Doctor Who: Square One

You know, if six years ago I had thought that Chris Chibnall would be a decent showrunner after Moffat slings his timey-wimey-hooky-wookie, I probably would have got my good friend and hashish addict to shoot me through the face with his flintlock pistol. Nowadays? Well, the thought of anyone instead of Gatiss has huge appeal, but Chibnall has been particularly fine this year - a year, one should remember, he's written more Doctor Who episodes than Moffat himself. And they've been, on the whole, very good. Above average, indeed.

And The Power of Three really does show up the Grand Moff - his last attempt to evoke the RTD era was an episode that Moff wishes he could retcon out of existence (The Beast Below - it just strikes that there were two eps that year with the initials TBB, maybe that's it). Chibnall meanwhile gives us glorious undiluted Welshman - UNIT in the tower of London, domestics, celebrity cameos, cynical alien concepts, running around hospitals, wormholes, zombies... even his laudable (though ultimately doomed) attempt to bring back Wilf in the form of Brian Pond! About the only thing missing is a doomed Prime Minister and mentions of Torchwood. There was even a Bad Wolf reference!

In truth, I'd say this could be the weakest of the season - the last bit on the spaceship has been hacked away, leaving us with questions like... what the hell were those dudes with the cubes in their mouths? What happened to the android girl? What happened to the cubes? Why were they taking patients? The annoying thing is we know, we JUST KNOW, that all the answers were in the Director's Cut... and probably would have been shown in Doctor Who Confidential if the world were rich enough to pay for it any more.

So.

Yeah.

Chibnall for the next showrunner!

But not Cumberbatch for the next Doctor. No. No, don't do that. No, no, no, no.

No.

Doctor Who: A Town Called Malice

Hmmm. Not bad. Could have been better. Not sure how... but something didn't gell for me. Maybe it's just Westerns and Doctor Who don't mix as well as we'd like? I'm not particularly fond of The Gunfighters either, even though it's much better than its unfair reputation suggests. I guess I'll reserve judgement till I find out how heavily edited this episode was...

Doctor Who: Awesomeness On An EVEN MORE AWESOMENESS!!!

(The Cardiff Millennium Centre. A canary-yellow roadster hurtles through the sky and crashes on the roof. A large, hairy scotsman in a flanelette and mirrored sunglasses lumbers out of the driver's seat, cackling like a lunatic.)

Moffat: AHAAAAH! And welcome to Doctor Who, the show which is already being bit-torrented across the globe and making filthy internet pirates look longingly at iView! This week, as the countdown to the departure of the longest-serving companions since... um... what's canon again? Anyway, as the countdown continues it's up the mightiest of the Who Team to tackle the difficult second-album-syndrome and give a dose of pure Whovian fistworthiness and give the licence-fee-paying public PRECISELY WHAT THEY DESERVE!

(Moffat approaches the Who team which consists of Gareth Roberts - a mad-eyed thug in a security guard uniform laughing insanely - Mark Gatiss - a slow, stupid-looking wrestler with antlers - Chris Chibnall - an athletic figure in jogging gear and a strange mullet and Russell T Davies - a vending machine with RTD printed on it.)

Moffat: The premise for this episode, should you be fistworthy enough to accept it, is to do Dinosaurs... ON A SPACESHIP! We have dinosaur CGI that would make Spielberg strangely aroused and that weak spineless dog Larry Miles weeping onto his copy of At The Earth's Core! We also have a bunch of stuff from one of the numerous proposed Blake's 7 revivals, including Dayna, Tarrant, Scorpio and some comedy robots. Now... which one of you is willing to take on this challenge?

Gatiss: STEVE! STEVE! PICK ME!!!

Moffat: Right. Chibnall. You're up.

Chibnall: The Chibmiester in da house! You can totally rely on me, Steve. I know what went wrong last time.

Moffat: You better do, Chibnall. I had faith enough to give you Silurians and you made me look an idiot.

Chibnall: Aw, Steve, I did my best.

Moffat: Yeah. That's what you said to the last guy when you wrote about a sex gas monster that killed men by giving them orgasms.

Chibnall: ...I'll shut up, Steve.

Gatiss: STEVE! HONEST, STEVE, I'LL MAKE IT WORK!

Moffat: Gatiss, I had the spend the last two years undoing the damage you did in Victory of the Daleks. Now clear off, get yourself some Tizer or something, and maybe I'll let you do some stuff when Amy and Rory are gone.

Gatiss: BUT I'M GREAT AT DOING THEM, STEVE! HONEST!

Moffat: Gatiss. Two words - wooden Amy being a retard.

Gatiss: THAT'S FIVE WORDS, STEVE!

Moffat: And where was that precision and insight when I needed it?!

(Moffat kick-boxes Gatiss over the edge of the roof.)

Roberts: What about me, Steve?

Moffat: You keep working on getting another sequel to The Lodger.

Roberts: I can do OTHER things, Steve.

Moffat: But nothing else has ever earned you... MAN OF FIST! Now get to it.

Roberts: You can't just backtrack and create another UNIT era, Steve! You can't knock down knowledge, replace it with ignorance and call it strength! Feng Sheui, Steve! FENG SHEUI!!!

(Moffat glares at him.)

Roberts: Can I at least bring back the Chelonians this time?

(Moffat continues to glare. Roberts runs away. He turns to Chibnall.)

Moffat: Go my son, go and double the fist! Make us proud to be sci-fi fans! Don't do Torchwood all over again!

Chibnall: I won't let you down, Steve!

Moffat: You better not.

(Moffat cackles, kisses his thumb and then gives Chibnall the thumbs up. Explosion.)

(Another explosion. Moffat leaps onto the bonnet of the roadster as Cardiff burns. Watching him are Roberts dressed as a giant turtle, Gatiss in a neckbrace, Chibnall in the Man of Fist vest, RTD vending machine, and a panda outfit with a sign around its neck saying HELEN RAYNOR.)

Moffat: Well, well, well, wasn't THAT a satisfying way to spend 45 minutes! We got social commentary, domesticated triceratops, vigilante justice, nuclear satire, sexual politics and also resolved one of the greatest historical mysteries as well as creating yet another off-the-top-of-our-head magnificent seven gang that whupped anything Captain Jack Harkness ever achieved. So let this be a lesson to you: anyone can do gritty social realism in the backstreets of Manchester with regional accents, but only weak-spineless dogs waste their time on anything that doesn't have DINOSAURS on a SPACESHIP! DON'T YOU EVER WATCH THIS SHOW AGAIN! GRRRNAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

Doctor Who - Dalekmania!

DOCTOR WHO: ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS

Meh. It was all right. OK, it was better than all right and certainly in comparison to the previous Dalek episode it was awesomeness squared, but does it make up for the delays and shortages of Who? That Moffat's rabid antispoiler phobia means none of the newspapers could review the ep and thus Season 7/33 has garnered less media attention than anything post-2005? Seriously, bar a casting decision (wow, companion actress playing someone else - ain't seen THAT since Amy... and Martha... and Romana...) and some plot twists at the end of the episode... what were they so worried about?! Sheesh...

8.5/10

I am Moffat!

Within the last 24 hours, sparacus has blogged that the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who continues a subplot he created for the near-impossible-to-find-even-more-impossible-to-read Deviant Seed. Now, personally, I would have kept quiet about this myself as sparacus has basically said that absolutely nothing else he has ever written is worthy of televisual exploration. It also shows he's slightly confused that he "started" an ongoing plotline that has been in existence ever since The Eleventh Hour. In plain sight.

But the fact is, alas, that Moff was inspired by the semi-illiterate drivel in the quarantine zone of Gallifrey Base, the web forum he has publically lambasted for the last four years and refuses to attend. It was a sheer fluke he encountered the camp-bordering-on-that-freak-from-Eat-the-Rich tale of the Doctor and the Master putting aside their battle to discuss antique pottery during the English civil war while a Chatham expy ate pies containing the severed genitals of Roundhead soldiers.

This fluke aside, the fact is that Moff is actually totally dependant on me for ideas for his new series. The facts are there people. The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River are clearly just Andrew, Eve, Dave and Nigel in a sci-fi context. The crack in the wall? Clearly based on the shattered bit of pavement a few streets away from where I live. He's continuing RTD's habit of turning to me when he needs advice, plots, dialogue suggestions and the like - after all, was Season Fnarg not inspired by Drop Dead Fred, my favorite film? Did I not suggest, months in advance, the split-reality-dream motif of Amy's Choice? And anyone who read The Enemy Within will certainly know I practically ghostwrote the Season 3 finale. I've been in contact with Who illumni like Rob Shearman, Cavan Scott and Mark Wright, as well as on first name terms with Katy Manning. That's bound to cause waves in the televisual community. I own the Auton trilogy on DVD! I have all the Stammers Howe and Walker books! I am the eminent whovianologist! ICH BIN FUCKING CONTENDER!!!!

Look at the video below. Is this a vision of Doctor Who inspired by sparacus, or by myself?

Who needs the Silent Majority when we all know we kill them on sight?