Tag Archives: David Tennant

Doctor Who, Movies & TV

Smith and Jones

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So far, Russell T has taken producers prerogative, and written the opening story of each season, and this year was no different. I have to say that New Earth, last years effort was a bit of a stinker, so I wasn’t quite sure what we were going to get, what with a new companion to introduce.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. We were introduced to Martha Jones and her entire family within the first few minutes, and then a brief and slightly peculiar encounter with the Doctor, who takes off his tie and disappears. Martha gets even more bemused when after she gets to work as a trainee medical Doctor, when following encounters with strange motorcycle couriers, and a static electric shock, the Doctor turns up again as one of her patients, but claims never to have left the hospital.

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Then things start getting really weird. The hospital gets hit by a very strange, and very local thunderstorm, where the rain is going up, and suddenly the building shakes violently, and they find themselves on the moon, with the building being invaded by rhino-like aliens, the Judoon, who the Doctor describes as intergalactic police officers. Martha quickly realises that the Doctor knows a lot about what is going on, and the two team up.

All in all it was a great opening episode. The plot was pretty good too in that the monsters, the Judoon were in a way the good guys – the main baddie actually being a little old lady with a drinking straw! Seriously, expect young children to be terrified of people with drinking straws for a while after this! David Tennant has definitely found his feet in the role of the Doctor with a nice mix of seriousness and bizarre moments, for example after a massive dose of radiation, he shakes it down into his left shoe, which he then throws into a bin. Martha at this point says that she thinks he’s mad. The Doctor agrees, and takes off his other shoe to match!

There are a couple of minor, but probably significant references during the episode. Firstly there are some references to ‘Saxon’, including ‘Vote Saxon’ posters similar to those seen in Torchwood. Secondly, when in the hospital, the Doctor is asked whether he has a brother, and replies “Not any moreâ€?. The Doctor has also taken to name dropping again – claiming he had a laser spanner that was stolen by Emmeline Pankhurst, and talking about meeting Benjamin Franklin. In a moment reminiscent of Peter Davison in The Visitation, the Doctor has a moment of sadness when his trusty sonic screwdriver is destroyed. Unlike the fifth Doctor though, by the end of the episode he has a replacement.

There is also a nice little epilogue – as Martha doesn’t just leap into the TARDIS after the hospital is returned to Earth. Instead, he appears later that evening after Martha has attended a party for her brother. After her enthusiasm at her visit to the moon, the Doctor has come to offer her a trip as a thank you for her help. Martha says that she doesn’t have time, and doesn’t believe the Doctor when he says that he has a time machine. The Doctor proves it’s time travelling abilities by going back to that morning and returning with he tie removed – the strange meeting on the street that so bemused Martha. She then asks the Doctor why he didn’t warn her when he went back, to which the Doctor replies that it is against the rules, ‘crossing into established events is strictly forbidden – except for cheap tricks’. After that she is questions the amount of room, plus the fact that his spaceship is apparently made of wood. The Doctor shows her in side, where she is as usual amazed at the size inside ‘It’s bigger on the inside’ she exclaims, ‘Really? I hadn’t noticed’ answers the Doctor. They then briefly discuss Rose, and how it is one trip only, and she isn’t a replacement for her, and then the Doctor sends them plunging through time to a meeting with Shakespeare next week.

All in all, a great start to the new series, and the trailer for The Shakespeare Code next week looks great.

Doctor Who, Movies & TV

A Day to Go…

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For those of you without access to Sky or Virgin Media, here is the full trailer for the new series of Doctor Who that is currently running on BBCi – but not on Freeview.

The trailer only runs for ninety seconds, but crams a lot in. We get to see some flying Dalek destruction, some scary looking walking scarecrows, lots of pigs running around and someone that looks like the Doctor saying that he isn’t the Doctor amongst other things. We also get a whistle-stop run through some of the guest stars who are turning up this time around, including Michelle Collins, Derek Jacobi toasting Utopia, a brief snippet of the Doctor apparently marrying Jessica Stevenson, John Simm looking really smarmy and of course John Barrowman is back as Captain Jack. The most intriguing snippet though is a couple of shots of someone who looks rather like Denzel Washington – an actor linked with the US revival of the series back in the nineties. He pops up at about 23 seconds, and again at 43 seconds. Having said that, since I suspect a cameo by such a high profile actor would probably have been picked up by the press by now, it probably isn’t. Sure looks like him though…

Books, Movies & TV, Politics

Having a Laugh with Comic Relief

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Yesterday, this years Comic Relief appeal reached it’s climax with eight hours of TV on BBC1 and BBC2. Yet again it pulled in the donations at a fantastic rate, reaching the fantastic total of £40,236,142 by the end of the night (as a comparison, the BBC’s own Children in Need managed £18,300,392 last year).

The show included the conclusion of The Apprentice Does Comic Relief, that I wrote about yesterday. It finished up with Sugar choosing between Campbell and Morgan for the nominal firing – he went for Morgan in the end, which had been hinted at from the start in that in his start of show interview he was the only one seen commenting that he didn’t want to get fired! To be honest the best moments of that can be found in the first part of the show on Thursday – Campbell and Morgan trying to get the other one fired was amusing, but really a postscript to the main programme.

As usual, the show included a mix of hard hitting documentary sequences showing some of the areas the appeal aims to help in both the UK and Africa, and special comedy sketches. The comedy sketches were a bit hit or miss, with the Vicar of Dibley special, whilst having some funny moments, not being the best, and a live Mitchell and Webb sketch that was greeted with pretty well total silence by the live audience. However, Harry Hill provided what was pretty well a TV Burp Greatest Hits, and there were some star studded sequences from the special Little Britain Live. Peter Kay produced a memorable musical number to follow up Amarillo from last time. This time it was the old Proclaimers number, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)â€? along with Matt Lucas. The video includes an unbelievable range of celebrities, including Lord Lucan and Shergar according to the credits. The video and song are available from iTunes and is going for a record in terms of being the fastest selling online song – we’ve been star spotting in the video, and about the only non-dead celeb who is credited that we can’t spot so far is David Beckham.

The sketches that we laughed at most though, were two of the Catherine Tate ones with a variety of famous people. The first includes David Tennant as a new English teacher, which if you watch, you’ll realise quite why Beth likes it…

The second was just amazing, as it includes Tony Blair, who actually gets a number of the funny lines…

All of the Catherine Tate sketches from the night, together with some bonus material will be available on DVD on April 9th, and is available from Amazon amongst others.

Whilst on the subject of fund-raising goodies, check out Shaggy Blog Stories, a book of one hundred funny blog postings pulled together by Mike Atkinson, and including contributions from a real mix of famous and not so famous UK bloggers, including Dave Walker from Cartoon Church.

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Doctor Who

Too Much TV Bad For You?

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Last night on Doctor Who we got the contribution from Mark Gatiss. After last year where the monsters came through the gas supply, this year his story was set in 1953, with the monster coming through the TV, in The Idiot’s Lantern.

Much as with his story last year, the Doctor hasn’t quite hit his target destination. Instead of his target of New York for a performance by Elvis, he instead ends up in early fifties London, who are preparing for the coronation. Along the street, a local electrical store is selling TV sets at knock down prices, apparently out of duty. However, strange things are happening – residents of the houses are being found, with their faces mysteriously gone, and no sooner does this happen do the Police turn up, and take the faceless people away.

As with his previous script, Gatiss has produced a great episode. The story is based around a lot of the warnings that parents used to give their children about what would happen if they watched too much TV, and there are some amusing jokes based around the whole TV monster idea, indeed the ultimate conclusion where the Doctor defeats the monster effectively by recording it onto a video tape continues the joke. As with some of the earlier stories, it’s all a bit of preposterous hokum, but enjoyable none the less. We again had the mixing of an alien threat, with a bit of domestic drama, and the character of the Doctor seemingly a lot more balanced than he has been – perhaps due to the friendship between David Tennant and Mark Gatiss himself. We also had Maureen Lipman doing her best BBC announcer – but becoming the monster…

Next week we have another of this seasons visits to a planet other than Earth. Although New Earth was set off world, it was on a planet that was supposed to be similar to Earth following the destruction of the original planet. The Impossible Planet is going all out for a really alien planet apparently, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out, as one of the often mentioned reasons for focusing on Earth based stories has been that the production team have been concerned that they couldn’t do an alien planet justice. The writer of the episode, Matt Jones although new to the series, is another who has been involved in writing Doctor Who before, in particular two stories in the New Adventures range.

Doctor Who

Tooth and Claw

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Last night we watched the second of the new series of Doctor Who, Tooth and Claw, which finds the Doctor and Rose trapped in a Scottish mansion with Queen Victoria, and being stalked by a werewolf.

Overall I thought this was a much better episode than the rather lacklustre season opener last week, starting off with an attention grabbing pre-credit sequence as martial-art trained monks take over the house and put the occupants of the house into the cellar, together with something in a cage. In the best tension building style, you don’t actually see what is in the cage, only the terrified reactions of the other people.

The arrival of the Doctor and Rose is another one of the TARDIS navigation mistakes where having aimed for Sheffield in 1979, the Doctor overshoots slightly in both time and space, and ends up on a bleak Scottish moor in 1879. Worse than that he walks straight into a group of jumpy soilders who are escorting Queen Victoria by road to Balmoral after the route of her train has been blocked.

Of course the take-over of the house, and the blocked railway are connected, with the creature in the cage being a werewolf, and the monks planning to use the werewolf to take over the throne.

In essence this is a reworking of a classic horror story plot, with the cast trapped in the house with the monster. However there are some nice touches. For example David Tennant does a great bit of acting as the Doctor putting on a Scottish accent. Whilst he maintains the accent at the beginning, once the monster appears he forgets his accent and drops back to the Londonish accent he has used before. Bear in mind that Scottish is David Tennant’s native accent. There is also a nice intertwining of history and fiction, with Queen Victoria travelling with the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond which Prince Albert had cut by almost 42% of it’s original size to increase it’s brilliance, but was dissatisfied with the result. In this episode the reason for the cutting was said to be so that the diamond could be used as part of a trap for the werewolf, where the cut and it’s increased brilliance were vital.

The central monster was impressive, especially compared to the last appearance of a werewolf in the show back in 1988. Here techniques similar to the way that Gollum in Lord of the Rings was realised in the recent films were used, with actors taking the part of the monster being digitally replaced with the werewolf.

There were also a number of elements to keep the fans happy. Firstly the Doctor introduces himself as Doctor James McCrimmon, a reference to previous companion Jamie. At the conclusion of the story we also get to see the beginnings of Torchwood, the secret organisation referred to first in the Christmas special, and now it seems formed by Queen Victoria in response to the events in this episode, for which she entirely blames the Doctor. Rather than the usual happy ending where everybody is grateful, instead Queen Victoria banishes the Doctor and Rose warning them never to return.

Certainly it was a very enjoyable episode, and perhaps would have been better as a season opener than New Earth last week. However next week we have the much anticipated School Reunion, for which there is the prequel TARDISODE sequence and trailer already available from the Doctor Who web site. Can’t wait…