The latest Private Eye carries more reports (or disgraceful tittle-tattle if you prefer) of behind-the-scenes rumblings in Cardiff.

So. Farewell then to another executive producer at Doctor Who, with Beth Willis following Piers Wenger out the door to return to her former employer, independent producer Kudos.

This time, following the PR storm which followed the Eye’s revelations of behind-the-scenes calamity under the leadership of the gruesome twosome and the reduced number of episodes that will air next year (see Eye 1290), the corporation was taking no chances.

BBC Drama controller Ben Stephenson and showrunner Steven Moffat lined up to offer fulsome praise (and there’s a phrase that’s often misused), while more lowly staff at BBC Wales – uncowed by a threat of punishment “in the strongest possible way” should they be proved to have leaked any information to Private Eye – tell us that “we are planning a party for the day they leave Wales, and we will buying a cake for your informant when we discover who it was.”

Production on Doctor Who is meanwhile running several months behind the usual schedule. The Christmas special – hitherto filmed in June or July each year – will not see cameras roll until September. Filming on the next series customarily starts shortly afterwards: this time the Tardis is unlikely to take flight before February next year.

The corporation’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, meanwhile, has had a good look at the figures for 2009, the last year when a smaller number of episodes than usual aired. and has noted that sales of its flagship kids’ title Doctor Who Adventures dropped by nearly two-thirds. It has now reconsidered plans for a massive magazine partwork it was to release in the run-up to the programme’s 50^th anniversary in 2013. It has, to use a technical publishing term, been “shitcanned”.

“Out the door”??? Is Private Eye now following the DW lead and pandering to the US market? Cardiff doesn’t sound entirely the harmonious family it always seemed to be under the original Three Who Ruled, does it? Distressing as it may be to hear of the clouds louring on Cardiff, there seems to be one silver lining. It’s been suggested here and there within fandom lately that, if the BBC finds that it can make just as much money from a reduced season as from a full 13-episode season, it may decide that it’s cheaper to only produce half as much DW each year. If, as Private Eye reports, the Specials year hit DW merchandising hard enough for the BBC to notice, this may discourage any such ideas.

I think Torchwood only works in extremes. It has to be either gloriously bonkers (or ingloriously if you prefer) as in parts of the first 2 series or all intense and gritty as in Children of Earth. Let it be a fun romp or let it be intense drama but make it one or the other. Although I generally enjoyed the first episode of Miracle Day, I’m already getting the sense that it’s falling between the two stools.

Take the character of Rex, the CIA agent. His whole performance in dragging himself across the Atlantic could best be described as just wacky enough to remove any sense of tension but not wacky enough to give it the virtue of comic relief. His journey from bed to Wales seemed to be played for laughs, as if it should have been speeded up and set to a track of Benny Hill music. Yet it was comical rather than amusing and I don’t think it was intended to be. Given the tales of British preview audiences howling with laughter at the Severn Bridge gags, what does RTD ply these audiences with? Laughing gas? Illuminated signs around the theatre flashing “Piss Yourselves Laughing Now”?

There were silly little things here and there. Rex escaping from the hospital despite the efforts of a doctor in a pencil skirt and vertiginous stilettos was ridiculous. I’ve no objection to the high camp but this just came across as someone getting the tone wrong.

Things were much better in the Welsh scenes, though Eve Myles could do with turning the dial right down on the wide-eyed ham. I confess that I sniggered involuntarily (and I don’t think I was mean to) when her mobile phone in the drawer started ringing and she instantly went into wide-eyed panic mode. Even more so than at the sound of the knock on the door which was understandable.

There were some tell-tale signs of what we’ve learned of RTD’s writing style from The Writer’s Tale. If you find yourself at a plotting or timetabling impasse, grit your teeth, close your eyes, think of Wales  and chuck in any old thing. Take the retconning resolved within seconds of Esther returning to her office to find herself presented with a fat file on everything Torchwoody by a friend who had a friend in the office that had just confiscated all files on Torchwood. Helpfully removing any sense of urgent secrecy and any point to the retconning. What about Gwen’s hideaway cottage being conveniently located at the end of the Severn Bridge? I can understand the need to cut to the chase but Rex was having a phone conversation with Esther at the time, the final sentence of which began with him on the Severn Bridge and ended with him drawing up on the cliff above the cottage.

I didn’t like the helicopter crash scene at all. Not because I have any objection to big action sequences for the sake of it (this is Torchwood in America, after all) but because it felt tacked on for ratings when it could so easily have been tied right into the story. What’s the theme of this series? No-one dies. So, for the sake of a cheap line where Gwen can say “we’re Torchwood” (where we’re presumably meant to punch the air), we’re asked to ignore the completely overlooked point that the crew in that helicopter were all burning alive and would continue to burn alive because they couldn’t die. I expected that surely that scene would end with the sounds of the crew screaming in the flames – drama upon drama upon drama – but no. It ends with Jack and Gwen standing wide-legged watching the flames and grinning at each other.

That aside, there were some fine elements to it all. The Bill Pullman scenes were the best of all. His creepy interview with the governor’s aide brought to mind some of the best of the tone and mood of Children of Earth and I was hopeful that this augured well for the rest of the episode. Kai Owen as Rhys, Tom Price as Sergeant Andy and Gwen’s parents brought a welcome sense of reality to the whole story by dint of not overacting at all.

Those elements were few and far between unfortunately and I always find myself coming back to the root of what stops me taking Torchwood seriously, John Barrowman. I like the guy a lot but the unspoken truth is that he cannot act (ooh look, I just spoke it). That’s not necessarily a handicap because the weird thing about John Barrowman/Captain Jack is that he’s terrible in Torchwood but wonderful in Doctor Who. In Series One (2005) of New Who he was one of the best things around and made a great trio in the TARDIS with Rose and the Doctor. Then along came Torchwood and I thought: ooh I don’t like Captain Jack as much as I thought I would. Then along came Utopia and I thought that JB and the character were on top form again. Make him a supporting character in a show which revolves around the far bigger character of the Doctor and his cheeky wisecracking conman works fine. But put him in a show which has to revolve around him and where he’s required to be grim and morose and he’s just not got the acting ability to carry it off. I cannot take seriously all those silent close-ups on his face while he’s doing intense and moody because he doesn’t have the face for it. It’s too smoothly matinee idol and doesn’t carry a vast range of expressions. There are also signs that they intend to continue to use his silhouette in his long coat as an iconic image in this series. It was used when Esther first met him in the archive and there was a shot of him at the end of a corridor in the series trailer. That worked well in something like School Reunion where Sarah is backing away from the TARDIS and the camera shows the shape of the Doctor standing behind her, all long coat and spread legs. Why does anyone ever stand like that, by the way? It’s not a natural way to stand unless perhaps you’re on the deck of a ship in a storm. It just screams: I’m standing like this in the hope of making an impression. Anyway, to get back to the point, that worked in School Reunion because you knew that inside that coat was David Tennant who can do the moody silent close-ups in his sleep and has the acting chops to make you go eeeeeek in anticipation of what’s to come.

The strongest and most promising part of the whole show looks to be the most original – the reversal of the rules of death. Fingers crossed that it turns out to have a decent resolution. Jacks’ immortality was always a problem in earlier series of Torchwood. Unless it was handled in an original way such as Jack’s burial alive or the attempts of the baddies to kill him in Children of Earth, it was always a tension dampener knowing that he was never going to die. I worry that, if the reversal of his immortality is going to turn out to be critical to the plot of Miracle Day, they won’t be able to avoid explaining how he came to be immortal which will take Torchwood out of reality and into fairy tales.

I did approve of RTD keeping some things almost wholly in the dark. Like the much promised amusing misunderstandings between Wales and America which he skillfully excised almost completely from this opening episode. Always keep them wanting more. However, if the few snippets which slipped through are anything to go by, then we’re in for a comedy treat. What’s a road bridge doing in this country? (chortles growing louder). Wait a minute, it’s also a toll bridge, what craziness is this? (guffaws coming thick and fast by now) Bridges? Tolls? Wales is insane! (I fell off the sofa in helpless laughter at this point).

I hope that this was just an unsettled introductory episode and am hoping for great things in the rest of the series. But that’s a hope based on Children of Earth rather than any confidence in this opener. Nor did the long Coming Soon in This Series trailer which the BBC stuck on the end of tonight’s episode fill me with hope. It had to be the blandest promise of thrills to come I’ve ever seen. Repeated shots of doctors pointing out that no-one is dying. Brief random snatches of meaningless dialogue. And thank you so much, BBC, for telling us pretty much what Oswald Daynes’ character ends up doing. That’s so much more satisfying than waiting to see it revealed through a developing drama.

How is it that people who grew up on Doctor Who can behave as if they grew up on Masters of the Universe and Thundercats?

The recent spate of ha-ha-ha-Colin-Baker’s-overweight jokes appearing as a rare lapse somewhere online (naming no URLs) has provoked some readers into a long overdue flurry of criticism.

What is it about DW fandom which leads certain elements to imagine that Colin Baker is an acceptable target for a string of personally offensive barbs? DW is supposed to be a show that we love, isn’t it? And isn’t one of its greatest attractions  that it allows those of us whose childhoods predated The Wilderness Years to recapture some of the innocence and magic of that childhood? Pre-1989 DW can claim some fantastically imaginative concepts but, as adults looking back, if we’re honest, much of it was ropey painting-by-numbers with appalling gender stereotypes. Even the show’s greatest icon, the Daleks, only had two types of story written for them – Genesis of the Daleks and everything else. None of the first seven Doctors were top of the range actors. But that’s looking at the show as adults which we don’t. We look at it not necessarily as children but as something which ties into our childhood. Which is why we forgive so much. Childhood innocence and wonder is a great filter.

Why then is it felt acceptable to treat Colin Baker with such barely concealed contempt? This is The Sixth Doctor, remember? It’s not the second Sea Devil from the right. He’s by no means a lesser actor than his counterparts in the role in Classic Who. For those of us of an age and a disposition to consider the eras of the last three classic Doctors to be one of increasingly diminishing returns storywise, his stories aren’t even that bad relative to their period in the show’s history. We know that his joke of a costume was imposed on him by John Nathan Turner against his own representations. His departure wasn’t him doing an Eccleston but rather an act of appalling unprofessionalism on the part of the BBC – the sort of thing that makes you wonder if the Corporation was nicknamed Auntie because of its occasional resemblance to a stinking old crone who ruins every Christmas.

As for Colin’s post-Doctor behaviour, I can only go on second-hand anecdote. I’ve never been one for attending conventions as the idea of spending two days surrounded by people like me and worse is a little off-putting. Yet Colin always seems to be affable and friendly. He’s never come across as a touch-me-not Doctor like Eccleston with his phoney brand of professional northerner schtick. He always seems happy to sign endless autographs though I still believe that queuing to pay for an autograph remains the lowest to which a sentient life form can sink on either side of the signing table. So why the hostility?

Why does this contempt for Colin revolve around his weight? It can’t be the extent to which he’s let his waistline go because, compared with Tom Baker, Colin is positively svelte and you never hear anyone cracking jokes about Tom’s size. Perhaps this goes to the heart of it. It’s fashionable to be revisionist these days and say that Tom’s reputation as the archetypal Doctor has been blown away by David Tennant’s legions of sinister groupies (if only you’d perfected the thrust-out lower jaw and burping while talking, Tom, your title would still be secure). But Tom still has a large fanbase to defend him and a breezy not-of-this-world manner to deflect any barbs which might get through. Plus the very length of his tenure lends him an unassailable gravitas.

Colin, on the other hand, is possibly a more niche taste within fandom. His was an era disappearing up its own fundament with regard to veneration of back story. He wasn’t allowed enough time in the role to ensure that he’d be remembered for just himself and not that hate crime of a costume. He had the 18 month hiatus in the middle of his tenure. Also, Colin may possibly stand a little on his dignity, but when you’ve been treated as badly by DW and the BBC as he has, you could argue that he has every right to do so.

In other words, it’s easy to defend Tom as a great Doctor, not so easy to defend Colin as such. Colin is therefore the softer and easier target.

Then you have to look at the nature of cult fandom. If in 2011, you’re producing DW fanzines, putting together reconstructions of lost DW episodes or writing DW blogs, it’s a safe bet that, 20-30 years ago, you weren’t one of the cool, sporty, popular kids at school. Be honest now, you weren’t the captain of cricket. You were always the last one left when picking teams for football. You didn’t know how to talk to girls. The fact that, 30 years on, you may have discovered sex sufficiently to get married and may kick a football around the park with Tristram and Jeremy from the office, none of this stops you still being at heart the lonely DW obsessive in the corner of the playground whom none of the cool kids would play with. I myself was an exception to this rule as I was hard as nails and wildly popular at school. The Hard Whovian, they used to call me as I was stealing their lunch money. I went to Wormwood Scrubs on a hockey scholarship.

So DW fans by and large were not the school bullies but the law of averages suggests that a fair number would have been that even more despicable breed – the school bully’s hangers-on, his sycophantic little acolytes. Those who bully only when it’s safe to do so. Those who grew up to spend their time in fandom bullying the “less popular” Doctors and the annoyingly precocious teenage companions.

How can this be the behaviour of people brought up on Doctor Who which has never been about bullying? Very much the opposite. With the exception of the Tenth Doctor veering dangerously close to the swaggering braggart obsessed with his own coolness, it’s never been the sort of 007 show where your worth is predicated on how well you can fire a gun, shag the most women or win a fist fight (even Venusian Aikido was hilariously camp). Isn’t that what drew so many of us…(cough)…I mean you lonely shy unsporty kids to the show in the first place? All you had to do to earn a place in the TARDIS was to be the Doctor’s best friend and to be brave and to look out for him. You didn’t have to descend into the final incarnation of Rose Tyler strutting down a burning street carrying an enormous fuck-off gun under your arm.

If you’ve been brought up by DW not to bully people, why behave in adulthood as though your formative influences had been Masters of the Universe and Thundercats? The sort of kids’ TV described by Charlie Brooker in his Oliver Postgate tribute as consisting of “endless screeching and zapping sounds that beat you over the head and can be exciting but also leave you feeling ultimately rather hollow.” By all means criticise someone’s acting performance or their behaviour on-set or off-set. Short of turning it into a 30 year witch hunt as has been inflicted on Matthew Waterhouse by fandom and by one or two of his more up-their-own-smug-arses DW colleagues of the time, that’s fair comment. But making personal remarks about Colin’s appearance is merely crass bullying. Maybe that’s only to be expected of the more dedicated fans of any cult TV show whose hours of internet time necessarily deprive them of the sort of normal social interaction with  “other people” which might educate them as to inappropriate behaviour. Oh, and attending a DW convention once a year as one of seventeen identically costumed Brigadiers does not count as meeting other people.

A year or so ago, one usually fairly cool podcast (not to be named) was actually bragging that they had offended Colin Baker at a convention as if it were some feather in their cap. Which I suppose just goes to show that even the coolest of fans retains within them an element of the sad and insecure little wanker in the school playground compensating for their lack of friends by joining in with the crowd bullying the easiest target.