The Return Of The Der-Bains

When you’re at school certain insults do the rounds like a weird kind of grammatical virus. Two that stand out for me are “wassock” and “pranite”, both of which became very popular in the early eighties and were slung about my junior school playground like disyllabic Molotov cocktails.

But the one that caught on the most and had the biggest impact was “der-brain”. Anyone who did or said anything remotely idiotic (which when you are 10 or 11 is a regular occurrence) was declaimed in as loud a voice as possible as being a “der-brain”. Adopting a heavily spasticated tone of voice was also thought de rigeur when using this insult.

I’m sure this insult went national during the eighties and was heard in playgrounds (and building sites) all over the land. However, what I am sure was a purely local phenomenon was the transmutation that occurred one day when in my school playground at least “der-brain” suddenly morphed into “der-bain”. The meaning stayed the same but the loss of that single “r” somehow rendered the insult (a) funnier and (b) more effective. Being labelled a “der-bain” was a good degree worse than being labelled a “der-brain”.

Eventually, as these things do, these schoolyard insults died away to be replaced with boring, standardized, post puberty expletive combinations. Insulting someone became a cold and precise undertaking with no real room for imagination or the invention of new language forms. So “der-brain” – and indeed “der-bain” – died a natural death and dropped away from the general lexicon of childhood foulmouthedness.

Until last Sunday.

I must have dug “der-bain” out of my memory and uttered it at home or talked about it to Karen... who knows... but suddenly I heard it coming out of the mouth of Ben, my eldest boy. He was playing in the bath with some minifigures while I did some chores in the office and I could hear him re-enacting various scenes from Doctor Who. David Tennant’s last episode featuring the return of the Timelords (and a viciously spitting Timothy Dalton) had obviously made a big impression.

The improvised script when something like this:

Timelords: kneel before us petty humans! You are no match for us – we are far cleverer than you are and you are nothing!

Humans: no we’re not; we’re cleverer than you think and we will defeat you, you der-bains...!

I have to say I stumbled in my chores and had to stifle a giggle. It took me right back to the playground. I am now wondering if, with some clever auto-suggestion, I can resurrect “wassock” and “pranite” for a new generation.

In the meantime, if Steven Moffatt and the BBC would like to purchase a brand new Doctor Who script with cool playground lingo they can contact me via this blog.

Toodle-pip, der-bains.

Who Needs Easter Eggs When You Have Eye Candy...?

Apologies to my international readers (oh how I love saying that) who don't have access to UK terrestrial television but it's been a bumper weekend for both TV and the BBC. Friday saw the return of Ashes To Ashes - the third and final series - and yesterday saw the return of Doctor Who.

Suddenly weekend television is great again.

Given the media stir that both these programmes create surely TV executives everywhere must be able to interpret this as a clear vote for more quality drama on our televisions and less of the (comparatively cheaper to make which is why so much of it is made) reality TV tosh that infects UK programming schedules like slugs around a lettuce bed?

Hmm.

But back to the plot: the first instalment of Ashes To Ashes was shockingly dark. The actual crime story of the episode almost took second place to the black undercurrents of trouble occurring within the police team that Alex Drake finds herself trapped within. The apparently unassailable Gene Hunt suddenly finds himself confronted with a sly nemesis in the shape of Discipline and Complaints officer, DCI Jim Keats - a strange mix of East End wide boy and geeky university post-grad. A cocktail that is never going to appeal to the Gene Genie. And there is nothing poetic about Keats. He is wheedling, he is smarmy, he is two-faced. He is courting Alex Drake - albeit only professionally at the moment - but has already voiced his hatred of Hunt to the great man's face. There was a lovely TV moment when, caught within the glass of Hunt's closing office door, Keats's reflections passed across the image of Hunt like a glowering cloud. Matter and antimatter. Dark and light.

There are uncomfortable secrets about to be revealed. Keats promises to reveal the truth about Hunt... and by extension, the truth about Drake's predicament in this 1980's world. And I suspect it's going to be nasty.

I have to be honest and say that Keeley Hawes could be dressed as a tramp and I'd still watch her but Alex Drake is a fabulous creation and is actually a better foil for Hunt's blustering machismo than Sam Tyler ever could have been. In the end, Sam became one of the boys. This is something Alex Drake can never be. Certainly not with those amazing legs anyway...

...and talking of legs, Karen Gillan made a rather long legged splash onto our TV screens as Doctor Who's new companion. Dressed as a policewoman kissogram with legs longer than the double doors of the Tardis (but, I suspect, leading to a box far more exciting - sorry, couldn't resist; am high on chocolate this Easter morning) Amy Pond established herself within the Doctor Who world with serious redheaded aplomb. In a single episode Steven Moffat has again proved himself to me to be one of this country's finest screenwriters. This first episode crackled with tension, humour, in-jokes, Whovian references and technological cleverness. Unlike R.T. Davies who, God bless him, knows drama from a soapy / emotional standpoint, Moffat understands science and technology. He understands time as well as people. Without blowing too much of the plot for those of you who are still to see it, he establishes a truly emotive link between Amy Pond and the new doctor with ease and without it feeling too clunky or contrived. This is what I like most about Moffat's writing. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is throw-away. Everything is well used.

And what of the new Doctor?

*Nods* Yeah.

I give him - Matt Smith - a thumbs up. I'd seen a couple of interviews with him and found him curiously "not quite likeable" but having watched last night's episode I can't knock his acting skills. Tennant is a hard act to follow but Smith has done it. He has the energy of Tennant's old doctor but also brings something more to it. An Englishness. An eccentricity that appears to be genuine and is, I suspect, as much a part of Smith's true real-life make-up as that of the character he plays. By the end of the episode I had accepted him fully as the Doctor. He had stamped his Gallifreyan DNA indelibly all over the role.

So. A victory for Moffat, Smith and Gillan.

A victory in fact for the BBC.

A proud morning to be British. Happy Easter everyone.

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.

Oven Ready

Class episode of Doctor Who last night.

My favourite line was Miss Jones panicked comment to the Doctor – “You’re defrosting!”

It made the Doctor sound like a Bernard Matthews’ oven ready meal. Hell, given her constant moocow eyes over the sonic screwdrivered one, I’m sure she’d be quite happy to tuck in to his thick piecrust pastry with or without gravy, hot or cold, any day of the week.

So is Mr Tennant a slice of prime Aberdeen Angus beef steak or just a mouldy old bit of ham from the back of the freezer?

Hmm. I suspect the former. I thought the whole cast were superb last night and Michelle Collins handled the Ripley-esque role of McDonnell excellently.

Now there was a hot dish. I have to say she was looking damn good.

Just a couple of seconds in the microwave and she’d be done...

Ping!

Ready to serve…

Doctor Who Exclusive!

Having lived for most of my life in the completely land-locked town of Leamington Spa I was mystified when a friend found a web site this morning that purported to tell the history of the Leamington Spa Life Boat Museum. It waxed lyrical about the brave life boat men of Leamington Spa as they risked their all on the high seas to save stricken sailors along the rough Leamington Spa coastline.

Leamington also appeared to have uprooted itself from deepest Warwickshire in the very heart of the country and re-sited itself near Carlisle on completely the wrong side of the UK!

What the hell was going on? Had I entered an alternative reality?

Almost.

Further investigation revealed that the source of this mystery lay with the BBC and Doctor Who. Follow the links below to find out more:

http://www.leamingtonspalifeboatmuseum.co.uk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_tie-in_websites#Leamington_Spa_Lifeboat_Museum

Future visitors to Leamington Spa please note: life jackets will not be fitted as standard.

Dalek Divergence

Four weeks into the new series of Doctor Who and it’s safe to say that Freema Agyeman has stepped up the plate admirably – she fits the bill, does the job, wears the hat and every other euphemism that defines universal acceptance.

The ghost of Rose Tyler has been well and truly exorcised. Helped no doubt by the fact that for the first time this season she wasn’t name-checked at some point by the Doctor. Much as I liked Rose it’s time she was laid to rest.

RIP (Rest In Panto).

And what of this week’s dynamic Dalek dichotomy?

In the words of my wife, Karen, the story was "classic Doctor Who" and that is high praise indeed. Daleks trundling menacingly down dark, murky corridors, American’s being genetically transformed into pig-men and a chorus line of gorgeously nubile NY broads. Hey – everything you need for a worthwhile Saturday night in.

I was dying for the Daleks to join the chorus line. Seeing Black Dalek Sec doing the Chattanooga choo choo would have been a marvellous piece of television. Ah well. Never mind. Maybe next week.

I liked the whole ambience of 1930’s New York and thought the show handled it well. It’s a big period to take on and capture but the show’s producers did so convincingly.

The story was excellent too – finely paced, plenty of action, political comment, social comment and fantastic emotion. Despite the proliferation of the Daleks the human element of this story was massive and helped make it a winner in my book.

My only niggle is the idea of the Daleks bending their obsessive adherence to species purity and splicing themselves genetically with humans – a far inferior species. Sure, I can understand the argument they expounded – the need to ensure their survival in the face of imminent extinction but even so. Why pick humans? Why pick the 1930s?

Why not splice a Dalek with a dolphin instead? Just as intelligent. Better swimmers. And they’ve got lovely disarming smiles.

Anybody for a Dalphin? Or a Dolphlek?

Catch a fish, anyone?

Verdict:

Reserved. But then I’ve always been a cautious wee soul.

But I will say that I enjoyed last night's episode hugely and think that the injection of Miss Jones (o-oer, Rigsby) will be a very good thing. She’s got a fire and an upfrontness which works well with Tennant’s frenetic Doctor. Straight in and no messing. In yer face geezer. Take it or leave it. Which was just what this first episode needed: a few nods to the past but mainly chowing down on the breakneck action of the present.

And what great action it was. Stompy aliens with massive horns and leather skirts rampaging around a hospital inexplicably sucked onto the moon, talking like Barry White farting into a biscuit tin and marking everybody with an X. Wow. Just like going to a nightclub in Birmingham. Only with more expensive looking women.

Talking of which, didn’t Freema look lovely. Always helps, doesn’t it, eye candy?

For me the only real question mark is over her family. How long before they grate so much on my tits that I start praying for another Darlek invasion to wipe them out? To be fair the only ones that really annoyed me were the dad and his blonde dolly bird. They were like a couple of characters from Eastenders only without the benefit of two dimensions. Too cartoony. The mother was good though.

Anyway, I think it’s far too early to say whether it’s an out and out success. The first episode gets a thumbs up but I’m going to give it a couple more weeks to see how it all beds down before I deliver my final judgment.

Unlike the Judoon, my judgment is not swift. Though it might be Swiftian…