Through the looking-glass

Two more storylines from the next series of Doctor Who have emerged from the show’s producer and chief writer Steven Moffat. He says, in episode two, The Doctor will take on pre-historic creatures in a story called Dinosaurs On A Spaceship! I had to suppress a snigger when I heard the title. It does sound a tad silly and more than a little preposterous until you remember Voyage Of The Damned and its spaceship, Titanic, almost crashing into Buckingham Palace! First thoughts are the episode is endeavouring to capitalise on the popularity of Primeval, but I remind myself that the current, probably final, series of the ITV1 dinosaur saga, while visually spectacular, is no more than a reworking of the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story Invasion Of The Dinosaurs. The new dinosaur escapade is written by Chris Chibnall and features Being Human’s Mark Williams as Rory’s dad, Brian, and Rupert Graves from Sherlock.

Episode three is a western-themed adventure, written by Toby Whithouse and filmed on location in Spain, entitled A Town Called Mercy. It co-stars Adrian Scarborough and Ben Browder. Any mention of the Last Chance Saloon immediately conjures up images of William Hartnell’s legendary encounter at the O K Corral with Wyatt Earp and Johnny Ringo in mid-Sixties’ four-parter The Gunfighters, which not only gave The Doctor toothache but many fans as well! The new storylines are both directed by Saul Metzstein and follow the first episode of the new series in which The Doctor will be reunited with his oldest enemies in Asylum Of The Daleks. The first five episodes of Series Seven will air later this year, followed by the Christmas Special, with the remaining eight to follow in the New Year.

Meanwhile, Scots actress Karen Gillan has won the lead in a film about a haunted mirror, according to the Radio Times. Gillan, from Inverness, leaves her role as Doctor Who companion Amy Pond in episode five of Series Seven, and not in the Christmas Special as I previously suggested might be the case. In new US horror film, Oculus, she will play Kaylie whose brother is convicted of murdering their parents. Kaylie believes an antique looking-glass was responsible. It’s not the first time one of The Doctor’s companions has worked on a horror movie. Shortly before starting work on Doctor Who, Billie Piper played Jenny in Spirit Trap, alongside Russian pop star Alsou. It was released in August 2005 to generally poor reviews. After being returned to her own time and space in the classic series, Wendy Padbury appeared in Piers Haggard’s excellent cult 1971 British horror film Blood On Satan’s Claw as the unfortunate Cathy Vespers. And we shouldn’t forget Lalla Ward who began her acting career as Helga in the hypnotically stylish 1972 Hammer Horror film Vampire Circus.

The Actor Factor

As pop temptress Rihanna embarks on her maiden voyage of discovery, in the acting world, aboard Peter Berg’s Battleship, it’s as good as time as any to take a brief look at how other chart-toppers have fared upon leaving the relative comfort of the recording studio to try their hand at this alternative profession! Rihanna isn’t the first honey to don combats. Kylie’s already been there, done that… and surprisingly good in them she looked too. Street Fighter was terrible, also based on a video/computer game, but she was sufficiently distracting to take our attention from villain Raul Julia’s over-the-top performance. Sometimes the line is blurred as to whether or not a singer is a singer, from the outset of their career, or an actor/actress first. Kylie Minogue started out in Neighbours, of course, and she recently returned to acting for a one-off appearance in Doctor Who, appropriately on board the luxury Starship Titanic, but she’s best known as a pop starlet whose snug bottom fits golden hot pants to perfection! Rihanna’s debut, as Raikes, looks like being an even more explosive affair, as she kicks butt all the way to kingdom come, although the director insists that, unlike other movies of this type, Battleship doesn’t lose sight of its characters.

Billie Piper trained as an actress but started in show business, at the tender age of 16, as a pop star and it wasn’t until she joined the cast of Doctor Who that anyone seemed to realise. Unlike Kylie, we won’t be hearing any new recordings from Billie for a while… she now seems embarrassed by her former career and has put it well and truly behind her! The same seems to be the case for Hannah Spearritt. After initial success with S Club 7, she’s perhaps better known, at present, for her starring role in Primeval. But will she find any more acting work in the future, once the ITV sci-fi series has expired for good? Irish songstress Samantha Mumba also had a brief flirtation with the genre, when she appeared in the most recent adaptation of HG Wells’ The Time Machine, but it doesn’t seem to have led to greater roles or a return to pop. Britney Spears dabbled, in buddy movie Crossroads (no, not the Birmingham-based soap opera of the same name!), but seems happier when strutting her funky star-spangled stuff (spank her booty, one more time)!! The less said about Madonna the better, except when blow-drying her armpits, while playing herself opposite Rosanna Arquette, in Desperately Seeking Susan.

Perhaps the most successful collaborations between pop singers and moviemakers has occurred when the groove merchants have teamed up with director Nicolas Roeg. First there was Mick Jagger, working with James Fox, in gangster flick Performance. Art Garfunkel had a tempestuous relationship with Roeg’s wife, Theresa Russell, in Bad Timing. Best of all, however, was when David Bowie played alien Thomas Jerome Newton in Nic’s adaptation of Walter Tevis’s novel The Man Who Fell To Earth. I suppose you could argue Bowie was playing himself, after a succession of pop alter egos that include Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and The Thin White Duke, but the result is still one of the most thought-provoking science fiction films about alienation ever made. Bowie’s had a reasonably successful stint as an actor, also starring in Tony Scott’s dreamlike vampire-fest The Hunger; as a goblin in Terry Jones’s Labyrinth, a sort of cross between Monty Python and Sesame Street; and alongside Tom Conti and Ryuichi Sakamoto in harrowing prisoner of war saga Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. He even made a cameo in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks prequel Fire Walk With Me. So, I guess you could say the Starman is multitalented!

Warden’s Watch: Primeval - Series Four, Episode Four

“Primeval”? Unbelievable! Very watchable but totally unrealistic. It’s not the idea of a horde of rampaging deadly therocephalians breaking through a time anomaly, while on the lookout for their next meal, which I have difficulty accepting but the reality in which these fantastical notions are set. In this week’s episode, similar to the one set in a shopping mall in the second series, a Saturday morning school detention is thrown into chaos by prehistoric events as indeed they would be if only the classroom antics were remotely plausible. The synopsis in my listings guide led me to expect to see “the pupils run riot”! Well, there were only three students being punished and they all seemed pretty well behaved to me. Dickheads but models of middleclass respectability! The two lads in the trio had made a nasty smell in the chemistry lab - probably something they ate at lunch! - so, instead of the teacher encouraging their obvious enthusiasm for the subject, the poor lads get a bollocking. These days, I don’t think teenagers would be detained for such a minor misdemeanour. And, if they were, they’d probably tell the teacher to fuck off rather than give up their free morning - assuming they attend school in the first place. Then there was the wee lassie completing the group, supposedly Miss unattainable! She was a proper little madam, snotty, antisocial with her iPod (why wasn’t it confiscated?) while unattractively dressed - mixing a short skirt with leggings. I can’t imagine what the boys saw in her!

I am sick of being told, about any series, that the latest season is darker than previous efforts. Still, it was certainly the case with the latest instalment of “Primeval” - so poorly lit I couldn’t see a thing! Seriously though, the darkness was laid on with a trowel, signposted in big black letters by the early demise of the supposed school princess, while bouncing up and down on a trampoline in the gym! Two series ago, Professor Cutter rescued a little girl who went through an anomaly after her dog. She was safely returned to her stepfather, their relationship miraculously restored, but, three years later, the little bitch in the latest adventure has to die. Yup, it sure is gloomier these days chasing dinosaurs. Hannah Spearritt’s character, Abby, has also become even more of a misery guts than she used to be. In series one, she used to prance around in her knickers, better dressed then than she is now! Give her some credit though, she has stayed with the show longer than Billie Piper stayed with “Doctor Who”. And, on the plus, there is a new girl working at the Anomaly Research Centre (ARC) who, I’m happy to report, does have a keen dress sense. Ruth Kearney plays operations controller Jess Parker who is more than a distraction from all the excesses of the CGI! Whether or not she would be so impractically dressed brings me neatly back to the question of credibility though I can’t have it both ways. Make up your own minds should you choose to watch the repeat tonight at 8pm on ITV2!

No More “Survivors” Any More!

I’ve recently discovered the BBC has cancelled “Survivors” and I’m a little disgruntled to say the least! Apparently, the series was given the elbow back in April. There’s nothing like being first with the news!! I found out via a footnote to a magazine competition, of all places. I suppose the powers that be decided there might be an outcry if the cancellation of a science fiction series was announced publicly. Following the furore surrounding the “postponement” of “Doctor Who”, in 1985, the Beeb learnt quite quickly better to brush these things under the carpet, and the series came to a discreet conclusion four years later!

What’s ironic, in the case of “Survivors”, is that the British Broadcasting Corporation has only recently rushed to the aid of ITV’s science fiction show “Primeval” and saved it from the same fate. Why would they save a programme on a competing channel at the expense of one of their own? Strange! I’ve lately rewatched Series Two of “Primeval” and, in all honesty, it isn’t very good. (The worst episode was the one written by “Doctor Who” writer Paul Cornell!) Adding to the irony is the fact that both shows, the revamped “Survivors” and new creation “Primeval”, are the brainchildren of the same man, Adrian Hodges.

The BBC have made a habit of terminating fantasy shows before their natural conclusion. They invested in John Christopher’s trilogy “The Tripods” during the mid-Eighties only to cut it short after two series. Director Christopher Barry claimed the series was better than “Doctor Who”. It wasn’t but it was a nice try. The episodes set in “The City of Gold and Lead”, during Series Two, had beautiful production design. Those filmed on location were not as captivating, where usually the great outdoors aids realism, but the superior model work wasn’t enough to save the series.

A decade later and the treatment of Brian Clemens and Stephen Gallagher’s “Bugs” was appalling. Following episode seven of Series Four, viewers had to wait nearly a year to see the final three instalments. Episode ten ended on a cliff-hanger, with the kidnap of some of the team, only for the series to be cancelled so that we would never learn their fate.

“Survivors” suffered because of the delay in broadcasting the second series. It was supposed to go out last year. When it eventually reached transmission, in January this year, there was a further delay between the first and second episodes due to the BBC prioritising football over drama. Sport is more important than fiction and politics more important than sport in the gospel according to the BBC!

There was a time when dramas went out at the same time, on the same day, every week. Look at the scattered start times of the thirteen episodes comprising this year’s series of “Doctor Who”. In 1985 all thirteen began at 5:20pm and ended at 6:05. A bit early but regular at least! Every episode of the original “Survivors”, broadcast between 1975 and 1977, went out at the same time bar one. 37 out of 38 isn’t a bad strike rate!

I shall miss new “Survivors”. It was serious where new “Doctor Who” is frivolous. I’ll miss Julie Graham’s irresistible Abby Grant as she desperately searched for her missing son against the backdrop of the pandemic. I was already missing Robyn Addison as they killed off her character, Sarah, at the end of what turned out to be the penultimate episode. And, now, we’ll never find out where Tom Price was headed, having stowed away aboard the mysterious Patrick Malahide’s aeroplane!

Who Survives(?)

“Doctor Who” celebrates its forty-fifth anniversary today and there’s not a single programme on television to mark the occasion!

“The Bill” recently celebrated its twenty-fifth year, ITV slipping in a couple of special episodes just in the nick of time, before giving over most of its precious airspace to jungle idiocy. So, why can’t the BBC manage something similar, between dancing bouts, for its flagship science fiction series, especially now they claim it’s so popular once again? Too busy trying not to hurt the feelings of Jonathan Ross no doubt!

Ironically, the BBC are resurrecting Terry (Dalek creator) Nation’s post-apocalyptic “Survivors” tonight, based on his highly original novel and television series from the mid-Seventies. I don’t know whether I should be excited or give up the notion of ever seeing anything as remotely creative as television once was.

“Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)”, “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons”, “Doctor Who” and now “Survivors”… what are the chances of the latter being as good, second time around, considering the quality of those other revivals when compared to their originals? The changes to the structure of the programme don’t bode well…

Two of the three lead characters of the original first season of “Survivors” are now a politically-correct shade of black while the endearingly brilliant Talfryn Thomas, as Tom Price, has morphed into Mr. chunky-hunky Max Beesley.

The new “Survivors” is brought to the Beeb by the same team who sold ITV “Primeval”. Fun as that was, the present undertaking needs to be grim.

It’ll be interesting to see how “Survivors” fares in the ratings up against the aforementioned, oh-so-popular, celebrity lunacy. I won’t hold my breath. Or, perhaps I should, given the nature of the epidemic! People want fun and what better way to have it than see people humiliated down under, credit crunching on bugs. Hopefully, “Survivors” will be intelligent, at the very least…

“Survivors” is the closest we’re going to get to “Doctor Who” (1963-89) tonight, to which I wish a very Happy Birthday!

Monster Smash!

I have to admit to enjoying the current series of “Primeval” more than I have “Doctor Who” in recent years. The reason is simple. It comes without RTD’s tedious gay agenda which infects not only “Doctor Who” but “Torchwood” even more so and merely acts as a disservice to his cause. Nobody feels it necessary to exclaim their heterosexuality at every given turn of the drama in “Primeval”, it’s just a straightforward monster show. “Doctor Who” forgot that from the very first episode when it came back revamped, and destroyed, in 2005. “Primeval” isn’t perfect by any means. In the latest series, a new love interest has been introduced for Connor which is an unnecessary distraction. We all know that Andrew-Lee Potts is dating ex-S Club 7 singer-turned-actress Hannah Spearritt, who plays Abby, in what passes for real life in celeb-land! So, we can all guess that the new girl in his fictional life won’t stand a chance!! Connor declared his love for Abby in a literal cliff-hanger, in episode four, so why he doesn’t just tell this other girl to go take a running jump I’m not quite sure.

But the point is, the relationship stuff doesn’t really intrude like it does, big time, in the reinvention of “Doctor Who”. “Primeval” is a show about dinosaurs, and monsters abound. My favourite series of “Doctor Who”, Season Five, the middle Troughton year, is affectionately known as the Monster Season. To his credit, Eighties’ “Doctor Who” Producer John Nathan-Turner saw the strengths of this decidedly individual year and tried to recreate it, with varying degrees of success, in Season Twenty-One. The monsters are well realised in “Primeval”, despite being totally computer generated, and I found it a genuinely exciting moment, this week, when Abby was snatched by one from the boat she was on. I don’t find myself thinking, Hannah used to be in that bloody awful pop group, either, like I kept remembering Billie’s tedious debut single “Because We Want To” when watching Rose in “Doctor Who”. Miss Spearritt is no longer running around in her undies, which was ostensibly on the grounds of having to keep her flat warm for her pet dinosaur! She, undoubtedly, wants to be taken more seriously!!

This series of “Primeval” has also introduced a narrative arc, which I could well do without, but again it doesn’t detract from the fun of “monster of the week”! The whole season is actually taking place on a parallel Earth, to the one in the first season, and it’s interesting to note how quickly one forgets that. It doesn’t deter from the peril even though, theoretically, any of the regular cast members could now be killed off only to find them still alive once hero Professor Cutter is returned to our Earth. I wouldn’t mind losing all the cynical and patronising characters representing officialdom, too, although, having said that, Ben Miller’s Charlotte Church gag was a laugh-out-loud moment in the latest episode. All quibbles are only minor, however. It’s precisely because “Primeval” doesn’t require its target audience to engage in any thought processes, whatsoever, that the series remains undeniably fun! Perhaps it works because it’s still only ten episodes old whereas “Doctor Who” comes with an enormous back story which, if you are aware of it, and find it contradictory, can often intrude.

Dino Hunting

In “Torchwood”, there were cannibals in the Brecon Beacons! Now, thirty miles East, in “Primeval”, there are dinosaurs in the Forest of Dean!! Firmly in Dennis Potter country, not far from where I live, and not far from where the interior scenes of the Sycorax spaceship were filmed, in Clearwell Caves, for “The Christmas Invasion” episode of “Doctor Who”, one of Professor Nick Cutter's students approaches him about some strange goings on in the Forest - a place that has a special significance in Nick's past. Douglas Henshall plays Nick Cutter, Hannah Spearritt is Abby Maitland. ITV1’s new British fantasy drama series begins a six-week run this Saturday, 10th February, at 7:45pm. Time for Adventure.

Invasion... of the Dinosaurs!

Hannah Spearritt

is

Abby Maitland

Who’s Who?

Celebrity is a strange business. Look at the career of Billie Piper! One minute she is a crap, though commercially-successful, pop star, the next a much-admired, in some quarters, “Doctor Who” companion. But, in the blink of an eye, she’s moved on to star in prestigious costume dramas. ITV1 is about to launch a new SF series, with the intention of rivalling the adventures of the great Time Lord, called “Primeval”. And, guess what? It stars ex-pop star Hannah Spearritt from cheesy pop combo S Club (7). Coincidence or deliberate strategy? It’s all about a time rift! Now there’s an original idea!! I wonder where we’ve heard that one before?!!

Hannah’s ex-band mate Jo O’Meara has just popped up again on telly. In an even more bizarre twist, she’s appearing alongside eccentric, but wildly-brilliant, film director Ken Russell in “Celebrity Big Brother 5”. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried! None of the non-entities knew of him or any of his work. He had Alan Bates and Oliver Reed indulging in a spot of nude wrestling long before Russell T thought it oh-so-modern to have a couple of guys playing tonsil tennis on prime time. I won’t be eulogising over “Bog Bother” as I absolutely abhor the concept and the exceptionally un-divine Davina.

And, while Ms O’Meara wastes her time trying to rekindle her career, I will, at least, be tuning in to Hannah’s drama. There’s the clue... Drama. Let’s have more of it on TV. I’ll, no doubt, post more on “Primeval” later. Meanwhile, which pop stars are likely to appear in a science fiction drama next? It’s only a matter of time. After all, Charlotte Church, Jennifer Ellison and Rachel Stevens, yet another ex-S Clubber (you’ve got to be careful how you say that!), have already been suggested as possible replacements for Billie Piper in “Doctor Who”!! See below to help imagine them in the part!!!