Obamaphobia

If there's one thing that did set my alarm bells ringing in EoT1, it was the inclusion of the esteemed President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. While RTD's penchant for celebrity cameos means we've already seen real-world politicians in the Whoniverse (hello Ann Widdecombe), having Obama as POTUS felt wrong somehow.

Does it make any sense? Until very recently, the politicians of the RTD era were fictionalized. In Aliens of London the Slitheen bump off the incumbent Prime Minister and replace him with "Joseph Green". This doesn't last long, obviously, and Harriet Jones takes charge. Thanks possibly to the Doctor's whisper campaign against her, she's out in May 2008 to "Harold Saxon", who quickly goes insane and kills himself, his entire cabinet and the US President. He may or may not be succeeded by one Aubrey Fairchild, depending on whether you count original Who novels published by the BBC to be canon; if so, Fairchild dies sometime circa the 2009 Dalek invasion. In 2009 Brian Green is definitely, canonically PM, but probably not for long given how Torchwood: Children of Earth finishes up.

Obviously we have less information about American politicians in the Whoniverse, but we do know that in 2008 Arthur Coleman Winters was President, or at least President-Elect, however that's possible, of the USA. It seems strange that a world that may not have had George W Bush or even 9/11 should still be electing Obama in late '08. Given that the Earth is constantly under highly visible attack from aliens these days, wouldn't a candidate with a better track record on military and national security issues have made more sense? Or is Barack one of those "fixed points" in history we've been hearing a lot about lately. (I like him, but that might be overestimating his importance just a little.)

I think I see what RTD was trying to do. After introducing one rubbish, fictional Prez to be killed off by the Master just a couple of years back, it would have had little impact to do it again. They could have not named the President, but let's face it, if the back of his head belongs to a black man he's obviously Barack, and if it doesn't, that's not the implicit political statement that RTD wants to be distracting attention from his swansong.

So we're stuck with President Obama and his speech about a recession that doesn't really make sense in the Whoniverse (I think if we'd been invaded by Daleks and our entire planet towed across the universe one year ago, the economy would be a bit of a secondary issue). Unless, and here's a theory I do quite like, the inclusion of the "real" President is symptomatic of The End of Time also being The End of the RTD Timeline. The Whoniverse Earth has had a pretty crazy ride over the past five years, but maybe this is where it ends. No more Presidents and Prime Ministers being assassinated or discredited by aliens on an annual basis. A return to the even keel of stable, "normal" history, at least until Steven Moffat decides if and how he wants to much that up beyond recognition again.

I wouldn't put it past Russell T Davies to employ a big reset switch in EoT2 tomorrow: it's a device he doesn't seem to see much point in sparing any need to use sparingly. Bring back the Time Lords, wipe out the whole post-Time War Earth continuity, which frankly went completely bananas without their stewardship. (Even inside of the RTD era, episodes like 2005's 2012-set Dalek make no sense at all in the light of the events of the subsequent few seasons.)

In many ways it'd be a great relief to get back to normal, have a Doctor on the run from his own people in a rackety old TARDIS, and an Earth where alien invasions are unthinkable again, instead of an annual occurrence. In other respects it'd be a massive, lazy cheat on Russell's part - encouraging future writers not to care about tight plotting or logical consequences because, hey, we can always reinstall a clean timeline at the end of our tenure. I suppose there's no point in speculating about it until we see what EoT2 has to say, in about 24 hours from now. Until then!

Anagramania

Oh dear, I can't believe I hadn't noticed this before.

Wilfred Mott's name is an anagram of Time Lord with a few letters left over.

Only on Friday will be know if his true identity is TIME LORD WTF?! or TIME LORD FTW!!!

The End of Time Part One, Part One

Well, I'm sure I will be able to get blog-writing material out of The End of Time for a good couple of weeks... but let's just say that my reaction to Part One was very positive. I watched it before Christmas dinner with Tessa, her Who-positive brother, and her Who-clueless sister, and a good time seemed to be had by all.

And then of course I logged onto the internet, and was inundated with the usual bile. Worst episode since Timelash! A plotless, pointless mess! Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Russell T Davies!

It seems to me that, at this stage, RTD Who is not unlike US politics. Russell T Davies has always, unrepentantly, made the sort of Doctor Who he likes. (Crucially, the general public seems to like it too - EoT1's AI figures of 87, while not record-breaking for modern Doctor Who, are comfortably awesome.) There is however a significant faction in Who fandom for whom the sort of thing that Russell T Davies likes are exactly what they hate. And these people no longer even bother to weigh up the merits of RTD's style of show. If he's not making their definition of "real Who", no point in weighing up the many good points of the show he is making: let's just shout unconstructively over the top of any other opinion till he's gone.

Meanwhile those of us who found EoT1 hugely entertaining - so much more interesting, ambitious and witty than almost anything else that's on modern television, so God bless you Sir Russell! - just have to shut out the noise and wait for what will without a doubt be an even more memorable Part Two. And yes, this is a story in two parts! So for the many people who are asserting that the new superpowered Master, or whatever other plot point, makes no sense whatsoever, can we just wait one week to find out if that's actually true?

The End of Time Part One is an episode that - gasp! - raises more questions than it answers. For me that's a huge positive. Where on earth have the Time Lords been hiding all this time? What the hell is going on with the Master? Are the Silver Cloak way more than they appear? Who's that white-haired woman then? Can Donna possibly survive this one? Can the human race possibly survive this one?

I for one can't wait to find out. This could be the best cliffhanger of the whole RTD era, given the disappointingly cheaty resolution of the one at the end of The Stolen Earth...

Captain Quirk

We are halfway through Planet of Evil in our occasional Tom Baker chronological rewatch and... well, we're certainly enjoying it, but is this the most Star Trek-like episode ever? An isolated planet quite literally on the final frontier, a scientist there who's behaving a little oddly, a Federation, sorry Morestran, starship turning up to investigate, a jungle created in the studio and an alien menace made of pure energy to save money.

The Hinchcliffe era is often lauded as a high point - if not THE high point - of Doctor Who, but approximately halfway in I'm not sure if it really deserves that sort of immunity from criticism. What it has, in spades, is a sort of grim and gritty hyper-seriousness. The situations are deadly, the bodies keep piling up, and while the Fourth Doctor has a clownish streak there's never the slightest hint of him not being in desperate earnest about the predicaments he finds himself in. (How that would all change under Hinchcliffe's successor...)

The charming, bumbling Harry Sullivan has now been removed from the TARDIS lineup, and it's interesting how much harder-edged that immediately makes the show. That this era's Doctor is a big fan of humanity as a species is a matter of record - see the famous eulogy from Ark in Space - but in Season 13 it's starting to become obvious he no longer cares much about humans as individuals. I criticized the most recent episode of Sarah Jane Adventures, The Gift, for Sarah's xenophobia and throwaway callousness towards the Blathereen, but watching Planet of Evil it's easy to see where she got it from. The Doctor professes to be actively tempted to hop into the TARDIS and leave the entire Morestran crew to die, if it wasn't for the small matter of the entire universe being endangered.

We'll see more evidence that this most alien of Doctors feels little empathy for individual humans as the season goes on. He does seem to be fiercely protective of Sarah, of course, where he mostly just verbally abused Harry for being an idiot. I wonder how much of the early dynamic of the new series arose from RTD's love for this era (apparently the man's favorite ever story is Ark in Space). The Ninth Doctor's unswerving devotion to Rose ("I could save the world but lose you!") while constantly belittling "Mickey the idiot" is very Season 12. Of course, Sarah's exit at the end of The Hand of Fear is the proof of the pudding when it comes to the Fourth Doctor's alienness. Of course she matters to him, but he's not of her world, don't try to understand or second-guess his feelings, one day out of the blue he's just going to show her the door.

Anyway, back to grimness and grit: a lot of old school fans want and need that out of their Who. That and plenty of spaceships, aliens and scientific pseudobabble. "Real sci-fi" has a checklist of such approved elements, and takes them all VERY SERIOUSLY INDEED. (I imagine that devotees of the Hinchcliffe era were big fans of the recent Battlestar Galactica reboot too.) The enemies of "real sci-fi" are magical realism, metaphor, satire and silliness - hello the Sylvester McCoy era!

I've always felt that I disliked Eric Saward's mid-80s vision of Who above all others, but I suddenly find it easier to sympathize with him now that I realize that, in many ways, he was just trying to recreate Hinchcliffe Who. Lots of violence and death, heavy reliance on popular old foes to kick the era off, a clownish Doctor (in a literal clownsuit this time), and a certain humorlessness to the approach. You can imagine him being absolutely baffled about how, ten years later, this tack would lead the show not to critical adulation this time, but cancellation.

Myself, I like my Who as quirky and metaphorical as possible, and I'm glad that Russell T Davies kept those factors high in the new mix. Planet of Evil is all very well, but if I wanted a bunch of aggressive, unlikeable characters (the Doctor included) posturing for dominance, spouting clunky, po-faced dialogue and then being killed by a sentient outline, I might as well go watch 60s Trek. Hinchcliffe Who is so straight-down-the-line and serious, but is it actually that much fun? My personal jury's still out on that one, but I guess we have many of the recognized classics to come. Let's see if they can win me over...

Why Let Zygons Be Bygones?

Terror of the Zygons strikes me as a pretty average yarn, enlivened by some above-average moody direction by Douglas Camfield and... probably the best-designed aliens never to have made a return appearance in Doctor Who.

It's easy to forget how hard it is to create a truly iconic race of monsters for a show like Who. The Daleks and Cybermen came out of opposite ends of the Hartnell era. Troughton's tenure added only the Ice Warriors, not that they've been seen since the early 70s themselves. With Pertwee came nearly-classic foes the Silurians and the Sea Devils, and then the Sontarans... who are possibly the last great recurring baddie in 36 years.

When a monster is any kind of a hit with the general public, the tendency is to bring it back as quickly as possible. The Slitheen and Judoon are Russell T Davies' big attempts at "icon" rubber-suited aliens, and both have been modest successes, although their main comebacks have been in the Sarah Jane Adventures. The Ood were an even bigger success, and seem to be writing themselves firmly into the mythology of the modern show, even if they have a big drawback in the form of not being remotely villainous unless possessed by Satan himself. I've already hinted that I'd like to see more of the Flood, and Steven Moffat would be missing a trick if he didn't bring back his own scariest creations, the Weeping Angels, before too long.

So why has the Doctor never had a rematch with the Zygons? In terms of design, the whispering, bodysnatching octopoids were hit straight out of the park. The organic technology inside their spacecraft, all slimy nodules and veined, eyeball-like viewscreens, is a high watermark for the series. James Acheson, the costume designer, would go on to win three Oscars. Perhaps we have to blame the Skarasen, that deeply unconvincing refugee from Invasion of the Dinosaurs, for letting the side down - the Zygons do subsist on Skarasen milk, after all, so maybe it was contractual that one could not return without the other.

Or perhaps Who is already at saturation point for eternally returning villains with the Daleks, the Cybermen, and at a pinch the Sontarans. Once you get any more obscure than The Big Three, you run a big risk of alienating the non-fan audience and losing viewers; in the mid-80s, it was Eric Saward's obsession with arcane continuity (see Attack of the Cybermen et al) that almost scuttled the show for all time.

Which is very sad for the Zygons, the Ice Warriors, the Yeti and other great monster concepts that never quite made it into the Dalek and Cybermen's league. But I guess there's always Big Finish. And sometimes, just sometimes, against all the odds, they do get one more hour in the primetime sun - just ask the Macra.

Prosthetic Vogan Gents

With their bumpy prosthetic foreheads, their flowing white locks and their aggressive, militaristic attitude towards restoring the honor of their people (well, if Vorus is anything to go by), the Vogans resemble a certain warlike Star Trek race more than anything else we've ever seen in Who, before or since.

The one big difference? The Vogans live on a planet of gold, and adorn themselves and their dwelling-places with the stuff.

I hereby move that we should rechristen them... as the BLINGons.

Hey, there wasn't ever a showdown between the Klingons and the Borg in ST:TNG, was there? If there had been, I think there'd be a strong argument that the whole Star Trek relaunch might have been cribbed from a long-forgotten viewing of Revenge of the Cybermen, on some subconscious level...

Sigh-bermen

It is intensely frustrating to rewatch Season 12 and to find yourself enjoying Revenge of the Cybermen more than officially rubber-stamped classics like The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks; because for all that is good about it, you can't help but admit that those who think of it as the season's embarrassing clunker do have a case. And that case is the Cybermen themselves.

There is so much that is good about Revenge. The excellent reuse of the Nerva Beacon sets, the chilly and paranoid space-plague scenario, a pretty fair stab at an alien race in the Vogans. The supporting cast is great, even if Kevin Stoney's incredible face and presence is wasted under a ton of prosthetics. Kellman and Vorus make for interesting and contrasting villains, there are great setpieces like the Doctor escaping from Kellman's electrified room, and the grand finale of the story arc, with Nerva Beacon plunging down on a collision course with Voga, the Doctor and Sarah bound and helpless on the bridge, is the most ambitious and pulse-pounding moment of the Hinchcliffe era yet (certainly on paper). The underground sequences shot at Wookey Hole are awesomely atmospheric and the direction is generally top-notch. What's not to like?

Well, in many ways Revenge is the anti-Genesis. Genesis is a boring, derivative Terry Nation script that succeeds because it single-handedly revitalizes the Daleks by introducing the electrifying figure of Davros, their creator. Revenge is a tense, interesting (try to tell me that Vogans aren't infinitely more interesting than Thals!) Gerry Davis script that fails because, well, it ruins the Cybermen, so thoroughly and devastatingly that they still haven't recovered from it.

The Cybermen are my favorite Doctor Who monster. This despite the fact that many of their sixties episodes are lost; Tomb, when it turned up, was less good than its hype, and I don't like Invasion that much at all; Revenge and its 80s successors - well, I'll get to them; and the new series Cybermen have been ridiculous at worst, and second fiddles to the Daleks at best. I can only conclude that the Target novelizations had a considerable effect on me in my teens.

Because the idea of the Cybermen is great. Humans who have removed every part of themselves that makes them human and "weak", and want to carry out the same upgrades on everyone else they meet. I always tell ST:NG fans that the Borg are pretty cool and all, but they've got nothing on the Cybermen. But pointing to any episodes that might prove this has never been easy.

The Cybermen of Revenge, while they do look awesome, are a disgrace. Their leader displays a full gamut of human emotions, as you might well expect from a serial in which they're bent on "Revenge". They have no interest in cybernizing anyone, preferring to utilize humans in a variety of damnfool schemes that don't make any sense, and which Cybermen would doubtless perform more efficiently. Worst of all, Revenge is the story in which the Cybermen suddenly develop the most preposterous weakness since DC's Green Lantern was powerless in the face of the color yellow. Despite the fact that there is no reason at all that Cybermen should need or want to breathe, suddenly, for no apparent reason, gold is fatal to them if inhaled. I'd harp on about how nonsensical their plan to blow up gold-rich planetoids such as Voga is, but really, worse was to come in the 80s. I still have nightmares about droves of Cybermen dying in agony from being hit by gold coins fired by a teenage girl's catapult, and not in the good way.

I don't know why it has proved so difficult for generations of Who scribes and script editors to get the Cybermen right. Thankfully the gold weakness seems to have been scrapped for the 21st century, but they still can't seem to get the cold, implacable logic and the body horror right. When the Cybermen's most recent idea of a cunning plan is to build a giant Cyberman the size of a mountain and stomp Victorian London into smithereens with it, it's no surprise that they mostly need humans like Lumic and Miss Hartigan to do their thinking for them nowadays. It's a crying shame.

All the Cybermen need is one show in which their true potential and horror is realized, and they could take their rightful place as the scariest monsters in the Whoniverse. Unfortunately they haven't had anything close to that since the 1960s, unless you're a big fan of Earthshock, which I can't say I am. That Russell T Davies' team considered them only as cut-price Dalek substitutes was evident from their new catchphrase of "Delete! Delete! Delete!" - how unimaginative was that? But if someone would present them with the love they deserve again, as heartless, soulless metal vampires making the world more efficient one upgrade at a time, man, that'd be a story to watch. Come on Moffat! You can do it!

In the meantime, I still think Revenge is underrated in Season 12 because of its dodgy place in Cyber-history. Pretend they're not Cybermen or something, that the allergic-to-gold concept didn't send us on a horrible downward spiral that would end with the sickening crunch of Silver Nemesis, and I think you'll find a lot here to love. It's more full of ideas than anything else in Season 12, and somehow more fun. And if those aren't the things we ought to love Doctor Who for being, then what are?

Boys Boys Boys

Another good indication that Season 12 wants to get back to the Troughton era is the composition of the TARDIS crew: one male and one female companion. It's funny how we're now conditioned to think of the orthodox TARDIS complement as the Doctor plus one female companion: since Season 12, only the first half of John Nathan-Turner's tenure (Seasons 18-21) has deviated noticeably from this formula.

Back in 1975, such an orthodoxy wasn't even dreamed of yet. The black and white seasons of Doctor Who always had at least one male and one female companion, and quite often a fourth crew member of either sex just for good measure. Pertwee may have had only one, female TARDIS companion at any given time, but with a squad of beefy UNIT soldiers hanging around at all times, the testosterone levels were kept high. What an innovation it was to ditch Harry Sullivan at the end of the Zygon escapade and head off into the vast universe with just one eccentric Gallifreyan and one Earth girl for him to explain the plot to on board the ship! The series would barely ever look back from here.

I do kind of mourn the loss of male TARDIS crew members - and yes, I'm aware that New Who has flirted with the idea of them, with Mickey, Adam and of course Captain Jack. When the Doctor decided to leave the well-meaning but dim Harry at home, he unwittingly gave birth to a lot of the fundamentals of the 21st century series. The Doctor is now young(ish) and athletic enough to do his own fighting and stunts. He is also, on some level, sexually rather than just paternally motivated: see how much gentler the Fourth Doctor is with Sarah than Harry, and of course the most romantic Old Who story ever, City of Death. With a slimmed-down crew the focus can go onto the stories instead of the characters - well, actually that's something they reversed for the new series, writing in friends and families for the companions to help construct some rather elaborate personal development arcs. But when the Tenth Doctor and his lady friend of the hour zoom off to another planet, there's usually only two people for whom the writers have to find something relevant to do, which I'm sure must be a great relief with only 45 minutes or so to work with.

As I say, I find it a bit saddening that the Doctor took over the parts of action man and romantic lead in his show; there's nothing wrong with it per se, it just seems like an eccentric old man taking youngsters on semi-educational, semi-terrifying trips in time and space in his magic caravan is a more original premise than the intergalactic superhero with an adoring woman on his arm.

Oh well, nothing to worry about, even if Moffat looks set to cleave firmly to the one-hot-babe-companion rule with Amy Pond: Doctor Who is always amazing. Some days I just quite miss the likes of Harry and Jamie, Steven and Ian, that's all.

Johnny Reboot

I've been enjoying watching my way through Season 12 with Tessa, starting from The Ark In Space; probably the best launching-off point to introduce someone who only knows the new series to the delights of Old Who.

I don't think Season 12 is up there with the very best of the old show - it is a sad truncated thing of only 20 episodes, 4 of which are a hangover from the Pertwee era. There are a few almost unsurpassed gems of dialogue - you probably know the ones from Ark and Genesis that I mean - but the adventures themselves aren't exactly incandescently exciting. It doesn't help that each story has at least one pretty duff monster, robot or special effect liable to cause the unconverted to snigger at the shoddy production values of Seventies Who. (But what do they know?)

The real greatness of the season lies in the fact that it's such an obvious reboot of all the values of the show. After five years of UNIT family coziness, Hinchcliffe and Holmes whisk us as far away from our comfort zone as possible, into the far future and the chilly reaches of outer space. Even the TARDIS, that trusty, impenetrable sanctuary from evil, is absent for the bulk of the season. The stories are littered with dead or frozen bodies, while the living are in constant fear of torture, irradiation, or plague. It's bleak dystopian sci-fi with a vengeance, leavened only by the Doctor's cheerful faith in the indomitable spirit of mankind. And even that would start to be whittled away in seasons to come, as the Fourth Doctor's alienness was played up more and more.

A conscious effort seems to have been made to bring the show back, if not exactly to its first roots, at least to the Troughton era. Genesis remakes the Daleks in a new image, that of Davros, just as Power and Evil had repurposed the Daleks to David Whitaker's thoughtful specifications. The return of Gerry Davis writing a Cyber-story is obviously a huge clue that the Second Doctor's era was uppermost on everyone's mind and, hell, maybe we can even claim that the intervention of the Time Lords in the Doctor's affair at the start of Genesis harks back to The War Games. Certainly Holmes and Hinchcliffe must have been interested in investigating the mystery of the Doctor's people, as The Deadly Assassin was not too far in our future...

I'm excited, then, to see how Steven Moffat reboots the show for 2010. A lot of people have been "like, whatever" about the decision to brand Matt Smith's first season "Series One" instead of "Series Five", but I'm filled with excitement by that news. It implies that they won't necessarily play it safe, with more of the Russell T Davies same, but might take us off to unsuspected new dramatic territories, might place a whole new spin on the Whoniverse. It's been done before, and some very highly regarded seasons have resulted (only the forced drastic revamp of the show that was Season 24 has really earned the hatred of the fans, but Andrew Cartmel and company started hitting the mark pretty quickly after that).

I mean, really, none of us has any idea what the newborn Smith era might have in store for us. Isn't that exciting? Please, Mr Moffat, don't let us down.

The Continuity Trainspotter Strikes Again

I wonder if Rivesh Mantilax and Saruba Velak got home okay with their spaceship's mileometer missing? After all, it was still in Henry Van Statten's possession 57 years later. (The Roswell crash was also responsible for giving the world broadband, so Dalek informs us.)

Then again, it's possible that Dalek exists in a continuity parallel universe from the Tennant era, given that it's 2012 and no one knows what the "Metaltron" is, despite the planet having been absolutely swarming with Daleks by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, according to subsequent episodes. Or maybe Van Statten and his staff were all on that Spanish scuba diving holiday with Donna Noble?

Oh No! It's The Pathetic Daleks!

In a bid to understand the Daleks better, I finally sat down to watch all seven episodes of their Season 1 debut, "The Dead Planet", "The Mutants", "The Daleks", whatever you personally choose to call it. And I must say, while it's a little unfair that I've chosen to name this post after the Viz comic strip "The Pathetic Sharks", I don't think it's absurdly off base.

Compare the Daleks of their preliminary outing to the terrifying monster we meet in "Dalek" in 2005, and... well, they do look the same, and the word "exterminate" is at the forefront of their vocabulary. But apart from that, nothing much in common at all.

The Daleks of "The Daleks" are a sorry bunch, all told. Sickly, dependent radiation and static electricity addicts, they mercilessly paralyze Ian's legs on first meeting him, and also gun down the Thal leader after his speech about peace and cooperation (boo! hiss!) but other than that they are easily bested in a fight by even the weakest humanoids throwing rocks at them, or just grabbing them and spinning them around. In fact these Daleks seem much more suited to bringing the Doctor and his companions trays of refreshments - they do this several times - than conquering the universe. By the end of the story, they have been wiped out by a tribe of pacifists, an old man and a couple of girls, thus meeting the first, and most ignoble, of their something like five "final ends" in the history of the programme so far.

So there's an obvious disconnect between Daleks as we think of them now, 46 years of mythologizing later, and how they appeared in their historic first outing. But this is Who Positive, so let's not be too quick to write off these proto-Daleks as a joke. History relates that they were an overnight sensation with the Great British Public, that Dalekmania swept the nation and that we'd get 13 episodes of Daleks a year until Evil of the Daleks declared that it was time for the poor dears to have a rest. So what was so great about them?

Well, first of all, the fact that they look pretty much identical both in 1963 and 2009 (in contrast to the Cybermen, whose appearance has been reworked for pretty much every story, never mind every era) should tell you that the design is a stone-cold, knocked-straight-out-of-the-park classic. There is a non-negligible possibility that Terry Nation owed his entire career to Ray Cusick, in much the same way that George Lucas arguably only got where he is today thanks to Ralph McQuarrie. Look at any other Nation-created Who monster and the less said the better, really: the Voord and the Kraals, anyone?

But to give the man his due, there is something about the original concept of the Daleks... even if it's very little to do with the Daleks as we know them today. The idea of a post-apocalyptic race so hideously mutated that they scoot around inside travel machines rather than expose themselves to public view: that's quirky enough that it's actually rather good. And I think what we see in the adventure - Ian getting inside a Dalek shell and wandering around impersonating one - does bear out the theory that, initially, the Daleks were just wizened little gnomes riding around in futuristic, heavily armed and armored bicycles. Did I just call that "rather good"? I'm upgrading it to full-blown genius.

The rest of the story, after the creepy tension of the first couple of episodes before we know who is out there in the city and jungle respectively, is sadly pants. The Thals turn out to be "perfect" blond-haired and blue-eyed specimens that Susan and Barbara are quickly crushing madly over. The "hideous" Daleks naturally seethe with hate for anything that is not like them. All the women are passive, and present solely to be protected by and fawn over the men; Ian is an unpleasant he-man who persuades the Thals from their pacifist ideals by manhandling one of their females.

Kudos to William Emms for subverting this silly scenario with his much sharper Galaxy Four script two years later, where the ugly aliens are benevolent, the beautiful ones are hostile, the women are shrewd and aggressive, and the male companion (Steven this time) nearly comes a cropper thanks to letting his chivalry/libido do his thinking for me. Needless to say, Galaxy Four languishes in the bottom 20% of DWM's recent "Mighty 200" poll, while The Daleks makes it into the top 20%. It's a bit lame; but of course fandom is notoriously intolerant of anything that smacks of even affectionate send-up - witness the generally low regard in which the ingenious Cartmel era is held, and modern episodes such as Love & Monsters - and besides, no one's ever seen or can remember seeing Galaxy Four.

So, once again, we have a story that seems highly rated more due to its historical importance than any intrinsic merit of its script. In it we see the first (and greatest) alien race and planet in Doctor Who, but also the first deeply unconvincing romance between a female member of the TARDIS crew and an alien; once the historicals were phased out due to lack of public interest, this would be the main blueprint for Doctor Who for the next twentysomething years. The fact that it's nowhere near as good as the criminally underrated The Tribe of Gum on one side and Marco Polo on the other is neither here nor there: thanks to the runaway success of the genocidal pepperpots themselves, their debut story, flaws and all, became a lasting template for "real Doctor Who".

And to give Nation his due, he certainly knows how to keep a six- or seven-parter packed with incident. Escapes, ambushes, expeditions, ordeals, rescues: not only did he include them all, he nabbed them for his individual episode titles, thus probably precipitating the shortage that would result in them being phased out within a couple of years. It's all faintly adorable boy's own adventure hokum from a more innocent time, and certainly a fabulous way of spending a couple of hours. It's got the first ever, hilariously useless Daleks in it, and a splendidly selfish and conniving First Doctor, and plenty of hunky Thal boys with posh British accents, perfectly coiffed hair and ridiculous trousers. In short, camp as Christmas, and I may not be entirely sure to this day why British telly-watchers took it to their hearts, I'm certainly glad they did.

RIP Terry Nation. They certainly don't write 'em like they used to.

Dream A Little Dream Of Me

I really enjoyed Dreamland, for a lot of different reasons. First, it arrived with relatively little fanfare, but it made for such a nice bonus in this droughty year for Who; stacked up together, the six parts are basically one extra full-length episode, and while thirteen or fourteen per year are much of a muchness, I'll take six "specials" over five any time.

And then, of course, is the fact that it's so different from everything else we've been getting lately. Dreamland is a romp, one last bit of fun for Doctor number Ten. This is huge in a year which has all been doom and gloom, even in Torchwood (could Children of Earth have been any more of a downer?) and Sarah Jane Adventures (well, it was a bit miz when Sarah found and lost the human love of her life, anyway). Planet of the Dead would have qualified as fun... if they hadn't tacked all that "your song is ending soon" foreboding onto the end.

But Dreamland dispensed with all of that emo stuff; the Doctor didn't see fit to warn his temporary companions that hanging around with him could only result in misery and death, and by the way did he mention that he recently lost all the people he ever liked or love? And the adventure was much better for it. A potent reminder that, despite the maudlin tendencies of the RTD era, Doctor Who doesn't have to wallow in angst to work.

I loved the fact that, even though the individual episodes were about five minutes long, the script wasn't afraid to pile on the complication, with about half a dozen different factions running around: the Viperox, the robot MIBs, the US military, the Grays, the Skorpius flies, the Indians... At first I was a bit unimpressed that Jimmy's relatives were so uniformly strong, noble and generous - it's a bit of a predictable reading of American indigenous peoples, especially when you have a boo-hiss evil US military nearby for contrast, but it actually turned out to be appropriate.

And here's why: the real triumph of Dreamland was that, despite being a "throwaway" piece of animation, it didn't skimp on the sound moral principles that are the bedrock of the very greatest Doctor Who. The Indians were straightforwardly good guys, but then, suddenly, miraculously, everyone turned out to be good guys. General Stark, despite initially appearing to be a textbook Dr Strangelove nutter, was capable of seeing reason. Even the Viperox, and this is surreptitiously a real punch-the-air great Doctor Who moment, are spared from eradication because one day they'll evolve into something wonderful. I was complaining in my last post that Genesis of the Daleks wimps out after the amazing "Have I the right?" speech. Yes, decides the Doctor fifteen minutes later, he does have that right, and back he heads to murder some Dalek babies. In Dreamland the Doctor regains the moral high ground that he never should have lost at the end of Genesis.

I can't end this review without mentioning the amazing voice work of David Warner as Lord Azlok: the man has been an acting hero of mine since I was a small child and saw his portrayal of Evil in Time Bandits. His association with audio Who is quite extensive, I believe, and I only wish they'd put him back in the main show, age permitting: wouldn't he make the ideal next Master? He's younger than Derek Jacobi at the very least...

But I'll let the last word go to the best dialogue we've heard in Doctor Who since... ooh, I don't know when. "Always count your steps, Seruba Velak. You never know when you'll need to escape in a box." If that isn't some top-of-the-line, A-grade Doctor Who dialogue then I don't know what is. I've had my doubts about him from time to time, but: good work, Phil Ford. You did a fantastic job on this.

Genesis of the Overrated?

According to the DWM "Mighty 200", Genesis of the Daleks is currently considered the third greatest Who story of all time, behind only The Caves of Androzani and new series flagship Blink. I had the pleasure of rewatching it a few days ago, and while it's certainly great Doctor Who, can it really be said to live up to its hype?

Yes, it has some incredible features. Davros is one of the greatest villains in Who history, perhaps the only one that can give the Master a run for his money. He is visually almost as much of a triumph as the Daleks were back in 1963, a genuinely repulsive living corpse in a wheelchair, immobile but for one greenish, dessicated claw. He's the original and best half-human half-Dalek, eons before modern pretenders like Dalek Sec. His dialogue too is phenomenal, the highlight being his musing over whether, given a virus that would wipe out every lifeform in the universe, he would unleash it: "Such power would set me up above the gods!"

The atmosphere is pretty strong as well, with gas-masked figures stalking a devastated warzone, or even more creepily, their dead bodies propped up in the trenches to give the illusion of armed resistance to the enemy. The bunker too is effectively grim and claustrophobic, and for once the bare minimalism of Doctor Who corridors seems appropriate to the setting, rather than a budgetary limitation.

But it seems to me that things fall off pretty quickly beyond this. The script is standard Terry Nation boilerplate, with cardboard cutout characters doing idiotic things, which don't seem to have logical repercussions. Only Davros has the remotest shred of actual character: the rest might as well be mannequins with "goodie" or "baddie" felt-tipped onto their foreheads. Even Nyder, majestically played by Peter Miles as the apotheosis of thin-lipped, bureaucratic evil, has no scripted features other than his loyalty to Davros. Even one line hinting at why he thinks it a good idea to help an obvious megalomaniac psychopath destroy all other life on the planet would have been welcome, but no. (One of the dissenting Kaled soldiers towards the end of the story has a Davros-designed pacemaker keeping his heart ticking, but even that's not enough to keep him on Team Let's Create An Amoral Killing Machine; so what's the story with Nyder?)

I won't bother getting TOO worked up about the Giant Cave Clams, which are well up there in the Monster Hall of Shame with the rat from Talons and the magma beast from Caves, since the occasionally really dodgy costume or prop is part of the fun of old Who; but the scene in which the Doctor and companions jump over these sad, completely motionless bits of polystyrene and then utter some immortal line to the effect of "lucky they're not very fast" is a bit of a low point. Likewise let's not dwell on any of the duff cliffhangers, for example Sarah free-falling from the rocket to certain death, and then being a little bit dazed on a miraculous ledge the following week. No, the problem with Genesis is that it's all classic capture-and-escape nonsense, with nothing to differentiate itself from any other Terry Nation script... until Davros blazes into view.

How much of Davros' dialogue is Terry Nation's and how much was cunningly interpolated by script editor extraordinaire Robert Holmes is, I think, open to some debate. Certainly great speeches such as "Have I the right?" have a Holmesian feel, but there's plenty of typically wooden Nation dialogue doing the rounds too, and for my money there is nowhere as near much sparkle on display here as we got in, say, The Ark In Space a few weeks earlier.

And indeed it does feel that the great moments are constantly being dragged back down to the bog-standard business. The Doctor may agonize over the morality of suffocating the Daleks in their crib at first, but five minutes later he's striding back, without a qualm in his mind, to finish the job. A great letdown in my opinion. Couldn't he have shown himself nobler than the Time Lords, the Kaleds and Thals, the audience? Instead of just temporarily (and disastrously) indecisive?

So why, if there's a lot to be ambivalent about in Genesis, is it destined to be in the top 10 Who stories of all time for ages to come? Well, not wishing to belabor the point, but Davros really is fantastic, so much so that we won't another Dalek story without him center stage for the next 30 years. And even Russell T Davies eventually caved and brought him back to New Who, despite that not really making an awful lot of sense. (But hey, "Journey's End" was one big Whovian carnival parade, sense wasn't at the top of the agenda.) If I had to vote for the best villain of all time, I think it would be the deranged Kaled scientist. Genesis is so much "Davros's story" that it's hard to separate the two things out.

By introducing Davros, Genesis really did change the course of Doctor Who history. Probably no other story has had such an influence on the 2005 show: in it, we see the first salvo fired in the Time War, and the first manifesto, I suspect, for the Daleks being the ultimate force for evil in the universe, as opposed to just another (literally) tinpot race of conquering aliens. I think Davros's fruitless plea "Have pity!" to his creations in Genesis is as unsubtle as a brick through the television, and completely out of character too; but I couldn't help shivering when it resonated down the ages in Rob Shearman's episode Dalek, as the captive Metaltron pleads to the Doctor with the very same words.

Dalek, yeah, I think that's a better Dalek story than Genesis. I think Remembrance is too, and I could well go with Master Plan, the White Album of Dalek stories, uneven though it may be. But are any of them more important than Genesis? Hell no. And that's why I think it's great that these six episodes of riveting Davros showcase (shame about the rest of the plot) can still be found amongst all authoritative lists of the ten greatest Who stories of all time. Long may it stay there.