The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant

Day 4045: Dr Sentimoo's Birthday Message for Daddy!

2012-01-28T11:00:00.000Z

Saturday:

Welcome to extreme old age, Daddy Richard (he's like four BILLION and one, or something).

And what better way to start a special day than by listening to the news that the Arch-bigot of York [warning: contains Telegraph] is once again trying to IMPOSE his BIBLICAL view on gay daddies getting married.

Putting the DICK into DICTATOR, the purple-frocked DESPOT says: "I don't think it is the role of the state."

So, you'll be giving up that SEAT in the LEGISLATURE then, your worship?

Quick check for the COMPLETELY-DETACHED-FROM-REALITY: WE are behaving like a DICTATORSHIP because the Government ACCEPTS the will of the people and PROTECTS the interests of minorities like gay daddies.

And YOU want people to obey your commands?

There's some old proverb about "sticks" and "eyes", I don't really remember… maybe a biblical scholar like the Arch-bigot could remind me.

(And if it's the BIBLICAL TRADITION he wants, then I'm sure he won't mind standing still while we STONE him for WRITING an ARTICLE on the SABBATH.)

And then we hear, on the radio, the Ever-so-Reverend Richard Communard cooing over atheist philosopher, and designer of the All New Tower of Babel, Mr Alain de Fluffy-Bottom for his new book "All the Good Things you can get out of Religion".

"The thing about religions is that they allow you to organise doing good," suggests Mr de Fluffy-Bottom.

"Ooh," perks up the Reverend Communard, "do you think it's that we're lacking this "organised goodness" that leads to such OUTRAGES like city bankers and their bonuses?"

Because thank HEAVEN we would never get a bunch as CORRUPT and MURDEROUS as the BORGIAs or the MEDICIs creaming off riches at the top of the pile under and organised religion. And thank the LORD that a criminal fraternity like the MAFIA could never arise in a GOD-FEARING country. If only GODLESS Britain could benefit from such a society!

More seriously, it's clear that HUMAN BEANS like to make ORGANISATIONS (whether that is TRIBES or CITIES or CORPORATIONS or complicated belief systems involving INVISIBLE UNICORNS. Or whatever.)

These organisations are ALL in some way "organised goodness" and they are ALL subject to being CORRUPTED by wicked people. This is why Liberals believe in WORKING TOGETHER with others but remain WARY of power structures and favour DISBURSING power to people.

The goodness of religion is that it brings people together, but the DANGER is that it hands the POWER TO BULLY to people like Dr Sentimoo.
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Day 4044: Duck and Cover! This Asteroid is Close Enough to Land a Lego Man on It!

2012-01-27T15:30:00.000Z

Friday:

If you're reading this at all, then snappily-named asteroid 2012-BX34 has probably NOT smashed into the Earth obliterating what we laughingly describe as "civilisation".

Or possibly: "hello to our new cockroach overlords!"

Anyway, just time before closest approach / impact at 1600 GMT to congratulate the Canadian students who managed to get a man into space. OK, he was a LEGO man, but you can't not give 'em credit for that!

And while I'm talking SPACE, if you STILL need convincing about a British Space Programme... do you REALLY want the NEO-CONS turning the MOON into a DEATH STAR?!

Run VT!

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Day 4043: Yes to Help for Low Earners, But We NEED to Help the No-Earners Too!

2012-01-26T15:30:00.000Z

Thursday:

Today, Cap'n Clegg will be calling on Master Gideon to ACCELERATE the increases in personal allowance, giving lower and medium earners more of their money back SOONER (paid for by taking MORE tax from the better off).

This is a GOOD idea. It's giving money back to the people who are most likely to spend it, and more spending will help with the woes of a shrinking economy and falling high street sales.

But cutting taxes for people IN work DOESN'T help the growing numbers of people OUT of work. People we seem to be ATTACKING rather than HELPING.

Like many of my Liberal Democrat friends, I got an e-mail this morning from Mr Dr Vince "the Power" Cable, was by way of a TRAILER for Cap'n Clegg's speech, telling me he is PROUD of the Coalition's commitment to increasing the tax allowance to £10,000.

I WISH I could take PRIDE in this Coalition, but I'm afraid the best I can manage is a sort of NUMBING of the GNAWING HORROR that we are barely taking the edge off the Conservatories' aggressive right-wing agenda.

This sort of thing can't convince me we're doing the RIGHT thing; merely that we're trying to do the LEAST WRONG thing.

(Well that and that the ONLY thing WORSE would have been propping up the AUTHORITARIAN LUNACY of a discredited and economically illiterate HARD LABOUR Party!)

So while you are considering Mr Vince's e-mail, can I also direct your attention to THESE THOUGHTS written by our friend Mr Simon.

Now, I confess that my first reaction was DEFENSIVE – a LOT of my first reactions are defensive these days; I wonder if I'm developing STOCKHOLM SYNDROME – responding to a story about bullying Job Centre staff with the thought "well, would that REALLY have been any different under the LAST government?" In fact, I'm sure we can all get out the DVDs that show that this sort of thing has been in currency since the last Conservatory recession. In fact, probably since the one BEFORE THAT!

And with the increasingly CONTROVERSIAL Welfare Bill still actually in Parliament (and hence all over the news), surely we can't be blamed for how the Law stands just YET – this is still HARD LABOUR's law of demanding people get back to work because of Mr Frown's PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC, not the Conservatory law of, er, demanding people get back to work because of Mr Iain Drunken-Swerve's VICTORIAN VALUES.

But read on!

Because what Mr Simon has to say about MESSAGE and TONE is frightening and true. The messages that are spilling from the Conservatory part of the Coalition – aided and abetted by the frothing venom of the newspapers – are all about VICTIM BLAMING and a VILIFICATION of the NOT WELL OFF.

And so long as we continue to use the words "hard working families" we're SUPPORTING this TOO and that is WRONG with a capital WRONG.

It does not MATTER that Cap'n Clegg assures us that he means "hard-working" in a BROADER sense; it's still using the word WORKING. It implicitly says "and not working equals BAD".

There are two things to say to this:

FIRST: people who are out of work and looking for work – especially when there is NO WORK – do NOT need the extra grief of getting it in the neck all the time.

SECOND: people who are out of work and not looking for work – good luck to 'em. It is NOT the business of government to MAKE people live their lives any particular way and it is COMPLETELY HYPOCRITICAL of the Conservatories to laud as "bold entrepreneurs" the wunch of bankers who get government support while decrying as "scroungers" the bunch of people getting government support because they're not employed any more.

If you WANT help to get back to work then the government should give it, but if you DON'T and if you can live on sixty-seven squids a week then frankly you deserve a NOBEL PRIZE FOR ECONOMICS and not more rude words from people who couldn't get elected against the worst Labour government in History!

(And since I've been saying for AGES that I would support a flat Citizen's Income if only I could make the maths add up – the problem remains the disproportional effect of Housing Benefit in a housing market that is still massively over-inflated, which is why that's proving such a botherer in the current debate about a "cap" on benefits – and I would be the hypocrite to say anything else now.)

There is very little fraud in the Benefits system, and I bet that any there is is more than cancelled out by people doing THEMSELVES out of Benefits because the whole business is too darn complicated.

And because of that, the PLAN was a GOOD plan to SIMPLIFY the benefits into one, and to change the way benefits are taken away as you get into paid work, the so-called "taper", so that working does always pay.

But at a time of massive fiscal contraction that was always going to be difficult to do FAIRLY (and I THOUGHT Mr Drunken-Swerve had got extra money from the Treasury to make the transition more PAINLESS) and doing it at the same time as trying to cut projected benefit payments is WILDLY DODGY!

(Even though that's a not-increasing-the-total-payments-by-20%-like -wot-Labour-said-they-were-planning sort of "cut" i.e. a not cutting but not increasing either sort of cut – or a letting INFLATION inflict the PAIN for you sort of cut, if you prefer.)

But we DID win the fight to make Chancer Osborne increase benefits – not just pensions, but ALL the main benefits – in line with the 5.2% Inflation in September this year when he wanted to use a lower number. Which on the one fluffy foot is a GOOD THING because it's hard enough to live on benefits as it is; but on the other fluffy foot focuses the problem on cutting NUMBERS, because you can only cut the OVERALL Benefit bill by cutting the AMOUNT that people get OR the NUMBERS of people getting it.

Which gets us to the aggressive approach to job centre staffing.

The government spends something like three quarters of a TRILLION pounds and about a THIRD of it goes on the NHS and about another third goes on the benefit bill. If you've sworn not to cut the money to the NHS, then there really is NOWHERE ELSE to cut than the benefit bill. And THEN most of the benefits are actually PENSIONS. You can't cut THEM either – even if it weren't political suicide to piss off the "grey vote", EVERYONE hopes they're going to end up a pensioner one day. The great UNSAYABLE of British politics is to suggest a freeze in pensions or freeze of the NHS, 'cos that's where all the money REALLY goes.

But if you CAN'T freeze those, well, you can see how more and more of the cuts get focused on the segment called "in work benefits" which our Conservatory (AND Hard Labour!) masters appear to think should be called "ought to be in work" benefits.

Quite simply, there is NO WAY to make this add to fair treatment.

At the moment there is BIG BLAME BATTLE going on.

Hard Labour, for obviously self-serving reasons, have been pushing HARD – and with some success – the idea that it was gambling by bankers that trashed the economy.

(Though, of course, that's only HALF the story: what the bankers were gambling ON was that millions and millions of ordinary people would carry on borrowing to fund lifestyles in excess of what they were earning, egged on by a government that was borrowing to fund a lifestyle in excess of what the whole economy was earning.)

In return, the Conservatories (and us!) have with even greater success pinned a lot of the blame for the CRASH on Hard Labour. But the blame for the ONGOING pain... that's more difficult to explain.

(Particularly since a LOT of people are feeling the "double whammy" of the economy grinding to a halt at a time when they have huge debts. The answer "well that's your fault" not being very conducive to re-election.)

Inevitably, we turn to the very human way of excusing ourselves for the pain that we are causing. By BLAMING the very people on whom the burden falls heaviest.

And then BOTH sides take a pop at the IMMIGRANTS!

It's got to STOP.

We should make the benefit system simpler, that's a given.

We should make it more generous too, but we can't get the money.

(Sure, we could talk about mansion taxes and no corporation tax cut, but we won't get them past the Conservatories and we can't cut MORE from anywhere else! And borrowing is RIGHT OUT!)

So let's talk about what we CAN do which is change the LANGUAGE.

'Cos no one is a "scrounger". They are all future entrepreneurs. Or future artists. Or future teachers.

Mr Balloon needs reminding that his BIG SOCIETY depends on people who AREN'T GETTING PAID: volunteers, or carers. Or at the root of it, your basic parents.

So as Liberal Democrats let's make it a CAMPAIGN to talk POSITIVELY about the people who aren't working because they haven't got work or aren't able to work. We can start with thinking of better words than "unemployed" or "job seekers". I've come up with the phrase "free sector" (as opposed to the "waged sector"), but you might think of something better.

And perhaps "families doing their best" instead of the wretched "hard-working families".

Yes, it might sound like political correctness, but if political correctness didn't work, we'd still be using the N word and Conservatories wouldn't talk about "death taxes".

In summary: let people get on with rebuilding their lives and they might start to rebuild the economy.
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Day 4039: If this is an Answer what is the Question?

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000Z

Sunday:

I see that Auntie Jennie and Mr Steven o' the Glenn have popped "The Question". No, no, no – THIS Question:

"What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?"

Well, the answer depends on how much MAGIC you're investing into the phrase "could not fail".

Because if it's a what-would-you-do-but-lack-of-confidence-is-holding-you-back kind of "could not fail", then the answer is: "be a best-selling fantasy author".

But if this is a rub-the-lamp-and-get-three-wishes sort of "could not fail" then it's: "design and build a workable, affordable (non-polluting) faster than light space drive and initiate the human exploration of the galaxy".

In all honesty, it would be nice to see one Daddy elected to FPC and one elected to Parliament. Either way around would do.

But getting millions of people to read my writing would, hopefully, get the Liberal message into people's heads and get them THINKING about it better than yet another nice middle-class Daddy in the "Big Shouting Club". Or Parliament, for that matter.

But if we're going to get full on wishes, it's got to be travel to the stars, for exploration and colonisation. There is so much to see out there – you only have to watch Stargazing Live to know there is more to "ooh" and "ahh" at than even Professor Brian Cox can manage in one lifetime. And let's face it, there are practical reasons too. Even if we don't destroy the planet ourselves, the chances of an extinction level even in the next thousand to ten-thousand years are frighteningly high. Moving to first the Moon, and then Mars and maybe Europa (near Jupiter) and then ultimately somewhere Keppler 22-b like… it's the ultimate in NOT keeping all your EGGS in one PLANET.

And if the ROMANCE doesn't convince you and the SELF-PRESERVATION doesn't sell you on space, then let's go all HAN SOLO and think about the MONEY. There is an asteroid up there called Eros containing precious metals to the value of TWENTY TRILLION DOLLARS. That's the world economic crisis sorted right there; that's all the banks AND the Euro bailed out tomorrow. And that's just one of the NEARBY ones!

The exploration of space can ENRICH us AND make us RICH at the same time.

So if it couldn't fail, THAT's what I'D do.
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Day 4035: Bojo May Be Bonkers But At Least He Thinks Big

2012-01-19T00:00:00.000Z

Wednesday:

Obviously, Great Britain needs an airport in the Thames Estuary like a hole in the wind farm, but you can't deny that it is a BIG IDEA. Stupid, yes, but BIG.

In its way, this is of a piece with the bicycle hire scheme and the new Routemaster buses. Mr Bojo may be CLOWN PRINCE of LONDON, but he's not interested in MANAGERIALISM. He wants to DO things, CREATE things. In the HORRID modern parlance, he's got his eye on the "LEGACY".

And this may be the key to his SUCCESS. Well, that and the "loveable" bumbling buffoon persona!

(Something he has in common with his arch-enemy Mr Livingstone: they're both very clever men who know that people don't VOTE for very clever men, so both have successfully concocted "personalities" to hide how much of a smarty-pants they are.)

The arguments for a new airport for London appear to be of the "you've got to build bypasses" variety that gets Arthur Dent's house knocked down in "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". And, in case you missed the point, then gets the EARTH demolished too.

(One of the OVERLOOKED arguments in favour of the new High Speed rail link being extended to Manchester and Leeds is that it would REDUCE the numbers of environmentally catastrophic short-haul flights around the UK, easing pressure at Heathrow as a lucky consequence.)

But in the middle of all this on-going global economic gloom, a "GRAND PUBLIC WORK", something magnificent and mad and ever-so-slightly-Victorian has the ability to GRAB the public imagination in exactly the way that a shiny new written constitution DIDN'T!

And we need something like that, something so that people will say "oh, THAT'S what the Lib Dems are about".

Would a new Federal Parliament (subject to Mr Salmon losing his referendum) be too much of an indulgence? Yes, I suspect it would… but we could hold a competition for which city would host it. Mr Graham Norton could host "How Do You Solve a Problem Like West Lothian?"

Or perhaps a more local approach, with a free gift to every council for a bit of CIVIC PRIDE, whether it's putting LOOS in all the high streets or refurbishing all the Victorian Spa Baths so everyone has a swimming pool or just BULLDOZING those IDENTIKIT high streets and rebuilding something with character.

Personally, of course, I'm in favour of a BRITISH SPACE PROGRAMME. We're so very keen to encourage our young people into SCIENCE and ENGINEERING and Mr Professor Brian Cox and his Wonders of the Universe and Stargazing Live, space is as popular as it's ever been. A Space Programme would be encouragement and training all in one, with new technology being developed with who-knows-what side benefits.

Plus, I'm sure that the prospect of sending Mr Professor Brian into space so he can "ooh" and "ahh" from orbit is one that would appeal to millions.
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Day 4034: Mr Holmes, It was the footprint of a GIGANTIC ELEPHANT!

2012-01-18T14:30:00.000Z

Tuesday:

An update for those people who think the Curse of the BOTYs has got me at last.

Yah boo! Still here!

Daddy Richard has finished writing his book, or at least volume one (the madness never ends!). It is called "Anarchy Rules: Before Dawn". We might have a look at publishing it now. Some cover art would be nice, if anyone has any ideas. Something with chessboards, perhaps. And fractals.

We're also having a look at collecting my "Mysteries of Doctor Who" into a book as well. This involves Daddy writing some linking material, plus THREE bonus, never-before-published Mysteries, including the long-awaited answer to "What Does Timey-Wimey Mean?"

In the meantime, the Mister Moffster has knocked out another series of Sherlock. Like a deep fat fried Mars bar, it is DELICIOUS but you know it is WRONG. Why is it that these days no one seems to notice that the "scandal" in "A Scandal in Bohemia" is how Mr the King of Bohemia is treating Irene Adler and not the other way around! Honestly, it's not like Sherlock doesn't tell his majesty to basically bad-word off at the end!

At least Mr Gatiss's "Hounds of Baskerville" avoided the gender-fail of "A Scandal in Belgravia" by the expeditious method of ditching most of the female characters! (A bit of Pennant Roberts-style gender-reassignment helped cover this – making Dr Stapleton into a woman helped the back end look a bit less all male, although turning Dr Mortimer into a lady shrink barely troubled the scorers.)

Did Mr Steve Thompson's "Reichenbach Fall" redeem his "Blind Banker" from last year? I'll pass on that one. The cleverest bit, I thought, was the revelation that Moriarty WASN'T the "anti-Sherlock" after all, that in fact it was Jim who was the FAKE, using "magic tricks" to pretend that he had done something very clever indeed™ when actually it was just a case of bribing the right people. He used Sherlock's very cleverness – and the hope that he could have an equal – against him, so that too-clever-by-half Sherlock assumed that Moriarty was as brainy as he was and looked for a too-clever-by-half solution.

(Incidentally, did any "Faction Paradox" fans notice that the "key to everything" that turns out to be a canon by Bach is actually the Clockwork Ouroboros from "The Book of the War"? In an episode chock-full of Dr Who references – what, you didn't notice it was more "The Deadly Assassin" than "The Final Problem"? – I certainly didn't expect THAT one!)

And then Mr Moriarty shot himself. Yeah, right.

But speaking of suicides, we also had the spectacle of Hard Labour shooting itself in the head and missing its brain by six feet.

Really, I now have NO IDEA what Hard Labour's economic policy actually is. If it even exists. It seems that Hard Labour do not WANT their cake and are still going to EAT it.

Mr Balls says that he thinks Master Gideon is wrong and that's why he now agrees with him.

(Okay, he actually says he "won't be able" to reverse the cuts – but surely he COULD borrow more to reverse or partly reverse them; that's what he's been saying so far – borrow more, cut less. Now he says he CAN'T do that. This does seem like saying the Coalition were RIGHT but he doesn't want to take the blame.)

Mr Millipede's appearance on the Andy Marrmite show didn't make things any clearer when he seemed to say that he now opposes the cuts but he accepts them. They are wrong but he's not going to reverse them.

Still, if Hard Labour are going to ACCEPT the Conservatories' Cuts, at least the Liberal Democrats are still here to OPPOSE them. And thank goodness we are actually IN Government and able to DO something about it!

(Do you remember those thirteen years when Hard Labour were in Government and DIDN'T do anything about it? No? You may be suffering from "Millipede Syndrome" also known as "a pain in the Ed".)

And at least there are some signs that Captain Clegg IS opposing some of the more EGREGIOUS cuts.

I mean, for FLUFF's sake, what are we DOING supporting cuts to Disability Benefits? Isn't that taking "we're all in this together" to the illogical extreme! Surely a CIVILISED society would say that the very LAST people to lose their protections in a downturn should be the POORLY.

We can cope with cohabiting with PHILISTINES and IGNORAMUSES [warning: Daily Fail], but do we have to come across as SADISTS?!

SOME reforms of the Welfare State are long overdue (helping people INTO work is as important as helping them when they're OUT of work; never forget that IDLENESS was one of Mr Beverage's "Five Giants") but we're supposed to be bringing some COMPASSION to this Coalition.

Finally, it would take a heart of stone etc… on hearing that Monsieur Sarcastic the President of Franceland has had to suffer the indignity of being downgraded from Triple-A. Actually, the real tragedy is the downgrading of nine Eurozone countries, particularly Spain and Portugal, many of whom are working ever so hard to control their deficits, while struggling with spiralling unemployment, particularly among young people. These downgrades are a sign that the markets are increasingly EXPECTING a default, from Greece almost certainly, but probably from other Southern European countries too.

In other news, a huge cruise liner has hit the rocks off the Italian shore. It is difficult not to see this tragedy as a METAPHOR!
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Day 4011: DOCTOR WHO: Forest Gump

2012-01-06T16:00:00.000Z

Christmas Day:

And now for a very special sneak preview of NEXT YEAR'S Dr Woo Winterval Special…

"What could be more Christmassy than a James Bond film at Christmas," cackled the Mister Moffster as he penned the title of the 2012 Christmas Special:

"No Doctor You Only Live On Her Majesty's Secret Service From Russia With The Spy Who Loved Me Twice!"

Scene One: "Phew, that was close!" cried THE DOCTOR as the TARDIS flew within a gnat's whisker of the Copyright-Infringement-Lawyer-Bots from the planet Intellectual Property Six…"

Anyway, more of that next Christmas. Here's Daddy's review for this year…

Well, it's always nice to see a new writer and I'm happy that this Stephen Moffatt, author of light, character-driven comedy-drama such as "Press Gang" and "Joking Apart", has been chosen to replace the plot-twist-crazed fanboy farceur Steven Moffat who's been running the show for the past two years, the man behind such "reimaginings" as "Jekyll", "Sherlock" and, er, "Who".

It's hard not to think that there's just a touch of overcompensation, reacting to all the "Amy isn't behaving like a mother" criticism, in this Christmas paean to the power of "mum", which sees plucky Forties mother Madge Arwell seemingly take everything in her stride from the Doctor falling out of orbit into her path to Bill Bailey in a spacesuit melting an alien forest for battery acid.

(Pity he still feels the need to toss in a joke about "women drivers". "I'm respecting you… as a woman." Or possibly not.)

Okay, there are just a couple of dollops of timey-wimey added to the sugary mix.

The first is the Narnia-referencing "time goes faster across the dimensional barrier". Which means Mum coming looking for them doesn't entirely make sense, since if twenty minutes for Cyril in the forest translates to just a few seconds, then with the whole adventure taking less than an hour, Mum should not have had time to notice they were gone. (In fact, I'll see your "time passes differently there" and raise you a "What do they teach in schools these days?".)

The other is the way that Madge manages to create her own problems by retrospectively rescuing her husband from the 19th December which results in the telegram that leads her to believe this is the night he died which in turn leads to her rescuing him from the 19th December in a typical Moffat ontological paradox. (In fact, I'll see your "timey-wimey" and raise you a "just this once, everybody lives".)

But that aside, and it's hardly an original observation, it's surprising how linear this story is. Again, Moffat seems to be kicking against his reputation for convoluted story-telling. Although, I'd argue that this one could have done with just a little bit more non-linearity. For example, the story of Madge and the fallen Doctor could have appeared part way through, maybe told as a story to her children to cheer them up in the middle of the frightening forest. Because we start off knowing she helped him in a moment of need, we know why there's a great big present under the tree. In a story that's supposed to be about the sense of wonder, there's not a lot to wonder about.

In a lot of ways, though, what really undermines this story is the presence of the Doctor in it.

It's ironic, really, because the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the episode are a fantastic, frenetic explosion of joyous fun, relying almost entirely on the enormous talents of Matt Smith.

From the cheeky pre-title sequence (never mind the physics, feel the performance) doing "The Christmas Invasion" in under thirty seconds, to the hilarious backwards spacesuit (we see the back of Matt's hair-do just a beat before "I've gone blind!" – Alex laughed out loud, the first time in ages he's had the simple pleasure of genuinely enjoying current "Who" and so worth a million River Snogs; and when the Doctor checks himself out to see that he's not being put back together "backwards"… well, it's quite rude for Christmas!), to the tour of the house (we're genuinely not sure whether he doesn't understand stairs or he's done something to them that isn't working), right through to that huge present, it's all fast, funny and rather marvellous.

This is "Doctor Who" as sketch show, it's "The League of Gentlemen" without the grotesque, or "The Fast Show" with catchphrases "I've made some repairs" and "it's developed a fault" (where the Doctor clearly believes "I've made some repairs" to be synonymous with "I've made it do something bonkers" while Matt's ability to look puzzled and affronted each time he delivers the "it's developed a fault" line is a particular delight). It's probably the perfect form for Moffat the comedy-drama writer to write.

Where the story falters is when it needs to develop an actual plot.

We are, essentially, in classic children's tea-time serial territory: think "The Box of Delights", "The Phoenix and the Carpet" or, obviously, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" itself. The crucial thing about all these stories is that the protagonists are the children. Adults are either silly, unobservant creatures that blunder about doing "grown-up" things and missing the wonders that the children participate in, or occasionally slightly weird, wise figures who know what's really going on but choose not to interfere except to explain it all at the end.

There's an extent to which the Doctor (or "Caretaker") is being thrust into the latter role, a sort of Professor Digory Kirke (taking over from the absent Uncle Digby, no doubt). But he's too pro-active to accept the role. Of course, he's kind of a big kid himself, playing at being an uncle or a caretaker, but the big kid crowds out the little ones.

In a "proper" version of this story, the children would discover the house for themselves rather than being shown it; the children would both enter the magical wood unaccompanied by anyone to explain it to them; and the children would resolve the problem, rather than waiting for mum.

These stories were always about going out and experiencing; the children learned lessons, but they learned by doing.

In Moffat's version the two kids have very little to do beyond gawp. (Which, I hasten to add, they do very nicely. Both child actors are pretty good, actually, so why not give them something concrete to do?) Cyril "gets into trouble" by exploring the forest ("boy's stuff", watch that, Moffat – though to be fair, Lily was on her way to examine the box when the sound of the sonic distracted her) while Lily mostly gets to hold the Doctor's hand and quiver. (And say "Oh God, Oh God" – both Alex and I wondered whether a nicely brought-up girl from 1941 would blaspheme quite so easily).

The Doctor already has all the answers and babbles them out like Basil Exposition on speed. We've turned the story into one about the passive acceptance of data rather than the learning of stuff by trying.

"In a forest in a box in a sitting room, pay attention!" says the Doctor waspishly when Lily asks where they are, which is either a clever reference to Moffat's own earlier episode "Flesh and Stone" or a summary of everything that he's doing wrong.

Lily's question is not a stupid one, despite the way the Doctor snaps at her, and he's actually going to spend most of the rest of the episode explaining the actual answer.

The weak/strong female/male "mistranslation" is just as blunt and crass. Simply reversing a stupid generalisation does not of necessity make it any less stupid. As certain persons have recently learned. In 1988's "Remembrance of the Daleks", the intergalactic fascist pepperpots want someone imaginative and adaptable to power their battle computer so they use a girl. When the Daleks are doing better gender politics than you, it's time to stop and ask what you're doing wrong.

I can imagine a version of this story with much less Doctor in it. If we started with the evacuation (no need for cute lines about Uncle Digby being in a home – actually, if he is in a "home", why aren't the Arwells living in his house already?). The children explore the house, find weird stuff like the lemonade tap and the Christmas tree and discover the giant present. They both go inside, they each meet the forest people (great wooden statues, pity they didn't do anything, and did I really see the lovely Paul Kasey credited as "wooden queen"?!). Possibly they meet one each, and the King and Queen have conflicting agendas. And we only discover the Doctor near to the end because he's behind it all and probably the captive of one of the forest monarchs.

That's not the Moffat way, though, as he once again bends over backwards to try to write drama without conflict. The principal threat here is not from the impressive statues but from Bill Bailey and friends' intention to burn down the forest with acid rain. There isn't even a suggestion that they are bad for wanting to do this. As Alex puts it: it's OK to kill trees, because if you’re a hippie they’ll turn into stardust, because obviously that’s what trees really want. I'm not totally sure that's how photosynthesis works. (And this in a story where the Doctor has just blown up ~~the Vogons~~ one ship in orbit for merely pointing a gun and a loudhailer at the Earth.) They're just slightly inept, almost a pastiche of a "typical" Doctor Who space crew: "the cold captain", "the psycho security chief" and "the nice one" – think "Colony in Space" or "Kinda" or, gawdelpus, "Terror of the Vervoids". It's Doctor Who as sketch show again.

It's not much of a part, but it's quite nice to see Bill, and he does some great reaction shots. There's not a lot more for Unbound Doctor Arabella Weir to do either (and how's that for respecting her as a woman?), while Paul Bazely gets to mug like crazy and hang a lantern on this week's theme with his "mother issues".

(Oh, and their hand scanners are foiled by Madge's cardigan because it's made of "natural fibres". They're in a forest. I have to ask: do any of their platform's sensors work?)

And they tell us they're from Androzani Major.

Look, I don't have a problem with them being from Androzani Major, that's a nice touch. All too often the Doctor visits planets in one episode that are never heard of before or since; reminding us that this is all one Whoniverse is good, and of a kind with the Sense Sphere/Ood Sphere thing that Russell did.

And I don't mind "Androzani platform" for their vehicle, either. But "Androzani trees"? Given that they're from Androzani Major not on Androzani Major, isn't that a bit like us landing on, say, Beta Caprisis or Draconia Prime and saying "hey, these trees are impressive; let's call them Earth trees"?

(And on the subject of tree-based niggles – if you're CGI'ing a forest, surely you can manage more than one "sweeping over the panoramic vista" shot.)

Anyway, as I'm sure you know, this is a reference to Peter Davison's swansong: "The Cave of Androzani". (And the spacewalking without a spacesuit is a reference to the first story Peter recorded: "Four to Doomsday".)

"Caves" tells us there are five planets in the Sirius System. We're not on Major, nor Minor because we know what that looks like and it can't support forests because of the mudbursts. If you recall even further back, the Pertwee space opera "Frontier in Space" lets us know there are Commissioners from Sirius Four. That doesn't entirely rule out forests on Sirius Four as well, but suggests a terraformed planet rather than a Christmas tree world. Maybe this is Sirius 1 or Sirius 5 then.

I'm not quite sure how to get a handle on the character of Madge Arwell. Claire Skinner plays her as almost "simple", as though she has a wisdom of innocence, except in the "crying is useful" bit when she's suddenly sly. Certainly she pegs the Doctor with a single glance: possibly a spaceman, possibly an angel. The possibility of Doctor as fallen angel has been big this year (and, I'm afraid, not terribly well handled) so thankfully that's about all we get of it here. Instead, he's the Christmas genie, from the (box with a) lamp, granting wishes and not quite getting them right. I guess if you want a woman to play against this hyperactive child persona then the lead from "Outnumbered" is the first one you'd call.

The other guest star is Alexander Armstrong, who got to be slightly wasted in this while his comedy partner Ben Miller got to spend six months in the Caribbean filming "Death in Paradise". Who got the better deal, I wonder?

Matt however remains absolutely the star of this show. The moment when he turns on a sixpence to speak wisely to Madge about why her children should be allowed to be happy is key, as is the reversal at the end where she sends him to be happy with his "children" / "parents-in-law" Rory and Amy.

And the moment at the end, where he discovers he is capable of crying with happiness, for that, for Matt's expression and one gleaming tear, I'll forgive "humany-wumany". Eventually.

I do hope that he'll be staying longer than just one more year – the messages have been somewhat mixed recently, whether he's going to try his luck in Hollywood after another year of the Doctor or whether he's enjoying it just fine. Perhaps because of the interconnectedness of his stories, or because he hasn't had one "great" story yet a la "Human Nature", or possibly because he's only had Amy (with or without Rory) as companion he hardly seems to have been here any time at all. I think the news that Amy and Rory will be leaving in the next season is welcome (inasmuch as we all thought they'd left already!) because a new companion will make the lifespan of the eleventh Doctor feel that bit longer. And maybe persuade him to stay an extra year.

Someone very wise said that the difference between Moffat and Russell is that Moffat writes for his children, but Russell remembers being one. I think that nicely captures both Russell's habit of treating Doctor Who as the "biggest playroom evah" regardless of consequences for plot or character, and Moffat's flaw of – occasionally – writing down to his audience.

When he lets himself have free rein, as in the two episodes of "Sherlock" that he has written, Moffat's writing takes flight, it lifts in song almost, but exposes the deep flaws that he has regarding character, particularly, I'm afraid to say, women. Did he put so much soul into Lynda Day that he just can't do it any more?

"The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe" shows every sign of him making an effort to overcome those flaws, to write against his usual tropes (well, some of them) and produce a simpler, sweeter, kinder piece. That's courageous, even if it's not always completely successful. It starts off as seat-of-the-pants exciting as anything, but the effort to be nice means it rather goes off the boil in the second half. But it made Alex laugh, so top marks for that.

Next Time… Shockingly, not a dickey bird. Not even a title for the next episode! Come on, Moffat! Some of us have a template format to fill in, you know!

Day 4010: We Wish You A Yoda Christmas

2011-12-25T00:00:00.002Z

Saturday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

...and a Jedi New Year

Day 4009: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 23 - Spirit of Chrimble

2011-12-24T14:30:00.000Z

Friday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 23: Tree, probably from Endor or something

PS: late today - been listening to JAMES BOND on the RADIO

Day 4008: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 22 - The Final Battle

2011-12-23T12:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 22: A-Wing leads the attack

Day 4007: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 21 - Saved by the Millennium... er, Falcon

2011-12-22T12:00:00.000Z

Wednesday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 21: Yee-haa!

Day 4006: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 20 - Fly TIE My Pretties

2011-12-21T12:00:00.000Z

Tuesday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 20: World's Tiniest TIE fighter

Day 4005: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 19 - The Empire's Sinister Agents

2011-12-20T21:00:00.000Z

Monday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 20: A TIE fighter pilot, relaxing after a hard day oppressing the enemies of the Emperor

Day 4004: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 18 - Retrieve the Crashed Y-Wing

2011-12-19T12:00:00.000Z

Sunday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 18: Y-Wings... they date back to the Clone Wars, y'know

Day 4003: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 17 - A Dangerous Pursuit

2011-12-18T15:00:00.000Z

Saturday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 17 Time to Arm Up

Day 4002: A Star Wars Lego Advent day 16 - Bad News from Captain Pil

2011-12-17T12:00:00.000Z

Friday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 16: Conversation with the Clone Pilot

Day 4001: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: The Girl Who Was Death

2011-12-17T00:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

Is this REALLY "The Prisoner"? I'm not sure it's even TELEVISION!

Daddy Richard, however, thinks it's AWESOME.

information

The Prisoner appears in a tale from his life as a secret agent. The eponymous "girl" is impossibly modish in all-white attire and all-white make-up, stringing the Prisoner along through near-fatal escapades while he pursues her father, a mad scientist with a literal Napoleon complex, pastiching in passing "The Avengers", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", "Mission: Impossible", "James Bond", "Sherlock Holmes", Hitchcock and, um, "Danger Man" aka "Secret Agent" making "The Girl Who Was Death" possibly the single most Sixties thing ever!

what's your number, please

Everyone but everyone places "The Girl Who Was Death" as the fifteenth episode, just before the concluding two-parter. So what on Earth has possessed me to persuade Alex to let us put it here?

Well, the reasoning for everyone else placing it fifteenth appears to be "well, everyone else does", and that's not a particularly strong argument. Generally held to be barking mad – and, to be fair, it is – it is felt not to fit with the continuity of the series – which really isn't the case. In fact it fits very nicely with the other two "out of Village" episodes, except that it's vastly superior to either of them. As with the other two, there is a framing device to "allow" the Prisoner to be outside of his usual haunts which concludes with a return to the regular Village and a humiliation for Number 2.

From the Village's point of view, this seems almost tame: merely placing him in an "unguarded" situation and seeing if he will let anything slip. On the other hand,

In a way this is a nice mirror of "Living in Harmony": there it was a story that they were putting into his head; here it's still all in his head, but he's the one telling the story. The revelation that he is the one telling the story this time is what sets this above the other two. He has seen through the Village's latest attempt and this time he's actively fighting back, subverting the story and writing comedic and derogatory caricatures of Number 2 and his assistant into the narrative.

The most telling moment is the cheeky tag, where the Prisoner addresses his captors with a "Good night, children… everywhere."

But the observant will notice that Number 2, frustrated at the failure of this ploy, turns off the monitor.

Meaning that the Prisoner must have turned it back on again. He is beginning to take control of the machinery of the Village…

the new number two

Once again they employ the technique of a fake Number 2 voice for the – thankfully restored to full length after the previous two episodes – title sequence in order to hide the "twist" ending, and thus denying Kenneth Griffith his turn in the spherical chair.

Now this is interesting: Kenneth Griffith was a mate of Patrick McGoohan which is probably why he – like Alexis Kanner who also pops up here, though uncredited – will be back for the, ahem, big conclusion. However, before we get there, there are a couple of weeks' gap in the schedule of "The Prisoner" because production fell behind, so they dropped in the final two episodes – and only colour episodes – of "Danger Man". And the last episode of "Danger Man" also stars Kenneth Griffith.

And in it, a British agent abruptly resigns so John Drake takes his place to find out why, only to have the trail lead him to a sinister abandoned island. Honestly, it's hard to think people noticed the difference. And on top of that "The Girl Who Was Death" was adapted from an unmade "Danger Man" episode too! No, seriously!

Griffith gets a dual role here: within the story-within-a-story he is "Dr Schnipps" the aforementioned mad scientist with a rocket disguised as the Beachy Head lighthouse; while in the "real" world of the Village he is Number 2. As Schnipps, dressed as Napoleon, he is a rather sympathetic, melancholy figure: a villain in the "why capital? am I surrounded by idiots?" mould of Dr Evil, who'll trigger his Moonraker-esque plan and only then think to make sure his papers are saved for posterity. What is clever about his portrayal is that in his brief time as the "real" Number 2, he manages to retain your sympathy; his sharp critique of the latest plan "he wouldn't drop his guard with his own grandmother!" coveys a sharper intelligence but the same sense of "why am I surrounded by idiots" and convinces you that Schnipps was an, admittedly grotesque, genuine parody of this person.

He doesn't get a lot of screen time – the episode is owned by his "daughter" – but he's a lovely little supporting role that adds charm to what could have been… okay lets be fair, is… a ridiculous ending.

One intriguing little moment: as he and his daughter share a "family" moment, he remarks "if only our dear mother could be here". The subtitles clean this up to "your dear mother", but it's clearly delivered to suggest a hint of incest. It might explain why they're both so potty. But how shocking in front of the children!

follow the signs

It's not like they don't show you what's going on: the framing device of a children's picture storybook held in the hands of an invisible narrator. And it's not like it isn't funny. It is in fact full of deliciously black humour throughout. But they never choose to go for the laugh. Instead they "go for the surreal".

The entire episode is filled with bizarre juxtapositions, weird cuts, jump-zooms and other camera tricks and oddly, even grotesquely framed images.

We start as we mean to go on: bafflingly, with a cold open on a cricket field where "the Colonel" is exploded by a substitute cricket ball.

So far so nuts, but the execution is even stranger. The reveal of a high calibre rifle in a kit bag is almost run-of-the-mill in this sort of thing, but the first appearance of the Girl Who, apparently, is Death is quite extraordinary. Her appearance, highly made up – so white she's almost an anti-goth – and dressed for a party, not the cricket field, is quite, quite out of place. And the camera focuses on her parasol and, almost fetishistically, on her feet. There's a moment of "Thunderbirds"-like hand acting as she exchanges the cricket ball. Then there's an excitable three-stage zoom on the colonel as he faces the fatal delivery. And to cap it all, a quite indescribable extreme close-up of the bowler grinning like a maniac into the lens and held for seconds… The entire sequence is an exercise in estranging the audience.

And then the Colonel is dead. Now, unless he's a Time Lord who keeps regenerating, this is not the same "colonel" who was played by Kevin Stoney in "The Chimes of Big Ben", Donald Sinden in "Many Happy Returns", nor Nigel Stock in "Do Not Forsake Me…". Though it would be nice to think that it was, and that this rounds off a kind of character arc.

This colonel, though, was assisted by the always-marvellous Christopher Benjamin as Potter. He's been in this series before – as the psychoanalyst who spikes the Prisoner's tea in "Free For All" – and in "Danger Man" before too. As a character called "Potter". Anyway, Potter makes contact with the ~~Prisoner~~ Secret Agent and directs him to a happening record store, booth 7 (not 6?). Notice the shop window dummy at the start of this scene dressed as the Girl Who Was Death; by the end of the scene she actually is the Girl, suggesting that teleport ability that the Number 2's sometime have, or even spookier magic powers.

At the record store, a voice on a record gives our Secret Agent a "mission" (whether or not he chooses to accept it) to find out what happened to the colonel and trace Dr Schnipps. The record, incidentally, appears capable of answering back. Which is novel.

And "Standard disguise", by the way, appears to mean full-on Victorian whiskers.

We then get a shot for crazy-shot remount of the cold open, except with McGoohan at the crease. Having taken over the colonel's batting position, though, the Secret Agent avoids the sticky wicket and returns the deadly delivery to the boundary, hoping perhaps to bowl the maiden over. Instead he gets an invite to meet again. Let's try the pub…

The gag about having McGoohan drink the entire length of the bar works so much better as a sketch in this story rather than making it the whole raison d'être of "Living in Harmony".

patrick mcgoohan only rides the tunnel of love with mrs mcgoohan

The Secret Agent continues to follow the clues that the Girl leaves for him, first to a Turkish bath and a scene lifted directly from "Thunderball". Then to a boxing ring where for once his skill with fisticuffs does not lay out the opponent flat. Finally to a long and extraordinary sequence at a funfair as she literally takes him for a ride. This location sequence is filmed almost as a silent comedy, a style that the Goodies would use over and over in the Seventies, in part because the music can be used to add to the derangement of the audience without the need for expensive location sound recording and dialogue re-dubbing, and in part because McGoohan blatantly isn't there. They intercut sequences of McGoohan standing in front of a back-projection of the location doing "looking this way and that" shtick, and then cut to footage of a man who clearly isn't McGoohan striding away from the camera after the Girl. And they keep doing it for a good five minutes!

Add to that the magic realism that sees the Girl again exerting that teleportation-like ability to suddenly be back on the ground watching as the log flume or the waltzers carry him away again. And they repeat twice a joke of him approaching a woman dressed all in white only for her not to be the Girl so that on the third time, when it is her, he wrongly backs off. A simple rule of three, and also a very fairy-tale approach, but putting it all together it starts to look deliberate.

Either they genuinely didn't think that the audience would notice or they are trying to do something consciously Brechtian to remind you that this is a story-within-a-story, to make you question what is real.

This reaches its apogee at the end of this sequence where the Girl flees in her car, for the traditional action-spy-drama car chase, pursued using more back-projection, by the Secret Agent – it can hardly be said to be McGoohan; it's almost like they're not even trying any more.

And then, as they chase down country lanes around Borehamwood, she turns to face her pursuer – or the screen on which he is projected anyway – points a finger and… he starts to rotate, in fact the whole image does, turning upside down, rolling round and round. As Alex puts it, it's like she's becoming director of her own story, fighting David Tomblin for control.

After this, the car chase ends with her leading him into a back lot. Rather like "A. B. and C." this is rather knowingly a back lot, making a point of saying "this is a set".

This is also the end of the first act, indicated by a second appearance of the narrator and his storybook. This time the picture is ominously labelled "The Village" and features prominently a bell tower with a green dome. As does the back lot set – she's going to machine-gun him from it later.

It's about as subtle as McGoohan racing up to the screen and shouting "Look at the fourth wall!" in your face. It flaunts its artificiality; it wants you to get that this is an allegory of the Village so that you will think about how the Village itself is artificial.

sometimes a rocket disguised as a lighthouse is just a rocket disguised as a lighthouse

On the down side, this is also what we might call the "Scooby Doo" moment. At first, the Girl speaks to him and her voice seems to come from everywhere. Until he espies a wire leading to a barely-concealed speaker. And there's a noticeable change in the sound treatment of her voice at that point, from omnipresent to public address.

Once he spots the wires, her magic seems to go from that point on.

The second act sees him defeating a deadly assault course, through the shops of the butcher the baker and the candlestick maker, of course, before he finds himself trapped in a garage with a bulldozer in a scene that you would think was pastiching "The A-Team" if it wasn't a decade-and-a-half early.

The second act concludes with her thinking the Secret Agent is dead and departing in, with another nod to the Village, her helicopter.

The third act sees him carried to the villain's secret underground lair™, clinging to the skids of the chopper.

They land in a field (also near Borehamwood unless I miss my guess) where McGoohan, actually on location this time, peers over the "cliff" to see some stock footage of the White Cliffs and the lighthouse.

Yes, it's big and pink and explodes at the climax; I'm rather afraid we've rather moved on from Vagina Dentata (or a bomb in the tunnel of love) to Phallic Symbolism as the script has his male power overwhelm her female treachery. Sigh.

That lighthouse turns out to be not only a massively-overcompensatory "rocket" but also a complex full of Napoleons. Six Napoleons, in fact (not counting Dr Schnipps himself) which is obviously another Sherlock Holmes reference.

Needless to say, by this point the Secret Agent is well on top, easily able to turn their own weapons against them, rigging guns to backfire and stick grenades to explode in their hands and, ultimately the "rocket" to explode on its launch pad.

At which point, the "narrator" closes the storybook and, revealed to be the Prisoner, tells the children to whom he's been reading:

"And that is how I stopped the mad scientist destroying London."

It works as a much more successful framing device than that "Living in Harmony" mainly because they set it up from the beginning, and repeatedly refer to the storybook motif throughout, but also because the whacked-out surrealism of the story as it is told is just so weird, so deliberately artificial that the explanation becomes an "oh, that's what's going on" moment, rather than them trying something out of left field and chickening out in the end.

Her strange powers over the story become his powers as the storyteller; the use of repetition and reiteration within the narrative become symbolic of the oral tradition; and the implausible coincidences and unbelievable mistakes become commentary on the art.

And clearly, this is all pre-figuring "Fall Out": the big spy finish with the rocket being discarded for a reveal that is one part unexpected to two parts insane. Alex takes it as an explicit warning not to expect the series to end with a "traditional" spy story twist / climax, although where "Fall Out" will be… whatever it is, "The Girl Who Was Death" just comes out and says "Spy stories are childish".

It is very blackly funny, but as a spy spoof it doesn't have many "gags". In part this would have to be because "The Avengers", the precursor and great rival to all these ITC serials, had already gone there with witty badinage and knowing commentary. Not until they discover Jason King, the High Lord of Louche, will ITC be in a position to do post-modernism, with a character who deconstructs and debunks the story around himself. What "The Prisoner" is doing here is much more about getting at the "engineering" of the story, because McGoohan is more interested in commenting on the society that watches spy dramas, rather than the incestuous reflection of the drama on its own nature.

Bluntly, he uses "The Girl Who Was Death" to test the spy adventure to destruction.

And if you watch closely, you might just spot the point where he goes right round the twist in the process.

It could be said that this story in three acts reflects the three phases of the conflict between the Prisoner and the Village: the first, psychological; the second, more intrusive and technological; the third where he turns the tables on them.

Or it could just be bonkers, with a side helping of psychedelia turned up to eleven.

who is number one?

Who else can it be? Justine Lord is completely compelling for at least the first thirty minutes of the story, appearing like an apparition in shot after shot. The gag at the funfair is entirely built around her iconic image, her ability to pose like a silent movie star. And at the end I'm sure she Joker-kills Alexis Kanner's photographer with a kiss of her deadly lipstick.

It's a shame that she becomes more mundane in the second half. And subject to a man rather than exercising her power over them. She becomes less visually interesting, too: transforming from an ethereal Mary Quant to an evil Emma Peel – the white leather catsuit may not be an exactly "ordinary" look, but in this genre it means she looks less out of place, less like a thing from an entirely other world. Even so, with her little World War One German helmet and Maxim gun, and the occasional "goodbye, lover" she still manages to hold her own in battle with McGoohan and dressed up in wig and gown as his Josephine she's equally good with Griffith. It's only the last scene back in the Village when she becomes merely Number 11 that lets her down, by giving him all the meat and leaving her to drape herself over the penny-farthing.

She's the last of the really powerful women in the series and together with Mary Morris ("Dance of the Dead") and Georgina Cookson ("Many Happy Returns") she forms the third part of a Village triad the symbols of one sort of female power, the Kindly Ones: Maiden, Mother, Crone. They are the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, who control men's lives with their spinning and measuring and cutting just as the Village seeks to control the warp and weft of the Prisoner's existence. (A point that would be even better if the Girl's given name had been Moira (meaning fate) rather than Sonia (meaning wisdom)).

If anything would convince me that this ought to be the penultimate story (before the two-part finale), it would be the symmetry of this Kindly One with Mary Morris's in "Dance of the Dead" added to Georgina Cookson appearing in the middle of the series, if only the other evidence could be bent to fit the picture.

Of course it's typical of the Village's twisted logic that while Clotho is incarnated as – forgive me Mary – the Crone; and Mrs Butterworth practically asks "Shall I be mother?"; here Atropos is the Maiden: hence the "Girl" who was "Death".

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

Day 4001: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 15 - Gunships to the Rescue

2011-12-16T12:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 15: LAAT/i - Low Altitude Assault Transport

Day 4000: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 14 - Death Star Droid Delivers Data

2011-12-15T12:00:00.000Z

Wednesday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 14: Elephant and Mouse (Droid)

Day 3999: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 13 - A Deadly Droid Double-cross

2011-12-14T12:00:00.000Z

Tuesday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 13: R2-Q5 has a hidden agenda... can we trust him? (Clue: No!)

Day 3999: In Defence of Mr Balloon. A bit.

2011-12-14T00:00:00.000Z

Tuesday:

"Mush, my huskies, mush," cries Mr Balloon into the biting arctic winds, "I must hugs you later, for the wolfpack of Deadwood, Desperate-Dan-Hannan and Cash-in-the-Attic are snapping close at my heels and their foetid breath is warm on my plump Etonian behind…"

There's no getting away it: our Prime Monster has behaved VERY BADLY.

Throwing RED MEAT to the slathering Europhobes will only make them pursue him more closely, hungry for a get-out-of-Europe referendum.

And getting into a WILLY-WAVING contest with the most PRIAPIC PRESIDENT on the face of the PLANET was never going to end well.

But still…

The thing is, it kind of looks like he sort of actually did the RIGHT thing. The thing that ANY Prime Monster would have had to do – and that Hard Labour twist and turn but eventually admit that THEY would have done too.

We can't just say it was WRONG because it's made the Europhobes GIDDY with GLEE. Just as we cannot say it proves him right to see the SILLY SUGGESTIONS being tossed about in the Euro Parliament today.

But he did the sort-of right thing in ENTIRELY the WRONG way, bad-wording off the whole of the rest of the continent in the process, so even people like the Swedish and Polish who might have quite likely to see things our way.

By swaggering in all MACHO, turning up at the "save the Euro" meeting saying he'll do what's in BRITAIN'S interests, he managed to portray the REASONABLE position (presumably the one he agreed with Captain Clegg) of "let's not do anything to endanger the Single European Act that we've ALL signed up to" as "I demand special privileges for Britain, and especially for the bankers you all secretly believe got you into this mess."

He's refused to hold out the fluffy foot of friendship when they needed our help and instead gambled everything on being able to say "I told you so" if the Euro really does collapse.

In doing so, he came across as the worst item in the IKEA catalogue: the KNORB.

The FUNDAMENTAL problem with Mr Balloon's behaviour was NOT, however, that he vetoed the treaty, but that he then walked away without putting anything else in its place.

What he SHOULD have done is said: "This is a BAD treaty that DOES NOT fix the Euroland crisis. Therefore I demand that we all STAY HERE until we sort out a solution that WILL solve the problem!"

Instead, he flounced off into the night like a PRIMA CINDERELLA, unfortunately not before his dress transformed back into rags and his husky-drawn carriage turned back into a PUMPKIN!

But just because Mr Balloon did WRONG does NOT make the treaty proposed by the German'n'French axis RIGHT.

An Economic Imbalance

The options proposed by France and Germany are NOT in any way a solution to the problems of Euroland.

A bigger bailout fund (more loans) and promises to stick to tighter controls with the prospect of penalties (won't that make overspending worse?). We've seen all of this before. And it didn't work then. Why would we expect more of the same to work this time?

I will say this about the European Union's proceedings. If the rules say they require unanimity then, not matter how bloody-minded and crazy the minority of one might be, ignoring that and saying "well we'll do it anyway without you" is NOT playing by the rules.

Maybe Mr Balloon IS the dog in the manger here… but the RULES are to PERSUADE him out, not to say he's not allowed to play any more.

And the RULES are IMPORTANT because they're trying to calm the markets by saying that… they will stick to the rules.

So it is NO GOOD saying Britain is being INTRANSIGENT (even when we are) or even SELFISH (which a lot of people think might be true), because when they all signed up to the European Union they agreed that the rules would only be changed if EVERYONE agreed, that it was to be evolved by PERSUASION and CONSENSUS and not just because a couple of big countries really wanted it, not even if all but one countries wanted it.

(DIPLOMATICALLY, of course, this is a catastrophe. In fact a cat-monster-astrophe! And we are going to be in the dog house for a long time. Especially if I keep mixing metaphors like that! And just when we thought Captain Clegg and even Mr Vague had managed to come up with a workable European policy, too! We're going to have to be very patient… and very HUMBLE… for a long, long time to persuade people that we will HELP rather than BOSS ABOUT!)

But if they won't play by the rules, how much store are we ACTUALLY able to put in a pact that says "we really reeaally promise to play by the (fiscal) rules. This time. Like we didn't for the last decade"?

Instead, the solution I propose to the problems of the Euro is – entirely counterintuitive, I know – that GERMANY should be ejected from Euroland.

No, calm down. Let me explain why.

The problems of the Eurozone are NOT that the Southern European countries' currencies are overvalued but that Germany's currency is essentially UNDERVALUED. This means that German goods for export are CHEAPER than the international market might expect. Before the single currency, an excess of demand for German goods would mean more people needed German Deutschmarks to buy those goods so the currency would strengthen, cancelling out the competitive advantage. But being in Euroland keeps the German currency relatively depressed in value.

Very much the same thing has been happening with CHINALAND on an even larger scale. The Chinese government has for a long while had a policy of keeping their currency stable relative to the dollar. This has meant that Chinese goods have been kept CHEAPER, a competitive advantage that has allowed them to continue growing. This draws money into Chinaland which – because of their sort-of-communist system, allows their government to continue to depress their currency by essentially advancing more loans to Americaland, loans with which the Americans can buy yet more cheap Chinese goods and so the cycle continues.

Likewise, money drawn into Germany fills up German banks enabling them to advance more loans to the Southern Europeans.

This was one of the engines that allowed Western borrowing to go on and on and on, inflating the bubble. The Chinese government IS in some part to BLAME. But remember it takes TWO to TANGO: it was our GREED for growth that kept us borrowing when we shouldn't have.

The situation in Germany is SLIGHTLY less CULPABLE. The Germans have not ACTIVELY been maintaining this currency imbalance. But I'm sure they've been very happy to let it continue to be to their advantage.

And who wouldn't? Certainly not US in Great Britain – how many times have you heard Conservatories BOAST that we have an independent currency that lets us DEVALUE to become more competitive? Well that's just what us trying to get the SAME advantage that Germany has with the Euro, built-in as it were.

This SMALL but SIGNIFICANT advantage diverts money towards Germany. People are more likely to BUY from Germany because their exports are, relatively speaking, cheaper; people are more likely to INVEST in Germany because their successful industries are there and their labour is relatively cheap and the labour in Southern Europe which ought to be cheap is kept artificially more expensive by the same currency. (That is, wages in Southern Europe ARE less, but because of the single currency not less ENOUGH – and companies looking for cheap labour can go to INDIALAND or CHINALAND.)

And of course this happens in Great Britain too. Much of our economic base is now in the South-East, and companies coming here are more likely to invest in London and the Home Counties because OUR single currency (the good old British pound, est. 1971) has a similar effect on the cost of business.

The DIFFERENCE is that in Great Britain there is a REVERSE transfer of money in the form of government spending that recycles the extra money that comes in in London into government investments and redistributive benefits.

The OTHER solution (the REAL solution) to Euroland's problem is, of course, for German (and France and yes Britain too) to ACCEPT that there is a RESPONSIBILITY attached to the financial advantage and that there is going to have to be arrangement to transfer money – to GIVE not to LOAN – from the rich, wealth generating parts of the Euroland to the poorer bits.

For pretty obvious reasons, the German (and French… and British) people don't want to do that.
.

Day 3998: A Star Wars Lego Advent day 12 - Crash Landing on Hoth

2011-12-13T12:00:00.000Z

Monday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 12: Rogue 2 to the Rescue!

Day 3997: A Star Wars Lego Advent day 11 - Confront the Droid Defenders

2011-12-12T12:00:00.000Z

Sunday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 11: Roger Roger! Eek!

Day 3996: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 10 - Agents of the Empire

2011-12-11T13:30:00.000Z

Saturday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 10: The Imperial Shuttle

Day 3995: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 9 - A Mission for the Alliance

2011-12-10T12:00:00.000Z

Friday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 9: OK, I've got to admit even I'M impressed with this one! Set S-foils in COOL position!

Day 3994: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 8 - The Rebels Make Contact

2011-12-09T12:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 8: Who IS this mystery X-Wing Pilot?

Day 3993: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 7 - Chewbacca Tooled Up

2011-12-08T12:00:00.000Z

Wednesday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 7: You're Not In Glee Now, Chewie

Day 3994: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling

2011-12-08T00:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

Still trying to watch an episode of "The Prisoner", this week my Daddies appear to have stuck in a disc of time-travelling rom-com "Dr Watson and the Amnesia Machine" instead by mistake.

Hang on, why's it named after the theme from "High Noon"? I thought the Western was last week!

information

Dr Seltzman, inventor of the mind-swap machine, has disappeared. And only the Prisoner knows where to find him.

The Village's solution? Use the machine to stick his mind in the body of one of their agents ("The Colonel", Nigel Stock) and follow him. What could possibly go wrong?

They guess – rightly as it happens – that if they give him a new face, stick him back in his old home in London, give him back his fiancée – yes, I said fiancée – that he'll go completely out of character and concentrate on finding the missing doctor to get himself swapped back. Rather than, you know, escaping, which is his usual concern.

One question: The Village can now put the mind of the person in bed A into the body of the person in bed B while putting the mind of the person in bed B into the body of the person in bed A. But they don't know how to reverse the procedure. Have they not considered swapping the beds?

The episode starts promisingly with an unexpected pre-title sequence, intriguingly suggesting more than is ultimately delivered.

As a premise, the mind-swap or body-swap is almost as obvious as the "evil doubles" episode that every genre series manages to do at one time or another, and in a way it's just the flip-side of that idea. Doctor Who sticks the Doctor's mind (or possibly his soul) in Freddie Jaeger's body as early as "The Savages", or there are as many Philip K Dick books as you care to throw sticks at.

Here it is deployed because, as almost everyone knows, McGoohan was double booked, and so spent this week filming "Ice Station Zebra" instead of "The Prisoner", so his character here is represented by a selection of Stock footage (I'm sorry, the pun is irresistible).

In a series so bound up in the question of identity this ought to have been a standout episode, indeed it's surprising they hadn't already used the idea.

Unfortunately it is done in the laziest manner possible, breaking the conventions and continuity of "The Prisoner" in so many ways as to suggest the writer was unfamiliar with the series… except that it's Vincent Tilsley who also wrote "The Chimes of Big Ben", one of the most on-the-button episodes there is. According to the imdb trivia: "he gave up writing for television, and became a psychotherapist, when his six-hour drama 'The Death of Adolph Hitler' was cut down to less than 2 hours". I guess writers in the Sixties were just like that.

what's your number, please

Well, this is awkward, because "Do Not Forsake Me" is clearly set just about a year after the Prisoner's abduction. It's a plot point that he attends his fiancée's birthday party. But in trying to convince her of his identity he describes a dress that she was to wear to the party and she replies "but that was a year ago".

For this reason, other list-makers have placed this as episode twelve, thirteen or fourteen on the "one month to an episode" principle. Although the fact that it is almost exactly one year on would surely pin it to twelve.

I assume that the reason for this "one year on" was connected to the suggestion that this was by way of a pilot for "Prisoner 2.0" where the Village now send him on missions as an agent. Quite how that's supposed to be possible what with him being totally opposed to the Village's authorities, philosophies and indeed existence utterly passes me by, but there we are.

But never mind that because as we discovered in "Many Happy Returns" he's been away for more than a year by then already.

Really, this is impossible to reconcile. "Many Happy Returns" makes no sense if he's been allowed out of the Village before. The entire psychological effect hinges on him finally being given a taste of escape and for it then to be proved an impossibility.

Equally, "Do Not Forsake Me" features long stretches with him back with his old employers, but he doesn't once try to get them to act against the Village and they don't seem that interested in knowing where he's been this last year. True, he's mainly trying to convince them he's who he says he is, but surely a trip to Portmeirion would at least support his case that there are these numerologically obsessed baddies who've been messing with him. It has to be that he's already tried that once – in "Many Happy Returns" – only to learn that his own side at least already know of and most likely are in cahoots with the Village.

Of course, the Amnesia Room could be used to cover a multitude of sins. We are shown the Amnesia Room – helpfully labelled "examination room", thank you crystal clear Blu-ray – in a very Chekov's Gun way before the mind swap, and then when he first wakes in London it's certainly open to the interpretation that he's forgotten his entire year in the Village – at least until he catches sight of his new face and has an unconvincing flashback sequence consisting of clips from "Arrival" and "Free For All". After this he seems at least semi-aware that a year has gone astray.

But wiping his memories is a drastic intervention which, along with the Village casually scooping out his marbles and plonking them in someone else's head using an unreliable experimental machine, must mean this is set later than episodes like "The Schizoid Man" or "A. B. and C." where it's important to them – and to Number 2's personal wellbeing – that his mind and memories not be damaged.

Ultimately, however, as we'll see, the continuity of this episode is shot to buggery anyway.

We place this second in the "out of Village" episodes because the Village suffers a bigger setback than in "Living in Harmony" but, like in that story, it's not really the Prisoner's doing.

From next time, we'll start to see him get pro-active.

the new number two

This week we have Clifford Evans playing an avuncular and largely forgettable Number 2. It's not his fault; in fact Number 2's role as antagonist is principally filled by John Wentworth as Sir Charles Portland, a remarkably similar avuncular piece of casting; it could have been used to cleverly suggest an equivalence but the opportunity is sadly wasted. Number 2 is mainly there to Basil Exposition "the Colonel" up to speed on how and why his body is going to be inhabited by the Prisoner for most of this story.

He's even denied the traditional "I am the new Number 2" speech as the title sequence is cut short at the point where the Prisoner reawakens in the Village, instead getting his moment in that badly edited flashback sequence, tacked on to the similar moment from "Arrival" where the Prisoner demands who are you of the first Number 2 (and the film footage very obviously doesn't match, making the insert stick out like a sore thumb).

And he pops up again at the end to be made a fool of by Dr Seltzman.

He is, I'm afraid, probably the least impressive Number 2 of the entire series, lacking even the presence of such "failed" Number 2's as Colin Gordon or David Bauer. More of a comedy stooge than a foe, his only exchange with the Prisoner is when – back in his own body – the Prisoner explains how the wool has been pulled over Number 2's eyes. At which the supposed Village mastermind just gawps stupidly. Rather than, say, calling the control room and having them bring the helicopter back.

Ultimately, he defeats himself. Only the Prisoner's generally passive role in the proceedings leaves us to rank this outside of the greater victories over the Village to come.

patrick mcgoohan only kisses mrs mcgoohan

The most shocking thing about "Do Not Forsake Me" is the romantic subplot. It's shocking because it has a romantic subplot.

McGoohan was infamously staunchly opposed to that sort of thing. His character, whether as John Drake or the Prisoner, was chivalrous but never lecherous. It's been one of the great strengths of the series because it's enabled women to be shown in a variety of roles, some strong, some weak, but never reduced to an appendage as "the hero's girl".

And suddenly, here he has a fiancée. It's utterly preposterous. Never mind that he's utterly failed to make any reference to a fiancée in any other episode – the very idea that he would be marrying the boss's daughter being utterly out of character. He's flirted with Mme Engardine, and gone head-to-head with Mary Morris; pity poor Zena Walker, playing Janet is a horrible, horrible part, but this drab little character wouldn't even arouse his pity.

And she's not helped by vanishing – Dodo-like – half-way through the narrative after one snog and delivering the next plot coupon – a receipt for a vital tray of holiday snaps.

It's unfortunate that we can't pretend that she's really the Colonel's fiancée, but she can't be. Not least because she's come to the Prisoner's house having recognised the Prisoner's car and – staring straight through Nigel Stock – asks if he is here. Her failure to intuit that the man awkwardly trying not to tell her that he is her betrothed dressed up in the wrong body somehow makes her come across as obtuse. To be fair, Stock's performance is nothing like the Prisoner and together they have less chemistry than noble gasses frozen to the surface of an inert Kuiper Belt object, but we the audience know who he's supposed to be and "television logic" says that if she's his soul mate she ought to know too.

And if nothing else why wouldn't the Village at least try pointing a gun at her head and demanding he tell them why he resigned?

follow the signs

The McGuffin of the episode, featuring in the unique pre-title sequence and setting the whole bonkers scheme going, is a roll of film, developed as slides, which Sir Charles Portland, high up in, presumably, British Intelligence (never so blatantly a contradiction in terms) and coincidentally the Prisoner's old boss, believes may contain a coded message.

Ultimately, this proves to be correct as the Prisoner uses a (simple) letter/number substitution key to select the correct four slides and some special lenses conveniently placed about his home (why didn't the Village come across those when clearing out the house for "Mrs Butterworth"?) to read the invisible message written across them.

This really isn't that secure. Sir Charles's assistants complain that with thirty slides there are too many combinations to check, but that shouldn't stop them analysing each slide under various lights and filters and discovering the "invisible" ink after which the combination should be obvious. Unless of course there are random letters on all the slides and only the right four make up a legible message. But that's not what they say. In fact, they say they don't even know if there is a message. Which just shows they're not really trying.

So what's the point of the clue in the slides?

The implication, surely, is that they are a message to the Prisoner from Dr Seltzman, to arrange a meeting. And yet, if you've gone to the trouble to encoding the location for your secret rendezvous, would you then hang around for a year – indeed, set yourself up as the local barber – if your contact failed to turn up? Or would you, rather more reasonably, assume he'd been nobbled and run for your life?

So perhaps it's that Seltzman is telling the Prisoner the location where he has gone into hiding in case… what? The Prisoner should ever find himself in need of a bodyswap? It's not really a very safe way of keeping your safe house safe, if you're going to tell people where it is. Rather more sensible would be to have a forwarding address or the spy classic "dead letter box" where contacts can leave messages without knowing where you are.

Later on, the episode seems to imply that the Prisoner helped Seltzman set himself up in this hidey-hole. Which leaves one even more puzzled over why he needs the slides. Does he not remember? Oh yes, the Village may or may not have erased some or all of his (precious) memories. So he, what, prepared the slides in the event of his getting brain wiped? In which case how does he remember how to decode them?

So on the one hand we have a romantic subplot that has no place in the Prisoner and on the other we have a spy plot so cack-handed that it hinges on the Prisoner hiding Dr Seltzman's hideaway behind a code so ingenious that neither his superiors nor the Village can crack it, but overlooking the possibility that they might just follow him there.

And yet, underneath this, crushed by the awfulness, there is a very Prisoner-esque attack on Descartes.

"I Think Therefore I Am" is a proof of your own existence. It proves it to yourself. It is possible to doubt your own existence but, crucially, you have to be thinking in order to do the doubting.

Where Descartes really struggles is to prove that anyone else exists, and eventually he has to fall back on "god isn't a bastard".

In "Do Not Forsake Me", the character played by Nigel Stock thinks he is the Prisoner. And we get to hear – thanks to McGoohan's literally telephoned-in voiceover – the inner monologue that proves that he's thinking therefore he is.

But can he prove that to anybody else?

Apparently not, because as his old boss Sir Charles says, he could be a fake who only learned what the Prisoner knows by extracting it from the real Prisoner.

In fact it's worse than that. The existence of the Seltzman machine means that he can never prove who he is. Even if he turns up in his own body, Sir Charles can say "ah ha, but you could be an enemy spy who has been body-swapped into our man's body. And if your people broke him and learned everything he knew, then you could know everything he knew."

Ultimately, this is now a world where nobody could ever prove they were who they said they were. And spying ought to break down overnight.

(Though fortunately for the Prisoner, this is also a world where your handwriting is as individual as your fingerprints and therefore a world utterly without forgery…)

Which leads us to the existential question: is Nigel Stock really playing the Prisoner? Or is he still the Colonel with a mixed up print of the Prisoner's memories and whatever else – like a fiancée – that the Village have concocted for him?

In a way, this would make the whole ghastly mess make a lot more sense.

For all Number 2's suggestion that they could use the Seltzman machine to turn returned spies into moles (as though returned spies aren't instantly pensioned off anyway, precisely because their own side can never be sure they've not been turned), a machine that extracts a person's memories would be infinitely more useful to the Village. They claim already to have an "amnesia" machine – which would mean half the old dears stuck in the Village because they "know too much" ought to be allowed out with a mild brain scrub – but how much more useful for them if they could just download all those tasty secrets first and then format the ex-agents brains like a redundant hard drive.

And how very irritating for them if Seltzman's machine doesn't work and insists on copying those annoying personality quirks like resistance and stubbornness across too.

Under those circumstances, what you get is a Colonel who thinks he's the Prisoner, while the real Prisoner remains safely locked up. Then all the funny business with the – obviously fake – fiancée and the slides is all part of the mind games to try and get him to trip some part of those copied memories into giving them what they want. He's not behaving out of character by falling for their obvious ploy because this isn't the Prisoner and we don't know what would be out of character for the Colonel. He is a Village agent.

The "twist" ending would have been the Colonel, overcome by the Prisoner's feelings, letting Setlzman get away, and finding himself in the Village alongside the Prisoner as another "Number 6". After all, he knows too much now too.

who is number one?

It would be nice to say that it's Nigel Stock, since the entire episode hangs on him, to say that he passes himself off as the Prisoner and that we don't miss McGoohan. But he doesn't and we do.

Zena Walker is given very little character to work with as Janet and does very little with it; John Wentworth as her father is really too wet to be a senior spy; and Clifford Evans' Number 2 is a cypher. And a smug prat too.

I'm tempted to give it to a very young Jimmy Bree as Villiers, just because he's actually entertaining and it's funny to see him as a security chief. (See Doctor Who's "The War Games" if you don't already know why!)

But in the end, and it is in the end, it has to be McGoohan again, who has barely more than a single line, and yet the moment he sits up to deliver it he lights up the screen and shows you just why you cannot do this series without him.

(Something ITV will take six hours to prove all over again in the 2009 remake.)

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

Day 3992: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 6 - Rescued by Chewbacca

2011-12-07T12:00:00.000Z

Tuesday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 6: Laugh it up, furball

Day 3992: Tobin or Not Tobin: Why Paddy Ashdown is Wrong and We Need a Robin Hood Tax like an Arrow in the Head.

2011-12-07T00:00:00.000Z

Tuesday:

Time to take a leaf out of Daddy Alex's book – and take my life in my fluffy feet – by picking a fight with Lord Paddy!

Look, for starters Robbing Hoodie ROBBED the taxman; he didn't work for him! A "Robin Hood Tax" is a CONTRADICTION IN TERMS!

People say "it's an itty bitty little fraction of a percent but it raises oodles of dosh." Well, it's either one or the other. If it raises a lot of money then that's got to come from SOMEWHERE.

And here's the real kicker: it comes from YOUR pensions and insurance. It doesn't come from "the rich" or from "the bankers". It comes from YOU.

The RICH do not, on the whole, spend their time buying and selling their assets over and over. They leave their wealth invested – in bonds or shares or in gold or oil paintings or racehorses or whatever. That's your problem right there: money being locked away in unproductive assets instead of being made to work creating business and jobs. A tax on capital transfers WON'T TOUCH THAT.

The capital transfer tax or Tobin Tax is usually said to apply to buying and selling shares and bonds, although some formulations suggest that it might be applied to ANY transfer of cash (yes, including moving your own money from your current account into your savings account).

The Tobin Tax mostly affects the HIGH VOLUME of stocks and shares traded on stock exchanges, particularly in LONDON.

But Bankers, you may somehow not have noticed this, do NOT play the city casinos with their own money. They invest money on behalf of clients, and mostly that is money from the huge funds controlled by pension funds, insurance firms and other financial institutions. And THAT money comes by and large from ordinary people paying in money to their pension plan or insuring their health, home, holiday or the rest.

If you're going to take fifty billion quid in extra tax then THAT's where it's going to come out of. Pensions and insurance firms will make less profit on each transaction. It doesn't matter that it's only a little bit less per transaction; if it's going to add up to a LOT of tax raised then it's going to be a LOT less profit overall. So they will need YOU to pay that extra bit in to cover it.

We've been here before.

When Mr Frown raided the pension funds back in the days when he was Mr Pay Down the National Debt (following Fatty Clarke's plan for repaying the tripling of the national debt the Conservatories ran up under Mr Major Minor, oh those heady days), what he did was to abolish a little tax giveaway called the Advance Corporation Tax Credit or ACT.

What ACT meant was that when company dividends were paid, 20% of the dividend was sent to the treasury. Ordinary shareholders would pay tax on their dividend, but the ACT was like a payment on account, so some or all of the tax they owed was already paid. But Pension funds didn't have to pay tax, so they could reclaim ALL of the ACT credit. It was only a little thing, an itty bitty amount per dividend. But it added up to a BIG amount in total.

And through the effect of compound interest, that amount could be snowballed to really build up the value of the pension fund.

So when Mr Frown took the ACT away, that REALLY hit the long-term growth value of the funds in which pensions were invested. And that's a big factor in the way that pensions suddenly became HUGELY more expensive to fund. People with private pensions had to pay in a lot more. Many companies decided that they had to stop offering final salary pensions because they were just too expensive.

(Ironically, Mr Frown STOPPED using the pension money to pay down Britain's debts and instead started using it to pay lots more public sector workers. Which is another reason why some people are a LITTLE bit resentful about those public sector workers who are demanding EVEN more from tax payers to fund all the extra pensions that all the extra workers are going to need. It would be easier to believe "we want decent pensions for everyone" if Mr Frown had not explicitly funded public sector pensions – and salaries – by raiding the private sector pensions for the money!)

The government and the Liberal Democrats in particular say that people who are paying into pensions are doing the RIGHT THING.

Now we could have a great big debate about whether they are or they aren't – pensions are of course more tying up wealth in unproductive savings rather than spending or investing money in a business – but since we have made a retirement, and a COMFORTABLE retirement at that, not merely an ASPIRATION but an EXPECTATION for most people then someone has got to pay for that.

Until the Seventies, that someone was always the government, but since the Eighties successive governments have made it abundantly clear that they are not going to pick up the tab and people had better make their own arrangements.

So it's a bit bloody cheeky to then keep eyeing up the savings of those people and going "we'll have a chunk of that, thanks".

(And the same thing goes for the so-called Higher Rate Pension Credits too. As I Twittered last week: that's not £40bn GIVEN to private pensions; that's £40bn NOT TAKEN from them. There IS a difference. Payments into your pension pot are supposed to come from your PRE-TAX income, because you are deferring that income until later in your life and you are going to get TAXED on it when the pension pays out. So it's somewhat NAUGHTY to tax it going IN as well.)

Anyway, the WORST thing about Captain Paddy's article is that he doesn't just want to raise yet more tax, but that he already has a wishlist of things to SPEND it all on.

Yes, of course it would be wonderful to end child poverty, or to reverse climate change, or to meet our Millennium commitments. But we are ALREADY spending more than we raise in tax. And we are already taking more than half Great Britain's GDP. Somewhere between none of it and all of it there has to be a limit to how much of what the country produces the government can take in tax. Adding a new tax burden and then hypothecating it to causes, no matter how laudable and worthy, just makes it more difficult to close the gap between what we are getting in and what we are forking out.

And, at the last election, the country made the choice to go for LESS tax and LESS spend.

That's the truth about the "ideological" cuts, incidentally. The country chose to accept the need for cuts. Just as in 1997 when the county accepted the case for more spending on public services, and so the largest vote went to the party "ideologically" inclined to SPEND, so OF COURSE in 2010, knowing that there had to be cuts, the largest vote went to the Party "ideologically" inclined to implement them. As opposed to the one which promised fiscal prudence and then spent like there was no tomorrow. Which in the end, there wasn't! And then promised us fiscal prudence again. And also promised us "Cuts deeper than Thatcher's". And now deny everything.

But never mind that Paddy is having a fit of the TAX-and-SPENDS; all this austerity is bound to give even the best of us a funny turn. But I want to say why this tax is WRONG no matter WHAT you spend it on.

You see, Paddy suggests that the Robbing Hoodie Tax will have a "calming" effect on the markets, as though it will act as an automatic regulator.

The logic behind this is that people will make choices about whether or not to do transactions if there's going to be a cost involved, so there will be fewer "unnecessary" transactions. The assumption here is that FEWER transactions is necessarily BETTER.

That's because people think that more trading means that the market is more out of control.

And there have been a good few occasions now where we have seen huge drops in the stock prices allegedly driven by computers chuntering away at huge volumes of trades and getting themselves stuck into automatic selling spirals.

But a free market isn't SUPPOSED to be "under control". And those incidents stand out because they are the EXCEPTIONS; they are NOT the way the markets behave day in day out almost all year round.

There're plenty of things wrong with Free Market Theory – like the assumption that investors will always behave RATIONALLY (have you SEEN the stock market?!) or that everyone has the same access to INFORMATION (have you HEARD of insider dealing?!) – but there being TOO MUCH trade is NOT one of them.

More transactions OUGHT to be MORE stable.

This is the most basic of those things called "market forces". A famous man called Mr Adam Smith wrote a book about it called "The Wealth of Terry Nations" (clue: invent the Daleks). Mr Adam Smith called this "the invisible hand" of the market, which "guides" people to find the right price.

If you happen to be a left-wing critic of liberal economics, you might talk about "the invisible hand" as some kind of crazy right-wing belief in MAGIC or WOO.

In which case, you need punching in the head, because it's NOT belief in magic; it's A GREAT BIG FLUFFING METAPHOR.

There isn't a REAL "invisible hand"; there isn't a magic pixie who "knows" what the proper price should be and "guides" the market to it. It just means that the market reaches a consensus without everyone having to sit down and agree on what it will be.

The theory of market forces isn't a made up belief like crossing your fingers for luck, or praying to Mercury for a safe journey, or the dialectic imperative of history. It's based on the way people really behave (or at least the way they behave a lot of the time).

It's like a weight on a spring. Let the weight go and it will bounce up and down as gravity tries to pull the weight down and the spring tries to pull the weight back up. At some point the weight will settle down and stop. No one has "decided" the height it stops at; it's just the point where the downward force and the upward force BALANCE.

So, somewhere there is a fair price; no one knows what it is. BUT if some people are charging more and some people are charging less then buyers will go to the people who are charging less. The people who are charging more won't sell until they drop their prices. Prices will fall. BUT (again!) if there are limited supplies, the people who are selling might chose NOT to sell if the price is too low, so the people who are buying won't be able to buy until they raise the price. Prices will rise. Between them, these two forces will reach a BALANCE point and that is the "market price".

The ACTUAL price you might pay at any one moment will wobble up and down around this level as the market is constantly adjusting and readjusting. INDIVIDUALLY people don't "know" the market price but they can see from the trading around them what SORT of price it should be and can either squeeze a good deal out of a seller or pay over the odds if they're in a hurry to buy and so strike their own deals accordingly at ABOUT the market price.

Now if there's a REAL change to the supply in the REAL World – like frost destroying the broccoli crop or a new oil strike – then the balance of the forces CHANGES and the price goes up or down.

(That's true of demand as well – e.g. it is thought that when the Roman Empire was turned CHRISTIAN by the Emperor Constantine all the temples had to stop making sacrifices to all the other gods so there was a big fall in demand for INCENSE, and as a result the price of Frankincense collapsed, wiping out the economy of Yemen. Which, frankly, has never recovered!)

The bigger the market, the more trades there are, the better this works.

Think about it: if there's just you and a farmer, then she can offer you a price and you can only take it or leave it. But if you are at the farmers' market, then she can offer you one price and you can either take it OR go and see what several other farmers are offering for their goods. So she's less likely to quote you over the odds. And the more farmers there are at the market, then the more the market forces will work to balance out the price.

This, incidentally, is another reason why MORE TRADE is ALWAYS BETTER.

A Tobin Tax would have a CHILLING effect on the financial markets, maybe not much of a one, but a little bit and that would make them LESS efficient.

A proper REGULATOR, like the controller of a steam engine, depends on a NEGATIVE FEEDBACK mechanism. That's CYBERNETICS. If the machine goes too fast, the controller starts to slow it down; but – and this is what the Tobin Tax doesn't do – if it slows too much the controller ought to speed it back up again. Tax just takes money out; it doesn't put anything back if the market grinds to a halt.

At the moment we want MORE transactions, specifically in the form of more BANK LENDING. So, sorry Captain Paddy, but a tax that is specifically designed to make FEWER transactions is EXACTLY the WRONG prescription.
.

Day 3991: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 5 - A Bounty Hunter Raid

2011-12-06T12:00:00.000Z

Monday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 5: Elephant-shaped Slave One, How Cool Is That!

Day 3990: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 4 - The Droid Army Attacks

2011-12-05T12:00:00.000Z

Sunday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 4: Spider Robot

Day 3989: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 3 - A Sinister Message

2011-12-04T15:00:00.000Z

Saturday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 3: Walking Hologram Thingie

Day 3988: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 2 - A Meeting with the Viceroy

2011-12-03T16:00:00.000Z

Friday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 2: Evil Replutocrat Nute Gingrich, er, Raygun, er

Day 3987: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 1 - A Diplomatic Mission

2011-12-02T15:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

Day 1: A Teeny Tiny Republic Diplomatic Cruiser

Day 3987: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Living in Harmony

2011-12-01T00:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

Daddy's put the wrong disk in the DVD player.

He says that this may LOOK like a Western but really it IS "The Prisoner" after all.

I say it's STILL the wrong disk… I wanted GOLDFINGER!

But apparently we're going to watch THIS…

welcome to harmony

A sheriff rides into town, storms into the Marshal's office and throws down his badge and gun. As he walks away, he is surrounded by toughs who knock him down and carry him off to a small town in the old West, a town called Harmony. D'you see what they did there?

There's no getting away from it: this week, "The Prisoner" goes completely bonkers, substituting an entirely alternative universe version of itself, where McGoohan uses his American accent a lot and punches people also a lot.

Harmony contains all the clichés of the Western: the saloon bar with the whiskey in straight shots and the girl in silks and feathers; the jailhouse; the lynching; the corrupt city official with the black hat; the shootout with the sinister sharp-shooter; even the Mexican bandito!

What it doesn't have is anything particularly interesting to do with all these tropes once it has collected them.

As usual on these occasions, real men can drink prodigious quantities of whiskey without suffering the slighted impairment to the quick draw.

silver dollar saloon: prickly pear beers

We are now into the third phase of "The Prisoner". Previously we have had "Arrival", "Dance of the Dead", "The Chimes of Big Ben" "Checkmate" and "Free For All" as the first phase when he was "new here"; and then, in our revised order, "The Schizoid Man", "Many Happy Returns", "The General" and "A. B. & C." in the second phase.

We now have six more episodes before the final two-parter. Arguably all six see the Prisoner scoring victories over Number 2, but in three of them –"Hammer into Anvil", "It's Your Funeral" and "Change of Mind" – there is a distinctly personal nature to their conflict. Perhaps not coincidentally, these are the most Village-centric episodes. In the other group – "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling", "Living in Harmony" and "The Girl Who Was Death" – we have what could be called the "out of Village" episodes, as all of them see the Prisoner in unfamiliar environments outside of Portmeirion (a jaunt to the continent; a Western town; and what Alex might call Englandland, a hyper-real "Avengers"-type version of the Home Counties).

We think that it is reasonable to infer that the former group belong later in the sequence, because they feature the Prisoner becoming proactive against the Village, reaching the height of his power against Number 2, able to use the machinery of the Village, turning it against and overthrowing Number 2 almost at will. In contrast – although we might make an exception for "The Girl Who Was Death" – the "out of Village" episodes still see a Village that is powerful, using its most blatant mind-control experiments with the Prisoner still on the defensive.

Let us therefore assume that our next episodes are the "out of Village" ones, because increasing drugs and mind-control feels like a logical extension from the events of "A. B. & C." We then have a choice of "Living in Harmony" or "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling". We're going to put "Living in Harmony" first because it seems like the Village contrives its own defeat as much as the Prisoner scores a victory over them compared to "Do Not Forsake Me…" where, even if he cannot escape himself, he can arrange for another inmate to get properly away.

Placed immediately after "A. B & C.", "Living in Harmony" might feel like a bit of a jump. In "A. B & C.", Number 14 described the process as untested and experimental, whereas in "Living in Harmony" the seemingly much more elaborate illusion is said by Number 8 to have worked before.

But it seems – from the outcome – that this process is more risky for the Village agents requiring their active participation, with accompanying risk of psychosomatic feedback, compared with the passive observation of "A. B. & C." which suggests a more extreme and therefore later attempt.

Alex suggests the creditable resolution to this conundrum. The process in "A. B & C." involves infiltrating the Prisoner's actual dreams, that is these are his real memories that they are influencing, whereas the events of "Living in Harmony" are an entirely created dreamscape, supported by props and actors. We might infer, therefore, that Number 14's experimental procedure in "A. B. & C." is actually a refinement of the drugs and brain-washing used more routinely here.

Because of the dangers involved, they've held off on this process until now. But once the milk-drinking Number 2 has exposed the Prisoner to the possibility that they can do this, they quickly move to use the technique in its proper guise rather than allow him time to compose a defence.

the Judge

David Bauer will, for me, always remain Mr Morten Slumber, proprietor of "Slumber Inc" crematorium and garden of remembrance in the James Bond film "Diamonds are Forever". When talking to Bond he's gloriously unctuous and totally, deliciously fake (he's almost certainly a member of the diamond smuggling pipeline masquerading as the real Mr Slumber in order to collect the diamonds from Bond's – improvised – method of smuggling them inside a convenient corpse) and later put upon, harassed and somewhat cross to discover the smuggled diamonds are fakes.

There's some of that in each of the two distinct turns he gives in "Living in Harmony".

As the Judge, he is assured and sinister, a powerful understated performance, with the nice touch of him seeming more interested in his games of Patience than his nefarious plots. In a way, he is the most blatant representation of the establishment using his position of power to arbitrarily change the rules on a whim so that he can get what he wants. His kangaroo court where he suddenly puts Kathy on trial in order to blackmail the Prisoner with her fate is case in point.

But then once he's revealed as Number 2, he's a much less impressive figure. He's not a little reminiscent of Colin Gordon's performance in "A. B. & C." possibly suggesting a well-founded fear that he will go the same way. Clearly trying to shift the blame and cover his own arse, he seems less in charge of the scheme, rather more that he has been persuaded to go along with a plan of Number 8's. He genuinely seems ill-prepared for the psychological feedback from the scenario they've been playing out, and shaken by the outcome, though not as disturbed as Number 22 (or, as it turns out, Number 8). But then that might be because his character was the only one to "survive" the climactic fight to the death.

I wish it had been real

"Living in Harmony" was written, directed and produced by David Tomblin, and it might well have been very funny for him to force McGoohan to play the Prisoner as a man who drinks too much and won't do his job… but for the rest of us, this is less entertaining.

It is by turns bafflingly mental, actually quite nasty and for the most part surprisingly boring.

Once you've got past the "it's 'The Prisoner' if the genre was swapped from 'Spy' to 'Western'," high concept – which takes all of two seconds – then not a lot happens, interspersed with a very disturbing lynching and some even-more-disturbing sexualised violence and murder.

In a typical episode of "The Prisoner" – and let's for the moment not dwell on the fact that from here on in there are no "typical" episodes – you would expect the Village to come up with some scheme in an attempt to get the Prisoner to crack. Here the entire scenario is the attempt, which may be why someone forgot that if this was the "The Prisoner as Western" then there ought to be an attempt to crack him within that "episode" too. It's not like you would have an episode in Portmierion that just had him sat around not being a spy, with Number 2 occasionally saying "be a spy!" at him and having him beaten up.

What is particularly odd about this, as Alex pointed out to me, is that this is not the usual modus operandi for the Village. Ever since "Arrival", either as an end in itself or because they've been convinced that they can crack him if only they can get him to answer, the question they've been obsessed with is "why did you resign", until here where suddenly they seem to be wanting him to "un-resign".

If nothing else this is a bit obvious in giving away that they are "our" Village. It's not "why not come and be Sheriff for our side"; it's clearly "come and be our Sheriff again".

On the one hand, this allows them to appeal to his sense of dereliction of duty, not something they've tried before, suggesting that he's "letting the side down" or that he should be doing it "for England" or to defend the people or for his honour.

On the other hand, they actually don't really try that. They ignore his patriotism or his humanism and instead go after him again through his chivalry, falling back on the make-it-about-a-woman kind of blackmail that they really have tried several times. They ought to know by now that he doesn't fall for that sort of thing. Except this time it seems he does. Perhaps it's because Kathy doesn't try to form a relationship with him, but instead has her own personal tragedy – her murdered brother. Having said that, it's not really the "give him love, take it away" that Number 2 sneers about once the scheme is blown. McGoohan doesn't play it remotely romantic. Without that line from Number 2, the script might be suggesting he thinks of himself as a substitute for her murdered brother. But with it, that isn’t strong enough; or is verging on the icky. If anything, it's a paternal care he shows to Kathy, and it's the wrath of a grieving father that pushes him over the edge.

Which brings us to the fact that this is the first time we have seen the Prisoner actively kill someone, and in particular in so crude a way as to shoot them. McGoohan had a particular horror of gunplay, and made a point of his heroes using fisticuffs rather than pistols, a point possibly satirised by the number of times that his character in "Living in Harmony" picks a fist fight with someone.

But to then have him pick up a gun and shoot someone is jarring and deeply unpleasant.

So there's this deep sense of confusion about the symbols of the Village. For example, the episode clearly wants to equate the Prisoner's refusal to wear the Sheriff's star with his usual refusal to wear a "Number 6" badge, but these things aren't equivalent. The star empowers the Sheriff; it enables him to do his job. Wearing the star is about actively doing something unlike the "Number 6" which is about passively accepting society's labels.

It must be possible to read more into this episode, because something got it banned in America.

Ostensibly it was the reference to drug use, but this is fleeting and no more than a McGuffin to allow the story to step outside the usual parameters. It's certainly not a heavy-handed "bad trip" metaphor. And if anything the person who is given the drugs is the one least traumatised by his "trip" to Harmony.

The other suggestion is that this was read as an anti-Vietnam story: the corrupt authority figure and the hero refusing to take up his gun just like those kids in universities… Except that he does take up his gun and the only Kid here is a psychopath. Once again, this isn't about patriotism, it's about small-time bullying.

If it's an attack on anything, it's on the American myth of the West and of the power of the gun. If anything might have persuaded McGoohan to do this script it is this: the best gunman is a madman; the hero doesn't get the girl and the minute he picks up the gun he is bound to get killed; technically the black hat wins, but by shooting the hero he actually loses in the "real" world. Ultimately the guns corrupt and destroy everyone who touches them.

Or maybe it's just a big metatextual sign to say "it's all a story": look, look, it's on a set and they're all actors! In which case, "A. B. & C." did it first and did it better.

At best "Living in Harmony" is a pastiche of other Prisoner episodes (it's certainly not an "allegory" whatever the Wackypedia might think, since it no more "explains" the series than any other episode does; at a pinch you might call it an "analogue" of other episodes).

And, ultimately, the episode bottles it, with the revelation in the last ten minutes that it was all a drug-induced hallucination within the "normal" framework of the "real" Village. It's the equivalent of "it was all a dream", tossing aside the surrealism of the experiment for the crutch of an "explanation". It shows a lack of confidence in the audience and in the strength of the show. Surely, the idea is that "The Prisoner" is such a powerful idea that you can translate it into any genre.

the ace of spades

Well, that would be Alexis Kanner in a special boxout in the titles as the Kid.

Kanner is an unusual actor, appearing in several roles across three episodes of "The Prisoner" but famous for almost nothing else. In a way, even though he's never a Number 2, he's the "face" of the latter half of the series, as his speciality would seem to be "being crazy" and as the series goes rapidly round the bend so it seems apposite that he crops up more and more in differently demented ways.

As with David Bauer as the Judge/Number 2 (or for that matter Valerie French as Kathy/Number 22) Alexis Kanner plays two distinct roles in "Living in Harmony": in Harmony, he plays "The Kid", a mute gunslinger and frighteningly accurate pistol shot, who has formed a dangerous obsession with Kathy the saloon girl; while in the Village he is Number 8, clearly the brains behind the current scheme, and apparently the least affected by the sudden crushing failure. Where Number 2 is visibly shaken, and Number 22 is in tears, Number 8 remains collected enough to essay a post-mortem on their efforts.

With that failure of their scheme, the first appearance is that it's down to Number 2 panicking and shooting the Prisoner dead in the dreamworld, thus breaking the spell. That's certainly the story that Number 8 is selling.

The final shootout is itself precipitated by the murder of Kathy and again the Judge/Number 2 could be said to culpable for this, having incited the unstable Kid to abduct her.

Except of course that analysis hangs on the assumption that the Kid is not an independent actor in this scenario.

The conclusion sees the psycho-drama repeat itself. Number 22 is seemingly drawn back to the backlot where the town of Harmony was staged. She returns to the saloon and curls up on the stairs where, as Kathy, she died earlier. Then, in one of the nastiest moments in the series, Number 8 suddenly appears in the gap between the treads of the stair. Number 22 is terrified and tries to flee only to end up being strangled for real.

As the Kid, he uses the character's silence (playing the Kid as a mute was apparently a choice) to create a childlike innocence – he cries easily and openly – that makes the sexual element of his menacing of Kathy all the more disturbing and wrong.

It's not a "naturalistic" performance, but in a dull episode it is an eye-catching and oddly sympathetic one.

In a way, his short scene as the "normal" Number 8 is more striking, because he plays it as normal, when anyone familiar with the series will be more likely to remember him as a crazy person.

So in spite of him being quite the most dangerous and frightening person in the Village this week, you sympathise because it is clear that he, not the Prisoner, is the one who has broken and gone mad. In the strange and ugly world of "Living in Harmony" it seems apt to pity the victim of his own dangerous experiment.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

Day 3980: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Many Happy Returns

2011-11-24T00:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

I REALLY like the bit where the MILKMAN breaks into the SECRET BASE in order to bundle the important PRISONER into an aircraft and make off with him!

Oh, no, wait! I've been watching James Bond in "The Living Daylights"!

My Daddies have been watching a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT bonkers spy adventure. It does have a Colonel James in it though…

information

The Prisoner wakes to find, without any explanation, that the Village is utterly deserted, saving only a solitary black cat.

If "A. B. & C." is the archetypal episode of "The Prisoner" then this one is textbook enigmatic.

The opening half hour, with almost no dialogue beyond a grunted name called between gunrunners or an unintelligible gypsy dialect, and so very reminiscent of "Arrival", is carried entirely by McGoohan as he finally escapes from the Village.

He must realise, even as he builds his raft and sails away, that they are manipulating him, and he spends most of the story waiting for the other shoe to drop.

what's your number, please

Well, the title itself suggests an annual anniversary, so are we a year into our sojourn in the Village?

Last time, I discussed how after watching "A. B. & C." I reappraised our viewing order and decided that "Many Happy Returns" should have been the seventh episode rather than the ninth, revising the order to allow for "Mrs Butterworth" to reappear in "A. B. & C.".

The rule of thumb is a month to an episode, so that would suggest that at least six or seven months have passed since "Arrival". But we may have to revise or abandon that.

On the one hand, he meets the new occupant of his old home, a Mrs Butterworth, and tells her that he used to live there "about twelve months ago".

On the other hand, he seems surprised to learn that it's the day before his birthday, as though he didn't realise so much time had passed.

(So was the "twelve months ago" a guess or a "clever lie", an improvised cover story like his claim to be "Smith… Peter Smith" the "nameless" exile? Even if he is making it up, he's trying to make his story consistent with hers so twelve months would at least have to seem plausible to him.)

He also mentions that there were six months left to run on his lease but he's not saying that it's less than six months later and his lease should not have run out, rather he is trying to convince her of his bona fides.

If this were just over six months after "Arrival" it would be a little tight, but not impossible, for the lease on 1 Buckingham Place – of course he lives at Number 1 – to have run out and been snapped up by a new tenant.

But she seems too settled, too confident in her home, to have just moved in. And she seems to have had time to redecorate. We don't get to see the room we are familiar with from the titles and "Arrival", so it's hard to tell, but he seems to be struggling to recognise his way around the study and some of the chintzier porcelain doo-dahs on the shelves don't look very him either.

It seems very odd that she's moved into a new home with her late husband's things, though.

(Subsequent developments, however, will provide an alternative explanation.)

One thing this does scotch is the theory that "The Schizoid Man" and "Many Happy Returns" take place over consecutive February/Marches a year apart.

We say that after this episode the Prisoner gives up trying to escape, so the escape attempt at the end of "The Schizoid Man" means that "The Schizoid Man" has to come first.

But if "Many Happy Returns" is only "about twelve months" after "Arrival" (and not two years), then "The Schizoid Man" would have had to take place within days of his abduction, which is clearly nonsense.

We do, however, have every reason to believe that this episode genuinely ends on 19th March, the Prisoner's birthday – and that of, as you surely know or can guess, Patrick McGoohan too.

Unlike "The Schizoid Man" which is self-contained within the Village where they can make every day 10th February if they want to, here they let him roam about freely – well to a certain value of freely – in London.

Of course, we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that it's all in his head, that they are directly manipulating the Prisoner's senses and experience. Although "A. B. & C." seems to suggest their power to control his dreams is quite limited, as we'll see when we get to "Living in Harmony" this may by no means be the limit of their abilities.

But if they can do that, then they can do any damn thing, so let's accept Descartes's Second Maxim and assume that the rest of the world is real.

In which case there are simply too many variables to control to stop him, say, dashing into a newsagent and checking the front page of The Times.

As Sir Humphrey once said: never conceal anything that someone could easily find out any other way.

Lying to him about the date is an unnecessary risk in such a carefully controlled plan. So they're almost certainly telling the truth, just this once.

He spends, according to his own log, at least eighteen days on the raft, arguably reaching England early on what would have been day nineteen (which he is told is the 18th, the day before his birthday). This would mean he awakes to find the Village deserted on probably the last day of February.

That's less of a problem if we're accepting that "The Schizoid Man" is now the immediately preceding episode. It might even suggest, contrary to everything I've said previously, that if you're willing to believe the events of "The Schizoid Man" can take place in a couple of weeks then one of the 10th Februarys in "The Schizoid Man" might be the real one.

But it's more likely that it's just been 10th February in the Village since Christmas – a timelessness that also explains his surprise at it being the day before his birthday.

Here's another little thought, though.

In describing the Village to his superiors, he tells them about the Village council and says that he could have been elected as it's "democratic". Now, obviously, he's echoing the words of Number 2 from "Dance of the Dead", but it seems slightly odd that he would claim he could have been elected in the light of the events that take place in "Free For All" when he tries to do exactly that.

(Well, not exactly that, since he stands for the "post" of Number 2, not for the Council as such. Nevertheless, one taste of Village "democracy" would surely shake the confidence of even the most stalwart candidate.)

So could "Free For All" actually take place after this? Well, up to a point, yes it could.

If we can't have "Many Happy Returns" as the centre episode, then another turning point episode like "Free For All" would be preferable. The use of potentially-damaging drugs and brainwashing on the Prisoner in "Free For All" would seem like more of a development from "A. B. & C." The Prisoner's escape attempt amounts to seizing control of the control room in the Green Dome, more in line with the "conquest/overthrow" phase of the series than the "escape" episodes. (Although taking control isn't something he tries to do when he finds the Village deserted, suggesting he already knows it's futile.)

But as a bridge between "regular" and "barking mad" episodes, you couldn't ask for a better one; "Free For All" is definitely the one where it all goes nuts.

Except… the reasons for placing "Free For All" in the "early" phase, the fact he's still unfamiliar with the workings of the Village, still hold. And we are told that the elections are annual – something he doesn't seem to doubt, so it cannot have been disproved to him. That fact told us that "Free For All" must take place less than twelve months after "Arrival", which means "Many Happy Returns" must take place later than that.

Wherever you place it in the running order, there is a clear sense of "end of an era" here. The way that "Many Happy Returns" mirrors the events of "Arrival", the fact that "Return" ultimately suggest "Arrival Again", set us thinking that this is if not the conclusion of the series, at least the anti-climax, the dramatic midpoint.

The Prisoner finally escapes, returns to England and to his home. And – fairly major spoilers – the conclusion sees him returned to the Village. They never really let him go.

(And clearly it would have been much funnier if we had watched this one with a year's gap on either side rather than the General).

the new number two

When a keen-eyed observer notes the episode opening with a male voice not listed in the guest cast delivering the "new Number 2" speech, and with no cutaway to the guest star in the famous ball-shaped chair, then they might very well think that something is up.

And they'd be right.

So there is no avoiding the spoiler when I tell you that the episode ends with the "twist" reveal that Mrs Butterworth was Number 2 all the time.

This, of course, is the "alternative" explanation for her swift occupation of his old residence. In the ultimate violation, the Village have taken possession of his home.

As the new resident of his furnished apartment, she appears to be wryly amused by the tramp-like figure the Prisoner presents, but has no difficulty in believing his prior claim on her home and car (well, why would she?). Cleverly, though, she turns her knowledge of his backstory into a trusting and generous nature. She is always completely charming and helpful to him. She clothes him and feed him, even promising to bake him a birthday cake – a promise she actually keeps.

There is only one instant where maybe the façade slips as he seems about to walk out without her help and she panickingly cries out that he can't. It's a disconcerting moment, because you think she might have given herself away. She recovers, but you might expect that she will now move to thwart the Prisoner in some way. But no, instead she becomes more helpful – she even gives him back his car.

And that's it. She apparently plays no further part in the proceedings, allowing him to trot off back to his superiors to try to convince them about the Village. Her place in the story is given prominence by the length of the scenes and that they take place in the studio rather than as filmed inserts, but superficially she is no more important than any of the other characters that he encountered along his journey.

But her performance is so central and memorable that the revelation that she was Number 2 feels absolutely right.

What is interesting, genius even, about her character is that she never stops being motherly. It's brilliant that they play it against every cliché of "Woman is Wickedness!" untrustworthy ladies; she’s not even an ice bitch. But also it's brilliant that it never stops. Even Eric Portman's avuncular Number 2 in "Free For All" sheds his benevolent façade once he's floored the Prisoner with his moonshine. Here, you get the feeling she thinks that what is best for him, that she genuinely believes that breaking him is a birthday gift.

And thus she kills him with kindness.

In a sense, she is the Village incarnate, the ultimate evolution of the "society above the self" model that it represents, to which the Prisoner is the extreme antithesis.

It is the old maxim comparing the dictators, the venal capitalist with the messianic socialist. The evil of the former is less because ultimately his desires will be satiated. The latter believes that they are doing it to you "for your own good". So they will never, ever stop.

In that way, Number 2 is what Tony Blair always wanted to be: a socialist Margret Thatcher. She's even got the hair.

And you get the sense that the Prisoner trusted her. She didn't ask anything of him, appeared to believe him, and fed him with cake. In a way that little betrayal is the biggest blow. Ironically, by making no efforts to question or detain him, she beat him.

follow the signs

"You can never escape… even when we let you."

There is still room for ambiguity.

The Village have the Prisoner's pilot – Brian Worth playing the Group Captain – replaced by their own man – who then ejects him over "Portmeirion" with a cheery "Be Seeing You".

A throwaway line raises eyebrows with the news that the police roadblock he ran into was: "looking for an escaped convict, old man. Nothing to do with you."

The final exchange between Donald Sinden as the Prisoner's old friend the Colonel (surely not the same one as Kevin Stoney's character "Colonel J" in "The Chimes of Big Ben", although he is called "James") and Patrick Cargill as Thorpe, the man who doubts everything about the Prisoner's story, is open to no end of interpretation.

"Who was he?" asks Thorpe.

"An old friend, who will never give up," replies the Colonel.

That could be praise; that could be regret; that could be an assessment of whether this attempt to break him is going to work. If you read it as a eulogy – that the Colonel is not expecting the Prisoner to return – then the Prisoner's friends and allies are complicit: the Village is our Village. But if you read it as recognition that the Prisoner will doggedly stick at this until he's found the place again, then the Colonel could be innocent and the Village might be "their" Village after all.

To muddy the waters further, Thorpe is played by Patrick Cargill and he's another one who's going to be back later working for the Village as a Number 2. (See "Hammer into Anvil"; we'll have to see how the two characters reconcile – if at all – when we get there.)

We see the Village's pilot disguised as a milkman – yes, just like Necros in "The Living Daylights" but without the exploding milk bottles – before he enters the pilots' changing room. If it is our Village, why would he need to be disguised? This would seem to exonerate at least someone on our side.

You might think that it's the Group Captain, but since we don't see him knocked out or dead on the floor he might just exchange clothes with the ringer. If he's in on the plot, why the disguise? Well, it might not be for his benefit, but to get the pilot past Thorpe and/or the Colonel. Why replace him at all, you might ask, but you can counter that with "need to know" about the Village's real location.

Yes, the real location of the Village. Because, as becomes clear, since it's all a Village game we cannot even be completely sure about that. It would be a doddle for the Village pilot to have tampered with the navigation equipment on the plane, and it's clear that they're keeping close watch of the Prisoner's travels by raft too – the timing is too perfect for it to be otherwise; when it looks like he might still be adrift on the important birthday, the gunrunners Gunther and Ernst propitiously turn up to provide him with a motor launch.

(For Doctor Who fans, by the way, Ernst is Jon Laurimore, fabulous as Count Federico in "The Masque of Mandragora", although sadly this time he doesn't get to large it up around Portmeirion, while Gunther is Dennis Chinnery, one of the "nice Nazis" from "Genesis of the Daleks" who get exterminated by, well you can guess. He's also unlucky enough to have been in "The Twin Dilemma" too.)

Given that they can spirit away the entire population of the Village overnight – and their rematerialisation in the closing moments suggests that Number 2's ability to teleport now extends to everyone else in the Village – the ability to take his raft from the Welsh coast and drop it off in the Bay of Biscay while he's asleep is unlikely to be beyond them. Assuming they haven't just built another entire duplicate of Portmeirion somewhere off Morocco.

This ambiguity, about where the Village is, about which side it is on, is it should go without saying, the point. If the Village could be anywhere then the Village is everywhere.

Maybe the most telling point is the music. As the Prisoner finds himself in London, the incidental music takes the usual tantara of the Village's bombastic reveille and mutates it into a swinging London theme. London too, it seems, is the Village.

"You can never escape… even when we let you."

The Wackypedia entry for this episode suggests that "…his taste of freedom was nothing more than a carefully controlled birthday gift".

That's clearly more insane than anyone sent to the Village.

This is the most powerful blow that the Village ever strike against the Prisoner. If there's one thing that isn't ambiguous it is this: this is where they win. There is no escape, there can be no escape.

This is the episode where the Village says: "you can never escape… even when we let you."

And, tellingly, he never tries again.

They do it to him on his birthday.

Tradition and expectation tell us a birthday should be a day of celebration. A happy day.

But how many people actually enjoy their birthdays the way that we are supposed to?

We feel that the universe owes us a special day, but whatever we do the mundane still creeps in to undermine us, and it always seems so much more unfair that it happens on that day, even if it happens on every other too. Nostalgia makes us pine for golden birthdays of childhood, or remember the horrors of birthdays at school – for me, every time, it was the games field in winter, thank you oh ye gods of ill-omen, you really know how to put a kid off! And it's a marker of entropy, the irresistible force of dissolution, as we count off the calendar one more year closer to the dread inevitable.

The whole point of everything the Village does to him is to give him back home, Britain, hope, freedom, self, and all on his own special magical day…

…and then smash his dreams to flinders at the moment of maximum psychological impact.

The tortures from now on will become more bizarre and more cruel. But they'll never do more damage.

"You can never escape… even when we let you."

For some reason, I was sure that the episode would end with all the faces from his journey – Gunther and Ernst, the gypsies, the policemen from the checkout, the substitute pilot – all waiting for him in the Village. That's the obvious thing to do, to show us that he was in their power all along. And yet they don't. This is the point. They do not need to. The Village is so powerful, so all-pervading that wherever you are, they still have you.

Home is the Village. Britain is the Village. Hope is the Village. Freedom is the Village.

In the end, they want him to believe that self is the Village.

The whole of the rest of this series will be an exercise in proving that it is not. That I is greater than 1.

who is number one?

Who else could it be? When you can destroy Patrick McGoohan with a birthday cake and a look and a shimmy of your hips, it must be Georgina Cookson's force of nature that is Number 2.

She is one of the great Number 2s, clearly a believer in Al Capone's old maxim "you can get more with a kind word and 20mgs of sodium pentothal than you can with a kind word alone…", she uses kindness and cake the way Vlad the Impaler used to use sawn-off tree trunks.

She clearly relishes her rôle as Mrs Butterworth, having as much fun pricking her "maid's" pomposity as she does wrapping the Prisoner in knots.

The black cat reminds us of Mary Morris's Number 2. Georgina Cookson is not quite as much fun as Ms Morris's pixie performance in "Day of the Dead", and does not get to dominate the episode as much simply because there's only so much of it that she can be in.

And yet the last scene silently tells us that she has scripted this entire performance, made the Prisoner dance to her tune and when the game was over, once he knows his place, folded him up and put him back in his box.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

Day 3977: If Mr Balls walks like a duck and talks like a duck, does that make him a QUACK?

2011-11-22T00:00:00.000Z

Monday:

Any sceptical journalist on the subject of ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE will tell you that there are some people who will EXPLOIT anyone who is ill and/or in pain, and tell them:

"the medicine you are using is not working; if only you were using this ancient Chinese/African/Indian herbal mixture/shamanic bangle/magic pointing stick then you would be better."

The sceptical audience tend to refer to this disparagingly as "woo"; and refer to its practitioners as QUACKS.

And yet, this is EXACTLY the same technique that Shadow Chancer Mr Bully Balls is using to describe the economy and his own "alternative remedies".

If you are diagnosed with CANCER, then you will probably be offered CHEMOTHERAPY or RADIOTHERAPY or a bit of both. These are VERY HORRID. Chemo is basically taking poison. The poison kills more of the cancer cells than your ordinary cells. But it's still poison. Radiotherapy is basically being blasted with radiation. It's targeted on the cancer so it kills more of the cancer than of the rest of you, but it's still killing bits of you. And then we get onto the CHOPPING BITS OUT OF YOU options.

If that's what conventional medicine is offering, you can understand why some victims might want to try an ALTERNATIVE.

But when the alternative is to NOT take the treatment (and instead place fruit slices on your Chakra points or something), then YOU DIE.

I'm really, really not overdramatizing this.

A cancer is an ORDINARY, HEALTHY part of the body that goes WRONG and starts growing out of control.

The Western economies, all of us, have various stages of something like cancer of the public sector.

(Look, it's an ANALOGY, not a proper comparison: NO public sector worker is "wrong" the way a cancer cell is wrong. They're just people, trying to get along, make a little money. Just like working in the private sector. The fault lies more with a SYSTEM that created too many jobs it couldn't afford.)

A strong, healthy public sector is a VITAL part of our country, but if it starts to grow uncontrollably then it becomes a danger to us all. Of course there is a danger of cutting too much, of cutting good and "healthy" bits out. And we need to be CAREFUL, so careful, because of that.

But if we ignore the problem and let it grow out of control then we end up going down the road through France to Spain and Italy and then Greece.

And the Greek economy looks very like it is actually going to DIE.

(And look, it's another analogy; there isn't an ACTUAL road that goes to from France to Spain to Italy. Not without using a car ferry from Gibraltar anyway.)

Let me try a DIFFERENT medical analogy. The Great British economy took one heck of a whack in 2008. Mr Dr Vince "the Power" Cable describes this as a MASSIVE HEART ATTACK. And you don't expect to go back to running marathons straight away after that. You need a period of RECOVERY.

The same is true of the ENTIRE WORLD economy.

There's no point placing BLAME here. We've all done that before. It's all too horribly complicated anyway, and by now we've all decided we know the story. But we cannot avoid the fact: it happened.

After an APOCALYPSE-class catastrophe like the Credit Crunch, NOTHING will fix the economy any time soon. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. It will take time, and not months but years maybe even DECADES.

ANYONE who says otherwise is talking ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

Any "growth" that we saw in 2010 was AT BEST a DEAD CAT-MONSTER BOUNCE (even a dead cat-monster will bounce if you throw it at the ground hard enough, and the 2008 crash was about as hard as it's possible to throw). At WORST it was an ILLUSION fuelled by a Quantum of Easing to the tune of BILLIONS of pounds and PAID FOR by a 25% fall in the value of Sterling and the more than 5% inflation rate we are having to live with now.

Handily we have EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE for what happens to recovery plans after a massive crash.

In Americaland, President Barry O borrowed a whole load more money (mainly because the crazy wing of the Reploutcrats wouldn't let him raise taxes) and invested it in a stimulus package. In Great Britain the Liberal Democrats agreed to let Master Gideon SLIGHTLY accelerate the cuts that Alistair Dalek had planned.

And as you can see… both economies are still EQUALLY SHAFTED.

There are really only two plans on the table: borrow as LITTLE as you can (the Coalition plan); borrow MORE than you need and invest it in the hope that that leads to growth that gets you enough extra income to cover the extra borrowing (Barry O's plan).

The EVIDENCE appears to be that NEITHER plan is very successful in the short term. The only difference being Barry O owes a LOT more money at the end.

So when Mr Balls says that the current stagnation is the fault of the Coalition's cuts then I'm sorry but, like the quacks who try to push alternative cures on the gullible, he is IGNORING the EVIDENCE.

(Or at least he's ignoring HALF the evidence: look, look, he cries, the Coalition plan hasn't worked instantly! We must do my plan for tax cuts and spending! No, no! Do not look at the Americaland stimulus package of tax cuts and spending that, er, hasn't worked instantly either!)

The economic situation is not getting any better. And Hard Labour keep repeating the same mantra that the economy is reaching a "turning point", that it's time for a "plan B" or that "when the facts change, they change their minds" (as if!).

But what, REALLY, has changed?

The problem is more the LACK of change, rather than anything else.

Now Hard Labour have invented a new stick to hit us with: they are tossing around the accusation that the Coalition are going to borrow "more than Labour would have done".

That's NONSENSE. The Coalition are only going to borrow more than Labour SAID they would have done. That's not the same.

Remember, Mr Alistair Dalek ALSO said that Britain under Labour would grow at 3½%, have 2% inflation and ½% interest rates. Do you think that that is what would REALLY have happened? Let me ask another question: do you think Mr Alistair Dalek ever got an economic forecast right when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer?

And it's funny, isn't it how Mr Balls never quotes Mr Dalek saying he would make cuts in 2011 "Deeper than Thatcher's."

(Almost as hilarious as last week's Any Questionables on the Radio, where Diane Abbot-and-Portillo immediately GROANS THEATRICALLY "oh, the old cliché" as soon as someone suggests that the financial problems may have ever so slightly started when Mr Frown was Prime Monster, but raises not a PEEP at the suggestion that all the greedy bankers can be traced back to… "oh the EVEN HOARIER old cliché" …Queen Maggie. I think this is called HISTORICAL IRONY.)

Hard Labour's claim that they would spend more and borrow less depends on them having succeeded, in the teeth of a global recession, and against every precedent they set while in power, in pulling huge levels of growth out of their fluffy behinds.

And if you believe THAT then you're clearly the target market for Lynx deodorant and Rapture cults.

Here's the difference: the Coalition borrowing is going UP to pay for the so-called AUTOMATIC STABILISERS, including the increase in benefits payments because there is higher unemployment and capital spending on infrastructure.

This is a CYCLICAL DEFICIT (the very-KEYNESIAN rise in borrowing when there is a fall in tax revenue to smooth the economic cycle – in fact, exactly what Hard Labour were SAYING we should be doing for most of the last year. A clue: we were).

When (when!) growth returns, there will be more jobs so more tax income and lower benefits and so the situation naturally reverses and we repay this borrowing.

This is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of Labour borrowing to cover CURRENT spending i.e. paying for public sector jobs. THAT is a STRUCTURAL deficit, one that does NOT reverse when the economy gets better (as we saw when Mr Balls was spending more than the country earned at the HEIGHT of the BOOM!).

Let's look at the MATHS.

Unemployment is going UP because people in the PUBLIC sector are losing their jobs. The Coalition hoped this wouldn't happen because more jobs would be created in the private sector. That hasn't worked. That's a FAILURE on the government's part. The private sector IS taking on more workers, but not AS MANY as are losing jobs in the public sector.

(There is also a BIG problem for YOUNG people, because OLD people are working LONGER, and so not leaving GAPS in the workforce for young people to move into. And companies are reluctant to create NEW jobs for a great many people who have been failed by an education system that Labour geared to getting the TOP HALF into universities while under-investing in apprenticeships meant ABANDONING the rest. But that's a whole other demographic thing.)

The WORST argument against reducing the public sector is that "the government loses the taxes that they would have paid".

I've said this before but no one seems to be listening: this is Baron Munchausen logic.

Think about it. If the government employed EVERYBODY, could it raise enough tax to pay for us all? Only by taxing everybody at 100% of their salary.

Yes, making that public servant unemployed costs the exchequer lost tax and extra benefits. But not nearly so much as they SAVE in reduced wages.

In fact, if unemployment is rising but private sector employment remains under control then the public sector wage bill must be falling and the only reason the government can be borrowing more is because tax revenues remain depressed.

All things being equal you would EXPECT that – we've CUT income and corporate taxes and people have chosen to SAVE rather than SPEND which reduces spending taxes (VAT, duties and the like). The idea was to stimulate growth and take a smaller share of a bigger pie. But the pie DIDN'T get any bigger so obviously LESS TAX.

So where the Labour Party is RIGHT is in saying that we need GROWTH in order to get the country out of the economic doldrums.

Where they are DEAD WRONG is in thinking that there is anything that the government can DO about this that the Coalition aren't doing already! Lower taxes, doing that; increase capital spending, doing that; invest in education for young people, doing that; the list goes on. Could we do MORE of those things? Well, maybe, but it always comes down to where does the money come from and does it, in the end, actually work?

Growth, real growth, will come when people stop being more afraid than they are confident that there is money to be made. All we can do is try to spend wisely preparing for that in the meantime.

So when Mr Balls (or Mr Milipede, if anyone remembers him) says that they have some TONIC that will CURE the economy, just remember that it's probably SNAKE OIL. Or a MAGIC POINTING STICK. Or WOO.

Because Mr Balls' brand of prescription isn't MAGIC; it's just a NASTY TRICK.
.

Day 3973: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: A. B. & C.

2011-11-17T14:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

Oh very fluffy dear.

You MAY remember from the DISTANT past that Daddies Alex and Richard were going to watch the sensational Sixties Spy Serial "The Prisoner" all the way through.

That didn't ENTIRELY work out. So they tried again…

And last year's attempt at a revival didn't really come to much, either. Much like ITV's attempt at a revival, really.

But we can never escape!

So we return to the Village once more…

information

Almost certainly the quintessential Prisoner episode, this may even be the first I ever watched, and it captures everything that makes "The Prisoner" iconic, being at times an action-spy drama, a commentary on the tropes of television and a musing on the nature of reality and freedom.

After his failure in "The General", Number 2 is under pressure from his unseen superiors and decides to try a dangerous new technique on the Prisoner. Number 14 has developed a drug that will allow her to induce a highly specific dream state into the subject, and equipment to allow her to watch those dreams on a big screen in three acts as though on commercial television. Only trouble is, more than three doses will be fatal. So they only have three chances.

It is Number 2's belief that the Prisoner will break if only they can get him to admit why he resigned, and Number 2 is convinced that he was selling out. All he needs to know is to whom. So he uses the Village resources to narrow the suspects down to just three, his three chances, whom he labels "A", "B" and "C".

"A" is Peter Bowles in a tightly sprung moustache as an old friend of the Prisoner who infamously – well, it made world news – defected to the "other side" a couple of years ago. His interest is predatory verging on the homoerotic and he'd rather indulge in a little light kidnapping than take no for an answer.

"B" is Annette Carell as an enigmatic foreign agent of the Mata Hari school. In fact, implied of Mata Hari's family. Although they are mildly flirtatious, she and the Prisoner seem to respect one another, at least until Number 2 tries to force the situation along by having Number 14 manipulate "B"'s voice directly.

"C" is a mystery person – this is a bit of a cheat by 2: I guess "A" Peter Bowles, "B" Annette Carell or "C" anyone else in the World! – but the Prisoner's most psychedelic dream yet seemingly unmasks Madame Engadine, the society hostess, as "C", only for her to reveal that she really works for yet another mystery person.

What Number 2 does not realise is that his own heavy-handedness has tipped the Prisoner off, and that by following Number 14 during the day, he has discovered the secret lab and weakened the third and final dose of the drug so that he, rather than 14, is in charge of his final dream. Meaning Number 2 is in for a rather nasty surprise twist.

there's been a slight misunderstanding

Well, we placed "Many Happy Returns" at the end of this four-episode sequence because it is every bit as big a turning point as "Free For All" was, and it seemed right to make it the end of phase two and, as the ninth episode, the dead centre of the series. Except, and this may be a bit of a spoiler for "Many Happy Returns" but Georgina Cookson plays a significant role in that story as "Mrs Butterworth" and blow me if she doesn't turn up here in the "C" dream sequence – significantly, the one most under the Prisoner's control.

Now, as we talked about under "The Schizoid Man", it is the Nineteen Sixties and para-science phenomena are in, but the series never comes out and flat admits to the possibility of telepathy. So it's wildly unlikely that the Prisoner has suddenly developed precognition, prescience or any other paranormal ability to see into the future. Faced with the fact of her appearance, she must be someone he remembers.

It is of course possible that he remembers her from one of Mme. Engadine's parties. We know are full of spy types. Perhaps he spotted her as someone who might reasonably show up working for the Village; perhaps they just happen to recruit her from the same small pool of people that he knows.

Though of course there is the catch that he effectively implicates her as a member of "C's" organisation.

But since he doesn't remember her in "Many Happy Returns" (although we can't rule out the usual brainwashing that the series has started inflicting on him by now, though there's no evidence to support that regarding her) then "A. B. & C." almost certainly ought to come after "Many Happy Returns".

The continuity of Colin Gordon's Number 2 is pretty incontrovertible, which means in fact that "The General" must come immediately before "A. B. & C." and so after "Many Happy Returns" too. In fact, that could be seen to fit: as we will see next time, "Many Happy Returns" is a powerful victory for the Village and – more spoilers – convincingly proves escape in any meaningful sense cannot be achieved by conventional means; and "The General" is the first episode where the Prisoner makes no effort at all to escape and is the first episode where he appears to come out ahead of the Village.

(And when I say "first" here, it is because we distinguish episodes of "The Prisoner" into three clear phases of "just got here", "barking mad" and "the middle one". He tries to escape in all of the "first phase" stories and none – barring "Fall Out", and arguably not even then – of the "late phase" stories. There are only the two "middle phase" stories "A. B. & C." and "The General" that could be the "first" where he doesn't try to escape and, as I've just said, "The General" has to be first of those two.)

Another first, incidentally: this would be the first time since "Arrival" (not counting the reprise in every title sequence) that we have seen the Prisoner outside of the Village (even if the set is just a redress of the Professor's residence from "The General"). And some actual not-stock film footage as Peter Bowles takes him to a nearby Dubious Foreign Embassy for a punch-up.

There's almost a case to be made for saying that "Many Happy Returns" should precede "The Schizoid Man": the Number 2 that appears in "Many Happy Returns" is as powerful and victorious as Mary Morris was back in "Dance of the Dead", whereas Anton Rogers' young technocrat is almost bested by the Prisoner and, as we've argued before, the series can be seen as having a definite through line as power shifts from 2 to 6.

There are however two good reasons to prefer them in the order "The Schizoid Man" then "Many Happy Returns".

The first and stronger reason is that at the end of "The Schizoid Man" the Prisoner tries another escape attempt, but, as I've said, following "Many Happy Returns" he has reason to give up even trying to escape.

The second, weaker, reason is the dates.

We said previously that "The Schizoid Man" starts on 10th February followed by a long enough period for the Village to electroshock the Prisoner into being left-handed and for the bruise on his fingernail to grow out; and then "Many Happy Returns" ends on 19th March after many days on a raft as the Prisoner "escapes" by sea. Now, there might – just about – be time for both of these stories to take place one after the other, and that would be in keeping with "one month to one story" rule-of-thumb for the series. We separated the two, acknowledging that there's really not space for four stories in this time span, but covering ourselves with the justifiable assertion that trusting the date to calendars in the Village is at best unwise. Putting "The Schizoid Man" and "Many Happy Returns" back together avoids the necessity of that fudge, though if you're still not happy with the time available for the two tales, you can still use it.

So, taking account of the "new" evidence of the Prisoner being familiar with someone who looks like Georgina Cookson suggests we should have a revised running order of:

"The Schizoid Man", "Many Happy Returns", "The General" and "A. B. & C.".

We will of course revisit this next time.

~~the new~~ number two

Colin Gordon returns, drinking more milk that ever and now apparently living in terror of a big red telephone.

That telephone is new, though we'll be seeing more of it, and it's an endlessly fascinating visual icon, its oversized semi-circular shape reminiscent of Rover providing director Pat Jackson with plenty of opportunities to photograph Number 2 through the phone, metaphorically trapping him, or catching him like a fish on a hook. Using the perspective to diminish Number 2 and make the phone – and by implication whoever is on the other end – bigger than him.

We neither see nor hear whoever is on the other end, nor are they named (or numbered). But it's almost impossible to avoid leaping to the conclusion that this, at last, is the hotline to "Number 1".

Oh, and either there are several of them or, like Number 2 himself, it can teleport around the place, as it somehow gets from the Green Dome to the secret lab without Number 2 appearing to bring it with him. In a further demonstration of possibly super-natural powers, the moment that Number 2 realises he's done for, even though it's still the middle of the night, it rings. Because unseen evil bosses always know.

But let's not get distracted from the fact that this is obviously "Part Two" of a two-part story. And for the first time, the series chooses to be about Number 2 rather than the Prisoner.

The episode opens with Number 2 in his control room – as remarked under "the General" it is unusual to see this Number 2 in there – and most of the scenes, in fact all the scenes set at night, are from his point of view rather than that of the literally-unconscious Prisoner, in contrast to the couple of sequences set in the day when we follow the Prisoner about.

His chief henchperson this week is Number 14 – two up from "The General's" Number 12? Or two down? – but his bullying of her seems more desperate than his previous sardonic sadism, more lashing out, or trying to do to her what is being done to him.

Finally, in a cunning reversal, granting Number 2 the power to look into Prisoner's mind actually reduces his status from "omnipotent observer" to impotently shouting at the television. Yes, we've all been there.

follow the signs

Lightning flashes and a storm breaks over the Village on the night of the first experiment, as though nature herself rebels against this "unnatural" act, which again may symbolise this is the first real "violation" of the Prisoner's mind. More prosaically, of course, it brings to mind Dr Frankenstein and "mad scientists" as we are introduced to the otherwise perfectly nice Number 14.

(Actually, with her dispassionate professionalism she reminds me very strongly of Doctor Who's Dr Elizabeth Shaw, particularly in her moments of sarcasm to her overbearing boss such as "you'll have to call him 'D'," on learning of a mysterious fourth person vying for the good the Prisoner has to offer).

Ever so slightly, one has to wonder how much Number 14 "lets slip" in order to drop her boss in it. She doesn't need to turn up at the café flaunting her Tally-Ho with its headline questioning Number 2's competence. And she's, at best, careless to repeat the words she spoke to the Prisoner in the afternoon when putting them into "B's" mouth in the second dream. Did she deliberately allow herself to be followed to the secret lab so that he could discover what was going on and arm himself against the third night's dreams?

And the heady mix of dreams, magic potions and mistaken identities might make us think of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", though there it was Oberon who fooled his Titania, not the other way around.

Dreams also might make us think of Dickens' "Christmas Carol", together with its three act structure, and there is just a hint here of past, present, future in that "A" is past friend, "B" someone he's comfortable just to be with for the present and "C" ends with his future in the Village.

(See also Doctor Who's "The Trial of a Time Lord" for a rather blunter take on this sort of thing.)

But Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, also reminds us of stealing the secrets from the "gods", and that is simultaneously what Number 2 is trying to do here to the Prisoner and what he suspects the Prisoner of having been doing when he resigned. So we have three possible candidates for our "Frankenstein" though, ironically, the reveal that his "secrets" were no more than holiday brochures leaves the Prisoner as the "Victor". (Forgive me, the pun was irresistible.)

In fact, McGoohan is more likely to cast himself as the hero of the flipside of Frankenstein, the anarchist creator god of Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound". See also "Fall Out".

By this point the series is getting pretty unequivocal that this is "our" side's Village. Number 2's appropriately dualist approach is very "them and us"; he believes the Prisoner was going to sell out "us" and go over to "them". All three of the agents, "A", "B" and "C" are working for "the other side". "A" is explicitly a defector (and clearly "studied at Cambridge" to coin a euphemism); "B" is "vaguely foreign" which is the none-too-subtle code in these things; and "C" has "fooled us for years". This may not be immediately clear – it wasn't to me! It's certainly possible to misinterpret Number 2's early remarks as questioning which side the Prisoner is going to defect to. But that makes no sense; there are (at least in 2's mind) only two sides and the Prisoner is already on one of them.

So everything here points to Number 2 believing that the Prisoner and the Village at least nominally are working for the same side.

(We might as well take the path of least resistance and assume that the Prisoner used to work for British or the more vaguely general "Western" Intelligence. Or whoever it is that John Drake was supposed to work for. You can mull over the possibility that he was actually a Russian agent in London and that Number 2 believes he was coming over to the West. But that still means that 2 thinks the Village is a Russian Village and that they were still both on the same side.)

Or they used to be. Number 2 believes that the Prisoner wanted to go over to the other side; the Prisoner believes that the existence of the Village betrays everything he thought his side stood for.

But let's get down to brass tacks: this is the episode that explicitly says that the Village wants to steal the Prisoner's dreams.

A man may be made of memories but his dreams are what give him freedom.

In that sense there is a terrible irony that the Prisoner's dreams – when not tampered with – appear to be of his resignation.

And should you be of the school that takes all of "The Prisoner" to be taking place inside what passes for McGoohan's brain, then the fact that it's actually an endless loop of the title sequence, which itself repeats every week, lends evidence to your cause.

Or even worse, there's an infinite regression, of Prisoners dreaming of Prisoners!

On the other hand, his dreams reveal that the Prisoner will not compromise, even in his imagination.

As I mentioned above, this is the first time we've seen him outside the Village, even if only in drug-induced flashback ("Chimes of Big Ben" was faked and doesn't count). And this may be the only freedom that he'll ever see. But even this he refuses.

In a way, this episode is addressing one of those quintessential Sixties existential questions: can we believe what we think is real or could it all be faked, false sensory impressions fed to a brain in a jar? The modern reader might consider this "The Matrix Question".

A pragmatist might accept that you can never know, and accept the "freedom" offered in the dreamworld as a better escape than none. But the Prisoner is, as has been frequently said, an idealist – in the almost Aristotelian sense. His quest is for Truth with a capital T. For him somewhere there is an "ideal form" of "John Drake", a "Number 1" towards whom he constantly strives even as he rejects him.

But then we're getting into almost Buddhist interpretations of reality: the dream is only a shadow of the greater "Truth" and the World is only a veil of illusion.

In this sense it is obvious that Number 2, well this Number 2 anyway, cannot defeat the Prisoner. Number 2 is compromised because he will compromise, cut corners, take short cuts, in essence because he is pragmatic. Obviously he gets crushed between the two implacable forces of the Prisoner's Truth and Village's Truth.

And finally the one everyone remarks on: the moment in the third dream – where the direction has gone all groovy Sixties angles and the music, after waltzing delicately around being "After the Ball" in the first two dreams, evolves into an altogether more trippy Sixties rock'n'roll theme – when the Prisoner looks into a mirror and seeing it hanging crooked seizes it and as he sets it straight, the scene behind him rotates to the perpendicular too, as he literally seizes control of the world.

I'm sorry, did someone mention a god complex?

who is number one?

Much as I should like to reward the suave Peter Bowles for carrying off that astonishing moustache, I have to give the crown for this to Katherine Kath as the evanescent Mme. Engadine. She appears in all three dreams, making this almost a two-hander between her and McGoohan – or making her the dreamworld reflection of Number 14 as the Prisoner is the mirror of Number 2 – and she's quite the most three-dimensional character present, mocking every spy cliché, teasing the so-chaste-it-hurts McGoohan as a womaniser, but then turning mournfully serious when "revealed" as "C".

By playing the life and soul of the party – blowing kisses and exchanging salüts with guests we never see – Engardine sells us the illusion that these swinging happenings are really happening. And selling the illusion is, of course, central to what this story is about.

In a way, she is a traitor to the Prisoner's dreams and this may be why he uses her similarly in return when he turns the tables. Even though Number 2 is left discredited at the end, this may leave the real Mme. Engadine in an awkward situation. Having said that, the Prisoner is or was a very good spy and may genuinely have unmasked her as "C". And his gentlemanly chivalry has always turned to callous disregard when let down by a woman – just see how he walks away from the false "B".

Her name, incidentally, is repeatedly pronounced as a feminine pun on "En Garde!". Which might be a clue.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

Day 3959: Mysteries of Doctor Who #23: Why Does "Pyramids of Mars" Take Place in ENGLAND?

2011-11-03T15:00:00.000Z

Thursday:

Here is me, kneeling before Sutekh!

Dust? Anyone?

"Pyramids of Mars" is one of the MOST famously SCARY episodes of Doctor Who, and one of the (very few) stories where Dr Woo takes down a GOD!

However, even though this story is an EPIC contest between two aliens with god-like powers – Sutekh the Destroyer in his pyramid in Egypt; and Horus from his pyramid on Mars – some people feel it necessary to point out that Sutekh cannot rise from his chair and Horus is slightly dead. So neither of them is coming to England any time soon. Which makes it a BIT odd that the bulk of the action takes place at Sir Mick Jagger's place in the Home Counties.

Of course, some people say that that the last episode is a bit of a let-down, and a bit of a knock-off of "Death to the Dustbins", but look: you are PROMISED a PYRAMID. And MARS. And that is what you get! And if a few MDF flats in a studio aren't good enough for you, then just you wait for the CGI ultimate edition!

Mind you, these are the same sort of people who don't like it that Sutekh is ultimately killed by the Doctor saying something clever about the time difference and using a bit of the TARDIS console. Which means that they have missed the WHOLE POINT.

Sutekh is a GOD and works by MAGIC. Doctor Woo is a TIME LORD and uses SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY.

And "Pyramids of Mars" is, basically, where SCIENCE tells RELIGION to FLUFF OFF!

(REALLY, as Daddy Alex will cleverly explain, this is all going to kick off NEXT season, with stories like "Masque of Mandragora" and "The Face of Evil" really laying on the "Dark Religion" theme, and also the techno-cults of "The Hand of Fear" and "Robots of Death" not to mention "That Thing with the Time Lords", but it all starts here with the evil Egyptian god of death and chaos getting his!)

Sutekh escapes by WISHING very hard and the Eye of Horus blows up. But this is the Time Lords' universe now, so little things like the law of propagation of electromagnetic radiation at the speed of light and relativity making lightspeed a universal constant are in play. And they TRUMP Sutekh's magic powers.

Finally to (TIME) RAM the point home, the Doctor uses a MACHINE (and not just ANY machine but HIS machine) to defeat Sutekh's MAGIC CABINET. And then literally kills the immortal with TIME.

It's not THAT subtle a reading of the we-can-hardly-call-it-subtext to say that, unlike the preceding Twerpee era, where magic, the devil, Atlantis, the Age of Aquarius and all that New Age jazz turned out to be LITERALLY REAL, the "story" of "Pyramids of Mars" is that science beats religion, end of.

Of course, what is REALLY interesting about this story is way that it handles TIME.

For starters, this story, broadcast in 1975, had Sarah Jane Smith stating quite boldly that she was from 1980. NOT "the 1970s" or 1975; clearly 1980.

We've done UNIT dating before, but to take it at a gallop: the UNIT era started out set a good DECADE into the future – with British Space Programmes and no end of HUGE not to mention DOOMED science-energy projects – but over the years this was quietly downgraded to just "the day after tomorrow" if that, with only a touch of video-conferencing to suggest it wasn't completely contemporary. And after his regeneration, Dr Woo has made it pretty clear that the UNIT era is over, to the extent that the immediately previous story-but-one, "Terror of the Zygons", is very much the valedictory UNIT outing.

So it's positively WEIRD of Sarah to be re-establishing herself as the girl of tomorrow. And we're already messing with the audience's heads when it comes to what TIME means to people. Sarah's from "our time", but now she's also from "the future" and she's in "the past". Are we confused yet?

But then there is that memorable scene where – having already cued us up to remember the works of Mr H G Wells – Dr Woo takes us to visit Sarah's 1980 and, as expected, the world has been destroyed. Only THIS wasteland is not the result of Thatcherism but the dust left behind by a vengeful Sutekh getting on with his day job of being "the Destroyer".

Now in part this is the ultimate in "show, don't tell": Sutekh is the ONLY Doctor Who villain EVER who actually SUCCEEDS; he definitively gets to Destroy the World™. Okay, so Dr Woo takes us back to 1911 and defeats him afterwards, but even that takes the SLAUGHTER of the whole of the rest of the cast (except for Ahmed the Egyptian porter – who Uncle Terry gets to finish off in the novelisation). And for a while there, Sutekh actually WON.

Spare a thought, incidentally, for Ernie Clements, the poacher. It costs him his life, but he saves the World. Having witnessed the brutal murder of Dr Warlock, he sets out to avenge the man, not realising that the murderer is the dead body of Professor Scarman. But his simple determination not to allow the killer to kill again, manages to save the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Scarman's brother Lawrence by distracting the undead Prof at the crucial moment. And hence he saves the World.

They do say that History repeats itself, first as tragedy then as comedy, but in Ernie's case the REVERSE is true. We see him run into Sutekh's deflection barrier TWICE: the first time he bounces off it is played as a big JOKE. But the SECOND time… with the mummies closing in… what seemed FUNNY becomes totally TERRIFYING!

And of course none of this is NECESSARY; the unlucky poacher is really only there so that Dr Woo can get hold of some explosives in part three! Mind you, his man-trap-sized rabbit traps ARE a bit on the BIG side!

What "Pyramids of Mars" is telling us, almost uniquely among Doctor Who stories although it's never actually contradicted either, is that the future and the past are CONTINGENT. That is to say, History past and future exists in one form until Dr Woo begins to MEDDLE. But once he has STARTED to interfere with events, he can no longer count on them working out as he used to know that they would just because "history" says they should. Even if his own past – via the agency of his travelling companions – DEPENDS on events working out according to "known" history.

For example, Sarah Jane's very EXISTENCE becomes PARADOXICAL once she sees that without finishing the adventure she doesn't have a world to have come from. This is a bit like Schrodinger's cat-monster in the box: Sarah Jane is both alive AND never existed until the experiment/adventure is completed. Only thanks to Dr Woo's Time Lord Powers™ she is allowed a sneak peek inside the box to see what her alternatives are!

More interesting, perhaps, is the often overlooked OPENING. After a bit in Egypt where Professor Scarman UNWISELY ignores the "Beware of the God" sign (translated by Ahmed as "aiiii, no!") and trespasses on Sutekh's grass with fatal consequences, the start of the story see Dr Woo and Sarah Jane travelling in the TARDIS and discussing dresses and mid-life crises, when suddenly Sutekh knocks a dirty great hole through the ship.

Now if Sutekh can punch a hole in an indestructible time machine at a range of who knows how many millions of light years never mind who can guess how far into the future – the Doc and Sarah are on their way home from the Planet of Evil in the story, er, "Planet of Evil" set on the edge of the universe in the space year thirty-seven thousand and change, (to a Morestran value of 37,166), and although they are ALLEGEDLY heading for UNIT HQ, there's NO indication that they are ANYWHERE near Earth let alone 1911 at the time – if Sutekh can do that, then there's no reason why he couldn't just destroy the Eye of Horus from the comfort of his own tomb.

Which he obviously can't do so obviously he shouldn't be able to puncture the Doctor's timeship either!

I mean, ultimately he DOES destroy the Eye with "mind power", but remember, he needs to get the late Professor Scarman NEAR to the thing to explode it in episode four because he's using the departed prof's zombie as a way to get around the effects of his imprisonment.

After all, kind of the whole POINT of the Eye of Horus is that it is STOPPING Sutekh doing this sort of astral projection shtick. It wouldn't be much good at stopping him destroying the world if it didn't!

Notice too that the Sutekh that Sarah sees in the TARDIS does not have his HAT on – she sees the Typhonian beast face, but he only appears that way AFTER the Eye of Horus is destroyed and he is at last able to rise from his chair (the Hand of Horus notwithstanding).

All of which SUGGEST that the Sutekh we see in the opening scene is actually… Sutekh AFTER HE HAS ALREADY ESCAPED.

Dr Woo even SAYS that he is tracing the mental projection to its source, which just HAPPENS to be the priory in 1911 that is on the site that will one day be UNIT headquarters.

In other words, the entire story APPEARS to begin with Sutekh escaping and Dr Woo going back in time to prevent that from having happened.

Who says the Grand Moff introduced the ontological paradox into Doctor Who, eh?

"Something is interfering with Time," he says to Mr Lawrence Scarman, "and that's MY job!"

This, as the Doctor himself might say, is intensely interesting. Sutekh ISN'T interfering in time; if Sutekh could time travel he wouldn't get stuck in the Doctor's space-time trap at the end. No, HISTORY says that Sutekh should never have been released: if he had been then Sarah Jane would never have existed, and SHE does so HE wasn't.

That may be the significance of Sutekh's appearance in the TARDIS being seen by Sarah Jane, not the Doctor. She says that "whatever it was, it was totally malevolent". Now to be FAIR, Mr Sutekh does rather RADIATE EVIL. But maybe it goes deeper than that and Best Friend Sarah is sensing at what Mr Larry might call a "biodata" level that Sutekh's timeline is totally inimical to her own.

(Plus she's dressed as a Victorian "sensitive" at the time; you can't get more mediumistic that that!)

So HISTORY has CHANGED. The interference in Time is Sutekh having got out at all, and that is why the Doctor – in his new "I walk in eternity" Time Lord duty mode – has gone back in time to change things back again.

Let me reiterate: something or someone has CHANGED HISTORY to release Sutekh. And we don't find out who!

Never mind "who blew up the TARDIS" at the end of season thirty one…

and when ARE they going to answer that question, that's what I want to know! (Clue: they aren't!)

…THAT's the REAL mystery!

There is – hat tip Daddy Alex – one POSSIBLE explanation…

Could it be that the REASON Dr Woo is going all broody (and falls into a year-long SULK) is BECAUSE his Time Lord Spidey-sense is telling him that there's an ontological paradox about.

Can Dr Woo sense the future? Well, next year, in "That One That Rewrites Everything We Thought We Knew", the same author is going to state definitively that precognitive visions of the future are impossible… in a story that HINGES on the Doctor receiving a precognitive vision! And THAT one's a TRAP too!

But, if you remember, the ontological or PREDESTINATION paradox is the one that SEEMS like it's allowable logically (it happens because it happens) BUT is the one that says there is NO FREE WILL. Essentially, Dr Woo knowing something's going to happen means he HAS to go and MAKE it happen. And since the Doctor has always stood for FREE WILL over DESTINY that would be BOUND to put him in a STROP.

Yet if "Pyramids of Mars" is telling us that History is CONTINGENT – and over and over again that is EXACTLY what it is telling us… even the supposed "padding" in part four is telling us this: consider the logic puzzle of the two guardians: they have fixed destinies, one must always tell the truth, one must always lie, whereas the Doctor has reason and choice on his side and he wins – if History is contingent on our decisions, then Dr Woo's big decision at the start is CHANGING HISTORY.

Superficially – not to mention meta-textually – he is choosing between returning to UNIT HQ and his larger destiny. Except that his "larger destiny" actually MEANS returning to UNIT HQ (or site thereof) because that's where Sutekh is waiting for him.

But as soon as that decision is on the table, History – future AND past – becomes contingent on it, and THAT is what lets Sutekh out!

In a story that is ABOUT the contrast between making choices and "destiny" then the conflict between the Doctor and Sutekh is INEVITABLE.

LIFE, in a universe with FREE WILL means CHOICES even though they come with RISKS. Sutekh wants NO RISKS and NO CHOICES.

Anyone who, by this point, is still thinking that Sutekh is a badly motivated villain who is "bad" just because he likes being "bad" is STILL missing the point: Sutekh is DESTINY INCARNATE, that's what gods ARE. Here he explicitly wants to deny any choice to anyone in the universe – and Bob Holmes is not even trying to be subtle when he equates this 100% with DEATH.

(But see also Mr the White Guardian's threat in "The Ribos Operation".)

Saying that Destiny doesn't have a motive is as silly as saying GRAVITY doesn't have a motive. And YES, you can defy gravity too.

"Your evil is my good" isn't JUST a cool line to excuse being the baddie; it's a statement that Sutekh and the Doctor are OPPOSITES. And again, see how those contrasts are REITERATED throughout the story, whether it is the lying/truthful guardians or the two Scarman brothers or even the (slightly stereotyped) contrast of "superstitious" Egypt with "enlightened", "rational" England…

Oh, that reminds me, I'm supposed to be explaining something!

So anyway, Sutekh's initial plan, of course, before he gets his frozen-in-place hands on a time capsule, is to build and then fire a war rocket at the Pyramid of Mars. Or rather, use "pyramid power" to transpose his war, er, pyramid with its target.

At which point those people turn up again to complain about the Sutekh being buried with all the equipment he needs in order to escape.

Except of course he ISN'T.

There is NO indication that ANY of the materials for the war rocket are actually IN the pyramid tomb with ol' Suuty.

The only things we can definitively say ARE from the tomb in Egypt are three mummy-shaped servitor robots (with matching slave relay ring accessory) and four canopic jars which form a force field (though these are almost certainly salvaged from the prison itself, probably designed to keep curious archaeologists from breaking in – either Sutekh has managed to tamper with them or the whoever who let him out did; this interference may explain how Dr Woo is able to easily disarm them too).

Actually, the exact number of Mummies is another thing that is STRANGE.

Obviously there are three of them 'cos there are three costumes and they're played by Mr Nick Burnell, Mr Melvyn Bedford and Mr Kevin Selway.

EXCEPT… when he sends them after poacher Ernie we clearly see TWO of them lumbering after him into the grounds but there are still TWO of them inside to drag away the body of cultist Namin.

In fact, it gets WORSE, because later on he has a quick tele-conference with Sutekh and the boss tells him not to let pursuit of the humans slow down building the rocket. So the late Scarman says he will recall TWO of the servitors from the hunt. But there are STILL TWO more who finally get poor old Ernie and then smash up the lodge at the end of part two. Which means there must be at least SIX of the buggers.

Plus the two with gold-wrap accessories doubling as servitors of Horus on Mars.

Clearly Sutekh's relationship with MATHEMATICS is as dodgy as his relationship with SCIENCE!

Anyway, it is far more likely that Sutekh has had to have the components of his war rocket manufactured for him.

And then it's MUCH easier to have all of his war rocket parts manufactured in England and delivered to Stargroves care of Ibrahim Namin than order them from Egypt in the days before Amazon Prime. That way, you only have to arrange for four sarcophaguses (three mummies and one space-time tunnel) to be shipped "home". We can assume that the Priory had its own crazy self-playing organ, though presumably Sutekh had to lay on the hot and cold running cultist.

And THAT is why he is using Professor Scarman's home in England as his main base of operations. Because England in 1911 is at the centre of a huge industrialised Empire. And Egypt is NOT.

PS:

"Pyramids of Mars" is available as an extra-feature on "The Scary Jane Adventures" season four, which means that it is the first "Classic" Doctor Who adventure to be available on Blu-Ray. Woo.

Unfortunately, it is presented in STANDARD DEFINITION rather than upscaled to HIGH DEFINITION and also in a rather nasty STRETCHED-TO-FIT widescreen. AND being a Blu-Ray already you can't fix this with the player controls.

So all in all I'd recommend sticking to the rather spiffy DVD edition.
.

Day 3949: Does Europe Make Referendum-dums of Us All?

2011-10-27T12:30:00.000+01:00

Monday:

"The people haven't had a say on Europe since before I was born," declared one so-called rebel Conservatory.

Or indeed for the TEN THOUSAND years before that, you might remark. And yet still the continent has refused to go away.

Why not have a referendum on the MONARCHY? The people haven't been consulted about that since, oh, ever. And Mrs the Queen has a big-ish role in our constitution. Or why not a referendum on POLITICAL PARTIES?

For that matter, why not have a referendum on TIES? Are, in fact, bow ties cool after all? A nation must know!

Why does the government not want a referendum on Europe?

This is what the Liberal Democrats' manifesto SAID about a referendum:

The European Union has evolved significantly since the last public vote on membership over thirty years ago. Liberal Democrats therefore remain committed to an in/out referendum the next time a British government signs up for fundamental change in the relationship between the UK and the EU.

This is what the Conservatories' manifesto SAID about a referendum:

We will ensure that by law no future government can hand over areas of power to the EU or join the Euro without a referendum of the British people.

and specifically:

We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum on that treaty – a 'referendum lock'.

And this is what the Coalition programme for government SAYS about a referendum:

The Government believes that Britain should play a leading role in an enlarged European Union, but that no further powers should be transferred to Brussels without a referendum.

and specifically:

We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum on that treaty – a 'referendum lock'.

which, obviously, and if you are a Conservatory backbencher claiming to be on a moral crusade you OUGHT to be paying attention to this, is a direct quote from the Conservatory manifesto.

So let's be COMPLETELY CLEAR: BOTH Parties ACCEPTED the status quo, and ONLY said there should be a referendum if there was to be a CHANGE.

Has there been a change? NO. So let's not hear any nonsense about "broken promises".

Those Conservatories getting up on their high horses about "moral duty": THEY are the ones breaking their manifesto!

However, as has been noticed, people do not do NUANCE. Not even nuance as BROAD BRUSH as "when there's a change".

So since both Parties IN the Coalition have at least given the APPEARANCE that they were vaguely, notionally in favour of the IDEA of a referendum, some people – by whom I mean "Conservatory right wingers who've been caught out by the need to keep a parliamentary seat in the musical chairs brought on by their own plan to reduce the number of constituencies by fifty" – have CYNICALLY and DECEITFULLY rebranded this as "we were promised a referendum" (add sounds of toys being thrown out of pram to taste).

This is a story that has legs because, unfortunately, governments have FORM on this: Hard Labour promised a referendum on the European Constitution… which then didn't happen so we didn't get a referendum. Mr Balloon gave a "cast iron guarantee" of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty… which was then passed anyway, 'cos it wasn't his to promise, so we didn't get a referendum… you see what it LOOKS like!

So why not just go ahead and have one?

Well, in the first place, there is no pressing NEED for a referendum now – beyond the "needs" of certain Conservatory backbenchers to, er, get their ballots off.

We NEEDED to do the AV referendum this year in order to decide what electoral system we were going to use in 2015 and have time to prepare for it. There is no such deadline looming over our relationship with Europe.

In fact, the reverse is true. Right now, we don't actually know what we'd be voting ON.

You cannot have failed to notice that there is a bit of a FLAP on to do with the Euro and the amount of borrowing by SOME Union countries.

Four countries, in particular, are a bit of a worry. Greece is the main one, because they are already over the edge and into freefall. Greece needs to be GIVEN money, not loaned money; they need their debt written off. Portugal is close to the edge. More worrying are Spain and Italy – they are more worrying because their economies and associated debts are larger and harder to wipe clean.

Not Ireland, though. Ireland, to whom Britain DID lend money, after their crisis last year appear – touch wood, wish for luck, pray to the nice blue lady – appear to be pulling out of their crash. So look, it's not impossible that these bailouts CAN WORK.

With all that going on, it is clear that the idea of "Europe" is very much in FLUX, which means CHANGING. We need to let things sort themselves out: either it will fall to bits with no help from us, or more likely just in the nick Germany and France will come up with a rescue package that will be just about acceptable to everyone.

What Europe doesn't need is Great Britain to start flapping on about in/out referenda when they need to be concentrating on fixing their economies. And, to appeal to self-interest too, WE need them to be concentrating on fixing their economies, because OUR economy is so bound up with theirs.

Mr Balloon talked about our neighbour's house being on fire and saying we should help. What he could have added as well was: what we SHOULDN'T do is rush round there flapping our arms shouting "look at me look at meeee!"

And it's not like we wouldn't like our own government to be concentrating on fixing our own economy.

The aim of the Coalition, first and foremost, has been to reduce the deficit. We also want a strategy to promote GROWTH. And it's increasingly clear – especially in prevailing economic World conditions – that the one is precluding the other.

Do we REALLY want the government to be committing a lot of its time and effort to negotiating an exit strategy from our treaty obligations and taxation agreements?

Or might that not be seen on both sides of the Channel as a MASSIVELY SELF-INDULGENT way to cause titanic damage to everyone's economies?

It's ALSO worth a remark that the people who are demanding a Europe referendum are many of the SAME people who spent last year WHINING that the AV referendum was an enormous waste of money at a time when we should be cutting back!

Time to update the dictionary definition of HYPOCRISY, I suspect.

Unfortunately it's all too easy to characterise these as excuses because we think we'd LOSE.

Obviously it doesn't help that I DO think we'd LOSE.

I don't think we would lose on the FACTS, but since when do FACTS come in to it?

We've just HAD a referendum on one bit of the constitution: the DEBACLE that was the voting reform referendum where people were clearly more swayed by a ruthless, reactionary, conservatory campaign than by the progressive hope for something better, even though almost everyone thinks that the existing system is utterly broken.

What on EARTH would make ANYONE think that a pro-Europe campaign would be any more successful than the shower who were in charge of the pro-AV?

And polling suggests that there is already a (small) majority in favour of LEAVING the EU; twice as many favour leaving as think they're happy staying in.

But the LAST thing that this country needs at the moment is to make 50% of our trade more difficult by leaving the single market.

People only hear about the COSTS of Europe without being told the benefits.

This is because, for years – no, for DECADES – cynical politicians have blamed Europe for anything that goes wrong and taken the credit themselves for anything that Europe puts right. And even-more-cynical newspapers have sold copies off the back of jingoistic little-Britain-ism while ensuring that they pay as little tax as possible IN Britain.

So-called "free trade" Americaland – so beloved of the very Europhobes who want us out of the Union – has EYE-WATERING barriers to entry, and Bush the Lesser actually INCREASED US Protectionism during his term, while on the other fluffy foot being in the Union grants us free access to a half-a-billion customers for our exports.

Explain to me where GROWTH is going to come from if we leave? Not so much cutting off our nose to spite our face as cutting off our BODY to spite our BRAINS!

Conservatories often bang on about the "small state". Well Europe is it! The whole EU is run on a tight budget (whatever UKIP may tell you), with a bureaucracy that is famously cheaper than the Scottish Office. And – post devolution – has more POINT.

Of COURSE there is a net transfer of money from Britain (and Germany!) to southern and eastern Europe. Just as there is a net transfer of money from London to EVERYWHERE ELSE in Great Britain.

There's a case to be made for France paying her fair share.

And a BLIND PERSON could see that the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy need reforming. But for all the inefficiencies and corruption, the CAP has contributed to the fact that we haven't had a famine in Europe in living memory. And the EU Fishing rules helps to PROTECT our fish stocks from Spanish trawlers in a way that we could not do outside of the EU without actually SINKING SHIPS and ending up at WAR.

We should judge things by whether they are a SUCCESS.

In contrast to the Euro – which is still very much in debate – I think that Europe and the Union have been a success.

Sixty-five years uninterrupted (Lord Blairimort aside) by war, famine or plague is unprecedented in European history. The rolling back of dictatorships in Iberia, Greece and Eastern Europe is a triumph of human spirit and freedom, and one that it is to be hoped might be a beacon to the newly-liberated countries of North Africa too. The affluence and well-being of hundreds of millions of people to a standard beyond anything dreamt of in the rest of the world or the rest of history is something to be treasured not tossed away.

It astonishes me… well no, it saddens me but I'm curiously un-astonished that Europe is now being scapegoated for our own economic crisis, even though European banks were better regulated than British ones (it's just a shame that some European GOVERNMENTS may have been as PROFLIGATE as British ones).

In hard economic times it's all too familiar to hear DOMESTIC woes being blamed on FOREIGNERS, the easy populist platitudes of why-do-we-have-to-pay-for and we'd-be-better-off-on-our-own rhetoric.

We were happy to be in the Union for the GOOD TIMES. Now times are hard all over and some people want to go all selfish and pull up the drawbridge.

Folly.

Our position as a BRIDGE between Europe and the rest of the planet has always served us for GOOD. But nowadays, that position depends more on the CONCEPTUAL territory of treaties and agreements than it does on our island geography.

But let's look at the Euro.

I think that the Euro is a really good idea. That's think, present tense, not thought. A single currency improves transparency and reduces exchange risk promoting intra-Union trade, generating jobs and so on.

But clearly, there's a massive downside.

The Greeks' governments of many years standing have been spending money that they didn't have. Worse, money that they were NEVER GOING TO HAVE. And they were able to do this because they were issuing bonds in Euros, nice safe, reliable, German-backed, guaranteed or your money back Euros.

(Which, of course, is why leaving the Euro would be INSANE for Greece: their DEBT would STILL be denominated in Euros and would actually spiral UP as their own currency collapsed.)

(Sidebar: Great Britain, not in the Euro, can make OUR debts "cheaper" by devaluing our currency: if I give you an I.O.U. for one TRILLION pounds (*actual numbers!*) when the pound is worth two dollars, and I buy two trillion dollars' worth of, oh let's say sticky buns… mmmm, two trillion dollars' worth of sticky buns… I'm drifting… if I then devalue the pound so it's only worth ONE dollar… I only have to repay effectively one trillion dollars, even though I got two. The PRICE that I pay for this is INFLATION – all of my exports are now twice as expensive. Americaland (as a whole) STILL GET their two trillion dollars back – they just get it in different ways and it gets spread among different people.

Funnily enough, the HIGH inflation that we are experiencing AT THE MOMENT is caused not a little by the way that we devalued our currency through Quantum of Easing.)

Where was I? Oh yes…

It seems this flaw may be inherent to the Euro. And may be fatal. There is NO incentive for governments like the Greeks' – and on a bigger scale the Italians' – to control their borrowing and spending whereas there are MASSIVE incentives – or RIOTS as they are called – for them to carry on burning other people's money so long as Germany will back them at the baccarat table.

The only solutions to this appear to be: don't let irresponsible economies into the currency (too late!) or don't let governments in the currency decide independently on how much they will borrow and spend.

This, in a nutshell, is the deal that the Union are edging towards. Germany will pick up the tab for EVERYONE ELSE'S overspending and in return they will hand over control of their treasuries to Berlin.

The extremely serious questions that linger over this are (a) can Germany actually AFFORD to BUY the whole of the rest of Europe (sure, they did it with East Germany, but that was peanuts in comparison) and (b) in spite of what we are supposed to think of them, do they actually WANT to? Because, despite what the SHRILLER of our xenophobes may want you to think, the Germans are actually a remarkably easy-going bunch and taking control of sixteen recalcitrant economies might just be too much bother, even if it DIDN'T mean having to sit in a room listening to Mr Balloon blow hot air about "leadership" when he won't take ANY responsibility himself.

(seriously, the number of times Mr Balloon and Master Gideon have prated about the need for the Eurozone countries to work closer together while praising themselves for staying out of the Euro and NOT working together with the Eurozone countries, you start to think Monsieur Sarcastic, President of France, might have had a point when he told Mr Balloon to– [cue Blackadder theme])

Plus, the other countries involved might not really want to surrender their sovereignty to the Bundesbank.

(Sidebar 2: fiscal union really OUGHT to lead to political union, so that people have democratic oversight of the bodies controlling their cash. But it might not. Europe would be, in a way, recreating the situation as exists in Great Britain between Westminster and Holyrood/Cardiff. The Scottish Parliament is of course the HAPPIEST Parliament in the World, because it always gets to be SANTA CLAUS. Nasty Master Gideon in London raises all those HORRID taxes that people have to pay, but Kindly Uncle Alec™ is there to hand out bounty and largesse to all and sundry, and if he's not got enough money then it's all the fault of those thieving Tories to the South. All of the pleasure of power, none of the pain of paying for it. That might be an attractive model to e.g. the Greek government – oh, here you are, my friends, cash for all; oh, so sorry, we can't pay any more this month, the nasty German tax inspectors won't give us any more, etc.)

So where does this MANIA for referendums come from?

Parties – and the Liberal Democrats should put our fluffy feet up to this because we're as guilty of this as the other lot, if not more so – seem to call for referendums from Opposition quite a lot, because it's a way of making a populist point and by-passing lack of actual support in Parliament as much as a principle of democracy.

It's ALSO a way of side-lining policies that while central in importance to the Party membership are unpopular in the general public: "look, we know you hate this Europe stuff, so we'll give you this promise that we'll ask for a second separate mandate on that, so you can trust us with your vote on everything else!"

We all know that the ORIGINAL referendum on Europe was – ironically – a wheeze by the political pinball-wizard Mr Harold Wilson because – ironically – his Labour party was in government but split down the middle on the subject.

So he punted the whole business over to the public to avoid an EMBARRASSING parliamentary defeat.

How times change.

But why SHOULD people except to have a separate say on this subject, separate that is from the NORMAL run-of-the-mill say that people get in our REPRESENTATIVE Democracy, where for the last couple of decades they have expressed their total indifference on the subject by conspicuously not electing a single UKIP MP to Parliament.

Most people are not well informed on all the subjects that Parliament legislates on. That's why we elect REPRESENTATIVES so that they can be properly informed and look into the details for us.

And yet, and yet, and yet…

Does anyone REALLY believe that that is a true description of our Members of Parliament?

And don't we really think that the reason UKIP don't have any MPs is because the electoral system is horribly rigged in favour of mainly the two over-represented Parties with a slight side-order of massively underrepresented Liberal Democrats and no/virtually no representation for other Parties?

And when it comes down to it, aren't we supposed to TRUST the people whether they are well-informed or not, and who are we – Westminster bubble elite – to SAY that the people are well-informed or not?

It's all very funny to have a laugh at the wingnut fringe of the Conservatory Party wailing and gnashing its teeth and tearing themselves apart when finally given an excuse to vent their frustrations about Mr Balloon – because let's face it, this IS about Mr Balloon, and the fact that he made them bury all their Nasty Party tendencies and STILL didn't win them an election, and that they're convinced that (in spite of all the evidence of successive election defeats in 2001 and 2005) they could have taken an overall majority if only they'd been MORE RIGHT WING.

(If the pie-faced lummox wasn't such a self-satisfied nincompoop you could almost feel sorry for him. Almost. Thanks to the Coalition, he might actually have a chance of being a decent Prime Monster, but his Party will never forgive him for it. Though if he HADN'T formed the Coalition they'd have never forgiven him for that either! Sometimes, as Mr Balloon proved in the election, you just can't win. But then he did WANT the job!)

But what if the loonies are RIGHT?

Parliament, and by large majorities in ALL THREE BIG PARTIES (and technically in the Green one too), kind of just voted to tell the people to SOD OFF!

I REALLY don't see how this is going to make things better.

It LOOKS undemocratic. It LOOKS like MPs are conceding the case that a referendum would be unwinnable (which it probably is!). And it LOOKS like we’ll be getting wall-to-wall Nigel Farrago telling us that we are being denied our basic rights to shoot ourselves in both feet with a pitchfork. Or something.

Is it any wonder that politicians have lost the trust of the electorate aka THEIR BOSSES?

Here's a CURIOUS COINCIDENCE about the number SEVENTY-NINE: seventy nine is the number of Conservatory backbenchers who voted against Mr Balloon AND seventy-nine is the year to which one of their leading lightweights, Mr Jacob Rees-Moggadon, wants to turn the clock back. Specifically EIGHTEEN-seventy-nine – the year in which he was accidentally pickled in formaldehyde only to be revivified again in the twenty-first century.

So HOW, can anyone please tell me, has it come to pass that this unreconstructed antediluvian fogey is able to stand in the House of Commons and pass himself off as the authentic MAN-OF-THE-PEOPLE?

Good grief I feel awkward saying this because I think that the benefits of being IN Europe are almost immeasurable and the consequences of voting to leave unimaginably dire (and they wouldn't have us back in if we changed our minds after a year out in the cold) and yet I still think that we would lose a referendum. But I might be WRONG.

If we want to win trust back, we need to show a bit of trust ourselves first.

But why should it be up to the Frozen Fogey to decide when we turn the country upside-down?

Given that the outcome of the current Eurozone crisis will almost certainly require a FUNDAMENTAL rethink of the Union, and a MAJOR renegotiation of treaties – and the Prime Monster as good as said as much in his speech at the start of the referendum debate – would it not have been as wise – or at least, better POLITICS – to ACCEPT the motion IN PRINCIPLE but with the reasonable amendment that the promised referendum would take place ONLY once the Euro situation was resolved so that people knew what they were actually voting on.

Because (…and it's in the Coalition agreement, the Conservatory and Liberal Manifestos and the words of the front benches of all three main parties…) THAT'S WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN ANYWAY!

But in the longer term, I think we really need to WEAN ourselves OFF this habit of calling for one-off referendums.

I really do.

We are in favour of EMPOWERING people and referendums, while they're GREAT for Conservatories who want to wave their electoral willies about, and for governments that want to duck decisions or kick them into the long grass, are actually one of the WORST ways of making people empowered.

Look at the AV referendum: the turnout was pathetic. Look at the confusion that arose among people who wanted PR but not AV. They're votes are being CLAIMED by the anti-reform dinosaurs, where actually AV wasn't reform ENOUGH! How has the AV referendum properly represented the will of ANYONE? Apart from the reactionaries?

Referendums LOOK like huge exercises in democracy, but actually it's all a TRICK, an enormous game of FIND THE LADY. You know, pick a card, any card… from these TWO I am offering you…

The public do NOT get input into policy. At best, they get an EITHER/OR question (or in this case an EITHER/OR/OTHER question) over which of the ALREADY DECIDED policies will be implemented.

By their very nature, referendums are DIVIDE-AND-CONQUER. Rather than a synthesis of good ideas, they promote cynical attempts to crush opposing points of view. Explanation and understanding are side-lined in the exchange of soundbites, and if knowledge is power then that ACTIVELY REDUCES people's control over outcomes. They INFANTILISE the public, by saying that all they can cope with is a simple binary decision, when most people handle far more sophisticated decisions all the time.

These issues are TOO COMPLICATED to reduce to a simple yes/no question. Even the "X Factor" allows more sophisticated voting than THAT!

They need NUANCE. But as we've seen, people do not DO nuance.

Remember, the Liberal Democrats plans for constitutional reform were never a single yes/no referendum. Not even for PR. We were and remain in favour of a Constitutional Convention where people together would develop the constitution and voting system. And THAT is the sort of model we should be looking for: town hall meetings, drop in shops, volunteer committees, suggestion boxes. Policy should grow from the bottom up, not be imposed from the top down.

Which, ultimately, is the same problem we have with Europe. We need a movement to RECONNECT the people of Europe with the policy-makers and power-brokers in Brussels and Strasburg and, increasingly, Berlin.

We need Europe to listen to her people, and the people to feel a part of Europe, not apart from Europe.

And no referendum is ever going to achieve that!
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Day 3943: THE SCARY JANE ADVENTURES: The Man Who Never Was

2011-10-20T12:30:00.000+01:00

Tuesday:

This wasn't how we'd have wanted it to end; we didn't want it to end. But if it had to end here, it was a good story to go out on: funny, moral, encapsulating the series' entire philosophy that the universe is wonderful, and by good fortune all Sarah Jane's family together at the end. (Except the dog!)

I read one person praising Sarah Jane because she "fought aliens and saved the world" and thought that was actually so wrong, so literally backwards. Because, as this episode proved, Sarah Jane was someone who fought the world and saved aliens.

Actually, I'm really glad that they did this story, getting it in just in time, because it's actually the first time in twenty-seven adventures where the main villain is unambiguously a human. We've had human accomplices before (e.g. "Warriors of Kudlak") or humans corrupted by an alien power (such as Russ Abbott's impressive turn in "Secret of the Stars") or acting bad under the influence of the Trickster (in "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?" or "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith" or even Sarah Jane herself in "The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith"). But the nearest we've had to an actual human baddie before was in "Mark of the Berserker" and that was Clyde's dad possessed by an alien device.

(And yes, we went through the whole series to check: Bane, Slitheen, Gorgon, Uvodni (Kudlak and his Empress), Trickster, Slitheen (again) and Xyloc; Sontaran, meteor entity, ~~Mandragora Helix~~ Ancient Lights, Clyde's dad!, Trickster (again), Bane (again) and Sontaran (again); Veil, Ship, Trickster (yet again), a ghost that turns out to be an entity from a distant galaxy, (deep breath) living paint made accidentally by Leonardo from a sentient meteor (yes, all right all right, The Mona Lisa), Blathereen; Extra-dimensional entity, Veil (again), claw Shansheeth (aka Muppet Vultures), robots, um… tricky… we don't know who the shopkeeper is (or his parrot, the Captain) and he's not really the villain anyway, Qetesh; fleshkind and metalkind, entity trapped in a totem pole, and at last a human!)

Actually, reviewing that list, it seems that you are more likely to be genuinely evil if you look human, or at least if you're pretending to look (or sound) human (especially if you're really a chunk of rock).

Of course, you can make excuses – since aliens aren't supposed to come to Earth, any that do may be a bit on the nefarious side already; or, we only see the thrilling adventures, missing out all those times where Sarah Jane and the Scooby Gang just have tea and poetry with a visiting traveller (well… aside from in their very first story!) – and given the Earth-bound nature of the show, the SJAs have got a lot more excuse for "invader of the week" stories than the parent series (where Russell's monster-obsession has nearly tipped the series over into a xenophobic crusade, with only episodes like "Planet of the Ood" and "Midnight" standing up for the "humans can be monsters" point of view). And it's not like there haven't been any nice aliens (a star poet; Captain Tybo of the Judoon; even Mr Dread turned out to be moderately on our side), but it was good to see the series firmly placing itself on the side of "not all strangers are bad".

(And coming on top of "The Curse of Clyde Langer" with its strong "homeless people are people too" subplot, it certainly seems season five is, or would have been, the "message" season. Done well – and it was done well – that's not a bad thing.)

James Dreyfus is rather wonderfully nasty, and more importantly, wonderfully petty as Mr Harrison, the human creep who wants to use alien slaves and a bit of alien hypnosis to cheat people into buying his nasty iPad knock-off.

Oh, yes, the plot involves an elusive genius performing solo at the launch of his revolutionary "device"… it's a timely piece of satire on the late Steve Jobs, all the more remarkable for having been recorded a year ago.

(And the same applies to Tat's observation that the steampunk-powered Serf hologram shows up the ridiculousness of a thing like Doctor Who's Tesselector… somehow getting the satirical digs in before Moffat wrote the conclusion to his death of the Doctor arc. It's another of those continuity errors in the real world.)

And of course "Mr Serf" (played with hilarious abandon by Mark Aiken – "no! proper smile, not sexy smile!") "Mr Serf" turns out to be operated by Serfs!

The Light Sculptors or to be honest Cyclops/Jawas were rather lovely – yes there was Dan Starkey back again, this time out of his Sontaran tights though – managing to be both sympathetic victims and quite funny. I don't care how obvious it was that the monsters were victims not villains (and to be fair, they did quite well disguising that for the first episode), it was a nice reversal and, as I say, about time.

And I should also say what a delight it was to see Peter Bowles turning up as Sarah Jane's old editor and basically just being charming all over the place. Like Nigel Havers a couple of years back, or Ronnie Corbett in the Comic Relief special, or Samantha Bond back in the pilot, or many others, this series has managed to get so many top notch actors, stars I should say, who ought to have been well out of its league.

And it's got to be because this really is the true inheritor of the mantle of classic "Doctor Who". It's not just the half-hour time-slots; it's not just that it's flagrantly done on a budget – achieving the extraordinary in the teeth of having no money just as the old series did; not having money to burn the way twenty-first century "Who" seems to. It's because this series has heart. It has joy. It has success.

Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Rani, and Maria before, time and again they unambiguously win. Too much new "Doctor Who" has concentrated on "the cost", "the price the Doctor has to pay". It's made the Doctor almost a selfish character, as he cuts himself off more and more. Sarah Jane has had almost exactly the opposite trajectory. She starts off alone, in a self-imposed internal exile, determined that if she can't have the Doctor she'll have no one. And gradually, between them, Maria and Luke and then Clyde and Rani open her up to the possibilities of family, and she reconnects herself to the world.

Yes, there are consequences. The kids learn and grow up. Maria moved to America; Luke went to university; Clyde and Rani look like they really are getting together ("Clani" shippers everywhere swooning with joy when the series itself made them canon). Everyone in the Sarah Jane Adventures changes – even K-9 and Mr Smith. But "consequences" doesn't mean things have to get worse. Luke and Sky's relationship goes from fearful and resentful to loving acceptance over the course of two episodes, a microcosm of the series as a whole.

In a way it's entirely appropriate that her last story should feature her old editor, a connection to the time when she was entirely defined by her job. Because for Sarah Jane, consequences mean more connections to people, complications, developments, evolution… in short, a life.

And that is the adventure that continues… forever.

I've not been very good at reviewing every Sarah Jane Adventure as they've come along, but holed up at home with an icepack wrapped around my swollen ankle, CBBC were broadcasting their "Ultimate Sarah Jane" season, and I watched most of "The Lost Boy" through "Mark of the Berserker" and you know what? They really stand up to repeated viewing. So I think we'll be going back to the beginning and watching the series through and I'll try and fill in some of those stories I didn't review first time around. Even the one with the Mona Lisa.
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Day 3926: DOCTOR WHO: Crisis on Timey Wimey Earth!

2011-10-18T13:00:00.000+01:00

Saturday:

Rule One: The Moffster Lies.

It's funny how many reviews for this have taken longer to come out. Life, obviously, got busy for a lot of us, but that also means that we let it.

In part I think that's got to be people rocking back on their heels thinking: "how the hell do I respond to that?"

I suppose the obvious, if important, thing to say is that Andrew is right: this was a magic trick, a conjuror's illusion, where almost the entire episode is an elaborate misdirection to keep our eye away from the fundamental bait-and-switch con on the beach at Lake Silencio.

Let's not suggest that it isn't a very good distraction. The idea of time zones colliding as history starts to implode is brain-bendingly intriguing; the visual imagery of steam trains and pterodactyls and pyramids is mind-blowingly spectacular; the development of any sense of consequence of all this is… soul-crushingly absent.

Churchill, for example, is present as apparently Roman Emperor and Holy Roman Emperor (two completely different crowns, separated by a thousand years of history, but you can sort of get away without doing the research if "all of history is happening at once"). But he vanishes completely from the narrative the moment that Pond, Amelia Pond enters. In other words, he serves no narrative purpose beyond prompting the Doctor to supply expository flashbacks. That and because Ian McNeice is a great character and much more fun than having David Cameron asking the Doctor to explain why the Coalition seems to be trapped in an Eighties time-warp.

We barely pause for breath and we're into the Doctor effectively waterboarding a Dalek and then breaking the Tesselector crew's spaceship. Again. Last time they met, he had Amy force them to abandon ship (and one wonders how they got back aboard without being killed by their own robot anti-bodies) and this time he fritzes the thing with a wave of his screwdriver. And after this the captain still lets him borrow it to get incinerated on a lake in Utah.

(Okay, let's assume that he time-jumps the Tesselector out of the hastily-arranged Viking funeral, but even so…)

Of course, the Tesselector crew do seem to think that they're the good guys. Even though the Doctor clearly thinks they're a bunch of schmucks. As he says to them in "Let's Kill Hitler": "You use time travel to punish dead people" and "I'd ask who you think you are, but it's fairly obvious".

In Dungeons & Dragons terms, I'd have said the Tesselector crew are "lawful good" whereas the Doctor is "chaotic good". But really, they're not even that. Their mission is pointless. And they're dangerously bad at it. Neither of which qualify them as higher than "wandering monster".

I assume, though, that every single person watching groaned on seeing the explanation of the Tesselector in the "previously" sequence, as it immediately said "and this is how he gets out of it". Having them appear as one link in the chain of the Doctor's mini-Bond adventure (like the opening of "Diamonds are Forever") where he traces the Silence nearly double-bluffed us into thinking that we'd guessed wrong after all and that Moffat had something cleverer in mind, though. Ah well.

It is unkind and, I think, wrong to suggest that Moffat thinks chess is too dull for television without explosions and shit, since this clearly has the whole scene backwards. The point is that the Silence's agent Gantok has to be in peril of his life. Moffat's joke is to have him imperilled by something as harmless and as connected to the lives of schoolkids watching as a chess match. I bet the chess club has never felt so cool, so good on Moffat for that.

And then from Bond to Indiana Jones and another design triumph for Michael Pickwoad – boy has he been the hero of this series – with the tomb of the Seventh Transept and all those skulls. That would have been unwatchable for me as a child; I was deeply afraid of skulls and I'd have totally lost it.

This of course marks the point where we've totally abandoned science fiction for horror fantasy.

Nothing about those skulls makes sense in a traditional scientific world. Never mind my hand-waving attempts to explain the headless monks back in "A Good Man Goes to War"; clearly this is done by magic. The monks may very well "behead you alive", as the head of Dorium Maldovar puts it, but beheading is pretty invariably fatal. There are some deep theological questions about whether your soul – should such a thing exist – hangs around with your mortal remains awaiting the Last Trump or skips straight to Judgement Day, but I'm fairly sure that no one outside of a ghost story suggests that it can animate your leftovers. Particularly not once the useful bits like muscle and cartilage have rotted away! Doctor Who's had walking dead quite often – but almost invariably with an alien explanation.

But remember that this is a ghost story, one being told to Churchill by the Doctor. Churchill himself scoffs at it, and, as we will see, we may have reason to believe that the Doctor is making all this up.

However, the imagery of a tomb of living dead is entirely in keeping with the theme of the episode.

I was almost tempted to point out that Moffat's "all history in collision" is entirely populated by dead people (also pterodactyls) but thought that that would be unkind to several breakfast TV presenters. Nevertheless, it's true that the significant figures we see – Dickens, Churchill, Dr Malokeh, and of course Amy and Rory and even River back in "Silence in the Library" – have all died.

The Doctor, caught between life and death by River's actions, is himself in Limbo, which is of course the outer circle of Hell, at least according to Dante. So who else but the dead should he expect to see populating his personal purgatory?

So the first half of the story is telling us two things: first that this is a story, one that the Doctor is telling us and it may not all be true; and second that it is about perspectives on the dead who might not actually be dead.

It would all be terribly clever if the "get out of dead free card" that the Doctor is going to play wasn't so utterly cackhanded.

But never mind that. You could, in fact, easily describe this one show as the traditional two parts of a season finale cut-and-shut into a single episode: the bit with Churchill in Roman-meets-Victorian-meets-Twenty First Century-meets-Prehistoric London and all the flashbacks being the first part; the stuff with River and Silence in the pyramid forming the second.

Whether that's a triumph of economy of writing or a sign of paucity of plot I will leave as an exercise for the reader.

The Eleventh Hour boys pointed out that Mr Moffat has a near-pathological fear of what we might call the "resolution episode": all the fun is in the set-up of the spectacular finale, pouring everything into a fantastic "now, get out of that" cliff-hanger; after which the actual getting out of that is an inevitable letdown.

Last year, the Grand Moff avoided this by having "The Big Bang" be a completely different story to "The Pandorica Opens", almost a completely different genre.

Here he goes one step further and bends over backwards to have nothing but spectacular cliff-hangers (the soothsayer is the Doctor… gasp; there are hundreds of Silence hanging from the ceiling… gasp; River in an eyepatch… gasp; etc) and then filling in the back story to how we got there afterwards.

All of which is all the more frustrating when we thought that Moffat was the man who could do resolution.

Russell T, famously, infamously, would leap to "with one bound he was free" by pulling god-like powers out of someone's bottom and covering with a lot of hand waving, tugging on the heart strings and turning the Murray Gold up to eleven.

(Most egregiously, the "and you're all dead" solution to the cliff-hanger in "Rise of the Cybermen" and the "nahh, I think I won't" cop-out to the regeneration crisis of "The Stolen Earth", though the void-vacuum-cleaner of "Doomsday" reused to get rid of the Cyberking in "The Next Doctor" and Dalek-geddon by supertemp – "Journey's End" again – come close.)

But Moffat, particularly in "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" (but also "The Girl in the Fireplace" and, obviously "Blink") demonstrated a talent for writing a complicated and intriguing set-up that was, like the best magic tricks, or more pertinently, the best mystery writing, just as good once you'd seen the conclusion. A well-delivered resolution to a mystery is a joy to behold and even rewards rewatching when you can see how the "trick" is being done, but the key to it is that the "oh, it's obvious" should only occur to the viewer after it's been explained to them, like Watson and all those "elementary" observations of Holmes.

What is becoming apparent is that that sort of plotting does not scale up to season arc length.

Having set up multiple interconnected mysteries, what Moffat has tried to do is keep the amount of material that the audience need to hold in their heads to understand any one set of explanations to a minimum (essentially to no more than can reasonably be stuck in a "previously on…"). He's done this by compartmentalising each "answer" to its own episode. This can result in occasionally bizarre decisions, like the one to keep the Silence out of "A Good Man Goes to War", making the motivations of Madam Kovarian impenetrable to anyone watching the episode because that episode was about answering the "who is River Song" question not the "who are the Silence" question. And of course fatally compromising the audience's sympathies with Amy by having her emotional response to Melody's kidnapping (grief, anger, murder) confined only to the 'relevant' stories, making her seem like an uncaring bimbo in otherwise fine episodes in between.

Seen as a whole, it's possible to work out what was supposed to be going on, but that doesn't make the individual episodes any more satisfying. Like constructing a Frankenstein's monster out of body parts, just sticking the bits together doesn't bring it to life.

Still, what are the questions we can now answer? Mike Taylor comes up with an excellent, though not exhaustive, list:

1. why the Doctor had to die;

2. why River had to be the one to do it;

3. why she had to do it in the form of an Impossible Astronaut;

4. why there was a Silent there;

5. why Present-Day River missed Old River with five shots from point-blank range;

6. why she said “of course not” after missing;

7. what the Doctor and the Astronaut said to each other;

8. how the Doctor could avoid death when Canton told us “That most certainly is the Doctor. And he is most certainly dead”; and

9. what is the “first question” that the Silence believe must never be asked.

Despite what Mike says, I think we can actually answer all of these questions, so let's have a go.

1. why the Doctor had to die
"Why did the Doctor have to die?" actually contains two questions: the first is "why did somebody want the Doctor to die (and who were they)?" and the second is "why didn't the Doctor avoid dying?"

The first is definitely answered: the people who want the Doctor dead are indeed the Silence, and Madam Kovarian works for them. However, contrary to the impression given by her line in "A Good Man Goes to War" about their "long and bitter war", this isn't (or at least isn't just) about revenge for his genocidal act in "Day of the Moon".

The real reason they want him dead is because there is something seriously deadly about his name and they want to prevent him ever answering the question "Doctor Who?" (see question nine)

The second is, in some ways, trivial: it's like watching part two of "The Caves of Androzani" and asking "why doesn't the Doctor avoid sticking his hand in that Spectrox nest?" He can't because he's already done it.

What makes the question slightly less trivial, of course, is the fact that he knows what is going to happen before the fact. In fact, the only reason that he is there on the beach is because he knows it's where he's going to be.

He is, essentially, trapped by a predestination paradox.

And this is presumably why the Silence in the White House loos gave Amy the post-hypnotic orders to tell the Doctor what he must know – that she is pregnant – and what he must never know – that he's going to die.

(That's a hell of a Cluedo conclusion, though, isn't it: the Silence, in the White House loo, with the predestination paradox.)

As a Lord of Time, and a defender of the ongoing continuity, the Doctor is kind of sworn to make sure that what is supposed to happen does happen.

If the fifth Doctor knew that he'd die of Spectrox toxaemia before episode one of "Androzani" would he still stick his hand in the Spectox nest? The stupid nobility of the fifth Doctor's character suggests that he would.

But as a natural rebel, the Doctor is as likely to reject the inevitable because he believes in free will. We've seen him encounter a predestination paradox and tell it to get stuffed before, in "Day of the Daleks".

Which is why we come to the "fixed point".

The trap that the Silence set isn't just to tell the Doctor the where and when of his death; it's to make that point a fixed point.

And to be fair to Moffat, he's not playing fast and loose with the rules of fixed points as we've seen them in the series. The rules as we know them come from "The Fires of Pompeii" and that very story shows us that the actual events of the fixed point can turn out to be different to what they appear. In that story, the Doctor believes he cannot avert the destruction of Pompeii because it's a fixed point; but it turns out that he actually could, he does still have a choice, and he – and Donna – choose to maintain the original history.

So the Doctor's sneaky "getting out of being dead" here doesn't break any rules because he doesn't change the perception of what is happening.

That is actually more important than the understanding that the fixed point was "always" the Tesselector that was getting shot. The Silence – not to mention all those witnesses in orbit who River unwittingly summoned up with her timey-wimey distress beacon – all think they see the Doctor die. So that is what history records. And as we will see, history is a very unreliable narrator.

2. why River had to be the one to do it and 3. why she had to do it in the form of an Impossible Astronaut
Dorium here gives us the clue. Lake Silencio is a still point in time. Which means, apparently, you can make a fixed point in time there. Notice that, you can make a fixed point. Making fixed points in time sounds very much like a Time Lord power.

The Silence are building a weapon to use against the Doctor. But River isn't the weapon; the suit is. River isn't there as the brains of the suit; she's there as part of the engine. The Silence are using her to fix the still point so that this means that this event can only happen in the one way and that no one can go round rewriting it. She is, essentially, there as a shield for the suit against the Doctor's timey-wimey powers.

Why doesn't the Doctor just avoid being killed on the beach?

What has been increasingly clear since 2005 is that the modern series sees the Doctor as possessed of a Time Lord super-power to see and to an extent manipulate the entire probability-space around him. That is, he can look at the world and see all possible outcomes and to a degree choose which ones happen. Essentially, he as the super-power of coincidence. Or, if you want to be even more meta-textual, the writers are always on his side, and will write him a get-out clause.

Why would this be getting meta-textual? Have you seen the answer to question nine yet?

So how do you stop him doing that?

Well the obvious answer is to have another Time Lord running interference for you.

All of which begs the question, how much is River, with her backwards timeline – beautifully straightened out in the last ever (or if there's one at Christmas last-but-one ever) Confidential; like that version of "Memento" on the DVD that reorders it chronologically – how much is River part of the trap.

Not the Silence's trap for the Doctor; the Doctor's trap for the Silence.

Remember "The Day of the Moon" and River's massacre of the Silence at the end, while the Doctor stands around uselessly zapping them with flashes from his screwdriver? It's really not her fault. I mean really not her fault. The Silence raised her and trained her as the ultimate assassin. And then the Doctor stuck her in front of a telly and played that clip of a Silence ordering her "you should kill us all on sight". So she does.

The Doctor doesn't turn his screwdriver into a weapon against the Silence. He turns his wife into a weapon against the Silence.

Compared to this, anything that he does to Ace in "The Curse of Fenric" is charmingly innocent.

4. why there was a Silent there
The Silent witness (sorry, it was irresistible) was there to makes sure that their plan went down the way they wanted it to. And of course, the Doctor needed one of them there so that he could be sure that they thought that it went down the way they wanted it to.

5. why Present-Day River missed Old River with five shots from point-blank range
Well of course what Mike clearly means is "present day River" missed "young River" not "Old River". And if she'd actually shot her younger self it would have caused a grandfather paradox. With enough paradoxes on that beach already, it's probably safest to assume physics or the armour plating of the suit deflected her bullets.

Or if you prefer, then she subconsciously chose to shoot wide. Or even the Silence programming her to miss. Or ultimately, the "it was part of the act" explanation, which brings us to…

6. why she said “of course not” after missing
Because she is now able to figure out that it really was her in the suit. The Silence clearly mess with her memory to an enormous degree and even the Doctor tells her she probably won't remember committing the murder. There would always have been a gap in her life, an unexplained blackout covering the period when she is supposed to have murdered the Doctor, and only by seeing it happen can she realise that after all she did it.

Except of course that this probably falls into the category of "a clever lie" to convince the watching Silence that this is what she is thinking.

It is clear that, like her mother Amy, River is able to remember the events of alternative timelines, because otherwise she wouldn't be able to tell Amy what the Doctor really whispered in her ear.

As we've said above, this seeing alternative timelines is a Time Lord power, one that "A Good Man Goes to War" lets us infer is connected with exposure to the Untempered Schism; or in Amy's case, the very similar crack in the universe in the wall of her bedroom. In fact, Amy can remember alternative timelines because of a childhood growing up next to a crack in the universe even though that childhood itself now took place in an alternative universe since the Doctor retrospectively fixed the crack in "The Big Bang".

Of course it's quite possible, likely even, that that childhood exposure to – let's say it – artron energy didn't just give Amy a touch of Time Lordly power but mutated her chromosomes just enough to act as a starting point for her daughter's evolution into human+.

Amy's memory powers crop up again in this episode too, in fact are crucial to the Resistance understanding that time has gone wrong. Churchill sensed that time was out of joint – like Shakespeare he's got that bit of human genius that, at least in Doctor Who, lets some people see that little bit further – but he lacked the understanding that Amy has to comprehend what was really wrong.

It's fascinating, though, that Amy admits she has to keep drawing and redrawing her memories in order to keep remembering them. In effect, the entire universe has become the Silence.

And notice, also, that she gets bits wrong. Of course, her remembered Rory isn't right, even when he's right in front of her. But funnily enough, her drawings include a Dalek and even though it's red, it's a Time War Dalek, not a New Paradigm Dalek (although there is an NPD there too, though only its dome and neck – and while I'm on the subject, the dying Dalek unlucky enough to encounter the Doctor is carefully shot from only the "shoulders" up. Oh, and it's clearly grey, too).

7. what the Doctor and the Astronaut said to each other
As it turns out, they had rather more time to chat than was previously appreciated. Up to and including an improvised wedding ceremony.

Although, as with the Doctor's death, perception is everything. If the Doctor says "this is a wedding ceremony" and the universe is watching and believes him, then it is a wedding ceremony, even if he did just make it up on the spot as an excuse to whisper to River the one thing that would convince her to stop foiling his plan.

Did I mention "The Curse of Fenric"?

8. how the Doctor could avoid death when Canton told us “That most certainly is the Doctor. And he is most certainly dead”
Well, clearly because it was a big fat fib. Aided and abetted by the older River scanning the "dead" Tesselector with her vortex manipulator and then lying through her teeth about the results.

If there's a disappointment this year… no, that's way too much of a hostage to fortune. But one disappointment this year was that the TARDIS crew didn't run into Canton Everet Delaware III for another adventure.

Morgan Shepherd's line "I won't see you again, but you'll see me" obviously refers to the events of 1969, but seemed to promise more, that that wouldn't be the only time in their future but his past that they would see him. And Mark Shepard's laconic portrayal of the younger Canton III (gay, American, secret agent – he's almost the anti-Harkness) was a nice addition to the generally overwrought mix in the TARDIS.

Still, there's always next year.

9. what is the “first question” that the Silence believe must never be asked
And here is where the meta-text becomes the text, as it were. Which means I'm going to start talking about Lawrence Miles.

Because, in terms of the Doctor Who universe, "Doctor Who?" is literally the first question ever asked in the series since it appears in the opening titles of "An Unearthly Child" before anything else happens.

Although admittedly it's missing the question mark and people – and by people I include psychotic proto-internet app Wotan and script editor Gerry Davis – often mistake "Who" for his name.

And on a meta-textual level, the Silence are right, because an answer, any answer, to "Doctor Who?" is the end of the Doctor Who universe.

It isn't as though Moffat hasn't been working towards this for a while, though. It first appears explicitly in "The Girl in the Fireplace", where Madam de Pompadour – passing the time between laying the groundwork for a century of European wars by playing the flirty minx – discovers that the Doctor's name is "more than just a secret".

"The Fires of Pompeii" (again) goes further when the seers' duel sees the revelation that the Doctor's name is hidden within the Medusa Cascade. Three years ago, I was speculating that Davros' new Dalek Empire would end up trapped in the Cascade by the younger Doctor and that he would use his name to seal it. So the revelation of the Doctor's name would unleash the full might of the resurrected Dalek Empire on the universe. That, of course, is not to be.

However, last year's conclusion as good as came out and said that the Doctor is made out of stories [link deleted].

Amy remembering the stories was enough to summon the Time Lord back into existence.

But beings made out of stories… we've seen those before. They're called "conceptual entities" and they appear in Lawrence Miles' "Alien Bodies" and all the following Faction Paradox works, most especially in the form of the Celestis in "The Book of the War" and "The Taking of Planet Five".

The Celestis are Time Lords who turn themselves into ideas, stories if you will, in order to avoid the Time War. Ideas being notoriously difficult to kill.

By turning themselves into stories of gods and monsters, the Celestis believe they have made themselves unkillable, immortal, all powerful.

But there is a greater and more terrible idea/story at work in "The Book of the War", the thing that is more powerful, more terrible than any gods or monsters is the unknown. And this is the story of the Time Lords' enemy.

The never-spoken question that runs through the Time War stories of the BBC eighth Doctor range and the parallel Faction Paradox oeuvre is "Who is the enemy?"

Let me rephrase that: "Doctor Who?"

At the end of "The Wedding of River Song", the Doctor "steps back into the shadows"; he chooses to abandon his legend, his story, and make himself the unknown. Embracing his "death", he becomes – to borrow from the best – more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

If the Silence style themselves the guardians of history, then they are setting themselves up as the new Lords of Time.

And the Doctor has become… their enemy.

But let's just look at the question as Mike has posed it, because Mike's question is based on a misconception that's actually quite revealing.

The Silence don't believe that the question cannot be asked.

Remember, back in "Let's Kill Hitler" (or the "previously on…" pre-title sequence): the Tesselector records told us that the core belief of the Silence was "Silence will fall when the question is asked." But later in the episode, Dorium tells us that this is a mis-translation; a more accurate one would be "Silence must fall".

So we know that we can't necessarily rely on the version of history we are told by the Tesselector.

For example, a thing – one on a long list – that could really have done with being spelled out: we only 'know' because the Tesselector crew tell us so that the Silence is a movement not a species – even though the Doctor himself refers to "the creatures that lead the Silence" (my emphasis).

It is important to remember that the Silence (the creatures) are memory-proof and therefore, bigger than that, they are history-proof. To the eyes of recorded history, and more to the point the Tesselector crew, the Silence are invisible. But their human servants are not. Madame Kovarian, Gideon Vandaleur, Mark Gatiss in a really big rubber chin… History can see these people doing things, following a set of orders given to them by invisible beings, and it looks very like they are following a religion.

Now think again about those scenes where the Doctor is explaining the plot to Churchill, in particular once he's noticed the first tally-mark appear on his arm. How can we be certain that he is telling Churchill the truth, given how particularly unwise that might be if there are forgotten Silence around to listen in?

And how do we know that that thing that the Doctor and River do on top of the pyramid is a wedding other than because the Doctor says it is?

These all point to the simple truth that the trope that Moffat is playing most heavily is "unreliable narrator".

Which brings us back to Rule One.

The reason why the cheat is most annoying is that Moffat told us explicitly – both in the series via the mouthpiece of Canton and in person on Doctor Who Confidential – that he hadn't. And of course it was a lie.

The reason why the cheat was tiresome was because – unlike the faux regeneration in "The Stolen Earth" – we never believed that the Doctor was truly going to be really and permanently dead. The cop-out in "Journey's End" was an appalling betrayal of the audience's investment in the drama and the narrative for the very reason that we could, just slightly, believe that it might be true. In contrast, this was merely a rubbish way of achieving something that was entirely expected.

Of course, Moffat has said that next year will be much more stand-alone episodes, much less arc-heavy.

And I don't believe him.

Rule One.

Because it ought to be fairly obvious that he's thinking – as a writer – in terms of a trilogy. He would, almost congenitally could never tell a story in two seasons. No one ever tells a story in two. The plan would always have been for three.

Season (Thirty) one: sets up Amy's story and lays the groundwork for the bigger mysteries.

Season (Thirty) two: answers to the questions who is River and who are the Silence which actually only show how much trouble the Doctor is in.

Season (Thirty) three: concludes the war.

Inform, educate and entertain.

All subject, of course, to how much fun Matt Smith is having in the TARDIS, because the Fields of Trenzelor at the Fall of the Eleventh is so his last story.

Not to get ahead of ourselves, of course – and who would want to when Matt is far and away the most brilliant thing in the series at the moment – but when he does go, is anyone else seeing The Fades/Psychoville's Daniel Kaluuya as possible replacement?

One last thing to say. In spite of it all, in spite of the tediously predictable cop-out of the Doctor's "death", in spite of the dreadful lack of development for the super-abundant ideas… that final scene, with the music building, and Dorium – furious, outraged, insane? – bellowing the series title over and over, and Matt Smith looks straight into the camera with his most enigmatic expression.

I loved it.

Next Time… Christmas in Wartime, in a creepy old house with Outnumbered's Claire Skinner and the awesome Bill Bailey. And Alexander Armstrong in a WW2 uniform. Harsh. Isn't it.

Day 3939: Fox Off

2011-10-14T18:00:00.000+01:00

Friday:

And so farewell then, Fantastic Dr Fox, the Indefensible Secretary, who's resigned following revelations about his Best Man.

It's been clear for a while that, whatever his capabilities, Dr Fox is an arrogant tool who thinks the rules don't apply to him, whether its collective responsibility and not leaking your letters to the Prime Monster during the spending review or the ministerial code that says you don't give your mates free access to your Ministry of Defence contacts and top secret diary.

Questions that will probably remain unanswered now surround Dr Fox's links with the dodgy charity "Atlantic Bridge" (aka the Special Committee for Electing Conservatory Rightwing Eejits or, er, "SpECTRE") and whether it was no more than an old fashioned Conservatory SLUSH FUND. Was the Defenceless Secretary secretly running a behind-the-scenes covert shadow-ministry in order to get round those tricky Civil Service rules and Freedom of Information requests?

It's not like those naughty Conservatories haven't got form trying that elsewhere.

What leaves a nasty taste in the mouth though is the way that that was all too COMPLICATED for the press to pursue. It was only when the hint of a juicy SEX SCANDAL was stirred into the mix (with no supporting evidence whatsoever) that the press pack went a-Fox hunting.

It seems that subverting the rules of democracy just isn't as interesting as the possibility that Mr Foxy might have been touched by "THE GAY!" or even worse, a bit of the BISEXUAL. I know we don't expect any better of our tabloids – though we ought to be able to! – but when even the The Today Programme starts salivating over the salacious – as Mr Humpy did on Wednesday this week – then something's gone very wrong with the meeja.

The speculation is already mounting about a reshuffle, as though who's in the Cabinet is Strictly Come Governing rather than a serious business.

Mr Balloon has – to his CREDIT – been pretty reshuffle-intolerant so far. And that's a GOOD THING because ministers ought to get on with learning the detail of their jobs rather than being swept cluelessly from department to department and letting the Sir Humphries retain the upper hand every time. It would be much better – much as we'd love to see Captain Paddy take over – for this to be a simple one-out-one-in for the Conservatories, just as it was for the Liberal Democrats when Mr David Outlaws fell on his sword last year.

Of course, it doesn't help that Oily Leftwin has chosen this morning to be caught having a "Hello Trees! Hello Flowers!" moment with his Cabinet papers.

Day 3934: Things Wot I Was Going to Write This Week

2011-10-09T19:30:00.000+01:00

Sunday:

Having a job is a good thing, I suppose (I'm a baby elephant; I wouldn't know!), but it doesn't half get in the way of Daddy Richard writing up my diaries!

It's a bit of a BUGGER though, wot with having spent last week taking pops at Hard Labour for talking rubbish, that this week the Conservatories have been giving me JUST AS MANY opportunities to mock, but daddy's had no time to write 'em up.

It all LOOKS a bit PRO-Conservatory. Ugh!

So here, to set the record a BIT straight, is a taste of what we've missed:

Day 3931: Mrs May and the Cat that Didn't Bark in the Night

Thursday:

Our Home Secretary, Mrs Theresa Nuts-in-May, gave a perfectly HORRID speech at the Conservatory Conference saying how much she wanted to oil the delegates' soft spots by abolishing the Human Rights Act, but managed to make a fool of herself with a story about a cat monster that turned out to be FICTION.

But there's a serious point too.

Her "complaint" about Human Right is that they "get in the way" of the Home Office doing "its job" by which she means: "whatever it wants to". Well, NEWSFLASH Mrs Nuts-in-May: THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO!

Human Rights law is the thing that defines our relationship with the STATE: it says what the state ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT do to people in its care (at least not without going through a proper procedure). That's things like "not kill you", "not torture you", "not lock you up for no reason".

And while we're on the subject, human rights are about our relationship with the state and NOT with other people. That would be CRIMINAL LAW.

So people saying "what about the human rights of so-and-so's victims" are talking HONK. It's NOT a "breach of human rights" to murder someone. It's a CRIME and it's called MURDER! And that's why we send murderers to JAIL.

You don't have to fulfil some arbitrary notion of "responsibilities" to receive your human rights (that's ANOTHER thing we have Hard Labour to "thank" for); you get them just for being alive because THAT'S how we say decent governments SHOULD behave.

You don't "give up" your human rights by breaking the criminal law; THAT'S why they're called INALIENABLE.

And one last thing, Mrs Nuts-in-May. It might be more CONVENIENT for you to deport terrorist subjects to foreign states where we have no friends and no controls, but PERSONALLY I'd much rather keep terrorist suspects WHERE I CAN SEE WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

And I'm sorry that you think DOING YOUR JOB makes doing your job harder.

Day 3930: Do You Understand the Paradox of Thrift? Neither Does the Prime Monster

Wednesday:

Mr Balloon was going to tell people to pay off their credit card bills until someone brighter than Master Gideon pointed out to him that the fabled "growth strategy" depends rather heavily on people spending their money on STUFF in shops and NOT vaporising it by clearing their debts.

If your debt is UNSUSTAINABLE (i.e. more than you can afford to keep paying for in the medium to long run) then OF COURSE you must control it and pay it down. Like wot the government are trying to do. (To a certain value of "paying down" given that we are actually adding MORE to the debt mountain faster than ever; we're just trying to add to it less faster than ever than Labour planned to do. If you see what I mean.)

But if your debts are under control then ACTUALLY the government would probably rather you kept on spending. A bit. Please.

Which brings me to…

Day 3928: Why Plan A Isn't Working. Why Plan B Wouldn't Work Either

Monday:

Astonishingly, the best speech of the week seems to have come from Master Gideon, with his upbeat, "we can do it together" mantra, suggesting that someone may have finally sat him down and told him that all the "we're doomed" dialogue may have been playing badly with CONFIDENCE in the economy.

Now, if we can just persuade him that that VAT rise was bonkers…

Really, though, there is a truth that no Chancer or Shadow Chancer will admit, which is that there is almost FLUFF ALL that he/she can do to stop the economy being in DOOMED mode.

I'm NOT saying it's gloom FOREVER. Something WILL come along. "The Next Big Thing". Whatever it is.

Look back at history and you will see that each period of recession comes to a turning point, a new idea or discovery or fresh resources, and people start to think that there is money to be made again and, almost by magic, they start to make money.

The early Thatcher recession ended when council houses started to be sold off. It wasn't Mrs T's PLAN, it wasn't in any manifesto, it was just a lucky strike that the wheeze seems to have started people making a FAST BUCK which in turn got the economy going. (Though it COULD equally have been something else, maybe the surge in confidence after winning the Falklands War.)

The nineties recession turned around after the Internet revolution. The dot-com collapse was turned around by the Federal Bank throwing open the taps of cheap credit (though that kind of deferred rather than prevented the crash, so we got a SUPER-CRASH in 2008).

And rather INFAMOUSLY the Great Depression is said to have been turned around when governments started rearming for another go at a World War.

So SOMETHING will come along.

But it's almost impossible to predict – let alone ENGINEER – what it IS.

You may recall that Mr Huhney-Monster has introduced the New Green Deal and is bringing in the Green Investment Bank and both of these ARE – at least in part – an effort to use the Green revolution as a kick-start for "the next big thing".

If it works, it's GENIUS. If it doesn't, you can't say we're not TRYING. But I bet lots of people WILL!

Day 3933: Appeal

Saturday:

Now, you might know (if you were paying attention during his conference speech) that Daddy Richard is trying to write a book. I know. Without my help! What does he think he's DOING?

He has convinced a couple of ~~mugs~~ volunteers who have agreed to have a bit of a read and tell him if it's any good at all. (To whom he's VERY grateful, and hopes they'll understand this is in no way about that!) Except, because they are excellent and busy people, they're a bit pressed for time actually to DO any reading.

So, if anyone would happen to fancy reading – including proofing and critiquing – a novella which daddy describes as "Casablanca if it were set during the Time War", then you might drop me a line and I will pass your message on.

He's a bit NEEDY so you'll have to be prepared to be NICE (but honest!).

Also, anyone who thinks they might be able to do some cover art...!

Fankooo!
.

Day 3919: DOCTOR WHO: Closing Time

2011-10-01T00:00:00.000+01:00

Saturday:

"A BABY ELEPHANT needs two GAY DADDIES who LOVE each other!"

Hooray! Hooray! Mr Gareth Roberts once again uses ME as inspiration for Dr Woo!

(Having previously had me as a PUB in "The Shakespeare Code"!)

Sorry Mr Gatiss, but Mr Gareth gets MY VOTE for next showrunner!

I wonder if he could be persuaded that Dr Woo should be a fluffy elephant…

While I brush up my photo for SPOTLIGHT, here is Daddy Richard's latest review.

Well, with that cliff-hanger, and Moffat's history, it's certainly not going to be River Song in the astronaut suit shooting the Doctor.

No doubt much of the shenanigans in "The Wedding of River Snog" will be about getting her out of and whoever else it is into that spacesuit in time for a…

"…this is where it gets complicated!"

…moment.

(My money, if you ask, is currently on the Doctor himself)

It was nice, though, wasn't it, of Gareth Roberts to write a forty-minute show just so that Moffat could have the last five minutes for a teaser for next week's season finale.

I do have to say special kudos to the director for the way that Francis Barber's Madame Kovarian appears, Cheshire-Cat-like, out of the shadows of whatever space-library River is studying in. First her mocking voice reciting the creepy nursery rhyme that Mark Gatiss wrote for "Night Terrors"; then just her pale pale face and wicked grin; then her slinky leather catsuit; and finally she steps forward into the light, just as the Silence materialise in similar style out of the darkness behind River.

And Alex Kingston is particularly good at doing the "oh my god! The Silence! What are they… [forgets] What are you talking about?" look.

As plots go, it does seem bafflingly over-complicated, though:

the Silence kidnap Amy from Twenty-First century Earth to Demon's Run in the Fifty-Second century in order to give birth to Melody…

…who they then take back to the Nineteen-Sixties and organise the entire Apollo programme to manufacture the spacesuit for her even though they must have access to fracking time travel technology and can just get one from anywhere in the future…

…and then they let little Mels escape to the Nineteen-Nineties to go and become young Amy's best friend and grow up together…

…so that at the ~~first~~ second (having inexplicably skipped Amy's wedding) opportunity she can hijack the TARDIS at gunpoint and make the Doctor take them to the Nineteen-Forties when she tries to kill him and then, for no adequately explored reason, changes her mind and saves him…

…after which he equally inexplicably dumps her (even more inexplicably is allowed to dump her by Amy and Rory) in some future time zone – although almost certainly, since she knows Dorium who dies at Demon's Run, not later than her own date of birth, so not strictly her native time either – where she becomes a student and eventually doctor of archaeology…

…and only at that point do the Silence drop by again with her old spacesuit and, we conclude, take her back to the Nineteen-Sixties again in order to have her kill the Doctor. Again.

Is Madam Kovarian is trying to outsmart Moffat himself, perhaps?

And why is the astronaut called "impossible" when, frankly, the whole plan is that the Silence have organised the space race so that 1969 is the earliest time that it would be "possible"?

Is it because River's head appears to be too large for the helmet in the CGI inset at the end? Or is that a cheap shot?

All this and no doubt much less will be made clear in the last episode of the series.

But, just as in "The God Complex", Moffat appears unable to tell his big story arc without intruding into other people's stories in blatant rather than subtle ways.

The fact that this story is very much about the Doctor having decided to go to face his death (or at least to go and try and cheat his way out of it) should be subtle enough a reference to the story arc without needing to have the Eye-Patch Lady almost literally making a song and dance about it.

Anyway, in the meantime we have a story that can't in all fairness be called a "Cyberman story" but one that does have Cybermen in it.

In a way, the Cybermen are completely appropriate for this adventure because, let's face it, they're a bit tired and past it.

Ironically, that has almost been their defining characteristic since they were introduced. The Cybermen of Mondas, who we first met in "The Tenth Planet", were always the living dead who had stuck around way past their sell-by date. And after their planet blew up, they were most often depicted as infiltrators and saboteurs, skulking around the Solar System hoping to infiltrate the sort of big space bases or space stations that the Sixties just knew were the future.

But as a metaphor, of course, they evolved as quickly as their appearance, from a paranoia about spare part surgery into Doctor Who's space commies – a, perhaps, necessary parallel to the Dalek space Nazis – the emotionless "other" seeking to undermine "our way of life" and turn us into them.

Maybe that's why the series since 2005 has found it so hard to use them effectively. With the fading of the Cold War, the collapse of communist Russia and the realignment of Red China as a sort of capitalist dictatorship, their underlying frisson has lost its edge.

Where the Daleks' representation of hate, bigotry, xenophobia and outright war remains an ever mutable but relevant threat, we no longer have quite the same existential fear of the communist infiltrator.

The nearest modern equivalent – if they even exist – is the home grown terrorist and they don't pose the same threat to our sense of self. Not least because they – be they separatist, or neo-Nazi, or religionist – self-define as other. So the terrorist bombers want to harm but not subsume us.

That was the quintessential threat of the Cybermen, and it's so odd how, in this age of individualism, that the loss of self has not been at the forefront of the Cyber stories, which have instead concentrated on the visceral, physical intrusion of – to put it crudely – having your brain scooped out and stuck in a tin can.

Really you have to blame Russell for this, because "Rise of the Cybermen" ought to have been a morality tale about consumer immortality, buying upgrades and "apps" for our physical bodies, but chickened out and muffed it. He almost pulled it back by having them be a metaphor for industrialisation or mechanisation in "The Next Doctor". But then there was that hilariously silly Cyberking.

So the new series stories have ended up trading on the Cybermen as iconic just because they are iconic.

Moffat has, actually, been even more guilty of this than Russell: having them turn up to fill out the crowd scenes in "The Pandorica Opens" (even though there shouldn't be any Cybermen – Mondasian or Cybus version – left in the universe by that point) and then having a whole legion of the beggars standing around waiting to be blown to bits by Rory in "A Good Man Goes to War" because, hey, if you want a big Star-Wars-y pre-credits explosion you better have someone baddass to blow up. Baddass and completely disposable.

(Though to be fair, the Cyberhead chasing Amy in "Pandorica" went a long way towards understanding what made them scary again.)

All of which is coming round to say that it is almost traditional that a Cybermen story won't be a very good story for the Cybermen.

And that Gareth is hanging a particularly shiny lamp on it by having them invade a shopping centre, of all places.

They invade a shopping centre because it's built on top of the crashed Cybership and that is just typical of the Cybermen's usual modus operandi. Just check out the "Doctor Who The Adventure Games" computer game "Blood of the Cybermen", out of which Gareth may be explicitly taking the piss. (Blood? Blood??!)

Given that the Cybus Cybermen didn't appear to use spaceships – just marching between dimensions, like you do – I suppose we can guess that these guys are leftover Mondasian/Telosian – i.e. native to our universe – Cybermen. Which means that their spaceship could have crashed during "The Invasion" (1970s ish) "The Tenth Planet" (1980s ish) or "Silver Nemesis" (1988, naturally) all of which see Cyberfleets destroyed in orbit – you see, they're always doing that sort of thing. Or they could be time travellers.

But if there's one thing about the Cyber-conversion process, it's that it really ought not to be very reversible. I can fully appreciate Gareth's desire for that "they're not really going to do that…" moment, but the price is letting Craig out of the Cybercontroller suit…

Yes, yes, it is a fat Controller, as per "Attack of the Cybermen"

…meaning that that fantastic sequence from "Pandorica" is now reduced to the amazing ziplock Cyberhead. Sigh.

And really, it could have been avoided. There are only a couple of things: one line of "begin full conversion" and a use of that whooshing/slicing knives sound effect they use to indicate the Cybbus scoop-and-serve Cyber-conversion. Drop those, and you could handwave about these Cybermen just having to connect up a controller to the brain machine because they're out of bits.

Does satirising the way that a classic monster has been undermined really justify further undermining them?

There isn't really even a cursory attempt to contrast the emotionlessness of the Cybermen with the emotional content of the story that Gareth is actually telling.

The crux of this story is that blokes don't listen to each other enough.

This is most obviously expressed when Craig (and baby) falls asleep on the sofa while the Doctor is delivering his deep and meaningful confession that he expects to die. But significantly, the Doctor does not listen to Craig either.

Because what Craig is saying is important, probably the most important thing and it's repeated in many different way throughout the story. In fact, it's so heavily stressed that it is almost as though Gareth is making his own case in reply to Moffat's thesis, as laid out in "A Good Man Goes to War" that the Doctor is distorting all of history, that his legend is too much, too powerful.

And what Craig says is this:

"It's not your fault, Doctor. You do good. "

The Doctor appears to have developed a death wish (again – see also Christopher Eccleston) this time based on the way that people around him have died or been left with shattered lives: Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and above all Melody.

But Craig is right: people are safer stood next to the Doctor, safer under the eruption than waiting to get hit by the consequences.

And it's not like they don't have a choice.

"Offer a child a suitcase of sweets and they'll take it," says the Doctor in "The God Complex", even as Rita is telling him he's got a God complex; "offer someone the universe and they'll take that too."

Well, who's to say they wouldn't be right to? Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and Melody: not a one of them would give up a second of what they gained by stepping into your mad old blue box. Not one second. All of time and space? Every star and every planet? Of course it's worth it. Of course it is.

In this equation, Doctor, we are all children. The TARDIS offered you all of time and space when she stole a Time Lord and ran away. And you took it.

But in the meantime, there's a lot of hilarity to be had with the bromance/gay agenda. The Doctor has a couple more nice fallible moments (he gets the shop lift working but hasn't worked out where the Cybermen are concealing the teleport; he assumes the ship is up in space when in fact it is buried down underground). And there is much fun with the return of the Cybermat.

It's a nice Cybermat too. Cute and then horrific. Though I notice they shy away from the suggestion – I think it's from "Bernice Summerfield: The Crystal of Kantos" – that the Cybermen make Cybermats out of humans that are too small for full conversion. I guess suggesting that the Cybermat had been someone else's baby was a bit too near the knuckle. Besides, its teeth are too big.

There were some nice turns from the guest cast. Jolly decent of Daisy Haggard to agree to do just two scenes, bookending the piece, and she was lovely in both. And all the staff in the store were lovely little character pieces, though I admit to sharing the slight disquiet that both Shona and George – the two black characters – got killed and cyber-converted and killed again at the end.

Special praise though to the wonderful Lynda Barron, lovely to see her in the show again too, as the sweet Val, with her noticing and her wonderful misconception of the "relationship" between the Doctor and Craig.

And then there was the cameo from Amy and Rory. Which was a shame. I mean lovely to see them, but the series couldn't even maintain the fiction that they'd left for just one week. Russell, if he'd still been in charge, when he had money to burn, of course, would have even changed the title sequence to Matt Smith and James Corden.

Though oddly, for me, this was the only thing to suggest a passage of time in the years rather than months. For Amy to have named the fragrance and come up with the advertising tag line, which she obviously has, then clearly a fragrance house has asked her to put her name/face to a product – like Kate Moss, Elizabeth Taylor or ahem Thierry Mugler (at which point I must declare an interest) – which means she must have become a successful and famous model. Which is a bit of a waste of her talents but at least shows her confidence has paid dividends and is a semi-logical progression from kiss-o-gram. But would presumably take time. At least a year from conceiving the fragrance, through testing to a full launch.

So time has passed for Amy and Rory to make a life, and time has passed for the Doctor to brood on his faults and change his coat.

Two hundred years, though? It's taken him two hundred years to bring himself to this point? Almost a fifth of his entire life? Really?

It makes the tenth Doctor's swanning about between "Waters of Mars" and "The End of Time", not to mention his protracted victory lap of companions, seem positively brisk.

It just doesn't seem credible. The whole of the season (and much of the tenth Doctor's arc as well) has been telling us that the Doctor just can't hack it on his own. The very last scene of "The God Complex" shows him destroyed to be alone in his beloved TARDIS. And all of this story is showing him as accepting, virtually serene. So how can it make sense that he's been putting this off for two centuries? He would have found someone else. He would have picked up more companions. Partners, I suppose we will have to call them now. He would have had more adventures. Look at him: he can't say "hello" to a baby without the Cybermen turning up!

And then to choose Craig Owens of all the people he's met to just drop in on. I mean why not Will Chandler from "The Awakening". Or Altos and Sabetha on the planet Marinus? Or Meglos? Or, to be honest, why not Susan?

He'd think of Craig because and really only because the adventure of "The Lodger" is recent. Which really it really isn't if this is two hundred years later. So obviously it's not.

Look, you can make of it whatever you want it to be, but for my personal canon I'm going to assume that at most a few months have passed for the Doctor since he dropped off Amy and Rory; that he is really about seventeen-hundred but has been claiming to be nine-hundred for most of the last five incarnations; and that when he says eleven hundred in "The Impossible Astronaut" he's not really two hundred years older, he's just being a bit more honest. A little bit.

However old he is, Matt Smith remains wonderful as the Doctor. Gareth writes him plenty of eccentricities – his air kissing, his new power of "shush", I particularly loved the way that the Doctor seasons Craig with the pepper mill before giving him a neck massage. But it is subtle and layered. The eccentricities themselves are a show that the Doctor is putting on, as you can tell from the moments where he drops them. It's never entirely clear, for example, whether the Doctor really can speak baby or if he is just making it all up for Craig's benefit. I mean, if he really knows what Alfie is saying, why can't he stop him crying in the scene where it's just the two of them?

So I'm pretty glad he's not going to be dead at the end of the next episode. Even if I'm quite wary of how he's going to get there.

Next Time… And they were all wearing… oh, you know the drill. It's "The Wedding of River Song"

Doctor Woo concludes tonight at 7.05pm!
.

Day 3922: That Milipede Moment

2011-09-30T11:00:00.000+01:00

Tuesday:

And now, over to our LIVE-ish feed from the Hard Labour Conference in Liverpool where Mr Potato Ed is just rising to address the ~~sheep~~ delegates. The mood is ELECTRIC. Literally: they've wired up the seating to ensure he gets a standing ovation…

Thank you Comrades, Congress, Concords.

It’s great to be here in Liverpool.

A generation ago a Labour leader came to Conference to condemn the behaviour of a Labour Council in Liverpool.

Thank goodness the Liberal Democrats were in power here for a decade and fixed everything, eh!

Concords, I've got a couple of jokes for you. Harriet Harman.

I'd like to thank Harriet for her unswerving loyalty. To herself. And for applauding my apology for invading Iraq. Even though she voted for invading Iraq. Thanks for that one, David.

Concords, a year ago I was elected your leader.

No, don't laugh.

No, don't cry!

But ask me what has been important to me this year, I say my new son Sam. Giving him his first dagger. Showing him his brother's back.

But Concords, let's get down to business. Which, of course, we can hate again now.

But today we face a choice. Will we change or carry on? Will we stick or twist? Should I stay or should I go? And will you still respect me in the morning?

But Concords, the choice facing the country is urgent. Yes, urgent! Because the election may be three-and-a-half years away – now signed into law – but I could be ousted tomorrow!

But I have to say to you, are we ready? Are we ready to ask the country: will they stay with the new coalition government or can we persuade them to throw the coalition out for the reheated old mantras of the very people they chucked out only eighteen months before?

But Concords, I’m going to tell it to you straight.

This is the lesson I have learnt.

To be true to myself.

Sorry, Mr Ed, I've got to interrupt you there.

Are you familiar with the opera "Peer Gynt" at all? Because Mr Peer Gynt, the hero of this tale, claims as his motto "to thyself be true" when of course he ISN'T at all, he's always changing what he does or says and never finishes or achieves anything, and eventually it is pointed out to him, once he's lost EVERYTHING, that even his MOTTO isn't his but nicked from the Goblin King.

Sorry, I just thought I should mention it, is all. Please carry on with your speech…

But I remember the moment it came home to me most was when I heard the terrible news that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked. I was at a party at the time. I was handing Rupert a cocktail. You can make halfway decent pocket money waiting, even on minimum wage.

But this is the lesson I learnt, rule one of British politics: Don’t mess with Rupert.

But I did mess with Rupert.

But I did it because it was right.

It was the right bandwagon to jump on and the right time to do it!

But that’s the lesson I have learnt most clearly in the last year: you’ve got to be willing to break the consensus, not succumb to it.

Nobody ever changed things on the basis of consensus.

But I know what you're going to say. Consensus is the basis of democracy, our whole system of government. But that's why we opposed a real chance of real democracy in the House of Commons. But don't worry. The lesson that I have learnt is that we're not IN government!

But that’s the lesson I have learnt: I may not know who I am, but I know I’m not Tony Blair.

I know I’m not Gordon Brown either.

Great men, who in their different ways, achieved great things.

But I’m my own man. And I’m going to do things my own way. Except when the Unions tell me not to. (Sorry about ditching the reforms, Peter.)

But Concords, we need to tell people that times are scary. Yes they are. Woo! As scary as that! As scary as finding David at the bottom of my bed at four in the morning. With the scissors. Again.

Concords, the world economy is falling to bits. But we can't let the coalition use that as an excuse. No, that was OUR excuse! Let them find their own excuse. Better yet, let them take the blame for what we left of the economy.

A year ago, lots of people thought the Government was taking the right course: The Governor of the Bank of England; The International Monetary Fund.

But one person in particular stood outside the consensus: Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls.

Hang on, sorry, me again.

Mr Balls has only been your Shadow Chancer since January, you idiot.

It was Mr Alan Johnson a year ago. Postman Pat, remember him? You know, you appointed him and he made all those mistakes about not knowing anything about the economy. And then Bully Balls leaked that thing that made him resign and made you look like a twonk.

Sorry, sorry, carry on…

But concords, you’ve seen a series of crises hitting our country over the last few years: recession… riots… Rupert…

I call it the something for nothing culture.

But as young people confront the choices they have in life, they see routes to success today based on a wrong set of values.

The something for nothing of celebrity culture.

The take what you can of the gangs.

The job for life of a safe Labour seat.

Concords, I say to you: riots! Phone hacking! Bankers! Fill your boots!

And that's why I say to you Mr Balloon is WRONG to talk about Broken Britain, because I say to you BRITAIN IS BROKEN!

Let’s be clear about one thing: the problem isn’t the people of Britain.

Britain, Britain, Britain…

We've had running water for over ten years, we have a tunnel connecting us to Peru, and we invented the cat.

Concords, the people of Britain are wonderful… except for the ones who are horrid.

The teachers, the nurses, the young people… the rioters, the phone hackers, the M.Ps… er…

So I say to Mr Balloon, let's put the politics aside. You agree that I'm right and I'll agree that I'm right too.

You see, Concords, this country needs a new kind of politics. That's why I say to you today, and I say it in all humility: yah boo sucks! Nick Clegg's a Tory and he smells!

Yes, he may be in favour of social mobility but I say what's wrong with daddy fixing you an internship then a cushy number as Mr Frown's SPAD? Only we can represent the proles because only WE know what's good for them!

Concords, it wouldn’t be responsible to make promises I can’t keep. That’s another cheap Nick Clegg’s joke.

Labour would NEVER make promises on tuition fees that they didn't keep. Except when we promised not to introduce them and then did. And except when we promised not to increase them and then did. And except when we promised to support the Browne review and then opportunistically voted against it because it was politically expedient to embarrass the Lib Dems.

So when I promise to cut tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000, you'll know how much that promise is worth.

And that's why it’s right, as a down payment, to tell you that we would use every penny of the sale of bank shares to pay down the debt.

After all, it was the TAXPAYER who saved those banks, so it's only right that they shouldn’t see a penny back and we should use all their money to pay off the debts that WE ran up. Er.

But concords, that's the lesson I have learnt.

Mrs Thatcher did some good things. But she did some bad things and that was very wrong.

And then came New Labour. And I am very proud of all the things that we did. But let me apologise for doing some of them.

Harriet, you may clap now.

Concords, we got some things wrong. In 2003, we accidentally spilled some ink over Tessa Jowell's biology homework and in 2007 we stayed up past our bedtimes and were crabby in the morning. And that is all!

But I'm very sorry for doing it.

But this is the lesson I've learnt: it was wrong and I pledge to you it will never, ever happen again unless the dog eats my schoolbooks and I don't even have my fingers crossed or anything.

But concords, we won't win back the trust of the British people by mentioning great men of the past.

I mentioned Gordon Brown once. But I think I got away with it.

Concords, for thirty years we've had a Tory-led government. Or a Tony-led government. Same difference. Yes… you may boo.

And what happened?

Your living standards have been squeezed by runaway rewards at the top.

And we have seen immigration policy which didn’t work for the people whose jobs, living standards and communities were affected.

Big vested interests like the energy companies have gone unchallenged, while you’re being ripped off.

No, sorry, sorry, it's me. One last time.

Just wanted to ask, Mr Ed, as a former SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE, was there anyone, anyone at all who you can think of who might have challenged the energy companies? Anyone? Any names spring to mind? No? Nobody? You're sure? You're quite sure about that? No one at all then.

Okay, just carry on with your speech and I promise no more interruptions…

But that's the lesson I've learnt: NHS, Labour, lovely. Tories, waiting lists, betrayal.

It’s all got to change.

But it will not happen with the old set of rules.

But that's 21st century Britain: still a country for the insiders.

What’s my story?

My parents fled the Nazis.

And came to Britain.

They embraced its values.

Outsiders.

Immigrants. But not the bad sort.

Who built a life for us.

So this is who I am.

The heritage of the outsider.

The advantages of the insider.

Think of me as inside out.

The guy who is determined to break the closed circles of Britain.

Not like Nick Clegg, no. He just wants social mobility and an end to foot-in-the-door internships and spadships like the ones I benefitted from. That doesn't mean he'll break the circle of insiders. We won’t let him. Er.

We can't let him!

But this is the lesson I've learnt: we know waiting for the Tories to fail won’t win us back your trust.

And we won’t deserve your trust if that’s what we do.

But it's the only plan we've got!

We can’t spend our way to a new economy. But Ed Balls is damn well going to give it a try anyway!

We can’t pay our way unless as a country we invent things. So I'm going to invent a world where I'm a credible leader and we have polices that are popular, and successful and even exist!

We can't be anti-business, even though we are, because that isn't even a choice any more. If it ever was. Or was it?

But let me tell you what the 21st century choice is:

Are you on the side of the creators or the strippers? The producers or the predators? Swap Shop or TISWAS?

Concords, there are things that Britain does brilliantly. But sometimes we are evil.

And I can tell which is which.

With my magic pointing stick.

But concords, that's why I'm here today. Because this is the lesson I've learnt. I have to offer you a New Bargain. And that's like the New Deal only, you know, cheap.

But my top demand of my Shadow Cabinet, my party, my team, is this:

Remember I'm ED not DAVID!

But my SECOND demand is ambition. Ambition to change our country. It’s why we were founded.It’s in our souls.

Those of us who have souls.

It’s the only point in doing the jobs we do.

Though of course it's a sign of vile treachery and betrayal of their principles in the Liberal Democrats.

Because Concords, that's the lesson I've learnt: people like values.

So I say to you this: I've got values. Good values. Great values. Huge lovely values. Best values! Cheapest values! Bargains!

I don't know what they are. You don't know what they are! But the important thing is that they're there and they're real and in a real sense so am I.

So concords, that's the lesson I've learnt:

To promise you the right values.

Whatever they are.

To fight for the New Bargain.

Whatever it is.

And to fulfil the promise of Britain.

Whatever that even means!

Concords, I've been Ed Nose Day, I'm here all week, try the veal, Thank you.

And the audience groans and rolls over in their seats and here we must apologise for the power cut in the hall preventing us from broadcasting the standing ovation.

Day 3923: Hard Labour – The Weal Truth

2011-09-28T15:30:00.000+01:00

Wednesday:

This makes me sick. And not JUST because I have to link to the wretched Daily Hate Mail.

(I'd much rather hat-tip Stephen and Neil.)

On Monday, we felt for Rory Weal, as he told Hard Labour's Conference how the Welfare State saved his family when their home was repossessed.

I was PUT OUT to see, smugly shaking the boy's hand, Mr Potato Ed, one of the very people RESPONSIBLE for destroying the economy and hence wrecking young Rory's life.

But now we learn Master Rory is just as much of a PRIVILEGED little LABOUR PRINCELING as Mr Ed.

All week Hard Labour have been going on about how the recession/deficit/debt (delete according to ineptitude of speaker) was not no way never caused by Hard Labour OVERSPENDING but by the wickedness of the bankers and the speculators…

…and it turns out that Rory's daddy was a bit of a property speculator.

Yes, far from being a VICTIM of fallout from the global collapse, it appears Mr Weal Senior was one of those people that we bailed out when they trashed the economy. You know, the people Labour have been BLAMING all week. In fact all YEAR.

Now, you can say I shouldn't judge Weal Junior by his BACKGROUND. It's not HIS fault what his father did during the Credit Crunch. And that's TRUE. But I can blame him for his CRUSHING IGNORANCE.

(Something, oddly, I was much more willing to forgive before I learned that:

"What does [Cameron] advise when I can't afford to go to school in the morning?"

doesn't mean: "we had to choose between my bus fare and feeding the electric meter"

but actually: "I had to leave my very nice private school for a very nice grammar school")

Master Rory and his mummy, even AFTER divorce and bankruptcy, appear to be better off than my daddies. And my daddy Richard is BLOODY WELL OFF! So Rory doesn't have a CLUE about the Welfare State. All he knows is his own PRIVILEGE.

To deconstruct Rory's speech a little, then, when he complains about the Coalition "tearing up the Welfare State", what he's ACTUALLY saying is: "I want the state – by which I means the rest of you – to carry on giving people like me a free guarantee to gamble!"

What he wants is a promise that HE can collect the nice homes and £13,000 a year school fees when daddy wins and WE will pick up the pieces when they lose.

And that's – if you'll forgive the grisliness of the pun – just a bit RICH.

Day 3912: DOCTOR WHO: Beware of the God

2011-09-27T13:00:00.000+01:00

Saturday (again):

If this was really the last story for Amy and Rory Pond, it would be – rightly – remembered as a classic. But it isn't.

Instead, it's a standalone story relying heavily on the series' established continuity, but at the same time undermined by the continuing aspects of the plot.

Hinging on Amy's faith in the Doctor immediately after a story that showed an Amy who had lost her faith in the Doctor and in the middle of a season-long arc where Amy's faith in the Doctor is betrayed by his failure to rescue her baby seems… misplaced.

And our foreknowledge of the season conclusion – set up by the arc as early as "The Impossible Astronaut" – means that we can be certain that Amy and Rory will return for the climax whether it's the Doctor's death or their daughter's wedding. So the departure at the end here feels like another cheat, another "death" that doesn't count. We are asked to commit to the emotional payoff of the end of Amy's journey, but without that journey really being over.

There is a weird sense that this series is almost a time loop. "The God Complex" ends with the Doctor leaving Amy and Rory in the nice new house that he appears to have bought for them, one that almost seems like it must be the one we find them living in at the start of "The Impossible Astronaut". And if it wasn't for Amy's line about her daughter, we could quite happily have accepted that we were actually having an episodes-long flashback.

In fact, the biggest problem that people have been having with this series is that the Ponds (Williamses) haven't been emotionally wrecked by the events surrounding their daughter's birth, abduction and subsequent growing up to be River Song. All of which would be removed from the equation if these recent episodes were set before the earlier ones.

Separating out the standalone episodes from the arc you actually get a pretty decent half-season. Suppose that we had had a season six that opened with "The Doctor's Wife", followed by "Night Terrors", "Curse of the Black Spot", "The Girl Who Waited" and this. Add in next week's companion light "Closing Time" and only then going to America for "The Impossible Astronaut".

Wouldn't that actually make more sense? The way these stories cover the Doctor's growing ennui, his self-loathing and his fear that he destroys his companions' lives, leading to him going off alone. It's a great fool that Amy and Rory leave only to find themselves caught up in his life again, but it would play better if "leave before I really wreck your lives" came before he really did wreck their lives. By which I mean the whole losing their daughter thing. Plus these stories are all basically about fathers and sons, meaning the second half of the year could all be about mother and daughter.

As a bonus you get a cracking "half time" cliff-hanger and that "three months later" opening of "Day of the Moon" would be less of a cheat when it's almost three months later in real time.

Of course, the downside is that you get a second half that consists of the second half of a two-parter, "Day of the Moon"; another two-parter, "The Rebel Flesh" and "The Almost People"; and effectively a three-parter of "A Good Man Goes to War", "Let's Kill Hitler" and "The Wedding of Melody Pond", which serves to highlight that "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler" only make any kind of sense as "series finale" or "series opener" episodes, all spectacle rather than story.

(Of course you'd have to do some serious editing to smooth the join between "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler" – which again emphasises how unnatural they are in their storytelling – and it would probably mean losing the "crop circle" open for "Let's Kill Hitler", which is a shame as it's moderately cool. And you'd still need to have introduced "Mels" earlier; I'd suggest having her in the house at the start of "The Impossible Astronaut". But the editing of other stories would, on the whole, be minimal.)

But I'm getting distracted. The fact I've written seven hundred words already and barely touched on the actual content of a beautiful and moving episode, I think, illustrates just how the story arc just gets in the way. Bit of a shame!

(At least, that's my excuse!)

I'll just say that I'm glad I wrote this before listening to the Eleventh Hour podcast or reading Andrew's piece at the Mindless Ones. Joe and Chris point out how unaffected they feel about Amy and Rory "leaving"; while Andrew develops a sharper (but fair) critique of the problems of the intrusive story arc.

And obviously the references are not just limited to the current series. A big shout out to "The Horns of Nimon", of course. A nice borrow of the "Horror of Fang Rock" moment where the Doctor realises he's made a terrible mistake. And everyone will spot that the ending is a direct lift from "The Curse of Fenric" (though I have to thank Jon Blum for spotting that where "Fenric" features the Doctor breaking Ace's faith with a lie, "God Complex" sees the Doctor break Amy's faith with the truth Or does he? Or does he? It's just a real shame that he has to do so by, once again, taking away Amy's agency: reducing her to a little girl, or to Amy Williams). And, personally, I can see in the "ancient mythological creature as guardian of the abandoned complex in space" a good slice of "Terminus" in here too.

But if you want to talk about a dark "science fairy tale", then a minotaur that eats your faith is about as Moffaty as you could hope to get.

It's a great twist on the clichéd "fear eater", which Doctor Who has done plenty of times, and another spin – after "The Curse of the Black Spot" – of the Doctor improvising a theory and getting it wrong. And that's good. Well, not for the three people who die as a result, but good to show the Doctor as an explorer again, and not a cosmic know-it-all who ends stories merely by "knowing the answer" (yes, "Night Terrors", I'm looking at you!).

Let me briefly mention the "secular agenda". The minotaur was somebodies god until they shucked off their faith and turned him into the active ingredient in their bizarro prison. What's obvious, but unstressed, is that they have weaponised the whole affair. The prison has been set floating in space with a mission to pick up anyone with "faith" and feed them to the minotaur.

I have to say, when it comes to "aggressive atheists" that's a wee bit beyond "The God Delusion".

Gibbis' line at the end about "that's my planet" seems to suggest that it is his homeworld of Tivoli that the prison is now orbiting. (If it were anywhere but the Tivoli system, Rory wouldn't be able to see the planet, although there may be some imaging technology involved.) Though given that most of the people recently taken are human, it would be more sensible for it to be near to Earth. Perhaps it has recently swept past.

It does, however, seem a bit odd that if it is attracted to "faith", that it has chosen to pick up a modern Western Muslim woman, a blogger and a guy with a gambling addiction. Rather than, say, al Qaeda and the Tea Party.

Perhaps it's not after people who are strong in their faith, but rather those who are weak and questioning – because they are "convertible". That might actually be more in keeping with it going after Amy. And to stretch a point it might actually be why Gibbis survives: he finds his room with the Weeping Angels before Amy looks into hers so logically he ought to start "praising him" first; but his faith in "being invaded" is actually quite strong.

It was refreshing to see each character have their own individual story. Even the police officer, Lucy Hayward, had a story, even if we couldn't quite see it. I suppose that showing us their deepest fear and their strongest belief was a good shortcut to that, but it really worked. Howie, in particular, was given most to do in the dual role of first paranoid geek – or as Rory rightly saw him, hero over the stutter – and then devoted cultist. Where gambler Joe had been decidedly creepy, with his wide-eyed faith, Howie made us feel for him as the person under the possession. Which in turn forced us to reappraise creepy Joe and see the Doctor's point of view in wanting to save him. And reappraise Gibbis the mole-man's attitude to Joe, which was ever so similar to the way we were prompted to respond to the "madman".

And we were, of course, supposed to fall in love with Rita. Smart, clever, witty. A Muslim – don't be scared. One of the more brilliant lines, that, both as a moment of foreshadowing, a clue if the Doctor had only spotted it, and in a broader context of modern Britain. Rita files "Gibbis is an alien" under "to freak out about later"; how many of the audience would file "Rita is a Muslim" similarly?

Conversely, we are supposed to find Gibbis (guest turn David Walliams under the latex – mostly fine, but occasionally a bit too "Little Britain") morally repugnant. His "sly cowardice" provoking the Doctor into one of those rash promises that the tenth always used to throw around: "no one else dies". And yet he is the one to survive.

And it's always a joy to see Caitlin as little Amy again, for what would have been a perfect bookending with "The Eleventh Hour" as the Doctor finally sorts out Amy's hang ups before she leave… if only he had sorted them out and if only she had left!

One thing I nearly said about "The Girl Who Waited" was how I felt it was a massive rebuke to the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "The Inner Light". There Picard gets to experience a whole life compressed into thirty minutes and afterwards he is a wiser and better man; in "The Girl Who Waited" Amy gets an entire lifetime of experiences… and they are wiped away. It's a much crueller and yet more poignant story.

I mention that here because of course this was a "Star Trek" holodeck story. And it is the only holodeck story ever where the holodeck actually does exactly what it's supposed to.

(Though, in fact, even here, they toss in the "glitches in the system" to explain why there are random clowns and PE teachers a-haunting the hotel, but fundamentally this simulation is doing what it's supposed to be doing, however barking the programme might be.)

If I'm going to mention glitches, then: "That's why it kept showing you the exit," the Doctor says to Rory. Well, except, it showed him a way one once, leading us to suspect that there have been scenes cut for time.

I didn't quite get where that was leading – or the moment where Rory discusses his time in the TARDIS in the past tense – unless it was as simple foreshadowing for the end.

Do watch out for the fantastic Rory moment in the scene in Amy's room: he's trying to hold the door closed and the minotaur bursts in, flattening him against the wall. Where he stays for the rest of the scene. Easy to miss, but once you've seen it you can't not notice. Poor Rory.

There was also a rather noticeable amount of reused music. Particularly "Amy's Theme" which makes a lot of sense in context, but also "I am the Doctor", Murray's hero theme which – although I love it – was a bit out of place. And it wasn't as though there was not original music in the piece either, like a strikingly modern theme for the minotaur. But it was the "old faves" that saw the dial turned up to, as it were, eleven.

I hardly need to say that the hotel from hell was once again a design triumph for Michael Pickwoad, and for my money the minimalist, Tron-esque God Complex revealed at the end was too. The direction by Nick Hurran – with some assistance from Stanley Kubrick – was also excellent: the rapid intercutting of the terrified/blissed out victims as they were driven to "praise him", and the near-subliminal printed words all on the right side of baffling; and the close-up on the minotaur's eye as it was summoned, like the Kraken being awakened, all helped to set the mood that was screwed up psycho-terror. Nor, it should be said, did the episode outstay its welcome, revealing its answers at just the right pace to keep us impressed with the Doctor's intelligence, even when he's pointing out his own failures.

Which leave us only with the question: will they do the right thing and leave well alone the question of what the Doctor saw in Room 11?

Next Time… We answer the questions: is "partner" better than "companion"; does James Corden deserve another go in Doctor Who; what would the Doctor spend his last hours doing; and what do the Cybermen get up to after hours? And as a bonus, just who is the Impossible Astronaut? All this, and Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All in "Closing Time".

Day 3921: Nu(Lab)Speak: What does Profligate Mean aka More Balls

2011-09-27T08:00:00.000+01:00

Monday:

The GENIUS of Mr Bully Balls is to hold two completely contradictory views simultaneously without EXPLODING.

For example:

On the one fluffy foot, the (Hard Labour) Government CANNOT be blamed for the MASSIVE ECONOMIC IMPLOSION of 2008 because they were at the MERCY of worldwide economic conditions, the poor helpless little ducks.

On the OTHER fluffy foot, the (Coalition) Government are ENTIRELY to blame for their powerful, cruel, ideological policies causing the stagnation in growth and employment in 2011 because that CAN'T be anything to do with the meltdown of the Euro and the chaos in Americaland, can it?

Today, Mr Balls has made a speech to the Hard Labour conference setting out a plan to rescue the economy from the trouble ~~he got us into~~ that is entirely the Coalition's fault, except for the bits caused by bankers. Lehman Brothers didn't collapse because Hard Labour built too many hospitals you know, oh no, it was just a coincidence that when they went bust we didn't have any money left and had to borrow massively to save a couple of banks of our own.

Oh and Labour didn't "build" hospitals: they RENTED them on the never-never from PFI firms that will OWN THE PROPERTY at the end of the contracts. IDIOTS.

Mr Balls has FIVE NEW policies for the economy. To a certain value of "new". To a certain value of "five" for that matter.

His policies are:

1. RepeatHard Labour's bank bonus tax which does not raise as much money as theCoalition's bank levy

2. Bringforward capital spending like what the Coalition are already doing (CaptainClegg announced this a week ago)

3. CutVAT

4. CutVAT

5. Givebusinesses a National Insurance holiday like the one the Coalition are doingbut a bit different. Ish.

Now as far as I can make out, that's FOUR policies, with "cut VAT" included TWICE.

Why am I thinking of that bit in Star Trek where Gul B'Stard has Captain Picard strapped to the torture-matic and is making him say: "There are FIVE policies!"?

And, you know, "cut VAT" (i.e. Mr Alistair Dalek tried last time and it didn't work but what the hell, we've got two slightly different flavours of VAT cut!) is an idea that Bully Balls has been banging on about for QUITE SOME TIME.

As is "repeat the bonus tax" (i.e. take VENGEANCE on the VILE BANKER!).

Now, I don't want to ASSUME anything but it does not seem LIKELY that Mr Balls has suddenly become an arch MONETARIST and so is not intending to LOWER the tax burden, so I must guess he means to do the bonus tax ON TOP OF the bank levy.

And just the other day Mr Potato Ed was talking to Andy Marrmite about "tax cuts for financial services companies", which turns out to mean the Corporation Tax cut for ALL companies (which, oddly enough is supposed to attract companies to move to Great Britain and hence stimulate GROWTH).

So Mr Ed and his almost-exactly-the-same-as-the-Coalition tuition fees policy wants to fund a cut in university costs FOR THE RICH by creating a differential Corporation Tax rate for banks.

Which is quite a LOT of extra taxes to heap on top of the banking sector. And yes, I know they've been VERY naughty, but still…

Look, I do think that we became OVER-DEPENDENT on financial services during the years that can only be described as "the Hard Labour government", but I am still a BIT dubious about policies that seem designed to drive THIRTY PERCENT of the country's economy into the SEA!

It's not exactly a solid GROWTH strategy, is it?

We need a MIXED economy which includes a SOUND banking sector, ideally with more and smaller banks – more because more competition is good for the consumer, and smaller because smaller is easier to bail out if they fail!

The bank levy is FAIR because we are charging the banks for the guarantee that we will bail them out. But PUNITIVE tax rates on both the banks as corporations AND the bankers who work in them will sooner or later see them relocate their businesses and, from a deficit-cutting point of view, their all-important tax revenues.

So, having redefined the word "five" (to mean "four") and the word "new" (to mean "same old same old") let's cut to something with more than one SYLLABLE and see what we can do about "profligate".

Mr Balls denies that Hard Labour were "profligate".

Well, let's see. You WERE spending more money than you raised in tax during the biggest longest boom in post-war history. Some might say that that was a touch EXCESSIVE. Maybe they might even hazard UNWISE. But was it "profligate"?

Well, the wiktionary gives me the definition:

"Inclined to waste resources or behave extravagantly."

So I suppose it depends on whether you think that Hard Labour ever WASTED any resources.

Was, say, invading a Middle Eastern country on the basis of a lie a "waste of resources" or was that a useful and productive endeavour that in no way wasted hundreds of our young people's lives?

Was it, to pick an example for which Mr Balls was personally responsible, "extravagant" to promise to rebuild every school in the country – whether they needed it or not? Whether we could AFFORD it or not?

Was it a waste of resources to commission a vast, pointless, endlessly unfinished IT project for the NHS?

Was "Blairforce One" an extravagance at all?

Did Mr Frown make the best use of resources when he flogged off the country's gold reserve at an historic low in the gold price?

Are you COMPLETELY sure that the Olympics aren't a MASSIVE VANITY PROJECT?

I could go on…

…and I shall!

The response to the foot and mouth outbreak, slaughtering pretty much every cow in the country, was that the best possible use of resources?

Surrendering the British rebate to the European Union, did we get all that we possibly could in exchange for that?

The Jubilee line extension, do you feel that all the extra payments to contractors have successfully avoided endless closures for repairs?

That, ahem, big tent in Greenwich for 2000 A.D.

Clearly it is POSSIBLE to argue that Hard Labour may have OVERSPENT by an few teensy BILLIONS and TRILLIONS, but only on things that were NECESSARY and IMPORTANT. Like the wallpaper in the Lord Chancellor's rooms. Or repaying Mr Bernie Ecclestone.

Clearly it is POSSIBLE… but only if you are BARKING MAD.

So, we must conclude that in Mr Balls' dictionary "profligate" means something like "spending wisely and with prudence", so he can deny ever being "profligate" and it be perfectly true..

Day 3915: The Big Conference Speech aka Quality of Mush

2011-09-21T09:30:00.000+01:00

Tuesday:

Well, the meeja might possibly give more attention to what Captain Clegg has to say, but for me there was a MORE IMPORTANT speech this week, cos it was my Daddy Richard's FIRST TIME!

Many people do not realise that Daddy Richard has never spoken at Liberal Democrat conference before. It's probably because he is so ANCIENT! Okay so he has spoken at the BOTYs a couple of times. If you count flapping his mouth like a landed fish when I won my award in 2010. But never a proper speech. Until today!

Here's what he had to say:

Conference, listen to what Jill Hope has just said.

We can do so much better than this.

Have we ended poverty? Have we defeated ignorance? Have we banished conformity? We have so much more important things to do.

This paper invites us to base our policy development, our next general election, on the idea of "quality of life" or "wellbeing", a concept so nebulous, so warm and fuzzy, as to be almost meaningless.

It says, in the first line of the paper, and it's repeated in the motion, that "most people's aim is to have a good quality of life".

If that's the case, then this is a simple truism. All policy should always be based on wellbeing; I mean who would vote for a worse quality of life?

I'm not even sure it is true. I think most people aim to make ends meet, or to see their kids all right, or to go to the gym more. I aim to write a book. You can say all these things are about "quality of life" but you spread the definition so wide that it can mean anything .

And if you try to mean everything, you end up meaning nothing.

Yesterday, we debated Facing the Future, a paper that grudgingly mentioned wellbeing in the introduction and then forgot all about it. Today we have a quality of life wish list. A string of nice policies tied together by woolly thinking .

How does this fit with our existing policy? New regulations for business - do we say which ones we will be replacing under Vince's one in one out rule? More interference in the curriculum, more government telling teachers what to teach. And more bureaucracy, a whole new quango, just to collate data, not to do anything with it.

The paper breaks down quality of life into individual wellbeing, community and environment. I've got a phrase for that. It's Free, Fair and Green. And Liberal Democrats, we do that already.

If you want to improve people's quality of life: plant some trees. Or write music. Or fund the BBC properly.

But don't give up the core of who we are.

ALL Parties would say they intend to improve quality of life. We differ on how, and for whom. And it is our choices that define us.

It's not that there are not good things in this paper. Who could be against shorter commutes, or support for volunteering, or better mental health care?

Indeed, as I said, who is going to disagree with improving wellbeing. But it seeks to shift our focus away from Freedom onto "being nice".

I can see how, in a coalition with the Nasty Party, we would want to shout out to people "but we're the nice ones".

But at a time when we alone stand against the cruelty of unrestrained Tory capitalism…

…and against the folly of Labour's profligacy and mismanagement …

we don't need to redefine ourselves.

We just need to be ourselves!

I know we crave comfort from the pain caused by this world of austerity. But our ideas need to be inspiring, not just comfortable.

I was listening to Paddy Ashdown last night, and he reminded me that Liberalism isn't easy, it isn't warm and fluffy. It can be difficult to trust people to make their own choices, rather than promising to make it all all right.

Joe Grimmond didn't tell us to march towards our comfort zone; he told us to march towards the sound of gunfire.

Liberalism is like a flame: it warms you, protects you, lights the way. But it can burn.

It's not a soggy security blanket.

We don't believe in leading people by the hand. That's the other lot.

We believe in empowering them, trusting them and getting out of their way.

It's not about wellbeing. It's about Freedom!

Conference, please reject this motion.

To our surprise and quite a bit of relief, we were not the only ones against the motion. Ms Jill Hope, who daddy mentions, was first to oppose it, telling us how SILLY we were going to look on council estates and up tower blocks talking about "well being" when they want jobs and houses and the lifts to work. And Ms Christina Baron who highlighted how ridiculous it was to be setting up a new quango, the Institute of, or perhaps for, Wellbeing.

We managed to fight them to a count, and it was quite close: a hundred and fifty-eight to a hundred and twenty-two.

But the real shame was that my other daddy, Daddy Alex was not called to give HIS speech, 'cos it would have been a cracker and I think he could have won the day for us!

Have a read of what he would have said and decide for yourself.

Even so, it is to be hoped that such a NARROW SQUEAK for what should have been an EASY policy paper, and for what IS such an IMPORTANT one, will give the Party pause and maybe they will think again.

And if not, we'll just have to get Daddy Richard to stand for FPC again.

Day 3912: IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MEEEEEEEEE… but it was DADDY ALEX! HOORAY!

2011-09-18T00:30:00.000+01:00

Saturday:

For technical reasons, it appears that already being me means it couldn't be me again. Or something. Which sounds like a very silly rule to me.

Thank goodness, then, that my DADDY ALEX wrote SUCH A GOOD POST about how all the Conservatories are just FROTHING at the mouth with how much the Coalition is really a LIB-DEM-LED government that he was given the shiny BOTY for bestest individual post. Wot he has deserved for absolutely AGES.

So we are STILL an award winning HOUSEHOLD!

My campaign to be nonimated blogger of the year again NEXT year begins HERE!

Seriously, though, huge congratulations to all of the winners in all of the categories, but especially congratulations to the four short-listers for AWARD-WINNING ELEPHANT AWARD OF THE YEAR AWARD:

Mr Matthew Gibson

Auntie Caron

Mr Neil Monnery

and

Mr Nick Thornsby

who between them demonstrate four very excitingly different and good ways of blogging, be it: in depth policy focus, accentuating the positive and the workable; personal campaigning with breadth and immediacy; proper journalism in the sense of keeping a daily diary journal, of personal and sometimes whimsical thought; and on the spot reportage and some fine economic analysis.

Really all four deserve to be award winners, but on the night the prize went to…

~~The Very Fluffy Diary of…~~

Oh no, we did that joke at the award ceremony!

Congratulations to the REAL winner, Mr Nick Thornsby (with some additional scenes by Phil Woolas Hard Labour's no-longer-MP for Old and Sad).

Now, if any of you need a STAND IN for the interview with Captain Clegg…

And don't think I won't be back next year!(Your scheduled Dr Woo review will appear later!)

Day 3889: TORCHWOOD: Manacles Day: The Porn Ultimatum

2011-09-15T20:00:00.000+01:00

Thursday:

Well here is a secret I bet you did not know. Auntie Helen has only watched Torchhoot TWICE, and both times she turned on during the RUDE BITS!

So she turned off again quickly.

My daddies did NOT turn off. Bad daddies! Bad!

Okay, this is, hopefully, going to be quick. The last episode of "Miracle Day" is on a at nine tonight and I want this up before then. I don't want to fall further behind!

This was a really good episode. It was even a really good episode of Torchwood. It was just in entirely the wrong season.

This, or something like this, would have greatly strengthened "Torchwood's" first year, showing us Jack in two time zones but also two times in his life: the younger Jack recognisably closer to the Jack who met the Doctor in "The Empty Child" and this story helping to bridge the gap both in our knowledge of what happened to him after the Game Station and in his emotional journey from the grinning, running, happy-go-lucky omnisexual of "Doctor Who" to the brooding Angel-a-like of "Torchwood". A century of disappointments, where trying to live your life like the Doctor ends in pain and murder again and again would start to take the perkiness out of anyone's strides.

This year, I'm afraid, it slightly has an air of taking us away from the plot again. Even though it is very obviously central to the story, and is done pretty much beat perfect in itself, "Miracle Day" is seven weeks in now, and the story ought to be picking up the pace, not slamming on the brakes to deliver us the exposition.

The reveal that the villains behind the Miracle are human after all, and not aliens, is a moderately interesting development, but it's no kind of shock twist. That, even more mundanely, they appear to be the Mafia, is verging on silly. I'm not sure why, but slamming the "spy-fi" genre (the genre of "Torchwood" and "the X Files" and even some "Bond") into the old-fashioned gangster genre just doesn't quite gel.

More importantly, this adds nothing to our understanding of the plot. Introduced earlier in the series, maybe around episode three, perhaps even two, this would have provided a solid grounding for the series to springboard from. They might even have got away with the swerve last week revealing that the mission to the modules had been a colossal waste of time. This late into the series' run, there's a sense that we've been strung along with the mystery of these Triangle people for ages now, and the answer is a big "so what?"

And, it has to be said, after "Children of Earth" featured a flashback to Jack's past revealing his "surprise" involvement in the conspiracy, this felt a little bit "samey".

That said, it is a gorgeous episode, beautifully written by Jane Espensen. I can't say if the period details of 1927/28 are right, but they certainly look lovely, and there is a wonderful sense of culture clash running through the episode where Angelo's inter-war conservative Catholicism conservative Catholicism rubs up against Jack twenty-first century metrosexuality. (Sure, he's a fifty-first century boy, but his cracking-wise about sex adn sexuality is so much of the "now".) It's much better done than the crushingly obvious Welsh-English/American-English culture clash between Gwen and Esther in Espensen's earlier "Dead of Night".

Daniele Favilli delivers a beautifully tortured performance as Angelo, stricken with guilt even as he is drawn more and more into his "devil" Jack's world. And, as has been said, he looks good too.

There are moments where the pair of them are running around shooting alien brain worms and escaping the mafia goons and they look like they are having such fun, and fun in a "Doctor Who" sense, the running and adventure. And then "Torchwood" slams Jack's failures into them in a brutally cruel, but exactly right sort of way. Because "Torchwood" is the fallen angel of the "Doctor Who" universe. And naturally, Jack – with his flaws – picks a companion with flaws, one who freaks out, and that leads to an incredibly powerful, and toe-curlingly gruesome sequence of Jack's repeated murder in the meat locker of the family butchers. It's not overdone with gore, but the repeated point of view shots as Jack revives only to see more and more people standing over him ready and willing to kill… Earlier in the episode, Jack being "out-and-proud" had told Angelo, "I don't care what anybody knows"; how those words come back to bite him.

If anything, Jack's excuses for leaving Angelo are too kind. Never mind the Doctor's line of "you'll grow old; I won't" – how about: "you failed the test, kiddo, when you murdered me seventeen times running. Bye, then!"

We are, of course, supposed to contrast Angelo's betrayal with Gwen's in the present day. But there's no comparison, is there. Angelo is wound up like a spring with guilt and fear and confusion and goes mental with admittedly pretty appalling consequences. Gwen, on the other hand, has ages to try and scheme her way out of this, to save Jack and her family, but no, she just goes to hand him over like the self-confessed selfish bitch she is.

(In fact, she only gets away with this because Nana Visitor's little gang are even more inept than Torchwood themselves. "We are watching", Gwen is warned. Yeah, everything except the other two Torchwood doofusses. Or Gwen's known PC associate in Wales. How totally on the ball is that? And then, Ms Conspiracy basically finishes the episode by saying: "well, sorry, that was actually just our really over-complicated way of saying, why not come over and discuss a few answers to this whole business." 'Cos it's not like Torchwood weren't right out of clues at the end of last week.)

This is really a cathartic moment for Gwen and the audience, who've been saying since year one (and the unspeakable affair with Weevil-boy Owen) what is it with Gwen's narcissist syndrome? "Say yoofa-give me!" she hollered into Rhys's face in one episode after she'd confessed all but before retconning him to forget the whole confession again: a selfish shrieking banshee who wanted to feel good for having confessed all but didn't want to handle the consequences. And that's how she's been ever since. So here the series actually faces up to the fact that Gwen is a deeply flawed, troubled even, individual.

But, again, this would have worked so much better back in series one, as a payoff for her frankly reckless and self-indulgent behaviour (and again, the affair).

If series one of "Torchwood" had had this and "They Keep Killing Suzie" (and let's face it not "Cyberwoman" or "Countrycide") it might have been a whole lot better remembered.

So, I'm relieved and grateful to Jane Espensen for showing us what American "Torchwood" can actually do and what a really decent version of the series looks like. It's just a shame it's so late.

Too late? We'll know after tonight's climax. Now I'd better go and pack for Conference!

Next Time…After an episode that blends romance, tragedy, backstory and genuine alien thrills in perfect measure, what do you think is called for? A tense thriller that takes the pace up to the next level? Or more padding? "Torchwood" reaches "The End of the Road" (but if you've any sense you'll skip to the end and watch tonight's finale instead).

"Torchwood: Miracle Day" continues tonight at 9pm (yes, that's in an hour!) on BBC1 and BBC1HD or if you're falling behind like me, then you can still try the iPlayer, but frankly by this point you're probably gonna have to buy the DVDs!.

Day 3905: DOCTOR WHO: The Girl in the Timey-Wimey Place

2011-09-14T17:00:00.000+01:00

Saturday:

You know what Doctor Woo is missing? GLOW IN THE DARK CATS!

Never mind creepy dolls or kill-you-with-kindness handbots, THAT'S a monster to be REALLY scared of! Honestly, when these appeared it was nearly ME that aged thirty-six years in a matter of minutes!

Anyway, where's Daddy review?

Well, this is awkward. My first reaction was that the episode was awesome. Alex… was rather less enthusiastic. He has been, if I can put it this way, timey-wimied out. So, I have to review this without my normal sounding board and soul mate. We'll just have to see how it goes.

The point of Alex's reaction is that this is very familiar territory for the Moffat era of the series. The effects of relative time, as seen in "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "The Eleventh Hour" and again in TARDIS corridors sequences from "The Doctor's Wife"; the dangers of alien medical technology, revisiting "The Empty Child" and "Curse of the Black Spot"; the fact the danger is situational rather than there being an actual enemy; the use of catchphrases; the way that nobody really dies…

Now, that's not to say that this was not taking those elements and crafting what I found to be a rather brilliant story out of them. And you might choose to argue that the conclusion, where we are made to feel every beat of older Amy's pain that her life is to be rendered undone, meaningless even, is a condemnation of this very undermining of death in the series, making the case against the "no one really dies in sci fi" mentality, a riposte to Moffat's repeated and casual "time can be rewritten" of the "and you kill someone every time you do" variety. But looking at the repeated memes in close up like that, you can perhaps see how they've been done to death. Assuming death even means anything in Doctor Who any more.

However, it seems to me, that what Mr Moffat is doing with the series this year, the reason why these ideas and themes keep recurring, is that he is exploring various ideas of predestination and free will: what they means for time travel; how one might get you out of the other. I mean, that's fairly obvious, isn't it, with the great big flag of killing the Doctor himself set up at the start.

In the most blatant terms, this shows up with the way that "The Impossible Astronaut" foreshadows the obvious get-out clauses: Amy declares that the fallen Doctor must be a "clone or a robot" and later in the series we see both of those solutions presented as possibilities: the clone in the Flesh of "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People" and the robot in the Tessellector of "Let's Kill Hitler", either of which could perfectly mimic the Doctor. In fact, this is too blatant; it can't be a coincidence.

There's another one, this week, when – as Simon hints – thirty minutes in, the Doctor tells us that if you know the future, and if you're bloody-minded enough, then yes you can change it. Rory even says "so Amy can change the future". If he'd given a Miranda Hart look to camera at the same moment it couldn't have been clearer.

"My life in your hands, Amelia Pond," as he says in "The Impossible Astronaut".

(And just after "fish fingers and custard", which comes up again in "Let's Kill Hitler".)

But I think Moffat is offering up possible escapes routes for us to latch onto in order to pull one of his trademark surprise twists out of the bag. (And he can no doubt relish the thought of factions of Flesh Doctor and Tessellector Doctor advocates forming on the forums.)

And that's just plot mechanics, where Moffat is trying to do a Derren Brown trick of showing us his workings and still distracting us at the same time.

But undercutting the clever-clever stuff there seems to be a strand of genuine philosophical thinking.

In terms of classical physics, both time travel and free will ought to be impossible. But Doctor Who as a television series has never subscribed to either view.

Except that if both "you can time travel" and "you have free will" are true, then you must be able to go into your past and do things that you know did not happen.

This is a paradox for the series, the ultimate Grandfather Paradox. If the Doctor goes back in time then can he or can he not rewrite that history? We only ever see him "defending history", i.e. stopping invasions that we know didn't happen. But why not stop invasions we know did happen, like (and this is always the test case) the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

The series has tried to address this in several ways over the years. The key stories are "The Aztecs", "The Time Meddler", "Day of the Daleks", "Pyramids of Mars", and "The Fires of Pompeii".

[And the following discussion does involves SPOILERS, in particular for "Day of the Daleks"; if you want to enjoy the story on DVD first, do skip ~~to the end~~ to "What does the Mister Moffster think he's doing?".]

What Does Timey-Wimey mean?

Initially there is what we might call the "David Whitaker Doctrine" as set out in "The Aztecs": the Doctor says "you can't rewrite history, not one line" and this is both true and a physical law of the universe.

Though by "history" the series has always meant "what the viewers know". (Which, incidentally, means that the history of, say, the end of the dinosaurs or the Trojan War or Atlantis/Minoan Crete or the reasons why King John signed the Magna Carta are always "what people at the time thought their history was", even if we think we know differently now. But that's a whole other argument.)

So that means there's a problem with the Whitaker Doctrine: it only seems to apply when the Doctor is "in the past" (or, strictly speaking, in those bits of time that we, the viewers, call "the past").

If he goes to Skaro – in "the future" – then it's fine for him to intervene and change anything he likes – wipe out the Daleks, be our guest – that doesn't break any laws of time that we haven't written yet. But that doesn't seem to make sense. Because no matter when you are, it's still "history" to the people who come later: the descendants of the Thals on Skaro (who, in "Planet of the Daleks", we get to see) actually call the events of "The Daleks" history.

But then Whitaker leaves and, after Dennis Spooner has a go, Donald Tosh becomes script editor. And he thinks that that's no fun at all. So we get the new revised rules set out in "The Time Meddler" namely you can change the past and what's more the Monk has done it a lot. But it's very, very naughty and the Doctor does not approve of that sort of thing. So now, "you can't rewrite history" is a moral law, not a physical one.

This begs the question: well who's to say what is "history", to which it turns out the answer is the Time Lords, and once Barry Letts arrives to run the series with Terrance Dicks as his script editor, then we develop a framework of "laws of time" laid down by these benevolent overlords. And because Barry and even more Uncle Terry are of an old-fashioned and small-c conservative bent, the Time Lords are both patrician and good.

(Whether that's what Dicks and Hulke intended in "The War Games" is another matter. Afterwards Robert Holmes, an entirely more cynical figure, takes over and the Time Lords become corrupt and decadent. And then eventually we get to Eric Saward and they, along with everyone else in the universe, reach the depths of thoroughly amoral and borderline psychotic. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

"Day of the Daleks" (available on DVD now, in full "Nick-Briggs-o-scape" special edition) tries to address the problem by presenting us with an alternative future Earth, conquered by the Daleks, because World War Three took place in the late Twentieth Century.

This, however, is a bit of a paradox pile up.

It turns out – spoilers – that World War Three is caused by people from the alternative future coming back in time to prevent it happening and instead accidentally triggering it. Now, this is a paradox already because if they hadn't have come back in time then no one would have started the war and they would not have existed and so could not have come back in time. In other words, the whole business should never have happened in the first place.

But then, the Doctor gets caught up in events and he manages to stop the people from the future causing the War that leads to their own existence. Which means that the events don't happen so the Doctor doesn't get involved and so does not prevent them coming back in time to accidentally start a war. Which means that the events do happen so he does get involved… etc ad infinitum.

Also, there are Daleks in it.

This is important because it directly addresses the predestination/free will question.

Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood address this in About Time volume three (original version) in an essay called "How Does Time Work". They try to make sense of the paradoxes by suggesting that the whole predestination paradox comes into being all at once in twentieth and twenty-second centuries and whatever century the time travelling Daleks arrive from simultaneously when the Daleks first travel back to re-invade the Earth. i.e. they go back in time and find that someone has already screwed up Earth's timeline for them.

History, they suggest, has "taken account" of all the consequences of past and future actions caused by the Daleks' time travel. However, history as not taken into account the Doctor's future actions.

Thus they conclude that no one has free will except the Time Lords. "Ordinary" time travellers cannot "change" history because they themselves are already a part of history and so they were in the history that they propose "going back to".

(This argument actually falls at the first hurdle, because of course the Daleks have changed history: the twenty-second century of "Day of the Daleks" is not the same one as the twenty-second century of "The Dalek Invasion of Earth".)

Tat quite rightly repudiates this argument in (much longer) version of the essay in the revised volume three, on the grounds that it is against almost everything the series stands for, up to and including the Doctor's own dialogue in "Day of the Daleks".

All of which suggests that if you try to make "Day of the Daleks" logically consistent you just make your head hurt. It is the written equivalent of the optical illusion in Esher's "Ascending and Descending" (those monks on the never-ending stairway): the loops look like they are consistent because of the way it's drawn but you can't actually build it in real life.

But looked at as an allegory, though, it makes perfect sense:

The Daleks conquer the Earth using a paradoxical loop that says time travel leads to predestiny, i.e. they win by taking away free will.

But then the Doctor trumps this with a second paradox, saying no, we will have free will and can choose to avoid fate if we try.

Which is entirely what the series is about. (It only adds to the irony that the Doctor wins by using the Grandfather Paradox.)

At this point I need to divert to a sidebar about the The New Adventures, which developed a thesis of "crystallised time", that is the Doctor came from a place very early in time and space, and for him all of the future is fluid and malleable… until he visits it and interacts with it at which point those bits of history become fixed, "crystallised" and cannot be changed. Obviously, because he's spent so much time on Earth and travelling with Earth people, a lot of the crystallised bits are Earth history and that is why he cannot interfere too much here. In other words, it's the Doctor's own interest in our planet that gives it its privileged "no messing with history" status.

Lawrence Miles, ever the iconoclast, suggested exactly the opposite theory in his Faction Paradox works: all history is fixed by the "Great Houses" (i.e. Time Lords) except for the bits where they or their timeships arrive which are made "malleable".

This idea of "contingent history" is as it happens consistent with the theory developed by Robert Holmes in "Pyramids of Mars". In that story, where Sutekh the Destroyer threatens to end the world, Sarah Jane (who has a habit of asking exactly these awkward questions while Holmes is script editor – see also "I don't speak Italian" in "Masque of Mandragora") puts it to the Doctor that since it's 1911 and she's from 1980, they know they're going to win. So the Doctor shows her Earth in 1980 and it's a blasted cinder. In other words, by becoming involved in events in her own history, Sarah has put that history on the line, as it were. Because she has free will and not predestination her own past is now in question.

This kind of "contingent history" is what gives us the "Back to the Future" rules where if you change your past (or even just go back into your past and find someone else has done something inconsistent with your history) then history rewrites itself… but not instantly, so you have a chance to put it right again. At least that's the Doctor's explanation to Martha in "The Shakespeare Code".

Jumping almost up to date then, we come the companion who is even more stroppy and awkward than Sarah, namely Donna Noble, and it takes Donna to directly confront the Doctor on the ethics of leaving Pompeii to get wiped out merely because they know that that is what is going to happen.

And so the Doctor explains that there are fixed points in time. And, as a Time Lord, he can see them.

This is terribly handy: it means the Doctor can intervene whenever he wants to except when he can't and only he can tell the difference.

"The Waters of Mars" tries to explore this further, asking what happens if the Doctor himself tries to defy one of these fixed points (answer: time seems to find another way of tying itself up, rather like death in those dreadful "Final Destination" movies) but muffs it up, or rather "The End of Time" muffs it up by not being about the consequences of the Doctor having gone bonkers.

But in fact, Douglas Adams had long ago proposed the most elegantly workable solution in "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" (nee "Shada"): history is too complex, too fractal to "fix" – i.e. "solving" one problem actually causes another to pop up. The example given is the Dodo and the Coelacanth. Professor Chronotis (in either version) goes back in time in order to save the Coelacanth from extinction. Only the unintended consequence of this is that, when he returns to the present day, he finds that dodos are now extinct when before he left they were not. Understandably, this rather puts him off.

(Mind you, I'm not sure that the viewing public would find much joy in a story where the Doctor travels back in time to prevent World War II, that terrible war between the British Empire and America, only to return to the "present day" to discover that instead there was now a World War II between Britain and Germany.)

But then, ironically, "Shada" was never completed so that timeline is sort of in doubt.

In a fractal history, though, fixed points and "strange attractors" actually make sense. No matter how you distort the pattern, some of the original order will reassert itself. Vesuvius will always destroy Pompeii; there will always be a Shakespeare; Bowie Base will always be destroyed – it takes a being of unimaginable, godlike power – like Sutekh – to destroy these things.

Time then is like a jar of coloured sand that makes a pattern. It looks fixed. But you can shake the jar and everything changes. But new patterns emerge.

Or perhaps, rather than grains of sand, say little coloured strings, some short some long, representing events strung together in sequences that we call histories or life stories. "Now" isn't a slice through time so much as the leading end of each thread where new events are being added to the chain. "Now" is happening at every point in time and space adding more events wherever there are gaps.

So "History" is a big ball of these strings all knotted together, forming ever-more-complex patterns which can be changed, disarrayed, smashed to bits even when the ball is disturbed; they are drawn to certain patterns and nexus points so that whenever the patterns are changed, some familiar once inevitably reassert themselves; the threads are both linked to and threaded around each other in a manner that can only be described as wibbly-wobbly…

All of which brings us to Mr Moffat.

What does the Mister Moffster think he's doing?

At the end of last season, Steve just went and broke all the rules. He had the Doctor use predestination paradoxes like they were going out of fashion to repeatedly cheat time. He got out of the Pandorica by having got out of the Pandorica, and everything that followed, mop, fez and all.

(Those dear boys at the Eleventh Hour podcast want this to be just the last iteration of a process where the Doctor first worked out how to get out of the Pandorica from the inside, then goes back in time to give the sonic to Rory to let his earlier self out, thus rewriting his own past to get himself out quicker, and then having been released by Rory, replicates the actions of himself from the previous version to create a stable non-looping version of history.

But that's really not what happens is it.)

And look: he uses a predestination paradox and lo, a Dalek comes back to life. And the bugger kills him.

Now, at the time we all thought that this was Mr Moffat having his little joke. Or at least playing "Curse of the Fatal Death" with live ammo.

But suppose he's not just larking about showing how clever-clever he can be with his writing. Not "just". Suppose in fact that he's waving all these predestination paradoxes under our noses to start us thinking about them.

Remember, the very next thing that Moffat wrote was "A Christmas Carol", in which the Doctor tries rewriting Kazran Sardick's past… and it does not work. It goes horribly wrong, every time he tries. Only an act of free will saves the day.

Moffat seems to be very much on the side of free will and choice.

It shows up mostly in the big "arc" episodes, but it's there in the standalones too: even something as seemingly unconnected as "The Curse of the Black Spot" is working with the "curse" idea to suggest that we are powerless, or we make ourselves powerless, when we do not try to understand, and concludes with Captain Avery changing his destiny.

"Night Terrors" last week, under the mush, was being driven by a little boy's fear that he was going to be sent away against his will. The "daddy loves you" conclusion was also an affirmation that his choices will be listened to, that his free will matters.

Notice also how "The Doctor's Wife" sees House, who believes in absolute control to the point where his puppets literally drop dead without his will controlling them, contrasted with the TARDIS, with all her non-linear perspectives and, at heart, choice, the choice to steel a Time Lord and run away, the choice to take him to wherever he was needed (and never to tell him what to do when he got there). In its crudest form, House is a planet and represents unchanging stability and the TARDIS is a ship representing travel and freedom.

From a certain point of view, the difference between the rebel gangers and the Flesh Amy was free will: their Flesh had gained it; her Flesh was taking hers away.

From a certain point of view, the point of the Silence (or at least the monsters formerly believed to be called the Silence) is that they take away free will by giving us post-hypnotic suggestions.

This might – might – take a step towards justifying the Doctor's actions in "The Day of the Moon". He is fighting against an embodiment of predestination; he is giving humans back free will. On that scale, you can see why he did what he did. From a certain point of view.

Equally, you can see how the Doctor and the Church would end up on opposite sides of a war. For god has to be omniscient, and omniscience destroys free will even more effectively than time travel does. Because if anyone can know everything that is ever going to happen, then everything is predetermined and there is no choice at all ever.

I've written before about how in a lot of ways the White Guardian is at least as bad as the Black Guardian. We need both but neither can win. In a universe of total chaos we couldn't live; but in a universe of total order, we'd be dead.

Moffat's Doctor is about giving people choices.

That's what he does to Rory in "The Girl Who Waited".

"That's not fair," says Rory, "You're turning me into you!"

But you know, the Doctor has the perfectly legitimate comeback: "No Rory, you chose to be me when you decided that you were not going to tell me about my future death."

We are supposed to believe – because River tells us so – that they are being all noble and preserving the web of time by keeping the Doctor's future a secret. But it's possible that they are just plain wrong. They are taking away his free will, and Moffat seems to want us to think that that is worse than messing with paradox.

Rory and Amy's lives are riddled with paradoxes, the Doctor having rewritten their pasts repeatedly and then rebooted the whole universe, so they are literally no longer the same people they were last year. But it's always been about giving them choices not taking choices away – the one time the Doctor took Amy's choices away was when he left her life to be swallowed by the crack in her wall and he's been trying to restore if ever since.

This may also be why we never hear of "Mels" before "Let's Kill Hitler". As the Doctor puts it "You named your daughter… after your daughter?" Moffat, I suspect deliberately, has chosen not to show Melody to Mels' history as a predestination paradox. Moffat – like the Joker – would prefer a past that is multiple choice.

Ultimately of course the whole of the Moffat era hangs on the relationship between River and the Doctor, and the whole of their relationship hangs on the very serious question of whether either of them has a choice.

Every time they meet, one of them knows the other's future. They could rewrite each other's history over and over but they don't. So the question that constantly underlines their relationship is this: are they powerless to change the intertwined course of their lives or do they choose not to?

This, I think, is why it is no accident that the season will end, just as last year's did, with a wedding. A wedding seems like the ultimate moment of destiny, so many things forcing you inevitably to that moment. And yet, the entire ceremony hinges on a question. "Will you take this man?" It is the single most important expression of free will that we have, in this case quite possibly capable of tearing time and space asunder.

We will see.

So the thing that's great about this episode, even apart from all the things that are great about this episode – the acting, the make-up, the dialogue, the design (Millennium Stadium with just a hint of Tim Burton) – the thing that is great about this episode is the way that it pulls into focus all the themes that Moffat has been developing and points us forward to where they might go.

If that's where they choose to go.

Next Time… Angels, minotaurs and David Walliams. Presumably he's a timey-wimey guest star who likes timey-wimey things. The TARDIS crew check into a hotel where every room seems to be room 101. And we can test my theories about omniscience. And see who has "The God Complex".

The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant

Day 4045: Dr Sentimoo's Birthday Message for Daddy!

Day 4044: Duck and Cover! This Asteroid is Close Enough to Land a Lego Man on It!

Day 4043: Yes to Help for Low Earners, But We NEED to Help the No-Earners Too!

Day 4039: If this is an Answer what is the Question?

Day 4035: Bojo May Be Bonkers But At Least He Thinks Big

Day 4034: Mr Holmes, It was the footprint of a GIGANTIC ELEPHANT!

Day 4011: DOCTOR WHO: Forest Gump

Day 4010: We Wish You A Yoda Christmas

Day 4009: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 23 - Spirit of Chrimble

Day 4008: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 22 - The Final Battle

Day 4007: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 21 - Saved by the Millennium... er, Falcon

Day 4006: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 20 - Fly TIE My Pretties

Day 4005: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 19 - The Empire's Sinister Agents

Day 4004: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 18 - Retrieve the Crashed Y-Wing

Day 4003: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 17 - A Dangerous Pursuit

Day 4002: A Star Wars Lego Advent day 16 - Bad News from Captain Pil

Day 4001: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: The Girl Who Was Death

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what's your number, please

the new number two

follow the signs

patrick mcgoohan only rides the tunnel of love with mrs mcgoohan

sometimes a rocket disguised as a lighthouse is just a rocket disguised as a lighthouse

who is number one?

next time…

Day 4001: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 15 - Gunships to the Rescue

Day 4000: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 14 - Death Star Droid Delivers Data

Day 3999: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 13 - A Deadly Droid Double-cross

Day 3999: In Defence of Mr Balloon. A bit.

An Economic Imbalance

Day 3998: A Star Wars Lego Advent day 12 - Crash Landing on Hoth

Day 3997: A Star Wars Lego Advent day 11 - Confront the Droid Defenders

Day 3996: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 10 - Agents of the Empire

Day 3995: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 9 - A Mission for the Alliance

Day 3994: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 8 - The Rebels Make Contact

Day 3993: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 7 - Chewbacca Tooled Up

Day 3994: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling

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what's your number, please

the new number two

patrick mcgoohan only kisses mrs mcgoohan

follow the signs

who is number one?

next time…

Day 3992: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 6 - Rescued by Chewbacca

Day 3992: Tobin or Not Tobin: Why Paddy Ashdown is Wrong and We Need a Robin Hood Tax like an Arrow in the Head.

Day 3991: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 5 - A Bounty Hunter Raid

Day 3990: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 4 - The Droid Army Attacks

Day 3989: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 3 - A Sinister Message

Day 3988: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 2 - A Meeting with the Viceroy

Day 3987: A Star Wars Lego Advent Day 1 - A Diplomatic Mission

Day 3987: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Living in Harmony

welcome to harmony

silver dollar saloon: prickly pear beers

the Judge

I wish it had been real

the ace of spades

next time…

Day 3980: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Many Happy Returns

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Day 3977: If Mr Balls walks like a duck and talks like a duck, does that make him a QUACK?

Day 3973: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: A. B. & C.

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there's been a slight misunderstanding

the new number two

follow the signs

who is number one?

next time…

Day 3959: Mysteries of Doctor Who #23: Why Does "Pyramids of Mars" Take Place in ENGLAND?

PS:

Day 3949: Does Europe Make Referendum-dums of Us All?

Day 3943: THE SCARY JANE ADVENTURES: The Man Who Never Was

Day 3926: DOCTOR WHO: Crisis on Timey Wimey Earth!

1. why the Doctor had to die