TV: Doctor Who, Season Ten and Beyond.

I've been reluctant to admit it, but the last few years my interest in Doctor Who has started to wane. I can trace the decline in fanaticism to the first mid-season break in season six. The series had its most ambitious, complex narrative arc to date, but splitting the season in half stalled the momentum, and giving us just a few episodes at a time for two or three years did not give me the chance to really become invested. There came a change in companion, then in Doctor. I did not warm to Clara at all; she was primarily a mystery to be solved, and her characterisation followed the narrative's requirements instead of shaping the plot.

I've rewatched the first five and a half seasons enough times that it probably wouldn't be too hard to give you a rundown of the episodes, but after that first mid-season cliffhanger, everything starts to blur together in my memory, and only the odd episodes, characters and ideas stand out: the War Doctor, Missy, the immortal girl-woman Ashildir, and the chilling puzzle-box episode "Heaven-Sent." There was still some great material, but it just did not come together as it might.

Season ten is a return to form. With a new companion comes a fresh start, and Bill's first episode was the closest thing to an introduction to the series since Matt Smith's first episode. The danger with telling the story of a man who goes here and there throughout all of space and time is that the narrative risks being untethered. This year, the writers introduced a simple yet radical new element into the mix: stability. The Doctor has a profession, a purpose, for the first time since his brief stint living as John Smith. Ostensibly, he works as a university professor, and this shapes his relationship with his newest companion into that of teacher and student. Bill Potts is a breath of fresh air into the series: being the first openly gay companion (although there has been some bisexual representation in Jack Harkness, River Song, and probably Clara Oswald) means that there are none of the messy romantic feelings that have crept across the edges of Doctor-companion relations since the 1995 film. Bill catches the Doctor's eye because of her curiosity. "Most people, when they don't understand something, they frown," he tells her. "You smile." That line gives us a better understanding of Bill than the show gave us of Clara in three years. I loved Bill instantly; she is bright, curious, good-humoured and big-hearted - and a big old nerd. She brings her savviness of science fiction into the very science-fictional world she inhabits, and she wants to know everything. Who better to learn from than a tutor whose expertise spans all of time and space?

But The Doctor's real reason for the change in lifestyle, the real reason he has settled down to academic domesticity, is what's at the heart of this series, for he has sworn an oath to guard a locked vault for a thousand years. The Doctor goes on his adventures, as ever, but always he comes back to guard the vault, assisted by his assistant Nardole. A lesser series would have dragged out the mystery of what, or who, is in the vault until the finale. The story would stand or fall by the surprise factor - and if Doctor Who had done that this year, it would have fallen, as the mystery was easily deduced by the knowledge of which guest stars were returning. Instead, it was a story all about the characters. I don't think it's a great strength to say that it was a love story of sorts, a story of hope, loyalty, and redemption.

It's a shame that Doctor Who only returned to its former glories in Peter Capaldi's - and head writer Stephen Moffat's - final year with the series, but it's best to end the era on a high. The reason Doctor Who has kept going all this time is because it is not afraid of change; there is no more sure way of killing a TV show than to keep trying to satisfy the audience's desire for more of the same. Capaldi has one more episode, the Christmas special, and next year we can expect another fresh start with Chris Chibnall in charge of the writing and Jodie Whittaker playing the Doctor. I don't know much about either of these names, but they have worked together on Broadchurch, whose first and third series seem to have done very well, and I'm excited to see what they can do given the keys to the Tardis. There are limitless possibilities; my wish is for the Thirteenth Doctor to travel with more than one companion, in a practical outfit, with pockets aplenty!

Sunday Summary: fly-by post 4

Well, my manic October is over and now I go back to having weekends of a sort again, even if, as is the case this week, actually in the middle of the week. Hurrah! But although I'm doing fewer hours at work, with Halloween over, the world is ready to catch up with the retail calendar and launch into Christmas, and of course things will only get busier. This Thursday I actually ran out of tasks to do. (There is never actually nothing to do, even if it's just cleaning and replenishing the shelves, but I stopped chasing my tail for a moment, making the most of the fact that this was probably going to be my last afternoon like that.

This week I have been:

Reading: 

The last part of 11.22.63. Beautiful, devastating, a wonderful book (that has already altered the way I think time travel in other fiction, such as last night's Doctor Who.) Stephen King does it again! I plan to write a proper review of this one later this week.

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, a novella about a thirty-something Japanese couple who get adopted by their neighbours' cat, and form a bond with this darling creature. A pensive, poetic read that is worth taking time over, despite its short length.

Rereading Redshirts, one of my top books of last year, and one which I recommend to anyone who has affectionately noticed the absurdity inherent in certain kinds of science fiction TV shows. A must-read if you like the film Galaxy Quest.

Watching: 

A bit more of Heroes - season two is a short one, due to the writers' strike of a few years ago.

Captain America, to remind my dad of Steve Rogers' story so far, before we watch the sequel. (The Avengers is, naturally, also on the cards.)

A bit more Star Trek: The Next Generation. There are some great, thought-provoking episodes of this series, but the fact remains that it doesn't capture my affections as much as the original series, the original cast. I do like Worf and Data, though.

 

The Addams Family, on Netflix. It seemed appropriate Halloween viewing, with hot chocolate and marshmallows, while tucked up with a rotten head cold.

Doctor Who. The first part of the season finale was powerful stuff. I've been a bit ambivalent about this season, enjoying each episode well enough, but not really hanging on to the story during the week. A recurring small character through the series really gave me the creeps in a way I term "the Umbridge Effect" - making the watching experience less enjoyable when the character is on screen. But a few weeks back, I stumbled upon someone's apparently random idea about this person which, if it were true, might make me rethink my approach to them.

Last night's episode was really powerful. An unforeseen* major event within the first minutes, some fine acting, especially from Jenna Coleman, some fantastic lines (including a reference to Peter Capaldi's most famous previous role), a journey somewhere that seemed impossible even for the TARDIS, and some huge plot twists that were unusual in being none the worse for being anticipated.

Scaring myself with: just the thought of getting scared by certain Stephen King books. Perhaps it is not a good idea to read his "Nightmare fuel" page on TV Tropes just before bed. I was the child who had to be taken out of birthday parties and school assemblies because I'd freak out when I saw a clown. Guess which book is not on my immediate to-read pile!

Can't sleep. Clown'll eat me.

But who needs Stephen King when you've got some of the stuff in that last Doctor Who episode? There was a time watching that episode that made me really wonder if the show had crossed a line, gone too far - and I like it when it goes dark. There were some ideas that will linger uncomfortably for a long time, I think.

Sneezing: A lot, especially (naturally) on my day off.

Writing: Well, I've made a start on NaNoWriMo, although I didn't even manage the wordcount for the first day. That's fine. For me it's not about reaching the 50 thousand words, so much as getting back into writing stories, and sticking with it. I don't know who I am when I can't write, and it's been such a long time.

Also, this week I hope to get back into some proper reviews for the blog, now I've (potentially) got a little more time on my hands.


SPOILER in white text >>> 

Actually, I did think for a moment, "Danny's too close to the road" before the phone went silent his end.  <<<
<<<

Sunday Summary: Adventures in Space and Time

I didn't write a Sunday Summary last week as I was busy with my Moonstone midway post. Most of my last two weeks' reading has been from Wilkie, although I took a couple of days out last week to read Yahtzee Croshaw's Mogworld. My friend Judi lent me Mogworld with the strict instructions not to look at the back blurb, so I had no idea what to expect from it. The only clue I had was that she lent it to me in response to me giving her a copy of Redshirts. Like Redshirts, Mogworld follows a group of supporting characters in someone else's epic adventure: in this case a fantastical world which bears an uncanny resemblance to a role-playing game. (My first thought was Dungeons and Dragons, but their world later turned out to be something else entirely.) Protagonist - not hero - Jim died at the beginning of the book, but a meddling necromancer brought him back as a zombie. All he wants is to die again and stay dead, but the plot has other plans for him. Mogworld was a light-hearted, easy read, not as brilliant as Terry Pratchett, but with a similar sort of eccentric British humour. I got through this in two days.

I finished The Moonstone earlier this week. Although none of the narrators in the second half managed to be as entertaining as Gabriel Betteredge and Drusilla Clack, Betteredge made another few appearances, acting hilariously passive-aggressive when coerced into a mad scheme of which he didn't approve. New character Ezra Jennings is a mysterious, rather tragic figure, a doctor's assistant who is terminally ill and addicted to opium, probably the most interesting character after Betteredge and Clack. The story kept me guessing throughout, up to a very satisfying conclusion. (I will write more about this later on this week.)

My current read is The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian, a book I picked up on impulse from the returns shelf in the library. It's a sort of psychological ghost story, an extended metaphor about how a past trauma can continue to haunt a person's everyday life. Some parts of the book are written in the second person, and this, combined with detailed, detached descriptions of an airplane crash-landing from the point of view of the pilot, was utterly terrifying, giving an immediacy to the disaster that any other narrative choice would be unlikely to capture. The story follows the pilot, Chip, and his family, as they move to a new home and try to put the tragedy behind them. Unfortunately, their new home is reminiscent in many ways of The Shining's Overlook Hotel, and the only new neighbours to reach out to the family are a group of sinister "herbalist" women who seem to have their own reasons for wanting Chip and his family in their circle.

After bidding farewell to Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy last week, I made a start on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Before I actually resigned myself to becoming a Trekkie, this series was more what I expected from Star Trek. I think I was first shown a clip of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in school; I can remember which classroom I was in, round about year 8, and I cannot for the life of me remember why it was shown. Even then, I think there was something appealing about the show. I'm liking The Next Generation a lot, though I'm not in love with it like I am the original series and its crew. I don't think I want to fall in love with it. It would feel disloyal.

Also in the world of ancient science-fiction-ish TV, Doctor Who celebrated its fiftieth anniversary this week. On Thursday, the BBC showed a moving documentary-drama called An Adventure in Space and Time, all about how Doctor Who came into being in 1963. Then, last night, was the eagerly-anticipated 50th anniversary special. The episode was simultaneously broadcast all over the world, with special cinema showings and many fish-finger-and-custard parties. (A disturbing number of my friends posted pictures of this, erm, delicacy on Facebook.)

I watched the episode with my dad at home, wearing my Tardis T-shirt and Doctor Who (ish) scarf. "The Day of the Doctor" started by going right back to the beginning, using the original 1963 opening credits and starting off in the very same school where Susan Foreman, the Doctor's granddaughter, once attended as a precocious pupil.

The main theme of the episode came as no real surprise. I had been predicting its subject for as long as I'd been aware that there would be fiftieth anniversary celebrations. And about a week ago, the BBC posted a prequel mini-episode which took away all doubt. The first thing I knew about this video was what was intended to be a major surprise, announced by the official Doctor Who Twitter account with no spoiler warnings, before I even knew there was a spoiler to avoid. I was (and am) very cross to find out about that, and thought that the story deserved to be part of the episode itself, rather than a web exclusive. Though it didn't tell me more than I'd already suspected about the anniversary episode, I'd rather have gone into the story with no more than my own theories.

Although the story showed the Doctor messing with his own timeline and rewriting certain parts of the series' narrative, it was done with illusion rather than my pet hate, the reset button, so I'll let it pass. Matt Smith and David Tennant were a lot of fun to watch together - I'd forgotten how much I'd enjoyed the Tenth Doctor's adventures (when he wasn't being angsty.) And John Hurt as the other version of the Doctor, the one who his later incarnations never speak of, was a wonderful addition to the canon (even if not numbered) tormented by his choices, bewildered by his later "childish" incarnations, but lovely, hardly the villain. It's always fun watching the past and present regenerations reacting, and this episode showed all of them collaborating. Yes. ALL of them. There were a couple of nice, unexpected cameos, though I would have liked to have seen more guest appearances rather than re-use of old footage. Really, I wanted many of the people who had vehemently denied being part of the episode to have been lying, although if that were the case, it could have been quite gimmicky, sacrificing storytelling. But the storytelling was well done here.

Doctor Who was a great way to mark the beginning of a week's holiday. The last few years I've taken the final week permitted before Christmas, as a means of recharging my batteries before the craziness that is December in retail. I plan to get a lot of reading done, perhaps watch some classic Doctor Who and more Star Trek: TNG, and to get back into my NaNoWriMo project, which has come to a halt at exactly 10 000 words. 40 000 in a week is not going to happen, but if I can get back into the story, I'll be pleased. On Friday I'm going to stay with my sister in London, where I intend to get some Christmas shopping done, and also catch up with one of my best friends who lives nearby.

Bout of Books: Saturday and Sunday

This is how the readathon ends:
not with a bang but a whimper.

Saturday:

Saturday was never going to have a huge page count. I read a few pages of Watchmen over breakfast, before heading off to work. On my lunch break, I popped into Boots and realised that I couldn't focus on the words on any of the packaging. I'd been feeling a migraine brewing for a few days, and had just been relieved that it hadn't ruined my day off. But the time I'd got back into the open air, everything was a grey blur. If I concentrated really hard I could make out words, but forming those words into meaning was another matter entirely. It was terrifying. So reading was out of the question.

I powered through the rest of the day on sheer willpower, and by the end of the day I'd perked up a bit, which was just as well because my friend was coming over to watch the Doctor Who season finale and Eurovision, while eating takeaway pizza.

DOCTOR WHO SPOILERS, SWEETIE. Scroll down to black text if you don't want to read.

I'll be honest, I haven't been overly impressed with this season. After the last series, since the series' return in 2005, the plots have been getting bigger and bigger, whereas the latest season has been a bit more understated, with only single-episode stories, and the big mystery of "how can the Doctor's new companion have lived and died in different times and places?" being the only connecting plot-thread. This mystery hasn't really been grown or developed through the series, just left hanging there, a loose thread for the Doctor to wrinkle his brow at when he thinks to do so. 

But the finale was impressive, with clips and moments involving all the previous Doctors, scenes sliced and reused right back from William Hartnell's days. That was the moment for the nerds, and we loved it. The episode was called "The Name of the Doctor." Because no one knows the Doctor's real name, only the name he chose for himself. And whatever that name is, whether it be Fred or Slartibartfast, it can never live up to the mystery surrounding his identity. 

"The Doctor has a secret; one he will take to his grave. And it is discovered."

I figured out the tricksy wording just a few split seconds before the Doctor said it. (Steven Moffat, you cunning devil.) It is not the secret that is discovered - but the Doctor's grave. Because even time lords don't live forever, and somewhere, somewhen, the Doctor dies and is buried. The series' final confrontation between the Doctor and his foe The Great Intelligence takes place here - a creepy place, even for a graveyard. The mystery of why Clara keeps on turning up in his timeline, not just in the past series, but throughout his life, largely unnoticed by the Doctor, is resolved, and far more satisfactorily than I expected. And then, while the duo are trapped in the wildernesses of the Doctor's timeline - "Everything around you is me." - their attention is drawn to a solemn sillhouette, terrifying even while standing with his back to them. Even the Doctor is afraid.

"He's me. There's only me here; that's the point, now let's - get - back."
"But I never saw that one. I saw all of you. Eleven faces, all of them were you. You're the Eleventh Doctor."
"I said he was me. I never said he was the Doctor."

Because the Doctor is the name the Time Lord chose for himself, the name that he has taken as his identity. This other man - played by John Hurt and credited as "The Doctor" - has done something so terrible that The Doctor has disowned him from himself. Theories abound, but mine is that this person, this non-Doctor Doctor, was a previous regeneration, between Paul McGann (8th Doctor, 1996) and Christopher Eccleston (9th Doctor, 2005) - during which time the infamous, appalling Time War destroyed Gallifrey, the race of Time Lord and many, many other planets. We know of the Time War only from details let slip by the only survivor, the Doctor. The next episode, due to be aired in November, is the show's 50th Anniversary special. It has long been a theory of mine that this episode's topic will be the Time War in the missing years. The cliffhanger supports this theory. But we have six months until then.

After Doctor Who came the Eurovision Song Contest. How does one describe Eurovision to one unfamiliar to it? From a British point of view, at least, it is just a chance to shamelessly make fun of the TV - a European musical competition. Well. I say "musical." It is generally considered a poor evening if there is actually much musical merit in any of the performances. There is a mixture of cheesy pop, dance music with a heavy beat, big inspirational ballads and a few strange acts. The most memorable acts of last night were Finland's song "Marry Me," an infuriatingly catchy ditty ending on a kiss between two women; Romania's falsetto-singing Dracula lookalike (pictured above) and Greece's "Alcohol is Free," which was just plain ridiculous, but had us all grinning all over our faces. The UK always does badly, whether because we are isolated from the rest of the European countries who like to vote for their neighbours, or because our songs seem to be trying too hard. I suspect the British pop industry has been ruined by being dominated by talent shows, (X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and the Voice) whose theme is pursuing one's dreams, and churns out very earnest songs on that subject.

Saturday 18th May:

Books read today: Watchmen - Alan Moore

Number of pages read today: 25

Number of books read in total: 3

Books finished: 2
Today #insixwords: little reading, pizza, Doctor Who, Eurovision

Worst lyric on Eurovision: 

If you don’t know I’m in love with you

When summertime falls it becomes untrue

Because of the shoes I’m wearing today

One is called Love, the other is Pain...

(Culprit: Andrius Pojavis from Lithuania)

Sunday:

7:15PM 

I've only read a handful of pages today - worse than yesterday. It is my mother's birthday, so we went out for a meal in a lovely little pub in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, the migraine came back in double strength around that time, and knocked me out completely for the entire afternoon. Probably writing up this blog post is a bad idea. Feeling a little better now, but not great. I expect I'm more likely to spend the evening watching Les Miserables than reading, though I will try to get a little more in before bed.

Books read today: Watchmen - Alan Moore

Number of pages read today: 67

Number of books read in total: 3

Books finished: 2
Today #insixwords: not a bang but a whimper

Katie's Adventures in Storyland

Hi everyone. Once again I must apologise for the lack of proper reviews around here lately. As is evident from the blog, most of my reading energies have been going on the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R R Martin. I'm currently about halfway through the final volume, and will shortly be joining the impatient masses begging Mr Martin to chain himself to his computer until book 6 is completed.* Oh, well, I suppose I have a year and a half less to wait between volumes than those who read Dance With Dragons when it came out, however long Martin takes.

But Song of Ice and Fire (may I shorten this title?) hasn't been alone occupying my mind. Welcome to the new very occasional series I am renaming Adventures in Storyland. (Is this a really terrible title? Little bit terrible, perhaps?) Here I will chronicle other stories - book, TV, film and Other - that my mind has been visiting, that have not had a whole post to themselves.

May contain spoilers

While waiting for my best friend (who is the other half of my unofficial book club) to catch up with me in the Ice and Fire series, I reread Pratchett's Unseen Academicals. Now, I love Terry Pratchett, and read or reread several of his books each year. I gave this book a glowing review when I read it first time around, but this time I took a while to get into it, even putting it back on the shelf for a while. I was clearly not in the right frame of mind for it at first, and the wizards' stories are my least favourite sub-series. But when I got to Mr Nutt's big secret (which was, of course, no secret on a reread) my heart broke a bit all over again. Dear old Mr Nutt, always striving to achieve "worth." In Nutt, Pratchett deals with a subject that J. R. R. Tolkien himself confessed to having trouble with in his own books - the problem of the orcs and goblins as irredeemable. Nutt is lovely, if burdened with a horrendous inferiority complex that makes you just want to give him a hug. And he has his own moments of Awesome at the end.

After many years of good intentions, I read The Perks of Being A Wallflower, soon to be a film. A year in the life of a geeky, awkward high school student, written as letters to an anonymous recipient. Perhaps it is the combination of Charlie's intensity and introspective character, and the epistolary narration that marks this out as a "literary" novel rather than being filed in the "young adult" bucket with other books with similar settings and themes. Not that I mean to imply that a book can't be both literary and YA, or that YA is inferior. Take a look at the greyscale spreading across the adult bestseller charts in your local bookstores.+ Alternatively, pass that by entirely and buy Perks of Being A Wallflower instead. It's an easy read, but one that lingers on in the mind long after the book is finished. I thought it was a cross between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Speak. (Many critics have compared it with Catcher in the Rye, but this is a book that I have never had any desire to read, so I can't say. If anyone wants to try to change my mind on Catcher, I'm willing to be persuaded.)



The last few days I've been hit with a beast of a cold, wrapped up in woolly jumpers and working through many boxes of tissues, watching DVDs. I was rather taken aback to see how many films I have acquired that are based upon comic books, and specifically superhero comics. I've always considered the sort of superheroes with superhero outfits and superhero names too cheesy for words, especially if capes and masks are involved.

Avengers Assemble (as The Avengers is called in the UK) strikes a careful balance, neither hamming up nor downplaying the cheesiness, but embraces the cheese for what it is. The Avengers introduced cult favourite Joss Whedon to a wider audience and is full of excellent performances. For those not in the know, Hollywood has been building up to this film for a long time. The Avengers Initiative comprises all of the Marvel superheroes who have previously starred in their own films: Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, as well as Black Widow and Hawkeye - the ultimate collaboration, based upon the ultimate comic book crossover.

Also in the last week, my sister introduced me to the Batman mythology via Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. A much darker story than your average superhero tale - or, at least, my preconception of your average superhero tale. Christian Bale's Batman is more of a superantihero than simple hero, the late Heath Ledger was exemplary as the terrifyingly psychopathic Joker, and Jenny and I raised a glass each time Morgan Freeman appeared on screen, because of his being Morgan Freeman. Living in comic book ignorance, I may have been the only person to be truly shocked and unspoiled for Harvey Dent's plot. Wow! I thought, I really did not see that coming! What a twist! What storytelling! before I discovered that it was an open secret, and everybody else who ever saw this film was waiting for the twist. Heh. Still, the surprise pleased me, and I ended up buying the double pack with Batman Begins. I'd been warned that Batman Begins was "all right, pretty good, but not up to The Dark Knight," but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. And looking at the cinema's website, I discover I just missed its last showing of part 3, The Dark Knight Rises, and have to wait for the DVD. Bother.

And of course I have been watching Doctor Who, which is four episodes into the five-part "first half-series." Unlike previous seasons, which each seem to have been aiming to be bigger and more impressive than the last, the episodes have been simple, fun adventures, one story per episode. Instead of a series-long epic tying each episode together, the main story is that of companions Amy and Rory Pond (or Williams) trying to juggle two lives: their everyday life as a married couple, and the Tardis-life. It can't go on forever, and they know they need to make a decision. It looked as though they were going to be sensible and decide to stay home, say "Thank you, Doctor, it's been good," and get on with their lives. And then, at the end of the last episode, they make the opposite decision. They'll travel with the Doctor a little longer. Now, knowing that they have just one more episode to go before they leave the show, ensures that such a decision bodes as ill as saying "We'll stay together forever." And I think that Doctor Who may have run out of non-fatal ways to permanently separate the Doctor from his companions. I've felt that it was time for Amy and Rory to move on, and thought that their decision to "quit" the Doctor was a refreshing, sad but not devastating way to do it. And then they don't make that decision at all! I thought I was ready to say goodbye - and instead the writers caught me off my guard and now I'm very much afraid for the Ponds.




*N.B. I don't literally mean he should be chained up. High output should be rewarded by food and water, fresh air and exercise. Ill-treatment of his characters, on the other hand...

+ I'm sure they're not all crimes against the written word. 

Looking Forward: Doctor Who, Series 7

It's been a long wait, but the new series of Doctor Who is almost upon us. Since the cult sci-fi series' relaunch in 2005, it has aired in the spring, usually beginning around the Easter weekend, but this year Steven Moffat has kept us waiting until the end of summer. As the evenings begin to grow darker, the atmosphere intensifies, the monsters that keep viewers behind the sofas are that bit scarier, the nightmares a little bit more real. But what awaits the Doctor and his brave companions this time around?

Daleks again, for one thing. So often killed off for good, but they always return, bigger and more numerous and more imposing than before. Or, alternatively, brightly coloured and/or offering round cups of tea. This lot certainly look impressive - but I've started to tire of the question, "How do we improve on Daleks?" being answered with, "MORE Daleks!" It is, however, grand storyteller Moffat in charge, so I think we can count on some more plot than mere grandeur.

More monsters! Dinosaurs - on a spaceship! Weeping angels again, including a creepy, creepy weeping cherub. (Eep!) The Doctor getting out of control again, flipping back to his "vengeance!" setting. (He seems to flip between two settings - vengeance and mercy, which coincide with whether he thinks he is more dangerous travelling alone or with a friend.) America! And then the trailer ends with this image that the BBC have been plastering all over their marketing: the Doctor carrying a limp and lifeless Amy Pond in his arms.

But will they really do it? Come on, Moff. I dare you.

Time and time again, since the relaunched series, the question has been asked: will the Doctor's companion be killed off for real? First of all we had Rose's voiceover in her final episode: "This is the story of how I died." Well, I'm sure I don't have to point out the logical flaw in that. Two series later, Rose (who had been trapped in a parallel universe forever and ever, impossible to return or it would mean the end of the universe) returned, and warned Donna she was going to die. So did an insane Dalek.

Donna didn't die.

Both of those companions' departures were heartrending. Neither were ever going to leave the Doctor of their own free will. They got too attached, and I wonder if the head writer at the time, Russell T. Davies, felt that he had written himself into a corner. How was he ever going to let these characters go? But he found a way, and perhaps that way was more tragic than killing Rose or Donna outright. Perhaps.

At the end of series 6, I thought that Moffat and co had written Amy and her husband Rory out of the series quite neatly, with the Doctor realising that their travelling with him was too much of a risk, dropping them off at home to live happily ever after, a subdued but tidy tying up of their characters' journeys. So I was rather dismayed to read that their real ending was to be "heartbreaking." Now, I'm as big a fan of a good tragedy as anyone, but if every send-off is a tearjerker, does it diminish its power? Does that have to be the norm? (I know Martha's farewell wasn't a tissue-fest, but I think she was a weaker character anyway.)

But is Amy really going to die? We've been fooled too many times. Neither Rose nor Donna actually died when they were supposed to, nor - SPOILER ALERT - did the Doctor in 2011 and, if you want to include Moffat's other works, what about Sherlock? (Although that should have surprised no one familiar with the Holmes mythology.) Besides, if the BBC have put that image out so publicly, they've taken away any shock value of killing off Amy Pond. Haven't they?

But what if that's what they want you to think? Maybe they're double-bluffing. I dare you, Moffat! I dare you to actually kill off Amy. Who, by the way, is not the Doctor's only companion. I get so irritated when the TV magazines continue to show pictures of the Doctor and Amy posing together, as the Doctor has posed in publicity with all the other young, pretty girls he's taken for companions. Amy travels with her husband Rory, and their romance has been a key element of the last two seasons - so why must the publicists keep on leaving him out?

I'm ranting, sorry. The other part of Rory's story is that he is the man who keeps on cheating death. It's become quite an in-joke, in fact. How many times has he died since his character's introduction? He's lived for thousands of years - but perhaps, if Amy is really and truly killed off in this upcoming series, his fate will catch him up properly, and he will "greet death like an old friend."


Huh. That's rather a gloomy thought to dwell on, though. The other thing of interest is, of course, the new companion, Amy and Rory's replacement. Aside from the actress playing her, Jenna-Louise Coleman (young, pretty and female) the Moff has kept mum about this new character, not even revealing her name. This silence leads me to wonder what the big secret is. My theory is that she is not a modern Earthling. Perhaps she is from another planet, far in the past or far in the future, and that revealing her name as Gingledwina, Starshine or Aelfrida would spoil the surprise.

Head writer Steven Moffat and new companion Jenna
image taken from the Guardian website

Like last year, it appears that series 7 will be split in two, and, because of the unusual scheduling, the annual Christmas episode will actually come part-way through the series. How will that work, I wonder, if they leave part 1 on a massive cliffhanger as they did last year? The Christmas Special tends to be a stand-alone episode, but will they work it into the overall series storyline this year?

All these questions, and more, leave me shivering with anticip...

Why Stories Are Important

A few times over the last year I've found myself questioning whether, or why, my love of reading is worthwhile. Back at the end of last year, when the British government announced their plans to treble university tuition fees, a newspaper comment on the subject suggested that students wanting to study "worthwhile" subjects such as medicine and teaching, should pay substantially reduced fees, while those who chose to study the arts must pay the whole lot. The sentiments I got from this letter were that studying non-essential subjects were a selfish indulgence and ultimately useless.  Now, my degree is in Creative Writing with English Literature, and so far it hasn't got me very far. I could have been in my current job with a handful of GCSEs, and I've had to move back home - something that I am very ashamed of. While the student protests went on, and the government and general public all had their own opinions on the matter, I found myself in a dark place questioning my own worth. All I was good at was reading or writing stories, and a bit of singing. What was the point of me? I'd always valued reading highly, but why, exactly? What was the point of stories?

Books like Harry Potter and Twilight are often praised, not so much for their literary value but because they've got people reading who wouldn't otherwise have picked up a book. But why is this important? What is it that makes reading a virtue?

The first purpose of stories - and really, I'm including films, TV and the theatre as well as my medium of choice, books - is simply entertainment. A good story will take you away for a little while, and you spend time getting to know characters and care for them, wanting to know "what happened next?" Reading fires the imagination and opens the mind to infinite possibilities and may inspire great ideas of your own. Or it may simply distract you, if perhaps you're not in a great place at the moment. Simply put, a good story makes people happy - and surely that can't be a bad thing.

Secondly, stories enlighten, and teach empathy and compassion. I've found myself reading books from the point of view of a character who reminds me of someone I'd never liked, or sympathised with. Sarah Ockler's titular Delilah was externally a high school delinquent, a trouble-maker and probably someone I would have avoided if she was one of my classmates. But seeing her from the inside out and learning what made her tick, I came to understand her real-life counterparts and realised that maybe we weren't so different after all. Or a a book might show the life of someone from another culture, another country, place or time, a story you might not find in your back garden, but the human experience nonetheless.

Finally, stories make sense of the world, and show readers that they are not alone. I know when I find myself in a situation I don't know how to handle, I find myself thinking of my beloved characters, their good and bad decisions, and that in turn helps me to understand my own emotions and actions. Even bad role models have been known to help here. When I was dumped by the Ex-Vampire, Bella of New Moon was a wonderful model for How Not To Act. I refused to think my life was over just because of a bloke. Maybe I felt like it - but I was not going to let the next six months pass like blank pages. Doctor Who's Donna Noble was living at home and working dead-end jobs when she was considerably older than me, before she was whisked away by a madman in a box to see the universe and finally realise her potential. (For the purpose of this article, let's ignore how that adventure ended!)

And I'm fortunate in that these were the first examples I could think of from my own life. Last autumn's Speak Loudly campaign, and a backlash against a Wall Street Journal article today, have demonstrated that books can offer a way out of despair. Fictional characters can offer hope to readers in comparable situations, and show that they are not alone, not the only person who has been there, done this or felt like that, and that there is a way out.

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.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: First impressions. Here be spoilers.

Just a short post, this time, but I thought it only fair to state for the record my first thoughts on Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, and the first episode of the new series. Warning - Spoilers!

If I were to summarise it in one sentence, I would say "I enjoyed it, but it doesn't feel like Doctor Who." There wasn't very much to link this series to the last one, which I think was intentional to mark Steven Moffat taking over the job as Big Boss Man, making a break from the old and starting with a clean canvas. When Ecclestone regenerated into Tennant, he still had Rose, and, essentially could just carry on where he left off. Tennant regenerated alone, and it was definitely the end of one story and the beginning of another, and it feels that way. The titles are different. The Doctor is different. He's meeting a new companion. The TARDIS itself regenerates, and he even gets a new sonic screwdriver. He doesn't even wind up in London, which was featured in so many of the first 4 1/2 series that it became the main setting. This was a new series, and it will take a while to think of it as Doctor Who. No doubt when the 2005 Series One came out, older fans felt the same, but as I said in a previous post, I don't remember it enough to feel that very much.

I can't say a lot about the characters, yet, having spent only an hour with them. The Eleventh Doctor (who I can't yet think of without the number) seems like a big child - he's a new person and doesn't seem quite sure what to do with himself, very clumsy. He seems to be a mild-mannered, understated sort of man with this crazy, adventurous, carefree side just beneath the surface. And he seems very innocent - a pre-time-war version of the Doctor, without all the pain that his previous two incarnations suffered. This makes me wonder if the series is going back into a smaller scale of story. The last series just got bigger and bigger, darker and more dangerous, week by week, and now it seems to have switched back to the olden days, where the Doctor is travelling just for the fun of it. With the Tenth Doctor, though it was for the fun of it, you got the impression he was always running away from something, trying to run away from himself.

Amelia/Amy Pond was an interesting character, though, again, we don't know much about her yet. She met the Doctor when she was seven years old, and he crashed into her back garden. After trying out half of the contents of her kitchen (and spitting them out again, reminding me and mum very much of Tigger) investigating a crack in her bedroom wall, the Doctor nipped back into the Tardis to check it was regenerating properly, promised to see her in five minutes - and vanished. For twelve years.

Amelia seems to be a very lonely, unhappy little girl. She has no parents, no siblings, has moved to England from her beloved Scotland, and it's implied she's at least a bit neglected, as her aunt leaves her alone in the house when she is seven years old, and has no qualms about using the stove. I wrote in my last post that she seemed too young, but although she looks young, even as a small girl she's had to grow up fast. And the Doctor makes such an impression on her at a young age because he actually notices her and shows interest in her. (Or maybe, just maybe, because he crashlands a time machine into her back garden, opens up a crack in her bedroom wall which is also a crack in the universe, exposing a giant eyeball, then runs off again.) The adult Amy, as she now calls herself, is an independent woman, but still seems to be searching for something, possibly unable to believe it when "something" returns.

Wasn't quite sure of the aliens this time around, but certainly there were a few creepy moments: the voices through the crack in the wall, the room hidden in plain view in Amy's house that she never even knew was there, and the alien disguised as a man walking his dog... but that went a bit wrong, giving the man the dog's voice. I even found those - what were they? - little models of "the raggedy doctor" a bit creepy, but I think that was because I felt I was missing something. The TV had cut out for a moment when Amy was explaining what was meant by "the raggedy doctor." Having said that, even that name has the potential to cause nightmares.

When at the end of the episode, the Doctor confronted the aliens, telling them of all the aliens that had attempted to invade the earth before, and of what happened to them (he happened to them) he spoke so matter-of-factly. I don't think I found his way of warning them away frightening like Ecclestone's rage or Tennant's cold, quiet, fury, but there was a moment when there was a montage of all of the previous incarnations of the Doctor, and then he walked out and just said, "Hello. I'm the Doctor. Basically... run." They didn't need to be told twice. That was pretty glorious.

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...