The Ood Cast

There was a time – the late 80s spring to mind – that Doctor Who wasn’t really viewed as, you know, “proper acting”. The Doctor was arriving in places filled with Comedy double-acts trying to stretch their careers for a bit longer, the cast of Cats and actors that people had assumed were already dead…

If there was any doubt to the quality of this show by now, I point you in the direction of The Doctor’s Daughter. This is, seriously, the best thing I have seen in a long time. Ok, so being daddy to a small boy, TV isn’t exactly something I get to experience all that much anymore. But the point still stands. This was brilliant.

That Tennant bloke is a master of his craft. In theory, I think its perfectly possible to play the Doctor by hiding behind the huge character and equally massive back-story and still do a fairly good job of it. But he packs so much into these performances – I’m sure that this isn’t the biggest acting challenge he will ever take on – but from the way he rollocks through these episodes, it looks like the most enjoyable.

Georgia Moffatt was superb – equally as subtle and deft with looks and facial expressions that echoed the Doctor. The beginning is a prickly one, and I felt a little nervous about where this would be going… But it becomes very obvious very quickly that the connection between them is real and from that moment on it was impossible not to warm to her.

In terms of characters, Donna showed a bit of intelligence here – and managed to think about puzzles in a completely dispassionate way, bypassing the confusion that the Doctor was going through. Martha was her usual bold self with firm morals. And the Doctor…? That scene where Jenny dies is the single most affecting thing I’ve seen this series. The pain and the emotion were real, and my goodness we felt that hole reopen inside him. A huge wow-factor.

It was hardly completely unpredictable. But I didn’t – and still don’t – care in the slightest. Like I said before, way back in my post about Partners In Crime I think, being a Doctor Who fan, its more about escapism than gritty reality. I don’t (usually) care whether the plot is water-tight and the visual effects are accurate, spot on or even good. It doesn’t matter if the cast contains more wood than a 16th century Galleon being studied by a group of hormonal 15 year olds. This isn’t Eastenders – this is meant to be entertaining.

And this was magnificent. I loved the similarities with classic stories – particularly Genesis of the Daleks sprung to mind a few times – the multi-generation race war just about to come to a horrible, destructive head and the surface scenes in particular helped that image.

And you know, even though I knew the end was coming, I loved it. Even though I was sitting there, waiting for it, I still bounced off walls with joy. The Doctor isn’t the only Time Lord any more. And he’s not the only one of him around. I really hope Andrew’s right and she returns some day…

I’m really really looking forward to next week. Not least because the writer of one of the best Series 3 episodes (The Shakespeare Code) is back with a new story, but also because its allegedly written as a more straight-up comedy episode, and that its about Agatha Christie – an author that I have disliked and been bored rigid by since I was little. I now sit here impatiently fidgeting waiting for Saturday…

I wasn’t wrong this time! Love it. There was a moment where the Doctor made wordplay with ‘source’ and I wondered what sort would go with my preview if I had to eat my words. As it was this was really really what I’d hoped it would be and totally unexpected too.

Doctor Who is like a packet of Revels – love them too. The variety. Some are crunchy (like The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky) some are chewy (Planet of the Ood), and some a bit surprising and not what you thought you might get (The Doctor’s Daughter).

Just so many lovely, rich ideas. Humans versus fish, fighting for so many generations that they have forgotten precisely why, but each generation lasts only a few hours so the war has taken a matter of days. Brilliantly implausible! And so much more besides: a deceptively layered story with plenty for the regulars to get their teeth into, even asides on the Child Support Agency and a turkey baster. There’s no other series that could cover such a broad rang…, ha, I’ve said it enough times before haven’t I? This blog is getting hard to write. This year is so consistently superb that I am getting stuck for superlatives. I wonder if the time has come for a new word to describe such consistent excellence. The English language has already embraced Dalek as a noun, so why not Doctor Who itself?

Doctor Who
1. BBC Television series. From 1963 to present.
2. Adj, (pronounced: dok-ter hoo). Consistently brilliant; defying expectations.

Here is another reason why I like Doctor Who. Those moments and ideas that plant the seeds of ‘what if’ in your mind. Those extraordinary moments that leap out and grab our imagination and often scared us stupid as kids. Walking stones, Kinda’s dream sequences, The Kandyman, the Marshmen. The other week a friend came up to me out of the blue and went, ‘I found these in the attic and I know you like Doctor Who‘ and gave me copies of The Tenth Planet and The Silurians. I’ve never seen either so this is very exciting. So I cracked open Tenth Planet last night. I was struck by the entrance of the Cybermen and then how they just command the screen. My goodness they are creepy. Terrifying actually. The way they speak with that voice (by the geniuses who did the voices for Captain Pugwash and Zippy and George in Rainbow!) that is emotionless but still recognisably human with their mouths breathlessly opening and closing. These days the idea behind them still seems fresh no matter how much it has been used in fiction, and the shock of their first appearance is so discernable 42 years on that I am very impressed. Not just the moments of awe and creepyness though. The ideas. Compare the breadth and depth of the ideas in your average Who story with almost anything else on telly and you’ll wonder why you watch anything else ever. Two more episodes to go and then it’s the first regeneration. I need another night in and fast!

What? Oh, yes; The Doctor’s Daughter.

It’s unfair to single anyone out, but this was David Tennant’s master-class in the full gamut of acting skill. There were many moments this week in which he effortlessly showed us what the Doctor was going through but one that really stood out for me: that smile that crosses his face when Jenny asks him what the Time War was like – goodness knows how he made that look so much like a father’s reaction to an innocent question from a child and be so full of anguish at the same time. He claims on the commentary that before the scene he’d accidentally bashed his leg on a table that that had helped ‘the moment’. But that’s just being modest if you ask me. The man is a genius. Oh, and another one: the ‘I never would’ scene was like the manifesto of the series and was incredibly powerful. There are all sorts of parallels to life there and it was a proper stare straight at the telly blinking regularly without looking at anyone else in the room moment.

Georgia Moffett was effortlessly brilliant. There’s loads of subtlety in her performance: moments where you glimpse bits of the Doctor in her; in the smile, the quickness of her actions.

Now then, I have a certain track record with my predictions on this blog don’t I (ahem). I predict that Jenny will be back – with an outrageous amount of running. Can’t wait.

This is about Fandom. The wonders of it, and the horrible way it can really obstruct other people’s enjoyment of things.

Doctor Who fans, in general (I think) are a wonderful bunch of people. They vary hugely in every way, and cover several generations. Even the younger fans seem to be able to intelligently hold their own in debates over whether the Slitheen should make a wiffy return, or if the Daleks really are the meanest baddies in the “Whoniverse”.

(Incidentally, my pedantic side picked up on something that was said by a 12-year-old fan in a podcast I heard recently. He said that he’d seen “just about all the classic series, which is an achievement for a child of just twelve years of age.” I agree. Especially since many episodes haven’t existed on video since the late 60s/early 70s…)

But there are some who are so set in their ways, so convinced that what went before is better than it can ever be again, that with every new idea, every new theory of the doctor’s past or the development of any plot line that has been used before, that they become willfully destructive and just blow up at the slightest provocation.

So we come to The Doctor’s Daughter. This isn’t a review, as I haven’t seen it yet, but a reflection of the controversy in fandom about this.

This is what is happening, as far as I can tell:
Firstly, people are up in arms that the title is so deliberately provocotive and controversial.
Secondly, the mere idea that the Doctor can have a daughter is appalling to some.

There is something that would counter both of these, to some extent. To find it, let’s quickly hop back to 23 November 1963…

The first Doctor travels with three people, to start with, at least. Two are teachers from a school. The other is his “Grandaughter”. Grandaughter. There you go. That might go some way to explain why the Doctor having a daugher isn’t as controversial as it seems. If the Doctor had a Grandaughter, its a fairly safe assumption that there would have been a generation in between. Perhaps, say, a daughter. And as for the title being deliberately provocotive and controversial… it got you talking about it, didn’t it… What else is it supposed to do?!

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Doctor Who is cool right now. And its been a long time coming – ever since the mid-80s when Michael Grade got his dirty hands in the pie and started to mess with it, Doctor Who hasn’t been cool. But now, we have a wealth of excellent stuff coming our way – really well-written, produced and performed audio adventures, a TV reincarnation that is better than any of us scarcely believed could have happened, books and new releases of Classic Who coming out of our ears. We have more and more fans – many of them young – joining us, and discovering what helped us through our formative years.

I don’t see the harm in playing with some of the old elements – there are new viewers to entertain these days, and its something that fans should be used to by now. This is our Doctor still, very identifiably our Doctor. But the old days are now a reference in something new and fresh and exciting. I was thrilled just to hear the name of Sir Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart being mentioned in The Poison Sky – he is a legend and I love watching old episodes with him and his UNIT colleagues. But to bring him back now would have been wrong. Even more than it was in Battlefield.

There’s no doubting it, the Doctor has changed. He’s had to. With TV and drama in particular the way it is now, there’s no way he could have returned meandering around for 20 minutes each week, no matter how well written the stories. I know some die-hard fans don’t like the 45 minute format. I’m not entirely sure I am totally with this either – but its the way things are done now. Doctor Who could not compete with US drama or what’s being produced on a regular basis by the BBC, without being dynamic and bold. Being the wonderful and ageing BBC Statesman, strolling round the corridors of Television Centre, is no longer an option.

This Doctor is young and exciting. He makes kids want to be like him. Just like Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker, Sylv McCoy and the rest did for us. A whole new generation of kids are pretending to battle Cybermen and Daleks in school playgrounds at break time. Isn’t that more important than if the Doctor’s hair is exactly the same two weeks in a row, or if they do something that contradicts a line in The War Machines?

And so what if this Doctor wears a suit with trainers? The one before wore a leather jacket. I think its a slight improvement on a question-mark-emblazoned tank-top or a coat that looks like he just mugged a passing gypsy. Don’t you?

Do you remember that feeling when you were little, when Christmas came round, and you got exactly what you wanted in every way… and then discovered it wasn’t quite as brilliant as you thought it would be?

I don’t know whether I should be disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the story – and I think the Sontarans are a wonderful baddie. I am, and always have been, a UNIT fan. DT was brilliant as usual, Donna bearable, and Martha was excellent. But I feel cheated. I went on a nostalgic trip after I saw The Poison Sky, and it only made things worse, and because I particularly like the Sontarans and I want to share my pain, I’m going to go a bit geeky on this episode’s ass.

After I saw this episode, I watched the first ever Sontaran story. A real cracker starring Jon Pertwee – The Time Warrior. Then I sat, and I thought back to classic adventures, including the first two or three Sontaran stories, and I feel like they’ve missed something big with the new one. A classic story – particularly of the 4-6 part Pertwee stories would consist of the first part being the Doctor and Liz/Jo/Sarah investigating something – just like the ATMOS device – and then calling UNIT in as they think there’s something suspicious.

We didn’t get that. The Doctor and Donna turned up halfway through the UNIT investigation.

We’d then be treated to a final part full of suspense-filled, thrilling denoument, topped off with a moment or two of humourous banter or slower reflection.

Out of two 45 minute episodes, we got about ten whole minutes of conclusion. One short, sharp UNIT assault, using amour-piercing bullets. One hastily-assembled atmosphere changer to fix the earth. One teleporter, and one more explosion. That’s it.

Ok, factor in the surprising change of heart from Luke Rattigan, who finally made something of his genius and sacrificed himself to save the Doctor and protect the earth. And because I don’t want Andrew to be wrong – maybe that was the comuppance he deserved for throwing his lot in with some squat Mr Potato Head alien types.

Despite that, I really enjoyed it. It was pacy, suspense-filled and good fun. But I do think it was badly-structured. Its the first time I’ve had the inclination to criticise the new series, and I feel awkward. But it was too-weighted on setting-up the end and had a storyline that didn’t entirely add up.

Let me explain: The Sontarans are cloned war machines, basically. They are totally focussed on war. They do anything and everything they can to fight – and ultimately to die. The term “one-track-mind” was invented for them, I’m sure. So would they really have decided to take some time out of their war to come to a planet like earth, team up with a teenage genius to gas the world’s population so they could use it as a clone-production world? Surely that’s far too crafty for Sontarans?

This is the trouble with bringing back older monsters. Its like the myth about Daleks not being able to climb stairs (they can – watch Rememberance of the Daleks if you don’t believe me – the cliffhanger to episode 1 is the Doctor being chased up a flight of stairs in the school basement by a dalek.), the Sontarans already have attributes and characters to fall back on. Their behaviour in the story was fine – and the two commanders were brilliantly written – and performed… Yet another blast from my comedy-watching past in Christopher Ryan making the small leap from Mike in the Young Ones to a Sontaran Commander… But it all worked well, and I absolutely loved it. Except for the mind-bogglingly layered “Stratagem”…

But I tell you what, if you either a) don’t have a clue about previous Sontaran stories, and/or b) are able to watch it all and keep your geeky tendancies quiet – like I had to – then this is brilliant. My reflection on it might be a bit lukewarm after I’ve had time to think about it a bit, but my reaction when I saw it was complete joy – and I’ll be happy to see this again (and again)!

Oh, and the icing on the cake… Martha’s in the next one too! Hurrah!

It will be pretty obvious to everyone by now that I’m the weak link in the chain. The faulty circuit, the twisted wire in a RTD-scripted deus ex machina finale where it turns out there’s a setting on the sonic screwdriver that can fix everything. My v. professional and v. insightful friends are two episodes ahead of me, seem to recall detail with startling clarity and have the intellectual kapow to back up those recollections with solid critique. All this while rooting the new series squarely in the context of the show’s mythology and (quite possibly) making stacks of fluffy pancakes with maple syrup and crispy bacon just the way I like them.

I’m not going to attempt the trick of catching up, of trying to shoehorn in an alternative perspective for each episode when they’ve been thoroughly interrogated already. That’s a lot of words and my fingers are like thick frankfurters tripping greasily across the keys, I don’t have the wpms in me. It’s a fool’s errand exacerbated by the following points:

a) I love Dr Who. Love it. Consequently any attempt on my part to go all Siskel and Egbert on its ass is doomed to failure. My utter unfeasible love for the programme renders me a dribbling moron with the analytical prowess of toast. I try to be insightful and unbiased but I’m not and it’s stupid to pretend otherwise.

b) As soon as I try to write a review, I think to myself “I’m writing a review now” and suddenly I revert to school mode and it stops being fun. I find myself clicking the word count every sentence and mewling to myself in irritation. Have you ever heard a grown man mewl? It sounds exactly like a cat. It’s uncanny, I don’t know how I do it. Make it stop. Make it stop.

c) I can’t remember the first two anymore, the third one’s getting fuzzy now too. They’ve all kind of blended together into a Rutan-alike amorphous blob entitled something like Dr Who and the Planet of Fiery Crime or Ood in Pompeii.

Anyway, here’s my review of Ood in Pompeii …

Isn’t the Doctor good? He just sets the screen on fire, doesn’t he? I mean even when everything on screen is literally on fire he still lights up the place like a magnesium flare. Any plot hole, any slight wobble with the dialogue can be relied upon to be ironed out by the sheer titanic steamrollering presence of the Tenth doctor. God, it’s brilliant to have him on the show- all crackerjack energy, wisdom, wit and rage. DT, in my humble opinion, is the broadcast equivalent of MSG in Chinese food – only good for you.

And this series has raised its game to keep pace with its star. The scope, the ideas, the FX execution is really quite brilliant. From those cute little teddy bear blobs of fat through choking volcanic ash to an ICE PLANET we’ve been spoiled in a way comparable to having the ambassador unload a dump truck’s worth of Ferrero Rocher on our front porch. I love the confident referencing of the show’s history, I admire the temerity of the writers to tackle complex and morally dubious issues, I applaud the skill and joie de vivre of a crew working at the very top of its game. This is a TV show don’t forget, and a British one at that, it has a tight schedule and a budget that Hollywood would laugh at and called ‘titch’ or ‘small fry’ while making derisive snorting noises through their cocaine-decimated blow holes. Well screw you Tinsel Tossers because this little Welsh televisual engine that can has delivered ancient cities, lava-veined granite homunculi, skin-rending, tentacle -spewing species switching and an orange rocket ship with go faster stripes. All within a budget that wouldn’t even cover Teri Hatcher’s mid-morning smoothie. Hooray for you BBC.

Oh dear, now that I’ve started there’s so much I want to talk about. The theory of Whoniverse time travel that I’ve cobbled together from years of trying to make it all make sense. The difference between a show like Lost that has been worked out 4 series in advance and a show like DW that has a spaceship that looks like a Police Box because they had a spare one lying around when they started filming. A show where layer upon layer of lore has been added by different artists with no rhyme or reason other than expediency and practicality at any given moment in its history and that now stands proudly unbent beneath the accumulated mass of more than six decades of creativity.

But perhaps I’ll be contented with unburdening myself of these furious narrative flights of fancy in short bursts throughout the week. What say you chaps? Are you up for some full on geek-flavoured navel gazing to break the humdrum passage of quotidian reality? Shall we free ourselves from this rigorous prison of academic discursion and plot our own course through the vortex?

Or shall we fall back on well-worn terrain because I tell you what … I’m still not sure about Catherine Tate.

And Partners In Crime is completely forgotten. My word this was good.

Soothsayers, volcanoes, underground monsters, stone people, ancient circuitry, moral depth for Donna (who saw that coming?! – I don’t believe you if you say you did…), fabulous actors…

Any shortcomings from the week before, forgotten and gone. This was lovely. Even the water pistol moment was good. In fact, it was far better than that – it was classic Who – it sits alongside offering Jelly Babies and cups of tea, and bamboozling enemies with insults so intelligent that they are still standing scratching their head while their plan is unraveled around them.

This is what I call Doctor Who… at least, what I did when I was little. It was one of those moments that you look for with every new Doctor, the moment where they challenge the previous incumbent’s reputation… Where they mark their path. Introduce their own little quirk to the role. The first moment that Pertwee’s furrowed brow morphed into that cheeky glint in the eye, when Tom Baker’s teeth filled the screen like an Attenborough Shark Special. When Davison adjusted the leek on his lapel and straightened his hair. When McCoy doffed his hat and swung his question-mark-handled brolly. When Colin Baker’s doctor had a break…

The Doctor of agonising choice was back, and boy it was fantastic to watch!

The thing is, this is more of a traditional Doctor Who story than any of the others I’ve seen so far in the “new series”. Until now, there’s been nothing that has created such a chasm and such a choice. Sure, in the last three series we’ve seen a succession of historical characters and settings, from Shakespeare, Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens to the Blitz, but none of them have been based on something obviously historical (albeit with the historical element given that regular, everyday alien conquest twist). And given the success of the last three years, maybe this constituted a risk. But by thunder, just see how that worked!

May be it sounds a little odd to say that its only now that DT’s doctor has made his mark – but I’m saying that from the point of view that everything else that has gone before has been markedly different from the kind of style that occupied the first 25 years of Who… DT made a mark immediately, but it was a complete change – its just not fair to compare some of the sweeping epics of the 1960s-70s to the swift, modern drama we get nowadays. But that doesn’t stop them being the same character, or having the same ethos. But I can’t think where this scale of sacrifice has been challenged. I’ve found something I like about Donna, if she’s going to stay like this – she’s stronger when it comes to challenging thought. But maybe that’s because she’s not distracted by the thought of what is in the Doctor’s pants.

All in all, this was a triumph!

There’s just one thing though: Donna’s “TK Maximus” gag… Oh lord.

Ahhh, that rare thing: really good telly.

Oh. My. Goodness. That was good. The Doctor holds off a monster with a water pistol. Donna gets mouthy with the sisterhood. There’s jokes about Latin being translated into Welsh (why? Who cares. It’s sublime). There’s history – we learn about Ancient Rome and their household gods, hypercourses and Pompeii. We glimpse monsters in the hypercourse, the sort of thing that took me back to the days when I stayed close to my parents in case I got too scared (Rutan, Stones of Blood, Kroll, Scaroth). There’s a cast including some of my favourite actors. There’s wit and genuine proper drama.

It’s wonderful isn’t it? It’s still a matter of suspending belief, just supposing for 45 minutes each week that there are aliens out there made of fire and rock, or … oh, how does that speech from the McCoy years go: ‘There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold’. It’s still about being spun a good yarn; learning something; and being scared – just enough to go on about it on Monday morning with your mates. Even if you left school in the last century. You’re never too old for this, and it’s priceless.

This week the point was to ask what would you do if could go back and warn Pompeii. As Chris said below, the Doctor operates on a completely different level from us, and there’s some superb stuff going on as he deals with Donna’s protestations. He knows what can’t be changed. But suddenly, in a great twist that makes this even better it’s more than that – it’s the awful dilemma of is it ever right to kill for the greater good? Although the answer in this case is made more palatable by dint of it being human history v alien empire. The act itself is still something the Doctor almost can’t bring himself to do, even though he knows it is a fixed point in time and therefore has to happen. As Chris said, 21st century effects can properly take this show further than Saturday tea time suspension of belief and into real full bodied drama – and how; the long shot of the ash cloud rushing towards the town is an image that is not easily forgotten. This is the quality we all remember thinking we saw when we were aged four to ten. Goodness knows what the kids make of it these days. Marvellous.

We don’t really know why at first the Doctor doesn’t save the family that Latin students have loved for years. And that’s fine, because it makes you think. Is it because if he saves them it’s not fair on the rest of the Pompeiians? Or does it hark back to the time he had to destroy his own world? Survivor’s guilt. Or perhaps he “shouldn’t” have saved them. That might explain the strange bright light emanating from the TARDIS as being more than just dramatic effect. Maybe it was fighting the fact that it had returned. I love temporal theory!

So now we know: Catherine Tate can really really blooming act. Goodness! There’s a chemistry between her and Tennant that is a delightful surprise, and if all goes well (and I think it will) will provide even more memorable moments in the months to come as their characters develop. Orrrr yes!! There’s months more of this!!

Congrats Who team. You are all brilliant. Just the best. And next week looks SUPERB too!!

PS: I have read in the Guardian of all places that Rose was in the cave scenes somewhere. Anyone spot her?

*Thanks to Edward Bond. If you missed his play The Sea at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, then you missed out…

At last! Andrew summed all that sentiment up perfectly, so I won’t add to that, except to say that I am glad its back, if a little nervous.

I have several gripes with Catherine Tate. Not least the idea that The Guardian put out there on the same day as episode 1 was broadcast that she’s “Britain’s best-loved woman comic”… I don’t particularly find her sketch show all that funny and there are characters on that which make me want to put my foot through the telly.

But in 2006, whether I liked it or not, she encroached on my ground… She was in Doctor Who. And she was, well, alright. It wasn’t a great story, and the character was pretty unlikeable. But it was alright. It was watchable – but having David Tennant in the cast does that to a programme…

So what on earth was this going to be like with the grating Donna by DT’s side, combatting what looked to be the least-threatening menace since the half-painted Myrka stumbled into the Sea Station in Warriors of the Deep? Its so much harder to get away with crap monsters these days. It was much easier when it was very clear to all that this hideous alien/creature was obviously a man in a half-painted suit – because Doctor Who fans didn’t care – its about getting lost in the fantasy of it all, letting your brain compute this as real for 20 minutes a week. Now, though, CGI has added it’s double-edged twopenneth in. On the one hand, they’re able to create the most stunning things I’ve seen on UK telly. On the other hand, there isn’t anything to be left to the imagination. So how were they going to pull this off?

The answer, came from the mind and keyboard of RTD. This wasn’t a sparkling story by any means. It had the required numerous pointless chases (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing) that it takes to be an RTD script. But there is so clearly a chemistry between Tate and Tennant that is such a winning formula that its impossible to misfire (it seems). Incidentally, I agree, Andrew – RTD’s opening episodes have tended to be up and down – the first season’s Rose was stunning. The second season’s New Earth was a huge disappointment to me – I found it all rather boring, to be honest. Last year’s Smith and Jones was just about perfect in pitch, script, acting and drama. And this year, well, it hit a nice middle ground. A concern that nagged at me was that Tim’s comment about Star Trek films in the majestic series Spaced (“Sure as night follows day, sure as eggs is eggs, sure as every odd numbered Star Trek movie is s**t.”) would become true for RTD’s season openers. It had been so far, with season two being a real fly in the ointment. Sure it wasn’t s**t, but it wasn’t all that good either. If cat nurses can’t save the thing, its a wonder the doctor managed to.

What saved Partners In Crime, though, was the script and the acting performances. Sarah Lancashire and Bernard Cribbins (I hope he’s a regular occurance!) really added brilliant depth to it all, and the sparks between the Doctor and Donna were gloriously not romantic, but oh-so-funny! To avoid quoting the “mouthing” scene again, I’ll go for the confrontation with Mrs Foster in the building – it was tense, climactic and ended with a moment of comic brilliance from Tennant (“Do you know what happens when you put two sonic devices together? [Mrs Foster: No] Neither do I – let’s find out!”)

My instinct was that I hated the aliens. But after a second watch, actually I didn’t. It wasn’t that I hated them – I hated what they stood for. Yes, they were a deceptively clever conception with the name and some of their reasonings for coming to earth, but I’m always uneasy at social comment in Doctor Who. And this felt clunky and not at all suited. It has happened before – the whole Slitheen saga in Season one had huge echoes of the debates surrounding the Iraq war – but that was more used for comic effect really. This seemed and felt more like comment on society. I guess its fair game, and you never know, it might convince some youngsters to shed a few pounds to avoid dissipating into a bundle of cute aliens. But it just felt wrong to me.

It was OK. I really did enjoy it, and I watched it twice without balking, but there were too many things that rankle slightly. And coming back to a point Andrew made… yes – I sat there at the end and thought that Rememberance of the Daleks was a better season opener. In fact, in the week since, I’ve seen some of Spearhead From Space and Robot… Both excellent openers. My goodness, I sound like a fan. When did that happen?!

And Tate? You’re alright by me if things carry on like that. I can only see it getting better and it didn’t start in a bad place…

I had three beginnings.

Of course I didn’t but wouldn’t it have been ever so elegant if I had? In actual fact I had five beginnings, one after the other in the space of an hour. Yes, my first experience of Dr Who was Terrence Dick’s “The Five Doctors” which is by any measure a crazy ass episode for anyone to enter the Whoniverse.

For one thing it follows none of the rules of the series as a whole, imagine watching that thing if you had no idea about the history of the show. Right, so this guy’s the Doctor and he travels to different planets in a blue box. Wait a minute, that guy’s also a Doctor, I wonder what his deal is? Oh, it’s exactly the same as the first guy’s, they haven’t even bothered to invent another back story. More questions followed: Why do those two seem to be acting in an entirely different show? Why does she keep spraining her ankle? Couldn’t she have just walked up that slope?

And yet … and yet … I was enthralled. Which meant that when in 1989 Dr Who burst (then limped) back into regular programming, I was beside myself. No behind the sofa for me, I had my face pressed up against the screen. It was ‘Ace give me one of those Nitro-9s you’re not carrying’ BOOM! and I was in love.

Favourite Doctor:

Will always be Sylvester McCoy. Not because he was all I knew, not because I didn’t know any better. He was just MY Doctor – dark, strange, clownish and complex. His Doctor was like nothing else on TV, not just the good guy but multi-faceted, a master-manipulator, so alien, so other when he wanted to be. I think I just instinctively knew that I wasn’t being pandered to with this one – 9 years old and something was speaking to me in all the glorious greys and half-tones of the real world. So yes, I firmly believe Dr Who had it’s own little renaissance at the fag-end of the century with stories like Remembrance, Ghostlight, and Fenric earning their place as really top-flight Who. Then came the New Adventures which went that one step further into territory I’d certainly never been before. I still remember the gist of the blurb on the back cover of one of the first novels (Timewyrm? Cat’s Cradle?) ‘Only the Doctor can save them. But the Doctor was destroyed years ago. Before time began …’ I couldn’t keep it in my head, couldn’t contain the worlds conjured up to dance before me, the ideas, the scale, the complexity of the continuum and through it all the rich seam of the McCoy Doctor – impish and strange, clever and comical – the grinning, winking tip of a cold, alien intelligence that spread out like a glacier beneath the surface.

Of course, all that said, David Tennant is beyond fantastic and the only other Doctor that convinces me the guy is operating on a completely different level to everyone else. The Doctor is not human, lest me forget, he’s not just really, really ridiculously clever – he perceives things differently to us, he can see time in the same way we can see length, width, height, volume – all that possibility, all those choices slowly solidifying around him, fixing future history in place just by his presence (and brilliantly realised and articulated in ‘Fires of Pompeii’ might I say [YES - first mention of Series 4 - and all because my colleagues have been gracious enough to wait for me to catch up, what a rotter!]). Tennant sells the hell out of the character and it is his obvious, joyous, infectious love for the role that ultimately lifts the current iteration of the show to a level that precious few programmes can match.

The last word should be left to Sylvester though in probably my favourite Dr Who quote of all time – ‘I can’t stand burnt toast. I loathe bus stations – terrible places, full of lost luggage and lost souls. And then there’s unrequited love, and tyranny, and cruelty. We all have a world of our own terrors to face.’

Perfect.

Favourite story:

I have loads. Apart from the McCoy classics mentioned above I would also like to give massive shout outs to City of Death, The Time Meddler, Caves of Androzani, The Green Death, Genesis of the Daleks, The Empty Child, Girl in the Fireplace and most of the latter half of Season 3. It really is a stellar time to be a Dr Who fan, isn’t it?

Oh and Dimensions in Time.

Kidding.

Monster/ enemy:

Not to be the contrarian of the group (which I am unfortunately) but I love the Daleks. They work and it’s crazy because it’s like Terry Nation just threw a load of concepts at a wall (like they were spaghetti that he wasn’t sure was quite done) and the bits that stuck he went with. The stupid wheeled design, the one eye, the plunger, the spots, the car grill, the weedy laser, the voice – it’s like the worse designed monster ever both in practicality and menace and yet when you put it together it’s a dalek and it’s ultimately cool. I was bouncing off the walls in the Ecelston episode – when the eyes flashed in the darkness. Awesome.

Also the Raston Assassin Robot thing. Take that you rubbish Cybermen idiots. You don’t like that cold steel up you, do you? Thought you were only vulnerable to gold? Well prepare to be retconned you motherf***ers coz it looks like you’ll also go down like a bitch when faced with the might of normal metal arrows. Hahahahahaha!

Which companion did you either want to be or fancy:

Peri … in the regeneration scene. No one was looking at you, Peter.

No one.

What are you looking forward to?:

I’m going to be honest here – absolutely everything. I can’t wait. But especially Moffet shenanigans.

Dreading:

Catherine Tate. She’s alright but I’m not a fan and she doesn’t make my heart go pitter patter like Rose did.

I should now go on and talk about episode 1 and 2 but I think I’ll leave the honour of commencing the geekathon to one of my esteemed colleagues that deserve it oh so very much more than me.

Go for your life, guys.

One of my very first memories is a recurring nightmare about a scary green man with tentacles running into a hut in the snow. The hut blows up and I wake up terrified. Years and years later a friend lent me the video (remember them?) of The Seeds of Doom and there was my nightmare, on screen at the end of part two. Yikes. That was quite a surprise. It seems therefore that I have been watching Doctor Who since before I can remember, but perhaps that is how it should be. Kids love a good story and that is what Doctor Who is.

Doctor Who challenged my imagination and the way I think about the world. It was a big influence for me. Tom Baker grinning at an adversary and offering them a jelly baby was such a unique way of dealing with trouble that you couldn’t help but love it. The series inspired me to become an actor, work in telly, the media, anything really that would get me making programmes like Who. If I may be deep for a moment it fed into my ideas of what is right and wrong and the challenges of the bits between the two.

Favourite Doctor:

Well this is so hard these days. A few years back that was such an easy question. The answer was Tom Baker. But these days how do you choose between Tom and David Tennant? Tennant has really got it nailed now. He’s angry, he’s lonely, he’s an old, old man in a young man’s body. He can be brilliantly funny too. Full of compassion, never allowing the end justify the means but making the means fit the end (is that an oo-er?). And, I’m told by countless women who watch it becasue he’s in it, rather hot… Doctor Who? Hot? Who’d have thought it.

I grew up with Tom’s Doctor so choosing David would be like disowning an uncle or something. Tom was sooo alien. Dangerous and surprising. Wildly funny;‘You know, you’re the classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain!’. Deadly serious; ‘When I say I’m afraid, Sarah, I’m not making jokes’. (Actually are there any really good quotes like that in the new series?) Amazing company, the best friend you could want and the worst enemy.

Hmmm, you can’t compare the two. But David may have the edge at the mo. Never before has there been a Doctor you can feel for, and that dimension is something the new series does really well. We felt his loss at the end of The Girl in the Fireplace and when the Master died. Goodness I had something in my eye on both occasions. Tennant is such a good actor that those big character pieces can really hit you between the eyes. But to be fair to Tom that happened in his time too. That bit in Logopolis where he spots the Watcher for the first time is surprisingly disarming and likewise when Sarah Jane leaves at the end of The Hand of Fear (my first Who memory). He draws his coat up around his shoulders and looks sooo alone.

Favourite Story:

That’s an impossible question! Come on this is Doctor Who! Oh, all right. If you must! Hmmmmm. No. Well. I guess. At a push, if I really must.

It would be City of Death. I suppose it has something to do with being on at the time when I was just getting into Doc Who, but it is brilliant. It’s all there really. An audacious and fascinating plot which is all to do with the Jagoroth wanting to survive (can’t blame him for that) but at the cost of humanity never having existed. A great monster/villain. Tom Baker at the height of his performance and one of the greatest Doctor / companion relationships with Romana (my first TV crush!). A sparkling script by Douglas Adams that gives Steven Moffat a run for his money. Some really scary bits (end of parts one and three – they were really scary to a kid). Julian Glover, Catherine Schell and Tom Chadbon amongst others. And John Cleese!! And Paris!!

Monster/enemy:

Well again there are so many. The Daleks though I have always found rather dull. Creepy yes and unquestionably a design classic. But they are just a bit slow. For me it is the Cybermen. When I was a boy you couldn’t put a scratch on them, not like today (what WAS Russell T Davies thinking of?). They were impassive, invulnerable, totally remorseless and really chilling. Somehow they are really tragic, but of course they’d not understand the word. Watch Earthshock, it still holds up!

But the monster that had the biggest impact on me was Kroll. Terrifying. Yeah, I know the story is dull, but this thing was a mile across. And that wasn’t including it’s tentacles. It could cut through marsh land like a hot knife through butter and pick off anyone at will. Watch those scenes where it attacks the refinery and you will see what I mean. I had nightmares for weeks and wouldn’t go anywhere near the deep end of a swimming pool. It was my one truly behind the sofa moment, and I found to my horror that it was too close to the wall. So I hung onto my dad for dear life.

Which companion did you either want to be or fancy:

Lalla Ward!! Yum!

If I’d been born a few years earlier I suspect it would have been Elisabeth Sladen or, indeed, Katy Manning. Then of course Nicola Bryant. How DID they get away with Planet of Fire part one?? Billie Piper too. I saw her play in the West End last year and got her autograph, she’s really nice

I sort of wanted to be Adric. Looking back he’s not the greatest of the bunch, but because he was a kid it was like wow, he’s getting to travel with the Doctor. His moral dilemmas made me think a bit and he was often getting it wrong and I identified with that – I just knew that I would mess things up in such extraordinary circumstances. Nothing prepared us for when he stays on the freighter to stop it hitting the Earth. Then the escape pod detaches, and the cyberleader blows up the console in the TARDIS, and the cyberman blows up the computer on the freighter, and it’s getting closer and closer to the Earth. Just stop a moment and consider how all that looked to a nine year old who had no idea whatsoever which way it was going to go. This was really, really jaw dropping. Then the muffled bang as the freighter blows up. I think there was a national stunned silence. Yeah it’s only a tv show but that was extraordinary. A needless death among so many made even more tragic by the fact that it was poor hapless Adric. We sat there and turned the volume up to full on the tv cos we couldn’t work out why there was no end music. Then it dawned on us. He was really dead. Goodness.

What are you looking forward to:

18.20, Saturday, BBC1. And Catherine Tate. I think she’s gonna be rather good.

Dreading:

I’m rather worried about episode six. I won’t spoil it if you don’t know the title… but as the Doc said in series one ‘I don’t do domestic’.