Overview: Doctor Who: The Saward Era

Ol' Petey hanging out.

This is a big'un. Written between the 5th and 15th of May 2012.

I appreciate that it may be difficult to simply overview five years of a program. If it was that easy, I could have done the Gene Hunt Time Travel Bonanza all in one go. ' makes mental note '. But the Saward Era is where I began all those years ago, before the show came back and when I was just a wee lad watching one of these new DVD things. I must have been five or six at the time, but what The Five Doctors did for me was to introduce me into a brave new world. Here was a fictional universe lasting over 26 years, and best of all, it was coming back. When I wanted to get further into Classic Who later on, my first stop was my cousin's large Who collection. From this I got The Two Doctors and Revelation of the Daleks, two really fun serials that concreted my love for the Sixth Doctor through thick and through thin. As I grew to know more about Who, I decided to take a proper look at the era that spawned so much in my modern life. That began in 2010, and it ends today.
     Before Christopher Ecclestone came along in 2005, Peter Davison was my Doctor, and in many ways he still is. The brazen youth, shouting at the cosmos with the intellect of a much older man - that was something that I felt like I could empathise with. More importantly, Five is always calm and collected, up until his final story in which he sacrifices his life in order to save his companion. Five wasn't a weirdo, he wasn't an egotist - he was calm, sensible. Vulnerable. Human. With Five, you always knew that the companion would be safe - even if the scripts meant that no one else was. Six... still confuses me. I literally have no idea why I like him so much. He's arrogant, crass, rude, and often completely out of touch with reality. But the thing that struck me was that he still fought for good. He's really the other side of Five's coin in that while you can't see them as the same person, you can see them being part of a greater, balanced whole. Six was the unstable element to Five's safe sensibilities, the contrarian to Five's straghtforward honesty. Despite his arrogance, he still cared. And he cared enough to not care about the rules when his friends were in danger.

Let's not get too big-headed.

    Saward's personal style changes a lot as we go through the era. He personally affected/wrote The Visitation, Earthshock, The Awakening, Resurrection of the Daleks, The Twin Dilemma, Attack of the Cybermen, Revelation of the Daleks and The Ultimate Foe. As time goes on, we see a clear development of his "multi-strand" technique of interlacing many different plots together, which sometimes works (Revelation) and sometimes doesn't (Resurrection.) This era saw a notable number of "Kill 'em all", where large numbers of background characters died. This didn't help the show's reputation, and in certain cases could be said to have contributed to the show's demise. Funnily enough, the most vicious of these is certainly The Caves of Androzani by the great Robert Holmes, and yet that's often considered one of the greatest stories in the program's entire history.

Season 19 - 1982, Peter Davison - New Beginnings

Season 19 was a big test for the program in terms of what it could stand. While the last few years of Tom Baker's tenure had been somewhat less fun that how it began, he was still The Doctor in the public consciousness. In a way, the show had become reverse-typecast so that it wouldn't be right without Baker at the helm, and there were fans of the show who had only been born while Baker was The Doctor. His influence was, to be frank, amazing. And JNT was faced with the epic task of having to follow that up. Although it may not seem like it, Peter Davison was the perfect choice - a well-known actor after having been in All Creatures Great and Small, and by far one of the most capable actors who've ever taken on the role. His Doctor was Baker's opposite - quiet, correct, and, most importantly, young. Davison injected some desperately needed youth into the program and despite its many gradiose concepts, the 19th Season was one of the show's most kid-friendly for a long time.

The Season 19 Team at full strength. Den of Geek.

     One problem that Five always suffered with, especially in his first season, was an overstuffed TARDIS. Adric, Nyssa and Tegan provided wide and varied personality types for the series to play with, but it meant that their characters didn't get any time to shine. I always preferred Nyssa to the other two because Tegan complained about everything and Adric is, well, Adric, but because of her less-than-outgoing personality type she never really got the right execution. She was the companion that could be afforded to spend an entire story sleeping, the one that could stay behind in the TARDIS to do the things that the script-writers could fit in anywhere else. Adric's death in Earthshock, while sad, is probably the best thing that could have happened to the season and after that Nyssa got notably more character development.
      That's not to say that the other companions weren't involved. Season 19's main plot was that they were trying to get Tegan, who had mistakenly wandered into the TARDIS in Season 18, back to Heathrow Airport in 1982 in time for her to get to her job as a Flight-attendant. This inadvertantly means that we get four stories where they land on Earth in various time zones, which to be honest is rather clever if productive of unimaginative settings. It works better as a theme than as an actual goal, as we see when we reach the dreaded Timeflight and Tegan actually ends up at Heathrow. The season was far better when it was exploring its own ideas, as we see in Four to Doomsday, Kinda and Black Orchid, and they're the ultimate standouts of the season.

The Saward Cybermen... stand around.

     The Saward stories within Season 19 itself are of note. The Visitation was written before Saward became script editor, and was an audition of sorts for his suitability for the role. It does show his fascination with the 1600s as we'd later see many times in his historicals, and it does read a lot more like a radio drama than one often thinks. It isn't by any means a bad story, but it's nothing really interesting. Compared to that story, Earthshock is a completely different beast. It's a story that I've really beat on in the past simply because of how deriviative it is - it takes so many archetypes and ideas from the Alien franchise, and the JNT Cybermen aren't really used as anything other than a generic monster. It may be a great return to form for the monsters after their seven years away, but the story itself really bores me to tears and Adric's death, coupled with a suspense filled first episode, is the only real attraction.
     My favourite story of the season is by far Black Orchid, which is just plain fun in a more innocent era. It's very fluffy and at times the plot makes little to no real sense, but for me that forms part of its charm and there isn't a serial this season that gives me as much fun. Four To Doomsday certainly comes close to that, though, with its quirkily stupid plot and the really quite interesting concepts at hand. The best story of the season in the classical sense is probably Kinda, whose philosophies and ideas mix with great acting from all to make one of the most thoughtful serials out there. My least favourite story, and the winner of the covetted Bad Sci-Fi award, is Time Flight, which mixes an absolute lack of sense or reason with shoddy production values. The truth is, I even like that - it's a fun romp and it's nowhere near unpleasant.

Three Doctors and a Bloke in a Wig

Season 20 - 1983, Peter Davison - Anniversary

Back in 1963, William Hartnell said of Doctor Who, "This will run for five years." Twenty years later, and the producers were due some rightful celebration. The Anniversary year revelled in its position, but it did suffer because of the stresses of what it had to do, and in the end it didn't turn out as well as it could have due to strikes and problems with writers. Season 20 saw Tegan come back, saw Turlough arrive, Nyssa leave and saw The Five Doctors come together to celebrate their acheivements. (Well, Three Doctors and a Bloke in a Wig.) Season 20 itself is a fair mix of very well-made stories with varying degrees of success, but there's a much higher standard overall and you can see the effort that they were putting in despite the problems with strike action.
     As part of the Anniversary Season, JNT brought back lots of former monsters and characters. In order, we saw Omega, Borusa and Gallifrey, The Mara, The Guardians, The Brigadier and The Master, followed by the epic Five Doctors special. Apart from Arc of Infinity, which flounders somewhat, all of this season's stories managed to take these guest stars and put them into interesting stories. And surprisingly enough, it never falls into the same trap that stories like Attack of the Cybermen later would - the mythology is not the most vital part of the story. It's merely complementary to an original, usually better, tale. Enlightenment is a great example. The Guardians from Season 16 form a large part of the story and the eventual conclusion features them heavily, but they're mere background characters in a space-epic about Eternals.

Five and Turlough get friendly.

     Companion-wise, Season 20 rarely feels as overstuffed as the previous season, despite at least one story with three companions. Nyssa's initial appearance as The Doctor's sole companion gives her the impetus for some serious character development that really helps to define the character and seperate it from the behind-the-scenes figure of Season 19. In fact, this development reaches its head in Terminus, which I still tear up at every time I see it. Tegan's reappearance is really, really stupid, and I had hoped that she would have been left behind for good. Apart from in the one Mara episode, the character floats along as the same caricature as before. She does get some decent work in Enlightenment, however, which is mainly due to the fact that during the Black Guardian Trilogy Turlough tends to act as his own entity outside the team. Turlough himself gets his best work here, as the confused boy fighting between his lust for power and his common sense of right and wrong. This really shows up best in Mawdryn Undead, with the rest of the trilogy (especially Terminus) consigned to quite petty villainy.
     The strike problems really show their head when you look at the season's semi-final story, The King's Demons. There in place of a Dalek story called The Return (later to be rechristened as Resurrection of the Daleks) it showcases the nadir of JNT's capacity for decision making in his use of Kamelion. The prop is damn creepy and is by far the scariest thing in a story which features duels, jousts and medieval torture devices. Luckily, the story is made up for by the Five Doctors, which is an absolutely astonishing effort and is the Saward Era's high point by a long shot. It's the story that got me into Doctor Who - the story that introduced me into this magical world.

Goodbye, Nyssa. "tear"

     Bests and worsts are difficult in such a good season, but my personal favourite of the season is The Five Doctors. The sheer spectacle of seeing the Who world pull together as it did makes this story an instant classic and will always be one of my favourite stories from the show. In the season-proper, my favourite is the moody Terminus, whose dark atmosphere is tempered with great ideas and a heart-breaking final scene. The most classically-good story of the season is probably Enlightenment, with it's Kinda-esque devotion to a high-concept sci-fi idea, or Snakedance for its fun take on the Mara and for Martin Clunes. My least favourite is by far The King's Demons, which, unlike its bedfellow Arc of Infinity, has very few redeeming features and features the damn-creepy Kamelion.

Season 21 - 1984, Peter Davison and Colin Baker - Darkness and Change

My viewing (and reviewing) of Season 21 has been incredibly topsy turvey. That could be the reason why my perception of the season is so fractured, but that also has to do with the way the season is structured as The Doctor loses companions and eventually changes himself. Season 21 would be the last time to date that a Doctor changed mid-season, and that's mainly because the reaction to the one serial with newbie Colin Baker was, to say the least, volatile. But for all of its sharp edges, the season has relatively few clunkers in my book, and the ones that are there are affected massively by production problems and not because of scripts.

The Myrka was the victim of bad budgeting.

     Margaret Thatcher's 1983 election robbed the production teams of several weeks, leading to Warriors of the Deep and The Awakening having some real problems on their hands, especially the former. That doesn't make them unwatchable, but both stories are notably incredibly pessimistic in tone. Warriors of the Deep is a quite contentious story for me - it's bad, and I can see that it's bad and I know why it is, but I can't help but enjoy it for its So Bad It's Good value. The Myrka is hilarious, Tegan's styrofoam door acting is terrible and vampiress Ingrid Pitt giving a judo-chop to the Myrka as a first line of defence is one of the funniest things in Doctor Who. It's a real shame that this still ticks people off, though, as this was inevitably the story that began the show's descent when Michael Grade got the wrong end of the stick.
      This season saw companions come and go a lot. Tegan disappears in Resurrection of the Daleks after one decent story in the form of Frontios, but the former story is often so confused with other things that it doesn't get to focus on her story. Planet of Fire sees the belated development of Turlough, and it all feels a tad rushed as we're supposed to absorb all this information about where Turlough is from, his relation to the people of the planet Sarn, why he was on Earth, who his parents were, and what his favourite colour is. It also introduces Peri, who in her three stories develops slowly into the form we see her in during Season 22. In her first story she gets a few decent lines, but Nicola Bryant's crisp English accent did cut through occasionally and her step-dad's accent was even worse.

Fighting for his life.

      We can't talk about Season 21 without mentioning the gamechanging Caves of Androzani and, conversely, the much-derided The Twin Dilemma. To be honest? I love both of them for very different reasons. Androzani is a powerful Shakespearean tragedy with great, great acting and a script that never lets up, and provides Davison with some of his best work for the program. It's not typical of his era at all - it's more of a callback to Holmes' 70s work - but it's still classically brilliant. The Twin Dilemma is just plain fun - a simple story with an entertaining performance by Baker, who manages to question our perceptions about the Doctor just enough for us to have to learn to trust him again. That's amazing.
      My favourite story of the season is Frontios, where Bidmead gets all of the characters dead on and mixes it with a great idea in the style that he's so used to. Frontios took a Tardis team that I was really down about and turned it into a great narrative combo. The most classically good is Caves of Androzani, which is Robert Holmes awesomeness in its purest form. My least favourite is The Awakening, which is utterly droll. I rarely have course to call Doctor Who boring - I think Boom Town is a classic, Terminus is a highlight and Black Orchid is fun - but The Awakening is by far one of the most irritatingly bland stories I've ever had to sit through simply because of the stupidity at the core of its central premise.

Sixy started off with a continuity drive.

Season 22 - 1985, Colin Baker - Sheer, unadulterated fun

Too many people beat on Season 22. The era was strife with publicity issues and it remains as what is oft-considered a dark age in the show's history. But for me, there isn't any problem. Against the odds, I enjoy every single story from the 1985 season, and despite the fact that some of the stories are a little fluffy, none of them are drastically bad in the way that, say, Time-flight is. Colin Baker is one of my favourite Doctors and over everything his Doctor is what makes 22 one of my favourite seasons in the Classic era so far.
      The dynamic between Six and Peri is an interesting one for me; while the pair are often caricatured as constantly fighting, but really the dynamic is more like a married couple (ooh, don't remind me of The Airzone Solution) where the two may argue, but they care for one another deep down. Colin's abrasive personality means that a lot of scenes occur where the two are just arguing; in my experience, this has led to some of the funniest and certainly weirdest lines in the era. Where would we be without, "Rest is for the weary, sleep is for the dead. I feel like a hungry man eager for the feast!" Despite being a bit of a tit at times, Baker's Doctor is a character that I absolutely love. He's like a sitcom dad. I like him for the same reason I like Stan Smith from American Dad - I don't agree with some of the things he does, but he's a character that is ultimately striving for good. Peri does spend a few episodes of the season as the token screaming companion - Mark of the Rani and Timelash especially - but she does get some further development. You could try a drinking game based on how many villains want to do the naughty with Peri, but I hear that stomach pumps are expensive nowadays.

Timelash is a bit off, but not as bad as it could have been.

      The program got in a lot of trouble for violence in this season, which is strange when one considers the relatively large amounts of violence and gore in earlier seasons that received only a harsh letter from Ms. Whitehouse. Attack of the Cybermen saw Sixy using guns, and the Cybermen squeezing Lytton's hands into a bloody pulp. Vengeance on Varos had the acid bath sequence (the guard fell in, he wasn't pushed, don't even try) and torture devices. The Two Doctors had the cannibal-esque Shockeye and his death via Doctor + chloroform. Timelash had the gory Borad. Resurrection of the Daleks had a mutated head begging for death, galaxy-wide cannibalism and a stabbing. There's no doubting that Season 22 is a dark one, but I don't have any problem with the levels of violence - I watched a few of these as a kid and it didn't do me any harm. As for the Doctor using lethal force - well, that's just who this Doctor is. He only killed a sapient being once, and that was in a script by the adored Robert Holmes. It's a lot of fuss over nothing.
     My favourite story of my favourite season is the excellent The Two Doctors, simply for how fun it is. The Sontatarans are good, the Androgums are interesting, the setting is beautiful and Two is still very much on form. The best classically good stories are certainly Vengeance on Varos and Revelation of the Daleks - both dark classics dripping with satire and strong messages. My least favourite is probably Timelash, simply because I didn't like the way that HG Wells was characterised. I did love its atmosphere though, and it's not as bad a story as people make it out to be.

The Doctor on Trial.

Season 23 - 1986, Colin Baker - Timelord On Trial

Ah, the hiatus. 18 months of pure stupidity. Not that Nu Who hasn't done similar (2009 comes to mind) but it was a statement from the show's executives that the series was listing in popularity. The series' ratings never returned to the heights of Davison's seasons post Hiatus and while this was probably the fault of the break there was one other contributing factor. The Trial season was one of the most outstanding concepts the series had ever undertaken, and it was almost inevitable that it would never reach the heights it wanted to on such a low budget.
     The season starts out strong with its first serial of four episodes, which return to the 25 minute format. Eschewing character development, Baker and Bryant have a much stronger chemistry and the atmosphere is instantly lightened. This does wonders for the story from a character point of view, but it does mean that the focus is elsewhere; Robert Holmes' penultimate script uses several of his Seventies trademarks (strange robots, comedy double acts - two of them) and quite a strong concept. Despite this, it flounders for the majority and relies much more on the strength of the Trial scenes themselves. The characters in these scenes make the best of the single set, especially Michael Jayston's Valeyard. The Valeyard's character is one of the most powerful of the Saward Era and the first serial of the season shows this off with great panache.

Mindwarp indeed. Better prosthetics =/= better story

     Mindwarp, the fifth-to-eighth episodes of the season, take on a much stranger notion. Written by Phillip Martin, the same guy behind the brilliant Vengeance on Varos, Mindwarp suffered a lot from the Trial aspect of the plot and while I admire a lot of the clever storytelling devices, it is confusing and at times unpleasant to watch. It tries to bring across the darkness of that first story into this season, and it just doesn't work with the Trial scenes. This season didn't need a brainwashed Doctor torturing Peri, it didn't need her to be brainwashed herself, balded and then killed by Brian Blessed (a fate worse than death.) The serial sticks out like a sore thumb, and while I like it, the story wasn't what the season demanded.
      And then we get to the dreadful, dreadful Terror of the Vervoids. I don't want to hate this story - it contains many things that I admire in other stories from the period. But the simple problem is that I think it doesn't contain any thought behind it. At least the silliness in Timelash was evoking plots from HG Wells, this is something like Day of the Triffids crossed with a back-door blue movie. Pip and Jane Baker... I could forgive them for other things. I don't think that Time and the Rani is as bad as most people say it is, and The Mark of the Rani was one of the most interesting stories of the previous season. But the tired Trial aspects, coupled with patronising storytelling and the rushed introduction of an incredibly annoying companion in the form of early Mel, really start to show the end of the era in ways that are immediately apparent.

The Doctor is in trouble one last time.

     Saward wanted a big end to the Trial season, and it was problems on the final serial of the season that led to his eventual resignation. Written by four different people over the two episodes, this leaves The Ultimate Foe as a demonstration of all that went wrong during Saward's final season. It was goofy, it had cheesy dialogue, and it was incredibly confused as to what it wanted to be. You could say that he never intended to leave, but the Trial wasn't the best finale that he could have given us as a script writer.

Conclusion

This has been a very cathartic experience for me. As I said before, this era is the one that brought me into the world of Who. It's been strange, and at times painful, but the era for me is never truly boring. There was always the best of intentions and in the long run, the struggle between Eric Saward's radio-drama ideals and JNT's mad whims created some of my favourite pieces of TV ever made. It's been a pleasure writing these reviews and I hope that you've had a pleasure (or will have pleasure) reading them.

Thanks.

Review: Born To Die

Born To Die - Lana Del Ray (2012)
Written 2/7/12

Lana Del Ray, after her rather odd first album, reinvented herself into the image of 50s Americana. Since then, her first album was hyped to buggery and back, and thus it came as something of a shock when her album didn't really live up to expectations in the quality department. Sure, Born To Die isn't terrible, but it does harbour some horriffic problems with its themes and it's main concept. This grandiose image of being the naughty seductress who bathes in the hedonistic American Dream doesn't just fall down, it cascades when it even touches reality. Soon, Del Ray's blatant product placement reads more like bad American rappers than high-quality ballads.
      It's paradoxical that the album's greatest folly is also it's greatest strength, steeped in a thick atmosphere of Americana indulgence. In certain areas this works absolutely fine; the lead song Video Games is by far the best on the album, with it lax, floating lyrics sounding absolutely heavenly. It's where the newly invented Lana tries to boast about other things that it does get a tad irritating. She was born in New York and attended a boarding school; her college degree was in Metaphysics. For this reason, I find it very difficult to get behind this image of a girl living on the edges of society. At the same time, without that, the album wouldn't be as unique and/or powerful as it can be.
      What can be said is that even though most of the lyrics and themes are total hogwash, the songs themselves are infective. Of note are the aforementioned Video Games, the sultry Blue Jeans and the satirical National Anthem. This is mainly due to a collaboration between Del Ray's enchanting coltralto vocals and some decent songwriting, which manages to get across this potent Americana theme while still producing great hooks. The only true duds are Off To The Races, which is just annoying with its disjointed lyrics, and Summertime Sadness, whose chorus is repetitive and irritating.
      Something about Born To Die just rubs me the wrong way, but I don't know what it is. It could be overplay, it could be the silly arrogance of the lyrics, presenting a character that affects my suspension of disbelief. Or it could be sheer disappointment at the sheer cynicism of the whole exercise. We're living in terrible economic times, we don't want musical movements returning to times in which, funnily enough, everyone's quality of life was even worse. I'd still recommend it for the simple fact that it's become such a movement, but it's not something that I'll be revisiting with ease.

Addendum
Written 4/7/12

What am I talking about? I love this album! Or, rather, I have a much more love/hate relationship with it than I previously claimed. So what if the lyrics make me cringe, and every little mention of her "edgy" lifestyle makes me want to tune out? Fundamentally, this is some very, very well made music. It's seriously catchy, and there's a lot of satire in some places, especially in National Anthem, which mocks America's preoccupation with wealth as much as the rest of the album glorifies it. At times I can't appreciate this; there's too much cynicism in the album for me to totally love it all the time, but while I do like it, I have to defend it from my own harsh words.
     Born To Die is a fun album, and it certainly tears me based on what's going on in the moment. The lyrics are total and utter bullshit half the time, but the musical underlay is both incredibly catchy and richly atmospheric. There's so much to love, and so much to hate, but in the right mindset this album is perfect. It's just that kind of album; she's just that kind of performer.

Thanks.

P.S. This is why I don't do music reviews as often as I used to...

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.2

Jed did a barrel roll.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Two, Episode Two

One thing now immediately obvious from my so-far two episode wander in to the Fourth Series of the Bonanza is that after Ashes To Ashes' shakey start, the producers finally know how to milk the concepts at hand for all they're worth. Unlike previous series, Series Two is a nest of golden continuity. Its themes are cohesive and flowing, its characterisations are delicious and the soundtrack is the best it's ever been. 2.2 struck at the heart of this series' core themes and did so with a gusto that has made me that much more excited for the rest of the Bonanza.
      The episode began with a trip to a group of Travellers, where known criminal Jed Wicklow flipped his car after having a shunt from Gene in a car chase. Jed left behind his abused and pregnant girlfriend Elva, who is currently being looked after by the swarthy Dr. Battleford. While there are whispers of conspiracy to cover up Gene's possible implication in his death, Alex finds evidence that implicates Battleford - who replies to Gene's follow-up with a certain type of handshake. While Gene is secretive and holds Alex at arm's length, she undergoes her own investigation. On the side, she begins to realise that her memories of 2008 are slipping away from her.

Gene joins the Masons.

     After a pile of evidence against Battleford is ignored, Alex follows Gene one night and finds him joining the Masons. The next day, with the evidence against him set in concrete, Gene confides to Alex that he is aware of the wide-spread corruption within the Met and needed to infiltrate the Freemasons to discover how far up it went. Using the newly discovered fact that the barely-over-age Elva's baby belongs to Battleford, Gene has him arrested and sent down. As SuperMac barely lets it slide, Gene and Alex look ahead to battling the Masons' influence. And finally, in other developments; Alex speaks to the man who abducted her last week, Chris proposes to Chaz and Kevin Hales has disappeared from prison.
     So far I'm loving the characterisations in this series. Gene gets to become a complex human being instead of a shouty caricature, and his internal conflict over the Masons is one of the best parts of the episode. Alex is also acting more like a real person than she did in the last series, and all is well. Much praise has to go to Dean Andrews, whose Ray this week became much more angry and sinister due to both his involvement in the Masons and the escalating reports of the Falklands' War, and Roger Allam as SuperMac. SuperMac is a brilliant villain - creepy and unnerving, but with that hint of authority that gives him a commanding presence in every scene he's in.

Gene ignores the will of the Masons.

       The Bonanza has covered Police Corruption approximately four times prior to this series, but here we really get the final say on the matter. 2.2 delved into the world of the Masons and explored it through characterisation rather than Mars' sudden shock revelation that Harry Woolf was crooked. It was also a great way of developing Ray and Chris as characters; the former to demonstrate the ubiquity of the issue as well as the character's own neuroses, and the latter in his complete rejection of the Cult in the name of love. It's really quite touching.
       Because of its continuity, its deeply-written themes and its excellent use of characterisations, the second episode of Ashes To Ashes' sophomore series far exceeds everything else that the show has done before. The examination of Police Corruption through the different viewpoints of Alex and Gene was absolutely stunning, and I admit that I loved every second.

Thanks.

Opinion: What's Yet To Come - Autumn 2012

So we're past the point of no return, and slowly it's getting darker again. But that means nothing for TV, and it means squat for Audenshaw Reviews. The Autumn Block in 2012 is packed with the shows that I review, and so I thought I'd take the time out to run through my expectations and my hopes. Expect spoilers here and there.

Matt Smith is going nowhere.

Doctor Who, Season 33 (Series Seven)

In the Classic Series, the show tended to start in Autumn and then leach into the new year; that's how it started in November '63 and that's how the show was meant to be. In the dark - scary. One of the main complaints about the New Series was that because it was light outside when it went out, there wasn't the right atmosphere. The right tone. I remember one episode back in Series Four where I came in to watch it right after helping my parents in the sweltering heat of the garden. Not really synonymous with, "threatening and tense."
       Series Six was astoundingly high quality on the surface but felt really repetitive and oft. mediocre in its themology and characterisation. The blunder that was Amy and Rory's failure to care about their kidnapped daughter until it mattered really ruined it for me. Despite that, there were some genuinely good episodes last year - predominantly The Doctor's Wife, The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex. I expect similar (well, higher) levels of quality this year.
      After Series Six's intense serialisation, Moffat has promised us something very different this year. Apparently every story of Series Seven is going to be standalone - there aren't even any two-parters. This makes a change from both New and Old Who, and hearkens back to around the T.Baker era. This is perhaps in conjunction with the change to Autumn, as the Who world gears up for its 50th Anniversary next year. With that in mind, I look forward to the new series of Doctor Who with its new companion (go Jenna!), new stories and new attitudes.
       If you've somehow missed them, my reviews of Doctor Who can be found in the "Dr. Who" tab at the top.

Merlin's final year approaches. I welcome it.

Merlin, Series Five

Merlin began as an Autumn placeholder for Doctor Who's more Summerly family fun. It's ironic that the show's final series arrives in time for Doctor Who to replace it. The show, an Arthurian export of the US Show Smallville, will be best known for its obsessive slash-fic-loving fandom and its great potential - a potential that so far it hasn't lived up to because of writing more shoddy than Arthur's ever-dirty armour.
      At the end of Series Two, I hoped that Series Three could continue that series' golden streak. It didn't. At the end of Series Three, I hoped that Series Four would improve upon that dreadful mess. It did, but it still isn't enough. It's not like Merlin can't be good television if it really, really tries, but it rarely does. And, most of all, it has to remember its characterisations. There were several points in Series Three and Four where things were effectively reverted back to the Pilot episode for the sake of a comedy moment.
       Newsflash - Merlin does not do, and has never done, comedy well. All it does is ruin everything else. If Series Five, in its final thirteen hours of plot, tries to keep to this... well, we'll have problems. Series Five has to do something monumental - it must reveal Merlin's fascade and, unlike Uthur's death last year, it has to do it well. This will be the key point in the series and likely what the series as whole will be judged upon afterwards.
      My expectations aren't exactly at cloud-nine right now.

Alisha and Simon are gone - for good?

Misfits, Series Four

At the beginning of my examination of Series Three, I asked myself whether Robert Sheehin's departure would have an affect on the show's dynamic. The answer was no, and yes. On one hand new Misfit Rudy perfectly filled the gap and was often written with very similar dialogue at times, but on the other... Rudy couldn't pull the friend-ship card. Nathan was so tremendous not only because he was a completely ridiculous and offensive caricature of humanity, but because he was also loved and could show real love.
      Series Three's finale also saw the departure of Alisha and Simon, two characters whose temporal love affair formed the key to the show's main Superhoodie storyline. Further, Lauren Socha left the show after an embarrassing rascist incident. With that over, only two characters are left, only one of them original. I don't really see what else we can do, other than adding new characters to the mix - something that, due to Rudy's writing, I'm rather uneasy about. However, seeing future Misfit Karla Crome's performane in Hit and Miss, I can at least sleep in the knowledge that it won't be a complete failure.
      The last series was supposed to be a chance for the show to innovate itself. With the Superhoodie storyline now stifled, it's a real test of whether this show can reinvent itself enough to survive. If not, then I suspect I won't be writing a passage like this next year.

Craig and Danny get down to business.

Red Dwarf, Series X 

Why Series 10? Because Doug Naylor's choice of the "knees Death in the balls" ending for Only The Good... gave him a cliffhanger that he couldn't fix. And, after the apalling Series VIII, not many people wanted him to. But, after a decade of fan outcry, the show's 21st Anniversary was celebrated through the Back To Earth miniseries. Fan hopes were high.
      While I don't hate Back To Earth, I'm in the minority. The attempt at drama over comedy was carried over from Series VII, and it just didn't work. There's so much potential here for brilliant stories, but Doug Naylor just has to hand the writing to someone else. I do not want this to be a repeat of the Dark Times, and no matter what the reaction from screenings, I have yet to see proof that Dwarf can return to its former glory.
      Regardless, any new Dwarf is good Dwarf as far as I'm concerned. A few months ago I was unsure that the show was even returning, and rather like Doctor Who, I feel privelaged that something once so retro is returning in my lifetime. So for now I'm feeling optimistic about the return of the Boys From the Dwarf, and positive that whatever happens it's going to be an exciting ride. See you there.

Thanks.

Editors Note: This was written in January, touched up in June, to be posted while I was away. Postponing this article is part of the "astoundingly good maths" I mentioned yesterday. I hope you've enjoyed it; it's one of my favourites.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Time and the Rani

Through some astounding mathemathics, this is my 500th Post! When I began this blog I never thought that I'd reach 50 posts, not least ten times that amount. I'd like to thank any readers (if you're out there) for sticking with me and I invite more people to read Audenshaw Reviews in the future. To celebrate this milestone, I'm looking at a season that is often considered worse than all of the Saward Era combined, beginning with Pip and Jane Baker's Time and the Rani....

The Rani (Kate O'Mara) tries some rather odd things in order
the get the Doctor to help her...

Doctor Who - Season 24, Story One - Time and the Rani
Written 8/6/12

I liked Season 22, and I liked the vast majority of Season 23. But I knew that that was because of Colin, and because I'd been raised on that era. Now Saward was gone, and the show was desperate to move in a new direction. Not fully understanding the definition of irony, they hired Pip and Jane Baker for one last story that went on to become known as one of the worst in the show's history, Time and the Rani - a tale so ridiculous that it's driven many to tears. However, readers of this blog over the past year should know exactly where this review is going. For the very reasons that so many despise Time and the Rani, I loved it. It was silly, ridiculous and actually, bloody hilarious.
      One thing I don't like, however, is the regeneration sequence. The Beeb had fired Colin Baker after perceiving him to be the problem (and not the writing staff) and so when they asked him back for a regeneration sequence to turn him into Sylvester McCoy, he rightfully told them where to stick it. The result is a bit silly, really - a horribly raw 3D graphic of the Rani shooting the TARDIS and then seeing Sylvester play Colin in a wig, the implication being that the Sixth Doctor met his end by hitting his head on the TARDIS console. As much as the team may have been iffed at Baker's decision, you can hardly blame him and they really could have done better than this episode presents. I did however like the trying-on sequence, in which Seven dressed up as Napoleon, Four, Three, Five and then Two while making several awful puns. It was a nice nod to the past and grounded the story for a short time.
    Sylvester himself? I bloody love him here. The Seventh Doctor is rather unfortunate in that the leftover material from Six and the desire to make the show family-friendly again left him with a bit of a personality disorder - in Season 24 he's a vibrant scots clown and in the final two seasons he's a scheming machiavellian chessmaster. Regardless, I like them both and when the script is being odd Sylvester more than manages to make up for it. The Doctor here is somewhat classic model - a buffoon on the outside hiding a cunning streak underneath. And despite a few moments of bad comedy, Pip and Jane get the characterisation just right. Well, for my tastes at least.

Science doesn't work that way, Rani.

     And, to my quite horrible surprise, this story actually made me like Mel. I don't what it is - she just came off as a much more rounded and much less extroverted character than she did while fumbling about with Colin. There was a lot in the story that I thought I wouldn't like, and the biggest of these is the writing, but to be frank I actually think that Time and the Rani is better written than Mark of the Rani two seasons earlier. Now before you load your shotguns, let me explain: Mark of the Rani had a lot of good ideas, but it floats about like no-one's business and there isn't really a cohesive plot. It just seems to come to an end, without the Rani's true plan ever being uncovered. Time and the Rani is cleverer than that - it presents the information about the Rani's (admittedly convoluted) plan just as the Doctor finds out. It's got better pacing, and I empathise more with the poor Lakertyans than any of the dull 16th Century types that Pip and Jane used in both Mark and The Ultimate Foe.
     However, as a scientist the Rani's evil plot does trouble me with just how far from reality it strays. Basically, the Rani has brought together the minds of several Human geniuses to help her solve a problem. That bit I have no trouble with. Her problem, however, is stupid, and if you'll bear with me I'll explain why.
<science> The Rani wants to detonate a "strange matter" asteroid above Lakertya, which will "cause an explosion the size of a supernova." She's doing this to form "Helium-2" which will form "chronons" when they fall onto Lakertya's atmsophere, enveloping the planet and turning it into a super-powered time-machine. Firstly, their definition of strange matter as being incredibly dense is somewhat correct, as it is believed to be formed in the centre of neutron stars and as such would "weigh as much as a planet" in small amounts(1). However, the key there is that an asteroid of such matter at such a small size could not exist on its own in the vacuum of space. Secondly, you cannot "detonate" strange matter, nor would an explosion the size of a supernova result from doing so. Thirdly, the substance the Rani is so desperately trying to create, Helium-2, is incredibly unstable and would fall apart into Hydrogen less than microseconds after being produced(2) - not least creating "chronons" and other such substances confined to the realms of Sci-Fi-Science. And to top it off, despite having used human scientists to build her big brain machine, she intends to use the planet to alter evolution and prevent Humanity from ever existing, which is Paradox 101. </science>
      The Rani is a lot more actively villainous here than she was in the previous story, but the efforts to impress for the regenaration story meant that she lost some of the personality that made her unique. The Rani was meant as someone who was fundamentally amoral and interested soley in the pursuit of science, ethics be damned. Here she has an evil scheme that would confuse even The Ainley Master, and thus she comes out looking a lot like his distaff counterpart. The highlight of the story is in the first two parts, where to persuade the confused, newly-regenerated Doctor to help rebuild her brain-machine, she decides to dress up as Mel and give him amnesia. It's absolutely ridiculous (that's a word I'm using a lot, I realise) and provides many of the story's more sitcom moments.

The alleged regeneration, aka swirly face thing over wigged actor.

      So what if it's unbelievable? That's certainly never stopped Doctor Who before. At the end of the day it's a question of whether I enjoyed Time and the Rani, and I most certainly did so on every level. Where it was good, it managed to change my negative attitudes towards a number of things, and it even made me admit to liking Mel even after I spoke of how much I despised her back in the Saward era. Where it was bad, it was so much that it went through the other side and became utterly hilarious. Time and the Rani is a great story and I'd reccomend it to anyone - seriously or otherwise.

Thank.


NEXT WEEK: We book a room at Paradise Towers.

Review: Doctor Who 2.3: School Reunion

Nostalgia-fest galore as Sarah Jane and K9 cameo.

Doctor Who - Season 28, Episode Three - School Reunion Written 20/3/12.

I don't hate Season 28. It's not that. It's just that it contains some of the worst Who that I can ever claim to have seen. I would rather watch Time-Flight or Terror of the Vervoids, two of my least favourite Eighties stories, than ever touch upon New Earth ever, ever again. But that doesn't say anything about the season that surrounds it. In Being Human, Adam's Family is the lowest the series ever sunk to, but I'm prepared to say that Series Three was one of the series' best.
     The comparison to Being Human is particularly apt with today's episode, the final one in my examination of Season 28 over this Holiday period, School Reunion by Toby Whithouse. School Reunion is somewhat like a rose set into liquid nitrogen; it's a unique and precious thing to behold, but one that will shatter with the slightest knock. Like Tooth and Claw, School Reunion boasts a lot of high-profile sci-fi ideas, but this time the characters are enough to keep it afloat when the plot's hull strikes the iceberg. This can be blamed, in part, by something that warms my Whovian heart - the return of Sarah Jane Smith and K9.
     Let's take a second to discuss The Sarah Jane Adventures. Season 28 was the one that pretty much launched both of the RTD spinoffs, Torchwood (for the Good Captain) and The Sarah Jane Adventures, a Softer and Lighter version of the main show following Sarah Jane and her entourage of children. While I loved the first series, I gave up after the main companion Maria (Yasmin Paige) bogged off after the first series and I detected either a drop in quality or my own movement outside the target audience. Nevertheless, the series continued to contribute towards the Whoniverse many times, including cross-overs with the main show, something that Torchwood never did. While I didn't like it, I recognised that it had a large fanbase amongst younger fans and I was greatly saddened by Elisabeth Sladen's untimely death in 2011.

Anthony Head is great as Finch.

     School Reunion, like Tooth and Claw, is the seed story for the spin-off, and so has to juggle that with any other ideas it may have. The main plot follows The Doctor, Rose and Mickey's investigations into Deffrey Vale School after Mickey reads news reports about lights in the sky and strange staff changes. It turns out that Sarah Jane is investigating also, and together they discover that the new Headmaster, Mr Finch (Buffy star Anthony Head, in a delicious performance), is a Krillitane who has brought some of his fellows to work at the school, and through using a special oil on the compulsory school dinners, they plan to brainwash all of the kids into solving an equation that will let them rule the Universe. The episode is a Scooby-Doo plot, and ultimately the day is saved when Mickey frees the kids and K9 uses his laser to explode a vat of the oil, which the Krillitanes are allergic to.
     I'll be honest, School Reunion's best facet is not its plot. The shambling element is pretty linear and it doesn't really go into much detail about just how interesting these ideas could be if properly exploited. But that's fine. Really, that's ok, because Whithouse is all about the Characters and their dynamics. Here, the quiet contemplative moments between Sarah and The Doctor are some of the best things in the season, and despite making references back to an event that occured 30 years prior (The Hand of Fear, 1976), it still manages to move even if one is ignorant of the subject matter. I chose to explore the Eighties when I looked into Classic Who, and I'm glad that I did, because I know that I have so much great Doctor Who left to experience from Sarah Jane's era.
     The weekly, "Complain about Doctor and Rose" bit? Well... more Rose than Ten. He is a little angsty here and there, but it's done with some panazz and as this is his fourth episode it isn't as tiring as it would become in, say, Season 29. In fact, this is the first episode where Ten shows some of the better aspects of his character - the rampant enthusiasm for the cosmos, the unrelenting battle against corruption, all that sorta thing. No, the annoying one this week was Rose, who apparently assumed that she and the Doctor were "special" and that the 900-year-old alien with a time-machine had only just decided to have a companion. (Here's a great piece on Deviant Art that describes this more simply.) It's not that I have a vendetta against Season 28 Rose, but she sure does not make it easy. I found the slanging match between Sarah Jane and Rose near-intolerable at times, because it seemed to stem out of Rose's immaturity more than anything else.

Goodbye, my Sarah Jane.

     Like Being Human, School Reunion's plot isn't much to talk about, but what is important is the way that he handled the return of the second-most important recurring character in Who history. (The first being the Brigadier.) The problems with the main cast still exist, but I found myself really enjoying School Reunion's mix of action and nostalgia, and the fact that I enjoyed it at all is a testament to how well the characters were written. Season 28 isn't all bad; episodes like this, The Girl in the Fireplace and the Impossible Planet two parter are some great Who. I think it's perhaps a statement about Doctor Who on the whole that whereever you look, in even the worst parts of the series, there will always be something to entertain.

Thanks.

P.S. I am literally in tears right now.