Month: May 2007

“You are, quite definitely, human.”

I hate the word “squee”. It makes me think of all that’s worst about over-enthusiastic fandom, coupled with the cliquey insularity of the net community and its need to come up with exclusive jargon. Then I saw this episode. Young Barry, sitting next to me, may not have actually heard me go “Squee! Squee!”, but I suspect I probably did, in my head at least.

I’ve known Paul Cornell for a few years now, and found him to be one of the nicest, most welcoming and self-effacing of the Who authors I’ve met. He even gave me some of his wedding cake! Yet every time I talk to him I trip over my tongue like a drunken idiot (which, by that point, I usually am). The reason for this is Human Nature (the novel). It was, and still is, one of my favourite pieces of fiction of any kind, Doctor Who or otherwise, and I was, and still am, totally in awe of the man who wrote it.

And this adaptation did nothing to change my opinion. Paul has done a splendid job of adapting his story to another medium, and as a talented scriptwriter has managed to retain the story’s essence while trimming some of the numerous subplots and adding some more televisual elements.

The historical setting was perfectly realised, thanks to some excellent “living museum” locations, but more than that, it was integral to the flavour of the script. Without being didactic, it demonstrated perfectly both the social mores of the period and the world politics that were dragging Britain inexorably towards the Great War. The sequence of the schoolboys at machine gun practice was masterly, redolent of what the viewer knew was soon to come; a feel reinforced by Latimer’s flash-forward to the trenches. Even the Boer War was touched upon, with Joan mentioning that she lost her husband at the battle of Spion Kop.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that I wondered whether this detailed examination of history might be lost on some of the show’s younger viewers. This was by far the most mature, adult script since Doctor Who returned, and unlike many of the others didn’t seem to have been made primarily with the younger child in mind. But if it prompts a few young minds to take an interest in history, so much the better!

David Tennant was, quite frankly, superb in the most demanding story the series has yet offered him. He managed to make John Smith a quite distinct entity from the Doctor, and sympathetic in his own right. He even modified his usual Estuary English accent. Smith came across as a naive innocent, much as he did in the book, conforming to social norms like allowing a beating or scolding the servants simply because he was a man of his time. This “little boy lost” quality made his blossoming romance with the more worldly Joan truly touching.

Jessica Hynes also did a cracking job as Joan, the first straight role I’ve seen her in. She perfectly conveyed the nature of Edwardian repressed emotion in a manner reminiscent of Remains of the Day, and the scenes with her and Tennant were pure magic.

Martha got more to do than usual this week, too, though it still seemed weird to me that she wasn’t Bernice Summerfield! Freema did a good job of showing her confusion at being left to deal with events without the Doctor, and her scenes inside the dormant TARDIS were pregnant with emotion. The one thing I found somewhat lacking subtlety was her line about how the Doctor had fallen in love “but not with me”. Given the ongoing relationship there, it might have been nicer for that to have remained unspoken. In any case, she did well in her assumed role as servant, accepting with equanimity the racist, classist nature of the times. I particularly liked that far from condemning Baines and Hutchinson for the racist sneering, she showed some sympathy for what she saw as their possible oncoming fates.

As the first part of a two-parter, the episode took time to build up these characters and situations in a way a single 45 minute could not have, and was far richer as a result. The boys’ school setting was well-realised, and redolent of that old saw about the Great War having been won “on the playing fields of Eton”. The schoolboys themselves may have seemed on occasion to teeter close to parody, but were probably good representations of boys of the period. Thomas Sangster (who must be about 18 now but still looks much younger) was superb as Latimer, the quiet, sensitive one who doesn’t quite fit in. He’s been impressive in everything I’ve seen him in and hopefully has a great future ahead of him.

And the villains? At first I was disappointed to see that they were incorporeal aliens, quite different from the creepy Family of the book. Then as they started to take human forms, I was pleased to see that they were exactly as I had envisioned them, especially the little girl with the balloon. But as nominal leader, it’s Harry Lloyd’s Baines who takes the honours here, effectively playing a convincing double role. As Baines the schoolboy, he was a convincing upper class twit, but on his possession by the alien he became incredibly creepy, with his flaring nostrils and sinister but confident smile. A revelation, then, as previously all I’ve seen him do is stand around and look pretty as Will Scarlet in the new Robin Hood. This guy is amazingly talented, and even as a creepy alien, amazingly attractive!

Fittingly for a story so centred on the Doctor (and the effect of his absence) there was a deal of emphasis on the series’ history, something I feel is too often ignored. Like most fans I loved the simple but significant in-joke about Smith’s parents being named Sydney and Verity after Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert, effectively the show’s creators. It was a lovely moment for the fans that nonetheless fitted perfectly with the script – after all, those names do sound convincingly Edwardian! But the best stuff was in Smith’s dreams, and that marvellous notebook he showed to Joan. The beautiful pencil sketches of old monsters were only beaten by the heart-stopping moment when we saw a page adorned with pictures of several of his previous selves. I can’t be the only fan who was overjoyed to see Paul McGann’s 8th Doctor right at the centre of it!

And Smith got to save the day with a cricket ball, something the 5th Doctor would have heartily approved of. I can see how this sequence could have seemed contrived, but actually it worked perfectly. Not only was it a thrilling moment, but it was the scene which establishes that maybe Smith and the Doctor aren’t so different after all. As Stan Lee so groan inducingly put it in Spiderman 3, “maybe one man can make a difference!”.

Then there were the scarecrows. Perhaps a weak point, they’d plainly been put in (at Russell’s suggestion, apparently) as a bit of excitement to keep younger viewers interested in an admittedly somewhat slow-moving episode. British gothic horror has a fine tradition of animated scarecrows, perhaps because these wood-and-straw homunculi are inherently creepy (no matter what L Frank Baum might think). These were done rather well; I loved the moment when Clarke put his hand right through one and out of its back, trailing straw and all. But while they provided a few nice moments, I still found them a little extraneous, as the unsettlingly alien presence of the Family of Blood was quite menacing enough, thank you.

As you can tell by the number of exclamation marks in this review, I loved, loved, loved this episode. But it’s only a first part. It may be perhaps the finest single episode new Who has yet offered us (and I don’t say that lightly), but a lot rides on how the story is concluded. Given that Paul describes himself as new Who’s “emo” writer, I suspect it’ll be in more tears even than his previous script Father’s Day. And I can hardly wait!

“Everything on this ship is so cheap!”

-That’s not something I would have drawn attention to, in-joke or not!

After two weeks wait, the anticipation was almost too much. The long-vaunted real time episode of Doctor Who! All set on a spaceship plunging into the sun! How could this not be brilliant? Oh, wait… “by Chris Chibnall”. So much for that, then.

All right, it’s true that I have a pre-existing prejudice against Mr Chibnall, for writing all the worst episodes of Torchwood, and being generally in charge of that show’s style and storylines. He it was, after all, who gave us the immortal line “when was the last time you came so hard you forgot where you were?”, not so much a chat-up line as a direct quote from some very cheesy porn. However, he also wrote a pretty good episode of Life on Mars, and where Doctor Who‘s concerned I’m always prepared to put aside these prejudices and give the artist a chance. After all, I loathe Peter Kay and Catherine Tate, both of whom were very good in the show!

So I tried to put my anti-Chibnall feeling aside and hoped to see a good episode. After all, the premise was interesting, and I’d heard some good things about it. Sadly, my leniency was wasted on the author, who produced a script that could most charitably be described as “average”.

To be fair, it was well-executed. The direction, by veteran Graeme Harper, was tense and visually imaginative. I particularly liked the exchange of shots between the Doctor and Martha as the latter was blasted into space in an escape pod. And the recurring countdown clock, while an obvious lift from 24, nevertheless worked well to heighten the tension.

Some of the effects were pretty good, too. The boiling, amorphous surface of the sun was convincing enough to be terrifying as Martha’s pod plunged towards it; though it has to be said, the ship itself was rather variably rendered. In some shots it looked terrifically detailed, but in others it was simply cartoony.

No, the real problem here was the script. For a start, the exact – and I do mean exact – same plot has been done before, and better, in 1976’s Planet of Evil. Think about it – living planet is exploited by ruthless humans who nick bits of it for a fuel source, said planet then captures humans’ spaceship and starts dragging it back to certain doom, while the crew are menaced by one of their own who has become infected with the planet’s substance and can kill gruesomely with a glance. OK, I’ll grant you that your average modern Who viewer may well be unaware of this, but there’s still no excuse for such wholesale theft – even Russell’s not that blatant!

Then there were the characters. Much like in Torchwood, they were either as flimsy as cardboard or thoroughly unlikeable. We never really learned anything about Lerner or Erina, the first two victims, and third victim Ashton fared little better. We learned he was some kind of engineer, anyway. And Scannell, who actually made it through to the end in a high body-count story, wasn’t given any kind of character at all -it wasn’t even clear what he did on the ship!

Michelle Collins put in a game performance as Captain McDonnell, but the character really didn’t have much going for her. She could have been sympathetic in spite of being responsible for the whole situation – pleading ignorance and all – or she could have been a more out and out bad guy. Instead, we got a character written as a kind of third rate Ripley, self-serving, incapable, prone to sudden fits of hysterical emotion. More than once I found myself wondering what kind of loon would have put her in charge of a spacecraft in the first place. Presumably the writer thought we’d be moved by her “epic” self-sacrifice in the name of love, as she plunged herself and her possessed husband into the fires of the living sun as some kind of quest for redemption. The trouble was, she’d already established herself as a cod Sigourney Weaver, so I just found myself remembering the strangely similar but far more powerful climax to Alien 3.

And did she really have to be married to another guy on the ship? That kind of relationship in that kind of environment is usually a bad idea, but the main problem for me was that I knew Michelle Collins from Eastenders. Every time she finished a scene on an emotional cliffhanger, her lower lip trembling as she contemplated the futility of the situation, I expected the familar drumbeat of the soap’s closing theme to thunder in! I should stress, though, that this is nobody’s fault but my own.

And the actual plot! The pub quiz idea was quite a nice one, as Martha and Riley (the only likeable one in the crew) raced to open more doors than Mystery Science Theater‘s Satellite of Love. But it led nowhere, and just made me ponder the sci-fi cliche of a very long ship in which the middle bit doesn’t actually seem to serve any purpose (see 2001, Event Horizon, The Black Hole etc). The struggle for control of the escape pod was quite well-realised, but seemed a little illogical. But all that paled into insignificance before the sheer, mind-warping absurdity of the scene in which the Doctor has to go outside the ship to reactivate the magnet that would recapture the pod. Leaving aside the issue of how strong the magnet would have to be, you’re still left with the question: what the bloody hell are those controls doing on the outside of the ship? How could anyone who needed them actually get to them? Russell commented in Confidential that it was necessary for the plot that the Doctor should “expose himself to the sun” (fnarr, fnarr). Fine, but why not come up with a convincing reason for him to do so, instead of a sub Four to Doomsday space walk with as much logic behind it as that reset button behind the deadly whirring fans in Russell’s own End of the World? It was the worst kind of illogical, unnecessary set piece.

David Tennant was as good as usual, really controlling his performance. There were no hysterical outbursts, no hugging, and he never once said that he was sorry. He did say “allons-y”, though, which I rather hoped he’d got out of his system. And his speech about humanity’s ruthless greed and self-interest seemed rather at odds with a lot of his “isn’t humanity great?” moments from last year! He put on a good show of being genuinely frightened when possessed by the sun-stuff, but this just made me recall similar bits in The Invisible Enemy.

Martha at least got a lot to do this week. She’s been threatening to become a stereotypical captive, ankle twisting companion of late, so it was refreshing to see her acting to solve the situation with the Doctor incapacitated in a hastily repainted MRI machine (which never once looked like anything else). Her authoritative commands to the crew resolved everything, though the solution of dumping the fuel actually negated any need for the Captain’s “dramatic” self-sacrifice. After all, dumping the fuel cured the Doctor, so it would presumably have cured her husband, and anyone else infected.

I was a little irritated to see Martha given a Time Lord enhanced mobile phone just like Rose’s, but it was at least put to good use, plotwise. It was good to see Martha phoning her mum when stuck in the pod and certain of her own demise (though if it were Torchwood, she’d have been too busy shagging the cute young bloke stuck in there with her). But the main reason for the slightly jarring sequences set on contemporary Earth was to enhance the ongoing Mr Saxon plotline. It was a nice directorial touch as the camera pulled out from Martha’s mum to reveal some sinister government spooks standing behind her, who seemed to be multiplying between scenes! This plot’s being handled well, starting off low-key and becoming more significant in later stories. Far better than the constant name-dropping of Torchwood last year.

Overall, I’d have to say 42 was a very poor script executed rather well. Kudos to Graeme Harper for some good direction, but Chris Chibnall, please try and get some original ideas! And remember – Alien was twenty-eight years ago, and that style’s getting a little dated now! Still, roll on next week and an adaptation of my favourite New Adventure from the 90s, Human Nature. Half of me hopes it’ll be brilliant, half of me dreads that they’ll mess it up!

“My name is Richard Lazarus. I am 76 years old. And I am reborn!”

Lucky he lived up to his name, then.
Professor Richard Lazarus is a true comic book style mad scientist in that his destiny is dictated by his name. Like the biblical Lazarus, he is reborn not once but twice in this entertaining but ultimately inconsequential episode. Just as Spiderman‘s Dr Otto Octavius spent his life working towards becoming an octopus, just as DC’s Dr Jason Woodrue dedicated his life to becoming the plantlike Floronic Man.

While reminiscent of classic comics in tone, the script didn’t shy away from nicking ideas from other sources. Lazarus’ machine and the monster it eventually produced were reminiscent of nothing so much as The Fly, while the cathedral-bound finale was obviously from The Quatermass Experiment. As was, indeed, the title! Still, as was evident from the Philip Hinchcliffe era of Who, plundering the heritage of gothic horror is nothing new for the show, and if done well can have remarkable results.

It didn’t here, though. The Lazarus Experiment passes 45 minutes entertainingly enough, and is a good yarn, but ultimately is no more a classic story than last year’s equally fun but inconsequential Idiot’s Lantern. Mostly, it’s an extended chase with a scary but none too convincing CG monster and a plot identical to Quatermass. What was intriguing was the integration of this year’s ongoing themes and plots. The uncertain future of Martha was resolved as the Doctor decided to take her onboard the TARDIS full time, and we got to see more of her family. I could have lived without this, but they were far less irritating than their initial appearance made them seem. Sister Tish was a strong, interesting character, and even brother Leo was a sympathetic, occasionally comic foil. The character that made the most impression though was Martha’s mum. I’m not sure the show really needs another dragonlike disapproving mother, but the part was played well and given a twist by her acquisition of (presumably distorted) information about the Doctor.

And this was where the previously low-key plot of the mysterious Mr Saxon came into play. The mysterious henchman who whispered indistinct words into the ear of Martha’s mother was a nice touch – if Saxon’s the main villain this year we wouldn’t want him to show his hand so early by appearing in person. We also learned that his full name is Harold Saxon, which presumably is already making the anagram hunters on the internet crazy with possibilities. Can’t say I came up with anything coherent, though, unless you’re meant to work the word “mister” into it as well…

As to the script itself, while there was little of originality in it, the dialogue was superb. Lazarus was given a real personality, with a believable history of a childhood in the Blitz and seeing London change around him. His discussions on the morality and motives of his actions with the Doctor were extremely well-scripted, and I loved the inclusion of various quotes from TS Eliot, one of the moodiest of doom saying poets. Mark Gatiss played the part surprisingly well; given the couple of lines evident in the trailer, I expected him to go for a high-camp League of Gentlemen / Nebulous style performance, but he was actually rather restrained. There was just enough camp relish to make him a memorable bad guy without becoming a cartoon Bond villain. Although he did seem to be channelling early Peter Davison in his blond-wigged younger version! For that matter, his performance as the older Lazarus was very impressive, seeming genuinely doddering with the aid of some surprisingly effective prosthetics. As ageing make-up goes, it’s some of the best I’ve seen, even down to the bulging veins and liver spots on the hands.

But at the other end of the scale, there was that monster. Oh dear. Clearly a lot of thought went into the design; it was a good idea to have Lazarus’ face on its head, and the Blade 2 -like splitting of the lower jaw was an impressively scary concept. But it seemed like the Mill had let their ambition exceed their ability again, and the CGI looked very cartoonish, blending into the live action about as convincingly as Tom and Jerry in On the Town. Added to that, not only did the face look very little like Mark Gatiss, it seemed like a 2-D mask painted onto the front of the creature’s head, oddly like those eerie cardboard masks Vic and Bob used to wear in The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. There’s a school of thought which says that the monster was made to look deliberately unconvincing so as to avoid scaring the kiddies too much; personally though, I just thought that the Mill had bitten off more than they could chew again. Points for trying, though.

David Tennant was again excellent, reining in his shouting and moralising for an effective confrontation with Lazarus in the Cathedral. The haunting dialogue about living too long and seeing those you love die was delivered with a sombre, convincing understatement, and was thankfully the only (oblique) reference to Rose this week. The humour was well-handled, too. I loved his enthusiastic reaction to being described as a “science geek”, his comically misunderstood exchange with Martha’s mum (“we didn’t have much time for talking…!”), and especially the Spinal Tap gag as he turned the organ up to 11 with his sonic screwdriver.

In a story that showcased her family quite effectively, Martha was oddly… ineffective. With the exception of her impressive exchanges with the Doctor at the episode’s beginning and end, she seemed to mostly be in the story to run away and/or be menaced. Ok, so that’s the trad companion role, but I’d hate for her to become the sort of cypher you used to see so often in the original show. I think we’ve already seen that the character has more potential than that.

So, a solid, entertaining episode enlivened by some good dialogue and excellent guest performances, but ultimately rather forgettable. Given its dark tone, it might resonate rather well with nightmare-prone kiddies, but I wonder if they’ll remember it with the same thrill of comfy fear that I remember The Horror of Fang Rock? Somehow I rather doubt it.

And now the show is on an enforced two week break. That’s irritating, and if anything reality tat-fest Any Dream Will Do is more responsible for its shifting around the schedules than the perennial Eurovision Song Contest, which let’s face it hasn’t interfered for the last two seasons. But it provides what looks like a convenient mid-season break as the Martha plotline comes to a conclusion of sorts while the Saxon plotline begins. At the very least, it gave us the chance to see a storming trailer for the remaining half of the season. It looks storming! I know that’s sort of the point of trailers, and it’s all in the editing, but I’ve got to say, I’m excited!