Well. It was twaddle, wasn't it? But for the most part, entertaining twaddle. There has been a serious shortage of comedy Who this season, which is my second favourite Who mode (after heartbeaking Who but before scary Who, which, not being eight years old, I don't think actually exists. Blink was not scary if you are an adult. Seriously.) After the whole New Earth cat nuns debacle I know I am alone in this, but basically the whole Doctor gets poisoned interlude - "IN WHAT WAY IS HARVEY WALLBANGER ONE WORD??" - was the best bit of slapstick since the Doctor / Rose / Cassandra body-swapping sequence in said reviled episode which I loved and everyone else hated. You can't throw stones, you don't know where I live. And comedy Tennant is my favourite kind of Tennant as well, so he and I are officially Back On after a rocky few weeks, though now that I've had it pointed out to me I can't take my eyes off his bottom teeth acting. Not to mention the visible top eye whites, which is apparently so rare as to be a named condition, which basically makes onlookers love you as if you are a vulnerable child, and is the real reason why Princess Diana was such a popular lady. Honestly, I read an article about it.
Can you tell I'm playing for time? OK, well basically I liked most of this one so much that I really don't want to have to go to the final third, in which it turned out, in an interminable and increasingly dismaying denouement, that Felicity Kendle had been impregnated by a giant wasp in India and the resultant offspring turned into a ginger vicar until his mind was filled with the plot of six Agatha Christie novels via the powers of a magic necklace and thus went around murdering people as if within a giant game of Cluedo. No, it's not any better written down.
Let's distract ourselves with the kiss. I'm a little disappointed that every single series there has to be a contrived non-kiss kiss, a device which is wearing rather thin, but I have to confess that being a huge fan of the Doctor-Donna relationship I quite enjoyed it anyway. They've got that great sexual chemistry going on where you are mates and the only way you can stay just good friends is by pretending to be repulsed by the very thought of each other but secretly you quite fancy each other anyway, but you can't say so because YUCK and NO WAY and GROSS. Or, to put it another way, just like when I was fifteen and my best friend was a boy and I really wanted to snog him but it would have ruined everything so instead we used to go out onto the grass after tea and beat each other up and once he broke my little finger because I wouldn't say mercy.
(You've forgotten about Barbara from The Good Life having sex with an alien wasp now, haven't you? Excellent, excellent.)
So verdict - look, I LIKED it, OK? Most of it, anyway. Leave me alone.
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(You've forgotten about Barbara from The Good Life having sex with an alien wasp now, haven't you? Excellent, excellent.)
*dawning realisation*
So THAT'S where I've seen her! I couldn't work it out at all; all I could think was that she looked staggeringly like Zoe Wanamaker, but I couldn't quite figure out where she was from.
I LOVED that episode, completely loved it, ridiculous wasp impregnation aside.
...wasp impregnation. That's a phrase I never thought I'd ever use.
I am truly sorry, but no no no...
Did not like that episode at all!
It could have been a lot of fun. But it was a mess. Never mind the wasp impregnation. The human-vespiform transformation was utterly naff - in a puff of purple smoke, I ask you! And what was the point of the unicorn - in the title, but no plot contribution, not even as a red herring? Or the man pretending he couldn't walk? Or the stupid repeated gag about Donna giving Christie ideas for her novels (wasn't funny the first time, but the fifth?) And so on, and so on.
So far this season I make it three gems, and three utter turkeys.
I love Agatha Christie. And I loved this. The plot was utterly preposterous, but I didn't care, because it was silly Who, and I really rather like that. And I enjoyed Donna giving Agatha all the plots in the same way I enjoyed the Doctor swapping lines with Shakespeare (same writer too). I think they basically made a mistake though in choosing to base this on the most obscure Agatha Christie ever, Death in the Clouds where people are murdered via a poisoned dart containing a wasp sting (I kid you not). So it a preposterous premise from the start, and I can think of a dozen other Christies to have had a really good alien plot around. Oh, and she disappeared in December not the summer, but I quite liked them working that in...
I thought it was hilarious. And stupid. And I might just have to reread the whole Christie canon now...
So. was the only one who saw him lick something then?
When?? I must have blinked (DON'T BLINK). Fortunately I have it recorded. My favourite Doctor / mouth bit was the anchovies.
Well, I always thought Agatha Christie was twaddle, so I rather enjoyed this. (To give you the general idea, I liked the latest Miss Marpole with Geraldine McEwan, which, I'm given to understand, most AC purists loathed. Should I run for the hills?)
Also, DT was looking particularly dishy in this. It was the first episode to be filmed this season, so he must have been nice and rested. I sincerely hope that he didn't actually eat walnuts and anchovies before kissing Catherine Tate, though. No man is that dishy...
I'm an adult (at least I thought I was), and I find most of Doctor Who damned scary. I admit to being more than usually squeamish. Mind you, I didn't find this one particularly frightening. Just quite enjoyable. And I didn't notice the music. Not even once. That's a good sign, by the way.
(Mary Poppins story arc continued: The Doctor's keepsake box, complete with caterwauling Cryptonites --- just like the bottomless carpet bag.)
Ah Marie, we're on a level when it comes to episodes like this, aren't we? Give us some entertaining with a few witty lines and an unnecessary kiss and we're happy. We have such simple needs....
By the way, that lady who played AC - bit good, isn't she? What else has she been in then?
Fenella Woolgar has been in Bright Young Things as a going-off-the-deep-end socialite (this also featured David Tennant, but they did not share any scenes that I can recall), in He Knew He Was Right as the elder of two desperate young spinsters after the rather reprehensible local vicar (also played by David Tennant), and in Jekyll as the pregnant lesbian lover of a private investigator on the trail of James Nesbitt. That's all I can recall without resorting to IMDB...
Persephone I am in awe as to your tv/film knowledge... I loved that Jekyll series but didn't see it all. And were there any Mary Poppins references in the Sontaran episodes?
Alun - the Unicorn referred to the jewel thief, and the writer of this episode said he gave it that title for an Agatha Christie type feel (though she never had a title The x & the y, so it's not really is it?)
Anna, it's not just you and Marie... I like entertaining, witty and kissing too. I blame having read too many Agatha Christie novels when I was thirteen.
I still think they chose the wrong book for inspiration. After watching Indiana Jones again last night, my preference would have been for Appointment with Death, set in Petra, where you could have had sooo much fun with artefacts etc. Though just realised as it's set around archeology, it was probably written when she'd married for the second time, so too late, although that shouldn't worry a time travelling time lord really, should it...
Ah, sorry about the bottom teeth thing :-)
TCMJ said...
So. was the only one who saw him lick something then?
No I saw it too (the wasp stuff from the floor - I was thinking "glasses! licking! Marie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
sorry, but it was just wonderful and I didn't care how silly it was.
And were there any Mary Poppins references in the Sontaran episodes?
But of course! The fumes! Clearly (or not so clearly) a reference to the ever-present London fog and the smoke from the chimneys being swept by the sweeps! The signs are all there, I tell you!
Yes, Donna was busy gabbling and diverting attention, but having been alerted to possible licking, I saw him lick the wasp stuff from the floor. Twice. Possibly even three times.
Jane Henry - I know who the unicorn was, but my point is that she had no bearing on the episode whatsoever, not even as intrigue. Whereas surely the point of Agatha Christie is that everything is so cleverly integrated.
I agree that Francine Woolmar did well, but that didn't redeem the episode.
I seem to be in a party-pooping minority of one, and I can see there's a strong fan-base for DT's oral equipment, but I am sticking to my guns; this one was unfunny, poorly-crafted rubbish.
It was a fun episode.
Very Christie in its pace & seeming inconsequentials. And I'm going to have to try to find the book it was (loosely) based on--I thought I had read all of hers, and I cannot remember any where wasps were important in any way.
I enjoyed the Cassandra/Rose/Doctor body swapping, too, so I guess I just have a strange sense of humor--but then again, so does the show, which is one of the many reasons I love it.
Bookwyrme, I couldn't remember it either, then looked it up and realised I had read it. The basic plot is someone gets murdered on a plane by means of a blowpipe through which the murderer has blown a wasp sting. I kid you not. With such a starting point, how could this have been anything else then preposterous?
Personally, I think an Indiana Jones type thing round Petra (Appointment with Death) would have been neat, or updated politics (They Came to Baghdad)or dead children in fireplaces (By the Pricking of my Thumbs which was remade last year(?) into a truly awful mishmash starring Anthony Andrews and Greta Scaachi), people being in two places at once (Evil under the Sun)... Why they chose a really obscure book and wasps I don't know. Unless it is to do with the annoying bees story arc - Donna did say something about at least there were bees still in the 20s, which I presume is significant? Or maybe just another red herring...
Alun, sorry I misunderstood your point. Yes the Unicorn thing wasn't really used, but then that's typical Christie too. No one reads her for the plots... well I didn't! I rather liked the joke the Doctor made about that...
Thanks Jane Henry.
Do you happen to remember the title? I'm trying to figure out how to find it without also finding out whodunnit (in Christie's world, that is), since it actually doesn't sound at all familiar.
Hi Bookwyrme Death in the Clouds - can't remember the characters but it's a very bad Poirot. Someone gets popped on a plane by means of a blow pipe and a wasp sting. And that's all I remember. Which is probably just as well...
The Harvey Wallbanger bit made me laugh, too. I liked this episode, although you're right about the having-sex-with-a-wasp thing.
The topic of Donna and the Doctor and what may or may not be going on between them is a topic of endless debate between me, my mum and my sister, so I'm sending my mum a copy of this post.
Also, my mum pointed out the eye-white thing to me the other week (my whole famliy settle down on Sat nights to watch, in their various parts of the country - and I now own the very sofa that I used to hide behind as a kid). According to my mum, DT is not the only actor doing this at the mo, but I cant remember who else she spotted doing it. She and my dad had decided it must be some kind of new fashion amongst actors - none of us knew it was a physiological thing. So I shall forward a copy of this post to them for that reason, too.
P.S. We saw the licking, if you mean when he licked at the sample he was trying to analyse. My (6-yr-old) son pointed it out: "He ate it!" he shouted out with delight, and then wet himself laughing.
Re: the unicorn. She very breifly provided intrigue, when she was unmasked and then accused of being the murderer. And there was the whole tools-dropped-in-the-flowerbed thing.
Re: the choice of the wasp book. I know the answer to this! That's what I get for watching Dr Who Confidential. Mr T Davies had a copy of this book in the house when he was a kid, and it had a giant wasp on the cover which appeared to be eating an aeroplane. In fact it was symbolic, as there are no giant wasps in the book. But the image stuck in his mind and meant that it was his obvious choice for a Dr-Who-meets-AC episode, what with it having a giant wasp on the cover and all that.
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