I Know Him So Well

Another You Are Not Alone from the mists of time...

THE PIP TORRENS FACTOR

Christmas, as we all know, is a time traditionally spent at home, sitting on a sofa, eating chocolate liqueurs, drinking brandy, breaking wind and watching television. But while you’re curled up in front of a Harry Potter movie, or a prestigious BBC costume drama, or a box-set of sitcom, why not pass the time by also playing The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game?

The rules are simple. Whenever you’re watching a British film, drama series, sitcom - or even when you’re going out to see a play – and you recognise an actor because they’ve been in Doctor Who, you must immediately shout out the name of the Doctor Who story they were in. This scores you five points.

You can then score an additional five points if you can name the character the actor played and another five points if you can name the actor. And finally ten points are awarded if you can accurately quote a line of their dialogue (and not just a “yes”, “no”, “help” or “aaargh!” – it must be a line unique to that story).

Say, for instance, you’re watching On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and you spot the guy out of The Deadly Assassin. Name the story, that’s five points. Say Chancellor Goth, that’s another five. Identify him as Bernard Horsfall, that’s another five. And quote the line, “He is abusing a legal technicality” and that’s another ten.

(Plus you can score bonus points by remembering the same actor’s appearances in The Mind Robber, The War Games and Planet of the Daleks, playing Gulliver, First Time Lord and Taron respectively. If you can recollect any of his dialogue from these stories, you’re a better fan than me. And while you’re watching On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, don’t forget there are points to be gained from spotting George Baker – Login, Full Circle – and Catherine Schell – the Countess, City of Death, “It’s a very rare and precious Chinese puzzle box, you won’t be able to open it” – ten points.)

Additional rules. Clearly it is not entering into the spirit of the game to check the Radio Times for the cast-list beforehand or to look up information on the internet while the programme is being broadcast. If you are familiar with the Big Finish adventures, you can include them – that way, you can score points with Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Tony Blackburn, Leslie Philips and all three Goodies. Similarly, I would say that The Sarah-Jane Adventures, Torchwood, The Scream of the Shalka and Death Comes to Time all count (if only for the sheer pleasure of counting Alan Dale and Stephen Fry amongst Doctor Who luminaries). Whether you include Dimensions in Time or The Curse of Fatal Death is a matter for you and your conscience.

And if you like – because this game is supposed to be fun – any actors who have played Doctors or companions score ten points (though you’re not allowed bonus points for listing all the stories they appeared in or for quoting any dialogue, as that would throw out the whole scoring system).

So there you have it. The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game. It works better if you’re playing it with a like-minded friend with a similar level of Doctor Who nerd-how, but to be honest, don’t we all play a variation of the game when we’re watching television alone anyway?

I’m not talking about deliberately seeking out shows because they feature Doctors and companions. I do that as well, of course, but that’s another article for another YANA. No, it’s about the surprise, the thrill, of seeing an actor you only really know from one or two Doctor Who stories appearing in something else. It’s like bumping into an old friend – spotting Drax in Midsomer Murders, spotting Li H’Sen Chang in Rome, spotting Fabian from The Twin Dilemma in Kingdom (and “May my bones rot for obeying it” – ten points). Plus there’s the comfort of knowing that the actors are still alive and well and that appearing in Doctor Who didn’t bring about a premature end to their acting career.

Similarly, at the theatre, there’s something spine-tingling about seeing an actor from Doctor Who in the flesh. Someone you’ve only ever seen in two-dimensions standing in a futuristic space corridor is now in front of you, on stage, in three-dimensional real life. The temptation is always to shout out a line from their Doctor Who story, to see if they recognise it – but I strongly recommend you don’t. Though I do remember once seeing ‘alternative comedian’ Lee Cornes doing a stand-up routine about how crap Doctor Who was, and heckling him by pointing out he’d played the Trickster in Kinda.

It’s the reason why I buy theatre programmes, just to look through the actors’ biographies to see if they were in Doctor Who. It’s one of those shows that every actor has to have appeared in, along with Doctors and The Bill. Though there was a period during the eighties when Doctor Who got accidentally misplaced from many an acting CV – and even now it’s interesting when an actor neglects to mention their appearance in the show, as though it’s still something to be ashamed of. Though to be fair, if I’d once played a Swampie in The Power Of Kroll I’d probably want to keep quiet about it too, Philip Bird*.

I check out most productions at the Globe in London - Henry Gordon Jago made a terrific Falstaff, the Steward from Platform One was a marvellous Timon and the rebel Areta from Vengeance of Varos excelled as Tamora in Titus Andronicus. Which is the other delight of seeing actors from Doctor Who – you discover that they’re much, much better than you ever gave them credit for, that you’d misjudged their abilities based upon a performance from twenty years ago (“...or something truly loathsome such as you!” – ten points). Though I also watch a lot of archive telly, which has led me to discover that the guy who is not totally great as Commander Millington in The Curse of Fenric was equally devoid of expression in an old Jack Rosenthal play (“The ancient enemies shall seek each other out and all shall die!” – ten points).

In a way, The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game is a celebration of, for want of a less trite term, the BBC drama repertory company. Those under-appreciated professionals who would do a Doctor Who, then a Softly Softly, then maybe a Play For Today or a prestigious BBC costume drama before returning to do another Doctor Who. The great unsung heroes of television – the Bernard Archards, the Bernard Holleys, the Bernard Kays. The Prentis Hancocks and the Eileen Ways. The Milton Johns. And the greatest of them all – the Ronald Leigh-Hunt. Nobody could end a scene with a proclamation of impending doom like the Ronald Leigh-Hunt.

To be serious for one moment, the sad fact is that the increasing prevalence of ‘star casting’ means there isn’t really a place for these sort of anonymous character actors any more. It’s understandable, in these days of diminishing viewing figures, why casting directors want to get as many big names in a show as possible. The problem is, you end up with travesties like ITV’s Marple, where the quest for famous faces has taken priority over whether actors are suitable for – or are even capable of playing – their parts.

The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game also throws up fascinating facts. For instance, John Hurt is the only Emperor from I Claudius not to have been in Doctor Who**. If you count The Infinite Quest – as surely you must - then the only regular from Linda Green not to have done a Doctor Who is Dave Hill (it can only be a matter of time). By my calculation, there have only been about a dozen or so episodes of EastEnders not to feature someone from Doctor Who – after all, Dot Cotton, Den Watts and Peggy Mitchell all count. Five Blue Peter presenters have been in Doctor Who***. During the eighties, nearly every member of the cast of The Pallisers turned up in Doctor Who (including three in Black Orchid alone). Each of the actors to play the Doctor has appeared in at least one sitcom, of some sort. And so on, and so on... this is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night.

And on that note, I have a challenge for you. After you’ve finishing boggling at the merciless impossibility of the Watcher’s Christmas Quiz, why not try The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game Challenge. It comes in two parts.

Part one is to find a TV series – a British TV show, drama or comedy – from the last fifty years not to feature any actors from Doctor Who. It must, however, be a TV series – not a one-off play or a single episode. And obviously this doesn’t include shows based around monologues – that’s cheating – or youth-oriented/children’s shows with a cast of TV newcomers.

It’s virtually impossible, I promise you. In the highly unlikely event that a show doesn’t feature Mark Benton in its cast, it will almost certainly include the actor Pip Torrens. He’s been in simply everything – hence ‘The Pip Torrens Factor’. He was Rocastle in Human Nature – (“I hope, Latimer, that one day you may have a just and proper war in which to prove yourself” – ten points). So if you can find a TV show which he hasn’t appeared in, that would be a good start.****

Part two is to find a TV series – again, a British TV show, drama or comedy – from the last fifty years where every actor has appeared in Doctor Who at some point. I’m not including extras – just speaking, credited cast members – and again you can’t have one-off plays, single episodes or monologues. And of course you can’t have Doctor Who as your answer, that would be cheating.

I don’t know what the answers are, by the way – or even if there are any, there might not be. But it’ll be fun trying to find out - I suspect Primeval might be a possible candidate for part one...*****

Footnotes from Jonny 2015:

* Actually he is quite proud of his Doctor Who appearance but doesn't count it because he was an extra.

** Well that dates this article, doesn’t it!

*** Actually I think it’s seven.
**** I once met Pip Torrens in real life, on the train near Honor Oak Park.

***** No, Jonny, the guy playing football in the opening scenes of Fear Her was a regular in Primeval.

Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)

By popular request, following my much-enjoyed Blake’s 7 reviews, a series of reviews of every single Shakespeare play produced by the BBC during their 1978-1985 ‘Bardathon’ released on this lovely box set here which I can’t recommend too highly, it really is the dog’s bodkin.

These reviews date from late 2005 and 2006 and I’ll be posting them in the same order I wrote them back then (informally, just for friends). Any opinions contained herein are automatically devalued on account of having been expressed by yours truly. They start off fairly short and get longer...

Kicking things off with the first entry, and the introduction I wrote back in 2005:

Well, I thought I'd go highbrow. And thoughts popped into my head whilst watching, so I thought I'd share. Maybe I should do a weblog instead, but I don't particularly want to.

Anyway, this is me, working my way through the BBC Shakespeares. In a fairly random order. I did look into trying to watch them in the order they were written but, rather like The Prisoner, nobody seems quite sure what the correct order is. Plus that would lead to great frustration when I had to miss out Love's Labours' Won and sit through the telesnap reconstruction of Cardenio. And the BBC didn't do Edward III, Sir Thomas More or The Two Noble Kinsmen because, in one of those peculiar twists of chronology, they weren't written by Shakespeare until the 1980s.

Henry VI Part One

Watched this last night. I thought it would be heavy going because, let's face it, it has a really boring title. I expect it was the rule or something that the plays had to be named after the Kings, because they were the most important people in it, but really this play isn't about him at all - he doesn't even turn up until halfway through. Instead it's about England being at war with the French - a plot I suspect may crop up rather a lot - and in particular a heroic, dashing chap called Talbot versus the French dauphin (not a sea mammal, but some sort of mini-monarch) and his bint on the side, Joan of Arc. So really it should be called Talbot! or Joan of Arc! or something.

Joan of Arc is played by Brenda Blethyn. I don't think she entirely nails the role, but it's a great, sexy character. She is portrayed, basically, as a bit of a nutter. She's not a witch, but instead gets her way by basically giving the dolphin blow-jobs all the time. That is my theory, she is after all French and it explains why he has a stupid grin on his face all the time and why she can still be a virgin when she's SPOILER burnt at the stake. She goes completely bonkers at the end, which is a shame, and doesn't quite join up with how the character is presented in the earlier scenes. Could have done with some foreshadowing.

This is one of the earliest plays, though opinion seems divided on whether it was the first, or was even written as a prequel to Henry VI Part Two and Henry VI Part Three. That would sort-of make sense because it sets up some plotlines - the war of the Roses - which run on all the way to Richard III. This means there are several scenes where York and Somerset (not sure of my history but in the play it's definitely Somerset) argue over some actual, literal roses. Somerset is basically a complete tosser whilst York is merely a pompous arse. This also leads to several lines which are, like, well, the precognition lines you find in cheap biopics. Like in say a biopic about the Beatles you just know the young Paul McCartney is going to, at some point, say something like 'John, I wish you would just let it be, we've been working eight days a week and I should be sleeping like a log...' There's a lot of portentous 'ooh, this is setting up the shit that will hit the fan later on' stuff. Kind of like in Revenge of the Sith, but with a measure of taste and subtlety.

You can tell it's an early play because each scene ends with a couplet, which, like the slowing-down bit at the end of baroque toe-tapper, lets the audience know this would be good point to clap, pop in another wine mug and rearrange the buttocks.

Richard III

Saw this a couple of weeks ago, but I'd seen it before at the National with Robert Lindsay. [Joke about how we used to go to the theatre a lot together removed]. Anyway, this is basically one of the comedies, as it is all about Richard III taking the piss. He really does. He kills the king, and then persuades his widow to marry him, and then he laughs about it in an aside afterwards. And then it is just a succession of him using people to get what he wants, until they outlive their usefulness and he has them killed. It's kind of like 24 in that respect - these henchmen never clock a thing, they always think that even if all the other henchman have been betrayed and killed, it could never happen to them. And then before they know it, their chair has tilted backwards and they're in the shark tank.

Still an early play this, because Richard III's character is, whilst very funny, he doesn't really have any proper motivation except, well, he's bad. He's not quite as bad as Aaron in Titus Andronicus but he is evil, because, well, he's ugly and disabled and well that will have to do for now. What I like about him, though, is that the play is all about him getting one over on 'conscience', going on about how he hasn't got one, he doesn't care, and frankly, my dear, I don't give a shit. And then it all comes back to haunt him, literally. Which actually doesn't feel like a cop-out, because it's been there throughout - there's a terribly super scene earlier on with two assassins setting up the themes of the play. Two rather dithery assassins who, being completely crap, wake up their target and talk to him for a bit before killing him. They might as well have baked him a pie while they were at it.

Anyway, lots of wailing and weeping from Richard's victims, but to be honest you don't have much sympathy for them because they are all so feckless and gullible and Richard is so charming. Apparently Patsy Kensit was in this one but I didn't spot her.

The Comedy Of Errors

Now this really is supposed to be a comedy. And, you know, it more or less works, because most of the jokes aren't based around wordplay or topical gags, but based around the story. Which is, it has to be said, mind-bogglingly implausible, involving as it does two sets of identical twins, a shipwreck, a quite extraordinary amount of coincidence and some plot holes the size of Wales*. That said, all of the coincidences are in the set-up, and after that it runs beautifully, as a simple but pleasing farce of the Brian Rix variety, as people run in and out of doors, sometimes without their trousers.

Quite astonishingly, though, some of the wordplay jokes do stand up, and I don't mean in a just-for-the-English-teachers-in-the-audience type way. There's a bit where one of the twins is describing this incredibly fat woman who has come onto him, thinking him to be her boyfriend. Anyway, this leads on to a discussion about this woman was so round she could be a globe - and he could see her France, and her Spain, but thankfully not her Netherlands. Maybe you had to be there, but it made me giggle. I've been under a lot of stress lately.

The cast for this one included Ingrid Pitt as a courtesan - thank goodness I had the subtitles switched on or I wouldn't have had a f*cking clue what she was on about. I mean, yes, she may have really big REDACTEDS but she can't act, she really can't. And, yes, I do have the subtitles switched on because one of the problems with all these Shakespeares is that sometimes the diction is so off you lose the sense of the line. And also because in these BBC adaptations sometimes the boom microphone is on the other side of the studio, or is even in a cab heading for the Pink Pussycat, Soho.

The other difficulty with these plays is the names. Particularly in the history ones, everyone has about four or five different names - their first name, their nickname, their surname, whatever county they are named after, and sometimes a couple of animals as well. And the characters hardly ever refer to each other by their names, so it takes ages to work out who anyone is - and also, bear in mind, when they do use names they might not be talking about who they're talking to, but might be referring to themself in the third person, or talking about someone from ancient myth who isn't even in the bloody play. I suspect in Shakespeare's time all of the actor's costumes and wigs made it clear who they were supposed to be, through heraldry. Or maybe f*ck-off big name badges.

Anyway, this adaption also features Roger Daltrey, star of credit card adverts and SDP party political broadcasts, as both the Dromios. Being wankey, this TV adaption uses split-screen so that the same actor can play both Dromio twins, and another guy can play both the Antipholus twins. This doesn't come off, because unfortunately they are played in a pretty similar way, when really you need one Dromio and Antipholus to be posh, well-to-do citizens of Ephesus, and the other two to be country bumpkins, or American tourists.

* One of the universal units of measurement, along with London buses, Olympic-sized swimming pools and, in Doctor Who novelisations, medium-sized restaurants.

Titus Andronicus

Another early one this. It's pretty bleak, and this time the villain - Aaron - is evil because he is black. And he's shagging the queen, Tamora, who is married to the emperor Saturninus, who frames Timon's sons for the murder of the emperor's brother and has them executed, and who gets her own sons - who had killed the emperor's brother - to rape Timon's daughter, and chop off her tongue and arms. Timon also chops off his hand, because - for no readily explicable reason - he trusts Aaron to free his sons. Anyway, there's a lot of shouting, a vast amount of bleeding, and eventually Tamora gets fed her own sons which have been baked into a big pie. Then everybody who is still alive kills each other until there’s a big pile of bodies on the ground. It's like something written by Eric Saward. Fast, funny, violent, but ultimately leaving you feeling slightly nauseous.

Julius Caesar

I have to say though, of the five I've sat through so far, this one impressed me the most. Unfortunately I studied it for A-level which meant I was prejudiced against it, because I loathed and abhored the mindless and superficial way the plays were criticised and discussed (unlike in this blog which is super-insightful). But you know what I mean, it's about dissecting literature in terms of historical context and authorial autobiography which, whilst I'm sure is an aspect of the work, does a huge disservice to what the author's role in the proceedings is, which is Making Stuff Up In His Head. I always feel that people like Dickens are never given enough credit for making stuff up - the critical biographies tend to go 'well, we haven't yet found a real-life source for this character or incident, but there must be one...' and I think, 'give the writer some credit for using his bloody imagination for f*ck's sake'. Not everything can be broken down into influences.

Anyway, railing against the tenants of literary criticism aside, this is a f*cking A play. Unlike Titus, Richard III and Henry VI (1), there are no bad guys, just two sets of good guys who unfortunately don't quite get on. Which is, y’know, more of a tragedy, best intentions leading to f*ck-up and all that being more tragic than a guy in a cape throwing the spanner in the works just for the hell of it. So anyway, this play isn't really about Julius Caesar - played by Charles Gray, and I'm sorry but you are best known for the instructional video for the Timewarp - but about the relationship between Brutus and Cassius.

Cassius is played by David Collings, and at one point he is very flighty. Now, based on his work in Doctor Who and Sapphire & Steel, I'd always thought he was a pretty decent actor, but in this he is f*cking fantastic. And the story is about Cassius wanting to push Brutus forward - kind of like a Mandelson to his Tony Blair, or a Sebastian to his Anthony Head - only for them to fall out when the going gets tough, but then reconcile in adversity. I thought it was actually pretty strong, moving stuff, all about loyalty in politics and man stuff.

Unfortunately I don't think Keith Mitchell quite nails Anthony's big speech. I dimly recall writing an essay about the speech, analysing what it does, and I just feel there needs to be a more sarcastic emphasis on 'But Brutus is an honourable man', because what the speech is about is twisting the word 'honourable' into a pejorative term. The other problem with this speech - which is otherwise f*cking magnificent, let me add - is that the scene relies on the fact that the public of Rome are all absolutely cretins with the memory of a goldfish. Which, I know, may be true in real life as well, but in a play it looks implausible.

Anyway, I can't leave Julius Caesar without a mention of my favourite bit, which is the angry mob killing the poet Cenna, 'tear him for his bad verses'. A very funny scene, what Radio Times listings writers would no doubt call 'darkly comic' or somesuch.

Too Busy Thinking About My Baby

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done...

Well, at last I have a spare moment, so it’s time for a long-overdue blog. I make no excuses, but the short-and-the-tall of it is that I’ve been very busy over the last few months. Terrifically busy. Early starts and late shifts and everything. In fact, since the last blog I’ve written over 4 hours’ worth of scripts, plus rewrites of other scripts, script-edited over half a dozen others, plus a DWM Fact of Fiction, a review, plus all the introductions, synopses and a telesnap commentary for the DWM Missing Episodes – Second Doctor volume 2. Oh, and I started work on another two scripts and wrote an introduction to a reprint of one of my novels. Plus some other bits and bobs I’ve forgotten.

So you might understand why, at the end of the day – whenever in the early hours that may be – I’ve been disinclined to tap out a blog. Plus my life has undergone a fundamental re-assignment of priorities, so blogging has been bumped down the list *.

So what have I missed? Well, I’ve had two Big Finish Doctor Who audios released. The first was a Companion Chronicle called The Ghost in the Machine starring Katy Manning as Jo Grant with Damian Lynch as Benhamin Chikito. It’s a spooky, claustrophobic tale of tape recordings developing a life of their own, a bit Sapphire & Steel, a bit The Stone Tape, and whatever remains must be original. Katy is superb in it, Louise Jameson did a fabulous job directing it, and it seems to have gone down quite well. It’s my last entry in the Companion Chronicles range (which is being brought to an end) and one of my best ones, though what I’m most proud of is the diversity of styles and subjects that I’ve covered, from hard sci-fi to history to comedy to psychological horror to Rod Serling tribute to ghost story.

And I get to name-drop Katy Manning and Louise Jameson in the same paragraph. Jo and Leela. Sometimes my life is like the eight-year old me is having a particularly vivid Doctor Who-themed dream. Maybe that’s what it is.

The Ghost on the Machine can be ordered here. 

The other Big Finish Doctor Who audio was The Space Race, a story set in November 1963, in the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union. I wasn’t overwhelmingly confident of my script for this one, to be honest I thought I’d messed it up, but nevertheless it seems to have gone down quite well, for which I give all credit to the stars, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, the director Nicholas Briggs, noise wizard Howard Carter and the rest of the cast, particularly Samantha Béart who did a fantastic job brining pathos to an outlandish role. The story deliberately starts off very Quatermass, very switches-and-oscilloscopes, and then does something completely different. There are some serious ideas in there, some cutting edge hard-sci fi (or what I think passes for it!) and I was so proud of each of the three cliff-hangers I was dancing around the room when I wrote them. But a few critics have pointed out that it is, essentially, a bit of a shaggy dog story and I can’t really disagree.

The Space Race can be ordered here. I previously blogged a little about it here.

Whilst those were being released another story was being polished and recorded, namely Psychodrome, starring Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor, along with his companions Tegan, Nyssa and Adric. Yes, Adric is back, portrayed by Matthew Waterhouse. As I grew up with a picture of Adric on my bedroom wall (the one of him in his spacesuit from Four to Doomsday, naturally) it was a massive thrill to finally get to write for the character. It’s always a thrill to write for the fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa so this was extra-exciting for me. As for the story, well, it’s a strange one, different from pretty much anything I’ve ever done before, or that anyone has ever done before in Doctor Who at least. The starting point was to tell a Big Dumb Object tale like Rendezvous with Rama. The end point was somewhere else entirely. It’s set early on in the run of fifth Doctor stories – between Castrovalva and Four to Doomsday, chronological-shelving-fans – and addresses a few of the tiny bumps in continuity between those stories, by showing the four TARDIS travellers getting to know and trust each other, and to learn a little bit more about where they are all coming from and take stock. But it’s also about a lot more than that, and to say any more would spoil the surprises.

Psychodrome can be ordered here.

Since I last blogged the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who has been and gone. Wasn’t it all marvellous? Watching An Adventure in Space and Time I started crying when the Daleks turned up and didn’t stop until the end. Peter Davison’s The Five(ish) Doctors was hilarious. And Steven did a fantastic job with the anniversary episode, rising to the challenge of impossible expectations by pulling out all the stops, switching off all cynicism and engaging his LITTLE BOY FAN BRAIN. Which is the only way to write these things, I find, with punch-the-air excitement, with boldness, and with love.

Apart from The Space Race, my other small contribution to the jamboree was a 6-page article for the anniversary edition of Doctor Who Magazine, an article called The Wonder of Who setting out to define, once and for all, the indefinable magic of Doctor Who. It was commissioned as a feel-good piece and basically I just wrote why I, personally, love the show and hope that others felt the same. I think I did a pretty good job, no doubt I’ll add it to this blog when the dust has settled, and even though it wasn’t listed in the magazine contents I like to think it was singlehandedly responsible for that issue of the magazine being the biggest-selling edition since the early 1980s. But then, I like to think a lot of things.

That magazine also contained a Fact of Fiction on the story The Five Doctors, which I wrote back in September (so it doesn’t fall under the things-I’ve-done-since-the-last-blog rule). As it’s one of my favourite Doctor Who stories it was sheer joy to write about it and point out all the little things I’ve noticed over the last thirty years, including an Amazing Moment that no-one else have ever spotted, the source of the phrase ‘A man is the sum of his memories’ and all my theories about quite how the Easy as Pi chessboard might work. There was a lot to say about the story so it ended up being a very long article, as I also sought out the great and the good from the world of Doctor Who for their favourite moments, including Terrance Dicks, Peter Howell, Mark Gatiss, Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat amongst many others. So maybe that article was also the reason why the magazine sold so well. Maybe I’ll do a similar one for the 100th anniversary on The Day of the Doctor, if I’m still here (I’m sure Doctor Who and Doctor Who Magazine will both be going strong).

The month after that, in the current edition, I wrote a Fact of Fiction on the recent Matt Smith Christmas episode A Christmas Carol. The most exciting part of writing this article for me was that Steven very kindly, and unprecedentedly, sent me a copy of his very first draft of the episode, one that was so ‘hot-off-the-press’ it still had asterisks in the right-hand column to indicate how much of it he’d written in his final sitting. So the article explores the writing process of a Steven Moffat script in unprecedented detail. Of course, he got most of it bang-on in the first draft, but it’s interesting to see which scenes were problematic and how they were rewritten and which ones were plain sailing. And I love the episode so it was an unadulterated pleasure.

That magazine was closely followed by a special edition, The Missing Episodes – The Second Doctor volume 2. Originally there were going to be three volumes but one very plucky chap went and found nine of them so we revised our plans (and this volume was brought forward, not to pre-empt any further potential discoveries but because the planned Matt Smith behind-the-scenes volume wasn’t ready). For the magazine, I wrote introductions to the various stories; I’m particularly proud of my write-up for The Web of Fear, given that the story has been recently (mostly) recovered so I couldn’t just write a review and had to come up with something more creative, more personal. And it was interesting taking an in-depth look at all the other stories, with my admiration for The Abominable Snowmen increasing while my dissatisfaction regarding The Ice Warriors also went up a notch. And I discovered to my surprise that episode five of The Wheel in Space is actually really good! Who knew? For the magazine, I also wrote a telesnap commentary for the entirely missing story Fury from the Deep, based on the camera scripts, an audio recording and the telesnaps, which was easier-going than my previous efforts as the story holds fewer mysteries but in a way slightly harder work because the first two episodes are awfully dull, with the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria barely appearing and lots of lengthy arguments about pipes. But I sprinkled lots of Morris magic, so hopefully that didn’t show.

And I think that’s all. No, that’s not quite all. This month Big Finish released Afterlife by Matt Fitton, which I script-edited (which with his scripts basically involves just reading them and sending him an email saying they’re great). BBC Books have announced that they’re going to reprint my Doctor Who novel Touched by an Angel with an exciting new cover (they haven’t even let the previous edition go out of print first). I’ve written a new introduction for it and some of the typos have been corrected so even if you’ve bought the previous edition, you have no excuses, you must buy it again.

Touched by an Angel can be ordered here.

That’s everything. Oh, I attended a few recordings of other scripts but they haven’t been announced yet so my lips are sealed. Suffice it to say on several occasions my ‘career’ has been more like having won a competition. 2013 has been good. But 2014, oh, 2014 is going to be phenomenal.

* Don’t worry, it’s good news.

The Girl And The Robot

Missing Believed Wiped 2012

Another year, another Missing Believed Wiped? What treats would be in store? What shows would be a chore? Top Of The Pops – have they found more? Or some Lulu or Sandi Shaw?

Sorry, no more rhymes. First up this year, beginning and ending the first session and beginning the second, was a section of TV continuity. Which I’d feared would be a History Of Anglia Idents, and there was an element of that, but fortunately it was edited with a sense of pace and humour. So while I never want to watch all the Granada 'G’s bouncing around the screen again, it was rather nice to see little promo clips of The Two Ronnies and Reginald Perrin, as well as the original ITV presenter so accurately lampooned by Susie Blake on Victoria Wood As Seen On TV. And certain idents prodded at the nostalgia cortex; watching the slow but inexorable progress of the BBC For Schools clock took me right back to sitting cross-legged on a varnished dining hall floor waiting for Words And Pictures*. What was it with BBC For Schools and baroque classical guitar?

First highlight of the evening was a 30-minute play by BS Johnson called Not Counting The Savages, from 1972 but only preserved as a slightly dodgy black-and-white off-air recording. Like far too many of the plays of the day, it was domestic, indulgent, unstructured, rambling and possibly point-scoringly-autobiographical and appeared to have been knocked off in one drunken evening with no time for a second draft. It reminded me of Dennis Potter’s Shaggy Dog in that regard; it’s characters arguing to create false drama, with peculiar, hollow moments of surrealism (a character playing an electric keyboard which is switched off and re-setting the date). It wasn’t, it has to be said, any good, but I’m glad to have seen it; the main disappointment, though, was that I had hoped, being a BS Johnson piece, it would end with characters acknowledging their own fictional status and giving up on the story, when it just ends with a clunking great Do You See What I Did There. Oh, and some of the dialogue, some of the sentence constructions, oh dear.

After that was part three of Doctor Who: Galaxy Four, the episode Air Lock. Not the most spectacular, fast-moving or action-packed episode of the series, but wonderful to see nonetheless. It’s problem is that the story is far too thin to sustain the duration (probably because responsibility for it fell between two production teams), most significantly in part three where a large portion of it is dedicated to the villainess Maaga delivering a monologue (near enough) about Drahvins soldiers being genetically engineered to be unable to think or imagine.  It’s also quite a static episode; most of the characters spend it in one location, Steven Taylor barely moving more than half a dozen yards during the course of the episode, the Doctor being sidelined sabotaging an air filter for the first half.

It’s also a slightly wobbly production; the story repeatedly makes the point that the Rills can’t be seen in their ammonia chamber, when in fact they’re quite clearly visible (and very lovely). At one point Vicki is trapped by a sliding wall that the Doctor describes as immovable when it is anything but; later on there’s an accident with his cane and a scene where the Doctor is told by Vicki not to shout at the Chumblies, when he hasn’t raised his voice in the slightest.

But there were many delights in this episode too. A very nicely-directed flashback scene. The rills. Peter Purves’ enormous hair (he’s always said that his role in this story was written for Jacqueline Hill, which may explain why he has her hairdo and cardigan). The Chumblies, some endearingly wobbly robots that resemble enormous upturned salad bowls covered in Christmas decorations. And most wonderfully of all, William Hartnell’s interaction with the Chumblies, giggling with delight as they whizz past at quite a lick, prodding them with his cane, giving them instructions and leading them on the charge.

I should also add that the restoration job on the episode is fantastic, it looks utterly beautiful and the repair to the ending is virtually unnoticeable even if, like me, you can’t help looking out for it. And who would've thought, reading K9 And Other Mechnical Creatures all those years ago* that I would one day get to see a Chumblie in action?

In the second section, as well as more continuity, we got to see a clip of Roxy Music performing Street Life on Top Of The Pops. Not one of their better songs, but it was good to see. Unfortunately the BBC in their wisdom decided that we couldn’t see the whole episode as it features Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter; presumably there was a danger that their images could spring to life and emerge from the screen like the girl from The Ring and molest innocent members of the audience. Or that there might be someone in the audience who, despite having had forty-odd years to be desensitised by Savile’s appearances on TV (particularly over the last few months), might finally be tipped over the brink by seeing him on the big screen at the BFI. I mean, seriously, how can it be insensitive to repeat a Top Of The Pops presented by Savile when it’s okay for clips of Savile presenting Top Of The Pops to be shown endlessly on the news and ITV hatchet-mentaries? Which is more likely to be seen by, and distress, his victims? It’s the same magnetic tape, the only difference is that one is in the context of providing musicians with royalties and maybe a chance to see the one time their band ever appeared on telly, and one is in the context of trying to cynically provoke an emotional response of salacious disgust and anger. Oh, I’m ranting, and we all know the real reason, it’s because the BBC is scared of the Daily Mail.

So instead, we were treated to a couple of youth shows. Firstly, an edition of A Whole Scene Going. To begin with, I was on tenterhooks as a shopping montage to The Kinks' Dedicated Follower Of Fashion looked like it might contain a NEW SIGHTING OF SIXTIES TOP HAT GUY but alas that was not to be. The show then included a few pop acts, which I have already forgotten, and a little clip about the making of the second Dalek movie and an interview with a very defensive Gordon Flemying (father of Primeval’s Jason Flemyng). This was followed by an interview with some directors and a feature on The Spencer Davis Group with Spencer Davis being interviewed by a panel of ‘young people’. These ‘young people’ were hilarious, with their vague and yet aggressive line of questioning, and the fact that they all appeared to be in their mid-forties.

The show’s presenters, though, were fab; the utterly delightful and gorgeous Wendy Varnals, and Barry Fantoni, a dead ringer for Sonny Bono. Whatever happened to Wendy Varnals? She should’ve been presenting Newsnight by now. Her report on Birmingham's swinging nightclubs was the epitome of quality journalism.

And whatever happened to Ayshea, the gorgeous presenter of Lift Off With Ayshea? She’s great, the (only) highlight of her fairly ramshackle children’s TV show. The reason why it’s been generally ignored by the Brooker, Collins and Maconie nostalgia mill is that almost all of it has been lost, otherwise it would surely have had its own section in We Lazily Mock The 70s; ‘The Feet, what were they all about, eh?’ Ayshea’s co-star was a ‘Hacker’-type dog called Barker, disconcertingly voiced by the same guy who did Basil Brush; a very funny character but a truly shit puppet c/o Oliver Postgate. The show was weird and misjudged, the sinister Animal Kwackers-type dance routines and puppet seemingly intended for primary school children whilst the pop acts (which seemed to be three identical servings of Creme Brulee) were presumably intended for teenagers. As such, it could only serve to alienate and frustrate both sets of viewers.

And that was it, Missing Believed Wiped 2012. A much better and well-considered presentation than last year and it looks like there will be even more Missing Believed Wipeds during 2013 so maybe I should finally get that BFI membership as I’ll be attending them all.

* Twenty-eight, I was.

The Staircase (Mystery)

Over the past few days I’ve been very much enjoying watching the old ATV series Thriller. There are two things I particularly like about it. Firstly, Brian Clemens' ingenious, fast-moving, twist-packed, suspenseful and extremely well-constructed scripts. And secondly, the prominent use of staircases within the drama.

You see, within the early 70’s suspense drama, the ‘staircase’ fulfils an important dramatic function. It acts as a structural motif, literally elevating the dynamic of the text; where characters previously only acted within a two dimensional space, that of the horizontal, they now gain a third dimension, that of the vertical. The ‘staircase’ acts as a bridge, a fulcrum, a gateway, an escalier if you like, between the ground, a place of safety, of ease of escape, of reality, and a higher state of being, a place of danger, of a lack of ease of escape, of dangerous sexual obsession, of crime, of the supernatural. The staircase leads from the hallway, our public selves, our ego, ergo civilisation, up to the bedroom, which represents our interior selves, our id, ergo the repressed animal within. We, the viewer, are invited to ascend or ‘go up the stairs’ to a forbidden zone where the threat of violence inevitably lurks. Danger rarely lurks at the bottom of the stairs unless the staircase is below ground level, and we are going into a cellar, where the dramatic function of the staircase is inverted, with the place of safety at the top, because that’s on ground level, and the place of danger at the bottom, which is in the cellar where the bodies are stored and the satanic masses take place.

Many of the stories are based around there being something nasty at the top of the stairs; playing on the inherent topographical superiority/vulnerability that a diametrical disunity on the vertical axis affords. We are instinctively afraid of that which comes from above, it has power over us. This is emphasized within the text by the use of camera angles, where the antagonists are shot from below, in order to reinforce their supremacy, their unknowability, their unassailability, their nostrils, and the protagonists – whether they be a young bride, an American back-packer on holiday, or a country policeman – are shot from above in order to draw attention to their vulnerability, their low status, and in the case of the country policemen, their bald patches.

The dramatic potential of the staircase is extremely rich and varied. Characters can creep up it. They can fall down it. They can pause half-way up to examine a mysterious family portrait. They can meet other characters half-way up. They can sit sobbing on one of the lower stairs. They can flirt playfully by sticking their head between the banisters. Young brides can have trouble getting their back-pack up the stairs and thus request the assistance of a mysterious young gentleman, thus breaking the ice. People can crouch at the top and peer down through the banisters, which afford an excellent hiding place. People can stand at the bottom and look up and see the person peering through the banisters because it turns out they don’t afford an excellent hiding place after all. And staircases will also, without exception, have a door underneath them, leading to a cubbyhole, cellar or nook within which bodies, murder weapons and sinister monk costumes may be stored.

The staircase can even be seen as a metaphor for death. It is a ‘stairway to heaven’, a place of execution, a sequence of evenly-spaced horizontal wooden ledges rising upon the diagonal that connect stability to instability, the known with the unknown, the past with the future, the living with the dead, the ground with the first or second floor (depending upon whether or not you are American). Within each step lurks the inevitable threat of violence, of the step giving way, of an ankle twisting, a foot slipping, a neck breaking, a crash—zooming, and a corpse lolling with wide open eyes on the hard stone floor. To me, the staircase functions in a liminal space, a space fraught with danger, serving as a metaphor for the series as a whole.

They literally work on multiple levels, usually two. But while ATV’s Thriller sees some excellent staircase work, I would suggest that the definitive staircase work would be found later in the 70’s, in Sapphire & Steel, particularly in ‘Story 4’ or ‘The One With The Staircase’ in which 83% of the story takes place on the eponymous staircase. It’s worked into the plot; ‘As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there.’ The rhyme and the mystery wouldn’t be nearly so effective if the action took place on the horizontal. ‘As I was going along the hall, I met a man who wasn’t tall.’ Rubbish, isn’t it?

That’s the ATV staircase, but what of the BBC staircase? Well, during the 70’s and early 80’s, the BBC only owned one staircase, a vertical winding staircase of a modernist design made of plywood. This staircase famously featured in every single episode of Blake’s 7 as well as on numerous chat shows, pop shows, comedies and dramas. If a scientist had a laboratory, if a playboy had a penthouse, if a set designer had a whim, you can be sure this staircase – forever known as the ‘Meglos staircase’ after its appearance in the Doctor Who story Snakedance - would be on view.

But what now for the future of the staircase, I hear you ask? What place does it have in modern drama? I don’t know. I think this joke has already worn thin.

It Always Comes As A Surprise

There is a particular type of advert I hate.

Not the Go Compare ones. Everyone hates those. That is their power.

Nor do I refer to those adverts that are clearly intended to be funny, but where any humorous intent has been systematically filtered out by a process of management committee worry – I’m thinking of Paul Whitehouse’s bizarre commercials for Aviva, which seem to be the result of similar approach taken to the makers of the 60’s James Bond spoof Casino Royale, where they didn’t bother writing a funny script, but instead thought that simply hiring Peter Sellers would be enough to make it funny.

Nor do I refer to those car-crash adverts where the committee has not been able to agree on which approach to take, and have decided instead to combine several approaches into one advert, so you end up with an advert featuring a pop star, a puppet, a jingle, a song, a cartoon monkey, a CGI talking telephone, set both at home and in an exotic location, with voice-overs by three or four different actors. These adverts are, in fact, my favourite type of advert.

Nor do I refer to those adverts set in surreal CGI utopias, the British Gas people pottering about on their Super Mario Galaxy asteroids like smug Clangers accompanied by Blur’s The Universal, or the spindly folk who inhabit Lloydsland and their ‘pah-pah-pah-pah’ jingle.

Nor do I refer to adverts featuring ukuleles. Whether they are plucked by stalkers at tube stations or on the soundtrack of car adverts, strummed by breathy young ladies who are barely able to squeak out cutesy sub-nursery rhyme ditties like sub-Eliza Doolittles.

Nor do I refer to those perversely zen adverts where you watch them and have no idea what they are actually advertising. One suspects they are working on some subliminal level but the likelihood is merely that they are the product of incompetent advertising agencies trying too hard to be cool.

No, the adverts that particularly annoy are ones where you have three young ladies sitting around a table, in a cafe or at work, chatting away and laughing like young ladies do, when one of the young ladies takes a mouthful of yoghurt, or a sip of her drink, or sprays a scent...

...and then suddenly, as though by magic, a man appears, usually good looking, often topless. Whereupon he proceeds to do something wacky, maybe he sings a song, maybe he dances a dance, maybe he levitates with a stream of roses emanating from his backside.

And we cut to the women. Reacting shocked and delighted, as though this is the most amazing and surprising thing they have ever seen.

But, I want to scream, you are in an advert! Nothing is real in advert land! In advert land you have CGI people living on asteroids and talking gophers! What basis of reality is this working on? And why do the women look surprised when, let’s face it, something unexpected happening is the single most predictable bloody thing that can happen in an advert. It’s like expecting the Spanish Inquisition. Which, come to think of it, is exactly the sketch they are ripping off.

The advertiser’s train of thought is simple. What this product actually does, in real life, is unremarkable. So instead we will portray a comedic exaggeration of those qualities, by having a good looking man rush in with his top off singing a song or dancing a dance. Ladies react with shock and delight.

I can’t remember what the advert is for, there seem to be half a dozen or more which take exactly the same approach, and for some reason, they particularly annoy me. Just thought I’d share.

Underwater Love

On Sunday went to Missing Believed Wiped where, as I’m sure anyone reading this knows, they showed the recently-recovered Doctor Who episode The Underwater Menace part two and a clip from the also recently-recovered Doctor Who episode Galaxy 4 part three. Of which more later. But those weren’t the only things they showed.

The reason why I’d originally been excited about the event, before I may have heard a rumour and been sworn to secrecy, was that it would include a long-long Dennis Potter play, Emergency Ward 9, first broadcast in 1966. The play’s story editor Kenith Trodd introduced it, but with caveats; it was written in a rush, it was from a different time where racism was more commonplace. I think, actually, the play is much better than he thinks it is. It’s essentially about two men in adjoining bates, Mr Flanders and Mr Padstow, and we follow them over a few days in a typical NHS hospital. The only part of the story that didn’t ring true was the wealth black character; if he’s so wealthy, why is he in an NHS ward? The death of a patient asking repeatedly for a ‘cuppa tea’ was pretty tough viewing; this, and some other parts of the play (including the use of archive music) turned up in a rewritten form in The Singing Detective 20 years later. It was a funny, moving and in places ‘angry’ play; much better than some of the dull tat he was knocking out for LWT a few years later.

We were also shown some adverts and music clips with puppets, which were amusing enough, and a rather stiff play from the 50’s starring Andre Morrell, a supposedly but not actually true story about an allied soldier having plastic surgery so that he could take the place of a Nazi officer in Norway.

And then Mark Gatiss introduced the Doctor Who discoveries. It was an incredibly thrilling moment, to see the Hartnell titles on the screen, and then to see a Rill (a monster which fans had previously only been able to see in two grainy photographs) in action, followed by Air Lock, the title of the third episode of Galaxy 4. The Doctor and Vicki are trying to escape from its spaceship, a rather flimsy-looking affair like a geodesic climbing frame. Part of the set breaks off out of shot, but Hartnell carries on regardless. But then Vicki is grabbed by a Chumblie (a robot that resembles a stack of upturned colanders) and we get to see that Chumblies have arms and guns and little lights. We then cut to a scene of Maaga, leader of the Drahvins, discussing the artificial genetically-modified nature of the Drahvin race, most of which was delivered as a soliloquy to camera. And then the picture cut out. Just as it was getting exciting.

The Underwater Menace part two was no less fascinating. It’s Patrick Troughton’s earliest surviving performance as the Doctor, and as such is more gimmicky and comedic than what would come later. My mum once told me how annoying he was to begin with, because he’d just sit and play his bloody recorder all the time, and yet until now we’ve never had a clip of Troughton doing just that*; I also suspect that this episode is so early in his run that he’s still wearing a wig over his own hair. He’s also still very much in the wearing-silly-hats –whenever-he-can stage. What was surprising was how dark the episode was, how seriously it was all taken (given that the plot and dialogue are both pure comic strip). The story’s villain, Professor Zaroff, is supposed to be mad, and seeing Joseph Furst’s performance in this episode puts his increasing mania in episode three (which has long-since existed) into context; it also makes more sense of the politics and religion of the Atlantean people. It was also lovely to see more of Ben, Polly and Jamie (Jamie still wearing his highlander outfit from his first story). The only major disappointment is that I’d expected to see a shot of Zaroff’s pet octopus, but alas, no octopus was forthcoming. But it was a surprisingly strong episode; the darkness and cavernous echo giving it a real sense of claustrophobia, of it all taking place deep below ground, where a whole society is slowly going stir crazy. It’s still a daft, random, clunkily-written story, but the joy is in seeing Patrick Troughton working with what dialogue he’s given, playing against it, or weighing up his moments carefully, and creating a believable, magical performance, not so much with the words but through his mannerisms and expressions. Even if he does play that bloody recorder.

The second half of Missing Believed Wiped wasn’t nearly so much fun. I should have just gone to the bar.

After about half of the audience had left, Dick Fiddy took to the stage to remind people that they shouldn’t record stuff shown on the big screen. A reminder which might have been more effective before half the audience had left. But then it was on with the show...

First there were some clips from Oh Boy! An episode of the show has recently been found, but what seems to have happened is that someone has appropriated the footage in the hope of getting their Oh Boy! documentary off the ground, so rather than seeing the recovered footage in situ, instead we only got to see his trailer for his prospective documentary (which largely comprised of footage not from the recovered episode). I’m not keen on people trying to further their careers by interpolating themselves between recovered footage and people getting to see it. So rather than the footage of one of Cliff Richard’s earliest TV performance being made available for, say, a documentary about Cliff Richard, it seems either it will only see the light of day as part of some guy's documentary on Oh Boy! or not at all. Which seems counter to the spirit of Missing Believed Wiped – this stuff should be made available to as many people who want to see it, not hoarded or hidden or with an agenda attached.

Next up was an episode of The Rolf Harris Show. It was 45 minutes of sheer torture. I suppose it could be argued it has some historical merit – if nothing else it makes you appreciate how much better Lulu and Dusty Springfield’s shows were from the same time – and it was interesting to note that even when they were young, the Beverley Sisters looked like they were in their late 50s - but it was excruciating to sit through. As was the following ‘recovery’, a recording of a guitar festival from 1984. I put recovery in quotation marks because this concert was never actually missing, it was barely even broadcast in the first place (only being shown on a satellite channel that no-one could pick up) and has been retained in an indie's archive ever since.

What baffles me about this is that the people going to Missing Believed Wiped were only shown a measly 5 minutes of Galaxy 4, a recovery which will bring delight to thousands of people, and which made the national news, because the organisers thought it was more important to show 45 minutes of The Rolf Harris Show and a guitar festival from 1984.

Edit: Alternatively, they could have dropped the 50's play, as it hadn't been mentioned in publicity and, given the howls of derision with which it was greeted, I don't think it would have been missed.

Now, I’m not saying those things aren’t important in their own way, of course they are, but if the BFI's attitude to what gets shown at Missing Believed Wiped reflects their priorities regarding what they decide to keep and what they chuck then I worry. Unless, of course, it wasn’t their decision to make, and the fact that they could only show 5 minutes of Galaxy 4 was because of the owner of the footage or the BBC or for technical reasons.

But even so, I think there could be more flexibility in what gets show at Missing Believed Wiped. It’s not as if the programme is announced in advance. The publicity makes it clear 'As per normal not all the content of the day is verified at the time of going to press'. If you have a year in which lots of TV shows have turned up, but not many musical performances, don’t allocate TV shows and musical performances equal running time. Because, quite frankly, sitting through The Rolf Harris Show my attitude was that it should be chucked right back in the skip. I don't bedgrudge some highlights being shown, but the whole 45 mins? And the same goes for the guitar festival from 1984. The programme selection of Missing Believed Wiped should better reflect what the people paying to see the footage might actually be interested in and not the whims and personal tastes of the organisers. I mean, I was delighted to see the footage of David Bowie performing Jean Genie on Top of the Pops, but to play it twice? When you could be showing something else (like the rest of Galaxy 4 part three)? Because, I think, if the people paying to go to Missing Believed Wiped keep on being subjected to stuff like The Rolf Harris Show or a guitar festival from 1984 when there’s so much other more interesting and entertaining stuff turning up that could and should be shown (such as a whole edition of Top Of The Pops from 1976) then they’ll stop paying to go to Missing Believed Wiped. The event should be a showcase for gems from the past, not a feat of endurance.

Oh, I know I'm being greedy, I'm just annoyed that they didn't show all of Galaxy 4 part three. Because that would've been fantastic.

See blogs on previous Missing Believed Wipeds here, here and here.

* I have since been reminded that he does in The Abominable Snowmen part two.