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.

Thank God for Emerson Cod

The thing about Pushing Daisies is that you really do have to watch it to fully comprehend just how unrelentingly sweet it is. It’s so stylistically different to literally every other show on TV right now that it makes for quite a large pill to swallow, but I am soldiering on with it, despite ITV’s attempts to make me do otherwise.

“But, ITV? Aren’t they the channel broadcasting Daisies?”, I hear you ask. And yes, you’re right. However, in a move not unsurpising considering its track record, ITV recently had a really good go at completely shafting its prime-time Saturday night show – by not broadcasting the second episode. You see, after whatever crappy programme they were previously showing in the 9 PM Saturday slot finished, there was only 8 weeks until the start of Euro 2008, which ITV has shared coverage rights for in tandem with the BBC. Pushing Daisies’ first season is 9 episodes long. Which, obviously, means that they couldn’t broadcast the whole season in a one-per-week format without damaging the football scheduling, which takes precedence because of its inevitably higher ratings.

Now, the sensible thing to do, which most broadcasters tend to do with such things, would be to show either the first or the last two episodes back-to-back to fit in the slot. But no. ITV decided that repeating American Pie 2 yet again was a better idea than showing episodes one and two consecutively. So, they got rid of episode two because “it was the best candidate to cut without damaging the continuing story”. To put this into context, the second episode of Pushing Daisies is widely acknowledged as being the first season’s very best offering.

Man, I’d really love to see American Pie 2’s viewing figures that night compared to the first episode of Pushing Daisies. Now, ITV assures us that the episode will be broadcast when the show is rerun, but as far as I’m concerned that’s nowhere near an acceptable compromise. Frankly, if ITV didn’t think it would be able to show the entire season, they shouldn’t have bid for it in the first place. Ridiculous.

But I don’t want to go on and on about that act of insanity, really I don’t. I want to say good things about Pushing Daisies. You see, wrapped in several layers of faintly nauseating sugar is a charming and quietly involving story, with visual and linguistic gags aplenty and one of my favourite new characters of recent times – private investigator Emerson Cod, played by Chi McBride.

Emerson is the one guy in the whole series who doesn’t bleed caramel. His deadpan cynicism, at times laugh-out-loud funny, is complemented by occasions of vulnerability and tranquility. (One of the things I missed when the second episode was cut was the revelation that Emerson knits – I really, really wish I’d seen that scene.) He always gets the best lines of the show, and McBride milks it for all it’s worth. I was doubly impressed considering that the last, and only, time I saw his work was when he played nasty corporate slimeball Adam Vogler in House, the complete polar opposite to Emerson Cod.

For completely different reasons, I love Anna Friel. Dammit, if Chuck isn’t the single cutest character I’ve ever seen on TV, I’ll eat my hat – and for her to stand out so much for that reason on a show like this is quite an achievement.

BORIS JOHNSON?!?!?!?

BORIS JOHNSON?

…

BORIS JOHNSON?!?!?!?!?

Hello, City of London! You elected BORIS JOHNSON as your MAYOR?

It’s times like this that make me glad I’m an expat. If the English are resorting to voting based on how funny a politician’s tenure is going to be, then the country really is going to pot. For the love of Pete, the man’s a muppet! A buffoon who barely has enough wits to walk straight (which he doesn’t always manage anyway)!

I’m shocked. I’m truly shocked. If this is the standard of Conversative politicians that people are going to elect, I may have to kill myself when the mercy killing of Gordon Brown at the next general election comes to pass.

Spuds Up

So. The Poison Sky. I said I wasn’t prepared to completely judge last week’s Sontaran Stratagem until I’d seen this week, and you know what? I’m still not completely sure. While there were some very good moments during the two-parter, there were also some disappointments and inconsistencies, and I can’t decide if either outweighs the other.

Let’s start with the good – Ross’ death. No, I don’t mean it like that – I was sorry to see him go, he made a good impression in the first episode – I say this because the manner it was played was brilliant. As the Sontarans basically kicked UNIT’s ass, his demise was a reminder of what a terrible price to pay every single human life is. I’ll miss him, and that’s a credit to Christian Cooke, who played him, for the energy he injected into someone who in truth we saw very little of.

While we’re on the subject of the Sontarans owning UNIT, though, I must say that the sudden turnaround after the Valiant turned up and Colonel Mace gave his mildly inspiring speech was stretching believability. For a race that had been established as pretty much invincible apart from the probic vent on the back of their necks, I found it hard to suspend my disbelief as suddenly the Sontarans were slaughtered left, right and centre by being shot in the front.  I don’t care how good that speech was, if the enemy has supercool armour that’s built up to help make fighting Sontarans complete idiocy, then you can’t kill them that easily. Frustrating, but I guess I can live with it, I thought at the time.

However, that wasn’t the only glaring mistake. The big Earth-save method, cleansing the atmosphere of the poison gas by igniting the atmosphere and therefore burning it off, should have not only incinerated the gas, but also used up essentially the world’s entire oxygen supply, razed buildings and destroyed planes, including the Valiant, and probably instantly killed billions of people. Now, that’s a pretty big thing to overlook. I often give Doctor Who some leeway when it comes to stretching the bounds of plausibility but that was just ridiculous.

Anyway, I seem to have abandoned covering the good, but there certainly was plenty, so I should pick up on it again. Again, I have to give Catherine Tate some credit for Donna in this episode. The SFX magazine review of the episode that went up immediately after the episode aired made an excellent point that though we’d seen previous companions do similar things, when Donna knocked out that Sontaran it was the first time that we really felt it was a hugely courageous thing to do. I wholeheartedly agree, in fact that was probably my favourite scene of the episode, so credit where it’s due.

That said, despite the good work of the companion this episode, the one thing that excited me most about the Poison Sky was that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment when the transmission from the Doctor to the Sontaran vessel was intercepted on the TARDIS monitor – for less than a second, an image of Rose screaming interrupted the communication. Woo! I’m less patient than ever waiting for her return.

In all, I guess I liked it – it was dramatic, thoughtful and exciting in spades – but I can’t love it. There were too many silly things that made no sense (I haven’t even covered them all), but I can just about put up with it and look ahead to next week, which looks…intriguing. I have confidence that the writing team will do it well, but I can’t escape the worry that the idea of the Doctor having a daughter smells faintly of shark-jumping. There, I said it. Now I know karma will ensure that episode 6 will be the best of the season…

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In other news, apologies for not getting a midweek blog up as I’d hoped. I’ll be posting again tomorrow with discussion on Pushing Daisies, and probably the London mayoral election too as a way to get away from television for a bit. Next week will be my last five days of school (ever, quite worryingly) so I’ll have time after then for a lot more of the CDB Desk.

I do want to say a quick thank you to those of you who’ve followed links on Facebook or the SFX forums, or even if you found this blog on Google (by the way, hands up – who the hell is searching for “is Catherine Tate alive”? For Pete’s sake!). I hugely appreciate the readership, and special thanks to those who take the time to comment and feedback as well.