I'm sowwie

Hey everyone

Sorry about the recent lack of posts - just for a change. I'm up to my eyeballs in teaching stuff and my weekends have suddenly become chock-full of preparation and marking, etc etc. Natually all of that's had to take priority. I'll write something more substantial when I can find, oh, a few spare micro-seconds or something.

Meanwhile: It seems that the E-Space Trilogy might be coming out on DVD in the not too distant. Hoorah for the rather-good "Full Circle"! And the Marshmen! And Romana being bitten by a marshspider and turning all veiny and nasty! And procrastination aplenty! Hoorah for the very deliciously gothic "State of Decay"! And the Three Who Rule! And lots of vampire bats on strings attacking the Doc and Romana in the woods! And Paddy Kingsland's wonderful incidental musical scores in the aforementioned two stories! A semi-hoorah for "Warrior's Gate"! (A bit of a weird story in my book and not one of my all-time faves, but with some merits nonetheless...) And the lionine Tharils! And a nasty villain in Clifford Rose! And the touching departure of Romana and K9 Mark II! And last but not least, a less-than-hoorah for the debut of mathematical genius cum brat with crap pudding bowl haircut, Adric! Anyway I look forward to that one.

Mmmm. So much for not having the time to write.

My driving lessons are continuing to go okay, though not as frequent as I would like. I'm currently doing right hand turns. My steering needs some attention and the concept of the clutch is a new one to me, but I'm getting there.

Back inside the walls of Wentworth, Doreen's been packed off to the funny farm after twisted psychologist Peter Clements sends her round the bend by suggesting she might be a lesbian (like you do).

The winsome n' whiney Lynn Warner has finally departed the show, never to be seen again (rumour has it she later turns up as an alien in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and some kind of princess in "Dynasty"... No lie ...)

New arrival and baby killer Bella Albrecht (above with fabulously flicked 70s barnet) has been drowned in a sink with Bea and Monnie being the prime suspects.

However it transpires that it's actually the devious Martha Eaves (aka "Big M", above with Vinegar Vera) who is the culprit. Martha then decides to go up on the prison roof and hold Vera hostage with a kitchen fork (like you do) but eventually gets caught, not before we see that Wentworth is in fact a TV station (hence the radars):

Who knew?! Or could it in fact be a tracking station to locate alien intelligences like the Pharos Project (well, there's precious little intelligence inside Wentworth, so they've got to find it somewhere ...)

Fabulously flouncy prison social worker Jean Vernon has allowed Noeline Burke's daughter Leanne (above, an even better example of white trash than her mum) to stay in Meg Jackson's house, to the latter's chagrin. Cue hilarious scenes of Leanne trashing the joint and lounging on Meg's sofa, smoking loadsa fags, drinking loadsa tinnies and listening to loadsa naff 70s wah-wah music (which also seems to get played on the radio in the Wentworth laundry rather a lot - God, but they had excellent taste back then).

And future full-time warder Colleen "Po Face" Powell has made her first fleeting appearance. Not sure about the John Lennon look though, Colleen, love.

Right. Best go then. Strange how I can suddenly start waxing lots of lyrical when I get onto a favourite subject, isn't it?!

Hope you're all having a good weekend me lovelies ...

OC xxx

The Great Exhibition of 2008

Yaaaaay!! It's taken me a bit of time to report back on this one, but a few weeks back, my good friend from ooop North, Stephen, his lovely son Max and myself all made a trip to the Dr Who Exhibition which is currently showing at Earls Court. And a very good time was had by all.

It was so funny/strange taking Max with us. He's five years old and just getting into the whole Dr Who thing. There were lots of other kiddies there too who were equally relishing the experience, running around and shrieking with excitement on seeing their favourite monsters / creatures and all of it took me right back to my own childhood. It really doesn't seem so long ago when me and my friends in York, all die-hard Whovians, used to hold "group meetings" in which we got together to "rap" about DW and watch badly copied VHS tapes of old DW stories, which we'd paid through the neck to get hold of (we had a "contact" in Leeds who helped out for some extortionate price ... All I can say is THANK GOD for the advent of the DVD ...) I was also a member of the DWAS (that's Dr Who Appreciation Society to you plebs out there) and a regular subscriber to Dr Who Weekly (I still have a copy of the very first issue), closely followed by Dr Who Monthly. And erm, you are going to think me frightfully naughty, but me and a friend who shall remain nameless once wrote an "adult" version of the Colin Baker story "The Mark of the Rani", on his ZX Spectrum. This was in our later teens, you understand and we were, testosterone-infused not to say frustrated youngsters ... (Mind you it's probably no worse than this recent effort or this one, is it? Some things never change ... ) Regrettably "The Mark of the Randi" never got published.

Another highlight of my Who-infused childhood was a visit to the Dr Who Exhibition in Blackpool - which is still going strong. I think I went in about 1982 or 1983 and remember being terribly, terribly excited. I didn't get out of York very much and this felt like a trip to the USA or something similar. With hindsight I now realise Blackpool is probably one of cheapest and tackiest places one can visit but at the time it all felt sooo glamorous. And we went to the DW Exhibition and loved it. They had the regeneration scene from "Logopolis" on a looped video in the shop and I remember buying a china TARDIS money box and having my picture taken with my friend and his brother outside by the "TARDIS" entrance.

Anyway, flash forward to 2008 and Earl's Court. Here's a pictorial guide of what was on offer that day!

A taster of things to come!

Stephen and Max getting all excited in the foyer!

Doctors numero Nine and Ten invite you to the Exhibition ...

There were lots of good pictorial displays like the one on the right ... lots of good Who info and facts! It was probably more informative than the Blackpool Exhibition I'd say.

Saints preserve us! It's shop dummies coming to life! Could they be ... Autons?

Does the Henriks logo remind you of anything?

The David Tennant incarnation of the Doc outside the TARDIS. If you're wondering why his face is blank, there was a projector which "shone" a moving DT face onto the dummy .... unfortunately it didn't come out very well in the photo so he actually looks kind of sinister!

A David Tennant / Tenth Doc display.

Mewsters! It's a cat nun! Tin of kitty kat, anyone?

Lordy lordy! It's the wise and reputable Face of Boe! What a humongous head (oh, no comments please ... )

Me attempting to commune with the Face of Boe ... you can see the difference in head size ...

A bendy-wendy Slitheen! He (or she?) was positively huge! Big pincers too!

That famous model of Ben Ben from the first Slitheen story. Good model!

Aaaaah! It's that bitchy stretchy piece of flesh, Cassandra!

And one of the Trinnie / Susannah (not sure which it is) robots from "Bad Wolf"!

Uuuuughhh! The Empress of the Racnoss!!

An Ood waits patiently in a corridor. One of the best of the new Who monsters in my opinion ...

A Santa Claus robot! Rather silly staring eyes though.

This was an interesting display - showed you how they "made" an Oood mask. Who knew the spaghetti heads used blusher?

It's - that monster with the long name from "Love and Monsters"! Didn't look as good as on screen, I have to add. The jock strap didn't seem to ... hold very much.

Affirmative Master! Everyone's favourite doggie on show.

One of those scary looking clockwork dolls. Nice britches.

Enter ... the Cybermen!! Great display and great design. Kind of looks like they're on TOTP though.

No, no, NOOOOOOOO!! Don't delete me!!

Roger Lloyd-Pack, or should I say the Cyber-controller?

A solitary Cyber-bloke.

Rose's gorgeous costume from "Idiot's Lantern". Again she seems to be sans face ... but that's what happens when Maureen Lipman sucks the life out of ya ...

Couldn't resist a close up of Rose's lovely pink heels.

Remember those pictures the girl in "Fear Her" drew? The one of the absent Dad was rather horrible ...

Heaven help us! It's Wendy the Weeping Angel! I thought she was a testcard girl?

And no DW Exhibition would be complete without ... the Daleks! Enter the Black one ...

This was a cool bit of the Exhibition. You can't really see it from the photos (and the dry ice kind of obscures things) but three Daleks glided onto the "stage", threatened the audience as "unidentified intruders! and then shot them! Cue lots of laser beams ...

A Sontaran, recently returned to DW! Again didn't like the silly staring eyes though. Guess they couldn't exactly use real ones ...

One of those fishy aliens (again I can't be bothered to find out the name) who got all loved up with Martha in "The Dr's Daughter".

A scary scarecrow! Another one of my fave DW creations ...

A model of the Dalek Emperor.

Please do not touch the exhibits. Or you will be EXTERMINATED!!

The truck thing driven by Kylie of Minogia in "Voyage of the Damned". Remember?

Bannakaffalatta. Is he Darth Maul's baby brother?

Stephen and a Dalek. Actually you can't see, but Max is inside! They had a microphone inside in which you could imitate the Dalek voice - great fun! Naturally the place was filled with screeching kid's voices, all going "Exterminate!" again and again. I guess if you worked there it might drive you slightly mad ...

A saucy showgirl from the Daleks in Manhattan two-parter. Great outfit!

And later at home, Max tries out his newly purchased radio-controlled Dalek!

How exciting!! Oh to be young again ...

Well it was a good day in all. What Stephen and I both noticed (and as you'll probably have gathered from the photos above) was that the exhibition focussed almost entirely on NEW Dr Who monsters (apart from the obvious "crossover" aliens like Daleks and Cybermen) from the revived version of the series. There were no old ones, which was a slight pity. I guess the reasoning behind that is that a lot of the attendees will be too young to remember DW Mark One and far more au fait with Mark Two, hence the recent exhibits. Also the fact that if there had been monsters from Mark One PLUS Mark Two, a very big venue would have been needed! (And Earls Court is pretty big as it is - much more spacious than the Blackpool Exhibition for instance). But it's still great to know that the DW legacy lives on and that a whole new generation of children are being reared on the show, as I once was. Okay, what's the point in denying it. Going to these kind of things is really just an opportunity for my inner kid-like Whovian to manifest itself. Or, should I say, materialise!!

Saturday nights are cool again...

It's back!! Unbelievably, last night I wasn't able to sit down and watch DW when it was actually on (we had friends round) so me and my hubbie caught up with it on BBC iPlayer instead. What a marvellous invention it is.

Well, I really enjoyed it.

A few Cheeser criticisms out of the way first though. Like Steve, I thought the Adipose plotline was kind of daft and ultimately they weren't really the "sinister" threat that the pre-programme publicity made them out to be - ultimately just a load of baby aliens waiting to be born and then depart Earth to return to their home world. The Adipose themselves were more cuddly and cute than scary, and reminded me of something out of Ghostbusters, with their Pilsbury Dough Boy/Marshmallow man appearance, baby/giggly noises and waddling - hardly a worldwide menace. Definitely one for the kiddie audience. Consequently the tone of the episode did sometimes veer towards the silly rather than serious. On reflection though it was probably a deliberate ploy on the part of the writers to start off with a fairly lightweight story, in order to focus on the reintroduction of Ms Donna Noble and the dynamics of her relationship with the Dr.

And, whilst on the subject of Ms Catherine Tate/Donna...

I thought... ... she was actually pretty good!

OMG!! Yes, after numerous posts slagging off RTD et al for deciding to resurrect the character of Donna, I may well have to go and munch on some humble pie. For this was a far more "reigned in" Donna that we got to see, some time after the events of Runaway Bride - and generally a much more restrained and reflective lady after the fishwife performance of her debut story. A lot of the screeching and moaning of yore had vanished. Okay, there were still some "comedy" CT moments but on the whole these slotted in quite well with everything else. For instance, the scene with the Dr and Donna silently mouthing at each other through glass. Dr: "Donna?" Donna: "Oh-my-GOD!"Dr: "How?"Donna: "It's me!" Etc... Odd, cos when viewed in the original Season Four trailer, Donna's "Doctaaaaaaaaaaaar!" bit seemed awful (prompting me to do a "What's Donna saying?" post) but here it was very funny (the p*ss-take "tense" orchestral score in the background was a nice counterpoint too).

It was also good to see Donna getting more backstory - having to put up with her nagging, continually whinging mum (now we know where the fishwife characteristics originated) her scene with her Grandpa (a lovely cameo from Bernard Cribbins) where she talks about the Dr (nicely acted/done) and the bit at the end with Donna and the Doc waving to Gramps from the airborn TARDIS was actually rather touching and sweet!

Another positive aspect of Donna is the fact that, unlike Rose and Martha, she's a stronger and older character who is NOT romantically fixated on the Dr. Actually that's rather inaccurate as Ms Tyler and Ms Jones DID have their "strengths" as well, but the fancying the Doc thing at times seriously undermined their respective personas. It was established pretty much early on in "Partners" that Donna didn't like the Dr "in that way", Donna's amusing lines "Mad Martha that one...blind Martha...charity Martha..." firmly establishing her p.o.v. on that subject. And I liked the clever bit of dialogue with the Dr stating: "I just want a mate" which Donna mistook to mean "I just wanna mate" (!) leading to her response: "You're not mating with me, sunshine!" Again, in the original Season Four trailer, the latter Donna declaration had sounded pretty cringeworthy, but here worked much better when viewed in the context of the whole scene. And now that one's under their belts the Dr and Donna can embark on a more mature relationship. Here's hoping...

I was pleasantly surprised by Catherine Tate overall. One thing I will say is that unlike Freema Agymen, she is an accomplished character actress (having played a variety of roles in her own comedy show to perfection) and she's also got depth, range and excellent comic timing. There were several times during "Partners in Crime" when her facial expressions and line delivery were spot-on and this bodes well for the future.

What else? Having the Dr and Noble both investigating Adipose industries at the same time was a definite coincidence but a way of bringing them back together. The way in which they kept missing each other by a hair's breadth until their eventual "reunion" - e.g. the popping up and down between the cubicles - was a bit farcial and far-fetched though...

The "Close Encounters" style spaceship looked impressive (and funny when Gramps, watching out for alien lifeforms, totally misses it).

Sarah Lancashire as the villainous Miss Foster was excellent, a far cry from the days of Raquel Woltenshulme - icy, efficient, businesslike and humorous albeit in a controlled fashion. Even if the Adipose plot wasn't up to much, she helped to carry the whole thing. I couldn't help feeling sorry for her when she twigged that the Adipose had just used her and she plunged to her death. But what was she doing with a sonic device? Early rumour had it that she was Time Lord, even the Rani, but this was not the case...

David Tennant, now entering into his third season as the Doc, has really hit his stride in the role. His sometimes annoying tics and mannerisms were far less evident on this occasion. A good thing too. We got some of his "wide eyed acting" but on the whole he was good and his scenes with CT worked well.

And finally! Totally out of the blue we got a ... cameo from Rose Tyler!! Looking very moody and serious. How did she get back from the other side of the void? Why was she there? It was a great and genuinely surprising addition to the episode (even if she was only onscreen 10-15 seconds) and added nicely to the sense of anticipation re: the "proper" return of Rose later this season.

So, an entertaining start to the new series. Roll on the rest of Season Four!

PS I am intending to finish off my Torchwood reviews of Season Two... but as you know DW always take precedence for moi. Nah nah nah!