PR of the Daleks

If you despise that throwaway feeling
From disposable fun
Then this is the one
- Martin L. Gore

(You fall through the clouds, damp tentacles clutch at your tingling cheeks.  Abruptly the opaque surroundings clear and you see that you’re plummeting toward a rather solid looking toy village.  The sun’s low in the distance and shadows stretch like inky sneezes towards the broccoli-wood that hedges the edges.  You don’t feel scared though; not until the screech of a dinosaur rudely wakes you.)

Me:   That’s a T. rex, isn’t it?

Him:  Baby T. rex.

Me:  Baby T. rex.  Okay. The exciting news that broke this week about The Power of the Daleks?

Him:  Oh, yeah.  I definitely know about that.

Me:  Okay, what do you know about it?

Him:  I know that you sent me a link, and the link said, “This does not exist.”

Me:  Yeah!  That’s because, in classic BBC ‘License-fee payers enjoyed the chance to watch these episodes for free when they were first broadcast in the Sixties’ Worldwide fashion they, once again, leaked what the secret reveal was.  All by themselves.

Him:  You have really red elbows.

Me:  Have I?  I suppose so…  There’s a two-disc version of The Power of the Daleks coming out.  It’s all been computer-animated, and it’s based on designs by Adrian Salmon and Mar-

Him:  What’s wrong with The Power of the Daleks animation that’s already on YouTube?

Me:  It’s great, isn’t it!  I do like that one.

Him:  I’ve got a soft spot for it.

Me:  That’s the one we watched when we did our previous ‘review’…

Him:  We watched it for about five minutes.  You couldn’t handle it.

Me:  They hadn’t… quite captured Polly’s likeness…

Him:  Ha!  And that one scene with, “Oh yes, maybe this will work. Yes.  Yes, okay, I’ll take this bit and then…   Okay.”  And you’ve just got the little Patrick Troughton drawing standing there -

Me:  Just with the mouth moving.

Him:  - completely still.

Me:  There was that other computer-generated one where he slipped up the wall.  Do you remember that? 

Him:  No…

Me:  It was animated photographs and it was really creepy.  It was a bit like the Annoying Orange.  A little bit Uncanny Valley for my liking.  Soooooo.  There’s been some conjecture that if it’s going to be two discs, then that suggests…  Surely, you could fit six episodes on one disc if it’s just animation and no extras?  There’re rumours that it might contain missing footage, but I don’t think that it’s going to.  Why do you think this might be coming out?

Him:  Why do I think what might be coming out?

Me:  The Power of the Daleks.

Him:  I don’t understand why you think it is.  You sent me a link to-

Me:  Oh no, it is, it is.  The BBC’ve announced it and everything.  It’ll be available to download and you’ll be allowed to own the download after you’ve bought it; it’s coming out on DVD too.

Him:  You’re allowed to own the download?

Me:  The BBC’ve caught onto this new, modern idea.  This… y’know… valueless format.1

Him:  “404 – Daleks not found.”  Really, it’s not…  I don’t know why you think it’s coming out.  I could send you a link, right, having typed in, ‘www.bbc.com’-

Me:  ‘.co.uk’

(Potentially the final appearance of the sea-badger before Hallowe’en 2016…)

Him:  Nah, it’s BBC Worldwide, innit.

Me:  Ha!  If it’d been BBC Miami, I’d have understood.  The whole thing’s probably up there already.  I wonder if Marcel Carmego got his job back?  Anyway… 

Him:  ‘/The_Web_Planet_Episode_7_Through_9’ and saying they’d returned and that they’d been missing…  And we still don’t have the remaining episodes of The Web Planet, but seven through nine have at least returned…  I could’ve sent you that link and said, “Whoah!  Look at this!”  And you’d have clicked on the link and got, “Sorry, this web page doesn’t exist,” and you’d have been-

Me:  Web page!  Very good.  It did come back up at midnight.  I think, basically, what you’re looking at here is…  Because Top Gear’s curled up and died-

Him:  Well, no.  It just isn’t owned by the BBC.

Me:  Yeah, they own Top Gear.

Him:  No, they lost it.

Me:  No, they’ve got Top Gear, because now it’s a spin-off from Friends and-

Him:  Didn’t it run away to Amazon?

Me:  -just lost the ex-Mr Billie Piper…  The presenters ran away to Amazon.

Him:  Did they?

Me:  Yeah.  That and Doctor Who were the BBC’s biggest brands.2  So now Doctor Who has to carry the torch since Top Gear died on its arse-

Him:  What about whichever one of the soap operas the BBC does?

Me:  EastEnders?  Yeah, but you don’t get EastEnders  box-sets.  You watch it once and then – meh.  It’s not got rewatch value at all.

Him:  It does if you’ve not seen it before.

Me:  If you’ve never seen it before, that’s really good.  It’s like never having bought a National Lottery ticket.3  Just kidding.  Obviously, it’s one of the most important breeding soups for new writers in the country. 

Him:  I thought that was Casualty?

Me:  Same sort of thing.

Him:  Casualty’s very important for new writers and new actors.  Everyone in the world has been on Casualty.

Me:  It’s like Rep.  Or The Bill.  It’s a rite of passage you have to pass in order to get your Equity card.

Him:  It really is, though!  But why?

Me:  Well, it depends.  If you haven’t got a mate running the programme then that’s the route you’ve got to take…

Him:  Even obscure voice actors who’ve only been a voice actor in one thing…  They’ve been in Casualty.

Me:  Of course.  Have you not…  I’ve been in Casualty, when’re you going to be in Casualty?  Have they not got in touch with you yet?  Everyone’s in Casualty.  Everyone in the country.

Him:  Casualty’s like jury duty.

Me:  Ha!

Him:  They send you a letter through and you have to be on Casualty, otherwise you can go to prison.

Me:  Yeah.  It’s a bit like jury duty or leader of the Labour Party.4

Him:  Is Casualty any good?

(Okay, maybe I was a bit hasty with my earlier sea badger prediction…  I did type ‘potentially’.)

Me:  So, anyway…  Paterson Joseph was great.

Him:  Ah!  You’ve got a signed thing from him in Casualty.

Me:  I have.  He played Mark Grace.

Him:  But was he in Casualty for more than one episode? 

Me:  He was.  He was a regular.  I think the reason the BBC’re doing it is because they know they’ve got around twenty-thousand… people… who will shell out for something that costs about 50p to make.

Him:  It costs more than 50p to animate it.

Me:  I meant to manufacture the physical DVD!

Him:  Have you ever manufactured a DVD?

Me:  No.  CDs though…  Once you’re producing a certain amount it gets cheaper with each one.  It’s the initial mastering that costs…  There’s no restoration required.  If the BBC’ve come up with the money in order to do the animation then…  What this one is, really, is something that’s just being sold-

Him:  Last week, I specifically remember you telling me that they were never going to release any more DVDs.  I said, “No, no.  They can still make money off them.”  And you were like, “No!  They’ve said they won’t!  And they never will again!”  And then, not a week later, not even a week later, you’re like, “HRRRR!  THEY’RE RELEASING NEW DVDs!”

Me:  I reckon they’ve got the Hut bugged.

Him:  Then, why even record this?  The BBC’ll put it up.

Me:  That’s true.

Him:  Although, to be honest, no-one’ll hear what I’m saying…  Just your replies…

Me:  Ha!  Let’s be fair, the reason the BBC’re doing this one is because it’s a regeneration story and it’s got Daleks in it.  Also, it’s a classic and they can really push it.

Him:  It’s not really a regeneration story.  Are regeneration stories spread across both stories?  I mean, that makes the TV Movie a regeneration story squared.

Me:  It’s a regeneration story in the same sense that Castrovalva is…  And remember, William Hartnell does appear in it.

Him:  How much d’you think he got paid for that appearance?

Me:  Nothing.  Almost certainly.  Or, very little.  Going on the fact that Bret Vyon vanished off the floor, ensuring Nicholas Courtney wouldn’t get an appearance fee, which was a bit harsh.

Him:  He did come back, I think.  Was he not an extra in one of the later stories?

Me:  I think so, yeah.  He turned up in something, outside a castle…  

Him:  Was he in Casualty?

Me:  He must’ve been.  Colin Baker was.  He had glowing green eyes.

Him:  Was he in Casualty for a long time, or just the one episode?

Me:  He was one of the main characters-

Him:  Really?

Me:  Yeah.  He was the monster that lived in the hospital’s basement…  Or, am I confusing that with something by Lars Von Trier?  So, I think that if this is a success, we’ll probably get The Evil of the Daleks, which would explain the computer-generated Dalek Queen that was in that Doctor Who Adventures all that time ago…

Him:  I don’t think they’ll ever explain that.  Also, that must’ve been years ago.

Me:  It takes a long time to do this stuff.

Him:  It doesn’t take that long.

Me:  It takes a while.

Him:  It doesn’t take that long.

Me:  Alright.  Probably-

Him:  And, if they had a shot of it, then it means they’d probably already done it…

Me:  Could just be a design.  It depends on how this stuff sells.  If The Power of the Daleks sells really well, then it could open the rest of the stories for the DVD market.  If they can flog that one, then they can get away with milking the fans to buy the rest.  Having said that, the BBC’re going to have to start putting in some extra features.  It’s not like there’s any restoration that’s been paid for.  It’d put an end to the Omnirumour as well.

Him:  The ‘Omnirumour’?

Me:  Yeah, that’s the name for the rumour that all the missing episodes’ve been returned and they’re just sitting-

Him:  In the BBC Canteen?

Me:  Unable to escape.

Him:  You would get pretty sick of watching Feast of Steven on repeat.

Me:  Ha! 

Him:  It’s a bit upsetting because that one, it cannot return.

Me:  No.

Him:  Because the BBC were wiping it as they broadc-

(Tape runs out.)

1.  A chat we’ll have another time.

2.  Oddly enough, at the time of typing it’s just been announced that Auntie’s misplaced The Great British Bake Off as well, which really does put a lot of pressure on Doctor Who, a show that’s – basically – not even on this year.

Leaving aside the political scourging the BBC’s currently undergoing, some of it self-induced, it’s probably worth pointing out a few things that might be going on here.  First off, The Power of the Daleks isn’t the step backward some fans might think.  After Spearhead From Space and The Enemy Within, there’s no Classic series stories that’re genuinely suitable for BluRay treatment.  (BluRay’s not a terrific format either, it’s nowhere near the huge jump in quality between VHS and DVD for a start.  It arrived to the party slightly too late as well, with digital media already starting to infect the wider industry.  Even punishing DVD owners by only sticking extras on BluRay didn’t work.  After all, who wanted to buy a new player and TV to see what got chopped out of Prometheus?) 

The range of Doctor Who DVDs is very, very good indeed.  There are a few bad decisions – inverted Terreliptils, ‘improving’ rather than enhancing and a tendency to self-indulgent cronyism5 being the least-defensible – but the love that went into producing them really shines through.  The most impressive thing about the collection however, is also the T. rex everyone’s ignoring: the VAM.

With a few notable exceptions that we’ll get to, the Classic Doctor Who range contains a staggering amount of historical information about one of the most important1 TV shows ever made.  But there are gaps, and, despite what Auntie and other people may argue, those omissions are very, very hard to defend. 

There’s a definite air of The Tripods about TV Professionals Who Happen To Be Doctor Who Fans.  The Uncapped are cattle fit for milking and mocking and not much else.  Occasionally, one of these ‘Milkable Barkers’ will win a place at the side of the Chosen.  That these happy few seem to always hail from Arslikhan is just one of those things.  Like Derren Brown tossing ten heads in a row.  Or ‘needing’ a zombie to provide a jump-scare climax to a 28 Days Later homage that makes Pebble Mill’s Cyberman look like a herald of the Apocalypse.1 

Two Troughtons returned.  No extras.  Those days’re done.  Whatever the official reasons for vanilla releases with no accompanying documentaries, they’re bollocks.  Truly.  Not just a poor show, there’s no excuse.  There wasn’t at the time, and there isn’t now.  I’m sure that BBC ‘License-fee payers enjoyed the chance to watch these episodes for free when they were first broadcast in the Sixties’ Worldwide will disagree – these are the folk who gave us the Regeneration and Fourth Doctor boxsets after all – but it’s an attitude that’s smug and arrogant and, well, rather entitled.  The world’s changed – it might not even have very long left – so denigrating your customers while they still exist, should probably not be company policy.  (You might want to leave the knitting patterns alone too.)

In much the same way that record companies totally misunderstood how mp3 worked and criminalised it as a format (remember then, kids?), the BBC need to be very careful here.  It’s a no-brainer that The Evil of the Daleks and then Mission to the Unknown/The Daleks’ Master Plan are the next in line for production.  Both (yeah, yeah) stories have surviving episodes, which minimises the need for animated episodes, and both feature Daleks – which, let’s be fair – and Aaru never lie - are the main draw after the incumbent.  The Daleks’ll be back next year – AsBill’s intro presumably fulfilling the contractual obligations for 2016, we’ll see – so that’d be the time to relaunch them.  Give Mr Chibnall’s run a boost/fighting chance/Open-Airing (delete according to bias).

The BBC then have the opportunity to flog a box-set containing every Dalek story.  The DVD market-door’s closing, but folk out there might be tempted.  A download bundle’s one thing6, but A Complete Dalek Story Box-Set You Can Drive?  “Hey!  This cash prints itself!”7

Auntie’s not got long.  The twenty thousand (cit. needed) fanfolk she’s been exploiting won’t wait around forever.  There’re good quality reconstructions in the wild, complete with artwork that matches her own design better than she’s always managed.  DVDs are already a desktop-publishing market, and her market knows the production costs.8

If, y’know, being all speculative, the Dalek stories sell, then…  Well, within a limited timeframe…  There’s the potential for half-a-century’s double-dipping.  Forget Dalek and Cybermen and Doctor- themed box-sets, forget even the multiple season box-sets…

You see where I’m going?

The BBC’re currently running nostalgic reanimations of things they killed with bricks.  It’s desperate and sweaty, but understandable.  Imagine.  Just imagine.  A complete Doctor Who Collection box-set.  It’s Auntie’s only reliable brand.9  The potential’s incredible – for Humanity if nothing else.  Y’know, if Auntie doesn’t go full-Dodgson.10

3.  Other opinions are available.

4.  Triple-bluff for balance there.

5.  Still, that’s showbiz.1

6.  It’s, let’s be fair, the same as taping an album for a friend/reading a magazine in Smiths/finding a VHS in the street, and being charged full-price for the experience .1

7.  For Kroll’s sake, don’t throw in a ring modulator though.  If the peasants and livestock see behind that particular curtain, the outcry’ll be horrific.  Thankfully, Equity don’t seem to care. 

8.  If there’s an actual proper reason that The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear cost so much to bring back to life there was nothing left in the budget for VAM, then the BBC shouldn’t shy from explaining what that reason was – when they can.  Barring the Destruction of Humanity, I can see this story running for a while yet.

9.  BC.

10.  She will, just you wait.  I’ve presented a potential business model for the brand11 that emphasises integrity and longevity in the long-term (I doubt I’m the first).  This isn’t a Barrowmenesque rejection of the facts.  Torchwood: the ship that sank itself.  Hopefully Class’ll do better.  After all, it only exists to keep BBC 3 viable, and surely it can’t get that wrong…

11.  Ych y fi

Downtime (one last time)

BEFORE

Pass the crystal/Spread the tarot
- Eldritch, Alice

This ‘review’ of Downtime has been wandering around the internet in various forms for the last couple of years.  Seeing as Downtime itself is showing signs of escaping captivity within the next week, it seemed only fair to trot this disorientating chunk of text out for a final canter: let it feel the wind in its face, the sun in its fur, the screams in its ears – that sort of thing.

As with fairly much everything on this blog, it’s probably not about what it looks like it’s about.  You might want to scatter some breadcrumbs as you wander through it.  Y’know, in case you get lost.

It’s at this point that I feel obliged to state for the record that I’m not at this time, and have never been, a goth.

DURING

 

In illusion/Comfort lies
- Eldritch, Alice

It's been twenty-three years since Wembley.  The Doctor turned twenty-seven yesterday. 

Twenty-three years (and change) since Wembley.  In that time an ocean of river's run under more bridges than you'd even find in Hamburg.  New names; loads of pack-drill.

Shaved for the occasion.  Head right to the front, crush up against the barrier and get the sweating in early.  Every drop picks out tiny razor tears and magnifies them.

Lights.  Smoke.  Scream for speed, girls - here we go.

It's a different gig in the front.  Up with the gods twenty-three years (and a lifetime) ago, trying to guess which blur was which.  Now the Abyss looks right on back.  And points.

"It's for you.  It's all for you."   

Rise; reverberating.

AFTER

No confusion/No surprise
- Eldritch, Alice

So, yeah, I loved The Sisters of Mercy.

I came to music fairly slowly.  When I was really small it didn’t bother me, I was much more into reading.  The writing, drawing and falling off things came later.  Books, comics, trees and toys – that’s where satori came from.  Childhood’s an odd state where everything’s incomprehensible and slightly bigger; dreams and colours are clearer than they’ll ever be again, you might say.  And I will.1

The first record I remember having was an accidental purchase.  I’d really, really wanted the soundtrack to The Empire Strikes Back – so this must’ve been 1980.  The WH Smiths in Newport used to be a double-level beauty crouching opposite the Market,2 with all the vinyl stocked on the first floor.  They didn’t have the record I was after, so I picked up Jeff Wayne’s Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds instead.6 After that, I was taping radio dramas, picking up soundtracks on cassette where possible and recording TV programmes onto cassettes, so I could listen to them later.  (Alfred Hitchcock Presents rather than Doctor Who, like you’d think.)

I graduated from soundtracks onto Adam and the Ants and a selection of compilation records that collected hits of the day.  These would either be picked up in branches of Boots, Smiths, Woolworths or from Seeley’s on Hill Road.  Nobody reading this’ll have a clue where that is, which is shame as it’ll almost crop up again after the next paragraph.

I’d listen to soundtracks while reading books or reading and drawing comics.  The soundtracks I liked the best were the ones that had moments of proper drama.  The truck chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark still sticks out.  I got the same trigger from the Burundi-influenced drum twins, Terry Lee Miall and Merrick7 and that started driving me toward more full-on music.  Well, that and puberty.  After a brief dalliance with metal in its hairiest forms, I settled on early The Queen, which in turn led to The Sisters of Mercy, long hair, cowboy boots and recording studios.

My first gig was in a venue you can see in M*****man.8  The third was in an underground bar opposite Seeley’s and hidden in fog.  We did a lot of Sisters songs but none by The Queen.  Over Christmas we recorded a demo in Bristol’s Rizound Studios and in the New Year we headlined the Bierkeller.  We did one more gig and then split up due to ‘physical differences’.  I went to college and formed another band along with a chap who’d already had a letter published in Doctor Who Comic (that’s what it’s called).  We listened to a lot of Sisters but didn’t cover any. 

In 1995 I formed a new band with a Frenchman.  We played Floorshow for a while before moving on to other things. In the University of East Anglia, similar madness was taking place, albeit on a much grander scale.

Downtime9 is a sequel to The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear.  Although it wasn’t endorsed by the BBC, they sure let a lot of their staff have a crack at it.  The Reeltime film came out as a video premiere in September.  Written by Marc (Ghost Light) Platt, it begins with Victoria Waterfield returning to Det-Sen Monastery fifteen years ago and continues in a fan-pleasing vein for much of the rest of its sixty-seven minutes.  Familiar faces, lines and locations make an appearance in something that should really be unwatchable, but isn’t.  I’m not going to give the story away, because it would be nice if this cropped up as VAM on a future “Yeti Tales” boxset.  Well, a guy can dream. 

I was going to say a lot of clever things about the character of Hinton being a double-bluff – referencing both the late Craig Hinton and the inventor of the tesseract – designed with Moffatian precision to distract the fan from what’s actually going on.  I planned to point out the themes of education, aging, technology and the way that time is a perceptive illusion.  Platt’s lifted moments of (almost) occult mathematics from the gutters of From Hell - check out the two guys on the beach in the dream sequence if you don’t believe me.  This is a writer who totally understands the Cartmel Masterplan.  Throughout, the whole thing's suffused with the terror of the Millennium Bug: its huge wings and invisible teeth.

This makes sense to me.

In 1999 things were going gooey.  I screamed a pop song that wasn’t into a Maida Vale microphone in the same building that gave us the Greatest Theme in the History of Ever.  Laughing at the bear under the stairs as it eats off your leg isn’t really a career move.  These things only look cool if you can get the angle right.

Whatever’s wrong with it, Downtime is made from love and high-energy enthusiasm.  Every penny is on the screen.  The old chums shine, the guests…  Not so much. 

Other criticisms?  The music tries too hard; the camera direction’s inconsistent; the editing’s flabby and you can see the seeds of Craig Hinton’s greatest term in every in-joke that plays to the inner-circle.  That’s about it though.  It’s on a par with School Reunion and The Sontaran Stratagem by dint of spawning them, which is about all you really need to know.   

Fan love manifests in strange ways.  Sometimes it’s a success; sometimes it’s weird; sometimes it makes a difference, sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes you can’t tell what’s happened.  Or how you ended up wherever the hell it is you are.

So, yeah, I loved The Sisters of Mercy.  Seriously loved them. 

Still do.

1.  And did.  “If I have to explain then you’ll never understand.” 

2.  Newport Market was a treasure trove for a while.  When I was heading toward my teens, I found that the second-hand bookshop on the balcony also sold comics and seemed to have back issues of all the must-have titles that couldn’t be found anywhere.  I still hadn’t heard about comic shops at this point, so most of my periodical-excavating was being done in newsagents.3

Later on I discovered where they hid the record shops.  In fact, for a while there – around the age of 14 - I could sniff out shops selling comics or records in a city that I’d never visited before. These days I don’t go anywhere new.

3. There used to be three comic shops/stalls in Cardiff.  One was in Jacob’s Market where the Abzorbaloff later lived; one was stocked by the Roach brothers (only half of whom now draw the really black bits of the Doctor Who Comic strip) slightly above where the Philharmonic4 spewed onto Saint Mary Street and the last one was Roath Books which sat on City Road.  Roath Books was fantastic.  I’d spend hours in there.  Saturdays would fade away to the flicking sound of mylar bags as I went through every single box, the proprietor chatting to the weird little goblin creature while it distracted him from whichever sign he was painting that week.5 

I’ll tell you about Adam Warlock one day. 

4.  Years later, the band played many gigs there; a couple were doomed, one got bootlegged and one got written up by the Big Issue. 

5.  I remember when all this were motorway/jumpers for goalposts/Spangles/Yorkies made your gums bleed etc. etc. 

6.  I’ve told you about the time that I didn’t meet Phil Lynott, yeah?  Very strange.  The pub it happened in, the Park Vaults, doesn’t seem to exist anymore.5 

7.  Years later the band recorded a version of Kings of the Wild Frontier as part of a radio session for BBC Wales, closing something shaped a bit like a circle.  The Adam and the Ants Fan Club said they liked it and gave it a bronze medal at a convention.

8.  See The Payphone Story and Judge Minty blog posts for the gory details. Oddly enough, the story in question was reprinted by Marvel a couple of months ago.  It was quite a big deal.  Probably in almost every comic shop in the country.  That wheel keeps spinning.

9.  For a week there, every Doctor Who spin-off had a compound word for a title.

Most of this ‘review’ of Downtime was originally published in the Travers Tales Winter Special. 
It then went through a couple of revisions which’re here and here.

This (final) revision is dedicated to 
my long-suffering PA.

Extra blame (in no particular): 
 the encyclopaedic sisterswiki.org for release dates and images   
(I should really have laid everything on the floor, climbed a stepladder and just taken a photo),
J.R., Bev, Kev, Rev (not that one),
Gruff, Giz, Brian, Rob,
Stony, Mark, Tony,
Stu,
 Phil, Way, Dr. Will, Sklav,
James, Emma, Adam, Glyn,
the Rev (not that one), Rated, Dems, Rhods
and
 Lee.
 
It also comes with 
an extra-special cheery wave of the arms to all the folk in the Heartland.