Well, I can say with absolute certainty that they’ve cast the right hair for the job. If I was going to cast any hair for the role, it would be his. That’s Time Lord hair, right there.
Whether I’d have cast the rest of Matt Smith I’m less certain, but since Moffatt apparently shared my instinctive desire to cast someone older I’ll have to assume his audition was Just That Good. It’ll be a looong time before we find out for sure.
There’s a very thoughtful opinion piece on the BBC website entitled “Is Barack Obama black?”. It’s a response to comments about Obama that frankly I hadn’t even been aware of. I think the article makes some very wise points about artificially absolute definitions of race, and also the societal nature of the labels we apply to people. And indeed even if Obama is regarded as mixed-race that makes his accomplishment no less great, albeit less symbolic.
Rumours continue to circle around Paterson Joseph as a contender for the next Doctor Who, and he certainly seems interested. I know I was cheerleading for him earlier on the basis of his role in Neverwhere, but I’ve been reminded that he can be a little broad in his performances so I’d be interested to see a recent performance to make up my mind. He’s in the BBC’s new remake of Survivors, along with the increasingly ubiquitous Freema Agyeman and Julie “Bonekickers” Graham. It looks potentially okay, potentially terrible. I may summon up the energy to find out. Or not.
On a related note I’d seen others refer to the recently released BBC Archive material relating to the genesis of Doctor Who. What I hadn’t realised is that the first two documents released, and particularly the first, are essentially internal BBC briefing papers trying to work out ‘what is this thing called Science Fiction?’ with a view to determining whether it could be adapted for TV. They propose to use Arthur C Clarke and John Wyndham as consultants, and even met with Brian Aldiss. As such these documents represent brief but fascinating “as others see us” thoughts about written SF in the early 1960s; at once insightful, pragmatic and patronising.
The remaining documents are more about Doctor Who itself: ‘concept notes for new SF drama’ and ‘background notes for Doctor Who’ are fascinating glimpses into the origins of the TV show, with the latter representing a recognisable yet strangely different vision of the series. It goes some way to explaining just how unlikeable Hartnell’s Doctor would occasionally be in the early episodes.
Say it ain’t so: “David Tennant quits as Doctor Who”. More comments from him here.
Maybe Paterson Joseph is a possibility after all… no I don’t believe it either, but a guy can hope.
I’m sure this rumour about Paterson Joseph being cast as the new Doctor is utter bollocks, like 99.99% of all Doctor casting rumours, but I’d love it to be true. Ever since he played the flamboyantly Doctor-like Marquis de Carabas in the BBC’s Neverwhere I’ve thought he’d be fantastic in the role. Along with Peter Capaldi he was the best thing about that series. In fact Neverwhere was explicitly Neil Gaiman’s attempt to fill the old Who niche of scary genre television for adults. Ironically it was just as severely hamstrung by its production values as Classic Who ever was.
That news story also states that “many Doctor Who purists are already resisting the notion of a black actor taking on the role”, which if true just pisses me off immensely. I don’t hang around Who forums so I’ve no idea how widespread this sentiment is or if it’s just confined to one troll and a few hardcore Whovians, but it’s nearly impossible for me to imagine what arguments could possibly be advanced for the Doctor not changing his skin colour. This is an alien being who transforms every conceivable aspect of himself, including his hair colour, features, height, weight and, er, accent. Are we supposed to believe that melanin is one step too far?
Continuing my attempts to make myself look prehistoric by wallowing in Doctor Who nostalgia from the 1970s, here’s a fantastic little tin that my Mum brought over recently (in her continued attempts to rid the house of all our old tat…)
Click for bigger versions and just admire the time and care that’s gone into crafting this jewel in the crown of merchandising. I’m thinking the illustration alone must have demanded at least half an hour and a tube of Pritt Stick.
Here’s the bit they would look at on Antiques Roadshow to confirm its provenance:
Apparently BBC Enterprises took the bold decision not to disown it. I do have a nostalgic fondness for the old girl, though.
There’s a decent little interview with Steven Moffat here about the fifth season of Doctor Who and how his writing style will change.
Meanwhile I recently came across something from my childhood that I just had to share.
This is one of the Doctor Who game cards you used to get in packets of Weetabix. The back of each cereal box had a game board, and when you had all four game boards you could also add them together to make one really huge game board with the Tardis console in the middle. The cards were slotted in around the board, and then it was just a case of rolling dice and moving around the board, randomly landing on hazards. Sadly I no longer have the boards, but there are pictures here: 1, 2, 3, 4. Total nostalgia rush.
I have loads more of the things. As I recall they were traded in the playground at School and rare ones had the approximate market value of gold bullion. Ah, them were the days.
The second trailer (UK only) for next Saturday’s Doctor Who is rather cool.
It’s slightly spoilery, particularly if you’ve no idea who the main villain is (assuming you can read this from your isolation tank).
I’m back from holiday, so what’s the first thing I’m going to post about? Doctor Who. Damn straight.
Just saw this slightly later than planned and don’t really have time to post in detail but…
No Doctor Who tonight, of course, because we need to be reminded that, right across Europe, there are people with no ability to sing. However there’s a mid series trailer now online (UK only) for the remainder of the year’s episodes. I can’t say it blows me away or looks as excitingly incomprehensible as last year’s equivalent trail, and a large part of that is simply that the images in it – old enemies, old companions – are so familiar.
In related yet random musings, is it me or is the new showrunner Steven Moffat the only person in the world who actually sports Norman Osborn’s hairdo from the Spider-man comics?
Guests around today so this’ll be very short and sweet.
Spoilers for Doctor Who – Episode 7: The Unicorn and the Wasp
I’m certain I’m ambivalent.
Yesterday we had a very nice barbeque with good food, good company and even some reasonably warm and sunny weather. As a result, no posting from me. Belatedly therefore, here comes the rambling…
I was far too busy last week to write anything about Doctor Who but I’m nothing if not a completist so here, out of sequence and entirely too late to be of any interest, are some brief thoughts. Assuming I can actually remember anything about the episode…
Sontarans! Not much more I need to say, really. Oh, go on then.
There’s lovely.
Yes it’s snowing here too in big chaotic swirls of snowflakes. Sadly the flakes vanish into the tarmac as if continuing to fall unimpeded towards the centre of the globe. Even on the garden the snow is only able to cling on grimly for about half an hour before melting away into airy nothing. We’re still seeing the odd flurry, in between bouts of brilliant sunshine when the damp grass looks startlingly green.
Since I went out to, ahem, party hearty immediately after last night’s Doctor Who season premiere I haven’t really had a chance to comment very much, but it’s been thoroughly dissected here, here, here and here amongst other places.
Belated spoilers for Doctor Who – Episode 1: Partners in Crime
Nice cinema trailer for new Doctor Who, Season 4 here. It still has Catherine Tate in it, sadly. There’s only so long I can remain in denial about her. It also has some significant returning faces, and various nice shots of Rome, Ood and Sontarans. Oh, and Bernard Cribbins. Quite well done, all told.
We’ve been continuing to watch various old Doctor Who stories recently, with mixed success. I mentioned last time how much I enjoyed Tom Baker’s debut story ‘Robot’. Sadly ‘Planet of Evil’ from the following year is less impressive.1 The setting is atmospheric, especially the weird alien jungle, but it just lacks the necessary character banter from the Doctor to lift the so-so plot. Likewise Pertwee’s debut story ‘Spearhead from Space’ manages to be simultaneously snappily edited and draggingly slow, which is disappointing. Even the Autons can’t really lift it from tedium.
We then progressed to the ‘Beneath the Surface’ box set. ‘The Silurians’, despite being very long, is consistently entertaining with good characterisation, decent location filming, Fulton Mackay, Geoffrey Palmer and a vague attempt at moral complexity. Okay the Silurians themselves look crap and the young, headstrong one has a hilarious voice but otherwise it works very well. The sequel tale ‘The Sea Devils’ is less good but still quite enjoyable. You can’t go too far wrong with Roger Delgado and Sea Devils, and in true Pertwee fashion the story is stuffed to the gills (geddit?) with location filming and speedboat chases. The end of the -ahem- “trilogy”, Davison’s ‘Warriors of the Deep’ is both better and worse than I remembered. Better in that it was a tiny bit less polystyrene than I recalled, but worse in that the Silurian and Sea Devil dialogue is nothing but undiluted exposition and cliche of the worst kind, delivered at about four words per minute. “Soon.. we.. will.. have… our… revenge…” kind of stuff. (Also, why are the Silurians calling themselves Silurians when we know from ‘The Sea Devils’ that it was a misnomer? And why do they talk about “Our Sea Devil brothers”? Don’t they have a name other than a pejorative nickname some sailors slapped on them in the 1970s?)
I’m enjoying old Who overall but it’s a very hit and miss experience. My boss’s 6 year old boy was apparently sat down in front of an old Tom Baker episode recently and immediately started complaining that the monster looked fake. Sign of the times.
—
1 Although a few moments gave me powerful deja vu from watching the show in the 1970s, and from reading the novelisation — it’s surprising how often that happens. Those novelisations were a big part of my childhood.
So who were that competent, well-adjusted bunch of people and what have they done with Torchwood?
I’m not normally one for fan-made videos setting TV clips to music but this one of Firefly/Serenity to the music of Wicked has Joss Whedonian and Tim Minearian endorsement, so I went to look. It’s extremely well done.
< insert obligatory *sob* for Firefly here >
While I’m here, the 2007 in Review piece in Strange Horizons has a very small contribution by yours truly, in which I inexplicably can’t find anything better on TV last year than Doctor Who. Three times in a row. It’s just wrong. Fortunately everyone else is very erudite and reads books and stuff. Also pikelet is insane but you knew that.
Of course The Wire is far better than any SF-related TV currently airing but that doesn’t count for Strange Horizons. My Season 4 DVD arrived today, and Season 5 has just started in the US. It’s just so very satisfying, layered and intelligent and you should all be watching it but will you lot listen? *Will you*?
In lieu of any other good TV and with anyone who could potentially write some being on strike, we’ve resorted to DVDs. We’ve been hugely enjoying Cracker on DVD, a series we missed in its entirety when it was on TV. Robbie Coltrane is fantastic, and the writing is incredibly sharp, with a real interest in psychology and themes rather than just the surface process of investigation. This definitely puts it a notch above most other ostensibly ‘crime’ related television which seems more formulaic with each passing year. We’ve only the final one-off special and the more recent Cracker reunion TV movie to go.
We’ve also been bingeing on old Doctor Who. The Time Warrior is splendid, and gives me my fix of Sontarans in a way that The Sontaran Experiment just didn’t accomplish. The Claws of Axos is, sadly, complete rubbish despite featuring some iconic images that have stuck with me since childhood. In contrast, Tom Baker’s debut story Robot is great. Yes, even the rubbish FX are great. All of this has made me so nostalgic that I’ve rashly ordered the Beneath the Surface box set, despite it having the really terrible Warriors of the Deep in it.
Very briefly:
Given the astonishing constraints of time and budget that a little vignette like this must face, I have to give Steven Moffat kudos for pulling off as much characterisation and even perfunctory plot as he did.
These classic Doctor Who aliens will be in Season 4. That’s good.
No more Deadwood. That’s bad.
David Tennant is likely to stay on for a fifth season of Doctor Who following the “gap year” of three TV movies. That’s good.
They’re remaking Near Dark, a film only released in 1987. The Horror remake bandwagon careens, driverless, through yet more innocent pedestrians. (That’s bad, by the way.)
My parents came up the other week and brought with them a load of old tat from my childhood that was unnecessarily taking up room in their house.
It included this fine piece of 100% pure nostalgia, biro scribbles and all:
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My boss at work has a five year old son who has inexplicably missed out on Doctor Who so far but is now devouring the Christopher Eccleston series. He’s loving it. She was working at home yesterday when he ran into the room excitedly shouting “The spaceship has a pig flying it!”
Following last year’s exciting Doctor Who Season Report Card, here comes the inevitable follow-up:
BEST
1. Blink (5/5)
2. Human Nature (Part 1) (5/5)
3. The Family of Blood (Part 2) (5/5)
4. Daleks in Manhattan (Part 1) (4/5)
5. The Lazarus Experiment (3/5)
6. Smith and Jones (3/5)
7. The Shakespeare Code (3/5)
8. Utopia (3/5)
9. Evolution of the Daleks (Part 2) (2/5)
10. The Sound of Drums (2/5)
11. Gridlock (2/5)
12. Last of the Time Lords (1/5)
13. 42 (1/5)
WORST
I maintain that this year was a lot more solid than Season 2. If I total up my scores I gave both seasons 39/65, but that doesn’t really reflect how I feel about them. Last year saw very few episodes that weren’t marred by a silly ending or some moment that felt embarrassingly juvenile. It was that awkward feeling of having to squint slightly to ignore the bad bits in otherwise enjoyable episodes. This year the episodes that were solid were consistently solid from beginning to end, and it’s surprising how much that lifts the ‘felt’ quality of the show. Martha’s occasional slips into unrequited love were also a lot less annoying than the cloying Doctor-Rose dynamic of season 2.
Then of course was the run of three superb episodes in a row from ‘Human Nature’ to ‘Blink’, which showcased everything that works about the series and without which I’d be feeling less charitable about the overall lack of excellence that surrounded them. I suspect that these three episodes are pivotal to my enjoyment of the season, but they’re not the whole story. I was already feeling more positive about the year before they aired.
As for the dregs, while there were a few episodes that required squinting of Olympic proportions, there were actually no more stinkers than last year, and even a nominally poor offering like ‘Evolution of the Daleks’ was sneakingly enjoyable and nostalgic; unlike, say, ‘Rise of the Cybermen’. Only ’42’ failed to engage me on almost any level, although even there Martha’s scenes in the life pod provided at least something of interest.
I’m still trying to decide whether ‘The Last of the Time Lords’ falls into the stupid-but-fun category, or was a full-on unwatchable stinker of the ‘New Earth’ variety. Martha did significantly help the episode, as did the epilogue, but as the season finale it ended the year on an unfortunately sour note.
Spaceballs. Look, someone had to say it.
I’m even more rushed than usual this week so here goes the stream of consciousness:
Almost flawless.
Very much more of the same, but in the good sense of continuing the same themes and deepening them.
Not the answer to life, the universe, or anything else.
We had guests around last night so here’s my slightly belated review.
Considerably more amusing than it was intended to be.
Doctor Hooverville. Ba-dum tish.
SATIRE SATIRE SATIRE
Novelist David Mitchell somewhat disconcertingly does The Guardian‘s equivalent of one of those non-interviews you see in the sidebar of cheap TV guides or old editions of Smash Hits. In it he states: “I’m a big Doctor Who fan. I’ve bought the box set and worked my way through the entire oeuvre. David Tennant is my favourite Doctor; he is brilliant.”
His next novel is apparently set in the 18th century. I enjoyed Cloud Atlas, but not enough to read anything more by Mitchell in the near future, I think. I feel like a bit of a novel-reading fraud at the moment. I’ve only read three books this year, four if you count December: River of Gods by Ian McDonald, Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, and Coalescent and Exultant by Steven Baxter. I’m currently on Barbara Hambly’s Circle of the Moon, before heading back to Baxter’s Transcendent.
My wife, meanwhile, has ploughed her way through: Timothy Zhan’s The Green and the Grey, Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God, Mary Gentle’s Ilario, Nick Sagan’s Edenborn, Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things, Eleanor Arnason’s Ring of Swords and A Woman of the Iron People, C.J.Cherryh’s Deliverer and Port Eternity and Hal Duncan’s Vellum. She’s currently on World War Z. Ten books since the start of January. Mind you, she said Vellum almost did for her.
I’m well aware that there are those on my Friends List (*cough*Coalescent*cough*) who’ve probably read another couple of novels in the time it took me to compose this entry. To which I have to wonder: how? Is there some ancient art of time dilation that everyone is hiding from me? You can tell me if there is. I promise to use it only for Good and not get involved in any time paradoxes, valuable life lessons or exciting adventures with dinosaurs.
Thought: maybe if I spent less time posting rubbish like this and more time reading…
Extremely lightweight but extremely enjoyable.
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