Doctor Who - The Almost People Review

This review can also be found on Step2Inspire.

The crew’s dopplegangers have rebelled against their subservient nature, war has broken out between the organic and the artificial workers, and there is now a doppleganger Doctor. After last week’s ponderous episode, the Almost People moves the story up a couple of gears and throws in a mind-bending twist that hits you in the side of the face like a wayward football - shockingly and without warning.

The episode opens with the Flesh-Doctor struggling to assimilate over 900 years of experience, every incarnation the Doctor has experienced flowing through his mind, manifested in a tirade of phrases uttered by the previous Doctors (including Pertwee’s one-time line “I’ve reversed the polarity of the neutron flow” and Tom Baker’s trademark “Would you like a jelly baby?”). Matt Smith threw himself into the bizarre convulsions with great fervour, giving a remarkably credible performance on both sides despite the obvious difficulties of having one actor play two separate characters at the same time. There’s nothing quite as fun for an actor than going completely doo-lally!

The whole double-Doctor scenario played out rather well, with both celebrating the presence of another Doctor of equal brilliance. The Doctor and the Doctor made quite a good double-act! Not everyone was too keen on the doppleganger, though, as Amy harboured a ‘not-quite-the-Doctor’ prejudice towards the Ganger, something which the script cunningly toyed with by revealing towards the end that the Doctor and Flesh-Doctor had swapped shoes to prove a point. Exactly when they swapped shoes is not particularly obvious (at a guess, I’d say during the popping up and down from behind the console), so when Amy informed the Flesh-Doctor of the Doctor’s future death, did she tell the Flesh-Doctor or the real Doctor?

The only thing that really got confusing in the double-Doctor arc was the exchange of the sonic screwdriver, as evidently the Ganger (or was it, by this point, the real one?) did not possess a screwdriver, so the other threw him his. This swapping of screwdrivers occurred on a couple of occasions, but at one point they both seemed to possess one at the same time, with one Doctor in the TARDIS and the other left outside yet both inexplicably in possession of a screwdriver. Perhaps if one throws a sonic screwdriver to one’s counter-part a certain number of times it causes a rupture in space-time, causing it to duplicate itself…? I would say the TARDIS produced a second one, but I’m sure the double-screwdriver paradox had occurred prior to that. Perhaps it was merely a mistake that had been overlooked, or something that seems negligible now but will prove to be an integral plot-point in the future?

It is, however, incredibly important to note that when the Flesh-Doctor is about to meet his end and destroy the now mutated-Flesh-Jennifer, the Doctor indicates that the Flesh-Doctor may somehow survive in some form. Presumably it’s still open for the Flesh-Doctor to be the one who dies in the scene we see in the the Impossible Astronaut?

The pseudo-humanising of the guest stars made a recurrence, with an attempt to make both the humans and the Gangers seem as if they had some degree of depth and emotion. Personally, I felt this all to be a little hollow and may have worked better without it. However, perhaps it was necessary, as towards the end of the episode the surviving Gangers, with a new sense of humanity ,depart to make a press conference which is hinted at being important for the future. There’s also a notably cringe-worthy line when Rory is shown the discarded Gangers, and Flesh-Jennifer asks “Who are the real monsters?” - if the moral undertones of the Rebel Flesh and the Almost People were not obvious beforehand, it’s now been clearly spelt out!

Finally, if you have not seen the Almost People yet, do so now (click here) as what follows is possibly the biggest spoiler for this half of the series…

Amy’s not real. She’s been a Ganger all this time, and the real Amy is in some pristine and clinically white capsule with a rather conspicuous bump and Madame Kovarian/Eye Patch Lady staring down at her. That certainly explains why Eye Patch Lady kept cropping up and opening non-existent hatches, and why Amy’s pregnancy was positive and negative whenever the Doctor scanned her. Amy`s Ganger must’ve had some form of psychic link to the real Amy. Little bit curious as to why the Doctor felt the need to melt the Flesh-Amy, seeing as until that point he’d claimed that the Flesh had just as much a right to life as anyone, but still... These final few minutes completely eclipsed the 40-odd minutes that had come before it!

So when was it Amy was replaced with a Ganger? In the 3 month gap between the Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon? When she was taken by the Silence? Preceding the entire series? Seeing as she claimed to be pregnant in the first episode but had changed her mind by the second, it’s all very odd and open for speculation.

Next week, a Good Man Goes To War, and apparently (at least, so the trailer indicated) we finally learn the identity of River Song!

42 Uses for a Towel

Happy Towel Day, you hoopy froods!

The 25th of May (on Earth's calendars) marks the celebration of Towel Day across the Universe in honour of the late great Douglas Adams and the biography (at least, I thought it was a biography) of interstellar hitch-hiker and quintessentially British tea-drinker Arthur Dent.

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with. So here are 42 excellent uses for a towel (as recorded by GNews) on your myriad of intergalactic adventures!

1. Wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta.

2. Lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours.

3. Sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon.

4. Use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth.

5. Wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat.

6. Wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes.

7. Avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you).

8. Wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal.

9. Dry yourself off with it.

10. Attach it to a pole to make your very own flag – preferably with the “Don’t Panic” slogan.

11. Stuff your ears with it to block out the sound of Kria poetry (the second worst poetry in the Universe).

12. Set up the perfect foil to cover a towel sized hole to capture enemies.

13. Wear it as a majestic superhero cape.

14. Horde your precious Altairian dollars using your towel as a makeshift moneybag.

15. Wave it around madly like a Matador to confound intergalactic beasts.

16. Cover your modesty.

17. Fold it into a comfy pillow – easier to hold onto than the flying pillows of Squornshellous Delta.

18. Carefully wrap around a stick, dunk in flammable liquid and use as a fire torch.

19. Remove hot dishes from the oven in the absence of oven gloves.

20. Use it to support you weight as you slide down a massive zip line.

21. Swat flies and other irritating space gnats that come too close.

22. Cover the solar panel of robots, therefore rendering them useless.

23. Catch planetary aquatic life forms in a rudimentary fishing net on Frogstar World C .

24. Roll it into a ball and stuff it down the back of your shirt to imitate a hump.

25. Soak in Algolian Claret or another alcoholic tipple of your choice as a liquid sponge.

26. Blindfold yourself with it to avoid the unimaginable horrors of the Total Perspective Vortex.

27. Use it as a sun shade from the hot rays of Ursa Minor Beta.

28. Knot it together on a stick to make a haversack.

29. Apply to bleeding wounds as a field dressing.

30. Block drafts from the door on cold planets like Epun.

31. Drape it over your porthole on a spaceship as a curtain.

32. Combine with other hitchhikers’ towels to create a giant patchwork towel quilt.

33. Make a furry sack for Christmas presents.

34. Bind particularly weak and effeminate alien prisoners in the absence of handcuffs.

35. Wrap precious cargo such as the highly sought after Antarean parakeet glands for Galaxy Cocktails.

36. Stuff into the gob of an annoying loudmouth who will not shut up.

37. Whip lazy beasts that travel too slowly for your liking.

38. Open up your towel into a parachute on low-gravity planets.

39. Keep it across your face to ward off the dust and sand blizzards of Dangrabad Beta.

40. A knotted towel can be used as a short but effective climbing rope.

41. Tie neatly around your head to create a towel Turban.

42. Create a grand tent for a travelling Intergalactic Flea Circus.

And The BAFTA Goes To…

This article can also be found on Step2Inspire.

It is the most prestigious award in British film and television, and simply for the nominees to be considered in the running is an award in itself. There were some categories so tough to call, such as with the Leading Actor nominees, that it was hard to hedge bets or even pick a favourite!

There were five first-time BAFTA winners presented with an award last night. Daniel Rigby took home the Leading Actor award for his stellar performance as Eric Morecambe in Eric and Ernie, and Vicky McClure was award Leading Actress as Lol in This Is England ‘86. Lauren Socha won the Supporting Actress award for Misfits, which had been last year’s Drama Series winner, and the Supporting Actor award went to Martin Freeman for his performance as Watson in Sherlock, which picked up the award for Drama Series this year. Jo Brand also won her first BAFTA this year in the Female Performance in a Comedy Programme for Getting On.

If I had to nominate someone for the Best Surprised Face Of The Evening Award, it’d have to be a tie between Rigby and Brand for possibly the most perfect blend of shock, awe, and pleasure blended into a singular facial expression. Closely followed by Freeman for his expression of sheer bafflement when The Only Way Is Essex was announced as the winner of the YouTube Audience choice award!

The Male Performance in a Comedy Programme was awarded to Steve Coogan for The Trip. Coogan last won a BAFTA in 1998 for I’m Alan Partridge, which won two awards that year. Whether this will lead to a new series of The Trip, in which Rob Brydon is bitterly resentful of Coogan being nominated for the BAFTA and not him, remains to be seen.

The host of the evening, Graham Norton, also won an award in the Entertainment Performance category for The Graham Norton Show. Norton had previously won in this category for three consecutive years in 2000, 2001 and 2002 for So Graham Norton, but he had not been nominated since then. As an iconic figure of the British chat show scene, Norton’s perfect balance of humour, sociability, and interviewing technique makes him king of the chat show format, and more than deserving of this award.

The Entertainment Programme BAFTA was awarded for the first time to The Cube (a programme I feel could be made immeasurably better by introducing a lethal neurotoxin into the chamber whenever a contestant fails to complete a task successfully). If the Cube has developed sentience, as I’m sure it one day will, it is likely very proud that it’s cruel mind-games with human test subjects have been appreciated.

Channel 4’s Any Human Heart walked away with the BAFTA for Drama Serial, and BBC Four’s The Road to Coronation Street was awarded the Single Drama BAFTA. However, Coronation Street was beaten in the Continuing Drama category by EastEnders for the second year running.

Sky’s Flying Monsters 3D, which was awarded in the Specialist Factual category, was the first 3D television programme to win a BAFTA. It also marks the fourth televisual frontier in which Sir David Attenborough has won an award, as Attenborough has won in black and white, colour, high definition and now 3D.  There is not, and likely will never be, another man on Earth who can make such a claim in the medium of television.

The Factual Series award was presented to Welcome to Lagos, a series which explores the life in the capital of Nigeria. Single Documentary and Current Affairs awards were won by undercover documentary Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children. The sheer amount of philanthropy work that went on as a result of this documentary was more than enough to reaffirm even the most hardened cynic’s faith in the good of humanity (even my cold and robotic core was touched!).

However, when it came to the YouTube Audience Choice award, The Only Way Is Essex won the BAFTA, beating Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, Downton Abbey, Sherlock The Killing, and Miranda. This particular category firmly reassured me that my cynicism of the voting public was indeed well placed, and any positive emotion I may have had regarding Zimbabwe’s Lost Children’s great work had rapidly been replaced with misanthropy! But clearly, judging by the votes, that’s just me…

The special recognitions of the evening were incredibly well deserved, though. Peter Bennett-Jones was awarded the Special Award for his outstanding work in the industry and his continued dedication to the developing of new talent. Lastly, the Fellowship was presented to Sir Trevor McDonald in recognition for his exceptional work in news broadcasting.

For more on the BAFTAs, including red carpet interviews, backstage with the winners, and a full list of the nominees and winners, please click here.

Doctor Who - The Rebel Flesh Review

This review can also be found on Step2Inspire.

The Rebel Flesh marks the second episode Matthew Graham has written for Doctor Who, his first being the rather unremarkable Fear Her from 2006. However, the Rebel Flesh was of a markedly higher quality than Fear Her, if still running a little slow. That’s not to say the episode was particularly bad, it just wasn’t of the kind of quality we’ve been spoilt by in regards to the opening two-parter and the Doctor’s Wife.

The TARDIS is caught in a solar tsunami and hurtled to 22nd century Earth, a point in our future which seems to be decidedly industrialised, where the Doctor, Amy and Rory discover a monastery-turned-mining-operation largely occupied by workers from the northern counties (Foreman Cleaves excluded). Clearly the future subscribes to a stereotypical view of the working class! Dopplegangers (simply referred to as Gangers) are employed to carry out tasks deemed too hazardous for humans to complete. The Gangers are completely expendable, and are incapable of feeling pain, so appear to be the ideal work force for dangerous tasks (despite obvious ethical complications).

The creation of each Ganger is strongly reminiscent of the resurrection technique employed by the humanoid Cylons in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, and used for very much the same effect. One copy dies, another is reborn.

However, as with any SciFi in which an artificial work-force is taken for granted (Galactica, again), it’s only a matter of time before that work-force becomes sentient and starts demanding human rights. Violently. The Gangers are no different, and after a second solar tsunami they all get a bit self-righteousy and a little bit perturbed at their original selves. The ‘natural’ workers, of course, respond the way most people do in this situation - with an equal level of fear, loathing and violence. It appears only the Doctor and Co (and the Co to a lesser degree) have a sense of perspective on the situation, and the Doctor attempts to broker an agreement between the two factions. This is inevitably thwarted by the inexplicably infuriating Foreman Cleaves (Raquel Cassidy), whose classic narrow-sighted authoritarianism results in the rekindling of the fire of war. And now the Doctor has a Ganger who may or may not be as inclined to murder and violence as the others.

The episode itself was not intrinsically bad, and it had a fair few elements to keep the viewer watching, but it didn’t feel as if it was getting anywhere. Evidently, judging by the cliff-hanger, the Rebel Flesh was simply the set-up for next week’s episode, and it definitely provided a good basis for the story, but only really got interesting towards the final five minutes.

In context of the continuity and obscure arc’s running throughout this season, the hatch-opening-eye-patch-lady makes a return after her much deserved holiday from opening hatches and being enigmatic last week (or perhaps she had difficulty opening a hatch to outside the Universe?), but this time around she has nothing to say and closes it again. “Curiouser and curiouser.” cried Alice, whilst she sat drinking tea with the March Hare and I.

The Doctor is also seen scanning Amy’s on-off pregnancy again (still unbeknownst to her) in the opening of the episode. I hear speculation that perhaps eye-patch-woman is the midwife who delivers Amy’s wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey baby, who is most likely the little girl who regenerated at the end of Day of the Moon, who may or may not have been the astronaut who killed the Doctor. Further theories suggest that perhaps the child, Amy’s baby, and so on, is River Song, who then kills the Doctor. All of which is quite probable, but I’m not willing to place my money on anything just yet!

But by far the more tantalising question I’m left with at the end of the Rebel Flesh is how they intend to deal with the duplicate Time Lord. Will he be more of a help or a hindrance? Is his fate to be sealed in the next episode, whether he needs to be destroyed or left to his own devices? And is this how the Doctor will cheat his death that we have foreseen in the Impossible Astronaut?

So many questions, and still so few answers… How I love an intriguing plot-arc!

If you missed the Rebel Flesh, you can catch it on iPlayer here.

Much Ado, But Certainly Not About Nothing!

It was with great pleasure I was able to attend one of the preview shows for the highly acclaimed and much anticipated production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Wyndham’s Theatre on Friday night (20th May). Having already seen a couple of productions of this particular play, and performing in one of them, I was already very well acquainted with the narrative. This production of Much Ado, directed by Josie Rourke, was unlike any other I have seen, but felt almost like it was exactly how it was meant to be done.

One of the first things that strikes you about the piece is that it’s been modernised. Although it maintains the original Elizabethan dialogue, the play has been brought to 1980’s Gibraltar with Don Pedro’s (Adam James) men serving in the navy. Having just returned from battle, the men stay for a lengthy period of R&R in the company of good senior Leonato (Jonathan Coy), enjoying a week of parties and courtship.

The physical comedy and little add-ons throughout made it a much more enjoyable and memorable production compared to some others (which abide by the original script almost religiously). Pleasant choices for extra character depth, such as Don John (Elliot Levey) purposefully undoing the hard, Rubik‘s-cube-solving work of a small child was gleefully presented. The added levels of slap-stick and farce made the show enjoyable all round, providing laughs for those not already familiar with Shakespeare’s work.

By far the most outstanding aspect of Much Ado, though, had to be the banter between Benedick and Beatrice, spectacularly performed by David Tennant and Catherine Tate. As many will know from the pair’s time together on Doctor Who, they have marvellous chemistry both on-stage and off, providing the most natural and sublime interpretation of the character’s and their love/hate relationship. Their individual and collaborative performances truly stole the show, just as any Benedick and Beatrice should!

I obviously should not fail to mention the stellar performance of the other central characters, Claudio (Tom Bateman) and Hero (Sarah MacRae). MacRae displays a markedly more passionate and feisty Hero than one might expect (that is, if one has seen the 1994 version of Much Ado directed by and starring Kenneth Brannagh), but it certainly is not out of place and is a refreshing take on a character that has often been portrayed as being more mild-mannered and submissive. Bateman portrays the quintessential Count Claudio, polite and well-tempered but quick to embrace his passion and anguish. This is the West End debut for both of these artists, which when taken into consideration makes their performance all the more remarkable. These are definitely two people to watch.

The overall casting worked perfectly, every actor providing an excellent performance no matter how small their role, and everyone was clearly enjoying themselves. It was evidently a production that every member of cast and crew loved! It was such an impressive production it is hard to find any fault with it at all, and I was so gripped at one point my drink and my mouth did not meet for near on twenty  minutes! Overall, it was a production that I’m sure if Shakespeare had been sat in the audience watching, he would have been proud!

The evening concluded with a standing ovation, and if that’s not a credit to the sublime performance of the cast and the spectacular directing from Josie Rourke, I don’t know what is!

The opening night for Much Ado is on the 1st June, and will run until 1st September. Tickets can be purchased here.