Have I Got Whos For You (two for the price of one edition)

Hello kids. Here, have a Pope meme. In fact, have two.

“You are consistent,” said Melinda Malovey (not her real name), discussing the first image, “in telling us in a passive-aggressive way that you don’t like the Thirteenth Doctor.”

Really? Gosh, that’s news to me. I assume it’s because the Pope is holding Whittaker in the same position that you’d hold the communion wafer that you’re about to break. So what, you figured he’s about to rip her in half? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to tear plastic? Maybe he’s about to part the legs and have a look to see if there’s anything up there, something I suppose we might ascribe to repressed Catholic sexuality. This is like a scene from Bottom or something.

No, listen: I wanted to do a Pope thing because everyone else was, and my initial idea was to have him holding Whittaker in the one hand and Darth Vader in the other, ostensibly as some sort of Who / Star Wars comparison, only when I actually did the Photoshopping it made more sense to leave her on her own. And people have jumped to conclusions because they only see half the stuff on your feed, and the Report button is just a swipe away. Which I suppose is the sort of thing that happens in groups; everyone makes assumptions, and everything betrays authorial intent.

If I sound a little testy it’s because I write this, dear reader, on an afternoon I’ve been muted for having a go at someone who refused to accept either the concept of male privilege or the fact that he was guilty of it, and when I challenged him on his (repeated) comments his reaction was “Oh, just leave me alone”. This was right before he became whiny and foul-tempered because I wouldn’t simply accept what the moderators referred to as “a difference of opinion” – there is, in some groups, a strong rule set that espouses Any And All Views, however insane, because it’s easier to lock the thread than it is to pick a side. So if you actually stand by your principles (something I do only sparingly these days) then you pay the price.

Anyway, these are my principles, and if you don’t like them I have others. There is political content in this blog, and on my page, and in groups that allow it. I make no apology for this. I see a lot of stuff I ignore, and if I’m arguing with you then there is usually because I feel strongly about it. And the government are fair game, particularly when they screw up the country as much as this elitist, xenophobic, dispassionate bunch of defund-the-BBC fuckwits are currently managing.

You know the worst thing about that Fatima photo? It was on a stock site, and they didn’t even ask permission – something they really should have done, given that her face is clearly visible. It’s another thing that was clearly Not Properly Thought Through – you know, like when you cut corners by killing the software design budget for your Track-and-Trace database, and doing it in Excel instead.

Anyway, Fatima’s OK now, and faces a bright future in ballet.

While we all sit around making jokes about reskilling, the Government have got on with the oh-so-serious business of dealing with the catastrophic state we find ourselves in by adhering to a needlessly complicated and logistically impractical workflow that aims to be both healthy and beneficial for schools and the economy and as usual doesn’t really manage to be either. In practice this means dividing up the UK into different segments and colouring them in. Their mandate for containing Covid has literally become a year seven geography lesson. I scoff, but it’s not funny at all if you’re in Liverpool.

It should be noted at this point that this applies to England only: Scotland and Wales have their own system. Indeed, Wales has gone on full alert, banning any visitors from Tier 3, with local law enforcement ramping up their security arrangements in order to repel would-be invaders.

Meanwhile, the 2020 U.S. Presidential campaign is hit by scandal, when a series of emails are discovered in the most unlikely of places.

“Dear Hunter, thank you inviting me to DC and – Jeff, is this your laptop?”

What else happened this week? Well, on Monday we got to see Jodie Whittaker research her family history, which proved to be far less interesting than I thought it was going to be – mostly because I’ve never watched an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? and hadn’t realised how shamelessly manipulative it all was. We were treated to numerous images of Jodie looking by turns wistful and reflective, reading out loud everything we could see on the screen just before Phil Davis told us exactly what had just happened, as if recapping after a commercial break that only happens on BBC America. “I’ve never met them,” says Jodie, wrapping a scarf around herself, as she stands by a grave. “But I feel like I know them.”

Anyway, I made a drinking game out of it, which was a productive use of the time. And it was lovely to see Sid’s Cafe again.

The kids and I have been gaming. I’m on Rise of the Tomb Raider; Thomas is working his way through Geometry Dash and enjoying the Minecraft DLC in Super Smash Bros, along with its questionable victory screen. One game we all enjoy is Among Us, the whodunnit smash that’s currently enjoying a lot of press coverage in the wake of the announcement that InnerSloth have cancelled the sequel so that they can improve the original. The game, for the uninitiated, is a multiplayer murder mystery on board a spaceship on an unknown mission, designed for quick play.

In each round you’re assigned a role – either a crewmate or, if you’re lucky, imposter. The crewmates all have tasks to perform. The imposter’s job is to sabotage those tasks, and murder as many people as they can without getting caught in the act. By turns, the surviving crewmates vote on who they think the murderer is: the most popular choice is ejected, irrespective of whether or not they’re actually guilty. Rounds begin with the announcement that “There is 1 imposter among us.”

“It’s the current regeneration,” said more than one person. “She’s the imposter. #notmydoctor.” I really should have seen it coming, shouldn’t I?

Anyway, the idea of imposters and sabotage on a galactic freighter – a sort of interstellar Cluedo – really is quite Whovian in its concept; it plays out like ‘The Robots of Death’. We’ve been here before, but there’s nothing new under the sun and I can’t help thinking that some sort of episode based around it – however meta we go – might actually stand a chance of working.

“Oh God. Did it vent? DID ANYBODY SEE IT VENT?”

Have I Got Whos For You (statuesque edition)

“For god’s sake, Danny, stop urinating on them.”

—

It’s been a week of (self) righteous anger. The ‘self’ is optional; you can put it on if you like. The world we live in is one in which no sin goes unpunished, no tweet unmocked; a world in which armchair judgement has become second nature. No one is safe: it doesn’t matter if it’s angry protesters throwing statues in the river or multi-millionaire authors throwing their weight around.

—

It’s dull, and I’m tired of writing about it, so let’s look at this week’s news roundup. There are troublesome scenes in central London when Missy can’t remember where she parked her TARDIS.

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And on a routine visit to a parallel Earth, the Doctor and Rose are unsettled when they run into a queue for the re-opening of Primark.

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Meanwhile, as fury reigns over the expungement of classic episodes and series from on-demand services, a trawl through the Gallifreyan Matrix reveals that even the Time Lords have grown concerned over sensitive content.

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In Surrey, Thorpe Park opens after lockdown as a flurry of punters rush to make the most of the good weather.

—

And an abandoned concept still from the new Bill and Ted trailer reveals that studio execs were suggesting a very different look for the phone box.

“Dude. They’ve, like, totally redecorated.”

 

Review: ‘The Caretaker’

Things we noticed in Doctor Who this week.

1. When Moffat wants to do the Aloof Doctor, he has her making unkind remarks about Clara’s appearance. We’ve had age (‘Into the Dalek’), lack of makeup (‘Listen’) excessive makeup (‘Time Heist’), and now she’s had a wash. YES, WE GET IT: THE DOCTOR CAN BE RUDE. And him being rude to Jenna Coleman is funny because – ha! – she’s always suitably gorgeous, even when sweaty and exhausted, and even after a five-mile run you can still see the foundation. So it’s funny, see?

Plus, Clara doesn’t have to worry about being a victim. She gets to slap the Doctor – something that didn’t happen this week, but which always makes me uncomfortable, because it’s viewed as amusing, or at least What Was Deserved. River gets to slap the Doctor because he’s going to piss her off two hundred years in the future. Francine Jones and Jackie Tyler get to slap the Doctor because they think he’s a dangerous sexual predator. But that’s OK, because most of the time He Deserves It, and he’s not even human, so that’s fine. And if you think I’m overreacting, consider how you’d feel if the scene were played in reverse, when the Doctor slapped Clara for making fun of his wrinkles.

 

2. Danny is a former soldier who is now a mathematics teacher. The Doctor gets this wrong on multiple occasions, and both Clara and Danny take it upon themselves to remind him. There’s a whole Electra thing going on this week, which actually doesn’t bother me that much because it’s an excuse to showcase this.

(Yes, I have written more. Yes, I will post them when they’re done. Yes, she keeps her clothes on.)

The ‘soldier’ debate is tedious beyond belief and is obviously building to something, presumably when Danny’s PTSD takes hold and he flips out later in the series. We’re all about dramatic irony, then, which reaches a head when Mr Pink outs himself as Clara’s boyfriend, but the Doctor has not been this nasty to a member of the military since series four, or perhaps ‘Into the Dalek’.

By the way, according to his Twitter feed, this (which I didn’t do) has apparently not occurred to Gareth Roberts.

I do wonder if I’m the only one to pick up on what feels almost a veiled racism on behalf of the Doctor’s assumption that Danny teaches P.E., but before all the abuse starts, I’ll accept that perhaps I’m reading too much into things. (Your fault, Steven. You encourage us.)

Author’s note: I have left this remark in for the sake of scholarly integrity, but in the cold light of day, I do now think I’m totally off base about it. It’s one of those things Guardian columnists do. Please don’t hit me.

 

3. Heaven. All ambiguities aside, it’s now revealed that this is more or less the afterlife. It’s something that Gareth (our mutual friend, not Roberts this time) says we haven’t actually dealt with in Who before now. The reception area for heaven looks like an art gallery corridor. Still, it beats the hell out of RTD’s nihilist assumption that “Oh my God, there’s nothing”.

Coincidentally, “Oh my God, there’s nothing” is what neurologists generally say when they examine the brains of those people who ACTUALLY THINK that Missy is going to be Clara, because, you know, ‘Miss C’. (If I turn out to be wrong about this, I will eat my Fedora. Not because it’s unlikely to happen, but because I will need roughage.)

On that note – stupid fanboy quote of the week:

 

4. The Doctor has amazing eyebrows. This is presumably mentioned in case we’d forgotten it from last week, or the thirty second conversation we had about them in ‘Deep Breath’. Nothing is left to chance these days, and these recurring references cannot be a coincidence: the eyebrows will, at some point, develop full sentience and dance off the Doctor’s face entirely, or perhaps grow into two more Peter Capaldi heads with split personalities.

On the other hand, as Gareth also points out, we may actually be about to visit Delphon.

We also can’t blame the unnecessary recurring gag on Roberts, because this episode is co-written; the third such example this series, as it happens. Perhaps it’s a union thing. I hope so; the alternative is that the chief writer’s being even more of a control freak than usual.

 

5. When you need to write a Doctor Who story that’s half Grange Hill, half Hollyoaks, but need to include at least some sort of McGuffin to keep the kids happy, a rubbish robot with no motivation, backstory or general point whatsoever will do nicely. (Grizzly death scene optional. Use of Jimmy Vee mandatory.)

Incidentally, the number of people who can name the monster-of-the-week without Googling it is precisely the same number of people who voted ‘The Twin Dilemma’ as their favourite story in Doctor Who Magazine’s August poll. (I do confess to feeling a bit sorry for ‘Time-Flight’, which I actually rather enjoy. But not ‘Fear Her’. I’d rather have my fingernails peeled off.)

 

6. Dull chase scenes? No problem! Enliven them with jaunty camera angles. Particularly useful if you want your audience to think they’re being pursued by a bandy-legged creature that actually walks completely straight.

 

7. Not a P.E. teacher? Pah.

 

 

If Doctor Who were Torchwood, this would be the ‘Meat‘ episode: it’s The One Where The Boyfriend Finds Out. S.J. was telling me earlier that this was the first time she actually cared about Danny, and that makes sense, because Coleman and Anderson are as watchable as ever (as is Capaldi, come to that) and everyone does the very best they can with what they have. Still, what irritates the hell out of me is that seemingly the only way Moffat and Roberts can write this storyline is to have the Doctor play grumpy father. It’s as if Capaldi’s incarnation has automatically morphed into a disapproving patriarch figure purely because of the laughter lines.

This is the sort of simplistic analysis that mars ‘Time Crash’, in which Tennant’s Doctor maintains that his spell as the Fifth Doctor was the first time he got to dash about. Never mind the fact that in ‘Kinda’, Davison’s Doctor is an almost carbon copy of Baker’s Doctor, right down to mannerisms and general flippancy – or the fact that ‘The Caretaker’, at least for its first twenty minutes, could (with a few dialogue tweaks) have been a Matt Smith story. This is (once again) an exercise in writing the characters to fit the point you’re trying to make, rather than writing the dialogue to suit the characters. Hence, the Doctor disapproves of Danny because on some level, Moffat presumably suspects that we do, and the only way to actually deal with this is to turn him into the kind of character you see on Facebook wearing those ghastly ‘RULES OF DATING MY DAUGHTER’ t-shirts. It’s the Vastra / Clara ‘Deep Breath’ conversation all over again.

And I’m sorry, gentlemen: I don’t buy the concept of a stern, disapproving father figure who spends half the episode making disparaging remarks about Mickey Danny. It simply doesn’t feel very Doctor. Historically, he doesn’t care about that sort of thing. Of course the dynamic had to change after the regeneration. Flirting was off the books because Peter didn’t want it, and also because (and here’s the elephant again) an older man / younger woman will-they-won’t-they would have seen an awful lot of executives bum-shuffling in their seats. But you were already in murky waters with the Eleventh. This isn’t Highlander, where the worst you have to worry about is an idyllic rural montage scored to Queen and a colossally low sperm count. The Doctor isn’t even human. And you honestly thought the most effective way to get out of this corner was to bring in a boyfriend so the Doctor could switch from love interest to father? Couldn’t you have just not mentioned it at all, and had them pootle along in some sort of dysfunctional carer / patient relationship? We’d have been fine with that.

The thing is, you have to either include the monster that’s worth our time and investment, or (if you must) include a decently written domestic. In the end, you did neither. There was a lot of bluster and silliness, and some lovely early scenes with Peter, but all that went completely down the pan once the cat was out of the bag and the chickens came home to roost. You wrote gags, rather than dialogue – and ideas, rather than a story. It was all snappy metaphor and unnecessary shoehorning and needlessly repeated jokes, and (some of the Clara / Danny stuff aside) comparatively little substance. I could go on about this until the cows come home, but I think I’d be flogging a dead horse.

Anyway, here’s your report card for the end of term. You’ll note that you’re below the average, although the other week you dipped distinctly below the average, so I suppose we could call this an improvement. Just not a very good one. See me after class. Now back to work.

Tickled pink

Meet the new one.

I know nothing about Samuel Anderson, but apparently he’s established and popular, and destined to be the subject of dozens of animated GIFs later in the year, Danny Pink, the Independent reports, will appear as “a recurring character”, which is BBC speak for “plot device”. Given that we have a competent, self-aware and relatively intelligent companion in Clara (even if she still can’t cook a soufflé or use iPlayer) it seems likely that Danny’s going to be the gormless sceptic whose role is to go all wide-eyed at trouble before eventually finding his inner strength (no doubt epitomised in a single thirty-second clip that will go viral on YouTube and prompt a thousand comments that mostly read “Best. Scene. EVER.”).

I first read about the news in Metro, in a sadly ill-thought out article from Dan Wilson (“Whovian, Blue Peter Badge winner, barfly, flaneur” – should we add ‘would be writer’?). Dan points out that “sometimes those three-hand stories with the Doctor could be a bit claggy”. Of course. That’ll be ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ then. And ‘The Ark In Space’. And ‘The Mind Robber’. And, oh, almost anything with Hartnell or Davison (or Troughton, come to that). I will give him ‘Day of the Moon’, which is rubbish, but other than that I wonder if Dan’s knowledge of Doctor Who extends further back than 2005, despite his passing reference to the Brigadier.

But I’m not here to bitch about professional bloggers who presumably get paid for doing something that I do for free, to an arguably higher standard. There are more important things to think about, such as the fact that we have come full circle (“and then,” said Gareth, “we could go and live in a marsh with George Baker!”). Hence all sorts of stories about the show getting back to its roots, as epitomised by Danny’s probable role as a science teacher (it’s that or P.E., but he’s wearing a tie). Now all we need is a slightly bolshy teenager, and we’ll be –

Oh, god almighty.

Then there’s the fact that that the chairman of governors at Coal Hill is Mr I. Chesterton, leading to much internet speculation about a cameo from William Russell. If Moffat’s not actually filmed this yet he really doesn’t have long – Russell isn’t getting any younger, although Russell T. Davies might tell you otherwise. The problem, of course, is that most of what you see on screen is basically canon, which means that the Doctor really did admit to being half human (which doesn’t mean he is) and Peri really did marry Brian Blessed. You could almost see Moffat making story notes for ‘Future companion appearances?’ while watching ‘Death of the Doctor’.

Sarah Jane: There’s a woman called Tegan in Australia, fighting for Aboriginal rights. There’s Ben and Polly, in India, running an orphanage there. There was Harry. Oh, I loved Harry. He was a doctor, he did such good work with vaccines. He saved thousands of lives. There was a Dorothy something. She runs that company, A Charitable Earth. She’s…raised billions. And this couple in Cambridge. Both professors. Ian and Barbara Chesterton.

Moffat [half-watching, half-scribbling furiously]: Yes!

Sarah Jane: Rumour has it, they’ve never aged. Not since the sixties.

Moffat: Bollocks! [Throws his notebook at the screen]

—

“And Moffat has never been known to rewrite Old Who?” said Gareth. “Some twaddle like: ‘Oh, when the Time Lords gave the Doctor a new set of regenerations, it was done by draining his residual artron energy from his history. Ian and Barbara hadn’t aged thanks to an infusion of this artron energy during their time with the Doctor, and when Capaldi was created, they suddenly aged. The shock killed poor Barbara.’

Which basically works.

Anyway, I felt like some sort of commemoration is in order, so I have made one.

 

Let’s go to work.