We hold these truths to be not exactly self-evident

Well, that came out of the blue.

I think everyone was pegging their hopes on the 14th. It made sense for any number of reasons, not least because you’ve got that sweet spot between the FA Cup Final and Eurovision. Where was the song and dance, the flurry of trumpets, the countdown, the slow reveal? Instead we got a random Tweet that had everyone back and forth across the internet like chickens crossing a road for the five minutes we all spent trying to work out if the official Doctor Who account had been compromised. When it emerged that it hadn’t, the BBC website crashed, and the reactions began in earnest.

It wasn’t a bad decision. There is a thing that happens when you build up the anticipation to a fever pitch: the balloon instantly deflates, the disappointment palpable – “What, them?” It happened with Whittaker; it even happened with Capaldi, although no one remembers. At least this was a bit of a surprise. Dropping us on it the way they did there was no chance to feel let down.

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours, on and off, trying to get my thoughts in order. And here they are, in a sort of order. You will not agree with all of them. That’s fine. It’s why we have comments.

1. I’d never heard of Ncuti Gatwa. I don’t watch Sex Education, although I gather it’s very well thought of. That’s fine, although it’s going to take a while to get used to writing out his name. “We say the same about you.”

2. All right, yes, he is a bit young. So was Matt Smith. I was completely wrong about him. I was also wrong about Catherine Tate. I’ve learned, over the years, that I can’t understand the inner workings of the BBC writing team any better than you all can. Sometimes things happen behind closed doors in the heady process that is auditioning and we don’t get to know what they are.

3. At least they had auditions. I think Chibnall said he did for Whittaker’s casting but I also think he’d probably made up his mind before they did the read-throughs. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with casting a mate because he impressed you at a wedding, provided you know what you’re doing, but the fandom is under this irritating misconception that Doctor Who production needs to be some sort of democracy and that they should get a say about how it’s done, so maybe this will shut them up.

4. I like Jodie Whittaker. I always have. I wrote ‘liked’ in the first sentence and then went back and changed it. Anybody else been doing that? It’s very easy to write her off the moment the casting is announced. At least let her finish her arc in peace. We’ve still got Ace and Tegan, remember?

5. I’ve spent years defending Chris Chibnall, and I’m tired of it. The unfortunate truth is that his dialogue stinks. I don’t have an issue with even the more controversial aspects of those story arcs, but he can’t write a believable conversation, and as far as the other week is concerned I can’t defend a turkey. We were in Liverpool when ‘Legend of the Sea Devils’ was broadcast; I managed to watch it but didn’t have a chance to review it until the following week, by which point I realised I had absolutely nothing interesting to say about it, because there was absolutely nothing interesting about the story. Doctor Who shouldn’t be dull, and I shouldn’t be bored. But here we are.

6. When you think about it, casting a male Person of Colour was the most likely and sequentially logical direction for the BBC to take, and frankly none of you should have been surprised. I wasn’t.

7. Be careful, too, of the “Oh but I wanted Idris Elba” trope. Because most of the time that’s shorthand for “He’s the only really famous black actor I can name”. Idris Elba, versatile as he is, would have been a diabolical choice. (He’s quite good in Sonic The Hedgehog, though.)

8. It doesn’t matter that Gatwa is an unknown, or famous for comedy, or younger than you. From what I can gather, the kids love him. And like it or not, they’re the future of the show. Not you. Not me.

9. Here’s the thing. A healthy degree of skepticism is absolutely fine. Honestly. If you’re examining Gatwa and saying “Hmm, wouldn’t have been my choice”, go ahead. I did the same with Smith. I was wrong – he had me within two minutes of stepping out of the TARDIS – but it’s quite natural to shrink in bafflement when you hear about a casting choice. Doesn’t mean it’s racist, except when it is, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

10. There is a famous meme that does the rounds. I include it here for posterity:

Processed all that? Good, now forget about it entirely. It’s bollocks. Well-intended, but still utter bollocks. Some people never get past that first stage (that’s the one on the top left, for those of you who were wondering). We need to allow for that. I have never been a huge fan of Eccleston, but that’s probably my southern middle class privilege talking, and I own that.

11. Speaking of ownership: the outright criticism of Gatwa’s casting on the grounds of box-ticking is bigotry, and I will defy anyone – anyone – to prove me wrong. It’s offensive. It does him a disservice as an experienced actor (and winner of several awards). It also does a disservice to Russell T Davies, who – if you remember – was billed as the Second Coming (no pun intended) when his return was announced last September. And now you’re giving him a hard time because he’s cast a gay Scot with Rwandan heritage? Piss off.

12. If you’re wondering why point number 11 was so emphatically worded, it’s because (and you’ll love this) most white people are at least a little bit racist. It’s not a nice thing to talk about, and if you bring it up they’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks, with the likes of “I DON’T HAVE A RACIST BONE IN MY BODY”. Well, yes you do. I know you do, because I do. We can’t help it. You react differently to people who look different, at least when you don’t know them. There are preconceptions about diets, about religious beliefs, about lifestyle choices. If your son or daughter brought home a girlfriend / boyfriend of a different race, your reaction wouldn’t be the same as if they’d been white. You’d hopefully get used to them, but there would be an adjustment period. It’s partly societal, partly upbringing: we take on the values our parents had. And if you’re really about to tell me I haven’t got a clue about what you believe and how you feel, think about the last time someone told you an off-colour joke. Think very, very hard.

13. The question of whether people of colour can be racist is too long and complicated to address here, but I will go so far as to say this: all people harbour prejudice. You can call it racism, or something else entirely, but I don’t care what your skin colour is – if you’re a functional member of society, you have it, in some capacity or another. About men, women, those who have children, those who don’t, the rich, the poor, the East, the West. Don’t shy away from it. It’s what makes us human.

14. Let’s assume that you’ve read 11 through 13 and are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. How do we move forward from this? Because from one perspective I’ve just said it’s OK to be racist. It isn’t – but it is OK to accept your limitations. Inherent racism is a shackle from which you will never be truly free, but (and here’s the point) it is vital that you recognise it. Recognising it is the first step in tackling it; ask any addict. Ask yourself: where does this come from? Why am I reacting this way to this bit of news? No, really? Why does supposed box-ticking irritate me so much? Why was I really angry at Whittaker giving the brush-off to Graham’s cancer fears? Is it because it was callous? Or is it because I’m socially conditioned to expect women to be caring and empathetic? How would I have felt if it were Capaldi?

Only you can answer that one. But you do have to be prepared to ask the question. And many people won’t. Because it involves getting to know yourself a little better, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned these last two years of trauma, stagnation and poor mental health, it’s that we don’t like digging in the dirt.

15. Darren Grimes can, in general, go and f**k himself. From what I hear, he’s quite good at it.

The inevitable Doctor Who / ABBA thing

God Is In The Detail is taking a break this week. I’m sorry, I simply don’t have the energy. Events have worn me out. Sometimes you need to put things down, rather than going through the motions for the sake of completion. This week is one of those. Besides, I don’t think many people actually read it these days. There are so many outlandish fan theories doing the rounds that it just falls between the cracks, another victim of Poe’s law, dropping into the filter alongside all the crackpot ideas about grandparents and necklaces.

Let’s do something fun instead. We’ll have a bit of ABBA, shall we? ABBA are great. My love affair with them began in the early 1980s when we had a couple of their albums (at least one of which was a compilation) on vinyl. There was a record player in the bottom of the wardrobe, and whenever I heard the heavy, almost claustrophobic bass that opens ‘The Name of the Game’ I was convinced that they were hiding in the back somewhere behind the coats. (I was four; I think that’s a reasonable excuse.)

Fast forward – literally – a few years, to the video we bought from Smiths and which I watched nigh on every Saturday for about a year, wherein I learned about the joys of ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘Eagle’ and the unremitting sobfest that is ‘The Winner Takes It All’. I tended to stop when it started talking about ‘One Of Us’. For one thing I didn’t care for Agnetha’s perm. For another it was getting uncomfortable to read, the band walking away into the sunset during the final fade for ‘Under Attack’. Was it my first brush with divorce? Probably. You could feel the pain and the hurt in those lyrics – “I don’t wanna talk,” Agnetha sang as she stood looking out at a river with the wind blowing in her face like someone researching their family tree in Who Do You Think You Are? “‘Cos it makes me feel sad.” And by the end of the record, it made me feel sad too. Every single time it came on the radio. Job done, I suppose.

Comebacks and reunions are always ripe for scrutiny – can they still pull it off, after all this time? – and it was inevitable that for every cheering Mamma Mia fan there’d be at least a couple more wondering why they’d done it. And yes, the new album is occasionally patchy and has some pretty terrible lyrics. That’s vintage ABBA. Seriously, go and listen to ‘Two For The Price Of One’. Or ‘What About Livingstone’. Or ‘Dum Dum Diddle’, if you can stomach it. Or ‘On And On And On’. I could go on (and on). They’re Swedish, for pity’s sake; give them a bit of credit for writing stuff we can at least understand, even if there is at least one moment every album that make you cringe. On Voyage it comes in the form of ‘Little Things’. “Little things,” sings Frida (or is it Agnetha? Seriously I can’t tell these days) playfully. “Like your naughty eyes / You’d consider bringing me a breakfast tray but there’s a price…”. Ouch. Still, at least she’s not too old for sex.

Anyway. I took a bunch of ABBA lyrics and stuck them into Doctor Who stills, because…well, it was fun. And because Voyage, for all its quirks and oddities, is a bundle of infectious joy, and god knows we need more joy in this crazy, broken world. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I spent years feeling sad that they ended their original run on what was both a career high and a personal low – The Visitors was great, but the (apocryphal) image of Agnetha sitting in the darkened studio creaking out the final vocals to ‘The Day Before You Came’, as the rest of them all sit not speaking to each other, is just a little too much to bear. And for years that was it. I used to have a thing: for years, whenever anyone used to post a ridiculous (and frequently problematic) pipe dream, I’d say “That’s about as likely as an ABBA reunion.”

And it’s a shame I can’t use that one anymore, but it’s a price worth paying.

The Figures Mash (part 2)

Hello! And we’re back with more plastic idiocy, this time taking in classic movies, TV shows and even the odd video game. The Thirteenth Doctor features quite heavily. I make no apologies.

First on the roster: two wizards, taking the baby for a walk.

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Yes, I really did take them all the way to London just to do this.

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“RUN!”

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Time Lord video game sessions.

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“Look. If you’re gonna cheat, I’m not playing with you.”

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“Special delivery, sir.”

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“Yeah, no idea who it’s from.”

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No caption needed.

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The Twelfth Doctor’s series 11 hair.

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“FOR GOD’S SAKE, KEEP HIM AWAY FROM THE CONSOLE!”

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Lockdown board games.

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Edward set this one up.

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“DUGGEE HUG!”

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“We should probably dig her out.”
“Eventually.”
“Yeah, when we’re ready.”

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More of the same next time!

The Figures Mash (part 1)

There is a book on my shelf that makes the list of Brilliant Charity Shop Finds of 2017. Entitled Figure Fantasy, it celebrates the work of Daniel Picard, who has turned the careful posing of costumed action figures into what is quite literally an art form. Here’s the Man of Steel etching “BRUCE WAYNE IS BATMAN” onto a wall with his heat vision. Here’s the Hulk bending a tree. Here’s Darth Vader propped up at a urinal, the toilet walls lined by stormtroopers anxiously trying to incline their heads in the opposited direction. Look him up; the guy’s a genius.

I do not have Picard’s photographic skills, swanky lighting or creativity. I also don’t have the time or the patience. I have trouble enough getting the ruddy things to stand upright on concrete without wobbling in a summer breeze. However, I do have a decent-sized garden and the occasional good idea. Which has meant that as the children have got older, and the tendency to re-enact the finale of ‘Blink’ recedes somewhat, our playtime sessions have been replaced by impromptu photos in the garden. “Give me a Capaldi,” I’ll say in the manner of a concentrating surgeon or experienced mechanic, not taking my eyes from the scene I’m semi-meticulously assembling. “Dalek. Cybermen. Damn, we’ve got a wobble. Blu-tac, quick! CAN I GET SOME HELP IN HERE PLEASE?!”

Look, Doctor Who toys deserve to come out of their plastic packaging, all right? I can’t understand – truly I can’t – the mentality of people who buy them simply to have them, in order to build up a collection that does nothing except gather dust, a factory line of plastic David Tennants that sit permanently bubbled in cellophane, their tiny arms and legs bound with those irritating little cable things. Oh, they’re worth more, are they? What’s worth? How do you measure that?

So one of my Angels is missing a wing and Morbius’s leg has a tendency to drop out of its socket unannounced, but at least they get used. And such is the extent to which I have neglected this blog this year that we have a whole stack of unposted pictures, enough for a small exhibition, all hastily composed and all equally ludicrous. So this week and next, while you’re all drumming your fingers waiting for ‘The Halloween Apocalypse’, I’ll stick them all out here.

We’ll start with this one.

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“Oh great. We’re back on Trenzalore.”

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Unused Fourth Doctor stories.

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“Right. I don’t want to panic anyone, but there’s a leek in the boat.”

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“Interesting look, Frobisher.”

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Now showing on Britbox: Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes.

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“Hello, old friend. And here we are, you and me, on the last page.”

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“Seriously. You’ve been out for like a month and a half. Don’t you think you can stop doing that now?”

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“When this baby hits eighty-eight miles an hour, you’re – GREAT SCOTT!”

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“I’m sure you’ll get the…point, Doctor. He. He he he he.”

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The Doctor and Graham get caught up in a game of Tetris.

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“Hey, anybody seen a – you know what, never mind.”

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“So. We meet again, Great Intelligence.”

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“Uh…she did it.”

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More of the same next time! Enjoy your week.

The Smallerpictures Video Dump (2021, Part Three)

Been a little quiet in here of late, hasn’t it? There will come a day when I get back to posting regular content, but it is not this day. It’s likely to be the beginning of November, when we’re in the thick of Series 13. I used to post memes here regularly, and I may get back to doing that again, but a lot of the time the media interest has come and gone and it feels a bit more like lip service, or obsessive archiving for the simple reason of having done it, and for one reason or another that doesn’t sit right with me any more.

In the meantime I’m doing a little administration for a database website I run, and working on the book, and still creating regularly. As you’ll see…

1. Closing Time: Alternate Ending (August 2021)

My children tell me that my contempt for James Corden is rooted in the observation that he’s fat and successful, whereas I am fat and unsuccessful. There is probably some truth to this. At the same time I can’t help but wonder at the enduring appeal of the man, just as I can’t help but wonder at the enduring appeal of tailgating, or Bette Midler. He’s just so…there, and not in a good way. Rumours of unpleasant offscreen behaviour abound, and I probably wouldn’t mind so much were the man not so omnipresent, propping up musicals, chat shows and reunion specials with an overly familiar sycophancy that borders on excitable mawkishness. Even when he’s acting Corden is seemingly only able to play himself, and when said self is an outright dickhead, it doesn’t make for comfortable viewing.

I mean, he’s all right in Doctor Who. There’s a chemistry of sorts with Smith, who – thanks to Gareth Roberts’ flair for dialogue – bounces off him nicely. But I can’t be the only one who watched the end of ‘Closing Time’ with my teeth gritted. And so I changed it. And I can’t help thinking this new take, juvenile as it may be, is nonetheless slightly more believable than blowing up Cybermen with love. But then I’m fat and unsuccessful. What do I know?

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2. Doctor Who, Alan Partridge Style (August 2021)

Confession time: I’ve had this one on the back burner for years. I mean it. At least three. The idea of redubbing K-9 with Steve Coogan’s Presenter From Hell wasn’t entirely mine, but once someone had suggested it I realised that it would need to centre, quite obviously, around him being rude to Adric. So that was a starting point, and what followed was years of procrastination, until This Time came back for a second series and I realised that it was best to just get on and do it before the character falls completely out of favour. So what you’ve got here is material from the first series of I’m Alan Partridge – I’m a stickler for a laugh track – with a promise that there will be a sequel somewhere down the line. He does manage to be summarily rude to Adric: turning the tin dog into a lecherous creep was a side effect, but I largely think it works.

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3. Flux Trailer (October 2021)

So everyone was complaining that there was no proper trailer for Series 13, and that we just had the odd few seconds of out-of-context material, looped for about a minute, along with a bit of mugging for the camera. A closed set is seldom a good sign – sure, everyone knows about the Angels and Sontarans but I can’t help thinking that this is going to be six weeks of heavily dissected silliness, and in a way I can’t wait for it to be over so we can all get back to our normal, casual bitching, instead of the high intensity catfights that take place while a series is on.

Still. Flux. That’s…dysentery, surely? Well, we opened with a fart; why not close with one? And a bit of follow-through? Anyway, you lot wanted a proper trailer, so now you’ve got one. Make sure you watch to the end.

The Doctor Who / Stranger Things Mash

Have things to write. Honestly. But I just started the new book, which is exciting, so you’re going to have to make do with a bunch of Stranger Things quotes mashed up with Doctor Who images.

I mean, that’s not such a bad way to end a week, is it?

The 12 best scenes in Stranger Things

“Dude! You did it! You won a fight!”

Stranger Things is one of those programmes I put off watching. It was nothing personal; we just tend to avoid anything that’s really popular, largely because when it’s hyped to death it seldom lives up to the press coverage. We avoided Lost, Prison Break and Game of Thrones largely for the same reason. (And yes, I recognise that avoiding press coverage isn’t exactly rocket science, but when you’re in my line of work, you have to keep your feet in the water.)

Then – following a Saturday evening viewing of Super 8 – Emily and I decided to give it a go, and found ourselves suitably enthralled. After a slowish beginning (the first series is all about buildup, and the unfolding of a delicate, exquisitely teased mystery before everything explodes) the programme abruptly kicks into gear, as the Duffer brothers dole out epic scaled battles and small moments of domestic dysfunction with the expertise of master craftsmen. We binged the first three series in just over a month, which is something that never happens in our house. If you’ve seen it, you can understand why. This really is good TV: self-aware without being snide; nostalgic without being vacuous.

I could write more. But I think we’ll do that as we go. I don’t pretend this list is exhaustive, or definitive – it’s just the bits I liked. If I missed your favourite, tell me in the comments.

Spoilers follow. If you’ve not watched the thing, I’d advise against reading any further.

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1. Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

No eighties period drama is complete without the iconic soundtrack, right? For most of us, at least people my age, the Clash’s anthem is most synonymous with a jeans advert it accompanied when it was rereleased: in the show it’s used early on as a bonding exercise between the missing Will Byers and his older brother Jonathan. Distraught and distressed but not yet broken, mother Joyce (Winona Ryder, in a career highlight) wanders through their ramshackle home to find the song blasting from Will’s cassette player, right before the lights go haywire and something starts to come out of the wall. This is probably the first time the show was decently scary, but what makes it is the moment the terrified Joyce runs out to her Ford Pinto, sits her with hands clutching the wheel…right before her face sets into a determined grimace, and she leaves the car and walks back into the house.

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2. Barb’s Death

Horror movie sex is usually a death sentence – only on this occasion, the death happens to someone else, literally a world away. As Barb runs through the Upside Down, stalked by a largely unseen Demogorgon, Nancy is back in Steve’s expensive house, and the two of them are getting it on to Foreigner. This is all about symbolic juxtaposition – Nancy’s approaching orgasm mirrored with Barb’s helpless scream, as her hands reach out for Steve’s while her soon-to-be-dead best friend is holding on for dear life.

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3. The Body

Yes, yes. If you’ve seen the rest of the series you’ll be aware that Will survives his ordeal in the Upside Down and lives to become a host for a parasite. Still, there was a point early on where it really looked like he was done for, as the police fish a body from the lake, the dismayed Hopper looking on as Peter Gabriel’s sombre cover of ‘Heroes’ plays over the closing montage. This whole scene smacks of convoluted scheming that serves no purpose other than to provide a narrative feint – why on earth would you go to these lengths to produce a fake body when it would be much easier to char a corpse and mock up dental records? – but still, it packs a heck of an emotional punch.

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4. The Undoing of Troy

For the most part, there isn’t a single wasted character in the entire show. We might make an exception for Troy – a contemptible bully with no apparent redeeming features whatsoever, whose sole purpose is to abuse and belittle the Party. Having already been humiliated a couple of episodes back, he’s now out for blood – but what’s astonishing about this scene is the depth of friendship that exists between these children: Mike couldn’t have known that he’d be spared, and seems genuinely prepared to dive from a cliff in order to save his friend. As it turns out he doesn’t have to, as Eleven shows up in the nick of time in order to levitate Mike away from certain death, right before breaking Troy’s arm. Eat your heart out, E.T.

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5. Drunk Nancy

There’s nothing particularly important about this scene. Nothing world-shattering. It’s just two people having an argument at a party. But it features some of the best acting in the series. Natalie Dyer slurs and rants as the camera dips and dives, reflecting both her inebriation and fragile mental state. It’s an astonishing moment, and despite being great in everything that followed, I don’t think Nancy was ever quite so compelling, or so watchable, as she was here.

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6. Splitting Hairs

If there’s one curveball in particular the Duffer Brothers threw from their mitt, it’s the development of Steve Harrington. Initially the preppy dickhead who smashed Jonathan’s camera, he escaped the axe (Steve is one of those characters who was supposedly not going to survive the show’s first season) only to become altogether kinder, funnier and more responsible. There’s a certain growth borne out of humiliation – by season 3 Steve has failed to get into college and is reduced to working in an ice cream parlour while he rethinks his future – but key to his success as a fan favourite is the decision to pair him up with Dustin, and any scenes the two have together usually serve as comedic highlights. This first encounter, in which they discuss hair products while on the way to bait a carnivorous monster, set the tone for much of what follows.

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7. Bob

Poor Sean Astin. Having successfully paid off his family’s mortgage in The Goonies, and carried Frodo to the top of Mount Doom some eighteen years down the line, his more recent career seems to consist mostly of a series of memorable deaths. Not content with having choked on poison gas in 24, he finally gets to play the hero in Stranger Things’ second season, only to meet a violent end at the hands of a rampaging demogorgon. What’s clever about this is that it doesn’t quite unfold the way you think it will: the moment (just before this clip) where the camera swoops onto the forgotten pistol is, we’re convinced, something that Bob will come to regret later on, but as it turns out he never stood a chance. The rest of it unfolds in a series of slow motion cliches, and there is a lot of screaming and stretching, but it works, and it gives Joyce something to do, and that final shot of creatures feasting on Astin’s lifeless corpse is worthy of Romero himself.

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8. The Snowball

Proposal: the final episode of Stranger Things‘ second series is one of the finest hours of television ever made. That’s largely because it finishes early and leaves plenty of time for the wind-down: a blissful, ten-minute sequence that takes place near Christmas, with Mike finally getting to fulfil the promise he made a year ago. If Eleven’s return at the end of episode seven was akin to the reunion in Casablanca, this is the Bogart and Bergman scene we never got to see, which makes it all the more satisfying. As the camera pans around the hall, Will learns that being a misfit has its advantages, Max and Lucas share a first kiss – oh, and Dustin is dancing with Nancy. Even before that mesmerising final (and quite literal) twist, this is absolutely glorious work.

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9. Hopper vs the Russian

It’s all a bit silly, is this, but that’s not a bad thing. Having gone full-on Magnum P.I. the moment he threw on that floral shirt (prompting waves of applause from anyone old enough to remember it and waves of confusion in just about everybody else), we get, in this scene, a full-on fistfight. The jump cutting veers into Quantum of Solace territory at times, but this is both funny and frightening, the seemingly indestructible Russian making the most of the pistol Joyce accidentally throws at him, before the two heroes and the programmer they’ve abducted flee from a volley of machine gun fire in an unreliable car, barely escaping with their lives.

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10. Back to the Future

We bloody love Robin. Played to quirky perfection by Maya Hawke, she is the model of open-minded serenity, adapting to new scenarios and life-threatening situations like a backpacker switching trains. Her coming out to Steve is artfully rendered, taking place in adjacent bathroom stalls, but it’s this scene that sticks in my memory – as the two weary fugitives, blood-soaked and under the influence of drugs, debate the finer points of Back To The Future before giggling at the ceiling. Marvellous.

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11. The Sauna Test

I’ll be honest. There are moments, early on in Stranger Things 3, when you wonder if the show’s lost its way a bit. Then the third episode ends with a bang (I’m not getting into it here; I’ll just say “Don McLean”), and you spend much of ‘The Sauna Test’ wondering how on earth they’re going to top that. And then this happens. I dearly wish I could show you the whole thing, but this oft-reconstructed sequence – the subject of a thousand Reaction videos – is absolutely sensational work. The way the kids are grouped, Eleven standing in front with her arms outstretched in defiant protection. The incredible makeup job on Peggy Miley’s face. The lighting and the sensible camera work and the sweat. The scream that emenates from Mille Bobby Brown’s throat the moment she finally throws Billy through the wall. It’s an astounding scene, and nothing Doctor Who has done in the past five years has come even close.

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12. Dustin and Suzie sing

For most of season three, Dustin’s girlfriend Suzie languishes in a quantum state – real and not real, existing or not existing depending on who’s handling the observation – and her eventual reveal is a classic plant-and-payoff. That said reveal takes the form of a song, delivered over radio waves between Salt Lake City and Indiana, is a stroke of genius, Gaten Matarazzo and Gabriella Pizzolo belting out the Limahl classic as if the universe depended on it – which, of course, it does. In a dark, frightening and unremittingly sombre episode, this is a moment of sheer unbridled joy.

Who’s the new showrunner on Doctor Who? When is Series 13 released? Everything you need to know

No one knows the agony of waiting like a Doctor Who fan, except anyone who has stood at a Reading bus stop on a Sunday. It seems like only seven and a half months since we last saw Jodie Whittaker, blasting across our screens in the company of her fam, along with fan favourite Captain Jack Harkness as they broke out of a hi-tech prison and then took on an army of Daleks. Since then details about the new series have been scant and hard to find. But here at Digital Spy / The Radio Times / The Teal Mango / We Got This Covered, we’ve collected together all the information you already knew and then rearranged it slightly differently to make it look like we’re bringing something fresh to the table. You may hate us for this but it’s the middle of the silly season and there’s nothing else happening until the BBC’s autumn trailer drops. So read on, and be enlightened.

When is the new series of Doctor Who?

The new series of Doctor Who will air sometime in 2021. As there isn’t that much of August left, it is likely to be September. Or October. Maybe November. Almost definitely November because otherwise it’s nearly Christmas. It’ll be on a Sunday because it usually is, at a time that interferes with whatever’s on the other side. We don’t have a release date, despite basically implying that we did. Possibly 2022.

Who will be starring in the new series?

Jodie Whittaker will be returning as the Thirteenth Doctor for her final full series, having already done two full series, series 11 and series 12, before that. Joining her is Mandip Gill playing Yaz, and John Bishop as new companion Dan. Not appearing in the series will be previous companions Ryan Sinclair and Graham O’Brien, played by Tosin Cole and Bradley Walsh, because they left in ‘Revolution of the Daleks’, just in case you’d nodded off during that protracted finale. Game of Thrones actor Jacob Anderson will be joining the show as a man called Vinder, and although we know nothing about him we’ve got a few random fan theories about him being a new incarnation of Rassilon that we’re going to use to pad out space. We know that you could have got all this from Google but we like you to look at our pages rather than anyone else’s, because ads help pay the rent. We also just looked up the word ‘Vinder’ in the Urban Dictionary and really wish we hadn’t.

What will happen in the new series and how many episodes are there?

There are eight episodes in all but the main series will consist of six episodes that form one continuous arc. This is big news because it has never happened before, except for all the times that it did. This is the part where we show you a picture of Colin Baker. We don’t know what will happen in the stories because the teaser trailer was just a bunch of random pictures repeated two or three times before being analysed to breaking point, but some guy on Twitter took a few pictures of Weeping Angels on a telephoto lens, so we’ll drop that in along with a rumour about an origin story so we can make a pointless reference to Timothy Dalton’s obvious metaphor at the end of ‘The End Of Time’. We also have “QUOTE OF EMPTY CONTENT” from Chris Chibnall, in which he promises it will be “brilliant” and “ground-breaking” and a few other hyperbolic superlatives, so we’re embedding that somewhere so it looks like we’ve done our research.

Colin Baker once played the Doctor.

Who will be the new Doctor and when will we find out who they are?

Pass, on both counts. The only certainty is that they will be either A BRILLIANT CHOICE or ABSOLUTELY THE WRONG CHOICE and people will talk about how this is a great forward step for the show or a return to the dark days when Doctor Who was on a Wednesday and Bonnie Langford screamed a lot. We could, if we wanted, name a bunch of currently topical actors who’ve popped up in the Mirror recently, because it keeps people talking, particularly if one of them ticks an LGBTQ+ box or is called Idris Elba. The current favourite is Michael Sheen, who is someone people would like to see in the role because he’s been in Doctor Who before, plus he worked with David Tennant a couple of years back and he’s famous and a good actor, even though to the best of our knowledge he’s not actually been approached and this is all in here purely for Search Engine Optimisation.

Michael Sheen with a beard, and also a bit of facial hair.

Who will be the new Doctor Who showrunner?

It will be a man or a woman who has worked in television before. Probably not an American because the BBC don’t like hiring them, at least we don’t think so based on a rejection letter Stephen King’s son had back before the Covid pandemic.

This is an avocado. It is here because it is about as likely to become the next Doctor Who showrunner as I am.

So in short, you actually don’t know a whole lot.

No, but please don’t tell anyone. They put us in the chokey if we don’t keep the hit counts above water.

You’re not being very helpful, are you?

Oh, bugger off.

Don’t say: I’m sure this is actually going to be all right, you know.

Do say: LIBERAL LEFTY SJW WOKE PC DUMPSTER FIRE GARBAGE CHINBALLS SPITS ON THE GRAVE OF HARTNELL!

The Smallerpictures Video Dump (2021, Part Two)

‘Allo. Been a while, but nice to see you. More videos you’d be wanting, is it? Righto then, let’s see what we’ve got in stock.

1. Doomsday: Alternate Ending (March 2021)

The more a scene is revered, the more likely it is that I’ll end up mocking it. And they don’t get much more revered than the tearful, overwrought beach farewell that wrapped up series 2; watching Rose puff out her cheeks is still enough to get me giggling. Not enough with adding a laugh track a while ago, I decided – purely for the sake of producing something for the first time this year – to spice it up with another of the Doctor’s famous lines. It’s not one of my better ones, but it gets a laugh.

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2. Stay Outside (April 2021)

Now, this one. This one I am proud of. You will remember, last spring, that the first lockdown saw a spate of government advice telling us all to stay in our homes and only leave when absolutely necessary, and don’t forget your physical jerks and we have always been at war with Eurasia. I dealt with some of the cabin fever by accompanying one of the radio announcements with scenes from ‘Heaven Sent’, which worked quite well.

This time around, we’re out of lockdown but we’re still supposed to be cautious – and thus here’s Dr. Hilary Jones (yes, he of This Morning) to tell us all about the things we should and shouldn’t be doing. And here’s Matt Smith, trying to social distance from a group of murderous pensioners in Ledworth. Ain’t life grand?

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3. The Masked Singer: Rhino’s Got A Bad Throat (April 2021)

Rhino? Rhino, you say? Well, that’ll be a Judoon reference, then. I had the misfortune of catching a solitary episode of The Masked Singer not long before Covid first hit, and thought it a good idea, poorly executed (a couple of structural changes and you’d have yourself a far more entertaining experience, but what do I know?). Still, it’s going strong in the UK and America – Kermit the Frog, of all people, making a recent appearance when he was eliminated early on – but it was this particular chap (in reality baseball star Barry Zito) who caught my attention, to the extent that I wound up redubbing some of his performances to a throaty rendition of ‘Rapper’s Delight’. I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Ko Ro So.

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4. The Geoffrey and Bungle Videos (April – June 2021)

Lurking somewhere on Facebook there’s a series called The Same Video of The Same Guys Dancing To A Different Song. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know it (and the varying success to which it works): if you’ve not, you get the idea. Suffice it to say that they’re pushing on towards five hundred of these and whether or not an embedded song fits the two fellas strutting their stuff is dependent on two factors: how well the rhythm fits, and the impact of whatever happens at the thirty second mark when the second guy joins in. The one they did to Cher’s ‘Believe’ was particularly good.

Anyway: I’m not about to try and replicate that particular stunt, but having decided to hook up Geoffrey and Bungle with Peter Howells’ arrangement of the Doctor Who theme a couple of years back, I opted to revisit familiar territory and see how many of these I could make using different songs. It wasn’t difficult – it’s just a question of working out the tempo and Googling to see songs that fit. Some worked better than others, but the ones that didn’t work (‘Livin’ on a Prayer’; ‘Pinball Wizard’) I elected not to upload. The one you can see below enjoyed brief popularity on Twitter, for reasons I have yet to fully discern, but I also recommend you check out Stealer’s Wheel, and probably Hammer. U can’t touch this…

Have I Got Whos For You (Euro 2020 edition)

You’ll have to have these largely without comment, I’m afraid. I mean we lost. We lost and the fans are thugs. We lost and the fans are thugs and Rashford and Saka got a shedload of abuse, empowered by our corrupt, inept government. The sort of government who goes to Harrods for sofa covering and Poundland for flags.

I mean it started quite well. We made it to the semi-final without conceding a goal. Early on – the day of the first group match, when the leaked lineup caused consternation (too defensive, and WHERE’S GREALISH???) – I’d tweeted suggesting that it was possible, just possible, that Gareth Southgate knew more than we gave him credit for, and that perhaps the #Southgateout abuse was premature. I received a flurry of replies, some of which were supportive, others less so, but I made a point of muting anyone who disagreed, simply because I didn’t feel qualified to argue back. Weeks later all the naysayers were suspiciously quiet, although I stopped short of turning it into a pinned tweet, simply because the final was as far as the team got, and you’d still have a bunch of people telling you that they could have done a better job than Southgate did.

So, you know. Don’t give them the inch they crave. Thank heavens we don’t get this in Doctor Who.

It was those early games that were perhaps the most hotly contested, given that we were doing…well, reasonably, against less than stellar opposition. It was more about the spectacle than the quality of football, given that the much-hyped second group match – the British derby against Scotland – was touted as the epic confrontation between two rivals, with hundreds of years of history behind it. I mean I get that the Scots hate the English, but I don’t think it works the other way round. Not really. We know that Braveheart is made up and we don’t judge you for it. And who doesn’t love a good haggis? In the end, of course, it was a goalless draw, and not a terribly interesting one to boot, with all the bloodlust and hatred north of the border conveniently shelved until the angry tweets after the semi-final, and let’s face it – we all know that’s really just a preamble for the Six Nations.

“Three Ryans on a shirt…”

The semi-final, of course, was where the controversy kicked in – with England thanks to a soft penalty, Kane bouncing in the rebound after Kaspar Schmeichel deflected the ball but failed to catch it. It was a crummy way to win and you did feel sorry for the Danes, who’d nearly reached the end under some very trying circumstances, but to be fair to them England were denied an obvious penalty earlier in the match, so it’s swings and roundabouts. “Sometimes it goes in your favour,” quoth a wise man, “and sometimes it doesn’t. And if you add them all up over the season, they balance out.” Said wise man was Alex Ferguson, who knows a thing or two about football, as well as being Scottish.

Really, the controversy in that semi-final was caused by a laser torch that appeared to be pointed at Schmeichel during the penalty in question, although it supposedly didn’t affect his performance and it was in any case impossible to tell where it was coming from.

It ended in tears, with violence and thuggery following a game played by sportsmen who’d conducted themselves with dignity: the team deserved a win, even if the fans didn’t. Could we say Italy played dirty? Perhaps.

But even if they hadn’t, there were mistakes made and some questionable tactics that I don’t really understand because my area of expertise is dramatic structure, not sport. I do know that I felt a sense of pride – not in my country, as such, but simply in the team, and the manager who’s become the best sort of role model for the young men on the pitch and the children watching at home; eloquent and considered and rational and graced with more dignity and compassion than a hundred political buffoons. I’m mindful of the fact that children my sons’ age look up to sportsmen, and for the first time in a long while that doesn’t worry me. You can lose graciously, which is kind of like winning, even if you don’t get to lift the trophy.

Still, at least we’ve got the Olympics, right? Something else they had to postpone until after lockdown.