Cold War

Well, that was really rather good, wasn’t it? And I’m not just talking about this weeks Doctor Who. I was looking forward to the Scottish Cup semi-final all week - not just a chance to see some football on the telly but a rare opportunity to see Falkirk play. It’s a rather old cliché that football is a game of two halves but that’s exactly what we got – plus another half hour to decide things. In the first half Falkirk played like a team possessed. Hibernian looked like fish out of water but, as Pat Nevin pointed out at half time, it was a stunning display from Falkirk that put them 3-0 up after 30 minutes and left many Hibs fans trudging home to Edinburgh after the half hour mark – I bet they feel a bit stupid now.

Falkirk are a mix of young players, many still in their teens, and aged old workhorses. Whatever the Hibs’ team talk at half time did it became more and more noticeable that the Falkirk players were tiring and after Hib’s early second-half goal it became increasingly obvious that Falkirk’s best chance would be to hang on to their remaining lead. Whereas in the first half the Falkirk players were seemingly sailing past Hibs at will in the second half they were struggling to keep up with even the brilliant Lyle Taylor only looking like a shadow of the mercurial player in the first half. After Hibs equalised, the only way I could see Falkirk progressing was to hang on to penalties. It wasn’t to be but that is one of the most entertaining games I’ve seen on TV for a while: a great advert for the game in Scotland and a great credit to the sportsmanship of the players from both teams.

Doctor Who’s latest episode, Cold War, was the first of this series’ two episode penned by Mark Gatiss and after two rather so-so episodes this was a fantastic return to form. I’ve enjoyed Gatiss’s scripts for Doctor Who but this must surely rate as one of his best. He is, primarily, an aficionado of the horror genre and in Cold War he was taking the old Doctor Who tactic of using established film and literary concepts and applying them to the Whoniverse. In the case of Cold War this was a mix of the claustrophobic submarine drama of Das Boot, the single creature menace of Alien and Cold War type thrillers such as Hunt For Red October. What I think really made this far more effective was Gatiss’s master stroke of removing both the Tardis and Sonic Screwdriver in the first scene. Why don’t they do this every week?

The supporting cast for this episode was also top class: Liam Cunningham and Tobias Menzies were top draw and  David Warner was his usual brilliant self as the 80’s pop loving Russian eccentric. In fact his role struck me as very similar to the sort of paternal Doctor role that Jon Pertwee played. He would make a brilliant Doctor except I can’t see him being able to commit to the role (and I suspect the BBC couldn’t afford him). The Ice Warrior was also a masterpiece of how underplaying the monster of the week can play dividends. I watched the Monster of Peladon a couple of months back with the kids and whilst it was nice to see the Ice Warriors again they were amazingly clunky and obviously a bloke in a cheap suit. Having a single Warrior and removing him from his battle armour both moved the concept forward and made for genuinely gripping TV.

The leads were on top form again. I was rather pleased that the show’s producers didn’t just decide to enter Clara in a wet T-shirt competition but actually gave her something interesting to do. There were some similarities with episode Dalek in terms of how Clara saw the alien but I think the Doctor’s liking of petit blondes now appears to be confined to a Barbie doll. On the subject of the Doctor’s eccentricities, I sometimes wonder if Matt Smith is, in fact, completely crackers in real life and the shows directors just shove him in front of the camera and see what happens but I have detected more and more elements of his portrayal which seem to be borrowed from Patrick Troughton – which reminds me, we have “The Mind Robber” sent through from LoveFilm to watch.

So overall a great day of football and Doctor Who – if I hadn’t been woken up in the middle of the previous night to fix a computer it could have been my perfect day.