Tagged: River Song

The New Who Review – The Bells of Saint John

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How many times have you been told not to use wifi you don’t recognize?  This week’s episode takes the threat of identity theft to an all new degree.  And the only reason The Doctor found out about it at all is cause he got a call from a lady who said she couldn’t find the Internet.  Spoiler shields up, watch for falling planes, and listen for…

THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN
By Steven Moffat
Directed by Colm McCarthy

The Doctor is in the early 13th century, meditating over the living (well, living somewhere) mystery that is Clara Oswin Oswald.  So when he’s told “The Bells of St. John are ringing”, he races back to his hidden TARDIS, (with its “St. John’s Ambulance” label) where the phone in the door is ringing.  He’s getting an impossible call from modern day, from the impossible Clara Oswald, who thinks she’s calling tech support.  In London, people are mysteriously dropping dead shortly after using a rogue wifi feed.  Clara is having trouble with her wifi, and even after The Doctor comes to help, the troubles only get worse.

A great start to the series, with another trademark move of Moffat; take something common place, and make it terrifying.  He’s done it with shadows and statues, and now he’s made wifi something to be feared.  Jenna-Louise Coleman makes her (official) debut as the new companion Clara

THE MONSTER FILESThe Spoonheads are another example of a new monster that don’t actually get to do much.  Like the antibodies of Let’s Kill Hitler, they’re a physical effect that doesn’t even get to move.  The CGI head-spin thing is wonderfully unnerving, and it’s a great visual cue that something creepy is about to happen.  We’ve had any number of robots masquerading as humans, including the Teselecta from the aforementioned episode, the titular creations from The Android Invasion, not to mention The Androids of Tara.

The episode has clear similarities and parallels to Mark Gatiss’ episode The Idiot’s Lantern – an unseen force stealing people’s minds via new technology, faces trapped on TV screens, even The Doctor and his companion tooling about on a motorbike.  Many (myself included) expected to see a return of The Wire, the energy-based being from that episode, only to be happily swerved by the actual baddie.

GUEST STAR REPORT

Celia Imrie (Miss Kizlet) worked with Jenna on the recent Ttianic mini-series, appeared as the matron in both recent St. Trinian’s movies (films which have reached Kevin Bacon levels for Doctor Who connections), and was Lady Gertrude in the Gormenghast adaptation.  She brings a quiet menace to her role, and the final twist was quite tragic.

Geff Francis (George Maitland) actually does spell it like that. He was a regular in the Life on Mars spinoff Ashes to Ashes, as well as on the The Singing Detective.  Doctor Who is not afraid to get very good actors for even the smallest parts, but I’m rather hoping that the Maitland family appears again before the end of Clara’s story.  There’s a lot of story going on here, and each of the three actors had clear emotions built into their portrayals. Eve De Leon Allen (Angie), star of Nuzzle and Scratch, did particularly well at playing a young girl who has lost her mum, even in the brief moments she had on screen. Eve is the actor whose copy of the Neil Gaiman script was lost in a cab, which suggests that she, and hopefully the rest of the family will indeed be back, at least in that episode.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

CREDITS WHERE CREDITS ARE DUE – The credit sequence is largely unchanged from the Christmas episode, but the theme has undergone another slight tweak.  the strings are pushed to the background, possibly gone altogether, and the four-beat theme has been pulled more to the front.  The song is a lot deeper, more in the bass range. Some of the sound effects have been edited – the electric twinkly bits have been softened as the Doctor Who logo disintegrates. It’s been shortened slightly – a couple of the motifs are missing as the sequence races to the episode title and the opening of the TARDIS doors, which I must say I love.

SET PIECES – We get a longer look at the new TARDIS in this episode, including the space under the main control floor, which has a wooden storage chest that resembles the design of the short-lived wooden TARDIS set first seen in The Masque of Mandragora.  We’re supposed to see a great deal more of the ship’s interior in an episode later in this series.

“He’s definitely not a monk” – The Meddling Monk was the first Time Lord other than The Doctor seen in the series, way back in the Hartnell days, even before the term “Time Lord” had been coined.  The Doctor also disguised himself as a monk, a headless one, during the Battle of Demon’s Run in A Good Man Goes To War, and briefly at the end of The Wedding of River Song.

“Eleven’s the best – you’ll cry your eyes out” – The book Summer Falls is written by Amelia Williams, AKA Amy Pond.  This is a further clue into her life in New York after the events of The Angels Take Manhattan – she clearly got into both writing, and later publishing, as she was also responsible for publishing the Melody Malone adventures.

Summer Falls will be made available as an e-book tie-in as the Melody Malone adventure was, via BBC E-books on April 2nd.

“That is NOT supposed to happen!” – The Doctor does get calls in his TARDIS, but usually on the phone on the console. The phone on the outside door is not supposed to ring.  The last time it did was in The Empty Child, when the mysterious young boy was able to communicate through it.  I hasten to add that the young Melody Pond had the same ability to communicate through any phone, as seen in The Impossible Astronaut. I also love the fact that the handset’s cord is comically long.

“You know, I never realized how much I enjoy hering that said out loud” – The Question, “Doctor Who?” has been a recurring theme since the very beginning of the series.  It’s become an important plot point since the end of The Wedding of River Song, when it was connected to The Question, asked on the Fields of Trenzilore, at an event know eerily as The Fall of the Eleventh.  There have already been teaser ads suggesting that in the anniversary episode, we would learn The Doctor’s true name. Fan rage has risen to high levels over that, and we shall have to wait till November to see how that works out.

“Fine, let’s do it together” Fans of Douglas Adams will recognize that gag from The Hitchhiker’s Guid to the Galaxy as Zaphod and Ford attempt to pilot the Disaster Area sun-dive ship (Or if you’re a REAL fan, the Captain of the Haghunemnon fleet).

“Earl’s Court was an embarrassment” – Earl’s Court is the location of the last police box in London, and yes, it’s blue, and yes, it’s quite the tourist attraction for Who-fen.

“I never take the TARDIS into battle” – The Doctor is driving a Triumph motorcycle, a brand as beloved to the UK as Rolls Royce.  The “Trusty Triumph” was the model of choice for soldiers in World War II.  Plus, now we know the TARDIS has a garage as well as a swimming pool.

Old friends…very old friends” – UNIT was founded after the second televised appearance of The great Inteligence, thought its leader, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was instrumental in its defeat in the Underground in The Web of Fear.  Presumably it kept tabs on The Doctor and his friends in any way it could.

“You don’t run out on the people you care about…wish I was like that” – I’m starting to get actively annoyed with this idea that The Doctor is such a horror to be with.  It’s become a recurring idea since The Stolen Planet, and it flies in the face of the experiences of very nearly all of his friends.  Yes, the ends have been tragic for a small few, and the rest leave his company as far better people, who go on with their lives doing all they can to make the world a better place.  The level of guilt he feels is out of place.  He feekls bad about losing Amy and Rory to the Angels, but he knows for a fact they ended up fine.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – This may be the fastest reveal of the Big Bad in the new series’ history.  The Great Intelligence, generally suspected to be making a quick return after the Christmas episode The Snowmen, were revealed as the mysterious “Client”. It had been announces that Richard E. Grant would be appearing in the series again, tho the BBC was quite mum as to exactly who he would be playing. We can see why.

“The Girl Twice Dead” – Clara’s story is clearly and obviously going to be the biggest puzzle of the series.  The three iterations of her we’ve seen so far have delightful parallels, and surely more will be found as the episodes roll on.

We already have more than a few Clara-parallels…Clarallels, if you will:

She was a governess in The Snowmen, with a penchant for helping others. She’s helping a family cope with the loss of their mother in present day, and while her title was “Junior Entertainment Manager” on the Starship Alaska, that could be read not as an assistant to the manager, but the person in charge of entertaining the “juniors” as in, watching the children on the ship.

“RYCBAR123” – Aside from the fact that Whovians everywhere are updating their wifi network names and passwords, this was modern Clara’s inspiration to repeat the phrase across time “Run you clever boy and remember”, uttered by both past and future Clara at their passing, and get him interested in her.

“I call him Nina” – The pet name Oswin gave Rory, after a past paramour (“I was going through a phase”) pop’s up again, as the name of one of Angie’s friends.  Yes, it’s a common name, but this is Doctor Who – there are no coincedences.

Just Clara Oswald, what was that middle one?” – Clara comes up with the name “Oswin” as a username when she starts hacking Miss Kislet’s network, but it’s the same name the other two versions of her has.

“The girl at the shop gave it to me, said it was the best help line in the universe” – With the announcement that David Tennant and Billie Piper are returning to the series for the anniversary, Clever Theories are running amuck that Rose was the aforementioned girl in the shop.  It might be, and it might not be, but the point is, SOMEONE gave her the number to the TARDIS, and helped her get found.

“101 Places to see…” Even thought the book is designed to resemble The Daring Book for Girls (a sequel to The Dangerous Book for Boys), the traditional end of that title is “…before you die”.  Also, if you look about her room, ALL her books have to do with traveling and foreign lands.  Many brain cells have been spent on the significance of both the 16 and 23 being skipped in the years in the book.  It could be waved off as simply a brief lack of interest in the book those years; last year would have been the time her friend died, and she may have been distracted, for example.  But the 23 is a significant number – it’s popped up as Victorian Claras’s birthday (specifically, Novenmer 23rd, the date of the show’s first broadcast) and she mistypes “123” earlier in the episode.  And of course, since by delightful coincidence November 23rd is a Saturday this year, the anniversary episode will screen on the exact right day.

Page One may contain a leaf (Maple, I believe – are there many maples trees in England?), but page two contains a letter appearing to be from something or someone named “Delsa”.  No ideas who that is yet, but again, they don’t put things in by mistake.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – The Doctor is SICK of…well, no, he seems quite excited by the idea of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. Lestrade finds his division, Ron Weasley’s did is also Rory’s dad (so…related?) and also Queen Nefertiti. Seven days away…you busy?

The Point Radio: Creating Cutting Edge Comedy In MOVIE 43

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The Farrelly Brothers have broken the comedy barrier in a number of films, but with so much unrated material posted online daily, is it harder to be raunchy funny on the big screen? That was one of the challenges they faced with MOVIE 43, and our exclusive preview continues with a look at that challenge – plus she was DOCTOR WHO’s River Song, but can she pull off Black Canary in ARROW?

Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Alex Kingston joining cast of CW’s “Arrow”

Entertainment Weekly reports that Alex Kingston (ER, Doctor Who) will be joining the cast of The CW series Arrow, based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow. Kingston will join the cast as Dinah Lance, mother to Laurel (Oliver Queen’s girlfriend) and her late sister Sarah, as well as ex-wife to Detective Quentin Lance.

Kingston joins a growing list of actors on the show who have also appeared on Doctor Who. Kingston plays the enigmatic River Song, a woman with a very convoluted history and lineage.  John Barrowman joined the cast some weeks back as billionaire Malcolm Merlyn; and Colin Salmon, playing Moira Queen’s new husband Walter Steele, played Doctor Moon in the Two-parter Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead, the story that introduced River Song. Ben Browder, star of both Farscape and Stargate-SG1, and played Isaac in A Town called Mercy will appear next week as Ted Gaynor, an employee of Blackhawk, a security concern.

Many characters from DC Comics have appeared in the series, though most have been adapted without their superhero monikers.  In the comics, Dinah Drake Lance is the original Black Canary, and her daughter Dinah Laurel Lance is the modern-day version. The aforementioned Merlyn is a professional assassin who uses a bow and arrow as well, while the TV version has only recently shown his proficiency with the weapon. Helena Bertinelli has been introduced into the series, and while she wears a version of the comics’ Huntress costume, has yet to use the name.

Arrow can be seen Wednesdays at 8PM on your local CW affiliate.  More information and complete episodes can be seen at the show’s website.

New Who Review: “The Angels Take Manhattan”

The Fall of the Ponds.  The Last Page.  The Great Weeping.  You knew it was coming, The Grand Moff Steven made it clear.  Who died, who lived, and who will have a LOT of explaining to do to the parents.  Spoilers abound, even more than usual, so here we go…

THE ANGELS TAKE MANHATTAN
by Steven Moffat
Directed by Nick Hurran

The episode jumps between 1938 and 2012 Manhattan – in 1938, detective Sam Garner is asked to investigate a mysterious apartment house “where the angels live”, only to meet…himself, years older.  In modern day, The Doctor is visiting Central Park with Amy and Rory, when Rory is sent backwards by a weeping angel, into the arms of his daughter River Song.  How do you fight an enemy that can suddenly make you go decades into the past?  Perhaps the answer in some cases is: you can’t.

The story bears more than a few parallels to the original Angels story, Blink, as it should. In both cases, The Doctor’s actions are linked, even dictated, by a set of notes (here concealed in a book) provided before he begins, but written afterwards by one of the parties involved.

GUEST STAR REPORT

Mike McShane (Grayle), an American actor and comedian, was one of the regulars on the original British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? He played Friar Tuck in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, the hypnotherapist in Office Space, and (sigh) Professor Keenbean in Richie Rich.  He’s also one of a small numbers of actors who got to play another “Doctor” – he provided the voice for recurring and ubiquitous scientist Cid in Final Fantasy X and its sequel, X-2.

MONSTER REPORT The Weeping Angels made their first appearance only a few years back, in Steven Moffat’s spectacular and Hugo-winning episode Blink.  They’re described by the Doctor as “The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely”.  Their preferred method of taking their prey is to send them back in time.  They feed on the potential energy of the life the victims were supposed to live in the present.  The victim arrives back in time with no real idea how they got there – some may go mad, some may injure themselves, but many simply adapt and live out the remainder of their days there in the past.  They are functionally indestructible – when they are seen by anyone, they “Quantum-lock”, or transform into stone. They move impossibly fast when they can, hence The Doctor’s advice, “Don’t blink”.  In their second appearance in The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone, the Angels were in a very weakened state, and could not (or chose not to) use their standard attack, sticking to simple acts of violence as they slowly drained power from the crashed spaceship the Byzantium.  Here, they’re at full strength again.  They also have the power to replicate themselves – it’s explained that any image of a Weeping Angel itself becomes a Weeping Angel (likely because of Quantum), in this episode, it’s suggested they can infect or take over other statues, such as ones in a fountain or park, or even big honkin’ ones out in the harbor.

Something I’ve mentioned before: There’s a short story from 1984 called “Bones” by P.C. Hodgell that features a race of creatures called Vhors, skeletal ratlike creatures who, like the Angels, can only move when they’re not being observed. Surely a case of parallel evolution, but a pointed lesson in how there’s only so many truly original ideas, and how it’s all based on how you use the ideas and tropes we’ve been recycling since Og the caveman first set in stone (literally) the tale of a young boy who was destined to bring down a great kingdom run by an evil monarch.

The Statue of Liberty has had more than a few appearances in science fiction.  It was previously animated by Mood Slime and Jackie Wilson in Ghostbusters 2. It was fitted with a honkin’ huge  Neuralyzer in Men In Black 2. And of course it was seen as a twisted broken wreck at the end of Planet of the Apes.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

DARKER AND DARKER – It took me a while to realize the image in the logo this week’s opening credits was the crown of the Statue of Liberty.  Also, note that the color is all but gone from the TARDIS’ trip through the time vortex, and the electrical distortions have increased greatly.  Does it represent the immediate trouble of the trip to 1938, or a continuing change to the vortex?

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION – This episode was filmed in Manhattan, where it was followed around by hundreds of fans who spread the news of filming location via social media, which meant the crowds grew exponentially over the day.  In a recent interview (modesty forbids mentioning the writer), they discussed the excitement of filming in NYC, and the zeal and courtesy of the fans.  And one of the wonderful things about the city is there are plenty of buildings that would not look out of place in 1938, allowing for lots of sites to film.

YOU’RE MUCH TOO NICE TO BE A GRUBBY DETECTIVE ALL YOUR LIFE – There’s a lot of references to detective fiction and film noir in this episode.  Mike McShane plays Mr. Grayle – the Grayle family was featured in Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, which was adapted twice to film, once as Murder My Sweet, and again under its original title. Detective “Sam Garner” is clearly in the style of classic dicks Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, the latter of which was once played by…James Garner. “Melody Malone”, while also mirroring “Marlowe”, reminds one of Michael J. Malone, hero of Craig Rice’s (a female author – Craig was her middle name, Georgina her first), one adapted to film with the postcard-ready title Having Wonderful Crime.  Mike McShane is clearly playing a character in the Sydney Greenstreet “Fat Man” style.

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY – I can write off  “The New York Record” as not being allowed to use the masthead of a more…Timesy…paper.  But “Detroit Lions win Superbowl”?  For one thing, does that mean this episode takes place in February?  Or just that the British have no idea when the Superbowl takes place?  Or what teams are worth a damn?

ROLLS ROYCE? – The plaque The Doctor does a quick recce in seems to be from the engine of a Supermarine Spitfire, last seen (flying in space, yet) in Victory of the Daleks. There’s two explanations for that.  One is by  the implication of its jury-rigged appearance that the TARDIS has had many, many post-showroom upgrades with whatever parts could be found, hence its patchwork appearance.  But a concept that was to be mentioned in Neil Gaiman’s story The Doctor’s Wife is that a TARDIS’ Chameleon Circuit affects the interior of the ship as well as the outside.  The Doctor and Idris look out on a junkyard, and once she reminds him of the fact, he realizes he’s not looking at junk, but the disguised remnants of various TARDISes.  So he isn’t building a console from a hairdryer and coat hangers, but from highly technical components that LOOK like a hairdryer and coat hangers.

“Vortex Manipulator – less bulky than a TARDIS…a motorbike through traffic” River’s had the device since the events of The Pandorica Opens, when she bought it off the corpulent blue-skinned trader Dorium.  The Vortex Manipulator is standard equipment for the time agency, and one is almost always on the wrist of the rakishly charming Captain Jack Harkness.  The Doctor describes using it as “slightly addictive”, but odds are River can handle it.

“Once we know it’s coming, it’s written in stone” – The rules for the immutability of time are…rather mutable. The Doctor rather makes a habit of changing things he knows will happen, though in fairness, they don’t always go well, such as the crushed temporal reality of The Wedding of River Song.

“Are you an archaeologist as well as a detective?” Indeed she is – her Doctorate is is Archaeology, mainly so she can go about searching for events related to The Doctor.

“Oh, I know how they work” / “And it’s Professor Song Now” These two quotes allow us to place where this adventure happens in River’s timeline.  It’s after the events of Angels / Stone, and even a bit later in her life after that, as she’s earned her Professorship. She was surprised to hear she would become a Professor in the Angels adventure, but she’d she gained it in her “first/last” adventure, Silence in the Library. So this is interesting, in that it’s the first of her appearances that have happened “out of order”. To date, each of her appearances have been happening in reverse order – the first time we meet her, she’s known The Doctor for years, and it’s her last adventure, as she “dies”.  Each adventure after that, she’s come from a point further back in her time line.  She knew about “the crash of the Byzantium” in Silence in the Library, but during the crash (in Angels/Stone), she didn’t know she’d be a professor. Similarly, she mentions that she’ll see The Doctor again “When The Pandorica Opens“, another event that had yet to occur to him, and so on.  Basically, we’ve been following a specific story arc for River – now that it’s done and her big secret is revealed, it’s okay to pick and choose her time of appearances again.

“Oh I was pardoned ages ago…turns out the person I killed never existed in the first place” More evidence of The Doctor doing all he can to fade away, continuing the job that Oswin started for him in Asylum of the Daleks.  He didn’t show up in Solomon’s database in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship either.  Of course, there’s a faction who suggests that he’s not the one doing it, and that someone else is assisting him, possibly even without his knowledge…

“He’s been moved in space, but not in time” – This is a change from the stated abilities of the Angels – until now, they’ve been only able to displace in time. If they could do both, why didn’t Rory appear in front of Winter Quay when he first arrived, since that was their intended target?  Perhaps they can only do one or the other, so they get their targets back to when they need them, then worry about the where?  There’s also the possibility of a scene missing where he simply escaped from the basement and went looking for help, which would rather make more sense.

“That was a stupid waste of regeneration energy” It’s only paying back a favor – River, conceived in the TARDIS and possessing Time Lord DNA, could regenerate, and has, at least twice.  She gave up all the rest of her regenerations to restore The Doctor to life and health in Let’s Kill Hitler.  Likely that’s not a trick he could perform with any other person, which deftly explains why he’s never done it before.  Unless you count giving the fuel cells of the TARDIS a jump start by giving it about ten years of his life in Rise of the Cybermen.

“I can’t ever take the TARDIS back there, the timelines are too scrambled” – Lucky all the times he’s already been there have already happened, then.  Christmas of 1938 is when the events of The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe take place.  It’s also when they landed in Hitler’s meeting room in Let’s Kill Hitler.

“I will never be able to see you again” I don’t see why.  They spend many decades in Manhattan (presuming they don’t go traveling), and the time distortion is only centered around 1938, so there’s no reason he can’t pop by a year or two later, or even decades later.  Besides, River is already making plans to go see them, to drop off the book she’s now got to go write.

The seeming finality of the separation may be be partly based on the wishes of Karen Gillan.  In the aforementioned interview, she said,  “I’ve always said that when I go, I want it to be for good. Because I want that final scene to have that same impact, maybe ten years on. I want people to be able to revisit it and still have the same emotion. That’s really important for me, so for that reason, I think I’m going to rule out any returns.” However, when I quietly complimented her on her ability to lie, she replied, “I learned it from the best!”

I expect at the very least we’ll see a rasher of fanfic of Amy and Rory’s life in New York, the evils they fought and the lives they saved.  We already know (based on River’s plan) that Amy will be involved in publishing in the years after her re-arrival in this pre-war period and beyond. So clearly they CAN be contacted. One can only assume they’ll use their foreknowledge of history to make a few successful investments to keep themselves off the streets as well.

Let’s do a bit of math.  Amy was born in 1989, so when she met The Doctor (for the second time) in 2008, she was about 19. Last week, she surmises it’s been ten years of her personal timeline, so she’s now 29. 74 years pass between being popped back to 1938 and seeing their gravestone in 2012, where she’s listed as having died at 87. So unless she REALLY lied about her age, she and Rory are not only dead here, but died at least a couple of years, maybe decades back.  Also, it’s not made clear, but it’s implied that Amy and Rory do not necessarily die at the same time – she’s five years older than him, and her name appears under his.

“This is the story of Amelia Pond, and this is how it ends” Back in her first episode, young Amelia Pond is sitting waiting for The Doctor to return – he doesn’t, not to another fourteen years, but she hears the wheezing engines of the TARDIS in the sky, so at least she know she hadn’t dreamt it.  A nice callback to that first episode, and a good end to the story.

BIG BAD REPORT / CLEVER THEORY DEPARTMENT

tellmeimwrong-267x450-7430785“You think you’ll just come back to life again?” “When DON’T I?” There’s been two recurring themes to Amy and Rory’s life with The Doctor – death (usually of Rory) and waiting.  Amy waited 14 years for The Doctor to return in The Eleventh Hour.  Rory guarded the Pandorica for millennia between that and The Big Bang.  And in The Girl Who Waited, Amy was lost for decades in a parallel timeline, and her opinion of The Doctor…somewhat soured.  Rory’s made a habit of dying, something that’s become a bit of a running joke with both the show and the fans.  So it’s quite fitting that in this episode, both themes are referenced. The Old Rory of 1938 is clearly overjoyed to see his Amy again, quite the difference between her reaction to him in The Girl Who Waited. In both cases, the timelines vanished, with only the memories remaining.

Similarly, Rory dies.  A lot.  Sometimes winked entirely out of existence, sometimes just long enough for be revived after drowning, but it gets to the point where here, he’s betting on his past performance to guarantee future results.

“Does the bulb on top need changing?” “I just changed it” He did too, in Pond Life. But it’s another appearance of a recurring theme that a few folks have mentioned – flickering and dead lightbulbs.  They flickered whenever a Dalek Puppet activated in Asylum of the Daleks, Brian was trying to help with one in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, they flickered and sparked all over the place in A Town Called Mercy,  power went out a couple times in The Power of Three, and they kept going out all over the place in this episode.  Just a common symptom of teleportation or alien power use, or a further suggestion of something else?

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Always a fun and tantalizing question to ask when the next episode isn’t for several months; in this case, Christmas.  We know a few things for sure:

Jenna-Louse Coleman will make her premiere as The Doctor’s new Companion. Though after her surprise appearance as Oswin Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks, all expectations are off.  It has been rumored, based on overheard lines during location shoots, that her character’s name is Clara. Steven Moffat has said in interviews that one of the things interesting about her is where The Doctor meets her. Now, that could mean any number of things – it could refer to the fact that they “met” in Asylum, but I had a Clever Theory of my own back when I heard that.  The most surprising place for The Doctor to meet someone would be in the TARDIS itself.

In this interview on the BBC YouTube channel, a young person asks about why/how Jenna (as Oswin) appears in Asylum.  The Moff’s answer is telling and maddening – “All of that will be explained in the future … that’s the question I want you asking”. So clearly he does have something insidious planned.  He also was adamant that her character was “as yet un-named”, blockading the overheard dialogue.

Richard E. Grant and Tom Ward makes guest appearances in the episode.  Richard Grant has played The Doctor TWICE before – once in the oft-referenced Comic Relief special, and once in the animated episode Scream of the Shalka.

Vastra and Jenny (Neve Macintosh and Catrin Stewart) will be back from A Good Man Goes to War, but so will Strax (Dan Starkey), the Sontaran sentenced to serve as a nurse.  One wonders if this adventure will take place before or after the events of Good Man.

We’ll see you again then.  If you’ve got any requests for Doctor Who articles to keep my busy till then, do let me know.

New Who Review: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

The Doctor attempts to help the Indian Space Agency about a runaway spaceship of Canadian size headed for Earth.  Promising to stop it before it needs to be blown up, he picks up a few friends – Rory and Amy (and Rory’s dad, accidentally) big game hunter John Riddell, and already in his company, Queen Nefertiti of Egypt.  They find the ship is a derelict space ark, originally from Earth, created by the Silurians.  But where are they, and how did a mysterious and heartless trader named Solomon get control of the ship?

Arthur Darvill had it exactly right when he discusses the latest episode of Doctor Who in a promotional video – “It does what it says on the tin”.  The Doctor’s got a gang, Amy has her own companions, Rory’s got his dad, Rory’s dad’s got balls in his pants, the ship’s got a surprising builder, you’ve got your spoiler warnings, and did I mention there are…

DINOSAURS ON A SPACESHIP
by Chris Chibnall
directed by Saul Metzstein

Doctor Who is no stranger to funny episodes, but in the new series, they usually occupy a different spot in the series.  They’ve most often come near the end of the series, almost as a buffer to the rollicking action and drama of the series’ finale.  But this one is the second of the series, and is certainly one of the more barking mad ones to come along.  It may be a perfect episode for that friend you’ve been trying to get into the series – lost of humor, great adventure, and a good look at what can happen in a DW story; namely, anything.

GUEST STAR REPORT

Rupert Graves (John Riddell) Has been on British screens for over thirty years, but he’s best known to Who-fen as Inspector Lestrade on Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ adaptation of Sherlock. He appeared in V for Vendetta and a wide array of TV series, from modern to historic.

Mark Williams (Brian Williams) has a lot of quality work in both comedy and genre work under his belt.  He played the patriarch of the Weasley clan in the Harry Potter films, appeared in the recent Gormenghast, and played Cadet Flynn in Rob Grant’s Red Dwarf followup, the why-haven’t-you-seen-it-yet series The Strangerers. In Britain, he’s certainly best known for being a castmember of long-running sketch program The Fast Show.  Up next, he’ll be portraying G. K. Chesterton’s detective Father Brown in a new adaptation for British TV.

David Bradley (Solomon) is another alumnus of the Harry Potter films, in the role of Mr. Filch he’s enjoyed over forty years of acting, mostly on British television, in series of all shape and size.  He voiced one of the Shansheeth in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode The Death of the Doctor. He’s next appearing in a TV adaptation of the Ken Follett novel World Without End.

David Mitchell and Robert Webb (robot voices) Can best be described as being World Famous In Britain.  Stars of the sketch comedy series That Mitchell and Webb Look, they’re also popular on the chat and game show circuit, always able to come up with wit on the fly. As an example of their brand of humor, here’s a classic about a pair of introspective Nazis.
The team are the latest in the trend of big stars making voiceover cameos on Doctor Who.  Last year Michael Sheen voiced House in The Doctor’s Wife, and Imelda Staunton was the voice of the Apulapuchian Kindness Facility in The Girl Who Waited.

Richard Hope (Bleytal) is now one of a growing group of “go-to” actors who have played multiple members of the same alien race for the series.  He’s played two alternate-timeline versions of the Silurian doctor Malokeh (in The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood, and The Wedding of River Song), and now plays the scientist of the same race, keeping track of their ark.  He joins Neve McIntosh, who played two Silurians in the aforementioned two-parter, as well as the Victorian adventurer Madam Vastra (who is rumored to be returning Quite Soon Now) and Dan Starkey, who’s played several Sontarans on DW, as well as voiced them in a few audio adventures and the videogame The Gunpowder Plot.

Riann Steele (Nefertiti) got her first screen credit in David Tennant’s version of Hamlet, and has been making appearances in TV shows and films ever since.

Chris Chibnall (writer) made his first appearance connected to Doctor Who back in the original series.  He appeared with a number of other fans on a BBC talk show reviewing the 1986 series (Trial of a Time Lord) and was…not entirely satisfied with it. In the years between, like so many of the current writers, he became a screenwriter, and was brought on board by Russell T. Davies, not at first for Who, but its anagrammatic spinoff, Torchwood.  He was listed as co-producer, but was effectively the head writer of the series.  After a year or two writing for Law and Order U.K. (starring Freema Agyeman) he was brought back on Who, where he wrote 42 and the Silurian two-parter from last series. In addition to this episode, he also scripted the prequel series Pond Life, furthering the backstory of the Ponds’ life when The Doctor isn’t around.

Saul Metzstein (Director) is new to the series, but is coming on with a bang – he’s also doing the next episode, two on the back end of the season, and also directed Pond Life. He’s done a number of documentaries, including The Name of This Film is Dogme95, about the popular “back to basics” style of filmmaking spearheaded by Lars Von Trier and his contemporaries.  In accordance with the rules of the movement, he was not credited for his work on the film.

There were some dinosaurs down in the Silurians‘ cave in their first appearance Doctor Who and the Silurians. The race of Homo Reptilia ruled the earth millions of years ago, but a massive asteroid heading for Earth convinced them they needed to hide underground in hibernation (and, as we now know, built at least one ark) to avoid what would certainly be a world-killing event.  Their numbers were off by just a hair – the asteroid missed, was grabbed by Earth’s gravitational field, and became our moon.  They’ve slept beneath the Earth for millennia, only awaking when accidentally disturbed by humans, who evolved to the dominant lifeform of the planet in their stead.  Along with their close relations the Sea Devils, they’ve fought The Doctor on several occasions on screen, and quite a few more times in the other media.THE MONSTER FILES – For a show about time travel, you’d think The Doctor would have come across dinosaurs every other week, but in fact they’ve barely bee seen at all.  Jon Pertwee fought The Dinosaur Invasion when Operation Golden Age sent time all funky and brought dinosaurs to modern London. The Rani tried twice to use dinosaurs in her plots, in Time and the Rani and The Mark of the Rani.  And there were pterodactyls (that should not be fed) in the parks of London in The Wedding of River Song.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION – Everyone’s heart leapt when there were rumors that Doctor Who was returning to film at Southerndown Beach, which was used as Bad Wolf Bay for Rose’s departure.  But it stood in for the engine room in this episode.  It was also the surface of Alfava Metraxis in Time of the Angels / Flesh and Stone.

WHEN WE LAST LEFT OUR FRIENDS… – In an earlier draft of his Doctor Who episode, Neil Gaiman had a sequence that would show the middle  of a previous adventure, effectively interrupted to lead in to the new one, almost interrupting it.  He discusses the scene here. It’s effectively the structure used here with Nefertiti, tho this seems to be much more the end of the other adventure.  But both get across the point that The Doctor has many adventures, large and small, that we don’t get to see. As was touched on in last season’s A Good Man Goes To War, The Doctor has met many people, some who owe him a debt, and some (Winston Churchill, for example) who just call him friend. Both Nefertiti and John Riddell are examples of the latter.

Nefertiti is not the first member of Egyptian royalty to travel in the TARDIS.  Princess Erimemushinteperem (Erimem for short) traveled with the Fifth Doctor in several audio adventures from Big Finish Productions.  After meeting one of the Osirans (seen on screen in The Pyramids of Mars), she accepted the proposal of the newly-crowned king of Peladon and left The Doctor’s company.

SO THAT’S HOW JEFF BROKE HIS LEG – Slow down the playback as the dinosaurs as they tromp towards the screen just before the credits – a crack appears at the last instant, presumably as the glass of the “camera” shatters under the foot of a rampaging ankyosaur.

THE PUNCHLINE IS, “AND THEY WORK FOR SCALE” – As mentioned last week, the Doctor Who logo will be changing each week, covered with  a new “skin” connected to the episode.  This week it’s covered in dinosaur hide.  It’s a cute idea, trying to give the opening a little Simpsons-esque little update each week, but I’m not sure the

show logo is the thing to be changing.  Also, I think it’s a bit too small on the screen – perhaps making it a bit larger might help.

WELCOME…TO JURA—SORRY? – The dinosaur effects in this episode are a seamless mix of physical effects and CGI.  In the case of the triceratops The Doctor and the Williams Boys ride, it’s a mix on the one moveable beast.  The head and torso are a physical prop, moved along by stagehands, while the back feet and tail are CGI.  Solomon’s robots are funny physical effects as well – those nearly ten foot tall suits were worn by members of the show’s team of monster players.

HI HO TRICEY! – There’s been a bit of discussion in the archeological community over whether or not the triceratops actually exists.  There’s a very similar breed, the torosaurus, and there’s a theory that indeed they are the same species; what we know as the triceratops is a young torosaurus, which underwent a bit or a metamorphosis as it grew.  The theory was tabled a couple years ago, but recent studies have come to the agreement that it’s in error. Just as well – I still haven’t gotten over Pluto and the Brontosaurus – I don’t think I could take losing the Triceratops.

“I’ve got it set to temporal news view” Apparently The Doctor’s psychic paper has another function.  It was introduced in the new series as a device able to appear as any form of documentation he needs to get out of any situation, from a ticket to view the end of the Planet Earth, to ID backing up his claim that he represents Q

ueen and Country.  Some people are able to contact him via the paper, wither by being a close friend (AKA River Song) or by having emotions so strong and powerful the reach across space and time (Young George in Night Terrors). Apparently it also has the ability to pick up news of events he may be able to help with, like a four-dimensional police scanner.

“You don’t normally get spiders in space” – Oh, I don’t know about that.  Aside from the dominant life of Metebelis III, AKA Planet of the Spiders, there’s the Racnoss from The Runaway Bride, the Alzarian Spiders from Full Circle, and lots of other examples from the other media.

“Hydro-generators!” We’ve seen a number of “hybrid” power systems in the new series, like the treeborgs on the Byzantium in Flesh and Stone, which converted photosynthesis to electricity, and provided oxygen to boot.

“I will not have flirting companions” Effectively, Amy has take the role of being in charge here, and is the one figuring things out. Rory is helping his father cope with what he’s seeing, and later, fixing him up when he’s hurt.  He also lies. It’s another sign of how far the Ponds have come in their time with The Doctor, and possibly, why they need to move on.

“I don’t respond well to violence” Of all the events of the episode, it’s The Doctor’s decision of what to do with Solomon that has sparked the most debate.  It’s far from the first time he’s killed – he’s ever talked about the blood on my hands.  Indeed, one could argue that he’s killed more by his inaction.  He chose not to destroy the Daleks at their start in Genesis of the Daleks, as he realized that in some cases, races who were at war would unite to fight them, ending wars that could cause more deaths.  But by doing so, he effectively sentenced all who would die at the Daleks to those deaths.  In The Vampires of Venice, he doomed an entire race to extinction, the amphibious Saturnyne, all because their queen didn’t know the name of one of the girls they killed.  His choices seem based mainly on how cruel the being are acting towards others, and how much potential the have of being rehabilitated.  He chose to help Kazran Sardick and not just push him out of the way (with authority) all because he chose not to strike a child.  But even then, he gives Solomon a chance – he warns him that the ship is under attack, and tells him to leave.  Solomon’s fate is based entirely on his own choices.  He is clearly and irretrievably evil, and none of The Doctor’s companions seem distraught with the choice.

“A monkey could do it…oh look, they’re going to” The Silurians referred to the humans as “apes”, as when they were on the surface, that’s all humans were.

“Try not to bump into the Moon, otherwise the races that live there will be livid” at the time of this episode (2367 AD) there are human colonies on the moon, and presuming the Selenites are not part of the show’s continuity (Considering Mark Gatiss recently produced and starred in a remake of First Men In The Moon, I’d make no such assumptions) there have been no indigenous races reported on the moon.  So he may just have been being funny, but surely the humans on the moon would be annoyed by a fender-bender.

“Daisy, Daisy…” rather an obvious one here – Hal 9000’s last words, a repeat of his first, at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also makes the earlier reference to Arthur C. Clarke by Brian a nice callback. But not everybody knows the etymology of that choice of song.  A programming team taught an IBM 7094 to sing back in 1961, and this was the song it sang.

“Can I ask a favor? There’s something I want to see” As The Doctor has said many times, traveling with him changes people; usually for the better, if they survive.  In The Sarah Jane Adventures, she explains that she did a bit of research and found a bunch of people who traveled with The Doctor, all of whom have dedicated their lives to helping others in big ways and small, including, of course, herself.  Brian’s transformation from someone who “hates to travel” is a more personal type of transformation, but one no less dramatic.  Considering all the places he’s been in those postcards, it’s assumed that once again, quite some time will have passed until the next time The Doctor visits the Ponds.

“Siluria!” According to the events of The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood, in 1,000 years’ time, the Silurians will emerge from their cryo-chambers and negotiate a peace with the humans of earth. That’s still several centuries away from the events of this adventure.  One wonders how much the flora and fauna of the Silurian Ark will be able to thrive in that time, and whether or not it will make a good world for homo reptilia upon their return?

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT

“Are they the new us?” In School Reunion Rose faced the idea that The Doctor’s Companions come and go, that he has had friends before she came along, and will have some when she leaves.  Amy has known The Doctor literally as long as he’s been in this incarnation, and with Rory, have been traveling with him for most of that time.  The idea that he might stop seeing them and start traveling with other people is clearly something that has crossed their minds.  This carries throughout the episode, and is a theme through much of this semi-season.  His relationship with the Ponds is quite different than other companions – he’s keeping in touch, and even though he’s set them home safe more than once, he’s drawn back to them.  One reason for that is he’s family. He’s married (or will be, or will someday more officially be) to their daughter River Song, and that really needs much more explanation, but wait a couple weeks and I’ll be able to get into get in detail.

“How’s the Job?” It’s a bit of a throwaway line, but Amy has been unable to keep a job, for fear of missing The Doctor.  This whole scene is choked with portent, and is very revealing of the very unique these three have.  It’s been said that Amy and Rory have almost adopted The Doctor;Amy is speaking like a mother who’s afraid to have a life, lest her child need her. She ever expecting a call, asking that she pick him up.

Since we already know that the Ponds will be leaving The Doctor’s company at the end of episode five (tho we of course know in what way, or position), it’s tempting and worrying to hear anything being said about them parting.

“That’s me…worthless” Once again, parts of the universe has forgotten about The Doctor, which was, of course, his plan.  Some are suggesting the capable hands of Oswin Oswald are at it again, but let’s not forget that in the first episode of the new series, The Doctor produced a program that would erase all records of him off the Internet.  No mean feat, to say the least.  He could have easily done the same for this value indexing system…or could do so retroactively at his next opportunity.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – A western, filmed in Spain, with an alien.  THAT’S multiculturalism. A Town Called Mercy, just a week away

Doctor Who Premieres On NYC Stage

Last Saturday was a busy day if you were a Doctor Who fan in New York City.  The first episode of the new series, Asylum of the Daleks, had its US premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater, the largest single-screen theater in the city they could lay their hands on.  After a minor frenzy to obtain tickets, fans were treated to an hour-long thrill ride as The Doctor and his friends Amy and Rory fought against more Daleks than you could shake an eye-stalk at.  But the activity began earlier in the day, as the folks at BBC America made stars Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, as well as co-producer Caroline Skinner available for interviews to the appreciative hordes of the working press.

Matt Smith  (The Doctor) is currently shooting the Christmas special (“Which you have to shoot in August, because what could be more silly” explained Caro Skinner) and arranged a break in his schedule so he could fly to New York specifically to attend the premiere.  “I want to film every single episode in New York, I want to get that out there right now.  I absolutely love this place.  Any way you point a camera, there’s something wonderful and beautiful to look at. The Light here sort of falls between the grids of the buildings so wonderfully. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’d like to come live here one day. And it’s great to do a sort of periody piece here – the locations afford you so much.”

In the aforementioned special, “[The Doctor] meets his new chum…or someone he thinks is his new chum”, played by newcomer to the series, Jenna-Louise Coleman.  When asked about how The Doctor acts when he hasn’t got a companion, Matt admits he’s “really interested by the time he spends on his own. I think he gets more dangerous when he’s on his own.  I think he needs that sort of human moral compass, that human sensibility.  He needs that, he doesn’t have the same grasp of it.    It’s interesting to think about the character becoming more reclusive, and on his own. Just this old man, wandering around the universe, trying to put things right…killing loads of innocent people along the way. when you look at it, there’s a lot of clerics that die in certain episodes.”

This season of thirteen regular episodes is broken into a short set of five, the final eight coming in 2013, after the Christmas special.  The only “arc” in this five is what matt calls “The fall of the Ponds”.  “We start off exactly where we left him,” Matt explains, “a man who is trying to step back a bit, into the shadows, and be less prominent, less famous, less apparent, less destructive. less of all those things that he started to struggle with. We see him trying to deal with that, as a character, or personality trait, it’s absolutely something he’s trying to deal with.  Perhaps it does make his soul a bit darker, because he’s alone a lot more. As Amy says, it’s unhealthy for him, I think, ultimately, to be alone too long.”

When discussing the new episode, everyone has said the Daleks are “scary again”.  “We’ve got the design of them better,” says Matt.  “We’ve drawn from every Dalek, every one ever on its…well, you can’t say ‘legs’, can you?  On their…space wheels.  And The Asylum, you’ll see tonight, it’s…Dalek-Land. Like a perfect theme park – everything’s made for Daleks, it’s sort of ridiculous.  The doors all go like that (makes a triangle shape with his hands) cause they’re all fat at the bottom. The world is really sort of gruesome and frightening. The design, and the tone, and the way it’s lit, I think we’ve achieved our intention with their nature.”

Karen Gillan (Amy Pond Williams) admitted something fairly major – “I’ve never found the Daleks…all that scary. I’ve loved them, cause they’re so iconic. But in this episode, they’re properly frightening.

I wondered if this “asylum” was more in the sense of a place where you keep mad people, of a place where dangerous people beg to be kept safe.  Matt surmised, “I think it is [the first], but I rather like the idea of Daleks SO mad, they’re asking, ‘don’t let me out’. If they had more of a human consciousness, the latter could apply, but the Daleks don’t have that, it’s just not there.  It’s just alien evil, encased in a tank.  That’s why The Doctor has had this life-long war, that’s why they are his greatest foe, there’s nothing redemptive about them.  They are only evil, and that’s the way he sees them; only evil.”

“This is an interesting episode for the nature of the Daleks”, Matt thinks. “We learn a lot, Steven cleverly reveals.  As I think you have to with any villain that comes back.  They have to have moved on somehow. And I think Steven’s done that here, he’s explored their nature in a very interesting way.”

The recurring theme of meeting historical figures will come round again, in an odd way.  “In episode four, we encounter someone’s feet. He was a king, and he’s chasing us…and I’m not gonna give anything else away.”  When asked what figure he might like to see appear, Matt was introspective.  “Was Tarzan real?  He wasn’t real was he?  I kind of like the idea of The Doctor swinging from the branches, but being really bad at it.”

Gillan had a rather definite opinion about her character, specifically about the possibility of a return after this season’s assuredly dramatic departure.  “I’ve always said that when I go, I want it to be for good.  Because I want that final scene to have that same impact, maybe ten years on.  I want people to be able to revisit it and still have the same emotion.  That’s really important for me, so for that reason, I think I’m going to rule out any returns.”  However, when I quietly complimented her on her ability to lie, she replied, “I learned it from the best!”

This season will start with a five-part webisode prequel, Pond Life, which will be made available on the BBC’s You Tube channel. “That was really interesting,” Karen recalls. “Cause you never get to see the snippets in between their adventures with The Doctor. And that’s what Pond Life is all about.  And the in episode four (The Power of Three) that’s what the whole episode is about – these two people trying to deal with their domestic life, with this time-traveler popping in and out of their lives, whisking them off into these crazy adventures.”

“Steven (Moffat) and I wanted to do a fairly substantial piece about the Ponds and their relationship with The Doctor,” explained Executive producer Caroline Skinner, “kind of in general, and in between series six and seven.  And one of the exciting thing about this series of episodes is you’ve got Amy and Rory as a married couple, and The Doctor popping in and out of their life, and taking them on adventures, and then dropping them off again. And we wanted something to set up that context, and really let people get an emotional sense of their relationship. And to see what The Doctor popping in and out meant from their point of view. You’ve got him coming in like that crazy little child, and throwing everything up in the air.”

“We were working at the time with brilliant writer Chris Chibnall (writer of 42 and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood for Who, and numerous episodes of Torchwood), and he’s just got the most beautiful way for writing for Amy and Rory, and we asked him to put pen to paper, and that’s what we got.”

In this, her first full season producing the show, Caro brings to the table “A huge amount of passion for [the series], I’ve always loved it, and massive enthusiasm and ambition to make this the biggest series ever. And so does Steven.  I sat down on day minus-one, just before I got the job, and he pitched me what he wanted to do with the series. And miraculously, in fifteen minutes, he’d pitched me all 13 stories for each episode, and I was just sat there saying ‘Wow, that’s quite a lot.’  And it was just so exciting to hear, to be honest, and I just wanted to bring my enthusiasm to bear to make all those ideas come to life, in the most ambitious way that we could.”

While chatting, Karen shared a problem she had with the many deaths of Rory Williams:  “Each time, I have to invent a sort of new ‘death reaction.’  What am I going to do now?”  She didn’t have any such problems filming her final scenes.  “It not even acting, it’s just real. And it was honestly, just one of the most powerful feelings, and I just related it to how I genuinely felt.  [that scene] was fairly far along in the shooting, but our very last scene was kind of an insignificant one, just us getting into the TARDIS, going ‘bye!’ But it became significant, cause it was the last time were going into the TARDIS together. So Matt closed the door, and we were in total darkness, and we all had a massive hug in the dark.  And I cried, and milked it for all it was worth. It was amazing.”

Of all the episodes she’s filmed, Karen still considered The Eleventh Hour to be her favorite. “There was a particular magic to that episode. We were introducing the characters and establishing their relationship for the first time, and it was all so exciting.  Actually, my favorite scene doesn’t even involve me at all, it’s the fish/custard scene, with my little cousin (Caitlin Blackwood) and Matt.”

Karen’s met some very wonderful fans, but had a couple stories about a couple that…stuck in her mind. One was a fellow who had actually had his name changed to “River Song”, and dressed as her for the convention, and a second fellow from Australia who had customized his house to a Doctor Who theme – “He had a TARDIS elevator, the gates had the logo – it had to cost some money.”

All three of the guests agreed that filming in New York City was a wonderful experience. “We filmed in Central Park and had hundreds of fans,” Matt recalls, “following us. It was remarkable, like nothing I’d ever witnessed before.”  Karen agreed – ” Just to contain the excitement of being in Central Park was a challenge. We didn’t have any sort of security, we didn’t think anything like [hundreds of fans] was going to happen. But what was really nice is everybody respected the shooting, they were really quiet, and the they said ‘Cut,’ and it was all ‘Sign my TARDIS!'”  Caroline explained, “When we shoot in the UK, we’ll get quite a few people following us around, and the fan base absolutely adore the show.  But in my career, I’ve never known anything…I don’t think anyone had prepared themselves for what shooting in New York would be like. Least of all, our producers here in New York, who had done various movies here, and they’re all saying, ‘Caro, I don’t mean to be funny, but you’ve got twice as many people as Julia Roberts here!’ Just a wonderful experience.  We had maybe twenty, thirty people in central park in the morning, and the crowd just grew, and by the end, we were shooting at a big fountain, and we could hardly hold the people back.  And the sheer love and passion for the show was in the air, and it made the entire experience so special.

Indeed, Caroline called Angels in Manhattan the most challenging episode of this front half of the season.  “Challenging for Steven because he’s written the most beautiful and heartbreaking exit story and there are some scenes in there that just so absolutely emotional.  It’s an enormous thing to change companions, and you absolutely have to get that story right.  And at the same time, we wanted to make the New York setting as resonant as we possibly could, and really make it feel to every detail, that we’d set it over here.  And we did, we came here.  We worked incredibly hard to get to get out and about to every New York landmark that we could, but more so to create that sort of noirish atmosphere that shooting in this city is so famous for.  To make the story feel as beautiful as it possibly could do.

As for next year, which will of course be 2013, the fiftieth anniversary year for the series.  “All I can say at this point”, said Caroline, guardedly, “Is that next year i going to be the biggest year of Doctor Who, bar none.  I spent a lot of my time in strange underground rooms, with senior people at the BBC, and talking about what we might do. And not just on television; but other things, cause obviously Doctor Who has a lot of live events. So there are many plans afoot, which are all wonderful, and are all absolutely top secret.”

Writing for science fiction is always a challenge, as eventually someone has to ask how much things will cost, and that’s ultimately Caroline’s job.  “We are treated very nicely by the BBC, but it’s always, whatever show you do, however big of small the budget is, you always want more.  The thing we do on Doctor Who, as much as we possibly can do, is to let writers write exactly what they want, and then try not to cut anything,  What you tend to get, in a Doctor Who script, is if it doesn’t, in terms of the production challenges, within it, in terms of location, in terms of special effects, just sheer story-based ambition…if it doesn’t scare you, as well as the monsters, we’re none of us are working hard enough.”

Later that evening, Matt and Karen arrived at the Ziegfeld theater in twin DeLoreans, to the sound of the cheering crowds, and of reality folding in upon itself.  The episode itself was met with delight by the audience, and as the trio were so earnest in their requests to keep it all a secret (especially the BIG where where…ok, sorry), well, who are we to refuse them.  suffice to say we learn about a great deal more about how Daleks think, how they treat their failures, and what they see as beautiful.  The question and answer session was filled with laughs as, among other things, we learned that Matt had to help Karen zip up her dress (“Twice!”), the cast think that Peter Sellers and Bill Nighy would make great Doctors, and in answer to a young girl who asked “Why does Amy always get in trouble?”, Karen simply answered “Well, she’s a risk-taker”.  Matt shared a story about his Mum, who was with him at the premiere (and was received with great cheers). She’s quite the fan of the series herself, and when they were looking for the new Doctor, she sent him a text saying “You should be the new Doctor”, and he had already gotten cast, and couldn’t even tell her.  So if he’s that good at keeping secrets, surely the 1,200 member of the audience can keep schtum for a week.

Asylum of the Daleks premieres September 1st at 9PM EDT on BBC America.  Check you local listing, especially in HD as several major cable and satellite carries have recently added the BBC America HD channel to their lineups.

JOHN OSTRANDER: Doctor Whose?

Doctor Who returned to TV last night and my household is thrilled. Big fans of the Doctor here; I once wrote and tried to produce a Doctor Who stage play with the idea that this was the only way I would ever get to play the Doctor. The play never got to production and, despite being the writer and the producer, I couldn’t get cast as the Doctor which tells you, right there, one of the big reasons I gave up acting.

There’s a lot to be done in this new series of episodes, including explaining how the Doctor, who was shot dead in the first episode of this season’s series of episodes, escapes (the Doctor who was killed was from 200 years down the time stream; did I mention that Doctor Who is about time travel?). If the show does not explain that by this end of this season, I will personally hunt down the show’s brilliant writer and show-runner, Stephen Moffat, and throw him into a Pandorica until he tells. (If you haven’t seen the show, don’t bother trying to understand the reference. In show in-joke.)

However, that’s not the point of this rant. When last seen, the current Doctor (Matt Smith) went to war to recover his companion, Amy Pond, and her newborn child who would grow up to become River Song who would become the Doctor’s wife at some point later in the time stream. The adult River is along for the adventure, by the way. Sound confusing, perhaps, I know; it’s a timey-wimey-wivey thing. It works. Trust me.

However, towards the end of the episode, River gives the Doctor crap about how his life is going, how he is becoming too much the warrior, and some such bilge. Excuse me? The Doctor goes up against nasty horrible bad guys that are trying to take over the Earth and/or destroy/enslave humanity and/or destroy the universe or time itself and the Doctor time and again defeats them armed with nothing but his wits and a sonic screwdriver.

This has happened before. The previous incarnation of the Doctor – David Tennant (The Doctor regenerates from time to time when they need to change the lead actor and it’s a wonderful idea that keeps the series fresh) – got taken to task by one of the worst of his enemies, a fiend called Davros who invented the Daleks who go around killing anything that isn’t a Dalek. Said fiend accuses the Doctor of manipulating his companions so that they do the dirty work so the Doctor doesn’t have to. And the Doctor appears to take him seriously! Where does the creator of the Daleks have any moral ground against the hero who has saved the universe time and again from the product of Davros’ invention?

Is the Doctor supposed to feel bad about being the hero? Am I supposed to think the Doctor is not the hero me thinks him is? The Doctor is the good guy here, folks; I don’t want him all angsty and doubting his own motives. I mean, c’mon – the next thing you know, he’ll be doubting that bow ties are cool!

I know bow ties are cool. The Doctor told me so. And I trust the Doctor.

 

MONDAY (Hurricane willing): Mindy Newell

Doctor Who Series 6 Part 1

Doctor Who, under producer Steven Moffat, feels very different than that of the shows from Russell T. Davies. In some ways, it feels as if Moffat needs to top Davies so we go from the terrifying Weeping Angels to The Silence. And we go younger, with Matt Smith as Eleventh Doctor, the youngest yet. Everything old is new again, it seems, while a show once aimed strictly at kids is now being criticized for being too scary for the audience.

The new season, Series 6 of the reboot, is the first to be shown in halves, a marketing device that cable channels in the USA have been quite successful using, nabbing viewers during major network lull periods. It also provides a dramatic cliffhanger, which may be thrilling for viewers but no doubt causes headaches for the producers.

Speaking of commercial, BBC Video, distributed here through Warner Home Video, today releases Doctor Who Series 6 Part 1, collecting the seven episodes aired to date while we eagerly await part two this fall (with Part 2 and Complete Series 6 DVDs no doubt to come).

Moffat has introduced meta arcs and mini arcs that require a fair amount of attention and makes the series increasingly difficult to attract newcomers. Miss an episode and vital clues to the Big Picture are absent, potentially confusing the viewer the next time a story is watched.

At this point, the Doctor, along with Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), has settled into a comfortable relationship. The couple continues to act like newlyweds and the Doctor delights in having them around.  As a result, it’s business as usual with the opening two-parter “The Impossible Astronaut”/ “The Day of the Moon” which sets up the big threat, that of The Silence, referenced in previous seasons and made manifest here. They are an eerie addition, for sure, but what they want and how they’ll be defeated seem saved for the second half season. We also learn Amy is pregnant and the little girl, who manages to call President Nixon and ask for help, leads audiences to believe she is Amy’s child. The story opens with the Doctor being shot dead but we discover he’s a Doctor from 200 years into the future so the duo conceals this information only to fret about it in every subsequent episode. (more…)

Doctor Who Season To End With The Kitchen Sink?

Doctor Who Season To End With The Kitchen Sink?

The two-part finale to the 31st season of Doctor Who will feature The Daleks, The Cybermen, The Sontarans, and the return of River Song, the woman who may or may not be the Doctor’s mother. Or ex-wife. Or bookie. Whatever.

According to Digital Spy UK, producer/overseer Steven Moffet is writing both episodes, entitled The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. The Doctor and his assistant Amy Pond have been dealing with a large glowing crack in the space/time continuum all season, along with Amy’s neurotic betrothed. It is expected this two-parter will resolve the former storyline, if not the latter as well. With all those alien bad guys oozing around, there might not be time. Broadcast time, that is: Doctor Who is entirely about time.

The shows will air June 19 and 26th in the United Kingdom and June 26th and July 3 on BBC America. After that, the Doctor zots off to The Sarah Jane Adventures to meet his old friend and former assistant and recurring playmate…. for the first time.