“The Name Of The Doctor” – Doctor Who

A few months ago I was forcibly egging on my Masters class to give a breakdown of the different types of television that there can be. Breaking down the basics of the goggle box shows into various categories: serialized, procedural, mini-series, anthology, series anthology (rare shows such as American Horror Story which switch tack once a year, rather than once an episode). The list went on.

We never really got around to Doctor Who. How do you describe a show that builds a different world and a different characters every week, yet retains two or more recurring players? And what happens when one of these players is, from time-to-time, re-cast and re-imagined as a different type of person with the same name and the same history? What is the genre of a show that tips from horror, to sci-fi, to comedy, to fairytale, often within the same episode? One that, no matter what is happening in anyone’s lives at the time, has a mandatory Christmas episode? How do you even operate a monster like that while keeping all the plates spinning?

The truth is, you don’t. There is no such thing as the perfect way to run Doctor Who, and there is no such thing as the perfect show-runner for Doctor Who, because so many of the elements that make the show what it is are in direct conflict with each other.

I’ve realized this more and more lately, talking to friends who long for more Daleks, or despise River Song, or even the blessed souls at the Guardian who claim that every episode of this season has been the “BEST EVER!!!!1111″. I spent so much timing judging these people in my head, unable to fathom how they could simultaneously be so passionate and so wrong.

But perhaps they aren’t wrong. Perhaps they do love the annoying, possessed salt shakers. Or hate the kick-ass lady with the big hair. Maybe they think the Cybermen are genuinely scary, or that half the cast driving the TARDIS together in “Journey’s End” wasn’t the most hilariously saccharine moment in the history of television.

Maybe Doctor Who can truly never please everyone, because everyone comes at it with a different set of wants. The die-hard fact-checker who loathes timey-wimey hand waves, the ancient fan who desperately hopes for the return of the Rani, the anthology obsessive who wishes for a pure creature-of-the-week structure or the dark-hearted folks who wish to see the Doctor just go crazy and explore his evil side.

With that in mind, I can only approach “The Name Of The Doctor” by looking at how it works in the given tenets and rules of good fiction, and not the internal machinations of the show itself — because, as this episode proves time and again, Doctor Who has about as much internal consistency as the Bible.

The episode opens with a very unexpected moment in a very unexpected place: old Gallifrey, where an alarm is alerting a group of weary workers that someone is in the midst of attempting to steal a TARDIS. The Doctor, in fact, the First Doctor — and he’s being advised on his choice of bounty, like some TARDIS car saleswoman, by Clara Oswin.

Cue Clara falling through space, time, and the lives of every Doctor we’ve ever known, talking about being the impossible girl, her lives with the Doctor, and her on-going and multiple-lived quest to save his life.

All that Clara-ness explained in the first few minutes? Now that’s what I call dispensing with a mystery.

“Nightmare In Silver” – Doctor Who

On Saturday I had a very strange experience. For the first time I got to see a production of one of my own scripts, but one that I wasn’t involved in in any real way. I wrote the script, obviously, and had talks with the director along the way — and did some ruthless editing in the final stages when the show was over-running –  but by and large I came to the show with completely fresh eyes.

It was fun, and a great production and great central performance, but also had the quality of recalling a dream. I’d written the first draft back in November, caught in a feverish few weeks with a throat infection and not much time on my hands. Couple that with it being my first time working from biography to adapt someone’s life, and I was afraid that everything was muddled. But in the end everything worked out fantastically, and I didn’t have to use my prepared speech where I stand up in the middle of the performance and scream “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY WORDS?”.

A friend of mine who’d seen the show complimented me on my writing of a female character, and I did a bit of a theatrical spit-take. I always find that a very strange thing to say, and my friend acknowledged the strangeness of it, but said it had crossed her mind. The play was about Eva Gore-Booth, who was a crazy awesome suffragist and lesbian, so she had woman written all over her early 20th century body.

It just feels strange, like if you designed a house for someone and they’re first compliment was “I like that it has walls”. I mean, thank you, but…

This is a round-about way for me to talk about character motivation. To write someone as being a woman doesn’t excuse you from doing all the other character work required, otherwise you just end up falling into the trap of The Smurfette Principle. But making a person female should inform their character, because societal conditioning means that men and women so often experience the world differently.

This is what happens when I get a compliment, I just start talking until the person forgets what they originally said.

The subject of character was, then, what floated to top of my mind when I was watching this week’s instalment “Nightmare In Silver”. With Neil Gaiman back in the fray, many Who fans were expecting this episode to reach the dizzy heights of the last season wonder “The Doctor’s Wife”.

A direct comparison is unfair, as for all its bombast Gaiman’s last episode was a tighter, more character-focused affair. This week his remit was to re-introduce the Cybermen (Moffatt dictated that he “make them scary again”), which is the kind of thing that isn’t normally accompanied by much introspection.

Which is a shame, really, because the core psychological questions of the Cybermen could be at their best in a smaller piece: it just seems that nobody realised that.

Instead we got an episode that hewed closely to the over-arching theme of this series of Doctor Who: lots of interesting elements that do not make a lick of sense.

The Doctor and Clara arrive on an alien planet along with Angie and Artie, Clara’s two charges who discovered — because Internets — that Clara’s been time-travelling, and have hitched a ride on the TARDIS. The reason they’ve come to this planet is because it’s the site of Hedgewick’s World, the greatest theme park in the universe. Of course, this being Who, the park is shut down and is now occupied by a “punishment unit” of soldiers too incompetent to be left anywhere else.

There’s also a curiosity collector named Webley (Jason Watkins, aka Being Human’s Henrik) living in secrecy on the planet, and he’s got a shell of a Cybermen that faces off with the Doctor in a game of chess. Turns out the Cyberman is rightly inactive, but controlled by the diminutive presence of Warwick Davis as the friendly, feisty Porridge. It doesn’t take long for the Cyberman to come back to life, take over Webley, Angie and Artie, and kick-start a plan to release thousands of Cybermen into a future that presumed them long obliterated.

The episode’s ace in the hole, the element that truly departs from previous Cybermen lore, is to have the Doctor infected and in the process of being converted. What is it like to be infected by the Cybermen? How does it prey on the very human (or Gallifreyan) desire to not feel emotions? How much of it is infection and how much is choice? And what happens when a Time Lord is battling himself, inside his own head?

Countdown To Countdown: The Moorlines Of Destiny

Giles, you sly bitch.

I’ve stayed relatively silent since my appearance on the weird and wonderful game show that is Countdown, partially because I’m a blogger and half of blogging is screaming “I SHOULD REALLY BLOG TODAY” while falling asleep into your Sainsbury’s own brand Granola. But partially it’s because, after much posting and tweeting and excitement before going on the show (and sometimes during) the actual experience was so enjoyable in its own right I didn’t feel the need to.

Like, I’m sure when the Apollo 11 crew were on their way up to the moon they were all like “Oh fucking christ I can’t wait to Instagram this” and then when they got back they were too busy eating moon cheese and gravity-banging the life out of their astronaut wives to be bothered updating their Tumblr.

I am, in this and so many other ways, much like the Apollo 11 crew.

But now, with almost a month having passed since broadcast, I feel it’s time to talk about my Countdown appearance. I don’t want to spoil it, but I definitely got a blowie under the desk from Mariella Frostrup during the ad break.

As a bit of background, let me tell you about my previous relationship with Countdown. Growing up, I watched Countdown religiously. In fact, as it was on five days a week and religious people only go to mass once a week, I was five times more devout a follower of Countdown than any of them.

This is how I know that when St. Peter tries to stop me entering heaven because of all the peen I’ve had in my mouth, Richard Whiteley will snap his neck Seagal-style and blow the gates open with a rocket launcher. Then we high five and eat vol-au-vents for the evening.

My mother was and is a huge fan of Countdown since before I was born, and I was one of those weird, insufferable kids who was always desperate to stretch his brain in new directions. It was a match made in heaven. I’d park myself in front of the telly every day at 4.30 (those were the halcyon late afternoon broadcast days of the show), watching the evolution of Richard’s garish ties and Carol’s general hotness over my formative years.

Much is made of Richard and Carol, and they will always be such a huge part of my childhood, but I was in it for the numbers and letters, baby.

I love Countdown. There are few things in life that we can do again and again and again and have each experience feel like something fresh and new and desirable. One is food, the other sex, and — for me at least — the third is Countdown. I could, and have done, watch six, seven, eight episodes back-to-back without feeling the need to get up. If it weren’t for the limits of the human bladder and the NHS’ steadfast refusal to grant me a live-in nurse I’d probably be lying on my bed watching it right now.

Richard’s death hit me. I won’t say it hit me hard, because I don’t go in for the flowers-by-Buckingham-Palace brand of celebrity grieving that makes me question why humanity hasn’t been wiped off the map yet. But I’d grown up with him, and he was a joy to behold. A man who could best replicate my own experience of Countdown. As if every show was his first, as if he’d never get tired of it. That is the consummate professional: not the one who has unending wells of charisma, or slickness, or knowledge, but the one who has a river of enthusiasm that won’t run dry.

But Richard died, and Carol moved on too.

I feigned horror at the new arrangement. The new Countdown. But I knew deep down I was really in it for the letters and numbers.

One lazy afternoon, too much time having passed since I’d last watched the show, I flicked on the telly. Rachel was there. The feigned horror had earned a place in my gut, and my instant reaction was “Pshhh, who does she think she is?”.

Then she fucking owned the numbers round, and I was convinced.

This is one of the other great joys of Countdown. There is no other show on television, in my reckoning, that so bluntly celebrates intelligence above all else. There are many game shows out there that would try to claim the mantle, but many of them are driven by the whisper of executives, the dull monotonous “What makes this unique?”.

That is how you get inventive (and often enjoyable) shows like Pointless, The Chase, and Eggheads. The last is the only show that makes my mother swear: the phrase “Oh of course you ‘guessed’ it Daphne, you cunt!” echoing through the Irish midlands every weekday evening.

In terrible circumstances, that “unique selling point” quality delivers the sigh-made-flesh that is Deal Or No Deal.

But Countdown is not interested in being flashy. It has a format that works, a clarity of rules, and a string of celebrity guests that make the cast of Last Of The Summer Wine look like Rihanna and Ke$ha at a blood orgy.

It is good enough to be good enough.

In watching Countdown more recently, it’s also struck me why this simplicity is vital. The whittling process for contestants on game shows can often be more about the fact that Jenny once got her tits caught in the fan extract while on a hen trip in Magaloof, or that Margaret’s step-son is dying of cancer of the eyeball. It demands personalities.

To put it in the kindest way possible, any brief viewing of Countdown will bring to light that the show is not interested in personalities. I was watching a championship game not so long ago, and the two contestants involved were so guileless, so not built for television, so drowning in enthusiasm to be on the show that I kept screaming at my laptop “YOU’RE SO CUTE I HOPE YOU GET MARRIED TO EACH OTHER”.

I’d feel bad about saying that if it wasn’t for the fact that I think Countdown contestants are the best contestants on television. They are sincere, enthusiastic, polite, and judged in a meritocracy.

I’d also feel bad if I didn’t recently join their lofty ranks. I am the obsessive, inverted-T-requesting, anagram-hoarding Countdown contestant, and I couldn’t be prouder.

My reasons for applying to be on the show should be obvious. I love it. When I was young my mother would always tell me to apply, but neither of us worked up the mixture of courage and getting-off-the-couch-and-doing-some-research to actually go ahead with the endeavour. I’d travelled a good bit in the past few years, and being in London it seemed like the right time. The stars were aligning, I felt.

As it turned out, they were. But not for the better.

100-Word Review: “Star Trek: Into Darkness”

I expected a solid action flick, not a Star Trek film, and was proven correct when Kirk and co. crapped all over the Prime Directive in the first twenty seconds. What makes “Into Darkness” work, though, is largely what made the first film work: solid action, big-budget effects, quippy one-liners, and now an added scoop of The Cumberbatch and some genuinely unexpected turns. What makes it fail is lazy, rehashed plotting in later sections and the “Mad Men In Space” feel that renders every female character about as practical and effective as the omnipresent short skirts in this “utopian future”.

Eva Gore-Booth, The Great Forgotten Woman Of Irish History

If you say the name Countess Markievicz to anyone in Ireland, they’ll nod their head appreciatively — or at the very least get that mild eyebrow twitch where they recognize a name. In the Irish rebellion of 1916, the Countess — or Constance Gore-Booth, as she was christened — was the most singular (if not sole) female figure in the dozen or so names that will forever be linked with the Irish revolution.

She was a fighter, an artist, a woman of high birth who rejected her roots to take up the cause of her adoptive country. She was, and is, a vital and vibrant part of Irish history, and a well-known one.

She also had a sister. But you don’t hear very much about her.

Eva Gore-Booth was two years younger than Constance but no less vehemently rebellious. As young girls they were both often spotted out and about on their bicycles near Lissadell, the estate which had passed along the Gore-Booth lineage for generations. Neither Eva nor Constance were ones for the gentle hem or the drawing room. They were both spindly, gangly, women with better things to do than sit about and be ladies.

In their younger years, and as they developed into adults, their views were very much shaped by their parents. Their mother, affectionately known as Gaga, was a sort of liberal traditionalist — she would do her best to support working women in the community, though she was still constrained somewhat by her upbringing and the given “natural law” of landlord and tenant. But she was openly encouraging of her daughters’ desires to not be constrained by their gender.

“The Crimson Horror” – Doctor Who

Dame Diana Rigg. I tell you, that girl’s career is really taking off.

After thoroughly enjoying Rigg tearing things up as Grandmother Tyrell in Game Of Thrones these past few weeks, here she brings the sass with much more creep to the role of a Victorian ne’er-do-good with plans for global domination.

“The Crimson Horror” is in many ways the most assured episode of this current season, even if it didn’t necessarily thrill me in the ways I’d like. It brings back the Silurian Madame Vastra, her girlfriend / sidekick Jenny Flint, and the potato-headed Sontaran Strax. First introduced in “A Good Man Goes To War” and last seen in “The Snowmen”, the trio have proven to be a reliable extended family for the Doctor and a critical and fan success.

What made the episode unusual and interesting from the outset was the structure of leaving the Doctor and Clara out of the adventure for the first third. While it’s probably good for Smith and Coleman to get some down time (or time to spend on other episodes), it also allowed us to approach the mystery from a purely Victorian standpoint.

A young man is investigating the death of his brother at Sweetville, a mysterious factory up North. He brings the case to Madame Vastra, and the three travel to investigate a sort of temperance movement helmed by intimidating Mrs. Gillyflower (Rigg in full scenery-chewing mode). Bodies have been found entirely coloured red, and a local mortician has dubbed it the Crimson Horror. More than that, Gillyflower is selecting pure specimens to join her in a new community adventure named Sweetville. When Vastra discovers an image of the Doctor imprinted on the eye of the latest victim, they realize that their favourite time-travelling dandy is involved.

This section of the story unfolds nicely, and while the banter of the Paternoster Gang isn’t as strong as they’ve been written before, there’s still good mileage in the dynamic. Strax is bull-headed and violent, Vastra is calculating and intelligent, while Jenny is the human face (and talented martial artist) who can infiltrate enemy groups.

Eventually, Jenny does find the Doctor — crimson-ed himself, but still alive — and they set about rescuing Clara, foiling Mrs. Gillyflower, and making peace with Ada, Gillyflower’s blind, sympathetic daughter.

“Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS” – Doctor Who

About a half an hour before this episode aired I got into one of those Twitter debates that can eat up your evening. A friend of mine was singing the praises of Russell T Davies, and how the show has gone downhill since then. I respectfully disagreed (while also screaming “THE DALEKS ARE TERRIBLE”), especially at one point when he referred to Moffatt’s run on the show as being particularly sexist compared to Davies’. I, again, disagreed. And I still do.

But my god is there something wrong with Clara “Oswald” Oswin.

Since the arrival of Clara I’ve been a fan. Jenna-Louise Coleman’s performance has been enjoyable, bringing a screwball comedy element to proceedings that made episodes like “The Snowmen” a laugh a minute. The way her character was introduced was also intriguing, a sense that she was a Companion unlike anything we had seen before – how could she be dead, but alive? What does she remember? How much is this Clara like the other Clara’s? And why do the themes of parenting, child-minding, and orphans keep coming up?

As her journey with the Doctor has progressed I’ve still enjoyed Clara, enjoyed Coleman, and enjoyed the banter she enjoys with the Raggedy Man.

But this evening’s episode made me ask myself an uncomfortable question: is Clara really anything beyond what I want her to be? Is she a woman — a real, living woman — or is she just a mystery wrapped in a quip wrapped in a summer dress?

The answer is yes and is it no, and I’m starting to think it depends on the writer.

I’ve talked at length before about the structure of how Doctor Who is run, and how it puts an inordinate amount of pressure on the show runner to hold the entire process together. As head of the franchise, Steven Moffatt is responsible for sourcing writers to work on episodes, as well as writing key episodes himself. Each of these writers works alone, and Moffatt is responsible for making sure that any arcs are kept going and that no episodes contradict each other.

He, and I imagine one or two more, are also responsible for script editing on what ends up on screen. For those outside the television industry, script editing can sound like a fairly light touch game – fix the grammar here, cut the length there, maybe bring out some more clarity or more character in this section etc.

In truth, in the five, six, seven, whatever number of drafts between the origination of an idea and the shooting script, there can and will be huge changes. Characters can disappear, whole story arcs cut out, endings completely changed. Screenwriting is as much, if not more, about hard graft and making things better than having the talent to come up with the good ideas in the first place. It is a tough, messy affair, where a lot can go wrong — and a show-runner should be on hand to keep things from going off course. Is Moffatt a weak show-runner? Is he having difficulty running Who and Sherlock and is that affecting the writing? I couldn’t tell you.

But I do know that in “Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS” the writer appeared to have no real knowledge of who Clara Oswin was. Which is problematic when she’s half your cast.