In a, broadly quite well-written and researched, article entitled Here's To A Coming Era Of Doctor Who Where Showrunner Russell T Davies Helps More Kids Feel Seen, Salon's Melanie McFarland makes the following, extraordinary, claim: '[Jodie] Whittaker succeeded Peter Capaldi and joined the franchise along with Chris Chibnall, who worked with her on Broadchurch and took the showrunning reins from Steven Moffat. Neither Whittaker nor Chibnall had much of an association with the wider Whovian universe.' This blogger's italics (obviously, since you're reading this on his blog). Okay firstly, Melanie, before becoming Doctor Who showrunner, Chris Chibnall wrote six episodes of the BBC's popular long-running family SF drama between 2007 and 2012 and eight episodes of its spin-off, Torchwood. Not only that but, since the 1980s The Chib his very self was an active and very vocal member of Doctor Who fandom. One who, in 1986, appeared on the BBC discussion programme Open Air as a member of the Liverpool local group of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, criticising The Trial Of A Time Lord, especially the Terror Of The Vervoids segment and giving the writers, Pip and Jane Baker, a jolly well-deserved verbal kicking in public. He is even rumoured by some to be one of the main models upon whom the character of Whizz Kid from the 1989 Doctor Who serial The Greatest Show In The Galaxy, a - rather unsubtle - parody of obsessive fandom, was based. Secondly, anyone that uses the word 'Whovian' in any context other than a wholly ironic one does not deserve to have anything they say taken seriously; even if what they say doesn't include significant factual inaccuracies. It is, as this blogger has noted on several previous occasions, a thoroughly hateful word, made up by some American students in the late 1970s for the simple reason that Star Trek fans had a collective name for themselves so, it's about time we did too. Peter Davison, having just arrived back in the UK from an American convention in November 1983, first introduced the word to Britain during an interview with Terry Wogan on the BBC's Children In Need telethon immediately after the broadcast of The Five Doctors. Asked about the show's fans, Peter said 'I believe they call themselves Whovians' to which every single member of British Doctor Who fandom shouted at the telly: 'Huh? Do we? I don't think we do, you know, Peter!' Few Doctor Who fans would ever willingly describe themselves using this awful descriptor, at least, none with an ounce of dignity or self-respect in them (two things not usually associated with Doctor Who fandom, admittedly). And, anyone that does use it receives nothing but withering scorn and derision from the rest of us. Cos, like, we're so clever. But, in all seriousness, to any journalists that happen to be reading From The North (not a very likely happenstance, this blogger freely admits), take it from this blogger, just say 'no' to this 'Whovian' nonsense and cut it out. Thank you, in advance, for your kind co-operation in this regard.
Still on the subject of broadly well-researched and written, articles about Doctor Who with at least one huge flaw in them, Martin Belam's Hanky-Panky In The TARDIS! How A Writer's Divisive Doctor Who Movie Spent Twenty Five Years Being Hated By Fans focusing on Matthew Jacobs and the 1996 TV movie in the Gruniad Morning Star is a pretty decent effort. But, again, it makes the crass assumption that all Doctor Who fans think and speak with but one voice. No, mate. No, no, no - there are as many different shades of opinion within fandom on virtually every single aspect of Doctor Who as their are a lack of political diversity from the Middle-Class hippy Communists at the broadsheet you're writing for. The 'Doctor Who Movie Spent Twenty Five Years Being Hated By Fans' according to Martin. Really? Because, Martin, you asked all of them, didn't you? No? How jolly surprising. Colour me amazed.
This blogger did, however, really enjoy this picture which illustrated the piece, featuring 'an American Doctor Who convention.' And, yet the author couldn't even be bothered to tell us which one it was - even though the LA Marriott carpet pattern totally gave it away!
From the same newspaper, however, Rachel Aroesti's 'I'm In Awe': Trans Actor Yasmin Finney On Joining Doctor Who managed something this blogger scarcely believed possible. This is a 'broadly well-researched and written article about Doctor Who' which, for once, doesn't ruin its impact by including ludicrous sweeping claims with little or no basis in fact or ad hoc uses of the hated 'W' word. Well done Rachel.
That's also true of a similar piece (albeit, one entirely based around the same Gruniad Morning Star interview) by the Radio Times's Patrick Cremona, Doctor Who's Yasmin Finney Was "Worried" About Fandom Clashes.
And finally on the subject of Doctor Who-related articles that are worthy of a moment or two of your time, dear blog reader, you may want to check out the Nerdist website's Are We At The Edge Of A New Doctor Who Era?, written by Riley Silverman. Other than the fact that the title is chronically bad and invites the response 'yes, we are. Obviously. Next ...' The rest of the article, thankfully, justifies its existence by being really good.
From The North favourite Peter Capaldi is set to appear alongside another From The North favourite, Jessica Raine, in new psychological thriller series The Devil's Hour, which will be released by Amazon Prime Video later this year. Other than a first look trailer and an initial plot synopsis, the series, written by Tom Moran and executive produced by The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat (OBE) and his good lady, Sue Vertue, has been shrouded in mystery. However, Peter has now alluded to what viewers can expect. 'The nature of the piece is quite spectacularly dark and that can be quite enjoyable. Everything starts with the scripts and Tom's scripts were wonderful and inventive and such a brilliant idea at the core. Kind of an aspect of it is that you should listen to your nightmares, because they may be communicating with you in some way.'
Still on the subject of former Time Lords, 'I have the strangest feeling that we've met before ...'
This week saw the incoming arrival of Strange New Worlds: Memento Mori at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House. Probably the best episode of the series thus far; a prequel to Arena and a basic remake of Das Boot! Brilliant. (This blogger's fine fiend, Roberta Fleishman, noted that on The Ready Room one of the authors of the episode - Davy Perez - suggested that, actually, other classic submarine movies like Enemy Below, Run Silent, Run Deep and The Hunt For Red October were among his inspirations when co-writing the script.)
The BBC has apologised after a message appeared on the news channel saying 'Manchester United are rubbish.' Which, given The Scum's recent form in the Premier League some may consider to be a statement of fact. The text appeared on the news ticker at the bottom of the screen during a tennis update on Tuesday morning. Later in the morning, presenter Annita Mcveigh apologised to any supporters of The Scum who may have been offended by this. Which would be all of them, in all likelihood. Oh yes, huge areas of Essex, Wiltshire, Mumbai and Australia saw spontaneous outbursts of extreme vexation and manifest examples of kids gettin' pure-dead irked. Curiously, in Manchester itself, there was nothing but hilarity. Mcveigh said the mistake had occurred as someone was learning how to operate the ticker and was 'writing random things.' For a laugh. Another message which appeared on the ticker read simply: 'Weather rain everywhere.' Which, again, on that particular day, was factually accurate. Mcveigh told viewers: 'A little earlier, some of you may have noticed something pretty unusual on the ticker that runs along the bottom of the screen with news making a comment about Manchester United, and I hope that Manchester United fans weren't offended by it. Let me just explain what was happening: behind the scenes, someone was training to learn how to use the ticker and to put text on the ticker, so they were just writing random things not in earnest and that comment appeared. So apologies if you saw that and you were offended and you're a fan of Manchester United. "But certainly that was a mistake and it wasn't meant to appear on the screen. So that was what happened, we just thought we'd better explain that to you.' An official BBC statement subsequent added: 'There was a "technical glitch" during training with our test ticker, which rolled over to live programming for a few seconds. We apologised for any offence caused on air.' BBC new presenter and Sheikh Yer Man City fan Clive Myrie tweeted claiming that he had 'nothing to do with this!' A likely story, mate!
Jonathan Searle has been named the new police chief of Oak Bluffs - forty seven years after he appeared in Steven Spielberg's iconic Jaws filmed in the same Massachusetts town which went by the fictional name of Amity in the 1975 summer blockbuster. His appointment 'generated a big bite of buzz' (according to the New York Post) when the small town's board announced it had voted three-to-one to offer the role to the longtime community servant. 'I'm finding the whole thing quite funny myself!' Searle told the Post on Thursday on the island located south of Cape Cod. Oak Bluffs, which is home to just over five thousand full-time residents, is part of ritzy Martha's Vineyard, where Jaws was shot in 1974. In that movie, Searle and his real-life brother, Steven, memorably played two naughty pranksters who caused mass panic on the beach after swimming into the ocean with a cardboard fin.
This blogger was shocked - and stunned - if delighted to discover that one of his favourite movies turned up for a rare TV showing on Talking Pictures' The Cellar Club this week. Produced in 1968 as The Velvet House, subject to a few scattered screenings in the UK under the title The Corpse in 1971 and, later that same year, as what now appears to be its preferred international title, Crucible Of Horror in America, the movie almost never appears on TV. As far as this blogger is aware, it has never been shown in Britain on any terrestrial channel though there was at least one showing on some highly obscure satellite and/or cable channel (The Studio) in the late 1980s or early 1990s which is where this blogger first came across it. Almost impossible to get hold of for many years, under any title, when this blogger was writing A Vault Of Horror in 2004 and wanted, desperately, to include it, he was forced to order a video copy from the US (fortunately, The Stately Telly Topping Manor VCR at the time could accommodate both PAL and NTSC formats). It is, thankfully, now available on blu-ray in the US. However, to this day, the title has never been released in the UK on any format, presumably owing to rights issues.
If you've never seen it (and, because of its scarsity, theat's probably likely), the movie was something of a family affair (in several senses). Directed by Viktors Ritelis, it was produced by, amongst others, Gabrielle Beaumont with a screenplay by her husband, the actor Olaf Pooley, one of only a handful of people who have appeared in both Doctor Who - a scene-stealing turn in 1970's Inferno - and in the Star Trek franchise (in an episode of Voyager). Pooley also makes an appearance in the movie in a minor role. It stars Michael Gough - in one of his most brilliant performances from a career full of them - as a cruel and sadistic man whose wife (Yvonne Mitchell) and daughter (Sharon Gurney) have finally had enough of his violent tyranny and decide to do away with him. Though that's more difficult than either had first anticipated (in this regard, the movie is a minor variant on the plot of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques).
The family's other member is Rupert, played by Simon Gough (Michael's son) who was Gurney's fiancée at the time (they married in 1970 before The Corpse opened). It is something of a popular myth that the couple actually met during the production of this movie. In fact, this blogger believes it's more likely they first met when Michael Gough appeared opposite Gurney's mother, Rachel, in a superb 1965 Edgar Wallace adaptation, Gerry O'Hara's Game For Three Losers - another particular favourite of this blogger.
The film's frugal fifty five thousand knicker budget was raised via London-Cannon Films, the British branch of the American distributor Cannon. This meagre amount (achieved in part, according to legend, by both Gough and Mitchell taking smaller fees than they usually commanded at this time) meant that expenses had to be minimal. An actual house - in either Wimbledon or Collier's Wood (sources vary) - was used for on-location filming, with the remainder of the movie being shot at Merton Park Studios. It was, in fact, at least one of, it not the last film in production there before the studio's closure for redevelopment as a housing estate. This was Ritelis's only movie, but he subsequently had 'a long and fruitful career as a television director' working on the likes of The Troubleshooters, Counterstrike, The Expert, The Lotus Eaters, Colditz, The Sweeney, Gangsters, Secret Army, Blake's 7 and The Aphrodite Inheritance among many other series. Filming began in March 1968; according to assistant director, Nicholas Granby, owing to prior obligations, Ritelis was forced to depart the production prior to its completion and Beaumont took on directorial responsibilities for the last weeks of filming.
The movie was, reportedly, not submitted to the British Board of Film Classification until after they had changed the threshold of the X category in July 1970 when the minimum audience-member age was raised from sixteen to eighteen. The film was given its X certification on 19 December 1971 after unspecified cuts were made to it. It was subsequently released, as The Corpse, in Britain through Grand National Pictures on a double-bill alongside a really piss-poor US slasher movie, Psycho Killer (1970). Thereafter, it screened on this double-bill in Manchester beginning on 24 April 1972.
Gurney, who is fantastic in the role on the wild, stroppy sixteen year old Jane had done lots of theatre (a role in an acclaimed production of Catch My Soul, for example) and a few TV roles prior to this. She played Madeleine in a BBC production of Nicholas Nickleby and Elfine in Cold Comfort Farm. But this was her first movie. She subsequently appeared - and was, again, terrific - in another of this blogger's favourite British horror movies, 1972's Death Line. She was, briefly, a regular in the BBC medical soap The Doctors, guest-starred in an episode of Jason King and had a small-but-crucial role in Ken Russell's Women In Love. By the mid-seventies she pretty much retired from acting to raise her and Simon's growing family and two of their four children, Daisy and Samuel also became actors.
But, it's Michael Gough who owns the picture. As this blogger wrote in A Vault Of Horror, 'First seen rubbing his hands, suggestively, on the still-warm bicycle seat of his teenage daughter, hygiene obsessed Walter Eastwood's abusive - and possibly sexual - relationship with Jane is key to the movie. When he's not beating her, he's watching her with slavering desire bathe, naked, in a river.' And, 'Has there ever been a more believable screen villain than Michael Gough's performance here? A character of malevolence and mediocrity far removed for the supernatural monsters who occupy many of the other pages in this book but, who is guaranteed to make the flesh creep as much, if not more, than any of those.' An inscrutable parody of domestic banality, The Corpse reveals the tensions and sordid details beneath the surface of traditional English Middle-Class family values. And, it does so with a sense of righteous outrage at the rampant hypocrisy it finds there, squatting in the darkness.
As has been noted by several critics, the film is, chiefly, an allegory of the overbearing nature of the patriarchy, something of a hot potato for the burgeoning feminist movement. 'Superbly directed and beautifully played,' enthused the New York Times in a contemporary review. 'For tight, merciless tension and venom, the movie is uncommonly effective and engrossing. Add the twist of a civilized [sic], very British fadeout that is the most horrifying thing of all.' The horror author and critic Kim Newman regards The Corpse as 'an extraordinary movie,' adding, in his book Nightmare Movies, that 'the vision of Middle-Class monstrosity is nearer Harold Pinter than Terence Fisher ... It may look tatty and contain enough nudity to satisfy the sleaze market, but The Corpse is a century closer to home than Hammer's cardboard mittel Europe.'
In his review in A Vault Of Horror, this blogger concluded: 'This ambitious, multi-layered little chiller may have had absolutely zero budget, but what it lacked in that department it more than made up for in terms of striking atmosphere and conceptual depth. The Corpse is not based upon the most original of concepts but it is extraordinarily well-written and superbly acted.' So, having it turn up on TV this week was a real treat.
The following day, Saturday afternoon, Talking Pictures cemented its reputation as The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House's channel of choice for most of the time with a very welcome showing of another of this blogger's favourite (in this case, non-horror) movies, the 1976 big-screen adaptation of The Likely Lads. Featuring Terry's cynical essay on Working Class nostalgia ('Working Class sentiment is for Working Class people who've cracked it through football or rock and roll!'), the late Mary Tamm in a state of some undress, the glorious boutique sequence and the greatest thirteen seconds in movie history (the 'In the Chocolate Box Of Life' scene, filmed at sun-kissed Tynemouth).
Another huge point in its favour is the location filming in-and-around Newcastle which is almost a character in itself. The opening sequence, for example, was shot on a piece of waste-ground opposite The Free Trade Inn at the top end of Walker Road, a mere stone's-throw from this blogger's current location (well, a stone's-throw if you're the world stone-throwing champion, admittedly; it's, actually, about half-a-mile away from The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House).
So, dear blog reader, with an inevitability that borders on the ludicrous, we come to that regular part of From The North dedicated to this blogger's on-going medical issues. For those who haven't been following this on-going saga which seems to have been on-going longer than capitalism and the oppression of the proletariat: This blogger spent several weeks feeling rotten; he had a week in hospital; he was discharged; he received some B12 injections; he had more injections; he, eventually, recovered his previously missing appetite; he got a diagnosis; he had a meeting with his consultant; he continued to suffer from fatigue and insomnia; he endured a second endoscopy; he had another consultation with his doctor; then he got toothache and had an extraction, which took some time to heal. This week, this blogger had another conversation with his consultant who was, mostly, pleased with the progress since we last met. Although this blogger's continued fatigue, insomnia and occasional spells of dizziness are still a cause for some (minor) concern to the medical team. So, a couple of additions tests (an ECG, for instance) have been arranged for next month and another consultation has been scheduled for the end of June.
With that malarkey safely out of the way, this blogger experienced his first social engagement in several weeks, meeting up with his fine fiend Young Malcolm for some excellent grub at the world famous Little Asia on Stowell Street on Thursday. Such as, for example, chicken and sweetcorn soup with prawn crackers whilst we discussed Hammer's odd flirtation with kung-fu movies in the early 1970s and James Bonds that never were. Also, at what point does shouting 'they all did it' during a screening of Murder On The Orient Express (any version) become a 'spoiler' per se given that the novel was published in 1934? Agatha Christie's opinion of the Margaret Rutherford Marple movies (and, how great Ron Goodwin's 'Murder She Said' is), how ITV managed to shoehorn Julia Mackenzie's Jane Marple into one of their adaptations of Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, Dorothy L Sayers astonishing use of the 'wandering point-of-view' in Gaudy Night and Muriel Spark playing with tenses in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. See, we don't just throw these conversations together.
That was followed by sesame prawn toast with sweet and sour sauce as the discussion turned to the infamous Golden Turkey Awards, with specific reference to They Saved Hitler's Brain. And, various other movies with the word 'brain' in the title (Donovan's Brain, The Brain, Billion Dollar Brain et cetera).
And then, king prawn curry with egg-friend rice as we nattered away - for what seemed like hours - about the unlikeability of Jon Finch's character in Frenzy, how this blogger remembered the entire plot of the Van Der Valk episode guest-starring Lalla Ward, Lewis Collins having once been in a rock and/or roll band with Peter Egan called The Wombats whom Brian Epstein was keen to manage (they turned him down), a recently broadcast Peter Cushing documentary, Gideon's Way, people who do more research than necessary before pitching a book which has every possibility of being turned down and, for reasons far too complex to go into here, The Ghost Goes Gear. All-in-all it was quite a session (if, inevitably, rather tiring for this blogger in his current somewhat-under-the-weather state). And, just in case you were wondering dear blog reader, yes, all three courses were, indeed, really deserved.
And, finally dear blog reader, a message from the supporters of this blogger's beloved (and now, thankfully, sold) Magpies. What on Earth, you may well ask, is going on? Positivity at Newcastle United? Well, that'll never catch on.
