Last-minute change

What? What?!

As your correspondent (currently convalescing in East coast exile) drops, drained and confused, into the Chair of Reckoning for the weekly outpouring, the mobile goes off.

It’s a distress signal from the sofa back at Watcher Acres - and if I were to record here precisely what the text said just after the end of the episode… well, it would effectively be my resignation letter. Let’s just say it’s like ‘Flippin’ eck’, only turned up to 11.

As your resident Mysterious Projection From The Future, I feel I’ve let you down, because I just didn’t see it coming. But did you? I mean it can’t be, can it? If it is… but it can’t be! But it could be! No, but it isn’t. Relax: in the cool, calm seconds it’s taking me to type this, I am suddenly at one with everything. It isn’t. Breathe, and relax. Think of cool, cool moss…

BUT IT COULD BE! IT COULD BE!

I blame the trees, a lovely mindless day walking in the trees, tea in the flask, breeze in the face, not a care in the world; I was lulled, sloppy, mind off the job. But, in my defence, there was no disturbance in The Force, no sign of The Darkness threatened in the weather forecast, no distant clang of the Cloister Bell.

‘Yes, the Daleks are back tonight’, I remember musing idly – I may even have been humming something by Delia Derbyshire – ‘and one’s had a bit of a paint job, and unless that shadowy figure was Jackie Tyler in a pimped mobility scooter, we should see Davros again tonight, and we haven’t seen him for ages, have we, not since… ooh, I wonder what kind of tree that is…’

And all that did happen, of course, although up to about the 44th minute this was perhaps the most horrible, noisy episode we’ve had, genuinely hard on the eye, ear and soul. I felt like I was trying to watch the actual show while someone changed channels by smashing my face against the television set: ooh look, it’s Sarah Jane (PMPHH!)… I mean, Captain Jack (PMPHH!)… no, it’s the other one…(PMPHH!)… er, is that Dempsey and Makepeace? PMPHH! PMPHH! PMPHH!

People running, shouting, watching people watching other people watch other people on big screens, big guns locked and loaded, the end of the world redone as a kebab-house rumble. I almost wasn’t having any of it, until the Daleks zapped that mouthy bloke’s house, a restful suburban dream-wish moment amid all the volume and face-pulling.

But then it was back, the only calm clear voice the Judoon sergeant, whose ‘Kro! Blo! Flo! Mo! Ho! Yo! Bo! Ho Ho Ho! Toe! Flo Jo!’ seemed to sum things up nicely. Pity he’s thrown his lot in with The Shadow Proclamation, which is, apparently – and despite all the dark mutterings – merely the foyer of a smart dental practice, now ‘manned’ by former child genius James Harries.

But that was before The Big Surprise…

Russell T Davies: part genius, part wind machine. He’s like a brilliant chum you invite round for dinner in the hope of bons mots and airy charm, only to see him eat everything in sight, off every plate, before regurgitating and rounding out the evening with a protracted postern blast.

Except… he then comes back, washes up, and tells you the most thrillingly brilliant thing ever.

He did it last year with Utopia, the cosmic twin of this show in which nothing much happened for 30 minutes… and then suddenly The Master’s back. The writer even organised a real-life thunderbolt for that bit, at least at a storm-lashed Watcher HQ, and the effect was pretty much the same this time.

Ah, that deliberately-overdone run as Rose and the Doctor rush to embrace; the slo-mo; the syrupy strings; the wry smile on Donna’s face.

The Dalek.

The gone-into-negative death-ray.

The regeneration crisis.

The regeneration.

I mean it can’t be, can it? If it is… but it can’t be! But it could be! No, but it isn’t.

BUT IT COULD BE! IT COULD BE!

Left in no doubt

Well, it was the Doctor-Lite one… but otherwise this was as heavy, bleak and brilliant as anything ever done under the Doctor Who banner. It was almost… ach!.. too good…

Doctor Who’s always been about death, see, really; something about death. Not morbidly, but courageously: it champions life - grabbing at movement and sensation and change - because it understands that death is always the favourite in the big race.

Writer Russell T Davies certainly understands that - and what a brilliant, long game he’s playing with the viewers. First the showman’s tricks, the feints, the misdirections; ‘This season will be the ‘lighter one’(!)’. And then this.

Yes, perhaps this season has lacked gravity at some points - only suddenly that doesn’t seem at all true, after watching recent events replayed with the happy endings rubbed out. Just this once, nobody lives, the Doctor’s presence never felt more massively that by his absence.

Even the fairly fluffy Voyage of the Damned was suddenly the prelude to Threads (I know I’m not the only one flashbacking on that mushroom cloud; imagine if the Christmas Day episode had ended like that!), while the formerly-cutesy Adipose ate America, and Donna and family ended up in the desolate streets of Peter Watkins’ War Game. Martha dead. Sarah Jane and gang dead. The only bright spot was Torchwood copping it, too.

I’ve said it before, but, well: everything else is kids’ TV. Despite what the other inmates of Watcher Towers might have you believe, your correspondent isn’t actually aged eight, mentally. So I ask: how is this heavy stuff going down in the longest-day living rooms of the nation? The show’s always been scary, but some of the ideas here - labour camps, noble sacrifice under the wheels of a truck, moving to Leeds - are troubling in a way that, say, murderous giant vegetables just weren’t. Are the spawn sticking with it all?

The script was well served by director Graeme Harper too; ace with action, he handled the intimate stuff confidently. RTD has always loved the domestics - back-chat and hard home truths - and here it’s beautifully woven through a vast notion: death in excelcis, The End of Everything. Harper had something to offer every idea.

But the actors, of course, stole it. Bernard Cribbins’ cameos until now have been sketches of lovely, warm wonder; here his old soldier, all rheumy eyes and haunted heart, made the apocalyptic streets a terrible notion, not just sci-fi set dressing. And what a shame we haven’t seen more of Donna’s mum, Jacqueline King - fine actress.

But what we thought would be Rose’s night was Donna’s - I’ll stick my neck out and say Catherine Tate should make Bafta space on her mantelpiece (if that’s okay with Ant, Dec and Robbie Williams). How far she has brought the character from that first Christmas outing, a Donna any right-minded individual would queue up to push under a van. Now she’s funny and sad and brave and scared at the same time; she’s true. The scene in the time-thing where she suddenly understands that she really has to die… well, as I say, put her name on the plaque now.

Loving the new Rose, too - Rose the revenant, a ghostly, hardened time-hopper in the Doctor’s image, glib because she’s seen it all now, and words can’t convey how bad it’s going to get.

Oh, and the Bad Wolf stuff! Up there with the ‘Professor Yana checks his watch’ in the need-a-wee! stakes, as far as we’re concerned.

If we were giving out stars, it would be the big five - but the stars are going out of course…

Anyway, next time: look who they’ve wheeled out…

Don't knock it till you've tried it

The one predictable thing about new Who is that – like the Doctor himself - you never know what you’re going to get into next. Midnight was one of those no one saw coming.

You know, a lovely old lady of the Watcher’s acquaintance often uses the word ‘different’ to describe things she’s tried, in the spirit of necessary adventure, but probably wouldn’t want to try again, thanks all the same. She uses the word kindly, diplomatically, but Midnight – a show partly about fear of the different - probably falls into just that category. And yet, and yet…

If anything it was probably scarier than the last story, with which it shared some ideas. There, when the isolated humans faced an exterior threat they stuck together, more or less; here, the intruder unleashed something really nasty - a frenzy of murderous paranoia and self-loathing.

The babble of doubling, hating, blaming voices and the booming knocks really did seem to suck the air out of the place, the tension wracked up by Alice Troughton’s (no relation) edgy direction. Are they sure this is kids’ TV?

This was, in some ways, Voyage of the Damned remixed, scaled down and made self-consciously theatrical, the big sets and simplicity of that Christmas Day confection pressed into a suffocating space where words are weapons and nobody is in a hurry to be noble (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Bad Wolf?, anyone?).

It certainly gave the brilliant-as-ever Tennant the chance to polish his Dane, as they say (no, it’s not a euphemism; he’s doin’ Hamlet, innit?). Words or action, Doctor? Well, cornered and unsure he demands silence and inaction – most unheroic.

And how perfect that this most verbose incarnation (‘A skinny idiot ranting about every single thing that happens to be in front of him!’, no less), having failed to persuade or out-brain his fellow passengers, almost dies because the words suddenly run out and they don’t trust clever types. That’s… y’know… like… heavy…

(Heavyweight cast too: you seldom see anything less than excellence from Lesley Sharp (those eyes!), but Lindsey Coulson and David Troughton (most definitely some relation) too? Many viewers of the Watcher’s vintage might shudder to see lovely young King Peladon is now a balding older man in a cardy, but there’s always the videos, and he’s still absolutely magic.)

But all that said, what was RTD OBE’s script really getting at? There’s deep, unsettling obliqueness… and then there’s sub-Star Trek-ian portentousness that can’t quite remember what it wanted to say. Which was this?

Team Watcher Might need another look at it all before deciding… but you can’t help admiring this format-stretching effort from the big man. All-over-the-place is, after all, just an undiplomatic way of saying different, and different is what we like

Anyway, next time: the Doctor’s dead, Rose has risen again and Donna’s doomed – we’re heading in strange directions in Turn Left…

An awkward silence

Strange news from another world: it appears - and perhaps you’d better sit down - some people didn’t like Silence in the Library.

Yes, yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking: the chumps! But it isn’t like that, friends. As contradictory as it may sound, these nay-sayers are basically decent types - some sympathisers, some lapsed Whovians drawn back to the faith, some new fans, all clean and tidy types with brains and responsible jobs and partners and opinions and stuff.

They are, in a word, viewers - or at least they were until last week’s adventure (you remember: the Absolutely Brilliant One About Death with the space library, killer shadows, killer lines, a murderous skeleton in a spacesuit and some chicken bones). But one miscreant admitted - and I didn’t even know this was technically possible - actually turning the telly off halfway through the episode.

Another confessed to disappointment on discovering there was a part two due - and not as in ‘I just can’t wait another week!’, either.

The true Whovians were need-a-wee excited, of course… but it’s all led to more brooding than normal at Watcher Towers, dark mutterings of the ‘What Does It All Mean?’ variety. Because… well, what does it all mean?

Long-term fans found themselves flung into an alternative universe back in 2005, when their show was not only alive again (with three exclamation marks) but a palpable hit, and no longer a guilty secret. Everyone liked it, it seemed. That was weird, sure… but you can get used to popularity, however meaningless.

And we put up with weaker scripts, and occasional flabby bits, because mostly it was brilliant, and grown-up, and energised by a big Saturday night audience; the executive producer, the great RTD, actually said ‘We feared a small, niche audience’. Well, he didn’t get it… but is that the way things are going?

Because get this: viewing figures were down last week (although the appreciation-index stuff was gold standard). Now, a lot of weird variables feed into viewing figures, including sport and the weather, plus complicated-but-dumb other telly-stuff beyond the Watcher’s ken (Britain’s Got Talent? Yeah… but it’s probably not on ITV).

And of course, the Beeb is meant to be slightly above the mere chasing of big numbers… but having had a hit, Aunty won’t want a prodigal show go all niche-y again, will she?

Still, Watcherworld was encouraged by reports from the South, where a bona fide particle physicist of our acquaintance admitted to being ‘a bit scaredy’ after seeing the Vashta Nerada (he spends a lot of time in the dark. With, y’know, particles); and from the West, where a sensible eight-year-old was too scared to go to bed until Wednesday.
Now that’s how you blood future Doctor Who fans… and thus perhaps save the show from those swarming black clouds of disaffection…

What’s that? What about this week’s episode? Oh, brilliant, absolutely brilliant - a dark, dark, mind-blowing fairytale about (amongst other things) small matters like being, and nothingness, and the dreadful ticking of the clock.

Brilliant.

But you knew that.

Let’s just hope that’s a good thing.

Anyway, next time: tickets please, for the bus ride to oblivion… the Doctor’s son’s on board - and it’s nearly Midnight…

Shelf life... and death

…and that is how you do that, in case anyone, anywhere was in any doubt.

Good news, fellow travellers: the future of Doctor Who is looking absolutely dazzling… and very, very, very dark. Really, very. I think it’s fair to say, without any hint of over-exaggeration, that Silence in the Library was one of the Greatest Things Ever To Happen - not just on telly, but anywhere, ever… and the bloke who wrote it is taking over the whole show very soon.

I need a sit down, or air, or a non-sonic Screwdriver (large, please, barman)…

As the Doctor nearly said, there were so many brilliant, brilliant things in those 43 minutes (how could it be a mere 43 minutes?) that we’re gonna need bigger heads to take it all in!

Space. Library. Sounds like a Hartnell classic, a brilliant, pure concept. But then, you see, already the dark mind of writer Steven Moffat (you’re buying him two pints of whatever he’s having, next time you see him, by the way) is twisting it into new, confounding shapes, refining and expanding themes and motifs from previous work: the fierce power of a child’s mind; how ideas shape reality; disturbing fusions of personality and technology; how writing and recording a life is sometimes the only way of adding meaning to it (All those books! All those biographies! All those adventures!); and the sorry turning of the last pages (All that silence. All that death).

But even then, there’s more to unpack. What if you don’t travel the slow path, one way through time? If someone has a book of your life - even the stuff that hasn’t happened yet - do you read it? What about the spoilers?

And this isn’t even the bit that everyone in the playground/office will be talking about - that’s the Vashta-ruddy-Nerada, the scariest-ever baddies since the last scariest-ever baddies, Blink’s Quantum Angels, created by - yup - yer man Moffat.

Imagine: it’s not what’s in the dark you should be scared of - and you should - but the darkness itself.

So, Mr Moffat: there are indeed monsters under the bed; statues are, as many of us suspected, alive (don’t blink, by the way); and the darkness can tear you to shreds in seconds. Yes, I’m afraid your application for the position of supply teacher has, sadly, been unsuccessful, this time…

But know the darkest thing here? Probably the most genuinely disturbing thing on telly in a while? The sad undoing of that pretty, stupid girl who wandered off into the shadows, just like in the fairytales.

Words let the mind express, create, communicate, code your personality. How horrible, then, when suddenly they become empty, meaningless (remember ‘Are you my Mummy?’; who could forget). How hopeless they are at comforting. And how horrible the silence that follows when they stop - the sound of Moffat, a book-lover, a word man, briefly losing his faith.

He then twists it again, making Proper Dave’s sad, confused ‘Hey! Who turned out all the lights?’ into a chilling mantra - probably about existence - only one uttered by a skeleton in a spacesuit bent on death. Only, as they say, on Doctor Who.

And to think some people actually believe Doctor Who is a kids’ show! Listen: everything else is a kids’ show. Fact.

Anyway, next time…

Hey!

Who turned out all the lights?

Whorovision: It's really no contest...

Look, keep quiet at the back, will you. Yes, it’s a more than a bit annoying that the Eurovision Song Contest (all 38 hours of it) has nudged the Doctor off into Dark Space 8 for a week, but let’s be honest: the two shows do have what might be considered a shared constituency - last week’s writer Gareth Roberts co-penned a nice DW/ESC spoof called Bang-Bang-A-Boom! a few years back - so there will be some Audiential Carry-Acrossput, as we say in digital media circles.

Simply put, many of you will be happy enough.

Not the Watcher, though. As far as we’re concerned the contest hasn’t been the same since sixth-Doctor-lookalike Michael Ball was stitched up back in ’92 (or was it ’91? Pain clouds the memory).

The cherubic nans’ favourite bounded down the old stairs, like an overfriendly tiger promised a couple of steaks for his trouble, and simply roared into a killer - kill-er - versh of One Step At A Time. ‘One step out of time/ One reason to put this love on the line again/ Can’t believe that it’s true/ Now I’m one step out of time…’ it went. Er, probably.

Anyway, fast-forward to the end of a very sorry saga: The Ball was second. Or third. Not top, anyway. The winner was - and I can still ‘tsk’ about this, when memory catches me unawares - Melinda, a handsome-enough Belgian with a ’tauche, and her thoughtful take on the old why-can’t-we-live-together? business, End The Crazy Madness (This Nuclear War In My Heart). Impossible to dance to, need I add.

And - not to put too fine a point on it - I had money on Ball. ‘Can’t believe that it’s true’! You said it, Mikey. Talk to my landlady.

Anyway: has the ESC ever been the same since the participants and organisers twigged the camp thing? It was just more fun in old days, when someone who looked like Lordi - but without the make-up - might just have won it. Never shall we see their like again.

So at Watcher Acres it’ll be the new, old routine: pizza, a crate of Strongbow and a Curse of Peladon/End of The World double-bill, two prime slices of Who with a spiritual kinship to the old Euro V, in which disparate casts of aliens (variously, a woman who looks likes a trampoline; a desiccated skull in a bubblegum machine; a five-foot hermaphrodite cucumber in a shower curtain; and a warthog dressed like an ageing Teddy Boy) all come together on strange ground to forge Galactic Peace Through Song.

Or something like that. Well, in the 1972 story, the godlike Jon Pertwee croons a Venusian lullaby, while the 2005 episode does have Tainted Love and Toxic in it; people, you know what I’m talking about. And with the sound down and ESC coverage on the wireless you wouldn’t know the difference, honestly, especially when the ‘apple champagne’ kicks in…

Some parting thoughts:
Sandie Shaw: The companion we never had!
Lulu: The other companion we never had!
Lynsey de Paul: Likewise!
Abba: Stylists to the Cybermen!

Wonderful nonsense

Well, that’s more like it. After slightly undercooked, over-egged fare of late, here was something light, sparkling and giggle-inducing - just perfect for a garden party (and they’re always bugged by wasps, aren’t they?) Surely no one summoned to the parlour for the Unicorn and the Wasp could have been disappointed? And it was On At Seven O’clock, aka The Proper Time, schedulers, d’ya hear? Except… well, we’ll get to that later…

Confession: Team Watcher are suckers for the ‘celebrity historicals’ in new Who, and writer Gareth Roberts’ follow-up to The Shakespeare Code was a smasher, sharing its playful sensibility, knowing references (there were loads of book titles slipped in, of course, though no Man in the Brown Suit, oddly enough) and deliberately heightened atmosphere.

Shooing a real figure into the Whoniverse whets the appetite, sets the tone quickly, gets the audience up to speed - and then allows a clever script to start playing with the conventions. A country house mystery with Agatha plus the Doctor plus Felicity Kendall’s illegitimate alien wasp-child? Bring it! You don’t get that on EastEnders. Yet.

It was very much in Christie’s image too: prod the plot too hard and it might just fall over, but what a lovely way to pass the time. And - clever old thing - Roberts linked this to the deeper idea of Christie’s real-life disappointment and doubt. Did her books matter? Would they be remembered? The phrase ‘wonderful nonsense’ was seeded throughout, an idea thrown between the show’s own writers and fans for 45 years; does any of this stuff from the imagination really matter?

Well, yes: it helps create the Real World so many non-believers are proud of living in, and Roberts underlines his faith in the power of the imagination by making Agatha’s mind the engine of the action. Whatever her fears, she writes on, as did Shakespeare, as did Dickens, a fine message for the kids and further proof that Doctor Who is good for you, friends.

There was tomfoolery aplenty, too, of course: The ‘Agatha Christie/What about her?’ business; the wheelchair revelation; the body in the soup - all that and the Doctor’s inhibited-enzyme kitchen freakout, to boot. It’s good when his cool’s blown, just occasionally.

And the ‘Doctor Smith of the Yard and his plucky girl assistant’ schtick fits nicely with the ongoing idea of Doctor as shape-shifter, a role-player, an actor: hard to pin down, finding puzzles, putting off The End.

Knowing your role was an idea played with here - the minute that pretty girl said ‘toilet’, the mask dropped for everyone at home. She was, perhaps, our suspect… and we liked how clever camera angles telescoped us into the drawing room for the denouement, too, viewers getting their thrills from the safety of the sofa, as ever.

A hit then: Who did it.

Anyway, next time: an exciting adventure with… The Eurovision Song Contest, it sez here! Our sworn enemies the schedulers up to their old tricks, again! But fear not: there’s a way you can get your Who fix and still enjoy the third-campest night of the year. Watch this space…