Back Beats

Spoiler alert! This article contains some spoilers for The Power of Three. You have been warned.

There were some good moments in the latest Doctor Who story - The Power of Three, although it was basically a kiddie friendly version of Clive Barker's Hellraiser. What stood out for me was, of course, the stuff about hearts and the Doctor's dual cardiovascular systems. As UNIT descended upon the Ponds' house Kate Stewart identified the Doctor by his dress sense and then confirmed this with a hand held heart scanner producing a wonderful screen shot. (Click on the image for a larger picture.)

There we are, a nice colour image of two hearts. Unlike some of the previous images we have seen the hearts are shown arranged one above the other rather than side by side. We also see what could be lungs highlighted in blue, or this may be the Doctor's famous respiratory bypass system - a convenient "get out of jail card" for the writers on several occasions. There are also some rather truncated ribs which are helpfully kept out of the way of our view of the middle. Quite how this scanner manages to show them at the sides and not where they meet at the breastbone is a mystery but UNIT get all the cool toys.

Things take a turn for the worse when the mysterious cubes stop a lot of people's hearts. This also affects the Doctor's left heart and he struggles to continue with just one side beating. As his condition deteriorates Amy takes matters into her own hands and grabs a conveniently placed defibrillator from a hospital corridor. She shocks the Doctor and restarts his left heart. The reinvigorated Doctor can then program the cubes to act as some form of mass defibrillator and restart the hearts of all the affected humans. Happy endings all round.

Unfortunately this plot device makes the usual television error about what defibrillators actually do. When the heart is fibrillating it means that the muscle is contracting in an uncoordinated fashion and not pumping blood effectively. If you could look directly at a fibrillating heart it would be quivering rather than contracting regularly. Defibrillation applies an electrical shock which basically resets the electrical system of the heart and hopefully gets it contracting properly. If the fibrillation continues unchecked then eventually the heart stops altogether, at which point an electrical shock is going to make no difference at all. Sadly you can't "jump-start" a stopped heart with a defibrillator.

The Doctor's heart and the hearts of a third of the world's population have stopped. Defibrillation will not restart them. In fact using the defibrillator as Amy does would actually risk causing fibrillation in the Doctor's other heart. It is also interesting that the machine she uses is a rather old fashioned model that would only be used by doctors (of the human kind) or trained paramedics. You are much more likely to see something called an Automated External Defibrillator in public places or hospital corridors.

There is another problem. When the Doctor's left heart stops he still has his right sided organ to continue pumping blood to his brain. The humans who we see collapsing all around the world do not have this luxury. While their hearts are stopped no blood is getting to their brains so they are all at risk of serious brain damage. Unless I missed the bit where the Doctor managed to go back in time and somehow restart their hearts immediately after they collapsed then I don't think we would see people just standing up and carrying on as if nothing had happened.

However, the misconception about defibrillation is very common in film and television so the writer can perhaps be excused for making the same mistake. At least this episode gave us a nice view of the Doctor's two hearts. It also get brownie points for introducing Kate Stewart who I hope we see more of, and for mentioning the Zygons. Apart from that I found all the stuff about the Doctor living with the Ponds rather dull and that combined with the poor medicine made it rather a weak story for me. We shall see if the Weeping Angels can save the current series.

Big Finish - Jubilee

Big Finish release 40 - Jubilee by Robert Shearman, and directed by Shearman and Nicholas Briggs. Colin Baker plays the sixth Doctor and Maggie Stables is Evelyn Smythe.

This is diving into Big Finish's back catalogue again. The latest issue of Doctor Who magazine features an article about the episode Dalek from the first season of the new Doctor Who. The episode was loosely adapted by Shearman himself from this Big Finish story. I am quite interested in episodes of the television show that have been adapted from other formats. I have read the Paul Cornell novel that went on to become the Tenth Doctor episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood, and enjoyed both versions and the differences between them. And the episode Blink was based on a short story by Steven Moffat which first appeared in the 2006 Doctor Who annual.

In Jubilee the Doctor and Evelyn have somehow appeared in a parallel time stream where the English empire is celebrating the anniversary of their victory over the Daleks 100 years ago. The only element common to this story and to the TV episode it became is the idea of the single Dalek held prisoner and tortured by its captors. Evelyn Smythe forms a sort of relationship with the creature which obviously influenced what happened with Rose on television.

This is my first encounter with the Big Finish companion Evelyn, and I was quite impressed. I like the idea of an older companion who can give as good as she gets from the somewhat abrupt Sixth Doctor. Her scenes with the Dalek are very good and, as this is a four part story, she gets more time in the cell than Rose does, so the depth of the relationship she forms with one of the Doctor's implacable enemies is more convincing. I shall certainly be seeking out more Evelyn stories.

The rest of the cast are mostly fine and Nicholas Briggs does an absolutely splendid job with the Dalek voices, foreshadowing what he would go on to when Doctor Who returned to television two years after this story was released. I was slightly bothered by the accent that Martin Jarvis chose for his performance as the English President. Normally Jarvis is a fantastic voice actor so it was strange that he was the weakest part of this production for me.

However, this is another great Big Finish story. It bears almost no resemblance to the television episode it became and is almost more interesting as a result. This is getting another strong 4 out of 5 Dalek manipulator arms. Next up might be some more Evelyn.

Versatile Blogging

Blogging? Huh! What is it good for?

Paul from the Timevault podcast and Goldfish & Paracetamol blog was kind enough to mention me in his Versatile Blogger Award post. This is a rather fine idea which is all about sharing the blogs we read and maybe introducing some new readers to them.

After thanks and links as above the VBA calls for me to pass on the compliment and nominate some blogs that I follow so here goes:

D'Blog of D'Israeli
Everything Comes Back to 2000AD
Brit Cit Reviews
2000AD Covers Uncovered
Reading Watchmen
Comic Book Daily
Kiss of the Dalek
Doc Oho Reviews
Polite Dissent
Brian Vs The Internet

And finally, I'm supposed to reveal seven things about myself. Well I'm not telling but:

1. At the time of writing I am 50 years old. Turn that music down would you?
2. Tom Baker called me "Doctor". He really did.
3. I got to the top of Kilimanjaro. Possibly the worst night of my life, but the morning was pretty spectacular.
4. I watch an awful lot of classic British cult television but I still haven't watched a Colin Baker Doctor Who story. Sorry, Sawbones Hex.
5. I've got a 1965 Morris Minor. Well, actually I'm minding it for my son.
6. In my spare time I annotate comic books.
7. I have a serious Big Finish habit thanks to my Canadian friend and co-host, Brian from British Invaders.

And that is it. Now I have to let the next ten bloggers know about their VBA.

Target Acquired

I'm supposed to have less books now. I have a Kindle and everything, I've had a major de-clutter, so why am I making impulse purchases of second hand paperbacks on eBay?

I do have one shelf of old paperbacks. I have all the Quatermass scripts in their original Penguin releases. I seem to be accumulating a few classic 1970s Panther science fiction books with their great Chris Foss covers, but more about those later.

And now I have these.

Four of the 1970s Target novelisations of some of the Doctor's classic adventures. I'm blaming this entirely on Paul from the TimeVault podcast and Brian from British Invaders.

They do look rather nice on the shelf though.

Day 27 - Who are the nastiest bad guys?

Great bad guys make for great science fiction. Think of the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Borg. I'm sticking with the big screen for this category though and also sticking with yesterday's film. There is something really creepy about the Reavers from Firefly and Serenity. As Zoe put it in one of the TV episodes:

"If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing - and if we're very very lucky, they'll do it in that order."


The film provides an explanation for their behaviour which was a mystery in the TV series, and it somehow made them even worse. Honestly, Reavers could give me nightmares if I let them.

Day 25 - Funniest sci-fi

There may be some Star Trek fans who find Galaxy Quest offensive. I hope not, because it seems to me to have been made with a considerable amount of affection for the source material. It makes fun of the ridiculous aspects of television science fiction and of fandom, but it also highlights the heroic intentions of Gene Roddenberry's original series.

The cast are so great it's difficult to pick out individual performances. Tim Allen does a fantastic turn as a washed up star who unleashes his inner Kirk. Sigourney Weaver gets to make knowing jokes about her hair, cleavage and those pesky air-ducts. Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, Tony Shaloub and Enrico Colantoni are all fantastic. The effects, story, bad guys and the jokes are all perfect. It's a comedy I can watch repeatedly. Great fun.

Day 24 - Who's the No. 1 captain?

Much as I would like to choose Captain Mal Reynolds again I'm sure that this question is asking me stick to the Star Trek universe. And it has to be Kirk. Or should I say: KIRKKKKK!!!!

He's the man with a plan, he's the one I would pick to get me out of trouble (if I can't get the Doctor that is). Whether he's played by the Shat, or by the new swaggering Chris Pine, he is the business.

Big Finish - The Silver Turk

This is Big Finish release 153 - The Silver Turk, written by Marc Platt and directed by Barnaby Edwards.

The Eight Doctor, Mary Shelley, and Cybermen? What a prospect, and I’m glad to say that this doesn’t disappoint. Over the years Big Finish have turned out high quality audio dramas exploring many of the Doctor’s incarnations, and allowing his adventures to continue long after the show was de-Graded in 1989. In particular, it has allowed Paul McGann to flesh out the Eight Doctor from the ill-fated TV movie and given us all a chance to get to know his character more.

And, in a stroke of genius, Big Finish have given him Mary Shelley as a travelling companion. As this four part story begins the Doctor has just whisked Shelley away from that famous meeting at the Villa Diodati in 1816, and taken her to the Vienna Exposition in 1873. Amongst the wonders she encounters there is a curious, metallic automaton who defeats all comers at Checkers and Chess. This is another clever nod back to the history of a real automaton known as the Mechanical Turk. However, unlike the original, there is a dark mystery lurking beneath the Turban and bandages of the Silver Turk.

Before long the Doctor is struggling to prevent some of his oldest foes from taking control of the city, and indeed the planet. As the cover image suggests these are first generation Cybermen from the days of the Tenth Planet story, allowing Nicholas Briggs to give us a fantastic vocal performance as he replicates their peculiar, discordant sing-song voices. And, of course, the meeting between Mary Shelley and creatures who are part organic and part machine allows for some clever parallels between the Cybermen and the monster that she will create in Frankenstein. The moment when she is taken prisoner by a disabled Cyberman and starts to sympathise with its plight is particularly chilling.

McGann is very good as the Doctor and gets to make a knowing joke about the wig he sported for the film. He is ably backed up by Julie Cox as Shelley, and by the familiar voice of David Schneider as a helpful taxi driver. Big Finish are renowned for their sound design and this production is no exception. In fact, the only fault I can find with this is that the Eight Doctor is saddled with my least favourite version of the classic theme tune.

The Silver Turk is available on CD from Big Finish for £14.99, or by digital download for £12.99. If you are looking for a cheaper introduction to Big Finish then Mary’s Story is available as a 99p download. This is a short prologue to this adventure and recounts the Doctor’s first meeting with Shelley. It also serves as a perfect introduction to the joys of the Big Finish audio adventures.

This builds on the promise of Mary's Story and gets a full 4.5 out of 5 flowing Byronic wigs. Recommended.

Day 22 - Coolest alien race

Thee is something that is both cool and terrifying at the same time about the Borg. I wonder which Star Trek writer came up with this brilliant concept that became the "killer app" for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Their implacable will and the stark simplicity of their spacecraft (why should space craft be streamlined?) makes them great television baddies.

They are flesh melded with machine, they return again and again, and they have a great catchphrase, in fact they are the Star Trek equivalent of the Daleks. No wonder, that they work so well.

Day 18 - Best use of SFX on the small screen

CGI special effects on the small screen are still a bit dodgy, and very hard, and expensive, to get right. There are other effects that are very impressive. It's still hard for me to believe that the Weeping Angels in Blink were actually actors in silver paint. Classic Doctor Who. But I am trying hard to look beyond the British Invaders universe.

Let's go back to a classic. I love picking holes in Fringe but it is no X-Files. And if we're talking classic X-Files we have to be talking about the scary episode Squeeze. Eugene Tombs was a splendidly creepy bad guy and the scenes when he distorts his body to climb through a narrow chimney is really impressive. The special effects guys did a great job and, along with some thoroughly nasty sounds, it makes for a terrific episode.

Big Finish - The Doomsday Quatrain

This is the Big Finish Doctor Who release 151 The Doomsday Quatrain, featuring Sylvester McCoy as the seventh Doctor.

The Doctor lands in sixteenth century Florence and meets Nostradamus which allows him to make a neat joke about how his wife once knitted him a scarf, a nod back to a comment the fourth Doctor made in The Ark in Space. Of course, with the Doctor around strange things are usually going to start happen and this story is no exception.

Having said that I generally don't like the Doctor's encounters with historical characters, this had a neat twist which was very enjoyable. The seventh Doctor has a reputation for being a master manipulator and that's how he acts in this story. In a way it's classic Doctor Who with the Doctor playing two sides off against each other using no special abilities other than his wits.

I enjoyed this much more than the previous short stories. I like my Doctor Who in a serialised form with cliffhangers and the sting leading into the theme music. I also like how Big Finish use the right version of the theme music for each incarnation of the Doctor.

Overall, this is a good story with some fine performances from McCoy and the other actors. There's a monster voice that sounds a bit like a parody of a typical Doctor Who baddie but otherwise the sound design is great. I'm going to give this a solid 4 out of 5 Tardis fast return switches.

Next up is more of the seventh in The House of Blue Fire

Big Finish - Recorded Time

This is number 150 in the Big Finish Doctor Who line. A set of four short stories featuring Colin Baker as the sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown.

Now here is yet another embarrassing confession from the co-host of a podcast all about British science fiction television. I have seen precisely none of the sixth Doctor's TV adventures. I know that his run on the show was nearly as chequered as his coat. He was treated badly as the BBC controller Michael Grade put the show on hiatus, a foreshadowing of the decision to cancel the show altogether in 1989. Fortunately Colin Baker has had the opportunity to continue his portrayal of the Doctor in some very successful Big Finish productions. And Baker is, by all accounts, a thoroughly charming and likeable person. A few months ago our local newspaper reported that he had been in town at a charity event and I was genuinely disappointed that I hadn't known in advance to go along and shake his hand.

So I turned to these audio dramas with some interest. Four short stories in which the Doctor and Peri find themselves in the court of King Henry VIII, go up against some futuristic baddies, get trapped in the world of Jane Austen's novels, and finally find themselves on a strange space ship and suffering from complete amnesia. I found them a bit of a mixed bag. Although I enjoyed the meeting of the Doctor with Mary Shelley I generally like the historical Doctor Who stories less than the others. So I was less impressed with the Henry and Austen stories. However the two more traditional science fiction stories were far more enjoyable.

Perhaps because they are just short stories I was less engaged than I thought I might be. They weren't bad just nothing outstanding. 2.5 out of 5 Tardis control console stars. Next up is the seventh Doctor and the Doomsday Quatrain.

Day 7 - Best Non-human character

Tomorrow is Robots so this must be my favourite alien (wasn't that an American TV show?). It's a no-brainer again, which in a way is a shame as it means there is less to write about. The best alien in science fiction is a humanoid with two hearts, the ability to regenerate and who represents the last of his race. Best non-human? It has to be the Doctor.

Day 6- Best Sci-Fi Villain

I'm going to contradict myself this time. In the 30 day British Invaders challenge I chose Steerpike as my favourite villain. Now we are broadening the canvas to include all of science fiction and I am going to choose another British SF character as my favourite villain. I know, it doesn't make any sense but just look at him. Just think what he represents, just think of the lives he has cost. I should probably try and think outside of the British Invaders box a bit more for this challenge but for now my favourite villain is the man who makes me want to get back beyond the sofa.

Davros.

Day 2 - Favourite Sci-Fi TV Series

There are an awful lot of science fiction TV shows in contention for this category and I could waste some space by talking about some of my favourites. But ...

Duh-dum-de-dum, duh-dum-de-dum. Whoo - ooooo!

There can only be one. As a co-host on a podcast all about British science fiction television I have to pick the longest running and best science fiction show there is.

The excitement generated by the return of Doctor Who in 2005, the thrill of that first Dalek episode, the scariness of episodes like Blink and Turn Left, and the sheer enjoyment of considering all that has gone before. It has to be Doctor Who.

Fringe Binge

Fringe season three has arrived on DVD and it's time for me to drift away from British televison for a short while and get back to the world of parallel universes, bad medicine and a cheerful mad scientist in this X-Files clone.

Spoiler alert. If you haven't watched the end of season two and you plan to then probably best if you don't read the rest of this because I'm going to give the game away.You have been warned.

So here's the problem for the Fringe writers. At the end of season two they have established that the two parallel universes are at war and they've swapped the two Olivias. Getting from there back to the freak-of-the-week episodes is difficult but so far they have got round this by having the evil Olivia, or Faux-livia, masquerading as her blonde goodie version so that the original team can continue their investigations. Meanwhile over in the other world they have given our Olivia memory implants so that she thinks and acts like Faux-livia. The rest of her Fringe team don't know about the switch so they carry on doing their thing and we get alternating episodes of Fringe cases from each universe. Clever!

Actually it's all very neat and we get to watch more X-Files type mysteries while at the same time noting the differences between the two universes. The parallel world has much better technology, although strangely they still use Penny Farthing bicycles. And their Fringe team seem much better at their jobs than our eccentric versions of Walter and Astrid. Plus the Red universe team includes a character who is dead over here in our (blue) universe.

Quite how long they can keep this up remains to be seen, especially as Olivia seems to be rejecting her memory grafts and starting to remember who she really is. But at least they have got us back to monster of the week shows. Watch this space for more from beyond the Fringe.

Challenged

The British Invaders 30 day challenge is finished. Thank you to everyone who suggested questions, made comments, re-tweeted me, or started their own challenge.

In particular I would like to thank Paul from the excellent Time Vault podcast who has just started a challenge here.

Paul, Karode and Mekster re-tweeted my daily links. Karode and Wolfeeboy have been doing the challenge on their blogs, while over on the British Invaders facebook page Colin, Nick, John and Steve have been doing the challenge there.

Finally, a shout out to my friend Brian in Canada who invited me on to the British Invaders podcast and got me watching and talking about all this great British science fiction television.

Stay tuned for more ramblings and be warned, Fringe is back!

Day 30 - Who would you like to play the 12th Doctor?

It's the last day of the challenge and it's the second great question in Who-dom (you can read my answer to the first question here). So who should play next the next Doctor?

I made a few suggestions for this category in a Twitter poll recently and I could trot those names out here but I suspect the next actor chosen will be largely unknown. Who had heard of Matt Smith before 2009? Even David Tennant was just another jobbing actor when he got the part.

So after 30 days of British Invaders themed questions I am going to indulge myself in a moment of whimsy, a moment of sentiment. I'm going to choose a young chap who is at university and who, as far as I know, has no interest in acting. He does have a certain style however, and would make an interesting occupant of the Tardis.

It will never happen but I think my son Tom would make a great twelfth Doctor.

Day 29 - Favourite alien race or planet

This challenge draws towards its conclusion with a consideration of the various alien races and their planets that have cropped up in British Invaders so far. There are quite a few funny aliens in Hyperdrive and HHGG. I'm watching Space: 1999 at the moment and there's almost a new alien every week, and I haven't even got to their tame Metamorph in season two yet. But clearly the show with widest range to pick from is Doctor Who, and I think it's appropriate to return to the key show in British science fiction TV for the last two days of this challenge.

I started to run through some of my favourite monsters from Doctor Who but all the time a mechanical voice in my head kept repeating Daleks, Daleks, Daleks! Yup, it's the archetypical alien race from the archetypical show. Volumes have been written about them over the years, and about whether or not they make sense. I won't add much to more to the debate other than to say they scared me as a kid in classic Doctor Who and I also like what has been done with them in the new Who (well, for the most part. Let's not think about the Daleks take Manhattan storyline). And when you combine the Daleks with their incredibly creepy creator Davros, things just get worse (or better).

The best alien race on British television are the implacable exterminators from Skaro.

Day 28 - Which missing show would you most like to see restored to the archives?

Now this one is fun. Once again I'm excluding Doctor Who because that has already had its own missing show category. When I first thought about this question I assumed I would be picking Nigel Kneale's The Road which was a ghost story from 1963 with an ingenious twist in the tale of an 18th century village haunted by strange sights and sounds. You can find the script for it on the DVD of The Stone Tape, that's if you can still find a copy of The Stone Tape.

However another idea occurred to me. When I was young I was a huge fan of Isaac Asimov, and of his robot stories in particular. I am pretty sure that The Caves of Steel was my favourite novel as a teenager. I loved the odd couple pairing of a human detective with his robot partner as they try to catch a murderer in an over-crowded city of the future.

While researching shows for us to cover on British Invaders I discovered that there was a BBC adaptation of the novel in 1964 which starred Peter Cushing as the detective Elijah Bailey and John Carson as R. Daneel Olivaw, and it was adapted for TV by none other than Terry Nation. Sadly only one or two clips of the production have survived but wouldn't it be great to be able to watch that show?