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.

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.

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’.

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.