Following The Crowd

The concept of “following the crowd” seems to come in for a lot of flack these days, which is ironic in a democracy.

Following the crowd can be very useful. It gets you out of having to think for yourself.

I volunteered to teach English to a group of Asian children recetnly. That’s right – I am actively encouraging them to follow the crowd. More communication. More opportunities. More life.

At 7:45am last Saturday morning I therefore got up, had breakfast, went to the bus stop, fished out my Bible, and started to read while I waited.

No bus came, but gradually a group of people amassed behind me. Again, following the crowd, I knew this was a good sign. They obviously got this bus regularly. On my own, I might have panicked, but by following the crowd I knew that all was well.

I turned the pages of my Bible. The group behind me continued chatting. No bus came.

Time passed, but the group patience I was witnessing sustained me.

Half an hour passed. The one and only thing that was wrong here was the absence of a bus. In fact, the continued absence of any bus in either direction. Although there was no point, I turned around to look at these people for the first time.

Behind me, they had set up a kebab stall.

So, there really had been no point in rushing breakfast.

A small lightbulb came on in my memory. It was Saturday the 26th of November. It was the day of Howick’s Christmas Parade. So all the buses had been diverted. All morning. All day.

I looked at my mobile – I had 7 minutes to get to school.

It was all turning into a nightmare, complete with giant Santa.

But I had every confidence that God would somehow get me there on time, even though he had rather rashly only left himself 7 minutes in which to do it.

“Oh, hello.”

Russell! From the youth hostel. A whole hour away, setting up a kebab stall right behind me.

Russell is a man of few words, and yet here he was pointing out where I could get a cab from. I thanked him, and headed off, to find a completely empty abandoned minicab. Of course, that would have been just too easy.

Returning to the bus stop, I got out my mobile and told Russell that I was going to phone for one. Then one of his friends overheard, explained that she knew the cab driver, and identified him to me in a crowd at another stall.

So I strolled up to him, told him where I wanted to go, and mere minutes later was walking into my lesson bang on 9 o’clock, after a reduced cab fare.

But the thing that I was really grateful for was my mellow state of mind. I hadn’t even once supposed that God might not come through for me. This wasn’t my doing. God had taught me again and again and again now that he could easily win.

Summer In The City

Lionel

Who the…?

Last year I’d been buzzing around the backpackers’ hostel as usual, when I’d suddenly found myself doing a double-take at a new guest. It wasn’t because of his manner, or that I may have recognised him, or even that he had done anything out of the ordinary.

No, this guy had stood-out from the other 400 guests because he was old.

I guess I have a bit of a soft spot for retired folk. A significant part of my childhood was spent in the old folks’ home where my mum worked. We had elderly neighbours. My best friend at my last job in the UK had been a 70-something security guard. In 2004 I found myself visiting auntie Dorrie in hospital. Oh, and Grampa is one of my favourite Simpsons.

Yes, it seems as though God always keeps old man stashed somewhere in my life.


This guy’s name was Lionel, (although we called each other Sherlock Holmes and Moriaty in those early days) and over the coming months we spent quite a bit of time together chatting. Well, actually he chatted and I listened. That’s the great thing about talking to the older generation – you can let them do all the work.

Having travelled the world, Lionel had chosen New Zealand as the place where he wanted to spend his retirement. Unfortunately, New Zealand hadn’t been too keen on that idea so, undeterred, he’d come here for an extended holiday instead. He did all those backpacker things – sleeping in dorms, fruit-picking, even applying for a Working Holiday Visa. (alas, he was over 30 – even I’m too old) I understood how he felt – about mid-twenties.

Lionel’s plan finally skidded through the barriers when he’d suffered a stroke and been admitted to Auckland Hospital with a paralysed arm, and barely able to walk. He was soon scheduled for repatriation back to England.

But the only place where Lionel really wanted to go was back to the vibrant youth hostel on Queen Street. Even if he’d escaped the hospital and made it back across town, I really couldn’t see them accepting him back again though.

The irony of course is that, away from a brain-achingly boring hospital ward, I think that, mentally, it would have done him a world of good. Hospitals are like that – they can perform miracles on your body, whilst paradoxically suffocating your state of mind.

On Sunday, with two days to go before Repatriation Tuesday, God wonderfully enabled me to wheelchair Lionel back to the hostel for a day trip.

There was much laughter and smiling from all our friends, and it was great to see his mental energy returning to normal. This was the first time I had seen him here since I had got back from the UK last September, yet to sit chatting with him in the lounge area again, it really was as though not a single day had passed.

But we had a few practical tasks to carry out too…

We checked his food reserves in the kitchen, and collected a few odds and ends he had left behind.

There was a suitcase to collect from long-term storage.

And, having not seen his room in over two months, Lionel was convinced that all his gear was still strewn out across it.

I knocked on his old room door, shouted “Housekeeping!”, turned the lock and we entered. The bunks were still there, but other people’s belongings now lay cast over the bedclothes. I squeezed the wheelchair past where different travellers on different journeys through different lives had now wedged their different suitcases wherever they could find some exposed carpet. We maneuvered the fridge open, and I checked down the sides of the beds for his things. I also photographed the view through the window for him.

Suddenly Lionel rather bleakly remarked that there was no point in looking any further, and asked to go. As I closed the door again behind us, it seemed as though this was the exact moment that his unwanted journey from New Zealand all the way back to the UK was actually beginning.

The hospital had asked me not to take him out on the street, but with half an hour to go we careered across the busy intersection anyway, under the giant Santa, and up to the first floor of Whitcoulls. Here he browsed through various magazines, while from a distance I watched him and pondered the priceless value of ordinary everyday life.

Finally it was time to go. The cab driver stopped off at Foodtown and hopped out to buy a bottle of wine that he wanted. Now there’s service for you.

As I headed home myself on the bus that evening, I reflected that I had had a really nice day out myself. Sitting listening to Lionel talk for hours was one thing, but today I had had a purpose, and we had gone somewhere and done something together.

The following night at the hospital, I ran the risk of ruining all that. It was time to say goodbye.

Some friends had tried to convince me that I had to preach the gospel to this ageing wheelchair-bound lost soul. But I couldn’t do that. Lionel was my friend, it would ruin everything if he thought I’d only hung around him due to some zealous ulterior motive. But I thought I had to say something, even though no-one has ever listened to my opinion on anything.

I took a deep breath, and walked into the ward for our final hour. We chatted and talked for one last time, and he gave me his umbrella to take with me. Then, at a suitable moment, I just said “Lionel, you know what I believe about God, don’t you? Well I don’t want to know what you believe. But I would be grateful if you just decided for yourself whether you think I’m right or wrong. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know, just decide after I’ve gone whether you think I’ve got it right or wrong, that’s all.”

As I sat on the bus going home later, I realised with a start that I’d left his umbrella behind at the bus stop.

This morning Lionel was put on a Thai Airways plane, to travel first class for 26 hours back to England with two nurses – which the British consulate have volunteered to pay for. They promised that once Lionel has paid them back, they will be happy to return his passport to him.

“You’ve certainly been a good friend to him,” remarked my boss Phil the other day.

Have I? I haven’t spent time with this man because I enjoyed his company, in fact listening to him for long periods of time has been something of a struggle. I’ve done it purely because I believe it was the right thing to do. If Lionel had thought I’d been doing it out of “charity” then I think he’d have felt offended and patronised, and certainly not interested.

I try to follow Jesus, but this really isn’t the love that Jesus felt. Jesus would have cared. Jesus would have been interested. Jesus would have done it because he’d wanted to, rather than just because he felt he ought to.

Or is the line blurrier than that? He definitely didn’t want to go to the cross.

I have very very rarely ever felt love for anyone. But someone once told me that “acts of service” are a form of love.

I hope so, because it’s the only sort I seem to have.

curious link from a year ago

Doctor Who: The Unquiet Dead

One of these 19th century theatregoers is secretly dead:


Yep, the new Doctor Who series is getting into its stride.


Top episode by Mark Gatiss - I really enjoyed this. A deadly serious story, with sitcom characters (Sneed and Gwyneth have an established rapport from the start), some brilliant effects and a lot of fun. Doctor Who by numbers. Best of all, the story held together for me.

Well almost, the Doctor saved Rose from a zombie by… errr… removing its hand from her face. Really, why couldn't she have done that?


No, my only real problem with this episode is the same one I have with all zombie stories. This old lady's body has been weakened all the way to the point of death, yet here is the same broken body, without any healing, strongly fighting its way out of a coffin and killing people.

It reminds me a bit of the theory that Jesus, having been whipped, stabbed, crucified, lost blood, pronounced dead, mummified, entombed and starved for 3 days, actually came around, burst out of his bandages, shifted the rock that entombed him and escaped. I can't even see a completely healthy body being able to achieve that.

Technically, I suppose, this makes Jesus a zombie. It's nice that even zombies can relate to him.


8¾ out of 10.

Takeaway

Is it me, or is fast food getting faster?

Late last night I was at the Britomart bus-station on Queen Street, and starving.

I had got some food from somewhere, and had then stupidly offered it to a tramp, who of course had unkindly accepted.

“I know,” I naievely thought, “I’ve got a few minutes to go until my bus arrives, I’ll go treat myself to a Burger King.”

Well perhaps you can already tell where this story is going.

The BK opposite had shut-up for the night, so I headed back up Queen Street to the second one, and picked out the meal I wanted.

Heading back to the bus stop, I remembered the fate of my first meal, and decided I had definitely earnt the second. If I saw any more tramps between now and the bus stop, I would have to do the right thing and just walk on past. Really - what was the alternative? Buying them all BK meals and then living on the street myself?

It was tempting to just look down at my feet the whole journey, but I figured that was blinding myself to the plight of others, so I looked forwards.

Then I found I was avoiding looking at the other side of the road, so I tried to avoid avoiding that too.

Then I noticed the junctions that I was trying not to look down, and I started getting angry.

“What!” I began mentally shouting at God. “WHAT do you want me to do?! Do you want me to do an entire circuit of the area just to make sure that there’s no-one else here who wants this before I can eat it????”

That God. Ha ha ha. He’s so funny.

Walking slowly in front of me, going in the same direction, was a big old guy in dull clothes, with a Santa Claus beard, and carrying, for his own reasons, what looked like the base of a swivel chair.

I overtook him. After all, he wasn’t homeless. He didn’t have enough bags.

Still the gentle suggestion seemed to persist. “No!” I told myself. “This isn’t fair. What right have I to go around judging people on their appearance? Or on how I feel about them? If I offered the meal to that guy on the basis that he might be homeless, then I’d have to offer it to every single person here on the off-chance that they all might be! That way lies madness.”

I reached the junction opposite the Britomart bus station. Santa Claus was now out of sight somewhere behind me.

I stopped. I stayed stopped. I really really wanted to just eat my frickin’ burger, like I supposed everyone else in the queue now was.

I was trying to do what Jesus would. I was trying to do the right thing, and the right thing was to stop picking every single little decision apart like a lawyer. Jesus’ words were guidelines, not obsessive beaurocracy. It was wrong to give the letter of the law precedence over its spirit. Tomorrow I was planning to serve God by voluntarily teaching kids English, and then taking Lionel out for the day. I needed to eat to be strong enough to serve God tomorrow. If I didn’t look after myself first, then I would become weak, and my ministry for God would suffer.

That was that - I was going to catch my bus, and then to eat my burger, fries and shake while travelling home. God wants to provide for all of us, including me.

And anyway, the guy behind me had vanished, so God had really made the decision for me. Strange. He usually confronts me with these decisions.

Nope, there was Saint Nick, emerging from the crowds, still headed this way. I recognised him by his swivel-legs.

Oh, stuffing heck.

“Excuse me, would you like a burger?” I asked him, full of false smiles and pretend kindness.

And you’ll never guess what he said.

Well actually you will. He said “thank you” - the inconsiderate stone-hearted parasite. Rrrrrrr!!!!

I may give away everything I have, and even give up my body to be burnt – but if I have no love, this does me no good. – 1 Corinthians 13:3

Today, I was still hungry. I’d spent the afternoon unsuccessfully trying to get Lionel across town to visit his friends at the backpackers’ hostel for the day. (see last post) I’d failed. It was now about 5pm, and since breakfast all I had eaten was a bun.

I wearily dropped into the backpackers’ to let them know that I would now be bringing Lionel in tomorrow.

After that I headed for – understandably – the kitchen.

The backpackers’ kitchen has a “Free Food Shelf” on which they put all the food that travellers have left behind. During the 9 months that I had stayed here, God had kept me in clover through it. What about now? Would he provide some sustenance for me now?

As God, fate, chance, luck or whatever you call it would have it, the shelf was packed. Clearly they had just had their weekly clear-out. This was very good news indeed. I quickly began to fill my backpack up.

My ex-boss appeared. “Stephen – NO!” she scowled.

WHAT? I’d been back many times since leaving, chatted to her on numerous occassions, and even had her place large amounts of abandoned food on the table in front of me for me to have.

But no, today she dizzily had no memory of her past values.

“It’s not for you!” she self-righteously insisted as another woman walked behind to pick up some food. “It’s for the backpackers.”

I glanced down at my backpack, but decided there was no point arguing logic with someone whose argument wasn’t based on it. This lady was fuelled purely by how she felt at the moment.

I wanted to protest “But my Burger King meal wasn’t for that tramp last night” but knew the folly of trying to claim charity.

So I had a glass of water. In front of her. Then I washed it up, just like I usually wash up whatever I’ve used, and whatever the other backpackers have left nearby for my ex-boss to wash up.

Outside, I felt a bit despondent. She was more committed to how she personally felt right now, than to doing what was right. She had really disappointed me.

***HEAVY IRONY IMMINENT***

It was a stark reflection of my own attitude last night.

***HEAVY IRONY OVER***

And then I remembered.

“It’s not for you!” she self-righteously insisted as another woman walked behind to pick up some food.

That woman. That woman was another tramp. Last April, the backpackers’ had thrown her out onto the street when they had discovered her camping out in the TV room one night. She would periodically sneak in here for whatever she could get. I didn’t think my ex-boss knew this, but at the exact second that her attention had been focussed on accusing me, she had been distracted from this “street-pussy” getting away with what she needed quite literally right behind her back.

This was good. Now my memory was comical.

And God had provided for yet another genuinely hungry person.

Room With Only A View

Above is the view from Lionel's ward at Auckland Hospital. It's a view he doesn't see very much, because he's usually in bed or sitting in his chair next to his bed.

In fact, after next Tuesday, it's a view he won't be seeing very much of at all, as he's being repatriated back to Britain.

Today however the plan was to radically alter Lionel's view a few days early - I was taking him back to the youth hostel where we'd both met and stayed for so long, to visit his old friends again, and to say goodbye.

Social Services had been a bit apprehensive. The idea of a wheelchair being used to - horrors - wheel someone about outside the hospital seemed to scare them a bit. Fortunately this actually worked in our favour - as they coughed-up for a mobility cab.

And so it was that this lunchtime, Lionel put on his best flat cap, dug out his camera, and finally headed out into the fresh, well, carbon monoxidey Auckland air for a day-trip back to real life again.

Except that the cab hadn't waited for us, and was nowhere to be found.

Much toing, froing, and telephoning later, the nurses convinced the cab company to send another one. By this time Lionel and I were back up in the ward, so while we were heading back downstairs a second time, yes, the second cab decided not to wait for us either.

We had to try another cab company. Lionel kept thinking of more things he wanted to take with him. It kept getting later.

There's a point when you have to speak the words that you really don't want to think.

"This isn't going to happen today."

Darn it, Lionel actually was all dressed-up with nowhere to go.

I was sorely tempted to head off down the road with him, and in so doing break all the promises that I'd made to Social Services not to. But if I'd done that, what chance would the next person making that promise have?

So I wheeled him down to the shopping-centre on the ground floor. He bought a few nick-nacks, including a phone-card, and we sat down to enjoy a coffee and bun together.

After an hour, we went outside and explored as much of the outside of the hospital as we could. It was sunny. I was pleased to get that sunshine on his face again.

Back up at Rangitoto Ward, I made it absolutely clear that we were going to do this again properly tomorrow. We got another cab booked, made sure they would wait for us this time, and I looked out of the window at the City that had proved so elusive.

Somewhere in that view out there, I think hidden in front of the Phillips-Fox building on the right, I thought I could just make out our old backpackers...

NZ Idol

What sinister secret lies behind the continual disappearance of this store's casual staff?

If The Shoe Fits, Don't Wear It

My old shoes quite literally fell apart recently, so Korean Sam kindly shouted me a new pair.

Alas, despite a lifetime of experience that has taught me to buy a size too big, I gullibly accepted the shop-assistant’s assertion that I needed a pair that actually fitted, and left the shop to embark upon a new life of taking more confident and definite steps to wherever I was going.

So today I took them for a walk to the Ellerslie Flower Show (bizarrely, a trade-expo in Manurewa). There were heaps of companies plugging all manner of garden paraphernalia, and even the sun decided to visit in force, beating down with all the enthusiasm of a rich philanthropist.

Here I am in a low allergy garden designed by Lucy Lee, 10-year-old winner of the Flixonase Secondary Schools Low Allergy Garden Competition.

Afterwards it was to the bus stop to try and figure out a route home. There I met a Mormon, who I lent my mobile phone to to call Rideline. As seems to be standard procedure with Rideline calls, we quickly worked out afterwards a much quicker route to our respective homes.

However as my bus pulled into Botany shopping centre, I was becoming increasingly troubled by my shoes. In retrospect, I realise that all that walking about in the sunshine must have caused my feet to swell a bit.

Eventually I took them off, before also peeling away my socks to discover that one had been cutting right into my heel.

By the time I got home, I was limping quite seriously.

“Oh well,” I thought, (cringe now) “that’s shoebusiness.”

“WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC – the ultimate video collection

Flatmate Dave and I have been working our way through Weird Al’s 24-track DVD, and I think the thing that really comes across for me is the sheer level of planning that’s gone into these.

Many bands simply film themselves wandering aimlessly about somewhere, intercut with shots of themselves merely performing, but Weird Al’s videos are each an epic in their own right.


For example, Eat It parodies Michael Jackson’s Beat It apparently down to the last shot.


And then you get a cheap little video like Bob which is all in one take, and appears to have been quickly shot just to tick another one off of his list. (that’s not a criticism by the way!)


I have also discovered on here my favourite video of all time - Smells Like Nirvana. It’s the most random video I’ve ever seen.

But don’t take my word for it – click here to watch it and form your own opinion.

Doctor Who: The End Of The World

* CONTAINS SPOILERS *

The Doctor and Rose travel 5 billion years into the future, to that fateful day when, according to popular science, the world actually will end.


“This is the day the sun explodes.”

Wow – what a great hook.

Sadly the rest of this fancy-dress whodunnit could have been set anytime. Wha' haaappened? Did they splice 2 seriously underrunning episodes together and hope we wouldn't notice?

I mean there’s a very old jukebox from the 1960s there. Ignoring the obvious question of how come it hadn’t decomposed, with 5 billion years to choose from it then proceeds to play tracks by Rose’s contemporaries Soft Cell and Britney Spears. Maybe the original, Earthless, script was set only 1,000 years in the future…

They also, chillingly, meet the “last human being alive”…


… although this claim is clearly bogus as in the 1965 story The Ark the entire population of Earth survived and escaped in a giant spaceship. Poor deluded painting.

Lots of alien races arrive to watch the Earth do the big firework, but sadly the show shies away from acknowledging any race from the classic series. Arcturus’ or Sil’s race would have been good here. Instead we just had people dressed-up in make-up. These, would you believe, are trees:


(hey-hey - it's 1973 again!)

We even had robots wearing hoods and calling themselves “The Adherents of the Repeated Meme.” These guys are later revealed to be imposters, a plan that is rumbled when the Doctor says that their race doesn’t actually exist. Now I ask you – if you were going to pose as a member of an alien race, wouldn’t you pick a race that was real?

Equally foolishly, the chief baddie (yep the last human) teleports away at the end to escape, leaving behind a handy REVERSE button. Even handier is the inferred absense of such a button on her own ship.

Again, another thinly scripted climax, which led to some poor editing with no progression. Basically lots of cutting about for a while with nothing much happening
anywhere.


Rose feels homesick already, so using her mobile phone she dials 5 billion years back in time to talk to her mum - lovely idea.

Unfortunately, this is the first time they've spoken since, after dark, her mum told her to get straight home to escape from the killer manniquins that were shooting everyone last week, when Rose disconnected her mid-sentence.


Now, just half an hour later, her mum has arrived home herself, is doing the laundry, in daytime, and is mistified as to why Rose is phoning.

And yet, if you pay very close attention, you might just pick-up on Rose's mum's line "Put a quid in that lottery syndicate." This suggests that Rose has got through to her mum before all the stuff about her work lottery syndicate last week. If you miss that though, the much more obvious implication is that the same amount of time (as I say, about half an hour) has passed for both of them.

It's like they genuinely expected us to forget what we watched a week ago, and indeed just saw again in the recap.

If the programme-makers have this low an expectation of me, then why should I want to come back next week and see what else they've made?

For me, the appeal in science-fiction has always lain in seriously thinking about it afterwards, but these opening 2 shows fall apart as quickly as the awful Hitchhiker movie.

The storytelling actually gets worse. At the end of the episode, the Doctor – that’s the good guy, the hero, the defender of all humankind, actually kills the human race, or at the very least avoids trying to save it. That’s right – DOCTOR WHO™ does.


No way. No, no way.

On the plus side, there's certainly alot of mystery to his character, and he appears to be on the run, like in the early days, which is a perfectly good way to go, but my main problem here is this: I just don't know at this stage if he's the same guy I watched as a kid or not.

TV and movies today love remaking a classic TV show from scratch – e.g. Captain Scarlet, Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) and The Addams Family. (I leave you to list all the movies.) I always feel betrayed when they do that – I’m tuning in to find out what happened next. No, the last time I can remember a TV series revival that actually did follow-on from the original was… errr… in 1996. Doctor Who.

But with this series I’ve just got no idea. Is this a different guy called the Doctor? Is he the same guy? Sheesh - it's like watching Patrick Troughton, only with 23 more series at stake.

If he is the same guy that I watched as a teenager, then we haven’t half jumped ahead. Apparently his entire race have now all been killed-off.

I never like it when a show skips ahead and leaves the viewer on the outside. "Hey – here’s a really great story that we’re not going to show you." It's like starting a book half way through – you don't. If you do, you spend your entire time wanting to go back and read the first half first. Even when you finish, you still feel like you missed out.

This doesn't even help me to identify with Rose, because even for her there is only one possible home planet that the Doctor can have.

I'm feeling pretty low about this show at the moment.

Glenbrook Railway

It was Thomas The Tank Engine day today at Glenbrook Vintage Railway, so this afternoon flatmate Dave conscripted Geoff and myself to go out and video some of them. Well, technically Dave videoed and Geoff photographed while I just took things easy. Geoff and I even got a free ride on one. After that we reconvened at St Columba Church in Botany for the evening meeting.

! Krazy Kaption Kontest !

Here we see Flatmate Dave and myself preparing to shoot the oncoming train… but just what is Flatmate Dave thinking? Suggestions in the comments section please. The most accurate answer according to Dave will win some oxygen.

Well Sir, There’s Nothing On Earth Quite Like A Genuine Bona Fide Electrified Two-Car Monorail!

Met up with my Chinese friend Frank for a coffee at Starbucks this afternoon, and showed him the photos of my first year in New Zealand, teaching him odds and ends of English as went. When we got to my time in Sydney, I explained what the English word for the following picture was…


…Monorail.

Me: "You see – ‘mono’ means ‘one,’ and ‘rail’ means ‘rail.’ Monorail. What’s it called?"
Frank: "Monorail."
Me: "What’d I say?"
Frank: "Monorail."
Me: "Yes, that’s right – monorail!"

We immediately practiced this with some repetition.

Me: "Monorail."
Frank: "Monorail."
Me: "Monorail."
Frank: "Monorail."

Afterwards I showed the same photos to Lionel in hospital, but I skipped the whole monorail monologue. I figured it was really more of a Frank idea…

The Last Days

Blood Donor Sketch

A true story. Recorded on Thursday last week, and broadcast tonight!

Please feel free to click here to listen.

Moses Never Had This Problem

I have sunburn at the moment. (from my Kayaking For Kenya expedition last Saturday) When I got off the running machine today, I wiped the sweat from my brow and accidentally ripped off my entire face.

Doctor Who: Rose

*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

(ahh, how I have longed to type those words!)


"Well, needing some space now on One, it’s about time he returned, with a few bigger-on-the-inside-than-they-are-on-the-outside plot-holes… Oh my giddy Time Lord! - it’s the long-awaited rematerialisation of… (proudly) Doctor Who!"

Well all right, the BBC-1 continuity announcer didn’t quite say that on the beginning, but in the UK that’s just the sort of pun-binge they're continuitally force-feeding us! (Did you get what I did there? 'Continuitally'? Ay?)

And logically you couldn’t have faulted an intro like that – just for a change Doctor Who actually was back on... but how true to the much-loved original series would this new relaunched version prove to be? Would it faithfully follow straight on? Or would it ignore the original and be completely new? Or would it just stand ambivalently between the two, blankly trying to decide which direction to go in?


As if to answer my question, the new series led off with a remake of the very first colour story Spearhead From Space, perhaps to make the similarities easier to spot.

After all, both stories take a while to introduce the new Doctor, both feature a doppelganger, both are about the Nestene Consciousness taking over Earth using plastic mannequins, both feature said mannequins breaking out of shop windows, both go out of their way to emphasise that the woman’s as capable as the man, and both demonstrate this point by having the companion save the Doctor at the end.

Still don't believe me? Look -

Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space (1970):

Doctor Who: Rose (2005):

(which do you think looks more real?)

If this had been written from scratch, then an alien that could control plastic would surely have just strangled everyone with their mobile phones.

Other than that, this was, as expected, a fairly by-the-numbers tale to establish what is ‘normal’ in the world of Doctor Who.

For example:

- Companion has unique London accent found only in episodes of Doctor Who – check.

- Character alone in darkened cellar at start of episode one with some incredibly long monologue about thinking one of their friends is “mucking about” by pretending to disappear, when they're actually dead – check.

- Alien zombies turn their heads to use their non-functioning “eyes” to “look” at things – check.

- Alien substance can whizz about flying with great force, yet chooses to take on human form so it can instead just walk. Very. Slowly. Check.

- Companion walks all the way around outside of the TARDIS to establish its relatively small size – check.

- Acronym – check.

- Can go anywhere in time and space – check.

- Aliens take forever to menacingly approach before changing their minds at the last moment and firing instead – check.

- Alien develops a face and starts talking in one scene only for reasons of exposition – check.

- Aliens wait until after capturing the Doctor before executing their final masterplan – check.

Yeah, yeah this does seem to be the same show.

So – the differences then:


Well, first of all the interior of the TARDIS has been redesigned to look somewhat danker. I can understand a new version wishing to update the technology, but really – who wants to live in a grim cold metal dump like that? So much for the warmth of home that the old place had.

There were also lots of funky CGI effects and digital editing which, it must be said, didn’t half make for a fuzzier picture. The 70s looked sharper than this.

And of course the lead actor has been recast. Can’t really blame them for that – the old Doctor - Paul McGann - hadn’t wanted the role back, but it’s a significant concern that such a big name was never even asked.

McGann’s absence is made particularly painful by the opening scene, which looks as though it was written for him. It begins with the Doctor getting blown-up and maybe killed. When he returns a few scenes later, there’s no explanation as to how he survived, and he even implies that he’s just regenerated. Given the episode's air of mystery, there is absolutely no reason why he couldn't have been played by the outgoing actor in that first scene. You wouldn't even have needed to explain it. The revelation that this 'Doctor' character was in fact the same guy who’d died at the start would have been a great surprise-hook for new viewers.


Really – it’s the one thing that makes me go "It would have been great if only..."

Also, to establish that the Doctor has a history, Rose does something that few previous characters have, and looks the Doctor up on the internet. Incredibly, she finds the site she wants right at the top of her search-results. What's the name of that search-engine she’s using? Dozen?

So Rose goes to visit this conspiracy-theorist at his house, and sees lots of photos of the newly-regenerated Doctor throughout history. So if he’s just (as inferred) regenerated, these must be from his future then. Good - let’s hope that future episodes respect this.

Inexplicably, Rose’s boyfriend Mickey doesn’t enter the house with her, but stays behind in the car outside. Oh dear, I sense character-motivation taking second-place to moving the plot along. Sure enough, while patiently waiting for her, he gets eaten by a plastic wheeley-bin. (complete with comedy burp)

In fairness though, Mickey was a stroke of genius. He was so annoying that he distracted you from disliking Rose, who was irritating in her own way, but less so next to him. Shrewd move that.

And Christopher Ecclestone? Nah, he's not the Doctor, not yet anyway, although I liked the line about lots of planets having a north. I will say this for him though - you can really see the masked disappointment in his eyes at the end of the episode, when Rose turns him down.


Having said all that, the final lines ruined the characters. The Doctor steals Mickey's girlfriend. And just how nasty was she when she dumped him?

Rose: "Thanks."
Mickey: "For what?"
Rose: "Exactly."

I can't root for 2 people who'd do that, especially to a terrified innocent.


Top marks however do go to the surreal opening scene, which featured Rose encountering a crowd of faceless shop-window dummies, who whilst silently surrounding her suddenly began cheering in ecstasy. Then, boxing her in to kill her, they began happily chatting to themselves as though it was just another day. Scary stuff indeed.

In fact, this was all just because, during broadcast, a BBC transmission controller had accidentally faded-up the live feed from the studio audience of Graham Norton’s upcoming show.

Now that sort of thing never happened in the old days.

But this episode's real highlight was also provided by BBC continuity - yep, the "Next Week On Doctor Who" trailer at the end, which looked like great fun!

Anyway, overall I enjoyed it, although it didn't feel like Who. (which the McGann movie did) Everyone says that Russell T Davies' writing is brilliant, but on the strength on this one I'm really not convinced. The climax was sort of messy - both in terms of script and editing. Still, I always thought that when the show came back, the first episode should be about the Cybermen having a secret base underneath Waterloo Station, so the Autons hide-out under the London Eye was certainly close enough!

So yes I enjoyed it, but it in no way made me feel like I was watching Doctor Who. A movie, yes, but not Doctor Who.

Still, on the way home from work this evening, I passed a plastic wheeley-bin in the street. Then I took a second glance at it. Then I realised what I was doing.

Which is definitely good.

Bring Back Doctor Who

It was the 2nd of November 1981, I was 10, and I was upstairs in our house when my dad shouted up the stairs to me.

“Ste-phen!”

“What?!”

“Do you want to watch Doctor Who?”

You know, actually yes, yes I did want to watch it. Today was the day they were re-running the very first episode from 18 years ago. I wasn’t massively into the show (actually I’d always found it quite boring), but I didn’t want to miss what at the time I thought would be my only chance ever to see the very first one.

And, thanks entirely to my dad, I didn’t miss it.


25 monochrome minutes later I was hooked.


More than anything else I was hooked by the idea of the TARDIS – particularly that it was bigger inside than out.

How did that work with the doors? I mean, on the inside the doorway was quite wide, but on the outside the doorway was much thinner. If you were very fat (like a sumo wrestler), could you get stuck in the outer doorway, whilst still having space on either side of you when viewed from the inside?

Subsequent repeats did much to set me thinking also, and it’s for this reason that the show’s thought-provoking ability has always struck me as one of its key secrets of success.

Over the next few years I bought as many of the novelisations as I could find, audio-taped the episodes off the telly, bought Doctor Who Magazine and – importantly – wrote my own Doctor Who stories.

But alas, secondary school was looming its head, and with it my peers’ mystifying desire to appear older by shunning everything from the past. Of course I did the same thing in my own way, but I saw good stuff as being my aim, rather than merely new stuff. It made me so angry that my friends would judge a TV show by the timeslot it was in (ie. the age-group they thought watched it) rather than by measuring how good it actually was.

And Doctor Who was an utterly unique show. I’ve never heard of another series that would happily make a sequel to an episode that was 19 years old, black-and-white and wiped. (Attack Of The Cybermen) You certainly couldn’t aim such a story at kids under 19, and indeed Doctor Who, contrary to popular belief, had never been a children’s show. It had always been made by the BBC’s adult drama department, never been scheduled with children’s programmes, and had always been aimed at everyone, which happened to include kids as well as adults. Anyone who didn’t believe me really just needed to look at all the complaints the show regularly got about violence.


For example, the 1985 story Vengeance On Varos was about a TV station that incarcerated real people and forced them to endure tortuous ordeals for entertainment. Remind you of anything this decade?

And it had always been high-quality too – I knew because I’d read the books, and actually watched old episodes from throughout the show’s run – very special occasions before video.

In 1983 I went to a convention and sighted 3 Doctors in person – Peter Davison, Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee. (the last of whom accidentally trod on my foot)

I won 2 fancy-dress competitions as the fifth Doctor.

It was a wonderful legend for a 12-year-old to dream, and write, about. It even got me recording my scripts, with full sound-effects, which later on probably got me interested in radio.

Then, on 27th February 1985, it all very suddenly began its horrible and painfully long drawn-out end.

The show's cancellation was so unexpected that it headlined the national TV news. When does that happen even today?

The then BBC1 Controller Michael Grade initially said he was dropping the show to save money, however coming months would see this reason flick between (erroneous) low ratings, too much violence, and a tired format, each time claiming that a whopping 18 months off the air was needed to fix the issue. (Personally, I think these issues could have been addressed by just having a coffee with the producer)

Instead the production team was kept idle for a whole year, tantalisingly on full pay, and when it finally did quietly return, for only half a series, BBC heads cut from the scripts anything that was deemed either too adult, or too childish.

The result was a terrified shadow of the show’s former freedom.

This time Grade incredibly blamed the expense, ratings, violence and/or programme format on… wait for it… the lead actor.

Whu…? In retrospect, I can see that we just weren’t being told the truth here. What was actually going on with this supposed public-service broadcaster? Perhaps Grade was just following orders that he himself couldn’t find a credible reason for. Still, nearly 20 years later in 2002 Grade proudly boasted his real (or maybe just his latest) reasons on BBC-2, saying…


Grade: “I thought it was rubbish. I thought it was pathetic.”

and

Interviewer: “When it was axed, it was beating Match Of The Day and Wogan at the time in the ratings.”
Grade: “Was it really.”
Interviewer: “You don’t care do you?”
Grade: “No.”

So much for giving the public, including kids like myself, what they enjoyed. Just what was his job again?

Incredibly, the show limped on for 3 more awful years of deadness, years that saw the programme shrink away from its adult storylines, and simplify itself down for children.


In our house, it actually became known as “The Awful Programme”, as one at a time, we all just gave up hoping any more, and switched off.

And there it was. The BBC had ruined the show to the point where a fan as loyal as I was had actually stopped watching it. Why didn’t they just leave such a successful and well-loved show, that had been consistently popular for over 20 years, well alone?

Eventually, in 1989, the BBC announced that the show was temporarily on hold. They never actually used the word “axed” – they knew from experience how many complaints that would get. As a result of this equivocation, it was years before fans who had been talking about when the next series would “come on,” sadly began talking about when it would “come back.”

And yet, although utterly defeated, these very same fans refused to let the show they loved die.


Some of them employed the original actors to shoot their own mind-blowing stories, and publicly released them on VHS, carefully not mentioning the characters’ names to avoid copyright issues.

One fast-talking fan rang up several BBC departments and successfully convinced everyone that his 90-minute 30th anniversary script had been green-lit for production. With the BBC now behind him, his brilliant ploy only failed when the actors complained that his script was so poor.


Then, in 1995, a US fan got the rights to make a pilot movie for a new series. Incredibly, I was in Canada when it was on, and actually found myself watching it on the telly in Penticton, with absolutely no idea that it was Doctor Who. I thought I’d come across another cheap X Files rip-off. I can still remember my thoughts to this day: “Hmm, he looks a bit like Paul McGann. That thing he’s holding looks a bit like the sonic screwdriver. (and after 10 whole minutes of innocence…) Hold on - there’s a police box! (beat) Oh.”


In 1999 still another group began making a new episode every week on CD, again employing all the original castmembers. Over 80 CDs later, they’re still releasing them to this day. (More details here.)

Finally, in 2004, the BBC got its act together, and on 26th March 2005, the full-length new series promised over 20 years ago in 1985 finally began, and once again its return was down to a fan – Russell T Davies. This time, there was a good budget. This time, there was a lot of publicity. This time, it would be good.

I however, was over 10,000 miles away in New Zealand watching the wrong show!

Still, on 7th July the show began here on Prime, and I was determined not to miss it.


So I caught the bus home at Britomart and anxiously watched a guy dressed in orange having some long exchange with the driver for a whole FIFTEEN MINUTES, before we finally pulled away and trudged slowly through heavy traffic at Newmarket. When I eventually got home, I had missed the start, but flatmate Neil had come to rescue, and was taping it for me!

That evening my other flatmate David and I sat down in front of the projector, pressed play on the video, and eagerly watched a lot of recorded static. Oh dear, wrong channel.

(it's painfully ironic to note that, just as the very first episode on November 23rd 1963 had been pre-empted by the assassination of JFK, so the show's return in NZ coincided with the 7/7 London bombing)

No matter, the following day when I caught my flight back to the UK, and I discovered that Air New Zealand were showing the first 2 episodes… but not on my flight.

A few months later I returned to New Zealand with Singapore Airlines… who were only showing episode 2. (I really wanted to watch these in order)

Fortunately, this time I was bringing with me tapes of most of the series.

Alone in my flat one evening, I tried to connect up the video-projector to watch the first episode in style, but discovered the hard way that I had absolutely no idea how to do this. David has half a dozen remote controls for a start.

And then finally… tonight.

David set up the projector. I went out and bought a celebratory pizza. This may sound silly – I even said a prayer.

Finally, with a clear head, I sat down, turned off the light, picked up a slice of pizza, David pressed play… and suddenly I was watching Doctor Who again.

And I still owe it to my dad.