Bloody pepperpots...

I’ve been ranting enough about this on my Facebook page, and doubtless boring the arse off people by banging on about it so thought I’d condense my vitriol and pure unfettered disappointment here.

I. Hate. The. New. Daleks.

And here’s why.

1) They’re completely out of proportion. Simply put, they look bloody ridiculous. The base rims are rounded and far too high; the bulk of the base itself compared to the upper half is far too tall; the mid-section sticks out like the damn thing’s wearing an inflatable ring with a plunger on it, and the gun is now far too long; the head itself isn’t too bad, but the eye stalk is needlessly overdesigned.

2) That fucking hunchback. Front on, they don’t look too bad, you could almost forgive them that. But turn them more than 30 degrees to the side and all of a sudden it’s Quasimodo himself. The head section sits there on top of it like an upended garden bin (or as a friend put it, like a press-down sauce dispenser), looking like it’s been shunted forward. The symmetry (such as it was) is gone. And instead of a straight line running down the back from grille to base, now there’s a bump where it joins. Cover up the hunchback and it’s not so bad, but with it added… almost looks like they forgot to plane off the last bit of the design model and the error carried on to the final design.

3) Too tall, and too fat. How on earth these Daleks manage to fit through the doorways and spaces of that ship (originally full of the other, smaller, scarier and frankly better Daleks) without banging their heads or simply getting stuck escapes me. And now the gun and plunger have to be angled downwards rather than up as before, which sounds petty but take a look – in comparison, which looks better?

4) The colours. No. In the past we had a small number of moderately tasteful and acceptable colours – white, grey, silver, with the higher ranks of black and gold and the red Supreme. They weren’t an orgasm of garishly bright primary colours. Come on guys, less is definitely more. I was extremely impressed by the khaki WW2 Daleks in their British webbing, and yes I’d buy a toy of that in a second but this? What is this, a Japanese cartoon? (thanks Lee). I smell a horribly transparent excuse to sell a shitload of toys to 5 year olds, and it stinks.

5) They look cheap, childish and completely unthreatening. 2005 brought a solid, tank-like look to the Daleks. These things finally looked like they were unstoppable – the bronzed steel look was spot on. Taking the Cushing movie design as a template with the larger base rim and the larger lights, then making them ultra-hard bastards from that was EXACTLY what they needed. Turning them into flimsy looking, plastic bubble bath bottles is not an improvement.

You know what? For the first time since the show came back in 2005 I really am concerned. Not because of Matt Smith (superb) and Karen Gillan (fun), not because of the new TARDIS (gorgeous), and not because of the titles and theme tune (jury still out on that one).

It’s because Stephen Moffat has always come across as being exactly what the series needed in a showrunner after Russell T Davies left. His episodes without fail have been scary, intelligent, interesting and fun. They’ve been what Doctor Who should be all about.

Look, I’m all for someone wanting to stamp their mark on the show. But this is a huge misjudgement and one we’re now stuck with. They made such a big deal out of these being the ‘real’ Daleks (oh do fuck off) and the scene of their obliterating the Russell T Davies versions couldn’t have been more symbolically sledgehammered if they’d tried. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ll be sat there praying for some belated April Fool’s Day joke to be revealed, or for it to turn out that this is all some bizarre, horrifying alternate universe and that within a few months all will return to normal. But I don’t think it’ll happen. These are the new Daleks, and they’re here to stay. Christ on a bike (would fit inside one).

The fact that not only did someone design these and think “Yeah, that’ll work” (having seen the concept art, it looked just as shit on the drawing board) but Moffat and the other execs came along and then signed off on them makes me more than a little wary of what else he’s got in store. Change for the sake of change (and the sake of selling toys to kids)? No. Just no.

Yes, Doctor Who should be scary, but not like this.

I'm sure it seemed a good idea at the time, Paul...

I've seen some bad films in my time, most of which I enjoyed more than I should have - it's a guilty pleasure of a hobby really, in many cases there's a quaintness to them that raises a chuckle.

Many of them I saw when when I was younger and as such didn't notice their faults so much - viewing them now can be cringe inducing, showing that it really is best to leave some things in the past. Take this evening: At The Earth's Core went in the player as I hadn't seen it for years. An entertaining mid-70s fantasy romp, with Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, the beautiful Caroline Munro AND men in dinosaur costumes on dodgy back projection, what a fun way to pass an hour and a half - or so I thought. The memory really does cheat sadly, it was awful.

But in comparison to Give My Regards To Broad Street, the 1984 vanity project written by and starring Paul McCartney, that film was absolute gold...

A famous musician called Paul has just recorded his new album, but the mastertape has gone missing. Leaving it in the hands of a former con (to whom Paul has given a second chance) to drop off may have been a mistake, as he's gone missing too. Oh no! But Paul doesn't believe he's nicked it because the guy told him he'd gone straight.

But wait, it gets worse! Unless he gets it back, he'll lose ownership of his entire company - it's a little hazy as to why, something to do with his business manager making a deal with a shadowy sinister guy the year before (why he never told Paul is a worry, that's some great management). So the race is on to find the tapes!

Well, it should be. What actually happens is that Paul seems only mildly put out. He records a couple of songs in the studio (with Ringo and George Martin), shoots a couple of videos (some pretty grand ones at that), does a rehearsal in a docklands warehouse and speaks to a dodgy bootlegger played by Giant Haystacks, records an interview and plays a couple of songs at the BBC, then drives around a bit. While this is going on, some lawyers and the sinister guy follow his every move and the police don't seem to do anything at all, just talk amongst themselves a bit.

Oh yes, and while this is going on Paul has daydreams of what could have happened (the con being chased by the police with sniffer dogs over moors; selling the mastertape to Giant Haystacks) before the kicker: a lengthy, bizarre daydream where he, Linda, Ringo and Ringo's wife are in Victorian times; they go for a picnic, the others are killed and Paul then wanders about Victorian London following the trail of the stolen tape. For some reason.

Back to reality, he stops for a few minutes at the pub where the former con was last seen, speaks to an old guy with a monkey about nothing in particular, then drives around some more before passing Broad Street railway station and remembering a throwaway comment made the night before. With mere minutes to go before the midnight deadline he walks along the deserted platform and finds the mastertape on a bench. Where obviously it's been for the entire time and no-one has noticed it (let alone taken it). Mere feet away in a shed he finds the former con, who managed to lock himself in the night before thinking it was the toilet. They laugh, phone the office with seconds to spare, sinister guy goes empty-handed and then... Paul wakes up in the back of his car. The whole thing was a dream.

It really is as bad as it sounds. The fantasy sequences are an absolute masterpiece of self-indulgence (not quite as bad as those of Led Zeppelin in The Song Remains The Same, though at one point Linda on horseback, with flowing white robes and a mane of fair hair does look like Robert Plant's twin), Paul's acting is... well, it's generous to call it acting really, he seems heavily sedated the whole time - you'd think being on the verge of losing your company would get you a little bit frustrated at least, but he shows no emotion whatsoever. Ringo's almost as bad with what little stuff he has to do (pulling a journalist played by his wife with all the sledgehammer charm of a dodgy sex-pest), and in terms of real acting it leaves Bryan Brown to look a bit frustrated, Tracey Ullman to do a bit of crying and Ralph Richardson to be a bit enigmatic.

To be fair, I wasn't expecting much. Broad Street has a reputation for being less-than-stellar, and I'm happy to report it really is well-deserved... The sole redeeming feature is the music. No More Lonely Nights is a cracker, the big musical numbers are good fun and McCartney's re-recordings of Beatles songs are worth a listen (Eleanor Rigby / Eleanor's Dream, which plays over the Victorian daydream is very enjoyable).

Ahh, but my god it's craptacular.