ATOS declare Richard III fit for work "The dead monarch, Richard Plantagenet, was called for a reassessment of his fitness for work by ATOS – which carries out disability assessments on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - after it was discovered the deposed King had spent years lying in a Leicester City Council car park doing absolutely nothing." (tags: ukpoliticsdeathfunnydisability )
There's a trivia question that starts by listing Victor Pemberton, Glyn Jones, Mark Gatiss... And then someone buzzes in to say that Noel Clarke has both appeared in Doctor Who and written a TV story for the franchise, the only regular cast member to do so (though of course Colin Baker has written several short stories and a comic, Ian Marter wrote novelisations and a spinoff novel, and Big Finish allows us to invoke others such as Nick Briggs, Barnaby Edwards, and rather surprisingly Ingrid Pitt).( Collapse )
And, because we are doing these in original broadcast order, we suddenly switch from Torchwood to a couple of episodes from the two other main BBC Whovian shows. Luckily for my schedule, these two hour-long stories fitted into my weekend, rather than having to be chopped into different parts of the commute.
Three Whoniverse stories were broadcast for the first time on 1 January 2007, which is a record. 1 January is also the anniversary of the last appearance of the Meddling Monk (1966), the first TV Daleks in colour (1972), the first appearance of Leela (1977), and the regeneration of David Tennant into Matt Smith (2010). But none of the three broadcast on 1/1/7 were Doctor Who per se; we were treated to the first of The Sarah Jane Adventures in the afternoon and then the two final parts of the first Torchwood season late at night. This time I took three days over it. I think I would recommend dedicated rewatchers to do it all in one go; that way one is sufficiently worn down to be less perturbed by the awfulness of the closing episode of the three.
Well, the first season of Torchwood has its ups and downs, but most of the latter stories (with one crashing exception) are actually decent efforts, with the peaks good enough to show that it had potential for more. It is notable that most of the better episodes were written by women. (Audience ratings were consistently more positive than the fannish consensus, or even my more charitable views, which indicates that the show was delivering on some metrics anyway.) The rewatch mix is greatly improved by the Donna Noble and Sarah Jane episodes.
OK, it's the Doctor and Martha next. That will be fun.
