Day 5654: If You Brexit You Bought It

Friday:



By 6 o’clock this morning, Friday 24th June 2016, it was clear that the British public had voted to leave the European Union.

Britain has chosen a new direction. But we won’t be afraid, even if there is a difficult path ahead, because we trust the people of this country to make it through. And we believe, more than ever, that Britain will need a compassionate liberal voice to help along the way.


It's a sad end for David Cameron, aka Mr Balloon, who gambled recklessly with the county’s future. To keep his job as Prime Minister he gave in to his more unspeakable right wing. He has paid the price of losing and resigned. History won’t be kind to him, the man who deeply wounded his country’s future for his own ends, may even have ended Great Britain altogether.

By the Referendum Divided

Because we’re waking up to a country that is shockingly divided. Important parts having voted to Remain: not just Scotland and Northern Ireland but also many of the great cities of England – Greater Manchester including especially my home town of Stockport, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge and above all London, including my current patch in Tower Hamlets where the vote was 2 to 1 in favour of Remaining.

And it is a matter of pride that those two places where helped the campaign, Cheadle and Tower Hamlets, were among those to buck the national trend and vote to remain.



But while I wouldn’t blame them, I don’t want to see Scotland, let alone London, leaving the UK, tearing us even further apart.

Tearing things apart because you can’t have your own way is the way of the childish tantrum, the way of Farage and his Vote Leave crusade.

Vote Leave is fundamentally anti-democratic, something made pretty glaringly obvious by the way the next Prime Minister will be decided by internal machinations of the Tory Party and not by a vote of the British people.

Democracy means compromise, it means sometimes not getting your own way, something that the Vote Leave campaign – for all their talk of democracy – do not care for.

And this is why you need to elect liberals – if you don’t then the extremists get to take over the asylum.

We face uncertain times. The stock markets and the pound seem to have pulled out of their crash dives, and the Bank of England has promised a quarter of a billion to calm things down. But the pound is significantly weaker and the global economy has taken a blow. Already some companies talk of moving their offices from London to Frankfurt or Bonn.

We can survives this, but we need to pull together, not apart.

This country needs a new politics.

The Tory Party are clearly split and may never be able to put themselves back together.

Labour’s leadership have been weak and indecisive leadership throughout the campaign, their indifference to their own supporters means they abandoned many voters to UKIP’s brazen promises, populist solutions and outright lies.

Only the Liberal Democrats have been consistent and positive about the opportunities and benefits of an open liberal Britain, and that puts us in the best possible position to shape the new politics that we so clearly need.

There is a huge well of support for a liberal, outward-looking Britain and we will not let the triumphalist Leave Campaign ignore that voice, your voice. We will hold them to their promises of a free-trading Britain that is open for business. They promised to give you control. We will hold them to that too.

Now, even more than in the aftermath of last year's general election, we need you to stand with us. Stand up and be counted as the voice of the real Britain. Don't leave it to others. Don't leave your country in the hands of Johnson, Gove and Nigel Farage.

Join us and we will make Britain Great again.



(This blog also appearing at: http://richardflowers.nationbuilder.com/eureferendum)

Day 5651: The Dark is Rising

Tuesday:


We must turn back the tide.


In the last week there have been two murderous attacks on people who, although not close to me are only a short step away and feel like my people.

In America, my soon-to-be-step brother knows people in Orlando who have lost loved ones in the massacre at the Pulse nightclub – an attack on the gay community, my community.

And then in Birstall, I know people who have campaigned near there and who have campaigned with Jo Cox for better treatment of refugees – an attack on liberal-thinking politics, my tribe of politics.

At the Westminster vigil

These incidents do not come in isolation.

The roots of this poison go deep. Fear, anger, rage have been encouraged, fed by years of austerity. Left and right have encouraged a blame culture and simplistic answers. Our media have traduced politicians as venal and corrupt. The immediacy of social media has unleashed a tidal wave of trolls with the power of abuse. And this referendum has been the ugliest political campaign, fought in the ugliest political climate. To get to this point.

How many tweets calling a person with the opposite view a traitor does it take before some people think it's okay to shout abuse in the streets? How may expletive-laden chants of traitor have to be shouted before some people think it's okay to whisper threats of rape and violence to a young woman as she campaigns? How many whispered threats before some people think it's okay to stop threatening and use violence? How many assaults and beatings does it take before one person thinks that he will do what everyone he reads is saying he should do? To get to this point.

When did it become okay to say we've had enough of experts?

When did it become okay to say that violence would follow if you don't get your own way?

When did it become okay to just lie?

Those on the right need to be held to account for how they have promoted simplistic – and wrong – answers, seeking protectionism and blaming the foreigner, the other, despite the clear historical precedent that these answers do not work – we hear people like Peter Oborne saying the working class are fearful for their jobs but stoking that fear by repeating the falsehood that immigrants "take British people's jobs" when that is simply not how economies work.

Those on the left need to look at how they behaved during the coalition years: all the cries of betrayal and blame, never seeking to promote answers or accepting responsibility, abandoning arguments just as they abandoned the working class vote to the nationalists – the likes of Polly Toynbee who now condemns the toxic climate but never took a week off from denigrating Nick Clegg for trying to make a bad situation work.

Those in the media need to admit to their own faults, and failings and bias, who have given platforms to Farage and his rag tag minority far beyond what they deserved until the prophecy has become self-fulfilling; who have spun news stories – or just plain falsehoods – to the tune of business tycoons whose interests do not in any way correspond with the interests of the British public; and who push the idea that politicians never give a straight answer, but who won't let a politician answer the question without interrupting, and some questions need more than a soundbite to answer, who have earned far more than the MPs they bully while painting politicians as venal and corrupt and deserving of abuse and yes even death.

But I won't accept false equivalence. There are faults on all sides, but they are not the same, and to pretend that there is any sense that the Stronger In campaign mounting piece after piece of evidence that things will not be good outside the EU – dismissed as "Project Fear" by the people scaremongering about immigrant rapists – is in any way similar to the malice and lies of Vote Leave is to give succour to the racists who can hardly even be said to be hiding in plain sight any more, they are out in the open and revelling in their vile views.

There comes a time when you have to ask yourself – as in the Mitchell & Webb sketch – are you the baddies?

UKIP are not the victims here. Nigel Farage, asked about the death of Jo Cox, claimed that he was the victim of hatred. Nigel Farage is not the victim here. If you foment hate and you get hate back, that is not a free pass to go on spewing hate.

Evil exists.

It is a childish thing to think in terms of good and evil. We are more sophisticated than that. Grown up life is so much more complex and nuanced, full of difficult compromise and the best being enemy to the better. But sometimes is really is that simple. Because we have seen this road before and we know the place it ends.

It is a childish thing to think in terms of good and evil. But it is story of my childhood that keeps coming back to me – Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising". And that is what I have been feeling, for the last days, weeks, months even.

There is Darkness in all humans. And that Dark is rising.

I'm not immune. I'm not a saint. I've felt anger, fury even, at some of the things that have been said and done in this campaign. I like to tell myself that I've tried to campaign in an honest and optimistic way, that I've tried to stick to the facts and called on people to use fact and reason to build their case, to use the best of British tradition to encourage us to be part of holding together a Europe that for the first time in history has gone not one but two generations without tearing itself apart. But if you scrutinise, I would not be surprised if you found I'd sent a tweet in wrath, or posted an irate put-down on FaceBook.

Many have said that her death was the first they had heard of Jo Cox. Because she'd been working with Tim Farron and Yvette Cooper to urge Britain to do more for refugees I was vaguely aware of her work. But I can hardly say that I knew her.

But I want to try to be a better person, to not give in to that anger, as my way to honour her memory.

We must all strive to do better. And we can be better.

Today I am appalled to hear that a man was planning to assassinate Donald Trump. We cannot defeat Trump – or Farage – by killing him. That way, we only replace him.

The vigils that have been held for Orlando and for Jo Cox, the dignity of the tributes paid in parliament, have shown that there is love and there is a better way. The sudden and very obvious panic in the Vote Leave camp, and in Farage in particular, the way he's desperately trying to turn this around to make the story all about him again, the disrespectful claim that Remain are out to "profit" from the death of one of their strongest voices all tell the tale that they know they've been rumbled.

These vigils are not about any political campaign any more. They are about doing a politics that is Good.

Vote Leave's fear and anger is because they embraced the Darkness months, if not years ago. They lost the argument. All they have is driving people with fear, anger, hate, poison.

There is now the palpable sense that people have awoken to the clear and present danger of allowing free reign to this poison that has festered. There is a sense that I am not alone in wanting to strive to do better.

The Dark is rising.

But the Light is rising to turn back the Dark.


“The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.”
― Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree

Day 3761: A Tear, Sarah Jane?

Tuesday:


Ms Elisabeth Sladen, better known as Dr Woo's best friend Sarah Jane Smith, was one of the most ALIVE people we've ever known, a living testament to her most famous character's credo that you don't have to be a Time Lord up in Space to have ADVENTURES; that they can happen right here on Earth, if you just live your life looking for them.

In the way she remained open to wonder and new things, Sarah Jane never grew up. She certainly never grew OLD.

So how can she have died? I can only echo Tom Baker: impossible, impossible.

My heart goes out to Mr Dr Tom. Already this year he's lost his long-time drinking buddy, Mr "the Brigadier" Nick Courtney, and now Best Friend Sarah as well. And apparently, Big Finish were hoping to arrange for Tom and Lis to record more adventures together.

And then there are the wonderful cast of "The Sarah Jane Adventures", possibly the truest reincarnation of the Classic Doctor Who in its twenty-five-minutes-with-cliffhangers, we've-got-no-money-but-we're-going-to-do-it-anyway format and stories that were arguably more successful than the flashier Saturday series – certainly, the SJAs made better use of the Slitheen and the Sontarans and recurring nemesis The Trickster (aka The Black Guardian lite) was a darn sight better baddie than any villain they've come up with on Doctor Who since 2005. I can't explain better than Auntie Jennie why this series was so GOOD for young people. Mr Daniel Anthony, Ms Anjii Mohindra and Mr Tommy Knight, not to forget Mr Alexander Armstrong (as Mr Smith) and Mr John Leeson (as K-9), must be devastated.

Six episodes of a fifth season have already been filmed: the opening four and, perhaps more importantly, closing two.

This clearly presents two alternatives: a truncated fifth season of just the existing episodes, perhaps with a framing device of Clyde, Rani and Luke remembering Sarah through the stories; or, recording two new stories without Sarah, possibly persuading the incomparable Katy Manning to return once more as Jo Jo Jones or maybe even – subject to developments in his own series – the Doctor, Matt Smith.

Famous Dr Woo writer, Mr Jon Blum has suggested an "Ashes to Ashes" like continuation, with the younger cast of "The Sarah Jane Adventures" (plus alien computer and/or robot dog) continuing to save the world from Sarah's attic in Ealing.

I find myself in two minds.

On the one fluffy foot, it would be LOVELY to see the series regulars continue and to meet up with other former companions… and thanks to the in-series continuity established at the end of "Death of the Doctor", we know – and our heroes know – that there ARE other former companions out there… you could have one story with Martha Jones and UNIT, then another mad jape with Jo; I'd personally love to see them meet up with Dorothy McShane and her "A Charitable Earth" organisation, and they could even have a faabulous swinging adventure with Polly Wright…

But on the OTHER fluffy foot, there is a REASON why it was Sarah Jane, of ALL Dr Woo's companions, who was the one who came back.

Coming after the HUGELY popular pairing of Katy and Jon Twerpee's third Doctor, Lis had such a hard act to follow. But her smart, sassy, no-nonsense tomboy instantly won over the audience (as well as her leading man). Written as Mr Terrance Dicks' idea of a feminist character, famously given the line "there's nothing 'only' about being a girl", fortunately Lis was smart enough to never ever play her that way, and as such was a much MORE feminist character than any number of "right on" lines might have been. Instead Lis made Sarah Jane a rounded, totally capable character, more often genuinely amused at the ridiculous scrapes she got herself into than unable to cope. Sure, she screamed from time to time. But then she got on with unmasking the villain or defeating the monster.

Almost uniquely for a "Doctor Who girl", Sarah Jane had a life and a career that went on outside of the time she would spend with Dr Woo. For example, we are just watching Mr Dr Jon's swansong "Planet of the Spiders" (freshly minted on DVD), and the first episode sees Sarah's investigation of Mike Yates's lamasery completely independent of the Doctor's ESP experiments; only the conclusion (where the Metebilis crystal in the Doctor's lab and the chanting in the cellar combine to summon the first Spider) bring them together. Throughout her time with the Doctor, Sarah has a life IN the TARDIS, but also a life OUTSIDE of it, doing proper journalism, and – aside from the Brigadier himself – I can't think of another companion who DOES that.

She stuck with Dr Woo for three Earth years, Mr Dr Jon's last and Mr Dr Tom's first two, plus a couple more stories – famously taking in her stride: "mummies, robots, lots of robots, antimatter monsters, Daleks, real living dinosaurs and THE LOCH NESS MONSTER". After her they really COULDN'T follow that, so they did "The Deadly Assassin" with no assistant at all, and after that the Doctor didn't have another friend from contemporary Earth for another five years. THAT'S the sort of impact she had.

And of all Dr Woo's travelling chums, Sarah Jane is the one who just gets left. Sarah's was the story that BEGGED for a "what happened next?" At the end of what with hindsight we laughingly call her last story, "The Hand of Fear", the Doctor just kicks her out of the TARDIS and leaves. It's BRILLIANT, because it DOESN'T finish the story. At any moment, you think, he can just pop back and carry on.

Almost all the other "companions" leave because they've found their way home, or they've found their proper place in the universe, or (occasionally somewhat improbably) they've found that ol' Earth thing called lurve (or very, very occasionally because they've found that smashing into prehistoric Earth with a freighter-load of Cybermen tends to reduce your career options). All of those stories have reached their natural conclusion; with the exception of Adric they've had their happy ending and although we know life DOES go on, anything more can only detract from that. (See how "Death of the Doctor" practically rams home the message that, aside from never seeing her Doctor again, Jo Jo DID have a happy life ever after – none of this "divorce" nonsense that mid-nineties fanfic writers kept tossing in!)

But more than all of that, the thing that distinguished Sarah Jane was her ability to match the Doctor. (Helped not a little by Mr Dr Tom's habit of sharing some of his technobabble with her – note the scenes in, say, "Pyramids of Mars" where he has the Doc basically prompt Sarah into explaining the plot back to him. "Tribiophysics" indeed!) Where other time travellers would be content to ask "what is it Doctor", scream and fall over, Sarah Jane would TAKE CHARGE.

Everyone else loved being WITH the Doctor; Sarah Jane loved the Doctor enough to BE the Doctor.

And THAT'S why Sarah was the one who came back, not just once ("K-9 and Company: Least Said Soonest Mended") but again ("The Five Doctors") and again ("School Reunion") and again ("Invasion of the Bane" et al.)

Everyone who watches Doctor Who wants to BE the Doctor. Sarah Jane Smith did that, lived the life that we all would live if we just could: she WAS the Doctor, as close as an ordinary, wonderful human bean can be.

And that was down to the love and integrity with which Lis Sladen portrayed her.

Lis, you were one of "the Children of Time". And now we are so very, very sad.

While there's life there's…
.

Day 3719: Stars

Tuesday:


My mum died and the universe ended.


We are made of stardust.

In the Doctor Who episode "The Big Bang" there is a Richard Dawkins who believes in stars even when there are none in the sky.

But our Professor Richard Dawkins, in his book "The Ancestor's Tale", says:

"It's hardly surprising that we see stars when we look up into the sky at night, because stars are a necessary prerequisite for organisms that see."

He means that the elements necessary for life – carbon, nitrogen, oxygen – are only created through nuclear fusion, and thus only in stars.

So the evidence of our own existence requires that there must be stars, even if we do not see them.

So the Richard Dawkins in the story is not a blind believer but a rationalist who has inferred the stars' existence from the very fact that we are here at all.


Listening to the 500th "In Our Time", Melvyn Bragg and his guests, philosophers all, discussed free will and spent the better part of forty minutes trying to find different excuses for why determinism doesn't rob us of choice.

Determinism is the belief that given any one arrangement of physical space, the laws of physics determine that there is only one possible thing that can happen next. If that's true, then even the atoms that make up our brains, the patterns of electrons that describe our thoughts among the neurons and axons, are just one "arrangement" and physics determines what will happen next: what we think, what we do is determined by simple physical laws and any experience of choice is an illusion generated by the chemistry, our "will" no more than along for the ride.

Obviously, this presents a huge problem for morality: if we truly have no choices then how can it be fair to judge anyone by their actions? Yes, yes we would have no more choice about whether to punish or not and the punishment itself would be inevitable – but suppose you believe in a god outside of the laws of space and time: how could it be moral for such a god to set up a deterministic universe and then judge people to heaven or hell based on actions they cannot control?

But that can't be right, can it?

I believe in free will. And I believe that even if I'm wrong, I have no choice but to believe in free will. But I see the universe as intersecting matrices: space and time; matter and energy; observation and awareness. In Quantum Mechanics, in the Copenhagen interpretation, all possible outcomes of quantum event occur simultaneously in multiple "superposition states", all stacked up – super-positioned – on top of each other and our observation collapses this into a single state that we see, without necessarily disturbing the others.

If our awareness, our continuous observation of our own existence, our long reiteration of "I think therefore I think I am", if that means anything then it means we can and do choose the quantum superposition states that we observe.

We can, with our actions and choices, change the universe, even it is only the universe that we ourselves are aware of, passing like ghosts along one path through the myriad observable superposition states.




In another Doctor Who episode, "Utopia" by Russell Davies, the TARDIS carries the Doctor, and Martha – and Captain Jack clinging to the outside – to a hundred trillion years into the future, to the End of the Universe.

That's almost right. We live in the Stelliferous Era: the Age of Stars. And in a hundred trillion years the Stelliferous Era will come to an end as the last stars go out.

In his "Wonders of the Universe", Professor Brian Cox took us there too. He presented us with the Heat Death of the Universe as an inevitable consequence of Entropy, the scientific measure of disorder, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics: "In a closed system, entropy increases". Or as it has been satirised: "Things Can Only Get Worse".

That's bleak, very bleak, and not a little controversial – it is by no means a certain thing that the Universe will end that way.

In a nice simple universe, the Big Bang scatters matter in all directions and gravity tries to pull it all back together. If there is enough mass in the universe, then eventually gravity stops all the bits from flying apart and pulls them back into a Big Crunch, a reverse Big Bang that ends the Universe as it began in a fiery cremation of all matter, energy and time; if there isn't enough mass then things just expand into the cold and black forever.

Astonishingly, the amount of matter in the universe – the stuff we can see and the so-called dark matter that we have to guess must be there from the way the rest of space moves – is right on the borderline between being just enough to stop the acceleration and not quite enough to stop it going forever.

But whatever happens, that expansion should gradually slow down and slow down under the pull of gravity.

Except that's not what we observe. The expansion of the universe actually appears to be accelerating.

So we DON'T live in a simple universe; and until we have any idea what the "Dark Energy" powering the acceleration is, all bets are off.

The law of entropy, that Second Law of Thermodynamics, means – says Professor Cox – that nothing is forever.

But that's not right, is it.

Not even nothing is forever.

Quantum Mechanics tells us that particles can just happen, appearing out of nowhere in matter/anti-matter pairs. In our busy universe of stars and matter they almost always collide and vanish again. Almost always. But who knows what the rules are for a cold, empty universe, trillions upon trillions of years after the last stars. Our universe began in a single point of time and energy bursting into existence: everything from nothing. Perhaps that is how the next universe will begin.

Not even nothing is forever; there is always, always something new.

I believe in hope and I believe in choice and I believe in life.


Mum is with the stars now.
.

Day 3706: Chap With Wings

Wednesday:


Somewhere, somewhen, there is a TARDIS by a graveside, and the inscription on the headstone just reads:

"He saved the world."


I met Nicholas Courtney in late 2005 in the BBC shop off Regent Street. I was buying a Dalek.

I addressed him as "Brigadier" and said the new series wouldn't be complete until he was in it, a sentiment he approved. And now he won't be. And that is sad.

To fans of Doctor Who, Nicholas Courtney was the Brigadier: Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart KBE, originally a Colonel, latterly a General, but always, forever, just "the Brigadier".

As everyone always says, he first appeared as Bret Vyon, the slightly sinister Space Special Security Service agent in the first Doctor epic "The Daleks' Master Plan". But it was as the head of UNIT (British division) that he became central to the second incarnation of Doctor Who, when it regenerated into a colour action-adventure series with Jon Pertwee in 1970.

The Brigadier, much more than the Master, is the Doctor's equal and opposite. A military man, an establishment figure, a human with no Gallifreyan superpowers or Time Lord cosmic knowledge, but with simple courage and belief in doing the right thing Lethbridge-Stewart stood up to be counted as Earth's first and often only line of defence.

He definitively Saves the World™ in "Battlefield", but doesn't claim to be the World's finest. "I just do the best I can," he says. And then shoots the monster dead.

Like the Doctor himself, the Brigadier's character changes from era to era.

The Brigadier that we remember, the crack shot, lead-from-the-front, stiff-upper-lip, not phased by anything sort of a guy, who founds UNIT and recruits Liz Shaw – who commits genocide against the Silurians, don't forget, but who also stops the xenophobic General Carrington – is actually the second take on the character, after the Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart who breaks down upon getting his troops massacred by Yeti. This, second, Lethbridge-Stewart, who greets the second Doctor as an old friend in "The Invasion" and in turn is greeted by the third in "Spearhead from Space", is smart and wily – watch how in "Terror of the Autons" he foists Jo Grant on the Doctor knowing that the Time Lord won't have the heart to tell her she's sacked, and knowing that Jo Jo is exactly the assistant his scientific advisor needs – and exactly the one who will keep him here working for UNIT.

He evolves again into the more comic, bumbling, "Scooby Doo" version of the character that we see in the later Pertwee stories, infamously "The Three Doctors", though it's less of a stretch than you might think from "Five Rounds Rapid" to "I'm almost sure that's Cromer". And he still retains a kind of dignity that rises above any mockery the script – or the Doctor – might throw at him. By "Terror of the Zygons", the fourth Doctor story that is really the end of the UNIT era (no, "The Android Invasion" and "The Seeds of Doom" don't really count as UNIT stories) he's able to wear his clan tartan and look like he means it.

In the Eighties, in notorious continuity-cruncher "Mawdryn Undead", we meet a later Brigadier, a retired Brigadier, who is somehow more fragile and more real. He becomes an icon of nostalgia, but also an exploration of how things are so much less simple than they used to be. Ironically, given that he was a late replacement for the character of Ian Chesterton, the Brigadier is perfect for this role because the Brigadier was never quite as simple as good guys/bad guys – again, see "…and the Silurians" but also the even-less-subtle (than "Mawdryn Undead") contrasts of "Inferno".

The audio adventures "The Spectre of Lanyon Moor", with the Sixth Doctor, and "Minuet in Hell" with the Eighth, develop the retired Brigadier further, making him a UN ambassador and occasional off-the-payroll assistant to UNIT – a role recognised in the new series with a nod in "The Sontaran Stratagem". (There are also a couple of extremely wonderful "Unbound" adventures – "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Masters of War" – with the incomparable David Warner as an alternative third Doctor – well worth a listen.)

The books go further still, particularly Paul Cornell's "Happy Endings" and "Shadows of Avalon", while many of the New Adventures make reference to the Brigadier leaving a legacy of "Zen Warriors", using Buddhist techniques along with the things he learned from the Doctor to train a better defence for Earth in a gentle blending of the TV Brig with the second biggest contributor to the Brigadier's character: the late soldier-turned-Buddhist, producer Barry Letts (though Barry was, in reality, a Navy man).

It's a testament to Nick Courtney as an actor that he played all of these Brigadiers with humour and dignity and made them all recognisably facets of the same man: hero, killer, friend, saviour. Splendid chaps, all of them.


In a way, it is astonishing that Russell, with his reverence for all things Pertwee-era, never managed to find a place for the Brigadier in the revived series. Yet, in a way, he did – not so much with that throwaway reference in "The Sontaran Stratagem" or an oh-so-welcome guest appearance in the Sarah Jane Adventure "Enemy of the Bane", but I now realise in the character of Wilfred Mott, the old soldier. The scene in "The End of Time" where Wilf offers the Doctor his old service revolver and urges him to kill the Master first: it's pure Brigadier.

Dr David would have loved it – he'd appeared with the Brig in a couple of those Big Finish adventures, although playing Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood rather than the Doctor. Yet somehow it seems that Lethbridge-Stewart would have fitted better with Tennant's successor. The childlike crazy erratic Eleventh Doctor would have been perfect with the stalwart, dependable Brig of later years. And there's always the risk that the Brigadier would have taken one look at the "Time Lord Triumphant" and said "Doctor, you've gone bonkers" before shooting him dead.



The television series "The Web of Fear" somehow neglects to include the iconic first meeting of the Doctor and the Brigadier. Terrance Dicks, of course Terrance Dicks, corrects this oversight in his Target novelisation of the story, and Alex gave it to me to read this morning. If… no, when we see "The Web of Fear" re-animated – and dammit I will win the lottery and pay for it myself if I have to – shouldn't it be outrageously bowdlerised by having that scene "reinstated".

Or perhaps not. There's something poetic in the idea that we will never see the Brigadier's first meeting with the Doctor and we'll never see the Brigadier's last meeting with the Doctor.

Nicholas Courtney, rest in peace. The Brigadier is forever now.
.

Day 3206: MYSTERIES OF DOCTOR WHO #21: Frontier in Space… What Happened Next?

Sunday:


If the answer is "Planet of the Daleks" there's something wrong with the QUESTION!

Let us look at what has been going on: Space… the final frontier… these are the voyages of Dr Woo in a space-going prison flown by Mr the Master.

"Frontier in Space" is Mr Mac "the incredible" Hulke's contribution to the all-singing, all-dancing (well occasionally, during "Carnival of Monsters") Tenth Anniversary of Doctor Who, and is also the first half of an EPIC twelve episode cross-over adventure that sees the Master and the Daleks team up to actually not meet the Cybermen for contractual reasons.

…available now on DVD under an exciting "Dalek War" wrapper!

This double-story celebration of the series' greatest villains is a twelve-part homage to the mighty "The Daleks' Master Plan", Mr Dr Billy's great adventure that also took place over the course of twelve weeks, and likewise features a Dalek scheme to conquer the galaxy, this time with added beardy villainy, making this actually: "The Master's Dalek Plan".


Then as now, the "epic" was split into two distinct halves: one part written by Mr Terry National Lottery and the other by someone who could actually write. Er. The DIFFERENCE is that last time, Mr Terry came up with a title, some character names and the mystery space elephant element Terrynationerum later shortened to Tarranium before handing it all in a manila envelope to the series script editor and jumping into a taxi for Heathrow. THIS time, Mr Terry insisted on writing it all himself. Which he did… in 1963 when it was called "The Daleks". Still, you couldn't get DVDs in those days so a "remake" in colour was actually a rather SMART way for new viewers to see what they missed back in the beginning. (Also available as, er, "The Beginning".)

What I'm trying to say is this: "Frontier in Space" is actually really good. REALLY good. Especially if you watch it one episode at a time. Certainly it entails Dr Woo being locked up in a whole succession of prison cells, but it's actually all rather clever the way that it escalates the sense of galactic threat: first he's just put in a cell on a space freighter that's come under attack; then he's locked up on Earth; then he's locked up on the MOON; then he's handed over to Mr the Master… and locked up; then he's locked up by the alien Draconians; and THEN he's locked up on the Ogron planet and it turns out that the DALEKS are in charge! The President of Earth, the Emperor of Draconia, the Master, the Earth-Minbari War, er… all sorts of huge characters and huge politics are cleverly presented to us as Dr Woo struggles to get ANYONE to listen to him. Meanwhile Jo Jo Grant finally proves herself when her pluck resists the Master's hypno-powers.

All of this build-up leaves you as tightly wound as a spring, expecting a big, big, BIG conclusion.

And then you get Planet of the Daleks. I'm just saying.

But SERIOUSLY, at the end of part six, there's a bit of a MYSTERY as to what is going on. Dr Woo has used Mr the Master's own "fear box" to escape from his (most recent) prison cell, he has freed Earth leader General Williams and the Crown Prince of Draconia and seen that they escape but on trying to get back to the TARDIS (stolen in part one by the Ogrons) he runs into the Master and a large group of his gorilla-like hench-lifeforms. Mr the Master pulls a gun and SHOOTS Dr Woo…

What, as they say, happened next?

Well, what we ACTUALLY see is that Mr the Master is suddenly gone, the Ogrons are scattered and a sobbing Jo Jo – now armed with Mr the Master's gun – is dragging Dr Woo into the TARDIS.

What is MISSING is clearly the intervention of the Ogron Eater, a being known – for reasons I am too young and fluffy to understand – as the "Giant Ogron Bollock Monster". We've seen it once, in the distance, attacking one of Mister the Master's goons. Mr General Williams describes it as a large, aggressive reptile, which suggests that either HE has never seen a large aggressive reptile (unlikely; he's stood next to the Draconian Prince) or the DESIGNER wasn't paying attention.

We see another, or rather a huge mural of it, in the Ogron's shrine, and it's clearly SUPPOSED to be establishing something for a big reveal at the end… Chekhov's Giant Ogron Bollock Monster if you will… but that reveal never comes. Probably because Jo Jo turning into an enormous hairy testicle was considered UNBROADCASTABLE. (This IS thirty years before TORCHWOOD, remember.)

But that's clearly what was SUPPOSED to happen: with Dr Woo out for the count, Jo Jo grabs the "fear box" and turns on. SOMETHING appears, terrifying the Ogrons setting them running. Mr the Master is knocked flying; Jo Jo gets hold of his pistol; and he does a runner. The rest you know.

Well THAT was easy… for an encore I shall prove that BLACK is WHITE… or rather in COLOUR these days (and the restored episode three of Planet of the Daleks actually look really good, especially – to daddy's surprise – the ICE tunnels, where you would have thought black and white pretty much covered it, but in fact they look much better, with a kind of depth to the polystyrene set that the B&W flattens and deadens. Well done all round; hope they have the cash for the other episodes that need colour restored.)

But what is actually WRONG with Planet of the Daleks?

Well, actually, there's a list as long as my rather magnificent nose… starting with the TARDIS air supply, and "infected by the fungoids"; via some of Dr Woo's most patronising lectures ever; via some of Jo Jo's truly astonishing stealth in Dalek control (there's a Dalek looking RIGHT AT HER when she slips out of her hidey-hole) not to mention her hiding the Thals' explosives BEHIND A FROND; via some of the WORST space-dialogue in the history of this part of the space-galaxy(!); via some of the most WOEFUL glowing-eyes-in-the-jungle effects you ever did see outside of a Scooby Doo cartoon; via all the random invisible aliens, space-plagues, countdowns and other Flash Gordon plot coupons Mr Terry so loves to use; through to a conclusion involving literally dozens of tricky-action Dalek toys and a gallon of wallpaper paste that just cannot be described in polite company!

But what is ACTUALLY actually wrong with it is that it's NOT parts seven to twelve of the promised epic.

Let's flash back to "The Daleks Master Plan" again. With Mr Terry writing – or rather NOT-so-very-much writing – the first half, they could let Mr Spennis Dooner write what he wanted for the huge impressive conclusion and director Mr Dougie "Colonel" Camfield and script editor Mr Donald "this is" Tosh could make up what they wanted so long as they finished where he started.

This time out, Mr Mac writes a tremendous political thriller building up to the outbreak of all-out war with the Daleks poised to sweep in and conquer what's left of the galaxy and Dr Woo calling on the Time Lords themselves to intervene… and then Mr Terry writes an ordinary six-parter where Dr Woo is SURPRISED to find that there are Daleks on this Planet.

There's nothing to connect this to the bigger picture that we've just spent a month-and-a-half developing; this adventure is essentially self-contained and almost "small scale", with the big picture further undermined by the underwhelming revelation that the greatest Dalek army ever assembled (subject to Time War revision) consists of a mere ten THOUSAND of the metal menaces. Ten MILLION maybe, would be a threat to the galaxy – though it would make the concluding Icecano-gunking even more improbable a method of stopping 'em – but ten thousand? With Earth, Draconia, Sirius III and IV mentioned in "Frontier in Space" ALONE, that's only twenty-five hundred per planet (assuming the Ogron world can be counted as "under control" already!).

I know "one Dalek is capable of exterminating ALL!!!!" but really!

Half the problem is having the Thals in it AT ALL. Apart from anything else it makes doing Dalek history a REAL pain, as this bunch of wet warriors REMEMBER the events of "The Daleks", a story that finishes with, er, the death of all the Daleks.

The Thals come from the Planet Skaro, and have only recently (it's now the Twenty-Sixth Century) developed space flight. The Daleks ALSO come from the Planet Skaro – yes, that's the REAL "planet of the Daleks" – and have had space flight since at least the Twenty-Second Century when they invade the Earth (in, er, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"). That's a technological head-start of at least FOUR HUNDRED YEARS.

It's not IMPOSSIBLE to imagine a planet with two competing civilisations each developing space travel… like Russialand and Americaland did in the 1950s and 1960s. But NOT if one of those civilisations is the DALEKS. That would be the "exterminate all other species" Daleks. Even if they have no sentimental reason to re-colonise their homeworld, wouldn't they at least have used their MASSIVE space superiority to BOMB the Thals into extinction FROM ORBIT?

(…like they ACTUALLY do to Earth in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" and, well, Spiridon in, frankly, "Planet of the Daleks"!)

The solution is obvious: the party who have crashed on the "Planet of the Daleks" should NOT be Thals. In fact, they should be a party of humans and Draconians – following on from the end of "Frontier in Space", the Earth Empire and the Draconians should have allied themselves and sent out a force of scouts to search for the real enemy of both sides, now revealed to be the Daleks. Then, rather than references to "mythical figures" of Susan and Ian and Barbara it is Dr Woo's PERSONAL knowledge of Mr General Williams and Mr the Draconian Crown Prince that gets him in the team's good books.

This doesn't just tie IN with "Frontier in Space", but also ties UP the loose ends at the end – it neatly tells us that the Prince and the General DID escape, and that the Earth-Draconia War is OFF. By giving us a threat of ten (cough cough) million Daleks, enough to smash the Empires even if they DO unite, then the story gets bigger and becomes a vital race to give the new alliance a fighting chance.

Oh, and if the Dalek War has already started, then you can have the scout ships being SHOT DOWN by Dalek Saucers, rather than crashing. TWICE. (In the story as shown, we have to assume that the Thals have discovered space FLIGHT but not space LANDING; even then, it's an GINORMOUS coincidence that both rockets crash in the same small area of a rather large planet!)

You can even change the concluding moral homily from:

"when you tell your people this story, don't GLORIFY it; don't make it as an exciting space adventure in six weekly episodes…er…"

to:

"we haven't won the war; we haven't even won the first battle; we've just given ourselves a fighting chance…"

and by this you can imply that this is a small, but vital, skirmish part of a much larger, much broader history, consistent with the view from "Frontier in Space". (Plus get rid of more ghastly patronisation!)


Of course if you really, actually, desperately NEED to have the Thals in it… well, there's a solution to that too: you set the "Planet of the Daleks" actually ON the planet of the Daleks, namely Skaro, and the "random invisible aliens" turn out to be none other than the THALS themselves!

It would actually make more SENSE than that the Spiridons… er, Spiridonians… er, Spiridon-people have evolved/developed invisibility for no apparent (sorry, pun) reason.

The PEACE-LOVING Thals on a planet full of murderous (not to mention, post "The Daleks", vengeful and really quite p…ed off) pepperpots would need to find a way of staying hidden, and we already know that they have had some rather, er, peculiar evolution not to mention an affinity with drugs that affect radiation. Acquiring the ability to "fold" light around themselves would be a positive requirement and, frankly, not MUCH weirder than anything else that happens on Skaro.

It could also explain why Thal scientist Mr Codal knows what an "anti-reflecting light wave" might be!

Now, all you need to do is make sure that the designer doesn't install Dalek control panels with buttons that can only be worked if you have fingers (and not, say, sink plungers) and you're away!

PS:

Doctor Who's tenth anniversary came in the middle of the five year period when the series was produced by Mr Barry Letts, and we have heard from Mr Andrew and Mr Will that, sadly, he has passed away.


Mr Barry took over when Doctor Who was a series that had very nearly been cancelled at the end of the Black and White era, and along with his charismatic star, Mr Jon Pertwee, he turned it around and made it once again a National Institution.

Ideas and icons of the series introduced in his era have lasted through to today: okay, it's true that UNIT and Autons were ACTUALLY invented just before he took over, but they are closely associated with the show that he made, and you cannot deny him the creation of Mr the Master. The very shape of Doctor Who's future history, Earth's Empire, and its deep past, the Silurian legacy, were founded in these years, and even poorly regarded stories, such as "The Time Monster" (which, like "The Dæmons" before and "The Green Death" and "Planet of the Spiders" after, he covertly co-wrote), have left a legacy of powerful images, such as the god-like Chronovores or the TARDISes inside one another, which have influenced fans ever since, not least the great big lovely Welsh fan who – at least until Christmas – currently runs the show.

But more than that, the series that he inherited had become a shadow of the cutting-edge drama in space and time first developed by Ms Verity Lambert and Mr Sydney Newman, reduced to, a lot of the time, chasing monsters up and down corridors. Mr Barry put some HEART back into the series, introducing a thread of stories – like "The Curse of Peladon" or "The Green Death" – that were ABOUT something, and by having other stories – like "The Mind of Evil" and "Day of the Daleks" – play out against topical concerns about a possible World War Part III.

"Satire" today is often seen as just mocking and mickey-taking, particularly of those in power or the public eye, and we've rather lost the more important element of taking a critical view of society, even trying to correct it. It used to be the duty of the BBC to INFORM as well as to ENTERTAIN: Mr Barry clearly thought that that meant getting people to THINK, and that is a praise-worthy effort in itself.

I'm not going to say "rest in peace" because Mr Barry was a Buddhist. I'm not sure whether "come back soon" is appropriate either. Daddy Alex met him on several occasions and apparently he was lovely. Thank you Mr Barry.


.

Day 3160: Senator Kennedy and the Giant Vampire Foxbats

Wednesday:


The The Today Programme Studio:

6.45am This morning's headline: Senator Edward Kennedy has died

6.46am And now the news that the Giant Vampire Foxbat has taken a step closer to extinction…

Sometimes I think that the The Today Programme editors do these juxtapositions just to see if Mr Evan can cope…

Day 2937: BCNU

Thursday:


Nevermore an Orange Alert; Mr Patrick McGoohan has finally left the Village.

Mr McGoohan was one of those legendary iconic figures, like Sir Christopher Lee or Dame Patrick Macnee, someone you just expect to go on forever, and the World is a profoundly poorer place for no longer having him in it.

We celebrated his life by watching the Prisoner episode: "Dance of the Dead". It just seemed appropriate.

The Prisoner isn't really about the story. It's not for understanding; it's for THINKING ABOUT. And it asks some pretty difficult questions about the important things like DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM and RULES.

There are seventeen episodes of The Prisoner, ranging from fairly perplexing to downright dribbling, and from spy-a-rama to Western to Fairy Story, but there are FOUR of them that are the heart of it:

"Arrival", the series prospectus or possibly just the longest possible version of the famous title sequence; "Dance of the Dead"; "Free for All"; and "Once Upon a Time".

There IS a mundane explanation, an "answer" if you like to the question of The Prisoner: why did Agent John Drake resign? If you don't already know, it's… at the bottom of the page*

Or there's the semi-crass "psychological" view that it's all inside Mr McG's head. Not for nothing are the number "1" and the perpendicular pronoun "I" almost identical.

But that's not what is IMPORTANT.

So while this episode's story, as far as it goes, sees Carnival Time in The Village, with the Prisoner allowed to dress in his old suit to go to the ball, only to wind up on trial for breaking the rules and pursued by the mob, it's not ABOUT that. It's about the images along the way, and these are only a few of them:

The Prisoner thinks he can make friends with a cat, the cat who walks by herself, only to learn that she is Number Two's cat.

Slipping out of the Carnival that he has rejected, he borrows a scientific coat as disguise so he can explore the (previously off limits) Town Hall. He thinks he's being very clever but, ooh, he's "putting on a costume" after all.

Asked about the promised cabaret, Number Two replies bluntly: "you're it" (and later the Prisoner is "it" again in a LETHAL game of chase).

And in the trial, the three judges (French revolution style) are Good Queen Bess, Emperor Nero and Napoleon. Cleopatra is a witness. Wondering why only the sympathetic prosecutor, Bo Peep, is not dressed as a monarch, we realise that is fact she is: she's Marie Antoinette, and she's "dressing up".

And escaping from the murderous Villagers (who then merely lose interest in their "justice") the Prisoner thinks he's found the telex machine from Number One. He smashes the machinery to stop it… and then it starts working again. Because you can't smash the machinery of The Village.

"The Prisoner" was very much the signature piece of Mr Patrick McGoohan. It is almost unique, and sometimes very difficult. But, like the grit in the oyster, it makes for a more marvellous World.


Who was Number One?

You were, Number Six. You were.





*But then I would have to shoot you!

.

Day 2729: DOCTOR WHO: Turn Left

Saturday:


This week's photo has been ERASED from the timeline!

Here's Daddy's review…

Looked at objectively, a copy of Donna is created out of thin air, runs half a mile and then kills herself. Where did that Donna come from? If "our" Donna turns left then none of the things that lead to the other Donna being created happen. But if Donna turns right… then it leads to the creation of a Donna who kills herself to make sure that Donna turns left. So the "turn right" time line is ultimately self-negating. So where does the "other" Donna come from?

Yes, having last week done an exercise in "Stephen Moffat terror", this week, Russell tries his hand at "Stephen Moffat timey-wimey". (I hate that expression, but we're stuck with it now.)

In fairness, of course, it's not inevitably self-negating; it takes the intervention of Rose from outside of the continuum, acting as an ur-Doctor, to set things straight. And the creation of the alternative universe itself appears to be what allows Rose to return from her parallel universe.

(Where a parallel universe is one that occurs naturally and by some fluke resembles ours in all but some usually plot-significant detail. If you believe in the "Many Worlds" solution to Quantum Mechanics, then there is a parallel universe for every quantum event in space-time. Though, as I'm always saying, that is really dull for drama. Plus the universe is so much weirder if you believe in superposition instead.

An alternative universe is one created from our own by a time traveller going back and altering a decision at a branch point. If you imagine that time is like a river, then going back and changing something is like dropping a stone into the flood. Most times, the river just washes on past. But sometimes, sometimes you might just hit exactly the right spot to divert the flow into another path. It's the "Back to the Future" version of time travel, and usually it "overwrites" the original version of history (though often with some dramatic licence to allow memories and dreams of the "real" reality to bleed through – think also of Star Trek's "Yesterday's Enterprise").)

The other paradoxical aspect of the story was why do only some of the Doctor's adventures – typically the ones set in the "present (one year ahead) day" – get cancelled out?

I think most people have correctly worked out that without the Doctor, the Master would never have returned, leaving poor old Professor Yana to potter away his life at the end of the Universe probably never getting the footprint impeller working and so never populating Utopia with Toclafane. And pointedly there are no "orders from Mr Saxon" when the webstar is shot down; nor does Morgenstern claim "Mr Saxon was right!"

Similarly, the Family of Blood would never have come to Earth if they hadn't been hunting the Time Lord, so the events of "Human Nature" would not have happened; and it's difficult to judge what level of threat the Vespiform in the 1920s would have been, but probably not global.

Nevertheless it has to be said, there are three definite occasions when the world would have been ended in the relative past without the tenth Doctor's presence: the Carrionites in the Globe Theatre, the Daleks in Manhattan, and the Pyrovilians in Pompeii.

You could have got away with it – if there were room in an already packed script – with Rose making a remark about Shakespeare, Donna replying "Who?" and Rose saying "He wrote Hamlet, and Macbeth and the Tempest… or he would have done if he hadn't died in 1599 banishing the Carrionites."

It would have allowed a little hand-waving to cover the other two: the way that history papers over the cracks but that it costs the lives of people who are important, just as it costs the present day Sarah Jane and Torchwood.


People – well Russell Davies mainly – have heaped praise on Catherine Tate for her acting throughout this episode. But for me the standout performance was actually Jacqueline King as Donna's mum, Sylvia. It's easy to see how alike Donna and Sylvia are, but how Sylvia descends into hopelessness and despair. The last time we see her in the alternate Earth, a long long scene with her in full focus and Donna indistinct in the corridor behind, we see her completely lost. And that makes her reply to Donna's question: "you've always been disappointed in me, haven't you?" so cruel but so so devastating. Without even caring, she just says "yes".

This is the "Midnight" view of humans written across the face of the Earth but expressed in just one word from a broken woman. Humans can be cruel and cowardly. The Time Beetle is just a parasite; we are the monsters here.

Yes, of course Catherine Tate is marvellous. And so is Bernard Cribbins, jollying everyone along and yet with probably the second most crushing remark of the episode, "It's happening again". And, incidentally, so is Chippo Chung – no longer dressed as a big beetle, merely working for one this year – strikingly good as the malevolent fortune teller. Really though, after Pompeii you'd have thought Donna would have learned to stay clear.


Like "Love and Monsters" this skates close to "so it's come to this… a Doctor Who clips show" until you realise that the clips are mingled with new angles on the old events. So we see the Racnoss webstar float over the London suburbs before its fateful approach to Regent Street; Donna's world begins to fall to bits in the thunder of Hope Hospital being taken by the Judoon; we see the (surprisingly minimal in a global scale, if devastating to Britain) outcome of the Titanic crash; we see or at least hear of the outcome of the Adipose plan, sixty million dead on full conversion. For the "cheap" episode, it managed to look incredibly epic.

Okay, the "time beetle" itself was a disappointment, and not just because it looked like a big plastic beetle.

I admit I was rather hoping that it would turn out to be a Metebelis Spider. And there's an extent to which I say, if you're going to do something that might as well be a Metebelis Spider, why not go the whole hog and do it. We know that they are capable of manipulating time though "Eastern" mysticism rather than Time Lord (i.e. "Western") technology. We also know that they prey on the fears and flaws in the human psyche: Donna's railing against an uncaring world and repeated "I'm nothing; I'm not important" being as much a key to the Buddhist influence as Lupton's arrogance and lust for power. And a Buddhist theme would have also nodded briefly to "Kinda", referenced in the "evil" being revealed by a circle of mirrors.

(Plus there's a whole Lawrence Miles-baiting bonus of "Interference" killing off the third Doctor pre- "Planet of the Spiders" and thus effectively changing time to spare them; having a Spider "interfering" in time to change the Doctor's history would have been deliciously ironic. Mind you, Alex wonders if, with the alternative universes and reverse-engineered time machine, "Turn Left" doesn't have Simon "author of the Time Travellers" Guerrier's head spinning this week!)

The Doctor's throwaway line about it being "one of the Trickster's brigade" would have been no more confusing or continuity-bound if he's said instead: "I've met them before".


Is it part one of three? Last year's "Utopia" definitely was, and we have the "To be Continued…" before the end titles and the "Next Time…" teaser after the end titles to prove it. Despite the director viewing this in the same vein, "Turn Left" didn't do that, even though it feels much more like a great big warm-up act, a forty-nine minute teaser all on its own showing us Rose and a devastated Earth and killing Donna. (They really can't kill her in the finale after that… can they?) And the stupendous reveal of all the "Bad Wolfs", every flag and banner and poster and the TARDIS itself all covered in Rose's trans-temporal calling card, as the pounding "Dance of the Macra" music kicks in could not be a better way to get you ready for next week's epic.

And forty-three years ago a special agent delivered a warning in episode-without-the-Doctor "Mission To the Unknown" to warm us up for the oncoming Dalekatastrophe! says Alex.

But for all that, it was definitely a separate story in its own right. "Utopia" is all of one part with "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords"; "Turn Left" is much more a story of Donna and one single choice.


Anyway, the answer to "where did the other Donna come from" is probably she was created from energy drawn from the Time Beetle itself. Which is probably what killed it.


"Next time…" Where are the bees going? Where are the planets going? What does it have to do with the Rift in the Medusa Cascade? And will Donna have to make a noble sacrifice, or is there more to her than we have ever suspected? Nobel? Lord? Should she be steering clear of fob-watches? It's the season finale, part one, and the return of the Daleks. Lots of Daleks. And a big Red Dalek. And if you don't know that Davros is in it by now then welcome to the planet. "The Stolen Earth"

PS:

Sad news, I am afraid. I am very sorry to hear that one of my Daddies’ dear friends, Mr Ian McKay, has passed away. Always one for a jolly greeting in the queue for signings at the Tenth Planet shop – which itself has just closed like some terrible OMEN – Mr Ian was too young and too young at heart to go yet, for all that he sported what in Doctor Who circles can only be called a shock of prematurely white hair. He is survived by his partner Sandra and his son Peter, who has inherited his love of the Doctor. Fluffy hugs to them both.

Day 2552: Benazir Bhutto

Thursday:


Ms Benazir Bhutto, assassinated trying to return Pakistan to democracy.


This was the most shocking news, and it caught us completely by surprise, not hearing it until the headlines after the conclusion of "Extras", and not believing it for several moments after that.

It is, of course, appalling. But also appalling for the inevitable all-crushing on rush of the rolling news cycle. No concessions are made to people only just receiving the next news, and no excuses for not keeping up. The headlines were already taking the horror of assassination AS READ.

By the next day, reports went straight into Ms Bhutto's funeral and never mind if you had no idea that she had even died. By Saturday we were into speculation about the succession and questioning the accounts of what actually happened. By Sunday, a nineteen-year-old Oxford undergraduate had had the title of Mr Number One Target bestowed upon him. I really, really cannot begin to guess how he's going to be able to cope.

This is the modern age: relentless, unstoppable, appalling and no time to BE appalled.

Day 2518: Mysteries of Doctor Who #13: What's Wrong with Calling them Silurians?

Friday:


The especially SPLENDID thing about "Doctor Who and the Silurians" is the way that the title misnames both.

Obviously it was never anyone's intention that the Target Book-esque "and the" should end up on the caption roller. But more importantly, the titular monsters get lumbered with the moniker "Silurians", which has a snakey, lizardy feel to it but is scientific COBBLERS.

The Silurian Period, GEOLOGICALLY speaking, is an era of time from about 440 million years ago to about 415 million years ago. Life on Earth at that time was mainly GIANT SEA SCORPIONS, like this almost cute example, in the sea competing with early FISH.

On land, plants were just discovering the joys of having xylem and phloem to pump water and nutrients around, but animal life hadn't really got beyond your basic centipede.

Reptiles – and certainly not the walking, talking, radiophonic-kazoo-playing variety – didn't arrive until a HUNDRED million years, or two whole geological ages later (the Devonian Period and most of the Carboniferous Period if you're asking).

Of course, many Doctor Who books have tried to put this right – starting with Mr Mac Hulke's own novelisation "Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters" which called them simply Reptile People – including such formulations as "Earth Reptiles" (ER!) and "Indigenous Terrans" (IT!). Though they didn't QUITE go so far as suggesting "Earth Life Forms" and "Prehistoric Indigenous Xenomorphs Interred Entire Species.

Dr Who himself had a go at putting it right when they – or rather their fishy cousins – turned up in "The Sea Devils", saying that the person who came up with the name "Silurian" was a complete idiot.

(This is either a FREUDIAN SLIP or he has forgotten that his first words to a Reptile Person are: "Are you a Silurian?". Mind you, the Reptile Person in question then punches his lights out, so it’s possible that he quickly realised this was quite RUDE!)

In spite of that, for most of the story, the Reptile People are then referred to as Sea Devils, a name which MAY be in the title (again) but is coined by a human, Mr Alan Clark, a sea-fort maintenance worker scared out of his wits and trying to describe what he has seen. (Unless you want to believe that they call THEMSELVES "Sea Devils" and the worker is having an attack of the RACE MEMORIES!)

And Dr Who himself is back to calling them Silurians by the time he is Mr Dr Peter in "The Warriors on the Cheap". Which is hardly unfair, since they refer to EACH OTHER as Silurians and Sea Devils too!

What Mr Dr Jon SAID (back in "The Sea Devils") is that the Reptile People ought to have been called Eocenes.

Although to be PROPERLY consistent, Dr Who OUGHT to have said that they OUGHT to have been called Paleogenes, because the Eocene Epoch, from about 56 million years ago to about 34 million years ago, is the middle third of the Paleogene Period. (Just as the name Silurian refers to the Silurian PERIOD rather than the constituent Landovery, Wenlock or Ludlow Epochs.)

But this DOES fit quite PLAUSIBLY into history as we know it (complete absence of archaeological evidence notwithstanding).

The Eocene Epoch began and ended with an Extinction Event. (Not quite as dramatic as one of the Five Mass Extinctions – the End of the Ordovician, the End of the Devonian, the End of the Permian, the end of the Triassic and the End of the Cretaceous, aka the End of the Dinosaurs – or SIX Mass Extinctions if you include what's going on TODAY!)

The first was caused by what looks like RUNAWAY GLOBAL WARMING! In a very short geological time, the planet heated up by at least seven degrees and the weather was to remain WARM and SUNNY from the equator to the poles for the rest of the epoch, making it a GOOD time for REPTILES!

That temperature spiral was ARRESTED by a bloom of freshwater Azolla ferns in the Arctic Ocean – called THE AZOLLA EVENT – which locked up SO MUCH carbon-dioxide that it reversed the warming; eventually causing the ICE AGES we've been having for the last couple of million years!

The extinction at the end of the Epoch is called the Grande Coupre or "great break" when a whole lot of European fauna were wiped out and after that, recognisable modern mammals start to move in from Asia.

Either of those would fit quite nicely with a supposed civilisation of intelligent Reptiles: either the global warming caused by their early industry, fixed when the planet was nice and warm for them, or when they figured out carbon capture in a big way; or the Grande Coupre was caused by the environmental catastrophe that sent them into hibernation.

This epoch also sees the evolution of early primates which would certainly fit the Reptile People's history of apes raiding their crops better than any Giant Silurian Centipedes!

So – in spite of what the Wikipedia might say – it looks like Dr Who could be RIGHT and the Reptile People DO come from the Eocene Epoch.

The question then is why would a scientist like Dr Quinn (medicine woman) decide to call the Reptile People "Silurians"? Well, the obvious – but unsatisfying – answer is that he is a nuclear engineer and wouldn't know one end of a Paleobiologist from the other. But that's a bit insulting to his intelligence (even if it IS the reason that Mr Hulke the writer got it wrong in the first place!).

But how about this: he names them Silurians after the STRATA OF ROCK in which he discovers their hibernation units.

Silurian rock strata certainly exist in Great Britain, first identified in WALES actually, down beneath all the coal-bearing Carboniferous strata (why do you think it's called CARBON-iferous). And in fact the story's WENLEY Moor sounds SUSPICIOUSLY like the WENLOCK Edge – actually in Shropshire – that gives its name to the middle Silurian epoch.

As a pot-holer, as well as a scientist, Dr Quinn (medicine woman) could well be familiar with the classification of the rock strata. And he might make the obvious, erroneous assumption of associating the Reptile People with the strata in which he finds them.

Of course, it IS erroneous because the Reptile People built their shelters DEEP UNDERGROUND. i.e. they DUG DOWN to those Silurian Period strata – just like the humans THEMSELVES have dug down into the caves to build their Research Institute – in order to find a nice safe retreat to, er, hide from the arrival of the Moon.

(Okay, sorry, people USED to believe that the Moon was a rogue planet that came into Earth's orbit quite recently – analysis of MOON ROCK, though, now tells us that the moon and Earth are so similar that it's most likely the Moon is a large chunk of the Earth blasted off in some ancient interplanetary collision.)

It might be a BIT rude to use the name of a twenty-five million year slice of history during which oodles of species lived and died to name just ONE sort of creature, but it is a SMALL fig leaf to cover Dr Quinn (medicine woman)'s scientific dignity.


Still, at least it's not as DUMB as assuming that Silurians are aliens from the planet Siluria!

PS:

Today was the 44th Anniversary of the beginning of Doctor Who. Very sadly, today was also the day we learned of the death of the lady who very much made that beginning happen, Ms Verity Lambert.

Daddy Alex and Mr Will have written some lovely words of tribute to this marvellous person.

Ms Verity shaped the way that British Television looked for most of the last forty years. With an uncompromising commitment to drama and comedy of quality and diversity and imagination, she oversaw, not only the creation of Doctor Who, but such landmarks as “The Naked Civil Servant” and “Widows” as well as much loved series such as “Minder” and “Jonathan Creek”. She was in charge of Euston Films when they were redefining what the British police drama looked like through “The Sweeney”.

Through attending a party hosted by John Nathan Turner to celebrate Doctor Who’s twentieth anniversary she rediscovered a joy in the series that had been her first success at the BBC – even though she disagreed with a lot of what Mr JNT was doing. Because of that, through the nineteen-nineties she lobbied the BBC to let her company, Cinema Verity, take up production of the series. Although unsuccessful – the BBC turned instead to an American production with Mr Philip Segal that eventually became Mr Dr Paul’s adventure, Time Waits for No Man – the interest of one of the most important ladies in television was one of the things that kept the IDEA of Doctor Who alive at the BBC in the years before 2005. When the series eventually did return, Ms Verity was delighted to give it her endorsement, and said that – finally – it was all she had wanted it to be.

Mr Paul Cornell was able to pay tribute to Ms Verity this year when, in his story “Human Nature”, Dr Who’s human alter ego Mr John Smith names his parents as Sydney (for Sydney Newman, the series creator) and Verity.

But I find myself remembering an exchange between Dr Who and Mr Charles Dickens in the third new series episode: “The Unquiet Dead” by Mr Mark Gatiss.

Dickens: “There is one thing I must ask: Doctor, do my books last?”

Dr Who: “Oh, yes!”

Dickens: “For how long?”

Dr Who: “Forever.”

Be it so for Ms Verity

Farewell, and thanks.

Day 2463: A Diamond Gone Forever

Sunday:


We were sad to hear that the original Miss Moneypenny, Ms Lois Maxwell, has died at the age of eighty.

We were watching "Diamonds are Forever", interrupted by a telephone call, when we heard the news. It seemed sadly apt.

She won a Golden Globe while appearing with Ms Shirley Temple and had a small role in the notorious "Bedtime for Bonzo" (it stared Mr Ronald Raygun and a Chimpanzee – one of them would go on to become President of America).

She was the voice of Atlanta in Gerry Anderson's "Stingray" and played a Nun-with-a-Gun in "The Avengers" (working for a "bishop" played by Mr David Bauer, who would later be Mr Morton Slumber in "Diamonds are Forever") but she will always be remembered for creating (along with Mr Bernard Lee's "M" and Mr Desmond Llewellyn's "Q") one of the three central supporting roles of the James Bond films.

Originally from Canada, Ms Maxwell first came to Great Britain during the World War Part II. She had run away, aged only 15, to join up and become part of the Army Entertainment Corps but her age had been discovered and she was in danger of court marshal and repatriation to Canada when she managed to secure a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. In fact, she sneaked off AWOL in order to attend the audition.

In 1961 she twisted director Mr Terence Young's arm to get a role in the first James Bond movie, Dr No. He owed her a favour and offered her a choice – she plumbed for the more demure, if less well paid, Miss Moneypenny over the role of possibly recurring girlfriend Ms Sylvia Trench. Good choice – Ms Sylvia was unceremoniously dropped after only two movies; Miss Moneypenny appears in EVERY James Bond film except the most recent and for fourteen of those flicks she is realised by Ms Lois.

She managed to imbue a whole relationship between her character and that of Mr James in only a few moments of screen time, so that people remembered her far beyond the actual SIZE of the role.

In later years she tried to persuade the Bond producers that it was time for a female "M". Eventually they agreed with her, but sadly they went and cast Dame Judi Dench instead. Not that Ms Dame Judi isn't TOTALLY WONDERFUL, but it would have been a SPECIAL CHARM to see a new Mr James taking orders from an old friend: "M" for "Moneypenny".

As well as her onscreen performance, we have recently been listening to her engaging and heart-warming contributions to the cast and crew commentaries on my new Ultimate James Bond DVDs. Now, those stories will be tinged with more sadness as the last of those three greats in no longer with us.

Although two more actresses have succeeded her in the role, Ms Caroline Bliss and the almost-as-super-as-Ms-Lois Ms Samantha Bond (saucier than Ms Lois, but up to date and stronger), Miss Moneypenny will be forever associated with Ms Lois. It was a role she made her own: the Property of a Lady.

Day 2296: His Legacy will Live on!

Sunday:


No, not HIM – Mr Barry Nelson, who was the first person to bring JAMES BOND to the screen.

Mr Barry starred in a version of "Casino Royale" for the telly and that (Mr Kevin McClory aside) was where all the legal trouble started. Thankfully, this has all been resolved now.

So even though it is sad that he has passed away, the recent hugely successful proper film version of "Casino Re-al", staring Mr Daniel, is a testament to the enduring appeal of the visual Mr Bond.

And as ever, James Bond will return…