Barry Letts started his career as an actor, but became a director  in the 1960’s.  First working on Doctor Who as Director of the 1967 story The Enemy of the World.  In 1969, he was invited to become the Producer of the series. There can be no doubt that without his input to Doctor Who during the turbulent years of the early 1970’s, the series would not be here today.  Instead of a much loved flagship of British television, the series would regarded as one of those quaint, short lived black and white curios so peculiar to the 1960’s.    Back in 1969, the series  was going through the doldrums and came close to being canceled.  Mr. Letts took the show by the scruff of the neck and took it from monochrome into glorious colour for the new decade.  He gave us a new Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee; in a new setting, the exile of The Doctor to twentieth century Earth.  He was the man who proved that Doctor Who was the infinitely flexible format that the Fans  often claim it to be, he proved that it could go anywhere and do anything, and more importantly, he made people want to watch it again.

Barry Letts had a hand in the creation of three of the most popular Doctors.  As well as being Producer for all of Jon Pertwee’s tenure, in 1974 he cast Tom Baker in the role, before handing the series over to incoming Producer Phillip Hinchcliffe.  Finally in 1980, he returned to the series for one year as Executive Producer, and helped to cast Peter Davison after Baker’s marathon tenure.

It is fair to say that Barry Letts never really left Doctor Who.  He wrote two radio plays that featured Pertwee’s Doctor together with Sarah Jane Smith, (the companion played by Elisabeth Sladen, the he created back in 1974) and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (played by Nicholas Courtney).  He also wrote a number of novels with his friend and colleague Terrance Dicks.  His particular style blending the mundane with the extraterrestrial is a foundation of the current series of Doctor Who, and without him, Russell T. Davies would have had a much harder time bringing the series back in 2005.

Barry Letts’ carreer extended beyond Doctor Who. After leaving that series, he became the Producer of the BBC’s much loved Sunday Teatime Classics Adaptations, that would take a piece of great literature and transfer it to the TV in digestible half hour chunks.  It is through his work on these adaptations that a generation of children, myself included, developed a love of great literature.

His wife Muriel died earlier this year. He is survived by three children.

Barry Leopold Letts (26 March 1925 – 9 October 2009)

If you were walking down City Road in Cardiff towards the city centre at around 6.15pm on Friday, 14th January 2005, you would have found it difficult to ignore a large bright light shining out from behind some foliage near the church on Newport Road. The light is a powerful BBC scenic light mounted on a scaffolding tower. It shines through a diffusing grille into the forecourt of Cardiff Royal Infirmary opposite. Except that the Cardiff Royal Infirmary has had a makeover. An arched sign over the gates, apparently of cast iron, proclaims it as Albion Hospital. Behind the walls to either side of the gates are gunmetal coloured sheets of corrugated iron. Behind the gates, the low walls along the ramp to the curved double front doors have been surmounted with goldfish bowl gas lamps and reinforced with sandbags. All the windows have diagonal crosses of white tape and a large cloth banner hangs far above the doors covering much of the frontage. It bears the symbol of the red cross, used during the second world war to prevent aeroplanes from confusing hospitals with military targets. The powerful light casts the shadow of the large tree in the forecourt across this banner to eerie effect. Passers by gaze in confusion at this suddenly anachronistic transformation while twenty-first century cars drive past in ignorance.

Meanwhile, in front of the gates a complicated camera rig is being assembled. When it is ready, the camera hangs in a protected cradle from the end of a long black arm extended from a vertical black mount to one side of the gates. Connected to this are the camera monitor and controls. The point of this rig is to give the camera a view of the area in front of the gates without the light across the road casting the camera’s shadow into the gate area. A truck stops by the traffic island at the end of the road and two of the reflective waistcoated men who are keeping a watchful eye on events jump down from it. They begin to unload and set out traffic cones to narrow the road lanes. This will slow the movement of traffic, making the location safer and limiting the risk of vehicular shadows being cast across it. The traffic noise will not be a problem as no dialogue scenes are to be recorded this night. The background noise will be dubbed over with a more appropriate soundtrack during editing.

There is a call for action and the camera rig moves smoothly towards and focuses in on the gates, where precisely nothing is happening. This is a camera rehearsal and when the crew are satisfied, there is a pause while a member of the cast is summoned from inside the hospital.

Soon the camera is repeating its earlier manoeuvre three times in succession and each time, on the monitor, Christopher Eccleston walks along the wall, turns to stride up to the locked gates and pauses to examine the padlocked chain securing them. There is a pause in filming while the next shot is prepared. Eccleston chats to some children and the adults standing with them by the gate, probably relatives of someone connected with the production. A beautiful young camera assistant holding a digital clapperboard asks some onlookers if they are Doctor Who fans. They are pleased to learn that the scenes being recorded tonight are for the two part Doctor Who story The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, due to be broadcast on BBC One later in the year. She tells them what is going to be shot that evening and points out some of the scenic crew, who are affixing wooden signs painted with the words KEEP OUT – AREA RESTRICTED to the corrugated sheeting with a drill.

The camera assistant rejoins the crew as the next shot is ready. Now the focus is entirely on the gates. On the monitor, Eccleston walks into shot, pauses again before the padlock and reaches into a pocket to retrieve what looks like a futuristic pen torch. This he shines into the padlock, which comes apart in his hands and he unloops the chain from the gates. He then pushes open the gates and strides through them. A few more takes follow before the final part of this sequence is shot. These takes begin with Eccleston pushing open the gates then the camera tracks him through them, up the ramp to the doors and after trying the doors, Eccleston shines the pen light on their lock, opens them, steps through.

The watching fans are pleased with this as they recognise the pen light to be a new version of the Sonic Screwdriver, a device used by previous Doctors which generates focused sound vibrations and can be used to loosen bolts or even ignite marsh gas. The crew also seem pleased. Hot drinks are being shared out and the camera rig reset. The fans see this as an opportunity to snatch a quick word with the latest actor cast as their hero but as they cross the road, one of the men in reflective waistcoats sends them back. Soon after, Eccleston has left the location but the camera crew is ready for another shot. The gates stand open. There is almost no traffic now and a concealed smoke machine creates a fog through the forecourt, lending the location an even more sinister aspect than before. The doors of the hospital swing open and a column of figures shamble out, moving at an unnaturally slow, even pace towards the open gates. They all wear primitive gas masks, shaped like badger snouts made of dull green canvas with glass covered eye holes and a round filter at the tip, leather straps buckled around the back of the head holding them in place. One of the two at the front is a thin figure wearing a white lab coat, the other is much thicker set, in black trousers, a white shirt and a maroon tank top. A few are dressed in period nurses’ uniforms. Others are wearing 1940’s overcoats or dressing gowns. These are the patients and staff of Albion Hospital and are of all ages, the youngest being two twin girls in pigtails wearing red woollen overcoats who could be as young as nine and certainly not older than twelve.

This is a scene described earlier by the camera assistant as the sufferers of Empty Child Syndrome emerge. This walking nightmare takes on an even more surreal, dream-like quality when on reaching the gates, these extras suddenly break step, becoming more animated and removing the gas masks. The second take is even more impressive. The third ends with a laugh as an older woman in a magenta dressing gown turns in the act of removing the gas mask after the take and almost causes a passing member of the crew to fall to the ground. The extras re-enter the hospital and the camera rig is disassembled. The camera is repositioned across the road without the elaborate camera rig for the final shot of the evening. A few fans still remain on the site and are initially told that it will be acceptable for them stand to the left of the hospital but they are asked to move to the other side of the road, behind the camera. Possibly their shadows were unexpectedly in shot.

On the takes, the camera simply pans or tracks across the front of the hospital. This will be an establishing shot, showing the warning signs on the corrugated metal, some period fly posters flapping between them, the hospital name, the red cross banner and the taped across windows. On screen this will be a very brief shot conveying the austerity of wartime and the mystery of night. It will be digitally placed on a hill overlooking a deserted railyard filmed somewhere else entirely. “That’s a wrap!”, calls a tall man in a red jacket.

A man in a yellow reflective jacket quietly expresses his relief at this. He explains to the fans that he has been there since 8.00am and by the end of a fourteen hour day, his enthusiasm is considerably diminished. A blonde production assistant hurries across and asks if any of the crew want a call sheet for the next recording. The camera assistant folds one up and tucks it into her back pocket before dismantling the camera and stacking it on a trolley. A fan offers to help but she politely refuses, as the camera crew tease her about it and call to her to “Leave those boys alone!”.

Soon the camera crew have gone, but the fans linger a little longer. Crossing to the hospital again, they ask the BBC person left watching the site if they can take the period fly posters. After a momentary pause, he says yes. These are 12.5×9.5 inch (190×252mm) sheets, the text printed with a manilla coloured background simulating the look of paper that has been browned in the sun. The centred text in red on a typical example reads:

YOUR
“EMPTIES”
WANTED
Please bring back your
empty cod liver oil
and orange tonic
bottles when you come
for a new supply
ISSUED BY THE MINISTRY OF FOOD

In a production as complex as Doctor Who, these fly posters are a detail so tiny that when the completed episode is broadcast, it will not even be possible to read their text. By ten o’clock even the fans have left. It has been a good night. The production team is happy, the fans are happy and the latest Doctor Who adventure is in the can.

(Extracts from this location report can be found on page 119 of Back To The Vortex: The Unofficial And Unauthorised Guide To Doctor Who 2005 by J Shaun Lyon, Telos Publishing, 2005.)

People occasionally contact me to ask how they can meet the cast or see filming to the extent that I now have a standard answer and here it is:

The Doctor Who studios are on an industrial estate at Upper Boat near Pontypridd. I believe there is a lot of security and you would be extremely lucky to see much more than vehicles arriving or leaving through the gates. When the series first came back in 2005, it was quite easy to catch them location filming and even get quite close but now locations are a carefully guarded secret until the crew start setting up and are in increasingly obscure or closed off locations as the series popularity is such that filming attracts bystanders and journalists in sufficient numbers to potentially get in the way of filming. Even when you do find a location in use, the main cast may not be present for the sequence being shot or it may be a night or an interior shoot.

The best way to find out about a location shoot is to find an online forum in which location shooting is posted about by fans as it is happening. One of the most popular is currently at www.gallifreybase.com/forum and you would need to become a member of this forum (which is free) to access it. Within their television series section there is a thread called “photo-posting and set reports” where all the latest location filming sightings are posted.

If you do find and a visit a location shoot in progress there may be very little to see as a two minute scene can take several hours to get right and commit to tape with much waiting around while very little happens very slowly between takes. This does not mean the cast and crew have much time to interact with bystanders. Although this luxury sometimes occurs, they are there to work and have lines and positions to get right, camera moves and lighting to prepare and continuity with previously shot material to match.

If you’re determined to try, please remember to not talk or use flash photography during takes and it’s good policy to co-operate with any reasonable request from the programme makers as spoiling a take is not the way to show your appreciation for the series.

However, if you’re interest is more casual and hours of standing around doesn’t appeal, there is instead plenty to do in Cardiff, Europe’s fastest growing capital city and further places of interest can be found throughout South Wales.

The Idiot’s Lantern is a euphemism for television. This episode was written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Euros Lynn (pronounced ay-ross) who respectively wrote and directed The Unquiet Dead (2005). It is set during the coronation in 1953 and features the Doctor and Rose travelling around on a suitably contemporary form of transport.

I received a number of texts on Thursday, 16th February 2006 telling me that pick up shots for The Idiot’s Lantern were being filmed at the end of Florentia Street in Cathays, Cardiff. David Tennant as the tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose had apparently been and gone. I had a good hour to spare when I got back to my house elsewhere in Cathays before I had to be on a train to Pontypridd for a TIMELESS meeting, so I thought I would have a quick look around. It was dark, but not so cold as the previous week’s shoot for the same episode. The presence of a large crane light shining down into the street alongside the supermarket gave away the exact location.

In many of the earlier Florentia Street location photographs there could be seen a large board with a pale blue background depicting a textless illustration of children playing in bright colours. It was an advertisement for Spangles, a popular confection last century. This wall is part of a street that forms a T junction with the southern end of Florentia Street. This was where the day’s filming was taking place. The Spangles ad had been removed. The camera was near the back wall of the eastern arm of the T-junction, pointing west. A large dark green period lorry with words something like B D Casey & Sons was parked at an angle across most of the western arm of the junction, obscuring from camera view some twenty-first century cars and the traffic roaring back and fore along the busy Crwys Road further off. The road markings were covered with straw. An abandoned wooden handcart containing tall metal milk churns and other period produce containers stood to one side. The same handcart appears in the cricket ball sequence in Human Nature (2007). This street is mostly anonymous brick walls, although there is an anonymous metal gated yard along the wall of the eastern arm of the T-junction. This yard had been lit from within, light spilling into camera view.

When I arrived at about 6.40pm, there were very few bystanders. A couple with a few small children and there was an old man who mumbled occasionally in a barely intelligible manner. David Tennant was stood on his own just a few meters away and had I had something appropriate to hand, I could have got an autograph quite easily. With so few onlookers present and no still cameras in evidence, the crew were very relaxed. When they were ready to resume recording, a very simple shot was rehearsed and then recorded. Not far from the handcart, a member of the crew held a dark blue Vespa scooter steady from behind. David Tennant in the tenth Doctor’s brown pin stripe suit and wearing a pale crash helmet sat astride the scooter and the engine was started. The crew member pushed the scooter forward and moved quickly out of camera view. The scooter glided slowly towards the camera and Tennant stopped it only a very few feet from the camera lens. Although his stunt double was also present in a matching costume, it had to be the man himself for this shot as it plainly ended on a close up of his face. I left at 7.00pm between the first and second takes of this shot. A TIMELESS meeting and a curry were waiting for me in Pontypridd!

(Part of this report is quoted on pages 77-78 of Second Flight: Back To The Vortex II – The Unofficial And Unauthorised Guide To Doctor Who 2006 by J Shaun Lyon, Telos Publishing, 2006.)

I was there when the tenth Doctor stepped from the TARDIS for the first time.

Sometime around early July of 2005 a claim was made on one of the major Doctor Who websites about Cardiff filming for the first fourteen episodes featuring David Tennant as the Doctor. A bookshop in The Hayes was to have its frontage redressed as part of a Christmas street scene for some evening shoots on Monday 1st and Tuesday 2nd August. Closer to that date, counter rumours began to emerge. Some claimed they would still be shooting in London that week and others that the street scene was going to be shot in Newport. Certainly there was no indication that the streets around The Hayes would be cordoned off as they were during filming for the episode Rose (2005) the previous year.

With no concrete information one way or the other, I headed into the city centre straight from work on Monday, 1st August. It was a perfectly normal summer evening in The Hayes and there was no sign of a Police Box, so I moved onto somewhere I knew I would at least see a Dalek to find out if anyone knew anything.

Not far from The Hayes is The Mariott Hotel and across from The Mariott is The Wyndham Arcade. The Wyndham Arcade  used to house Comics Guru Presents before it moved to Westbourne Road in Whitchurch. At the time it had a huge ceramic Dalek in the window and Comics Guru Presents remains an excellent place to pick up the latest SF gossip. Kristian Barry, proprietor, TIMELESS member and occasional BBC Wales Today interviewee hadn’t heard anything, but before long, Alex Willcox, also from TIMELESS, arrived with some news. He had seen on a website that filming had taken place at Cardiff Bay that afternoon, but it had already finished and there would be no point going to the Bay now. It was believed that recording had moved back into studio at Newport for the rest of the day and disappointed, I went home. Alex also mentioned something else, which I shall come back to at the end of this item.

Later that evening, at about 6.45pm I saw a brief interview on BBC Wales Today with David Tennant in casual clothes recorded at Cardiff Bay earlier that day. It showed the exterior of the interior location used which the presenter described as being a nightclub in the year five billion and which we now know to have been the setting for the conclusion of New Earth (2006). The report included an interview with Antony Wainer, publicity officer for the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. I had a standing arrangement with Antony whereby if either of us knew about a location shoot, the other got a text message and moments after the report concluded, I received a text. Loudoun Square!

Loudoun Square is just off Bute Street which connects Cardiff city centre with Cardiff Bay and contains a block of flats, a chip shop and a playground, all of which can be variously seen in the episodes Father’s Day (2005) and The Parting Of The Ways (2005). As I approached it at about 7.40pm the only oddity that I didn’t remember from a previous visit was an old fashioned red telephone box stood near the gates to the playground, but I might simply not have noticed it last time. As I reached the park I saw a man in a yellow reflective waistcoat keeping an eye on the place and I heard someone in a loud pink and magenta striped shirt muttering caustically about the glamour of television. Something was happening!

A quick mobile call allowed me to find Antony, who was accompanied as usual by David Greenham with his trusty digital camera and another fan named Greg whom I’d not met before. There was a break in filming but a certain square blue object in the corner of the playground was proof that we were in the right place.

A large dark red estate car drove into the playground and the others recognised Camille Coduri who plays Rose’s mother Jackie waving from inside. Our excitement increased as we realised that also in the car were Noel Clarke (Mickey), Billie Piper (Rose, of course) and in the far back seat was the new tenth Doctor, David Tennant! The car stopped not far from where the TARDIS was stood and we quickly moved closer to the action, though not so close that we would be in view of the cameras. While the scene was being prepared, Antony explained that Camille was waving because they had spoken to her earlier during the Bay shoot.

Pink and magenta shirt turned out to be a photo journalist and was carrying a camera with a barrel lense the size of a human head. One of the yellow waist-coated shoot security people walked across to ask us not to take photographs and made a particular point of telling this to the photo journalist who backed quietly away. After a while, the security man returned having been told that as this was a public place they could not impose any restrictions and he would have to adopt the crew’s usual trick of trying to stand between anyone with suspiciously professional looking camera equipment and anything the crew would rather wasn’t photographed. Billie Piper seemed particularly reluctant to be photographed and stayed in the TARDIS prop whenever she wasn’t needed until the photo journalist had left.

The local children went up to the crew and asked if they could get autographs. Soon the stars were surrounded by a small army waving pieces of paper. After a while the children returned to the sidelines, happy to watch the scene unfold. A member of the crew stood by them, radio in hand to call for silence whenever a take was imminent.

There were several rehearsals and takes of the same scene, but something plainly wasn’t quite right. David Tennant was in Christopher Eccleston’s old costume so this was for the Christmas special, but even with the camera angled so that a large brick hut obscured the surrounding green grass, no one would ever mistake the bright August evening sunlight for a December day in London. So the crew repositioned the TARDIS slightly and wheeled in large screens on castors to block out as much sunlight as possible. We were surprised to see a gaping hole in the back panel of the TARDIS near the base, but this was soon explained when they plugged a lead through it and the interior lit up. After a short while, they removed the back panel and inserted a white sheet of plastic material called a translite. A photograph of the TARDIS interior was printed on one side of this and they positioned a strong light behind the TARDIS to shine on to this sheet creating the illusion for the camera of the brightly lit interior behind the doors.

During this process Camille and Noel stayed in position as a guide for the resetting of the shot, but we were surprised to find David and Billie walking towards us. Surely they were going towards the catering table or the monitor tent. No, they came right up to us, introduced themselves and shook hands with us. We mentioned where we had all come from, Cardiff and Bath for the fans, Swindon and Glasgow for the companion and Doctor. David told the others they’d made such a good impression on Camille earlier that she had insisted he and Billie come up and say hi. Billie was amazed that the crew had been found at this location so it was explained that David and Antony were working on a photo item for Doctor Who Appreciation Society magazine Celestial Toyroom covering locations used in the Christopher Eccleston series and had come here after the Bay only to find the TARDIS waiting for them. She remembered being there in March of 2005 of course and pointed out the walls and even the ground where much of the Bad Wolf graffiti from Parting Of The Ways could still be seen. We were quite surprised at how well Chris’ old jacket fit David but they didn’t think it had been altered for him. Billie’s costume was the same one from Parting Of The Ways, the deep pink top with the words “phishy food” on the back, which gave a good indication of how soon after the last series the scene they were filming was set. There was just time for each of us to be photographed with the new TARDIS team before they had to be ready for the next take. Some of you may know that I don’t usually like being photographed and the shot of me with David and Billie is a good example of why this is. I look as though I’m either drunk, dead or dead drunk!

I noticed in surprise that the red phone box was being dismantled – it hadn’t been there before after all. Antony told me it had been used as foreground dressing much earlier for a shot of the cast emerging into the block of flats. This of course is the opening scene of New Earth.

By now the sun was fast fading over the horizon, it was colder and December didn’t seem so far away. The last few takes both looked and sounded right for the festive season. Soon the cast were back in the dark red estate car, waving to us as they passed. Not long after, we were headed in our separate directions and only paused to swap future location news. One of the security people had told the others there was going to be a lengthy shoot at Clearwater Caves in Gloucestershire. At the time, we didn’t think this would be worth seeking out as with cave interiors, no one approaching from outside would be able to see anything very much. Had we known that the Christmas episode’s featured aliens the Sycorax would be there as the caves became their spacecraft interior then we might have thought differently. Now I shared what Alex Willcox had told me. Notices had gone up in Cardiff city centre announcing that several of the streets around The Hayes will be closed from 6.00pm on Monday 8th August to 3.30am on Tuesday 9th August and from 6.00pm on Tuesday 9th August to 3.30am on Wednesday 10th August. I and, as it happened, many other fans would get to see the Christmas street location after all!

Only a few seconds of the sequence I saw shot in Loudon Square that day made it into the finished episode, as it was a remount of a sequence shot in London which had suffered from a heavy press and public presence. The required material was a close up of Noel Clarke as Mickey but to maintain continuity of performance, they performed the whole scene:

EXTERIOR. AN URBAN STREET, NOT FAR FROM THE TYLER’S ESTATE, DECEMBER:

(JACKIE AND MICKEY ARE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE TARDIS. JACKIE IS DRESSED IN CASUAL WARM CLOTHES POSSIBLY DENIM. MICKEY WEARS A SET OF DARK WORK OVERALLS WITH A WOOLLEN HAT. THE DOORS OPEN. THE NEW DOCTOR STEPS OUT, DAZED, DISTANT. THEY DON’T RECOGNIZE HIM AND THERE IS A PAUSE BEFORE HE RECOGNIZES THEM.)

THE DOCTOR:
Jackie! Mickey!

(THEY DON’T REACT. HE STUMBLES PAST THEM, STILL MUTTERING.)

THE DOCTOR:
No, wait, wait…

(HE TURNS BACK TO THEM AND THEY HALF TURN TOWARDS HIM, STILL WITH NO CLUE WHO HE IS.)

THE DOCTOR:
There was something I had to tell you! Something important!

(HE RESTS ONE HAND ON JACKIE’S SHOULDER, THE OTHER ON MICKEY’S. HE IS STILL WEAK AND LEANS ON THEM FOR SUPPORT.)

THE DOCTOR:
Yes, that was it…

(HE STAGGERS SLIGHTLY.)

THE DOCTOR:
Merry Christmas!

(HE COLLAPSES TO THE GROUND, FACE UP, UNCONSCIOUS. ANOTHER PAUSE AND JACKIE AND MICKEY LOOK UP AS ROSE STEPS OUT OF THE TARDIS.)

MICKEY: Who is he, Rose? Why’s he wearing that jacket and where’s the Doctor?

ROSE: That’s the Doctor.

JACKIE: The Doctor? Doctor who?

(CUT TO) -

GRAPHICS: OPENING TITLE SEQUENCE WITH CAPTIONS:
DAVID TENNANT
BILLIE PIPER
DOCTOR WHO
THE CHRISTMAS INVASION by Russell T Davies

(An edited version of this report was published by the Doctor Who Appreciation Society on pages 13-14 of Celestial Toyroom issue 330 dated September 2005.)

Patrick McGoohan will probably be best remembered for The Prisoner, the surrealist spy drama that he created and starred in the 1960’s.  Playing the unnamed government agent who was not allowed to retire, and incarcerated in  he gloriously bizarre village, where he was known only as Number 6.  Prior to The Prisoner,  McGoohan played the spy John Drake for four years in the successful series  Dangerman which McGoohan claimed had no connection to the Number 6, who definitely was not John Drake.  McGoohan had obviously lost interest in the project and during a gap in production of The Prisoner went off to Pinewood to make the big screen adaptation of Alastair McLean’s Ice Station Zebra.  The final episode of The Prisoner entitled Fall Out was hurriedly written after the series had been cancelled and later in life McGoohan admitted he did not have a clue what it was all about.

McGoohan’s untraceable accent was the product of a wandering youth, he was born in New York, spent his childhood in Ireland and his adolescence in Sheffield, England.  He was a devout Roman Cath0lic and turned down the role of James Bond in Doctor No because he disapproved of the character’s loose morals.  It is rumoured that  this strong  religious belief lead to arguments about religion with Sir Clough William Ellis, the owner of Portmeirion, where The Prisoner was filmed, which was one of the reason for the cancellation of the series.

McGoohan continued acting until 2002, when his last role was providing the voice of a character in the film Treasure Planet.

Patrick Joseph McGoohan (March 19, 1928 – January 13, 2009)

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The Spirit (2008)

This is terrible. If you hear a whirring sound in the cinema, it could just be Spirit creator Will Eisner spinning in his grave. Unfortunately, what’s arrived in the cinemas is not Will Eisner’s The Spirit but Frank Miller’s. There’s a good plot buried under a greyscale colour scheme, dialogue to make you wince with a bizarre reliance on repetition and performances where normally clever and subtle actors have been told to go for a sledgehammer approach to communicating with the audience. Will Eisner’s The Spirit is a series that is colourful and engaging, so if you’re curious about The Spirit, get the comics and give Frank Miller’s monster a wide berth.

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight is an impressive film with much to recommend it, but is unremittingly grim and about half an hour overlong at 152 minutes.

Heath Ledger’s Joker is far more of a twisted psychopath than any previous screen interpretation of the character and sick jokes like his vanishing pencil are all designed to make the audience wince instead of laugh. In this film, some of the details of his schemes are as important as their theatricality which gives him genuine credibility as a criminal mastermind.

Sadly, I have to say that Maggie Gyllenhall replacing Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Crispin Glover returning as Alfred, Lucien Fox and the Scarecrow each make very little impact simply because the script gives them very little to work with beyond their assigned roles in the plot. They are either pawns to be sacrificed or sources of moral guidance for Batman to ignore.  Similarly, Christian Bale’s turn as Bruce Wayne is largely functional and his role as Batman, although more significant, is obscured by the voice filter built into the costume.  In fact, more impressive than all five of their performances combined is that of the articulated truck that flips cab over trailer in mid air during a key action sequence that I was quite tempted to cheer.

Aaron Eckhardt as Harvey Dent has more opportunity to shine in script terms than most of his co-stars but squanders it by underplaying a character who in plot terms is intended to exemplify charisma as the rising star of the district attorney’s office, losing the character’s eventual fate some of its impact. The actor most successfully absorbed into director Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of the Batman world is Gary Oldman as the caped vigilante’s police contact, Gordon. He’s the most three dimensional, relatable character in the film and comes across as a person, not a performance. The Dark Knight is definitely worth seeing but not a film that can be watched again and again.

Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans

Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans serves as a prequel set in feudal times to the previous contemporary set films Underworld and Underworld: Evolution. It relates the story of how the Lycans developed from a more bestial werewolf species as slaves of the Vampires before rebelling to form a society of their own. Central to this story are the werewolf blacksmith Lucien and Sonia, the daughter of the Vampire leader. The film plays well enough, but if you’re familiar with the story from its depiction in flashbacks and expository dialogue in the previous films, then it contains no surprises. I liked it, particularly after the risible The Spirit, but couldn’t help feeling that if Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans had taken some risks it could have been a much more satisfying film.