Doctor Who Anime

This looks much more fun than that tepid soap opera that runs under the title.

If only Pertwee was still with us.

The New Doctor Who

Matt Smith, age 26, has been named to take over from David Tennant as Doctor Who.

He's not black, a woman, Graham Norton, or (God spare us!) an American, so we should be grateful for small mercies for dodging the character-lethal bullet of stunt casting that would have been on a par with giving Rosie O'Donnell the title role in a remake of Shaft, but you'd have thought they'd have at least cast an actor who shaves more often than once a week.

Update: Get a haircut!

Time Polyp

Hear the demand from some "female scientists" that the next Doctor Who be a woman?

If we're going to do series-killing stunt casting, I say let's grasp the nettle firmly and make him a hydrazoa.

It's Bigger on the Outside

Apparently the reason why this year's Doctor Who Christmas special was cancelled is because David Tennant thought Russell T Davies's idea of having the Doctor running around in J K Rowling's imagination "sounded like a spoof".

Leaving pots calling kettles aside, this sudden burst of common sense can only be praised–especially as I've seen tins of beef consomme that had more imagination than Rowling and I suspect that Tennant had no desire to be trapped inside the reverse-Tardis of the literary world.

Midnight

Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look, for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

Mugatu

I feel Mugatu's pain. Reading reviews of "Midnight", the Doctor Who episode that aired in the US on Friday, I keep having the feeling that I must have a television that receives broadcasts from an alternate dimension. It's been called the best episode of this series, Davies' finest work, a classic, a brilliant claustrophobic gem and God knows what else.

Let's just step back a bit. We are talking about the episode where the Doctor leaves the dreadful Donna on the sun deck of an interstellar resort sometime in the future while he goes on a day trip in a tour bus only to have an alien "something" rip the driver's cabin off and possess one of the passengers, which causes the other tourists to descend into snarling paranoia? That the one?

No, can't be. That was, in technical terms, a steaming load of poo. We'll pass over Davies' standard missteps, such as the strange idea that, no matter what time period, people in the future will dress in 21st century clothes; the gratuitous homosexual reference; the collection of "realistic" characters treated with patent condescension by the writer who don't fit the setting or story at all, "moments" that has bloody all to do with the plot and just bring it crashing to a halt; or this season's annoying teasers for the Big Secret later on that no one will give a toss about when All Is Revealed. The story itself has enough in it to loathe and, amazingly, I wasn't the one to cast the first stone this time (In my defence, we only had it on because my daughter was in the room and I refused to watch Spongebob Squarepants, which I now regret). As the storyline about people fearing what they don't understand and turning into savages unfolded my wife, who has acted in and directed dozens of stage adaptations of the Twilight Zone in Seattle and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, pointed at the screen and said "It's 'The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street!'"

I couldn't help but agree, except that, heavy handed as Rod Serling had been half a century ago, at least he wrote dialogue for his characters while Davies, apparently went in for (bad) improv with everyone shouting "Stop it!" for half an hour interposed with thespian depths not plumbed since The Blair Witch Project. Then the creepy bit of demonic, sorry, "alien" possession occurred (why should one be any more likely than the other?) and the possessed person (with the appalling name of "Sky") starts repeating what everyone else is saying to her (*cough* Buffy *cough*). Many a review called this a tour de force of acting, though my better half just snorted and said, "Great! Now we're getting first year drama school exercises." And she knows from whence she speaks.

This was the highlight of an episode that wasn't helped by the fact that it merely demonstrated how weak David Tennant's Doctor is compared to previous incarnations. This 10th incarnation can't even control a busload of emotional cripples while Tom Baker's could silence a gaggle of homicidal telepathic priestesses with a glower and a glib word.

It was, however, marked by the new series' trademark of the action pushing forward at a furious pace to cover the fact that the actual plot doesn't move at all, but this this at least covers the fact that a) in the end, the Doctor does absolutely nothing and b) the panicky loudmouth who wanted to shove the possessed woman out the airlock was right all along.

Still, I must give Russell T points for a good moral: "If it looks dangerous, then it probably is, so kill it quick before it gets another shot in."

I don't think that's quite what Mr. Serling had in mind.

Doctors' Daughter

Science has decreed that marrying first cousins in now hunky dory, but what about an actor dating his television daughter who is also the real-life daughter of another actor who played the first actor's television character previously.

My brain hurts.

Hitting The Nail

"A soap-opera with laser-gun fights"; the best description of the consistently disappointing new version of Doctor Who that I've seen.

Doctor Who Egg Cup & Spoon

I know they were smoking crack when they thought this up. The only question is, how much?

Another Nail

Comedienne Jennifer Saunders is in talks to play Doctor Who in a one-off episode; the first time a woman has been cast in the role (not counting parodies).

According to the Sun,

TV bosses are keen to get a woman on board the Tardis for one of those shows.

Translation: We want fans of the show to know that we have no artistic integrity, we hold the character and format and their history in contempt, and that there is no depth to which we will not stoop for cheap, trendy "shock" value wherein we demonstrate nothing more profound than that we cannot differentiate between shock and flat-out bad taste. Oh, and we hate you all, too.

Doctor Who Nosferatu

This will not end well.

The Sontarans are returning to Doctor Who.

A few decades ago this news would have had me punching the air. Today, it merely confirms that the current series is nothing but a sex-obsessed (in a family programme!), treacly, sentimental, romantic, pop-culture centered, self-referential, gratuitous homosexual referencing (family programme!), aimed-at-the-fourteen-year-old girl-demographic vampire sucking on the corpse of a classic science fiction series that hasn't a blind bit of thought about what made the show great in its heyday and will undercut and betray whatever it is allegedly "reviving".

Stand by for the glacier-paced, self-indulgent, talky, watch-the-villain-get-in-touch-with-his-feelings road crash.

Be Afraid; Be Very Afriad

As chilling a bit of news as a Spandau Ballet reunion concert, contactmusic.com reports that Billie Piper will be returning to Rose the Dalek Slayer Doctor Who in a feature-length film.

I said that when they "killed" her character off nothing less than lots of blood and a head rolling in the gutter would prevent this from happening, but did anyone listen?

Of course not.


Now this is how to kill a character off.

Worzel Gummidge, Call Your Service

From Sky News:

Third Doctor Charged Over Terror Plot

William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant were unavailable for comment.

I Knew It Would End In Tears

From This is Lancashire:

Doctor who groped nurses spared prison

He is, however, under Tardis arrest.

Sauces and Ganders

Doctor Who producer Russell T Davies looks as if he was channeling Greg Dyke when he criticised rival ITV sci fi programme Primeval in these words:

Its [lack of] ethnic casting is shameful. I've never seen such a white show in all my born days.

Too "white," eh? I'd always thought that Mr. Davies's choices in "ethnic" casting were down to legitimate artistic criteria of the best actor for the part and not a conscious effort to make certain that not too many of "those people" get on the screen, but it looks as if I will have to amend my opinion. It would be interesting to solicit his view of when a show tilted in the other direction and became too "black" or "yellow" or whatever.

"Shameful" resides more comfortably in Mr. Davies's mirror.

Doctor Who Update

If Daleks were French... Which I have always suspected.

Return of the Master?

Rumour has it that John Simm is to join Doctor Who as the Doctor's archenemy the Master. Well, he has spent enough time on Mars to have earned the chance.

There was a time when I'd have been thrilled to see the renegade Time Lord make a reappearance, but that was before it became clear that the new incarnation of Doctor Who is a completely different show than what I grew up with. It's well made and undeniably successful, so I can't say that it doesn't deserve the praise that it elicits, but where the old series was adventure laced with horror and leavened with humour, the new one is romantic comedy bulked out with character drama. Where once it was made for 12-year old boys and their fathers, this one is for 14-year old girls and their mothers.

There just doesn't seem to be any room for a tissue compression eliminator in that milieu.

Another Nail

Britney Spears is rumoured to play a group of sex-mad aliens in an upcoming Doctor Who.

Please, dear God, no!

Sara Jane Smith: Leather Babe

Elizabeth Sladen has said that she hopes that her costumes will have a bit more of a "leather look" for her new children's series, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Given that Ms Sladen is 58, albeit remarkably preserved, this might have to go back to committee.