Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Doctor Who, BBC One

This weekend we heard a good deal about a power-crazed British prime minister who exploited his magnetic personal appeal with scant regard for democracy on a course to world domination. The BBC’s take came in the form of a crop-haired John Simm (aka Sam Tyler in Life on Mars), camping it up as the Doctor’s old adversary, the Master, in Doctor Who. Meanwhile, Channel 4 took a disappointingly uncampy approach in the form of one T. Blair, who did not sport any sort of new haircut at all in The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair.

For this second instalment of the season’s three-part finale, the Master had not only regenerated, but reinvented himself as a premier by the name of Harold Saxon, which surely should have set BNP alarm bells ringing. Popular yet sans policy, psychopathically dismissive of Cabinet politics, uxorious with a creepy spouse, Saxon clearly bore no relation to any PM in living memory.

Anyone who, like me, had inadvertently lost track of matters Tardis will have found themselves astonished by the spectacle before them. The Doctor’s recreator, Russell T. Davies, has expressed his admiration for Joss Whedon, the genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the series gets Buffier by the moment: witty, literate, sophisticated, and revelling in postmodern panache. Blink, the episode preceding this trilogy, was awesomely terrifying in the manner of Whedon’s Emmy Award-nominated silent episode of Buffy entitled Hush. Like Whoof old, it undoubtedly scarred a generation of children, by which I obviously mean my 36-year-old self – three weeks on, and I still cannot pass a statue less than goggle-eyed.

There’s another pleasing aspect to all this Buffiness: a certain – let us express it in Blair terminology – sexing up of proceedings. The Doctor of yore had a thing for earthlings, but it was very much a platonic thing, any dodginess sublimated into tearing the heads off jelly babies. Even for an alien he was borderline autistic. Sure, he got a tad moody when Adric bought it after stuffing his maths badge up the Cyberman empire, yet he proved impervious even to Peri’s breasts.

These days, he spends his entire time getting it on, or inspiring such getting. Martha loves the Doctor, the Master loves the Doctor, the Doctor loves the Master, Captain Jack – who is both Arthur and Martha – loves everyone regardless of gender or, indeed, species. Jack is a gay icon one does not even have to take the trouble to fantasise about converting, the man/being is the very embodiment of intergalactic miscegenation. Recently, the Doctor even referred to having possessed a wife. (My money is on the first Romana, rather than the one that left him for Richard Dawkins.) I have no idea what will happen in next week’s denouement – a seismic revelation is promised – and I wouldn’t want it any other way.