Urban's 'Doctor Who' Thing

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

Cheers Planky
I just hope they're not all that long, but this was a one off.

[Unknown Soldier]

I saw this back when it came out and I've never seen it since and hardly remember much about it, but what I do remember that this is what happens when the Yanks try to get their hands on something that they shouldn't. The problem with the film was that it was quickly forgotten and so was Paul McGann as the Doctor. But the choice of Eric Roberts as the Master must be one of the most outlandish casting choices in the history of Doctor Who. Eric Roberts was always great as cool dudes in films like Runaway Train etc, but I guess the casting director must have completely forgotten that Roger Delgado had ever existed and had defined the role of the Master many years earlier.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

A Musical Interlude (Part 1: The 60s)

Over the years a few Doctor Who inspired songs have been released some sung by fans, others sung by cast members, some just to cash in. Here are a few of them.




The Go Go's - I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek

With the show barely a year old the first attempt to cash in with the popularity of the show for Christmas of 1964 was this piece of pure cheese by The Go Go's (Nothing to do with Belinda Carlisle or Jane Wiedlin) who hailed from Newcastle. I'm not quite sure why you would want to hang a stocking from a Dalek's toes or even if they have toes. The whole song does seem rather odd when you think that the subject of the song is a Nazi inspired killing machine.
Surprisingly (cough) this was The Go Go's only release, also surprisingly this song didn't set the record buying public alight and sunk without trace.


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The Earthlings - Landing Of The Daleks

With Dalekmania sweeping across the nation in 1965 many small record labels saw it as a chance to cash in on the craze, many of them however failed to even chart. Released in 1965 Landing Of The Daleks was one of the first of these recorded by a bunch of session musicians rather than an actual band and this was as far as I can make out was their only release. Due to government rules of the time The BBC could not play the song on the radio due it it featuring a message in morse code which translated said 'SOS The Daleks Have Landed'.


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Roberta Tovey - Who's Who

At last we reach our first cast member recording, well sort of.
Roberta Tovey was the 12 year old girl who played Susan in the two Dalek movies that came out in the mid 60s. In 1965 she released this song. Despite being one of the better songs (In the context of what you've just heard) to be released around this time I can find no record of it ever bothering the charts.


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Frazer Hines - Who's Dr Who?

In 1967 the first television cast member to try his hand at recording a Doctor Who inspired song was by Frazer Hines who played Jamie McCrimmon to the 2nd Doctor. Teaming up with successful 60s songwriting duo Barry Mason and Les Reed they released this early Pink Floyd inspired psychedelic garage fuzz wig out which was much better than it had any right to be. And yes, the song flopped. In fact Frazer Hines said himself years later that his song was the only song Mason & Reed released that ever flopped.

In a bizarre twist of fate shortly after recording Piper At The Gates Of Dawn Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd because of their interest in the music being used in Doctor Who during the 60s were given a demonstration of the new VCS3 synthesizer by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, they later went on to use it heavily in the recording of Dark Side Of The Moon.


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The Crystalites - Doctor Who

As if to prove that Doctor Who was popular not just in the UK but in other various parts of the world in 1969 we have Jamaican band The Crystalites giving us a reggae version of the theme tune which is almost totally unrecognisable from the original.


The 70s to follow soon

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

207: The Lazarus Experiment

Doctor : 10th (David Tennant)
Companions : Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman)
Series : 3 (New Series)
Originally Transmitted: 5th May 2007


The Lazarus Experiment is one of those mid series episodes that is just kind of there to fill space, and that's about it. Even before it aired there was very little to get excited about. The only real highlight of the episode is that we finally get to see long time Doctor Who fan & writer Mark Gatiss (He of The League Of Gentlemen & Sherlock fame) appear in an episode of Doctor Who. And it has to be said, he deserved a lot better than this.

The only other thing to get excited about is that Thelma Barlow who played Mavis in Coronation Street is in this episode as well playing Lady Thaw, so you can see the level we're dealing with here.
Also I suppose if you're a David Tennant fangirl (or boy) you get to squee all over him being suited & booted in a dinner jacket again, sadly Martha only gets to wear a brown dress that looks like a potato sack. You'd think the costume designers would have at least made a better effort there. Come on Russell, I know Doctor Who has a huge gay male following but give us straight fans a bit of eye candy too once in a while.


Tennant in a suit for the laydees

This episode was written by Stephen Greenhorn who's past credits include The Bill, Where The Heart Is, creating the Scottish soap opera River City and also adapting his own musical play about The Proclaimers called Sunshine On Leith into a movie.
Would he use this attempt at writing for something totally different like Doctor Who as a chance to really use his imagination and to blind the viewer with interesting and thought provoking concepts?
Well no actually, it's a story about a mad scientist. Which, to be fair to the man is exactly what Russell T Davies asked him for. A Marvel Comics style mad professor.
Did I mention I hate Marvel Comics?

I guess now would be a good time to explain the plot, although in fairness you could probably write it on the back of a postage stamp . But I shall attempt to go into a little more detail.
The Doctor takes Martha home after her promised one trip in the Tardis, totally oblivious to her disappointment when she realises he's materialised inside her living room and wants to dump her there. While he's saying goodbye to her Martha's mother phones and tells her to turn the TV on because her sister is on the news.
She turns on the TV to see her sister Tish alongside professor Richard Lazarus, who she is doing public relations work for. Lazarus announces to the assembled press that he will change what it means to be human.
The Doctor leaves Martha behind in the Tardis but then comes back seconds later when he realises what Lazarus said.

Later that evening they arrive at Lazarus black tie presentation being run by Tish. Tish seems impressed by good looking guy that her sister has bought to the event but soon leaves when she realises he's a 'science geek'. Martha's mother shows up and moans a lot which will be a reoccurring theme during this series. Although it is quite funny when the Doctor is trying to make small talk with her and accidentally gives her the impression that he & Martha have been up all night screwing each other.
Lazarus enters the room and announces he is about to perform a miracle that will change the coarse of human history. He tells everybody that he is 76 years old and walks into the machine behind him.


Why is there never a big red butt.... Oh wait, there is this time.

The machine is started up, and look it has a big red button. That would please the War Doctor. The machine begins to go haywire and the Doctor is forced to step in before the building blows up.
A much younger man emerges from the machine and tells the crowd that he is Richard Lazarus and he is 76 years old and he is reborn. The Doctor speaks to Lazarus warning him that he couldn't possibly have solved all the variables in the experiment and that if it wasn't for him the place would have exploded but Lazarus and his partner Lady Thaw are dismissive. Martha & the Doctor is horrified when Lazarus & Thaw tells them their plans to have the machine made commercially. Lady Thaw and Lazarus retreat to his laboratory to discuss things, the Doctor says he wants to run his own tests using the DNA from Lazarus where he kissed Martha's hand.


Lazarus reborn, He's 76 you know. Doesn't he look well.

In his laboratory talks to Lady Thaw about growing up the London blitz and that he would feel safe in Southwark Cathedral (There is also a model of the cathedral in his laboratory) . Lady Thaw tells him that she wants to be the next person to use the machine so they can both be young again but Lazarus refuses. When she tells him she'll get his funding cut he begins to have cramps and starts to change form into a giant scorpion creature that looks a lot like David Bowie for some reason and kills Lady Thaw.


Ch-Ch-Ch-Chaaaaanges

The Doctor meanwhile is doing tests and discovers that Lazarus has totally changed his DNA reactivating dormant genes and that they are mutating. He goes to Lazarus's laboratory and finds the skeletal husk of Lady Thaw with all of the life sucked out of her. The Doctor realises that Lazarus needs to do this to keep the DNA stable, Lazarus has since returned to the party in human form. At the party Lazarus is with Tish and taking her to the roof, when the Doctor & Martha are told this they rush off after then, soaking Martha's mother with wine. While she is cleaning herself up a mysterious man offers her a glass of wine and tells her that Martha should choose her friends more wisely.


Mavis from Coronation Street looking a little husky

On the roof The Doctor confronts Lazarus and Lazarus changes form. The Doctor manages to lock him out onto the roof but because Lazarus starts trying to break the door down the buildings security system goes into lockdown shutting everybody inside. At the party the Doctor gives Martha the sonic screwdriver and tells her to get everybody out. He announces to the crowd that they are in serious danger and should leave. A woman tells the Doctor that the only danger in the building is choking on an olive, Lazarus shows up and kills her first. In the credits she's referred to as 'Olive Women' which amused me for some unknown reason.



Olive Woman is about to cop it before we even find out her real name.


The Doctor managed to distract Lazarus by getting him to chase him around the building while Martha gets all the guests out. She goes back in to help the Doctor against her mothers wishes. The man in the suit appears again and tells her mother that the Doctor is dangerous and whispers something in her ear. The Doctor meanwhile sets a trap for Lazarus in his laboratory causing it to blow up but Lazarus escapes, Martha hears the explosion and they both run into the machine, the Doctor saying that it's the one thing that Lazarus won't destroy. While they are trapped in the machine Lazarus switches it on but the Doctor manages to reverse the polarity (Pertwee reference YAY!!) of the machine so it affects Lazarus outside. When they exit the machine they find him lying naked on the floor in human form apparently dead.

Lazarus's body is taken in an ambulance, meanwhile Martha's mother slaps the Doctor's face (A running theme in the new series) The ambulance crashes and the Doctor discovers the ambulance crew drained of life. Using the sonic screwdriver to track Lazarus's DNA he tracks him down to Southwark Cathedral. Lazarus tells him during the blitz he vowed that he would never die and that he will feed to continue his life, the Doctor tells him that he can't allow him to. The Doctor tells Martha and Tish to go to the top bell tower, Lazarus changes and begins to follow them up. The Doctor plugs his sonic screwdriver into the church organ and turns it up to 11 (The first and only Spinal Tap reference in Doctor Who ..YAY!!).


Big bottom, big bottom. Talk about mud flaps, my girl's got 'em


The vibrations cause Lazarus to fall off the bell tower to his death, although Martha who is hanging on for dear life and can't block her ears seems totally unaffected by it ... hmmm lazy writing.


Nudity at 7.35 in the evening? Wait till I write to Points of View about this.

Back at Martha's flat she is preparing to say goodbye but the Doctor tells he she can stay with him. after she departs in the Tardis her mother phones her and tells her that she isn't safe and that Harold Saxon himself says this.

Some trivia : Both David Tennant & Mark Gatiss were also in the BBC's live broadcast of The Quatermass Experiment in 2005, Tennant played the character of Dr. Gordon Briscoe. It was during the rehearsals for this that David Tennant discovered that he had got the role of The Doctor. During the live broadcast Jason Flemyng who was playing the role of Bernard Quatermass ribbed him about this by changed his first line from 'Good to have you back Gordon' to 'Good to have you back Doctor'.

Extra Trivia : Jason Flemyng's father Gordon directed the two Dalek movies in the 60s.

The Lazarus Experiment isn't a bad story as such it's just a bog standard idea with a really bad CGI monster and a really silly ending.
There are a couple of witty bits of dialogue but that's more down to the regular cast and subtle in jokes rather than through the story itself. The only real moments of drama in this are when Tennant & Gatiss are together, Martha is good also in that she's brave & smart but in a kind of generic way that most Doctor Who companions are, although her being a Doctor is shown when she treats her brother for a possible concussion. The rest of her family are just annoying. Her mother is constantly moaning, her sister is just obnoxious and her brother stands around like stuffed suit looking like he's waiting around for his cue to announce who is number one this week.(Her brother is played by former Top Of The Pops presenter Reggie Yates).



This is the kind of stuff the new series does when it's on auto pilot, it's predictable, it's been done to death already and that's just in the Doctor Who universe. In the Peter Davison story Mawdyrn Undead the same topic is used where a race of beings wanting to live forever, and it is covered in a much better way with more plot twists, ideas and peril for the Doctor to overcome than anything this story could manage. There are a few plot elements that would crop up later in the series but they are minimal really. You could easily miss this story out and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to the series as a whole.

I can handle Doctor Who being bad, I can handle it having no money, I can even handle really bad special effects but what I really hate is when it's totally devoid of ideas and poor writing. I wouldn't say this story is boring because it's not. I wouldn't even say it's forgettable either. It's just really really predictable and the only reason you'll remember this story is because you've seen it done so many many times before.

[Astronomer]

Boy oh boy am I glad I found this thread to keep me going until Series 8 airs

The Lazarus Experiment is definitely one of those "filler" storylines that pretty much epitomises the badly CGI-ed monsters and predictable endings and so forth (however, at least it's not as bad as The Unicorn and the Wasp...) One thing I did like about the episode was the idea of throwback DNA creating a so seemingly unhuman monster, even if it was slightly ridiculous. In a way it also set up the ongoing suspicion that Martha's family have about The Doctor and the trouble that it will eventually cause in the major plotlines of that series.

I loved Martha as a companion, and it's episodes just like these that never did her justice!

Anyway, really enjoying the thread (that I pretty much just read in its entirety) Love your little references to other aspects of the show... the big red button.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

I was hoping you'd pop in when you saw this

I have a confession to make.
I quite like the Unicorn & The Wasp, It's one of my guilty pleasures.
I know it's not great but I've always liked stories set in early 20th century and they've not done that many, I can think of 4 off the top of my head.

I loved Martha too, she's easily my favourite female companion since the series came back. She always seemed to me to be the most normal and most true to life person they've had playing a companion.

I'm not sure why they got rid of her so quickly. I've heard a ton of rumours about it from they weren't happy with her standard of acting, to her and Tennant not gelling as much as they hoped, that she was moved to Torchwood because she was contracted for a second series of Doctor Who and they didn't want to pay her for doing nothing.

I know it had nothing to do with Catherine Tate coming in because even before they knew she was available for series 3 they'd already decided to recast the companion and were planning to have him travel with a journalist called Penny. Officially the BBC say Martha was only ever supposed to be in it for that one series and she was only contracted for that.

I guess it'll come out in a few years what really happened, it always does.

[Astronomer]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

I was hoping you'd pop in when you saw this

I have a confession to make.
I quite like the Unicorn & The Wasp, It's one of my guilty pleasures.
I know it's not great but I've always liked stories set in early 20th century and they've not done that many, I can think of 4 off the top of my head.

I loved Martha too, she's easily my favourite female companion since the series came back. She always seemed to me to be the most normal and most true to life person they've had playing a companion.

I'm not sure why they got rid of her so quickly. I've heard a ton of rumours about it from they weren't happy with her standard of acting, to her and Tennant not gelling as much as they hoped, that she was moved to Torchwood because she was contracted for a second series of Doctor Who and they didn't want to pay her for doing nothing.

I know it had nothing to do with Catherine Tate coming in because even before they knew she was available for series 3 they'd already decided to recast the companion and were planning to have him travel with a journalist called Penny. Officially the BBC say Martha was only ever supposed to be in it for that one series and she was only contracted for that.

I guess it'll come out in a few years what really happened, it always does.

I always wondered why Martha disappeared so quickly as well. I mean, she did continue to get a few post-appearances now and then but I thought she was great as a main companion. Interesting rumours nonetheless. Donna is still my favourite companion of the new series (after initially disliking her she grew on me), but Martha is a very close second! I love that she was already living her dream before the Doctor came into her life (rather than being "rescued" from the mundane as most of his companions are), she's intelligent and educated, she leaves the doctor on her own terms, and she uses her experiences with the doctor to lead a kick-ass life afterwards. When she comes back in contact with the doctor she treats him as an equal, rather than an idol. So yeah, pretty much, that is why I too think that Martha is awesome.

Don't get me wrong, I love episodes like The Unicorn and the Wasp as well Not only for the time period but I think the ridiculous monsters, calculable endings and less-than-impressive special effects are part of what I love about certain sci-fi enterprises! Plus, anything that takes place in the past around known historic events I find really cool.

Urban, you have no idea how excited I am to see the rest of this journal pan out and to hear your opinions are on some of the (even) newer storylines as well! Do you have an all-time favourite episode or storyline from the classic or modern series?

[Unknown Soldier]

I watched Love & Monsters again the other day, largely because you'd given it such a bad rating, but I always remembered it as being modern Doctor Who at its most interesting. Anyway I still think it's a great episode, especially with the concept of a small self-help group and Marc Warren was great, kind of reminded me of the tv series Dear John with the group of individuals on show. I'm guessing that the ELO influence probably killed it for you anyway

I also watched Fear Her and what a ****ing crap episode that was! and easily belongs that low down on your list.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

Originally Posted by Astronomer

I always wondered why Martha disappeared so quickly as well. I mean, she did continue to get a few post-appearances now and then but I thought she was great as a main companion. Interesting rumours nonetheless. Donna is still my favourite companion of the new series (after initially disliking her she grew on me), but Martha is a very close second! I love that she was already living her dream before the Doctor came into her life (rather than being "rescued" from the mundane as most of his companions are), she's intelligent and educated, she leaves the doctor on her own terms, and she uses her experiences with the doctor to lead a kick-ass life afterwards. When she comes back in contact with the doctor she treats him as an equal, rather than an idol. So yeah, pretty much, that is why I too think that Martha is awesome.

Those reasons you give for liking Martha pretty much nailed exactly why I love her so much.
I do love Donna as well, I was dreading it when I heard Catherine Tate was doing a full series but I think they handled it well in having her change after she met the Doctor the first time, and calming her down a bit. In fact by the time you got to the window scene in 'Partners in Crime' I was totally won over by her.
I love the way she was written out too, that was totally heartbreaking. Her departure was the most upset I've ever been about a companion leaving since Jo Grant left the 3rd Doctor. Having Bernard Cribbins as her Grandad was inspired casting, that guy could make a stone cry.

Originally Posted by Astronomer

Do you have an all-time favourite episode or storyline from the classic or modern series?

Yes

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

Anyway I still think it's a great episode, especially with the concept of a small self-help group and Marc Warren was great, kind of reminded me of the tv series Dear John with the group of individuals on show. I'm guessing that the ELO influence probably killed it for you anyway

Well Marc Warren is great in everything, If I ever do watch that episode ever again it's because he's in it, and that's all.
If I'm honest Peter Kay being in it annoys me more then the ELO thing.
I used to quite like Phoenix Night, now I can't stand the guy.

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

I also watched Fear Her and what a ****ing crap episode that was! and easily belongs that low down on your list.

I'll swap you, I just watched Episode 2 of The Sensorites.
F*cking hell this has got the be the slowest episode of Doctor Who I have ever seen. I feel like I've aged 10 years just watching it.

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

I'll swap you, I just watched Episode 2 of The Sensorites.
F*cking hell this has got the be the slowest episode of Doctor Who I have ever seen. I feel like I've aged 10 years just watching it.

There are a number of those early Hartnell adventures especially the historical ones that lacked pace and with a lot of them as you know being at least 6 parts, you really need to be in the mood for watching them. I can't comment on the Sensorites as I haven't seen or read that story in years, but then again I don't remember it that well and that probably says it all.

I guess it will soon be up here because if you're watching it, it probably means that it will be reviewed soon.