understand the questions.

PPS Have had a breakthrough with the Quiz.  Once we worked out the key, it isn't actually as hard as usual.  Woo hoo!

More Power of the Daleks

Sunday 11 December 2016

I am most encouraged to learn that I am not the only lady of a certain age who watches Doctor Who of her own volition. None other than Theresa May, Prime Minister (yes, we know who she is) enjoys watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special after she has cooked her goose. I just wish I could get away with wearing leather trousers...

Anyway, we have finished watching Power of the Daleks. There are definitely parallels with Victory of the Daleks - yes, we have Daleks in a servile role, bringing drinks. Why doesn't an enterprising Cardiff restaurant try that?

There are a lot of other familiar elements: lots of running up and down corridors; the Doctor being mistaken for someone in authority (psychic paper would have saved a lot of time; the Doctor being locked up; his companions being kidnapped; a misguided scientist; a rebel force and a scheming security chief. As this is the 1960s, the female companion has little to do apart from be kidnapped, although Polly seems to know quite lot about Daleks considering she hasn't actually met any before. Ben and Polly's initial suspicions of the new incarnation of the Doctor are soon forgotten.

The animation is strange in that the human characters are not particularly well realised, but the Daleks look almost photo-realistic.

Overall I enjoyed it.  Now we are on to the end of the Troughton era with The War Games.

Power of the Daleks - the beginning

Sunday 27 November 2016

On Friday my other half decided that a burgundy coloured Fourth Doctor cosplay coat was the ideal garment to wear:

a) to work (where the Finance Director correctly identified it); and

b) to the AGM and Presidential Lecture of the Royal Historical Society.

After the lecture, I tried to make a swift exit and he asked me if I didn't want to go the reception for a canapé.  "Not in that coat," I replied, "it looks a lot better in the dark." [This was a reference to our first date. We were at the theatre and as the house lights he turned to me and told me that I looked better in the dark. Reader....I married him anyway.]

The upside of this was that we got home in good time to watch The Grand Tour, leaving Saturday night free to make a start on the DVD of Power of the Daleks.

It's rather a strange story.  I'm not sure whether the animation follows the original script exactly, but it seems to be a little disjointed, as if linking action or scenes are missing.  The animation is quite basic, and doesn't seem to have captured the Doctor,  Ben and Polly particularly well.  That said, I am enjoying it, and found episode two creepy enough to be watched from a vantage point to the rear of our soft seating area.  The end of this episode is rather similar to Victory of the Daleks, which I wasn't really expecting.

I'm off now to watch the next thrilling installment.

A Helmet for a Space Cow?

Sunday 11 November 2016

Our meander through classic black and white stories reached The Time Meddler last night. We saw the first two episodes, which were incredibly slow by modern standards.  The initial scene in the TARDIS and the scene-setting in 11th century Northumbria would have been over  in about 2 minutes these days.

There were some good lines, nevertheless.  I think  that Steven's introduction to the TARDIS remains one of the best ever: "that's the horizontal hold...and that's a panda on a chair."  I suspect that the original script didn't say "horizontal hold." (For younger readers, horizontal hold was something you occasionally had to adjust on an old-fashioned TV, possibly while dancing around holding a set-top aerial to see where the best position was.) 

I will let them off having a Viking helmet with horns on it, purely because it allowed them to have the line "what do you think it is, a helmet for a Space Cow?"

It is very difficult though to watch episodes with Steven in without thinking it's Peter Purves from Blue Peter and wondering what he has done with Valerie Singleton and John Noakes. Peter Purves is also incidentally one of the few famous people I have seen and recognised in real life - he was on the platform at Euston Square Station. I'm the person who had to travel in the same train to Marylebone Station with Geoffrey Palmer, who lives in my hometown before being sure it was him! Luckily no one collapsed from plague on arrival.

This evening we will find out what the mysterious Monk is up to.