Titles

The episodes of series 4 of Doctor Who are as follows, with titles to be confirmed for four of the episodes:

Partners In Crime by Russell T Davies
The Fires Of Pompeii by James Moran
Planet Of The Ood by Keith Temple
The Sontaran Stratagem by Helen Raynor
The Poison Sky by Helen Raynor
Episode 6 by Stephen Greenhorn
The Unicorn And The Wasp by Gareth Roberts
Silence In The Library by Steven Moffat
River’s Run by Steven Moffat
Midnight by Russell T Davies
Episode 11 by Russell T Davies
Episode 12 by Russell T Davies
Episode 13 by Russell T Davies

It’s coming home

In just over a week’s time (Saturday April 5th 2008) Series 4 of Doctor Who (or series 30 depending on who you are and whether you give a shit or not) will broadcast on BBC One.

The teaser trailer for the series has just aired on television and wets the appetite for what is to come. There are lots of questions asked in this trailer but the main one, as I am sure you will all agree is, is this: Why is Martha dripping wet and covered in goo?

Is it the instant reaction of hundreds of fanboys on the news of her return to the series, or is it something more sinister?

Jack’s On Film

Torchwood From Out of the Rain

If there was one writer who you expected to deliver the goods when you first heard their name mentioned on the writing list for the second series of Torchwood, it would have been Peter J Hammond. After all this was the man who created and wrote the peerless Sapphire and Steel and wrote some the best episode of Ace of Wands (not that I can really comment on that, having never seen Ace of Wands) and after his episode of the first series of Torchwood high hopes were held for this episode, especially when rumours were that he was to revisit one of the more successful Sapphire and Steel stories.

Do you remember the episodes of Sapphire and Steel where at the end this young woman was told that she would never be able to have another photograph taken ever and that she had to destroy all of the photographs that she had? Well this episode of Torchwood is a little bit like that but with film instead. I suppose there isn’t a great deal of difference between photographs and films except for the fact that film captures moving images rather than static images. Otherwise the basic principles are pretty much the same.

I enjoyed this episode and thought it was rather creepy much in the same way that Sapphire and Steel was. The character of the Ghostmaker was an interesting creation and was played with a lot of moustache twirling menace by Julian Bleach who has a very distinctive voice. The other main character to come from the film was the rather strange character of Pearl who didn’t really have a great deal to do but she did come across as quite menacing in her own way.

Like Hammond’s previous episode this one could have also been a rather effective Doctor Who episode, rather than an episode that only Torchwood can do. There has, I think, always been something inherently creepy about travelling shows and the people that inhabit them so it is a good place to see a nice creepy story, which this was, but not in the same way that the Sapphire and Steel one with the photographs was.

In this episode Ianto had quite a bit to do, and his local knowledge also came into play a lot here. Like Ianto, I have always had a thing about old cinemas and often bemoan the fact that there a very few old cinemas left these days that haven’t been turned into either bingo halls, theme pubs or nightclubs. These new multiplex cinemas have nothing on the old ones and often seem very soulless like there is something important missing from them.

It was nice to see yet another glimpse into Jack’s former life before Torchwood and it seems that he almost turned his hand to anything in his long life. He did hint to Ianto that he was there undercover for someone, but he wouldn’t say whom, leading to lots and lots of rumours and supposition about who Jack might have been working for in those days.

Of course there are lot of hints about Jack’s past that have never been followed up so there is no reason to assume that this one will be followed up any time soon, just like the fact that Jack had been married before.

The ending where it was said that as long as there are still pieces of film about then the night travellers are never truly dead, and Jack hearing the old fashioned travelling show music (something else that gives me the creeps), was not quite as effective as the ending of Blink, where it implied that every statue you see around might be a weeping angel, but it still worked in a rather less scary fashion. I quite like to think that all of these Doctor Who episodes that are lost might well have that footage of a travelling show running through it now and wouldn’t that really scare the shit out of some fans?

Something old

Torchwood: Something Borrowed

Something old,
Something new,
Something borrowed,
Something blue,
And a silver sixpence in your shoe

There was a change in tone in this episode after the ruminations on death and mortality in the previous two episodes with a wedding episode and a comedy episode to boot! As is usual in these situations a wedding in a television programme is never going to go according to plan, as this never happens on telly, and this episode of Torchwood is no different.

What is the worse thing that can happen when you wake up on the morning of your wedding if you are the bride? A sudden outbreak of acne? Two black eyes? Waking up next to the stripper from your hen night?

In the case of Gwen Cooper she wakes up pregnant, which was a bit of a shock considering she hadn’t shown any signs of being pregnant the previous night at her hen night, and hasn’t probably spent enough time with Rhys to actually get pregnant in the first place. Having said that she did have a thing with Owen in the previous season but Owen in his current state wouldn’t be capable of anything let alone getting Gwen up the duff!

In hindsight it was probably not the best of ideas to have the hen night the evening before the wedding, or in Gwen’s case, it was the not the best of ideas to go chasing after a marauding shape shifting alien. She probably should have had an early night and a cup of ovaltine, but that wouldn’t have been much of an opening to the episode would it?

Working for Torchwood does has it unfortunate side effects such as Owen being undead, and in the case of Gwen getting impregnated by an alien shape-shifter the night before her wedding! I mean was there even the slightest chance of Gwen’s wedding being an incident free zone? I think not.

We even got to meet the infamous Banana Boat who has been rather like “her indoor’s” from Minder, or Maris in Frasier, being an oft mentioned but never seen character. It probably would have been better if we had not met him in this episode and kept him as a character that works better by never being seen.

We also got to find out something about Ianto’s family with the never before revealed fact that his dad is a master tailor. That might explain why he is always so smartly turned out. By the end of the episode he had added dj-ing to the growing list of his hitherto unseen talents and he probably had the best line of the episode describing the life of a Torchwood operative as working to rid Cardiff of aliens by day and then becoming the wedding fairy by night!

It helped that the alien’s were shape-shifters as that meant that absolutely anyone at the wedding could have been the alien. Poor old Mervyn the dj found out that to his detriment by trying to cop off with the alien. Still he didn’t know any better and she was quite attractive so you can’t really blame him.

Of course the worst bit of any wedding is the agonising wait after the words about is there anyone who had any just cause or impediment why you should not get married, because you just never know who might turn up at that moment. In the case of Gwen this was bound to happen and we weren’t disappointed when Jack bounded down the aisle and demand that the wedding be stopped.

Luckily in the end everything went to plan and Gwen did indeed become Mrs Gwen Williams. I just wonder if they will credit her as Gwen Williams from the next episode as I was half expecting that to happen at the end of this episode. I mean they should do, as that is now the characters name, unless she has decided not to take Rhys name, as there is no law that states that a wife takes her husband surname, it is just what most women tend to do. Also, didn’t Gwen look lovely in her wedding dress, with, or without, bump?

Aside from Meat this episode was Rhys’ best episode. He got to finally stand up to Captain Jack by punching his lights out after Jack called his mother an ugly bitch, kind of like what Marco Matteratzi said to Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 World Cup Final, and he got to marry Gwen. I think that you can call that a result.

For the second episode in a row we got a comedy great (who had also appeared in Doctor Who in the 1980’s) making a guest appearance in Torchwood with Nerys Hughes playing Rhys’ mother Brenda. Nerys Hughes had a bit more to do than poor old Richard Briers did in the last episode, and she even got to play the baddie, albeit for only a few minutes.

I thought Something Borrowed was a hoot, and was a nice change of tone from the previous two episodes, which were so dark and miserable! 8 out of 10!

The Miserable Life

Torchwood: A Day in the Death

Yet another Owencentric episode, another episode where Owen is moping around and unhappy with his lot. Although to be fair since he is dead, but not actually dead; alive yet not alive, it is no wonder he is a bit pissed off with everything and everybody.

I mean he now can’t die but unlike Jack it seems he also cannot do any of thing things that would count to him as being alive such as eating and drinking etc. He can watch daytime TV but that isn’t really the same is it? I suppose he could spend his days and nights playing games of his ps3 or X-Box or watching every series of 24 as he doesn’t need to sleep either.

Luckily by the end of episode he had found absolution of sorts by persuading a woman that it was not worth jumping to her death from the top of a building when there was the slightest, smidegeon of a chance that things could get better and not be as bleak and dark as it could be.

That was the one moment of the episode that suggested that things might not be as bad as you think they are, in a rather bleak episode written by first-time television writer Joseph Lidster. I mean you thought the last episode was grim and bit depressing but that had nothing on this episode.

I do begin to wonder why Freema bothered to get out of bed to make this episode as she had so little to do you didn’t really notice that she was there till the end of the episode when she had her nice farewell scene and promised that she may come back to Torchwood one day (read that as will return in the 3rd series probably). She had even less to do than she did in the previous episode and she was hardly in that one either.

I do wonder why they bothered having her in three episodes when there was only one that would feature her character in the main. She was in the background like Tosh normally is for the previous two episodes. I mean even Tosh had more to do in this episode and that is saying something!

There was some light relief in the episode courtesy of sitcom legend Richard Briers trying to come on to Tosh (I mean who wouldn’t?) and the knowledge that Owen really hates Tin Tin. Come to think about I always thought there was something funny about Tin Tin as well. It did seem a little wasted to get Richard Briers in and to have him play such a small part but he was very good in this small role as eccentric millionaire and collector of alien ephemera Henry Parker.

I think it would have been a nice touch if we had seen a picture of his wife in the house somewhere and it being someone like Penelope Keith or one of his many sitcom wives from over the years. That would have been quite amusing in the same way that they used a publicity picture of Briers from the Good Life, to show a younger Henry Parker, was. There was also the sight of Owen getting used to using the coffee machine which was also quite amusing!

The sub plot of Owen trying to talk a woman out of throwing herself of a building on her wedding anniversary after her marriage ended just as it had started with the death of her husband after mere hours of marriage, was a nice little extra layer to the episode but did seem to be a bit more important that what I assume was the main plot involving the Richard Briers character and the energy spike that was emanating from his property. Or perhaps it was meant to be the other way around. I am not too sure.

It was nice that it turned out to be nothing more dangerous than a reply to the messages sent from NASA in the seventies but I do wonder what it actually did to Owen and all we got in the way of an explanation was that it sang to him. Perhaps that is explanation enough.

A Day in the Death is probably the weakest episode of the series so far, and is not one that would benefit from repeated viewings, and it ended the Martha trilogy of episodes with a whimper rather than a bang, but it is still better than most of the stuff on TV today.

Death Becomes Him

Torchwood: Dead Man Walking

I suppose that something like this was always going to happen from the moment at the end of They Keep Killing Susie when Ianto quipped that gloves usually come in pairs that at some point the other risen mitten would find its way to Torchwood and be used again. I am not sure if I thought they would use it in quite the way that they did.

You would have thought that after what happened to Susie when they tried that that they would think twice before meddling with dark arts like that but having said that would they have needed to do so if Owen hadn’t been shot by Jim Robinson in the previous episode? I would have thought not and the risen mitten would have remained in that church with the weevils for a little bit longer until Torchwood decided to go looking for it, which may never have happened.

And it wasn’t as though any member of Torchwood crew decided to stop Jack from bringing Owen back to life again even when they were aware of what had happened the first time round. In particular Tosh who has now admitted her feelings for Owen and Gwen who had a thing with Owen during the first series.

It has to be said though that why does it take Owen to become a walking, talking bag of flesh before he gets another episode all to himself. The episode was basically about Owen and what might have happened to him after being bought back to life and how he was coping with not being able to do the things that most of us take for granted which seems to be drinking, farting and shagging according to Owen, but surely there is more to life than just those three things?

Despite the rather depressing mood of the episode there were some funny moments mixed in with the despair and all round apathy of the episode such as the moment when Owen has to expel several pints of lager from his stomach due to the fact of him no longer having a working digestive system and the bit when that woman who appeared to be on a hen night virtually manhandled Owen and was a bit disappointed when he didn’t respond. Well I suppose being dead was a good enough excuse but it would still smart!

There were some good effects in this episode most notably the representation of the grim reaper as a skeleton who walks around in a huge puff of smoke, well it makes a difference from the usual depiction of a bloke in a cowl carrying a scythe doesn’t it? Burn Gorman manages to look even uglier than usual when he was possessed by whatever the hell it was that was possessing him, because we were never actually sure what it was that had taken him over and was keeping him unalive were we. Was it actually death or was is some other alien force that needed death. I am not sure and I am not sure if we will ever truly find out, something’s are just best left unexplained.

Martha didn’t really have a great deal to do in this episode except start the autopsy on Owen at the start of the episode before Jack decides to go an resurrect him and kick start the plot of the episode which might otherwise have been loads of people sitting around moping about the death of Owen. Oh yes she also had to fend of the risen mitten and then be aged greatly allowing them to use a similar make up job they used of Tennant in the final two episodes of series three.

Just like then there was a plot maguffiny thingie that allowed Martha to be returned to her normal state at the end of the episode and you would have thought that might have been Martha’s cue to leave Torchwood but no she seems to be in next weeks episode for even more punishment. I mean what in the hell can they do to her in the next episode that is worse than what happened to her in this episode and the fact that she nearly died in Reset?

This episode is not really designed to be viewed on its own as it the middle episode of a trilogy and as a result will only be truly appreciated when you see the final episode of the trilogy next week. Not the best of Torchwood episodes, but still great television