Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space Episode Four

The Doctor, Liz and the Brigadier are working out what is going on, with the Brigadier asking the questions so that the other two can answer them, for our benefit as well as his. The Doctor thinks at the factory they are building a body to house the "collective intelligence" contained in the energy units.

Now that the dummy General Scobie has taken over, he is on the side of the Autons and orders the Brigadier not to go to the factory. When the Doctor hears that the factory was making a dummy of the general for the Madame Tussauds museum (which wasn't a secret, apparently), he takes Liz straight there to visit (any excuse, eh, lazy Doctor?) and, when he examines the brand new dummy of General Scobie he realises it is actually the real one!

Channing then gets the dummy General Scobie (the dummy one... I know, but I need some way to tell the real dummy from the dummy dummy, don't I? Mew) to go to UNIT and seize the unit.

The Doctor and Liz are still sneaking around the museum when it is closed, dark and empty. Channing and George Hibbert come in and many of the dummys come to life. It's lucky that George was there to ask Channing things about their plan, since it allows the Doctor and Liz to overhear them.

Channing leaves but then George sees the Doctor, who tries to undo the hypno-eyesing.

"Channing is controlling your mind, you must resist him. Channing is your enemy. The enemy of the entire human race!"

Channing comes back and George doesn't give the Doctor and Liz away, so we know he has partly resisted.

Back at the factory, in the control room, Channing has made a big box with lots of dials on it, and he puts the unit near it. At the UNIT laboratory, the Doctor is also making something, but we don't know what it is yet.



There then follows the iconic scene where the Autons in the shop window come to life with a sound effect and break out of the window (off-screen). A policemanny runs to investigate, and gets pewpewpewed, and so do a few other mannys including the manny on a bike wearing a silly hat.

This is the turning point of the story, as the Autons are no longer acting secretly, they are ready to put their full plan into operation. Somebody telephones the Brigadier to tell him what's happening.

"It's started, hasn't it?"

asks the Doctor, portentously. He knows a good dramatic thing when he sees it.

The Doctor knows they can't wait any longer, so he persuades the Brigadier to attack the factory with whatever UNIT mannys he has to paw. Just like the Doctor earlier, the Brigadier doesn't take much persuading.

Thanks to the Doctor, George is overcoming Channing's hypno-eyes, and he attacks the box in the control room with a stick until Channing comes in and catches him. George asks Channing

"Who are you? What are you?"
"We are the Nestene."
"Nestene?"
"We have been colonising other planets for a thousand million years. Now we have come to colonise Earth."

Some great exposition here, and played totally straight by the two actors. George is horrified, then Channing gets an Auton to pewpewpew him.

UNIT arrives at the factory but the dummy General Scobie (the dummy one) is waiting. The Doctor uses the machine he has made to turn off the dummy general.

"You've killed him!"
"I don't think so. You see, he was never really alive."

He takes off the general's face to reveal the Auton underneath.

Insert Scobie-Doo reference here.

In the museum, the dummy General Scobie (the real one) comes back to life and looks confused.

The Brigadier teams up with the soldiers that the dummy General Scobie (the dummy one) was commanding in time for a proper fight scene - guns, stunts, everything the Brigadier could possibly have wished for, while at the same time the Doctor and Liz sneak around the factory using the machine on the Autons, deactivating them one by one until they reach the control room.

 'He's behind me, isn't he?'

Liz hides while the Doctor goes in to confront Channing. Channing responds by turning the big dial on the box up to maximum and then he recalls. The Doctor tries to use his machine but it doesn't work. Liz tries to fix it while the Doctor gets grabbed by some naughty tentacles. This is Cthulhu's favourite bit.

The Doctor tries to fight it with some Venusian Gurning, but it is not until Liz manages to repair the machine that it blows up the box. All the Autons, including Channing, go

Back at the UNIT laboratory, the Doctor and the Brigadier "discuss terms" for if the Doctor is to W-word for UNIT. Oh noes, the Doctor doing the W-word! He's clearly no cat. Not yet.

The Doctor wants a car (not a cat, but such similar words maybe he just got them mixed up and only found out his mistaik later), and in return the Brigadier wants to know his name. The Doctor tells him it is

"Smith. Doctor John Smith."

and he smiles. Not such a big secret after all, eh Steven Moffat?

What's so good about Spearhead from Space?

Spearhead from Space is a great introductory story for Jon Pertwee as the Doctor and the establishment of the UNIT era. Indeed Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is the main Companion - practically the main character - for much of the story, perhaps because we have met him before (during the Patrick Troughton era) while Liz is new.

As a story in its own right, it is well-paced, ever escalating towards an iconic climax in episode four, when we get one of the most famous scenes in all of Doctor Who to pay it off - so good that Russell "The" Davies would later lift it completely for his first episode Rose.

Speaking of lifts, Robert Holmes was blatantly inspired by the 1955 BBC TV series Quatermass ii (he must have thought he could get away with it after 15 years and no DVD release), with several aspects of Spearhead from Space coming from it - most obviously the shape and purpose of the meteorites/energy units, but also in a key location being a factory under the control of the aliens, and the hypno-eyesing of mannys to make them go along with the aliens' plans. But Holmes makes these elements fit as part of a new plot (albeit still in the 'alien-invasion-by-stealth' sub-genre) and why not? He's stealing from the best after all.

There's also something to be said about the way that this story was made entirely on film, which lends it a 'cinematic' quality and an extra level of credibility that many of the studio-bound (or a mix of studio and film) stories lack. This is helped by the fact that the SFX throughout are impressive (by Doctor Who standards) and fit the story perfectly, which would probably have still been true even on videotape.

All in all, we're off to a great start to the season and the era, but I happen to know that the next story will be even better...

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space Episode Three

The dummy has a pewpewpew gun inside its hand, but John Ransome sensibly runs away before he can get pewpewpewed. The dummy gives chase, but has to stop to avoid being seen by General Scobie and George Hibbert.

Mr. Reeder gives the dummy a look as if to say 'just what do you think you're doing?'

and in response the dummy hangs its head in shame like a doggy that has been caught being naughty.

As he says goodbye to them, General Scobie calls Mr. Reeder "Mr Channing" so he is not Mr. Reeder after all! This explains a lot, although I did like the idea of a crossover episode between the two series so it is a shame that this hasn't happened.

Channing saw John escape, and tells George he is going to "send an Auton" to kill him. John runs straight to UNIT and babbles about what he saw like he's been in a Call of Cthulhu adventure. I'm not surprised when Cthulhu says he likes this story.

The Doctor says he needs "a lateral molecular rectifier" from the TARDIS, and Liz doesn't believe he has "an entire laboratory" in there. He explains about how the TARDIS is "dimensionally transcendental" and, while Liz doesn't fully believe everything he says, she does come round to believe that he needs equipment from the TARDIS and so agrees to get the key from the Brigadier.

Sam Seeley comes to UNIT to try and sell them a "thunderball," but it is quickly clear that he is in no position to bargain with them as during the UNIT era the rights were in dispute between Eon Productions and Kevin McClory.

John tells his story to the Brigadier and, while he is distracted with that, Liz manages to sneak off with the TARDIS key. It doesn't take the Brigadier long to notice it gone, and he enters the laboratory just as the Doctor goes into the TARDIS. They hear the TARDIS try to dematerialise, but it can't, and then there is the sound of a clap of thunder, as though the Doctor was trying to watch an episode of The Prisoner in there.

He comes out looking a bit sheepish and says "just testing." Liz is annoyed.

"Doctor, you tricked me!"

"Yes, the temptation was too strong, my dear. It's just that I couldn't bear the thought of being tied to one planet and one time. I'm sorry, it won't happen again."

The Brigadier brings them to talk to John, and he tells them about Channing and his hypno-eyesing of George.

Mrs Seeley's curiosity has finally gotten the better of her, and she opens Sam's secret (but not all that secret) box. As soon as she does so the Auton can detect the energy unit again. Channing and George are following its progress back at the control room, with Channing's link to the Auton conveyed to us by the unusual directorial touch of an extreme close up of his face.

The Brigadier, the Doctor, Liz and John arrive where the soldiers and Sam are, so the whole adventuring party is finally assembled in one place, but then they immediately split up by leaving Sam and John behind as the others go to get the unit from Sam's house.

Mrs Seeley hears a doggy barking as she puts the box away again, then there are noises of things being smashed so she gets worried. When she sees it is an Auton, her first response is to run to get a gun. Maybe she is the Player Character, not Sam?

She shoots the Auton, but this doesn't stop it (as all veteran Call of Cthulhu players know). After going to another close up of Channing and George, it cuts back to show Mrs Seeley having sleeps (tired out from all the excitement, no doubt) as the Auton proceeds to smash the house up while searching for the unit.

The Brigadier knocks on the door just as the Auton finds the shed with the box in it. He immediately starts shooting the Auton and calls for reinforcements (but then we already knew that he was a veteran player of the game), so Channing tells the Auton to "recall" i.e. run away.

High Burden is excellent as Channing - despite having no obvious monster make-up to differentiate him from other mannys, he has gradually revealed his alien nature over the course of the episodes purely through his acting.

John is sitting quietly in a UNIT tent when suddenly an Auton comes in and pewpewpews him. Channing orders "total destruction" so John's body vanishes into some smoke. John may be gone but his testimony is what leads the Doctor and UNIT to the factory.

George speaks to them while Channing acts weird. George has a cover story that John was lying to get the factory in trouble with UNIT but, as convincing as he is, unfortunately for him the Brigadier recognised Channing. He wants to get General Scobie's permission to do a legitimate raid on the factory, one with guns and stunts and everything.

General Scobie is on the telephone with the Brigadier, promising he'll "give you all the support you'll need" when there is a knock at the door.

He opens the door and it is himself, or rather his dummy - exactly like him in every detail except for it wearing a hat. Cliffhanger!

It seems there were two generals in this story after all - and both of them General Scobie!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space Episode Two

Sometimes cliffhangers cheat, and here when it recaps the last few seconds of episode one the soldier shouts

"Stop firing you fool!"

instead of

"Who told you to fire, you stupid..."

so that we can keep Doctor Who as a kitten-friendly, family TV show. The trigger-happy soldier asks "is he dead, sir?" because he wants the experience points, and then the scene hard cuts to the hopistal where the Brigadier has clearly just asked the doctor (not the Doctor... oh let's not go through all that again) the same question.

The Doctor is unconscious so the Brigadier takes his key under Finders Keepers rules. He then turns his attention to the "meteorites" as UNIT has found a piece of one and is keeping it in a box. They have a photograph of Mr. Reeder (or it may be a screenshot taken from episode one, I don't know - if so they only have a black-and-white television set, lol).

Cut to a factory, where lots of mannys are hard at W-word making dolls. There are bits of dismembered dolls everywhere, including lots of severed heads and limbs - this is real body-horror stuff, so much for "a kitten-friendly, family TV show." I'm surprised this got away with a PG rating to be quite honest with you.

One manny, John Ransome, is wandering about looking confused. Mr. Reeder watches him while looking sinister. If we didn't know that this is just his way we might have thought that he was a baddy.

John has an interview with George Hibbert, which thematically mirrors Liz's interview with the Brigadier in the previous episode, and it allows us to get the exposition while they tell each other things they already know.

"What's happened to this place? Most of the staff gone, and security notices everywhere?"
"We're developing a new process, it's all very secret. We've, er, changed everything."
"I'll say you have. The whole layout of the factory floor is different. And my workshop, what's in there now?"
"Stay away from there John."

George looks shifty, and he tries to warn John.

"I don't think you should have come here, John. You must go away at once. It's not safe."

But then Mr. Reeder comes in. He has obviously hypno-eyesed George because he suddenly acts all hypno-eyesed and tells John to go away. John leaves, and Mr. Reeder makes sure that he goes.

Back at UNIT, the Brigadier has obviously run out of things to do since he's bored and is bothering Liz while she is doing science in her makeshift laboratory.

"I deal with facts, not science-fiction ideas."

says Liz, a line which is quite meta. As is her mocking the Brigadier's description of the Doctor

"An alien who travels through time and space in a police box? LOL!"

Mr. Reeder is hypno-eyesing George again, this time into talking exposition with him.

"You talk about these energy units as though they were living things."
"All energy is a form of life."

They have lost two "energy units" (i.e. the "meteorites") and need to wait for their signals to get stronger before they can find them.

Sam Seeley has one of them in his sack, which he is now keeping in a box in his shed. When he opens the box to look at it, it sends out a beeping signal that is received by a dummy.

Mrs Seeley is curious about what Sam is up to, but he hides the unit (not UNIT. Oh noes, here we go again) from her. She knows he is concealing something, but not what - she probably thinks it is just some old-fashioned pornography, lol. When Sam closes the box the dummy becomes confused, because it can't tell if the unit is alive or ded.

The Brigadier and Liz meet General Scobie, who immediately patronises Liz to help make the Brigadier seem more sympathetic in comparison. When the general notices the TARDIS in the corner of the room, Liz takes the opportunity to troll him.

"Camouflage, general. It's not really a police box, it's a spaceship ROFL."

The Doctor, meanwhile, is is trying to escape from the hopistal. I can't blame him, I went to a hopistal once and I would have liked to escape from it as soon as possible. He steals some clothes and we can see the Doctor has somehow regenerated into having a tattoo already in place.

The Doctor steals a fancy car and drives away. By the next scene the Brigadier has obviously been informed of his escape because he knows about it and says that the Doctor "won't get very far." Is he a baddy?
No, he's only saying it because he has the TARDIS and knows the Doctor won't want to leave it behind.

UNIT mannys dig up an energy unit which is already glowing and beeping. This summons the dummy, which makes the UNIT jeep crash so that it can steal the box with the unit.

Mr. Reeder and George have a control room with lots of computers and some more dummys standing by. They are waiting on a visit from General Scobie, which helps keep the number of characters down because there is no point in having two generals in the same story.

The Doctor drives straight up to UNIT and demands to see Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The manny he speaks to, who is played by Producer Derrick Sherwin, makes a series of komedy faces, really overplaying his small part. I suppose it's good to be the boss.

The Doctor was able to find UNIT because he has a TARDIS homing device built into his watch. It beeps in a manner not entirely dissimilar to the way the units beep to allow the dummys to find them. The Doctor then does a bit of business about "the planet Delphon, where they communicate with their eyebrows."
Mr Sherwin take note - this is how you do a komedy face:

As soon as he is introduced to Liz they start talking science and she quickly draws him into the mystery of the plastic of the units (I think that phrase sounds like it could have been an alternative title for this story). The Doctor agrees with the Brigadier that he will help them on the promise that the Brigadier will "possibly" return the TARDIS key - he didn't bargain very hard, because really he wants to help them.

It doesn't take the Doctor long to reach some conclusions about what must have happened to the rest of the units.

"Then the answer to your question is obvious, isn't it? By the time your search party arrived, the rest of these things had been collected. Collected and taken somewhere. The question is: where?"

John Ransome, having returned to the factory, is busy doing some investigating of his own. Mr. Reeder and George Hibbert are making a dummy of General Scobie, and he is happy to help them with this - the general has no reason to suspect anything bad is going on, after all, Mr. Reeder works for Sir Jason! But I, at least, am beginning to think there is something up with Mr. Reeder, and it seems that John agrees with me.

John breaks into the control room. He sees one of the dummys move and he makes a face - cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space Episode One

Spearhead from Space is a four-episode story from season seven of Doctor Who, first broadcast in 1970. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Caroline John as Liz Shaw, and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

It is a notable story for several reasons, being Jon Pertwee's first in which he plays the Doctor, as well as the beginning of the UNIT era, where the Doctor is stranded on Earth and unable to use the TARDIS to have adventures in time and space (except when he is). It also introduces us to a new monster, a particularly scary one that the Doctor has not encountered before but which he will be forced to face again.

It starts with an establishing shot in space, where we see the Earth. Some mannys with a radar detect objects coming towards the Earth.

"They must be meteorites."

says one. Just wait until UNIT hears about this, they won't be so blasé about potential incoming threats. Oh hang on - they are UNIT!

Sam Seeley sees the "meteorites" land and makes a face. He finds where one has been buried off-screen, perhaps by a doggy mistaiking it for noms. It is glowing and making a humming sound, which causes him to make another face.

Meanwhile the UNIT mannys are convinced they must be meteorites and that there is nothing to worry about. They really do need the Doctor's help, don't they? Speaking of the Doctor - the TARDIS appears and the Doctor falls out of it.

Liz Shaw arrives somewhere in a car with the incidental music sounding like it is from some late 1960s telefantasy series. She must think she's on her way to interview for Department S, or to be John Steed's new companion. It's actually only an interview with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who explains to her (and, by proxy, us viewers at home) what UNIT is about.

"We deal with the odd, the unexplained. Anything on Earth... or even beyond."

Liz is sceptical, until they begin talking about the "meteorites" and the Brigadier gives Liz the exposition about how another group already landed in the same place. This is enough to get Liz (and us) intrigued.

"Why is Earth any more likely to be attacked now than during the last 50,000 years?"

"In the last decade we've been sending probes deeper and deeper into space. We've drawn attention to ourselves, Miss Shaw."

The Brigadier then gives further backstory about UNIT, and just when he starts telling her about the Doctor, he gets a telephone call about how a mysterious manny and his police box has been found and taken to a hopistal.

The doctor at the hopistal (who is not the Doctor) is confused by the Doctor (who is the Doctor) having two hearts. He talks to another doctor (who is also not the Doctor) who has been confused by the Doctor (the Doctor)'s blood not being manny blood.

The doctor (not the Doctor) explains very carefully the situation to the other doctor (also not the Doctor) over the telephone so that he can be overheard by another manny, who has a HOOVER! Oh noes!

He's obviously a baddy if he's in league with Hoover.

The manny makes a telephone call of his own, trying to sell the story to "the Daily Chronicle." We then cut to Sam Seeley, who digs up the glowing "meteorite" and puts it in a sack, and by the time we cut back to the hopistal to see the Brigadier and Liz arrive, the press are already there and waiting to annoy the fuck out of them.

"Is it true there's a man from space in there?"

"Nonsense. I don't know where you get these stories."

"We heard there's something odd about him."

"I know nothing about a man from space."

"Then why are you here, sir?"

The Brigadier then gives a perfectly timed pause before answering

"Training exercise."

Nicholas Courtney puts across a convincing level of authority here in this scene.

Mr. J. G. Reeder (Hugh Burden) stands at the back of the scene to watch the confrontation between the journalists and the Brigadier and he carefully notes their questions and his non-answers, presumably so that he can report back to Sir Jason later. Like the journalists, he is led to the false conclusion that the Doctor "found one of those meteorites and won't tell them where it is."

The Brigadier and Liz meet with the doctor (not the Doctor) and ask him about the Doctor (the Doctor), but then the Brigadier doesn't recognise the Doctor (the Doctor) when he sees him - because the last time the Brigadier saw the Doctor he was being played by Patrick Troughton.

The Doctor wakes up and recognises the Brigadier straight away. His first words are

"Lethbridge-Stewart? My dear fellow, how nice to see you again."

But his changed appearance means that the Brigadier can't trust him for now. The Doctor pretends to have sleeps so the Brigadier and Liz go away. He gets his shoes where there's a key hidden, but before he can enact any more of his plan two mannys come in and kittennap him.

They put him in a wheelchair and wheel him out of the hopistal where they meet up with Mr. Reeder, but before they can put him into Mr. Reeder's van the Doctor wheels himself away in an escape attempt. Mr. Reeder gives chase in his van and so the UNIT soldiers think he must be a baddy and start shooting at him.

One particularly trigger-happy soldier shoots at the Doctor, but when they run up to the wheelchair they find he has escaped off-screen between shots (although for a moment there I though he had regenerated into that pillow). The soldier shoots again, and the Doctor falls over. Another soldier says

"Who told you to fire, you stupid..."

and the episode ends just in time to cut off his saying "...fucking cunt?"

The West Wing

20 years old, and yet at the same time from a thousand years ago, the first season has a quip-quip-quip aspect that makes some scenes feel like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (same era), and there are komedy moments that a Doctor Who DVD extra would be embarrassed by. Martin Sheen has the skill to sell the komedy in a way that most of the other regulars can't - Rob Lowe makes me cringe when he tries, Bradley Whitford is on another level of smug, and Allison Janney isn't nearly as funny as the show wants us to think she is. There's also a level of sentimentality that makes a lot of it feel very... soap opera-y... and the music (including the Hoff Bless America title sequence) only adds to this.

But when it's at its best the political drama is exceptional, and this makes the series highly watchable. If anyone knows of a British series that's as good as this, I'd like to know about it - House of Cards wasn't long enough, and other than that I think you have to look at comedies Yes Minister and The Thick of It to see our political system dramatised half as well.

The second season is a step up from the first in terms of quality, especially the run of six-or-seven at the end of the season with the 'arc' plotline of the President's illness gradually being revealed to the other regulars and then to the public, and is up there with some of the best TV drama evar.
Oliver Platt makes several guest appearances in which he steals every scene he's in, but it is Martin Sheen who absolutely nails the season finale - the season cliffhanger is him doing his best Avon impression as he faces scandal and imminent impeachment... and he smiles. Purr.

Then, by season three, we're past the sea-change in the world that was the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, and you can sense this series move from the old world order to the new, as the terrorist threats to the President and our all-American heroes shift from the right-wing gun-nut racist survivalist types who want to kill Charlie for being black, to the Islamic fundamentalists who want to kill every American because they... well, they just hate freedom and democracy over there, what other reasons could they possibly have? Mew.

From a distance of over 15 years (and from a much worse reality than the series exists in) the writing of the show reveals a lot about the American mindset of the era - "America First" is hardly something new, as all the main characters treat the lives of Americans as simply being worth more than those of anyone from another country. Where would the rest of the world be if it weren't for the Good Old USA coming to sort everything out for them? Never mind the attitudes towards the Chinese, the Arabs, the Koreans or the Russians, the French get mocked for being cowards to the extent that it is practically a running gag. And this is by the ultra-liberal (by USA standards) good guys! The only regular British character is a stereotypical drunken, womanising lord, and there aren't any cats!

There remains some excellent dramatic episodes of television, though the highs of the tail end of season two seem gone for good throughout seasons three through five. But at least most of the cast seem better at the komedy bits now - Rob Lowe gets sidelined before leaving the cast altogether during season four, and the exception is Allison Janney who is badly in need of more dramatic plots (which she would finally get in season six) to play to her strengths.

The guest cast also continues to be impressive - John Goodman is in a few episodes as the Acting-President who steps in during a crisis, though it is his doggy who steals the scenes. Gary Cole is good as the replacement Vice President, walking the line between smarter-than-he-seems and just aware of his limitations. Matthew Perry (one of the overhyped "Friends") even puts in a good, and completely straight, turn as a White House lawyer.

The producers seem unafraid of shaking up the core cast from time to time - Rob Lowe's departure was the first of these. It's not exactly The Sandbaggers, but it helps give the series a bit of an edge beyond plot-of-the-week. Then as the show moves into its sixth season, there's an earthquake in the cast dynamic, as well as the introduction of new characters, making things fresh again just when it was needed.

Season six also brings us the Israel-Palestine-peace plot, which may very well be hopelessly naive and wishy-washy, but makes for some very good hours of TV drama. Seeing President Bartlet (or President Barkbork as the doggys have taken to calling him) go against the demands of the military, both political parties, 80% of the American public (so we're told) and most of his own staff in order to do what he knows is right... it's uplifting stuff. The world of The West Wing may not be an intrinsically better one than ours, but there are better people in charge of it. (Americans, obviously.)

The latter part of the season gets into topical territory as the parties choose their candidates for the next presidential election. Alan "Hawkeye" Alda is introduced as the moderate Republican who gets their nomination - this makes peace in the Middle-East look realistic by comparison - and becomes the sort-of 'end boss' for the series by being a credible threat to the Democrats.

Facing him is the Obamaesque Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits, with Whitford's Josh Lyman leaving the White House to help him get elected. Whitford gets just a bit less smug with each passing season, but never quite escapes it completely. His role changing is just one of several, with almost every main character having to adjust to the new dynamic set off by Leo's heart attack and the President's increasing physical frailty - shots in the arm the series very much needed and almost a return to the highest highs of season two.

The final season is overshadowed by the real-world death of actor John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry. I don't know how much this changed their plans for the season, but it seems to me that Leo's death was an essential component of the story and would probably have happened anyway - though not in exactly the same way. This is because the main arc of the season is the presidential election, eventually won by good-guy Matt Santos with his campaign having been run by main character Josh Lyman. In winning the election for the Democrats, Josh finally steps out from the shadow of his long-term mentor and father-figure Leo (who was to President Barkbork what Josh is now to Santos). Leo's death at the very hour of triumph is thus symbolic of the old giving way to the new, and a far more powerful symbol in a TV drama than the final episode where Barkbork surrenders the reins of power to President Santos.

The choice of Alan Alda's character Senator Arnold Vinick is inspired as the Republican presidential candidate, as in the world of The West Wing only a moderate Republican can be a suitable final opponent for our Democrat heroes - we had already seen them soundly defeat a more traditional (George W Bush-inspired) Republican in the previous election back in season four. The return of Bruno Gianelli (Ron Silver, a magnetic presence on screen) to run Vinick's campaign against Santos, when we had already seen how effective an operator he is - he was instrumental in helping Barkbork win his landslide victory when on 'our' side - only raised Vinick's credibility as a threat even further.

If seasons six and seven are a great introduction to Santos and 'the Santos administration' that the show could, had they wanted, have run with for further seasons, it is much less so as a farewell to the outgoing Barkbork administration - you know, the one that contains most of the main characters we've been following for the past seven years (their time, and only our time if watching at broadcast speed). The main arc for the final season is the one about the leaking of the secret military space shuttle, and it is poor for two reasons. First is that it is thematically little more than a re-run of the President's MS-disclosure and investigation from season three, basically going over old ground. We got an encore from Oliver Platt, so at least some good came of that.

Second is that they seem to have changed their minds about who did it between seasons six and seven - at first it is made clear to us that C.J. is the leaker - the episode in question closes on a slow pan around her as she is alone in a room wrestling with emotions - a clear televisual signalling of her guilt. Then in season seven Toby confesses to the crime, and seems ready to accept several years in prison for something he didn't do in order to stop the investigation from reaching the other characters and potentially damaging the presidential campaign. But by the end of the season it seems as though he is supposed to actually have done it - why else would the President be so hesitant about pardoning him? Barkbork is a clever manny - if Toby was covering for someone else, Barkbork should have figured that out sooner or later. I can only conclude that either it was to try to inject some small amount of peril into what is otherwise a bittersweet tea-and-medals final episode, or else Richard Schiff (who played Toby) must have at some point annoyed the writers.

The West Wing is often criticised for being overly optimistic and naive about politics. While that is to some extent justified, it is no more so than a typical TV detective series where each and every episode concludes with the case being solved and the right manny being arrested for the crime. There are, of course, a lot of TV detective series, running the gamut in terms of realism from Columbo to Taggart. That doesn't mean Columbo is bad.

But there are few TV series that are purely political dramas, so it feels unfair to criticise The West Wing when there isn't the same spectrum. In the UK we tend to go in for political comedies rather than dramas, so we have no equivalent to The West Wing (Number Ten?) and so must look to something like this to give us a flavour of what it is like, however rose-tinted the view is.

Mahabharat and the Crusader Kings too

The Mahabharata is the longest (and therefore best) poem in the world, and the TV series they made of it in 1988 is so long that it took the BBC two whole years to show it - at 94 episodes, it is so long that you could have watched all of Blakes 7 instead, and then started watching it again and been as far along as Traitor.

The narrator is Time, who I think was the baddy in Sapphire & Steel. For that matter his bits, where he introduced each episode with a vague recap and some incomprehensible philosophising, are reminiscent of the opening titles of Sapphire & Steel.

And then there are the special effects within the series, which remind me very much of Monkey, especially when gods and demons appear, or when characters go to Heaven - it would be very easy to imagine the two series coexisting. There is also Monkey-style SFX used for battle scenes, of which there are a lot, when the main characters use their magic powers.

This bit made me do a lol, as it comes right at the climax of an episode, and is supposed to be very dramatic. I'd explain what is happening, but you need a lot of context when you're 85 parts in.

The plot is very complicated, but very basically it resembles the sort of thing that happens in a game of Crusader Kings 2 - the great king Bharat (the title character, but he only appears briefly in the first episode and then very occasionally in dream sequences thereafter) establishes the Indian Empire with the inheritance determined by the most worthy in each generation.

Many years later, his descendant is the foolish king Dhritrashtra, who wants to change the succession law to Primogeniture so that his evil son Duryodhan will inherit instead of his nephew, the worthy Yudhishthir.

Krishna (who is the main character) then leads a faction to restore the law of Bharat and make Yudhishthir the Crown Prince again, which in turn leads to a revolt by Yudhishthir, Krishna and their allies, culminating in the 18-day battle of Kurukshetra in which most of the characters get killed.

It is a tragic battle because many of the characters fighting on the side of evil Duryodhan are not themselves baddys, rather they are goodys trapped into aiding Duryodhan because of oaths or social obligations they have towards the king and his family.

Chief among these is Bhishma, who is the eldest member of the family to fight in the war, and the character present for longest in the series - it goes from his birth in episode 2 through to his death in the very last part. Bhishma is the son of the goddess Ganges and has been blessed with a form of immortality, so that he can only die if he chooses to - this makes him unbeatable at fighting until Yudhishthir's brother Arjun, the "ace archer," shoots him so full of arrows that Bhishma cannot move or even stand up, and he lies on a "bed of arrows" until the battle is over.

In Crusader Kings 2 terms, Bhishma is Dhritrashtra's Steward, who has clearly had some kind of immortality event trigger earlier on. The other council positions on the baddys side would be Sage Kripa as Court Chaplain, Sage Drona as Marshal (who taught all of the young princes the martial arts), Duryodhan's evil uncle Shakuni as Spymaster, and Dhritrashtra's illegitimate half-brother Vidur as Chancellor.

Of these only Vidur (the wisest of them) resigned his post in protest when the war began, and was presumably replaced at that point by Duryodhan himself, even though diplomacy was never Duryodhan's strongest attribute.

Meanwhile on Yudhishthir's side all of the council roles are filled by Krishna, as he acts as adviser to Yudhishthir and his brothers on all things because it turns out that he is the incarnation of their religion's best god - a fact which all of the main characters seem to be aware of, somehow, even though he only reveals his cosmic manifestation once, to Arjun.

The TV series would be a tough watch for a casual viewer - partly due to the huge cast of characters and the glacial pace (it thinks nothing of spending 10 episodes on Krishna's childhood, or of bringing back a minor character from dozens of episodes earlier and expecting you to remember who they are and what relationship they have to the main characters), but mainly due to the English subtitling. This is patchy at the best of times, but on occasion it seems as if the subtitler just simply couldn't be bothered, and whole scenes dense with dialogue are left mysterious. This is even worse if you're watching it on the internets, where two crucial episodes towards the end of the series (both of them featuring the deaths of major characters) do not appear to have subtitled versions available at all!

But there is a lot to enjoy if you're prepared to persevere and get past these difficulties - I found the Wikipedia entries on the Mahabharata story invaluable in following what was going on, and for comprehending some of the different cultural assumptions that make no sense to us cats. The story is one of the All Time Greats among mannys for a good reason (more than just being the longest, I mean, mew) and this is because many of the larger-than-life characters and clever plot twists stand up well even today.

May you live long.

Happy new year 2020

Here is the winner of our 2019 Calendar Doggy of the Year competition to wish you all a happy new year for 2020.

And a happy new year to you from all of us cats, doggys and Monkeys With Badges (and not forgetting Dragon!) as well.