After last week's drama, I arrived on time for the show this week, and immediately went into the broadcast studio to get prepared. The show before mine is a pre-record so I can go in and sort everything out. On the monitor I found a live feed of BBC1 so that I could keep up to date with the announcement of the new Doctor. I thought at first that the BBC were a bit silly to put on such a programme at the same time as The Sunday Alternative, as I imagined that their ratings would suffer. This turned out to not be the case, and from watching the comments on Twitter and Facebook, (remember Facebook? It's making an inexplicable comeback), it appeared that a lot of people were watching the telly on what is supposed to be a radio day. It was also nice to see that my friends on Facebook had developed the ability to type at the same time as watching television, and looked forward to the programme finishing so that they could carry over this new found skill on The Sunday Alternative's Facebook and Twitter. Typing while listening to the radio is surely easier than doing so while watching television isn't it? It appears that it isn't, as once again the communication was rather poor.
I haven't watched any of the last series of Doctor Who, as I simply couldn't be arsed with it anymore. It was my daughter who introduced me to it, when the rebooted series began with Christopher Eccleson and Billie Piper. We got into it and especially enjoyed David Tennant's portrayal. Matt Smith didn't endear himself to me, and combined with Stephen Moffat's ridiculously overblown story-lines, the series just lost it for me as it continued to try and out-clever itself. Hopefully the new series will be a fresh start, and I believe that Peter Capaldi was the second best choice that they could have possibly made, (the most obvious choice being me of course, why wasn't I chosen?). Capaldi is 55 years old, which is about the right age for the role. Matt Smith should have still been in Grange Hill at his age, if it was still on. I didn't realise that William Hartnell was only 55 too, as people did look older in those days I thought he was in his sixties.
Parents were immediately on the defensive about the suitability of the role, and the newspaper websites were reporting that Malcolm Tucker had landed the role. In this day and age, when most of the civilised world have stopped looking up at aeroplanes and fearing fire, I found it hard to believe that people are still confused about the line between an actor and his or her part. If Malcolm Tucker had been chosen to play Doctor Who, then I could understand the complaints and concerns about such a foul-mouthed person taking over in a children's show. On the other hand, if the fictional character of Malcolm Tucker was to play the role, then I would presume that he would still be given a script to work with. Are these people the same ones who think that Ken Barlow is under investigation for a historic sex offences? When I was a kid, Billy Connolly appeared in one episode, (and sang the theme tune) of Supergran and Rik Mayall appeared on Jackanory, and that led to him being given his own version; Grimm Tales. Two comedians better known for appearing in adult programmes, and did it have an effect on us? Did it fuck!
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