The Ood Cast

I learnt something very insightful and rather frightening about my future at the weekend. Let me briefly explain. My parents have been watching the series of Doctor Who. On Sunday, when Luke and I went to visit them, my dad said that he didn’t understand that week’s episode. “It didn’t make sense,” he said. “Why? What was wrong with it?” He looked up and replied “It had no end – it was confusing…” Everyone turned to look at him. “Dad, you did know that it was the first part of a two-part story, didn’t you?”
“Ah. Now that would explain a lot, wouldn’t it…”

Let’s get on. The Sontaran Stratagem. Like Andrew, I think this will be more tangent than plot talk…so let’s start where we mean to go on.

When I was a teenager, I went out and bought a VHS copy of The Two Doctors. Apart from Patrick Troughton and Shockeye, oh, and Peri (with her barely-existing top), the revelation for me was the Sontarans. Humourless, ruthless, honourable, war-loving race. What an enemy! I always loved the story of why they were so short and stocky (their home planet had much higher levels of gravity). How brilliant it was to hear that they were coming back!

Now I’ve heard some rumours about the Sontaran plot. Mostly fan-generated rumours… But interesting ones. Rumours that suggest that the hat that Donna’s grandfather was wearing in episode 1 had what looked like a UNIT badge on it… and that he was “on lookout” in London at Christmas (I guess that means when the Titanic stuff took place…)

But then I’ve also heard that the whole “the Doctor’s song will end” stuff from the Planet of the Ood was being taken as meaning that he would be regenerating at the end of the series. Which doesn’t entirely tally with the fact that David Tennant was photographed filming the Christmas Special this week… Ah well. Worthless listening to rumours I suppose!

This was wholly more satisfying than I had imagined. But what did niggle slightly before I saw it was the fact that its another two-parter written by Helen Raynor, and almost exactly like the one she wrote for the last series, in that it involved an old enemy of the doctor trying to take over the world. And Daleks In Manhattan was pretty good but not brilliant. But oh, this was different.

A camp childhood genius helping a ruthless warrior race with the only weakness being a small plug socket on the back of their neck. And just as good – Martha was back! (I’m an unashamed Martha fan – and for me, swapping Martha for Donna was really not a fair exchange.) As well as all that, Catherine Tate was pretty good in this, and the scenes with her family were funny and touching. Of course, it helps to have Bernard Cribbins there. But these scenes of the home life were excellent. And one of my childhood favourites, UNIT, was back on the kind of scale that I remembered… And plausably at last – not like in Battlefield.

On another tangent – I was always cruelly disappointed with Battlefield. I’d seen stories from the Pertwee/Baker era. I knew who Lethbridge-Stewart, Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton were. And when Lethbridge-Stewart returned for Battlefield, I couldn’t wait. I was at the age that meant I was required to be bathed and ready for bed before Doctor Who came on – it was a school night, after all – and I curled up in an armchair in pajamas and dressing gown to see the return of UNIT. And it was barely recognisable. They seemed completely amateur and rather inept. The Doctor said in the Sontaran Strategem that UNIT always used to be a “little more homespun…” which is true, but there was always the feeling that they were ready for anything – just completely unprepared for the things that were thrown at them because they were only armed with puny earth weapons… Nevertheless, UNIT were great, and what I was seeing – with all the glorious late 1980s technicolour – was rubbish. And it had the female Lister from Red Dwarf in it (not that I knew it then – I just hated the character at the time). There wasn’t much to love about them – except the Brigadier.

It was almost exactly like the contrast between seeing Tomb of the Cybermen for the first time, and then watching Silver Nemesis. And there were some great stories in the McCoy time, but what people tend to remember is the bits like these – not The Happiness Patrol (which made a Bertie Bassett lookalike a plausible and fairly chilling villain – which was no mean feat!), not Paradise Towers, The Curse of Fenric, Ghostlight or Rememberance of the Daleks. Which is such a shame.

Again, we’re back to traditional Who stories. Which is not in any way a criticism. How could it be? Traditional Who is TV drama at its best – perfect escapism and often with a wider message that is demonstrated clearly in the way the Doctor deals with his enemy. This, depending on the conclusion next week, is traditional in the best way possible.

I just hope my dad understands that the reason it didn’t make sense at the beginning is that its part 2 of a two part story. Otherwise, I don’t stand much chance for a stable future!

So, our namesakes arrive… and this was a bit of a masterclass in sci-fi staple elements. An ice planet, a future inter-galactic human empire, a slave race in revolt, misuse of science for personal gain and a scientist with slightly mental hair. And that’s not to mention the warehouse chases and planetary landscape scenes filmed in a quarry…

But that’s not to do it down any. This was well done. Well written and slick, this is an interesting story that was really nicely put together.

Donna’s moral side really does something good here – and really does counter the Doctor well. But, like Chris, I really am not sure about Catherine Tate. She’s OK, and she’s fine with me if her character remains interesting next to DT (who wouldn’t?). But every time she speaks, I just hear characters from her sketch show. At the end of every episode she’s been in so far, I have been expecting her to storm off to the TARDIS shouting “F***ing liberty!”… I’m waiting for the Dalek episode where she’ll just look at it as if its a male model on a cold day, cock her head to one side and shout “I ain’t bovvered!”.

I liked this story though – it reminded me very much of a Tom Baker epic. I was wishing for all the world that the Doctor would come out with one of those lines… You know, like, “You humans… Totally clueless, but you can’t help but love that…” There was an almost palpable atmosphere when the Ood were bearing down on them while they were handcuffed that somehow, the Doctor would slip the cuffs, and offer them a jelly baby (which would then, obviously, turn out to be the Ood’s downfall).

As far as the story was concerned, it was a towering 70s rock supergroup of issues… Can you get much bigger than tying together battery farming and slavery? You can if you add Captain Darling from Blackadder…

But I rather liked the guilt trips that the Doctor went on – being reminded of the first time the Ood appeared, and he couldn’t save them because he’d been too busy looking after everyone else. After last week’s moral bitch-slapping from Donna, this was an interestingly Morrissey-kind-of-perspective. It was nice that the Ood were given a history – a place to come from and a place to go, and not just used as a plot device or as some evil git’s tool of destruction. It was nice that they were a victim, is what I mean. It means that while they were just the forgotten and thrown away bunch of lads the last time round, this time, they ended the story as likeable and friendly creatures.

Oh, and even though I liked this one a lot, the preview of next week made my day… The Sontarans AND UNIT are back in the same week! Oh what unconfined and childish joy! Roll on the weekend!

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…