Six Reasons Why I Love Wolfblood

Wolfblood is currently experiencing its third series run on CBBC and I think it's one of the best dramas on TV, genuinely doing solid and extraordinary things, full stop. I've written about it before on this blog, but two years on, it's clear to see why it's ahead of the opposition:

1. It's a serial show. With Wolfblood you get more out of it if you started watching from the start, discovering the main characters' special abilities in the first episode (super-powered werewolf-like humans), and the gradual layering of new characters and events. More than that, the characters properly develop and show new sides, almost every week too. I was genuinely surprised in the first series how much they probed into the character's lives - Maddy's best mate Shannon's monster-spotting obsession being properly addressed, or later on with the slow and subtle romantic and non-romantic friendships between characters. Plotlines have been introduced that pay off later on, and plot elements that have proved useful before are taken for granted.

2. It's a fast show. Big things happen every week - big for the young characters and audience, like falling out with friends. And more importantly, it doesn't patronise its audience by undoing things after each episode. The secret of Wolfbloods living among us must be kept secret, and that's always a danger. Those high-stakes moments - at the series finales, or the threat of doctors running tests - feel like the whole thing could suddenly come crashing down.

3. It's not a scary show, it's not horror. The creator, Debbie Moon, envisaged her "werewolves" as normal people with superpowers - superpowered hearing, smell, the ability to run really fast and dealing with becoming a wolf at every full moon. That's particularly present in the most recent two-parter when one of the characters gets to experience what it's like as a Wolfblood. Stripped from the horror tropes, it becomes pure character drama with cool fantasy moments. And whilst there's sometimes big angry wolves, the scariness comes from characters messing up or getting found out, rather than death or getting attacked.

4. It's a realistic show, even with the fantasy elements (no, especially because of the fantasy elements, because without them you wouldn't be able to broach some of the subjects so easily). Whilst a lot of children's telly has a school setting, this really feels like the characters go to school - they get told off for skipping lessons, they have parents, they hang out at school at lunch break or in the toilets. Perhaps in another show the mundanity of French class and school assemblies would ground the rest of the fantasy and provide a safe haven before they go out to fight monsters. In this show, the monsters come from inside you, and school life provides enough drama for some episodes. As it's telly, we only see one class of course (well it's a tiny rural village!), but all of British school life is represented here: the sporty boys, the mean girls, the geeks, the loners, and the people who fall into the gaps. And the teacher Mr Jeffries is a real teacher too - like all the other (often more wolflike!) antagonists, he's not evil, he has interests and humour and warmth. That's what I've liked about the wild Wolfbloods and urban Wolfbloods introduced in series 2 and 3 - whilst they pose a threat to our main characters, they're always painted in shades of grey. No out-and-out evil villainy, that wouldn't be interesting enough.

5. It's a funny show, especially as the writers and actors have stretched their wings as they've gone on. The supporting cast of fellow school pupils might on the surface be a bunch of archetypes, but the strong polarised characters allows for some amazing moments and realistically snarky remarks. Recently the girl gang of The Three Ks have had some brilliant hilarious scenes (plus some brilliant drama), the writing and acting now honed over the three series to pitch perfect levels. There's variety in the humour too (bad dad jokes and insults to slapstick and farce) and a lot of it is refreshingly honest and grown-up for a show like this.

6. It's an amazing looking show, with a visual style and sound that's unlike anything on CBBC or elsewhere, and feels very assured from the first episode. The music has a wild folky quality (topped off by the theme song), even if ultra-modern chart music sometimes intrudes. There's bright yellow eyes, a wild muddy forest, slow-mo and stunts and night shoots. It's very impressive work all round - this series there's been seriously impressive closeups, drone shots, split-screen, the works. All this and CGI wolves! Rightly, this looks and feels like shows that have ten times its budget.

And these are just the shots that stood out!

So there's six reasons - and to be honest, I could easily come up with six more delving into the characters and the positive storylines. It's thrilling, it's fun, it's addictive to watch each week - I hope this has whetted your appetite if you haven't discovered it yet.

Time Heist - almost a review

Today I'm wondering how they could have improved Time Heist. Don't know why, but bear with me - it's probably because I didn't quite know what to think of it when I saw it, in a bad way.

Don't get me wrong - it fits the Saturday night bill perfectly. The show needs at least one episode every year which throws everything at the screen, rips off a bunch of favourite movies and genres, and everything ends happily. It's a formula for fun lightweight telly that has produced the likes of Dinosaurs in a Spaceship, Curse of the Black Spot, Planet of the Dead, and it's not a bad thing. We can't have Listen every week.

And there were some terrific elements to it - the Teller, Keeley Hawes as Miss Delphox, the gang, the look and style, the ending - pretty much all of it, on paper. Except for me it's less than the sum of its parts, and I'd say it's in the writing. Not that the writers haven't put a ton of work into the often labyrinthine plot, just that it could do with a few more solid character scenes, or explain things away easier.

Loved the opening: the Doctor and Clara, definitely how to open a story, even if it's very close to their first scenes together in Listen. And then the Memory Worm (a nice return of this plot device/joke machine creature), fast but wordy introductions to our new gang and why we're here. Guards banging on the outside and we realise it's going to be quicker than we thought. No time for questions now, let's go - straight into the plot and sneaking into the bank. In the most part, it works, I'll give them that, but I'd have liked another (possibly filmed but cut) scene outside the bank with the gang. Or for them to go the whole hog with the genre, and have a montage of security guards with a voiceover telling them exactly what the plan is.

I'm only saying this because the frantic pace of the opening, helped by the sudden jump in plot via a memory wipe, goes straight away once they get into the inner corridors of the bank. There's little in the way of geography - Into the Dalek had that in a similar setup, simply because it was inside a recognisable structure, though Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS didn't - or really threat, because the bank's so huge and devoid of guards and the Teller's slow and only used a few times. But I'm jumping ahead here - before the gang break in, there's a very fine scene where the Teller is introduced, a completely faceless character meets a grim fate, and Miss Delphox has a way with words. The direction and slow mo works a treat, and I love all the dry bleak hyperbole of the bank protocol in the script (reminiscent to Doctor Who fans especially from Robert Holmes's The Sun Makers): "open up and you'll be humanely disposed of", "fired with pain". And especially the dark "that's not tears, that's soup", which you can imagine Peter Capaldi relishing.

It's a shame then the plot dries up after this - it's often been wordy so far and full of unwieldy explanations and get-out clauses, but saved by the pace. Couldn't they think of a couple more (cheap!) set-pieces to fill the middle act? But the new 'companions' in the Doctor's gang get things to do, and become slightly more than just their stock characters (clever updating, but they're still undoubtedly cliches - a lot of thanks go to the actors and costumers as well as the writers). Psi and Saibra are great additions to the ever growing list of the Doctor's casual acquaintances, so it's good to see them survive for another adventure. Though with an obvious teleporting effect, their 'deaths' were undermined from the start, even with the muddled explanation of the importance of yet another mysterious gadget in a case put there by a mysterious... zzz...

Still, we've got some creepy scenes with the Teller being let loose, like a more colourful, lighter-toned version of The God Complex from a few years back (though what's up with the editing between scenes? again, geography). 'Don't think' resembles all too many monster weaknesses these days, and Clara alone comes almost too soon after Deep Breath, unless they're trying to make a running theme of it. And then by the time we're left with the Doctor and Clara, everything ties up a bit too early into an anti-climax and we're left wanting answers - and then we get them.

Peter Capaldi's Doctor needs more scenes with villains, including in this story. Karabraxos was a surprise to me (come on, the Architect figure was obvious, which distracted me a bit) but she's handled surprisingly by the Doctor - little time for any contempt, no punishment, because he's bound by the laws of time and trying to work out the plot.

And what is the plot? I think they fudged the explanation a little bit by explaining it in the wrong order (though working things out in your own time isn't a bad thing - just look at Listen) but here's my take:
Decades after having received the Doctor's phone number and then left, Karabraxos on her deathbed has a change of heart and wants to put things right by saving The Teller - right up the Doctor's street - but can only do so in the moment when she left it just before the solar storm hit or else she'd change time. She doesn't come up with the plan - the Doctor does, recruiting the best people to help him do it, and placing the gadgets and everything beforehand.
It's not much of a time loop really, just a bit of prior knowledge as to the moment, because the magical destroying solar storm means it had to be this moment for them to be able to break in (as explained halfway through) and they couldn't go by TARDIS, or just jump straight to the private vault... for some reason.
And finally, memory wiping had to be done for them to get past The Teller (as explained at the start when it's introduced) and to stop the younger Karabraxos finding the whole thing out. It's a rescue mission for the creature that would have been killed otherwise.

Contrived as heck, but then it's ridiculously high concept to begin with (the bit with the two aliens as the end is also quite similar to - and an improvement on - the ending of last year's Hide). I just hope Clara's "there has to be some logic behind all this" isn't the stick that people use to beat it with - once everything's explained and you've got your head around the oddness, it's a good story.

As the end shows, this is lightweight fare, even with a couple of grim bits. Our heroes made it out alive, everything's back to normal with Clara, job done. There's no final shot of the Doctor being dour, or prophetic about his own death, or realising something about the story arc. Nope, this is as Saturday night as they come.

(What's this? A phone call from somebody in the future: "I want you to write an article on how to improve Time Heist". Sounds contrived as heck, but why not...)

Doctor Who and the Terminator: an observation

When Doctor Who eventually came back on our screens, it had style. The past was still there, it was still the Doctor and his companion running towards danger and old, familiar monsters. But there was a new, perhaps American style, admittedly cribbed from wildly popular and influential shows like Buffy.

And it also pays lip service to Terminator 2: Judgement Day I noticed, after seeing the wildly popular and influential sequel the other day (I know, what kept me so long?). Both have mysterious leather jacketed time travellers going on the run with the girl, who's been noticed and death follows in their wake. And it steals the imagery when the plastic duplicate of Mickey develops flat blades for hands (no gory stabbings at 7pm) and destroys a restaurant, an unstoppable figure chasing after the Doctor and Rose. And upon seeing the finale of the film set in a steel factory, I finally saw the direct reference in the Nestene Consciousness's underground lair, lit up red and embodied in the lava. I still think the episode owes more to the Hollywood film than it does to Spearhead from Space, barring the Auton Invasion near the end.

Released in 1991, the film - hailed in places as the greatest science fiction film of all time - was too late to influence the TV series itself. But then I thought back to the TV Movie in 1996, set in America with the same brief to update this dated time traveller for a new audience, with movie style effects and not so many bug eyed monsters. Heere's the other half of Terminator 2, as it almost cribs the plot: two time travellers, one good and one bad, one out to change history and one who's trying to stop them, though the heroine doesn't know that yet. There's cool motorbikes and hospitals and nighttime chases to a scientific establishment and outwitting cops and a streetwise kid and body swapping and everything, followed by a fight in which both hero and villain are dangling over the edge, with an ominous destruction of the world hanging over them all. It's very T2.

And as such, it didn't really work as Doctor Who. Sure, the show had mined plenty of science fiction in the past, and there were plenty of Hammer ripoffs in the 70s. The series had both predated hits (The Ark in Space is the same idea as Alien, infamously, but a few years earlier) and mined them (the bit in Dragonfire that goes all Aliens, but with nothing like the production values), and that's fine. Indeed, if you're looking for accessible modern science fiction, T2 would be in the back of your mind.

I think one of the reasons Rose worked is it only used different imagery, but built it around the Doctor Who formula. The strength of Rose was the story enabled it to go straight into thwarting an alien invasion rather than dealing with regeneration, Time Lords and other 'core concepts', irrelevant to a new audience. The TV Movie was criticised for straying too far away from the show, even with these references, but that's probably because the plot's thin. What makes T2 thrilling is the drama and the danger: it had Arnie protecting Sarah and John Connor from the other, unstoppable Terminator. Here, the Master doesn't have much of a plan at first other than to survive, and so the Doctor has to go on a wild goose chase involving shutting the Eye of Harmony. Perhaps they should have stuck to what the Doctor does best - fighting monsters and villains.

The First Five Decades

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is upon us, and it's a good one for anyone who likes numbers. Thousands of fans have scored every story from 1 to 10, and all these have been averaged and totted up to find people's favourite - favourite story ever, favourite Doctor, favourite season, you name it. And there's even the prospect of comparing the results to the last time the poll was done, five years ago! (with a whole load of new stories since)

You can find out more about the issue, with a wonderful fold out cover, here. But I thought, since I entered myself, a short summary of what I voted for as my favourites. I rarely sit down and work out my favourite Doctor or story (there's 241 of them) - and my tastes are no doubt only controversial for how average they are - but it's a good game of numbers. (And maybe I've boosted the Slitheen ones up the chart ever so slightly!)

10s went to: (deep breath) The Tomb of the Cybermen, Inferno, The Green Death, The Time Warrior, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, The Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom, The Deadly Assassin, The Robots of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, City of Death, Earthshock, The Caves of Androzani, Remembrance of the Daleks, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways, The Girl in the Fireplace, Army of Ghosts / Doomsday, Human Nature / The Family of Blood, Blink, Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead, Midnight, Turn Left, The Waters of Mars, The Eleventh Hour, The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone, Vincent and the Doctor, The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, The Doctor’s Wife, Asylum of the Daleks.

9s went to: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Time Meddler, The Mind Robber, The War Games, Spearhead From Space, Pyramids of Mars, The Curse of Fenric, Dalek,
Father’s Day, Tooth and Claw, School Reunion, The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, Smith and Jones,
Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords, The Unicorn and the Wasp, The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End, Amy’s Choice, The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes to War, The Girl Who Waited,The God Complex, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Snowmen, The Name of the Doctor



There's a list of top 50 stories to watch right there.

(2s and 1s went to: Planet of Giants, The Space Museum, The Krotons, The Time Monster, Timelash, Time and the Rani; Underworld, Meglos, Time-Flight, Terminus, The Twin Dilemma.)


Per Doctor, it works out that Christopher Eccleston's stories work out the most favourable (my first Doctor, even though I put Matt Smith on the poll), followed by David Tennant and then Matt Smith. Out of the older stories - lower on average no doubt due to ropiness, but they're not that much lower - it goes, surprisingly, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker (!), William Hartnell, Paul McGann (his one story), then Colin Baker.

That's stories, not the actors, of course. I tried to keep a wide distribution (or else I'd give them all 9s), and stories I haven't seen (seen, not just heard) are omitted. (This means in DWM, the lesser known 60s stories are voted for by less people... but then most are never going to be front runners, and 'less people' still equates to over a thousand!)

Don't ask me to pick a favourite out of that lot!

My Best of 2013

I watch possibly too much TV, especially drama, these days. But 2013 was a great year for drama. I've seen a lot of roundups of best things to watch last year, though I haven't watched everything. (Breaking Bad? Not on the BBC, so...) Here's my thoughts on the best things I've personally seen. Starting with..

Best Crime Series

Was it just me, or is there more crime dramas - and detective dramas - than ever? Not that I'm complaining (most of the books I read too tend to be crime-ish now, or sci-fi, and I guess the telly I watch reflects that too.)

Broadchurch
No list on 2013 is complete without Broadchurch on it. Even from the start I loved it - the acting, the cast, the cinematography, even the writing (Chris Chibnall's far better at 'realistic' drama than spaceships and swords, it seems). Really lives up to the hype - even the electrifying ending (which I didn't guess - even if many other people did!). Blogged about it here. Curiously, my mum thought it was too slow and boring, but she's wrong.

Top of the Lake
Slightly too highbrow, too arty, with lots of intelligible New Zealand locals (almost needs subtitles!) and little exposition. This was yet another slightly grim crime series, but head and shoulders above the rest in terms of gorgeous scenery, dark crazy themes, and mysterious storytelling, and great twists. I really got into it by the end.




Endeavour
Very classy, very pretty and captivating mysteries. I've never seen the original Morse series (though I've started reading the books) - this came first, and it's a series of very good mysteries.


The Great Train Robbery
Quite slow and meandering, but a fine reenactment of the robbery and the police side of things from 50 years ago. It's very classy (CSI 1963! super) but gripping and very nicely done.
Also worth mentioning: Ripper Street (most of it's two series aired this year - strong Victorian cop show), What Remains (very suspenseful mystery, unashamedly contrived, with loveably bonkers final scenes), The Fall (grim serial killer drama, classy as hell). ITV's Poirot/Marple serials (generally well done, EIGHT new ones this year! - and I've caught up on a few old ones. Curtain and Endless Night particularly were amazing). Swedish crime dramaseries Arne Dahl (good, overblown long thrillers with good character development), Luther (returning, looking pretty and well told - I caught up with series one too, the first ever episode is a masterpiece), Scott and Bailey, Father Brown (cosy short mysteries), Mayday.

Best Unrelentingly Bleak Series

An extra category - and I'm not counting Broadchurch in it, cos even that had some humour in it. These ones didn't.

The Village
Very bleak and depressing (I sense a theme here..), but very well told and shot. One of those lovely epic dramas, but set in a rural Northern village from a hundred years ago. At times, at it's best, it's very moving, and very special.

The Returned
A French series about zombies... wait, come back! This wasn't really about zombies at all (apart from the odd bit of cannibalism), more like ghosts - as four or five dead people return to a quiet village and unsettle their grieving loved ones. Why are they there? Your guess is as good as mine - but aside from getting very few answers this year, this show just oozed a classy, eerie atmosphere and suspense. (Alright - it was slow!)

Also worth mentioning: Top of the Lake and The Fall (see above), and The Mill (fine period drama from C4, in all its grubby authenticity). 

Best Series I Often Found Frustrating

But there's also some really good TV shows that I loved... well, after a while. At first they rather irritated me. There's a new trend for the confusing, filmic, muttery drama series, and here's some of them that - whilst being excellent - took me some time to warm to.

The White Queen
Lavish as ever - I loved the first episode's containedness, gorgeousness and great plot, but then it suffered under the following two or three episodes of rushed historical events, muttered exposition and a cast of thousands. For a while I hated it - but by the end of the series it calmed down into a smoother, much better watch. Don't read up on the history if you don't want to know what happens, even though it helps you to follow the plot, as it's pretty accurate actually, depicting the end bits of the War of the Roses, and the reign of Richard III. It's just a shame history wasn't a bit more... simple.
Peaky Blinders
BBC Two's lovely gangster drama set in 1919, up north, to the sound of the coolest rock songs and arty visuals. Another one of these shows without much exposition, and an unconventional plot, so I thought it a bit mystifying at first, but go along with it, if only for the ride. Or something.
  
Dancing on the Edge
Started off slow (a ninety minute opening episode, too), but a great cast, oozing class and quality like The Hour (much missed), and jazz songs you wouldn't realise weren't authentic. But I did find it odd - stuff happening, but not much depth or subtlety - or mystery, by the end of it. Frustrating to watch at times, with the plot too, but glossy and memorable. (There's also an extra, very odd 'documentary' episode!)

Also worth mentioning: Top of the Lake (there's a running theme to this), Burton and Taylor (muttery, but with really good casting... even if I've never seen them in real life much to compare them to!), The Great Gatsby (the film - although the book was quite hard 'to get'. I wrote about them here - but yes, an odd film to love)

Best New Sci-Fi/Fantasy Series

Orphan Black
A very intriguing import, about a woman who discovers there's other people who look like her. Sounds a bit crazy - it's a sci-fi (ish) thriller - but it plays differently to how you'd expect, in that it's actually very very fun. Tatiana Maslay as the clones deserves every award going, as I kept having to remind myself that these characters were all played by the same actor. Really really lovely.

Utopia
Again, only technically sci-fi. Super stylish, hyper realistic and very awesome... and very disturbing! This was gripping from the start - a conspiracy, comic-booky drama, with violent assassins and... well, I'm doing it a disservice. Like nothing else this year, highly recommended - and it's coming back.

In the Flesh
After Being Human, BBC Three aired a zombie drama... wait, come back! This was completely different to your usual horror, actually being a self-confessed rural kitchen-sink drama exploring what it's like to be dead. The gradually unfolding main character and situation is what made it - the first episode's slow, but it improved into something really special.

Also worth mentioning: The Returned (see above), Neverwhere (not telly, but epic radio drama with one of the best casts ever, and best stories too. Basically, incredible - and I've never experienced the originals), Agents of Shield was alright superhero-ish action fluff.And of course returning stuff like Doctor Who - but more on that later.

Best (Other) New Series

The best of the rest (alright, I can't think of any more categories!).


Frankie
The complete opposite to most of these - a light, breezy antidote to the violence and misery on this list. But it's also a very well made series, about a district nurse played loveably by Eve Myles. It's not all sweetness and light though - there's a stalker, relationship problems, and obviously, death. The plot's good, and it's miles better than anything similar on ITV.
  
The Americans
An American show - a slow paced, tense spy series, about a pair of Russian spies posing undercover in 1981 as a typical all American family. It's a great, solid and rewarding watch - no huge explosive set-pieces or secret volcano lairs, but pure drama with a good cast. 

The Escape Artist
Another one of these BBC mini-series: this one, starring David Tennant as a lawyer, was an economical, solid, effortless thriller, with a great twist of a final episode. And just a cut above most dramas.






Privates
Odd title - it's a BBC daytime drama shown last January about 1960s conscripts to National Service. But it's a lovely series, with unfamiliar actors (well, except Alex Vlahos), and juggles the plots and themes superbly over the five episodes, to keep you watching.






Also worth mentioning: I discovered Borgen, easily the best Danish political soap I've seen this year. The Wrong Mans (fine thrilling drama, with laughs). CBBC's documentary 'I am Ethan' (top notch - and Who related). Lucy Worsley's A Very British Murder (very enjoyable, about the history of crime solving!). Irish gangster drama Love/Hate (shown on 5 - action packed, pretty darn good), The Wipers Times (an excellent period piece, despite being overly long, packed with humour and cynicism), The Whale, Gangsta Granny. And The Tractate Middoth and The Thirteenth Tale were two very good ghost stories shown at Christmas.

Best Returning Series

A second series (or even more) is often hard to do. But these shows kept the quality up this year in my opinion...

Call the Midwife/Last Tango in Halifax
A second series can be tough - more of the same, especially as the first series is often hailed as the best thing since sliced bread. But these two series - both real hits, both which I loved the first time around - came back with the same quality, the same cast too, and really stunning telly. Call the Midwife made me weep with the always painful abortion sequence, pre-watershed (no blood, but intercut with bright red nail polish...) Last Tango developed the characters realistically and showed the wedding of the year, as well as the best acting, writing, directing, etc...

Wolfblood
A great set of 13 new episodes gave us our old Wolfblood gang back, plus new characters and expanded the characters and the world they lived in. A very strong, realistic serial with heart and - wait for it - bite. I also watched back the whole of the first series from last year when it was repeated on BBC Three!

Wizards Vs Aliens
The first series was alright, if small and sometimes too silly - the second really knocked it out the park though with its risk-taking stories. The Thirteenth Floor in particular is a fantastic adventure with bold twists, and the finale is amazing. But all the stories were good, ranging from high comedy to tragedy - between this and Wolfblood, it's breaking the boundaries of traditionally 'children's telly' (And Young Dracula too, not on this year).

Also worth mentioning: The Sparticle Mystery (another great children's series - a fantasy drama with all child actors, trying to find the adults - great old-school, watchable fun, like playing in the woods). Final series of Being Human (great ending to the show, revitalised for the final stretch - especially with Phil Davis, and also Kate Bracken) and Misfits (much improved on last year's also). Black Mirror (executed perfectly, most of them), The Paradise (still lovely, with glorious design and over-acting). Doc Martin (consistently light and funny - don't be snobby). And Horrible Histories - very very amusing and brilliant as ever

Best Bit of Doctor Who

An odd year for Doctor Who - but a good one on the whole, with an eight episode series (also called, just, a series) and two specials. The one in November, The Day of the Doctor, was superb - as were highlights like The Crimson Horror and The Bells of St John. Let's not mention some of the episodes though, nor the Doctor or Clara's character development...

However there was also two star highlights of the year elsewhere:

An Adventure in Space and Time
A one off drama, completely different to Doctor Who, about its origins. I'd heard a lot about the drama and the history behind it already throughout the year - it's beautiful, absolutely magical. David Bradley is (was?) William Hartnell, and Mark Gatiss skilfully compressed an awful lot into 90 minutes. It's almost perfect. 

The Five(ish) Doctors
Pretty much as good as the Doctor Who anniversary special, but a comedy, and with a tenth of the budget (probably). Star studded, bloody hysterical, one of the best things ever.

Best Show I Watched from Years Ago

State of Play
One of the best TV series ever, quite possibly? A perfect storm of conspiracies, politics, journalism and mystery - if a little too long (six hours). It's also got a now A-list cast, including John Simm, David Morrissey and Bill Nighy.

Casanova
This reminded me how much I love Russell T Davies - it screams 2005 Doctor Who with David Tennant and the music and the fun, fast cutting. And it does that trick of making you laugh and cry at the same time.

Also: Finally saw Ashes to Ashes after only seeing the final one-and-a-half series (just as good as Life on Mars, perhaps better). Danger UXB (a very thrilling old wartime series). The original Pride and Prejudice (I read the book first, too, the BBC series is marvellous), Margaret (the Thatcher drama that is all about politics, with a fine cast), Land Girls (a strong series from a few years back, soap style), Eric and Ernie (accomplished and infectious - no wonder it won a Bafta). And as a family we've been watching Bergerac (the crime drama set - mostly - on Jersey. we've seen all of it now, it's mostly really good).

I didn't watch that many films this year, certainly not at the cinema - but I did see Alien, Avengers Assemble, Scott Pilgrim VS the World, Brideshead Revisited, Attack the Block, Young Sherlock Holmes, A Field in England, Indiana Jones, Starter for 10, The History Boys and Source Code, so that made up for it. And not telly, but Big Finish's last Eighth Doctor series on the radio was excellent, a real high point (as is discovering Round the Horne and Cabin Pressure, two of the solidest, funniest radio comedies). And I finally got round to reading all of Sandman, if in a fairly jumbled order. And I read lots of books, too many to mention. And, of course, I got on the radio myself, as part of Chain Gang, which was very lucky (and it wasn't half bad either).

Disappointments

 

BBC's Atlantis - a sub-par Merlin (no pun intended), which started off terrible, and ended up as, well, a sub-par Merlin (and that had problems of its own too). I watched the first episode of Mr Selfridge, to my horror - utterly lifeless. Doctor Who - well, there was The Rings of Akhaten, but I watched Death to the Daleks for the first time, unfortunately.
Southcliffe was very naturalistic, arty, but without a plot and so grim it's almost unwatchable. Death Comes to Pemberley was lavish, if sombre, but I didn't like the lacklustre ending. Masterchef's format this year was very repetitive.
Catching up, the film version of The Time Traveller's Wife doesn't quite work, and doesn't feel like how I imagined it when I read the lovely lovely book - well, I was warned. Mars Attacks is far, far worse than I remembered back when I was younger. And after getting round to read them for the first time, I found some of the short stories of HP Lovecraft to be a bit heavy and a struggle to read, sadly.

Maybe I shouldn't have ended on such a downbeat paragraph... but 2013 was a good year for telly, and 2014 (even thus far) looks to be great too. It's striving for better things, it's more filmic, more nuanced, more varied than before.(And with all the dramas I watch I should probably go into the industry myself... let's call all this "research", eh?)

The Doctor Who Actor Spotting Game

(Well, nobody's given it a proper name, have they?)

It's one of the most common things people shout at the telly - "oh, what's he/she been in?" And a lot of the time, they've been in Doctor Who. Naturally, it's attracted a whole range of guest stars over its 50 years (well, minus fourteen or so - but who's counting?) - from the likes of Michael Gambon and John Cleese, to Ken Dodd and McFly. People have noticed - I recall Doctor Who Magazine itself asking some pertinent questions a couple of years ago: with alumni popping up seemingly in every show, is there anything with no Doctor Who stars in? Or a series where every actor has appeared in it?

Okay, there's a few rules to this. For starters, it's got to be British - some American telly for instance is connected, but that's just lucky guessing. Secondly, obviously we're only looking at dramas or comedy, not real life stuff. And thirdly, ideally it has to be a series. A one off play with two actors or new and upcoming comedians isn't as interesting as twenty-odd episodes of something.

And only Doctor Who counts - not Torchwood, or Sarah Jane Adventures (sadly - even the latter starred Nigel Havers, Phyllida Law, Miriam Margoyles, Jane Asher, Julie Graham, Eddie Marsan, Ronnie Corbett...). Nor technically the wonderful new An Adventure in Space and Time drama. And no Big Finish, or we'll be here all day listing them.

The Day of the Doctor

"Great men are forged in fire. It's up to lesser men to light the flame."

Saturday 23rd November, 2013 - fifty years to the day since Doctor Who was first shown, and going stronger than ever. Of course everyone expects a special episode to commemorate it - and so we got The Day of the Doctor, the latest anniversary extravaganza!

Whilst I can't comment on the 3D (though I'm sure it looked cool), this Doctor Who special was big (and yet contained), brilliantly written, and beautifully directed. The sort of anniversary special the series needed, even if people didn't know it. Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman (both good value, as ever), David Tennant (seamlessly appearing again, even though it's been almost four years), and the very clever casting coup of John Hurt as a long lost Doctor. Who could resist?

The Silent Scream

Against all expectations, it's something new from me - and it moves! If you like Doctor Who, or watching things, then here's The Silent Scream...

And since this is a blog, I thought I'd say a bit about the making of it:

It's not your normal Doctor Who episode - really, it's an experimental short film. (Intentionally, kinda, there's no theme music, or familiar TARDIS groaning) It started off as me filming something on my new camera, and naturally that led to a seven minute short, with lots of voices, mixing different styles of filmmaking!

The obligatory Broadchurch post

Six weeks ago, the first part of Broadchurch aired - a slow, Dorset-set drama about a crime that shocks a small village. Since then it has slowly and surely built up to what some people are tipping the telly drama event of the year (well, so far at any rate). Certainly it's a big hit ratings-wise.

It's amazingly well made, which is odd because it's an ITV drama - great cast, lovely stylish direction and music, and even the writing's up to scratch. One of its strengths is in its sincerity. Not only is there realism in the local police's investigation, but you've also got Olivia Colman in it, and she's amazing, which adds some warmth and humour and truthfulness to the subject material. Given the slow pace - seven or eight weeks is a long time in this digital age - and that it's dealing with heightened events, it's the characters and the humanity that stops the whole thing getting silly.

Many people have compared it to Danish drama The Killing and you can see why: a (relatively) long, drawn out investigation isn't the norm on crime dramas these days - usually it's wrapped up in two hours. It takes its time with the potential suspects (an isolated community, with huge murder mystery style potential suspicions), and we see the story, mainly, from the point of view of the police, the victim's family, and the press. Like The Killing, it's quietly stylish (although this has much more slow-mo), but also it's very gripping, with a new development and twist seemingly every week. The cliffhangers might not match The Killing's - though Episode 6's nighttime chase could have been lifted from the other - but it's proving to be unmissable.

Final episode's next week, and we still don't really know who's done it, and a whole heap of forgotten clues and soon-to-be-answered questions.

So - who killed Danny Latimer?

Seeing as everyone's got a pet theory - which everyone then has to change week on week - I thought I might post mine.

First off - the death. It's a bit hazy at the moment - first we see Danny on the cliffs at the dead of night (which nobody's mentioned!), then there's a hut, a boat which was later burned, and the body put on plain view on the beach... So, he was killed on the boat then. Why all the trouble - lack of evidence? Seemingly Danny went to meet his killer secretly that night... willingly? And did they want the body to be found straight away, because they had an alibi that night?

Susan Wright says she saw a man in a boat, dragging the body onto the beach - did she really? She lies easily, as we've seen. And though she recognised the man as Nige - who is now a credible suspect - can we trust her? Could she be the murderer herself? (unlikely)

Danny's friend Tom can't have done it - that would be silly, even if he's acting strangely. Even more silly would be his father, and Ellie's husband, Joe Miller. I know people are speculating it, but he's the least likely person who could have done it, and the only evidence against him would be the stuff with his son. So no - but Tom definitely knows something important, perhaps who Danny was going to meet.

In your standard murder mystery, often it's the most likely person who did it. Here, the most likely person was the first person arrested, Mark Latimer. He got off, as he had an alibi (though it was the first time he'd ever slept around...) and not much of a motive-  but could later evidence change things around? It's not the most likely, but he's still in the picture, and it would bring the story round full circle if it was a big main character like that.

Otherwise, my (figurative) money's probably on the dark horse, psychic Steve. It's a bit of a ludicrous character, but played perfectly down-to-earth. I can see why he's in the show - it ties in with the themes of grief and the public and adds a layer of mystery. But, presuming he isn't a psychic then - how did he know about the boat? He hasn't been in it much, but he's still a suspect too... Don't get me started on motive though!

And then you've also got the nice young vicar with a shady past (who was more trusted than the newspaper seller with a shady past!), and the thing with Danny's sister's boyfriend...

Regardless of what the end result might be, it's still been one of the best things on TV this year. Now we just have to wait until Monday...

Cold War

This is beginning to be a regular occurence!

This week, Doctor Who's action movie, and a rather fine one at that. It's packed to the gills (and definitely merits a future rewatch). The TARDIS lands on a submarine - and a Russian one, in the middle of the cold war! Back in the day, that would be enough in itself - but here, it's a colourful backdrop for an alien menace which happens to be on board. They thought it was a mammoth... it's not!

Ultimately the setting of this story is uncontroversially spot on - you can't argue with confined spaces, water gushing in, the works. It's beautifully made - and shown off in a particularly beautiful episode. Warriors of the Deep this ain't - there's well controlled lighting, a dark spooky atmosphere, lots of steam and water.

And add into the mix a very cleverly redesigned version of an old enemy - the Ice Warrior! Some people have compared this episode to Dalek (I guess because it reboots a monster by putting it on its own in an confined space, and making it a killing machine) - but as the episode goes on, it reminded me more (certainly visually) of the stalking-on-a-spaceship action of 42. The Doctor's reaction is great - and establishes that this alien is not only dangerous, but also has a personality - something absent from the mysterious, parasitic monsters last week - and a history.

Perhaps its greatest moment was that twist, which I didn't see coming at all - that Skaldak the Ice Warrior had escaped his suit! (There I was thinking - they could have shown more shots of its mouth saying the lines!) From there on, it turns into a real monster movie, Alien style. The bony, green alien hands look excellently creepy - that'll be why they redesigned it, although they don't quite fit in with what we recognise already as Ice Warriors - but I was expecting to see the whole thing. I know there's a budget, but it returning to its suit out of shot felt slightly clumsy - there's keeping a monster in shadow, and then there's hardly showing anything at all. Nonetheless, it gave the suit (now a design classic) a tiny bit more screentime - something that perhaps this episode suffered from.

The atmosphere was tense - especially when it came to Clara, realising nicely that things might not work out so well this time. But I felt a feeling of unease, and not wholly intentionally I expect. There's a disorientating (but stylish) bit early on where Clara loses consciousness, and then wakes up to find everything happening. Okay, it's a pacy episode, and so it cuts out some of the real-time explaining, but it puts you on the back foot.
Similarly, as ever with twists, if you don't know where the thing's going, or think you do and something else entirely happens - like Skaldak escaping - you feel slightly out of the action. That's not to say it doesn't make sense - just that, when you build up a monster, for him to mostly skulk about in the shadows halfway through, it feels a bit mystifying.

The cast is strong, stronger than most - I love Tobias Menzies already, and then you've got Liam Cunningham and David Warner too, playing three very different characters
They aren't especially nuanced, though - see also Victory of the Daleks (except Churchill), although editing may have something to do with it in both - but then it's an action movie. It's still a nice set-up - and the Cold War provides not only weapons (nuclear - huge threat there, well explained) but imagery that contrasts with the big old Martian, a character in itself, separated by culture and suspicion. Red planet, red army, perhaps.

Does it provide a satisfying ending though? It's a happy one - not least because there's no armageddon - but I couldn't help feeling a little cheated. Dare I use a certain latin phrase describing godlike denouments? The giant (if pretty, and almost Nekross-like) spaceship wasn't the only problem though - the Mutually Assured Destruction threat felt slightly forced, and it was a shame that we never glimpsed the Ice Warrior after he had teleported away - a shot of him in the spaceship hesistating would have made the situation clearer. (And can submarines do trips from pole to pole?)

And we get a reference to Ultravox - hooray!

Flashback: The Eleven Doctors

I've been meaning to write an article on a Doctor Who fan film series I made a few years back in the summer holidays - and with talk rife at the moment, what better time to talk about my own take on 'Eleven Doctors' - featuring the voices of Matt Smith, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and all the rest?

I'm sure it won't be news to anyone reading this, but 2013 is a particularly special year for Doctor Who - its fiftieth anniversary, to be exact. At the time of writing - with filming due to start next month - speculations are wild for what the upcoming special story will be like. Will any the old actors who played the Doctor turn up - like in previous years? And what about including ones that are dead, or very old? Could there be other old guest stars, companions, monsters? What does Steven Moffat have up his sleeve?

Well, I don't have any answers*. But I do have my take on what such a special could be like...

It was back in the summer of 2010, and Matt Smith had just done his first 13 week run playing the Doctor (and only 13 week run, come to think of it!). Added to that, for the first time, the earlier Doctors were being released in toy form - fans could get a complete set of all eleven! In this era, where all the early years of the show are readily available and embraced, this sparked a lot of imaginations...

At the time, I'd done a few films with action figures. The Doctor versus the Daleks, that kind of thing, normally stop motion. With some of them, I'd put on voices - and because I'm rubbish at impressions, using sound clips from the TV show. If I was going to do a 'meetup' adventure of all of them - which was irresistable! - I'd have to make them talk to each other, and that meant using the original actors.

Yep, even Paul McGann!

It was ambitious. Actually, it started off as a one-off - a fun, short episode where the Doctors found themselves together, and decided to argue, ending on a cliffhanger. (I often end things on a cliffhanger, and then never resolve it!) I knew a website which handily offered soundbites from the show, so I was able to pick and choose a range of dialogue for the characters to say, and then piece things together, like a giant jigsaw puzzle. As the scale of the adventure increased - a very exciting prospect! - I quickly exhausted the list, and had to source my own clips from the DVDs, a few audios, deleted scenes, extra games, practically everything (with big thanks to online transcripts of the episodes, saving me a lot of time when I wanted something specific, like opening a door!).

Some ideas I'd had from the start. Others came to me whilst I was collating possible voices - for the story has to be driven by what the characters are able to say, or else the whole thing feels manufactured. One thing was certain - I wanted to feature all the Doctors, taking an equal share of the lead role (a hard task in itself - that's eleven lead characters!). Although I didn't have much choice when it came to companions, as many weren't released yet - I chose Amy, as she was the current one, though I couldn't resist featuring K-9 and Captain Jack too. However, all the big monsters would feature, like in previous specials - so thanks to the range of toys, we had Daleks, Cybermen, The Master (with a rather hammy voice), Weeping Angels, Sea Devils, Sontarans, Autons... the works!

And whilst the plot was always going to be weaker than most, I tried to make it as much like a proper new series story as possible - whilst nicking the general 'quest' format from The Five Doctors, and with a few blatant homages to old stories along the way.

As it turns out, the series was really popular. About two months elapsed between the first and the last part (including a holiday, hence a slightly rushed editing on Part Two), with the production getting slicker as it went - the first part, with static figures in a dark room talking, is a little quaint now I look back. The whole thing totals an hour - pleasingly, about as long as a 'proper' episode!

Plus a short scene at the end, in the new TARDIS set - which has just come out when recording the final part!

So, if you haven't seen it yet, why not have a watch? It's made out of six-inch-tall plastic toys by a teenager (on his own!), with various cardboard spaceships and a back garden becoming a rainforest. But it's bursting with imagination - and who could resist pitting William Hartnell against the Weeping Angels?



For more videos, before and since (I was going to follow this up with other invidual Doctor stories - but I only got as far as a dark Tom Baker tale!), see my Youtube Channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/Aquatics64

And Babelcolour's 'The Ten Doctors' is highly recommended - like this, but made out of video clips. Highly accomplished!

(*though I'd expect something like the Doctor visiting his past - possibly solving a mystery, like the Silence stuff - and so we have quite a few references and cameos, but an actual storyline. Think Wedding of River Song crossed with a Who convention!)