My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece, Annabel Pitcher (audiobook)

Five years ago, Jamie’s sister Rose was killed in a terrorist attack in London. He doesn’t really remember Rose, because he was only five at the time, but his family has never recovered. His mum left just a few weeks ago after having an affair with Nigel from the support group. Jamie’s dad drinks all the time and hates all Muslims. Rose’s twin sister Jas – now fifteen – has dyed her hair pink and got her nose pierced, an act seen as a betrayal by their parents, because she doesn’t look like Rose any more. It’s like Jas and Jamie are less visible than the urn on the mantlepiece, less present than the hole where Rose ought to be, the gap around which their whole family revolves.

After Mum’s desertion, Dad, Jas and Jamie move to a small village in the Lake District to start a new life. At his new school, Jamie doesn’t fit in. His teacher always seems to ask the very questions he can’t answer, and is frustrated by his reticence and apparent stupidity. The other kids call him “freak,” with the exception of sparky, mischievous Sunya, who recognises in him a kindred spirit, a fellow super-hero. But Jamie dreads to think how his father would react to his friendship with a Muslim girl, when he blames all Muslims for Rose’s death.

Jamie is a bright, unusual child with a vivid imagination. His narration is full of bright similes and metaphors which fit perfectly:

“I was more nervous than the most nervous person I could think of, which right now is the lion from The Wizard of Oz. My tummy had something bigger and scarier than butterflies inside it. Maybe they were eagles or hawks or something. Or, come to think of it, they could have been those monkeys with wings that kidnap Dorothy and take her to the witch that's scared of water.”

Jamie doesn’t really remember his sister Rose. Every day he sees the effect of her death on his parents, but for him that’s normal. He doesn’t remember when life was any different. For the outside reader, it is clear that something is very, very wrong. I felt intense pity for Jamie’s parents – one could never get over the loss of a child – but they are unreasonable in the way they treat their surviving children, so wrapped up in their own pain that they resent Jas and Jamie for not being Rose, or for not letting their lives revolve around her absence. When Jamie had to write a school essay about a hero, and chose footballer Wayne Rooney, his mother made him rewrite it about Rose, dictating the memories he didn’t have. Then, at a birthday party, when Jamie asked for food, his dad filled a plate – to put on the mantlepiece beside Rose’s urn. Jamie is such an optimistic child, but his hope is painful to an older, wiser reader (or listener listener) because of the awareness of the crushing disappointment that is to come when his wishes don’t come true, or if they do, they aren’t what he had hoped. At times the story just seems to be disappointment after disappointment, and Jamie has to learn the difficult lesson that adults don’t always get it right, don’t have all the answers and do let you down. But they get there, slowly, until Jamie concludes:

If OFSTED inspected my family, then I know what grade we'd get: Satisfactory. OK, but not brilliant, but that's fine by me.

I downloaded the audio version of this book when I was struck by a bad migraine attack. I couldn’t sleep for the whole time but wasn’t up to reading, so I let David Tennant read this to me instead. Although he is a talented voice actor, seemingly able to imitate any accent he tries, in this case his reading is simple and understated, letting the story do the work, narrating with the right amount of innocent hope, eagerness and subdued sadness. I bought the audiobook from Audible.co.uk, but was quite disappointed that it came as one six-hour track, so I couldn’t burn it to CD to wake me up in the morning. In future I think I’ll stick to buying  audio books as CDs.

Theatre: Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndham's)

Preview showing.

One cold day in January I was mooching around my room, probably reading or using my laptop, when all of a sudden my ears tuned into the radio news: “David Tennant and Catherine Tate are to be reunited on stage, playing sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice in Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing…” I confess, I actually squealed and did a little happydance. Much Ado About Nothing wasn’t a Shakespeare play I’d seen or read before, but I’d heard a little about it. When I told my dad, who had studied the play at O-Level, he knew immediately which roles they had been cast in. The characters seemed to have been written for the duo. (Perhaps they were…)

Now, we know he's met Shakespeare when travelling
with Martha Jones. Maybe he popped back to see
his old mate with Donna Noble one time...?

But, strange as it seemed, it didn’t occur to me for a few hours that I could actually see the play. Once that lightbulb lit up, I was on the internet, but so was everyone else, so I tried the phones. Lots of twinkly music later, I decided to give myself another two minutes. Two minutes passed, and then… a person! And I had tickets! And I was one excited bunny.

After many months of waiting, the day came around. My best friend and I had decided to wear nice dresses and stay in a hotel overnight – but just before we got to the hotel, the heavens opened! It looked like we would have to reconsider. My shoes were little more than ballet slippers, not good for splashing through puddles. With a few minutes to go, the rain stopped and we decided to risk it. But as we stood on the station platform, it seemed we had made a bad choice. Rain emptied down once more, and the sky exploded into a thunderstorm. Oh dear. Instead of heading to Foyle’s – the wonderful bookshop up the road from the Wyndham’s Theatre, and grabbing a bite to eat in Leicester Square, we grabbed some food at the station and took the tube straight to the station. We arrived with about ten minutes to go before the doors opened, just enough time to eat our food. And then – we were there!

I had been worrying that something would go wrong - surely it was too good to be true? - but we were ushered in without a problem, and made our way into the stalls. Entering the theatre, I was shocked that it was a lot smaller than I had been expecting. We were six rows back from the stage, and on the end of the row – but the rows were fairly short meaning we got a fantastic view.

Review may contain spoilers.

Much Ado About Nothing is the tale of two couples: young Claudio and Hero, whose love is tested by the evil Don John’s lies, and the older Benedick and Beatrice whose relationship consists of trading insults, and whose friends think it would be a laugh if they could be persuaded to fall in love with each other.

This production was updated to a 1980s setting, with its location Messina being translated to being a bit of a party island. Lyrics from Shakespeare’s songs – not only from this play – were set to a variety of ‘80s-style pop and rock arrangements, for both drama and soundtrack. I've had the finale number, "Sigh No More, Ladies, Sigh No More," in my head all day.

Though perhaps Claudio and Hero are supposed to be the “main” couple and provide the most drama, it is the older couple who are the real stars. It seems that Benedick fancies himself as a wit, and a bit of a ladies’ man, but the sharp-tongued Beatrice is more than a match for him. Catherine Tate plays the role pretty much as her fans expect: tomboyish and mouthy and seemingly with more anger in her words than the smart-ass of a Benedick. Seeing her in the role makes you aware of what a modern, interesting character Beatrice is, and I had the impression that she was bitter about the expectations of her sex, battling with her tongue when denied a sword. Tate and Tennant’s banter was perfect, a sort of verbal Wimbledon Final match between pros, although the dialogue was not always audible over the audience’s laughter.

Need I point out that David Tennant was superb? Such a versatile actor, hilarious both in his delivery of his lines, and in his unspoken acting, quietly frightening when angry – I would not want to be on the receiving end of that stony glare – and charming when Benedick finally confesses his love for Beatrice. And, worryingly, he looks better in a mini-skirt and lace tights than I ever would. Perhaps.

Hero was played by West End newcomer Sarah Macrae, who did a great job of playing the pretty, innocent love interest caught in the middle of Don John’s scheming. As the drama came to a head at their wedding ceremony, I found myself glowering at the unkind Claudio, and most of Hero’s friends-and-relations who were so quick to condemn her. Still, Tom Bateman managed to evoke a little sympathy for Claudio in times, once he’d realised his mistake – although shame on Hero for taking him back without question!

The best scenes for me were without doubt those in which Benedick, and later Beatrice, overhear their friends discussing the other’s love for them. After some brilliantly staged slapstick moments, Tennant ended up with paint all over his face, and Tate found herself dangling from the ceiling, trying to assault the gossipers. Benedick's attempts at songwriting with the aid of a little plastic keyboard were brilliant, as was his lack of control over said instrument when interrupted mid-ballad. Hero’s wedding dress also amused me - being set in the 1980s, it was of course a Princess Diana-inspired beast with a ridiculous train, which Beatrice proceeded to wrap herself up in when suffering from a mysterious disease causing her to sneeze at the word “Benedick.” The dress also gave a double meaning to the comparison of Hero with “Diane in her orb.”

Note also needs to be made of John Ramm as the watchman Dogberry, who reminded me very much of Sergeant Colon of Ankh-Morpork, and let me not forget to note that he is an ass!

When I was at school, first studying Shakespeare, I was informed that his comedies are defined by ending in weddings, and the tragedies by ending with a stage full of corpses, but it took quite some time to understand that Shakespeare’s comedies are actually funny! This production made no doubts about that, with a superb cast delivering a witty script so as to cause louder laughter than you may expect if you expect Shakespeare to be “boring, cultural stuff that no one actually understands.” Yet I was drawn emotionally into the play too, feeling anger and pity for those wronged by the villain Don John and rejoicing in a happy – if contrived – ending (if happy it can be for poor Hero marrying the awful Claudio.) The play received a standing ovation, and the cast seemed to really enjoy performing it.

After the show, I took a detour round the back of the theatre “just in case” any of the cast decided to make an appearance at the stage door – which they did. Although not as big a crowd of fangirls – for most people I saw were female and between about 16 and 25! – as I could have predicted, I didn’t manage to speak to Mr Tennant or Ms Tate, or get an autograph. It would have been nice, of course, but it was too busy for an autograph to be more than a squiggle on a programme anyway. I didn’t want to be a demanding fangirl shouting “David! Over here! Catherine! Sign this!” But I’d have liked to thank them personally - and say, "Nice tights!" Still, I saw them up close, close enough to touch if it weren’t for the crowd. Miss Tate has glorious hair. In the flesh, Mr Tennant is very tall and very skinny but looks remarkably ordinary - if a rather eye-pleasing ordinary who looks like David Tennant!

What Katie Did: a general update

What Katie Read: Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.

See, there's this boy, right.
Called Skippy. He dies.

This crazy, sprawling epic is set in and around a prestigious old boys' school and follows staff, students and other local characters in the events leading up to and following the death of Daniel "Skippy" Juster. Seemingly unconnected characters all had their own stories to tell, and gradually all came to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw. Murray uses a mixture of unusual narrative techniques: alongside the ordinary third-person narration are chapters written in the second person - "you" - the first book I've read to use this, and stream-of-consciousness. Despite this, Skippy is quite intelligible, although some of the consciousnesses we see into are decidedly disturbing, horrible, twisted places. In the end, though, I couldn't be sure what to make of this book. There was so much going on, and it was so many different things: blackly comic, bleak, tragic, innocent and at the same time as obscene as only fourteen-year-old boys can be. Then, after the tragedy, shocking revelations come to light. Not shocking because of being unexpected - given the setting and date of writing, these secrets were almost inevitable - but due to the way they are handled, and because this didn't come from one man's twisted imagination but based upon reality.

I wouldn't recommend Skippy Dies to everyone, as it is horrible in places, and despite its humour in the first part, I reached the end with an impression of disgust and despair. Still, it is an interesting, sometimes amusing, sometimes tragic interesting, well-written and thought-provoking piece of work.

What Katie Watched: Glee and Doctor Who

Once again, I'm late to the party. I tried to avoid the phenomenon of being the last person to discover a new story/band/TV show, but after watching the first two episodes, predicting an adultery storyline and misinterpreting a throwaway line as being much filthier than it actually was, I wasn't too impressed. Then I tried again for season two and got myself hooked, and ended up renting series 1 from Blockbuster to catch up. I've always had a thing about school stories, and the American High School of TV and film seems such a more glamorous, story-worthy place than the bog-standard 13-18 comprehensive I attended. I guess the grass is always greener. Interesting to notice that the American preppie style of fashion seems to be the in thing at the moment. TopShop, H&M, et al are full of High school style sports jackets, short red cheerleading-type skirts and anything out of Rachel Berry's wardrobe, such as polka-dot blouses with cute little rounded collars.

The latest series of Doctor Who opened with a huge two-part story that is comparable to most seasons' finales. Ten minutes in, spmething unthinkable happened, and I was in denial. But due to the laws of timey-wimey and Steven Moffat's magnificant brain, there are still many, many unanswered questions of "what happens next?" and "what happened to lead up to this point?" Unfortunately, it's hard to follow up on such an opener, and stand-alone episodes that would be great in an ordinary season just seem to fall a bit flat, when what you really care about is the big story arc. However, last week's episode, "The Doctor's Wife" was written by Neil Gaiman, and what a cracking story it was! Full of Gaiman's trademark humour and horror, we get a new point of view on the Doctor's life story. I could tell Gaiman was a fan of both old series and new, and although some people complained that the title was "misleading" (which it was) I thought that it was perfect, its meaning perfect and in fact I had predicted the identity of "The Doctor's Wife" as a "mad crazy theory" the day before, after picking up on a clue from the previous episode.

Fangirl much?

What Katie Listened To: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

Just before Spotify changed The Rules to limit how often one can listen to music for free, I had this album pretty much on repeat, so I was thrilled to see Glee dedicating an episode to this album, causing me to buy it for myself. The album tells the real-life story of the band's relationship breakdowns - with each other! - but instead of letting their emotions break up the group, they turned them into some amazing music. Go Your Own Way, Second Hand News and Songbird are my favourites at the moment, but the other tracks follow close behind, and I'm sure they are liable to change.

What Katie Planned:

I've got a much-needed week of holiday from work, in which I intend to spend a lot of my time catching up on my reading. Since my Lent book-buying embargo, I've added some half dozen or so books to my collection as well as a few borrowings from libraries and friends.

Contrary to labelling, Catherine
Tate is the redhead and David
Tennant is the furtive-looking one
with facial hair.



Currently I'm reading The Woodcutter, a crime thriller by Reginald Hill who wrote the Dalziel and Pascoe detective novels. So far, it is remarkably different from the run-of-the-mill mystery I was expecting to read, and is the second book in a row to feature at least some second-person narration - unusual. Hodder books sent me Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth to review, so that will appear online in the next week or two, as will part two of Whitney's Tenant of Wildfell Hall read-along.

On Thursday I'm off to the theatre to watch some Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing starring the wonderful pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as Benedick and Beatrice. I absolutely cannot wait.

Tv: Single Father

There are a lot of small-series BBC dramas that come and go with very little fanfare. Usually I think to myself, "Ooh, that sounds good," and forget all about it when it comes along. Single Father would no doubt be one of these, but is helped along by the casting of David Tennant as the titular dad. Dave Tiler finds himself solely responsible for four children when his wife* Rita (Laura Fraser) is killed suddenly in a bike accident. Struggling to cope with his own grief and that of his children, he finds support in Rita's best friend Sarah (Suranne Jones) which starts to turn to something more...

I was a bit tickled when I identified Rita, one of those actresses who once you've identified from two places, pops up everywhere. Laura Fraser was Door in Neverwhere, Kate in A Knight's Tale and Henriette in the BBC's Casanova. (So Casanova and Henriette were reunited at last. And... cruelly separated once more!)

I would probably not have watched this programme if I had realised that Sarah was already in a relationship - adultery stories usually ruin a book/film/tv show for me, and in this case I really didn't feel it was necessary. There were enough conflicts and complications to Dave and Sarah's relationship as it was - Dave had only just been widowed, it was too soon, there were the kids to think of and an ex-wife and another daughter hanging around. That being said, the story and characters draw you in and really make you care, events ripping up your insides until you think you can't bear to watch any more. The cast is superb, acting so well that you forget they are acting at all. Dave's breakdown at the end of the first episode is devastating and I forgot this was an actor, forgot this was the tenth Doctor Who and just broke my heart seeing a man so overwhelmed by his loss and fear for the future. In later episodes I found myself actually shouting at the screen when I foresaw disaster or realised something the characters overlooked.

The kids are excellent, from stroppy teenager Lucy to little cutie Evie, who I just wanted to adopt. They add some humorous relief to the drama, but also have some serious storylines of their own as they come to terms with the loss of their mother in different ways. Lucy is not Dave's biological daughter, and despite his best efforts, feels all alone in the world after her mother's  death. Watching the programme after reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I realised that the girl playing Lucy is just how I imagined Katniss (but Scottish.)

Shown on Sunday nights, I watched the first episode before going to bed, but I think it is better to watch on bbc iplayer (or videoed) than live, as it is not light viewing. I found it quite stressful just to watch it as the story sucked me right in to empathise with Dave. Sleep does not come easily after this.




*It later emerges that Dave and Rita weren't actually legally married but we're led to believe they are until halfway through. I gather that he considered her his wife, but she was a free spirit type who didn't want to be tied down in that way. The writers seem to have changed their minds about this part-way through the story, as I'm pretty sure Rita is called Mrs Tiler at the beginning of episode one, and Miss Morris later on.

TV: Blackpool

Another one of those mid-2000s TV series that I missed at the time, probably due to being away at university, Blackpool is a crime drama with a difference. Ripley Holden (David Morrisey) is a thuggish, ambitious amusement arcade owner whose plans to build a Vegas-style casino hotel are jeopardised when a young man is found dead in his arcade. Enter DI Peter Carlisle (David Tennant) who takes an instant dislike to Holden and an equally instant liking to Mrs Holden (Sarah Parish) and watch as Holden's little world starts to unravel. Blackpool is a fairly standard BBC mini-series with a small cast of complex characters and a compulsive mystery, or would be were it not for the musical interludes.

Now, Blackpool isn't strictly a musical series, in the way that, say, Glee is, but the music is more significant than remaining quietly and unobtrusively in the soundtrack like every other show that uses pop music. In Blackpool, dramatic and emotional highlights are translated through Captain Subtext's Truth Helmet* into neatly choreographed song-and-dance routines performed by the characters under the original pop song. Not as slick as if performing original covers, the musical numbers provide some realish surrealism to the drama. The actors' voices provide an extra layer to the music, especially when it is a male singing along with a female-fronted band or vice versa. The cast's voices vary in musical quality (Tennant has a distinctive, husky singing voice while Morrissey's more shouty voice is usually on-key and always in keeping with the character of Ripley Holden) and everyone gives their all. Most memorable is the manly hate tango between Davids Tennant and Morrissey to "These Boots are Made For Walking."

The characterisation is complex, but none of the main characters are exactly lovable - and yet I still found myself caring for them. As the series goes on, Ripley Holden, who starts off as an entirely unsympathetic person, softens and we get to see the heart behind all the bluster and rage. Natalie Holden is the peacemaker of the family, a quiet pillar of the community (she volunteers with the Samaritans) but never really appreciated. When a handsome young detective comes along investigating her husband's part in a murder, it's clear from a mile off where the story will go. The conflict between Natalie doing the right thing, as she has done all her life, or thinking of herself for once starts off well enough, but in the end she comes across as a bit dithery. When all comes to a head, there is too much "I did this for me," or "What about me?" from all sides to really feel any sympathy.

DI Carlisle is a determined man, whether it is to prove that Ripley committed the murder and bring him down, or to get Natalie. When we first meet him, his is the obvious "side" to take because he is Ripley's enemy and Ripley is highly unpleasant. But as Ripley becomes a little more sympathetic, Carlisle's single-mindedness becomes more personal than based on evidence, and he turns to increasingly manipulative and desperate measures to get his nemesis and rival put away.

When it comes to Natalie, he seems to be the antithesis of Ripley. Peter Carlisle is interested in her, wants her to be valued and appreciated as herself, and besides, Ripley has apparently slept with half of the women in Blackpool - that's how much their marriage vows are worth! Carlisle really loves Natalie. And then you remember that he had decided that she was his before they even met, on the strength of a photo. His anger at Natalie when she tells him she can't leave Ripley after all, while perhaps realistic and understandable, shows that maybe his motives aren't so altruistic and noble as we're led to believe. Like Edward Cullen of Twilight, Peter Carlisle is more a creepy stalker who is lucky enough to have his feelings reciprocated, than a romantic forbidden lover. (That being said, in real life - at least in my experience - creepy stalkers don't tend to be David Tennant.)

By the way, take note of how many times Carlisle is shown eating. Especially in the first three or four episodes, he gets through an incredible number of chips, ice creams, doughnuts, etc. etc. Special note goes to the ice cream he sings into during the song, "The Gambler." You know he's unhappy when he refuses a doughnut.

Although the murder mystery is a bit thin and simple, when compared to most crime dramas, there are enough twists and turns, lies and more lies to keep the story going over six one-hour episodes and still keep you hooked. Yet in a way the murder is really a plot point to get the characters into place for the relationships to unfold and unravel. As well as the love triangle of Ripley, Natalie and DI Carlisle, there are family tensions. Ripley's twenty-year-old daughter Shyanne is engaged to a man her father's age, moreover one who knew him in an unhappy past he'd thought he'd put behind him. And seventeen-year-old Danny Holden is a troubled but likable youth with secrets of his own, who is just looking for his father's approval. The answer to the murder mystery itself is not the grand twist ending that many mysteries require, but with only a handful of suspects it's inevitable that the right one would be at least guessed at during the six-hour duration, before being dismissed. But that's okay. That's not what Blackpool is really about. It is more than simply a crime drama or whodunnit. Instead, Blackpool is a character story, a relationship drama. And of course a musical.

*thank you to Steven Moffat's Coupling

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor:

Spoilers galore, though if you're reading this you're probably up-to-date with Doctor Who up to The End of Time.

I hadn't heard of David Tennant before he was announced as replacing Christopher Ecclestone as the Doctor for the second series of the revamped Doctor Who. My sister filled me in: he played Casanova in a BBC drama series of the same name. I had seen trailers for the show and thought Tennant seemed an... unusual... casting: a scrawny, scruffy-looking young man as the world's greatest lover? I had expected someone a bit more... dashing, especially after having seen the trailer for a film starring the more conventionally good-looking Heath Ledger. However, I had never seen the programme, so could only judge from vague memories of the trailers.

I thought at first that Tennant's Doctor was the Ninth all over again. They did, certainly, have a bit in common: both were by turns manic and brooding. However, I thought the Tenth Doctor more likeable, gentler, cheeky but with less of a sharp edge to his tongue, even when rude. "Is that what sort of man I am? Am I rude? Rude and not ginger?" Which was why, when he got angry, he was all the more frightening.

 And as the series went along, the Doctor changed... and not always for the better (as a person. As a character development story, it just kept on getting better and better.) After the loss of Rose in a parallel universe that she could never ever return from (for now) The Doctor starts getting darker, crueler. The sight of him standing, hard-faced, staring down at the dying Racnoss, is frankly terrifying. Donna tells him "sometimes you need someone to stop you." He also seems to be stringing Martha along, letting her come along with him for the ride, then one more, then another, but constantly comparing her with Rose. And of course, Martha is in love with him too.

Maybe because she was only there for one series (and some odd episodes in series 4) and maybe because she was constantly feeling like a second-best Rose, but unfortunately I never really felt that Martha was very well-rounded as a character in her own right. I think because of the way she related herself to the Doctor - wanting to take Rose's place in the TARDIS and the Doctor's life, but being a poor second best, that's the way she came across in the series (again, that's only my opinion.) With series 4, when Donna came along, it seemed as though they were deliberately trying to make her the anti-Rose. Every episode so far on my re-watching of the series, they are mistaken for a couple and make it quite clear that they aren't married. At first she seemed like the writers had put in the effort to make her the exact opposite to Rose and Martha, but as the series progressed she became a more fleshed-out character.

At the end, the character development becomes terrifying, when he decides that as the last Time Lord, it is up to him to make the laws of time... culminating in a character's suicide. "I've gone too far!" From there on, he has to die. He thinks he is a god... there is nowhere he can go from there, except redemption and death.

Rewatching the series in an attempt to remind myself where we've got to and how we got there in time for the new series (which starts in ten minutes so I think I failed in that one!) I am reminded just how much the Tenth Doctor suffers. The Ninth Doctor was the first shown after the Time War that destroyed his home planet and all his people, and he was a little bitter and brooding about it, but the Tenth Doctor is a tortured soul who takes everything so much to hearts. His home, his family, destroyed - forever. His best friend - trapped forever (for now) in a parallel world. He becomes human, falls in love, has the chance of a happy life - but instead has to go back to being a lonely Time Lord. He discovers his worst enemy is alive - his worst enemy who is like a brother to him. He dies. He has (in one way) a daughter. She dies. (she gets better, but he never finds that out.) His new best friend  has to forget he ever existed, or she will die.

When it comes to New Who finales, there has always been, so far, a build-up to a big bang of a story, hints spread throughout the earlier episodes, ending with something huge - and inevitably even more danger than the last year's story. Series one there were Daleks way into the future. Series two, Torchwood was identified, and both Cybermen and Daleks materialised into the here and now from a parallel world. Series three, the Master became Prime Minister of Britain, Master of the world, decimated the world's population (but at least he used the word literally) and it became a terrifying, barren planet. "Planet Earth is Closed." Series Four ended with Daleks, Davros and the world being moved for some nefarious purpose I can't remember but that was so desperate that a better alternative was to blow up the planet. And Series Five, or the Specials, if you prefer, finished with the return of Gallifrey, the Time Lords, and the revelation that the Time Lords wanted to bring an end not just to the world, not just to the universe, but to time itself.

Problem is, although it is always thrilling to find out what all these mysterious clues mean, to see Daleks, or the return of Rose Tyler, or the Time Lords, once the story's finished, I so often find myself feeling a bit disappointed. The last three finales, in particular. Series 3 ended with time going back a year, so that the worst of the Master's evil plans had never happened. Granted,it is a time-travel show where anything goes, and the Master had gone so far that there was no conceivable way of putting the world right. Granted, there needs to be secrecy to keep the general public from knowing most of what is going on, otherwise it becomes a fantasy world where aliens are accepted as a part of everyday life, and that takes off some of the immediacy. But I still think that the "reset button" should be as much of a taboo as "it was all a dream," a sign that the writer doesn't know how to get his characters out of their predicament.

In series four, the penultimate episode ended with the Doctor getting EX-TER-MIN-ATED by a Dalek and regenerating... only to begin the final episode as the same person, and somehow (again, can't remember the details, growing a second, human, Tenth Doctor from his severed arm. Though I really like Tennant as the Doctor, and didn't want him to change, it would have been very effective to regenerate him without it being given away in advance! It would have been an interesting plot to throw a confused, brand-new version of the Doctor right into the chaos. The fangirls never would have forgiven that, though. Also, after bringing back Rose to the series - which I also thought was a bad idea because her story was over and the show needed to move on - the Doctor fobbed her off by giving her a clone of himself for a boyfriend. (You can't have me, but this bloke looks like me, have him instead.)

I had been hoping that somehow the series would be able to deal with Gallifrey and the Time Lords again, despite the Doctor insisting they were destroyed in the Time War, which presumably means that they're eliminated from all of time and space except from his memory, as he can't even take the Tardis to pre-time-war Gallifrey. After all, "forever and ever" in Doctor Who seems to translate to "for now, anyway." So I was thrilled to see their return at the end of the Christmas Special: The End of Time Part One. But I thought the writers had wasted their opportunity. Clearly they wanted to show the Time Lords as a great finale, a good way for Russell T Davies to finish as Big Boss Man, and certainly they made an impact. But when it came to part two, there just didn't seem to be much of a story. It felt rushed to me, lots of drama, rushed through, before we get to David Tennant's big goodbye scene. And Tennant certainly deserved a good farewell. But it seemed to come at the expense of a story which could have opened up a lot more possibilities than were allowed. (Oh look, there's a bubble hiding the Time Lords. Mwahahaha! Time Lords have gone bad. Pop! Bubble's gone. Time Lords too. Bye-bye!)

With five minutes to go before the new series begins, I think of David Tennant's Doctor as "my doctor." Yet, with the trailers for Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, he is already moving into the past tense. His last words as the Tenth Doctor were, "I don't want to go," to which I wanted to cry, "I don't want you to go either!" I imagine that the new Doctor will be feeling a bit bewildered about that: aware that he was upset about changing, but unable to feel anything now, and thinking he should - rather like the Tenth Doctor, once he had stopped being John Smith the schoolteacher.

Matt Smith looks wonderful, a more classic-style Doctor, reminiscent of Jon Pertwee, with a bit of Tom Baker thrown in. A young actor - only three years older than me - but supposedly playing the character as a much older man. Polite, quietly-spoken, with a real sense of adventure. His companion, Amy Pond is Scottish, ginger and young. I am a bit worried about her, in a way. She seems too young to my eyes. She is described as "feisty," which is all very well, but I'm hoping there is more character depth than some possibilities. It is all too easy to designate a character as "feisty" to make sure they're interesting, and for it to mean little more than "argumentative." Then again, that was what I first expected Catherine Tate's Donna to be like. We will wait and see.

In the absence of a sofa in the house, it is time for me to position myself behind the armchair...