Happy new year

Here is the winner of our 2017 Calendar Doggy of the Year competition to wish you all a happy new 2018.

And a happy new year to you from all of us cats as well!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Part Three

Madame de Gaulle was said to have been lunching with the American ambassador at the time of her husband's retirement when she was asked what she was most looking forward to in the years ahead.

She thought for a moment before announcing boldly "a penis."

A startled hush fell over the table until the former president leant over and said "my dear, I think it's pronounced 'happiness'."

Fifi lives! She is covered in comedy bandages and being looked after by Mrs Thatcher, but Fifi is alive! I am happy about that, not least because I don't think it would be a good message for the BBC to send out to its viewers that they can solve their problems by blowing up the Prime Minister's pets.

Trevor comes to tell the Doctor that he is leaving Terra Alpha and shows him a long list of everybody Mrs Thatcher has had "disappeared" (killed), just in case we had forgotten how much of a baddy she is since watching part two.

The Doctor has a microphone and sings a song (in a French accent for no reason) and Earl plays the music to go with it. He has a plan and says

"Everything is beginning to fall into place."

The Happiness Patrol arrive and are about to shoot the Doctor, but he acts so happy that they get confused and don't shoot him. The demonstrators join in and the Happiness Patrol end up pointing their pewpewpew guns at each other because they're the only ones who aren't acting happy. This allows Ace and Susan Q (her friend, who is at long last named out loud for our benefit) to escape from them (again) (again) (again).

Mrs Thatcher and her husband Joseph C hear an announcement:

"Happiness will prevail. Chaos in Forum Square. Fighting has broken out in the ranks of the Happiness Patrol itself. Happiness will prevail."

This is the first of several things that we are not shown happening but are told have happened by way of Public Exposition Announcements.

Fifi goes to chase some more aliens in the pipes, despite how well that went for her in the last episode. Fifi is a silly doggy, but she is cute and cuddly.
The Doctor, Earl and Ace go in the pipes with the aliens and join in getting chased by Fifi. The Doctor and Earl play music to make the studio set fall on Fifi and so Fifi gets squashed and they all get away.

Next the Doctor and Ace visit the Kandyman (again, at least for the Doctor). They take it in turns to troll the Kandyman so he doesn't know which one he wants to kill first until he tosses a koin to help him decide.

"I'm finding this rather tiresome. Heads or tails, Doctor?"
"Tails. Well?"
"That would be telling."

Oh what a giveaway. I think that particular line of dialogue has let the manny out of the bag with regards to the writer's influences for this story. The Doctor and Ace use the Kandyman's own kitchen utensils and ovens (which are a Health & Safety nightmare, fortunately for them Mrs Thatcher's regime has no use for such Political Korrectness) against him until he runs away and escapes into the pipes. The aliens then get into the Kitchen and they turn the "fondant surprise" upon the Kandyman.

By now there is a full scale revolution against Mrs Thatcher going on off-screen, which we only get to hear about from the announcements. These always begin by saying "happiness will prevail" even though they go on to announce that things are going very badly for the strong and stable Happiness Patrol.

Mrs Thatcher tries to act as though nothing is wrong in front of her henchmannys, though secretly she is preparing an escape shuttle. Except in the next scene Gilbert M and Joseph C steal it and fly away in the shuttle without her.

To celebrate their victory, Earl plays his music over the loudspeakers. Mrs Thatcher hears it as she tries to run away, but the Doctor meets up with her (again) for them to have a final confrontation.

"You can't get away, Helen A."
"There's a scheduled flight in an hour. You can't stop me, Doctor."
"Oh I know I can't. But it's not me you're running away from."
"Who is it, then?"
"Yourself. That's why you'll never escape."
"They didn't understand me."
"Oh, they understood you only too well. That's why they resisted you."
"I only wanted the best for them."
"The best? Prisons? Death squads? Executions?"
"They only came later. I told them to be happy, but they wouldn't listen. I gave them every chance. Oh, I know they laughed sometimes, but they still cried, they still wept."
"Don't you ever feel like weeping, Helen A?"
"Of course not, Doctor. It's unnecessary. And those that persisted had to be punished."
"Why?"
"For the good of the majority. For the ones that wanted to be happy, who wanted to take the opportunities that I gave them."
"What were these opportunities you gave them? A bag of sweets? A few tawdry party games? Bland, soulless music? Do these things make you happy? Of course they don't. Because they're cosmetic. Happiness is nothing unless it exists side by side with sadness. Two sides, one coin."
"You can keep your coin, Doctor, and your sadness. I'll go somewhere else. I'll find somewhere where there is no sadness. A place where people know how to enjoy themselves. A place where people are strong, where they hold back the tears. A place where people pull themselves together."
"Where there is no compassion."
"Where there is control."
"A place where there is no love."
"I always thought love was overrated."

And then Mrs Thatcher... Oh, it seems she is not actually called Mrs Thatcher in this, she is called Helen A. I am a silly cat. I can't understand why I thought she was Mrs Thatcher.

And then Helen A sees Fifi, who goes

This makes Helen A sad. It makes me sad too. Poor Fifi, all she wanted to do was nom things.

With that the plot is all over, or as the Doctor says:

"'Tis done."

Ace paints the TARDIS blue again (although to be fair that is the first time we have seen it being painted blue in this story), and the final exchange is, of course:

"Will they be all right, Professor?"
"Happiness will prevail."

The Happiness Patrol is one of the most savage and scathing attacks against authoritarian governments ever seen in Doctor Who (and that means ever seen full stop), and so it remains as politically relevant today as it was in 1988.

The final confrontation between the Doctor and Helen A is the heart of the matter, in which the Doctor exposes her for what she really is: she does not want mannys to be happy, she wants them to act as though they are happy no matter what her government does. To keep any sadness on the inside. To keep quiet. To conform.

Like all tyrants who pretend to democracy, she claims she is acting "for the good of the majority" and therefore that means anyone who disagrees must be in the minority, and can be portrayed as a handful of remoaning killjoys out to sabotage "the will of the people" - which in turn justifies any actions to

The Doctor is the moral polar opposite of Helen A. He recognises that the appearance of happiness is not the same as real happiness, and that enforced conformity does not equal approval. He knows that the mannys of Terra Alpha are not free until they can choose for themselves whether to be happy or sad, whether to agree with Helen A or to oppose her, and in their confrontation he pushes her until she admits this too.

At the end of their dialogue it is revealed that Helen A knew this all the time, but still chose to do what she knew to be wrong, and then when she cries for Fifi - and by extension herself - it is because under the façade of happiness Theresam A was the most unhappy of them all.

In the end, happiness does prevail.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Part Two

After a recap of the final scene of part one where the Doctor and Earl Sigma are caught by the Kandyman, part two begins with Ace - once more a prisoner of the Happiness Patrol - who sees some black-clad mannys demonstrating against Mrs Thatcher and the Happiness Patrol. This is very brave because the Happiness Patrol are obviously going to kill them for being "killjoys."

The Doctor tricks the Kandyman into sticking himself to the floor so he can't kill them. Then the Doctor and Earl escape from the Kandyman into some pipes where they meet some aliens. At the same time, in a parallel plotline, the aliens are also helping Ace to escape from the Happiness Patrol (again). Then the Doctor meets Trevor Sigma (again) and trolls him (again). Aside from introducing the friendly aliens, this episode seems to be repeating itself a lot.

Mrs Thatcher decides to let her doggy Fifi go into the pipes to nom Ace and the aliens when she hears about the escape. Fifi chases Ace and an alien until they blow her up with some of Ace's Nitro Nine. Ace is, as usual, very quick to resort to explosives to solve a problem.

Trevor takes the Doctor to see Mrs Thatcher where he trolls her for a bit by pretending to be too important to answer any of her questions (such as who he is or whose side he is on), then he goes off to meet up with Earl again.

The way the Doctor moves from scene to scene, to meet with the required supporting characters in turn, makes the world of Terra Alpha feel very small - but deliberately so, as though attempting to make a plausibly realistic alien planet within the confines of a television studio was not even being attempted by the makers of this programme. Either that or all establishing shots of the Doctor travelling from place to place had to be ruthlessly edited out to make room for more scenes of Ace escaping from and being recaptured by the Happiness Patrol.

When Earl hears the Doctor is on his way back to the Kandy Kitchen, he says

"Not the Kandy Kitchen."

in a very similar way to

I think this may be a deliberate reference, as this era of Doctor Who is notorious for its many gratuitous callbacks to the earlier years of the show - another example of this here is the Doctor telling Trevor his name, or rather his "nickname," is "Theta Sigma", which is a reference to The Armageddon Factor from season 16.

Two Happiness Patrol mannys are waiting to shoot the demonstrators from the start of the episode, but the Doctor sneaks up on them and trolls them into throwing away their guns. This is another demonstration of the Doctor's moral philosophy, similar to the bit when he said

"Weapons: always useless in the end."

back in Remembrance of the Daleks Part Three. (Although, as in that story, this is somewhat undermined by how effective Ace's Nitro Nine continues to be.)

Mrs Thatcher wants to execute another prisoner, Ace's friend from earlier (whose name has still not been given on-screen), using the Kandyman's "fondant surprise" but the Kandyman is still stuck to the floor. The Doctor comes in and offers to release him if the Kandyman will stop the fondant surprise.

Ace tries to rescue her friend and ends up getting captured (again) (again) instead, but at least they don't get killed by the fondant surprise because the Doctor is successful. Trevor tells Mrs Thatcher that the rules say she has to use a different method to execute them next time, but this doesn't worry her too much as she has plenty. Mew and hiss, Mrs Thatcher is a pantomime baddy.

The Kandyman, who is no longer stuck to the floor, wants to kill the Doctor so the Doctor sticks him to the floor (again) and then leaves to find Ace. He meets up with Earl (again) and they see a poster of Ace, who is going to be appearing at "the Late Show at the Forum" - this is obviously going to be Mrs Thatcher's next attempt at executing her, although we will have to wait until next time to see it, as it is the end of the episode.

This episode contains a lot of repetition, and so feels like it is mostly padding. Escapes and recaptures, and revisiting earlier locations and characters, are so frequent (and so quickly reversed) that it is tempting to view this as deliberate commentary upon the padding often seen in the middle of a typical Doctor Who story.

While Ace has been continually moving from captive to escapee and back again ever since she parted company from the Doctor in part one, the Doctor has been more proactive in this episode - since (easily) escaping from the klutches of the Kandyman, he has been acting like a force of nature, sweeping into scenes with Trevor, Mrs Thatcher, the Happiness Patrol snipers, the Kandyman, even Earl, and taking them over effortlessly - none of them know how to deal with the Doctor because he does not fit into their view of how the world of Terra Alpha functions.

While many baddys (and some friends, for instance Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) have experienced this of the Doctor over the years, here it is particularly fitting because of the allegorical nature of The Happiness Patrol. Terra Alpha is like the Village, it stands for all that is worst in manny society, and all that is worth fighting against. The Doctor has fought against plenty of power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermannys, and the like before now. This time he is up against Mrs Thatcher.

Happiness will prevail!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Part One

Happiness will prevail!

The Happiness Patrol is the second story of season 25. It stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace. There is dramatic music right from the start, fading in as soon as the title music is over. We are in the dark streets of Studio 8 at the BBC Television Centre, where Silas P and the Happiness Patrol are already busy entrapping an unfortunate manny who gets shot by their pewpewpew guns only because she has a sad. This quickly and neatly establishes that the Happiness Patrol are the baddys in much the same way as we get to know the Federation are the baddys in the first episode of Blakes 7.

The TARDIS arrives, and the Doctor tells Ace (and us) he has already heard "disturbing rumours" about this place, called Terra Alpha. The Doctor tells Ace it is "an Earth colony, settled some centuries in your future." I should hope so, otherwise that means there are Earth colonies already. Get the tinfoil cathats everybody, it's conspiracy theory time!

They meet Trevor Sigma, "on official business from Galactic Centre," who asks them questions but refuses to answer theirs, so the Doctor can't help himself but troll Trevor into answering a question.

The Happiness Patrol paint the TARDIS pink and the Doctor likes it. The Doctor and Ace get arrested for not having the right badges, but for a change this is all part of the Doctor's plan which was to try and get arrested. (It is not clear if the Doctor had any further steps to his plan worked out but I suspect not.)

Speaking to another prisoner, they find out lots of other silly things that are illegal: wearing dark clothes, listening to slow music, reading poems (unless they're limericks), and "walking in the rain, if you're on your own and don't take an umbrella."

We see another manny getting executed by the Kandyman by being drowned in "fondant surprise", which is a very Shakespearean death reminiscent of Clarence's murder in Richard iii.

On the subject of the Kandyman - however did they get away with it at the time? Watching this now, it was surely a lawsuit waiting to happen? I mean, just look at this:

Mrs Thatcher, played by Sheila Hancock, is the main baddy in charge of Terra Alpha. She electrics the manny that the Doctor and Ace had been talking to, so he had obviously given them enough exposition to be going on with. Mrs Thatcher has a pet doggy, but it is not a cute doggy, it is a grumpy looking doggy because Mrs Thatcher is a baddy.

The Doctor and Ace escape on a very, very slow moving go-cart. It makes the buggy from Day of the Daleks look positively zippy by comparison. Ace allows herself to be recaptured by the Happiness Patrol so the Doctor can get away, and we don't see much of their chasing him because the Happiness Patrol would all have to run extra slowly so as to not catch up.

Ace meets a member of the Happiness Patrol who is not happy really, and she lets Ace get away. Sadly Ace then gets captured again in the very next scene she is in.

The Doctor meets Silas P from earlier but, before he can entrap the Doctor like he did the manny from the start of the episode, the Doctor is rescued by Earl Sigma. Then the Happiness Patrol arrive and shoot Silas P instead. They must have a quota.

The Doctor and Earl Sigma escape into the Kandy Kitchen where they are caught by the Kandyman and his henchmanny Gilbert. The Kandyman menaces them and that is the end of the episode.

The Kandyman is very kreepy, especially his googly eyes - he is a terrific parody of a kute kharakter, and on top of that his spelling is worse than a lolcatz!

The Happiness Patrol is obviously a very sophisticated story working on multiple levels, so it is difficult to pass judgement on part one in isolation. Since there are only three parts it has to get a move on - the world building is done quickly and broadly, and even though entire characters exist solely to give exposition to the Doctor and then get killed off to show (or to reinforce what has already been established) how evil the baddys are, it nevertheless manages to achieve both a memorably distinctive visual style and a politically charged message at the same time.

Doctor Who Night 2017: Hammer Time

Doctor Who's 13th season (1975-6) was influenced a lot by the iconography of the Hammer Horror films, which began in the 1950s and were still in production at that time. This gave us our theme for this year's Doctor Who Night, as we watched two classic stories that very obviously draw inspiration (putting it mildly) from Hammer.

Pyramids of Mars sees Tom Baker at the height of his powers as the Doctor, with one of the most definitive portrayals of the character - simultaneously an alien and an exemplar of mannykind, as he battles against the forces of Sutekh.

Sutekh is one of the most powerful and evil baddys the Doctor has ever faced, with a memorable appearance and even more memorable voice - which he needs, because he doesn't actually do very much besides talk. Instead his actions are carried out by his minions, who are all themed around manny mummys from Egypt, as drawn from the Hammer Mummy film series.

It is a very serious story for the most part, with the fate of the Earth and maybe the entire universe at stake if Sutekh wins, but there is still time for some humorous moments such as this bit where the Doctor and Sarah go "Nonononononope!"

The second story we watched was The Brain of Morbius, which is not nearly as Spock's Brain as it sounds. The Doctor doesn't have to search the galaxy for Morbius's brain, it's there in that jar.

This is the story from which the Morbius Doctors Theory comes, as I have written about in the past. But there is a lot more to the story than just that one (in)famous scene - after all, it doesn't even involve the best baddy character in the story, who is not the monster Morbius but his creator, the monster Solon.

Solon, played by Philip Madoc in his second-best appearance in Doctor Who (after The War Games), is a mad scientist blatantly based on Frankenstein. He has a henchmanny called Condo and he makes Morbius a new body out of spare parts to put his brain in. As the old saying goes:

What do politicians make of The Prisoner?

Now that we are 50 years on from the first broadcast of The Prisoner, it is a reasonable assumption that some, if not all, of the mannys who are today politicians with jobs like Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, and Guest Presenter of Have I Got News For You, will have at some point in their lives have watched The Prisoner on TV.

I wonder what they make of it, and in particular the episode Free For All - relating as it does to the matter of manny elections that are the means by which some politicians get their jobs in the first place.

Do Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbyn both see it as a metaphor for the struggle over control of the Labour Party, just from very different points of view?

Does Theresa May secretly sympathise with Number Six, but can't say so in public for fear of getting replaced by a new Number Two in time for the next episode?

Has Michael Gove had enough of my posts about The Prisoner and wants me to post more Blakes 7 fanfiction instead?

And does Boris Johnson think that if we destroy the 17 episodes of The Prisoner then we can have 17 episodes of Patrick Troughton-era Doctor Who back?

If you are a politician, please let me know what you think of Free For All - and The Prisoner TV series as a whole - in the comments.
Unless you're Nigel Farage, in which case you can fuck off.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Remembrance Day of the Daleks Part Four

The cliffhanger, such as it was, didn't leave any of our heroes in immediate peril, so we can get straight on to...

Dalek v Dalek action!

That's what we want to see! A pity, then, that these scenes are so static, with the Renegades and the Imperial Daleks just sitting there and shooting at each other from only a few feet away, a bit like a scene from Police Squad!

Daleks have never been the most dynamic of monsters, but the lack of motion here is so much more noticeable when we see Daleks on both sides of the fighting.

The Imperial Daleks are losing at first, but then they get the "Special Weapons Dalek" to come and help them - it has an even bigger pewpewpew gun, and blows up two Renegade Daleks with one single pew.

Mike runs to Mr Ratcliffe's base and gets captured by the Renegade Daleks who are there. The little manny has managed to get their Time Controller working again, so they are about to exterminate Mike and Mr Ratcliffe before leaving with the Hand of Omega when the Imperial Daleks attack the base.

This acts as a distraction allowing Mr Ratcliffe to steal the Time Controller and run away, but then the little manny turns out to have Evil Emperor-style lightning powers... somehow... and she electrics Mr Ratcliffe. Mike takes the Time Controller and runs away, pursued by the little manny.

The Doctor and Ace see Mike has the Time Controller and the Doctor tells Ace to follow Mike. By now all the Renegade Daleks' base are belong to the Imperial Daleks, so they take the Hand of Omega coffin back to their shuttle and fly away.

The Doctor repurposes the borked Dalek teleporter to turn it into a TV that he can use to speak to the Imperial Daleks in their spaceship. He sees the Dalek Emperor on TV, and then it opens up to reveal...

Davros!

I do like the way the Emperor's voice changes from Dalek to Davros before we see him. We are now poised for a classic confrontation scene between the Doctor and Davros, the dramatic climax of the whole story. But first there is a short cut to where Mike has a gun and captures Ace.

Davros looks and sounds so silly on the Doctor's TV set, in crackly black and white, but yet strangely menacing at the same time. This is an effective conclusion for the story arc of Group Captain Gilmore, Professor Jensen and Allison, who are present to witness the confrontation. They know the Doctor is an alien, and have wondered if they can trust him, but now they see in Davros what a genuinely alien alien is like and so the Doctor seems benign by comparison.

Davros looks scary, but the Doctor is not scared. He provokes Davros into threatening to use the Hand of Omega at once. Then the Doctor pretends to be afraid of this and so Davros immediately switches to gloating before ordering

"Activate the Omega device!"

The Hand of Omega does not do what Davros wants it to, and instead it blows up Skaro (unless you believe the events of the novel Retcon of the Daleks, which you shouldn't because it is one of the worst books known to cats). In terms of characterisation, this scene is a highlight of the story - the Doctor knows Davros is a megalomaniac and so psychologically manipulates him into using the Hand of Omega prematurely, defeating the baddy using words alone.

Davros, too late, realises he has been tricked by the Doctor and as soon as the Doctor switches off his TV set, Davros abandons the bridge of his spaceship to get to an escape pod, which you can just make out leaving the spaceship model before the Hand of Omega comes back to blow it up as well.

The little manny comes and electrics Mike who goes

and then she tries to electric Ace. The only Dalek left now is the Black Dalek, leader of the Renegades. The Doctor comes and talks it to death, which is inevitably an anticlimax after he has already dealt with Davros.

The Black Dalek vanishing frees the little manny from its control, illustrated very nicely by the scene transition from the disappearing Dalek to the screaming manny, both spinning around out of control. This bit makes no sense, but does look cool - which basically sums up most of the problems with Remembrance Day of the Daleks right there.

Remembrance of the Daleks is a flawed classic. It was once voted the sixth best Doctor Who story of all time (Doctor Who Magazine #265, June 1998), and while I wouldn't go that far (that same poll put Timelash 157th, and that's over 150 places too low, mew!) I would say it is one of the most cinematic Doctor Who stories of all time, in both positive and negative senses of the word.

It looks great. Not only the Daleks themselves, which have always been Doctor Who's most iconic monster for good reason, but all of the SFX from the spaceship in the pre-credits sequence through to the Black Dalek's technicolour demise, not to mention the fact they got in a genuine Time Controller for the Renegade Daleks to use! These all add up to make this story one of the most visually memorable of all Doctor Who stories.

But looks aren't everything and so there was a tendency, as I have noted, for things to be included just because they looked cool, even if they didn't make sense or, at the most charitable reading, weren't fully explained to us. The plot then exists as a device to link one "cinematic" set piece scene to the next, and so on. In those terms it is very successful, but the result is that Remembrance of the Daleks is left as the Doctor Who equivalent of a superficial Hollywood blockbuster action movie, rather than working as something deeper like, for example, Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan (my best evar film).

The Doctor's character has also continued in the questionable direction it started taking in Dragonfire, particularly with regards to his relationship towards Ace. I don't mind the attempt to make him seem more mysterious, to put a distance between him and us the viewers, but what I do mind is the muddying of his morality - the Doctor should, must, always be a goody, and Doctor Who ceases to be Doctor Who when that fails to be the case. It is a fine line and I think they manage to just about stay on the right side of it in this story, but we are seeing the beginnings of a path that leads inexorably to times in the New Series when they have crossed it.

By setting his trap for the Daleks on Earth, it is arguably the Doctor's fault that so many mannys are placed in danger of being exterminated. But the Doctor does spend a lot of the story trying to keep as many of them safe as he can, which seems to me like a step back in the right direction compared to his characterisation in Dragonfire.

And then there is the retrofitting of the reason the Doctor was on Earth in 1963 in An Unearthly Child, apparently to give the Hand of Omega a decent burial. This is another aspect to the plot that doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it - or at the very least it raises more questions than it answers - the Doctor certainly cannot have been planning to use it as a trap for the Daleks back then, as he hadn't even met them yet. But it works in a superficial way because it ties the story to the origins of Doctor Who, and feels right because it is marking the TV show's 25th anniversary.

Why do mannys think the 25th anniversary is special anyway? Is it because 25 is half of 50, which itself is half of 100, which is special because it is the biggest, longest number known to today's cat science? That would mean that half of 25 must also be a special anniversary, but what is that in Doctor Who terms?

I have consulted with a leading cat Professor of my acquaintance, and he says the answer is that it would be the 12½th anniversary (oh noes, this means we need fractions). The first half of season 12 consists of Robot, The Ark in Space and The Sontaran Experiment, and the second half (less stories but the same total number of episodes) is Revenge of the Cybermannys and... Genesis of the Daleks!

Appropriately enough, Remembrance of the Daleks is not only in the 25th anniversary of Doctor Who and the Daleks, it is also in the 12½th anniversary of the first appearance of Davros.