The following
commentary, footnotes and opinions are presented for entertainment purposes and
do not represent the opinions of the Him, the author or No Complications in general.
This doesn’t mean they
aren’t correct.
The one unchangeable
certainty is that nothing is unchangeable or uncertain.
- John F Kennedy
Let me tell you
this. The whole planet’s leaking,
everybody’s leaking. You know,
everyone’s spewing up their guts onto the internet. Putting up their relationship status and
their photos of their (redacted) We’ve
come to a point where there are people, millions of people, who are quite happy
to trade a kidney in order to go on television.
And to show people their knickers, to show people their (redacted), and then complain to OK! Magazine about a breach of privacy. The
exchange of private information, that is what drives our economy. But you come after me because you can’t
arrest a land mass can you? You can’t,
you can’t cuff a country. You might as
well go and…
You can’t lynch that
guy there, can you? But you decide that you can sit there, you can judge me and
you can ogle me like a page three girl.
You don’t like it? Well, you
don’t like yourself. You don’t like your
species and you know what? Neither do I. But, how dare you come and and lay this at my
door? How dare you blame me for
this?
This is the result of
a political class which has given up on morality and simply pursues popularity
at all costs.
I am you and you are
me.
- Malcolm Tucker, 4th July 2012.1
Junk is the ideal
product – the ultimate merchandise. No
sales talk necessary. The client will
crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.
The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer; he sells the
consumer to his product. He does not
improve and simplify his merchandise. He
degrades and simplifies his client.
- William Burroughs
The Him hates spoilers which is a shame as the BBC doesn’t
seem to understand how they work. We’ll
get back to this.
Somehow, the Him’d heard that Matt Smith was leaving Doctor Who. I probably let it slip by accident – it’s a
lot harder to keep up with what’s official and what isn’t at the moment. I rewatched the whole of The Thick of It (including In
the Loop) as ‘research’ before typing this up, and I was particularly
struck by how the endemic culture of leak and spin reminded me of the bizarre
circus that’s been performing throughout this Golden Whoniversary year. We’re supposed to be fun, so I’ll exaggerate
certain bits for comedic effect and ignore other ones completely. 3
It’s interesting to see the BBC’s chosen to celebrate this
wonderful one-off year by treating it as an excuse to furiously milk fans of the
show. If I was really cynical, I’d point
out that if you’re using the fact that you produce reversible DVD sleeves - so
that when all the purchases are lined up on the customer’s shelf they actually
look like a set - as a marketing tool,
you’re probably aware that the customer is going to be quite an easy mark to
shift product to.6
The main moan about the lack of new Doctor Who in yer actual Whoniversary year can be found elsewhere,
in some of the more frightening and cacophonous parts of the Internet. You probably know where I’m talking about,
Faithful Reader, or you wouldn’t be reading this. I’m not going to go on and on about the
flirting with America
– well, not in any great depth – but I am
going to mention - you may need to squint - these:
 |
| Why, that’s nearly an armful. |
Seeing as the customer base, as we’ve established, is quite
eager to have everything looking nice on a shelf, it seems a trifle unfair to-
To…
Well, that’s the thing.
To do what exactly?
I once described Doctor
Who Adventures as a weekly stationery set with a free magazine. These box-sets are quite cunningly disguised
but can still be described in a similar way.
The Regenerations book is in
fact, a pre-release vanilla version DVD of The
Tenth Planet (the kind of thing that used to fall out of newspapers every
weekend throughout 2006) – with free hardback book of (mostly) already
published glossy pictures and DVDs of every story that can be linked to a regeneration. Looks nice, but at £50, perhaps a bit steep
for the casual buyer – who I’m sure
it’s aimed in the general direction of.
As mentioned before, I don’t buy things online, so I appreciate that
both of these sets can be found cheaper elsewhere. That’s not the point – this is what they’re
selling for in real shops.
The Fourth Doctor Time
Capsule set makes me froth
blood.
Initially introduced as a hashtag, followed by a deliberately provocative vague viral video, this is one of the most cynical
milking moves yet to be pulled – we’ll ignore London’s
Official London Convention in London. Rush-released so fast that Doctor Who Magazine couldn’t even list
it in their upcoming merchandise section (have a look, it’s not there). Limited to 5000 copies worldwide, and
retailing (at time of ranting) at £59.99 from the BBC Shop, let’s see what you
actually get: a vanilla DVD of Terror of the Zygons
(proper release in September) and a yet-to-be-leaked interview with Tom Baker with free print,
postcards, CD you’ve already got, book you don’t want, previously unpublished
Letter from the Doctor, sonic screwdriver and a Jon Pertwee action figure with
the wrong head. There’s no way this is
aimed at the casual buyer. And, priced at
£80 in real shops, there’s surely no reason other than greed that this
monstrosity actually exists.8
So, after a brief pause to wipe away the spittle, let’s
continue. Do you want a cloth?
A while ago I started to listen to Doctor Who based podcasts, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. Anyway, easily my
favourite of these is The Pharos Project. Unfortunately, they’re rather robust and
certificated at a higher rating (18) than this blog (12), so we’re operating an
honour scheme here – don’t click that link if you aren’t old enough to.
Mr Paul, Mr Chris and Mr Pete offer erudite scatology,
intoxicated profundity and – refreshingly – frequently stray off-topic into
interesting thickets of genre film and TV.
Also, I’d totally forgotten about Sean Connery’s “Fill the schtag!” line
from Highlander until Mr Paul unexpectedly
quoted it, causing me to utterly disgrace myself all over a packed train
carriage. So, yeah, thanks for
that. More about them later on.1
Back in the Judge Minty post, I started alluding to a story concerning a payphone at
the bottom of the escape stairs.
Remember? Anyway, I promised to
tell you the story in full when you were older.
You aren’t there yet, which is a shame as it involves Neil Gaiman. More about him later on.1
2013 has been a very odd year. You’ll have noticed that our posts have
dropped off a lot and become a bit stranger, as well as more sporadic. For personal reasons I’m not going to go
massively into why that is, but I am
going to highlight some of the really good things that have been stopping me
from transcribing our ascent up the difficult North Face of the Trout.
As I keep mentioning, I managed to get published this year
(the Him having already had a joke published in an academic Doctor Who related book back in 2011 –
the swine). I also managed to beat an
addiction to live performance that started back at the top of the escape stairs
with a final headline concert in Cardiff, got played (and talked about) on
national radio2 and achieved a
lifetime goal by releasing a (limited edition) coloured vinyl 7” single and
recording a live album. These are some
of the diamonds glistening amongst the offal of months making up the butchers
window that 2013 has otherwise been.
Obviously, none of that has anything to do with the live Doctor Who related programme that aired
worldwide on Sunday, August 4th.
Or does it?1
I’d bumped into members of Glasgow Who on several occasions
before, including the #dalekmoviedoublebill where we talked long into the night about glass ankles and static
electricity. It was ace. More about Glasgow Who later on.1
So, when it was announced/leaked that Matt Smith would be
stepping down, the usual arguments cranked up from Phil Space and other
newspaper-column-vomiting chums. It’s an
area that we aren’t going to go into really – purely because I’ve got conflicts
of interest when it comes to both Helen Mirren and Paterson Joseph (to pick two
names that get bandied around every time the regeneration word-spew floodgates
open) and the Him’s not really bothered as long as the show itself doesn’t
become sensorite.4
 |
| Helen Mirren won’t be appearing in this post again (sorry) but we’ll have more about Paterson Joseph later.1 |
Basically, you’ve got this gentleman going about his
everyday life being filmed from hidden cameras working to a schedule so tight
you’d think it’d been drawn up by Douglas Camfield – foiling alien invasions,
dodging explosions and going slowly mad with justified paranoia. When I actually had the chance to tell the
Scouser in question the Him’s theory, he showed me this:
 |
| Yes, that’s a genuine supporting artist, as seen on TV's Doctor Who. It’s hosting a panel at next year’s Comic-Con. |
Apart from not buying anything online, we don’t watch
TV. This presents a bit of an issue when
it comes to reviewing a live TV broadcast.
The Him had to be elsewhere but insisted that I got out of
the cave and found somewhere showing the show.
Glasgow Who were tweeting excitedly as the day went on, inviting people
along to theirs for a group watch. There
was a kind of anoraky intensity and expectation building throughout the whole
day. I suppose something like this is an
echo of the fuss around the royal baby.
The new Doctor is – like it or not – with us for the rest of our lives,
no matter how much we retcon.
Feeling nervous and pretending to wear a The Prisoner t-shirt, I grabbed my Beano
notebook and ran for the train. I’m
lucky to be alive after the last month and bounding up those stairs could’ve
easily done for me. Obviously it
didn’t. I was just trying to inject a
little excitement into the narrative.
The barman, after reminding me that I’ve always been the
caretaker, directed me toward the shouting.
Round the corner, two very long tables were laid out and filled with
enthusiastic folk. Bottles and pizza
were doing the rounds, the conversation was amplified and bouncing – the energy
palpable. I recognised a few faces from
the Flying Duck and a gentleman who’d been sat just in front of me and the Him
at the GFT's '50 Years of Doctor Who' and Whoniversary director reveal. I took a place as far from everyone else as I
could and started scribbling, which - looking back on it - probably made me
come across in about as bad a way as is possible. Everyone was lovely, so that’s a shame.
By this point I was convinced that the Capaldi rumours must
be bunk1 and put my bet square on
Aneurin Barnard – if just because it must be time to actually have a Welsh
Doctor. The flatscreen TV on the wall
was a fair way off, but I could scribble nervous lunacy and still see
everything. The only problem was the
volume of the normal TV wasn’t augmented by a PA system (well, it wasn’t
something important, like a football match, was it?).8
When the World’s
Deadliest 60 (Monsters of the Week: a crocodile, a snake and a get-lost
whale) had finished, the Countdown Dalek was wheeled out and three things
happened:
1) A Horrible
Histories advert that seemed to have had an episode of The Muppets in the pod when it went through the transporter, crapped
all over the screen.
2) Twitter went into turbo boost.
and
3) Very polite people tried desperately to get a bunch of
hyper (but no less polite) fans to stop talking.
And then we were through the looking glass.
All we knew for sure was that the show was being presented
by Zoe Ball, and according to the Socks, Rankin (not that one) had leaked the Doctor’s sex earlier. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d
type. Even back when the Big Breakfast was appointment TV.8
Following some hideously rushed graphics we were dropped face-first
into an odd parallel world where Doctor
Who had become not just culturally important, but also acted as a glittery accompaniment
to the End Times. It was like the Roman Empire’s version of Loose Women strained through the frontal lobe of whatever mythical
beast it is that thought the X-Factor
might be a good thing for society. Too
many lasers, a hovering TARDIS (nice), Zoe Ball apparently wearing two coats of make up to
protect her from the cold, and then Peter Davison, Linda Green and what
appeared to be a not-yet-fully-developed clone of Chris Addison, largely
talking light entertainment fluff. Thankfully,
almost everyone had the decency to look as though they thought they had probably
walked into the wrong studio by accident.
The band - the one that’s on that 7” I subtly mentioned earlier - started
properly during an intense period living in a mid-Wales studio. In-between writing, we’d amuse ourselves by
watching (and ripping samples from) old episodes of Blake(no apostrophe)s 7, More Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS,
assorted horror films and, of course, Neverwhere. I’d followed Neil Gaiman’s career with
interest ever since I’d received a signed copy of an issue of Redfox that he’d worked on. Weren’t expecting that, were ya?
I’d read Ghastly Beyond Belief, Violent Cases, Black (no relation) Orchid, various Future
Shocks and, with Sandman, it was
obvious this was a cat going serious places.
I wish I could tell you that payphone story – you’ll just have to be
patient.
Neverwhere was –
therefore – compulsory, if flawed. We
nabbed a line from everyone’s favourite character who wasn’t from Aridius - “Of course you can move. Or you can wait there until your legs freeze
and you tumble to a rather messy death.” - for the track we were working
on.
Later on, when the actor playing the Marquis de Carabas appeared
in Equity’s bread-and-butter-rite-of-passage Casualty as Mark Grace, I got a bit fixated and started to put his
photo on band posters. Eventually, we
wrote a song for him. It went down very
well in London’s Covent Garden’s Rock Garden in London - to namedrop an
example. Eventually, I plucked up the
courage to contact his agent directly – I guess we were hoping to get a
voice-over. The agent said his client
was flattered and baffled (this was before The
Beach) and would we send him a copy of the song in question for his client
to listen to?
We did – and that was the end of that particular
conversation.
In the end, whilst the song for Paterson Joseph wasn’t
played onstage during my penultimate live performance at Newport City Live
Arena in 2003, in February 2005, his only performance in Doctor Who was largely recorded there.
None of this means anything.
The live show, meanwhile, has turned into one of those
talking-head clip-spasms that always used to feature Paul Ross – it was a
tradition, or an old charter or something.
Depressingly, it’s not as good as the usual talking-head clip shows on
the DVDs and before long before we’re back to rubber-necking a car crash. What exactly was going on with Matt Smith?5
Speaking of slow-motion-car-crash TV, I should probably feel
sorry for Rufus Hound’s toe-curling performance, but seeing as he’s been rude about people like me in the past, it’s hard to. Nice to see Wilf
again – Glasgow Who agreed and a spontaneous golf clap broke out at his
appearance - even if he did seem to be the only guest (apart from the final
one) in the correct studio. “I thought ‘Boff’
was a locale.”
The cover to my very first proper fanzine was drawn by the
same artist who eventually rendered the comic adaptation of Neverwhere. Kiss my axe, indeed.
Next up, it’s the inner cabal of Gatiss and the Moff and the
Moff’s awards – spontaneous booing - but something’s changed. I’m still dreading the next few moments – the
Moff seems… different this time.5
 |
| And... |
We’re back to Zoe Ball and the draw itself. The moment’s milked like a Doctor Who fan before the big reveal
finally splashes itself into the bucket of knowledge. God, I’m sweating.
Punk bands, Doctor Who
fandom, Glasgow,
Neverwhere – none of this means
anything.
I always check the front door’s locked before I put the commuting
podcast on, just in case I forget. I
might line my DVDs up in broadcast order like it matters, but this is a sensible
thing to do, rather than early-warning signs of an OCD-based Casualty storyline. When we repeat things enough times our brains
just skip the memory allocation required to record the actions – it’s like
muscle memory in a way. If you think
about how to tie your laces, it instantly becomes twenty-three times harder to
do it (Dept. of Made Up Statistics,
2003). By doing this routine I’m able to
actually fix in my memory that the door’s locked, because otherwise you do it,
don’t remember you did it, and then the day’s spent worrying about whether or
not you did the thing that you know you did.
I don’t live in Tooting Bec, but I don’t want to come home and find
anything murderous and hairy on my loo, thank you very much. Especially if it hasn’t had its shots.
After that I’ll make sure the volume’s set to the right
level not to annoy any other commuting livestock in the carriage and walk to
the train station. With a Pharos Project podcast that means I’m
normally through the introductions and onto the news by the time the train
leaves. The journey takes as long as it
damn-well pleases, which always makes me wonder how the train company manages
to tick all the boxes that need to be ticked in order to be able to function in
a follow-through interface type of fashion.
You dig?
We land when we land.
My ticket never works at the exit barrier, so you have to wait to be
ushered through by someone who’s also just trying to get through the damn
day. When I’ve walked under the corridor
that the Him got his photo taken with Lis Sladen in, I’ve got the choice of
left or right. If I need lunch, or the
train’s landed earlier than expected, I’ll turn right and head up towards
obscure Bogie Man reference locations. I’m normally into the main meat of whatever
the Projectiles are discussing by now, but not always.
In today’s podcast, Neil Gaiman’s cropped up and the
banter’s twisting toward a long forgotten BBC production. Lenny Henry once played the Doctor in a
sketch that eventually appeared on a DVD VAM.
The only thing worse than The
Chase is to be in Earl’s Court. None
of this means anything.
I’m walking up a hill that contains a voodoo model of the
hill that I’m walking up. The
Projectiles are talking faster and suddenly, just as I almost walk into a tall
man with a week’s worth of salt and pepper stubble, Islington is
mentioned.
For a moment everything stops. My brain tries to connect all these half-forgotten,
scrappy, flappy strands that stretch decades behind me and into different
countries.
He knows I know who he is and I know that he knows and –
I make an apologetic noise and step out of the Angel’s way.
I want to say that he nods at me before he walks down the
hill and into something very like immortality but…
None of this means anything.
 |
And the – uh – the
thing about being kind to people – umm - I had a letter around about this time
I would think, enclosing a script written by an eleven year old boy. So I sent him some other scripts back and
eventually we invited him to come to the studio – and again, Jon was absolutely
nice to him and we had lunch together and so on.
And that was Peter
Capaldi.
And Peter always says
that was one of the reasons why he went on to become a writer and an actor.
- Barry Letts, The Monster of Peladon commentary.
1. Wait until I pull the strands together. You’ll love it.2
2. Going on past form, both of these statements
are false.
3. Namely, the publishing of plot points on
official (and otherwise – I didn’t
know Mitchell and Webb were in Dinosaurs
on a Spaceship until I read a preview advertised as being spoiler-free) websites and the covers of official magazines, releasing
plot-twists within trailers (which is a touchy subject anyway) for other
countries and all of the sordid sensorite4
that cropped up in (The) Private Eye
and all the stuff that’s being whispered about the attempted escapes from the BBC Canteen. Between seven and ninety-three
at the time of writing5 - not
including the second part of The
Underwater Menace which has successfully escaped and is still on the run. This is going to make it quite
difficult for the BBC to use it as leverage like they did with the third
episode of Galaxy 4.8
4. We don’t do that joke anymore.
5. More and more it feels like the unauthorised volume
of behind-the-scenes Doctor Who
history that’ll eventually be published to chronicle the years following
Russell The Davies’ The Writer’s Tale
is going to be closer to Miwk’s The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner than is comfortable.8
6. And if I was being really cynical, I’d then point out the fact that when you
misprinted one of these sleeves so that it wouldn’t
match up (the Vengeance on Varos Second
Effort) it was a bit rude to complain about obsessive fans pointing this out to
you (cit. needed) – especially as
this was the second time you expected them to buy the DVD in question. Still, the customers got a solemn (if a bit
sniffy) promise that this wouldn’t happen again (cit. needed). This promise was
forgotten about when you repeated the
same misprinting error several releases later (The Green Death Second Effort).
It’s understandable that mistakes get made, but it’s hard to believe
that someone who really, truly cared
about Doctor Who would mistakenly Photoshop
a monster upside down on official DVD artwork (The Visitation Second Effort).
There’s an awful lot of annoying self-congratulation going on – and the
same names and faces keep turning up over and over again in Doctor Who Magazine
and the DVD VAM5 – yet no-one’s performing rigorous idiot-checks before this stuff goes on sale.7
I suppose I should also differentiate between the BBC in
general (which is lovely) and BBC Worldwide/2|Entertain (who are in charge of
the relentless milking). Oh well.
7. Which brings us to Metebelis 3. The planet’s name was mispronounced by Matt
Smith – I’m going to ignore the fan apologies, this is a serious point about
lax quality-control. None of the fans
making the show noticed the error until it was too late to change it. Surely there’s time to overdub something whilst
the effects are being added? The
turnaround’s not that fast, no matter
how zippy the shoddy FX in The Rings of
Akhaten make it appear. It’s all
well and good pointing out mispronunciation in the classic series, but that
doesn’t wash anymore. If you can’t get
the names right, why mention them in the first place? Make one up instead.
The new show has so much riding on it; the only explanation
is that someone, somewhere, has taken their eye off the ball. This is why pirates go missing. And goes some way to explaining what the hell
happened with Nightmare in Silver – a
story which remains so impossibly awful it creates its own conspiracy theories
and flogs them on message boards. You
could at least have rolled it in glitter first.8
8. I needed to vent all that. I feel a lot
better now.2
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