Day: December 25, 1972

Categories
TV Movies

The Stone Tape

The Stone TapeAn abandoned pre-war building is taken over by Ryan Electronics to serve as the skunkworks for a crash program to find and develop the electronic recording medium that will supplant magnetic tape. With its wartime history as a command post for visiting American soldiers, and an even longer history as a haunted house stretching back into the late 1800s, the building isn’t anyone’s favorite place. Some members of the electronics R&D team refuse to work there, and a visit to the pub reveals that the locals believe that any new secret project there is military (and hazardous) in nature. The sole female member of the Ryan Electronics team, Jill, experiences a vision in a supply room formerly used by the U.S. Army, catching a fleeting glimpse of a screaming woman, and project director Peter isn’t convinced until he hears the screaming for himself. Determined to debunk the hauntings so his team can get down to their real work, Peter decides to throw the team’s resources at the problem, using every kind of sensing and recording equipment at their disposal and regarding the sightings as merely misinterpreted data. Even though sightings continue, none of the group’s equipment manages to record any of it. After several further sightings, Peter becomes convinced that the sightings are a message recorded in the very stones of the building itself, a “stone tape” recorded by a massive output of psychic energy, though the haunting nature of the repeated sightings gives his team the uncomfortable feeling that the burst of energy was provided by the moment of the screaming woman’s death. Gradually becoming unhinged by an obsessive belief that the “stone tape” represents exactly the kind of breakthrough recording medium his team was sent to discover, Peter begins probing the room with UV light, lasers, and blasts of high-frequency sound, and eventually the sightings stop: his team believed he’s “wiped the tape.”

At least until Jill begins to pick up on something else, another presence somehow recorded in the stone. Something older – almost unimaginably older – and far more dangerous than a screaming woman. Could it be that Peter has simply erased the most recent recording from the stone tape and revealed the original recording?

written by Nigel Kneale
directed by Peter Sasdy
special sound effects by Desmond Briscoe and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Cast: Michael Bryant (Peter), Jane Asher (Jill), Iain Cuthbertson (Collinson), Michael Bates (Eddie), Reginald Marsh (Crawshaw), The Stone TapeTom Chadbon (Hargrave), John Forgeham (Maudsley), Philip Trewinnard (Stewart), James Cosmo (Dow), Neil Wilson (Sergeant), Christopher Banks (Vicar), Michael Graham Cox (Alan), Hilda Fenemore (Bar Helper), Peggy Marshall (Bar Lady)

Notes: There is little music in The Stone Tape; instead of crediting a music composer, BBC Radiophonic Workshop co-founder Desmond Briscoe is billed as creating “special sound effects.” BBC graphics designer Bernard Lodge, responsible for many of the Doctor Who title sequences including the Tom Baker-era “time tunnel” graphics, created the title sequences for The Stone Tape. Louis Marks (Doctor Who: Day Of The Daleks) was the script editor, and the show was produced by late-Hartnell-era Doctor Who producer Innes Lloyd.

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

Categories
Electra Woman & Dyna Girl

Return Of The Pharaoh – Part 2

Electra Woman & Dyna GirlThough Frank can only be of minimal help to Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, they manage to escape the Pharaoh’s latest trap. Just as he as within reach of the Coptic Eye, an ancient Egyptian relic of great power, the Pharaoh finds himself trapped, buried alive with an artifact that’s now useless. The catch? Electra Woman and Dyna Girl can’t escape either…and if they do, they risk releasing the Pharaoh’s evil upon the world again.

written by Greg Strangis
directed by Jack Regas
music not credited

Electra Woman & Dyna GirlCast: Deidre Hall (Lori / Electra Woman), Judy Strangis (Judy / Dyna Girl), Norman Alden (Frank Heflin), Peter Mark Richman (The Pharaoh), Jane Elliot (Cleopatra), Sterling Swanson (Mr. McLintock), Marvin Miller (Narrator)

Notes: This is the final episode of the series.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Lexx Season 2

Lyekka

LexxAs Lexx flies through a swarm of space-borne life forms, one of them slips aboard and scans the crew, listening in on one of Stan’s dreams and taking the form of a girl he once (unsuccessfully) asked out on a date. Despite his having just woken up, this incident still registers as unusual enough with Stan to convince him to awaken Kai. The girl, Lyekka, seems to take an instant dislike to Kai, but she’s still perfectly cheerful about it. The Lexx receives a signal from a spacecraft from the planet Potatoho, whose astronauts are venturing into interstellar space for the first time. Stan welcomes them aboard and gives them a tour of the Lexx, and Lyekka expresses an interest in the astronauts as well. When Stanley demonstrates Lexx’s destructive power, he accidentally destroys the Potatoho space capsule. As Stan sleeps, the astronauts explore Lexx, and one of them finds Lyekka lurking on the flight deck. She offers herself to him, and mere moments later, his crewmates can find no trace of him. The same fate soon befalls another of the astronauts, only this time Kai sees it happen – Lyekka reverts to a jellyfish-like form and devours the astronaut. Now, with only one of the astronauts remaining, Kai knows it’s only a matter of time before Lyekka turns to Stan for dessert. But first, Lyekka has a gift for Stan.

In the meantime, the planet Potatoho receives visitors of its own: a swarm of robotic drone arms which attack and completely destroy the planet, with Mantrid’s ship not far behind.

Order the DVDswritten by Lex Gigeroff and Paul Donovan
directed by Stephan Wagner
music by Marty Simon

Guest Cast: Stephen McHattie (Captain Moss), Louise Wischerman (Lyekka), Jeffrey Hirschfield (790 / Bando), Roman Podhora (Boosh)

Notes: This episode marks Xenia Seeberg’s debut in the role of Xev (the same character as Zev, more or less reborn in a new body).

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 02

The Christmas Invasion

Doctor WhoJackie Tyler and Mickey Smith are going about their normal everyday lives, each quietly hoping on Christmas Eve that the TARDIS will bring Rose home, despite the chaos that usually follows. But when it finally does appear, tumbling out of the sky, Jackie and Mickey are stunned to see a man they’ve never seen before emerge from the TARDIS and wish them a merry Christmas before collapsing. Rose steps out and tells them that the stranger is the Doctor.

Powerless to do anything but wait for the Doctor to regain consciousness, Rose joins Mickey for a bit of Christmas shopping, getting on his nerves with her constant talk of life in the TARDIS. When a group of horn-playing figures in Santa Claus masks stop playing and begin following her, Rose is immediately suspicious; when the Santas reveal their instruments to be powerful weapons and open fire, Rose quickly deduces that she and Mickey are the targets. They rush back to Jackie’s flat just before the Christmas tree there reveals itself to be a mobile killing machine. Rose puts the sonic screwdriver in the unconscious Doctor’s hand and then asks for his help – at which point he sits straight up and destroys the killer tree with a single burst from the screwdriver. He then bolts out of the flat and finds the Santa-masked attackers waiting outside, but when the Doctor brandishes the sonic screwdriver at them, they teleport away. The Doctor cryptically warns everyone that something is coming before passing out again.

Again helpless until the Doctor awakens, Rose, Jackie and Mickey watch a live broadcast, waiting for the British-launched Guinevere One probe’s first pictures from Mars. Its first picture, however, certainly isn’t of the red planet – a hideous, skull-like face appears, bellowing in an indecipherable language. At UNIT HQ, Prime Minister Harriet Jones – voted in by a landslide following the attempted Slitheen invasion – swings into action, feeding a cover story to the media to buy time. But UNIT’s people are very worried – a gigantic spacecraft has been detected leaving Mars orbit on a beeline toward Earth. The next contact from the Sycorax leaves no doubt as to their intentions: the human race will submit to slavery, or be destroyed. Her cover story blown, Prime Minister Jones openly calls for the Doctor’s help in an address to the nation.

But the Doctor is in no condition to defend the Earth this time, leaving a terrified Rose to step up, speak for all of humanity – and find out if she’s learned nearly enough from the Doctor yet.

Download this episodewritten by Russell T. Davies
directed by James Hawes
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler), Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith), Penelope Wilton (Harriet Jones), Daniel Evans (Danny Llewellyn), Adam Garcia (Alex), Sean Gilder (Sycorax Leader), Chu Omambala (Major Blake), Anita Briem (Sally), Sian McDowall (Sandra), Paul Anderson (Jason), Cathy Murphy (Mum), Sean Carlsen (Policeman), Jason Mohammed (Newsreader #1), Sagar Arya (Newsreader #2), Lachele Carl (Newsreader #3)

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 03

The Runaway Bride

Doctor WhoStill stunned from the loss of Rose, the Doctor is even more surprised when he finds someone else in the TARDIS – someone else who’s wearing a bridal gown and insists that she was only moments ago at a church walking down the aisle. Her name is Donna, and she’s neither impressed or pleased to find herself in an alien time machine.

The Doctor whisks her back to Earth, but no sooner has she arrived again than trouble follows: the robot Santas return, but this time they’re not homing in on the Doctor – they’re after Donna. The Doctor discovers that Donna’s body has been irradiated with a kind of energy that hasn’t existed for billions of years, and sets about tracking down the cause of it, eventually finding an elaborate but abandoned Torchwood installation beneath the Thames. But that top-secret organization isn’t behind the energy or the robots. The Empress of the spider-like Racnoss is, and she plans to use Donna to jump-start a diabolical plan to revive her nearly-extinct race…at the cost of the human race’s extinction. If the Doctor can’t find a way to flush this not-so-itsty-bitsy spider down the waterspout, Donna’s TARDIS travels may have already come to an end.

Download this episodewritten by Russell T. Davies
directed by Euros Lyn
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Sarah Parish (Empress), Don Gilet (Lance Bennett), Howard Attfield (Geoff Noble), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Trevor Georges (Vicar), Glen Wilson (Taxi Driver), Krystal Archer (Nerys), Rhodri Meiur (Rhodri), Zafirah Boateng (Little Girl), Paul Kasey (Robot Santa)

Appearing in footage from New Earth: Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)

Doctor and DonnaNotes: Despite numerous mentions that the planet of the Time Lords has been destroyed, this marks the first time in the new series that the name “Gallifrey” has been spoken on screen. (It’s somehow fitting, given that the name wasn’t invented until Jon Pertwee’s final season, over a decade into the original series’ run.) Sarah Parrish starred with David Tennant in the series Blackpool (which was seen in the U.S. under the title of “Viva Blackpool”). Though the Doctor says his visit to the formation of Earth is further back in time than he’s ever gone, one would presume that the TARDIS’ visit to “event one,” i.e. the creation of the galaxy (see Castrovalva, 1982), must by definition be even further back in time, though he had just regenerated and wasn’t aware of much of it. The extrapolator makes its first appearance since Boom Town. For only the third time in the series’ history (The Deadly Assassin, the 1996 TV movie), the Doctor arrives and departs without a companion. The “dark times” during which the Time Lords did battle with the Racnoss may or may not be the same dark times hinted at by Lady Peinforte in Silver Nemesis. When the Doctor and Donna run out of the TARDIS en route to their final confrontation with the Empress, Donna leaves the door open, but it’s closed a second later.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 04

Voyage Of The Damned

Doctor WhoThe bow of the Titanic slices through the skin of the TARDIS, much to the Doctor’s alarm, though he is able to pull the timeship out of the collision so it can repair itself. Landing within the Titanic, the Doctor is stunned to find alien life forms and helpful robotic angels mingling with the passengers…until he looks out a window and discovers that he’s aboard a spacefaring cruise ship bearing the same name. He befriends a cocktail waitress named Astrid, who admits that she only signed up for the opportunity to travel through space, but before the Doctor has finished sizing her up as a new companion aboard the TARDIS, things start to go disastrously wrong. The Titanic’s captain, in observation of Christmas being celebrated below on Earth, dismisses his bridge crew, disables the shields, and steers his ship into the path of oncoming meteors. Several direct hits ensue, causing many deaths and leaving the Titanic reeling out of its orbit. But instead of just burning up when it comes through the Earth’s atmosphere, the ship’s powerful engines will overload, destroying all life on the planet. The angelic robot servants on the ship begin to slaughter the few survivors aboard. The Doctor doesn’t have much time to save the day, barely managing to keep Astrid and several passengers alive. But who has set the Titanic on a deliberate course for disaster in the first place?

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Russell T. Davies
directed by James Strong
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Kylie Minogue (Astrid Peth), Geoffrey Palmer (Captain Hardaker), Russell Tovey (Midshipman Frame), George Costigan (Max Capricorn), Gray O’Brien (Rickston Slade), Andrew Havill (Chief Steward), Bruce Lawrence (Engineer), Debbie Chazen (Foon Van Hoff), Clive Rowe (Marvin Van Hoff), Clive Swift (Mr. Copper), Jimmy Vee (Bannakaffalatta), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott), Nicholas Witchell (himself), Paul Kasey (The Host), Stefan Davis (Kitchen Hand), Jason Mohammad (Newsreader), Colin McFarlane (Alien voice), Ewan Bailey (Alien voice), Jessica Martin (voice of the Queen)

Notes: Guest star Bernard Cribbins may well be the new series guest star with the longest association to the golden days of Doctor Who – he appeared as hapless police constable Tom Campbell in the 1966 film adaptation Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., starring alongside Peter Cushing as Doctor Who; he would reprise this role in Partners In Crime. At least on the surface, Voyage Of The Damned would appear to share at least its setting with the computer game Starship Titanic, created by the late Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams and novelized by former Monty Python writer/performer Terry Jones. The Heavenly Hosts bear an uncanny resemblance to the equally helpful (and, ultimately, equally deadly) Vocs and Super Vocs from the Tom Baker story Robots Of Death. Voyage also sees the introduction of another variation on Murray Gold‘s arrangement of the Doctor Who theme tune, this time featuring electric guitars mixed in with the version, introduced in 2006, which combines samples of the original 1963 Delia Derbyshire arrangement with an orchestral overdub. A dedication appeared at the end of the episode to Verity Lambert, the first producer of Doctor Who, who died on November 22, 2007 – one day before the 43rd anniversary of the series she was so instrumental in launching.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
2008-2009 Specials Doctor Who New Series Season 04

The Next Doctor

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS lands in London, 1851, at Christmastime, but before the Doctor can even be serenaded by carolers, someone is calling his name. He discovers a woman in an alleyway, but even though he’s arrived to save the day, she doesn’t stop calling for help until another man shows up – another man claiming that he is the Doctor. Some sort of Cyber-converted creature bursts out of a building, leading both Doctors on a wild goose chase until they lose track of it, but then the Doctor – and the Doctor who was already on the case in 1851 – encounter real Cybermen, apparently escaped from the Void. Curiously, this other Doctor remembers nothing of his tenth incarnation, who then discovers why: this Doctor isn’t the man he says he is. But why does he think he’s another incarnation of the Doctor, and what monstrous plans are afoot that involve the Cybermen enslaving the children of London?

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Russell T. Davies
directed by Andy Goddard
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Davis Morrissey (Jackson Lake), Dervia Kirwan (Miss Hartigan), Velile Tshabalala (Rosita), Rauri Mears (Cybershade), Paul Kasey (Cyberleader), Edmund Kenie (Mr. Scoones), Michael Bertenshaw (Mr. Cole), Jason Morell (Vicar), Neil McDermott (Jed), Ashley Horne (Lad), Tom Langford (Frederic), Jordan Southwell (Urchin), Matthew Allick (Docker), Nicholas Briggs (Cyber voices)

The Next DoctorNotes: While Peter Davison reappeared as the fifth Doctor in Time Crash, and Human Nature‘s Journal of Impossible Things showed sketches of all of David Tennant’s predecessors in the role of the Doctor, The Next Doctor marks the first time that actual footage from the original series or the 1996 TV movie have been incorporated into the new series, with a brief clip of each Doctor. The potential inconsistency of the alternate universe/”Cybus” Cybermen having information about the Doctor’s prior regenerations is avoided with the Doctor’s conjecture that these Cybermen stole the information from the Daleks in the Void, which also explains why few if any of the clips are from Cybermen stories (though they’re not necessarily from Dalek stories either).

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
2008-2009 Specials Doctor Who New Series Season 04

The End Of Time – Part 1

Doctor WhoNightmares plague the human race; every nightmare features the same laughing face – the face of a man that the world once knew as Harold Saxon. Most people forget the nightmares and are vaguely troubled the next day, but one man retains his memory of each incident – Wilfred Mott, Donna’s grandfather, who immediately begins to keep a watchful eye out for the Doctor’s return.

The Doctor, on the other hand, seems to be in no hurry to rush to the rescue. After events on Mars, he’s actively avoiding situations where he must save the day, but a visit to Oodsphere changes that. The Ood are also experiencing nightmares involving the Master, as well as a disjointed series of images of other people, including Wilfred and Donna. The Doctor returns to Earth and discovers that a cultish group of followers has resurrected the Master’s body, and the twisted Time Lord is now more powerful than ever, with abilities far beyond those of a normal Time Lord, and a bottomless appetite as a result. But not all-powerful: the Master is abducted before the Doctor’s eyes.

With Wilfred’s help, the Doctor tracks the Master down to the mansion of billionaire Joseph Naismith, who hopes to enlist the Master’s help to gain control over an alien artifact called the Immortality Gate. But the Master, even though he’s working at the point of a gun, has his own plans for the Gate – plans to achieve dominance over the human race and remake it in his own image.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Russell T. Davies
directed by Euros Lyn
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), John Simm (The Master), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott), Timothy Dalton (The Narrator), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Claire Bloom (The Woman), June Whitfield (Minnie Hooper), David Harewood (Joshua Naismith), Tracy Ifeachor (Abigail Naismith), Sinead Keenan (Addams), Lawry Lewin (Rossiter), Alexandra Moen (Lucy Saxon), Karl Collins (Shaun Temple), Teresa Banham (Governor), Barry Howard (Oliver Barnes), Allister Bain (Winston Katusi), Simon Thomas (Mr. Danes), Sylvia Seymour (Miss Trefusis), Pete Lee-Wilson (Tommo), Dwayne Scantlebury (Ginger), Lacey Bond (Serving Woman), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells), Paul Kasey (Ood Sigma), Ruari Mears (Elder Ood), Max Benjamin (Teenager), The End Of TimeSilas Carson (voice of Ood Sigma), Brian Cox (voice of Elder Ood)

Notes: Naismith says that the Immortality Gate was originally recovered and held by Torchwood, and that he acquired it after Torchwood fell; this could either be referring to the fall of the London branch of Torchwood in Doomsday, or the destruction of Torchwood Cardiff in Children Of Earth. This episode marks the first time Bernard Cribbins has stepped into the TARDIS since the 1966 film Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., in which he co-starred with Peter Cushing as the Doctor.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 05

A Christmas Carol

Doctor WhoRory and Amy’s honeymoon takes an unexpected turn – a downward turn into the stormy atmosphere of an alien planet, as it happens. With the starship they’re aboard just minutes away from a crash landing, Amy sends a distress signal to the Doctor. The TARDIS lands in the city below, where the Doctor tries to negotiate with the powerful Kazran Sardick, who has the ability to control the weather. Sardick cares nothing for the fate of anyone aboard the crashing ship, and doesn’t have much regard for anyone else either. The Doctor decides to intervene, not technologically but psychologically, going into the past to change Sardick’s own history beginning with his childhood. But even a youth and an adolescence spent having adventures aboard the TARDIS with the Doctor may not be enough to soften Kazran Sardick’s heart.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Toby Haynes
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory), Michael Gambon (Kazran Sardick / Elliot Sardick), Katherine Jenkins (Abigail), Laurence Melcher (young Kazran), Danny Horn (adult Kazran), Leo Bill (Pilot), Pooky Quesnel (Captain), Micah Balfour (Co-Pilot), Steve North (old Benjamin), Bailey Pepper (Boy / Benjamin), Tim Plester (Servant), Nick Malinowski (Eric), A Christmas CarolLaura Rogers (Isabella), Meg Wynn-Owen (old Isabella)

Notes: Arthur Darvill’s name appears in the opening credits for the first time here. The Doctor mentions making up for Amy and Rory’s curtailed honeymoon by sending them to an actual moon made of honey; this is where he says the newlyweds are in the Sarah Jane Adventures two-parter The Death Of The Doctor, so that story takes place after A Christmas Carol.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 06

The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe

Doctor WhoThe Doctor sabotages a gigantic spaceship on a mission to destroy Earth, only barely getting a spacesuit on in time to ride to the planet’s surface amid the ship’s debris. Amazingly, he survives re-entry and the landing, but he has to enlist the help of a woman named Madge Arwell, who believes he’s either a spaceman or an angel.

Three years later, Madge Arwell has completely forgotten the otherworldly visitor. Days before Christmas, she receives a telegram informing her of her husband’s death in an RAF fighter during the war. Worse still, Madge and her children, Cyril and Lily, are evacuated to a country house to avoid the air raids. The Doctor is waiting for them, having renovated the house in his own unique way. Under the tree, a gigantic present awaits, but the Doctor insists that it remain unopened until Christmas. Naturally, Cyril opens it early and climbs in, finding himself in another world. When the Doctor learns of this, he and Lily follow, and the Doctor explains that it literally is another world, one where the trees grow their own organic Christmas ornaments. Huge footprints in the snow reveal that Cyril wasn’t alone here. The Doctor and Lily find Cyril in a domed, castle-like structure where a king and queen carved from sentient wood are sizing the boy up as a host body for the collected consciousness of the forest outside – a forest which will soon be clear-cut by acid rain induced by human harvesters from Androzani Major. But Cyril isn’t up to the task, and to his own surprise, the Doctor is judged unfit for the task as well.

That’s when Madge Arwell shows up, having followed the Doctor and her children to this world through the gift-wrapped gateway. She’s also managed to drive the crew from Androzani off-planet and commandeered their harvester. And the trees decide she is their ideal host, but she already has the weight of the world bearing down on her: she hasn’t told her children that their father has died in the war, until it’s revealed for her by the trees.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Farren Blackburn
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Claire Skinner (Madge Arwell), Maurice Cole (Cyril Arwell), Holly Earl (Lily Arwell), Alexander Armstrong (Reg Arwell), Sam Stockman (Co-Pilot), Bill Bailey (Droxil), Paul Bazely (Ven-Garr), Arabella Weir (Billis), Spencer Wilding (Wooden King), Paul Kasey (Wooden Queen), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory)

Notes: Androzani Major was the site of murderous political intrigue in 1984‘s The Caves Of Androzani, at the end of which the fifth Doctor was forced to regenerate. This story doesn’t make clear if the forest snowscape is on Androzani Major or not. Actor Alexander Armstrong has a long association with the Doctor Who universe, having provided the voice Doctor Whoof Sarah Jane Smith’s alien computer, Mr. Smith, for the entire run of The Sarah Jane Adventures. The set of Sarah Jane’s attic also makes an appearance here, heavily redressed as the attic of the house where the Arwells are celebrating Christmas. Arabella Weir also has a voice-only Doctor Who connection; she starred as the Doctor in Big Finish’s continuity-busting Doctor Who Unbound story Exile in 2003.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Snowmen

Doctor WhoForlorn and bitter after the unexpected departure of Amy and Rory, the Doctor has retreated into hiding in Victorian London – actually, a cloud hovering above it – refusing to lift a finger to alter the destiny of the world. The human race is on its own, at least until a barmaid named Clara draws the Doctor’s attention to snowmen that seem to appear out of nowhere, during one of the Time Lord’s infrequent visits to London. Despite encountering Strax the Sontaran and the Silurian Madame Vastra, Clara unflinchingly asks for the Doctor’s help when she learns that the snowmen are made of snow that responds to the deepest fears of those around them. The Doctor follows Clara to her second job – as a governess taking care of the children at a mansion in the heart of London – and finds that something else lurks beneath a frozen pond on the estate. The mysterious Dr. Simeon is determined to claim it for himself, and he seems to command the slowly growing army of snowmen. But who is Simeon working for – and is all of the mystery finally enough to draw the Doctor out of his melancholy?

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Saul Metzstein
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Tom Ward (Captain Latimer), Richard E. Grant (Dr. Simeon), Catrin Stewart (Jenny), Neve McIntosh (Madame Vastra), Dan Starkey (Strax), Joseph Darcey-Alden (Digby), Ellie Darcey-Alden (Francesca), Liz White (Alice), Jim Conway (Uncle Josh), Cameron Strefford (Walter), Annabelle Dowler (Walter’s Mother), Ben Addis (Bob Chilcott), Sophie Miller-Sheen (Clara’s Friend), Daniel Hyde (Lead Workman), Ian McKellen (voice of the Great Intelligence), Juliet Cadzow (voice of the Ice Governess)

Doctor WhoNotes: The second Doctor encountered the Great Intelligence in Tibet, 1935, and again in the London Underground in the late 1960s. By showing the Intelligence a lunchbox with a map of the Underground, the eleventh Doctor could well be ensuring that the disembodied being well attempt its fateful takeover of the London subway system (an incursion which leads to the Doctor’s first meeting with Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, later promoted to Brigadier). The Intelligence’s usual minions, robotic Yeti, do not appear in this episode. A 1995 fan film, Downtime (referenced once already this season), depicts a third attempt by the Great Intelligence to gain a foothold on Earth via the Yeti. Clara first appeared in the season premiere, Asylum Of The Daleks. Doctor WhoGuest star Richard E. Grant was the ninth Doctor in an animated alternate universe in 2003’s Scream Of The Shalka (a web-based story that, while produced by the BBC’s interactive wing, has generally been relegated to the “unofficial” column), but is much better known for Withnail & I, in which he co-starred with Paul McGann. This episode debuts a new TARDIS interior (the second major rethink of the vehicle’s console room in Matt Smith’s era) and a new title sequence, only the third time in the show’s history that a new title sequence has premiered in the middle of a season (the other two occasions were the late-in-the-season transition from the fifth to sixth Doctor, and Patrick Troughton inheriting the William Hartnell titles for several episodes). The Doctor now says he is over a thousand years old, which lines up with the unofficial pre-publicity line that hundreds of years of isolation may have elapsed for him since The Angels Take Manhattan.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Time Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is confronted with a mystery: a powerful signal is emanating from a backwater planet, defying any attempt to translate or decipher it, and luring ships from nearly every spacefaring race to that world. Having salvaged the severed head of a Cyberman to harness its processing power, the Doctor attaches a piece of Gallifreyan communications technology to the head, presumably capable of translating any language, much like the TARDIS herself, and “Handles” promptly identifies the planet from which the signal is transmitting as Gallifrey, though it bears no resemblance to the Doctor’s home planet. The Doctor and Clara are invited to board the first ship to have arrived here, the Papal Mainframe of the Church. The head of the Church, Tasha Lem, reveals the true name of the mystery planet: Trenzalore. The Papal Mainframe is protecting Trenzalore with a force field, but all hell will break loose the moment that the other ships realize that not only has someone been granted access to the planet, but that someone happens to be the Doctor. Upon first setting foot on Trenzalore, the Doctor and Clara find that others lie in wait, including Weeping Angels. They narrowly escape, and this time the Doctor insists on visiting Trenzalore on his terms, using the TARDIS instead of Tasha Lem’s teleport. The signal emanates from a large crack in the wall of a church tower on Trenzalore, shaped like the crack that the Doctor witnessed numerous times during his early travels with Amy and Rory. The signal is in the Gallifreyan language, repeating one question over and over: “Doctor who?” – the question that the Doctor has been warned must never be answered. Soon, the occupants of the many ships orbiting Trenzalore lose their patience, and try to invade the planet, only to find that the Doctor has given up his travels in space and time to defend it. Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Weeping Angels and others attempt to land on Trenzalore, and are either driven back into space or destroyed.

Involuntarily returned to Earth by the TARDIS, Clara tries to resume her day-to-day life, only to be visited by Tasha Lem, piloting the Doctor’s timeship. She wants Clara to return to Trenzalore. Hundreds of years after he last saw her, the Doctor is dying of old age, able to regenerate no more. Tasha Lem wants Clara to visit him because the Doctor shouldn’t have to die alone.

But yet another force in the universe seems to believe that the Doctor shouldn’t have to die at all.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Jamie Payne
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Orla Brady (Tasha Lem), James Buller (Dad), Elizabeth Rider (Linda), Sheila Reid (Gran), Doctor WhoMark Anthony Brighton (Colonel Albero), Rob Jarvis (Abramal), Tessa Peake-Jones (Marta), Jack Hollington (Barnable), Sonita Henry (Colonel Meme), Kayvan Novak (voice of Handles), Tom Gibbons (Young Man), Ken Bones (Voice), Aidan Cook (Cyberman), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek/Cyberman voices), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 1), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 2), Ross Mullan (Silent), Dan Starkey (Sontaran), Karen Madison (Weeping Angel), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Peter Capaldi (The Doctor)

Notes: Daleks, Cybermen (including a unique Cyberman made of wood, echoing the King and Queen from The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe), Sontarans and Angels are seen to attempt landing on Trenzalore; others, such as the Terileptils (seen in only one story, 1982’s The Visitation), are mentioned by name only. Silurian Ark ships (Dinosaurs On A Spaceship) are also seen besieging Trenzalore. The device the Doctor attaches to “Handles” is indeed a communications device given to the Master by the High Council of Gallifrey before venturing into the Death Zone with orders to rescue the Doctor (The Five Doctors, 1983); the significance Doctor Whoof this reference lies in what happened before the Master was given that device in The Five Doctors: he was offered “a complete new life cycle” of regenerations, something which one may infer has been granted to the Doctor by the end of this story. The Punch & Judy-style puppet show performed on Trenzalore recounts the Doctor’s misadventures with the one-eyed Monoids in The Ark (1965).

The Silence, seen throughout the eleventh Doctor’s era, are part of the Church, and stand with the Doctor to defend Trenzalore; the Silents that pestered the Doctor in seasons past (The Impossible Astronaut, Day Of The Moon, The Wedding Of River Song) were part of a rogue task group led by Madame Kovarian to prevent the Doctor from ever reaching this point; obviously that group was not successful, even when they took great pains to kidnap infant Melody Pond to program her to assassinate the Doctor. The cracks, first glimpsed in The Eleventh Hour (and, in that story, attributed to Prisoner Zero), are apparently the Time Lords attempting to signal their location to the Doctor so he can retrieve Gallifrey and return it to its proper place in reality.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 08

Last Christmas

Doctor WhoFrom Clara’s roof, there arises such a clatter that she wakes up to investigate, finding a man dressed as Santa Claus…and two elves…and a crashed sleigh and wayward reindeer. If that scene isn’t surreal enough, the TARDIS appears, the Doctor emerges, and tells her she must do exactly as he says. They travel to a research base at the North Pole where the scientists live in fear of crab-like alien beings that attach themselves to victims’ heads and consume them; the victims are kept in a dream state, anesthetized from what’s actually happening to them. The beings attack both the base crew and the Doctor and Clara, but does everyone survive the attack, or succumb?

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Ben Wheatley
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Nick Frost (Santa Claus), Samuel Anderson (Danny Pink), Dan Starkey (Ian), Nathan McMullen (Wolf), Faye Marsay (Shona), Natalie Gumede (Ashley), Maureen Beattie (Bellows), Michael Troughton (Professor Albert)

Doctor WhoNotes: Michael Troughton is the son of Patrick Troughton, who was the second Doctor from 1966 through 1969; Michael’s brother David appeared in the David Tennant episode Midnight. Nick Frost has co-starred with Simon Pegg (the Editor from The Long Game) in a number of movies co-written and produced by Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Shaun Of The Dead, and The World’s End), as well as co-starring in the series Spaced with Pegg.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 09

The Return Of Doctor Mysterio

Doctor WhoOn the rooftop of an apartment building in New York City, the Doctor befriends a boy named Grant, entrusting him to hold onto an alien artifact for a moment. As Grant has a cold, and knows that his new friend is a doctor, he assumes the artifact is some sort of pill and swallows it, to the Doctor’s horror.

The Doctor returns years later, discovering that Grant has assumed a secret identity as the Ghost, a superhero with a habit of saving the day and then being summoned away when a device that he carries lights up. In reality, the device is a baby monitor…and Grant, in between super feats, pays the bills by working as a nanny, babysitting for a reporter he’s known (and had a crush on) since grade school. But the Doctor has also discovered a silent alien invasion of Earth, a years-long plan that’s much further along than most. And while he’s upset that Grant is drawing attention to himself rather than keeping his powers a secret, the Doctor will need the Ghost’s help to save the human race.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Ed Bazalgette
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Matt Lucas (Nardole), Justin Chatwin (Grant), Charity Wakefield (Lucy), Tomiwa Edun (Mr. Brock), Aleksandar Jovanovic (Mr. Sim), Logan Hoffman (young Grant), Daniel Lorente (teen Grant), Sandra Teles (Reporter), Tanroh Ishida (Operator), Vaughn Johseph (Soldier)

Notes: The Doctor says that time travel is complicated in New York City, and that it’s his fault, a reference to the Doctor Whotangle of temporal energy left behind in the wake of The Angels Take Manhattan (2012). Nardole was introduced in the preceeding story, The Husbands Of River Song, which happened to be the previous year’s Christmas special, hence the Doctor’s “being away” for a long time is both a meta reference and a hint that he spent years in the company of River Song. The Doctor somehow removed Nardole from King Hydroflax and “reassembled” him (in Nardole’s words); Nardole would remain with the 12th Doctor for the duration of Capaldi’s final season.

LogBook entry by Earl Green