Despite the relentless flogging of an undeniably dead horse by the BBC in the vain hope it would attract the attention of those who had rightly given up on it a long time ago, the 60th anniversary of ‘Doctor Who’ last November was the mother of all damp squibs where the general TV audience was concerned. With the latest right-on reboot drawing in record low viewing figures, it was telling that the only birthday gift worth a jot was the appearance on the iPlayer of the surviving back catalogue; all bar the very first story – 1963’s ‘An Unearthly Child’, absent due to unresolved rights issues – can now be viewed on the Beeb’s online outlet, but as I myself grew-up during the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker eras (ones I’ve relived multiple times since then via VHS and DVD releases) I found it more interesting to take the Tardis back to the very beginning. And what a refreshing contrast it is with the unwatchable charlatan of a series that has misappropriated the brand name today.
Returning producer, the insufferably smug Russell T Davies, has decided to use the carcass of the series as a propaganda pulpit from which to preach the most tediously predictable and patronising ‘message’, ticking every box and not missing a moment to lecture the viewer; what used to be one of the few genuinely adventurous shows aimed at a family audience has now narrowed its focus to become ‘Queer as Folk in Space’, perhaps the most blatant branch of the BBC’s ideological agenda. The his/her/they/them non-binary narcissists that have added the series to their litany of causes may be momentarily cheering it on before they discard it in favour of another, but for the wider audience who kept the memory of the series alive during its lengthy absence from screens, there is no longer any room at the inn. And criticism of this ‘stunning and brave’ direction is naturally greeted by a hail of phobes and isms to neatly categorise the bigotry of the critic. Of course, what has happened to ‘Doctor Who’ is merely a sample of what has happened to all the long-running sci-fi/fantasy franchises in recent years: heavy-handed Identitarian preaching at the expense of exciting and creative storytelling, and the criminal rewriting of inconvenient history.
In the case of ‘Doctor Who’, an irreparable ‘ret-con’ (that’s short for ‘retroactive continuity’) has seen the long-established narrative of William Hartnell as the original Doctor ripped-up; no, we are now told the Doctor began his/her life as a black baby girl (of course) and went through the entire rainbow alphabet prior to 1963. This follows a familiar pattern whereby those of a certain mindset find the past so painfully problematic that they have to re-imagine it to suit their specific contemporary mores, whether that be white historical figures being recast as Actors of Colour or making said characters female or gay – or all three, preferably. ‘Doctor Who’ laid the foundations for this with a shameful character assassination a few years back when David Bradley was cast for a one-off episode as William Hartnell’s Doctor, and a heroic, charming and amusingly crotchety individual was rebranded as a racist, sexist bigot who repeatedly had to be lectured on how inappropriate he was; this disgraceful and ungrateful hatchet-job was not only an unwarranted slur on those who had made the programme what it was in the early years – actors, writers, producers – but it also gave an entirely false impression of those years. And revisiting those years is worth it, if only to discern the fiction being presented as fact to clueless viewers today.
The Woke approach to the past is always to ‘deconstruct’ – that is, to besmirch and blacken its reputation in order that the upgraded version can be presented as a superior and morally-unimpeachable alternative. But this remaking and remodelling – one that capitalises on the idle ignorance of its target audience – immediately falls flat on its arse when the demonised past is held up next to the present and the suppressed truth is revealed. Laden with lazy CGI and a facsimile cinematic sheen, the current version of the programme couldn’t be visually further away from the monochrome, studio-based series of the 60s, produced on a shoestring budget and often housed within the cramped environs of Lime Grove. But what TV programme of that era wasn’t hampered by such limitations? As when the Hays Code inspired Hollywood’s most ingeniously creative directors to inventively work their way around its restrictions, such a challenge as that presented to the original production team behind ‘Doctor Who’ merely served to galvanise them into working wonders with what little they had. The original model of the show saw the Doctor and his companions visit the past in one story – the so-called ‘historical’ adventures – and visit an alien planet in the next. The latter placed greater demands on cast and crew, and whilst it’s true they didn’t always get it right, when they did the end results could be amongst the most delightfully surreal moments of television ever delivered to a prime-time mainstream audience.
Perhaps the pinnacle of this glorious explosion of imagination was the six-part 1965 story, ‘The Web Planet’. With excursions to Ancient Rome and the Medieval Crusades respectively on either side of it, this diversion into brilliantly bizarre science-fantasy has long had a bad reputation as an exercise in ambition exceeding execution, so it was one I approached on the iPlayer with low expectations; and I was pleased to have my expectations completely blown away. ‘The Web Planet’ is quite unlike any other ‘Doctor Who’ I’ve ever encountered. The story sees the Tardis dragged down to the arid surface of the planet Vortis, in which insects are the dominant species, albeit in humanoid form. The intelligent indigenous natives are the butterfly-like Menoptra, forced into exile and determined to liberate Vortis from the grip of the ant-like Zarbi, storm-troopers of a powerful parasite called the Animus, which is draining all life from the planet. This premise threw down quite a gauntlet for costume and set designers alike, but they admirably refused to shirk the challenge and went for it.
The Zarbi only ever emit an electronic chirrup, never actually speaking, whereas the Menoptra speak with a staccato flourish, complemented by their curious body movements – something that was developed by a mime artist who worked with the actors hidden behind the elaborate costumes. The Menoptra also have wings, which means they can fly; a technique not dissimilar to the way in which the pantomime incarnation of Peter Pan swoops onto the stage was used to achieve this effect; although understandably used sparingly, the sight of them taking off and then landing is undeniably impressive, even now. There’s a sequence where they launch themselves into battle against the Zarbi and, with the additional presence of the Zarbi’s living weapons – the beetle-like venom guns – scurrying across the floor, the whole beautifully-choreographed scene plays out like an otherworldly ballet; the unique atmosphere of the planet Vortis, as represented by a dreamy filter of Vaseline on the camera, enhances the illusion that the viewer is genuinely witnessing something taking place a long way from Earth; the ethereal Musique Concrète soundtrack serves a similar purpose.
The late addition of the even stranger subterranean species sharing the planet – the Optera – adds another eccentric layer to the adventure, as they bounce along like children taking part in the sack race on a school sports day. The spidery lair housing the eerie Animus is a triumph of set design and, were it in colour, one wouldn’t hesitate to call it Psychedelic. Indeed, there is a strong hallucinatory quality to ‘The Web Planet’ that transcends the budgetary restraints and succeeds in transporting the viewer to what feels like a genuinely alien environment. Even when it doesn’t quite work as intended, it never sours one’s enjoyment; there are so many out-there sights and sounds to elevate the adventure way beyond its false reputation that those who prefer to be spoon-fed CGI-drenched sermons masquerading as entertainment are welcome to the wretched excuse for the show in 2024. They will never be able to appreciate the abundance of imagination and ingenuity inherent in a talented team of creative individuals whose tireless efforts created something that those bogged down by dogma have made a living off the back of over the past half-decade.
© The Editor
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In a way, it’s no surprise that the first film in the ‘Carry On’ franchise was set in the world of National Service. ‘Carry on Sergeant’ was released in 1958, when military conscription was already being phased out in Britain, yet it had formed the backbone of many a young man’s learning curve throughout the 1950s and remained relevant to the cinema-going audience; indeed, the first handful of ‘Carry On’ movies were rooted in professions most of that audience would have either come into contact with or would have been directly involved in – the police, the navy, nursing, teaching, taxi-driving – and gave the nascent series a narrative that it successfully milked until it gradually moved onto pastiches of established cinematic genres. After all, the army life had been part of the collective British experience for almost 20 years by 1958, with the post-war continuation of wartime conditions having interrupted the peacetime lives of those without a World War to fight, often to their chagrin. Years after the event, actor Tom Courtenay still spoke with discernible bitterness of his RADA training being put on hold to play at being soldiers for no valid reason; moreover, it’s often been noted that the individual members of The Beatles only just missed out on being called-up via their post-1939 birthdates, whereas Bill Wyman (born 1936) was the sole member of The Rolling Stones – or any of the key 60s bands – who actually did do his National Service, which underlines just what a close shave the generation he played alongside had.
Perhaps if the Democrats weren’t still suffering from the effects of ‘Long’ Trump Derangement Syndrome, they might acknowledge the Donald’s determination to recapture the White House is a natural by-product of their relentless pursuit of Mr President first time round. So much has been made of Trump’s denial of the fact he lost in 2020 that it tends to obscure the fact that Hillary Clinton didn’t exactly accept defeat with grace when she was ‘robbed’ of the Presidency in 2016; the same doubts over the victor were expressed back then, but this appears to be a recurring factor in US Presidential Elections ever since the infamous ‘Hanging Chads’ of 2000. No contestant in this increasingly divisive contest can accept they lost anymore. Had the Democrats channelled all their energies into selecting the best candidate to take on Trump last time round instead of wasting four years going out of their way to annul Trump’s 2020 win by frantically retrieving whatever ‘evidence’ they could locate at the bottom of the barrel, maybe they wouldn’t have dumped the most ineffective President in living memory on the American people. Most of us are amazed Joe Biden has all-but made it to a full term; that he intends to run again – meaning he would be 85 if he manages to complete a second term – is probably the most encouraging news a relatively-youthful (at 77) Donald Trump could wish for.
Although no longer a pet-owner – or, to put it from a pet’s perspective, a human owned by an animal – I have been in the past, and had a foot in the two most popular camps due to sharing my home with both a dog and a cat. The former required more physical input on my part courtesy of the two daily walks in all weathers all year round, and as we tended to trek to the nearest park within walking distance I became accustomed to seeing the same fellow dog-walkers on each visit. At least three durable friendships grew out of these encounters, though there did also seem to be an abundance of little old ladies walking little old dogs at the time. I eventually ended up doing the shopping for some of them and they proved to be a font of fascinating recollections of the neighbourhood from their pre-war youths. One of them had a couple of dogs and had once had a cat, though her feline companion disappeared one day never to be seen again; not knowing what had become of the cat put her through all kinds of agonies and she told me how she’d spent months wandering up and down the locality in search of him, a sadly futile hunt that left her utterly bereft. I can understand if that sounds melodramatic, but it helps to put one’s self in the shoes of a senior citizen without a spouse or family, one dependent on furry friends for company.
Back when television would bow to current pop cultural trends and hand over a miniscule amount of airtime to whatever the Kids were grooving to, each movement had its own TV show. ‘Ready Steady Go’ captured the exuberant spirit of Swinging London and its Mod-affiliated movers and shakers in the mid-60s; ‘Colour Me Pop’ attempted to visualise the Psychedelic scene as BBC2 shed its monochrome roots; ITV’s ‘Supersonic’ managed to illustrate the death-throes of Glam Rock; Granada’s ‘So it Goes’ and the BBC’s ‘Something Else’ did their best to provide Punk and New Wave with a platform via the cathode ray tube; in its early days, Channel 4’s ‘The Tube’ profiled the post-Punk, anything-goes landscape of the early 80s; and a decade later, ‘The Word’ did likewise for the early 90s as BBC2 tried to replicate the thriving Rave scene with ‘Dance Energy’, hosted by a proto-Ali G who went by the unfortunate name of Normski. Unlike ‘Top of the Pops’, which was able to outlast all of them by rigidly sticking to whatever the record-buying public was shelling-out for, every one of these programmes was rendered irrelevant when the scenes they latched onto inevitably died, with cancellation being swift and ruthless. ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’, which began in 1971, was so associated with Prog Rock and the more esoteric early 70s tastes that both it and its most famous presenter Bob Harris were invariably targeted by the emerging Punk generation in the late 70s, yet this fixture of the late-night schedules was determined to cling on and gently reinvent itself; it did so by pensioning off ‘Whispering’ Bob and his beloved concept albums and bringing in some new blood in the shape of Annie Nightingale.
As the famous example of Ken Loach’s landmark (and traumatic) BBC play, ‘Cathy Come Home’ proved in 1966, it seems that sometimes drama can do what real life often fails to achieve, to actually raise awareness of a pressing issue; it shouldn’t do, but it apparently does. The Post Office IT scandal, in which over 700 sub-postmasters and Post Office branch-owners were wrongly accused, prosecuted and imprisoned on charges of false accounting, fraud and theft over a period of 16 years, has been largely overlooked by the MSM until relatively recently. What is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history spans the majority of this century, yet only readers of Private Eye and viewers of ‘Panorama’ appear to have received regular updates on this shocking story as it has unfolded over the past couple of decades. An ITV dramatisation of the affair, ‘Mr Bates Vs the Post Office’, which aired over the Christmas/New Year period, belatedly alerted the wider public as to just what had been going on under their noses. A faulty IT system by the name of Horizon was imposed upon Post Office workers when the 21st century was still in nappies, and it was pretty evident early on to those entrusted to deal with it that the system wasn’t working properly. Not that the Post Office itself acknowledged this, assuring any worker who contacted it to raise concerns that nobody else had done likewise; yet when cash shortfalls began to be detected, the Post Office wasted little time in bringing criminal proceedings against those who had raised these concerns in the first place.
‘Beckenbauer was known in the game for running referees…he started having words with Kitabdjian, the referee, and to our total disbelief, the goal was ruled out.’ So said Peter Lorimer, the Scotsman with the thunderbolt in his foot, who scored more goals for Leeds United than any other player in the club’s history; he was speaking 40 years on from the infamous 1975 European Cup Final, recalling how his goal for Leeds against German cup-holders Bayern Munich was abruptly disallowed following an intervention by Bayern captain Franz Beckenbauer. ‘Der Kaiser’ had strolled over to the ref when Lorimer had put the ball in the back of the net and suggested he have a word with the linesman, who hadn’t raised his flag and had already returned to the halfway line; despite having initially pointed to the centre circle – indicating a goal – the ref suddenly changed his mind and decided Billy Bremner had been offside; no goal. This incident played its part in enabling Bayern to end up winning the game 2-0 and retaining the trophy they went on to win again a year later, ensuring a hat-trick of victories and putting them on a par with past record-breakers in the competition like Real Madrid and Ajax.
Who knew? Apparently, the disturbingly talent-free zone that is Miley Cyrus was No.1 for 10 whole weeks last year. However, as a characteristically-stimulating conversation over on Rick Beato’s YT channel once pointed out, we live in an era of ‘million-sellers’ that the vast majority of the public have never even heard. Quite a contrast with the days when Bryan Adams could be lodged at the top of the charts for what felt like six months, with the world and his wife able to whistle the tune whether they liked it or not; but the charts provided the soundtrack for everyone’s lives back then, whereas these days a weekly list of the best-selling downloads is only of interest to the music industry. The atomisation of listening habits has made music the property of the isolated individual rather than the masses. One could say the same for television in the age of streaming and specialist channels only accessible via subscription, with dozens of so-called ‘must-see’ shows binge-watched by different people at different times, consigning water-cooler discussions on the programmes in question to history, as nobody is viewing the same thing on the same day anymore. The rationing of channels that once guaranteed every popular TV show shitloads of viewers and ensured them a place on the front page of people’s lives has meant such shows remain indelibly imprinted on the collective memory; and one such show was ‘Starsky and Hutch’.
There’s an extra day this February, which naturally means 2024 is a leap year; it’s also an election year, and less than a week into the first dates being pencilled-in on the opening page of the latest calendar to grace the nation’s walls, it would appear the MSM is already eager to walk the campaign trail. I could be talking about forthcoming events across the Atlantic, but on this occasion I’m not; 2024 is just one of those occasional years when the UK and US electorate both go to the polls to elect Prime Minister and President respectively. The two sometimes happen to coincide, and the coming twelve months promise to be a marathon for political journos, commentators and talking heads, all vying for space on rolling news channels and boring us to death months before the hustings even get underway. American Presidential Elections have always dragged on for most of the year they’re staged, but here in Blighty we used to only endure the circus for a month or two at best; however, a 24/7 media age demands a constant supply of information – or speculation – that cannot wait until nearer the actual event, like an annoying kid asking a parent how far away Christmas is when we’re still in April.
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