the SPGB Executive Committee in session

The Cadbury's Smash advert, with the laughing martians, is a true TV classic.

Who Review #89 - the Deadly Assassin

Picture: the Master (in this episode)

scene by scene, episode by episode

A gripping tale from start to finish! The Master returns (played by Peter Pratt).

The face mask is very well done; it was one of the things that scared me back in 1976. Pratt's Master captures much of the cunning and intelligence of Roger Delgado's characterisation; however, there isn't any suaveness about this one at all, as Pratt's voice is chillingly full of hate. Other good performances are Who regulars George Pravda (the Castellan) and Bernard Horsfall (Goth) as well as the sweet Erik Chitty (Engin). The big let down are the other Time Lord characters who come across as bumbling fools, with bad hearing. As many have noted before, these Time Lords are simply not the awe inspiring beings we first saw in the War Games.

Episode 3 is the most memorable part of the story as the Doctor battles Goth in the virtual world of the Matrix. (Yup - the show was 23 years ahead of the film.)

The end of episode 3 raised the sharpest of criticisms from that old witch Mary Whitehouse: the Doctor appears to drown. She is dead now, and I don't celebrate that. But are there any Doctor Who fans that hold her in high regard? Not really. She was a fundamentalist Christian who tried to impose her own sick values on people; thank goodness she didn't get it all her own way.

Philip Hinchcliffe was interviewed and spoke thus:

Your era is also associated with a perceived increase in violence and horror content, which brought a complaint from TV watchdog Mary Whitehouse. Were you surprised to be targeted by her group?

No, I don’t think so… She was very vocal at the time on a lot of programmes and she honed in on us. I think she confused violence with thrills. Our aim was to be thrilling, but I don’t think there was a huge amount of violence.

At the time television boundaries of taste were evolving very quickly. I was a young producer, and I think probably I was pushing the envelope, as it were, for that type of programme in that tea-time Saturday slot. I don’t think we ever got it massively wrong. I think we were bumping up against the limits of what we could do at that time with that audience, but I don’t think we got it grotesquely wrong at all.

You were trying to develop a more grown up version of Doctor Who, though?

What I tried to do was make the show work. When I inherited it, it worked very well for the very young audience and the smart 12-year-old, and there was something in it for mum and dad. I think what we did was to increase the appeal, so that it was more compelling. Mum and dad would continue to watch and really believe it and the growing audience of the student generation would also.

We wanted to make it more plausible, rather than have people think it was a joke. We treated the stories a bit more seriously in the way that we developed them and handled them.

here

I never had a problem with Doctor Who and neither did my Grandmother, who let me watch it those Saturdays, long ago. Sure I was frightened by it, but not in a way that gave me nightmares. In fact, the show was simply a great joy and I looked forward to each episode, albeit armed with a cushion to hide behind.

Sex and violence in TV and film et al is always going to be a controversial subject - the thing is whether or not those doing the "Mrs. Whitehouse" of Tonbridge act will speak as strongly about the wars they support?

The late John Nathan Turner jokingly said he would hope Doctor Who got a complaint from Whitehouse because that added a couple more million on the number of viewers.

Finally, the incidental music is once again superb. Episode 1 has an organ piece and that music builds up to the end shot, where the Doctor apparantly assassinates the President. Class!

******

Wendy Richard (1943-2009)

Wendy was my first kiddie crush, when I saw her in the BBC sitcom "Are You Being Served."

Planet of the Dead

The slightly shallow types in the Dr.Who community (which includes me!) are thrilled with the news that Michelle Ryan - "EastEnders", "the Bionic Woman" - is going to be in the next special. She is cute. Whether she'll have a dress on like her noteworthy black number is another matter.

Ryan joins a long list of ladies who have travelled with the Doctor; what has changed is their characterisation: they are no longer reduced to screaming and being (completely) helpless.

And some more eye candy! Victoria (Deborah Watling); Peri (Nicola Bryant - and the famous bikini scene from the story "Planet of Fire").

Tony Hart (1925-2009)

I am one of those kids who grew up loving art because of Tony Hart and Morph. I never got any pictures in the Art Gallery on his show, but not for the lack of trying!

An Alternative Queen's Speech

(A text to be read before the real thing on Christmas Day.)

I'm speaking to you today from Sandringham - or is it Balmoral? No matter, it is one of the big houses or palaces I own and every Christmas Day I intrude on whatever enjoyment you might be having to foist a boring speech on you which is supposed to strike a thoughtful, humane note among the celebrations. I'm sitting in a sort of study and behind me is a window which opens onto the lush estate where my house stands.

I own these places because I'm a very rich woman - in fact about the sixth wealthiest person in the world and I'm worth about £3,340 million. Although I was born into this wealth and have never known what it is like to be poor, I shall be talking to you as if I was the sort of ordinary, everyday mum you're likely to have a chat with in the bus queue or in the doctor's waiting room or at the supermarket check-out. Except that I am the mother of the nation (for my recent ancestors it was the Empire) unless Margaret Thatcher manages to take that bit over as well.So for this broadcast I compose my face into the maternal expression - calm, caring, perceptive, wise.

A lot of people seem to believe it is my speech, all thought up by me. Well I do have a say in it but it's really what the people I work for tell me to say. I'm what is called a constitutional monarch - I do what the government tell me - and if I kick over the traces I will end up like my Uncle Edward.

Whatever is in my speech the media will report it as if it's really profound, earth-shattering, historical. They'll dredge through the frigid platitudes in the hope of finding some small nugget of humour, or controversy or intelligence. Then they'll blow it up into a big headline - "Queen Says War's A Killer", that sort of thing. I don't blame them; media people are like everyone else - except those like me - they have to work for a living.

In case my speech comes over as too boring and trivial I try to touch on some real problems which you might be experiencing. Like being homeless or struggling with life in a slum or in a high rise or battling to keep up with the mortgage on a regimented semi somewhere. This is a bit of a cheek, coming from someone who owns these big houses but I can't let on about the real housing problem - like shopping at the supermarket or having to queue for the doctor it's part of the wider poverty of all who work for their living.

This being Christmas I have to say something about children, to fit in with all that schmaltz about liitle faces aglow around the tree and so on. I drop hints that childhood is not like that - about violent, broken families, drugs, crime, dead-end years in comprehensive schools. It wasn't like that for my children; they had the best of everything, their schools carefully chosen and their whole lives based on the confidence that they would never want for anything. Perhaps that's why I get so upset at all those news items about Koo Stark and so on.

I often refer to problems abroad which, I say sadly, are casting such a blight across the joys of this great Christmas festival. Like war, famine, epidemics - always easy to talk about because they are going on somewhere all the time, wiping out millions every year. I pretend they're like social quirks which would go away if the Christmas spirit- peace on earth, goodwill to all, and so on - were allowed to last all year. Some people might be awkward and ask about these problems being knit into the fabric of the social system which awards these great privileges to me and forces degradation onto you. But they're obviously suffering from a lack of Christmas spirit.

And that brings me to Christmas itself. All those singing cash registers. All that rubbish being sold. All that nonsense spouted from pulpits and in programmes like this one. I try to forget that Christmas is only a short break in the routine, year-in year-out, exploitation, poverty, conflict and insecurity which you endure and the wealth and capital accumulation which keeps me so cosy. That's what destroys people's hopes, distorts their lives, represses them, kills them. And I'm one of its most prominent figureheads.

But I mustn't go on like this. My job is to encourage the most massive diversion of your attention from reality into a circus world of noise and colour. Remember my wedding? My coronation? The jubilee? The weddings of my children? You loved them all, they made you forget where you stand in the social order, what your lives are really like. And that is what I'm supposed to do, in this Christmas Day broadcast for example.

Well it's been nice getting this off my chest - a change from the usual twaddle. Oh, there's something else... Merry Christmas Suckers.

Socialist Standard editorial, December 1988.