There’s an elephant in the room, and it’s the idea of having oral sex with a disembodied head entombed within a stone slab. I’ll be ignoring it from now until the end of the review.

There’s a few new perspectives on Who that turned up in the New Adventures novels in the 90s, but have continued into this new series. The TARDIS was grown; it’s the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits that translate for you; the Doctor is what monsters have nightmares about. But my favourite is the idea that after hundreds of years of interference, the Universe has started to notice the Doctor. Clive thought he was a Phantom-like harbinger of doom in ‘Rose’. The Daleks have legends about him. Queen Victoria set up a secret organisation to watch for his meddling. And on a more mundane level, Elton Pope’s life was once touched by the Doctor, and will never be the same again.¹ So what does Elton do? He finds a whole bunch of people who’ve also noticed the Doctor, and they start hanging out, and give themselves a name; LINDA.

The idea of group Doctor Who fandom is an odd one to me. As a kid I briefly joined the Doctor Who Club of Victoria, who had a half-decent fanzine for a number of years, and organised two awesome screenings; one of the 1996 Who telemovie,² and even more excitingly, an Australian premiere of the first seven episodes of Babylon 5‘s fourth season.³ But it wasn’t all roses. By the time I thought it’d be interesting to actually go to a meeting, most of the people responsible for these things were gone, and the club was populated almost exclusively by dull, if pleasant, old men, and run by a President seemed less like a Who fan and more like a sleazy little man who enjoyed having power over people. I remember him assuring me in all seriousness that the club didn’t always talk about Doctor Who — sometimes, they talked about… pussy.⁴ So I’m pretty envious of Elton and his LINDA. They tell each other stories, they form a rock band, they sculpt — if anything happened to them it’d be a terrible tragedy.

But then, it wouldn’t be Doctor Who if something didn’t, which is the central dilemma of the story. A recurring theme this year has been whether the fun of the Doctor’s life is worth the heartache, pain and death that surrounds it. If I were the girl who ended up on the right buttock of the Abzorbaloff, I’d probably be more inclined to go with “No” than Madame de Pompadour was.

Marc Warren, Shirley Henderson and the gang make LINDA seem a bit pathetic, but earnest, true and devoted to each other as well. Of course, Warren has to take most of the focus of the story, and he does a great job. I was worried at first that he might start to grate, but as the story became more subdued, so did he. And the big surprise — Camille Coduri returns as the real Jackie Tyler and reminds us just how wonderful she really is. Some might complain at the ‘soapy’ elements to new Who, but I feel the show would be poorer without characters like Jackie, especially when they get moments like these. I felt like cheering when she declared that she’d defend Rose and the Doctor to the last.

The first three quarters of the story is somewhere near perfect. Having comedian Peter Kay as the murderous villain was a good move — having the Abzorbaloff completely sinister would have made the episode way too bleak — but perhaps the costume could have been a little more scary and less like Fat Bastard’s ugly cousin. Other than that, the final confrontation played out very well, and the ensuing revelation was very poignant.

Unfortunately, there’s a scene at the end that feels very much like it should have been cut at some point. I’m not a big one for scenes that explicitly explain the themes of the episode, or unsubtly foreshadow unhappiness to come. I’m even less amused by the idea that living as a disembodied head in a paving slab is a viable form of existence — though it must be said that the character in question does seem pleased. And I’m really not comfortable with the elephant in the room. At the very least, they could have told Marc Warren not to hold the slab on his knees. Why not move Elton’s dialogue up, finish with the montage, and let ELO have the last word?⁵ And wouldn’t everything have been more perfectly tragic if the adorable Ursula had died?⁶

Either way though, it was undeniably interesting. I’m happy they’re experimenting like this. Doctor Who remains perhaps the freshest TV series around. I simply request that there be no more oral sex with paving slabs.

1. According to Davies’ commentary, the original idea for this show was that Elton’s whole life, from childhood to adult, was permeated by the Doctor’s influence, and that in a Forrest Gump like manner he had walked through all the Doctor’s adventures. Part of me would have loved to see this. ↩
2. Ultimately disappointing, that film, but oh-so-exciting to watch for the first time. I’m pretty sure it was the first time anyone showed wind blowing as the TARDIS materialises, which they’ve been doing in this new series to great effect. ↩
3. Damn, they were awesome. If I were to write a list of ‘Ten Great Moments in Genre TV’, Londo’s “Actually, now that you mention it” would be in there. ↩
4. He then attempted to ‘bond’ with me by pointing out that a passing student wasn’t wearing a bra and that the shape of her nipples was visible through her t-shirt. I left soon after this. This man may or may not still be president of the club. ↩
5. An ‘ending with the wrong ending’ travesty of this magnitude has not been seen since the end of ‘The Happiness Patrol’. Or, if you prefer, ‘The Return of the King’. ↩
6. Everyone keeps referring to Shirley Henderson’s role in the Harry Potter films as Moaning Myrtle. May I remind everyone that her definitive work is as Isobel in Hamish Macbeth. ↩

This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006. It concerns such pressing issues as Doctor Who, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.