Dalek Babies

1975's Genesis of the Daleks is one of my least favourite Dalek serials on Doctor Who. I don't hate it--the last three episodes are especially good and as much as the next person I love the Fourth Doctor wrestling over the moral question of killing the Daleks at inception. But at a total of six episodes, the serial feels a bit padded, particularly in the first two episodes. And I like the longer serials, usually.

The whole sequence where Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) is forced to work on a Thal rocket could've been lost though I do love how she takes charge, makes an escape plan, and then nearly falls off the scaffolding because she's so frightened. That would be pretty scary.

But this sets up too much the serial can't pay off later. How can Sarah Jane and her Muto friend switch to being allies of the Thals so easily when the Thals had put them to hard labour? The intent seems to be to show that neither the Thals nor the Kaleds are the unambiguous force for good, and I like that, but there's not enough development on that idea.

I don't really like the production design, either, and the whole serial looks especially cheap somehow. Maybe all the budget went to Davros' (Michael Wisher) makeup and the baby Daleks. I know the idea was to make everyone look like credible military but I missed the distinctive visuals of the original Dalek serial. I missed the big foam Ys the Thals will apparently one day wear.

Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, and Ian Marter are great, though. I love Four repeatedly asking for a cup of tea when they're first captured by the Kaleds.

Twitter Sonnet #1289

Percussive stairs repeat for heavy shoes.
Electric mirrors cheat the glowing face.
A monster swam through cluttered greens and blues.
Graffiti cars create a faster pace.
In placing names, the map allots the land.
Accustomed ranges sort the mountain park.
For all the sea was filled with shelly sand.
Beneath the waves the water's very dark.
Consistent cash arrives in oyster shells.
Recalled militia mount a baking firm.
In airy space the spirits fill the wells.
Another wheel began another term.
A hurried tea assaults a cooling tongue.
I thoughtful nose supplies the empty lung.

Eggs for Soufflé

After writing a couple weeks ago how I didn't like the 2011 Doctor Who Christmas special, it seemed worth saying I really like the episode that followed it, "Asylum of the Daleks", also written by Steven Moffat. After the show had been running out of steam for a long time with the Eleventh Doctor's first season companions, Amy and Rory, being introduced to the next companion, sort of, earlier than expected was a pleasant surprise delivered with very welcome and lively energy. And it manages to be pretty creepy and bittersweet, too.

We find the Ponds in their domestic life away from the Doctor (Matt Smith) are on the verge of divorce. Amy (Karen Gillan) now works as a fashion model. Not a very high end one judging from the ridiculous photo shoot she's taking part in at the beginning of the episode.

Likely it's supposed to look ridiculous, a reflection of her shallow, fast paced life away from Rory (Arthur Darvill). But, jeez, that makeup doesn't suit her. In the latter half of her run, Amy wears so many bad outfits and her makeup so frequently looks odd that sometimes I wonder if people on the show said to themselves, "Karen Gillan's so beautiful, we couldn't make her look bad if we tried!" and decided to test that theory.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has a meeting with a strange woman (Anamaria Marinca) in a ruined building on Skaro, the Dalek homeworld, which still hasn't gotten the renovations we see at the beginning of the Twelfth Doctor's second season. Presumably the devastation is a result of the Seventh Doctor's trick in Remembrance of the Daleks, causing Davros to destroy Skaro on accident. The damage looked much worse than what we see in "Asylum of the Daleks", I must say.

It's kind of funny how often times when the Daleks show up they seem to have a complete different system of hierarchy than the last time we saw them. Now the Doctor, captured by the woman who turns out to be a Dalek secret agent, finds himself, with Amy and Rory, in the middle of the "Dalek Parliament".

Which I don't think we ever see again. I've love to see the meeting of Daleks where one of them suggested, "I don't know, why don't we try having a parliament for a while?"

And, of course, the other new idea is the Asylum of the Daleks, a planet where the Daleks too crazy to submit to conditioning are stowed. Only all is not well--there's a girl named Oswin (Jenna Coleman) on the planet, hacking the systems and making soufflés.

What a great introduction. There's a really intriguing mystery; right from the beginning you suspect something isn't quite right about the rosy picture of the chipper girl keeping a humble home on one of the galaxy's creepiest planets. And it's built up to with a series of sensory deceptions—like the man (David Gyasi) who helps the Doctor and Amy when they arrive on the planet who turns out to be a Dalek zombie--and the revelation that Amy and the Doctor have misinterpreted his nature is revealed by his misapprehension of his crewmates, culminating in the subtly menacing line, "I'd forgotten about dying."

So much of Oswin/Clara's story throughout her run on the series involves conscious control of her own life being imperceptibly corrupted or stolen. It's an effective piece of tension that plays off an endlessly compelling question; is there a way to defeat death? That's where her loss of control inevitably leads, both in this episode and in her later ones; physical or mental death. And this is why her story holds up so well; the fundamental unjustness of what happens to her demands some kind of recompense but that wish-fulfilment always comes with dread, the knowledge at the back of the mind that it could be too good to be true.

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An ancient shine returns to shape the cheek.
To-morrow leaves beyond the glass will reach.
A sleepless eye through paper trees'll peek.
The apple fell enticing near the peach.
A quiet trip became a sinking street.
In time a boat conveys the glass to rooms.
In any colour games became defeat.
So Wonka made a bag of candy dooms.
Potato elves expand in salted bags.
A promised time delivered beans to seize.
In counting seeds the fields are sewn with rags.
The linking arms of stamen beckon bees.
A marble taps appointed bells to fight.
But flowers bloom between the cracks of light.

Only Fur can be Seen in the Jungle

DOCTOR: "Well, Jo? Do I pass?" JO GRANT: "You'll do. In a pinch." Get a room, you two. It's not clear why the Spiridons, the indigenous inhabitants of the world featured in Planet of the Daleks, must wear these furry purple cloaks. They're naturally invisible but it seems like they could've been forced to wear something much duller by their Dalek enslavers. I'm not really complaining, it looks really cosy.

This six part Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) Doctor Who serial from 1973 was written by Dalek creator Terry Nation, the first he'd written since the First Doctor era. As part of a larger sequence of linked serials that began with the six part Frontier in Space, the characteristic differences in Nation's writing are marked. Planet of the Daleks has been called a reworking of the first Dalek serial, The Daleks, written by Nation, and there are many reminiscent elements of that serial, welcome ones in my opinion.

I love how much the flora and fauna of the alien planet impact the story, for example. Alien planets too often become interchangeable quarries, here the Doctor, Jo, and their Thal allies must contend with spores that cause irremovable grime to spread over their targets and sinister, glowing eyes and growls from the dark.

Jo (Katy Manning), having been hit by one of those spores, is saved by a floating medicine bowl that turns out to be a Spiradon sans purple fur. The element of fantastic in the serial has a fabulous late 60s/early 70s quality and I do love it so.

When the Doctor and some Thals infiltrate the Dalek base, he throws the purple fur over a double breasted, burgundy velvet sport coat and bow tie with muted green and burgundy. I love that he takes a moment to change into this outfit at the beginning of the serial when the TARDIS is malfunctioning and running out of air. He changes from an all green outfit that would've provided perfect camouflage, even if it was too dressy, into something that sticks out like a sore thumb. But wear the same outfit for two serials? Three knows that would certainly never do. The Daleks would never understand such sartorial sensitivity. Well, we heard in the Tenth Doctor era a Dalek proclaim they have no concept of elegance.

Many developments in Planet of the Daleks depend on the non-Daleks making decisions influenced by love and fear, emotions the Daleks deem useless. The Doctor gets captured in a hasty, obviously futile attempt to save Jo from getting blasted and he's imprisoned with a Thal soldier. The two have a nice conversation about bravery which would be echoed later in the Twelfth Doctor era.

"Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know," the Doctor says to the Thal who's worried about controlling his own fear. "It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway."

This serial also marks the first time the Thals, the ancient enemies of the Daleks, appeared on the show since the first Dalek serial. Sadly no longer wearing their skimpy foam Y outfits. Wouldn't it be great if they brought those back in the new series? I might as well dream big.

Never Forget Daleks

I naturally continued my tour of Dalek episodes of Doctor Who recently added to BritBox's collection by watching Remembrance of the Daleks this past week, a Seventh Doctor serial from 1988. This season première serial is when the Seventh Doctor really started to cook after his spotty first season and when his companion, Ace, made good on the potential she showed from her first appearance in the previous season's finale. It also continued the Dalek civil war storyline from Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks but with the decidedly different tone of the Seventh Doctor's era. It lacks Eric Saward's penchant for pushing the envelope, violence-wise, yet its introduction of the Daleks conveys more of a sense of danger. But what I like most about this serial is its theme of misapprehension and people, good and bad, suffering for their mistaken impressions. But not the Doctor.

Despite an amusing moment in one of the episode cliffhangers where Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor pulls a face and delivers a line straight to the camera about how he miscalculated, it's very clear the Doctor's only miscalculations are pretty trivial. The proto-UNIT military group in the serial, with which the Doctor quickly makes himself an ally just by intruding on one of their surveillance vans and explaining things, seem to be also his only real problem. As he tells Ace (Sophie Aldred), he has to keep them occupied while the Daleks play into his hands.

The proto-UNIT group has no idea what they're fighting, of course, but a lot of this serial is about just how much the Daleks and humanity have in common, referencing the relatively recent menace of the Nazis in World War II (the serial's set in 1963) and the recent tensions arising from Jamaican immigrants who came to England for the rights promised to them as citizens of a British territory.

Although the serial isn't directly about racial tensions in Britain at the time, 25 year old Ben Aaronivitch's teleplay does a decent job of showing how racism operated in a community. Racists aren't simply easily identifiable two dimensional jerks; they can be the seemingly nice young man, Mike (Dursley McLinden), whom Ace almost falls for. Or Ratcliffe (George Sewell), an Englishman who felt the Nazis had it right, who now allies himself with the Daleks, finding their ideas of racial purity to be congenial.

The Daleks also aren't what they seem in this serial. The viewer is deliberately misled as to which side is which now in the Dalek civil war, which has become about race, as well, since one side has mutated, as is shown when the Doctor inspects the shell of a partially destroyed Dalek casing. The old rebels and the old establishment have switched roles but we don't know until we're directly shown, a nice way of showing just how illegitimate intrinsic ideas of racial superiority are.

Through it all, the Seventh Doctor earns his reputation as a manipulator, with Sylvester McCoy occasionally employing an effective, quietly sinister tone between his moments of clowning, giving the impression the latter is a calculated ruse. Like a good strategist, a lot of what he does is counter-intuitive, as when he seems to be working against his British military allies, or when he deliberately refrains from destroying some Dalek equipment, explaining to Ace that he doesn't want to strand the time travelling Daleks, which would increase the chances of them corrupting the timeline.

One of the famous moments in this serial is Ace cracking a Dalek with her enhanced baseball bat and that's one of the reasons she and Seven are such a great pair--he's the subtlety, she's the direct approach. But we see in this episode there's more to the Doctor's disdain for weaponry than pacifism--his techniques can be far deadlier than any weapon.

Truncation of the Daleks

After watching Resurrection of the Daleks last week, I thought I'd continue my tour of BritBox's newly added Dalek episodes to its streaming Doctor Who collection by watching Revelation of the Daleks, the Sixth Doctor's Dalek serial and the next Dalek serial after Resurrection. I started watching the first episode and it was really good quality and without the controversial updated special effects from the DVD release. But then I noticed something strange--after eleven minutes, I was already halfway through the first episode. This was odd because it was from the Sixth Doctor's first season which consisted entirely of 45 minute episodes, generally two parters. For certain rebroadcasts, the 45 episodes were cut in two to fit the normal twenty two to twenty four minute episode format of the classic series. So I assumed, for whatever reason, BritBox must have used one of these rebroadcasts for Revelation of the Daleks, despite using the original 45 minute versions for the other episodes of that season. However, after the conclusion of the first episode, the next one on the playlist was a 45 minute episode--the original second part of the two part episode. So basically the BritBox version of Revelation of the Daleks is missing just over twenty minutes of footage.

Maybe this is due to an oversight but what's really strange is the second episode begins with a "Part Three" title card--basically the title card from the reformated, four part version of the serial. So someone took the title card from the reformated version and put it on the 45 minute original version. This seems like more work than someone could do on accident. Is there something BritBox was uncomfortable broadcasting?

I'm joking but Revelation of the Daleks is certainly a prime example of the notoriously gratuitous sadism in Colin Baker's first full season as the Doctor. I ended up digging up my old copy so I could watch through the whole thing. I'm pretty sure it was only the second time I've actually watched the serial. Like Resurrection, it was written by Eric Saward, and the events of that previous serial are alluded to, Davros (Terry Molloy) now trying to strengthen his faction of Daleks in his conflict with the faction controlled by the Supreme Dalek.

To this end, Davros has secretly taken over an enormous funeral home on a planet called Necros. For some reason Davros is now just a head (something that turns out to be a ruse with some very tenuous logic behind it) and to distribute a Mystery Protein Food source he's been producing--somehow manufactured at the mortuary and sold to impoverished peoples (three guesses what the secret ingredient is)--he's forced to negotiate with an administrator played by Eleanor Bron, who seems to be having a delightful time.

After competing villains worked so well in Caves of Androzani it seemed to set a trend continued here. The alliance between her and Davros basically lasts as long as it takes one of them to figure out a way of profiting from the others' death. For this purpose, Bron's character hires the two most interesting characters introduced in the serial, two assassins belonging to a noble order of intergalactic contract killers; Orcini (William Gaunt) and his squire, Bostock (John Ogwen). Like the recent season, the guest stars in the Sixth Doctor era frequently outshone the Doctor and his companions and listening to Orcini and Bostock talk shop furnishes some of the best moments in the serial. Two savvy and worldly hunters just starting to sniff out they're being set up, they quickly establish a lovely dynamic and crusty fondness for each other.

This serial also features Clive Swift as a funeral director, Professor Jobel. Swift would later appear in the much better Tenth Doctor episode "Voyage of the Damned". In Revelation of the Daleks he's part of really a cruel subplot. He and his assistant, Tasambeker (Jenny Tomasin), have developed a close rapport over time but it's apparently only served to feed his egotism. She's in love with him but he, wearing a ridiculous cheap toupee throughout the episode, considers her beneath him, and obnoxiously flirts with Peri (Nicola Bryant) and other female employees, apparently not conscious of repulsing them. This plot has a really ugly end, made all the more so because Swift gives a very good performance.

It's not quite as cluttered as Resurrection but there are several story threads that go nowhere or seem to change course halfway through. The Doctor originally comes to the planet for the funeral of a friend but at some point he seems to forget all about this; there's an annoying DJ character (Alexei Sayle), who, from dialogue, is apparently supposed to sound American. He seems to be watching all events like some omniscient entity in the first episode but in the second is explained as being part of a special package for funeral clients; the episode wraps up with the Doctor explaining that the food source Davros had been producing from, let's say, a special meat, can be replaced with a certain flower that just happens to be growing a short distance away.

The Daleks themselves seem like they have a relatively small role in this episode but there is time for the Doctor to use a silver uzi on one.

It's not altogether a bad serial but certainly not the Daleks at their best.

Twitter Sonnet #1192

The needed tea will slowly take the place.
Ideas of running horses hit the glass.
A slowly sinking jelly quickens pace.
It's only molluscs dragging time to pass.
The brows were placed a space above the waist.
Relaxing clouds were sweet as syrup poured.
A moss was growing green to suit a taste.
It seemed the blouse's jagged pattern soared.
A team in coats assemble next to Sears.
The ocean not returned was pawned for ponds.
A soupy wax was melted, swapped for tears.
A tanning palm exhibits bronzer fronds.
The twins were lately sprung upon the line.
A tumble planet snagged on starry twine.

Daleks are So Metal

So apparently Daleks rock. That's the impression I got from the New Years Doctor Who special, "Resolution". And I mean "rock" with electric guitars and drums, lots of drums. It wasn't exactly bad but it was an odd fit, especially the drums. At one point I wondered if another file was playing on my computer on which I was watching the special. Mainly I enjoyed the episode and its reprise of elements from the Ninth Doctor episode "Dalek" (which was itself a reworking of the Sixth Doctor audio play Jubilee). It's nice to see the Rolling Stones play "Sympathy for the Devil", too, though, in both cases, it's fundamentally not a new song.

Spoilers after the screenshot

"Resolution" benefits a lot from reintroducing pre-Thirteen elements, not just the Dalek (once again voiced by Nicholas Briggs, though credited as "Nick Briggs" for some reason), but also Twelfth Doctor era director Wayne Yip. I didn't even think his Twelfth Doctor episodes were especially well made but in comparison to most of the directors in the recent season he's a genius. All the close-ups meant something, there was dynamic blocking, a cool tracking shot when the Dalek was blowing up soldiers, and a neat moment where the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) swung around in the TARDIS to confront a sudden hologram of Dalek Lin.

Not only did the Dalek rock, I had the strangest feeling we were supposed to be rooting for him. Or her. There are a lot of parallels drawn between the Doctor and the Dalek--the sequence where the Dalek forges a new shell with Sheffield steel almost looks like it was shot in the same exact place where the Doctor forged her new sonic screwdriver. But by taking over the mind of poor Lin (Charlotte Ritchie), especially since we don't get to know Lin very well, the Dalek effectively becomes a woman--much as a change of sex doesn't mean a whole lot to the Doctor except in how people with cultural conceptions of gender react to her, now the Dalek is interacting with humans in the shape of a woman. This was part of the vicarious thrill in watching her confront the patronising cop, though, really, she was doing 103, I'm going to have to side with the cop on this one. Oh, yeah, and she's a mass murderer.

The Doctor mentions that she learned to think like a Dalek a long time ago, and this episode does seem to continue the idea of the Dalek as a dark mirror the Doctor. Though I kind of thought that was the point of the Master.

I didn't care much for the subplot about Ryan's father but I appreciated the effort Tosin Cole put into his performance confronting him in the diner. Easily the best performance from any of the companions this season.

Once again, Yaz (Mandip Gill) seemed completely superfluous. You'd think her being a cop in Sheffield would come into play, maybe with her utilising local knowledge and connexions, but no. I feel like the writers have forgotten she's a cop.

No-one watches Doctor Who for a sensible plot but this one had an amazing amount of dumb moments. Ninth century humans defeated a Dalek? Why were three humans from different parts of the world fighting it? Whose history were they trying to erase it from? How would hiding the body keep the knowledge from historians who'd hear about the battle? If they didn't hear about the battle, why hide body in different parts of the world? If the Dalek can build rocket engines and missiles why can't it immediately access communications when it takes over the biggest communications centre in the country? What would contacting the Dalek fleet accomplish? They already know about Earth.

All the New Years jokes were shoe-horned in pretty lamely, worse than the Christmas references usually are. Still, the action scenes were good and it was good seeing the Dalek kick ass.

Twitter Sonnet #1191

A pocket button held the thread inside.
The mem'ry spool was stout and very tough.
No needle, pin, or thimble *could* decide.
To darn a simple want a thought's enough.
The tangles part at last revealing eggs.
The rising structure born becomes the land.
The puppy stands on thin, unsteady legs.
May strides of grace prove firm on shifting sand.
Some copper coils wait in faded bins.
The painted moon remains at early dawn.
Beginning meals were et with finished pins.
The sushi's here but also now it's gone.
A rack of woolen coats await the phone.
The icy air desires human bone.

Wedged in the Time Corridor

Those of us in the U.S. who watch classic Doctor Who via BritBox have for some time wondered at the mysterious absence of several Dalek related serials from the otherwise complete collection. The series, aside from many no longer in existence First and Second Doctor serials, was in tact up until the 80s Doctors--most of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctor Dalek serials were inexplicably absent. I assume it was related in some way to the late Dalek creator Terry Nation's estate which still apparently owns the Daleks and is rumoured to be difficult to negotiate with. Well, this past Halloween, just as mysteriously as they were previously excluded, BritBox made all those Dalek episodes available to paying customers. I didn't realise it until last night. So I thought it fitting to watch Resurrection of the Daleks to celebrate, a Fifth Doctor serial from 1984.

According to the TARDIS Doctor Who Wiki, writer Eric Saward was "unsatisfied with the story," contending later "it was too frantic, with too many ideas." Indeed, a lot is going on--the Doctor (Peter Davison), and his companions, Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson), are caught in a "Time Corridor"--something never very clearly defined--and wind up in London in 1984. There are zombie police shooting at men from the future; the Daleks are involved; there's a "Supreme Dalek" now; they're trying to break Davros (Terry Molloy) out of prison to come up with a cure for some kind of virus deadly to Daleks; there's some British military unit that dresses suspiciously like UNIT but they aren't UNIT--all this in only two 45 minute episodes (a departure from the usual 25 minute episode format necessitated by an Olympics broadcast).

This is also Tegan's final story. I always liked how she departed--just freaked out and unable to cope anymore. Realistically, this should happen to a lot of companions.* It's hard to blame her, too; she suffers a head injury in this serial and watches as the military officers caring for her turn into Dalek zombies. She also sees an extraordinary number of casualties in this episode, including an innocent bystander with a metal detector who the cops chasing her shoot apparently out of pure sadism. And she has to do everything in a micro-mini skirt and heels.

I, for one, will always appreciate that.

Turlough, meanwhile, ends up sneaking about the Dalek ship and the prison station that held Davros. He watches as most of the personnel get exterminated or zombified but teams up with one guard (Jim Findley) and teaches him how to be more ruthless and cunning. I do like Turlough.

I also liked the plot thread with the woman in charge of the prison, Osborn (Sneh Gupta), who ends up in a miniature horror drama as one of her subordinates gets half his face melted off. She gets caught between him, a terrifying figure plaintively begging for help, and a line of Daleks blowing open the wall.

The Doctor is himself forced to extraordinarily violent methods. Despite his distaste for guns, he's compelled to use several in this episode, not for the first or the last time.

Of course, sometimes it's necessary, it would be stupid if the Doctor refused to use a gun under any circumstances. He uses an Earth pistol and several laser pistols in this one. He almost accidentally shoots a cat, mistaking it for one of the Daleks slithering about without their robot shells.

You do get the sense of a chaotic and deadly situation throughout this serial but the clutter does prevent some of the dread from really setting in. Though personally, I only find the Daleks truly eerie in their first two, First Doctor serials. But Resurrection of the Daleks is a good frantic bit of television.

*But Tegan does eventually reunite with the Doctor in a 2006 audio play called The Gathering.

Twitter Sonnet #1190

A single bean was keeping Earth afloat.
A muscle made the mustard stronger stuff.
Buffets abound aboard the butter boat.
Successful people wore a collar ruff.
Appraising eyes were watching 'neath the stair.
A whisper cut the candle late to-night.
The little flames became the watching pair.
A magnet shifts the lamp from dark to light.
Opinions lightly fell on silver plates.
Discretion carries phones across the lawn.
A foyer's patient presence ever waits.
A cough informs the sun about the dawn.
The footless heels ascend the mountain slope.
A spiral wheel contends the spokes'll cope.

Forbidden Word of the Daleks

It seems at the beginning of the 2013 Doctor Who audio play Daleks Among Us that it's going to be a nice, paranoid tale about an Orwellian dystopia. The aftermath of the humans winning against the Daleks on Earth eerily has the governing humans enforcing a constant rewriting of history and now Daleks can't even be mentioned. This is justified by the fact that humans turned on each other after the Daleks were supposedly gone over recriminations aimed at Dalek collaborators. But the story ends up going in a far more conventional direction and at best is an echo of Jubilee. But it's always nice to hear Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and he does a great job.

Coming after Persuasion and Starlight Robbery, Daleks Among Us forms the final part of a trilogy in which the Seventh Doctor is travelling with the sort of former Nazi, Elizabeth Klein (Tracey Childs), and the new UNIT scientific advisor, Will Arrowsmith. The Daleks are involved now, trying to get their suction cups on the Persuasion Machine introduced in the first story, a device that controls people through powerful hypnotic suggestion. This story goes back to the original concept involving Nazis and makes the not entirely novel thematic connexion between Daleks and Nazis. Yes, they do have a lot in common--belief in themselves as the master race, ideas about eugenics, and so on.

Davros (Terry Molloy), the creator of the Daleks, also features in this story and, as very often seems to happen in the audio plays, is forced to work with the Doctor and his companions after the Daleks have turned on him. But apparently this was the first audio play that paired Davros with the Seventh Doctor--sadly there are no allusions to the great "rice pudding" speech from Remembrance of the Daleks.

The latter half of this audio play features entertaining drama dovetailing confusion about clones with confusion about time travel and writer Alan Barnes comes up with some amusing dialogue. Ace makes a sort of appearance at the beginning in the form of a nude statue of herself with a baseball bat. That's something much easier to get away with in audio format. The word "Liberty" is engraved at the base of the statue on which the Doctor remarks, "A liberty is what she'd have called it."

Was Gallifrey in Ireland?

I've written more than once about the scarcity of Irish actors or characters on Doctor Who but this year Saint Patrick's Day has fallen on Saturday, the day I usually write about Doctor Who, so I listened to the first Dark Eyes audio anthology from 2012. A collection of Eighth Doctor stories, it features the Doctor's only Irish companion in any medium, Molly O'Sullivan, portrayed by Irish actress Ruth Bradley. And I was glad to find Dark Eyes is a good series, especially surprising since it was written by Nicholas Briggs, whose scripts I've generally not enjoyed in the past. He loads up a few too many Irish-isms in Molly's dialogue but mostly she's a good character in a good set of stories. I like how she mockingly insists on calling the Doctor "The Doctor."

Comprised of four stories, each just under an hour, the first, "The Great War", finds the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) arriving on Earth in the midst of a mustard gas attack during World War I. The Seventh Doctor had a few World War I adventures, too, and with the recent Christmas special featuring the Twelfth Doctor in a World War I setting, I wonder how many Doctors are roaming about No Man's Land.

Molly is a Voluntary Aid Detachment nursing assistant--not a nurse, she continually reminds everyone. The medical staff angle is another thing that makes this reminiscent of the Seventh Doctor story, No Man's Land. But "The Great War" does a better job establishing the lives of the average participants, with Molly being a wiser, more experienced hand hastily advising another woman on how to treat and behave around men brought in from the battlefield.

The second story, "Fugitives", gets more into the underlying story that bridges the four, and features more heavily two guest characters played by Peter Egan and Toby Jones. Whether or not they're villains isn't quite clear but in the concluding chapter, "X and the Daleks", Briggs makes good use of them, coming up with a really cool way to use Time Lord regeneration I can't remember seeing or hearing in another story.

The third story, "Tangled Web", features the Doctor and Molly coming across a community of peaceful Daleks. It's a story that plays with the Doctor's acquired hatred for the species in much the way the new television series has done from time to time; giving us the innocence of his companion's eyes, wanting to give a whole species the benefit of the doubt, confounded by the normally open minded Doctor unable to accept the possibility of peaceful Daleks. This one has some interesting moments, I particularly liked how in the climax it gets to the point where the Doctor feels like he's going mad for being the only one who holds what he can't help feeling is a perfectly reasonable point of view.

Briggs, as he does on the new show, also voices the Daleks and is good at creating an impression of several individuals. McGann is good as always and has good chemistry with Bradley. She's effective in the role though I don't like how she calls the TARDIS a "Tardy box".

Twitter Sonnet #1094

The water turned above to different roofs.
The circuitry of scuba scars appeared.
A warning dripped from restless, turquoise hoofs.
The worried land observed the endless weird.
The face beside the ears divulged a sound.
As pieces ranged a board became a day.
A cushion took the seconds from the ground.
As grasses pass the ivy shows the way.
Surprising kings beneath the hills were hid.
A dot was glowing green before the snakes.
A clover star would burst to quadrant grid.
Remembered drinks were debts beneath the lakes.
The ling'ring wolf returned to save the slain.
A wailing shade perplexed the sullen train.