The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe

From DWM #443. Fact fans – I first saw this story, sat in the office where I work, just as the Christmas edition of our magazine (not DWM) was going to press. So I felt very festive indeed.

I saw it again at the BBC press launch, which was held at Television Centre. We journalists filed into a studio alongside kids – kids! – to be regaled with a silly warm-up man, the episode itself and then a Q&A in which kids – kids! – asked most of the questions. As we stood up to leave, grumping about the lack of free drinks (we’re monsters), a curtain rose  revealing, on stage, a TARDIS stood in a winter wonderland… and a bar. It was a Christmas miracle.

The Sarah Jane Adventures series five

From DWM #441. I wanted to write something robust, not maudlin, despite the obvious shadow hanging over this final series of SJA – and that’s why I kept the Elisabeth Sladen stuff till the end. Particularly as I knew the previous issue was a special in tribute to her. 

Re-reading the review now, though, that final line – which is an echo of the final onscreen caption – does still feel a bit too loaded. 

After Image…

And finally from DWM #440, an ‘And Finally’ on the series. I’d asked Tom Spilsbury if I could pop in some sort of afterword, in part to make sure we weren’t ending on a bit of a damp  note (my previous review) but also because unlike any other run of the show since it returned, the season needed additional consideration as a whole. 

The Wedding of River Song

Here we are – the final episode of the sixth series, and my review from DWM #440, one I found particularly difficult to write. A tricky thing, balancing out my disappointments with the finale, and all the things I liked about it. Did I succeed? Dunno. Maybe you can tell me. 

But end-of-season affairs always feel heightened – and not just in terms of the size of the plot. They’re also burdened with the expectation of being, well, better than average. That made it feel all the more cruel to pick out the bits I didn’t like so much.

Closing Time

Not really a huge amount to say about this one from DWM #440. Must… think… of… enough… text… to… flow… neatly… around… TARDIS… graphic!

This is a piece where I quite obviously show up with a conceit in my back pocket, unwrap the thing, then tidy it away again. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a review, too.

The God Complex

Here’s fun (perhaps). Obviously, a blog like this is a wholly self-regarding project.

So, in that spirit, I’m reproducing here a couple of pages of notes I took while reviewing The God Complex. My routine, should you care, when writing about Doctor Who is to watch the episode once (usually in my lunchbreak, via the BBC’s preview site for journalists) without taking notes. Just to give me a chance to enjoy the thing. Then, I’ll watch again the following day – and take an insane amount of notes – in insane handwriting. Which brings us to figure 1…

My first draft of notes for The God Complex

The 'rationalised' notes

Yes, it can get a bit befuddled.

With that in mind, I quite often – but not always – ‘rationalise’ my scribbles. This can help me get a clearer picture of what I want to say… but it’s a process I loathe. It feels, I guess, like having to write a plot outline. However, once done, it’s terribly helpful.

The thing on the left is what that stage looks like. Click it for a larger version.

And that, I guess, is that.

Well, kind of. I do keep a sporadic diary of sorts, and on September 14, I wrote, referring to this review: “I can’t remember the last one of these that took me so long to write. Even now, it isn’t there. I can’t see it through the fog”. The fog, probably, of too many notes.

Anyway, this is from DWM #440.

The Girl Who Waited

From DWM #439. It’s yet another review where the last line calls back to the first. However, when I made a grab for that opening quote I didn’t have much of an idea how I was going to play with it. The notion of using it again came later. Sorry, it’s just too handy a trick.

By the time I’d written about Let’s Kill Hitler and Night Terrors, both for this issue, I was quite squeezed on word count for The Girl Who Waited. Which was a good thing. If I’m given lots of room to write about an emotive episode, my prose can get overwrought.

Night Terrors

This review took me just a couple of hours, the quickest I’ve ever written for the magazine. As such, I don’t have a huge amount to add, other than recalling that I originally had that first line as: “Dolls. Shudder! Dolls are scary!” But then realised I was aping the rather staccato and repetitive delivery that Doctor Who – and a lot of BBC shows at the moment – use to connote they’re saying something light-hearted. So I changed it. 

Sorry, not much of an anecdote. Anyway, this is from DWM #439.

Let’s Kill Hitler

This is from DWM #439, and is probably one of the least effusive reviews of Let’s Kill Hitler that’s out there. Should that matter? It’s tempting to make something of it, certainly. To use it to trumpet the magazine’s independence and freedom to criticise. But then I guess that can lead you up a dark alley, becoming overly negative in your writing simply to deflect any accusation of toadying. That would be stupid. So, hopefully, I haven’t ever done that. And I always end each piece on a positive note.

But, yes, LKH didn’t thrill me as much as what was to follow. (See? Positive note.)

A Good Man Goes to War

I wrote previously about the fact that this year I knew how my reviews were going to be sequenced in the magazine. And that was helpful, cos I was aware my piece on A Good Man Goes to War (which I was confident I was going to enjoy) was to be published in the same issue – DWM #436 – as my rather downbeat remarks about The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People. One would hopefully counterbalance the other, plus we would end on a positive note. Which, broadly, I think is how it should be.

In addition, I specifically wrote the reviews to be companion pieces, both opening with a similar gambit. Does that add any value? I dunno. Oh and note, I use a list below. Another attempt to break up the big chunks of text.