And another thing…

THE SPOILSPORTS over at the official BBC Doctor Who website have said that the special sneak preview of the Christmas special shown during Children in Need tonight won’t be put online.

Well sod them, then. I did it for them. It looks pretty good.

UPDATE on Saturday at 8.45 am: Turns out I didn’t need to go to the bother. Hat-tip to Padougy who points out that, despite dire warnings to the contrary, the Beeb did, after all post this on the web themselves (and in HD to boot!). Still, it’s the gesture of defiance that counts, isn’t it?

ALTHOUGH I try to hide it, I’m a bit of a Doctor Who fan, and tonight was a big date in this year’s calendar for me – the latest in David Tenant’s hour-long specials.

Waters of Mars tried to be – and was largely successful in being – a straightforward Alien-like thriller. It was tense and stylish, though not anywhere near as scary as predicted by the outgoing showrunner, Russell “the T” Davies. On another level, it returned to the occasionally-visited theme of the Doctor being the last of the Timelords and what that actually means (other than his achieving WWF status as an endangered species).

Tenant has explored this terrain before, most notably in his first appearance in the role, when he killed the leader of the Sycorax in 2005’s The Christmas Invasion, warning him: “No second chances.” This was a new facet of the character; more ruthless, less patient. Unfortunately, for most of the rest of Tenant’s reign in the Tardis, he was more like the traditional character: superior, compassionate, willing to offer that second chance to any enemy who needed it.

In Waters of Mars the Doctor finally seemed to succumb to the inevitable arrogance that most people would associate with the title “Timelord”; he actually started inventing his own rules and saying “tough” whenever someone disagreed with him. That would have been a fascinating direction to take his character. but at the very end he seemed to revert to his more familiar and safe “white hat” mode, which was a pity.

A very good episode, though, and miles better than the disappointing Planet of the Dead.

Of course, the trailer for the Christmas special, The End of Time, must have whetted every viewer’s appetite for Tenant’s curtain call in the title role. And John Sim’s back as the Master! I’ll blog, one of these days, about the drunken conversation I had with him a couple of years ago.

THERE’S an intriguing snippet of the next Doctor Who special, The Waters of Mars, over at DigitalSpy, featuring tall, dark and gruesome (pictured right). Watch it here.

It looks appropriately spooky, but in my view, a combination of the Doctor and Mars should mean only one thing: Ice Warriors. If they don’t make an appearance before David Tennant shuffles of his immortal coil, I shall be most displeased.

There — I’ll bet Russell T. Davies is scared now…

… when Doctor Who companions start to look younger. Karen Gillan (right) is the latest actress to be named as the Tardis’s latest resident. She’s 21. Which means she was born in 1988. That’s just plain wrong, that is.

When Jon Pertwee changed into Tom Baker at the end of The Planet of the Spiders in 1974, I vividly recall my older brother snorting dismissively: “He’s too young!” Having been brought up with William Hartnell and then Patrick Troughton in the lead role, he was used to the Doctor being a father or even a grandfather figure. I’ve no idea what his views were when Peter Davidson took over from Baker seven years later, and he has not yet communicated to me his views on Matt Smith, who’s… what? Ten? Eleven?

Still, youth should not be a barrier. And as long as the Doctor himself is still more than 900 years old, I guess it doesn’t matter how old the actor is who’s playing him, or, indeed, the age of his companion.

I just hope it doesn’t end up feeling like Hollyoaks in Space…

THERE’S a scene in the original Ian Fleming novel, Live and Let Die (my favourite of all the original Bond novels, as it happens), when Felix Leiter of the CIA loses his leg to a shark after being lowered into the water by the villain of the piece.

Fast forward to 1989 and John Gardner, the novelist tasked by the Fleming estate to continue the literary adventures of Britain’s most famous secret agent, is asked to novelise the latest Bond movie, Licence to Kill. This, the second movie to star Timothy Dalton in the starring role, included a scene where Felix Leiter of the CIA loses his leg to a shark after being lowered into the water by the villain of the piece. The Bond films have always cherry picked scenes and set pieces from the novels.

The problem is that Gardner had chosen to write his own original novels, beginning with Licence Renewed in 1981, as if they were simply continuations of Fleming’s novels. So Bond, having had his first literary outing in 1953, was exactly the same character who stars in Licence Renewed nearly 30 year later. And in his novelisation of Licence to Kill, the character of Leiter, at the very start, was already crippled, having lost his leg in 1955 during the events in Live and Let Die. Ridiculously, Gardiner depicted Leiter losing his prosthetic leg in the shark tank, whereas in the movie it was all a bit more violent and unsettling.

In 1996 I was discussing the forthcoming Doctor Who TV movie with a fellow fan who was clearly a lot more “into it” than I was. He was very definite that there was an explanation behind the fact that the Tardis’s interior in Paul McGann’s single outing in the title role was far more impressive (and larger) than it had been under any of his predecessors. “It was all explained in the last ‘New Adventures’ novel,” he confidently explained (the “New Adventures” was a series of paperback novels published by Virgin Books which continued the story of the Doctor after the BBC cancelled the show).

The reason I raise these matters is that I’m hoping to see the new Star Trek movie next week. I’m really looking forward to it, but ever since it was announced that the characters from the original series were being re-cast, there has been a level of controversy that only sci-fi interwebbers could justify. Such heresy can only damage the continuity of the series, they screamed. Even the original teaser trailer incensed some because it showed the Enterprise being constructed on Earth, whereas, as any fule kno, and according to Trek legend, all the starships were constructed in orbit because of their size and weight.

And the very first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise got off on the wrong foot with fans because it featured a Klingon, even theough the series was supposed to depict events before the five-year mission of James T. Kirk, when Klingons were first encountered.

Apologies for taking so long to get to my point, but here it is: who cares? It’s not real life. It’s made up.

You can’t expect characters like James Bond or the Doctor to survive this long and have every detail of continuity respected. 

And don’t even start me on the the fans who couldn’t quite get their heads round the idea of Judi Dench playing M during Bond’s first outing as a Double-0 agent in Casino Royale. “But in Goldeneye she became Bond’s boss when he was already an experienced agent,” someone actually wrote in a sci-fan magazine a few years back. Really? You mean Casino Royale and its predecessors aren’t hidden camera docu-dramas? Well, that’s a blow…

The reason the Tardis interior changed between 1989 and 1996 and then again between 1996 and 2005 is that there was more money to spend on the budget. Simple as that.

Felix Leiter still had two functioning legs up until the point Sanchez lowered him into the tank because… well, he just did.

And Klingons were in Star Trek: Enterprise because it was convenient for the writers.

Continuity is important, of course, but what’s the point of trying to maintain it over decades? Such a requirement would utterly stifle creativity. And creativity and entertainment, rather than the creation of a watertight mythology, is what’s important.

HAVING looked at the details of the YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Telegraph, I’m reminded of the fact that I forgot to write a review of the Easter Doctor Who special.

It was very enjoyable.

Goodnight.

I’M TAKING a short break from blogging over the Easter weekend. So have a good one, whether or not this particular holiday has any spiritual significance for you.

I may update my Twitter feed (see right) occasionally, if something important happens (Doctor Who Easter special tomorrow night, for instance).

IT LOOKS like my decision to delay getting Hi-Def television is going to be sorely tested in the next few weeks.

THIS is very funny and doesn’t apply to me at all, oh no…

(Hat-tip to SFX Magazine.)

Only a few hours until Doctor Who and the question on everyone’s lips is: “Who?” Or possibly “How?” Maybe even “Why?” Whatever, there’s a question in there somewhere.

I’ve heard all sorts of rumours about who might play the 11th Doctor: James Nesbitt, Simon Pegg (I started that one), Robert Carlisle, Jennifer Saunders*.

My guess? David Tennant. Something to do with his own severed hand, still sitting in a jar inside the Tardis, will allow him to regenerate into himself. Or something like that. Whatever happens, it’s nothing that a good old reversal of the polarity of the neutron flow won’t be able to sort out.

BBC1 at 6.40pm. Miss it not.

* In the ’70s, a regular wheeze of the media was to speculate that the next Doctor Who actor would be a woman. “They can’t do that,” I would say with misogynist, pre-enlightened indignation. “They’d have to change the title to Nurse Who…”