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Doctor Who: Partners in Crime

An Adipose
  • Posted at 1:21pm
  • 07 April 2008
  • by WilliamGallagher-RT
  • 7 comments

There's a photo of me somewhere playing chess with K9 in the 1970s. It's not my proudest Doctor Who moment, I'd have done better to pick Scrabble, but it is the earliest I can remember. Since then I've written about Who for BBC News and Radio Times, I've been to the Doctor Who offices in Cardiff, I've sat in on recording sessions and I dare not watch the new Five Doctors DVD because I might just be visible in one of the featurettes.

Break it to me gently if I am. I'll be the guy wearing a Tom Baker scarf - and you cannot know how much I'm wincing now - following Sarah Sutton around Longleat like a puppy in the 1980s. I was going to say that Doctor Who is ingrained in my journalism career but I think really it's ingrained in my life. I have a Tardis biscuit jar.

And I snacked from it this week during the brand-new episode Partners in Crime. Did you see it? Full of thunderously gleeful energy, it had true excitement to it and a verve that other dramas can only dream of. I can't think of another Doctor Who monster as cute as the Adipose - there was Sylvester McCoy's Kandyman in 1988 but we will not speak of that - and it ought to have been risky making a lovable monster. But then you see them plopping out of people's bodies or you see thousands of them on the streets and the cuteness becomes scary.

The Doctor always invigorates those around him, makes them want to become better people. In just the same way, Doctor Who makes me want to write like Russell T Davies: the reintroduction of Donna (Catherine Tate) was marvellous. It was such a delight as he played with all those tremendous near-misses as she searched for the Doctor - and then when you'd forgotten that, when we'd moved on in the story, he used exactly the same device to bring in Rose at the end. When my jaw came home, I applauded him.

And I want an Adipose. I eat enough biscuits now that I could spare a couple and go back to the weight I was when I let K9 win. I wonder if Sarah Sutton would look at me then?

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Comments

  • Posted on 30 April 2008
  • at 11:26pm
  • by SophieOohie
William, yes that's right but only the leader is like that. PS that combination of cute and repulsive seems to be turning up often- like the Ood being locked up, and the Sontarans singing and dancing. :8}
  • Posted on 13 April 2008
  • at 7:13pm
  • by Helena Handcart

A street full of Adipose, and everyone with a mobile phone is ... making a telephone call?

Surely the street would have been a forest of arms waving phone cameras at the massed hordes of Adipose? Or is it because we're really in the Doctor Who Alternate Earth, where aliens are real and come in your cornflakes packet?

  • Posted on 08 April 2008
  • at 4:59pm
  • by Ionaclio

I too would love an "Adipose" for Christmas. They were so cute and when they were all on the street, it reminded me of the scene from Porterhouse Blue when the condoms were raining down everywhere. Thought Saturday's episode was excellent. Hats off and 3 cheers for all the actors and everyone involved with Dr Who's production.

  • Posted on 08 April 2008
  • at 4:32pm
  • by WilliamGallagher-RT

Oh, the Mara! A plastic half-inflated balloon snake 20 feet high and wobbling - yet I loved that story. Even if Nyssa sat that one out.

But the Adipose that slid off the taxi, the one waving in the sink - and the thousands of them on the streets: it was the combination of cute and repulsive that so won me.

And that Auton toy: it was scary even when it was meant to be a toy. Who'd buy a doll like that? I was more scared by the plastic chair that ate people who sat in it. Gives me shivers.

And SophieOohie, those were the Cybermen with the tall heads, weren't they? I loved them breaking out of those ice cells but their voices stopped me believing them. I think that's another reason the new show is better than the old.

Um, I'm not hearing a chorus of agreement now, am I?

William

  • Posted on 08 April 2008
  • at 1:23am
  • by ChrisJones123

Hmm......those Adipose were suspiciously like the little aliens from the Excel Saga anime in both looks and behavior. Can't help thinking there's been a little unsung inspiration there

  • Posted on 07 April 2008
  • at 11:41pm
  • by SophieOohie
Quote: I can't think of another Doctor Who monster as cute as the Adipose - there was Sylvester McCoy's Kandyman in 1988 but we will not speak of that - and it ought to have been risky making a lovable monster. - What about the 1966-68 versions of Cybermen? They were much cuter, seriously so, and without over-the-top silliness. Deliberately trying to make characters cute very rarely works IMO. :-)
  • Posted on 07 April 2008
  • at 7:14pm
  • by nigelrainford

Oh William, I really cannot agree with you on the Adipose. My heart sank when I saw the picture of them in the Radio Times; I really hoped they might turn into the devil-troll creature from Terror of the Autons. But alas, no. As they all danced and squeaked their way across my set on Saturday my jaw dropped too - only because my head was there as well, in my hands! Russell is such a brilliant, brilliant writer and everything else in the episode was beautifully made and acted (especially the scene on the hill with Donna and Gramps) but the Adipose were just embarrassing. I love this show (am as old as Russell) and I have defended it to the hilt (Myrka, Mara, Tractators, Mestor - gulp, that was hard one) but at least these were awful because the budget was lacking. Imagine if the Adipose were really nasty evil "children" - so much more chilling. And I disagree with you on the Candyman - it was wonderfully designed and did what the writer intended it to do. Oh well, maybe I am too protective or can't let go of something I love; maybe I need a rest at Paradise Towers. Or perhaps not....

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