Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 24

Doctor Who - Season 24
Written 10/6/12

How do I describe Season 24? I wanted to hate this series, I really did. Reviews where I say that I like things aren't entertaining to write or to read, and after having loved some of the "worst" Doctor Who in the Saward Era, I needed desperately for Sly to come through with some real clunkers. But I can't help myself; the simple fact was that despite all of the season's faults, it's really, really fun. It's fun because you know that the characters are having fun, because when it's good it's superb and where it's bad, it's so bad that you really don't care. I sat through these fourteen episodes wondering why the hell anyone would find them unpleasant. Like I did before, I'll be looking at characters.

Lifitng of the hat became a common character tic.

Seven (Sylvester McCoy) - Time and tide melts the snowman...
(All Season)

The writers couldn't decide what to do with Seven's characterisation. While Andrew Cartmel had the idea of the Doctor's manipulative streak, this took a long time to translate through - most of the writers were unaware of poor Colin's sacking, and so a lot of the scripts had been written with him in mind. What results is a Doctor with an incredible witty streak who now and then shows flashes of dark anger. This is most obvious in Seven's first story, Time and the Rani, which while excusable due to his regeneration presents an overtly silly and clownish Doctor who takes almost nothing seriously. And yet, I love it. Because Sylvester is still working the character, and it's fun to watch.
     The Doctor favoured by Cartmel starts to appear around Delta and the Bannerman, the first story that wasn't overtly written for Colin Baker, as a sort of cheery old uncle. The way he confronts the villain of the week, with such fervour - it seems almost uncomparable to the absurdist impression that we first see of the character as he pratfalls around Lakertya. And I like this guy - he's a fun Doctor, unlike his two JNT predecessors and yet still recognisably the hero. Season 24 won me over to Seven, and I'm glad that it did.

Like the 2012 Albanian Eurovision entry....

Mel (Bonnie Langford) - Surprisingly ok...
(All Season, leaves in Dragonfire)

In my last overview I may have said a few things that I now regret. Mel in Season 23 was unique - something that I hated! At last! I'd been waiting for so long, and finally the Saward Era delivered me a character whom I despised throughly. Now that she was the proper companion, however, I had none of that. Mel became a bit blander than I had expected, but with that it brought out Bonnie Langford's natural charm and turned the character into a positive influence on the series. That was what originally got me about Mel - after four seasons of snarky dysfunction with his companions, the Doctor finally met someone with whom he had a perfect friend.
     But the screams, oh god the screams. By Dragonfire it's just ridiculous how often and how painful those screams are. At least Terror of the Vervoids did a relatively clever thing and tuned the scream to the pre-credits sting - here it's just blatant, and happens in at least ten of the fourteen episodes. She's getting so little development (and, notably, absolutely no backstory) that this otherwise superficial element completely takes over her characterisation. Mel may be a pleasure on-screen, but as a character she fails absolutely.

Ok, maybe she inspired Lister's jacket, rather
than the other way round...

Ace (Sophie Aldred) - Outdated slang, Professor!
 (Dragonfire)

Ace, in the beginning, is naff. Dead naff. She may think she's ace. That she's wicked. But she's naff. And that's the biggest thing that detracts from Ace's initial characterisation - some of her superficial aspects seem to be a deliberate ploy by the production team to try to appeal to a younger audience that, at the time just didn't exist. However, Ace has one shining thing about her that differentiates her from the incumbent by several miles.
     She has a backstory! After Mel was introduced with three lines of Vervoids, it's such a relief to know that the Who scriptwriters had heard of this concept after the Hiatus shakeup, and despite the very vague nature of her Wizard of Oz-esque origin, she does get a few intimate moments that highlight the fact that she is a character - a character controlled carefully by Cartmel. Ace has the potential to become very good, and some of her lines and actions in this story show that perfectly. Onto the next eight serials!

Thanks.

Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 21

After The Five Doctors, something strange happened to Doctor Who. Davison had decided, based on a chat with Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, that he would be leaving after his third season. This is also often attributed to JNT's decision to add in an American companion to make the show popular in the states, which for Davison was the last straw, as he believed that Americans (and Austrialians) liked the show for its Britishness. I've only seen five of the seven stories in Season Twenty One, but that's enough for me. The stories I haven't reviewed, The Awakening and Frontios, will be reviewed later in the year.

Davison's Doctor became darker.

Five (Peter Davison) - I'm not going to let you stop me now!
(Warriors of the Deep to Caves of Androzani)

Saward suddenly decided that he was feeling under the weather, and so for the next two years we were faced with kill-em-all bloodbaths. Warriors of the Deep, Resurrection of the Daleks and Caves of Androzani are all like this, and they all have one key feature - the Doctor inadvertantly plays an active role. Five kills Silurians with poison gas pumped into the ventilation system, he massacres the Daleks with both a gun and a genetically engineered virus, and his presence on Androzani sparks a war in which every last male character in the story (including him) dies.
     Perhaps because he knew he was leaving, Five is much more dejected and pessimistic in this season. This certainly adds to the darkness of the Saward kill-em-alls, but it even affects relatively lighter stories like Planet of Fire, where The Doctor euthanises Kamelion and watches as The Master burns to death. It just feels so unlike Five's characterisation, and in fact harkens back to Tom's era. Despite this he still demonstrates his wonder for the universe and all of its intricacies.
      This darkness of character does come into its own, however, once we reach his final story in The Caves of Androzani. Here Five shows his character's core determination - he will fight to save his companion's life no matter the cost, no matter the risk to himself. This is epitomised in Five's most badass quote, "I'm not going to let you stop me now!" where you can hear him trying desperately to resist the beckoning call of regeneration.
     Five's last days were darker than they needed to be, but his final story did justice to a season that had thus far been unimpressive. Until the end he was enthusiastic, nerdy, and always hoping that somehow, peace could prevail.

It was never fun, Tegan.

Tegan (Janet Fielding) - It stopped being fun, Doctor!
(Warriors of the Deep to Resurrection of the Daleks)

Tegan's final stories continued to fail to paint her in a particularly good light. In Warriors of the Deep she gets trapped under a polystyrene door. The final straw for the character comes in Resurrection of the Daleks, where she apparently cottons-on to the fact that it's a kill-em-all and takes her chance to wing-it. Tegan's leaving is a stark commentary on the darker nature of this season, herself commenting that, "It stopped being fun, Doctor!" Words that don't really ring true when one considers how much she found to complain about in her eighteen stories.
     Aside from that, Tegan doesn't make much of an impression. Her whining doesn't help in this more pessimistic year, and despite the Doctor's regret at losing her, I found it a bit of a relief. Her only real point of relief was Frontios, where Bidmead's writing gave her something to do.
     Although it wasn't part of Season 21, Tegan's next appearance would be in the non-canonical A Fix With Sontarans for Jim'll Fix It. There she randomly met Six, and the two work surprisingly well together. Check it out, it's awesome.

Mwhahah... wait. Did that joke
last time.

Turlough (Mark Strickson) - Pessimistic nobody.
(Warriors of the Deep to Planet of Fire)

Turlough is surprisingly pessimistic for someone who broke free from the most evil force in the Universe. This is especially characterised by the fact that he either stays in the shadows for most of the story and/or he declares that they're dead everytime a slight problem arises.
     And then, from nowhere, we suddenly find out all about him. Frontios does place some hints, but we have to wait until Planet of Fire before we learn anything about his history. He was a political prisoner from the Planet Trion, who was exiled to Earth for his own protection. This doesn't stop him from wearing the same school-boy outfit in all but one of his ten stories.
    Turlough's main problem was that he was too far outside the companion mould. He really didn't want or need to be there, he had little courage or confidance and he disagreed with The Doctor's ideas. When he leaves, one feels less sad or relieved and more concerned as to whether you should feel anything at all.
     Again, Turlough shines the most in Frontios, where he's given stuff to do. He also works very well into making Planet of Fire more managable. 

Erm... Hello?

Peri (Nicola Bryant) - I'm Perpegillium Brown and I can shout as loud as you can!
(Planet of Fire onwards)

Peri has issues. Sure she does. Like Tegan, she was conceived to make the show popular with foreign viewers, this time in the Amercian market. The problem is that they cast a very British actress, Nicola Bryant. As a kid watching the old videos I didn't really notice it, but now it's obvious to both British and American audiences why this should never have happened. The character didn't even need to be American - and if she wasn't, there's a chance Davison would have stayed for longer.
     Although she's mainly eye candy (another nod to 'the dads'), there was a token attempt at giving her some backstory. Apparently she's a botanist, and she lives with her step-dad who she appears to have a strange sorta relationship with. In the end, she's sorta stuck with the new Doctor; they argue and fight, but I think that Peri still wants to find Five's innate goodness within Six's brash exterior, something that she certainly does by the end of Season 22.
     In Season 21, she's not so lucky. While with Five she gets a few cool moments - chastising the Kamelion!Master with, "I can shout as loud as you can," and talking ethics with Karaz Jek. Rather unfortunatly for Five, her cleavage ends up being the defining image of his regeneration! By Season's end, Peri is how she is in Season 22 - stuck with a joyfully unstable Doctor, not really knowing why the hell she's there.

Colorful!

Six (Colin Baker) - In my time I've been threatened by experts... and I don't rate you very highly at all.
(Caves of Androzani onwards)

I've already said how much I love Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor. He's brash, he's rude. He's arrogant and he always believes that he's the most powerful person in the room. And, in his way, he is often right. The thing that differentiates Six from your average villain is that Six has these qualities and balances it out by using them for good ends.
     The coat gets so much scrutiny, and yet while it shouldn't matter to you what he's wearing, this is a time where The Doctor's costume actually reveals a lot about his character. He's brash. He doesn't care about style or class; he doesn't fit in anywhere because he doesn't accept the things people try to fit him into. Six may be a little morally sketchy, but he always tries to do what is right.
     Since this is about Season 21, The Twin Dilemma is the most hated of all stories in the show's 48 year history. But it really shouldn't be. Colin Baker was a brave move for the production team and frankly, I love The Twin Dilemma's little cotton socks off. He's promising, and after the dire season that he finished he was a wonderful splattering of colour. After I've taken a look at a few assorted stories, I'll be continuing with Colin's story when I cover Season 22.

Thanks.

Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 20

Season 20 was the Anniversary Season, and so JNT pulled out all the stops. We saw Omega, the Mara, and the Guardians, as well as the introduction of two new companions! That didn't go so well. Regardless, Season 20 saw some differences in characterisation across the board.

Davison steps up to the plate.

Five (Peter Davison) - That's how it all started
(All Season)

If anything, Season 20 saw Davison's Doctor become the more intellectual Doctor that the character is always stereotyped as - and rightly so. He stops Omega with some jiggery pokery and is only able to kill The Mara through sheer force of will. Notably, Davison's Doctor now has the confidence to take the story's heroic role, and he spends less time in this season trying to explain himself.
     The Doctor does get awfully devious around the Black Guardian Trilogy, where he manages to feign an ignorance of Turlough's intentions. There's always a shadow of doubt being cast over how much he is aware of and how much he is hiding. The only really applies in Mawdryn Undead and Enlightenment; in Terminus he is allowed to show Season 19's more emotional side as Davison is genuinely sad about Nyssa's leaving.
     Overall, one can say that Davison's Doctor is now longer the new guy. He is the hero, and this is the peak of his era.

Nyssa slipped out of the series
in a slip.

Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) - I can't go with you
(Arc of Infinity to Terminus)

Nyssa's main character development starts in Season 20, up to her heart-breaking (well, for me anyway) leaving scene. She lost her naivity and grew up, gently shedding her inhibitions. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for a generation of teenage boys) this was mainly shown through her slow removal of more and more clothes, culminating in her leaving scene, in which she wears see-through underwear.
      In Arc of Infinity, it's clear that she's been able to spend a bit more time with The Doctor and has thus become a lot confidant in herself. That first episode also shows her, of all people, willing to use weapons to fight to save The Doctor from execution. In Snakedance she finally changes out of her regal gear and begins to show signs of independance. Mawdryn Undead has her a little empty and guilible of Mawdryn's claims, but this plays into her concerned nature and sets up her leaving in Terminus. And then, strangely enough, she sets up some of the newer series by being the first companion to give The Doctor a kiss.
       Nyssa was the most promising of Davison's companions, but she was horrifically misused in her tenure. This was mostly because she was a little too smart, too well written. However, the character will remain, in my mind, Five's best companion.

Terry Wogan calls Enlightenment,
"The battle of the bodices."

Tegan (Janet Fielding) - I guess you're stuck with me
(supposedly re-joins in Arc of Infinity, All Season)

Tegan was never really gone. That's the official story, and one really begins to see the effect that JNT's insane demands had on the series. Tegan's arc was over - she had been taken home after an entire year of trying to get her there. And yet she's brought back in, with little to no reason for her return besides, "I guess you're stuck with me."
      One thing I do love about her presence is that The Doctor seems to share my feelings. Over the course of the season he shows incredible disdain for Tegan, and this even enhances his trauma over Nyssa's leaving. You could expect, now she wants to be here, that her abrasive personality would soften. It doesn't. In Snakedance she nearly releases The Mara upon the Universe, and in Enlightenment she nearly blows up the White Guardian.
     As part of JNT's sudden decision to make Doctor Who sexy (after 19 years of stark asexuality), Tegan was pulled out of her uniform and into a series of ill-fitting corsets. Unlike Nyssa, where her outfit change reflected a similar change in personality, Tegan just looks silly. The peak of this is during Enlightenment, where she, for a part, dresses up in a corset (pictured) that she bearly fits in.
      Tegan continues to be a pain despite the consistency of her appearance in Five's era.

Turlough (Mark Strickson) - Alien Schoolboy

Mwhahahahahahahaha!

(Mawdryn Undead onwards)

Turlough was another whim by JNT. His character, created in the summer of 1981, was randomly inserted into the Black Guardian Trilogy at the conception stage. The character was seen as a risky move - someone whose loyalties were consistantly being questioned. For the first three stories of his tenure, he was trying to kill Five on the orders of the Black Guardian.
     As Davison and Strickson often point out, the concept is fundamentally flawed. Once Turlough has stopped trying to kill The Doctor, what then? He remains devious and murderous in nature. Why is he even with The Doctor once he gets off Earth? He's afraid to return to Trion until the next season, and so his Tegan-esque, "take me home" line at the end of Enlightenment is rather silly. We'll cover where Turlough goes wrong in the next Overview, but here he just doesn't do as he's written to.

Thanks.

P.S. Kamelion doesn't count. And even though it's sorta part of Season 20, The Five Doctors is coming next Monday.

Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 19

As part of my Five marathon, at the end of each season in Five's era I'll examine the characterisations of the main TARDIS crew. You could also see these as similar to my Character sheets. Season 19 was a brave new time for Who, as Davison's Doctor had to follow on from the immensely popular Tom Baker, as well as fighting with a Tardis that had far too many companions. Why only the characters? Well, that's all I care about.

The major parts of Davison's cricket-loving
persona are found in this season.

Five (Peter Davison) - Tristan but brave
(All Season)


He was fresh. Energetic. After the bitterness of Tom's final years, Davison was a breath of fresh air for a production team used to working with a lead actor more experienced than themselves. The character itself was a bold change for Doctor Who; a precursor of sorts to the 10th and 11th Doctors. Five was by the far the youngest Doctor that we'd ever seen.
      In Season 19, Davison's portrayl does draw a lot from his previous work on All Creatures Great And Small. In a now-famous interview before the season aired, one young fan asked that Five's personality be "Tristan, but brave." Such is inevitable after Davison's long time on All Creatures, and one of the major changes between Five and Four is that while Baker could command authority instantly, Five is very much the wanderer who has to work diplomatically to gain people's trust.
     Fundamentally speaking, this first season is the one in which Five plays less of an active role in the story's resolution. Instead, his character is given a lot of emotional beef to deal with - Adric's death especially played for tears. If anything can be said, it's that Davison certainly suits it better than any that had come before.

Adric whined incessantly and then died quietly.

Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) - Whine whine
(From Castrovalva to Earthshock)

Adric. Where to begin? The character was introduced in the previous season as part of JNT's preparation for the regeneration. Let's just say that it wasn't the best choice. Adric is characterised by his whiny, arrogant slip of a personality. He assumes authority and superiority in every given situation regardless of tact or convenience.  
     Despite his many list of characterisation crimes, he really hits his irritance peak in Four to Doomsday, in which he is sexist and idiotic enough to believe that the megalomaniac Monarch has benevolent intentions for humanity. Despite the fact that he only has four more stories left, he doesn't really annoy me in any of them, shy of Earthshock itself.
      Earthshock is not one of my favourite stories. It's tacky, and its only real decent writing is on the first episode. However, to its credit, it really is Doctor Who's last surprise. The Cybermen, despite their reintroduction, aren't the most important part of the story - Adric, and his belated demise, is the story's only redeeming feature.

Nyssa never changed out of her regal
gear until the next season.

Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) - "The only one who wants to be there."
(All Season)

Nyssa of Traken was never intended to be here. Created by Johnny Bryne for The Keeper of Traken in the previous season, Nyssa was a bio-mechanist from the planet Traken -  a planet that was destroyed by the Master in Logopolis. She was only written into Logopolis and then the series when JNT was impressed by her performance. Despite this, Peter Davison fought with JNT to prevent him killing her in Earthshock, leading to Adric's demise instead. His reasons are immediately clear.
       Wheras the other two companions can be irritatingly in-your-face, Nyssa is the exact opposite. She's an intellectual, like The Doctor, and the only one of the three actually capable of understanding his technobabble. Because of the fact that she was a brave, intelligent woman, she of course got very little to do. The production team needed companions that could easily get into trouble, and for Nyssa that just wasn't logical. Because of this, she spends a criminally long amount of time in the Tardis, especially so in brilliant stories like Kinda in which she was randomly comatose.
    Unfortunately Nyssa doesn't get a hell of a lot of character development in Season 19, which is reserved for the next season. However, she does get some lovely character work in my favourite story of the season, Black Orchid, where her character is starkly opposed to her doppelganger Ann Talbot. Nyssa wouldn't get this sort of character work again until she leaves.

Tegan (Janet Fielding) - Mouth on Legs
(All Season, supposedly leaves at the end.)

Tegan's character was a twofold creation. She was mainly there to make the show popular with Australian viewers, but a popular tale told by Davison reveals that she was an airline hostess soley to get free flights on Quantus Airlines. Fundamentally speaking, Tegan never wanted to be there, and this entire season is spent trying to get back to Heathrow 1981. In fact, they finally make it in the season's final serial, Time-Flight. The results, if you remember from Monday, weren't all that pleasant.
     Luckily, despite all of her moaning and groaning and being generally all-round useless, Tegan does get a decent story in the form of Kinda. Her best stuff is in the first two episodes, which are a complex philosophical exploration of the self. The Mara stories are the only time that Tegan won't be irritating for the average viewer, and Kinda is certainly the more powerful of the two.
      The one thing you have to notice about Tegan is that she is the Jamie to Davison's Doctor. She is one of the longest running companions in the series' history, and her presence oft defines Five's era. If I'm perfectly honest, I don't know why. Tegan didn't want to be there, and we shared her thoughts exactly.

Thanks.

Characters: Red Dwarf

A basic run down of all of the characters present in Red Dwarf, so that you're able to better understand my reviews. Unlike Survivors, any insults I throw at these characters were provided by the program itself.

Dave Lister

Dave "Cinzano Bianco" Lister, both his own father and son, was the last human alive. Born through artificial insemination on Starbug, in around 3,002,200, he was taken back in time by his older self and left under a pool table, with the word "Ouroboros" written on the side. As he grew up, he lost his virginity at the age of 12 on a golf course. Then, on a drunken pub crawl around London, he for some reason used all of his money to get a space-flight to Mimas, a Spanish-colonised moon.
    After waking up drunk, with only a passport with the name of Emily Berkenstein, he took up stealing taxi-hoppers and gathering the five-thousand Dollarpounds needed to return to Earth. It was on Mimas that he first met Arnold Rimmer, who was on Space-Leave from Red Dwarf, and took him to a brothel. It was this incident that inspired him to join the Space-program in an attempt to get home. Lister bought a cat on Mimas and smuggled it on board, meaning that after a period of working under Rimmer, he would be put in Stasis for the rest of the trip back to Earth.
    However, when Dave woke up, he found that there had been a radiation leak on Dwarf soon after he was put in stasis. This leak had killed everyone on the ship, and had taken 30 million years to fade away to a safe level. He was, in effect, the last human being in existence. Beknownst to Lister, not only had a race of creatures evolved from his cat and left one survivor, the ship's computer had ressurrected Rimmer in android form.
   Lister is one of the two main characters, but he is never given as much focus as Rimmer. He is a slob and idle by nature, often unable to complete the most simple tasks, but he is also very intuitive and is often the voice of reason. He is also deeply moral, a form of chaotic good, and believes the same of everyone else. Over the series, he becomes more mature and begins to take a greater interest in more philosophical ideas, although he still takes basic pleasures.

Arnold Rimmer

Arnold Judas Rimmer, Bronze Swimming Certificate, Silver Swimming Certificate, was a Second Technician about Red Dwarf. He was born the fourth son of mad parents; his father was obsessively bitter about not getting into the Space Corps, and always expected much from his children, while his mother was ignorant and adulterous. Rimmer and his brothers were often stretched on a rack to meet the Space Corps height limits, and Rimmer was constantly picked on by his brothers to the point of abuse.
      In boarding school, he wore boxing gloves to bed and had the nickname "bonehead", although he always wanted to be known as "Ace". As his brothers advanced into their respective fields, Rimmer remained a Second Technician, and was always humiliated, and steeped in self-loathing. One of the more traumatic events of his life, in his eyes, was when he was invited to the Captain's table and proceeded to ask for his cold soup to be re-heated. Before the accident, Rimmer had only one sexual encounter - a one-nightstand with officer Yvonne McGruder.
     Rimmer took the Astro-engineering exam, the exam that one needs to pass to rise in rank past Technician, a total of eleven times. It was his stress-induced coma during the last of these tests that prevented him from fixing a faulty drive-plate, the consequences of which led to the radiation leak. After he was resurrected, he felt deeply responsible due to this fact.
     Red Dwarf is essentially the study of how Rimmer is humanised by Lister, how he comes to terms with the negative aspects of his personality and becomes the ideal Rimmer, as his Parallel Universe counterpart(s) display. His final act on the show was an act of bravery, and he finally had enough self-confidence (and humility) to become Ace Rimmer.

The Cat

Cat is a creature born to a cripple and an idiot, one of the last few members of the Cat people, a race that evolved on Red Dwarf from the off-spring of Lister's pregnant cat. Like real cats, he's vain (taken Up To Eleven), sex-crazed and obsessed with preening and style. In later series he develops a much greater sense of smell, which adds some exposition.

Kryten

Kryten is a droid created by Crapola, designed as a sanitation droid to scrub toilets and fix pipes. He was working as a general servant droid on the Nova 5 when he decided to give the circuitry a good clean, accidnetally making the ship fly into an android. He looked after the crew for three-hundred years (long after their deaths) until he was picked up by the crew of Red Dwarf around 3,002,300 AD. There, he broke his programming and gained a personality. Soon afterwards he left on a space-bicyle, and after he had been blowen up by a passing asteroid, the crew of Dwarf picked up his remains and put him back together again, albeit with a new personality.
   
Thanks.

Characters: Survivors

This post is just a basic rundown of all of the characters in Survivors, so I don't have to elaborate when reviewing them. Note that these descriptions examine their roles throughout the whole two series.

"Heroes"

Abby - Mother of the Group/Screeching Protagonist

Abby Grant is the only person to survive the virus by fighting it off naturally, and this makes her hopeful towards finding her son, Peter. If you didn't know that her primary objective was to find her son, you'd just have to wait five minutes, for her to either brood or scream his name loudly. The plot is often moved in the wrong direction because she thinks she saw her son, or thinks she saw someone that knew her son, or is looking for her son etc. . She's supposed to fill the "normal woman" role, but it rarely works as she's always swanning off to look for her boy, or being abducted by scientists, or having sex with strange men. Her background is revealed as the main plot of the first episode.

Greg - Survivalist/Only Sane Man

Greg has a very lax character, but he's basically the straight man to Abby and Tom's madness. He appears at first as a survivalist, and often talks about how his wife left with his two children, and thus his objective is to find them. Unlike Abby, he doesn't really make use of this objective, instead just acting like a househusband and, occasionally, a rational thinker. His stereotype is "modern black man," very P.C. . His background is only revealed in Series Two.

Tom - Hard Man/ Ex-Con Nutjob

Tom Price has been in prison and the army, and acts as the more gun-happy member of the group. He's the "right-wing white man" but he's Ok. He doesn't have much to say, and the acting is a little stiff; very little voice inclanation or tone is used to try and create an ex-con out of charmer Max Beezely, but it doesn't work well. Regardless, he seems to have the most common sense, and tensions with Abby and Greg just make the group stronger. Somehow. Background is revealed in Series Two.

Al - Playboy/ Whiny Arsewipe

Al, short for Ali, is used to a life of luxury - fast cars, booze breakfasts and deep-seated loneliness. His attitude to the world in general is less annyoing thn Sarah's but still manages to be annyoing whenever someone damages his pride. Acts like a father to Naj, even though most of the time he fails quite considerably.

Najid - Whining Muslim Boy/ Whining Muslim Boy

Take all of the muslim zealots of the world and condense them into one little boy, and you have Najid, whose actions are nonsensical, illogical and unrealistic. He is also extremely annoying and upon occasion makes the show unwatchable. Serves as the series' only main child.

Anya - Deppressed Doctor/ Lesbian Deppressed Doctor

Anya is bearable to say the least, ignoring the obvious issues regarding her having had to watch people die consistently throughout the epidemic, scaring her mental state. Despite being a lesbian, most of the boys don't catch on, and so early on she serves as Al and Tom's main love interest. 

Sarah - Pretty Girl/ Shallow, Manipulative Bitch

Sarah Boyer is empty-hearted, callous, stupid, lazy, ignorant, annoying, manipulative, and dowright useless. Why she exists as a character at all is beyond me.

"Villians"

Samantha - MP for Flydale North

Sam Willis is the last MP, and she's trying wholeheartedly to create her little commune in the North, and eventually tke over the whole country. And to be honest she's only presented as a villan because she does morally ambigious things and isn't part of the group; murdering Tom on the other hand, is loveble. Sam's my favourite character mainly because she does things that make sense. It's bovious that this series views sense as a threat.

Dexter - Rampaging Gunman / Spindly Idiot

My main problem with Dexter is that he's never actually shown trying to kill anyone until the last few minutes of Series One, by which point we're supposed to already think he's badass. But he's not. He practices kung fu, and drives around with his gang, but they only hold guns to peoples' heads in their main performance. Once he joins up with Samantha, he provides a good foil for Tom. Which is odd, seeing as out next villian serves the same purpose...

Gavin - Government Gunman

So the Commune's security needed a toughman. Here comes Gavin, who has the same ideals as Samantha but likes to kill people anyway, just to make sure other people agree with him as well. Despite him being in three episodes, he's killed off by Tom.

The Scientists

They're not really revealed until Series Two, but in Series One we get small tastes of what's going on, and how they're cooped up to make sure that the virus they accidentally released early doesn't infect them.

Thanks.