Last Night I Dreamt I Drowned

Really - I was lying at the bottom of the sea unable to move.

Doctor Who And The Schedulers Of Pain

*** If you’re not a Doctor Who fan, then please don’t bother reading this. Really - save yourself. ***

Well, I've just spent the last half an hour reading up on New Zealand's long history of screening Doctor Who. Apparently they showed the very first episode less than a year after the UK did, in 1964! Not only that, several missing episodes were recovered here (including the last one that I watched with my dad - The Lion), and it was a New Zealander who used to cine-film clips of the show off the telly, saving what is now the world’s only known copy of, among other things, the start of the very first regeneration scene.

And that caring really is the difference between viewers and stations, as the next 20-years showed a dogged commitment by NZ’s broadcasters to what I call LWT (London Weekend Television) principles.

I couldn't possibly list the whole lot of broadcasting atrocities here, but the most unbelieeeeevable instance would have to be the incredible 5-year break in transmission mid-way through Davison's run. Mawdryn Undead - you remember - the one with the 2 Brigadiers and the Black Guardian manipulating Turlough? For 5 years that was Davison's final story. When the series came back, he was played by...can you guess?...yes that's right Patrick Troughton. (in black-and-white)

Not only that, but they billed it as a repeat of "the very first Doctor Who story". (yes, it was neither)

They then showed every surviving story all the way through until they had almost caught up again, except for the b/w Invasion Of The Dinosaurs #1, as the BBC had carefully only sold them the surviving colour installments 2-6 with new episode numbers 1-5 on the start.

And then, ages later, with a mere 3 stories to go before catching up with the break in Davison's run again, yes, William Hartnell's the new Doctor, in a 'repeat' of his unscreened Dalek Invasion Of Earth. And that was followed by another 'repeat' of Troughton's unscreened Seeds Of Death, publicised with the synopses of The War Games.

Then, on 20th November 1988 (note the date), at MIDDAY, who'd have thought it, Davison actually snuck briefly back into the role again for the specially-made one-off Australian co-production twentieth... err... now twenty-fifth anniversary episode The Five Doctors.

Well, Davison fans could be forgiven for thinking that their hero had finally returned to them, but the fact is that a mere 90 minutes after Davison's somewhat diluted return (he was sharing the role with 4 other actors after all), would you believe, straight afterwards, at 1:30pm, it was time for another actor to take on the role of the Doctor. An esteemed professional whose characterisation was a bit controversial in fan circles. Many people consider him to be a very poor Doctor, but that's not really fair, as he wasn't in the role very long, even in Britain. Yes that's right, The Five Doctors was immediately followed by the opening story of Peter Cushing's run.

Cushing must have quit or something, because the very next day he and his entire family were replaced by newcomers Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, who coincidentally also only made one story - Revelation Of The Daleks. (in the UK this was his penultimate one) But it's not all bad news for Colin, as while in the UK we only got 2 episodes of Revelation Of The Daleks, here in NZ they got 4.

Nonetheless, despite his unusually short episodes (only 25 minutes each) Colin played the role with distinction (although he's hardly in that story) and became one of the longest serving Doctors, notching up, as I said, a whole 4 days in the role before being replaced by Sylvester McCoy. The very next day.

This was a movie-length edition of McCoy's 7th UK story Silver Nemesis...the last two-thirds of which had, believe it or not, never been shown anywhere else in the whole world. Even then, one minute was missed out while commercials were running, and although the episodic opening/closing credits were cut, the episode numbers over the action weren't.

About 2 weeks later, things again looked hopeful for Peter Davison’s long-awaited return, as his next 2 sequential stories were repeated. Unfortunately, with just one story to go before 'new' Davison episodes, the whole show was taken off the air again until Easter.

Finally, on 6th April 1989, Mawdryn Undead was repeated, and things finally carried on with next story, continuing the whole Turlough/Black Guardian storyline, after an absence of over 5 years.

The story was ironically called Terminus.


Fig. 1: The fifth Doctor locked in combat with a NZ TV scheduler for 5 years.

***Told you.***

BACK IN TIME - A Thinking Fan's Guide to Doctor Who

Q. What’s even more embarrassing than being a Christian?

A. Being a Doctor Who fan too.

I of course am both, and have been both since about 1982.

Growing up feeling sleighted for both of these allegiances inevitably led to some sense of insecurity, so how relieving that Steve Couch, Tony Watkins and Peter S Williams have at last written a book about both subjects together.

Alas, to me, its basic premise seems to be flawed.

It’s not the rushed copy, or the absence of much new information, or even the fact that the very first sentence that I read gave away something from the next series. (avoid page 120) No, I really have 2 problems:

1. The hero-worship of the new series.

The new series of Doctor Who is I think, as I just might have mentioned before, the least achieving in the show’s history. While the effects were weak by today’s standards, and the subject matter of teenage sex, homosexuality and sniggering flatulence so obviously out-of-place in this family show, its biggest shortcoming was still its consistently poor scripts.

To write a whole book attempting to extrapolate some meaning from words of such little depth, was a bit of a fool’s gambit from the start.

You cannot think about this series without quickly realising how much of it disagrees with itself.

You certainly can’t go putting your foot in it with statements like “Quality was the benchmark of the new Doctor Who.” [page 20]

Hardly the attitude of any “thinking” fan.

This blind cheering sadly underpins the whole tone of the book, although even they are forced to concede on page 80 that “{the scriptwriter} is more committed to telling the story well and making an emotional impact on the audience than being rigorously consistent with previous series. He’s also more concerned about this than maintaining the internal logic of the stories.” Yep, just like in the show, even here there's a self-contradiction. (you can’t tell a story well without internal logic)

2. Secondly, the authors have chosen to write “from a Christian perspective”, although the book does not appear to have been written for Christians, but for non-Christians.

There is precious little mention of the book’s Christian content on the cover (only the quote above from the back cover) As a result, whenever the transition is made from say the episode Boom Town to the faith required for scientism, the transfer feels quite awkward and even a bit ashamed of itself.

It must be said however, that these are the sections where the book’s real strength shines through.

Page 156:

Richard Dawkins says that ‘When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, they call their feeling “revelation”.’ [A Devil’s Chaplain page 245] On this definition of revelation, Dawkins’ belief that the only way to know things is through evidence may itself count as a revelation – after all, he can’t have any evidence for it. Hence, according to Dawkins’ own advice, it is a bad reason for believing anything.

One of the reasons why I used to like Doctor Who was because it was so thought-provoking. How ironic that this book should satisfy that, now that the show doesn’t.

!rotinaJ

Patrick, he of Hope City Radio fame, can currently be seen on ALT TV circa 18:15 on Friday nights performing a regular comedy sketch.

Anyway tonight I popped-in to see him just before the show, only to be introduced to ALT’s President Of Programming who, with just 30 seconds to air, suddenly press-ganged me into playing a comedy janitor on the live show.

My appearance was barely fleeting. I stood there with a vacuum cleaner and, as comedically as possible, ducked out of the way, as the presenters of their flagship Action News programme swept past me in the corridor, followed by a camera, and into the studio.

And that was it, over.

Giving me an appearance that was so brief and silent was probably a wise move however, if my edition of That Friday Feeling on Hope City Radio later that night was anything to go by.

The theme of this week’s show was backwards. So I had reversed the usual playlist order, put the introduction at the end of the show, read all the verses in the Bible reading in reverse order and, after about 30 rehearsals, read an entire link with every single word spelt backwards. This was much harder than I had first thought.

To listen to the evidence, please click here.

Uoy knaht. Ymra eht nioj.

Night Work

Finally got an early night tonight, for the first time in absolutely ages.

Then at half-past-midnight my mobile phone rang.

Calls in the middle of the night tend to carry with them an air of urgency. When you live on the other side of the world, it stands to reason that the call maybe from someone at home, where it is daytime. Could be important. Blearily I answered.

It was flatmate Dave, standing a mere 3 metres away in the corridor.

“Steve – I’ve just bought a sofa, so I need you to come out to the street and help me to carry it in.”

Now I Know What Made All This Blue

Dropped into the youth hostel this evening to find that Lionel had posted his spare phonecard and NZ stamps back from the UK to me. Also waiting for me was a Burger Fuel voucher and a very long bank statement from ANZ, making up for the many that they have still not sent to my new address.

Afterwards, it was off to Chris’s place – bizarrely the same building where I had tried (unsuccessfully) to get a room in June last year.


Chris, as well as being incredibly patient, (it took me over an hour to locate his house again) is an html genius, and was kindly tweaking this very blog from green to blue for me. I have made other odd textual changes myself between these two screengrabs, but see what you think:


Green’s a nice colour, but I think white and blue are more “me.” I like white clothes because they get so many good references in the Bible, and blue is just a very simple relaxed colour, like the sea and the sky.

Chris also has a beautiful view from the road outside his house:

Everyone in this picture is now dead

Well this blog doesn't get much more trivial than this. Here are some ants in our kitchen eating poison and taking it back to the nest for their queen. This is about as cruel as I get.

Expecting nightmares in which they all come back, forgive me, and offer me milkshakes.

Church Search

On 25th July 2004, I joined a new church.

I’d just arrived in NZ, and I didn’t want to spend the next couple of months trying a different church every week. I figured that I needed to put some roots down and make a few friends, and that meant picking a church and sticking with it.

A chance meeting on a Christian weekend back in the UK had furnished me with the contact details of just this one church in the area, which just happened to be within walking distance of where I was staying. So that first Sunday afternoon I’d strode up and down across town (this was Auckland after all) and crept into the service.

It was one of those slightly embarrassing “youthy” churches, complete with rock band, but I got with the local culture and was sorry that I had to leave early to go see a Buster Keaton movie at the current Auckland Film Festival. I particularly liked that one of their self-professed aims was “to build whanau.” (family)

Over the coming months I went on their teaching weekend to Hamilton, on their church houseparty to Howick (where I got baptised), and attended several other functions.

The services were very uplifting and full of encouragement, which was exactly what I needed at the time.

But at the end of each service the same thing would happen. There would be no-one to talk to. There would be many people, but no-one to talk to. Of course, there were one or two exceptions, but they were usually in a group already, and if they were free, then after “How are you?” I genuinely had no idea what else to say to them.

(I felt more among my own over at Tiger’s Korean-language church, where I had not the faintest idea what anyone was saying, but they all knew me because I was white.)

I attended a Bible study one Tuesday night to find that I was the only one, so the leader cancelled it saying there was no point in running it just for one.

On another Tuesday night, I had a 10-minute videotape that I’d been given by a potential Christian employer. With no VCR to watch it on at the hostel, I’d brought it with me to the church office to watch. After an hour-long Bible study at which all present enthusiastically affirmed the huge importance of helping others ahead of oursleves, the leader told me that she didn’t have 10 minutes to let me watch it because she was tired.

Sometimes I would go up for prayer after the service. One time I waited over an hour, while others after me were prayed for first, until I was literally the very last left.

After 18 months, I asked for a reference, but was refused with the explanation “I just don’t know you well enough.”

That afternoon I’d arrived an hour early to help set everything up and welcome everyone at the door.

There was just no glue holding me there. Of course I’m generalising, but I’d found that I was making the trip across town each week, more than anything else, out of sympathy for an ill retired guy who I’d spotted also had no-one to talk to each week. I didn’t really want to let him down.

Tonight I sat down at the start of the service. I was aware that I was sitting in the area normally reserved for parents and families, but I badly needed some floor space to lie-down on during the rather long worship and sermon.

A guy whose face I recognised approached me. I knew everything that was about to happen.

He greeted me and asked how I was. I knew that was a cover.

He shook my hand. I knew that was false too.

He asked me to move. I explained why I wanted to sit there. He said if I didn’t move he’d get some other people and have me removed from the building.

I acquiesced, I moved to another seat, I stayed for the service, and I even helped take everything down afterwards, making sure that I spent a few moments having a laugh with him to make sure that he didn’t feel bad.

But the thing that hurt was that, had I not been sitting in the wrong seat, he would absolutely never have come up to say hello, shake my hand, or ask how I was.

I find it dreadfully hard to confront people, but particularly so when it’s to restore a relationship that I think they’d be happier without.

And in the last 18 months of course I have come across several other churches, sometimes containing people who remembered me when I went back.

I guess I didn’t make a move before tonight because I just didn’t want to give up on these people.

Or let that old fella on his own at the back down.

Doctor Who: Season 27 Trailers And Review

Traditionally, trailers have always come before the movie.

I prefer to watch them afterwards, to avoid having the plot given away. I want to experience being told the story as the writer/director originally intended.

To that end, today, courtesy of TV-Ark, I sat down and watched the BBC-1 trailers for the season of Doctor Who that I have just finished watching.

Surprisingly, this actually included “new” footage that had not been in the show. (a bit like on Blue Peter but that's another story)

There was an oft-repeated generic shot of Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor being chased down a corridor by an explosion.


There were ITV-esque shots of the Doctor and Rose standing like statues in the TARDIS, posing at the camera and saying nothing.

We also had other shots of them both talking to camera, in character, inviting the potential audience to come with them on “the ride of a lifetime.”

It all gave me a curious sense of optimism. I remembered this feeling from before I had watched the episodes – when everyone and his dog had told me how great the new series was. Written by the same authors as the BBC Books series – it had all seemed so promising.

Alas, I think I have already catalogued here my subsequent disillusionment. Just once or twice. But just to sum up the series as a whole…


I can forgive the cold redesign of the TARDIS' interior and exterior, the needless recasting, and the 90s-looking CGI. I can grumble about but live with the absense of outgoing Doctor Paul McGann from the opening scene in the exploding warehouse, which would surely have improved the opening episode as a whole, not least for new viewers. (what a great moment it could have been, when Rose realised that this strange hero was actually the same guy whose death she had earlier grieved for)

Despite a great fresh take on the role, Ecclestone only offered one series in which to prove himself, so it hardly seems fair to compare him with the earlier actors. Piper, despite faced with playing such an unlikable character, (messing with 4 different guys' feelings) still won me over when it came to her acting.

The characterisation has been extremely strong - the strongest in the show's history - so I can't knock the scripts themselves. What I mean is that guest characters have established themselves ever so quickly, which is a tough thing to do with just a few lines. I really didn't like Mickey at the start, but again I've been turned around on that one.

Doctor Who has always been a tangle of good and bad things, and generally it hasn't mattered too much because four weeks later there's been a fresh roll of the dice, and a new tangle of good/bad.

But for me the bottom line is this:

My only real problem is with the consistently drowsy storylines. And by drowsy I mean that they generally work fine, so long as you can’t clearly remember what happened a moment earlier.

The Unquiet Dead was a fine story, Dalek had a rather careless central gist that rendered the entire Dalek race easily defeatable, but was at least possible in Dr-Who-Land, and Steven Moffatt's 2-part Empty Child, if you cut out Jack, would have been a great classic 45-minute story too.

But all the other stories, without exception, consistently did not work. They didn't just contradict each other, they contradicted themselves.

Impossible things would happen without any explanation. (that gloop coming out of Adam's home telephone in The Long Game, Rose's unexplained survival of the TARDIS vortex in The Parting Of The Ways, Margaret leaving MI5 to become a Mayor in Boom Town)

Unlikely coincidences. (the Britney Spears track in The End Of The World, Mickey's proximity to the TARDIS in the final episode, Margaret's presence in Cardiff in Boom Town)

Characters taking action without a motive to. (Mickey running into a fence instead of the closed dematerialising TARDIS doors in The Aliens Of London, Margaret continuing to run after teleporting to safety in Boom Town, Margaret running in the first place when she has a teleporter in Boom Town, Rose's faith in the 12-months-out TARDIS to return her to Jackie in 10 seconds' time at the end of World War Three, robots impersonating a race that doesn't really exist in The End Of The World)

Characters acting on information that they could only know by being a TV viewer. (The Doctor: Adam's responsibility for his predicament in The Long Game, Adam's answerphone message in The Long Game, Rose: her contradictory childhood memories in The Parting Of The Ways)

Conversely, characters' amnesia. (the Autons apparently forgetting their invasion plan until after the viewers have been told it in Rose, our heroes forgetting they have a hypnopass in The Aliens Of London, the soldiers forgetting they were surrounding the TARDIS in World War Three, Harriett Jones forgetting Margaret's a Slitheen by Boom Town, Jackie and Mickey forgetting the Auton invasion on the night of Rose’s disappearance in The Aliens Of London, everyone forgetting the Daleks' new super-weakness in The Parting Of The Ways, everyone forgetting the nuclear power station that's still going to be completed and blow-up the Earth in Boom Town, and, yes, everyone forgetting Rose’s phone-call home in The Aliens Of London)

(I have omitted making any direct reference to the episode Father’s Day in order to save on page-loading time)

Strangely, a few people have said to me that I shouldn’t expect the new episodes to tie-into the original series.

That is simply not the protest I've made.

My conviction is that the new episodes must tie-into themselves.

A playground in Father’s Day, as it swarms with huge bat-like reapers the size of double-decker buses, eating screaming children and their parents, it was claimed a few scenes later.

I'm sorry, my subconscious mind is still busy. Please hold.

I had a dream this morning...


In the dream, I went out and about somewhere with about 6 girls, who snuck off when I wasn’t looking. In a deserted street, I found a cordless telephone and its big old base unit sitting on a stone bollard, playing staticy classical hold music. I picked it up to take it to the police station.

To get there, I took a short-cut through a stairwell in a block of flats, unsure whether it was private or not, but it came out on the platform of an underground train station.

A smoking woman approached me and I was told she was going to sue me. I offered to shake her hand, but got no response, not even facially. She said someone (an old woman I think) had fallen down the stairs, as though my taking the shortcut had caused it. I asked her what time this had happened at. She answered “Five to Mash.”

I realised that I no longer had the cordless phone or its base unit, so I said I’d be right back as I had to go back and get something. She seemed to understand, and made no attempt to stop me leaving...


I awoke, it was shortly before 10am. The cordless phone in our flat, on its base unit outside my room, rang for a very long time.

I didn’t answer it.

Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion

Well, one has to wonder just what the Doctor Who Programme Guides of the future will have to say about this one…

The newly-regenerated Doctor collapses in front of Rose, Jackie and Mickey, who are all uninterested in the outcome of the Dalek invasion. Rose has forgotten that the Doctor has just claimed to have "given his life" for her. They all decide the best thing to do is to haul his unconscious body away from the TARDIS and up several flights of stairs, before undressing him and forcing him into a pair of pyjamas.

Rose cries that “her” Doctor has left her, which of course serves her right.


Meanwhile, the alien Sycorax know the Doctor is on Earth, so they send three spies dressed as Santa Claus to play in a brass band, and shoot at Rose and Mickey with their trombones. When this fails, they decide to attack them at their flat, by hiding a large Christmas Tree in their living-room and waiting a few hours until they have noticed it, whereupon it starts furiously spinning towards them, threateningly playing Christmas carols, and slowly heading towards the Doctor's room.

As everyone with A+ blood has climbed to the top of a nearby tall building, Prime Minister Harriet Jones goes on television and tells everybody in the civilised world about the Doctor.

Rose forgets that she has forgotten getting taken over by the TARDIS' vortex, and now appears to have total recall of the event, adding that she cannot do it again. No-one realises that Mickey or Jackie could instead, as indeed could anyone else on Earth.

The Sycorax then beam up the TARDIS and its crew within, because they are surprised when they detect the use of alien technology on Earth.

Rose then suddenly refers to almost every single episode last series.

The Sycorax, unable to speak English, understand her.

Finally the Doctor comes around and, unaware of events leading up to this point, rather rashly challenges the Sycorax leader to a fight, which he…err…wins. He just does. His new arm is good at fighting. That's it.

The assembled thousands of Sycorax dumbly do as he says and leave Earth.

Then Harriet Jones hilariously reveals that she could in fact have destroyed the Sycorax all along, and proves it by doing so.

Harriet is then deposed as Prime Minister through a vote of no-confidence, because after apparently saving the entire population of the world, she looks a bit tired, and the press have never said anything negative about her before.

And UNIT now has a department that does…err…the same thing that UNIT has always done. Needlessly blowing up the aliens at the end. Yes, yes that's what UNIT do. (a touch of overfunding there maybe)

The end.

N.B. What I really must emphasise here is that I really liked the new Doctor. Here he was playing the whole thing like a good sitcom. He treated the situation as serious, and the dialogue as comedy, and I realised towards the end that I was actually smiling. Heck, I don't want to analyse it any more. This Doctor was great, and like the old days, he was verbose.

Let's hope he gets some worthy scripts next season.

The View From My Kitchen