Potato Head

I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to judge the Sontaran Stratagem, tonight’s Doctor Who episode, before having seen its conclusion next week. But hell, let’s do it anyway, starting with the titular villains. Not having seen the Sontarans before, I learned to like them very quickly. I think a lot of that was down to the voice – General Staal (or however we’re supposed to spell his name) in particular sounded like a grumpy 19th-century Duke stuck in a cramped space whilst trying to maintain his dignity and authority, and it worked perfectly. Thinking about it, such a sound should have undermined him and his race as threatening villains but I thought they pulled that particular aspect off very well. The scene in which the UNIT grunt got the height jokes out of the way was brilliantly played, both for the comedy and for the reaction of the Sontaran.

I do feel obliged to say that I liked Donna more this week. Her introduction to Colonel Mace was great – Tate delivered “I’ll ‘ave a salute, thanks” to much more laughter than any of her sketches have ever gotten out of me. She and her screen grandfather Wilfred have an excellent chemistry and that made her family scenes a great improvement on Martha’s frankly dull family last season. (The mum was a bit annoying though, you can see where Donna gets it from.)

Speaking of Martha, I was really interested early on in finding out how and why she’d become more of a soldier, and I was disappointed that more wasn’t made of it. For me, the scene in which she and the Doctor discussed it came too early to feel satisfying – there really needed to be more detail in between her intro and that resolutionary scene, so that we could see how exactly Martha works inside the organisation, what’s she like on giving orders and maybe actually fighting (though we might see that next episode, I suppose).

The cliffhanger felt very, very similar to those from the first parts of the seasons one and two finales, in which first the Daleks and then the Cybermen as well amassed their armies and started the invasion of Earth. “The army is coming!” is a powerful dramatic device but it’s starting to get a little worn – however different your enemies are they at least need to do it at different points in the episode rather than just the end of part one each time. Hopefully the fact that they’ve done this now rather than in the finale means that we’ll see something more original and small-scale at the end of the season, though considering how many companions we’re rumoured to be seeing again then I’m guessing that’s unlikely.

All in all, a flawed episode but a fun enough set up for part two, meaning that this is the first season so far since the relaunch of the show that I haven’t felt there was a real gem in the first four episodes. Shame, but RTD and the team have done enough over previous years to convince me to stick by them. After all, slightly disappointing by Who’s standards is pretty damn good by most others’.

Humphrey Lyttelton RIP

This is, without doubt, the saddest piece of news of 2008 so far, and I’d be willing to bet money that that’s still the case come the 31st of December. Humphrey Lyttelton, “Humph” as he was known to most, passed away yesterday evening at the age of 86.

A trumpet-playing jazz legend he definitely was, but I will always identify with Humph most for his inimitable role as chairman of I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue for 38 years, right up until his death. His astonishingly funny deadpan delivery and, quite often, sheer cheek, was a massive part of what made Clue what I believe to be the single finest radio programme of all time. It’s a horrible thought that he will never again wow the audience (in a how-did-he-get-away-with-that way) with a smutty double entendre concerning Samantha, the show’s long-suffering fictional scorer.

Humph was one of the very few people who I genuinely considered to be invincible. Much as I love it, I don’t believe Clue can continue going without him, so I shall make it my personal mission to find as many recordings of previous editions as I possibly can. That seems the best way to honour his memory – enjoying the fruits of his labour over again.

So, as Humph would say, as the 4×4 of destiny on the level crossing of fate stalls in the path of the speeding freight train of doom, and the signalman of time rushes to fetch his camera, I notice we’ve come to the end of the blog. I’ll be back, however, later this evening to discuss tonight’s The Sontaran Strategem, and hopefully during the coming week as I’ll have some days off to mention some of the things I’ve not had time to touch on recently. See you then.

It ain’t over ’til the Ood sings

So that’s it – David Tennant’s time as the Doctor is coming to an end. Or, at least, that’s what we were just given a huge, very unsubtle hint towards at the end of tonight’s episode, which I just finished watching not 5 minutes ago. It does seem something of a shame to start with something that really had very little to do with the episode, which by the way was excellent, but this is clearly the biggest news to come out of it. If the Ood’s statement that the Doctor’s song (in context of the episode, a metaphor for his life) will soon end is to be taken as truth, that surely means that the regeneration into the Eleventh Doctor will occur at the end of this season rather than after the four specials that will be shown next year, meaning that whoever takes on the mantle next will have a much more difficult task stamping their name on the role as quickly as Eccleston or Tennant have done.

By not giving Eleven a weekly season next year, I suspect that it’ll take much longer for the audience to get used to the new actor (or actress, but that’s 95% certain not to happen) – a job made even harder by the fact that following Tennant is going to be an unenviable task (well, not that unenviable – you’re playing the Doctor, for crying out loud). As fascinating as Christopher Eccleston’s one-year stint in the part was, it’s Tennant who has really defined the role for the new audience, particularly the younger generation who won’t have seen much, if any, of the original show (myself included). Of course, now the inevitable avalanche of guesses as to who will be the next to play the Doctor will now begin, and we’ll have to endure it for seven or eight weeks before somebody will leak the news despite Russell T. Davies’ best efforts. (I’m sure he’s got it sorted out already, he did much the same thing when Eccleston decided to leave and he’ll have been aware if Tennant was considering packing it in.)

So, naturally, I’ll start by venturing a couple of guesses of my own. Well, not really actual guesses – I’m pretty certain these won’t happen – but, for example, I think it would be so quirky and fantastic if John Simm took over. Aside from the obvious acting talent and energy he’d bring to the role, it would just be so ironic if the Doctor regenerated into the spitting image of his nemesis (though that would possibly rule out a future comeback of the Master in his most recent form, and I loved Simm in that role too much).  Alternatively, I’m sure that after the London mayoral elections, Boris Johnson will be looking for a new job.

I do think it’s a shame, though, that for the second week running much of the individual episodes has been overshadowed by a couple of lines of premonition and foreshadowing for later in the series. Once I can handle, but to do this sort of thing so overtly I feel undermines somewhat the early episodes. Today’s, as I said, was a very good one with a good twist that it’s actually us humans who are the baddies – I enjoyed the political subtext in this one, and Tim McInnerny was delightfully nasty as the token baddie, though this fate at the end was…a bit weird. Catherine Tate was, unfortunately, still very annoying. I shan’t miss her when she’s gone.

On the bright side – next week it’s Martha! Hooray! Also, UNIT and the Sontarans! Hooray! I wonder what part of the finale they’ll spoil then?

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Some housekeeping now – a heavier work schedule leading up to the start of my A-level exam period has already started constraining my ability to write as often as I’d like and will probably continue for a good month or so. I’ll certainly be updating weekly and will do more than that when I can, but bear with me.

A Saturday night in

Okay, so by one day I meant over a week. These things happen. Now, I was planning to do a blog reviewing the first episode of the fourth season of Doctor Who a week ago, but circumstances conspired against me – however, I don’t think that’s been such a big problem. I feel a lot better being able to write about the first two episodes than the one on its own, and that’s because, like last season, the season opened with a slightly more comedic first episode before getting down to a serious drama in the second.

I came into the first episode, Partners in Crime, trying to shed my mind as much as I could of the preconceptions I had of Catherine Bloody Tate (as you can see, I was not entirely successful). I was really disappointed upon learning that she was returning after her less-than-stellar Christmas special in 2006, and Partners in Crime didn’t really do anything to change my perception. She’s still shouty and annoying, especially as there is a constant fear while watching her that she may say “am I bovvered?” as a little writers’ joke, although she was good for the minute or so where she didn’t have to speak – her through-a-window conversation with the Doctor was great. Other than that, I wasn’t so keen on the episode as a whole, mainly because as Who is primarily a kids’ show, the humour is a little underdeveloped for my tastes, so I much prefer the hard drama and action episodes that make up the bulk of the 21st-century series. The whole thing was made worth watching, mind you, purely on the basis of that 5-second surprise cameo for Rose Tyler. Hooray! Billie’s back! I realised in those five seconds just how much I’ve missed her.

The second episode, The Fires of Pompeii, which aired yesterday, started an evening of TV which I am on the whole pleased to have watched, although the jury is still out on some of it (more on that later). I certainly preferred this episode to Partners in Crime – even Donna was slightly more watchable this week, Tate did a decent job with her reaction to the Doctor’s refusal to warn the people of Pompeii. I’m pretty sure neither Rose nor Martha would have made such a fuss about it (I shudder to think what Captain Jack would have tried if he’d told everyone they only had 24 hours to live) so that was a nice change. Some points of interest; that’s two for two so far in terms of episodes in which they’ve mentioned the Shadow Proclamation – to do with this season’s story arc maybe?; the excellent CGI throughout the episode, really impressive work on the fiery alien rock monsters in particular; and the warning that Donna “has something on her back”. I know there are rumours of her character’s story arc taking a turn for the sinister this season (it’s a comfort to think that Catherine Tate is the villain of the piece), and I’m looking forward to seeing how it’ll pan out.

Now, on to the rest of my Saturday night in. Unfortunately, my family, particularly the women in the house, are prone to falling into watching all of the inane talent shows like the X-Factor and (god help us) I’d Do Anything, or whatever Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest PR scam is, but occasionally this works in my favour. Having been around while they watched the week-long festival that was last year’s Britain’s Got Talent, I have to say that it was a good laugh, if only because it deviated from the singers-only format that weighs down the entire genre. Obviously, it was won by a singer, but Paul Potts was at least not singing in English, and he was awesome. So this year I decided I’d put my dignity to the side and indulge myself again, starting yesterday with the first bunch of auditions. And while so far I’ve yet so see anything both really different and really good (such as my favourites from last year, the drink-juggling Bar Wizards), it was worth the time I put into watching it, and the 13-year-old at the end of the programme is surely Paul Potts’ test-tube baby. It’s totally uncanny their resemblence, and I’m quite sure he’ll be there in the final live show. As usual, there was a lot of cringe-worthy rubbish on the show, but that’s quite enough talk about Piers Morgan.

My evening concluded with the show that followed Britain’s Got Talent on ITV, the award-winning American import Pushing Daisies. My interest in the show was only slight, and I only really thought about watching it when I realised that it was about to come on next. I’d heard of it in various SF and TV magazines and knew it was winning awards for being slightly quirky, but I really was unprepared for quite how quirky it is.

If you’re unfamiliar with the show, and I wouldn’t blame you, the premise is as follows: pie-maker Ned (Lee Pace) has the ability to bring dead things back to life with a touch, as he discovers at the age of 9 when his mother bursts a blood vessel in her brain and he resurrects her. Unfortunately, as evidenced when she kisses him goodnight that evening, if he touches those things again they die for good. What’s more, if he keeps that thing alive for more than a minute, something else will die instead to keep the balance – in this case, his neighbour, whose daughter “Chuck” (Anna Friel) he is in love with, drops dead instead. In the present day, a private investigator called Emerson (the excellent Chi McBride, last seen being excellent on House) finds out about Ned’s power when a man he’s chasing falls from a roof to his death only to touch Ned on the bounce and return to life. They start a business claiming rewards from murder cases by talking to the deceased and solving the crime. Eventually they cover the case of a woman who was murdered on a cruise ship – it turns out to be long-time-no-see soulmate Chuck who’s kicked it this time, and as he speaks to her in her coffin, Ned can’t bring himself to kill her for good, so some fat funeral director takes the bullet instead (metaphorically). Much romantic awkwardness ensues as the pair can not touch each other lest she keel over like the cadaver she really should be.

The thing about Pushing Daisies is that it’s the brightest thing on television. Immediately you are assaulted by full-power yellows and blues in corn fields that I’m pretty sure can not physically be that colourful, and from then on the tone stays exactly the same. Everything is sweet and sugary and happy, including a faintly nauseating narration by former Carry On regular Jim Dale, who if he keeps referring to Ned as “the pie-maker” may cause me to break my TV in frustration by episode three. It may well be that as the season goes on the continuous sweetness may eventually stop me watching but I was intrigued enough to decide to watch the next episode in a week’s time. Much of this is down to the overwhelmingly-cute Anna Friel (yes, that Anna Friel, who will, to her great frustration, probably always be known as the 16-year-old on Brookside who participated in the first-ever-in-Britain screen lesbian kiss), who is just totally compelling as the born-again village girl who muscles her way into Ned and Emerson’s enterprise. It’s great to see another English import do well overseas.

The big worry for me with Pushing Daisies is whether it can continue being interesting over more than one season (Friel is contracted for six-and-a-half years!) as the central premise loses its novelty. But I think I’m looking forward to finding out.

Gotcha!

Or not, for most of you. But yes, yesterday’s post was an April Fool’s. Hope you enjoyed it – I only remembered the date at about 10 AM, so the big prank article I’d been planning had to go in order to meet the midday deadline.

Somewhat ironically, I’m taking today off, but I’ll be back tomorrow. I hope you’re all still reading.

This is the end

First of all, my sincere apologies to readers who have become invested in this blog, I’ve really appreciated your readership and feedback since I started this project.

Unfortunately, I’ve come to the conclusion that I just can’t take the pressure of writing regularly. It’s become too much of a strain on my workload and the stress is starting to take effect. So, this is the last edition of the CDB Desk. It’s been fun.

Thanks again.

~ CDB