Let’s Stick Together

When it comes to relationships, television - and the BBC in particular - is obsessed with two diametrically opposite aspects. One was laboriously regurgitated, for the umpteenth time, in last week’s seventh episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day. Russell T Davies has his agenda, which he will doggedly pursue to the end of days, that isn’t helping his cause, either as writer or in terms of sexual orientation, in any way whatsoever. Eighties’ Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner was homosexual but didn’t insist on forcing it down our throats, if you’ll pardon the expression, at every available opportunity! All RTD is doing is, metaphorically, boring the pants off everyone by carping on about it and, yes, I know the episode in question wasn’t actually written by him! And, yes, I’m fully aware the instalment was authored by a woman! Similarly, the BBC’s other preoccupation, concerning affairs of the human heart, is about to be foisted upon us, yet again, in a dramatisation of the recent Royal Wedding. Ex-Spooks actor, and one of the many stars of the superlative BBC adaptation of Dickens’ Little Dorrit, Matthew Macfadyen will play heir to the throne HRH Prince William. Ex-EastEnder, though still a Bionic Woman in my eyes, Michelle Ryan will slip into the shoes, if not the smaller brassiere, of Kate Middleton while Rowan Atkinson, assuming he has made a full recovery from his recent motoring accident, will once again attend the Royal Court… this time as best man Prince Harry!!

Alright! It’s a tissue of lies. I made it all up! The BBC aren’t spending any more of the licence payers’ hard-earned reminding us how certain wealthy sectors of the population choose to overindulge. The Royal Wedding reputedly cost fifty-three million pounds which makes the five million smackers that Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone spent on his daughter Petra’s nuptials seem like chicken feed. I do think spending £4,000 per bottle of wine is obscene though. Apparently, both Fergies were there! The ex-Royal, who wasn’t invited to the Royal Wedding, and the female member of Vengaboys sound-alike pop combo The Black Eyed Peas. Stacey and the boys were paid a whopping one-and-a-half million to perform whereas Sarah was the one who could’ve probably done with the cash. Instead, she had to make do with emulating her eldest daughter’s performance at the earlier bash by turning up in another silly hat… presumably! Even the rather feisty Mels, in this week’s opening episode of Doctor Who, lied (or did she?) claiming not to “do” weddings when we all know the series, and its two spin-offs, is obsessed with them. I won’t bore you all to buggery by recounting every single occasion we’ve seen a white meringue in the last seven years. If, in the series finale, the Daleks unexpectedly trundle through the vestry door, and gatecrash The Wedding Of River Song crying ex-ter-mi-nate, then it’ll all have been worth the wait!

Remembering the Brigadier

Nicholas Courtney, aka Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, is sadly no longer with us… at least in person. But he has left behind an immeasurable contribution to my favourite television series, “Doctor Who”, ensuring he will never be forgotten. It all started when director Douglas Camfield cast him as Bret Vyon, opposite first Doctor William Hartnell, in the epic twelve-part story “The Daleks’ Master Plan” in the mid-Sixties. Nick and Dougie clearly had a good working relationship because when the director was hired to oversee the reconstruction of the London Underground, for the Patrick Troughton adventure “The Web of Fear”, the actor was cast as Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, ready to battle the Yeti in those dark, dank tunnels. A year-or-so later and Lethbridge-Stewart was back, this time promoted to Brigadier, in the eight-part Cyber-infestation “The Invasion”, engaging the silver giants down in the sewers of London and on the steps of St. Paul’s. It’s surprising the term Brigadier ever became a watchword in “Doctor Who” circles because the rank is actually a demotion from Colonel! Even more ironic is that Camfield was an ex-military man and could’ve had the error in the script corrected. But, in retrospect, maybe it’s just as well the mistake was left in because it gave birth to one of the series’ most-enduring and popular characters.

By the time the second Doctor regenerated into Jon Pertwee, and black-and-white pictures gave way to colour, Nick Courtney became a regular on “Doctor Who”. The year was now 1970. The Doctor has been banished to Earth to reluctantly work as scientific advisor to military outfit UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, tracking all manner of alien invasion in the style of “Quatermass”! In “Inferno”, just as Patrick Troughton had as Salamander in “The Enemy of the World”, Nicholas is given the opportunity to play an evil version of the Brigadier, the Brigade Leader, resplendent in Blofeld-style eye-patch, when the Doctor ends up on a parallel Earth. A year on sees Nick given one of his most memorable lines in “The Daemons”, “Chap with wings, five rounds rapid!” His time as a regular essentially came to an end when it was time for a new producer to be appointed. “Robot”, Tom Baker’s first story was Barry Letts’ last. New producer Philip Hinchcliffe naturally had new ideas and wanted to direct the series towards a gothic influence. Nick, however, would return occasionally, seeing off the Loch Ness Monster in “Terror of the Zygons”. By the time Peter Davison was the Doctor, Alistair was teaching maths at a boarding school for boys in “Mawdryn Undead”. The twentieth anniversary adventure, “The Five Doctors”, gave the character another of those immortal lines, describing the Doctor as a “marvellous chap, all of them!”

In the final series of classic “Doctor Who”, Alistair Gordon is now retired and married to Doris, played in episodes one and four of “Battlefield” by the lovely Angela Douglas. It was rumoured, at the time, that the Brigadier was to be killed off but, luckily, has a last minute reprieve against the Destroyer. The story includes a poignantly reverberating scene where seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy cradles his friend’s head in his hands, believing him to be dead, and calls him a “thick-headed numbskull”. The only Doctor Nick hadn’t acted with by the end of the Eighties was the sixth, Colin Baker. Producer John Nathan-Turner corrected this omission, after the show’s cancellation, with the 1993 “Children in Need” Special “Dimensions in Time”. This wasn’t to be the last appearance of the character on television. A few years ago, the Brig resurfaced aiding-and-abetting Miss Smith in the Season Two finale of “The Sarah Jane Adventures”. This story has become his swansong. Former Doctor Tom Baker remembered Nicholas Courtney as “a wonderful companion” with “a marvellous resonant voice”. Quite a legacy and to paraphrase a line from the aforementioned “Battlefield”, Nick just did the best he could!

“Doctor Who” actor’s cancer diagnosis

TV star Geoffrey Hughes, who played “Coronation Street” binman Eddie Yeats, is being treated for cancer for a second time.

The 66-year-old collapsed with back pains at his home in Newport, on the Isle of Wight, on Friday.

The actor, who also starred as Onslow in BBC sitcom “Keeping Up Appearances”, was taken to hospital in Portsmouth for intense radiotherapy.

He was appointed deputy lieutenant for the Isle of Wight last year.

There’s a lovely story, dating from 1986, involving Geoffrey and, former “Doctor Who” producer, the late John Nathan-Turner. After a day’s filming on the two-part season finale, “The Ultimate Foe”, concluding the fourteen-part epic “The Trial of a Time Lord”, the cast and crew returned to the location hotel and naturally those with a strong constitution headed for the bar!

Eventually, writers Pip and Jane Baker made their excuses and retired for the night. When they came down for breakfast, the following morning, Geoffrey and John were still propping up the bar, still deep in conversation! Sounds like they were making the most of things!!

I can only wish Mr Popplewick a speedy recovery.

Warden’s Watch: Doctor Who - Series Five, Episodes One to Three

It’s “Doctor Who”, Tim, but not as we know it! The much-loved science fiction fairy tale is back and it’s still as beleaguered with problems as under its previous show-runner. On the plus side, gone are the gratuitous references to homosexuality which Russell T Davies forced upon his audience every episode - John Nathan-Turner was gay too, but didn’t see the series as the place to air a personal agenda - and, better still, gone are all the companions’ annoyingly-grating mothers. Rose, Donna, Martha - they all came with one! It’s already established, in “The Eleventh Hour”, that Amy’s parents are dead and that she lives with her aunt. We’ve never had that before in “Doctor Who”! I was also hoping new Executive Producer Steven Moffat would drop the season-umbrella idea, so poorly realised previously with Bad Wolf, Torchwood and Saxon, and keep the stories self-contained. But the crack in the wall in the first episode and again this week, at the end of “Victory of the Daleks”, coupled with Amy’s lack of memory concerning the events of “The Stolen Earth” suggest these ideas are the running themes of Series Five.

Upon his arrival, Mister Moffat indicated a desire for all things new. New Doctor, new short-skirted rather than trouser-wearing companion, ghastly new opening titles in which the actors names are almost unreadable, terribly uninspired new logo, the worst arrangement of the theme tune ever, new - better than the last one - TARDIS console room, new lick of paint for the old Police Box, and now five new impressively-oversized individually-coloured Daleks! But all these things are cosmetic. It doesn’t really matter that much which actor plays the Doctor, ask Tom Baker! What you really need are superbly-written scripts and both “The Beast Below” and the Dalek extravaganza were too short for their good ideas to be fully realised. We’ve been landed with the same format, ten stories over thirteen episodes, when we’d be better off with just six stories over those same thirteen instalments. The classic series’ four-parters were ideal in length, structured a bit like a traditional symphony. If you want superficial then forty minutes is fine but, if you’re looking for substantial, one hour forty minutes is preferable. There was never any need for this change in format when the programme originally returned in 2005. The one thing they should’ve retained they threw out with the bath water!

The “new” Executive Producer has held onto those blessed stallholders much beloved of RTD. We met them in “The Long Game”, we met them in “Gridlock”, we met them in “The Fires of Pompeii” and again in “Turn Left”, and up they popped most recently onboard the Starship UK. These villains return more often than the Daleks! The stallholder, one of many ideas “borrowed” from the JN-T era, was better realised by Peggy Mount in “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy”. Then there’s the obligatory gunk-tank, splattering all and sundry, firstly whenever there’s a Slitheen around, next getting messy in the canteen kitchen in “School Reunion”, and now hurtling down a tube into slime onboard, yes you’ve guessed it, the Starship UK! And where are the Doctor’s table manners? Compare the Tenth Doctor’s eating habits in “The Unicorn and the Wasp” with those of his successor in “The Eleventh Hour”. Both very very mucky!!! I did admire how writer Mark Gatiss managed to cram all three best things from Christopher Eccleston’s single year into a single episode, namely an historical figure, new-look Dalek and Blitz-ravaged London. Churchill was fun, the pepper pots buggered off too quickly and the Second World War setting always works in “Doctor Who”… just watch “The Curse of Fenric”!