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.

Whatever happened to the teenage dream?

When I was growing up, assuming that I did manage to climb to the top of that particular mountain, it was presumed that what children wanted on television in the way of drama was escapist fodder. Thus my memories are full of daring-do on the high seas, in shows such as Freewheelers, or moderately scary outer-space malarkey on Saturday teatimes during the late Sixties, in the company of Patrick Troughton and chums! Doctor Who was aimed at intelligent 12-year-olds, although I was a little younger when Pat was the Doc, but designed for all the family to enjoy. The lovelies that accompanied our hero were always suitably attired… yes, they wore miniskirts and, thus, showed a bit of leg but it never really went beyond that. If you wanted to see Wendy Padbury having sex, you wouldn’t see her engaged in the deed on either of the aforementioned series. You’d have to stay up late and catch her in Blood On Satan’s Claw for that kind of thing! Even when you got a bit older, sex was never really a staple for teenage consumption. The closest television was ever going to get to linking the two would be Marc Bolan and T.Rex encouraging us to Get It On, on Top Of The Pops in 1971. The girls dancing amongst the studio audience weren’t dressed to ever suggest that that prospect was an actual possibility.

So, here we are, 40 years on, and your offspring are more likely to want to watch Hollyoaks or Skins than an episode of Doctor Who or The Sarah Jane Adventures. It’s not hip to enjoy a rollicking good yarn with the faint hint of a moral message in these enlightened times. We’ve got to concern ourselves with the issues of the day and wallow in all things problematical. Is Johnny finally coming out of the closet or has he just been in the bathroom an awfully long time?! Is Jenny on the pill and having underage sex? Probably, considering how much mascara she has on, not to mention the boob spillage from her low-cut tops! It isn’t just 16-year-old girls that want to watch Skins. If they have a younger sister, the sibling won’t want to be left out. They’ll want to see it too, even though I presume it’s the older lasses who are the target audience. The lads will be tuning in to see how much flesh is on display, rather than to learn about safe sex. Childhood no longer exists anymore. It’s been gradually eroded away by commercial interests, despite self-appointed moral guardians doing their level best to stop anyone, of any age, from being remotely titillated by anything they see on the box. Alf Garnet once complained he couldn’t find the pornography Mary Whitehouse was fussing over… and he’d looked on every channel!

The Prettiest Star

The viewing public often think the term Best Actor or Actress applies to how good looking they find a particular personality, whether on television or in movie theatres! This is, of course, not the case. The term refers to those lucky few ladies and gents who have honed their craft to the pinnacle of perfection, as perceived by their peers. This piece isn’t necessarily about them but, as an heterosexual male, concerns women I think have been blessed with extraordinarily good looks, those with a pleasant face who are nice to look at. If these ladies are really fortunate, they may possess a talent as well! My selection is purely subjective. Some men, no doubt, find Clare Balding better looking than Marilyn Monroe. But a pleasing persona is equally important. If one is irritated by particular phrases or quirky mannerisms, an otherwise perfectly charming member of the opposite sex is going to come across as unattractive, dare I say ugly! But, I’m not going to dwell on those unfortunates; rather move swiftly on to the gals with bucket loads of charisma and oodles and oodles of sex appeal…

As a child, I found myself attracted to some of the actresses playing the companion in Doctor Who, namely Anneke Wills, Deborah Watling and Wendy Padbury. I had a crush on pop singer Sandie Shaw and was disappointed when Gabrielle Drake failed to make an appearance in the latest episode of UFO. As I moved into my teenage years, I was torn between Jenny Agutter and Judy Geeson. Jenny is gorgeous as an abandoned schoolgirl in the Australian outback in Walkabout, and as “Stay off the line, Bobbie” in The Railway Children, but is at her most perfect in dystopian science fiction thriller Logan’s Run. She and Judy both featured in Churchill-kidnap saga The Eagle Has Landed while Judy and Debbie went on to appear on television in Danger UXB. Judy’s sister Sally was an added attraction to ITV sitcom Bless This House. Some of Hammer’s finest, also the James Bond franchise, partly owe their success to the added glamour of starlets such as Linda Hayden and Caroline Munroe. As the Seventies drew to a close, Sandie was usurped by “the pull of the bush”, Kate Bush!

By 1984, the black and white dollies of the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who found themselves giving way to the ample charms of Nicola Bryant. Judy and Sally Geeson made way for another pair of acting sisters, Caroline and Susannah Harker. Susannah made her name in productions such as House Of Cards and Pride And Prejudice while Caroline achieved much the same in Middlemarch, Moll Flanders, Fay Weldon’s Growing Rich, and with David Jason in A Touch Of Frost. Never much of a fan of this plodding detective drama, I didn’t minded watching an episode if WPC Hazel Wallace was in on any action! More recently, I’ve been drawn to Medium, remembering Patricia Arquette from Eighties’ horror-fest Dream Warriors, the third instalment of A Nightmare On Elm St., only to fall for her onscreen daughter Ariel, portrayed by upcoming actress Sofia Vassilieva. Sofia is, quite possibly, the most stunning looking girl I’ve ever seen and yet she seems to carry herself with such poise and grace. Jenny Agutter and Caroline Harker have been joined in my affections by sweet Sofia!

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!

The NICOLA BRYANT Years 1984-86

Most of my favourite “Doctor Who” companions hail from the 1960s. Carole Ann Ford was the original, back in 1963. She played Susan Foreman, the Doctor’s granddaughter, over the first ten stories. In her final story, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, the Doctor told her she was in need of a good smacked bottom. Perhaps that’s why she left! Anneke Wills personified dolly bird Polly, who saw Hartnell regenerate into Troughton. Poor old Pat didn’t know what hit him when she wore a t-shirt to rehearsals with the slogan “Bring back Bill” emblazoned across her chest!! When Anneke left the series to marry “The Celestial Toymaker” Michael Gough, whom some of you may know better as Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred, her immediate successor was Deborah Watling. As Victoria Waterfield, she was adopted by the Doctor when her father was exterminated in “The Evil of the Daleks”. She left for a spot of rumpy-pumpy with David Essex in “That’ll Be the Day”!!! And, last but not least, the diminutive Wendy Padbury played squeaky-voiced computer boffin Zoë. Between takes, Padders took the occasional nap until, one day, Doctor Pat and Jamie-actor Frazer Hines decided to undo her skirt, in a church, with disastrous consequences when she woke and stood up to greet the incumbent vicar!!!!

I say “most of my favourites” because the exception to the rule is Nicola Bryant. Peri Brown joined the TARDIS crew, two decades later, in the mid-1980s. And what an entrance! Many fans assume she spent her entire time on “Doctor Who” in a bikini because of the first episode of her debut adventure, “Planet of Fire”. However, it is true that she spent some of her time in tightly fitting leotards and hot pants! In “Attack of the Cybermen” she sports a nice little bright-pink number until the Cybermen come over all caring and suggest she change into something a little warmer, more suitable for the cold climes of the tombs on Telos. Luckily, Nabil Shaban’s Sil wasn’t as thoughtful on Varos! Here Peri dons a super little bright-blue outfit for the entire serial. A couple of stories later, while opposing Laurence Payne’s Dastari’s illegal time-travel experiments, she’s back in skimpy shorts shaping up to the Sontarans in “The Two Doctors”, the excuse for her attire, this time, being that it was filmed in Seville, Spain… where it’s hot! But, hey, I didn’t mind!! I pretty much thought Peri looked perfect during the tail end of season twenty-one and for the whole of season twenty-two!!! Following the hiatus, Peri’s appearance changed for the first two stories of “The Trial of a Time Lord”. Gone was the cute bob, maybe inspired by Jenny Agutter’s hairstyle in “Logan’s Run”, to be replaced by a longer permed cut and more sensible clothes. Michael Grade had ruined everything!!!!

Almost a quarter-of-a-century after Nicola’s departure from “Doctor Who”, I’m happy to report that all is not lost! As of today, Monday, 14th June, 2010, Miss Bryant’s three-year portrayal of Peri is now available complete, to drool over as-and-when you choose, on DVD. With the release of “Planet of Fire”, partly filmed in Lanzarote… where it’s even hotter, all her adventures are, at last, available on disc. Coupled with a Special Edition of the story, on a separate disc, featuring an augmented soundtrack, “Planet of Fire” forms part of the boxed set “Kamelion Tales” and is complemented by the earlier two-part Peter Davison adventure “The King’s Demons”. At the RRP of £29.99, or even with a moderate discount, it’s fairly expensive for what is essentially six twenty-five minute episodes of “Doctor Who” but this is a special case. Well, it’s probably made of card and plastic, like all the others, but you know what I mean! Go on, be a devil, pretend you’re Mark Strickson’s Turlough, for the day, and go rescue Peri from drowning in the ocean in her pretty salmon-pink bikini!

(And, I didn’t even mention Nicola Bryant’s two best “Doctor Who” stories, “The Caves of Androzani” and “Revelation of the Daleks”!)

Telly Visions: Gabrielle Drake

Just for a change, I thought I’d better write about an actress who hasn’t appeared in “Doctor Who”! She has, however, appeared in a major science fiction series and this is probably her main claim to fame, despite being a classically trained Shakespearean actress. Her popularity also hails from, approximately, the same time period as my first two choices in this new feature and she is, facially at least, very similar in appearance to my previous “Telly Visions” selection, Wendy Padbury. I’m talking about Gabrielle Drake, one of the best-remembered stars of the 1970 television series “UFO”. Yet, she played Lieutenant Gay Ellis in only ten of the twenty-six episodes produced. Lt. Ellis worked on Moonbase, which was Earth’s first line of defence against invading flying saucers. Part of the reason for her not appearing in the remaining episodes was a gap in production, of about six months, due to relocation of the studio, during which time she needed to look for alternative employment. This also affected other major players in the Gerry Anderson show such as George Sewell. He played Colonel Alec Freeman in the first seventeen episodes then vanishes without a trace, despite still appearing, like Gabrielle, in the opening title sequence! Don’t let that put you off watching the series, though, if you’ve never seen it… Many of the later episodes have stronger scripts, despite a shifting of emphasis as to the reasons for the aliens coming to Earth! The costumes worn by Drake, and her female co-stars, included grey catsuits and mauve or purple-coloured wigs, the practical reason for which was never explained in the series. Trust me, ambiguity is good!

If you don’t remember Gabrielle from “UFO”, you may recall her appearance with John Cleese in an oft-repeated commercial for Yellow Pages, where, if I recollect correctly, the couple attempt to retrieve a goldfish bowl from their flooded home! But, really, she should be most familiar to a wider television viewing audience for her starring role in “The Brothers”, in which she played Jill Hammond for forty-two episodes between 1972 and 1974. If you’re unfamiliar with this series, “The Brothers” could be seen as producer Gerard Glaister’s forerunner to “Howards’ Way”, both being, essentially, Sunday early-evening soaps centred around a family business. It certainly brought Colin Baker into the public eye, as the villainous Paul Merroney, well over a decade before he took on the mantle of Britain’s most famous time traveller. In hindsight, the character of Paul Merroney can be viewed as a prototype for the new Thatcher-inspired generation of corporate go-getters. Anyway, it wasn’t Gabrielle’s only brush with the world of soap! Also like Wendy Padbury before her, she has appeared in the long-running motel saga “Crossroads”, though Drake’s stint was over several years during the mid-to-late Eighties as Nicola Freeman. No relation to Alec, in “UFO”, I trust! On the big screen, she played posh tottie Julia Halforde-Smythe opposite Peter Sellers in the Boulting Brothers’ romantic comedy “There’s a Girl in My Soup”. Peter’s catchphrase in the film is “My god, but you’re lovely” and this is certainly true of his co-star, Gabrielle Drake. Just take a look at the short clip of Lt. Ellis changing into her mini-skirt in the Moonbase equivalent of a locker room, from the “UFO” pilot-episode “Identified”, and I think you’ll agree!

Warden’s Watch: The Invasion (or… Lifting the Lid on the Cybermen!)

With the news that a pair of Cybermen have been photographed stomping round a cemetery in Newport, filming for this year’s “Doctor Who” Christmas Special, it seemed an appropriate moment to look at the story I consider to be their finest hour! That “The Invasion” is also Wendy Padbury’s best “Doctor Who” serial is a happy coincidence, as well as the fact that this eight-part epic just happens to be my second favourite “Doctor Who” story. When I was consciously choosing an order of preference, perhaps some twenty odd years ago now, it was a toss up between this Cyber-adventure and the previously discussed, ecologically minded, “Fury from the Deep” as to which should claim pole position in my affections, and the tale of the demented seaweed won out in the final analysis! Incidentally, it’s about time the producers of the new version of “Doctor Who” resorted to using one of the programme’s giants as villains in their seasonal offering. The creative choices taken, thus far, to fill the Christmas episodes have been quite odd, to say the least. The Doctor hardly appeared in the first, we were treated to a screaming bride in the second and the third relied on the notoriety of an unsinkable ship that sank! Personally speaking, I’ve always wanted to spend my Christmas with a Dalek!! I know… there’s no accounting for taste! Anyway, onto the main thrust of what I hope will be a very buoyant discourse…

“The Invasion” was directed by Douglas Camfield, the most-assured figure to work in this capacity on “Doctor Who” at any time in the programme’s history, and therein lies the strength of this serial. The Cybermen look very good on screen, due partly to the superb new costumes designed for them by Bobi Bartlett but perhaps more particularly to Douglas Camfield’s excellent direction. The helmets, for example, were now a lot bulkier in appearance with the addition of what can perhaps best be described as “tyres”, preventing the notorious handlebars from attaching directly to each side of each creature’s face. The teardrop effect, on the underside of each eye, was retained in the revamp but dropped from the lower lip, which became wider and narrower. It hadn’t been long since the monsters, originally from Mondas with Telos as their adopted home planet, were last dispatched by the present TARDIS incumbents, with only two five-part serials separating the earlier “The Wheel in Space” from the creature’s surprise reappearance halfway through this escapade. The first repeat of a complete adventure in the programme’s history, “The Evil of the Daleks”, undoubtedly helped put some distance between the two Cyber-serials. One of the really good things about “The Invasion” is the Cybermen’s seeming indestructibility. Attacking them with all manner of military hardware does nothing to stop their inevitable nihilistic onslaught…

Like the second William Hartnell Dalek serial, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, “The Invasion” benefits enormously from the use of location filming around familiar London landmarks. Whereas, in the earlier story, we were treated to Daleks patrolling the likes of Westminster and Trafalgar Square, in this Cybermen outing the aliens appear through street manholes from out of the sewers, at the end of the sixth episode, to march triumphantly down the steps behind St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is, indeed, an imposing sight. Also something of an arresting display, and without skirting around the issue, Wendy Padbury’s and Sally Faulkner’s knickers are frequently revealed! Douglas would insist on filming things using low camera angles!! The director had the reputation for organising his shoots with military precision!!! He’s also responsible for my favourite episode of “The Sweeney”, “Thou Shalt Not Kill”, which prominently featured another lovely of the day, Harriet Philpin, better known to “Doctor Who” fans as Bettan in the second half of “Genesis of the Daleks”. As for the Cybermen themselves, and despite not having much dialogue in “The Invasion”, they would never again be this good. After their fifth and final black and white story, writers seemed to forget that the creatures are supposed to be emotionless, when terms like “Revenge” and “Excellent” started creeping into future scripts! They seem harder to write for than Daleks, with only “The Tomb of the Cybermen” being truly comparable in quality to the pièce de résistance that is “The Invasion”.

Telly Visions: Wendy Padbury

Deborah Watling’s successor in “Doctor Who” was the diminutive, but equally lovely, Wendy Padbury. Wendy became something of an icon for me in my formative years. Not only did she have a regular part to play in the adventures of the second Doctor but also with the team on children’s drama series “Freewheelers”. She joined “Doctor Who”, as Zoë Heriot, during another encounter with the Cybermen, in “The Wheel in Space”, and was returned to her own time and place, after forty-eight episodes, at the end of the epic ten-part story “The War Games”. It is during her final episodes on the series, the end of the Sixth Season, that we discover the Doctor’s race is known as Time Lords. I suspect this came out of desperation on the part of writers Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke having had problems securing enough scripts for the programme’s final days in black and white and having to hurriedly write new instalments themselves! Ms Padbury’s bottom gained great notoriety at the beginning of her third story on the show, “The Mind Robber”, when, at the end of episode one, the TARDIS explodes and she and fellow companion Jamie are left clinging to its console as it slowly spins round, becoming engulfed in swirling mist. I hasten to add she was wearing a close-fitting lamé catsuit with said derrière pointing directly at the camera! No wonder I was enamoured!!

After leaving “Doctor Who”, Wendy Padbury found employment as co-presenter on a BBC game show, alongside Paul McCartney’s brother Mike McGear, in a short-lived series called “Score with the Scaffold”. The Scaffold were a well-known pop trio of the day, with a humorous slant, who themselves scored great success with hits “Thank U Very Much” and “Lily the Pink”. Wendy returned to acting in the brilliant and controversial British horror film, dealing with witchcraft and superstitions, “Blood on Satan’s Claw”. Appearing as Cathy Vespers, she is ritualistically raped. The actress renewed her acquaintance with the small screen in the fondly remembered, by me at least, Southern Television series “Freewheelers” as Sue Craig. Then in its fifth series, “Freewheelers” can probably best be described as a sort of junior James Bond, being action-adventure orientated. Like “Doctor Who”, a series usually comprised several serials, each episode closing with a cliff-hanger. It had a jaunty opening theme tune but ended with a different part of the same composition, creating a more sombre mood. The credibility of the show declined in its final days but I loved it and used to rush home from school to catch it, in an era before the introduction of domestic video recorders! Towards the end of her career, Wendy played Rosemary Roberts in the ITV soap opera “Emmerdale Farm”, to give it its original title, where she was reunited with Frazer Hines, her co-star from the good old days of “Doctor Who”!!

A living nightmare of black magic… and unspeakable evil!

You may well have noticed in my recent list of top ten movies a distinctly British feel to the compilation and that’s because, these days, I have some difficulty equating the American way of life with my own, despite both nations speaking the same language! At least, we speak the same language to a certain extent but the connection between the two countries doesn’t really go any further than that. Even in my choices involving US participation, such as “Alien”, there is also a strong British contingent. “Alien” has a British director in Ridley Scott, who almost designed the Daleks whilst at the BBC in the early Sixties, as well as a couple of Brits in the cast alongside the five Americans. “Lifeforce” may have been directed by an American but it is set predominantly in London with a mainly British cast.

In the Nineties, in the absence of any new British science fiction or fantasy series, with the exception of “Bugs” (curiously broadcast at the same time of year, on the same channel and evening, and in the same timeslot as new “Doctor Who” is now), I watched a fair amount of American television, predominantly the various spin-offs of “Star Trek” and “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”, together with its spin-off “Angel”. How times change! I no longer watch any US telly. I’ve seen but a few minutes of “Battlestar Galactica”, never watched “Ugly Betty”, and not even a few minutes of Englishman Hugh Laurie, playing American, in “House”. For the most part, when Brit actors work in the States they tend to produce inferior work. I best remember Alan Rickman as Slope in “The Barchester Chronicles”, for example, rather than the baddie in “Die Hard” or as the Sheriff of Nottingham!

The behaviour of Americans does at times seem, to me, to be extreme and excessive. From twenty years ago, I remember an American character in the second series of “A Very Peculiar Practice” describing the UK as a “pissant little swamp”! This was, of course, writer Andrew Davies telling his audience the way he thinks the citizens of the US see us and so is, perhaps, something of a generalisation. My father has worked with Americans, though, and has told me they sometimes commented on the smallness of everything over here! Does bigger automatically mean better, then? I think the marketing machine of Hollywood, representing its country both at home and abroad, would have us believe that it does! Many, if not most, people nowadays derive their viewing pleasure from films, nay movies, made from wads of cash thrown at each project, the result of which is usually nowt more than forgettable throwaway fluff.

I dare you to watch the opening three-and-a-half minutes of Seventies’ horror film “Blood on Satan’s Claw” and not be hooked by the cliff-hanger! Wallow in the Britishness of its direction and creative use of camera angle. Listen to the haunting score by Marc Wilkinson with its inclusion of one of Stravinsky’s favourite instruments the cimbalom, an east-European instrument a little like a piano, but played with various types of mallet. Enjoy the initial appearances of Barry Andrews, as Ralph Gower, who a few years earlier had appeared in “Dracula Has Risen from the Grave”, and Wendy Padbury, as Cathy Vespers. She well-and-truly leaves “Doctor Who” behind her in this film. Then, there is our beautiful English countryside to gaze upon. Yes, the pace is slow. It’s so slow you can even read the credits! But, as when listening to Bach, you appreciate with a cleansed soul, free from the Romantic syrup of Rachmaninov!!