Ways of Getting Away

Why clean your messy apartment when you can escape to your rich uncle's country cottage? It sounds like a good idea to the protagonists of 1987's Withnail and I. However, things aren't quite so simple for these two unemployed actors whose lives are endless strings of partially sedated chaos. Paul McGann and Richard E. Grant established themselves with this movie, their collaborative charisma making it a delightful experience.

In their squalid Camden flat, they reminded me of Holmes and Watson, if Holmes and no kind of useful genius. Withnail (Grant) certainly impresses himself.

McGann, as "and I", years before he starred on Doctor Who, was already rushing about in a panic, just trying to manage Withnail or his own high (the two are invariably under the influence of prodigious quantities of drugs and alcohol).

Withnail's uncle is a windbag named Monty (Richard Griffiths) who has designs on sleeping with McGann's character and shows up at the cottage to do so. Aside from that and a menacing poacher named Jake, I envied Withnail and his friend's countryside refuge. Even Monty is a charming companion before he tries to assault McGann.

Withnail and I is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of their Handmade Films playlist.

There are Places I Remember Inaccurately

It's one of those days when all kinds of different historical periods are jumbled together in the 2008 Doctor Who audio play "Dead London". The first episode in the Eighth Doctor's second stand alone series, he returns with the nice enough companion Lucie Miller for a story that, at under fifty minutes, feels too short, as most of the stories in this particular series of audios do.

The first scene drops us into the Old Bailey where the Doctor (Paul McGann) is on the dock, answering for the crime of leaving the TARDIS in the middle of traffic while Lucie (Sheridan Smith) was away shopping. What started as a modern day preceding unexpectedly becomes a 17th century one and the Doctor is sentenced to death. Meanwhile, Lucie encounters similar problems on the streets of London, one of which, Fleet, unexpectedly transforms into its river namesake.

There's an amusing supporting character played by Clare Buckwald called Spring Heeled Sophie, presumably a reference to Spring Heeled Jack. Though I'd have enjoyed her character more if her voice were more distinguishable from Sheridan Smith's. I also enjoyed a reference to The Wicker Man when the Doctor and his companions find themselves suddenly in a Wicker Man about to be torched in pagan Britain.

...

On another subject, to-night is the final episode of Game of Thrones so I figure this is my last chance to make predictions. All my predictions so far this season have been wrong but I figure that's no reason to stop now (spoilers for past episodes ahead).

I think the reason we never saw Danaerys' face during her rampage last week will be explained by the fact that she'd lost telepathic control of the dragon--she told it to go for the Red Keep but all he heard was "Urg, rage, kill, kill!" and decided to burn civilians instead. I predict there'll be a shot of Drogon pulling the Iron Throne from the rubble. And I suspect that Bran might do something with time travel and alternate time lines since that kind of thing seems to be popular right now.

What do I hope will happen? That Cersei ends up being alive and rules long and benevolently on the Iron Throne. I wonder how many people would sign an angry petition about that.

The Hypnotic Banal

The Eighth Doctor's first independent audio series concluded in 2007 with the two part story Human Resources. What starts as a fairly amusing homage to The Office turns halfway through into a pretty effective encounter with one of the Doctor's classic foes.

Lucie Miller (Sheridan Smith), who became companion to the Doctor (Paul McGann) at the start of the series, had before that been applying for work in data entry for a company called Hullbert Logistics. In Human Resources, she's abruptly forced into accepting the job and her memories of her adventures with the Doctor are blocked. The story then proceeds to follow her and her co-workers making dumb puns and goofing on their clueless boss who enthusiastically spews tone deaf advice and encouragement a la David Brent or Michael Scott.

The Doctor eventually infiltrates the office (with some help from the Time Lords) as part of the management team and is surprised, when sitting in on a strategy meeting, to see that the team are coordinating invading troops without consciously realising it. This concept, that people are hypnotised into thinking they're working in some kind of civilian business when they're really organising an army, makes less and less sense the more it's explained. But the actors, particularly McGann and Smith, make it a lot of fun and when the story shifts it because an interesting survival fight I won't spoil.

Twitter Sonnet #1225

In level blinds the light resides in peace.
Across the table shadows point to chairs.
The frying pan is lately mostly grease.
In nightly bursts the oldest channel airs.
A story starts in snow and ends in ice.
Between is cold and swamp and sodden food.
The number five appeared for counting twice.
A metal skull can kill a loving mood.
The seven balls of rice create the eighth.
Another copy makes complete the poem.
There's something 'bout the bread that makes it safe.
There's something 'bout the paper makes it home.
A group of pages turned to make the air.
The ink could turn the lousy weather fair.

Veni, Vidi, Vortisaur

The Eighth Doctor takes notice of his companion's butt in the 2007 audio play No More Lies. "Always looking at my bum," says Lucie when the Doctor tells her to mind her backside before wandering into a confrontation with a wicked time traveller named Zimmerman. It's a time loop story but without the usual repeated scenes effect; it turns out to be a decent episode about a villain who changes.

The story begins at what feels like the end of a story--The Doctor (Paul McGann) and Lucie (Sheridan Smith) having a final confrontation with the newly introduced Zimmerman (Nigel Havers). Lucie seems to have the initiative throughout, coming up with some solutions before the Doctor several times, and benefiting from an immunity to Zimmerman's "Time Whip" because she's not a Time Lord (or Time Lady). Zimmerman escapes and then the story becomes quite different--in chasing him, the Doctor and Lucie end up at an innocent looking garden party where a much reformed and elderly Zimmerman is devoted to a wife of many years named Rachel (Julia McKenzie).

It's a nice enough story, not really filled with many surprises for Doctor Who fans, but it's fun hearing Paul McGann grudgingly express something like affection for Lucie. There's a callback to the 2001 Eighth Doctor audio play Storm Warning with the return of Vortisaurs—pterodactyl-like creatures from the Time Vortex, somewhat like the titular creatures from the Third Doctor story The Time Monster, though presumably better looking than a guy in a white suit flapping his arms (I still think the chronovore is kind of cool).

Fright with a Dash of Delight

Doctor Who stories about beings that feed on specific emotions seem to be numerous enough that the 2007 Eighth Doctor audio play, Phobos, parses the suitable emotional fodder to being quite a lot of fear, but not too much fear, and always mingled with a certain amount of euphoria. The writer, Eddie Robson, was only 29 at the time but the story's condemnation of thrill seeking tourists by a peace and quiet loving elder generation seems at first like it was written by someone much older. Incidents of the Doctor grandstanding in the story definitely feel like the work of a young man, though. Maybe not one of the best audio plays but not bad, most of its faults resulting from the short length of shows from the Eighth Doctor's series.

The Doctor (Paul McGann) and Lucie (Sheridan Smith) find themselves in a precarious spot halfway up a mountain when they emerge from the TARDIS. A couple adrenaline junkies or "Drenies" turn up to inform them they're on Phobos, the Martian moon, where, in the future, people go to indulge in extreme sports like bungee jumping and "gravity-boarding". But a greater danger lurks in the shadows, according to old man Kai Tobias (Timothy West) whose dislike of the noisy young interlopers coincides with his repeated warnings about a deadly indigenous lifeform no-one's ever seen. But then people start winding up dead. Without getting into too many spoilers, this story does feature a direct Scooby Doo reference (". . . if it weren't for you meddling kids!").

But the story really does have a creature that feeds off psychic energy, whose appetite for slightly pleasurable fear causes it to stir up suspicions in an alien tourist (Tim Sutton) that the human tourists have been making racist comments behind his back so the large furry fellow can sucker punch one of them. I guess the idea is first there's the fear of being the target of discriminatory insults and then there's the pleasure in getting revenge.

The climax of the story is one of the instances where a psychic vampire gets more than it bargained for trying to feed on the Doctor who has an ominous speech about how he's seen and experienced terrible depths of fear, much more than the creature can bite off let alone chew. Paul McGann sells it really well.

People are Other People in Space

Immortal Beloved, the 2007 Eighth Doctor Doctor Who audio play, doesn't seem to have anything to do with Beethoven or the 1994 movie of that name. In this story, the Doctor (Paul McGann) and Lucie (Sheridan Smith) arrive just in time to prevent a pair of young lovers from committing suicide but unfortunately this leaves the kids vulnerable to the fate they were attempting to escape; having their brains wiped and their bodies used as replacement vessels for the elderly. So, yes, in case you had any doubts, that idea wasn't original to Get Out. I'm pretty sure it's not original to this audio play, either, but I can't think of older examples just at the moment.

It's a nice audio play, a short, 60 minute episode from the Eighth Doctor's series. Once again, though, it feels much too short, really not having enough time to establish the world of colonists and the love stories involved. The leader of the colonists, played by Ian McNeice sounding nicely like Michael Gambon, calls himself Zeus and his wife (Elspet Gray) is called Hera, their whole society modelled on ancient Greek myth. The mixture of sadness and repulsiveness in these characters trying to stave off death by murdering their own clones is nicely introduced but doesn't quite have enough time to develop.

Eight and Lucie continue to develop romantic chemistry, too, though it feels a bit rushed. I assume they've been on more adventures between episodes but it feels too soon for Eight to talk about how much she means to him at the end of the story. Sheridan Smith's performance sometimes makes her sound like Charley, Eight's first companion from the monthly range of audios, whose relationship was developed with him much more organically. There is a nice moment in Immortal Beloved where Lucie's trust in the Doctor is tested, though.

Twitter Sonnet #1211

Intentions saved a pack of gum from Hell.
Tormented tay attempts to sate the gut.
Of course the soup would fill the copper bell.
Unless we added just a single nut.
No mixture makes a really solid link.
As choral timers tick the pulse of feet.
A hoofless carriage brought a horse to drink.
Where knees and clouds at stations lately meet.
Intruding clouds confused the store with rain.
No falling peppers splashed the tile floor.
So boosted wheats and rice were muffled grain.
Entire crops were crowded round the door.
A certain ice was sweetened near the stove.
A troop of shades assembled near the grove.

Is Glamour a Horror?

Here's a Doctor Who audio play I'd been wanting to listen to for a while--Horror of Glam Rock, an Eighth Doctor story from 2007. I love the title's play on the Fourth Doctor television story Horror of Fang Rock and it always stuck out when I was looking through titles. But I wanted to finish Eight's monthly range stories before I started on his own series. I finally had a listen last night and enjoyed it, though maybe found the variety of stories relating to the production a little more interesting.

The Doctor (Paul McGann) and Lucie Miller (Sheridan Smith) find themselves in 1974 Bramlington on an overpass during a terrible snow storm. They soon find the mutilated corpse of an aspiring glam rocker and so a mystery unfolds that involves the Doctor making frequent references to his love for David Bowie and Brian Eno. As a fellow Bowie and Eno fan, I certainly appreciated it.

Bernard Cribbins, shortly before he appeared as Wilfred Mott on the television series, here plays Arnold Korns, a cutthroat manager for rock musicians. You can tell this story was written during the Tenth Doctor era for how morally grey it is, Korns being a somewhat complicated character whose work ethic leads to something really horrible happening. But he doesn't become a villain and Cribbins' unassuming performance, even when he's grandstanding, made me continue to pull for him. Una Stubbs--Mrs. Hudson from Sherlock--is also in the story as a service station employee and it's satisfying and kind of sweet hearing her rebuke Korns for his callousness.

Taking another cue from the Tenth Doctor era, some romantic chemistry between the Doctor and Lucie is already in evidence despite this being only their second story together. The actors pull it off well--it's nice hearing Lucie's prickly guard slowly being lowered and Paul McGann is a cool Prince Charming.

Not all the glam rockers are dead in the story--a pop singer named Stephen Gately plays Tommy Tomorrow. Gately, who was a member of a band called Boyzone, died in 2009 from a congenital heart disease. According to Wikipedia, his last single recorded as a solo artist was "Children of Tomorrow", which was composed for this Doctor Who audio play.

Not the best lyrics but he has a decent enough voice and I like how he tries to imitate the sound of a 70s glam rocker. I guess it's appropriate that the only other time I remember hearing of Boyzone is when David Bowie was asked in an interview if the "boy zone" mentioned in his song "Looking for Satellites" was a reference to the band. Bowie said, no, he hadn't heard of the band at the time he'd written and recorded the lyric (I'm not sure where to find that interview now).

It's a good audio play though I prefer the length of the monthly releases--this one is only 45 minutes. Making it a bit like a television episode, I suppose.

Daleks in the System

Sometimes even Daleks can be subtle. Blood of the Daleks, a two part Eight Doctor Doctor Who audio play from 2006/2007, is set in a colony beset by the social and political problems arising from resource scarcity in the aftermath of a global calamity. I found the portrait of citizens desperately scavenging, hoarding, and attacking people, paranoid about the politicians, and generally panicking nicely developed through the story.

The Doctor (Paul McGann) also gains a new companion in this, his first adventure in his own Big Finish series of audios outside specials and the regular monthly releases. Lucie Miller, played by Sheridan Smith, is a bit ornery compared to Charley Pollard, Eight's most recent companion for listeners at that point. And Charley was no shrinking violet. Lucie seems to get on the defensive about everything but that's somehow not annoying. Her sudden appearance in the TARDIS baffles the Doctor and over the course of the story we learn little else about how she got there, this being part of the general story arc of the series.

Hayley Atwell, four years before she was cast as Peggy Carter, also appears as one of the political types being menaced by a mob when the Doctor arrives. Which is not to say she's entirely innocent herself. But the villains here are the Daleks, of course. When they do finally show up, the title of the story, Blood of the Daleks, turns out to be related to a fixation with racial purity and one faction of Daleks seeking to destroy a mutated faction, much like in Remembrance of the Daleks. But in the context of the problems in the human colony it still works really well. I also loved the name of the colony, "Red Rocket Rising". It sounds like something that might have sounded hopeful but circumstances have easily made ominous.

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.