Forget The Day Of The Doctor, there was just one show out there worth talking about for Doctor Who fans last night, and that was the hotly anticipated jewel in the schedule that was Doctor Who Live: The Afterparty, a magnificent triumph that celebrated the show in style, and was a warm, reverent and highly polished piece of entertainment that all involved can be proud of.
That was sarcasm.
But The Afterparty truly was brilliant, for all the wrong reasons. The kindest thing that can be said about it is that in many ways it truly did manage to capture the seat-of-the-pants coping-with-tecnical-adversity and getting-by-on-a-wing-and-a-prayer spirit of the Classic series. A more accurate thing to say, though, was that it was a shambles.
A glorious, uproariously funny shambles.
Forget The Twin Dilemma, forget Dimensions Of Time, The Afterparty has taken the much-coveted crown of becoming the Star Wars Holiday Special of the Whoniverse.
In many ways it's hard to pick a highlight when every scene was car crash telly at its finest, and hosts Zoe Ball and Rick Edwards were reduced to knocking back the hard spirits on-screen to get through it all.
But here are the five craziest moments in one of the craziest hours of television ever.
5: Rick Edwards Is Accidentally Racist!
The show gets off to a great start when Rick Edwards decides to dive into a crowd of "dedicated fans" to get their opinion on The Day Of The Doctor.
Now, the BBC may well be celebrating the show, but this is BBC Three, home of lowbrow "laddish" entertainment and "banter", so nobody involved is really comfortable with the thought of shaking off the image of grown fans as socially-maladjusted weirdos, so this group is a peculiar looking bunch, all dressed like refugees who's only means of clothing themselves was to pick through the wreckage of a burned-out charity shop.
You can smell the Lynx deoderant and copious amounts of cats through your screen.
Rather than trying to do the decent thing and try to pick somebody to speak to who doesn't look like a complete piss-take of
the entire target audience of this little show, Edwards heads straight for the weirdest looking one of all, a strange Japanese fellow who is grinning like a psychopath at a combat-knife convention.
"What did you think of the episode?" asks Rick.
To which the lad replies with something along the lines of "It was very moving."
Unable to understand the concept of "accents", Edwards repeats what he thinks the chap said, in shock and disbelief. Unfortunately, he thinks the lad said "DIRTY MOVIE!!"
The poor fan finds this both baffling and hilarious, so he just nods, then bursts into some admittedly rather sinister giggles that in no way makes things any better. Rick looks scared. The fan looks legitimately insane. The audience seem confused. And we're only five minutes in...
4: William Russell Has A Snot Problem!
William Russell. Dear, sweet, lovely William Russell. This isn't your fault, man.
But during one of the interview segments, when a star is on the sofa, William Russell gets a runny nose. No big deal, he's in the background after all, not being interviewed himself. Like any sane man of manners would do, he whips out his hanky and has a bit of a blow and a wipe.
Unfortunately, the cameraman has noticed this, and the camera shifts ever-so-slightly so that Russell is in the centre of the frame.
Quite what the cameraman's obsession with nasal hygeine is it's best not to ask. But it leads to a wonderful moment where for a very long time, everyone at home is sat spellbound by the sight of Ian Chesterton giving his nose a very extensive clean-up.
I know that Who fans have a reputation for being interested in the minutest details of their favourite show, but this is something that we don't need to see.
3: Sarah Sutton Hates Doctor Who!
Okay, so picture this - we're into the second half of the show, and so far everyone has - just about - survived.
We've not yet reached the point where Rick and Zoe will turn to the alchohol to get through things (at least on-screen).
But the horde of companions who have been sat around with nothing to do but look like haggard, aged versions of their former glory clearly
have been drinking all night.
So Rick Edwards decides that the time is right to go for a chat with some of the stars gone by. As a child of the Eighties, he obviously flocks towards Sarah Sutton, because there can't be a lad his age who doesn't remember the bit in Terminus where she randomly took her dress off for no reason.
"So why do you think that Doctor Who has lasted so long?" he asks her.
To which Sutton gives a wonderfully scornful laugh, and drunkenly shouts "I have no idea!" in a tone that leaves no doubt that she thinks the show should've been binned off years ago.
Mark Strickson tries to jump in and save the day with some sort of rehearsed patter about what a magical show it is, but nothing can hide the look of bewilderment on Edwards' face.
So he does the only logical thing in the face of such an awkward moment, and cuts off Strickson's valiant attempt at game-saving in favour of awkwardly thrusting his crotch in Janet Fielding's face instead, while making some weird comments that essentially amount to "I used to masturbate to you."
That's one way to divert attention from Sarah Sutton at least.
2: Mark Gatiss Heckles The Hosts!
Perhaps sensing that it was a bad idea to fill the studio with nearly every living companion (some of whom, like Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso, will have had to travel a hell of a way to get there) only to not involve them at all was a bad move, Zoe Ball decides to play a game.
And so, like the commendant of some godawful corporate training retreat, she orders them all on their feet for something that some shit-headed executive no-doubt referred to in the planning stages - without any sense of irony or shame - as an "energiser".
The goal is to find out the ultimate companion. Zoe Ball will pluckily shout out some scenarios, and if the scenario applied to a companion they had to take a seat. The last one standing would be the "ultimate companion". Simple, right?
Wrong.
"Sit down if you never ran down a corridor!!" demands Zoe. And the companions all look baffled as they try to remember episodes that they filmed perhaps as long as fifty years ago. Some of them nervously sit. Others try to confer amongst themselves. Bernard Cribbins looks at the camera and smiles like a dotty old grandad.
This goes on for a while. Bernard Cribbins gets bored and announces he's sitting down anyway. Sophie Aldred is struck out but then visibly cheats and sneaks back to her feet, perhaps forgetting that she's on camera. Yee Jee Tso and Daphne Ashbrook contemplate just how much a return flight from the States to be here has cost them, and get sad. The guy who played Jake in Age Of Steel looks around nervously, hoping that nobody will notice that he was never a companion.
Then a hero comes along. Mark Gatiss steps into shot, and irritably announces that everyone should just be allowed to sit already.
It is the only thing he does in the whole show.
Zoe arbitrarily declares K9 the winner because fuck it, and the show continues.
1: One Direction Become The Voice Of Reason!
So you have Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Steven Moffat and the legendary John Hurt on the sofa. So what do you do? You go to a live link-up with two-fifths of One Direction, of course! As soon as the two lads turn up on the screen, Matt Smith is caught on camera flipping them the v-sign. This is the smoothest part of the section.
First of all, Zoe Ball tries to talk to Not Harry Styles and The One Who's Shagging Little Mix. They stand in awkward silence for a painful
fifteen seconds before Ball's words are heard on their end. Through the television set they have - on screen - showing The Afterparty. Most people would immediately spot the problem that is about to come, but not our Zoe. After introductions are made, she asks them what they thought of the show. Then the loop of terror begins... On the TV set in the boys' studio, the fifteen second delay is up, and Zoe's introduction
again can be heard. As well as the question she has just asked. As well as the question she is currently asking in the main studio.
Like some sort of TARDIS-within-a-TARDIS recurssive Logopolitan paradox, every fifteen seconds from this point on a new Zoe Ball voice will chime out from the link-up, and every question that she asks is added into the mix, to the point that every word she and they have said during this whole debacle is being said
at once.
Zoe finally manages to ask again what the lads thought of the episode. Turns out that they haven't watched it.
Moffat sticks his head in his hands in despair. Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman can't contain their giggles. John Hurt is visibly trying to calculate the
exact moment in his career that lead him to this.
And Zoe Ball carries on regardless.
Eventuall, shockingly, it is up to One Fucking Direction to sum up the whole experience by saying "This isn't really working, is it..." and just casually wandering off.
Behind them, Zoe Ball's first question echoes out for the umpteenth time...
So there you have it - a cornocopia of crap and terrible moments, of spectacular failures and unbelievable awkwardness.
And I didn't even mention Matthew Waterhouse desperately trying to get Moff to bring Adric back live on air, the bit where Edwards happily announces "And now we go to Zoe, who is live with Matt Smith" only for the camera to cut to Zoe Ball, who is very much not live with Matt Smith, Tom Baker denying that he is in the episode
after we've just seen him in the episode (the secret's out now, Tom), or the delightful Bernard Cribbins joyfully explaining that he didn't understand a moment of The Day Of The Doctor.
Honestly, the biggest testament to just how insane The Afterparty really was is that when the end credits rolled over live footage of Sylvester McCoy playing the spoons on Cribbins' arse, it didn't seem remotely surprising. In fact, it kinda made sense...
If they don't do one of these shows after every episode of Who from now on, I'm cancelling my license fee.
