Doctor Who 1984 (Peri flavoured)

This weekend I picked up a cheap Doctor Who DVD from the end of the Peter Davidson era, The Caves of Androzani.

This is one of the storylines I would have seen bits of pieces of when it was originally broadcast back in 1984 without really following what was going on.

I think I made the effort of tuning in for the final episode of the story because it was Peter Davidson's last.

Revisiting it after more than 25 years I note three things:

One, the production values are probably worse than I remember. The underground dragon creature is a particular low point.

Two, it's quite a good little story with a fair amount of "which faction is working for who?" going on. There's Scottish gunrunners, soldiers, androids impersonating soldiers, a substance that gives eternal youth, political blackmail and assassination.

Three, Nicola Bryant as companion Peri is gorgeous. I dare say I am influenced by the 13 or 14 year old version of myself. But she is.

Early in the first episode she and the Doctor get stung by some webby alien egg thing they find in a cave. It turns out they have caught a bad case of "spectrox toxaemia" and poor Peri gets weaker and progressively more wheezy as the episodes progress. Meanwhile one of the the villains, the masked Sharaz Jek, captures Peri and wants to spend eternity gazing on her beauty. Fair enough.


"Peri, I don't fancy yours much."



Eventually the Doctor get some of the bat milk antidote and gives it all to Peri. He then succumbs to the disease and regenerates into Colin Baker.

Peri would go on to be the Colin Baker companion through nearly all of his tenure as the Doctor. Looking up the episode list I am reminded that in the space of the 1985 season she encounters Cybermen, Daleks, Sontarans and even meets Patrick Troughton's version of the Doctor in The Two Doctors. All while maintaining an American accent.

However I will jumping ahead to watch my other purchase from this weekend, 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord...

Claire Foy in Sunday Times Culture

Today's Sunday Times Culture mag has an article about Claire Foy from Little Dorrit and Upstairs Downstairs. She's on TV tonight in Channel 4's Israel-set drama The Promise. Anyway, I thought it was a nice picture so I attempted a scan.

I'll make an effort to watch the first episode of The Promise even though it's a long one as it starts at 9pm and lasts until 10:45pm. But I'll give it a go because Claire is in it. She has become a sort of surrogate Ruth Wilson for me!

Emily Blunt in Sunday Times Style magazine

Emily Blunt is on the cover of today's Sunday Times Style magazine. It's an odd photo but seeing as it's Emily I thought it worthy of a quick scan...

John Barry RIP

I was sad to read today about the death of John Barry. He was responsible for the soundtracks for eleven of the first fifteen James Bond movies plus a bunch of other movies. I was listening to some of his stuff on YouTube and thought I'd put a few on here...

OHMSS is one of my favourite Bond movies, based on my favourite Fleming novel, featuring one of my favourite Barry soundtracks... You get the idea...



Here's a favourite piece of music from Moonraker to accompany the space battle near the end of the movie. It has some unmistakable Barry sounds.



Here's a track from his last Bond soundtrack, The Living Daylights. This music accompanied a sequence early in the movie where Bond helps a defector escape across the iron curtain.



The Black Hole was a Disney movie that came out in 1979 to cash in on the Star Wars SF craze. It ticks a lot of the usual boxes, e.g. cute robots, laser battles, etc. It also had a great cast including Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins and the voice of Roddy McDowell. However it had a very unexpected ending. I must have been eight or nine when I saw the movie in the cinema and to this day I'm still not sure what it means. Check out the creepy visuals along with Barry's magnificent score.



And I forgot he did a great score for Enigma, the move based on the Robert Harris novel. Now I want to watch it again...

X-Men: First Class

As a kid I was never into the X-Men comics as Spider-man was more my thing. I knew who the main characters were but that was about it. However I am a big fan of the X-Men movies. It's the one superhero franchise that gets me excited.

I've been pretty much avoiding reading too much about the new movie, X-Men First Class, that is due out this summer. I knew that it had young Magneto and young Xavier but that was about it.

Last night I did allow myself to read the following Entertainment Weekly interview with the director, Matthew Vaughn, and the movie does sound interesting. For example I didn't know that it was set in the 1960s and the focus on Magneto's character looks promising.

Check out the article at http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/01/22/x-men-first-class-matthew-vaughn/

Just four-and-a-bit months to go!

Lucy Brown back in Primeval

The reason I started watching Primeval when it was first on was the presence of Lucy Brown as Claudia/Jenny. After she left I still tuned in but it just wasn't the same.

I've only seen bits and pieces of the new series and have been pretty much giving it a miss. But I'll be keeping a close eye on the next episode as Lucy is back!

George got in touch with these photos he found on a Primeval site. Apparently she is in the next episode (number six) this coming Saturday 29 January 2011.

Photographic proof follows!

Outcasts on BBC

Trailers for a new series called Outcasts have popped up on the BBC lately. It seems to be an expensive-looking science fiction series dealing with settlers from Earth starting over on a new world. There are a few familiar faces in the cast including Liam Cunningham, Hermione Norris and Jamie Bamber, formally of the remake of Battlestar Galactica and Law & Order UK.

Looking at the cast list I also noticed Amy Manson is in it. She played one of the pre-raphaelite models in 2009's entertaining Desperate Romantics. Although it took me a while to regonise her because in that she was a redhead and now she looks very different with dark hair.

It's nice to see the BBC doing some original science fiction. Lately I've been watching some Blakes 7 for the first time since it was on way back when. It got me thinking that the time is right for British TV to try something like that again.

By the way, Outcasts seems to be eight episodes long. I'm shocked! After Sherlock, Upstairs Downstairs and Zen I thought the BBC was only doing three episode series from now on!

There's some basic info and video clips at www.bbc.co.uk/outcasts

PS Here's a picture of Amy as she will not appear on an alien planet.