Doctor Who - 49th Anniversary Favourite Fifty

01. Fury From The Deep - Patrick Troughton
02. The Invasion - Patrick Troughton
03. The Evil Of The Daleks - Patrick Troughton
04. The Web Of Fear - Patrick Troughton
05. The Tomb Of The Cybermen - Patrick Troughton
06. The Power Of The Daleks - Patrick Troughton
07. The Dalek Invasion Of Earth - William Hartnell
08. The Daleks - William Hartnell
09. The Caves Of Androzani - Peter Davison
10. Revelation Of The Daleks - Colin Baker

11. The Curse Of Fenric - Sylvester McCoy
12. The Greatest Show In The Galaxy - Sylvester McCoy
13. The Mind Of Evil - Jon Pertwee
14. Inferno - Jon Pertwee
15. Genesis Of The Daleks - Tom Baker
16. The Ice Warriors - Patrick Troughton
17. The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit - David Tennant
18. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances - Christopher Eccleston
19. Ghost Light - Sylvester McCoy
20. Remembrance Of The Daleks - Sylvester McCoy
21. The Ambassadors Of Death - Jon Pertwee
22. Doctor Who And The Silurians - Jon Pertwee
23. The Seeds Of Death - Patrick Troughton
24. The Moonbase - Patrick Troughton
25. Asylum Of The Daleks - Matt Smith
26. The Wheel In Space - Patrick Troughton
27. The Two Doctors - Colin Baker
28. Frontios - Peter Davison
29. Planet Of Giants - William Hartnell
30. Dalek - Christopher Eccleston

31. Blink - David Tennant
32. Delta And The Bannermen - Sylvester McCoy
33. The Daemons - Jon Pertwee
34. The Talons Of Weng-Chiang - Tom Baker
35. Vengeance On Varos - Colin Baker
36. Attack Of The Cybermen - Colin Baker
37. Resurrection Of The Daleks - Peter Davison
38. The Unquiet Dead - Christopher Eccleston
39. Planet Of The Dead - David Tennant
40. Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks - David Tennant
41. The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People - Matt Smith
42. Planet Of The Ood - David Tennant
43. The Doctor's Daughter - David Tennant
44. Amy's Choice - Matt Smith
45. Midnight - David Tennant
46. Survival - Sylvester McCoy
47. The Sea Devils - Jon Pertwee
48. The Tenth Planet - William Hartnell
49. The Abominable Snowmen - Patrick Troughton
50. Earthshock - Peter Davison

Favourite Eras - based on the above list

01. Patrick Troughton - 402 points
02. Sylvester McCoy - 166 points
03. Jon Pertwee - 156 points
04. William Hartnell - 112 points
05. David Tennant - 100 points
06. Colin Baker - 96 points
07. Peter Davison - 80 points
08. Christopher Eccleston - 67 points
09. Tom Baker - 53 points
10. Matt Smith - 43 points

A special one-off drama about the creation of Doctor Who has been commissioned to mark the programme's 50th anniversary. An Adventure In Space And Time will tell the story of the genesis of the BBC science-fiction series in the early 1960s. "This is the tale of how an unlikely set of brilliant people created a true television original," said its writer Mark Gatiss. The 90-minute production will air on BBC Two next year.

Something wicked this way comes…

I’ve never been much of a fan of Being Human… until now! I’ve always watched it because I believe in supporting what little telefantasy comes our way. I can only put my change of heart down to the change of cast. Over eight episodes, the Fourth Series - completed on Sunday on the otherwise ghastly BBC Three - dispensed with the entire original cast of vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner), werewolves Nina (Sinead Keenan) and George (Russell Tovey), and finally ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) in favour of new werewolf Tom (Michael Socha), new vampire Hal (Damien Molony), and introducing new ghost Alex (Kate Bracken). I’m hoping that Series Five will see a return of the other new werewolf-in-the-pack Allison (Ellie Kendrick), introduced in my favourite episode of the season, Puppy Love, as a replacement for Nina and partner for Tom. The transitional nature of this series was reminiscent of the Twenty-First Series of Doctor Who, which underwent a similarly radical change of cast… back in 1984! Michael Socha made semi-regular appearances in last year’s run of Being Human and returned - full-time - as lovable as ever, more so. I anticipated Lenora Crichlow’s departure and Kate Bracken looks like being a worthy successor but what really astounded was the performance of Damien Molony, in the light that Hal Yorke is his first television role. The original cast were fine but, for me, the new cast is a marked improvement.

The main plot of this year’s series of Being Human centred around baby Eve, daughter of George and Nina and would-be-saviour of mankind, whom Annie takes it upon herself to mother. Future Eve (Gina Bramhill) has herself killed (as you do) and returns through time, via purgatory (as you do when you’re deceased!), in order to terminate herself as infant because her survival will mean the survival of the vampire species and the end of human civilisation as we know it! Eve is both saviour and nemesis which she flippantly dismisses with the line, “Talk about multitasking!”. This is, of course, the same time paradox set up as in the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story The Day Of The Daleks and reused in The Terminator franchise but, if you’re going to borrow, you might as well borrow from the best! The real dilemma though is how can anyone bring it upon themselves to kill a defenceless infant despite the knowledge that, otherwise, they will initiate the downfall of mankind. This is also the essential premise of the Tom Baker Doctor Who story Genesis Of The Daleks. In Being Human, there is no cop-out! Writer, and series creator, Toby Whithouse is clearly a man with balls of steel!! The baby dies. It’s not dwelt on excessively but, nevertheless, the infant passes over to the other side, along with Annie, to rejoin its natural parents and reunite the original house-sharing quartet.

Although much humour is to be had over the last two months of Being Human, most - admittedly - of a very dark nature, it could be argued that the series does take an awfully long time for the arc to reach the point at which it can begin to resolve itself. It isn’t until the end of the penultimate episode that the vampire-threat-en-masse The Old Ones arrive, led by the ever-reliable Mark Gatiss (perhaps typecast after the Doctor Who story The Lazarus Experiment?), as Mr Snow, at which point he utters just four words, “Well then… who’s hungry?”. Compare this with the three-part Sylvester McCoy Doctor Who story Survival, from 1989, in which the Doctor comes face-to-face with his nemesis The Master after just twenty-five minutes! The arch-enemy turns to the Doctor and wryly exclaims, “Why Doctor… what an unexpected pleasure!”. It takes seven of its eight hours for Series Four of Being Human to arrive at the same point! The Doctor Who story runs to just an hour-and-a-quarter, in total, so speed is of the essence! Usually, I prefer my science fiction/fantasy straight but, in the case of Being Human, I like the humour and adore the domesticity. I can believe in it. For that reason, my preference is for the first three-quarters of this series over the last two instalments in which events reverted to the darker nature of Series Two and Three after, earlier, rediscovering the humour of the First!

Doll parts

He’s shagged Susan Lynch, stolen a bus (causing pensioners to miss their regular game of bingo!), blown up a house (using its central heating system!!) at precisely 6pm and much, much worse in Cracker… attempted to blow up a London railway terminus, as a terrorist in Spooks… mutinied, then had his back flayed for his trouble, in Hornblower… and, if all that wasn’t enough, he wasn’t a particularly pleasant character in Survivors either… but Andrew Tiernan never short changes the viewer. Andy, as he was credited in this week’s episode of Doctor Who, always turns in a bloody good performance. He played the landlord of a rundown block of flats in Bristol, demanding rent money with the menacing aid of his bruiser-of-a-dog, Bernard! Andy had many of the story’s best lines and moments, bemoaning there was nothing to watch on television except thirty-year-old repeats of Bergerac. Lord knows why he was tuned into Yesterday if he was after the boxing! He brilliantly got sucked into his mangy old carpet much to the total disinterest of his pet but, best of all, was his transformation into one of the demon dolls! Possibly the finest use of special effects since Richard Wilson grew a gasmask in the first series.

Then there was Daniel Mays, whose career continues to be in the ascendancy. ITV3 have been running the 2007 movie Atonement, in which he co-stars with James McAvoy, a romantic drama where a man is accused of a rape he didn’t commit. More recently, Daniel attempted to sort out Gene Hunt’s nick, not the easiest task you can imagine, in the third-and-final series of Ashes To Ashes before being banished to the outer reaches of the solar system in Survivors-style drama Outcasts. In Doctor Who he played Alex, father to a little boy, George, unsure how to connect with his son’s phobia of the dark - when all the scary things come out to play. Boy George turned out not only to be adopted but also alien, living his life in fear of rejection. The coming together of father and child, at the story’s climax, was a pure Railway Children moment, and all the more moving for that! If you’re going to “borrow” then do it from the best!!

And the man who wrote Night Terrors, which may well turn out to be this year’s finest episode of Doctor Who… well, all his previous scripts have been set in the past whereas his latest is set in the present day. He tackled Dickens in The Unquiet Dead, when the novelist was in the last year of his life and about to embark on The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, while Christopher Eccleston was The Doctor… bullying in The Idiot’s Lantern, set during the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, was his next choice of subject after David Tennant had taken over the role… and, after a few years away from writing for Doctor Who, he returned to the fold, last year, to pen Victory Of The Daleks, in which the pepper pots from Skaro were outgunned by Matt Smith, with a great deal of help from the forces and spitfires assembled by a certain PM Winston Churchill. I’m talking about Mark Gatiss, author of all three, whose latest (fourth) instalment of everyone’s favourite science fiction series also included the death of a dear, little old lady by multiple black bin bags! Maybe it was because she looked like Patricia Hayes whilst sounding like Frank Spencer?! When Steven Moffat relinquishes his post as show runner, and assuming he wants the responsibility of the top job, surely Mark is his natural successor.

Warden’s Watch Special: Highlights of the Year

It hasn’t been a particularly memorable year for those of us interested in brilliantly-crafted television drama. The fifth series of new “Doctor Who” was disappointing but my expectations weren’t that high to begin with. I worried that, under Steven Moffat, the stories would become increasingly esoteric and my fears proved well-founded. One of the problems is that, creatively, the most-successful stories written by both the new Executive Producer and Mark Gatiss were the ones they wrote back in 2005 for Christopher Eccleston! It’s a bit like Ben Aaronovitch trying to top “Remembrance of the Daleks”, in the late Eighties, and coming up with the vastly-inferior “Battlefield”, itself a reworking of one of his earlier scripts. The irony is that the finest story of the year to feature the new, eleventh, Doctor, played brilliantly by Matt Smith, was one of “The Sarah Jane Adventures”! And, to compound the irony, “Death of the Doctor” was the one written by Russell!! It almost made me feel sorry he’s gone and I’m sure that that was his intention. This third story in the fourth series of “The Sarah Jane Adventures” was equalled, if not bettered, two stories later by Rupert Laight’s “Lost in Time”, a two-episode reworking of an entire twenty-six episode (“The Key to Time”) season of classic “Doctor Who”. With segments reminiscent of “Ghost Light” and “The Curse of Fenric”, and another nodding to the Hartnell historicals, the story gently acknowledged the 47th anniversary of “Doctor Who” with the dateline of the newspaper cutting which the three adventurers had initially set out to investigate.

Aside from stories set in space and time, another mainstay of 2010 has been the continuing dreamlike-investigations of American “Medium” Allison DuBois. Freeview viewers have got as far as Season Five while, if you subscribe to satellite, then you’re enjoying Season Six and, for the more impatient among us, Season Seven episodes have been materialising on the internet from the early hours of Saturday mornings for the ten weeks up to the beginning of December with the remaining six scheduled to resume in the New Year! It’s a miracle the show is still with us, having been picked up by CBS after cancellation, while other series, such as “Heroes”, have fallen by the wayside. Back in the UK, we were treated to the second, and sadly final, series of “Survivors” which I believe to be a more successful reworking of an old hit than the reincarnation and enduring saga of everyone’s favourite Time Lord. Why the BBC have picked up ITV’s “Primeval” and dumped their own is beyond me! I wasn’t as enamoured by Season Six of “Hustle”, at the beginning of the year, as I was Season Five in 2009, despite guest appearances by Brian Murphy, Colin Baker and Danny Webb. Last year it was given a new lease of life with the introduction of two new regular characters, as well as the return of a familiar face, so, by this year, the con seemed to have settled back into a familiar routine once again. On the other hand, “Spooks” has benefited from the introduction of new characters! Still not as good as when Rupert Penry-Jones led the cast, Season Nine was a distinct improvement over recent years. “Luther” was this year’s detective success story, although I’m sure there are those who preferred Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s modernisation of “Sherlock”, but it doesn’t look as though the BBC know where to take Idris Elba’s character next as there isn’t to be a second series as such, just a couple of one-hour specials! Bizarre or what?!

The real triumphs of the year came in the form of selected repeats. I’m not talking about the endless rotation of “Inspector Morse”, “Poirot”, “A Touch of Frost” and “Foyle’s War”, for the older generation on ITV3, or the constant repetition of “The Sweeney”, “The Professionals”, “Minder” and “The Prisoner”, for real men on ITV4, as good as all these series undoubtedly are, but a couple of gems that have surfaced on Yesterday. First was a rerun of the six-part Dennis Potter serial “Lipstick on Your Collar”, originally a Channel Four conclusion to the musical trilogy begun and continued on the BBC with “Pennies from Heaven” and “The Singing Detective” but much-underrated in their shadow! Secondly, and unquestionably one of the ten best series ever to come out of Britain, the two seasons of “Colditz” have recently enjoyed a long-overdue re-screening. The first season is the most consistent, especially when dealing with the psychological aspects of imprisonment rather than boy’s own heroics, while the second suffered a smidgen after the “escape” of Edward Hardwicke’s Pat Reid though his replacement, a new character in the German ranks played with thorough viciousness by Anthony Valentine, aids the drama in delving into the infighting of Nazi politics of the time. There’s no incidental music to tell you what to think or how to feel just bloody good writing, acting and directing from the likes of “Doctor Who” stalwarts Michael Ferguson and Terence Dudley. They just don’t make thought-provoking series like “Colditz” anymore.

Full Moon

Were I to watch only one hour of television this week it would have to be the second instalment of the three-part “A History of Horror” with Mark Gatiss which, in an episode entitled “Home Counties Horror”, focuses on the genre’s films from the 50s and 60s, an era dominated by Hammer Films. In the first programme, Mark covered the Universal pictures made in the States, in the 30s, recalling Bela Lugosi’s performance as “Dracula” and Elsa Lanchester’s seminal outing as “The Bride of Frankenstein” while, in next week’s final show, he will be exploring the US horror films of the late 60s and 70s such as “The Exorcist” and 1979’s “Dawn of the Dead” where four people, barricaded in a shopping mall, struggle to repel rampaging zombies. But Mark’s favourite period, and mine also, is the one covered in tonight’s documentary. Not only that, he also cites “Blood on Satan’s Claw”, made in 1971, as the era’s finest example and, again, I agree it is definitely amongst the best…

“Blood on Satan’s Claw”, ironically not from the studios of Hammer but from Tigon Pictures, stars Linda Hayden and concerns witchcraft and superstitions. Unlike in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, with which it has much in common, the fears of local villagers are well-founded as Linda, playing temptress Angel Blake, attempts to seduce popular “Doctor Who” character The Master! Yes, Anthony Ainley appears as a preacher, the Reverend Arthur Fallowfield, who gives into her naked charms inside his very church. A whole host of famous faces appear in this film. Wendy Padbury, as Cathy Vespers, is ritualistically raped. Simon Williams dons 17th century period costume as Peter Edmonton while Michele Dotrice, playing Margaret, gets away from Frank Spencer! The film is extremely seductive owing, in no small part, to the direction of Piers Haggard. He is the great grand-nephew of author H. Rider Haggard, though perhaps equally famous, in his own right, as the director of Dennis Potter’s much acclaimed television serial, with musical numbers, “Pennies From Heaven”.

Another contender for the crown of best horror movie is the Peter Sasdy-directed “Taste the Blood of Dracula” from 1970 which, like “Blood on Satan’s Claw”, stars Linda Hayden as well as a certain Christopher Lee! You guessed, this one’s a Hammer horror… I did at one time know more about this studio’s films than I did “Doctor Who” simply because they were oft-repeated while I was growing up. I especially love their vampire movies and “Taste the Blood of Dracula” is the fourth in their seven-film “Dracula” cycle. Dracula doesn’t actually get to say much, except count the number of his victims, but boy is this film sensually erotic. It details three bored hypocritical aristocrats, including Geoffrey Keen from the “James Bond” films and Peter Sallis from long running sitcom “Last of the Summer Wine”, seeking ever-extreme thrills until, one night, they take on more than they bargained for in the crypt of a church. Plenty of heaving bosoms but little nudity, it is in fact James Bernard’s music score which delivers the romance with such beautifully-orchestrated melodic punch. Linda Hayden, as Alice Hargood, is the heroine to die for. I’d quite happily be bitten by her, anytime!

Finally, I would suggest another Hammer movie for the aforementioned title. It’s also another vampire film although with John Hough’s “Twins of Evil”, made in 1971, the inspiration isn’t from the pen of Bram Stoker but J Sheridan Le Fanu, albeit interpreted rather loosely. It’s one of a trilogy of films centring on the legend of the Countess Mircalla and my favourite movie to feature the much-missed Peter Cushing. Here, though, he isn’t playing Van Helsing but a witch hunter called Gustav Weil, rather in the mould of “The Witchfinder General”. The beauty of this film is in the blurring of the lines between who is the hunter and who the hunted. Good and evil are Twins of the same coin when both lead to the deaths of innocent young women (if there is such a thing!). The title, taken more literally, stars real life twins and “Playboy” playmates Mary and Madeleine Collinson, as Maria and Frieda Gellhorn, who, while undoubtedly beautiful, aren’t exactly the world’s finest actresses. The incidental music strangely makes the film feel like a western at times and, amongst the many delights on offer, concludes with the gruesome decapitation of one of the sisters! But, which one?

Following Mark’s programme on BBC Four, there is an increasingly rare chance to see the fifty-year-old Hammer film “Brides of Dracula”. Despite the title, Dracula does not appear but when a beautiful young teacher unwittingly frees the mysterious Baron Meinster, he turns the students of a school for girls into vampires. And with a synopsis like that, “Brides of Dracula” is definitely ripe for a remake! “St. Trinian’s” with fangs!! Actually, in my younger days, when one of the brides escapes the confines of her coffin and advances upon a possible victim pleading “Let me kiss you”, it scared the hell out of me. Also showing later this week, on the same channel, is Brian Donlevy in “The Quatermass Xperiment” in which the sole survivor of a British rocket’s crash is revealed to pose a deadly alien threat. At the weekend you can catch the Tigon Picture most claim is their best, apart from Mark and myself, the previously mentioned “The Witchfinder General”, filmed in 1968. It’s a disturbing tale of evil, set during the English Civil War, telling the story of Matthew Hopkins, Oliver Cromwell’s Witchfinder General as portrayed by that other bastion of horror Vincent Price. And, if you can’t get enough of Mr Gatiss, in his capacity as an actor he can be seen in a new adaptation of HG Wells’s science fiction classic “The First Men in the Moon” tomorrow evening. With a playful new twist on the original, beginning with the Apollo astronauts set to land on the Moon in 1969, an old man tells of how he and a professor were first there in 1909!

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”!

Turn Back Time

The latest episode of “Doctor Who”, “The Lazarus Experiment”, seemed to take its ideas from just about every horror film ever made so, not surprisingly, failed to come up with anything new! Everybody was dressed very smartly, no doubt reusing the tuxedos from last year’s “Rise of the Cybermen” as well as the Sycorax’s big red button from “The Christmas Invasion”, but it couldn’t disguise the derivative nature of the story. David Cronenberg’s remake of “The Fly” starring Jeff Goldblum; “The Quatermass Experiment”; one of the films chosen in my previous post, “Lifeforce”; the conclusion of Tim Burton’s take on “Batman” which itself referenced Charles Laughton in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”; these were just a few of the sources from which “The Lazarus Experiment” borrowed. It even plagiarised “Doctor Who” itself for its resolution! As recently as “The Runaway Bride”, in fact, amplified sound has been used to defeat an enemy. But before overcoming Santas last Christmas, the Doctor, in his second incarnation, defeated seaweed creatures through amplifying companion Victoria’s scream in “Fury from the Deep”!

“Fury from the Deep” happens to be my all-time favourite “Doctor Who” story but it has a lot to answer for! It was the tale which introduced the sonic screwdriver but in Victor Pemberton’s story was actually used to sonically undo the screws of a gas pipeline, believe it or not, and wasn’t the multi-multi-purpose gadget it has become in new “Who”. I’ve never been keen on K-9’s use as a cure-all in the latter Tom Baker seasons but I don’t recall the computer dog ever being as overused as the sonic screwdriver is now. I recommend rewatching “Gridlock” in order to count the number of times the Doctor gets it out and puts it away when moving between vehicles! Then there’s the psychic paper, used again last week in “Evolution of the Daleks”, which is another gimmick too far. Ever heard of getting into a building using a fake pass, a much more plausible method of achieving the same result in a story? But, when the Doctor whipped out his sonic thingy in the confined space of the Professor’s machine, this week, and Martha asked him what he was going to do with it, I was ready with a few suggestions!

I believe Russell achieved another first with “Lazarus”, too, but I may be wrong. Has the Doctor ever had sisters as companions for a story before, I wonder? He could go one further and try twins next! How about the Cheeky Girls? They have experience, so to speak, in the pop world to commend them, just like our very own Lil Bill, so they must be good!! Anyway, it was strange how, in “Smith and Jones”, Tish didn’t even mention her new job to Martha and yet they are supposed to be really close! And, also in the girls’ debut story, how did Tish manage to get so much time off work to go visit her sister at the hospital, then spend the evening celebrating brother Leo’s birthday, when just twelve hours later, as specifically mentioned in the current story, she is supposed to be organising Richard Lazarus’s demonstration!!! Can’t they even get continuity right within a single season? And, finally, to add insult to injury, the possibility of the Doctor one day meeting Beethoven was discarded with a cheap throwaway line when there is a really good story waiting to be written about the pair of them!

When Two Worlds Collide…

This trailer takes us right up to the end of the latest third series of “Doctor Who” including brief clips of Sir Derek Jacobi as the Professor in episode eleven, toasting “Utopia”, and the appearance of “Life on Mars” actor John Simm, as “Mr Saxon”, in the final two episodes. John doesn’t say anything but appears to be on a television monitor presumably partaking in a spot of political campaigning! I think that’s what they call it when power-mad peeps try to suppress the rights of the individual!!

Also featured are John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, returning to the show only to find it severely changed, personnel wise! How on Earth is he going to recognise anyone? Will he like Martha as much as he did Rose? Will he wanna kiss Davey-boy as much as he did Chris?!! All pertinent questions! Me, I wonder how Rose feels knowing she will never learn the secret the Face of Boe is waiting to impart in episode three!!

Mark Gatiss looks on fine form in episode six as Dr Lazarus. Interesting that he’s acting in the series this year, having narrated “Confidential” last year, whereas Tony Head, having acted in the show last year, is narrating “Confidential” this year! Simon Pegg managed both in the first year appearing as the Editor in “The Long Game” whilst also narrating “Confidential”!! Enough plugs for the BBC THREE documentary series!!!

Best of all, the 82-second trailer, which is available on loop to Sky and Virgin subscribers but not Freeview users, includes brief footage of delectable “Spooks” actress Miranda Raison as a showgirl in the Dalek episodes, who seem to be whizzing about all over the place exterminating everything in sight. Regular readers of my blog will know I’m rather partial to naughty Miranda! I demand to be transported back to 1930s New York this minute!! I don’t mind fending off the Pig Men to save her!!!

More curiously, the Doctor seems to be with someone in a wedding dress… again! It’s not Donna. Her name’s Joan and she’s played by Jessica Stevenson, who’s just tied the knot for real herself, in the two-part story by Paul Cornell. Could the Time Lord really be considering taking a wife, getting married, a mortgage, settling down and all that?!! He did mention something of the sort in “The Impossible Planet”. Even more curiously, he tells Martha he’s not the Doctor! Who is he then, Tony Blair? Watch and enjoy!!!