May Contain Spoilers

If last week’s episode of Doctor Who was written for long term fans of the show then this weeks, The Angels Take Manhattan, would have to be for all the current fans. We knew that the episode was going to be set “Over The Pond” in New York, we knew that the iconic Weeping Angels were going to feature and we also knew that the Ponds, Amy and Rory, would be leaving. But how would the episode pan out? Well, it turns out that the story was pretty much as I imagined. That’s not a criticism about predictability either – all the strands of the story ran together in a manner which was both poignant and satisfying at the same time and that also finished the Ponds story as I wanted it to – at the beginning.

Filming abroad, and particularly in America, seems to be a  growing trend for Doctor Who and is a world away from the good old days when the furthest they ventured from the BBC quarry was a weekend away in Paris. The injection of money from BBC America is welcome and the production values are noticeably slicker than Matt Smith’s first series as the Timelord. I was somewhat concerned that there would be a noticeable Americanisation of the show (I recently watched Doctor Who: The Movie from 1996 and winced at some bits) but they have chosen to use the best that America has to offer and, in particular, the New York skyline which is a star in its own right. Even the guest US actors, like Mike McShane, are well known to a British audience.

I think the real stars of this episode were the Weeping Angels. We were introduced to them in the episode Blink but I think last nights episode could have as easily been called Jump. As psychological horror ideas go they are a work of genius. We never actually see them move. We don’t even see them nab anyone until after they have done their dirty deeds and in keeping with the whole concept of the show it’s very difficult to blink – just in case some little detail is missed. The only thing I did wonder about is that if the Statue of Liberty was really an Angel, how does it still manage to be a tourist attraction that people can walk up - I suppose it was far too big an opportunity to miss (pun intended).

Knowing that the Ponds were going to leave, it was really a case of whether Steven Moffat was going to kill them off or let them live happily ever after. As it turned out, he picked both. I had read interviews with him where he stated he had re-written this episode over and over again, trying to get it just right. Even then he changed the ending at the last minute. I’m wondering which bit he altered as the way it ended would have been exactly what I would have written. Although I have enjoyed the story of the Ponds I do hope this is the last we have seen of them. I found Russell T Davies’s inability to let Rose go once and for all to be rather annoying and I am still at the point where Amy and Rory will be fondly missed. I’m also wondering if we are moving towards the end of River Song’s story as she is now a professor and we all know how her story ends. I suppose all the story threads will tie up eventually and it was nice to see the Doctor return to see little Amelia and thus complete the ending of the Matt’s first episode: The Eleventh Hour.

One thing that did have me perplexed was this:

I’ve been trying to fathom it’s significance. The Rolls Royce plant at Crewe was a wartime aero engine factory but was switched after the Second World War to build Rolls Royce and Bentley motor cars – it is now owned by Volkswagen and makes all the Bentley luxury vehicles. I’ve looked up the details on the plaque and can’t see any reference to Rolls Royce products. Does “MK V11” refer to the 11^th Doctor? What does the “Type FD” mean? Maybe we will find out – or maybe Mr Moffat is messing with fan’s heads again.

Incidentally, the title of this blog “May Contain Spoilers” is aimed at a couple of friends of mine. The first chap sent an email out at 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon saying that he wouldn’t be able to watch the episode until Monday night. The other posted some rather profane words on Facebook regarding the quality of Sky TV’s television reception equipment. This episode of Doctor Who was actually the first in this series that I managed to watch as it was being broadcast and the impact of PVRs and the  iPlayer does seem to be having some sort of impact on the shows viewing figures – it is as popular as ever but not everyone watches it at the same time. Anyway, Dave and Dan – if you have read this far I hope it’s Tuesday!

One for the Fans

Being described as a fanboy is something of an insult in the world of fandom. Liking a TV or film series, sports team, comic book series or computer game to the point of obsession may appear a little mystifying to the outside world but it can be a perfectly healthy pastime in moderation. Watching every episode of a Star Trek is perfectly acceptable. Wearing your Star Fleet uniform to work probably isn’t. Supporting your local football team through thick and thin is fine. Punching one of your rivals fans is a definite no no. Learning the Klingon language is a little obsessive if academically intriguing. Naming your kids after the entire first team squad of the league champions is taking the piss.

The interesting thing with long running TV shows is that the fanboys can often end up writing the show themselves and it must be a great temptation to adapt some sort of fan fiction or get caught up in the minutiae of detail rather than write a general script that the casual viewer would appreciate. However, it is possible to appeal to both audiences simultaneously and this is what the writers at Doctor Who have managed to do with the latest episode, The Power Of Three. In the grand scheme of things the episode is really just readying the audience for the departure of the Ponds in next weeks episode but along the way there were numerous references to appeal to old farts like me who grew up with the show in it’s early 1970s heyday.

Having Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart’s daughter in the show was both a great nod to those of us that grew up with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor and also a fantastic way of celebrating Nicholas Courtney who died last year. We had a reference to the Zygons – possibly one of the best monsters only to have featured in one story. We finally got to see UNIT in their full glory and we had a reference to The Doctor’s home planet. We also had hints of the ghost of companions past – they don’t always make it out alive. Of course, there was also the whole plot thing with the cubes and this is where I felt the episode let itself down somewhat. I think part of the problem is that there was too much going on to really care too much about why the cubes where there and what the resolution was. It also rather let down the cast with Steven Berkoff being criminally underused and Jemma Redgrave not having quite the full staring role that I think she deserved. However, it was great to see Mark Williams again who is comic genius – sadly, with the Ponds leaving next week, this may be the last we see of him.

Next week sees the return of the Weeping Angels, possibly the best adversaries that the revival of Doctor Who has seen. It also sees the end of the Ponds – quite how remains to be seen although I have heard that Steven Moffat changed his original script as he was unhappy with the ending. I’ll miss Amy and Rory. They have provided a very different dynamic for the show and one that has proven refreshing.

Cowboys

After last week’s preview of Doctor Who I thought we were going to see a remake of Westworld. Whilst the cyborg gun-slinger in this weeks episode did have a passing resemblance to Yul Brynner’s robot cowboy, what transpired was a western with a science fiction twist rather than a science fiction story with cowboys. It also transpired to be somewhat darker than I imagined with a strong ethical dilemma at the heart of the story. However, just like the dinosaur episode last week, this looked magnificent – in part this was because it utilised Sergio Leone’s backdrop for his Dollar’s trilogy: the Wild West in all it’s authentic glory (as filmed in Spain).

The Western genre has been in decline for years. Cowboy films where hugely popular from the 1930s through to the early 60s but the advent of the space age started to make it look old hat – that and the fact that 90% of Westerns were complete rubbish. The genre does have it’s classics: High Noon, The Magnificent Seven and pretty much anything by John Ford and everything Clint Eastwood has done. I never quite did take to the Hollywood heyday of the films but I do enjoy a decent Spaghetti Western. Why it should be that poorly-dubbed, European-made Westerns should be more appealing than the “real thing” I’m not sure but it is possibly the dark sense of humour combined with the gritty realism that makes them so compelling.

Having watched A Town Called Mercy, Raymond was asking me whether we could watch a Spaghetti Western. I’d like to, and something like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly would be a great starting point. Except, of course, that it is one of the most spectacularly violent films of all time. The X certificate was not there for a joke. I suppose this comes up in conversation quite a bit. He asked about the original film version of Total Recall (I say original as a remake has just been released). Now I love Philip K Dick and Total Recall is one of my favourite Sci Fi movies, but it actually is the most spectacularly violent film ever made – I mean it’s just violent in ways I never even imagined violence could be done. It’s an 18 for a reason!

Anyway, I thought it was another cracking episode of Doctor Who. Despite Steven Moffat’s claims that there would be no big story arc and it would all be one-off episodes I can see some big themes emerging. Where does the Doctor go when not hanging about with the Ponds (and didn’t he say this week that he was 2000 years old?) When did he start dispatching baddies without being “Sorry. I’m so sorry” about it? And what is it with the flickering light-bulbs? Next week we get The Power Of Three. It’s about cubes - obviously!

Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are ace. I think it was something I liked from a very young age: giant, marauding, dim-witted lizard-monsters. Partly, the interest was down to my love of all thing scientific. However, I think a great deal of it was down to having a father who loved monster movies (in fact this extended to all sorts of trash cinema including science fiction, cowboy films, dodgy horror movies and Kung Fu pictures – he was deprived of much of this as a child in the 1930s as his big sister  controlled the cinema budget and took him along to Busby Berkeley type song and dance movies). For me, the pinnacle of dinosaur pictures were the Ray Harryhausen stop-frame animations such as One Million Years B.C. and The Valley of Gwangi. All complete nonsense, of course, but enjoyably so. In 1974 it was with great delight that Doctor Who decided to do a six-part serial called Invasion of the Dinosaurs. The problem was that the dinosaurs were crap.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs was re-released earlier this year on DVD and I watched it with the kids. The main dinosaurs were badly realised glove puppets against a flimsy London skyline set. There was also a larger-scale one that Sarah Jane appeared alongside that was a tad better as was the pterodactyl that attacked the doctor from the vantage point of a zip-wire. I actually saw the pterodactyl prop at the Blackpool exhibition a couple of years later and it looked much better than on screen (then again, it wasn’t moving in Blackpool). Even my daughter (who is 4) could see they were duff effects but I knew this anyway as my brother failed to hide behind the sofa when it was first shown in the 70s. It’s a pity as the story behind Invasion was actually rather good but it seemed to put the Doctor Who production team off the giant lizards for good – at least they did once try it in the Zygons adventure but even that looked like it had fallen out of a cornflakes box.

The problem with doing dinosaurs is that the game changed beyond all recognition in 1993 with the release of Jurassic Park. I can recall the review that one of my friends gave at the time: The dinosaurs were very good and the people were not so good – but the dinosaurs eat most of the people so it turns out well in the end. I went along to see the film with my (now) wife. She is a dinosaur nut as well and we were both completely blown away by the special effects. The thing was, we knew that this was all done with CGI trickery but THESE BEASTS WERE REAL! I have become rather blasé about special effects in films, mainly because they tend to be used as a substitute for a script, but I still think the realisation of the dinos in Jurassic Park are magnificent. I can watch them over and over again – which is quite handy as ITV seems to have the film on a 3 month rotation.

This week Doctor Who decided to go for Dinosaurs again. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is possibly one of the naffest episode titles that they have ever come up with but at least it let us know that this was not going to be a particularly serious episode – even by the standards of modern Who. However, what would the dinosaurs be like? I was hoping for something better than glove puppets or an escapee from a Kelloggs box but given that TV budgets are a fraction of movie ones I wasn’t expecting too much. I needn’t have worried: the dinosaurs were fantastic (in every sense of the word). The episode wasn’t too bad either and I loved the Doctor playing “fetch” with a triceratops. Mark Williams as Rory’s dad is possibly my favourite extended cast character since Bernard Cribbins : I just wanted him to say “I’ll get me coat”. Possibly the finishing touch was Mitchell and Webb’s camp robots.

The story itself seemed rather inconsequential – the basic plot premise of a Cretaceous period space arc was intriguing but actually seemed little more than a ruse to get a silly title and the excuse for the cast to chase around with pre-historic creatures. The villain of the piece, too, looked a little contrived. In some ways it seems a pity that the script wasn’t as well thought out as Invasion of the Dinosaurs but for dinosaurs this good I can forgive a lot. Overall it’s not a bad start to the series. I’m still intrigued by last week’s episode and next week’s looks like it owes a debt to Westworld – I wonder who they will have in Yul Brynner’s role?

Sci-Fi Night

Saturday 1^st September and I’m all hyped up to enjoy a night of brand new Sci-Fi. However, it’s not Doctor Who (yet). Due to the wonders of modern digital recording technology (and a backup recorder in the bedroom (and the BBC iPlayer if all Hell breaks loose)) I’m off to Glasgow’s Kings Theatre to see a post apocalyptic play called The Ripple Effect. Of course, I wouldn’t leave Raymond to watch new Who on his own and that’s because he is actually in the play. This is all part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and Stenhousemuir Primary pupils are taking part in it. Acting is one of the things that Raymond says he would like to do. In fact, I think he wants to be the next David Tennant – just as he would like to be the next Andy Murray when he is playing tennis. I’m quite glad that he aspires to this rather than to be the next brain-dead reality star but I don’t think he quite realises how much effort it takes to learn lines, rehearse and give the audience that suspension of disbelief that makes a performance work: David Tennant didn’t just turn up to the studios at Cardiff and announce that he was going to be the next Doctor Who, although I think he would have been quite jealous to get the opportunity to perform at the Kings as a 10 year old.

The play itself was actually very professionally presented and was far in excess of the glorified school play that it could have been. Raymond had been to some workshops during the school holidays and there had been a few rehearsals last week but overall the young actors were quite a revelation and, aside from one or two technical glitches with the sound, the presentation moved along quite slickly. I suppose the subject matter of a devastated future where children are formed into factions of “haves” and “have nots” ruled by a selfish elite has a certain nod to the Lord Of The Flies mixed in with a dash of neo-liberal capitalism but the messages of truce and reconciliation were well handled. The only thing I did notice was that Raymond’s character was that of “impoverished, orphaned waif” – rather the same as his character in the school performance of Oliver! I hope he isn’t getting typecast. Of course, what was his first reaction on returning to Stenhousemuir? “When are we going to watch Doctor Who?”

We did get to watch Doctor Who. The BBC seem to be pulling out the big guns for this series. It’s being shown at a sensible time and the opening episode features the iconic Daleks and is written by the master of ceremonies, Steven Moffat. Asylum Of The Daleks refers to a mental asylum for Daleks that have gone a tad bonkers. Well, let’s face it: Daleks have always been a bit mental anyway. One of the problems with Dalek episodes has been to find something new and original to do with them. After the first couple of Dalek stories they became rather farcical and it was Genesis Of The Daleks in 1975 that managed to find a new and interesting angle on them. Since the series has returned it was only really the opening season’s Dalek that managed to make the iconic beasts both terrifying and interesting. By the time we got the Victory Of The Daleks they had become somewhat of a MacGuffin – pointless pepper pot devices getting in the way of a potentially more interesting plot. In fact what made Dalek so intriguing is that it explored what it means to be a Dalek: something that was touched on in 1980’s episodes but Asylum takes this to a new level.

I had heard quite a few rumours about the episode in advance but largely from official BBC press releases and I have to admit that playing “spot the Dalek” was quite a bit of fun. However, I think my enjoyment of Asylum of the Daleks has probably been enhanced by one big thing – I routinely avoid spoilers. Unfortunately, this means that I don’t hang around on movie and Sci-Fi forums any more but given the amount of pointless sniping they suffer from that’s probably no bad thing. I have to admit that I have great admiration for Mr Moffat for managing to keep a huge and major surprise out of the public domain. In fact, given that there had been press screenings of the episode before hand I am absolutely astounded that I hadn’t heard what the twist was beforehand. Unfortunately, it means that it is difficult to discuss the Asylum episode in any great detail without giving away major plot points. In fact, aside from a surprise appearance we have been told very little about the true nature of “the twist”. Possibly this will be explained in the next 4 episodes but (knowing the wily ways of the Grand Moff) it is more likely that we won’t find out until the end of the series next year – or even beyond.

Anyway, it was a fantastic opener and I can’t wait to see how the following spoiler-free episodes unfold. Steven Moffat is really back at the top of his writing game and he is doing what he does best: messing with our heads!