And another thing…

I RECENTLY finished reading The Writer’s Tale by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook. Essentially it’s a record of Davies’s creative process as he gets to grip with writing the fourth season of Doctor Who, told in email exchanges between him and Cook, who writes for Doctor Who Magazine.

It’s a cracking read, a really fascinating insight into the writing and production process for TV drama. Here’s part of an email sent by Davies in response to a question from Cook asking how he enjoyed a special press preview of that year’s Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned, in December 2007:

I hated it. hated it. I still feel sour… After the screening we get speeches praising me. I would rather die, I swear. I just wish they’d stop it… Then it’s the Q&A. I hate the Q&A. I hate any Q&A… Then it’s the party afterwards. But I can’t relax. It’s all work. In three hours I have half an apple juice and half a Coke. I have to speak to everyone. That’s my job. Signing autographs for kids, which is nice…

And then there’s the best bit:

… but then the MPs, the bloody MPs, then a man from the Youth Hostelling Organisation, then BBC bosses (so I have to be nice and ask for some more programme money), then more MPs – they never, ever say which party they represent. For all I know I could be thanking a Tory… And then more MPs, and they’re getting red-wine mouths…

Okay. So, anyway, here’s a picture taken by Tory MP Rob Wilson (Reading East) at that very event:

Tom and Davies. One of them was dying on the inside, apparently

I was slightly miffed on reading his account because it was a brilliant, brilliant evening. After the Q&A (during which I asked if there were any plans to bring back previous Doctors for guest appearances; there aren’t) there was a huge drinks reception in another part of the Science Centre at which some of the stars from the series were just milling around, almost as if they were real people. I spoke to Lis Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), John Sim (the Master) and Tony Head (the headmaster from the season two episode School Reunion and, more importantly, Giles out of Buffy The Vampire Slayer). Oh, and Russell Tovey (those ears are real, it turns out).

Davies is a hero of mine. He’s a wonderful writer. More importantly, he’s the guy who brought Doctor Who back to our screens, and he did it with style. I thought he might have been pleased that so many MPs turned up to support the event and, in effect, give the programme their vote of confidence.

And if you’re reading this from your swanky new pad in LA, Davies, I never introduce myself at such events as the Labour MP for Glasgow South, because party affiliation isn’t relevant and it risks alienating people. I was there as an MP, not as a Labour Party representative. So there.

And let the record show that I never touched a drop of red wine all night.

FORTY years.

Forty years ago to this very day, my five-year-old self sat in our livingroom in Beith and watched my very first full episode of Doctor Who.

And yes, it was scary! No hiding behind the sofa for me, oh no, no, no. As a featureless, silent dummy with a gun hidden in its plastic wrist pursued its victim through the woods, I exited the livingroom altogether, using the presence of a box of Gypsy Creams as an excuse to venture into the kitchen, re-emerging only after the action on screen had reverted to a less nightmare-inducing scene.

Not only was this the very first Doctor Who adventure broadcast in colour, it was also the first starring Jon Pertwee. And he was my Doctor. Always has been, always will be.

That’s not to say that I have no affection or admiration for other actors who have taken up the part; Tom Baker was probably the best Doctor ever. It’s just that he came along when I was too old to be scared by the programme. And I loved to be scared. Still do.

Which brings me to the departure two days ago of David Tennant’s tenth Doctor. He was an inspired choice to play the part, wasn’t he? I vividly recall hearing the news, after just one episode of the rebooted Who had been broadcast in 2005, that Christopher Eccleston was packing it in at the end of the season. The news provoked hysterical sobbing in middle aged men throughout the length and breadth of my house, and a consequent sneering contempt for them displayed by their wives. Or wife…

Anyhoo, the same news bullietin held out a grain of hope that the future was not as grim as first feared: speculation was rife that the star of Russell T. Davies’s previous BBC drama, Casanova, would take over from Eccleston. This was confirmed a few short weeks later and, on 18 June 2005, the ninth Doctor “died”, to be replaced by the gurning countenance of the young Scottish actor.

For four years he’s played the part – longer than the average tenure of other actors playing the role. Only Tom Baker and Pertwee lasted longer (if we don’t count Sylvester McCoy’s disastrous reign as lasting from 1987, when he took over, right up until Paul McGann’s appearance in the 1996 TV movie; the series was cancelled in 1989).

So before I offer some critical remarks about part 2 of The End of Time, let me offer a balance to some of the criticism that Davies has endured during his time as DW’s showrunner. Yes, his writing wasn’t always consistent. He too often relied on incomprehensible McGuffins to get the Doctor out of situations he himself had created. He wrote some real stinkers: Fear Her in season two springs readily to mind, as does the finale of season three, when the Master is defeated in an entirely unsatisfactory way.

Yet one of the reasons for the criticisms was that he himself raised the bar so high when the series was relaunched in 2005. RTD is a fan, and he understands what made DW such a success in the first place. More to the point, he understood why it was eventually cancelled. The ridiculous scripts, lamentable acting, and plots that tried to be more clever than scary and ended up as neither. The producer who presided over the death of the “classic” Doctor Who was Jon Nathan-Turner, a man who simply didn’t understand what the show was supposed to be. When it was cancelled it deserved to be; it deserved to be put out of its misery.

RTD was the anti-Nathan-Turner, reversing the damage done by his predecessor and breathing new life into a beloved show. Sometimes the critics overlook how successful he was. How quickly we forget how grateful we were that he was appointed to resurrect the show in the first place. Because he is one of the best TV writers in the country and he produced, even at its weakest points, something that was high quality and wonderfully entertaining.

But let’s talk about Friday’s episode which saw the introduction, in its last few seconds of Matt Smith’s Doctor.

It had all the hallmarks of a typical RTD story: an epic notion (the return, not just of the Time Lords, but the planet Gallifrey itself in Earth’s orbit), improbable solutions and more mysticism and prophecies than you can shake a sonic screwdriver at.

How could a single bullet fired into a computer panel foil the Time Lords’ plans to take over Earth? How could a diamond thrown by Rassilon (for it was he) at a hologram of Earth actually find its way into the Master’s back yard? How could the isolation chamber in the mansion be made of Vinvocci unbreakable glass? Why had Donna’s mother and fiancé, having turned into the Master the day before, not moved from the kitchen by the time the process was reversed by the Time Lords? What was the “defence mechanism” used by Donna to escape the pack of ravenous Masters in the alleyway?

Nevertheless, it was wonderful to watch, and it had some golden moments: the realisation that the Master’s own warped personality was a deliberate construct of the Time Lords themselves, the Doctor and the Master each choosing to fight the Time Lords rather than each other; Wilf doing a Millennium Falcon on the pursuing missiles.

And of course, there was David Tennant, whose performance was breathtaking. His angry bitterness at Wilf for getting himself trapped in the isolation chamber was just amazing. His plaintive cry of “I don’t want to go!” as his regeneration drew near was positively heartbreaking.

So, on the whole, a brilliant but deeply flawed episode, and one well worth watching again.

Davies and Tennant will be deeply missed and they have both contributed massively to the success of the popular myth that is Doctor Who. I’m prepared to be proved wrong, but I expect that Steven Moffat and Matt Smith will pick up the baton and take the series to new heights.

Russell "the T" Davies

ACCUSATIONS of a particularly nasty nature were chucked at Russell T. Davies during his four-year tenure as executive producer on Doctor Who.

Some of those accusations made their way onto this blog last week when I wrote about the first part of this year’s Christmas special. DW is now “too politically correct” and (God help us all) “gay imperialist” (what does that even mean? I have visions of stormtroopers breaking down people’s doors, charging inside and holding the residents at gunpoint while they re-arrange their furniture and populate their music collections with Scissor Sisters CDs…)

So, according to the uneasy-in-the-modern-world brigade, it is now offensive to portray gay or black people in positive ways. It’s unrealistic, they claim; not accurately representative of today’s society.

Presumably they’d be happier if there were no gay characters at all (yeah, because that would be so much more realistic, wouldn’t it?) and all the black characters were serving in McDonald’s?

What is so offensive about black actors finally being given a fair chance to play major roles? Black people were so excluded from television and film roles when I was a kid that when they started appearing more frequently, I noticed. I noticed the increasing number of black faces, and “black” was what defined them in my mind. Ronnie and Reggie, on the other hand, are so used to seeing black and Asian faces on TV (and yes, on Doctor Who) that I doubt they even register the characters’ colour. All they’re interested in is whether the characters portrayed are goodies or baddies or are entertaining.

Why shouldn’t fictional (even science fictional) scenarios be populated with at least a few gay characters, characters whose main function in the plot is not confined to their sexuality? Straight characters have been free to be straight since TV was invented, but no-one ever accused the makers of Z-Cars of being “straight imperialists”.

My gay friends grew up in a society where there were precious few positive gay role models on television. How awful it must have been for them to be given the unintended but very real message that they were abnormal and that there was no-one else out there who felt the way they did. And how fantastic that young, gay men and women can now see gay characters on TV who aren’t defined by their sexuality. Yes, Captain Jack is gay, but more importantly, he’s a soldier, he’s brave, he’s clever, he inspires love and loyalty, he’s a leader. He’s also gay. So what? Get over it. Donna Noble is brave, clever and funny. She’s also straight. Got a problem with that? No-one cares.

I don’t believe for an instant that black actors were hired by Russell T. Davies (brilliant writer and producer. Also gay, incidentally) out of any desire to “meet quotas” or anything so silly and offensive. He’s far too smart a guy to do anything other than hire the best actors available. But what I also have no doubt about is that, in the past, black actors were turned down for parts because of their colour. If those days are now behind us then I see no reason to do anything other than cheer.

And what does it say about those who are able to suspend disbelief enough to accept that Earth has endured alien invasions a dozen times in as many years but who can’t accept that black people can be successful, powerful or accepted as friends and equals by white people, or that gay people exist in the future?

SAY what you like about Russell “the T” Davies, he knows how to end on a cliffhanger. And the ending to Christmas Day’s Doctor Who was certainly a doozey.

The episode as a whole, up until a minute before the end, was good rather than great. I loved John Simm as the Master, I liked the twist that his resurrection was despite his wife’s efforts, not because of them. Tennant’s acting was his best yet – almost too good for a family sci-fi show, in fact.

But the last minute of the show, in which Timothy Dalton’s character is revealed, was breath-taking. Now, a couple of concerns, here (and they are minor ones): when I started collecting American superhero comics in the ’70s, I was regularly frustrated by the practice the writers had of killing off main characters, only to resurrect them a few issues later. Superman and Captain America are two more recent examples.

So in The End of the World, the second episode of Davies’s rebooted Doctor Who starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper, we discovered that in the years since the programme last appeared on our screens, the Time Wars had resulted in the complete obliteration of both sides: the Daleks and the Time Lords, leaving the Doctor the last surviving member of his race.

Except, it turned out the Daleks hadn’t just survived – they had prospered in the Time Lord-less universe. All well and good – you can’t really have Doctor Who without the Daleks. And now we have the return of the Time Lords, which is powerful and dramatic, but it leaves me asking the question: why bother with the drama of the Time War in the first place? If it turned out that neither side was wiped out, it kind of lessens the drama of the revelation in the first place, doesn’t it?

My second minor quibble may turn out to be groundless. The finale to season three, when the Doctor was rescued from the Master’s cruel captivity by the world’s population thinking nice thoughts about him (no, seriously) was undoubtedly the weakest of all the season conclusions so far. Add to the mix the clichéd and lazy plot mechanism of the “we turned back time so none of it ever actually happened” and it left a very unsatisfying sense of anti-climax.

So now, at the end of this year’s Christmas special, we have the entire population of earth having become exact replicas of the Master. An ambitious and original idea, I’ll grant. So how is this reversed? If it’s a time reversal or some such nonsense, it’ll have been a waste of a good idea. If it’s another of Davies’s famed “reversing th polarity of the neutron flow” gobbledygook, then ditto. We need a sound, logical and dramatic solution to this situation. Davies had the imagnation to invent it in the first place; surely he has the ingenuity to solve it without resorting to a lazy device the dramatic equivalent of a “reset” button?

Oh, and what’s with this nonsense of the whole of Britain talking excitedly about a broadcast from President Obama on Christmas evening?

Of course, I’m looking forward to part 2, and I’m getting prepared to have my emotions trifled with as David Tennant makes way for Matt Smith in the title role. Because if Russell T. Davies sometimes has difficulty writing his way out of the impossible situations he has himself created, there’s one thing he can write better than anyone else: drama that actually moves you.

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…

CAROLYN and I have just finished watching the last episode of Torchwood: Children of Earth.

For me, the essence of good drama is how much you think and discuss it afterwards, and I can imagine wanting to discuss this a lot in the days ahead. So yes, great drama. But any parent will have found it incredibly difficult to watch. Again, a sign of good writing is when those watching it on screen empathise so strongly and immediately with the situation unfolding in front of them

Yet doubts persist. Children of Earth was clearly meant to be manipulative, and boy, did we feel manipulated; exploited, even.

Despite my love of Doctor Who and my admiration for Russell T. Davies, I’ve never been able to get into Torchwood before. Don’t know what it is, but I just never connected with it, with the plot or the characterisations. But I decided to watch Children of Earth because, with a five-night consecutive run on BBC1, it had to have something going for it.

And it did. It was utterly engrossing from the very start. The story of evil aliens attempting to abduct and then feed off human children, and the even more disturbing narrative concerning the even more evil politicians too cowardly to stand up to them, was just so well written, so well directed and well acted, that I found myself eager to watch every succeeding episode.

I’m glad I did. Carolyn wishes she hadn’t.

John Barrowman: not nearly as irritating this time round

I asked my Twitter friends if there’s a word for hatred of children (in the same way that mysogyny is hatred of women). Apparently it’s “misopedia”. So does that make Russell T. Davies a “misopediast”? Probably not, but really, a very emotional and emotive drama. But I guess that’s a good thing…

The other question is: have we seen the last of Torchwood and Captain Jack? His first appearance in Doctor Who was in a Steven Moffat-penned episode entitled The Empty Child. So maybe Steven has plans to team him up with the new Doctor in the next season. We’ll see.

In the meantime, Children of Earth has made me want to revisit seasons one and two to see what I’ve been missing.

Fantastic end to season 4 tonight, and a fantastic end to Russell the T’s tenure as executive producer (was the title of tonight’s episode, “Journey’s End” also a reference to his own departure from the series?).

And I’m so relieved David Tennant isn’t leaving. You see (and non-Whovians won’t understand this), fans need a grieving period, which starts when it’s announced that the incumbent actor is leaving, allowing most of the season to grow accustomed to the forthcoming change. Replacing Tennant without any warning at all really wouldn’t have been very fair to the fans.

One of the great perpetual disappointments of the classic series was the writers’ refusal to explore the characters’ shared history and continuity. Davies recognised this fault (as a fan he probably shared it) and sought to rectify it, which he has done in spades. The episodes he wrote were a bit hit-and-miss, but there’s no doubt Russell the T will go down in Whovian history as the Doctor’s saviour.

I’ve noticed a tendency among friends to be increasingly critical of Doctor Who as this season progresses. I’m not sure why this is; could it be that it has become a victim of its own success, that expectations are so high because the standard has been also?

Anyway, in response to a (parliamentary) colleague’s suggestion that season four has been weaker than its predecessors, I decided to have a look back on the 12 episodes broadcast so far.

Granted, Partners in Crime was awful, probably my least favourite episode ever. The “lard monsters” weren’t only not scary – more importantly, they weren’t remotely believable. And I physically cringed when Catherine Tate was waving at her grandfather from the open door of the Tardis as it flew past. Hideous. So not a great start. The one plus point was some terrific acting from Tate.

I thought The Fires of Pompeii was a fine return to form; excellent performances, particularly from Peter Capaldi, a good sci-fi story and some cracking special effects. Mind you, it got me wondering if the Beeb will ever do a historical Who episode devoid of any sci-fi elements. In the William Hartnell era this was all the rage: The Gunslingers, Marco Polo and the Crusaders, for instance, where the Doctor and his companions got caught up in historical events. Bloody boring, mind you…

Planet of the Ood: setting aside all the new age hippy nonsense, this was a very strong episode. But I think the full potential of the Ood as a Doctor Who monster has probably been exhausted: they’re really nice and docile but sometimes they go crazy bonkers and kill people but it’s not their fault because they’ve been exploited. Yeah, okay, we get it.

I was really looking forward to The Sontaran Stratagem, and it didn’t disappoint. The Sontarans were one of my favourite villains from the classic series and, as usual, their “rebooting” by Davies and the team was superbly done.

The Poison Sky proved that when given 90 instead of 45 minutes to wrap up a story, the pace and plotting is invariably superior. Mind you, I thought the whole “hey kids – cars are bad, walking is fun!” message was hardly subtle and just a tad overdone.

I’ve written on this blog before about The Doctor’s Daughter. Despite apprehensions, it was a very strong episode with some good strong science fiction ideas and an intriguing ending.

The Unicorn and the Wasp was arguably the weakest episode of this season. Carolyn is a huge Agatha Christie fan, so she enjoyed the multiple references in the script to Christie novels’ titles (“Why didn’t they tell- …heavens!”). It was pretty much Doctor Who Lite, but enjoyable and nice to look at nevertheless.

Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead were widely and almost universally acclaimed – as have previous episodes written by Steven Moffat – as the strongest in the series. The skull in the spacesuit uttering the line “Who put the lights out?” is as creepy an image as the schoolboy in the gas mask in The Empty Child asking the question “Are you my mummy?” (another Moffat-penned episode, incidentally). Great stuff, and the making of truly classic Who. Both episodes were ingenious, scary and believable – pretty much flawless.

Midnight was an unusual episode. This was the one to which I and other MPs were invited to preview a couple of weeks before it was broadcast. It was a great episode – claustrophobic, tense and brilliantly acted (and it was nice to see David Troughton, the son of the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, making an appearance, especially following the appearance in The Doctor’s Daughter of Georgia Moffett, daughter of fifth Doctor, Peter Davison). But if truth be told, those of us who went to the screening were, afterwards, a little puzzled as to why the Beeb had chosen this particular episode to show. Previous screenings have generally been season openers or Christmas specials (though, given the awfulness of season four’s first episode, maybe it’s just as well they didn’t invite us to a preview of that; sometimes it’s not polite to tell the truth to one’s hosts).

Incidentally, this episode was directed by Alice Troughton, the only person to have directed episodes of Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures. But she’s not related to Patrick Troughton, which is a shame, really.

And that brings us to Turn Left, one of Russell T. Davies’s greatest triumphs. How would life on earth have turned out if the Doctor had died? A familiar but ingenious conceit, with Catherine Tate playing the Jimmy Stewart part. Utterly, totally brilliant. It reminded me why I am a fan.

So now, with yesterday’s amazing episode, The Stolen Earth, behind us, we’ve only one episode of season four left to enjoy.

If yesterday’s episode is anything to go by, the season finale is going to be extremely memorable – and a tearjerker. I just hope Davies doesn’t wrap it all up, as he did with Last of the Time Lords at the end of the last season, with a “turn back time” cheat: “so it never really happened at all…”

It’s hard, on reflection, to justify the notion that season four is anything other than one of the strongest yet.

No doubt I’ll feel inspired to write about it next week.

Gosh, it feels good finally to be able to write about something important!

Russell T. Davies has proved his critics wrong with an outstanding piece of writing for tonight’s episode of Doctor Who. “Turn Left” was utterly gripping and was a brilliant set-up for what looks set to be a fantastic episode next week; the trailer included Daleks and (I think) the voice of Davros.

Just one grumble: what on earth is wrong with Billie Piper’s voice? She seemed to be mumbling her lines, almost as if her mouth couldn’t open properly. Odd.