Maureen Flynn - Author
Strap on your seat belts! It’s finale time! Given how much I disliked Bad Wolf I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Parting of the Ways. Yes, even with the RTD literal deux ex machina and a host of Daleks playing the big…
Ah, and so we reach the end of Series One of New Who with the first two-parter finale. Again, and I know I keep repeating this, but back in high school I thought this two-parter was the height of high stakes, emotional drama and I…
Now we reach the episodes that Maureen has limited recollections of, which is weird, coz ya know, the episodes I don’t remember include the finale and all… Anyway good old Boom Town continues on The Slitheen storyline, but with more panache and better acting. Too bad it cops out in the final third…
Pre-Title Sequence
Ben: Between the little recap of our previous encounter with the Slitheen and the scene with a nuclear expert meeting an unfortunate fate, it’s pretty clear the direction this episode is headed. Bring on Cardiff!
Maureen: Ah Cardiff… I remember back in 2010 at Cardiff Bay, tourist information actually gave you a free sheet of Doctor Who filming locations you could wander around and take pics outside of. Do they still do that? What a great tourist activity that was… but ahem… reviewing the episode… yes. Where was I?
Companion
Ben: Urgh. Rose doesn’t really do anything except treat Mickey badly. It’s like she never remembers he exists until they’re back on modern day earth.
Maureen: Well yeah, Ben. That’s one of the reason’s Rose never works for me. She comes across as superficial and naive at best and as callous and heartless at worst. She is a seriously annoying companion and I say that as someone who LOVES Billie Piper.
Ben: Plus, the bit with her calling Trisha Delaney “a bit big” is pretty gross.
Maureen: Yep. I say no to fat-shaming, RTD! Also, I hate that Mickey is only dating Trisha to try to forget Rose, like Trisha is some kind of second-rate Rose.
Ben: It’s so telling that the only time on Mickey and Rose’s date that Mickey gives any details of his life is when he offers these details himself. Rose is fine to go on about her adventures in space and time, all take and no give. The final insult is that when the real trouble starts she runs off without him, heading straight to The Doctor without a thought for poor Mickey. It isn’t until the crisis is resolved that she remembers she abandoned him.
Maureen: My final note on Rose in this episode is, ‘and Rose says she’s fine to go on without Mickey… well fuck you, Rose.’ In other Rose Tyler news, I liked her cute braids this episode, her strangely similar to Amy Pond outfit and her Mary Poppins-esque joy when she says big alien words. More of this Rose please. Also, final note: I swear at the start of this episode Rose groped the side of the TARDIS. That was some weird tea-time porn 😉 Now where’s that fan fic?
Ben: As to Jack, he doesn’t really do anything but look handsome and flirt with everyone. Which is fine by me, really.
Maureen: I got nothing written about Jack except that the Jack/Doctor/Rose chemistry is a bit cute as they bounce off each other telling Mickey about their adventures.
Ben: Ah yes, Mickey. Poor Mickey can’t do anything right. First off, he bungles their plan to corner the Slitheen, then he asks Rose out on a date involving pizza and sex, during which he admits he’s seeing another woman? Classy! At least by the end of the episode he’s realised how bad Rose is for him and has walked away from the whole mess.
Maureen: Yes, Mickey and the guy who’s stuck playing him sure have a raw deal this season. I really hope when he comes back next season he gets more to do and less harshing on by the script. I’ve forgotten most of Season Two to be honest so this shall be unexpected.
The Doctor
Ben: Right off the bat we have the Doctor calling Mickey Rickey (booo!) and flirting with Jack (yay!). The scene with the Doctor and Rose realising Bad Wolf is following them is very emblematic of how this episode ends up playing out: a lot of interesting build up culminating in a fizzer of an ending. The episode is filled with the Doctor doing general Doctor stuff, solving mysteries and kicking butt. We get some good truths about the Doctor and his God-like powers from Blon during the dinner scene, but otherwise this episode is pretty light on good Doctor moments. Having the TARDIS return Blon to egg form felt like more of a cop out than anything, to me. Especially after the dissection of the Doctor Blon gave us during the dinner scene, I felt like there was an opportunity to delve deeper and darker about the dangers of The Doctor by actually having the Doctor take her to her death. But alas, it was not to be…
Maureen: I think that Nine is at his best in his comedic moments and his darkest moments as in Dalek. I love Nine’s face when he hear’s Margaret drop her tea cup and the follow up of ‘she’s climbing out the window, isn’t she?’ Nine also gets dark when he says no one should worship him as a God. Damn straight, Doctor. It’s why the lonely God trope that surfaces from season two onwards never ever works for me. Also, The Doctor describing a planet called ‘women wept?’ Link me to that fan fic stat.
The Alien of the Week
Ben: Ahhh, the last of the Slitheen is up to her old tricks. That is, until she gets soft and can’t follow through with killing the pregnant, soon to be wed Cathy Salt. Being all alone in the world is clearly weighing on her.
Maureen: I love this little scene. I felt sorry for Margaret as she cried in the toilet and said she was cursed. What an actress!
Ben: Her acting is excellent, isn’t it? Margaret’s rightly the focus of this episode. After the Doctor and his companions handily capture her, she beings her mind games to the dinner party (literally) as she torments The Doctor and his companions with the fact that they’re taking her to her death on her home planet. It’s clear she has the full measure of the Doctor with lines about how the Doctor is always the first to leave, and often avoids the full consequences of his actions. Throughout playing these mind games (“dinner in bondage, works for me” Maureen: God, how I snickered at this line) it’s pretty clear that she has every intent of escaping the Doctor. The in depth detailing of the execution she will face, of the pain she will go through, the pleading for one last chance, all have the intent of helping her to escape. It wasn’t until that final speech she made to the Doctor that I really started to feel bad for her, which is unfortunate because immediately after that final emotional plea she showed her true colours.
Maureen: I found Margaret to be a surprisingly funny character too. I loved this exchange:
Margaret: What did I ever do to you?
Nine: Tried to kill me and all of earth?
Margaret: Apart from that…
I also laughed at her ‘I sound Welsh. I’ve gone native,’ comment.
Otherwise, the centrepiece of the episode when The Doctor and Margaret talk at a restaurant was pure gold. As was the TARDIS exchange below:
Rose Tyler: We’ve got a prisoner. The police box is really a police box.
Margaret Blaine: You’re not just police, though. Since you’re taking me to my death, that makes *you* my executioners. Each and every one of you.
Mickey Smith: Well *you* deserve it.
Margaret Blaine: [looks straight at him] You’re very quick to say so. And you’re very quick to soak your hands in my blood. Which makes you better than me how, exactly?
[he says nothing]
Margaret Blaine: Long night ahead.
[walks away & sits down, finally]
Margaret Blaine: Let’s see who can look me in the eye.
[looks piercingly at each person; none hold eye contact for more than a few seconds; & the Doctor barely even looks up from his work]
This episode would have been a ten outta ten if it had stuck to that theme and followed through on its implications for The Doctor as story hero.
Ben: Alas, in hindsight Margaret had a pretty obvious plan, why else would you have the extrapolator as part of the model nuclear power station? Of course it was meant to be discovered. I’m not a fan of her final fate either, reverting to an egg. I would have preferred a (much darker) ending where she is returned to her home planet for execution. That would have lead to a much more interesting dissection of the Doctor, especially as he is very alone in the universe, just as she is.
Maureen: I have to agree with Ben. I noted when Margaret grabs Rose that the story would have been better if it had left Margaret as being actually contrite for her actions. I also wrote that the TARDIS egg sequence is the episode going to shit so…
Final Thoughts
Ben: This episode was 30 minutes of really good Doctor Who followed by 10 minutes of really bad Doctor Who. Margaret/Blon’s acting was truly excellent, but ultimately wasted in a terrible conclusion. I would have much preferred if RTD had followed through to the ultimate bleak ending of the final Slitheen getting her just rewards and being executed. But no, she’s an egg. With a great setup and poor follow through, I’m going to give this episode a 6/10.
Maureen: I’ve sat back and let Ben’s comments dominate this review because he basically says everything I want to say, but better. I agree with his assessment of the episode. I wanted more darkness and less Doctor cop-out resolutions. 6/10 inky stars.
This is one of the RTD era who two-parters that everyone talks about. Actress Nicola Walker once said this was amongst her favourite of all New Who. Hers and many others, including best of lists. I hadn’t re-watched this one in years and had forgotten…
I hadn’t seen this episode in years and nor had Ben. Ben didn’t remember it at all. I had fond memories. I knew it was *the* Pete Tyler episode but not a lot else. So what goes down? Rose begs The Doctor to take her…
This is one of the episodes I haven’t re-watched in years. I knew it involved Simon Pegg, an alien in a ceiling, and very little else. I thought I liked it quite a bit. Whoops. Maybe I did back in the day, but this re-watch… well… let’s just say every frustrating aspect of RTD’s writing style and show running style which I loathed back in the day is on display here. Strap yourselves in. This review ain’t gonna be pretty.
So what happens? The Doctor, Rose and Adam find themselves in the year 200 000 in the fourth great and bountiful human empire. Technology and the sought after gold-wall lined Floor 500 (where humans after a promotion go) are wrong, says The Doctor, and thus, exploration ensues in a pastiche episode that checks off The Face of Boe pregnant, the Bad Wolf channel and a 1984 style propaganda machine.
Pre-Title Sequence
Ben: The opening to this episode was fun enough. I liked the Doctor giving Rose a chance to show off with Adam. It was a sweet moment. And Rose is 19 years old, so I can understand her needing to get her flirt on every once in a while. Is it enough of a reason to bring Adam with them on an adventure? Not really. But hey, there’s always the chance the writers have an interesting way of using him in this story (spoiler alert: they very much did not). Ultimately, this opening reminds me of the opening to The End of the World, but with less awesome.
Maureen: My favourite part of the pre-title sequence was Rose successfully getting her Doctor on (I love it when companions get to do this without being harshed on). Rose is loving showing off when she says ‘judging by the architecture’ it’s a time far in the future and the surroundings point to ‘definitely a spaceship’ to Adam. She does get her flirt on, as Ben points out, and yes, I get she’s 19, but it makes Rose seem inconsistent. She likes Mickey… no wait The Doctor … no wait Adam … no wait The Doctor again. Make up your mind, woman!
Adam: *Faints*
Nine: He’s your boyfriend.
Rose: Not any more.
The Companion(s)
Ben: As much as I was in support of Rose getting a little action at the start of the episode, I really soured towards her as the episode went on. She was pretty supportive of Adam going through the motions of acclimatizing to time travel, only to immediately abandon him when things got interesting. Because leaving someone you barely know to their own devices in a strange place where bad things are probably happening is an excellent idea *sarcasm*. She doesn’t really do much for the rest of the episode other than follow the Doctor around. They have a nice moment in the elevator to level 500 when they realise Adam isn’t there and agree it’s better when it’s just the two of them, but like, why aren’t The Doctor and Rose concerned for him? He’s alone 198 000 years in the future and the general consensus is that’s fine? It’s no wonder he gets up to absolutely nothing good, especially considering where he was working in the previous episode! The final scene where they drop Adam off at home was pretty nasty really, especially considering they’re at least partly responsible for what happened to him. Really, Rose doesn’t come across as a great person this episode.
Maureen: I agree with Ben on this one and Ben gave Rose some leeway on her Adam flirting in the pre-title credits! I have very little to add except I did like the bit where Rose says she’s ‘missing out on the party upstairs’ re wanting to dash up to the creepy Floor 500. I’m going to leave Rose behind and focus on yet another companion who never was, Suki, as played by the excellent actress Anna Maxwell Martin. Here’s the thing guys: why cast someone as prestigious as ANNA FLIPPING MAXWELL MARTIN and then do nothing with her character till she’s unceremoniously fridged? WHY? I thought Suki didn’t know she was a spy, so it was a neat twist when it turned out she was a double agent all along.
Suki: This whole system is corrupt.
But that’s about all there was to her character. RTD. YOU ARE THE WORST.
Ben: And don’t forget Adam. Poor Adam got the worst of it. After the scene in the food court where he got to call his parents he was basically left to his own devices. It would have been kinder to keep him in the TARDIS for the rest of the episode. Instead we get so many scenes about Adam getting progressively further in over his head, culminating in him having everything he knows about Rose and the Doctor being forcibly yanked out of his brain.
Maureen: I read online somewhere that this was the series first Doctor-lite episode. Maybe it was. But it still sucked. And the Adam screen time is still completely unjustifiable. It was boring, awkward and a distraction from the real plot. I can’t believe Rose and The Doctor leave Adam to his own devices. He was working for the dangerously inquisitive Van Statten in Dalek. Wouldn’t they, you know, want to keep him on a tight leash till they know they can trust him? Scratch that. In logic land, The Doctor would never have brought Adam along at all!
Ben: Of course Adam was going to be interested in futuristic technology!! And then he was consigned to a future of being prodded and probed and reverse engineered. Yes, he got greedy, but he was the equivalent of a kid in a candy store in this episode. His guardians are the ones who should be shouldering the blame here. My final thought is, why even bring Adam into this episode if they didn’t have an interesting idea for how to use him?
Maureen: Rather! Also, the script is just plain predictable. It’s telegraphed a mile off that Adam is up to no good and will try to use his future knowledge for his own capitalist gain. It’s obvious something bad will happen to him (the cute dog whining at the sound of Adam’s voice on the answering machine made that obvious, and it was shown not once, but twice). And anyone who isn’t totally moronic aka Adam would trust Tamsin Greig nurse lady as far as they could throw her. Speaking of Tamsin Greig, her entire performance was off. Was she going for sexy? For funny? For creepy? Who knows? I doubt even she knew. And as to the episode’s ending, the tone is all wrong. Were we meant to feel sorry for Adam? Were we meant to laugh at him? Were we meant to feel vindicated? Who knows RTD.
The Doctor
Ben: I don’t really have much to say about the Doctor in this episode. He was okay. He solved the mystery, saved the day, and then left the mess to be cleaned up by other people. I didn’t mind this so much in World War Three, because Harriet Jones was quite capable of handling things herself. But in this case Cathica is quite right in stating that no one is going to believe what happened here.
Maureen: Nope. She’s a woman AND black. Unless social structures have changed any by the year 200 000. I doubt it.
Ben: I guess the Doctor isn’t really a fan of being there for the long haul. But then to cap things off, he was quite happy to leave Adam to his own devices (which left Adam with a head full of futuristic technology), and then blamed him for ending up over his head in an extremely alien environment! The worst part is that the Doctor and Rose didn’t care they were damning Adam to a fairly miserable life at the end of the episode. Yes, Adam got greedy, but where was the Doctor to keep him in line? At least some acceptance of responsibility would have been appreciated.
Maureen: I can’t disagree with Ben on that either, though two positives to end this section on from me. I did like the emphasis on Nine as a more sexual Doctor (shown when he is cool with Suki hugging him and looks like he kind of enjoys it and also the fan fic hand cuffs scene with him and Rose). And Nine’s lines about being a tourist rocked.
Nine: The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can’t just read the guide book. You’ve got to throw yourself in, eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers – or is that just me?
So true, Doctor!
Alien of the Week
Maureen: Simon Pegg is… adequate… I guess? What a waste of a role for him too. So he’s a banker. That’s nice. Somehow he makes money out of propaganda news and supporting The Jagrafess who wants… who knows? The episode never makes that clear.
Ben: Ahh, the cheap special effects are back this week. I know that this was made in the early 2000s, but you know what else was? Lord of the Rings. Special effects aside, the Jagrafess didn’t really make sense as the big bad. Why is it living on the roof of a space station for 3000 years of its lifespan? How is this preferable to where it normally lives? How does it benefit from this arrangement it has with the Editor and the consortium of banks he represents? Why does controlling the information benefit banks in the long run? And in a slight aside, how does Cathica use the information transfer system they use to package the news to control the space station’s heating systems? There’s a lot of plot holes and poor explanations in this episode.
Maureen: Also, far too much pastiche. It’s 1984! No! Simon Pegg and his frozen people keyed into the space station channels are Minority Report. No! Suki, Cathica and co. are like Scarlet Johanssen and Ewan McGregor in The Island. Wait! It’s kind of like Seven/Ace meta stories like The Happiness Patrol… except far more boring and with far less to say. What a mess!!!
Final Thoughts
Maureen: This is it. Right here. The point where all of RTD’s excesses are truly revealed for the first time. There were elements in Aliens of London, but this here is the real McCoy. We got the kitchen sink. Check. We got The Doctor being an arsehole and getting away with it narratively because… well… he’s the Doctor. Check. We got nonsensical plots. Check. We got humour that isn’t funny. Check. We got inane, empty dialogue that goes nowhere and means nothing. Check. Urgh. The last line in my notebook on this episode is ‘HORRIBLE EPISODE. HORRIBLE.’ It gets worse the more I think about it. 1/10 inky stars.
Ben: Look. This episode was bad. Real bad. It feels like they threw everything at the wall to see what stuck, and decided they really liked the look of the stained mess that was left on the wall. It was convoluted, confusing, the jokes didn’t land, and Adam existed. The world they created was interesting, which makes it all the worst because they could have done a really interesting story about propaganda – the great human empire and it’s one news source. But no. I give it 1/10.
Next week at least we have Father’s Day, which by both my memory and by all accounts is halfway decent. Regular Who programming to resume at InkAshlings next week.
Before I write any more of this review, I need to remind everyone of this: Rob Shearman wrote this episode. Yes, THE Rob Shearman. That guy who wrote two of the best Doctor Who audios ever recorded for Big Finish; Jubilee and The Chimes of…
Sorry guys for the lateness of this write-up. Ben was on time, but I’m in Canberra for the 2018 Hardcopy manuscript development program and now is the first chance I’ve had to upload words to this blog. Aliens of London/WW3 is RTD’s first two-parter and…
The Word is Murder
Anthony Horowitz
Publisher: Harper Collins
First Published: August 2017
RRP: $27.99 paperback
Anthony Horowitz is one of those authors who has been on my radar for a long, long time. I’ve never read his popular Alex Rider series, but they’ve been on my to-read pile for years. Midsummer Murders was a family staple when I was in high school, and Foyle’s War is one of the best crime and historical dramas ever written for the television in my opinion (why oh why ITV did you cancel it? Please tell me there will be more, Horowitz. Please). I’m also interested in Horowitz’s sanctioned Holmes stories, House of Silk and Moriarty. Even if I’m not a fan of Holmes stories, I do enjoy some good Moriarty fan fic. As part of his transition to adult fiction, Horowitz’ most recent two stories are meta crime. I haven’t read Magpie Murders (yes, it’s on my list too), but when I read the super interesting interview I re-blogged from Sophie Masson about The Word is Murder with Mr Horowitz and saw that there was an e-book sale happening, I jumped right in with Horowitz’ most recent. And what an odd beast it is too…
Where Magpie Murders sees Horowitz experiment with the book within a book trope (an author is killed and his editor reads his manuscript to source clues), The Word is Murder goes much further. In a Holmes/Watson dynamic, the fictional detective Hawthorne teams up with author, Anthony Horowitz, to uncover who killed Diana Cowper just after she arranged her own funeral. Diana’s son is famous and much of the story follows various people involved in acting and the fame game.
I enjoyed this unusual crime read, though I suspect writers and avid crime trope and genre fans (such as myself) are more likely to enjoy the novel’s central gimmick. Horowitz posits that he writes the novel at fictional private (sometimes police) consultant, Hawthorne’s request and the novel is written in the first person from Horowitz’ perspective. There is a lot of time dedicated to Horowitz’ own experiences writing crime drama for TV and plotting books, which I found fascinating as a crime writer. Judging by Goodreads reviews, other readers mileage may vary. I did find that sometimes Horowitz became too obtrusive in the story, too self-aware and this detracted from the very well-written, very clever mystery around Diana Cowper. Inventing fictional characters who had CVs rooted in the real world was also a bit distracting for me as I’d seen most of the dramas mentioned and knew no such actor had been in them!
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve never read a Horowitz novel before so had no idea what to expect in terms of writing quality (I knew he could plot a crime story from various dramas). There is no denying that Horowitz is a brilliant writer. I found myself reading passages of dialogue and trying not to weep in despair at how trite my own conversation passages in my manuscript read compared to his. He has a way of sketching strong characters quickly through conversation which brings his story to life.
The overall crime plot was clever, even if I guessed a portion of it. Towards the end there were a number of twists I didn’t see coming and I had no clue who the murderer was till the big reveal. Aside from the more obtrusive Horowitz biography moments, this is a taut, suspenseful work.
The Word is Murder: 3/5 inky stars
You can purchase this book from Book Depository.
If anyone knows me at all, they know I like A Series of Unfortunate Events. Obsessively so. I’ve blogged reviews of Snicket’s other series All The Wrong Questions twice on this blog. I once kept my partner up all night telling him all the reasons…