The Time Warrior

Chapter The 144th, where the Doctor is back in time for a new companion.

Plot:

UNIT bring the Doctor in to investigate as scientists from a top secret research establishment keep going missing. Also investigating is a young reporter Sarah Jane Smith, who has blagged her way in by pretending to be her Aunt Lavinia, an esteemed virologist. The Doctor rigs up a gizmo which shows that someone is travelling through time to kidnap the scientists and steal equipment, dragging them back to the middle ages. He follows their time signal in the TARDIS, unaware that Sarah has stowed away aboard. A Sontaran, Linx, has crash landed and done a deal with a local robber baron, Irongron. In exchange for anachronistic weapons, Irongron gives Linx shelter, and Linx repairs his spaceship with help from the kidnapped scientists.

Sarah gets the wrong end of the stick and thinks the Doctor is the one helping Irongron. With soldiers from the nearby castle of a local nobleman, who fears attack by Irongron, they kidnap the Doctor. After the Doctor explains, they join forces to repel Irongron's attack, then sneak into Irongron's castle, drugging his men's food with a sleeping potion. They send all the scientists back to their proper time, but cannot stop the launch sequence of Linx's mended spaceship. Linx kills Irongron, and a stray arrow kills Linx in the ship, when it goes into the probic vent on the back of his neck - a Sontaran's only weakness. Linx collapses onto the lift-off button, meaning the ship's engines will fire and destroy the castle. Everyone else escapes, and the weapons Linx built get destroyed in the blast. Sarah Jane joins the Doctor in the TARDIS to travel back to her own time and place.

Context:

Back to random selection from the whole of the Doctor Who TV oeuvre, after a slightly more guided trip to the North Pole for Last Christmas. I watched this stripped an episode a day over four days in the Chrimbo Limbo, the days between Christmas and New Year's Day. All the family (the Better Half, boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7) were up for it, and watched along with me. Everyone was on hols from school or work, and we took a break for 25 minutes every day from indulging in the usual preoccupations of the period: pondering over whether it's still acceptable to have the Christmas lights on (yes), to have the seasonal playlist still in rotation (that's a no apparently - I was outvoted), not knowing what day it is, and having the usual panic waking up every morning that one has probably missed a bin day and might have to wait two  weeks to have the mounds of wrapping paper, wine bottles and uneaten sprouts taken away. The Time Warrior is an apt story to watch at this time, as it was originally broadcast starting just before Christmas 1973, crossing into the New Year period of 1974 by its final episode. It was viewed from the DVD but with the - frankly unnecessary - updated CGI effects switched off, as nature intended. 

First time round:

Having been far too young to watch The Time Warrior on its BBC1 debut broadcast in 1973 / 74, this was one of very many 'classic series' stories that I caught for the first time on VHS. This release was more notable than a lot of those other tapes, though. It was one of the earliest, before distribution was reliable, before future releases were even advertised (or at least they weren't advertised anywhere the young me would ever have seen them). As such, back then, one stumbled across them - they were always a find. This particular find (on a Saturday in 1989 in the Bognor Regis WHSmiths) was particularly special, as a head-spinning three new titles hit the shelves at once. I've written about this moment in the First Time Round sections of the blog posts on the other two stories that became available that day, The Ark in Space, and The Daleks. The Time Warrior, like most of the stories released at that time, had its episodes stitched together into one feature-length omnibus. Most of those stories, though, were later re-released on VHS during the 1990s unedited; for some reason, The Time Warrior never was, so it was only when the DVD came out eighteen years later that I first got to enjoy the full Time Warrior experience.

Reaction:

Every story of Jon Pertwee's five year tenure in the title role of Doctor Who was deliberately planned to have a hook, a big audience-grabbing unique selling point. Each of these bagged the series opener the cover of that week's Radio Times. In the first year, it was a new Doctor, and the show being on TV in colour for the first time. In the following years, there was the launch of a new Master villain, the return of the Daleks after many years, and the first ever story to bring back old Doctors alongside the current model. For the eleventh season, which started late in 1973, producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks must have felt hard-pressed to come up with another new idea. In the end, they went with the Doctor travelling back in time. Now, or in the early years, this wouldn't be seen as remarkable at all, but in 1973 time travel backwards hadn't been done for a while: a couple of brief interludes only in the previous seven years, no whole stories. Doctor Who was by then a show about space monsters - either the Doctor went to them, or they came to him - not meeting Kings and Queens and other historical personages. Whether reintroducing this was a sufficient hook for the new series is debatable (the Radio Times cover completely ignored this aspect of the story, for example), but it worked as a way to expand the canvas and allow different types of stories to be told.

What writer Robert Holmes makes of the brief is deceptively simple. It is probably the epitome of what fans refer to as a 'romp'. It's a slightly nebulous label, so there's room for differences of opinion, but to my mind a Doctor Who romp is one where the tone is quite light-hearted but energetic, the stakes aren't that high, and the main aim is fun rather than scares, action or drama. As such, it's a very difficult style to do well. Make it too low stakes and light-hearted, and it doesn't look like it's being taken seriously enough, which means people watching don't care, which means they don't have fun, defeating the point. Holmes was a craftsman, and well versed in writing Doctor Who by this point, having written one a year on average since Patrick Troughton was the Doctor, so finds the right balance. He creates an interesting enough premise: the present is being invaded by the past, because a futuristic space villain has crash-landed in Earth history. He thereby distills everything about Doctor Who into these four episodes, and introduces a new sub-genre. The pseudo historical, as it is called in old school Who fan circles, features an alien menace terrorising a historical setting. Like most story styles it was tried as a one-off experiment in an early William Hartnell outing (The similarly named The Time Meddler in Doctor Who's second ever season), but from this point on it gets used regularly, particularly by Holmes himself in such stories as Pyramids of Mars and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Not content with sub-genre innovation, Holmes also creates an enduring new alien race, perhaps the last great returning monster of the classic series, the Sontarans. A jingoistic species with an overriding passion for war is another deceptively simple premise, but Holmes makes it work because he writes it (and Kevin Lindsay as Linx plays it) straight as an arrow. The (excellent) design of the creature belies its nature, being squat and potato-headed, but not a figure of fun despite some taunts from the medieval bandit characters; the sense in the script is that Linx knows he may appear ridiculous to these primitives, and uses it to his advantage, taking Irongron by surprise, for example, and besting him in one scuffle. The subplot of Linx perverting the course of history by providing weapons to Irongron that are too advanced for the current undeveloped society is nice enough in itself, but is also interesting for how it illuminates the Sontaran's character. Even past the point where he no longer needs to bother, he still follows through on his side of the bargain - he has a sense of honour and integrity. Even though Irongron isn't particularly interested, Linx continues working on a fighting robot for him too, and it's clear that he's doing this because he loves it! He loves making weapons and stirring up conflict. It's an honesty of purpose that's never quite recaptured in the future Sontaran stories, until maybe the new series appearances.

As well as expertly treading the fine line regarding the tone of the story, and creating a new story type, and a new monster, Holmes has to introduce a new companion. And what a companion it is: Sarah Jane Smith. She doesn't quite arrive fully-formed, it's a slightly embryonic version of the character that will endure for almost forty more years, but it's still a very impressive debut. Sarah is self-possessed, clever, resourceful, indefatigable, and won't let anyone push her around. Elizabeth Sladen performs the role with gusto, managing to make every line seem lovable, even when the - middle-aged male - production team give Sarah material that's veering towards shrill and hectoring. Pertwee has an instant rapport with his new co-star; his performance here is charming and unforced, with all the irritating, patronising bits from previous years gone, either because they weren't relevant to this new relationship (unlike the more 'mother hen' role he took up with regard to previous companion Jo Grant) or perhaps because he was getting better at it after four years. The guest characters are all written and played perfectly for the romp style too; larger than life, yes, but still expertly calibrated. David Daker as Irongron, particularly, is having enormous fun, but so is the audience watching him. It's a shame he gets killed at the end. But everyone is great: Jeremy Bulloch as Hal the Archer, Alan Rowe as the pallid, worried Edward, and pre-Eastenders June Brown as his wife. My favourite is Donald Pelmear as Professor Rubeish, a wonderful comic performance.

Connectivity: 

Both stories were first broadcast starting in December. Both feature actors (Kevin Lindsay, Dan Starkey) who have appeared multiple times in the show as Sontarans, as well as occasionally in other roles.

Deeper Thoughts:

The end of 'The Tens'. The end of this decade, like the last one, has caught me by surprise. It's only very recently that I realised that the end of a ten year block - what to call it, the Teens, the Tens? - was fast approaching, and I remember the end of 2009 taking me similarly unawares. The end of the 1970s or 1980s seemed much more apparent, and much more celebrated, by comparison. I don't know if it's my getting older, or because we're still early in the century (making the naming convention a little tricky) that's the reason for this. As with everything we pattern-seeking humans consider, twentieth-century Doctor Who can get lumped together, and appraised in ten-year chunks; indeed, a very good trio of reference books were released in the 1990s that did exactly this for the previous three decades (The Sixties, The Seventies and The Eighties, each by David J. Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker; hard to come by now, but thoroughly recommended). Until now, twenty-first century Doctor Who hadn't been going long enough to be similarly treated. Now, it has reached the end of its first full decade, which can be compared to the stories broadcast between 2005 and 2009. You never know, similar books might start being published soon.

The decade started with new Who firmly established after its re-launch five years earlier. The years from 2010 to 2019 would then be about it enduring as that established show once its first major phase came to an end on the very first day of the decade, January 1st 2010, which saw the final David Tennant / Russell T Davies episode, part 2 of The End of Time, broadcast. The departure of such big hitters both in front of and behind the cameras could easily have been the end of the show altogether. But the show carried on to the end of the decade, with the final two years seeing another new phase, with eleven stories broadcast starring Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, under the showrunner-ship of Chris Chibnall. These were bookends, though: the responsibility for the lion's share of the 2010s fell on one man: Steven Moffat. He was the main reason that the show was still on air ten years later. He cast two new actors to the starring role, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, and produced three successful seasons of stories for each. He wrote an astonishing eight Christmas specials, every year from 2010 to 2017.

In this time, the show built on the reach it had had in the previous decade to become a truly global phenomenon; this maybe came at the cost of the size of the UK TV audience - Doctor Who rarely made the ratings top ten as it had the previous decade. TV was increasingly consumed in new ways in the last decade, though, and Doctor Who embraced this, becoming a huge streaming hit (all of the twenty-first century episodes are still available on BBC iplayer). Another new way in which Doctor Who could be consumed during this decade was on the silver screen, with cinema releases for a couple of big episodes. This was all kicked off by the 50th anniversary in 2013, one of the most significant and successful times for Doctor Who in the decade, and a triumph for Moffat on every level.

Doctor Who on home media also evolved over the course of ten years. The regular classic series releases from the previous decade (like The Time Warrior) were coming to an end by the early years of the 2010s. By the end of 2013, all complete stories had come out, the range only running until then because of multiple re-releases. Three more semi-missing stories - two in 2014, and the final ever unreleased scrap in 2015 - stretched things further, but it looked like the days of the shiny disc as distribution method were over. A new all-animated version of The Power of the Daleks was released a year later, but the physical format version seemed secondary to its launch on the BBC Store, an archive streaming service. As it turned out, though, that streaming service was pretty short-lived, whereas the idea of animating stories for physical release looks set to run and run. This, together with the Blu-ray box set range (a well-planned and budgeted attempt to produce the definitive collection of classic Doctor Who) means a shiny disc renaissance, and opens up the possibility of releases for many years to come until - by the end of the next decade, perhaps - every single classic Doctor story might be available for the home shelf, with visuals for all the missing stories. This, of course, can feed in to other platforms too: the recently launched Britbox subscription streaming service put up hundreds of Doctor Who episodes, including some animated ones, on Boxing day, and they are already proving very popular.

On a personal note, the last ten years has seen one final addition to my family (a girl, currently 7 years old), and seen her and her two brothers grow up. They are all still interested in watching Doctor Who with their Mum and Dad, sometimes reluctantly, but usually with joy. Tomorrow, the first episode of Doctor Who in the Twenties will be broadcast, and I hope they'll all be joining me to watch it. In 2020, new Doctor Who stories will still be showing on TV, and innovations will still continue to be made in presenting the old stories for purchase. That's something to celebrate in dark days. So, to you and yours: Happy New Year, and Happy New Decade! 

In Summary:

Simple (deceptively simple), honest-to-goodness fun, in 25-minute long bursts - what a nice way to end the year!

Last Christmas

Chapter The 143rd, all together now: Last Christmas, I gave you my brain, which you devoured slowly in an Inception pastiche. Doesn't scan.

Plot:

The Doctor is reunited with Clara a while after they parted company, each having lied to each other that they were fine. The Doctor imagined that Clara was happy with Danny Pink, but doesn't know he's dead; Clara thinks the Doctor's happy on Gallifrey, and doesn't know it's still lost. (Had anyone else completely forgotten about all of this stuff, like I had? It seemed more important at the time.) Anyway, they're reunited on Clara's snowy roof when Clara catches Santa and two elves after they crash their sleigh. Later, the TARDIS travellers take a trip to a futuristic North Pole science base. (Why do they do this? Well, it's a long story.) The team based there are having trouble. They discovered something buried in the snow, which turned out to be hostile, and now some of their colleagues have been taken over by Kantrofarri, commonly known as Dream Crabs; these creatures scuttle around, spin down from the ceiling, and when they get you, they hug your face - rather like face-huggers - insert a proboscis through your skull, and drink your brain. In order that you let them do this without fighting, they put you into a dream state. Multiple crabs attack, but the Doctor, Clara and the four remaining members of the base team are rescued by Santa and the elves.

Despite being the subject of much scepticism from everyone, it does seem that this Santa is the real deal. While people are distracted, though, Clara is attacked while on her own in another part of the base, and taken over by a Dream Crab. She dreams that she is enjoying Christmas Day with Danny Pink. The Doctor allows himself to be crabbed so he can enter her dream world and get her back. They escape back to the base, the crabs that were on their faces turning to dust, but they realise that they are still dreaming - the original attack that they thought Santa saved them from must have been successful, and Santa is part of the dream - representing their collective unconscious trying to wake them up to their fate. Working together, they all break free and wake up again.

The Doctor is just leaving when Clara reminds him that they saw Santa, a figment of their imagination, on her roof back home. They are all still dreaming, and the zombified crew members, staggering towards them with crab-heads, are twisted reflections of the parts of their brains already succumbing to the dream. Surrounded, the Doctor urges them to use their imagination to save themselves, and Santa appears with his sleigh. They take an airborne sleigh ride and one by one they vanish, reappearing in the real world - none of them are scientists, they're just living ordinary, marvellous lives. The Doctor wakes up on some planet somewhere, and races to Clara's house. Removing the dead crab from her face, it looks like she had been taken into the dream when a lot older, having spent a life without the Doctor. But Santa arrives again - it's another dream: Clara's her usual self, and can rejoin the Doctor for adventures in time and space...

Context:

It was very nearly Christmas 2019, the tree was up, the lights were on. I popped on the Blu-ray, from the new series 9 box set (despite the story very clearly being the culmination of the series 8 plot lines, it was for some reason held back to be on the series 9 box set). This time, all the family (Better Half, boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7) watched. The youngest found a couple of sections too scary, and ran out of the room for a bit (there's no room to hide behind our sofa as it's hard up against the wall). At least one of children still believes in Father Christmas, so I'm glad the story hedges its bets somewhat, and doesn't destroy all their illusions!

First time round:

It's been five flippin' years since Last Christmas was shown; time has flown by. As it seems only like yesterday, I have no excuse for not remembering any details of watching it for the first time. This was the last regular Doctor Who broadcast before I started this blog, so I can't look back on any posts from the time for clues of what I was up to. I searched the internet for the TV schedules of the day, and nothing leapt out at me, to help me place things in context. I searched my memory, but - as long as they remain blissfully undramatic - one Christmas Day is very like another in our house. I expect I would have been enjoying the company of relatives at 6.15pm, and would have watched Last Christmas time-shifted later in the evening with the Better Half, when people had gone home, and the kids were abed. This era was notable for being a bit scarier than before, so we would have made a decision after that first watch as to whether it was suitable for the younger of the children to see. I can't believe we would have let anyone but the eldest see it back then, as it is jolly frightening in parts; however, all of them claimed to remember it.

Reaction:

Last Christmas was the tenth consecutive Doctor Who Christmas special since the series had returned in 2005. The only comparable festive run on British TV was for the sit-com Only Fools and Horses in the 1980s and 1990s, and the makers of that show dispensed with the straitjacket of having a seasonal theme quite early on. Neither of the showrunners of Doctor Who for those ten specials (first Russell T Davies, then the writer and exec of Last Christmas, Steven Moffat) wanted to give up that easily. Davies had done contemporary Christmas, space Christmas, Victorian Christmas; he had introduced killer Christmas trees, exploding baubles, robot Santas; he had sampled screwball comedies and disaster movies. Moffat sampled even more, riffing on specific texts such as A Christmas Carol and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; he did future Christmas, wartime Christmas, and created killer snowmen, sentient baubles and trees, and a village called Christmas where nobody can lie. What was there left to do? Well, how about Santa - the real Santa, the actual deal? The trouble is, how can that person / concept exist within the "everything must have a scientific explanation" rigour of Doctor Who. A couple of Yuletides later, Moffat got even more desperate for thematic ideas, and faced the similar problem of how to integrate superheroes into Doctor Who. His solution for Santa Claus is a lot neater.

Because it's all just a dream, innit?! Now, normally this would be a cop-out, but luckily the film Inception was relatively fresh in everyone's mind, and dreams nested within dreams as a concept was a reasonably hot property, waiting to be plundered. In the best Doctor Who tradition, Moffat nicks it shamelessly, and makes it his own. As well as giving free rein to embrace the descending level of dreams idea, the humans' subconscious sampling allows riffs on other films like Alien and The Thing. None of this would be up to much if the casting of the big man was anything but perfect, but Nick Frost is a marvel. He wasn't the most obvious choice, but the Claus on the page is a sassy and sarcastic one, and Frost performs this with aplomb, and an added sprig of meta slyness. He doesn't go as far as winking at the camera, but he does seem to be enjoying the danger of dancing up to that line and not quite crossing it. Given the nature of the character, this is apt, and in no way indulgent: Santa is the secular collective idea of a guide through nightmares, as outlined in one of the many excellent dialogue exchanges: "You're a dream who's trying to save us?" "Shona, sweetheart, I'm Santa Claus. I think you just defined me." 

Frost is just one of a great cast. Both actors playing the elves get lots of fun stuff to do, and it's great to see Dan Starkey, who had played Strax the Sontaran regularly for the the last few years, get to do work sans a latex face. It's also good to see Michael Troughton, second Doctor Patrick's other thespian son, finally appear in Doctor Who, after his brother David had landed three speaking parts over the years. The regulars are firing on all cylinders too, particularly Samuel Anderson in his last appearance as Danny Pink, being heroic and self-effacing even as an imaginary version of the character.  Best of all, though, is Faye Marsay as Shona. Sparky, funny ("I will mark you Santa!"), tough, vulnerable, and with all the best bits to do (her dancing to Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody is very special). It's as if she's auditioning to be the new companion. Of course, that's exactly what is happening. Jenna Coleman was all set to depart the show with this Christmas special, and Shona was intended to become the new regular.

I've seen rumours that the decisions - and rewrites - were made very late in the day, but nothing confirming exactly when. It's definitely on record that the original ending would have been pretty much what is presented as a false ending in the final finished piece: Clara aged, having lived a full life of her own before the Doctor arrives back, decades too late. In some ways, it's a shame that this never came to pass: the Clara character felt like she stuck around one series too long, and there was nothing significant plot-wise for Coleman to do in the following run of episodes; the presence of Shona, and presumably Marsay (depending on whether she'd have been cast or accepted it as a regular role) would have breathed life into what were a mostly lacklustre set of stories to come next. The confusing way Coleman was eventually written out (she's both alive and dead, and she's roaming the universe in her own TARDiS with someone else who's both alive and dead) was also nowhere near as dramatic and effective as the Last Christmas ending. But, even though it could have been superior in lots of ways, I'm glad it turned out the way it did. Can you imagine how depressing Last Christmas would be with Clara exiting at the end as an old woman? A hell of a downer, that, and it's already been one of the scariest, grimmest Christmas specials ever; plus, the melancholic "Every Christmas is Last Christmas" theme wasn't exactly light relief to begin with. On Christmas day, there's got to be hope.

And this way, Shona gets a very strong ending for herself too, simple but affecting. We see her wake up on Christmas Day, her handwritten itinerary in her lap, which explains whose imagination has been creating the dreamspace in which the previous hour's action has unfolded; it reads "1. DVD (Alien) 2. DVD (The thing from another world) 3. Dad comes round. 4. DVD (Miracle on 34th Street.) 5. THRONES marathon. 6. Forgive Dave???".  I think we have to assume that Shona never got as far as number 5 (though Marsay would later have a regular role on GoT, which is nice).  Then, she picks up her pen, thinks for a moment, and puts a big tick next to point number 6: lovely.

Connectivity: 

One more story where the alien threat uses subterfuge to get away with their naughtiness undetected, though this time they're operating at a subconscious level. In both Last Christmas and Aliens of London / World War Three, the Doctor uses a fire extinguisher as a weapon against the bad guys.

Deeper Thoughts:

And so this is Christmas, and how much have I done. With 2019 now nearing its end, I have been doing the blog for four and a half years approximately. I have covered 143 stories so far, which - had I been watching in chronological rather than random order, would have taken me up to Timelash, the midpoint of sixth Doctor Colin Baker's run. The end - well, at least an end - would have been in sight, with probably another year's worth of blogging (one more episode plus four more shorter seasons plus a feature length special) to see out the 20th century 'classic era'. Right or wrong, I made a decision to jump about in a random order, and to include the 21st century 'new series' too. This means it's all or nothing: I have no convenient stopping point on the way. In fact, if they keep making new episodes, I'll never ever be done - that finishing line will keep receding into the distance. What a thought! Not a sad one, though, as if I'm honest I never thought I'd keep going this long. I've been a bit busier with other things in 2019 than I have been previously, so the number of blog posts completed (31 including this one, but I might yet squeeze another one in before New Year's Eve) is slightly down on recent years. Even so, as things stand, I'm almost at the halfway point. Of course, from January 1st 2020, more will get piled on the To Do list by dint of a new series starting, but I can't get upset about that; in fact, it's rather exciting. New episodes! Every week! It feels like a long time since that happened last.

The distribution of stories was fairly level this year, without any one Doctor or era dominating. Four stories apiece from David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker. Three for Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi. Two each for William Hartnell (one semi-animated), Patrick Troughton (one wholly animated and jolly good it was too) and Jon Pertwee. Only one each for Sylvester McCoy (The Curse of Fenric, although I did watch it twice, see the Deeper Thoughts section of the New Earth post for more details!) and Christopher Eccleston. This is okay, as both have shorter tenures as measured by number of stories, so would need to be rationed if future selection were going to stay as varied. Alas, I saw another two of a Doctor with very few stories left, Colin Baker. I finished my first season, having blogged all the stories in Colin's Trial of a Time Lord year, and now only have four of his stories remaining to watch (including Timelash!). Still, Mindwarp live at the BFI was a blast, and The Twin Dilemma was probably my favourite story to write about (though not to watch) this year. Finally, the addition of K9 and Company (my first and possibly last spin off episode watched for the blog) makes it up to 31.

High and low points? 2019 only had one new broadcast episode, so Resolution obviously stood out; it was also good to get a veritable dollop of new old Who in the form of the previously referenced Macra Terror animation. Of the remaining stories covered for the blog, probably a couple of Russell T Davies productions - bookends of his era in fact, being the first and last produced during his time as showrunner - worked best for me: David Tennant swansong The End of Time, and early Christopher Eccleston story Aliens of London / World War Three. Both tend to divide audiences, but the family and I enjoyed them very very much. Silliest story award goes to Black Orchid, which - considering K9 & Company was also in the running - says something about the very many different levels upon which Black Orchid is so very wrong. I also am starting to question whether I've just watched all the Tom Baker four-parters too many times now, or whether they are secretly all, well, a bit dull. Sorry for the almost blasphemous pronouncement, but none of his were particularly interesting this year. The three that came up (The Creature from the Pit, The Face of Evil, The Horns of Nimon) are certainly not top drawer, so it might just be that. I hope for some great Tom Baker stories next year to prove my theory wrong. I'm also looking forward to a nice new Jodie Whittaker series, a couple more animations, and some more Blu-ray box sets. On top of all that, it's the long-awaited final season of Brexit - this time next year, it'll all be over, so they tell me. What an eventful finale that will be. 

In Summary:

If every Christmas is Last Christmas (which seems needlessly depressing), then every Christmas is also First Christmas (much better!). So, let's accentuate the positive with a Season's Greetings, and - incidentally - a Happy First Christmas to all of you at home!

Aliens of London / World War Three

Chapter The 142nd, where there are dangerous liars in 10 Downing Street, and they want to destroy us all.

Plot:

After adventures in the future and the past, the Doctor returns Rose home; he thinks it's only 12 hours since she left, but he's miscalculated and she's been gone 12 months. The questions and recriminations from Rose's Mum Jackie are cut short by a spacecraft descending into the skies above London, crashing into Big Ben and splash landing into the Thames. It looks like Earth's first contact, but the Doctor is suspicious, and sneaks away from the Tyler's flat to take the TARDIS to a London hospital to investigate the body of the alien pilot, which is under quarantine there. It is a fake - an Earth pig but augmented with genuine alien technology. In the febrile atmosphere in the aftermath of the event, people are getting assaulted on the streets after being falsely identified as aliens. When the Doctor returns to the Powell Estate, Jackie sees inside the TARDIS, and - in a state - rushes home to report him to the government helpline number. Certain words she says trigger an alert, and very quickly troops arrive and take the Doctor and Rose off to 10 Downing Street. They're not being arrested, though, but are instead being drafted in to help alongside many experts from UNIT.

Various minor politicians / public servants have been put in charge of the country, as the PM is missing and the rest of the cabinet are stuck outside central London with roads blocked. These turn out to be disguised alien criminals, the Slitheen family, compressed inside their human skin suits, who have killed the PM. They proceed to kill all the UNIT personnel, but the Doctor, Rose and a backbench MP, Harriet Jones, who happened to be there for a meeting when it all started to kick off, get away. They hole up inside the impregnable Cabinet Room, and call Jackie and Mickey to help them from outside. Meanwhile, the Slitheen, still disguised, make a statement broadcast around the world saying that aliens are orbiting Earth ready to destroy the world. They have indulged in all this theatre with crashed ships and pig pilots, to create a false flag narrative to encourage the release of UN nuclear codes, so they can kick off World War Three. Once that's over, they intend to sell the radioactive Earth for use as cheap spacecraft fuel. The Doctor talks Mickey through hacking into missile control, and he fires a conventional missile at 10 Downing Street. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet are safe within the reinforced walls of the cabinet room, but the Slitheen are all killed. Harriet Jones takes charge in the aftermath, and - as the Doctor tells it to Rose - will go on to become Prime Minister. Rose goes travelling off with the Doctor again, leaving Jackie and Mickey behind.

(Oh, and the compression required for the aliens to squeeze into their disguises causes gas to escape, which sounds like they're farting. This is, regardless of what some might have you believe, a minor part of the narrative.)

Context:

The family have come around to the idea of watching Doctor Who again! Most of the lovelies (Better Half and two of the children - boy of 13, girl of 7) watched this with me from the DVD one Sunday afternoon. I'd expected to have to switch off after the first episode, but nobody wanted to wait, and I was encouraged heartily, maybe even aggressively (you know, like the mafia encourage people) to put on the second part immediately. Christopher Eccleston's entire year is excellent, every second of it, even when there's farting aliens, and I'll fight anyone who says different. If the Slitheen are supposed to be embarrassing, and the plot of this story a bit wonky, then someone needs to tell my family as they adored it. They laughed at the bits that were supposed to be funny, got excited by the bits that were supposed to be thrilling, and were scared when it got scary. If you haven't seen this story recently and have a memory that it's rubbish, then I'd recommend giving it another spin - it is so much better than I remembered.

First time round:

This was the first story filmed for the new Doctor Who series, in a production block that also covered the re-launch episode Rose. The first scenes ever shot were those in the hospital with the space pig. Later, on August 20th 2004, this two-parter went into the studio for the first time. I mention this only because 170 miles away, I was getting married to the Better Half at the very same time. Anyway, a few months later, once the series had got underway, there was advance press regarding these, its fourth and fifth episodes. Slightly sniffy preview comments emerged online to suggest that this would be the first less than excellent story of the run. This caused worry amongst the fans reading it. The first three episodes had made a big splash, but even before episode 2 - when Eccleston's decision only to do one year had leaked - fans were thinking that the show would get cancelled any time soon, so we were all over-reacting to any bad news. Also, there was a small but vocal minority that hated anything and everything about the new series, and they were more than ready to put the boot in.

I watched the first episode on BBC1 broadcast in April 2005 and thought it was great: couple of dodgy moments where they hadn't got the tone quite right, but mostly excellent material, particularly around Rose, Jackie and Mickey, and the real world consequences of the Doctor's erratic time travel. Ditto the second and final part. The internet went crazy, though, piling on and decrying everyone responsible. This was so severe that I questioned my first impression and watched it all again, waiting for the moment where it went south. And I waited, and I waited. I got to the end thinking it was better than I had before. There were a couple of moments where the tone was wrong, but they were shorter and less significant on second watch.

One other nice point about the first ever watch was a multi-textual treat for the obsessives in the audience like myself who'd be devouring every scrap of information available about the new series. There was some fun online stuff tying in to the early stories. The website run by amateur alien investigator Clive shown in the first episode Rose was launched for real online following the broadcast, and was then updated weekly after that with tie-in content. Following the in-show continuity, it was being run by an unnamed someone else (as Clive died at the hands of the Autons in that first story). Within the text, hints were dropped by the person running the website that they were in trouble, and having run-ins with the police. It was then revealed after Aliens of London that it was Mickey's website now, part of his ongoing investigations into the Doctor to clear his name, and the run-ins with the police were connected to Rose's disappearance. It was a nice little bit of world building.

Reaction:

I like to imagine, and it may even be right, that Russell T Davies - the writer and executive producer of the story - was plotting the scene where Jackie is being interviewed by a police officer in her home, and the audience has to be clued in that he is in fact one of the disguised aliens. I picture him brain-storming how that could be achieved in an innovative way. Sure, the alien's eyes could glow, but that's been done so many times before (including by Russell himself in his then recent ITV drama The Second Coming, where he insisted the production team made the demon characters' eyes glow silver instead of red, as red would have been too much of a cliché). Eureka! What if they farted instead?! It is original, you have to give him that. Many people, as mentioned above, think that this kills the episode stone dead, but there's so much more here than just farting. The only egregious bit is a moment where the actors are encouraged to play it like children (where Annette Badland says "I'm shaking my booty"); the idea I think is for this to counterpoint the moment where the scene turns sinister, but it's taken too far. Aside from that, it's just a few gags ("Do you mind not farting when I'm trying to save the world?!", and Penelope Wilton wringing every ounce of comedy from Harriet Jones' discomfort at having to discuss farting "If you'll pardon the word").

It is perhaps understandable that the tone isn't quite there - this was was one of the earliest written scripts, and part of the first recording block. As well as Annette Badland shaking her booty, the pig looks a bit too much like one of the Muppet Pigs in Space (which may have been deliberate, but is still very wrong), and there's blood seen in one moment (they would never show blood again during Russell T Davies's era, and very rarely at all). There's too much of an obvious join between the physical suit and CGI versions of the Slitheen, and nobody knows how to edit a cliffhanger with economy. These are blink and you miss them moments, though, and weirdly they are now not the moments that necessarily stand out most for the wrong reasons. Far more wrong tonally, at least with the benefit of hindsight, is the Christopher Eccleston Doctor's bullying of Mickey, and Rose's use of "gay" as a derogatory term roughly synonymous with the word "lame". The former at least has a plot purpose, with Mickey and the Doctor eventually coming to a grudging respect for one another during the course of events; the latter, though common usage at the time, doesn't feel like something Rose would say; Davies was trying to be provocative, but because the Doctor lets the word pass without censure, I'm not sure what point he was trying to make. Again, though, to dwell too much on these very minor and momentary blemishes would be to miss the truly excellent material all around.

This was a show finding its way, clearly, but finding its way very quickly and confidently, and this is where the new series truly begins to my mind. After three quick-fire and, beyond some of the trappings, fairly traditional tales - present day invasion, trip to space with weird aliens, historical trip to Victorian Britain - Davies does what he does best, and has continued to do often in his later career: big sci-fi / fantasy ideas explored within a domestic family situation. The regulars, who made a big impression in the series opener, get fleshed out here: Mickey's rough treatment, keeping secret all the weird stuff he saw in that first episode while he's suspected of having murdered Rose; Jackie - making explicit the dramatic question and emotional core of the story - asking the Doctor whether he can keep Rose safe. This is also where the key Davies Earth invasion tropes get established, like global events being filtered through broadcast media, including celebrity cameos (Matt Baker doing a Blue Peter make of a spacecraft), and the first ever glimpse of Trinity Wells, news anchor on AMNN, the fictional American station, who continues to appear throughout Davies's stories.

The story has a great guest cast, particularly Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, who was so good they had to bring her back, even though it ruined the continuity of the character established here (she does not end up in power for three consecutive terms). The moment that epitomises her character is at the point in the narrative when someone has to make the crisis point decision, to risk individual safety for the greater good; she steps up. Asked "Who the hell are you?" over the phone by Jackie, she says "Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North" turning a running joke into a statement of intent. There's so much great dialogue, great jokes, great effects (the model work of the spaceship crashing into Big Ben still looks amazing to this day). Despite the reported issues with director Keith Boak, he gets some great sequences in the can, particularly the scenes creeping around the darkened hospital while an unseen menace makes sounds from off. There's quality in every aspect of the piece, down to the smallest decisions: Davies made the TARDIS key an ordinary one, so that every child could have one, but also makes it special - it glows when the TARDIS approaches - to fire the imaginations of those same children.

This story also has a handful of those great Doctor Who moments that send a shiver down one's spine, or get one jumping up and down in excitement, or punching the air. My favourite is the "Narrows it down" scene, which combines thrills and humour to reach a fever pitch. Mickey and Jackie are stuck in his flat, with no escape and a Slitheen breaking down the door. If we love these two characters by now (I did!) we're already emotional that they've been thrown together after spending the year of Rose's disappearance hating one another. But now they're in trouble, and their only help is the Doctor, locked in a room miles away, with only a phone to communicate. Eccelston becomes a still point, thinking, while the chaos whirls around him, and Rose and Harriet brainstorm everything they know about these aliens so that they Doctor can work out from where they originate. With every fact, he says "Narrows it down" as the tension ramps up. As the final splinters of Mickey's flat door break, the Doctor works out where the Slitheen are from, and Davies gets a huge laugh from the incongruity and silliness of the planet name "Raxacoricofallapatorius!", then manages to top that with Mickey's dry reaction "Great - we could write 'em a letter". It still keeps building, as this helps the Doctor find their weakness - vinegar ("Just like Hannibal!"). They attack the Slitheen using vinegar from Mickey's kitchen, there's a wonderful dramatic pause, then the explosion of tension and another great gag as the Slitheen blows up and Jackie and Mickey get gunged. It is a great piece of writing and performance: serious and silly, in perfect balance, but underlining that the Doctor is a hero that uses his wits first and foremost.
 
For some, I suppose, the story is too jokey, too much of a romp; but watch the quieter moments, particularly at the end, and you'll see that there's an underlying seriousness. Mickey sits proudly on a bin, having put his fears behind him - previously, he's been very cautious around bins, having been eaten by one in Rose. Jackie patiently waits, after her daughter has a little too glibly told her that, because she's travelling in a time machine, she can be back only ten seconds after she leaves. Jackie watches the TARDIS disappear, calmly counts to ten, then walks away resigned, her daughter not having returned. Another moment as a demonstration of how this story can change its attitude in a split second: Eccleston, on his first day filming, is pursuing Jimmy Vee, playing a Muppet pig waddling down a corridor. It is a bit risible, to say the least. Then, the pig is gunned down by a twitchy squaddie, and Eccleston kneels down, looking up, eyes imploring, asking why the soldier did what he did, and says "It was scared" with such gravitas that he lifts the whole thing up five or six levels, and the pig is imbued with more life than it ever could have been by the costume alone. He is, so far and by far, the best actor ever to play the Doctor.

Connectivity: 

Another story where aliens lie to fool a gullible populace into helping to bring about their own destruction. In both productions the design of the monsters is somewhat unwieldy.

Deeper Thoughts:

Untruth and Anti-reconciliation. After recent events in the UK, you'll understand if I'm a little depressed: yes, it's been announced there's no Doctor Who special on Christmas Day, and Spyfall is instead debuting on New Year's Day 2020, seemingly sealing that date as the ongoing festive special day for the foreseeable future... Oh, and the end of everything I hold dear in the UK following the general election too, of course. I'm hoping it won't be that bad, but it is a dark day indeed for anyone here yearning for a progressive and social democratic country. While it might not be the end of civilisation, I fear it is the end of civility. It's clear from the events of the Autumn and prorogation of parliament, and multiple pieces of evidence elsewhere - they haven't been shy about it - that the newly empowered Conservative government are not going to play fair. The old, and sometimes unwritten, rules are gone, blown away by the wind of a Britain Trump. Shameless opportunism, or even outright cruelty, are no longer to be avoided, but actively to be embraced, it seems. The Conservative candidate that proposed nuisance council tenants should be put in forced labour camps was duly elected last Thursday. Ditto for the candidate who said disabled people should be paid less as they 'don’t understand money’.

If such ugly truths bring reward, then it seems unlikely that anyone is going to care about the lies anymore. There were plenty of those too. That forced labour camps candidate, Lee Anderson, was caught faking a doorstep interaction while canvassing, for example. Independent fact checkers found that nothing Johnson said in his interview with Aliens of London cameo player Andrew Marr was accurate, and separately it was found that 88% of Conservative Facebook ads during the campaign were misleading. The percentage for the main opposition party Labour was 0%, but they lost the election comprehensively. This is, at least to my mind, a major change since the era of spin referenced in Aliens of London / World War Three, with the script's sly digs about the UK justification for the 2003 Iraq War ("massive weapons of destruction capable of being deployed within forty five seconds"). Whether you believe that justification was right or not, or no matter how much you felt it was fabricated or exaggerated, you can't deny that the people who thought they were being lied to minded. There were mass demonstrations. In the 2005 election, which took place a couple of weeks after the Slitheen Invasion episodes aired, Labour saw it's majority reduced; it's never been and will never be forgotten, and will forever be a toxic part of Tony Blair's legacy. These days, though, with arguably bigger porkies being told, nobody seems bothered.

With a more than decimated main opposition, the other hope for holding the government to account is the fourth estate: journalism. Print journalism in the UK (particularly England) is fiercely partisan, so no hope there - but what of broadcasters, particularly that independent and unique broadcaster, the BBC? Where to start. There have been so many issues with BBC News over the course of the election that it would take too long to list them. I don't go in for tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, but there is without any doubt establishment bias in the BBC (it would be very hard for there not to be - it is part of the establishment after all). This, plus the ever accelerating news cycle and manifestly untrustworthy sources gaming the situation, leads to issues where, to take one example, BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg gets informed by a source that a group of Labour activists organised a confrontation with Health Minister Matt Hancock, and that one of them punched an aide. This is then tweeted verbatim. Only, there was no evidence that the three or four people barracking Hancock were Labour activists (one of them was clearly someone who was on his bike coming home from work), nor that they had been organised. There was video evidence however that the "punch" was in fact the aide walking into the back of someone's arm, brushing against it lightly. Kuenssberg deleted the original tweet, but her retractions were mealy-mouthed; she stated that it didn't "look like punch thrown". It wasn't. She went on to call it a "grim encounter". It wasn't, just a distraction from the main issue - the state of the National Health Service - that Tory central office had spewed out and that she'd enabled.

It wasn't just the BBC either; ITV's Robert Peston also rushed wholeheartedly into the "punch" story; other ITV mainstays agreed to be used as photo opportunity props by agreeing to a selfie with A. Johnson MP. All of this matters because even with a less than rigorous and hostile press, this government does everything it can to avoid scrutiny. The Prime Minister unprecedentally evaded many opportunnties to face questions during the election campaign, both locally and nationally. In its new and even more entitled and emboldened phase, I can't see this situation getting better. This government desperately requires scrutiny. There have already been threats to the BBC, as well as some other badly smelling things: keeping ex-MPs in key government roles that have stepped down, or that the electorate have rejected, scrapping previous commitments on workers’ rights, posturing about tying parliament's hands over extending the deadline for leaving the European Union (which was supposed to be easy to manage in a year - why would he need to block it from being extended, if it's so easy?). All of this is depressing, but I haven't lost hope. For the next couple of weeks, though, I want to put it out of my mind and enjoy Christmas, before the fight starts again in 2020. Deprived of a festive special until January 1st, I'm going to choose a random old Doctor Who Christmas special to watch next...

In Summary:

Phrases one never thought, before it came back, that one would use to summarise a Doctor Who: there's more to this one than just farting.

The Horns of Nimon

Chapter The 141st, is when panto season well and truly arrives.

Plot:

The Minotaur legend but set in Space! How could it fail?!! The planet Aneth is forced by Skonnos, a planet previously the centre of a huge military empire but now long past its prime, to provide regular tribute of seven vestal virgins and seven lumps of a space fuel crystal. These are given to the Nimon, a bull-headed creature living on Skonnos who arrived promising the Skonnon leader Soldeed the regeneration of his world in exchange for these presents. It's a con, of course: the Nimon uses the crystal fuel to create a hyperspace travel system involving artificially created black holes. Using this, the other members of his race can arrive, feed on all the planet's energy (including absorbing the fresh-faced Anethan sacrifices), and then send a single Nimon on to the next world to begin the cycle again.

The old Skonnon ship bringing the final complement of Anethans and crystals breaks down (thanks to being pushed to unsafe speeds by its idiot co-pilot) and starts to fall into the black hole the Nimon is creating near Skonnos. The Doctor, Romana and K9 also get pulled in, and arrive on the Skonnon ship. Here, they meet two young lovers from Aneth: Seth and Teka, who are part of this last delivery. The Doctor uses some of the crystals to power the ship out of the black hole, but is back on the TARDIS without Romana when the co-pilot zooms off to Skonnos without him. He catches up with them on Skonnos, when they're all thrown into the labyrinthine power complex where the Nimon resides. They manage to avoid getting killed (unlike the co-pilot, who is killed by the Nimon in one of the most memorable Doctor Who deaths ever - more on that later). Romana takes a trip using the Nimon transport to the last planet ravaged by the bulls, Crinoth, and pieces together what's going on. With Seth and Teka's help, the TARDIS team defeat the Nimon, and Soldeed gets killed.

Context:

The Discontinuity Guide (an irreverent 1990s paperback Doctor Who episode guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, which became an absolute bible to me at the time, and has been ever since) finishes its entry on The Horns of Nimon with the statement that the story is "Rather wonderful with some friends and a bottle of wine." I again couldn't tempt the family to watch this, and - though I hate to disagree with the Discontinuity Guide - I don't think it's a good enough watch to invite people over for. I did have some wine, though: a cheeky little Chilean Carménère, from which I sunk a few glasses as I watched the DVD late one Saturday evening. I found that the effects of the wine didn't get me through more than two episodes, though. The story is great in places, but it doesn't go down that smoothly, certainly not as smoothly as the Carménère. I cannot in all conscience recommend watching the final episodes of The Horns of Nimon while you're sobering up!

First time round:

Late 1997; I was living in a studio flat in Worthing, after having moved in with the Better Half the previous year; but, she was away at university and I only had TV to keep me company. Perhaps for this reason, I had expanded the scope of TV on offer to me by getting cable. I specifically wanted a package including UK Gold as they were regularly showing old episodes of Doctor Who at that time and had been for many years, cycling through the colour episodes, and starting at the beginning again once they'd finished. I'd timed it badly, though, as they were mostly showing stories I'd already seen, or previously purchased on VHS, at the point when I got connected. The handful of stories I did manage to see for the first time, and tape for rewatching, of course, were amongst the most weary of stories, with poor reputations which - mostly - on seeing the episodes for the first time, were confirmed. The Horns of Nimon was one such story, and I would have watched it when it was broadcast on a Sunday morning, in a sort-of semi-omnibus format - all the episodes would be shown in one go, without end credits, until the final episode, but the cliffhangers would be maintained by having a commercial break at the point each episode ended (and, if I remember rightly, an extra break in the middle of the final episode). I had to wait until 2003, near the end of the VHS range's life, to get the full experience without adverts, and with end credits and everything.

Reaction:

At the end of episode 2, the midpoint of The Horns of Nimon, the nasty Co-pilot (who reminds me of someone - can't quite put my finger on who right now) is caught in his lies, found out, and killed by the Nimon. He is zapped, rolls around on the floor and groans unconvincingly, then slumps with his backside to camera so the audience can see that his trousers have a massive split in them (this, mind you, is only the second worst wardrobe malfunction of the story). Depending on various factors (including the company and the amount of wine consumed) this can seem funny or it can seem rubbish. I've watched it multiple times over the years, and sometimes it falls one way, sometimes the other. Anticipating the viewing of this moment, it is of course both funny and rubbish simultaneously, and that goes for the whole of the story, until you open the DVD box and put it to the test - Schrödinger's camp! This watch, it fell mostly on the rubbish side, I'm afraid to say. I appreciate that Tom Baker gets to deliver some funny lines, but he also gets some very weary and forced lines - this time (and it would definitely be different watching another time), I wasn't tickled overall.

What's the first most egregious wardrobe malfunction in the story, you ask? The Nimon costumes, of course. And yet, the concept was sound, and even some parts of the design as it ended up. Viewed from the side, the curving of the rear of the head / helmet sweeping far down the back of the performer is really quite striking. Front on, though, and it's just too fat and bulbous, and the detailing is crude - it needed to be much sleeker. The decision to have them all wear platforms means they are already wobbly; adding a top heavy bull's head was asking for trouble, and the only feeling of danger watching comes from the worry that one of them might come a cropper. Other design decisions are similarly mixed: the Skonnons costumes are OTT but in a majestic and operatic fashion, but the Anethans are all dressed in cheap yellow Judo suits. The Skonnon senate room set is magnificent, every other set is drab with the feel of a yellow-and-brown 1970s living room. The spaceship models are shot on video rather than film, and look fake, but the "space tunnel walk" scene where the Doctor, Romana and K9 travel down an extended force-field from TARDIS to ship, is a quiet triumph of the VFX work of the era.

Big does not necessarily mean bad in Doctor Who performances, particularly with villain parts. Understated naturalism is usually not as effective. And Graham Crowden's performance as Soldeed is big and bold and berserk, yes, but it's not quite right. It isn't the precise and controlled excess that Brian Blessed delivers as Yrcanos in Mindwarp, as a comparable example, or that Crowden himself gives a few years after Nimon as Jock in A Very Peculiar Practice - a masterclass in the larger-than life arena, which gives even Blessed a run for his money. When he creeps around the labyrinth calling out "Lord Nimon, Lord Ni-iiiiiii-mon, it is I - Soldeed" only the most serious fan watching wouldn't get at least the flicker of a smile playing across their face. Ditto for his magnificent delivery of "My dreams of CONQUEST" just before he dies. A few seconds later, though, as he slumps down dying, he's also openly corpsing - and this laughter is not in character at all; he has a look on his face that seems to be aimed at the floor manager, questioning whether they are going to go for another take.

The script similarly has material that seems good, material that seems bad, and material that can change from one to another like an unstable waveform. Unlike it's stablemate The Creature from the Pit, which I watched for the blog earlier this year, The Horns of Nimon is not short of plot -  exactly the opposite, in fact. So much time is taken up with uncovering the exposition, gradually filling in the details of the Nimon's cosmic Ponzi scheme, that lots of activity at the end - the Skonnons starting to rebuild their society with Sorak in charge, the Doctor persuading them to give Seth and Teka a ship, Seth and Teka making off towards home - is covered by a couple of lines of dialogue between the Doctor and Romana in the TARDIS right at the end. This rushed and throwaway conclusion is particularly hard of the two Anethans, who deserved a slightly better ending. Janet Ellis, in an early acting role before she became a Blue Peter presenter, is rather good as the young and idealistic naif, and it is a nice running gag to have her unrealistic expectations of Seth blow his minor acts of heroism out of proportion, giving him a reputation he'll spend a life living up to. The script has lots of other great ideas, such as the moving walls of the labyrinth being part of a massive circuit board, but it also contains many longueurs where characters wander around the drab walls of that massive circuit board. All in all, The Horns of Nimon is very like the labyrinth depicted within it: it keeps switching around. Sometimes, it's drab and tatty, sometimes it's incisive and laugh-out-loud funny.

Connectivity: 

They both feature a character that claims to be the last of their race, but they're not telling the truth (Soldeed's Nimon co-conspirator knows it's lying, but Doctor Ten doesn't yet know what the Face of Boe's pronouncements mean).

Deeper Thoughts:

The December Ritual. I've written before here about some of the yearly rituals I indulge in when advent comes around and the days count down towards Christmas. This year, I can add a new ritual to my usual lot. As well as putting up the decorations, reading some Dickens, slamming on the festive playlist, and opening each door on the advent calendar, I have also stopped daily to have a moment of paralysing fear that a far right government is going to be given rein to dismantle the very edifices of civilisation in front of me. What a gift! Yes, the UK is having a general election on the 12th of December, and nobody with any sense can relax and enjoy the season until it's over with. Maybe nobody with any sense will ever be able to relax again, depending on how it goes. Watching The Horns of Nimon, I was particularly drawn to the Co-pilot character. As I said above, he reminds me of someone, being a bumbling guy with a mop of messy blonde hair, who looks like a bit of a joke, but underneath it all is a bully yearning for long past days of power and empire; a person who creates the problems he expects other people to fix, who abandons people in the blink of an eye if they're no longer useful to him, and just lies and lies and lies. Who is it that he can possibly be reminding me of? 

Actually, sod it, that's too subtle, and the time for subtlety is behind us: it's the current UK Prime Minister I'm talking about, Alexander Johnson MP. I will not call him by his usual 'B--is' sobriquet, nor even write it out in full - he is not my, nor anyone's, cuddly chum, he's a ruthless politician who wants us to make him seem less threatening, so he can get away with more of whatever the hell he likes in his entitled way - I will have no part in it. I'd never have thought before this watch that The Horns of Nimon was a political allegory, but it seems to be quite relevant to our times. Just like Soldeed and his deal with the Nimon, the current government in my country have shady characters standing behind them waiting to take advantage - they might seem manageable now, but they are undoubtedly poised, once they get a whiff of what they want, to devour everything that we hold dear. Also, in Brexit, I believe we have - like the people of Skonnos - helped manufacture a black hole that's going to suck in everything for years to come. But what about the positive side of the story, could that be a parable too? Oh yes. The different tribes (Gallifreyans, Anethans, and even Skonnon moderates like Sorak) work together to deny the powers of darkness. There's a lesson there, for sure.

You may think I'm being extreme or histrionic comparing the Conservative party in the UK to the villains and monsters in a Doctor Who story. I admit, it is a little unfair... on the Nimon. I'm not joking. The Nimon, as destructive and amoral as they are, are driven by their life cycle (their "great journey of life" as they put it) and consume to live and multiply; A. Johnson has no need to pursue power except for its own sake, he has no philosophy, it's all a game to him. This has been made clear during the very few times he's allowed himself to be subjected to even the slightest scrutiny in an interview (those that he hasn't managed to swerve), and been presented with the words that he'd previously written as a journalist. These stated, for example, that single mothers (like mine) produce "ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate" kids, or that less well off working mothers (again, like mine) produce kids more likely to "mug you on the street corner". On being presented with these, his reaction is sheer incredulity that anyone would think he took such things seriously. It was just a fun wheeze. And as he was to journalism, now he is to politics. He doesn't care about the misery, hatred and division that his ruthlessness or carelessness - or mix of the two - creates.

Wouldn't it be nice to wake up on Friday the 13th of December, the day after the poll, to see him get the electoral equivalent of being knocked to the floor and having his trousers split? It's still possible. Vote. Don't vote for the Conservatives. And vote tactically. You may not like or trust Corbyn or Swinson or Blackford, but none of them are going to get a majority; their working together, though, ending the policies of the extremist Tories, but denied the numbers to indulge in their own extremes: that might just be the best thing for the country. It's certainly better than the alternative, and that's the most we can hope for now. Don't stop hoping. I'll see you on the other side... 

In Summary:

Tatty / Hilarious.