9 posts tagged “doctor who”

Swine ’flu was long predicted by the Doctor Who writers. Except that time it was caused by Daleks.

   I am so sick of the fear-mongering in the New Zealand media at the moment that has caused a rush on Tamiflu. This is not big news anywhere else, and it should not be big news here. Headlines like ‘Swine flu toll at 109’ hint at fatalities (this is not the case) and, once again, makes me question The New Zealand Herald’s agenda in all of this.
   How are your Roche shares looking today?

There is an extra photograph of Spanish Life on Mars, La chica de ayer, in this blog post, though the magazine article that the blogger has excerpted has a major error: its author writes that La chica de ayer is a remake of Doctor Who. (Wouldn’t it then be El doctor Quién? Doctor Quién—that sounds familiar. Wasn’t that with Jane Seymour?)
   Well, the Americans did call Sam Tyler’s Mum ‘Rose’ in their remake … so maybe it is all tied up with the Tardis after all? And don’t forget this:

Great US Life on Mars: a remake of the eighth UK episode, so the basic storyline was the same—and because of the shorter running time, some bits were missed, and there was less depth to the Sam–Annie relationship caused in part by the still inexplicable introduction of Lee Tergesen’s character, Lee Crocker, into the US show. Gene played a bit part here, but he did in the original version of this episode as well.
   Vic Tyler (Dean Winters), is crueller in his American incarnation, and it’s interesting to note that Ruth Tyler (Jennifer Ferrin) is called Rose Tyler here—something I missed a few weeks ago. (For Life on Mars trivia buffs, Sam Tyler’s surname came about when the daughter of one of the writers suggested it, after watching Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler character in Doctor Who. It’s very interesting that the American writers chose Rose as Sam’s mother’s name.) And because of the shorter running time, there was one disappointment: both Sam and Annie had to verbalize things that we had to figure out for ourselves in the original (e.g. Sam realizing he had blocked the memory of Annie’s death at the hands of Vic). We also missed the part where Sam told Ruth, in the original, what to tell young Sam about his father.
   But what a cliffhanger! It reminds me of the call Sam received at the end of episode nine in the UK (second series, episode one) from Hyde 2612 and he seems genuinely fearful of the rings from the black rotary-dial phone. This time, Sam gets clues from the printing and form codes at the NYPD to take him to an address, 35 Stewart Drive. There, the phone rings as soon as Sam enters the house. And the call is of an electronically muffled voice, one that can hear Sam.
   Before you think that this is a straight adaptation of the British series and it’s DCI Frank Morgan calling, the call’s contents are chilling. The lights are flickering in the room as in Jekyll, and the script goes something like this:

Caller: Hello, Sam.
Sam: You can hear me.
Caller: Of course I can hear you. You’re doing a good job, Sam. I need you to do something for me.
Sam: Who is this?
Caller: I need you to go to the basement.
Sam: Why?
Caller: The basement, Sam. Across the room, behind you. I need you to go down to the basement, Sam.

And the credits begin.
   So: is this the American equivalent of Alex Drake’s Pierrot clown or the Test Card Girl? Because it doesn’t appear to be the American Frank Morgan calling. The preview suggests there is a nutter decapitating police officers, and the call could be from the killer. No Gene, Sam, Ray and Chris getting into the Cortina and saying, ‘Pub.’ ’Pub.’ ’Pub.’ … ‘Pub.’ Not a happy, upbeat ending—but it wouldn’t have worked here anyway.
   It appears this is where the Americans will break for now. The series stops here and does not return until January 28, 2009, after Lost, on ABC. It is a logical place to conclude things—this story was the season finalé in Britain—but by that week I imagine we will all be waiting for the next series of Ashes to Ashes more.
   Here is the January 28 preview and I don’t think there is a British equivalent this time. This, as far as I can tell, is where the two shows really begin to part company. And the Americans seem to be taking a darker route, which is what has also been promised for Ashes to Ashes in 2009.

I can normally explain some of these Derren Brown specials (e.g. his use of suggestion, clever reading of faces), but when we are predicting a newspaper article from the future, right down to two names, it gets outside what I can rationally suggest.

Torchwood finally premières on TV2, 10.30 p.m. tonight. So how many years behind the British are we? And has anyone seen a single promo for this show?

If ABC hadn’t advertised on Lucire last year with its series Samantha Who? I would have wondered what folks were talking about.
   For instance, I probably would have thought it was the first proper Chinese–American sitcom, Samantha Hoo. Yes, folks, east Asians on prime-timenetwork television. Yellow-skinned Americans with a rice cooker. This hasn’t been seen since Margaret Cho was in All American Girl. We haven’t had “our Cosby” emerge in the US yet.
   Samantha Hoo could have been a good series about a Chinese–American woman who wakes up after an accident and discovers she has no memory of her heritage, and thinks she’s white.
   Each episode she discovers something new about her ethnicity that she didn’t know before. The final episode has her speaking Cantonese rather than American English. Laughs all round.
   When it would have been explained to me that it was Who, and not Hoo, I would have then believed this was one of those Doctor Who spin-offs like Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Mysteries.
   Samantha Who is the story of a woman who is the love child between the Doctor and one of his female companions, and seeks to find her estranged father. It is filmed in the United States, so she has an American accent. Along the way, travelling in a white Volkswagen convertible, she pieces together parts of the timelord side of her past, meeting various characters from the main Doctor Who series to mark it as a spin-off: Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, Capt Leithbridge Stewart of UNIT, and someone looking suspiciously like Eric Roberts.
   She is raised to seek out the Doctor and the first-season finalé leads to her admission of a growing romance between her and Capt Jack, who also has an American accent (see, now the casting makes sense). The final of the series, meanwhile, sees her finally find her father, but not before Greg ‘B. J. McKay’ Evigan, as the Master, tries to claim that he is her biological father. Paul Reiser guests as the Doctor.
   As it turns out, Samantha Who? is actually an American TV series starring Christina Applegate, whose memory loss has caused her to blank out that she once played Kelly Bundy.

Ashes to Ashes will be coming to New Zealand, according to the BBC. Though by the time it is on, I probably will have bought the DVD of the second series from Amazon UK. It will be on Prime, which either means no one will watch it, or it will become a destination hit as the Beeb’s Top Gear and Doctor Who have. I wonder if there are enough Lifers here since most mainstream viewers in 2007 went to watch Ugly Betty instead of Life on Mars, but if marketed with Doctor Who it might work.
   It would be nice to see Ashes here in New Zealand in the same year rather than having to wait a year as we did with TV One, maybe a little after Life on Mars finishes.
   Other concluded deals for series are listed in a press release sent to Scoop.

For Judge Bob, who mentioned he would like to see more bloopers. This wasn’t the Doctor Who collection I saw—in fact, it may be better, especially some gag footage. You can see some of the footage pre-CGI, which explains why Billie Piper’s face is marked in the three-take sequence where David Tennant is cracking up. Sophia Myles, Tennant’s then-real-life girlfriend, also appears as Mme de Pompadour.

   I just want to see Tennant break into his normal Scottish accent.

After débuting some crap shows—and continuing others well beyond their sell-by date (Prison Break and Lost are, in my household, the shark-jumped Hogan’s Heroes of the 2000s)—the Americans have cranked their TV into high gear for fall 2007.
   While I am going to reserve judgement on the new Bionic Woman till it’s out (where is Oscar Goldman?), Journeyman is one of the strongest débutantes of the season. Starring Kevin McKidd—he was young Father Deegan in a Christmas episode of Father Ted, where they get stuck in the lingerie section of a department store—it might smack of Quantum Leap and joins Doctor Who, Life on Mars and Day Break as a mid-decade time-travelling stories, but is in fact a very well written series that is additionally blessed with a good timeslot Stateside (following the incomprehensibly daft Heroes). McKidd even got rid of his Scottish accent to be a Yank this time, and pulls it off.
   Like Day Break, Moon Bloodgood co-stars (why are all her on-screen boyfriends time travellers?). There’s the return of Gretchen Egolf (formerly of the network-tinkered and vastly inferior season of Martial Law), too.
   Here’s my review from TV.com. Someone mentioned his review was deleted, so I had better put mine here in case it meets the same fate.