Tuesday 27 October 2020

Time is Relative - The Android Invasion

Good evening and welcome to another ramshackle account of the adventures of TV's Doctor Who. Oh sure, other people can give you accurate information about the episodes, or offer informed commentary on the themes. 
But can they do it with such a thrilling disregard for what actually happened in the story?

I doubt it. 





This week, Doctor Who lands on Earth and so of course he goes straight to the pub. His face wears a look of grim determination, as if he's already mapped out the next four days worth of drinking, and has clear targets for what will constitute an acceptable hangover. 

The pub is mysteriously deserted. Which suits Doctor Who fine, but is kind of weird. It's the 70s, after all, and drinking during the day is not so much frowned upon as actively encouraged. 





Eventually a bar guy turns up, and so Doctor Who instantly starts being weird at him and playing with his things. The man does not really react with any surprise, which means either 

a) this is not really Earth, but a fake version without any of the nuances of the real thing, or

b) this man has met Doctor Who before.






Quite soon, Sarah Jane trips and falls down a hill, and her face comes off. It turns out she's a robot or something. Albeit one that comes to bits quite easily. 

I don't think she's always been a robot, in all the previous stories. I think this is just a pretend version, that turned up recently. Otherwise, it's a marvel her face hasn't come off a number of times already. She does do a lot of falling off things. 

Also, Doctor Who would be furious to find out that he had a super killer robot with him all the time, and she never said anything. All that running away, when he could have just been shouting, "Murder Davros, Sarah! Crush his ugly green skull with your metal hands!"





Sarah-Robot soon gets on with the business of trying to kill Doctor Who. She doesn't seem to mind that her face is still off, and that she looks both nightmarish and faintly ridiculous at the same time. 

You'd think that if you programmed a robot to impersonate someone, so closely as to fool their very best friends, that you'd give it some fairly clear instructions. Like, "Try to speak with the same mannerisms," and, "Don't mention anything about our plot to destroy the humans," and, "If your face falls off, make sure to put it back on."






Doctor Who is starting to think that he's not really on Earth. There is no beer in the pub, and everyone is being really boring and not reacting to any of his hilarious attempts to confuse them. Plus there's the thing with Sarah's face coming off.

He's very keen to get back to normal Earth, where he can start being wilfully eccentric and get a proper reaction out of people. Oh, and warn them about the invasion of killer robot duplicates. Probably. If he gets time. 





This is the King Alien, who is in charge of all the robots. He's a Kraal, and his main thing is building robots and doing invasions. His face wears the familiar expression of someone who has had his afternoon ruined by the madcap antics of Doctor Who. 

He's hanging out with his little human mate, who he clearly despises. Human Guy is pathetically desperate to impress King Alien, and has gone to such desperate lengths as accidentally betraying Earth, helping out with the invasion and trying to look cool by wearing an eyepatch. 

Having said all that, they do appear to be holding hands, so maybe it's just one of those bitchy relationships that works despite itself. 






Real-Sarah has been captured and is hanging out with the aliens. Except look - it's Harry! We thought he'd left. 

Well, it turns out it's not Harry. It's a bad Robot doing a disguise. Sarah can tell right away, even without Harry's face coming off. He's scowling. you see. Real Harry would never scowl. 

I think, even if he was about to murder you, real Harry would look, at worst, slightly apologetic, as if he was about to ask you to give back that five pounds you borrowed. 






King Alien captures Doctor Who as well, and ties him to a big stone thing in the middle of town. He's off to invade Real Earth now, you see, so he's going to blow up the pretend one. Which seems short sighted. Guaranteed the minute he destroys it, he'll think of something that it would be really handy for. 

This would have been a good argument for Doctor Who to make. "Don't blow everything up - you might need it later." But no. He just does his usual thing of taunting the villain and being really rude about his personal appearance. 

Have you ever stopped to think, Doctor Who, that maybe if you weren't so petulant and borderline racist all the time, and stopped calling everyone ugly whenever you disagreed with them, then maybe they'd stop tying you to bombs? 





Doctor Who escapes, of course, and ends up having to hang out with Eyepatch Guy. This does not appear to fill him with joy. 

I think they're on the way to Real-Earth. Eyepatch guy talks excitedly for the whole journey about how ace it's going to be, and how everyone's going to really get on with his Alien mates, and what does Doctor Who think people will make of his cool new image, with the eyepatch and everything?

Doctor Who has clearly developed an instant hatred for this man, and expresses it by telling him that his Alien mates are evil, and he's betrayed Earth, and everyone who dies is his fault, and his eyepatch is the only thing he could imagine that would make his already stupid face look stupider.







Doctor Who eventually gets to Earth and starts to give some thought to stopping the invasion. There is a lot of exciting running around, featuring these Space Suit Robots, who shoot people with their fingers!

Doctor Who looks quite disbelieving here, and with good reason. Sure, the Robots might have super cool finger-guns. Or, perhaps more plausibly, they might have forgotten to bring their guns, and be trying to style it out. 






There's more zany fun later, as Doctor Who meets a Robot version of himself. He's not bothered, obviously, and is clearly focusing less on the prospect of imminent death than on the excellent possibilities this will afford for skiving work.

The existence of a Robot Doctor Who does raise the question - what were the aliens hoping to achieve with this? Let's say the Robot version successfully takes the place of the real one. What then? No-one ever listens to him anyway, and he's always getting arrested and called a spy and nearly killed. 

I give it three days before Robot Doctor Who comes back to the office, crying and saying he doesn't want to do it anymore and can he just be a photocopier or something please?

The story ends with victory for Doctor Who, or possibly his Robot duplicate. One of them goes off into space, with Sarah. 

Or possibly her Robot duplicate.



Tuesday 20 October 2020

Time is Relative - The Pyramids of Mars

 

Well if it isn't you, with all your hair and face and loveliness. Welcome, once more, to my half remembered ramble through the history of Doctor Who. This week, the Pyramids! Of Maaaaaars!



This story finds Doctor Who peering out from under his hat to see if anyone has noticed how unusual he's being. 

People are not paying enough attention to him, so he's putting a lot of effort into being extra weird and alien. Apparently the massive scarf and nonsensical hat aren't enough to signal "Look out, here comes someone with one heck of a personality." So he's thrown "moody sulking" into the mix. 




The story, when finally Doctor Who deigns to glance its way, is very exciting. This guy, in the super excellent fez, lives in a house full of Egypt stuff and and maybe is Egyptian himself, even though they all live in England for some reason.

I like how casual he is about it all. If I get a new poster on the wall I basically spend all day hopping up and down waiting for someone to comment on it. But this guy is all "Yeah, I've got a massive sarcophagus in my lounge. It's no biggie."




It all kicks off big time when - hurray! - some giant evil Egyptian Mummies burst out of the woods and start murdering everyone.

These are a truly excellent design and look very much like they mean business. I think even a Cyberman would do a gasp if he saw these two lumbering out of the dark. He'd think, "I know I don't have any emotions, but I also know that Cybermen aren't meant to wee in their suits, and I've definitely done that."




The Mummies are chasing this guy. He was just wandering around near the house, and now he's having to run away before he gets hit to death by the Mummies. 

I don't know why they're so keen to kill him. Maybe they're just angry, because they've woken up confused, like wasps. "Why are we in England? Why am I covered in bandages? What's going on?"




The guy has fooled the mummies, by the cunning plan of standing next to a tree. This has totally foxed the Mummies, and they are absolutely at a loss what to do next. 

I think the guy is meant to be a poacher. I've never come across these characters except 

a) being murdered by aliens in Doctor Who and 

b) selling eels to Withnail and I. 

As I understand it, they are some kind of wood dwelling vagabond. This one has quite snappy dress sense, though, I think, for someone who lives in a ditch.





Soon the Mummies catch the poacher guy, and squash him to death between their angular bosoms. 

It will later transpire that the Mummes are really robots. I can only assume, then, that these strange, protruding chest things are specifically designed for slicing off people's heads. Otherwise... I mean, what's the thinking? Who designs a big killer evil Mummy thing, and then gives it a giant triangular chest? 

Or are they... are they meant to look sexy? Is that why the poacher looks so distraught? He's thinking, "I hope they kill me before anyone sees us and thinks we're friends."





Doctor Who and Sarah eventually turn up and start to dick about with all the Egypt things. They haven't even bothered to find out what's going on, they just think "Oh look, someone's doing something - let's fiddle with it and break things and move stuff and put it somewhere else."

What if it's a nice thing, Doctor Who? What if it's a surprise birthday party and you've ruined it? What if the poacher guy was a heroin smuggler, and the Mummies are just two really unorthodox cops who don't play by the rules?




Meanwhile, these two guys are having an argument. They are brothers, so this isn't too unusual. This isn't like that argument I had with my brother, though, which ended with me pulling off Boba Fett's head and laughing while he cried. No. 

This one basically goes:

Pathetic Moustache Brother: "Why are you being so weird and murdery since you got back from that Mysterious Tomb in Egypt?"

Cadaverous Clearly Evil Brother: "Why do you prattle so, puny human? I mean... nothing's wrong, I've just been driving all day.  How's mum?"

He murders him, obviously.





Meanwhile, in space, this guy is watching everything and going, "Yeah!" He's the main bad guy, and he's called Sutekh. He lives on this chair, and he's been stuck there for ages because, years ago, he was a massively evil space-jerk and all his friends ganged up on him and stuck him to a chair forever. 

All the stuff with the Mummies and Egypt is his idea. He wants to get off the chair, and so he keeps shouting things like, "Do my bidding!" and "Make evil happen!" and "Kill more poachers!"

Apparently this will help.





The Mummies build a big space rocket. At least that's what they tell everyone. It doesn't really resemble a rocket at all, does it? This would explain why they are all standing in such defensive 'hard man' stances, as if daring anyone to say, "Why have you built a big vinyl tent in the garden? Are you having a pretend festival?"

I think it's meant to go to Mars, and set Sutekh free, or something. If it destroys... something... then he... gets out of the chair. I'll be honest, I've never really paid much attention to what's happening. It's all too exciting and scary for me to properly settle.




Evil Cadaverous Brother turns out to have the rather mundane job of bossing the Mummies about. You can tell that he's a bit deflated by this. He was clearly expecting bigger things from his job as Villainous Ghoul than 'supervise the efficient loading of a rubbish looking rocket, on schedule and without damaging the original wood flooring of the house."

He's a good villain, but he needs some underlings that he can yell sarcastic insults at. The Mummies have excellent upper body strength, but they don't really listen, so it's impossible to make them sad.




Kaboom! Shoot!

I don't know what Doctor Who has been up to in this story, but it's clearly not much. For all the difference Doctor Who has made, this might as well be called "The Amazing Sutekh Show - episode five, Everyone Nice Gets Horribly Killed".

Sarah has clearly had enough, and has found herself a massive gun. It was only a matter of time, really, before she tired of Doctor Who's idiosyncratic approach to evil. "Ooh, let's talk to it. Let's wave jelly babies in its face. Let's try to see the good in it until it dies of shame! Let's press a button and hope it makes the story end for no reason."





Towards the end of the story, everyone goes to Mars. Here we see Evil Cadaverous Brother poking furiously at one of the many puzzles that you apparently have to do if you want to see Sutekh. 

He is definitely not having a fun time. It was good earlier, when he was strutting around being the embodiment of evil and murdering his brother, and watching the Mummies charge excitedly after people. Now literally everyone he could conceivably kill is already dead, and here he is, frustrated by this nonsense.

What's next? A huge sudoku? Evil Candy Crush? 





The final test for Doctor Who and Sarah is when they meet these fancy Bling Mummies and have to play stupid logic games with them. It's one of those "If I'm telling the truth, but my mate says I'm lying, but then I say I'm not..." things, where you've got to use clever thinking or Sarah Jane will suffocate in her big tube.

Sarah looks very concerned, and with good reason. She's realised that Doctor Who has, right this very second, run out of enthusiasm for this story. If she's lucky, he'll tell the fancy Mummies the answer to their stupid quiz before her lungs explode, but then there'll be no getting anything useful out of him for the rest of the day, and they might as well just go home. 

As I recall, that's pretty much what happens. Sutekh does escape, and vows to destroy all living matter in the universe etc. But Doctor Who defeats him by getting out a device no-one has ever seen before and pressing some buttons.

It's a poor ending to an otherwise delightful story. Ah well. You can't have everything. 


See you next time, for more, similar nonsense. 



Tuesday 13 October 2020

Time is Relative - Planet of Evil

 Good evening one and all. It's time for another erratic journey into the adventures of Doctor Who. 



It's a typical evening in the TARDIS for Doctor Who and his lovely companion Sarah Jane Smith. They appear to be experiencing rather different levels of fun, don't they?

I don't know what Doctor Who has got his eye on, but it's clearly the best thing he has ever seen in his entire life. He's laughing like a madman, which can only mean that he's discovered somewhere incredibly dangerous and weird, and he's about to ask Sarah if they can go and play there please. 

Sarah will probably say yes. She increasingly resembles a young mother who is running out of ways to keep her toddler occupied. Any distraction is welcome at this point - even a planet literally made of Evil. 



After landing on the planet, Doctor Who and Sarah do an explore and discover a big pool of Definitely Evil Stuff. 

It's quite pleasing that they do all their playing out together these days. In the old days, Doctor Who would wander off from his companions almost instantly and they would be forced to have their own adventures until he remembered they existed and came to find them. Nowadays everyone tends to stick together all the time - mostly because this version of Doctor Who simply cannot be trusted to go out unsupervised.

For example, it is very clear here that Doctor Who is seriously considering jumping into the pool to see what happens. Sarah is calmly explaining, yet again, that responsible adults don't spend all their time jumping into pools of Evil and what if it turns out to lead to another dimension? Has he even thought about that? 



After a while, a Plot happens. Some quite dull Space Guys come along, and start moaning about how the planet is full of terrible invisible monsters or something, and all their friends are dying. 

The guy in the middle is not, as his appearance would suggest, a director of low budget specialist erotica. Rather, he is some sort of Space Scientist. He wants to do lots of experiments and tamper with nature and all that. The incredibly old man on the left is saying, "Let's not tamper with nature and all that, because if we do, we will all definitely die."

Doctor Who has completely zoned out, as you can see. He is not interested even one bit in their problems. He's had loads of adventures that are about a million times as exciting as this, and these guys haven't even had the good grace to capture him and attach electrodes to his brain and accuse him of being a spy. Stupid boring space guys. 



This is an excellent picture of Sarah Jane, isn't it? She's ever so well lit, and looks like she's having all the emotions. 

I can't remember what she's looking at. Maybe the Planet of Evil has possessed her or something? That happens to Sarah a lot. Barely a day goes past where some kind of alien intelligence doesn't leap into her mind and tell her to murder everybody she meets. 

At least, that's what Sarah tells everyone. Luckily for her, the villain is generally dead at the end of the story, and doesn't have chance to refute her oh-so-convenient alibi. "Possess her? No. I can't possess people. What's she said?"



Doctor Who has found a quite lovely Space Jungle, and is having fun exploring it. It's very colourful, and makes all sorts of weird noises. Also there's an enjoyable Invisible Death Beast thing floating around somewhere. 

Usually Doctor Who loves this sort of thing, and can be found grinning like a lunatic as everyone is horribly killed all over the place. But he seems a bit sombre today, doesn't he? I think it's because there isn't a proper villain in this one. 

He likes a villain does Doctor Who. They take everything very seriously and so they are very easy to wind up. This jungle is mysterious and a bit evil, but it's all rather abstract. You can't make trees cry, no matter how many times you veer off into another non-sequitur.



Eventually... well I'll be honest I can't quite remember. I think it turns out that the Planet of Evil is cross with the Space Guys, because they tried to steal some anti-matter, or something. Everyone has to decide if they want to a) steal the anti-matter and get sucked into another universe and die horribly or b) don't.

It's not massively involving, and you can kind of tell by the way everyone is reacting. Doctor Who and Sarah Jane look a bit concerned, but only about as much as you would be if you'd heard someone famous had died, but you kind of thought they'd died years ago, and now you're confused about how sad to be.

The Space Guys, meanwhile, are approaching the dilemma with all the drama of a quiz team trying to remember who played James Bond in the most films, Sean Connery or Roger Moore, and not able to agree whether to include 'Never Say Never Again.'

In the end, I think they choose to not die, and give the anti-matter back. Doctor Who has not had a very satisfying experience. 

Cheer up, Doctor Who. Now you can say you defeated a whole Planet of Evil. 

Just don't go into detail.




Want more? The previous story - Terror of the Zygons - is here!




Thursday 1 October 2020

Mother Foucault

It's National Poetry Day, so here's a poem. If you don't enjoy poetry, please pretend it is a pie or some nice new socks or something. 




Mother Foucault

I’m a poem for you 

and I’m self referential

I’m inclined to a half rhyme 

To avoid the appearance of being

Too reverential

It’s a difficult trick to step out of convention


To express heartfelt interest in 

Your form and your content

Without becoming entranced by the means of production

Without losing myself to

A kind of seduction.

The language of romance

Is the means, not the end


All my rhythms and rhymes are just

Tricks to pretend I have

Said something new, 

Gone beyond semiotics

Found a way to communicate

Feelings and knowledge

Outside of the constraints of regular discourse.


And Foucault would tell us that’s not how it works

He’d laugh at our ideas and he’d tell us we’re jerks

And he’d say, “There’s no finding a path to the end.

 - There’s only the moment of starting again”


And he’s right, that old guy, with his postmodern gaze,

There’s no end to the writing, even though I try hard

To avoid the cliches, we’ll just have to make do

With this constant renewal

And trust that the burning of draft after draft,

Is creating the fuel, and renewing the flame


So it never runs out

And it’s never the same

And we misunderstand

And we stand

By the window frame