Search Results for "Liz Shaw

A Tuesday Doctor Who meme

24 October 2006 Rob Buckley 21 Comments

I’ve not had much joy with these meme things, but I thought I’d give it another go. Today’s meme of fun, to be answered in your own blog or in the comments section, is quite a simple one and I reckon there are enough people here in the know to give it a go.

So here it is: what are you three favourite Doctor Who stories and why? You can have stories from the old series, new series, audio plays, movies, books, comics, stage plays, even fan fic. You don’t have to arrange them in any order (nor put down any other stories if you don’t want). You just need to name your top three.

To get things rolling, here are mine:

  1. Caves of Androzani: It’s just so bleak! With the exception of two characters, everyone dies; even the Doctor ‘dies’. There are those marvellous, fourth-wall breaking asides to the audience by Morgus.
  2. Kinda: One of the only attempts to do proper literary-style sci-fi. Full of Buddhist metaphors, it does suffer a bit from cheapo production values and the inflatable snake. But it’s a cracker all the same. It was either this or the sequel Snakedance anyway.
  3. Genesis of the Daleks: Well, it had to be, didn’t it? Again, bleak as bleak can be, but it was Tombo at his finest, Davros at his most nuanced and the Daleks, surprisingly, at their scariest.

I toyed with Ark In Space (evil alien wasp things lay their eggs inside human beings), Deadly Assassin (the Doctor’s first proper return to Gallifrey) and The Five Doctors (it’s fun) but those were the winners.

Who wants to be first with the follow-ups? Anyone? Bueller?

UPDATE: I’m actually reconsidering Genesis of the Daleks in favour of Ambassadors of Death: it’s adult, gritty, and intelligent thanks to a corker of a script from David Whitaker. Pertwee is on excellent form, Liz Shaw has great fun taunting bad guys (my faves: “It’s so simple even you could understand it” and “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you”) and there’s some fantastic direction, with some particularly well composed shots that you just wouldn’t have expected from the Beeb of the time. Plus you have to appreciate a composer of incidental music, who when faced with an action scene, doesn’t go for the obvious but goes for the flute solo instead. Marvellous.

News

Things Doctor Who-y that happened while I was on holiday

18 September 2006 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

This is all old news, but just in case you missed it, here’s a rundown on the top Who stories of last week:

Sarah Jane’s back… again, in another Doctor Who spin-off… again
Sarah Jane SmithThe Beeb has finally confirmed that The Sarah Jane Adventures will be happening. Lis Sladen’s back as (almost) everybody’s favourite old-school Who assistant, complete with helpful investigative teenage neighbour. K9 will appear in the first episode, a 60-minute special, but won’t be in the rest of the series. Has a hint of Dark Season to it, don’t you think?

It’s worth pointing out that that’s yet another series Russell T Davies is spreading himself thinly over. When’s he going to find time to sleep?


McGann’s the other official BBC Doctor

Paul McGann as the DoctorThe Eighth Doctor aka Paul McGann is to get his own original BBC7 series in the New Year. McGann’s Doctor is already a reasonably familiar presence on BBC7, thanks to airings of various of his Big Finish stories. This season of stories, however, will be originals and will feature Sheridan Smith from Two Pints of Lager… as his companion, rather than the delightful India Fisher as Edwardian adventuress Charley Pollard. They’ll still be produced by Big Finish, however, and enhanced versions will appear on CD later next year.

I’ll withhold judgement on the stories till I hear them (ooh, goodie, new things to review!) rather than “go knee jerk”, but having seen her filming Two Pints, I would say that Sheridan Smith is actually a pretty good actress (who doesn’t fluff her lines constantly like certain cast members) so could do well here. Why they’ve switched from India Fisher, though, I don’t know: pick your own conspiracy about Charley being too posh, etc for younger audiences to identify with or how it might annoy Conrad Westmaas if India Fisher got a solo companion role.

Most unlikeliest event in human history occurs


Janet FieldingJanet Fielding has agreed to narrate an audio book version of rubbish Peter Davison story Warriors of the Deep. Caroline John (Liz Shaw) and Katy Manning (Jo Grant) will be narrating Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Sea Devils as well, as part of the ‘Monsters on Earth’ limited edition CD.

I’ll tell you something: if you’ve never seen Janet Fielding go on at length about how Doctor Who is rubbish, anti-feminist, etc, in front of a mass of seething Whovians, you haven’t seen courage yet. Now she’s narrating one of the most awful stories she ever appeared in? Bizarre. Still, at least you won’t have to see the polystyrene sets and the Myrka in this version…

US TV

And at number 25…

29 August 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Coming up with last few characters in the list of the top 25 TV characters ever has proved harder than I thought. I managed to come up with 23 and 24 yesterday morning. That’s caused a bit of a stir over at the Doctor Who LiveJournal forum. Some agreed with my inclusion of Liz Shaw. Some didn’t pick up on my tongue-in-cheek style. Oh well.

Anyway, ever since, I’ve been trying to come up with number 25. You should have seen the look on my wife’s face when I explained why I seemed distracted in Sainsbury’s: “Well, I’m trying to think up the 25th greatest character in TV history.” “Oh, right….”

I came up with a few options, some of whom might be good for your own lists, if you haven’t already got them:

  • Frank Burnside from The Bill
  • Miranda from Sex and the City (thanks Marie)
  • Maggie Forbes from The Gentle Touch (which goes back to my point about how we forget strong female characters in favour of slightly less strong female characters such as Jane Tennison from Prime Suspect, in this case)
  • Dirty Den from EastEnders (until he came back from the dead)
  • Dr Cox from Scrubs (thanks Lisa)
  • Niles Crane from Frasier (thanks again Lisa)
  • Regan from The Sweeney
  • JR from Dallas
  • Matthew Burton from It’s Your Move (Jason Bateman showing off some extreme talent at a very early age)
  • Jason King from Department S and Jason King (the original Austin Powers)
  • Kit Curran from The Kit Curran Radio Show
  • Julie Newmar’s Catwoman in Batman
  • Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers
  • Howling Mad Murdoch from The A-Team
  • Tom Chance from Chance in a Million



Eventually, though, I hit on it. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten him (or is it her)! You might well kick yourself when you hear their name.

At number 25 is…

Jim Bergerac.

Nah. Just kidding it’s….

Continue reading “And at number 25…”

UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 7×9 – Cold War

15 April 2013 Rob Buckley 16 Comments

Doctor Who - Cold War

In the UK: Saturday, 6.15pm, 13th April 2013, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday, 8pm/7c, 13th April 2013, BBC America

Mark Gatiss is a fanboy. This will probably come as a surprise to you only if you’ve never heard of Mark Gatiss before. Otherwise, this should be known to you.

A member of the League of Gentlemen (a troop of horror-story loving fanboys), Gatiss first appeared in the realm of Doctor Who writing some of Virgin’s range of New Adventures books that emerged following the cancellation of the original series. Then, after writing and starring in some of the Liz Shaw spin-off P.R.O.B.E. stories, and some of the Big Finish Doctor Who and Sapphire and Steel audio ranges (he’s an S&S fanboy, too), he came to write some Doctor Who TV episodes: The Unquiet Dead, The Idiot’s Lantern, Victory of the Daleks and Night Terrors. He’s also written fiction that pastiches 19th century fiction, hosted and contributed to documentaries on some of his favourite fanboy subjects (Nigel Kneale, Hammer horror), adapted and starred in HG Wells’ The First Men In the Moon and being a Sherlock Holmes fanboy, too, it should come as no surprise by now for you to hear that he’s one of the show runners and writers for Sherlock.

A fanboy, then. Clear?

The biggest problem facing fanboys in general and Mark Gatiss in particular is originality. It’s all right when you have something to adapt and something to riff on, but actually coming up with good new ideas is actually terribly hard for the fanboy. It’s no surprise therefore that whenever Gatiss writes anything, it’s usually slight variations on an existing, familiar story, with knowing references to other things thrown in and some sort of Important Obvious Metaphor thrown in for good luck.

By now, it shouldn’t surprise you when I tell you it was Gatiss who suggested to bestest Sherlock pal and Doctor Who show runner Steven Moffat that they should do a story feature the Ice Warriors, just about the only popular old Who monster that the new series hadn’t featured. Nor should it surprise you that our Stevie was a bit dismissive of the idea, thinking they were a bit rubbish looking.

But Gatiss has brought them back, with an Important Obvious Metaphor about the Cold War (hence, the title) thrown in for good luck. It’s a little bit The Ice Warriors, a little bit Dalek… okay, a lot Dalek, with a big chunk of Alien and just a soupçon of Hunt For Red October on a low budget thrown in. And while it never hit the ‘totally excellent’ mark, by sticking with what he’s best at, Gatiss turned in what’s probably his best Doctor Who yet.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 7×9 – Cold War”

UK TV

The Caves of Androzani – still the best ever Doctor Who story

28 June 2010 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Peter Davison in The Caves of Androzani

Well, I mentioned it on Friday as part of new series “Liz Shaw’s Best Bits” and the lure ever since has been irresistible. So today, the best bit from the best Doctor Who story ever – the final fifth Doctor story The Caves of Androzani.

Written by Robert Holmes, directed by Graeme Harper, Caves is without a doubt one of the bleakest of all the Who stories, with the Doctor and new companion Peri finding themselves stuck in the middle of a war on a moon that holds the key to near eternal youth: a chemical called Spectrox. Unfortunately, in its unrefined state, Spectrox is poisonous to anyone who touches it – guess who touches it. Go on – and so the Doctor and Peri have to spend most of their time looking for a cure.

The joy of The Caves of Androzani is that it’s pretty much exactly what would happen if the Doctor did end up in the middle war: he gets captured, tossed around as a pawn, and stuck in front of a firing squad, while more or less everyone around him dies. In fact, of all the many, many characters in Caves of Androzani, by the end, there are only two survivors, and neither of them is the Doctor…

As well as Graeme Harper’s incredible direction, Maurice Roëves’ mercenary, Stotz, and the sheer brutality of the story, Caves is notable for a couple of things: the use of machine guns, rather than outer-space lasers to make everything just that little bit more real; and the breaking of the fourth wall, with chief villain Morgus turning to camera at a couple of points to explain his thought processes.

Nevertheless, it’s ironic that the best bit is the end with Peter Davison’s regeneration into Colin Baker – still the best regeneration scene of them all (unless you count the lead up to David Tennant’s exit, and guess what that was modelled on). Unfortunately, within about three seconds, you can see everything falling apart as possibly the worst Doctor Who story in existence, The Twin Dilemma, is cued up.

If you want, you can watch the whole ruddy thing on YouTube thanks to BBC Worldwide (which has, unfortunately, made the whole thing unembeddable otherwise I’d stick it on here for you!)