Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 509: The Stones of Blood, Episode One

Dear diary,

Until I moved out of home at seventeen, I used to live in a small village about 20 miles from Norwich. When I talk in the Diary about visiting the farm or seeing my family, it’s still the place I’m returning to. All that time I spent living there, and some of it as a Doctor Who fan, and I never realised that only about a fifteen minute walk away lived a man who - whisper it - had actually written adventures for Doctor Who. In fact, I didn’t actually discover this fact until some years after I’d moved out (and even crossed the country to live in Cardiff), and I was sent a clipping from the local newspaper about a ‘local man’ who was writing a Doctor Who ‘radio play’.

Of course, that ‘local man’ was David Fisher, and the ‘radio play’ was the audiobook of The Stones of Blood. While Terrance Dicks had been responsible for the original Target book in 1980, Fisher wrote a new version of the tale to be read for the CD. Suffice to say, I couldn’t believe that an actual Doctor Who writer - and a man responsible for what I’ve long considered to be my favourite segment of the Key to Time season - had been living almost on my doorstep! David Fisher will be responsible for several stories over the next few seasons, and he’s one of that small group of writers who get to contribute two consecutive stories on their first outing.

I can’t really tell you why I’ve thought of The Stones of Blood as my favourite Season Sixteen story for so long, I simply recall it being the one which grabbed my attention the most when I first watched them all. Truth be told, I can’t even recall a great deal about the story - I know it involves stones which kill, and about halfway through we’ll relocate from the rural setting to some kind of advanced space ship… but that’s all I can tell you! Oh, and a character dresses up in that bird costume at some point, but I remember that more from photographs of the outfit than from my first viewing of the story itself!

Certainly, we’re off to a decent start in this episode. The opening recap of the whole arc is perhaps a little too much of an info dump (although I rather enjoy Romana nodding along and pointing out that she knows much of the information), but I’m mostly glad that we get to see them piecing together the segments of the Key. Things were left a bit up in the air during the last story, so it’s nice to see that they did actually manage to retrieve the segment. I’d always assumed that the actual retrieval of the Key would be a key scene in each of these stories… but perhaps not! Curiously, I could remember what the segment was for The Pirate Planet, but I can’t recall what it’s disguised as in this story, or the next one. I think I rather like that - because it adds a bit of excitement to them!

We’re also back to the BBC trying to do the kinds of sets it does best. The main hall at ‘the Big House’ is just lovely, and the use of the stairs here really allows a few interesting camera angles, too. There was a moment - only a moment, mind - when I even wondered if it had been shot on location. The sets in the last story didn’t really do it for me, so I’m glad to be back on more familiar ground with these ones. I’m also really interested to see how they compare to the spaceship sets coming up letter on, and see if those are kicked up a gear by work on settings such as this one.

I’m also loving the continuation of a running theme across this series so far: Romana being the one in charge. It starts as far back as The Ribos Operation Episode One, with her giving the Doctor instructions on using the Tracer, and being responsible for creating the hole in the TARDIS. It’s continued into The Pirate Planet with her piloting of the ship, and being the one that the locals are willing to speak to when they first touch down on a new world, and here she’s the one who can both fit the segments of the key together, and suggests that they get on with looking for the next segment. The Doctor’s reaction to this last incident is particularly amusing!

It’s a good thing that we’re getting moments like these, because for the rest of the episode, she’s reduced to what I’d call your typical ‘companion’ role. She’s left to complain about things, wear inappropriate shoes, ask questions, and even gets left behind when the Doctor goes off to explore. The fact that she’s the one lured into peril during the cliffhanger should come as no surprise! I’m hoping that she gets to continue taking the upper hand before long, though, because Romana really doesn’t shot the typical ‘Doctor Who girl’ role… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 508: The Pirate Planet, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Well… I’m tempted to say that everything fell into place and started to make sense in this final episode, but actually all I mean is that the bits I phased out for yesterday suddenly make sense to me. The old woman they found in the bowels of the bridge was the evil queen who ruled the planet, and all that stuff about a black hole was the Captain’s cunning plan to dispose of the woman. Right, fine, I’ve got that now, thanks. Where I’m left confused is when this episode starts to descend into the Doctor and Romana spouting various kinds of technobabble at each other, and planning to go pick up the bit of Key later on (after the episode has ended, it seems!)

I also found myself completely lost by the reveal that the real power behind the throne is the nurse! Because - aha! - she’s not a nurse, but the reincarnation of the evil queen, who might be a hologram (but she isn’t really. At least, not any more), and is actually using the Captain as some kind of front. Looking back, there are hints peppered across the tale, and Rosalind Lloyd even points them out during the special features on the DVD, but I can’t say that I really picked up on them as I’ve been watching. I think the fact that I’ve failed to bet interested by The Pirate Planet has led to me missing all the clues that might have made it more interesting!

It’s nice to see the Captain being revealed as more than simply a blustering villain, though. It’s a fairly arch performance throughout, but I think it’s worked for me better than a lot of the story has. The design of the character is interesting, too, and it’s quite fun to watch him doing battle with Tom Baker. There’s little wonder that the Captain is one of the more fondly recalled villains from Doctor Who’s long history.

On the whole, I’m sorry to say that The Pirate Planet has really disappointed me. I don’t know what I was expecting from the tale, but I’ve found myself being mostly bored throughout all four episodes. This tends to happen from time-to-time, and I wonder if it might be that old foe of mine - burnout. Watching Doctor Who at the pace of an episode per day is usually quite a nice way to experience the series, and I’ve found that it’s immeasurably helped a number of stories improve in my estimation. Now and then, though, you just find yourself seeing more and more of the same, and start to tire of it!

I think perhaps the best bit of the episode is the explosion at the end. It feels like quite a long time since we had a really decent exploding model shot to round off a story, and it’s good to see that the effects team haven’t lost their touch in the interim. It’s not all a loss, either - although I’ve not cared all that much for the last few day’s episodes, we’re onto The Stones of Blood next, and I’ve always thought of that one as being my favourite segment from the Key to Time…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 507: The Pirate Planet, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I’m like a yo-yo with this one. Episode One really didn’t do it for me. Episode Two put things back on track somewhat. Today’s episode has just left me… cold. I’m not sure what it is, really, because there’s a lot in the episode that I really should be enjoying. The dialogue continues to be quite witty (indeed, I think it’s here that the story is really working), there’s some nice design work on display, and today we even get to watch K9 have a fight with a metal parrot! All that, but I’m still finding my attention wandering. There were a few moments during today’s episode where I actually zoned out, leaving me somewhat confused as to what’s actually happening (The Captain is sucking the life force out of these planets, yes? The result of this is that a black hole will be formed, maybe? That’s where I’d started to let my attention lapse a bit, so I’m not completely sure…

To that end… I don’t really have all that much to say on the subject of today’s instalment. All my notes are centred around the dialogue, taking down exchanges that at least raise a smile, if not produce a genuine laugh. I think the highlight has to be “You don’t want to take over the universe, do you? No, you wouldn’t know what to do with it. Beyond shout at it…” There’s plenty of other lines I could happily quote for you here, but I think I’ll leave it at that. It’s tricky not to mention Tom Baker’s cry of “THEN WHAT’S IT FOR?!?!?”, though…

There came a point during today’s episode where I wondered if I just didn’t ‘get’ Douglas Adams’ sense of humour, and if that might be what was stopping me from enjoying the story as much as I’d like to. A quick call round to a friend later and I found myself listening to the first episode of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series. Hitchhiker’s is obviously Adams’ most famous work, and it’s particularly pertinent to this story, because he was writing the first series interchangeably with the script to The Pirate Planet - both commissions having arrived at once. Due to the different lead times in production, the radio series made it to air a little bit quicker than this story did, and the first episode was broadcast between Parts Five and Six of The Invasion of Time.

I’m pleased to report that I really enjoyed the episode, and soon found myself letting the CD run on to the next episode, too. And then the one after that. I’ve heard the first three now, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I’d imagine that I’ll take the opportunity to have a listen to the rest of this first series at least, and then I might even venture as far as hearing some of the later ones, too. It’s easy to see the links between his radio work and this story (Indeed, there’s a few lines which I’m sure crop up in both!), so it’s just a shame that his first foray into Doctor Who is leaving me so cold… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 506: The Pirate Planet, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I was cautious going into today’s episode. Having not enjoyed the first instalment of The Pirate Planet, I spoke to a couple of friends to gauge their reaction to the story. One confirmed that they were ‘bored stiff’ throughout, while the other told me that the direction did a dull story no favours. It worries me when things like hat happen, because I fear that I’m heading for another one of those stories which I just can’t get into - the Dominators and Cure of Peladon type tales, which are destined to languish somewhere towards the bottom of my ratings no matter what.

Thankfully, though, I’ve actually liked this episode a lot more than yesterday’s one! One of the things that I’m quite enjoying (sorry, Nick!) is the direction of things! I don’t know if that’s because my mind is trying to consciously enjoy it more knowing that I’m not supposed to, but little moments - like the way the Captain wanders down a line of his workers and then leans around them - really appeal to me. I’m even quite impressed with the effects work on display, too! The first time we see the Polyphase Avatron rise from his owner’s shoulder and fly off to attack someone is well realised, but it then left me with another worry…

I suddenly remembered being less than impressed with the flying car sequences in the story. Sure enough, it’s only a few minutes before Romana is led to a flying car by a set of guards. But you know what? I thought those scenes came off rather well, too! Perhaps more noticeable during the later sequence of the Doctor in one of the vehicles, it’s things like the wind blowing through the character’s hair which really sells the effect to me, and there’s a lot less fringing on them than in stories such as Horror of Fang Rock. Is it just that I’m tired today, and therefore not noticing the bad bits, or am I completely wrong and it’s not even CSO? Either way, I’m impressed.

I’m even somewhat amazed at how well things are being dropped in to help you piece things together. I did know that this planet materialised around others and robbed them of minerals, but I love the way it’s threaded through the tale. Romana gives a basic description of how the TARDIS works (dematerialising in one location, travelling through the vortex, and dematerialising in a new location - the Ninth Doctor manages to give an even more succinct version of that in a later story), and that same description, or a variation if it, comes back into play later when discussing the planet. Then you’ve got Romana realising what the broken component of the machine is, and the discovery that it’s similar to a bit of TARDIS tech.

And yet, there’s still things that don’t quite work for me. I can’t make myself like the power plant section of the high-tech base - it just doesn’t feel in-keeping with the rest of the design in the story. There’s also the mine workings, which look just too much like 19th - 20th century Earth mines. Oh, sure, they add in a few lines about the fact that it used to be done like that and no one in living memory has used the equipment, but then it still feels out of place.

There’s everything to play for with The Pirate Planet, I fear. I doubt it’s ever going to come out with a stellar score, but it could either claw its way up to ‘average’, or sink right down to the bottom. I genuinely have no idea which way it’s going to go…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 505: The Pirate Planet, Episode One

Dear diary,

I really need to start today’s entry with something of a confession. As much as I’m bound to be scoffed at for this: I’ve never actually experienced The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. What I mean by that is that I’ve never read any of the books, or heard the radio play, or seen the TV series. I have seen the movie that they did a few years ago, but I can remember so little of it that I genuinely can’t remember a thing - I may as well not have seen it. To this end, I don’t really know of Douglas Adams outside of the fact that he worked on Doctor Who in the 1970s. I’ve seen City of Death, his other (finished) contribution to the programme, and I know that he was Script Editor for a time, but aside from that, I’ve got nothing. Sorry.

It’s perhaps because of that fact that The Pirate Planet has entirely failed to grab me with this opening episode. To be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect from it. This is a story which I know the basic premise of, I know who a few of the characters are, I know what the segment of the Key to Time is disguised as… but they’ve always been simply facts, stored away in the back of my head somewhere. I must have seen the story before, on that watch through when the series first came out on DVD, but six years on, those memories are about as useless as the ones for the Hitchhiker’s film.

Now, I can’t really claim that it didn’t grab me at all. There were a few lines which managed to raise a laugh from me (K9’s suggestion that Romana has better luck with the locals because she’s more attractive than the Doctor, for example, really got a hoot - I’m glad that in his new ‘incarnation’, the tin dog has lost none of his sarcastic edge). Then there’s the Doctor’s question ‘excuse me, are you sure that this planet is supposed to be here?’, and everything about Romana trying to learn about piloting the TARDIS properly (complete with the Doctor ripping pages from the manual). There’s lots of little bits which did work for me, but they were sadly few and far between.

I think I was turned off almost from the start. There’s some model shots which are far from being the programme’s best, and much of the episode is filled with the kind of bland sci-fi nonsense that I just don’t care about. Coming from The Ribos Operation, in which we were presented with a world full of history, and culture, with a religion and a social hierarchy that I could really believe in, this feels like something of a slap in the face. People talk of the good times coming back, there’s strange mystical nonsense going on, and the costumes are leaving little to be desired.

And then, seemingly from nowhere, we cut to a group of the characters walking across a field! I have absolutely no context for the field. We’ve seen parts of the city. There’s a large square (which, if a little bare, is actually an impressive set due to the sheer size of it), and some spacious living accommodation. There’s the high-tech lair of the half-robot Captain and his metal parrot… and then there’s suddenly a field from absolutely nowhere. It feels out of place, and having spent so long praising the world of Ribos, I’m really struggling to get behind this one. Still, it’s early days yet, and I’m hoping things will pick up once our heroes are really caught up in the story.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 504: The Ribos Operation, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Looking back over the last couple of days, I think I’ve been a bit too harsh on Tom Baker. I’ve complained a lot recently about him not really taking the programme seriously, and I think that I’ve broadly come to equate any scene where he smiles too broadly with that sense of not doing his job. But, actually, it’s all a part of this Doctor’s character at this point. He can sit, and smile, and laugh with Garron when they’re imprisoned, safe in the knowledge that K9 is on the way to rescue them. It feels somehow right that he can fit in with this kind of person, in much the same way that the Third Doctor doesn’t feel out of place when interacting with high-ranking members of society.

I guess what I’m really waiting for is the Doctor to take a fall. It’s that same thing that I discussed under The Invasion of Time - when he starts getting too sure of himself (and I’m sure that the Fourth Doctor has), then it’s time for him to go. I’m wondering if that means Season Eighteen will come as a real breath of fresh air in a couple of months time? I’m hoping so, because as much as I can enjoy this version of the Doctor, I fear that it’s starting to grate a little.

Still, this story does boast quite an impressive guest cast - and they’re really giving their all to the roles. It’s going to sound like I’m beating the same old drum over and over again, but they really help to imbue Ribos with a sense of being something more than just This Week’s Planet. I think chief among the guest cast has to be Timothy Bateson as Binro. He only joined the cast halfway through the story, and has what is really a minor role in the story, but I genuinely care for the character when he dies. It’s not often that you find that with the guest characters, so I think it points to being something truly special with this one. It’s fair to say that the part is somewhat hammy and over-played at times… but I think that’s all a big part of the charm, and it actually works.

Someone else that I need to draw attention to today is George Spenton-Foster on directing duties. This is his second and final Doctor Who story, and I’ve had relatively little to say about his work on this occasion, in stark contrast to Image of the Fendahl, in which his role in the story was all I could talk about! The direction of this story has felt far more run-of-the-mill than it did during the last one, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In Fendahl, I thought the direction actually distracted me from the story, whereas here it’s just helping to tell the tale. He’s really managed to marshall the troops to make the best out of this one, too, and while I’m sure being the first story into production for the year must have helped (I dread to think what the budget will be like by the end of the season), he’s certainly done a fantastic job.

I think I was most impressed right at the end of the story, as the Doctor and Romana turn the lump of Jethrik back into a segment from the Key to Time. It sits on the table in front of them, as the camera pulls in to remove it from the shot. I assumed that when we pulled back out, a stage-hand would have swapped the prop with one of the crystal segments, but that’s not the case - we actually get to see the transformation a few minutes later. Is it the best effect the programme has ever achieved? Well, no. Is it a passable one? It is. As the Doctor says - that’s one down, and five to go. We’re off to a good start for this long story… 

Doctor Who is arguably one of the finest British sci-fi productions ever. In fact, this highly acclaimed TV series featuring The Doctor (a Time Lord) - just yesterday won the 2014 British Academy Television Award for ‘The Day Of The Doctor’, as-voted by Radio Times readers for their ‘Audience Award'

In 2011 a BAFTA television award for best actor was presented to Matt Smith – the first time in the history of the show that such an accolade was awarded. More significantly, Doctor Who holds the record for the longest running sci-fi series on TV in the Guinness Book of Records. The show first aired in 1963 to 1989, for 26 seasons. It was picked up again in 2005 and is already in its 7th season.

The premise of the show for those who have not had the pleasure of seeing it is about an alien time traveller known as the The Doctor who explores the universe in his TARDIS. Of course there are many enemy combatants along the way, but The Doctor is tasked with saving civilization and helping ordinary people at every juncture.

It has become a popular cult favourite in the UK and indeed across the United States of America. Television producers certainly hit jackpot pay dirt when they decided to reintroduce Doctor Who back in 2005. There's certainly no gamble when it comes to this show’s popularity. The Time Traveller seems to have it all figured out – much like a skilled card player employs blackjack strategy while sussing out opponents at the table!

Long may the show continue to wow audiences, far into the future!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 503: The Ribos Operation, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Because The Ribos Operation is a Robert Holmes script, I’m supposed to be telling you how ‘wonderful’ the double act of Garron and Unstoffe is, but that’s not really grabbing me all that much. For a start, I think that Jago and Litefoot may have managed to steal all the thunder on that front! No, I’m still more interested in the planet of Ribos itself, and everything that comes as a part of that.

I mused yesterday that because it’s styled as being a historical adventure that just happens to take place in the history of a planet other than Earth, it feels far more realistic than something in sterile white corridors and with bizarre ‘space’ make up would give us. The connection to Russian style of centuries past simply helps to reinforce the fact that this is real, identifiable history. But then today’s story really takes the fact that this is an alien world and runs with it. Put simply, this is the most rounded alien planet that Doctor Who has ever given us - certainly up to this point in the series, and I’d make the case for it being the most rounded location ever.

It’s mainly helped by the introduction of Binro the Heretic in today’s episode. There’s something wonderful about the idea that every world needs to go through that ‘Galileo moment’, and that certainly helps to add to the idea that we’re looking at a civilisation with a rigid set of beliefs. Simply from the guard’s recognition of the man, and Binro’s later description of the events taking place some time ago, you get a real sense that events were happening on Ribos long before the TARDIS touched down here. I really feels as though he has a history in this world, and his later descriptions of the way the people of this world believe in the various gods and the way that their religion works really do help to create a world that’s different to the norm.

This has quickly become my favourite aspect of the story, and I think it’s the finest writing that Holmes has ever crafted for the series. While he’s never been short of good concepts, unique characters, or sparkling dialogue, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so adept at creating a very real world, populated by very real people. Even when we make it down into the catacombs and are given legends that they were built so long ago that no one really knows how far they stretch it all feels very true to me, and I can’t really convey what an effect that’s having on me.

It’s a shame, then, that I’m not all that struck by the story that’s populating this rich and vibrant world. The Doctor has slipped back into being a bit of a smug know-it-all again (and it certainly feels like Tom Baker going overboard again, All that restraint he was showing so well when faced with the Guardian the other day seems to have been completely swept out of the window), but I’m loving the fact that his relationship with Romana has already started to thaw out. There’s some beautiful shots in this episode when the pair put their heads together for private conversations, and it feels both friendly, and completely different to the kind of thing I’d expect from Leela, or even Sarah Jane. It’s lovely to watch this relationship forming, and I hope it continues to grow over the coming stories in the season.

We’ve also got the first instance I’ve found of K9 being a bit of a cop out. The Doctor and his companion are locked up! There’s a massacre about to occur! There’s little chance of making any kind of escape…! But it’s ok, because the Doctor has got a new dog whistle, and K9 is able to come to the rescue, immobilising the guard for them and then becoming their bodyguard as they move into the catacombs. While there’s a part of me which looks forward to the idea that we might get to see him fight with a shrivenzale in the next episode, I can see how this kind of get out could start to become very wearisome…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 502: The Ribos Operation, Episode Two

Dear diary,

During The Sun Makers, I pointed out that - with very few modifications - it could almost be a historical story, set at any time in Earth’s past. The Ribos Operation is, if anything, even more like a story from history. Obviously, the setting takes cues from Russian design, particularly in the costumes, and the entire serial can only really be described as ‘lavish’. Looking back, only Peladon has really had the same ‘historic’ vibe in a ‘space’ story, and even that is somewhat stepped on by the presence of the Federation and all their various aliens. This is the first time that we’ve ever really been given a world that’s set out among the stars, a setting that would usually be all shiny and high-tech, or at least futuristic, and presented it to us as going through its own middle ages period of history. It’s really quite fun to watch.

I love a good castle set, and the BBC always do them so well. Here, we’re being treated to a miriad of different rooms that all really do feel like they’re part of the same architectural style. It’s always easier, I find, to connect with the Doctor’s adventures when they’re set in a location thats identifiably ‘real’, and this is one of them. For all the talk of ‘Jethrik’, and cosmic alliances, this is a story set on a developing world, into which these space-age characters have simply been dropped.

I think ‘dropped’ is certainly the right word to use describing the Doctor and Romana’s presence in this story. They’ve not really found an awful lot to do yet - struggling to get their hands on the segment they need by conventional means, and planning to swipe it from someone they think might well be their rival in proceedings. Indeed, I think it’s almost a shame that we know the Doctor is wrong about that - because it might actually add some much-needed tension to the story. So far, even during the cliffhanger to the first episode, in which Dr Who’s assistant is menaced by the traditional green monster, it doesn’t feel like there’s any real threat.

It feels as though things might be starting to gain traction from here, though. I know there’s several characters in the story who have yet to put in an appearance, so I’m guessing that the tale will be veering off in a slightly different direction from tomorrow. Actually, and for the first time in ages, I’m looking forward to seeing how the Doctor gets out of the current cliffhanger. He looks genuinely surprised to see that they’ve been captured (even more surprised than when the Sontarans part-way through the last story), and I’m actually excited to see where we go next. Perhaps more importantly, I’m looking forward to seeing how they finally get their hands on the segment of the Key that they need before leaving Ribos. At this point, I’m staking my bet that they simply end up swiping it during a struggle in the final episode and leg it to the TARDIS, but I’m hoping there’s something a bit more cunning involved than that! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 501: The Ribos Operation, Episode One

Dear diary,

The Doctor might describe some days as being ‘Temporal Tipping Points’ - special days which are so full of important (in some sense of the word) events. For me, there’s always 24th September 2007. Not only was it my very first day of University, but it was also the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures Series One (following the pilot episode some nine months earlier). As if all of that wasn’t exciting enough, it was also the release date for not one, or two, or even three new Doctor Who DVDs… but for six of them! 24th September 2007 was the release date for the set of Key to Time stories, Doctor Who’s entire Sixteenth Season. But there was a problem.

The fact that the set contained six brand new releases was special enough (and more than had been collected together at any other point in the range), but it was also a limited edition, in a nice box designed to look like the Key to Time itself. Ah, but the internet was awash with rumours. No-one was quite sure exactly how many sets there were going to be, and people who worked in various entertainment stores confirmed that they’d only be getting one or two copies in, and that they’d been unable to order any more, because the suppliers had run out already. There was no way I was going to miss it, which meant that I’d have to hurry up to Woolworths before heading off to University first thing. The only problem was… Woolworths didn’t actually open until the exact minute that my very first day of Higher Education was supposed to begin, and there was no way I could possibly be late for my very first day!

Well, we can all guess what happened. Nine o’clock came, and I was waiting outside Woolworths. Degree be damned. To be fair, all these years on, I can’t even remember what grade I achieved at University. I passed, that’s good enough for me. I sat through the day as they explained the way the course would work for the first year, then hurried him in time to catch Miss Smith battling the Slitheen. And then I settled in to start watching Season Sixteen. I decided to ration myself - a few episodes a night. Yes, this was the most ‘new’ classic Doctor Who I’d ever bought in a single hit before, but there was no point in rushing through it all too quickly!

I can’t recall mush of the season, looking back. I know that The Stones of Blood was my favourite of the bunch, and I’m sorry to say that I know I was thoroughly bored by pretty much everything else. Ever since then, I’ve consciously skipped over these six stories if choosing a Doctor Who DVD to while away a Sunday afternoon. General reception seems to be pretty mixed, all told. Some people swear by the season (indeed, some claim that it’s the programme’s final hurrah before getting steadily worse from here on out), while others think that it’s tedious, and dull, and everything I seemed to think that it was back in the day.

And yet… I think I’ve rather liked today’s episode. I’ll warn you now that I’m not really going to be discussing the story or anything too much like that in this entry - there’s another three days in which we can get around to all that! - I’ll be focussing today, really, on the first ten minutes or so of the episode. It’s something of a brave voice to introduce the entire arc of the season in what is effectively a massive info-dump right at the top of the first episode (hey, kids! Doctor Who is back on TV, and he’s chatting to an elderly man in a chair!), but there’s a lot to enjoy about it. That shot of the TARDIS being plunged into total darkness before the roundels become backlit and a blinding glow floods through the doors is beautiful, and it’s always been my favourite image of the ‘classic’ style console room. Back when I used to make up Doctor Who stories and take photos of the action figures acting them out, I always found excuses for the TARDIS to look like it does here.

And then I even quite enjoy the exchange between the Doctor and the Guardian. As I’ve said, it really boils down to a massive explanation of what this season is going to be about, but there’s some nice little moments in there. I love the threat that if the Doctor doesn’t co-operate then nothing will happen to him (…ever), and there’s something quite surreal, and perfectly Doctor Who about the most powerful being in the universe sipping his drink in a wicker chair while he explains the stakes to our hero. Most of all, though, I love that the Doctor is brought down to size, almost. Right the way through his conversation with the Guardian, the Doctor is trying to keep his flippant arrogance in check (not very well, it has to be said), while remembering that he’s addressing, basically, God. I’ve mused before about the fact that the Doctor is getting s bit big for his boots, and Tom Baker is starting to think of himself as being irreplaceable, so it’s nice to have a moment like this which cuts him down a little.

Then there’s Romana! Mary Tamm has massive shoes to fill following on from Louise Jameson (though the pair were contemporaries at drama school, so I have high hopes!), and I’m not sure she’s made the best first impression. Romana is tricky to judge so far, because she’s supposed to be slightly unlikable and superior, and that’s exactly how she’s coming across. I’m going to enjoy watching her own character arc unfold across the season (and beyond, once she’s regenerated), and see how much I like her by the end…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 500: The Invasion of Time, Episode Six

Dear diary,

At the press launch for Doctor Who Series Seven last year, Steven Moffat said of this episode:

”I thought that day, ‘Some day! Somehow, I will do what I can to get into television and do that properly!’”

It’s not hard to see where he’s coming from, really. One of the things most people know about The Invasion of Time is that it features a sequence of Sontarans chasing the Doctor and his friends deep into the corridors of the TARDIS. Sadly, industrial action meant that it needed to be filmed out on location and… well… it doesn’t really work, does it? I think we’re back to that same argument I made about Gallifrey during 8The Deadly Assassin* - I want to see something grand! To some extent, I think I could forgive this sequence if it were filmed in a castle, or some swanky modern art gallery, but having it filmed in an abandoned hospital just robs it of… hm.

I think Emma summed it up nicely when she asked if this was supposed to be the inside of the TARDIS or if they’d landed somewhere and she’d missed it. Pressed for comment on the design, she was reluctant to give one. In theory, I love the idea of the TARDIS having a number of rooms which all look the same, and it’s quite a fun gag (the first time), but I just feel let down by the whole thing. We used to get brief glimpses into the rest of the Doctor’s ship right back in the early days - visions of strange uncomfortable beds and food machines - but this is the first time we’ve ever been this far beyond that regular console room, and it’s just an abandoned building! And not even a particularly interesting one!

The fact that so much of this episode is reduced to the chase (and I use even that term loosely - it’s more of a pacy stroll) simply leaves me uninterested by much of the proceedings. Things slightly liven up when one of the Doctor pursuers is trapped by a man-size plant… but then he’s released from the threat a few minutes later seemingly without any harm. It never feels like there’s all that much of a threat to either the Doctor or the Sontarans, and the weapon which saves the day - the De-Mat gun - is build mostly-off screen, and then rendered useless after a shot has been fired.

But, oh, let’s be honest, it’s not really the Sontranas or the TARDIS or the Great key that I’m supposed to focus on today, it’s the departure of my favourite Savage. I’ve really loved having Leela - and Louise Jameson - in the series over the last few stories, and I’m genuinely going to miss her. She’s been note-perfect since the moment she arrived in the story, right up to this final goodbye with her friend. Emma claims to have seen it coming a mile off - picking up on the subtext between the pair - which is more than I can claim to have done. Certainly, both Lousie and Christopher Tranchell (as Andred) have been slipping in little moments between the characters, but Em has been more adept at spotting them than I have.

It’s going to be a shame to carry on now, without Leela aboard the TARDIS, but it’s Doctor Who shifting into a new form once again, and there’s very few things as exciting as that…

And while I’m here… I try to avoid getting too sentimental or nostalgic in The 50 Year Diary, but… well… it’s Day 500! Five-Hundred! Five-zero-zero! I’m genuinely, completely, flabbergasted that I’ve made it this far. I’ve said it before, but I genuinely did think that I’d have grown bored of the whole experiment - be it the pace, or the stories, or… well… anything, really, by about the time The Sensorites came along. And now here we are! Almost eighteen months on from the start, and an episode of Doctor Who every day richer. How brilliant.

I’m closer to the end than I am to the start, now, but I’m still really loving it all. Doctor Who really is the most wonderful, barmy, bizarre programme in the world, and I’ve loved watching it evolve and change as I’ve made my way through. And here we are, about to embark on a whole new adventure again, with a new companion, and a new quest as Doctor Who enters its first ever conscious season-spanning arc. Frankly, I can’t wait to see what the next few hundred days hold in store for me!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 499: The Invasion of Time, Episode Five

Dear diary,

Something strange happened during today’s episode. About halfway through, I turned to Emma and said aloud ‘I’d forgotten how much I really love the Sontarans’. It’s only strange because, looking back at what I’ve said on their previous two appearances in the programme, I’m not sure that’s actually all that true. I was full of praise for Kevin Lindsay’s Lynx during Episode One of The Time Warrior, but after that I was far more preoccupied with enjoying the lovely setting, meeting Sarah Jane, and realising that Jon Pertwee wasn’t all that bad. By the time The Sontaran Experiment rolled around, I barely mentioned the titular creature at all! I think what I really meant, in realising how much I loved the Sontarans, is realising how much I love a good comedy Sontaran.

I see a lot of complaints around the internet (and a lot of love, too, it has to be said) for the character of Strax - the Sontaran-turned-nurse-turned-butler who crops up in several of the Eleventh Doctor’s adventures. People seem to think that having a funny Sontaran character around really ruins the effect of the creatures as a whole (it doesn’t - if played right then it can serve to make a very nice contrast when some more vicious, cold-heated clones arrive to do battle. Oh, what I’d give to see a Sontaran story set in Victorian London, with Strax sneaking among the other Sontarans to sabotage their plan - they’d never notice: they all look the same!), but I think that ‘comedy’ in the Sontrans has always been a part of it.

That’s never more true than here in The Invasion of Time, though I suspect that they’re not really supposed to be funny here. There’s just something about the way that they move through the corridors of the Citadel that really makes me smile (and, of course, we get to see more of their graceful movement tomorrow, when one tries to jump over a sun lounger), and the - let’s be honest - ridiculous attempt at doing the voice just helps to add to the humour. But it’s not all unintentional. We’re told that these Sontarans are a part of the ‘Sontraran Special Space Service’ (in my head, it’s the Seventh Section of said service), and the Doctor comments that it’s a bit of a mouthful. Even the way that the cowing Castellan Kelner acts around his latest set of masters is inherently amusing.

Yet none of this takes away from their impact, really, because you can’t underestimate the effect of having four Sontarans on screen at the same time. It seems strange to think of it now, but this is the first time we’ve had more than one on screen (yes, yes, I know that technically there were two in The Sontaran Experiment, but since one was on a screen and there was only one of the present…), and it’s the most that we’ll see in one place for the entirety of the ‘classic’ era. Even though the helmets don’t look quite as good as they did the last time we saw them, there;s no denying that it does look rather imposing to have so many of them around. And then we get to watch one of them smash up the controls of Gallifrey’s defences on location! This is the kind of thing that I was longing for during The Sun Makers - it’s a very real looking set of equipment, so it looks all the more effective when we see someone attack them!

A few years ago, I was responsible for writing segments of the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space Role Playing Game. One of my jobs was to write background text for various aliens and creatures, to help add some colour to the various statistics needed to play the game. I was assigned various monsters - the Sontarans among them. We had to stick fairly closely to the televised material when creating our write ups, but we were allowed to embellish and add little things as we went along, subject to approval from those in charge! My comment about the ‘Great Sontaran Art’ renaissance was removed, but I did get to explain away the very tall Sontarans from The Two Doctors by claiming that all members of the Scientific core were unusually tall, and I got to retroactively make The Invasion of Time into a part of the Time War:

”The Sontaran War Council was furious at being denied entry to the Time War, which had started between the Time Lords and the Daleks. Locked out of the war, it became invisible to the Sontaran Race, who were considered no more than brutes. The War Council set about devising their own plan: if they could not join the already waging Time War, then they would start one of their own…”

I used the opportunity to make the whole Kartz-Reimer plot of The Two Doctors a precursor to this story, and went on to say that following their defeat at the hands of two incarnations of the Doctor, they decided to try something particularly daring, and invade Gallifrey…

”Using a ‘lesser’ race, and the Doctor himself, they forced their way onto Gallifrey, planning to steal the secrets of the Eye of Harmony – the heart of the Time Lord civilisation and the core of their power. The Sontarans planned to destroy the Eye and bring chaos to the Universe by unleashing the raw power of the Vortex upon it. The Doctor ultimately defeated them with the use of a de-mat gun, which wiped the Sontarans on Gallifrey out of time itself.

The Time Lords closely monitored any time travel technology that did make it into the war with the Rutans, and events were locked as they happened, to prevent the Sontaran race from altering history and causing havoc with the Universe.”

Now, clearly, the Sontrans in this story make no mention of the Eye of Harmony, but hey, who can blame me for wanting to devise a Sontaran battle strategy! It’s telling, also, that they come to Gallifrey looking for the Doctor. They’re not like Cybermen or Daleks, pretending to be emotionless killing machines. They’re the kind of creatures who would want to find the man responsible for their previous defeat, and make him pay for it! It’s making little connections between stories like this that I really enjoy about the universe of Doctor Who, and it means that I’m enjoying the events of this episode on a slightly different level to some of the others… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 498: The Invasion of Time, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I’ve been so looking forward to this one. Oh, I can’t begin to tell you. I’ve been excited - partly - for Emma’s reaction to the Sontarans turning up in the closing moments, and also for The Doctor’s reaction to their arrival. Heck, if I’m honest, I’ve just been excited by the prospect of them arriving on the scene. If there’s one thing that people know about The Invasion of Time, it’s that the story takes a sudden twist in the closing moments of Episode Four, as Sontarans invade Gallifrey! Now, I knew the shot of them on the stairs, overlooking the great hall, I knew there was the moment of the leader raising his… stick, I guess? I knew that it was the first time you see more than one solitary potato making up the invasion force…

But I didn’t know they were revealed in a shot of the Doctor… looking to his left. How rubbish is that? In my head, there was much frivolity over the defeat of the Vardans, the Doctor and Leela ready to depart in the TARDIS as is usual for the end of a story, before BANG! An entire wall is blown apart and four Sontaran troopers come marching out of the smoke, standing proud atop the steps, as they declare Gallifrey to be under their control. In fact, in my head, that’s still how they invade. So there.

When the moment came, I turned to Emma’s reaction. ‘Where did they come from?’ she mused, but there wasn’t a huge glimmer of interest in there. I think she’d been somewhat let down by the story when the shimmering Vardans suddenly reveal themselves to be… some rather bland humanoids in dull uniforms. After that, her attention had certainly started to wane. I think when our favourite potato heads turned up, it simply felt like the reveal we should have had fifteen minutes earlier. Here’s hoping that the warrior race are used well in the next couple of episodes to make up for it.

One of the nice things about being back at ‘home’ while watching this story is that my **Doctor Who Magazine* collection is all to hand. Issue 290 is a ‘Fourth Doctor Special’, in which a number of key Doctor Who writers (including Lance Parkin, Alan Barnes, and Steven Moffat) give their own analysis of various Tom Baker seasons. Reading through them in the last few days has been really interesting (though I’m saving the entries on Seasons Sixteen, Seventeen, and Eighteen until I reach them myself), and I’m especially struck by the article on Season Fifteen, written by Gareth Roberts.

He describes The Invasion of Time as “probably the best story of the season”, and goes on to make some rather nice points about the story, which I hadn’t really considered before:

” [*The Invasion of Time *is] the only story I can think of where the Doctor is motivated, alongside his altruism, by a deep-seated personal desire - not to take a holiday on the peaceful planet Whatnot, but to get revenge. To engineer the biggest schadenfreude he ever could get. To go back to school more or less, pretend to sell out to the Vardans, and then save all his peers and his elders and say; “clever old me planned it all along…” The appearance of the Sontarans at the end of Part Four is not only shocking and thrilling, it’s also a restatement of the series’ most basic theme - people who plan ahead (your Daleks, your Master) always come unstuck.”

It’s in reading this description that I realised - this would be a really nice regeneration story. I’ve always been a fan of the idea that when the Doctor goes too far, that’s when the time is right for him to be reborn as a new man. It’s a theme played with during the Tenth Doctor’s demise, and would work rather well here, too. The Doctor has been very clever in this story. He’s stage-managed the whole thing up to this point, and then, suddenly, he’s taken by surprise. He’s not got every last detail planned out to a tee. He’s not considered that opening a hole in Gallifrey’s defences would allow someone to come through and invade. It’s that kind of instance which then marks the right time for him to go.

Here, at the end of Baker’s fourth season, I’m still really enjoying him in the role. Right now, it still feels like a reasonable amount of time for him to stay in the role. I don’t know how I’m going to be feeling in another three seasons time, but it has to be said - this could have been a great way for him to go.

Roberts also goes on to discuss the idea that this story serves to examine the Doctor’s relationships with his current companions, especially highlighting the idea that Leela is the only one who believes in the Doctor’s ‘essential goodness’, even after the Doctor has been so brutal to her, cast her into the wilds outside the Citadel, and apparently gone over to the wrong side. It’s this which succeeds more than anything else in the story for me - I love the way that Leela refuses to give up on her friend, and it makes for some of the most powerful drama on display. Once again, and fittingly for her last story, it’s Louise Jameson who really sells this to me, and it’s another one of those instances where I tell you just how good her performances in this programme have been. The closer we get to the end of her time, the more saddened I am to be losing such a true talent from the series. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 497: The Invasion of Time, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Now, this is more like it! Everything is starting to lock into place, now, and the Doctor’s actions - and motives - are becoming clearer. As I’ve said before, it was likely that the alien invaders were inside the Doctor’s mind, and it turns out that they were simply reading his thoughts rather than actively controlling his actions. Still, it does explain why he was so out of character for those first couple of episodes, because a single stray thought would have led him to danger. How very like the Doctor to just go along with things, safe in the knowledge that he’d be able to sort it all out in the end.

Even Emma has been enjoying things more today than at any prior point in the story. She’s resorted to giggling every time K9 turns up on the screen (oh, who am I kidding? I’m doing exactly the same thing. Now that he’s such a part of the team, I can’t help but love the TARDIS pet - even if he is still noisy!), and she’s enjoying the fact that the monsters are so obviously made out of tin foil. The one thing that’s still really niggling her is the fact that Gallifrey seems to have bought in a bulk lot of this ‘tacky plastic rubbish’ an resorted to decorating the Citadel with it. Today, we follow characters down a corridor which has sets of green chairs placed at regular intervals, which makes it look somewhat like a waiting room at the Dentist.

My issue with Gallifrey is the leaves on the trees - they’re not silver at all, as Susan promised way back during her description of the planet in The Sensorites. That said, I like to imagine that there are artificial trees inside the Citadel which do relate to her colour scheme: Rodan clearly knows little about the world outside the glass dome, and I like to imagine that Susan was much the same, before she fled the planet with her grandfather in a rackety old TARDIS. I can’t help but love the vivid orange hue to all these outdoor scenes, though, and it contrasts very nicely with the greys and greens of the interiors. It really helps to make the outside look dangerous and alien - I’m enjoying the switching back and forth.

It has the added bonus of returning Leela to her roots, too. She’s never really grown out of her ‘savage’ persona, and that’s a good thing - she feels much more developed than perhaps any other companion up to this point. Whereas many start off with a distinct character ‘thing’ which then gets lost slowly as the stories go by (Susan is alien and weird! Sarah Jane is a journalist!), Leela has always felt like the same character throughout. That’s not to say that she hasn’t seen any development - I’ve really enjoyed watching her interactions with the Doctor, and the way their relationship has moved. It’s always been very much the role of teacher and student (I think the Doctor simply likes having someone he can show off to), but Leela feels as though she’s genuinely learning something from her time in the TARDIS.

I know that she’s off in a couple of episodes time, to stay behind on Gallifrey, and I’m really rather hoping that she gets to spend some time out here in the wilds of the planet. Although she’ll hook up with Andred (and later, in the audios, effectively become Romana’s bodyguard), it would be a crying shame to see her stuck in a life of luxury (read that as ‘boredom’) inside the Citadel. Im genuinely quite sad to know she’s off - though I’m glad she’s leaving on a high - because I’ve really grown to love Leela over her time in the programme. Even Emma concedes that she ‘kicks ass’… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 496: The Invasion of Time, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I’ve been musing again today about the style of Gallifrey. When we last visited the planet, in The Deadly Assassin, I went on at some length about the way that I personally imagined the planet to look, before concluding that while I liked the design we get on screen, it really was just any old planet, as opposed to being the majestic home world of the Time Lords. Today, I put the question to Emma - what did she make of the fabled Shining World of the Seven Systems?

I think her opinion could be neatly divined from her description of it looking like a child’s bedroom. There’s lots of bright colours about on Gallifrey this time which weren’t there during the presidential assassination. They’ve added plastic chairs in various colours, and they carry their ancient relics around atop inflatable plastic cushions in a bright red hue. Emma seemed to feel the same way that I had - it just wasn’t what she’d expected to see from Gallifrey. Personally, I don’t think I’m all that fond of these new additions to the Citadel, either. They’ve gone for ‘futuristic’ designs in the furniture, but that just means that it’s dated all the more. I won’t say that it makes it look incredibly 1970s (indeed, I’d say in places it looks to be more 1990s than anything), but it certainly doesn’t leave you with the impression that I think they were aiming for!

It’s all the colours which caused me a problem with this story… during The Name of the Doctor. There’s a sequence from this episode (the Doctor walking down a corridor) which was used to represent the Great Intelligence, and later Clara, making their way through the Doctor’s time stream. Because of the big, green, wall in the background, I always think it looks like they’ve forgotten to green-screen the background in behind our digitally-added characters! It’s something that I simply cannot un-see now, and it does somewhat turn my opinion even more against the design!

Elsewhere, the Doctor is still acting incredibly out of character - ordering the removal of Leela from the Citadel, to be thrown out into the wilds. I’m guessing that it’s to protect her from the invasion he’s allowed to happen, but I’m not entirely sure yet. Part of the beauty here is that I can’t tell if the Doctor is faking all of this for some greater reason, or if he’s genuinely been possessed by something. He’s been taken over so often in the last couple of years, that I wouldn’t rule it out entirely. That haunting cliffhanger, where he laughs in that way only Tom Baker can, only adds to my suspicions that he’s perhaps not entirely himself at the moment.

It’s also helped by the fact that it has gone on for so long now. Usually, the Doctor might be out of character for a little bit of an episode, and even then if he’s faking it, there’s usually a wink or a nod to his companion (and the audience). Here’s he’s kept up the charade for a third of the story, and that’s making me very unsettled. There’s a number of little hints and tips towards Borusa that seem to imply that he’s waiting for the room to be properly sealed off before he can talk openly, and that makes me think even more that our mysterious alien invaders might be inside his mind, controlling some of his actions. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 495: The Invasion of Time, Episode One

Dear diary,

Ah, The Invasion of Time. It’s another one of those stories which isn’t very well liked, and its faults are all too known in fandom, even before you sit down to watch it. I’ve never seen this one, but I know the basic plot, I know the twist at the end of part four, and I know how it ends. I think that’s going to mean that I’m a bit non-plussed by the story, and that I’m just going to be going through the motions. What I really need is to be able to watch it without any of that prior knowledge about the quality or the plot. It needs to be seen through the eyes of someone completely in the dark to actually stand a chance of it being received well.

Thankfully, I’m on holiday with Emma this week. Not a massive holiday anywhere sunny or hot (mores the pity), just a simple trip back home to look after the animals while the family is away (they’ve gone somewhere hot. Boo). Six nights away, six episode of Gallifrey-based Doctor Who to watch, and one partner who doesn’t have a clue what’s to come. Surely that’s the perfect test for The Invasion of Time?

Emma was fairly silent throughout the episode itself. She usually has a fair bit to comment on (often it’s how much she’s enjoying - or not - the dress sense of the companion), but today didn’t really prompt much of that from her. Instead, she waited until the closing credits were rolling before admitting that she was simply confused by this one. To be fair, she’s not the only one. I knew that the story involved the Doctor returning to Gallifrey to assume presidency of the Time Lords, and yet the episode moves at such a pace, and sees him (seemingly) acting so out of character that you’re really not sure what to think.

That’s not to say that I’ve not enjoyed it, though. As ever, there’s some sparkling dialogue between the regulars, and for the first time it really feels like K9 is a part of the team. We’ve had scenes of him playing chess with the Doctor before now, but it now feels… I don’t know. Different somehow, but in a good way. I laughed heartily at K9 telling Leela to shut up (‘engage silent mode, mistress!’), and also his description of swimming as ‘being fully submerged in H2O.’

I think for now that it’s just got an awful lot to set up very quickly. I’m hoping that now we’re in this position, with the Doctor given all the things he needs to rule Gallifrey, we can settle down a bit and get more in to the story. Although I know the basic outline of the story, I’m not really sure what fills up these first four episodes.

Yesterday, we were shocked and saddened to hear the news that Big Finish Production Assistant and Producer, Paul Spragg had died.

Paul had worked at Big Finish for over 5 years, and as well as his behind-the-scenes work, Paul provided customers and website owners and bloggers with the most fantastic service and upbeat attitude to his work which he clearly loved.

Big Finish posted a news item on their site, stating:

"Paul had worked with us for over five years and had become an essential member of the team. We will remember him for his tireless diligence, his total dedication to his job, his cheery nature, his hilarious sense of humour and his kindness and friendship.

He had relatively recently become editor of Vortex magazine (a promotion he was given 'live' on a podcast).

His work behind the scenes on contracts, script distribution, proof-reading, cover layout, studio management, CD Extra interviews, the website and so much more made him vital to the company's operations." 

Doctor Who Magazine Editor and friend of Paul since he was 11, Tom Spilsbury, posted a poignant and heartfelt tribute on his blog, here. 

On a personal level, Paul was the guy who provided DWO with all our Big Finish covers for our site reviews and merchandise guide. From the many emails we have bounced back and forth over the years, he had a great sense of humour and was one of the fastest email repliers out there!

Paul's partner, Natalie Hayden, issued a statement on Facebook, yesterday.

"To all of you that I didn't manage to text yesterday (I couldn't get round to everyone): there is sad news that Paul died yesterday suddenly. He'd been unwell for a few weeks, and was due to go to the GPs yesterday. But he was too breathless to be able to make it in to the surgery, so they phoned him instead. They arranged for a non-emergency ambulance to come and take him to hospital so he could be monitored. When they arrived, he was talking to them normally, and then had a seizure. He came out of that one, then had another seizure, during which his heart stopped and he stopped breathing. The ambulance crew tried to resuscitate him for two hours at home, and then took him to hospital where they tried for a further half an hour, but couldn't bring him round."

DWO would like to pass on our condolences to the Paul's friends and family, as well as the Big Finish family.

[Source: Big Finish]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 494: Underworld, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Confession time: I’ve never actually sat through an entire Star Wars movie. I know, I know, that’s something tantamount to blasphemy within the sci-fi world… but I’ve never really thought of myself as a science fiction fan. I love Doctor Who, in all its many varied forms. I’ll happily sit and watch other bits of sci-fi, or fantasy, but I’ve never been one for really delving into them. I’ve simply never had all that much of an interest. The only time that this wasn’t quite true was during 2005, when people were gearing up for the release of the final Star Wars. I can’t remember where I saw it, but there was a short feature about the way in which the film had been largely shot against green-screen, and speculating that this was the way all films would be made in the future - who needed to spend time building the scenery when you can simply add it in later, making changes as you go. The thought of that absolutely captivated me (although these days, I’m not so fond of the idea), and I love that there’s a clear ancestor to that kind of production here in Underworld.

It’s fitting, in a way, because this serial was in production when the first of the Star Wars films reached the UK. I’ve spent some time tonight catching up with the special features on the DVD of this story, and Anthony Read confirms that he went - along with Graham Williams and Tom Baker - to see a preview screening of this soon-to-be-seminal film. There’s some discussion on the effect the film had towards the models’ budget for this serial (and I still think that the spaceship shots are one of the very best bits of the entire story), and I think it’s also telling with the way that the series is moving in this latter-half of the Baker years. It’s becoming more ‘spacey’: we’re going to be spending a lot more time away from Earth in the next few seasons (and I think I’m right in saying that this incarnation of the Doctor won’t be venturing into Earth’s history again for the rest of his tenure), and we’ve even got a cute robot sidekick along for the ride.

While I’m briefly touching on the subject, I do have to praise the special features on this DVD. The Doctor Who range as a whole has been ridiculously well-served over the last 15 years or so, and I think it’s fair to say that no other series - archive or not - has been given the love, care, and attention that this one has. By the standards of some discs in the range, this release is positively stripped-down, but what we do get is fascinating. There’s a thirty minute documentary about the production of the serial, looking at the parallels with the tale of Jason and the Argonauts before moving on to the actual in-studio problems, and then there’s an additional 20 minutes or so of narrated footage from the various studio days. It gives a brilliant insight into the way this programme was put together, and really highlights how hard everyone worked to even get the story to screen in the first place.

So how’s it fared on the whole? This was ranked in Doctor Who Online’s story poll last year as being the worst story of the 1970s - and by quite some margin. Well… I’m pleased to say that I’ve not actually found that to be the case for me. I’ve been updating my friend Nick on this fact as I’ve moved along and, bless him, he’s tried to understand. I think the biggest problem for me is that the story has simply fallen a bit flat. I’ve already spoken at length about the face that the plot isn’t really anything new or interesting, but the expectation of the story being terrible has had a negative effect on it. I’ve not found it to be as bad as everyone says, but it’s hardy one of the best either. It’s sort of stuck in a purgatory, and its average score of exactly 6/10 across the four episodes puts it just about right. Slightly above average in places, but not breaking out that much.

Indeed, from the 1970s, I’ve rated four stories lower than this one (The Sontaran Experiment, Revenge of the Cybermen, The Android Invasion, and Image of the Fendahl) and several others have come in with the same average score - including that supposed classic The Deadly Assassin! That’ll probably duffel a few feathers!

I’m glad that I’ve enjoyed the story more than people usually do, and there’s something nice about knowing that I’ve liked it more than several stories that I’ve already been through. It leaves me with a sense that there’s always things to enjoy within Doctor Who - even when they’re supposed to have very few redeeming features at all…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 493: Underworld, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Whenever I buy a new issue of Doctor Who Magazine, I have a strict way of reading it. An order that I always take. Well, I say ‘strict’. Effectively, I turn to the ‘Production Notes’ section, read that first, and then read the rest of the issue in any old random order that I want. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, and I can tell you why that is: I love the way Russell T Davies writes his column. And Steven Moffat after him. It’s not about grabbing little bits of production information for me, it’s about enjoying two story-tellers tell a story. There’s been so many of the columns now (well over 100), and they don’t all stick in my mind. There’s one or two, though, that for some reason I always remember.

There’s one, for example, from early 2008, which is very pertinent to the watching of this story here and now. In it, Russell finds a VHS copy of Underworld in the back of a cupboard, in the middle of the night, and decides to pop it in for a watch. He admits that he’s seen it twice before, and didn’t care for it on either occasion. But then, as Cardiff Bay wake up around him (much as it has done for me this morning - I’ve got a busy day ahead so I’m watching this episode at an ungodly hour), he finds himself changing his mind…

“We’re way past Part One now! The script has moments of elegance: ‘The Tree at the End of the World is guarded by Invisible Dragons.’ There’s a Blackpool joke. There’s a pacifier ray, which makes Leela smile like a baby! There’s a villainous, arch supercomputer which actually sounds both villainous and arch in the right quantities. Better still, the villainous, arch supercomputer then realises, a second before death, how very wrong she has been. It’s actually rather moving. And, d’you know what? Sometimes, just sometimes, you can see these CSO shots as they were meant to be. The odd fleeting image has some depth, and shadow, and promise. The potential of Underworld is still there, buried under the tape”

He goes on to wonder about the design of the decedents in the story, too, deciding that if you mentally block out the ‘nose’ from the gold helmet design, then they’re actually not bad creatures. There’s definitely something alien and different about them. Mostly, I’m just surprised to find that the design of the helmet (or… mask? head?) only surfaces at this point of the story - almost three-quarters of the way through! You’d think they’d want to get their money’s worth out of the costumes, but they’ve hidden them under a black hood for the majority of the tale!

Russell picks out a number of things to enjoy about this story, and he’s right with all of them. The design isn’t all that bad, and the nose does somewhat throw it off. All that talk about invisible dragons is lovely (and leads to the Doctor being more ‘Doctory’ than I’ve seen in a while, when he sets off to find them), and whereas Russell says that some of the CSO shots work, sometimes, I’m willing to say that for me, they mostly work! Maybe I’m metally blocking out the worst offenders (the ‘falling’ sequence, for example, but then that would have been of a similar quality wether they had regular sets to hand or not), but I’m not having any problems with them.

My main issue with this one is still that it’s ‘generic science fiction’. It’s a story which feels familiar because we had a variation on it only a season ago (Doctor and friends head into a mythical temple which turns out to be a lost space vessel with a faulty computer), and no one is really giving it anything more than a basic performance. The guest cast are plodding through the script, Tom is over-doing things in an attempt to make up for other failings, and Leela has a sudden lust for revolution following her recent trip to Pluto. I still maintain that there’s a lot to be enjoyed in ‘Underworld’, and it’s still far from being deserving of the ridiculously low score it’s often saddled with… but it’s certainly one of the weaker stories, there’s no denying it. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

492: Underworld, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I know how this works. You lot. You’ll laugh, you’ll point. You’ll hunt me down with knives and pitchforks. You’ll revoke my Who card and make me surrender my DVD collection. But you know what? I’m going to say it anyway: Underworld isn’t that bad. And on top of that… the CSO actually kind of works.

Oh, believe me, I’m as stunned as you are. I was really dreading making it out of the ship today and into the the green-screen tunnels. It just seemed like such a bad idea. There’s several places where - no - it really doesn’t work: moments when characters are able to walk in front of things that they shouldn’t be able to, or when the smoke starts to fill the cavern at the end of the episode (although points for trying…), but equally there’s a lot of places where it looked good enough to me.

It’s worth bearing in mind that I’m saying this after a single episode of CSO shenanigans. By the time I’ve finished the next two episodes, I’ll probably have grown somewhat sick of it. I think the biggest shame is that while this world well enough to tell the story, it can’t ever compete with being out in real caves on location somewhere. It just lacks the kind of depth that you get when they film in locations like those used for The Mutants. This seems even more of a pressing shame coming right after The Sun Makers: a story in which to corridors and tunnels looked especially nice for being proper locations.

The other thing that seems to be happening - and especially in Tom Baker’s case - is that people are compensating for the fact it’s being shot so much on CSO by over-acting. When the Doctor and Leela first step out into the cave system, we get a few shots of him as things are explained. It’s all pretty standard stuff for a Doctor Who episode, and it’s the kind of thing that Baker could usually rattle off in his sleep.

He’s really going for it, though, and delivering a version of the Doctor that I’ve not seen him give before. He’s more ‘boggly’ than ever before. In some ways, it reminds me of that bit in the Whose Doctor Who documentary, where he describes Jon Pertwee as being like a big lightbulb. Playing up for the cameras. It’s not needed in this instance, though, and it sticks out more than any of the CSO backgrounds are.

The other issue I’m having is that… I don’t really care. Yesterday’s episode gave us a lot of sci-fi nonsense with dying civilisations, and pacifier rays, and rede banks, but as soon as we switch today to some men in hoods banging on about sacrifice, I just really thought very clearly ‘I don’t care’. It doesn’t feel rooted in reality: it’s just the kind of thing you could find in any old sci-fi. That’s not a fault particularly of Underworld (indeed, several Doctor Who episodes fall into the same trap), but it is a let down. I’m starting to wonder if the story’s poor reputation may actually be deserved - in the past I’ve only ever heard people say it’s rubbish because of the CSO effect… I’ve never actually heard anyone talk about the story…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 491: Underworld, Episode One

Things everyone knows about Underworld number one: due to crippling lack of budget, it was mostly shot in the studio against CSO backgrounds.

Things everyone knows about Underworld number two: the factory in Coronation Street was named after it because writers on the soap were huge fans of Doctor Who.

Things everyone knows about Underworld number three: it’s not very good. In fact, it’s terrible. When Doctor Who Online ran a poll last year to get readers to rank every Doctor Who story, it placed in position 234 (out of a total 239) with an average rating of 43.45%. It was the lowest-ranking story of the 1970s (by quite some margin - the next lowest was The Monster of Peladon, in position 217 with a score of 52.46 - almost 10% higher!). It’s hardly a glowing advertisement for this tale, is it?

Things Will didn’t know about Underworld: this first episode is brilliant. Like, genuinely, fantastic. That was a surprise!

As I’ve said above, Underworld has something of a reputation within Doctor Who. I remember when it came out on DVD (in a box set along with two other less-than-well-received stories), people weren’t exactly rushing to purchase it. It didn’t help that it was one of the first box set releases of that style, grouping various stories together with a tenuous linking theme, and had a rather high price tag attached. I wouldn’t say that I’ve been dreading getting to this point, but I’ve certainly not been relishing it. I’ve been through enough stories by now to know that when the bad ones come along, you just have to grit your teeth and bear them.

Imagine my surprise, then, when this episode started and I found myself completely captivated by it! We open with that love space vista, panning into a screen of blackness for the TARDIS to fly across. I was ready to say what a shame it was that the TARDIS couldn’t have been flying through that beautiful space shot… but then it’s part of the story that we’ve got a blank screen! And then a few minutes later, a beautiful model spaceship comes flying past us, too. I complained during The Sun Makers that the model of the city was far from being the best shot of the decade - but the various shots of this ship (both in flight and when it’s being turned into the core of a planet) are probably fairly good contenders. They look brilliant.

And then there’s that set! No wonder they ran out of money to build all the sets they’d need for later episodes (or to venture out onto location), because it’s all been sunk into creating this bridge! It’s massive which is always a good sign when they’re trying to impress you on this show, and it’s so nicely detailed. There’s a lovely shot when we first see the set, as the camera pulls forward to show us everything and it simply looks stunning. The one slight disappointment is that they seem to have forgotten to CSO in the images behind the view screens in a few shots (I assume, at least, that it’s the reason we get green windows from time to time).

If all that wasn’t good enough, you’ve got Tom Baker and Louise Jameson on fine form as ever. I love they was they joke and banter - the Doctor’s description of them being the first intelligent, and semi-intelligent, life to witness the spiral nebula is a real highlight and elicited a good laugh from me.

I worry that Underworld is already cursed, though. I’m fully expecting it to all go to pot once we start venturing outside the ship (I know most of the CSO sequences are set in caves, so I’m guessing that’s where we’re heading), which means that the story could fall into one of two categories. Either, the next three episodes will really work for me, be better than expected and earn an unexpected high score… or they’ll be so bad that they let down everything I’ve loved about this first episode. Frankly, I’m looking forward to finding out… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 490: The Sun Makers, Episode Four

Dear diary,

People often mourn the loss of the ‘Pure Historical’ format from the programme’s style after about Season Four (one of two exemptions not withstanding), but I think it’s a style which lives on throughout several other tales. Take this story, for instance. Sure, it’s set in the far future of Pluto, and the ‘big bad’ turns out to be a kind of alien squiddy creature (although you never actually see him in anything other than human form), but really it’s a story about oppression and revolution. You could take much of what we see in these four episodes and only apply a few small changes to set it at any point in Earth’s history. You don’t see anything that looks alien, and aside from references to other planets, it really could be set anywhere.

I think I quite like that. Over time I’ve found myself enjoying the appearances of monsters in Doctor Who, but I rather like having these stories come along every so often which don’t really conform to the usual ‘man in a rubber suit’ style. It seems to be the direction in which the series is heading, too. During Season Thirteen (to pick a random, recent example) monsters were the flavour of the day. Be it Zygons, or Sutekh and his Mummies, the Kraals, the Anti-matter creature… monsters were undoubtably a focus of the series. But then compare that to Season Fifteen so far. In The Horror of Fang Rock, The Invisible Enemy and Image of the Fendahl, the monster doesn’t turn up until at least the end of that third Episode. Oh, its presence is felt throughout the story up to that point - we might even get the odd glimpse of it - but it isn’t remotely the focus of the tale. In this story, it never even arrives. It’s an interesting change of pace, and one which I think I’m rather enjoying.

Especially when it means that we get villains and creatures like the Collector in this story. I’ve held off mentioning him up to now, simply because I didn’t know what to say about him. At times, he’s reminded me of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory (both in mannerisms and speech patterns), but mostly I think I’m just a bit… put off by him. I mean that in a good way - I find him a little bit revolting, and it’s almost difficult to watch his scenes without a sense of just being uncomfortable.

Henry Woolf gives a wonderful performance, and he’s quite unlike anything else we’ve seen in the programme before. You can see - during their confrontation in this episode - that Tom Baker raises his game in order to go toe-to-toe with the man. It feels like some time since a guest has had such an effect on our Time Lord, and that’s always a good thing to see happening. Indeed, I think the only thing I’ve found to be a let down about the Collector is that his motorised transport doesn’t quite work. As the head of ‘the Company’, I’d expect him to have the latest model of wheels… but even K9 can get around more efficiently!

On the whole, The Sun Makers has been a really pleasant surprise. I entered into the story really not knowing what to expect, and my opinion has shifted a little bit all over the place in the last few days. I’ve ended up thinking that it’s something of a success. Does everything work perfectly? Well, no. But then, that’s always the case with Doctor Who. That’s the case with life in general, probably! A nice surprise in the middle of the season, though. And tomorrow I move onto Underworld: another tale I know very little about… but I’m well aware that it’s not regarded at the best the series has ever produced…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 489: The Sun Makers, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I’m finding The Sun Makers to be a bit of an odd one, truth be told. Not in a bad way, simply in the sense that it seems to be getting a good deal better as it goes along. In my entry for Episode One, I complained that the direction wasn’t quite as interesting as I’d like it to be, and that you don’t get a real sense of the location when we’re out on the rooftops because there’s no model shots to help us along. Today, though, it’s like they’ve taken all that criticism on board!

The cliffhanger reprise has that lovely shot as the camera pans around the corner where Leela and her comrades are hiding, and you get to see the real length of the corridor behind her. I can’t say that I really picked up on just how nice this moment is, but I’m glad that I’ve noticed it today because the rest of that scene goes on to give us some really - really - nice shots. Use of selective focus when looking at K9 (there’s one moment when we get a real close up on his ‘nose’, and another where we watch his tail dip) and on Leela as she lies wounded on the floor feel almost filmic in nature, and they’re really rather great. It helps that they’re being shot on film, and that’s always a sure-fire winner with me.

We’ve then even got a shot of the city as a model! It’s hardly the best model that Doctor Who has ever given us (indeed, it’s far from the best model this decade), but it does help to give a scale to the world we’re inhabiting. There’s something oddly retro about it - that sense of ‘this is what the future will look like as decreed in the 1950s and 1960s - with all the skyscrapers and connecting beams, and I rather like that. I’m wondering now if there might have been a shot of this during that first episode that I simply missed, because it seems strange to build the model and then only show it at this late stage.

The only thing I am coming away from the episode feeling a little down-hearted at is some of the sets. Now that I seem to have ‘switched on’ to the direction being used here (it’s not as though they saw the work in the early episodes and then changed the way it was done, because it would have all been filmed in one big ‘block’, although I suppose they could have changed between locations), I’m really loving the use of the various locations. They give the underworld of the city a real industrial feel, and I completely believe that this world exists under those enormous tower blocks. I love the concrete tunnels as much as I love the sterile while corridors way overhead, and I love the sense of realism that it gives the story.

But then you enter sets like the control room above the steamer, or the correction centre. They’re all bloody peach! They don’t look like the kinds of technology that I expect to find in this world at all. I grew up on a farm, though it had long ceased operating as one by the time I was born. Right at the back of the main yard there’s an enormous barn. The roof has half caved in, and it’s reached a point now where the structure is so covered with Ivy that you can’t see a single inch of the brickwork below. Truth be told, it looks a bit like a Krynoid looming over the other outbuildings.

When I was young, I used to be fascinated by this place. It was a forbidden world of adventure and exploration. I wasn’t allowed in because of the roof being in such a precarious state (frankly, I’m surprised it’s still holding up now in places. I imagine that’s the work of the ivy), but I could peer through the cracks in the big, metal doors. It was full of old decommissioned farm machinery. Great big vats, three or four meters tall. Bits of equipment that had stood in this place for ten, twenty, even fifty years in some cases. By the time I was a teenager and old enough to decide that of course I was going in, I realised that if you worked your way around the back, there was a great big opening in the wall. Finally, I made it in there to look at all this stuff up close.

I know what you’re thinking - I’m supposed to be talking to you about The Sun Makers. But I am! Because all this equipment is exactly what I expect to find in this ‘control centre’. Rusting, and ancient. Crumbling away in places. You’ve got plenty of dials and readouts in this one, but they feel false. They’re too comically overrides and made out of numerous pastel colours. I want real dials. Little readouts behind panels of glass (cracked, of course), and little switches and levers to control all the operations. In short, I want this area to look as out-dated and industrial as the rest of the city does. It’s the only thing which is taking me right out of the story.

By contrast, the more I see it, the more I love the Gatherer’s office. It’s an odd kind of corridor that leads you in (something like a rib-cage, but it works!), and the whole thing feels like a set… but that’s just right for it. It’s supposed to feel different to the rest of the city. I also can’t help but like the hideout of the rebels deep down in the under city. It’s very stripped down and minimal, but those ‘pipes’ which lead up and out look fantastic, and I can really believe that they connect to the locations we’ve seen above. I don’t think that we’re going to be seeing many (if any) new locations in the final episode, but I’m hoping that if we do, they’ll be falling into the category of things I love rather than the things that feel like they’re letting me down.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 488: The Sunmakers, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I don’t know if I was simply having a bad day when watching Episode One of this story, but I’ve found this episode far more agreeable. Lots of the things that I was complaining about before either don’t seem to bother me so much now, or are simply better. The direction, for example, is much better here than it was during the first part, and there’s some lovely shots both down in the tunnels as the Doctor heads back to the under city, and when Leela and her new party of revolutionaries are making their way through the long, white tunnels upstairs.

Leela herself is yet another highlight. Anyone who follows The 50 Year Diary on a regular basis will be more than aware how much I’ve come to love the character over the last month or so, and she’s as brilliant here as she ever is. It’s another one of those instances where both the character and the actress really come together to create something… well… something perfect. Every choice Louise Jameson makes with her performance is fantastic - just watch here as she tells one of the rebels that they have have no pride, or courage, or manhood, and tell me that it isn’t one of the best performances a companion has ever given in Doctor Who.

Leela is simply brilliant in herself, though. She doesn’t even see the Doctor in this episode - they don’t once share the screen - but you never feel like she’s left running around as a spare part. She actively goes looking for her friend, and in the process starts to build up supporters for a revolution. I can only assume that this plot thread is going to keep building in the next half of the story, and we’ll have a rill-scale revolt on our hands by the end of Part Four.

Even K9 is acting as a great part of it, being sent to stun the gourd and giving Leela and Cordo a chance to proceed with their plans. By the time that the little robot pooch was removed from the programme during Season Eighteen, people often claim that he’d become too much of a useful tool, eliminating any really danger or tension in a lot of instances. I think I can see that already beginning here, but it’s still fresh and news, so I really enjoy it. We’ve never had a companion like Leela before - one who would be so willing to head off armed with a knife and a robot dog - and seeing them paired up like this is simply fun.

That said… oh my God K9 is loud! I don’t know if it’s a peculiar side effect of the types of tunnels they’re filming in this week, but I can’t say that I noticed his motors quite so obviously during The Invisible Enemy! It makes it sound really rather strange when he trundles up to the guard, and his mechanics are drowned out by the incidental music! The Doctor spent some time in the last story upgrading the dog’s systems - let’s hope he’s aiming to make him quieter! If I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure how K9 was able to sneak up on the guard like that! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 487: The Sunmakers, Episode One

Dear diary,

Every so often I seem to tell you how this is ‘another one of those stories’ that I know very little about, and every time I’m convinced that it’s the last one I don’t know very much about. I genuinely do find myself surprised when another one comes up, especially on a day like today - when I’m expecting to pop in the DVD of Underworld only to remember that this tale exists before I reach that one! When it comes to The Sunmakers, I know it’s set on Pluto… I know that it’s a story about a population crippled under the weight of enormous taxation… I presume there’s something about people making suns in there? Basically - oh look! it’s ‘another one of those stories’.

It’s also one of those episodes that Emma has joined me for. She’s dipped in and out occasionally and seems to enjoy touching in on the Doctor’s adventures from time to time. In todays episode, she’s very taken with Leela, not keen on K9 by any stretch of the imagination, and somewhat indifferent to the rest of the story (although she likes the Gatherer’s hat).

For me… well… I’m not really sure yet. The Sunmakers is odd in that - I believe - there’s no monsters or anything like that in there. This isn’t a case of ‘mysterious deaths with a green slug arriving in the last third’, and as such I’m sort of left wondering when things are really going to get moving. Much of today’s episode is incredibly ‘talky’, and spent setting up the world into which we’ve found ourselves. It’s really the locations of the story which work the best for me - being so striking and different as to really make an impact. They’re cold, and grey, and utilitarian. They’re bleak, and large, and the kind of shapes (and sizes) you just don’t find in a BBC tv studio.

Sadly, they’re being shot in a particularly bland way. These settings call for the strange direction of George Spenton-Foster, or even the keen filmic eye of Douglas Camfield. That never-ending round corridor, with the concrete pattern built into the walls could look so dynamic and interesting, but it comes across as simply flat. Maybe that’s the point - this is supposed to be a crippled and cloudless society after all - but it feels like a real missed opportunity.

I’m also longing for the kind of model shots which were used to such good effect during The Robots of Death - cleverly masking in a shot with a model to give the scene some scale. When we watch the Doctor and Leela look out from the roof of a building ‘thousands’ of meters high, You want an impression of that size. Instead - again - it’s just flat. Even some shots slightly from below, looking up to them, would help to sell the idea that bit better for me.

Mostly, though, I think I’m interested to see how they use K9 in the plot. I rather liked him during The Invisible Enemy (and despite the Doctor’s assertion at the end of yesterday’s episode, I like that here he’s very much Leela’s pet again), but this is the first chance we’ve really got to see him being integral to a story away from his origins. I love that he’s setting out on his own to explore (even if he is followed by CCTV and leads thee ‘baddies’ to the Doctor), and I can’t wait to see where he goes from here… 

Ex-Doctor Who actor Matt Smith has been cast in the new Terminator movie trilogy, Paramount Pictures confirmed today.

Below is from today's official press release:

Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions announced today that “Doctor Who” star Matt Smith will join the cast of the upcoming “TERMINATOR” reboot.

Smith will play a new character with a strong connection to John Connor, alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, J.K. Simmons, Dayo Okeniyi and Byung Hun Lee.

Alan Taylor is directing the film from a screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier. David Ellison and Dana Goldberg of Skydance Productions are producing. Skydance’s Paul Schwake, Annapurna Pictures’ Megan Ellison, Kalogridis and Lussier are executive producing.

Smith is best known for playing The Doctor on the popular “Doctor Who” television series during the 2011-2103 seasons. His other television credits include “Christopher and His Kind,” “Moses Jones,” and “The Street.” He can be seen next on the big screen in “LOST RIVER,” directed by Ryan Gosling, alongside Christina Hendricks, Saoirse Ronan and Eva Mendes.

He is represented by United Talent Agency and Michael Duff at Troika.

The “TERMINATOR” franchise launched in 1984 with Schwarzenegger as the title character and spanned three subsequent films, which have earned more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office.

+  Terminator: Genesis will distribute worldwide on 1st July 2015.

[Source: Deadline]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 486: Image of the Fendahl, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Nope, I’m sorry to say that I still just don’t get it. I’m simply stumped by the entire concept of the Fendahl. I get that the Doctor says there needs to be a certain number of creatures plus the ‘core’ in order to form this mythical being (is Golden Thea the core?), but then if they’ve killed one, and another has killed itself… how is the creature going to form the full being? Take over the Doctor or a companion, I guess… but then didn’t Golden Thea turn into one of these Fendahleen at one point? And why are some tiny and some huge? Do they grow quickly? Or is it absorbing energy? And how come some are created by people turning into them, while the first one we saw was apparently formed from simply absorbing energy?

Oh, I’m sorry. I’m trying very hard to like this one, and there’s a lot in here that I do like, but it just… it’s lost me somewhere along the way, and didn’t manage to grab me back into it I’m afraid.

Still - let’s focus on the positives in this episode, and the story as a whole, yeah? For a start, I really love the design of the Fendahleen. Although you never lose sight of the fact that it’s a person in a monster costume (it’s that problem I’ve complained about a few times since the Giant Maggots saga - it needs to look slimier…), it’s far more effective than your average shuffling alien costume. It has a presence that really impacts on screen - and it helps that you rarely see the full creature in shot. You almost get the idea that it’s too large to fit entirely in the frame.

Again this is an example of where George Spenton-Foster’s direction far outstrips what I’m accustomed to in Doctor Who. There’s lots of very competent directors working on the programme at this point (more, I’d argue, than at any time before in the series’ history), but these four episodes have really stood out as something special. I’ve complained once or twice that his unique style has made it harder for me to ‘read’ what’s happening in the narrative… but maybe that’s more to do with the story itself, and the fact that it’s coincided with this suddenly very different style is purely chance.

Then you have that final scene in the TARDIS. It’s a bit of an odd one (and everyone back at the cottage must assume that the Doctor and Leela have perished in the fire at the house, since they don’t appear to drop in and say their goodbyes! Somewhere in the back of my mind, UNIT will arrive before long and will take down the Tyler’s report that ‘the Doctor’ and his assistant vanished when the house went up. That’ll keep the paperwork going for a while!), but it shows just how comfortable Tom and Louise are in the show at this point. I’ve heard it said several times over the years that Louise never really felt welcomed by Tom during her time on the show, and that they only really became friends in later years. If that’s the case, then they hide it incredibly well, because this relationship is at least as fond as the one he shared with Lis Sladen and Sarah Jane.

On the whole? An oddity. Something of a half-way house between the old style of the programme and the new style, and it just hasn’t worked for me. Certainly another one for me to add to the ‘must rematch’ list for when this marathon is over… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 485: Image of the Fendahl, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I feel a little bit silly in admitting it… but I genuinely don’t have a clue what’s happening in this story. I mean, I understand that there’s a scientific research station set up in an old house to investigate this mysterious skull, and I get that the skull is really alien, and is drawing power in an attempt to live again… but I’m not sure what’s actually happening.

When the giant worm creature appears round the corner at the end of the episode… Is that a Fendahl? Where did it come from? Did the skull grow into that thing when it had absorbed 100 hours worth of energy (I’m guessing that it’s drawing this energy from the time fissure)? Or did the group of people in the catacombs manage to summon this creature up somehow? Did Thea turn into it? Or Max? Or one of the others? I just don’t know what’s going on.

Part of this comes back to the problem that I described yesterday - I’m struggling to follow the direction of the story. I can’t tell if the Doctor and friends being rooted to the spot by the sight of this creature is happening at the same time as the clock reaching 100 downstairs. There’s a point earlier on in the episode where we witness a conversation in the TARDIS between the Doctor and Leela, switch back to the Priory to see a van of people unload, then return to the TARDIS to find Leela out cold on the floor. Why? Was she asleep? Unconscious? Did I miss a bit? I’m not sure what was happening there, so it’s cast doubt on my ability to follow the plot in the cliffhanger.

I’m hoping that everything becomes clear in the the final episode, because I’m really rather keen to enjoy this story more than I am. There’s so much great dialogue for the Doctor and Leela to share (I expected nothing less of a script by Chris Boucher) - a particular highlight has to be the savage freeing the Doctor from the Fedahl’s grip early in the episode, and them both rousing on the floor and asking in unison if the other is all right. I wondered how I’d feel about the fact that so many Big Finish adventures for the pair have been set in the gap between their two seasons in the last couple of years - but these two have obviously been travelling together for a very long time. There’s something rather nice about that.

There’s also the fact that we’ve not got an actual monster to focus our attention on. I never really thought of myself as being one of those kids who loses interest in a Doctor Who story when there wasn’t something big, green, and slimy to keep me invested, but it’s felt like this story has been lacking one up until now - I’m really keen to see what George Spenton-Foster does with the creature, because it’s a really nice design, and I’m sure that his artistic - if tricky - direction could make it look stunning… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 484: Image of the Fendahl, Episode Two

Dear diary,

So do we all now just assume that a splinter of Clara opened the door to the locked room and let the Doctor out? I know very little about this story, but even I know that this causes something of a bone of contention amongst Who fans. The Doctor tries his sonic on the lock. Nothing. He paces around a bit… and then the door opens. Off he goes. He doesn’t even question it! I guess you could argue that the lock takes a while to react to the sonic (I guess?), but I much prefer the idea that there’s a version of Clara running around Fetch Priory that we never see. Maybe she’s the cleaner?

Something that I am enjoying - or, rather, something that I think I’m enjoying - about Image of the Fendahl is the direction. It’s George Spenton-Foster’s first time directing the programme (though he’ll be back again for the Key to Time series next year, before being whisked off to Blake’s 7), and he certainly brings a style to the episodes that I’m not used to seeing. I’ve been wracking my brain for the best way to describe it, but there’s only really one - it’s more artistic than I’m used to.

Several years ago, I studied ‘Film and Television Production’ at university (or something like that. We were the first group to take the course, and they changed the name every few months across the three years. I can’t even remember what my diploma says - heck, five years on I’m not sure I can even remember my final grade…). Because it was an art school that I attended, there was an awful lot of snobbishness around everything. All your films needed to be arty. Well, I came to this course at the point when web-video and YouTube was just taking off, and I was determined to create a web series. It took me the full three years, but I was finally able to do it.

The one problem I kept running into was tutors reading the scrips and saying ‘you could lose this scene. All of that can be conveyed with an artistic camera shot’. The problem, I constantly argued, was that by being too arty with something as narrative as my series meant that viewers may end up lost, and then switch off. Well, I’m certainly feeling lost at times with Image of the Fendahl, because there seems to be an awful lot of style over substance.

Usually, this comes in the form of two reactions from me; first, I muse on how good a particular shot looks - how unlike Doctor Who it is, and how much better than some of the more run-of-the-mill direction I’ve witnessed over the last few seasons. This then muses into the second reaction: realising that I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to be looking at. It happened a few times with Episode One - I wasn’t sure if the skull was transforming and morphing into Thea’s form… or if it was doing something else (I think I’m right in saying that it was, effectively, brainwashing her). Then during the cliffhanger, the Doctor finds himself rooted still in the forest, while the camera moves towards him. It’s very striking, what with the mist and the location at night, and the Doctor so utterly helpless… but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be seeing some kind of Point-of-View shot from a creature, or if it was just Spenton-Foster getting a bit artistic!

All of this sounds so negative, but there’s a lot to really love about the direction, too. There’s nothing wrong with it being artistic - as long as you can follow the plot! Elsewhere in the story, the direction simply feels ahead of its time. There’s a two-person shot of Fendelman and Adam examining an x-ray of the skull which feels like it’s come from a drama from the 90s: it’s very out-of-keeping with what I’d expect to see, but in the best way possible! I’m wondering if things may settle down a little for me the longer the story goes on, maybe with me getting used to the ‘language’ of Spenton-Foster’s direction (I’ve still retained something of my art school training!), or with him toning down the flourishes to simply tell the story… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 483: Image of the Fendahl, Episode One

Dear diary,

I’m terribly sorry, but I think I’ve gotten lost somewhere along the line while working my way through Doctor Who for this marathon. You see, this is clearly a Philip Hinchcliffe story from Season Thirteen/Fourteen, and not part of the same programme that’s now shifted tone to things like The Invisible Enemy. I commented during Horror of Fang Rock that it always took a bit of time for a new production team to establish themselves, so I’m not really expecting Graham Williams to set a tone for the programme until the next season rolls around, but The Invisible Enemy felt like much more a template for what’s to come than this episode has, if anything, this felt like going back a step.

That’s not a complaint, mind, because there’s an awful lot about it to like. Opening with a shot of the skull is immediately striking, and certainly means that my interest is being grabbed right from the start. That we go on to have sets of big country houses (something the show always does very well), and plenty of shooting at night means that I’m kept rooted to the screen right the way through. This has been one of those strange episodes where it’s felt as though it’s going on for an absolute age, while also managing to be over before you know it. That’s always a sure sign that I’m too caught up in events to pay attention to anything else.

This is another one of those stories which I really know very little about. I knew it was set in a location called Fetch Priory. I knew there was a skull. I know there’s a kind of… worm creature turning up at some point. The DVD disc also informs me that there’s a character painted gold at some point. That’s all I’ve got! Everything else is completely uncharted territory, and that’s always an exciting prospect.

Something to note, though… we seem to have reached a shift in the way that Tom Baker approaches the role. It’s been creeping up for a while now (mostly since they resumed to start filming this season - with The Invisible Enemy forming the first story of the ‘block’), but we’re definitely seeing him approach it differently to the way he did for his first three years in the role. There’s a couple of ways of looking at this, and I think it comes down to a combination of the two.

The first way of explaining it is to simply reference Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor. In Series Five, the writers script a generic ‘Doctor’, and Smith then applies his own unique performance to that character, giving us a new incarnation of the Time Lord. By the time we get to Series Six (and, to a lesser extent, the latter episodes on Series Five), writers have seen enough of Matt’s performance to start writing the character as ‘The Eleventh Doctor’. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel as natural anymore - all the quirky moments are now scripted, so they lose something in the translation to the screen. It feels a bit like that’s happening here, too. It feels entirely natural that this Doctor would hold court with a field of cows, and it did make me laugh, but it also feels more forced than I’m used to.

The second way of explaining it returns to my thoughts of the Tom Baker years comprising three distinct ‘eras’. I’ve described them as being largely divided by the producers in charge, and that seems to apply to Baker’s approach to the role, too. He’s playing everything up that bit more now. He is the Doctor. He’s settled and confident enough in the role by now that he can pretty much do whatever he liked. Several tales do the rounds of this period of the programme’s history, where Baker would offer his suggestions, and if they were turned down he’d just go ahead and do it anyway. You can feel that confidence in his performance during this episode, and it’s not always a good thing.

That might just be me having an off day, mind. The Doctor and Leela haven’t really gotten caught up in the story yet (they’ve only met a single character - who also hasn’t intersected with the main guest cast), so I’m perhaps focussing on the pair more than I usually would. They’re being given the freedom to roam more than I’m used to of late. Maybe once they’re inside the house and fighting this month’s menace, Baker will settle down again?