Is it just the Bishop . . .

. . . or do most human beings spend most of their lives in multifarious states of minor physical discomfort?

It was with sharp intake of breath . . .

. . . that the Bishop stole himself and purchased two of the most expensive DVDs, pound for pound, that he is ever likely to shell out for. At ninety-four Australian dollars for the pair, ‘The Seeds of Death’ and ‘The Curse of Fenric’ come to the price of almost a whole season of new Doctor Who. The obsessive instincts of the collector aside, this may not have been the smartest money the Bishop has parted company with.

Your canonical critic had already watched ‘The Seeds of Death’, or done his best to watch it, and knew that it was bogged down by the usual things that bog the Patrick Troughton era down. Still, it has Pat Troughton, and Frazer Hines, and Wendy Padbury, quite possibly wearing a very short skirt. ‘The Curse of Fenric’, until now one of the few Who stories unseen by the Bishop, has Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. And . . .

The first thing the astute viewer notices about ‘The Curse of Fenric’ is the plot. Much of it centres on ULTIMA, a translating machine a la Alan Turing, and it may well have gained some benefit from having been run through such a device itself. The Bishop does not know if it is extremely difficult to follow or if there is simply nothing to follow, but in either event we might expect the writer to invite us along for the ride, instead of waving manically as he speeds past. Ungainly pace aside, there is a sense that nothing really fits together, of a recipe that lays out the ingredients and neglects to work out how to cook them together.

The performances are, as they unfailingly were during the Sylvester McCoy era, among the worst acting jobs ever committed without irony to the screen. One gets a real sense these poor people thought they were doing adequate work, but an even realer sense that they were hooked on amobarbital at the time. Regards the regulars, the Bishop seems to have kind of gotten used to McCoy, as one gets used to the fact that trains rarely run on time—what can you do? With Aldred the task is much harder; the other cast members may as well be speaking Navaho for all she reacts to what they say. She is the very definition of hopeless, though slightly in her defence Ian Briggs may possibly have written his dialogue in Navaho, then translated it into English via Japanese, for all the sense it makes.

Admittedly, ‘The Curse of Fenric’ isn’t the worst Doctor Who story ever made. But it is still basically quite bad, really quite bad, and the Bishop has always wondered why so many Who fans see it differently. At first he suspected desperation; but now, having waded through it himself, he proposes that what many fans are actually regarding in this story is the large amount of money that seems to have been thrown at it—large by Doctor Who standards, anyway. The locations are pretty and the sets are remarkable by the standards of the show. The costumes and make-up convince, and the two girls playing vampires are unsettling in a Salem’s Lot kind of way—at least until they open their mouths and the Sophie Aldred’s voice comes out. The direction, if such a conceit should matter in Doctor Who beyond the camera facing the right thing at the right time, at least has a sense of élan. So too does the score; though, trying valiantly to tell us what the script hasn’t, it’s too much like a boorish party guest, herding the unwary viewer into a corner to wax overeager on its favourite subject.

As for the story’s supposed sophistication, the Bishop can certainly see that it was trying. But what it mostly amounts to is telling us that Ace hates her mother by telling us she hates her mother; that the vicar has lost his faith by having him say the words, ‘I’ve lost my faith,’; and that the Doctor’s battle with Fenric is a metaphorical chess game by having the two of them play an actual game of chess. Oh, and in case you missed it, the Doctor wears a dark coat. He also wears a nice pair of spats, though the symbolism of those is perhaps less obvious.

The Bishop has just heard a rather lovely tune

'Foundations', by Kate Nash, who of course the Bishop, rapidly approaching middle age, had until five minutes past never heard of. An irresistible (and eminently shagable) voice she has, and one which with agility and sweetness sidesteps her obvious vocal gimmick. Apparently she's not unlike Lily Allen, whoever that is. All this sufficiently original track needs to be particularly good is arrangement and production.

The Bishop has just watched two Doctor Who stories featuring Peter Davison in the same day

But never fear. The damage was less than expected, and he anticipates making a full recovery within the month.

Thoughts to come.

The Bishop on Doctor Who: 'The Pyramids of Mars'

‘The Pyramids of Mars’ leaves a lot of questions unresolved; or, perhaps, unresolvable. Is Scarman the servant of Sutekh, or a cadaver taken over by Sutekh? Why does he first appear in the form of a black spacesuit, with Sutekh’s voice and personality, only to change for no particularly useful reason into Scarman, with Scarman’s voice and something resembling his personality. (So the kids can point at the screen and scoff? 'It's not the real Scarman, silly!') Why does Sutekh have to tell Scarman what to do when he could just control his body, as he does the Doctor’s? Ditto the service robots: why is Sutekh controlling Scarman controlling the mummies, when he could presumably just skip the middle man? Is Sutekh clairvoyant or not? He manages to spot and stop an explosion about to blow up his rocket, but doesn’t notice anyone planting the explosives, nor seem to realise when one of his telepathically controlled service robots is replaced by Tom Baker, hovering round like a sheepish schoolboy working up the nerve to ask a girl on a date. Why does Horus protect the ultra-secure entrance to his can't-be-broken-into-at-any-cost Martian base with question four out of Challenging Logic Puzzles for Clever Boys Aged 8 and Up? And what’s the deal with that little Egyptian fellow: does he realise that he’s in a story called ‘The Pyramids of Mars’, and sit down at the pipe organ to help out with the incidental music?

Oh well. ‘The Pyramids of Mars’ may not be the tightest Doctor Who ever, or the fastest, but it does feature the most chemistry between two leads since the invention of the galvanic cell. And, more importantly, Robert Holmes and Gabriel Woolf teaming up to produce this.

And this.

Damn, that’s the stuff.

The Bishop on the Doctor Who season that was

For various reasons not really worth going into, the Bishop has been somewhat lax in commenting on the latest season of Doctor Who. Here are his thoughts in sum.

How well any given viewer copes with ‘Smith and Jones’ will probably depend on how much she likes unsuccessful camp humour and watching people run. It wasn’t that the straw and the shoe weren’t ‘scientific’, it’s that they weren’t funny, and if this it what he thinks passes for comedy, it seems Russell T. may have more in common with JN-T than the number of Y chromosomes he likes in a mate. In any case a flat joke is forgivable; a flat story is not, and this dramatic case of cardiac arrest needs more than a couple of doctors to revive it. Set on the Moon and with about as much atmosphere, it also has the inauspicious job of kicking off the tale of Martha Jones, a love song with one lyric. Bland as Martha is, though, Freema Agyeman makes her blander, and the best that can be said after a season of this unimaginative actress is she isn’t Matthew Waterhouse.

Surprisingly unappetising, ‘The Shakespeare Code’ proves that a TV script and a TV tie-in novel are not the same thing. Gareth Roberts, best of the New/Missing Adventures gang, writes a flavourless historical with a Shakespeare who’d be more at home on Knots Landing than Stratford-on-Avon. It’s not that Roberts can’t put a televised Doctor Who adventure together, and this is perfectly competent fare, but the flare of ‘The Plotters’ or ‘The Well-Mannered War’ is absent, as if he didn’t know what to do without the mannerisms of a William Hartnell or a Tom Baker to transfer into print. Add a by-the-numbers BBC-history-is-sexier-now cast, including David Tennant playing David Tennant playing the Doctor, and all we really have here is a comparative reminder of why ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ was so fucking good.

There is nothing necessarily specious about a story set in a twenty-year traffic jam, but is it too much to ask that the characters you stick in it behave like they are? In the hands of, say, Steven Moffat—who, the Bishop is convinced, could put a working plot together with a plastic knife, a handful of marbles and an orange ball of string—‘Gridlock’ may have been tense, witty, claustrophobically chilling bit of telly. In the hands of Russell Davies, it’s like being stuck in traffic for forty-five minutes.

There are, of course, worse things than being stuck in traffic, and two of them came next. Helen Raynor must be just about the mediocre-est talent ever to bluff her way through the BBC scriptwriters entrance exam, and the only thing the Bishop has to say about ‘Daleks in Manhattan’ is that it was so bad he didn’t bother with the next one.

If only he hadn’t bothered with the one after that . . . No, that’s unfair. ‘The Lazarus Experiment’ was perfectly alright, in the same way ‘Terror of the Zygons’ was perfectly alright. That notwithstanding, though, the Bishop wonders why an immortal Time Lord so in love with the indomitable nature of the human spirit thinks reversing the aging process is such an inherently evil thing; and why this photocopy of a story conveniently proves him right.

The Bishop had always assumed episodes like ‘42’ had to come with a warning: ‘Contains only fifty-three per cent new material’ or some such. A thriller free of thrills and just about anything else, '42', like much of the season so far, mistakes character development for characters telling us they are developing; and with its humourless quasi-environmental mewling and even more humourless cast, it poses the curious viewer only one lingering question: to how many people does writer Chris Chibnall now owe royalty cheques?

You know who the villains are, you know how it’s going to end, and even the cliffhanger isn’t very good. But like all great Doctor Who it doesn’t matter: ‘Human Nature’ and 'The Family of Blood' are simply a collection of wonderful bits with a story to take place in. Fair enough, Paul Cornell is too obvious and far too sentimental, and there are one or two moments when his characters seem to know they are in a television show, but like David Tennant’s John Smith, this two-parter is charming almost because it’s not perfect. And while it concerns the Bishop that the tenth Doctor becomes more interesting as someone to talk about than someone to watch, that’s hardly Cornell’s problem. Harry Lloyd is a grand ham in the Henry Gordon Jago tradition.

Like a master chef, it isn’t just what sure-handed Steven Moffat can make a story with, it’s what he can manage to make one without. Here he is asked to throw together some three-quarter season filler with almost no budget and even less Doctor, and if ‘Blink’ is by a whisker not the most enjoyable episode of 2007, it is certainly the best. The Bishop is not sure the sort of closed time loops used here ever really make sense, but he is happy to suspend his disbelief if Moffat is going to whip up fare as inventive as this. Carey Mulligan, meanwhile, has the sort of smile that could break a man in half or put him back together again, and is effortless behind it.

The Bishop suspects that without the Master—or, more specifically, the brilliantly telegraphed fact that he is coming­—‘Utopia’ may have been the sort of base-under-siege cardboard that could almost make ‘42’ seem palatable. But it did have the Master—two Master’s for the price of one—and a lovely chat between the Doctor and Captain Jack, which fooled the Bishop into thinking Torchwood might be interesting. Derek Jacobi gives a­ masterclass,* and even Freema’s not shit. Not quite shit.

You can find out why ‘The Sound of Drums’ was so much fun here. Which leaves us with ‘Last of the Time Lords’, about which the Bishop really doesn’t know what to say. It seems almost as difficult to analyse the failings of ‘Last of the Time Lords’ as it is to enjoy them; churlish to dismiss a vapour plot the little’ns no doubt loved; missing the point to spell out the narrative and thematic failings of the canis ex machina ending; and veritably nasty to suggest the one good thing about this disappointment was that Freema Agyeman was finally put out of everybody’s misery.** For despite running out of petrol here and there, Davies and co have done a pretty good job with new Who thus far; and as season three ably illustrates, sometimes one has to take the rough with the smooth.

*Until he becomes the Master, at which point, well . . . What happened there?

**Albeit only temporarily.