Space Pirates Discovered - Now In Colour

No, this isn't a shot from MST4K (calm down folks, there isn't such a show - yet), but from the best thing on TV at the moment. CBeebies' Space Pirates. Think Michael Bentine's Potty Time (if you're over 35) meets Tiswas meets Later... With Jules Holland. OK, had a touch of The Muppets, a dash of Roland Rat and you're part way to Space Pirates. This manic, fun and addictive pre-school show is broadcast on CBeebies and the slightly less colourful BBC One every day, bringing music, mayhem and song to 1 and 35 year olds everywhere.

The premise is a simple one. Captain DJ helms the good ship Gusto on a quest to bring music to the demanding brats known as the Pirate Possee (in reality lucky five year olds who get to pick their favourite tune of the episode). Along with his crew he scours the galax-seas for pop videos, instrumentals and cover versions from the in-ship band, The Jingles. Occasionally a child-friendly band will make a 'live' appearance on the ship and it's always satisfying when the posse choose the puppets over the genuine ‘talent’. In a recent episode we were treated to The Cheeky Girls featuring their genuine cheeky niece perform a bastardised version of the Okey-Cokey with a rather disturbing farmyard twist. Had this been on a Friday night Channel 4 show there would have been complaints, but on Space Pirates it’s just par for the course. Ably assisting the captain are his chatty microphone, (MST's Crow-lookalike Lippy),two likeable but cheeky kids Honk and Tonk (who are always trying to extort doubloons from Capt. DJ), a two-faced Jolly Roger flag, three singing rats known as The Jingles (who provide a musical commentary on the proceedings) and the almost indescribable Zorst - a blob is attached to "Gusto's rear" who has a penchant for bad jokes and surreal weather and travel reports.

For weeks I was convinced that Captain DJ was being played by Brasseye's Chris Morris (and it really wouldn't have surprised me given that the show is most certainly on the right side of cool). In reality DJ is played by comedian Luke Toulson, a likeable albeit put upon MC to the proceedings. Like the show as a whole, what makes DJ so entertaining for an adult viewer is that the style of presentation lacks the condescension on many kid's programmes. It's warm and wacky and very amusing. I'm hooked. It's not often I actually make a conscious decision to turn to CBeebies in order to catch a show. I even know the lyrics to most of the regular songs, from the Space Pirates theme to the Zorst report jingle, performed of course, by The Jingles.

Apparently Chris Moyles tried to get the theme song into the charts by repeated air play. Now I'm no Moyles fan but it was a damn shame this didn't get the Christmas number one. It was only ever available on download through iTunes and I missed the boat (don't pardon the pun). And if you wanted any more convincing, it's a science fiction show that doesn't feature John Barrowman - although given the musical nature of the premise it's only a matter of time.

It's an eclectic show - a musical showcase for toddlers, with a bit of comedy thrown in for good measure. It deserves to have its own two hour slot on Saturday mornings - maybe throw a bit of blue in for the Dads (maybe not) and get a few more live acts in. So, while ITV shamefully ignores the development children’s television, be thankful that not only is the BBC still making new shows that don’t always feature multi-coloured Teletubby clones (stand up Fimbles and Night Garden), but that it’s making shows that grown-up kids can quite happily, nay readily, watch along with their own kids.

Click here to listen to the theme tune.

DW 4.5: The Poison Sky - They Mentioned The Brigadier!

The Poison Sky

Fantastic!

There’s not much else to say really, but for the sake of those unlucky enough to stumble on to this blog, or kind enough to follow the Facebook link I will elaborate. Between the age of 3 and 12, Saturday night television was a very special place to be. Basil Brush, Jim’ll Fix It and of course Doctor Who. Being a teenager in the 1980’s was pants (there were several dents there), but that was a small price to pay for escaping every week into the Doctor Who universe during the mid to late seventies. I always thought I’d never recapture those moments sat on the floor in front of the telly, gawping up at the screen. Yes, gawping – usually in wonder, sometimes because I really needed the loo or more than likely because I couldn’t break away from the sight of the last of the Jagaroth or from a stone hand that was hurting my fantasy big sister, Sarah Jane Smith.

Experiences like that tend to disappear when you have to pay your first council tax bill, or when you begin to see the sense in filing away every bank statement that comes through your door. Television certainly appears to lose its magic when you receive your first demand for the TV licence – we demand that programmes on the BBC prove themselves on a daily basis. TV becomes routine, not a treat. It takes something very special to send you back to that moment of plenitude (and I’m not talking tittie sucking here fellas). However, on Saturday 3^rd May, 2008 I was pretty much sent back to the 70s and I didn’t even have to put Jeff Wayne on the stereo. It was all because of that one programme that refused to give up on the fans and the child within all of us. The Tomorrow People… no, wait a minute, that’s not right. Where was I?

The Poison Sky was the Saturday Night TV experience. Action, adventure, energy, explosions and the Doctor! From the moment Donna’s Mum grabbed that axe, to the TARDIS being hurled out of control towards another wacky adventure, for forty odd I was taken on a fun filled, action packed, (other cliché please), ride. We had Sontarans in force, we had the sky ignite in glorious, that’s-worth-the-licence-fee-alone-technicolour, we had Tennant being brilliant, we had the most perfect Empty Child reference ever and we had word that not only was the Brigadier alive, but active in Peru!

I was back on the floor that I’d occupied as a five-year old, cross-legged, hoping that I could make it until the end of the episode before nature made it’s call irrespective of my telly habits. I was a child again, enjoying Saturday night TV. I had fallen in love with Doctor Who all over again. Damn that RTD – he keeps springing this on us. When all hope seems to be lost, we get a two-part classic, a third-way into the fourth season. How will this be topped? Daleks, Davros, a cross over with Sapphire and Steel? What’s more it was written by the same woman who pissed all over the Daleks to such an extent I don’t really want to see them again for some time.

David Tennant confounded expectations again as the Doctor. After the last few performances he seems to have finally nailed it. It’s only taken him (or the writers/directors) two and a half seasons to get it right, but right he was. His was a Doctor you could finally start to love rather than to get annoyed by. It all seems that he’s leaving it all a little too late though, that he is going to leave us on a high note – that song is almost over remember, or so the Ood have led us to believe. Maybe that’s the poetry of it though. If he was as useless as he was with Rose, we’d be baying for his blood. Good job he’s finishing on a Bohemian Rhapsody rather than a Fat Bottomed Girls (ironic given Catherine Tate’s ample proportions). And let’s face it, Tennant will be gone by the end of this season – in some form another. I wager we’ll see two Doctors for the Christmas special. Rose is here to warn the Doctor that his parallel self is alive and well and living in London… sorry that was Dracula wasn’t i? Ok then, looking like David Morrisey, but hey what do I know?

It’s difficult to write a measured review of this episode. I just want to make one word statements. Brilliant. Fun. Cool. Sontar-ha! Perfection. Blah, blah, blah. Anyone would think I was in this one – and I’m not. I just had a whale of a time watching it. For all the blarney we keep hearing that US television really is the must see experience, you can shove it all. Doctor Who, in 42 minutes made TV actually matter. It cheered me up, it thrilled and it made me feel like a kid again. And this from someone who doesn’t particularly dig the Sontarans. To be honest though, it could have been any classic monster, it wouldn’t have mattered that much, although then we would have lost that genuinely classic moment of seeing Donna giving one in “the back of the neck” to the Weebles. Now anyone who doesn’t’ think Catherine Tate is perfect in the role of the companion now needs to stop watching Doctor Who and stick to Doctors. It’s the closest we’ve ever come to Sarah Jane Smith without actually having to resurrect Sarah Jane Smith.

I really can’t wait for next week’s episode. It will probably be dreadful – it looked pretty pants in the preview. Very 42 meets Satan Pit meets Buffy via Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t - because RTD, for all your duff ones, missed opportunities and Slitheen, you are responsible for The Poison Sky, and for Blink, and Human Nature, The Empty Child, Dalek, Father’s Day, Parting of the Ways and The Fires of Pompeii. Like Martha in The Sontaran Stratagem, you brought the Doctor back. You made him brilliant and you made us remember what fun we had as children. Hat’s off to you.

DW 4.4: The Sontaran Stratagem - Oh What an Atmos-Fear

I love a party with a happy atmos-fear.

Normally it takes either a spectacularly bad or stunningly good episode of Doctor Who to get me back behind the keyboard. Sometimes I’m kicked from my lethargy because I have a really good title for a review. Unfortunately I can’t claim any of the above as an excuse for getting off my backside. But if RTD can bring back the Sontarans, then by gosh, I can start reviewing an episode from the fourth season.

I’ve never been a huge Sontaran fan. How can a creature that looks like an over developed Weeble Wobble really get anyone going? They may be the most feared warrior race in the known universe and true, they may, like their diminutive counterparts, never fall down (probic vent weakness not withstanding), but we’ve never been given much evidence of their warlike ways. And when you come to realise that their mortal enemy is a radioactive brussel sprout , you do begin to question their battle cry bluster. So I neither love nor loath them. They just don’t particularly ring my bells or tick my boxes or whatever it is one has to go through to feel satisfied these days. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the urge to take The Time Warrior off the shelf, other than to see if my Star Wars Tazos have fallen down the back of the bookcase. The best thing about The Sontaran Experiment was the Tachyon podcast. I haven’t pre-ordered The Invasion of Time and the less said about The Two Doctors the better.

Yet, that aside I rather enjoyed The Sontaran Stratagem. It was safe Doctor Who, familiar and fun. It had an air of ‘classic Who’ about it – hardly surprising since we also saw the return of UNIT as well as an old adversary. And while we’ve yet to meet a real successor to the Brigadier (quite the opposite it seems), I’m glad that the boys are back to entertain us and no doubt cause a little havoc in the second part, arriving just a little past the nick of time. It’s also good to see that this once top secret organisation have gone down the Torchwood route of disguise and emblazoned their mobile HQ with the UNIT logo. All that was missing were a couple of UNIT rentagrunts stood agog as something alien ponced its way towards them. Oh wait, that did happen (kind of) and they got zapped in the shins by Sontaran Staal. Appropriate really, given that the UNIT goons accused him of being a child that he gave them the sonic equivalent of an ankle-bite!

Christopher Ryan was a hoot as Staal and I was pleasantly surprised by the make-up after my initial fears on seeing that ‘thing’ in the Radio Times at the start of the season. Thank the maker they didn’t use that… oh, they did. The posh Sontaran – what does he look and soundlike? Still it once again reminded me of Old Who – an actor fresh from RADA, who thought he was reading for a part in Richard III. Little did he know that the title was merely rhyming slang to keep the fans fooled. Actually I think I know what’s going on with the Sontarans. First we get Angry Sontaran, then Posh. Next week the invading force will reveal Baby, Ginger and Sporty (the latter will no doubt take on the Doctor at squash and not get hit in the probic vent). The Doctor will defeat them, but in ten years time they will be back for the reunion invasion after failing miserably with solo projects of destruction across the galaxy.

I won’t waste too much time with Donna. I’ve always liked Catherine Tate and had no doubts that she’d be fine in the new series. While she will always be haunted by the many comedic creations from her previous series to the point where you’re almost hoping she will get just a little bit bovvered, she is a good counterpoint to the Doctor. She continues to prove herself admirably each week, and so far (although far too early to tell) the return of Martha hasn’t sidelined her to the point of pointlessness, although he walk down memory lane was a bit OTT. Next she’ll be having flashbacks from two minutes ago, recalling that time when she put the left leg forward before the right as she walked.

Another pleasant surprise was Rattingan, boy genius. A well realised villain driven by tantrums and a ‘bratishness’ that managed to avoid high camp and proved to be a worthy adversary for the Doctor. He was a cross between Bill gates and Woody Allen – and science fiction has been crying out for such a hybrid for days. It’s a good move to include these kinds of sidekick villains in a Sontaran story, as you just can’t imagine the Doctor and Staal discussing much beyond “war good”, “no war bad”. I’m just not sure who will put Rattingan over their knee first and gives him six of the best, because he needs a bloody good spanking. And no that is not a euphemism.

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but the episode felt very much like Rise of the Cybermen. We have the returning classic monster, the alien technology already well established across the globe, the evil factory, the human baddie, the ‘hypnotised’ humans and many of the same, all too recognisable locations. Of course, the extras in this story weren’t a patch on the ones used in ROTC, but you can’t have everything – I’ve been busy. I swear one of the door guards even blinked – but I bet no one starts a bloody thread about that. No. Not that I’m in the least bit bitter and twisted. I’ll be starting my own academy next, developing a range of toilet paper that cleans itself with every wipe.

So all in all, an enjoyable, none to taxing first part. And while the fans were screaming “get a brick!” when poor old Bernie was trapped in the car, we do at least see Donna’s Mum run off for something. I can understand the Doctor not thinking about the bleedin’ obvious – that’s the curse of a genius I guess, but surely Donna would have found something lying around. Although the neighbourhood didn’t look like ASBO hell, so maybe the odd brick or window-smashing implement wasn’t such an easy item to procure. Still, nothing detracts from that marvellous final image of the Doctor looking lost in the mist. Is all lost? Tennant was very good in this instalment, toning his performance down several notches but still suitably alien and eccentric, the trademarks of any discerning Time Lord. But anyhow, once the second part has aired it may ignite a new found passion for the intergalactic Mr. Hankeys. I just hope they have the courage to do something good with evil Martha, because if this is just an excuse to get her and the Doctor snogging, it won’t be big and it won’t be clever.