Tuesday 28 August 2018

Cover Art: The DVD Years

When The Tomb of the Cybermen was first released on DVD back in January 2002, Clayton Hickman proposed changing the grey roundel template. His ideas were dismissed by BBC Worldwide on account of the uniformity of the collection. After all, Doctor Who fans would only moan if the DVDs boasted an array of templates. This hadn’t bothered anybody when the VHSs lost their beautifully painted covers but hey ho; the grey roundel template was staying. It’s bloody horrible. The logo and text are inexplicably right-aligned. The creamy font choice is ugly. The artwork is killed dead, squashed into a rectangle less than half the size of the cover. The band across the bottom detailing the years the actors reigned as the Doctor is pointless.

The template was never designed for art though; it was designed for a random photograph from the particular story. When I first saw The Robots of Death cover at Panopticon 2000, I was appalled. Tom and Louise were marketing it like bulls in china shops (well, Tom was) and it was just so bloody ugly. Spearhead from Space wasn’t much better. And what was with Remembrance of the Half A Smoky Dalek? The Caves of Androzani boasted the often-spoken-of stand-out image from that story: a blindfolded Peter Davison in a boudoir. Vengeance on Varos starred Forbes Collins as the Doctor and some extra called Colin Baker got down to his sweaty shirtsleeves. Clayton Hickman’s (to be honest, uninspired) eventual cover for Tomb was a blessed relief. The Ark in Space and Carnival of Monsters were similarly uninspired though I seem to recall an edict for Hickman to focus on monsters. It’s a tricky brief without a decent photograph of a drashig. And when the story is The Aztecs.
Surprisingly, The Aztecs was Hickman’s chance to show off and his cover art is strikingly beautiful. Perhaps its breaking of the template and utter gorgeousness was what convinced BBCWW to allow Hickman to go his own way with the covers from then on. Suddenly, after almost two years, we had artwork we could talk about again. Aside from the persistence of those bloody awful roundels, below are my Top Ten favourites! Enjoy!

10: THE WEB PLANET


Yes, it’s a direct rip-off of the Alister Pearson VHS painting, but when the source material is so beautiful, you can’t blame Clayton for thievery. What makes The Web Planet DVD cover different, however, is the glorious purple colour scheme. William Hartnell proudly looks to the stars, tearing right through that awful grey template, not a hero to be tied down by such rot as uniformity. This is one of Clayton’s best covers. Just as The Web Planet itself re-wrote the rules for what Doctor Who could be, Clay’s cover re-writes the rulebook as to how a cover can be composed. It paved the way for the likes of Lee Binding’s orange Terror of the Zygons eight years later. 

9: CASTROVALVA


It looks like a simple headshot but look more carefully and the intricacy of Clayton’s composition becomes clear. An underused and vaguely puckish image of Davison is flanked by two darkened images of the Portreeve and Shardovan, the potential villains of the piece, and for once the concentric circles that Hickman would begin to overuse make perfect sense. Each cutaway section of the circle contains a different section of the distorted city of Castrovalva itself. The pinks match the story’s design aesthetic and the covers matches a Doctor Who story’s usual sense of adventure but Castrovalva’s rare sense of philosophy and thought. 

8: THE CHASE


In later years, Hickman would occasionally adopt the throw-everything-at-it approach to cover design. Luckily, so did Terry Nation when he wrote The Chase and it’s got a cover to match. Against the classic title sequence of the early 60s (given a stylish purple wash), Hickman depicts several of the story’s multitudinous settings: The Empire State Building; the Marie Celeste and the planet Mechonus. In the middle, a mercurial Hartnell, fingers interlinked gives his weird Doctor photo finish whilst below him, the heart of the story – Ian and Barbara – stare at one another. Pus Mechonoids, the TARDIS and Daleks! It’s a real hotch-potch but it’s exactly the right cover for a galactic Chase.

7: THE ARMAGEDDON FACTOR


All the Key to Time covers are tremendous (barring perhaps The Power of Kroll due to its photographic paucity) but The Armageddon Factor marks a culmination. At its centre is the completed Key to Time, the sinister Shadow stands in the foreground victorious, whilst either side a haunted-looking Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are bathed in darkness. This feels like the cover to a season finale and for once in the classic series, it got one. 

6: THE INVISIBLE ENEMY


Yes, it’s the well-worn photoshoot with K9 on a lead but what a bloody photoshoot that was! The word iconic is overused but the image of Tom, Louise and K9 epitomises the thrill of late 70s Who. It’s a small wonder it’s never been used on a cover before. Behind, a burst of space colour and lightning, the Titan shuttle and the nucleus of the swarm combine to create a cover that thrills and delights the imagination. It matches perfectly the psychedelia of The Invisible Enemy.

5: PLANET OF EVIL


So the most obvious thing to say about the Planet of Evil cover is that it’s The Hand of Fear cover. However, it’s been given a masterful paint job by Lee Binding. Despite the pink overprint and the pink planet behind them, the Doctor and Sarah seem to be in genuine peril, Elisabeth Sladen’s expression one of real fear. Tom Baker looks desperate and heroic at the same time. Put simply, it’s such a great action shot it deserves to be used on two covers.

4: THE LEISURE HIVE


A Season 18 Doctor against a Sid Sutton starfield and an 80s Cyberman was precisely the wrong cover for Revenge of the Cybermen. For The Leisure Hive, however, (sans Cyberman) it’s inspired. Clayton picks a great image of Tom: he’s still bright and breezy, not quite the funereal Doctor of later that year. The starfield, used in the story itself outside of the title sequence, feels like a perfect fit here. The Hive itself, towering in the foreground is impressive and intimidating and even the Foamasi almost manages to look threatening. Not every cover could look like this, but for this sudden dive into the 1980s, it feels absolutely right.

3: PLANET OF THE DALEKS


It’s the classic photograph which sums up the story: Pertwee and Horsfall wrestling with the Dalek. This is such a deliberate homage from Clayton Hickman that he even includes Chris Achilleos’s upwards flying comets from the Target book cover. But why deviate when the original was one of those images which positively sums up the programme itself, let alone this particular story?

2: THE MIND ROBBER


When one thinks of the wonderment of The Mind Robber, it’s easy to remember images from the story itself but difficult to recall a particular photograph. With such limited choice of publicity shots, Clayton Hickman’s cover is all the more impressive. The toy soldiers look genuinely threatening in the foreground, looming over the viewer. The forest of words behind looks faithful to the (very sloppy) sets and yet atmospheric and frightening. Above everything, the TARDIS is breaking into splinters. Troughton seems to be in despair and the mysterious Master seems characteristically enigmatic. It’s a supremely well put-together montage, making a limited selection of photos work incredibly well.

1: DESTINY OF THE DALEKS


For me, Lee Binding’s Destiny of the Daleks is easily the best cover in the entire range. It’s not a difficult choice. No deliberation. It brings to mind pictures from the 70s Dalek annuals with all their dynamism and physicality. There’s Tom and Lalla racing through the adventure, the Movellans armed and ready to fire, Davros creeping slowly behind, the suicide Daleks front and centre and angry. It is a blisteringly exciting cover and for once, doesn’t come second best to the Target or VHS covers. Whilst Clayton Hickman was the backbone of the DVD range, producing an incredible amount of artwork and bringing the series to life in its new format, Lee Binding came along and offered something new. His works for Paradise Towers, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and The Sensorites were worthy of note but in Destiny of the Daleks, he produced something transcendent. This was a brand-new image which seemed to define Season 17. The artwork the show had never had back in the day. It remains tremendous. 
Near misses: Not every cover could make a Top 10 list. Here’s a few I deliberated with: The Aztecs, The Claws of Axos and The Seeds of Death (the originals rather than the Special Editions; simple and effective), The Androids of Tara, The Pirate Planet, The Twin Dilemma (yes, really!) The Tomb of the Cybermen, Resurrection of the Daleks and The Caves of Androzani (Special Editions) and Horror of Fang Rock!

JH

Saturday 25 August 2018

The First Doctor Adventures - Volume 2

I recently waxed lyrical about the merits of Big Finish’s first volume of stories featuring David Bradley’s TARDIS team. They presented a tangible flavour of the 1960s through a parallel world prism in which the original ship’s crew were replaced by other actors. Paradoxically, The Destination Wars and The Great White Hurricane typified the 60s story-telling style whilst breathing fresh life into the era for the 21st century. The result was one of my very favourite releases of 2017. Could Big Finish bottle that lightning formula twice?

Sadly no, not quite. The intention is clearly there though. We have a “sideways” story in The Invention of Death and another “pure” historical in The Barbarians and the Samurai which sound and feel precisely like 1960s Who. The story The Invention of Death most closely resembles, however, is the second half of The Sensorites. It is slow and torpid, lacking in incident and with performances muffled not by face masks but by voice distortion. Howard Carter’s sound design on both stories is terrific actually and the performances of The Invention of Death’s Ashtallahns are both audible and ethereal; it’s just that there are no other human voices, aside from our regulars, to latch onto and so the story starts to feel distant in a Web Planet kind of way. The plot, as simple as it is, only kicks in during Part Three and even then, the murderer gives themself away by checking themselves mid-sentence: “But I didn’t… Oops.” It’s exactly the kind of moment relished by William Hartnell as only his Doctor could spot such a little mistake like that. Well, him and 8 million child viewers. Of course, the point of The Invention of Death is that it is a rumination, a philosophising on the nature of death; it’s not about plot at all. The trouble is, it hasn’t really got anything to say about it, other than death being necessary for a species to make progress, which in the end is as sterile a reason for the need for death as it possible. John Dorney has a very specific agenda in writing this story, and he succeeds on all counts. It does indeed end up feeling like a slow, slightly crap, none-Dalek Hartnell sci-fi story. Whilst Dorney is usually one of the truly great Big Finish writers whose scripts I hugely look forward to hearing, in The Invention of Death he has set out with a flawed set of aspirations and whilst meeting them, has delivered something he is demonstrably more than capable of bettering.
The Barbarians and the Samurai is far more successful. Why Andrew Smith never continued to write for the show in the 1980s is beyond me. Full Circle is a masterfully constructed story and almost every one of his Big Finish scripts proves him to be a great talent. This is no exception. The Barbarians and the Samurai sits somewhere between Marco Polo and The Crusade. It has the same educational bent and Eastern exoticism as Marco Polo and the 4-act structure and sub-plots for the regulars as The Crusade. This is a taut script with a strong narrative motor, propelling events forwards and boasting an exceptionally strong sense of place. It is incredibly difficult to create a plot the likes of this – mistaken identities, swordfights and emperors - but Smith makes it look easy. Whilst some poor performances (one almost incomprehensible) threaten to knock the tale down a peg or two, for the most part this is as typically enjoyable as those Hartnell historicals of yore. 
I remain as unconvinced by David Bradley’s performance as I was when reviewing the first volume – his dithering delivery feeling like a first reading - but Jamie Glover’s Ian Chesterton has the rich steadfastness of a dashing 60s hero and becomes the boxset’s leading man, his voice a reassuring presence across the two stories. I’m also quite taken by Claudia Grant’s impish Susan. All told, I’d happily listen to more of this TARDIS team and am hugely looking forward to finding out what Marc Platt has in store for us with his Phoenicians
With one poor story and one very strong, this boxset, ends up with an overall score of 6 out of 10. (3 for The Invention of Death, 8 for The Barbarians and the Samurai, for the record.)
JH

Cover Art: The Target Books


One aspect of Doctor Who to really tickle fans’ artistic taste buds is cover art. Since that magnificent 1965 Annual, artwork has painted pictures in the minds of impressionable young fans. There were stories I’d never seen as a child but which I was deeply enthralled by due to the Target book artwork. My copy of Timeframe was probably my most well-thumbed Doctor Who book in 1994 and I would trawl over those full-page images in awe. The Mutants looked like a story offering the greatest monsters of all time and I ached to see it. (Imagine my disappointment when UK Gold repeated it some years later.) Dragonfire seemed amazingly atmospheric and exciting. (Imagine my disappointment, etc…)  But those images stick around. When one thinks of a particular story, the Target cover often springs to mind. Death to the Daleks is such a vivid and striking painting, that iterations of it have found their way onto VHS and DVD covers decades later. It’s perhaps more well-loved than the TV story itself.
So what are the best Target covers? Which radiate passion and immutability? Which are not just book covers but modern art in their own right? Here’s my Top Ten. As always, please feel free to disagree below.


10: THE ICE WARRIORS
The Chris Achilleos Target book covers elicit a sense of nostalgia, of yesteryear. Whilst he’s not my favourite artist, it can’t be denied that his images positively scream Doctor Who. His Ice Warriors painting is a strikingly simple design and says everything about the Troughton story that needs to be said. Once that image has been seen it becomes synonymous with the classic black and white tale. In its own right, the painting also represents a bold piece of 70s pop art. It is in its own way, quite beautiful. 
9: THE CHASE



Alister Pearson is my favourite Doctor Who artist. His likenesses are unfathomably faithful. His eccentric arrangements are memorable and bold. His three Dalek covers – The Chase, Mission to the Unknown and The Mutation of Time are tremendous paintings. His two Daleks’ Master Plan covers recreate the epic nature of the TV originals but The Chase paints a picture of a story far more accomplished than Richard Martin’s ham-fisted (though never less than enjoyable) effort. Pearson’s cover is colourful, exciting, varied and fun. It seems to be the influence on Clayton Hickman's DVD cover too – unsurprisingly one of his very best.
8: INFERNO

For a bright orange painting, the unsettling image of a bewitched Bromely atop Inferno’s silos isn’t half frightening. With scant publicity photography from the story itself, the choice of pictures to include on a JNT-enforced Doctor-less cover must have been minute. Artist Nick Spender chooses to embellish the one photo of Ian Fairbairn and it proves startlingly effective: a microcosm for the end of the world.  
7: GHOST LIGHT
Alister Pearson’s life-like paintings really come into their own during the McCoy years. It was tricky choosing a favourite from the moody covers of Paradise Towers, The Happiness Patrol, Survival and Ghost Light. All four radiate that weird late 80s/early 90s teenage sci-fi vibe the show was about to dive into with The New Adventures. Ghost Light entirely matches the menace and darkness of the TV episodes themselves, however, and offers the most splendid painting of McCoy, one side of his Doctor’s persona shrouded in blackness. So striking is the painting, it was later used for the soundtrack CD and the BBC Audio talking book. It captures the essence of a story - a moment - and becomes timeless.  
6: THE TIME MONSTER

Not a cover that is talked about much, but it’s an extremely well-conceived design by Andrew Skilleter. JNT’s refusal to allow older Doctors on the book covers made for some interesting artworks: Frontios, Fury from the Deep and The Seeds of Death to name but a few. But this one jumps from the page, the three images tessellating beautifully to form one bold masterpiece. For such a poor TV story, the ethereality of Skilleter’s painting brings it to rich, exciting life. 
5: THE DALEKS

Those three totemic novels - The Daleks, The Zarbi and The Crusaders - are mighty edifices in terms of Doctor Who fiction. The three covers are Chris Achilleos at his most inspired. The colour schemes are rich and vivid, with strange monochrome images of William Hartnell at the hearts of the pieces. But it’s The Daleks that remains the most spectacular. It is, for wont of a better word, iconic. If there is one image which sums up the Doctor Who frenzy of the 1960s, it’s The Daleks cover.
4: THE MASSACRE

The Massacre is perhaps the most missing of all the 1960s Who episodes. Its cover is a simple and beautiful arrangement by Tony Masero. The strangeness of William Hartnell in the monk’s habit, the TARDIS burning on the pyre behind him is such a memorable image that it secures the reputation of an already well-regarded story as an outright classic. Sadly, it does nothing to help picture what this staggering tale would have looked like. But if it had anything like the atmosphere of this painting, it would surely look just as good as it sounds. 
3: THE WHEEL IN SPACE

I fear The Wheel in Space would be a pretty average story were it to miraculously return to the archives. Dare I say it, at times, it’s pretty boring. However, its partly-missing status does elevate it; we can imagine it to have the brooding majesty of the book cover by Ian Burgess. Its depiction of the vast emptiness of space, the one-armed Cyberman battered by the hostility of its environment is a moody and evocative image. What a shame it’s the rarest Target book of them all, almost as rare as its TV counterparts. Perhaps if all that remained of The Wheel in Space were the book cover, it would be remembered with far more affection.
2: HORROR OF FANG ROCK
Jeff Cummins’s haunting image of Tom Baker lingers long in the memory. It has since been replicated by the Black Sheep VHS cover, Clayton Hickman’s DVD cover and the BBC soundtrack CD. None have quite matched Cummins’s original though. Its bleak and atmospheric darkness matches entirely the creeping menace of the TV episodes themselves. 
1: THE REIGN OF TERROR
It’s one of the great publicity photographs of William Hartnell from his favourite story to boot. Here, however, it’s artistically rendered against a backdrop the TV serial couldn’t hope to portray: the guillotine looms in the distance, the executioner poised and ready. One can almost hear the jeering crowd, their arms punching the air in the foreground. And there, in the middle of it all, is the Doctor, flanked by soldiers, that strange stoic expression across his face, steeling himself to face the violence of humanity. This isn’t just a magnificent portrait, it’s an image of revolutionary France, an image even the Doctor can never hope to impress upon.
Near misses: For a while, the following titles were in my possibility list, and I struggled to whittle it down to ten. However, for completeness’s sake, here’s a few I had to say goodbye to: Alister’s Pearson’s blue-spine Curse and Monster of Peladon, as well as his Smugglers and Mission to the Unknown; Jeff Cummins’s Masterful Doomsday Weapon, his Face of Evil and the aforementioned Mutants. And also Chris Achilleos’s most exciting cover: Planet of the Daleks as well as Steve Kyte’s miraculously sinister Horns of Nimon.

JH

Wednesday 8 August 2018

Nu-Who Seasons Ranked

With ten series of the relaunched Doctor Who under the programme’s belt, it feels like time for yet another Top Ten. It’s funny how, as fans, we yearn for lists such as these, and why DWM polls are so popular and weighted. During my teens, though it somehow feels shameful to say it, my bedroom carpet was full of scrawled-in-biro lists of cliff-hangers, monsters, Big Finish audios, missing episodes, the works. There was always some aspect of the show that could be represented in list format. It’s sad but it’s just this sort of list-making that allowed me to memorise all the Hartnell episode titles chronologically and why I know all the Big Finish Month Range in order from about 1-150 including their respective writers. If I were strapped to a chair and tortured, I could probably eek out of my spectrum-based memory all 240. But the best sort of list was always one that could be changed. A Top Ten Missing Episodes list could change if I happened to listen to the cassette of The Macra Terror for the thirtieth time a week later. (Oh, what a terrific endeavour that was: “Jamie was tossing relentlessly.”) So here, as it suits me today, is the Nu-Who series ranked, from worst to best. In 1998, ranking seasons was so much easier. The best was 14 and the worst was 24. Now, there’s a new playing field to kick seasons (or series rather) around on. As always, please feel free to agree or disagree below!
10

Series 6
During Series 5, fans were thrilled by the fact that a future version of the Doctor from The Big Bang waltzes up in Flesh and Stone, eight episodes earlier, without ceremony, just dropped in. Actually, they shouted an awful lot about how clever and brassy a move it was (ignoring the fact that the dialogue doesn’t really work, The Big Bang being written a good while later). But Steven Moffat got the message: timey-wimey was the order of the day and so Series 6 was based around one giant astronaut-shaped loop… and it doesn’t really work. It’s far less than the sum of its parts, its reach extending far further than its capacity. The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon, The Rebel Flesh, The Almost People, A Good Man Goes to War, Let’s Kill Hitler, parts of Closing Time and finally The Wedding of River Song all form an important part of the overall story of the season, which to be frank, isn’t all that engaging: the Doctor definitely WILL NOT be killed on that beach; we just have to work out how he gets out of it. Which we don’t need to because the solution is spoilered instantly when the Teselecta turns up in the Previously On Doctor Who montage at the beginning of the finale. None of these episodes can be enjoyed in isolation and once their secrets are revealed, there’s nothing much left to thrill at. Stand-alone stories include The Curse of the Black Spot and Night Terrors (both very poor), the overwrought and overwritten Girl Who Waited and the massively over-rated Doctor’s Wife. Series 6’s biggest offence however, is in its casual take on the kidnapping of a baby. Amy and Rory are not shown to give much of a toss. When Night Terrors comes along, they’ve happily forgotten about the loss of their daughter and are having fun with boy George instead. Why they hell they aren’t making demands of the Doctor who has singularly failed to explain why he hasn’t found Melody is beyond me. The Theft of River Song story simply doesn’t ring true. It’s adolescent and ill-considered. The season does have its moments, of course. Day of the Moon’s pre-titles sequence is majestic. Closing Time is understatedly wonderful and The God Complex is amazingly well shot. Which goes to show that even when Doctor Who is overstretching itself, it can still pack a punch. 
9

Series 9
When Steven Moffat announced that the show was going to two-parters, many (myself included) were delighted. Finally, the traditional 4-part structure of yesteryear could make a return! There was the tantalising thought that stories could be edited down to 25-minute instalments and sit happily alongside the classic series. However, what was never considered was that the sluggish pace of some of these stories and the flatness of their direction meant that they wouldn’t hold a torch to the best of the classic series. Steven Moffat opens the season with his version of Genesis of the Daleks, which is boring, drab and lacking in energy, despite some terrific scenes between Julian Bleach and Peter Capaldi. Under the Lake and Before the Flood are perhaps more like what fans had in mind (exciting, traditional bases-under-siege), but then we’re into The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived and The Zygon Invasion/Inversion which sap all the breeziness and froth from the series and make it arduous to get through. Even Face the Raven drags in the middle. Things obviously pick up with Heaven Sent, although after a series of slow, introverted stories, it’s perhaps not the best time to tell this tale of one man’s solitary grief. The spark, the vim, the very essence of the show isn’t there during much of Series 9 and it was a blessed relief to find it back with abundance in Series 10. Even the titles in Series 9 are flat and uninviting. Honestly, The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived?! And who exactly are the Magician’s Apprentice and the Witch’s Familiar? What could be a tantalising fan mystery is met with a disaffected shrug of the shoulders simply because the story it chooses to tell just isn’t very good.
8


Series 4
Series 4 climaxed with Journey’s End, officially the Number One Most Watched Programme of the Week. Well, there’s no accounting for taste. The public tuned in for Time-Flight too. Series 4 marked the apotheosis of David Tennant’s time as the Doctor and was perhaps the best publicly received of all Russell T Davies’s series, perhaps of every series ever.  It’s broad, populist and fun, there can be no doubt. There are also moments of excellence such as Turn Left and The Unicorn and the Wasp. Forest of the Dead too is avant-garde and hugely ambitious. Midnight is a brilliant last-minute addition to the stories on offer this year. But many of the remaining tales suffer. The Doctor’s Daughter is perhaps the 21st century low. Planet of the Ood has a stack of problems. There’s a cynical feeling that Partners in Crime and The Fires of Pompeii are a re-tread of a successful formula which is already out of date. Whilst The Stolen Earth is thrilling in its returning elements, reckless pace, epic scale and nation-changing cliff-hanger, Journey’s End truly disappoints to the point of embarrassment, with Freema Agyeman’s Martha smiling at the camera as she pilots the TARDIS the final twist of the knife. What’s more, there is one big problem at the heart of this season which is truly lauded elsewhere in fandom: Catherine Tate. Sorry, but she’s just not all that good an actress and her and David Tennant make for the least dynamic TARDIS crew since the series’ return. At the climax of Turn Left she’s unbearably screaming her way through scenes. Yes, she can deliver the goods when it comes to the comedy, her mime through the window in Partners in Crime the highlight of the episode but ultimately she’s a very average performer and after the love story with Rose and the unrequited love story with Martha, her narrative journey simply isn’t as interesting. Thank God she brought Bernard Cribbins with her, who is delightful in every scene. Series 4 does have its very high points for sure, but there’s a lot of middling conveyor-built Who here too.
7

Series 7
Definitely a game of two halves is Series 7. The first half, despite its weird title sequences and uneven tonality, is easily the best. The first three scripts really do feel like Doctor Who films, fulfilling this series’ agenda to tell a movie every week. Those opening stories sing and it feels like Doctor Who has got its mojo back. The Power of Three is off-beat but stumbles (for various behind the scenes reasons) at the final hurdle, and The Angels Take Manhattan suffers as an ending for Amy and Rory because it’s not quite sure of its time travelling rules and the emotional pay-off is muddied by the technobabble. Rather than cry with our heroes, we’re busy working out what just happened. But 3 out of 5 sure-fire hits ain’t bad. There’s a lot to like in the second half of the series, with Clara stepping aboard the TARDIS but not all that much to love. The new, sparkly titles with their very solid TARDIS and Matt Smith’s face in the stars are beautiful though! The Bells of Saint John and The Name of the Doctor make for terrific examples of season openers and finales, but in-between, there are half-finished ideas and not-quite-working scripts put through the production machine too early. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS is a mess, The Rings of Akhaten is repetitive and Nightmare in Silver isn’t sure what story it wants to tell. The Crimson Horror is a stand-out episode although it’s so atypical that by this point in the season it feels like a more regular episode of good Doctor Who would be preferable. Still, the stories have great variety and there’s always something new to look at every week with Series 7. It feels fresher and more dynamic than Series 6 and truly manages to illustrate the breadth of the Doctor Who universe. It also pleasingly starts with a giant Dalek and finishes with a giant TARDIS.
6

Series 5
Matt Smith’s first season proved, it proof were needed, that Doctor Who could survive and indeed be brilliant without David Tennant or Russell T Davies. The Eleventh Hour will forever be the episode to beat in terms of a Doctor’s inaugural adventure. The whole series looks beautiful, its colour palette bold and crisp. It has moments of great beauty, the final ten minutes of Vincent and the Doctor providing something truly special and The Lodger understatedly charming throughout. The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone represent traditional, action-thriller Doctor Who and doesn’t stop for breath. It’s terrifically well shot to boot. Yes, the series has its shortfalls, the fat Daleks among them. The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks are doubly disappointing after the great monolith that is The Eleventh Hour. The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood feel compromised and unspectacular due to budgetary issues and to have two low-cost episodes (Amy’s Choice and The Lodger) in the one season, even episodes as good as these two gems, feels uneven. However, we end with The Pandorica Opens (utterly compelling) and The Big Bang, the most original series finale up to that point. It must be mentioned too in any discussion of Series 5 just how magnificent Matt Smith is. Given enormous pressure, he puts in the most creative, charming, mercurial and unpredictable of all his performances. I love this gentler, more innocent take on his Doctor and I wish he’d stuck around for the next two years. This is easily his best performance. Despite a few mis-steps, Series 5 showed the world that Doctor Who was here to stay. Forever.
5

Series 10
Steven Moffat’s last hurrah and quite unexpectedly he starts all over again, with the story of a mysterious university professor who’s been on campus more than 70 years. To be honest, the story of the mysterious professor never really ends, rather it gets forgotten about. But after the sometimes stultifying Series 9, this is so fresh and full of new-found energy and purpose, it’s easy to disregard that fact. And when the series ends with World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls, it feels churlish and a little foolish to criticise it for not being more about a mysterious professor in a university. Like Series 7, there’s enough stand-alone content here to feel the vast breadth of the series across its episodes. The future is represented as both the utopia of Smile and the dystopia of Oxygen within three episodes. There’s Scottish folklore and Victorians on Mars, the Thames winter frost fair and even Sydney Opera House. In Bill Potts, we have the perfect, wide-eyed (relative) innocent to run through the cosmos with. This is a fun, free-wheeling ride of a series and even if it doesn’t stick quite to the narrative rules of how a season arc ought to progress, it’s all the better for it.
4

Series 3
Easily the best of Russell T Davies’s “story arcs,” the Harold Saxon narrative is weaved with supreme dexterity throughout the series. It provides cliff-hangers to The Lazarus Experiment and 42, becoming an integral part of the overall tale in a way that mentions of Torchwood or vanishing bees simply don’t. The huge cleverness at the heart of the series is the fact that Martha must not recognise the Master as the Prime Minister she’d known from as early as Smith and Jones, so Russell T Davies invents a new Master on Malcassairo – the ever-divine Derek Jacobi – and ties his story into the otherwise unrelated Human Nature via the fob watch. There are so many links in this narrative chain, that the episodes become utterly co-dependent but prove massively enjoyable in their own right (and can thus be watched individually) in a way that Series 6 couldn’t manage later. Last of the Time Lords may be a leap too far for some and to be honest a Gollum Doctor doesn’t sit right with me, but the series makes up for it in those last few minutes of Utopia, in Blink, in Gridlock, in Martha Jones’s mature self-realisation, in Captain Jack’s bravado return, in the Lazarus monster, in the Judoon. There is so much greatness in Series 3, the fact that its finale falls short of expectation, in the end, doesn’t really matter.
3
Series 2
Funny how this series has begun to sink slightly in fan estimation, when it consists of such strong material and was so adoringly received at the time. The run from Tooth and Claw to The Girl in the Fireplace is probably the finest consecutive triplet since the show returned. The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit form an out-and-out masterpiece. Doomsday is a vividly exciting gut-punch of a finale. The story of the parallel worlds is written across the season beautifully, the loose ends from The Age of Steel tied up by the series’ conclusion. Love & Monsters in its off-beat confidence is a massively underappreciated gem. There are lows of course: The Idiot’s Lantern, Fear Her and (aside from its stonking cliff-hanger) Army of Ghosts are all rather drab affairs. But the highs more than make up for these blips. The Rise of the Cybermen climax is quintessential, edge-of-the-seat Doctor Who, and it’s not even the best the show has to offer. Ultimately, it’s the heart-breaking conclusion to Rose’s story (which should never have been rekindled in Series 4) which lingers in the memory far longer than the closing credits. This is the Doctor Who which people will talk about in generations to come: “Remember the One with the Werewolf and Queen Victoria. Remember the One with the Devil Inside the Planet. Remember the One on the Beach.” “Yes,” they’ll reply. Because they definitely will. 
2
Series 1
No one could have predicted it. No one would have dared to predict it. Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Phil Collinson and certainly Mal Young didn’t even come close to predicting it. Doctor Who came back in 2005 to absolute rapture. It was beloved by everyone in an instant and every narrative decision made on that first series was perfect. No Time Lords, Daleks enter half-way through, no Cybermen, no Master, the TARDIS translation circuits, Rose’s footprint in the snow, no alien planets, no “sci-fi” CG effect for the sonic screwdriver. It comes down to the tiny details like that. This is as user-friendly as Doctor Who has ever been. It looks (and often sounds a lot) like Shameless. There is a richness to the scope and colour of the stories (from 1869, through 1984 to 200,100) but a directness of purpose: this is the story of Rose and her encounter with the Doctor, her Lone Ranger. This is a story about the human race in all its forms and its past, present and future brilliance. It’s about steak and chips as much as it’s about the Game Station. Yes, there are some production blunders (the Slitheen costumes, some naff CGI, Noel Clarke) but the show has such a strong idea of what it wants to be that even if the costumiers or the FX boys or even Chris Eccleston (who simultaneously blazes and bombs) don’t, it’s still got Success running through it like rock. This was the return of a legend and the legend, for once, was the truth. 
1
Series 8
Uncelebrated, even unremarked upon, Series 8, for my money, is the most mature and well-written Doctor Who series of all time. The dynamics aboard the TARDIS for once feel like real drama. Just watch the end of Kill the Moon: that interplay between Clara Oswald and the Doctor is perhaps the most real moment – or as real as Doctor Who can possibly be – of drama between any time travellers of the past 55 years. It’s striking how much more genuine Clara seems this year compared to the series before and even the series after. She’s a teacher with a life on Earth which has a fractious, damaging relationship with her life beyond it. The deception at play between her and Danny is at times nail-biting. The great tragedy of the series’ ongoing story is of course that Clara really does love Danny. But she also really loves the adventures. And she simply cannot decide which is more important to her because often in life, we just can’t. The decision is made for Clara when Danny is unexpectedly killed, although even in death he has his own demon to face: the Afghan boy from his army days. Clara does get a chance to say goodbye in the graveyard, a long scene brimming with sadness. But for once in Doctor Who this is not a romantic sadness, or a sci-fi sadness, this is close to despair. As Kate Stewart flies from the presidential plane, the Doctor’s cries signal his own desperation too and his later speech about having “a friend once” is replete with anguish. The finale is doom-laden and tragic and ends with a great gulf of emptiness, not knowing quite what our heroes will do next. Last Christmas forms a vital part of the season (unlike most other Christmas Specials and broadcast only a few weeks later), acting as coda, wrapping up those dangling emotional threads, grieving for Danny and for Gallifrey, bringing the Doctor and Clara back together again. The series also puts out some solid gold stand-alone tales: Mummy on the Orient Express, Into the Dalek, Deep Breath, the massively under-rated and hysterically funny Robot of Sherwood and Time Heist to name but a few. Only In the Forest of the Night lets the series down and that because its very concept is ill-conceived. Yes, trees invade London but where are all the people? It simply doesn’t convince. Still, amongst such dramatic giants, the story feels insignificant and doesn’t detract from a season of such incredible quality. There are some blistering directorial debuts too: Ben Wheatley’s direction on Deep Breath and Into the Dalek is truly cinematic, both using vividly different colour palettes and painting vividly different worlds. He even manages to shoot the Daleks differently. Rachel Talalay provides a superbly shot finale cementing her reputation as the Capaldi Director from here on in. And Peter Capaldi is completely, astonishingly good as the Doctor. Jenna Coleman is completely, astonishingly good as Clara and the cliff-hanger on the steps of Saint Paul’s is as exciting and vital as Doctor Who can ever hope to be. The series may dabble with darker ideas and be a little less family-friendly than others, but for one year only, it didn’t matter. Because Series 8 remains stunning. It is as beautiful a body of work as any HBO series. The Half-Face Man says, "We will find the Promised Land." On this evidence, I think Doctor Who already has.
JH

Sunday 5 August 2018

The Yorkshire Who-athon and The Stormy Capaldi Survey

Just before Christmas, I went up to Yorkshire to a mate of a mate’s cinema room for a Who-athon. Seven of us chose either a Nu-Who 45-minute episode or two 25-minuters from Classic Who. The playlist was an eclectic one:

DAY OF THE DALEKS – EPISODE 2
DARK WATER

THE REBEL FLESH
THE ALMOST PEOPLE
THE WEB OF FEAR – EPISODE 4
DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS – EPISODE 1
PLANET OF THE SPIDERS – PART SIX
THE CRUSADE – THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE
INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS – PART THREE
For those eagle-eyed mathematicians out there: No, we didn’t manage to get through everyone’s choices but we at least enjoyed one each! We were gluttonous when it came to Pertwee and suffered a paucity of Tom. And not a single 1980s episode reared its head. Nor, perhaps remarkably a Tennant story. Averaging things out, Tom and David were the favourite Doctors of the group broadly speaking so to have none of their episodes screened was a surprise.
But the thing that struck me the most about this motley rabble of fans was the feeling of doom, the feeling that the end was in sight for the good Doctor, and that the fun of the show had evaporated. All but one person thought of Capaldi’s time as the Doctor as something of a mistake. Daggers were pointed in the direction of Steven Moffat and the idea of casting a female Doctor was a cause of concern for everyone, even those two people who supported the notion. It was quite sad really, to see a group of lifelong fans so negative about the thing they love, about the thing that brought them together. And I think they felt sad too.
Knowing that there was a probability of such an atmosphere, I cheekily decided to hand out a devilish survey. This survey concerned the Capaldi era and fans’ thoughts thereof. The results made for compelling reading. I couldn’t quite believe what fans found to be offensive. After the screening of Dark Water, one fan commented that it was “totally tasteless” whilst another felt “Doctor Who isn’t the place for these things.” I felt like a lunatic, surrounded by people who loved the show, decrying what I thought to be a pretty phenomenal episode with an absolutely riveting climax. Equally, when I derided The Almost People for being the shambolic mess that it is, I was greeted with anti-cries of “It’s not that bad,” and “I never lost interest,” and “It keeps you thinking.” What was going on? Fandom it seemed had turned on the show and its victories were all squarely rooted in the past even when the past was demonstrably dogshit.
Other things I learnt in no particular order: 
·         Watching episodes out of context and in isolated form breathes new life into them. Day of the Daleks Episode 2 had an urgency about it, missing when the programme is digested in one fell sitting. Episode 2 without Episode 1 is still a perfect little vignette of a programme. Invasion of the Dinosaurs 3 has its own little idiosyncrasies, Sarah Jane repeatedly leaving messages for the Doctor before she goes out confined to this episode alone.
·      The Web of Fear is a masterpiece of atmosphere. If only Episode 3 existed, it could be perfect. 
·         Matt Smith’s performance veers wildly, sometimes ending up indulgent and embarrassing, other times hitting notes of absolute beauty. (This is frustrating in the extreme!) 
·         On the basis of four Pertwee instalments: the actor is completely outstanding in every single scene. He is pitch-perfect, hugely charismatic and you cannot take your eyes off him. 
·         The Crusade is sumptuous in every single respect. “And some half-started morning while you speakers lie abed, armies settle everything, giving sweat and sinew, bodies... aye and life itself.” 
·         Watching a 2-parter like The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People essentially back to back can sap the life out of it. Especially when it’s crap.
All told, it was an incredibly interesting day, seeing fan consensus on certain subjects proving fascinating. I really was amid the “Moffat Must Go” brigade. With that in mind, the results below may prove very interesting!
The average age of the survey completer was 46, with the eldest being 66 and the youngest (that’s me, by the way) being 32. All the fans were men but my wife helped bulk out the results afterwards. Whilst she wouldn’t call herself a fan, she’s seen every episode since Eccleston and her opinions did tend to chime with her fellow scribblers. Several other surveys have since come my way via email. 
I asked the question: Are you happy with a female Doctor? The majority answered No, with only one person answering Yes. The best negative answer stated that the fan was “cautiously optimistic.”
When asked to describe the show’s journey over the last ten years, three people independently answered that the series had seen a “slow/spiral of decline."
Finally, it was my mammoth task to collate all the individual story scores. (They were all marked out of 10, although three fans admitted there were several episodes they hadn’t seen and so the averages were adjusted accordingly.)
Several episodes completely divided opinion. Both Death in Heaven and Face the Raven received scores of 10 and 0. Listen and Heaven Sent received scores of 10 and 1. For some, these proved to be the very best and very worst of the Capaldi era! The Woman Who Died and The Husbands of River Song had been watched by the fewest people. Twice Upon a Time had yet to be broadcast and only four people sent results to me on the Christmas special, skewing the average score. 
Below, you’ll see the full chart, from best to worst.
1
WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME
8.11
2
THE DOCTOR FALLS
7.78
3
MUMMY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
7.44
4
OXYGEN
6.89

EXTREMIS
6.89
6
DEEP BREATH
6.78
7
THIN ICE
6.67

THE ZYGON INVERSION
6.67
9
INTO THE DALEK
6.56

THE PILOT
6.56
11
KILL THE MOON
6.44

THE RETURN OF DOCTOR MYSTERIO
6.44
13
DEATH IN HEAVEN
6.38
14
THE ZYGON INVASION
6.33

LAST CHRISTMAS
6.33
16
EMPRESS OF MARS
6.22
17
KNOCK KNOCK
6.11
18
SMILE
6.00

THE HUSBANDS OF RIVER SONG
6.00

UNDER THE LAKE
6.00
21
BEFORE THE FLOOD
5.88
22
ROBOT OF SHERWOOD
5.78

DARK WATER
5.78

FLATLINE
5.78

THE EATERS OF LIGHT
5.78
26
HEAVEN SENT
5.75
27
THE PYRAMID AT THE END OF THE WORLD
5.67

FACE THE RAVEN
5.67
29
THE WITCH'S FAMILIAR
5.63
30
THE GIRL WHO LIVED
5.50
31
THE LIE OF THE LAND
5.38
32
THE MAGICIAN'S APPRENTICE
5.33
33
THE WOMAN WHO DIED
5.29
34
TIME HEIST
5.22
35
HELL BENT
5.00
36
LISTEN
4.88
37
THE CARETAKER
4.67
38
TWICE UPON A TIME
4.50
39
SLEEP NO MORE
4.44
40
IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT
3.44

As you can see, there is a clear victor and a clear loser. World Enough and Time stands tall as the best of the Capaldi era and In the Forest of the Night perhaps predictably takes last place. What is notable though is the lack of high-scoring tales: only three stories gained an average of more than 7 out of 10. Six out of the Top Ten stories hailed from Capaldi’s third season and one fan commented that his last series had been the “best for 3 or 4 years.” 
So despite the latest bunch of episodes ending on a seemingly universal high, spirits among the group were still low, the general feeling that the show’s heyday was in the past almost tangible in the cinema room. However, Doctor Who is about to undergo a huge regeneration. Everything is about to change. I hope that Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker can breathe fresh life into these fans’ ailing opinions on the show and leave them a little happier than they are at present. I adored the Capaldi era and I hope Whittaker’s can be just as strong. If not, we’ve always got our Special Edition Day of the Daleks DVD to re-watch. Those CG laser bolts really do make all the difference. And some of us can fill in another survey in three years’ time and think wistfully about how much better everything was when Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat were in charge. Vive la difference! 
JH