Turn Left

A little later than planned, here’s the Doctor Who review! So on Saturday night, it was the now-annual Doctor-light episode, this time spotlighting Donna (hoo-ray…) along a parallel universe. Well, mostly Donna, anyway.

While I appreciate the intention, the last thing I wanted to see was Donna Noble circa The Runaway Bride. Yes, it showed us how far she’s come (and she is a lot better than she was then), but if I never hear that shout again it will be too soon. Luckily, Tate did a pretty damn good job with the rest of the episode, despite Bernard Cribbins nearly stealing the show as cuddly old Wilf.

Of course, there was only one woman I was looking out for - Billie Piper! Woohoo. Can’t help wondering why she was talking a bit funny, though - I hope that’s some weird universe-hopping side effect and will go away next week - but she radiated awesomeness as Rose throughout, despite us learning absolutely nothing about what the heck’s happening to her (”all the universes are being pulled together” isn’t as expositionary a piece of dialogue as it thinks it is). Looking forward to seeing more of her next week.

I do have to wonder if they couldn’t have done the back-bug (as it will surely become known) in a slightly more convincing fashion. I’ve been impressed with a lot of the monster work in this series but the obviously plastic creature was one of the worst I’ve seen and really undermined the danger of the situation. Budget-saving for the finale? Probably.

I loved all the little nods to other episodes and the spin-offs, of which more in the finale - brilliant news. According to those evil media types who got to see the episode already, the entire of episode 12 (titled “The Stolen Earth”) is a massive ’squee’ moment. I cannot wait. I cannot wait at all.

Review: Coldplay - “Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends”

You lucky things, I’ve found some time in between my busy Euro 2008 schedule to write some pleasantly non-sport-or-Doctor-Who related words of wisdom.

Well, having been looking forward to it for quite some time, I was finally able to get my hands on the new Coldplay album on Monday, and having had three days to listen to it (and listen to it a lot) I feel I’m just about ready to pass judgement on it. It’s been pretty difficult, as Viva La Vida (no way am I using the full title, and it does at least say ‘or’) is a big step in a radical new direction for Chris Martin, Will Champion, Jonny Buckland and, uh, the other one.

The album opens with Life in Technicolor, a dreamy instrumental (aside from a few seconds of Martin wailing incoherently) with a great guitar hook that apparently once had vocals until someone described it as an obvious single. That says a lot to me about how committed Coldplay are to making this album different, so I’m already interested. Life in Technicolor doesn’t go anywhere in particular - it’s only two minutes or so anyway - but is a pretty good intro and leads on very quickly into the meat of the album.

And what a song to lead on to. Cemeteries of London is by far my favourite song on the album, and is right up there with the best the band has done. Chris Martin wrote it overnight in response to an assistant producer working with head honcho Brian Eno dismissing his songs as ‘incomplete’, which makes me feel that people should insult his songs more often (I got the feeling enough people did anyway, but apparently not). It’s a mesmerising ghost story that mixes the sinister with the wondrous beautifully. It’s Coldplay Do Folk Rock and it’s worth the price of the whole album. If you haven’t heard it already, find it.

Then comes another highlight (though not quite on the same level as the above), Lost!, which is made great by the amped-up percussion that becomes a theme of the New Coldplay as the album goes on, maintaining a steady but urgent rhythm that should become a highlight of their live shows.

Next is 42, Viva La Vida’s most complex track, that goes through three distinct phases (one of them twice) in the space of four minutes, contemplating life and death and such things in typical Martin style. The variations jarred a bit at first but having gotten used to them I’m growing to really like 42, particularly the Rammstein-inspired electric guitar riffs in phase two.

Now then, Lovers in Japan. Oh, and Reign of Love. Yes, in the most annoying thing Coldplay have ever done (and I include Fix You in this superlative), it’s the first of three tracks actually containing two songs each. The later two are ‘hidden’ tracks but they’re the most obviously placed hidden tracks I’ve ever seen. Sadly, while all three are vaguely interesting, they all bog down the songs they’re attatched to. In this case, Lovers in Japan is one of my favourite songs on the album, an optimistic jaunt that just avoids being too plinky-plonky by speeding up the piano part, but I feel far less induced to listen to the track because Reign of Love, that follows it, is by far the most boring part of Viva La Vida. It’s quite pretty but utterly uninteresting and I’ll be chopping the track in two as soon as I figure out how to.

After that is another two-parter, Yes and Chinese Sleep Chant, which, while both songs are better than Reign of Love, add up to the dullest full track of the collection. Yes sees Martin get rather disturbingly raspy in a song that sounds like a creepy stalker’s anthem. In theory, that sounds great, but Chris Martin is nobody’s idea of a creepy stalker and it all falls a bit flat. Chinese Sleep Chant is interesting, and fairly bravely fades the vocals into near-incomprehensibility as a wave of guitars carries the song through. It’s just two and a half minutes of the same thing, though, and gets boring pretty quickly. Let’s move on.

The title track is of course featured on That iTunes advert, which makes it sound brilliant, cut down to a couple of lines of verse and chorus. The longer version manages to strip away most of the impact of the chorus - there’s very little to tell between it and the verses after the first instance of the chorus - and it ends up being a bit too similar to the Really Exaggerated Sentiment Syndrome that troubled bits of X&Y. I’d rather have the 30-second TV version on my iPod, frankly, but it’s still enjoyable to an extent. Lyrically, it’s even bigger than before.

Then the album rockets back into form with lead single Violet Hill, an anthem led by a fantastic stomping drumbeat and big guitars (which continue to be one of the big selling points of the album) and, for a change, a one-line chorus that doesn’t get tangled in any of Martin’s overworked metaphors (”If you love me, won’t you let me know?”). This must be absolute gold live, and is the closest contender for Cemeteries of London’s Best Song On The Album crown.

Strawberry Swing betrays Coldplay’s introduction to Malian band Tinariwen, who I’ve been listening to before and are well worth investigating (think hypnotic African guitar and you’re most of the way there), and the influences are large. I had difficulties with it at first, much like I felt with Tinariwen, but I’m liking it more every time, being one of the most relaxing tracks and arguably the most different thing Coldplay have done.

Finally, Death and All His Friends closes the album (before being undermined by unnecessary Life in Technicolor reprieve The Escapist) with a slow-burning, words-light delight and an infectious closing chorus. Another of my favourites, but I really do wonder why they bothered with The Escapist.

All in all, Viva La Vida does require several listens before it can be properly appreciated but is well worth it. When it’s good, it’s brilliant, and represents a really interesting change of direction for the band. Contrast with U2, whose new album later this year will almost certainly be the same as How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (I’ll probably love it anyway, of course).

Talk is Cheap

After a clash with the football last night I was able to watch Doctor Who this afternoon, and - wow. I wasn’t expecting much from Midnight, mainly because of the clever way that the producers disguised the episode as a fun romp in the vein of Voyage of the Damned - last week’s trailer showed us none of the chilling tension that we saw throughout the full episode. All of my attention had been on the next three episodes anyway. Yet still - wow.

Midnight turned out to be the scariest episode of the series so far, easily surpassing the creepy Silence in the Library, and though it was a different type of fright than Blink, I think it was right up there with my much-trumpeted favourite ever episode for the scare factor. Lesley Sharp was mesmerising as the woman possessed by the voice-stealing monster without a name. As commented on by the (pretty good) supporting cast, her eyes were what really did it. I was expecting some hideous face contortion when she turned around to face us after that build-up, but the simple reveal of the same face but different aura was excellent.

The best bit was how scary we humans were made to look. The mob mentality kicked in subtly, and though as a viewer you knew the Doctor was right, you empathised totally with the passengers and genuinely feared for his life. It was sickening, but utterly compelling.

And I have to say, while she’s been getting a bit better recently - wasn’t it lovely to have an episode almost entirely sans Donna? I didn’t notice until she came back at the end just how much I really wasn’t missing her in the slightest. Luckily for me, next week’s ep is the Doctor-light one with much more of her, but it doesn’t matter, because ROSE IS BACK! YES!

I’m excited.

Doctor Who etcetera.

Firstly, apologies (again) for later-than-promised updates. Keeping up with all of Euro 2008 for the CDB Pod means about five hours of my day have to be devoted to that (it’s such a hard life, eh?), which has cut into time for the CDB Desk. Fear not, however, as I’m here to cover some things I’d been wanting to, but for the rest of the championships I’ll probably only have time to review Doctor Who each week. So, in about two and a half weeks, I should be able to settle in to a decent steady rhythm on both blogs. Go me.

So, better start with the Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead two-parter that aired over the last two Saturdays. And wasn’t it bloody brilliant! Coming just after the news that writer Steven Moffat is replacing Russell T. Davies as showrunner from season five onwards was released couldn’t have been a better time - we’ve been reassured completely with these two episodes that the show is in safe hands.

Where to start? The shadow monsters, the Vashta Nerada, were genius, playing tricks with lighting rather than huge special effects for maximum scare value. That throwaway line about being able to see the Vashta Nerada as the specks in sunlight was typical Moffat, finding little ways to terrify small children, like he did with statues in last season’s stunning Blink.

I guess we’ve also been successfully hoodwinked, myself included, by the line in Planet of the Ood warning that “the Doctor’s song must end soon”. Originally, as documented here, I’d thought that meant imminent regeneration for the Doctor, but no - clearly, the word song had a capital S, and I’m hugely looking forward to seeing River Song’s next (or technically first?) appearance sometime in the future. Is she a future companion, or, seemingly more likely, a future wife? Brilliantly played by Alex Kingston, her death scene in particular was heart-wrenching.

My favourite episode of the relaunched series ever? Probably.

A quick word on the Britain’s Got Talent and Pushing Daisies finales - I might have done more if I’d had time closer to their broadcasting, but such is life - rather good. I’d been rooting for dance group Signature in BGT since their audition (if you haven’t seen their first audition, YouTube it. It’s hilarious), but considering some of the dross that was in the final (Cheeky Monkeys anyone?), George Sampson was a worthy winner. I may now tune in for 2 minutes of the Royal Variety Show later this year (OK, no I won’t). Pushing Daisies has flown by, though, and I will be tuning in to season two (that’s assuming ITV don’t drop even more episodes). I’d like to see them pushing the format as much as they can, though, as I suspect more of the same may grow tiresome very quickly - mind you, I said that about the series as a whole after watching the pilot, so…we’ll see. I’m still, of course, in love with Anna Friel.

Tomorrow on the CDB Desk

Unforunately I won’t be able to get the Doctor Who episode review up immediately after the show airs tonight as I’ll be recording it while watching the Britain’s Got Talent finale, and later the finale of Pushing Daisies. I’ll be discussing all three tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to catch up with Who. See you then.

Notice: The CDB Pod

Just a quick notice that The CDB Desk’s sister blog, The CDB Pod, (http://cdbpod.wordpress.com) which focuses entirely on sport, will be opening for business tomorrow with a preview of the 16 teams heading to football’s Euro 2008 in just over a week’s time. That’ll be the main focus of the blog in its first weeks, with occasional comment on the cricket and any other sport story that catches my eye. See you there.

Euro-bysmal

The Eurovision Song Contest.

Yeah.

So, I guess we’ll start with the good. It was a pretty good show last night, with some fun songs and some…fun-to-hate. As usual, the hosts and, in particular, the green room presenters, were strange and slightly irritating. As usual, Terry Wogan was priceless in the commentator’s chair. What an absolute legend. (I won’t comment on the frankly brilliant suggestion of Wogan as the Eleventh Doctor…)

There were songs I genuinely liked; Iceland, for example, were catchy and exciting while being bland enough to appeal to everyone - at least, so I thought when I foolishly predicted them to win. I really, really should have known better. I blame it on alcohol. I also enjoyed the Armenian entry, which did rather better. I thought it was much more fun than the one-woman Ruslana rip-off that was Ani Lorak’s Ukrainian runner-up (the woman couldn’t really sing, but she didn’t need to, looking like she did), but fourth was a more than respectable finish.

And believe it or not, after having avoided it in the build-up to the final, I actually really enjoyed Andy Abraham’s UK entry. Wogan was right when he said it was our best in years, and I think the fact that it tied with the terrible Polish and German entries proves that the contest is almost entirely decided on politics rather than the music, which is a terrible shame. I was surprised when I heard Wogan suggest that there might be a Western breakaway in a not-too-distant future, but thinking about it it seems more and more accurate a prediction. I’d have mixed feelings about it - it’d be a real shame not to have all of Europe participating - but at least it might be fairer.

Speaking of predictions, I did rather better on others. Though I had quite enjoyed it myself, I guessed that the quirky French entry from Sebastien Tellier might find itself with the dreaded nul points, and though I wasn’t spot on, I took its relative failure as a minor success for me.  I was delighted to be vindicated in my assertion that highly-fancied Charlotte Perrelli (who, in the grey light at the start of her set, looks exactly like the life-sucking Wraith from Stargate Atlantis) bombed completely.

A mention has to go to Azerbaijan, whose painfully shrieking devil-and-angels mess was by far the worst song on the night and one of the worst in Eurovision for a long time, and yet somehow managed to garner over 100 points. Astonishing! (in a bad way.)

Finally, the top 3. It should have been obvious that Russia would win. Their song was pretty poor but inoffensive, with a handsome singer and famous skater (who knew Jurgen Klinnsmann could dance on ice?) to promote it. And, of course, the Eastern bloc got down on its knees and worshipped the fatherland like crazy. It was a crap winner, but at least it wasn’t Greece. Good god! How did that girl manage third, keeping pace with Russia for as long as she did? I nearly puked watching her performance, a tired, lazy cash-in on a mildly pretty (but out-of-place) singer, with utterly silly lyrics and an uncomfortably sweet tone. It was truly horrible, and I was actually mildly offended that it did as well as it did.

Eurovision, eh? I hate - hate - to love it.

A post on…Thursday?

Shock! Horror!

That’s right, after weeks of intent but no end product, here I am categorically not talking about Doctor Who. Yes, even the big behind-the-scenes news. I’ll save that for another time.

So what’s been interesting in the world of all things un-Doctorly over the last couple of weeks?

Well, the US Presidential battle quite definitely isn’t. Goodness me, it’s still not over! I’d never realised previously just how insane the US electoral system is, but I sure as hell see it now. If there are any Americans reading this, please tell me you’re bored of it too, or I shall be forced to abandon all hope for your kind.

The quality and quantity of bizarre news has been dropping recently, as well. The most interesting thing I’ve come across on that front is a chain email I received highlighting a “study” done in which two mobile phones are placed either side of an egg and call each other. After 65 minutes the egg was cooked. I’m sure that isn’t recent, though. If any readers can prove to me that there’s a really good slice of weird news this week, I want to hear that too.

I suppose I should touch on Eurovision, as well, though I’ll do a full entry on that topic after the show proper on Saturday. For the first time ever, though, there are not one but two semifinals, the first of which was on Tuesday night and the second is tonight, and though I was initially reluctant to watch any more than the final, I did end up sitting through the majority of Tuesday’s showing, which, for better or worse, allowed me to get my first look at the notorious Irish entry.

It’s difficult to convey quite how mad Dustin the Turkey’s act was merely with words. If you haven’t seen it, http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z28STzFIFBU <- there’s a video. I have no idea why it seemed to be received with boos the other night - I would have expected shocked silence - and though I’m glad this means that the UK now cannot lose to a puppet, I think I’m sorry to see it not make the final.

Well, it’s not as much as I normally squeeze out, but this should at least be a healthy kick up the backside to spark some more frequent updating around here. There’s a new sheriff in town. (or something like that.)

Oh, Christie!

I thought it appropriate that the title of this episode’s entry should be probably the worst joke I’ve done yet, as all I’ve heard in the build-up to The Unicorn and the Wasp seems to be the mind-numbingly poor joke “there’s a sting in the tale”. For crying out loud, is that really the only pun anybody could come up with? Alas, sometimes I worry about the state of our collective state of humour.

So, I suppose I should mention the episode itself. I have to say I enjoyed it a lot, somehow with a greater sense of freedom to do so than in some others this season, mainly because there were considerably less political overtones about the whole thing - Who got back to a plain old romp, and it’s good to see, especially considering that the trailer for the next episode, Stephen Moffat’s two-parter, looks as scary as his season 3 highlight Blink.

I revelled in the constant shoehorning of Christie’s titles into the dialogue, and of course the extension of that homage into the revelatory scene with everyone gathered in the lounge - I thought it was a cheeky, but not too over-the-top, way to send up Poirot and the like. Fenella Woolgar (what a great name) was absolutely superb as Agatha Christie, portraying her strengths and doubts with real conviction, and made an excellent spearhead for the episode in general.

Time for an update, then, on the continued ups and downs of Donna. I thought this was a bit of a mixed bag for Tate, personally, with some scenes that I loved (trying to cure the Doctor’s poisoning, her part in the exposition scene) and others I…didn’t, mostly when she wasn’t around the Doctor, like when she was investigating the locked room. Somehow her comedy abuse of power just didn’t come off for me like some similar jokes in the episode did. Perhaps Tate is best suited to making asides and having attitude while allowing the Doctor centre stage, but when she’s left to carry the scene on her own, she’s not quite able to grab it completely. (Borderline case is her excellent scene in the Sontaran two-parter, but the Doctor was around that time.)

I felt the ending got to be a tad much, what with the “she’s the best-selling author of all time” shpiel and all, but I’m willing to forgive it because I think overall I had more fun with this episode than any other this season. I do have to ask now, though, if the next “historical celebrity” we meet isn’t an author of some kind? We’ve had Dickens, Shakespeare and now Christie. I rather fancy meeting Genghis Khan or somebody else suitably un-Western, for a change of pace.

Oh, one other thing - that Doctor-Donna kiss was painfully gratuitous. A slap would have made much more sense.

Goodnight.

The Haths and Hath-nots

So. The Doctor’s Daughter. I concernedly hinted last week that shark-jumping might be imminent, and thankfully I was completely wrong. That’s not to say, however, that it was a great episode tonight. Chief among the problems was the amount of material that was trying to be fit into the timeframe - most of it pretty decent in its own right but the 45 minute slot meant that it all had to be condensed to the bare bones in order to get it all in, meaning that there was very little opportunity to really develop any of the ideas.

The Hath immediately had me intrigued - I think they’re the best of the new alien races introduced in the relaunched series, in terms of visual style. They had the ‘aww’ factor while still remaining mysterious and threatening in a different way. So I was disappointed that we didn’t get more exposition regarding what they are, where they came from, how they came to be working with humans - with whom they apparently can’t communicate - and so on and so forth. I suspect and hope that they will be getting the same treatment as the Ood, who after appearing in the Impossible Planet two-parter in season two were given a more revelationary episode this season.

Georgia Moffett, playing Jenny, the titular machine-baby, was very watchable (in more ways than one, I’ll admit), and did her best despite the really quite limited time she had to teach us to care about her character. Unfortunately that restriction was a little bit too much for me, so in a way I’m glad she’ll be back (which she very clearly will be). My question is when. It’s already been confirmed that this season’s finale will feature Donna, Rose, Martha, Captain Jack AND Sarah-Jane, so they can’t possibly be meaning to bring Jenny into the mix as well, can they? I’m convinced that not all of the above will be getting anything like the screen time they deserve when the finale comes anyway, so one more would only exacerbate the issues. Later this season is surely too early to pay off the set-up, so that must mean in the Christmas special at the very least…

…which leads me on to a very juicy theory that’s just now occurred to me. This is almost certainly not going to happen, but as soon as it came to me I fell in love with the idea, not necessarily because I think it would be the best thing for the show, because I’m not sold on that by any means, but because I think it’s just the sort of left-field idea that Russell T. Davies would love too. It’s been made pretty obvious so far this season that David Tennant will be leaving the building, so to speak, pretty soon, but reports confirm him filming the Christmas special. What if - wait for it - that’s when he’s replaced by Georgia Moffett?

Yes, I know, it’s completely mad. Because that would mean writing the Doctor out of his own show, right? Well, yes it would. But I can sort of see it happening for a little while, perhaps in the four specials rather than the full season the year after, before the Doctor comes back, just as a little interlude. Perhaps he’s lost at the end of the special and Jenny is off to find him, or some such. It would be a really bold, daring move that might just liven up the show a lot after the slight dip in quality this season.

But I digress - back to tonight’s episode. As I said earlier, time was an issue and this made a lot of things seem very heavy-handed. For example, if everyone’s dying so fast, why was Cobb an old man? Then there was the cut from Jenny’s semi-regeneration straight to her being chased to the shuttle, which disoriented me for a moment and I’m sure affected others similarly.

It is, of course, a lot easier to nitpick than to dwell on the good, and this episode was good. It just wasn’t great. I thought David Tennant was on top form, Donna less so - Tate back to her usual shouty antics again, which was a shame after a good day last week.

One last thing before I leave it for the evening - we’re starting to see a lot of stray camera shots on the Doctor’s old disembodied-hand-in-a-tank this season. Plot importance later, anyone? Next week - Agatha Christie. Awesome.

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In admin news, I am officially free from the restraints of school forever, so you can look forward to a lot more of the CDB Desk in weeks to come. Lucky you.