Those Damned Drums …

Doctor Who – The Sound of Drums

[USUAL SPOILER WARNING]

An interesting episode – tying up all the threads from this year to build to a great finale.

I thought that the method of the Doctor, Martha and Jack escaping the future and getting back to present day earth was a bit obvious (Jack had talked a bit too much about this transporting watch, and the sonic screwdriver does seem to be able to fix anything!)

The character of the Master was played just right – not too obviously evil, but not too panto villain either, somewhere in between.

There were a few bits I really loved – the Master saying “I am the Master” (although I had hoped for the “and you will obey me” bit to follow). And the bit where the Master asked his wife if she would like a jellybaby – from a paper bag! The use of the Torchwood music when Jack spoke about Torchwood. UNIT being mentioned. And the American president taking over the alien contact made me laugh.

But what I really loved was the filling in of all the stuff about Gallifrey – ever since it was first mentioned in the Christmas episode it seems to have been building to this. There was all the stuff about the academy and looking in to the eye of the vortex, and the Time Lords even had their funny old robes – it was a really good catch up for all the fan who’ve just discovered the Doctor through the new series (and a reminder for all us oldies).

And I loved the exchange between the Doctor and Martha when he was explaining who the Master was – Martha said “I thought you were going to say he was your brother or something”, to which the Doctor replied “you’ve been watching too much television”. I think this was a bit of a dig at the age old debate as to the relationship between the Doctor and the Master which has been dragging on since the Pertwee days. I’m glad its been buried – in the right way!

The End of the Universe?

Doctor Who – Utopia

[major spoiler warning!]

A strange episode – it seemed quite dull until I realised what was happening …

Trying to evade Captain Jack, the TARDIS hurtles the Doctor and Martha billions of years into the future. There they find humanity clinging on to existence in a universe without stars, and Professor Yana who is trying to build a rocket to send them to ‘Utopia’. The scary thing seemed to be a group who had evolved from the humans and were seen to hunt them down. But they weren’t really that scary and there was no threat that the rocket, with the Doctor’s help, wouldn’t take off.

So where was all the adventure and excitement? Well it all came down to Yana (brilliantly played by Derek Jacobi). You may remember the Face of Boe told the Doctor “You Are Not Alone”, and then there was the watch that he had which was just the same as the one the Doctor had had in Human Nature …

That’s when the excitement began for me. I realised that it could mean only one thing – The Master, my favourite Doctor Who villan, was back!

There was a great line from the Master – “Why don’t we stop and have a nice little chat where I tell you all my plans and you work out a way to stop me – I don’t think!”, which I think tells something of the dislike of the use of the character in the past. In an episode of Doctor Who Confidential in 2005 Russell T Davies stated that “Someone will bring him back someday, he’s too good to resist. But it has to be done properly”. It’s interesting reading back my post on this comment

I took his comment to mean that it is possible the Master could return (at some point in the future), but that the writing of the script has to be really good and have a plot that necessitates his return, not just bring him back for the sake of it.

I’m glad to see that my faith was not misplaced!

A Comedy Legend

When I was younger David Hatch was one of those names which was read out at the end of radio programmes. As I got older I discovered that he was an important name in the world of radio; as producer of some of the great series like I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, Just a Minute, Hello Cheeky and Weekending as well as being controller of various bits of BBC Radio.

Through my dad’s love of radio comedy, in particular thanks to I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, I discovered that David Hatch wasn’t just a name – he was a voice too. As an actor in this series he performed alongside his fellow graduates from the Cambridge Footlights Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graeme Garden, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie. And he was just as funny as all of these comedy legends. It was this series that allowed him to cut his teeth as a producer, which in turn led him to create some of our well-loved comedy shows.

David Hatch died on the 12th June after a long illness. He was only 68.

His legacy of great radio comedy lives on.

Don’t Blink

Doctor Who – Blink

[usual spoiler warning]

An episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor hardly appears – how odd (see last year’s Love and Monsters for a similar thing)

Despite this, the episode was hugely enjoyable and very scary. The story concerned Sally Sparrow who kept discovering messages from the Doctor, as she was the only person who could rescue him and Martha. They, and several other people had been transported back in time by the Weeping Angels. These appear to be statues which can move, but only when no one’s looking at them. It’s a bit like the childhood game of grandmother’s footsteps – with the Angels creeping up behind their ‘victim’ until the person turns around. This was a highly frightening concept for me as an adult, let alone the children who would be watching.

There were some lovely moments for the adults and fans – when the detective is explaining to Sally what a police box is he comments that the Doctor’s TARDIS is a replica because “the windows are the wrong size”. And Sally takes the hint from the bloke watching and shouting at a film in the video shop how says “go to the police! Why do they never go to the police”. And then there was the comment made by the obsessive geek about having a certain line from the DVD Easter Eggs on a t-shirt – perhaps the writer, Steven Moffat, was commenting on the t-shirts whhich someone made after his first Doctor Who story with ‘Are you my mummy?’ on them??

Everytime We Say Goodbye

Doctor Who – Human Nature/Family of Blood

This was by far the best story of this series, probably even the best of the whole ‘new’ Doctor Who. Based on his novel Human Nature, Paul Cornell wrote a fantastically well paced two part story with humour, poignancy, moments of tear jerking sadness and a real, proper cliff-hanger where you can’t possibly see how they escape.

The Doctor Becomes human – not half-human or a bit human, but fully human, no longer a Time Lord. All this is so that he can hide from the Family of Blood, so he transports his Time Lord self into a watch so that he can remain undetected on 1913 Earth, taking the post of a public school master, John Smith. All the while Martha knows what’s going on and tries to keep the Doctor safe, but she can’t stop him from falling in love with the school matron. Then the watch that contains the Doctor is stolen by one of the boys, Tim, to whom it talks, so that when Martha needs to return the Doctor to his true self and save the day she can’t.

The Family of Blood take over the bodies of four local people and begin to hunt down the Doctor with their army of animated scarecrows. They seem to be on a quest for immortality, which the Doctor, as the last of the Time Lords, is the only person who can supply. They close in on John Smith, but are confused by the watch, which Tim keeps opening.

There was a fantastically fannish moment in the first episode when the Doctor (as Smith) is talking about how he learnt to draw on Gallifrey, although he doesn’t know where that is. But the next bit was even better and I spotted the references straight away – he then talked about his parents, Sydney (Newman - creator of Doctor Who) and Verity (Lambert – Doctor Who’s first producer).

The story, being set in 1913 just before the Great War was full of poignancy for the young boys who were being trained in their duty to fight for King and Country, but who would be all but obliterated in the coming years. The closing moments where we see Tim saved by using the Doctor’s watch, followed by the Doctor and Martha visiting the elderly Tim at a Remembrance service was sad.

The bit that really brought the tears though was when John Smith realised he had to give up his life and become the Doctor. The watch somehow seemed to show him what he would be giving up and quickly showed a succession of scenes where he marries Joan (the matron), they have children and finally he is on his deathbed as an old man asking about his children and grandchildren. There have been some sad moments in Doctor Who over the past few years, but none that had me with tears streaming down my face as this one did.

But possibly my favourite moment from the story was when Tim finally knew it was the right time to return the watch to Smith, so that he could become the Doctor again. Tim had opened the watch and glimpsed the Doctor within and described him

Because, I’ve seen him.
He’s like fire … and ice … and rage.
He’s like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun.
He’s ancient and forever.
He burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe.
And …
He’s wonderful.