Now showing on BBC America and on the official site is this new extended trailer for the forthcoming five part Torchwood saga Children Of Earth.

The official BBC site still sheds no light on an actual transmission date but the odds on are that it'll be towards the end of June. BBC America have it advertised as July for their broadcast.

Blurb from the official site:

"In one epic story told over five nights the new series, to be broadcast for the first time on BBC One later this year, promises to be Torchwood's greatest adrenalin-fuelled, high octane adventure yet.

Torchwood: Children of Earth re-joins Captain Jack (John Barrowman), Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) who are still coming to terms with the death of two of their closest friends. Despite their pain, they have a job to do.

This time they are faced with their fiercest threat to date - one which throws the future of Torchwood and the entire human race spiralling into danger. They battle against the odds but do they stand a chance of saving mankind?"



Also note that a series of Torchwood radio plays will be airing in the Radio 4 Afternoon Play slot before the 5 part story transmits on BBC1.

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"We should show them (children) that evil is something they already know about or half know. It's not something right outside themselves and this immediately puts it, not only into their comprehension, but it also gives them a degree of power" - Catherine Storr

The late John Nathan-Turner, producer of Doctor Who for nearly a decade, used to upbraid fans with a little saying: "the memory cheats", when responding to the brickbats hurled at him that Doctor Who under his leadership was not as good as it had been in the past. He suggested that viewers of the series often had a rose-tinted recollection of older episodes, believing them to be better than they actually were. Indeed, older Doctor Who fans were rather rudely disturbed from their staunch opinions about classic episodes of the series when in 1992 all four episodes of Tomb Of The Cybermen were returned to the BBC and subsequently released on video. What had been enthusiastically built up into...like...one of the best stories...like...evah! actually turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

Would I be in for a disappointment?

And so we turn to Escape Into Night. I have as vivid a memory of this as I have of Yeti's in the Underground, Cybermen in sewers, Victoria screaming at parasitic weed creatures. Disturbing images of a dark, empty house on a hill and a boy trapped inside by nightmarish stone creatures with one eye. At the tender age of ten this put the screaming ab-dabs up me. So, with some trepidation, and bearing in mind Nathan-Turner's mantra "the memory cheats", I turned to Network's DVD release of the series. Would I be in for a disappointment? The serial had a good pedigree. Adapted from the book Marianne Dreams written by Catherine Storr in 1958, the story concerns a young girl, bedridden by an illness (a riding accident in the television version), who occupies her time by drawing in her scrapbook with an old pencil. Strangely, whatever she draws she subsequently dreams about and it seems to become real. The house, the unhappy young boy, the stairs, a bed and food all materialise in her nightmares. Uncannily, the boy, Mark, also exists in the real world, and his illness is related to Marianne by her home tutor, Miss Chesterfield. A rather antagonistic relationship develops between the two children as they meet in her dreams and in a blaze of anger she draws bars at the window of the house and huge one eyed boulders as a barrier around the house to prevent him from escaping.

...she's also exorcising her fears, frustrations and boredom

Storr's book is regarded as a children's classic, dealing with often dark and problematic themes: mortality, illness, fear. But it also explores the connection between dreams and reality, the consequences of your ill-informed actions and how they will affect others. The dilemma for Marianne is to find a way of helping the dream version of Mark to recover enough from his illness (for the real world Mark it's eventually stated as polio) and help him escape from the house and the encroaching row of stone cyclops. In doing so, she's also exorcising her fears, frustrations and boredom, perhaps linked to her own, and the real Mark's difficult passage, not just through a serious illness such as polio, but also through the choppy waters of adolescence.



Enter producer and script editor Ruth Boswell (Timeslip, The Tomorrow People and The Feathered Serpent amongst others) who took the idea of commissioning a serial based on the book to Head Of Children's TV at ATV, Alan Coleman. The serial, with newcomers Vikki Chambers and Steven Jones as Marianne and Mark respectively, originally made in colour in 1972, now only exists as black and white telecine recordings and it is these that have made their way onto DVD. It was also one of the first outside broadcasts for drama put together by ATV, with the house set built on location at Aldridge in Walsall by set designer Don Davidson. It certainly lodged in the minds of impressionable young viewers, myself included, and has inspired other versions of the same story, a film Paperhouse, directed by Bernard Rose in 1988 and an opera by Andrew Lowe-Watson that was premiered in 2004 from a libretto written by Storr herself before she died in 2001.

An undercurrent clearly exists regarding absentee and dysfunctional father figures

So, what does it feel like to watch the serial as an adult in 2009? Obviously, it has that fuzzy nostalgia attached to it that certainly helps you overlook its meagre budget, leisurely pace and theatricality. Vikki Chambers clearly isn't as naturalistic an actor as Steven Jones. I found Jones quietly impressive, with an ability to put a great deal of emotion into the lines, presenting them in a natural, conversational style. Chambers often puts the emphasis in her lines in the wrong places, committing some of the cardinal sins of children acting by coming across as slightly shrill and unnatural. Despite that, this never infantilises the characters (even though Marianne does act childishly it's for the greater dramatic purpose of rescuing Mark) and doesn't talk down to children. The relationship between Marianne and Mark is as complex as that between her mother and the visiting tutor Miss Chesterfield. Mind you, the viewer gets as exasperated with Marianne as much as as her mother does.

There's definitely a tension between the two women that's subtly played out by the excellent Patricia Maynard, as Chesterfield, and Sonia Graham, as Mrs Austen. An undercurrent clearly exists regarding absentee and dysfunctional father figures with Mrs. Austin bringing up Marianne more or less on her own (a theme reinforced in the book by inclusion of the rather frightening and deranged blind father). It's as much about the relationships between parent and child as it is about male and female roles. This theme also plays out in a rather nightmarish sequence in the third and fourth episodes when Marianne has a relapse and has a distorted vision of all the adult figures that surround her, including Dr. Burton, the local GP.



That said, both the young actors and adult performers drive the story forward and keep you interested and the scenes set in Marianne's 'dreams', in the empty house, are heightened by stark sets (suggesting the crudity of Marianne's pencil drawings), moody lighting and sound effects (the muttering and whispering of the stone watchers, the singular ticking of a clock). The surreal, eerie quality of these scenes could quite easily be seen as a precursor to the similarly haunted environments of that other ATV classic, Sapphire And Steel. I would go as far to say that by only being available in black and white the serial avoids the usual distancing effects of studio-bound colour productions of the period. If you compare this to episodes of The Tomorrow People and Doctor Who from the same period it gains more credibility and atmosphere because much of the cheapness, over-lighting and disastrous tonal colour palette of studio based productions is eliminated.

...the one eyed stones gradually advance on the house

Despite the passage of time and the low production values, there is still something compelling about the serial. Richard Bramall's direction uses slow dissolves and abrupt edits to wrong-foot you, leaving you wondering which parts of the story are the dream and which are the reality. The last two episodes really ramp up the tension as the two children bicker and the one eyed stones gradually advance on the house, their weird electronic voices warbling 'We're coming' in the background. Their escape by bicycle is full of connotations from playground games like Grandmother's Footsteps where they have to hide in the intermittent darkness whilst a lighthouse, drawn by Marianne, temporarily blinds the boulders. Terrific stuff.

Does the memory cheat here? Yes, I suppose it does but then that's partly because I'm watching it as a cynical 47 year old, and like a lot of children's television that's buried in the archives and only to see the light of day decades later, I tend to have more exciting, half remembered versions in my head that bear little relation to what you eventually see on DVD. What would a 10 year old make of this serial now, I wonder? The most important thing you can take away from this is that children's drama does seem to be in a parlous state these days when you compare contemporary output to the riches of the mid to late 1970s. It would be great to see a new version adapted for television but I suspect Storr's directness in dealing with evil, fear and illness would be severely toned down and the impact would be lessened.

Thanks to the BBC's h2g2 entry on Escape Into Night for the details about Catherine Storr and www.aldridge-web.com for the ATV location shooting background details.

ESCAPE INTO NIGHT - The Complete Series (Network DVD 7953015 - Region 2 - Released 18th May 2009 - Cert 12)

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BBC1 - 25th May 2009 - 9.00pm

“I feel different. I feel better. You haven’t seen the best of me. Before I go I think you’re going to be really surprised because I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

"He'll strain a muscle doing that"

"How would you know? You've never had a proper girlfriend!"
"I've had plenty - just never done enough to get stuck with one. I'm like Liberace."
"...what, a poofter?"
"...no, no!! ...I'm like the other one... what's it... Valentino, that's it. I'm like Valentino."

"Can't we talk hypothetically?" "Oh, let's"

Hmm. I got the distinct feeling that Series 2 was treading water here. Matt Graham and Ashley Pharaoh are obviously reluctant to give away too much at this stage but by playing their cards a little too close to their chest the series has delivered a couple of episodes now that are little more than exercises in playing for time. After the last two episodes it would appear to me to have been a major mistake to kill off Super Mac so early in the series. I felt that they could have got a little more out of the character and his entanglement in Operation Rose, given us more of the Masons angle and the threat to send Gene to Plymouth. It would have kept the series simmering nicely. Instead, it's gone slightly off the boil before what I presume will be a much needed cliffhanger ending to the series.

...it's unusual for Ashes To Ashes to bore me with its weekly 'crime plot'

That's not to say Episode Six wasn't enjoyable. It still had its moments but Jack Lothian's script distinctly lacked something. It was slightly humourless in much of the opening half and his sub-plot characters, the suitably twisted threesome of loan-shark Trevor Riley (a wonderfully slimy performance from Sam Spruell), poor old Donna Mitchell (Daisy Haggard) and Stanley (the always excellent Tom Georgeson) were each unsympathetically bound within the somewhat dull story of the death of Donna's husband Colin Mitchell. None of them were particularly appealing people, which I expect is the point considering the machinations of their relationships, and it's unusual for Ashes To Ashes to bore me with its weekly 'crime plot' but it did this week. And not caring about the victims and the perpetrators of crime didn't quite help sell the plot to me which I have to say I found slightly irritating in that it was fairly easy to work out 'whodunnit'.



Last week's at least had the gimmick of Alex's 14 year old husband to propel the story along but this just felt like a routine cop-show plot about loan-sharks and adultery with a few bones thrown to those of us hungry to get to the bottom of Operation Rose. The most dramatic part was indeed the revelation that it wasn't the nasty loan shark or the upwardly mobile wife that killed Colin but his own father, Stanley. Tom Georgeson effectively rescued the episode's main story with Stanley's moving confession and I could see how Lothian was attempting to use the relationships between Colin, Donna and Stanley as a reflection of the more interesting developments for our main characters.

...it's interesting to see a very vulnerable side of Gene

Suffice it to say, the joy in this episode came from those developing relationships between Alex and Gene, Alex and Ray and the Ray, Chris and Shaz triumvirate. There were several scenes between Alex and Gene that I thought worked very well. The impromptu talk to the Neighbourhood Watch was hilarious with Gene's admonishments to take the law into your own hands ("well, just make sure the bugger's still breathing when you ring 999") nervously being countered by Alex ("well, technically, that's still assault..."). A nicely played double act rounded off by the sombreness of the interview with Stanley. When Gene is set upon by Trevor's thugs (a beating he seems to miraculously bear little physical injuries from), it's interesting to see a very vulnerable side of Gene as he sits in the cell, licking his wounds and contemplating his next move. Later, Gene stapling Riley's tie to a desk, Gene's 'warrant' and the outrageous sequence in the car crushing yard were all very entertaining moments in counterpoint to the somewhat humiliated man being comforted by Alex in a cell.

...great use of Dean and Marshall's ability at physical comedy

There is also further evidence stacking up about Ray's sexuality. Hints have been dropped all the way through the first series and in much of this series too that Ray is overcompensating because he feels internally his masculinity is under threat. Hence, we get that bizarre little conversation on Donna's doorstep where he considers himself similar to, at first, Liberace (obviously gay) and then to Valentino (a far more sexually ambiguous man who was oft rumoured to be gay) and his immediate retort of "it's a poof's car" when Alex asks him to describe what he sees at the crime scene. We've seen a different side to Ray this series and the interplay between him and Alex over the use of psychological profiling was great and showed finally he was willing to open up to Alex as his superior officer and learn something. Ray and Chris had some great scenes too. Their blundering about trying to inform Donna about Colin's death and having to steal the Porsche whilst Alex and Gene break into an office and are interrupted by the arrival of Trevor were very funny and made great use of Dean and Marshall's ability at physical comedy. The arguments between Shaz and Chris about their impending wedding added a different dimension to their relationship but Monserrat Lombard has been so short changed this series with Shaz ending up being little more than a secretary. For heaven's sake give her more to do.



The key turning point for Alex was certainly the moment she witnessed her own operation in 2008. This signaled the conclusion to an arc running through the last five episodes indicating her body's been discovered, she's in a coma and it's touch and go that an operation will bring her round. The success of the operation and her recovery in 1982 is gloriously celebrated by the bump and grind of Donna Summer's I Feel Love on the soundtrack and a quip from Gene, "Just as long as you're not tripping all over the place like Norman bloody Wisdom" and later ironically symbolised by Summers sending her a bunch of wilted roses. This cycle also fits with the other relationships - Chris and Shaz's row being resolved, Alex's leaving letters that she then takes back (loved the comment from Chris "didn't understand a bloody word of mine" and Ray's protest of "I'm not repressed or whatever it bloody said") with the notable respect from Gene who has not opened his letter and admitting he'd miss her if she went. Endings of a sort in preparation for the final two episodes. And when Alex hears from the future that the patient in Room 5 is having a seizure are we to assume that this is the same patient we saw right at the beginning of the series and/or is Martin Summers? Or a future Gene?

So there was a lot to enjoy but Lothian's script was by far the weakest of the season, a sub-standard crime plot bolstered by some nice character moments and humour, with a good supporting cast that managed to keep the episode going and excellent work from our reliable regulars. However, it flagged and it's main failing was to apply little significance to Gene's violent humiliation and Alex's recovery from the operation when it's obvious these are the two major scenes around which everything else in the episode hangs. A strange directorial and editorial choice but perhaps deliberately so.

Series Two Reviews:

Episode One review
Episode Two review
Episode Three review
Episode Four review
Episode Five review

Series One Reviews:

Episode Eight review
Episode Seven review
Episode Six review
Episode Five review
Episode Four review
Episode Three review
Episode Two review
Episode One review

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Ian Wylie A2A Blog

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And so we draw the final curtain. The filming on the last two specials concludes tomorrow. David Tennant completed filming yesterday. And Upperboat must feel like a house with all the children gone. Here's Russell on BBC Wales tonight (live from the TARDIS, no less) and my word he looks like he can't quite fathom the reason why he decided to leave in the first place.

Oh, and note that the BBC Wales newsroom can't even get the poor man's first name spelt correctly at the top of the item. I do hope someone got a slapped wrist for that.

The end of an era.



Video courtesy of Tim Drury on You Tube.

BBC1 - 18th May 2009 - 9.00pm

'I told you, I'm having nothing to do with this' 'You...girl!'

'TV in the afternoons? It's for students with greasy 'air and the clinically insane'

'Bols. Don't cry. That's an order.'

'I have seen a bloke from Billericay balance a budgie on 'is 'ampton Wick...but I have never, ever seen anything like that before'

Hold on to your bootstraps for a terrific opening including the slightly creepy Keith Harris and Orville the Duck sending us messages about Alex's status in the future, the dumping of one of the criminal fraternity on the back of a French juggernaut and Chris' hilarious aversion to mime artists. Meanwhile Gene and Alex ponder the media treatment of the Met and are suddenly called to the house of Molly's father. And he's fourteen.

I wasn't totally bowled over by this episode. The story about notorious gangster George Staines defying his own death only to undergo a sex change and return to his, or should that be her, old manor as Gaynor Mason was crude and rather unpleasant. The subject matter didn't bother me as it's yet another variation on the theme of the threat to the series' depiction of masculinity by all manner of 'other' - be they gays, strong women, prossies et al - that is rapidly running out of steam. I mean, how many more times do we have to see Ray Carling fumble his way through a story, either as a lure for a gay criminal or, in this case, on the receiving end of the words of transexual wisdom, only for his maleness to be ritually humiliated. Far more interesting here was the doubt in Ray's mind about his career in the Met and a possible future in the army. It's the lack of sensitivity, using the transexual angle simply as a plot twist (and a rather obvious one at that) and the feeling that we've been here too many times before that marks out the weaknesses in Julie Rutterford's script. Not Gene's finest hour either, it has to be said, even if Rutterford attempts to ease our consciences by showing how sensitive Gene really is by the lovely way he treats old ladies.

...a real disappointment that a popular drama isn't clever enough to destabilise ingrained prejudices with real wit

Sara Stewart's performance as Gaynor also teetered into kitsch, almost too broad to be contained within the television frame, and whilst often amusing ('found 'im doing the fandango with my best friend, so I told 'im where to shove his castanets') she never really managed to untangle the character from the caricature and offer us more empathy. She was, however, very strong in her confrontation with Gene, at least insisting on a transexualism that stood up to the hardships and resistance encountered when undergoing transition, and where gender identity is not, in and of itself, the thing in question for transexual people.

Alex's bedside conversation almost rescues Gaynor from stereotype and there is yet again another undercurrent about Ray's sexuality in that last scene between him and Gaynor. However, this stereotyping is again illustrative of one of the series major faults; where it crudely brandishes its gender politics, racial or immigrant issues as 'issue of the week' and often does little more than pay lip service and is often left to do little more than mock the issues. It's a very fine line and the series has only fitfully managed to attempt anything resembling a sensitive approach. It can be argued that this is a period drama and the identity politics featured in it would reflect the very non-PC attitudes of the times but I was always under the impression that it was a period drama that had a unique perspective by allowing its main character, be that Sam Tyler or Alex Drake, to redress these expressions with at least some form of critique. Alex barely managed to articulate any kind of criticism of the heterosexual male attitudes to transexualism, those then purely played for Carry On style laughs, and that's a real disappointment that a popular drama isn't clever enough to destabilise ingrained prejudices with real wit.



A shame really, because the sub-plots involving Alex are far more refined. Her eventual meeting with the teenage Peter Drake, later to become her ex-husband and father to Molly, is much better stuff and played excellently by Keeley Hawes and Perry Millward. Again, it picks up on the the series' ongoing themes of the relationship between adults and children but here does give it a genuinely interesting twist in that it's also the relationship between a wife and a husband too. It's interesting too that Alex's own prejudices against a father who eventually abandons Molly are reversed to a point when Peter clobbers Gaynor after realising it was she who burgled the Drakes' house. I also thought Keeley was rather good when she's chatting to Bryan Drake in hospital about how he'll be a fantastic grandparent and how he was the only one who supported her when Peter left her with Molly. The unresolved sexual tension between Alex and Gene is also very present, with little flickers of jealousy about Alex meeting 'Boris Johnson' and that moving scene in the office when Alex is crying about Gaynor's treatment of the Drakes.

Is Martin Summers just another Frank Morgan?

The major reason for enjoying this, apart from the interaction between Alex and Peter, and Alex persuading Ray to stay in the force, is the first meeting between Alex and Martin Summers. It's a marvellous scene because it doesn't provide any easy answers. If this is all a coma induced reverie being provided by Alex's subconscious then Martin Summers is a product of her own mind and will know everything she knows. He isn't from 2008, is he? However, the series teases us constantly (there have been plenty of red herrings so far this year about people knowing about Alex and 2008) and what compels us to watch is the idea that 1982 is real, that Gene and company are real, this is time travel, an alternate reality and that Martin is from the same place as Alex. Life On Mars was about a coma survivor returning to the 1973 in his head. Is Ashes To Ashes necessarily going to be the same? Is Martin Summers just another Frank Morgan, another figure attempting to get Alex to undertake an act of betrayal, to become corrupt? When he describes his own 'slow and painful death' is he in fact referring to the man in the 2008 hospital bed we saw right at the beginning of the series?



Director Philip John makes a pretty decent job out of a flawed script - that great point of view shot of Metal Mickey's head down the loo, that sudden close up of Elsie Staines' gas fire and then the neatly edited sequence of Gene's grilling by the Commissioner on the phone; Alex's rather Gene like interrogation of Metal Mickey; and Chris suffering from nicotine withdrawal whilst planting a seed of parental doubt in Mickey's mind (nicely played by Neal Barry) - all underscored by 'Under Pressure' by Queen/Bowie. The scene between Alex and Martin in the empty office is atmospherically shot too and full of menace that is carried through to Alex's rejection of his Faustian pact in Luigi's. And as a result of her choice Operation Rose is on it's way and Bowie's 'The Man Who Sold The World' ironically plays over the end credits.

Series Two Reviews:

Episode One review
Episode Two review
Episode Three review
Episode Four review

Series One Reviews:

Episode Eight review
Episode Seven review
Episode Six review
Episode Five review
Episode Four review
Episode Three review
Episode Two review
Episode One review

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The Railway Arms forum

Ian Wylie A2A Blog

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The Roundhouse, Camden, London - 17th May 2009, 7.00pm

They say nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Last night at The Roundhouse, nostalgia was back with a vengeance as the former members of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, which closed its doors in March 1998 (apparently Liz Parker did actually switch the lights off!), took to the stage and embraced an appreciative audience in a warm, fuzzy back catalogue musical wallow of seismic proportions. Emerging as a collective group of white coated, Quatermass-boffin-like music group pioneers, Messrs Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb, Peter Howell, Dick Mills and Mark Ayres plugged in their instruments, fired up their pro-tools and turned the Roundhouse into a time machine. It was not only a heart-warming paean to electronic music pioneers, name checking and showcasing legendary names Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson, Madalene Fagandini, Desmond Briscoe, Daphne Oram and John Baker along the way, but also, by heavens, it made you extremely proud to be eccentric and British!

...tape reels, bizarre animations and classic title sequences

Kicking off with a lab coated Dick Mills twiddling his knobs on a VCS3 and firing up the time warp into which the audience were plunged, all manner of smashing visual treats were relayed to us on the three screens hanging above the ensemble. Starfields, colour and black and white images of the Radiophonic staff, tape reels, bizarre animations and classic title sequences (BBC Micro Live, Towards Tomorrow!) and extracts from the BBC archive. A wonderful musical suite of material from founder Desmond Briscoe got the ball rolling featuring work from Quatermass And The Pit (including the chilling sound effects of the Martian id released from the buried ship) and Dick Mills effects for The Goon Show set to clips and stills. Peter Howell then introduced us to the Vocoder and serenaded the audience with a delightful version of Greenwich Chorus which has always reminded me of the Wendy Carlos work on A Clockwork Orange.



Peter, Roger, Paddy, Dick and Mark all took turns to introduce the works and were more than ably supported by...sharp intake of breath...a real brass section, real percussionists and drummer and a sax player. Roger provided us with his musical calling card and there was a collective cheer as the ensemble launched into that wonderful Kingsland composition 'Reg', which all Who fans will recall was the B side to the original 45rpm of the Doctor Who theme. Paddy noted that the tune was used for a programme about Africa but am I mistaken in recalling it was often used on cricket and tennis coverage in the late 1970s.



After this the nostalgia floodgates were wide open, with two further tributes; one to Delia Derbyshire with a suite of work (introduced by Dick Mills wielding that sacred object of Delia devotion, the green metal lampshade) and including the 'of course they couldn't leave those out' recordings of Blue Veils And Golden Sands and Ziwzih Ziwzih 00-00-00 from the Out Of The Unknown episode 'The Prophet'. The other tribute was to the lovely John Baker and the Radiophonic lads did him proud with a storming version of New Worlds, the sting of which is instantly familiar to those of us who grew up with John Craven and Newsround in the 1970s.

...whilst the majority of them are near pensionable age they haven't lost it!

Paddy introduced a suite of music for schools programmes including the irresistably catchy theme from Words And Pictures, Roger spoke about the continuity music Swirly (which according to Roger was actually Shirley in homage to the woman who commisioned it) and Peter discussed the music for Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and how often the labour undertaken by the musicians at the Workshop often got buried beneath all the other stuff going on in programmes (actors and sound effects were mentioned). To this end the boys recreated the Brighton Pier (erroneously titled because the sequence in Hitchhiker mentions South End Pier) music from the programme overlaid onto the sequence where Ford and Arthur are rescued by the Heart Of Gold. If anything, this simply demonstrated how creative this group of musicians were (and are) and how all their efforts often go unrecognised. Roger confirmed as much when he described how hard he often found it to describe to people at dinner parties just what it was he did at the BBC! However, it wasn't all archive material. Those BBC electronic music boffins have recently been writing together and presented a wonderful new piece called Dancing In The Waves, full of funky electronic noodling and a jazzy sound demonstrating that whilst the majority of them are near pensionable age, they haven't lost it!

Move over Murray, let the old fellas have a bash again.

And so to Doctor Who. A whole section took us from a pant-wettingly quadrophonic version of the Delia Derbyshire realisation of the theme, electronic swoops, loops and swirls leaping across the Roundhouse venue, to Brian Hodgson's booming and resonant ambiences for The Wheel In Space, via Malcolm Clarke's still revolutionary electronic score for The Sea Devils (accompanied by much hilarity at the footage of the Sea Devil attack on the naval base) and finally onto a fully accompanied suite from Keeper Of Traken and Logopolis, focusing on Kingsland's gorgeous music for the regeneration of Tom into Peter (timely considering we'll be seeing David turn into Matt this Christmas). Mark Ayres' scores for The Greatest Show In The Galaxy, Ghost Light and The Curse Of Fenric rounded off a very fitting tribute to the classic series. Howell then topped this off by leading his fellow reprobates into a 'hairs up the back of the neck' version of his own 1980 realisation of the theme that then became a full on, prog/synth rock wig out which quite frankly would not look out place over the programme's current title sequence. Move over Murray, let the old fellas have a bash again.

...voice cracking with emotion Mills paid tribute to his erstwhile colleagues

The evening concluded with a selection of music from Sea Trek, a suite that provided evidence for one of the Radiophonic's old dictats, that music and sound effects were often woven together and that the seam between them was largely undetectable. Howell finally introduced another Who 45rpm B side, The Astronauts, a composite piece for a programme about space and a documentary about ancient astronauts (we were still intrigued by that von Daniken stuff when I were a lad) and he offered us a word of warning that what he might have been able to create in the studio with multiple takes wasn't going to be that easy to handle in a live situation. It's a fantastic slab of Jean Michel Jarre inspired BBC synth rock music and Howell did initially have a bit of trouble playing what Slartibartfast might well have described 'the fiddly bits'. But he ploughed on and ended the suite with much relief and some triumph. Dick Mills took to the stage once again, and voice cracking with emotion (and enough to get me teary eyed too) paid tribute to his erstwhile colleagues and brought them back out for a rousing encore of Radiophonic Rock.

Peter Howell plays Greenwich Chorus. Video courtesy of metaltax on You Tube.

A simply marvellous night of nostalgia, analogue synthesisers, Vocoders, music concrete, tape cut ups and anecdotes, both a feast for the ears and the eyes, that formed a suitably eccentric and surreal tribute to the 50 years of the Workshop, to a long lost BBC that used to pay people for mucking about with sound and to a great tradition in experimental electronic music 'made in Britain'. Long may their influence be felt, and judging by the age range in the audience their music and compositions do seem to be inspiring not just the nostalgia junkies but young musicians alike, and let's appreciate that at least for one night the doors to Maida Vale were flung open once again and everyone was made welcome.

Reviews of the recently released John Baker albums from Trunk Records, and the Radiophonic Workshop reissues are here. A review of Trunk Records' The Tomorrow People album is here and a short essay on the work composed by Delia and Brian (Electrosounds and White Heat) outside of the Workshop is here.

Thanks to 'rainycat' for the marvellous photos. Flickr stream is here.

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Royal Northern College Of Music, Manchester - 16th May 2009, 7.30pm

Like many, I discovered Philip Glass back in 1983 with the release of Godfrey Reggio's stunning film Koyaanisqatsi. It was pretty much at that moment that his music properly crossed into the mainstream even though musicians like David Bowie had been singing his praises in the late 1970s. Glass emerged from the school of minimalism, a term he and the other musicians such as Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Michael Nyman would rather liked to have rejected. He distances himself from the term and describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures."

After the groundbreaking score for Reggio's film, Glass has continued to expand the nature of his work, not only covering theatre, opera, film scores but also working with Bowie, Eno, David Byrne, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Paul Simon and Aphex Twin. He's also worked diligently on a growing body of symphonies, concerti, music for dance and ballet and solo piano works.



It's the solo piano music that Glass brought to the Futuresonic 2009 festival and conference this weekend with an 80 minute set at the Royal Northern College Of Music in Manchester. For some there is perhaps the perception that his solo piano pieces could be prejudged as the ultimate in minimal expression of his music. Judging by the wide range of pieces he performed this would be an erroneous view. Glass, an adorable, softly spoken 72 year old, whipping his glasses off at the beginning of each piece to briefly introduce the audience to the works in question, wrangles the keyboard with a mixture of attack and seduction. Despite looking tired and not quite remembering the dates of said pieces, he sat at the grand and like a snake charmer mesmerising a recalcitrant viper, he urged music of great complexity, subtly and melody out of the instrument. There was also an inner sound reverberating out of this music, a 'haze' (for want of a better word), that often possessed the accumulative structures and than sang out above them. A very curious effect to hear at first hand and something that might perhaps account for his wider appeal beyond the conservatoire.



Beginning with a selection from the gorgeous Metamorphoses (from his Solo Piano album, composed for a version of Kafka's Metamorphosis and some of which you will have heard in the reimagined version of Battlestar Galactica), Glass held a filled to capacity venue enraptured. The repetitive structures are there and the pieces are, technically at least, highly representative of his methodology but these are far from the clinical sounding works that the titles suggest. Full of melodic and harmonic progressions, the music building and cycling with various motifs repeated and adapted as his hands sprang across the keys. A piece for dance, Mad Rush, rapidly followed and then the most powerful section of the concert, eight of the sixteen Etudes For Piano. Glass played these end to end and it was here that the familiar repetitive structures moved away from the pleasantly recognisable and into a highly complex relationship with blues and jazz that displayed more humanity and soul than many of his large scale works. Much of that humanity also came from the rough around the edges playing. Glass is an accomplished player but he isn't technically one of the best and the various slips are perhaps an aspect of the music that should be embraced rather than used as an excuse to reprimand him. Personally, I'd like to see other pianists attempt the Etudes at the age of 72 and still dazzle an audience with drama and passion as well as the scintillating carousel of melodic playfulness that was inherent in this performance.

Glass humourously kept adding concluding piece to concluding piece, and offered us such wonderful nuggests as a passage from The Screens, music from The Thin Blue Line and 'Closing' from the superb Glassworks. A beautiful, thought provoking evening and bizarre in that it almost felt as if your long lost uncle had shown up to do his party piece only to leave you agog and wanting more. A well deserved standing ovation too after what can be best described as a rather moving out of (the) body musical experience.

Royal Northern College Of Music
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More filming took place last night for the two part finale for the Tennant era of Doctor Who.

BIG, BIG SPOILERS AHEAD

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It would seem that a flashback sequence to 2005 is on the cards for the Tenth Doctor. The crew have returned to the Powell estate, the home of Rose, Jackie and Mickey, covering the location in special effects snow. David Tennant, Billie Piper and Camille Coduri were all on set shooting scenes that indicated that it is New Year on the estate as Rose and Jackie hug, wishing each other 'Happy New Year'. The costumes Billie and Camille also seem to confirm that this is a flashback. This also suggests that the Doctor has traveled back to a point in time before he even met Rose. Perhaps as a final farewell before his regeneration? Judging by the photo below, the Doctor's not feeling too chipper...



It would seem that the majority of the companions are returning to the series for one last hurrah. A brief scene with Elisabeth Sladen was filmed recently and John Barrowman and Russell Tovey were on location for the scenes shot at Tiger Tiger in Cardiff. We've also seen lots of location shooting with Catherine Tate and Bernard Cribbins.





Pictures on the Doctor Who Forum courtesy of Stephen Ackroyd, 39austin and schehera. Thanks for all your hard work.

The following reports from the DWF and Twitter (thanks to schehera) during the night:

"Rose walks past Doc. He staggers. You alright mate she asks. What year is it, he asks. 2005"

"You know what? I bet your going to have a really great year, he says. "

And that's as much as can be related because those watching the filming were asked not to spoil any further by David and Billie in person! As broadwaybaby on DWF reported:

"I just got home, having stayed until the bitter end. As the evening progressed and things got more spoilerrific, they told us no more photos and kept a very close eye on us. There were surprisingly few of us watching -- fewer than 10 at some points!"



The Daily Mail has now picked up on the shooting too and pictures are courtesy of Daily Mail/ Matrixphotos.

The Doctor Who Locations Guide

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Nightmare Of Eden

November - December 1979

Now that we've got the shiny new Star Trek out of the way (honestly, I loved it, I did) it's time for another helping of classic Who. Nightmare Of Eden, (or should that be Nightmare Of Edam owing to very high cheese factor in the story?) continues CRT's hobble through the Tom Baker stories. We're in the dying days of the Graham Williams produced stories and, boy, does it show.

D'you know...I rather enjoyed this. Best seen through the haze of a fine wine and a lack of pretension. It has its major faults but as a story it's very engaging and contains some good SF ideas. This is a Bob Baker solo effort and, forgive me Dave Martin, but this actually works better as a script than the offerings the duo usually provide. Two ships collide in space and the instability allows creatures to escape from zoologist Tryst's virtual reality zoo. They have a fine time making a meal of the passengers and crew. Meanwhile, the Doctor gets arrested for possession of Class A drugs and sets off in search of the smugglers.



We are well into the period where the programme has ceased to be about taking the audience to strange new places and where the abiding public perception of Doctor Who was, and still is to an extent, one based on stories such as this. Cheap, silly and colourful, bad sets, costumes and performances. And for a while, as an 'institution' of the television schedules of the time, this was acceptable but Nightmare went out during the post-Star Wars SF boom. Alien was on general release. It's that cheap a production it nicks some of the superior effects work done for Space:1999 for a sequence where Romana examines the CET machine. Standards in production were changing year by year and audience expectations were changing. The look of cinematic science fiction was forever changed and its legacy was very slow to trickle down into productions for television. That abiding memory that summed up the show to the casual viewer then was still common currency at least until 2005.

they sport fur trimmed flares

A shame really, as Nightmare is a jolly little yarn. It's just constrained within a rather pulpy, dreadful, bargain basement Flash Gordon sense of design which rather than heightening the reality of the visuals just ends up inducing the audience into gales of laughter. The scenes on the passenger liner are over-lit, denying the Mandrels any effectiveness when they're rambling down the umpteen corridors chasing after people, 1970s fashion sense dictating they sport fur trimmed flares. When they're in the shadowy jungle of Eden they're much more effective. Visual effects are OK and there's a real push here to integrate them into the storytelling and use them as a tool rather than a gimmick. Oddly enough, Douglas Adams very sneakily comments on this within the story. David Daker as Captain Rigg, high on vrax, sits and watches his passengers get torn to pieces by the daft looking Mandrels and is reduced to fits of laughter whist uttering 'They're only economy class. What's all the fuss about'. A distinctly odd moment - the script editor knocking away the few remaining props of the show's internal reality as he gets a cheap laugh.

Geoff Hinsliff pops up as the ineffectual police officer in a sparkly black hat

Beneath all the pulpiness, the comedy police and dull direction there is a commentary going on about exploitation of both alien and human through technology that echoes some of the similar themes in Creature From The Pit and City Of Death. Tryst and Dymond are most certainly proto-Thatcher's children, motivated only by greed whilst possessing a technical wonder like the CET machine. They achieve their 'high' by using the machine and the Mandrells to make addicts of all those around them. And there's the neat twist of having the monsters of the week not really the figurative beasts they seem to be but simply the drugs haul trapped in a virtual reality machine. Performances are really variable here and often seem to belong in an 'end of the pier' revue. Lewis Fiander chews the scenery with a terrible mid-European accent. Is he supposed to be German? Geoffrey Bateman seems to stand around in scenes for ages with nothing to do except chip in tersely whilst wearing a very camp silver space suit. And he turns out to be a villain! David Daker and Barry Jackson, playing Rigg and Stott respectively, are the epitome of restraint here especially when Geoff Hinsliff pops up as the ineffectual police officer in a sparkly black hat and takes us through several Keystone Kops routines - oh, how my sides ached...The Keystone Kops stuff is also picked up by composer Dudley Simpson who vamps away, in true silent movie manner, to some crassly edited bits of Tom Baker hurtling down a set of stairs whilst giving chase to a suspect.

hampered by shabby production values

And then we have Tom, who really behaves himself until the excruciating bit in the Eden projection when he's grabbed by the Mandrells (pardon the expression), mugging in voice over during a dreadful bit of foliage rustling with cries of '..my arms, my legs, my...everything' and instantly any the credibility the story had is cruelly undermined. Again, a shame, as his reaction to Tryst's excuses for his smuggling activities is a very black look and the kind of reaction from Baker that is absolutely what it requires - 'go away' indeed. Lalla continues to be light but effective and is really starting to come into her own as Romana. Despite the cheapness of the production and the wildly changing quality in performances, there is an entertainingly good story in the middle of it all with clever ideas and plotting that's actually not dependent on the usual Baker and Martin method of chucking everything in and seeing what sticks. But it's hampered by shabby production values with a sense of 'oh that'll do' permeating these efforts. I agree it's easy to sneer from over here in 2009 but I was just as dismayed back in 1979 as I watched it then and to an extent I still wonder what was going on in the minds of the production team at the time.

NIGHTMARE OF EDEN (BBCV6610 VHS Cert U - deleted)

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BBC1 - 11th May 2009 - 9.00pm

'Ebony and Ivory!'

'Fire up the flip chart'

'I can't have been that drunk'. 'You were very drunk. I had to tie a pencil to it'.

'Get back to Liverpool and have a lovely life stealing hubcaps and being over sentimental. OK?'

"Excuse me, me police officer, you pregnant journalist'

'This time tomorrow, she'll be wrapped up under a Bananarama duvet cover'

'Oi, you and your Fallopian tubes get back in the car and do nothing.'

Oh, Rose, thou art sick...a black comedy stick of rock with 'Jacobean tragedy' in big letters running all the way through it, this fourth episode, from Ashley Pharoah, steps the series up a gear in preparation for the last half of a particularly dirty match. Talk about mixed metaphors! I don't think you could get more in a tizzy after that rather nudge, nudge, wink, wink opening scene of Alex and Gene sneaking off from Luigi's, whipping the Galex followers up with some fruity dialogue. Gene and Alex have gone on the offensive and have decided to bug Super Mac's office in a attempt to gather incriminating evidence. Make mine a double entendre, please.



We're also treated to the reappearance of Jackie Queen, the Glaswegian journalist last seen in Life On Mars, who hilariously winds Gene up with her impending motherhood and ruffles Alex's feathers. However, even though much hilarity does ensue, Jackie is the key to this tale of the corruption of innocence. To continue with the Shakespearean angle, there is something rotten in the state of Fenchurch East CID and it leads from Jackie attempting to track down her missing niece and to the murky world of Ralph Jarvis and Super Mac's money laundering. As they track girls arriving from the North at Victoria Coach Station (much praise should be given to the set designers and dressers for the superb recreation here) Alex gets a message from her mysterious admirer and we see the reappearance of the symbol of the rose. As well as its significance to the repeated mentions of 'England's Rose', Princess Diana, the flower could be seen as a deeper representation of the series religious undercurrents. Sacred to the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians (certainly a link to the Masonic rituals there) I see this rose as a symbol of Alex's journey, the thorns in her (its) side as representative of the adversities she must overcome, the opening flower and petals the gaining and shedding of wisdom. There's something of the divine feminine about the relationship between Alex and the rose.

'How's your Victoria..blooming I hear'

After threatening a pervy photographer with a cocktail charmingly referred to as 'Pornographer's Guts Against The Wall' the team discover that particular girls are being exploited at Ralph Jarvis' parties. Alex and Gene decide it's worthwhile digging a little deeper as it may be the way they can get at Super Mac. There's also an interesting theme here about parents and children; firstly with the pregnant Jackie suggesting Gene is the father of the baby, then Jackie's desire to protect her niece Rachel, Mac and Victoria and the ongoing plight of Alex's connection with Molly. The episode shifts at this point, from a wise-cracking, banter filled tale of young girls seeking adventure in London to something far darker and the initial interrogation of Jarvis is the turning point. It certainly raises the ire of Super Mac. And when Alex and Gene overhear the conversation between Jarvis and Super Mac in the bugged office, there's not only an indication that there's a deal between them but that Jarvis has or intends to have his wicked way with Mac's daughter Victoria. Quite telling that Jarvis says, 'How's your Victoria..blooming I hear'. The feminine flower symbol again to remind us of the corruption of innocence.



As the main storyline gathers apace, and here it successfully serves the great character moments and is an intriguing story in its own right unlike the previous two episodes, there are some charming moments for Ray and Chris (the Brideshead piss take, Ray's dig at women in the police force as Chris helps Shaz attaching a wire) and some understated bitchiness from Alex directed at Jackie which does seem to indicate that at least some of her feathers are getting slightly ruffled by a journalist who isn't as stupid as she seems when she digs up photographic evidence of Jarvis and Super Mac's association. It's great too that Shaz gets to go undercover and bring in some valuable information and Monserat Lombard subtly adds further definition to the character here. She discovers that virgins are invited to the parties to earn better money. The virginal status of Shaz is again a parallel symbol to the rose, itself a flower of both earthly passion and heavenly perfection. It's ironic that she, a sexual innocent one suspects despite her worldliness, is seen sitting in a room of presumably deflowered women. After a false trail to an empty house, the team meet Rachel, the niece who desperately wants to be taken seriously as an adult woman and as she rows with Jackie in Luigi's, and Chris, Ray and Alex name several famous people from Devon, Gene offers to make an honest woman of Jackie. When the truth is out, Gene quickly informs a champagne toasting Luigi, 'Put the cork back in.We've just separated'.

'he was not put on this Earth to have kids. He's got other work to do'

Finally, Alex and Jackie do connect in that beautifully played scene back at Alex's flat where a worried Jackie is comforted by Alex. It's here that Alex also gets to follow up her questions about Sam Tyler and we discover he did settle in 1973, marrying Annie and leading a happy life. It's a crucial scene, very heartfelt, and allows Alex to reaffirm her role in the Ashes To Ashes drama, 'That's the difference, you see. I have to get back. Somebody needs me.' The conversation turns to Gene and children and Jackie is quite adamant that, 'he was not put on this Earth to have kids. He's got other work to do' that again suggests Gene's role as that of some guardian or avenging angel. Once again, Alex has a disturbing nightmare, where Molly, blindfold, is preyed upon by the corrupting Jarvis. Oddly enough, the rose obsessed admirer calls her the moment she wakes from her nightmare. And is it me or is she always speaking to him on a red telephone?

the outrageous moment where Gene shoots the guard dog

The death of Debbie, the young girl lured from the coach station by the photographer, pushes the story towards its final, rather bleak, conclusion. Gene confronts Mac about his protection of Jarvis. This gives the opportunity for Glenister to put in one of his best performances to date as he tries to persuade him to give up Jarvis. Roger Allam also matches Glenister here, suggesting that there is a decency beneath the sordid exterior of the man, with a performance that claws at both your dislike and sympathy for the man. The man's so desperate that he suspends Alex after planting evidence in her flat. Ray and Chris are brought in on their bosses suspicions and Ray's loyalties are tested, eliciting a fiery performance from Dean Andrews. After a message from Molly, via of all subconscious symbols to choose - Roland Rat, Alex joins Gene and Jackie in a raid on what turns out to be Mac's house. There's the amusing moment as they climb the fence, which started me laughing, and then the outrageous moment where Gene shoots the guard dog, pretty much finishing me off. Jarvis is dragged in and Gene once again confronts Mac in another superb scene between Glenister and Allam.

'Operation Rose'

As so to the truly Jacobean ending. Irving Ribner described Jacobean tragedy as the search "to find a basis for morality in a world in which the traditional bases no longer seem to have validity." That more or less sums up the electrifying conclusion to the episode when Mac turns a gun on Jarvis and then dies when Gene attempts to stop him from then killing himself. And like a Wellesian conundrum worthy of Citizen Kane, Mac's parting words are 'Operation Rose' and 'it's coming' that suggest something much bigger on the horizon for the final half of the series. Just what could be bigger than this? A superb development of the mystery at the heart of this series and an episode marked by a brilliant use of music (Bauhaus and The Associates on the same soundtrack!), a black wit and a sad end to Roger Allam's tenure as Super Mac. I loved Gene's restatement of his mission, which is again part of the Jacobean drama's affirmation of human dignity and honour in the face of suffering and injustice, and its reaffirmation of male loyalty. Love the bittersweet use of The Korgis 'Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime' on the closing credits too. Very poignant end to a superb episode.

Series Two Reviews:

Episode One review
Episode Two review
Episode Three review

Series One Reviews:

Episode Eight review
Episode Seven review
Episode Six review
Episode Five review
Episode Four review
Episode Three review
Episode Two review
Episode One review

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