feeling listless

TV So yes, the BBC failed to secure the usage of the Daleks in the new series of Doctor Who (Warning the following two and a bit paragraphs contain injokes which some non-fans may find disturbing). The media have wildly suggested that this is a very bad thing, that the timelord is nothing without his nemesis and that everything is downhill from now onwards. Well no. Actually the lack of Daleks is very good thing indeed. It means that when we sit down on Saturday night we'll not only have something which is respectful of the past but will also look to the future. It'll have monsters which work within a twenty-first century context. No matter how hard you work, unless you go the whole hog (and its rumoured that the reasons the negotiations fell down is because Russell and friends wanted to make them vicious bastards and the Terry Nation Estate bauked) they do seem a bit pathetic in relation to threats which have appeared on screen in the intervening years such as The Borg, the Independence Day aliens, or indeed Aliens. Kids need something more than a cone on casters nowadays.

One additional comment on something the Nation Estate said in relation to the breakdown: "We want to protect the integrity of the brand," he said. The problem is without Doctor Who, they don't really have a brand. For years Nation himself tried to get his own spin-off show made, presumably with someone called Tarrant fighting the Daleks but no one was biting. Although the afformentioned Big Finish Dalek Empire stories are gripping, the reason they work is because its about the people fighting the enemy, not the enemy itself. Nation's people need to be very careful and not quite so arrogant with their main property otherwise it might continue to be another one of those bits of nostalgia that everyone remembers being good at some time but not really what they want now.

Might I suggest to Russell and the gang that it might be time to pull The Mechanoids out of hiding. If they worked for TV Comic when they couldn't get the rights... (meanwhile anyone with a PDA looking for a Who fix can download the novel Sands of Time in full and gratis from the BBC -- who said the corporation isn't working for you). Also, did anyone hear Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy on the PM on Radio Four this evening? They'd wheeled him on to talk about the above (which gave us the utterly charming line from him 'Maybe they'll go from pepperpots to coffeepots...') but which (I'm not making this up) segwayed awkwardly into the death of Brando, the question pretty much being -- you're an actor and you're here so say something nice. Luckily Sylv had been working box office at a cinema during the 75th anniversary celebrations and had served him a drink at the bar. He was able to tell us Mr Brando was short. Could have been an embarassing moment otherwise ...