Girl Done Good

She’s suffered some stick our Catherine has.

In the lead up to the current series of Doctor Who poor Ms Tate’s name was dragged through the mud, trampled on and urinated over worse than one of East End Gran’s hand crocheted blankets.

And I have to raise a beautifully manicured hand and say that I too was guilty of unwarranted and heinous crimes against the red headed one.

To be fair though most of us were basing our opinions on the Doctor Who Christmas Special where Catherine’s character, Donna Noble, first made her televisual appearance. It was horrific. Donna Noble was brash, screechy, snotty and LOUD. Very loud.

But you know what? None of that was her fault. I blame the script writers. It was their fault. Shoot ‘em, I say.

Because suddenly with decent scripts, decent character development and an all round softening of her character traits, Donna Noble has transformed into the saviour of the show. I honestly feel that she’s the best thing to have happened to Doctor Who (“the new generation”) since Billie Piper started wearing lower cut tops in series 2 – or did I fantasize that?

And for that I credit the script writers. Allow them to regenerate, I say (with the possible exception of Russell T Davis).

Donna Noble is a mature, self confident woman as opposed to a flighty, easily impressed twenty-something and that fact alone has injected the show with something more solid and weightily resonant than a mere lovelorn travelling companion. As pleasant as Rose Tyler and Martha Jones were their moo-cow eyes began to grate on my nerves very quickly.

Donna Noble might be in awe of the Doctor but she doesn’t think he’s perfect. Not at all. She’s aware that he’s fallible. That he needs someone to rein him in, to hold him back. To question his motives. This creates a much more equally balanced relationship. The balance of power is as close to 50 / 50 as it’s ever been. There’s 2 way respect on the Tardis and that is always going to be far healthier than the alternative: a companion constantly falling into an admiring swoon while the Doctor looks on patronizingly... aah, good human, you’re so cute!

Donna ain’t cute and I like her all the more for it. She’s intelligent and doesn’t have to be led. She can jump to her own conclusions and work things out for herself. She can contribute intellectually and meaningfully. She can challenge. And my God does Tennant’s Doctor need that. He’s a great bloke and a great Doctor but he’s needed someone strong to restrain him for a long time. Tate is at last providing that strength.

And as TimeWarden has already pointed out, Tate also provides a vulnerability that is based on a sensitive assessment of any given situation rather than a mawkish, girlish response. She’s morally sussed. Intelligence and worldly experience are definitely the keys to her character’s success.

The other bonus of course is that without the soap opera storyline of unrequited love constantly getting in the way the show can concentrate on what we, the viewers, really want to see: decent, well thought out sci-fi.

Hoo-bloody-ray I say. Saturday night’s are halfway decent again.

All they need to do now is get the costume department to lower her tops...

Joke.

Oh Lurcio!

I feel somewhat ambivalent about last night's episode of Doctor Who.

The Pyrovile rock monsters looked like rejects from the Transformers movie (maybe they thought the Tardis was the Allspark cube?) and sounded like a dodgy haemarroid cream. I also felt that Phil Davis - a terrific actor - was rather wasted as Lucius Petrus Dextrus (what, he can carry Chihuahuas in both hands?).

The 'limbs turning to stone' thing was rather ridiculous too. Phil Davis spent much of the episode running around like a vandalized one armed bandit. I was constantly waiting for the Doctor to score three cherries (but alas the Syballine Oracles weren't at all interested in his sonic screwdriver).

And yet the story overall did pack quite a bit of emotional punch. The history of Pompeii is well documented but still manages to move (unless you're as hard hearted as the Pyrovile of course) and the writers capitalized on this resonance by wisely focusing our attention on a select few of the town's inhabitants - making the sense of tragedy personal rather than general. The scene where Donna tries to rescue a small child from the panic before it is snatched away by its mother was superb. Very simple but it hit the target big time and Catherine Tate proved beyond all doubt that she is a superb actress in the harrowing scenes that followed.

I also liked the fact that Donna is acting as a "moral earth" to Tennant's Doctor - grounding him a little in the minutiae of existence rather than merely seeing the universe as a massive binary tapestry of what is and what is not meant to be. Their relationship is set to be far more rewarding for us viewers than the Doctor's previous travels with the lovelorn Martha Jones.

If only Donna could lose some of her Essex girl attitude when under life threatening stress... it is a little off putting to have her shout things like, "'Ere babe, no, leave it aht, wot you fink you're doin'?" etc when the proverbial is about to hit the fan. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit but I was half expecting her to whip out a white hand bag and pointy stilettos from beneath her amply bosomed toga.

The rine in Spine falls menly on the pline, anyone?

Belly's Gonna Get Yer

The fourth series of RTD's Doctor Who hit our TV screens last night with something of a greasy splat... little blobby creatures made from the excess body fat of the clinically obese were running amuck in London. Well. Not running exactly. More like waddling very slowly and occasionally hyperventilating when they passed a chip shop.

The evil Miss Foster - deliciously played by Sarah Lancashire - had come up with the ultimate diet pill that literally made your fat "just walk away". So what's the problem, I hear you ask? Well. To maximise productivity of these little creatures - Adipose, as they were called (such a stupid name, they sound like a brand of trainers) - the unfortunate dieters were being reduced to nothing but a pile of oversized clothes. Britain's burgeoning obesity problems solved in one fell swoop you might think but no... by a marvellous script coincidence both the good Doctor and Donna Noble were attempting to put a stop to it.

Ta da! Welcome to the wacky world of the BBC's Doctor Who.

Actually, it was fairly entertaining stuff and although it didn't say anything intelligent about the UK's obesity problems and the worldwide obsession with quick-fix dieting I suppose the story could be seen as mildly satirical. It just didn't go anywhere with it. The Adipose themselves were a bit of a disappointment too. Way too cutesy by half. Little blocks of lard with arms and legs and, rather bizarrely, a single solitary tooth in their little Mr Men mouths. If the Pillsbury Dough-boy and the Michelin Man ever spent a night together in unholy bodily union, the Adipose would be the end result.

But at the end of the day the Adipose were a sideshow. The real focus of last night's episode was Donna Noble's promotion to Doctor Who's travelling companion number twenty-whatever...

So, how did she do? Was she a harridan? Was she a travesty?

I'm possibly going to break ranks with a great number of people when I say that no, I don't think she was. The girl did good. Sure there was the occasional nod to the "Catherine Tate comedy persona" - mouthing "Oh my God" through the window at the Doctor for example - but other than that she was reigned in by the script and her character was given more character and less caricature. And it worked. All at once she was less annoying than her Christmas special debut and became more of a sympathetic, well rounded, likeable character. And a strong character too.

It'll actually be nice to have a foil for the doctor who isn't mooning over him and sighing over his every twitch with the sonic screwdriver. Martha's moo-cow eyes last series were seriously starting to grate on my nellies. In fact as was said on Doctor Who Confidential afterwards: Donna Noble is a "grown up" whereas Rose and Martha were lovelorn teens / twenty-somethings. The Doctor has at last got an older woman on board the Tardis and it might just do him some good.

So dare I say it? A promising start to the fourth series! And Bernard Cribbins as Donna's grandfather played a blinder too.

Well phat.

Cat Scan

News that Catherine Tate is to be the next “permanent” Doctor Who companion has been causing a fair bit of furore in both the UK national press and the Bloggosphere.

The general response has been a resounding, “Oi, Russell T. Davis – NO!” though whether Russell, Doctor Who’s head writer/writer in charge (or whatever he wants to call himself), will actually listen is a matter of some debate.

I suspect he won’t which leaves us with the worrying prospect of Catherine Tate appearing in all 13 episodes of season 4.

A number of Doctor Who stalwarts have already voiced their concerns most eloquently – TimeWarden being once of them – and it’s not my intention to repeat what has already been said but nevertheless I feel the need to cast my hat into the ring.

I don’t hate Catherine Tate in the slightest. I love her comedy shows and think her a competent actress. I’ll even admit to finding something very attractive about her though she always seems intent on taking a bad photograph. (Karen and I are convinced she has issues regarding her looks but that’s a subject for another post...)

What I didn’t like was the character that Catherine played in last year’s Christmas special, The Runaway Bride. “Donna Noble” was just too shrewish and too fish-wifey to be an effective long-term companion. She grated. She jarred. She was a one-trick pony. Does the Doctor really need a stereotypical, constantly nagging female companion on his travels?

What next? Bernard Manning style mother-in-law jokes?

The trouble with Donna Noble is that her creator has confused volume with depth. The character is irritatingly two-tone and two-dimensional to say the least. And that’s hardly fair on Catherine Tate’s abilities.

But maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe a fantastic back story is even now being composed? Maybe scintillating scripts are even now being prepared and salivated over by Russell T and his crew?

The trouble is I suspect that Russell T has utterly no sense of quality control. He was swooning over the season 3 finale last Saturday for example and, to be frank, “Last Of The Timelords” was complete and utter cack. Ineffably risible.

It doesn’t bode well for the fourth season at all.

The problem is I can see Catherine Tate being turned into a convenient scapegoat and I think – if all does go belly up (though hopefully it’ll remain paws down) – the real blame will actually lie elsewhere...

But is Russell T Davis bovered?