Simon’s Incoherent Blog

Series 6, Episode 7: A Good Man Goes to War

“Look, I’m angry, that’s new. Not sure what’s going to happen now.”

There’s a rather magnificent, fan produced, 13 minute faux anime version of Doctor Who on Youtube. If you haven’t seen it, go and have a look. Go on, I’ll wait…

(Plays teletext style music)

There. Great, isn’t it? It consists of beautifully produced crowd pleasing set pieces in which icons of the show are shoehorned into a typical series of anime action sequences. What it doesn’t have (and as an experiment in style, probably doesn’t really need) is any kind of coherent plot formed out of these sequences. Unfortunately, an actual episode of the show does need that, and arguably, that’s the problem with A Good Man Goes to War.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like about this episode. As the (unprecedented) mid season finale, it’s ‘the spectacular one’ at which they’ve clearly thrown all the money. It looks sensational, with masses of CG of varying quality all over the place to give it an epic feel. Director Peter Hoar has clearly got a good eye for vistas and action, and the Clerics’ asteroid base has the real feel of an epic Hollywood action movie villains’ lair. Not to mention some genuinely good spaceship action – the destruction of the Cyber Fleet in the pre-credits sequence looked sensational.

The episode is also brimming over with brilliant ideas. A lesbian Silurian detective hunting down Jack the Ripper in 1888 (the incurably silly Primeval is, coincidentally, heading for that year next week). A disgraced Sontaran is forced to act as a battlefield nurse rather than a warrior, the ultimate humiliation. Either of these sumptuously mounted set pieces could easily form the basis of an exciting episode in their own right, and Steve Moffat just chucks them blithely into the mix.

We also get much more expansion on the idea of the ‘Church Military’ concept first seen in last year’s Angels two-parter. The Headless Monks, mentioned then, are finally seen, and really are headless – the blank gap beneath their cowls reminded me of the similarly freaky Brotherhood of Demnos in 1976’s Masque of Mandragora. Crucially, they have no heads so that they act entirely from the heart – a metaphorical concept taken literally that’s a central theme of this episode. We also get throwaway lines that hint at how Christianity and the military work together. The Monks’ declaration that each ‘army’ must offer a ‘sacrifice’ hints at the idea that there might be other religions who have armies – a Jewish one perhaps, or Hindu or Muslim. And another throwaway line gives an idea as to the workings of Christianity in the far future as Colonel Manton refers to “the Papal mainframe herself”. Along with the inclusion of gay married couples, that proves the Church has really moved on in accepting science and women too!

In fact, dialogue was another strength of this episode. Aside from random lines hinting at staggering concepts, almost every line seemed to be an instantly quotable classic. Lorna Bucket says, portentously, “he meets a lot of people. Some of them remember. He’s like… I don’t know… a dark legend.” Rory, getting brilliantly heroic this week, enquires as the Cyber Fleet is destroyed, “Would you like me to repeat the question?” There was some great humour too, as one of the clerics declared, “We’re the thin fat gay married Anglican marines. Why would we need other names?” Later, as ‘the fat one’ is led unsuspecting into the Monks’ sacrificial chamber, he comments on their choice of interior decor: “I like this. Lot of red. Hope it’s not to hide the stains!” And when the Doctor finally appears, twenty minutes into the story, he immediately mocks the soldiers with, “Please point a gun at me if it’ll help you relax!”

Some immediately likeable characters too. Probably best were the lady detectives from 1888, Neve McIntosh again brilliant as Lady Vastra (her chauffeur is called Parker and says “Yes, m’lady”) and Catrin Stewart was fun as her maid/lover/assistant Jenny (the same name as the Doctor’s ‘daughter’? Hmmm). It’s hard to know what would have scandalised Victorian society more – an interspecies romance, a same sex romance, or an inter class romance! Dan Starkey was great fun as Sontaran Commander Strax, who seemed to be finding being a nurse more enjoyable than he had anticipated: “One day we may meet on the battlefield and I will slay your puny human form. Now get some rest.” And it was nice to see Simon Fisher-Becker back as fat, bald, blue Dorium Maldovar – a sort of futuristic version of Sidney Greenstreet in Casablanca.

So, yes, there was a lot in this episode that was really brilliant. Why then didn’t it really work for me? Firstly, I think, because there was simply too much of it. Each new idea was tossed eagerly into the mix without pausing for breath, making the whole thing seem like something of a staggering melee. It’s like when I first started cooking curries, and thought that the ideal way to do it would be to use the entire Schwartz spice range.

Secondly, to me at least, the fan-pleasing inclusion of so many old friends and foes seemed pretty gratuitous and self-indulgent. It reminded me of nothing more than Journey’s End, in which Russell T Davies similarly included every trope he’d established during his tenure as showrunner. That was slightly more forgivable though, as Russell was nearing the end of his tenure and wanted to sum everything up. Still, I didn’t think it worked then, and I don’t think it works here, particularly with Steve Moffat only a year and a half into his tenure. By the time the still-ridiculous spaceborne Spitfires turned up, I was getting pretty bored with it and wondering if we’d be treated to a return appearance by such memorable characters as Breen from Victory of the Daleks (remember her? Thought not). And while I’m on the subject, if the Doctor was collecting in favours from all his debtors and old friends, where the hell was Captain Jack Harkness?

Also as in RTD’s era, we got beautifully staged and brilliant set pieces that impressed but existed entirely outside of the plot. The introduction of all the Doctor’s allies fell into this category. This was possibly a good thing, though, as what plot there actually was probably only really merited about twenty minutes of screen time once the spectacle and set pieces were stripped away. I mean, what did the Doctor actually do? He sneaked into a top secret military base and rescued his companion. Sure, there was some advancement of the big plot arc, but essentially, that’s the gist of it. In some 70s episodes, he got that done in five minutes.

Of course, it was painted as something much more significant as that. The Doctor was angry! (Which isn’t really new, even for this incarnation). And River commented that “he’ll rise higher than ever before, then fall so much further”. But the stakes were, apparently, nowhere near as high as they’d been in the past. In fact, River’s statement more accurately sums up last year’s The Pandorica Opens, which has the same basic plot but plays for much higher stakes – the existence of all of space and time. In that one, the Doctor rises high as he sees off a gigantic, multi-baddie space fleet all by himself (not just a few piddling human soldiers), then falls far as he’s seemingly imprisoned for eternity while the universe is erased from existence. Whereas here, his ‘fall’ is losing Amy’s baby – a very big deal on a personal level, but lessened even on those terms by River’s big revelation. After all, if River was the baby, we know she’s going to be just fine.

Still, that revelation was played well, even if the last ten minutes were basically just exposition that even further unbalanced the structure of the plot. I can’t say it came as too much of a surprise that River was Amy’s daughter (that theory’s been all over the internet for weeks, not least in my earlier reviews!), but it was all very enigmatically played. When she told the Doctor himself, it was all played in half sentences and gestures – could she actually have told him more than she told Amy? She seemed to be gesturing at the Gallifreyan words on the Doctor’s cot every bit as much as the scrap of cloth within it. We still don’t really know the nature of her relationship with the Doctor, though he seemed amused and embarrassed that they had kissed. It only tells us part of who River is, so there’s still plenty more scope for mystery, and I’m glad Moffat isn’t giving us all the answers in one go.

Mind you, if River is Amy’s daughter, and Amy’s daughter was the girl in the space suit, how come she didn’t remember that at the time she was actually examining the suit? And what, if anything, should we make of the seemingly throwaway bit of innuendo when she first meets Rory this week; she says she’s been off with a Doctor from a different part of his timeline, and Rory jests, “unless there’s two of them…” And we now know that River is part Time Lord – or has a ‘time head’ as Amy referred to it earlier – because of being conceived while the TARDIS was in flight in the vortex. Can it be that easy to make a Time Lord? And if so, are we seeing some sort of origin story here? Some people have already said that, if River can regenerate, it makes a nonsense of her death in Silence in the Library. That’s definitely not the case though; she sacrificed herself there to avoid the Doctor’s death, and if that computer/brain connection would have killed him, then it surely would have killed her.

Still, the subject of Time Lords was central to the episode’s real theme, and amid all the sound and fury, I have to say that was handled well. Moffat was interested in what the Doctor has become, the consequences of it, and what will happen if he goes further down that path. It’s beginning to seem very reminiscent of the McCoy/Cartmel story arc and its enlargement in the Virgin New Adventures books. “Why would a Time Lord be a weapon?” muses the Doctor, to which Lady Vastra responds, “Well, they’ve seen you”. Matt Smith’s stunned realisation, as he sinks horrified into a nearby chair, was brilliantly well-played. The Doctor started out as a healer and a wise man – but now he’s a ‘dark legend’, ‘the oncoming storm’ and a warrior to be feared. RTD touched on this theme occasionally – most notably with Davros’ accusatory speech in Journey’s End – but never made it so central. It was underscored by River’s nicely judged speech about the word ‘Doctor’ meaning a healer entirely because of him, and what it might come to mean in the future. Interestingly, many fans have now dug out this little nugget from Steve Moffat, written on rec.arts.drwho back in 1995:

“Here’s a particularly stupid theory. If we take “The Doctor” to be the Doctor’s name – even if it is in the form of a title no doubt meaning something deep and Gallifreyan – perhaps our earthly use of the word “doctor” meaning healer or wise man is direct result of the Doctor’s multiple interventions in our history as a healer and wise man. In other words, we got it from him. This is a very silly idea and I’m consequently rather proud of it. “

So he’s been thinking about this one for a while…

Overall then, A Good Man Goes to War is a slim plot padded out but unbalanced with some brilliant ideas and dialogue, standalone set pieces, and visual spectacle. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, and still think it’s head and shoulders above the rest of what’s on television at the moment. But it seemed to me to be something of an incoherent melee, with too much of everything and not enough actual plot. The overall baddie, Madam Kovarian, still has no clear motivation and consequently comes across as a sneering pantomime villain. Mind you, I’m prepared to accept that this is because Moffat doesn’t want to show his full hand yet, and both she and this episode may be redeemed by further developments in the plot arc.

This episode may have disappointed me – and I gather a few others – partly because of that arc, and it’s worth noting that, of 7 episodes so far, only two haven’t been heavily connected with it. Some more strong standalone stories would be a very nice thing, especially if you want to attract more casual viewers who haven’t been following a complex overall plotline. But the arc may also mean that, when it’s over, we can look at all the preceding episodes in a new light. Let’s hope this is the case, when we reach the intriguingly titled Let’s Kill Hitler. More Doctor Who reviews in September – I’ll try to write something else in the mean time!

Series 6, Episode 6: The Almost People

“Why? Why should we have to suffer for human beings?”

Hmm. Tricky one to review this – with that sudden dramatic switch in emphasis to the overall story arc in the last five minutes, it’s actually more like trying to assess the differing qualities of two episodes. Not since Utopia has an episode’s last few scenes changed the nature of the story so much. And yet, both aspects of the story informed each other in a way that made it, overall, rather better than last week’s somewhat predictable opener.

To start with though, the conclusion to the actual story of the Flesh and the Gangers was itself less of a predictable beast. As I said last week, there are some interesting, albeit familiar, themes being dealt with here, and even with the plot advancement being signalled a mile off as if by giant semaphore flags, both episodes dealt with them well, with some good dialogue and interesting characterisation.

What marked the conclusion out as rather more interesting, though, was the inclusion of the Ganger Doctor. Matt Smith was clearly relishing the possibilities available here, with two equally manic and excitable Eleventh Doctors to play with! The Ganger’s ‘post-regenerative trauma’, as it tried to sort through the information in a man who’s had eleven personalities, was a joy of fanwank as we heard lines from Hartnell, Pertwee, and then, marvellously, the actual voice of Tom Baker emerged to enquire as to the desirability of a jelly baby. But once settled down as Eleven, the Ganger made a great double act with the original Doctor, and their indistinguishability – apart from their shoes – became one of the key plot points.

Kudos again to director Julian Simpson for making the split screen shots of both Doctors work so well and look so effortless. And kudos to writer Matthew Graham for using the concept to further interestingly explore the nature of the artificial Flesh, and its status as a being in its own right. The Ganger Doctor was key to this, but as we later found out, there was a far more dramatic revelation in store.

The title, if I can get a bit fanwanky myself, seemed to encapsulate the theme. It seemed to me reminiscent of Ben Aaronovitch’s Virgin New Adventure title The Also People, which in itself I always thought derived from a line in Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – “the things are also people”. That, in a nutshell, was the theme of the story overall. The Flesh was more than a tool or a thing. Like Data in Star Trek TNG’s Measure of a Man, it had become a sentient being that should be accorded the rights of all other sentient beings.

This was illustrated in some actually quite graphic and horrifying ways. The pile of still conscious Ganger cast offs that Jennifer showed Rory was perhaps the most disturbing, with their still moving eyes and mouths. But perhaps more unnerving still was Ganger Jennifer’s assertion that she remembered every death she’d experienced as Flesh.

Here, though, we did see some more of the predictability emerge as to where these characters were going. As with, again, every Silurian story ever, Jennifer was clearly going to be the militant, driven Ganger who would stop at nothing to start a war out of bitterness, clearly for revenge. Her ultimate transformation into an almost well-realised deformed shrieking monster came as no particular surprise. Nor, given the setup last week, did Jimmy’s Ganger having to ultimately replace him as little Adam’s dad when the original Jimmy died. There was pathos, sure, but that was paint-by-numbers plotting.

Rather better was the treatment of Cleaves, with Raquel Cassidy again being magnetic in a dual role. It was fitting for the concept that Cleaves’ Ganger should be the first to experience cynical disillusionment with Jennifer’s fanatical revolution, as she shared her original’s character traits. Along with her original’s fatal blood clot – a point that was later vital to establish.

Having said that, not all of the characters were so well-defined. Marshall Lancaster’s Buzzer wasn’t given much to say or do, and his human original was despatched in short order, to no great emotional impact. And Leon Vickers’ Dicken, while looking pretty enough, wasn’t really given a personality at all, so when his human version sacrificed himself to save the others, it was no particular shock either. And what happened to all his sneezing in part one? I’d thought that might lead to some plot point or other. Or was it simply the only distinctive character trait the writer thought to give him?

The oncoming destruction of the crumbling factory as Gangers and humans tried to outwit each other and escape was well-handled by both writer and director, even if, again, we were seeing nothing new here. The scenario was actually handled so tensely as to allow me, at least, to forgive the fact that it was basically an Alien-inspired runaround. Others, I know, might not be so forgiving!

So the plotline was wrapped up fairly efficiently, at least in an exciting way. However – and I know this is probably niggling – there was still no explanation forthcoming as to why 22^nd century Earth needs all this acid, or how one can mine for it in any case. I realise that scientific accuracy isn’t traditionally a strong point in Doctor Who, and you could say that the business of acid mining is merely a McGuffin to give the base under siege a purpose. But as the acid’s destruction of the base was one of the primary sources of peril in this concluding part, I could have done with, at least, a couple of throwaway lines of exposition, preferably as establishment in the first part. It might have made more sense to set the story on an alien planet which could have vast deposits of subterranean acid. Indeed, I wondered whether this had been the original intention, and the shift to Earth and the admittedly atmospheric monastery setting had been dictated by budgetary considerations.

As the TARDIS deposited a motley crew of Gangers and humans at the headquarters of Weyland-Yutani like corporation Morpeth-Jetsan for an inquiry that had somehow already been convened, the point was rammed home well enough about the dangers of playing Frankenstein, and the consequences of artificially creating life. But even with the theme having been quite nicely explored, there was a lack of internal logic here. The Doctor had implied that these particular Gangers had gained individual sentience as a result of the solar storm, leading to the obvious conclusion that this was an exceptional circumstance, and that the Flesh in general didn’t have these characteristics. Yet he was urging them, as they went into the meeting, to make the case for the rights of Gangers. Also, the Ganger castoffs, still alive, implied that all Gangers had this potential. Which, if you think about it, makes his decision to destroy the now-revealed Ganger Amy a bit damn callous!

But oh, what a scene! That was marvellously played by all concerned. Karen Gillan’s faltering, uncertain, “I’m scared Doctor” was truly heartfelt, as was Rory’s initial protectiveness. That he ultimately, reluctantly, stepped away was a testament to how genuinely scary Matt Smith made the Doctor – once again, we saw that underneath the playfulness, this is really a 900 year old alien of immense power.

So, major arc developments. The Doctor has known for some time that this wasn’t the real Amy – that was his real purpose behind investigating the Flesh. Indeed, it hasn’t been the real Amy “for a long time”. How long exactly? I was thinking maybe she was replaced when captured by the Silence in Day of the Moon, but Steven Moffat has strongly implied that it happened even before the series began. And she really is pregnant – but with whose baby? And will it be the mysterious, regenerating little girl from the opening two parter? At least we now know that eyepatch lady is real, some kind of sentinel over the recumbent, real Amy, whose tenuous link to her Ganger led to the ‘Schrodinger’s baby’ uncertainty on the TARDIS medical scanner.

Rory didn’t die this week, but yet again, there was a reference to the 2000 years he spent as the Watchful Centurion, as the Doctor playfully called him “Roranicus Pondicus. As this has been harped on about several times since the season opener, and as Rory seems next week to be dressed in Roman garb, this is obviously significant. But who knows how? And the Doctor now knows about his oncoming demise, courtesy of Amy finding him indistinguishable from his Ganger self – something which didn’t hold true for hers! He hasn’t commented on it yet, but with next week’s episode bringing the season to a midpoint cliffhanger, I’m expecting this to play a major part.

So, we got an exciting and thoughtful conclusion to a very trad Doctor Who story, which suffered from a lack of originality, a lack of internal logic and some predictable plotting. Nevertheless, I do think that part two had more to recommend it than part one, and I never thought it was actively bad – just a little overfamiliar. Those who spend less time analysing the tropes of Doctor Who and science fiction in general may not have had that problem, and I know a lot of people who found this the most enjoyable story of the season so far. It’s just that I’m not one of them!

But those final scenes lifted it out of routine, and while linked to the main story, were almost an episode in their own right. Given the big advancement of the story arc, I wondered whether those particular scenes had actually been written by Steve Moffat himself – but Matthew Graham is capable of some very good writing even if he did give an unwilling world Bonekickers. It was a heart in mouth cliffhanger – and while I’m already finding it hard to wait for next week, I know the wait of several months after that may be even harder!

Series 6, Episode 5: The Rebel Flesh

“You gave them your lives. Human lives are amazing. Are you surprised they walked off with them?”

OK – a slightly less “rapturous” review this week. (Note to future self – there was a big deal about a Californian televangelist nutter predicting the Rapture on Saturday – it didn’t happen, hence still being here to write this). Maybe I was still reeling from how much I loved last week’s episode, maybe it’s because I was stuck watching it on a tiny 4:3 TV in a dull hotel for work, maybe it’s because writer Matthew Graham’s last Who story, Fear Her, was less than impressive. But I didn’t find this as great as I know a lot of other fans did.

Not that it was in any way bad, mind – in fact, this was waaay better than the aforementioned Fear Her, in which the awestruck voice of Huw Edwards caused stomachs to turn with his depiction of the Olympic flame – “it’s a flame of hope now, of love…” And with his other writer’s hat on, Matthew Graham seriously impressed me with his cop/time travel crossovers, Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. The Rebel Flesh wasn’t as good as those, but it was miles ahead of Fear Her. And yet, it left me curiously unmoved.

In the spirit of positivity caused by the apocalypse fail, let’s start with what was good. To begin with, this was very much a trad Who story in the mould of the Troughton ‘base under siege’ staples – an isolated scientific installation where things go wrong, help is not forthcoming, and the Doctor and co can’t just leave. Actually, that latter point has been an impressive factor in recent episodes. Like the 60s stories, you can’t just yell at the screen, “get in the TARDIS and leave then!”, because the TARDIS has been removed/destroyed/possessed, or in this case, buried in an acid-corroded hole.

Unfortunately, that does bring me to the first of my negative points. This is indeed an impressively realised future installation, a 13th century monastery used to mine acid. But I don’t recall there being any explanation of why 22nd century Earth would particularly want acid. It’s plainly important, hence the urgency over getting the operation up and running again, but why? Either an important bit of exposition was buried under Murray Gold’s music, or some useful lines from an earlier draft were deleted and not replaced. For that matter, how can you mine acid? I know I’m no scientist, so I may be talking through my hat here, but my hazy memories of O level science don’t include vast untapped pools of subterranean corrosives. For a start, wouldn’t they end up corroding their way to the depths of the planet before losing their potency? And while I’m on the subject, what the heck is a “solar tsunami”?

Still, nobody’s ever accused Doctor Who of being scientifically accurate. However much that niggled at me, it did make for an impressively dangerous scenario, and an island surrounded by acid instantly called to mind 1964 story The Keys of Marinus. Which made me realise I was thinking too much.

But some thought was definitely required. The central thrust of the plot is not a new idea – we’ve created artificial life, and we’re using it to do the dirty jobs, and it may, or may not, be conscious of its own existence/purpose/duplication. These themes are familiar from Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner and any number of Philip K Dick and Harlan Ellison stories. But familiarity doesn’t dull their potency – these are big philosophical concepts, and exactly the sort of thing science fiction is good at dealing with.

And to give Graham his due, the script is dealing with them well. The artificial Flesh, and the (doppel)Gangers are a well-realised concept, given some interesting dialogue about the nature of identity when they separate from their human progenitors. A good cast helps – it was nice to see Marshall Lancaster from Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, again giving his patented Manchester everybloke (though why were the acid mine’s crew all Northern? Just so the Doctor could get that rather forced “Ee by gum” gag?). And I’m always glad to see Raquel Cassidy, who I’ve liked since her stint in Teachers, and it was amusing to think that she was being reunited with her Parliamentary researcher from Party Animals – one Matt Smith. But this time, he was in charge!

So, a good concept, a good cast, and some interesting philosophical dialogue – always a Doctor Who strength. Why, then, wasn’t it more engaging for me?

Mainly, I think, it was the plotting. Given the concept, there were no surprises here. It was obvious that the Flesh would become an independent life form. It was obvious that we’d be wondering which version of the characters was real (“Kill us both, Spock!”). And it was obvious, as in similar stories where the ‘monsters’ are just misunderstood (I’m looking at you, every Silurian story), that one of the human characters would, through fear and ignorance, instigate an avoidable conflict.

Some strong direction almost avoided the predictability – this was done very tensely, and even when a plot point was obvious, as with Jennifer’s toilet transformation, it was handled well. Julian Simpson pulled a lot of tricks out of the bag, despite an apparently meagre budget, to make this very suspenseful; the split screen work was impressive, and the Gangers’ make up interestingly scary for the tots. But ultimately, the predictability of the plotting was never going to be something you could hide. That said, it addressed the same plot miles better than Chris Chibnall’s disappointing Silurian two parter last year.

The regulars were as good as ever though. I’m really loving the dynamic of the three person TARDIS team this year, it’s so refreshing after RTD’s determined ‘one Doctor, one companion who fancies him’ staple. There’s obviously something being set up with Amy and Rory; the emphasis on their nice, loving relationship in previous episodes seems to be setting them up for a fall. And we may be seeing the genesis of that here, as Rory gets to play the hero searching for Jennifer – someone he seems to have fallen for in both human and Ganger form. It’s nice to see Amy looking discomfited that, for once, she’s not the dominant one in the relationship; and Karen Gillan has played that rather well.

Arc watch – apart from establishing that our heroes like Muse (Supermassive Black Hole is one of my favourites too), the Doctor is still puzzling over Schrodinger’s baby, and Eyepatch Lady makes another brief appearance. The Ganger Doctor could, of course, be the one we saw killed in the first episode – but that’s far, far too obvious, I think. Some have theorised that the frequent deaths of Rory (none this week, amazingly) are the Universe’s way of compensating for the fact that he should be dead, and Amy brought him back. So if he’s the father, his position in space/time is far from secure, hence the ‘positive/negative’ pregnancy indecision. Incidentally, that medical scanner in the console seems a little convenient – it could have come in useful in any number of disease oriented stories, notably The Invisible Enemy. Perhaps the Doctor didn’t want to reveal that he’d been peeking inside his companions’ bodies…

So, some interesting ideas but, for me, a formulaic and predictable plot. Far from a bad episode though, and as the first of a two-parter, much hinges on the conclusion. What are these mysterious hints the Doctor has been dropping regarding his knowledge of the Flesh as “primitive technology”? And will we find out more about the implications an intelligent, self-aware slave race could have for this future society? Next week’s conclusion could raise this from being an interesting idea with dull execution into something rather more. Here’s hoping…

Series 6, Episode 4: The Doctor’s Wife

I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and ran away. You were the only one mad enough.”

Wow. My brain is still reeling! Where to start, where to start? With Neil Gaiman of course! Neil Gaiman wrote this episode! Wait… I’ll write that again, but bigger. NEIL GAIMAN WROTE THIS EPISODE!!!

As you may have guessed, I’m a bit of a fan. Forget your Richard Curtis and your Simon Nye (much as I loved their episodes), this was written by the guy who created Sandman. And Neverwhere. And American Gods. Fan or not, it’s fair to say that I was worried Neil wouldn’t live up to my high expectations. But I needn’t have been. This was every bit as special, as lyrical, as weird, inventive and beautiful as I could have hoped for – and more besides.

The title was either pretty clever or a sneaky bit of misdirection, depending on your point of view. The Doctor’s Wife was first floated around as a possible episode title by John Nathan-Turner in the 80s, hoping to bait easily riled and humourless fans who thought the very idea of their hero having a romantic relationship would mean the end of the universe. And I think similar fans may have had similar reactions on hearing the title this time around. But this was far more interesting than the Doctor getting married, or even having some kind of daughter. I don’t know if you could call the relationship the episode centred on a romantic one (though I wouldn’t rule it out), but it’s the longest standing relationship in the history of the show – the Doctor and the TARDIS.

It’s a brilliant concept, particularly for those of us who talk to our cars. Imagine if the car suddenly talked back! Sentient TARDISes have been done before in the BBC books (though I don’t know if Neil will have read them), but this wasn’t some Johnny come lately of a timeship like Compassion. This was the original, the one and now the only TARDIS. All those little hints the show has dropped about the ship’s sentience and telepathic abilities were crystallised by having her ‘matrix’ installed in a living, breathing woman.

Suranne Jones gave a marvellously batty performance as Idris/TARDIS, though the look she’d been given made it difficult not to think of Helena Bonham-Carter in some of her madder roles. Not being a Coronation Street fan, this is the first time I’ve ever seen Suranne Jones, but I have to say I was impressed. After all, it’s a pretty weird role to get your head around… “What’s my motivation?” “Well, you’re a shapeshifting box who travels in time and space.”

It helped that she had excellent chemistry with Matt Smith, enlivened by some brilliantly witty and lyrical dialogue. “Do you have a name?” “700 years, finally he asks.” Anthropomorphising the one the Doctor has always loved above all others gave them a chance to have an almost flirtatious relationship, with him calling her ‘sexy’ while she remarked on the hilarity of his chin. Matt was at his most exuberant, running around like an excited little boy half the time, but still carrying the gravitas to convey his guilt at having wiped out his own race.

But central concept aside, there had to be a plot – which my friend Kim has already described as ‘The Edge of Destruction on acid’. The plot was as typically weird as one might expect from a writer whose plot for Stardust is actually accurately summarised by the lyrics of Take That’s Rule the World. So a sentient asteroid that eats TARDISes has been luring Time Lords outside the universe to kill them for their craft, while maintaining a ‘family’ constantly rebuilt patchwork people put together like the Morbius creature. And finding that the Doctor’s TARDIS is the last one, said TARDISophage is desperate to get back into the universe to find more tasty timeships.

It’s a much more fantastical idea than recent Doctor Who has ever done, though still less weird than things like The Mind Robber from 1968. As a result, I think some fans might find Neil Gaiman’s lyrical fantasy style not what they were expecting from Who – though if so, his episode of Babylon 5 could have given them a clue as to what to expect. I must say, I was a bit worried at first by the visuals I saw in the trailer – it looked like identikit Tim Burton/Terry Gilliam/David Lynch stuff, and I was concerned that we might be getting a blend of two styles that didn’t quite mesh. But in context, it worked perfectly. The ‘TARDIS junkyard’ planetoid and its patchwork inhabitants were very much of the style that could have crept out from Coraline or Stardust, which for me is no bad thing.

It was a shame that we had to get rid of the witty but crumbling Auntie and Uncle so quickly, but there were so many ideas packed into this episode that there wasn’t really time to explore many of them in depth – if there was a flaw at all, that was it. It was nice to see some menace restored to the Ood in the persona of Nephew, with his eyes that green colour representative of House. And the possessed TARDIS, green light glowing from its windows, brought an element of chills back to the ship and its multitudinous and infinite corridors.

The visualisation (finally!) of the TARDIS interior being more than just the console room was just one of many continuity references in the script, too. Apparently Time Lords can officially regenerate into other genders – the Doctor’s old friend Corsair had been men and women. The room delete function has a failsafe to ensure no occupants are deleted with the rooms – makes you wonder what Nyssa was so worried about in Castrovalva when deleting rooms randomly. And Time Lord distress messages are (were) still sent in little telepathic cubes as seen in The War Games!

Rory and Amy continued to be a strong double act as House menaced them in the possessed TARDIS – great voice for House by Michael Sheen, incidentally. Though the old, bearded Rory did look unavoidably reminiscent of Monty Python’s “It’s…” guy, and Rory looking like he was dead again was fooling no-one. Nice that the TARDIS thinks of him (to the Doctor’s incredulity) as “the pretty one”!

In the end, though, House was perhaps too easily vanquished by the TARDIS as she was set free from her corporeal prison, but that final scene between her and the Doctor was absolutely heartbreaking, knowing that he will never speak to her like that ever again. Convincing tears on the part of everyone in the scene – and a few from me at home too.

There were almost no references to the big story arc this week, beyond a short exchange between Amy and Rory, which meant no mysterious, eyepatch-clad Frances Barber gazing through a hatch in reality. But the TARDIS’ final words to Rory must be a big clue – “The only water in the forest is River”. No idea what that actually could mean, but I’m sure all will become clear…

In the end, this episode was, for me, very special indeed. I don’t love Neil Gaiman’s work uncritically, but I thought this was a marvellous blend of his trademark style with Doctor Who. And I’ve never heard the series better summed up than in Amy’s remark in the final scene – “A boy and his box, off to see the universe”. And that’s the magic of Doctor Who. Thanks, Neil.

Series 6, Episode 3: Curse of the Black Spot

“Yo ho ho! … Or does nobody actually say that?”

Sometimes, my brain hurts from trying to analyse the complexity of Steven Moffat’s Chinese puzzle plots. So after all the twisty turny plot arc stuff of the last two episodes, it was almost a relief to get back to a straightforward, standalone adventure. And with pirates! I love pirates, although I know from some friends’ reactions to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies that this isn’t a universal feeling. Still, with a fourth Jack Sparrow adventure due to be released in a fortnight or so, this episode was nothing if not timely.

At any rate, Doctor Who has done pirates before, but not since 1966’s The Smugglers. In some ways, that was a more trad take on the whole Robert Louis Stevenson staple, with “Aaarr!” accents and all. This was actually rather lighter on Errol Flynn heroics than I might have expected, though Amy at least got to brandish a cutlass and swing across the deck by a handy bit of rigging. Amusingly, she also found time to put on the requisite frock coat and tricorn hat before rushing to her men’s rescue – the situation was clearly not so urgent to prevent her “dressing for the occasion”.

This was fairly lightweight stuff, though by no means unenjoyable. Hugh Bonneville impressed as Captain Avery, making the most of a role that was formed more from a brief character sketch than anything else: former naval officer, likes gold, turned pirate unbeknownst to his family. To be honest, he was really the only guest character with any sort of personality, as the rest of the crew were simply stock pirates, few of them even graced with such luxuries as names. But fair’s fair, this was a 45 minute adventure story, and the kind of character development given to the lowly bilgerats on Jack Sparrow’s ship needs a bit more time than that.

Nonetheless, the crew gave their all with what little they had to work with, responding to the demands of the plot more than anything else. So we had the cowardly one, the loyal one, the treacherous one etc, all familiar archetypes from pirate tales of yore. Particularly notable was Lee Ross as the ship’s boatswain (he wasn’t given a name either) – I always liked Ross as Kenny in Moffat’s Press Gang, and he doesn’t pop up enough on telly. The last thing I seem to recall him doing was a nifty turn as Gene Hunt’s nemesis in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes.

It was nice to see the Doctor guessing at what was going on, and consistently being wrong – “Ignore all my previous theories!” – somewhat in the style of Dr Gregory House with his several incorrect diagnoses before reaching the right one. There’s been rather too much of the Doctor being omniscient since the series returned, and I like to be reminded that he’s fallible – though preferably not by committing genocide as he did last week. Matt Smith gave his customary well-studied performance, playing with a lighter script than we had last week which gave him some great lines (though I’m not sure “Urgh, alien bogeys!” is going to go down as one of the show’s classic quotes).

Karen Gillan got some meaty stuff too, with the aforementioned swashbuckling nicely handed to the girl rather than either of the men. She also got some really touching moments with Rory, which continue to really solidify their relationship – it’s hard to see the situation in the TARDIS as so much of a love triangle this year. Arthur Darvill too was marvellous, though he did spend most of the episode being utilised basically as comic relief. Still, I can’t say I was entirely displeased to see him shirtless, even if this did involve him dying yet again! While the recreation of the bit from The Abyss where Ed Harris brings back Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was a nice scene, given Rory’s many previous deaths I never believed for a second that he was gone for good this time. As my friend Richard commented on his recent blog post, Mr Moffat’s trend of killing off major characters only for timey wimey wizardry to bring them back has rather cheapened the idea of death in Doctor Who.

A relief it was then, that the scary ‘siren’ wasn’t actually killing people after all – though I twigged that after she got the little boy, finding it unlikely that this show would kill off a child quite so freely. She was, basically, an alien version of Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram, shaped (presumably from the sailors’ minds) into an object from a classic sailor’s ghost story. The idea that she could appear from any reflective surface was a nice gimmick, though backed up with the kind of technobabble that would make a Star Trek writer blush. At least the Doctor had the disclaimer, “It’s not really like that at all”.

And the spaceship coexisting in the same time and space as the pirates’ vessel is a nice sci fi idea, but as old as the hills. Doctor Who itself has done it several times, notably with the Megara ship in The Stones of Blood and the two ships stuck through each other in Nightmare of Eden.

Ultimately though, this wasn’t an episode about big sci fi concepts – it was meant to be a rollicking adventure with pirates. On that level it largely succeeded, though I could have done with seeing some actual piracy, or at least the ship soaring along in the daylight. Those are quibbles really though – Curse of the Black Spot succeeded perfectly well on its own terms. It looked good, filmed on an actual sailing ship, had some fun moments, good dialogue, and fun if improbable resolution that the ship’s crew will now become… wait for it… The Space Pirates!

Next week – Ood! With green eyes!

Series 6, Episode 2: Day of the Moon

“You should kill us all on sight!”

I hate having summer colds! Still, I roused myself from my sick bed to watch the exciting conclusion of this opening two parter, which presumably sets out Steve Moffat’s stall for what’s going to happen this series. And while I did enjoy it, I had some – if not too many – reservations.

The pre-title sequence (one of the longest they’ve ever done, I think) immediately plunged us back into X Files territory with its ‘3 months later’ schtick avoiding an easy resolution to last week’s cliffhanger. It’s an audacious thing to attempt, though I had actually become rather tired of its use in American shows; still, along with the overall more adult tone, this season does seem to be aiming for a more American flavour. They certainly managed that, with some epic, if rather gratuitous use of big locations in Arizona and Utah, although I was slightly reminded of the similarly gratuitous extended sequences of Paris in City of Death.

Still, the time jump cleverly played with our perceptions of Mark Sheppard’s usual, more villainous, onscreen persona. We’re used to seeing him as bad guys, so it made it easy to believe that Canton Delaware had been taken over by the Silence. Of course, it was all an elaborate ruse to enable the construction of a totally isolated environment and get him and our heroes inside it with the TARDIS. Nice to hear the mysterious material described as ‘dwarf star alloy’, a nod back to classic serial Warrior’s Gate, but the whole ruse was itself reminiscent of the Doctor’s similar scam in The Invasion of Time – act like a bastard till you’ve built your snoop-proof room, then reveal your actual plan.

Mind you, it’s fair to say that most of the audience watching this probably don’t remember The Invasion of Time in that kind of detail, and if they do, then like me they should probably get more of a life. Probably more recognisable was that shot of the bearded, shackled Doctor surrounded by soldiers – that was almost a direct lift from the beginning of Pierce Brosnan’s last Bond movie, Die Another Day.

Enough with the references though – how well did it work as a conclusion to the story? Well, as predicted, it left as many questions hanging as were actually answered. First of all, if the Silence were the all powerful bad guys of the last season, would they have been defeated so easily? It was a very neat resolution, effectively using them as their own executioners, though it seemed a mite convenient that the injured one in the Area 51 cell should say something, on video, so precisely applicable to the Doctor’s intentions.

It also seemed a little easy that President Nixon became, effectively, the Doctor’s Get Out of Jail Free card. Those sequences were fun – especially the well shot reveal of the Doctor fiddling around inside Apollo 11’s capsule – but I did wonder why the Doctor, having been so reticent to allow Churchill too much knowledge of the TARDIS last year, would so blithely allow one of history’s dodgiest democratic leaders to travel hither and yon so easily. Given that the US were mired in the Cold War and Vietnam at the time, I’d have expected Tricky Dicky to at least try and nab an Owner’s Manual from the TARDIS bookshelves. Lucky the Doctor threw it out because he didn’t agree with it. Also handy that he got Nixon to tape everything in his office…

Stylistically, we were in effective X Files pastiche mode here, never more evidently than in the genuinely creepy sequence of Amy and Canton investigating the deserted orphanage. The message of ‘Get Out’ scrawled in what looked like blood over every surface was unnerving, but not half so unnerving as Kerry Shale’s shellshocked performance as Dr Renfrew. And the flashlight beams in dark, eerie rooms were much in evidence as Amy prowled the building. The concept of the Silence editing themselves out of your memory was used to give some cool reveals, most notably Amy’s discovery that they sleep hanging from ceilings!

At least from Amy’s perspective, the sequence became more and more dreamlike, almost David Lynch in style. Who was that mysterious woman with the eyepatch who stuck her head through a non existent hatch to proclaim “she’s dreaming”? What was going on with the little girl’s room, and that photo of Amy holding a baby? There were no answers here, but I’d say this sequence is pivotal to the story as a whole, and worth watching a few times to pick out clues. I’m going to have another go when I’ve finished writing…

Also in classic X Files mode was the ‘alien abduction’ sequence, with Amy (wearing a dark, Scully-like suit) strapped to a chair while a big light shone in her face and the aliens leaned menacingly towards her. The Silence look like a lot of things – Munch’s The Scream, the Gentlemen from Buffy episode Hush – but here they were most reminiscent of the classic Greys as often depicted in The X Files.

Character wise, we had some nice development here too. I thought Steve Moffat was trying to up Rory’s uncertainty about Amy’s affections again, but it was genuinely heartwarming to learn that the ‘stupid face’ she wanted to see rescuing her from the aliens was Rory after all. And Arthur Darvill played it beautifully, reflecting Rory’s doubts with a genuinely tense repression of emotion. I think I may be falling for him a little bit!

Equally touching was River’s lack of certainty after kissing the Doctor, realising that, from his perspective, it had never happened before. “There’s a first time for everything,” the Doctor gasps, but River’s heartfelt, “and a last time”, made you realise that, from her perspective, this might never happen again. I’ve never read The Time Traveller’s Wife – the novel from which this plot obviously takes its inspiration – but I wonder if it’s this moving.

But mentioning River brings me to possibly the biggest problem I had with this conclusion. The Doctor, while not actually helping, stood back to back with her as she systematically gunned down the Silence, after having admitted earlier that he does sort of think she’s cool for doing that sort of thing. That doesn’t really sit well with my conception of the Doctor – he’s been responsible for plenty of death, but he usually tries to avoid it, and never becomes as directly responsible as that.

Think of McCoy in The Happiness Patrol, taking down a totalitarian regime without firing a shot and actually talking an executioner into laying down his weapon by saying, “look me in the eye. End my life.” Or think of Davison at the end of the otherwise execrable Warriors of the Deep, staring miserably at the carnage and saying , “there should have been another way”. I’m not at all sure I like the idea of the Doctor wanting to resolve a situation like the hero of a Tarantino movie, even if I do like Tarantino movies. It’s not what I want from a character I think of as a man of peace above all; especially after having come up with a neatly conceived twist to defeat the Silence on Earth overall.

Ok, so that was my major gripe. Other than that, I thought it was a pretty good conclusion; more action packed than the first half while still retaining plenty of the creepy atmosphere that marked out this season’s beginning as far less kiddie-orientated than the last.

And those unanswered questions – the Silence may have gone from Earth, but what about the rest of the Universe? We know they have at least access to TARDIS-like technology from them having the same control room seen in the faux TARDIS from last year’s The Lodger – which I think I was the only person not to clock last week!

And given that we’ve been told the Silence don’t actually invent things themselves, where did they get that from? Could it be from the little girl who seems to somehow be at the centre of it all, who can apparently regenerate? Could she be the Doctor’s daughter from the episode of that title back in 2008? The Silence engineered man’s trip to the Moon solely so that humanity would invent them a spacesuit, it seems (which does rather cheapen one of humanity’s proudest achievements). Did they want it to imprison the girl, or did the girl, controlling them, make them get it for her? And is Amy pregnant or what????

So many questions, and while I like Moffat’s Chinese puzzle approach to plotting, it would be nice to get back to some straightforward adventure. Thankfully the show can still do that it seems – next week, for the first time since 1965, it’s pirates!

Series 6, Episode 1: The Impossible Astronaut

“A lot more happened in 1969 than anyone remembers. Human Beings. I thought I’d never get done saving you.”

So, a two parter to open the season, for the first time since Doctor Who returned. With that, a mid season break and a one part finale, Steven Moffat seems to be introducing some much needed variation into the increasingly formulaic structure of Doctor Who seasons. I think that’s a very good thing, as I don’t like knowing what to expect – but it does come with the risk that, as a setup for a second part, the season opener might not be as gripping as in previous years.

And was that the case? Actually, I don’t think so. Certainly The Impossible Astronaut set up many questions without answering them, but that’s the nature of a first episode. Nonetheless, this was gripping, atmospheric stuff, helped to achieve an epic feel by the advantage of some expensive (looking) US locations. And it started with a bang, with the much hyped spoiler about the death of a main character resolved in the first ten minutes. That, more than any other element of this first part, set up the biggest question to be resolved in the second part – if indeed it is. I have the feeling that a lot of the issues set up in this season opener are going to play out over the season as a whole, rather than being sorted out next Saturday.

The answer to the much hyped spoiler/poser about which main character was going to die was a genuine surprise. I’d inferred that it couldn’t be River, as we’ve seen her die already later in her timestream, but it could be either Amy or Rory, with most people’s bets being on Rory. However, with Arthur Darvill’s name now in the opening credits (excellent), this seemed unlikely.

Such was my uncertainty as the Doctor was shot by a mysterious figure in a spacesuit, I actually wondered if the production team had pulled off a major coup and sprung a surprise regeneration on us! I had conflicting feelings about that for a second, until the Doctor was, actually, shot dead. A Doctor, we later discovered, who was from some 200 years into his own future.

Yet again, then, it seems Steve Moffat is going to take us on a ride through ‘wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff’. The Doctor seems decisively dead, but in his current body. Since I can’t imagine that the BBC want to rule out the possibility of any more Doctors after this one, there’s going to have to be a very clever way out of that. After the last couple of years, I trust Steve to be clever enough to make this work, but it might cause a few ructions among those who already feel his plotting is a little… overcomplicated.

That aside though, what of the episode itself? From the outset, it seemed to be taking a different style than last year’s deliberate ‘fairy tale’ approach. We were into dark territory here, reminiscent in many ways of the better years of The X Files. The director obviously picked up this feel from the script, giving a very X Files visual feel to the story – aside from the epic Monument Valley locations, we saw the American corridors of power, spinning tape reels, and most notably, a creepy deserted building with our heroes using flashlights to penetrate the darkness.

There were plenty of memorable images too. The Apollo astronaut rising improbably from a Utah lake was unsettling, if surprisingly reminiscent of the similarly suited and armed Kraal androids from the mostly awful Android Invasion of 1975. But the most disturbing –and X Files like – image was of the new monsters, the Silents (or is it ‘Silence’?). Obviously tied into last year’s unresolved master baddy in some way, they were very creepy to look at, combining the Men in Black suits with a shrivelled, skull-like take on the classic alien ‘grey’ frequently reported in the close encounters that formed the backbone of The X Files.

And the concept that, as soon as you look away from them, you forget they’re there is an inventive twist on the perception-influenced Weeping Angels, another Moffat creation. The scene in the White House restroom as an innocent bystander was wiped out by one (“her name was Joy”) was deliciously creepy as she kept forgetting it was there the instant she turned away – until it vapourised her. Mind you, I suspect the White House cleaning staff may wonder what those peculiar bits are all over the floor…

Ah yes, the White House. The Oval Office set was superb, every bit up to the standard set by shows like The West Wing. I was fairly surprised to learn, from Confidential, that it was built especially for the show – it seemed so good that I had assumed it was a standing set used by various productions. But no, although it seems odd that no such standing set exists. I know there’s one for the House of Commons, I went there once!

Mention of the White House brings me to the guest cast. Since it has returned, one of the standard tropes of Doctor Who has been the episode eulogising a significant historical figure – Shakespeare, Dickens, Churchill, Van Gogh and so on. Richard Nixon is rather harder to eulogise, history having a fairly uniform perception of him as the bad guy. The Doctor did at least mention that he’d done things other than Vietnam and Watergate, at least. Stuart Milligan did a passable imitation of ‘Tricky Dicky’ from under more mounds of latex than Anthony Hopkins had to endure when playing America’s least loved President.

But the story’s not really ‘about’ Nixon. In fact, thus far there is only one fleshed out guest character, but he’s a doozy – the cynical hard bitten former FBI agent Canton Everett Delaware III. It’s almost a stereotypical role – with shades of The X Files again- but Moffat’s script and particularly Mark Sheppard’s performance bring it to life. Sheppard’s a bit of a genre legend, what with his appearances in Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and, yes, The X Files. I did wonder about the logic of bringing a British actor, based in LA, over to Wales to play an American – but it was great to finally see him in Doctor Who, so I could hardly quibble. And as if that wasn’t enough, we got the added bonus of his father, the legendary Morgan Sheppard, playing the character in old age. I loved his line – “I won’t be seeing you again. But you’ll see me.”

Mark Sheppard in Firefly, and Morgan Sheppard in Max Headroom

The dialogue in general had that flair of wit we expect from Moffat, who knows very well how to strike the balance between humour and chills in Doctor Who. Matt Smith was given some marvellous lines, which on a second viewing complement his actually distinct performances as the older and younger Doctors. The older was still somewhat playful – “ I thought wine would taste more like the gums” – but has an almost resigned, doomy air to him. By contrast, the younger one has all of the manic energy we’re sued to, bumping into the invisible TARDIS and memorably referring to River as ‘Mrs Robinson’. (“I hate you.” “No you don’t.”)

The relationship between the Doctor and his companions is now very strained by the secret they have to keep – the secret that they’re all there because of his death. That’s going to have an interesting effect on the drama from hereon in, depending on when he gets to find out. And find out he obviously will, as when he confronted the ‘astronaut’ he was obviously expecting what happened.

So, questions, questions, questions. Who was in the spacesuit that killed the Doctor? Could it be River, who hinted last year that her prison sentence was for killing a much-loved man? Could it be the Doctor himself? And who is River? Since Amy’s pregnant, could she be Amy’s daughter, adrift in time? Or perhaps even Romana in a future incarnation? Knowing Steve Moffat, the answers won’t be nearly so obvious.

Overall then, a good, atmospheric season opener, with a nicely dark new tone along with the customary wit and humour. The involvement of BBC America doesn’t seem to have diluted the show’s Britishness – in fact I wondered how American audiences would take to the Doctor’s assertion that two of the Founding Fathers had fancied him! A pretty good ep – though not as good as last year’s earth-shaking Eleventh Hour – but hard to really say how good until we’ve seen the conclusion. Decisive opinion next week…

“My Sarah Jane Smith.”

“There’s nothing ‘only’ about being a girl.” – Sarah Jane Smith, The Monster of Peladon

I don’t usually blog about TV deaths, real or fictional. For example, the recent demise of Being Human’s Mitchell (fictional), while it made me shed a tear, didn’t move me to jot anything down. And even the sad loss of all round gentleman and paragon of Englishness Nicholas Courtney (real) didn’t provoke an outpouring of writing. But the news last night of the shocking, unexpected death of Elisabeth Sladen, Doctor Who’s Sarah Jane Smith, has surprised me by how much it’s affected me. And to judge from Twitter, Facebook and the internet in general, I’m far from the only one. I’ve seen tributes from sources as varied as Stephen Fry, Charlie Brooker and NME.

I’m not one of those fanboys who invests so much emotionally in their favoured shows that the characters, and the actors who play them, seem closer than real life friends. But one of the most common phrases that’s been cropping up in tributes to Lis Sladen is that, “a little piece of my childhood died today”. For me and anyone of my age, that’s by far the best way of putting it. And the thing about Lis, and the character she created, is that she was a link to that childhood, who was still enthralling the children of today – and I’ve no doubt they’ll be as upset as the rest of us. Because she almost seemed to have never changed, I think we thought she’d be around forever.

Elisabeth was a jobbing actress with a solid CV of character parts when she was recommended to Doctor Who producer Barry Letts by Z Cars producer Ron Craddock. Letts was trying to cast a new companion to replace the phenomenally popular Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and by all accounts she hugely impressed both Letts and Jon Pertwee. As Sarah Jane Smith, a ‘liberated woman’ and journalist, she was meant to be a break from the Who tradition of ‘companion screams/twists ankle/needs to be rescued twice an episode’.

Of course, like other similar attempts, this initial character brief soon slid into the standard Who companion template. It used to be typical that a companion would only be clearly defined as a personality in their first and last stories, the rest of the time reduced to something of a cipher. Lis was once quoted as saying, "Sarah Jane used to be a bit of a cardboard cut-out. Each week it used to be, ‘Yes Doctor, no Doctor’, and you had to flesh your character out in your mind — because if you didn’t, no one else would."

And she did, taking the standard “What’s going on, Doctor?” type of scripts and investing them with a belief in the character as she saw it. And that’s when the five-year-old me made her acquaintance.

It’s true to say that her time in the classic series is something of a golden age. Most notably, the three seasons she did with producer Philip Hinchcliffe and star Tom Baker cemented her in my, and everybody’s, mind as the archetypal Who companion. That run included stories renowned as all time classics – Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Seeds of Doom, and many more. Tom Baker hadn’t yet slipped into self parody and was a warm, commanding and humourous presence as the Doctor, and the shows were just scary enough to thrill little boys like me.

And, it seems, Russell T Davies. Russell and I are of a similar age, as are most of the fans who were instrumental in bringing Doctor Who back to television. I think we all have the same place in our hearts for Sarah Jane, the companion in the stories that really formed our love of the show. Even John Nathan-Turner could never quite let her go, trying to bring her back to bridge the Baker/Davison regeneration, then succeeding in K9 and Company and The Five Doctors. Sarah Jane, due in no small part to Lis’ spirited performance, was the companion everyone remembered.

So when Russell wanted to bring an old companion into the new series, who better than Sarah Jane? Lis had been retired from acting for a decade, and was initially sceptical. But one of the strengths the new series has over the old is its depth of characterisation, and the scripts persuaded her.

2006’s School Reunion was a thing of beauty, bringing Sarah Jane back in a way that cleverly informed the development of the Doctor’s relationship with Rose. Obviously, fanboys like myself loved every minute of it, and couldn’t hold in a tear at the obvious, real, affection shown to Lis by David Tennant – another fanboy, of course. Their final scene together showcased Lis’ marvellous ability to play dignified, restrained emotion, in the same movingly understated way as her farewell scene in the classic series story The Hand of Fear.

It was no surprise that this appearance was a hit with the fanboys. More of a surprise was how much the new generation of fans took to Sarah Jane, and to Lis. She’d worked so well in the context of the new series, bridging its world with that of the old, that she soon became a regular part of Russell’s expanding ensemble of players. And ultimately, she was so successful that she got her own spin off show, The Sarah Jane Adventures. Captain Jack Harkness may have had a spinoff show too, but counting K9 and Company, only Sarah Jane had two!

Because of that then, there are two generations of fans feeling devastated today. I’ve seen comments on the internet from old guard fans wondering how they can tell their children the news. That’s tragic, but it’s also heartwarming – the children of today hold Sarah Jane Smith in the same place in their hearts as the five year old me. And that’s something very special indeed.

Finally, though, I have to say that beyond bringing this iconic character to life, Elisabeth Sladen was a charming, funny and lovely person. Even when she wasn’t ‘officially’ acting, she kept up with the world of Doctor Who, going to signings and conventions, and, like Nick Courtney, being one of the most patient and entertaining people to be with.

I met her at the 2005 Gallifrey One convention in LA, at which point she must have been playing her cards close to her chest about her imminent reappearance in the show. But what I remember most about her was chatting to my childhood heroine like a friend, about the movies we liked. It turned out we had similar tastes – we both think Casablanca is one of the best films ever made. She pointed out to me Van Nuys airfield – just behind the hotel – and told me that that was where they filmed Bogart and Bergman’s classic farewell scene, suitably dressed up with wooden flats to make it look like North Africa. I’d never known that. And she remembered my partner Barry looking after her daughter for her at a convention a decade previously!

Barry and I joined Steve Roberts and Sue Cowley in keeping Lis company during the interminable wait for the flight back to the UK, and she was very nervous. TARDISes and spaceships might not have been a problem, but she was terrified of flying. She still found time to try and blag a seat upgrade at the Virgin Atlantic desk on the pretext that she knew Richard Branson though!

Her death was a shock – I’m only really taking it in this morning. 63 is pretty young to go these days – in fact I was amazed to discover she was that old. And the fact that she kept working while so ill, and didn’t make a fuss about it, is a testament to how professional she was. There are a lot of people out there on the convention scene who knew her better than I who must be feeling pretty upset this morning, not to mention those she’d worked with on Who and SJA, and those who simply loved her from watching her on screen. To them, and to her family, my heart goes out.

“You know, travel does broaden the mind.”

“Mmm. Till we meet again, Sarah Jane.”

The Hand of Fear, 1976

Elisabeth Sladen 1948-2011

The Shock of the New

This week, I have been mostly surrounded by sex.

No, I’m not living in some hedonistic fantasy of nonstop orgies – but my television is. At least that’s what it seems like, as the new TV season gets underway with the return of some old favourites and some distinctly dubious new ones.

To start with, historical rumpy pumpy fest The Tudors is back for its final season. In the mists of time, when this purportedly “85% accurate” portrayal of Henry VIII’s court first started, I theorised that it would have to end when the historical figures in it stopped looking photogenic. Not so – in its increasingly tenuous relationship with actual history, the series has taken the approach of, basically, letting the characters not age at all.

Henry by now should be grossly overweight and diseased; in the show he still looks like, well, Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Which is pretty good for a bloke in the 16th century who’s over 50 years old. Granted, they’ve let Jonathan grow his hair a bit longer and have a slightly bushier beard, but that’s it as far as aging goes. And as to the gross obesity, this Henry still appears to go to the Tudor equivalent of the gym every day, judging by his still frequent sex scenes.

The aforementioned sex is now with wife number 5, Catherine Howard. As portrayed by Tamzin Merchant, Catherine, it seems, was some kind of a giggling imbecile. All right, I know she really was only 17 years old, but she can’t have been this dense, surely? Meanwhile, she’s been getting flirty looks from pretty young courtier Thomas Culpeper (hobbies: rape and murder). This already doesn’t look like it’s going to end well – and since we’ve got one more wife to cram in by the end of the season, even if you don’t know the real facts you can probably work out that it’s not if Catherine’s going to end up on the block, it’s when.

Meanwhile, the Seymour clan is now entirely represented by ex cast members of Hollyoaks – namely Max Brown and Andy McNair as Edward and Thomas Seymour. Henry Cavill, gamely sporting a bigger beard than Henry’s, is still around as Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. But for my money, the cheesy drama lacks something cast wise compared with previous years when we had the likes of Sam Neill, Jeremy Northam, Peter O’Toole and Max von Sydow hamming it up as caricatures of real historical figures. Still, it remains watchable, and will hopefully remain close enough to real history for Henry to actually die on schedule – rather than, say, living on to steal a Nazi Enigma machine for Winston Churchill.

Fortunately for fans of realism, Skins was back too. Oh, all right, not actual realism – the show’s defenders refer to it being a “hyper-real” portrait of contemporary teenage life. Nonetheless, in the past it’s had endearing characters and veered unstably from genuinely moving drama to ill-considered base comedy. But it’s always been watchable, and the gimmick of changing the entire cast every two years – when the teenagers finish their A Levels and move off into the real world – has kept it pretty fresh.

So, this year, we get to meet teenage gang number 3 – and a pretty likeable bunch they are on first impressions. I’m sure they’ll end up having just as much naughty fun as the previous gangs, but in a week of naughtiness, this was a surprisingly low key season opener. Eschewing the full on shagging, drug use and, er, bottom tattoos of previous cast introductions, this first episode focussed mainly on androgynous misfit Franky Fitzgerald, engagingly incarnated by Dakota Blue Richards out of that dull Philip Pullman film. Franky has just moved to Bristol after a traumatic time in Oxford; unwisely, she makes an enemy of the nastiest girl in school, and soon enough unflattering Facebook pictures are popping up all over the walls. Franky doesn’t like this, so she’s off to have some fun with her gun…

The new guys…

It’s actually nice that it looks like this season’s going to focus a bit more on the misfits rather than the implausibly good-looking, anarchic heroes of previous casts – remember Nicholas Hoult’s Tony, or Jack O’Connell’s Cook? There’s an oddball guy who spouts pretentious nonsense at Franky while she’s trying to concentrate on shooting things, and he’s nice to look at but on limited evidence not the best of actors. But this first episode mostly served to introduce Franky, who eventually ended up doing a bit of moonlit swimming with fellow misfits Rich, Alo and Grace. Rich is an old-fashioned metalhead – I didn’t know there were any of those left – who I look forward to seeing a bit more of, while Alo is an engaging, if distinctly unattractive redhead boy who seems to live in a van with some weed and a stack of porn. Grace was less of a misfit, but is obviously going to be faced with the dilemma of choosing between the cool girls and the oddballs she actually likes.

As a season opener, it’s not going to grab viewers like the previous ones did – the very first episode in particular springs to mind, which had droolworthy shots of Nicholas Hoult in his underpants, copious drug usage, a house trashing party and ultimately a stolen Mercedes sliding into a Bristol lake. But I already like this new gang more than the second cast, who never engaged me as much as the first. With parental/teacher guest appearances already from the likes of Gordon Kennedy and John Sessions, this year looks promising.

But if you’re aching with nostalgia for the original characters and that very first episode, you can have a look at MTV’s virtual shot for shot remake of it, relocated to “somewhere on the North American continent”. Oh all right, it’s Vancouver again, but as usual they’re pretending it’s somewhere in the United States.

Actually, the American Skins is a little hard to fathom – as it seems to have pretty much just recycled the script of the British one, the reasons for remaking it seem sketchy at best. Still, I remember thinking the same about the American Queer as Folk, until it ran out of British episodes to remake and became an entity of its own – at that point it became a genuinely good drama, and maybe this will too, when it finds its own identity.

Spot the difference – Brits (left), Americans (right).

It hasn’t yet though, and for anyone familiar with the British version, it’s hard to shake your memories of the ‘real’ cast. Tony is now the somewhat less likeable James Newman, Sid (called Stanley in this version) is played by shaggy haired Daniel Flaherty, who lacks Mike Bailey’s gauche charm, and worst of all Maxxie has been replaced by a lesbian cheerleader, Tea, who has implausibly retained most of the same lines.

That last change is symptomatic of the apparently watered down approach of the US version – is it because even progressive American teenagers find a gay woman less threatening than a gay man? And the swearing’s been watered down too – there were two uses of the word ‘fuck’, but each was bleeped (although I gather some networks leave the dialogue uncensored).

Because we’re so used to seeing slews of light drama shows from the US featuring groups of angst-ridden, implausibly good-looking teenagers – the very thing the original Skins was trying to be the antithesis of – what this ends up feeling like is a slightly more risque version of The OC, with worse weather. But it’s still too near the knuckle for US moral guardians the Parents’ Television Council (a group who make Mary Whitehouse look like Linda Lovelace). As soon as the first episode was finished (and quite possibly without actually watching it), they were attacking MTV for the exploitative nature of the drama, and actually tried to file charges of child pornography with the Department of Justice. Which should help the ratings no end, I imagine. Heaven knows what they’d have made of the British version.

And Heaven knows what they’d make of Channel 4’s new advice/documentary show, The Joy of Teen Sex. Shakily walking a tightrope between information and exploitation, this purports to be an investigation into what British teenagers are really doing sexually, interspersed with practical sexual advice from the likes of James Corden’s sister. So, this week, we got an expose of the practice of “vagazzling” (sticking fake jewellery around one’s shaven vagina, for reasons that are hard to fathom), some eye watering close up photos of sexually transmitted diseases (to encourage the use of contraception, naturally), and a queue of sexually dysfunctional kids seeking advice.

A girl and her mother dropped in for an encounter session to try and curb the girl’s promiscuity, which of course ended in much crying and hugging. Meanwhile, a teenage drag queen tried to conquer his fear of being the receiver of anal sex, leading to very anatomically detailed descriptions of how exactly that works – though for some reason, nobody asked if he’d just considered being a top instead. And an inexperienced lesbian had some questions about the best ways to pleasure another girl.

As sage advice was given out, and the teenagers looked suitably appreciative, said advice was shown in reconstruction by various (far better looking) actors. Anyone getting their jollies from this, however, would soon be put off when the next close up of a disease popped up – this week, a very close look at a visibly uncomfortable young man with a bump in his scrotum.

It’s hard to know what to make of The Joy of Teen Sex. Is it information, or titillation? It seems to have the best intentions, but this kind of show always attracts viewers for quite the wrong reasons. And it’s made with the kind of earnest, patronising tone that TV producers always seem to come up with when trying to get “down with the kids”. With only four episodes, it’s unlikely to be around long enough for anyone to take too much offence. I expect somebody will, though.

Still, one show that wasn’t reeking with hormones this week was the return of BBC3’s sublime Being Human. Well, unless said hormones were the result of masses of violence being perpetrated by vampires or werewolves.

Being Human has, like Misfits, now been saddled with the burden of being a cult hit, with all the expectations that that comes with. So the third season has a lot of work to do, particularly to try and recapture the nice balance of humour and horror that the first season had and the second season rather lost.

It’s hard to say, from the first episode, whether it has. A move from Bristol to Barry Island has certainly changed the feel of the show’s locations, and the gang’s new digs – an old B & B – seem like a down at heel version of Angel’s Hyperion Hotel. And there was plenty of darkness in the subplot of a group of insalubrious vampires (led by a bleach haired and rather terrifying Paul Kaye) kidnapping werewolves for gladiatorial fights with humans. Oddly, they were defeated by stern werewolf patriarch Robson Green and his son – played by This Is England’s Michael Socha, who looks disconcertingly like a male version of his sister Lauren, who plays Kelly in Misfits.

Spot the difference 2 – Michael (left), Lauren (right)

But there was fun to be had, as George, looking for an unobtrusive forest glade in which to transform into a wolf, inadvertently got himself arrested for dogging (oddly appropriate, that). The presence of Torchwood’s Kai Owen as the genial swinger in charge of the whole thing led to a certain amount of confusion as to which cult show I was actually watching, but the subplot led to a funny resolution as Nina turned up to extricate George from the cells before he transformed and ripped Kai to shreds. “He’s got a medical condition”, she stammered, trying to resist her own transformation and generally looking as mental as she claimed George to be. Apparently somewhat unperceptive, the cops took her at her word.

But the heart of this season opener was Mitchell’s quest into the afterlife to retrieve Annie, condemned to limbo at the end of the last season. This ended up as a sort of quest for redemption, as mysterious spirit Lia (a sublime Lacey Turner) took Mitchell on an extended tour of some of his greatest hits of wrongdoing since he became a vampire.

I’m not sure that continually exploring the mythos of the show does it any favours – the tantalising hints as to the nature of the afterlife in previous episodes are better left for the viewer to imagine, rather than being actually shown to us. And Mitchell’s homicidal past might also be best left to the imagination – nothing visual is likely to live up to what we’ve imagined.

Be that as it may, though, Annie’s back and the gang is back together. And Mitchell’s trip left us with some intriguing hints as to where the show’s going this year – it looks like he’s going to end up romantically linked with Annie ( I’m finding it hard to keep track of whether she’s corporeal enough to touch things, but she can still make tea). And there’s obviously some vampire/werewolf hostilities on the horizon. Could be good, and hopefully better than the similarly themed Underworld.

With all that sex and violence filling the small screen, the return of Top Gear actually seemed to inject some sanity into the week. Sanity in the sense of dropping a VW Beetle out of a plane from a mile up, to see if a Porsche 911 GT can beat it to the impact point from a mile away on the ground. It was business as usual for Jeremy, Richard and James, although James had the unusual duty of test driving a very fast car – in this case the new V8 Ariel Atom. Top Gear has become as comfortably familiar as a pair of old slippers, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

With such a glut of new shows, it looks like I’m going to be spending more time in watching the telly for the next couple of months – hopefully I’ll get to write on this blog a bit more frequently! In the mean time, if you’re after yet more sex, apparently Channel 5 have adopted the not at all gimmicky approach of asking former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to investigate the world of pornography (presumably not on expenses). The mind boggles…

Politics and murder: is this the way it’s going to be?

I don’t usually comment on American politics in this blog, but in the wake of the terrible events in Tucson last Saturday, it seems that everyone else online already is. Finding myself leaving ever longer comments on American friends’ Facebook pages, and trawling through the mounting hysteria on online forums, I thought I might as well add my two pennies worth. In a plea to restore sanity, if you will.

On Saturday, a gunman shot Arizona Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head at point blank range, before turning the gun on the crowd and killing six others. The obvious assumption to make was that this act was politically motivated; the obvious suspects, as the target was a Democrat, were the Republicans – specifically, the extreme right wingers calling themselves the Tea Party. Liberals across America within hours were reposting Sarah Palin’s notorious ‘gunsight’ map of Democrat targets (which pinpointed Giffords specifically), while Republicans, with perhaps some justification, pointed out that it might be a smidgen tasteless to ascribe this tragedy to politics before anyone knew anything like the full story. Of course, the more extreme Republicans expressed this sentiment in terms unlikely to gain them any sympathy, with their usual cries that the Democrats were “like the Nazis”, and other less salubrious comparisons.

Just in case you’re one of the three people on the planet who haven’t seen this.

From the information still emerging about the gunman, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, it seems that he was almost certainly mentally ill – his incoherent Youtube rants paint him as most likely a paranoid schizophrenic. Despite vociferous cries from many of my Democrat friends and hardcore Republicans taking the opposite stance, he doesn’t seem to have had a coherent political ideology. The much vaunted list of his favourite reading material includes The Communist Party Manifesto (left) Mein Kampf (right in some ways, left in others) and Ayn Rand (emphatically right). He is remembered by classmates as a bit left wing, but obsessed about big government conspiracy theories with the fervour of a Fox News commentator, and his fascination with the gold standard for currency was (probably coincidentally) echoed by Sarah Palin herself on Twitter not long after the incident.

Finger-pointing, then, at either party as his prime motivator seems pointless. But, tasteless though the debate may seem to some, politics itself clearly was a motivating factor – and perhaps it’s the hysterical, shrieking incoherence that has become de rigeur in American politics that fostered a similarly incoherent hysteric in his ambition to get a gun and take matters into his own hands. Like it or not, this event has thrown a spotlight on the state of American politics, and the face it’s revealed isn’t pretty.

It’s often been said that the British possess a desire to reform America that it finds baffling, primarily because the British don’t really understand that American culture is far more different to them than it seems. But equally, a bit of distance and an outsider’s perspective can perhaps be revealing. It’s difficult for us, in a country with three major political parties (well, until the next election, anyway), to comprehend quite how viciously partisan an entrenched two party system can be. And our own political parties inform our views of the Americans’ – it seems laughable to us that the Republicans cower in terror (with a suitably big gun) of the Democrats’ ‘socialist’ policies when the Democrats are actually slightly to the right of our own ‘beloved’ Conservative party.

American culture is different, and from this Brit’s perspective, seems hugely informed by three things – an ill-informed nostalgia about the War of Independence, Hollywood’s mythologising of the pioneers who conquered the West, and the 1950s Cold War hysteria over Communism. Reducing the problem to just that is over simplifying of course, but that’s exactly what the Tea Party is doing – it’s exemplified in the movement’s very name.

I’ve been reading a lot on this topic over the last few days, much of it in left-leaning UK newspaper The Guardian. The Grauniad, as it’s known after its proud tradition of typing errors, is most revealing when one reads the Comment section, particularly the user comments after each piece. Reading these threads, neither Republicans nor Democrats, Brits nor Americans, come off very well.

It is interesting that so many fairly extreme Republicans post so vociferously on the website of a UK newspaper known to have a left wing bias, but some of the comments are revealing. This Michael Tomasky article has had all of them removed (a communist-style purge, I hear some cry) for inflammatory language about the mentally ill. So, sadly, I can’t share with you the poster who took pride in his mis-spelled insults to the liberal left because he didn’t want to be “a smart asshole” like them. So to the hard right, intelligence is a bad thing? Nor, sadly, can you see the chap who told the British emphatically that if we didn’t have gun control, we might still have our Empire. Leaving aside the fact that having an Empire is not necessarily a good thing, I feel patriotic enough to point out to this idiot that we don’t have an Empire any more because we went bankrupt standing alone against the Third Reich while the United States, with all its guns, remained isolationist.

And talking of the Third Reich brings me to one of the most common themes ‘explored’ by the real right wingers on such threads – liberals, are, unfathomably, supposed to be like the Nazis. Glenn Beck, with his Godwin’s Law Tourette’s, may bear some of the blame here, but the argument makes an insidious kind of sense. After all, the Nazi Party’s full name was the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany. Socialist – do you see? And a totalitarian state certainly fulfils the definition of big government, the concept to which Republicans are so implacably opposed.

Unfortunately for them, that’s where the similarity ends. The ‘Socialist’ part of the name predates Hitler’s involvement with the Party; as they rose to power and once they’d gained it, they courted and got funds primarily from the middle class and businesses. Hitler banned trade unions shortly after getting into power, and targetted communists, socialists and journalists at the same time as the Jews. At the same time, he exalted the virtues of the traditional family unit, urged women to stay at home and breed, and encouraged a fanatical patriotism to the Fatherland. All that sounds socialist in the same way that the Democratic Republic of Congo actually is a democratic republic. What it does sound suspiciously like, though, is the mantra of the Tea Party. Or am I stooping to their level in making the comparison?

I should, at this point, mention that it’s a fallacy to stereotype all Republicans as Tea Partiers, in just the same way that it’s a fallacy to assume every Democrat is a pro-choice, socially inclusive gun control supporter – Rep. Giffords herself is apparently a staunch opponent of gun control. Most Republicans are, by the standards of their party, fairly moderate, as are most Democrats. But what this incident has thrown into sharp relief is that they’re not the ones who get noticed.

The viciously partisan nature of the struggle was started, let’s be honest, by the Tea Party. And it’s important to remember also that not all Tea Partiers are Republicans. But most are, and the movement does share a similarity to the Nazis in at least one way – its founding was at least in part due to a period of economic hardship. It’s been said that the Republicans tend to fare badly in power because any party who so strongly opposes big government is unlikely to be any good at being big government. The Tea Party seem to want to go further – they want to dismantle government altogether, and fall back on those good old pioneering virtues of self reliance and individual freedom.

Nothing altogether wrong with that – I have Republican friends, and while I disagree with their politics, I understand their motivations. American culture is all about aspiration to material success, and it’s understandable that those who achieve it don’t want to share any of the loot. They also don’t want the government to run every aspect of their lives – something I can sympathise with, after the last Labour government in the UK making this the most surveilled country in the world and attempting to introduce compulsory identity cards.

But the Tea Party movement have taken this mantra and under a guise of ‘patriotism’ reduced it to a level of fervent hysteria where Michele Bachmann calls for “second amendment remedies” to legislation she disagrees with, and Sarah Palin exhorts her supporters, “Don’t retreat, reload”, capitalising on the frontiersman myth of the noble gunslinger and hunter as the role model to aspire to.

That might have had some validity a couple of centuries ago, but makes little sense now. But harking back to a nostalgic, non existent golden age is what the Tea Party is all about. They want to return America to “what the Founding Fathers intended”. The trouble with that being that the Founding Fathers were from the 18th century, and some of their ideas look a bit outmoded now. For instance, the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have let Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann or Christine O’Donnell have the vote – come to think of it, they might actually have tried O’Donnell as a witch. That I can sympathise with, but it seems rather harsh on the sane women of America. The Founding Fathers also didn’t have much of a problem with slavery; though the Tea Party conveniently ignore this and if pressed point out that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican too.

They also point to George Washington’s declaration that a state must have God at its foundation – despite that bit in their beloved Constitution that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” This is where the ideal falls apart somewhat; Glenn Beck, while liked by right wing churches, is also viewed with suspicion as a Mormon.

The Tea Party, like the Republicans in general, share a hatred of “big government”. This, again, is not the clear cut issue they would like to make it. The hatred and furore surrounding Barack Obama’s fairly pitiful healthcare legislation seems mystifying to those of us in the UK, where even the Conservative party would balk at dismantling the long established National Health Service. Yet even that’s not clear cut; it’s true to say that as an overstretched public service, the National Health Service can never offer care to the same standard as private companies. But the choice still exists here, and for those who can’t afford private healthcare, they won’t face the choice of dying or going bankrupt avoiding death. Tea Partiers don’t see why it’s any of their problem to help those who can’t help themselves; if I can take a leaf out of their book and harken to the past, I might refer them to the words of John Donne:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

In other words, don’t ignore those who need help – you might need help yourself some day, and by your standards, nobody would give it. Still, we’d hate to undermine your vaunted self reliance. I’m sure you can amputate your own foot to get it out of that animal trap you set.

Similarly unequivocal is their attitude to gun control, or rather, the lack of it. The second amendment to the Constitution made perfect sense when it was drafted – in 1791. There should not, in a supposedly civilised society, be any need for every citizen to go about armed these days. But the precedent is set, and however irrelevant it may seem, the continued ownership of guns becomes a justification for the ownership of guns to protect oneself from those who own guns, in a dazzlingly circular argument. Republicans have already seized on this argument to state that if more people had been carrying guns at the Giffords event, they could have “taken Loughner down”. In practice, I seriously doubt a firefight in a crowded area would have produced particularly preferable results – we might well have been looking at twenty dead instead of six.

Still, gun control would represent having the government interfere in the liberty of individuals, and we can’t have that, can we? Oh, except where we can. The right’s determination to constitutionally ban gay marriage is surely exactly that – government legislation mandating what individuals may do with their private lives. And while they stick vociferously to their opposition to gun control, they somehow ignore that the exact same arguments support the legalisation of recreational drugs. Big government, it seems, is fine, as long as it’s banning what you personally don’t like. But if it’s not, there’s always those “second amendment remedies”.

For a picture of what the country run by Tea Partiers might look like, here’s a good article about the state of Arizona in Harper’s. The Republican administration of Arizona, where this tragedy occurred, represent a virtual Tea Party state. Their opposition to government taxation over the years has been so vociferous that public buildings never even finished are crumbling from lack of funds to repair them, while the state as a whole has a massive budget deficit despite a healthy tourist industry. They want to cut still further, believing that only those who can afford to send their children to school should benefit from education.

Meanwhile, they pass insidious laws playing on irrational fears about Mexican immigrants, by which anyone who looks ‘a bit foreign’ can be stopped by the police and forced to present identification. Fortunately, they’ve banned any study of Hispanic literature in the state’s schools, along with many ethnic studies programmes, so none of the upcoming generation will know what a foreigner is. These measures are in the sensible hands of such as state senator Sylvia Allen, who famously stated that the Earth is only 6000 years old (because it says so in the Bible, obviously), and that trees are “stealing Arizona’s water supply”. One begins to see the rationale of the internet poster who venerated stupidity as a plank of the right wing.

They also have some of the laxest gun regulations in the Union, but these are still too intrusive for the Arizona legislature, who are taking the sensible step of allowing faculty members to carry guns on university campuses – one of the few places in the state where, until recently, one couldn’t carry a gun.

When the level of political rhetoric is raised to, essentially, “shoot whoever you disagree with”, and people with mental health problems take an interest in politics in a state where guns are virtually handed out like candy, an event like Saturday’s seems almost inevitable. Unfortunately, it was in the aftermath that the left didn’t do themselves any favours either. They jumped to the obvious conclusion – mad Tea Partier, all Glenn Beck’s fault, look at Sarah Palin’s map – before bothering to get any of the facts. Understandable, sure, but it brings liberals down to the same level as the right to exercise that kind of knee jerk reaction. And it’s come as something of a surprise to me to find so many of my liberal American friends virtually baying for Loughner’s blood like an online lynch mob – surely that’s more the province of the right, too?

And the trouble is, that kind of reaction plays perfectly into the right’s hands. The left shouldn’t try to take them on at their own game – aside form losing the moral high ground, they’re just not as good at it. Obama’s much quoted remarks about “they bring a knife, we bring a gun” (yes, I’ve seen The Untouchables too) and finding out who was responsible for the Gulf of Mexico disaster so he’d know “whose ass to kick” sound like feeble imitations of the right’s fevered exhortations. Meanwhile, online blogs’ demand grew for the shutting down of Fox News. Remember the other bit of the First Amendment, where it says “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”? You’re better than this, Democrats.

Of course, this gave the real right wingers the excuse to play the victim. "How distasteful”, they tut, “politicising such a tragedy for which we are not at all responsible”. All while, behind the scenes, inflammatory material like Palin’s map was quietly removed from the web without comment. Guilty consciences? Surely not. Meanwhile, Glenn Beck was able to offer a heartfelt plea for peace alongside an unfortunate randomly generated image of himself impersonating Jack Bauer:

Still, surely this should at least give us a temporary lull in the shrieking, rabid vitriol, right? Well, we got a day or two, with Obama’s minute’s silence and John Boehner’s reasonably dignified, bipartisan condemnation. But even then, both sides just couldn’t let it go. Democrats continued to stubbornly insist that Loughner was a calculating, evil right winger, while right wing radio pundit Rush Limbaugh’s view almost beggared belief – apparently Loughner’s mad grin in the now infamous mugshot is because he knows he has “the full support of the Democratic Party”.

Nobody questioned the lack of support for those known to be mentally ill, least of all Arizona governor Jan Brewer, whose own son has been institutionalised for 20 years in a comfy private facility after copping an insanity plea for a charge of rape. Meanwhile, apparently sales of Glock handguns have soared in Arizona among those who consider the whole event some sort of consumer promotion. Never mind, the Republicans can look almost cuddly if they compare themselves to old favourites the Westboro Baptist Church, who are heading to Arizona to picket the funerals of the dead because Rep. Giffords was a “fag-promoting, baby-killing, proud-sinner”.

In the midst of all this, Gabrielle Giffords, once considered a bright hope for the first female President, fights for life in an Intensive Care Unit. Six people are dead, including a bright nine year old girl who had the misfortune to be interested in the democratic process. And the hysteria rages on, barely checked. Something is definitely wrong here. I don’t have a magic solution to it. Neither do the Democrats. Neither do the Republicans. But calming down and talking like civilised human beings would probably make a good start.