TORCHWOOD: "GREEKS BARING GIFTS":

Oh dear. After a couple of decent missions, Torchwood is back to its own particular method of dealing with alien threats: priority angst; rookie professionalism. It's a good job that the aliens come one at a time, because God knows it's easy enough to infiltrate Torchwood's inner sanctum. All you have to do is tempt one of them, after hours, with a bit of alien technology and then seal the deal with a bit of inter-species but same-gender sex. The alien took the guise of a comely, sassy and smirky woman who was less femme fatale than "EastEnders" strumpet. She targeted Toshiko with combination of a gem that allowed telepathy and a little lesbian action. Actually, I wouldn't necessarily have said that Toshiko would be my first choice to penetrate Torchwood, since she has proven to be the most consistantly professional of the lot ... although it must be said that Owen has shown himself capable of messing around but still focusing on the assignment at hand. Otherwise, the Torchwood team were acting as they always seem to: like a hormonally-vulnerable, self-involved sixth form common room. This story, they managed to ruin Toshiko's careful workload by playing basketball by her computer. And then, when she complained, just saying she was uptight. Well she had the gem and she could read their thoughts - quite a decent and subdued imagining of things people might be thinking, this - and even though she had vowed to tell the team about the gem, I can go with the idea that the shock of actually hearing others' thoughts might have changed her mind initially. But then, it just got silly when she had her "Unbreakable" moment of stopping a potential killer. I must say, it was jolly nice of him to leave the front door open so that she could creep up on him. Once the alien hussy got inside Torchwood, she strutted around with menace - tilt chin down, smirk, stare at everyone from under your brow, walk as if you are about to break out into a "Guys and Dolls" number - before being defeated by convenience. Capt'n Jack can reprogramme any ol' alien technology, see? Afterwards, Toshiko had a soul-searching moment beneath the helicopter camera that continually prowls over Cardiff. What should she do with the mind-reading gem, she asked? Lacking any apparent solid proceedure for dealing with alien technology, she crushed it underfoot. There are some things man should not.... etc etc.

As I said, it's a good job the alien threats come mostly one at a time. Hmm, the fairy threat proved too much and Torchwood just, well, just gave up trying to outwit them and gave them what they wanted. They can resolve cannibal hicks by using guns, of course, but most of the other problems are of their own doing. Focusing on character fallabilities is fine and character-building, but when the entire episode threat hinges on that, it stumbles and trips headlong into clumsiness, and what you get is all the depth and consistancey of a slightly warmed, underdone soap opera with genre sprinkles on top. And hey, did the Cyberwoman actually kill the Pterodactyl then??

Dr Who... the old Dr Who... is great as a time killer and filler, those neat-sized 20+ minutes episodes. I have been wading through some again...

So with the second ever story - "The Daleks" with William Hartnell - it's quite surprising to see that the whole format was down pat from the start. Two opposting factions; cliffhangers; a little moralising; capture and escape; limited sets (but written decently so that you can hardly tell). The digitally remastered print helps, for we get gloriously crisp black-and-white, which is always a good thing. It helps to make the Dalek city look great; an empty inhuman shell of endless metallic corridors. The Daleks themselves make a celebrated entrance, and there's the one awesome chill of the little Dalek hand. The Doctor himself is quite different from later incarnations; he's duplicious and quite childish in his treatment of his unwilling travelling companions... except for his niece Susan who, in all honesty, deserved to be left on some planet where her dodgy emoting won't hurt anyone. Thankfully, Ian and Barbara are mature and smart and seem to do most of the solving. Despite this being six episodes long, there really isn't much flab either; rather there's a good sense of pacing that the Twenty-First Century series could probably learn from.

The follow-up TARDIS-based mystery, "Edge of Destruction" has filler pasted all over it - which it was. A hurried two-parter with no cash to step outside. Although the makers now see it as crucial to solidifying the relationship between the time-travelling crew, it's still garbled and baffling, hinged upon a button spring malfuctioning. Why the sentient TARDIS would think turning some crewmembers murderous would be a good warning to them, or quite why melting clocks sends them into terrified exclamations isn't exactly clear. There could have been a really good chamber piece here, but this hasn't worn well and comes as a disappointment after "The Daleks".

Time to skip forward to Jon Pertwee and "Inferno". A notably dark storyline, despite green-hairt heat-based Hyde-monsters (Primords). Again, a six-parter that drags out just fine, mostly due to the fact that it skips over to a parrallel dimension to reload the narrative. It's true that this "slide" is a red herring (as says Adam Kintopf at gallifreyone.com) but nevertheless, parrallel universes are scary in the same way that dreams can be. Pertwee is quite cantankerous and although Tom Baker is my favourite, he does cut a dashing and demanding figure who know what he's doing, and it is col to see the Doc played straight. A little social commentary on misuse of industrial and militaristic forces and how this can lead to fascistic societies... the Brigadier as a Bond Villain... Liz Shaw as a latent dominatrix... some great magma stock-footage too. The austerity and not a little cautionary pessimism makes this stand out.

"The Green Death" had its political agenda as inspiration, rather than being written in afterwards for gravitas. THe Dr Who team wanted to do a cautionary tale about ecological and capitalist concerns, and end up with sentient computers and giant maggots. Wonderful. This story has dated and is peppered with references to the new era of alternative life-styles and the shifting emphasis in industries from old-school mining mining to technology-led corporations. There's even a spot of feminism and equal rights and proto-Quorn. If anything, it's a bit saddening to see how many of the concerns here haven't dated in the Twenty-First century. Pertwee is at his best, there is again a decent supporting cast, especially the Welsh, and the story is stretched without breaking over six episodes. Lots of locations, lots of deux ex machina. Hmm, a HAL-esque, Neitzche and Wilde-quoting computer... these days, it would be a laptop. The mines are under-used and the special effects... well, one must always be forgiving when Dr Who is giving good story. Anyway, they are nowhere near as damaging as Jo Grant's utter annoying stupidity. Her moving on from the doctor is nicely developed though.

Ah, now, here's where we hit the high marks... "Pyramids of Mars" is a total classic and doesn't disappoint at all. With producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and co. happily raiding and Who-ifying all the established horror icons, this is perhaps the most celebrated of Who eras. Certainly I felt no need to rely upon nostalgic fondness to boost my enjoyment re-watching. Tom Baker, an old victorian house, good serious performances, much lurking around lush English greenery, some nasty killings and giant blind mummy-robots. What more is needed? There is Sutekh too, but it's the mummies and Bernard Archard as a living cadaver that really hit the mark. Glorious fun.

"The Hand of Death" I also remember watching as a kid... either first time around in '77 or during some repeat. The moving hand in the Tupperware box is a classic and still chills. There was a brief era of disembodied and moving hands - that Michael Caine flick and others - and it always scared the marbles off me as a kid. Again, Dr Who was smart enough to crib established scaries and Whoify them. As a story, "The Hand of Death" is a little imbalanced, with Eldrad being an only so-so alien adversary, far more interesting in his ambiguous female incarnation. And the whole idea that an alien reace would commit mass suicide just in case Eldrad returns... well, didn't episode three end with a trap that would have successfully killed Eldrad if the Doctor and Sarah hadn't been there? A couple more traps like that would have worked, surely? Why wipe yourself out? No one smart enough amongst them to remake or fix barriers and/or to make a subterranean living bareable? But the first two episodes have some great stuff in them.

Hmmm, my personal favourite, "The Talons of Weng-Chaing" is only a few stories away from this. But that is another day...