Cast and crew of Graceless 3

The splendid fellows at Big Finish have announced the cast and crew of Graceless 3, what I wrote. Their announcement goes like this:

Champagne celebration for final Graceless

The third – and final – series of Graceless will be released at the end of June, bringing an end to the adventures of time-travelling sisters Abby and Zara. The three-part series, written by Simon Guerrier and directed by Lisa Bowerman, reunites Ciara Janson as Abby and Laura Doddington as Zara – along with a guest cast of new and familiar faces to the Graceless universe.

“It’s sad to be saying goodbye to Abby and Zara, but after three series, we felt that the story of Graceless was coming to a natural end,” says producer Mark Wright. “It’s been such a happy creative time working with Simon, Lisa, Ciara and Laura over the last few years, and I think that the scripts Simon has come up with for this last series really do the characters justice. And it’s been a real privilege to work with a fantastic guest cast, and to welcome back some old friends to the series for the final episode.”

Part one, The Edge, resolves the series two cliffhanger, which saw Abby and Zara lost in the vortex, with Abby washing up at a strange hotel on the edge of a cliff in search of Zara. But will she want to be found? Tim Bentinck and Sunny Ormonde – better known as David Archer and Lillian Bellamy in BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers – guest star as Albert and Miss Simone, along with Joe Coen as Kurt and Paul Copley as Dennis. Joe recently appeared in the TV mini series The Bible, and for Big Finish has recorded the Doctor Who audios The Elite and Binary. Paul Copley’s extensive CV includes The Lakes, Downton Abbey, the Bafta-winning Last Tango in Halifax, as well as the acclaimed Big Finish Doctor Who audio Spare Parts.

Part two, The Battle, takes Abby and Zara to the Battle of Maldon in 10th century Britain, where they discover the true consequences of their actions throughout space and time. Can they convince a historian in the far future to help them put things right? Critically acclaimed actress Geraldine James guest stars in The Battle as Chi. Amongst her many credits, Geraldine has starred in TV drama Band of Gold, as Mrs Hudson in the Sherlock Holmes films with Robert Downey Jr, and most recently in Channel 4’s Utopia. Tim Chipping (Troyand the Big Finish Companion Chronicle The Wanderer) joins the cast as Burtnoth, with Joe Coen as Olaf.

With a universe and history against them, Abby and Zara find they have nowhere else to go – apart from the one place they nearly called home. But what will they find there on the day they choose to die? Consequences, the final episode of Graceless, sees the return of Michael Cochrane and Joanna Van Gyseghem reprising the roles of Brondle and Wing, first seen in series two’s The Flood. They are joined by another old friend to the series in Fraser James, who once again plays Marek – but is it a Marek that Abby and Zara will recognise?

“Lisa Bowerman has assembled such a brilliant guest cast for this third series,” says Mark, “and to be able to welcome back Michael, Joanna and Fraser for the final episode was the icing on the cake. We’ve loved every second of making Graceless over the years, and we hope our listeners enjoy the finale as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.”

Graceless III is available to pre-order now as a three-disc CD box set for the special pre-order price of £22, or as a digital download for £17.

Doctor Who: 1976

After episode 427: (The Seeds of Doom, part six)
July 1976
<< back to 1975

Doctor Who and the Fish Invasion of London

You can establish the credentials of a Doctor Who fan with a few quick questions. Who is their favourite Doctor? What was the first story they ever saw - and do they know the name of it and when it was broadcast? What episode was first broadcast closest to the day they were born - and do they have to work it out or do they already know?

I was born in June 1976 in the gap between the end of Season 13 (The Seeds of Doom, part six, was first broadcast on 6 March) and the start of Season 14 (The Masque of Mandragora, part one, was first broadcast on 4 September). So I like to think that my birth story is the LP Doctor Who and the Pescatons, released that July.

It was the first Doctor Who story produced in the audio format, and starred the two leads of the show at the time (Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen recorded an episode of the educational radio programme Exploration Earth a few weeks before they recorded The Pescatons, but that episode - "The Time Machine" wasn't broadcast until October).

It's a daft old story - a giant space fish invades London before the Doctor and Sarah Jane can defeat it using special sound. Writer Victor Pemberton reused elements (i.e. the whole plot) of his Second Doctor story Fury from the Deep (1968) - which had itself reused elements of an earlier radio play.

Listening to it again, I realised how similar the format is to a lot of the Doctor Who audio adventures I write now for Big Finish. It's two episodes; it's a mixture of narration and dramatised scenes; there's one guest actor; and it tells an ambitious story that the TV show probably couldn't afford to realise while still trying to emulate the feel of the TV show of the time.

The Pescatons has clearly been written with Tom Baker's Doctor in mind - it's full of his eccentricity and strangeness, and the action scenes are more violent than anything from the Second Doctor's time.

But for all it stars Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen as the Doctor and Sarah Jane, their characters don't quite ring true. The tone is really peculiar. The Doctor's narration is oddly jokey delivery, such as in this scene from episode 2:

The creature reared up; its long, pointed teeth moving in for the attack. For one moment, it looked as though the creature was going to ignore me and claw straight into Sarah Jane and the baby. To regain its attention, I had to do just about everything except turn a cartwheel. Thinking about it, I'm not too sure I didn't even do that. Anything I could lay my hands on I threw at it: stones, dustpan bins, milk bottles, even an old boot somebody had discarded in rather a hurry. But still the creature ignored me and slid closer and closer towards Sarah Jane and the baby.

It might have his voice but this doesn't sound like the Doctor. Today, that sort of thing would usually be picked up and corrected by the script editor and producer, or caught by the unblinking eye that we refer to, in hushed whisper, as "Cardiff". I suspect the Doctor making jokes while a baby was in danger would also be cause for concern.

I don't mean this as any kind of judgement on The Pescatons, just to note the historic moment and show how things have changed. After all, how can you not love a story in which the Doctor saves Sarah Jane and a baby from a giant alien fish by singing "Hello Dolly!"?

Next episode: 1977

Diegesis, fabula, synergy and syuzhet

A few weeks ago, Brother Tom and I were asked to speak to some AS and BTEC students about making short films. We basically told them, "Don't listen do us: go and make stuff".

I was fascinated by one of the teaching rooms, the walls covered with technical terms the students needed to know for their exams. Here's just a small selection:

Doctor Who: 1975

Episode 408: Pyramids of Mars, part 3
First broadcast: 5.45 pm, Saturday 8 November 1975
<< back to 1974

Sarah Jane takes aim
Pyramids of Mars, part 3

This blog thing of choosing one moment from each calendar year of Doctor Who has taught me a new fact! Until I started thinking about what I'd do for 1975, I'd never noticed that that year boasted a whopping 35 new episodes - from Robot part 2 (4 January) to The Android Invasion part 4 (13 December). I wonder how much showing a season and a half in one year helped cement new Doctor Tom Baker in the public mind? We can but dream of such riches today. Anyway, this plethora of episodes made choosing one moment quite tricky.

I've chosen something from Pyramids of Mars - a story I'm especially in love with. It's a very good story to show people who don't know old Doctor Who (see an introduction I wrote to it for some students). That's why it, of all Sarah Jane's 18 adventures with the Third and Fourth Doctors, was included on the DVD of The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Fourth Series to thrill a new generation of viewers. In 1998, readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted it the 4th best Doctor Who story ever; in 2009 they voted it seventh best of the then 200 stories.

It was also the first old Doctor Who story I - or rather my brother Tom - owned. My elder brother and sister bought the video as a Christmas present for him in, I think, 1990. We watched it endlessly and it's the Doctor Who story I know best of all. Yet I still spot new things each time. Watching it again recently I was struck by how often our heroes depend on the most extraordinary good fortune.

In her first scene, Sarah just happens to have rummaged through a wardrobe in the TARDIS and put on a period dress before the TARDIS crash lands in the year 1911 - where the dress fits in just right. This coincidence isn't helped when the Doctor says the dress was worn by his former companion Victoria: she was from 1866, nearly 50 years earlier.

In part 3, when the Doctor explains the history of villainous Sutekh and the ancient Egyptian gods, Sarah already knows some of it, referring to,

The seven hundred and forty gods whose names were recorded in the tomb of Thutmoses the Third.

That's quite a precise bit of egyptological knowledge. As I discovered when I visited the Valley of Kings in early 2012, the tomb of Thutmoses III is not one tourists usually see. It's an earlier tomb than the rest, the wall decorations (which do indeed name 740 gods) simpler, less striking, so tourists are often disappointed. It's conceivable that Sarah has been to the tomb or had read about it somewhere, but it's still quite a thing to be able to recall when needed. (Presumably, it's from whatever reference book the writer used as a basis for the story.)

Later in the same episode, Sarah also just happens to be a brilliant shot - though she and the Doctor never mention or use this skill again in any other episode she appears in. There's something striking and cool about Sarah Jane in an Edwardian frock pointing a rifle at an alien spaceship but it's completely out of place for the character. (I'll talk about companions wielding weapons another time.)

It's not just Sarah. In part 1, the Doctor congratulates Laurence Scarman on conveniently,

Inventing the radio telescope forty years early.

In part 2, Laurence shows Sarah a good hiding place in the house - a priest hole he and his brother found when they were boys. The Doctor isn't impressed when Sarah mentions this priest hole.

In a Victorian gothic folly? Nonsense.

But pointing it out as nonsense doesn't excuse it being there. In part 4, two things that help the Doctor outwit Sutekh - the TARDIS controls being isomorphic so only the Doctor can work them and the Doctor's respiratory bypass - have never been mentioned before.

These things suggest a script rewritten in some haste, and it's a mark of the quality of the setting, characters and dialogue - as well as the design and performances - that I'd never spotted them before. Brother Tom reckons that we only notice continuity errors or poor design and performances when we're not caught up in the story. This period of Doctor Who, under producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes, is often brilliant at ensnaring us, the stories so shocking and thrilling, the characters so lively, that we rarely notice the joins.

See also: my friend John J Johnston, vice-chair of the Egypt Exploration Society explains a bit about Sutekh's love life.

Next episode: 1976

Doctor Who: 1974

Episode 370: The Monster of Peladon, part 6
First broadcast: 5.30 pm, Saturday, 27 April 1974
<< back to 1973

"Anybody would think you would prefer me dead."
The Monster of Peladon, part 6

In December 1973, during production of Death to the Daleks, Jon Pertwee gave notice to his producer that he would leave Doctor Who. He would leave at the end of the season, so with 12 episodes still to be made that effectively meant three months' notice. But those 12 episodes broke down into two stories, one just about to start filming.

We don't know the exact day that Pertwee tendered his resignation. The script for the season finale, Planet of Spiders, was not officially commissioned until 5 December 1973 - perhaps after Pertwee had given his notice or with a suspicion that he would. The story had been in development for some time before that (though I couldn't track down it being announced in Radio Times earlier in the year). Elements of the plot may have been carried over from the story originally planned to end this season, The Final Game - which would have written out the Master had the actor Roger Delgado not sadly died.

But once the production team knew Pertwee was leaving, Spiders becomes all about writing him out - and does so very effectively. My chum Gary put it all much better than me, saying the

"story weaves together the warp and weft of a whole era ... Planet of the Spiders sends the Third Doctor off in style; buried like a Pharaoh with all the symbols of his glorious reign. This is a story with much lingering power, and has a greater influence of modern Doctor Who than any other. "

Gary Gillatt, review of Planet of the Spiders, Doctor Who Magazine, 2011.

That ought to be more than an enough of a send-off for the magnificent Third Doctor. But I love the fact that the previous story includes some nice foreshadowing of the death to come, added to the script at the very last minute. In part 6 of The Monster of Peladon, Sarah finds the Doctor seemingly dead and there's a poignant close-up on her tears - before he opens her eyes and tells her not to be silly.

It's especially brilliant because it's so similar to the same scene between them six weeks later, when the Doctor really does die. The audience also knew that Pertwee was leaving (it was announced to the public on 8 February) so might even have thought this was it. The scene plays on what we know in addition to what's happening on screen, and the lightness of the Doctor chiding Sarah for her tears is doing what so many production teams have tried to do since in the lead up to a finale. It teases us, "Keep watching: there's something big to come."

But best of all is Sarah's reaction as she follows the Doctor out of the room to get on with things. That resigned shrug to the madness of it all is one of my favourite things in Doctor Who.

Next episode: 1975

Why you'd name a cow

The Village has not exactly been known for its laugh-a-minute joyousness but there was a good joke in episode 3. Having learned that the rich people have names for their animals, we see dour working-class farmer Middleton (John Simm) with his six cows - which he can tell apart. If you want to see for yourself, it's at 23:00...

MIDDLETON:
(POINTING TO A COW) She was my first.

NORMA GREAVES:
You should give her a name.

MIDDLETON:
(BAFFLED) She's a cow.

It raised a rare smile and, for a character not given to expressing his feelings, let us see some of his view of the world. Yet, watching Michael Wood's Christina: A Medieval Life on Sunday, it turned out it might not be quite right. 12:20 in, Chris Baldwin, a farm manager, tethers two cows to a plough and explains their importance to the medieval peasant - and also why they had names.

CHRIS BALDWIN:
This is Grit and Graceful - single-syllable nearside, double-syllable offside so that when you're working the two of them they know who you're talking to.

Should have thought of that for my cats.

Doctor Who: 1973

Episode 350: The Green Death, episode 1
First broadcast: 5.50 pm, Saturday, 19 May 1973
<< back to 1972

The Doctor reacts to Jo declining a trip to Metebelis 3
The Green Death, episode 1

There are those who will tell you that, unlike this modern Doctor Who, the old-skool show did not dwell on relationships or extended family, that such things were hardly deemed suitable for a family audience and got in the way of the adventures. There are even those who say such things should not feature in new Doctor Who.

But the scares and excitements are all the more palpable when we care for the Doctor's friends. Some of the most powerful moments have come when those relationships are tested: for example, the Doctor and Barbara's arguments in The Aztecs about changing history or Jamie accusing the Doctor of being too callous in The Evil of the Daleks. The departures of companions are often extremely effective because they play to our emotions.

Even today, most companion departures occur at the end of a story - often as a shock twist. The audience may know an actor is leaving but the drama is in how. I'd argue that the departures of Susan, Steven and Victoria all have an impact at least as powerful as anything done since 2005. But they're nothing compared to the loss of Jo Grant.

The main reason for this, I think, is that Jo doesn't leave at the end of The Green Death. Yes, that's the last time we see her (until her return in The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2010). But she actually makes the break from the Doctor in her first scene in episode 1.

In that scene, she and the Doctor talk at cross purposes: him about a jaunt to the planet Metebelis 3 (mentioned in last week's Hide, if not with the same pronunciation), Jo about the latest news of strange things happening in Wales. When she runs off to pack a suitcase, the Doctor thinks she's all set to join him on another adventure. "I'm not going to Metebelis 3!" she snaps - and this most erudite of Doctor's is completely lost for words. He sees what she does not: they're going their separate ways.

Later he tries to persuade her: "Jo, you've got all the time in the world - and all the space. I'm offering them to you." It's one hell of an offer, the same one that makes so many other young women go rather weak at the knees.

"All the time in the world, and all the space.
I'm offering them to you"
The Green Death, episode 1

Yet Jo still turns him down. Worse, she says she's leaving him for a man just like him but younger. As the Doctor says, "I don't know whether to feel flattered or insulted." But he puts on a brave face and is all smiles until the moment she's gone.

"So the fledgling flies the coop..."
The Green Death, episode 1

It's perfectly written and played to pack an emotional punch. There's a hint, too, that the Doctor's been waiting for this to happen. As I've argued, Jo's never been interested in all of time and space. After the events of The Three Doctors when he regained control of the TARDIS, she joined him on a test flight to Metebelis 3 - but they never got there. Having been chased by giant Drashigs in Carnival of Monsters they crash into another spaceship. "I'm never going in that thing again!" Jo complains of the TARDIS. It takes 12 weeks to get home again - after battles across space with Ogrons, the Master and Daleks - but then Jo is as good as her word.

So the Doctor goes to Metebelis 3 on his own. And perhaps Jo's got a point: it's not quite the tranquil place he described.

"Waaah!"
The Green Death, episode 1

Jo, meanwhile, has met the young man so like the Doctor. Just to hammer home the point, she does exactly what she did the first time she met the Doctor and ruins an experiment. It's the start of a beautiful friendship - and something altogether more.

It's not just that dashing Clifford Jones is like the Doctor but younger: he's also permanently earthbound. Jo's keen to save the Earth as it is not swan about in the future pretending to be someone important. You could argue that her first trip in the TARDIS only underlined her sense of priorities: she saw in Colony in Space what pollution would lead to.

Yet as the story plays out she's also the last to spot what's happening between her and Cliff and between her and the Doctor. That means we're one step ahead of her in what happens next. For the next five weeks, the audience reads between the lines of dialogue and notes the telling glances, and adds layers of extra meaning to what could otherwise be a silly tale about giant maggots.

In the last episode, the villains and monsters are defeated relatively early, allowing time to tie up the loose threads of the "family" surrounding the Doctor. Mike Yates - created specifically as a love interest for Jo - hears that she's engaged and looks momentarily distraught before telling her, "Well, that's marvellous". Only the Brigadier spots that Mike is being brave.

"Uh... Uh... Well, that's marvellous!"
The Green Death, episode 6

(On the rebound, Mike considers his future - and the future of the Earth. It's therefore Jo's fault he'll betray his friends.)

The Brigadier raises a toast and Benton starts singing: we should delight in what's happening. But the Doctor glowers sadly, knocks down his organic fizz and slips off without a word. It's brilliantly rich in things unsaid and yet the meaning is clear: the Doctor loves Jo and she knows all too well as she leaves him for another man.

Down in one.
The Green Death, episode 6

I find myself wondering if the modern series would dare do something so haunting and brave?

Next episode: 1974

Doctor Who: 1972

Episode 330: The Three Doctors, episode 1
First broadcast: 5.50 pm, Saturday, 30 December 1972
<< back to 1971

The Time Lords watch a new Second Doctor story.
The Three Doctors, episode 1.

First two items of trivia of no interest to anyone but me. The Three Doctors opened Doctor Who's 10th season but was shown closer to the ninth anniversary of the first episode being broadcast than it was the 10th. And when Patrick Troughton returned to the series, he'd been away for less time than David Tennant will have been when he comes back this November.

Anyway. I asked in my piece about 1970 how different Doctor Who's seventh season would have looked to viewers at the time. For all the Doctor might be stuck on Earth in an indeterminate near future, I argued that a lot of the show - the feel, the monsters, the quarries and corridors, the Radiophonic effects - were exactly the same. What changed was that we didn't see inside the TARDIS and the Doctor stopped being a reluctant hero and willingly sought out adventure. With 1971, I argued that Jo Grant made us wonder why we'd want adventures in space and time anyway.

By The Three Doctors, the Doctor had been stranded on Earth for three seasons, just three of the 13 stories allowing him to set foot on another world (four if you count wherever it is the TARDIS comes to rest in the last episode of The Time Monster). But of five stories in Season 9, two were about travelling in time on Earth and two were set in outer space. The production team have since said that the "exile" format was limiting and the show's original format had started to push through.

The Three Doctors, as well as bringing back the first two Doctors Who, also returns the show to the format as it was in their day: at the end, the Doctor can once more travel freely in time and space. (Jo doesn't seem all that thrilled by the prospect of the wonders to come: "I suppose you'll be rushing off, then," she sulks.)

But the story doesn't just free up the future of the series: it does the same for its past. In episode 1, the Time Lords must nab the Second Doctor from his timestream and plonk him into his own future. We glimpse on screen what he's up to just before they grab him.

The show has always hinted in dialogue at events we never saw - the First Doctor's time on Quinnis or with Henry VIII, the Second Doctor taking a medical degree under Lister, the Third Doctor knocking about with Chairman Mao and Napoleon. But here, on screen, we glimpse an adventure: the Second Doctor running from what might be an explosion or weird fog, then stopping to consider his next move.

It's not a clip from some old story: it's something new, presumably meant to fit unobtrusively among his original run of stories.

He's not alone. The First Doctor, too, is glimpsed in a new adventure with him pottering round a nice garden (which features again in The Five Doctors (1983)).

The Time Lords watch a new First Doctor story.
The Three Doctors, episode 1.

And the Radio Times special released to mark the show's 10th anniversary also boasted a series of photos showing strange new adventures for the Doctor's former companions...

A new Cyberman adventure, with Ben and Polly.
Radio Times Doctor Who 10th anniversary special / BBC.

So I'm monstrously grateful to The Three Doctors. It didn't just set the series back on course. The books and CDs I now write for a living basically started here.

See also @theMindRobber's Twitter feed from 1972.

Next episode: 1973