Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife

Apologies: much work to do = short review.

In a word: frustrating. I so badly wanted to love this, and from the looks of all the reviews, you all did love it. The Tardis's soul takes on a human body: what's not to love? And my answer, alas: everything that was not the Tardis taking on a human form.

Which is not to say that I hated it, not at all. But patchwork people, and a talking asteroid, and an Ood, and some running along corridors - although you do need some running along corridors - they are not the Tardis in human form. And every time we were away from the human Tardis, I just wanted to go back to her. Frankly, I would have been delighted with just the Doctor and the Tardis in a room, talking, for an entire episode, but as a wise friend of mine pointed out, that doesn't exactly scream "kids' show". Fair enough. Still, she was magnificent, and we only got her for one episode. I could have done with more. I don't suppose this is anybody's fault, exactly. (I also could have done with this being a David Tennant episode. I just think he would have done it wonderfully. Which is not to say that Matt Smith did it badly. But even so.)

Also, about those Tardis (blue box) scenes. A whole lot of corridors, not a lot of rooms. Not how I'd design a spaceship. And I am beginning to wonder how often Rory can die without it starting to take its toll. Surely it can't just be lazy screenwriting? He dies EVERY WEEK. It had better have some significance, or it is seriously going to dent my "Doctor Who is not rubbish" argument.

Doctor Who: Yawn Ho Ho (may not actually be called Yawn Ho Ho)

Well. That was a bit boring, wasn't it? And for a Doctor Who episode about pirates and supernatural supermodels, it was VERY boring. Boring like an apparently bloodthirsty siren eating away her way through humanity turns out to be a rather nice hologram of a nurse. Boring like half an episode spent in a volatile gunpowder store, with not only no explosions but not even the suggestion of a threat of an explosion. Boring like hiring Lily Cole and then making her only communicate by the sound of ghostly humming. Boring like setting up a massive coincidence whereby the Tardis, a pirate ship and an alien spaceship are all adrift in the exact same bit of space, and nobody so much as mentions that it's a bit odd. Boring like the Doctor not being able to figure out what the hell is going on and therefore having nothing at all of interest to say. Boring like no River Song. Boring like Rory dying AGAIN (is anybody keeping count of how often Rory dies? that's got to be at least three times so far), and Amy giving up on resuscitating him after about two minutes (despite his confidence that she'll "never give up") and then he comes back to life anyway. Boring like a murderous pirate who'd risk the life of his own small, Rada-educated son for a shiny crown not getting any kind of comeuppance and instead getting to spend the rest of his life flying around space with said son in a gigantic spaceship which was previously staffed by aliens but is apparently easily flown by a 17th century human. You know. Boring. And maybe a smidge unconvincing.

I liked Amy swashbuckling, though. It seemed to come naturally to her.

Doctor Who: the Impossible Astronaut, and the other one I haven't had time to look up the title of.

We're now in our second series with Matt Smith as the Doc and Steven Moffat pulling the levers behind the scenes, Wizard of Oz style. I felt quite gratified recently when I read an interview with Moffat saying that he'd began by writing a Tennant-ish Doctor and had only gradually made his way over to writing for the character developed by Matt Smith, as that was absolutely how I'd experienced the last series (she writes, not actually checking her episode reviews to see how that tallies with reality - feel free to check, and to mock me for my inconstancy). This series has started so Smith-esque it now feels impossible to imagine Tennant playing the role, which is exactly as it should be.

As for these opening episodes, I was largely delighted and also fairly largely confused. But then the confusion added to the delight, because since the very first of the rebooted Who series, all I've wanted is a proper series-long arc, not just some blink-and-you'll-miss-them clues which are hastily resolved in the finale as per every other season. So although this was allegedly a two-parter, we're left with some colossal questions: how are the companions going to stop the Doctor from dying? Who was in the space suit? What's River Song's secret? What's going on with Amy's pregnancy? Who is the little girl? Who is the woman with the eye patch? And just when you thought you had plenty to be getting on with, WTF IS THE LITTLE GIRL DOING REGENERATING AT THE END?????

I have theories aplenty. I don't think River is Amy's daughter, because GROSS - does he just wait sixteen years and then pounce? - and also it seems unlikely that Amy and Rory, knowing River Song, would name their daughter River Song just in case. The little girl could be Amy's daughter, though in that case what is she doing regenerating? - just sort of caught it off the Tardis? because she was conceived in the Tardis? Which is also GROSS, because the only nookie that should go on in there is *see paragraph one* or maybe the Doctor and River WHO IS NOT A BABY. The person who kills the Doctor is totally the Doctor. Or River. Or Amy. Or Rory. No, not Rory. Or the little girl, who then sucks up the Doctor energy and regenerates back into him by the bins next to the homeless bloke. Maybe.

Some of the details of the episodes themselves actually pale a bit against this speculation. On the whole I don't think Doctor Who should ever do America, as it's never convincing - bad accents, bad sets, bad comparisons with better, more expensive American Sci Fi shows - and reminds me of those episodes when Eastenders go to the seaside. I also can't help but wonder why, if the Silence (scary, nasty, evil - good stuff) have had control over this planet and everything on it since the dawn of time, all they've done with that power is get themselves a nifty spacesuit. I do wish Amy would stop getting captured, though it was seriously creepy this time, and I desperately, DESPERATELY want Rory to be less wet. At the moment it's like having a heap of algae on the Tardis. (Cute in his disguise specs, though. Costume department take note.)

However, however. Let's not go overboard. It was disorienting and frightening and properly unpleasant at times (the evil orphanage? *shudder*), big points for that, though a few points minused for not considering that your own face is a stupid place to put marks that are meant to remind you of something. It was a great set-up for the series as a whole. And basically the more River Song kicking arse and flirting the better, in my opinion, and not only because I'm closer in age to her than I am to Amy and therefore makes it easier to fantasise about *see paragraph one*. I can't pass judgement on the blafflingness of various baffling bits because they may become less baffling as the series progresses. We'll have to reconvene on that one.

Verdict? All in all an excellent start. I am agog as to how it will resolve.

No(t) shit, Sherlock

Plenty to say about Sherlock, and plenty is already being said. It was proper, everyone watched it, everyone's talking about it, "water cooler" etc etc telly. The first two episodes aired while I was on holiday and I didn't even know that they were going to be on; by the time I got home it was wall to wall on Twitter (people discuss things in places other than Twitter? I wouldn't know as am currently working in an empty office.) We're (almost) all agreed: it was clever and funny and brilliantly performed, and maybe we're not sure about the visible text messages and the blogging storyline (in a word: NO) but Benedict Cumberbatch is an extraordinarily-named genius who has made Holmes his own and I wonder if he turned down Doctor Who (that bit's just me).

One thing I have found interesting is the hormonal outpouring from female viewers including me: I've seen Cumberbatch in plenty of stuff before and surely he was never sexy (I mean, Stuart: A Life Backwards? Thanks no) only now suddenly he is wearing a long coat (see also Doctor Who - men, if you know what's good for you, buy a long coat) and his eyes look kind of oh yes, and he's got a very funny script and a decisive don't-give-a-toss demeanor and he's clever and YES I WOULD. But in addition, I don't know if it's the presence of a gay co-creator but there's so much man-on-man flirting going on: Holmes and Watson, Holmes and Lestrade, Holmes and Moriarty, Holmes and everybody basically. And we love it. By which I mean the ladies love it. There's a whole other piece to be written about how, in the era of the internet and slashfic a previously unknown well of female interest in men getting it on with other men has emerged (I just typoed 'me getting it on with other men', which is a whole other other piece) but I have a deadline so I can't write it right now (magazine editors: you know where to find me and my rates are very competitive). I'm not surprised to see this coming from Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat - both having done time in RTD-era Doctor Who which was the first bit of mainstream family telly to crank up the gay flirting and win. (Ironically, given the context, in Moffat-era Doctor Who the gay flirting has been excised, and Gatiss wrote the one really duff episode of the most recent season, the WW2 dalek one, and I wonder if he feels like his wings have been clipped.) I'm mentioning Doctor Who a lot, which is because Sherlock is really Doctor Who for grown-ups: in an updated version of a popular old classic, a mysterious, socially removed, insouciant but charming supergenius and his prosaic sidekick solve crimes involving monstrous villains and a hypereal version of the world. I guess it's not surprising that I adored it.

Any downside? Sadly yes. Sherlock's representation of women is awful. It's maybe unfortunate for Moffat and Gatiss that I watched it so soon after hearing about the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test? Why yes, it's a formula for figuring out whether the films have the most basic characterisation of women. Basically it works like this:

1. Is there more than one woman in it?
2. Do the women have names?
3. Do they talk to each other?
4. Do they talk to each other about anything other than men?

Try to think of some films that pass this test. Er... (I came up with Juno and all of the work of Mike Leigh, but it's much harder when you move past independent movies into the world of mainstream.)

TV is way ahead of the curve on this, with the likes of Mad Men or The West Wing proving that it is entirely possible to have a fantastic show with a wealth of intelligent female characters who have more on their minds than who they are or aren't shagging and what the men are up to. Sadly Sherlock isn't one of them. There are plenty of female characters, yes, but they never speak to each other, and if you think for a minute about why they don't speak to each other you'll realise it's because they'd have nothing to say, as they aren't really characters at all, just a bunch of girlfriends, victims and idiots whose lives revolve around the men. So Sarah, who exists to be Watson's girlfriend, and gets captured and shrieks; and Molly, who has a simpering crush on Holmes that renders her incapable of using the brain you assume she must have to be a qualified pathologist; and the policewoman who slags Holmes off but doesn't appear to have much by way of a job to do; and Mrs Hudson, who is Una Stubbs and therefore wonderful and very funny but a bit thick and makes the tea. And lots of dead people, and one criminal mastermind in episode two who actually isn't that much of a mastermind because she's just following orders from Moriarty.

Ah, Moriarty. When the envelope turned up in episode three with a woman's handwriting on it, I had high hopes that Moriarty would be a woman; making Holmes's evil nemesis female would have been a nice 21st century touch. Making Molly Moriarty, for example, would have been an excellent about-turn for her frankly insulting characterisation (oh no I'm going to cry because Holmes thinks I've put on weight!) But no, this is boys' games in a boys' world, and the girls are incidental. Which is not to say that Moriarty wasn't fantastic: like the rest of the male characters, he was bright, witty, sharp and very hot. In fact, the irony is that while female viewers have got the total horn watching all the sexy men running around being clever and cool, (straight) male viewers have some eye candy here and there, but nobody who is any fun or actually does anything (seriously: 'girl in car who looks at her phone a lot'?). So in a way, we women have the better deal. But in another way, we really don't.

Perhaps I'm being unfair, picking holes in something that is so much better than the British TV norm, but I don't mind a lazy attitude to women as much in something that's crap, because it's crap across the board; this is good, and so it should know better. End of mini-series report, then: brilliant as far as it goes, but when you get the recommission, if the women could actually talk to each other next time, that would be great.

Doctor Who: The Big Bang and full series review

So hurrah, it wasn't an RTD-style apocalyptic wig-out, nor was it All A Dream! In fact it was very good. In brief: the universe has ended and the Earth is the last to go (please switch off the lights). The doctor, freed from the Pandorica, hatches a plan to save space and time, but at the expense not only of his own life but the very fact of his having existed at all. Fortunately Amy can bring people back by the power of her mind, so as long as she can remember the Doctor everything will be OK. But can she? Well, what do you reckon? The man spent half of this episode in a fez. Who'd forget that?

This was not an episode to please those who like to think too deeply. Those, for example, who might think "if the Doctor has never existed, surely the Earth wouldn't have survived long enough for Amy to reach her wedding day and remember him back to life, because [insert any of the gazillion times the Doctor has saved the planet over the years before now] would never have happened". Or those who might get deeply irritated that, having set up the Pandorica as the greatest prison ever created, the Doctor manages to get out by a whimsical piece of timey wimey trickery involving being saved by sending his saved self back in time to hand over the screwdriver to Rory. And for anybody who prefers proper science to "er, Amy's only half dead and when she sees herself as a kid it'll be fine, and as for the universe, when the light from the thingy goes onto the whatsit, everything will be OK", well, fergeddaboutit.

Hmm. I seem to be talking myself out of liking this. But come on Marie, who cares? This isn't 'Horizon'. It was clever and neat and it had junior Amy Pond in it - I LOVE junior Amy Pond (Caitlin Blackwood) and desperately hope there will be more of her next season - and the Doctor in a fez! (OK so River and Amy destroy the fez, but as he says, he can buy another fez. Do it, Doctor.) There was lots of peril and a fossilised Dalek and antics in a museum, which is a good place for Doctory antics to take place, and River Song - with more River Song to come - god I love River Song, I want to be River Song when I grow up - and when the Doctor finally went back over his life as he made his way out of history, it was all rather understated and nicely done, and turns out whoever brought it up in the comments was right, that WASN'T a jacket-based continuity error in the Angels episode. Well spotted, that man. So yes, very good. Very good indeed.

Which means we end the series with high marks. The good episodes (my own faves? Vincent, and Amy's Choice) were great, and the bad episodes (Victory of the Daleks, and that tedious two-parter with the green scaly leotard monsters) weren't that bad. I have learned to love Matt Smith's Doctor - so what if I don't want to jump him, his absent-minded dotty professor schtick is hilarious - and Amy Pond has been an equally dotty and highly entertaining sidekick.

And yet and yet and yet... I just haven't cared about this series the way I used to care. Aside from that Vincent ending, which seems to have switched on the waterworks everywhere except for in my own eyes, it has all been, emotionally, a bit 'so what'. The Doctor never gets that fussed by anything: surely he should be at least slightly concerned by - say - the imminence of his own removal from the world? And Amy's much emphasised love for Rory would be more convincing if, for example, she didn't make jokes about wanting to snog the Doctor in front of Rory on their wedding day. As for Rory, I've never believed in him as a character - and I don't ever like the 'spunky girl and wet pathetic lovelorn admirer' dynamic, as it makes me worry that I'm going to end up with a wet pathetic lovelorn admirer of my own one of these days - so I wasn't at all bothered either time he got killed, and when he decided to sit outside Amy's box for two thousand years I know I was supposed to be moved but I just rolled my eyes. Purrlease. How boring is this man? Could he not at least request to have the box moved into a library to help him pass the time? And yes RTD's series were messy and soapy and hideously erratic, but they were wonderfully emotional too, and I cried my eyes out on numerous occasions. In this series, if I wasn't laughing or scared I was bored. Fortunately I was laughing or scared most of the time. (Well, you know, Doctor Who scared. By which I mean, would have been scared, if I was eight.) So if I had a request for next series, it would be this: yes to the cleverness, yes to the zaniness, but please try for a bit more emotional depth next time.

Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens

"There's only one way to settle this. FIGHT!"

Like the Spanish Inquisition, Steven Moffat's greatest weapon is the element of surprise. We all knew that Rory was bound to be brought back from the dead, but hands up who foresaw his reincarnation as a half-killer-robot Roman Legionnaire? So that would be no hands then. Verily my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

It was a terrific episode that sometimes teetered on the brink of lunacy but never quite toppled over. Looking back on it, it packed such a lot in that I'm not sure whether it was even the usual length. Firstly, a 'greatest hits' prologue where River Song (yay!) escapes incarceration again to bring the Doctor a Van Gogh painting of the Tardis exploding, with help from various characters from previous episodes of the series (the duffer episodes on the whole, sadly - Winston Churchill, I mean you) plus a blue-faced baldie in a Star Wars-style alien bar, and a message written into cliffs in a nod to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. This was followed by a lengthy interlude modelled on Indiana Jones - this ep was homages a-go-go - where the Doctor and co find the Pandorica - basically a big box - underneath Stonehenge in Roman Britain. Some particularly pleasing business with a headless, one armed Cyberman guard followed, plus the cyberman's arm and its head operating independently. If I'd be pre-pubescent I'd have lost my lunch, in one direction or t'other, when the cyberhead opened to reveal the rotten human skull within. Help me Doctor Jones! At some point in all this Roman Rory showed up. How? Because miracles happen and not everything can be explained and OH LOOK WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE? Amy didn't remember him. Then she did. Because it was like he'd never been born only it wasn't because some residue is always left like the ring and even though she'd forgotten him some memory still remains because love conquers all even the death of time, even the destruction of the universe, what's that you say, how, well, I'll tell you how, it's because OH LOOK WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE? Then every baddie in the new Who universe turned up to claim the contents of the box. This was crap. Mainly because it reminded me how crap all the evil aliens are. Oh look, the crap iDaleks. Oh look, the crap ones that look like baked potatoes. Oh look, the kitchen sink. And so on. And the Doctor stood on a bit of Stonehenge with a really powerful microphone which was sadly not calibrated to work terribly well with my TV speakers so I don't actually know exactly what he said but it was some variation on COME AND HAVE A GO IF YOU THINK YOU'RE HARD ENOUGH. Matt Smith: don't tell anyone, but it turns out that I do quite like you after all.

And THEN the Pandorica opened to reveal not, as I was almost correct to expect, the Doctor himself, but a CHAIR for the Doctor to be TRAPPED in, because IT IS ALL A TRAP and it turns out that this whole series is a strange projection of the mind of Amy using psychic dust and some books she read as a child but conveniently keeps sitting on a side table even now that she's an adult, with her model of the Doctor, so that River Song can discover them when exploring her creepy house, just before blowing up the Tardis, but not before dosing us all with a hefty amount of WHAT THE FUCK and also HANG ON A SEC and WHICH UNIVERSE ARE THEY IN ANYWAY and DON'T TELL ME IT WAS ALL A DREAM and while we're on the subject RORY, DEFINITELY SEXIER AS A ROMAN, THOUGH LESS SEXY WHEN KILLING AMY WITH HIS KILLER ROBOT GUN HANDS plus I SERIOUSLY CAN'T FIGURE THIS ONE OUT and really I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU'RE GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS ONE, STEVE but IF IT IS SOME TIMEY WIMEY VARIATION ON IT WAS ALL A DREAM I AM GOING TO FLIP MY LID but in the meantime IT IS GOING TO BE MORE CLEVER THAN THAT or at least I HOPE SO and if they are in a universe ALL OF AMY'S IMAGINING maybe NONE OF THIS MATTERS ANYWAY and I bloody hope that MOFFAT IS BETTER THAN RTD AT RESOLVING THESE THINGS but really THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT.

And thus, see you next week.

Doctor Who: The Lodger

"And the goalkeeper's job is to keep hold of the ball and stop it going into the goal, right?"

Halfway through Sunday afternoon, I thought to myself 'I really need to watch yesterday's Doctor Who so that I can blog about it'. And then I remembered that I already had. This is not a good sign.

From what I can recall, 'The Lodger' featured The Doctor taking a room as James Corden's lodger to investigate dodgy goings-on in the flat upstairs, which was swallowing local people and keeping poor Amy stuck on the Tardis in a timewarp. Much of the action, such as it was, that ensued was the Doctor's attempts to appear normal and human, which - especially as Matt Smith - he is incapable of (though he manages pretty well in every other episode? Never mind). So he air kissed everyone hello, and turned out to be brilliant at football, probably because the episode was timed to go out on the same day as the first England match, and for an extended sequence he ran around wearing only a bath towel which made me miss David Tennant A LOT. James Corden meanwhile got fed up with it, especially because he couldn't woo his platonic best girl friend because the Doctor was getting in the way. But he loved the Doctor anyway, the way we all do, particularly after they did a mind-meld thingy (Corden's performance hit a high after that - "Oh my God it's Amy Pond!") and then - well here's the thing: I have NO RECOLLECTION WHATSOEVER of the denouement or what was happening in the upstairs flat or how they got out of it and how the episode ended. Which does suggest that the episode was sorely lacking in tension. Plus in general I never think it bodes well when what I purport to be a "review" is actually a synopsis because I have nothing to say about whether I enjoyed the episode or not. I mean, I didn't fall asleep. I was there for the duration.

So: not a high point. But not bad enough to be memorable either. I will rate this one with a solid, forgettable: "OK".

Doctor Who: Whatever the hell last week's was / Vincent and the Doctor

Shall we all be in agreement that last week's Doctor Who wasn't very good, and move on? I only have the vaguest recollections of it. From what I do recall, it was like I myself had a time machine and travelled back in time to a point just before the last series of 'old' Who was cancelled, and then remembered why. All people running around in scaly leotards carrying stunguns which can apparently be exploded just by pressing a button on the sonic screwdriver. The only thing of significance that happened was that Rory died; I might have cared more if he hadn't also died two weeks previously, and is now turning into a comedy "why can't you stop dying all the time" type character. They are bound to bring him back from the dead, otherwise why place the engagement ring so carefully on the Tardis console? I will save my tears. Also, how come the Doctor can now stick his hand in the "it will be like you have never been born" time crack and pull it out unscathed?

This week's, penned by Richard "Love Actually, Notting Hill actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral actually, I'm dead famous actually" Curtis, was better. After an art history lesson from Bill Nighy (why aren't you the Doctor? Why?), the Doctor and Amy go back in time to save Vincent Van Gogh from a monster only he can see. Depression? Psychosis? No, a great big space dinosaur. The idea of an invisible monster is quite scary, but in reality it wasn't at all really, unless you are totally freaked out by nineteenth century French furniture being knocked over (my mother would probably have been behind the proverbial sofa.)

Fortunately the episode was saved by a great turn from Tony Curran as Van Gogh, and a thoughtful script that didn't dodge the tricky territory of Van Gogh's depression (Curran, curled up on his bed, sobbing with despair that the Doctor and Amy will leave him) and eventual suicide. (The first episode of Doctor Who ever to have one of those "if you have been affected by issues in this programme" phonelines?) I was promised tears aplenty, but I didn't shed any; I'm guessing that the blubworthy scene in question was when Vincent was taken to the contemporary Musee D'Orsee to see an exhibition of his own work and hear Nighy describe him as one of the greatest painters of all time, and one of the greatest men. Lovely grown-up fantasy stuff. The rest of the interest was in watching Vincent and Amy flirt outrageously; which I think is meant to be poignant in the post-Rory era, but actually just made me hope they don't bring back Rory after all, and Amy can carry on making eyes at all the other male guest stars.

Only three to go until the end. James Corden! River Song! Exploding Tardis! Bring it on!

Doctor Who: Amy's Choice / The Hungry Earth

When Matt Smith looks in the mirror, this is what he sees.

Two for the price of one Who review today (and an even bigger bargain when you consider that the price of one is currently "free") (love how I'm trying to sell this as a good thing rather than 'I am neglecting my blog until my book is finished and handed in', but hey.)

First up, Amy's Choice, which I absolutely loved. This was the one, if you can think back that far, where a mysterious Dream Lord (a stupendous performance by Toby Jones) sets up two alternative worlds, one on a Tardis heading fast into an Ice Sun, and one back in Amy's home village where Amy and Rory have got married and Amy is heavily pregnant and VERY grumpy about it. I love grumpy Amy. Anyway, the crew have to choose which is the real reality before they are frozen to death (on the Tardis) or killed by hordes of marauding zombie alien-infested OAPs (in the village, though suddenly I want to see the Tardis invaded by hordes of marauding zombie alien-infested OAPs. But I digress.) The writing by Simon Nye (he of Men Behaving Badly fame, so I owe him) was smart and funny, the performances were all great, and best of all this was the episode which made me fall in love not only with Amy - I was halfway there already - but with the Doctor. Yay! He's certainly kept me waiting. Matt Smith's absent-minded-professor schtick was perfect for this episode, and it was the first time that not only could I not imagine David Tennant having done it better, but I couldn't imagine David Tennant having done it at all. Who writers take note: it is MUCH better when you write for Smith, not Tennant. Incidentally, as it turns out that the Dream Lord - SPOILER - is in fact a projection of the Doctor's own subconscious, not only do we now know what Matt Smith's Doc looks like inside his own head (and boy does it make sense), but it does raise the outside possibility that Toby Jones could be a future incarnation. Which would be AMAZING. The campaign starts here.

The Hungry Earth - hmmm - not as good. The Doctor, Amy and Rory pitch up in barely-future Wales, where an old bloke and an oddly unconvincing Meera Syal have been drilling deep into the earth and have disturbed some very angry Silurians. Silurians, apparently, are Who villains of old, but being no expert I didn't recognise them. Basically, they are dance school students dressed in scaly green leotards who like running around graveyards at night. It's a two-parter, so nothing is yet resolved, but the key element of peril is that Amy has been captured and taken underground where she is tied up and threatened with being dissected while wide awake. It's a very old school Who predicament, particularly as Amy has dressed for the occasion in miniscule hotpants (excuse: "I thought we were going to Rio.") It does seem that the trope for this series is "put Amy in a sexy outfit and tie her to something." Are any women writing scripts for Doctor Who this year? Anyway, while by no means terrible, this episode was full of clunks (Rory telling Amy off for wearing her engagement ring because she's going to lose it - in a *Welsh mining village*? A small boy running out into monster-infested darkness to retrieve a pair of headphones, and the Doctor letting him go?) and I wasn't particularly excited by any of it.

What the two eps have in common - aside from being, y'know, both Doctor Who - is that they came with an almost overpowering wave of nostalgia for the TV for my childhood. Amy's Choice with its rural setting and funny/scary oldsters was pure Two Ronnies / The Goodies, and The Hungry Earth, with ITS rural setting (far more villages than urban settings in Moffat's Who, which I like) and companion-in-peril-from-alien-dissection storyline was as close as it gets to the Doctor Who of my childhood, what I remember of it (mostly: quarries, and my girl-crush on Ace.) Which is all to the good.

Looking forward to the concluding eps of this series (how many more are there?) where all the hints of timeline crossing (the latest being Amy and Rory seen in the distance of T.H.E.) will be resolved. Excellent work, Mr Moffat.

Music Monday on a Tuesday on a Wednesday (wish I had called it something else now)

I have been lax again. In my defence, it's because I've been nose-down making final corrections to my novel before we submit it to publishers. That's exciting. Well, it's exciting for me. I have no idea whether revealing that I am shortly to submit to publishers is a bad thing, like I should suddenly spring it on them with no warning, like a surprise inspection from Ofsted (nicking a joke from Doctor Who there), except in a good way. Like they will be more likely to love it and give me loads of money if they don't know it's coming. Like a surprise pregnancy. Oh, I don't know. This is the long way around of me apologising to my agent for letting the cat out of the bag if that is, indeed, what I am doing.

Anyway, I've been busy with that, which means why no Who review (it was brill), no Jose Gonzalez review (he was brill), and no Flight of the Conchords review (they were brill and *I met them*.) I am fully intending to post all of these things in the fullness of time.

Meanwhile, earlier today, I got an e-mail from my friend, the serious academic, which said simply 'We will always associate this song with you, Marie. Great dancing at the wedding.'

Which song? Why, this song of course.



Yes. It is now MY song. I am not entirely sure how I feel about that, but my lovely lady lumps are delighted.

And seeing as we were talking Flight of the Conchords, let's remind ourselves of their fabulous parody:

Doctor Who: Vampires of Venice

"I'm a Time Lord. You're a fish. Think of the children."

As a massive fan of Toby Whithouse (he of Being Human fame) I wasn't at all surprised to find that I really enjoyed this episode, filled as it was with appropriately mordant humour. The gist of the ep is that the Doctor takes Amy and her fiance Rory on a date to Venice, only to discover that it has been taken over by vampire-imitating metallic fish aliens from another dimension. (Why do I watch Doctor Who? Because there aren't enough vampire-imitating fish aliens from another dimension in other telly, that's why.) There's a lot of running around, Amy gets captured and strapped to a chair while wearing a floaty nightdress (cuing many a pubescent boy fantasy), somebody sacrifices himself heroically taking a bunch of vampire fish with him (I do like a heroic self-sacrifice, even if nobody seems too upset about it afterwards) and the Doctor gets to flirt (having figured it out since last week, apparently) with one of my favourite actresses, Helen McCrory, as lead vampire fish (question: why did only male fish and their mum survive dimension leap? Answer comes there none.) Rory is the wettest thing in the whole episode, which is surprising given that it is set in Venice and half the cast are fish, Amy appears to be a walking hormone bomb with very odd taste, and the Doctor commits genocide (again) because Queen Fishy can't remember that one of her zombie fish brides is called Isabella (I'm terrible with names, note to you all, never wager the future of humanity with the Doctor on my ability to place someone I've met at a cocktail party).

Next week's looks triffic. Crashing on.

Doctor Who: Flesh and Stone

Did anybody else find this a bit confusing? My television is almost an antique but, you know, a worthless antique, and the sound on it wasn't great, so for the first ten minutes or so I couldn't hear any dialogue, just loud music and sound effects. So I haven't a clue how the Doctor got them out of the trap, and the shoot-out on the way into the spaceship was scary but disorienting in a way that I don't think it was supposed to be.

Matters then improved a lot for me in the middle, where Amy had to keep her eyes shut or she'd die (I'm really not clear on why, but I am traditionally generous on bonkers "science" in Who - this is not the Open University after all) - a really nice down-to-earth scary-for-the-kids touch in the middle of all the monsters and craziness. The angels are still terrifying and all the darkness and strobing worked brilliantly. Loved the fact that the soldiers were convincing as soldiers, loved the brave Bishop dying a hero's death, loved the ongoing chat with Angel Bob, continue to love River Song no matter what she does (flirting with the Doctor good, implication that she might kill the Doctor somewhere along his timeline even better). Delighted that she's going to be back again soon.

But the stuff with the crack in the universe I could barely follow at all. When Matt Smith talks really fast I can't actually understand what he's saying, which doesn't help. (Sudden realisation that I am turning into a grumpy old woman. Ah well. I did have a birthday a couple of weeks ago. And hey, I've just remembered, I didn't wear ear-plugs when I went swimming on Saturday morning, so maybe it's that.) So I got that "it's a crack chatter chatter end of the universe chatter time running out chatter chatter chatter IT WILL BE AS IF YOU'VE NEVER BEEN BORN!" Not a good thing obviously.

And as for Amy hurling herself at the Doctor at the end, I found it completely implausible as there's no sexual chemistry between them at all, but I did find Matt Smith's desperate attempts to get away from her very funny (hurrah!) And my favourite thing about this episode is that Moff's brought in the series arc good and early, so all the crack-in-the-universe, Amy-getting-married stuff will shape the rest of the episodes, and there's nothing I love more than a long series arc, so I think he's doing a great job as series runner and I'm all happy and excited.

Doctor Who: The Time of Angels

"I know they call him ten-inch, but you should see mine."

Wow. I mean - wow.

This episode scared the bejeesus out of me and I didn't even know I had bejeesus in me. Plot summary, not entirely coherent: River Song summons the Doc across time and space to save her life, and while he's at it, do battle with one of those nasty weeping angel statue thingies from Blink. River and the Doc bicker and flirt a lot, which I like, Amy laughs at them, which I also like, they team up with a bunch of warrior monks with a rather sexy leader in the form of Iain Glen, which I like hugely, helloooo Iain, it's all quite jolly and then OH MY GOD, AMY'S LOCKED IN WITH THE ANGEL AND IT'S COMING ALIVE ON SCREEN, IT'S COMING TO GET HER, NOW IT'S IN HER EYE, IT'S IN HER EEEEEYYYYEEEEEE, BLOODY HELL, SHIT NOW THEY'RE IN A MAZE, A MAZE OF STATUES AND DEAD PEOPLE, AND THERE'S AN ANGEL IN THERE WITH THEM, WHERE IS IT, WHERE IS IT, OH GOD, SOMETHING WEIRD IS HAPPENING TO THE MONKS, THIS IS LIKE THOSE WALKING BODIES IN THE LIBRARY ONE, THAT WAS SCARY TOO, OH GOD, ANGELS, ANGELS, ALL OF THE STATUES ARE ANGELS, ONLY THEY'RE ALL MESSED UP AND LOOK EVEN SCARIER WITH MELTED FACES, HELP, THEY ARE ROYALLY SCREWED, SHIT, SOMETHING REALLY WEIRD IS HAPPENING TO AMY, OH NO, THEY'RE IN A TRAP, AND THAT VOICE OF BOB THING IS FREAKING ME OUT, OH GOD, WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THEM, OH NO, OH NO, OH what the fuck is an animated Graham Norton doing on screen NO, THE DOCTOR IS SHOOTING A GUN, HE NEVER SHOOTS A GUN, THIS IS SERIOUS SHIT, AND OH MY WORD IT'S THE END OF THE EPISODE.

(Spot the BBC's deliberate mistake.)

It was bloody brilliant and properly written and directed and all of that, and if I had a tiny little quibble it would be that early on in the episode the Doctor still comes across as a bit hopeless in comparison to River "I can reverse park this Tardis into a space even smaller than a Fiat 500" Song and Amy "give me a day to save and I'll save it" Pond, and I don't think the Doctor should be hopeless. But he gets very angry and unhopeless at the gunslinging end, so I have middling-to-high hopes of lack of hopelessness in future. Man of steel under his bumbling professor image etc.

What think the rest of you? It was great, wasn't it? Yes. Great. Definitely.

Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks

Oh dear.

While not being nearly as dire as [insert your least favourite Doctor Who episode here], Victory of the Daleks wasted an exciting premise (Churchill recruits Daleks to win him the war) on a boring resolution (Churchill is deceived, not the pragmatic bastard history teaches us he was [cf sinking of Lusitania], WW2 setting swiftly abandoned for grandstanding on board Dalek ship) and bar a bit of fun with a jammy dodger was largely devoid of humour or danger or, well, anything. The Daleks get a redesign for the Apple generation, the Doctor gets hasty and flustered and nearly cops out yet again, Amy saves the day yet again, and how come I am using the words 'yet again' to describe episode 3? How can it already be feeling tired?

Next week should be a blinder, the first of a Moffat-penned two-parter featuring both River Song and the Blink angels. If they can't pull that one off I will be weeping into my life-sized David Tennant cutout* (*may not actually own one). Sex sells, but it also helps keep a girl awake. Could this be the beginning of the end of my love affair with Who?

Doctor Who: The Beast Below

(By the way, when I post my Who reviews on a Monday I'll do Music Monday on a Tuesday, just to spread things out a bit. This is how I roll, baby. Just call me an anarchist.)

This week, the Doctor and Amy (in nightdress and slippers) went to a future dystopian 'Earth' comprising of a bunch of towerblocks floating through space, looking for a new planet to call home. It's a police state, ruled by those creepy heads in glass boxes you get at carnivals that spin to reveal three faces: 'friendly but weird', 'scary and weird', 'demonic with teeth, coming soon to a nightmare with you. Oh and by the way, you're about to be eaten by a giant monster. Bye!' Stephen Moffat, as has been observed by many before me, has a real eye for the everyday stuff that, with the most minor of twists, can traumatise children for life.

I didn't enjoy this quite as much as last week's - junior Amy Pond was sorely missed (I really hope we get to see more of her, though timeline-wise I can see it might not quite work) - but partly, I suspect, it's because Doctor Who seems to have taken a more child-oriented direction, and that can only be good. So it was unhappy children who moved the Doctor's heart to disembark at that particular articulation of Earth, and unhappy children to provided the denouement of the whole tale. The world seemed to me to be highly evocative of children's nightmares: do your homework or you will be dropped into a fiery pit and eaten alive. I didn't find it all that scary, but I'm about to turn 34. I don't think that I should be the Who target audience. Having said that, I found the "protest or forget" polling booth unaccountably sinister, so maybe Moffat will prove just as good at tapping into dark corners of my subconscious too.

However, my particular pleasure in this episode was the development of the eleventh Doctor's character, and especially what I'd been hoping for ever since the announcement of Matt Smith's casting: that he would be an old head on a young body. His Doctor moves old, sounds old, dresses old, acts old. But he's full of bonkers enthusiasms and inexplicable behaviour. He's basically an ancient, eccentric, boffiny professor trapped in a young man's body. Which is exactly the way I want him to be. I was also pleased to see him lost patience with the human race, as it was all getting a bit lovey-dovey under RTD's stewardship, and was properly taken aback when he lost it with Amy and threatened to send her home.

Amy is proving herself smart and resourceful as well, and it was nice to have her save the day so early on in the series. I liked gun-toting Liz 10 as the guest star, and if the "star whale rescues crying children" ending was a bit sappy, so be it - seems appropriately reassuring for a younger audience. (My contrary head was full of questions like how come the whale's tentacles had teeth, and if Scotland really had gone on a "different ship" does that mean that they all died?)

All in all, another good effort, and I'm looking forward to see what Moffat does with the Daleks next week.

(Picture courtesy of Rob's review on The Medium is Not Enough, always an excellent purveyor of Who and other TV / film-related stuff.)

Voice of the TARDIS

Helen made the following excellent observation in the comments of my Who review:

"Did you notice the speaker phone thingy? Will this TARDIS have a voice?"

No I did not notice the speaker phone! And am immediately intrigued. If the Tardis had a voice, whose voice should it be? Brian Blessed? Jane Horrocks? David Mitchell? Anyone but Stephen Fry, please, whose voice is marvelous, but ubiquitous.

I open the floor to your suggestions...

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour

So here are the headlines: I love him. But I don't want to shag him.

It was fab, wasn't it? I was deeply freaked out by the last few seconds of last season's finale, but with hindsight I defy anyone to step into the clothes of a dead David Tennant and say "We're crashing. Geronimo!" in any way convincingly. As it turns out, Matt Smith is brilliant and - hurrah - it looks like the 11th Doctor is going to be deeply, deeply weird. I am taking the fishfingers and custard combo as a very firm statement of intent. Am super-pleased about this: the Doctor is an alien after all, and the 10th incumbent did spend a bit too much time making dreamy speeches about how bloody brilliant humans are (open a newspaper, Doctor. We aint that great.) MS is at his best doing odd doc, which suits his odd looks, and slightly less convincing in what I'd call the DT scenes ie sudden moments of soulful introspection.

And how do I love thee, new Tardis. So many whistles and bells! Actual whistles and bells! And that typewriter! And the concierge bell! Did I mention bell? Yes, the Tardis has been reborn as a Heath Robinson collage of weirdness reflecting the inside of its owner's mind. There's been mention of a library and a swimming pool, and this is just a personal thing, but all through the RTD era I have been desperate to see more of the Tardis's interior beyond the console room and I am very, very excited to think that I might finally get my wish. I might not. But I might. Meanwhile the Tardis has a proper personality, a very sexy personality as the Doc himself said. I might fancy the Tardis more than I fancy the Doctor.

Speaking of fanciability, I doubt very much that many of the men (or lesbians) watching will have been disappointed by new companion, kissogram (ahem) Amy Pond. Start with a looker and then put her into a fake policewoman uniform complete with micro-mini and seamed stockings. I hope my brother was watching (were you, Bro?) I am proud of myself for having spotted that that radio was plastic, duh. I was possibly less distracted than some might have been by other aforementioned aspects of aforementioned outfit.

New New Who also impressed by casting people who could actually act in all the supporting roles - as well as Karen Gillan, who is totally convincing and pleasingly bonkers as Amy, there's junior Amy Pond (a child who can act! I predict great things for Caitlin Blackwood, who apparently got the part on the strength of being Gillan's cousin), Amy's slightly wet boyfriend Rory the nurse (way more convincing than Metal Mickey), some old lady, some bloke called Jeff, I mean this is exciting stuff! All this and a minor role for Olivia Coleman. Truly my cup (Doctor Who-branded official Tardis-shaped cup) overfloweth.

Hated the theme tune. Moving on.

The plot was... fine. Functional, better than functional, but not a classic. Who cares? There was a lot of introducing to do. I did like the slight Time Traveller's Wifeyness of the Doc appearing and disappearing in Amy's life. Moffat is clearly a fan of the Time Traveller's Wife, judging by the, shall we say, homage of Girl in the Fireplace (which is itself referenced in Niffenegger's follow-up novel, so we can assume all is forgiven.) Amy dumping her wedding to take off across the stars with the Doc was also a nice move. What do we think, people? Was she marrying Rory, or Jeff? Looking forward to returning to that storyline. Also, at some point next season there's bound to be a two docs episode, and I wonder if the libidinous Doctor 10 will be rather jealous of Doctor 11's pulchritudinous companion. Ooh. Some 10 and Pond flirting. And 11 getting jealous. I like the thought of that.

So a bucketload of squee from the Talk Too Much jury and very much looking forward to the rest of the series.

Placeholder Post

So, new Doctor Who: I absolutely...

...have to go away from my computer for a few days. Full report on Who when I get back. Expect at least an entire paragraph just about the new-look Tardis.

Meanwhile, Happy Easter. Don't do that thing of eating chocolate just before you go to bed so that when you brush your teeth the spit is brown. Just me? Oh.

Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars / Children in Need

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS...

I know it went out days ago, but it feels unnatural to let an episode of Doctor Who go by without comment. (I have visions of myself standing outside the gates of heaven with St Peter saying "I read your blog, you know - what were you DOING between November 15th and 20th 2009?") Also, I can wax lyrical for page after page on episodes of Doctor Who I didn't like (number one cause of hatemail on this blog, stats fans) so it seems unfair to remain silent on one that I absolutely bloody LOVED.

Space station in peril is one of my favourite Who modes anyway, and bleak Who is my second favourite variety after, well, anything in which David Tennant cracks lots of jokes, gets wet, wears his glasses, and licks something. And maybe does a little dance. But anyhow, this was EPIC bleak. I should have guessed in advance, given the casting of Lindsay Duncan as "companion" (not really so much companion as equal, or, arguably, superior by the end) - she is a woman whose armpits probably excrete gravitas instead of sweat.

Anyway, essentially, what we have is the Doctor rocking up to Mars, finding a space base there, realising that it is going to be destroyed that very day killing everyone inside, and in order to protect the integrity of time he MUST NOT FOR ANY REASON SAVE THEM, and he spends almost the entire episode not saving them, feeling awful, but reluctantly bonding with them despite knowing they will all be dead within hours, walking away as they are slowly taken over by parasitic monsters, before finally realising that he can't bring himself to desert them, rescuing the last remaining survivors, but sacrificing his sanity in the process, his actions leading directly to the suicide of the head of the base, and ending the episode abandoned and on his knees, overwhelmed with the horror of his hubris and realising the inevitability of his own impending death.

Just read that over again, only this time I want you to imagine that it was a family show largely aimed at children, broadcast around teatime in the run-up to Christmas.

That's right. BLOODY BRILLIANT.

You know what would have made that even better for me? If just before Lindsay Duncan went into her house to kill herself, she had casually turned around on her doorstep and shot the Doctor first, so that he had died a banal death all alone in the snow, instead of whatever OTT whistles-and-bells everything-but-the-kitchen-sink guest-starring-EVERYONE-who-has-ever-been-in-Who-EVER Messianic exit is lined up for the Christmas Special. Man, that would have been BLEAK. But that's just my preference.

(Of course, if that HAD happened, we wouldn't have had DT's Doc on Children in Need tonight, wearing the *exact* same hat I wear when I'm working outdoors on sunny days (I wonder if his also has a label inside that says "this is a fancy dress accessory item for adults, it is not a toy"), and sunglasses and a lei, on a snow-covered planet, making jokes about having boffed Queen Elizabeth the First, so I can see the perks.)

It's getting very close to the end.

If it has to be a crap ending, can we at least have Rose and Donna duetting I Know Him So Well over the Doctor's mutating body?



Rose is Elaine and Donna is Barbara. *Obviously*.

David Tennant or John Barrowman?

Over on the excellent The Medium Is Not Enough TV blog, blogmaster MediumRob is currently running a competition to win one of two Amazon Vouchers worth £25 each. The question to answer to win the competition is "David Tennant or John Barrowman? And why?" And my answer can be found here below... (Contest open til October 25th, please do enter but please don't win.)



- Hello, I’m looking for a man.
- Well, you’ve come to the right place. That’s all we do here. You might say that men are our speciality.
- I know. That’s why this is my favourite shop.
- Thank you. So what kind of man are you looking for today?
- Um… I’m thinking Scottish?
- Scottish, very good. Very on-trend. Scottish men have been all over the catwalks this season.
- And I’m planning to wear heels, so he’d better be tall.
- We have some very nice men in the 5ft 10 range.
- Hmm. No, I think taller.
- 6ft plus? That will narrow things down a little.
- And I’d like him to be an actor. I’m going for a dramatic look.
- Special occasion?
- I’m thinking of marrying him.
- Oh, well in that case I can see you’d want someone to stand out from the crowd. Well, we have our basic Scottish actor range, and then our Premium range.
- What’s the difference?
- The Premium range are better looking and more famous. But they are priced accordingly.
- It’s a one-off purchase.
- Of course. So do you have any preference on what kind of actor?
- I like science fiction. Television science fiction, in particular. For a family audience?
- Gosh. I’m not sure how many of those we have in stock. Oh, yes, actually more than I thought. But I’m not sure if we can meet all your criteria. For example, here’s Douglas Henshall but he’s only available in 5ft 9 ½.
- 5ft 9 ½?
- His imdb page is very clear on that extra half inch.
- I’m afraid that’s a little short for me.
- I quite understand. I can offer Patrick Stewart, who is a little taller, and while he isn’t Scottish exactly, he has a good Celtic name, and he’s a timeless design classic.
- Tempting. I do like his voice, and he looks great in that Starfleet uniform. How timeless is he exactly?
- He’s currently 69 years old.
- Hmm. That’s a bit too timeless.
- I see. Well in that case, if your requirements are non-negotiable, it’s David Tennant or John Barrowman.
- David Tennant or John Barrowman?
- That’s all we have left.
- This is tricky. Will you be getting any more stock in?
- Not til Christmas, which is when we’re expecting our new Doctor, but he isn’t Scottish, and imdb doesn’t even list his height, so we’re anticipating that he might be quite short.
- I was hoping to be married by Christmas. Right. Well, in that case… God this is hard… and I hate making impulse purchases, but I’ve got to get to the bank and it’s closing in ten minutes… OK. Barrowman.
- Barrowman? Are you sure?
- Yes. No. No. Tennant.
- Tennant?
- Do you offer a refund or exchange if I change my mind?
- Unfortunately not.
- Tennant then.
- Definitely?
- Yes. Absolutely. He’ll go better with my handbag.
- Tennant it is. If you wait here, I’ll just go and get him wrapped.
- No, it’s OK, I’ll wear him home. Thanks very much.
- My pleasure.