Be Still, My Beating Hearts!

The BBC has released the first publicity still for season four of new “Doctor Who” and, I have to say, my response to it comes as something of a surprise. How like Sarah Jane does Donna Noble look was what immediately ran through my mind. Catherine Tate’s facial features definitely seemed to have softened, somehow, since “The Runaway Bride”! Of course, a photograph doesn’t talk and if she retains the same brusque manner, as in that earlier episode, then no amount of positive marketing will induce me to watch. But then Sarah Jane could be quite curt when the mood suited!! I showed my father the picture and, before I explained it, he asked if it was Sarah Jane!!! So, it isn’t just me with that initial reaction. I would be only too happy if Catherine Tate turned out to be another Elisabeth Sladen!

Elsewhere in the production of series four of the good Doctor’s adventures, imagination is running low! The Time Lord is to meet the creator of “Miss Marple” and “Poirot”, popular whodunit author Agatha Christie. I moaned last year about him meeting Shakespeare, having already met Dickens, and now the Doctor is to meet yet another writer. Talk about creativity!! Can’t Russell, tiresome dictator that he seems to be, come up with something other than that with which he is already familiar or doesn’t he want to spend time researching maybe a meeting with a scientist or a musician? A little (“Enigma”) variation wouldn’t go amiss! My guess is that when James Nesbitt takes over the keys of the TARDIS, for series five, the chances are the eleventh Doctor will meet a writer too, probably Robert Louis Stevenson!!!

It’s also been rumoured that Sir Ben Kingsley is to appear in next year’s series as Davros, fictional creator of the Daleks in the original series. Again, this is so predictable. During the era of the first Doctor, the Daleks were established as the main adversary and, naturally enough, they were the principal villain reintroduced in the first year of new “Doctor Who”. With the second Doctor came the Cybermen. Year two of new “Who” and, behold, a new breed of Cyber-buddies! Time Lord menace, the Master was pitted against the third Doctor eight times. Series three and up pops John Simm! Down boy!! Then, Dalek history was rewritten and fourth Doctor Tom Baker meets their maker a couple of times with each successive Doctor, over the next three incarnations, also squaring up to the crippled scientist. Why resurrect THE major villain from each era, of the classic series, one per year in the new series in chronological order? Talk about creativity! Oh, I’ve already said that!!

It shouldn’t be assumed, by the way, that just because Davros is returning the Daleks will follow. There has never been a televised Davros story without his demented offspring in tow and RTD’s notion of imaginative writing is to rework an old idea out of its usual context. Perhaps viewers will witness the decline and fall of Davros, pre-“Genesis of the Daleks”, discovering how he became shrivelled and wheelchair-bound. We saw Sec released from the confines of his casing and it might be interesting to see the process in reverse… If you’re interested in seeing what kind of villain Sir Ben might portray in “Doctor Who” then, as luck would have it, you can catch him in this Saturday’s ITV1 teatime movie premiere as the Hood in a very poor live action retelling of Gerry Anderson’s most-popular puppet series “Thunderbirds”. It also features Madame De Pompadour as Lady Penelope, Mr Magpie as Parker and a closing theme song by the god-awful McFly! You have been duly warned!!