BBCHD -  24th April 2010 - 6.20pm

The breathtaking thing about The Time Of Angels is how adroitly it switches tone several times throughout the episode without bending the entire narrative out of shape.

The pre-titles, simulating much of the frisson of similar sequences that opened many a James Bond movie, especially those that contain huge, gimmicky stunts, are slick, dynamic and full of splendid excess. The very clever opening starts with a brilliant piece of editing, jumping from the imaginings of one of the crew of the Byzantium, lost in drugged reverie from the application of River's hallucinogenic lipstick, to his real location on the ship. We then see River make her escape, close ups on her shoes (so glad the 'shoe agenda' has made a return after Chrissie clobbered that Sontaran with a pink slingback in The Sarah Jane Adventures), close up on her sunglasses as she burns a message into the Home Box and then a bewildering leap to the Delerium Archive some 12,000 years later where the Doctor picks up the message and sets off to rescue her. Only Doctor Who could audaciously bound from one location to another in the space of minutes.


River's confronted by the suave Alistair and his henchmen in a wonderful piece of metatextual playfulness with actor Simon Dutton in tuxedo and bow tie, looking for all the world like he's stepped off the set of The Saint TV movies he made in Australia in the late 1980s. River's evacuation from the Byzantium and the rendezvous with the Doctor contains more excitement, visual spectacle and wit in its four minutes and fifty five seconds running time than the entirety of last week's Victory Of The Daleks. As River says, 'You might want to find something to hang on to' as she primps her hair and reads out the co-ordinates for her impending rescue. You could bottle this and sell it back to Barbara Broccoli.

Immediately she collapses on top of the Doctor, the tone shifts again. Alex Kingston and Matt Smith dash around the TARDIS set, she channelling the sophisticated wit of Kate Hepburn and he the sulky, petulant jitteriness of Jimmy Stewart in what feels like a restaging of The Philadelphia Story. Moffat's comic timing and repartee provides both actors with a gift and they respond with performances that balance eccentric humour, wisecracks and sentimentality. As they nag at each other there's that lovely moment where River uses the blue stabilisers and lands the ship. It's one of Moffat's reflections where he shares with fans those little things that are clearly iconic of the series  and offers them back to us through the prism of the narrative itself.


When Matt does his impression of the TARDIS materialisation sound effect, now denied the machine by River taking the brakes off the ship, I wonder how many of us recall trying out our own impression of that 'wheezing and groaning' as children and adults. Knowing the Doctor he'll put the brakes back on for take off because, as we all agree with him, 'they're blue boring-ers' and it wouldn't be the same without that familiar sound. And it's the details that matter too. The playful comedy as River hangs her shoes up on the scanner screen as she spouts a load of gobbledegook and taps away at a keyboard whilst Amy, eyes popping out of her head at this amazing woman piloting the TARDIS, is just sheer joy. As much pleasure to be had as in hearing the old 1980s console sound effects too. Matt is superb as the indignant Doctor, huffy and childish, as he sarcastically counters River's need for environment checks by standing at the TARDIS door and rather smugly reels off his own assessment.


We then move to 'epic' mode with the production team pulling out the stops for the crash of the Byzantium with some impressive visual effects and gorgeous location work where director Adam Smith, in homage to David Lean, dwarfs his human figures with the sweep of their surroundings. Whilst the pretty pictures keep you agog, the screwball comedy continues and Amy and River get to bond over the Doctor's discomfort and rib him mercilessly as River clambers over the wreckage in evening dress, clutching her shoes with a handbag over her arm. The woman certainly knows how to make an entrance, I'll give her that.

When River signals a group of soldiers from the 'Church', lead by Father Octavian (Bishop, second class, 20 clerics at his command) and enquires of the Doctor about the Weeping Angels, then the tone shifts again. Amy, wonderfully oblivious to all the machismo being played out around her, goes for the jugular in her conversation with the Doctor, asking that vexed question about River Song we've all been wanting a definite answer to. Moffat and the two Smiths conspire against us with that extremely deft bit of line reading which either answers the question directly or merely confirms that he is indeed Mr. Grumpy Face today. It's back to how you interpret it for yourself.

Night falls and the episode becomes plainly what Moffat had been telling us would be his Aliens style sequel to the standalone Blink. Again, director Smith goes for those widescreen landscape shots to establish the change and the story takes on board the visual tropes and allusions to Cameron's film as well as harking back to the series own Earthshock, that game-changing story of 1983. Where Aliens was partly a metaphor about the Vietnam War, Moffat offers something quite intriguing here. This is clearly a religious war of some nature. As the Doctor pronounces to Amy, after she's now accused him of being Mr. Grumpy Face (a lovely bit from Karen) and he's catalogued his rather busy day to her, it's the 51st Century and the church has moved on.


Once the story's framework is established, our expectations are focused initially in the chilling sequence where Amy is locked in the landing craft (by whom is not revealed and remains a mystery) and watches the video tape loop of the Weeping Angel in the Byzantium's hold. Moffat has obviously been watching his Asian horror films, particularly Ringu with its own deadly videotape, its folklore about the 'monstrous' and its fetishisation of fear. The urban legend of the Weeping Angels ('don't blink'), promulgated by that equally interesting use of the familiar medium of DVD 'easter eggs' where the Tenth Doctor provides Sally Sparrow with a bluffer's guide to these quantum locked beasties, is augmented here by further extending their power in the haunted landscape of communications technology and surveillance footage.

Like the iconic image of of the monstrous Sadako in Ringu, the Weeping Angel materialises out of the video loop to kill Amy simply by virtue of her own fascinated gaze at the video image. Moffat is no longer confining these agents of fear within the video image but is allowing them to spill out into Amy's (and by extension our own) reality. Amy's gaze into the image of the Weeping Angel offers a complex weave of character, spectator and viewer all colluding to seal the fate that befalls her, where she, us and the monster all become one, the surveyor and the surveyed. Amy's curiosity and interrogating gaze replicates our own fascination with viewing the fearful and the horrific and Doctor Who's own obsession with monsters, fear and death. Ultimately, this fascination becomes the instrument of possession that then plays out as the image of the Angel burned into her retina enters her consciousness and changes the nature of the threat from the physical materialisation of the Angel to something more troubling; her loss of control and loss of humanity.


Moffat subverts that old phrase 'the eyes are the window to the soul' (various sources from Cicero to Matthew) by suggesting that images have the power to change us, possess us, enter us. Amy has been changed, even 'radicalised' by the image of the Angel. "That which holds the image of an Angel, becomes itself an Angel" doesn't merely allude to the creation of Angels but also to how the image affects the viewer, with the crackling, indistinct footage of it interestingly alluding to proselytising grainy video messages from the frontline of the jihad. She is aware she is being transformed by them, her mind altered by their cause, further emphasising the episode's subtextual interpretation of religious indoctrination via media and warfare. The conflation of religious order - the bishops and clerics in the squad - with the camouflage gear that wouldn't look out of place on the troops in The Hurt Locker - indicates a scenario caught up in the aesthetics of the 'war on terror' with an apparent 'crusade' to find the Weeping Angel in the hold of the Byzantium and destroy it.

In a similar way that Aliens itself could be seen as a metaphor for the Vietnam War, then this 'holy war' on the Weeping Angels could be seen as a possible reflection on the continuing cultural and ideological clash between the West and Islam. The Weeping Angels as a creeping, amorphous, unpredictable army (the 'difference between dormant and patient') waiting for the call to re-emerge suggests the only partly perceived and often invisible threat from the 'war on terror'. As the episode unfolds in the catacombs this threat refuses to be fully described, pinned down, filling the characters with a sense of great uncertainty. If anything, The Time Of Angels articulates some of our own fearful distraction with national security and global security.


As the Church's army, the Doctor, Amy and River attempt to get to the Angel in order to destroy it, the episode mimics the structure of Cameron's Aliens in that the technologically superior force of the soldiers (and one presumes their Western religion) is slowly reduced to desperation by the 'other', the Angels and their alternate doctrine. Moffat uses classic genre tropes, showing young soldiers gradually being compromised by the Angel, and adds a further twist to some of the ideas he developed with the data ghosts in The Silence In The Library by having the Angels possess the dead men's consciousness to use them as the voice of the enemy, broadcasting back to the survivors about the Angel's subversive conquest.  Fear, and not overt horror, is the episode's stock in trade and the sequences in the maze of the dead are beautifully shot, the darkness constantly pierced by torches with Adam Smith's cinematic framing and cutting rehearsing much of the similar hand held material present in Aliens, and articulating the episode's desire to paralyse with anxiety and dread.


There is also the question of gender here where the Angels, when fully formed, appear to be female and the story plays on the patriarchal fear of the feminine power embodied in the creatures as they hunt down the gun toting squaddies. The nature of this fear, whether it be gender based or not, is also nicely flagged up in the conversation with Bob (with Moffat knowingly transposing Sacred with Scared - also suggesting some form of divine terror perpetuated in the clash between the Church's soldiers and the Angels) that underscores the series continuing fascination with fairy tales as a mechanism for coping with fear.

What's also clear is that with two parts to the story there is plenty of time to create atmosphere, develop the story and invest emotionally in the supporting characters, particularly the return of River, which was something that last week's episode singularly failed to achieve. Considering this was shot in the first block of filming, Matt Smith shows us that he was no fluke, hit the ground running with an assured performance, fulfilling his promise from day one. Kingston is splendid as River Song and is well on the way to creating one of the series most iconic characters. Karen Gillan continues to surprise with a spiky interpretation of Amy and is showcased particularly well in the chilling scene with the Angel in the tape loop. Cinematography, production design, visual effects and music all adeptly decorate the story and in director Adam Smith the producers have found a talent who seems more than capable of bringing this mix of Guillermo Del Toro and James Cameron, screwball comedy and spy-fi, spectacularly to life.

A classic in the making. So please don't drop the ball for the second part.

A completely revised and much fuller version of this review is now available in my book Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens - Exploring the Worlds of the Eleventh Doctor published by Classic TV Press and is also available on Amazon.  

Gene: 'OK, you got me Bols. It's a massive bleedin' conspiracy between me, Linda Lovelace and Shergar. And you just rumbled us. So, well done you. Have a Smartie.'

Gene: (on Daniel Stafford) 'Slashed his rival across both cheeks, then gave him a gentle shove out of a window, 15 stories high. Bounced higher than Dolly Parton's fun bags.'

Wilson: (to Alex) 'Nice tits, by the way...'
Alex: (to Gene) 'Did he just say...'
Gene: (to Alex) 'Man's a cripple Bolly. Have a heart.'

Terry: 'Shouldn't believe what you see or half of what you hear, Mr. Hunt'

Gene: 'Right. It looks like young Danny boy's going down faster than a five pound prossie.'

Gene: 'It's only a bloody garden!'

Chris (to Louise about the dangers of working undercover): 'A bit like Batman and Bruce Wayne. Is he a bloke in a cape pretending to be a millionaire playboy? Or is it the other way round?'

BBCHD - 23rd April 2010 - 9pm


Well, we're half way through. And straight away composer Ed Butt gets us in the mood with a lovely, haunting refrain from the Life On Mars theme tune as the pre-titles play out and Jim Keats threatens to expose Gene Hunt. And as we are 'half way on this life's path', on this allegorical and Dante-esque journey of the soul, what better time to underline the 'contest' between Jim and Gene.

After a drugs bust reveals that D16 have an undercover officer, Louise Gardiner, working on Gene's patch, the team investigate the Stafford family and their determination to take over the drugs scene, the rivalry between father and son and the perils of working undercover. I hope we've all been keeping on eye on how Keats is now using Chris to chip away at the edifice of Gene's kingdom. He's obviously identified Chris as the weakest link in the team (well, he has previous form as we know from last year). On one level the story peels off the layers of the relationship between an officer, Gardiner, and the criminals she's working with, suggesting that the woman has developed a sort of Stockholm syndrome towards the Staffords where the father Terry, having shown some kindness and tenderness towards her, has made her submerge the anger she feels in response to these criminals and towards her boss DCI Wilson.


On another it also examines the relationships between men and women, that between Shaz, Chris and Ray ('you're like a bloke with tits' says Ray, 'I am not!' retorts Shaz), between Louise and Terry. Chris still has a light shining for Shaz but in her firm rejection of anything beyond friendship his sympathies become complicated by Louise's apparent vulnerability. There are also some rather pointed remarks between Gene and Alex about Louise and the Staffords that keep that little frisson between them cooking: 'Well, when a girl like that wiggles up to you, you're gonna tell her anything to get her knickers off' as Gene wryly comments. Note the moment's pause from Alex at the end of that comment!

Louise's complex allegiances offer a fascinating view of how undercover policing carries a tremendous responsibility, both emotional and psychological, for those involved in undermining and disrupting crime by preventive infiltration of criminal organisations. As this involves the skillful manipulation of human relationships, the episode shows that the psychological connections between Gardiner and the Staffords have a vital role in the effects of undercover work on vulnerable personalities. Gardiner's role playing and her sense of self-hood become entangled to the point where she becomes empathetic to Terry Stafford after being abandoned by her DCI, Wilson. It's further complicated by the relationship between the two Staffords and Louise's self-harm that muddy the investigative waters. The episode underlines Wilson's failure to manage Gardiner, her stress and the post-operation psychological syndromes that then lead to dire consequences.


As this sub-plot explores the mental toughness that the job requires - not just Louise's, but also that needed by Chris, who then allows his out of control feelings to get the better of him, Alex and Gene pay a visit to Shorty, a smackhead, suffering from cold turkey, slumped in a dark tunnel. Director Alrick Riley once again hints at Gene's symbolic nature here. As he questions Shorty about the feelings on the street about the Staffords attempt to control drug trafficking, he is again silhouetted against the glare of sunshine reflecting off the windows behind him. Following up from last week's analysis, I'm now fairly confident that Matthew and Ashley are using the Divine Comedy as an influence here.  If Gene is some kind of figure of salvation here then it does tie in with the Inferno where 'salvation' is symbolised by the image of 'the sun behind the mountain'. Nothing could better describe the figure of Gene Hunt caught in the shadow of the sun.


Further to that visual allusion, Shorty offers a cryptic message to Alex. 'You belong here. You look like you're visiting, but you're not, are you? You're staying.' And then we get that equally intriguing graffiti on the tunnel wall. 'For a good time, call 6620', 'Gene ♥ Sam' and 'Molly Waz Here'. What all these mean is anyone's guess. The 6620 might be analogous to Sam's phone call to Hyde in Life On Mars (2612), the bit about Molly is perhaps just a reminder to Alex that her daughter is out there still awaiting her return and the Gene/Sam stuff...well, that'll give the slash fiction writers some further ammunition.


Jack Lothian's police procedural storyline is solid, with the central struggle for Louise Gardiner's conscience at the heart of the plot reflecting the, what appears to be, similar struggle between Keats and Hunt for the hearts and souls of everyone at Fenchurch East.  There's also a clear parallel to Blade Runner here, both visually and thematically. This reaches an apotheosis with the stake out in the mannequin factory which is a direct homage to Deckard's prowl through J.R. Sebastian's apartment in which his constructed beings, the replicants, hide under sheets and drapery and then spring into life to kill Deckard.

The lighting and cinematography, clearly aided by copious amounts of smoke, is also very similar in style to Jordan Cronenweth's singular vision that made Blade Runner one of the key films of the 1980s and influenced a whole generation of cinema. Thematically, the episode mirrors Blade Runner's own philosophical questions about what it means to be human. No only do both examine what the material body means to us as human beings - how the characters are connected by violent assaults, mortality and death - but they also discuss the morality of our characters, the 'questionable things' that might prevent them from becoming the true essence of themselves. You can also hear little Vangelis-like moments in Ed Butt's marvellous incidental music too.


Here, it's the disordered personality of Louise Gardiner that skews morality, with the undercover operation that changes her very essence and by extension influences Chris to assault Daniel in the cells. By the conclusion, Louise's actions, at first gaining Alex's sympathies as a fellow woman officer, create much self-doubt in Alex because she simply mis-reads the physical and emotional signals that Louise was creating. She's strung along just like the rest of us because she sees Louise's journey from one world to another, from one personality to another, as similar to her own. Zoe Telford offers us an extraordinary performance as Louise and crucially she doesn't turn Louise into a martyr. It is in the end as much her own fault as anyone else's. Alex argues that she was let down by the police, as she says: 'You can't just put somebody in undercover and expect them to make sense of things by themselves'. And does that sum up Alex's role? Is she too undercover and losing the sense of things? Is Keats there to help her?


As we go through the twists and turns of the infighting between Terry and Daniel for dominance over their criminal activities, we reach that extraordinary final sequence. And it's been flagged up by Jim Keats' exchange with Louise in the squad room. 'You wanna run, don't you. You wanna leave.' She agrees and he offers: 'I don't blame you. But the end of the road is in sight'. This surely signals that Keats already knows her fate and is in fact awaiting it. 'See this through to the end' he says, 'otherwise...it's all been for nothing.' This is accompanied by that very symbolic shot of Gene looking out of his office at Alex, Keats and Gardiner, as if observing these moments of revelation from on high. Later, Louise emphasises her desire to leave to Alex after their conversation about the interrogation of Danny Stafford. 'And then, can I go home?' This suggests that there are, in fact, quite a number of 'visitors' to 1983 all trying to get 'home'. And is her remark, 'It's like I'm being punished' also highly significant?

The end of the road for Louise is a major statement because it tells us a huge amount about who Keats is perhaps and what his relationship to Gene might be. Chris significantly starts calling Keats 'guv' and again symbolises his own confusion about their two roles in much the same way Louise did about her own role as officer and gang member. Keats as 'guv' is then represented in the scene where Louise dies in his arms and that very enigmatic, heavy whisper of 'soul' on the soundtrack as, it seems, Keats facilitates the passing of her soul from torment into peace. The breath, the whisper is very symbolic, particularly in Jewish thought where the soul is composed of two drives - one heavenly, one earthly, with both masculine and feminine principles (Keats and Gardner?), which must come come together as a single spiritual principle, spirit or breath. 


It also seems to reflect much of the Jewish tradition that suggest the human soul is immortal and thus survives the physical death of the body and where the hereafter is known as 'the world to come' and the earthly world is known as 'this world'. Keats and Hunt could therefore represent two judges, one of purity and one of sin, who decide which souls of Fenchurch stay in 'this world' or pass over into 'the world to come'. It all ties in with aspects of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and with Milton's Paradise Lost as well as an interpretation of Dante where sinners select their hell by an act of their own will, eager to confess their sins even whilst they are dead or dying. It's a truly extraordinary scene that offers us a Keats who isn't 'evil' as such but is just simply a 'being' that's bringing people to account either because of their actions or through their weaknesses. All the more impressive because of the performances from Danny Mays and Zoe Telford and the exquisitely plaintive music from composer Ed Butt. Breathtaking in all senses of the word.


Along the way we have the bizarre visions of Alex in a coffin complete with a further appearance of the weather vane (the crooked figure that seems to be carrying a burden and walking stick which, I venture, is something to do with John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress  - another text that I think has a huge significance to this series - and ties in with my theory above about the 'world which is to come'), the disfigured copper, suggestions that lots of files are going missing from Gene's office and then that conversation between Alex and Keats about the projections of her subconscious and her fears realised in the apparitions. There is also the genuinely funny sequence of the chase between Gene and Danny allegedly resulting in the devastation wreaked upon the Blue Peter garden.


Marshall Lancaster once again skillfully adds more dimensions to Chris and there's great support from Dean Andrews and Montserrat Lombard. As well as Zoe Telford's excellent performance, we also have Bryan Dick quite convincingly physical as Danny who also suggests, in his dialogue, some of the episode's themes. When he asks Gene how he would feel about someone younger and smarter taking over from him, Gene grumbles, 'They'd melt in my shadow, son'. More fiery imagery and the sun/son parallel. The moment where Alex offers Louise a place on the team at Fenchurch is also interesting because it perhaps suggests that if Alex is staying, as the drug addled Shorty pronounced, then is she there to replace Gene? Is she the new gatekeeper? Plus we get that confrontation between Gene and Keats in Luigi's which could be interpreted as a declaration of war, especially with 'My Way' blazing from the soundtrack to underline the individual battlelines drawn by the two of them. 

A good episode, not as instantly effective as the previous two in this series, but worth it for some of the deeper meanings that can be teased out of the narrative, some great performances and Alrick Riley's visually consummate direction.

With a new series of Doctor Who comes an opportunity for BBC Books to extend their new branding to their range of Doctor Who novels and the first three to feature the new team of Amy Pond and the Eleventh Doctor hit the shops at the end of April. As well as the swishy make-over you'll also notice that these hardbacks are a bit bigger than their earlier counterparts.

First up is Apollo 23, written by the range's consultant Justin Richards.  It's apt that Richards seizes on Matt Smith's own Troughton-esque performance by setting his story in those very environments that the Second Doctor himself would feel completely at home in - top secret moonbases and military-industrial complexes. It begins with a wonderfully surreal set of images, a fully suited astronaut popping into existence in the middle of a shopping centre and a woman suddenly walking her dog on the moon. Coincidentally, Amy and the Doctor are doing a spot of shopping right at the moment both events occur and dive in to investigate the problems with an instantaneous form of travel and how the malfunctions form a prelude to a sinister alien invasion.

Richards tale picks up a brisk pace, lovingly paying homage to creepy space bases, name dropping T-Mat into the bargain as he gets the Doctor tinkering with the 'quantum displacement' method of travel between Earth and the Moon.  Revealing that several secret Apollo missions were continued to create the lunar installations ushers in a genuine affection by Richards for the demise of the 'space race' of the late 1960s and early 1970s and rekindles memories of those early scenes in Troughton's The Seeds Of Doom as well as reflecting Doctor Who's 'alternate future history' - you know, the one where Britain still has a space programme. A mention of the British Rocket Group is enough to remind you of the Quatermass vibe of well intentioned scientists and generals as playthings of evil alien forces. Even The Mind Of Evil's Keller gets a mention and there are lovely echoes of The Invisible Enemy when the Doctor and Amy discover that the moonbase is a facility for brainwashing convicts with a process that unwittingly allows aliens to possess their minds.

It's a solidly written, fast moving romp, with a few neat little twists along the way and a healthy sense of paranoia about who is and isn't possessed by the aliens, set on the high frontier of space exploration. Richards manages to pick up on some of Matt's little physical and vocal mannerisms as the Doctor and Amy's fierce sense of independence and her fearlessness but atypically it doesn't embrace the oft referred 'fairy tale' tone that the series is currently trying hard to develop.

David Llewellyn's Night Of The Humans is elegantly written with a lyrical prose style that evokes tangibly the world and characters he's created. The bizarre notion of a space body created by piles of junk has that mix of Tim Burton, Roald Dahl and Oliver Postgate that the new series has started to emulate and throws in a Dan Dare and Eagle Comics sensibility too. Thematically, with its story of human survivors from a crashed cargo ship devolving into blind worship and fear of technology and those who use it, with a society shaped by old Western films, reminded me of the futurist medieval trappings of State Of Decay and Face Of Evil.

The Doctor and Amy land on the Gyre, a world created, by gravitational forces, out of rubbish and junk, to discover aliens, the Sittunn, on a mission to destroy the Gyre with a nano-bomb before a huge comet strikes it and sends chunks hurtling into the nearby densely populated planets. However, they've encountered a group of regressed humans, the descendants of the crew of a cargo vessel The Herald Of Nanking, who have ignored their warnings and attacked and killed most of the expedition because they believe their God, based on the image of a clown used in the cargo company's branding, will save them from the comet.

It's a cracking little book with some really interesting themes about faith and feudalistic societies, about how species must learn to trust each other and face the truth about their beliefs and where those beliefs come from.  It's packed with striking imagery of mountains of junk, swamps full of huge slugs, wrecked spaceships and apocalyptic destruction as bits of comet start to rain down on the Gyre as Amy and the Doctor struggle to escape from the humans. Into the midst of the story Llewellyn introduces Dirk Slipstream, a bizarre and amusing character that's a cross of Sabalom Glitz, Dan Dare and Zapp Brannigan (and continuing with the Western theme too, Nathan Brittles), who isn't as honourable as he seems. You'll have fun spotting all the Western movies influences and character names too

Look out for Amy and the Doctor's slight embarrassment at their high five scene because it is one of many little moments where Llewellyn tunes in beautifully to their relationship and to Matt and Karen's interpretation of it. The book ends on a gorgeously bittersweet note that underlines the Doctor's fallibility too, echoing the similar introspection at the end of Victory Of The Daleks.

A smashing read.

Finally, we have Brian Minchin's The Forgotten Army. Again, similarly to David Llewellyn's book, Minchin has seized upon the series espoused surreal, fairy tale quality with this story. Of all three writers, I feel he really gets the Doctor and Amy absolutely spot on. He's particularly good at capturing Amy's feisty independence and the character really does come off the page. By the time I'd got to this book, I was happy that all three authors had passed the ultimate test - clearing hearing Matt's voice in the dialogue and scenes featuring the Doctor.

On a visit to New York (to taste the best hamburgers in the universe along with several other alien diners in disguise), the Doctor and Amy are dragged into a strange incident at the Natural History Museum where an apparently dead mammoth has come back to life and is running amok amongst the exhibits. When the mammoth is captured and isolated in Central Park Zoo, the Doctor discovers that the creature is in fact a spaceship housing a miniature alien army, the Vykoid, planning an invasion of the Earth.

The whole notion of an alien invasion conducted by a tiny alien race using a spaceship disguised as a woolly mammoth just conjures up the wonderful Lilliputian satire of Swift's Gulliver's Travels and the homespun adventures of Mary Norton's The Borrowers. As the vicious little army emerges and attacks Manhattan, they even have a tea break on Amy's knee. And if you thought the Star Whale was a peculiar thing to have floating around in space Minchin takes absurdity to a new level with the tale of the rather smelly Space-Boars and the potential fate of the human race.

With the Doctor carted off by the Vykoid army (impossibly, like a gang of army ants they manage to carry him over a fence) it's down to Amy to save the day and stop the Vykoid from enslaving the human race. There's a great chapter where Amy only has a police officer, Oscar, to help her try and rescue the Doctor and the sparkling dialogue is quintessential Amy - funny, brave and reckless. As daft as this entire scenario might seem, especially with NYPD's finest controlled like puppets, mammoths galloping down Broadway and the world being saved by a pretzel, somehow Minchin makes it all work and turns in a rather charming, often hilarious, book about freedom from slavery and the potential of the human race.

Apollo 23 - Justin Richards (Published 22nd April 2010 - Publisher BBC Books/Ebury - ISBN: 184607200x)
Night Of The Humans - David Llewellyn (Published 22nd April 2010 - Publisher BBC Books/Ebury - ISBN-13: 9781846079696)
The Forgotten Army - Brian Minchin (Published 22nd April 2010 - Publisher BBC Books/Ebury - ISBN: 184607987x)


Cathode Ray Tube has a set of all three new Doctor Who books, courtesy of BBC Books and Ebury Press, to give away. 

• This competition is open to residents of the UK only, but not to employees of BBC Books and Ebury Press or their agents.
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• By entering the free prize draw, entrants agree to be bound by any other requirements set out on this website. Entry is only available online or via email to frank_c_collins@hotmail.com. No responsibility can be accepted for entries not received, only partially received or delayed for whatever reason. Paper entries are not valid

Question: Which famous astronomer and broadcaster appeared in the The Eleventh Hour, the first episode of the new Doctor Who series?  COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED

Answer:
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BBC1 - 17th April 2010 - 6.30pm

As the Doctor and Amy stand in awe of the Blitzed London cityscape before them, the Doctor utters the word 'history'. It's often contentious how the series uses history and the well known historical figures within it. Victory Of The Daleks makes another bid for 'quality television' status in the way it tries to faithfully recreate the London and Cabinet War Rooms of the Blitz and uses Winston Churchill as a 'sign' of British heritage within the series. At the same time it tries to tell a story about the Daleks which hyperbolises the 'Nazi mythologising' of their race within the World War 2 setting but also offers a 'restoration' of the Daleks that concludes, by returning to a kind of Dalek Year Zero, the entire Time War phase of their history and offers a questionable revisioning of a 1960s design icon.


This restoration includes some radical design decisions that change the established classic silhouette of the Daleks, altering their iconic expression of 1960s modernity, where their streamlining echoes an amalgamation of influences, evoking that decade's distinctive progress in domestic, consumer and industrial product design and incorporating the futurism of the then new Atomic Age, both aesthetically and philosophically. What now emerges is a bulky, brightly coloured 'Vorsprung durch Technik' that clearly acknowledges the pop-art Daleks of the Cushing movies and 1970s German car design (think Volkswagen Beetle on steroids) but that also seems to echo the unflattering commercial wardrobe of the Power Rangers.

I understand the desire for change and don't dispute that some of the design decisions have a perfectly reasonable rationale (removing the rivets that perhaps denote a human hand in their making) but the results look clunky, particularly from the rear, are less streamlined, quite top heavy and If they are meant to be more threatening then I think the primary colours don't necessarily do them any favours. Design is subjective and, divisive as these new designs are, I'm sure someone out there actually loves them. Personally, I don't.


The new Dalek design is the least of Victory Of The Daleks problems. Whilst it's an entertaining episode it is by the far the weakest of the series so far and after all the hype, including those Radio Times covers that revealed in advance the one big juicy spoiler of the episode - the new Daleks, it is actually quite disappointing. Once the new Daleks are revealed, there is a sense of expectation still remaining as the story draws to a conclusion where we wait for one more surprise that never comes. Instead, five Daleks stand around a rather empty looking spaceship, barely moving, not hovering or flying out into space to go one on one with Spitfires, and then they do a Millennium Falcon and disappear.

The episode feels very much as if it should have been the first half of a much bigger story. It has a very economic running time, rushing through a series of slightly dislocated set pieces, visually pleasing but not very emotionally engaging. Although the World War 2 background and Churchill character are well realised nostalgic bits of window dressing they are not entirely central to the success of the story and Gatiss could well have extended this by an episode, perhaps moving the story on to a confrontation away from the Earth. It might have helped generate a genuine sense of threat out of what is a very convoluted scheme to give the Daleks a new paint job. It's an odd episode, with a strange tone that emerges from an uncomfortably parodic 'stiff upper lip' 'chocks away' portrayal of the British servicemen and a very unsubtle caricature of Winston Churchill, provided by the normally reliable Ian McNeice.


The opening 15 minutes are terrific because the interaction between the Daleks, Churchill and the Doctor works very well and the vision of Daleks prowling round the War Rooms, serving tea and doing the filing whilst craftily keeping an eye on the Doctor, bring back happy memories of the scheming pepperpots from The Power Of The Daleks. It all goes to buggery with the activation of the Progenitor (and who knows where that came from) and the nonsensical scheme to use Bracewell to bring the Doctor to them to confirm he's their arch-enemy. As soon as the Doctor heads to the Dalek saucer, the World War 2 setting just becomes cultural tourism and the episode becomes more concerned with pimping up the Daleks and dogfights in space.


Although there are efforts made to show the effect of the war on those serving in it with the pre-titles momentarily depicting a worried servicewoman, Breen (little nod to Quatermass there from Gattis) and then the episode picking up her character again briefly to mention that she's lost someone in the battle, I found it very hard to connect emotionally with her plight and the consequences of the story's use of history. We are shown or told about the Blitz at a distance, amidst Churchill's constant re-stating of the high stakes, and connections to personal stories are kept to a bare minimum. It would have been interesting to see characters in air raid shelters or in the Underground to give us a real sense of what was at stake. There is talk of incendiary bombs and strikes but we never see them or the aftermath as much as we see the air-raids in The Empty Child.

In Dalek, which successfully set out to re-establish the threat of Skaro's finest in the face of all the 'stairs' jokes we'd heard as a repeated meme over the years, the Doctor's role in the story, and his emotional connection to the Daleks, is propelled by survivor's guilt. His anger and xenophobia is also countered by Rose's humanity. The Doctor's connection here is to inadvertently provide the catalyst for their resurrection. Amy, who doesn't get a great deal to do here, only really engages us when she and the Doctor are trying to deactivate Edwin Bracewell. It's Amy's role to relate to Edwin on a human level, thus highlighting the human factor that's currently missing from the Doctor's view of the world. This emotional dimension is welcome in a story that for much of its running time oddly doesn't succeed in providing one and also doesn't make the new Daleks a force to be reckoned with.


This is, I think, a symptom of the 'shopping list' commissioning procedure that Gatiss was provided with. A simple brief of 'Churchill, the Blitz, Daleks' but the historical backdrop and the use of Churchill are simply history as 'clip art', as pageant and pastiche, to frame, and perhaps clumsily comment on, the problems facing Doctor Who's two great political forces - the British Empire/Doctor and the Third Reich/Dalek Empire - both fighting to survive, both attempting to hold an Empire together. The nostalgic view of British identity here is something that the new series seems particularly driven by, with both The Eleventh Hour set in the pastoral of an English village and The Beast Below offering a retro 1950s Orwellian future.

It is a continuing narrative about our island identity (including Scotland it seems) that Moffat desires to uphold even though this is more a mythical construct than realist vision. The version of that myth presented here could have been further strengthened if Gatiss had been able to tease out more of the cultural differences between the two Empires, and by extension the real threat of one to the other, instead of relying on a familiar vision of wartime that was itself a propagandist construction of the concensus-creating processes of cinema, radio, Pathe News and Picture Post.


The episode gets a little too bogged down in jingoism and a romanticised cod-patriotic view of the war. These are stereotypical images reinforced through countless British war movies, particularly the ones pastiched here, such as The Dam Busters, 633 Squadron and Where Eagles Dare ('Broadsword to Dannyboy'). We mustn't forget that all these stereotypes actively promote a certain vision of World War 2 and the home front that contentiously becomes a reinforcement of the 'Dunkirk spirit' and of national social solidarity. Here, Churchill sees a vision of Wren's churches in flames and this fits exactly with a mythologising of Britain and British culture within the series that's been there since the 2005 revival where the episode's space battle re-enactment of the Battle Of Britain takes place over the London of Shakespeare and Dickens.

Churchill himself is a construction too, the familiar public persona used here is one he no doubt helped to create and one he encouraged himself, and he has always been perceived in popular culture as a mixture of traditional stereotype, patriotism and a symbol of national unity. McNeice overplays it and it's hard to find the man's humanity in there amongst the jowls, the cigars and the stylised speeches and that's a great pity because a chance to see beneath the symbol would have added an interesting dimension to his portrayal.

In opposition to this popular image of British collectivism during the height of the Blitz we have the 'restoration' of the Daleks. Their 'tonight Matthew I'm going to be Strategist, Scientist, Drone, Supreme and Eternal' unveiling in a waft of dry ice suggests the new Daleks are again highly symbolic of the purist Nazi monoculture that sought to consume or destroy anything aberrant, or 'other', including non-purist Daleks, and they continue to represent tyranny in opposition to freedom, persecution in opposition to tolerance, with the confrontation between the Doctor and the Daleks subtly reinforcing that continuing Anglo-German rivalry that is in itself a re-enactment of the Second World War.


Beyond this, there is still a captivating performance from Matt Smith to savour, whose physicality is a pure delight and who manages to deliver a number of lines that could easily have been lost on the page. The TARDIS destruct button bluff ('Don't mess with me, sweetheart') with the Jammie Dodger (their sales will rocket on the basis of this) is wonderfully played and his anger in trying to get a reaction from the camouflaged Daleks is great. He holds all of this together and is now clearly the greatest asset this series has at its disposal.

Karen Gillan doesn't really get an awful lot to do until she has to talk Bracewell out of self-destructing and there is therefore a distinct lack of chemistry between her and Smith that the episode sorely needs. Again, what she does get given to do she does very well. Bill Paterson is good as Bracewell, managing to convey well the confusion at discovering his non-human origins and the conflict between machine intelligence and human emotion.

But then there is that really unnecessary scene at the end which seems to go on forever with the Doctor and Amy prattling on to Bracewell. Their suggestion that he go off and have a wonderful life with Dorabella could have been reduced to a couple of lines. What's also clear here is that the budget has gone on two major sets, the War Rooms and the Dalek Saucer interior,  and building the new Daleks (which also suggests they will want to recoup their costs by featuring this lot again). Sadly, no amount of set dressing and dry ice can hide the fact that the Dalek saucer looks like a vacant factory floor somewhere in Wales.


Andrew Gunn's direction is, at times, very cinematic. The shots of the Doctor looking over his shoulder as the Daleks prowl the War Rooms are beautiful examples of the deep focus cinematography the series has now embraced but he really needed to get some good movement into those new Daleks even though he tries hard to shoot them from various angles and distances. The trouble is that no amount of good lighting and shooting can resolve the very unflattering side on or rear view of the props. Visual effects are excellent, especially the Spitfire versus Dalek saucer battle and the views of London in the Blitz. Murray Gold's music has a suitably rousing Eric Coates and Ron Goodwin feel to it considering the borrowing from the British war film genre.

So, the episode is not entirely a success and I would say it is very much a Pyrrhic Victory when it comes to redesigning one of the major icons of the series and reintroducing them to the Doctor. As controversial as the buggering with the theme music, the titles and the TARDIS interior. In the end, we are left only to ruminate on the intriguing mystery of why Amy doesn't know about the Daleks and a reminder of that crack in the universe as the TARDIS dematerialises.

A completely revised and much fuller version of this review is now available in my book Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens - Exploring the Worlds of the Eleventh Doctor published by Classic TV Press and is also available on Amazon.  

There's no stopping Odeon Entertainment this month. Not content to spoil us with a clutch of British horror films in March, they now dig out several more exploitation classics from the archive and re-release them onto an unsuspecting world.

For Pete Walker aficionados out there there's a double treat with the legendary horror film Frightmare and one of his early 70s noir thrillers Die Screaming Marianne both getting a release. The Pete Walker films were last released as part of an Anchor Bay UK box set in 2005 and came with a host of special features, including commentaries from Walker and Walker experts Steve Chibnall and Jonathan Rigby.

After working in the British industry for some time, Walker eventually ended up making cheap sex comedies at the end of the 1960s and if you're looking for someone to blame for foisting upon us the career of Robin Asquith...then look no further than his surprisingly competent film Cool It Carol (also available from Odeon). By 1970, he'd turned to making noirish Hitchockian thrillers with the rather splendid Man Of Violence (available in the BFI's Flipside DVD range) followed by Die Screaming Marianne. Walker's thrillers echoed some of the similar attempts by Hammer to produce psychological dramas during the 1960s, such as Crescendo, Taste Of Fear and Paranoiac. He also invests both films with a critique of the modern family - particularly father figures - and political and judicial corruption, the depressing slide of aspirant 1960s hopes into the economic melt down of the 1970s and in Man Of Violence even offers a film with a bisexual hero. The nature of evil, the causes of violence and crime are very much Walker's concerns and in both the early thrillers and horror films he sees people and institutions as the root of these problems.

Die Screaming Marianne rather defies the implications of its own title. Marianne does neither. However, it's not a conventionally happy ending for her - something of a Walker hallmark. Marianne, played very well by the luminous Susan George, here in her second film, is a young go-go dancer on the run from her seedy ex-judge father (referred to as the Judge strangely enough), a loopy half-sister with a kink for incest, Hildegarde (an eye-rollingly mad performance from Judy Huxtable, the second Mrs. Peter Cook) and a hired kidnapper Sebastian (the louche Christopher Sandford). Basically, they want to get their hands on incriminating letters and a fortune stashed away by her dead mother Ruth and they'll do whatever they can to get the number of the account from her.


Sebastian picks her up on her escape from The Judge's rather smart villa in Portugal and attempts to marry her in order to get access to the money. Marianne's a bit more canny than that and upsets Sebastian's plans by marrying his friend Eli (the young and very cute Barry Evans who would go on to a major career in television sit-coms such as Doctor In The House and Mind Your Language). Bolstered by an outrageously camp, almost Bondian title sequence, depicting George in a black bikini draped with chain mail go-go dancing in front of a blood red back drop to Cyril Ornadel's brassy and infectious title music, the first half of the film is solid, if conventional, fare.

There are two rather good sequences in the first half. After getting a lift with Sebastian in Portugal, Walker places George and Sandford's dialogue over a sun-drenched drive down a hillside, inter-cutting between close ups, landscapes and the car. Brief but effective. Later, after The Judge has tracked Marianne and Eli down in London, two of his henchmen pick Eli up and take him to a seedy brothel.


They hold him there with no explanation and Walker really shows his talent here as he edits between a nervous Barry Evans, playing Eli's fear with utter conviction, and the sinister John Laurimore who doesn't speak a word but indicates his intentions in front of him by fitting a silencer to a gun and then twisting a broken washing line between his hands. The framing is superb and Eli's fears are then further justified as Walker cuts to him looking out of the window to see the other man preparing the boot of his car and unloading a blanket to wrap up what will be Eli's body. Eli only escapes by locking one man in the bathroom and stabbing the other with a pen-knife on the stairs. A brilliant sequence.

After a rather extended search by Eli and Sebastian for the runaway Marianne, the story re-locates back to Portugal and the film starts to flag. Whilst Walker generates a hothouse atmosphere of mounting tension, lacing it with a frisson of incest and violence (a disturbing scene between Hildegarde and the Judge using reflections in mirrors to visually distort the meanings), he does stretch this to such a degree that it gets a little bit tiresome and the film really needs to reach a conclusion much earlier than the one he arrives at here. That said, he uses the Portugal locations very effectively, with George the centre of attention in scenes showing her, tanned and bikini clad, emerging from the sea and sunbathing, whilst isolating the characters in a sort of poisonous paradise in the Judge's villa.


Here Hildegarde and Sebastian torture Marianne by locking her in a steam bath and her father ends up plunging off a cliff top in a rather delirious car crash sequence intended for Eli. The hero of the film, Eli, whom you suspect might turn out to be Marianne's saviour, does meet a violent end and it's a genuinely effective twist when she is taken by the police to identify his body. Walker stages the climax of the film in a ruined abbey, shooting day for night, but even here doesn't seem able to generate much suspense apart from Hildegarde's sadistic use of a lighter to torture Marianne. Sebastian is left to die, along with his parade of excruciating fashion disasters worn in the film, in what looks like the bottom of a grave and the Pallenberg-like Hildegarde is choked to death by The Judge's faithful retainer Rodriguez. Marianne is left shedding bitter tears in a very downbeat ending.


Susan George and Barry Evans are appealing as the two lead characters and have a genuine chemistry, providing the best performances in the film. Huxtable is suitably nasty and Sandford just about acquits himself. Leo Genn, a mainstay of Walker's films, mumbles through much his role as The Judge and lets the side down a bit. Cyril Ornadel provides a brassy, driving soundtrack to a half decent film that meanders wildly off the beaten Algarve track about half way through where it could have done with some judicious editing and clarity.

The DVD uses a fairly decent print but there is quite a bit of damage and dirt here and there. It's in an anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 format, quite grainy with a colour palette that reflects both the greyness of the London set sequences and the brighter more vivid blue skies and rugged coastline of the Algarve. We also get the Walker and Jonathan Rigby commentary ported from the Anchor Bay set, a ten minute interview with the affably modest Walker, a gallery of stills, posters and lobby cards and a batch of trailers for Walker films including Frightmare, Cool It Carol, The Flesh And Blood Show and Home Before Midnight. Not a bad offering from Odeon.

Die Screaming Marianne  - The Best Of British Collection (Odeon DVD ODNF157 - Region 2 - Released 26th April 2010 - Cert 15 )


From the slightly ridiculous to the sublime with Walker's Frightmare, arguably one of his most coherent films and worthy of joining the ranks of contemporary British horror, in the company of such films as Death Line, that anticipated the realist approach to the genre emerging from the US.

At the heart of the film is an attack on the conventions and structures of family life and on the failure of institutions and psychiatric medicine to cure the criminally insane. But it's done with such gleeful and mordant black humour and a truly exploitative use of cannabalism, a trend in horror films that blossomed during the 1970s, that the subtext takes second place to a glorious performance from lead actor Sheila Keith. Keith, a member of the Walker repertory company, as Dorothy Yates is joined by Rupert Davies as Edmund Yates.

Both were committed to an institution for the insane in 1957 for Dorothy's unspeakable murders and cannabalism and he for attempting to cover her tracks. Some 15 years later, they have been released, considered fit to rejoin society. But are they? Their eldest daughter Jackie has her doubts and begins to fear that Dorothy still has her blood lust. Debbie, their youngest daughter, showing some sadistic tendencies in her own delinquency, has started to unearth the background to the strange family into which she has been born.


It's quite a disturbing and unsettling film, suggesting that not everything is as cosy as it seems under the outwardly normal lives of British families. And it doesn't pull its punches when it comes to showing how the psychiatric 'talking cure' is pretty useless in the face of deep neuroses (oh, and hereditary cannablism). Whilst Dorothy and Edmund live in isolation in a lonely farmhouse, Jackie has started to date Graham (Paul Greenwood, of sit-com Rosie) a psychiatrist who thinks he can solve Debbie's rabid delinquency by unpacking the motivations behind her maladjustment.


It's clear from Walker's observations on the commentary that the cannabalism angle of the story was simply put there by him and scripter David McGillivray to up the gore and violence and give the film its unique selling point. Nothing wrong with that, especially when the victims are on the receiving end of Sheila Keith's wonderfully unhinged performance as Dorothy. We follow the dysfunctional family fortunes as Jackie grows more and more concerned about Dorothy and Debbie. What's striking is the loving relationship between Dorothy and Edmund where she elicits our sympathy as a tortured and confused pensioner and you empathise with his struggle to cover up her atrocities. Keith turns her performance on a sixpence, one minute a lonely old soul seeking refuge from the harsh realities of the world and the next a drill-wielding maniac with blood spurting all over her face. She's quite fabulous in this film and you can understand why Walker enjoyed working with her.

There's also a strange dream sequence where Jackie meets a pallid, red eyed Dorothy on a train which is superbly evocative and provides the audience with a sense of foreboding about her eventual fate. The film hurtles towards a very downbeat climax. Graham uncovers the history of Jackie's parents (Walker regular Leo Genn has a little cameo as a Doctor who helps him) and Dorothy's 'pathological cannabalism' (as it is described by Gerald Flood as one of the consultants at the Lansdown institution). Jackie is not convinced that the nightmare of her parents crimes is over despite Graham's admonitions to the contrary.


Meanwhile, Debbie finds the farmhouse and is reunited with her parents whilst her biker boyfriend uncovers the bodies in the barn. Alas, he also comes to a sticky end in a gloriously over the top welter of gory violence dealt out by a fiercely grinning Sheila Keith. Poor old Edmund is driven to the end of his tether when Debbie proposes that the next victim be Jackie and he also has to deal with Graham turning up at the farm in the hope of talking some sense to Dorothy. Mad old Dorothy soon sees through him and it's an extremely grim scene that greets Jackie when she finally arrives and her father admits of Dorothy that 'she's had a very serious relapse I'm afraid'. The understatement of the year, Edmund. It's bleak, bloody and thoroughly depressing as the dysfunctional Yates family turn on her.


An under-rated British horror film, steadfastly modernist in the face of the Hammer and Amicus product of the time and looking towards the contemporary horror of American cinema for its inspiration. Keith and Rupert Davies (as Edmund) are superb, Deborah Fairfax as 'final girl' Jackie is pretty good too. I did find Kim Butcher a little shrill as Debbie but that may well have been the intention in order to make her as obnoxious as possible. Look out for Andrew Sachs in the opening scenes and Crossroads Victor Winding as the DI working on the murder committed by Debbie. The film is supported by a effective score from Stanley Myers.

The DVD presents the film in a 1.85:1 widescreen anamorphic print that shows off Peter Jessop's lush cinematography very well. The colours are vivid, the image has some blemishes and scratches but overall looks pretty sharp and clean. The commentary with Walker, Steve Chibnall and cinematographer Jessop has, I assume, been ported over from the Anchor Bay and there's a good 18 minute interview with Walker about the film that would appear to be new and again sees an amiable Walker on good form talking about Sheila Keith, writing the script and working with the censors. Add in a gallery and the same batch of Walker trailers and you've got a great little DVD package from Odeon.

Frightmare  - The Best Of British Collection (Odeon DVD ODNF156 - Region 2 - Released 26th April 2010 - Cert 18 )

Starsuckers is the new documentary from film-maker Chris Atkins, director of Taking Liberties which looked at the erosion of civil rights in the UK. Here, he takes his guerrilla style film-making and cuts a swathe through celebrity culture and fame and the way it affects our children, our politics and our media.

It's a fascinating film, occasionally rather uneven in approach, hampered slightly by a rather annoying voice over that's supposed to represent the omniscience of the media complex and how it manipulates us with its obsessions about celebrity and fame. Atkins breaks the film down into five sections or 'tricks', demonstrated by an animated set of conjurers hands, and begins with a look at how children's attitude to fame and celebrity have changed to such a degree that they believe that to be a celebrity, to be famous is the be all and end all of their adult lives. He looks at how mass media infiltrates their lives through indoctrinating advertising.


Well, this isn't particularly earth-shattering news. We know celebrities flog us stuff on behalf of advertisers and we know how the children's market is so perniciously targeted. After these revelations we see Atkins follow a young couple as they push their son into a career as a DJ, football mascot and all round endorsement machine. Clearly, they just want to make as much money out of this poor young lad and it isn't so much that they've been brainwashed by the acquisitory nature of fame and celebrity but that they in turn are brainwashing their son into believing this is going to be a life-long and worthy career.

I would question the morality of such parenting rather than lob a heap of criticism at the culture itself. But, Atkins is spot-on about the way media companies shovel masses of product at children, grooming them for the self-esteem wars that are associated with the latest Hannah Montana '2 in 1 transformation doll'. Equally horrifying is the sight of parents actually signing their children up to participate in reality shows, one with the dubious title of Baby Boozers.



Once you ignore the grating narrator and the film properly settles down, Atkins does get to the meat of his polemic. On the way, he again reveals that...hey, newspapers do make stuff up and will pay any silly bugger who rings up with a complete load of lies about this actor or that actor. Nothing new there but he does make some spirited observations about how reductions in costs and staffing on newspapers is contributing to the feeding frenzy about celebrities and how decent news reporting is being slowly eroded by such practices.

It seems it is easier and cheaper for a reporter to replicate any piece of PR guff that lands on his or her desk than it is to to actually write their own copy or, in fact chase a story and do a really decent bit of investigative journalism. And get the facts right. You can't blame the journalists because these days they have very little time to cover their posts and those of others who have long since been made redundant. It's this that affects the quality of our news. That and the way the PR machines of huge media conglomerates choke up any chance of decent reporting, turn reporters into press officers and the business of news into huge PR and spin operations.


Atkins and his crew undertake a sting operation on various tabloid papers and successfully show that if you've got a bit of made up gossip that they're interested in then you can say farewell to any ethical standards in the press. This is particularly pertinent to the rules of selling medical information to the press and the film shows the team being offered £3,000 in return for stories based on medical information about celebrities, and a reporter's cynical assurance that any protest and fines from the Press Complaints Commission will be easily put aside by editors.

Where Atkins misses a trick is in not showing how, as mass media evolves in the digital age, that rather like reality television, there is now a blurring between public and private citizens, an interchangeability between so called celebrities and members of the public, between media and the public. This also indicates one of the film's flaws. Atkins has two or three really fantastic investigative pieces up his sleeve and the whole film could have been constructed using these, just as a piece of exceptional investigative reporting. Instead, he covers the stories but not in enough depth for me and surrounds them with much material that, as I've pointed out, isn't exactly news to anyone.


The film really comes into its own in the final half. Taking his notion of how PR and spin manipulates our view of the world, he manages to get Max Clifford - protectionist 'celebrity Mr. Fixit' himself - to fess up, nay brag, on camera about what he'll do to bury a bad story or ensure that the rather desperate and unsavoury antics of his clients can be covered up, for the right price. Clifford, naturally, attempted to get the film pulled but it seems Atkins has prevailed and the jaw-dropping footage remains intact. Just after you've recovered from that salvo, Atkins detonates his biggest bomb. The documentary alleges that some of the money and aid from Live Aid, back in 1985, actually did more harm than good, causing population movements and an ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia.



He also critiques the Live 8 concert in 2005, showing how this self-indulgent PR fueled bombast, rammed down our throats by an internecine connection between Richard Curtis, Bob Geldof, PR guru Matthew Freud and Freud's father-in-law Rupert Murdoch, both manipulated and coerced the media and public alike into believing it would put pressure on the G8 summit to do something about aid to Africa. As he explains, very little of what was promised by the summit has actually been achieved and offers that Live 8 had very little effect on the decisions made at the summit. Meanwhile, recording artists CD sales rocketed through the roof and their bank balances glowed with rude health. This blanket PR coverage also seriously eroded the efforts of political lobbyists Make Poverty History who were starved of the oxygen of publicity for their cause in favour of a Pink Floyd reunion.

It satisfyingly hits its smug targets but really Atkins should have made both the Clifford story and the Live 8 fiasco the centre of the film. There was definitely enough material there to make a single documentary without the flimsier, rather obvious observations he surrounds it with in Starsuckers. But, job well done in exposing the incestuous relationship between self-agrandising celebrities and pop stars, media barons, PR leeches and politicians and it is highly recommended for the Clifford and Live Aid/8 revelations. Clearly, the film made its mark with Clifford attempting to get an injunction on it before theatrical release and Geldof sending a 58 page rant to Atkins the day before it was due to go on air on More 4. You can read his whole, rather amusing tirade on the film's website.

Special features
The DVD is packed with loads of little featurettes, a making of and a commentary. All quite fascinating stuff that adds to the material in the film.

• Commentary Decent commentary with Atkins and his producer Christina Slater and they chat about the whys and wherefores of shooting various scenes, offering plenty of background detail about the making of the film. Well worth a listen. 

The Media 

• Kids Talking About The Media - School children offer their observations about television, celebrities, magazines and how culture affects them. 
• Entertainment Journalist - An anonymous reporter spills the beans on the vacuous and manipulative world of celebrity journalism, coverage of culture in general and Hollywood paps. 

 Paparazzi 

• Kids Talking About Paparazzi - The same school children talk about the paps. 
• More Kev the Pap - Observing a paparazzi in action, chasing celebs and having dust ups on the street. 
• Owen the Pap - A pap chats about stalking Britney, the nature of the Hollywood dream and his own profession. 
• Paps Chase Britney - Pretty obvious from the title. Fifty photographers attempt to pap Britney much to the chagrin of the police.

• Media's Influence on Mass Shootings An interesting mini-report on how the media reports shootings at schools and colleges and how the way such incidents are reported might fuel and affect future incidents.

Celebrities

• Kids Talk About Fame - Those school children again with some predictable responses. 
• Famous People!!! – Celebrities on Celebrities - Atkins button holes various actors at film premieres and asks them about fame and celebrity. Pacino, Jackson, De Niro and Fiennes all stick to the party line. Jennifer Tilly is refreshingly honest about the subject, though. 
• Oliver Auditions Celebrity Kids - At the auditions for the BBC show I'd Do Anything with kids and their parents.   
• Liliana Dalla Piana – Celebrity P.A. - The nature of being a PA is briefly discussed 
• Luke Yankee – Celebrity Son - The son of Oscar-winning actress Eileen Eckhart tells us what it's like having a famous mother 
• Ian Drury – Celebrity Publisher  - The celeb biog market, the ghost writer and branding
• Gifting Suite – Celebrity Ligging - Marketing man Mark Harris tells us about "gifting," and Nephria soaps explain the  of having a celebrity endorse your product.

Starsuckers (Network DVD 7953312 - Region 2 - Released 12th April 2010 - Cert 12)