The Sontaran Experiment

Chapter The 177th, a short bit between two bigger events either side, so very like the 26th to 31st of December.

Plot:

After having their more popular and famous adventure on an ark in space, the Doctor, Sarah and Harry transmat down to Earth to apply a permanent fix to the transmat receivers, allowing the revived humans on Nerva to beam down. Unfortunately, they have arrived in the middle of an experiment by a Sontaran, Styre, on some colonist humans he's lured to the abandoned Earth. He's doing this as part of plans for an invasion, but Styre doesn't seem to care about all the empirical evidence that the planet is empty except for these, like, six dudes. Instead, he tortures them to find their weaknesses. He likes torturing people, is what it is. The experiment also involves turning the leader of the humans, Vural, traitor and letting him spy on the others; again, not sure what help this will be for a wholesale military invasion, and anyway there are only about three humans left on the planet by then (the torture kills a few more of them); but, Styre's having fun is the main thing. The TARDIS trio get caught up a bit in the capture and torture, but soon dispatch the Sontaran; the Doctor challenges him to hand to hand combat to tire him out, and Harry meddles with a component in his ship so that when he tries to recharge, everything blows up. After this, the Doctor, Sarah and Harry say goodbye to the remaining couple of humans and transmat away to their more popular and famous adventure witnessing the genesis of the Daleks.

Context:

"But when is bins??!!" That's the traditional cry of mental anguish that can be felt across the UK in the period between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve, the Chrimbo limbo. It was on one early evening during that period in 2020 (and yes, I can't remember which exactly, only a few days on) that I put on and watched The Sontaran Experiment from the box set blu-ray disc accompanied by a glass of beer, and my youngest child (girl of 8). The other two children were amusing themselves elsewhere, firstly by playing draughts against each other, and then after that by fighting about the game of draughts. Happy days! The youngest, when Tom Baker's tones emanated from the TV saying "Doctor Who Season 12 Box Set Disc Three", recognised the voice as belonging to "the one with the scarf" making me proud, and then when he said "To select audio navigation, press Enter now" she said "Bossy!" making me laugh. Aside from thinking right at the start from the long shot that the transmat refractor balls were sheep grazing, and being disappointed when they weren't, there were no further comments from the little one; but, she did keep watching avidly, and fidgeted a bit in excitement at the chase scene in part one when Vural and his colonist crew are pursuing the Doctor. 

First time round:

Early October 1991. Bryan Adams was at number one in the UK singles chart for the 400th week running with disproportionately unremarkable song '(Everything I do) I do it for you', and I was packing my things ready to go off to university for the start of my first year at St. Aidan's College, University of Durham. A lot of people I have mentioned regularly over the years on the blog were connected to that place. I would travel up on the train for that first time with my Doctor Who fan friend Zahir, and within a few days would meet a lot of friends for life including my very good Doctor Who fan friend David, and my less keen on Doctor Who friend Phil who nonetheless has watched a hell of a lot of episodes with me over the years. I would quickly meet Mike, whose possession of a single room and a VCR would allow me to watch Doctor Who videos in my first year with lots of other friends who were curious if not fanatic, Tim, Rich, Andy, and even sometimes Mark who really doesn't like Doctor Who at all. I even met later Doctor Who Magazine editor Gary Gillatt who was at the same college at that time, a couple of years above me. Based on the odd time I've bumped into him since, he doesn't remember me, but does remember David.

Perhaps because it was such an exciting transitional time in my life, and there were other things to think about than Doctor Who, it is one of the rare points in this era where I am uncertain of the exact chronology of events regarding my first experience of a new Doctor Who story (get out the tiny violins - before university, seeing new Doctor Who stories on VHS was the most exciting thing in my life!). The Sontaran Experiment / Genesis of the Daleks VHS double pack, as well as The Deadly Assassin, came out at around the start of term, so I don't think I would have bought them on the day of release as was my usual style. My memory is of buying them in Worthing not Durham; later, during the Christmas holidays, I first saw The Deadly Assassin on a pirated VHS copy that David had loaned out to me (see here for more details). All the evidence suggests that, maybe wanting to save pennies, or to grow up a bit since I was in higher education, or maybe because I didn't know Mike well enough yet to monopolise the use of his VCR / room as I would eventually in 1992, I must have showed the most restraint I've ever done in my life and held off from buying a new Doctor Who release for three or four months. After that kind of wait, even The Sontaran Experiment - definitely the least of the three stories released in October 1991 - would have seemed exciting when I finally got to see it.

Reaction:

Tom Baker's first run, season 12, is structured to connect each of the stories loosely. This seems to have been driven by financial rather than narrative concerns; some sets are reused by having the Doctor and friends return to the scene of a previous adventure in a later story, for example, and the production also pulls off a trick that 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner would use regularly in his later seasons, of getting two stories out of one. So, a six part slot with an allocation for studio and location filming is split into one story that's all studio, and another that's all location; the first was The Ark in Space, the second is this 2-part quickie The Sontaran Experiment. To make the location shoot stretch to cover two full episodes, it is made on Outside Broadcast (OB) video rather than film; to be able to reuse a costume and spaceship prop from existing stock, the decision was made to feature an existing monster, the Sontaran as introduced in the previous year's The Time Warrior. All of these decisions look like they were made for budgetary reasons, and all have influences on the shape of the eventual narrative, some good, some not so good.

Starting with the good: the OB video cameras available at the time were designed for use mainly at sporting events, and had restricted scope of movement having to keep closely connected to the OB van. This necessitated the action of the shoot being all in one fairly localised area. Whether desolation was dictated by the script first, or - as I suspect - arose from those limitations, this gave rise to the idea of setting it in Dartmoor National Park, which is one of the biggest aspects the story has in its favour. The vast sweeps of greenery and craggy rock formations allow for a coherent vision of an abandoned world to be established with minimal external elements of set dressing, but still allow for variety without the cast and crew having to trudge too far between set-ups. From a narrative point of view, it allows development on from the previous story of the survivors of a cataclysm. Here we get to see the Earth the Nerva sleepers of The Ark in Space escaped from and which they hope to return. So far, everything is holding up logically. There has to be someone for the Doctor and friends to interact with, though, which is tricky on an abandoned planet; but, this is seeded within the previous story too. The people on the Ark weren't the only escapees, and some colonists have survived elsewhere. Some of these have landed on Earth and are now in a fight for survival. Again, so far, so good.

The colonists have little screen time to establish themselves; some interesting choices in terms of accents and dialect work as a characterisation shorthand to make them different from the Doctor and Friends, and from the humans seen on the Ark. Beyond that, there isn't a lot of space for anyone to shine in two episodes (The Sontaran Experiment was the only two-part story of the decade, this story length had fallen out of favour after being a bit more common in the 1960s, and would stage a comeback in the 1980s). Vural - played by fine Scottish actor Donald Douglas, most famous for portraying Darcy Senior in the Bridget Jones films - gets to do betrayal and last ditch attempt to put things right at the cost of his own life, but at warp speed, blink and you'd miss it. The other interesting character is half-crazed with shock Roth (Peter Rutherford) whose frightening appearance belies his bravery and decency when he rescues Sarah. He survives two seconds into episode 2 before being brutally and disappointingly gunned down by Styre before his character can develop further. Kevin Lindsay does solid work, building on his debut as a Sontaran the year before, this time playing both the two Sontarans in the piece, Styre and the Marshal spoken to on a video communicator (Equity might have had something to say about clone races in science fiction if Doctor Who had played this trick more often). The regulars, in only their second production together, are settling in nicely as a great TARDIS team, with some witty interplay and nice bits of business.

The effects, most of which would have needed to be created on location in camera, without the luxury of the studio gallery or much else in the way of post production, are nonetheless effective. Styre's head deflating when he dies, for example, is very memorable. The music is the Dudley Simpson house style of the time, and none the worse for that. There are a couple of great stunt falls on location too. This is slightly ironic, as one of the most famous things about this story behind the camera is that Tom Baker had a real fall on location and broke his collar bone. Later shots in close up have his scarf wrapped around disguising his neck brace, and later long shots of the Doctor are all played by stunt double Terry Walsh. If this is pointed out, you can't help but see it, but it's done very well, and the first time I watched I was unaware and it looked seamless. So, if all that's competent enough, then the drawbacks of this story must come from the script, mustn't they? But the little details of plotting to link this story to the others around it in the wider narrative are good too, with the Doctor saved from death when shot by Styre as he's got a piece of metal he nicked from Nerva in his pocket, and Harry mentioning the Animal Botanic section which will be used to repopulate the Earth's fauna. There's a nice bit of world building too, when the colonists gripe about the superiority of the pure Mother Earthers from Nerva, and not wanting to be bossed around by them.

No, the major drawbacks of the script are not the details but the bigger picture which doesn't really make sense. It's also not a great fit for the choice of adversary. The Sontarans as delineated in their debut story are thirsty for combat at all costs, so why would they delay and eventually call off their invasion of this galaxy while waiting for one Sontaran to finish an experiment? Though the first Sontaran we are introduced to in The Time Warrior, Linx, is proud of his superior technology, he is not messing about with science as part of a usual experimental process, but because he's stranded on a primitive planet and desperate. If he'd had an invasion force on standby, he'd have called them in without a single thought. Styre and the Marshall on the other hand seem reluctant to engage. Beyond that, though, what hypothesis exactly is the experiment supposed to prove?

At first glance Strye's actions look even more illogical than they actually are, as he seems to be testing humans in order to invade a planet that's uninhabited of humans; but, buried in the dialogue, is a confirmation that the Sontarans want to invade the galaxy not just the planet. So, assuming there are other worlds in that galaxy with humans on, then it does make sense to test their defences. But what have they got to prove except 'do our guns kill them?' which Styre presumably established on day 1. Why bother testing out their survival skills? Also, won't the battles to conquer a galaxy mostly, or at least firstly, be dogfights between spaceships? If so, all that needs to be be proved is 'do our guns kill their spaceships?' which Styre definitely establishes on day 1 when he vaporises the colonists's ship. Even giving the Sontarans the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they were anticipating on-planet troop battles later on, then wouldn't surveying each planet for ground defences and troop numbers be a better use of time than luring nine blokes to an abandoned planet and seeing whether immersing them in water or dehydration is a better way of killing them? Sontarans: you have guns that can vaporise their spaceships, stop mucking about.

Connectivity: 

Both The Sontaran Experiment and The Christmas Invasion are set in London (unless the Doctor's comments in the two-parter about underground stations are a joke), and both involve the Doctor challenging the main villain to one-on-one combat, duel style, and then the alien spaceship later getting blown up.

Deeper Thoughts:

2020 Hindsight. So, a new year is almost upon us; from my very unscientific glance at the international mood, it seems to me that nobody has any great concrete expectations for 2021 beyond getting 2020 over and done with. It doesn't feel like a time for resolutions. If you disagree, just think of all the people who at midnight on 31st December 2019 resolved to get out of the house more, see more live gigs, meet up with old friends again, or do lots of exercise in the spring when the weather would be nicer - definitely more than once a day. Those people can supply you their own hollow laugh. Yes, 2020 feels like something inflicted upon us, over which we couldn't have much control, and the beginning of 2021 is going to be more of the same. Resolutions may not be appropriate, but hopes, that's a different deal. Everyone has hopes that the roll out of Covid-19 vaccinations will restore normality at some point later in the year. One's level of optimism or pessimism dictates exactly when in the year seems plausible. I have bookings rearranged from 2020 for a live music event and a sporting event in May and July of 2021 respectively. I wouldn't put any money on being able to attend either, and expect them both to be cancelled or rearranged again. I hadn't had any plans to go to the cinema to see the new (well, quite old now) Daniel Craig Bond film, No Time To Die, but it now feels almost totemic. I feel that I should go along whenever - 2022, 2023? - the producers and distributors decide sufficiently good takings are likely, as that feels like the point where all the madness will definitely be over.

On a smaller scale, I'm looking forward to a resumption of Doctor Who on TV and on shiny disc. In both cases, it's been confirmed that there is something in the can ready for imminent release (Revolution of the Daleks on January 1st and the Blu-Ray Collection box set of season 8, Jon Pertwee's second year, in February), and work on the ongoing series in both cases has been resumed, albeit somewhat restricted by the virus, and associated tier and lockdown rules. I'm trying to remain as un-spoilered as possible for the 1st of January; I've seen some reviews being referenced online, but have not read any, and may have to go on a social media blackout for the next day. I don't know why exactly, I've certainly had my reservations about some of the bigger episodes of the show since 2018, but I think this one's going to be very special. I'll report back here later in January and let you know whether I still feel the same after having watched it. I'm also very intrigued by season 8 restored for an HD delivery medium. This was a set of stories that presented perhaps the most challenges of any colour 20th century run; episodes needed to be re-colourised, either from available non-broadcast standard video tape versions, or from the chroma dots stored in the black and white film copies; more still needed full re-colourisation from scratch. Some episodes are also conversions from another broadcast standard, NTSC, which contains less picture information. I've 100% faith that what is on the discs is the best that could possibly done, and I can't wait to see it.

Beyond this, Who knows what we will see in 2021? Assuming that nothing happens in the wider world to delay it further, there will be eight Jodie Whittaker episodes currently being made that will be shown later in 2021. Or maybe seven, and one will be held back for New Year's 2022 perhaps. What will happen within them is impossible to even take a guess at until any shocks, revelations or changes contained in Revolution of the Daleks are known. Will Covid restrictions change the types of stories being told? Will there be any continuation of the Timeless Child plot arcs from series 12? Will the Master return, or the 'Ruth' Doctor? Will any other old school foes be back? It's exciting to be able to speculate, and not have any kind of hint. Similar is true for classic series releases. What will be the next series box set? Is this the year when a black and white series finally gets its own Blu-ray collection release? What about animated stories, any chance of them? Well, on this last point, there's already some good news that the missing episode of The Web of Fear (part 3) has been animated for a special edition DVD and Blu-Ray sometime TBC in 2020. There's also rumours that another two animations are being worked on for release next year too. Even if not all of that proves accurate, there's still enough already confirmed to suggest that 2021 will have ballpark the same amount in one quarter alone that 2020 did altogether. With their recent work, the teams involved have proved that they can produce animations and Blu-ray restorations while working remotely, so it's only the new series which could be blocked by future events, and production is so far still going strong. There's every reason to be optimistic for a Happy New Year's worth of goodies to keep us entertained, even if we all can't leave our houses.

In Summary:

Like 2020, The Sontaran Experiment didn't make a lot of sense, but still had its fun moments. Happy New Year everyone!

The Christmas Invasion

Chapter The 176th, where the Doctor's asleep on the job, and Christmas gets forgotten about once the aliens arrive.

Plot:

The newly regenerated Doctor accompanied by Rose crash lands the TARDIS back on the Powell Estate in time for Christmas. The Doctor sleeps in Jackie's spare room, and nobody knows how to revive him. While out Christmas shopping, Rose and Mickey are attacked by robots disguised as a Santa Claus brass band, who follow them to Jackie's flat, and also try to kill them with a spinning Christmas tree. The Doctor rouses just long enough to defeat them and explain that they were 'pilot fish' come to steal his regenerative energy, but they will be followed by something bigger and scarier. This is a big spacecraft that hovers over London, and broadcasts a message from the bone-faced aliens the Sycorax within asking for the planet to surrender. As they have a vial of A-Positive blood from a UK space probe, they are able to control all the humans with A-Positive blood, making them walk up to rooves and stand on the edge, as if to jump. UK Prime Minister Harriet Jones is transported onto the ship to negotiate on behalf of the Earth.

With the Doctor still out for the count, the others decide to hide in the TARDIS. Jackie brings a flask of tea and disappears back into the flat to get more provisions; Mickey and Rose, trying to get TV news channels so they can follow what's going on, activate something that alerts the Sycorax of the TARDIS's presence, and they transport that to their ship too. Leaving the TARDIS, Rose squares up to the Sycorax, channelling the Doctor, but to no avail. Luckily, the movement of the TARDIS spilt the tea which revives the Doctor; in short order, he disables the blood control, defeats the Sycorax leader in a sword fight and sends the rest of them packing. Returned to Earth, Harriet orders a Torchwood super-weapon to blow up the retreating ship. This upsets the Doctor, who brings down Harriet by casting doubts about her health. Later, in a better mood, the Doctor picks out a new outfit, and has Christmas dinner at Rose's.

Context:

Christmas is all about rituals, some national, some international, most personal. They tend to feel like they've been around forever, but they are often relatively recent innovations (a lot of the UK's Christmas trimmings date only from stuff Prince Albert liked to do at Christmas less than 200 hundred years ago). And rituals can spring up, develop, and reconfigure under their their own steam, whether one likes them to or not. The Christmas Doctor Who special was not a thing at all until 2005 and The Christmas Invasion. There had been one episode that debuted on the big day in the 1960s - see blog post on The Daleks' Master Plan for more details - and repeats and compilations were shown during the Xmas period in the 1970s, but that was the extent of it. After 2005, it became an instant tradition which endured for over a decade. Then, one year it ceased to be once again, and became a New Year's thing instead. For those recent years, without a new Who episode in December, I've started randomly selecting a story from Christmas past to blog as part of the lead up to the big day. I had planned to do the same this year, but another ritual impacted this and made it a more considered choice. Like many, I have a standard Christmas playlist which gets put on in heavy rotation from the start of advent onwards. Unlike many, perhaps, I try to include a lot of obscure and downright naff tunes on the playlist as well as Christmas crackers. It's rather like another self-introduced tradition I had in the earliest days of the blog of picking a banner image file for the post that was so ridiculously small that it was comically blurry, as a kind of parody of bad websites by people who didn't know what they were doing (the post for Heaven Sent is a good example).

I stopped doing this when I realised that people likely wouldn't see the joke and would assume I didn't know what I was doing. It has not occurred to me similarly that people might just think I had bad taste in music. Maybe this is because I have exercised some restraint. I've not gone as far as to add 1960s Dalekmania novelty anthem "I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek" by the Go-Gos to the list, for example, though every year I consider downloading it. One song that is on the list is Song For Ten, in the re-recorded version by Neil Hannon that was commercially released on a Doctor Who incidental music CD around 2006. This song was created for Doctor Number Ten, hence the name, and plays in a different version over some of the final scenes of The Christmas Invasion. Reportedly, this was just because the production couldn't get the rights to one of the famous Phil Spector-produced Christmas records that they desired, but it started a tradition of its own where composer Murray Gold would write at least one pop song a year to include in a story, usually the Christmas one. Anyway, my youngest child (girl of 8) wondered what the song was when she heard it playing, and when I told her asked if she could watch the story from which it came. This seemed like a good enough random determining factor as it came up organically; so, one Sunday in December, the whole family (Me, the youngest, her two brothers, boys of 14 and 11, and even the Better Half who hasn't watched a Doctor Who with the rest of us for a long while) got to together to view it.

Before I put on the DVD, I opened up youtube on the TV and found the exclusive scene that forms a prologue to the story, and which was broadcast a few weeks before Christmas as part of the Children in Need telethon in 2005. Once we were into the story proper there was a bit too much of a focus on a particular point for my liking: when Jackie Tyler asks of the Doctor "Anything else he's got two of?", the youngest said, a little too knowingly, "She's talking about his willy!" Later, she and the Better Half had a conversation about whether the Doctor was wearing underpants under his pyjamas during the climactic sword fight with the Sycorax leader, "Or else his willy might pop out". I apologise on behalf of my family. Middle child displayed some wisdom musing on the improbability of the Doctor's depicted lifestyle: "Why is he never allowed to just have an ordinary day when he's not threatened with death?". He also wondered whether the Sycorax ship is made out of an asteroid, or just disguised as an asteroid, which I'll admit is something that it had never occurred to me to wonder before. At the end, when they'd seen the trailer for the whole of Tennant's first full season, everybody wanted to watch that immediately, in order, and entreated me to dispense with the random shuffle experiment, but I stood firm. The naff Christmas music tradition, by the way, stems from my own childhood, where the only Christmas songs my sister and I had to listen to were the few on a lone album by The Torero Band, 'Tijuana Christmas - The Sound of Brass'. Words cannot describe what it is like. The Better Half wonders what I'm imprinting in the mental plasticity of my offspring's youth. Will they one day be sitting with their own children to watch a Doctor Who story in the run up to Christmas? I'd like that, but I can't see it happening somehow, can you?!

First time round:

Another ritual that was typical of my Yuletide before The Christmas Invasion was the pre-Christmas Christmas. Neither the Better Half or I have big extended families, and our close family is very small in number too. Yet, I still had too many relatives to be under one roof on the big day. My parents had got divorced in the 1980s, and the usual drill had been that my sister and I would spend Christmas with Mum, and New Year's with Dad. When we were older, though, and going out with friends on the last day of the year, and when even older than that and staying in with our intense loathing of New Year's in general (or maybe that was just me), we didn't get to see Dad during the festive period. Thus, the pre-Christmas Christmas was born. Usually this was the last Sunday before the 25th of December, and Dad would come to mine. I would cook a roast, and usually dig out a DVD of a recent big film to watch after that, and many drinks would be drunk. My sister would also usually be there, as would be the Better Half when we were together. Sometimes, my Mum would be there too; for some reason, it was acceptable to be under the same roof on the 18th December or whenever, just not on the 25th. I can't fully explain the rituals of my family; can anyone?

 

Thinking back on the first time I watched The Christmas Invasion, I momentarily couldn't remember why we hadn't had pre-Christmas Christmas that year. I was temporarily in one of those bubbles of denial of grief that one's memory can sometimes put up around one. The last one was in 2004, as Dad died after a heart attack in late summer 2005. He'd seen and enjoyed the 2005 Doctor Who series, and we'd talked about it, but he never made it to Christmas. I was still grieving in December, and Doctor Who - at least in the episode - was also finding time to grieve. After only one year, Eccleston's Doctor was gone; based on the initial scene with David Tennant as the Doctor at the end of Eccleston's final episode, it seemed like the next story wouldn't dwell on this, and would instead just rush off into a new adventure. The Children in Need scene and the story itself, though, highlight the uncertainty of Rose at this death and rebirth and then keep the new Doctor unconscious for a period of adjustment.

Outside of the story itself, the mood was more celebratory, with Doctor Who unprecedentedly being the focus of the artwork cover of the Christmas Radio Times, a rare honour for any programme, as it is usually a more generic Christmas picture without reference to specific shows. This was testament to the buzz surrounding the programme. I also remember there was a clue in the accompanying article as to what would be required to revive the Doctor - the letters starting each paragraph spelled out "A CUP OF TEA". At that time, the Better Half and I had recently moved into a new place in Hove, had just found out that the BH was expecting our eldest (boy of -7 months at the time), and were entertaining my Mum and the BH's grandmother on the big day. I got the unfeasibly large and vaguely TARDIS-shaped DVD boxset as a present, and rushed to watch the exclusive preview of the Christmas special on that set before said special was broadcast making the preview irrelevant (it was pretty irrelevant anyway, to be honest). We took the BH's relative home before 7pm, so it was just the three of us watching live when it went out. My Mum was somewhat bemused, but we enjoyed it. After it was over, I went online to play the interactive game/episode Attack of the Graske (we'd only just got connected to broadband, which made this possible). Doctor Who definitely owned Christmas that year.

 

Reaction:

The creation of the 21st century Christmas Day Doctor Who tradition looks to have been something of a last minute deal. As discussed last time in the blog post for The Long Game, writer and showrunner Russell T Davies had carefully planned out the shape of his first season, and he continued this into his second year, again producing a planning document of the stories he was going to write or commission. As can be easily discerned from the finished story, a Christmas special was not part of that plan. He'd intended to follow the same pattern for the first three episodes of the 2006 run as he did for 2005 - a contemporary Earth invasion story followed by a futuristic one, followed by a visit to a famous historical figure. The new need for a special on the big day, a sign of the success of the show earlier that year, necessitated that the first of these planned stories had to be pulled forwards. One side effect was that the 2006 series started with a full-on and possibly audience-alienating monster mash, and Davies has talked about how they briefly considered swapping it with the second story Tooth and Claw. The intended 45-minute long Sycorax invasion story has grafted on to it 15 minutes of Christmas-themed material, mostly up front, with a tiny little bit at the end too. But in the middle, once the threat is established, there's barely a mention of the yuletide setting. It works, though, and means that Davies doesn't have to spread the trimmings - flame-throwing Santa robots and a homicidal Christmas tree - too thin throughout. Thus, were established the narrative version of rituals, i.e. tropes, for the Christmas specials to come.

 

Mixed and a mingled in with the Christmas stuff are the pre-existing tropes of a particular Doctor Who sub-genre, the post regeneration story. Over the years of classic Who this became hardened almost to a formula; it would have been disappointing if Davies hadn't included a period of time where the Doctor is incapacitated, the companion being distrustful of the new Doctor only to be be convinced by some Doctorish act done in the final act, and a scene where the Doctor chooses his new outfit; all these are present and correct. Davies takes things to an extreme by keeping the Doctor laid out and holding his proper entrance back until the last possible moment - apart from a little cameo taster midway through. It's a good choice, as is the clever idea to have the aliens for once not speaking English, explained away as the Doctor being temporarily out of the TARDIS telepathic circuit loop, stopping the instant translations. This means that there can be a build up to the moment of the Doctor's emergence from the TARDIS and joining the story as we start to hear the Sycorax language turn into English bit by bit.

The two different Doctor Who narrative traditions, Christmas and post-regeneration, one emerging, one established, dove-tail nicely at the end where the new Doctor, in contrast with the previous incarnation, sits down and enjoys Christmas dinner with the Tylers and Mickey. It nicely rounds out the 2005 story arc and sets the Doctor up for a new direction the following Easter. here's a lot of joy in that moment, and all four regular cast, David Tennant, Billie Piper, Noel Clarke, and Camille Coduri look like a team by the end. Everyone's performance is on top form too, with Tennant finding his feet instantly, as if he'd been waiting to play this role for the whole of his life (spoiler: he had). The opportunity offered by writing a Children in Need prologue after the main story was conceived (and maybe even filmed if I'm remembering the timing of events correctly) allows Davies some retrospective continuity to smooth things over too: the mention of Captain Jack being left on the Games Station is useful, or else he's completely forgotten about, and Davies even manages to put in a line about the weakness in the Doctor's hand, the same hand that later will be cut off during the sword fight and regenerated into a new, and we assume better, one. It's also good to give the Doctor and Rose a full scene together on their own, which the busy action of the story proper doesn't allow for.

It's not all joy, though. Davies, true to form, can't help but add some grit to the oyster. This is most obvious in the treatment of Harriet Jones, but he also has the snowfall at the end turn out to be ash from the mass murder of all the Sycorax, zapped in the upper atmosphere. Harriet Jones' fate, though, is harder to take. Penelope Wilton is so very good in the role, and the character so beloved, her downfall - and the comparison to Margaret Thatcher and the sinking of the Belgrano in the Falklands war - seems very unfair. There's a genuine moral discussion to be had about whether she is right in her actions. I think there is a valid point in her argument that the planet has to be prepared to defend itself when the Doctor isn't around. It's very sad to see her brought down by the Doctor whispering "Don't you think she looks tired" in her aide's ear, a hint of the occasional flash of darkness that will characterise Tennant's Doctor later on (as in the climactic scenes from The Waters of Mars, for example). You don't get material like this in any other Christmas day special, I think it's fair to say. It's just one of many things this story has to recommend it; there's some great gags (the running gaga of Harriet introducing herself only to be met with "Yes, I know who you are" starts here), a sword fight, a nice song - what more could one want at Christmas?

Connectivity: 

The Christmas Invasion and The Long Game are both Russell T Davies penned stories first broadcast in 2005. In both, the Doctor returns someone back to their Mum's place on Earth after an alien menace has been defeated, and in both the Doctor confronts and deposes a figure of authority who's wearing a suit, who also happens in each case to be played by someone who starred in Shaun of the Dead.

Deeper Thoughts:

Christmas Dalek Baubles. In the spirit of the season's traditions, the BBC and Panini have both given us gifts recently, and both are Dalek themed. The first, which came out a few weeks back from the people who make Doctor Who Magazine, is The Daleks Bookazine. This is a lavish collection of some astonishingly well restored 1960s comic strips. They were originally published in TV21, the magazine that Gerry Anderson created as a showcase for his Supermarionation programmes such as Thunderbirds, Stingray and Fireball XL5. The Daleks somehow snuck in to the guest list too, and made their presence felt in the magazine from 1965 to 1967. The strip shows the beginning of the Daleks (not overridden in the TV series until Genesis of the Daleks) through to their decision to target Earth for invasion sometime around 2150 AD. There's a beautiful and deceptive simplicity to the story-telling in these pages that is quite hard to describe. Partly, that's down to the words, which were penned for the most part by Dalek originator Terry Nation and David Whittaker, the script editor on Doctor Who in its first couple of years and the man who commissioned Nation to deliver his earliest TV Dalek tales, and later wrote a couple of the best Dalek stories himself. Clearly, both men are obsessed to a greater or lesser degree with the Nazi pepperpots,

The storytelling would be nothing if there weren't top notch artwork, and the three artists that worked on the strip over the years, Richard Jennings, Eric Eden, and Ron Turner, all deliver the goods in different styles. My favourite is the pop art deco stylings of Turner, who did the later numbers. The colours and curves of the Dalek vehicles and machinery are a joy to behold, and they look better than they have ever done thanks to the restoration work of designer Peri Godbold. I'd normally say I recommend you pick up a copy, but it's sold out everywhere. Maybe they'll do another print run in future. The comic strips inspired the second early Christmas gift, 'Daleks!' a five part youtube series which is an attempt to recreate the style of the TV21 Dalek adventures. It is one part of the cross-media arcing Time Lord Victorious concept: lots of tie-in audios, books, comic strips, toys and even T-Shirts that can be taken as stand-alone, but which also can combine to form one big sprawling interconnected narrative. It's a bold idea, but I haven't watched or read any of the other parts, so don't know how well this fits in. For 'Daleks!' it just meant the main threat to the titular protagonists, a green wibbly thing in space, goes unexplained.

A lot of the visuals are breath-taking with mass ranks of Daleks and mechanoids, flying saucers, planets and gadgets  in a Ron Turner-esque style. The story too tries to recreate the 1960s comic strip approach, with terse exchanges of dialogue as would fit into a single panel on the page. The Dalek emperor is the gold-domed version from the comic too, and he's accompanied by a new character, the Dalek Strategist, a beaten-up old school grey-and-blue Dalek who is as wily as any in a David Whittaker scripted Dalek story on TV. The Dalek voices are provided by Nicholas Briggs, and he's as good as ever. Other voices are provided by Doctor Who alumni Anjli Mohindra and Ayesha Antoine, plus Joe Sugg for some reason (he doesn't too bad to be fair). To make it possible to turn things around in a short production time - the animation was started only after Covid lockdown had started in the UK - there are no humanoid characters at all. This made it a bit hard going for me, to be honest. It's difficult to feel anything based on the drama unfolding, though it looks and sounds excellent. I think it is better watched in episode chunks one a night rather than tackling it all in one go. Though it wasn't 100% successful to me, I'm still grateful it exists, and I didn't have to wait until the first day of next year for some Dalek action. What's also heartening is a memory of the wilderness years before 2005 and stories like The Christmas Invasion made Doctor Who the going concern it is now; something like Daleks! would have been a decade-defining event back then, instead of just a nice stocking filler.

In Summary:

An instant tradition, starting an incredible 13-year run of Doctor Who specials, each of which made for a happy Christmas for all of us at home. Season's Greetings! .

The Long Game

Chapter The 175th, which focuses on the companion that couldn't, but maybe it shouldn't.

Plot:

The leather-jacket Doctor, Rose and Adam (remember Adam, who they picked up in Utah after fighting a lone Dalek? No? Oh well!) arrive in the year 200,000 on Satellite Five, a 500 floor space station in Earth orbit that gathers, packages and broadcasts all galactic news to the human race. He encourages Adam and Rose to explore what is known as the fourth great and bountiful human empire, but the Doctor suspects something is wrong, and future history has been changed. Rose gets bored of Adam's lack of adventure, and joins the Doctor in his meddling. The two of them meet up with a journalist Cathica, and realise that floor 500 is where they need to be to figure out what's going on. Cathica, like the rest of the human race, seems to have been conditioned not to be curious or rebellious, and refuses to accompany them. On floor 500, they meet the Editor, and a massive creature, the Mighty Jagrafess of the Douglas Adams-esque long name. This creature is in charge of satellite 5 and uses the power of the news to control the empire.

Meanwhile, Adam has been tempted by the idea of recording future technological developments for monetary gain. His access to computers is limited, unless he gets an operation to put a socket in his head. He gets this done, and connects to the system, which gives the Editor all the information on the Doctor. The Editor plans to use the TARDIS to spread the Jagrafess' power throughout time. Luckily, the Doctor's admonishments have inspired Cathica, who has come up to floor 500. She plugs into the system too, makes the Jagrafess blow up, and helps the Doctor and Rose get free as the explosion kills the Editor. The annoyed Doctor dumps Adam back in his UK home, where he will have to live a quiet life as any click of the fingers will reveal the sci-fi hole in his head.

Context:

The evening of the first Saturday of December 2020, I had a Zoom meetup (not actually on Zoom, but you know what I mean) with my friends David, Trevor and Alan, who've been mentioned several times before on this blog. We regularly in times pre-Covid would meet up at the BFI in London for Doctor Who screenings (see many previous blog posts for write-ups of those) and there would usually be one in the run-up to Christmas. Meeting virtually for a glass of wine from our kitchens, spare rooms and the like made up somewhat for the lack of this ritual. We all added a few touches to emulate as well as could be expected the usual experience. For example, David used an image file for his background based on a photo he'd taken last time we were in NFT1, and I'd prepared a quick-fire Doctor Who quiz so we could all enjoy "shouting for Dick". We didn't do that thing you can do where you all watch the same thing on Netflix together to share a Doctor Who though (frankly the technology might be beyond me, I can't speak for the others). Luckily, I had watched one myself earlier long before the drinking and chatting started, the best to recreate the full experience. This was The Long Game, watched from the DVD. It was a shame Chris, who also usually joins us at the BFI, wasn't able to join the Zoom later, as this is one of the Doctor Who stories he worked on, and I could have asked him about it. 

As there had been some signs of a lack of interest of late from the family, I started watching it on my own on that Saturday afternoon, but it wasn't long before the youngest family members (boy of 11, girl of 8) had entered the living room and settled down to watch it. Even the eldest child (boy of 14) came in towards the end and watched until the credits. There wasn't much commenting from the children watching, they were too engrossed. The eldest recognised that the nurse character was played by "the Mum from Friday Night Dinner", and the younger two were both shocked and appalled by the Doctor brazenly stealing money by using his sonic screwdriver to update a futuristic credit card.

First time round:

At the end of April 2005, I visited (along with the Better Half and my friend Phil who's been mentioned many times here before too), David - the same David from the not actually a Zoom call - to stay with him and his Better Half over the bank holiday weekend. This represented quite a few Doctor Who fans gathered together (what's the group noun for Doctor Who fans - a convention? A cosplay? A continuity of fans?). As such, we all sat down to watch the new episode that was broadcast on the Saturday, which was Dalek - the barnstorming big set piece story for the middle to the season. Everyone enjoyed it very much.Then, after the story proper ended, before the credits ran, there was a trailer for The Long Game. Everyone looked at one another as if to say "What the heck was that?!". A week later back in our own place in Kent, the Better Half and I watched the story go out live. It was a bit better than the trailer had suggested, but I still felt it was the weakest story of the year at that point, and I didn't revise that opinion once all the stories had been broadcast. Even now I think it probably is the weakest story of that year, but it was a hell of a year. I still maintain that the stories broadcast in 2005 form the best season of Doctor Who ever. So, for all that I felt it was lacking at the time compared to the stories around it, it's better than the last half a dozen or so stories I've watched for the blog by a long way.  

 

Reaction:

When Russell T Davies, writer of The Long Game and showrunner of the relaunched 2005  Doctor Who, was planning the first run of new Who stories, he produced a document of the running order of the thirteen episodes he wanted to write or commission, with a short description of each. This was subsequently published in the Doctor Who Magazine special that formed a guide to the 2005 Christopher Eccleston run. This episode was intended to highlight how special Rose was, and how solid her and the Doctor's partnership was, by bringing in another companion who was a bit rubbish by comparison. Subsequent to the broadcast, in a couple of different interviews, Davies accepted that the story didn't quite work, and mused on whether he should have stuck to his original concept. This was to play the episode entirely from Adam's point of view, like a darker mirror image of the series opener Rose. Instead, the story cuts back and forth between Adam's story and the Doctor and Rose's, leaving neither with quite enough screen time to be satisfactory. The latter, though, is where the audience want to focus, and that's the central problem with The Long Game: it's the answer to a question that nobody asked.

To understand how this came to pass, one has to cast one's mind back to March 2005, just before that opening episode Rose was broadcast. There was a lot of hype about the series, but hype does not guarantee a hit. I remember seeing a Saturday tabloid newspaper front cover when I was out on the day of Rose's broadcast, talking about the ratings clash between Doctor Who and Ant and Dec's show on ITV. As someone who in the 1980s had avidly watched every tiny ripple and dip in Doctor Who's audience figures as it struggled against big hitter competition on the other side, my heart sank. Was it going to be a disaster? Would anyone watch? Davies was doing everything he could to shape a set of stories that would bring people in. It can be seen in the planning document, and the shape of the season it led to: start with a bang with some returning classic monsters, but not the Daleks, hold the Daleks back. Instead, show what the series can do - future, past, aliens, invasions, cliffhangers - then, for the sixth episode when that hype might have died down, bring in the Daleks and have what is effectively another launch episode. The story doesn't touch on the series character arc for Rose, and doesn't feature any of the supporting characters from Rose's family and friends, so as not to alienate any new viewers joining who are intrigued at seeing Daleks again.

It makes sense in this series structure for the story immediately following Dalek to establish for those new viewers how special our two heroes - a Gallifreyan, a human, but one team - are, by comparison to an interloper just introduced. The issue, though, is that Doctor Who in 2005 was more successful than anyone had imagined. The first episode Rose had received a record-breaking audience of over 10 million; some of those had fallen away, yes, but a very large audience of around 8 million were consistently and loyally watching, a much higher figure than a Saturday night drama had any right to expect at that time. By The Long Game, ITV had all but given up, and were putting out dross like Celebrity Wrestling up against Who. Everybody already knew that the Doctor and Rose were great, they didn't need it underlining. When he was writing this, Davies - never that timid or cautious a person, I think it's fair to say - must have predicted this on some level, which is why he couldn't stick with the original idea of it being solely from Adam's perspective, and kept wanting to cut to the Doctor and Rose. Adam's cautionary tale isn't as interesting as even the slightest proper Doctor Who story, and is maybe even slightly damaging to Rose and the Doctor's standing, as they come across as a bit cruel, unable to empathise with his culture-shock at the start, and taunting him at the end because of the finger-click activated hole in his head. It might have been better to get rid of Adam altogether and just concentrate on the Satellite 5 story.

Tonally, the Satellite 5 story feels like the one most aimed at the younger end of Who's demographic of 2005: loud, brash, colourful and stylised - the journalistic operation much more CBBC Newsround than All The President's Men. This is probably the right choice, but it does feel a bit fake in places. The original idea was reportedly pitched by Davies to the Doctor Who production office in the late 1980s, and it would have been right at home in one of Sylvester McCoy's seasons. It's not without its good points, don't get me wrong. The thing that the episode does showcase that hadn't been seen in 2005 up to that point was the mainstay of Doctor Who, the humanoid moustache-twirling villain. The disguised Slitheen are monsters, and didn't get any real screen time facing off to the Doctor in their humanoid disguises, Van Statten in Dalek was another mainstay, the dupe that enables the real alien baddie. So, by my reckoning, Simon Pegg as The Editor is the first proper one, despite his insistence that he's just second-in-command - the capital letter job title as handle rather than a name is a giveaway. He gives a great performance, and the series was lucky to have him before his star rose rather rapidly. The Long Game was filmed just a few weeks after Shaun of the Dead premiered in the U.S.

The acting elsewhere is very good. Bruno Langley plays what's on the page as well as anyone could; boy genius is never a likeable part to play, even before the exploitation and greed is factored in. Tamsin Greig's extended cameo is fun; Anna Maxwell Martin, in a very early TV performance, looks at every moment like a talent to watch for the future. Christine Adams as Cathica does good solid work. Everyone's performances are a little bit heightened but I'm sure that's what the director is asking of them. The regulars are great, fully settled in to their roles now. The massive globby ceiling creature with the silly long name is fun enough, though a bit static to be threatening. Overall then, not too bad. It is anyway worth it just for leading to the ominous recap at the start of Bad Wolf, which in but a few minutes tells us that The Long Game was just a set up for something bigger and better...

Connectivity: 

The Long Game and Planet of Evil both take place in years further in the future than usual for stories previously in the series - five and six figure numbers, rather the usual four. 

Deeper Thoughts:

The Even Longer Game. It's getting towards the end of the year. I have watched a Christmassy story already for the next blog post, which I aim to publish on Christmas Eve or just before. I may even squeeze in another story after that in the Chrimbo limbo period before New Year's Day brings Revolution of the Daleks, which - after a yes/no coin toss - I have decided to blog immediately after its broadcast. Before thoughts turn to festive things, or a look ahead to what 2021 will bring, it's time for my yearly audit of how I'm progressing in my long and frankly insane plan to blog every TV story of Doctor Who's two lifetimes, classic and new. Assuming I do blog the next one and find a post-Turkey moment to watch and blog another after that, I'll have covered 33 stories in total this year. That's about the same as my usual recent yearly average. As I commented at the time, though I thought the lockdown periods might have given me time to watch and blog more stories than usual, I turned out to be even more busy with other things not less. Of the 30 odd stories covered in 2020, there's been a good spread of coverage. Having just snuck a Christopher Eccleston story in, and having polished off Paul McGann's sole contribution very early on when I started this adventure, five and a half years ago, that meant every available Doctor was covered bar one: Colin Baker. He made very few stories altogether in his time, and I've done a lot of them already, so the odds of him coming up in a random search are quite low.

With the 31 stories blogged since the start of January, plus the one I know I'm covering next, I can crunch the numbers and see if there were any significant trends. Of the 32, only five were black-and-white stories from the first two Doctors, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, with Bill winning it with three stories to two. What's interesting is that only one of the five (The Seeds of Death) was a whole story with all its episodes extant, audio and video together; the remainder were partially missing stories plugged with animations or reconstructions, and one was a wholly missing audio-only experience (The Savages). There are now only nine missing or gap-filled stories remaining, a few of which have animated episodes making up the shortfall. Rumour has it that another couple (Evil of the Daleks and The Abominable Snowmen) are being animated right now as I type this. I've not blogged either story as yet, so if either or both are released next year, they could very well be covered here. The split between classic and new stories in 2020 is 14 to 18, which seems in line with the split overall. At the end of 2019, there were more new series episodes to cover (all those 1-part Matt Smiths add up, and of course they keep making new Jodie ones too), but it's more evenly split now with 62 old and 64 new stories left, not including the eight more being made in Cardiff by Jodie Whittaker at this very moment.

The winner of the most stories covered per Doctor in 2020 is Matt Smith, with six. Matt won't be beaten this year. Just behind him with five is Tom Baker; if I do find time to blog another one between the 25th and 31st December, and it's one of Tom's, he can only equalise. Then, Peter Capaldi and David Tennant are tied for the Bronze with four apiece, though two of David's were 'Doctor lite' stories, so Capaldi probably racked up more screen time. Jodie Whittaker, like Hartnell, had three stories; Peter Davison, like Pat Troughton, had two. One of Davison's was The Five Doctors, where all the early Doctors gets a look in. Other than his appearances in that, Jon Pertwee was only represented by one story this year, as were Sylvester McCoy and Christopher Eccleston. For those latter two, it's just as well as - looking at what's left - they, like Baker, C. are looking dangerously low on remaining stories with only four or five left each. Tom Baker and David Tennant are the highest mountains left to climb, both with 17 stories left. It may turn out the last couple of years of the blog find me alternating between those two popular Doctors; we'll see. I completed no new seasons this year; last year, I managed to finish off the four story season 23, but nothing more to date. I have a feeling this may change in 2021, though. A lot of the Jon Pertwee seasons only have one or two stories left to do, including season 8, which is coming out in a Blu-ray box set; again, time will tell.

I have reached my 175th story and blog post, which is definitely a milestone. Based on my idiosyncratic system, that means there are currently 126 stories left (including Revolution of the Daleks). Just in case anyone is using up brainpower working it out, that's because I count The Trial of a Time Lord as four separate stories, lump Utopia in with The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords to be one long story, and because I include Shada and K9 and Company in the total too. Because reasons. If I had been covering the stories in chronological order of broadcast, I'd be well in to new series territory by now. I would have just published the blog post on School Reunion, a few stories into Tennant's first year. With a reduced rate of new series episodes being made, I could catch up in about four years' time; but, if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that you can't necessarily plan for anything. So, I'll just enjoy the ride! 

In Summary:

The companion that shouldn't have been, but the rest is fun enough .