Doomsday Clock #2

The Comedian is alive and well and living in a parallel universe.

He tries to kill Ozymandias while Ozymandias is talking to Lex Luther.

Comedian still alive.

Ozymandias talking to Lex Luther.

Still alive. Comedian.

What.

Were.

They.

Thinking.

I remember Superman Versus The Amazing Spider-Man.

That was what it was called. Not “Superman and Spider-Man meet” or “Spider-Man vs Superman.” Superman Versus The Amazing Spider-Man. A huge over-sized thing, with a long title, costing ten times what a normal comic cost. 

I read it over and over, twenty or fifty times, the most times I have read a comic apart from Spider-Man Comics Weekly #5 or the Star Wars Treasuries.

Did I even know who Superman was? I suppose there were annuals, and second hand imports in markets, and a TV cartoon, voiced by your actual Bud Collyer, so I knew the basics. It was a smart piece of work: it knew what Superman Versus The Amazing Spider-Man had to deliver and by Rao it delivered it. Rather pointedly it started with a standard issue Spider-Man solo story of the period and followed it up with a standard issue Superman story so we could see how different the two guys were before we saw them together. Spidey sent Doctor Octopus back to prison and Superman sent Lex Luther back to prison and the two villains ended up in the same prison plotting a horrible revenge. When Peter Parker and Clark Kent both end up at the same newspaper conference there is a massive misunderstanding which results in Spider-Man punching Superman. Kryptonite becomes involved. But they make friends in time to join forces and foil their respective villains. Lois Lane and Mary Jane have a girly chat, and J. Jonah Jameson talks photographers and news reporters with Perry White in the bar. 

There is no reason why this kind of thing can’t be a lot of fun. Comic book universes thrive because we already know the characters: Spider-Man reminds us of every Spider-Man story we have ever read and Superman reminds us of every Superman story we have ever read so naturally if you put both of them in the same panel our fan-emotions run off the scale. All the writer really has to do is play up the differences between the characters — have Spider-Man behaving in as typical a Spider-Man way as possible and Superman being as much like Superman as possible and then stand back and allow the stylistic clashes to emerge. And when you are done, put everything back in the box. Spider-Man meeting Superman is a one-off for our entertainment, not a stage in his character development. Marvel didn’t have a concept of Imaginary Tales back then, but Roy Thomas shunted Superman Versus The Amazing Spider-Man off to a parallel universe in the very first issue of What If…? Superman and Spider-Man could never really meet: Spider-Man lives in a much more realistic story-world than Superman and Superman lives in a much more heroic story-world than Spider-Man. That is kind of the point of them.

I remember a 1970s cartoon in which Scooby Doo visited Batman and Robin in the Batcave. There was a whole series in which Scooby Doo met other celebrities and cartoon characters. Scooby Doo meets the Adams Family; Scooby Doo meets Laurel and Hardy; Scooby Doo vs Predator. I think even us kids could see that this was a silly idea. Scooby Doo and Batman don’t belong in the same story. Pretending that they do takes all the laughter out of Scooby Doo and all the excitement out of Batman.

The two criminals who the fake Rorschach sprung from prison last month rob a bank. One of them, the lady, Marionette, has an unspecified previous connection with Doctor Manhattan. While the bank robbery is in progress, Doctor Manhattan teleports in from the galaxy or universe where he has been staying. That is why Ozymandias needed the crooks: as bait for Doctor Manhattan. Ozymandias has retrofitted the Owl Ship into a TARDIS and worked out that when Doctor Manhattan teleports he leaves a trail of McGuffin Particles. So Ozymandias and fake Rorschach and the two crooks can follow the McGuffin Trail back to the universe and world where Doctor Manhattan has been hiding out since the end of Watchmen. The DC Universe, obviously.

There was a good TV series a while back in which a policeman from a modern cop show got sent back in time and had to work with policemen from a 1970s cop show. The methods and attitudes of modern day policemen, and the style and assumptions of modern cop shows are ironically contrasted with the methods and attitudes and styles and assumptions of 1970s cop shows. They also did a 1980s version but that was boring. Why they didn't bring Gene Hunt forward to the present day I never understood.

So it could have been fun to take the realistic, grim, dark superheroes from Watchmen and dump them inside a traditional four-colour comic book universe. Part of the point of Watchmen was that superheroes had escaped from the printed page and got into the real world -- metaphorically, at least --  so a story in which those same superheroes somehow got trapped inside a comic would have been in keeping with Alan Moore’s metaphysics. But so far as one can tell, the mainstream DC Universe is now indistinguishable from the Watchmen universe. It’s grim, it’s dark, everyone is talking about corporate take overs, there are anti-superhero riots going on and no-one trusts ther Batman. That’s also very nearly the plot of the Superman vs Batman movie, which is as far as I have got with the DC Cinematic Universe. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if Rorschach had met the square-jawed Adam West version of Batman? Then Ozymandias could have met Lex Luther the gangster who stole forty cupcakes. Or even Gene Hackman.

There was a comic where Miles Morales met Peter Parker, wasn’t there? It didn’t do very much except establish that the Traditional Marvel Universe was now just as realistic as the More Believable Ultimate Marvel Universe and that the latter therefore had no good reason to exist. Miles and Peter both now live in regular Marvel Continuity. They get on just fine. 

So: Ozymandias and Rorschach go to look for the two smartest people on this new earth, namely Bruce Wayne and Lex Luther. Lex Luther seems to be part way between the corrupt businessman persona and the super-villain persona — he lives in a tower block and wants to buy out Wayne Industries, but he has minions who he keeps threatening to execute. I liked the Lois n’ Clark version better.

The real Ozymandias told Nite Owl that he wasn't a Republic Serial Villain. The line was changed to "I'm not a comic book villain" in the movie, presumably because most people wouldn't know what a Republic Serial was. Lex Luther actually is a comic book villain, but Doomsday Clock consistently encourages the reader to see him as the plausible figure and to see Ozymandias as a little absurd. “If you are the smartest person on your earth, I would hate to meet the dumbest” says Lex. The point of Watchmen is that Ozymandias creates a brilliant plan, but Rorschach (just possibly, we never know) spoils it by sending the confession to the conspiracy theorists. Everyone in Doomsday Clock seems to take it for granted that it was a bloody stupid plan from the beginning. (The plan is framed as “scaring everyone with an arse-faced squid”. No-one has grasped any of Alan Moore’s metaphors about fiction and reality and idea space.) This isn’t the wholesome proper traditional four coloured DC Universe fighting back against the much too dark, much too cynical Watchmen. It’s more like the DC Universe and the Watchmen Universe vying to see who can be more cynical. Watchmen is if anything the naive younger brother.

Meanwhile, Rorschach has found his way into Wayne Manner and discovered the secret entrance to the Bat Cave which rather charmingly is still hidden behind a grandfather clock. He goes down a long stone staircase rather than a bat pole. Batman still has Robin’s old costume in a tube and a gigantic American penny, but no dinosaur. Rorschach isn’t impressed by Batman’s collection of trophies. They eventually meet in the last panel.

Geoff Johns tries to imitate Alan Moore’s writing style, a little bit, sometimes. On the opening pages, Ozymandias monologues that if he succeeds in persuading Doctor Manhattan to save the world “we’ll all be heroes again” — and we cut to Marionette telling the staff in the bank not to try to be heroes. We watch the robbery on black and white CCTV while Ozymandias says that “nothing is black and white any more”. In Watchmen there was sort of a point to this kind of thing: Rorschach, Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan all believed, in different ways, that there were connections between everything if you looked hard enough. In this context, it feels more like parroting a narrative tick.

There are several panels in which a psychiatrist tries to assess Bruce Wayne’s sanity using, you’ll like this, Rorschach blotches. The sequence very closely parallels (although, in fairness, it doesn’t directly quote) Dr Long’s interview with Rorschach in Watchmen #6. (The psychiatrist has a bow-tie like the prison guy, although his suit is plain brown rather than natty purple.) One of the blotches looks like a bat. One of them looks like the iconic “young Bruce looking at his dead parents” panel, although to be honest I didn’t spot this until Bruce has a flashback a few pages later. An one of them is possibly meant to look like the Comedian. Bruce says they all look like speedboats. This is reference for the sake of reference: a thing happens in Doomsday Clock which reminds us of a thing which happened in Watchmen. I suppose some of our memories of Watchmen are supposed to be transferred to Doomsday Clock; the one stealing the gravitas of the other. All it really does is piss us off.

The artist’s decision to stick with a 3 by 3 grid is trying to do something similar. It’s a big structural smoke signal that says “When you read Doomsday Clock, remember how good Watchmen was!” In fact, it mainly serves to remind us of how unlike Dave Gibbons’ Gary Frank’s art is. (I am prepared to concede that Brad Anderson colours a bit like John Higgins). Mercifully, Doctor Manhattan is wearing the same v-shaped thong he had on during the Vietnam sequences of Watchmen. (Marionette helpfully points this out.) Dave Gibbons slightly more cartoony art deftly sidestepped the problem of male nudity: we could see that Manhattan was stark naked without feeling that the picture was particularly indecent. I look forward to seeing how Gary Frank’s slightly more realistic art will deal with the Big Blue Penis Problem.

Everything now hangs on what Rorschach and Batman say to each other next issue.  Will we get a clever and witty scene in which both characters mutually critique one another? Or will they just endlessly quote lines from older, better comic books?

But honestly. The Comedian?

Andrew Rilstone is a writer and critic from Bristol, England. 

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 WATCHMEN AND DOOMSDAY CLOCK ARE COPYRIGHT DC COMICS. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copyright holder.

 Please do not feed the troll. 

A Right Wing Racist Writes

....Richard Smith is looking forward to the Colston Hall name change - how about Hally McHallface or Star Bucks [sic]. And would you like Bristol renamed next year too, since a lot of its wealth in the past was made from the slave trade, and sugar and tobacco?

Of course neither [correspondent]mentions the significant philanthropic contributions that Colston made to Bristol...and neither acknowledges the realities of the times that Colston lived through and that his involvement with the slave trade should be seen in that light.

But then should we be surprised that the Countering Colston arguments are so one-dimensional and biased, because behind them is the sort of anti-establishment anti-capitalist slant of the Bristol Radical History Group[?] Looking at its website shows how they would like our history rewritten with conscientious objectors the only true heroes of war, Churchill the evil war-monger who incited WW2, and the renaming of the Colston Hall the first "domino" to fall.

...Colston was a significant person in the history of Bristol whose name should continue to appear, though his slave trade involvement should be highlighted in the context of the times he lived in as well as his philanthropic contributions. 

And before you call be a right wing racist, I am an educated liberal Bristolian with a passion for history, Bristol, education, and fairness. 

J. E Hill 
Evening Post Jan 18

An Ignorant Outdated Racist Writes....

I am getting totally fed up with the non-Bristolians of lower Clifton etc imposing their views on true Bristolians over historical events that happened more than 300 years ago.

Now they have finished their uni courses and settled down here, they seem to think they are the best thing since sliced bread because they are so-called educated and can impose their minority views on us!

For the non-Bristolians who want to have a rant at me because in their eyes they think I am an ignorant outdated racist (which I am not) I am actually a fairly successful career person who was born in this great city of ours but detest when the former uni students demand our history is changed because of their unrealistic left wing views. 

Bristol Evening Post 17/1/2018

Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time

I have done my very best to like the Doctor Who Christmas Special. I truly have. But it won’t do. I’m sorry. It just won’t do.

*

In the 1950s, most children got smacked by their parents. I’m sorry but they did. Canon be damned, the First Doctor is Susan’s grandfather: he has been in loco parentis for a number of years. In the first episode of Dalek Invasion Earth she recklessly causes a bridge to collapse, blocking off the only route back to the TARDIS. You can see why the old boy might be a bit miffed, but we cringe when he threatens to spank her. Of course we do. We would like to believe that the remark was an unscripted interjection by William Hartnell. (All the bad lines in 60s Who were unscripted ad libs by William Hartnell, in the same way that all the bad lines in Shakespeare are interpolations by Middleton.) And it would have been better if Terry Nation had written “clip round the ear” or “thump” rather than “jolly good smacked bottom”. But the Doctor is more or less Susan’s father. When he gets cross with her, he talks like a tetchy, old-fashioned, embarrassing, late-1950s Dad. This was the kind of thing embarrassing Dads said in those days. I’m sorry, but it was.

The scene had a purpose within the overall structure of Dalek Invasion of Earth. Young people today may feel that it is not quite politically correct, or even decent, for stories to have overall narrative structures and for scenes to have points, but in those days everyone thought it was perfectly normal. The First Doctor was quite forgetful. The original series pitch used the word “senile”. He mixes up his companion's names and can’t remember how to operate the TARDIS. So at the beginning of the story, he treats Susan as if she is about twelve, even though she is seventeen. But at the end of the story, he treats her like an adult, even though she is only seventeen. You may think that shutting her out of the TARDIS at the end of the story is just as abusive as threatening to hit her at the beginning. But “How the Doctor came to see that Susan was no longer a little girl” is one of the things Dalek Invasion of Earth was about.

It is impossible to know how the First Doctor would have reacted to swearing. In one sense it's a meaningless question: no-one could possibly have said “bloody” or “arse” on 1960s TV. Mrs Whitehouse thought that even “bum” was crossing a line. But I imagine he would have said something like “Goodness gracious me! You will make me blush! I haven’t heard such words since I was on the lower decks of HMS Victory!”

To which Ian would have replied "Oh Doctor! If you had taught in a London secondary modern school, you would know that it is sometimes politic to go unaccountably deaf for a few seconds…"

And the Doctor would have gone "Hmm, hmm" and everyone would have laughed.

What I am confident that the First Doctor would not have done under those circumstances is threaten to spank a 28 year old stranger.

There is such a thing as fan lore and folk memory. Everyone knows that the Third Doctor used to say “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” a lot, even though in the actual scripts, he didn’t. But he did use a lot of pseudo-science and Jon Pertwee did tell a story about memorizing that particular phrase to the tune of "When I was a lad..." from H.M.S Pinafore. So although it's a myth, it’s a myth that stands in for a truth.

I struggle to think of examples of the First Doctor being particularly sexist. All the original Doctors were somewhat patronising to their companions. I recall the rebels on Dalek controlled earth asking Barbara if she could cook — but that’s not an unreasonable question for a group of male soldiers to ask a middle-aged lady. I recall the Second Doctor telling Polly to go away and make some tea but that was a plot point. I recall one of the UNIT soldiers announcing that Zoe was much prettier than a computer. But the Doctor thinking it was the job of his lady companions to dust the TARDIS? If the TARDIS got dusty I am sure there would have been an auto-cosmic-room-sanitizer-ray.

Why does Moffat wrench an admittedly terrible line out of context and somehow imply that this was the kind of thing the First Doctor said all the time? Weren’t there more interesting contrasts to be drawn between Olden Days Doctor and Current Doctor? Man of Science vs Man of Action is the one that comes immediately to mind. "Oh by the way, did you take three dimensional graph geometry at your school, hmm?"

But let's accept for the sake of argument that the First Doctor is the Sexist Doctor and the Twelfth Doctor is the Less Sexist Doctor. Who lore apart “A fairly liberal guy has to spend time with a previous, more socially conservative version of himself” is a perfectly good starting point for a story. But if that's your premise, for goodness sake, do something with it. Do the obvious thing and have the liberal guy show the conservative guy the error of his ways. Do the very slightly less obvious thing and have them both learn from each other. Ironically reveal that the chap who says “my dear” and “young lady” is deep-down a better feminist than the guy who uses the right-on language. Do something. Do anything. Don’t just point at the two characters and say “har har weren’t the olden days old fashioned."

Why does the First Doctor have such outdated social attitudes anyway? If Doctor Who made any sense -- if you were going to reboot it and start again, knowing everything we know now -- then the earlier versions of the Doctor ought logically to be much more alien and Gallifreyan and ill-at-ease with humans. The later incarnations would progressively take on the attitudes of their adopted home planet. In fact, William Hartnell's Doctor knew nothing of Gallifrey: the Time Lords were a gigantic ret-con, added to the series at the end of Patrick Troughton's tenure. But there is no reason why they couldn't have been a ret-con that made sense: Gallifrey could have been very fusty and old fashioned and patrician; a vast dusty Oxford common room full of old boys in Edwardian suits who say "school master" and "young lady" and threaten to smack people's bottoms. The kind of place where the First Doctor would have fitted right in. In fact, when we first met the Time Lords they were super advanced and godlike. Granted, the Doctor is meant to be a rebel, but how does being a rebel from their point of view equate to being a bit of an old fuddy duddy from our point of view?

This isn't news: we all know that Doctor Who, taken as a whole, makes absolutely no damn sense. But why are we drawing attention to its senselessness in this particular way. There is no in-universe reason for the First Doctor to be old fashioned compared with the Twelfth. There is no reason for the First Doctor’s Police Box to look different from the Twelfth Doctor’s Police Box. We all understand perfectly well that the BBC doesn't use the same prop in 2017 that they used in 1966. But why draw attention to this kind of  thing? You might as well say “Before The Great Time War all spaceships were made out of washing up liquid bottles and propelled through space on the ends of wires”. You might as well have someone shout out "It's only a model" and have done with it.

It is quite possible to imagine an episode of a TV series in which someone says “It’s only a model” in a genuinely striking and creative way. William Shakespeare broke the fourth wall all the time. Steven Moffat is no William Shakespeare.

A character called the Brigadier certainly appeared in about half the stories transmitted between 1970-1975 — in all but one story during Seasons 7 and 8, and a couple of times in each of Seasons 9-12. He made three further appearances between 1975 and the show’s cancellation — once in a special and twice in regular stories. He never appeared in the reboot at all although he did have a cameo in the children’s spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures. Yet on Christmas Day 2017 a Captain-Darling-style World War One officer (hammed up to perfection by Mycroft Holmes) deliberately withholds his name from the Doctor and Bill Potts specifically so he can announce in the final scene that his name is Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart.

Your reaction to this I suppose depends on how big a Doctor Who geek you are.

NEVER WATCHED DOCTOR WHO BEFORE:   Who?

NOT AT ALL GEEKY:  Er…Wasn’t there someone in Doctor Who already called Lethbridge-Stewart?

JUST GEEKY ENOUGH: Oh. Okay. The Brigadier's grandpa.

TOO GEEKY: Oh joy! Oh rapture! What a Christmas Present! A Character who last appeared in 1989 has been referenced on screen!

MUCH TOO GEEKY: But…but…but…this means that the Lethbridge-Stewart novels are canonical! This is that very Hamish who slept with his brother’s wife while the latter was away at war and is thus the Grandfather of the Brigadier (although the Brigadier believes him to be his great uncle!)

For most of the Tom Baker era, Doctor Who was engaged in a Pol Pot level denial of its own history. Stories like Deadly Assassin and Destiny of the Daleks pointedly didn’t bother to check up on how the Time Lords or Regeneration had been treated in previous episodes. But every couple of seasons, someone would chuck in a reference to an old story to mollify the fans.

“The Daleks home planet is called Skaro”

“Drool, drool, they still love us, drool drool.”

Then of course John Nathan-Turner took over, there were back references in every episode, and the series went into a self-destructive spiral. New Who has consisted of nothing but internal references. I don’t need reassurance that Steven Moffat knows about Who history. I already know that Steven Moffat knows more about Who history than anyone else on the planet.

We are entitled to say that the Brigadier has greater significance in fan-lore than he ever had in the TV show. He started out as “that annoying soldier who the Doctor is sometimes allied with”; but he ended up as “the Doctor’s best friend”. And “How a Time Traveler met his former best friend’s non-canonical grandfather” is a perfectly good starting place for a story. That kind of thing happens to Time Travelers all the time. The Time Traveler usually inadvertently kills his friend's grandfather when he was supposed to live, or more problematically, saves his life when he was supposed to die. Sometimes he prevents his grandfather meeting his grandmother, becomes implicated in the curse of Fenric, or invents rock n’roll.

So why is Captain Darling Lethbridge-Stewart? So far as I can see, everything in this story, and in fact everything else in the history of the universe, proceeds exactly as it would have done if Mycroft had not been Lethbridge-Stewart but just some guy.

Are we meant to retrospectively think that when Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart turned up in the Second One With the Yeti, Doctor Patrick retrospectively thought “I had better been nice to him, he’s related to that guy I met for 20 minutes at the North Pole just before I regenerated.”

“No Luke. I am the non-canonical illegitimate grandfather of someone you once met.”

“O.K. I guess that’s quite interesting. Did we already know that the guy with the military background had family members in World War I?”

Captain Darling and the First Doctor are momentarily shocked when Bill Potts mentions that she is gay. And, once again, nothing follows. I don’t know what an actual World War I officer would have said if a young lady (a young black lady, at that) openly said that she was a hoh moh sexual. Would he have turned his back and averted his gaze in case he was morally contaminated by the sinner, or would he have said “Oh, I know all about that kind of thing m’gel, I was at Eton too don’t you know”. The First Doctor would I suppose have been Enlightened By the Standards Of His Day: “Hmmm.. Hmmm… well I dare say you are my girl I dare say you are, and it is entirely your own business but we really don’t need to mention it in mixed company, do we, hmmm hmmm?”

In fact we just establish that social attitudes used to be different and move on.

Remind me, why am I watching this thing again?

And then again again; the Christmas Truce.

The Christmas Truce seems to be something which actually happened in history. That is, for one night in 1914 and maybe again in 1915, the British and German armies stopped trying to kill each other. I think that this kind of thing was quite common in pre-modern conflicts: soldiers regarded war as a rather violent game and didn’t think it that odd to meet up in the pavilion at half-time and say “you fought awfully well today, sir.” That was one of the things which the First World War brought to an end. It wasn't an astonishing thing happening for the first time, it was a fairly normal thing happening for the last time.

But just as there is a folk memory of William Hartnell and a folk memory of the Brigadier, so there is a folk memory of the Christmas Truce. I think (like a lot of our memories of World War One) it largely comes from Oh What A Lovely War! It is basically a set of symbols: there are no characters.

Germans singing Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!

The English soldiers responding with Silent Night. Miraculously, they were all taught the same translation at school.

A few soldiers come out of the trenches, nervously, and shake hands.

More join in.

They show each other pictures of their sweethearts.

Some of them start kicking a football around.

They go back into their trenches.

One of them opens a box of Sainsbury’s Chocolate Biscuits. I may possibly have made that up.

The next morning, they carry on killing each other as if nothing had happened.

The Christmas Truce worked its way into the Christmas Special partly as a plot device: the Brigadier’s Grandfather and a German Officer are about to kill each other, but the Doctor moves them a few days forward in time so Peace breaks out before they can do so. But it’s mostly a detached, free floating image to make the audience feel vaguely warm and Christmassy.

Who was it who said that Dickens' Little Nell isn’t a character — she is simply an onion to make you cry?

It’s a scrap book approach to history. You take some cuttings — soldiers fraternizing in no-man's land, the first Doctor being embarrassingly tetchy at his granddaughter, an affectionately remembered 1970s character — and you hang them on a string like fairy lights. And that is all you do. “Christmas truce” makes you have a Christmassy emotion. “First Doctor says bottom” makes you have a superior emotion. Cameo by Wonderful Clara makes you have a sad emotion. Someone saying the Brigadier’s name makes you have a fan-squee emotion. And then you watch Strictly Come Dancing.

“Oh but Andrew I am sure if you went back and watched old Who you would probably find it had plot holes as well. If you moan every time you find a tiny little plot problem in what is after all basically just a kids show you will have to pull down ever pub in Bristol and pour salt over the ground.” 

Yes, Doctor Who frequently had plot holes. Doctor Who was frequently very silly indeed. It relied very heavily on super villains who did illogical things (hollow out the center of the earth? feed prisoners to an alien mind parasite? release dinosaurs in the middle of London?) for no better reason than it was the kind of thing a super villain would do. It relied very heavily (though not as heavily as the reboot) on heroes who could pull Special Baddie Defeating Devices out of their jolly good bottoms. We long ago admitted that this silliness was a big part of what made Doctor Who Doctor Who. But it always took place in the context of a story.

The Christmas special doesn't have plot holes. The Christmas special is a collection of holes without any plot to go round them.

I could never give up on Doctor Who. It is coded into my DNA more than anything except, I suppose, Spider-Man and Winnie-the-Pooh. (I love Star Wars, of course, but I had lived on this earth for twice seven years before Star Wars came into my life.) It is, as the fellow said, part of my personal mythology.

But I have wasted far, far too much head space searching for content in a series which has none; trying to find the story in a series which is only about surfaces; clutching at straws when it reminds me a little of the programme I used to like so much.

And it is now being handed over to a Peter Davison enthusiast who was show runner on the dreadful Torchwood.

Time for a  break, I think.

There are Big Finish CDs I haven’t listened to and New Adventures I haven’t read and Tom Baker DVDs gathering dust on my shelf.

Maybe I shall binge watch all 30 of Jodie Whittaker’s stories over Christmas 2020 and let you know if things seem any better.

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