Starman

And we're back.

You might have noticed the new series of Doctor Who started this weekend and The Impossible Astronaut compelled me to have a word splurge.

To start a series off with a two-parter is more like the old days of the series and it marked the new direction under Stephen Moffat by starting with creatures that were disturbing and, whoa, scary.

Remember the adipose? They were amusing, sure, but at the ultimate end it was just another episode with an alien disguised as a human and a blinky spaceship and David Tennant making lots of 'ohhhhhhs' and funny faces.

It was almost inevitable that every series of Doctor Who should start with some mild peril gambit of the world being in danger via some silly source that you couldn't quite take seriously (autons, aformentioned adipose, a weird translucent floating snake and some cops made of eyeballs).

Of course, these episodes would hint at what was to come, some bigger whodunit to be solved after a 42 minute yarn of mild peril and toasted teacakes.

There's more danger in this year's opener, it's sinister, creepy and confusing, thanks to all the bizarre time-travel whatishappeningidontunderstand in the first 10 minutes.

There's nothing wrong with having an over-riding story arc throughout a series, the feature working in brilliant fashion in the last series with reappearing cracks in time, but there are still things left over from last year to explore. EXCITING.

Who did the crackly voice on the Tardis belong to? Is it these aliens in Burton menswear that are trying to take over America? Or is it someone else?

Suave and scary as

That River Song came back (again) and this time there was someone in a spacesuit shooting death-rays caused a backward glance to her debut with Tennant and the library/computer/simulation/godonlyknows gizmo. Is there a link to that? Did she say anything about spooky dead things in spacesuits?

I can't remember and I won't be going back to check but the very fact the thought occurred makes the show feel a bit more American in tone, which can only be a good thing.

Revisiting old stories within the Eccleston/Tennant/Smith age makes the canon stronger and more believable (and accessible to the chiddlers who haven't seen Tom Baker. Their loss, of course...) and, again, more like an American show.

Self-contained series can be a little bit boring after a while, it certainly got to that stage when Russell T Davies was running the show.

When Doctor Who returned all those moons ago the effects were still very much of the old show, in a way. You sort of laughed. The BBC might have thought a big, shiny monster stuck to a ceiling and bullying Simon Pegg was impressive, but when kids have been spoiled with Hollywood special effects then Doctor Who just wasn't going to cut it.

The Moffat run has started to change that. The (over) ambitious special effects have been reined in (bar that whale thing) to allow the ambition of the stories themselves to show through.

Nobody wants the Doctor to become Schumacher's Batman, impotent and standing in the wings while you look at the OTT villains, but there is a lot to be said for taking a bit of plastic, putting it in a mould and making something bloody scary, rather than seeing what The Mill can produce.

Matt Smith is still the coolest thing about Moffat's Doctor Who

The biggest compliment you can give the new series so far is that it is classic Moffat with scares, disembodied children's voices (a staple) and, best of all, it's the episode 5 and 6 two parter right at the bloody beginning!

It can only get better, too, right?

Throw Away Your Television

How queer that after watching the second part (television) of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle on iPlayer yesterday I chose to watch the venereal stain that was The Sex Education Show vs Pornography on Channel 4. I ought to explain. Lee dismissed Channel 4 as a deluge of faecal matter that descends upon people, as shown through the sketches that interject between his missives (the majority of which are performed by Kevin Eldon and that fat man from the Little Britain Fat Fighters sketches who wasn't funny then and still, wow, isn't); Anna Richardson seems to be making television programmes to support this view.

Anna decided to ignite a debate by visting a school made up from the mongoloid handfuls of Sheringham, which is in Norfolk (hey... I used to live there!) She spent the next fifty minutes (I turned over before the end, sorry) disecting the seedy world that school children inhabit on the internet. Well, she might have called it seedy, she spent a lot of time repeating herself which was pretty pointless as I think most people spent their time watching it hoping to see some wank material.

The best bit was her reporting a child pornography website after she clicked on a link whilst watching some other porn. She must have mentioned that it shocked her at least five times in twenty to thirty seconds. It grated so much that I answered her aloud, "I get it, you're shocked", then again, I talk to myself a lot, conducting imaginary pre-match interviews for Football Focus on Football Manager, so I suppose an analyst would call talking at an animate object a 'breakthrough'. She also spoke for the crew (of course, if she hadn't, I'd have assumed they were all massive raging paedos spaffing off into the boom, so I applaud her for this) and questioned whether children were being exposed to this.

I question whether Jacqui Smith is being exposed to it, Anna.

The answer is quite obvious, for this is Channel 4. Don't click on it. She's talking to a bunch of porn vets and wonders if they're being exposed. Probably not, Anna, people know not to click on those things because they're not as stupid or weird as you are. Apart from in Sheringham, where The Darkness still seem to be de rigeur in the style stakes. Or was that the Welsh porn star she interviewed? Sorry for not giving a solitary spazzy fuck.

Don't show sixteen year olds naked grown women and be surprised they don't like how they look. You can be surprised at the boys' shit hair styles and the silly things the girls say when looking at tits (even they like the fake ones!) but being flabbergasted that kids don't like saggy boobs of a woman who has had two children is thicky on a bike at the post office. I don't even know what demographic they're going for. The same people that watch all the spew that Channel 4 gag on as they brush their tongues with their toothbrushes, I expect.

Anna visited three computing retailers and was shocked to find that the filters inbuilt in all mobile phones were available on computers but had to be activated by consumers themselves. She was also shocked (there it is again) that each retailer gave her different advice. Welcome to the modern high street, Anna. The obvious answer, from someone who can't even hyperlink or fix their DVD drive, is google. I wonder if she's heard of it? Ah, she fucking has as well! She used it to find porn sites! Hooray. Why not google admin and filters as well then? ARGGGGGGH. Like cutting yourself with a knife to test the sharpness of a blade. I assume she does that too. Just get AVG free, Anna, and sit down.

So, then... Risible, ugly and pedantic television with a bizarre number of ad breaks. It made me sad that my phone was too shit to browse for porn to pass the time while I wait for Stewart Lee to start on BBC2. The entire experience made me feel the need to dig a moat around my house, fill it up with petrol and spend my remaining days tending to a wall of flame to keep these idiots and their mutant spawn from posting me my letters.

Then I watched the aforementioned Comedy Vehicle. Calling it a vehicle seems about right as it seems to exist to propel Stewart Lee in to the same bracket of 'modern life is shit and this is why' as Mitchell and Webb and Frankie Boyle blah blah blah. This would work better if Lee didn't repeat himself so often to make the jokes last longer (and less funny) and if the programme's theme music wasn't that piece of filth that Bolton Wanderers play when (!) they score a goal at home. I watch comedy to be entertained, not to be reminded of the existence of Gavin McCann, Gary Megson and Sam Allardyce. In fact, Sam Allardyce's interviews on why he should be England manager were funnier than the entirety of last night's Comedy Vehicle. Stewart Lee is like Morrissey; only half as good as he thinks he is. He has some wonderful moments which you can forget as soon as he opens his mouth to spout out the next bit of rubbish. For every How Soon Is Now? or diatribe against Dan Brown (from the first programme, on Books) there is some shit about veganism or a shit joke about a maudlin, solitary ballet shoe which culminates in a poor joke about people complaining to the BBC about everything.

He also looks a bit like Morrissey, which is really where the comparison came from in the first place.

However, The Wire started last night and if you missed that you're fucked, well and truly. There's no more to say on that, in all honesty.

Come back later for some appalling creative writing and a one-word review of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, if you fancy.