Death and the Maiden

Could Lucy Griffiths be the next “Bionic Woman”? Very much looks like it as she works up a sweat in this candid! Nice to see there’s plenty of life left in the young lady and that news of her death has been greatly exaggerated!!

Actually, it’s Lucy’s character Maid Marian, in “Robin Hood”, who has sadly shuffled off this mortal coil.

And, the reason for posting this picture is to add to Steve’s burgeoning collection at Bloggertropolis! He has shown much affection for Lucy, of late, and I know he will appreciate this addition to his hard drive!!

Finally, while I’m at it, I’d just like to take the opportunity to wish all my readers a very Happy New Year! Or, as they say in Vienna, Prosit Neujahr!!

Down and Out in Beverly Hills

I’ve just heard that the remake of “Bionic Woman”, starring British actress Michelle Ryan as Jaime Sommers, has been cancelled after only eight episodes. This is due, partly, to the ongoing US writers’ strike, now two months old, but mostly because, after the pilot episode aired in the States, there was a sharp fall in ratings. Viewers claimed the series was too dark in tone which, personally, I find preferable to a lot of high camp. We’ll have the chance to make up our own minds when the series airs in Britain, in the New Year, on ITV2. You have to wonder what effect this will have on the lead’s future career? I believe NBC signed Michelle up for seven years and the series didn’t even complete a, full, single season! Presumably, that’s a lot of income lost to her which could’ve set the lady up for life, in much the same way that Patrick Stewart is now able to pick and choose the projects he wants to work on because of the money he earned working on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” for seven seasons.

Miss Ryan is likely to receive compensation for early lay-off but it isn’t going to be anywhere in the region of what she would have accumulated had the “Bionic Woman” series been successful. Then, of course, there’s the question of accommodation in LA. I hope she didn’t purchase a property, based on future expectation, but rented instead! I never saw her in “EastEnders”, not being a watcher of soaps, but her performance alongside James Nesbitt in “Jekyll” was accomplished. I vaguely recall something about her auditioning for a companion role in “Doctor Who” which she obviously didn’t get, more’s the pity! I wonder whether Michelle will stay in America, as it’s unlikely a similar break will be offered to her again, not through any fault of her own, or return to the UK where, for the most part, let’s be honest, the work available is far more diverse. I wish her well for the future…

Whatever Happened to Sara Griffiths?

Sometimes when you enjoy an actor’s performance in a favourite programme you keep a sharp eye open in the hope of catching them again in something else. After seeing them once or twice more, they then seem to vanish off the face of the Earth, never to be seen again, and you forget all about them or file them away at the back of your mind. Imogen Boorman was one such actress, for me, who was stunningly gorgeous in the “Hellraiser” sequel “Hellbound”. I believe she gave up acting following stints in “Coronation Street” and “Casualty”. After my last post, in which I compared “Voyage of the Damned” with an old Sylvester McCoy story, I began to wonder whatever happened to Sara Griffiths? I enjoyed her performance as gun-toting tomboy Ray in the “Doctor Who” story “Delta and the Bannermen”, a little over twenty years ago, and am still puzzled, to this day, as to why the producer, John Nathan-Turner, chose Sophie Aldred to succeed Bonnie Langford over the young Welsh actress. Based on their respective performances in “Delta and the Bannermen” and “Dragonfire”, I would’ve gone with Sara rather than Sophie. Sophie’s debut as Ace lacked confidence whereas you believe, wholeheartedly, in Sara’s motorcycle-loving Rachel.

I decided to do a little investigating to find out what became of Miss Griffiths! I discovered that, as a teenager, she was a can-can dancer at the world-famous Moulin Rouge in Paris! She’s appeared on television in the usual round of shows that you might expect to find an aspiring actress, “Emmerdale”, “The Bill”, “Holby City”, but what surprised me was that, for the last two years, she has been working as a presenter on the shopping channel QVC (Freeview, channel 16)! I confess I found that a little sad but a girl has to earn a living. I say girl because when she appeared in “Doctor Who” that’s what she was, a mere 18-year-old, and, naturally enough, that’s how I remember her. However, I managed to find a few screen caps from her appearances on QVC. I can’t say that I would’ve recognised her, after all these years, until looking more closely at her eyes! And, sure enough, that’s her alright, appropriately situated next to a silver Christmas tree! When you consider she is a trained dancer in ballet, flamenco, tap and contemporary dance and also an accomplished musician who plays the flute, guitar, recorder and keyboards, selling goods on telly seems rather a waste of talent but I suppose it all depends on how much you want to appear on TV!

Stardust

I was really hoping for good things from “Voyage of the Damned”, the third successive “Doctor Who” Christmas Special. It couldn’t be any worse than last year’s “The Runaway Bride”, if only for the sole reason that Catherine Tate isn’t in the new episode! I tried to convince myself that, despite it being written by Russell T. Davies, the compensation would come from no less than four quality guest actors. Three of them, Geoffrey Palmer, George Costigan and Bernard Cribbins, I felt were sadly underused while, although good, Clive Swift was better as Mister Jobel in “Revelation of the Daleks”. This wasn’t the actor’s fault but the writer’s. Eric Saward, although heavily lambasted at the time, wrote much better “Doctor Who” stories than does the current head writer. And, producer Phil Collinson set himself up for a fall in a recent online interview with SFX magazine. The interviewer suggested the plot outline of “Voyage of the Damned” was not dissimilar to that of “Delta and the Bannermen” to which Phil replied that his latest production was better. It wasn’t. Interestingly, both stories are the same length but the twenty-year-old “Delta and the Bannermen” is both faster and funnier, more entertaining and even more exciting! The Heavenly Hosts featured in the current story, for example, were highly derivative; Angel masks replacing Santa ones from the two previous Christmas Specials!! They aped the mannerisms of the Ood and it felt, at times, as though we were either back on board the space liner Hyperion III, from the “Terror of the Vervoids” segment of “The Trial of a Time Lord”, or the massive sandminer vehicle which features in “The Robots of Death”. And, seafaring ships in space is, of course, an idea pinched from “Enlightenment”!

I find both Russell T. Davies and Phil Collinson to be more than a little immature and it comes across through the writing and production but, if you need further proof, rewatch the “Doctor Who Confidential” episode that accompanies “Time Crash”. In that same programme you’ll find Steven Moffat and Graeme Harper acquit themselves with far more credibility. Russell recently claimed that the production team can’t afford to make a poor episode, with over eight million viewers watching their every move, and yet the last two years have produced the worst four episodes (“Love & Monsters”, “Fear Her”, “The Runaway Bride”, “Last of the Time Lords”) in the entire history of the series. Even David Tennant seemed shocked by Russell’s recent offensive and insensitive remark that Hitler would’ve made a good Doctor! Huh?!! Davies isn’t even particularly good at bullshitting it seems!!! As was the case with the guest actors, I didn’t think there was enough of guest-companion Kylie Minogue, as Astrid Peth, in the story either. Kylie’s waitress never got to see inside the TARDIS. She was sacrificially-abandoned, along with other characters before her, well before the end; which only served to highlight the inadequacies of the script’s structure. Ironic that there’s an Aussie actress in the show, now the programme is based in Cardiff, when “Delta and the Bannermen” had a real Welsh guest-companion in Ray played by Sara Griffiths (pictured on the back of a Vincent motorcycle with seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy)! The moments of self-sacrifice in “Voyage of the Damned”, together with Mister Copper’s closing contemplations, were good, however, in what, otherwise, left me with that sinking feeling!!