Cats.

WHO 50: 1989: Survival.

TV A guest post from writer Mags L Halliday:

Survival should, probably, have been my last Doctor Who story. It was 1989 and I was at art college, living in a bedsit on a diet of jacket potatoes, and going to see American post-punk bands. My tv was a tiny black and white set with a hoop aerial and a dial you used to tune in manually. Presuming you'd put a 50p in the meter. Once a week, though, I'd head back to my parents for a real dinner and Doctor Who in colour.

I missed the first episode of season 26 in fact. Unsurprisingly arty shared houses did not buy tv listings magazines so I only realised after it was on. And my parents didn't have a video. By the time Survival aired, it felt like it was becoming time to put Who away in the box marked "childhood". Despite the season having contained two of my favourite stories, Ghost Light and The Curse of Fenric, things like Hale and Pace and bad animatronic cats made me embarrassed.

Thematically, Survival is about conforming (or not) and working together to escape a doomed world (be that Perivale or the Cheetah planet). That chimed with me, as I partied with Anti-Fascist League members and protested the oncoming poll tax. In retrospect, Survival distilled the social and political tensions of the late 80s every bit as much as the more obvious The Happiness Patrol. But still...

Most fans think Survival has a melancholy air applied only afterwards, just as the Doctor's voice over at the end was dubbed on in edit. But for me that feeling was there as I watched it, and it chimed with my own feeling that something was coming to an end. Had there been another season in 1990, I suspect I wouldn't have watched it. My love of Who would have been boxed away along with my Bauhaus t-shirt.

Instead, I bought the first New Adventure. And Doctor Who became too broad and too deep for any TV set.

Mags is a contributor to Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who and Encounters of Sherlock Holmes: Brand new tales of the Great Detective, both out now. Her previous works include the Eighth Doctor novel History 101 (which I reviewed here) as well as for the Professor Bernice Summerfield and Faction Paradox spin-off ranges.

Jennifer Lawrence wears Dior.

"We went out to lunch and we started talking about dresses, he told me I should wear this one, and I said ok, and then I wore it."

Hand of Omega.

Horology The Financial Times reports that Omega watches are introducing a new innovation to their watch movements:

"After increases in recent times engendered by the introduction of new technologies such as the coaxial escapement and the silicon hairspring, the company’s latest innovation, a movement that is antimagnetic to a greater degree than has previously been achieved, will continue the pattern.

"The movement, based on Omega’s calibre 8500, its first proprietary coaxial movement, incorporates non-ferrous materials throughout to negate magnetic interference."

Essentially this is a watch which can be worn around things like MRI scanners without fault.

Public Art Collections in North West England: The Story So Far.

Art Since yesterday's visit to West Park Museum in Macclesfield might have been a surprise for some readers, I thought I'd re-post the links to previous visits. The explanation for why I've been doing this is in the first entry, for Southport's Atkinson Gallery.

Accrington - Haworth Art Gallery
Altrincham - Dunham Massey
Birkenhead - Williamson Art Gallery and Museum
Blackburn - Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
Blackpool - Grundy Art Gallery
Bolton - Bolton Museum, Art Gallery and Aquarium
Burnley - Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museums
Bury - Bury Art Gallery and Museum
Chester - Grosvenor Museum
Kendal - Abbot Hall Art Gallery
Lancaster - Lancaster City Museum and Ruskin Library, Lancaster University
Liverpool - Sudley House, Tate Liverpool, University of Liverpool Art Gallery and The Oratory
Macclesfield - West Park Museum
Manchester - Whitworth Art Gallery
Oldham - Oldham Art Gallery and Museum
Port Sunlight - Lady Lever Art Gallery
Preston - Harris Museum and Art Gallery
Rawtenstall - Rossendale Museum
Rochdale - Rochdale Art Gallery
Salford - Salford Museum and Art Gallery and The Lowry
Southport - Atkinson Art Gallery
Stalybridge - Astley Cheetham Art Gallery
Stockport - Stockport War Memorial and Art Gallery
Warrington - Warrington Museum and Art Gallery
Wigan - The History Shop

Which leaves ...

Carlisle - Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery

Coniston - Brantwood and Ruskin Museum
Grasmere - Wordsworth and Grasmere Museum

Knutsford - Tabley House and Tatton Park
Liverpool - Walker Art Gallery
Manchester - Manchester City Art Gallery
Runcorn - Norton Priory Museum

There's actually less than I thought ...

Watching and listening to all of televised Doctor Who in order: The Second Doctor.

Junkyard.

Who is the Secret Actor? #6

Theatre Secret's in generic mode again this week talking about other people in other places and lookatmeism.

Within she talks about a "Young Actor Pal" who could be anyone, attending a meal that has a very famous person hold forth who could also be anyone.  Without names or faces, I'm not sure what we're meant to draw from it other than that human beings walk around, breath, are sometimes arrogant and often have dinner, all at the same time.

It could just as well be that "Young Actor Pal" is Secret herself in which case she's using an anonymous fictional friend within an anonymous column for the purposes of an anecdote which makes her look clueless, but the philosophical implications of that would be enough for a whole series of Adam Curtis films.

So here's a parody of an Adam Curtis film about Adam Curtis's films:



Also today, The Guardian published this interview with casting directors which says more about the profession than the first six of Secret's columns.  Here's Doctor Who's casting director Andy Pryor on receiving presents:

"The worst," he says, "is when you get a card with a teabag in it, and the card is filled with glitter – so that when you open it, it goes all over you. They say, 'We just wanted to get your attention.' It's like, 'Yes you did. Now we've got to clean this shit up.'"

Pryor then goes on to admit that they have cast roles on the strength of unsolicited approaches. I wonder who.

Public Art Collections in North West England: West Park Museum.

Art To Macclesfield. Those of you who’ve been following my travels around the public art collections in North-West England will have detected a fairly large gap since my last visit, Townley Hall in Burnley which I wrote up in January 2011 but actually happened a few months before. I hadn’t actually realised it had been this long, but life intervened, various Liverpool Biennials and the fact that most of the remaining venues are pretty difficult to approach without public transport. But along with all of the other projects I’ve had on the go, I’m going to try and complete this by the end of the year, weather, life and health permitting.

To Macclesfield and to West Park Museum, which in the end was more accessible than I expected, with a train from Liverpool changing at Manchester Picadilly and a short walk from the city centre to West Park where it’s inevitably situated. Macclesfield also boasts various exhibition centres and a Silk Museum which seems to be the key recommendation for most visitors to the town. But because of time and my ongoing adventures with this lingering cold, after a quick wander around the town centre I pretty much mostly concentrated on the museum. Which is fine. Given the distances I’ll be travelling to elsewhere, there won’t be much time to do much else there either.

I did manage to see two of the local sights:



In St. Michael's Church, the tomb of Sir John Savage the Fifth (d. 1492) who commanded the left wing of Henry Tudor's victorious army at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485) and at the siege of Boulogne (says the accompanying information card).



Sarah Storey's gold post box for her fourth gold medal win in the Paralympic Road Women’s C5 Road Race, athough I've just had to look that up.  There are no plaques on site.  No words of explanation.

Edward Morris dedicates just two longish paragraphs to West Park Museum in his book each highlighting the institution’s main features. As he explains, this is another example of philanthropic curatorship, having been donated by the Brocklehursts, one of the wealthiest families in Macclesfield, who made their fortune from silk and banking. The endeavour was mainly spearheaded by Marianne Brocklehurst, who had amassed a relatively notable Egyptian collection after three expeditions there and she wanted somewhere for this to be displayed as well as parts of their art collection and various natural history curios collected by her husband.

A museum leaflet, researched by Luanne Collins to celebrate the centenary of the museum in 1998 suggests that the whole thing was quite scandal. Having selected an architect Purdon Clarge, the then deputy director of the South Kensington Museum in London, and approved of his design, for some reason the local town councillors took objection to it, and according to a letter to the local press, it was variously described in a meeting as looking like a “dog kennel”, “an abortion”, “a tool-house” and “a mortuary” though as Collins ponders, perhaps the plan they saw had been misinterpreted by the copyist. In the midst of these objections, Mrs Brocklehurst withdrew her offer.

Then four years later she quietly proposed the whole thing again, with the same plans, actually modelled on the interior of the South Gallery of the Whitworth in Manchester, and it was built and opened in October 1898. Mrs Brocklehurst sadly died just a few weeks after the opening and didn’t live to see the museum completed. Luanne Collins notes that arrangement of the museum was in the style of the time, every exhibit for itself, “Egyptian relics and the paintings would have been packed closely beside tropical beetles, models of Canadian settlements, ostrich eggs and a stuffed tiger.”

The floor plan is still somewhat within the spirit of this original structure. The fine art collection is predominantly overwhelmed by a particular artist, which I’ll return to, but amid that are still related natural history items and at the far back a walled off section displaying Mrs Brocklehurst’s Egyptian finds. It’s not unlike the Lady Lever Art Gallery in miniature. While I was there a small school class of infants aged children dropped in to inspect a single item, but I could imagine large groups spending an afternoon here investigating the whole display, perhaps seeking tangential connections.

The reason for my visit, the fine art collection, is essentially split between that single artist and everything else. When in 1974 Cheshire County Council took over management of the museum and began to develop a display of works by the Macclesfield born painter Charles Tunnicliffe, best known as a wildlife painter (most of that work on display at the Oriel Ynys Môn in Angelsey) but earlier in his life, the period predominantly covered by the West Park’s collection, he was interested in a much wider variety of subjects and it’s this display the visitor is confronted with on first entering the museum.

Although some of his later nature work is here, arguably the stronger works are the illustrative etchings and paintings of Macclesfield town centre. Of the former, he seems most comfortable reporting on rural life at a turning point, with some atmospheric images of life on the Sutton farm where he grew up and illustrations for Richard Church’s book Greenhide all of which reveals an almost surreal element of isolation, loss and destruction. One etching, of bell ringers in various states of repose and work within a shadowy stone space demonstrates perfectly how a group of men can be in the same room, relating to one another, yet still seem totally alone.

In some ways, in many ways, I prefer Tunnicliffe's town paintings to Lowry's. As the artist himself admits in the relation to his The Cattle Market, the architecture of the town is just as interesting to him as the people and he paints both with a richness of character. But unlike Lowry who was determined to force dour abstraction and desolation into his scenes, Tunnicliffe utilises an almost Mediterranean colour pallet to his scenes, which in its own way may be less realistic, but does a least focus on the positives, why someone would live in this town, albeit again in the transitional moments between rural and metropolitan.

Tunnicliffe was also attempting portraiture in this period. One of his strands was a collection of images of locals and on display is a head and shoulder portrait of a nameless local policeman, sternly regarding us from the space between where his helmet stops and his uniform begins. Painted in the 1920s, the cop is wearing a cape originally introduced in 1843 though it’s not made clear from the accompanying information if it was still a standard part of the uniform or whether Tunnicliffe was indulging in some municipal nostalgia. From the same period is a study of a Reclining Nude. This lacks any accompanying information.

Some highlights of the rest. As with most of these regional galleries, West Park has a Landseer, Interior of a Highland Byre, a milk girl and a rather startled looking cow. Mabel Layng’s A Seat in the Park is an impressionistic scene of two turn of the last century ladies gossiping on a bench as a handsome man reads his paper trying not give the impression of listening in. One of the women looks just ready to burst into laughter, an emotion the painter achieves with just a few brush strokes. Nearby is a landscape of Durham Cathedral, attributed to Edward Hastings, which is notable for putting its subject in the background, its towers almost hidden behind trees.

But my two favourite works from the collection are at the opposite corner, right at the back of the room. One is a panoramic painting of West Park itself on a summers day, in which the artist George Stewart captures the diversity of people who have utilised this green space, women in beautiful Victorian dresses with the working class playing ball games. The other is Nina Colmore’s The Panda, painted in 1935 featuring the animal almost submerged in a grey background which is accompanied nearby by a stuffed Panda which Mr Brocklehurst shot himself one of his hunting trips. Colmore’s painting show that there are other means of demonstrating their majesty.

The curatorial assistant on duty this afternoon was extremely helpful, introducing me to the Egyptian collection, noting that it’s one of quality rather than quantity. He showed me in a catalogue investigating the museum’s shabti collections (The Shabti Collections by Glen James) two paintings by Mrs Brocklehurst of her digs, which are currently on loan abroad because of the accuracy with which they depict one of the digs, unafraid to show the local labour involved in shifting the sarcophaguses across country. Should these be part of the fine art or archaeological parts of the collection? West Park is one of those museums where these distinctions are blurrier than ever.

Stairs.

Technology  To China and a selection of photos of a new invention best explained by the first caption:

"Liu Tie'erlooks at a wheelchair he invented in a workshop in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, May 6, 2013. Liu Tie'er, a 71-year-old local resident, invented a wheelchair capable of climbing stairs in an effort to help his disabled wife and many more who are in need."

There are a variety of designs to suit every occasion.

Doctor Who confirmed for eighth season.

TV Surprising a few of us, Doctor Who has finally been confirmed for an eighth season and another Christmas special with Steven, Matt and Jenna a lock.

 Whether that means Christmas 2013 or 2014, I'm a bit confused about but at least there's some forward direction on this, even if also we don't actually know when it'll be broadcast.

 I've seen reports of Autumn 2014, which seems a looong way off.

 My hunch is it's one of the reason Merlin's left us -- to allow Who to finally have a full thirteen weeks in Fall and Winter because frankly I think we'd all be a bit cheesed if it was another split season across the closing of the year, because if it was another split season across the closing of the year that would mean we're been reduced to having one full run of episodes every two years in real terms.

 Which, yes, I know is more than was broadcast in the 90s but still looks a bit pokey for what's supposed to be one of the BBC's flagship dramas.

Anyway, to celebrate BBC America have uploaded the moment from The Name of the Doctor with all the Doctors so we can enjoy Murray Gold's vague cover version of the Field of Dreams piano theme once more:



"People will come Doctor, they'll come to Trenzalore and they won't know why..."

Coal Hill.

Nature Wow, this is grim.  From an ABC News affiliate in Arkansas:

"In recent months our Seven-On-Your-Side office got several complaints that we had never heard before.

People were voluntarily giving their horses to what they believed would be a "forever home," only to now have serious second thoughts about the wisdom of their decision.

We went to Johnson County... where these horses should be living out their days.

The real story is not what we found...but what we failed to find.

We didn't find a lush 60 acres. We didn't find plenty of hay. And most importantly...we didn't find any of the horses in question."

I think you can tell that this doesn't end well.  Poor horses.

The Name of the Doctor.

TV Where do we start? Let’s start with Alien Bodies. Alien Bodies is an Eighth Doctor novel by Lawrence Miles. I’m about to spoil the book so if you haven’t read it and have any intention, I’d shift your gaze downwards five paragraphs. As you know, or you will by the end of this sentence, Alien Bodies is about the Doctor attending an intergalactic auction with its single lot of a relic containing his final remains. As with The Name of the Doctor it’s a very funerary piece of work that’s also extremely funny and ultimately changes our view of the character because it gives him a finite end albeit one that’s presumed to be very far in the future.

Like The Name of the Doctor it also references a Time War, one which is revealed in future novels to include the destruction of Gallifrey, an act which actually negates Alien Bodies from happening in the same way because it stops the Doctor’s relics from existing in quite the that form. Part of the story arc involves an alternative version of the Time Lord, the Grandfather Paradox, who has a coincidental resemblance to the Ninth Doctor, but whose actions in actively continuing the war are what the Eighth Doctor is fighting against when he destroys his own planet (as it turns out for the first time).

Why that’s interesting in the context of The Name of the Doctor, is that it too features an alternative version of the Time Lord, the one, we must assume now, who destroyed Gallifrey, and because as we know now he can't be an old version of Eighth or Ninth (see far below), absolves them of the action in quite the way it’s been portrayed over the past eight years on television and in some of the books. In AHistory, Lance Parkin makes a pretty good argument for both destructions of Gallifrey being the same space-time event seen from different points of view, that perhaps the Grandfather Paradox regenerated into the Ninth Doctor.

Even now the climax makes me giggle. Not since The Stolen Earth's surprise regeneration have we had a conclusion this “sexy”  and so much metafictionally about the language of tv though in this case it’s one based on we the audience finding out a piece of information rather than something particularly happening to the Doctor who knew about this all along. The fact that John Hurt is somehow playing the Doctor has been heavily spoilt in advanced already, thanks to a tasty set photo ala those early shots of Rose from Partners in Crime and the words coming out of John Hurt's own mouth. It’s the somehow which is interesting (again see below).

Was Alien Bodies and its ensuing arc in the novels rattling around Steven Moffat’s head when writing this series of Doctor Who? Let’s look at the evidence. As I noticed in 2008 when coincidentally reviewing The Forest of Dead (of which this is a semi-sequel), Moffat was an avid reader of the books including the Lawrence Miles material. Alien Bodies also includes the concept of the Doctor’s then companion Sam having alternative versions and in the Time/Space sketches, the Doctor talks about the TARDIS entering “conceptual space”, a Lawrence Miles invention from Alien Bodies (see this review of that here). So if you want to infer all of this, you can.

But and this is a big but, designed especially for those of you who skipped the past five paragraphs (hello again!), The Name of the Doctor is one of those episodes. A glance at the TARDIS Datacore page for it shows that like similar season finales, and more-so thanks to it being an anniversary year, narrative stuff from across the franchise’s half century of existence, and although most of it’s on the nose animated gifs and wav files, some of the underlying html, java and python is notable for those of us who spend more time than we should pouring over Lance Parkin’s AHistory, TARDIS Datacore pages and other reference “works”.  See also something Paul Magrs has noticed from his own work.

Did I enjoy it? Yes! Is it any good? Well … I suppose having said all of the above it depends what you want from Doctor Who. To be fair to the show, a few episodes this series have returned to first principles with bases under siege and alien invasions, but there is a point where you have to show more of the Doctor on his adventures saving all of those lives rather than of the Doctor chasing his own tail or indeed tale. Partly the current approach is as a result of this being the 50th anniversary and wanting to respect that past and introducing something new, or at least reveal something new about something in those fifty years.

But (small but this time) I do hope once the 50th is over and the eighth series begins, whenever the hell that’s going to be, though it’s good that we know finally that it is going to be, that we’ll have another brand spanking approach, that the story arc isn’t about the Doctor or the companion or a mix of the two, ending in another paradoxical situation of some form or other related to same existing or not existing or revealing something which is/was already in plain sight. We’ve done that and it’s been thrilling. It's thrilling here, but now even I’m asking for something else. Across a whole series of thirteen episodes because the split season thing isn’t working.

Right, now that I’ve got all that off my chest, what about The Name of the Doctor? What about The Name of the Doctor? Like I said, I loved it. Even though it does have roughly the same structure as The Pandorica Opens, The Wedding of River Song and The Angels Take Manhattan, of the Doctor receiving a message which forces him to confront that which he should never confront which is ultimately resolved by messing about in his own time stream, like the other older standards, it’s how that’s deployed what really matters and this is an excellent example largely because we like spending time with the characters.

If Clara (more on whom later) still seems a bit consistent in relation to how confident she’s supposed to be, which isn’t to criticise Jenna’s playing which has exponentially improved across the season, especially her comic timing, Strax, Jenny and Vastra will remain, like Jackie, Donna and Wilf in Russell’s era, his greatest creation and he clearly loves writing for them, notably Strax, whose line “Surrender your women and intellectuals!” will become the quote we all secretly wish would be put on the posters, t-shirts and badges even though we know that by implication it’s really, really wrong.

Does The Name of the Doctor ruin The Forest of the Dead?  No more than everything else which has been inserted into Professor River Song's backstory.  The Silence in the Library and its following episode were always stronger when River was a mystery, someone in the Doctor's future.  I remember watching the story on the afternoon before the broadcast of A Good Man Goes To War, knowing that I wouldn't be able to enjoy it in quite the same way again.  Taking into account my previous comments, she'll also be back despite what happens here; the Doctor still has to pass to her his sonic screwdriver, take her on her final trip in the TARDIS, the dramatic possibilities of which Moffat is unlikely to ignore (even if the fact Clara didn't recognise her rules her out of the being the person who gave Clara the Doctor's phone number).

His handling of the Doctor is also really strong. Having built him up, as usual, as the great, fearful mythic god like figure, he’s shown entirely outwitted (apparently) by teenagers and a blindfold. When he’s confronted with his greatest fear, his first thought is to ask Jenny, who last he’s heard is dead, if she's ok. Whether that is Moffat or “business worked out in the rehearsals” (which judging by the production subtitles on the classic dvds how the entire Troughton era was thrown together) (“The scripted line was…”) it’s an attention to detail which hasn’t recently been deployed that often. Jenny was kind to him. Saved his life. Now she’s under his protection.

Moffat's handling of the Doctor’s darkness is equally muscular. Notice how, when listing his vanquished, those bathed in blood, Solomon the Trader is included. Remember how annoyed some of us were about his death, how it seemed to be in cold blood, how it was somehow, along with his approach in A Town Called Mercy, an indication of there being something wrong with him. Well, Mr G Intelligence seems to be suggesting here that it’s just him. That’s just the way he his. He’s The (Oncoming) Storm, The Beast, The Valeyard. Even in these earlier incarnations he’s capable of the inhuman, the morally ambiguous. Unless you’re under his protection.

None of which should really be a surprise. We all like to hold him up, largely because most of the time that’s how the franchise tends to portray him, as a white-hatted figure, Roy Rogers. But he’s The Man With No Name, or man with a name though not even, really a man. In comics terms, his publicist might portray him as Superman, but really he’s The Batman. Which when glancing back at my review of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, makes me feel rather foolish. Nothing happened between seasons as I suggested there. Moffat’s saying he’s just like that. The Doctor, can be, and often is a shit. He’ll still brain you with a rock if you’re in the way.

Much of this is the Great Intelligence’s own moral justification for his upcoming actions, gutturally spit out in one of REG’s best ever performances (and if only he’d played the Shalka Doctor with this conviction) (not that it would have mattered in the grand scheme of things but at least it would have made it a bit more watchable) (perhaps he’ll do it again for the dvd as a special feature) but I suppose the retrospective point being made about Solomon and the Dominators and all the other human looking people he’s exploded is that they’re all monsters even if they look like the people he’s usually defending.

Trenzalore.  Remember back in The Wedding of River Song when the descriptions of what would happen here gestured towards the epic?  Again we're in "arguable" territory.  Arguably Silence did fall when the question was asked.  Or rather time imploded in on itself when the GI entered the Doctor's time stream causing a cataclysm big enough to destroy the universe.  It's interesting there were no specific callbacks or explanations, apart from a mention of poor old Dorium.  But it is another example of Moffat's slightly woolly approach to story arcs which assumes we've forgotten why things are happening anyway.

Now then Clara. In my review of The Snowmen I pondered, “it is still possible that she is fragments of the same figure blown across time Scaroth like?”, to which the answer is yes, yes it is. Of course everything else I said in ensuing paragraphs is utter bollocks and most of the speculation from the past seven reviews, but I was in fairly early. Like Scaroth from City of Death, she’s blasted across time with a goal, her goal being to save the Doctor. A lot. Through a method which makes about as much sense as Amy Pond remembering a whole universe plus Time Lord and TARDIS back into existence, Clarke’s Third Law in full effect.

How are these adventures supposed to play out? Does the Great Intelligence arrive at all points in the Doctor’s timeline inserting himself into all of his adventures at some point forcing them to go wrong, helping the Drahvins to invade the Rill’s ship, manufacturing more evidence of the Doctor’s guilt in Cranleigh Halt and buying Chloe Webber a Costco sized batch of crayons before one of Drahvins suddenly realises she doesn’t need to take orders and sabotages their ship, one of the flappers in the hall happens to witness the Doctor edging out of the hidden passages or as a teacher buys out all of Costco’s crayons for her school’s Olympic art competition?

Are we supposed to now watch Doctor Who on the assumption that every coincidental piece of luck and continuity error might not just be due to the Time War, the Faction Paradox or the cracks in time, but on a more human level, one of Clara’s aspects keeping an eye on the Time Lord? If that’s the case, no wonder the TARDIS took a dislike to her. While she’s taking the Doctor where he needs to go, Clara’s already there to help out, unseen in the background. She’s a benevolent version of Mila from the dying embers of the Sixth Doctor and Charley Pollard audios, at which point I refer to the comments I made some paragraphs ago.

Except there’s an inconsistency. When Clara appears in all of these eras, “Doctor?” she asks. “Doctor?” Except as per her three appearances in the series, these fragments, recreations, whatever, don’t know who he is initially, he has to explain to them anew each time. They don’t have his name. Yet here they are peering at him in his literal cliffhanger from Dragonfire entirely recognising who he is despite his predicament and it has to be the same set of events because this is an ontological paradox. Clara wouldn’t be there if the Doctor hadn’t found her intriguing enough in her other versions to have her as his companion/assistant until he worked out who she is/was/will be.

The rendering of Claras appearances through time should be squee inducing but there’s no way of getting past how these don’t quite work. For one thing, the merging of Jenna with the old footage simply doesn’t match in most shots, often cutting between 80s video and 10s HD, or between actual footage and stand-ins running at a different pace. Much of it looks like a poor cousin of similar YouTube experiments and indeed many people on Twitter noted afterwards that they should have asked “the Babelcolour guy” Stuart Humphreys to have done the colourisations, especially since he’s apparently achieved magic on The Mind of Evil restoration.

The lack of accomplishment in these scenes was illuminated still further last night during the Eurovision Song Contest, when presenter Petra Mede was also merged seamlessly into a similar variety of footage in various states of restoration from the history of that franchise, with the ABBA footage a particular success thanks to the engineer noticing the halo effects on the tape and replicating that in Mede’s appearance. Perhaps if the Gallifrey footage had appeared in black and white retaining the mis-en-scene of the era we might not have been pulled out of it quite so much. Perhaps if Jenna had been acting opposite David Bradley instead.

Which is a shame because Clara’s costumes are well chosen to evoke their given era, especially in the case of the Seventh Doctor era in which they recreated almost companion Ray from Delta and the Bannermen’s threads to the nearest stud. Some doubling up across Doctors, and what looks like Emma’s jumper from Hide. Incidentally I’m not sure where all this leaves the Doctor’s remark about Clara’s dress being a little bit “too” tight from last week. I generally didn’t notice it but friends have thought it a bit creepy. I’m still not sure especially having watched how the Doctor talks to Liz in Spearhead from Space earlier which is very in period, my dear, my girl.  Such a man's man.

The use of stand-ins works much better later in the episode, running through the Doctor’s essence in their various costumes, the First Doctor version looking not unlike Richard Hurndall version anyway. The Eighth Doctor is here too briefly, twice, with his velvet jacket. Say what you like about the JNT costumes, at least they’re immediately recognisable. Notice how the Tenth Doctor isn’t much here, saving his cameo presumably for the 50th. Will he be the Time Lord? Will he be the human version from the alternative universe (my hunch?). Still plenty of time to go until we find out.

Woody Allen says, though I’m paraphrasing, that he has a perfect version of each of his films in his head beforehand and what we receive his failed attempt at recreating that. All of my writing is like that and this review in particular, due to my cold, so thanks for keeping with it. Sometimes these things need to be written simply so that they're not in my head and the idea of waiting another few days until my head cleared was unbearable. Who knows what last night’s version would have been like. If I wasn’t perpetually knackered and coughing. If Eurovision hadn’t been on. If this hadn’t been the season finale but just episode eight.

Glancing back across these thirteen odd episodes, has the whole thing been the creative failure some have suggested? Well, no, at least not more or less than most previous seasons in the show’s history. Always remember: between The Sensorites came between The Aztecs and The Reign of Terror. The Twin Dilemma happened after The Caves of Androzani. The Curse of the Black Spot segwayed into The Doctor’s Wife. Even The Name of the Doctor brings some sense to a couple of its weaker instalments, metaphysically recreating the leaf from Akhaten and repairing a reset button, making it clear the Doctor remembered the Journey all along.

It’s still never less than watchable. Mostly. It’s still Doctor Who. The Snowmen’s still a triumph, closely followed by Hide and The Crimson Horror. Asylum of the Daleks could have been a classic if we’d been able to see more of the older models instead of having to squint (notice the parallel with The Name of the Doctor which brought us some their foes older models at the other end of the season). The Power of Three is excellent up until the final moments when Berkoff’s boredom unbalances everything. The Angels Take Manhattan falls apart under the weight of its own existence. Nightmare in Silver is the catastophic failure of the year. Oh well.

For one final time, cue speculation, or rather repeated speculation.  John Hurt’s Doctor. As I said earlier he can’t be the older Eighth Doctor because the stand in version dashed past the prone Clara or some older Ninth Doctor for the same reason which ruins my old theory, so he has to be some interstitial incarnation, the one who destroyed Gallifrey and ended the Time War, the one who had “the moment” in The End of Time, which is both very exciting indeed and disappointing because it presumably removes the Eighth Doctor’s notional cameo from the same story. Let’s hope he’s back for the 50th to make up for it. Paul’s apparently just gone and got a new sonic screwdriver from Weta ...

76 Totters Lane.

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1963.

History Four days before he met his fate, John F Kennedy visited Tampa Bay. It was an unremarkable stop, and if the President hadn't lost his life a few days later would have gone unremarked. But a researcher, Lynn Marvin Dingfelder, is determined to illuminate why it was important for the people of Tampa with a new film:

“I want this to be about the joyous time he spent in our city,” Dingfelder added. “I don’t want this to be about mourning and conspiracy theories.”

She's researching and collecting recollections of the visit for a documentary. The response has already, apparently been excellent, but on the off chance that someone in the area does read this blog (you never know) (I fail to be surprised by anything these days) the full details of how to make contact are here.

WHO 50: 1988: Remembrance of the Daleks.

TV Although Silver Nemesis was intended to be the 25th anniversary story for Doctor Who, celebrations began earlier in the season with Remembrance of the Daleks which, with its return to 1963, to Totters Lane and Coal Hill School is arguably the more celebratory of the two.

The acme of that is the announcer on the television in the living room of the boarding house, which at the close of scene is heard to say, “This is BBC television, the time is quarter past five and Saturday viewing continues with an adventure in the new science fiction series Do-“

The shot changes before the walls of this fictional reality entirely breakdown (ignoring previous asides to camera), but the intent is clear. Within an episode of Doctor Who we’re supposed to be nearly watching the broadcast of An Unearthly Child.

On first seeing this, I probably didn’t notice the implication. I was too young and well into my period of Transformers fandom.

On the second occasion, on video later, I was terribly excited because it suggested to me that as in the comics universes of Marvel and DC where superheroes spawned their own comic series dramatising their exploits, the BBC of the Whoniverse produced something similar.

Until it occurred to me that if indeed the BBC was producing a series called Doctor Who in the Doctor’s universe, whenever he turned up subsequently, people should be saying, “The Doctor’s a fiction character off of the television. Who are you really?”

But narrative abhors a vacuum and in the ensuing wilderness years, the Doctor Who universe did indeed get its own version of the series, thanks to Paul Cornell’s Virgin novel No Future with Professor X.

The TARDIS Datacore inevitably gathers together the ensuing references that have appeared in other stories to Professor X, spanning the BBC Books and Big Finish, of this television series which ran from 1963 to 1989 featuring “a mysterious scientist who travelled through time and space inside a TASID, a ship which resembled a pillar box on the outside.”

So perhaps this is the series being announced in Remembrance. Perhaps the announcer’s not about to say Doctor, but something else with that opening syllable. Perhaps.

Unsurprisingly for a franchise that has been rolling on for fifty years it has attracted a number of these internal references designed to comment on its existence, admittedly in the spin-offs.

Dr Who in the Head Games, a fictional version of the character based on the figure who appeared in the TV Comics.

Iris Wildthyme, whose own history runs as one long feminist or camper rewrite of the Doctor’s own (“But that’s me, I did that” as he’s often heard to say in the Eighth Doctor novels).

The One Doctor’s Christopher Biggins shaped imposter.

There’s also Robert Sheerman’s Unbound story, Deadline in which Derek Jacobi plays an old Juliet Bravo writer who has hallucinations about the Doctor and his companions.

But the Remembrance reference is arguably the most potent because it leaves so much unsaid (or at least two syllables), and so much to our imaginations.

Hibiscus blossom.

Food Vanessa Wolf of Maui Now! reports on a local food festival. It's all about onions:

"The offerings varied from Kulis’ Kona Maine Lobster Salad with smoked Kula onion emulsion and grilled Kula onion vinaigrette to Maui lamb crepinettes stuffed with house lemon ricotta and Maui onions. Vasquez’s crispy Maui onion and kampachi tartare was given some stuff competition by Simeon’s chicken liver mousse, Maui onion jam, and Funyuns plate and the Maui onion stuffed with a fried hibiscus blossom filled with black lentils."

Not sure if I like onions that much.

Wendy James in 1991.

Music The things you turn up. After impulse listening to Baby I Don't Care, I happened upon this interview between Jonathan Ross and Wendy James (below). She's clearly not quite sure what to make of him or how to come across because it's a prime time interview in relation to a tentative comeback after Transvision Vamp's heyday just two years before. There's an exchange about something which happened on Going Live the week before ...



... and thanks to YouTube, here is the Going Live from a week before:



What's remarkable about this isn't just that it shows that Ross and the commenters to Points of View blew everything just slightly out for proportion especially considering her admission that she doesn't wear knickers when performing is for practical reasons, but also that it's a demonstration of what kids television and Saturday morning television was like in 1991.

 At various points, James is coaxed into talking about feminist issues and the environment and although some of her answers wander a bit, the fact that she's even being asked in comparison to the topics which are covered on so called "adult" television now. The modern comparison would be The One Show, I suppose, which has a particular reputation for Goulding stars out of the comfort zone.

Generally James comes across as being really rather mighty, so it's a shame that this was the last we really saw of her in the pop world.  Wikipedia suggests the album she was promoting, Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble, didn't eventually have a release in the UK after a disagreement with the record company over the sound, the group splitting up before they could change their mind.

There's load of Wendy James related stuff on YouTube.  Here she is on Rivron for goodness sake.  Can you imagine this programme being commissioned now, let alone there being any guests?  "So I'm supposed to float in the Thames with Roland Rivron while he asks random questions?" "Every now and then a boat may almost collide with you but it'll be fine ..."  Oh and good lord, Star Test.  "Number nine, yawn."

The Vincent.

Traffic For Popular Mechanics, Jay Leno remembers the Vincent Black Shadow:

"Where I grew up, in a small New England town, the Vincent was a motorcycle you only ever heard about. But the legend surrounding the bike was so strong. There was a guy who lived a couple of towns over who had a Vincent that had allegedly run in the renowned Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race off the coast of the U.K. Every now and then, somebody at school would say, "I heard it go by the other night." All the kids would stop to listen to his story. "What did it look like? What did it sound like?" We all wanted to know."

Navarino.

History The National Maratime Museum has in its collection two charts illustrating "the Battle of Navarino, a naval engagement fought on the 20 October 1827 in the Mediterranean Sea during the Greek War of Independence":

"A combined fleet of British, French and Russian ships under Admiral Sir Edward Codrington decisively defeated the Turco-Egyptian fleet of Ibrahim Pasha in the bay of Navarino (modern Pylos), on the west coast of the Morea (the Peleponnese). Many Turkish and Egyptian vessels were destroyed in the action, which effectively decided the war in favour of the Greek insurgents struggling to throw off many years of Ottoman Turkish rule. It is also the last recorded occasion that two fleets entirely under sail met in conflict."

The collection also has this painting by George Philip Reinagle which demonstrates the sheer horror of naval battle, the fires of hell ripping through the fleet.

Who is the Secret Actor? #5

TV After last week's information overload, Secret's back to talking about someone else.

She has a friend who's a bit like Martin Freeman and is everywhere, but before that was being asked to be a bit like Martin Freeman in auditions.

If this is Romola "After the recent birth of my child, I had the misfortune of having 23 stitches in my vagina. So I didn't think I'd be laughing at anything for a long time - but tonight's nominees have proved me wrong" Garai (Oh wasn't she brilliant last night? Wasn't she?) then a prime Freeman-like suspect would be Joshua McGuire from The Hour.



He's sort of Freemanesque.  He's not "everywhere", certainly not on television.  He's not a household name.  He isn't out of work at the theatre though.  He played Hamlet at The Globe in 2011.  He's at The National at the moment.

The comments underneath the column are still scathing, but I'm sticking with it, if only for the intellectual challenge.

One of them is making an effort and suggests a few decent possibles.  Hits upon Hugh Bonneville as another possible, which could work too thanks to the Glorious 39 connection, but he's not very Freeman-like, plus he's was knocking around well before Freeman turned up nullifying the premise of the column.

Doctor Who's BAFTA Tribute.

TV Presumably because they couldn't afford the clips or some other licensing issue, the Eighth Doctor was under represented in the BAFTA tribute last night. Everything else was present and correct, Dalek Sec, the Dominators, Colin not telling Peri that she's a rather egotistical young lady and Sylv finally defeating a Dalek by sticking two wires together. At least didn't include the Myrka I suppose.



The final bumper's a treat and shows that the these characters really are at their best and funniest when they're simply talking together in the TARDIS. Everything else just simply stops us from having that. Spot the moment when the walls of the fiction come crashing down and they drop out of character ... I'd never thought this before but Dr Brian Cox is sort of a real world version of the Doctor isn't he?

Softel Nebula.

Anti-gravity spiral.

Life You've probably read this already (it's the first post I've seen at blogpost to reach five thousand comments) but in words and pictures and ironically in a very funny but also very tragic was, Allie Brosh explains what it's like to be depressed. Not just down, but medically depressed:

"The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief. I had always wanted to not give a fuck about anything. I viewed feelings as a weakness — annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn't have to feel them anymore.

"But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there's a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they don't feel very different."

On the basis of this, I'm probably on the borderline. Which is either really worrying or entirely normal.  Her first attempt is here.

She Said, He Said.

TV Uploaded and broadcast after tonight's episode, She Said, He Said is a nuWho equivalent of the Troughton Web of Fear trailer filmed in the style of the Steve Lyon penned framing material with Ian Chesterton from the VHS release of The Crusade or with all that memorabilia Tom's Shada escapade ("Beat you cock!").  We're offered two contrasting approaches to the soliloquy, looking everywhere other than at the audience or addressing us directly, which means Jenna-Louise is left to uncomfortably talk into space until she's confronted by the Tussaud's version of the Eleventh Doctor.

Exposition wise, it's mostly a tease, offering a synopsis of what we already know, though it does illuminate something which has been bothering me for the past seven weeks.  Other than the Doctor, Clara's barely spoken to anyone else about herself in an intimate way.  There's the small child in Arkadin and the Professor in Cold War, and herself in relation to the TARDIS but most of anything she's done has been plot based, generic companion stuff.  In that sense, this is the longest time we've spent with her covering the existential essentials and we still only scratch the surface.  She loves him, but she's not sure why.

Although the unreversed "He Said, She Said" is a relatively common phrase, it does also give me the opportunity to recommend the underappreciated and generally ignored 1991 film of the same name starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins as television journalists falling in and out of love, which utilises a Roshomon structure (cf, The Girl with Two Breasts episode of Coupling) to show the situation from their differing gendered and interpersonal perspectives, which is also, obviously what this prolquel is attempted to do too (and we're back on topic).

Nightmare In Silver.

“Target audience will hate it.”
“Who's the target audience?”
“People with eyes.”

TV So yes, that was rubbish. This exchange between Ben Affleck’s CIA operative and John Goodman’s fantasy film make-up man when asking about the quality of the work in the film Argo has been making me giggle for days partly because of the delivery but mostly because of how it satirically comments on the nature of some fantasy filmmaking and the assumption that people who like fantasy lack discernibility genes. Inevitably, as Neil Gaiman’s Nightmare in Steel unfolded, that quote wandered into my brain, not unlike the Cyber-Planner, and lodged itself there. Because wow, that was wow, and I don’t mean wow as in The Doctor’s Wife, I mean wow, how the hell did that happen?

The previewer’s word of mouth has admittedly not been good. Radio Times is especially scathing in this week’s ish, but friends “in the industry” had intimated things and so I’m willing to open up the potential, and just the potential mind, that I was watching it expecting a fail and it’s also true I did notice a few good things which will at least make it rewatchable. It was not episodes two to four of The Space Museum. It was not Time-Flight. It was not Timelash. It was not most of the first two series of Torchwood. It was not Torchwood’s Miracle Day. But as an example of the series taking its various elements and becoming the show that we fans spend more time than we should complaining that it’s not, it was just about perfectly crafted.

The kids! Oh damn, no, please no. It’s not fair to criticise child actors, so I won’t, but having only vaguely been set up in The Bells of St John and last week’s epilogue, we’re led to believe in between that the Doctor’s not only agreed to carry them in the TARDIS but taken them to this planet. But rather than amazed by the fact they’ve just been in a box which is bigger on the inside and gone through time and space, they’re bored and moody. You know that show in Twelve Monkey’s when Bruce Willis’s younger version is amazed at the concept of an airport all boggle eyed. See also Jurassic Park. Not bored. Boredom leads to an entirely lack of empathy. Imagine if the kids from The Sarah Janes Adventures had offered this reaction.

Having entirely not bothered to make them sympathetic figures in any kind of meaningful way, they’re then given the narrative agency of a third companion, inevitably becoming someone captured for the Doctor to save. But unlike a Jackie Tyler, they’re not especially funny because they’re being written as the kinds of kids who appear in these kinds of roles in this kind of drama so they’re literally just there to be saved and trespass and do all of tedious things that third wheel companions often do. Arguably, this is meant to contrast with Clara perhaps, who as we’ve discussed is in essence the “perfect companion” but I’m as bored with this paragraph as they are with being on an alien planet so I’ll move on.

The Cybermen! Oh Cyberman. Nightmare in Steel (and my brain really wants to put an indefinite article in front of that title) is supposed to be the big reboot for these monsters, the upgrade from the Cybus Industries models that have populated the series since series two. The upgrade seems to be to Borgify them even further, with Cybermites which act like the wiring that enters the body in Star Trek: First Contact, a Cyber-Planner who instantly co-opts an existing body and borrows its knowledge ala Locutus and who mass in great armies around castles. Sorry, that's Orcs, but my point is that in upgrading the Cybermen, Gaiman’s ironically drained even more of their individuality.

I had hoped that we might have had some kind of definitive suggestion that we were watching the original Mondasian Cybermen but instead we were given some new back-story reminiscent of the old Big Finish audio spin-off with its massive space battle and empire except the old Big Finish audio spin-off recognised their roots. Instead, the only Cyberperson allowed a modicum of individuality or character is still the Controller/Planner, which is arguably to some extent also true in the past but at least most of them were capable of philosophically speaking up for themselves when required and with something other than, “Installing upgrade” or some such.

But it’s a measure of a script overflowing with too many ideas, that it’s one notionally interesting thought, Cyberman as The Silver Turk, is dispensed with relatively quickly, so it’s lucky that an Eighth Doctor audio, The Silver Turk exists to do something with it instead. But everything about these models feels derivative, with the detachable hands all but doing the job of the absent Cybermats and a 180 head turn beat which is almost an exact repeat of a similar Dalek manoeuvre from Dalek.  The design is grand, but doesn’t work at all well as part of the static, pin like CGI hoards hoards ring the castle later in the episode. Is just having one of them turning to the camera, clenching a fist and saying “Excellent” too much to ask for?

The script! As I’ve intimated this is a script in which the writer has had several dozen ideas and decided to cram them all in leaving them mostly underdeveloped, handing ammunition to those fans who believe that the forty-five minute episode doesn’t work. In this case, I’d agree, it doesn’t. But there’s enough mileage in the idea of an abandoned whimsical theme park with its creepy attendant alone to fill forty-five minutes yet here it simply to becomes a backdrop for the travails of a punishment platoon (did we actually hear what crimes they’d apparently committed?) (if we did it was pretty much thrown away), who’re then backgrounded in favour of the Doctor’s Gollum-like battle for control of his own brain.

Sometimes the story idea pile-up, some might say shopping list, can work. It was the engine that powered plenty of the RTD era (werewolves, kung fu monks and Queen Victoria?), but more often than not they seemed to integrate better than this. The Doctor’s All of Me moments could and should have been at the centre of a tense, otherwise low key episode, perhaps even a two or three hander, one which would have made more of his brilliant lapses into impressions of his earlier incarnations, existential discussions about the nature of time and of Clara, something in the region of The Girl Who Waited. Instead, it’s at the nucleus of another rather tedious Lord of the Rings knock-off. Oh, wow, I really hated this, didn’t I?

But there’s no excuse either for how undernourished most of these characters are (though to be fair, that’s been an element of this whole series to some extent, especially Cold War). In The Doctor’s Wife, the characters of Auntie and Uncle were simplistic because they were fulfilling a narrative function, whereas Porridge is supposed to be a dimensional character we sympathise with, almost everything about him is carried by Warwick Davies’s charm and as Patrick Mulkern notes at the Radio Times, nothing about his character makes much sense. As president of the galaxy, just why is he hiding out in the torso of a defunct Cyberman on this dead planet? The tedium of power? Oh purlease.

Actually you should probably go read Mulkern’s review. It just about captures everything and it’ll save me repeating him. He’s right about Tamzin Outhwaite too. Once touted as a potential companion by Tom Baker for himself back in the day, here she’s called upon to play the poor cousinof Iain Glenn’s Octavian from The Time of the Angels or General Cobb from The Doctor’s Daughter (a comparison not helped by the barracks quite obviously being filmed in Newbridge Memorial Hall which was main backdrop to that episode). Perhaps given one of the more offhand major supporting character deaths in recent years, this was also an example of the series wasting some good casting and acting on an underwritten character. See also Jason “Webley” Watkins.

Reading back through all of that, because the process of writing this is making me depressed and I want to stop soon, it is possible that I’m damning it for being Doctor Who. Many of the same criticisms could be levelled at most of the Cybermen’s appearances in the 60s and Gaiman could be to some extent presenting his homage to all of that, albeit with much more whimsical tastes (the design of the Planner's prosthesis is reminiscent of the sculptural version from The Invasion). The problem is we’ve also had over three decades of evolution, upgrades, if you like, in-between, and it’s surprising to be handed something this unsophisticated in a lot of ways in the eleventies. Some should have handed him a copy of Nick Brigg’s Sword of Orion during the writing process to give him some indication of how to make the Cybermen really scary.

Nevertheless, despite all of this, it’s only fair for me to suggest a couple of positives. Matt really does work his socks off in the episode creating two distinct personalities (in contrast to The Almost People were his work was much subtler playing versions of the same). He’s not helped by the direction and editing though. Like I said, a big moment, like his impressions of the earlier incarnations should have been clearer. When he offering us his Eccleston, I thought initially he was taking the piss out of Clara. Plus the visit to the interior of his brain really disappointed (despite the appearance of many of the publicity shots from the classic series page with the wrong logo on the BBC website), mostly because it resorted, as the show so often does now, to CGI, when lighting effects can often be just as effective if not moreso.

Oh, that paragraph ended up being two thirds of criticism. Oh, um, I know Jenna-Louise. Jenna-Louise was excellent, wasn’t she, somehow managing to convince us that she could take charge of an army with little or no preparation and without the apparently nervousness of early Rose in taking charge. You could argue that it’s inconsistent with the person walking around in Cold War, but we don’t actually know how long she’s been travelling with the Doctor (especially as with Amy and Rory earlier in the season they're not having consecutive adventures – she goes home at the end). But it could also be part of the notion of her being this impossible girl. The perfect companion able to do what he tells her to, capable of anything he tells her to.

Weirdly, all things considered, Nightmare in Silver had some of the best scenes we've had between these characters, him trying to keep his obsession with her strictly "professional", she apparently not really understanding what he's about or sure why she's travelling with him.  Perhaps the audience might have warmed to her if they'd been allowed to spend more time together rather than being constantly separated; it's certainly true that all of the best scenes in this run have been when they've been together, but rather like the Turlough problem, there's only so long that they can be in scenes together before the Pink Elephant delegate in the Third Intergalactic Peace Conference becomes too obvious to ignore.

One week to go then. Who is Clara? I’ve seen theories as wild and wacky as “She’s the Doctor.” “She’s the Master.” “She’s the offspring of the Doctor and River.” I’m still on the side of her being some kind of perfect companion figure created for reasons unknown, by persons unknown and scattered across time and space like Scaroth or Bad Wolf, ready to be scooped up by the Doctor, who’ll find her intriguing.  Her decision-making abilities and general nouse are far superior to most of the Doctor’s companions and even to him in some ways and at key points in the series. But we’ve no real sense of the interior of the character. She rarely talks about herself, how she feels. She’s almost robotic. Dalek agent?

Now, there’s always the possibility, possibly that when I rewatch A Nightmare in Silver, I’ll like it a whole lot more. People whose opinion I trust have said they thought it was an excellent piece of work and they really enjoyed it which at this point means I’m in the rare state of being on the other side of the argument for a change. After slamming Planet of the Ood mercilessly on the night of broadcast, I warmed to its charms later if only because of Catherine Tate’s performance rather than the pointless chase scene. But at this point, just as Neil Cross was capable of Hide and then The Rings of Arkadin (as I’ve taken to calling it because it’s easier), Neil Gaiman is capable of The Doctor’s Wife and then Nightmare in Silver. Oh dear.

Holiday Camp.

TV BBC One's morning strip of daytime television should under normal circumstances be avoided like all hyper-addictive substances. Each utilises a similar structure of only ever presenting a snippet of a given "story" which forces the viewer to keep watching in order to discover what happened next. In the case of Homes Under The Hammer, we're shown the house, which is up for sale, the auction, we're introduced to purchasers and we're then made to wait half an hour to see if they've turned it into property gold, which if we're not careful we do. Even if it's a repeat.

Don't Get Done Get Dom takes that to a kind of hyperpleptic level, as between smaller consumer outrages, a complaint about a company spins onward for three quarters of an hour through minutes of padding in which the given consumer advice orientated problem is reiterated several times, presenter Dominic Littlewood is seen to make dozens of phone calls until eventually and usually the company puts out a statement of apology with some compensation for the given client. Which we'll still sit and watch and wait and wait and wait for, all the while tutting at the incompetence of the given company.

Yesterday's Don't Get Done Get Dom was a perfect example. A couple have a horrible holiday at Pontins after being given a chalet which judging by the photos looks unbearable, unlivable. Complaining at the time led to an upgrade to even worse accommodation. They complain, don't get anywhere, contact the BBC, and so the shows usual process of phone calls and padding and repetition begins. Except, none of it works. None of it. Dom's offering his usual "I'm from the BBC, hello!" and Pontins don't care.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01sfj8k/Dont_Get_Done_Get_Dom_Series_7_Holiday_Parks/

That's a link to the programme.  Thanks to the iplayer you can skip most of it.  Essentially what Pontins, whose representative will be familiar to fans of a 90s docusoap about  a hotel in Liverpool, do is break the format.  They stonewall Littlewood, as phone calls go unanswered, messages are ignored and his usual final game-changing gambit of speaking to the CEO of the company gets him nowhere (I've only seen the odd episode by the way) (honestly).

Why does Pontins react like this?  Is it because they don't know the format?  If this had been Watchdog would they have had the same reaction?  Do they realise that their target audience are just the sort of people who might watch daytime television?  Either way, it's a rare example of a company not bending over backwards when someone from a BBC consumer advice show phones their press office with a list of demands, which makes it addictive television for a whole other set of reasons.

The Cure and Sugababes.

Music I'm not entirely sure what's being implied or achieved here, but yes, The Cure and Sugababes. Thank you, YouTube uploader.

WHO 50: 1987: Delta and the Bannermen.

TV  There’s much that can be said about the so-called stunt or celebrity casting which inhabited or for some inhibited the closing embers of Doctor Who’s first run but what isn’t generally noted is how these choices usually aren’t the worst things about their given stories. More often than not they're a strength.

When you mention to a not-we that Nicholas Parsons once played a priest in Doctor Who they’ll rolls their eyes, because it seems to them to be the epitome of what went wrong in the latter stages.

Except, of course, we know he’s really rather good in The Curse of Fenric, especially in the specially prepared dvd version where his character’s given a few extra “moments”, becoming a rather tragic figure as the foundations of his faith are challenged.

Then there’s Ken Dodd in Delta and the Bannermen. During the wilderness years, comedy shows and satirical articles, when attempting to explain why Doctor Who should not return they’d print a shot of Dodd as the Toll Keeper and Sylvester McCoy in his original jacket.

Doctor Who Magazine even put a version of it on their cover like a badge of honour.

What those still images don’t illustrate because they can’t, because you’d only know this if you bothered to watch the episode, is that he’s perfectly cast.

The Tollmaster is only a bit part. In nuWho terms, it’s Phil Cornwell’s stallholder in The Fires of Pompeii or Bella Emberg in Love & Monsters. Local colour.

The character calls for a flamboyant figure heralding passengers into an exciting space adventure (which just happens to be pointed at Earth but nevertheless).

Dodd’s perfect for this, not least because some of the DNA of his screen persona runs through Sylvester McCoy’s due to the connection with one of his great admirer’s Ken Campbell which leads to some excellent on-screen chemistry.

When Sylv later played the fool in Trevor Nunn’s King Lear, Dodd’s influence is tucked away inside somewhere.

But the arguable highlight of his performance, because this is an acting performance, is in his death as he’s dragged away by Don Henderson’s Gavrok, and the look of appreciation when he’s under the impression that he’s being set free, grovelling as he tries to get away as quickly as possible.

Then the guttural scream and whimper as he falls. It’s horrible. Pantomime, in its own way, perhaps, but horrible.

Now, Hale and Pace? They’re a different story …

The Ultimate Foe.

Journalism Were you a student in York in the 1990s? Did you read one of the local student papers, The Matrix? Do you still have any? If so, York Press reports comedian Rosie Wilby wants to speak to you:

"Rosie has filmed video interviews with original members of the collective after tracking them down on social media.

"It’s been really fascinating to catch up again with some of these really inspiring women,” she said. “One or two are still in journalism, but we also have an academic and science fiction author, a clinical embryologist, an internationally touring playwright/poet, a former barrister now running a successful vintage hair company doing hair for films and more.”

"But she can’t find back copies of the magazine anywhere."

If you have any information, Rosie can be contacted via her website.

Adventures with the Wife in Space are done.

TV Best mark this landmark. Neil and Sue have finished, the Adventures with the Wife in Space are done. Completed. The final end and with this final, brilliant post about the TV Movie:

"And then the Master drops a bombshell:

The Master: The Doctor is half human!

Sue: Eh? Since when?

I pause the DVD.

Me: What do you make of that, then?

Sue: It makes sense, I suppose.

Me: WHAT?

Sue: Well, he’s obsessed with Earth. He can’t keep away from the place. Why isn’t he saving Mars every week? There has to be a reason for it and that’s a good enough reason as any.

Me: I take it all back, you’re not a fan after all.

But she loves McGann, which is the main thing. As I've asked for the final podcast, I wonder if she'll be tempted to go off and listen to the audios?  Perhaps we'll find out in the book of the series which will be available shortly.

Terror of the Vervoids.

Gardening Not entirely seasonal perhaps (look! sun!) but last December the Kennebec Journal published the story of Maine's Christmas trees:

"About half of all Maine's Christmas trees begin at the same place, in the western Maine town of Fryeburg.

"Since 1917, Western Maine Forest Nurseries have raised conifer trees from seed. The company grows about 500,000 seedlings every year, some of which are sold for reforestation projects and private landscaping, "but a good chunk of them stay right here in Maine for Christmas tree production," said Rick Eastman, 57, the nursery's third-generation owner."

I've noticed in the past couple of weeks the waste ground on Smithdown Road where we usually buy our Christmas tree is currently being built upon. Oh dear.

Vigilante Copy Editor.

Art In this mini-documentary, Jay Dockendorf of the New York Times reports:

"In the sculpture park at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, one of the nation’s oldest art schools, a clandestine struggle is under way — over grammar. In recent months, a vandal (or team of vandals) has used permanent markers to correct grammar and punctuation mistakes on the informational placards near the sculptures."

Watch out for the moment when it's revealed how these typos happened in the first place...