SkyHD - 29th April 2008 - 9.00pm

Blimey. Talk about a transitional episode! This is, I'm afraid, a bit of a plod. And that's a shame as there are some rather superb scenes in it. It eschews the action for more heavyweight matters and that's fine but it did feel like I was being repeatedly hit over the head with the 'Contemporary Analogy Mallet'. Whack! This bit is about the current Bush policies enacted under Homeland Security. Bang! This scene is the clash of East and West religious beliefs. Thanks, Jane Esperson, but I didn't need that explaining to me.

The running theme of the story is the revelatory power of pain. From the encounter between Six, imprisoned on Galactica, and Tigh; Tyrol's dispassionate attitude towards his wife's death and to Baltar becoming a religious punch-bag. All experiencing pain as a conduit to revealing part of their nature. Pain as manipulative force as the hidden Cylons turn in on themselves to dig out their true natures. That naughty Tory is also getting very good at pulling strings and pushing people into strange emotional spaces. She alone seems to understand the kind of power she's now acquired as one of the Cylons whilst the others seem to self-implode on their odyssey into their very hearts of darkness. She's revelling in having no conscience.

When Tigh starts to obsess about the captured Six and sees her transform into his dead wife, he takes the idea of using pain to shed light into his soul to the ultimate degree. I have to say that the editing and direction here are quite superb as Six switches identities with the deceased Mrs. Tigh. His guilt trip runs in parallel to Tyrol's descent into self-loathing.

If knowing your true self is the theme, then Gaius Baltar decides to eat a full packet of Smarties and overdose on the religious E-numbers. James Callis is rather fantastic in that final 'you're perfect as you are' speech to the assembled harem and the monotheism is all looking like a springboard towards a melding between Cylon and human as the outcome of the series. Roslin's attempts to block him also indicate that she's on a rocky path into being an uncaring totalitarian and her illness is perhaps a wee bit too obvious a metaphor for all the 'radicalisation' of certain contemporary religious groups - be they Christian or Muslim fundamentalists. She's so in thrall to her cancer that she's getting less and less bothered about the concerns and problems of others. And she'll bend and change the law to do it. How terribly George Dubbya of her.

So, it gets quite heavy in this episode and I did find I eyed the clock part the way through this as it is terribly unrelenting. Ain't no light relief here. I hope this is just a plateau and that the various sub-plots get going again next week. For instance, there is little screen time for Starbuck's Shit Ship mission apart from the very brief coda towards the end of the episode and Cavill & Co are very conspicuous by their complete absence too. A tad too much philosophical navel gazing - in the dark - without a match or a torch. That said, Bear McCreary's incidental music is utterly sublime throughout, the acting is top notch stuff and definite kudos to the editing and direction too.

Previous reviews:

The Ties That Bind
He That Believeth In Me & Six Of One

It's the 50th Anniversary of the formation of that influential institution, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It's over a decade ago since the doors on that Maida Vale studio closed for good but many of us regard it as one of the greatest achievements of the BBC, a fascinating meeting point for the demands of radio and television production and the anarchic, surreal and experimental thinking of its resident sound designers and composers such as Brian Hodgson, Delia Derbyshire, Dick Mills, Desmond Briscoe et al. Here's Dick and current custodian of what remains of the Worskhop, Mark Ayres, on BBC News having a natter about the good old days.



To acknowledge the anniversary, I'm more than delighted to review two quintessential albums for you Radiophonics, Delia and Brian fans out there.

KPM 1104 Electrosonic

Essentially, if you love all those weird synthesiser tonalities from 'Doctor Who' circa 1970 then this is for you. A series of very short mood pieces from Delia, Brian and Australian musician Don Harper composed for the library and probably used in countless television programmes of the era. 'Frontier Of Knowledge', the fourth track, sounds like it could fit in with 'Spearhead From Space' or 'Terror Of The Autons' and this and a later track 'Nightwalker' conjurs up those odd moments in the programme when armchairs would swallow people or troll dolls would go on the rampage. 'The Pattern Emerges' is an unnerving ascending and descending mood piece which is not quite as pastoral as the sleeve notes describe. 'Plodding Power' and 'Busy Microbes' again have that surreal ambience that the composers at the Workshop seemed to imbue all their cues with at the time.'Depression' is just like the theme for the Master but extended and given even more sinister undertones. This album also recalls the pioneering work on the radio adaptations of 'War Of The Worlds' or the special sound for plays such as 'The Stone Tape'.

At the time this was fairly cutting edge stuff, a spare, electronic musique concrete to match the likes of Wendy Carlos or Stockhausen and its influence goes beyond television and radio production and into pop and rock music composition, affecting artists as diverse as The Human League and Aphex Twin and seminal soundtracks such as John Carpenter's 'Assault On Precinct 13'. It may have a nostalgic charm but some of the tones and moods here remain very contemporary.

John Cavanagh (BBC Radio, Phosphene, author of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn) unearthed the Electrosonic tracks made in 1972, licensed these recordings and released them commercially for the first time on his Glo-Spot label. His sleeve notes are detailed and paint a lovely, personal picture of Delia in particular. This is a limited edition run of 1000 copies as I understand it.

Electrosonic (KPM 1104 originally released in 1972. Re-released 2006, Glo-spot 1104 CD)

White Noise - An Electric Storm

From the sublime to...well...the sublime with this 1969 album from White Noise. The album was brought to life by David Vorhaus, an American electronics student. He attended one of Delia Derbyshire's lectures, and then with her and Brian's help he decamped to Kaleidophon Studios in Camden to compose what is surely one of the great British sound experiments of all time.

An avant-garde whirlwind of sounds, effects, songs and synthesisers. 'Love Without Sound' is a sound clash of echoing vocals, dogs barking, weird electronic noises and a nursery rhyme reading. 'My Game Of Loving' is all French mutterings, Beach Boys style wall of sound stylings and an orgy. Yes, an orgy. Lots of panting, ooohing and aahhing that gets sped up and then merges with the plinky-plonk sounds and French whispering. It's as mad as a box of frogs. 'Here Come The Fleas' is bouncy electronics, cartoon sound effects and skiffle and a bit of avant-garde poetry. The kazoo electronic break is shattered by more dogs, bits of shouting and sirens. It's the equivalent of letting Spike Milligan loose in a room full of synthesisers and sampling machines. 'Firebird' moves into English pastoral psychedelia with treated drums, what sounds like a harpsichord and some distant female crooning laced with electronic stabs straight out of 'Forbidden Planet'.

The final half of the album moves into darker territory with what sounds like the Weed creatures from 'Fury From The Deep' dueting with Juliet Greco. Lovely electronic washes and organs. The 11 minute plus of 'The Visitations' is all Doctor Who sound effects, free form sound collages, synthetic screeching and swirling, pulsing heart beats which sounds like 'Quatermass And The Pit' meets Brian Eno via The Kinks. It's fantastic. The finale, 'The Black Mass' is off the wall, vari-speed incantations, organs and frenetic percussion, electronic buzzes and pulses and screams. There's even a sound effect in there that I recognise from 'Timeslip' and 'The Tomorrow People'.

This ocean of dark, poppy lullabies must have had an effect on bands like Hawkwind, Tangerine Dream, Can and Eno himself and later The Chemical Brothers, I would suggest. This remastered release comes with superb liner notes from Mark Powell who charts the history of the album and the subsequent careers of Delia, Brian and David.

White Noise - An Electric Storm (Originally released 1969 Island ILPS 9099 - re-released 2007 on Universal/Island Remasters CD 9843197)

BBC1 - 26th April 2008 - 6.20pm

You know, I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I'm sure those Sontarans put the mockers on my viewing of this episode. The Sky box crashed after failing to record the episode tonight. When satellite boxes fail I'd definitely class myself as one of the many Britons who have a prevailing pessimistic disposition towards technology. And Doctor Who has always enjoyed fuelling this disappointment with its own take on the perils of new technologies and new ideas. Just look at what the new series has already managed to blemish; mobile phone networks, bluetooth attachments, power stations, computers; and now the much maligned Sat-Nav, the evils of cloning and catalytic converters.

In fact, 'The Sontaran Stratagem' is honestly so in love with the relative merits, both good and bad, of new technology its like it's taken it out on a date and then thrown a drink over its head for not getting down on one knee to propose. Here we are talking about technological might and the abuse of power and how innovations can offer individuals considerable influence outside of industry in the course of human affairs. The Rattigan Academy, with Ryan Sampson's Luke Rattigan coming on all Bill Gates to a bunch of genius kids, is pretty much about how technology devcelops autonomously. It feeds on itself and becomes irresistible to consumers who simply don't consider the responsibility that goes hand in hand with new developments. Luke Rattigan, an unfortunate 'boy genius' SF cliche, is someone we should be scared of. He's essentially practicising a form of eugenics and his Academy is pure Robert Klark Graham, the American millionaire who tried to collect sperm from Nobel laureates and breed an entire generation of geniuses, and that other pariah William Shockley, a giant of Silicon Valley and one of Graham's 'offspring'. Trouble is, Ryan Sampson plays it just like so many other cliched child geniuses in film and television (yes, I'm looking at you Sarah Jane Adventures) and Helen Raynor's writing barely addresses these ideas that its rather disappointing.

That's the problem with these two-parters though. They are murder to write. It's difficult to pull off the necessary action, spectacle, subtexts and character development especially when most of the formula here is feeling a tad stale. We've had the companion returning home in 'Aliens Of London', 'The Lazarus Experiment', we've had the phobias about technology and we've had alien invasions galore so this does feel like a retread. The plus here is that we do get the 'evil doppelganger' of Martha and that's a new one for the series. It's perfectly enjoyable for 45 minutes, a good, pacy set-up for the second part. There are some very delightful and well written scenes - Donna having a go at flying the TARDIS and the nod to 'denting the 1980s' which this story literally does in its retro Pertwee UNIT vibe and Saward like obsession with the military; the faux 'I'm going home' exchange between her and the Doctor which is one of the best played scenes from Tate and Tennant; and the whole reunion with Wilf and Sylvia which again relies on some affecting interplay between Tate and the wonderful Bernard Cribbins and would have been even better if they'd decided not to treat the audience like imbeciles and flashed us back through Donna's Greatest Hits. Tate's playing of Donna gets better with each episode and I really loved the warmth between her and Tennant. Freema is not as good as she was in Torchwood's 'Reset' and this confident and strident version of Martha suffers slightly with some poor line delivery but it is still good to see her and the sub-plot of her cloning will hopefully give her an opportunity to stretch her acting muscles.

Tennant is much better in this story, almost teetering into the manic performances of his early episodes, and his barbed attitude towards Colonel Mace (Rupert Holliday-Evans is a very poor man's Brigadier, it has to be said) and UNIT's emergence from its 'homespun' origins and the later rather smashing scene where he corrects Rattigan's grammar and wields a squash racket to whallop Staal's probic vent (shades of the satsuma bowling in 'The Christmas Invasion') finally prove that he isn't on auto-pilot this series. The script is littered with funny lines and good character moments for the Doctor, Donna and Martha but it doesn't serve the other human characters that well. Plenty of continuity references too and perhaps a cheeky answer to that thorny question of dating the UNIT stories with that "Back in the seventies. Or was it the eighties? It was all a bit more . . . homespun back then" line and more mentions of the Time War and the Medusa Cascade. Personally, I feel that the 'homespun' UNIT of Lethbridge-Stewart, Benton and Yates is in no danger of being eclipsed by Mace and his rather anodyne sidekicks of Ross, Gray and Harris especially with their 'Homeworld Security' agenda of roughing up Polish factory workers, much to Donna's chagrin. It's a Bush 'New World Order' version of UNIT already hinted at in Torchwood and if they carry on like this I suspect the Doctor will resign his position.

However, Helen Raynor does triumphantly reposition the Sontarans rightfully amongst the best of the returning classic series monsters. She manages to create a memorable foe in General Staal and feeds him with the kind of dialogue we haven't heard Sontarans utter since 'The Time Warrior' or 'The Sontaran Experiment'. Christopher Ryan seizes the opportunity and makes Staal into a wonderfully erudite, bombastic military leader completely fixated on war. And the redesign of the costumes and prosthetics does work effectively to enhance Ryan's performance and obliterates the rather feeble efforts of 'The Two Doctors'. Couple that with the rather lovely CGI effects for the warship and the scout vessels nipping around it and its safe to say that the school playgrounds of Britain will soon be ringing with Sontaran chants.

The cliffhaner goes on for far too long and I'm sure most viewers would have been urging the Doctor or Donna to simply smash the car windows in with a blunt instrument of some description. Douglas Mackinnon directs in a suitably epic manner but with a little less confidence than some of the more seasoned directors on the show and I did feel that some of the lighting wasn't up to the usual standard and there was an over reliance on the more gharish schemes you would associate with 'Sarah Jane Adventures'. The overall impression is of a rather gaudy, fast paced comic strip. With this more or less just the sum of its better parts, the story is now having to rely on an equally strong or better second part if Helen Raynor wishes to avoid the disappointment of her previous efforts with the Daleks.


Previous reviews:
The Planet Of The Ood
The Fires Of Pompeii
Partners In Crime

SkyHD - 22nd April 2008 - 9.00pm

Now that one crept up on me.

Quite honestly I was half dozing through that episode until probably the last 20 minutes or so. I was prepared to write it off as one of the dullest episodes to date when all of a sudden all the plot threads drew together and I was left sitting on the edge of my seat.

Just when you think the writers aren't going to bother moving the plot forward, the rug gets pulled! Let's have a little look then. You've got the Four, hidden away on Galactica, meeting in secret; Anders, Helo and Starbuck getting cabin fever on the shit ship looking for Earth (when they get there no one will talk to them anyway as they'll stink to high heaven); machinations back on the Cylon basestars between Six and Cavill; and then Apollo throwing a few punches to Roslin during an executive meeting. Keep up at the back!

So...Cavill gets reborn and a big snog from a Boomer model and then starts plotting against the Sixes. Boomer's hots for Cavill does seem to indicate why she's supporting the Cylon Lobotomy Plan (CLP to us). Dean Stockwell is superb as the scheming Cavill and we're hoodwinked into believing he's acceeded to the Six demands. This plot line saunters along nicely and then....twist!....Cavill simply bombs the Base Stars loyal to Six in a gob-smacking denouement full of spectacle and tense hand-wringing from Cavill and Boomer. Oh, I say. American War Of Independence, anyone?

Unfortunately, the Four on Galactica plotline is rather spoiled by a screaming baby and an equally traumatised Cally (the superb Nicki Clyne). I didn't know if Clyne was upset because she had a wailing child in her arms for 40 odd minutes or she'd seen the end of the script and was worried for her career. Poor old Cally. You do have to feel sorry for her. Lumbered with a whingeing child, and that's just the Chief, and half-breed baby (oh, that's the Chief and his kid). It all gets a bit much for her and she ends up spying on the Four in a very tense little scene, gets that the Four are Cylons, and as a result scuttles off to throw herself out of the nearest airlock. I felt very guilty as I chanted 'Do it! Do it!' during that scene. Clyne was seriously channelling Shelley Duvall's Wendy from 'The Shining' at that point too so I would have been quite happy to see her and the baby go tumbling into space. Naughty Francis! Anyhow, Tory shows up, belts her about a bit, snaps up the nipper and sends Cally off into the void even after promising the Four weren't 'evil'. Pretty bloody evil to me, darlin'. It's a stunning, shocking end to the episode and kudos to Clyne for a fine performance.

The weakest part of the episode is the sub-plot with Anders, Helo and Starbuck as they dick about looking for Earth. Kara comes on like Jackson Pollock and starts painting the ship and Anders slips in a quick bonk whilst they try to piece together their relationship. Yawn. Something needs to happen here or the viewers will get as frustrated as Gaeta, Athena and co with the navel gazing that's going on.

Meanwhile, Lee Apollo joins civvy street and gets tangled with Roslin in the first Quorum meeting with a helping hand from Richard Hatch's Tom Zarek. There's a great Homeland Security 'rule by fear' subtext playing out here as he reveals Roslin's plans to go all Guantanamo Bay on the fleet. And Zarek's obviously manipulating it all to get his feet under the table.

Cally getting spaced, Apollo trouncing Roslin and Cavill bombing the other Cylons all neatly fold around each other whilst the 'Earth' search plot is left flapping in the wind. For about 20 minutes it is a bit heavy going what with screaming babies, crying Cally, Tory and the Chief chatting each other up in a bar, Anders and Starbuck raking over the ashes of their marriage. All personal storylines that then climax in big plot twists (a different sort of climax for Anders I suspect) and that save the episode from being rather dull. Good stuff and can't wait for the repercussions from Cally's death. Unless, of course, she's a Cylon too and gets reborn! Nah, they wouldn't, would they?

The Robots Of Death

January – February 1977

‘I will release more of our brothers from bondage. We will be irresistible’

Sounds like robot porn to me.

And indeed ‘Robots’ is irresistible. From its literate and witty script, finely drawn characters to its ‘art deco’ (there I’ve said it – art deco and Robots Of Death seem to go hand in hand) sets and costumes it’s a classic right down to its bicycle reflector ‘corpse markers’.

Plot in a nutshell – The Doctor and Leela arrive aboard a mining ship, the Sandminer, where the bitchy crew suddenly find their gorgeous robots have turned to murder. And can you guess who's turning them bad...? Well, yes...it's bloomin' obvious. The frilly trousers give it away.

The important thing to note is that again Chris Boucher is very aware that for SF to work it has to be able to build worlds in the minds of the audience. By way of Asimov, Agatha Christie and Frank Herbert, not only does he succeed in doing this with the Sandminer and its crew but there are suggestions in the script of the outside world beyond the miners’ workplace with its references to the Founding Family, Kaldor City and the fate of Zilda’s brother. Right from the start, information is coming at you to enable you to construct the universe these people exist in - both visually and narratively.

Visually everything is working together coherently. The appearance of the Sandminer crew, the interiors and models of the Sandminer itself (sterling effects work from Richard Conway) and the elegant designs of the robots all communicate to you the nature of this world. It has a ‘glam rock with the edges knocked’ off feel to it in both the make-up and costumes. They all look like some weird hybrid of Wizard and Roxy Music. But it works in the context of the environment, particularly with set designer Ken Sharp’s homages to Gustav Klimt all over the place. Performances are mainly first rate, particularly Russell Hunter as Commander Uvanov, Pamela Salem as Toos and David Collings as Poul. The only let down on the acting front is the rather shrill and often unconvincing performance from Tania Rogers as Zilda, The wonderful robots are represented by some good work from Miles Fothergill and Gregory De Polnay as SV7 and D84. D84 is so charming that I wish I had him around to do the housework.

Symbolically the story has some interesting things to say about the unconscious, dual personalities and phobias. Dask and Poul are both aspects of a similar union. Dask is a schizophrenic amalgam of man and machine – Taren Kapel and his robots. He identifies with the robots so much that he thinks he is one to the point of dressing similarly and wearing a rather fetching Ziggy Stardust make-up equivalent of a robot’s face. Poul is on the other hand phobic about robots. His instincts, like all of us, are to look for signs of life in beings around us – ‘body language’. We all get the creeps if we’re interacting with something that looks human but doesn’t give off the same signals as us or gives none at all. However, the phobia is buried subconsciously in Poul and he works alongside a ‘humanised’ machine, D84, who is perhaps the antithesis of Taren Kapel.

Both characters are repulsed and attracted to the robots in equal measure. Whereas Dask embraces the notion of becoming like them, Poul rejects their presence when his mind breaks. More fascinating still is that D84 actually rescues and saves Poul’s life whereas it is the very whimsical idea of altering the resonance of the human larynx with helium that strips Dask of his robot persona and his life.

The altered robots, woken from their sleep of slavery, are random unconscious Egos let free by Kapel/Dask’s interference. Their unbridled nature, in contravention of law and reason, leads to murder, death and disintegration of the conscious lives of the Sandminer crew. The crew are also projecting their anxieties onto the robots. Indeed, their anxiety is a major thread in the narrative. Their projections onto the robots are their way of confronting their own complexes and coming to terms with them. A huge motivation for most of the crew is to be successful at what they do but at the same time they dread failure and the robots become their anxiety realised in murder and death. It is certainly true of Uvanov who goes from a rather pompous, self important Commander to a man confronted by the truth of Zilda’s investigation into her brother’s death which ultimately he feels sorrow for. And it is a literal mind shock for Poul, whose anxieties are all about the robots themselves. Poul wants to face the unconscious realm of the robots but cannot from fear of the consequences in doing so.

This animation of anxiety is driven home by the pulsing, heart beat like sounds and music as robots advance upon the humans. The neat touch of seeing the attacks from their point of view ensure that we see the environs of the Sandminer and the pain of the crew in a lurid, unearthly frame of reference (thanks to ‘Top Of The Pops’ video effects again). Outwardly they have impassive, blank eyed but elegant faces. Artifice embodied with a killer instinct.

On a final note, there are some wonderfully quotable lines: ‘Please don’t throw hands at me’, being one of the best. Tom and Louise are on top form, Tom particularly when he’s being questioned by Borg and Uvanov, and the theme of Leela becoming educated in an Eliza Doolittle relationship with the Doctor continues to develop and will find its apotheosis in the next story. Good also to see that her savage nature allows her to be a step ahead of the rest of the humans in recognising Poul’s true function and the zombie like nature of the rampaging robots.

It’s a story that glitters on the surface, all silver and green and sparkly costumes but is merely a camouflage for the relentless, murderous power of anxiety and the unconscious (it's written literally on Dask's painted face). We are trapped in Taren Kapel’s waking nightmare for 90 glorious minutes until his voice goes all camp and squeaky and I, for one, will never tire of it (his camp squeaky voice and the glorious 90 minutes!).

THE ROBOTS OF DEATH Region 2 DVD (BBCDVD1012 Cert U)

Alex Turner has been borrowing his grandmum's record collection. Where else has this giddy enthusiasm for Brel, Scott Walker, John Barry, Wally Stott and Bowie (circa 1971) as well as Shirley Bassey, Dusty, Tom Jones and Gene Pitney come from? It's all there Alex, it's all there. I don't know...we get one 1980s themed collaboration (Neon Neon) and then along comes this 1960s one between Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner and Miles Kane from The Rascals.

When I heard they were being heavily influenced by Scott Walker for this bit of mucking about I had a weird feeling they might try whacking a few slabs of meat and singing about Communism just for a lark and totally alienate their fanbases. But this 28 minute whirl through Ennio Morricone influenced troubadoring, spliced with the cantering thrust of Walker's Brel interpretations such as 'Mathilde', Jackie' and 'Funeral Tango', doesn't outstay its welcome. If they'd gone on for any longer then it would have descended into tedium. As it is, it's a great little chamber piece with some ravishing orchestral arrangements from the London Metropolitan Orchestra and from sometime Arcade Fire collaborator Owen Pallett which actually don't have the precision of the arrangements on Scott 1, 2, 3 and 4 and are more akin to many of the brass and string pastiches on Marc Almond's 'Vermin In Ermine' or 'The Stars We Are'.

Turner's Sheffield drawl also marks out the difference here too. He's no Walker or Almond but he does actually have a good voice and his and Kane's voices mesh well, often create little sparks as they collide, and have a fullness that adds to the effect. I'm not a Monkeys fan at all but here Turner sounds good and the lyrics are suitably decorative in quality. It's all broken relationships, loneliness...exactly the existentialist subject matter that Brel and Walker cornered the market with. It often tips into an over-enthusiasm but let's give them credit for at least dragging certain musical forms back into focus as a set of galloping rhythm tracks, swirling strings and aching torch songs.

The standout tracks for me are 'Meeting Place', a soulful and yearning ballad with a stunning string and brass arrangement which is all remorse and regret that has an elegant elongated string coda; 'The Time Has Come Again' another ballad of doomed romance drenched in strings; 'The Age Of The Understatement' which sounds like 'The Las' meets Morricone and 'Black Plant' a shuffling tango that features a crashing organ section and lovely stabbing brass and sweeping strings with another Bernard Hermann like string coda.

This is a great big, blousy, widescreen, windswept pop record, perhaps rather old fashioned in its retro stylings, but it follows respectfully in a great tradition and does it without embarrassing itself.

The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement (Domino WIGCD208 - Released 21st April 2008)

BBC1 - 19th April 2008 - 6.20pm

Slavery is bad, boys and girls. Globalisation is bad, boys and girls. ‘Planet Of The Ood’ takes us back to the first principles of the classic series. Put a whacking great moral lesson in the middle of a bitter, bleak tale of science fiction imperialism and serve with fish-fingers and peas on Saturday.

Doctor Who gives us a treatise on Milton Friedman’s supply side economics when you look at the journey of the Ood out of their ‘slavery’ towards ‘ freedom’ as an analogy to the struggles against the impositions of the free market. The Ood are reformist, co-operative might against the golden strait-jacket of the IMF or the World Bank. They’re like the Danish and the Norwegians refusing to accept the way the Euro has ripped down the edifice of worker protection rules and taxes that support the welfare state. Chuck in a few pops at imperialism and it’s like we’re watching ‘The Mutants’ all over again. Quite apt in the year of the 200th Anniversary of the abolition of slavery.

Not that I’m against the series wearing its big leftist heart on its sleeve. It just seems so unfettered in ‘Planet Of The Ood’ as if suddenly Russell the lion tamer has let one of the big cats out of the cage. It's quite radical for a contemporary family tea-time show to try and address the audience’s own complicity in the cloak and dagger world of global economics whereas in the Letts era, anti-imperialist, pro-environmental themes arrived like an over-frequent bus service. Is this a sign then that the new series is getting much bolder in the way it reflects contemporary affairs? I hope so but then again this was like being bludgeoned a little too aggressively by Davies anti-totalitarian, progressive politics that runs through his reworking of the series. Love the message but not quite sure the messenger was being that subtle in delivering it.

Subtlety is perhaps not something that could be employed, I suspect, when dealing with the emotive subject of slavery and, beyond the obvious visual symbols, – lines of Ood being whipped into submission – there is a more complex subtext bubbling away. The exchange between the Doctor and Donna about the Empire (obviously referring to both the British imperialist past and the USA’s imperialist agenda now) touches on Donna as representative of those coffee guzzling, Primark (other cheap clothes importers are available, readers) wearing members of the audience, clearly aware of the conditions under which their commodities were produced, who may well not want to hear the Doctor offering them 'holier than thou' cheap shots. And she goes on to argue that the Doctor could be accused of having human companions simply to provide him with a conscience. He's the 'Friends Of The Earth', 'Fairtrade' and 'Greenpeace' all rolled into one patronising moment and quite rightly Donna doesn't need lecturing when it is clear she recognises slavery on the Ood-Sphere for the wrong that it is and may at last be able to actively do something about it.

It’s quite brave for an episode to feel the collar of the audience and suggest that in some ways we are all guilty of complicity in the way that the free market isn't fair on economies in China and India. The Empire is seen as a free market trading in Ood. These markets are about the flow of commodities in and out of galaxies without actually being of benefit to their respective economies. The money is being made outside of them. So, Halpern’s activities may well equate with the more dubious practices of the IMF and the World Bank. And if indeed an Ood revolution has taken place, as we are told by the conclusion of the episode, and all the Ood are returning to the Ood Sphere, then the story rather overlooks the down-side of this. The Empire will go to hell and probably suffer economic collapse. With the Ood out of slavery the Empire will surely seek a way to replace them? Doctor, is that a good thing? Do you want that on your conscience too? It’s too ‘feel good’ a solution to free the Ood and it raises more questions generally about the Doctor’s actions in what must eventually lead to the toppling of an Empire.

The other problem with this story, which isn’t quite as radically cheeky as ‘Partners In Crime’ or emotionally gutsy as ‘The Fires Of Pompeii’, is the uneven tone. It’s clear that this is one of the first (if not the first) episodes in the filming block and Catherine Tate hasn’t quite got to grips with the character of Donna. The opening scene in the TARDIS and the subsequent landing are shrill in the same way that her flouncing around in a wedding dress was in ‘The Runaway Bride’ but later she seems to get to grips again with the subtler acting requirements when confronting the dying Ood in the snow. She’s also rather good when she asks the Doctor to allow her to hear the telepathic (protest) song of the Ood and her emotional response connects the audience to the moral battle being played out. She also continues to counter the Doctor’s flippancy, no more fittingly than in their little spat about imperialism and markets I discussed earlier.

There are subtle touches of humour despite the bleak tone of the central message – the goofy Ood advertisement in the pre-credits, the handcuffs gag, the nod to 'The Simpsons' – that are then complemented by some good, kinetic action set pieces (director Graeme Harper’s forte) and nostalgic references to ‘The Sensorites’ as well as more mentions of missing bees and a note of foreshadowing for the Tenth Doctor in that ‘soon, your song will end’ coda. In keeping with the general themes of this series, once again we have a human being transformed into an alien, which now does seem like less of a coincidence and more of a continuing and developing idea. Tim McInnerny is suitably oily and ruthless as the low-grade IMF lackey, Halpern, and the whole mutation into an Ood is a bit of simplistic poetic justice, whilst scientifically dubious, and again is as near the knuckle as Doctor Constantine’s possession in ‘The Empty Child’ but perhaps not quite as effective. Still, it’ll have the kiddies freaking out over their baked beans. The notion of the Ood with their hind-brains is an interesting one but again don’t examine the evolutionary theory too closely. The hind-brain could be seen simply as another symbol of liberty and enlightenment and Halpern is transformed from ranting capitalist to a slave of the Ood holistic hive mind. Whilst the story opens up many questions, it is in itself reliant on some very SF, B movie tropes – the giant brain, telepathy, the base under siege – and whilst Harper’s direction works wonders this does feel a little flat, quite 'trad' in Doctor Who parlance, and even the ice planet environs verge on the unconvincing with some painfully obvious matte effects in some shots. Murray Gold's music strikes out in a different direction and adds some strange sounding tonalities that pleasingly seem to have wandered in, along with the moral message, from the classic series too.

As an episode, it’s a strange mix of the traditional and the radical that doesn’t quite come off but at least they went back to the unanswered questions about the Ood’s origins that were left hanging in ‘The Impossible Planet’. How well they answered those questions is debatable but at least they tried.

Previous reviews:

The Fires Of Pompeii
Partners In Crime

SkyHD - 15th April 2008 - 9.00pm

Thanks to Sky bigging up the premiere of Season 4 we get the first two episodes shown as one 90 minute chunk across the evening. Anyway, where were we? Last time...Gaius Baltar was acquitted for his war crimes; Anders, The Chief, Tory and Tigh all discovered they were four of The Final Five Cylons; and the Cylon fleet had suddenly caught up with Galactica in the nebula. Figggghhhhhht!

Er, not quite. There's the thorny question of why Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace has suddenly popped up in her Viper in the middle of it all and made Apollo literally shit his knickers. How can she be back from the dead?

So after the teasing statement of ‘one will be revealed’ we go slam bang into an eye-popping visual effects fest of the conflict in the nebula. It's a stunning tour-de-force of effects work, very exciting and ramps up the tension as various ships get spectacularly wasted. In the middle of the mayhem, the four Cylons prevaricate over what to do next. Best to resume business as usual it seems.

The mystery of Thrace's return deepens when it is discovered that she believes she's only been gone for six hours when in fact it's been two months. And her ship is brand new, just out of the showroom, without a scratch and no navigation data on the flight computer. Was that the 'Twilight Zone' theme I heard just then? But she's got some lovely snaps of her visit to Earth and vehemently claims she's been there and knows the way back. Mad as a box of frogs, I tell ya.

So the paranoia gets ratcheted up, the crew gives Thrace all the odd looks they can muster and naturally Adama is tortured as to whether he believes her or the soothsaying President Roslin. I love Eddie Olmos and he's great at the whole Adama riddled with doubts, weighing it all up and going on a gut instinct. A lovely, subtle performance which inevitably leads us to the rather obvious conclusion of the second episode - he sends Thrace out on a mission, unbeknownst to Roslin, to find Earth. All this after Katie Sackhoff does much throwing of tantrums, rolling about and screaming on the floor of her cell. 'We're going the wrong way' she screams repeatedly. Perhaps she's screaming at Ron Moore for deciding to make this year's season the last? I still can't quite bring myself to like Sackhoff's portrayal of Starbuck. I often feel like slapping her round the chops for being so bloody selfish. Ah, flawed heroes. The climax of the first episode ends with her bursting into the President's quarters and them both having a ding-dong over who's going the right way to Earth. Starbuck's hysteria is brilliantly countered by Mary McDonnell's Roslin who is doing a lovely job of a cancer-riddled, drugged up school-teacher cum President coping with a blonde sociopath. Her scenes with Eddie Olmos are always a treat to watch as both are very subtle players.

Back to the Four. Anders gets scanned by a Raider during the battle and he puts the fear of God (literally) into them so that they all scarper with their tails between their legs and the battle is over. Tigh, meanwhile, has a perplexing vision of shooting Adama in the head. Tory, in consultation with the other three, decides to pump (literally) Gaius for more information about the Cylon plan and starts making puppy dog eyes at him. Inevitably, she ends up gaining his confidence and his libido. Naughty girl! Gaius, still entertainingly played with great charm by James Callis, is spirited away by a gaggle of Gaius worshippers who've bunged a few fairy lights up, some nice drapes and a whopping great shrine to the man himself. Here he 'cures' a sick child and everyone's convinced he's the second coming. These monotheists are yet another riff on the One God sub-plot that's been established but I'm not sure where this is all going. Six pops up to reassure Gaius he's doing the right thing but alarmingly he has visions of another Gaius chattering away to him. An amusing riff on the Gaius/Six axis but again where exactly is this going? This and the harem of believers tend to stop dead the ongoing plots of the Four Cylons and Starbuck despite the amusing presence of Callis.

The second episode also tends to deal with the bittersweet goodbye of Apollo to the rest of the Viper jocks. He also firmly believes Kara's story of her trip to Earth and in searching for a new career in a new town shares a great deal of 'destiny' with Starbuck. How terribly spiritual. His leaving do is typical Galactica cheese with a side order of cheese, all back slapping, nudge-nudge, crotch grabbing nonsense as usual. He also looks like he's knocking back shots of Flash floor cleaner. That'll clean his insides out. Kills all known Viper pilots.

And the Cylons are getting all hot under the collar over Brother Cavill's attempts to send the Cylon troopers back to the factory to get their brains bypassed. There's a lot of offscreen voting, plenty of huffing and tutting, and a series of dissolves showing big surgical tools drilling into blood-spattered Cylon inards. Very nice. So lots of strops from Six and she later marches into the boardroom with her sidekicks and gets all 'Robocop' on Cavill and his smug entourage who go down in hail of gunfire. Ooops, I feel a Civil War coming on, what with Cylon troopers that can think for themselves and Boomer voting against her own model...and the potential of the others, having been mowed down here, downloading and getting heavy on Six's ass!

So Kara buggers off in a flying sewer, Gaius 'oh, my giddy aunt' Baltar clearly has an inkling about what Tory is up to and has a twin to debate these matters with - love that whole analogy to the orchestra tuning up too (cue Bear McCreary's own tongue in cheek incidentals) - and the Four continue to twitch in anticipation of heinous acts they're programmed to visit on the fleet.

If you wandered into this unprepared you'd think it was utterly bonkers. It's a series now rumbling along on the potential energy of its story arc and sub-plots and loyal viewers will now hopefully get some answers and a satisfying conclusion. New viewers will be rather puzzled, I should think. As ever, it's beautifully made and looks fabulous in HD, McCreary's music is some of the best incidental scoring for a television series and the plot twists keep coming. A good start to this final season.

BBC1 - 12th April 2008 - 6.45pm

“You held her off with a waterpistol? I bloody love you!”

Ladies and gentlemen…the prologue. And it came to pass that yet another fine episode appeared before the assembled masses.

The series turns on a sixpence yet again and, after last week’s light hearted romantic comedy, writer James Moran explores the Doctor’s moral choices whilst framing his dilemma in the tragic events at Pompeii. No other television programme really has the ability to do that.

Certainly for the first 15 minutes it is a bit of a slow burn and the introduction of Caecillus (Peter Capaldi on fine form) and his family (Tracey Childs as Metella, Francesca Farmer as Evelina and the rather lovely Francois Pandolfo as Quintus) seems disjointed and slightly out of place because modern speech patterns are being used. It’s almost as if ‘My Family’ has been transposed to AD79 and it took me a bit of perseverance to accept it. When you’re used to watching a series like ‘Rome’, for example, this feels very different and I’m not sure it entirely succeeds especially when it extends to Phil Cornwell’s tradesman channeling Del Boy. But we do get exceptional production values and location shooting to make the episode look ravishing and sumptuous. And it’s lovely to have the Doctor referencing ‘The Romans’ with his comment: "But that fire, nothing to do with me! Well, maybe a little bit..." as he discusses what he assumes is Rome on arrival with Donna.

Going back to the modern speech patterns you could argue that this is also a reminder of the theme established in ‘The Shakespeare Code’ about the power of words and language. Hence, we get the pure visual communication of the Sybeline prophecies, the running gag about Latin/Celtic translations and the very accurate point about how the events in Pompeii create new words like ‘volcano’ that are part of the very language we use now. This is as much about ‘what did the Romans ever do for us’ and their cultural impact as it is about rock monsters and the Doctor’s humanism. Even then the notion of the ancient and modern roots of language echoes the fixed and in flux nature of history as observed by the Doctor.

However, minor problems aside, the story moves up a gear when the Doctor and Donna are identified by Lucius (Phil Davis, still channeling Albert Steptoe perhaps) and we get some further foreshadowing from his prophecies. What is on Donna’s back? What is the Medusa Casade? All very intriguing and a good hook to keep the observant viewer happy. What’s interesting in this episode is that the plot almost mirrors that of ‘Partners In Crime’ where again we have aliens attempting to reproduce themselves by exploiting the human body because, mysteriously, their planet of origin has been ‘lost’. Is this theme of 'reproduction by any means necessary' a recurring one, I wonder?

Then after the slow start it all moves into high gear with the Doctor’s confrontation of the Sybeline Sisterhood (a neat bit of male reason versus feminine intuition), the attack by the adult Pyrovile and Donna and the Doctor’s escape into the heart of Vesuvius. The effects, both CG and prosthetic, are excellent and the epic scale is maintained by director Colin Teague. Once inside the Pyrovile pod, the moral choices and high stakes of the story are finally revealed. When the Doctor realises that his choice must be to cause the eruption of the volcano to save the world there is a sense of inevitability that he and Donna share as they both, in a highly charged scene, press the destruct button and seal the fate of Pompeii.

The central argument of why and when the Doctor is not allowed to interfere with history is emotively made and takes us back to similar discussions in such early stories as ‘The Aztecs’. The Doctor’s anguish is clear but he has to contend with Donna, who like Barbara, refuses to acknowledge the brutality of the Time Lord’s responsibilities. This moves beyond the original notion of ‘The Aztecs’ as it shows a passive Time Lord simply cannot abandon 20,000 people and a determined companion arguing that he must do something ‘human’. The cold shoulder that the Doctor gives to Caecillus and his family as they huddle in the fall-out and he rushes into the TARDIS is an incredible moment and it takes Donna to force him to go back and help them and for him to recognise that she was right in ‘The Runaway Bride’ – he needs someone to stop him. That final, tearful plea from Donna is a truly moving scene and in it Catherine Tate firmly enshrines Donna into the roll call of the series best companions.

The coda with Caecillus and his family standing on the hillside overlooking the devastation of Pompeii is brimming with sad reflection and shock for the victims they've left behind and symbolises our own ongoing fascination with this moment of history. And as the TARDIS departs that is where the story should end but unfortunately there is a trite epilogue that depicts the surviving family worshipping the Doctor and Donna as their household gods that, for me, takes the edge of the very powerful drama we have just witnessed. But again a minor problem for a stunning episode that demonstrates a production team working at full tilt, a script asking some searching moral questions and an ensemble of actors, and especially Tate, delivering great performances. Marvellous.

Pirie's original 'Heritage Of Horror'(out of print) has been upheld as one of the best books on horror films and on British cinema full stop. It's long been overdue for updating and reprinting and I'm pleased to say Pirie has returned to his original text and updated it here.

Whilst some may find horror films and Hammer horror films a source of amusement or camp frivolity, Pirie brilliantly argues for their inclusion within the Romantic Gothic tradition and he underlines this by devoting one his first chapters to an unpacking of the emergence of the Gothic and its attendant tropes. In 'The Characteristics Of English Gothic Literature' he manages to locate Hammer's key films within an anti-realist agenda. I'm not keen on his strident dislike for the 'realist' films of the 1960s - I find 'A Taste Of Honey', 'Saturday Night And Sunday Morning' et al are amongst some of the finest films made in Britain - but I can see his point that there has been quite a denial of the power of the fantastic and horrific within British cinema. Many films and directors have been ignored or pilloried (the case of Michael Powell's 'Peeping Tom' comes to mind) for no other reason than they have taken a different path to discuss their themes in the cinema.

His book also reclaims much of the careers of director Terence Fisher and producer Anthony Hinds and he sees them both as key components of the richest years at Hammer. And he ensures that certain films are given their due as key moments in the return of the Gothic Romantic to cinema - everything from 'Brides Of Dracula' to 'Frankenstein Created Woman'. Here he manages to get across his admiration for the work of both Fisher and Hinds as well as their place within the tradition. He also focuses on other directors, with those employed by Hammer, such as John Gilling and Don Sharp and later in the book such talents as Michael Reeves. The nice surprise is the section on Vernon Sewell where he elevates that director's long forgotten 'Curse Of The Crimson Altar'.

He does include more about Fisher, and about the battles with the BBFC and is of the opinion that both James and Michael Carreras more or less oversaw the demise of Hammer in the mid 1970s rather than blaming either one of them. The original volume concluded in 1972, I believe, and from what I've read here he was very positive about the future of horror cinema and as well as updating existing material and revising his views, Pirie examines the period after 1972 when British cinema went through a rapid decline. He goes on to discuss the state of the horror film in the 1980s and 1990s and through to the present day.

His own experience as a screenwriter informs the final section on modern horror and again he is very positive that, after the dire slump of the 1990s, British horror is alive and well. The overwhelming sense though is that he advocates the Gothic as the only anti-realist tradition in British cinema and the films that have embraced this are still vibrant and powerful.

It's an excellent book but it suffers from some inaccuracies and typos and often Pirie doesn't carry his thesis through completely into his discussion of various periods or films in the tradition. Mind you, I'm utterly delighted that he views 'Scream And Scream Again' as a masterpiece of 1970s British horror.


A New Heritage Of Horror - The British Gothic Cinema (I B Taurus December 2007 ISBN-10:9781845114824)

Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys teams up with industrial dance producer Bryan 'Boom Bip' Hollon to concoct an electropop homage to the 1980s. Not just musically but culturally as this is a concept album about the rise and fall of car tycoon John DeLorean. And the DeLorean itself is a significant 1980s icon, immortalised in 'Back To The Future' and lately featured in 'Ashes To Ashes'. So cue a story of celebrity, power, girls, cars and 1980s greed.

If you don't get the irony of the whole venture you might just miss the point. But if you were weaned on New Order, Yazoo, Depeche Mode and the sauciness of early period Prince and the disco shennanigans of Bobby O and Miami Sound Machine then you'll think you've died and gone to heaven. It's a tongue in cheek pastiche of these and the soft rock bombast of Foreigner et al. It's a mash of swirling synths, sequencers and those lovely crashing synth drums that every 80s pop record swiped off Bowie's 'Low' and these are given a soulful caress with the smooth vocals from Rhys. It's a bubblegum electro fantasy that's so endearingly cheesy and yet sits comfortably alongside the likes of Daft Punk with its retro sound that catches power pop, library music and a 1980s 'lust for power'.

The only problems with it are the attempts to do hip-hop on 'Trick For Treat' and 'Luxury Pool'. It's not a musical form I particularly like and I can understand why the songs are done in this style as part of the 1980s conceptualisation but for me they don't work alongside such deliciously gorgeous pop delights as 'I Lust U' and 'Raquel'. The fall of the DeLorean empire is charted in the Numan-esque pop croon of 'Belfast' with its stabbing sequencers and swathes of analogue synths and the hilarious break with the 'nightmarish' keyboard sounds. "I Told Her On Alderaan" is all snares, spoken word and an insistent chorus whilst "Steel Your Girl", all nursery rhyme soft rock guitar and jittery synths and I couldn't suppress a guffaw at the squirmy "Michael Douglas" and its repetitious 'Michael Douglas, he's in sunglasses' refrain.

Neon Neon's 'Stainless Style' reflects an era and both pastiches and honours it consistently and as the very title suggests whilst we may think of the 1980s as all style and no substance both Rhys and Hollon have attempted to go beyond the superficiality by choosing DeLorean as their subject matter and an exemplar of where it all went wrong in that period. It's an eccentric, playful, often hilarious, album and those synths and snares are to die for.

Stainless Style - NEON NEON (LEX LEX067CD Released 17th March 2008)

BBC4 - 9th April 2008 - 9.00pm

I'm getting a little irate at the critics moaning on and on about how unfunny these four films have been. 'Where is the laughter?' they continue to cry. Er...I think the whole lot of them have completely missed the point of the entire season. The private lives of Bramble, Corbett, Hancock, Green and Howerd, according to received wisdom, were not conspicuously 'jolly' affairs. Said journalists have fallen into that rather limited view that any and every comedian should automatically have an hilarious private life. They must be funny on and off stage. Which is nonsense, of course. What the four films clearly show is that these were men emotionally disconnected from loving human relationships either by societal or psychological pressures involving drink, drugs and sex. Strangely, the bleakness of their situations does have a blackly comic edge in all four films.

'Rather You Than Me' is slightly different. I found the 'love story' between Frankie Howerd and his long suffering partner, Dennis Heymer, heartbreaking. Howerd is portrayed as a man constantly at war with his physicality, fighting sexual impulses that he finds intolerable, and overly sensitive to the interconnectedness of his intimacy, personal privacy and career.

We join the story in the mid-1950s when Howerd went out of fashion for a period. The vacuum at the centre of his career is not just down to his poor material, poorly presented, and the drama suggests that this crisis is entwined within the emotional fall-out of the abuse at the hands of his father and the turmoil of how to handle his relationship with Dennis. For me, personally, the intensity of Howerd's psychological battering and the intensity of Dennis' clear love for Howerd are what the film has set out to depict. It s not about how funny this man was. It is about how he handled the undinting love and support from Heymer. The drama therefore skews the focus of its intent to Heymer and in doing so presents a superb performance from Rafe Spall. Spall is utterly convincing as the devoted Heymer - tender and loving with Howerd when they first meet and then, after an affair and a potential new life is curtailed, resigned to 'mothering' the insecure comedian. But Spall captures Heymer's own mix of frustration and admiration with Howerd and gives us a gay man who isn't a cliche and who is dealing with an unconventional relationship that actually does, I suspect, still represent similar conflagrations in the here and now. It's very real, very tender but also, because of Howerd's aversion to himself, his body and his sexuality, a life where Heymer was kept at arm's length and took on roles as housewife, chaffeur and agent but never really as a lover. We did glimpse Heymer happy, briefly, in a guilt free affair but this sits oddly in the drama as if to say, it's alright, he's a had a good seeing to and can now go back and suffer with Howerd, although the implication was he was about to leave him. It was more a tokenistic bit of salve for the audience I think.

Walliams is good but I think he struggles to make Howerd as real as Spall's Dennis Heymer. There is a whiff of 'doing an impression' here that other performers like Jason Isaacs, Ken Stott and Trevor Eve have managed to avoid in the series. It's a slight shame as some sequences, such as the LSD treatment and the death of Howerd's mother, actually do demonstrate a much more sensitive handling of the Howerd character. But this disappointment is also perhaps tangled up in both viewers and critics alike demanding that Walliams be 'funny' in the role. So I can see the slight struggle going on there. That said, he did get much more right than wrong and there are some quite lovely bits of self-deprecation that are truly Howerd. He wants his wig put on the teapot and claims the advice of "It steams it. Keeps the contours." by way of Bette Davis, to which Dennis retorts amusingly "I think she was taking the piss, Frankie".

This is followed by Howerd's confession to Dennis about his sexually abusive father. Walliams quite rightly doesn't do histrionics here, not Frankie's style, and tells the horrific story dispassionately. It's upsetting and I think is the keynote difference between Howerd and the other actors/comedians in the series. Bramble and Hancock are trapped by drink and repression, Green is selfish and self-destructive, Corbett is frustrated by a dying career. Howerd is crippled by his childhood and his psychological problems are not of his own making it would seem. He has been abused whereas the others tended to abuse themselves. In this light, I think it makes Howerd a much more sympathetic soul and you can understand why Dennis decided to stay and look after the poor man.

Again, we get a faithful recreation of the 'Frankie On Campus' gig at the Oxford Union, which at the time was another turning point in his career, good period and domestic detail underlined with particular songs on the soundtrack. John Alexander directs this with great skill and Peter Harness' script is a fine tribute to Dennis Heymer, essentially the centre of the story and, quite clearly, a man of remarkable patience and forgiveness.

A stunning piece of work that quite literally had me holding my breath for over an hour. Spall deserves a much credit for making Dennis and his love for Howerd so emotionally real. Walliams shows that he does have the potential to take on bigger dramatic roles and whilst he often stumbles into becoming a caricature-like clash between Howerd and himself, he deserves credit for taking on a pretty impossible task.

BBC 1 - 5th April 2008 - 6.20pm

'Donna Noble...Health & Safety'

'Oh, it's a beautifully fat country. Believe me, I travelled a long way to find obesity on this scale'

'Oh...oh, I don't think so.'

Before anyone dismisses the plot of 'Partners In Crime', and it could easily be the case as it languishes in the midst of capers, comedy and CGI, I would suggest it might be worth sparing a thought about the meaning behind Russell T. Davies' rather sly dig at 'Supernanny'. Sarah Lancashire's Miss Foster, a galactic mix of Jo Frost and Mary Poppins, amusingly recalls recent government initiatives to recruit a bunch of "supernannies". He touches on some quite sensitive issues which Blair and Brown were hoping to solve - irresponsible parents and guardians who hire in childcare and the effect of bad parenting on the underclass. The story isn't about the Adipose children being the evil, undisciplined alien monster of the week at all. It's about the underlying problem that parenting is becoming far more difficult in a universe where resources and time are increasingly scarce, where society is becoming ever more selfish (the Adipose pills trade on the superfoods, slimming and diet fixations with obesity), and where childhood is so integrated into economic systems that it becomes the object of enormous commercial pressures (the Adipose break the law to seed other planets and create their brood on the back of vanity and greed).

The dilemmas of parenting is notionally the Adipose narrative but Russell T. Davies feeds in other sub-plots. In his supremely amusing re-introduction of Donna, we are treated to two very key scenes about parental relationships. As Donna sits morosely in her mother's kitchen, director James Strong dilates time with a series of striking dissolves as her mother hurls abuse at her about her failed career and social life. This is then balanced by a very heartfelt and warm scene between Donna and her grandfather, Wilf, on his allotment. Wilf is not judgemental at all and offers a wiser outlook on Donna's destiny. Parenting is a tough act and the stakes could not be higher than the responsibility of bringing kids into the world and bringing them up as rounded and worthwhile beings. The Adipose solution is to hire a supernanny...just like Blair and Brown. Donna's solution is to find her destiny with the Doctor much to the glee of her grandfather Wilf.

'Partners In Crime', despite the serious undertones of this message, is a frothy caper, part Spencer Tracey/Katherine Hepburn romantic comedy and part Ealing satire with Tennant and Tate immediately sparking off each other. The gloriously fun opening half where both the Doctor and Donna breach security at Adipose headquarters but still narrowly miss bumping into each other in the open plan office and later in the street is great physical comedy cheekily directed by James Strong and given a springy score by Murray Gold that also has hints of the music for 'The Runaway Bride'.

Strong is adept at sweeping camera moves, visions of symmetry and using dissolves. When the Doctor is examining the pendant in the TARDIS, he moves the camera around and up, then dissolves to a wider angle to reinforce that the Doctor is alone, talking to himself in an empty TARDIS. This underscores the lack of an audience identification figure that will later, of course, be filled by Donna. He imbues the episode with a sense of time passing with these sequences and tops it off with that further dissolve of the office clock as Donna hides in the loo.

The height of the Doctor/Donna dynamic is the superb encounter across Miss Foster's office whilst she interrogates the journalist. It's fantastically performed,timed and edited and is very funny indeed. The crisply constructed parallel investigations by the Doctor and Donna are expertly extended until the tension is relieved by this sublime visual gag. Their interplay then becomes a series of witty one liners and non-sequiturs that punctuate the episode. Donna's mention of her trip to Egypt 'all guide books and don't drink the water' is both funny and clever in the way it signals Donna's realisation that her wanderlust is far from satisfied and can only be cured by pairing up with the Doctor. She also quite rightly emphasises the changes in the Doctor through her discussions with him about Martha and her observation that this time he isn't intending to kill the Adipose offspring unlike his vengeance on the Racnoss children.

It doesn't matter in the end that the animated blobs of fat are just simply that. The CGI is good in some sequences, particularly where they are massing in the streets, but very unrealistically cartoonish in others, especially close up. They function symbolically and are intended as non-threatening which is actually quite a refreshing change and those predicting they may turn nasty were probably a bit disappointed. Many will no doubt find them cute. They're not pivotal to the re-establishment of the Doctor and Donna partnership. The effects for the Adipose nursery are very good, if rather borrowed from 'Close Encounters' and the final sequence of Donna waving from the TARDIS only just about achieves the right effect but looks a bit odd visually. The stunt work and effects on the falling cradle sequence are to be commended though.

Tennant and Tate are wonderfully supported by Bernard Cribbins, instantly loveable as Wilf, and Jacqueline King as the waspish Sylvia. Sarah Lancashire finely balances her performance as the villainous Miss Foster and steers it the right side of being a tongue in cheek Bond style adversary. She did remind me a little too much of the equally excellent Samantha Bond in the pilot for 'Sarah Jane Adventures' though. Which is fine as this story would not look out of place in that spin-off series. There is an over reliance here on the use of the sonic screwdriver as a device to solve problems which does irritate and is compounded by Miss Foster also having a similar device. It's convenience to the plot really needs nipping in the bud now and a Doctor who relies more on his wits would make a pleasant change.

And then there's that reveal of Rose. A superb hook to keep viewers enticed and completely out of the blue despite being aware that Piper was returning to the series at some point. This is obviously a set up that will pay off much further down the line and it's beautifully and mysteriously established.

So, a fun little episode to get the series going. It won't be an award winner and probably won't make the top of the list when the series is over but it's a good start and as with all of Davies' scripts there is always a sub-text to the satire.

Preview clip from next week's drama in BBC4's 'Curse Of Comedy' season. This looks very promising. Lots more Howerd related material, interviews with Walliams and another clip can be found on the BBC Four website, as well as details of the previous three films in the series:

BBC Four - The Curse Of Comedy



Previous reviews:

Hughie Green, Most Sincerely
Hancock And Joan
The Curse Of Steptoe

BBCHD - 4th April 2008 - 9.00pm

'Because you're breaking my heart...'

Torchwood...Torchwood...Torchwood, what are we going to do with you? Save for the last 15 minutes that finale was rather underwhelming. I'll talk about the ending in a moment but first let's just look at what on earth went wrong.

OK. Captain John tells Jack right at the start of the season, remember in 'Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang' that he'd found Gray. We then learn about Gray later in 'Adam'. And that's it. That's all the development that Gray gets until the finale. Jack letting go of Gray's hand is the motivation for not only the bombs in the previous episodes but also for the explosions in Cardiff, the Weevils, the Hoix and the deaths of Owen and Tosh? Chris Chibnall is taking the piss. The wicked brother comes back to punish his sibling. I'd feel it was a good idea if indeed it had been given any dramatic credence in the rest of the series. His imprisonment by creatures is mentioned but we never see it so we never really connect with his pathology. It's a weak basis for a finale. And this is then compounded by poor casting and an actor who simply failed to lift the character off the page. No chemistry between Gray and Jack and no real sense of Gray's sociopathy leaves this with no sense of threat. And Jack forgives him like the big wet fop that he is. It would have been more dramatic for him to kill Gray instead of popping him in the freezer. After all, he's destroyed most of Cardiff, used Captain John and killed two of Jack's colleagues...just because his big brother let go of his ickle handy-wandy!

OK. You have serious rift activity, blow up most of Cardiff and let loose a mass of Weevils. Sorry, not on this budget it seems. Again, big dramatic events that are poorly played out on screen. Where are the traffic jams, the fleeing crowds, the panic? Just a brief shot of burning buildings, some sirens and a scene in a police station where Gwen tries to rally the troops with a stirring speech. Over ambitious to the point where it is just on-screen rhetoric. It betrays the golden rule of telly - show, don't tell! Great to see the Hoix back and love the no nonsense despatch of the reaper figures by Ianto and Tosh but they are too very brief interludes in a game of smoke and mirrors. The nuclear power plant run by an external server? The lack of basic science and research just shows an arrogant disregard for an intelligent audience. Even I know that a power plant would have fail-safes and contingencies to prevent meltdowns. Golden rule of writing - do the bloody research!

And the very confusing bit about Jack crossing his own timeline? Sorry, run that by me again? So he gets exhumed by Victorian Torchwood and, for a man buried for nearly 2000 years, he looks remarkably well preserved, his clothes haven't decayed and he seems psychologically unscathed. Then he is frozen so he doesn't meet himself. So there are two Jacks are there? What sheer nonsense. Another vague idea, very Buffy-esque, with no real thought gone into it. Nice to see more of Victorian Torchwood but the whole Jack dead, Jack alive burial feels like one more silly idea too many. Penance, indeed!

Welcome back to Captain John, played impeccably by James Marsters, who at least manages to convey a man under duress, hating what he's forced to do, and finally coming good in the end. I say dump John Barrowman, whose acting this year has resembled something hanging in a butcher's window, and replace him with Marsters. Jack has, I'm afraid, become a dull old sod.

The real saviour of this episode is Naoko Mori. She turned in a stupendous performance as Tosh. The whole of her death scene and the two hander with Owen was very well done, deeply affecting and very emotionally real. My main gripe is that as this played out I wondered where everyone had got to - did Gwen, Jack, Ianto and John just bugger off for a fag break? - and that gave it an artificiality that lessened its impact. But I will so miss Naoko and the Toshiko character and she rescued this rather risible affair and elevated it to proper drama. Burn almost made me like Owen too but ever since they made him a zombie I just knew it wasn't sustainable. It was a likely outcome that he would finally die. But a very sad ending for both characters.

A terribly flawed last episode, full of thin, puffed up ideas, epic events of little or no dramatic consequences that struggled to imply a massive canvas, a vengeful sibling about as threatening as a plank of wood in the end, that boiled down to the deaths of Tosh and Owen. 'Torchwood' is so accident prone as a series and this second year has been an improvement but it's still producing only a handful of good episodes. My vote would go to 'Reset' as the best of the lot, followed closely by 'To The Last Man', 'Dead Man Walking' and 'Adrift'. It needs a better show runner and hopefully Chris Chibnall's replacement will be able to fix some of the remaining problems. Make it scary and make it real.


Previous episode reviews:
Fragments
Adrift
From Out Of The Rain
Something Borrowed
A Day In The Death
Dead Man Walking
Reset
Adam
Meat
To The Last Man
Sleeper
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

BBC4 - 3rd April 2008 - 9.00pm

Perhaps the most revealing of all the dramas in this season so far. Tony Basgallop's intricate script presented a side of greasy, game show compare Hughie Green that quite honestly left me gasping for air as much as the titular star of the show.

Central to the success of this was a barnstorming performance by Trevor Eve. He looked like him, he sounded like him. He got that infamous transatlantic drawl to perfection and there were idiosyncratic facial expressions that he caught in the performance. I've a vision of Eve sitting through episodes of 'Opportunity Knocks' and 'The Sky's The Limit' because it's certainly clear he's done his research. Eve made the man an utterly unlikeable, pompous old sod but cleverly, as the drama drew to a conclusion, Green's fall from grace actually tugged at the heartstrings as Eve caught the man's isolation and the ravages of his self-destruction. Couple that with the boozing, shagging and asthma and you've got a performance of Grand Guignol proportions. Compelling.

The story is bookended by childhood trauma. The young Green approaches a slightly ajar door and it's only later as the adult Green drowns in booze, amphetamines and sex that the trauma is revisited and we find out he's on the scene as his mother energetically shags some total stranger as his father sits nearby in tears. The cradle of Green's unpleasantness and his own casual affairs and the emotional scars he causes to his own children stems from this parental wreckage. The birthday party for his own kids where he ends up hogging his son's new train set is again a key scene that tells us what this man is about. He's all self, self, self.

The relationship with Jess Yates, which has obvious consequences later, starts out as almost agreeable but once Green suspects that he's fathered Paula the relationship is all open hostility and rivalry. The hilarious argument over the wearing of a tie is full of undercurrents. Green is being pig-headed not just because he's had control wrested from him on the production of the show but it's Jess that's trying to control him. Equally the pitch to Jeremy Isaacs and Isaacs subsequently seeing Green in full nationalist hubris on television, picking up a phone and requesting: 'Get that man off my channel' are spiky little bits of humour.

The drama then charts the decline of Hughie, his ill health, and pining for the daughter he could never know. He defends her in front of his ex-producer and a tabloid journalist in a smoky gentleman's club and fleetingly witnesses the media scramble as Paula arrives at some awards bash but he never gets close to her and that's the irony. He's spent all his life keeping people at arm's length and treating them like shit and then when he desperately needs human contact the very media he's been manipulating conspires to put a distance between them. You're torn between sadness and a sense of triumph that he's finally been dealt the appropriate hand. And Eve is totally mesmerising in the way he manipulates your feelings. He's supported by Mark Benton as Jess Yates and he's fine but I was troubled by his bald cap makeup and very broad Northern accent. I don't recall Yates sitting at his organ complete with Northern drawl. Emma Stansfield is appropriately cold and calculating as Elaine Yates and comes across as manipulative and as self-destructive as Green. Director Dan Percival again makes great use of a small budget and manages to create significant bits of 'Opp Knocks' (the Lena Zavaroni and the Muscle Man recreations are great) and spookily evokes the period. But his concentration is on getting such a committed performance from Trevor Eve.

That's three excellent productions in a row. Roll on Frankie Howerd next week.

Bumper conclusion to my Series 3 reviews...just in time for Series 4.

Utopia

Originally transmitted 16th June 2007

If the Doctor describes Captain Jack as a still point in the universe then the same could be said of ‘Utopia’ within Series 3. This could be best summed up as a game of two halves.

Davies’ script is more tightly focused on character development and exposition to fill in those gaps in our knowledge that have been waiting to be occupied for some time. Thus we get an explanation for the Doctor abandoning Jack, what exactly happened to Jack when resurrected by Rose and a bit more of Boe’s enigmatic message. All this is complimented by copious flashbacks in a ‘story so far’ re-cap. And then the stillness is shattered by a customary sucker punch from Davies.

Hope the audience has been paying attention up until this point because all of the above is pretty much the driving force for the first half of the episode amidst a rather budget-strapped background story of the last humans attempting to escape to Utopia from the savage, ‘Mad Max’ wannabes, the Futurekind. Some nice little nods to ‘The Time Machine’ (the Morlocks and the Eloi) and ‘When Worlds Collide’ but it’s a bit of a flimsy, sketchy B plot on which to hang the slow burn of the story proper – that of Professor Yana.

It’s a typical Davies touch. Set up a fairly predictable pulp 50s SF scenario but then let that dwindle into the background as the mystery of Professor Yana takes hold. And this is food for Graeme Harper too as he quite stunningly turns up the heat until by the second half and the appearance of the fob watch you fully comprehend the Series 3 tagline ‘two worlds will collide’ with his frenetic inter-cutting of multi-jeopardy paying off with that utterly sublime last act. If you weren’t giddy with excitement at that point, I would check yourself into a clinic for the seriously under-whelmed.

And Jack is the still point. He’s the axis around which two relationships turn, one mirroring the other – the Doctor/Martha and Yana/Chantho. Time Lords and their companions. And it is interesting that the Doctor tows the Time Lord party line opinion on immortals and immortality – ‘just wrong’ – and we all remember what Rassilon thought of the curse of immortality in ‘The Five Doctors’. The scene in the radiation room between Tennant and Barrowman is subtly played out by both actors, their genuine chemistry paying dividends, and leaves you wondering how Jack’s going to cope with the Doctor’s obvious wariness. Will Jack’s immortality be something to sacrifice later down the line?

Derek Jacobi as the unconscious Master, the humanised Time Lord as an echo of ‘Human Nature’, was definitely the highlight of the episode. He found a profoundly moving emotional core in the script and gave a, pardon the pun, master-class in performance. With a subtle physicality he took us through the slow re-awakening of the Master where towards the final reveal, there are tears running down his face as his troubled mind clicks into focus and realisation complimented by some wonderful sound design that included the voices of Delgado, Ainley and even Eric Roberts that I’m sure left classic series lovers with a fixed grin on their faces. A truly triumphant sequence that ends with a turn on a sixpence reveal to camera of Yana’s loss of humanity and the emergence of the Master.

So many parallels to the Eccleston/Tennant regeneration too, with the standing up bodily renewal and the manic Simm testing out his new voice, layered in to ensure viewers really understand what has happened. I think it may be too early to judge Simm’s version of the Master until we get into the story that follows from this introduction.

And we still don’t know why the Master was turned human, nor how he escaped from the Eye Of Harmony after being sucked into it in the 1996 TV Movie, but I suspect much of that will not be referred to as Davies really doesn’t like being a slave to continuity. One thing’s for sure, he’s up to no good with the Doctor’s severed hand.

So, we’ve got a lovely taster for the real showdown with some impressive character moments, particularly from Jacobi, but it’s an episode that only stands up because of the raw power of that second half.


The Sound Of Drums

Originally transmitted 23rd June 2007



"You’ve been watching too much television”

I really think Russell T. Davies needs sectioning. How mad was that 45 minutes of television? That was uber-television written by a caffeine fiend with one finger stuck in an electric socket. It was terribly messy, very explosive, often daft and profound within the space of minutes, scattered with pop references and crowd pleasing scenes, over wrought but often subtle and yet it left you with an amazing high.

See it once and you’re left wondering just what the heck you’ve sat through and you feel both cheated and grateful, thrilled and disappointed. But it’s a Russell script. You need to see it more than once. Preferably, go out somewhere in between viewings and try a bit of rain-soaked reality just to put things in perspective. Believe me, it works.

OK. With one bound and they are free. Fine. Most of us had sort of worked out that the Doctor, Martha and Jack would get away from the Futurekind via Jack’s vortex manipulator. If you didn’t see that coming and you’re complaining it’s a cop-out from last week’s cliffhanger then you didn’t grow up on Saturday morning serials at your local flea-pit and get an appreciation of audience expectation whilst driving narrative forward. It’s a classic Flash Gordon ‘get out of jail free’ card. Enough said apart from mentioning that maybe it shouldn’t have been the opening scene of the episode because Colin Teague’s decisions on pacing and editing often trip the episode up.

The clock is ticking and Russell doesn’t have time to spend back with the Futurekind because he has a huge amount of exposition to dump into the episode to set up for the finale. And perhaps this is where the problem lies with the ‘messy’ feel you initially get from a first viewing of ‘Drums’. There is an awful lot of chatting, nattering, talking going on. It’s a big risk to take whilst also turning up the heat and trying to belt along to another cliffhanger.

‘Drums’ essentially ties up much of the Saxon threads that have been running through the series, explains a lot of the questions about the new Prime Minister whilst also giving us our first full-on encounter with the regenerated Master. Full-on. John Simm careers through the episode being utterly demented, funny, charming and so very, very hard. There are times when he does tip over the edge into self-parody (some of the cabinet scenes, the first meeting with President Winters) but he’s sensitive enough as an actor to know how to pull it back and defuse it with some ruthlessness. Overall, he’s good and the entire scene between him and Tennant over the phone demonstrates the power of both actors to create an on-screen chemistry even though they are not face to face in the scene. It’s certainly one of the best scenes in the whole episode and for my money Tennant underplayed it and quietly stole off with the honours.

The pop references are a mixture of the lazy and the inspired. The cameos from Widdecome et al…well they are becoming a tad repetitive as a device. I really didn’t think they were necessary, not because they aren’t funny but because they are simply an over-used bit of flummery. Bit tired and I’m surprised Russell decided to repeat himself so blatantly. Oh, look and there’s Skybase from ’Captain Scarlet’ and the Teletubbies (itself an amusing nod to the infamous scene of the Master watching ‘The Clangers’ in ‘The Sea Devils’) and the whole notion of a politician like Saxon being a creation of the Master did have a bit of Jeffrey Archer’s own subterfuge about it. And let’s not forget the nod to ‘Logopolis’ with the ‘Peoples of the earth…’ line and also bringing UNIT back into the fold.

The other great scene here is the outlaws – Jack, Martha and the Doctor – sitting down and eating chips together. Tennant, with some help from The Mill, effortlessly conjures up the Gallifrey back-story for us and gives us a glimpse of the young Master looking into the vortex and being driven mad. He is the vengeful god in opposition to lonely god it would now seem. The CGI for Gallifrey was not that impressive but suitable for the comic book strokes that essentially make up most of ‘Drums’. Lovely to see the old Time Lord cossies again too but how much will this mean to a younger audience who are still coming to terms with the existence of the Master? Fan pleasing it may be but, again, Russell’s taking some big risks front-loading the episode with this and the Master’s revival.

Whilst all this is going on, there is a plot unfolding. I liken this to plate-spinning. How many plates can Russell keep spinning all at once without some of them falling to the floor? Quite a few it would seem as the narrative busily unfolds with the desperate journalist trying to reason with Mrs. Saxon (lovely work from Nichola McAuliffe), the gripping destruction of Martha’s flat, the arrest of Clive and Francine, the infiltration of the Valiant (magnificent budget-busting set from Ed Thomas), the killing of the President and the descent of the Toclafane whilst the Doctor is forcibly aged (brilliant prosthetics on Tennant) and the decimation of the populace (‘Lovely word. Decimate’).

It’s the Toclafane that remain both the episode’s biggest mystery and laziest device. Their descent, whilst spectacular, is Russell reaching for his bag of tricks too many times. It’s a repeat of the previous finales from Series 1 and 2 and it simply suffers and lacks impact because it’s no longer original. They’re nasty little things but by not revealing exactly what they are you are left feeling these villains have no real personality to latch onto. You need to fear them and it’s a failing that Russell just doesn’t quite manage to instil that fear here. And the ‘Rogue Traders’ dance number booming out whilst destruction rains down on the world is a barminess which slightly cheapens the climax of the episode for me.

And can I say again how good Freema Agyeman was? Martha’s anger and desperation in this episode helped add further emotional depth and she’s now going to be the focus of the finale it seems. This bodes well for some kind of final restitution with the Doctor after that telling scene with the Doctor and Jack about the perception filter. ‘You too…’ says Jack and perception can only be but a cruel irony at a time like this. This was Barrowman’s best scene along with the revelation about him working for Torchwood in a fairly undemanding outing for the character this time round.

If anything sums up the episode it’s the word ‘antithesis’ – the Master and the Doctor are the reverse of each other, the equal of each other. And they could easily cancel each other out. The structure and pacing of ‘Drums’ does the same. It’s a ramshackle, uneven, audacious and often hilarious bag of tricks with broad comic-strip brush-strokes (it felt like ‘Batman’ and ‘James Bond’ at times) off-set by silent self-reflection from the leading characters. This isn’t the best episode of this year’s series but its epic giddiness and madness manages to please despite an over reliance on formula. And it leads into the finale proper which in turn may well put this episode into a very different perspective.

The Last Of The Time Lords

Originally transmitted 30th June 2007



"Will it stop...will the drumming stop?"

Strange that we’ve had two episodes provoking the same reaction in me: disappointment and delight. It’s a very odd feeling, perched on the edge of your seat, gripped by a piece of television which you know is going to tumble over a hair-pin bend and plunge down a hillside at any minute. As an experience, it’s both ambitious and reckless.

Russell T Davies is now not only frantically spinning numerous plates but he’s also trying to eat off them at the same time as he unveils his narrative. It’s a good, complex story…on paper. I just think it fails, rather badly, in some of the execution.

As soon as ‘One Year Later’ appears on the screen it’s quite obvious that by the end of the story we’ll be back to square one courtesy of the Paradox Machine. It’s a narrative trick that’s become very familiar to television audiences and Davies obviously feels that it’s time for Doctor Who to pull the same trick. No good complaining about it now – it was obvious this was the way the finale would be resolved. The good ol' reset button.

Having said that, the grimness of this post-apocalyptic setting shifted the gears of the story after the over-indulgence of the Master’s humiliation of the Doctor set to a ‘Scissor Sisters’ song. I don’t mind the series referencing songs but again on this occasion it felt a little crass and overdone. The Doctor living in a tent with a dog-bowl outside...how utterly bonkers is that?

The Jones clan and their failed attack on the Master better underlines the frustration and humiliation being metered out and the way hope can bring the survivors of the apocalypse together. The running themes through the season – faith, hope, redemption – are writ large throughout the story, often crudely and simplistically.

The journey across the world that Martha takes is a grand narrative that is hard to compress into 50 minutes and it almost comes off. We are on very sure ground when we get to Martha and Milligan helping Docherty knock out one of the Toclafane. We get great twisted plot points, certainly head and shoulders above the crass elements as outlined above, with the revelation of what the Toclafane are and Docherty’s betrayal. It was a genuinely disturbing moment when Martha realizes she’s talking to the mutated Creet, last seen as a blonde haired poppet in ‘Utopia’. It would seem the Doctor sent the survivors on Malcassairo to Hell rather than Heaven.

He’s turned humans into monsters, as the Master quite rightly points out. For me, this is one of three plot points that make the episode worthwhile. This revelation, the ‘death’ of the Master and Martha’s final choice not to be a typical companion are the major movements that illustrate the Doctor’s ability to be both sinner and saviour. Davies is very heavily emphasising the semi-mystical - religious qualities that have been running in parallel through 'Gridlock' 'The Lazarus Experiment' and 'Human Nature'. The Doctor as Christ picks up on the whole Word made Flesh dogma of Christianity. Certainly this reaches the height of silliness with the Doctor’s floating, glowing form swishing across the room and then him offering forgiveness to the Master. Better to have de-aged him and just got on with it because the whole, shining body of Christ metaphor is truly awful.

The Gandhi-like concept of using non-violent means – words actually - to defeat your enemies is to be applauded and the Doctor forgiving the Master is a magnificent way of pulling the rug from under him. It’s the worst thing the Doctor could have done to him. The ‘death’ of the Master was a very powerful moment, Simm and Tennant both providing the story with an emotional breakdown and an end to the Master’s dark Dionysian orgy of destruction. The drumming does indeed stop. The fact that this scene then turns into a victory of sorts for the Master is the icing on the very big cake we’ve all been trying to eat. The acting from both leads is terrific.

However good that scene is, it is totally undermined by two things – the clichéd ‘Return Of The Jedi’ funeral pyre and the super clichéd ‘Flash Gordon’ recovery of the Master’s ring. These scenes don’t add anything at all to the power of the ‘death’ scene and they are easy, convenient ways to keep the plot going. Too many lazy cliches fail to enrich this grand narrative. It’s typical Davies plotting and characterisation – he sets up some stunning piece of character development and then ten minutes later can’t resist putting in a crass pop reference or forgets his set-up and contradicts his own rules. It is one of the dangers of being both the show-runner and the writer. And don’t get me going on the 900-year old wizened little Doctor. Fancy reducing your leading actor to a piece of CGI that doesn’t convince and what is an intended humiliation for the Doctor then also spills out into the execution of the scenes. It doesn’t work.

And so the paradox is undone and the whole year of Martha traipsing across the world carrying the Word Of God is just a memory for those pinned to floor of the Valiant. The power of thinking and the power of words revitalises the Doctor and all is re-set. The world is recreated in the Doctor’s image – the human race once again doesn’t know who he is and that’s the way he likes it. At this point I had a flashback to the 1996 TV Movie and suddenly realised that an awful lot of 'Time Lords' felt very familiar - countdowns, taking time back, the Master....

Martha is a changed woman by the conclusion of the story and although the Doctor senses this change he decides to bluff his way into keeping her on board. It’s a brave decision for the series to take the companion out of the narrative just at the moment we think she has become more than the typical companion. She’s just as good as Rose but she’s got her own counsel now and realises it is time to ‘get out’. Martha’s growth has been one of the consistent threads of the series and it quite beautifully pays off here with a fantastic performance from Freema. I’m sure we’ll be seeing her again soon.

Finally, the Titanic crashes into the TARDIS. Oh, well. The beautiful ‘departure’ of Martha is completely undercut by a daft looking conclusion. The Davies formula strikes again. Never mind, we can at least savour some wonderful performances from the leading actors apart from John Barrowman who basically didn’t get a great deal to do apart from shoot the Paradox machine. But…wouldn’t that destroy the solar system? I clearly remember the Doctor’s warning even if the writer doesn’t. Perhaps that’s why the Titanic crashed into the TARDIS. It seems to sum up the state of the narrative in this particular episode too.

Series Three has been the most consistent run of episodes so far but it saddens me to think that both ‘Drums’ and ‘Time Lords’ are not the best of this run and of the Davies’ episodes this year ‘Gridlock’ is far better than these. They are very entertaining episodes but I feel that repetition and formula, leaps of logic and cod mysticism are starting to spoil the party. Epic in scale they may be but they only work on that very human level that exists between Martha, the Doctor and the Master. Without them, they are fairly hollow experiences.