The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

Chapter the 312th, which depicts the war between the land and slightly under the land.

Plot:

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in a Welsh village in 2020 that is somehow populated only by one family (it's probably something to do with Covid restrictions, it being 2020). A nearby drilling project has penetrated to a record-breaking depth, but this seems to have woken up something under the ground. The father of the family Mo has gone missing, and based on the Doctor's investigations he was sucked down below the ground. Soon, Amy disappears this way too. Rory and the Doctor protect the others - Mo's son Elliot, Elliot's Mum Ambrose, Ambrose's Dad Tony, and Tony's colleague on the drill project Nasreen - when a group of creatures travel up from below and attack. Eliot is taken, but the Doctor and Rory manage to trap one of the creatures. It is a Silurian - one of the original inhabitants of the Earth from prehistory - called Alaya. The Doctor and Nasreen travel in the TARDIS to the Silurian city under the ground to negotiate a hostage exchange. They find a vast colony, most of whom are in suspended animation. Mo and Amy have been held there by a scientist Silurian Malohkeh, but manage to escape. They find Eliot in suspended animation, but can't release him, then catch up with the Doctor and Nasreen.

Silurian military commander Restac, who is a relative of Alaya's, wants to kill all the humans, but Malohkeh wakes up their leader Eldane who prevents this. Elliot is released. Meanwhile, on the surface, Tony is ill from a Silurian sting; this, plus fears for her missing son, leads Ambrose to torture and kill Alaya. Amy and Nasreen negotiate with Eldane on behalf of Earth. But Rory, Ambrose and Tony arriving with Alaya's body puts a bit of a dent in those proceedings. Tony has set the drill to destroy the Silurian underground city, but the Doctor sends a timed energy pulse to destroy the drill. Eldane agrees - a bit too readily - to put his people back in suspended animation and wait 1000 more years, with the humans agreeing to spread the word down the generations to prepare for an amicable solution at that time. Restac goes on the attack, killing Malohkeh. Eldane sets off toxic fumigation to force the Silurians back into hibernation, so Restac is without her army. Tony decides to stay and go into hibernation too, so he can be cured of the Silurian venom in a millennia's time. Nasreen stays with him. The others race to escape before the drill explodes. As they reach the TARDIS, they see the mysterious crack that's been following them around the universe. The Doctor risks pulling a piece of shrapnel out of the crack to see if he can work out what caused the explosion that fractured reality. Restac staggers into view, dying from the toxic fumes and shoots Rory. He falls near the crack, and the time energy escaping from it erases him from existence. Amy forgets him. After dropping Mo, Ambrose and Elliott home, the Doctor examines the shrapnel - it's a piece of the TARDIS door.

Context:

Watched from the disc in the series five Blu-ray box set in early October, with a week's gap in between the episodes. I was accompanied by two of my three children, boy of 15 and girl of 12 (the eldest is now living away from home at university, and we miss him). Both of them were tickled by the 'futuristic' setting of the year 2020, and made comments about nobody in the narrative wearing masks or socially distancing (but it could be set in January or February 2020, of course). The youngest proudly told me before the first episode that Doctor Who had featured in Heartstopper (characters are seen watching David Tennant in The Runaway Bride in the latest run of that Netflix series).

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. Another domino falls, as this post marks the completion of eleventh Doctor Matt Smith's entire televisual Doctor Who era. This makes a total of four Doctors done so far (the seventh, eighth and fourteenth Doctors having been completed before Smith). This post also marks the completion of another season, the 29th out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-12, 14-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 2, 4, 5-7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

I always have trouble remembering my first impressions of Matt Smith stories; don't know exactly why. It's probably a combination of factors - it's a while ago now, the series wasn't as much of a novelty as the early period after the 2005 relaunch, and I had more going on in my life. What I have done in the past if I came up short was to use the First Time Round section to tell a completely different anecdote, mostly from the wilderness years when the show wasn't on TV as a regular series: nearly dying on New Year's Eve 1985, watching Blakes 7 videos with my school friend Paul, reading Doctor Who Magazine back copies rather than revising for my A-levels, interviewing for a university place in Durham, not attending a Doctor Who convention in my first week at university, being accused of shoplifting, attending a Tom Baker book signing, and what it felt like to be a fan in the slump between the years 2000 and 2003. I've run out of those anecdotes now, so will have to rack my brain for something that was going on in May 2010. Oh, of course, it was the beginning of the end of my country. A few weeks earlier (just before The Vampires of Venice) a general election in the UK had returned a hung parliament, so there were a few days of negotiations. Then, just before Amy's Choice, the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, had made a speech from the Rose Garden behind 10 and 11 Downing Street. They had formed a coalition government, allowing the Conservatives (the majority partner) to systematically dismantle anything and everything good. Policies would have started to be announced around the time of the Silurian two-parter, including the Fixed Term Parliament Act, which mandated that there would be minimum five years before there was a chance to get them voted out. Maybe this is why I struggle to remember the period - at some conscious or subconscious level, I don't want to.

Reaction:

The problem with reviewing any story featuring Malcolm Hulke's lacertilian legions is what to call them. At various points they have been known as Silurians, Eocenes, Earth reptiles, Homo Reptilia and probably a few more handles I've forgotten. I will stick with Silurians; even though it is wrong, it was what they were first called. Another problem with the Silurians is that they are a great concept, but a difficult fit for Doctor Who stories. Their backstory is more complex and lengthy than some other villains, which is not the best for filling in new viewers with on the fly during an action adventure storyline. The Doctor dumps all the info over the audience in a speech in the second part of this story. In two times 45 minutes of story, why was there no opportunity to tease this information out more gradually? Well, most of the first episode withholds the Silurians' identity and appearance to ramp up the tension and excitement. I wouldn't necessarily want it done differently, as the first part is rather good. The scenes of characters being sucked under the Earth, the siege scenes with Silurians barely perceptible, zooming past the camera as a blur, the distorted POV of characters being experimented on by a Silurian in a surgical mask. It's all great. Sooner or later, though, if the concept is going to be treated appropriately, the horror movie has to turn into the more sedate drama of people sat round a table negotiating. Trying to meld those two halves together in a coherent way is difficult. The original Silurians story from 1970 is essentially the same, horror and action adventure at the start and end, negotiations in the middle. It probably seems more harmonious as a whole than the more jarring changes in the Matt Smith story only because the length (seven episodes) smooths out some of the joins.

I don't fault the writer Chris Chibnall or director Ashley Way. The flaw is built in to the central concept, which tries to have its cake and eat it by presenting the Silurians as both a set of horror monsters, and as a group of people with legitimate claims. For example, Alaya - the first Silurian we are presented with in the story - is aggressive and prejudiced against humans to a ridiculously heightened degree. She makes the race seem less than empathetic, undermining the second part; but, she has to be nasty enough to be killed by a human; if she isn't, then there wouldn't be any dramatic tension in that second part, where her death undermines any chance of a peaceful solution. The two conflicting halves cancel each other out. Even if Chibnall hadn't given Alaya the taunting and manipulative dialogue, she looks like a monster, so inevitably would appear to be one in the visual grammar of Doctor Who. Obviously, the one addition to Silurian biology made in this story, a whiplash tongue with venom sting, isn't helping matters either. Many would say that Alaya's just one of a species that are infinitely varied just like humans; but, one of the more peacenik Silurians is scientist Malohkeh, played by Richard Hope, and he experiments on people. Why spend the first episode framing him as Doctor Mengele if you want him to be sympathetic? For the thrills, obviously. When the potentially more sensible negotiations section starts, it has two randos representing Earth. This seems to stem from having so very few characters in the story, probably for reasons of narrative or production economy (or both). If the Silurians agreed to terms, though, how in hell would Amy Pond and Nasreen Chaudhry have then persuaded the nations and governments across the globe? It's silly, and glaringly obvious from the outset that things will go back to the status quo with the Silurians hibernating again, and the issues side-stepped.

This is problematic because of the real world analogues of this fictional conflict. It doesn't need much spelling out: "We have a claim to this place extending far back in time", "Yeah, well you haven't been around for a long time and we live here now", "We will retake this place, it's our historic birthright", "No way, where would we live?", "Not our problem, you need to make way for our settlements", "Not without a fight", etc. etc. These sort of conflicts have occurred throughout history right up to the present date, and therefore need to be treated sensitively. It's troublesome to interrogate such issues in dramatic form if one side are dressed as lizard people. Even if we could put aside the risk of crassness - it's only a fantasy show aimed at a family audience after all, not meaning to offend - what is the best we could discover? The morality of such conflicts is complex, and the best we are likely to end up with after 90 minutes is philosophy at approximately the level of Culture Club's The War Song. If we dispense with the backstory, we would just have Silurians doing traditional Doctor Who monster stuff; to be fair, that's what their creator Malcolm Hulke ended up doing. In the follow up to his first Silurian story, The Sea Devils, the earth reptiles are reformatted to just be action adventure antagonists with the moral complexity largely ignored. Similarly, Silurians have made many returns to Doctor Who after this 2010 reintroduction, but there haven't been any more land claim negotiations included in those stories. That aspect seems to have gone into permanent hibernation. At the time of writing, though, a Doctor Who spin off is in production featuring the Sea Devils, which from the title - The War Between the Land and the Sea - might just be dabbling in that moral complexity again. Perhaps over a five episode mini-series that doesn't have to be Doctor Who exactly it can be made to work.

Other points of note: the moments from the wider series arc are much more successful than the Silurian story. The mysterious crack turning up in the end is very unexpected and dramatic; Rory's death scene and the scene where Amy tries to hold on to her memories of him but fails were both well played and emotional. The reveal that the shrapnel the Doctor has pulled from the crack is a part of the TARDIS exterior is nicely intriguing. The new design of Silurian make-up is effective. The regular cast are all on good form, particularly Arthur Darvill as Rory. It's got a phenomenal guest cast. Neve McIntosh gets the most interesting material to work with, and makes an indelible impact in both of her two roles. She got to return regularly to play a more nuanced Silurian in future stories. Everyone else is wasted to a greater or lesser degree bringing life to dull characters. Enough time has now gone by for Meera Syal and Robert Pugh to come back to the series playing other roles; it's too late for Stephen Moore, alas. There was definitely mileage in a claustrophobic chiller with a small group of people trapped with a violent and manipulative Silurian; there was probably mileage in a grander, more epic story of two races trying to find peace; trying to do both dragged the resultant story down.

Connectivity:

The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood and Survival are both themed around the dangers of conflict; both feature sequences set underground and races that are anthropomorphised versions of creatures found on Earth (cheetahs in Survival, non-specific lizards in the Silurian 2-parter).

Deeper Thoughts:

From reptile scales underground to musical scales underground: Part 2 of The Happiness Patrol BFI events write-up, Q3 2024. At the end of the first part of this epic - see the Deeper Thoughts section of the Survival blog post - an email had arrived. A week after the wrong version of The Happiness Patrol was shown, the BFI contacted attendees including yours truly to generously and unexpectedly offer free tickets to a rescheduled event where the new special edition version would be showcased, definitely and for reals this time. As it was inserted into the schedule at the last minute, the new screening was at an awkward time, 4.30pm in the afternoon on a Sunday, 29th September (about a month after the initial screening); three of us (me, Chris and Alan) were still able to attend. The later than usual start made travelling up less frantic, and we met for a spot of Sunday lunch before the screening, then ambled along the South Bank to the BFI and took our seats in the NFT1 theatre. Hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy made merry with the unusual situation from the off: "Welcome to the monthly screening of The Happiness Patrol" said Johnson, with Fiddy joking that in a month's time they would be showing an 8mm black and white version. Turning serious for a brief moment, Johnson gave appreciation to everyone, audience and panel members, that had made it back for this rescheduled slot, but then added of Sheila Hancock that "She's been banned from today's event; she spoke too much". The first item on the agenda was the social media round-up, with Johnson suspecting that some people were now making comments in the run up to BFI events deliberately to get read out, as with the tweet saying that fans who attended both times could "say that they've been double-Dicked". Johnson deadpanned that he was "horrified" that anyone would think he ever used Dick's name as a double entendre.

NFT1

After the quiz, with a final jokey and rhetorical question ("What is the name, address and phone number of the person at the BBC that sent the wrong files?"), there was the first instance of what Fiddy jokingly called "Deja Who". Pete McTighe, a major creative force behind the Blu-ray range, instrumental in creating the special edition of The Happiness Patrol, was invited to the stage to whet the appetites of the assembled about what they were about to see. In other words, to give the same interview he had given a month before. He revealed from his pocket a Blu-ray of the correct version of the story that he'd brought "just in case", and again talked about the insertion of cut material and restructuring of the narrative that had been done to what he feels is an "underrated gem" featuring two stars of the show "at the height of their powers". Again, he highlighted that the intention was to build up the world of Terra Alpha more than could be done with the original budget of "20 quid and a ham sandwich". After McTighe, there was another returning guest: model-maker and puppeteer Stephen Mansfield. This time he hadn't brought the Fifi puppet with him, as it had been assumed that the same people would be attending as had done the previous month, so all would have seen it already. A quick poll of the audience with a show of hands demonstrated this view was only half right: the audience was about 50/50 split between single and double-Dickers (any free tickets that hadn't been claimed by original attendees were put on general sale). Mansfield came up with a few new comments for those of us that had been before. A crucial moment for him was Fifi's death scene, which comes at the end of the story but was shot early on. It is a "tall order" to expect a puppet to be convincing all the time, and he was worried until he saw the emotion that could be wrung from a good actor such as Sheila Hancock working with his co-creation. He relaxed after that.

Our hosts

The house lights then went down, and the first two episodes of the story (in the correct new edition, no doubt to many gasps of relief) were shown. I was skeptical going in, but what has been achieved in these updated episodes is miraculous. The CG backdrops can never have quite the detail or feel of physical sets shot on video, and yet there are seamless sequences where the camera pans from one to the other, or they both share the same frame. McTighe's world building aim has definitely been achieved. The narrative has more time to breathe, with additional scenes inserted of the Doctor and Ace exploring. Lesley Dunlop's Character Susan Q seemed to suffer most from the drastic editing for time that was done on the original, and there are many more sequences featuring her now. There's also much more humour, like the moment where the Kandyman says "I don't give interviews" or a character from this very bureaucratic world tells another that "You need a permit to hide here". There is some reordering of material, but nothing jars and things flow along nicely. It wasn't just the episodes that were new on this day in September; the BFI had done a good job in providing some new onstage content too. After the two-thirds point of the story had been reached, there was a brand new onstage panel focussing on the sonic aspects of the Happiness Patrol. This featured Dominic Glynn (composer of the incidental music for the Happiness Patrol), Adam Burney (the harmonica player featured on the story's soundtrack) and Mark Ayres (audio restoration whizz for the Blu-ray range, amongst many other things). Ayres commended the new edition version that we'd just seen, describing The Happiness Patrol as "a lost classic, hopefully now being able to shine a bit".

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, McTighe

Glynn thought the story was a "wonderful gift" as music was built into the script; plus, the styles required varied wildly from awful lift muzak to the soulful harmonica motifs. Burney, who was only 19 when he performed said motifs, explained that all his work took place after the TV studio sessions. Like many an auditioning actor ('of course I can ride a horse'), Richard D. Sharp, who played the harmonica player Earl Sigma in the story, had said he could play. On watching the footage it quickly became clear that he couldn't. Burney had to shape what he was playing to best match Sharp's movements: "I think we got away with it". Ayres explained that as part of his remastering job, he noticed there was one brief moment of Sharp's performance still in there, which came as a surprise to Burney. Sylvester McCoy's live Television Centre performance of the spoons is still intact on the original recordings, and survives to the new edition. To extend Glynn's original set of cues to cover the new material of that edition, Ayres used every trick in the book, stretching, looping, even playing some backwards. Just before the panel ended, Glynn mentioned that he'd also scored the last ever classic story Survival: "So, as I always like to say, I killed it off." "That was my job," shouted McCoy from his seat in the audience. The lights then went down again, and it was time for episode three. It wouldn't be possible to fix every issue with the script (see my original blog post on the story to see if you agree with me on what those issues are), but McTighe has managed to smooth over some things. The fact that there seems to be no audience in the forum, for example, is explained by there being a curfew in place that is highlighted in some of the CG additions. The death of the Kandyman is built up much more, and there is new model work and explosions to up the dramatic ante. The final frame after the credits is an "In Memory of" slide for the late writer of the story Graeme Curry, which was a lovely touch.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Mansfield

Pete McTighe came back onto the stage, this time accompanied by Chris Thompson, who had marshalled the new effects work we'd just seen. The chat with the two of them had been planned for the previous session, but couldn't take place once the wrong version of the story was shown. This was particularly tough on Thompson who lives in Belfast, and had to fly over twice. He showed the audience the new miniature of Helen A's escape craft, having made this - from many Kenner Star Wars toys stuck together - and many similar new models for new editions of the stories of season 25 for the box set. He had brought more of them over for the first BFI event, but unfortunately not this time as they'd been damaged in transit first time round: "The combined might of the Daleks and Cybermen was nothing compared to easyJet baggage reclaim". McTighe explained that a lot of the material reinserted came from early ('71') edits of the episodes that had been retained in the archive. Thompson also illustrated how ambitious McTighe had been in pushing for the scope of what could be changed in the story; Thompson had originally presented a plan with 20 new special effects shots; McTighe asked if they could have "an extra 40". Speaking for all of us, Johnson told them both that they had worked wonders. After a brief and nice moment of applause for the normally unsung BFI staff who were setting the stage up with more seats, the final panel of the day got underway. The panel a month earlier had been the biggest I'd ever seen at a BFI event; this one was was even bigger. Onto the stage, to much applause, came designer John Ashbridge, director Chris Clough, script editor Andrew Cartmel, guest actor Rachel Bell (who played Priscilla P), plus the star duo of Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Glynn, Burney, Ayres

There wasn't a single repeated anecdote from this final panel. The organisers of the event from both BFI and BBC deserve kudos for getting the key players back, finding new people to attend too, and keeping it fresh. Initial questions went to the two people who hadn't been present a month before; Bell had enjoyed seeing her younger self and loved the special edition, adding that she was "going to have to watch the original"; "Some of us did that quite recently," replied Johnson, to much merriment from the audience. Ashbridge gave a dramatic pause on being asked what he thought of the new version before replying that he thought it was "absolutely stunning"; "Phew!" said Johnson; more merriment. "If only Chris [Clough] and I could have done that first time". Clough explained that the 'fondant surprise' death of the Kandyman couldn't be shown in full in the original as it would have been impossible to have so much liquid in the studio. Later, Clough was asked how they achieved the fluid seen flowing into pipes in the Kandy kitchen: "God knows". Johnson talked to McCoy about some comments he'd made at the previous Happiness Patrol event, about the show being a vehicle for politics, that had subsequently made the news. McCoy was unrepentant, of course, and mentioned in his reply that his one stipulation on getting the part was that the Doctor never use a gun. He said that the Doctor would always "use this" pointing to his head, and added that this constituted good acting "as there's nothing there". Picking up on the drama with messages theme, a couple of the panel pointed out that there is a line in The Happiness Patrol about banning demonstrations, "And that's now, isn't it?!".

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, McTighe, Thompson, Escape ship model

Bell reminisced about taking her two children (aged seven and nine at the time) to the studio, and also a separate time when all the Happiness Patrol trooped in together to the canteen, where their short skirts were reportedly popular with some of the diners. The shortness of the skirt also led to a floor manager's comment relaying instructions from the gallery, which Bell retold: "Can you tell Rachel to put her legs closer together, please?". McCoy thought on first seeing the guest cast assembled "Oh my God, it's the Royal Shakespeare Company". Aldred remembered that before her first ever studio session, she didn't know where Television Centre was, so asked Bonnie Langford ("I figured she'd probably been there [while] in the womb"). Ashbridge had recently watched all the Doctor Who stories he'd designed for an interview by Doctor Who Magazine, and decided that The Happiness Patrol was his favourite - as it was studio-based, he had full control over the look, even though there were huge challenges equating the vision of the script with the resources and technical ability available. When Bell was asked if she was ever remembered by anyone for Doctor Who she said no, but added that this was because she's not recognisable as her younger self. She related the sort of exchanges she now gets with the public: "I know you?" "Oh?" "Yes. Don't you work in M&S?". Everyone loved the design of the Kandyman, though Cartmel said his first thoughts on seeing it were "That's fantastic - they're going to get sued"! McCoy thought that David John Pope had such poor vision in the Kandyman costume that he was lucky not to cut his own finger off in the scene when the character does the same. During a discussion about the proclivity of 80s TV to feature gunge (like the fondant surprise in Happiness Patrol), the TV show Tiswas was mentioned; "Ooh, I was in Tiswas" said McCoy somewhat wistfully.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Ashbridge, Clough, Cartmel, Bell, Aldred, McCoy 

There were a fair few comments about the flimsiness of the Police Box prop that was taken on location to perform as the TARDIS. McCoy also noted that people used to use the interior as a public convenience. He acted out being inside it holding his nose, desperately waiting for a cue: "Please say action"! It was such a chatty panel that there probably wasn't a need for an interviewer, although Johnson did need to shush them when they were nattering away while an audience member was waiting to ask their question. A great audience question asked was about who should be cast if ever there was a docu-drama of the making of 1980s Doctor Who. After it was confirmed to him that the suggested person was still alive, McCoy put forward TV astrologer from years gone by Russell Grant to play producer John Nathan-Turner. Kit Harington was suggested for Andrew Cartmel. A person to play McCoy proved harder. As Clough put it: "Sylv's unique". After briefly suggesting himself "I'd do it again", McCoy thought Johnny Depp could play him ("He's a bit dodgy though"); Sophie mentioned Ben Whishaw to play McCoy. One of the last audience questions compelled Rachel Bell to say "Were there any sexual problems?", which I'd say only about 10% of the audience understood, but I was one of them (google "Dear John UK" if you are similarly in the dark). Then, it was all over, and we decamped to the bar. Johnson said at one point of the special edition that it was definitely worth a month long wait, and he's right. As testament to this, Chris - probably the most difficult to please of our group of regular BFI attendees - loved it. At the time of writing, there's only a couple of weeks before the box set is released, and I can't wait to see what has been done with the special editions of the other three stories in the season.

In Summary:

War, war is stupid and people are stupid, and love means nothing in some strange quarters...

Victory of the Daleks

Chapter the 254th, which teaches us that nothing good was ever described as a "new paradigm".

Plot:

The last remaining Dalek ship falls back through time after a previous altercation with the Doctor, to Earth in the early 1940s. The Daleks have a Progenitor DNA device that will help rebuild their species, but because of their impurity, having been created from the cells of the Emperor Dalek / Davros / humans (whichever of the many various groups of final remaining Daleks these are), the device will not recognise them as true members of the species. There are probably many plans they could hatch to address this problem, but they decide the best thing to do is to help the allies win WW2. They create a robot professor with fake human memories called Bracewell who pretends to have invented the Daleks as helper machines dubbed "Ironsides". This is so that Winston Churchill will tell his old friend the Doctor about it, the Doctor will arrive (with Amy Pond in tow) to warn everyone that the Daleks are evil and must be planning something, and will inadvertently identify them by name. This indeed comes to pass, and a recording of his identification is used to fire up the Progenitor. The Doctor materialises the TARDIS on the Dalek spaceship and witnesses the creation of the new Daleks. To destroy the humans, the Daleks force all the lights on during an air raid. But, using the future technical knowledge of Bracewell, the British air force - very rapidly - installs space-proof bubbles around Spitfire planes and they fly up and attack the Dalek ship, turning the lights back off again. The new - fat, hunchbacked, colourful - Daleks destroy the old impure ones, and activate a planet-destroying bomb within Bracewell so they can escape (funny they didn't do that earlier, rather than muck about with the lights). The Doctor returns to Earth and cannot diffuse the bomb, but Amy has the idea to appeal to Bracewell's pretend humanity, and that makes the countdown to destruction cease (somehow).

Context:

Watched one dull weekend afternoon with all the children (boys of 16 and 13, girl of 10) from the new series 5 box-set Blu-ray disc (the sound seemed a little off, and I'm worried that I missed a recall many years ago). The middle child throughout expressed his enthusiasm, as he really likes this one (unlike his Dad who was harrumphing all the way through at one thing or another, but we'll get to that anon). 

First Time Round:

Most people have probably forgotten this, but the first experience I had of this story was of a single line of dialogue. An audio file of Matt Smith's line reading of what turned out to be some key dialogue "I am the Doctor, and you are the Daleks" leaked to the online forums many months before the story aired, and before any of Matt Smith's work in his stories had been seen. Nobody knew exactly how he'd perform the role, and this was the earliest clue. As anyone with experience of such things would have anticipated, fans' extrapolations from this smidge of evidence went big, broad and deep. It was the best of lines, it was the worst of lines; he was going to be a disaster, he was going to be marvellous, etc, etc. Much later, on the evening of Saturday 14th April 2010, I was visiting the flat of old friend Phil, mentioned many times before on this blog, to meet his new partner (and later Better Half) for the first time. All of us being fans, our idea had been that we would watch Doctor Who together before dinner, but my bus over to his place was delayed, so I ended up watching Victory of the Daleks the following day at home. I'm glad at that, as I was so disappointed with the episode on first watch it might have put a downer on the evening.

Reaction:

Is it better to be bored or disappointed? It's one of those age-old questions with no right answer. A story - or indeed any piece of art or craft - can fail by playing it safe and ending up dull, or being over-ambitious and ending up embarrassing. Which is the lesser experience for the viewer may be just a matter of taste, but I've always thought it was better to shoot for the moon and miss than keep one's sights low. Until now, maybe. The last story covered on the blog The Web Planet - which in its own special way manages to be both dull and embarrassing - is clearly on paper a very challenging spectacle to realise for the time in which it was made. The story structure supporting the spectacle is coherent, though, and aligned to those visual aims: imagine a planet of insects, and the insects are at war. Simple. There's a difference though, at least I think, between failing to realise an ambitious script, and squandering the potential of a good scenario with an incoherent script. Victory of the Daleks asks its dramatic question "What would happen if the Daleks took part in World War Two?" in a 'celebrity historical' featuring Winston Churchill (expertly brought to life by Ian McNeice). That is a set-up with a great deal of potential. It's not over-ambitious either; WW2 and Daleks are both things that Doctor Who has a lot of experience at doing well previously. The script becomes ruinously ambitious by trying to do so many disparate things within that set-up in 45 minutes, none of them getting the time to be properly explored or even - in some cases - covered sufficiently to be baseline plausible.

The story starts intriguingly by side-stepping what might be the viewer's expectation: the Daleks are fighting on the allied side. As they have been Nazi analogues throughout their history, it might have been more obvious to have the Daleks fighting against Churchill and Co. The Doctor and Winston Churchill versus Adolf Hitler and the Daleks - how would good prevail? It's a sitting target and it's sitting right there - why not go for it?! Okay, maybe it's a bit too obvious. So, the intriguing and less obvious - but probably less exciting - option is chosen instead, and the Daleks are pretending to be good. It's not exactly an original idea, as it is openly and playfully plagiarised from a 1960s Doctor Who story The Power of the Daleks. There's even an in-joke highlighting it with the Daleks saying "I am your soldier" instead of "I am your servant". Cribbing from a story as good and as well remembered as Power is a bit risky, but the earlier story showed that focusing on the Daleks using their wiles and gradually taking over a situation can be winning. The problem is that Victory of the Daleks doesn't explore it for any length of time. At roughly the 12 minute point, it leaves the plot behind, a means to an end just to get the Doctor to identify the Daleks. For that purpose, though, it doesn't make any sense as the Dalek's gambit. In Power, they had no, erm, power, so they couldn't exterminate everyone. The Daleks in Victory have no such limitation, so why don't they just threaten to kill Churchill to make the Doctor do what they want? In Power, the unarmed Daleks look relatively benign; in Victory, Churchill knows full well they are capable of vaporising German aircraft, so why doesn't he listen to his old friend the Doctor when he's pointing out the dangers?

Almost a third of the way into the story, and everything so far has been a gimmick, a little callback fun for long-term fans and the chance to see Daleks painted camouflage green (which is admittedly pretty cool). The next third is mostly set on the Dalek spaceship. There's a nice Matt Smith moment where he bluffs the Daleks that a Jammie Dodger biscuit is really a detonator, but it can't take away from the deathly surrounding exposition that forms the rest of this sequence. The convoluted backstory of Daleks (that aren't quite Daleks any more) creating new Daleks (that are) is not interesting to even long-term fans. Why can't the Daleks just turn up wanting to explode or enslave things anymore, and spare us all this tedium? A new type of Daleks is created, which I'll get to criticising in a moment (everybody else has over the years, so I don't see why I should hold back). Before that, there's a moment that's stupid with two o's - the Daleks have turned all the lights on to allow for the devastation of humans (why bother, though, when they have a bomb that can explode the planet?), but luckily - based on some blueprints that the robot Bracewell created (why would the Daleks program him with knowledge that could be used against them?) - Churchill's team are able to make Spitfires and their pilots capable of operating in space in special protective bubbles. From an idea on paper to working space-Spitfires in the time it takes the Doctor to have a brief conversation with the Daleks. It's ludicrous. Our boys bravely battle against the Dalek ship, and knock out the transmitter keeping the lights on, so the Daleks use their bomb anyway. It's pointless, but people get to see a WW2 dogfight in space (which I didn't think was cool, as it seemed to be playing on war years patriotism just for some cheap thrills).

We're now approximately 30 minutes in to a 45 minute episode. The final section is Amy stopping Bracewell from exploding using the power of love (yuck!) and then some drawn out resolution scenes. Bill Patterson as Bracewell is good, but the material he's given is poor. Writer Mark Gatiss maybe had to rush the screenplay, as it is not up to his normal standard. Perhaps, though, all the material described thus far was merely window dressing, as the point of the story is really just to introduce a new look (plus, if one is cynical, some new merchandising opportunities) for the Daleks. If the new designs weren't an unmitigated disaster, this might be a justification. Alas, they are awful, hardly anybody liked them, and they rarely appeared again after this series. They're too big - one of the joys of Daleks is their not looking quite big enough for an operator, and these look big enough for two. They have a weird hunchback - the older designs have the upper section and base section aligned in a fluid way. They all have job titles (the Strategist, the Drone, and, erm, a few others I already can't remember) - Daleks shouldn't have anything as dull as job titles, so these were wisely never mentioned again. They lose all the detailing of their immediate predecessors like rivets and panels, and go instead for smooth blocks of colour - this would be good if it didn't look like they were made of such cheap plastic. And they don't do anything. They kill only their own kind, and then they run away. All told, the so-called 'new paradigm' Daleks and the story as a whole are two of the biggest disappointments of Doctor Who's long history. They could have done Churchill and the Doctor versus Nazi Daleks, and everyone would probably have been happy. Maybe sometimes it is better to keep things simple.  

Connectivity:

Both Victory of the Daleks and The Web Planet start from a lead-in set up in the previous episode. There's also maybe the faintest echoes of World War 2, specifically D-Day, in some of the action of The Web Planet related to the Menoptera invasion plans.

Deeper Thoughts:

They keep killing, and it's snoozy. The one positive thing I found with Victory of the Daleks at the time was that the Daleks got away at the end, rather than all being destroyed as had happened every time they appeared in the new series previously. The Doctor's a bit sad about it in the story, but I was relieved. It meant that they could return the next time without as much convoluted explanation. The question I posed above, "Why can't the Daleks just turn up wanting to explode or enslave things anymore, and spare us all this tedium?" could do with a little deeper thought to answer it. Apart from in their first appearance, when they weren't expected to appear in any further stories, and in The Evil of the Daleks, which was intended to write them out of the show forever, the classic era Daleks didn't get wiped off the face of the universe at the end of their every story. The small group of them that been threatening whichever planet, colony or home counties mansion would be destroyed, yes, but there were always more out there; sometimes this was explicitly stated, sometimes implicitly hinted. When the series came back, this all changed because showrunner Russell T Davies believed he had an issue to overcome. He felt that the Daleks - after years of no appearances on telly except in chocolate biscuit commercials - had become objects of fun, or even ridicule. They were the butt of jokes about sink plungers and not being able to go up stairs, and such.

To rectify this, Davies commissioned a story for their reintroduction (2005's Dalek), where just one is shown to be a plausible threat to the world. It was very effective, too. By the end of the first season of the relaunched show, when they come back en masse, things hit a dramatic peak; as Billie Piper's Rose says "We could hardly stop one" and now there are thousands. As part of the overarching mythology Davies weaves into his first year as showrunner, the Daleks are also the old opponents of the Time Lords in the Great Time War, both races having wiped each other out; because, of course, who else was it going to be? So, they're all powerful to the extent that even one survivor could wreak havoc, and they were all supposedly destroyed long ago. But they are also the most popular and recognisable foe the Doctor has, so they have to return periodically, and when they return - because of the nature of a good versus evil narrative - the Doctor has to defeat them. One side effect of this was pointed out by the showrunner that followed Davies, Steven Moffat: the Daleks become paradoxically the most defeated of all Doctor Who villains. The other side effect, though, is that there has to be precious story time given over to how they returned from annihilation this time. In those early years after the Daleks' reintroduction, this generally followed the same pattern (as seen in Victory of the Daleks), one or a small group (the Emperor Dalek, members of the Cult of Skaro, etc.) inexplicably escaped the previous purge by "falling back through time", and they rebuild the race using cloning or a previously unmentioned device (the Genesis Ark, the Progenitor).

It's easy to see why all the Davies Dalek stories after that first one are two-parters; by the time you've explained how they returned, and then explained how they're being got rid of again, you haven't got much time for any story in between. Moffat seems less enamoured of the Skaro pepperpots than his predecessor: they stop returning every year regularly, they stop being the de facto villains for every series finale, they usually get one episode for their tales rather than two. And, because enough time has passed since the show introduced the Time War mythology, nobody feels any longer that they have to ensure the threat of the Daleks is removed at the end. There's no reason ever given why the colourful new paradigm Daleks created at the end of Victory don't regroup, come back and destroy the planet Earth a little while later. This is probably more in keeping with what had come before in the series, though, than the more detailed explanations felt required by Davies. The other two contenders for the 'Most defeated villain' award in Doctor Who, the Cybermen and the Master, also fell at different times into similar patterns of implausible destruction and rebirth, story after story. The various different groups of Cybermen encountered in the 1960s were all the last vestiges of a once mighty race, every single one of them; the explanation given in the show was... none, they just didn't mention why or how this came to be. In the 1980s, the Master got killed off at the end of every story, only to turn up again fine the next time; the explanation given in the show was... none, they just made a running joke out of it. Maybe plausibility isn't that important a quality for Doctor Who. Which is lucky for Victory of the Daleks in particular.

In Summary:

If I wanted a shoddily written adventure story designed to launch a range of toys, then I'd pick He-Man and the Masters of the Universe over this.

The Vampires of Venice

Chapter the 247th, where there's something fishy about a Venetian artistocratic family

Plot: 

The Doctor crashes Rory's stag party to confess that Amy kissed him after their last adventure, then takes them both on a trip as a date so they can discuss and make-up. They arrive in Venice in 1580 to rapidly find a mystery involving aliens (it's only to be expected). The Calvierri family has persuaded the Venetians to cut themselves off from the rest of the world because of a non-existent plague, and have set up an exclusive school for girls. Venetians are sending their daughters to this school, never to be able to interact with them again, despite everyone involved in this educational establishment making it clear that they're turning the girls into vampires. Some investigations by the TARDIS team discover that they aren't vampires but instead Saturnyns, carnivorous fish creatures using perception filters to disguise themselves. The mother of the shoal, posing as Rosanna Calvierri, was the only female who survived when they fled their homes from something called the Silence (which isn't explained but which presumably will be covered in Doctor Who seasons to come, probably somewhat unsatisfactorily).

Aside from her son, also posing as Venetian aristocracy, the other males are swimming around in the canals of Venice. She is converting the school's pupils into Saturnyne females by draining their blood and replacing it with her own, Dracula style. With help from Guido, the father of one of the pupils who's desperate to get her back, the TARDIS team attempt to infiltrate by enrolling Amy in the school. They manage to get her out after only one small neck bite, but they fail to free Guido's still unconverted daughter Isabella. Isabella is killed by being thrown into the waters of Venice where the male Saturnyns eat her. The female converted Saturnyns attack Guido's house; the others escape, and Guido blows up some barrels of gunpowder he's been collecting to attack the Calvierris. Not knowing her breeding stock is gone, Rosanna starts up a weather control gizmo that starts storms in order to flood Venice and make it a watery wonderland, perfect for fish people. The Doctor climbs a Venetian tower and does some techno jiggery-pokery to an aerial to stop that. With her plans foiled, Rosanna commits suicide by jumping into the water, her perception filter device jammed on to human mode meaning the males will eat her. The TARDIS team travel off to new adventures as a trio.

Context:

Watched from the BBC iplayer (the Blu-ray remote is broken again) on my lonesome one evening.

First Time Round:

As usual, I can't remember my first encounter with a Matt Smith story. Almost certainly I would have watched The Vampires of Venice on the day of its UK broadcast, probably slightly time-shifted as the Better Half and I had at the time a young baby and a toddler whom we would have been putting to bed at around the time the story went out. In these circumstances in previous blog posts, I have produced an anecdote about the Doctor Who 'wilderness years' (the period from the end of 1989 when the classic series ended to its return as an ongoing new series in 2005). This one is not so much an anecdote as a description of how it felt for a few years of that period, specifically the period from 2000 to 2003. The 1990s, although they form the larger part of that so-called wilderness period, were pretty good for Doctor Who fans. Most would not have seen all the older stories that were being newly released on VHS, there were new original novels being published, and later in the decade Big Finish started to make new stories on audio; there was no shortage of tales to buy and enjoy. There were many repeats of old stories on terrestrial TV in the UK in the first half of the decade, a lot of hoopla around the 30th anniversary in 1993 with a big new documentary and a charity skit featuring new performances from actors that played Doctors and companions through Who's history; then, there was a brand new feature length story starring Paul McGann in 1996. It wasn't a barren wilderness

The decade ended with an entire night (23 years ago to the day as I write this) given over to Doctor Who related programming on BBC2, followed by the launch of an ambitious series of repeats. Starting with the first colour story, Jon Pertwee's Spearhead from Space, the intention was to continue with all the serials from the 1970s in order. Doctor Who would potentially be on British TV screens all year round. It was early in 2000 that things faltered. The repeats didn't get good ratings, so they tried leaping ahead to a Tom Baker story, but things did not improve. The repeats were cancelled, and thereafter no classic series episode would be repeated on the major BBC channels 1 or 2 ever again. Four years after its showing, there was no hope left that Paul McGann's one night stand was ever going to become a series, and the VHS releases were drying up (with less frequent releases of the dwindling number of unreleased stories in the back catalogue, none of which were that popular). DVD came along instead, but the range started slowly with only a handful of releases in the early years of the 2000s. For approximately three years, it was the leanest of times, and the wilderness did finally feel a bit barren. Then one day in September of 2003, everything changed, the sun shone and the land became green and bountiful again. A press release went out saying that Russell T Davies was producing a new series of Doctor Who. After that, all was anticipation, and excitement. Eighteen years later almost to the day, another press release went out saying that Russell T Davies was again producing a new series of Doctor Who. Now that Jodie Whittaker has bowed out, we are in the same kind of period of anticipation and excitement: over a year to go, little bits of filming being spotted, the unveiling of a new logo. If it's anything like the first time round, it'll be worth the wait.

Reaction: 

I can remember every story title from Doctor Who's start in 1963 to the present day, and can recite them to order, except... I never know if it's Vampires of Venice or Vampires in Venice. I have to look it up, every darn time. I had to look it up to title this blog, and as I type this I've already forgotten which it is and have had to take a glance upwards at that title to double check again. It's odd that my mind has this one silly blank spot where it has perfect recall elsewhere (believe me, I've tried to forget some of this stuff). It's not just the title, either; the story's not exactly forgettable, but it is rather superficial. For a plot that hinges on the projection of false images that disguise the villains, it coincidentally ends up all about the surface and not what lies beneath. It's a hell of a good looking surface though. A case in point is a stunning image from early on: beneath a grand staircase, the late and much missed Helen McCrory playing Rosanna Calvierri - whose work throughout the story is powerful, precise and excellent - kneels before a factotum, head back. He is serving her what looks like wine in a bejewelled gold goblet, but the hint is that it's blood. Her big skirts are fanned out flat on the ground behind her. It looks like a Renaissance canvas. Nobody could complain about the story's production design, and the sumptuous look created on screen: the use of the Croatian town Trogir with CGI enhancement to double for Venice, the costume and make-up, and a good number of background extras all add up to an effective and beautiful realisation of time and place. There are many other shots in the story as striking as the McCrory 'hydrating' scene too. But who in the story laid her skirts all flat like that, and why? How long did it take? Why make such a spectacle out of doing something which ought to be covert, and who exactly is the intended audience for this spectacle? There's a figleaf in the script suggesting that the aliens are so arrogant and superior as to be overt about their villainy, but this doesn't seem adequate to me.

This is not to say that the story is 100% superficial. There is some very neat material providing a scientific rationale for many parts of vampire mythology. They are really alien fish creatures using low-level mind control to appear human, but the human brain's survival instincts kick in when it sees the teeth, so they are not disguised. The same technology confuses your brain when seeing the reflection in a mirror, so the creature does not appear; and, as they usually live in a subaquatic darkness, they are sensitive to light. Rory is a nice addition to the regular travelling team, and Arthur Darvill's performance complements - completes - the others. This also allows a little bit of interesting interpersonal conflict between Rory and the Doctor as the former accuses the latter of making people put themselves into danger as he encourages them to want to impress him. The relationship between Calvierri mother and son is nicely sketched in. Matt Smith and McCrory have a couple of good confrontation scenes, where the villain challenges the Doctor's morality related to the fate of his own people (very similar to the scenes that writer Toby Whithouse had between Anthony Head and David Tennant in his story School Reunion, but none the worse for that). Smith does a good line in righteous anger "This ends today - I will tear down the House of Calvierri, stone by stone ... And you know why? You didn't know Isabella's name - you didn't know Isabella's name." There's some nice playful moments too, like Guido appearing in Rory's stag night T-shirt as they've had to swap clothes for Rory to pretend to be a Venetian. Listed out, it sounds like a lot, but it adds up to very little running time, and the rest is stuff that looks good but doesn't always make sense.

Why, for example, if the Saturnyns are just mildly sensitive to light does Amy's reflecting the sun onto one with a mirror make it instantly combust into a cloud of ashes? It's just for spectacle and to bring an end to a fight scene the writer had no other way of tying up, but it doesn't make any sense. There's a lot of other material that doesn't work too: there's the somewhat flaccid opening where the Doctor appears jumping out of a pretend cake at Rory's stag do; it's supposed to be comic, but it isn't because it's not real (has anyone's real stag night in the real world ever involved an exotic dancer jumping out of a cardboard cake, or is it just a TV-land only situation?), and the rhythm of the comedy is all over the place - there's not much of a punchline, and it's not cut so the credits come in quickly enough, leaving the scene to limp on for too long. The resolution is a bit too easy, with the Doctor effectively pressing a switch to turn off the plot (albeit the switch has been placed in a high spot to make it a tiny bit more difficult for him); by that point, the evil plan has effectively been foiled anyway, as Guido has blown up all the young female Saturnyns in a plot development that's heinously telegraphed by the presence of Chekov's gunpowder barrels in act one. There's a major loose end in that the carnivorous males are still swimming around in Venice's waters at the end of the story; how long they'll live to terrorise swimmers is not something that's covered.

Another puzzling aspect of the story, though it's not a fault of this script so much as it is the wider arc narrative of the Matt Smith years, is the references to the Silence. Clearly there was some planning ahead in the arc plotting of this period, and the Silence teased here would be introduced properly the following year. It maybe hadn't been thought out sufficiently to be so bold about it so early, though. The creatures that form the order of the Silence (Silents?) don't make things go very quiet, as suggested at the end of Vampires, it's just a name. Additionally and crucially, it's rapidly established when they finally appear that nobody can remember the Silence after an encounter, so how can Rosanna know that it was the Silence that attacked her home world? And why would the Silence attack her home world at all? They will either be the relatively peaceful religious order that want to prevent the return of the Time Lords to the universe, or a more violent breakaway group that want to kill the Doctor as they believe that will prevent the Time Lords returning. Neither group would have anything to gain by attacking the Saturnyns. I know this is nit-picking, but it's just another example of the story going for an effect without any underlying logic. It all looks very good though.

Connectivity: 

Both The Vampires of Venice and The Edge of Destruction feature William Hartnell (he appears on the library card that Matt Smith flashes at one point, thinking it's the psychic paper).

Deeper Thoughts:

For the Dads? For a long time after this story was broadcast, there were Doctor Who musical events - one-off proms, touring music showcases, etc. - which used the same pattern as had been established early on after Doctor Who's return with the very first charity concerts of Murray Gold's incidental music. There would be many pieces stirringly played, accompanied by clips on a screen and / or creature performers wandering round the audience scaring and thrilling kids. The creature costumes that would most often appear would be the ones you'd expect: Cybermen, Judoon, Ood... and, of course, the fish creatures from Venice in their nightie-wearing girl disguises. Erm? Why that last one again? They appeared in one story, never returned, did not make that much of an impact, and they barely look like monsters at all. Maybe the reason for their inclusion was so some female artistes could appear as part of proceedings (I assume that the big, heavy costumes of the other creatures were mainly worn by blokes, but I may be wrong), maybe it was to still provide some spectacle but take the pressure off backstage for a period as the vampire girls were easier to dress. Maybe. Hmm. I could be being cynical, but I suspect that at least part of it was that they were there "for the dads" as goes the phrase long associated with Doctor Who. Could they have been added to appeal to the fathers dragged along by the kids, who weren't particularly interested in science-fiction or adventure narratives? Though not exactly at the slutty Halloween costume level, the vampire girl outfits and performers in The Vampires Of Venice are clearly intended to have sex appeal for the heterosexual males watching. The script even has the Doctor describe them as "buxom", which I have to say stuck out as a line and put my teeth on edge when I watched the story this time round. Perhaps uncharitably, I am convinced it was a line added by showrunner Steven Moffat, no stranger to including a saucy gag or two in his writing.

Doctor Who has a long history, particularly in the 20th century, of introducing questionable sexist outfits as a way to attract a certain audience demographic that those making the programme thought might not otherwise be interested. Successive (male) producers presented the female companion characters in shorter and shorter skirts in the 1960s and 70s. Tom Baker's companion Leela played by Louise Jameson wore a skimpy savage girl leotard made out of chamois leather; in the 1980s. Janet Fielding as Tegan was hardly ever allowed a hem line below her knee (she finally got to help choose her character's outfit for her appearance in The Power of the Doctor, and wore trousers); in the same decade, Nicola Bryant perhaps got it worst of all, forced into day-glo bikini-top and cut-off shorts combos for her first couple of seasons. It seems to me a ridiculous notion that this would have any impact on Doctor Who's viewing figures, as households would have to be watching anyway for the Dad in this hypothetical situation to get a glimpse of leg - it wasn't the sort of selling point they covered ahead of time in the Radio Times plot synopsis. Is the scenario being envisaged that the Dad would keep tuning in the following weeks, whether his kids were still interested or not? Were the 1960s and 70s so devoid of titillation that these - if we're honest, profoundly unerotic - outfits in Doctor Who were a draw for perverts? If so, is this really an audience that the show wants? If any middle-aged man can't get through a music concert accompanying their kids without the potential for a glimpse of cleavage, they probably need a bromide prescription. Jodie Whittaker, in an early interview with Vulture after debuting as the Doctor, mentioned "the male gaze", and some of these decisions were clearly objectifying and - based on a lot of testimony since - were aimed at heterosexual males (they may have appealed to lesbian and bisexual women's gaze as well, I suppose, but this was not the intention).

As one of those heterosexual males, and being a long-term fan, I was apprehensive when watching Whittaker playing the Doctor for the first time. With all apologies upfront for my shallowness (I'm just being honest): I had seen her act in many other things and thought she was attractive. Was I going to end up fancying the Doctor? The way she played the role of the Doctor, though, was completely childlike and un-sexual (unlike, say, David Tennant's handsome swagger necessary for him to become a love interest for Rose and Martha, as the script dictated). It was a wonderful approach to the part; a bit like how Matt Smith mostly played the role (when he wasn't given lines noticing how buxom or not people were). Context is everything, and Doctor Who should not be the context for providing anyone those kind of thrills. It wasn't anyway Whittaker's meaning when she talked about the male gaze; the quote is about "stories being told through the white male gaze" (emphasis mine) not for the white (or otherwise) male gaze. Indeed, although he was a white cishet middle-aged man, Chris Chibnall in his time as showrunner did create the greatest plurality of authorial voices that had ever written for Doctor Who before, and did try in his own scripts to cover a range of subject matter that featured minority characters, situations and viewpoints. Incoming and returning showrunner Russell T Davies will continue this, or course. Won't he? Based on a recent social media reaction against some comments he's made, Davies has upset some of those hoping for a diverse and inclusive Doctor Who, and it also happened to be about a character wearing clothes that are just a little too small for them. (Note: spoilers for The Power of the Doctor follow, although I imagine you've seen it by now). At the end of Whittaker's swan song, the regeneration scene was different in that the Doctor's clothes changed also. The only time previously that this has happened was way back when Hartnell turned into Troughton, so it's not unprecedented, but Tennant plays the moment with surprise looking at his new outfit, and there are hints in the trailer for next year that it's going to link into a future plot point somehow.

Whether Davies's decision not to have Tennant appear in Whittaker's costume preceded or developed from the plotting of the 2023 stories is unknown, but a deliberate decision it was. In Doctor Who Magazine issue 584, the showrunner is interviewed and mentions it. He explains that he felt that the "culture and the dignity" of drag needed to be treated delicately. Because of the size difference between the two actors, he thought it would look like "taking the mickey" if Tennant appeared in Whittaker's outfit. He also believed that there would only then be interest in those images of Tennant in "what [the press] considered to be women's clothes" and it would become "weaponised" to mock feminine traits and drag culture. This upset some people, as Whittaker's outfit had been carefully designed to be gender neutral (some might not have the seen the comments about the press and their capacity to ignore that, though - a screenshot of the interview circulated online that only covered the first part of his comments as they continued over a page). Some others felt it was an attack on any male that had ever cosplayed as Thirteen, though it seems uncharitable to assume that Davies's talk of dignity did not extend to cosplayers. Why wouldn't it? A more valid criticism was that Davies shouldn't self-censor because of possible reactions from the reactionary press. I can sympathise with both sides: in a way, his decision is writing Doctor Who for the white male gaze (as dominates the tabloid press) yet again. Davies, though, wants no distractions from his series relaunch, particularly ones that might be hurtful to a group of people about whom he cares. The social media spat has probably fizzled out by the time you read this, and was mostly just an excuse for fans of one showrunner period to criticise another: this is just another rite of passage for any new era, just like revealing a new logo. It's nice to know that however Doctor Who develops, some things are constant, but also some things can change (the era of putting companion actors into revealing costumes is gone, I think, and I hope gone forever).

 

In Summary:

Looks good, but - on reflection - there's not a lot to it.