Christian Cawley's Blog, page 25

Here’s Why Midnight is Your Most Underrated Series 4 Serial

Simon Mills is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

“Ahh, taking a big space truck with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight? What could possibly go wrong?”

What a great quote, and one of the many reasons why I love this story so much! Apart from all the wonderfully quotable lines, star turns from guests David Troughton, Colin Morgan, and Lesley Sharp, and the seemingly well rounded world in which the story happens – we have a well crafted ghost story with lots of chills and dubious moral choices.

So, just when we thought Russell T Davies was descending into predictability and an endless run of average stories (I was still feeling grumpy after the dire Sontaran story and The Unicorn and The Wasp), he comes up with this instant masterpiece, showing us how a base under siege story should be written. This is an exploration of how quickly humans will descend into panic and chaos and will turn on each other when the fear of the unknown takes hold.

After a pre-titles sequence with the Doctor asking Donna to take the tour with him but failing and leaving her to her sunbathing, we rejoin him on board the tour bus exchanging pleasantries with the other passengers and quickly establishing backstories of everyone on board – the arrogant Professor Hobbes, his downtrodden but probably cleverer/wiser assistant Deedee, the “ordinary folk” Biff and Val Cane and their bored son Jethro, and the wonderfully enigmatic Sky Silvestry – played to perfection by the superb Lesley Sharp.

The hostess greets everyone with a typical RTD greeting of “ladies, gentlemen, and variations thereupon” (which I will now forever use when addressing a group of people!) and the tour starts with multiple streams of onboard entertainment all blaring out at once – which isn’t that much of a stretch from how things are today with everyone watching different channels and using multiple devices all at the same time in some sort of multimedia orgiastic frenzy. The Doctor soon puts paid to this din with his magic wand… Sorry, I mean sonic screwdriver… and peace reigns as he announces that everyone will just have to TALK TO EACH OTHER! This soon turns out to be a great bonding experience as they all start getting along nicely and laughing together at their different stories, or being lectured by the Professor on his research. The Professor provides us with the important information we need about the planet having no history and nothing living on the surface. It is during the Professor’s lecture that the tour bus breaks down and comes to a stop. Uh oh! Time for the tension and panic to start building!

Whilst talking to the bus crew who tell us that a rescue bus will be there within the hour, The Doctor persuades them to open the window screens to take a look. We see a beautiful sparkly crystalline vista (which would be gorgeous if reimagined with today’s HD visuals, by the way!). One of the crew spots something moving – something dark, running – just as the screens are closing – but that’s impossible, I hear you cry! Nothing can live out there with the Xtonic radiation poisoning everything! This is what we’ve been told by different people several times already. And yet… the mechanic was adamant that he saw it. What could it be? What could this mean???

The Doctor returns to the cabin where his words about the reasons for the halt are rapidly misconstrued and the panic quickly builds until everyone is shouting and everything is being misunderstood at an incredible rate of knots. The Doctor calls for quiet (very loudly) and calm is restored when Deedee explains that they aren’t going to run out of air. It is at this point that things take a sharp turn for Chillsville as a series of knocks are heard on the outer hull of the bus. What could it be? What could this mean??? Have I asked these questions already????? Is that too many question marks? Well, these are big and scary questions!

Sky quickly becomes isolated amidst her panic when she thinks “it” is after her, maybe sent by her ex-lover to “get her”. The mysterious “it” keeps a-knocking and then the bus starts a-rocking and the lights go out while everyone screams in panic. When things settle down we briefly see a few seconds of Rose Tyler trying to communicate with the Doctor across universes in a foreshadowing of what is to come in later episodes. The hostess opens the door to the cockpit but finds that it’s no longer there and is open to the planet’s surface and radiation. The driver and mechanic would have been vaporised, the Doctor assures us.

It is only now that everyone realises that Sky has been quiet and has been huddled with her back to everyone. Jethro also notes that the noise outside has stopped and speculates that this might be because it is now inside… I’m loving this build up of fear and tension. I think this is the single best example of this type of story-telling we’ve ever seen in Doctor Who. I’ve seen pretty much every story from 1970 onwards and a fair few of the black and white episodes and can’t remember ever seeing it done better. The Hinchcliffe years were good for the gothic horror, of course, but for the pure emotional manipulation of this story, I just don’t think it can be beaten.

Back to the story, we see Sky turn around and her wide-eyed stare immediately tells us that something is wrong. Lesley Sharp is marvelous as the possessed Sky and we then embark on, what I think, is probably one of the hardest scenes to perform – repeating word for word what someone else is saying while they are still saying it. This is where the story starts to become elevated above every other story in this series. The sheer alienness of what Sky is doing coupled with the Doctor’s obvious delight at encountering “something new”. Again, after a few minutes of this, Jethro shows his keen observational skills by pointing out that Sky is now saying things AT THE SAME TIME as the people she is copying. How can she do this?

“Shamble bobble dibble dooble!”

The hostess is first to voice what most of the passengers are thinking… Throw Sky outside to die! The others take up the idea and start calling for her death. The Doctor tries to talk them out of it by pointing out that this is murder. Plain and simple. Fear has taken its toll and turned them all into potential killers, except for the surprisingly rational Jethro who continues to prove himself a lot more mature and level headed than his parents. Sadly, though, Jethro also points out that the Doctor is loving this which starts to turn everyone against him and the decision seems to be rapidly made to throw him out as well, just to be on the safe side because they don’t trust him!

This is a very real pressure cooker situation. Throw everyone in a pot, turn up the fear and see how quickly they turn on each other or gang up on someone they see as the cause of their fear. So many parallels here in real life – just look at the current state of fear so many are living in due to recent terrorist acts and the overwhelming tide of fear that turns to anger and hatred of the Muslim community that are seen as the perpetrators rather than just fellow humans who are also victims.

Sky/the creature then changes tack and only speaks in unison with the Doctor, making the others even more suspicious of him and the possibility they are working together. The Doctor keeps trying to figure out what the creature wants; maybe it wants his voice because he is the only one who can help… but the eyes tell a different story, they say in unison. And then the seemingly impossible happens and the creature speaks first – seeming to take control and forcing the Doctor to repeat her words.

Sky/the creature is now pretending to be recovered and the others believe her, except for Deedee. Even the keenly observant Jethro is taken in.

The hostess, however, wants to listen to Deedee. Deedee explains the process of repeating, then synchronising and then taking over and draining the victim, just as they have seen and just as the Doctor said would happen, but is unsuccessful in convincing them. However, the more the creature drains the Doctor, the more of his “voice” she takes and the more she sounds like him… and eventually gives the game away by saying “Molto bene!” and “Allons-y!” – both phrases that the hostess recognise as the Doctor’s.

And then here we are, we’ve arrived at another self-sacrifice moment (see my other recent article about “Father’s Day” – it seems I have a taste for stories with self-sacrifice!) where the hostess grabs Sky/the creature and pulls her along out of the airlock to save everyone else. What an incredibly brave thing to do.

Ask yourself, could you do the same thing? Would you kill yourself in order to save other people’s lives? Hopefully, we’ll never have to find the answer out for ourselves…

The obvious question from this story is most definitely, “what the hell was this thing?” and I, for one, am glad that we never find out and we never even see it. A classic case of the monster that ISN’T seen being much more scary than the one we do see. This is the stuff of our nightmares from when we were children – the monster under the bed, or in the closet, the unseen thing that terrorises you with the briefest of glimpses or hints of movement from the corner of your eye.

This is fear at its most primal which is what invokes the primal response in our protagonists – fight or flight. They can’t flee, so the only option is to blindly lash out at what they see as the threat. At first, this is the possessed Sky, but then it’s what they think is the possessed Doctor but we suspect that he was just being controlled and being used as a patsy to take the fall, to be thrown out of the bus to die so the possessed Sky can be free to return to the city and do whatever it is that psychic shadow beasts do in those environments – presumably feed on the minds of the innocent.

What chaos may have been wrought on Midnight or even much wider in the universe if the hostess hadn’t made the ultimate sacrifice to save her charges? We’ll never know, but we can imagine…

The post Here’s Why Midnight is Your Most Underrated Series 4 Serial appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Here’s Why Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead is Your Favourite Series 4 Serial

Jonathan Appleton is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

There were some strong candidates for the sought-after title of Kasterborous readers’ favourite story from Series 4 (mostly from the second half of the series, it would appear from the breakdown of poll results). Turn Left, Doctor Who’s take on Sliding Doors starring Donna Noble as Gwyneth Paltrow, was the top pick for many. Midnight, featuring that wonderfully unnerving performance by Lesley Sharp as the unfortunate passenger possessed by… well, we never found out, came in a close second. For some fans the epic finale The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, with its blend of an Avengers-style team-up of companions, planets being hurled through space and German-speaking Daleks hit the spot.

But in the end it was Steven Moffat’s two-parter Silence in the library and Forest of the Dead, the story that gave us ‘Hey, who turned out the lights?’, ‘Donna Noble has been saved’, and ‘Count the shadows!’ (not to mention ‘Spoilers…!’) that topped the poll, indicating perhaps that Kasterborous readers like their Doctor Who to be chilling, intricate, mysterious and a bit cheeky as well.

Yes, it’s impossible not to mention River Song, the flame-haired archaeologist who has the Doctor an advantage, in any retrospective covering these episodes. The character has become so polarising in the years since that it’s easy to forget that the basic idea behind her introduction – that a time traveller can meet the same person out of sequence at different points in their life – is brilliantly apt for Doctor Who.

River’s timeline may have become so complex through return appearances that Doctor Who Confidential felt the need to devote a programme to explaining it, but in this story she’s someone genuinely new and different, even if Donna surely echoes what many viewers were thinking when she wails ‘You’re just talking rubbish! Do you know him or don’t you?!’

By this point we were becoming used to some of the classic features of a Steven Moffat script: an intriguing set-up with elements that veer off in different directions before coming back together; things from everyday life becoming monstrous; and an ending which involves key characters cheating death in some way.

The Vashta Nerada, fearsome ‘piranhas of the air’, will surely have made kids terrified of their own shadows for weeks afterwards. The lumbering skeletons-in-spacesuits feel somewhat less sophisticated, however, than the writer’s previous creations such as clockwork men and moving statues and it wasn’t entirely surprising when someone unearthed an image of a remarkably similar looking villain from a Scooby Doo story…

Nonetheless, this is a brilliantly sophisticated slice of Doctor Who, encompassing some strong sci-fi concepts such as the reveal that the little girl’s consciousness trapped inside a planet-sized computer is at the heart of the story as well as some unsettling moments like Miss Evangelista’s ‘ghosting’ that, in the best traditions of the series, were extremely effective even if they may not stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. All this and we get some proper RTD-era Doctor Who heartbreak as well with Donna lulled into thinking she has found lasting happiness, only to find it’s a computer-generated illusion… and sadly things weren’t about to get any easier for her.

A worthy winner, then, for our Series 4 poll – but did our readers get it right? Was there a more deserving candidate from this series? Let us know below!

The post Here’s Why Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead is Your Favourite Series 4 Serial appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Here’s Why 42 is Your Most Underrated Series 3 Serial

Rebecca Crockett is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

In Series 3, there are a great number of episodes that are important not only to the story of the Doctor and his current companion’s journey, but to Doctor Who as a whole. We first meet not only Martha Jones, but also future companion Donna Noble, after her wedding goes awry. We are reintroduced to the Master, a fellow Time Lord and the Doctor’s oldest friend and foe. And then there is that little episode called Blink. Nestled among those many noted and wonderful stories is a small but exciting and action packed episode titled 42.

It’s the episode you, dear K readers, voted as your most underrated episode of Series 3, with its 20.6% besting Gridlock (17.59%), The Shakespeare Code (11.56%), and Smith and Jones (9.55%).

How can an episode that advances the over-arching plot of the whole series not be important? How does it get overlooked? Precisely because of the episodes surrounding it. The Lazarus Experiment has a fantastical plot device and an over the top monster in the creature Dr. Lazarus becomes. Human Nature and The Family Of Blood see some of the best performances of the Tennant/Agyeman series, and has absolutely heart breaking moments. Who doesn’t weep with the Doctor as he is asked to give up the humanity he longs to live?

But 42 deserves more attention than it’s usually given. It is a proper hide-behind-the-sofa scary episode in its own right and one that fits well into Who canon. The episode itself actually gives Martha something to do aside from being the fish-out-of-water companion to the savvy Doctor. It also advances the Martha/Saxon/Master series subplot and will be the last episode of the series to speak of that subplot until that story comes to a head a few episodes later.

The title of the episode is the caveat that the Doctor and Martha face when answering a distress call from a cargo ship about to crash into a sun – they only have 42 minutes. This gives us a different kind of energy and urgency to the Doctor’s actions. Added to the situation is the fact that the Doctor can’t use his typical get-out-of-plot devices as things can’t be fixed with the sonic screwdriver and they are cut off from the TARDIS.

The Doc will have to get out of this and save Martha and the ship’s crew with just his wits. And even more dangers are thrown the Doctor’s way when a crew member becomes infected and possessed with burning body temperatures and glowing eyes and a desire to kill the rest of the crew.

There are a number of other specific things about this episode that make it just as important as those previously mentioned. First, it gives us a glimpse into what’s been unfolding at home while Martha is off on adventures with the Doctor.

We see her call home to speak to her mother. The first call shows her mother’s annoyance at Martha’s attitude and once again her negative opinion of the Doctor and what being with him has done to Martha. In the second call, made when Martha believes she may not live much longer, we see that her mother has been joined by ominous people in suits who are listening in on the phone call. Again, we can hear her mother’s negative feeling toward the Doctor, which is of course not much comfort to the endangered Martha. The third time, we finally get an answer – her mother is being watched by the mysterious Mr. Saxon. With all the action in the episode, this short scene is probably the most important as it plants a final seed for Martha’s future. When she does finally come home, she’ll find her family being held by Mr. Saxon…

Secondly, it’s the first Doctor Who episode written by Chris Chibnall, who would later write episodes for the Eleventh Doctor and was the original head writer and co-producer of the spin-off Torchwood, and is someone who has been on a few fan lists for their choice as a future showrunner for Doctor Who.

Thirdly, it is a style of episode that Who hadn’t done before – real time. It’s Doctor Who meets 24 with the Doctor standing in for Jack Bauer. It’s different from the others that Chibnall has done for the show, and more like what he would later write for both Broadchurch and for Law and Order: UK. (It’s interesting to note that those shows would also go on to star Tennant and Agyeman respectively.) Yet it is one that works well with Doctor Who and one that I am surprised hadn’t been tried before or since. The real time format gives a vigour and desperation to the danger that the characters are in. For a show that puts its lead characters into mortal peril in virtually every episode, why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?

Martha’s chance to do a little bit is great – when the Doctor himself is possessed by the living creature that was mistaken for a sun, it’s up to Martha to put him into the stasis chamber and use her medical skills to help him. She also gets to tell the ship’s crew what to do, though the idea of how to save them is the Doctor’s – he channels Jack Bauer to the end, even while he is possibly dying.

One of my two issues with the episode comes at this point. I’d have had it be Martha, once the Doctor was sorted, to have come up with the idea to vent the particles. She’s a smart woman! She is a doctor after all!

Of course, I would also be remiss if I didn’t happen to mention that the title of the episode directly references Doctor Who’s connection to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Forty two is, after all, the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. This is the other issue I have with the episode – I’d have liked them to find a few more places to reference Hitchhiker’s. It seems a bit of a waste of a title to have not done more, given how connected the two properties are.

So don’t skip this one on your rewatch.  Don’t dismiss it. You’ve got a 42-minute appointment with the Doctor.

The post Here’s Why 42 is Your Most Underrated Series 3 Serial appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Here’s Why Human Nature/ The Family of Blood is Your Favourite Series 3 Serial

Jonathan Appleton is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

It’s a result that has prompted a good deal of surprise here at Kasterborous Towers. We may not be talking crack-in-the-fabric-of-space-and-time levels of shock but, make no mistake, eyebrows have been raised at the result of our poll to find readers’ favourite story from Series 3.

The winner was sure to be Blink, right? Steven Moffat’s brilliant, beautifully intricate, all-conquering episode which gave us Weeping Angels, Sally Sparrow and balls of timey-wimey stuff; that was bound to win this poll just as it’s won so many others, wasn’t it? Well… no, as it happens. The favourite story from Series 3 as voted by our readers is Paul Cornell’s heart-rending two-parter Human Nature and The Family of Blood.

And because I was the only member of the writing team to name this as my personal favourite it falls to me to say what was so great about it that led 37.3% of Kasterborous readers to stick their cross beside it. That and the fact that the rest of the team have nipped down The Cloven Hoof for their Christmas drink and conveniently forgot to tell me they were going…

Doctor Who has been around for so long that it’s very difficult to come up with a truly original idea for it; Russell T Davies knew this better than anyone so he adopted a magpie-like approach of collecting plots from other media. It’s not hard to see why he settled on New Adventures novel Human Nature as the programme’s first ever book-to-screen adaptation, offering as it does a Doctor Who version of one of the classic plots in fiction – what happens to a hero when you take away the thing that makes them what they are? Or as Paul Cornell himself has put it: ‘Superman 2 works every time.’

There are key differences between the book and television versions and, to my mind, the writer and production team made the right calls. Whereas in the novel the Doctor opts to become human as a kind of intellectual exercise in finding out what it would be like to feel human emotions, in the episode there’s a much more urgent, pressing and ultimately tragic reason – he’s on the run from the fearsome Family of Blood who want to steal his life force and, we learn later, he wants to give them a chance of dying peacefully.

All the death, chaos and heartache that follows can be traced back to the Doctor’s choice. For some viewers this has been a reason to dislike the episode – would the Doctor really have opted to do something that had such disastrous consequences? It’s a fair point (and the Doctor is taken to task on it by Joan in the story) but I take the view that this theme of decisions taken for the best of reasons having terrible results is the stuff of tragedy, and it’s this that gives the story a richness and depth we don’t often see in Doctor Who.

Science fiction fans have a reputation of being a techy, unemotional bunch but the high regard this story is held in surely gives the lie to that. Seeing Joan have her heart broken is almost too much to bear, all the more so given she lives in a time when keeping a stiff upper lip is all important and young men are sent off to die for King and country without question…

The early twentieth century setting is beautifully realised and it’s worth noting how important the period when the events take place is to the episodes. It’s almost as though the story’s place in time is a key player in the drama: Martha has to endure prejudice from horrendous born-to-rule pupils, boys are taught to fight as part of the curriculum, and people are culturally prevented from talking about how they feel.

There are some wonderful performances to enjoy: Jessica Hynes as the quietly dignified Joan, Harry Lloyd’s awful yet somehow sympathetic Baines, the terrifyingly ordinary members of the Family. David Tennant bumbling around in the spaceship as the Doctor pretending to be John Smith is an absolute joy.

I could go on; there are so many extraordinary aspects to these wonderful episodes. I haven’t even mentioned the disturbing punishments delivered by the Doctor, the glorious setting-up of the fob watch for its key role in Series 3 or that gut-wrenching montage of John and Joan’s life together that never was. To my mind Human Nature/The Family of Blood is the best story of Series 3 and the best story the programme has delivered since 2005.

But what about you? Was this the right result? Did Human Nature/The Family of Blood deserve to top our poll? Let us know what you think below!

The post Here’s Why Human Nature/ The Family of Blood is Your Favourite Series 3 Serial appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Here’s Why Love & Monsters is Your Most Underrated Series 2 Serial

Thomas Spychalski is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Or: Much Love For Love & Monsters

One of my favourite films of all time has to be Interview With a Vampire, based on the novel of the same name by Anne Rice. Like most things that become our personal favourites there are some scenes and certain dialogue which will always stick out in our minds and this film has one that has relevance when we are preparing to discuss one of the most controversial and dividing episodes of Doctor Who since it returned to television in 2005:

“Vampires pretending to be Human pretending to be vampires… How avant garde.”

It always seemed to me the line could be paraphrased to describe the episode Love & Monsters: “A fan writing for fans about actors pretending to be fans.”

When Doctor Who entered its second series in 2006, the glow of seeing it back on television had started to wane slightly, and that of course meant the ugliness that is a bitter and unsatisfied section of fans began to loudly protest some of the elements of the programme that they disagreed with.

Funny thing is, the adventure from that series that would get the most hate was also partially written with those very fans in mind, as it’s partially an in-universe jab at fans that sit hunched over their keyboards for hours, only to become so ‘absorbed’ in the series that they take it too seriously.

So serious in fact that when blended together they might even resemble a horrible green monster, most likely from the planet Klom.

As we all might have heard someplace or other, the past is a foreign country and back then I was right along with that section of fans that felt Love & Monsters was a bit too silly in some places and that if Fear Her was not broadcast the very next week, it would have been for me personally the worst episode of Series 2.

Fortunately one mellows with age (I have no idea where I am getting these bits of knowledge).

Today I see Love & Monsters for what it is: a brilliant script that is a celebration of Doctor Who fanaticism – both the good and the bad. Even the ‘monster of the week’ is a fan creation born of a Blue Peter competition… How avant garde.

This is a seriously underrated tale – and 24.73% of readers who voted agree. Interestingly enough, 17.58% felt The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit, your favourite Series 2 serial, is also the most underrated of the lot.

Love & Monsters concerns Elton, who bumps into the Doctor by accident one night in his childhood, only to find others who know of him as well, leading to the creation of a small group of people that over the course of time become friends, becoming much more than a group that just focuses on the Doctor himself.

They bond over a common interest, an amazing man of mystery whose secrets brought them together but through that connection they are able to shed some of the loneliness and tragedy out of their own daily hum-drum existence. This is how the Doctor has saved people in the real world for a very long time now.

Every story needs a villain of course and Love & Monsters has one that may hit close to home to anyone who has ever visited a forum or comments section related to their favourite television series or film: Victor Kennedy.

Kennedy comes into the fold of the small group of friends and immediately the tone is changed to be overly serious: no more mucking about, no singing songs, or no homemade snacks. This is serious work after all. This is important; too important for it to be enjoyable anymore, right?

There in short is the beauty of Love & Monsters put plain and simple. It is almost a guide of how not to enjoy Doctor Who or any other interest people tend to tale too seriously. Quit noticing the mistakes in continuity, stop poking the plots till you make a large hole and for God’s sake quit saying the latest episode ruined your childhood for the fifth time this year!

Now, I also love playing devil’s advocate, mostly because they have these really comfy chairs and those little Hors d’ouevres made with cream cheese and bits of pickle, but I digress. Admittedly I will say the ‘Scooby-Doo’ homage chase at the start of the episode is still a bit too much for me to handle and the fact that the Doctor would let poor Ursula Blake live out eternity as a face in a small square slab of concrete is pretty confusing (not to mention the infamous sexual joke I won’t go into detail about on a website that is family friendly), but they are small points in an overall great episode.

Love & Monsters also has the distinction of being the first ‘Doctor-lite’ episode of NuWho, arguably ever if we dismiss Mission to the Unknown and the times the cast went on holiday (none of these were officially ‘Doctor-lite’). These were put into place to serve as a break for the recurring regular cast of Doctor Who, after some issues in work load and scheduling were causing strife during production of Series 1.

Personally, I think it is the second best of the Doctor-lite scripts second only to the modern classic which is Blink from Series 3. Although the Doctor and Rose are only present for a short time on screen, the story keeps your interest and a clever use of revisiting major events that took place on Earth since Rose re-launched the series in 2005 makes sure you knew you were still very much in the Doctor Who universe.

This is also true of using Rose Tyler’s mother, Jackie Tyler in the script, which allowed Russell T. Davies to use his amazing gift of always focusing on the emotions and motivations of his characters to allow Jackie to grow a bit as well as she vocalizes the story of being the loved one ‘left behind’ while her daughter continued to travel through time and space.

When all is said and done, Love & Monsters is an episode that deserves praise not just because it is one of those tales that becomes infamous in Doctor Who fan circles for the way it divides fan opinion but also because if you do decide to criticize or hate the story it throws that hatred right back at you… in ‘spades.’

The post Here’s Why Love & Monsters is Your Most Underrated Series 2 Serial appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Here’s Why The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit is Your Favourite Series 2 Serial

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

It’s always tempting to say, ‘Doctor Who doesn’t deal with religion very often,’ but that would be a lie. The whole show is about faith. More often than not, faith in one particular person: the Doctor. We’ve had stories about belief systems before and since; just look at The Daemons, The Curse of Fenric, The God Complex, and A Town Called Mercy. So what makes The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit so special?

And it is undoubtedly that. 33.09% of polled readers agreed, pipping The Girl in the Fireplace (27.57%) and School Reunion (18.75%) to the top spot.

It’s easy to argue that, while religion has been covered numerous times, this is arguably the first full exploration of it, nonetheless drawing on previous adventures and influencing subsequent stories too. Frankly, it’s an incredible piece of work: the perfect mix of a solid script, strong cast, beautiful direction, and haunting music.

A one-line teaser –’the Doctor comes face-to-face with the Devil’ – is both captivating and, if you’re at all religious, a little worrying. But this is what Doctor Who does. The Doctor has seen fake Gods and bad Gods and demi-Gods and would-be Gods, but nothing is fixed. The Beast in the Satan Pit is just one version of evil, not the definitive article. We simply don’t know.

That’s fascinating because that’s what religion is. I’m a Christian, but I think it’s a bad thing to have such rigid beliefs. You can have faith without knowing the minutiae. The important thing, at least to me, is to carry on questioning everything. Understanding why and how religion exists is not the same thing as saying all faith is incorrect. As the Ninth Doctor once said, your vision of the world isn’t wrong; “there’s just more to learn.”

That’s the story of our Time Lord hero. In fact, pretty much all we learn about the Doctor’s religion is that he hasn’t seen anything conclusive. That proves very little, either way. We make up our own rules, our own justifications, strictures, and to some extent morals, and that’s true of everyone.

It’s all about the unknown: this episode and religion in general.

To the crew of Sanctuary Base 6, the Doctor and Rose are big unknowns. The power source is the tempting unknown. Krop Tor, at the edges of nowhere, is an unknown, impossibly orbiting a black hole – the very definition of the unknown. And the Doctor, it seems, is out of his depth.

The show itself breaks down boundaries and explores the Great Unknown, doing the preposterous. Time and space: immense factors that rule our lives, yet we understand so little about them. In The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit, we’re teased with a bleak future that hints at a struggling empire, desperate for some grasp of power, or, if you will, war. That this is set in the future makes it even more effective: there’s a hopelessness and isolation laced throughout the tale.

Examining the Unknown from the Doctor’s point-of-view is also fascinating: it’s a total role reversal, because he’s scared of our Everyday – a proper house, with doors and carpets and a mortgage. He made it clear in The Girl in the Fireplace that he’s not even quite sure how to get money.

It’s never made explicit whether the Doctor is actually afraid of the Beast and its possibilities, but he’s certainly scared of life without the TARDIS, despite having Rose beside him. David Tennant’s understated dread of the future (and guilt over not returning his companion to Jackie) reaffirms this horrendous outlook.

We learn of different belief systems, and different iterations of guilt as well. The Beast plays on the things that niggle away at us: Zachary is scared of being in charge; Jefferson is the soldier, haunted by the eyes of his wife; Ida is still running from Daddy; Danny lied; Toby is a virgin; and Rose is lost, perhaps in more ways than one. What sins scratch at the Doctor’s subconscious? What does he pray to?

These questions are pondered upon further in The God Complex, but it’s quite clear that everyone believes or has faith in someone. It appears all involved has faith in the Doctor (a notion subverted in Midnight), but none more so than his companions, and rather pleasingly, that trust is mirrored by the Doctor’s belief in those who travel with him.

The crew of the doomed mission have humour in their lives, and flirt with high art – the Bolero plays over the night shift – like they’re reminding themselves of humanity, but on this little outcrop in deep space, it’s as if they’ve been shunned by divinity, cast out by God, and left for the Devil.

Certainly, there’s something ungodly about Scooti Manista’s death, one of the most chilling but fantastic demises in the show’s history. MyAnna Buring radiates innocence and enthusiasm, and that’s why it’s so tragic that she’s the first to go, abandoned in space, drifting into the K37 Gem 5 black hole. It’s just as haunting that the inhuman computer voice is somehow tainted by humanity’s vision of evil, just like the Ood (“the Beast and his armies shall rise from the pit to make war against God”).

And in Doctor Who, has there been a more poetic line than “he bathes in the black sun”?

It comes as a great relief that Zachary, Danny, and Ida escape. Here, unlike The Doctor Dances in which everybody lives, it’s amazing that some survive.

The brilliance of this two-parter doesn’t complete revolve around religion, but so many lines are touched by the topic that you do get a sense of witnessing something immense and deeply searching.

When it comes down to it, The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit is the stuff of legend.

The post Here’s Why The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit is Your Favourite Series 2 Serial appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

See River’s Death Updated to Include The Husbands of River Song

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

River Song died a long time ago in the future. We saw her die in 2008’s Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead, and since then, showrunner Steven Moffat has expanded on much of the dialogue she teased the Tenth Doctor with.

The crash of the Byzantium? That was in The Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone (2010), for example.

And this Christmas, in The Husbands of River Song, her final remarks were put into context; the last time she saw the Doctor, he turned up with a new haircut and a new suit and took her to the Singing Towers of Darillium. We thought we’d seen that in the Series 6 special feature, Last Night, but Alex Kingston’s character said that the Doctor kept cancelling that appointment with death.

YouTuber Lyndon Coleman made the above video, updating that scene where she lugs herself into CAL to include sections of her complicated timeline with Doctors Eleven and Twelve.

It’s pretty cool.

Will we see River again? I suppose only time will tell…

The post See River’s Death Updated to Include The Husbands of River Song appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Here’s Why Father’s Day is Your Most Underrated Series 1 Story

Simon Mills is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Back in February, we asked you what your most underrated serial of Series 1 is – and it was a close call!

In third place, with 13.83% of the vote, was The Long Game, Russell T Davies’ tale of media manipulation, while Boom Town, a return of Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, claimed second place with 16.43%. But beating those stories to the title, with 18.73%, is Father’s Day.

And I, for one, really enjoyed this story. Being a fan of Sapphire and Steel, I love the concept of time itself being an integral part of the story more than just a vehicle for getting the protagonists into a spot of bother.

The story is an exploration of dealing with the unintended consequences of wish fulfillment, the pain that can bring and the sacrifices we make for the ones we love.

We start off with Rose (Billie Piper) and the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) having a somewhat cosy, intimate chat about where she wants to go in all of time and space… She chooses to go and see her long dead father, Pete Tyler (Shaun Dingwall), and wants to be the one to comfort him in his final moments so he doesn’t have to die alone after a traffic accident.

Rose gets her wish to see her father, but panics and fails to run and comfort him in his final moments. She is so devastated by her failure that she begs the Doctor to let her try again, surely against the Doctor’s better judgment. After all, we are all aware of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect (see Day of the Daleks, Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Mawdryn Undead!) which either prevents this sort of thing happening, or in extreme circumstances, causes massive energy discharges.

Anyway, persuaded by Rose’s tears and his obvious desire to please her overcoming his better sensibilities he takes her back to try again, and they spy on their original selves from behind with the intention of Rose going to her father after the other Rose runs off. This time, though, Rose is so overcome with the grief from seeing her father die the first time she rushes into the fray too early and causes a paradox by crossing the paths of their former selves and preventing her father from dying. Uh-oh! This paradox apparently causes a rip in time and we first see the Reapers as something more ephemeral, but they gain power and physical form as the paradoxes pile up through the story.

Of course, the question needs to be answered why we haven’t seen the Reapers before or since. If they turn up when someone lives or dies that shouldn’t have, then why don’t they pop up all over the place in the Doctor’s wake? The Doctor explains this in the context of the story as the absence of the Time Lords who would otherwise have policed this and prevented it from happening. This is fair enough, but I like to take it one step further – I think of it as an alternate timeline that shouldn’t exist. An offshoot of the canonical history of the universe as we know it that needs to be eradicated, the tree of time being pruned by a troop of Reaper tree surgeons, if you will!

The Reapers remind me very much of a Stephen King short story/TV mini series called The Langoliers – wherein these creatures come along to devour everything after an accident in time occurs… Sound familiar?

Naturally, throughout the story Jackie (Camille Coduri) gives Pete a hard time about pretty much everything, and this is not altogether undeserved as he seems to be a bit of a womaniser and also a failure at being an entrepreneur – not even rising to the lofty heights of success that Del-Boy Trotter managed. Jackie probably finds Pete to be a huge disappointment and is angry that he doesn’t change his ways to provide a stable home with a steady job to provide for her and the baby Rose. This constant putting down of Pete is at odds with the stories that the older Jackie tells a young Rose of an idyllic life that never was and the clever man that her father was with all his inventions. She has obviously been sugar-coating the truth. So the realisation that Pete isn’t anything like that comes as a bit of a shock to Rose.

Pete also gradually realises who Rose really is, showing his more sensitive side when the bull headed Jackie fails to see it (until right the very end of that timeline). Rose also falls to the temptations of sugar coating the truth when Pete asks her what he’s like as a dad – she lies to him to spare his feelings, much as Jackie did to her as a child.

The Doctor himself, falls victim to the Reapers after they gain access to the church when Pete hands the baby Rose to the grown-up Rose, making the paradox worse (probably fed by the potential time energy being shorted out when Blinovitch comes into play!). This is another part of the story that appeals to me – the Doctor tells everyone to get behind him as he is the oldest thing in the church and is therefore the greatest barrier to the Reapers. However, his protection doesn’t last long and he is actually devoured by the Reaper! I think this is probably the first time in the show’s history that we see the Doctor actually die. Please correct me if I’m wrong, though!

Even though he is somewhat of a failure as a husband and an entrepreneur, Pete realises what’s going on and that it is all his fault for living when he should have died, so steps up to the line and makes the ultimate sacrifice to save his daughter (and the universe in general, let’s not forget that part) by running into the path of the car that should have killed him earlier. This is a very brave act from an otherwise ordinary man, which is one of the main points of this story; that it is the acts of the “little people” that make the biggest differences. I’ve rewatched this story several times now as research for this article and this scene gets more powerful each time. Being a parent, a father myself to a single daughter who isn’t that much younger now than Rose, I can totally empathise with the ultimate sacrifice he makes so that his daughter will be safe. Powerful stuff when you dig down into it.

Eccleston is as good as ever, gurning away quite happily at the beginning, trying to impress his girlfrie– I mean “companion” by telling her he can do what he want and then proceeds to take her back to see her deceased father alive and well in the 1980s. La Belle Piper is on form as the less annoying version of Rose (see Series Two and also her terrible involvement in Series Four). Shaun Dingwall is great as the wannabe wideboy – putting in a great emotive performance towards the end. Camille Coduri continues to play the downtrodden but vocal Jackie Tyler to perfection. Great performances all round, actually.

I have to say, my favourite scene, has to be in the church with the Doctor baby-talking to the infant Rose and telling her not to bring about the destruction of the universe when she grows up! Love it!

So, to summarise, in scholarly fashion, we have a story with multiple instances of self sacrifice, mistakes being made in the name of love, the near destruction of the universe (or at least the local area), an exploration of paradoxes, and, ultimately, the redemption of Pete Tyler – a failed man, father, and husband, who comes good at the end. Rose’s intervention, through a rather circuitous universe shattering route, transforms Pete’s sad lonely death that made Jackie bitter into something slightly more positive in that he had someone with him holding his hand when he died and that the driver stopped and waited instead of fleeing the scene. Not much, but enough to soften the blow slightly.

There we have it! Go back and give this story another chance – it’s worth the effort. Love and redemption always is…

The post Here’s Why Father’s Day is Your Most Underrated Series 1 Story appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Here’s Why The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances is Your Favourite Series 1 Serial

Katie Gribble is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

So some of you may have noticed that over this past year, we here at Kasterborous have been celebrating the 10th anniversary of NuWho by listing some of our favourite and most underrated episodes of each series. We asked you to vote for your favourites and the time has come to reveal the winners.

Before we spoil the results for the favourite Series One episode, head over and read some of our reasons for our best episodes. Do you agree with our choices?

Have you looked yet? Go on. It’s jolly good especially the bit about the parrot… Seen it? Marvellous! We’re safe to proceed…

The winner for favourite episode of the first series starring our wonderful Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, starts us off on a great footing. The favourite story of 2005 series is The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances two-parter. The story won with 44.1% of the votes so thank you to all of you who voted. These episodes were chosen in the article by Barry Rice, Philip Bates and Joe Siegler. They must all have excellent taste or have bribed you. So why has this story garnered so much favour?

We cannot get away without mentioning the larger than live every-sexual character that this story introduced to the Doctor Who universe. The one only Captain Jack Harkness! He comes charging in with his charm and wit, scanning for alien tech and sweeping the Whoniverse off its feet. He doesn’t get off to the best start conning Rose and the Doctor into buying what he describes as space junk. Thankfully through meeting the Doctor, he realises the errors of his ways and stops the bomb from falling on the site of the Chula warship killing everyone in range. However, there are still many questions left unanswered about the ex-Time Agent. That and so much more just keeps us coming back to Jack and it is this story that he makes his debut. We are eternally grateful.

But this adventure also includes another wonderful character who is so well rounded – and it’s such a pity that she has not appeared again. In Moffat’s early work, no character passes through without a shine and an ability to immerse the audience in the atmosphere of war-torn London. The character of Nancy is so well rounded and every interaction, whether it be with the kids she looks after or the Doctor, is completely based in truth.

Dr. Constantine’s gas mask transformation is still terrifying and so heartbreaking. The growing gas mask is still very graphic and it took me well over 7 years to be able to watch it again after initial transmission. Good nature of people: ‘Before this war started, I was a father and a grandfather. Now I am neither, but I am still a doctor.’ A good man. An example of British morale and staying power and the spirit of those war years. He also has one of the greatest lines of all NuWho:

Mrs Harcourt: My leg’s grown back. When I come to the hospital, I only had one leg.

Dr. Constantine: Well there is a war on, are you sure you haven’t miscounted?

And at this joyous time of year, I think it’s apt that we have an ending where, to quote the Doctor’s utter joy ‘EVERYBODY LIVES!’ It’s a pity that Moffat didn’t keep this up, but for this story and as the winner of Series One favourite, it is a wonderful message to think on. Not everything ends badly. Sometimes, when we just dream, there are good days.

The bad in this episode is not intentional. It is pure accident. Shows bad things can just happen sometimes but there doesn’t always have to be a negative outcome.

There are plenty of other wonderful reasons why this story deserves the top spot of Series One, but you should go back and watch it to see them all. Now we here at the K must bid you a good day. I’m off to snooze this Christmas off.

*sits in armchair, puts feet up, and plays Glenn Miller on the gramophone*

The post Here’s Why The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances is Your Favourite Series 1 Serial appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

We Shouldn’t Worry About The Husbands of River Song Overnight Figures

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

The overnight viewing figures for The Husbands of River Song have been announced – and they’re a bit disappointing. But viewed in context, it’s not all bad.

The Doctor Who Christmas special attracted 5.77 million, and though this will obviously increase (probably quite dramatically) when final figures are collated, you can’t help but feel a little deflated. Audience figures for Series 9 were lacklustre, but Christmas always sees a rise. Indeed, the 5.77 million is greater than every overnight stat for Series 9 (itself a depressing fact) – but only just.

2007’s Voyage of the Damned remains the most watched episode of NuWho with 13.31 million, beating the UK figures for even The Day of the Doctor (12.8 million, not counting worldwide watchers and cinema takings).

The first modern Christmas special, 2005’s The Christmas Invasion had peak overnights of 9.8million and an average of 9.4; however, final viewing figures were 9.84 million… and this shows us a lot. Consumption of television has changed greatly, and we need to remember that.

Because The Husbands of River Song didn’t do too impressively, but neither did Christmas Day viewing as a whole.

Doctor Who was the seventh most-watched show of the day according to unofficial viewing figures, with 29.4% share of the audience, just beating EastEnders‘ 5.7 million.

Sitting in the top spot is Downton Abbey:The Finale, the last episode of the show which has run since 2010, claiming 6.9 million – which isn’t a considerable number really. It was followed by BBCOne’s highest-rating entry, Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special (6.5m), then Mrs. Brown’s Boys Christmas Special, and Stick Man, both of which had 6.4m. And in fifth place, 5.9 million watched Coronation Street on ITV1.

Ratings across TV were down on last year – and that was even down on 2013. The Time of the Doctor reached 8.3 million, while 2014’s Last Christmas has overnights of 6.3m. This increased to 8.28m for final figures.

Last Christmas’ most-watched, according to overnights, was Mrs. Brown’s Boys which got 7.6m.

As you can see, overnights have decreased across the board, but Doctor Who‘s timeshift audience is typically greater than other programmes.

So no, we shouldn’t worry too much. Apart from for television in general. After a few stumbles, Doctor Who will be just fine.

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