We wrap our look back at 2012 as Ric Meyers (ricmeyers.com) covers TV drama, the good and bad, and how the movies of the year fared, too. Meanwhile, it seems everyone watched DOCTOR WHO, and which network TV action show is trying a “choose your own ending” trick on Twitter?
I was a little slow when it came to adopting television as a part of my lifestyle. I only cared about cartoons as a small child, and no wonder: teevee was mostly local and cheaply produced and all those public domain Fleischer and Warner Bros. cartoons were a delight. They still are. I didn’t get sucked into the mainstream until pre-adolescence.
When that happened, TV Guide was my bible. A digest-sized magazine that contained detailed descriptions of every local and network show to be aired in the following week, I, like my peers, pretty much planned our lives around the boob tube. The annual Fall Preview issue was a genuine event.
When it comes to broadcast entertainment today, TV Guide has become less than irrelevant – it’s useless. Cable has brought us so many channels if the magazine stuck to its original concept it would take a half hour to read the next 30 minutes of descriptions. The printed grid tells us nothing we can’t get from our cable grid. And the vaunted Fall Preview issue presumes the “new fall season” is unique. It is not. With the exponential growth of choice, “new seasons” come with each new season.
more important. I take the recommendations of my friends quite seriously – daughter Adriane is a constant source of advice, and I take heed at the recommendations of Martha Thomases and the other ComicMix crew (Martha makes one such nod this Friday; I’d link to it but it’s not Friday yet).
But if my jaded, tube-weary brainpan is capable of generating any excitement similar to that of the old new fall season, it happens right now, in January. Some of my favorites return this month: Justified, Community, Young Justice, Bill Maher. There are a number of promising-sounding shows such as Ripper Street, and before long we’ll have Louie, Hell On Wheels and Doctor Who back.
None of these (save Bill Maher) are what we used to think of as full-length series. We get maybe a dozen episodes of each annually. Even though each episode is played many times, teevee-watching isn’t quite the passive experience it once was.
All of this cable stuff already is being eclipsed by streaming media: Netflix and others have competitive original content, Apple has a box for sending stuff from a great many services (including, of course, its own) to the teevees in your house, and Intel is going to be rolling out an interesting new media box on a market-by-market basis starting soon. The larger cable companies have apps that allow you to pick up their service at home on your smartphones and tablets, and content suppliers such as HBO and the various networks allow you to steam their material to these same devices.
We’re probably just a heartbeat away from fulfilling the prediction made back in 1967 in the brilliant social satire, The President’s Analyst. Pretty soon we’ll just have a chip installed in our heads, and the fees will be debited to our bank accounts.
We don’t need drugs, alcohol or virtual reality. We have television.
This is the time of year when all manner of people and media post their best/worst selections of the year. The main purpose is to elicit outrage or agreement or bewilderment regarding the selections. Anyone can play. So I guess I will with these caveats. I’m not saying that what follows is the best of any the categories. It’s simply what I most enjoyed. Some books, TV shows, music, movies I simply didn’t experience (e.g. Argo and The Hobbit) or didn’t enjoy as much as those listed (i.e. the latest Dresden book, The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man). I’m only touching on what was new in 2012 – not those things I’ve enjoyed from other years and enjoyed again in 2012.
Caveats away. Let’s get down to it.
Doctor Who: The mid-season finale didn’t please me as much as I hoped. The departure of long time companions Amy and Rory had me scratching my head. However, the Christmas Special – The Snowmen – made up for it, introducing an intriguing new companion for the time and space faring Doctor and a tantalizing mystery. Steven Moffat – show runner and head writer – remains in fine form.
Justified: Big tough ass series based on an Elmore Leonard character. This season was even better than the one last season, which is saying a lot. Star performances made the season starting with Timothy Olyphant as Marshall Raylan Givens, along with Walter Goggins, Nick Searcy, Neal McDonough as a truly scary bad guy from Detroit, and Mykelti Williamson as an equally scary local bad guy. It’s violent, sexual, badass, and Raylan Givens is so damn cool he should be illegal.
Fringe: It’s now on its final episodes and taking a whole different tack from the previous seasons. I’m hoping it all ties up and makes sense by the end but this was created by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci who also did Lost and the ending of that got a little bit away from them. Still, John Noble’s Walter Bishop is a delight to watch and is reason enough to tune in.
The Daily Show/The Colbert Report: This got me through the freakin’ election. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are both geniuses. Stewart does the faux news show and Colbert does a faux conservative commentator ala Bill O’Reilly. Colbert’s may be the more brilliant show but I have to admit that Jon Stewart makes me laugh more. However, Colbert did perhaps the last interview that famed children’s book writer Maurice Sendak ever gave and its hysterical and touching. Both shows are must-see TV for me.
Suits: I would not have bet you that a series set in a high powered law firm with people I don’t especially like would keep me riveted, but this one sure does. Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams and Rick Hoffman are superb but for me the best characters are two women – Gina Torres (who you might recognize from Firefly) as the really tough head of the firm and especially Sarah Rafferty as Macht’s tart tongued, all knowing secretary who steals the show. Morally complex, suspenseful, and witty.
Kate Bush: 50 Words For Snow: I’ve been a big Kate Bush fan for a long time and it becomes an event when she brings out a new CD. Kate Bush is one of the most influential female singer/songwriters in the music business. This is one of her best CDs in recent years and the duet she sings with Elton John, Snowed In At Wheeler Street, is haunting. I play it over and over again. It’s influencing a concept that I’m working on. I love this CD.
The Avengers: The most perfect cinema realization of the Marvel comics ethos. Joss Whedon (director and writer) rules. This made umpty gazillion dollars and you’ve probably seen it. One of the best moments: Hulk vs. Loki. ‘Nuff said.
Lincoln: I’ve talked about this in one of my other columns. Daniel Day-Lewis gives one of the great movie performances of all time but he’s not the only one. Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones. Hal Holbrick, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who has had a very good year), James Spader and so many others make the film an acting delight.
Skyfall: James Bond’s 50th Anniversary in films and this one is a knockout. Bond is not simply an icon in this film; he’s a character with a deeper story. We see a seedy Bond, we see a Bond off his game, we see an aging Bond who may be outdated in the modern espionage world and knows it. This is right up there with my other two all-time favorite Bond movies, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger and it may be my favorite of the three. A key to the film’s success was hiring noted director Sam Mendes who delivered not only the action set pieces we expect from a Bond film but visual style, pacing, and performances. Daniel Craig gives his best outing yet as Bond, Javier Bardem’s Silva is one of the scariest all time Bond villains and Judy Dench – ah, Judy Dench. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about and, if you haven’t, I won’t ruin it for you. It’s not just a good Bond film; Skyfall is a really good film – period.
The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: One of the pleasures of series books is coming back and seeing characters that you’ve come to regard as friends in a setting, a world, that has become real to you. Alexander McCall Smith has done that for me with his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books, a detective series set in Botswana, Africa, and starring his woman detective, Precious Ramotswe. This series is a long ways from a hardboiled noir detective. The stories are gentle and filled with characters I love. The challenge with series books is to give the reader everything they remember and want in the series while also covering new ground. It’s a tough trick to pull off; the books could become stale. This series progresses slightly with each book and stays fresh. I look forward to my next trip back to Botswana.
Favorite Person In the Whole Wide World: My Mary. Who else? Love you, cutie pie.
I’ll be back next year. Happy New Year to you all.
Oh, Steven Moffat, you magnificent bastard. The return of a villain before it and The Doctor have ever met, a reunion with a character The Doctor’s never actually met, the team-up of three characters, one of whom died in the far future, and a couple of surprise guests. A nice little Christmas present, and what’s Christmas without…
THE SNOWMEN
By Steven Moffat
Directed by Saul Metzstein
A young boy is met by a talking snowman, one who promises he can help him. Fifty years later, and Dr. Walter Simeon has become quite a successful man, head of a prestigious institute, and still working with the sentient snowstorm to prepare for a coming assault on the earth. Madame Vastra and Jenny are curious as to Dr. Simeon’s plans, but get nowhere. Meanwhile, a young barmaid named Clara has noticed a snowman pop up out of nowhere, and though the man she asks randomly about it seems disinterested, his curiosity is piqued, something The Doctor has been trying to avoid.
Clara is quite a mystery – she’s living a double life as the Governess for two young children. Their previous governess drowned in a pond outside their manor last winter, which froze over so quickly and thickly they never even found the body for a month. During that time, the Snow had time to analyze her DNA, providing them a perfect blueprint with which they plan to use to create more sturdy and permanent forms for itself. The challenge is not for The Doctor to defeat the Snowmen and its secret leader…but to get The Doctor interested enough to care.
Brilliant episode from head to toe. The chemistry between Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman is positively captivating, as we saw in Asylum of the Daleks, but here, with both on screen at once, it’s explosive. Dan Starkey pulls in a leaves-you-breathless comedic performance as Strax, one so good it’ll be hard to take him seriously if (when?) he appears again. Unlike most of the previous Christmas specials, this one has a more direct connection to the narrative of the show. They’re usually a rather done-in-one story that can be enjoyed on its own. But here, as with The Christmas Invasion, the story leads right into the start of the new semi-season this Spring/Summer.
Once again, Moffat has created a character rippling with mystery. Why was she working for Captain Latimer, and more importantly, why does her face seem to be spread across time?
THE MONSTER FILES
The Great Intelligence has been rumored for a return to the show for at least two years. Of course, so has damn near every other villain. Appearing twice during the Troughton era, it was a disembodied consciousness that was able to remotely animate constructs, created with the help of wiling human compatriots. Its favorite form in past battles have been giant robotic Yeti, also know as Abominable Snowmen, which was also the title of their first adventure. It appeared again in London in The Web of Fear, the adventure that also introduced us to then-Colonel Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, who would soon receive a promotion, and assignment to U.N.I.T.
The prose novels added a great deal to the history of the Intelligence, as it did for many of the villains of the series. In them it was revealed that it is in fact Yog-Sothoth, one of the Old Ones chronicled in the H.P. Lovecraft stories. Neil Gaiman revealed in an interview that he had initially intended House, the villain from his previous episode The Doctor’s Wife, was to have been the Great Intelligence, or at least was to have been heavily hinted as such. While none of those allusions remained, its modus operandi is sufficiently similar as to still make the connection possible.
Madame Vastra is a Silurian, an ancient lizard race who escaped under the Earth’s crust to save themselves from what they saw as an extinction-level threat in the form of an asteroid heading for the planet. When the asteroid was instead captured by the Earth’s gravity and became our moon, it allowed other races to rise to planetary dominance, namely Humanity. The Doctor has faced the Silurians several times both in the new and original series. Madame Vastra and her human partner Jenny, were introduced in A Good Man Goes to War, as was Strax, the Sontaran clone warrior, sentenced to the ultimate shame, to serve as a nurse.
GUEST STAR REPORT
Richard Grant (Dr. Simeon) has been a staple of British comedy and drama for years. He first came to note in Withnail and I, co-starring with the future Eighth Doctor, Paul McGann. He’s been in mad satiric comedies like How to Get Ahead in Advertising and Hudson Hawk, has played the Scarlet Pimpernel, starred in the underrated Warlock, and been in far too many more to list. He has also had quite a history with Doctor Who. He’s played The Doctor twice, once in Moffat’s oft-referenced Comic Relief sketch The Curse Of Fatal Death, and once in an animated adventure The Scream of the Shalka. That had been intended as a sort of pilot for a new Who series that never materialized. It was quiet shuffled out of continuity when the new series started with a different ninth Doctor.
Ian McKellen (voice of the Intelligence) is Magneto and Gandalf. Get Over It.
Juliet Cadzow (voice of the ice governess) has had a long career on British television and on film, but is likely best known as Edie McCredie from the cult favorite children’s show Balamory.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details
CREDITS WHERE CREDITS ARE DUE – New credit sequence, and a new mix of the theme, but even then, a return of some old motifs. The Doctor’s face has been missing from the opening sequence ever since the new series began, but its made a happy return here. Also, The TARDIS seems to traveling through space for more of the sequence than through time. The vortex has gone through some changes as well. In the initial credits sequence it seems made of energy, much resembling a “laser tunnel” effect. In the first Matt Smith sequence, the vortex took on a more smoky look, one that became progressively more violent in the episodes of this season. Now it’s taken a look of a column of flame. One theoy has suggested that the change represented a change in The Doctor’s mood and experiences, rather than mere a change in the vortex itself.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION – The episode was filmed in Bristol, which features a number of Victorian style locales, and makes for easy conversion.
THE ROSE AND CROWN – well, “Rose” is rather obvious, but one could also argue that a Crown is worn by someone who is…Noble.
YOU DON’T NEED THEM, YOU JUST THINK THEY MAKE YOU LOOK CLEVER – The Doctor is wearing Amy Pond’s glasses, last seen in The Angels Take Manhattan. It’s the only bit of clothing or accessories remaining from his previous costume. Even the bow tie is different.
DON’T KNOW WHERE, DON’T KNOW WHEN… Note Clara’s birthday – November 23rd, same day Doctor Who premiered in 1963.
“Those were the days” – What’s interesting is that we have NO clue exactly how long The Doctor has been out of the Saving The Universe business. Take a look at the TARDIS – the exterior is a weather-beaten mess. And even though the interior has a brand new design, I’ve already suggested that it is in fact the ship’s “default” setting, indicating that he didn’t care if it had any character anymore.
‘You realize Dr. Doyle is almost certainly basing his fantastical tales on your own exploits” – And that sound you hear is reality folding in upon itself. Moffat is, of course, also the showrunner on the new Sherlock series starring Smaug and Bilbo Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and fans have been doing crossovers between the two series for some time now.
“And remember…” Clara is another woman that The Doctor is meeting out of order. Like River Song, there’s clearly much more going on with her than any average woman. Unlike Amy Pond, she’s got a very inquisitive nature, and was involved in her own little mysteries before the Doctor even arrived. She lives a double life, as the governess of the two children, who just happen to be in the middle of a dangerous situation. Rather like how Sarah jane and Donna Noble were inspired to investigate and help people after they met The Doctor. But Clara hadn’t MET The Doctor yet. Or has she?
BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – There’s two possibilities here. Rumors abound that the Great Intelligence will return throughout the back end of the season as the Big Bad. This story works perfectly as a stand-alone origin story for the entity, but could also serve as the start of a “You created me” story that could wind up in the season finale.
It seems very clear that one theme of at least the beginning of the semi-season will be the search for Clara. The clips in the Coming Soon teaser show that Clara’s influence is all across time – note the painting, and the fact that she seems to be wearing many different outfits. Yes, she could certainly be just changing clothes…but who’s to say it’s not a different Clara in each episode?
NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – As is traditional at these points, that’s quite up in the air. We know we’ll be seeing…
A Cyberman episode by Neil Gaiman
Diana Rigg and her daughter in another Victorian era adventure
Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen.
The mysterious spectral shapes that have been appearing across London are not what they appear. What becomes a Doctor Who fan’s greatest wish come true starts as an…
ARMY OF GHOSTS / DOOMSDAY
by Russell T Davies
Directed by Graeme Harper
“Daleks have no concept of elegance.” “This is obvious.”
Returning to Earth, The Doctor and Rose are surprised to learn that ghosts have been appearing all over the world. Rather than being met with fear, they’ve become a national phenomenon. People await their by-the-clock appearances and disappearances daily, and happily discuss the visitations with each other and on the TV. What they don’t realize is they’re actually being caused by experiments at the Torchwood Institute, attempting to perfect a machine that would cross dimensional barriers to obtain new energy sources. But even that is only means to an end, to open a mysterious sphere that resists all testing and analysis. As The Doctor attempts to analyze the ghosts, Torchwood detects the shift in the field and realizes he’s in the area. So when he identifies the source and heads there, they’re ready for him.
Following from Queen Victoria’s dictate, Torchwood exists to study alien technology as a defense for the nation, and they view The Doctor as an enemy, regardless of the number of times he’s saved the world. He’s immediately taken into custody and the TARDIS impounded. Showing him the sphere, he identifies it as a void ship, designed to travel, and hide, in the space between dimensions. He convinces them to stop the testing, but the people (well, I say people…) behind the breach have been slowly taking over the staff, and they initiate a final breach, and stand revealed as…Cybermen. The ghosts across the world fully materialize as Cybermen, and almost immediately seize control.
Ah, so they’re hiding in that void ship sphere, right? Wellll, no. The Void Ship was what pushed through to our world first, a weakness the Cybermen took advantage of. It’s a life raft for a race that thought they would not survive its final battle. It’s the Daleks. Carrying a Genesis Ark, they plan to repopulate the world with new Daleks, and with no Time Lords to stop them, nothing should stop them from conquering the universe.
Well…ONE Time Lord. And luckily, a small army from Pete’s world, who cobbled together technology to follow the Cybermen through the Void. But is that going to be enough to fight the two most powerful enemies The Doctor has ever faced at once?
The Doctor Who team did a great job keeping the return of the Daleks secret, basically by making it blatant that the Cybermen were returning. There’s not a Whofan on Earth who hasn’t considered how cool a Cybermen/Dalek team-up would be, and to finally see it was a surprise indeed. The first discussion between the two foes is absolutely hilarious.
A great close of the season, and a happy ending for Rose and Jackie. Following up on the idea of alternate universe replacements, Pete has almost no hesitation in accepting “our” Jackie and Rose as his new family, and since it meets the happy ending parameters we want, we do as well.
The Cybermen got a small upgrade in this adventure, the retractable wrist-cannon. They had no offensive weapon in the earlier adventure, and had to “delete” their enemies hand-to-hand. We also saw a rather big change to the Daleks as well, with the Cult of Skaro, three Daleks bred to have independent thought, to come up with ideas that a normal brute-force Dalek never could. It’s an idea that had been addressed before, with the need to find Davros in Destiny of the Daleks.
The original “Ghostwatch” was a very controversial one-shot special presented on the BBC in 1992, and never repeated in the UK. Presented as a reality/documentary show about ghosts, it was in fact a staged drama. British chat show legend Michael Parkinson hosted what was to be a live investigation of spectral activity in a house in North London eventually resulted in the ghosts taking control of the broadcast and remotely possessing Parkinson as the show ended. Even though it was touted as a drama, complete with “written by” and cast credits in the opening, the show was met with a reaction similar to the classic War of the Worlds broadcast. There’s copies of it floating about the Internet, and is well worth a look.
Musical motifs from what would become the Torchwood theme appear in this episode’s score, which rather makes sense since Murray Gold provides the music for both.
Yes, that is Freema Aygeman as a worker at Torchwood. Doctor Who has become almost legendary at choosing from its own for larger parts — Eve Myles will be back shortly for Torchwood, and Karen Gillan made her first appearance as a prophetess in The Fires of Pompeii. It didn’t start in the new series, either. Colin Baker, Doctor number six, first appeared as Commander Maxil in Arc of Infinity.
May you all have a very merry Christmas, and may the Doctor keep you safe from any and all snow goons today– particularly the ones that try to trick you by sounding friendly like Gandalf! (Tricksy snowmen… we hates them!)
Hat tip to James Hance, whose artwork gave us the inspiration. Go buy his prints!
SyFy (formerly known as the SciFi Channel) has acquired the US broadcast rights to the K-9 solo series, produced in Australia in 2010. They will run the entire 26-episode series in a 13-hour marathon on Christmas Day.
Featuring an updated K-9 design and a new group of characters, the series has been shown in many countries since its initial premiere. The US is one of the last regions to see the series on TV. The series is live-action, featuring a streamlined CGI K-9, voiced by John Leeson, the original voice of the “tin dog”.
K-9 is one of the most popular companions from the classic series of Doctor Who, with two different “models” traveling with The Doctor from 1977 – 1980, and making quite a few appearances afterwards.. Making his first appearance in the Bob Baker / Dave Martin adventure The Invisible Enemy, K-9 was the creation of Professor Marius, who built him as a replacement for his own dog back on Earth. After the adventure, Marius asked The Doctor to care for K-9, as he was returning to Earth and would not be able to take him on the ship. The original K-9 traveled with The Doctor and Leela for some time, and chose to remain with her on Gallifrey after the events of The Invasion of Time. The Doctor built a new model almost immediately, and he was a companion of The Doctor and fellow Time Lady Romana for another three years, until they chose to remain in E-Space with Romana at the end of Warrior’s Gate.
A third K-9 unit was sent to Sarah Jane Smith as a gift from The Doctor, and became her adventuring confidant for many years, up until she met The Doctor again in School Reunion. K-9 Mark III sacrificed himself in that adventure, but The Doctor was able to salvage enough to build a mark IV, which he left behind for Sarah Jane. The spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures was green-lit almost immediately after this adventure, but Bob Baker had already made the deal for this new series, which is why K-9 appeared only in limited cameos for the first two series of SJA.
K-9 has had quite a few appearances in the prose and Big Finish audio adventures as well. In the Gallifrey series of adventures, Romana returned to her home planet with her canine companion, and came to meet Leela, and HER canine Companion. K-9s Mark I and II, humorously, did not get along, and often argued with each other.
While Doctor Who cannot be explicitly be named, the K-9 of the new series is clearly the same K-9 from the original. Specifically he’s K-9 Mark I, who survives and escapes the Time War, and winds up on late 21st century Earth. After a brief fight where he is seemingly destroyed, he “regenerates” (a new system apparently installed for him by the Time Lords” into a new streamlined design. There’s a second series of the show in the planning stages, in which the producers have promised another redesign, responding to feedback from the fans.
Creators Bob Baker and Dave Martin collaborated on all the Doctor Who TV scripts, as well as numerous other projects in British television. Dave wrote four K-9 solo adventure novels in the early 80’s, and passed away in 2007. Bob Baker has had some small success away from Doctor Who as well – he co-wrote three of the Wallace and Gromit shorts, as well as the feature film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
With K-9’s appearance, we’ve seen every Doctor Who-related series in the US, save for the aforementioned Sarah Jane Adventures, starring the glorious Elisabeth Sladen. While there’s no news of that show being picked up, needless to say it’d find a welcome audience.
The K-9 marathon runs Christmas Day from 10 AM – 11PM. The show is not yet scheduled for a regular time slot after the marathon. More info about the series can be found on its website, k9official.com.
Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen.
Children are disappearing on a suburban street, and a certain being seems intent on making us…
FEAR HER
by Matthew Graham
Directed by Euros Lyn
“I can’t stress this enough – ball bearings you can eat…masterpiece!”
Three children have vanished in the course of a week, cars are cutting out in the middle of the street, and everyone has been reduced to paranoid panic. Not a good state of affairs for the day of the opening ceremonies of the London Olympiad. The Doctor and Rose arrive just in time to help, luckily. There’s an odd residual energy in the spots where the kids have vanished, which suggests it’s not some common human crapsack. One girl named Chloe stays indoors and draws. She draws the other children in the street. Just before they vanish. …yeah, The Doctor and Rose made the same assumptions…
An alien creature, the Isolus, has latched onto Chloe and used her raw emotions from a lifetime of abuse from her father (now dead a year) to try and get back to its family. The alien is too weak to do so, and Chloe doesn’t know how to help, so she draws the kids in the street, who get teleported to a nondescript somewhere else, to attempt to assuage the alien’s loneliness. She has the power to create things in her drawings as well – she angrily crosses out over one drawing, and the scribble comes to life, and a huge and choked thing with the emotion of her abusive father is gaining power in the back of her closet. The Doctor has several goals – save the trapped kids, separate the alien from little Chloe, help it get back to space… and crash the Olympics?
This episode is…bad. It’s a weak shadow of the classic Twilight Zone episode It’s a Good Life, with no real sense of direction. The alien is innocent and unaware of its effects, and we end up being more afraid of Chloe’s father, who’s been dead a year. The scene with them collecting up al the pencils and crayons in the house as if they’re knives is ridiculous, is immediately surpassed by the scene where Chloe reveals she’s got pencils hoarded inside her dolls like Ray Milland hid whiskey bottles. The acting’s good, the music is great, but the premise is just so blah, and the look of the crayon monsters so silly that there’s no surprise that this is universally considered the worst episode of the new series by a long length: Doctor Who Magazine did a poll of the 200 most popular stories of the show’s run, and this one came in 192nd, only barely beating out Paradise Towers. By contrast, Daleks in Manhattan, the story that resulted in the Daleks getting put in the cupboard for two years, came in at 152. Of course, that just beat out the sublime Love and Monsters, so I imagine no poll is perfect. Even the idea of a living scribble was even done before, and better, on an early episode of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. In the episode The Trouble with Scribbles, it’s learned that scribbles are the almost universal form of babies’ first imaginary friends, and they mount up quickly.
There’s a bit of fun in the beginning of the episode – the idea of 2012 being the “Near future” gave them a moment to to skewer new X-Factor winner Shayne Ward with a poster for a Greatest Hits collection.
But it was this episode that fueled Doctor Who fandom’s hope… nay, belief that David Tennant would be carrying the Olympic torch at the 2012 ceremonies. Even after Matt Smith started it off in the relay, the desire for Ten to close out this little time loop was unassailable. Indeed, in Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening ceremonies, there was originally to be a sequence featuring Doctor Who; each of the living actors had to authorize the use of their photos, but it was dropped. The whooshing sound of the TARDIS, barely audible over the din of the mix, is the only mention.
Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode,The Snowmen.
If Lars von Trier had thought of it, it would have been one of the Five Obstructions. Make a Doctor Who episode, but don’t use The Doctor. It rather limits the drama, doesn’t it? far from it, it gives you a chance to do a story about friends and mystery, and…
LOVE AND MONSTERS
by Russell T Davies
Directed by Dan Zeff
Elton Pope (Not that Elton, and not that Pope) is relating his adventures on his video blog. He’s just met The Doctor, who was fighting an alien in a disused industrial building…as he does. Elton begins to relate his history a bit – he remembers seeing The Doctor in his kitchen back with he was a toddler, as well. He grew up rather normal and has a pleasant life, until a couple years ago when London started getting regularly attacked by aliens. The Autons, the Slitheen, the Sycorax, all seen through his eyes. He begins to search about the Internet, and finds a blog by a young woman named Ursula Blake, with recent photos of The Doctor, who looks no different than when he appears in Elton’s kitchen decades ago.
Ursula introduces Elton to a group of her friends, fellow Doctor-sighters and searchers, who meet regularly in the local library. They all share the tidbits they’ve discovered about him throughout history. After meeting for some time, Ursula suggests the club needs a name. Elton suggests “LInDA” – The London Investigation ‘n’ Detective Agency. LInDA slowly become more of a social club than a tin-hat society, and the all become proper friends. That is…until Mr. Victor Kennedy appeared. A strange man suffering from a skin complaint (Exceezma…like Eczema, but far worse). He claims to have information about The Doctor, and shows them that they’ve lost their way in their investigations. Kennedy has access to a staggering amount of information about the Doctor, including data from Torchwood. He hands out pictures of Rose Tyler, and sets LInDA off on the task to find her. And in amongst the investigations…the members of LInDA are slowly going missing.
Friends are made, loves are lost, and a monsters stands revealed. Oh, and The Doctor shows up, eventually.
There’s been bits of humor in every episode, but this is the first episode that’s elbow-deep hilarious. The episode was created by necessity – the BBC asked for a Christmas episode with this season, but didn’t add any time or much money to the budget. So the producers were forced to find a way to force a fourteenth episode into the schedule, one that would have very little of The Doctor and Rose, as the actors simply wouldn’t have time to shoot another full episode. So with a short sequence at the beginning, an appearance at the end, and photos and mentions all in between, you get a great bit of sleight of hand that feels like a full Doctor appearance. The acting in the episode is wonderful as well, featuring British comedy star Peter Kay as the baddie, and Camille Coduri making a return as Jackie Tyler.
LInDA is a name Russell T Davies had made up for a earlier children’s show he’d written years back called “Why Don’t You?”, The Absorbaloff was created by a child as part of a Blue Peter competition. Russell begged for one more alien for the alien, with the opening sequence, and they gave him one. He even gave it a name – the Hoix.
Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode,The Snowmen.
Humanity’s natural response to the order “no” is “why?” Put up a sign marked “wet paint”, and count all the people who touch what it’s hanging on. And if you bury the devil, it’s a poor idea to put him on…
THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET / THE SATAN PIT by Matt Jones Directed by James Strong
The Doctor and Rose land on a space base orbiting around a black hole (this is of course impossible), filled with writing so old the TARDIS can’t translate it (this is of course impossible). The crew of the base explain that there’s an ancient power source at the core of the planet so strong it’s not only holding the planet in place, but generating a safe path to and from the planet (this is of course impossible). After a bit of investigation, it’s discovered that a being who claims to be The Devil (The definite article, you might say) is imprisoned at the core, and this mad geostationary contraption is its eternal prison (this is of course, even if the other stuff was possible, which it isn’t, impossible).
The beast cannot escape his prison, but his mind can, and successfully takes over one of the crew, as well as its stock of alien slaves, the Ood. While The Doctor spelunks down to the cavern in the planet’s core, Rose and the crew fight the now quite violent Ood in the station. The Doctor is left with a terrible choice – destroy the beast’s prison and doom Rose, or let her and the crew escape, along with the beast’s mind.
A very moody episode, with a well-designed set that allowed for lots of corridor runs and corner turns. The Doctor even comments at the beginning that a lot of these bases look the same, and are made from kits. It’s got a very haunted house feel, which is basically what the classic sci-fi film Alien is, as are all tributes to it. The Doctor gets a number of very nice speeches about how amazing humans are, boldly rushing in where angels fear to tread, and wanting to do things solely because they’ve not been done yet. It’s a recurring idea for the Doctor, interspersed occasionally with his comments about how blind and small-minded they are. We’re clearly his favorite race, and not simply because humans are cheaper to portray in a TV show.
It’s the premiere of another new recurring alien, the Ood. They return a few time over the course of the new series, including a much more Ood-centric story in the Donna Noble season. The Ood are played as an unintelligent hive-minded race here, a “perfect slave race” as they’re described, and there’s simply no time for the story to address that. Rose makes a passing comment about it, but it’s quickly waved off, especially after they went all red-eyed and scary, and could be classified as a threat. It’s not until the next Ood story do we get a real idea of their situation, and a more proper addressing of their status as slaves.
An Ood appeared in Neil Gaiman’s story The Doctor’s Wife, mainly because they didn’t have money in the budget to make a new alien.
While The Doctor had never met the devil himself before, he’s come close. The Demoniacs, Sutekh, and other races were believed to have interacted with humanity in the past and give it the idea of devils. Tom Baker was supposed to have fought the devil, in the guise of Scratchman, in a film written by Baker and Ian Marter titled Doctor Who meets Scratchman. It had a mad throw-everything-at-it plot, but never got past the talking stage.
A young boy is met by a talking snowman, one who promises he can help him. Fifty years later, and Dr. Walter Simeon has become quite a successful man, head of a prestigious institute, and still working with the sentient snowstorm to prepare for a coming assault on the earth. Madame Vastra and Jenny are curious as to Dr. Simeon’s plans, but get nowhere. Meanwhile, a young barmaid named Clara has noticed a snowman pop up out of nowhere, and though the man she asks randomly about it seems disinterested, his curiosity is piqued, something The Doctor has been trying to avoid.
Richard Grant (Dr. Simeon) has been a staple of British comedy and drama for years. He first came to note in Withnail and I, co-starring with the future Eighth Doctor, Paul McGann. He’s been in mad satiric comedies like How to Get Ahead in Advertising and Hudson Hawk, has played the Scarlet Pimpernel, starred in the underrated Warlock, and been in far too many more to list. He has also had quite a history with Doctor Who. He’s played The Doctor twice, once in Moffat’s oft-referenced Comic Relief sketch The Curse Of Fatal Death, and once in an animated adventure The Scream of the Shalka. That had been intended as a sort of pilot for a new Who series that never materialized. It was quiet shuffled out of continuity when the new series started with a different ninth Doctor.
K-9 has had quite a few appearances in the prose and Big Finish audio adventures as well. In the Gallifrey series of adventures, Romana returned to her home planet with her canine companion, and came to meet Leela, and HER canine Companion. K-9s Mark I and II, humorously, did not get along, and often argued with each other.
There’s a bit of fun in the beginning of the episode – the idea of 2012 being the “Near future” gave them a moment to to skewer new X-Factor winner Shayne Ward with a poster for a Greatest Hits collection.
Elton Pope (Not that Elton, and not that Pope) is relating his adventures on his video blog. He’s just met The Doctor, who was fighting an alien in a disused industrial building…as he does. Elton begins to relate his history a bit – he remembers seeing The Doctor in his kitchen back with he was a toddler, as well. He grew up rather normal and has a pleasant life, until a couple years ago when London started getting regularly attacked by aliens. The Autons, the Slitheen, the Sycorax, all seen through his eyes. He begins to search about the Internet, and finds a blog by a young woman named Ursula Blake, with recent photos of The Doctor, who looks no different than when he appears in Elton’s kitchen decades ago.
Friends are made, loves are lost, and a monsters stands revealed. Oh, and The Doctor shows up, eventually.
The beast cannot escape his prison, but his mind can, and successfully takes over one of the crew, as well as its stock of alien slaves, the Ood. While The Doctor spelunks down to the cavern in the planet’s core, Rose and the crew fight the now quite violent Ood in the station. The Doctor is left with a terrible choice – destroy the beast’s prison and doom Rose, or let her and the crew escape, along with the beast’s mind.
