History and Monsters

Doctor Who did a historical episode this week – at least a historical setting with added monsters. I think they do these particularly well, I suppose historical dramas are the BBC’s forte anyway, but Thin Ice, set during the last of the great Thames frost fares, looked absolutely magnificent. However, even though I am now back into the escapist world of the Whoniverse, I haven’t given up on chasing around after Scotland’s historical settings. In fact I visited one earlier in the day.

Echlo Castle

I have to admit that I had never heard of Elcho Castle until the middle of last week and one of the main reasons for visiting it is that I fancied a drive through Fife on Saturday. However, it is an absolute delight – originally built in 1560 it is less a fortification and more an extremely well preserved example of a grand residence. The bulk of the building is intact and it is possible to wander through the spiral staircases and even up on to the roof to get a real idea of what it must have looked like in it’s prime.

Echlo Castle Dining Hall

Anyway, aside from chasing around the Kingdom of Fife I did watch Doctor Who and, for a change, actually at the time it was broadcast (a rarity for me for any TV outside of news and sport). I loved the episode as a whole. I suppose the story itself was rather slight but Bill is becoming one of my favourite assistants in years – an actual fully rounded character rather than a plot device. She seems to have a real chemistry with Peter Capaldi and her reactions to him seem very genuine. I can’t quite pin it down but I think it is best explained that if she wasn’t a character in Doctor Who she would actually be the sort of person who was fanatical about the show and attending Sci-Fi conventions.

Peter Capaldi was in great form this week as well. Often it is just the little touches – like his mischievous look of delight on rescuing his sonic screwdriver having failed to save a child but also his inherent kindness towards the other children. As a bonus we got to see him punch out the lights of the obnoxious Lord Sutcliffe – arguably the best twatting the Doctor has dealt out since the late, great Jon Pertwee’s last fist fight. Anyway, next week he will be facing those creepy looking wooden people – and Hercule Poirot apparently…

Smile

“The Doctor makes Bad Thing better.” I keep telling myself that this week after Emperor Palpatine (or whatever Theresa May is calling herself these days) called a General Election. Actually, I initially reacted the same as Brenda from Bristol (“Not ANOTHER one!”) but with far more expletives and a good deal of vitriol added for good measure. Supposedly this election is meant to be because of “saboteurs” in parliament (which rather indicates that May has no concept of how a democratically elected representative chamber is meant to work) but, in truth, the real “saboteurs” are the Police and Crown Prosecution Service who were about to press charges against some 30 Conservative MPs for electoral fraud. So much for democracy…

Anyway, aside from anything else, this week’s Doctor Who really did make me feel better. Smile was written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce and so far appears to have been far better received than his previous episode “In the Forest of the Night” which, apparently, I was the only one to have enjoyed. This episode probably came at a better point in the series and allowed the relationship between the Doctor and Bill to progress from last week’s introduction. I thought they were a great pairing and, if anything, they were even better this week – possibly helped by the fact that they were the only actors on screen for at least half of the episode.

The story itself was quite neat and the plot twists were not immediately obvious as we were left to ponder quite what had gone wrong with the robots to cause them to behave in such an odd and murderous fashion. In many ways this reminded me of an Isaac Asimov tale as these were often concerned with the unintended consequences of well-intended robotic programming. The set itself felt  genuinely futuristic in the sort of gleaming white image of space travel that we had in the 1960s (think of 2001 : A Space Odyssey) . It also reminded me of some of the classic series episodes, particularly The Arc In Space with its sparse sets and skeleton supporting cast (well, literally in the case of Smile).

I suspect this series will also be a hit with the more casual fan. I know that Nina enjoyed it as a simple Sci-Fi tale that did not require in-depth knowledge of Time Lord lore or any of the more involved tropes of Science Fiction fandom. It also did have this rather classic feel about it. I don’t think this would have felt out of place in any of the original Doctor Who series and the fact that the last scene was first scene of the next story was far more in keeping with the 1960s show – just one point, though. Why the need for a trailer when the scene was set in the previous frame? Anyway, frost fairs on the Thames, what’s not to like?

The Pilot

It’s been a good 16 months since the last series of Doctor Who finished although, even with the two intervening Christmas specials, it somehow feels much longer than that. The new series comes with rather mixed emotions for me; on the one hand I am overjoyed to get more of my favourite TV show but at the same time saddened that this will be Peter Capaldi’s last in the lead role. However, this episode was less about him and more about his new sidekick/muse Bill, played by Pearl Mackie.

The title of the episode was originally meant to have been “A Star in Her Eye” but was changed to “The Pilot” as a playful reference to the series reboot. Since this is Capaldi’s third series it is not exactly a fresh start but it definitely does have a new feel to it with the Doctor having spent the previous 50-odd years (since 1963?) as a university lecturer whilst guarding a mysterious vault in the basement and the TARDIS parked up in a corner of his office (in a similar way to how Jon Pertwee’s TARDIS was left in his UNIT laboratory in the early 1970s.) The idea is to give the new viewer a fresh start but there are still references to the older series with a picture of River Song on the Doctor’s desk (for those who have been watching the series for the last 10 years) and a picture of his granddaughter Susan (for those that have been watching for 50-odd years).

The episode starts with the Doctor summoning Bill to his office having been intrigued by the additional student to his lecture theatre and made her an offer that she couldn’t resist of becoming her personal tutor. We also learn more about Bill’s background, an orphan still living with her foster mother and also discovering that she has had a crush on the mysterious Heather (a ghostly Stephanie Hyam) – this was the controversial gay story line but one that was beautifully realised and essential to the plot (no more Doctor-assistant romantic sub-plot here!)

In terms of the story, the plot was rather thin and the monster did rather borrow from a couple of Russel T Davies’s better creations (Midnight and The Waters of Mars) and also featured the inevitable cameo from the Daleks alongside the Movellans (which those of us watching in 1979 will remember – robots that looked like Boney M). However, the plot here was really secondary to introducing Bill and setting up the series arc (what is it that the Doctor and Nardole are keeping in the vault?) I had wondered what Bill would be like after a rather patchy introduction during the half time break in an FA Cup match so this episode needed to up its game quite dramatically.

I needn’t have worried about Bill. Pearl Mackie is bright, funny and wonderfully fresh. She is very much an old school assistant in that she is acting as the eyes and ears of the audience in terms of unravelling the Doctor’s fantastical universe but doesn’t resort to the old parody of incessant screaming and simply being caught by the monsters in the first five minutes. She also has a fun sense of the comic – the scene with her wearing a Christmas cracker paper hat with her afro hairdo sticking out of the top had me laughing out loud. However, by the end of the episode, I felt that not only did I know the character but I also liked her.

Next week sees another episode by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. His previous episode “In the Forest of the Night” wasn’t particularly warmly received by fans but I rather liked it. Anyway, it is called Smile and appears to feature the emoji robots which I had seen previously in the series trailer. Incidentally, a word to the BBC regarding its rather extensive trailer at the end of the episode: SPOILERS, Sweetie!

The Twitterati

I’ve been giving Twitter another try over the last couple of weeks, partly through idle curiosity but presumably because I have nothing better to do with my time. I originally gave Twitter a go to see what all the fuss was about but rapidly lost interest. There are lots of Twitter tie-ins with TV and radio shows so it is worth having an account for that but I can’t see myself being an avid Twitterer (or Twitterati or Twat or whatever one is called when blurting out 140 characters of nonsense.)

I think it does has its uses for keeping track of particular public figures (comedians are a good target) as well as a couple of well curated news services. The problem with some is that they spew out far too many Tweets to keep track of and tend to swamp out other sources (The Economist is guilty of this, duly unfollowed.) It is also a reasonable way of trying to follow current events by searching on a hashtag but this can also have its downside.

I tried searching for information about the proposed Scottish Referendum (#Scotref) and this did produce quite a few results but it became fairly obvious that the majority of Tweets, whilst perfectly polite and constructive, were largely the result of an SNP echo chamber. The only real dissenting voices where mainly trolling comments from British Nationalist supporters who, if one followed their links, where operating in a parallel universe on a polar opposite echo chamber of their own. I also noticed a few obvious attempts to create a straw-man argument by creating a seemingly SNP orientated sock-puppet account which then spewed vile anti-Semitic posts for the (presumed) perpetrators to knock down.

I think the other thing I noticed from this political debate is that there are a number of accounts who repetitively spew out Tweets to the extent that I can only assume that it is a computer algorithm producing them. All of this becomes rapidly tiresome as well as using epithets such as Gnat or Yoon to describe those with which they disagree. Such language is more likely to put off those that are undecided rather than win them over.

There are nice elements to Twitter. I’ve noticed that there are a few journalists who are happy to join in with banter and it is also nice to be able to contact people to tell them that you enjoyed a show (I Tweeted Neil Brand after the Silent Cinema show in Bo’ness and he seemed to appreciate the comment – at least he retweeted it). However, to be perfectly honest I could really do without yet another banal waste of time and effort. Maybe I’ll stick to reading rather than writing it.

Anyway, the new series of Doctor Who starts next week and if there is one thing I know it is that " Doctor make bad thing better..."

We Marched Right Up to the Top of the Hill

Being the 1st April today there will be quite a few of Historic Scotland’s attractions opening again for the Summer but that didn’t stop us from visiting Dumbarton Castle which overlooks the Clyde last week.

Just some of the steps at Dumbarton Castle

When I say it is a castle it is actually more of a set of fortifications around an extinct volcano with, as the guide gleefully points out, more than 500 steps up it.

Dumbarton Castle Battery

There are things of interest with a battery , the well preserved French Prison (for Napoleonic naughty boys) and the magazine at the top where the gunpowder would have been stored.

Dumbarton Castle - French Prison

Dumbarton Castle - Magazine

However, overall there are steps. Lots and lots of steps. In fact if you enjoy going up and down steps this is really the day out for you. Having said that, there is a fantastic view of the Clyde estuary at the top.

Dumbarton Castle - the view of the Clyde at the top