The Mary Whitehouse Experience

The main ground floor atrium of the Buffalo Wings Research and Development Centre in East Herefordshire was light, spacious, and currently empty. The rays of the afternoon sun flooded through a generous panel of windows spanning most of the length of the room, which was about half the size of a football pitch and a lot less muddy. Ornate columns of off-white marble stood near the glass staircase that led to the atrium’s upper balcony. It held the sort of acoustics most orchestral conductors only dream of, but besides the hum of an air conditioning unit, the chamber was utterly silent.

This was about to change.

All at once the silence was punctuated by a wheezing, groaning sound. It was a sound of intrigue; it was a sound of excitement and adventure; it was above all a sound of hope. It was emanating from an ageing caretaker whose job it was to make sure the room was empty, once an hour, every hour. He shambled out of his cupboard, limping on wobbly, rheumatic legs, gave a vaguely satisfied grunt, and then wheezed and groaned his way back to the armchair in the darkened corner he’d reserved for snoozing.

He did not see the arrival of the police box, which turned up out of nowhere just a couple of minutes later. The door swung open and a middle-aged grey-haired man stepped out, followed by a woman young enough to be his space daughter. The middle-aged man had taken on a variety of appearances over his uncountable lifespan, and had often been described as having a pleasant, open face, but the one he currently wore was neither pleasant nor open. He usually looked like the Demon Headmaster’s stunt double, unless he smiled, which had the effect of creating the sort of sinister, slightly deranged expression that people usually crossed the street to avoid.

He surveyed the room, and harrumphed.

“Bland. Lifeless.” He sniffed the air. “Thursday. I hate Thursdays.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Clara Oswald, who was gazing around with folded arms and a weary expression. “You never could get the hang of them.”

“Haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. In any case: Herefordshire!” He threw both arms up to the sky and opened his mouth wide in mock enthusiasm. “The Buffalo Wings R&D Centre, home to the latest scientific enhancements in multimedia.”

“And we’re here because…?”

The Doctor was running his screwdriver across the desk, scanning. “They’ve got some fancy new device that lets you walk around inside your favourite TV shows.”

Clara frowned. “Hang on, you don’t even like TV.”

“Correct! But,” said the Doctor, pocketing the screwdriver, “the tech is years out of date.”

“Ah.” The penny dropped. “This is a nostalgia fetish, isn’t it?”

“No, I mean years the other way. Way, way too advanced for this time period. Which means…” The Doctor was feeling under the desk for something. “There’s something up.”

His hand reached a button, and a door on the first floor landing swung open. “To be precise, it’s up there.”

***

The Doctor couldn’t be quite sure what happened next.

There was a curiously empty room in this even more curiously empty research centre – why, why, why hadn’t he stopped to wonder why it was so quiet? – and then the stand-mounted CRT television had risen out of the floor like the booby-trapped idol rising out of the ground in some terrible adventure flick, and then the Doctor had touched its edge and then the big red button in the middle and the glass partition that dropped from the ceiling had separated him from Clara. And then the black-and-white static on the TV seemed to bulge at the edges, gaining substance, leaking its way out of the glass and swelling like a balloon, and then getting taller and taller and then it was rising around him like a fog and enveloping him completely –

– and then he was falling and falling and flying through a whirlwind of stars and swirls and bits of circuitry, and the wind was howling like a gale, and he could

not feel his own body, and the colours were like that excessively lengthy sequence at the end of that Kubrick film that always bored him to tears, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the sound of crackling, only — no, it wasn’t crackling, it was applause, studio applause, and then he could hear a distorted voice crying “It’s Friday… It’s five to five… It’s CRACKERJACK!”

***

He blinked, and adjusted his eyes. Why couldn’t he see?

No. He could, but for some reason the world had faded to monochrome. The Doctor had no idea why. He also had no idea why he felt so old, all of a sudden, or why his neck felt suddenly both constricted and warm. He looked down at the cravat that dangled from his shirt collar, and examined the wrinkled fingers. Looked down at his feet; noticed the cane propped up against the wall nearby.

Ah. Of course. He was both older and younger, trapped in a previous body. His first. Possibly his first; it was difficult to tell. And apparently he still had his memories, although they were a little fuzzy – rather like the world around him, which seemed to have lost definition. Things looked grainy.

It was a testament to the Doctor’s resilience that he did not immediately freak out. Instead, he got his bearings. The studio was staged and curtained and a live audience of gaggling school children sat watching as a plain-suited gentleman explained how the next game worked. Before the Doctor knew it, he was being handed a variety of prizes, which he was expected to hold, all at once, in an ever-expanding pile. A wooden Dalek-themed jigsaw. A bumper box of sweet cigarettes. A vinyl copy of ‘I’m Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek’. A TARDIS-themed bagatelle game. A doll that was presumably supposed to look like him, although it did not.

His ageing fingers fumbled at the last one and the doll dropped to the ground; there was a chorus of ‘ahhs’ and a bit of laughter, and one of the floor runners emerged from the wings carrying something large and, under normal circumstances, green. A cabbage. The presenter received it with a smirk, and then balanced it on top of the Doctor’s haphazard pile, where it rolled from left to right and back again while the Time Lord tried desperately to steady it.

“I don’t suppose you have any celery?” he asked hopefully.

***

Zap.

There was a moment’s disorientation while the Doctor tried to work out why he was suddenly in the English countryside.

What had happened was this: he had been ripped out of one plane of existence and into another, as if someone had changed the channel. The world was no longer black and white, although the colour didn’t feel quite right to him. He scratched his head, and was alarmed at the sensation.

The Doctor felt the moptop he’d suddenly accumulated, and looked down at the checked trousers.

Ah.

He gazed around him at the scene: the brightly-painted houses lining the edges of an idyllic village square. People milled about, going into and out of buildings, moving with a stiff-legged gait. Most of them were too far away for him to see them clearly, but there was something about them that seemed off.

“This is another fine mess ye’ve gotten us inteh, Doctor.”

He turned to identify the voice, and found himself face to face with Jamie McCrimmon.

“Hello, Jamie,” he said. “Are you really here?”

“I’m as here as you are, Doctor. Wherever here is.”

“Some sort of English pastoral scene, I shouldn’t wonder. But none of it looks quite real.”

It didn’t. The buildings and the shrubberies, while brightly hued, lacked a level of depth. The colours were too vivid, the designs too simple, the flowers all identical and stiff, as if they had been cut from fabric and then glued in place. The people, too, were moving in a slow and almost robotic manner, buying fish and walking dogs and waving at passers by, and doing so in complete silence.

“And look at the locals,” said Jamie, as if reading his thoughts. “They havenae any mouths!”

So that was it. The Doctor wondered why he hadn’t noticed already, but now that he had, it was obvious: aside from the occasional moustache, the beady-

eyed villagers were featureless from the nose down. The effect was uncanny, and not a little unsettling.

“My goodness,” said the Doctor. “It’s extraordinary.”

“It’s creepy, is what it is.” Jamie was tutting. “Are you no gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?”

“I seem to have been forced to relive classic television series from the point of view of my previous selves.”

“What — all of them?”

“Mmm, well, at this stage I simply don’t know. Perhaps just the old favourites. Anyway, I’m hopping through time at the whim of some unknown entity or person, dropping in and out of programmes seemingly at random, accompanied, it would appear, by various friends and companions from my past. There’s no apparent pattern established as yet, so the best I can do is to leap through from programme to programme until I can find a way to escape.”

“That’s a shedload of exposition, Doctor.”

“Yes, Jamie, it was a big one.”

It went dark. Not after-sunset-dark, but partial-eclipse-dark: the sun (which looked, now the Doctor came to regard it, rather like the bulb from an angle-poised lamp) all but disappeared as a colossal head swam into view.

Jamie balked. “Would ye look at the size o’ that thing!”

The head spoke: its voice was booming but also very polite. “Here is Camberwick Green, where everyone is going about their business.”

“What’s that he’s speaking into?” Jamie asked.

“It’s a microphone. I think he’s — ”

The giant head opened its mouth again. “Hello, Doctor!”

“Oh! Oh, I say! Are you — ”

But the head wasn’t addressing him. It was addressing the bearded gentleman in the top hat who was climbing out of a vintage car. The Doctor looked at the car and felt a pang of nostalgia, which was instantly undone as the bearded gentleman walked toward him, brandishing a scalpel.

“Are you busy on your rounds?”

The bearded gentleman stopped, looked up and gave an exaggerated nod.

“Are you going to deal with the outsiders?”

Nod.

“And how are you going to do that?”

The bearded gentleman looked at the Doctor and Jamie with glowing red eyes. He brandished the scalpel.

“Oh,” said Jamie. “Oh, sh-”

***

Zap.

And now he was in a strange, slightly drab suburban house, minimalist and monochromatic, like an unfinished drawing. Cupboards and doors appeared to have been sketched, the lines carelessly contoured. Most annoying of all there was nowhere to sit, and apart from two long tables at chest height the place was all but empty. Some of the paintwork was gay, and a window looked out on a serene garden bathed in artificial light, but it really was the most cheerless room, a wooden box full of toys and a small bookshelf the only concessions to fun.

The Doctor looked down at himself, and nearly fell over the thick scarf he was now wearing, stretching up and around his neck at least twice and trailing out behind him like a multicoloured knitted wedding gown. It had the air of a garment that had been assembled by some elderly lady who’d got too enthused with her task and hadn’t known when to stop. Still, it would be handy in a cold snap, like a summer’s afternoon in Frinton.

The crown of his head felt warm. The Doctor loosened the hat he found up there and a mass of curls sprang out, wiry and unruly. Instinctively, he licked just behind his lips. “Hmm. I know these teeth.”

A door at the end of the room was opened by a young lady wearing a green cashmere jumper, a pleated skirt, and saddle shoes. At least she looked young, and might not have objected to the adjective. The Doctor happened to know she was only a hundred and twenty-six.

“Hello, Romana,” he said, all curls and familiar teeth.

“God,” she said. “This place is like an interior designer’s nightmare!”

“It is rather dull round the edges, isn’t it?” said the Doctor, knocking on the tables for signs of secret compartments, or woodworm. “Have you encountered any other life forms?”

Romana sighed. “Well, actually — ”

Hot on her heels was an impudent teenager dressed in mustard yellow. The Doctor’s heart sank. Here was a complicated and wearisome history he’d hoped never to revisit, even in a possible hallucination.

The teenager was in the middle of a ferocious argument with someone who was apparently not Romana. “For pity’s sake, I only asked if I could borrow it! Just for a moment! I want to work out where we are.”

He looked around, confused, as if having lost something. “Wait — where’d he — ”

An ugly, rugby-ball shaped creature that seemed to be made of felt suddenly popped up behind the table. Its eyes were large and frog-like, and bizarrely it had a many-toothed zip for a mouth.

“Well, you can’t!” it said, in a voice like an unfiltered Dalek. “It’s mine!” And then, as a sort of half-formed postscript, “I don’t like sharing.”

Adric folded his arms and regarded the creature contemptuously. “Well, if you’re going to be selfish about it then no one’s going to want to be your friend.”

“I’ve got lots of friends!” The creature waved the compass in its hand in indignation. “More than you.”

“What on Gallifrey is it, Doctor?” asked Romana. “And how did it just appear like that?”

“Yes,” said Adric. “How did you do that? You were right behind me when we were arguing upstairs.”

“Some sort of teleportation device,” said the Doctor. “Or perhaps it floats. Look.” He peered behind the counter. “It doesn’t have any legs.”

“Or genitals,” remarked Romana.

“Hey!” the zip-like creature said. “Do you mind? That’s private.”

It was at this point that the bear wandered in. He was six foot tall, with black beady eyes behind a mass of shaggy brown fur.

“Zippy?” he began. “Have you seen my — ” and then stopped. “Ooh! Visitors!”

“How’d you do?” said the Doctor, with a congenial smile. “I’m the Doctor, and this is Romana. Oh, and that’s Adric, squabbling with your pet.”

The bear looked momentarily blank; it took no visible effort. “Eh? Oh, Zippy’s not a pet. He lives here. With me, and George, and Geoffrey. They’re out at the dentist. George needs a filling done.”

“Yeah,” said Zippy. “Too many sweets.”

The bear wagged an accusatory finger. “You can talk, greedy-guts!”

“I never eat sweets!” Zippy cried. “I don’t even like them!”

The Doctor knew a lady protesting too much when he saw one, and was already fishing the bag out of his pocket. “Ah,” he said. “I suppose you won’t want a jelly baby, then.”

You would think it impossible for a pair of fabric eyes to light up, but somehow the zip-shaped thing managed it. “Jelly babies? They’re my favourite!” And, grabbing the bag in a three-fingered paw, he stuffed its entire contents into his mouth.

The Doctor regarded him, amused. “Well now, Adric,” he said. “It would seem congratulations are in order. We’ve found someone even more obnoxious and annoying than you.”

Adric rolled his eyes in the manner of an over-acting waif straight out of stage school. “Oh, fuck off, Tom.”

“So it’s just the two of you?” said Romana, anxious to change the subject before things escalated into a full-on brawl. “Here in this house, on your own?”

“Only for a moment,” said Bungle. “We’ve got a babysitter.”

“Yes,” piped up Zippy. “Actually, we’ve got three of them!”

From just outside, there was a chorus of “Hello!” and “Coo-ee!” and at least one “Bollocks, what have I stepped in?” The trio who walked in were all human in appearance, although the woman’s skirt was far too short for daytime children’s

television and the dungarees were the sort of fashion disaster the Doctor hadn’t seen since 1976.

“Seems Eldrad lived after all,” he muttered to himself.

“Hello!” said the bearded man. “We didn’t know you had company.”

“Oh, we’re just passing through,” said Romana, to which the Doctor added “Though we’re glad we stayed. You look to be a cheery threesome.”

The short-skirted woman went red. “Threesome? No, none of that,” she said, far too quickly. “We’re just friends.”

“We’re time travellers,” explained Adric, in the sort of patronising know-it-all voice that always got on the Doctor’s unmentionables. “Only, we got lost.”

“Hey!” the curly-haired young man who looked like he was eyeing up Romana suddenly piped up. “We know a song about getting lost, don’t we?”

“Ooh, yes!” The three of them came round to the front of the table into the big space in the middle of the room. “Shall we sing it to you all?”

“Please don’t,” suggested the Doctor, but of course it was too late.

Mirth-driven, minor-keyed synthesised muzak filled the room like the smell from fish that had been left in the sun for a week, and then Jane’s troubled soprano took up the narrative –

“I was driving to Milton Keynes one day
Saw Tony Blackburn, then drove the other way
But before I knew what was happening to me
I took a wrong turn off the A33

I was lost! Lost! In the English countryside
Found a jolly farmer and he took me for a ride
But we crashed into a haystack, and down on me he went
Couldn’t get him off, and his tractor shaft was bent – ”

“Doctor!” whispered Romana urgently. “You don’t take the A33 to Milton Keynes!”

“Lost! Lost! Oh, what am I to do
I’ve got into an accident, and I can’t find the – ”

Later, the Doctor would wonder where the music was coming from; there had been no sign of any speakers.

***

Zap.

The first thing to note was that he was completely naked. The Doctor scratched his head – which seemed much easier, given that it now had far less hair – and tried to work out whether this had happened before. There was that time in Madrid, of course, after Drax’s stag party, but —

He blinked and sat up. He was in the TARDIS. The console room gleamed like an army of fireflies sitting on the hem of a spangled evening gown in direct sunlight; the Doctor wondered whether he ought to turn down the brightness settings.

He felt his throat. Scottish, again. Shorter. His hand trailed along the floor and brushed against something soft and fluffy lying next to the console: a blonde wig.

From outside, he thought he could discern a jaunty melody; some sort of hornpipe. Then there was a knock on the door. “Five minutes, Mr McCoy!”

The Doctor panicked. There appeared to have been some terrible misunderstanding. Frantically, he looked around for his clothes. Didn’t he wear a v-neck? A v-neck with question marks?

Well, it wasn’t here. Scrambling together what he could, the Doctor headed for the exit just as the TARDIS door opened and a chirpy BBC voice said “the new Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy!”

The Doctor blinked as he entered the blazing lights of the Blue Peter studio. That was the final straw; as far as the console room was concerned, he was going dark. Or had he already? It was a job to remember when you weren’t quite yourself.

For not the first time in this hallucination, the woman standing outside to greet him looked oddly familiar. She was going on about the Pied Piper.

“And what are you going to be wearing?” she asked him.

“I’m not quite sure yet,” said the Doctor. “It’s a secret.” He looked about, his eyes darting anxiously from left to right, for signs of an exit, or his actual clothes. At least the hat was right.

“And which planet are you going to be visiting first?”

Christ. What was this, Twenty Questions? The dog bounded over, wagging its tail. The Doctor hoped it was house trained.

“Do you want to come with me to my planet?” he asked, half-meaning it, half-wishing he could remember the name of the bloody place.

The interview over, the Doctor popped back inside his TARDIS in search of a stiff drink. There were footsteps — tap shoes on linoleum — from the corridor outside, and in walked a disgruntled redhead, wearing a leotard and a sour expression and picking what appeared to be blue ostrich feathers out of her bushy hair.

“Mel?” said the Doctor. “Where have you been?”

“The Pink Windmill,” was the reply. “Seriously. Don’t ask.”

***

Zap.

The Doctor and Rose — he in a leather coat, she in a crop top — were striding down a hill somewhere on a remote Scottish island.

“All I’m saying is, PC Plum is clearly gay,” Rose was saying. “And so is Archie. And they’ve clearly got eyes for each other. So why doesn’t Miss Hoolie see it?”

“Haven’t a clue,” replied the Doctor, cheerily. “Tangled webs of unrequited love are way out of my comfort zone. I’m more concerned about that signal.”

“That, and Miss Hoolie’s wardrobe.”

“She wears the same clothes. Every day!” The Doctor shook his head and examined the readings on his screwdriver. “I can’t imagine ever doing that.”

Rose fingered the hem of his jacket. “I bet you can’t.”

“Still. Balamory’s a catchy name.” The Doctor put away the screwdriver. “Should commit it to memory. Might come in handy.”

“Oh, when will you ever need — ”

From the bottom of the hill, at what looked like Pocket and Sweet’s, there was a sudden, violent explosion, followed by cries of “EXTERMINATE!”

“Contractual obligation of the Daleks!” The Doctor grinned. “Fan-tas-tic!”

***

Zap.

And now he was walking along the harbour of a fishing village on the Yorkshire coast and there was a man who looked like Wilf chatting to a woman who looked like Martha and a man who looked like the man who’d tried to sacrifice Donna to the queen of the spiders…

***

Zap.

A blank, white space, bright and featureless. A noise that might have been a tuning fork.

“God,” said the Doctor. “This is The Mind Robber again, isn’t it?”

“Not quite,” said a familiar voice.

The Doctor rubbed at his eyes; he could hear the click of heels on a wooden floor. The voice continued as its owner swam into focus. “There’s an old joke. The BBC only has thirty actors and about a dozen sets, all recycled. I’m wondering how many you ran into.”

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the Doctor, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Hello, Missy.”

“Hello, dear.” The buttoned jacket was porpoise grey, the boots a dark yellow. “Have a pleasant journey?”

He was himself again; moreover, he was back where he had been, albeit on the other side of the room, away from the TV. “Where’d you get the tech? And where’s Clara?”

“She ate my last wine gum, so I killed her,” said Missy. “As to your first question, I built it myself.”

“You built an immersive television?” said the Doctor. “For what? Is this because they wouldn’t let you on Strictly?”

“Immersive!” Missy expelled a gush of air from the sides of her mouth. “You and your understatement. This is next level, sonny jim. We’re talking full engagement. People who believe they’re actually in the shows I assign them to!”

“Why would you want that?”

“Because it’s criminally expensive, which means the richest and most powerful people on the planet are going to be queuing up to have a go. What else do you buy the man who has everything?” Missy was wandering up and down the chamber, in that curious little dance she often performed. “Rock stars, premier league footballers… politicians.” She gave a wicked smile. “And once they’re in…”

“You’ve got them where you want them.”

“Bing! Gold star for the underperformer from Gallifrey. What you saw was the prototype; I just needed to run a few calibration tests to check the damned thing works. Tweak here, bit of wire twisting there… presto! I can have them say anything I want them to say.”

“So I’m your guinea pig?”

Missy pawed with her hands. “Squeak, squeak.”

The Doctor had been moving across the room, casually circling until he was next to the antique television, which stood in its mounted stand like a museum centrepiece. “The enduring appeal of television. God, talk about using their own weaknesses against them.”

The door at the end burst open; it was Clara with a fire axe. “Doctor! Doctor, I — oh.”

“I’m fine.” The Doctor greeted her with a raised eyebrow. “You look like Jack Nicholson.”

“Very funny.” Clara dropped the axe to the floor, where the blade embedded itself in the wood. “So what’s all this?”

“Never mind ‘what’s all this’; where’ve you been all this time?”

“I was gone for thirty seconds!”

“Ah.” The Doctor nodded. “It’s like Narnia, then. Felt rather longer.”

“I’ve just taken your boyfriend on a little trip,” said Missy, beaming nastily at Clara. “I think it did him good.”

“Bit inconsistent, though,” said the Doctor. “I mean it was — ”

“God!” Missy threw up her hands. “You’re such a fanboy. Always wanting stuff to make sense.”

“I just don’t understand why everything else was BBC, and then you had one, just one from ITV… ”

“Look. I like Rainbow, okay?” Missy leaned on the edge of the TV; she was glaring at him contemptuously. “You know me well enough to know my tastes are eclectic. Or are you losing your memory as well as your looks?”

“Ohh, no,” said the Doctor, taking a step back. “I have a long memory. In fact…”

He dropped a wink at Clara.

“It’s almost as long as yours.”

Hefting the axe, the Doctor threw it handle first at the big red button.

Missy was a foot the wrong side of the glass screen when it slammed to the floor. She hammered on it in a fury. “Let me out!”

“You’ve got a fire axe,” the Doctor pointed out reasonably as the static began to fill the room.

Too late, Missy remembered the axe. She picked it up and began to pound at the toughened glass, but even as the first crack appeared, the widening static enveloped her completely, and she was gone.

“Don’t worry,” said the Doctor to Clara. “We’ll get her out.”

“Yeah,” Clara replied. “In about… ooh, thirty seconds.”

***

Zap.

The Master looked at the forest in which he’d landed. It was impossibly sculpted, like a Capability Brown. Bright paths led here and there, and an ornately coloured bridge stood over a cave big enough for a small bear. The Master looked at the trees, some of the grandest he’d ever seen, and the brightly coloured birds that sang a strange song that sounded almost human.

He checked himself over. Blast! He was old. No matter. Age was no barrier, merely a temporary impairment. He would deal with the Doctor in due time, once he found a way out of these woods.

The Master walked across to the cave, noting the presence of two tiny houses, a large bush with three holes, and what looked very much like a hospital bed. He would deal with the alpha predator first, and then assume command of whatever hellhole he’d been cast into.

“I am usually referred to as the Master,” he announced, at the cave entrance. “Universally.” He stopped to wonder whether this was actually true, realised it wasn’t, and decided it was a matter for another time. “I come in triumph and in conquest, and you will obey me.”

There was a pause, and then a small brown fluffy creature ambled out of the darkness, carrying a sponge.

“Makka Pakka?” it said, and then, with a gentle, loving touch, it began to wash the Master’s face.

The Master sighed. It was going to be a long night.

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.

—

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?

—

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.

—

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…

Doctor Who series 12: the executive summaries (part one)

It’s a good discipline, writing for other sites besides your own. It gives you an awareness of different audiences. Blogs make for a tendency towards self-indulgence; it’s easy to embark on bouts of madcap silliness, unnecessary sidetracking anecdotes that could easily be trimmed; or excessive waffle. None of this is particularly harmful, but when you’re working for someone else – whether paid or unpaid – you generally have to rein it in.

I’ve been writing for The Doctor Who Companion for the last four years, and its predecessor, Kasterborous, for some time before that. It is an eclectic mix of features and analysis, run by a team of writers with diverse views and opinions, united by their love of Doctor Who. My pieces for them tend to be features, exploring particular aspects: for example, what do TARDIS reveals tell us about the companions witnessing them? Is there a case to be made for headcanon? And if the Doctor were a biscuit, what sort would she be? The editor is a thoroughly nice chap, willing to indulge my occasionally ridiculous prose and lengthy discourses, (“I don’t care that it’s long,” he tells me. “The readers can take it. We’re not BuzzFeed.”)

Series reviews work like this: episodes are assigned to individual writers (or we volunteer for them) and published soon after initial broadcast. A few days later, we’ll publish collective reviews from the other writers, three-hundred word summaries of their thoughts and feelings on the story of the week. And it’s a tradition at BoM that I’ll eventually gather them up and reproduce all my contributions in here.

This year’s assembly took a little longer than originally anticipated – the DWC was offline for quite some time in early spring as we rebuilt it, and then all this happened. So it’s been a good few months since ‘The Timeless Children’, which may not be a bad thing because we were all thoroughly sick of the shouting, weren’t we? For some of you, this collection of rambling thoughts will be a chance to revisit and reappraise episodes you haven’t seen in a while; you may find that your opinions have changed. For others, it’ll be a reminder of pointless cameos and tedious plot twists. If that’s the case, I’d advise you to keep your head down over the next week or so, because I’m doing these in batches.

Links to the full write-ups have been provided where they exist, but unfortunately a few articles got lost in the migration process and we’re still trying to get them back. At least you’ll be able to read my contributions, if nothing else. Oh, and as you go through these, you may eventually come to the conclusion that I wasn’t taking this brief entirely seriously. You’d be right. I no longer take Doctor Who seriously; as a consequence, I now find it tremendously fun to watch.

 

Spyfall, Part One

Somewhat awkwardly for an opener, I reviewed this one, so there is no summary. But here’s a paragraph that’s as good a precis as I can provide:

‘I’m not sure I can say with a clear conscience that this was any sort of classic, but neither was it a car crash (although it features one or two). Spyfall strides the awkward middle line between haphazard fun and mediocre buffoonery, equal parts cringe to crowdpleasing, and there is a sense, as its closing credits roll, of having watched something that was basically candy floss: enjoyable while it lasts but flimsily and loosely constructed, and prone to falling apart the second you poke at it. That’s probably okay: some people like candy floss.’

DWC write-up

Spyfall, Part Two

‘There’s something slightly amateurish about the sight of an ashened, ruined Gallifrey some 10 or 15 minutes after we’ve heard the Master talking about its destruction. It gives the Doctor a reason to pop over there (something she can apparently do at will now, even though the Time Lords are seemingly unable or unwilling to reciprocate) – still, how much better might it have been for us to first glimpse the torched citadel completely unwarned? ‘Show, don’t tell’ is a maxim that gets thrown about far too much, but it still feels as if this was the perfect opportunity to use it – as it stands, there is no shock value to the scene because we know it is coming, and the BBC presents only the most cursory of vistas, prompting only the mildest of reactions from the person looking at it. Would it have been too much to see the Doctor cry, or at least show some visible signs of upset besides sitting against a TARDIS wall, looking blank and forlorn?

Or perhaps that’s the point – perhaps this, too, is the calm before the storm, a storm the Doctor can only weather with the help of friends she is currently content to leave in the dark, thus setting the stage for six or seven episodes of skirting around the question of who she really is before a final, explosive confrontation. And perhaps that’s the only way to reinvent Gallifreyan history – something, it seems, Chibnall is about to do – without it becoming tedious. And it is destined to be tedious, this game of gods and monsters and prophecy. It is an awkward fact that stories about Time Lords – the anomaly of Deadly Assassin aside – tend towards dullness, and it is difficult to see how the current regime could reinvent them. But it does, at least, give us something to ponder as the weeks unfold and the awkwardness in the console room builds towards an inevitable crescendo. Like it or not, we’re going back to Gallifrey, and all that remains now is to see how much of the fandom Chibnall can poke with a stick without losing the casual viewers. It’s a dangerous game, but so is getting out of bed.

The rest of it is average: Graham is enjoying his laser shoes, while Yaz has apparently forgotten how to be a police officer, having decided that her role this week is to sit in the corner and look helpless while the men get to have all the fun. But the biggest problem with Skyfall Part 2 is that the pacing is off. Having the Doctor travel 200 years into the past to pick up Ada Lovelace is absolutely fine – the pages of exposition seemingly necessary to explain her importance, however, are downright tedious. It doesn’t matter whether they’re in 1830s London with Charles Babbage or war torn Paris with the cast of ‘Allo ‘Allo; Whittaker paces and monologues and gushes about the admirable pioneering qualities of the people whose memories she will eventually wipe, reeling out the history, seemingly unaware that the only people who tend to listen are stranded in 21st century Essex. It’s like watching a BBC Schools presenter on crack. There is a reason why the Doctor is not allowed to travel alone; occasionally she needs someone to tell her to shut up.’

DWC write-up

Orphan 55

INT. RAINBOW HOUSE. DAY

[On an unimpressive CRT television, the Rainbow personnel – GEORGE, ZIPPY, BUNGLE and GEOFFREY – are watching the closing credits of Orphan 55.]

GEORGE: Ooh, that was wonderful, Geoffrey! So exciting!

GEOFFREY: Yes, it was, George, wasn’t it?

BUNGLE: Yes! All those aliens and things blowing up! Ka-BOOOOM!!! But I did wonder, Geoffrey –

GEOFFREY: What did you wonder, Bungle?

BUNGLE: Why did the Doctor take everyone with her to go and rescue Benni? Wasn’t it dangerous for them all?

GEOFFREY: Well, I expect it would have been quite dangerous for them to have stayed, wouldn’t it? All those creatures running around trying to gobble them up. I know what you mean, though. I thought they might have put something in about that.

GEORGE: Perhaps we just couldn’t hear it, Geoffrey. They do talk awfully fast, don’t they?

BUNGLE: Yes. Still, at least there weren’t any frogs this time.

ZIPPY: Huh. Well, I thought it was rubbish. All those stupid monsters!

GEOFFREY: Didn’t you find them scary, Zippy? I know George did. [George is clutching at his blanket and whimpering softly.]

ZIPPY: Why would I find them scary when I share a bed with this lot? And the ending was boring.

BUNGLE: It was supposed to be warning us about climate change, Zippy!

ZIPPY: I already know that, Bungle Bonce. I still thought it was silly. Why did they have to go on and on about saving the planet?

GEOFFREY: Well, because it’s important, Zippy! We’ve only got one planet, haven’t we? We’ve all got to work together to take care of it.

ZIPPY: I do take care of it!

GEORGE: Is that why you always throw your crisp packets over the garden wall?

ZIPPY: I don’t!

GEOFFREY [brandishing a selection of cellophane wrappers]: Oh, yes you do. I found three of them there this morning!

ZIPPY: Yes but – well… [He harrumphs and rests his head on a floppy hand.]

BUNGLE: It’s funny, though. I don’t remember seeing Yas this week. What was she doing?

[There is a thoughtful silence, with gratuitous head scratching and chin-rubbing, as the four of them consider this.]

GEOFFREY: Oh well, never mind. I expect she was there somewhere. The Doctor needs to have someone standing around looking gormless.

ZIPPY: Yeah. You’d know about that, Geoffrey.

GEORGE: Oh, Zippy. You’re such a tw*t.

BUNGLE: Well, I do know one thing. I don’t think I’d want to go on holiday to a place like Tranquility Spa.

GEOFFREY: Oh? Why not, Bungle? Are you worried about furry things that look even less realistic than you do?

BUNGLE: No! I haven’t got any swimming shorts that fit me!

ZIPPY: You walk around the house stark naked!

BUNGLE: Well, yes, but I put my pyjamas on at bedtime, don’t I?

GEORGE: That engineer was funny, wasn’t he? His little boy knew much more than him. I felt like that was trying to tell us something, but I can’t really work it out.

BUNGLE: Ooh, Geoffrey! Rod, Jane and Freddie know a song about dysfunctional family relationships, don’t they?

GEOFFREY: Yes, you’re right, Bungle. Do you know, I think I’ve got a cassette somewhere. I’ll see if I can fish it out. But before we listen to it, I think we’d better say goodbye, don’t you? [Through the fourth wall] We’ll see you again soon. Take care of yourselves. Goodbye!

OTHERS: Buh-bye!

DWC write-up

 

Nikola Tesla’s Night Of Terror

‘I have a question for the floor. Why is it that, whenever Number Thirteen meets anyone famous, it takes half the episode for the penny to drop? Mistaken identity often enhances a narrative, but it jars when the pudding is overegged. Are we really supposed to believe that there isn’t a visual dictionary in the library, or that no one checks the readouts to see when and where they’ve actually landed? It’s happened twice this year, once with Ada Lovelace and once with the pioneering inventor who graced last night’s episode, and on both occasions the audience has been quicker on the uptake than the Doctor – who manages to wander into and escape from the Niagara Falls power station without having a clue that she’s in the presence of the man responsible for building it.

I’m not going to say that’s my only hang-up with this episode – we could also talk about the historical revisionism, the TARDIS crew’s apparent apathy to new wonders and situations and the sub-par villains (honestly, when did Doctor Who monsters get so dull?) but this was, perhaps, the first time this year it’s felt like we were actually watching the show as it used to be, for better or worse. Here’s a litmus test: you remove Whittaker from the equation and you substitute another Doctor and it still works. In this case, it’s quite easy to imagine Tesla happening with Tennant at the helm, perhaps in the company of the perenially clueless Martha. Certainly the story has that vibe to it: a world on the brink of destruction, the tortured nature of misunderstood genius and the hungry prejudice of a placard-carrying mob.

We might question why the Skithra opted for Tesla, rather than someone who’s actually going to understand the technology they’re throwing at him, but this was never really about them: it’s about Tesla and Edison and the rivalry between them. That Tesla is whitewashed while Edison is made something of a pariah should come as no great surprise to anyone, but it’s to Nina Metivier’s credit that she avoids turning the light bulb pioneer into an out-and-out villain: Edison gloats and generally behaves rather selfishly, but he also expresses remorse over the loss of his staff (“These were men with families!”), he doesn’t cut and run, he doesn’t try and sell out Tesla to the villain of the week, and at the end he extends a hand of friendship, even if he’s only following the money. A well-rounded supporting character. In Doctor Who. And there was me thinking we’d left those days behind.’

The DWC writeup is currently missing. We are checking behind the sofa.

The Smallerpictures video dump (2019, part four)

I’m not always making videos. But when I am, they invariably end up in here, sooner or later.

 

1. Doctor Who: The Blockbusters Edition (April 2019)

The Twitter conversation is still pretty clear in my head. It was the trailer from Pale Rider – that 1970s Clint Eastwood vehicle where he may or may not be a ghost – and what strikes you about it, if you’re British, is that it uses the Channel 4 News Theme. Or, to be precise, it uses a piece of stock music titled ‘Best Endeavours’ (composed for the library by Alan Hawkshaw, who also wrote the Countdown theme) that’s turned up all over the place, as stock music is wont to do. Anyway, there then followed a conversation about whether Jon Snow was actually a cowboy, and then somebody else quipped that in the original version of the Star Wars cantina sequences, the band was playing the music from Blockbusters.

Bang. There it is. Why has nobody done this before? Blockbusters is the eighties quiz show personified: all drum machines and synths and overly dramatic stings that made you feel the stakes were much higher than they were. It was staple viewing in our house – watching those incredibly grown-up looking sixth formers with Italian style shirts and mullets flounder over what ‘R’ defines an unsophisticated and rural person (Rustic, in case you were wondering). You tried to plot their pattern across the board, working out which spaces would be likely targets for the battling contestants, and you cheered when they won a Thailand holiday at the end of the Gold Run.

Plus the music was awesome, particularly when they were doing the hand jive on Friday evenings (and, unless my memory is playing tricks on me, singing some sort of lyric during a special anniversary show). It’s taken years – and a Wikipedia entry – for me to notice that it actually contains snatches of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which is the sort of thing you can never unhear once you’ve noticed, and (as a consequence of this) something that’s been stuck in my head for the last three months. Make no mistake: the Blockbusters theme is infectious.

And it works perfectly with Series 11. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps there was an inherent cheese factor in that as well – some people loved it, some didn’t, but no one can deny its presence. Making this was simplicity itself: it was simply a question of delving into the episodes for appropriate footage. Cole and Gill really do deserve their own title cards, but the whole thing’s only about forty seconds long and I had a lot to get through, so there had to be sacrifices. And the synchronised shoulder pat at the end turned out to be a happy accident, but the sort I’m always anxious to repeat. I don’t always feel pleased with my work, but this was one time I did. And it made The Poke, of all things, so it was a good day.

 

 

2. Bungle from Rainbow dances to the Doctor Who theme (April 2019)

Let me conjure a picture. It’s the very next morning after the Blockbusters video went live, and I’m wandering home from the school run in the fresh heights of an Oxfordshire spring, and of course I’m ignoring everything around me because I’m on my phone. And then a video pops onto the feed of Bungle doing a dance to…something. I can’t remember. It might have been Soft Cell. But it was the sort of thing that happened a lot on Rainbow, which is the price you pay for creating an inherently musical show featuring only one non-human character with legs. Bungle got the lion’s share of the soft shoe numbers (well, you can’t exactly do ballet in a furry onesie) and usually it was to some sort of Rod, Jane and Freddy throwaway they hadn’t used for a while, but my mind started wandering and  there was something about his turn in ‘The Show Offs’ (a 1986 story in which the entire cast get to act like dickheads) that struck a chord. In the story he’s dancing to an instrumental version of ‘We’re Singing A Little Song’, but…

This took me thirty-eight minutes. You can tell. It’s not quite in sync, which is something I probably could have fixed if I could be bothered. As it stands, I think the rough-and-ready nature probably works in its favour. And Peter Howell’s version of the Doctor Who theme is the one from my childhood and probably the best version of them all. Although I’m guessing Bungle was probably more of a Pertwee fan. Call it a hunch.

 

3. Tim Shaw the Enchanter (May 2019)

Yeah, this doesn’t quite work. But I’d been putting it off for months, and I really needed to confirm that it didn’t quite work. And now I have. And bits of it are good. Probably. Maybe. Anyone fancy rabbit stew?

Have I Got Whos For You (Easter special)

I’m going to be poking a sizeable portion of the fandom with a stick in a few days, folks, so do tune in later this week if you want to see the fireworks. I should point out that there’s nothing sensationalist about it; I just felt like a bit of a rant. You know, like when you’re in a Subway and they’ve stopped heating the sandwiches even though it’s only half past eight and they’re not closing for another hour and a half and THEY DIDN’T TELL YOU, and the only seating available is next to five black bin bags that have been left on the floor and the drinks machine is basically flavoured water, and your nacho beef subs don’t actually contain any nachos because they ran out and THEY DIDN’T TELL YOU, and they can’t give a refund because it’s just the two of them and there’s no manager.

I mean, hypothetically.

Anyway, that can wait for a bit. In the meantime, here’s a bumper roundup of news from the last fortnight or so. First: Record Store Day. Which I missed, which wasn’t a bad thing because the so-called vinyl revival is nothing but a fad purported by specialist retailers and music snobs. It did, however, reach the TARDIS.

I sometimes wonder if Levine sees anything I write about him. God I hope not. I do try and have a bit of patience with the man, but he makes it so piggin’ difficult.

If you follow the news, you’ll be aware that scientists have released a photo of a black hole – to be specific, the event horizon of a black hole, as the hole itself is impossible to photograph due to being…well, black. (“The thing about space,” Hattie Haydridge once explained in Red Dwarf, “is…”) Some 55 million light years from earth, the thing was 6.5 billion times bigger than the sun, which meant you had to have eyes as big as the Earth in order to photograph it. Or something. But a closer examination of the image reveals some interesting debris floating across not too far from the singularity.

(Eagle-eyed viewers will notice there’s a mistake in that. Bloody BBC interns. Never could get the staff.)

Back down to Earth now, and a leaked promo image for a new Brexit-themed mashup which goes under the working title ‘Fury from the DUP’.

If you were in the UK, it was a gorgeous weekend: we spent part of it in London, which was full of environmental protesters, selfie-snapping tourists and the smell of cannabis. There were new things at the Tate Modern and we got lost in Canary Wharf, but the Cabot Centre has a piano, so all was well. In the meantime, the Doctor and her friends were out enjoying the sunshine, but nobody spotted Darth Vader sneaking off with the Easter Eggs.

“Hmm,” says every single person to leave a comment. “I can’t see anything in that picture.” I knew I should have used a bloody Cyberman. Question: if you’re looking at one of the Silence / Silents, and then you look away, do you really forget the whole scene? Surely that’s not the case? You only forget about the Munsch derivative; everything else – characters, scenery and so on – is completely intact. If you’re going to reference a series 6 low point, at least do it properly.

Some people unsub from Doctor Who groups when they want to avoid spoilers. Others unsub because the fandom can be toxic, or because they feel their opinions are unwanted. Personally, I unsub around this date every year when you can barely move for selfies and arm shots covered in fucking tally marks. “Ooh! I don’t know why I have all these marks all over me!” I don’t know either. Because you’re a twat?

Sticking with today, and turning away from things that just make me sour, we turn to William Shakespeare, who celebrates a birthday and deathday, and who is close to losing it completely with his new understudies.

(This is crying out for a caption. Anyone want to oblige? No? That’s fine.)

I’m not the only one who’s been hanging out on Twitter. It seems the Doctor is keen to broadcast his TV viewing habits.

Things happen when you’re away. Thankfully nobody died, or at least nobody I’d have wanted to write about, but I did miss the Episode IX announcement, with all its bells and whistles and the pleasing presence of Billy Dee Williams, who will presumably turn out to be Finn’s uncle (or a closer blood relation). It’s something of a disappointment to discover that the film will be titled The Rise of Skywalker. Still: being out of the loop at least meant that I missed (or largely missed) the furore surrounding the Emperor’s laugh, the significance of Leia’s ring, and whether Matt Smith is involved. I can’t remember when this stopped being interesting, although I daresay I’ll see it and enjoy it more than most of the people who purport to be fans. Thank God it’s never like this with Doctor Who.

But then you’re back in Oxfordshire and you need to scratch the creative itch, at least a little. “Can I – ” (I found myself wondering) “- reference the tenth anniversary of ‘Planet of the Dead’, David Tennant’s birthday and the new Star Wars trailer, all within the confines of a single image?”

Yes. Yes, I can.

The Rainbow Connection

Today, boys and girls, you have a choice. You can read this through, or you can skip to the bottom. That’s where the video is. I will not hold it against you, and I’ll never know you did it. Your time is precious. But do, at least, spare five minutes to watch the Thing At The End, because that’s the whole point.

Somewhere in the home counties – I’m thinking Surrey, although it’s never clear – in a cheerfully painted house, a fluffy gay hippo is carefully stacking blocks. To his left, there is a weird orange thing that may or may not be extraterrestrial, doing a puzzle. There is a piece missing: in his frustration, he chucks the box in the direction of the hippo, upsetting his tower. “Ooh, Zippy!” complains the hippo, rife with melodrama. “Zat’s very naughty! Now I’ve got to start again!”

“Oh, well, never mind George,” says the alien. “You can always make another one.”

Stage right, there is a large brown bear reading a comic. “Oh, Zippy,” he sighs. “You are careless.”

“Yes, well, it’s not my fault!” says the alien. “He shouldn’t have been building right next to my jigsaw!”

Their greying foster carer – all sensible shirts and white trainers – walks in, carrying a basket of washing that is inexplicably full given that he’s the only person in the house who wears any clothes. Scenes like this no longer astound or surprise him the way they once did: he’s watched every episode of The Dumping Ground and accepts most of his job is firefighting the squabbles and arguments his young charges have daily. He suspects the alien may have ADHD. He has caught the bear rewiring the electrics once or twice and has asked him not to. The hippo is constantly put upon by his would-be siblings, and the people down the road are always holding impromptu glee clubs in his front room. This, he reflects, was not how he saw his life going when he signed up for this gig.

When we were children, Rainbow was a part of the furniture. It had been around so long that no one gave its murky origins a second thought. There were all manner of questions about the setup in the house – who were these strange anthropomorphic characters and why were they living with this middle-aged storyteller? What did they do for money? And are the frequent fourth wall breaks some sort of indication that they’re in some sort of kids’ version of Big Brother, mercifully without the sex? But no one really asked. It was just something we accepted. It was, like Doctor Who, more about the situation, and the hijinks that ensued, than anything that might have led to them.

It’s strange when you reflect upon how much things have changed. I often read comments on the CBeebies Facebook page about The Tweenies, usually complaining about something obnoxious that Bella is doing. It is inconceivable that a show like that would be made today. Everyone spends all their time arguing. The characters are real, but they’re not a good influence, and even though their behaviour usually results in consequences and discipline, that’s lost on today’s thou-shalt-parent-my-children-for-me audience. While it’s hard to pinpoint precisely where it happened, somewhere along the line we lost the concept of dramatic irony.

There was – I swear I’m not making this up – an episode of Rainbow where Rod, Jane and Freddy sang a song that went “A flying saucer / In our garden / It must have come from outer space…”. Whereupon Zippy poked his head out of the window and offered them a trip to the stars, which they gleefully accepted, finishing the song along the way. It was, to my mind, the best origin story for Zippy that we’ve ever had. There is no other explanation for a creature with a zip sewn into its mouth, other than one that evolved on a planet where it’s an essential survival feature. Perhaps he was expelled from his home world for being thoroughly obnoxious – it would explain why ‘cousin’ Zippo is so mind-numbingly placid, at least until that later episode where he develops a bad American accent and starts talking about crisps.

Little moments like this are integral to our understanding of Rainbow. There are episodes where Geoffrey randomly ‘has to go out’. We never know where he goes (unless he returns with something plot-related) or why. Sessions at the dole office immediately spring to mind. So too do images of Geoffrey attending a drug deal or hiring himself out as a gigolo. It all depends on the mood I’m in. So you can understand why I’d latch onto the image of Zippy emerging from a wrecked spacecraft and setting up home with a bear and a hippo, which is to all intents and purposes what the song implies. (It also implies, of course, that Rod, Jane and Freddy were actually housed together in some sort of communal living situation, which corroborates many 1980s tabloid rumours.)

Then there’s…um. Rainbow cosplay.

I mean, seriously. What the hell is that? It’s like Zippy ate him. At least he can still breathe, which is presumably a situation that can be quickly altered with the swipe of a zip at the top. Come to think of it why does this have a working zip anyway, given that its sudden closure by an external party is likely to render the occupant airless and blind in an instant? Is this some sort of gimp outfit you use for fetish games? Does Christian Grey have one? It is only marginally less disturbing than the Rainbow comics which hit the stands back in the 1990s, in which every character looks basically normal except for George, who bears the haunted, blank-eyed stare of a hippo possessed.

(If you enjoy exploring the seedy underbelly of the animals in the house, you would be well-advised to check out World of Crap, who have devoted pages and pages to rewritten Rainbow comics with amusing captions.)

I’ve dabbled with Rainbow before, of course, in a video that I still quite like, some six years after its creation (not to mention Roy Skelton’s death, which upped the hit count considerably). But Zippy’s only one part of the trio – and while he’s the obvious candidate for voice transposition, that doesn’t mean the others don’t have potential. Except that George is timid and often stumbles over his words, of course, which makes placing him difficult. That left Bungle, who is usually well-spoken, as well as prone to bouts of pomposity. When it came to finding a Doctor Who character for him to replace, there really was only one choice, and that was Omega.

It’s not that I don’t like ‘The Three Doctors’. I think it’s overrated, not to mention structurally problematic – one of those stories that is beloved because it was the first multi-Doctor fusion (and even then, it fails to deliver on its title’s promise). The bickering between Pertwee and Troughton is about the best part of the story – although an unexpected highlight occurs when Benton walks into the TARDIS for the first time, and refuses to state the obvious. The Gel guards are quite fun, but this one is perhaps the epitome of the ‘Stupid Brigadier’ phase, in which U.N.I.T.’s finest devolves into a reactionary simpleton who refuses to accept the evidence of his own eyes.

Then there’s Omega, a villain so melodramatic it’s impossible to see him as a serious threat. Omega’s role in ‘The Three Doctors’ is to shout. In ‘Arc of Infinity’, it’s to shout some more, and then decompose at the edge of a river, just after bonding with a small child over the sight of an organ grinder. In ‘Omega’, the 2003 Big Finish audio drama, his role is to convince you that he’s the Doctor, which he manages with aplomb. But for the most part it’s just a lot of shouting. There must be a reason for all that anger. You almost want Tennant to lean round the door of his chamber, survey Omega’s colossally oversized mask and mutter “Compensating for something?”

Still, masks are handy. I use masks a lot, simply because it makes the dubbing much easier. And there’s something fun about having a supposedly sinister character rendered ridiculous. In the case of Omega, it only half works. You can make him ridiculous all right; he just isn’t very sinister.

When it came to putting this together, I wanted it to feel as close to an actual episode of Rainbow as possible, so I started with the animations. There are two of them, built up in that slow, frame-by-frame style (the sound effects, by the way, are all ripped directly from the show). Originally it was just going to be K-9, but I put the other one in just for the heck of it – the same might be said for the Rod, Jane and Freddy song that shows up later, although that’s partly the silliness of Pertwee’s slow motion fight with Omega.

The biggest problem was Bungle’s voice, which is less consistent than you imagine (unlike Zippy, who always sounds like Zippy). It’s perhaps most obvious in the opening scene, in which the changes are obvious. This being a Classic episode, I didn’t have the luxury of score-free dialogue, which meant dealing with ambience and the occasional sting from Dudley Simpson (who recently turned 95, if you want another entry to your list of Entertainment Veterans You Hadn’t Realised Weren’t Dead Yet). As a result it’s rather rough around the edges, and I almost like it that way.

Oh, and make sure you watch to the end…

Paint the whole world

I’m working on something, and you get to see it soon, but to tide you over in the meantime, this is something Thomas made. No prompting from me whatsoever, although he was quite happy for me to share it via social media.

 

Nightmare in Plastic

I’m thumbing through the latest issue of Doctor Who Adventures yesterday afternoon, and this is what I see.

—

I’m sorry. What?

In the first instance, I should mention that I don’t buy the figures these days. Not since they dropped the size from 5 inches down to 3.75. Overnight, the Whoniverse characters shrunk from respectable, chunky ones that took up a good portion of a fist when you were holding them down to piddly little things that easily fall out of pockets. To give you an idea:

I’m reliably informed that the new figures are about the size of the original (and, for all I know, contemporary) Star Wars figures that your friends used to have in the playground back in the 1980s. Maybe that’s why they changed them; it allows for greater cross-play between universes, presumably inspiring numerous scenarios in which Clara goes doe-eyed at Lando Calrissian and it is established that neither Han nor Greedo shot first; it was the Doctor, playing around with a laser pistol on the other side of the room and not realising that the safety was off.

I haven’t bought any of the new size figures; they look ridiculous alongside the original range, and it gives me an excuse to concentrate on DVD purchases, as well as dithering over whether I really want to spend £25 on that ‘Three Doctors’ set with the Brigadier and Jo Grant. The fact that I won’t be able to buy a decent scale version of the Twelfth Doctor annoys me, but there’s no sense getting too cross about it. It just means they don’t get any more of my money. Their loss, and I’m sure it’s minimal.

But these? Colossal fail.

Let’s start with the good stuff. They have, at least, not managed to fuck up the Dalek. Presumably doing so would incur threats of insane legal action from the Nation estate (even though Nation had bugger all to do with how the thing actually looks, beyond a vague description). If I were going to be picky I’d question whether you could really justify releasing two practically identical models where the only difference was the dome colour and the weapon attachment, and then charging £12 for each, but I think that ship already sailed back in 2010. The Weeping Angel, too, is reasonably functional. Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, meanwhile, resembles the androgynous singer in a New Romantic pop group, all impeccably smooth skin and hints of what looks suspiciously like lipstick, although if you examine closely, I don’t think it is.

Capaldi’s Doctor is facially intact, if again the skin looks far too smooth for a man of his age. I recognise that some loss of detail is inevitable when you scale down your sizes, but one of the most interesting aspects of Doctor Who was their tendency – at least until 1981 – to avoid casting oil paintings. Sorry, but colouring his hair grey won’t do it; it looks like he’s had the sort of disastrous facial surgery that lands you on the right hand column of the Daily Mail’s home page, photographed by the paparazzi. The whole thing reminded me of an episode of Dad’s Army called ‘Keep Young And Beautiful’, in which the most elderly men in the platoon get makeovers from the undertaker in order to make themselves appear young enough to avoid being drafted into the ARP; the sight of the elderly Arnold Ridley, skin stretched so much that (in the words of Captain Mainwaring) “he looks like Madame Butterfly”, is enough to reduce me to fits of hysterical laughter every time.

But it’s arguably poor Clara who’s suffered the most. I mean, have another look.

 

She’s practically obese. At the very least she looks like she’s suffering from the mumps. Now, I’m not suggesting that all Doctor Who companions need to be slim and beautiful. I got as cross as you did when Disney did an extreme Photoshop job on Princess Merida from Brave. But the fact is, Clara is pretty slim – no Kate Moss, by any means, but the fact of the matter is that this doesn’t look anything like Jenna Coleman, and if I were here I’d be seriously mortified, or at least stomping around my house like David Huddleston in Santa Claus: The Movie, muttering “Is that how they think I look?”.

Well, it is, if you do this.

 

And yes, it looks dreadful, but so does the figure.

(Seriously, there must be people out there who could do a better job of fattening up Clara’s face than I’ve managed in two minutes with a three-month-old baby on my lap. Anyone want to have a go?)

“The Zygon looks quite good,” said my eldest child.

“Josh, it looks like Bungle,” I said, having been apprised of this by Gareth some time before. And, of course, it does.

 

I’m not a toy manufacturer. I know nothing about plastic moulds, cost control or the limits of manufacturing technology. Still, even I can see that this is a massive turkey. I’m not asking for a return to five inch scales (although I do think that might fix some of the facial detail problems). But I think the only way they could make this lot any creepier would be for the things to come alive on the back seat of the car on the way back from the toy shop.

 

Now, there’s a concept.

Eggwatch, Part 6 (and 7)

Gareth and I were talking about the God is in the Detail posts. I was explaining that they really are a joy to produce. There is no sense of logic, no planning, no structure. I simply scrub back and forth throughout the video and grab any still image that I think could be significant if you were looking for something incredibly obscure. Anything goes, the sillier the better.

“It is very silly,” said Gareth, “and, rather disturbingly, not so far from some of the discussions I encounter online.”

That struck a chord with me. I do hope the satire is obvious, and that no one is looking at this lot and thinking that I’m actually serious about anything I post. I have tried to be increasingly flippant as time goes on, but if there’s one thing I’ve leaned about the interweb over the years it’s that someone is always on hand to miss the joke.

“But wait a minute,” said Gareth. “These episodes are part of series 7, aren’t they? Which means we should do Eggwatch again!” And he was right, dammit.

For those of you who are new round here, Eggwatch was something we ran last year, when we realised that the ‘subtle’ arc that Moffat talked about for the first half of series 7 was eggs. And behold, there were eggs in every episode, if you knew where to look. Sort of. Egg-like substances, anyway. Of course, this half of the series is all about Clara, but there’s no reason why eggs shouldn’t continue their recurring appearances. There’s plenty of room to share.

Except, of course, I’ve just spent forty-five minutes going through ‘The Snowmen’ and I can’t find one. Single. Egg.

Well, almost. Oh, and Gareth has pointed out that Clara talks about soufflés again – ground we covered in Eggwatch, Part 1, but no harm in revisiting. Still, all told the results are a bit disappointing.

But I will not be deterred, so let’s move on to ‘The Bells of Saint John’, which has a lengthy sequence in which the Doctor and Clara order breakfast in a cafe, where there is again not a single egg on show. It’s a wasted opportunity, but then you look at the monster-of-the-week, and it’s enough to restore your faith in humanity.

A spoonhead, of course. And what do you put on spoons? Specifically on sports day? Josh, has the answer.

There will be more Eggwatch in a few days. Take us home, Roy Zippy. (Scrub to 7:05.)

—

Sunshine and showers with a chance of Rainbows

Today, the weather in Scotland will be mostly Zippy.

(Cheers Gareth…)