Christmas Special 2014 - "Last Christmas"

This year's Doctor Who Christmas Special wasn't too bad at all, particularly given my initial fears and misgivings. I feared the worst. When I first heard the title and saw the trailer with Santa Claus in it, I rolled my eyes and groaned in despair. I mean, a Christmas Special with the title of Last Christmas (strains of Wham! playing in the background)? And Santa, Rudolph and the rest of the gang flying around, delivering pressies? Please, not another piece of silly, irrelevant, soppy old Christmas nonsense! Oh God, spare us!

So I tuned into BBC One at 6:15pm on Christmas Day not expecting anything special, to be perfectly honest. Surprisingly, it wasn't too bad at all. Thankfully there was a reasonably intelligent story, which wasn't particularly fluffy or seasonal (despite the presence of Santa). It was even pretty dark and ominous in parts. Hell, there was even a (relatively) logical reason for the presence of Santa in the story. The aliens were pretty good, but derivative, right out of the film Alien. But Moffat managed to work a decent "facehugger" reference into the script as an acknowledgement of the original source, accompanied by a pretty funny scarcastic joking comment by Capaldi.

After all the rumours and the speculation about Jenna Coleman leaving the series ("will she or won't she?"), it was nice to find out that Clara will definitely be back as the Doctor's companion. Is it just me, or has there been a lot of Clara-hating going around in fandom circles? I know that she has taken a lot of criticism from fans, but I think that Clara has come into her own during Season 8, after an initial beginning as more of a plot device than a real character. In my opinion, she fits in better now with Peter Capaldi than she ever did with Matt Smith. I regard Jenna Coleman as a good actress, so I'm glad that she's staying with the show.

Overall, it worked out to be a reasonably good Christmas Special for 2014. Sure, it wasn't a mind-blowing entry in the annals of best Doctor Who episodes of all time, but it was definitely worth wasting an hour on.

Season Eight - Brief Overall Impressions

Now that Season 8 has ended with the two-part climax of Dark Water/Death in Heaven, what were my overall impressions?

Overall, it was a pretty decent season, the best we've had for several years now, and a good start for Peter Capaldi in his role as the Doctor. And Clara was written much better for Season 8 than Season 7, as I found her role in the Impossible Girl arc to be a bit of a plot device, reducing her effectiveness in the overall series plotline, despite Jenna Coleman's obvious talent as an actress and likability as a character. Season 8 sees her character written much more strongly, as a proper companion, not a mere plot device, with a bit of a tragic love affair thing thrown in between her and Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson).

We had a fairly decent debut/regeneration story (Deep Breath), a couple of light, fluff/filler stories (Robot of Sherwood, The Caretaker), one kinda lame episode (In the Forest of the Night), three fairly good but not amazing episodes (Into the Dalek, Kill the Moon and Death in Heaven), and five very good-to-excellent episodes (Listen, Time Heist, Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline and Dark Water).

That's a pretty fine batting average in my book. Only one dodgy episode out of twelve (and even that one wasn't exactly awful), five very good episodes, and the rest at least fairly decent, watchable stories. The final two-parter was marred slightly by the fact that the first part, Dark Water, was considerably better than the second, Death in Heaven, which let the ending of that story down a bit. But that was only by comparison, because Dark Water was so good, and Death in Heaven was still pretty decent by any reckoning.

All that I can say is that I wish every season of Doctor Who was as high in quality as Season 8. Let's see if Moffat and his crew can keep it up.

"Into the Dalek" - Some Thoughts

Into the Dalek, the second episode of Season 8, is definitely a stronger story than Deep Breath. It's also less light-hearted, definitely more serious, with less humour. The new Doctor has ironed out most of the regeneration craziness (although a few quirks still remain), and Peter Capaldi is settling nicely into the role, confirming my initial impressions that he will make a very good Doctor.

Clara is better written this episode, back to her brave, feisty self, especially in the scenes where she's helping to reawaken the Dalek's memory banks, while the troopers try to hold off the "antibodies". She's definitely interacting much better with the new Doctor, with no more of that ridiculous out-of-character nonsense that we had from her in Deep Breath. It also looks like there's an interesting relationship brewing between her and Danny Pink. There also seemed to be a bit of an interesting "soldier" sub-plot going on with both Clara/Danny and the Doctor/Journey Blue in this story. I dunno what the new Doctor has against soldiers. He's certainly fought alongside enough of them in his time. :)

Obviously the really big thing with this episode is that it is a Dalek story. It's only the Capaldi Doctor's second story, and he's already encountered the blobby little terrors, his most dangerous enemies. One would think that Moffat is doing a re-run of the First Doctor, William Hartnell, as they also featured in HIS second story. After all, Peter Capaldi is the new "first" Doctor, in this new cycle of incarnations, so maybe this was a conscious decision by Moffat.

The story itself is well-plotted and exciting although the whole premise of a "good" Dalek isn't a totally new one. Also, the Fantastic Voyage journey through the internals of a Dalek has also been done before in Doctor Who, both in the classic and the new series. And it has also been done many, many times before in other sci-fi series and films. But none of them ever had antibodies like those nasty little Dalek mofos.

But more than anything, Into the Dalek in some scenes reminded me so much of the classic Christopher Ecclestone story Dalek, particularly during the Doctor/Dalek interaction scenes, that parts of it seemed to be just lifted from the earlier story and rehashed in this one. A tribute? Yes, maybe. But a bit more originality might also have been appreciated (by me, anyway).

"Deep Breath" - Some Quick Thoughts

Deep Breath is, at its core, a fairly typical regeneration debut story. The story itself wasn't bad, but wasn't exactly anything special either. But a regeneration story has the primary function of successfully introducing the new Doctor to the audience. This is the single most important thing we needed from Deep Breath, to break in Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor, and, as such, the episode did an excellent job of it. Everything else is secondary, in my opinion, although there were definitely both plus and minus points.

As I've said, the story was nothing exceptional, not exactly setting the world on fire for me. However, there were some nice scenes in it. The character set-pieces and interaction were generally excellent (with the exception of one thing). There were also quite a few nice bits of humour in among all the sad bits, and I also really liked seeing Lady Vastra, Jenny and Strax again. I enjoy these characters a lot, and I think that Strax is absolutely hilarious.

On the negative side, the plot itself was definitely a bit thin, there were at least a couple of glaring plot and character inconsistencies, particularly Clara's aggressively negative overreaction to the new, older Doctor, which was TOTALLY out of character. Any other companion, yes, it might've actually been more realistic, but not the Impossible Girl. She's met them all. And even if, as some people argue, she has no memories of her other lives (which I disagree with), her reaction was STILL over-the-top and totally out of character.

Hey, she's already pretty familiar with regeneration and different Doctors, she's even been in an adventure with three different Doctors (Matt Smith, David Tennant and John Hurt), in The Day of the Doctor 50th Anniversary Special, and having already met (and liked) an older Doctor (Hurt), her overly-negative reaction to Capaldi because he is "old" is totally unrealistic and out-of-character.

The shame is that Jenna Coleman is a pretty good actress, and Clara, as a companion, is quite likeable. But Steven Moffat didn't come up with the writing goods for her on this occasion, writing her not as herself, but reducing her to some kind of a one-dimensional cypher, a dig at and representation of fans who can't handle regeneration and the replacing of "their" Doctor with a new one. In her defense, I have to say that this is NOT Jenna Coleman's fault, and the young lady can only deal with the scripts she's been given.

Another major plot flaw was actually one of the nicest scenes in the entire episode, the phone call from the Matt Smith Doctor on Trenzalore to Clara, said call obviously being made before or during the events of The Time of the Doctor. It's all very poignant, heart-tugging and well-acted, until you actually stop and think about it, and you realize that it simply couldn't have happened. It was was a major continuity flub and sloppy writing by Moffat. Nice, emotional, tear-jerking writing, but sloppy and wrong, wrong, WRONG.

MattDoc says to Clara that "the time is getting close", and "it's going to be a real whopper" (he's obviously referring to an "upcoming regeneration"). But remember back to what happened at the end of The Time of the Doctor. The whole crux of the story was that the Doctor was coming to the end of his final incarnation. There weren't going to BE any more regenerations. As far as MattDoc was concerned, for pretty much the ENTIRE episode, he'd run out of regenerations, and he was going to die. That was the whole point of the story. Which is what would've happened if Clara hadn't begged the Time Lords to save him, as they did right at the end, by popping up at the last minute and giving the Doctor a new cycle of regenerations. So Matt Smith's Doctor couldn't have made that phone call. He didn't know he was going to regenerate before it actually happened. Very sloppy continuity mess-up on Moffat's part.

Those were my two main gripes, and the rest I can live with. However, one thing I couldn't complain about was Peter Capaldi's performance as the new Doctor, which was excellent, top notch. I think he's going to be an excellent Doctor. For that reason alone, I'll give Deep Breath a B instead of the C that I thought the fairly average story by itself actually deserved.

Series 8 Starts Today!

We're into the early hours of Saturday morning right now, and the big event that every Doctor Who fan on the planet has been waiting for happens later this evening, when the first episode of Season 8 debuts on BBC1 at 7.50pm.

This first episode is the first of twelve, and is a 75-minute feature-length episode titled Deep Breath. I know absolutely nothing about it, as I've been very stringent about avoiding spoilers on the new season, other than the titles of the episodes, and that the last two episodes of the season are the two-part Season Finale.

The Season 8 Episode Listing is as follows:

1. Deep Breath
2. Into the Dalek
3. Robot of Sherwood
4. Listen
5. Time Heist
6. The Caretaker
7. Kill the Moon
8. Mummy on the Orient Express
9. Flatline
10. In the Forest of the Night
11. Dark Water
12. Death in Heaven

I've been eagerly awaiting the first full appearance of the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, as he steps into the role he has inherited from the absolutely amazing Matt Smith. Peter Capaldi has some pretty big shoes to fill there, but I reckon he'll make a darned good Doctor. He's a very experienced actor, who has been around the acting business for many, many years. And the BBC have never failed yet to pick a good one to fill the new Doctor's role.

Something which I think bodes well for the show, in my opinion, is that he was also a big fan of the classic series when he was a kid, in particular the first four Doctors, up until the middle of Tom Baker's run on the show. All of which pretty much mirrors exactly my own childhood journey with Doctor Who. This love and respect of the classic series might serve him well as he slips into the role of the new Doctor.

Anyway, I'm actually really looking forward to this new, older, grumpier, darker Doctor, and to seeing how Peter Capaldi works with the current companion, Clara (played by Jenna Coleman). Roll on this evening, 7.50pm!

Galaxy 4

Older, more hardcore classic series fans will instantly recognize that this blog, Galaxy 4, is named after Galaxy 4, a really ancient, dusty old William Hartnell Doctor Who story, which originally aired on the UK television channel BBC1, over a four-week period during the months of September-October 1965.

The story itself no longer exists in the BBC archives, as it was wiped during the shamefully short-sighted BBC "space-saving" purge of old TV shows back in the early 1970's, although a few bits and pieces did survive here and there. The previously existing audio-visual material, including six minutes of footage from the first episode, "Four Hundred Dawns", was initially included on a 1998 VHS video as part of the documentary The Missing Years, and subsequently re-released on the 2004 DVD release of Lost in Time. Episode Three, "Air Lock", which was recovered back in early 2011, was released on the March 2013 DVD release of The Aztecs: Special Edition as an extra, along with reconstructions of the other 3 episodes, plus the other surviving clips and photographs, all of which had originally been intended for the DVD release of The Time Meddler.

The only way to enjoy the original story in its entirety is in book form, and the complete soundtrack also exists, released in 2002. Actually, there were TWO books, and I have really enjoyed both the Target Books novelization of Galaxy Four, by original writer William Emms, and the Doctor Who: The Scripts edition (Titan Books) of the William Emms Galaxy 4 script. The titles Galaxy Four and Galaxy 4 seem to be interchangeable, and vary from book to book, although Galaxy 4 seems to be considered the correct title. Either of these books will give you the full story, if you manage to get your hands on them. I'm uncertain if either book is still in print (if not, try Ebay or Amazon).

In this story, the TARDIS lands on an unnamed planet in the aforementioned Galaxy 4, a world which is only days away from exploding. The Doctor (the first Doctor - William Hartnell) and his companions Vicki and Steven encounter the Drahvins, a race of female clone warriors, who have crash-landed on the planet and are unable to take off again. Also on the planet is another crashed spaceship belonging to the frightening, alien Rills and their robot servants, the Chumblies (this rather silly name being given to them by Vicki). The Drahvins tell the Doctor that they were attacked by the Rills and both ships were damaged and had to crash-land.

The Drahvin ship is irreparable, but the Rill ship is almost fully repaired and will escape the death of this world. The Drahvins need to capture it, to get away. They are trying to enlist the Doctor's help, but the Doctor realizes that it's the Drahvins who are the aggressors and the Rills are peace-loving and civilized. The Doctor helps the Rills finish repairing their ship and escape, and one of the Chumblies stays behind and helps the Doctor, Vicki and Steven escape in the TARDIS, while it and the Drahvins perish when the planet explodes.

By all accounts, the televised story was a fair-to-middling mid-1960's Doctor Who adventure, pretty decent, although nothing special, certainly not one of the greatest classics of the series. However Galaxy 4, like a few other old Doctor Who stories, seems to go a little bit further than other sci-fi television shows of that era, with a few more twists and a less predictable plot. Back in those days most TV sci-fi was very simplistic - you always knew who the bad guys were, because they were almost always the ugly, scary ones.

Most of the time, Doctor Who was as guilty as any other show in that respect - the series was, after all, dependent on the monsters and aliens for its kiddie "scare factor". But in Galaxy 4, the writer, William Emms, turned all that completely on its head, making the repulsive, reptilian, warthog-like, ammonia-breathing Rills the intelligent, civilized "good guys", and the beautiful, blonde amazonian Drahvins the villains of the story.

I've also always admired the bravery of the production crew on Doctor Who, for at least making the attempt to create "alien-looking" aliens on the show's miniscule shoe-string budget, whilst US sci-fi series with much larger budgets (Star Trek, for example) have traditionally served up "aliens" who are, ninety-five percent of the time, obviously only humans wearing latex masks or with bumps glued onto their heads and markings painted on them. The effects and make-up on Doctor Who often looked tacky and cheap, but at least they had the guts to try and make the "aliens" look a bit "alien".

To the younger viewers of the modern Chris Eccleston/David Tennant/Matt Smith incarnations of the Doctor, most of these old 1960's Doctor Who stories must be virtually unwatchable. Compared to the current, frenetically-paced, slick CGI series, these ancient shows creak along at an unbearably slow pace, with too much jibber-jabbering, not enough action, have rather simplistic stories (they were supposedly aimed at kids, after all, and seen from this perspective, they are pretty good), and terrible or non-existent special effects. But having said that, I wonder just how much of the current version will still look good in fifty years time. Modern sci-fi shows tend to depend far too much on SFX, which date very quickly, and less on strong storytelling, which endures pretty much forever.

Old farts like myself still love those ancient 1960's television shows, and we remember them fondly from our childhood (although I have no memories of Galaxy 4, as I was only four years old at the time). Nostalgia is an incredibly addictive drug. It's probably also stating the obvious to point out that we must take into account that, FOR ITS TIME, and compared to the rest of the 1960's BBC output, Doctor Who was an innovative, exciting, frightening and controversial television show. There was nothing else like it on UK television at the time, and the series has influenced countless other sci-fi shows over the decades since then.

I'm hoping that it'll still be around in another fifty years, long after I'm gone, entertaining yet another new generation of fans.

50 Years in Space & Time (Part 12)

Here's the final part of my look back at Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary, with the final two of my list of favourite dozen best 50th Anniversary items:

• Doctor Who: Monsters and Villains Weekend
• Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited

13. Doctor Who: Monsters and Villains Weekend

The three-part Doctor Who: Monsters and Villains Weekend, which aired on BBC3 over three nights from the Friday-Sunday, 15th-17th November, was a celebration of the various monsters and adversaries that the Doctor has met in the new series. It starts in reverse order, from the Judoon in tenth place, down through the Silurians, the Ood, Clockwork Droids, the Ice Warriors, the Cybermen, the Silence, to the final big 3-2-1 of the Master, the Weeping Angels, and the Daleks. Lots of monsters, and LOTS of fun.

14. Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited

The Doctors Revisited originally aired as individual episodes between January and November, and was reshown in omnibus format on Watch on Saturday 16th November. It is an 11-part series featuring each of the previous incarnations of the Doctor from the first to the eleventh. Some classic clips featuring the Doctor and his adversaries, and interviews with creators, cast and behind-the-scenes contributors and crew, make this a worthwhile viewing experience for all Doctor Who fans.

All in all, a great 50th Anniversary. Not a bad item on the list, although the first four or five were undoubtedly, for me at least, the best of the bunch.

50 Years in Space & Time (Part 11)

Here's the penultimate part of my look back at Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary:

• The Radio Times Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special
• The TV Times Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special

11. Radio Times 50th Anniversay Special

The Radio Times Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special is a real doozy, with no less than TWELVE variant covers featuring all of the Doctors, including "War Doctor" John Hurt.

There's also a Steven Moffat article, on set with Tennant, Smith and Hurt, a celebration of 50 Years of Radio Times Doctor Who covers, a detailed overview of all eleven Doctors, and even a competition to win the Doctor's bow tie. What's not to like about this? Another nice one.

12. TV Times 50th Anniversay Special

The TV Times had their own 50 Years of Doctor Who Anniversary edition, which was also pretty good, although they didn't go quite as overboard as the Radio Times, with only four variant Doctor Who covers.

There is a nice Classic Companions piece, interviewing Peter Purves (Steven) and Frazer Hines (Jamie), plus a mini-review of The Day of the Doctor. But the main piece of the Doctor Who anniversary is the five-page 50 Years of Doctor Who Special celebration, which includes interviews with not only David Tennant and Matt Smith, but also Tom Baker and Peter Davison.

However, my absolute favourite was the A Brief History of Time (Lords) timeline, which runs along the bottom of the entire five pages of the main 50 Years of Doctor Who Special section. Anyone who knows me knows how much I like my timelines. Lovely.

To Be Continued...

50 Years in Space & Time (Part 10)

Here's the next part of my look back at the Best of the Bunch from Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary:

• The November DVD release of Scream of the Shalka

10. Scream of the Shalka

This November DVD release almost slipped by unnoticed in the midst of the 50th Anniversary celebrations, but is worth a place on any Doctor Who fan's shelf.

Originally produced during the "wilderness years" when Doctor Who had been off the air for quite a long time, Scream of the Shalka was intended as a celebration of Doctor Who's 40th Anniversary (there was little else happening to celebrate it).

Using then state-of-the-art flash animation, and first broadcast in six parts on the classic BBC's Doctor Who website from 13th November - 18th December 2003, Scream of the Shalka was the first true Doctor Who web animation. Up until the surprising return of the live TV series, web animation was generally accepted by many to be the future of Doctor Who.

The return of Doctor Who to television in 2005 relegated Scream of the Shalka to the level of a mere historical curiosity. But Doctor Who fans just love that kind of thing, and this DVD is worth getting for the excellent extra features on the disc alone.

The main story, written by Paul Cornell, is also pretty good, and the excellent performance of Richard E. Grant as the Doctor showed that he'd have been perfect for the role, if he'd been selected for the live series. It's a great pity that he only had this one bite at the cherry. I bet he thought he'd last a little longer as the Doctor!

To Be Continued...

50 Years in Space & Time (Part 9)

Here's the next part of my look back at the Best of the Bunch from Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary:

• The Night of the Doctor - mini-episode prequel
• The Last Day - mini-episode prequel

8. The Night of the Doctor

Commemorating Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary, and the first of two very good mini-episode prequels to The Day of the Doctor is The Night of the Doctor, which was released on Youtube and BBC iPlayer on 14th November. At less than seven minutes long, it is an excellent swansong for the Paul McGann Doctor and as an introduction to the War Doctor. It was also nice to see the Sisterhood of Karn make a reappearance again, as we hadn't seen them since the Tom Baker era. Both McGann and the Sisterhood should have been given more airtime in past Doctor Who series, so it was nice to see them again, and particularly in McGann's case, to see him have a nice, much-deserved regeneration scene at last.

9. The Last Day

The second of the two mini-episode prequels to The Day of the Doctor, and, at under four minutes, even shorter than The Night of the Doctor, is The Last Day, which first appeared on YouTube and BBC iPlayer on 21st November. Seen from the point of view of a Time Lord soldier wearing a headcam, this one elaborates on the "fall of Arcadia" during the Time War. The sequence with the commander bragging about the supposedly impenetrable "sky trenches" and Arcadia being "the safest place on Gallifrey" illustrates the overconfidence and complacency of the Time Lords. When the Daleks burst through in large numbers, I was almost cheering them on. :)

To Be Continued...