Torchwood: Everything Changes

Ah, Torchwood. It seems a long time since the heady days of October 2006 when I sat down to watch this with Doctor Carrie Dunn. There we were looking forward to seeing The Barrowman in action.

I'm not going to dwell on how Torchwood came to be. This was the red heat of the return of Doctor Who when RTD could do no wrong and a spin-off series starring John Barrowman as Captain Jack, a character introduced in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, seemed like a no brainer. Captain Jack was sexy, cheeky and maybe they could pursue more adult themes in Torchwood than they could in Doctor Who.

However, particularly in Series One, they were to make the same mistake that the Virgin New Adventures did in the nineties: swearing and sex do not adult themes make. Especially if you have a very poor grasp on consent and turn your series into something that might, just, be a bit rapey. But, I'm leaping ahead of myself. At least a little bit.

We're in Cardiff. Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) is a PC in the Welsh Police. She's at the scene of a murder when a gang turns up from an organization called Torchwood. They proceed to mess about a bit on the murder scene, then disappear. This leaves Gwen all a bit curious. From here on in we get the story of Gwen's discovery of Torchwood, who they are and what they do, which is hunt aliens. In Cardiff. Because it turns out, Cardiff is built on a ruddy great rift in the space-time continuum and as a result, a lot of intergalactic, timey-wimey flotsam and jetsam turns up to cause trouble and/or be cannibalized by Torchwood to protect the world. After all, as Captain Jack says: "The Twenty-First Century' is when it all happens. You've got to be ready."

Gwen's been involved in investigating a serial killer in Cardiff, who it will turn out has links to Torchwood. And we'll end up with a stand-off, two shots, and a resurrection before the end. Gwen is our intro to Torchwood as a fairly ordinary person. She's our companion figure. At least in this episode. She asks lots of questions.

We meet the rest of the team: Owen Harper (Burn Gorman), Toshiko Sato (Naoko Mori), Suzie Costello (Indira Varma) and last, but not least Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd). None of them is really given much character at this point because our story focuses on Gwen and Jack.

I like Eve Myles as Gwen. I think Myles is a great actor. She's particularly good here when terrified. The Barrowman is The Barrowman. I'll probably talk more about that as the series goes on. Gwen's coming aboard the good ship Torchwood, although how she'll explain that to her husband, Rhys (Kai Owen - who is brilliant btw) may become an issue.

Hopefully, the next few episodes will broaden out the characters a bit and drop the unnecessarily creepy sexual stuff. There is definitely an unnecessary light-hearted approach to sexual consent in this episode that seems to say that using alien pheromones to get two people to sleep with you isn't rapey at all. O, no. It's just a wee bit of high-jinks using office equipment. Like borrowing a piece of tech that allows you to read a book pretty much instantaneously. As I said all this stuff is a misunderstanding of what 'adult' means. It's a problem I remember Torchwood suffers from.

That and the spectacularly stupid idea of a top-secret organization that drives around in bloody obvious vehicles and is known to half of Cardiff's police force and orders pizzas to its top-secret headquarters under the name of Torchwood. I think Torchwood could be creepier. There are hints at it when Tosh talks about the porter who died in the hospital and whose body they dispose of. This is an organization with frightening powers, which no one ever really talks about. Except for Gwen.

So, it's not a bad introduction. It's entertaining enough. But there's problems in the initial episode that might be fatal if not dealt with at some point. I mean who wants a heroic team of rapists?

K9 & Company

I am sure there are people out there that love K9 & Company but I'm afraid it is almost entirely terrible. From one of the worst title sequences ever and a theme tune so horrible and inappropriate that you wonder what the hell everyone was thinking who was making this. It's like JNT's brief to the director was 'let's start the programme in such a way as no one will ever want to watch it.'

It's easy to blame Ian Levine. who co-created the theme tune, with Fiachra Trench but that's not entirely fair. They might have written it. The producer didn't have to use it.

The story itself, written by Terence Dudley, involves Sarah Jane (Lis Sladen, of course) coming to her Aunt Lavinia's (Mary Wimbush) house to do some writing. Or something. I never quite got why she was going to live with her Aunt. She is also joined by Brendan (Ian Richards) who is Aunt Lavinia's 'ward'. You only seem to come across 'wards' in television series. I'm sure there are some out there in the real world but the only two I've ever heard of are Robin, in the 1960s Batman series, and Brendan in K9 & Company.

Anyway, Aunt Lavinia has left mysteriously early and Sarah starts to fret. Meanwhile, a big box that's been sitting around Aunt Lavinia's house in Croydon turns out to contain K9, Mark III. A gift from the Doctor. K9 is voiced in his usual fine way by John Leeson.

There is talk of witchcraft. Then there is an attempted kidnapping. Then an actual kidnapping, when Brendan is snatched by Peter Tracey (Sean Chapman) to be used for sacrifice. By this time we've met an assortment of the villagers. There's Lily, the Post Mistress, and Bill Pollock, who is Aunt Lavinia's farm manager and played with gurgling grumpiness by Bill Fraser. Colin Jeavons crops up as George Tracey. There's Juno (Linda Polan) and Howard (Neville Barber) Baker who seem to throw parties and invite Sarah Jane for drinks and dinner. We're obviously meant to suspect these two are part of the coven, especially as Howard keeps popping out mysteriously and Juno makes sinister-looking phone calls.

It turns out that rural England is still home to a witches coven. Worshipping Hecate. At this point, I started to feel like I was watching Hot Fuzz. And this is the main problem I have with this story. It's all played too damn straight. It either needs a splash more camp and comedy - although George Tracey's reaction to K9 is hilarious not necessarily for the right reasons - or it needs to be a lot darker. It needs to have the atmosphere of a Philip Hinchcliffe production. It all feels a little amateurish, which is perhaps the point.

Most of the acting is fine. After all, there are some good actors here but some clunking performances too. The only thing stopping it from being an utter catastrophe is Lis Sladen. You can see, even in the rubble of this disaster, that there could have been a Lis Sladen spin-off that would work. It didn't really need K9, although that helps. One day we'll get one and people will the character and the actor justice. One day.

The other problem with K9 & Company is that in 1981 the technology didn't exist to make K9 anything but a clunky box on wheels. K9 was never the most mobile of creations and the site of Sarah Jane lifting him out of the car amuses me.

I'm almost certainly being too harsh on something that was created to fill a Christmas slot but it never really works for me at all. I found myself reminded of Hot Fuzz or Mindhorn (oddly) because this feels more like a pastiche than a programme in its own right.

You also find yourself wondering where they would have taken the series if they'd made one. Brendan's role in this story is to be Sarah Jane to Sarah Jane. He's the character that gets kidnapped and almost sacrificed. Sarah Jane herself is more the Doctor. Would this have carried on? Would Brendan be kidnapped, hypnotized, etc each week to be rescued by K9 zapping away whilst Sarah Jane does some very mild martial arts on a collection of fine British character actors? Would they have stayed in the countryside? Would Aunt Lavinia have come back and had more of a role to play? Who knows. Who cares.

In the end, this is a mild curiosity that doesn't quite work hamstrung by awful titles and music but you can see potential in Sarah Jane.

So, if you do like K9 & Company let me know why. I'm intrigued.



*Yes, I know the titles and theme tune are an easy target but that's because they might as well be painted with a series of coloured rings ending with a small red bullseye.

Inferno

Inferno is the final story of Season 7. It's another seven-part story, but never really drags. There's a real tension throughout, especially as we get to see the Doctor fail and the world destroyed thanks to the miracle of alternative universes. It's a strong story, which ends a strong season. Possibly one of Doctor Who's strongest seasons full stop.

We find ourselves at a drilling project, which is led by Professor Stahlman (Olaf Pooley). Its objective is to crack through the Earth's crust. This will turn out to be a bad idea but you already knew that didn't you? Stahlman will turn out to be a double-Doctor Who trope: the scientist to whom the ends justify the means & a leader who is too highly strung for his own good. HR in the Doctor Who universe is clearly a discipline lacking in expertise, especially in the military and scientific community.

We discover why this is bad when engineer Slocum (Walter Randall) encounters some green slime leaking from one of the pipes. He makes the mistake of touching it and from that point onwards it is all downhill to the transformation of Slocum from human to Primord.

PRIMORD DIVERSION

Alas, the Primords are the classic poorly rendered Doctor Who monster. They look like slightly too cuddly Wolfmen. Or shaggy dogs. Depending on your point of view. We mostly don't see their transformation, which is probably a good thing as the transformation of Platoon Under-Leader Benton (John Levene) is a little silent movie for a 20th-century television series. Personally, I find these things easy to ignore. The sense of tension that surrounds them drives home their danger but they are the sort of thing that some people find distracting.

PRIMORD DIVERSION OVER

UNIT is providing the security for the project so the Doctor has taken the opportunity to tap its nuclear power source to work on the TARDIS console. The Doctor and Stahlman clearly do not get on. During one of his experiments with the console, the Doctor finds himself torn out of his reality and into an alternative universe.

This is one of the strongest parts of the programme. All our heroes - apart from the Doctor himself - are now part of a fascist Republic. The Brigadier is now Brigade-Leader complete with eye-patch. In this universe, the Brigade-Leader has none of the Brigadier's twinkle and isn't far off just being a bully. It's a fine performance from Courtney but the same applies to Caroline John whose alt-Liz Shaw is brilliant. And John Levene turns Benton into a thug. They are all different people but another character, Greg Sutton (Derek Newark), isn't too different to his normal Earth character. He's a drilling expert in both brought in, much to Stahlman's disappointment and annoyance.

In the alternative universe, the drilling is ahead of ours. So, despite the best attempts of the Doctor penetration of the Earth's crust takes place and the world comes to a terrible end but in that ending, we get to see our favourite characters, even in alt-form, die (or about to die.) This is the Doctor failing. It's something he'll carry with him going forward, especially as he escapes. Thanks to help from Liz, Greg, Petra Williams (Sheila Dunn) and - for more selfish reasons - the Brigade-Leader the Doctor finds himself back in our Universe.

By this point, Stahlman has started his transformation into a Primord but remains determined to finish his project. He tries to stop Sir Keith Gold (Christopher Benjamin) from reporting the problems to the authorities by having him killed. Something he achieves in the alt-world. The Doctor's return though puts a spanner in the works. He's seen the world's destruction and won't let it happen again. This is the Doctor at his most ruthless and Pertwee really sells it. He's going to save the world even if the world doesn't want to be saved.

Stahlman has turned into a full Primord by this point but the Doctor and Greg take him down with fire extinguishers* and stop the drilling. Sir Keith promises to have the shaft filled in. And things all end happily. If you forget the total destruction of an Earth. Probably.

Inferno is such a strong story. It's packed full of excellent performances from Pertwee downwards. It manages to keep its coherence even though health issues affected Douglas Camfield and he ended up in the hospital. Barry Letts finished the filming and actually I think he does a fantastic job of showing the end of the world via heat. It takes advantage of the alt-universe to allow us to see what would happen if the Doctor fails, which adds tension to the final episode in the 'normal' Earth.

The regulars get a chance to play a darker version of their existing characters and demonstrate their acting chops accordingly. John Levene, in particular, seems to revel in being Platoon Under-Leader Benton. But the rest of the cast do a fine job too, including Newark and Dunn as the nearest thing to a romantic subplot Season Seven has had. Olaf Pooley does twisted scientific bully well. Christopher Benjamin is his usual excellent self in a not particularly over-written part.

This will turn out to be Liz Shaw's last story and Caroline John gets to be superb in it. But Liz Shaw has been a little wasted as a companion, but that's not John's fault. It is the fault of writers that didn't know how to use her properly.

Pertwee finishes his first season on a massive high. He's settled into the role of The Doctor immediately and Inferno gives him a chance to be the Doctor in defeat**. Plus there's a moment in this story when the Doctor shouts: 'Listen to that. That's the sound of this planet screaming out its rage" That line, the way Pertwee delivers it has made me use it a number of times when terrible things are happening to the environment. Or in politics.

Basically, if you haven't seen Inferno then you should. Indeed, if you haven't seen Season 7, then you should. It's almost entirely brilliant if occasionally a story turns out to be a tad too long.




*There is a reason for this
**Not the Doctor in Distress, which is a terrible record. Google it. No. Don't Google it. It is horrible.

The Thirteenth Doctor

So, I thought I'd finally add my tuppence worth to the whole Thirteenth Doctor announcement response.

First of all, I should explain that I'm delighted. Jodi Whittaker is a fine actor. I think she'll be a fine Doctor but a lot will depend on the quality of the scripts she gets. I wrote - a while back - that casting a woman or a person of color might require the telling of different stories and I'll be fascinated to see in what direction Chris Chibnall takes the programme in.

Steven Moffat has done fine work in sowing the seeds for this but fundamentally there was never any reason given in the television series as to why The Doctor had to be a man. The only thing that made it so was a convention. It had always been a man. Therefore it must always be a man. The gender fluidity of Time Lords is now and always will be a thing.

There has been a hostile reaction from some people, which I find baffling. All this nonsense about having your childhood ruined I find frankly pathetic. My childhood went a long time ago. Somewhere around 1986/87. Nothing that happens in the present will ruin it (or improve it.) It's gone. Sometimes when the world is complicated and stressful I miss it. I think that's one of the reasons Doctor Who always cheers me up. It reminds me of a less complicated time. And if I want to revisit my childhood then I have shelves full of Doctor Who DVDs and CDs that allow me to do that. The casting of a female Doctor hasn't deleted all the past Doctor Who stories. The BBC isn't going to come around and take it all away from you. It's all still out there.

I'm a 46-year-old man. Doctor Who isn't made for me anymore.

I still happen to like it quite a lot but I'm not the person who the BBC wants to make this stuff for and that's perfectly right. If they were making Doctor Who just for me we'd have Zarbi and Nimon. Doctor Who has survived so long because it always brings a new generation of fans who bring a new generation of fans. It will die if it just appeals to the hardcore amongst us. It needs to change to survive. It's why New Doctor Who was radically different from Classic Doctor Who. And since 1966 change has been in the programmes DNA. Or even earlier when Susan left and was replaced by Vicki. Companions come and go. Writers change. Showrunners change. And Doctors change. Accept it. Embrace it.

But the best thing about the announcement has been the joy with which it has been received by young girls. There are a couple of video reactions out there and it seems that was echoed elsewhere. We should be pleased for them rather than disappointed for ourselves. They're the new audience. The new fandom. They know the Doctor can be a man or a woman now. They're not anchored to the past. And that's the way it should be. Doctor Who needs to be a living show, not a television museum. I've also had female friends - one of whom never even watched Doctor Who - who are interested in watching to see how it pans out.*

So let's all welcome the new Doctor, Jodi Whittaker. Let's hope she gets the stories that make everyone forget that this is something different. And we'll just settle down to watch Doctor Who once again.

Welcome aboard Jodi.

Enjoy.





*And - on a side note - we shouldn't be gatekeeping these people. I want everyone to love Doctor Who. I don't want them to be forced to justify their interest via some quasi-inquisition by fanboys on the internet. However, you come to Doctor Who enjoy it. Obviously, I'd like you to dip into all of it. If you like New Who try some Classic. Or vice versa. There's something for everyone in Doctor Who. So, let's be nice to those coming on board. Doctor Who isn't just for me. It's for everyone.

The Ambassadors of Death

I write this blog in the afterglow of the announcement that Jodie Whittaker will be playing the new Doctor. The first woman to play the part. I wasn't convinced the BBC would ever have the courage to do it. But they have. Good luck to Jodie. Welcome aboard. I'll probably write more about this later, which I'm sure will thrill my reader.

But what of The Ambassadors of Death I hear you cry. Well, I enjoyed this. Mostly. I have one quibble, which is how rubbish UNIT is at actual fighting and how easily they have rings run around them. This, though, is UNITs fate in most stories. They constantly face creatures that can't be killed by conventional weaponry. UNITs casualty rate must have been horrific? How did a soldier end up in UNIT? Was it voluntary? If so how did word not get around the British military that joining UNIT was effectively a suicide mission? Is the Brigadier actually a terrible officer? Sorry, all that was brought on by watching some pathetic soldiering in the final episode. Come on Brigadier get it sorted out.

Although to be fair to the Brigadier it is clear that he had his doubts about General Carrington (John Abineri) early on. And there's a lovely exchange between the Brigadier, who doesn't want to speak ill of a fellow officer, and Ralph Cornish (Ronald Allen):

Brigadier: I think the General is a little over-wrought.
Cornish: I think he's mad.

Which brings us to one of the best things about this story: the villains. That's not the Ambassadors themselves. It's General Carrington and his various associates. John Aibineri is superb as Carrington., who is a man acting in what he thinks is the best interests of his world. He's been mentally shaken by the death of a colleague at the hands of the Ambassadors* earlier and he blames them. He twists that into them being a threat to the entire world and tries to stir up events to create a war between Earth and these mysterious aliens. He's not a mustache-twirling, evil laughter black hat villain. He's a broken man. His final exchanges with the Brigadier and the Doctor in Episode Seven are actually quite moving.

One of Carrington's henchmen, Reegan (William Dysart), is also brilliantly played. A dry-witted, intelligent sadistic bastard he's one of the best henchmen in Doctor Who. The fact that he doesn't die at the end is great and part of me hopes that he survives another day. Perhaps UNIT use his skills in a poacher/gamekeeper way? Perhaps not.

Ronald Allen is Ralph Cornish. The problem I have with Ronald Allen is that I remember him most as David Hunter in Crossroads, which was a soap opera with a reputation so terrible that Victoria Wood was to create Acorn Antiques as a piss-take of it. That, combined with his semi-regular popping up in The Comic Strip Presents and the fact that he's in frankly awful The Dominators makes him a hard actor for me to take seriously. But he's suitably solid and serious in this story.

There are some great cliffhangers in this story too. (I miss cliffhangers) The Ambassadors are suitably creepy without being hugely memorable but I willing to think that they must have been in Steven Moffat's head when he wrote Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, although I could be wrong.

Yes, the story is too long but it doesn't particularly drag for me. However Liz Shaw's 'escape' is a tad annoying as I don't think Liz would be that stupid. The problem for Liz (and for Caroline John) is that the writer really doesn't know what to do with her as a character. She's too intelligent to be standing around asking stupid questions and, alas, that's what Pertwee seems to need. But Caroline John does fine work with what she's been given.

I should also pay tribute to appearances from two Doctor Who stalwarts: Michael Wisher as the journalist John Wakefield and Cyril Shapps as the scientist Lennox. Michael Wisher seems to be able to get exactly the right TV journalist tone as Wakefield who seems happy to broadcast the rantings of an insane General to the whole damn world whilst Cyril Shapps does the Shapps thing, which I love. His characters always seem to be in permanent danger of cringing to death. Oh, Lennox's death I put entirely down to bad work on behalf of the Brigadier btw who, instead of going to see him immediately, decides to faff around long enough to allow the bad guys to stick a radioactive isotope in his cell, which brings me back to my original quibble about UNIT's competence in this story.

So, to conclude The Ambassadors of Death is a reasonably enjoyable, slightly over-long story raised by some excellent performances. I also love the ambitions it has for a British Space programme that has taken us to Mars. More than once. It isn't perfect. It's probably the weakest story of Season 7 so far, but that still makes it an exceptional piece of Doctor Who.

Give it a watch. You never know you might like it.

Next up: Inferno





*They never get a proper name. They are on Mars when Carrington first meets them but there is never any explanation of who they are and why they are where they are.

Doctor Who and The Silurians

Doctor Who and The Silurians is as fine a Doctor Who story as you'll ever see. Yes, it is probably a tad long but then that gives us the space to see The Doctor actually doing science and some genuinely disturbing scenes in and around Marylebone Station as the Silurian plague starts to take its toll. It also allows some fine British character actors room to give their characters life.

The cast is superb: Fulton McKay as Dr. Quinn, Norman Jones as Major Baker, Peter Miles as Dr. Lawrence, and Geoffrey Palmer as Masters. All four of whom are doomed in their own ways. Doomed by greed for knowledge. Doomed by a desire to make up for a past mistake. Doomed by a failing career or the desire to protect his career.

Dr. Lawrence's final scene, when he goes berserk, is painful to watch (in the right sense) and hilariously English. He's dying, mad and the Brigadier and Liz are circling him nervously and trying not to look. It's as if he finally dies because he's caused so much of a fuss. Dr. Lawrence is almost an overhang from the Troughton era. The leader that can't lead. The difference perhaps is that Dr. Lawrence has a fine line is dry snark before things get too bad but eventually in his refusal to see the obvious truth pushes him over the edge.

But let's go back a bit. (Admire the technical brilliance of the writing in this blog. It's like a well-oiled machine.)

Season 7 consists of one four-part story & three seven-part stories. All set on Earth. This was a decision of the departing producer, Derrick Sherwin, but wasn't one that new producer, Barry Letts, liked. Nor did his script editor Terrance Dicks. What it meant was they had to come up with some cunning ways of doing 'Earth Invasions'. Malcolm Hulke's solution in Doctor Who and The Silurians was to have the aliens already here. Or that the enemy wasn't even an alien. The Earth had once been theirs and they'd quite like to take it back from the mammals with ideas above their stations.

The Silurians are a species in Doctor Who that seems to have a life beyond just being an enemy of the Doctor. Their history is hinted at here - and will be given more depth as the years go by in the various parts of the Whoniverse - but the minimum we know is that they were an advanced scientific species that went into hibernation in fear of an impending cosmological catastrophe that never came to pass. Their alarm clock then never went off so they over-slept and let us take over the world. When the British government builds a nuclear power station and Cyclotron* on top of their hibernation place it seems to trigger a handful of them to wake up. They start siphoning off energy, which causes problems for the base plus the base seems to have a weird effect on the minds of those who work in it. The Silurian also make contact with Dr. Quinn whilst he's caving. Dr. Quinn sees this as an opportunity to get Silurian scientific solutions. But some cave explorers die and UNIT get called in to review what's happening. Then etc until the end and the Brigadier blows up the Silurian base much to the disgust of the Doctor.

Two things to note here. Nicholas Courtney is fantastic as the Brigadier in this story. He feels like a proper military man and isn't any kind of uniformed buffoon. And in the end he's devious and ruthless. He knows The Doctor will try and stop him destroying the Silurian base so he deliberately lets him leave. He also willingly follows orders to kill the Silurians. If these were the only Silurians then our beloved Brigadier has just committed genocide. And the Doctor witnesses it. In a way that's the point at which Doctor Who as a television series is done. How can the Doctor and the Brigadier continue to work together after this?

Yes, the Silurians - or some of them - have tried to genocide humanity but the Doctor knows they're not all like that. The Brigadier would argue that this has to be done because humanity needs to be protected from that threat. A threat that they might not be able to defend themselves against. The only good Silurian is a dead one. It's pretty dark. This is murder. But we've got five more seasons of Jon Pertwee to go and the gradual unsoldiering of UNIT to come. I love the Brigadier and UNIT but at the end of this story, you have to ask yourself why.

Also, this is only Jon Pertwee's second story and yet he's already so settled in the part. It feels like he's been the Doctor forever. We talk about Tom Baker being meant to be the Doctor but watching this you have to say that Jon Pertwee was born to be the Doctor. He has the charisma to burn. Yes, his Doctor can be a tad patronizing - witness his tone with Miss Dawson (Thomasine Heiner) when talking to her about Dr. Quinn. But he's trying to do the right thing in the face of hostility from friends and enemies.

Poor Caroline John as Liz Shaw is left at a bit of a loose end though. She's reduced to answering phones and checking HR files, although in Episode 6 she does at least get to assist the Doctor in attempting to find a cure to the Silurian plague. John is clearly a good actress but I fear Liz Shaw is a tad unwritten.

A brief word on the design of the Silurians. They look slightly dated now but they look proper alien here. Whereas the modern Silurians have been humanized to a degree that you can have a marriage between one and a human being you can't imagine Jenny settling down with one of these Silurians. Also, their third eye**, which has some kind of sonic power so can be used as both a weapon and a way of digging through the rock to convenient locations close to the person you want to kidnap, is effective.

The director, Timothy Combe, gets some great shots from the Silurian point of view. In fact, Combe's direction is pretty damn solid throughout. The scenes of the Silurian out on the Moor are well done. He also does a fine job of keeping the Silurians hidden until their appearance actually has an impact. The first couple of episodes should be part of the instruction manual of anyone making Doctor Who, although I will politely skate over the dinosaur. Because I am a gentleman.

So, Doctor Who and the Silurians is a fine story. It's well-directed, well-written and well-acted. If you've not watched it you should do. And don't binge watch it. Classic Doctor Who thrives on breathing space between episodes.

Next up...The Ambassadors of Death.




*Which appears to be a particle accelerator aka a Large Hadron Collider.
**This use will be forgotten by the time The Silurians reappear in Warriors of the Deep when people think it is a signal to announce which of them is speaking. By the time we get around to New Doctor Who it will disappear altogether.