Doctor Who: Battlefield (DVD)

The irony is, of course, that fans and critics alike agreed that, just as the BBC decided to cancel Doctor Who (albeit without telling anyone), the production team had finally got it right.

Season 26 opened with a whimper and the production team learnt a very valuable lesson - it was better to get a group of people who loved Doctor Who to make the programme rather than a group who couldn't care less. Consequently, fans such as Mike Tucker made great special effects, and Sue Moore and Stephen Mansfield creatd brilliant monsters like the Haemovores. And moreso, fans were writing the stories. And they were all loved.

Except Battlefield. The opening serial was spat upon, and even writer Ben Aaronovitch believes that it is his biggest failure. And he's actually wrong. He gets it right on the audio commentary, though, when he says that the acting and direction were on top form, and his script editor Andrew Cartmel says the script is very good, but Aaronovitch also points out that there are other departments that just didn't seem to care. And he is right here because there are two versions of the story on this DVD - the transmitted TV version and a movie version with new effects, missing material restored and, most crucially, new sound effects. The sound effects make all the difference, clarifying inane dialogue that seems to make no sense in the transmitted version.

So, yes, Battlefield is actually a good and underrated story. The idea of making the Doctor Merlin seems, on reflection, glaringly obvious, and you can't understand why this wasn't done earlier. The rest of the Arthurian legend fits in very nicely, with Jean Marsh playing a brilliant version of Morgaine, and Christopher Bowen giving a delightful performance of Mordred (as long as you ignore the fact he can't do insane laughter for nuts). Marcus Gilbert is brilliant as Ancelyn and Lin Tai is tolerable as Shou Yuing.

However the top performances are regulars Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred as the Doctor and Ace, developing the relationship between the two very nicely (and how hot does Sophie look in this story), while Angela Bruce is outstanding as the new head of UNIT, Brigadier Bambera. The shock of seeing a black woman leading UNIT doesn't have quite the same effect today as it would have back in 1989, but it makes little difference because Bruce is just brilliant.

However all this fades into insignificance because this story sees the return of the Brigadier. Nicholas Courtney is such an integral part of Doctor Who nowadays it's hard to imagine there was a time when the character wasn't there. When he turned up in Sarah Jane Adventures last year it seemed entirely appropriate and when the old war horse opens Battlefield one can't help but cheer. He almost overshadows the return of the Doctor's vintage roadster, Bessie.
Battlefield may not be the best of Season 26, but it's still a thrilling story and works very well even today.

"B"

Doctor Who - The Next Doctor

It's a little delayed, but I have to say I did get the chance to watch this on Boxing Day and so was able to enjoy it in the spirit in which it was intended.

There's a feeling about the Christmas Specials (and I'm as guilty of this as the next man) that they are the big spectacles of Doctor Who; a longer episode with big name guest stars and lots of action. But then I sit down and think realistically that only The Runaway Bride and Voyage Of The Damned fit that bill. Arguably, though, you think that it applies to The Christmas Invasion as well because Tennant is the big name (except he wasn't) and there was plenty of action too (except, really, there wasn't).

So, when The Next Doctor finishes, part of you is inclined to think...is that it? I mean, yes, at the end, a giant Cyberman walked through Victorian London stomping on people left, right and center, but still...it wasn't a TARDIS chase down the freeway...or a tension-filled walk across a pylon, pursued by robots. Except that's not really what the Christmas Special should be about. It's really just a bit of fluff - something to sit down and enjoy on Christmas Day that gives a bit of action and a bit of fun, and when it boils down to it, The Next Doctor fits the bill perfectly.

There are a lot of little parts in the episode, all handled rather well by the various actors involved, but really, the majority of the screen time is held by four actors - David Tennant, David Morrissey, Dervla Kirwan and Velile Tshabalala. Kirwan is the luckiest as she is playing the villain, and she gets to be beautiful and nasty for the entire episode, even lording it over the Cybermen at the end when she proves she is actually better than they are. There is a lot of the feminist in Miss Hartigan and she gets many opportunities to put the boys in their places. Sadly, poor old Rosita (Velile Tshabalala) doesn't quite get the same opportunity to shine. An assistant to Morrissey's Doctor before taking on the role for Tennant, she plays second fiddle throughout the entire episode and aside from a nice little moment at the end, one can't help but wonder if there was any point to her character. Certainly the episode wouldn't have lost anything by her not being there.

And then, of course, there is David Morrissey. A lot of fans on the 'net at the moment are bleating on about the need for a male companion. We've had enough of young women, they've declared, bring us a young man. They are, of course, mostly the gay fans, and they are, also of course, missing something pretty fundamental - at the end of the day, male companions don't really work. Oh they work well when the Doctor is an absent minded professor who doesn't have the time to be a hero - Ian, Steven, Ben and Jamie all worked because the Doctor was too busy being mysterious. Jack works for the same reason; the ninth Doctor is too damaged to be an action hero. And when the third Doctor is getting all high and mighty, and scientific-advisory, the Brigadier was there to do the heroic work. But once the Doctor takes on that role, the male companion becomes redundant. Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Tenth Doctors are all heroic Doctors...they don't need a male to do that stuff. And the female companion works in most capacities because they are so flexible. The best combination is a male-female relationship. And so the Tenth Doctor besides another Doctor, who is essentially the male companion, is a difficult mark.

Davies goes some way to address this situation by reversing the roles and making the tenth Doctor the companion to the next Doctor, whilst at the same time getting him to do Doctory stuff. This works surprisingly well, and it's interesting to see the tenth Doctor face a character he believes to be his older self, but trying to understand why he doesn't remember what he should. Finding more out about the next Doctor changes our perceptions of him, and he stops being the action companion, and becomes a tragic character which makes him work all the better.

Of course, what makes him work the best is David Morrissey who brings the next Doctor to life in a brilliant fashion, playing him as a bizarre amalgam of the tenth Doctor and the fourth Doctor. Tennant is obviously pleased to be on set with Morrissey as the two actors spark off each other fabulously, trying to outsteal each scene from the other. If it weren't for this brilliant combination, the episode might fall slighly foul of being just average.

The Cybermen are also used in a very effective manner, looking particularly creepy as they move through the graveyard, giving Andy Goddard a chance to show his directorial flair. They also are vividly single minded, with their Leader looking decidely disturbing and stealing a scene where it informs Miss Hartigan that information it gave her was designated a lie.

There are other delights in this episode - Davies dialogue absolutely sparkles, with some genuinely funny moments in the episode, and for the fans there is a rather special treat when an info-stamp shows us images of the previous nine Doctors. This is not the mind-blowing spectacle of the previous two Christmas Specials, and there is a strange lack of spectacle that is surprising from a Davies script, but it is still very enjoyable.

"B"

Doctor Who: Silence In The Library (Series 4)

There's nothing worse than when Doctor Who doesn't do so great in the ratings, particularly when the episode being broadcast is bloody awesome. In Series Two, the series suffered on the broadcast of The Satan Pit, and that was a great episode. Sadly, for Silence In The Library, it's happened again, and once again it's a brilliant episode, penned by Doctor Who's Executive Producer-elect Steven Moffat. Curiously it was Moffat's BAFTA-winning episode Blink that suffered from the slump last year as well. Do the general populace just not like Moffat's work? Or is it just that Britain's Got Talent was far too interesting to switch off. Hopefully the episode will get a good time-change.

Meanwhile, onto the episode itself. Moffat, in a similar way to P J Hammond, realises that horror is all about imagery, and he also believes that (like one of his predecessors, Robert Holmes), Doctor Who is a horror programme. Skeletons, freaky little girls and libraries are all very scary and they play on the imagination to freak us out. All these elements turn up in Silence In The Library, but the weird thing about this episode - and something that's a great idea - is having two story strands that are definitively tied together (the little girl's and the Doctor's) but there is no obvious way in which they are tied together. It's an idea that was used in the Matrix, and subsequently used in reverse in the sequels very unsucessfully. When the audience knows what the link is, but can't see the storylines interacting, it loses the freakiness-effect of being in the same position as the characters - knowing that there is another storyline out there, but unable to see how they are tied together.

Similarly to Moffat's own The Girl In The Fireplace, we have another female character who is linked in a very soulful way to our hero, though interestingly we have a character who has met the Doctor before, but he has never met her before. Professor River Song is an archaeologist who keeps a book which looks not dissimilar to the TARDIS that charts her meeting with the Doctor. Riversong is a slightly odd character, coming across as overly flirty in the first few moments we meet her, before implying that she knows the Doctor in a romantic way. It's odd, but can be explained away by the suggestion that the character was trying to get the Doctor jealous. Perhaps we shall see more of Prof River Song in Moffat's take on the series.

The episode has a superb cast with ER's Alex Kingston playing River, Bond movie regular Colin Salmon as Dr Moon and St Trinian's Talulah Riley as poor Miss Evangelista. On that note, the death of Miss Evangelista and her subsequent ghostly return is one of the most disturbing moments of the episode and also one of the saddest in the series. It is handled so well by Catherine Tate, and she should take full credit for the tears that came to my eyes. The production team should take great joy in the knowledge that in an episode with an amazingly high calibre guest cast, it is still the series leads that steal the show, with both Tennant and Tate on top form.

Giving the episode a rating with the second part still to come is a bit difficult, but I'll do it all the same. So much of the little girl's storyline has yet to be explained and if I were to discuss it at any length I would be doing it a disservice as it is clearly being set up for quite a revelation in the second half. But on the same note, the cliffhanger is one of the most unsettling that has appeared in the series to date.

"A"

Doctor Who: The Invasion Of Time (Season 15 DVD)

Doctor Who fans are a weird lot. They complain when Doctor Who's not on air because they think it should be as it's the best television show ever made, and complain when it's on air because it's crap - either it's not true Doctor Who like it used to be, or it's too much like it used to be. Therefore it's kinda interesting that this month's DVD release features a monster that has just appeared in the new series. Yes, the good old Sontarans in the only other story available for release. If I were cynical I might point out that a Sontaran box set (for this has also been released) coinciding with new episodes featuring the Sontarans is a tad like a marketing exercise, but, hey, more power to them. And at least this release has no new stuff on it, like the Davros box set - don't even get me started on that one.

My opinions on Doctor Who (and indeed James Bond as well) have changed over the years. As a child I thought they were all brilliant!!! Then I got older and cynical and began to espouse perceived fan wisdom ("Ahh yes, well the Graham Williams era of Doctor Who was, of course, very silly because it was all too comical"). Now, I enjoy all stories because they have something to recommend them, but I can still be realistic.

The Invasion Of Time has a lot going for it, but production wise it's a bit shoddy, and when you discover that it was a last minute replacement, and further it was made when the budget was pretty much drying up, you can begin to understand why it looks that way. I still have a problem with the interior of the TARDIS looking like...well a disused hospital, which is what it was, and the Sontaran mask is pretty ordinary. Indeed, Derek Deadman as the Sontaran Stor is really poorly cast as he cockney's his way through the last two episodes just sounding crap. The Vardans also look a bit silly, both as the cellophane wrapper monsters they start out as and then as the silly little men in green uniforms.

But all that aside, it has some amazing things going for it. Some of its cliffhangers are fantastic - the Doctor laughing evilly as he gives up Gallifrey to the Vardans, the appearance of the Sontarans at the end of Part Four, being sucked into a black hole at the end of Part Five - all great stuff. And the casting is also superb (aside from the above problems). John Arnatt is so good as Borusa - I used to think he was a bit ordinary, but he has some wonderful moments. Milton Johns is a scene-stealer as Castellan Kelner, and I love Hilary Ryan as Rodan. It's pretty obvious that she is the template for Romana, and as I watched the story a part of me wished she had gone with the Doctor at the end (I wonder why she didn't...was Leela's departure written in that late in the day?). And how shocked am I to learn that Gai Waterhouse is in this production??? Truly bizarre...

At this point in the series it's pretty clear that Tom Baker controls the show as not only does he take center stage on screen (even if he's to one side), he does things in this story that he would never do in others, especially under Philip Hinchcliffe as producer - the asides to camera would have been absolutely forbidden in his first three years. However, given that Baker's popularity was so huge, it's hard not to forgive him for this.

I have discovered that I genuinely enjoyed this story so much more than I used to, and as such, I can't wait to watch it again. This time with funky new CGI effects. Just done it, and it looks even better!! Love the Vardans this time round.

"A"

Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Judoon (Novel)

When I was younger (so much younger than today, lalalaaaa) my interest in Doctor Who was stemmed, not only from the television show, but from the novels, the majority of which were written by Terrance Dicks. I believed that Jon Pertwee was the first television Doctor, and then I saw him regenerate into Tom Baker, and I honestly believed that the any Doctors before Pertwee were created by Dicks for his novels, and boy oh boy how exciting were they? I never saw The Three Doctors on initial transmission, and so as far as I was concerned, Dicks had written this novel bringing his first two Doctors in to meet the third. The second Doctor was scary. Look at that jacket cover. Yes, Dicks fashioned my love of Doctor Who.

When, in the 1990s, he began writing the New Adventures, this was a good thing. Exodus was a great book, and gave us fans hope that these new book adventures would work. He churned out a few more and they were all pretty good. Then he wrote The Eight Doctors. And from that point on, Terry found it difficult to redeem himself. He's been writing pretty dodgy shit for a while now, climaxing in the godawful Warmonger, which turns the fifth Doctor into a battle commander and Peri into a commando. So believable.

Last year, when tasked with writing the Quik Read, I was hesitant. He's written mostly crap recently, but the short novel might be more his style. And it was. Made Of Steel was pretty good. They announced he was writing this years, and I thought, fine, bring it on.

Revenge Of The Judoon...is terrible. The Judoon actually aren't in it for most of the book, and only go about "revenging" in the last two chapters. Well, I saw go about revenging, I mean, one says "I shall have my revenge" and the Doctor says, "Leave it to me," and the Judoon commander says "Fair dues, I'll sod off then" (OK, so he didn't say that last bit, but that was the gist of the conversation).

No the actual villains are these "Peacemakers" who...well, I don't actually know what they want to do. Something about using Britain to conquer the world in order to...what? Get peace? I have no idea, because frankly I just didn't care when I finally found out their plot. Dicks sticks in a number of characters to get us a little excited - oo, there's Arthur Conan-Doyle, oo, there's Baden-Powell, but it's just over-egging a pudding that isn't tasting all that great to start off with.

I think, Uncle Terry, it may finally be time to hang up the pen and move on. You've done Doctor Who a great service and it, and myself, would not be the same things without you. But go out on top...or as close to top as you can now...

"C"