Five minutes...

Ooh, seconds of Nu-Nu-Who!



(via Behind the Sofa)

Casanova revisited

When the Beeb first screened Russell T. Davies' Casanova in 2005 we were at the height of a bout of frenzied speculation that David Tennant was going to succeed Christopher Eccleston in the revived Doctor Who. That was confirmed very shortly afterwards (possibly while Casanova was still running if I remember rightly), and I remember thinking at the time, "ah, this seems like Tennant auditioning for the Doctor."

So watching it again now, as Tennant leaves Who and we eagerly await Matt Smith's debut, brings a revelation: blimey, Casanova pretty much is the tenth Doctor. Tennant's performance is absolutely stuffed full of the vocal and physical tics that characterised his tenure in the TARDIS, to the point where you have to remind yourself that it's not a Who story set in the 18th century. The copious shagging helps with that, of course.

What's even more remarkable is that Rusty D's script seems just as hewn from the same cloth. You'd expect similarities of tone, of course, but so much of the schtick present is similar - the running about, the cheery smart-alec persona occasionally leavened by hints of darkness, even some of the dialogue ("I'm sorry, I'm so sorry") bears a relationship beyond even what you'd expect from two shows with the same writer. I wonder if it was a dry run for Tennant's Who for Rusty, too. Minus the shagging, of course.

It's not all marvellous: the scenes with Peter O'Toole as old David Tennant seem strangely stilted. Maybe it's a lack of chemistry between him and Rose Byrne. Or maybe it's just that the entire set-up reeks too much of maguffin to allow the narration of Casanova's memoir. The other thing is that for a writer who's so vocal about the terrible amount of expositionary dialogue on telly, Rusty puts a lot of expositionary dialogue in, especially in the first episode. And Tennant's blue contact lenses don't convince. Honestly, if they're going to go to the trouble of changing his eye colour to fit O'Toole's, you'd think hey could go the extra mile and choose the right shade of blue. Having said that, the performances (particularly Tennant) fizz with energy, as does most of the dialogue, and I remain very fond of the Adam Ant-channelling court scenes.

It remains a wonderful romp, and surprisingly affecting at the end. It's a shame it also shares Nu-Who's weakest characteristic: Murray Gold's shit music. I know he has his fans (e.g. Rusty T), but to my ears it's clumsy, half-arsed rubbish that really lets everything else down. I cannot for the life of me understand why TV people are so enamoured of his stuff. Every so often he threatens to have an idea that will match the inventiveness on the screen, but the execution almost always falls flat. And the crappy synth strings don't help, either.

Still, if you overlook that, it still stands up well even after the unimaginably long time of five years.

Let's go to work

Little time for blogging at the moment, as you may have noticed from the few and inconsequential posts lately. Well, I'm afraid you'll have to get used to that, because inane witterings about Doctor Who is about as good as it's likely to get in the immediate future. This is not in itself a bad thing, as it's at least partly down to the exciting thing that I'm now working on, of which I shall not speak, as talking about these things seems to have a tendency to kill them off in my mind. Maybe once you've expressed the thought behind it the need for the piece evaporates. Better to explain in retrospect, if at all. I will say there's an element of thinking about rhythm involved, in a different way to what I've done lately. All these months I've been worrying about my drained pool of ideas, wondering if I need to take a long hard look at things and reassess what I'm doing, and it turns out what I really needed was a few days off. There's a lesson for us all there.

Anyway, Doctor Who. I'm getting quite excited about that.

A nice night in

I know I'm probably too old to be excited by this sort of thing. but I am, so there.

Neckwear for second childhood

It's a good and necessary thing to have goals, and it occurs to me that I'm sorely in need of an objective or two at the moment.

I don't believe, however, that the tasks one sets oneself need have anything directly to do with one's grander ambitions - in fact I've increasingly come to the conclusion that making grand plans is all well and good, but you've got to have some sort of goal that you'll achieve in the short term, otherwise you end up adrift on a floe of daydreams.

I have thus decided that this year, I will learn to knit, and make Tom Baker's scarf.

When I was 6 or 7 I had a very long scarf (well, it seemed very long to me at the time; it'd probably barely get round my neck now) that I wore, which made me actually become the Doctor. It didn't matter that the stripes weren't exactly the same as the one on telly then. As the years pass, however, imagination begins to seize up and won't get going without a good prod, and so now just having a long stripy scarf won't do - it has to be the right stripy scarf.

I wonder if adulthood isn't a matter of putting away childish things, but more of an opportunity to accrue the childish things you couldn't get hold of because you were only a child.

Now, I must make the momentous decision: which scarf should I make? The original model, the replacement that came along a few series later when the first one had had one too many bits shot off by daleks and the like (which I guess is the one I really remember, as it coincides with my getting old enough to become really obsessed with the show) or the burgundy one from Tom's last season, which came in with the shirt with question marks on the collar that I associate with the beginning of the slide into 80s awfulness?

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Christmas No.1

...if there's any justice. Genius!

"It's either Romana, or Fred"

So, you're struck down with a particularly nasty bug, you've finished with one deadline, you can't quite rouse yourself to start the next job, what do you do? Well, if you're me, you sit down in front of the telly and enjoy a big box of Doctor Who!

The Key to Time is the complete 16th series of Doctor Who, first broadcast in 1978, and a novelty for the series at the time in having what we'd now call a story arc throughout the season, i.e. a vague plot linking all the stories together. This comes from the height of my first obsession with Doctor Who, so buying this was a shameless act of nostalgia on my part. I remember vividly reciting all the best lines from each episode on Monday morning in the playground, but of course it's 30 years later, and everybody knows the effects were crap and you couldn't get away with that now, don't we?

Well, ya boo sucks. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's surprising how well it all stands up. See, it doesn't matter that the effects were crap (and actually, considering how little money they had, what they achieved and the ingenuity they show in achieving it is remarkable), or that it's sometimes a bit hammy, because there's more imagination in the least of these stories (probably "the Power of Kroll") than a month of most kids' TV now. Tom Baker's in great form, funny and mad and not yet a parody of himself, Mary Tamm as Romana talks back, not something the Doctor had been used to before, and there are some genuinely wonderful stories in here, best of the bunch being the Prisoner of Zenda spoof "The Androids of Tara". And in "The Armagedon Factor" K-9 actually gets something to do other than make smart-alec comments to cover up the fact that he's got stuck in the gravel again. Lots of extras (I've not listened to any of the commentaries yet, but as Baker, Tamm and John Leeson are all present, along with a number of supporting actors and directors, I anticipate some fun there), including a very funny interview with Tom Baker on Nationwide where he accuses Frank Bough of being a fictional character. And of course in "The Pirate Planet" and the final scene of "The Armageddon factor" you've got some significant early writing by the late Douglas Adams. Perhaps not the very best of old-skool Who, but a welcome reminder nevertheless of why it was the best thing on TV ever when I was 8.

Who: It's back, then gone, then back again

The Beeb have announced that there will be a fifth season of the resurgent Doctor Who, but not until 2010, with 3 specials bridging the gap after season 4.

I'm not sure what to make of this. Is it a sign that David Tennant will stay for another series, and they're taking a break to accommodate his other commitments? Will Series 5 be an effective relaunch with Tennant and Rusty Davies replaced with new blood? Will they move the show to Autumn/Winter (which is where it ought to be, after all)? Who can say? Well, Who fans can, of course, and you can read some thoughts here. (And probably here, too, but possibly not such sane thoughts.)

I'm apprehensive at the prospect of an almost Who-less year. Still, there's always Torchwood to tide us over, isn't there?

Oh god...

The 'wood life

Exciting news for fans of Garth Marenghi's Torchwood! The excellent Behind the Sofa reveals that sit-com legend Richard Briers is to appear in the new series. Briers describes the script as "terrifying", which could be taken more than one way, of course. Still, it does look as if they're getting some names in for the cast, so I continue to nurse the hope that it may turn out not to be complete shit. Hell, it can't be worse than the first series... can it?

In other, actually exciting Whoniverse news, I see that British comics legend Pat Mills is scripting one of Big Finish's upcoming 8th Doctor stories. A friend of mine opined on top sci-fi loony forum Outpost Gallifrey that Mills would be an ideal writer for Torchwood, and you know what, he's right. They'd never allow it on screen, mind.

Da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum....

Maybe it's a sign of stress or impending madness (it's been one of those weeks), maybe Rusty Davies has me in the grip of some kind of mind control voodoo, or maybe it's all true and the Master really is in the process of enslaving us all, but over the past week I've kept finding myself tapping out that rhythm. When I was a small lad, Doctor Who was my passion and obsession. It broke my heart to see its decline during the 80s, and I was overjoyed when it came back and made such a success of itself. It's not perfect (the Doctor needs to stop saying sorry and STOP SHOUTING, for a start), but it's still the best thing on telly by miles. Bar a mid-season wobble (that disappointing Dalek story) this has been the best series yet of the reconstituted Who, and I can only hope, as I wait to find out just how he'll get out of this one, and anticipate a return to the unwatchable any-of-big-brother's-x-factor-grease-idol-will-do type rubbish that will undoubtedly swamp the schedules from hereon, that all those rumours that the BBC might actually be stupid enough to cancel it when RTD & co move on (after series 4, allegedly) are the utter nonsense that they must surely be.

da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum...

Relative Dimension

There's a certain breed of gay man who sends women of a certain age all of a quiver in a last-ditch hormonal frenzy, and the exemple de nos jours is part time TARDIS occupant, chum of Emperor Palpatine and all-round hunk o' cheese John Barrowman.

I'll be looking forward to seeing him turn up in Doctor Who tomorrow night, seeing how many seconds he lasts without chatting someone up, and hoping for a shock revelation or two. But in the meantime, I feel duty bound to ask, what is going on on this album cover? Is Andrew Lloyd Webber just out of shot, applying his aspects to Captain Jack's Torchwood?