"You Wouldn't Want To Worship Me. I'd Make A Very Bad God"

So said the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, to Margaret Slitheen when, on entering the Tardis she was in awe of the whole thing and how wonderful it was. Well, now we are starting to know what he meant.

A slightly bizarre ending to "The Family Of Blood", and a very dark one too. I think I remember reading somewhere that another rumour on The-Master-Or-Not ending was that Mr Saxon would actually turn out NOT to be The Master but some kind of Really-Bad-Guy future incarnation of The Doctor of way into the future. This may well prove to be right based on what we saw in this two-part story.

But it's just a little tricky to get your head around it all. So here goes: The Doctor and Martha at the start are apparently escaping from The Family Of Blood as we see a laser shot. The Doctor sees they can follow him anywhere through time and space so feels it might be better to hide somewhere as a human because that way they could not trace him. He hopes too that they did not see Martha's face. This is what we saw in the "Human Nature" episode, and you would be quite sensible to conclude that this was some kind of rare enemy that The Doctor really WAS afraid of. Even more scary than the Daleks and Cybermen - those two must be like wimps in comparison to the mighty FAMILY! So this is what we take through episode 8 until the conclusion of that where they find him - the Human 'him' that is.

Through we go then to the "Family Of Blood" episode where the Quest For The Watch is on. We assume, and are made to believe, that if John Smith can find the watch before The Family then he can turn back into The Doctor (and miraculously regain his internal biology!). He can then know what to do, will not be afraid any more of this previously terrifying enemy (whose fear factor will have miraculously gone for him), and can then fight them all off and Save The Day Once More (Hurrah Hurrah!)

Ah, but no. It's all turned on its head! Turns out that the reason The Doctor wanted to hide is that he wanted to spare The Family their Ultimate Punishment (which they all got in the end anyway!). He wanted to show them mercy by pretending he had disappeared and so they would, in the end, just die off "like mayflies" with Punishment Not Administered. Kind of like dying of Old Age when on Death Row I suppose.

Well, I think I've analysed it enough from An Adult Point Of View which of course is completely wrong in a programme made for children (Gee, we adults spoil the whole thing, eh!).

While watching "The Family Of Blood" on Saturday night I found myself thinking two things. Firstly, that this was yet another two-parter where the second of the two parts was something of a let-down when compared to the first part. They've all been that way actually right back to Eccleston days. Part 1 full of great things, Part 2 The Doctor cleans up and makes the drama of Part 1 look like it needn't have happened. Secondly, what a rather LAME ending it WAS! I mean, The Doctor tricks The Family pretending he's still John Smith gives them the Fake Watch then falls around the place pressing a few buttons, they then fall for this little charade and the end result of this is that something that could have been done by anyone at any time happens and End-Of-Story. I mean, come ON! If all it takes to blow up a ship like that is to press a few buttons In The Wrong Way, then it ain't much of a ship, IS IT? And I think we deserved a better ending than THAT!!

Speaking of Lame Endings, it gets me thinking of previous two-parters and how they ended in comparison to this:-

DALEKS IN MANHATTAN / EVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS --> This actually wasn't a bad ending at all except that by rights The Doctor should have been dead with such a huge bolt of lightning going all the way through his body from SUCH a big storm as we were told it was

ARMY OF GHOSTS / DOOMSDAY (Series 2) --> Utterly superb of course since it was the end of Series 2 and the dramatic departure of Rose. But since it WAS the end-of-series, you would expect it to be good!

IMPOSSIBLE PLANET / SATAN PIT (Series 2) --> Many people criticised this story, but I really loved it as a whole. But it has to be said that it made NO SENSE AT ALL that Rose could shoot out the window of the rocket with a bolt gun and not have the WHOLE CREW sucked out together. Seat belts holding them in? Yeah, right, and isn't space a .... VACUUM??!!

RISE OF THE CYBERMEN / AGE OF STEEL (Series 2) --> Got to be one of the dumbest endings of a Doctor Who story, as good as the rest of the story was up until that ending. OK, Mickey hacks the computer, gets the code 'somehow' (was the Binary 9 enough of a clue?), sends it to Rose's phone, The Doctor then conveniently has a point to plunge Rose's phone into (remember, an ORDINARY MOBILE PHONE!), sticks it in there and hey presto he causes chaos with the Cybermen. And blows up the factory too while we're at it. Talk about something outta nothing!! And a stupid ending to an otherwise great story.

BAD WOLF / PARTING OF THE WAYS (Series 1) --> Was again full of drama being the end of the series and end of Doctor Who #9. Rose, Mickey and the car breakdown crane yank open the Tardis's innards (the time vortex) which then goes into Rose's mind and makes her some kind of Mega-God-Of-Time and able to do what she wants - killing, turning to dust, bringing back to life etc. Did I like that one? Yes and no. It provided the way forward for the regeneration though in a somewhat bizarre way, and wouldn't the time vortex have fried Rose's brain a whole lot sooner? I mean, if it made the Doc do a regen so quickly then why was Rose virtually unhurt? Ah, because The Doctor sucked it all out! Hmm .... OK then.

EMPTY CHILD / DOCTOR DANCES --> One of my real favourites over these three series. And yes, I even liked the ending. Yes, it is plausible that these nanogenes could, intelligent as they were, recognise the parent DNA and change all things back and then the newly-enlightened nanogenes could certainly then put the rest of the gasmask-people back to normal. So that was a good story. BUT I'm not sure about how ol' Captain Jack managed to hook up with the Tardis and escape just before his ship exploded. Well, a small thing and I won't worry too much about it. It just DID, alright?

ALIENS OF LONDON / WORLD WAR THREE --> The Slitheens went from being big and fearsome in part one to floppy and just a bit pathetic in part 2. Fine when they were done in CGI, silly otherwise. Their hands were just too darn BIG! And OK, so Mickey and The Doc hacked their way into the Royal Navy computer to launch the missile and somehow managed to stop it getting intercepted. Gee, that Mickey sure learns fast! I mean, just HOW DID HE stop it being intercepted. Again, a small detail. I don't know if I'd be that scared of a Slitheen - big pot-bellies, oversized ridiculous hands that you could probably pull off if you tugged hard enough and slow-moving (but NOT so slow in CGI!!). So a good part two? Yes, but a little too condensed for my liking.

So if you look at these opinions of mine you can probably see a trend forming. Two-part Doctor Who stories are kind of running out of steam. They could probably fit a whole two-parter into one whole hour I reckon. That was another thing I was thinking on Saturday night - how it was really a one-and-a-half-parter.

Back to the present then. So we've seen a darker side to Doctor Who that will, no doubt, climax in the end of the Series in some way. Now I'm not so sure that Mr Saxon IS The Master after all but is some kind of evil alter-ego which has found its way back to meet The Doctor in present time to confront him to stop him in his tracks. A bit like that if Mr Saxon won, there would ne no chance he could be stopped in the future. OR, in a Terminator kind of way, he has come from the future to prevent the future from happening (if you see what I mean).

Next week is one of those Doctor-light episodes so I don't think I'll bother writing about that. But surely I'll come up with something to entertain you (and myself) with!

Before I sign off, I want to say just HOW GOOD WAS THE CHARACTER OF JEREMY BAINES!! A really SUPERB PERFORMANCE by the actor involved, Harry Lloyd! Oh, and I discovered, to my amusement, that the girl who played the character of the Daughter Of Mine (red balloon girl) is in fact a Canadian ice skater!

See ya next time then, Time Lords!

Doctor Who to be Deleted after Series 4?? It's a Dalek Rumour!

OK, now I am not one for reacting wildly to newspaper stories which are, most likely, gossip, tittle-tattle, most-likely unfounded, bordering-on ridiculous and plain scandalous at best. But I feel that I have to write a piece about what English tabloid newspaper 'The Sun' has been saying about Doctor Who, about Freema Agyeman (Martha), about Russell T. Davies and about the whole institute of Dr Who as we know it today.

There was a story published in The Sun yesterday, 31st May. The title of this was, "Doctor Who to get axe in 2008" and the gist of this so-called 'story' is that Russell T. and the guys have had enough of their 16-hour Dr Who days and are all going to quit together in summer 2008. You can also see a forum thread here also on this topic

My first reaction, as was many of yours too, was absolute shock and UTTER HORROR that the BBC could consider doing such a thing.

But that's the way 'The Sun' newspaper works, you see. What they have gone on for this report, it seems, is one of those Anonymous Sources. And whizz-bang - you have a news story!

BUT it's also a news story that I can't ignore and can't totally dismiss. I don't mean the content of the story itself and what The Sun Says - NO! What I mean is that way back at the start of this blog's creation I actually speculated about this myself in Blog Entry Number One. If you don't recall that far back, I basically said that I was wondering how they would carry on past the middle of Series 4 next year. One Time Lord generation gone, one companion gone (Rose), cybermen seemingly all gone, Daleks reduced to just one again, the great Face Of Boe dead and soon to be revived Master making a comeback. Options for good storylines definitely ARE being dried up.

Of course, the thing about sci-fi is that The Universe Is A Big Place And All Things Can Happen. And Doctor Who is very much proof of THAT little number!

The question is this: with many good and strong storylines and baddies used up, where is the strength coming from for future series (beyond Series 4 anyway)? It's a GOOD question, isn't it? But why, you say, should we answer it since if we WERE able to answer it then it would make it all far too predictable and therefore not watchable and it might once again descend into the Pit Of Bad Writing. And no-ones wants THAT ugly monster to rear IT'S hideous head, do they?

As i said at the start, this blog entry was inspired by more than one of The Sun's little articles lately. The second nasty little rumour they're putting about is that Freema Agyeman is to be sacked from the show. BUT they don't give any idea as to WHEN this is supposed to happen. Yup, it's another of these Anonymous Sources spreading it about a bit, causing trouble, making chaos.

Well, Dr Who is to be congratulated if The Sun is taking so much interest in it. I mean, there are so many things, so many shows on TV and so many showbiz stars they could choose to attack and undermine. So it is definitely a great complement to all that Russell T. Davies and the crew have achieved in their brilliant revival of The World's Greatest Time Traveller that so much is being said - albeit from not the most reliable journalistic source on the planet!

News stories like these just make me angry that there are people calling themselves journalists who just try to create the news by extrapolating the "truth" from Anonymous Sources who might have 1001 reasons why they would want to damage the people or insitutions they give their little leaks on. This is what we get from a free press of course, but that is not any topic of THIS blog.

I was thinking and wondering about this all last evening after reading about it. Today I read this news story from ITV News which did put me at my ease a bit mainly because of the speed of the reaction from the BBC to The Sun's story. In it, a BBC spokesman has described the story as "idle speculation". Good! Err .... but hold on a moment. Do I believe an Anonymous Source or an Anonymous Spokesman? Hmmm .... well, I prefer the spokesman's view myself. I guess it shows that maybe we believe what we want to believe! Well, let's say that I believe what the BBC says over and above what The Sun newspaper says! NO CONTEST!! The spokesman also said that "the BBC has a long-term commitment to Doctor Who". Nuff said! Case closed (almost!).

Last of all, I want to comment on this report from Sky News that Russell T. Davies wants to have more time to concentrate on other projects. He might well, yes, and after all Doctor Who is not the only thing he has done as we well know. Certainly he has a lot of good shows on TV now and from the near-past. But the nature of writing for TV and for a programme like Doctor Who is, unfortunately, that you DO have to give it a lot of your time. But I see that even now RTD is delegating more of the writing to others - look at Helen Raynor's credit in the Daleks In Manhattan story when in actual fact it was Russell's ideas that were given her to put together (and I see now she doesn't do Script Editing any more!). In addition, as much as I am enjoying this two-parter Human Nature / Family Of Blood, we all know full well that the idea is from a book. I wonder how many other Dr Who stories started off life as books - not many I'll bet! So that is possible another indication that RTD is trying to make time for himself and his other work. I also read here in this news story from 23rd March this year on some kind of speculation from the Series 3 Launch Party about a possible "spin off" movie. Now that IS INTERESTING!!

So, in summary, any thought of killing off Doctor Who after Series 4 or at any time before that is completely out of the question and the BBC would be stark-staring bonkers to quit on such a bankable number as The Doc! ZAP!!!!!! CASE CLOSED (in a Judoon kind of way)!!!

Ah HAH! Now THAT'S more like it!

Last week, we had a definite Downer in Series 3 with the ridiculous episode entitled '42'. But I wrote about that last time so no repeats here - this isn't BBC3 folks! So I was hoping and praying that something better would spring out from our TV screens this week to compensate and put Doctor Who back on the Greatness Track where it belongs.

Oh, and I was IN NO WAY disappointed! We had, "Human Nature", the first in a two-part Dr Who story set in England in 1913 - one year before World War One (not sure of the significance of THAT yet but still). Next week it concludes, and seven days is WAY TOO LONG if you ask me, and potentially we have the best story of the series to date. Yes, EVEN BETTER than the Dalek story, which, although good, didn't really do it for me as a true Evil-Daleks-Try-To-Conquer-The-Universe type of story. Important, yes, but not nearly as good a Dalek story as that in Series 1 with Christopher Ecclestone or the Series 2 ender with Cybermen combined.

No, even today I watched it again and it stil gives you loads to think about, to wonder about, to speculate about what it all means, who they all are, why they are there, who sent them, how The Doctor knows them etc. etc.

The first thing, and I reckon this could be the most important part next week, is Tim Latimer, the boy who took the Doctor's watch. Now, he obviously went to John Smith's study for that very reason to get that watch and not to get the book. WHY? Who is he? Then there was some kind of clip or backflash of him bumping into Martha, Martha saying Sorry and then Martha running on somewhere. Except that in this backflash clip, Martha was dressed as she was at the start of this episode. So did they meet in the events leading up to the very beginning of this Human Nature episode in the part we didn't see? It seems like they may well have done!

And another thing. When Jeremy Baines returned from his 'Alien Conversion' in the woods and had come through the window, he gave a long suspicious look at Tim Latimer, who had by then opened the Doctor's watch. AND SO DID the three family members out in the countryside.

And did you notice how those three cocked their heads to one side when looking at this boy? What does THAT remind you of? Come on, think hard, think, THINK!! COME ON, it's obvious, isn't it?? Yes, full marks!! It was, of course, exactly the same gesture as Jamie, the "Are You My Mummy?" kid, the Empty Child from the brilliant Series 1 story, "The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances" story with Christopher Ecclestone and Billie Piper. Significant? Well, perhaps not but in THIS Doctor Who these days, nothing should be dismissed.

So this boy, Tim Latimer, then. I seem to remember David Tennant in, "Girl In The Fireplace" (I think it was) saying, as The Doctor, how he HAD had a child once. Maybe THIS IS THAT CHILD who has somehow managed to time travel to that time period at the same time as The Doctor. He definitely KNEW what he was doing taking that watch because he had not even seen it before entering that room - had he?

And there's also Nurse Joan Redfern, who as we have seen is to get married to our Mr John Smith next week. And a BABY too!! EHHHHH????? She too knows more than what we can see on the surface. Perhaps SHE came with the boy together from ......

Ah, now here comes the next set of speculation which comes from the Face Of Boe and his prophecy. Did you notice that the first thing we heard once the kid had opened the watch for the second time WAS indeed the words, "You Are Not Alone"? Oh, YES!!!! Mind you, this was AFTER he had got it back to his room. And we saw him with it open for a THIRD time sitting outside in .... the garden being observed by The Family Of Blood. So clearly he has been influenced in some way by the contents of that watch. Is he now some kind of Time Lord boy?

There is speculation that this Family Of Blood is somehow connected to Mr Saxon aka The Master, and that could well prove to be true. They are "hunters", The Doctor said, and for some reason need a Time Lord. Well, that would obviously target The Doctor. I'm not sure about this, but wasn't there something about The Master that he was running out of regenerations and needed another cycle? He nearly got one in 'The Five Doctors' on the promise from Barosa, the President, but that was most likely not a genuine promise as Barosa just wanted to make sure they all did his dirty work for him.

YET another piece of speculation and gossip I've got to put your way. Remember the Carrionites from Episode 2 - the witch ladies which The Doctor supposedly caught and imprisoned in some kind of 'crystal ball' and put for safe-keeping in his Tardis' attic. Well, I am thinking of the scene now inside the alien spaceship where the three Family Members have caught the other house-maid, Jenny. The bit where Jeremy Baines takes his green-glowing crystal ball saying it is The Mother and then the 'being' gets into Jenny. IS IT my imagination, or was that a bit too Carrionite Witch to be ignored?? Certainly seemed significant to me!

I seem to have picked up on a whole lot of things from this episode which may or may not have any meaning at all. Hey, YOU out there in blogland reading this! Don't be silent! Tell me what YOU think! We've got six more days to sweat over it all, and that's a WHOLE LOT OF TIME even for a Time Lord fan!