Last Saturday marked the passing of Doctor Who Series Four. This was possibly my favourite series so far, with the excellent Catherine Tate proving all of my original doubts about her wrong. Doctor Who fans speak these days of story arcs, and the Doctor-Donna story of 2008, including in no particular order the return of Rose, the emergence of the Doctor’s daughter, the inevitable resurrection of the Daleks and a supporting turn from the brilliant Bernard Cribbins, had me hooked.
Our house was packed with Who fans young and old last weekend and the final episode left us exhausted. Adults and children sat around the table confused and dumbstruck, raising their heads to start talking only to sink back into inner thoughts. It was just too much to absorb. Two Doctors (or was it three?), practically everyone the Doctor has ever befriended in the last four years (Captain Jack, Donna, Rose, Martha and even Sarah Jane who he’s known since the early 70s), Davros at his most insane (and at last played by a decent actor – Julian Bleach) and a final wrapping up of the Bad Wolf ending from two years ago. Just too much for my simple mind – for a moment I needed a nearby Time Lord to come along and wipe my memory clean to stop my head exploding…
But what – I think – we learn from it is several things.
That head writer Russel T. Davies will pull all the stops out on an ordinary day, but pull a muscle when it comes to end of season.
That we’ll face a familiar foe in episodes 12 and 13. Last year the Master, this year the creator of the Daleks.
That the Doctor will always, always end up on his own. So what better way to highlight this than to surround him with all his friends and then pluck them all away, one by one. I’ve noticed that, when he’s on his own, the Tardis looks huge with just him standing there in the control room. And the camera likes to dwell on that.
That we’ll want to buy the DVD of the series when it comes out, to check and recheck all of the clues. The references to “The Medusa Cascade” and “the Doctor-Donna” (not to mention “your Song will end soon” – I got that one). The Rose sightings. The whispering in ears. The name (or lack of) theme. The hand. The timey wimey stuff.
So tonight I sat down with my daughter and we watched the BBC Three repeat. The episode was still confusing, but it was the last fifteen minutes or so that got me. Brilliantly written and acted and just painfully sad. The Bad Wolf business was superbly done, but what was just sensational was the conclusion to the Donna Noble story. I just found it very moving that once the Doctor had introduced Rose to the earlier angry, immature, dangerous version of himself ready for taming he suddenly faces the earlier, less travelled, less enlightened Donna. And there’s nothing he can do about it. So while Rose gets a rougher version of her man, the Doctor nods goodbye to the original incarnation of his best pal. And the sight of the scared Donna pleading “don’t let me go back there!” as he approaches her to wipe that dangerous memory was, for just a tv show, heartbreaking. And the final Cribbins/Tennant scene was an absolute joy.
Of course, if you’ve not seen it yet this post is meaningless to you. Don’t take what I’ve said as spoilers, just enhancements to the story arc. All I really wanted to say was well done Russell T. Davies for having a nine year old and a man fast approaching middle age in tears at the same time. I never thought I’d see the day.
In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren’t enough euros to go round. “The entire EU is short on coins.”
And I say, “Really?” because there are plenty of them in Germany. I’m never asked for exact change in Spain or Holland or Italy, so I think the real problem lies with the Parisian casiers, who are, in a word, lazy.
When you are Engulfed in Flames is my introduction to the writing of David Sedaris. This is a collection of loosely connected autobiographical pieces, and the writing has a neat line in self deprecating humour and is full of excellent observations on the everday; it’s the kind of writing I suspect we all aspire to. It’s also the sort of thing you’d expect to find in the pages of the New Yorker, prose that’s as well crafted and nourishing as a good and wholesome meal.
His sixth publication, I’m late to the Sedaris world. His pieces come across as very compact, well-constructed short stories, although this book is officially categorised as autobiography. Sedaris is best when writing about himself and his view of the world; his Greek heritage, upbringing, life as a writer and its odd encounters, addictions, his homosexuality. He also touches on death and all it threatens, a subject he cannot help veering towards. There are also two hilarious accounts of airline travel, where in one he manages to deposit a sucked throat lozenge on a sleeping woman’s lap, and in another he sits beside a weeping, and ultimately irritating, man. The best however is the last section of the book, The Smoking Section, where Sedaris moves to Tokyo for three months in an attempt to give up smoking and to learn Japanese. He only succeeds with one of these goals. This was a highly enjoyable book that I polished off in two days. I look forward to more of his musings.
Unusual for a music autobiography, Alex James hasn’t used a ghost writer for his memoir Bit of a Blur. He has an easy, engaging writing style of his own that strolls through his time as bass player with Blur, living a booze-fuelled hedonistic lifestyle in the 1990s. He’s proud of the achievement of one of the most successful bands of that decade, but he’s also fond of recounting stories of drinking in the Groucho Club and his friendship with Damien Hirst and Keith Allen. James comes across as a pleasant enough chap, but he can’t help also revealing that he’s been incredibly lucky, sailing through his life and grasping all of the amazing opportunities offered to him.
Blur peaked in 1994 and 1995, following the incredibly successful (and also very good) album Parklife with their part in Britpop and the much talked about public battle with Oasis. James talks less about this that you might expect, and most interesting is the few years in the early 90s that Blur spent struggling; a run of very minor hit singles, a poor selling album and a lengthy US tour orchestrated to beat bankruptcy. Here is the seed for what could have been a very good book, although I suspect that James is very much aware that his fellow band members Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon were the talented ones. James was content to get drunk, look pretty and go along for the ride – he’s more at home writing about this than of any enduring artistic legacy.
Bit of a Blur gets the award for most reviewed paperback in British broadsheets this weekend. It’s also one of the best marketed books I’ve seen recently, although it could have been so much better, and I left it knowing little more than I already knew about a band I was so fond of in their heyday. The drinking and sexual exploits I could have done without. A bit of a bore really.
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