Day 2659: DOCTOR WHO: The Fires of Pompeii

Saturday:


This week Dr Who was up a volcano. Well, been there and done that!

Look: here is a piece of MOUNT VESUVIUS to PROVE it!

Elephant Rock

Don't panic though – I haven't pulled the VITAL PLUG that is holding the magma in check; Daddy collected it years ago when, like Mr Dr David, he went to visit the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum!

Mr Dr David said it was quite LIFE AFFIRMING to be up on top of a live volcano. But that is because he is a MANIAC who likes to do his own stunts.

Powerful, exciting and moving, this was a corker of an episode, and Alex was even more blown away than I was. If there's a problem with this, it's only that it leaves you wondering how the back end of series thirty is going to be as good.

It was another long episode, but one packed with incident: humour, action, horror, tragedy and redemption. One of the series' best teasers, showing off ancient Pompeii while the Doctor and Donna's relationship is charming and funny, finishes with the great dramatic reveal of Vesuvius. This meant the episode starts by first fooling us into thinking it would be a "hunt the TARDIS"/"race against time" plot only to resolve this within minutes and instead introducing two, seemingly divergent, plots concerning the prophecy of the Sisterhood and the stone circuits that Lucius Petrus Dextrous is having made, before revealing that they are actually two aspects of the same plot, but then effectively wrapping up the "alien threat" forty minutes in so as to devote the last ten entirely to giving the eruption the sense of scale and tragedy that it deserved.

There's also time for a moment or two of toying with the continuity, tying up one or two points in an interesting and – for the series – finally consistent way. A brief nod to "The Romans" in the teaser is a fun throwaway; in fact, it's the sort of thing that the Doctor often says (q.v. the Titanic in "The Invasion of Time") and it's just a nice nod for the fans that we've seen that past adventure. And there's the old, old question of "how does the TARDIS translate deliberate use of foreign language?" resolved by saying yes, it really does translate it into a different foreign language, hilariously choosing to make a Welsh joke out of it. You might want to think about what this means for stories like "The Reign of Terror" where we hear the Doctor address locals in (in that case) French and what that might mean for the translation convention.

But all of this is used to wrap up two very big moral dilemmas. First, Donna's question: "why can't the Doctor change Earth's history?" And second: "how can you choose between twenty-thousand deaths and the whole world?"

What is interesting is that, although they do what is probably the right thing in the end, both Donna and the Doctor are morally compromised in different ways. The Doctor won't intervene to save the citizens of Pompeii because he sees the bigger picture, when Donna just thinks he should save them; conversely, the second dilemma, when the bigger picture requires him to intervene the fact that can see the consequences paralyses him and he needs Donna to almost give him permission, or at least to share in the decision – and the culpability – before he can push the lever and trigger the volcano.

Both cases emphasis the difference between the Time Lord perspective and the human, and illustrate why Donna is right that he needs a human companion, both to remind him of the little things and to let him get past the cosmic.

Needless to say by now, David Tennant is brilliant. But what a magnificent, strong and ultimately heart-rending performance from Catherine Tate: she is really very good at being a companion. And what a good companion Donna is. There's the moment when she gets kidnapped by the Sisters – if you watch you realise that she's fetched a bucket to fight off the Pyrovile foot-soldier; then there's her reaction to being placed on a sacrificial slab – fury not fear; but then there's her compassion for the Doctor's decision, and acknowledgement that in spite of the consequences for Pompeii that they have to save the world. But she still doesn’t give up trying to save those people, almost despairing when they won't listen to her and worse the Doctor won't listen to her, but she forces him to in the end.

With the exception of a cameo for Dead Ringer's Phil Cornwall, our interaction with "ordinary" Pompeiians is entirely through the family of Caecilius (yes, by now everyone must know they're named after the family in the Cambridge Latin Course, just as Lucius Petrus Dextrous has a "stone right arm" in best Asterix tradition). Plus a quite impressive number of extras for the "and now you all get incinerated" scenes. Peter Capaldi is a marvellous actor, starting off as almost comic relief, with the "Up Pompeii" antics of rushing to stop everything toppling over in the earthquakes and the ticking off of his children; but shading into seriousness as the dark night comes and then the full horror of the volcanic eruption. Francesca Fowler as Evelina, daughter of the house and signed-up seeress, is also marvellous and spooky. The commentary reveals she was genuinely unwell for the day of filming the "duelling prophets" scene but I think she really makes it add to her performance, as she is supposed to look wasted and wan. Meanwhile, young Qunitus's toga already has its own appreciation thread on Outpost Gallifrey.

That duelling scene, though, was an early flash of just how brilliant this episodes was about to get – and there's a nice directorial touch as the camera angles twist more and more out of true as the two seers reveal more and more that they shouldn't know.

Speculation has got to attach to the meaning of Lucius' specific – and guaranteed accurate – prophecies for the Doctor ("she is coming back" has got to mean Rose, hasn't it?) and Donna ("there is something on your back", the most obvious and sinister suggestion is one of a Queen Spider from Metebelis III, previously seen on Sarah Jane's back in "Planet of the Spiders", and Donna already has a spidery connection with the Racnoss, but surely it means something else?). There is also a second mention for the Medusa Cascade (after "Last of the Time Lords" when the Master referred to the Doctor sealing the rift there). Specifically Evelina tells that the Doctor's real name burns in the Cascade of Medusa, leading some to think that that is where Gallifrey is, or was, and where it burned, particularly since the Doctor "burns in the centre of time", again possibly meaning Gallifrey.

Lucius, played by Phil Davis, is a great Doctor Who villain – or even James Bond villain with his volcano lair! As with Peter Capaldi's Caecilius, it's a performance that shades over the course of the programme, starting gruff but also impressed by the Doctor, but then growing more sinister and dark as his Pyrovile masters gradually take him over so that he finally goes right over the top in the climax. Mind you, when you're stood next to an imaginary stone titan then "large" is the only way to go.

The Pyroviles themselves are another spectacular success from the CG workshops of the Mill. Admittedly, they more than a little resemble the "live action" Transformers from last year's movie, done in stone – though I did like the "Centurion's Helmet" look to the heads. Most impressive is the one that steps out of the mountainside to greet the Cult of Vulcan: impressive not because it's merely "large" but because it's done in daylight and looks completely credible in the scene.

Like the Adipose in "Partners in Crime", the Pyroviles have "lost" their planet. Lucius describes it as both "gone" and "taken", while last week Ms Foster said she wasn't interested in the politics. These remarks together might suggest that the planets are either being conquered, perhaps in the rise of a new Dalek Empire, or literally disappearing, falling through cracks in time. The possibility occurs that if Rose is able to return to our universe then someone has cracked open the walls between realities and these planets might be falling into the Void as a consequence.

Lawrence Miles raises the criticism – and it's not completely an unreasonable one – that modern Who can't seem to visit the past without aliens/monsters showing up. By "modern" of course, he's referring to all Doctor Who since Innes Lloyd took over as producer in 1966 and decided that "The Highlanders" was quite enough of that sort of thing. (OK, "Black Orchid" excepted.) And it ought to be remarked that the Doctor can't arrive in the present or the future without having a similar problem. But the point still stands: could the Doctor visit the past and just have an "isn't this different!" kind of story?

To an extent you could, but I think that it's telling that the great era of the "historical" was in the 1960s when nothing else on television was doing the same. When the BBC costume drama era arrived in Colour in the early Seventies, the Doctor was exiled to Earth to find other things to do with his time; while the time-travel adventures of the Fourth Doctor are all Hammer Horror pastiches rather than genuine history, and even he gives up visiting Earth's past after "Horror of Fang Rock". It's a great strength of the new series that they've found a way to get back to those adventures in history. Remember in today's television age, you can watch just about any historical period you want, thanks to "Rome", "The Tudors", any number of nineteenth century vehicles for Dame Judi Dench, or just old fashioned UK Gold; Doctor Who has to have a unique selling point to get in the audience and let's face it, that's the monsters. In a series that is much more allegory and fairy story these days, you need to have the bogey man (or the id) up there on screen getting what for.

On the other hand, of course, it is possible to do a (nearly) "pure" historical in Pompeii because it's been done before.

The Big Finish adventure "The Fires of Vulcan" features Sylvester McCoy's Seventh incarnation of the Time Lord, alongside the rehabilitated Mel played by Bonnie Langford, also arriving in Pompeii the day before the volcano's eruption.

What is actually very pleasing is that the TV adventure in no way tramples over the audio; in fact it is perfectly possible for both to be taking place at the same time

Where the TV has the Sisterhood of the Sybil and Lucius's Cult of Vulcan, the audio has the worship of Isis and the priestess of the Trinity (that's Jupiter, Juno and Minerva). If the city is supposed to be awash with rumours of the arrival of the Seventh Doctor's blue wooden temple, well all the more reason for Caecilius to be conned into buying the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS as a piece of "modern art". (Though surely also a reference to the classic John Cleese and Eleanor Bron scene in "City of Death", and mustn't Russell be kicking himself that "David Agnew" got that title first!)

And there are points where they almost seem to be referencing each other: Donna spots an Amphitheatre and suggests gathering everyone there to warn them; if they had they might have seen the Seventh Doctor's confrontation with Muranus the gladiator. (Although actually that was the day after.) Equally, one of the reasons that "honest and boring as they come" Mel is thought to be a liar is because she starts predicting Vesuvius' eruption but none of the Augurs have foreseen it, a dismissal out of hand that almost speaks to the "gift of Pompeii" that all their prophets speak the truth.

Most intriguingly, one of the Sisters reports to her order "the tall one calls us mad" – odd way to distinguish between the Doctor and Donna, surely "the man" and "the woman" would do, unless… are they perhaps also keeping watch over another visitor from a Blue Box? A short one?

Perhaps that is why they focus on Donna and the Tenth Doctor (who then start to meddle in their affairs, while Doctor Seven and Mel are quietly trying to find the TARDIS).

So, if you accept that both adventures can take place, consider that it might go deeper than that. In "The Fires of Vulcan", the Doctor cheats time: when he arrives he already knows (because UNIT told him in his fifth incarnation) that the TARDIS is destined to be buried in Pompeii by the Vesuvian eruption. At the start of the story he is very accepting of this, but by the end Mel convinces him that there has to be a hope, so they sit out the eruption in the TARDIS and wait for the ash to settle and solidify before dematerialising and rematerialising in the same gap 1901 years later.

Mel even asks what this will mean for the web of time, and the Doctor says to leave that for another day.

But he's still cheated time, using his foreknowledge to change the outcome, and that sort of thing creates "weak spots" in history, at least according to "Father's Day". So maybe that is why Vesuvius was able to blow a hole in the continuum. Is it, in fact, possible, that it is the Seventh Doctor's adventure that makes it possible for the Tenth Doctor's adventure to take place at all?

Just a slight shame, then, that there wasn't a moment where – in the background perhaps, you could see a man in a straw hat and paisley tie running past the other way, followed by a redhead.


Next time… Ood 'ave thought it; that "I'm Spartacus" joke prefigures a slave revolt next week. The Sensorites' next-door neighbours are back and they don't look happy on the "Planet of the Ood".

Day 2657: Unlawful to let off the unlawful

Thursday:

Corruption: noun, lack of integrity or honesty (especially susceptibility to bribery); use of a position of trust for dishonest gain

Once upon a time there was a Prince who had a problem. The police were asking all sorts of bothersome and impertinent questions about where he got all of his lovely presents (and free aeroplane) from.

So the Prince asked Lord Blairimort (who was Prime Monster), and Lord Blairimort asked Lord Goldfinger (who was Attorney General), and Lord Goldfinger asked the police and all the questions went away.

And they all lived happily ever after. Or possibly not.

But, begging your fluffy pardon, doesn't using one's POSITION as, say, a Prince of a Middle Eastern Country for the GAIN of getting an inconvenient police investigation off of one's back sound pretty much like evidence of CORRUPTION anyway?


Now, it turns out that when the Serious Fraud Office, on the orders of Lord Blairimort, dropped their investigations into the alleged BRIBERY going on between BAE and assorted Saudi Arabian Princes, not only were they behaving like the puppets of a cowardly quisling and jumping to obey the dictates of a foreign dictatorship, they were also BREAKING THE LAW.

So Liberal Democrat Leader Mr Clogg is calling for their inquiries to be reopened immediately and investigated properly!

Mr Denis McSHAME, former junior minister at the foreign office with special responsibility for oleaginously thanking the Ambassador for the Ferrero Rocher, came on the The Today Programme protesting that he was a PARLIAMENTARIAN and judges should not seek to overturn the WILL of PARLIAMENT.

News flash, Denis: Parliament expressed its will QUITE CLEARLY when it made bribery and corruption ILLEGAL.

But never mind the SELF-SERVING hypocrisy of a member of the party that has a majority of seats on the House of Commons based on a minority of support in the country saying that they should use that leverage to overturn the law whenever they've broken it. And never mind the ludicrousness of his thesis that courts should ask Parliament to decide first what outcome they are allowed to reach – should there be a division of the House for every case of shoplifting, Mr McSHAME? Or expenses fraud, perhaps?

No, never mind all of that, the whole POINT about democracy is that it is NOT just decided by who has the most votes in Parliament. We have LAWS so that minorities are protected from majorities, and so that the weak are protected from the powerful. Of course it is FAR from perfect but a system with even SOME checks and balances has got to be better than Mr McSHAME's "electoral might is right" scheme. Typically of the Labour, Mr McSHAME clearly does not understand that the Law is there to PROTECT us, including protecting us from governments that have gone MAD WITH POWER.



In the hope of some SANITY, Mr Clogg has written a letter to Mr Frown, asking him to live up to the promise he made on inheriting Lord Blairimort's crown to mend our constitution and restore people's trust in the political system.

Mr Clogg is QUITE RIGHT!

There are two things that NEED to be done:

First we must sort out the state of our law so that OTHER ongoing corruption cases don't end up getting BOTCHED because our laws are full of loopholes. The Labour should LIKE that, because they are ALWAYS making laws, but the problem is that they are always so BUSY spewing out legislation like sausages and always in such a RUSH that they are always making a really BAD job of it.

We need the law to be up to the HIGHEST STANDARDS set by the OECD, not the lowest that the government can get away with. Because otherwise how are people to know that they are being treated fairly and equally? And how are our entrepreneurs supposed to do business abroad if the government is making them all look like Arthur Daley types?


Second, we have to remove the TAINT of government interference in criminal investigations. Lord Blairimort was able to order his Attorney General Lord Goldfinger to pull the plug on the SFO Bribes for Bandar inquiry; that can't be right!

The Attorney General is the Government's chief lawyer, both advising and representing in court the Prime Monster and all government departments.

BUT the Attorney General is ALSO responsible for overseeing all criminal prosecutions.

So when Mr Clogg says: "the role of the Attorney General is fraught with conflicts of interest", what he means is what happens when the government has an interest in the criminal not getting prosecuted?

Quite obviously, people are going to be a bit SUSPICIOUS that maybe – just maybe – the AG is putting on his "I work for the Prime Monster" hat BEFORE putting on his "I serve the cause of justice" hat. Especially since "Justice" doesn't do his PAY REVIEW.

What you need to do is SEPARATE this office into its two distinct roles: one is the government's chief lawyer, a politically appointed position for the party in charge to decide; the other is the INDEPENDENT head of the Crown Prosecution Service, who should be answerable to Parliament (yes, Parliament, NOT the executive) but appointed by a non-partisan panel, like the way the Judicial Appointments Commission picks High Court Judges.

(You could even build in Mr Frown's suggestion of US Senate-like oversight committees in Parliament approving the appointment.)

That is why it is all the more CROSS-MAKING that Mr Frown is doing the EXACT REVERSE and trying to give the Attorney General MORE powers: specifically the power to squish any investigation on the grounds of "that's too embarrassing" or "our chums from the thirteenth century say 'No!'" or "I don't really feel like telling you why".


When Mr President General Mustbehavingalaugh of Pakistan didn't like what the Pakistani courts were deciding, he had the judges rounded up and put under house arrest. And we called him a DICTATOR and said he was VERY NAUGHTY for doing so.

Now (and I call Daddy in evidence!) it seems that the Labour want very similar powers for themselves.

Still, it all ended in HUMILIATING DEFEAT for the General… So Mr Frown has THAT to look forward to, I suppose.

And then we can ALL live happily ever after.

Day 2656: Jodrell Bank UPDATE

Wednesday:


You may remember that a month ago I protested that the most important scientific instrument in Great Britain – or even THE WORLD, give or take a hadron collider at CERN and a neutrino observatory in Sudbury, Ontario – was under THREAT.

Well, this week there was new news, with two BBC programmes covering the calamity: The Sky at Night and the Newsnight at Night.

For the Newsnight Show, Ms Susan "mega" Watts reported on the brouhaha with an introduction that you may find EERILY FAMILIAR.

(Nothing wrong with that, though – there are worse jobs than being Newsnight's Unpaid Scientific Advisor… I wonder if I get a sprightly yellow roadster™!)

In The Sky at Night, available now – as the advert goes – on the BBC's iPlayer Sir Patrick Xylophone (Professor X!) told us all about Jodrell Bank's current work, the astonishingly exciting measurements of a pair of spinning quasars that are proving Mr Einstein's theory to a degree previously thought impossible, and then quizzed Mr the Astronomer Royal on what was going on.

(You might also be excited by the photography of a Gamma Ray Burst – at a million times brighter than a GALAXY, it's the cosmic phenomenon that makes a super-nova look like a far… bad-word in a bathtub!)

The good news is that Jodrell Bank is a bit less in danger than we thought, and Mr the Astronomer Royal seems to think that it will be saved. The bad news is that Mr Frown's new science-funding quango* messed up the funding in a big way and it might still put the tin hat on the eMerlin array (where you get radio telescopes from all over the country and link them up to the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank and make a super-telescope out of them – you know, the project on which they've already spent millions of pounds for the plugs).

(*This quango was made from two other quangos… probably by colliding them in CERN's super-collider.)


As Ms "mega" Watts explains in her piece, Mr Frown's precious "knowledge economy" depends on actual people WITH actual knowledge. So-called "big ticket" toys, like the Jodrell Bank telescopes, are what you need to attract the very best talents in practical and theoretical science, and you need to attract THEM so that they will inspire a generation of students who will go on to be the people who keep our economy going!

(Assuming Mr Frown hasn't FLAT-LINED it by then!)

BUT… I've said it before and I will probably say it again: the search for knowledge, the exploration of our universe and the quest to understand how it works and what it is made of… these things are GOOD in and of themselves.


As you may have noticed, I am not a particularly RELIGIOUS baby elephant, and so do not believe that our PURPOSE in being here is to sit on this rock singing praises to an invisible friend. In which case, we have to make OUR OWN purposes, and for me, that purpose is "finding stuff out".

In just the same as Radio Three enriches us and Tate Modern enriches us – not everyone wants to go there, but it is reassuring that you COULD – expanding our knowledge ENRICHES all of us. That makes it worth doing.

Day 2655: Olympic Torchwood: May the Farce be With You

Tuesday:


Stormtroopers, it would seem, are IN.

At the High Court in London, the Jedi Master of Lucasfilm, Oh-Beardy-One Kenobi (George "don't do that" Lucas), defends his right to use SITH LIGHTNING against anyone who tries cashing in on his multi-billion dollar merchandising EMPIRE.

Meanwhile, in London, Paris, San Francisco and worldwide, the People's Liberation Army Formation Jogging Team of China – "handsome" and "mighty" according to the China News Service; "thugs" according to the less diplomatic Lord Olympics & Coe
– have been manfully keeping alight the Torch of Freedom by, er, oppressing anyone who tries to get close to it.


The Olympic Committee are said to be considering doing away with the FORMAL SPECTACLE of the host country being forced to take it on the chin from all the people round the would that they've really p… bad-worded off.

I think that ending this ritual humiliation would be a SHAME, as it would deprive everyone of the chance to give Great Britain the reception we would deserve if we do not shape up our act. And anyway, SELF-FLAGELLATION is an Olympic event we'd be really GOOD at!

On the other fluffy foot, Mr Balloon thinks that we'd be world class at DITHERING – at least if Mr Frown were to put himself forward as a competitor.

(Mr Balloon is TOO MODEST: he and Master Gideon show great promise for the two by shall-we-shan't-we-privatise-the-Northern-Rock relay.)

Of course Mr Balloon is only trying to catch up with everybody else who has ALREADY said Mr Frown should not go to the opening of the Olympics in China.

Mr Clogg LED THE WAY, calling for a boycott last week.

Then Ms Hillary-Billary urged a boycott of the opening ceremony.

And so did Senator Barry O.

Finally, Mr Frown finked out of showing up.

BUT… he went and ruined any POSITIVE MESSAGE that he might have sent to the Chinese government, or to the rest of the world, by claiming that he had NEVER been going and confusing pretty much everyone.

"This is not a boycott," claimed No. 10, "we're just not going."

Riiiiiiiight.

In his letter to Mr Frown, Mr Clogg reminded the Prime Monster that the Chinese PROMISED to improve their human rights record before the Beijing Olympics, a promise that they have NOT kept:

"Recent events in Tibet, broken promises over media freedoms, ongoing human rights abuses and intransigence over the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur demand a response."

he said.

"Serious concerns cannot be swept under the carpet for the sake of ceremonial duties. Unless and until China takes steps to honour the spirit of the Olympics, as laid out in the Olympic Charter, I do not believe that the British Prime Monster can attend the Beijing Games in good conscience."

Mr Frown has completely missed the point by saying he won't be there for the opening – he's STILL lending his support to the brutality of the Chinese regime when he turns up to ceremonially collect the official Zippo torch-lighter and keys to the Olympic shed.

Rather than taking the opportunity to stand up for Freedom and Human Rights alongside the other leaders of the world, Mr Frown has managed to make us look small and stupid and wasted another chance to help the people of Tibet.

"Too often Gordon Frown does the right thing under pressure, rather than out of conviction," commented Mr Clogg.


It is just SILLY to think that there is no POLITICS in SPORT. If that were true why would there even BE bidding for the Olympics?

To quote the Olympic Charter:

"Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."

What could be MORE political than "universal fundamental ethical principles"?

The Chinese promise to clean up their Human Rights record was a POLITICAL STATEMENT too, and every response to them breaking that promise – protesting against it OR saying it's not your business, doing nothing and letting them get away with it (and yes, I DO mean the athletes as well as Mr Frown) – that is a POLITICAL response.

I fully understand that for many people this may be their only chance to take part in the Olympic Games and that it could be a very difficult choice to decide between your personal ambition to take part or the nebulous and probably unachievable goal of supporting Human Rights for people you've never met.

But at least our athletes – and Prime Monster – live in a country that LETS them make the choice for themselves.

Now, the question is, will Mr Frown's new CEREMONIAL BLACK ARMOUR for the closing ceremony get him SUED by Oh-Beardy-One Kenobi?

Day 2654: Brian Begins

Monday:


Mr Brian has launched his campaign to be London's next Mayor, pledging a Contract with Londoners and springing into action with CSI Liberal Democrat.



He then clashed with the other candidates, the Labour's Mr Mayor Ken and Mr Balloon's bumbling bounder, Suicide Boris, on Newsnight.

Boris (Tessa Jowell isn't going to ban ME from calling him that!) had earlier been broadcasting in black and white to disguise his florid appearance emphasise his gravitas and seriousness. He was very serious. Very serious INDEED.

UNFORTUNATELY, Newsnight then proved that he DIDN'T KNOW the costings of his own centrepiece Bendy Bus policy.



(Hat tip: Dr Pax)

It is a shame that too few people watched this IMPLOSION for it to make a significant difference. Boris seems somehow able to ride out GAFFES like this, or like bragging that his house was worth SHEDLOADS to the SHELTER/CRISIS Hustings, or admitting to snorting cocaine to Janet Street-Pothead.

HOW are London's police supposed to reduce the drug crime (and associated knife and gun crime) that make people fear their own streets when the Conservatory candidate for Mayor thinks that Class A drugs are just something he "got away with"?

The fact that this CRIMINAL vacuum in rumpled suit and hair might end up being elected Mayor of London fills me with TERROR!

Equally, his inability to answer the question clearly filled Mr Paxo with fury, as Ms Featherweight reports.

Mr Ken was, understandably, trying to play up his SUCCESSES of the last eight years: like the way he has successfully slipped out of his promise only to stand twice, or succeeded in raising the Congestion Charge after promising not to. Er. He made another promise, to resign if he raised the C-Charge on smaller cars… you can decide for yourself what that's worth given his (stuck) record.

Of course, he was also keen to stress that anything that has gone wrong will be somebody else's problem. Problems on the tube… not him guv, don't you know he opposed PPP? Crime on the streets… can't blame Mr Ken, don't you know the Labour have solved all known crimes (so they've had to invent a load of new ones!)?

He's very good at his: "I'm a perfectly reasonable guy, honest as the day is long, no you can't ask me about the stolen money, that sort of thing happens all the time you can't expect ME to know how every penny is spent, can you?" shtick. He never answers the question, but he doesn't have to because Suicide Boris reliably goes into one of his "I yi yi yi yi've never been so, oh oh oh, goodness corks!" blusters and Mr Ken can just keep protesting innocence and no one hears that neither of them are saying ANYTHING.

A case in point was when Mr Brian as trying to press Mr Ken on the deadly bendy buses. One of Ken's minions had, apparently, threatened to cut off police funding if they investigated a death by bendy bus; Mr Ken whined on that the victim was three times over the legal limit. Yes, but he's still DEAD Mr Ken, and the police OUGHT to be able to investigate without your HEAVIES threatening them! Boris, though, just starts Oompah-pah-oompah-pah-ing about the buses and Mr Paxo let's Mr Ken get away with another non-answer.

If Mr Brian has a PROBLEM in this debate, in fact in this entire campaign, it is trying to get a word in edgeways. When he can get a chance to speak, it is clear that he KNOWS HIS STUFF, and is on top of his brief – on transport, for example, he had a clear message about trams as opposed to Boris's daydream of a new Routemaster, and a plan that would cost no more (over ten years) than the Labour's Mr Ken wants to spend on buses. Or on crime, where he's got the experience and the ideas and knows that what we need is to reconnect the local police with the people that they serve, to rebuild the trust so that we can cut crime TOGETHER.


Obviously he is TOO POLITE to use his police training to render Ken and Boris unconscious, but…

Day 2653: Expelled Exploded

Sunday:


Exciting news! My top chum, Professor Richard – husband of one-time time traveller Romana, who used to be in Doctor Who, and friend of the late Mr Douggie Adams, who used to write for Doctor Who (and some travel books) – is going to be in Doctor Who too!

This seems like an opportune moment to WARN you about another screen appearance for Prof Richard, the man rightly acknowledged as the Theresnosuchthingasgodfather of British Atheism.

It is a movie called "Expelled", which alleges that science is really a conspiracy by atheist Nazis to suppress Unintelligent Design and persecute teachers who believe in Mr God.

And – proving that even the brightest of elephants can be taken in some of the time – Professor Richard got fooled into appearing in it.

“The incredible thing about Expelled is that we don’t resort to manipulating our interviews for the purpose of achieving the ‘shock effect’,”

How did they fool him? Well, when they approached Professor Richard, and also Mr Professor PZ Myers and a number of other REAL scientists, they CLAIMED to be making a documentary called "Crossroads" about a cheap soap set in a Birmingham motel… no, that's not right. They claimed that "Crossroads" would be a dispassionate appraisal of the clash between scientific and religious thinking.

This – as you may have been able to guess – turns out to have been what is technically described as a HONKING GREAT FIB, or in religious language: breaking Commandment Nine.

But Professor Richard got his own back by getting into one of their "invitation only" screenings… though, at the risk of undermining my hero's reputation as a MASTER SPY, that's "invitation only" in the sense of "free tickets available off of the wibbly wobbly web".

In fact, Professor Richard happened to be in town for the American Atheists conference, and Professor PZ was the one who got the tickets…

…which it was probably why it was Prof PZ who the brave little STORMTROOPERS for Freedom of Speech picked out of the queue and EXPELLED from "Expelled".

Clearly not "intelligently designed" with an IRONY GLAND there then.

Professor Richard gives his review of the "movie" here.

But why take HIS word for it, when you can LAUGH and POINT at their own propaganda.

"But even worse, along the way, Stein uncovers a long line of biologists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers who have had their reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment"

What the movie is ACTUALLY about is pushing the assertion that believers in Mr God the entirely scientific and credible (I say SARCASTICALLY) "theory" (likewise) of Unintelligent Design, that has nothing to do with Mr God at all honest injun, are being PERSECUTED: i.e. kept out of teaching jobs and even fired just for no other reason than that they want to ignore the set curriculum (not to mention the Constitutional separation of Church and State) and fill their pupils' heads with religiously motivated brain-bilge instead.

Remembering that this is the country where, when the President's DAD was Vice-President, he said:

"I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under Mr God."

is it COMPLETELY believable that it is the SECRET ATHEIST CABAL who are doing the persecuting, as opposed to, just for example, the blatantly out-in-the-open religious theocrats who make it difficult-verging-on-the-impossible for anyone to get a job in public service in Americaland without expressing a deep and abiding lurve (but not in THAT way) for Mr Jesus?

And anyway, it turns out that their "evidence" doesn't stack up. As this review by Mr Dan Whipple from Colorado shows, the cases of "discrimination" that they cite just don't stand up to examination. Claims that Mr Richard Sternberg was removed from the Smithsonian prove problematic when you learn that he never worked for the Smithsonian. The allegation that Mr Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure because the faculty of astronomy at Iowa State University "unfairly" based their decision on his book about Unintelligent Design collapses when you know that he HIMSELF submitted the book for their consideration. And so on.

"an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma… that allows absolutely no dissent from Charles Darwin’s theory"

Their OTHER "theory" is that knowing about Mr Darwin automatically turns you into a Nazi.

This is their equation:

"Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany."

which is said in HILARIOUS spoiler tags in this review on the movie's own website.

If you don't want to know the ending look away now… "Adolf did it!"

So, I know, Godwin's Law, but they mentioned the Nazis first so they lose.

Thing is, Mr Adolf WASN'T an atheist. He was some sort of weird cross-breed between Norse Mythology and Roman Catholicism, neither of which are RENOWNED as Atheist belief systems.

And Mr Adolf did NOT base his ideas on evolution.

For that matter "eugenics", which is selective breeding applied to human monkeys rather than pigs or dogs or cows or sheeps or other animals, does NOT follow from evolution either.

Selective breeding had been going on for AGES and AGES before Mr Darwin realised that it was going on in nature TOO. About TEN THOUSAND years, in fact since the agricultural revolution and people started farming crops (your mileage may vary if you believe the Earth was created in 6000 BC).

To say that something is happening in nature is NOT the same as saying that that is a good reason for people to do it too.

It is a FALLACY to suggest that just because a person ACCEPTS a FACT about how something works in one part of nature it means that they believe that that way of working should be IMPOSED universally.

In fact, Professor Richard often says that he is passionately AGAINST Darwinism being APPLIED. He believes in social services, universal education, health care and support for the unemployed. If ANYONE is a "Darwinist" in the area of public policy it is the right-wing Mr-God-bothering THATCHERITES like Mr Balloon with their "get rid of the failures" policies.


Suggestions that "evolution is racist" or that "Mr Darwin was a racist" are just as FALSE. If anything, evolution and genetics show that, for all of your different colours, human monkeys are one of the LEAST differentiated species on the planet. Famously, there is MORE genetic differentiation between two tribes of CHIMPANZEES on opposite sides of a river than between any tow humans ON EARTH. (You can thank a near miss with extinction in the last Ice Age for that, by the way.)

To point at "the Origin if Species" and hoot about the rest of the title being "…or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" is to show DRAMATIC IGNORANCE. Mr Darwin talks about races of CABBAGES, or PIGEONS and all sorts of things. He is talking about VARIATION within species. He's not recruiting for the KKK.

As Professor PZ explains, Mr Darwin was no more a racist than anyone else in the Victorian era… that is to say actually quite a bit racist, but only because he'd been taught all his life that the British were the Best. And certainly no worse than Mr "I freed the slaves" President Lincoln.


If by now you are worrying that I am only going to stop writing my fluffy diary in order to go back to my secret volcano base and polish my black leather jackboots before receiving my next set of secret instructions from Uber-Professor Richard, then I suggest you put on your best TINFOIL HAT and go out to see this movie.

Otherwise, I should look forward to some more EXCITING Doctor Who!

PS:

I am indebted to Uncle Alan for bringing this BUNKUM to my fluffy attention.

Day 2652: DOCTOR WHO: Partners in Crime

Saturday:


Hooray! Doctor Who is back! This makes my Daddies very happy.

And, to celebrate the return of Ms Catherine Tate as Donna we… ooh, a new flavour of Pringle!

Noble Elephant

Scoff, snarff, snargle… over to you, Daddy…

Brilliant, that's the first thing to say. A successful combination of comic and dramatic in the same way that "Smith and Jones" and even "Rose" managed, and that failed to come off in "New Earth". There's a terrific stunt sequence in the middle and a magnificent special effects finale, with one big shock in the coda.

Russell Davies takes the time to reintroduce us to Donna Noble, despite the audience's alleged familiarity with her from "The Runaway Bride", and I think that it's this aspect of introduction that helps to make for a good opening episode; see also "Smith and Jones" and "Rose" and again not "New Earth".

Because we have met before enables Russell to get playful with our expectations, to the extent that the opening sequence – Donna walking up the street towards the camera and the Doctor walking down the street towards the camera – is almost a match for the opening of "Smith and Jones" up to the point where they fail to meet each other. And then they spend the first half of the episode in farce mode, with Donna and the Doctor approaching the same problem from different directions (literally, according to the stage directions) and repeatedly missing each other. But it's not just screwball comedy; Donna's duplication of the Doctor's methods isn't just funny, it's also establishing that she is really quite good at this, and is perfectly cut out to be a companion.

The climax of this theme is the moment when the Doctor needs a second capsule to block Ms Foster/Matron Kafilia's signal and save everyone. Donna, quite calmly, makes him tell her what he needs and then – and this is the proof that she's companion material – shows him that she's got it.

It's the counterpart to the "Rose would know" moment from "The Shakespeare Code" last year, when Martha wasn't being treated properly by the Doctor (remember that at the end of the episode Martha does know just the right word to finish Shakespeare's charm and banish the Carrionites).

Compare Donna too with the comedy journalist Penny, who in any scheme of things ought to be being set up as the potential companion, except she clearly doesn't know when to ask the right questions, when to bluff it out and, most importantly, when to run for it. She deserves to end up tied to a chair; as Donna says: some people haven't got what it takes, and some have.

So, at pretty much exactly the halfway mark though this (quite long at 48½ minutes) episode, Donna and the Doctor are reunited, in the brilliant "Mimed conversation" scene. Their eyes met across a crowded room… hilarious. There'll be those who think that Catherine Tate's open-mouthed drop-jawed mugging – on first seeing the Doctor – is a bit much, but then her miming of "I looked on the Internet…" etc is just fantastic. Tennant (thankfully) is more restrained, making him the perfect straight-man in this exchange… up to the point where Sarah Lancashire's deliciously wicked Ms Foster butts in, almost steeling it.

The super-nanny from hell and/or outer-space is another terrific RTD lady villain, following in the high-heeled footsteps of Lady Cassandra, Margaret Slitheen and Yvonne Hartman. She's certainly not dissimilar to Mrs Wormwood, played with relish by Samantha Bond in the Sarah Jane pilot "Invasion of the Bane" – so much so that even the BBC website's "Fear Forecasters" notice. However, their motivations are completely different: Mrs Wormwood was planning an old-fashioned invasion (yes, the clue is in the title) whereas Ms Foster in spite of her icy character and amoral methods thinks that she's going good, by bringing a new generation of cute CGI muppets into the world.

(And, as the Doctor points out, it's only when they go to "emergency parthenogenesis" that there's a problem – though since it's lethal it is a biggie. There's a beautiful symbiosis just waiting to happen once we've made first contact.)

It's almost a shame she's so enthusiastic about killing the Doctor and Donna – ordering her gun-wielding goons to shoot them, as well as trying to sever the cables of the window-cleaners' cradle in which they are trying to escape – since it would make her (literal) downfall all the more tragic. On the other hand, she'd not be nearly so much fun if she wasn't so gleefully malevolent.

It does make for a good opening to the season: nothing too heavy, plenty to laugh and joke about, but also an interesting idea to make you think. Who actually suffers here? There are only two deaths – innocent Stacey and guilty Ms Foster – and you could argue that both of those are caused because Donna and the Doctor interfere. Breeding baby Adipose from human fat is against "Galactic Law" but does that make it "wrong"?

I suppose I really ought to eat humble pie after my comments about "Galactic Councils" in my review of "Revenge of the Judoon" only last week. And yet, just to be perverse, where I feel that "Galactic Council" sounds far too much like something that "Star Trek" would set up, somehow calling it "The Shadow Proclamation" makes it seem all right. As with the hired police services of the Judoon last year, it adds to the impression of a busy galaxy around us.

I know I'm reading all this into it – but that's how Russell loves to write – so to me "Shadow Proclamation" suggests an appeal during or in the aftermath of the Time War to "please stop hurting us". By inference, I imagine it less like Star Fleet and more like an interstellar UNIT – rather homespun, muddling though and trying to sort things out for the best. In short, more British and less American.

Perhaps most significantly, the Shadow Proclamation aren't just the people who turn up to put everything right. It's a more credible universe where you can't rely on the law riding up on a white horse. In fact, they never come to arrest anyone at all, and this is a crime that the criminals get away with.

The people who are really responsible are the never seen Adiposian First Family, as Russell himself points out in the accompanying Confidential (forty-five minutes ought to be too long for these things, it was at Christmas, but this one felt right, probably because it was more like three different Confidentials in one: the Donna one, the cradle sequence one and the in the read-through one). They have a cool spaceship, though, with its rather lovely homage to "Close Encounters" in both appearance and sound.

The Adipose creatures – it's hard to call them "monsters" when even the Doctor recognises that they're only children – are cute little cartoon critters, nicely realised and there's some brilliant software that gives hundreds of them individual movement and character. Their mewling and waving made them irresistible.

I did wonder, briefly, if like the Meeps, the Adipose cuteness was a disguise for something altogether more malevolent, but it's not: they were just babies, and that allowed for a reminder of the Doctor's vengeance on the children of the Racnoss and for Donna to appreciate that the Doctor isn't always that way. I'd like to think that the Doctor doesn't usually go around massacring alien babies unless they’re insatiable carnivores, but it is also nice to feel that it might be, as Donna says, because of Martha's influence.

Alex thought that the little Adipose resembled nothing so much as an army of Mr Stay-Pufft's ("Ghostbusters", obviously), and by extension the meeting of the Sonic Screwdriver and Sonic Pen was "crossing the streams" (hence BAD!). Myself, I saw the duelling sonics as very much magic wands in the "Harry Potter" tradition, with the Doctor expelliarmus-ing Ms Foster's pen, and that would make the sonic vs sonic similar to the clash between Harry and Voldemort's wands seen in "…and the Goblet of Fire".

And it was rather nice that the last shot of them has them looking rather sad that Nanny has been dropped to her death by their all too guilty mummies and daddies.

Speaking of families, with Donna return hers, although tragically real life intervened so that Howard Attfield, who played Donna's dad Geoff, passed away before being able to complete his filming for series thirty. For this reason, Bernard Cribbins character Wilf was drafted into the role of Donna's granddad. In some ways this actually works better, because Wilf's role is to encourage Donna in her quest for the Doctor, and that's much more the sort of thing you'd expect from a grandparent – indulgent and willing to conspire in mischief – rather than a doting dad. Fathers and daughters have a different relationship, one that is more protective. The scene is re-edited in a different order to the way it appears in the cinema trailer, and it makes a small but noticeable difference to the tone. It also makes for a clever link to this year's Christmas voyage, and is of a part with the theme of the episode: Donna doesn't realise that her Granddad has met the very man she's looking for. It is so lovely – and speaks so well of her character – that Donna's first trip in the TARDIS, to go anywhere in time and space, is to fly over his allotment where he is stargazing in order to wave goodbye.

Happily, Jacqueline King makes a welcome return as Donna's overbearing mum, Sylvia. Haven't we all had moments that feel like the scene where Donna drifts away as "Raston Warrior Mum" blurs around in a frenzy of chores and nagging? It's so evocative of how a loving mum trying to help can sometimes come across as more of an antagonist than a friend. I do feel for Sylvia as, especially with Geoff gone, Donna leaving on her adventures might be more of a blow to her than Rose's leaving was for Jackie or Martha's was for Francine. And where Grandpa gets waved off from the doors of the TARDIS, all Sylvia gets is a phone call and her car keys in a bin.

Of course, it's impossible to finish without mentioning the stunning surprise re-appearance of Rose Tyler. The producers went to such trouble to keep this unspoilered – even excising the reveal from the press copy shown at the launch party. Billie Piper's performance is marvellously enigmatic (Alex will reply: or is she?) and we wonder whether that is sorrow or anger on her face. How can Rose even be here at all, after the Doctor sealed the Universes in "Doomsday"? Has Dalek Caan smashed them open again to rescue the Dalek Race? And what makes Rose fade away? Is she going to be literally haunting the Doctor's adventures for this whole season?

Donna meeting but not knowing Rose returns us to the farce of the first half of the story, but this time with a more ominous overtone, helped along by the reprise of the doom-laden "Doomsday" theme.

Phew, what a start to the new series.


"Partners in Crime", incidentally, is David Tennant's 24th story as the Doctor, levelling him with Jon Pertwee (in stories, though with less than half the screen time).


Next time… When in Rome… or at least the Roman Empire… do as Romans do: run screaming! Prophecies, scarlet-clad sisterhoods and sacred fires; no, it's not the "Brain of Morbius" – we're on Earth and it's Volcano Day in "The Fires of Pompeii".

PS:

This year I have learned that I have a SPECIAL RESPONSIBILITY to my readers because we have discovered that I am being QUOTED in a proper book! Or at least a guide-book from Telos Publishing!

(Fluffy thanks to Mr Booth for dropping me an e-mail to tip me off that I was in there; what a pity that the author didn't think to do so too! Big thank-yous for reading, nonetheless!)

Day 2651: TOYCHWUD: Exit Pursued By A Bear

Friday:


Yay, REAL Doctor Who is back…

Oh, all right, I admit there were lots of snuffles and shockingly actual goodbyes forever for the last episode of Torchwood, even if the episode wasn't the BEST.

Fortunately series three of Torchwood has a new TOP TEAM to deal with the alien menace among us…

They'd Do Anything… to save the World

Oh dear. Whatever transfusion of TD DNA that produced the anarchic fun of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" or the moving tragedy of "Adrift" seems to be wearing off. From opening with a "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" this season is closing on a whimper.

The problem at the heart of "Exit Wounds" is Gray. The twist of bringing back Captain John – playing on the ambiguity and amorality established in the season opener – only for him to turn out not to be the villain we suspect is a good one, but you need to have someone bigger and badder, or at least with a bit of presence, standing behind him to make it credible. The story, the season arc, even the genre all call for Gray to be an intense, mesmerising and frankly a little bit bonkers figure. And when you've got scenes with John Barrowman and James Marsters you really need someone who can give it a bit large. Lachlan Nieboer as Gray isn't that person. Bless John Barrowman for saying each line is "spat with venom", but in truth his performance is muted and dull. Alex points out that the alternative to a John Simm-esque extrovert is hauntedly introspective… only Gray isn't played like that either – just middle-of-the-road.

Not that he's given a lot of help from the script. Where Russell T Davies (in "The Sound of Drums") tiptoes up to the hoary cliché of the long lost brother gone a bit mad and evil, but then tweaks its nose and runs away laughing, here Chris Chibnall just does it.

But there's not really enough of him in the story to make a proper impact: he doesn't turn up until a third of the way in, and then – one Poe-esque living burial aside – seems not to do a lot. He loiters around the Hub, shooting people and brooding, but why? What is his plan? There's no sense that he actually has any intentions beyond his banal vengeance and with that done, what's he here for? It smacks of having him hang around until it's comeuppance time.

"Actions have consequences," says Jack's brother at one point, which is clearly a philosophy that neither he nor Chibnall really believe. It is our ability to imagine consequences that gives us our consciences and here Gray clearly acts without one.

But equally, the writer doesn't think that way either. Jack is taken back to 27 AD and buried alive (and dead and alive again, repeat ad nauseam) to be dug up almost two millennia later. And he's fine.

(In fact, given Torchwood is the usual one-year-in-the-future of the current incarnation of Doctor Who, then 2009 is 1982 years later… oh dear, that might be a really obscure "Ashes to Ashes" reference.)

It's not just that Jack seems to have no psychological hang ups at all from his ordeal, nor even that his clothes seem to be as immortal as he is (that shirt looks good after two-thousand years despite getting machine-gunned to shreds before the titles) but that we the viewers never see anything to give us the impression of his horror or suffering. "Spaced" style, we "skip to the end" and he's out and about again.

And his first words to crazed little bro: "I forgive you". Yes, Chris, we get that you've watched "Last of the Time Lords". In fairness, Jack had that exact same line (to Owen, for shooting him) in last year's big dumb demon finale, too. So perhaps the heavy-handed son-of-god metaphor flows the other way. But the Doctor's still the nearest to have gotten away with it. At least this year we passed on the resurrections and the empty tomb.

Where the episode works – and I think it's largely through the work of the actors – it's in the two death scenes. Yes, two – 100% more death than anticipated. Predictably, Burn Gorman finally comes to the end of what has got to be the longest death scene ever, lasting a good seven weeks: you couldn't really expect Owen the living corpse to keep going getting more and more damaged and broken without it becoming a sick joke, so better to go out on a high. But shockingly unexpected is the death of Naoko Mori's sweet Toshiko.

Both deaths are well done: Owen's being heroic and showing that doing the high risk things sometimes doesn't leave you time for the "last minute escape"; Tosh dies in a horrible act of random violence, but still – even dying – giving her all for Owen, and never telling him. The moment of death, in Jack's arms and quite right too, is desperately tragic.

In contrast, we never see Owen's actual dissolution (his "death" was weeks ago, remember) and Burn uses the Torchwood Declassified to suggest that a radioactive Owen escapes into the sewers to be "King of the Weevils". Actually, that's more than slightly credible given the solid hints that the Weevils are genetically descended from Owen and that the Weevils strange behaviour towards him has never been explained.

It would be appropriate in this series to think of the Weevils as Owen's legacy.

Torchwood's theme of "life after death" hasn't always been as obvious this year. Stories like "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "Meat", "Reset" and "Something Borrowed" hardly seem to touch on it at all. Equally, "To the Last Man" deals with Tommy's life prolonged after the date of his death; "Adam" sees Adam escaped from "Hell"; and "From Out of the Rain" features celluloid ghosts returning from the death of their lifestyle. And most obviously, "Dead Man Walking" and "A Day in the Death" focus heavily on Owen's life after death.

Here, we get Tosh's message from beyond the grave, a beautiful – and entirely in character – moment. The immortality of being remembered for doing good.

These are good scenes and powerful performances, the only snag being that they barely connect to the main story. Any number of crises could result in the threat of nuclear meltdown; any passing villain could commit a casual, brutal shooting. In an ironic twist, these are consequences of the unfolding events, the violence of Gray's retribution against Jack having unforeseen victims and causing chaos all around it. But the story never draws the connections, never makes these events a coherent part of the bigger story. With Gray already subdued by Jack, it seems like that story has finished and we're into a "let's kill off the non-returning cast" coda. Which is a shame because these scenes and these actors deserve better than that.

Torchwood series two has, overall, been a darn sight better than series one. Regrettably, the weak link is still Chris Chibnall, and putting all his scripts at the end of the season has just highlighted the distinct tail-off. On the plus side, the surviving cast have all really built in performance over the year, so that Gwen, Ianto and Jack seem like a team we can expect to be saving the world (between snogs) and look forward to finding out just how they move on from here.


Next time… it's Doctor Who, for goodness sake!

Day 2650: DOCTOR WHO: Revenge of the Judoon

Thursday:


With the new television series right upon us now, Daddy has been writing reviews of Doctor Who in several other media forms just to get you all warmed up.

We have had RADIO Doctor Who from the Big Fish people and SPIN-OFF Doctor Who in the form of Toychwud. Now it is time for some PAPERBACK Doctor Who, with the return of the Master… of the novelisation, Mr Terrance Digital Versatile Dicks.

Here are Daddy Richard's thoughts on the "Revenge of the Judoon"…

Technically there are "Judoon" in it, and yes technically they do demand "revenge" at one point. But neither point is really what you would call key to this story of David Icke-esque shape-shifting lizards and their plan to take over the world.

Last year, "Made of Steel" was brilliant, a series of classic Terrance Dicks set pieces strung together in a way that was both fun and compelling. This year's follow-up, or cash-in on the popular Judoon from "Smith and Jones" if you prefer, is merely ordinary. Again it's a string of set-pieces but unlike "Made of Steel" they don't seem to flow one into another.

The setting is the Edwardian period… Edwardian England (or even Scotland) seems in vogue – perhaps it's that the Doctor himself is no longer dressed as an Edwardian inventor – and shape-shifters and a threat to the Royal person were central to Steven Cole's recent Zygon-fest "Sting of the Zygons" too.

For that "New Series" feel, though, we get a number of guest historical celebrities – up to and including King Tum Tum himself, but also Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who between this and Christopher Bulis's "Evolution" never fares well from being novelised in Doctor Who, it seems) and a brief cameo for Lord Baden-Powell, of all people, just pre-Scouting for Boys.

Apparently a meeting with the young Churchill was vetoed by BBC Wales, which is a shame as we've had Terry's take on Doctor's two and six meeting the great man and it's likely that no force on Earth could stop Terrance alluding to those previous meetings.

Of course, I was expecting a representative from Torchwood to turn up too, trying to arrest the Doctor. Sadly I was disappointed. Old Queen Vic seemed quite put out by the Doc; did she never thing to mention it to young Eddy? Even if she didn't like him very much, it still seems a bit odd that they never discussed where she was funnelling all that funding.

So there's quite a lot crammed in, and perhaps that's why the action never feels more than perfunctory.

Stealing the Royal Hope hospital and plonking it on the Moon is a terrific visual image. Stealing the whole of Balmoral Castle and plonking it in the desert of the Empty Quarter… would probably also be a great visual image but unfortunately this is a book.

The traditional splitting up of Doctor and Companion – the Time Lord sends Martha to London to trace the origin of an alien gizmo while he himself pursues Balmoral – seems rather oddly blunted when both trails quickly lead back to the kidnapped castle.

And the aliens never really feel like characters. The lead villain, and he's only a villain in the sense that he has a "Master Plan" to be ridiculed by the Doctor, is masquerading as a Professor Challoner, leader of the "Cosmic Peacemakers". But he doesn't do much more than feign gentle benevolence (badly) and then gloat (also badly). His plan to use advanced weapons to destroy the capitals of all the rivals to the British Empire in return for King Edward becoming puppet Emperor of Earth is… well a bit dull, actually. What's his motivation for wanting to conquer an inhabited planet? And if he's got that level of technology available to him, why does he even want to? Does he really expect the British (or whoever he makes Emperor) not to double-cross him? For that matter, how long does he think he can continue to fool the Judoon into being his ground troops? (You see where the "revenge" comes in now, don't you.)

Let's face it, as Power Crazed Alien Space-Lizards, Professor Challoner and his crew wouldn't get to the first round of "The Apprentice". But then, Alex reminds me, neither should most of the Power Crazed Alien Space-Lizards who’ve got to the first round of "The Apprentice".

Nor do over-inflated threats to the "entire universe" add much to the drama, and I'm never terribly convinced by the Doctor saying such-and-such a plot is a threat to history – surely that can only be true if the baddies have time travel and for all their "temporal" weaponry it's never clear that these Prof Challoner's bunch actually have travelled in time. And again, if they can time travel why do they need to be doing daft plots and fooling Judoon? Anything they want would have to be within their reach.

So there's no real challenge here for the Doctor: he effects a solution with – literally – a wave of his sonic, proving to the Judoon that their legal authority here is faked and thus proving the Cosmic Peacemakers' undoing. I mean it's nice that there's an allusion to the Judoon having no authority on Earth itself, but is that all?

Oh, and for all that we get that broadcast warning from someone in the opening of "Last of the Time Lords", surely "Galactic Councils" are much more "The Tomorrow People" than Doctor Who?

On the other hand, the open-ended conclusion – leading into an imagined series of globe-trotting adventures for Martha and the Doctor – is actually very "now", being reminiscent of the end of "The Infinite Quest" in the way it says "the Doctor and Martha's adventures continue…". Rather than a cop-out, or even the page-count running out, it feels quite natural and almost like it's the time travellers returning to their "day job" of saving planets.

Strangely, the description of the Temporal Power source device; the unfortunate fate of Professor Challoner; the fact that there's a "temporal reversal" weapon left lying about in (among other cities) Paris; and the Doctor's remarks about humans not being allowed to get time travel too early all point towards an obvious continuity connection to "City of Death". "Strangely" because the connection is never made, and the ending suggests that all the leftovers will be carefully tidied away. Would have been fun if there had been a hint or reason for the Paris weapon to be overlooked.

So, we have a quick-read which is just that, quick and sadly disposable. You do wonder if Terrance was writing to order on this one: Justin Richards says "Terry, can you write me a story about the 'Revenge of the Judoon'?" "No," says Uncle Tel, "but I can bolt that title onto one I wrote earlier, will that do?"

If you're not very demanding, then yes it'll do. Otherwise, read "Made of Steel" instead.

Day 2649: Candid Cleggster

Wednesday:


Whatever happened to politicians being HONEST? When did we end up with the choice of MENDACITY or NAIVETY?

This week, Mr Clogg has admitted to having had CUDDLES with more ladies than one or two (or none).

So, let me just check something: Mr Balloon infamous for breaking the law (traffic laws, drugs laws, those property laws that say the Bullingdon Club shouldn't smash up people's restaurants… it's clear that Mr B STILL thinks the law only applies to "common" people) or Mr Clogg admitting to consensual cuddles… and WHO is being condemned as "unfit" to make our laws?

Seriously, it must be a slow news week, with prudes, sorry, pundits from as far apart across the spectrum as NuLabour apologist Mr Steve Richards and NeoCon Hypocritical Harpy Ms Appalling Platell both harping on about this as though it was somehow SHOCKING.


Lovely Sarah Teather made a good job of sticking up for Mr Clogg's honour on Questionable Time. It was an all-women panel, with Lovely Sarah joined by Ms Claire Snort, Ms Theresa May-NOT!, "Douglas" aka Ms Wendy Alexander and Rod Liddle dressed as a woman from Monty Python's Life of Brian.

As Sarah pointed out to "Douglas" that it was a bit rich to criticise a leader talking about his personal life after Lord "five times a night" Blairimort gave a "full and frank" interview to the Scum on the eve of the last General Election. And it's no good Ms May-NOT! getting on her high horse about Mr Clogg's interview in GQ when it was to that AUGUST ORGAN that Ms May-NOT!'s then leader Mr Vague bragged of his fourteen-pints a night sessions. Binge does not come into it.

Actually, Ms May-NOT! was more interested in linking Mr Clogg's confessional to the issue of how Liberal Democrat peers will vote on EUROPE… Paging Dr Freud! Paging Dr Freud! As lovely Sarah put it, talk about OBSESSIVE!


As for Mr Clogg, the sort of people who are going to get their knickers in a bunch about this are only going to be voting Conservatory anyway – in fact, the question is much MORE dangerous for Mr Balloon because now someone is likely to ask HIM and is he going to be evasive or own up to a number that will horrify his core vote (i.e. any number greater than NONE!); meanwhile, I do not think that Liberal people are going to MIND about Mr Clogg's new reputation as a LADIES MAN and indeed he may go UP in the estimation of few.

So, I think that thing that we need to be asking is this: is fewer than thirty lady friends really ENOUGH for a Liberal Leader or do we need to get Captain Paddy back in for a spot of TRAINING?

What?

PS:

Apparently this story is very RUDE and you might think that I am supposed to be too YOUNG to know anything about it, but I am EIGHT [R: seven] and Liberal Democrats think that that is old enough to start to know about mummies and daddies and relationships.

Day 2647: Rock and Reckoning

Monday:


So, with the accounts tallied up, it seems that OUR bank, the Northern Rock'n'Hardplace has lost a-hundred-and-seventy-six MILLION pounds!

Fifty million pounds (a bit less than a third) of the loss was the fees paid to (or wasted on) consultants who were trying to find a way to avoid the bank being nationalised. Not on a no-win-no-fee basis there, I am guessing.

And, adding INSULT to INJURY, there is the outrageous GOLDEN GOODBYE given to the man who got the bank into trouble – and cost us all so much money – in the first place.

"It is an utter disgrace," said the Liberal Democrat whose advice was both right and fifty-million pounds better value, Mr Vince "the Power" Cable.

Mr Adam Applegarth, the BOSS with the LOSS, will receive three-quarters-of-a-MILLION in readies (plus additional benefits) in twelve instalments. That's twelve monthly payments of more than most families earn in a YEAR. This is, I believe, described as nice money if you can get it.

It certainly appears to be the case that while the MINIONS might get the SACK, if you are the BOSS then it is a one-way bet that you'll make a FORTUNE. Gamble like crazy – with other people's money, mais naturellement ? – and if you win you take a large slice as commission or profit-related pay or old-fashioned bonus. But if you lose, then… it appears that, so long as you lose ENOUGH, the government will step in and bail you out, with a little gold-plated thank-you as an afterthought.

This is all getting so BLATANT that it was the subject of a rant-to-camera from the BBC's new Business Editor.

With that nice Mr Evan gone off to the The Today Programme, his job of explaining MONEY to for the BBC has been passed to Mr Robert Hey-Presto… with HIS peculiar habit of EMPHasising random syllABLES in ALL of his senTENces.

It's been a good old while since we've seen such naked politics of ENVY in hour long television-documentary form. Each and every point was – it seemed – intercut with (and fundamentally undermined by) a cut away to Mr Presto pawing at Prada bags with a personal shopper, lusting over luxury yachts that cost more than the whole of Burkina-Faso or oozing covetousness over Mr Damien Hirst's fifty-million pound skull. (Incidentally, if the materials, i.e. a skull plus fifty-million pounds worth of diamonds and platinum, cost as much as the finished work, does that make the value of the artistic content, er, nil?)

It is certainly TRUE that the head-bangingly rich find some spectacular – and spectacularly TASTELESS – ways of spending their enormous and probably undeserved gigabucks. And obviously one's fluffy heart BLEEDS to learn that there just aren't enough Malibu beach condos to go around, these days. But hasn't it always been so? Did the aristocracy stop partying just because World War part One came along? The poor Parisians might have starved, but did Marie-Antoinette have any cake-related troubles while playing sheeps and shepherdesses in Versailles? (Though obviously that party came to an end rather sharply!) Ouch!

I mention this because I think there is a perfectly good case to be made that there were some very greedy people in the City – and almost all other financial centres – who got carried away in a classic BUBBLE, without having to over-egg the pudding by saying: look what the rich spend their money on, isn't it awful that they have SO MUCH and you HAVEN'T!

Instead of playing the envy card, we could have used the time to investigate why the system that REWARDS winners and RESCUES losers is allowed to continue. The blame seemed to be being passed to the banks' OWNERS – which means SHAREHOLDERS – for letting their "employees" carry on like this because, on the whole, they win from a share of the profits. BUT most shareholders are actually pension and insurance funds, vast pools of money that are controlled by… more City insiders.

Those pension funds are actually the property of all the people who are putting money aside for their retirement (because Mr Frown surely isn't doing it for you), but do they have any right to control the shares that their money has bought? They do not.

Instead, the people who vote to gold-plate the bottoms of the bankers who gamble with other people's money are THEMSELVES buying their way to the table with other people's money.

With the system so stacked against people, we need to think RADICALLY about breaking it open and start again. The very fact that the Stock Markets are an elite CLOSED SHOP means that they cannot be a proper FREE MARKET (free access is one of the requirements)! We need to bust open those cliques and let people control their own money more, through smaller and more co-operative projects, like the old building societies before Queen Maggie's "Big Bang" encouraged them all to turn into banks.

But things are certainly NOT going to change when the so-called Parliament of the people is controlled by two parties entirely in hock to those very vested interests. The Labour and the Conservatories both depend for NOT BEING BANKRUPT on a million quid here and there from a very small number of the hyper-wealthy… so you can hardly expect them to be on the side of the ordinary folk. They know which side their BREAD is BUTTERED. And they recognise who holds the solid-silver butter fork.

Speaking of which, teenage toff Master Gideon Oboe wasn't one to let a week of grumblings from the Labour backbenches (who've JUST ABOUT caught up with the Lib Dem criticism of Mr Frown's tax policy) go past without claiming that it would all be so much better if HE was in charge of the SWEETIE MONEY.

"But would you have lowered taxes in the last Budget?" he was asked on the The Today Programme.

"Well, if I'd been putting money away during the good times, if I'd been reducing the deficit, maybe even running a budget surplus, then I'd be able to do what they did in America and help the economy out," he replied.

And if he'd managed to catch the magic money fairy he could have abolished Income Tax too.

There is NO evidence that Master Gideon would have spent any less over the last ten years, indeed all of that talk about "sharing the proceeds of robbery growth" surely means that he'd have been slashing taxes not repaying national debt. Nor, for that matter, is citing the Monkey-in-Chief's trillion dollar deficit as a guide to FISCAL PRUDENCE a sign that young Oboe's eye is entirely on the economic ball!

And continuing his new policy of kissing bottom at the Federal Reserve, Mr "a new Northern Rocky policy every fortnight" Oboe went on to praise the American's speed and decisiveness in selling off Bear Sterns, saying that we should have powers like that in this country… only not for the FSA like Chancellor Sooty proposes, but for the Bank of England. 'Cos it makes SUCH a difference which fusty institution has the power!

People are tired of arguing over which puppet-Chancellor gets to fondle the levers of economic power (without actually being allowed to pull any of them, of course).

Come on Liberal Democrats, it's time we put forward the anti-Establishment answers!

Day 2646: DOCTOR WHO: Max Warp

Sunday:

When the most ADVANCED spaceship that Planet Earth can manage is a remote-controlled Ocado van, what FUN to look forwards to the time when they will be SLEEK and STYLISH lifestyle accessories like modern CARS are today.

Come on: I will drape myself decoratively over this electrum-plated gravity-impulse-stabiliser fin and you can try out the genuine leatherette-effect acceleration couches while we listen to the next thrilling adventure from the Big Fish people when Mr Dr Paul reaches "Max Warp".

Here are Daddy's thoughts…

Let's get the obvious out of the way first: it's "Top Gear" in space.

Of course for legal reasons we have to say that the characters in no way resemble any of the cast of the BBC's premier motoring magazine show.

Gentle-hearted spokesperson for reform and moderation Jeremy Clarkson is cruelly parodied as Geoffrey Vantage, played by the undeniably brilliant Graeme Garden as an arrogant, opinionated right-winger in jeans too tight for a man of his years and dignity. Oh and he's a psychopath with a genocide-wish. So nothing like Clarkson at all then. Duncan James, who has appeared in the press so many times as "formerly of boyband Blue" that it's probably going to become his surname, plays Timbo "The Ferret" (I presume you can see what they did there) who is very tastefully killed off in a hideous spaceship crash within minutes of the opening. And James Fleet does the humble bumbling shtick that he's made his trademark, boring the pants off all and sundry with his engine obsession as… the third one.

This is, obviously, the funny one. And it is genuinely amusing, thanks to the delivery of the cast and mostly to the script. There are – this being Johnny Morris writing – a few moments where it is too painfully trying to be Douglas Adams: the most clunking is the description of Timbo's doomed Kith Sunstorm as "looks like a brick, steers like a shopping trolley"; all too reminiscent of Zaphod Beeblebrox's description of a Lyricon Custom spaceship that overtook him only subsequently to smash into the third moon of Jaglan Beta: "looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow" (Douggie's "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" if you didn't know). Some people might call this homage, though.

Alex suggests that even more Johnny is trying to be Gareth Roberts trying to be Douglas Adams (and some might say a rudimentary comparison of "Max Warp" with the Gareth Roberts penned "Boom Bang-a-Bang" proves this), and this illustrates the point: Gareth Roberts has gone on to great success writing in his own voice.

The comedy plays to one of Sheridan Smith's many strengths as her character of Lucie mixes a wry line in put-downs for all things male and hormone-driven while becoming increasingly ditzy in her efforts to solve the mystery by means of her knowledge of TV detective stories. It's all too tempting to do so, follow the conventions of drama rather than real detection, and I confess I too fell into the trap, fingering the President's "Spindroid" on no more grounds than that it would be an obvious blind. There's a definite charm in the way that the Doctor patiently counters all of Lucie's suggestions with logic and mild embarrassment.

(And yes, the elected leader of the humans is obsessed with her popularity and guided in all matters by her spindroid: it's a rather clumsy political gag, as is the Doctor's later remark that things get better as soon as she stops taking the "spindroid's" advice.)

The mystery – the Doctor declares Timbo's apparent crash to be murder so he and Lucie masquerade (with a hint of psychic paper assistance) as investigators – is compounded by apparent assassination attempts on the visiting Kith Ambassador, a sort of sinister-ish sponge with a West Country accent, leading to the threat of galactic war.

That accent is actually quite clever: it makes the Kith seem endearingly homespun, helpful in a comedy show but also disguising their nature as very competent starship engineers who have recovered from the recent war far more quickly than their human rivals and now have a significant fleet of powerful ships, albeit ones apparently vulnerable to sabotage.

Anyway, the resolution is entirely as ludicrous as any of the suggestions that Lucie comes up with, with unbelievable disguises and multiple faking of people's own deaths before the villain is unmasked and escorted off to justice. As is entirely proper, even in a spoof like this, all of the clues are there for you to work out whodunit.

(Though there is one tiny cheat: the Doctor and Lucie leave the ambassador's room and head somewhere because the Doctor knows what the killer is going to do next. Remember that when we later find out who the Doctor has gone to with his warning.)

Paul McGann uses a light touch to give his Doctor a very dry sense of humour, particularly in the scene where he warns Security Officer Gilbride that if he tells her his mission he'll have to erase her memory… in fact he may already have done so. The Doctor's breathless enthusiasm for shiny spaceships – and his defensiveness of his beloved TARDIS in the face of Lucie's affectionate teasing – recall his "time's wet-nosed puppy" persona from his TV appearance in "Time Waits for No Man", but in a good way, as part of a multi-faceted character rather than a cartoon. It makes sense that that boyish enthusiasm is still in there, waiting to be evoked by the right kind of fun.

Nick Brimble plays the Kith (all of them): we think of him as Francis Urquhart's loyal gallowglass from the "House of Cards" sequels, but here he is really rather brilliant in the serious/comic role. Katarina Olson (last year's "Headhunter") returns to play Gilbride and, between them, she and Brimble have terrific fun doing all of the "public address voices" as well.

These are occasionally quite funny, although given that in Jonny's previous Big Finish audio "Flip-Flop" the Slithergee were enormous blind slug-like creatures the announcement of a "Slithergee Ice spectacular" sounds like a recipe for disaster.

The setting is the Sirius Inter-G Spaceship Show, so presumably we're on (or rather aboard a space station in orbit around) one of the worlds of the Sirius System. But it's probably an awful long time after the events of "Frontier in Space" (where the Master poses as a commissioner from Sirius IV) or even "The Caves of Androzani" (where Trau Morgus controls the Sirius Conglomerate)."Max Warp" the Vide-show is – according to Geoffrey – watched throughout "the seven galaxies" which has to make it the very distant future. We generally accept that intergalactic travel doesn't happen until the "Star Pioneers" reach Andromeda some time after 5000 A.D. ("The Ark in Space") but it is reasonably commonplace by the time Iceworld provides shopping services to "the nine galaxies" in "Dragonfire" which is probably… (if you accept that both this and "The Mysterious Planet" are Sabalom Glitz's native time) set two-million years in the future.

The people here are apparently human, and Sirius is not very far from Earth, so it seems a little strange (though not impossible) that the homeworld doesn't get a mention, unless we are upwards of five-billion years in the future and Earth has been toasted.

The Kith refer to human space as "The Varlon Empire" …which might just be a "Babylon 5" joke or it might be because they are confused about it being named after President Varlon, unless she is named after it, King Peladon of Peladon-esque. All indications are that the Kith Oligarchy is right next door, which might not flatly contradict most of Doctor Who history, but does seem to at least beg the question of where they were during the Earth Empire (destroy all aliens), or Federation (we love all aliens) or Daleks' Master Plan (we need alien help!) eras. Though I suppose in a time of routine intergalactic travel "right next door" might be a lot further out than in earlier eras.

I really enjoyed this, though – like the preceding story "Dead London" – it is just a bit "wacky". Maybe Big Finish are trying to cut a distinctive swathe away from what the TV series is doing, or maybe they're just trying to work something out of their system before the hyper-trad story they're threatening to finish this season on. Whatever it is, it's certainly distinctive and – unlike certain other Eighth Doctor eras – not remotely dull.

One for the "funky" side of the "funky board".


Next time… plastic fantastic as Lucie and the Doctor discover a "Brave New Town"

Day 2645: A Tsvangirai Tsunami or a Mugabe Mugging?

Saturday:


Zimbabwe. And President Mugabe denies there is any evidence of vote-rigging.

"This result of one million-billion-willion percent for me is no more than a sign of the STRENGTH of my people's LOVE!"


"Now launch the sharks and lasers at Mr Tsvangirai. And prepare my getaway sub! And don’t tell me Zimbabwe is land-locked, you defeatist imperialist puppets!"

Day 2648: Harriet's Fool

Tuesday: Surely, surely THIS has got to be an April wind-up! Ms Harriet Harpic quizzed for ten minutes by Mr Humpy on the The Today Programme is a waste of everyone's life most days, but today it was almost beyond satire. She is wearing a policeperson's anti-stab jacket. So WHAT: it is a PHOTO OPPORTUNITY, you monkeys, not some kind of surrender to ANARCHY in the UK! On a day when there are MUCH MORE IMPORTANT things to be discussing it just seems a bit BONKERS. In other news: Committee of OAP's from the House of Lords Club says: "We don't like immigrants much!" Coming soon, House of Lords Club report on "Why aren't things as good as they used to be" blames "Kids Today!"

Day 2644: TOYCHWUD: Fragments

Friday:


There is less than a week to go until PROPER Doctor Who and I have the latest trailer here to watch courtesy of the BBC WhoTube…



…so you might think that we've forgotten all about Torchwood. And you'd be right!

[R: er, or not]

Oh no, apparently, you'd be wrong… Daddy has another review for you:

Having not done a "how the team was recruited" story for the first series, Gwen's story in "Everything Changes" excepted, the second season seems rather early to be going back to do the "what came before" story. Perhaps it's "Babylon 5"'s "In the Beginning", perhaps it's "Star Wars", but to me prequels seem to be the thing you leave till later.

Having said that, it is in keeping with the Series Two reboot of the Torchwood set-up to go back and tell us these stories, using them as a device to say that the themes developed this year, particularly the emotional arcs of Ianto and Owen, were in some way "always there".

On the other hand, that very retconning raises new uncomfortable difficulties, not least the way that their Series Two personalities don't reconcile to their Series One versions.

The creators choose to suggest – in fact producer Richard Stokes said it out loud in Torchwood Declassified – that Jack recognises that the Torchwood Institute is missing something and that that something is Gwen. In which case, you have to ask, why did he try so hard and keep wiping her memory to keep her off the team in "Everything Changes"? And if Jack has had pretty much a free rein to recruit whoever he wanted since 2000 A.D. then he's much more responsible for the team being a bunch of dysfunctional halfwits than previously might have been supposed (when we could have more comfortably assumed that they were all imposed on him by Torchwood 1).

Anyway, it's a portmanteau story, four short tales within a wafer-thin framing device of the team being caught in a booby-trapped building and blown up by Captain John. The only surprise with Captain John being that he is not in the end credits. Quite why this induces flashbacks to how they joined Torchwood seems… unclear. Still any excuse for a flashback, when James Masters is guesting, I suppose.



Jack's story comes first, taking us back to the end of the Nineteenth Century, charmingly described as 1392 deaths ago, one of which he recovers from at the start and another of which takes place shortly thereafter in Torchwood's cellar. Given that he's going to be averaging fewer than 14 deaths a year over the next century-and-a-bit, 14 deaths in the last eight months suggests he's been roughhousing it a bit up till now.

Remembering that in "Utopia" he told the Doctor that he first discovered he couldn't die in 1892 on Ellis Island (he was shot), it would appear that he's been to America and come back. But recently. "Still not used to…" he says. Well we don't think he actually means hangovers, so he can't have been doing the resurrection trips too often yet. Not that he ever gets used to it, but it's still soon enough that he believes that he will.

And then he gets picked up by a couple of lesbians.

All right, so Queen Victoria didn't ever really say that lesbians didn't exist, but it's still slightly funny to have a couple of "non existent" persons in charge of the Institute. But on the other hand, was it completely necessary to say that Torchwood staff were always "like that"; is it not the remotest bit more plausible that Torchwood 2000's swinging atmosphere could be the result of the omnisexual being put in charge? Would that not be a sign that he was throwing out Torchwood's old prejudices and repressions, actually making a change for the better? Wouldn't that just be more dramatic than a gratuitous pair of ladygays? Consider the difference with the Torchwood of the World War One years as portrayed by Helen Raynor at the start of the season – Alice and Emily seem like such cartoon characters.

Anyway, they want to know what Jack knows about Torchwood's Enemy Number One. Guess Who.

This story gives us, I think, our first explicit mention of The Doctor in Torchwood, as opposed to Jack's evasive "the right kind of Doctor" replies and his and Martha's shared allusions to "him". In many ways this is the episode to reconcile the Doctor Who Torchwood Institute of "Tooth and Claw" to the Torchwood Torchwood of Cap'n Jack and chums. The Torchwood of the Nineteenth Century is clearly depicted as bad, bonkers and borderline psychotic in its defence of the Empire against anything and everything the slightest bit different.

Jack doesn't want anything to do with them and it's like a fall – or a relapse – when he does return to his mercenary ways. Actually, John Barrowman does this quite well, starting off with the laughing-in-the-face-of-death Jack who we know and love from Doctor Who and Series Two, and having him broken by Torchwood to end the story as the grim faced death-seeker who sulked his way through Series One. It's perhaps a little too fast a transition, but at least it's there.

There are also a couple of interesting continuity nods: one is the blowfish alien of the species we first saw in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", with the twist that there it was Jack who blew the alien away; here he is horrified when it happens. The circumstances are totally different of course, but the reflection is still worth thinking about. The other is, of course, the return – or rather first appearance chronologically – of the girl fortune teller who we saw reading Jack's cards in "Dead Man Walking". We still don't get any explanations about who she is, though, but from her passing of the century without ageing, she is apparently another immortal. That makes her more complicated than "just" another psychic, gifted with the Sight – under the "allowed" Doctor Who rules – by proximity to the Rift. I suspect, though, that "Exit Wounds" will be rather busy, so she's probably a mystery for another time.

With Jack now shackled to his Sisyphean task of working for Torchwood through two turns of the century, we fast forward through a filing-cabinet montage to 1999 and the next crucial step, as Captain Jack gets the top job by the Klingon method of Dead Man's Shoes.

Jack discovers that "Alex", whom we presume to be in charge of Torchwood Three, has wiped out the existing crew and hands the place over to Jack before finishing himself off too.

"I looked inside and saw the future", he says, and we see that he's holding a silver locket – could this be another "fob watch", part of another Time Lord's chameleon arch? Could it, in fact, have some connection to that young-seeming but ageless fortune teller?

In spite of being clearly crazed, for some reason (as yet undisclosed… maybe it really is the monarchical principle: the king is dead; (very) long live the king!) Torchwood command see fit to accept Alex's gifting of Torchwood Three to Jack and he sets out to recruit a team to make a difference. Or possibly for adventures of a sexual shenanigans based nature. (Again, it would make lots more sense of all the free-and-easy sexualities in the team to have had Jack recruit them on the basis of "I fancy that one!")


Given the circumstances of their meeting, it seems quite unlikely that that was how he picked out Toshiko, which is a shame. Still, we avoided John Barrowman having to deliver a "why, Miss Sato… without those glasses your beautiful!" line.

Instead, mousy-but-determined Tosh works for the MoD and in her spare time is being blackmailed to build sonic weaponry. It's almost as though she's been asked to build a sonic screwdriver from UNIT's 1980s files.

Ah yes, UNIT, or Evil UNIT as they appear to be now. It's rather shocking to see the treatment that is meted out by the old crew that we knew and loved when the Brigadier was in charge. How can they have changed so much? And aren't Torchwood supposed to be the bastards of alien intelligence organisations?

Well, the first thought that springs to mind is, naturally, a Laurence Miles reference, once again the conversation from "The Adventuress of Henrietta Streets" where the Master tells the Doctor that they always do the opposite: should he (the Doctor) try to destroy the universe, then the Master would inevitably have to save it. The application here being that Jack's efforts to turn Torchwood good have, by some kind of karma, meant that UNIT has to go bad.

It's not totally original, of course. The dark side of UNIT (a prison facility known as ' the Glasshouse' and run by the Master, I seem to recall…) has already been toyed with in Dave Bishop's spin-off novel "Who Killed Kennedy" in the 1990s – which was both rather schlocky and very of its time, though even then "The X-Files" had already been doing conspiracy within the government agency for ages.

More practically, though, how could this have happened? Obviously, UNIT have come under American control (since 9/11 perhaps?) as evidenced by President Winters' declaration in "The Sound of Drums": "From now on this operation is under UNIT…" (and by inference American) "…control."

But Martha's working for UNIT now, and we fully expect to see them in full force in Series Four of Doctor Who. What, I wonder, does this darker side to the Intelligence Taskforce portend?

Of course, Jack's a bit of a bastard here too: he doesn't rescue Tosh from UNIT's indoor Guantanamo because it's right, but because he has a use for her. And how many prisoners does he leave to rot "outside the law" because they aren't of use to him?

Mind you, the prison is also reminiscent of prison sequence the end of the second book of "V for Vendetta" where Evey believes that she is being held by the fascist state. That all turns out to be a charade played upon her by the mysterious super-hero V to teach her her own true strength. Sound familiar?


Ianto's story is different to the others. In the first place it breaks the chronological sequence, being only "21 months ago" and therefore not only after Tosh joined but also after Owen, whose story we haven't yet seen. But also this story, unlike the others, is not told from Ianto's point-of-view but from Jack's. Jack encounters Ianto three times in the course of his works over a few days, first catching a Weevil, second outside the Hub and third while driving the SUV and checking in with the rest of the team. (Cheekily, Ianto's appearance interrupts Jack's conversation with Suzie, sparing the production the cost of hiring Indira Varma for one line of dialogue. Makes her absence stick out like a sore thumb though.)

This, obviously, is because Ianto is "a man with a secret™". We all know that that secret is the Cyberwoman, the full horror of which no one needs reminding of. But that's clearly the unstated but underlying reason why Ianto is so desperate to convince Jack to give him a job.

He is certainly a man willing to do anything to get that job – and judging by the way he's dressed when he first "encounters" Jack, that definitely includes seduction. That does make it all the more poignant when that expectation is turned on its head, Ianto surprising, perhaps shocking himself by falling for Jack instead. Ianto leaves crying because he clearly fancies Jack but still loves Lisa and now thinks he's betrayed both.

This is, incidentally, also the "how I joined Torchwood" story for the Hub's resident Pterodactyl – the one we all thought had come off fatally worst in the fight with that Cyberwoman until it turned out to be unexpectedly not dead in "Meat".

Though this obviously means that the only thing that "Cyberwoman" has going for it – a fight between a Cyberwoman and a Pterodactyl – turns out to have been a no-score-draw damp squib. Strangely, I am unsurprised.


Owen's story of his dead bride-to-be makes for a tragic echo of the story of Maggie, who he met on a roof in "A Day in the Death" and who was widowed on her wedding day. This is presumably supposed to make us understand how a "good" person like Owen came to be such the callous sexual user that we saw in Series One. Unfortunately it's also the most melodramatic and frankly crass part of the tale. Oh, Owen's true-love got her brain eaten by an alien, no wonder he's such a cold one, I don't think.


An awful lot of this episode was really good. It looked lovely, over a whole load of sets and times, and was well acted throughout. It set out stories that were (mostly) interesting to know about; it showed us things that were new even when it was reusing familiar monsters like the Weevil and the Pterodactyl; and it opened up some new mysteries for us to think about. And James Marsters managed to deliver the Spike-esque shtick in a way that made us want to see the climax next week.

Where it has problems it is in part because of the mismatch between Season One Torchwood and Season Two, but also because the flashback sequences make no sense, there's no reason for them to happen, for these particular memories – or indeed any – to be replayed. It's not a "life flashing before your eyes" moment, because it's too specific, so you are left with a question of "why?" or worse a sense of "that was handy".

And (although I suppose sort of appropriately) it is a return to the first season's ongoing problem of starting from "ooh, that would be cool" ("Cannibal Holocaust" in Wales, lesbian aliens, "Fight Club" with Weevils or a gigantic CGI devil) and then slapping a story made of sci-fi clichés around it to try and make it work.

The ultimate problem is that everyone survives, leaving the episode without a meaning. Even the infamous "Dynasty" wedding massacre managed to blow up some of the cast. While the individual stories work well, and while they connect to the bigger themes of the season, there's nothing to make this story work as a whole. As Alex puts it: "Nice pictures; lousy frame". Series Two of Torchwood has done so much better than this, concentrating on the emotional journey that caries us through each episode and that is what is missing here. We only have a fanboy's reason for wanting to know how the team came together and, if there's one thing that the rest of this excellent season has told us, that's not enough from which to make a drama.

Next time… Captain John plans to leave some "Exit Wounds"