In the Brown Stuff - Part Deux.

You may have heard that Gordon Brown didn’t turn his mic off. What happened next and the response to it is, however, the real story.

After all, and whether you agree with Brown said or not, was this not a private conversation? All politicians have them and no doubt say all sorts of things the public would be shocked to hear, and yet we all can reasonably assume that things like this are said all the time. And what about the things we all say in private that are all too different from what we say in polite society? Double standards, anyone? Or is Brown's real crime that he got caught?

And while some may say that different rules should apply to politicians, this seems quite self-serving. One moment, we want our politicians to be like us, and the next minute we want them to be inhumanly perfect. We can't have both. Perhaps we need to stop seeing politics as a calling or a means to the Promised Land, or an epic battle between good 'n evil, but merely as a job full of conflicted, compromised, weak and silly people like us. And in a similar vein, so should politicians themselves.

But the real hypocrisy lies in the response to what Brown said. We demand candour and openness from our politicians and even avoid the ballot box because 'they're all as bad as each other'. Well, actually, they're not and such immoral and lazy thinking is the root cause of our political malaise, along with a dysfunctional relationship with politics itself. Do we really know what we want our MPs to do? It seems to change day by day.

And as ever, it is the voters who are the main villains here. If Gillian Duffy can say what she wants, then so should Brown. Yet we refuse to hear honest opinions if they clash with our preconceptions. This will have dire consequences. On the one hand, it has lead to spin, dishonesty, doublespeak and secrecy on the part of those who need our votes, which has lead in turn to corruption, embezzlement and indeed £1645 duck houses. We have to take a fair share of the blame for this.

But it is even more harmful than that. Whoever gets in next week will have to make cuts. Very big cuts. And so, a lot of enemies. Yet where is the honest debate? Where are the figures? The discussion? The bare facts? You won't get them because no sane politician is going to tell the truth to the public. We would rip them apart because they dared rouse us from our La-La-World retreat from reality. We all know it will come to pass but we're too spineless and stupid to face up to it. We then get the leaders we deserve.

I hate Brown, but I hate humbug and the 'have-cake-and-eat-it' mentality of the British body politic even more. Isn't it sad that Brown is done down, in the end, not for lies but for an honest opinion? And as I have said before, this story has only made the news because we have collectively decided he is a loser again. Never mind why Brown or Clegg or Cameron should be PM – why would anyone want to run a country with such a blind and pig-foul electorate in the first place?

Doctor Who, Series V, Episode IV: Stone Cold Tedium.

DOCTOR WHO
'The Time of Angels'
24/04/2010
BBC One

The day will come when ‘Whostorians" will note the weird parallels between Nu Who and New Labour. Both re-launched what were seen as naff, worn-out franchises, both to great success but at the cost of their original values. Both also saw a single figure raised to almost idolatrous heights – be it Tony Blair or Russell T. Davies – who then plummeted to earth when ego and hubris brought spectacular nemesis.

The pub bores will no doubt swill many a pint over David Tennant too. Charismatic, young and the object of almost hysterical devotion, he – like Blair – jumped before an over-rated Scotsman finally took over and ran everything into the ground. True, one can stretch the idea too far: unlike Blair, Tennant is still loved, and certainly deserves some if not all of that adulation. And it was RTD who wrote ‘Torchwood: Children of Earth’, as scathing a satire of the New Labour years as you could hope for.

But still, the parallels are… eerie. Not least because Peter Capaldi keeps turning up both in the Whoniverse and as a thinly veiled Alastair Campbell. Or how 70s feminista Sarah Jane Smith was reborn as a sort of Blair Babe, a mumsy authority figure who sacrificed a family life for a career and an unrequited love for a distant, Christ-like figure.

Even the rise and rise of Who producers BBC Cymru echoes the ascent of a more confident, more assertive post-devolution Wales. Meanwhile, the growing clamour of criticism for Stephen Moffat’s tenure as ‘Show Runner’ echoes the slow rot and decay of the post-1997 political settlement under Gordon Brown. Moffat also shows another Brownish trait. He simply can’t stop living off past glories, whether they be an end to Tory Boom ‘n Bust, ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, pouring tons of money into public services, ‘The Empty Child’, throwing Nokias at people or ‘Blink’.

For what was last Saturday’s episode, "The Time of Angels", but a trawl through an ever-more tarnished legacy, at the cost of fresh ideas or anything to say? Moffat’s last outing – the two-part "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead – had all his tropes, tricks and eccentric plot devices, as well as recycled dialogue from previous Moff episodes. The net result was a bloated regurgitation of ideas that worked last time but now seemed worn and dated precisely because they relied so much on their own novelty.

This episode features two of Moffat's 'big ideas'. Namely: Mrs. Who, aka Professor Riversong. She's a sort of bastard lovechild of Elric (in that she’s FUCKING DOOMED) and Bernice Summerfield (in that she’s a bit foxy, likes digging things up and spends a lot of off-screen time with the Doctor). Only, this is the point where she hasn't become a Prof yet, is just out of jail and no doubt hasn't married the Doc either, as he keeps flitting in and out of her timeline in a random sort of way. (Not At All Like The Time Traveller's Wife or, indeed, The Girl In The Fireplace, you understand. Oh NOOOOOO...)

The other returning idea (or rehash of old glories if you wish) comes in the form of the Weeping Angels. For those who have not yet seen "Blink", they're those statues that come to life when you're not looking and steal your potential future from you. This time though, they are NEW AND IMPROVED, with the ability to spread through images, including televisions (Not At All Like The Ring!), and steal voices of their victims (Not At All Like The Vashta Narada!), not to mention being able to infect their victims like a sort of virus. (OK, that's quite original, I'll give him that...) Also, they now cut to the chase and just kill you. HOW'S THAT FOR INNOVATION???

There are some other original ideas here though. The concept of clergy-as-squaddies is rather good, not least because it doesn't go down the path of cyber-goth/Warhammer 40,000 pastiche. Yet the tensions between the Doctor and the 'Father' are just a retread of the equally pointless tensions between Richard E. Grant's Doc and Jim Norton's Major Kennet in "Scream of the Shalka", right down to the squabbling over a radio in an underground setting. The only difference being, of course, that you really don't care if the Father dies or not.

The Doctor also gets some decent dialogue too, for once, and starts sounding like a new Doctor rather than a David Tennant tribute. Still, that doesn't last long, and soon Matt Smith reverts to waving his sonic screwdriver about and doing Who 10's hyperactive ferret act. His 'look of surprise' when it's revealed the Angels are out and about is meant to be dramatic but is so overdone it comes across more as accidental self-parody that wouldn't look out of place in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.

But the highlight is Alex Kingston's performance as Riversong. True, the way she summons the Doctor via a message from the (relative) past was done to death in Blink. But Kingston brings a real crackle and swagger to her cocky and knowing character. In doing so, she gives the episode a sort of depth and soul it otherwise lacks. And yes, there is even more unoriginality when she does a Lara Croft at one point. Yet she is also the most interesting character here because she is both the story's ambivalent protagonist and the one with the most going on under the surface. Her 'husband', meanwhile, seems like more of a cardboard cutout, following her lead and delivering lines that wouldn't be out of place in a bad action film.

Speaking of flat and insipid, Amy Pond remains awful. Her character development in this episode can be summed up as both obnoxious and slappable. But sadly, you know the Angels won't snuff her out, so instead teeth must be gritted as she stumbles around the place like a crap heckler or a particularly unsympathetic damsel in distress. Alas, the Doctor does not leave her to her death. That would have been fun. The rest of the cast may as well not be there.

All in all then we have one more shit-to-lukewarm episode on our hands. Ironically for a Moffat episode, it's the lack of originality that stands out. Beyond all the examples just given, it's plain that the episode's high-tech military force being picked off piecemeal by an extraterrestial foe (with a numerical advantage!) is pretty much Aliens for a teatime audience. And why did that chav twat from The Streets have to make a cameo at the start of the episode? Why oh why? It would have been more fun to see him get abused in a Turkish prison - now that would have been entertaining!

Still, there's always part two, which is next week and - if the preview is anything to go by - has Amy Pond still not getting killed and Matt Smith shouting a lot. Who knows? Who actually fucking cares?

WHOPOINTS 5

Doctor Who, Series V, Episode III: Half-Decent Episode Shocka!

DOCTOR WHO
'Victory of the Daleks'
17/04/2010
BBC One

One must admit to a bit of pre-empting here: Mark Gatiss' episode, "Victory of the Daleks" wasn't as shit as I feared it to be.

In fact, it was all rather good fun if you consider the whole 'Daleks & Churchill & Spitfires in Space'-type vibe. When it's breezing along like this, the episode comes alive mainly because it's having fun and so doesn't really have to deal with small matters like depth and pacing.

Because that is the real problem here: as one critic has already pointed out, the story feels like a two or four-parter Old Who jammed into 42 minutes with all that implies. It rushes along at a great speed and doesn't let the viewer digest each event before leaping on to the next.

The Daleks themselves do benefit from a nice set of touches though, like 'ironsides' painted up in WW2 khaki, and a willingness to make the tea, do filing and be killed because they're not 'dalek' enough. But it still feels more like a new toy line being launched rather than an old threat made new and scary once more. Boring old sods like me will also no doubt observe that their new luridly primary colour scheme echoes that of the 1960s Doctor Who films. At least they're not as 'emo' as the RTD era pepperpots-of-death. But still, there's too much emphasis on what they look like than what they do, which is what they're meant to be about.

Matt Smith's Doctor remains a work in progress. He’s still Tennant-ing at an alarming rate, whilst trying and failing to strike his own note. That said, the scene where he threatens the Daleks with a Jammy Dodger is inspired. Karen Gillan still comes across as Karen Gillan playing Karen Gillan - we don't feel for her character like we should. Yet the fact that she doesn't 'remember' the Daleks (despite their recent antics) is an interesting touch with many intriguing implications. So too is the way that this time the pair actually play an equal part in the resolution rather than one overshadowing the other. (As was the case in the last two benighted episodes.) This isn't ruined too much by yet more cringe-worthy dialogue between the two at the end of the episode (as was the case last week), which nonetheless suggests that the Moff-Beast, as story editor, is developing habits every bit as irritating as RTD’s.

Speaking of which, there is much symbolism here. RTD's era is symbolically blown away alongside with its take on the Daleks by new Daleks belonging very firmly to the Moffat era. Coincidence? Or some weird Oedipal shit that the Moff seems to be working out? Once again there's the 'Scottish' joke/obsession too, which rather makes one yearn for good old Terrance Dicks, who always had the courtesy to leave his hobbyhorses at home and away from the typewriter.

As for the rest of the cast, Ian McNeice's take on Winston Churchill seems alive and believable. While avoiding being that of a mere pastiche, it captures his heroic and human traits alongside the genuine darkness that at times surfaced both in the episode and in reality. The real moral of the story, that the ends do not justify the means (unless you are a Dalek/Nazi), is made all too clear through McNeice’s performance, his Churchill nearly, but not quite, entering seriously dodgy Faustian territory. This is only held back by his grasp on his humanity and his friendship for the Doctor, which is wonderfully depicted.

Bill Paterson's portrayal of Dr. Bracewell, who turns out to be the mere tool of the Daleks in more ways than one, is very effective too, despite how little the script gives him. His character's journey has a genuine poignancy and Paterson makes us feel for him. In a sense it's his character's story - a triumph of humanity vs. the soulless totalitarianism of the Daleks and the real life monsters they represent.

It's a mixed bag, then, that's true. But what stands out is how much fun it all is at times, a sort of gloriously absurd B-movie at teatime with some human drama thrown in for good measure. It's a bit of a shame that it's also trying to do too much with too little, and does feel like a toy commercial at points, but be honest - when's the last time you've had a bit of a laugh with a Dalek episode anyway?


WHOPOINTS 7

Doctor Who, Series V, Episode II: Epic Fail (Whale).

DOCTOR WHO
'The Beast Below'
10/04/2010
BBC One

So the second episode of the Moffat era is here. But is it any better than the lukewarm "11th Hour"? At least it leaps straight into the action, as Who XI and rather mad new companion Amy Pond find themselves on Starship UK. This constitutes the fag-end of Great Britain, carrying what's left of the UK to safety after Solar Flares make the Earth a bit crispy. (Which ties it in nicely with the existing Who chronology, if you remember "The Ark In Space".)

Once there they discover it to be a grim place indeed. Children weep silently, as sinister mechanical overseers called 'smilers' discipline and punish. For there are a few seriously nasty secrets here, not least a Queen whose memory keeps getting wiped. And then there’s a charming scene where the Doc & Amy get caught up in a tidal wave of vomit. Yes, it's wholesome entertainment all round as the Doctor is forced to consider giving someone a quick lobotomy. Yay.

The episode lacks teeth. Both leads (Matt Smith and Karen Gillan) still seem smug and complacent. It’s like they've not quite realised that there’s more to it than just passing the sodding audition. On the other hand, Smith actually tries to de-Tennant the Doc in this one, albeit in a way that suggests Moffat really, REALLY wanted Martin Clunes instead. But the effort seems wasted as he still lapses into Tennant-esque impotent rage for the most part.

In terms of all those de rigeur high concept Moffat ideas, The Smilers are too pretentious to be really scary. But the novel use of glasses full of water placed on the floor (to reveal... well that would be telling) is a great touch. Meanwhile, the conflicts between Doc & Amy are surprisingly free of RTD's old rancour and misery. The truly clever part of the story is where Amy revolts against the Doctor because, paradoxically, she understands he is right.

On the other hand, while the resolution to the 'unresolvable' dilemma is a sound one, it all seems far too hurried and rushed, like a four part Old Who serial jammed into 42 minutes. And while the resolution also means that Amy Pond gets something to do, the Doctor is reduced to a bit player as a result. This somehow doesn't seem right, not least when you consider that the best Doctor-Companion solutions to cosmic problems have always involved equal or at least substantial contributions from both sides. It's always been a show about the poor sods taken along for the ride, but it's never been called Doctor Who for nothing either. In this sense, Moffat gets the balance wrong, perhaps being too keen to establish Amy at the cost of the dynamics between her and the Doc himself.

And of course, some of the dialogue is pretty cheesy, in fact, almost ST: OS-like in levels of pure Stilton. Some of it is painful to remember, let alone quote without cringing.

But the real problem is that the core conceit of the episode - that Starship UK is built on top of a massive Space Whale - is either a blatant rip-off or may as well be. The Space Whale, a benign intergalactic cetacean enslaved and used as a transport sounds eerily like the Acanti, of Marvel Comics fame, who just so happen to also be... benign intergalactic cetaceans enslaved and used as transports. Going back to the Star Trek angle, the Space Whale's secretly maternal and cuddly nature, combined with its ruthless exploitation by ghastly humans, sounds eerily like the Horta from "The Devil in the Dark" episode, so much so that you have to wonder what is really original about this story.

After all, a feisty redhead companion? We've already had Donna Noble. Angry conflicted Doctor wondering why he puts so much effort into protecting all those human bastards? Who III was doing that 40 years ago. Thinly veiled satire on British society? "The Happiness Patrol" wants an apology for all the shit hurled at it over the intervening 23 years.

It doesn't help that Starship UK doesn't seem particularly believable. This is not because of the swish CGI effects, but precisely because it feels like a collection of clichés, Union Jack Kitsch and bric-a-brac on a soundstage rather than a living, breathing place or collection of places, like that hinted at masterfully in "The End of the World". (Which, incidentally, still comes out looking good in comparison after half a decade). That was itself the second episode in a new series with a new Doctor, where the companion's first trip is in the far future, and so, of course, even that's unoriginal, right down to the penultimate shot where Doc and Companion stare wistfully into space after the mayhem is resolved. In that sense, this is less drama and more repetition without end, and doesn't bode well for the rest of the season.

Still, we get to see what Mark Gatiss does to Winston Churchill and the Daleks next week. What could possibly go wrong? Answers on a postcard to...

WHOPOINTS 5/10

Doctor Who, Series V, Episode I: Meh ad excelsis.

DOCTOR WHO
'The Eleventh Hour'
03/04/2010
BBC One

So farewell then, David Tennant. You wowed the crowd though the existential angst was a massive downer and RTD had long passed his sell-by date. 'Look to the future' as your weird two-hearted alter ego might say... And any man who can admit to liking Coldplay and not come across as a total wanker while simultaneously doing Hamlet justice deserves at least some adulation.

And then there was Christopher Ecclestone, whose one series in the role still has a haunting resonance, despite the naff aliens, munchkin Daleks and Captain Bloody Jack.

This leaves us with Doctor Who XI, the curiously shaped Matt Smith, and new turnip-headed showrunner Stephen Moffatt. It's said that the Moff's Nu Who episodes (Blink, The Girl in the Fireplace, Forest of the Dead, The Empty Child etc.) were some of the best, but they all had a tendency to get too caught up in their own cleverness and abandon RTD's never-ending grief-fest for a sort of fetishisation of the Doc which was no more true to the source material than ol' Russell was.

The first episode of this new paradigm thingie is, then, a curate's egg farted out by a conflicted chicken. The annoyances are still there: all the whizz-bangs, overwrought drama, the ADHD-friendly pace aimed at kids (and some adults) with five-second attention spans, the improbable solutions to improbable situations, the wholly unconvincing CGI effects and the inevitable love interest rammed in to keep the morons who actually like soap operas interested too, not to mention the occasional flashes of scenery-chewing melodrama that blighted RTD's work at its worst.

In other ways, what has changed is simply cosmetic. Whilst RTD felt a neurotic urge to keep reminding us that, yes, he was gay and - FUCKING HELL! - there were other homosexuals on the planet (to which a 2005 audience should really have replied - 'who gives a fuck either way'?), so the Moff brings his own neuroses. Yes, he's Scottish, so it is no surprise that the inevitable 'Scotland's Great & England's shit' in-joke is invoked, not to mention a reference to the Jock lust for fried food. It's all horribly self-indulgent attention whoring, like a 14-year-old girl fretting about her weight and insisting on telling everyone about it every 15 seconds. What has been Nu Who's main flaw is its constant self consciousness, which manifests as both a itch that must be scratched and a lazy reliance on its heritage.

Equally cosmetic, if you'll forgive the irony, is Matt Smith as the new Doctor. It's fitting that he spends most of the episode in David Tennant's old costume before donning a new set of clothes that look a bit like... David Tennant's old costume. Obviously every new Doctor must thrash about a bit before they become their own man, but it's telling that whereas poor old Colin Baker nailed it in seconds, Matt Smith still comes across as a sort of tepid tribute act at the end of his first episode, right down to the 'timey-wimey' clichés and the weird Freudian fixation on the Sonic-Screwdriver-As-Magic-Wand schtick.

Of course, much is made of the fact that the Doctor saves the world sans Tardis (which is too busy turning into an expensive and overdone Steampunk pastiche) or the aforementioned screwdriver, like he used to before the BBC started throwing money at its one-time sci-fi Cinderella. But this seems like a drastic over-compensation for over-used tropes, as is the point when XI proclaims loudly that he IS the Doctor mainly for dramatic effect, but in part, one suspects because he hasn't otherwise sealed the deal.

It doesn't help that Matt Smith is faintly insipid. His voice lacks force and his performance is without sparkle or real presence, like there's no real passion for the gig. This is not helped by scripted dialogue that would sound stilted and routine if it wasn't coming out of Tennant's or Ecclestone's mouth, all of which creates an uneasy sense that we've spent the last five years watching a truly monumental turd polishing exercise rather than a decent sci-fi series. Worse, there is nothing remarkable about this Doctor - his costume is staid and unimaginative and his personality is indistinct. Perhaps it doesn't help that Smith's off-stage demeanour is that of a preening, self-satisfied BAPA bollock, right down to the ridiculous 'look-at-me-I'm-an-Ac-TOR' leather trilby he sports when spotted in Confidential, and the lack of personal depth and nuance he brings to the role. Tennant had old man's eyes. Smith does not.

Equally uninspiring is new time tottie Amy Pond, played by an inevitably Scottish Karen Gillan. Leaving aside the absurdity of a little girl growing up alone in a large house with an on-the-run alien criminal hiding in a room she can't notice, whilst somehow retaining a Scots accent AND ending up as a Kissergram (why does the Doctor never travel with any Plain Janes?), she is also far too abrasive and unsympathetic a character. Gillan's performance is also too cold fish and patronising, and there is none of the immediate, easy rapport with the audience that, say, Billy Piper, Freema Agyeman and Catherine Tate - or for that matter, Katy Manning - brought to the table.

Did I mention that the plot has holes you could pilot a battleship through and a cottage hospital setting that is a far-too-blatant retread of 'Spearhead From Space'? (The Doctor even gets his new clothes there a la Pertwee/III. It's surprising he doesn't steal Bessie for good measure, but this being HEAVY HANDED ROARING NU WHO, he settles for a fire engine instead.) Or that the monster (an enormous snake-like shape-shifter with silly teeth, that hangs from the top of the screen like a elephant's penis so they didn't have to put any more thought into its design) is crap?

So are the other aliens - giant eyeballs flying through space in flimsy space ships that look like they were rendered by a 17-year-old graphics student on a knackered Amiga A1200. The big Nu Who delusion seems not to be that it's as good or better than the old series but that its production values are ultimately any better, and in terms of crap monsters, they most plainly aren't. They even had the cheek to feature a montage of the Doctor's past foes, including Sea Devils, who somehow seem start-of-the-art by comparison.

And yet, parts of this episode do actually work. The possibility that Pond is as much psycho stalker as new BFF and groupie is intriguing, but doubtless will be buggered up. Whilst her hapless boyfriend Rory, played with suitably floppy pathos by Arthur Darvill, serves as an effective foil, quite literally Amy's Nurse to Amy's Doctor. His role is no doubt destined to be 'the other woman' in the Doctor's relationship with his new companion, but it would be nice if more was done with an intriguing character. The scene where the Doctor searches his memory (using a gloriously surreal time lapse photography special effect) is inspired, and the plot device of 'the crack' (apparently in a wall, but actually in the fabric of space-time itself) is genuinely ominous. It remains to be seen whether the good bits will outnumber the bad parts to a degree sufficient enough to make it different from the previous four series, but for now perhaps this series deserves just enough rope to hang itself...

...Apart from the pisspoor new rendition of the theme tune, which is in turn overly orchestral to the point of self-parody, has appalling timing and ultimately sounds like Drum 'n Bass meets Ice Cream van. Murray Gold, hang your head in SHAME...

WHOPOINTS 6/10