The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Who’s ready to give this golden age another spin?
DOCTOR WHO Saturday, BBC One BIG GOLD DREAM Saturday, BBC Two BORN TO KILL Thursday, Channel 4
Believe it or not, there are people out there who’ve never seen Doctor Who before. Some of them, admittedly, are children who weren’t even born when the show returned triumphantly in 2005, so at least they have an excuse. Everyone else has been slacking, frankly.
Or maybe they’ve been put off by the daunting prospect of joining a club with more than 50 years of continuity behind it. I know I would be.
However, when you throw out all that baggage and get down to basics, the concept behind Doctor Who couldn’t be more straightforward: an eccentric alien hero travels through time and space righting wrongs in his bigger-on-the-
inside spaceship. That’s all you need to know. And that’s why the first episode of Peter Capaldi and head writer Steven Moffat’s final series was so effective. It served as a concise, witty, charming introduction to Doctor Who itself.
Through the wide eyes of new companion Bill – Pearl Mackie, instantly likeable, fun and engaging – the craftily titled The Pilot spelled out the essential ingredients of the Doctor’s universe, while providing enough in-jokey wrinkles to satisfy the initiated. Moffat’s wry subversion of the traditional “companion enters TARDIS for the first time” sequence was particularly amusing.
Without a trace of self-indulgence, he managed to celebrate and explain the unique magic of Doctor Who in the space of 50 entertaining minutes.
Meanwhile, he teased an intriguing new mystery for the wonderful Capaldi’s last hurrah – why has the Doctor vowed to stay on Earth and out of trouble?
A show as old as Doctor Who occasionally needs to refresh itself and attract new viewers. That’s why it’s lasted for so long. This purely entertaining, winningly traditional episode fulfilled its brief beautifully.
An old Glasgow punk, Capaldi would have loved Big Gold Dream. This droll documentary paid fond tribute to that fleeting period of post-punk excitement when Scotland ruled the hip parade via pioneering indie labels Fast Product and Postcard.
This tale of two Svengalis showed how Fast’s Bob Last and Postcard’s insufferable Alan Horne built their DIY empires in Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively.
Musicians from regal Scottish indie bands such as Orange Juice, Strawberry Switchblade, The Associates and Fire Engines shared affable anecdotes, guarded complaints and poignant regrets as they raked over the coals of their youthful innocence. Like most tales of idealism, eventually it collapsed into a sad heap of compromise, betrayal and disappointment. But the music lingers on. The most important thing about this delightful film? Reminding the world that Scotland – Bob Last’s Factory pre-dating label in particular – invented independent music as we know it. Nicola Sturgeon should run on that ticket.
Teenagers can’t be trusted, even when they read aloud to dying pensioners. That’s the important public service message behind Born To Kill, a new psychological thriller about a seemingly sensitive, kind adolescent boy with homicidal tendencies.
Sam lives with his mum. He claims his dead father was a war hero but that’s obviously an obsessive fantasy. Mum’s job on a geriatric ward allows him to indulge his dangerous obsession with death, which eventually results in murder. I’ve no idea what to make of it so far. Sam is subtly inhabited by promising newcomer Jack Rowan – his unnervingly friendly smile recalls Anthony Perkins in Psycho – but I can’t shake the nagging suspicion that this is yet another emptily stylised exploitation of mental illness.