The Ood Cast

The “Whoniverse” is a complicated place.  Ever aware of this, and the confusions that can arise, your friendly Oodcasters present the beginning of the end of your confusions…  The Oodcast Guide.  Each entry in this weighty online tome will be compiled using the very best of what remains of the Oodcast’s collective memory, and therefore absolutely and thoroughly under-researched.

So, let’s get cracking.  First up, we’ll take you through the most important part of the series…  The Doctor.

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The First Doctor __

The Doyen of doctors, the original was a crotchety old man who insisted on surrounding himself with young people and wearing a hat the shape of a fur-lined cone (which, combined with his white hair gave him the appearance of a time travelling Mr Whippy…)  He also chose the TARDIS with the broken chameleon circuit, presumably, so we can’t assume his judgement in travelling methods was any less flawless than his fashion sense.

He travelled with teachers, space pilots, resistance fighters, rescued spaceship passengers, secretaries and sailors before collapsing and regenerating for the first time.

Tremendously knowledgeable on scientific matters, but curiously awful at flying his own time machine, was the first to encounter Daleks and Cybermen, as well as taking jollies to Mexico, Ancient Greece, China and revolutionary France, met cowboys, cavemen and the Celestial Toymaker.

Oh yes, and he had a library card (see Vampires of Venice).  Eventually, old age took its toll and he regenerated for the first time, into a time-travelling bad-hair-day.

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The Second Doctor __

Slightly shambolic and unpredictable, the second doctor had the appearance of a tramp that wandered into Mr Benn’s favourite costume shop: with a shaggy pudding-bowl haircut, the occasional massive fur coat and Rupert Bear’s favourite trousers.

But there was more to him than fashion statements.  He was mercurial and fascinatingly clever, while clumsy and caring towards those in distress.  He also established the formidable team with Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, and was the first to openly (and shamelessly) use a sonic screwdriver on screen.

Surrounded by frightened Victorian teenagers, certain UNIT officers, hot-headed Scottish warriors and stupidly intelligent young women, he took on the cybermen and daleks again with nothing but his intelligence and a recorder, is still the only Doctor to take on the Ice Warriors as enemies, guided his friends through an attempted mind robbery, faced creatures from the deep and Yetis in the London Underground before being forced to become Worzel Gummidge by the Time Lords.

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The Third Doctor

Geriatric jujitsu exponents everywhere raised a cheer – for this was their doctor…

Beginning as a victim of friendly fire, and then becoming a confused clothing and vehicle thief as well as saviour of mankind in a plastics factory was something of a rollercoaster of a first day.  If it was possible for a Time Lord to have a mid-life crisis, this was it: fast machines, short-skirted female companions and more action than is seemly for someone of advancing years, this doctor was a kind of Budget Bond.  With his own Blofeld too: enter… the Master.

During the course of his careering about, he encountered the daleks again, the Master, daemons in Bronze age barrows, the Master, giant green poisonous maggots, the Master, fascist versions of reality, the Master, two sets of underwater cousins (who’s idea of “self-defence” is creeping aboard sea forts and murdering people), the Master, mind control machines, the Master, lost aliens, the Master, potato-headed warrior Sontarans, the Master, and the giant spiders which would ultimately be his end.  And the Master.

Did remarkably little travelling around his immediate environs for someone with itchy interstellar feet confined to just the one planet.  He did, however, reverse the polarity of more things than any other doctor.

Radiation brought his dashing about to an abrupt halt, and he regenerated soon after into that one-legged sailor in Blackadder II that drank his own wee and wanted to marry Nursey.

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The Fourth Doctor

Described as looking like a “Space vagrant”, the fourth incarnation was eccentric both in action and dress sense (although not quite as much as the previous doctors, it has to be said).  He pioneered the use of scarves as weaponry (see Hand of Fear), the use of confectionary to calm agitated beings, and the construction of jacket pockets from Mary Poppins’ old carpet bags.

Superbly intelligent, witty and fond of jelly babies, this doctor would stick around longer than any other and inspire thousands of children to beg mothers everywhere to get knitting.

In the TARDIS, which gained a glorious oak-panelled look for a time, he entertained journalists, (oddly clumsy but very likeable) UNIT medical officers, savage warriors, Time Ladies, robotic dogs, one rather annoying stowaway boy genius, an aristocratic brainbox and, just before his end, a loudmouth air hostess.

His battles though, were many and varied – taking on all manner of robots (giant ones, servile mining ones, mummified ones, half-human pirate captain ones and reproduction human ones), ancient alien powers, criminal time lords, Sontarans again, female radioactive creatures conveniently buried for centuries under a quarry, disturbing scary mannequins, amphibious lifeforms hiding in lighthouses, art-dealing monsters and – perhaps most famously – the daleks.

His end came when he met the Master again, and fell from a radar dish.  Thus becoming the chap off of All Creatures Great and Small.

Next time…  Doctors 5 – 8…

In the last few months, we’ve seen not just the new series of Who, but plenty of views expressed about the series.  I talked about Stephen Fry’s comments in my last post, but there was also Sir Terry Pratchett, saying that the show wasn’t so much as science fiction, but fantasy.  To be honest, I’m sort of with him there.  Neil Gaiman, for what it’s worth, pointed out (quite rightly) that the show has never pretended to be hard sci-fi – and I’m rather proud that it’s not.

When other shows like Star Trek have a writing team dedicated to making up mumbo-jumbo fake science language, it’s nice to have a traditionally British kind of show.  One that cannot be bothered to get up and switch the TV over, it’ll just wait on the sofa till someone else comes in.

But it’s not as if it matters a great deal – it’s still all wonderful escapism, right?

Or is it?  I’m not sure there’s ever been a time when this “children’s show” has ever reflected society so astutely and with such brilliant timing.  I mean, this year, we’ve had riffs on elections and decision-making the weekend before a general election.  And spitfires – albeit in space – the same year as the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.  And a football connection on the opening weekend of the world cup.  A finale planned and shot using specific dates.

That’s pretty impressive planning on behalf of Mr Moffatt, I would say.  It’s almost unbelievable to think that he’s been doing that while also teaching

Guy Ritchie how you update Sherlock Holmes without including Jude Law…

When RTD ran the show, I always got the feeling it just sort of, you know, rambled on – like it didn’t really belong in the same world.  Nothing real was allowed in and nothing out.  But I love the little connections.

I love watching things like Survival and remembering that Hale and Pace were once famous in this country.  I love seeing Stephen and Jamie on the screen and remembering that one was a Blue Peter presenter, the other spent years as a farmer on Emmerdale Farm (because it was still a farm then.  Oh how the reality hurts these days…).

But these days, we’re in the hands of someone taking us away from the soap opera in space style and back towards the show’s roots, finding writers who are able to grasp this, no matter how far removed they normally seem.  If Richard Curtis’ episode proved anything, it’s that the unexpected source is often the richest.  And if Chibnall’s proves anything, it’s that we should really try and avoid that again…

But I’m thrilled…  THRILLED that filming on Neil Gaiman’s episode is starting filming next month.  Gaiman’s writing has always been consistently great, he has an amazing ability to draw spectacle from something normal, unobtrusive  as well as the unknown and fantastical (very Who), and I think he’s always been counted as the dream writer fans would like to see working on the series.

I was convinced it was a cruel joke when it was announced he’d be writing for the next series, but it’s real, and there was apparently a photo on his twitter feed last week showing him, the Moff and Richard Curtis at a read-through.  I can’t find it on there, but then asking me to find something on Twitter is a bit like putting someone in a round room and telling them to stand in the corner…

(To one side, what was Curtis doing there?  Is he writing more?  I’ll be delighted if he is.)

But what excites me more than anything, is that Gaiman GETS Who.  Properly.  And this proves it beyond even the most unreasonable doubts:

“At best Doctor Who is a fairytale, with fairytale logic about this wonderful man in this big blue box who at the beginning of every story lands somewhere where there is a problem…”

Roll on next April!

Pocket explanations

If you’ve ever wondered why we’re almost always universally positive about whatever Who throws at us, I think I have a shortened way of explaining it.

Last week, I watched the 1982 story, Time Flight.

How can you complain about the effects or storyline of the new series when you’ve seen things like that?

Incidentally, despite its obvious (and brightly coloured) flaws, I really enjoyed watching it…  I know I have a natural bias towards the vegetable-wearing Edwardian cricketer, but I expected it to be awful.  And it was, I suppose, but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting.  I’ll be more than happy to watch it again.  Anyone else?

Why I don’t hate what Stephen Fry said

We didn’t talk about this on the podcast at the time, so I want to just have a go at tackling this.

Not very long after my birthday (it was very nice, thank you), the hulking great genius Mr Fry said this:

“The only drama the BBC will boast about are Merlin and Doctor Who, which are fine, but they’re children’s programmes. They’re not for adults.  And they’re very good children’s programmes, don’t get me wrong, they’re wonderfully written … but they are not for adults.”

I think he’s kind of right, although I think his comments are slightly tongue-in-cheek and pointing to a completely separate issue which then got almost lost behind the overblown storm that followed him mentioning Doctor Who…

If it is a proper complaint, however, it doesn’t quite follow.  I say that for 2 reasons.

First, Doctor Who and Merlin are not children’s programmes – these days the term for it is “family entertainment” – there’d never be children’s stuff on BBC One that time of day…they have their own channels, and so on that basis I disagree with him respectfully.

But I also think what he’s saying is not a terrible thing.  If it means I’m a fan of a children’s programme, I can live with that.  Especially seeing as how “adult drama” appears to mean Eastenders, Casualty and the like.

Second, his speech complained about two things – too much family entertainment, and also that scheduling is too polarised into specialist areas.  Which is a bit too much of a contradiction to make sense to me…  You want something with more general appeal, but you’re also convinced that we already have too much of that?  Head.  Hurts.

And even besides all that, he’s complaining while desperately ignoring “Kingdom” – the nice, but marvellously mediocre series he starred in on Sunday nights.  Hardly your obvious example of a “grown-up” drama which is made to “…surprise us, to outrage us.”

People in glass houses, Stephen, people in glass houses…

Ever since we recorded the review of The Big Bang, slightly influenced by fermented grape juice, I’ve been thinking about the finale. Not in an obsessive way, you understand… I do have a job, and a small dependant-type person. But it sort of comes with the territory that as my friends know me as a fan, I get into conversations with people who can watch the show with other people talking throughout, or while they nip in and out of the room being busy with real life things.

The thing is, I can’t do that. It annoys me intensely if someone talks through something I’ve been waiting to see, and when Doctor Who is on, the only thing I do is watch it. There isn’t much that can’t wait 45 minutes, after all.

But neither do I sit there and drink in every detail and process every misplaced shoelace or wrongly-positioned object. I get caught up in the story and I’m far from ashamed to admit that.

So when it comes to a Steven Moffatt finale… I got lost in it. I don’t mean that I didn’t understand it, just that I went into the world and didn’t come out again until the end theme music started. Having watched it again, yes, I think it was a bit over-complex and could possibly have been stretched over 3 episodes to make the little arc work (let’s face it, amusing as it was, I’d not miss “The Lodger”). But, frankly, I don’t care.

There were holes in the plot – I know. I see them too. But the Doctor is a Timelord. They’re as real as Daleks… it really doesn’t matter that there’s a couple of confusing paradoxes in there.

There are things unresolved – I know. Have you never watched a Steven Moffatt story before? That’s par for the course… Unresolved probably means it will be part of the next season. This is, after all, the chap who brought us River Song 2 YEARS AGO and we still don’t know who the chuffing whatsit she is.

Inconsistencies and contradictions? Hmm. I don’t know. The Moff seems to write scripts where you’re left thinking these are inconsistent or blatant contradictions, but a while down the line, we’re shown the significance. I don’t really see that grumbling about them is of any use. But then, I grew up in the 80s, so this is Doctor Who’s Golden Age of Hollywood compared with some of my childhood memories of bubble perms and talking green slugs. When things contradicted then, it was because they cut the episode together wrong – like that time when the 3rd, 4th, 5th 6th and 7th Doctors all appeared in Albert Square…

What do you mean, that wasn’t a continuity error?   Well, it was definitely some kind of error…

All in all, I don’t care about the problems. I don’t even care that Amy is a character that seems unnaturally cold and unemotional and that nothing has made me really like her except that she’s funny.

I think the sketch we did in Episood 16 (“Childish Things”) highlighted the one that actually bothered me – that the Pandorica plan hatched by the Big Book of Doctor Who Baddies was absolutely rubbish. But then, so is every evil plan hatched by balding master criminals in every James Bond film, and it’s still very easy to enjoy them without worrying about it. Which is exactly what I did.

My point being that is doesn’t really matter in any significant way…  I know we on the Ood Cast are usually ridiculously enthusiastic about the show, and it doesn’t matter whether the episodes are top-notch or middling rubbish – we still love it.  But being a bit more level-headed about it here – the episodes that people will undoubtedly judge the Moff’s first season on – it did what everyone wanted: it surprised, entertained, scared (the stone dalek was brilliant – finally there seems to be an end to the ridiculous flying swarms of them) and tied a few things up.  Not everything, but that’s a reason to keep watching rather than whine about it, surely?

And apart from anything else…  Egyptian godesses?  Orient Express?  In Space?  Anyone fancy opening a book on whether we’re about to see “Pyramids of Mars II: Mastaba and Commander”?! (*FULL credit and huge thanks to Mr Ian Smith for that title*)

As long as the time tunnels in this one aren’t London Underground tunnels, sounds like it’ll be great!

Oh, and did we mention I predicted the Fez….?  OK, OK, I’ll stop now.

While the Ood Cast takes a summer break, we are getting back to our roots.

In other words, I’m going to blog… and I hope the others will find the time to as well… which is how this all started.

I’m not going to bore you with all sorts of rubbish about why this all started though. If you really want a history, you’ll have to meet us and buy us dinner. This post is just a plea… We’re not podcasting for a while, but it’ll seem like just a few weeks, I promise. So PLEASE stick around. Check the site every few days. Keep talking to us and commenting on what goes on here.

After all, you want to hear how the Littlest Doctor gets on at school, right?! And I’ll be announcing a competition for the summer break in the next few days, so keep coming back!