Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 8

Presenting Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day Eight.

Paul McGann: 1996

Companion:Dr. Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook)

Comments: Paul McGann was four years and nine days old when the first episode of Doctor Who appeared on the BBC. Perhaps a little too young at the time to be hiding behind a sofa, he did quite literally grow up watching the show. Born and raised in Liverpool he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts before embarking on a very busy film and television career. He is probably best known for playing the "I" in the film Withnail & I and had a small part in Alien 3, but let's not hold that against him - at least it wasn't Alien Resurrection. It's unfortunate then that he only got the one chance to play The Doctor on TV. Ironically his agent was worried that appearing as The Doctor would result in him being typecast and advised him not to take it. Even more ironic is that the agent who advised him on this was Janet Fielding, better known to fans of the show as Tegan Jovanka.

The story of the first attempt to revive Doctor Who is an amazing case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. While the show had been cancelled in 1989 it was still generating revenue through the sale of videos and from licensing fees for merchandise such as books. Virgin Publishing had the license for a time and were not only publishing novelizations of classic episodes - as the previous licensee Target had done - but were printing non-fiction episode guides and new stories. When the BBC took back the license they also published new stories. Some of the earlier series were aired on BBC2 to generally good audiences. The BBC felt the market was there for a new series, but they felt they needed outside partners.

There were all sorts of rumour about possible productions. At one point Cinema Verity was reported to have acquired production rights for a new show - appropriate since Cinema Verity is the production company owned by Verity Lambert who was the very first producer of Doctor Who back when William Hartnell played The Doctor. Lambert supposedly wanted to start the series right from the beginning. Green Light/Lumiere Pictures acquired the rights for a time and were set to do a series or movie directed by Leonard Nimoy with Alan Rickman as The Doctor. This also collapsed in part because there were rumours that Steven Spielberg wanted the project. What the BBC got was Philip Segal who had been head of production at Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. When Segal left Amblin he took Doctor Who with him. The project quickly became a partnership between Universal where Segal had first taken it and Fox.

The script that Segal put together was a bit of a hodge-podge. There were a great many "fannish" elements, as well as a great many things that the fans were bound to object to. Sylvester McCoy was brought back for a cameo appearance as the Seventh Doctor who was gunned down by a San Francisco street gang. The regeneration was triggered when a surgeon was confused by what she saw inside the patient (two hearts has a tendency to provoke this reaction). The Doctor had been sent to Skaro to recover the body of The Master who had been tried and executed by the Daleks for various crimes (the Daleks tend not to be interested in trials or crimes). Reincarnated as Eric Roberts (Segal had wanted Christopher Lloyd but the studios said he'd be too expensive - as it turns out, Julia Roberts' older brother cost the producers more than Lloyd would have). It was revealed that The Doctor was "half human" which was the reason why he was entrusted with the "Eye of Harmony" which powered his TARDIS. Worst of all The Doctor kissed his new companion and not a friendly peck on the cheek either.

No matter what else could be said about the new movie, one cannot fault McGann's performance as The Doctor. In dress he's very reminiscent of Pertwee's Doctor albeit less colourful. He's dressed in a black velvet frock coat, vest and ascot tie. Thankfully the "question mark" motif that had been forced onto The Doctor during John Nathan-Turner's time was nowhere to be seen. Initially at least he's not at his best - he has amnesia but soon becomes aware of the threat posed by The Master. We don't really get to know much about this incarnation of The Doctor (obviously), but he has an earnestness about him that works. It would have been very interesting to see where McGann would have taken the character. As for his "companion" in the movie, she is intended more as a temporary romantic interest - because Hollywood obviously wondered what kind of hero doesn't have a romantic relationship, particularly when dressed in "those" clothes. She's pleasant and competent, and mercifully not a screamer, but Grace doesn't have the depth that the sadly absent Ace developed. She's another character that gets things explained to her, which since the mass American audience didn't know that much about Doctor Who meant that she was being told about what the TARDIS did and how The Doctor traveled through time. It did give an opportunity for banter though. Consider this example of dialog:
Grace: I suppose you knew Madame Curie too.
The Doctor: Intimately.
Grace: Does she kiss as good as me?
The Doctor: As well as you.

When the Doctor Who movie premiered in Britain it was the second highest rated program for the week. Unfortunately it did not do well in the United States. Airing on Fox, and opposite the episode of Roseanne in which Dan suffers a heart attack, the show had been a ratings disappointment performing worse than any two hour TV movie aired in May 1996 and doing poorly when compared with other Fox programming. Fox refused to pick the show up as a weekly series (and as far as I can tell has never aired the movie since). Without an American partner the BBC was unwilling to take a chance with a new series either. Doctor Who was - apparently - dead again.

Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 7

In honour of the revival of Doctor Who debuting in North America on April 5 on CBC, I present Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 7. Those of you who are interested in the new series might want to check out Doctor Who online. Click on the "New Series" link and go to the bottom of the resultant page to see teasers and trailers for the new series. Looks good.

Sylvester McCoy1987-1989

Companions: Melanie "Mel" Bush (Bonny Langford), Dorothy "Ace" (last name unknown although there's a suggestion that the producers wanted it to be Gale) (Sophie Aldred)

Comments: Born James Kent-Smith in Scotland in 1943 and raised in Dublin Ireland by his mother and grandmother (his father died in World War II, shortly before he was born). Between the ages of 12 and 16 he studied for the priesthood and actually applied to enter a Dominican Monastery but was rejected because he was too young. He soon discovered girls and thoughts of a religious life vanished. At various times he worked as an insurance salesman and was once a bodyguard for the Rolling Stones. He entered show business first at age 27 selling tickets and keeping the books for a theater. Later he joined the "Ken Campbell Roadshow" where he had a double act with a young man named Bob Hoskins. After Hoskins left the show, Kent-Smith developed a comedy act as a circus stuntman who did things like stuffing ferrets down his pants (!) - the name of the stuntman was Sylvester McCoy and as a joke Sylvester McCoy was billed as being played by Sylvester McCoy. A critic didn't get the joke and liking the irony of the situation, James Kent-Smith adopted Sylvester McCoy as his stage name.

McCoy was primarily a stage actor with some credits in children's television when he was selected to play The Doctor by John Nathan-Turner. In fact he is the only actor to play two different Doctors on the show. Since Colin Baker refused to sign on to play the Sixth Doctor for the regeneration scene, McCoy put on a curly blonde wig and Baker's trademark multi-colored coat and was photographed laying on his stomach so that his face wasn't seen during the regeneration scene. McCoy's Doctor was far more subdued than Colin Baker's both in dress and personality. Normally dressed in a straw hat, off-white jacket, a sweater vest decorated with question marks over a white shirt and tie, and tweed trousers with a sort of Scottish plaid feel to them, his biggest affectation was the umbrella he always carried which had a question mark handle. In terms of personality he was very much a toned down throwback to Patrick Troughton's version of The Doctor - comedic but with an added, philosophical aspect to his character. Another aspect that the writers were beginning to explore was the notion that The Doctor was more than "just" a Time Lord; there was something deeper going on.

In terms of Companions, Mel remained pretty much as she had been in the two serials she did with Colin Baker, namely a screamer as well as a health food activist. The problem is that the scripts didn't give much opportunity for development. Ace fared much better. In fact her character was developed more than any other companion with much of what turned out to be the final season of the original series being devoted to her character. She was a rebellious teen with a bad relationship with her mother, a love of explosives, and a hatred of racism caused by the death of a childhood friend in a racially inspired attack. Over time she became increasingly confident and less brash.

The scripts for McCoy's first season were quite weak, a result of the turmoil that surrounded John Nathan-Turner's relationship with the previous script editor. There was no time for the new script editor, Andrew Cartmel, to put his stamp on the twenty-fourth season - McCoy's first - and scripts previously accumulated on the "slush pile" were used for the season. To say the least they were uneven. The next season was the show's twenty-fifth anniversary. It contained an uneven Cybermen story, and a beautifully realized Dalek story taking place at Coal Hill School (where Ian and Barbara had taught Susan) climaxing on November 23, 1963 - the day that Doctor Who premiered on BBC TV. Even one of the silliest episodes The Happiness Patrol was deeper than many people thought. At the very least is it was an anti-fascist tale and could very readily be seen as a parody of Margaret Thatcher's Britain, although the murderous robot made to resemble a collection of licorice allsorts tended to undercut things. The Greatest Show In The Galaxy serial has been analysed as being a parody of the BBC and it's management with the "Gods of Ragnorok" representing the TV audience which is always seeking some new entertainment. The twenty-sixth, and as it turned out the final season of the series not only featured the aforementioned arc devoted to Ace, which also continued to show The Doctor as a master manipulator, but also an appearance by Lethbridge-Stewart (who never did appear with the Sixth Doctor - at least not on television) and Anthony Ainley's final appearance as The Master.

Sadly the changes weren't enough. The BBC had already moved the show away from its traditional Saturday afternoon time slot, moving it first to Monday and then to Wednesday for the final two seasons and the ratings had not improved. Nathan-Turner was thoroughly tired and wasn't prepared to put up the same sort of fight that he had when Michael Grade had cancelled the show (Grade had left the BBC in 1988) so he simply packed up his office while McCoy and Aldred were informed they were unemployed. McCoy recorded a final monologue and that was it.

Or was it?

Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 6

In honour of the return of Doctor Who to television as a series, debuting in North America on CBC on April 5, I present Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 6.

Colin Baker:1984-1986

Companions: Perpugiliam "Peri" Brown (Nicola Bryant), Mel (Bonny Langford)

Comments: It's rather difficult to believe that Colin Baker was actually eight years older than Peter Davison, if only because Baker's version of the Doctor seems much more immature than Davison's. Baker had actually trained as a solicitor (in Britain a lawyer who contacts and advises clients) and only began training as an actor full time at age 23 (in 1966) (among his fellow students was David Suchet). He alternated between television and stage work before being cast as The Doctor. His period in the role was undoubtedly one of the most turbulent and only partially because of him.

Colin Baker's Doctor is generally regarded as the worst ever. He is an abrasive, arrogant, pushy, aloof, unpredictable know-it-all with absolutely no sense of taste (just look at his costume). Throughout his tenure in the role he had people rooting for the monsters. The contrast between Colin Baker and previous incarnations of the Doctor is seen in the episode The Two Doctors in which he worked with Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor. This version of the Doctor was at least in part a result of consultations between Baker and producer John Nathan-Turner. It seems to have suited Colin Baker's personality though - he'd spent a lot of his career playing "people you love to hate" and apparently set out to create a Doctor who fit that description.

John Nathan-Turner had taken the job producer in the last year of Tom Baker's time in the role and would continue to the end of the original series. Most Doctor Who producers stayed with the show for three years - Turner was there for nine and while continuity is good in principle it's not always good in practice. On the other hand he was facing a number of external pressures. In the last year of Davison's time as Doctor coverage of the Olympics had caused two weeks where two episodes had aired on the same day making a 50 minute episode. The BBC liked the ratings results and decided that Season 22 - Baker's first - would all be 50 minutes long. There would now be thirteen 50 minute episodes instead of twenty six 25 minute shows. It was a disaster because it destroyed the pace of the show. The aforementioned Two Doctors was made up of three of these episodes which was the equivalent of six normal episodes. It destroyed the show's tension, and the material simply wasn't adequate for the extended length of time. Then there was the question of violence. Mary Whitehouse and her National Viewer's and Listener's Association had been criticizing the show for having too much sex and violence since the Davison years, but if anything the amount of violence (and "sex" in the form of Nicola Bryant's impressive cleavage which initially at least was very much on display) increased in the Colin Baker period - Baker himself said in an early interview that the show wasn't violent enough. The trouble was that BBC 1 had a new Controller. He was Michael Grade, nephew of film and television producer Lord Lew Grade, and he hated Doctor Who. He cancelled the show, nominally because of the violence and because it "underperformed".

No matter what else can be said about John Nathan-Turner, he did have a gift for public relations and promotion. He organized a campaign to revive the show using his press contacts and after a gap of 18 months the show returned to the air. It was vastly different than what had been planned however. The 50 minute experiment was abandoned but only fourteen episodes would be made. A complete season of episodes that had already been written was tossed out in favour of a season long arc that seemed far too rushed because of the number of episodes, known as The Trial of the Time Lord. Nicola Bryant's character Peri was killed off(apparently) in the eighth episode of show and a new companion, Mel was brought on without any indication of how she met The Doctor. The result was forced. The writer of the last two episodes died after finishing only one, and the story editor quit taking with him a hastily version of the last episode forcing Turner to hire a writing team to come up with a new script without referring to the script that the story editor had created. It was a mess.

Peri was the Doctor's first American companion (although the actress Nicola Bryant was British she was so convincing that Turner actually thought she was an American) and was carried over from The Davison period. She was the constant butt of The Doctor's bouts of temper and ego, although by Colin Baker's second season there seemed to be a definite affection which heightened the sense of loss when the character was killed off. She definitely filled (pun intended) the part of a companion's role of retaining adult male viewers - her cleavage was often on display. Often courageous in a hesitant way, she was usually the recipient of The Doctor's frequently petulant explanations. As for Mel, she possessed a great set of lungs which she used often for screaming, but stage actress Bonny Langford (who at 12 appeared in the movie Bugsy Malone with Scott Baio and Jodie Foster) was the personal choice of Turner for the job of companion.

Colin Baker's time as The Doctor ended as it started - with controversy. Turner was informed that despite poor ratings against The A-Team, the series would continue but only if Baker were replaced. Turner told Baker that three years was long enough in the role - although Colin Baker had actually only appeared in the show for two years and one episode (and had said that his ambition was to stay in the role longer than Tom Baker) - and fired him. He then tried to rehire Baker for one episode to do the traditional regeneration scene. Understandably, Colin Baker refused.

Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 5

In honour of the new Doctor Who series, which will debut on CBC TV on April 5, I now present Day Five of Nine Days Of The Doctor (even though Chris Eccleston, the actor hired to play The Doctor in the current series has quit after the first year, meaning that there will soon be a tenth Doctor).

Peter Davison: 1981-1984

Companions: Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), Vislor Turlough (Mark Strickson), Perprigilium "Peri" Brown (Nicola Bryant).

Comments: Peter Davison, born Peter Moffett, is probably best known not for playing The Doctor but for playing the rather dissolute veterinary student Tristan Farnon in the television adaptations of Jame Herriott's All Creatures Great And Small, which made him a very popular and sought after actor. He was the first actor to play the Doctor to have been a viewer of the series from the beginning, and apperntly modelled his portrayal primarily on Jon Pertwee, although there was some suggestion that he play the part as Tristan Farnon with courage and dignity. He was definitely cast to be different than Tom Baker. It's reported that he left the series at the end of his three year contract at least in part on the advice of Patrick Troughton. It is true that liekmany actors in similar series he didn't want to get typecast as The Doctor.

Davison's Doctor is far less flamboyant than any of his predecessors including Hartnell. His normal dress was a cricketer's sweater, a beige coat with red piping and striped trousers. The one bit of eccentricity was a piece of celery pinned to the left lapel of his coat. At some point the producers decided that The Doctor needed a symbol and a question mark was embroidered on the right lapel of The Doctor's shirt. The question mark would be a recurring theme in the costumes of the next two actors in the role. Davison's Doctor is probably the most physically active of all his incarnations. He's an expert cricketer (Davison was a keen amateur player) and in one episode plays the game expertly while his survival in another episode depends on his carrying a cricket ball in his pocket. Unfortunately the scripts begin to suffer in this period so while some stories are quite good there are a number that are rather weak. Davison does participate in the last purely historical story The Black Orchid and there's a nice episode with Lethbridge Stewart.

Of all of The Doctor's companions, perhaps the most disliked by the fans is Adric. In part this is because he's a teen-ager and a bit of a know it all at that. The character was written as being abrasive and arrogant. Apparently actor Matthew Waterhouse wasn't particularly well-liked by his fellow actors. Nyssa as precisely the opposite, a gentle caring young woman who was also brilliant at just about everything. She tended to be the peace maker between Adric, Tegan and The Doctor. Sarah Sutton was also a favourite of Davison's, to the point where he urged them to retain her in the role of the Doctor's companion instead of Janet Fielding. Tegan was one of the most argumentative companions ever on the show. She was strong willed - a trait that often got her into trouble - but tremendously loyal. (There was a definite chemistry between Davison's Doctor and Fielding's Tegan which, had the show been aimed at a more adult audience, might have been interpretted as some sort of sexual tension. At least that's my perception, which may be skewed by the fact that with her later short hair and more revealing clothes, I tend to find Tegan very sexy.) Turlough is one of the more interesting companions - he was also infuriating. He was at turns traitorous, cowardly and ruthless. You could never be sur you could trust him. Finally, Peri only appeared in two serials with Davison, and was introduced primarily to set her up for the transition to Colin Baker's Doctor. She did seem to have a close relationship with the Fifth Doctor in contrast with her relations with the Sixth.

Davison's time as The Doctor saw the return of The Master. After Roger Delgado's death the character was retained durning Tom Baker's run in the series but his face was only seen occassionally and then as horribly disfigured. In this form he was played by Peter Pratt and George beevers. At the end of Baker's time as The Doctor, The Master managed to take over the body of the Keeper of Traken, Nyssa's father. The character was played by actor Anthony Ainley who, with the addition of a moustache and goatee, bore more than a passing resemblance to Roger Delgado. The Fifth Doctor was also the last to use what might be described as "Doctor Who's Magic Wand", the Sonic Screwdriver. The device had first appeard during the Troughton years and was used by Pertwee and Baker. The second Romana even had her own. It was destroyed in the episode The Visitation and not replaced. Another item of marginal interest was Kamelion. The BBC officially lists Kamelion as a companion however it only made two appearances in the series - the serial in which it joined the Doctor and the one in which it "died". In the show Kamelion was a shape shifting android. In fact it was a remote controlled robot. The problem, and the reason why it was only seen in two serials, was that the device never worked properly and the inventor, the only one who knew how to operate it, died after selling it to the BBC.

One of the highlights of Davison's time as Doctor was the 20th anniversary of the show, commemorated in the episode The Five Doctors. Actually there were only three of the original actors on screen - Davison, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee. William Hartnell had died in 1975 and William Hurndall, who bore a rather superficial resemblance to Hartnell picked up the role. Tom Baker was unwilling to appear, feeling that too little time had passed since he had played the Doctor. He was "present" through the use of scenes from an unaired episode Shada (which was not completed because of a strike at the BBC). When a publicity photo featuring the Five Doctors was needed Baker's figure from Madame Tussaud's wax museum literally stood in for him. The episode was Jon Pertwee's last appearance as the Doctor.

My New Dedication

I am well aware that you, gentle readers, are probably getting sick and tired of my fixation with Doctor Who. Therefore I am sure that you will be pleased to hear that I have decided to rededicate this blog to the single objective of reviving the greatest program ever to appear on television: The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. told the adventures of a young espionage agent named April Dancer and starred Noel Harrison (son of Rex) as Mark Slate, while the always delectable Stephanie Powers played the ever so yummy April. Fools ran the networks then as now and the series was cancelled after a mere 29 episodes were made. Many considered the show to be a failure and point to the fact that only two of the writers were willing to post their names in the credits. This is of course nonsense. In truth the writers of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. were amongst the greatest literary figures of the 20th Century but simply were unwilling to admit that they wrote for television, such was the stigma that the medium was under at the time. It is said that an episode of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. was the first and only time that Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer ever worked together. A number of film directors also worked on the series, but of necessity used pseudonyms to protect their reputations. Careful detective work and handwriting comparisons have proven positively that Stanley Kubrick and John Frankenheimer each directed multiple episodes.

My personal preference would be to have Charisma Carpenter cast as April. Fools joke that she is not a strong enough actress to step into the shoes of the great Stephanie Powers. Freddie Prinze Jr. would be ideal as her partner, with Brian Blessed as Alexander Waverly, their boss.

Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 4

In honour of the return to TV of the classic series Doctor Who, which will be seen on CBC on April 5, I present Nine Days of The Doctor - Day 4.

Tom Baker 1974-1981

Companions: Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen), Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter),Leela (Louise Jameson), Romana I (Mary Tamm), Romana II (Lalla Ward), Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) Teegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding).

Comments: Baker may well be the best actor to portray the Doctor. He had been nominated for two Golden Globe awards for his portrayal of Rasputin in Nicholas & Alexandra and there had been talk of an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the same role. Baker is certainly the only "Doctor" who has also done full frontal nudity, in Pasolini's Canterbury Tales. He spent six years in a monastery (from age 15 to 20) before becoming an actor. At the time that he got the part of The Doctor he had been working as a labourer on building sites for about six months. This may help to explain why he stayed so long in the role, twice as long as any other actor.

Baker's Doctor was all hair and teeth, with an extremely long scarf (supposedly knitted by Madame duFarge; in fact the BBC gave a knitter a selection of balls of wool and told her to knit a scarf, she just knitted until all of the wool was gone) and a large floppy hat. In terms of character, Baker's Doctor borrowed a little from Troughton and Pertwee. He was a scientist but not as immersed in it as Pertwee's character - you never really saw him working with test tubes. From Troughton he took a bit of the cosmic clown aspect although his humour was a drier droller wit (a product of the writers of course, which in this period included Douglas Adams who later created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Baker's Doctor was quite funny and was frequently underestimated by his opponents, to their cost.

Baker's companions were initially the damsel in distress type, although able in their own way and at least paying lip service to the notion of Women's Lib. Sarah Jane - who carried over from Pertwee's time as The Doctor, was a capable young woman who somehow was always stumbling into peril despite or perhaps because of her experiences with the Doctor. That said, Elizabeth Sladen is generally considered the best companion by many fans. And of course her male counter-part, Harry Sullivan, seldom fared much better. Leela on the other hand was rather child-like in that there were two types of people, friends of the Doctor and people to kill. Even then she still required frequent rescuing. As for the two Romanas, they too were Time Lords (well Time Ladies if you want to be technical) but like most of their race had little knowledge of the universe around them. Again, the companions are people to be rescued and vehicles through which explanations can be given. About the only companion that this couldn't be said of was The Doctor's robot dog, K-9.

Most of the conventions about the character were set by the time that Baker became the Doctor. They were mainly amplified on in this period. For example it had always been established that the inside of the TARDIS was larger than the outside but during Baker's period it was shown to be not just one or two extra rooms, it was gigantic including a cloister (complete with bells), an auxiliary control room, and a "bathroom" that rather resembled an Olympic sized indoor swimming pool. There were two visits to The Doctor's home world, Gallifrey, which depicted it as a rather sterile authoritarian world - no wonder The Doctor found it so boring that he left.

It was during Baker's period that Doctor Who achieved cult popularity in the United States, to the point where Marvel Comic began publishing a Doctor Who comic book. Baker's decision to leave the series had a rather odd basis. He had fallen in love with Lalla Ward, the actress who played the second version of Romana for two years (and was 17 years younger than him). When she left the series he himself stated that he didn't really feel like continuing with the series. They married in 1980 after she left the show. They were divorced in 1982.

Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 3

In honour of the new series of Doctor Who which will be debuting on April 5 on the CBC I present Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 3.

Jon Pertwee: 1970-1974

Companions: Liz Shaw (Caroline John), Jo Grant (Katy Manning), Sara Jane Smith (Liz Sladen).

Comments: It was fated that Jon Pertwee would become an actor - his father Roland was a distinguished playwright and actor, and his older brother Michael was also writer and an occasional actor as was their younger cousin Bill Pertwee. As a young man he counted Laurence Olivier among his friends. Nonetheless he was expelled from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts for refusing to play the role of the wind in a play. As a naval officer in World War II he was assigned to HMS Hood and was reassigned off the ship just before she sailed for her fatal battle with the Bismarck. Pertwee put his experiences in the Royal Navy to good use in the long radio comedy The Navy Lark which ran from 1959-1977. Until Doctor Who, Pertwee was primarily known as a comedic actor and created the role Marcus Lycus in the stage production of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum which in the movie was played by Phil Silvers while Pertwee was relegated to the minor role of Crassus.

Pertwee's Doctor was the first to be seen in colour. The show was seen both on the 420 line Black & White BBC1 and the higher definition Colour BBC2 until the transition to the new system was completed. He is also the only one for whom all of the episodes exist although a few episodes exist only in Black & White. While Troughton's Doctor was a "cosmic clown" in a ragged coat and baggy pants, Pertwee's Doctor is a man of Science albeit a man of science dressed as an Edwardian dandy complete with red velvet coat. Pertwee's Doctor is much more active than either Hartnell's or Troughton's, thus the companions were relegated to the roles of "damsel in distress" and people to whom the Doctor can reveal details of the plot. This is particularly true of Katy Manning's character Jo Grant. The Doctor is constantly pulling her out of difficulties. Liz Shaw on the other hand tended to be more of an equal partner. Like Pertwee's Doctor, she was a scientist even though what the Doctor knew was far beyond her understanding. This wasn't to say that he didn't have a mystical side, simply that it didn't escape very often.

For the first two years of Pertwee's time as Doctor, the stories were primarily Earth based although no less science fiction because of it. The Time Lords had exiled the Doctor to Earth after the first Troughton episode and only occasionally allowed him to leave the planet until the episode The Three Doctors which marked the 10th anniversary of the series (it also marked the last time William Hartnell appeared as the character he created). This allowed the emergence of two major characters in the show, Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart (Nicholas Courtney, who holds the distinction of appearing with seven of the eight actors to play the Doctor - he missed the ill fated Paul McGann, while his appearance with Hartnell was as a character called Bret Vyon in The Dalek Master Plan) Captain Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) and Sergeant Benton (John Levene) representatives of the international military organization UNIT. The Pertwee era also introduced the character described by the Doctor as "my best enemy", The Master, played by Pertwee's close friend Roger Delgado. Indeed it was Delgado's death in a 1974 car crash in Turkey that led Pertwee to give up the role, which he felt wasn't fun anymore.

Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 2

In honour of the return of Doctor Who to CBC on April 5, I present Day 2 of Nine Days of The Doctor

Patrick Troughton 1966-1969

Companions: Ben Jackson (Michael Craze), Polly Wright (Anneke Wills), Jaimie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines), Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling), Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury).

Commentary: When it finally became clear even to William Hartnell that he couldn't continue as the Doctor, his choice for a replacement was Patrick Troughton. Troughton was a veteran character actor who had done a number of TV series including playing Robin Hood in a 1953 series as well as being the Player King in Olivier's 1948 Hamlet. The question became how to replace the tall and white haired Hartnell with the short and dark haired Troughton. The answer that the writers came up with was to simply change the actors right in front of the audience. Thus was born the Doctor's ability to regenerate. When a member of the Doctor's race reached the end of their life they had the ability to regenerate and acquire a new body. The new body had a new voice a new way of thinking and a new taste in just about everything. Thus, Troughton wasn't locked in to Hartnell's portrayal of the Doctor as a doddering old grandfather type, he could recreate the Doctor in his own image.

It's difficult to right much about the Troughton period in Doctor Who because most of it is lost. Of the 21 serials that Troughton did, only about six survive in more than fragments. Virtually all of the fourth and fifth seasons don't exist except for one episode Tomb of the Cybermen which is Deborah Watling's first real episode as the Doctor's companion. (The only episode in which we ever see Ben and Polly is the Hartnell episode The War Machines in which they are introduced and we see very little of Polly in that. Virtually all we know about the Troughton period therefore is his interactions with Jamie and Zoe. What we can see from these episodes is that the show has become a lot less studio bound. They do a number of location shoots. This also results in the episodes being a lot less difficult to watch since they don't appear to be filming them off of the monitors anymore.

The Doctor that Troughton created owed a bit to Charlie Chaplin, although Troughton called him a bit of a "cosmic clown". He wore baggy clothing and was nowhere near as authoritative or decisive as Hartnell's Doctor. He is still eminently effective in dealing with his opponents however. Unlike Hartnell's Doctor, Troughton didn't need his companions to fulfill the action parts of a particular episode. The male companions - which really means Frazer Hines as Jamie since he appeared in the second Troughton serial and was there through to the end of the Troughton period - were relegated to the role of holding younger male viewers. Troughton's period as the Doctor also saw the last of the historical episodes as a regular feature of the series. It became almost exclusively science fiction after the serial known as "The Highlanders".

When Patrick Troughton decided to leave the series at the end of its sixth season they needed a way to take him out of the series. The producers decided to reveal a little more about the Doctor and introduced the concept of the Time Lords. The Doctor was a renegade Time Lord, one who believed in intervening rather than just watching. As part of his sentence for breaking the Time Lords' laws, Troughton's Doctor is forced to regenerate.

TV On DVD 4

Another rather smallish list with one or two curiosities.

America's Next Top Model: Cycle One
- Oh there are some dog food jokes I could use based on the decision tocall this "Cycle One" rather than first seson, but I will keep myself from using them. Can we say that this is American Idol for the tall anorexic and possibly talentless?

Astro Boy The Complete Series
- Well not really. Amazon.ca tells us that this is in fact the complet series of the 2003 version produced by Sony which as the Editorial Review says is far more lavish than the 1963 original or the 1980 colour remake.

Clutch Cargo Cartoon Collection Volume 1
- Okay, I officially don't get it. Season 1 and Season 2 I understood but what is the need for this?

Due South The Complete First Season
- Has been available for a couple of years so I don't know why TV GeekSpeak is talking about it now. Never mind, any chance to talk about the show is welcome. The pilot episode started out as a relatively straight "fish out of water" show but became increasingly quirky as time went by. Season 2 is actually the better one in my not so humble opinion simply because it introduced a love/hate interest for Fraser in the form of his new commanding officer Meg Thatcher and the incredibly inept Constable Turnbull. Imagining what might have been if CBS had actually kept the series for its third/fourth season (in Canada the show was split into two 13 week seasons while the BBC and TNT showed it as a single third season) when things really got wierd.

The Lone Gunmen The Complete Series
- A series almost as quirky as Due South and probably would have been quirkier if had lasted longer. Byers, Langly, and Frohicke were the three geeks who occassionally aided Mulder & Scully in The X-Files. In their own series they were joined by Yves Adele Harlow (whose name is an anagram for ....) and dimwitted doofus "Jimmy" Bond. The show was in the Friday "death slot" where many series had entered but none stuck after The X-Files moved to Sundays. In truth it was probably too subversive for certain people today. The governmental plots they invesitgated then seem almost tame in today's climate. Interesting to note that while the actor who played Byers was an experienced actor, the guys who played Langly and Frohicke had done comparatively little acting before The X-Files and Tom Braidwood (Frohicke) was actually the second unit director on the show.

Twilight Zone Season 2: The Definitive Collection
- The original Twilight Zone has been collected on DVD before but the "Definitive Collection" is probably the way to go simply because it collects the episodes by season.

The Saint: The Early Episodes Set 1
- I'm going to go out on a limb and state that Roger Moore playing Simon Templar "...the Saint (do doody o do wah dah)" was not only cooler and sexier than Moore as James Bond and on a par with Connery's Bond. We know that Ian Fleming's first choice to play Bond was Roger Moore. The Black & White episodes are the better ones in my opinion, before the series took a turn towards the more secret agent type scripts.

Nine Days Of The Doctor - Day 1

Since the new series of Doctor Who will debut on the CBC On Tuesday April 5 I now present Day 1 of Nine Days of the Doctor.

William Hartnell the First Doctor 1963 - 1966

Companions: Ian Chesterton (William Russell aka Russell Enoch), Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), Susan "Foreman" (Carol Ann Ford), Vicki (Maureen O'Brien), Steven Taylor (Peter Purves), Katarina (Adrienne Hill), Sara Kingdom (Jean Marsh), Dodo Chaplet (Jackie Lane), Polly Wright (Anneke Wills), Ben Jackson (Michael Craze).

Commentary: They say that your favourite Doctor is the one you were first exposed to but I may case it isn't entirely true. As I related in the frist post I made in this blog, my first exposure to Doctor Who occurred whenthe CBC foolishly decided to replace The Bugs Bunny Show with Doctor Who in January 1965 (I actually thought it was earlier, but I looked it up). It wasn't well received, at least not by me and apparently not by a lot of people because the show was moved to a Wednesday afternoon slot in April 1965 (which wasn't seen here in Saskatoon) before the CBC pulled it in July 1965, having aired the complete first season.

Hartnell's period as the Doctor was the foundation for the show in that it established most of the conventions of the series as well as creating several of the most memorable villains. In the first episode, the Doctor's ship (in BBC memos of the period it is referred to as a spceship) is dubbed the TARDIS and we learn that it travels in time and space and is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. We also meet the principal characters: the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan who has adopted the name Foreman (from the salvage yard where the TARDIS is currently resting) both of whom are exiles from their home world, and school teachers Ian and Barbara. We also learn that the TARDIS isn't exacly operating properly when it fails to change from a Police Call Box into something fitting its surroundings. As the Hartnell period continued we will learn more about the Doctor, although they won't introduce the idea of "Time Lords" or "Gallifrey" until much later.

Casting in the series was regarded quite seriously. Hartnell, an actor who had been working in films since the 1930s and had come to prominence primarily for playing Army sergeants (in both serious films like The Immortal Batallion and comedies, most notably Carry On Sergeant) was 55 when he took the role. He was intended to be something of an irritable grandfather type, while Susan was meant to give the children in the audience someone closer to their own age to relate to. Hartnell had a notoriously poor memory for lines, cause in part by a medical condition that he was dealing with, but this was actually built into something of an endearing character trait by making the Doctor slightly absent minded. The addition of Barbara was quite literally meant to give adult males someone to look at (the show aired immediately after a sports show called Grandstand) while Ian was meant to be both someone for boys to admire and to do most of the adventurous and physical stuff that Hartnell might not be capable of. It is a common thread throughout Hartnell's period to have a younger male companion as well as a female companion.

The stories in this period were meant to be split evenly between historical adventures and science fiction stories. The first serial 100,000 B.C. dealt with cavemen, while the second serial introduced those murderous creatures the Daleks. It turned out that the science Fiction stories, particularly the four serials involving the Daleks - two of which were turned into technicolor movies starring Peter Cushing - the most popular in the series. Although not yet totally abandoned, the historical adventures became fewer in the latter part of Hartnell's years on the series.

The Hartnell episodes can be difficult to watch from a technical perspective. Some of the costumes are ludicrous (notably those in the Web Planet serial, particularly the "ant suits") while the sets are scarcely impressive. A lot of this has to do with the notorious parsimony that was forced on the producers. Verity Lambert's team was supposed to produce the show on a budget of 2,500 pounds per episode - or else. Based on conversion rates of the period that's roughly $7,000 an episode, admittedly in 1963 dollars. There's also the fact that they were forced to shoot just about everything in studio because they were shooting direct to video tape and particularly in the early period you shot in sequence and with a minimum number of retakes. It took a lot to get the BBC to reshoot a scene because at the time video tape wasn't easy to edit. Picture quality can also suffer - someone on the TV newsgroup recently complained that the Hartnell eisodes looked as though they shoot the show with a security camera. In fact episodes were shot on video tape in the 405 lines of resolution system then used in Britain. For export the episodes were filmed off of the monitor. It was not a system designed for great resolution. Or for retention of the episodes. Only 17 of the 30 serials from the Hartnell period still exist in a complete enough form to be broadcast. Others exist in partial form.

The Definition Of "Spackle Television"

If my personal dictionary of television terms ever gets published, the term "Spackle Television" will contain the note "See Grey's Anatomy" together with a cast picture from the show. It is there to fill a hole and there's some hope that it will stick. On the whole I wouldn't bet on it, nor would I get to comfortable watching it.

It isn't that Grey's Anatomy is a bad show. It's a nice workmanlike production. Unfortunately it was a nice workmanlike production back in the 1970 season when it starred Broderick Crawford and Mike Farrell and was called The Interns, 1964 when it was a movie called The Young Interns, 1962 when it was a movie called The Interns, or 1961 when it was called Young Doctors. That is to say that in form at least it's an old form and an old format. The producers of Grey's Anatomy apparently do not feel the need to improve on it.

Grey's Anatomy isn't technically bad, and the cast is relatively sound. The trouble is they fit "types". There's the "beauty queen" type (Katherine Heigl looking good enough to make me wish yet again that I was 20 years younger and Hollywood handsome), the "nerdy" type (T.R. Knight), the "got here by hard work" type (Sandra Oh, who is the oldest of the four main cast member and also the best actress although she really doesn't get much opportunity to show it here), and the "privileged" type (Ellen Pompeo, playing Meredith Grey - the "Grey" of the title). The only innovative thing here is that all but one of the featured characters is female; in the old movies and TV show it was exactly the opposite. It does however give the opportunity for sex to rear its not entirely ugly head. In the pilot episode Meredith wakes up with a guy after a drunken one night stand only to discover - of course - that he's an attending doctor at the hospital where she works, in the area where where she works. Once the characters move in together - which happens in the next episode - you can bet there'll be the usual sex farce situations occur that are always arising when people of the opposite sex share living space.

That's not unexpected of course, because this series is recycling all the old situations. There's the usual "interns working 48 hour shifts because it tests them" situation, which is real enough but still a cliche. There's the "young doctor makes the terrible mistake of assuring someone that the surgery is a piece of cake only to have the person die" situation - also a cliche. There's the "lead intern makes a brilliant diagnosis despite never having seen the patient" situation. There is of course the "jerky intern gets his comeuppance" situation tied to that last one. And so on. There is nothing new here and the most innovative it got was that we got to watch Ellen Pompeo's character toss her cookies on the lawn outside the hospital. I thought that's what ladies rooms were for.

I didn't find Grey's Anatomy that bad, I just didn't find it to be that good. It's the sort of show that would probably do well on The WB if only because the cast is for the most part made up of attractive young people, although how you can reconcile casting Katherine Heigl and Sandra Oh as contemporaries is beyond me (but then I buy Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz as brothers despite the 16 year difference in their ages, so what do I know). The trouble is that it's not on The WB, it's on ABC opposite Crossing Jordan and the second half of the CBS movie, not to mention that it's filling in for Boston Legal which does seem to have built up a following. As it stands, Grey's Anatomy Isn't innovative enough to make it stand out. If you like it, enjoy it while you can, because I predict that this is one bit of spackle that isn't going to stick. In a way it's too bad too.

Whatever Happened To? (Number 4 of a series)

Whatever happened to programming for children in the after school period?

Don't tell me, I already know the answer but it is a point worth illustrating and it follows on from yesterdays rant about the Parents Television Council. The Council, as you will recall, has focused its ire on network TV programming, supposedly in early prime time period (although they don't restrict their complaints about indecency to programs airing in that period), in an effort to make TV more "family friendly". The problem is that if they are really concerned about what children see on TV shouldn't they also be interested - perhaps even more interested - in the late afternoon period when kids are coming home from school or in the morning period before children go to school?

I was a kid in the 1960s and the standard programming for the afternoon was either a local children's program host (the one that sticks in my memory was a guy named Jeff "Smokey" Howard who was with CFQC in Saskatoon for at most three years) or a national program fed from CBC in Toronto, usually followed by some old program stripped into the 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. slot. I haven't been able to see afternoon TV Guides from places in the United States, but I suspect that programming in this period was similar, although possibly with a greater addition of syndicated programming. There were continuing efforts to produce programming for children and teens into the 1970s - in the United States this was the period of the "After School Specials" - but from what I can recall it tended to dwindle into the 1980s and by the '90s programming was almost entirely adult oriented. This can be "blamed" (if that is in fact the right word) on the rise of cable networks such as Nickelodeon, The Disney Channel and The Cartoon Network in the United States. In Canada there wasn't the same corresponding rise in children's programming on cable. Family Channel, which started as a Canadian version of The Disney Channel, was a premium channel well into the 1990s while YTV is 17 years old and Teletoon, the Canadian answer to The Cartoon Network is about the same. Treehouse TV the station for pre-school and early school age children is 8 years old. All three are owned by the same company, Corus Entertainment which is a sister company of Shaw Cable (literally, since the Chair of Corus is the sister of the President of Shaw Cable).

The rise of the cable stations in the United States coincided with a decline in programming on over the air stations that was aimed at children or at least child-friendly. That's fine if you have cable but not so good if you can't get it or don't want it. The same trend occurred in much of Canada even without the competition from cable although the presence of the CBC, which offers over-the-air service to over 90% of Canadians, takes up some of the burden. In North America there are only three networks that make a serious effort at kid-friendly programming in two hours after school - say 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. local time: PBS, CBC and The WB which has its Kids WB mix of animated programs combined (at least in the two stations I see, WPIX and KTLA which are both Tribune stations) with reruns of older programs like Sabrina The teenaged Witch and Fresh Prince of Bel Air. From the other stations, there's a mix of "court shows" (Judge Joe Brown, The Peoples Court) talk/psychology shows (Maury, Dr. Phil) and local news programs, some as long as an hour and a half.

The fact is that it isn't this way in other countries. In Britain, the publicly owned BBC1 and the private ITV have a solid schedule of children's shows in the afternoon and while Channel 4's programming isn't directed at children it isn't objectionable either. Australia's ABC has a full range of children's programs and the commercial networks have at least a half hour of shows for children on weekdays. The same thing applies with both of the publicly owned TV New Zealand networks and the privately owned TV3. The point being that programming in the after school period in other countries represents something of a priority that it apparently doesn't in North America.

I'm not saying that we should go back to the days of local kid's shows or after school specials. I think that boat has long since gone. I do think however that if groups like the PTC are sincere about improving programming for children and not in grabbing headlines, they should show more concern for what is being shown on their local stations in the after school hours and less concern with programs that are airing in late prime time, when the children who are most likely to be affected by violence, language and what passes for sex on American television should be in bed. Of course this would mean working locally with broadcasters rather than nationally against them, so I doubt that anything like this will occur.

Me and the PTC

I was going to do a thing on This Old House today but an e-mail from Tony Figueroa reminded me of a pet peeve of mine: the Parents' Television Council. Now you might be asking why I, as a Canadian, am concerned about the PTC but when you consider that most of the programming on Canadian television originate with U.S. networks it seems clear that if they react to their ox being gored it affects me almost as much as it does Americans.

Tony's blog offers an article that is in the form of an open letter to the PTC and I have no doubt that he has sent it to them as well as posting it in Child of Television and on BlogCritics.org. To summarize he takes the PTC to task for describing an episode of Crossing Jordan for being "the worst Family TV show of the week" in some time period, despite the fact that the episode was in the latest timeslot possible, carried a clear ratings disclaimer stating that it was a "TV14" show, not suitable for people under that age. He goes on to point out that there are other hazards to children that are far more pernicious than TV - you are reading this on one of them. I'm going to go a little further than Tony.

I find the PTC itself pernicious and potentially dangerous. The Council claims that they are trying to make TV more family friendly and are doing this by "fostering changes in TV programming to make the early hours of prime time family-friendly and suitable for viewers of all ages." (This is from the first of the PTC's mission statement printed in their FAQ - "What Is The PTC's Mission?") The problem is that they don't restrict themselves to just early prime time but express their opinion on just about every show on TV. That is their right of course, but they go beyond that and actively work to make all TV shows "family safe" by bombarding the FCC with complaints. It is a fact that over 90% of the complaints filled with the FCC come from the PTC. They aren't worried about the fact that they protest shows that no one else seems concerned about - they're proud that they are standard bearers for "decent" Americans against the smut peddlers of Hollywood. Even if they are a minority they think they represent the majority. And again, it's not just the shows in the first, or even the second, hour of prime time that they target - despite the claim in their FAQ - it's everything. In fact, in their self promotional section Accomplishments the Council drops the mask of being concerned with just the early prime time hours "The PTC is now recognized nationally as the leader in the fight against indecent television content. Newspapers from coast to coast, magazines, talk radio, television news even the entertainment industry itself acknowledge the power and influence of the PTC." No mention there about the early prime time hours.

Let's look at the days of the week of March 18-24 as seen by the PTC. They rate shows on Sex, Violence, and Language using a Red light, Yellow light, and Green light system for each. Ratings are combined to form an overall rating. Friday you could watch America's Most Talented Kids on Pax, but everything else has a "Yellow" rating, except That '70s Show which is rated Red. Saturday you should just unplug the TV because everything is Red except the shows they haven't rated. Unrated shows included The Ten Commandments but be careful - there's a married woman who tries to seduce a man. Sunday, it's back to Pax again for America's Most Talented Kids and Sue Thomas FB Eye, as well as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on ABC, but everything else is Yellow or Red. Monday night is a mother load, with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How'd They Do That, Listen Up, Everybody Loves Raymond, Nanny 911 and 7th Heaven but everything on NBC is Red. You can watch Fox's American Idol on Tuesday and Wednesday, along with Sue Thomas FB Eye, and Doc on Pax on the latter night. Finally Thursday had an obviously edited version of America's Funniest Home Videos (edited because normally the show gets a Yellow) on Pax. Did you notice anything from that list. It's mostly pablum and it makes clear that the PTC is more than a little out of touch with America's taste. Most of the shows that the PTC proudly recommends are on a marginal network - Pax - and in some cases (Doc, America's Most Talented Kids) are no longer in production. Here's the bigger question, where are the shows that are artistically challenging (admittedly a very short list in American TV but let's just stick with the concept) because they sure aren't in the list of shows that the PTC likes.

I'm not totally unsympathetic with the aims of the PTC. I'm not a parent, but there are shows on in the first hour of prime time that I would not want a child of mine to see. However the PTC reminds me of Mrs Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons (PTC Yellow: - excerpt from their review: "The show ridicules entrepreneurs, religion, educators, and law enforcement officials, and has occasionally incorporated foul language into its dialogue.") shouting "Won't somebody think of the children!" at every opportunity. I object to their methods, and more I object to their unstated desire to take responsibility from parents and put it on government. The people who would scream bloody murder if the schools were to try to teach their kids about sex, saying that it is the job of parents to do that not the government, want take the responsibility for deciding what kids should watch from individual parents and give it to the government. The computer writer and broadcaster Leo Laporte has stated that the way to protect children from Internet predators and the other "bad stuff" that's out there, don't have a computer with the Internet in their rooms, have it in a common area where you can keep an eye on them and stop them if they go someplace they shouldn't. Surely it follows that if you want to protect you kids from the "bad stuff" on TV, you don't put TVs in their rooms, but you sit and watch with them. Isn't that part of a parent's job anymore, cause it sure was when I was a kid.

TV on DVD 3 - Supplemental

And here's one we both missed.

- Hardy Boys - Nancy Drew Mysteries Season 1
Pity to miss this one. They alternated the Hardy Boys, featuring Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy, with Nancy Drew, starring Pamela Sue Martin. Guys were supposed to care about the Hardy Boys, but dammit Pamela Sue Martin was such a hottie (although that's not a term we used back then) that any teenage (or slightly older) male with an ounce of testosterone and a interest in breeding wanted to be with her - in the bible sense. Later of course she showed off her nice bits for Playboy in an effort to revive her flagging career - yeah, like that ever works - and appearing as the first version of Fallon Carrington in Dynasty. Today, while Shaun Cassidy produces like Cold Case and The Mountain Pammy is twice divorced and living in Idaho or Montana. Doesn't seem fair somehow.

TV on DVD 3

Bit of a weak week for new DVDs of TV series. There seems to be a certain amount of kid's stuff (or stuff that could be perceived as kid's stuff) and special repackaging. (TVGeekSpeak.com hid this on me which is part of the reason why I'm late with it. On the other hand I caught one they missed!)

- 24 Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2
This one sort of mystifies me. The full season of 24 has been available for a couple of years now, and as I recall the first two episodes don't really constitute a pilot movie. In fact, I'm not sure but I don't believe that the first two episodes of Season 1 were shown back to back, something that was done in subsequent seasons. Given the nature of the show it's not a great move in my opinion. It's a bargain way to sample the show, but my advice is to save your money and buy the full box set.

- Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2
This, on the other hand, might be a viable option. The first two episodes of Buffy were a two part story which introduced the characters and got the show off to a rousing start. That said, the first season was only 12 episodes and because of this there are places where you can probably find the first season box at an affordable price.

- The Pretender Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2
Are we beginning to sense a trend here? I was never a big watcher of The Pretender although the series has more than it's share of vehement fans. It is interesting to note that all three of these series were made by Fox and are described as "TV Starters". Maybe they figure that TV DVDs are like peanuts - once you have one you can't stop.

- Mary Tyler Moore The Best of Season 1
One DVD four episodes and the box set has been out for two and a half years. Another Starter Set.

- Clutch Cargo Complete Series Season 1
- Clutch Cargo Complete Series Season 2
Doesn't ship till next week according to Amazon.ca but since TVGeekSpeak.com mentioned it (and I have one that they don't have!) I'll just state that the series is probably the worst "animation" ever done for TV and I include the Star Trek animated series in that list. In fact it was so bad it has become a cult favourite - a "Cargo" Cult favourite you might say.

- Dora The Explorer: Big Sister Dora
Apparently this is a popular series on Nickelodeon which airs on Treehouse here in Canada. Needless to say I've never seen it.

- The Flintstones Complete Season 3
- The Flintstones Seasons 1-3
When I was about 10 or 15 the local station started airing The Flintstone at noon on weekdays from September to June. They aired it for 25 to 30 years on the grounds that every year there were always kids watching who hadn't seen the blasted thing. And at that, it's more thought and service than most TV stations give to programming for children at lunch time and after school today.

- Nova: Welcome to Mars
Another one that ships on March 29. Worth it for the story of the little rovers that could.

And now the one that I found and TVGeekSpeak.com didn't:
- Kojak The complete First Season
Who loves ya baby? Obviously being released now to coincide with the new USA Networks series starring Ving Rames but who cares, Kojak was one of those landmark series that everyone has memories of. (Did you know that this series was regular viewing at Buckingham Palace? The Queen apparently was a fan. The lady has always had taste.)

Medium - Well Done

And if I'm the first person to use that pun, I will be very surprised.

It's true though. Given all of the possible ways that this show could have gone wrong and been done badly, what has shown up on the screen has been quite good. Surprisingly, within the internal logic of the show it is easy to suspend disbelief unless you are one of the hardest of hard core unbelievers. Credit for that goes equally to the writers, the producers, and most importantly to Patricia Arquette.

The writers have been given a very difficult task. They have to sell the viewers on a concept that most people believe is absolute nonsense and make it sensible enough that we in the audience can suspend our disbelief in it. Mostly they pull it off, at least in part by making it seem that Allison's visions come closer to strong hunches than anything else, and always need to be backed with legitimate proof. In the pilot episode, for example, a "vision" that allows her to explain some inconsistencies in a crime scene comes across (at least to anyone who is willing to listen, which is not the people in the D.A.'s office where at the time Allison is an intern) as a simple, logical chain of events seen through a different set of eyes. Equally important, they have totally sold the fact that the character is in virtually all respects an ordinary working mom, although admittedly one whose work is rather "odd".

The producers should also be credited. Their task is equally difficult: to present something as ethereal and ephemeral as a dream or a vision in a way that is not hokey. Part of what they do is to not present Allison's visions the same way every time. By setting things up in this manner we can't always be absolutely certain when Allison is having a vision or communing with dead person, at least not initially. They work hard on this. Another aspect that the producers have worked really hard at is building the cast that surrounds Patricia Arquette. It would be very easy to make her family "perfect" - perfect husband, and three perfect kids - in short a typical TV family. Jake Weber, as Allison's husband Joe, is suitably dishevelled and even rather geeky, as befits an aeroespace engineer. Moreover he sells himself to us as a guy who loves his wife and sort of believes in her "gift" but is only slowly coming to terms with it and the impact that it has and will have on his family. As for the kids, with the exception of Sofia Vassilieva, who is 12 but looks two or three years younger, they aren't the stereotypical "pretty" children that are found on most TV shows. More to the point they tend to be written as somewhat needy kids - as in needing their mother. Finally there is the always reliable Miguel Sandoval as Allison's boss slash sounding board slash "doubting Thomas" Manuel Devalos. It isn't the hardest acting job but Devalos as a character has to both believe in what Allison does sufficiently that he wants her working for him, but has to be enough of a nonbeliever that he can not only demand proof but tell her that he thinks she's barking up the wrong tree.

Still, most of the weight for carrying the series falls on Patricia Arquette. If we don't believe her then we can't believe the character and the whole premise collapses of it's own weight. I think she pulls it off. Allison comes across as a slightly overweight (overweight by the standards of what we see on TV and the other media every day that is) woman who mostly stumbles through her day to day chores and at night has these precognitive dreams. The dreams frighten her, to the point where she was - as she says to her husband in one episode - not only drinking her share but part of her husband's share too. Alcohol dulls the dreams, although it doesn't always keep them away. Only by embracing her abilities does she become truly effective. Arquette manages to put this feeling across in a manner that is both believable and likable.

The series has has it's moments where it goes slightly off the rails. One point is that it seems as though each of Allison's daughters will, in turn, exhibit similar powers. At least the two eldest daughters have; we don't know yet about the youngest, but then she's still in the pre-talking stage. Indeed the trait appears to run in Allison's family, since an earlier episode dealt with her brother, a soldier in Iraq who drank way too much and was known as "Lucky" because he tended to lead his squad out of situations where they'd take casualties. These were of course were the result of his visions. Another irritating trait is the frequent "ghost ex machina" in which a ghost will pop up in front of Allison to explain exactly what happened and how to prove it. In Monday's episode, the spirit of a long dead "murder" victim popped up in Allison's living room about 10 minutes before the end fo the episode, and apparently told Allison where to find the proof that the "murder" was actually a suicide. It was a little too pat of an explanation, as if the writers ran out of show before they could allow Allison to come on the answer by her own.

There is in fact a real psychic medium named Allison Dubois who did work as a consultant with the Phoenix police, has a husband named Joe and three daughters. In fact NBC initially promoted the series as being based on a real person, a move which caused a lot of initial attacks on the concept in the rec.arts.tv newsgroup on the simple basis that psychics don't exist and those who claim to be psychic are frauds. From what I've seen at her website, I would have to say that the real Allison is actually prettier than Patricia Arquette. On the other hand, based on part of an interview I saw on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch on CNBC, I tend to find the fictional Allison far more interesting than the real one. While the fictional Allison seems to accept her powers as a medium somewhat reluctantly, the real Allison Dubois seems to revel in her claims to be able to communicate with the dead. She seems far more interested in being like John Edward (host of the show Crossing Over which was cancelled within a year of starting in syndication. That said, I think that Medium the TV show has some interesting ideas used in it and as long as willing suspension of disbelief doesn't expand much beyond the fictional TV show, than the existence of a real Allison Dubois shouldn't really matter.

Comfort TV

Everybody has a comfort food, whether theyknow it or not. Comfort foods are the sort of thing that you eat and they take you to a happy place where the pressures of the world are set aside for the duration. For me it's "Hawkins Cheezies". They're an extrude cornmeal thing, coated in Canadian Cheddar and you can't get them in the US. Here's the thing; give me a small bag of those and in the all too brief time it takes me to eat them - savouring every cheesy morsel - the world can go on collapsing around me. Comfort food doesn't challenge you; instead it sort of wraps you up and let's you just sort of relax. Most comfort food goes back to something in your childhood, but it doesn't have to to work.

There are TV shows like that. I don't mean shows that make you revert to childhood. If I wanted that I could watch Have Gun Will Travel or Gunsmoke on the Lonestar Channel or find some episodes of Petticoat Junction or Three's Company. No, "Comfort Television" is like sinking into a nice warm bath after a hard day and just letting the tensions ease. Crossing Jordan is an example of "Comfort Television".

When I say that Crossing Jordan is "Comfort Television" I am not denigrating the show. It's just that it is certain that no cast member from the show, and certainly no writer, will ever win or possibly even be nominated for an Emmy. The show should come with a disclaimer - "No creative ground has been broken on this TV series." The show doesn't challenge you, the characters aren't innovative, and they don't break with TV convention. That said, the series is fun. The always enjoyable Jill Hennessy plays Doctor Jordan Cavanaugh a troublesome and high energy pathologist working for the Boston Coroner's Department, but this is no CSI. It's more like Quincy where the coroner solves crimes, while coping with her personal life. Her boss, the show's answer to Quincy's Dr. Asten is Garret Macy, played by the always enjoyable Miguel Ferrer (who isn't as good an actor as his father Jose Ferrer, but is at least as good as his cousin George Clooney). Garret at least does more out in the field than Asten ever did. The police are most frequently represented by Detective Woody Hoyt (Jerry O'Connell), whose relationship with Jordan provides whatever "unresolved sexual tension" the show may need. Part of the real joy of the show are the three main supporting characters, Dr. Nigel Townsend (Steve Valentine), Dr. "Bug" Mahesh (Ravi Kapoor), and Grief Counselor Lilly Lebowski (Kathryn Hahn). While all of the characters, with the possible exception of Dr. Macy, provide a certain amount of comic relief, these three provide a good bit of it. That isn't to say that they're comedic characters, simply that they are more likely to be involved in humorous situations, many related to the Nigel-"Bug" relationship. The cast meshes well together. What really shows this at work is that episodes where Hennessy doesn't appear or only appears briefly aren't the worse because of her absence.

The chemistry between the main characters is quite strong. You can readily believe that these people would go out together and grab a drink after work. I think that could be because we can actually believe that these people have a life outside of work. In so many current shows, like the Law & Order franchise or the CSI franchise it is difficult to believe that there is anything outside of work for these characters. That's one of the things that set NYPD Blue apart, although of course Crossing Jordan isn't in the same league as Blue. Relationships matter, both at work and away from work.

Over the years characters have appeared and fallen by the wayside, most notably Jordan's father Max Cavanaugh, a former Boston detective with a shadowy past. Max, played by Ken Howard, was featured in the credits in the first season and was integral in helping Jordan to solve the various crimes she was investigating as well as hiding the mystery of the death of Jordan's mother. From the second season on, Max increasingly became a secondary character and then more or less just a vague presence. In all honesty I think the change is for the better even though the character of Max fit nicely into the mix of the cast. He was becoming increasingly marginalized, and as it stands today when the character makes occasional appearances - as he did in last night's show, appearing to help solve the mystery of the death of several of his old partners - he comes in naturally, as a pleasant surprise. It is not, as was the case in NYPD Blue someone who was on the show and then went away not to be thought of again.

One interesting thing they've done, and promoted on the show, if to create an online presence in the form of Nigel's Blog, which presents viewers with the mystery of the "Beacon Hill Murders" to try to help Nigel to solve. I haven't delved into it deeply, but it looks like it could be fun.

On the whole I find Crossing Jordan to be one of the highlights of the TV viewing week. It's a nice comfortable show to settle down with for an hour. The show doesn't bury the audience in science; it is driven more by the people than the work, and as the Lilly character frequently reminds us, People Matter.

American vs. British

Last night I watched an episode of Trading Spaces straight through. It wasn't a new one, but the one with Christopher Rich and Melissa Peterman from Reba doing each other's rooms. With all due respect to Rich, I was there to watch Peterman because her character on Reba is a hoot and probably the best reason to watch the show, although Steve Howey's character "Van" comes close. I tried to write about the experience last night but the words wouldn't come, mainly because I was trying to do a general overview of why American adaptations of British "lifestyle" shows may be commercial successes but don't work as well as the British originals - in my opinion anyway. So let me take another run at this thing.

I am not a handyman. I have tools but most of them were inherited when my grandfather died, and my brother got the better tools, like the router. The one power tool I own because I wanted to have it is a new 22 speed Craftsman cordless drill because, let me tell you, a cordless drill is the one power tool that you will use the most. Even if you live in an apartment there are screws to take out and put back in and Ikea furniture to put together and a cordless drill is just the thing. But even if I am totally inept about tools - a tool about tools if you will - I love home improvement shows. Norm Abrams is a demi-god in my world, thanks to his series New Yankee Workshop and the gang at This Old House are idols. I watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition which is fun, and the guy they call in next Holmes on Homes (a Canadian series that features contractor Mike Holmes going into peoples places and redoing renovations that slipshod contractors have done in the first place). And of course there's Changing Rooms.

Changing Rooms is a simple little half hour series that was adapted into the hour long American Trading Spaces. All of the elements of the former are in the latter but for me at least they don't come out right. Going to an hour from a half hour is part of it. I think that the half hour format makes the show more focused and dare I say it more entertainment than the American version. Of course the American show has more of a commercial element to it. In the episode that I saw last night we watched the designers head off to Home Depot (the adult male's answer to "Toys R Us") and Pottery Barn and actually do some shopping. In the British series you might get a designer mentioning where he picked up a particularly nice bit, or a particularly cheap bit but to a North American the product might just as well be on Mars. Tell me, where do you get lime wax in Saskatoon? The interesting thing is that while the British show is shorter than the American program, it doesn't seem as forced. Fast paced yes, but not as if they were trying to overstuff it.

Of course the big thing is the personalities. Both shows had perky hosts - in the United States there was Paige Davis, while in the UK there was Carol Smillie (I say was because Smillie ended her hosting duties in 2003 after six years and three pregnancies, while it was announced that Davis will be dropped at the end of the current season). Smillie always seemed more polished. Not surprising, after all she had been the "Vanna White" clone on the British version of Wheel of Fortune while Davis was a Broadway performer with no previous TV experience. The British have always had "chippie" (British for carpenter) "Handy" Andy Kane, while Trading Spaces has gone through a succession of carpenters starting with Ty Pennington, Carter Oosterhaus, and several others. Kane tends to be calmer but can be quite sarcastic to the designers and even the "clients", but it's a funny quality.

Of course the designers are the hear of both shows. The core British designers are Graham Wynne, Linda Barker, Laura McCree and Anna Rider Richardson with Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen moving from designer to host after Carol Smillie left. The American series has had a larger number of designers although Frank Beliec, Hilda Santo Tomas, Roderick Shade, Laurie Smith and Doug Wilson have been with the show from the start. On the whole I think that the British designers aren't as flamboyant or abrasive as many of the American designers. Certainly they seem to take the tastes of the customers - the people they are working with rather than the people whose houses they're renovating - into account more than the American designers. That's not to say that the British designers don't have their stupid designs that please no one except the designer. Laura McCree's first room was a bedroom in an 18th century vicarage that belonged to an artist - she turned the room into a replica of a London squat (an abandoned building taken over by squatters) that no one liked. On the other hand no one is likely to staple straw to a wall, paper the kitchen of a teetotalling Baptist minister with wine bottle labels, or turn a family room into a home theater despite the fact that the family only had a 19 inch TV. The British designers are usually calmer and less prone to be overdramatic and tend to work more cooperatively with their teams. American teams and designers frequently seem to be in opposition to each other.

I can't really put my finger on the reason for it, but - and this tends to be common to all of the American versions of British originals - I like tend to feel that Trading Spaces is nowhere near as enjoyable as Changing Rooms. I watch the latter as pure entertainment and somehow I'm just not as entertained by Trading Spaces as I am by Changing Rooms.

I Hear Music, Mighty Fine Music

I came across a link to a top 100 list of TV themes in Bill Crider's blog. It's an interesting list, although of course lists like this are so subjective as to be absurd. I mean let's face it, any list of TV themes that doesn't include I Love Lucy isn't up to much, although I'm not sure what I'd pull to put it in. Maybe one day I'll post my own list of TV Themes, but which ones? There are so many out there that listing 10 or 25 or even 100 may not be enough. I think we can all agree on the worst TV Theme at least: that would be the theme from Walker: Texas Ranger rendered (take that term in every way possible) by famed vocalist and thespian Mr. Chuck Norris.

That's the thing about TV show themes. Everybody has a favourite, or rather a lot of favourites, and they tend to evoke feelings and memories about a show. They don't have to be famous series either. The first record I ever owned was an extended play Columbia 45 of Johnny Cash singing The Rebel - Johnny Yuma from (as the record jacket says) "the ABC-TV production 'The Rebel'". The record cover features an impossibly young looking and pompadoured Cash dressed not in black but in a white shirt, suede vest and string tie. A definite blast from the past and the makings of a lifelong Johnny Cash fan. The reason I have that record however is that as a little kid I so loved that series that I bugged my mom to get it for me. I don't recall much about the series. It was usually Johnny Yuma - the Rebel - wandering - alone - from town to town and getting fighting mad - that rebel lad - usually for some cause or other sometimes related to the fact that he was still wearing the remnants of his Confederate uniform. The show wasn't much of a success, but that theme is still memorable.

Every so often there are attempts to get rid of TV theme songs and title sequences on the grounds that it will allow the producers to tell the story more fully. As nearly as I can tell the producers of Jake In Progress took that approach (but remember I had a headache last night and may not have noticed it). They're wrongheaded. The theme and the title sequence are a readily identifiable signatures for a TV series; in the case of theme music, an audio cue but for the audience. You can be doing something totally involving away from your TV but with it on, and when you hear the theme music from a show you like - say Nerf Herder's music for Buffy the Vampire Slayer or that drum roll that is the signature at the start of The West Wing - you know that you're going to want to stop what you're doing and watch TV for a while.

You can't get away from them, and when they're played out of context they not only bring a smile to your face but an instant flashback to the show. There are people who think they know The William Tell Overture because the finale was the theme music for The Lone Ranger and every time they hear those first trumpet notes immediately think of the lines of the narrator "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi-yo Silver....The Lone Ranger rides again." I remember being waiting for a movie - Three Men and a Baby - to start when the theme from Magnum P.I. came over the loudspeakers. You could see the crowd offer up a collective smile and nod, as if the theater had set it up that the music from Tom Selleck's TV series would play before a Tom Selleck movie came on. I know that I can't watch parts of the movieBackdraft without expecting to see a flamboyantly dressed Japanese man chomping on a pepper and shouting "Allez Cuisine". That's the power of TV theme music.

This is Progress?

It says something about ... something that ABC decided to program two full hours of their new comedy Jake In Progress opposite the first night of the NCAA Championship. They showed two new episodes followed by the two episodes that aired last Sunday. I bailed about ten minutes into the second half hour, just after Wendy Mallick was corralled by a trivia spouting employee who, against her will, Mallick was trying to get to know a little. I was getting a headache and life is too short to watch shows that you think might be giving you a headache.

Maybe I'm not the right audience for this show, but I found all of the characters depressingly self-centred. A self-centred character isn't a bad thing really but when all of the characters are self-centred, there's no one to root for or identify with, no one to like. John Stamos plays Jake Phillips, a New York publicist to the stars who, according to the clips we've seen ABC use to promote the show, has reached the point in his life that all men (well at least straight men who haven't done something stupid like entering the priesthood or a monastery) reach, where he wonders what it would be like to settle down with one woman and raise a family. Trouble is that he's so used to being a serial dater that he's not sure about how he's supposed to go about this. Maybe my problem is that I didn't see that in the episode I caught. What I saw was a battle of one-upsmanship between Jake and another publicist and Jake getting a chance to do it with an actress he's lusted after for years. Jake came across as a self centred jerk. Then there was Jakes friend the performance artist Patrick, played by Rick Hoffman who wants to go to a party so he can insult magician David Blane and plans out in detail how he's going to do it, down to which T-shirt made him look angrier. Wendy Mallick's character of Naomi is merely Nina from Just Shoot Me in a new office and a pregnancy belly. I didn't see much interaction with Ian Gomez as Jake's long-time best friend Adrian or with Margaret Welsh as Adrian's wife Naomi, so maybe this episode was a bit atypical. ABC has also promoted the series as "Different sex, same city" but it really doesn't live up to that billing. Carrie Bradshaw had at least some redeeming features and there was always Miranda. In fact the only totally self-centred character was Samantha, and even she had sympathetic moments. In what I saw of Jake In Progress there was none of this.

The writing is sharp, one might even say barbed. There were some good satirical moments when Jake was dealing with clients. There was the comedian who was putting together a play that was an entirely non-comedic attack on American - sorry "A Murderer" - international policy, in five very long acts; and in a different episode the "Three Gaymigos" (who seemed suspiciously like the Queer Eye Guys) one of whom was coming out of the closet as a heterosexual and the older actress played by Mel Harris who was living with a somewhat dense adolescent star but wanted to break up with him to go live with a 50-something psychiatrist (I wonder which actress with two daughters and a boob job and which star of a Fox comedy set in another decade they could be a send-up of). This is good stuff, and if the recurring characters even once did something that made me actually like some of them, or even feel some sympathy for them, I might tune in again. As it stands I think I'd prefer to watch Survivor, or This Old House, or basketball or even Joey. Life is too short.