Sorry folks, got a bit behind; hit by a stinker of a cold Friday night (as did EVERYONE at work!), just about over it now (I can actually… think now). Plus, what lucid time I did have was taken up by raving about The Star Beast (Wasn't it great?). So, making up for lost time, the next few days, I’m going to cover four years in each of the remaining blog posts, which will take us up to 60 by the 30th. So, let’s jump right in with…
Year 47: 2009 to 2010 - The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor
Firstly, no I’m not repeating myself from Thursday, it’s Death OF the Doctor, not TO the Doctor, completely different, and very different stories all around. I did love the Sarah Jane Adventures; whilst it’s the more kid friendly of the spin offs from the RTD years, it really was at times telling more mature stories than quite a few Torchwood episodes, and it’s good to see a show marketed around an older woman go down well with a young audience. Plus, given the format, if an issue you have with New Who is a lack of cliffhangers, this one has you covered well. This episode is from the fourth season, and has a couple of notable guest stars… as well as a very young Finn Jones, the future Iron Fist! Eh? Eh? What, not excited about Iron Fist? Why no- oh, right, yeah, that’s why…
Anyway, this story is one where we not only get the Doctor himself making an appearance, but Jo Jones (nee Grant) is back too! It’s a wonderful little story, reflecting back on the seventies era of the show, and the pasts of two companions. The reunion, when the Doctor spends quality time with both Sarah Jane and Jo, is so wonderfully played; Sarah Jane getting used to a newly regenerated Doctor, referencing the last time they saw each other in The End of Time, and Jo not having seen him in far longer. It builds nicely on the ending to Tennants era, the idea that he visited EVERYONE in that time, which in turn nicely fits in with the later reveal of him believing he was in his last regeneration. The rest of the story is a lot of fun too; the Shansheeth are great creations, and I’m not just saying that because they remind me a bit of the Skesis from The Dark Crystal. What’s especially funny in retrospect is that the lead villain is voiced by David Bradley, both a year before he became a Who villain proper in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, and two before An Adventure in Space in Time! A hidden two Doctors special! A final touch I love with this story is the very ending, where Sarah Jane mentions a few other old companions. Now this was originally meant to be setting up for a future episode, where Ace was meant to come back, however, due to Elizabeth Sladen’s passing that never came to be. However, it did end up paying off with the Power of the Doctor, especially with that final support group scene. This series really was a gem, and this was one of its highpoints.
Year 48: 2010 to 2011 - The Doctor’s Wife
That title had existed for many years purely as a way for JNT to troll the fans, so take a mind like Neil Gaiman’s to make something truly special out of it. It’s a story that finally acknowledges on screen Doctor Who’s OTP; the Doctor and the TARDIS. We have known that it has a mind of its own pretty much since The Edge of Destruction, so to finally have an episode where we get to talk with them properly is something long overdue. (There have been spin-offs and such before where something similar has happened, including in the Eighth Doctor novels future fully sentient TARDISs that take on human form, but this is first time on the show.) The interactions between the Doctor and “Idris” are great, pulled off so well by Matt Smith and Suranne Jones, including her frustration that the doors are meant to be pulled, not pushed, it’s written on the front! A few Gaiman fans do probably get an extra chuckle from these scenes, as she is characterised a lot like Delirium from The Sandman; I can so see “Biting is excellent! It’s like kissing, except there’s a winner!” as one of hers. Also, for extra Gaiman connections, this also features Michael Sheen in the cast, who would join forces with the previous Doctor for a very successful Gaiman adaptation!
Back to this story though, it’s brimming with love for the show’s past, right down to the story being kicked off by something we haven’t seen since The War Games. Because of new Who’s use of the Time War, we haven’t had as many opportunities to expand upon the Time Lords as in classic Who, so this one does do a great job of that, including exploring more of the inside of the TARDIS, introducing off-screen another renegade, The Corsair, and with them making “canon” the idea that Time Lords can change gender when regenerating. It also gives Amy and The Pretty One plenty to do; their torment by House is genuinely unnerving in parts, as close to pure horror territory New Who has gotten. It all culminates in a truly beautiful finale, where someone finally gets to say “Hello”, which gets me a bit teary eyed just thinking about it. Easily the best episode of Series Six, definitely in the top five of Matt Smith’s run, it’s a fantastic piece of work. Now, is Gaiman too busy with more Good Omens to give us one more script for Ncuti, that’s the question…
Year 49: 2011 to 2012 - The Fourth Wall
It's back to Big Finish again; now it was a close run thing between this story and the release immediately before it, The Curse of Davros, but for that one it's another case where it's very hard to talk about why it's so good without giving the whole game away. So, since I didn't want to do the reverse order spoiler space yet again, I’m going with this one, although I’ll leave a note here; seriously, go have a listen to The Curse of Davros, it’s a really fun story, that’s a great companion introduction, and… no, that’s really all I can say, go into it as blind as possible.
Anyway, this is another case where I really wanted to highlight a particular writer, this time John Dorney, who has been doing marvellous stuff for Big Finish over the years, across almost all their ranges. His stuff often goes for pastiches, meta commentary, insanely structured stories, and this is a prime example, with the Sixth Doctor and his new companion Flip getting involved in the launch an all new storytelling medium… and as the title suggests, this story is about what happens when the line between that medium and reality gets blurred. It’s a story absolutely packed with ideas, including some great commentary about sci-fi action cliches and writing shortcuts; at one point the Doctor observes “So these Warmongers are utterly invulnerable to all forms of weapons… but they are not immune to being punched by that man.”, pointing at the hero of the story within the story. There’s an incredible moment when the fictional villain starts to realise that he was written to be a villain… so the terrible parts of his part were just created by the outside world on purpose. There are also the Porcians, a race of would be universe conquerors… who are just really crap at it, really not cut out to be warlords, adding a great dose of humour to proceedings. (Dorney would have them referenced and brought back a few more times, including the Master at one point mentioning that he is never having them as his stooges again.) There’s a tonne to dig into with this one, but it’s better just to experience it yourself (and again, pick up the story before it The Curse of Davros whilst at it, it’s awesome!).
Year 50: 2012 to 2013 - The 1963 Trilogy
Hoo boy, were we spoiled in the anniversary year. We had the main special, of course, we also got An Adventure in Space and Time, The Night of the Doctor, The Fiveish Doctors Reboot, and more on TV. The DWM Comic had a great few strips marking it; Hunters of the Burning Stone and John Smith & the Common Men. There were a whole bunch of special releases by Big Finish, including their big multi-Doctor tale The Light at the End, which features a great confrontation between Eight Doctors and The Master. But the ones I want to highlight here are three special releases forming a little trilogy in the Big Finish monthly range; three separate releases based around the year 1963, three fun stories in their own right, and come together quite nicely to form something quite special.
First up was the fifth Doctor story Fanfare for the Common Men by Eddie Robson, which picks up on the detail of that band Susan was listening to in the very first episode of the show. The Doctor takes Nyssa to see the start of Beatlemania, only it’s not John, Paul, George, and Ringo who everyone’s come to see, it’s Mark, James, and Korky? What the heck is going on? It’s a great journey finding out, in a tale that pokes loving fun at the history of The Beatles, with some nice songs thrown in by comedy singer/songwriter Mitch Benn. I do love Eddie Robson’s scripts, he’s a writer that really gets how to handle audio, and this is a great example.
Next is the Sixth Doctor tale The Space Race by Jonathan Morris; the Doctor and Peri land in 60s Kazakhstan, by a Soviet rocket base, who is having trouble with an cosmonaut in orbit. It all goes a bit Quatermass (or maybe The Ambassadors… :twang: OF DEATH!) with the pod returning to Earth, but what they find inside, and what it means for humanity is something I am so not giving away. When I first listened to this, I heard the part one cliffhanger and was immediately “I am so on board for this story!”, and it’s a great one, which revels in the sixties setting, whilst not whitewashing it in the slightest.
Finally, there’s The Assassination Games, by John Dorney, reuniting the Seventh Doctor and Ace with the Counter-Measures team from Remembrance of the Daleks; in fact, this acts as a sort of pilot for Big Finish’s spin-off series featuring them, which I do recommend people try too. In this tale, the team are involved in the investigation of some very odd assassinations, and early on they know it’s going to be something bigger than expected as The Doctor and Ace are there too. This is a fine spy tale, very much inspired by La Carre and real life political scandals at the time, whilst still having a very fun sci-fi concept at the heart of it. Best thing about this one is that it’s recently been added to BBC Sounds for free, so you can give it a go yourself if you haven’t already; it’s pretty stand alone, as long as you’ve seen Remembrance and, erm, remember the characters from it, you’re all set! A good end to this series, reflecting the year of Who’s birth from multiple angles; these stories might have been lost in the shuffle of everything else in the anniversary year, but they are very much worth your time.
Next time we’re covering pretty much all of the Capaldi era, from a great episode with a daft title, one of the show’s best ever cold opens, another trilogy for Big Finish, and the moment that made me watch a bit of Wimbledon…
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