50 Years of Joy

I cannot let the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who slip by without nailing some personal thoughts about my relationship with the show to my blog. It's been a close relationship in some ways. It's certainly been an influential one.

I'm two years older than the show but I was too young to appreciate its impact upon kids until I was about six or seven. By then William Hartnell had hung up his wig and retired, bloody but unbowed, so my first memories are glimpses of terrifying giant crab claws and of choking foamy suds (the Macra Terror and Fury From The Deep respectively) overwhelming Pat Troughton's cosmic hobo.

I quite clearly remember Troughton's final series. 1969 was an extraordinary year for this young impressionable Cornishman; not only did I watch Apollo 11 touch down on the surface of the Moon ... I also saw Troughton regenerate into Jon Pertwee at the end of episode 10 of The War Games. Or, rather, I didn't. I saw him gurning and shouting 'No! No! No!' a lot while spinning around in something not unlike the video for Bohemian Rhapsody ... and that was it! We were left hanging as to what would happen next. And what did happen next was ... colour!

Now, I had seen some Doctor Who in colour already. Like many kids my age, I'd been to see the two Peter Cushing films - Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 (1966) - and had marvelled at seeing everyone's favourite xenophobic pepperpots in glorious technicolour. If I'm honest, we didn't care that Cushing wasn't Troughton; fandom back then wasn't quite so rabid and exhaustingly nit-picking as it is today. Yes, it was an obvious attempt to cash-in on the popularity of the Daleks. Yes, they were clumsy re-hashes of two Hartnell stories with Terry Nation's scripts hacked to pieces. And yes, they were camp and pretty terrible. But don't be so sniffy! Remember, what we were seeing were production values that far outstripped the TV show. Oddly enough, we under-10s didn't care about who the Doctor was. We went 'Oooh!' and 'Aahh! at the big screen Bakelite flying saucers, we laughed at Bernard Cribbens trying to be a Roboman and we drank in the glorious colours. The films had a big impact on us kids and I genuinely find it a bit sad that Cushing's Doctor seems to have been completely written out of the celebrations. If he did one good thing, it was to make us all go home and pester our parents to start renting (nobody bought a TV back then) a colour TV so that we could see the new Doctor in colour, like at the cinema. We pestered and we pestered. And, in my case, me and my brothers won. Jon Pertwee arrived on our spanking new colour TV screen in 1970 with Spearhead from Space and we were agog. We were also a little puzzled that he had a tattoo. Did Time Lords have tattoos? I guess it did look a bit like a question mark; a motif that was later repeated in shirt collars, tank tops and umbrella handles. Or is it a snake? Eek! The mark of the Mara!!!

Incidentally, another Doctor who has been written out of the history of the show is Trevor Martin. He had appeared in the TV show - he played the character of 'Second Time Lord' in that scene in The War Games when Troughton is sentenced to regeneration. But he also played the Doctor in Doctor Who and the Seven Keys to Doomsday at the Adelphi Theatre in London, a 1974 stage play that, like the films, was non-canonical ... but we didn't care! It was Doctor Who! On stage! The show was written by long-time Who writer Terrance Dicks and parts of it - such as the planet Karn - later turned up in the Tom Baker era story The Brain of Morbius ... which also introduced us to the Sisterhood of Karn, who recently appeared in Paul McGann's Night of the Doctor. So there's a link from the stage play right through to the present, which is nice to see. The stage show script has since been recorded as an audio drama with Trevor Martin reprising his role.

Pertwee cemented my love of Doctor Who forever. He was funny, heroic, gallant, smart ... the perfect role model. His era also coincided with my descent into puberty and his assistants, Liz Shaw, Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith, did much to get the hormones sloshing. I was now hooked on the show. I bought the annuals and the Target novelisations. I bought some Daleks at Butlin's with ballbearings underneath that you could flick at each other like Subbuteo players. I entered Doctor Who competitions - I cannot begin to tell you how envious I was of my best mate Huw Williams when he won a Blue Peter 'design a monster' competition and got taken to London to meet Tom Baker. Grrr. I don't mind admitting that it became a mild obsession.

The Three Doctors (1973) was a proper national TV event. Everyone I knew made sure they were in to watch it (much as people will tonight for the 50th). And it was wonderful; particularly to see Troughton and Hartnell in colour for the first time. The Radio Times published a special 10th anniversary magazine, in the back of which were comprehensive plans to build a life sized Dalek. Our technology teachers at school didn't need much persuading to have a crack at it; it made a pleasant change from building go-karts with lawnmower engines. Schools up and down the country built their own Daleks ... I wonder what happened to them all?

But soon, Pertwee's reign was over and the inimitable Tom Baker arrived and placed his indelible stamp on the character. And my mum knitted me a long multi-coloured scarf believing that I'd love it (I did) and that it would make me look cool (it didn't). It was too embarrassing to wear around town or to school but I did wear it 'ironically' in my later teens.

Like many teenagers, I was starting to experiment with writing. And I wrote Doctor Who stories, typically involving plots and monsters that were Hollywood epically huge; things that would never appear on the TV show like exploding suns and planet-sized creatures. I wrote more and more and they got better and better. Of course, it was just for my own amusement but there was always the thought that maybe ... just maybe ... I'd one day be able to write for the show.

My teens came to an end and in 1980 I headed off to London to become a police officer. And the Doctor changed once again. The gloriously eccentric and wickedly betoothed Tom Baker morphed into the youthful, clean-cut Peter Davison in 1982 and I found myself suddenly in an unprecedented position; it turned out that one of my neighbours worked in the VT editing suite at the BBC. Initially all this meant was that I got to see the infamous BBC Christmas 'white tapes' containing rude, sweary and hilarious outtakes (this was before It'll be Alright on the Night and such shows). But when I saw two Tom Baker outtakes, I couldn't help asking whether he had any link to Doctor Who. He did. He was one of the editors. And, what's more, he set me up with a studio visit. Which is how, a short time later, I found myself at the BBC on the prehistoric set for the filming of the story Time Flight and chatting to the then producer John Nathan-Turner.


Of course, being ever the opportunist I asked about writing for the show. Back then there was a more open door policy and, having shared some of my ideas, John asked me to send him a couple of my stories. In recent years he's been portrayed as something of a predatory figure but I experienced none of that. He was a lovely guy; okay, so he was as camp as a cake stand and had a taste in Hawaiian shirts that bordered on the insane, but he liked my ideas and, over several meetings, we talked about how I could hone them down into usable scripts - I'm afraid my imagination and vision far outstripped what the BBC visual effects department could manage back then. Anyway, I watched several more episodes being filmed at BBC television centre and witnessed the changeover from Davison to Colin Baker. I then had to do a rewrite of my scripts to accommodate the change to Baker's Doctor and saw parts of The Twin Dilemma being filmed with those bloody awful Tractators. But, for one reason or another, my show never quite got made. I got close - at one point one of mine was in a toss up with two others - but just got pipped at the post. By better writers; I have no illusions about that! That said, it's a great shame I fell short of the goal as I will never get that chance again now that the show is so huge. One current Doctor Who writer, Paul Cornell, suggested to me that I write my scripts up as novelisations. I might well do that one day when I get time.

Colin Baker was unpopular from the outset - a great shame as he's a genuinely lovely bloke - and, sadly, the series was starting to look cheap. Or cheaper. We can look back on them now with nostalgia and fondness but, at the time, I felt really sorry for them; they had a shoestring budget and the post-Star Wars cinema and TV sci-fi boom in the USA was putting our shows to shame. Colin was swiftly replaced by Sylvester McCoy but the show never seemed to quite recover. I still loved it and I watched it avidly. And, all the while, my collection of memorabilia continued to grow. I had the autographs of the first five Doctors. I had all of the annuals and Target and Peter Haining books. I had the Radio Times 10th and 20th anniversary special magazines and a pristine copy of the Radio Times The Five Doctors issue with that fantastic painted cover by Andrew Skilliter.

I'd also, quite bizarrely, taken possession of an original copper plaque of Doctor Who and the Seven Keys to Doomsday that had once graced the Adelphi theatre. While returning from the BBC after a meeting, I'd been discussing the show with a cabbie and he told me he had the plaque (he said he'd got it from his son who worked in theatre) and asked if I wanted to buy it. So I did. I then checked with the Adelphi to see if it was nicked (I was a cop after all!) but they expressed no interest in it at all. Extraordinary.

Anyway, as you know, the show eventually came to a grinding halt for all sorts of reasons and the last we saw of the Doctor for some time was McCoy's 1989 morality tale Survival, written by Rona Munro, one of a criminally few female writers on the show. McCoy was to return to the role one more time, albeit briefly, in the TV movie that introduced us to Paul McGann's eighth Doctor, but he did leave us a legacy of great audio adventures and appearances in the New Adventures books. These should not be swept under the carpet like Cushing's films and Trevor Martin's stage show often are. They filled a seven year void between 1989 and 1996, when the TV series was off air. Are they canon? I'm not sure. But with Paul McGann saluting his companions - Charley, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin and Molly from the Big Finish audio adventures - in Night of the Doctor there is an argument to say 'maybe' at least.

I even bought (to my eternal shame) the Doctor in Distress single. But hey ... it was for charity. And there was a precedence - I'd also bought Jon Pertwee's Who is the Doctor? years before. Yike.



The TV movie was the last that we'd see the Doctor for some time. And, while it had its flaws (and contradictory plot holes - the Doctor is half human??) it did give us Paul McGann who was fantastic in the role. But not fantastic enough for the sponsors, sadly, and the rogue Gallifreyan disappeared for a further nine years until Christopher Ecclestone brought him triumphantly back into our lives.

Again, the gap was bridged by books, audio adventures and even fan-made films so people like me were kept entertained. But it wasn't the same as having the show on TV and I'm genuinely sad that my own kids - born in 1985 and 1989 respectively - were part of the unfortunate generation who grew up without Doctor Who. Well, they didn't ... not as long as my video and, later, DVD player was functioning. In the meantime, I sold off all of my memorabilia to buy cots and prams and to get my first mortgage. It hurt, I can tell you. And, since the reboot, it would all now be worth so much more. Sobs! My one regret was selling the copper plaque. I didn't even have the sense to take a photo of it before I let it go. Such a shame. But, it did sell for a lot and I did need the money back then.

In the past five years or so I've made the effort to watch every single Doctor Who episode (and its spin-offs) that still exists. And, even if the episodes don't exist any longer, I've watched or listened to the reconstructions. It's been worth every minute and I got to relive some amazing childhood memories.

So, there you go. My 50 year relationship with the show continues unabated and I'm HUGELY looking forward to tonight's big anniversary special. I have occasionally been critical of the new series; I freely admit that I got very tired of the Rory/Amy soap opera that seemed to push the Doctor into playing an almost subordinate role. And some of Russell T Davies' more outrageous plot devices made me wince. But I've also shouted with joy from the rooftops at amazing stories like Dalek, Father's Day, The Girl in the Fireplace, Midnight, The Doctor's Wife and the amazing Blink. It's a show that continues to delight and surprise me and the knowledge that Peter Capaldi is going to take it into the future fills me with childish glee.

I may not have quite become part of it but it has become a part of me. It's been one of the bigger influences on my life and I'm a better writer today thanks to people like John Nathan-Turner, Jane Judge, Lindsey Alford, Neil Gaiman, Paul Cornell and the late, great Douglas Adams who all kindly offered me good advice. I've been lucky enough to meet five of the Doctors and I count among my friends people who write for the show, work on the show, write the books and audio adventures and who love the show as much as I do. Doctor Who has enriched my life.

So happy 50th birthday Doc. Here's to 50 more.

p.s. There's a great story attached to the photo of me with the Dalek (above). It was taken at the BBC in 2008 when I was doing some radio interviews about my first book and popped in on the production office to visit Lindsey the script editor. You might notice that the plunger is missing. The security staff had borrowed it during the night to unblock a sink. Absolutely true. It was on a draining board drying off when I got there. Joyous. :)

Mrs Who?

And so, Matt Smith has announced that he's leaving the role of The Doctor at Christmas and the usual barrage of speculation has begun. Who will be the new Doctor? Will it be someone established? Will it be someone we've never heard of? Will he be black? Will he/she be female?

That last option is what I want to talk about here. Should the Doctor regenerate into a woman?

I can see why people ask for a female Doctor, or a Doctor with an obviously non-Western ethnic background. It would show that the BBC is committed to fairness and equality. Casting a woman or a person from a visible minority in such a major, iconic role would definitely send out a strong message; just as the inclusion of openly gay and 'omnisexual' characters has. However, much as I heartily support positive moves like that, I can't help feel that there are better ways to do it. My issue is not with the sexual politics of such a change. It's with the logic of doing it (and, by logic, I mean the show's internal logic).

I've been a fan of Doctor Who from the outset and I'm old enough to have seen all 10 regenerations to date. My family rented its first colour TV (everyone rented back then) because I went on and on and on about new Doctor Jon Pertwee being in colour. In the mid-1980s, I actually had a script I'd written selected by then-producer John Nathan-Turner and went to a number of production meetings at the BBC before, sadly, my script was bumped in favour of Frontios. Dagnabbit. I am pretty much everything you'd expect from a life-time long fan. But I'm also someone who worked tirelessly for fairness when I was a police officer. When I was a trainer at Hendon Police College, it was me who forced the decision that women could wear track suits or shorts instead of gym skirts during physical training. After the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, I was one of the team selected to totally overhaul the Met Police's diversity training programme. I now work as a writer for TV and radio shows like QI and The Museum of Curiosity and no one shouts louder than me for more women to appear on the shows (although, to be fair, everyone on those shows shouts equally loudly). I'm not some sexist, misogynist nob who spends his days fuming over the number of female news anchors or the loss of the word 'gay' even though I never once used it to mean 'happy and abandoned'. But I still think that it makes no sense to have a female Doctor. Here's why.

Firstly, there's no real precedence for it. Time Lords can have 12 regenerations - 13 bodies - and the Doctor is on body 11. He's never changed sex before, so why would he now? His arch-enemy, the Master, has also had a number of bodies and they've all been male (although I'll concede that we haven't seen most of his regenerations). Time Lord President Borusa has appeared in several incarnations, all male. And when the Doctor and Morbius had their mind fight in The Brain of Morbius, we saw all of their previous incarnations on a screen. All male. Meanwhile, we have met a number of female Time Lords (Time Ladies?) over the years, such as the Rani, the Inquisitor, and Chancellors Thalia and Flavia, but we've only seen one regeneration - Romana, who changed from a woman into a woman. In 50 years there has never been a mention of Time Lords changing sex ... except just once, where Neil Gaiman muddied the waters in his 2012 script, The Doctor's Wife, in which he mentions a Time Lord called the Corsair who's been male and female (though the name suggests a somewhat campier Time Lord than we're used to - I imagine him/her cross-dressing or using technology to change sex on a whim). The only time a Time LOrd gender swap has ever been seen was in the 1999 Red Nose Day spoof Curse of Fatal Death where the Doctor morphs from Rowan Atkinson to Richard E 'lick the mirror handsome' Grant to Jim Broadbent to Hugh Grant to Joanna Lumley (incidentally, Jonathan Pryce would make a great Doctor and was, in this, a great Master).

Secondly, how would family relationships work if the parents kept shifting genders? And how would that affect reproduction? We know that Time Lords have kids - the Doctor certainly had children and at least one grandchild - Susan. I'm afraid that I don't buy into the whole 'but Time Lords are aliens and don't have to follow the same rules as humans'. From what I've seen, they're not that alien. They have all of the same emotional responses as us; love, grief, anger, surprise, fear, longing, anguish. They are upright, bipedal warm-blooded mammals (we've seen the Doctor's nipples many times and female Time Lords definitely have breasts). Yes, they have two hearts. Yes, they have some organs we don't. But, otherwise, they're still more like us than koalas, blue whales or fruit bats are, and they share our DNA. And how would long-term relationships work if your partner kept changing sex? Or are all Time Lords 'omnisexual' like Captain Jack? I've never seen the Doctor come on to a male companion, have you? But I have seen him fall in love with Rose Tyler (a woman) and marry River Song (a woman) though. Then there's the Doctor's relationship with the TARDIS itself. Or herself. How would that be affected?

I'm not suggesting for a moment that the show would be harmed by having a female Doctor. I think it's popular enough to survive (Mind you, I said that back in the classic era). And I'd carry on watching and enjoying. But unless it's done for a good, logical reason, it'll just come across as box-ticking tokenism by the BBC and that does the equality cause no good whatsoever. What I'd much rather see is the introduction of a strong female Time Lord character. Or, even better, why not a spin-off series starring her? We've seen just how popular a show The Sarah Jane Adventures was with barely an appearance from the Doctor. So why not create a whole new character and give her equal billing? There is quite definitely a Time Lady-shaped hole in the schedules and it could be a wonderful counterpart to Doctor Who. And how about more female writers on the show, eh?

The Doctor has such a weight of history and character development behind him that it seems highly unlikely that he would not have become female before if it were possible. Or at least mentioned the fact that he can. We know that gender roles can be successfully swapped out - just look at Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, or Watson in Elementary. But they immediately become wholly new characters by doing so. A female Sherlock Holmes would not be Sherlock Holmes; she would be something equally interesting but she wouldn't be Holmes. It's very hard to imagine what a female James Bond or Bertie Wooster or Darth Vader would be like. The fact that Doctor Who is science fiction and has a lead character that can change bodies and personalities doesn't alter the fact that the character would be completely different if they were female. Gender is an enormous part of a person's identity and affects all of their actions and decisions. All 11 actors who have played the Doctor have had their own personal quirks and eccentricities but beneath the scarves and the cricket whites and the leather jackets, the same Doctor has always been there. James Bond is a good analogy; the actors may change and they bring their individual flavour to the role but he's still undeniably Bond. I'm not sure he would be the same character if he were a woman.

So, there you go. Only my opinion of course and it carries no more weight than yours or anyone else's. I just feel that it would change the essential character of the show to make such a major change. To be honest, I think it's all academic anyway as it's way too big a change for the risk-averse BBC to take. And, even if they did, I reckon they'd cast someone based on gorgeousness rather than acting brilliance to keep the fan boys happy and the ratings high. Not to say you can't be both (Helen Mirren et al) but it does rather defeat the point of such a change in the first place.

But what do you think?

P.S. Michael Legge has done a great blog on the same subject here.

P.P.S. Oh and my theory for the 50th anniversary goes like this ... McGann regenerated into John Hurt who, because the Time War was raging, became the Valeyard, rather than the Doctor. We've met the Valeyard before - he's the Time Lords' equivalent of a war lord and chief of police. As Time Lords choose the name they believe defines them, Hurt might choose the Valeyard. I reckon we'll see what happened to the Doctor's family - particularly Susan (interesting that Matt Smith mentioned her 'I used to come shopping here with my granddaughter' - in the recent Rings of Akhaten). And, when the war is over, the Valeyard will regenerate into Ecclestone, maybe with some kind of memory suppression of what has happened - maybe to ease the pain of loss. There is some evidence for this.

Unless it's a very clever decoy by Moffat, this paparazzi photo (below) seems to show Hurt wearing parts of McGann's outfit under Ecclestone's coat.

 

 

Of course, that would mean that Matt Smith is actually Doctor 12 ... which means that whoever replaces him could be the last. Unless, of course, he/she finds a way to extend their lives, like the Master did.

 

Can't wait!

The Regeneration Game

Okay ... so the Doctor is a Time Lord. And he can regenerate 12 times. And he's used 10 ... that we know of; after all, we don't know if William Hartnell was hs first incarnation or whether he had other incarnations between McGann and Eccleston.

The most recent couple of generations have looked quite similar involving a massive expulsion of energy. Previously, there have been odd distortions of space-time, swirly effects and the curious anomaly of 'The Watcher'; a wraith-like figure of the Doctor's future incarnation that hovers around waiting to inhabit the regenerating body. But however it's happened, we're told that every molecule in the body is in a state of flux; re-shaping, repairing and re-moulding the critically injured Time Lord into a new form.

So my question is ... why does Jon Pertwee's incarnation have a tattoo when no other incarnation does? He can't have visited a tattoo parlour. He didn't have time. After events in The War Games, he is punished by having a forced regeneration and sent directly to Earth. In this still from Pertwee's debut story Spearhead from Space he is in a shower at the medical faclity that he is brought to directly after arriving on our planet.  

Looks a bit like a question mark doesn't it?

And then there's the tricky issue of teeth. Do Time Lords visit the dentist? Do fillings transfer between regenerations? I only ask because Peter Davison's Doctor has a good mouthful of amalgam (seen here in his pre-penultimate story Resurrection of the Daleks). Did he really get that many cavities in the short time since he first appeared at the end of Logopolis?

I think we should be told.

The Relentlessly Cheerful Art of James Hance

I think that if I were ever to meet the fiendishly talented Mr Hance we'd get on very well. He appears to share my sense of humour and my love of subverting genres and mixing and matching beloved characters from films, books and TV. His artwork is witty and delicious and annoyingly good. Look!

Do visit his website here. The man is very prolific and there's something there for almost anyone I reckon. Plus the proceeds from his posters and t-shirts and prints all go towards medical treatment for his daughter. So buy! Buy! Buy!

Dalek Relaxation Tape (for Humans)

Typical brilliance from Peter Serafinowicz.

A holistic supernatural review

I don't often write reviews because I generally don't read reviews. I like to watch/read/hear something and make up my own mind. It's always seemed to me that professional reviewers - and I know a few as friends - are just people with informed opinions and, therefore, their view is no more valid than my own. Admittedly, some of them have made films and TV and written books themselves and, certainly, they've built up a large mental storehouse for comparison purposes. But, when it comes down to it, films, TV, books, art etc. are 'good' or 'bad' depending on the individual viewer's perception. Almost every review I've seen of the John Carter movie has been negative and yet everyone I know who's seen it thoroughly enjoyed it. So who to believe? In just the same way that I can't say that a Gaugin is better than a Manet, I can't say that Coronation Street is better than Eastenders. Both have merits and demerits; all that I am entitled to say is which ones I like and which I don't.

Which brings me to two shows that have just finished their runs: Being Human series 4 and Dirk Gently series 1. This is not a review per se - more a flurry of observations about why both shows didn't quite work for me this year. In essence, the problem I had with both is that they seemed to have lost their essential qualities. Let me explain ...

When Being Human began, I thought it was one of the most interesting and original ideas for a comedy drama that I'd seen in years. A group of supernaturals - a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost - find each other and end up sharing a house while attempting to fit into human society. It's an inspired set up for a TV series. I met the show's creator, the very affable and talented Toby Whithouse (see my interview here), during the filming of series 2 and we talked about where the show could go. Obviously, he couldn't reveal too much but he said that he was looking forward to exploring as many facets of human behaviour as possible; to use his characters to challenge the concept of what it is to be human. There would be temptation, envy, lust, joy. He would write about the angst that parents suffer about bringing a child into a world where that child will always be under threat; whether to fall in love with someone who is immortal and who will watch you grow old and die; how to live alongside people who fear and hate what you are; how to be human. That is, after all, the name of the series and what distinguishes it from all of the other supernatural series on TV. Which is why, with series 4, I was disappointed by the sudden change to 'end-of-the-world vampire armageddon' story arc.

I will state categorically here that the change of cast was not an issue - the new people have slotted in beautifully and are every bit as entertaining and likeable as Annie, Mitchell and George were. It's the plot that I had trouble with. The War Child. The over-exposed Mark Gatiss 'Old One' character Mr Snow. Time travelling ghosts. In just eight short episodes it's stopped being about 'being human' and has turned into every other supernatural TV show/film from True Blood to Daybreak to Blade to Ultraviolet (the excellent TV series and the unrelated Mila Jovovich film). There were hints of this plot-line in the show's pilot back in 2008 where the original Mitchell (played by Guy Flanagan) was told by the original Herrick (Adrian Lester) that the vampire takeover is coming and to choose sides. That whole plot device was dropped for the revamped (sorry) pilot and series 1 and the show was all the better for it. Now, it seems, the vampire takeover plot has returned, for me, it's a big step backwards. I really don't want to see it drown in the sea of predictable supernatural cliches, especially when there is so much that can yet be done with the characters. Incidentally, the US Being Human is very good. It's taken a different path to the UK show but I love the ideas they are exploring there, such as their 'Annie' - Sally Malik - becoming addicted to possessing human bodies so that she can have a physical relationship. That's closer to what I think Being Human should be about than the UK show currently is. It was Being Human's originality that made it so wonderful and made me love it. I hope it gets back to that with series 5.

And then there's Dirk Gently ... which seems to have done exactly the opposite to Being Human. While Being Human has got too fantastic, Dirk Gently isn't fantastic enough. This is a show that demands big world-changing themes ... but it falls flat. Stephen Mangan is perfect in the role; he is Dirk. He's exactly how I always imagined the character to be and the always excellent Darren Boyd is great as sidekick Richard MacDuff. Yes, I know MacDuff's character is fundamentally different from the book but changes always have to be made when converting a book to a film or TV. They are different media and what works in one doesn't necessarily work in another. However, that isn't my beef.

Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently books are a showcase for the author's extraordinary gift for invention. The first book, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, featured a time-travelling Cambridge Don (who, as many of you know I'm sure, was a recycled character from Douglas's aborted Doctor Who story Shada), an electric monk that believes things for you, a ghost desperately trying to get a message to his sister, an alien spaceship at the dawn of time that is responsible for kick-starting life on Earth, an impossible sofa and a very funny horse. We also get to see the effects on the history of poetry when Dirk becomes Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Man from Porlock'. It's a work of genius. The second book, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, had Norse gods destroying airports, jet fighters turning into eagles and giant green-eyed, scythe weilding monsters rampaging about killing music executives. Even Adams's unfinished The Salmon of Doubt - which may or may not have been a new Dirk Gently novel - has the main character(s) travelling (in Douglas's words) '... through the nasal membranes of a rhinoceros, to a distant future dominated by estate agents and heavily armed kangaroos.'

So why, then, is the TV series so damned mundane?

The essence of Dirk is there with his unorthodox methods of working and his obsession with the interconnectedness of things. But where is the vision, the inventiveness, the fantasy, the sheer lunacy of Douglas Adams? Dirk should be saving the world by accident while looking for a lost cat, not solving everyday murders. Now, I do realise that budget comes into the picture. I also realise that the show will draw inevitable comparisons with Doctor Who and Sherlock. But, if that's the case, why bother making it? I know that seems a little harsh but if something won't work properly on TV then why do it? I would personally draw a parallel here to two recent radio series that have transferred to TV - Bleak Expectations and Dave Gorman's Genius. Both worked brilliantly on radio as 'radio has all the best pictures'; a lot was left to the imagination of the listener. In Bleak Expectations, writer Mark Evans could do whatever he liked. Anthony Head's character -Mr Gently Benevolent - was killed, came back as a ghost and possessed a pigeon, was then killed again and resurrected as a Frankenstein's monster-type creature and then later orchestrated an abortive Martian invasion. However, when the show moved to TV, Evans created a new, albeit very similar, show called The Bleak Little Shop of Stuff and it lacked all of the sparkling originality and madness of the radio show. It was just a Dickens spoof. And Dave Gorman's excellent radio series Genius, in which the British public come up with fantastic ideas and inventions, it was easy to simulate the Isle of Wight being made more symmetrical or a giant spike on a steering wheel instead of seatbelts to ensure people drove more carefully. The move to TV wasn't unsuccessful but a lack of budget - radio shows cost a fraction of the cost of TV shows - and a rubbish time slot meant that the BBC killed it after just two series.

That's how I feel about Dirk Gently. If you can't afford to do it properly then why bother doing it? Writing in the Metro newspaper, Keith Watson said, 'There was no disguising the fact that Dirk Gently was a five-star script being filmed on a one-star budget, making it look like a designer label knockoff when set against the production values lavished on Sherlock.' As I said at the start, I don't always agree with critics and rarely read them, but Watson has hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned. Howard Overman - the chap who gave us the excellent Misfits - is the chap behind the TV version of Dirk. He's a very, very good writer and what he's given us is very, very good TV writing ... but it just isn't Dirk Gently. It's Dirk Gently Lite. I want full fat, outrageously fattening, over-the-top Dirk Gently because that's what Dirk Gently is all about. Instead we have something that looks like a slightly bizarre crop of episodes of Morse or Midsomer Murders.

Despite everything I've written here, I watched all of the series I've mentioned and enjoyed them. There were some great performances, brilliant writing and many classic TV moments. I will be tuning in to the new series when they happen. But I hope, in the meantime, that Being Human and Dirk Gently return to the roots that made them such phenomena in the first place. I fear that if they don't, they'll lose that originality and spark that made us all go 'Wow!' I also hope that Bleak Expectations and Genius return to the radio where they both belong and are both quite brilliant.

But then again, this is just my opinion and, therefore, it carries no more weight than yours. You may disagree with everything I've said.

Which is how it should be.

It came from the Kitchen!

Yes, I thought it was about time for another art challenge as you all enjoyed the last one so much. And this time, it's Out Of This World ...

Using ONLY items found in your kitchen, I want you to show me what an alien could look like. Let your imagination go wild. Use tea spoons and the dog bowl. Use chopsticks and potatoes and muffin cases. Use tomato sauce and gravy as paints. Use ANYTHING! Just remember (a) to tidy up afterwards, and (b) it doesn't have to be a permanent work of art so you won't need to upset the house chef by welding all of their utensils together. If you're really clever, you can always arrange it on a plate and eat the alien for your tea.

You have just five days to comply, puny Earthlings. Photographs/scans in to me by Midnight Wednesday (BST). My Twitter address is @stevyncolgan. My email address is stevyncolgan@mac.com. As always, it's open to anyone, professional or doodler, rich or poor, young or wishes they were still young, black, white, brown or green.

I'll send an original doodle on a postcard to everyone who enters. I think I might even draw your alien in my own cartoony style! If lots of you enter, it'll be second class post ... I'm not made of money you know. I'm mostly lard and tea.

If you want to see what doodles the people in the last challenge got as a reward, just read back a few posts on this blog.

So ... boldly go and find the Klingon in the cauliflower and the Cyclon in the sink! Find the Dalek in the dustbin and the Wookie in the wok!

Find those aliens!

365 Doodles - Day 258

A doodly thing inspired by a real incident I saw outside a school recently. Some parents ...

And here's something that filled my heart with joy. A young man called Michael Fatham - Mikey to his mates - was recently one of the younger contributors to my Angry Art Challenge project. So I sent him out a freshly drawn doodle as a reward. Then yesterday I got a postcard with this AMAZING drawing of a Dalek on it from Mikey:

Isn't it great?! He's 11 years old and very talented. On his card he wrote 'I think that your doodles are clever and funny. One day I hope to be as good as you.'

Well, Mikey, the stuff you're drawing is HUGELY better than what I was drawing at 11 years old so I'm completely sure that one day you'll be HEAPS better than me. In fact, I'm not sure I could do a better Dalek now ... and I'm 50!

So keep drawing!

Masks, Bingo and eleven Doctors

I went into London today for one of my usual 'cram as much great stuff into a day out' type days and crammed as much great stuff into the day out as I could. I began with morning tea with my good chum Dave Gavin who happened to be in London. He's a movie model maker and is one of those people responsible for the kind of non CGI monsters that Harry Potter likes to shout nonsense words at. His claim to fame is taht he made those crotch-hugging orange rubber braces that Mila Jovovich wears so flatteringly in The Fifth Element. Of course he still has them ...

From there it was on to the Cartoon Museum to meet another chum, Terry Bergin, and to have a mooch around the Doctor Who in Comics exhibition. Some lovely stuff there that really took me back. There's early art from Hartnell era 1960's annuals right up to date with Roger Langridge's excellent take on Matt Smith and everything in between. For me, the highlight was some original Frank Bellamy art from the Pertwee-era Radio Times and some original paperback covers by Andrew Skilleter and Chris Achilleos. Great to see art from the old TV Action and Countdown comics too. Beautiful work. Do go and see - it's on until the 30th October and there are some excellent related events on.

From there it was on to Tate Modern to see the Miro exhibition ... which finished on Sunday. Always best to check beforehand you know. Still, Terry and I took tea on the members' terrace overlooking a very sunny river Thames and got bullied by feral London street pigeons instead.

Next stop was the East End and a short walk from Liverpool Street up the deliciously named Norton Folgate brought me to the studio of the enigmatic Mr Bingo. We've been mates for a while now and I love his funny, sharp illustrations. He's quite rightly at the top of his game right now and it was great to see his studio at last - I've been meaning to visit for ages - and shoot the breeze. However, our time was cut short by the fact he had to go partying with Kate Moss. No. Really. Hmmf. I've been stood up for worse I guess.

Final stop of the day, and just a stone's throw from Bingo's studio, was the Nobrow Press gallery for the private view of Ben Newman's new show Masks which opens tomorrow.

I've loved Ben's stuff for some time and his Bento Bestiary book is a joy. Nobrow produce some really excellent stuff and among my recent purchases have been McBess's limited edition Big Mother A3 book and John Sibbick's beautiful and informative Flesh and Bone. You can see the whole range here. Great to see a small press outfit doing so well. The quality is superb.

This exhibition features Ben's painted masks plus some very real 3D masks constructed from wood with his annoying talented dad, Colin. There were also some brilliantly bizarre plush figures on display based on Ben's illustrations and made by the inimitable Louise Evans, better known to the world as Feltmistress. They were wonderful! Here are two of Ben's illustrations. Compare the monster with Louise's plushie below. Beautiful work. All of these photos get bigger if you click on them, by the way.

Ben (above) cuddling up to a plush chum called Tippy, courtesy of the elusive Feltmistress (below).

Jonathan Edwards and Woodrow Phoenix. Two very very fine illustrators and damnably nice chaps too.

If you're in London, do pop along and support the exhibition. It's also worth it for the complete Nobrow catalogue too. there are some truly excellent books and prints on sale.

Another splendid day spent in the company of people who delight and inspire. I wish I could do this every day.