Midnight on the Recyclingwatch

Just before we start-- that Christina Rosetti quote was exactly what I was on about last two weeks. It's not so obscure that the audience will feel intimidated by it, but it's out of the mainstream enough that the bookish kids can feel a bit proud for recognising it, and hopefully some of the less bookish ones will go out and look it up.

This week (and probably next week and the week after) is going to be more of a work in progress than usual as the end of term/start of conference season workload catches up with me; check back as I find time to update and edit.

The End of the World: The future is into slightly misunderstood 20th-century kitsch as entertainment; use of pop song/video as atmosphere-building.

The Unquiet Dead: Alien invader that goes in for possession.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit: Small crew, with a member who seems normal in some ways but is actually possessed and speaking with someone else's voice. The mechanic who dies is a trainee on their first trip.

Love and Monsters: A small group of people, initially trusting the Doctor, then turning on him because of the actions of another non-human.

Fear Her: The driver and mechanic as analogues for the nice council blokes. Alien "invader" who isn't actually invading, just doing its thing.

Gridlock: People trapped by transport media.

42: See TIP/TSP above, and add the possessed crewmember going in for repetition.

Voyage of the Damned: RTD does love his disaster movies, doesn't he?

Catchphrasewatch: "Allons-y," "Molto Bene", "No, don't do that," and another explanation that Donna's just a friend really.

Old Skool Who: "The Green Death," "Planet of the Spiders" and associated Pertwee-era stories (Doctor extolls virtues of paradise planet which turns out to contain some hostile lifeforms); "The Deadly Assassin" (companionless story). "The Horror of Fang Rock" (alien starts taking over members of small ensemble cast trapped in a perilous location, causing them to fight amongst themselves), though you could make a similar case for "The Image of the Fendahl," "Shakedown," etc. "Kinda" (possessed person who alternates between odd, animal-like movements and a kind of powerful sensual manner).

Everywhere else: Any disaster movie featuring a small group of slightly stereotypical individuals trapped in a small but imperilled environment, and/or any movie in which a mysterious entity possesses a vulnerable woman and wreaks havoc, and/or any of the recent spate of movies about emo teens whose parents don't get them (e.g. "Napoleon Dynamite"). Labyrinth ("Jared"). Poltergeist (the alien's ability to affect the electrical systems).

I've recently been reminded that David Troughton played Bob Buzzard in A Very Peculiar Practice. Skinny, championship-squash-playing, Olympic-swimming, full-head-of-hair Bob Buzzard. My word, hasn't he changed?

Recyclingwatch of the Dead

Further to last week's comment about mixed messages about reading in Doctor Who: if you want to encourage kids to read, isn't it a good idea not to tell them "libraries are scary and books can kill you"?

Usual two-parter deal: only new stuff or stuff I didn't think of last week.

New Earth: Endings with bewildered people standing around a lobby as a delighted protagonist hugs as many of them as he can.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: "Everybody lives!" again, plus compare the moment when the Doctor realises that Other Dave is just repeating catchphrases to the moment where the Doctor realises that the tape has run out a while ago. Microscopic organisms as this week's antagonist. Sonic screwdriver/squareness gun antics.

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways: The Doctor announcing to the villains that he's going to win because that's what he always does.

The Girl in the Fireplace: The Doctor finds love, but she dies.

The Runaway Bride: Donna's wedding dress is recycled from that story, as is her falling for, and marrying, a fantasy man.

Gridlock: Doctor's antics involving dropping through doors and hanging from objects; the library really looks like New New (etc.) York, particularly in the ending bits.

Human Nature: Character experiences a virtual life, complete with spouse and children, which they enjoy but have to give up at the end.

Blink: "Mummy's not going to close her eyes," says Donna.

Voyage of the Damned: More people getting a virtual life, plus the Doctor doing another "I'm the Doctor and I'm going to win" metatextual type speech.

Catchphrasewatch: "No, no no no!" a lot, smacking about the technology while gibbering out an explanation at top volume.

Old Skool Who: Underworld (floating platforms, computers at the world's core). The Aztecs (River Song even says "...not one line"). The Robots of Death (two beings advancing on the Doctor from opposite sides, both spouting catchphrases, but the Doctor ducks between them). The Ark in Space (only three people on the teleport at any one time). Faction Paradox (creepy ladies in anachronistic Victorian dress). The Virgin NA Who Killed Kennedy (companion is sectioned and told her adventures with the Doctor were all a schizophrenic delusion, but still can't shake the idea that they were real). Battlefield, AGAIN-- look, people, it wasn't that good a story!

Everything Else: The Time Traveller's Wife, again (meeting someone who's special to you, after you've known them a while but it's the first time they've met you). Neil Gaiman's "A Doll's House" (people trapped in a virtual universe made up by a little girl). The idea of dead people downloading their consciousness into the Internet has been a staple of cyberpunk fiction since Neuromancer (although this story most closely resembles the denouement of Mona Lisa Overdrive). The Matrix, again. The early books of Piers Anthony's Xanth series (lady who alternates between ugly and smart, and ditzy but beautiful). Star Trek: Generations (the one where Picard falls into an anomaly where time has no meaning, and he imagines/creates for himself a family life with perfect spouse, kids and Christmas).

Recyclingwatch in the Library

According to this week's Confidential, Doctor Who is all about reading, encouraging kids to read and emphasising the power of the written word. OK, but why is it that, aside from Shakespeare and Dickens (who are the only two "quality" writers your average chav can name, if only because they've seen the BBC TV adaption), the only writers that get namechecked are the likes of J.K. Rowling, Jeffrey Archer, Helen Fielding, Agatha Christie etc.? It's like the writers are on the one hand saying "reading is cool, kids! Don't listen to what the bullies say!" and, on the other, saying "oh, but don't actually read anything with words of more than two syllables in it, that does actually make you a nerd." Personally I suspect that Doctor Who is actually about little shops, particularly given the merchandising glut out there.


The End of the World: Announcement systems giving amusing/peculiar futuristic instructions. The idea of the future as having a massive nostalgia industry. Companion freaked out by practices which are normal in this future society.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Creepy undead thing repeating a fairly mundane catchphrase in a sinister way. Captain Jack's device for putting square holes in things makes a reappearance.

New Earth: Mysterious summons for the Doctor via psychic paper, and the presence or absence of little shops as an indicator of the health of an institution.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit: Multiethnic, wisecracking group of future adventurers, one of whom is suddenly possessed by something that one would generally assume is a myth or articulation of a primal fear.

Love and Monsters: Stones with talking human faces embedded in them.

Fear Her: Small girl who draws pictures which turn out to be real.

42: In media res with a futuristic group of multiethnic adventurers with their own in-jokes, who unleash an evil force which possesses one of them, and he goes after the others.

Blink: Abandoned buildings, with something fairly mundane hiding a creepy alien secret. "Stay out of the shadows" as this year's "don't blink."

Human Nature: A diary about the Doctor's adventures, only he doesn't know about them. A child with some kind of supernatural power or ability.

The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords: That security camera with the consciousness of a child looks suspiciously like a Toclafane.

Voyage of the Damned: An impression of someone's mind being left inside a piece of technology, resulting in a creepy ghost that doesn't know where it is.

Good gravy, now they're even recycling *within* the season: Last week's Agatha Christie title-referencing competition spills over into this week, when we learn that there is No Body in the Library. Oh, and how many future companions/ex-companions/potential companions are we going to have to endure this year?

Catchphrasewatch: It's like Moffat had a bet on with someone as to how many times he could get Tennant to say "I'm so sorry."

Old Skool Who: River Song is basically Bernice Summerfield with curly hair-- archaeologist and Doctor's companion, full of one-liners and quips about unusual dating habits. Big intergalactic libraries seem to have been a staple of the Virgin and Big Finish eras-- even Moffat himself apparently had an earlier go at one-- but I'm thinking particularly of Daniel O'Mahony's "Timeless Passages," a story featuring Bernice Summerfield in a library with a creepy girl. Plus the entire Faction Paradox series focuses around shadows and their presence/absence/difference in form from their ostensible owner. That aside: Battlefield (the Doctor coming across a piece of his own future history), The Keeper of Traken (hiding a secret to protect the family pride, even at the cost of others' lives), Remembrance of the Daleks (creepy possessed little girls). The Horns of Nimon (the companion has their own sonic screwdriver). The Tomb of the Cybermen (archaeological expedition on a hiding to disaster, and it looks like their financial backer, who is accompanying them, is up to no good).

Other Stuff: The Omega Factor, episode one (protagonist flees along a street as the streetlamps go out ominously behind him); Space 1999 has a similar sequence in which a possessed crewmember drains the power from everything he passes; The Matrix (what seems to be twenty-first-century Earth is in fact an illusion, and the information-based nightmare is real, according to a bald black man with spectacles; also check out the Matrix homage in the Library's data displays). Any and all SF stories with giant future libraries. The Box of Delights (more issues about the presence or absence of shadows).

Nigerian Follow-up

A couple of years back I wrote this post, dealing in part with the fact that, due to my job being the sort where one might reasonably expect to receive e-mails from people in developing countries with the words URGENT REQUEST in the header, I tend to wind up opening a lot of Nigerian spam e-mails.

The ironic follow-up is that this week, I actually wound up deleting a legitimate and above-board e-mail, simply because it looked too much like a Nigerian spam to even bother checking.

The Unicorn and the Recyclingwatch

Sorry to make you wait for this one-- I've been out of town.

The End of the World: The year Five Billion, with its fully-blown nostalgia industry.

The Unquiet Dead: As the script itself points out: famous writer, supernatural adversary, the Doctor gushing away like a fanboy.

Tooth and Claw: “No, no, don’t do that” as companion attempts local argot; dinner party with discussions of the supernatural, lots of chasing of monster and being chased by monster, and goings-on about Britishness.

Smith and Jones: The Doctor neutralizing some kind of normally-fatal poison or radiation through Time Lord physiological magic.

The Shakespeare Code: Aside from the obvious (see The Unquiet Dead, above), running gag about the Doctor and companion giving a famous writer all their best ideas, and speeches about how brilliant writers are, and how the power of writers’ imaginations alone can stop disasters happening (I’ve got five published books to my credit, and yet, somehow, I wasn’t able to stop Boris winning the London mayoral elections).

Torchwood: Mental link between two characters, such that if one dies, so does the other—“They Keep Killing Suzie” again.

Catchphrasewatch: “We’re not married”; Donna gets to tell Agatha Christie she’s brilliant. Christie quotes her own catchphrase about little grey cells.

Good gravy, now they’re even recycling *within* the season: Yet another alien creature wandering around with half its brain somewhere else.

Old Skool Who: The Doctor’s already had a Christie-esque adventure in the 1920s—the strikingly-similar-to-this Black Orchid. There’s a Big Finish involving giant mutant wasps, but I can’t recall the title right now. The Curse of Fenric (Donna telling Christie that everything will be better in the future = Ace telling Rev. Wainwright that everything will be better in the future). The Green Death (giant wasps that can be killed in the same way the little ones are). And of course The Ark in Space (three guesses).

Everything else: Cluedo (Professor Peach in the library with the lead pipe); The Box of Delights (shape-shifting ginger-haired vicar). I’m not much of a Christie fan (sorry—always preferred Dorothy L. Sayers) but apparently if you are, there’s lots of inside references to her books and namechecking of the titles (though somehow they managed to steer away from including the one beginning with the words “ten” and “little”). Brideshead Revisited (young camp noblemen having gay affairs in the 1920s, plus Aloysius guest-starring as the teddy bear). Gosford Park (servants keeping secrets having to do with unplanned pregnancies among their noble employers). The Man with the Golden Arm (character who has been faking paralysis in order to keep their spouse from leaving them, though maybe he got it from Little Britain instead). Raffles (society burglar who infiltrates country-house weekends and nicks the family jewels). The Anubis Gates (the protagonist combats strychnine poisoning by eating the contents of his fireplace, remembering that carbon neutralizes strychnine). The Incredible Hulk (“you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”). The Prisoner: The Girl Who Was Death (poisoned man drinking a variety of strange things to induce vomiting).

Incidentally, teddy bears weren’t invented until 1902, so, if the room hasn’t been disturbed since 1886, then Lady Eddison has a pretty avant-garde toy designer in her employ.

Niggling thought of the day

This has been bothering me ever since "The Poison Sky", but... how is it that, when a bad or morally ambiguous character on a TV programme or in a film commits an act of self-sacrifice after recognising that they've done wrong, why is it that people describe this act as "redemptive"? As opposed to if, say, the character recognised the evil of their ways, but then went on with the rest of their lives, living with the shame of the past and doing their best to make up for it, and make others' lives better in the process? Taking a bullet for the Doctor, or whatever, may make for a nice exciting climax and a slightly poignant episode ending, but, in real terms, it's taking the easy way out, and neatly avoiding any uncomfortable questions about forgiving your enemies.

The Doctor's Recyclingwatch

The Unquiet Dead: ...has a *massive* amount to answer for in terms of random guest-characters sacrificing themselves while Murray Gold switches the keyboard to "sad" mode. Just once I'd like to see the obvious human sacrifice make it through the story (and this one doesn't count, as she does technically die).

Father's Day: Disappointment when your relatives don't turn out as you expect, plus a father who gets to know his previously-unknown daughter and comes to respect her.

Boom Town: Ages and ages of raking the Doctor's moral hypocrisy over.

The Parting of the Ways: Magic golden breath precedes regeneration.

School Reunion: Companion has convinced herself that she'll travel with the Doctor forever, but ex-companion knows better.

Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel: "I'm not your father! Really I'm not! Well, sort of, I suppose." Ad nauseam. Plus companion who heads off into the sunset for more adventures at the end.

Love and Monsters: Donna is played for laughs as a sexually frustrated older woman, sort of like Jackie in LAM.

Doomsday: More crash-the-action-to-a-halt-so-we-can-talk-about-relationships action.

Gridlock: The idea that the people in this society can't help themselves, they have to have the Doctor turn up and save them.

Daleks In Manhattan: Does that theatre look suspiciously familiar? Or maybe it's just the opera house on Kobol (see below)?

42: Race against time through corridors with fetching young people dressed in khakis; supposed enemy that isn't all it seems.

Last of the Time Lords: The Doctor as Messiah again.

Voyage of the Damned: Doctor meets plucky blonde girl temporary companion, with whom he bonds, and who dies, or sort of dies, at the end (and you could see *that* one coming for miles in both cases).

Catchphrasewatch: Lots of "No no no" this week, plus yet another iteration of the tired old "assuming the Doctor and Donna are married" bit.

Old Skool Who: The Face of Evil and Underworld (planets that start out as terraforming operations and end up with warring, primitive populations with no idea of their origins). The Chase (planet terraformed by machines, just waiting for people to fill it). City of Death (the jokes about Jenny being seemingly unable to solve a problem without violence are recycled from Duggan's). That famous Lenny Henry sketch (jokes about running up and down corridors). The Ark (human-alien colony mission, where relations between humans and aliens sour rapidly). Oddly enough, the Sontaran stories (warrior clones). The Curse of Fenric (Ace's distracting-the-guard bit, plus don't the Hath look kind of like haemavores?). Lance Parkin already did a similar Doctor's-daughter bit in the BBC novel Father Time. Full Circle (colonists who don't realise they're colonists, and/or that they've got a close connection with those humanoids with gills wandering around out there).

Everything Else: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan has a lot to answer for here, what with Genesis devices, heroic self-sacrifice, and loony old warriors (although the Doctor's wrong, the Genesis device *can* be used as a weapon), with a bit of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock coming in the resolution. Battlestar Galactica: TRS (generations-long war between two groups who are quite similar really; reproduction through cloning machines; protracted bonding between two members of opposing camps as they wander through an irradiated landscape, and the Doctor lifted his pointing-guns-at-heads-and-handing-them-over bit entirely from Sharon "Athena" Agathon in Season Two) Entrapment, the film whose sole attraction was watching Catherine Zeta-Jones negotiate a corridor full of lasers. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the obvious, plus random relatives being created out of nowhere through plot conveniences). Enemy Mine, and to a lesser extent "The Return of Starbuck" (Martha's bonding with the Hath adventures). BBC News (note that when the Hath do their victory dance with the rifles, it looks suspiciously like that dance that Iraqis do that involves hopping from one foot to another with your rifle held in the air). Silent Running (in the sequences in the terraformed jungle, I kept expecting the camera to pan across to Bruce Dern happily transplanting saplings with his little robot pals). Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (plucky and tough warrior girl who can't solve a problem without knocking it unconscious first).

Star Trek and the Holy Grail

Made me laugh, anyway.

The Poisoned Recyclingwatch

Usual deal for the second half of a two-parter: only stuff not mentioned in the first half gets in.

The End of the World: Companion, freaked out by recent experiences, rings Mum through time and/or space, and gets a kind of bizarre reassurance from it.

The Unquiet Dead: Guest character does heroic self-sacrifice bit, which incidentally also involves self-immolation.

Aliens of London/WW3: How is UNIT's computer security still so rubbish that Martha can hack the nuclear grid using her Ipod Touch? Plus another resolution to the general effect that with one thing changed, everything is now absolutely wonderful. Plus real BBC personalities slumming it in guest cameos.

The Empty Child: "Are you my mummy," indeed.

The Parting of the Ways: The Doctor can't just slaughter the bad guys, he has to give them the chance to back down. Companion, trapped on another planet to the Doctor through Tardis displacement, has to figure out how to get back to him.

The Age of Steel: Doctor instructing companion secretly in what they have to do, using a mobile phone and a video broadcast.

Fear Her, Army of Ghosts and The Sound of Drums: Celeb newsreader guest cameo.

Doomsday: Action grinding to a halt for various people to talk through their issues with each other.

42: More mobile phone and stranded companion antics.

Torchwood: The clone-Martha's relationship with her original, and her death, are lifted straight out of "They Keep Killing Suzie."

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Evil factories with attractive products run by aliens who want to breed; annoying parents who get in the way but sometimes come through for you.

They're still recycling within their own season: As if the other "Partners In Crime" parallels weren't enough, now we learn that the Sontarans want to breed.

Catchphrasewatch: A hat-trick this week: "Bwilliant," "I'm so sorry," and "No, no, no".

Old Skool Who: The Claws of Axos (new technology that is marketed as the solution to one of Earths' major problems turns out to be terraforming devices from an alien species). The Auton Invasion (killer dolls and chairs, meet killer cars). Invasion again (evil genius who recants and does good, plus huge set-piece UNIT battle with expensive hardware); Battlefield (UNIT's arsenal of cool bullets and anti-alien gadgets); Invasion of the Dinosaurs (tracksuited group of Utopians, convinced, wrongly, that they're going to go to another planet to start again). The Android Invasion (gratuitous explanation for lack of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stuart). The Green Death (ending in which the ecosystem will be, by implication, miraculously saved through everyone going green, and companion informs Doctor that marriage to a scientist is more exciting than going around with him).

Everything Else: Bizarrely, the original Japanese version of Godzilla has an equally stupid scientific resolution, in which the monster is killed by some chemical which acts on the sea, but with no explanation as to how they avoid killing all fish everywhere in the world at the same time. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (if you locked Rattigan in a cupboard with Warren from Season Six, which one would win?). Predator ("This isn't war, this is sport!"). Harry Potter (secret academies, with bitter and twisted misunderstood geniuses determined to kill off the unlike).

The Sontaran Recyclingwatch

Appropriately enough for an eco-story.

Rose: Duplicates, where the original conveniently has to be kept alive; Doctor's companion duplicated; harmless objects activating and attacking people; a few deaths early on, followed by an all-out massacre when the signal is triggered-- are these guys really Sontarans, or Nestenes in suits?

The End of the World: People standing in front of huge screens looking down on the Earth, check.

Aliens of London: Is there some kind of rule that all DW companions' mums now have to be obnoxious old things who just don't understand, and immediately start attacking the Doctor?

Dalek: The Doctor steals Van Statten's "Intruder, in-tru-der window" gag, even though there's no way he could have heard Van Statten making it.

The Long Game: More people standing in front of huge screens looking down on the Earth.

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways: More evil companies and outer-space CGI armies over the Earth.

Tooth and Claw: Monks in red in big Gothic pile, meet geniuses in red in big Gothic pile.

School Reunion: Current companion, meet ex-companion, and let them bond over shared experiences.

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday: Doctor's ex-companion turns up, wearing black jumpsuit and working with a paramilitary organisation to fight alien menaces. Doctor comes back to visit another ex-companion and find out how she and her family have been getting on.

The Lazarus Experiment: See entry for "Aliens of London" and repeat slightly more loudly.

Last of the Time Lords: Does Martha's boyfriend know she met him in a parallel universe? Oh, and more companions joining the black-clad paras.

Good gravy, now they're even recycling *within* the season: Isn't this just a retread of "Partners in Crime"? Mysterious company shoots to fame with miracle product tackling topical social issue, which turns out to be really run by aliens; it's being investigated by the Doctor's ex-companion who is hoping he'll come back and help out; nosy female journalists investigating the place meet predictable fates.

Torchwood: The whole thing feels more like a TW than a DW story: nasty fates in cars on deserted roads (Countrycide), allegedly-secret supergovernmental organisations with a moral compass that ranges from the dubious to the facile (the whole series really), everyday things or objects given an alien twist (Meat, Random Shoes, Sleeper), guest appearance from DW monster (Cyberwoman, Exit Wounds) and/or ex-companion (Reset through A Day in the Death).

Catchphrasewatch: Martha gets in the "bwilliant" this episode.

Old Skool Who: Watch for recycling from pretty much every Robert Holmes story except the Sontaran ones: evil duplicates and mysterious factories with popular products (Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons), corporate satires (The Sunmakers, The Caves of Androzani, The Power of Kroll), satires about paperwork (The Carnival of Monsters), evil dwarves (The Talons of Weng-Chiang), academies of brilliant people being preyed on by aliens (The Krotons), red-clad secret societies in Gothic piles (The Brain of Morbius). The Time Warrior gets a brief look-in only with a misquotation of the thorax thing (it's not "vulnerable," just hypertrophied), and the idea of people being hypnotised (which is hardly unique to the Sontarans). UNIT's mobile HQ is straight out of The Invasion (though at least the Brig could afford a Hercules). Battlefield (reimagined UNIT). Any evil-duplicate-made-by-the-baddie story, e.g. The Chase, The Android Invasion, The Androids of Tara, Resurrection of the Daleks etc.

Everything Else: ITC series made evil-duplicate and evil-megacorporation stories a stock in trade in the 1960s and 1970s. There's also a whole horror subgenre revolving around evil or possessed everyday items (e.g. Ringu/The Ring, The House that Dripped Blood, etc.; one could arguably include the film Phone Booth), the most obvious referent here is Christine (cars with minds of their own and evil designs on their owners). Real life (jokes about "homeworld security", Guantanamo Bay, illegal immigrants, etc.). Battlestar Galactica: Razor and the third series episode "The Passage" (a hand suddenly shooting out of a tank of fluid and grabbing someone).

Oh, and I'll confess that when Donna's granddad says "you!" upon seeing the Doctor, I was half-hoping he'd go on with "back in 1966, when I was a bobby on the beat..." but of course he didn't. Rats.

Recyclingwatch of the Ood

Rose: Nestene Consciousness, meet Ood Collective Brain, with similar harmless-things-becoming-murderers bit.

The End of the World: Companion gets taken into the future for the first time and freaks out in both bad and good ways.

The Long Game: References to the Fourth Great and Bountiful Etc., plus a company that's hiding a secret nobody asks too much about, and a character turning
out to be a secret anti-capitalist operative.

Boom Town: Alien which had a few things wrong with it from a story perspective revisited and given a more nuanced treatment; the Doctor's ethics called into question.

New Earth: the Face of Boe/Ood singing telepathically; the cat nuns' experimenting on people for what they claim is the common good versus the company's lobotomising the Ood for similar reasons, etc. Both have "...and then everything gets sorted out perfectly in five minutes," happy endings.

The Girl in the Fireplace: The Doctor's mind-meld trick.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit: Ignore the obvious connection, and focus on a) the slaves-rising-up bit; b) the psychic-CGI-monster-in-a-pit bit; and c) the fact that Murray Gold, when forced to do music that's a bit off from his usual bombastic National-Orchestra-of-Wales default setting, actually turns into a really good composer; both the Firefly-influenced stuff there, and the Sensorites-influenced stuff here, are great.

Catchphrasewatch: "we're not married" again; the Doctor works in another teeny "bwilliant," though manages not to say "I'm so sorry" to the dying Ood on the hillside.

Old Skool Who: The Sensorites (leaving aside the namecheck, we have a psychic bald race who are extremely gentle and kind when not under outside influences); The Robots of Death (only without the twist that the beings supposedly being liberated are actually just being reprogrammed); Ghost Light (although transforming the vicar into a monkey made more scientific sense there than turning Lord Percy into an Ood here); Revelation of the Daleks (Graeme Harper again gives us an opening where the Doctor and companion walk across a snowy landscape to discover an escaped mutant creature on the run); The Seeds of Doom (opening scene where companion comes out of the Tardis in hot-weather clothing to discover an arctic landscape, and rushes back in to put on warm clothes; also, later, when the companion finds certain of the villain's practices repugnant, the Doctor points out analogous practices in her own culture); like last week, anything with evil businesspeople and greedy consumers in.

Everything Else: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (slave race rising up and taking over the planet, led by a few individuals who are brainier than the rest); Blake's 7: Ultraworld (race with a collective mind which turns out to be an actual literal giant brain); Terminator III (company innocently producing robot slaves only to have them turn on them unexpectedly); John Wyndham's short story (later televised) "Dumb Mart" (alien creature thought to be stupid and fit only for use as a slave turns out quite intelligent indeed, and exacts revenge).

Anybody else wonder if the fact that this story's acronym is POO is deliberate?

Doctor Who Recyclingwatch: The Fires of Pompeii

Late and brief, I'm afraid...

The Unquiet Dead: This is basically the source story here. Doctor shows off by taking companion to requested historical destination (only he gets the time and place slightly wrong); said destination is being invaded by homeless aliens who have designs on Earth, Doctor and companion vow to go as far as sacrificing their lives to stop them, moralising about who one can/can't save. Girls with second sight making prophecies of visible relevance to the rest of the season. The Doctor even technically meets literary figures, in the form of the Caecillii. At the end of the episode he officially confirms Donna as companion.

Boom Town: Just as Margaret Slitheen predicted, the Doctor saves one family, and assuages his conscience.

Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel: Baddies plan to convert the whole human race to become like them, and take over the world.

The Satan Pit: Underground Balrog-like monster that gets loose; it's already been working its influence on some of the population, and they're physically marked by this.

The Shakespeare Code: Historical done as comedy, with anachronistic gags ("T.K. Maximus," etc.) Also (and this goes for "The Unquiet Dead," "The Idiot's Lantern, etc.), the idea that one can't do a straight historical, there has to be a monster in it somewhere.

Gridlock: Doctor bonds with companion at end of story over the nature of his life as a time lord; major prophetic revelations given in cryptic manner.

Daleks in Manhattan: Wales as stand-in for more glamourous location; some of the team go to said glamorous one and don't let anyone forget it.

Catchprasewatch: Looks like this "everyone assumes they're married" gag is going to become a recurring thing. "Allons-y, Alonzo," and a blink-and-you-miss-it "bwilliant".

Old Skool Who: The Aztecs, the Massacre, and The Reign of Terror get the whole "can you or can't you change history?" question resolved at a stroke (answer: sometimes), while The Romans is actually namechecked and The Myth Makers is also a visible influence. Any story in which a cult attempt to sacrifice the Doctor and/or companion; take two points if their reasons are actually other than religious (The Masque of Mandragora, Meglos, and see elsewhere); The Brain of Morbius (The Sisterhood called, they want their robes, makeup, and chanting-and-whirling schtick back). Big Finish did a CD called "The Fires of Vulcan" focusing around Pompeii.

Everything Else: The Confidential admits to Asterix and the Cambridge Latin Course (though IIRC the Caecillii never had a daughter), but other candidates include the HBO/BBC series Rome and, indirectly, I Claudius (Ancient Romans talking and acting like modern people), The Terminator ("Take my hand [if you want to live]"), Spartacus ("I am... Spartacus." "I'm Spartacus too"). A short-lived 1980s transforming toys franchise called "Rock Lords" (it was basically Transformers with rocks, and the creatures looked a lot like those Pyrovile things). Actual Pompeian history/archaeology (people turning into stone is a creepy reference to the petrified casts of Pompeians buried under the ash). Only Fools and Horses ("lovely jubbly"). Up Pompeii is going to be an unconscious influence regardless of what you do. That Star Trek episode where the crew journey back to the 1960s and accidentally kidnap an astronaut (in that the question of what to do with him is influenced by the question of how historically significant he and his offspring will be, much like the Doctor with the Caecillii).

More Moving Mayhem

British Gas Lady: Your closing balance is [gives number]. Would you like to pay that now?

Me: Yes.

BGL: You would?

Me: Why not?

BGL: Um... OK. What sort of card is it?

Me: ...a debit card?

[silence]

Me: A [name of bank] debit card?

[more silence]

Me: Uh... [brand name of card]?

BGL: Ah! Could I have the long number on your card?

Me: [gives it]

BGL: Start date?

Me: [gives it]

BGL: Expiry date?

Me: [gives it]

BGL: Start date?

Me: I just gave you it.

BGL: Sorry, issue number?

Me: [gives it]

BGL: [long pause] I'm sorry, the card isn't registering. Can I have the long number again?

Me: [gives it, and all the other details above, again]

BGL: No, it's still not registering. Do you have another card?

Me: Look, I have direct debit on my British Gas account....

BGL: Oh, you do? (pause) Oh yes, you do. Right, I'll just debit your account then.

Me: [says nothing, but contemplates switching to Southern Gas and Electric]

Mattress postscript

Discovered after an intensive and frustrating web search that we have a community recycling centre twenty minutes' drive up the A30, so loaded the damned thing into the hatchback and took it there (with Alan holding it down as firmly as possible so that it didn't obscure the rear-view mirror). Now I wonder why the nice council lady didn't suggest that option straight away?

Real life update

We're moving house (hopefully for the last time for a good long while), which means that a) I haven't got much time to post here and b) once we've moved, there'll be a two-week radio silence while the broadband migrates. I'll try and keep up with the Recyclingwatch as best as I can using dialup and my work computer, but if I slip up, that's why.

On a side but related note-- the local council charges thirty pounds to recycle your mattress. THIRTY POUNDS. You could buy a new (albeit secondhand) mattress for that. I always wondered why I saw so many mattresses thrown into railway sidings; now I know. I'm off to find a friendly neighbour with a skip.

Doctor Who: Recyclingwatch: Partners in Crime

Yes, the Recyclingwatch feature returns again, to general fanfare. This episode sets the tone nicely...

Rose: Glimpse of companion's pre-Doctor life, with unsatisfactory family, lousy job experiences, and Billie Piper. Companion turning to conspiracy theory websites to explain the Doctor. Companion's Mum nagging her about her employment status. Some woman propositions the Doctor only to be bluntly turned down.

Aliens of London/WW3: Nasty things happening to fat people; cute but fatal aliens, fart-based humour.

Bad Wolf: Another Anne Robinson look alike (see below)

New Earth (and Gridlock): "I've met cat people, you're nothing like them..."

School Reunion: Doctor and ex-companion both investigating same thing at same time, with comedy hijinx.

The Idiot's Lantern: The Doctor and companion try to get to the bottom of strange happenings by knocking on the doors of ordinary people and pretending to conduct a survey.

Love and Monsters: Ordinary person whose life was briefly touched by the Doctor subsequently spends ages trying to track him down.

Army of Ghosts: Check out the advert for the ectoplasm polish, and ask yourself who that cute little ghost reminds you of (the sound people have even recycled the noises it makes).

The Runaway Bride: Oh, go on, guess.

42: Silent dialogue between the Doctor and companion, behind their own separate windows.

The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords: The villain has their own version of the sonic screwdriver.

Voyage of the Damned: Bernard Cribbins reprises his crusty-old-granddad bit.

Sarah Jane Smith: Invasion of the Bane: The plot of PIC is essentially an adult version of the Sarah Jane pilot, only with diet pills instead of fizzy drinks, and some extra added body horror. Even the two villainesses look almost exactly alike, and have a penchant for kinkily victimising nosy female journalists.

Old Skool Who: Not much, surprisingly: The Invasion (rooftop exploits with armed guards, attempt to escape in a lift). Robot (the source for all the creepy business-suited crypto-lesbian villainesses). Any story featuring an evil megacorporation with a popular product as chief villain (The Green Death, Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons...)

Everything Else: The sheer number of referents for the appearance of the Adipose is staggering (The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, the Scrubbing Bubbles, Pokemon, the Smurfs, the Death Guard). Gremlins (cute, seemingly harmless aliens with food-related issue). Mary Poppins (Nanny flying through space over London); Harriet the Spy (children, by implication, experiencing separation anxiety when their parents get rid of Nanny); Shivers (body horror involving beings inside people trying to get out); Alien (the scenes involving the birth of the Adipose are like a teatime comedy version of John Hurt's famous chestbusting incident). Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the giant Adipose mother [sic] ship). The Weakest Link (Anne Robinson's look/stage persona).

I wish I'd done this...

Kind of hard to read even with large sizing, so click on it to get the full effect.

Dead Man Puking

Among all the other impossibilities regarding Owen from Torchwood's undead state-- apparently if he runs, his legs will snap.

What I'd like to know is, how is he managing to feel depressed? He doesn't have a serotonin level any more.

Gary Russell once said that you know you've made it when your books are sold in W.H. Smiths'....

...It's a start.

The Cult Of... The Cult Of

Watching "The Cult Of... Poldark" on Sunday, it finally crystallised exactly what I don't like about BBC4's "The Cult Of..." series: it's that they could go in two very strong directions, but instead go in neither. They could either be a good in-depth history of the programme involved, discussing their genesis, their production, the televisual context which meant a programme like that became a hit, etc., but they don't: the "Poldark" episode mentioned a couple of times that Winston Graham (author of the original Poldark novels) complained initially about the series but later became reconciled, but never actually explained what he complained about, nor why he changed his mind (both of which are interesting stories, easily available in the author's memoir "Poldark's Cornwall").

Likewise (and perhaps more controversially), with a name like "The Cult Of..." they could do a series on reactions to programmes, why they come about and what appeals to people about some programmes, and why unexpected phenomena sometimes occur (why does Blake's 7, a programme with no explicit sex scenes and almost no inexplicit ones, have a thriving erotic-fanfic subculture attached to it? Why is Between the Lines popular in Canada and Howard's Way in Australia, but the reverse isn't true? Why are there lots of Survivors fans and yet almost nothing in the way of an organised fandom? Etc). But again, the series barely touches on what makes the programmes popular, and when it does it's usually in a fairly denigrating way: Kate O'Mara, interviewed on "The Cult of... The Brothers" the other week, said that the programme was popular because there was nothing better to do on Sunday nights in the 1970s, and the Poldark episode showed us a group of Poldark Appreciation Society members without actually interviewing any of them to find out what it is about the programme that inspires them to meet in full period dress.

The world is crying out for a good documentary series on cult television in all its various and sundry permutations: unfortunately, this isn't it.

Headline of the Week, or, You Know You've Been Working on the Battlestar Galactica Book Too Long When...

From Channel 4 News:

SIX TO FACE TRIAL OVER 9/11

...Gaius Baltar is reported to have turned Colonial Government's Evidence.

Funk to Funky

Okay, I love "Ashes to Ashes." But what's bothering me about it is the cognitive dissonance among amateur and professional TV reviewers alike out there. They first note that "Alex Drake doesn't really believe she's in 1981, and thinks it's all in her head," and they then go on to say something along the lines of "it's completely unbelievable that a female cop would wear off-the-shoulder shirts and miniskirts/talk to her male colleagues that way/drink bad red wine in public/whatever."

Put the two together, guys. The reason why she's not acting like a copper is because she doesn't believe any of this is real. In 2008, she wears sensible clothes and acts like a sensible police detective, but as far as she's concerned 1981 is just a dying fantasy she's having.

RIP Kevin Stoney

...who played my two all-time favourite Doctor Who bad guys, as well as appearing in pretty much every other classic British show I like. Plus some wonderful interviews, which we used to refer to as "Was I a Doctor Who Monster?" for his entertaining take on appearing in the series.

Damn, that's gone and ruined my entire month.

Headline of the Week

From the Guardian:

FIVE FACE TRIAL OVER SECURITAS

...by Enid Blyton. Timmy the Dog is reported to be considering turning Queen's Evidence.

Funeral Reith

Every year, around August, the newspapers continually run screechy articles about how A-levels, and indeed school curricula in general, are dumbing down and that the history curriculum has been reduced to a whistlestop "Nazis and Tudors" overview. I generally laughed this off as scaremongering, and then I did my usual tour of the blogosphere for reviews of last week's Torchwood. And was amazed by the number of reviews praising it as "educational" and "Reithian" simply for pointing out that shellshocked soldiers in 1918 often got shot for cowardice. I remember learning that at fourteen, in a Grade Nine history module, and again, in OAC North American History, and again, in OAC Social Studies (in the unit on psychology, which dealt with PTSD among other things). If people aren't learning about that sort of basic historical fact in school, then the scaremongers really do have a point.

The Stuff of Legend

The local real ale pub's latest beer is called "Legend." Every time I see it, I keep picturing a Spartacus-style faceoff between Will Smith, Charlton Heston, Bob Marley and a pint of beer, all shouting, "no, no, I am Legend!"

Context is Everything

...and you'll never look at Mary Poppins the same way again.

Amusing product warning roundup

On a container of Tesco's table salt: "May contain nuts" (I'm still looking for a box of nuts that reads "may contain salt")
On a bag of Sainsbury's mixed nuts: "Prepared in a factory where nut-based products are handled. May contain nuts."
On a bottle of cod liver oil capsules: "Allergy warning: contains fish" (the day I find cod liver oil capsules that don't contain fish, I'll give up on the ecosystem completely)
On a bottle of Body Shop eye makeup remover: "Avoid contact with eyes."

Torchwood: the Revenge

All sorts of TV reviews are telling me that Torchwood S2 has changed, has improved, has taken notes on what people disliked from S1 and worked on it... I'm wondering if we were watching the same programme. The episode I saw last night differed only from a S1 episode in that there were more whip-pans, more lines laden with puerile innuendo (I like puerile innuendo, but this was actually getting to the point where I was going "yeah, yeah, another willy joke, let's get on with it), more musical numbers that were out of date before Kurt Cobain offed himself, more adolescent angsting on the part of characters who are supposed to be in their late 20s/early 30s, more pointlessly thick behaviour on the part of characters we're supposed to care about ("Hey guys, this total stranger has just turned up with a cock-and-bull story we none of us believe, so we'll investigate what the truth of it is by going along with his plan-- no, I don't see the flaw in that, do you?"). Plus yet another jokey "everyone in the world knows who this secret organisation are" moment, which just really looks like they're trying to imitate the running gag in later series of Buffy (surely not!) about everybody in Sunnydale regarding vampire attacks as a part of everyday life (and ignoring the fact that even in Buffy this gag caused massive internal contradictions within the setup).

The only new element I could discern is that they're now doing what I can only describe as Captain Jack fanservice-- it's like someone noticed that a whole bunch of fangirls punched the air at the same-sex kiss in "Captain Jack Harkness" and are now determined to get him to snog/flirt with/otherwise get physical with anything male (plus a token pass at Gwen just to remind everyone he's bisexual). Which I don't mind on the one hand because it gives me more material for the LGB Guide to Doctor Who, and because I think that television needs more portrayals of bisexuality as a good thing, but on the other hand I can't shake the feeling that this isn't some attempt to encourage tolerance of same-sex sexuality amongst the audience, so much as an attempt to exploit a demographic, which is just creepy.

Russell T. Davies Recyclingwatch: Damaged Goods

So over the holidays I read "Damaged Goods," RTD's Virgin novel, and just for fun I thought I'd list all the things I'd spotted in it that he wound up using somewhere else later on:

-Working-class family named Tyler (Doctor Who series 1 and 2, Queer as Folk)
-Woman cooking a man's favourite meal then lacing it with rat poison (The Second Coming)
-New York as the template for all future megacities (Doctor Who-- New Earth, Gridlock)
-Exploration of gay issues, particularly as pertains to different generations of gay men's experiences of sexuality (Queer as Folk)
-Housing estate (Doctor Who series 1)
-Future human whom 20th-century humans assume to be gay, but his sexuality's a bit more complicated than that (Doctor Who, Torchwood)
-War between Time Lords and someone else having consequences for ordinary humans (Doctor Who, particularly series 1)
-UNIT namecheck (Doctor Who: Aliens of London)
-A mother who makes, effectively, a deal with the devil to help her children (Doctor Who series 3)
-Bad guy driven by incessant sound in his/her mind (Doctor Who: Utopia, The Sound of Drums, etc.)
-Zombies animated by amorphous alien (Doctor Who: The Long Game)
-Reciting numbers to thwart a transdimensional alien weapon (Doctor Who: The Shakespeare Code, which wasn't his, but it's interesting that it turns up there)

Will edit this post as I notice others.

Doctor Who lecture

For those of you who live in this country and have an interest in this sort of thing, I'm giving a talk on "British Multiculturalism in Doctor Who" at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology in Oxford on Friday 25th January (11 AM). E-mail or otherwise ping me if you want to go but need more details.

The people have spoken

The results of the poll last month are now in, and the blog is now "Nyder's Takeaways." Happy?

Christmas Recyclingwatch Special: Voyage of the Recycled

Rose: Companion holding off villain with sports activities over giant molten pit.

The End of the World: Although it might not be visible at first glance, it’s this story that it’s all coming from: human being who has, through attempting to combat the vicissitudes of age, been rendered into a grotesque quasi-human object on serious life support, who joins a group of people on a cruise over the Earth, starts picking them off one by one using killer robots, tries to aim the vessel at a heavenly body, and then, when caught, reveals it all to be a financial scam before being killed.

The Unquiet Dead: maid sacrificing herself for the hero.

World War III: Well-known television anchor makes guest appearance.

The Long Game: Hidden megalomaniac tycoon named Max; shielded layer of the ship/space station where nobody goes which hides a terrible secret.

Boom Town (and arguably Torchwood): Watch where the Tardis goes when it flies towards the Earth—it’s on a beeline for Cardiff.

The Parting of the Ways: person getting sucked out into space; character giving farewell message through blue-tinted projection.

The Christmas Invasion: Ambulatory seasonal ornaments which turn out to be killers; unseasonal snow caused by spaceship activities; a bit of gratuitous royal-family-baiting.

Tooth and Claw: More royal-baiting, plus a queen who knows who the Doctor is.

Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel: Crippled megalomaniac businessman plotting takeover with evil army of robots; talking holographic advertising pictures with annoying catchphrase; Doctor gatecrashes posh party; companion in waitress uniform.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit: Trapped people, trying to find their way out of a doomed edifice while being attacked by what used to be calm-voiced innocuous servant-beings and are now calm-voiced vicious killers; Tardis, which could provide a solution, is conveniently rendered hors-de-combat for the duration; somebody getting sucked into space; the commander is trapped in the control centre with no way of getting to the others. Unscientific adventures in magnetism.

Love and Monsters: The Doctor’s “Hold on! I can save her!” bit, with mixed results.

Fear Her: Yet more moonlighting news anchors.

The Runaway Bride: Santa’s a robot, yes, and so are the Christmas angels. More unseasonal snow. Gratuitous Gallifrey namecheck. One-off companion (though the chances of this one coming back in two seasons’ time are slim). Villain falling into bottomless pit at end. There's a review on Tachyon TV which draws pretty hilarious parallels between the two.

Smith and Jones: Another bloody companion who falls in love with the Doctor straight off, and manages to get a snog off of him.

The Shakespeare Code: More baiting of queens who know who the Doctor is.

42: More trapped people trying to find their way to the bridge; more people getting sucked into space, in this case grabbing the villain and taking them with them as they do so.

Human Nature: Yet another companion in Edwardian servant uniform.

Blink: Creepy unstoppable killer angels.

Catchphrasewatch: “I’m so sorry”; “Allons-y, Alonzo” (groan); “No no no no no no!” (ad nauseum).

Old Skool Who: The Robots of Death, a lot (beautiful art-deco robots who go on a strangling spree thanks to the intervention of an evil genius who’s smuggled himself on a long trip; practically every line the Host have which isn’t preceded by the word “information” is, or ought to be, copyright Chris Boucher, and by the time you get to a scene where one gets its hand first stuck, then cut off, in a door, you start to wonder if RTD isn’t just taking the St Michael); Enlightenment (human-seeming entities who have fun by flying Edwardian ships around the solar system and looking down on Earth humans); Delta and the Bannermen (alien tourists visiting Earth, incognito, having a fairly dubious grasp of the planet’s culture, and getting hit by a satellite; there’s even a tickling-stick visible on the Titanic as the Doctor leaves the Tardis); Revelation of the Daleks (disembodied-head bad guy who is secretly planning corporate machinations); while we’re at it, there are talking disembodied heads in Perspex tanks in the Peladon stories as well; The Claws of Axos (a horde of space-borne beautiful golden killers); The Web of Fear (unexpectedly deserted London); The Enemy of the World (it’s not the first time the Doctor’s teamed up with a blonde named Astrid); Earthshock (blobs representing people vanishing off the scanner screen as they get picked off one by one by robots; ship programmed to crash into the unsuspecting Earth). Silver Nemesis (Queen cameo). The Wheel in Space (controlled meteorites as weapons). Frontios (Human being incorporated into machinery that runs on wheels).

Everything Else: Real life (tycoon Robert Maxwell, who famously threw himself off his yacht when his company went under, or did he); Blake’s 7 (teleport bracelets, even down to the design; Mr Copper’s half-understood pastiche of Earth culture is like the President’s half-understood pastiche of Earth history in “Bounty”; “In-for-ma-tion”); The Poseidon Adventure (forget all other 70s disaster movies—this is the source, down to including a fat woman with a Shelley Winters hairdo); Star Wars: A New Hope (attempt to cross a chasm on a narrow beam, as army of killers tries to break through the door); Aliens (unexpected attack by woman wielding forklift); Alien 3 (same woman, hurling herself and the enemy into a fiery pit; Astrid even does a slow-motion look-up like Sigourney Weaver does); Seven Years in Tibet (the Doctor’s slow-motion walk through fire); any movie/TV show involving a talking disembodied head in a Perspex tank, from They Saved Hitler’s Brain through the future sequences of Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (where Nursey is now, well, you get the idea); Harry Potter (talking pictures); Ghost (touching sequence featuring kisses between phantom and corporeal people); Robert Silverberg’s novella “Elegy for Angels and Dogs,” which features a clique of superrich people who, at one point, sail through the Solar System on the Queen Mary liner, which has been converted for space flight); Goldfinger (gold people theme, plus compare the Angels’ halo-throwing to Oddjob’s hat trick). James Cameron’s Titanic (leaving aside the obvious, you’ve got an ending where the hero [Leo DiCaprio/Astrid] dies and the bad guy [Billy Zane/that rich fellow] lives; Douglas Adams’ Starship Titanic. There’s a film called “Passenger 57”.

I'd sooner kiss a Wookie

Thoughts on the Star Wars DVDS:

• When you watch the movies in prequel --> original order, weird things stand out. Like how there's no kids in the original series (well, I think there's a baby Ewok at one point, but that hardly counts), and lots in the prequel series.
• Likewise, the Stormtroopers take their helmets off all the time in the prequel series, but not in the sequel. Which makes sense from a production point of view, but narratively it makes you wonder if they all suddenly got ugly or something.
• What an amazing thesp-fest the original series is! It's fun to watch just for the sheer entertainment value of seeing Julian Glover, Cy Town, Don Henderson etc. turning up every five minutes. Prequel series far more disappointing in this regard, though occasionally you do notice someone like Celia Imrie where you wouldn't expect it.
• Round about The Empire Strikes Back, suddenly there's a masive jump in dialogue quality. Even characters like C-3PO suddenly up the wit quotient (the monologue at the beginning, where he's rambling on about how difficult it is to get Princess Leia's clothes washed and dried in the freezing cold of Hoth, sounds like improv comedy). And I'm sorry, but, in narrative order, that's the first non-Lucas-written script.
  
• People can say what they will, I like the new overdubbed voice for Boba Fett, mostly because the idea of a bad guy with a New Zealand accent is enchanting.
• Doesn't Ian McDiarmaid really look like Dennis Potter? All he needs is a pair of huge 1980s glasses for the resemblance to be complete.
  

Late addendum

Have added another renaming option: "Nyder's Takeaways"-- referencing the Nyder's Dyner parent site. Because Blogger won't let me edit the poll, I've added it as a separate poll, but will count votes for it in the main poll.

New Poll: Rename this Blog?

Please note: on the right-hand sidebar, I've started a poll. I'm considering changing the name of the blog, as it's a bit negative, and really I'm not so sure I do hate Steven Spielberg. Possible options include:

Keep the current name (why not, if you like it)
"Dreams Without Gangsters" (a line from the theme tune to Gangsters: I like this one because of the Maurice Colbourne connection, and the media connections)
Daniel Feeld's memories (sometimes I feel like I'm just archiving nostalgia)
Mostly about the Media (the simple minimalist idea)

I was tempted to include "prison sex with Christopher Neame" as an option, since it's one of this blog's inside jokes, but decided not to on the grounds that I might be stuck with it.

I'll add other options if I think of them. Poll closes Jan. 10.

RIP Evel Knievel

...which is even more ironic, since two days beforehand, I discovered this website. It's full of toy catalogues from the mid to late 1970s (including two separate Evel Knievel catalogues), which has taken me on a massive nostalgia trip, full of exclamations of "I used to have one of those!" "The kids next door used to have one of those!" and "I always wanted one of those!" It's interesting, too, to be able to put a name to all those nine-inch action figures that the unbelievably grown-up and sophisticated older kids next door (three and six years older than me, respectively) were always playing with (Mego Star Trek, Planet of the Apes and Superhero figures, mostly).

I'm also both enchanted and frustrated by the discovery that Space: 1999 had not one, but two sets of action figures associated with it (by Kenner and Mego, respectively). I didn't discover Space: 1999 till my teens, but I would so have loved a teeny-tiny Paul Morrow and Victor Bergman for my desktop.

It also makes me mourn the loss of the Family Show. TV shows that were adult hits, like The Six Billion Dollar Man, Planet of the Apes, Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica routinely had action figure lines, reminding us that these programmes were made to be enjoyed by kids too, even if they didn't totally understand the nuances. Much as I love the new BSG, it's a real shame that the only programme out there which seems to have that family niche at the moment is Doctor Who.

RIP Verity Lambert

yesterday. Oh, the irony.

Popular Culture 101, again

One thing I've never been able to understand in telefantasy fandom is the people who become fans of one single programme, and feel that as a result of that, they have to hate all other programmes (particularly similar ones; I've lost count of the number of Doctor Who fans I've met who automatically hate-on Blake's 7, and vice versa, even though they shared many of the same writing and production team and are, as Corpse Marker demonstrates, close enough conceptually to take place in the same fictional universe). I mean, if you have a child, you don't automatically hate all other children; if you get married/civil partnershipped, this doesn't mean you automatically hate everyone else of the opposite/same sex; if your favourite food is hamburgers, you don't automatically hate every food that isn't a hamburger. Also, thinking about it, it doesn't seem to work that way in literary fandom-- people who like, say, William Gibson, don't automatically hate Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Neal Stevenson et al.; indeed, to judge by the "If you like X you'll also like Y" adverts in bookshops and lit magazines, it's assumed that fans of one author will be actively looking for similar authors to enjoy. So why is it somehow different with television? Answers on the usual postcard please.

Warmed-over Lazarus

...and a late addition to the Recyclingwatch: wow, doesn't the head of hybrid-Dalek-Sec look astonishingly like the organic-look VR helmets in Cold Lazarus.

(I tried to find a picture to do a comparison with, but unfortunately image searching for Cold Lazarus gets one five pictures of Albert Finney's head, and several dozen relating to some Stargate SG-1 episode which ripped off the name shamelessly. Instead of "No biography," Daniel Feeld's last words should have been "no recycling...").

Daniel Feeld's memories available for download

As part of Channel 4's 25th anniversary celebrations, the 4 on demand service is putting up a lot of old content for free viewing. This includes the otherwise-unavailable (unless you or one of your friends managed to video them back in the day) Dennis Potter classics Cold Lazarus and Lipstick on Your Collar (they've also got the prequel to Cold Lazarus, Karaoke, but they've cunningly made it pay-per-view). The viewing window is unfortunately tiny-- but hey, it's free, and I can't recommend them enough.

I first encountered Cold Lazarus when it was shown on CBC in the mid-1990s; being totally ignorant of Potter and the whole context of the story (and also, coming into it mid-episode), my reaction was "cool, the British have finally started producing great sci-fi series again; hope this one runs and runs." Eleven years later and, with occasional brief blips like Doctor Who (which, let's face it, isn't actually new science fiction, it's just reviving an old format-- check out Recyclingwatch if you honestly think it's all that different to the series that ended in 1989), I'm still waiting for the present-day British to start producing great sci-fi series of the sort that seemed to come out weekly in the late seventies (Blake's 7, The Omega Factor, Children of the Stones, Beasts, etc. etc.). Forget WWII and the Blitz Spirit-- this is the sort of thing whose passing the more jingoistic press should be lamenting.

Linking Park

Just like to draw your collective attention to Edward Gorey's The Trouble With Tribbles-- it's in the sidebar, but I don't think everyone reads that.

Also-- Twenties-style LOLcats!

The LOL'ing Prisoner

Well, since nobody else out there seems to have done a The Prisoner macros site, I thought I'd join the trend... it's at http://inocanhasnumber.blogspot.com/, and if you want to join in, please do!

Fall Out and website update

First off-- Fall Out is now for sale-- buy it, people, it's got more opinionated textual analysis than you can shake a stick at!

Second off-- major update this week to LGB Who. I apologise to all readers for the fairly skimpy entries on TSOD/LOTT beforehand, but I was too busy going "What?! Catherine Tate?!" to update it.

Third off-- Recyclingwatch is now appearing as a serial feature in the DWAS magazine Celestial Toyroom, for those of you who like to have dead-tree copies of things.

My Kind of Agony Aunt

Life ain't fair.

Me: Why can't they structure the tax disc system to be more like the television license fee? That way, we'd pay far less tax.

Alan: How did you work that out?

Me: Because our car is black and white.

The Silly Season begins

I feel like a high-schooler, posting a quiz-based meme in what's ostensibly a semi-serious blog, but I was rather amused to learn today that, according to the promotional website for The Golden Compass, if I were a character in a Philip Pullman novel, my daemon would be a tiger named Alvin.

Now, I think most people who know me would agree with the "tiger" bit, albeit probably in a far less complimentary form (I'm also a Year of the Tiger baby, which apparently means, ahem, I have a quick temper and will never get married). But... Alvin? Seriously.

Though I did grow up in the same house as a ginger cat named Theodore.

Ironies of global warming

All this rain we've been having lately has caused the car to do what Minis do worst: i.e., develop a) rust and b) more worryingly, damp sparkplugs. Which is ironic, considering that it's a pretty ecologically sound choice of car (it's recycled, it contains no energy-burning bells and/or whistles and, despite being nearly old enough to drive itself, gets about 30 miles to the gallon), and the neighbour's gas-guzzler seems to be getting through the deluge unscathed. No justice.

Recyclingwatch omnibus

Now that Doctor Who is over for the moment, here is a handy link to the full run of Recyclingwatch. Responses have been surprisingly gratifying (i.e. people actually wrote in to say they liked it) which means I'm thinking of doing something similar next year. It's actually been a fun way of reviewing the episodes without having to actually write paragraphs, from my point of view, so there's a few reasons to go for it.

Reasons to be slightly puzzled

Today I received a cheque for £9.00 in the post from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and I'm still trying to figure out why. Not that I'm ungrateful for it, it's just that I can't think of anything they should be reimbursing me for.

Riding around in cars with boys

Alan: Better not park your Mini next to that other Mini, or they'll mate and we'll be stuck with a litter of little Minis.

Me: Don't worry, I'll park next to this Alfa Romeo, so that if they mate, we'll get a litter of Mondeos.

B'Stard Beware

Alan and I went to see Rik Mayall's The New Statesman stage show a couple of years back, and thought it was a great updating of the series for the Blair era. So, naturally, when Rik Mayall turned up with what purported to be a new NS stage show at the Richmond Theatre (our local, at least until the Egham/Staines area gets a proper rep theatre), we booked tickets and settled in.

Only to find that it was the same stage show. Sort of.

To be fair, the jokes had all been completely updated, but the plot was the same, aside from a new subplot about Alan B'Stard wanting to join the Trillionaires Club. Oh well, we agreed afterwards, buyer beware, and at least there were enough new jokes to make it worth the trip.

But then I reread the advert in the Richmond Theatre's guide to upcoming shows:

"Brand New Installment Direct From West End Success..."

"Episode 2007...."

"Don't miss Rik Mayall's hilarious comedy creation in this brand new installment..."

And the one bit that actually describes the plot, focuses exclusively on the Trillionaires Club subplot.

I suppose one could make some kind of comment about it being a metatextual joke on the audience in a B'Stardesque vein, but if so, it wasn't funny enough to justify the ticket price.

Last of the Recyclingwatches

The End of the World: Popular musical numbers again (is RTD trying for a soundtrack album?).

Father's Day: Turning back time to change history and reset a screwed-up timeline.

But mostly, this episode is a greatest-hits compilation of the following four stories:

The Parting of the Ways: Let's see: enemy alien which is really little bits of human in a mechanical casing; Captain Jack getting shot by the enemy while creating a distraction (even doing the whole cruciform-arms "yeah, I kind of figured that" bit while doing so); deus ex machina ending in which one of the main characters becomes a transfigured glowing godlike thing and uses their magical powers to hit the reset button; the power of belief.

Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel: Companion takes up with the resistance, who involve cute stubbly men and butch older women; humans converted into robot thingies and seeing nothing wrong with this; donning of maids' uniforms; companion decides to stick around Earth at the end of the adventure due to their experiences in it. Villain with airborne HQ and all-controlling mobile phone network. The Doctor/Master, speaking over a television network, assuming that Rose/Martha is watching at the time and will interpret what he says and does correctly, which happens, through coincidence, to be exactly the case.

Doomsday: Companion in resistance in black designer fighting suit; companion leaves series; companion as "defender of the Earth." Invasion by flying thingies from out of the rift, who are defeated by a convenient deus ex machina. Companion's dysfunctional family are magically back together at the end.

The Runaway Bride: Companion decides not to take the Doctor up on an offer of further adventures; the Doctor repeating the word "what?" after something incongruous turns up in the Tardis after the teary goodbye.

Ripping Themselves Off: Who'd've thought The Lazarus Experiment would wind up as the pivotal story of the season? I mean, really? Plus the whole power-of-words bit from The Shakepseare Code (seriously, why couldn't they have carried on ripping off"Human Nature"?).

Timelash Moment: The ending was oddly dissatisfying. Plus finding out that the Borad is the Loch Ness Monster/Captain Jack is the Face of Boe (both equally unlikely-sounding fates).

The Fifth Element: Clearly-defined moment that you can point to and say "There, that's where the shark got jumped."

Old Skool Who: The Dalek Invasion of Earth (ripped off in so many ways, the Nation Estate ought to be suing); The Curse of Fenric (future humans paradoxically come back for revenge on their ancestors); The Leisure Hive (aging the Doctor again-- come on, it's been done before); The Stones of Blood (Professor Amelia Rumford returns, but heterosexual). The American Telemovie (turn-back-time ending; climax that involves a total ignoring of the existance of time zones on the part of the writer; heavy-handed Doctor=Christ Master=Satan metaphor). The Mutants (where Ky turns into a big shiny, floaty god-thing and makes everything OK again). Timewyrm: Revelation (the ending, where the companion goes back in time and does things to people who can't remember the alternate history which are incomprehensible to them).

Everything Else: Peter Pan (clap your hands if you believe in fairies, and Tinkerbell shall live again). Star Wars trilogy again (the Doctor lighting the Master's funeral pyre, just like Luke does with Anakin at the end of Return of the Jedi, only less poignant). Scarface (Michelle Pfeiffer called, she wants her performance as a faintly-stoned, red-evening-dress-wearing, blonde wife of a psychopath megalomaniac back). The Doctor has been variously compared to Gollum, Dobby the House Elf, and Moloch from Blake's 7, though he reminds me personally of a cross between a puppy dog and the ghost of Doctor Mabuse from Das Testament des Doktor Mabuses (but then, as Alan has helpfully pointed out, that says more about me than anything). Quatermass (the 1978 one; degenerate future world where the hero's allies are helpful scientists and slightly butch older women). Blake's 7: "Terminal" (the human race, at the end of its existence, devolving into primitive savagery). Flash Gordon (as well as the Master's death-dodge at the end, there's the floating HQ, the hero on a picaresque quest to rally the populace, who all inexplicably decide to rally round at the end). The Matrix trilogy; any film/TV programme which uses the Titanic disaster to ironic effect (that Benny Hill monologue in which a shipwrecked sailor, after many hair-raising adventures, is finally rescued... by the Titanic... leaps to mind); Tim Burton's Batman (Jack Nicholson called, he wants his popular music collection back). Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Series 4 finale (hero being transfigured through others' belief in her) and Series 7 finale (again, the faith/belief of ordinary girls being channelled to defeat evil), as well as another visual reference to Willow's flying act in "Tough Love." Battlestar Galactica ("one year later...": though to be fair, Alias and Six Feet Under both got there first).

Now I've got Aqua's song "Turn Back Time" going through my head. How annoying.

Recyclingwatch minus one and counting: The Sound of Drums

Rose: Doctor and/or companions running from explosion (I know, but visually compare the two sequences, OK? You'll see what I mean).

The End of the World: Chips as comfort food; villain playing popular musical number.

The Unquiet Dead: Aliens with little-girl voices pleading to be let into our world, and some Time Lord is mad enough to do it.

Aliens of London/World War Three: New PM, who's been elected while companion's been away, presides over an alien invasion which isn't all it seems; the cabinet getting killed and the public knowing nothing about this; alien attacks on London; return of Mal Loup the American news presenter; montage of celebrity cameos on TV; Ms Rook's mad-eyed strut through Number 10, brandishing her press pass, is disturbingly like Harriet Jones' robotic "MP for Flydale North!" schtick; the government tracking down and arresting the Doctor and companion, courtesy of the companion's mother.

Dalek: Floating attack balls, plus return of old enemy with new name.

The Christmas Invasion: Hotshot new prime minister turns out to be less cop than expected.

Rise of the Cybermen: Population hypnotically controlled through mobile phones; gas mask-wielding villain who reveals his robotic hordes at the end of the story. Villain meets a sceptical President on the tarmac of an airport and later has him killed.

The Idiot's Lantern: More bird names-- and if you look at the back of Martha's television when we see it briefly, you'll notice that it was made by Magpie Electronics (the boy done made good, apparently).

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday: Again with the celebrity cameo TV montage; again with the rift opening up and thousands of alien robot thingies pouring through; again with the brief images of "normal" people being attacked; again with the arrival of something/one who the local populace think are friendly but, gasp, the Doctor knows better.

The Runaway Bride: Floating attack balls.

Torchwood: Nice to know the Doctor thinks they're as dodgy as the viewers do.

Ripping Themselves Off: Let's hope that Lazarus Experiment reference wasn't just gratuitous, and does actually have an interesting payoff. The Doctor also does the aging thing in "Human Nature" (hope they're paying Paul Cornell a lot).

Old Skool Who: The Leisure Hive (the Doctor aging); The Time Monster/The American Telemovie (the Master has a missus); the Master keeps doing Pertwee and Baker references (swaggering around in red-satin-lined black jacket and gloves one minute, offering round the jelly babies the next); The Sensorites (the sky, burnt orange, etc); The Deadly Assassin (in which we get those stupid Time Lord robes; why couldn't they have broken with continuity on that one, please?); The Mind of Evil (the Master firmly established in powerful sociopolitical role and using it); Genesis of the Daleks (Jack's bracelet seems to be used in much the same way as the Time Ring, even down to everyone placing their hands on it at arm's length); the Doctor Who comics (appearance of Gallifrey, plus a solitary black Time Lord); Logopolis (the Master's speech); The Sea Devils (the Master mistakes a children's programme for a documentary); The Curse of Fenric (sudden discovery of dynamite attached to ordinary household object, followed by panicked exodus and explosion); the New Adventures (A "paradox machine"? Ahem).

Everything Else: Star Wars (so, Time Lords are chosen from the general population at age 8 and taken off to an Academy to undergo rigorous psychic and physical testing? And one of them turned into a megalomaniac with dreams of galactic domination as a result of it going wrong? Lucas' lawyers must be going mental right about now); The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (stare into the vortex and you go mad, unless you're Zaphod Beeblebrox); Captain Scarlet (hang on, what good is an airborne aircraft carrier, anyway?); Marvel's SHIELD comics also feature an airborne aircraft carrier (I never followed the series so I'm going on hearsay); The Omen (psycho demon child); I Claudius (where Caligula goes around hearing the sound of drums, is acclaimed by the Romans as leader before he suddenly turns on them and reveals the extent of his madness, and, guess what, there's even a Derek Jacobi connection). Harry Potter (kids off at a mystical academy, and one goes mental and becomes a supervillain); Quatermass (car driving madly off down urban street at speed whilst being fired on by heavily-armed types); Phantasm (eccentric villain with floating attack balls which suddenly unfurl with knives); Gordon Brown is currently attempting to build a cross-party coalition cabinet for no good reason, but that's probably coincidence.

Lessons learned

Further to the post below, I decided in the end to go with a new iPod rather than a Zen. I'm still angry at Apple, but research suggested that both were similar in terms of lousy customer service, susceptibility to breakdown and pathetic warranty cover, plus a) the Zen has an apparently easily-lost connecting device, and b) I'd have to start all over in terms of buying compatible accessories.

Anyway, I opened up the box and had a look. There was something a tiny bit different about the new one-- like they'd redesigned it slightly. And indeed, they had. Including....

...the data port. The wretched data port which was the thing which eventually scuppered the first iPod. They redesigned the very thing that I'd found such a problem.

Thing is, I don't normally buy products which are fresh on the market; I usually wait until the kinks have been worked out, but somehow I seem to have gotten, well, a kinky one. I suppose in this case, I assumed that since Apple have been manufacturing these things since the 1990s, they'd've sorted out the obvious stuff. Anyway, things are looking better, but I'm still pretty miffed.

Update: Showed Alan the new machine, and he remarked that probably the reason Apple refused to fix the first iPod was because they'd been inudated with defective data ports and didn't want to go to the expense of replacing them all. He's probably right.

Recyclingwatch: Utopia

Sporadic RWatch this week (busy still); will post this and update as the week wears on.

It's practically impossible to write this review and not spoiler the episode. My first attempt at this tried not to include spoilers, but for the edited version (this one), I'm throwing caution to the wind and just saying that if you don't want a serious spoiler (and believe me, you WILL like this story much better without spoilers), don't read this.

Rose: For God's sake, stop mentioning her!!!

The End of the World: The Doctor takes his companion into the far, far future, to meet quasi-human things, and other things claiming to be the last human.

The Empty Child: Captain Jack flirting his way through history, etc.

Boom Town: The rift in Cardiff being used as a Tardis-recharger; Captain Jack; introspective story in which we get to know one of the villains a little better; someone does something creative and unexpectes with the Tardis console.

Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways: "Just saying hello," "I don't mind" returns in catchphrase format. Along with various quips about how good Jack looks naked, etc. John Simms' speech when he regenerates is a deliberate parallel of David Tennant's "New teeth, that's weird," one.

The Impossible Planet: Industrial red-lit settings; unforeseen threat from an old enemy of the Doctor's; the Doctor gives the *&%^ "indomitable" speech for no good reason; Tardis goes missing; the Doctor and companions do a "it could be dangerous out there... [outrageous grin and rush out into said peril]" bit, although somewhat more understatedly here.

Torchwood: Captain Jack repeatedly dies, lies around for a minute or two and comes back with a big gasp. But that's it, fortunately; it's lovely to have the proper Jack back, as opposed to the evil twin version.

Ripping Themselves Off: Human Nature; hope Paul Cornell got paid extra for this. Plus the arrival, finally, of Mister Saxon. Martha sees herself, and even her own catchprases about the Doctor not loving her, in Chantho.

Timelash Moment and The Fifth Element: Haven't the faintest this time, actually. If I think of something, I'll update.

Old Skool Who: Trial of a Time Lord and Battlefield (we're initially led to believe that the Professor is a mind-wiped future incarnation of the Doctor); The Ark (oh, figure it out); The Ark in Space (compromised humanity-rescue attempt; also, please, Nu-Who team, no more variations on the £%&* "indomitable" speech!); Survival (the Master, and people with animal teeth); The Curse of Fenric (what humanity will evolve into in the far future; Doctor as vengeful pagan deity); The Leisure Hive (clickety insect people). There's a lot of New Adventures stuff in here as well (Steve Lyons' "Land of Fiction" books including a kind of evil-twin version of the Doctor, for instance, and they have lots of introspective moments where companions think about how little they really mean to the Doctor).

Everything Else: Dead Ringers' "Torchwood" spoof ("I'm Captain Jack Harkness, and these are my shiny teeth..."); that Alita: Battle Angel comic mentioned below (in which the alt-universe Alita bonds with the alt-universe version of the villain); the 1960s version of "First Men in the Moon" (deserted planet; insect people; mad professors); Neil Gaiman's Sandman (man who finds he literally cannot die) and Neverwhere (multilayered structure crammed full of weird people). Several episodes of Blake's 7, principally "Countdown" (two antagonistic, yet similar, men have a fraught discussion while defusing a nuclear devce and end up respecting each other), "Deliverance" (rocket bearing the last survivors of a humanoid race which its creators can't launch, until an alien turns up and shows them how to do it) and "Dawn of the Gods" (spaceship winds up in a starless void where refugees are engaged upon a mysterious task). Robert Asprin's Thieves World novels feature a character who never can die, and who periodically takes it upon himself to test whether this is still the case (haven't read the books since I was about sixteen, so can't remember more). Buffy the Vampire Slayer S5 featured the Knights of Byzantium, who sport tattoos not a million miles from those sported by some of the Futurekind; Mad Max and its sequels (as admitted by Graham Harper)-- in fact any of the postapocalyptic-punk films that filled the cinema schedules in the 1980s.

Reasons to hate Steve Jobs

OK, those of you who read my "current top picks" sidebar will know all about the saga of my iPod troubles lately: to boil it down quickly for those who haven't: damage out of warranty (supposedly); Apple refuse to replace; ipodrepair.co.uk will repair it but for more than the cost of the machine itself. The logical thing to do at this point is to forswear Apple entirely and go for something else. The problem is that the only other device that comes close enough to what I want is the Zen Vision-- but it doesn't have a text-files function, and it's no cheaper than the equivalent iPod, plus the reviews on their customer service performance are mixed. Plus, no iTunes, no automatic podcast download, and I'd have to buy a new set of accessories. So, do I go with an iPod again, since it's got exactly what I want in an audio/video player, but it might die on me; or go with a Zen and restart the whole learning/product acquisition curve? Answers to the usual address please.

I'd also like to say this: over the past few years, I've had my PlayStation, laptop and iPod break down. Guess which one wasn't immediately replaced or repaired, no questions asked, by the manufacturer?

Recyclingwatch: Blink

Late and rather brief Recyclingwatch-- it's been an annoying week. Anyway, on with the business at hand.

This is another literary self-recycle, since Moffat rewrote a story from the first Nu-Who annual for this.

Rose: Geeks endlessly debating something on the Internet (the Doctor there, the transcripts here), which proves crucial to the plot.

The Idiot's Lantern/Rise of the Cybermen: Damn, more bird names.

Rise of the Cybermen: For the third time this season, a convenient newspaper provides date and/or location exposition.

Love and Monsters: Action revolving around one-off character on the fringe of the protagonists' lives; people's lives getting irrevocably messed up due to coming into contact with either the Doctor or something he's done.

Torchwood: Random Shoes: Action revolving around one-off character on the fringe of the protagonists' lives; grotty DVD shop and Internet geek prove crucial to solving of mystery; story effectively told backwards as the protagonist figures out what happens.

The Fifth Element: Yes, there's one this week too: people in the past affecting foretold events in the future.

Timelash Moment: Something happens in the present which only makes sense in light of future events. Several "Timelash" clips in the Confidential, as well.

Old Skool Who: Ghostlight (mysterious old house where a girl finds something evil yet science-fictiony); The Stones of Blood (stone aliens that move); Battlefield (the Doctor leaving clues for someone in the past to find); The Daemons (Bok!)

Everywhere Else: Warner Brothers' cartoons ("Duck, no, seriously, duck"); any comedy that uses the person-talking-back-to-a-recording gag (I seem to recall Get Smart being notorious for this); Sapphire and Steel, particularly the Railway Station and Petrol Station episodes (abandoned houses, supernatural creatures sending people into the past); Twelve Monkeys (recording from the past that makes sense once the events of the future unfold; man trapped in the past finds romance); William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition (mysterious messages, transmitted via electronic media, which eventually make sense once their origin is traced); Life on Mars (cop from the present day, sent mysteriously back to the past, and when he returns to the present, he dies).

Brideshead Recycled II: The Family of Blood

First off... as before, with Gridlock, let me say that I thought this was outstanding-- but that I'm still Recyclingwatching anyway.

And, as before with the Dalek two-parter, this one's just going to be an addendum post, putting in any new recycling, or any previously-mentioned recycling that's either become a bit more obvious or acquired a twist, or otherwise become mentionworthy.

The Unquiet Dead: Plucky girl housemaid saves the day; a human being makes a conscious decision to die so that the Doctor can live.

Aliens of London/World War Three: I've said it before, but Lawrence Miles put it better in his blog: "The Doctor describes these aliens as hunters. They track their prey by smell. They have a strong sense of family. They insert themselves into human bodies, they've got a thing for strange gases, and they clearly prefer fat victims. Even Rebekah Staton looks like a younger, cuter Annette Badland. Is the message not clear, I asked myself?" Apparently RTD has said that he based the Slitheen on the Family of Blood, so this is kind of the ouroboros of recycling here.

Boom Town: Introspective conversations between the Doctor and someone else, the upshot of which is that, seen from the perspective of those who catch the fallout, the Doctor's really not such a nice guy after all, even when he's trying to be.

The Parting of the Ways: Moral decision time for the Doctor. The Doctor's cell structure changes, turning him into someone else.

The Girl in the Fireplace: Well, this one's got a girl in the mirror, but it's also got a woman who loves the Doctor but is willing to let him go because she loves him. The Doctor meet someone as a child, then fast-forward to when he's an old man.

The Impossible Planet: Mother-of-Mine getting chucked into a black hole.

Love and Monsters: Being on the fringes of one of the Doctor's adventures wrecks a whole bunch of human lives, but one of them, who's been having mysterious dream-visions, suddenly has them all make sense for him.

Old Skool Who: Battlefield (war memorial sequence; anti-war message). Any of the Cartmel Dark-Doctor stories and the NA's they spawned (emphasis on the idea that the Doctor's really a bit of a bastard, if you see it from someone else's perspective); special mention again to "The Curse of Fenric," featuring a baby, and a baddie who is trapped in a flask for all eternity; "The Five Doctors" (Borusa wants eternal life and gets it but in an ironic way); any humans-taken-over-by gaseous-aliens story you care to mention. The American Telemovie (featuring a half-human Doctor, though they may have nicked that one from Cornell's book to begin with, so it's sort of another ouroboros-recycle). Warrior's Gate (dwarf star alloy, and people living inside mirrors). The Enemy of the World (Tardis doors opening and a baddie being sucked out). The Wheel in Space (the sequence where the Family line up the schoolboys and go through them looking for the Doctor resembles the Cybermen going through the crew manifest with the same intention).

Everywhere Else: If again, in spades; Oh! What a Lovely War (ironic use of hymn music over battlefield sequences); Twelve Monkeys (thanks to Lawrence for this one); Battle Angel Alita (OK, I don't know if Paul Cornell's ever seen this, but there's a sequence fairly late on where Alita experiences an alternate world in which she didn't grow up a warrior-cyborg, but instead had a normal human-style life; and, seductive as this option is, she makes the conscious decision to end it so that she can save her friends). The Sapphire and Steel story about the man who lives in every photograph ever taken (the fate of Sister-of-mine).