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So, here we are: the centenary post on "Place". Somewhat overdue on a stormy North-East night. We've finally reached the end of my Five Faces of Doctor Who 30th anniversary celebration and we're revisiting the Tenth Doctor, the much-missed David Tennant.

I re-watched the 2009 CG animated adventure Dreamland on dvd on Christmas Eve. I don't care at all for the animation style: the characters were stiff and doll-like. Also, I'm not convinced by the Claremontian name Jimmy Stalking Wolf but the voice talent (Georgia Moffet, Lisa Bowerman and David Warner) was highly effective. Phil Ford wrote a competent B-movie pastiche with a modern blockbuster feel; I think he would be a safe pair of hands for a future show runner.


It's safe to say Ten was THE most popular and iconic Doctor since Tom Baker. His episodes reintroduced classic monsters to the new audience: The Cybermen, The Sontarans and Davros. They gave us a deranged and unsettling Master and a controversial companion in the form of big-hearted but shouty temp Donna Noble ( high profile comedy actress Catherine Tate). On the subject of companions, apart from the Kylie Coup, I particularly like Dan McDaid's DWM serial with the acidic Majenta Pryce and would have welcomed more tv adventures with slinky thief Lady Christina.
 This was the most romantic and emotionally accessible Doctor yet and lovelorn time and again: the luminous Reinette; Rose Tyler;  Joan Redfern; Kylie's tragic Astrid; River Song; the DoctorDonna and the mysteriously under-used Jenny Who were all taken from him. We also witnessed this Doctor helpless and terrified in the unforgettable Midnight and deeply flawed in the hard-hitting Waters of Mars.
While the most tearful of Doctors was a little too lachrymose for my liking, his eventual exit, saving another old soldier, was a moment of acting and pathos that Matt Smith's whirling Young Fogey has yet to generate ( The Doctor's Wife excepted). Vale Decem, the most beloved of modern Doctors.

The Tenth Doctor made his debut of course in the very first feature- length Xmas Special and last night saw the first screening of the seventh of these now- traditional tv events: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.I was feeling a bit pessimistic given the derivative Scrooge story last year. After a visual nod to Star Wars, Moffat deftly tapped into both the British collective memory of celebrating wartime privation and folk tale traditions of wood sprites and the Forest Perilous. Unfortunately, despite a small and able cast, the episode was slow and lacking in drama.  The throwaway cameo of the comedy Androzani foresters was ineffectual: you don't need Rude Mechanicals when you have a clown as Leading Man. I'd like to see the Doctor's eccentricity reined in a little so he doesn't seem quite so unhinged. He was giving Jean in the Queen Vic a run for her money in the Holy Fool stakes last night.

Moffat squandered the opportunity to explore some of the harsher truths of fairy tales with a rather saccharine happy ending. "It's a Wonderful Life" would be robbed of its power to move without the pain of Mr.Gower's bereavement and violence or Potter's grasping venality. The desire to wrap up the story in a pretty bow for the kiddies left this Xmas special a sickly confection.

The coda with the Ponds was predictable but inevitable. I had hoped their story was finished but seemingly not. Maybe in my dotage I'll look back on the Moffat era as fondly as I do Graham Williams' Season Seventeen. But for the moment, I'd prefer a step away from the convoluted story arcs and the self-conscious cleverness.


I'm off back down to Glasgow tomorrow to see the family but I'll be back to update Place and Materioptikon just before Hogmanay.

Coming soon: The JLA treasury edition; Vworpabix; and New Teen Titans- Games


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