Season 26 on Blu-ray

It's been mooted for a while now that Season 26 was going to be released on Blu-ray this year - and they're just going to manage it. It hits the shops, in the UK at least, on December 23rd - so just in time for Christmas.
This was the final season of the Classic Era of the programme - the last four stories before cancellation. Those stories are: Battlefield, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, and Survival.
The set includes the extended and the special edition versions of Battlefield and The Curse of Fenric as well as the following new extras:

• Comprehensive new interview with Sophie Aldred (companion Ace).
• Documentary about John Nathan-Turner (producer).
• Writers Room feature with Andrew Cartmel (script editor), Ben Aaronovitch, Marc Platt, Ian Briggs and Rona Munro.
• Feature on the creation of the Destroyer from Battlefield, including the actor who portrayed him (Marek Anton) and one of the designer / sculptors (Stephen Mansfield).
• A new making-of documentary for The Curse of Fenric.
• Behind the Sofa. We get McCoy and Aldred, as well as companion actors Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton and Anneke Wills, and writers Pete McTighe and Joy Wilkinson - who contributed to the Season 10 Behind the Sofa features.

Season 26 is widely regarded as the series when the programme really picked itself up after a period of decline, building on the successes of the 25th anniversary year. Doctor Who was basically getting good again, only to have the rug pulled from under it.

The season has its faults - even its own writer is unhappy with Battlefield - but it is amazing how much better it is than McCoy's first series.

There's a very nice trailer for the box set doing the rounds, which ties in with what The Sarah Jane Adventures said about what eventually happened to Ace - she's seen in the London offices of her 'A Charitable Earth' foundation.

The set is available to pre-order now.

Terrance Dicks 1935 - 2019

Terrible news for all Doctor Who fans today as it is announced that Terrance Dicks has passed away at the age of 84.
I was singing his praises just last month in my piece about the Target novelisations, of which he was the principal author.
He joined the programme as an assistant script editor during Patrick Troughton's tenure - at a time when the series was in a state of flux. He was quickly promoted to full script editor and remained with the programme when Barry Letts took over as producer - between them ushering in what many regard as a golden age for the show. They certainly got the series back on an even keel, saving it from cancellation and reinvigorating it. Ratings improved and the public really took to the UNIT additions to the regular cast - even if Dicks felt that the Earthbound format was limiting.
It was whilst he was script editing that Target approached the production office with a view to releasing more novelisations of Doctor Who TV stories. Dicks would write many of these himself - partly because he wanted the income but mainly because he knew the show inside out.
He may not have written all that many of the broadcast stories, but in his capacity as script editor his fingerprints are all over the Pertwee stories. The Seeds of Death is also virtually all his.
His actual writing credits were:
The War Games (with Malcolm Hulke - his old landlord).
Robot
Horror of Fang Rock
State of Decay
The Five Doctors
We all know that the first version of The Brain of Morbius was also his. He asked for his name to be taken off it when Robert Holmes heavily rewrote it - suggesting that some bland pseudonym be used instead. Despite falling out with Holmes over this, he laughed when he saw the show go out credited to one Robin Bland. Dicks also wrote two of the stage productions - Seven Keys to Doomsday (a warm-up for Morbius) and The Ultimate Adventure.
A couple of other things he should be credited for are the championing of Robert Holmes (he might not have written for the show and become one of its greatest script editors if it hadn't been for Dicks), co-creating the Time Lords, and for being the co-creator of the Master (the definitive Roger Delgado incarnation).
Fortunately Terrance is immortalised not just through his numerous novels, but through his many contributions to the DVD range (and its Blu-ray upgrades). Listen to his commentaries, or watch his on screen contributions to the documentaries, and you'll hear his familiar repertoire of stories - whether they relate to the featured story or not.
He just liked telling stories, and he was very, very good at it.
Terrance - RIP.

Inspirations - Warriors' Gate

Auteur: (noun) - from the French for "author". In cinema, an auteur is a director who has so much influence upon all aspects of a production that they can be seen as the film's author. The phrase was popularised by the director Francois Truffaut in an essay he wrote for Cahiers du Cinema in 1954, entitled Un Certain Tendence du Cinema Francais. Basically, you can look at some movies and know just from a few clips who directed it, thanks to visual style, a repertory company of regular actors, or even a concentration on the same subject matter. Terry Gilliam has a unique visual style in his fantasy films; Tim Burton movies invariably feature Helena Bonham-Carter and Johnny Depp; Woody Allen for the most part films contemporary New York set stories, featuring someone based on himself - usually played by himself.
Prior to making Warriors' Gate, his only story for Doctor Who, director Paul Joyce showed a number of films to his team by way of explaining what he wanted to achieve. Some of these films influenced the look of the story.
Warriors' Gate is the first of two stories written by Stephen Gallagher - although it was heavily reworked by the script editor (Christopher H Bidmead) and the director.
The story opens in a manner seen only once before in the series - in the story which opened this present season. Then, we had a long, slow pan across Brighton beach, taking in a number of TARDIS shaped beach tents before finally settling on the TARDIS itself. Here, we have a long, slow set of hand held camera shots exploring the corridors of a spaceship. One of the films which Joyce had shown to his team was Last Year at Marianbad (1961) which was directed by Alain Resnais. The opening sequence of the film consists of over 5 minutes of the camera exploring a huge, opulent hotel. More relevant to a Doctor Who story, Ridley Scott's Alien also opens with a lengthy sequence of the camera roaming through corridors and rooms of a spaceship - taking its time getting to the cast members.

The hotel in Last Year at Marianbad is set in ornate formal gardens - just as the realm beyond the mirror in the Gateway appears to be a stately home in similar manicured gardens. The realm beyond the mirror is also a monochrome world - and most of Joyce's film choices were B&W movies of the 1940's and 1950's.
Two films by Jean Cocteau provide inspiration for Warriors' Gate. The first is Orpheus (1950), which is set in contemporary Paris but based on the myth of Orpheus and his decent into Hades to save Eurydice. In this mirrors feature prominently. Supernatural characters can pass through mirrors to another dimension in the film, whilst ordinary mortals can't. Cocteau said "We watch ourselves grow old through mirrors. They bring us closer to death". Needless to say Orpheus doesn't have many jokes in it... In fact, all of the films Joyce chose to reference are highly regarded visually, but are criticised for being very much triumphs of style over content. Last Year in Marianbad is especially regarded as an incredibly dull movie.
The other Cocteau inspiration, especially for the leonine Tharils who appear in the Doctor Who story, is 1948's La Belle et la Bete (or Beauty and the Beast). The make up for Jean Marais' Beast is based on a lion. The Gateway is also reminiscent of the Beast's castle home.

Apart from the visuals, another theme runs through this story - namely theories of chance. The I Ching is specifically mentioned, along with the tossing of a coin to determine courses of action. The I Ching is over 2000 years old - the oldest written Chinese text - and is a form of divination. Carl Jung used it in his theories of synchronicity. At one point Romana dismisses chance as "Astral Jung!". Jung was interested in the concept of the collective unconscious. This story was originally going to be called "The Dream Time".
Some see I Ching as a precursor to modern computer logic - and we all know how passionate about computing Bidmead is - whilst others saw it as holding back technological development in China, as though a form of superstition.
Some of the character names reference scientists and cinematographers. The captain of the privateer is Rorvik (named after science writer David Rorvik), whilst his underling Sagan is named for cosmologist Carl Sagan. On the Tharil side, Biroc is named after cinematographer Joseph F Biroc, and Laszlo after his colleague Ernest Laszlo. Both of these worked with director Robert Aldrich - another favourite of Joyce.

Gallagher's initial draft was written more like a novel than a TV script. It already included some of the Cocteau imagery, which Joyce picked up on.
The production of this story was a troubled one. Joyce was very slow in organising his camera plans, and his assistant Graeme Harper had to complete these in order to be ready for studio. The complex set for the privateer was deemed unsafe, as it consisted of a lot of scaffolding which wasn't properly secured. Joyce then elected to shoot "off set" - capturing the studio lighting rig through the flooring for instance. This led to an argument with the head of the lighting team. Deciding to record the story as though it were a film led to Joyce falling seriously behind schedule. Things came to a head and John Nathan-Turner removed him from the production. Harper took over, though Joyce was later reinstated. Later, JNT had to answer to his boss as the lighting director had lodged an official complaint, and he acknowledged that Joyce had not been the best choice for a Doctor Who story. He wasn't invited back. Director Lovett Bickford had tried the same filmic approach on The Leisure Hive, and had run into the same problem of falling way behind schedule - and he also directed only the one story.

Bidmead and Joyce had reworked his material so much that when it came to the Target novelisation of this story, Gallagher reinstated much of his original ideas. JNT had a watching brief over the Target books and insisted that the novels had to reflect what viewers had seen on screen - so Gallagher had to hastily rewrite it.
At the conclusion of the story, Romana and K9 are written out of the series. K9 has been damaged yet again - this time irreparably - but he will function normally on the other side of the mirror in the Tharils' domain. Rorvik and his slave trader crew have been killed, but many more of Biroc's people remain in bondage in E-Space, and Romana elects to stay behind with Laszlo to free them. She's trying to avoid having to go back to Gallifrey (having been summoned home at the end of Meglos).
The Gateway also acts as means of exiting from E-Space back into N-Space, out normal universe, so this trilogy in a pocket dimension comes to an end. As we've mentioned before, JNT had only grudgingly agreed to a story arc, on the condition that it was a brief one.
One final reference - as the Doctor bids farewell to his companion he tells her that she was the noblest Romana of them all. This is a play on Marc Anthony's description of the now slain Brutus, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, as the noblest Roman of them all.
Next time: an old foe returns, and gets a new body at last...

Story 211 - Vincent and the Doctor

In which the Doctor takes Amy on a trip to the Musee d'Orsay in Paris where they see an exhibition of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. Studying one of the canvases - The Church at Auvers - the Doctor spots what appears to be a hideous, alien face in one of the windows. He quizzes art historian Dr Black, who is giving a guided tour of the exhibition, about the circumstances behind the picture, and learns the approximate date when Van Gogh painted it. The Doctor takes Amy back to the TARDIS and they travel to Auvers-Sur-Oise and arrive at the beginning of June, 1890. They must discover what it was that Van Gogh saw that day. Searching for Van Gogh they come across a street cafe similar to one in another of his other paintings and find him there - vainly trying to trade one of his self-portraits for another bottle of wine. Amy buys him some wine, and he becomes quite besotted with her due to her fiery red hair. They convince him that they are interested in his work and so he invites them back to his house. As they are about to leave, however, a young woman is attacked in a nearby street and torn to pieces, as though by a wild animal.

At the house, Vincent tells them all about his work, and the Doctor asks him if he has any plans to paint any churches soon. When he says that he has been thinking about this, the Doctor tries to encourage him to do it the next day. Amy is out in the garden looking around when she is attacked by something unseen. The Doctor and Vincent rush outside to help her, and the Doctor discovers that only Vincent can see what is attacking them. To everyone else it is invisible. They manage to chase it off and go back inside, where Vincent draws a sketch of what he saw. It is part-bird, part reptile in appearance. The Doctor leaves Amy with Vincent and returns to the TARDIS where he digs out an old piece of equipment which has a mirror attached. This can capture the image of even invisible creatures and connect to a database to identify them. He leaves the ship armed with the device and finds that it is now daybreak. In the mirror he sees the creature close behind him. It gives chase but he manages to evade it and get back to Vincent's home. Here, the device identifies the creature as a Krafayis. These savage creatures travel across space, usually in packs. For some reason this animal has become separated from its group.

Later that morning Amy decides to surprise Vincent with a display of sunflowers - only to learn that he doesn't like them very much. The Doctor wants to start the trip to the church, where he knows the Krafayis will be waiting. However, Vincent is struck down by one of his fits of depression. The episode passes and they set off for the church, passing the funeral of the young woman on the way. The villagers seem to hold Vincent responsible, as though his madness has brought about the attacks.
The Doctor finds the process of painting to be rather slow, and indicates that he is no fan of modern art. As night falls, Vincent tells the Doctor and Amy that he can see the creature inside the church. They all go inside but are attacked by it once again. The Doctor loses his device, so they have to rely on Vincent to tell them where it is and what it is doing. It soon becomes apparent that this Krafayis is blind, which explains why it was abandoned by its pack, and why it is lashing out at people. The Doctor had hoped to capture it and take it away from Earth but in the struggle Vincent inadvertently stabs the creature with his easel, killing it.

On the way back to his house, Vincent gets the Doctor and Amy to lie down and look at the night sky, and try to see it as he sees it. The next morning he tries to give them a self-portrait as a thank-you, but the Doctor declines - knowing how valuable it will be one day. he then decides to give Vincent a gift. He and Amy take him to the TARDIS and travel to the present day Musee d'Orsay so he can witness the exhibition of his works. The Doctor has Dr Black say some words about his importance to the world of art. Vincent is taken home, his lust for life renewed. Amy insists that the Doctor return her to the exhibition, where she hopes to see many new works by the artist. She is disappointed to find the exhibition unchanged. Vincent still killed himself on 29th July 1890. However, on studying one of his paintings of sunflowers she sees a dedication on the canvas - "For Amy"...

Vincent and the Doctor was written by Richard Curtis, and was first broadcast on 5th June, 2010 - round about 120 years to the day since Van Gogh painted The Church at Auvers. He mentioned the painting in a letter to his sister on 5th June, 1890.
Curtis is one of the most famous people to have written a Doctor Who script, being best known for some ridiculously successful romantic comedies (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually - all starring Hugh Grant), plus TV comedy series such as Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley. He also wrote the screen adaptations for the Bridget Jones movies. Alongside this, he co-founded - with Lenny Henry - Comic Relief. This gave him his first contact with Doctor Who, when he commissioned Steven Moffat to write the extended sketch The Curse of Fatal Death for 1999's Comic Relief night. This also featured Hugh Grant as a future incarnation of the Doctor. Another actor who has worked with Curtis many times is Bill Nighy, who was wrongly reported as being the new Doctor back in 2005 by one UK newspaper, on the day that the BBC announced that Christopher Eccleston had won the role. Nighy features in Vincent and the Doctor as Dr Black. He declined an on screen credit.

The main guest artist - indeed the only other actor in the programme beyond some supporting cast - is Tony Curran, who played Vincent. He bears a remarkable likeness to the painter. Curran is originally from Scotland, but now lives in the USA, where he has guested in a number of popular TV series.
He plays Vincent in his native Scottish accent - leading to the TARDIS translation joke that Amy must also be Dutch as she has the same accent as him.
The notion that only Vincent can see the alien is indicative of the way that he saw the world differently from anyone else - as illustrated by the Starry Night sequence.
Curtis likes to feature social commentary within his works, as befits the co-founder of Comic Relief. With Vincent and the Doctor he wanted to say something about mental health, and depression in particular. Van Gogh suffered psychotic fits and deep depressions throughout his adult life, which eventually led to him committing suicide at the age of 37. Today he would have been diagnosed as Bi-Polar. The BBC advertised a mental health helpline immediately after the broadcast of this episode.

No story arc elements this week, although Amy is suspicious at the beginning that the Doctor seems to be treating her a lot these days (his reaction to Rory's death and removal from history last week).
Some people think that there is a visual reference to the crack in the scene where Vincent is returned to his own time following his trip to the future. There is a tree branch along the bottom half of the screen which has a similar shape.
Overall - one of the best stories from the Matt Smith era. It is gorgeous to look at and packs an emotional punch. Series 5 had been lacking some of the emotional elements of the RTD days up to this point, but I defy anyone to watch the sequence where Vincent is taken to the gallery to see how he will be remembered and not get a lump in their throat.
Things you might like to know:

• Did you spot how I managed to get a reference to the Kirk Douglas bio-pic about Van Gogh into the story synopsis above?
• One thing which is glossed over is the infamous story of Van Gogh's ear. In December 1888, during one of his psychotic episodes, he mutilated his ear. It is unconfirmed if he cut it all off or just part. He wrapped the piece in paper and handed it over at a brothel he often frequented. Vincent and the Doctor is set in the last few weeks of his life, after the ear cutting episode, yet he is seen with both ears uninjured in the story. There is one subtle reference to this in the episode as Amy is seen casually playing with a knife in Vincent's home, but hurriedly puts it down - presumably fearing he might use it on himself.
• Paintings which are referenced include The Starry Night (June 1889), The Church at Auvers (see above), Cafe Terrace at Night (September 1888), Vincent's Chair With His Pipe (1888), Wheatfield with Crows (one of his last - from July 1890), plus one of his Sunflowers series. A number of his many self-portraits also feature.
• The location filming for this story took place in and around Trogir, Croatia, alongside location work on The Vampires of Venice.
• The museum is a composite of two Cardiff locations. The exterior is the Millennium Centre, and the interior is the National Museum of Wales. Both have appeared in various guises in the series before, as well as in the spin-off series.
• At one point we see the TARDIS covered in posters (see image above). These were reproductions of real posters for the Cafe Au Tambourin in Paris - the first place in the city which exhibited Van Gogh's works. 
• We've seen people and objects pass through the Vortex on the outside of the TARDIS (Captain Jack in Utopia, and later Clara in Time of the Doctor, plus an arrow in Gridlock) but paper gets incinerated.
• We mentioned that Bill Nighy declined a credit. The last time someone famous turned down a credit on Doctor Who was also an appearance in an art gallery setting - cameos by John Cleese and Eleanor Bron in City of Death.

H is for... Handbots

Featureless white robots which were used as clinical staff in the Two Streams medical facility on the planet Apalapucia. The planet was under quarantine after an outbreak of the deadly Chen-7 disease. This was known as the "one day plague" as its victims died within 24 hours. The Two Streams Facility used compressed time to allow those infected to live a full life. The Handbots were so called because they sensed their surroundings through artificial hands, which could emit a powerful anaesthetic. They also dispensed medication by darts, fired from a unit in their chest or when their heads opened up. Chen-7 only affected people with binary cardiac systems, like the Doctor. When Amy became trapped in the wrong Stream, cut off from Rory and the Doctor, he had to remain in the TARDIS and send Rory in alone to rescue her. As she did not have Chen-7, the Handbots' medication would prove fatal to her, so she had to go into hiding. The Facility's time engines masked her from their sensors. When Rory found her, she had lived there for more than 30 years, and was now an embittered older woman. She had learned to fight off the Handbots, making herself armour from their bodies.

For company she had a reprogrammed Handbot, whose hands she had removed. She had drawn a face on it, and called it Rory. The Doctor was able to locate the Amy from the earlier time period and rescue her. The older Amy had also wanted to be saved, but the Doctor could not allow such a paradox to take place. She sacrificed herself by giving herself up to the Handbots, although by removing the earlier Amy from the Facility she would never have existed in the first place.

Appearances: The Girl Who Waited (2011).

H is for... Hampdon, Jane

Jane Hampden was a school teacher in the English village of Little Hodcombe. She was opposed to Sir George Hutchinson's Civil War reenactment because of the disruption which it was causing, and her feeling that some of the participants were taking it all too seriously. Her old friend, Colonel Ben Wolsey, tried to get her to accept the war games. Jane was right to be concerned, as Sir George had fallen under the baleful influence of the Malus, a psychic alien entity which had visited the village at the time of the original Civil War battle that had been fought here. It thrived on negative emotions. It had lain dormant beneath the village church for centuries, reactivating due to the hostility being generated by the reenactment. Jane joined the Doctor in helping to defeat the Malus, which was destroyed after its link to Sir George was broken when he died.

Played by: Polly James. Appearances: The Awakening (1984).

• James was the second of The Liver Birds to appear in a story alongside Peter Davison's Doctor - Nerys Hughes having previously appeared in Kinda. In both cases they act as temporary companions to the Doctor - leading many fans to comment on how this incarnation of the Doctor worked better with more mature companions.
• Her actor son, Adam James, is an old friend of David Tennant, and appeared alongside him in Planet of the Dead, playing Detective Inspector McMillan.

H is for... Hame, Novice

Novice Hame was a junior member of the Sisters of Plenitude who ran the hospital on New Earth in the year 5 Billion. Like all her sisterhood, she was a member of the Catkind race. The Doctor met her when he was summoned to the hospital by the Face of Boe. Hame had been assigned to care for him, as it was believed that he was finally dying. She told the Doctor of the legend that the Face would impart a secret to a wanderer like himself just before he died. Hame was aware of the hospital's dark secret - the use of specially bred human beings to be used as guinea pigs in the creation of various cures. She tried to justify this to the Doctor, pointing out the millions of people who had been cured by the Sisters. After the human guinea pigs had been cured by the Doctor, the hospital was raided by the New New York police and Hame was arrested along with the rest of her order.
As part of her sentence she was tasked with the continued care of the Face of Boe.

Some 30 years after the Doctor's last visit to New Earth he returned to find the city had been ravaged by a virus which had mutated from one of the new Mood drugs which were in fashion. The Face of Boe saved her by wreathing her in his protective smoke, and together they sealed off the city's motorway, to protect the millions of people there. Everyone in the city above died of the virus within minutes. The Face of Boe knew that the Doctor had returned, and sent Hame to the motorway to find him. She found him and brought him to the Senate House where the Face was dying, having used all his energies to maintain the motorway. The Doctor freed the trapped drivers and their passengers so that they could reclaim the city. Hame was with the Doctor when the Face spoke his great secret - that the Doctor was not alone as he had always believed. Presumably Hame would have later taken on some role in the city's new government.

Played by: Anna Hope. Appearances: New Earth (2006), Gridlock (2007).