Twice Upon a Christmas Time

Christmas Doctor Who is a great tradition, but has proved a bit hit and miss. On occasions it has been a bit light and inconsequential, at other times guilty of being too inward looking and self-referential. 
This year's special didn't seem to be the former, while somehow accommodating the latter.

Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat contrived for themselves, and for this generation of the character, a fantastic send off. David Bradley, no matter how good the make-up and characterisation, was never going to actually be the same as William Hartnell. For those with any knowledge or recollection of the first Doctor that was always going to be a potential sticking point, so the inclusion of what was originally someone pretending to be the original actor playing that character was only going to be justified by great performance and dialogue. I think it was accomplished wonderfully.

For all Capaldi's great scenes, there was always the nagging knowledge that had been there for almost too many months, that once it had all played out, we were still all just as keen to see what was bound to be the all too brief, and likely cliff-hanging, introduction to Jodie Whittaker's 13th Doctor. I found the last combined change of Doctor and showrunner to be a welcome change of style and character, and before the end of Matt Smith's first episode I was already thinking 'David who?' So I am already excited.
'Oh Brilliant!' was a great way to start, and while we will have to wait and see, I have high hopes for whatever we have in store next year. I am sure there will still be plenty of audible nay-saying regarding a female doctor, opinions are OK, humour on the subject is acceptable without any Whovian militant response, let the story come first, then decide.

In anticipation of Christmas specials yet to come.

08/01/18

David Tennant had to endure comatose bed rest in Rose's mum's flat. Matt Smith had to eat fish fingers in custard and solve major swimming pool problems. Even Sylvester McCoy had major wig issues. With all these challenging regenerations, and the associated crises of having the TARDIS crash, explode, or forgetting how to fly the damn thing, why hasn't the Doctor gone to the trouble of sorting himself out a new Zero Room?

Advent Day 24 - Beavers

Advent Day 23 - That Old West Indies Joke

Advent Day 22 - Attila the Insecure

Advent Day 21 - Top Trumps

Play a couple of hands of your favourite card game.

Advent Day 20 - Saucy

Get a bit of sauce on that Turkey.

Advent Day 19 - Peas

Eat your greens.

Advent Day 18 - Onion Fruits

Treat yourself to some of your favourite sweets at Christmas.

Advent Day 17 - Nono

Check the Daily Mail to ensure that there are no important issues on which you are ill informed.

Advent Day 16 - Boarhunt

Peruse a local version of a children's classic.

We're Going on a Boarhunt.

Advent 15 - Judi

Who's going to see Star Wars?

Advent Day 14 - Kenobi

Advent Day 13 - Monkeys with Mohawks

Advent Day 12 - Horror

Maybe find time for a grown up shocker, if you have the stomach for it.

'Trump Thing!'

Advent Day 11 - Singe

For a kid's film with a difference, why not try the foreign language version?

Advent Day 10 - Dances with Wolves

Find a great movie to watch.

Advent Day 9 - Music

Recorded music is a great gift idea.

Advent Day 8 - Grammar

There will be lots of cards, thank you notes and letters to Santa written this Christmas. 

Please play close attention and use correct grammar at all times.

Advent Day 7 - Jacobeanstalk

Get yourselves tickets for a panto, maybe one of the fashionable retro period shows, such as Jacobeanstalk.

Advent Day 6 - Astronomy Joke

Look to the heavens, search for a star, and imagine what Christmas may be like for the rest of the universe.

Advent Day 5 - The Suckle Brothers

The Suckle Brothers

I don't normally do requests, unless people ask me.

This one is for James.

Advent Day 4 - Brogue One

Brogue One - A Shoe Wars Story

What if the plans stolen by the rebels were not for a death-dealing space-bound battle station, but for a giant gentleman's shoe?

Advent Day 3 - Red Sky...

Time to start planning Christmas telly.

Advent Day 2 - Capon

Start stocking up on Christmas food.

Advent Day 1 - Velociraptor

Velociraptor.

Festive season is upon us again!

Another opportunity for a succession of dubious quality, chocolate free visual puns.

Dr Manfratton's 2017 Advent Calendar.

No apologies, sorry.

The Knuckle Brothers

Take the Pinheads Bowling....

....take them bowling.

Zombies are so last month.

Happy Halloween everyone.

The Zombies are Coming! - The End

All right, that's enough now.

The Zombies are Coming! - Bairns

The Zombies are Coming! - Bahrains

The Zombies are Coming! - Stains

The Zombies are Coming! - Lanes

The Zombies are Coming! - Rains

The Zombies are Coming! - Trains

The Zombies are Coming! - Strains

Happy Friday 13th everybody.

The Zombies are Coming! - Grains

The Zombies are Coming! - Cranes

The Zombies are Coming! - Drains

The Zombies are Coming!

October! People start anticipating the pagan festival that is already vying for shelf space with Christmas items. They start to think about being scared; scared of darker evenings, and of being asked by children for sweets.

It is also a time to think about the inevitable zombie apocalypse and just how the world at large will be affected by the plague spread by the walking dead. Perhaps your own friends or colleagues will be affected. How will this blight permeate society? Will you have time to think about it much before a loved one chows down on your innards?

In this month, on an occasional basis, we will interrogate this idea pictorially.

Star Trek Discovery

So Star Trek Discovery has finally arrived, is it any good?

Connolly in Space

Still from the 'lost' Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story, 'Connolly in Space'.

GBBO - Making a Hash of it

The real reason Bake-Off changed channels - GBBO sources have revealed that a predilection for 'space cakes' saw the presenting team implode. Only Paul Hollywood's expensive 'icing sugar' habit has helped him to continue on the new Channel 4 show.

Orderly Queue

starring Jerry Lewis.

Raised by Wolves

Tanita Tikaram and Dame Kiri te Kanawa at Lake Titicaca

The Cray Twins

Doctor Who - 'Fear Her' or 'Heaven Sent', Jodie Whittaker is Doctor 13

With the announcement of a female Doctor Who, I admit that I could not help but look for the comedy angles. I started imagining Peter Capaldi starting to regenerate, growing a pair of boobs, and then getting second thoughts. Along with all the predictable suggestions of a pink Tardis, and the idea that she might have trouble parking it, my social media contained a lot of negative comments, but a lot of these were more noticeable because people were responding to them, and thus giving them more exposure than maybe they deserved. There was possibly more furore from those unwilling to put up with the naysayers. There were a lot of people ready to try and shut down those insistent that the Doctor must be a man, and that we would end up with bras flying out of the Tardis.

It would be very easy to get too bogged down in discussing if a female Doctor will be able to cope with 'The Visitation' from 'The Stones of Blood', or how she might fare against The No-Penis Patrol. But I suspect a lot of the negativity that was highlighted in the last couple of days will die down as time goes on. I am sure that jokes at the expense of a female Doctor will persist. There has always been a wealth of humour to be derived from Doctor Who, and that will not change. There will inevitably be criticism from some if jokes are seen to be sexist, but the programme is going to have people take the mirth anyway and will have to put up with it. It has coped in the past.

Doctor Who? by Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett

One thing that is not going to change is the casting decision. People can moan all they want, but the Doctor is going to become a woman at Christmas, and then presumably some time next year we will find out what stories the production team want to tell us. Some enthusiasts have pointed out that the moment has been prepared for, and they are right. The introduction of Missy, a female regeneration for The Master, was the clearest indication that the way was being prepared for a female Doctor. In 'The World Enough and Time', the Doctor's chat with Bill has him tell her that he was 'fairly sure' that he was a man back when he had a man crush on The Master. Avoiding all the possible discussion about how The Doctor could not have been a woman at that time, as all the iterations of his self in his regeneration cycle are male and accounted for, this line simply allows The Doctor to acknowledge very clearly that he could be a woman. With this build up, it would have been a travesty if the new Doctor had not been announced as a woman. (Of course, the Time Lords are able to dish out new regeneration cycles, so we have no guarantees that William Hartnell's Doctor was not simply the first of a new set of regenerations, so there could easily have been a female Doctor before - someone would simply have to write the story).
I would have been astounded if there had not been those that were horrified at the announcement of a female doctor. This is fine, and to be expected, even though there have been umpteen strong female fantasy lead characters in the past.

Every time the actor changes, there are bound to be some people that are unhappy. I confess to being horribly disappointed that Tom Baker was going to be replaced with the young idiot from 'All Creatures Great and Small'. I am old enough to have watched Jon Pertwee in the role, so Tom was not my only Doctor, but he was in it for so long, and had had so many great stories, that the idea of him leaving was a wrench, and I was not happy at the suggested change. What the hell was The Watcher about? Much of the tenures of the Doctors that came later left me terribly disappointed, but that was after their runs had started and I had seen what was on offer. With Peter Davison I was dismissive before an episode had been aired. The BBC messed about with the schedules too, so instead of cosy Saturday teatime viewing, I was missing episodes due to being ferried to midweek piano lessons. This impeded any chance of warming to the new interloper. So I get how some people will not think this gender revelation will be bad for the show. But a lot of them will still be curious enough to watch. It is up to those making the programmes to produce a show that will intrigue and deliver.
The issue of The Doctor being a woman as part of the stories themselves is something that needs to be balanced. Each new episode cannot have someone saying 'Oh my god, you've got tits'. Yet the show will clearly need to address aspects of the change in some way. As has already been said elsewhere, this is not about the character becoming a woman, it is about what she is going to do. Very soon we need to get away from the labouring the point that The Doctor is a woman, and start wondering how the stories will unfold. And to be pedantic, The Doctor is not actually a woman, she is an alien being played by a woman. For all we know, this regeneration will have two penises.

The issue of 'simply having to write the story' is key for me in terms of my enjoyment of the programme. I felt the original series declined from Tom Baker's final season onward. Given that this show is about someone that can go anywhere and do anything, the scope for stories is near infinite. Not withstanding limitations of budget, the only things holding Doctor Who back were imagination and talent. There really was no excuse for the weakness that ended up permeating at all levels. Good ideas were swallowed up by the lurching man-in-a-suit monster of mediocrity. Michael Grade should be ashamed he did not have the vision to seek out those who could elevate the show to deserved heights rather than limp on as a dead show walking. Still, that's history, and a fixed point in time. Without it, we would not be at this exciting juncture today.
For anyone still reeling at the idea that the last (although not quite actually really) of the Time Lords is going to be played by a lauded member of the acting profession that has garnered praise and accolades from all quarters since the announcement, and just happens to be female, it is worth remembering that other properties have switched to a female lead or major character without it doing them any real harm.

And it's not as if we haven't had a female Doctor before.

Admittedly one of these was a joke, and lots of people will not have heard of the other, but the ground has been broken. And with record downloads for the reveal it seems that there is a lot of curiosity and excitement about the potential for the new Doctor. Please tell us a good story.

And let us all pray that we don't have to go through all this type of stuff again when Doctor 14 turns out to be Muslim, or dare I say it, American.