TELEVISION CHOICE
I have seen the future. Outdoors it all looks like a stone quarry near Reading, and inside like a gas showroom. Yes, Doctor Who (BBC 1, 7.35pm) is back. Part of its enduring appeal is, I suppose, that no show about the future has looked less, well, futuristic. The technology makes Dan Dare by comparison look positively Spielbergian. Sets appear cobbled together from egg boxes and oven-foil; the costumes are an extraordinary mixture of lurex and tartan (the most expensive thing about the props' budget are the colours), and aliens sport Bagwan togas and hair-dos that resemble a cross between Rod Stewart circa 1976 and a Davy Crockett hat. The new Doctor, the seventh, is Sylvester McCoy, a thin man's version of Robert Morley. Given such surroundings, it is hard for the actors not to camp it up, and McCoy, Kate O'Mara, as the arch-villainess, and Bonnie Langford, as the Doctor's assistant, duly oblige, delivering their lines with all the gusto of pantomime.
Caption: The new Doctor Who (Sylvester McCoy), with Bonnie Langford and Kate O'Mara (BBC1, 7.35pm)
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