Goodbye Sarah Jane

R.I.P. Elisabeth Sladen
1 February 1948 – 19 April 2011

The lovely and talented Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who opposite Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker in the 1970’s and then again opposite David Tennant in 2006 before getting her own highly successful series The Sarah Jane Adventures, passed away today aged just 63. She’d apparently been fighting cancer for a while but had kept her illness a secret shared only with her family and a few close friends. She was due to make a fifth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures this year for CBBC.

Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to meet Elisabeth. Even so, the lady and I go way back.

You see, one of my earliest and most vivid of memories is being sat at home on a Saturday evening watching Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, together with the smart, beautiful and feisty Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane in a weird and scary adventure running around some creepy looking caves. Now I don’t remember the exact episode. I was only around four or five at the time. I just remember being glued to the TV, utterly mesmerised by what was going on.

And so I kept on watching.

Eventually Doctor Who left the air in 1989 after ratings and quality fell through the floor. But even after the latter shonky scripts and the even shonkier creative decisions, like many fans I kept the hope alive that one day the show would return and the quality would return, too.

And return it did in 2005 thanks to Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner at BBC Wales. And one of the best decisions Russell ever made was to bring back the beloved Sarah Jane Smith in the wonderful 2006 David Tennant episode ‘School Reunion’. It was like old times. Elisabeth had barely aged. She was still smart, still beautiful and still feisty. And still with that lovely smile of hers. She was still Sarah Jane Smith. And a whole new generation of fans soon fell for her just as we had done thirty years before. So much so that the BBC gave the lady her own series on CBBC – The Sarah Jane Adventures, which quickly became the channels biggest hit and stayed that way through four series with a fifth planned for this year.

Simply, Elisabeth Sladen made Sarah Jane Smith arguably the greatest and the best loved of all the Doctor’s many companions. Even people who don’t know much about Doctor Who will often still know who Sarah Jane Smith is. It was wonderful of Russell T Davies to have given Elisabeth the opportunity to reprise the role and to have (naturally) gone on to become beloved by a whole new generation of fans. I’m sure there will be children and parents and grandparents up and down the nation and all around the world who will be so incredibly sad to hear this awful news. Like I said, I never had the opportunity to meet her in person, but she is one of those figures who played such a big part in my childhood that I kinda feel like I’ve always known her. Those lucky enough to have met her over the years have said that she was a warm and thoughtful lady, a pleasure to know. I don’t doubt that for a second.

My thoughts and prayers go to Elisabeth’s family and friends at this sad time.


A fun little Sarah Jane tribute I found on YouTube

Fangers, Digby and Casper: True Blood vs. Being Human

(True Blood's Jessica getting frisky...not in a good way.)


I've just finished watching the finale of True Blood series 3. And it was great, a lot of fun, just like the season overall and a marginal improvement on season 2.

But though this season had its fair share of inspired and messed up 'HOLY C**P!' moments (head twisting sex springs to mind) I didn't find myself particularly involved in what was going on. Part of the problem for me has been the werewolves. The furry critters made their début on the show this year. And that's cool. I love werewolves. They are by far my favourite mythical monster. Unfortunately the werewolves in True Blood ended up being a bit crap. They were mostly shallow and dimwitted trailer trash thugs. And as for the vampires... Well, Bill proved himself yet again to be a right arse. Luckily Eric is still pretty cool and I do still love Jessica. Other than that I don't much like the vamps in this show, though I did appreciate seeing more of their supernatural side this year. I loved it when their invitation to a home gets revoked and they then get invisibly dragged in reverse back outside. The series ended with several plot threads and a couple of cliffhangers ready for series 4.

Don't get me wrong, True Blood is still a highly watchable and enjoyable series full of great actors, high production values and messed up creativity. It even manages the odd good scare. Perhaps it's the format of fast paced plotting, loads of characters, gratuitous sex and gore that is starting to wear a tinsy bit thin with me. I kinda need something more for long term viewing. A bit more depth and a bit more weight maybe?

Speaking of vamps and werewolves I've also been re-watching series 1 of the BBC's Being Human. It is easy to forget just how awesome this show is. True Blood is a lot of fun but for my money we Brits here in Bristol (though now Cardiff for series 3...Boo!) have the superior show. It may not have the budget or gloss of True Blood but the writing to my mind is sharper, more focussed, more considered and a lot more meaningful. It is also primarily a character driven show whereas True Blood is mostly plot and incident driven, possibly suffering somewhat from too many characters and disparate story threads. For instance, in True Blood I like Lafayette but I wasn't remotely interested in his story this year nor really in the story of Sam and his family. In contrast, the beauty of Being Human is that the focus of the show is always on the three main characters: Annie the ghost, Mitchell the vampire and George the werewolf, and on their simple desire and struggle to have a quiet ordinary life. Being Human takes the trials and tribulations of real everyday life and gives them a supernatural twist. But it remains always utterly relatable. The point of the show is in its title. It acts as a mirror and an ode to what being human on a day to day level means. It's pretty much what Joss did with Buffy and why that show still works and resonates so well. Oh yeah, it also doesn't hurt that Being Human's main bad guy Herrick is simply one of THE best vampire villains ever. Jason Watkins rules! Plus the werewolves in Being Human are waaay better than the ones in True Blood.

In the end True Blood and Being Human are very different shows doing different things with the supernatural. And I appreciate them both. Though, for me, Being Human is the superior entity as it manages to do so much more with a lot less. Plus its local to me so I'm bias.

No s**t Sherlock

For any fans of Sherlock Holmes or just of great TV then you need to check out the BBC’s latest offering. They’ve made a three part series called simply SHERLOCK, bringing the character of Sherlock Holmes out of the nineteenth century and in to 2010. Each episode is feature length and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock and Martin Freeman as Dr John Watson. The series was co-created and co-written by current Doctor Who show runner and all round genius Steven Moffat along with Mark Gattis who also features as Mycroft Holmes.

Now I’m not the greatest fan of Sherlock Holmes, more someone with a casual appreciation for the character and his history. I’ve never read any of the books but used to really enjoy the Jeremy Brett series from the 80’s and quite enjoyed the recent Downey Jr movie. But I have to say this new telling is truly brilliant. The cast is perfect with Cumberbatch being especially wonderful as an energetically charismatic yet arrogant and socially challenged Holmes. Paul (Lucky Number Slevin, Push) McGuigan directs the first and last episode in a vibrant and stylish manner making great use of central London and its many famous locations.

I’m sure some purists will take offence at Holmes being uprooted from his Victorian origins and moved in to the high tech media and celebrity obsessed world of 21st Century Britain. But the iconic details remain – they still live at 221b Baker Street, Mrs Hudson is still the landlady and, somewhere out there, Moriarty is lurking. So hopefully the naysayers will be a tiny minority because this works brilliantly. Pure and simple.

I’ll leave it up to Steven Moffat to explain:

"Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes – and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters."

SHERLOCK has been a big hit for the BBC and so thankfully more episodes will come next year. And thank God for that as it ended on one heck of a cliffhanger.

Steven Moffat should just run all TV in the UK.

Trailer


Short scene of deduction

"Come Along, Pond."

Doctor Who series five ended last Saturday and I’ve been rewatching some key episodes of the season including opener The Eleventh Hour and the final two parter The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. So I thought I’d give a summary of my thoughts on this brand new regeneration of the classic and much loved series.

As Doctor nine would say: ”Fantastic!”

I get Steven Moffat's approach to Who. Because it's the same one I have. It hits all the right buttons for me.

This season was a twisty crazy fairytale all about little Amelia Pond and her imaginary friend, a madman with a box who fell out of the sky.

"When I was seven I had an imaginary friend. Last night was the night before my wedding, and my imaginary friend came back."

While left all alone one night, a brave little girl called Amelia prays to Santa for someone to come and save her from the scary crack in her bedroom wall. And come to her someone does, falling right out of the sky and in to her garden. The Raggedy Doctor. A brilliant yet strangely childlike madman with a box who eats fish custard and loves bowties and thinks fezzes are cool. But after fixing the crack in the wall, The Doctor disappears leaving poor little Amelia all alone once more. But she refuses to give up on him and settles down to wait for his return. And she waits and waits and waits. Little Amelia eventually grows up to believe that she imagined it all, that nothing that happened that night was real, that the Raggedy Doctor never existed. The wonder, the magic, the imagination of childhood has finally been driven out of her. She loses herself, her innocence, even losing her name, now being called Amy. As an adult she becomes cynical, rather bitter and hard nosed - albeit charmingly so.

And then one day, many years later, right out of the blue (box), her imaginary friend returns.

The story of Doctor Who season five is not so much about hanging on to the wonder and the imagination of childhood as it is about regaining it once lost. It’s about losing our cynicism and finding the simple joy in everything that is out there beyond the narrow, repetitive often soul-destroying confines of adult life. Now, most of us (I certainly do) remember how when we were kids we could happily play for hours, imagining all sorts of weird and wonderful adventures to lose ourselves in. We didn’t need much, just our imagination and the freedom to disappear within it. But there comes a point – maybe around age eleven or twelve – when that ability starts to fade. It gets harder and harder to have imaginary fun in our own little worlds, fun that once felt so easy, so real. The magic of childhood starts to leave us as we begin the difficult journey in to adulthood, having to spend more time thinking about real life because real life has suddenly become far more complicated and far more necessary as more demands are put on us along with more responsibility.

But the good news is that just because we become adults with all the baggage that brings, we can rediscover our imaginations. We can learn to see with more innocent, wondrous eyes again. We can rediscover our inner child so to speak. That is exactly what happens to Amy. By seasons end she has found little Amelia. Literally. The Doctor was the key to her re-discovering her inner child, her sense of adventure, discovering the weird, crazy, silly, scary fun that life can be.

The Doctor: “Fourteen years since fish custard. Amy Pond. The girl who waited, you've waited long enough.”

Amy: “When I was a kid, you said there was a swimming pool. And a library, and the swimming pool was in the library.”

The Doctor: “Yeah. Not sure where it's got to now, it'll turn up! So! Coming?”

Amy: (shaking her head) “No.”

The Doctor: “You wanted to come fourteen years ago.”

Amy: “I grew up.”

The Doctor: “Don't worry. I'll soon fix that.”

This season has been my favourite of new Who so far. And that’s due primarily to its thematic undercurrent, one which chimes perfectly with what I love most in storytelling - the fairytale vibe, the innocence and wonder and scariness of childhood and of life in general. It’s what Spielberg has been doing for years. And it works for a reason. The same reason it has worked down through the centuries. It imparts important stories and lessons to children while also reminding adults what it is like to be a child, reminding us not to lose that special gift that lets us make up crazy adventures and weird and wacky stories in order to pass on down to our own children the same important messages and themes.

I love this season for its range of stories too, and that while shifting from the more overblown, camp, panto feel of Russell T Davies’ tenure to Steven Moffat’s more odd, sinister, eccentric fairytale feel, Doctor Who hasn’t lost its sense of fun nor its crazy, silly, very British whimsy. The stories this year have ranged from the downright nightmarish (The Time of Angels) to the very silly (Victory of the Daleks) to the emotionally sublime (Vincent and the Doctor). And throughout it all, Matt Smith has been a total legend and has made The Doctor his own. I liked Tennant, though I much preferred Eccleston, but Matt Smith has trumped them both. His energetic, clumsy, rather mad little old man in a young man’s body has been a joy to watch. And I love Amy too. Like many men I am in lust with Karen Gillan. She is great and has such a wicked chemistry with Matt that just crackles both onscreen and off. And she had to be great because this season was Amy’s story. It was the story of little seven-year-old Amelia Pond, the girl who waited. The girl who grew up, but who then became a child once more. Brilliant!

Any negatives? Well, my only real problem has been with some of the FX. There’s been some pretty shoddy CGI in places. So, please, someone give the guys at The Mill a kick. They do some great stuff (the two-part finale FX are all pretty darn excellent) but then they seem to counter it with some truly ropy stuff. A bit more quality assurance needed me thinks.

Anyway, this has been a wonderful new start for The Doctor with Steven Moffat proving yet again why he is such a genius of a writer and one of the very best working in the industry today. Everything in this season was thought out and planned in detail. Things are set up and pay off throughout – both plotwise and thematically. It’s an intricate machine of storytelling, which ends with the sublime two-parter of The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. And, of course, with season five a star has been born in the form of Matt Smith. So roll on the Christmas special.

"Geronimo!"

Trust Him. He's The Doctor.

Matt Smith's debut as The Doctor has now aired in the UK.

And I gotta say...it was brilliant!

Steven Moffat's rejuvenated Who is (pardon the pun) just what The Doctor ordered. The tone is indeed like Moffat’s promised dark fairytale - especially the first ten minutes or so of this Moffat written story titled The Eleventh Hour. This episode charts the first and then second meeting between the new Doctor and his new companion Amy Pond. And this meeting is quite special, clever and touching.

So, most importantly, how is our new Doctor?

He's great.

Being still in the grip of his regeneration cycle Smith's Doctor is rather confused, manic, and still a bit Tennant-y in his ways. But as the episode goes on he slowly becomes more of his own man. Eccentric in a young-yet-old professor-ish way, he is also effortlessly witty, a bit goofy, a bit reckless and quite a lot charming. Smith's Doctor makes an instantly great impression. The food tasting scene with the little girl in the kitchen is simply brilliant. “Fish Custard.” LOL. You can see why Smith leapt out at Moffat and co. during auditions. He genuinely does have an odd, otherworldly quality to him. And as new companion Amy Pond, Karen Gillan is very good too. In this episode she is all (lovely) legs, fiery red hair and cynical attitude. She’s a bit messed up, a bit of a bad girl and doesn’t really trust The Doctor and isn’t afraid to give him what for. She is also very, very easy on the eye. Amy and The Doctor should prove for an interesting and fiery dynamic with their relationship having been set up in a very cool and intriguing way.

And the story? It’s fine. It does the job. An escaped intergalactic shape-shifting alien prisoner is hiding out on Earth while the Prison Guards (giant flying eyeballs) arrive to give the world only twenty minutes to hand the prisoner over before they destroy the whole planet. As a story it’s not as good as what Mr Moffat has given us before (we’ve been spoiled) and he uses it mostly as a hanger for introducing the new Doctor and the new feel to the series as well as reminding us of its mythical heritage. And in that way it works spot on. But Moffat still manages to do what he always does so brilliantly. He layers his script with smart precision plotting and intensely creative ideas while also inventing scary images and creepy concepts based around things an audience (especially kids) can relate to as being odd and kinda disturbing at a very basic level. At night a big crack in the wall of a child’s bedroom becomes sinister and so very creepy with whispered voices leaking out. A bleak phrase is repeated over and over through every piece of electronic communications equipment everywhere. Extra rooms in a house seem to appear but are only visible glimpsed through the corner of the eye. An alien changes itself to appear as regular people but gets it a bit wrong, appearing as a mother walking hand in hand with twin little girls, except the children speak with the mothers voice and vice versa. And it also appears as a man walking a dog, but the man barks and growls, not the dog. Weird and properly creepy. And Moffat being Moffat he also laces his script with some great quips and one liners. “You’re Scottish. Fry something!” The direction of the episode is excellent too. There are two stand out moments: a glimpse in to The Doctors mind as he recalls an event that has just occurred, looking for a clue in his own memory. Then, later on, glimpses of all past ten Doctors ending with the heroic emergence of Doctor number eleven to confront the bad guys. Also, the first ten or so minutes of the Doctor crashing the TARDIS and meeting a little girl left alone in her house and scared by the sinister crack in her wall is just all-round superlative. A very special shout out goes to young Caitlin Blackwood who plays said little girl. She is wonderful and does a quite brilliant job opposite Matt Smith.

As well as a regenerated Doctor, the rest of the show has had a ground up regeneration too. There’s a new title sequence with a dark and scary time tunnel complete with lightening bolts striking the TARDIS. And there’s a new, more electronic and choral version of the iconic theme. The TARDIS has also regenerated after being almost wrecked at the episode’s start. It looks newer and brighter outside while inside the console room is twice as big and on multiple levels with curved and odd-angled walls and with stairs going off in many directions. It looks weird and very, very cool.

So colour me impressed. I could tell within the first ten minutes that I loved this new take on our favourite Timelord, it being much closer to my own personal tastes than that of RTD’s version. Not to take anything away from the awesome job Russell T did, but I just love the whole dark fairytale vibe, the more sinister-yet-playful feel. And I can see a whole new generation of kids properly hiding behind their couch come Saturday evenings as a result. And their parents might just be joining them.

So bring it on. And like the man says: “Trust me. I’m the Doctor.”

Indeed you are, sir.

Keep away from men with sticks and rope...

Being Human: Episode 2.2


Bloody hell! How brilliant was this second episode of the second series of the sublime Being Human? Pretty bloody brilliant is what! Episode two gives us more great character stuff with the arrival of Mitchell’s old friend Carl who has done something awful to someone he loves and now needs Mitchell’s help to clear up the mess. New werewolf Nina is struggling with coming to terms with her changed life and is becoming more and more at odds with George and some of the decisions he now has to make. And poor Annie really knows how to pick her men as Saul turns out to be not what she or we expect.

In this episode the utterly terrifying view of death that this series presents makes a shocking return. It is no warm white light and happy hereafter here, just a dark horrible tunnel lined with men bearing rope and sticks…and something awful waiting for you at the end. Understandably, Annie wants nothing to do with it. She wants to stay on earth where everyone can now see her and she is almost entirely corporeal (though still having her ghost powers so as to teleport when needed.) She arguably has a better life now than when she was alive. There is an awesome scene both scary and tense as anything where Annie is being dragged screaming towards the open door in to the corridor of death that had me on the edge of my seat hoping against hope she wouldn’t be thrown through. “NO! NOT ANNIE!” I nearly cried out. “Hurry up George, get in the room and save her…” The episode ends with poor Annie having had a major relapse in her condition. I felt so sorry for her. The other storyline of Mitchell helping his old friend Carl is excellent too and not a very hopeful sign for our recovering bloodaholic regarding his future prospects for controlling his addiction. Here we get the return of Ivan too, this time sans wife Daisy, to lend a helping hand. Ivan is a fascinating character. He has a talk earlier with George where you think it might kick off…but he is just keen to find out what it felt like for George to kill Herrick as well as to have made whoopee with Daisy. It seems Ivan has a hard time ‘feeling’ emotional connections anymore. And yet he still loves Kate Bush…the music he plays in his car.

This was a seriously fabulous episode full of character development, character backstory, plot twists, deepening mysteries, horrific happenings, surreal story telling (loved Sir Terry Wogan as the voice of death), cracking dialogue and brilliant humour, all produced with very strong production values. This show looks great. Some of the photography was darkly lush and wonderfully moody. Yep, Being Human just gets better and better. I so love this show.

Being Human, Being Brilliant!

Being Human: Series 2

The awesome supernatural house-share drama and my favourite TV show of last year returned for series 2 last night. A vampire called Mitchell, a ghost called Annie and a werewolf called George all live together in a shared rented house in Bristol and together gain mutual support in circumventing their supernatural natures so as to live like normal regular everyday people, to just be…well…human.

After the battle against the vampire revolution and the defeat of vampire leader Herrick at the end of the last series, only a short time has now passed. About a month to be precise. And there is fallout to deal with including the exact lycanthropic status of werewolf George’s girlfriend Nina and the power vacuum amongst the remaining vampires after Herrick’s death. Plus there is a group of humans doing nasty secret experiments on supernaturals, one of which results in the particularly gruesome death of a werewolf in a hyperbolic chamber. And then there's the arrival of two new vampires in town with their own weird agendas. They are a married couple of which the husband seems to want to taunt and torture Mitchell and George for Herrick’s death while his wife apparently just wants to make dirty vampire/werewolf sex with George while also looking to kill off any living remnants from her human past. Yep, the stage seems set for a very interesting and hopefully bizarre new series of Being Human.

This first episode was great. It did a very good job reintroducing the characters and setting up ideas and threats for the new series. The main focus of the story was about Nina, George’s spiky nurse girlfriend who he accidentally scratched in the last episode of series one. It was about her fear that she is now a werewolf too and how she'd deal if she is one, and how George would deal with being the one to have cursed her. The episode was also about the three main characters looking for new meaning and purpose in their lives. Annie the ghost has become more confident and less afraid. As such she’s now visible to everyone and almost 100% corporeal when she wants to be. So much so that she goes and gets herself a job as a barmaid in a local pub. It’s a crazy idea - a ghost getting a job. But it is very funny and Lenora Crichlow as Annie is so sweet and charming that you just go with it. Her excitement over finding a new lease of life in death is infectious. Meanwhile Mitchell the vampire makes a connection with a new female member of staff at the hospital where he works in a cute scene involving pet goldfish. And then there is George the werewolf. Previously, George was very ordered and reticent about life in general as well as hateful of the monster he'd been turned in to. But now he seems to have embraced his werewolf nature despite still protesting how much he hates it. Those protestations sounded a little hollow with his temperament appearing rather arrogant, cold and aggressive. He even went and got jiggy with the naughty vampire lady…something he’d never have done before. But then I guess it was the night before the full moon.

Writer/creator Toby Whithouse provided another great character based/led script that was as rich in human themes as it was in fantasy plot and horrific incident. The characters were all great and the dialogue funny, sharp and meaningful. Toby can write great lines just as well as any top US writer. I especially loved his little nod to Buffy when Annie, trying to console Nina over her fears of being a werewolf, said: “There was a werewolf in Buffy called Nina.” Nina replied that she never watched it. Annie then said: “Yeah, well, I stopped watching it when I started living it.” Great! Although being a Buffy geek I have to point out that Nina the werewolf was actually in season five of Angel and not in Buffy at all. But appreciated all the same Toby :D

And talking of werewolves…the beasties in series 2 look even better than they did last year with the transformations still up to the same high standards. Very creepy in An American Werewolf in London style. Wicked!

All in all a great start to (hopefully) a great second series. Bring on episode 2 already.

Two strangers arrive…