News from Nowhere

Three episodes in, and I still don't have much sense of how I feel about the new Doctor Who. Can I assume that anyone who cares about this is up to date, if not far ahead of me? Oh, well, better be on the safe side:

SPOILERS FOR THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR EPISODES 1 - 3: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Jodie Whittaker's Doctor is shaping up nicely: I liked her in the first episode, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, where she was still feeling her way into this new body, still half Peter Capaldi, but quite together enough to construct a sonic screwdriver from whatever she could find lying about a 21st century workshop. I liked, too, how she gradually put together what was going on, until what felt like an overloaded plot (oh, let's face it, what probably was an overloaded plot: peril on a train! aliens! more aliens! peril on a crane!) began to make some sort of sense.

I'm not convinced that more is better, when it comes to companions. I'm particularly not convinced, since of all the characters in that first episode, the one who actually enjoyed grappling with aliens was the one who (I said there would be spoilers, didn't I?) died - and whose death was then milked for all the pathos it could yield. Grace and the Doctor, two older women having adventures in time and space: it was never going to happen, but how I would have loved it! And could we have a moment's sympathy for Karl, the aliens' quarry, with his mantra of I am wanted, I am special, who is forgotten the moment he stops being useful to the plot.

One other disappointment in that first episode: there's a moment when a strange blue object appears in the woodland where Ryan is looking for his bike. It's about human height, and an attractive sculpted teardrop shape - I'd say tactile except that it's icy cold, not easy to the touch. Just for a moment I wondered if the TARDIS had got its camouflage circuits going, and chosen this inscrutably pleasing shape. But no, the TARDIS is withheld until episode 2, when it appears as the eponymous Ghost Monument, phasing in and out on a planet which isn't where it should be. All our intrepid heroes have to do is make their way across the planet to reach it. This is fine, I quite enjoyed this. There was perhaps a bit too much emphasis on how toxic everything is: the atmosphere may be poisonous, but they manage to breathe it OK (and to travel all day bare-headed in blazing sunlight without any ill-effects, too). They regain the TARDIS, which has spent the time redecorating itself. I really did not like its makeover, but luckily the Doctor did, and there was some nice Doctor / TARDIS interaction.

Episode 3, Rosa, is also all about the TARDIS, which deposits the team in Montgomery in 1955, so that they can ensure that history takes its proper course. Despite the impossibility of finding anywhere at that time and place where a team of several races can operate, they do not return to the TARDIS until the job is done. This doesn't make any sense, except that no opportunity must be missed to tell us how bad things were, and how important Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat, and the resultant bus boycot. And all this is true. Here's a handy summary of how historically accurate it all is. But historical accuracy and the high moral ground do not automatically make a good story, and I found Rosa quite heavy handedly didactic. Also, you know, Rosa Parks didn't just decide one day that she had had enough, it had been a hard day and she wasn't going to give up her seat: she was active in the NAACP, this was a planned protest. The programme hinted at this, but could admit that if not today then tomorrow, or soon, because that wouldn't leave much of the plot. It didn't have time to look at the paradox of how much our time travellers were prepared to intervene to protect the true line of history, either. So despite a splendid performance from Vinette Robinson as Rosa, it didn't work for me.

And next week, axxording to the trailer, there will be spiders. (I don't like spiders.)

That summer feeling, where doing not very much still fills the day from end to end, with plenty of breaks for reading or poking about the internet. Time slips by, yet nothing seems to have happened - or at least, nothing to write home about. Nonetheless, rounding up a few things -

Last Friday we went to a wine tasting at Majestic wines. We'd dropped in the previous day, in search of rosé, and since the tasting was of rosé, and the price of the ticket was redeemable against buying wine, and we weren't doing anything else, it seemed worth a try. We weren't sure what to expect, but we caught the bus, in the pouring rain, and were welcomed into the shop by Mike who had served us the previous day and was our 'wine guru' for the evening, busy putting out chairs for the six customers. That made it one of the smallest tastings I've ever been to, and definitely one of the least formal (we were not - quite - rowdy, but we may have come close). Mike had put together half a dozen wines from six different countries at a range of prices (and showed us, with evident regret, the Bandol which his budget wouldn't cover). The hit of the evening was a Côtes de Provence in a fancy square bottle, which I thought pretentious and not very interesting, certainly not justifying its price. I was disappointed in the Chapel Down (and I wish I'd been taking notes, because I don't remember why), intrigued by the Muga, which had the flavour of Cava but without the fizz, could have done without the Route 88 White Zinfandel (pink sugar-water) and of the six preferred the Breganze Pinot Grigio, an easy-drinking blush. But I didn't like any of them as well as the La Serrana we had bought the previous day, deep raspberry red with a surprising tannic grip, and how can they possibly sell something drinkable at that price? After which we caught the bus home to a takeaway pizza and a bottle of decent red. A fun evening, good company, I'd do it again.

We've been enjoying Doctor Who. The series began while we were away on holiday, so we've been watching on catch-up, and were following along a week behind transmission. On Saturday we watched the last two episodes back to back in one feature length extravaganza - and I'm glad we did, because I would have found the cliff-hanger irritating and the second part dragged out. As it was, I didn't feel it earned its extra lenth, but that was less obvious since we'd chosen to watch at extra-length anyway. The series as a whole has been very uneven, which I suppose is what you get if you have different authors for different stories. and there have been bits of dialogue (usually when the Doctor has to say something particularly high-minded) when I've just thought 'no!' but I tend to blame the writer rather than the actor. Overall, I've enjoyed Peter Capaldi's Doctor, and I'm sorry we have entered its end-game. Nardole was fun; Bill was fine, though the University setting was one of the more alien worlds the Doctor has visited. Initially I greeted the rehabilitation (or not) of Missy as a pretty threadbare plot device (I still don't buy the idea that the Master is the Doctor's oldest, bestest friend, he just happens to be evil) but it grew on me. She gets all the best lines...

We were at the Lit & Phil last night for the launch of Peter Mortimer's book The Chess Traveller: the proposal was that Pete would start from a randomly selected point and proceed from there by bike to a sequence of other randomly selected points, at each of which he would engage a total stranger in a game of chess. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty, of course, and the sections Pete read out were very funny about what did go wrong - as always with Peter Mortimer, I'm half amazed at what he achieves and half baffled how he gets away with it. But looking forward to reading the book.

At the market this morning I bought a red hat. Nothing special, and not expensive, just a floppy sun hat with a wide brim, in a strong deep red, lined with dark green. Only later did I realise that I was already wearing purple (with which it doesn't go). No-one can say they had no warning...

The current series of Doctor Who started while we were in France, so we are lagging behind, but fast catching up.

The initial two-parter took me by surprise, but, thanks to poliphilo, we were prepared for the next one, and made time last night to watch episodes three and four (Before the Flood / Under the Lake) back to back. I enjoyed this story a lot, especially the first three-quarters, after which it collapsed into the sort of unearned emotionalism which had spoiled the first two-parter for me. Genuinely unexpected developments and lots of smart lines, plus fun with time paradoxes, for this I'll forgive any number of plot holes.

Two questions, though:

If we need to be reminded that the TARDIS takes care of translation, and that its failure to translate the sigils is mysterious and significant, what are we to make of its failure to translate sign language?

And the Fisher King? Really, we (the writers? no, the characters, surely?) have decided to call him the Fidher King? Because why, exactly?

Three days of sunshine: short days and not warm, but sunny while they lasted. Correspondingly, our excursions have been brief. On Christmas Eve, as I said, a quick visit to Ely, on a bus driven by Santa Claus: when he stopped for a cigarette break, we got out and walked down to the river, then back across the meadow to the cathedral (saving a proper, fee-paying visit for a more leisurely occasion) and home. Then across the fens to Whicken for lunch.

We ate our Christmas dinner in the evening, so there was time to go out in the afternoon to Bottisham, which is where durham_rambler's father always said his family came from. We didn't find any obvious evidence of this, but a pretty church, some attractive buildings (with plenty of scope for discussing what their original purpose might have been), plenty of people walking purposefully between the different stages of their Christmas. Under D.'s direction, we took the scenic route home, through more pretty villages with thatched cottages and tall churches catching the low sun (Swaffham Prior has two chuches adjacent to each other, one with a striking octagonal tower). We bumped down narrow lanes across the fens, all right-angled corners and little bridges. There are windmills everywhere: some to grind corn, says D., but some to power the pumps which raise water from the drainage ditches and pour it into the rivers - the Cam and the Great Ouse.

This morning I accompanied D. to collect the newspaper, and a guided tour of the immediate locality - the building which is a barn from one side and a medieval chapel from the other, the distant view of the cathedral, the two medieval hospitals which a now a very private house, shielded from profane eyes by a high wall and an even higher hedge. They do serious hedges in these parts: it's very windy, says D., which may explain why a farm standing alone in a vista of fields is surrounded by a high square of hedge, but not why it is so neatly trimmed.

A not unduly leisurely lunch meant we were late going out this afternoon, to Rampton this time, where we noticed a yew tree so savagely clipped it looked like a giant darning mushroom. Also more thatched cottages, a thatched church and 'Giant's Hill' a moated mound which is all that remains of an Anarchy castle (I hadn't met this use of the word, for a castle built during the conflict between Stephen and Matilda). The sky faded from sunshine to dusk with no perceptible sunset, and the field of leeks (probably) which I had noticed on the way out glimmered silver grey.

In other news, I was disappointed in Doctor Who: all that build-up, all that sound and fury, all those faces from the past and - what? No logic, no plot, just emotional manipulation. And not enough Peter Capaldi.

I have started re-reading Mary Poppins. sartorias, gillpolack, ookpik - and nineweaving, please join us - ready when you are!

Four episodes in to the series, and already I have to concentrate to remember which is which; must be time to fix those thoughts on paper.

Two disclaimers, to begin with. The first I share with just about everyone else, it seems: I thought Christopher Ecclestone was terrific, and his playing of the Doctor was a large part of what made Doctor Who unmissable. He was always going to be a hard act to follow.

The second may be no more than a reflection of the times of my life when I was and wasn't watching Doctor Who: I watched it from the beginning, with William Hartnell's grandfather figure, through Patrick Troughton (still my own favourite, on the basis of vague but fond memories) and then intermittently during the tenures of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Since then, I might catch the odd episode, but whole Doctors have passed by unseen. Meanwhile, I have grown older, and the Doctor has grown younger - and it isn't David Tennant's fault, but he takes this to extremes.

It isn't just that I was so very much younger when my concept of the Doctor was formed, of course: he is a Time Lord, incredibly old and incredibly powerful. At the origin of the "companion" rôle is a recognition that this may be a little forbidding, and the audience had better be given someone younger to identify with, a kid sidekick, Robin to the Doctor's Batman. Naturally, we speculate about the relationship between the Doctor and his travelling companion(s), but this is a game played on the margins of the script; I don't want to see it acknowledged overtly (pre-slashed, as it were), I want to feel that I am piecing together a story which is hidden, unravelling a secret which is - however slightly - a guilty secret, a breaching of the barriers between two characters who are different in every way possible: age, background, species (and traditionally gender too, though I wouldn't insist on that one).

This worked fine with Rose and the Ninth Doctor: Christopher Ecclestone's dry, sardonic manner contrasted beautifully with Rose's exuberance, and made him seem older and her younger than the actual ages of the actors (no, I have no idea what those are). As has been said about someone else, "She gave him sex appeal, he gave her class" (OK, in this case she humanised him, but you get the drift). With the Tenth Doctor ( and this is probably the point at which it's safer to draw a veil over any potential spoilers )