Review - Rose

Casino Royale came out on DVD recently and this presented the great opportunity to do a reboot special of watching both the highly acclaimed Hollywood blockbuster alongside one of the greatest Who reboots ever - Rose.

Both projects were a huge risk for the respective production teams but for very different reasons. For the Bond team it meant changing the scope, tone and nature of the Bond franchise at a time when it was already exceedingly successful, complete with new actor in the main role. For the BBC the Doctor Who revival meant risking precious quids on a programme consigned (and rightly so) to the junk heap over 15 years previously. They'd tried before with the TV Movie in 1996 (see here) but this time they'd secured the brilliant scriptwriter Russell T Davies as Executive Producer and head writer and it's Mr RTD the BBC can thank for crafting the main ideas behind the reboot and for the script of that very first episode.

Of course there are huge differences between a Bond film and a 45 minute Dr Who story. The main storytelling difference in the examples here is that Rose brings the premise of the show to the fore by focusing on the soon to be companion and her interaction with what appears to be a complete nutcase. Contrast that to the TV Movie which tried to tell the audience the premise of the show built up over 26 years in a pre credits talk over by the most exciting man in show business.

Casino Royale took a very different approach by being one of the only Bond films to have character development for Bond himself. In the past it had been best to present the character of 007 as being consistent across movies but by going back to basics and showing the Bond that appears in the novel the audience is given a glimpse into how a blunt thug can gradually learn to be a suave secret agent.

Rose was brilliantly acted. Billie Piper showed more than great promise in this first episode and in Christopher Eccleston the audience were treated to a hard nosed Doctor, just going about his business and saving the World without fuss. It was a great performance and set up the following 12 weeks which would see the actor become one of the greatest Doctors ever. It's a crying shame he left the show so soon.

Russell T Davies added some lovely touches and it's nice to see that one of his greatest little tricks was there in the first episode. I'm referring to the way in which he can write a scene to provoke different reactions in the audience in quick succession. The scene in which The Doctor got strangled by the Auton arm in Rose's flat is a good example. At first you have the humour of the the attack on The Doctor but when it switches to Rose it suddenly becomes scary and these two reactions are paid off in the following scene where the characters talk about the Earth revolving. It's a fantastic pay off which RTD crafts to keep everyone on the edge of their seats.

That scene about the earth revolving also involves a long chat and a long walk presented in just one continuous shot. This is a good moment of clarity during an action packed episode. The Director, Keith Boak took flak from a lot of fans who haven't a clue about TV. Some fans can't distinguish good / bad direction from episodes they like / dislike which means they always like Graham Harper's direction because they like his stories. They dislike Keith Boak's direction because they dislike his episodes. It's a shame because he does a great job in Rose and adds some touches which give the episode a stylish and often cinematic feel.

When it was announced that Doctor Who was coming back it seemed that the greatest difficulty for the production team would be to create a modern version of Who that the fans liked. For Casino Royale the production team ran the risk of alienating casual cinema goers at the expense of making a film the fans were already salivating over.

It seems that both crews got it right. The BBC now have a Who franchise that the fans can't shut up about (does every fan really have to have a blog for Christ's sake!) and the Bond team have created a major hit with an essentially new version of their main character. This represents a line in the sand for both franchises. It marks out quality and standards on a level neither had before.

Doctor Who and James Bond films started in the same era and their popularity and style have often mirrored each other so it's nice to see them both riding high again. Rose was the perfect reboot and led to a number of years of success. I'd be surprised if Casino Royale doesn't mark out the same success for Bond.

Review: The Three Doctors

Radio Times covers, special features on Blue Peter, Dr Who in the news: in 1973 the show celebrated its 10th anniversary in style. Meanwhile on the programme itself a special story involving the three Doctors to date teaming up ensured that, on air at least, the anniversary would pass with little of substance. This is a knock around celebration and nothing more.

This story suffered from major re-writes and several hiccoughs during its production so it's hardly surprising that that it seems like a mixture of themes and ideas loosely packaged together. Multi Doctor stories are a pretty poor idea on the face of it. They demand from their viewers a working knowledge of the show that most casuals probably don't share with us Whoicides. This one started out as a story that would fully feature all three Doctors but it later emerged that William Hartnell was so frail he would not be able to play as great a part. This caused one of the major problems for the production and it's a shame because when Hartnell is on screen the drama progresses and the story almost gets interesting. It would have been fantastic to witness one last full performance from this great actor.

Instead we have the over bearing Pertwee and the arched theatrics of Troughton with neither at their best. In fact the story deflates quicker than a burst weather balloon the moment they meet as the following few minutes are taken up with boring introductions, pointless continuity and a lack of plot. Still, at least Courtney is out of the way through most of that initial banter.

The Brigadier is one of the most popular characters in Who and I love him as much as the next fan. BUT! Courtney is a poor actor. Hasn't anyone noticed? Perhaps you were too busy supplementing his pension. Watch him in the background in any of his scenes and you'll see what I mean. When he's in the foreground he goes through the motions by acting what he thinks a top class military official would act like - perhaps he was getting stale in the part by this point but he certainly isn't convincing - I can't be bothered with his raising eyebrows any longer and don't get me started on the upper lip theatricals.

The directing on this story is perhaps it's greatest asset. The film sections in particular are well thought out and executed in style. Unfortunately most of them feature a major quarry and lots of running away from the most ridiculous looking blobs in Who history. The fact that they bob up and down to a silly noise doesn't help. By the time you're half way through you really feel it in your gut and thank goodness the tempo ups a little as the climax approaches.

The best element of the four parts is the complex villain. Unfortunately the idea is crazy and most of his scenes occur during the really boring bits of this dull serial. It is hard not to feel a little bit of sadness for the lonely Omega. So lonely that rather than creating an imaginary sexual partner, he creates the Gell Guards for reasons unknown. Oh and he spends a lot of time watching the Time Lords on his little telly. At least I assume that's what he does because he somehow knows they exist and left him to die, that they have a "High Council" and he even intimates that he knows them well enough to understand the rules of their society - all of which developed after he was left to die. Plots and holes. There's a lot of it about but don't worry nobody's watching.

If you're a fan and you've not seen this one - just watch it to get it out of the way. I suspect that in it's day it was just what the public wanted and while it's not really badly written or directed, it doesn't stand up to multiple viewings. It wasn't meant to.

Review: Dr Who and the Daleks

The movie industry and the movie going public were a different breed in the mid 1960s. There were many more successful British production companies in a highly lucrative industry with a wider variety of distribution networks and for some people movie going was a routine that involved catching up on the latest news headlines as well as catching the latest blockbuster.

Multiplexes barely existed and cinemas didn't have to either be called Vue or Odeon. It was a different World. In 1965 the first adaptation of Dr Who reached the big screen and it's worth bearing in mind that it would be competing against other films with mega budgets in order to gain affection amongst the Saturday matinee crew.

Taking a quick look at film releases that year shows the diverse nature of what was on offer so Dr Who and the Daleks entered the fray (Does anyone have a copy of Pinocchio in Space???) and was a broad success.

And rightly so. This is a slick production with sumptuous sets and some excellent design. There are some problems with the production but they're minor quibbles really: The story is rather on the dull side. I prefer the lengthy BBC version as the tension really mounts between the two Skaro races and the members of the TARDIS crew. However that tension is completely taken out of the film because there is no place for it - the plot allows the action to come to the fore which is just right for the kids movie style.

This story is clearly a re-telling of The Time Machine and in places it even looks like the original film version and it also blends in some wonderful adult themes such as the obvious Nazi style Daleks as well as playing on the Cold War insecurities of nuclear warfare. These are all subtly woven into the plot rather than slapping the viewer in the face. The point being that these were the concerns of the day but playing out on the big screen and on another World.

Peter Cushing plays the central character as a man of science and fun. He's in with the kids and immediately the viewer can make the connection with the old man who never grew up. In the first scene we see him reading the Eagle comic giving a hint as to his mischievous sense of fun. He is at one with his granddaughter, Susan, who wants to explore the planet they find themselves on just as much as he does.

Roy Castle plays Ian, the boyfriend of Dr Who's other granddaughter, Barbara and adds some slapstick humour to the mix. Most fans find his performance embarrassing but it really fits with the time and the type of movie this was.

It's well known that the producers wanted the Daleks to fire... er fire out of their exterminating guns. When this was vetoed by the censors (and let's face it it would have been horrifying) the crew went in the opposite direction and chose fire extinguisher foam. A fantastic idea that gives the Daleks extra eeriness and looks just as good now as it must have on the film's release.

The movie holds up rather well and is shown on British TV with regularity, normally on Channel 4 and in widescreen format. It still looks magnificent, the Daleks look and sound great, the music is unfortunately dull but on the whole Dr Who doesn't get much better than this: entertaining, fun, thought provoking and short!

Review: Revelation of the Daleks

Back when BBC books had an open submission policy, its guidelines for budding writers made it clear that plots should always have the Doctor at their heart with his involvement being paramount to a story’s development and outcome. ‘Don’t just brush down an old adventure and plonk the Doctor in the middle hoping no one will notice’ they warned. Can you guess how this connects to Revelation of the Daleks? Yup, this tale is always criticised for the Doctor’s failing to get involved until the second half and even then there’s not a fat lot for him to do, but is that all that’s wrong here?

Revelation is generally held up as the best story of Baker’s short reign chiefly since it faces little serious competition for that title, rather like a tramp choosing to eat the sausage least past its ‘consume by:’ date. However for many it’s a genuine masterpiece, mainly because it’s grim, gives Davros more to do than just rant- though God knows he does plenty of that- and of course Graeme Harper’s directing so it’s automatically just as good as Androzani. Watching WHO from across its forty-odd years may tell us something about the changing tastes of contemporary audiences, but when viewing Revelation today, the series it most resembles is Torchwood - another show that equates body parts and stomach churning ideas with maturity. Who do you find it easier to visualise snooping around a hi-tech funeral parlour only to unearth cannibalism and space mercenaries - David Tennant or Eve Myles?

Of course there’s a rich history of black comedy in WHO but it’s generally been there to support a solid adventure with an easily followed plot. Here, Eric Saward seems to have built his script from chunks of things he’s enjoyed in the past (famously the source material is Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One) then hoped that including the Doctor will magically force a plot to emerge. What we end up with is style over substance; the notion that Daleks and fancy sets will be enough to engage viewers.

In fairness, many of the guest cast do a good job of making the whole thing far more watchable than it could have been, though the best efforts of Clive Swift, Trevor Cooper & William Gaunt are eclipsed by the astonishingly inept Jenny Tomasina's Tasambeker. How was she cast? Was it deliberate? Was she supposed to lend some sort of John Waters-esque camp appeal to whole thing?



Harper’s direction also has a decent bash at making it all look interesting but ultimately just draws attention to the fact that there’s so little going on that fancy camera angles and scene composition are the only things worth bothering with. Hold on, ‘...there’s so little going on’? How can this be when we have political plotting, cosmic knights on a quest of honour, grave robbers, unrequited love among the slabs and civil warbrewing between the series’ most famous monsters? Oh, and the Doctor wandering about outside awall.

Well, possibly that glib aside is the answer- the lack of direct Doctor involvement makes it difficult to care about, or even to take on board these other strands, and it doesn’t help that most of them are so poorly developed. While the various factions vying for our attention in Androzani cohered effortlessly as the Doctor raced to save Peri, here we’re asked to follow the schemes and agendas of characters who often seem to have been included merely to pad out the running time. When the Daleks themselves are reduced to this sort of token status, then something’s gone very wrong.

Of course when this was first broadcast fans were aware that it was to be the last new WHO they’d be getting for eighteen months (I won’t mention Slipback if you don’t) bearing this in mind I bought a then exorbitantly priced VHS tape intending to keep this no-doubt instant classic to get me through the barren times ahead. A few weeks later I had little hesitation in recording over it with ‘The Pink Panther Strikes Again’.

In 1985 this came across as a story aiming to snare an older audience, yet even at the time it seemed hampered by appearing half-finished and poorly thought through. Sure, it's an improvement on the disastrous Two Doctors, but knowing that it was followed by the catastrophic Trial of a Time Lord, this now looks less like the show attempting a fresh direction and more like another example of the series forgetting what it’s supposed to be doing, mistakenly believing that audiences will be happy with anything just so long as the Doctor or the Daleks pop up every few minutes.

Written by Phil Richards.

Review - Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD

The two Dalek movies are generally seen within fandom as a bit of a joke and Peter Cushing's second outing into the thrilling world of the Metal Men is perceived as the better of the two.

Invasion Earth is certainly enjoyable in places but it really is the worst of the two films for a number of reasons. Despite looking lavish in places it really does lack the cash needed to pull off such a project. OK, the Robomen look great in their fetish suits and the Daleks themselves have great presence, most notably during the night time "Attack the Saucer" scenes but the matt backdrop drawings and the London sets in general make the movie look painfully studio bound.

When the action does move out into the countryside it's quite jarring but so nice to see real horizons and this helps to get through some of the quietest parts of the plot, which by this time is all over the shop.

Making a TV serial into a film isn't a simple process. The first thing a film has to do is provide its audience with an engaging central character and Bernard Cribbins does his best as P.C. Tom Campbell. Cushing's Doctor Who is relegated to supporting character (in the script) and this fails to give the film the necessary urgency and perhaps as a consequence all semblance of framework goes out the window.

In hindsight the production team would have done well to go down the James Bond route and to show the end of Doctor Who's previous un-screened adventure but instead they opted for Bernard Cribbins getting beaten about the head by a jewel thief. Despite this poor bit of originality it may have been much better to have come up with something completely original rather than another version of a Terry Nation TV story.

The film also does a bad job of re-introducing the Daleks to the cinema. It is assumed that the viewer knows what these metal meanies are. At no stage is there even a hint that there is something alive inside the casings so lets assume that they're robots.

Cushing does a very good job here despite being ill at the time of filming and being given such lame material. He is often compared to William Hartnell as he was taking on Hartnell's role but in this and the previous film he is much more comparable to Patrick Troughton's portrayal of the character. Unfortunately the script gives him little to do and he lacks impact in the finished product.

The film is thankfully brief and despite being laughable in many places it does have some charm. The scene that seems to annoy most fans is the "Tom Pretending to be a Roberman" section in which a comedy meal ensues. I've never understood why people dislike this scene apart from the fact that it isn't funny. But then the drama parts of the film aren't that dramatic so why quibble? I like it simply because it shows that the makers of the movie knew their audience and they wanted to make the film as accessible as possible.

This film was a flop at the cinema. It came towards the end of the Dalekmania period and it simply didn't have the well made gloss of it's stablemate.

If it had been a success it was rumoured that the BBC serial The Keys of Marinus would have been next. Both Keys and the third BBC Dalek story, The Chase showcased the epsiodic format of Dr Who perfectly and it's perhaps for the best that only two movies were produced.

Review: The TV Movie

The TVM was transmitted in May 1996 and was a co-production between the BBC (BBC Television and it's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide), Universal Television and the Fox network. How it ever got made with those four egos working overtime is anyone's guess and executive producer Philip Segal deserves a medal for coming out of the production in one piece, and with a fully watchable, entertaining romp beneath him.

It's fast becoming a cliche that the TVM is a fine example of how not to reinvent Dr Who but the truth is that each part of the production partnership wanted the same thing - a successful American version of a British 'classic'. Hindsight is a great thing.

On Broadcast the programme was a complete success... in the UK. It got all the hype you'd expect and fared well in the ratings, viewers seemingly didn't mind too much about the Americanisation, complete with car chase. In the USA the production team(s) had good reason to think that the show fitted Fox's demographic but with all those continuity references (see below) and a plot that involved two outsiders coming into town for a battle that didn't make any sense, they were onto a hiding to nothing.

The American audience were witnessing a pivotal moment in their cultural history. Unfortunately for the people in Hollywood and White City, the moment is commonly known as the 'last ever episode of Rosanne'. Any American people watching Dr Who were likely already fans of the show or at the very least Sci-fi fruitcakes, with dribble running down their chins. Under such circumstances US TV firms run away very quickly but just slower than their advertisers. And they did. After all, the chin dribblers were getting plenty from Fox already and they didn't need to spend millions of dollars on another show for just one tiny group of the population. This show had no legs.

Just as Michael Grade was right to cancel the programme in the mid 1980's so were the powers that be right to leave the TVM well alone. They were probably worried as to where it went next. Outer space? Back in time? Into the future? Who gives a toss? Where's my money?

Segal has spoken a number of times since the broadcast of having to make certain decisions to please the backers. The major one being that Eric Roberts was connected to Fox Toosday Night Movie and therefore was contracted to appear in the show. Ironic then that Roberts' performance is now one of the highlights. His over the top hammy performance was just so spot on and in keeping with the script that you really want him in every scene. Moreover his brief portrayal of Bruce shows that his casting was more than suitable for the show.

You can imagine Eric getting the script of "The science fiction event of the Millennium" through the post. "Yes! I've got a part in panto!" And that's what the TVM is - a big fat slice of pantomime where you get to boo and hiss at the baddie and the goodie is just a girl in a silly wig. Oh that's harsh! McGann does a good solid job here. With it being on telly like, he can't just turn up and read his lines into the microphone so he moves a bit too.

Actually it's a shame he isn't in it from the start but for some strange reason the producers and their four production masters thought it best to make this a continuity fest. Not only do we have the Old Doctor, in the guise of the largely talentless Sylvester McCoy (not doing too badly in his last outing - but all he does is die), we also have mention of 13 lives, Time Lords, the planet Skaro, and the Daleks - and that's just the pre-credits!

Some of the decisions were bizarre but you can understand what they were trying to achieve in keeping the Britishness of the character but Americanising the drama. The problems stem from two areas of the production. The first is the script. Despite explaining the premise of Doctor Who in the first two minutes with a major info dump, Matthew Jacobs decides that the rest of the plot needs no explanation at all. There's some good pacing and wonderful lines for the Master but it's best not to delve too deeply into the story because you end up with more questions than answers.

Dr Grace Holloway takes all this in her stride considering. Within a few hours of killing the old Doctor, Jacobs' script has her snogging the new one, despite the fact that he's clearly just a nutter. Within minutes she's being chased on a police motorcycle by another nutter in an ambulance and she's wittering on about finally meeting the man of her alien dreams. Women.

The other big problem is the over the top direction. Geoffrey Sax does exactly what the script required and deserved. Panto time. And you can't blame him. With 90 minutes to show how exciting Dr Who could be he pulls out all the tricks and goes for the glitzy big shots and special effects.

This was also a chance to free Dr Who from the 'theatre' approach that was the established style for most of its original run and Sax takes it on. The result is a cinematic feel for sure but it resembles a shiny B Movie. Not that I'm complaining because that's part of its charm. It's just way over the top and coupled with the script it makes the film a great throwaway Sunday matinee rather than the start of a long running series.

The movie itself is great fun and I still enjoy watching it, largely for Roberts who makes a perfect Master for a Sunday afternoon. The TVM is categorically not 'bad' television but then neither is pantomime 'good' theatre.

P.S. Is this Character's surname 'Jenkins'. I feel we should be told!

Coming Soon: Revelation of the Daleks