Today's Celebrity Bible-Reader Is... Easy-Reader

Make sure that the writing is easy to read.

- Deuteronomy 27:8b (CEV)

Anger

Just finished watching the two-part BBC documentary Losing It - Griff Rhys Jones On Anger, in which Griff Rhys Jones surprisingly investigates anger.

Griff, it seems, has been having a problem with this. For years he's been getting angry on the inside, quite unaware that much of his politeness has not been perceived as quite as polite and keeping-it-on-the-inside as he thought.

He draws no conclusions in these programmes, which is probably the strongest suggestion that his personal journey is actually genuine. After all, it is a TV programme, which is, nowadays, a tremendous hurdle for any amount of even authentic sincerity to overcome.

For example, he interviews his friends about what they really think of him, which is quite an easy way of getting celebs on the show, but surely a tough way to get honesty.

And yet, when he asks Rory McGrath about how he dealt with similar issues, they're actually seated facing away from each other. Either it was a bit hard for Rory to honestly open up to Griff, or they were deliberately filmed that way to give that impression. We'll never know for sure.

Either way, it doesn't really matter – what Rory has to say is fascinating. He explains that he realised that the subject of his anger had greater control over his life than he did, and that you just shouldn't give anyone else that sort of power over yourself.

Like many other viewers no doubt, I realised I was relating to that, as my mind drifted back to people from yesteryear who I used to be angry with.

I have always been hurt very easily by other people's anger. As a result, I have tended to hide my anger to avoid causing that person to feel hurt too. It became clear from friends' jokes that at least on some occasions I wasn't hiding it very well. (perhaps politeness in an annoyed tone of voice sounded threatening) One day I realised that, far from being able to forgive people, I didn't even actually have a clear definition for the word. (I still don't) So I decided that, since forgiveness was so hard, I would just not get angry at anyone ever again.

The long-term effect of that was that people took more and more advantage of my positive nature, and, unable to express my dissatisfaction, I became very afraid of them.

Today, I try very hard to nip things in the bud. If I'm dissatisfied with something, I'll generally say so while it's still new, small and manageable. I don't really know what to do with bigger anger, so I try my best to simply prevent it.

And that's why I liked this doco – it offered much to ponder. At one stage a therapist had Griff filling-out a "personal self-awareness inventory" (questionnaire), and the questions, though simple, delve deep...

- What things do you do well?

- Tell about a turning point in your life.

- What has been the lowest point in your life?

- Was there an event in which you demonstrated great courage?

- Was there a time of heavy grief?

- What do you do poorly, but continue to do anyway?

- What are some things you would like to stop doing?

SPUC Coffee Morning

Attended a coffee-morning in aid of SPUC. (The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children)

Twenty-First Century Flying Car

The Avengers (movie)

My feelings about TV show revivals are well-documented on this blog, but nothing demonstrates the folly of doing it badly like The Avengers does.

The two leads are disappointing, playing such well-established characters as Steed and Mrs Peel as little more than shallow stereotypes. Jim Broadbent gives Mother the depth of a man trying to save the world, but as a result he's the one who I wound up wanting to see more of.

I found the plot quite lacklustre. Maybe I shouldn't criticise since I found it too hard to really follow. It ended with London a bit damaged and deserted with no thought to any aftermath, a bit like new Doctor Who has every single series. (yep, that's the film's ending on the cover above) Even worse, the climax has Steed doing all the fighting while Mrs Peel... doesn't. We keep cutting back to her on her own just doing some rewiring. Surely a big part of her character's mainstream draw is to see her fighting the bad guys at the end?

But I think I can see what they were trying to do. It's more of a tribute film than anything else, taking as many of the best elements from the original show as the writers could recall, and hoping that they would all stick together into one awesome action movie.

However, despite the weak acting and lacklustre plot, their biggest mistake was the re-use of the characters' names "John Steed" and "Emma Peel". Had the makers just created two new characters names, then they wouldn't have set the film up in competition with the original series, and Patrick Macnee's cameo could actually have been as John Steed. No matter how bad the plot, the film would have been accepted as continuing the legend, like the precedent set by The New Avengers, rather than dooming itself to being just a footnote in it.

Unfortunately, for me at any rate, it was a weak cup of tea. Dreadfully sorry about that.

The Railway Children (1970)

*contains plot spoilers*
"Very beautiful and wonderful things do happen, don't they, and we live most of our lives in the hope of them."


Rather enchanting tale of yesteryear, in which three children lose their dad and are forced to move to the countryside and begin a new life.

It's exactly the sort of fare that, as a kid, I found boring, until it had drawn me in. Today its effect was no different.

Despite the coldness of the opening, so many pieces of good fortune happen to our heroes, that this was never going to be a story with an obvious threat. Hope triumphing against adversity, yes, but nowhere here is there any threat.

The acting was weak throughout, the editing jammy in places, (the jump-cut of the train nearly running over Jim's leg was a bit keen) and even the lighting made me wince occasionally...


... but by the end I felt as if I'd lived a lifetime in these kids' shoes. It's a real instance of a film becoming much, much more than the sum of its parts.

And who can fail to be moved by Bobbie's cry of "Daddy! My daddy!" when she is finally reunited with her father at the end?

It's an absolutely beautiful moment, which is a fortunate thing, as after an hour-and-a-half of pure delight, the rest of the final ten minutes is just awful.

The children's father is finally out of prison and coming home, yet no-one breathes a word of it to them. Or even goes to meet him at the station. Nope, not even his own wife. Sure, maybe their mother is hedging her bets, and maybe the old gentleman on the train had other things to do too. Yet even Parks, in assuming Bobbie's knowledge of her father's impending arrival on the next train, says nothing specific to her of it, or even wants to be there for it.

In fact, dad himself never even bothers with seeing his other two kids! Unbelievable.

And then the closing credits actually break the film's spell by having Bobbie turn to camera and wish the audience "Goodbye" in the final shot.


I'd have hated that as a kid. Had Bobbie been able to see the camera all the way through the film then? Had everyone just been putting one over on us for 109 minutes? Or had we been watching the entire tale through the eyes of a fourth kid, who hadn't had anyone speak to them until the final shot?

Very beautiful and wonderful things do happen, don't they, and I spent most of this film enjoying one of them.

THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN (UK) #8

It's two US issues from DC Comics reprinted in a fortnightly UK mag.

The first strip Terror On The Streets sets the jokey post-modern tone for the whole publication. The villains are a bit panto...


... the Daily Planet scenes are sitcommy...


... and everyone seems full of post-modern wisecracks.



And DC's UK editors? They seem to have had a laugh recaptioning this strip for the British audience too.


However if the first strip was light-hearted, then the second one was a positive farce.

Ignoring any progression from the first strip for Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, Speed Hills! sees Mr Mxyzptlk talk Superman into a running race around the world against the Flash. The whole world watches it on TV too, although I've no idea how you'd film a race that fast at 25 frames per second, let alone how Supes and Flash could hold a conversation using something as sluggish as soundwaves.

But hey - this strip is a bit panto, a bit sitcommy, and a bit post-modern as well.


(I must admit I'm intrigued by what has happened to the British Isles in the DC universe there) (global warming?)

Of course, the floating imp from the fifth dimension does his darndest to mix things up, making life tough for Supes – such as by making him run underwater at one point - even though he wants him to win. All of which flaws the end result, which pleasingly isn't a dead heat.

Serious stories (well all right then, just the one) in a fun, sitcommy way. I guess this is the version of Supes that I like best.

(Thanks again to Herschel)

The Amazing Spider-Man (US) #252 vs. Spider-Man (UK) #631-632: Homecoming!

Plot: Roger Stern
Script: Tom DeFalco
Pencil breakdowns: Ron Frenz

Although Marvel US' Amazing Spider-Man #252 has since become quite an iconic issue, the events inside are rather mundane.

After all, there was so much to fit in that giving the webslinger an exciting adventure too might have really cramped things.

Sorry, did I just use the phrase "there was so much to fit in"? In fact there are really only two items on the agenda here, but at the time of publication they were both so important to Marvel that it's easy to understand why an entire 22-page issue was cleared to focus on them.

1. To unveil Spider-Man's super-duper new black costume

This was the first issue in 20 years to do away with Spider-Man's familiar red and blue outfit, potentially forever. Such a major change to such an iconic image must have been a really tough sell, and the pressure was really on this issue to convince readers what a great idea this new thought-controlled chamelionic colourless alien costume that gets into all the nooks and crannies was.

Today, thanks to the miracle of time-travel, we can actually nip forward in time 7 months to the letters page of ASM #259 to find out what ASM #252's original readers had made of his new black-and-white facelift...

Spider-Man's new costume stinks!! Get rid of it!!

- B Zimbinski, Duluth, MN

Come on, guys, the thing is ludicrous. He just "thinks" himself back and forth between costume and street clothes. It has an inter-spatial hole where he stores his camera. Next, I guess, Spidey will store his lunch and a six-pack in there. (Will it stay cold?) It filters the air he breathes and it fits better and it's practically indestructible and it never runs out of web fluid and it just makes me wanna puke!

- T Starks, Evansville, IN

Over 20 years ago a strange fellow with a red and blue costume came on the comicbook scene. The costume was dynamic, yet hand-made without any science-fiction features.
Now you've changed the costume, and as far as I'm concerned he's not the same Spider-Man anymore. I'll never read your magazines again.
Today, you left a deep void in my heart.

- V Oss, Trento, Italy

If this costume can respond to mental commands, why not have Peter command it to look like the old one?

E Rigney, NSW, Australia

All right, so I've only quoted the negative letters (come on – we both knew they would be the funnier ones) but all in all, public opinion on the new outfit seemed to be about 50/50.

Dear Marvel Comics Group,
How does it feel to know that instead of the traditional definition of the word "genius," all that now has to appear in dictionaries from now on are the words: "See AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #252"?

- S Darner, Bronx, NY

And there were plenty more positive letters like that.

Me? The new costume's guest-appearance in the UK Transformers comic was one of the reasons why I started to buy Spider-Man comics!

2. To advertise issue #1 of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars.

This was a twelve-issue limited series that had taken place immediately prior to this story, but which was to be published following it over the course of the next year.

That's right, although I've just read ASM#252 where it chronologically comes, Tom DeFalco's script is quite definitely aimed at readers who have no knowledge of recent events for our hero. And he wasn't giving anything away, either. Maybe DeFalco himself didn't know what was going to have happened.

As a result, no-one refers to any specific recent event out in space, but their generalisations must surely have made readers want to know. The shortage of references to specific events in Spidey's informed thoughts on the subject feels a bit odd, straight after having read the whole adventure, but nonetheless acceptable.


However my feelings on the original storytelling aren’t the, um, issue here.

Y'see, regular readers of this blog will recall that I quite enjoy comparing the original US and later UK versions of these tales, and pointing at Marvel UK's cuts as though I had some sort of a right to see the missing material when I was 14.

But in this instance, in 1985, (a year after the US printing) Marvel UK's weekly Spider-Man reprint comic really came into its own for one final redaction to end all redactions, before the title died a horrible living-death a fortnight later under a new editor. (that long story's here)


Planning to launch their own British Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars reprint title, Marvel UK chose to follow the same strategy as the US. One way or another, they were determined to get British Spider-Man Weekly readers to buy the UK reprint of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars too. So, they first reprinted this tale in issue #631 of their ongoing Spider-Man title... but accentuated by a heap of new material that the Americans never saw.

Consider...

For comparison, here are two consecutive panels of Peter Parker from the original US publication:



Pretty straightforward, huh? Now here's those same two panels again, only as they were presented in the UK:







Wow. In there we had the original panels, relettered captions, two new narration-boxes, borrowed artwork, new artwork, two whole pages from a different comic, and even a brand new cover in the middle! (To say nothing of all the rewriting that had gone on in the rest of the strip...)

Reading these new pages where they come, as I did today, they seem like a very odd trip into Peter Parker's stream-of-consciousness, as his thoughts wander back and forth without any care for chronology. (much the way real people's minds wander) He has the same flashback of entering the flying saucer twice from two different perspectives! Even the new UK cliffhanger doesn’t run-on into the following panel the next week!

Still, those pages are the highlight of the story for me now, especially since today I was able to read them together with the US panels that had been cut to free-up room for them, creating one gigantic omnibus version. (As far as I'm concerned, it's all canon)

And I don't think I can really blame Marvel UK for cutting stuff out of this one. After all, they were only following Peter Parker's own example. Having just been through what was clearly the most amazing spectacular team-up adventure of his career, and even been lucky enough to take his camera along with him, I don't think I'll ever be able to come to terms with what this professional photog then did with his priceless master negs of it.


With that much respect for image-preservation, maybe he should have taken that job in London...

(With thanks to Herschel)

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul (radio series)

Unintelligible, couldn't understand it, made even less sense than the book.

Loved it.

Dirk Maggs and John Langdon have plunged-into adapting another of Douglas Adams' gigantically complex novels, and quite understandably held little of its original narrative sacred. And kudos to them for that. The plot is hard enough to puzzle-out in book form, so the challenge to convey the story easily for Radio 4 listeners had them examining, it seems, every last line for a clearer way of presenting the tale.

And although I'm still fuzzy on the plot, they've done a fine imaginative job of adapting it all.

For example, while the book had Gently investigating Anstey's house on his own, the radio version has given him a police guard to convey his thoughts to. Everyone in this updated version has mobile phones, which again excuses the characters from talking to themselves while alone – instead they just ring someone up and tell them what's taking place.

And musician Richard MacDuff from the first book has been written back in, which is no difficult feat given that this second book partly concerns a pop-group's music contract, so it's now a group that Richard used to be a member of. The reason why this really works though, is because this new aspect of his past was foreshadowed in the dramatisation of the first book last year. And, of course, the fact that Dirk Gently is a man routinely plagued by coincidences only serves to justify the rewrite further.

I was a bit disappointed that a couple of my favourite jokes were missing from this version, but only when I could find no reason for losing them. For example, when a check-in desk at Heathrow Airport suddenly explodes, in the book it's explained away by experts as "non-linear catastrophic structural exasperation", or, that the check-in desk had just got "fundamentally fed-up with being where it was." In the radio version this joke is replaced with "indoor global warming." To my mind, both jokes are as funny as each other, so why was it changed? I don't mind at all – it's new Dirk Gently material, and comes from a team who in recent years have earnt the respect necessary to continue Adams' radio legacy.

That said, there initially appeared to be rather too many homages in this to Adams' more famous work The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Stephen Moore and Peter Davison are both on the cast, the line "resistance is useless" is in there, and the calculator that Gently buys even makes the Guide's old sound-effect. When Gently rings-up Richard MacDuff for information, he's working in a lab at the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, with the Vogon flying-saucer room atmos behind him!

And then, rather magically, Marvin walks-up...

Okay, these aren't homages, are they? I think they're actually going somewhere with this, especially since the next series will be based on the book that Douglas Adams never finished writing...

Yes, you can tell what a fan I am. It's so cold at the moment that before listening to the last episode tonight, I actually made myself a really hot cup of tea and put on my dressing-gown.

Roll on the next series next winter!

Shrek

*contains plot spoilers*

Fun little movie about an ogre falling impossibly in love with a beautiful princess, who then very very fortunately turns out to be an ogre too.

As the above synopsis makes clear, there are really no surprises in this lethargically-plotted fairytale, (the princess forgets she can do karate, the 3-day return journey makes nonsense of both the outgoing one, and Shrek's motivation to spend a week on it) but there are a ton of inspired ideas, great jokes, and fantastic performances. John Lithgow is at his pottiest in this – he makes being completely bonkers sound so incredibly easy.

Really - it's impossible not to enjoy this, unless of course you like your fairy-tales to have a cohesive story too.

(Shrek 2 here)
(Shrek The Third here)
(Shrek The Halls here)
(Shrek Forever After here)

(with thanks to Herschel)

(available here)

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars

Writer: Jim Shooter
Penciler: Mike Zeck (#1-3, 6-12), Bob Layton (#4-5)

Twelve-issue epic featuring a heap of Marvel super heroes and villains getting transported to a patchwork planet by a god-like being to fight each other to the death to win whatever their hearts desire.

I read this in the wrong order when I was a kid, because it was only mid-way through this series that I got into Marvel comics, so over the past 11 weeks I've re-read it all chronologically. The only issue I'm missing is the first one, but thanks to the Marvel UK reprint I was able to include that, plus its additional (and anachronistic according to Amazing Spider-Man #252) UK-only opening.


And it's awesome. Author Jim Shooter pulls no punches as he lays the story open to be shaped by whatever the individual characters would do. Simple good guys versus bad guys? No, there are really three factions here, plus about 20 personal agendas, and a continual barrage of mind-blowing scenarios. Rarely did I find myself wondering "Why didn't this character use that power to achieve the other purpose?" Frankly, almost every time they'd done it.

A few moments do feel tacked-in. The eventual origin of Spider-Man's new black costume in issue #8 is so brief and inconsequential that it must have been something of a let-down when first published, seven months after the outfit's first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #252 which chronologically follows this series. There are also some forgettable cliffhangers, as though the storyline found it had just run out of pages at inconvenient moments.

That said, the cliffhanger to the penultimate issue must be the greatest in Marvel history.

The evil Doctor Doom has, to all intents and purposes, finally become God. The assembled super heroes (and Magneto) are all voting on whether to pointlessly try to fight him, even though their every thought requires his permission. Everyone – Captain America, Wasp, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Professor X, Hulk, Thing, Spider-Woman, Spider-Man, the Human Torch and Mister Fantastic (and Magneto) - are unanimous that they must at least try, all except poor tortured Colossus. His is the final vote.








So, Doom is god, and the heroes are all dead. How on Earth (or wherever) do they get out of this one? The answer, if you can ignore Doom's flawed omniscience, is nothing short of genius.

This is one war I'm glad they didn't keep secret.

Thunderbirds Are Go! Barry Gray Centenary Concert

Think of the Thunderbirds theme in your head. Now imagine it being deafeningly performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra. That was my evening tonight.


Barry Gray was the guy who composed the music for Thunderbirds, Stingray, Fireball XL5, Joe 90... basically all those sort of shows. (ones made by genre-legend Gerry Anderson) His music could be magical, doom-laden, or as racing as Thunderbird 1, and before tonight I had to wonder what the point was of listening to a live performance of it. Surely no new arrangement of his work could possibly top the ones that he himself had recorded?

Well, I'm not enough of a fan to judge, but the opportunity to experience his background music taking-centre stage was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.


And so it was that this evening I sat at the back of London's Royal Festival Hall as the performance opened with the Century 21 ident. This was the branding-jingle that Gerry Anderson's TV shows used to open with, and when that single shrill violin-note sliced through the tops of everyone's consciousnesses, before plunging all the way down to ground beneath our seats, you knew that the evening was to be a labour of love.

Genre-actor Brian Blessed picked his way excitedly across the stage to introduce the festivities. Being the notoriously loud Brian Blessed, I had to wonder if he was going to bother with using a microphone tonight, and in retrospect it's a good job he did. After all, even his booming voice would have a fight to be heard against the music of Barry Gray.

Blessed's enthusiastic persona appeared to be just that however. Sticking to his script, he made several errors, (including twice calling Space 1999 just "Space 99") but never failed to be a pleasure anyway. Let's face it, he's Brian Blessed - he can do no wrong.

I guess I take these things apart too much. It's tough to stage a one-off charity concert and find performers who are all aficionados on the subject, so when the vocal band Voces8 tackled their first number Supercar, I found I was scrutinising them carefully for any trace of singing-down to us. I found none – they were great performers who knew exactly what they were doing. In fact, any early doubts that I had had about their ability were well and truly dispelled when they actually made it to the end of the closing music of Fireball XL5 without getting cut-off by a Thames TV logo. After that impressive feat, they could do no wrong.


Fig. 1: This didn't happen.

Next up Voces8 tackled Gray's commercial single Robot Man, for which they clearly got the joke, and from then on it was TV heaven all the way.

After a suite from Four Feathers Falls came incidental music from the Thunderbirds episode Terror In New York City, synchronised with footage from the episode on a screen. I guess it was inevitable that having in recent years watched both silent movies and cartoons with a live orchestral soundtrack, next it would have to be puppets.

Then it was the Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons section, and the track that I was really hoping to hear got an incredible full-length airing. The piece shows up in a couple of episodes, but I've never been able to find it on any CD... and here were sixty people playing it in front of me live!

During the interval, I was able to ascertain the track's title: 'White As Snow'. Now I know what to look for.

The second half featured selections from Stingray, Joe 90, The Secret Service and UFO, but of course my favourite had to be the Space 1999 theme, which I enjoyed for much the same reasons as I loved watching the opening credits to Superman™ Returns a few years back. I owe Neil Norman so much.

Since he was a music man, there isn't much film footage about of Barry Gray, so the final number was performed to some cropped home movie shots of him from a trip to the beach he'd been on with his family. You have to admire that.

Then there was a standing ovation.


Afterwards I wandered about a bit and discovered Gerry Anderson himself signing autographs just outside the auditorium. I wasn't really that interested in getting his signature, but I joined the group for that purpose anyway because I certainly wanted to meet him. I thanked him for a lovely evening, to which he made it clear that he hadn't been the one to organise it, and in the circumstances I found myself speechless to counter his humility. Barry Gray's music had not been his creation of course, but surely he must have recognized his own contribution to the show that had just been staged?

He kindly signed the last autograph in my programme and made-off. I headed home too, knowing that two things were stay with me from this night.

A renewed appreciation for Barry Gray's music, and the knowledge that I had actually met Gerry Anderson.

FAB.

ELEKTRA (2005 film)

Fun super-hero chick-flick spin-off to Daredevil, starring Jennifer Garner as a professional assassin turned nice.

Not a movie with a plot to be examined too closely, but the ideas for the characters make it fun enough wallpaper, even if the girl sneaking around in the eye-catching red-dress doesn't do it for you. It certainly makes a change to come across a super-hero who's so quiet. Elektra is a loner, and remains one, and I guess that makes her more appealing. What the heck's going on in there?

No idea why they cut the scene with Matt Murdock in. Perhaps they felt that her injuries in that one made this work better as a prequel.

(available here)

Doctor Who: Turn Left

A What If tale examining how recent history in Doctor-Who-Land might have gone had Donna never met the Doctor.

Just for a change, it's pretty well-researched and executed, although as usual there are a pile of unanswered questions at the end. If Rose can time-travel now, why didn't she fix history herself? How can Jack, who can't die, die? How does the Doctor know the name that Alan coined for the Trickster?

There's no explanation for who the mysterious Asian woman was, or where she went, or pretty much anything outside the show's main storyline. Just like last week then.

And it's yet another story that finishes with time going backwards. Which is a foregone conclusion from the start really, especially with history getting changed so that the Doctor was killed a coupla' seasons back.

The fun in these things is always seeing events from earlier episodes being followed logically through, and this is done pretty well, particularly with the interviewee from Smith And Jones doing his closing scene again, although I didn't get why everyone died of suffocation this time, unless they did in the original history too.

Also, if Sarah, Luke, Maria and Clyde were all at the hospital in Smith And Jones, then that means that all their adventures must have taken place a long time before (or after) their transmission, or Earth would have suffered a few other calamities too, such as getting destroyed by a meteorite. Fair enough - their world doesn't seem to have been invaded so much anyway.

Also how Sarah and Torchwood know everything that they do is a mystery, not to mention how Rose does.

Probably the worst gaff in this is that it only looks at the ramifications of the Doctor's absence on selected episodes. Forget the world's destruction in The Shakespeare Code, or the Daleks' unaverted plan to turn humanity into more Daleks, we'll just... erm... finish this sentence now. Move along.

Shortly after BBC News has shown yet another impossible-to-film camera-angle...


... the near-deserted city of London gets hit by the Titanic, killing everyone who isn't there. Why it still hits Buckingham Palace without the Doctor's interference, or indeed why it doesn't wipe out all life on Earth as planned in Voyage Of The Damned, is not recalled either.

The line from The Fires Of Pompeii about Donna having something on her back now makes no sense, as that was her timeline before the interference. Poor foreshadowing again.

There are some good scenes in here though. As Earth faces invasion after invasion without the Doctor to save everyone, the political and social ramifications are bleak indeed.

Donna's family realise that their safe world is falling-apart due to powers far stronger than those they have always felt secure in. The scene with Donna's landlord being driven away to a British 'labour camp' is galling. Also doom-laden is the moment when she and her grandad watch the stars going out, either due to some something moving in the way, or their destruction millions of years ago.

Most of these situations aren't from a parallel-history though. The events in the above paragraph would be logical consequences in the history we've already had, in which the Doctor is alive and well and saving Earth with limited success. The events of World War Three, The Christmas Invasion and Doomsday have already left 'our' Earth absolutely devastated. The Cybermen invaded every home in the world! Then they transplanted our brains into robots to wage war against the Daleks! But no, everyone in the world has just forgotten how their loved ones were lobotomised by aliens. I bet everyone in Doctor-Who-land forgot all about the second world war straight afterwards too.

The ending was dreadful as well. I can't believe that in three whole years they still haven't worked-out what nonsense the 'bad wolf' 'message' is.

I enjoyed this, in places, perhaps because it's a glimpse of the more exciting version of Earth that we should have been watching for the past three years. But my goodness it needs a proof-reader.

The World's Rainiest Indian

This morning, Perry and I splished through the rain to Richmond Station, where we met-up with old friend Rich, before the three of us crossed the road to go and doss in Starbucks for an hour.

After that, we headed round the corner to stuff down a pub lunch.

Then we squelched around the town centre window-shopping, before escaping the ongoing rain by camping down in a café.

Then we splashed back to Perry's for some serious couch-potatoing with more hot coffees in front of Prisoner And Escort and Batman & Robin.

After that, I actually did some work. I nipped back to my place for a dry pair of shoes and socks, before paddling back to Perry's. Rich had gone on ahead of us, so Perry and I waded through yet more rain chewing over yet more old times.

We found Rich in another pub with John, which gave way to a couple more rounds of chilled nothingness, before we swam up the alley for the day's highlight – a curry.

Actually I think I had a korma. It didn't really matter. Nothing mattered today.

After John had put on his frogsuit and left, we front-crawled back to Perry's place, where it was time for me to bid him and Rich goodnight, and catch the last submarine home.

As days go, it was hard to fault this one.