|
BBC The Sound of Drums |
|
| Story No. | 200 | 
|
| Production Code | Series Three Episode Twelve | |
| Dates | June 23 2007 |
|
With David Tennant,
Freema Agyeman, John Barrowman Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Colin Teague Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner. |
| Synopsis: Harold Saxon becomes Prime Minister, just as the world establishes contact with a mysterious alien race called the Toclafane. |
Here come the Drums! by Steve Cassidy 23/10/07
The Sound of Drums is a paradox; it manages to be rather entertaining while at the same time exceedingly boring.
Whats going on here? Has Steve gone mad? How can you be both at the same time?
Well, TSOD manages to do both. There is no doubt that this adventure has a joie de voie that makes it entertaining but at the same time there is such a sense of "seen it all before". Does every season finale have to have an alien invasion? Big SFX and Doomsday weapons seem to be de rigeur for episode 12-13? Larry Miles in his review listed the words "boring" twenty five times and interspersed it with the words "tedious" and "deju vu".
I sort of agree. It's not boring in a sleepy, disengaged type of way, because an episode which employed as many set-pieces and looked as good as The Sound of Drums is almost impossible to make boring in this kind of way, but boring in a disconnected, uncompelling way. Because the story is driven by formula, it's difficult to care and become involved in the story. Because the soundbites, the ingredients, the various oddball ideas, are more important than a coherent story, and what we end up with is populist television, but not populist in the mistaken context many people apply the term (ie anything simple and easy that works) but populist in the way of unintelligent, unconfident television that relies upon set-pieces and familiarity instead of challenging and compelling stories.
Let's have a look at what is repeated in this one. We have the trio at odds with the authorities, the social and political satire (I'll come to that later), the basic variant invasion plan as the previous finale (where it's Saxon manipulating the opening of the rift as opposed to the Cybermen/Torchwood), the same execution of ideas (the invasion being the prime example of spectacle), the same gaudy pop song moment (Voodoo Child by Rogue Traders) and, finally, the same way in which the public are duped by hypnosis of good faith.
But to keep the balance there are some terrific little gems hidden away amongst the mediocrity. I especially like Nicola McAuliffe as Vivien Rook who bluffs her way in to interview Lucy Saxon. Those of us of a certain age caught the "Rook" reference. There was a Fleet Street harridan named Jean Rook who terrorised showbusiness from her column in the Daily Express for twenty years. McAuliffe does a terrific turn as Ms Rook (despite a death that really doesn't work). When she changes tack when Tish leaves the room and tries to warn Lucy Saxon about her husband it suddenly becomes gripping. Russell hits upon a truth here - the first people to uncover Harold Saxon as a fraud would be the British press. And McAuliffe really carries the scene, her earnestness and seriousness impart a gravitas to the situation.
The regulars are a pleasure as well. The ambiguous Jack Harkness always seems to bounce off well whatever Doctor and assistant he is put with. (Torchwood in the Himalayas? There won't be a yeti unmolested.) Doc Tennant gets a nice little soliloquy reminiscing about Gallifrey and Martha Jones shows some spunk when her family are in danger. Theres a terrific set piece when Saxon's people open fire on Marthas vehicle with Martha spinning the car around. Martha Jones is still this season's good luck charm.
I'm underwhelmed by Harold Saxon, played by John Simm, playing the Sheriff of Nottingham. Simm plays a pantomime version of a pantomime character.
Much like Tennant, Simm can't make unfunny material work, so he flounders as he mugs while doing a speech on happy/frowny faces or rocking out to dance music during the climax. Simm, on Confidential, went out of his way to say he just played it how it was in the script (a lovely bit of buck passing) and some of Russell's lines are truly stinky "So, Prime Minister then? I knoooww..."/"Are you asking me out on a date?"). People point out to me that he is the alter-ego of Tennant - young, energetic, trendy. But I just didn't believe the menace of the character.
Simm just did not convince. The very fact they had to pile up his crimes to make him more evil makes it worse. A good performance means making people believe you are evil and you don't always have to do anything at all to convince people of that. For example, Jacobi put hairs on the back of my neck just after he opened the fobwatch and up to that point had not harmed anyone but I believed him to be evil.
The Sound of Drums is a OK. I can't say anything more than that. It has some enjoyable aspects, it has some excruciating aspects. (The portrayal of Americans is one. Could you believe the jocks in front of the TV munching popcorn?) It's once again a proficient effort which has every penny of its budget up on screen. Hugely unimaginative, a photostat copy of the two previous seasons - but, somehow, not "bad to the bone" awful. Just OK. Definitely OK.
Pushing my last buttons by Thomas Cookson 1/4/08
I often talk about the story that killed my enthusiasm for New Who. Whether it be World War Three, The Christmas Invasion, The Idiot's Lantern, Love & Monsters or Doomsday. Maybe my love for the new series died a slow death by five separate daggers, and like a firing squad, there's a bit of a confusion about which one fired the fatal shot.
But obviously the one that finished me off would have to be the one that I last saw, ergo the one that was last on. And the fact is that this was one that has made me so dispirited and frustrated that I think I'd save myself a burst spleen by not watching any more of this kind of crap. I've given it all the chances in the world, and each time the show has gleefully irritated and cheated me as a viewer. I might be tempted to tune in on Christmas Day to Kylie and Tennant and succumb to Russell's desperate ratings whoring, but I know better than to do that.
I've made plenty of snide attacks about this finale, but that's never going to be fulfilling unless I go into the details of why this finale so annoys me, and why it represents for me everything wrong about modern mainstream Doctor Who. But of course there are too many words just for one review so I'm going to review the finale in its two parts.
I mean truth, be told, I wasn't exactly watching the show regularly anymore. Sure, I'd watched the first two seasons religiously, but, by the time I got to Smith and Jones, I was dreading more domestics and mean bitchiness, and, lo and behold, that was exactly what I got. From that point on, I just wasn't watching regularly. My usual clockwork devotion to the show slipped up and I missed a huge chunk of Shakespeare Code. The Saturday when Gridlock was on, I was out with my friend playing Jenga instead, and didn't care about missing it. Then I kind of got back to viewing between Daleks in Manhattan and 42 (incidentally, Doctor Who's first real time story was Horror of Fang Rock) and most of that was pretty undemanding. So I tailed off again, missing the highlights of Human Nature and Blink.
So why did I tune into The Sound of Drums, knowing that it would be a Russell T. Davies story? Well, one thing was certain. This was going to be possibly the final pay off to a thirty five year conflict (which as I keep saying I think was carried on for too long). How could I miss that? In some ways, for that reason alone, I don't regret watching it. In fact, in terms of being the story that finished me off, I almost feel grateful to it for 'freeing' me.
The opening is fairly intriguing, "I'll recognise him the moment I see him" really conveys the underlying mysticism of the Time Lords and having been late to backtrack to Utopia, I managed to escape feeling cheated by the cliffhanger resolution. And it suddenly dawns on me how much I've missed Captain Jack and his pro-activeness. Unfortunately, he'll spend most of Last of the Time Lords being out of action.
Captain Jack and the Doctor clash this week again, though for less petty reasons than last week. The Doctor directed a full dose of bitchiness at Captain Jack in Utopia, and in fact, it went beyond his usual cliqueness - 'Even the TARDIS tried to get as far away from you as it could' - but in a double-edged way he also has a go at him the moment Jack tries to interact with anyone else. Wow, how daring to have the Doctor act like a complete cock. And Captain Jack still kowtows to being part of the team. For cream puffs like Adam and Mickey to be so easily mocked yet sticking with the Doctor for more was bad enough, but to see a tough hero like Captain Jack reduced to the same is slightly more demoralising.
But this week the clash is more appropriate in that the Doctor and Jack clash in their plans for how to deal with Saxon. The Doctor prefers the merciful, redemptive approach whilst Jack's plan involves snapped necks, although I do think Jack had the better plan myself. Of course, by now I've gotten used to how the Doctor's morality isn't set in stone. The Doctor of The Unquiet Dead wouldn't have been so obscenely prudish during a galactic famine at Davros' plan to feed the dying millions through cannibalism. Same way the Doctor Who shows mercy to the last Dalek in Evolution of the Daleks despite it being armed and ready to kill, isn't the same Doctor Who showed a ruthless streak in The Runaway Bride, then again I think that ruthless streak was a pretentious moment to try to make the brainless runaround seem more meaningful than it really was.
Tennant is actually quite good in this two parter. His performance has the occasional squee, but mostly he's quite disciplined, and for once lets the menace seem grave without spoiling the effect with over-the-top mocking flippancy. Indeed, he is at his most Doctorish and in The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords, his usual bitchiness is mostly absent, which is always a relief. Then again, why should I praise an episode simply for turning off the water torture for once? So I'm not elevating it to greatness or anything.
Oh, I love the Doctor's plan with the TARDIS key perception filter, but then he rubs it in by telling Martha that 'its like when you fancy someone and they don't even notice you exist'. Again, it's this unpleasant way of rubbing in the Doctor's cold aloofness to his companion, but in such a loud and overstated way that suggests he actually enjoys and goes out of his way to make people feel worthless.
I always hate it when Martha's face sinks or she makes a catty retort when she hears Rose mentioned, even when she's gone further into the future than any companion before her. The reaction it usually provokes in me is a very vocal 'yuck!' and dismay at how Russell's 'full-blooded drama' seems to deem it a requirement that characters be as emotionally immature and ridiculously self-involved as possible. Incidentally, given how much of Season Three has a nice 'second pilot' feel to it, why spoil the accesibility and freshness by season-long references to an absent character?
Utopia was a story for the fans, a story set in an alien quarry near the end of the universe, featuring the last of humanity having to deal with their rapidly evolving, savage, missing link. The next two chapters were for the modern viewers featuring more domestics, more juvenile political satire and slapstick, and a Saxon who must conform to the "no one over 45" rule. Even some of John Simm's earliest lines and hyperactive gurning in Utopia were quite irksome to watch and didn't bode well for the future.
John Simm does his best but he's called upon to do some truly excruciating pieces of patronising humour with a tedium that must have taxed the patience of even the rabid fanboys of Outpost Gallifrey. I'm talking about the happy/angry face moment. Humour is all well and good, but this is just insultingly condescending and seems tailor made to put the viewer in a bad mood, and shouting at the TV screen 'just get on with it!' And we get more comedy when the Prime Minister Master meets the President and mocks him with a Zippy from Rainbow impersonation. All right, that bit did make me laugh; it was just so stupid and unrelenting I couldn't not laugh.
The Toclafane spheres, with their spinning swiss-army blades and sadistic disposition, are one of the few CGI threats that Russell has created that are actually threatening and have presence, as opposed to the cartoonish, all-bark-and-no-bite Jagrafess. But, of course, their homage to the Terrahawks is telling, as is the Skybase and indestructible Captain Jack homaging to Captain Scarlett. Other writers tend to homage Sapphire & Steel, pitching their audience as people who grew up on both shows and can't remember which one's which but remember the time when TV was seemingly more challenging and imaginative. Russell pitches his episodes in the same vein as undemanding, throwaway childish kitsh with a bit of showmanship to appeal to the kiddies.
But then, of course, there's the moment where Saxon invites us to laugh at his hijinks as he opens and closes the airtight door on that screaming woman being torn to shreds by those Toclafane. It's unpleasant in the wrong kind of way, and seemingly aimed at the nastier, more sociopathic spectrum of kids. As many have pointed out, the old show used to direct its humour at authority and tyranny, while the new series invites us to laugh with the oppressor at the oppressed and the humiliated.
And something else. It's been pointed out to me that maybe in some hypocritical way we might have applauded Rose's bitchiness in Season Two if she could bitch well and had some witty insults in her pocket, instead of just being inane and smug. Same is true of the supposed black humour. A good piece of black humour would require wit, cleverness and the power to shock. What we get here is a gruesome moment with some infantile, repetitive slapstick randomly tacked onto the end of it. It's typical of Russell's stories that aspire to be grand guignol with bloated grotesques like the Slitheen and Victor Kennedy, but are undone by overabundant slapstick and chick-flick moments.
No, more than that. Season 17 was the show building a comfortable environment where frivolity and letting your hair down was acceptable. The John Nathan-Turner years were more stuffy, as if trying to break the ice or get in with the crowd, and so every attempt at humour or making an interesting point came off as desperate. The New Series, however, would gladly laugh at the John Nathan-Turner era for its efforts. It uses humour and mockery to be brutally dismissive of anything else, and doesn't know when to stop. New Who humour is like someone laughing at a funeral.
So no, Saxon is not an effective villain. There's no sense of grand plans with him, he just seems to be having a laugh and generally making it up as he goes along. More importantly, there's no way I buy him as someone who could deceive his way into the role of Prime Minister. That requires a villain who knows how to keep a lid on it and how to be subtle. But I don't think Russell ever could write a villain like that, and what we get here is Saxon as a disco-dancing, game-show host. I don't even cringe by the end, I'm just too numb to it. It's the only way to sit through irritating nonsense like this.
It is refreshing though to get a TV explanation for how Saxon became evil, which is about time quite frankly. The old show never really 'did' beginning stories; Genesis of the Daleks was the exception to the rule. Though since Big Finish have started doing origin stories like Spare Parts, Davros and Master, they seem to have made the crossover from extension of the old show to a self-contained reinvention in their own right. This doesn't follow Joseph Lidster's interpretation, but instead favours something shorter that can be conveyed in a single half a minute's flashback. Same way that if they bring Davros into the fold, they'll probably sidestep all the origins in Davros and just paraphrase his bouts of madness and pathos in Terror Firma where he talks of needing the psychological comfort of a monolithic, monocultured universe, which is why he needs the Daleks to win. Unless, of course, Russell writes Davros and subjects us instead to more tiresome, desperate comedy.
And I like the fact that this is all told over a meal of chips from the chip shop.
Oh, and the ret-conning of the Time War rears its head again. I turned my nose up at it when it was fan fiction and I turn my nose up at it when Russell canonises it. But, then again, Russell also in some way canonised the idea that the Time Lords somehow fired the first shot of the war by their actions in Genesis of the Daleks. Another point that I don't buy. Since when did Daleks need provocation?
There are moments in the Doctor and Saxon's conversation over the phone where the hints of two last survivors about to engage in a titanic battle comes through. The way that Saxon confides in the Doctor that he behaved cowardly during the war. For a moment they seem brought together by their loss, only for Saxon to start gleefully taunting the Doctor over his destruction of both races - "how did it feel?" - and we get a sense of the Doctor's tragedy.
But even that is ruined by cod come-ons like "I love it when you say my name" or "are you asking me out on a date?" and it all comes crashing down.
The Doctor and friends have become fugitives, and it's a workable set up, making a worthy point about our CCTV society, in which Saxon has the all-seeing eye. But then they have to spoil the effect with some pretentious point about the Doctor and company being listed as 'terrorists'. Now, when Blood of the Daleks saw the Doctor called out as a terrorist by the Daleks, the Daleks were only half lying. The Doctor did, after all, blow up Skaro, so their relying on such a charge was effective. Here, it's just a crass political jape.
Oh but that's nothing compared to what goes on with Martha's family. In 42, it became clear that Saxon had his agents involved with Martha's family, tapping their phones and playing the family against the Doctor. This was an interesting setup, to say the least, but then this finale goes and blows it and has the Dad running for it, being put in a police van whilst making a pretentious outburst to onlookers of how it's our fault for voting for Saxon. Not since Tegan's artificial mourning of Adric in Time-Flight, the Doctor's vow to become a hermit to purge his evil side in The Twin Dilemma has the show ever resorted to such cringeworthy pretension. There's just no development to make it seem either believable or effective. But Russell can't do development to save his life, as we find out in LOTTL.
It's a shame because the cliffhanger is such a brilliant hook, and briefly got me back in the habit of catching next week. There has been quite a good effort made to make the Doctor seem more vulnerable this season, which was really needed, given that the Tenth Doctor seemed to come through encounters with Werewolves, millions of Daleks and even Satan himself without so much as chipping a nail. In fact, given how cocky and obnoxious his behaviour was, it stretches credulity that he only got punched out the once.
But this season, that has mostly been compensated for. We've seen him getting struck by lightening on the Empire State Building spires (which made my hands sweaty in a way that a similar moment in The Idiot's Lantern just didn't), being possessed by a sentient and seriously pissed off sun and, best of all, we've seen him being noteably afraid in The Family of Blood. So the payoff for the season saw the Doctor helpless as the Toclafane arrive. But then when I tuned in next week my last bit of enthusiasm was well and truly dashed as I was cheated for the last time.