Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways

Chapter The 98th, in which it's only a game show, so put up a real good fight...

Plot: 
The Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack each arrive separately in twisted year 200,100 versions of dated (even in 2005) game shows, not knowing exactly how they got there. The Doctor is in the Big Brother house; Rose is on The Weakest Link; Jack is on What Not to Wear... I think; is that what it was called? The Trinny and Susannah one? Whatever. Anyway, the twist is that contestants get killed. Both Jack and the Doctor escape their shows, the latter alongside another Big Brother contestant Lynda (with a Y). They find they are on a space station that the Doctor and Rose visited 100 years earlier, and the Doctor's actions back then seem to have made things much worse, allowing unseen parties to stage these vicious competitions for a docile viewing population on Earth. Meeting up with Jack, they track Rose, but are not quick enough to save her - she is seemingly zapped by an Android version of Anne Robinson. Investigating, the Doctor discovers that the Controller of the station has brought them here, to defeat "her Masters", who turn out to be a new race of Daleks.

Rose has been transmattted to a Dalek saucer in the middle of a fleet containing half a million Daleks led by the Emperor, who has rebuilt his disciples using the cells of humans; this has turned them religious and mad. The Doctor rescues Rose, and the Dalek fleet attacks the space station. Captain Jack leads the remaining humans aboard the station to mount a defence. The Doctor tricks Rose into the TARDIS, and sends her back home to Jackie and Mickey, while he works to build the station's transmitters into a weapon that he can use to destroy the Daleks. There's only one problem: because of the lack of time to prepare it, it will destroy humans and Daleks alike. With the Daleks closing in, the Doctor faces a terrible choice, just like he did during the Time War: kill innocent people or let the Daleks live to terrorise the universe. Meanwhile, Rose uses brute force to open the TARDIS console, looks into the time-vortex and flies the ship telepathically back to the Doctor. Surrounded by Daleks, with everyone else including Captain Jack killed, the Doctor cannot bring himself to pull the trigger on his mega-weapon and is just about to be exterminated. But Rose arrives, changed into a superbeing having absorbed the time-vortex. She destroys the Emperor and all the Daleks, and resurrects Jack; but too long holding the time vortex within is lethal, so the Doctor snogs it all out of her, and thereby regenerates into David Tennant.

Context:

For the first time in a while, the randomiser has been overridden, and this story was specifically selected for viewing by yours truly. The weekend of my birthday, my lovely family asked what sort of things I would like to do, and knowing me as they do, one thing they offered was to sit down and watch a Doctor Who, all together as a family. I thought about my selection very carefully, like any list-making obsessive would (more on that below), and chose this particular two-parter, which we watched on DVD. The children (boys of 12 and 9, girl of 6) were captivated throughout despite not recognising any of the game shows being referenced; the Better Half was pretty captivated too, though she did comment several times on how thick a layer of make-up Billie Piper was caked in, so that must have been distracting. We left a couple of hours' gap between the episodes, as the second part benefits from a bit of time for anticipation to build; nobody could have waited a week, though.

First-time round:
During a brief period when we were living in our newlywed pad in Gillingham, myself and the Better Half watched both episodes together live on BBC1 broadcast. There are a few solid contenders for best individual series or season of Doctor Who; in my humble opinion, Christopher Eccleston's 2005 run is the best. No other individual season had to be built to work so hard; in William Hartnell's first year, episodes were being made much closer to broadcast, so they knew they had a hit as early as production on the the fourth story in. But 99% of footage of all thirteen 2005 episodes, including this two-part finale, was in the can before the series started on BBC1. Nobody knew how it would go down with viewers; one could make a persuasive case that, had it tanked, Doctor Who would have been dead for a very long time, if not for ever.

Consequently, everybody involved in its making, a lot of whom were fans of the show, has clearly given their all. It's the set of stories with most to prove, and it rises to that challenge. That the show is still going more than a decade later is testament to this. So, the finale of that year was aiming to be something very special. The marketing hoopla certainly went into overdrive, with a new trailer every day in the period between the two parts counting down the days until we saw the final episode, and afterwards on Doctor Who Confidential a very nice montage of Eccleston's best bits to some slightly uplifting Coldplay-a-like tune. Even though it had only lasted a few months, it did feel like the end of an era.

Reaction

Despite the high camp sampling of popular game shows of the time, it's clear from even before the pre-credit scene that this story is taking things seriously: the selection of clips in the 'Previously' montage, the magnificently ominous music cue by Murray Gold, and that caption "100 years later", left hanging for a pregnant pause, all set the scene - this isn't necessarily going to be an easy ride. The game show idea, which there's evidence that writer Russell T Davies had been thinking of as a one-off for a long time, is then introduced with a joke and a cheeky wink. A lot of people hated the idea, and I can see why to a certain extent, but such criticism misses the point: it's been cleverly deployed as a feint, a distraction, to fool the unaware into thinking they're just watching another high-concept one-parter, to heighten the surprise and impact when the Daleks are revealed. The title of the first episode also clued in those that had been paying attention: Bad Wolf is finally going to be explained after verbal and visual clues throughout the preceding episodes. A lot of people hated that device too, but I was there and the level of enthusiastic speculation as to what it all might mean was phenomenal.

If you are the sort of person who can get behind the game show bits and the Bad Wolf concept, then I can't see how you won't think everything else in the story is as good as Doctor Who can be. Years ago, Doctor Who Magazine ran an article "Twenty Moments when you know you're watching the greatest TV series ever made"*, choosing their score from every era of the programme. I could pick at least twenty moments just in Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways. In fact, screw it, that's what I'm going to do. This is a contender for my favourite ever Doctor Who story (more on that below), so this was only ever going to be a rave anyway; I may as well give it some structure. Let's begin:

1. Starting at the end, my first magic moment to list would be the confidence of the "Doctor Who will return in The Christmas Invasion" caption, proving that this story keeps the pleasures going beyond the very end.
2. Captain Jack's scenes with the Trinny and Susannah droids "Your viewing figures just went up", the reveal of his compact laser deluxe, and the gag about where he'd been hiding it, etc. Trinny and Susannah are great actually, as are the other non-actor guest voice artists.
3. The Doctor's scene of realisation that all that's happening is his fault from his visit 100 years earlier, "I made this world", part of the story's overall pulling together of the year's themes and making The Long Game (weakest story of the season) worthwhile at last.
4. All Paterson Joseph's scenes as Roderick, but particularly his return in the second episode, obsessed with getting his winnings from a corrupt system that's collapsing all around him.
5. The Doctor's defiant speech at the end of Bad Wolf, folding his arms and saying "No" to half a million Daleks, ending with "Rose, I'm coming to get you!".
6. The follow up to that, a week on, when he flexes his muscles rescuing Rose in the first two minutes of the programme, the wonderful materialisation of the TARDIS around a Dalek, and the thrill of seeing one in the TARDIS control room for the first time.
7. The scene between the two programmers just before they die.
8. The confrontation between the Doctor and the Emperor Dalek, with the slow reveal of their new religious fundamentalist nature, including a nice in-joke: "...half human?" "Those words are blasphemy!"
9. The moment of Eccleston leaning with his head against the TARDIS door after confronting the Daleks, where we realise - if we hadn't already - that his gurning chappie persona is just a front masking his survivor guilt.
10. The conversation between the Controller and the Doctor during solar flare activity: "But speak of you. My masters, they fear the Doctor." Joe Ahearne's direction here, and everywhere, is exemplary - he can shoot Daleks so well.
11. The reveal that Rose is still alive with a suddenly familiar control room noise, and a hint of a reflection as unseen Daleks advance. Joe Ahearne, I love you!
12. Lynda with a Y's death: the clever echoes of Rose and the Doctor's meetings to lead up to it, making us subconsciously see her as the new companion. The economy of doing a call back in-joke of the Daleks cutting through the door, only for it to be misdirection when Lynda's shot through the window instead. The silent floating Dalek's head lights flashing "Ex-term-in-ate" is way cool too.
13. Rose suddenly realising she's surrounded by Bad Wolf graffiti, including the large words written on the ground.
14. Rose telling Jackie that she went back in time to meet her father, and was with him when he died.
15. The sequence where the Doctor, Jack and Lynda are arrested, silent and stony faced while their photographs are taken, then the Doctor turns to Jack, says "Let's do it" and they break out effortlessly, leading to the wonderful confrontation in floor 500, where the Doctor instantly gives up the gun. "Don't be so thick, like I was ever gonna shoot".
16.  The Doctor replaying the Time War in miniature: "What are you - coward or killer?" "Coward. Any day!" The Day of the Doctor later stretched an entire feature length story out of this one moment; just sayin'.
17. The wonderful escalating tension as Rose loses the final round of The Weakest Link, while the others rush to save her but arrive just too late. The scene playing just on Eccleston's face, almost motionless, as he contemplates the loss of Rose while the background tussles drift away, quieter and quieter.
18. Cheesy, I know, but the kiss: "My head is killing me" "Come 'ere, I think you need a Doctor."
19. Eccleston's farewell speech, the first ever standing-up regeneration and Tennant's first lines.
20. And finally and best of all, one of the greatest moments in Doctor Who's long history: the emergency programme one hologram of the Doctor that plays to Rose in the TARDIS as she is whisked off to safety. Most of this is shown sideways on until the spine-tingling moment when the hologram turns to face her. Magic.

* A few months later, the magazine followed the article up with another ten moments. I reckon I could come up with ten more moments just in Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways. But not today.

Connectivity:

Both stories contain foes created by Terry Nation, and both appear in the first ever season of different phases of Doctor Who production.

Deeper Thoughts:
Playing favourites.  So, it's all downhill from here: I've now watched and blogged the story I think is the best one ever. Well, yes and no: it's definitely my favourite right now, but I could quite easily have picked another. If my birthday had been the following week, I would have given the matter the same amount of thought, but could have come up with a completely different favourite. I might even have chosen another story from 2005: The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, for example, is bloomin' excellent, but I have already covered it for the blog here. If I hadn't, would I have picked it over the same year's finale? It would have been a close run thing. Of the stories I haven't blogged yet there are some crackers too: Talons, of course, but I did do a thing only last week about it being offensive and borderline racist: has that put me off? Robots of Death, Kinda, Caves of Androzani, Inferno, The Web of Fear. The only sane thing to do would be not to try to pick a favourite at all, and appreciate them all. But I'm not quite sane about this, and I can't help myself.

I'm not alone either; it tends to come with the territory of Doctor Who fans that they are inveterate list-making obsessives to a greater or lesser degree. But anyone who has read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity will know, it's not restricted to Doctor Who. I have shared offices or pubs with many a fellow sufferer (my people!) and made and remade lists of favourite films (Casablanca, Brazil, Chinatown, Three Colours Blue, Godfather Part 2, Annie Hall, Bicycle Thieves, Monty Python and the Holy Grail...), favourite songs (A Day in the Life, Life on Mars, Graceland, Being Boring, Old Red Eyes is Back, All Apologies (Unplugged version)...). There's no point saying to oneself that art isn't a competition - of course it is! People make Doctor Who so you watch it rather than what's on the other side, to pretend otherwise is silly. Still, one can take things too far.

By one measure, Doctor Who might not even be my favourite show at all. I mentioned in passing this time last year that I have yet to indulge in any audio Doctor Who stories from the many available made by the company Big Finish; this has not changed in a year. But I have indulged in a recent purchase from them, and pre-ordered the next one in the series too; it's just not Doctor Who - it's the opening releases from their recently started Star Cops range. Does that mean I like Star Cops more than Doctor Who, at least in audio form? Or is it just that there's plenty of Doctor Who in any form, but Star Cops only ever had 9 televisual episodes, and is crying out to be continued somehow. I've only listened to the first audio story so far, so I'm not in a position to pick favourites there, but my top three of the TV ones would be Trivial Games and Paranoid Pursuits, Other People's Secrets, and An Instinct for Murder. Or maybe I'd sneak Intelligent Listening for Beginners in at number 3, actually. Or maybe Little Green Men and other Martians. You see, I really can't help myself...

In Summary:

Really rather good wolf.

The Keys of Marinus

Chapter The 97th, you know what it's like when you just can't find your keys...

Plot: 
Once upon a time, the planet Marinus had a machine that controlled the planet's population to make them honest and just, and they lived in peace and hypnotised harmony having had all their difficult choices and responsibilities outsourced; but, some wet-suit fetishists called the Voord somehow managed to evade the machine's power. The machine's custodian Arbitan turned it off, to stop people being exploited by the Voord. So, next step, destroy the machine, you'd think, right? It was ethically dubious, anyway. But no - instead, Arbitan hides himself and the machine away in a fortress surrounded by a sea of acid, and hides the five keys to the machine at various locations around the planet, then works on making the machine foolproof again. Once he's done this, he sends each one of his friends and family off to find the keys, but none of them return.

Luckily, he ropes in the Doctor, Susan, Barbara and Ian who've landed on Marinus in their ongoing peripatetic adventure in time and space. Still, all this justice imposed by machine stuff will be an interesting underling theme ... oh, no they've just decided to use it as an excuse for some fun romping about; fair enough. The TARDIS travellers go through what amounts to various themed escape rooms to find the keys; they then return to find Arbitan dead, killed by Yartek leader of the Voord, or Voords (depending on your protocol). They destroy the machine; if they'd done that right at the start, it would have meant six episodes of everybody's life back, that's all I'm saying. The Doctor gives a little speech denouncing all this justice imposed by machine stuff but it's too little too late, really.

Context:

Watched the DVD over what seemed like ages, with long gaps between the episodes, accompanied by the Better Half, and sometimes one or two of the children (mainly boy of 9 and girl of 6) coming into the living room to watch bits. I don't know why it was such a struggle - it's not as if it has a dense layered plot involving complex, mentally challenging scenarios. The trouble might be that the family are all Who-ed out, having been happily watching the Tom Baker blu-ray boxset separately throughout the long school holiday. As such, a bitty, even more episodic than usual serial, which we could pick up and drop without any problems, should have been just what the Doctor ordered. [Side note: Peter Davison's first series is going to be the next Blu-ray box set released later this year; my first ever season as a regular watcher, and I'm super excited; come November, though, it's going to be the same deal: working through a whole season while watching random episodes on the side. I predict another slowing down of my blog publishing rate around then.]

First-time round:

I don't remember reading the novelisation of The Keys of Marinus when I was a youngster, but I remember seeing it often in shops or school libraries. It was an intriguing one as the book cover - a painting of a very not-blue TARDIS floating in orbit round a planet - gave away nothing about the story, not even which Doctor or monsters featured in it. I was probably quite unaware of the plot when I finally came to see it in early 1999, when the VHS crawled out during the latter years of the range. It must have been one of the last I bought from Volume One in Worthing, who'd been my main supplier for most of the 90s, as I moved to Brighton not long afterwards and starting getting my regular DVD and video fix from MVC instead. 

Reaction

The Keys of Marinus is the fifth story in Doctor Who's first ever season, and the show is still thrillingly testing out the types of tales it can tell. After a survival narrative, a Wellsian political fable, a chamber psychodrama, and a historical travelogue, the show presents us this time with the first ever Doctor Who quest. Writer Terry Nation produces his first stab at the second of his two main 1960s Doctor Who story templates: type A - a competent, slightly serious Dalek tale, or B - a frothy runaround through different locations. The problem with the latter is that it does put a strain on resources, particularly in the 1960s, when even a story with only a couple of sets that could be reused week on week could end up looking cheap. Having to create a wholly new environment for every studio session, including all the costumes and effects, was a definite challenge. The approach was improved upon (at least in terms of production value) the next time Nation tried it in The Chase, and eventually perfected in The Daleks' Master Plan, which fuses story types A and B in that it's a frothy Dalek runaround through different locations which stops every so often to be competent and slightly serious.

None of those retries was so boldly and baldly a quest with a capital Q as is The Keys of Marinus, though. Just for fun, I compared the unfolding action to the twelve stages of Christopher Vogler's Hero's Journey, a structure for quest narratives based on the work of Joseph Campbell; Marinus indeed progressed through each stage in its small way. It starts with our heroes in their "Ordinary World" of arriving at places with glass beaches and acid seas; there is then a "Call to Adventure", well, more of a long-winded polite ask to adventure, but it nonetheless ticks the box. The next stage is "Refusal of the Call" and this is where I suspected it could even be deliberate. It almost never happens that the TARDIS team refuse to help someone, even in this early adventure-phobic era, but here they flat out refuse to go on the quest, and it's only Arbitan's force field tricks that make them grudgingly accept their mission. Arbitan would be the candidate for the title role in the next stage "Meeting the Mentor"; he also has the nous to get killed later, as mentors inevitably do - actually or symbolically - in this kind of narrative; see Obi Wan in the first Star Wars, for example (George Lucas was influenced by Campbell's works too).

Using the travel dials, our heroes then progress to "Crossing The Threshold", and in every place they go they repeat the next few stages "Tests, Allies, Enemies", "Approach to the Innermost Cave" and "Ordeal". There's a literal cave in one of these mini-stories within the main narrative - perhaps this is more than coincidence? Can we really see Terry Nation taking the time to study Joseph Campbell as a jobbing writer in the 1960s? Maybe. The trouble is that his playing these stages out multiple times on a small scale doesn't leave time or space for things to be deep or difficult enough. Barbara's final ordeal in The Velvet Web episode involves knocking over some glass jars; the audience, it's fair to say, go through worse ordeals during The Keys of Marinus than that, and it's hard to credit the brain creatures' evil empire lasting so long if that was all it would have taken to bring it down.

Anyway, each time, the "Reward" is achieved as another key is collected. After a brief detour into courtroom drama, the TARDIS team and their allies take "The Road Back" to the TARDIS, in possession of all the keys. All is set for the hardest stage of all: "Resurrection", which should be a battle to the very limit of the hero's powers where he or she snatches victory, so tough it is like being killed and born again. This is represented somewhat disappointingly by the Doctor and his friends  hoodwinking a man in a novelty wet-suit. The final stage, "Return with the Elixir", should see our heroes changed by their experience; events on Marinus, though, have not made a dent on the Doctor, Ian, Barbara or Susan. Perhaps their travelling dial companions, Altos and Sabetha, are the more changed, having fallen in love.

It's a lucky dip story: one episode you're going to get a shiny toy, the next episode - perhaps even the next scene - you'll come away with a handful of straw. But it is by no means all a dead loss. No other Doctor Who story to my knowledge can boast sharing a cast member with Citizen Kane (George Coulouris). Some of the sections are very much fun - the Doctor as lawyer in the courtroom bit, for example, or the bravura scenes in The Velvet Web where Barbara's perception of the environment is different from what everyone else sees. This is even more commendable given the technical limitations those scenes were made within - whatever designer Raymond Cusick thinks. Cusick is interviewed in a special feature on the DVD talking Eeyore-like about how none of his work on The Keys of Marinus is anything to be proud of, but he's being much too hard on himself and the story. It's not that bad. 

Connectivity: 

In most parts this story is hard to connect to Sleep No More, but one stop on the Marinus mystery tour calls back to the Morpheus process; it takes place in a place called Morphoton, which has brainy creatures in it called Morpho, and whose plan involves sending people into a sleep during which they are altered. I also would have said that both stories feature sand, but in Sleep No More it's not really sand, so I guess that doesn't count.

Deeper Thoughts:
You can't remake history - not one line!  During the many planning documents and series bibles put together when the US version of Doctor Who was being planned (the one for which the Paul McGann TV Movie was intended to be the launchpad), one idea they had was to remake some of the clunky stories from Doctor Who's past, buffing them up to a shine with their hoped for big dollar budgets. Sacrilege? Maybe. But a couple of stories from early on were so ambitious, for any BBC budget let alone the tuppence ha' penny they had in the 1960s, that it might be interesting to see what could be done with them, given modern technology and the opportunity for more time and money to be spent. The Keys of Marinus would be one of those for me, and another William Hartnell story The Web Planet too. But what about remaking stories that were well made and relatively richly resourced to begin with? What about remaking 1977 Tom Baker classic The Talons of Weng-Chiang?

The Talons of Weng-Chiang, unlike The Keys of Marinus, is not ruinously ambitious; on the contrary, it is perfectly crafted to be realised excellently by the people and resources of the BBC in the 1970s. Except, perhaps, in one aspect. And just because they were playing it safe to a certain extent does not take anything away from the extra effort everyone has gone into to make Talons a bit special. Except in one aspect - and I'm not talking about the dodgy giant rat costume. This story has recently become a talking point because its first episode was covered in the latest issue (529) by the new young diverse Doctor Who Magazine time team (see the Deeper Thoughts section of The Brain in Morbius for more details on them). And the new young diverse Doctor Who Magazine time team took one look at The Talons of Weng-Chiang and considered it racist. I'm not cynical, and I don't believe the retooling of this feature is deliberately designed to bait older fans into clicking about their complaints on social media, but yet again that is what has come to pass. And yet again, all I see on my feed are people complaining about the original complaints: I never actually see anyone being intolerant in the first place. Imagining both sides of this debate, though, I wondered where exactly I stood.

In my wondering, I can't avoid being the old white guy defining racism, so I'll have to go with it: yes, it's a bit questionable that all the Chinese characters in Talons are villains. There's no get-out clause either that the piece is riffing on Dr. Fu Manchu, as that source is not subverted enough to exonerate anyone. This aspect, though, I would not change. The Tongs are clearly not representative of their race as a whole, and the biggest villain, who's arguably manipulating the others, is from Brisbane. Besides, who wouldn't want to play the villain in Doctor Who? Something that is often forgotten is that there's a plumb role in Talons taken by a non-white actor: Mr. Sin as played by Deep Roy. And I challenge any actor not to want that part: original, memorable, visually interesting and operatically nasty. It's a gift.

I don't think, meanwhile, that the 'yellowface' make-up used on John Bennett, a white actor, playing Li H'sen Chang, a Chinese character, is racist. It's grossly insensitive, yes, and was destined not to be accepted even a few years after Talons was made. What makes it even more problematical - it's hard to state this but it's the truth - is that it's a very good make-up job, from a technical point of view; it's a great performance too: clever, sly, with depth and a confounding of expectations. At the time, there was a limited pool of Chinese actors in Equity, so perhaps they shouldn't have tried at all to create a story revolving round a part they'd have trouble casting. But every Who fan knows how hard it was to get scripts together for the series, let alone excellent scripts (the time team all responded well to the story itself, with comments like "it's taking itself seriously", "all the costumes look gorgeous", and that is was "Like, really, really good"). All that's good in John Bennett's performance comes from the page: Li H'sen Chang is a great character. So, yes, it is tempting to think it would be good to do a remake with an actor more appropriate to the part's ethnicity; but whoever plays him, I think it's better than Li H'sen not existing at all. 

In Summary:

A lucky dip with a bit too much straw.

Sleep No More

Chapter The 96th, please wake me when it's over.

Plot: 
A broadcast of found footage is shown, presented by a scientist called Gagan Rassmussen; it depicts a rescue ship arriving on the deserted Le Verrier space station orbiting Neptune in the 38th Century. Gagan has edited the footage together and narrates as the rescue crew meet up with the Doctor and Clara to investigate what happened to the station's inhabitants. They get attacked by lumbering sand monsters, find Rassmussen hiding, and it comes out - amidst death-defying scrapes and dangerous confrontations during which the crew are picked off one by one - that the monsters have been created because of his revolutionary Morpheus machines, which compress a month's worth of a person's sleep into a few minutes. These machines have turned the space station's crew into the gunk that you get in your eye, and it's formed into monsters and also into floating particle cameras, I think (it was all dark and runny and shouty when these explanations were being delivered). Rassmussen is in league with the evil eye gunk stuff, and has a plan to convert everybody in the whole universe, but the Doctor defeats that plan, while admitting that it doesn't all add up. He and Clara leave (with the one surviving rescue team member... at least I think they take her - it's dark, runny, and shouty again). But it turns out there might have been more to the footage we've seen than first appeared.

Context:

Myself and the family (the Better Half, boys of 12 and 8, and girl of 6) have recently been on holiday to Tenerife. Having achieved a first by watching the previous Doctor Who story covered by the blog on a phone screen during said holiday, I followed it up with another novelty. I watched Sleep No More on the flight home. I'd downloaded it using the BBC iplayer app at the same time I got Vincent and the Doctor, and the entire episode was reviewed 8 miles high. Now, this might seem like dull everyday science to you, but to me it's bordering on magic! I don't know whether it enhanced things particularly: I might have got a 4D experience on the cheap had we got turbulence during the sequence where the space station drops alarmingly out of orbit, but luckily we did not. It is interesting in these days of personal hand-held entertainment that the previous rules for avoiding alarming aviation-related in-flight material have disappeared; airlines used to avoid or cut films that might cause distress because they involved plane crashes and the like, but now anyone can watch anything they like, I guess. I don't know how I'd feel if someone was watching Nightmare at 20,000 ft on an iPad next to me on a long haul flight, though.

First-time round:

One of a few stories I have covered so far that have come up randomly for viewing later but were first shown during the lifetime of the blog. As I always think when I come across one: why did I not start a viewing diary to help me with these First-time round entries in years to come? Reader, I am lazy - that's why, although half the fun is seeing what impression a story has left upon me and the family, unaided. This one hasn't left any impression on the family as they haven't seen it. The standard pattern for the first couple of Capaldi seasons, with a couple of our kids still relatively young and sensitive, was that I would screen the episode (usually accompanied by the Better Half) sometime on the Saturday evening of its BBC1 debut, time-shifted; if it was deemed suitable, the kids would watch again with me Sunday morning. Almost always, the eldest would be allowed to watch next day, even if his younger siblings couldn't. This is one of those few that I considered too frightening for all three kids.

The Better Half meanwhile was finding the 2015 series increasingly hard to endure for different reasons, and by the end of the Zygons two-parter, had announced she wasn't going to bother watching any longer. By the time of the story following Sleep No More, I'd been a bit spoilered and knew that significant things were going to happen in it and the two episodes following, so I managed to persuade her to return to watching, though I don't think she enjoyed much until Bill arrived (but that's for another time). She's not managed to catch up with Sleep No More since, leaving it as the only new Who episode she's not seen to date.

Reaction

This is a very clever narrative, excellently made, and I hate it. The world building is expertly done, with hints at a catastrophe that's reshaped the land masses of the Earth and little touches to subtly shade in how the society now functions. The concept of the Grunts, and Bethany Black's performance, is also strong, as are the other moments that colour in the theme of a space-age future corrupted by neoliberal capitalism (a theme that would be revisited in Capaldi's next season). The regulars are working at their peak, and there's some nice jokes including in-jokes ("It's the Silurians all over again"). The bit where the ship's computer has been reprogrammed so it won't open unless someone does something silly (sings a song in this case) is a rip off of the same gag in David Tennant story 42, but it still works, and this story is shot and edited much better than 42. The central twist, that the footage we're seeing isn't from cameras per se, is subtly hinted at before the big reveal.

In summary, it's an effective mini-horror movie complete with final eerie twist, sampling a sub-genre that had never been used in Who before. If it were one of author Mark Gatiss' BBC4 one-offs, I would have no problem. But as Doctor Who? Every time I watch it, it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, and feels like a bad fit for the show. I've never had much truck with people who say "it's just not Doctor Who" about any particular story, just because they don't like it (it's after all the show that can go anywhere and do anything), so I'm going to have to unpack this feeling a little to convince myself I'm not a hypocrite.

There's two main points that I can't get beyond that block me from accepting this story in a Doctor Who context. The first is that the story is unresolved from the protagonist's point of view, and he doesn't even know it. To quote the script, the following delivered by the Doctor: "We will sort this, Clara. We'll sort you. We'll sort Nagata, and everyone back on Triton. And then we will destroy Morpheus forever." A lot of people don't like this kind of showboating from the 21st century version of their hero, but at least he normally follows through on what he says. Here, he doesn't realise what the exact threat is and leaves without defeating it. The main character has made an explicit promise to the audience (which would have been implicit anyway if he hadn't been showing off) that he doesn't deliver on. If I'm very charitable, I can project events after the credits roll where the Doctor and Clara back on Triton realise what has been revealed only to the audience, and do fully destroy Morpheus forever. But it's a big stretch. Effectively, the story expects me to write its own sequel in its head, or else believe that the Doctor can't keep me and all the other children watching safe.

The second problematic point is that the piece as a whole is just too dark (literally and metaphorically), in particular the final shocking sequence. It's fine in a horror film to pull the rug from out from the audience and reveal that the horror has come back from the dead, literally or metaphorically; in fact, it's more than fine, it's expected. But here it's just another betrayal of viewer trust, and the very final moments (which I can't spell out as I don't want to spoil it for the uninitiated) go too far for a family audience. There's a combination of concept, dialogue and visuals which is very impactful, and which I'd more than appreciate in another context, but which pushes it well over the line of acceptability.

There are some bits that don't work on the story's own terms too: if this were one of author Mark Gatiss' BBC4 one-offs, or shown anywhere else, it would be called out for being wildly derivative of other sources. It's only because it hasn't been done in a Doctor Who context (and there may be a reason for that!) that found footage seems refreshing. The narrative isn't flawless either: for example, why let the Doctor go at the end? Things need a "proper climax", but killing the Doctor would do that, and there's plenty of opportunities for it to be done; letting him go leaves open the possibility that he'll rumble things and mount a defence from Triton. Gatiss tacitly seems to agree that there are loose ends, as he planned a sequel for a while before dropping the idea. I'm glad he did: Doctor Who should offer hope, without it needing to be tacked on after the fact.

Now, I appreciate that this was not the best one to watch on a very small screen, what with all those dark, runny, shouty bits; so, I may give it another chance in another couple of years perhaps. But, as someone who's become a Doctor Who pusher (see Deeper Thoughts for more details), I have finally found something I'd rather my kids didn't watch. "You will show this film to your family, won't you?" says Rassmussen. "No" says I.

Connectivity: 

Both Sleep No More and Vincent and the Doctor are Steven Moffat era one-episode stories which feature a piece of art being created which contains something horrific. Sleep features in both (this latest story revolves around it, and Vincent's snoring is commented upon in the earlier tale).

Deeper Thoughts:
Adventures in Holiday Parenting (Part 2). So, to recap: I went on holiday with my family in two different times, and the two events were connected by some quirks of coincidence - it's a bit like Mawdryn Undead, now I come to think of it (and was just as fun!). In 1984, 12 year old me went to Malta with my mother, grandfather and sister (woman of 44, man of 69, girl of 9); our first foreign holiday. In 2018, my 12 year old eldest son went with me, the Better Half and the other two kids to Tenerife; the kids' first foreign holiday. On both trips I coincidentally brought with me the same Fighting Fantasy book, City of Thieves (but I'm an adult now so I brought a book that didn't require dice rolls too, which was Robert Webb's How Not to Be a Boy). In 1984, City of Thieves had been my saviour from boredom, when it rained regularly in that island republic; I had tried and failed during the 2018 trip to get my eldest, or his two siblings, to embrace the book similarly; but, not only did it never rain, they never got a chance for any constructive boredom, such are the wonders of portable entertainment and information devices. I did however succeed in introducing them to the continental wonders of Fanta Limón.

When I got stuck into Robert Webb's book though, I started to feel a little guilty about my actions. In his own words, the book is "a deconstruction of masculinity for comic & political effect though the lens of [his] childhood". It's a very good but chastening read, and it made me (as I suspect it will to any male partner or parent reading it) want to improve myself as a person, particularly in relation to my family. I wasn't being negatively gender-specific (I'd have been overjoyed if my daughter had wanted to try City of Thieves) but I was trying to influence them based on a pattern ingrained in me when I was young, which might not be that healthy. My nostalgia had made me a pusher, and I'd already got them hooked on fizzy drinks. It wasn't as if I was a one-time offender either. Almost every one of the Doctor Who stories that I've covered for the blog, I've tried to get the kids interested in too: is that part of the same pattern?

My grandfather had been stationed in Malta in the second world war, and he wanted to show it to us. My Dad, who took us to Spain in 1985, had previously been to the same resort when younger for holidays with his mates. I was now the third generation to try to relive old times through new people. I know it's ultimately harmless to want to interest one's children in things one is interested in, but it still gave me pause. Good or bad, though, it's almost certainly counter-productive. My Dad was interested in all kinds of sport, and tried to share this with his growing son, but - perhaps because of his avidity - I wasn't interested at all. He was probably dumbfounded as to how to connect with someone who was mad keen on Doctor Who, rather than Brentford FC, but he did make an effort to meet me some of the way.

Dad had two anecdotes about Doctor Who which he'd deploy of occasion throughout my childhood,  as if they were new and he'd never told me before. The first was about an evening sometime in the first half of the 1970s, when he'd vaguely recognised someone in a London pub as being off the telly, and had amiably mentioned this to the person in question. He had then been invited by that person to guess their identity. "You're not Doctor Who, are you?" said my Dad; "No, actually, I'm the Brigadier". This was followed by Nicholas Courtney and my father having a drink and a chat together. Nice bloke, apparently. I was (ungratefully) a bit disappointed that it never turned out to be Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker no matter how many times the tale was told. The second was a comment he'd often make in our living room: "Your Doctor Who's made in a place that's only about the size of this room, you know?!". Said room was indeed large, as the back of the house had been extended and it was the size of two large living rooms stuck together. I suspected at the time, though, and now know for sure, that it was still smaller than Limehouse D, let alone the Television Centre studios being used at the time the comment was made. He tried, at least.

The boot is on the other foot now, though, as my son - since the world cup, and perhaps because of a previous lifetime of his father trying to encourage him to like TV science fiction - only talks about football, and I don't even have two anecdotes to tell on that score. I'll have to try too. But not too hard; whatever they like is fine, whether it's something I'm into or not. Another lesson I've learnt is never to try to second guess them, as - to my surprise - when we arrived back to our home from Gatwick Airport, our sojourn in the Canaries over, one of the first things the children wanted to do was resume their watching of the recent Tom Baker boxset, even the football crazy eldest. So, that's something.

In Summary:
Less is more. Less of Sleep No More, please.

Vincent and the Doctor

Chapter The 95th, Paris, a mystery about a work of art, going back in time to meet the painter... but not City of Death, nothing remotely like City of Death, alas.

Plot: 
The Doctor takes Amy to the Musée d'Orsay in present day Paris to cheer her up because her fiancé's been erased out of existence. There, the Doctor notices a creature's face in one of Van Gogh's paintings - which we're told means something very bad - so rushes them both back to Arles in 1890 to ask Vincent - who we're told is very talented and important - about it, because it's urgent and vital (we're told). They meet the painter, but he may be a parallel universe version as he seems to have both ears intact, talks about painting sunflowers like it's a new idea despite having painted them loads by 1890 (he's even been painted painting sunflowers by Gauguin two years earlier), and crucially doesn't show any real signs of his documented mental illness bar being a bit intense when he has too much coffee. But he does helpfully tell us that he's mad, so that's okay then.

The three of them effortlessly defeat the invisible alien thing (called a Zzzzzzzzz, I think, or I may have nodded off briefly). The Doctor then breaks pretty much every rule he's ever had by allowing non-diegetic modern pop music onto the soundtrack (oh, and he takes an individual to see his own future impact too). Vincent is shown that he will be successful, but this makes no difference and he still commits suicide sometime after they've dropped him back in his proper place and time, which the Doctor knew would happen all along (bit presumptuous of him that, really, though).

Context:

It has become a tradition that every year, once a year, the blog covers a story during the family holiday, and the Deeper Thoughts section temporarily morphs into something of a travelogue (previous examples have been The Leisure Hive last year, and The Androids of Tara the year before). We were going abroad this time, and several factors - luggage space being at a premium, the randomly selected tale being of 21st century vintage, and my being burned last year with the lack of a DVD player in an Isle of Wight cottage (so what chance a holiday apartment in Tenerife?) - necessitated that physical media would not be coming abroad with us. But technology came to the rescue, and I did something I've not had call to do before: I opened the BBC iplayer app, where everything from Rose onwards is available right now, and downloaded an episode of Doctor Who (two actually, but that's another story) onto my phone.

As we were in the Canary Islands, Planet of Fire would have probably been the choice had it been a non-random selection, but it's already been covered for the blog here. Vincent and the Doctor is pretty summery, though, and the crew went abroad themselves to film it. One evening, when the family had turned in, I sat out on the apartment veranda and watched with a glass of red, which chimed a bit with the European street café vibe of the early Arles sections of the story.

First-time round:

On its first BBC1 broadcast, live or probably slightly time-shifted, in June 2010. Matt Smith's first year had a few great stories, but was mostly disappointing for me. So, the only clear memory I have is the usual roller-coaster dip of repeatedly starting a story with high expectations, and ending the experience thinking "well, maybe next week's will be better". This time, it had a cameo from Bill Nighy and was being written by Richard Curtis, most of whose work to that point I'd very much enjoyed; so, the roller-coaster started higher, but ended lower, alas.

Reaction

To date, this is the only Doctor Who episode to be followed on its broadcast by the BBC announcer giving it the old "if you have been affected by any of the issues in this programme" v.o. with a caption card containing a helpline number. It would be easy to scoff at this (how many people rang up to ask for help with the giant invisible alien chicken in their local church, do you think?) but the message, like the story preceding it, had its heart in the right place. It's therefore hard to criticise without seeming uncharitable, but I'm going to try my best. This is such a cautious depiction of mental illness - as it probably had to be for a family audience - that you could blink and miss that there was anything up with Vincent at all. To overcompensate, the script repeatedly talks about it: tell, tell, tell; it hesitates to show more than a glimpse. As such, it fails as a drama and damages the possibilities for engagement on the topic that presumably were the intention in the first place.

This hesitance borders on historical inaccuracy. Vincent's documented troubles amounted to quite a bit more than feeling sad that he's going to be lonely. I was distracted for a lot of the running time scouring the little screen on which I was viewing it to see if there was any make-up job on his ear, which he'd famously mutilated two years before the events of this story; obviously, the production team has decided not to go anywhere near there. So, if they couldn't really cover the complexities of the subject properly in the chosen vehicle, should they not have tried at all? Tough call. Arguably, this script raises awareness of a subject to a new audience, and that's a good thing if it's an honest depiction. But is it? I don't feel qualified to judge, and I don't know why anyone would, even Curtis with his many years working for good causes.

Every person with a mental illness experiences it differently, and history doesn't even agree on what diagnosis Van Gogh would be given today: bipolar disorder, depression, epilepsy, porphyria? Syphilis? Ah, there's the rub: the conversation about mental illness is one we need to have, but it can get difficult, it can get nasty, it can get "not in front of the children". It's a can of worms you can't put a lid back on in 45 minutes, particularly if you have to leave enough time for the sweetener of a monster subplot, and avoid scarring the children watching. I don't want to seem reactionary, but I have to spell this out: in this narrative, the Doctor, our hero, leaves his young companion for a night with a man they've only just met, who has been consistently reported historically to have uncontrollable violent episodes. Side-stepping something like that is airbrushing out realities to the point of callousness. The result is that nothing appears to be at stake on screen, even though in the real history Vincent's sanity was in the balance (and was not destined for a happy ending). The monster subplot similarly doesn't inject any jeopardy - we're never shown anything particularly dangerous that the creature can do, just told. And because it's operating mainly as a metaphor - the enemy is invisible, aggression is blind, etc. - it ends up being a rubbish foe.

The regulars are curiously unlikable here: I've never warmed to Amy's shouty unearned confidence, but can usually rely on Matt Smith no matter what the material; but, his relentless focus on a harmless seeming monster rather than what the audience knows is the real story makes him seem uncaring. Plus, no matter what 'everything sounds like Coldplay now' tune is ladled over it, the ending is wrong: it's supposed to jerk tears, but it just elicited anger in this viewer. The Doctor has no right to take Vincent into the future of his own legacy, and the script has no right to presuppose what this might have meant or done to him. Lots of people really love this story, so maybe it's just me. There are some things to recommend it: there's a great performance from Tony Curran, a little too self aware I think, but that's the fault of the script not him; it's shot well in sumptuous locations; the recurring moments of tableau where the on screen visual matches a famous Van Gogh painting are also nice, and there are some good gags here and there. That's not enough, though, to save it; the underlying script is too flawed - it needed extensive work, or abandoning all together.

Connectivity: 

Very tough one this: I can't really see much of a link between Vincent and the Doctor and The Ark in Space. The monsters have a very loose connection being both based on exaggerated examples from nature (a parasitic wasp and a crazy chicken). There's mention of the Krafayis creatures travelling through space in groups and not making planet-fall often, which is similar to the Wirrn too.

Deeper Thoughts:
Adventures in Holiday Parenting (Part 1). We've put off taking the kids (boys of 12 and 8, girl of 6) on a foreign holiday until now. We wanted them to be old enough to enjoy it, remember it, and - to be frank - be old enough not to be a nightmare on a plane or in an airport. In the meantime, we've had some great adventures in the UK (the break spent in Leeds Castle was a definitely highlight, and not just because Androids of Tara was filmed there, honest!). But it was long past due to roam a little wider, not least as there's still a customs union and free movement, who knows how they'll remain. It was only on the plane - upon which, all three kids were good as gold, by the by - that I realised my eldest was the same age, give or take a week or two - that I was when I first went on a foreign holiday. In 1984, I travelled with my mother, grandfather and sister to Malta. I'd been concerned with what my own children would remember from this trip, so cast my mind back to see what I recalled of my first jaunt, and it mostly involved Fighting Fantasy novels.

City of Thieves (Malta)

Malta was not then the tourist haven (nor tax haven) that it has become since; I don't remember beaches, I just remember rocks. We weren't lucky with the weather either - there was quite a bit of rain. So, I mainly remember sitting around the hotel keeping myself busy playing the aforementioned game books, which were popular (certainly popular with me) at the time. City of Thieves is the one that I definitely remember having with me, a rather good example of the genre by Ian Livingstone, one of the two founders of the range. For the uninitiated, these are books divided into 400 numbered passages, where you can make choices - to go east, turn to 268, that sort of thing - plus use dice to simulate sword fights, luck and tests of strength. If you make it through these, you reach the end (which is always passage number 400) and win. I was almost as keen on them in those days as I was on Doctor Who.

It's curious that I have no memory of taking any Doctor Who novelisations on that holiday, though I remember The Awakening by Eric Pringle getting a bit water damaged when I read it poolside on holiday in Spain with my Dad the following year (the rest of that holiday I remember mostly drinking Fanta Limón while playing a Popeye arcade game, battling with a German teenager for who had the high score that day). So, the little minor entertainments can end up being the most memorable things. This makes one wonder whether it's worth spending so much money. I don't know how much Malta would have cost, but enough to want myself to remember more than rocks; I could have read that book anywhere, after all.

City of Thieves (Tenerife)

Maybe this trip would be different, though. For my 2018 excursion, I'd selected my holiday reading carefully; having not had a chance to read Robert Webb's How Not to Be a Boy since it was published last year, but hearing many many good things about it, I'd got myself a copy. I was concerned though, that I might finish it before the trip was out, so I ordered another book too: a recently re-released edition of City of Thieves by Ian Livingstone. As I said, the parallels between my first ever foreign holiday and this 2018 trip only occurred to me when I'd already left England, so this was not deliberate. But maybe my subconscious was trying to clue me in. I'd picked it as I wanted something light - I'm not one who can handle Proust when I've got sand between my toes, but I don't object to packing dice. I also thought (hoped?) one of the kids might want a go of it after me. I've previously had some success introducing the kids to these books, which of late have had something of a renaissance. But, as many will know, sometimes too much parental enthusiasm can be the kiss of death to a child's curiosity.

I'd also not factored in modern technology. A holiday let doesn't come with a DVD player as standard, but wi-fi is definitely expected. The same kind of streaming services which allowed me to take a Doctor Who story with me to Tenerife, meant the kids could watch all the Netflix shows and youtube videos they watch at home on their tablets (which were also definitely expected, and had to be brought with us). Even if it had rained (it didn't) there was minimal chance of them getting bored for one second. But also, there was minimal chance of them discovering anything new, or just savouring a small amount of something familiar, as I had with my Fighting Fantasy book. I tried in vain to explain how, when I was their age, you couldn't access much of back home when you were away, and it couldn't access you. You drank Fanta Limón because you literally couldn't get it in England, and parents read British papers that were a day old, because they couldn't read the news at the touch of a touchscreen. But I had no luck persuading them to pry themselves away from their screens to try City of Thieves. They all liked Fanta Limón though.

The blogger abroad (Fanta Limón not pictured)

So, how did all this lead me to question myself and my parenting? If you want to know more, turn to the Deeper Thoughts section of the 'Sleep No More' blog post when I get it published (it's coming next); if you'd rather not, then turn to... well, whatever you want - can I recommend reading a good book, perhaps? Till next time.

In Summary:
Not everyone, however talented and well-meaning elsewhere, can write Doctor Who.