Some dos and don'ts upon meeting various Dr. Who villains by Mike Heinrich 28/9/05
A guide with some good general advice.
We all know the old chestnuts about aiming for eyestalks and how stairs won't protect you. But the Daleks are only one of the things you might encounter during your trip around time and space. Upon venturing out into the universe, it's handy to keep in mind some good general safety guidelines in order to prevent falling afoul of one of the many evil despotic (or at least highly antisocial) masterminds you might encounter along the way.
In that spirit, here's a handy take-along list of points to remember
Should you happen to meet...
THE MASTER:
DO- Casually mention how you've been looking for someone to obey and would be only too happy to do so. (Note: You might want to make sure that it actually IS the Master prior using this one, as this is probably an inadvisable thing to mention in other situations. Say - for example - you and The Doctor have found yourself in a strange and mysterious Galactic Hard Core S&M Leather Bar. Now, I'm not judging anyone's lifestyle.. All I'm saying is you should probably be aware of what you're getting yourself into.)
DON'T- Stand there whimpering like an idiot waiting to be turned into an adorable action figure replica of yourself
DON'T- Casually mention how nice your father's body is. (Actually this is just good advice on meeting anybody. It's a creepy thing to do, and no good conversation is going to come from it.)
DON'T- Stare at the shiny object swinging back and forth. No. Seriously. Don't. Just look away. Even though it's so shiny.. Sooooo shiny... Sooooo... Where was I?
A MOVELLAN:
DO- Grab the shiny silver vibrator off their belt.
DON'T- Ask them how it felt to have their Grammy taken away. It's an embarrassingly old joke, and the Movellan isn't going to get it anyway.
A VERVOID:
DO- Mention how against slavery you are and how you can't get enough of red meat.
DON'T- Shake hands.
DON'T- Deliberately expose him and all his kind to ultraviolet light causing the extermination of their entire race, because God knows you get picked up and sent to court for any little thing in the future and they're going to bring up the whole 'genocide' thing and then suddenly you're in ALL this trouble.
TTOXYL, HIGH PRIEST OF SACRIFICE:
DO- Pretend to be a reincarnation of some deceased priest/god. If nothing else it buys you a little time.
DON'T- Screw up his whole 'Eclipse' thing. It's at the very least rude and at most life-threatening.
AN ICE WARRIOR/LORD:
DO- Make a quick check to see if they're in their 'be courteous to you' period or they're 'tear off your head and stick it on a tallish pole' period. I can't stress how important this distinction is.
DON'T- Ask him to sing a chorus of 'Fascinatin' Rhythm'. Oh, and try to avoid sending his whole fleet into the sun if at all possible. You know, unless you have to.
A TYTHONIAN AMBASSADOR: (Note: not technically 'evil', per se.)
DO- Establish diplomatic relations with him BEFORE chucking him in a great big hole.
DON'T- Immediately try to put your mouth on his big dangling appendage. It's only polite to at least buy him a drink first. And if you DO decide to go ahead and do it anyway, you certainly shouldn't expect it to lead to increased communication, because it never, ever does. How many of us have made THAT mistake?
SCAROTH, LAST OF THE JAGAROTH:
DO- Tell him how much you enjoyed his role as the AT-AT Commander in Empire Strikes Back. I'm sure he doesn't hear that nearly enough and he really was quite good.
DON'T- Ask how his family is.
THE RANI:
DO- Compliment her leather pants, as it's only polite.
DON'T- Worry about being turned into a tree, as they have a much longer life span and it's not like you were going to DO anything with the rest of your life anyway, right?
DON'T- Eat maggots. Although, frankly, if that's the kind of advice you need then I'm not altogether sure that there's any hope for you.
A CYBERMAN:
DO- Safely lock and secure your time vehicle behind you.
DON'T- Worry about them being any kind of a threat, as they will inevitably turn out to have an incredible violent weakness for any old thing that you happen to have to hand, up to and including gay pornography. ("Ex-cell-ent! We have ac-qui-red the Time Lord's DVD at last. OH NO! It's Back Door Ban-dits Four! We are Doomed. DOOOOOOOOMED!")
THE MARA:
DO- Keep an eye on how much Rouge you're applying at the time. For some reason the Mara's presence tends to make people go completely overboard on the stuff.
DON'T- Under any circumstances, agree to share your body. Again, get drinks first.
A BIG SCARY DIDOAN SAND BEAST:
DO- Remember to keep it leashed and pick up it's droppings when taking it on walks through the park. It's the law.
DON'T- Immediately shoot it with a flare gun and kill it, as it will without fail turn out to be some young orphan's pet and she'll be all pissed about it. Not that she'll ever mention it again. Or even remember, apparently.
A SILURIAN/EOCENE/EARTH REPTILE:
DO- Make an effort to immediately learn it's first name, as I have no idea at this point which species name is Wrong/Inaccurate/possibly racist.
DON'T- Stare at the third eye. Hey! My two eyes are down here, buddy!
I Hope that these simple guidelines will ensure a safe and happy tour through this, our Universe.
What I really want by Mike Heinrich 13/10/05
The other day I popped The Five Doctors in to the DVD player - primarily for background noise while I cleaned the house - and I found myself thinking (not for the first time) "Man it's a shame that we'll never know what this would have been like if Tom Baker had participated. Or if William Hartnell had still been alive"
At which point it occurred to me that there's no good reason why we can't.
OK, OK, I know that copyright issues would prevent this from ever really happening, but bear with me on this.
What I really want - is a five book set of five different versions of The Five Doctors. One with Tom in it. On based on the Robert Holmes script where Richard Hurndall was apparently a robot. One with Jo Grant. One with Sarah falling down a hill that has more than a fifteen degree slope to it, etc. etc. The Five Five Doctors. Come on, it'd be great! They could be Target size, Virgin size, Telos Novella size, whatever, I'm not fussy.
And while I'm at it, and bearing in mind that nobody seems to give much of a crap about maintaining continuity these days anyway, I want... Nay, DEMAND, a few books with the 7th Doctor and Ray as if she had been chosen as the new companion instead of Ace. I want to read a version of Dragonfire where The Doctor and Ray show up, have a rousing adventure with a nice waitress they happen to meet, and then leave together without bothering to learn her name.
And for that matter, what about that chick from The Faceless Ones. You know the one I'm talking about, the one in the amusing hat. How about a run with her, Jamie and Patrick Troughton taking in the universe. What about The Laird of McCrimmon? I wouldn't mind seeing how that was supposed to go. What about Battlefield where the Brigadier actually DID get killed? Oh, and where the villains and plot weren't crap...
Once I started thinking along these lines, the possibilities truly seemed endless. Could we one day read a version of Mawdryn Undead that contained not only Ian Chesterton but also Plot Coherence? Yes! Yes we could! And the original Robert Holmes ending to Trial of a Time Lord which at the very LEAST would be an improvement on what we actually saw. And Kamelion could function properly for Warriors of the Deep! And we could neatly excise the tacked-on bits with the Black Guardian and Olvir, exploring whole new areas of Terminus... And... And...
And I'm getting carried away with myself, obviously.
Stupid copyright issues.
It'll never happen, of course.
But still...
I demand possibilities.
Because Doctor Who has always led me to believe that I should.
What's Wrong with the New Series by Ron Mallett 20/10/05
Introduction:
My heart sank as I winced and cringed my way through the first episode of the new series. My wife got up at the end of it and declared: "I don't know what that was, but it wasn't Doctor Who." She can be described as a casual fan at best and it was glaringly obvious even to her that the new series had failed to deliver the return of a beloved institution. In this essay I have tried to break down my main objections into 10 points (not an easy task as one could write a book on all the flaws) but I have tried to keep this as brief as possible.
The Main Characters:
While Christopher Eccleston makes a good effort, it is clear that the majority of his characterization was transplanted from The Second Coming (another Davies project). No thought went into his costume at all. He now looks like a middle-aged rent boy. All the previous Doctors wore anachronistic clothing - with a decided bent towards the Victoria and Edwardian era - in order to emphasize the sense of him being of great age and learning. This was a critical departure and continues to undermine the series. The fact that Eccleston has just used the show as a career stepping-stone, had not helped the cause either.
Billie Piper could not act her way out of a paper bag. No wonder the character of Rose Tyler comes across as a two-dimensional cardboard cut out. I've been criticized for labeling her "character" as an annoying slapper. I'll just add that she's also a non-entity, a waste of space, cheap and a shallow moron to boot. It makes me weep that there are real actors out there who will not have the chance to build a fully rounded character such as Jamie or Sarah, where both growth and charisma are evident.
The Writing:
It has been overwhelmingly pathetic. According to some the blame cannot be laid at the feet of Russell T. Davies but how can it not? He has himself explained that despite the fact that he plans the seasons from start to finish, including a run down of character and tone, the writers have complete creative freedom (huh?!). Davies has officially written more than half of the stories in the first season, so any argument that he is not primarily responsible for the greatest line of all time turkeys in history is ill informed. The suggestion that we are only satisfied with stories that could have been made during the Hinchcliffe era is just a lie. It is more truthful to say that real fans have been let down by most of the stories that would not have been considered for production during twenty-six seasons of Doctor Who. Only two are potential candidates and they are The Unquiet Dead and The Long Game.
General Characterization:
While I've been accused of being a snob we have seen a parade of cliches pass before us that would have Dickens blushing. Rose's mother is the worst. She is played as the stereotypical British estate moron with a provincial accent, loose values and no brains whatsoever. I just get the feeling that Davies doesn't like people very much. Some of the wisest people I know have no formal qualifications at all. The aliens and humans we meet on the "adventures" are really very shallow due more to the format.
The Format:
The 45-minute format is too limiting for satisfying stories. All the single parters seem rushed and crammed. While some might argue that it is the padding that has been cut, there simply isn't adequate time for a story to unfold in a naturalistic way. It would be much better if all stories were two parters that would allow for proper character development amongst the guest cast of characters and more relaxed intrigue. As it is the story is secondary to the soap opera anyway, so that isn't likely to change. Another issue is the awful glimpses of what is going to happen next week... what is this, The Bill? It destroys any mystery about what is to follow and is really just a chance to show clips of Billie Piper and her jugs bouncing up and down corridors. The little preludes work a lot better but it is all ruined by the title sequences...
The Episode Names:
The names of the stories also reinforce the preoccupation with interpersonal issues: Rose, The Parting of the Ways etc. Gone are titles such as "Attack of the Autons" and "Invasion of the Daleks", after all 15 year old girls don't want to watch shows with titles like those. In the main, the titles have been very un-Whoish and generally unimaginative.
The Sex Opera:
The way in which the show has been marketed as a sexual-tension-filled soap opera is deplorable. In a crass attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator, the show has been topped up with cringeful moments that suggest some kind of relationship between the Doctor and Rose. At one moment a Dalek even declares that she is the woman that the Doctor loves! Gimmie a break! This is kind of like a man having an affair with a pet dog. All the hand holding and rolling around on the TARDIS floor would have Sydney Newman vomiting. The show has been advertised on the basis of who Rose may open her legs for this week rather than what situation the Doctor has found himself in. Honestly, it has Davies' finger marks all over it and I wouldn't be surprised if the name of the show was changed to "Sex and the TARDIS!" The influence is very strongly American of course and the slide started with The Telemovie. It is disgraceful.
The TARDIS Set:
Isn't it amazing that the old, limited but architecturally beautiful TARDIS sets were more effective that the new one. I thought the TARDIS interior from the movie was over the top. The set is a metaphor for the show in a sense, a concern with aesthetics over content. Bigger does not always mean better, only slappers think that.
The Opening and Closing Sequences:
Oh dear, oh dear, this is what happens when people cannot get a certain era out of their brains ie. 1974 to 1979. I thought the Hartnell and Troughton era fans were annoying with their insistence that such and such an episode was a classic and only they can remember them (until of course they are systematically discovered and debunked), please make way for the Tom Baker zombies. The vortex effect is nothing new and the theme sounds like the National Philharmonic Orchestra is performing it. The arrangement therefore has no aura of spookiness about it at all. It all really has a rushed feeling to it and looks as if it was been slapped together by fans aged 30 to 45 who think that only Tom Baker played the Doctor.
Humour:
There has been a lot of unnecessary slapstick humour that to put it bluntly, has just been childish. The bin burp in Rose is a good example: it was animated plastic, it doesn't have a digestive system so why should it burp? The Doctor wrestling with a small child for control of a TV remote control was another of those moments. You can't expect much more when we have a crop of writers such as Steven Moffat who openly claim: "Doctor Who was never a seriously-intentioned program!" It was an abused program at times, and in the Williams production era it did not receive the respect it deserved, but when it did work well from day one, it was always played straight.
The Thought Police:
As far as the views of certain fans who shall remain nameless and others are concerned, I fully anticipated them. We've seen this kind of philosophy in action before in relation to the McCoy era. After the series was originally cancelled following season 26, no one was allowed to criticize anything about that era, not the writers, the actors, production crew, nothing. It was almost as if people were concerned that any negative criticism would impede the chances of McCoy and Aldred returning to television (and it really worked didn't it?!). There are always trumped up little fascists in every sub-culture more than ready to act as thought police. Real fans are not apathetic, they question and contribute - it is both our right and our responsibility. And in anticipation if their next comment ("Well why watch it then, just let us enjoy it"), it is our privilege to act as custodians for an institution that was created by many great minds and talents and we should not remain silent while that is perverted into something shallow and meaningless. I can see now that anyone speaking the truth is going to be labeled as boring old farts and ungrateful. The only thing that would make me grateful is if the show in its current form was taken out the back and put down.
Conclusion:
Therefore there are some serious problems with the new series. The most frustrating is that there is a great show buried underneath all the rubbish trying to get out. When Roddenberry resurrected Star Trek into The Next Generation, he succeeded because he kept true to the core values and essence of the original. It's almost as if the BBC have decided to drive the final nail into the coffin by creating a show that is a mockery of the original, a method of finally alienating traditional fans from the series. If Michael Grade (champion of the shallow, corporate and all that is dull and amoral in the world) can become a fan, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. Wake up Whovians! Fight for your inheritance! That doesn't make us boring old farts, just traditionalists.
Where Old and New Do Not Converge by Adrian Loder 26/10/05
This is an article exploring the real, fundamental change that the series has undergone from 1989 until now, on television anyway.
I've written fairly recently that the rebirth of Doctor Who deserves to be seen as a legitimate continuation of the original series and have made my claim that the season just past is, in fact, Season 27 (and no, the audios don't contribute to this numbering because they aren't television seasons. That doesn't mean they don't fit into overall continuity, merely that they don't fit into the numbering system of a different medium). I stand by this, and believe that, though there are things I don't like about the series, enough of the old survives. Even emotional drama is not unknown in the original run - what of Hartnell's tortured codas to The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Massacre? When done right, without undue sentimentality and with real emotion, there is no reason why things such as these cannot be part of the ongoing evolution of the show.
The problem, however, is that most of the time in the season just past, sentimentality has been everywhere, emotions have been trite and unreal and as a result the heartfelt aspect of the show comes off as soap-like. I'm more than sympathetic with Ron Mallett's criticisms of the new season, and I certainly agree in part with most of his complaints. I also tend to agree somewhat with the people who say that new is not necessarily bad, that Doctor Who has always changed, and that this new direction has good things to offer, as well. I can see both sides, and I suppose I come down between them. Perhaps that is why I see something that others seem not to, the one major point of divergence between what has been and what is now, and will be, regarding Doctor Who.
And that is...? The difference between story-based, and character-based, drama.
In the old days, Doctor Who was definitely story-based. Characters were fleshed out over a series of episodes and, in the case of the leads, over the course of seasons. Evolution was slower and more gradual, but also more lifelike and subtle, because of this, which is the natural byproduct of story-based storytelling. Because of the primary focus being on plot, characters are not defined through lengthy emotional interludes, or extended expositions, so much as by the way they react to others, to events around them, the actions they take in response to others' actions. We are not told how a character is, either by others or the character him/herself, but rather we are shown how the character is through the unfolding of the plot. In this way characters are not shoved into pre-made roles that they then expound on at length, or revealed through constant emotional heart-to-hearts; they gradually reveal themselves, in a more slow, and subtle way. Aside from being superior simply in terms of not hitting people over the head with things, story-based drama is also better when the actors and actresses are not exactly Oscar material. This is not a jab at the fine men and women who have worked on Doctor Who, but rather an acknowledgement that then, as now, sometimes people aren't up to snuff. When you put someone like this into a position where they have to do one of the most difficult things in all acting, to realistically and powerfully portray deep emotion and feeling without being trite, maudlin or hyperbolic, and that person doesn't have the stuff to do it, you get disaster or, more specifically, you get Rose's mother.
The new show is far more of a character-based affair than the show was in the past, and the problem is that very few in the cast have the chops to justify it. Chris Eccleston is able to pull it off, and John Barrowman isn't too bad, but no one else is that strong. This isn't to knock them - as mentioned earlier, being able to consistently pull this sort of thing off is very tough. Furthermore, you can only work with what you're given, and the fact of the matter is that the writing in a character-based drama also has to be stronger on the emotional front, and capable of real, sincere emotion and words that ring true. Crafting a tight plot is quite difficult, but in a different way. I'm almost tempted to ask Russell Davies to try stories like that - sure, the ratings might drop (would they? audiences were just as "common" in the sixties, seventies and eighties as now and Doctor Who had several periods of multi-year ratings awesomeness), but the stories might improve.
Davies has been acclaimed for his writing on other melodramatic shows, and frankly I have to wonder if this is acclaim from the same folks who do not now see that most of the supporting cast of the new series, insofar as emotional depth is concerned, are not up to the task. I felt that Paul Cornell and Stephen Moffat actually did the best in welding a greater, but sincere, emotional element to what has been forged into what we know as Doctor Who over the previous 40 years. This is not to say that Davies is horrible; there are good moments, and it is my emphasis on the good that allows me to still see the Doctor Who in this and embrace it as a continuation of the past. But the stuff that he is best at is also what is usually not played up in the stories, at least not in my opinion.
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind, however, that the weaknesses that exist are largely due to this change from story-based to character-based drama. If you're going to do the latter you'd best have the absolute finest actors/resses and writers money can buy lest you risk unintentionally making fun of yourself. That the spirit of Doctor Who lives on even within this is a testament to its staying power. Perhaps I emphasize the good elements in Who a bit too strongly - if I were to rate The Web Planet, I'm thinking I might give it as a high as a 7 out of 10 ("Yikes!" go the McCoy fans) - though, unlike someone's suggestion that people who like everything have no taste, I do not enjoy everything equally.
Perhaps were I not so desperate for the dead old Doctor's adventures to continue, I would not view the new series as still retaining the breath of the original 26 seasons. I don't think that's the case, however; I think both sides of this argument are exaggerated, and that if this matter of character-based storytelling were remedied we would see an appropraite uptick in the quality of the program.
On the New Series' Episode Titles by Tom Berwick 15/1/06
Much has been said of the new series' episode titles, usually to criticise them for being entirely unlike those of what the BBC calls the classic series, with the implication that they are indicative of deeper problems with the new series. But are they? I'm going to look at them and see how well they fit with the classic series. That's the only criterion here: whether or not the title, or indeed the episode is any good, I will leave up to you. Or indeed the crucial issue of whether or not any of this actually matters.
(Not that I don't have opinions on those matters. I'm just not going to tell you. Not here anyway).
Firstly, though, a couple of points: lots of stories on the classic series had titles with the basic formula [The] X of [the] Y. 49 stories had a title with this formula after the introduction of story titles. But that is considerably less then half, so I don't think we can look for the title format as our benchmark. We need to look more closely at the flavour of the title, and what it's trying to get across.
Secondly, the titles of part twos don't count. They are not story titles. Perhaps the two-parters have unscreened titles, but I will assume that the title of episode one is the story title. Part two titles can only be compared to Hartnell era episode titles, and when you can have episodes called Small Prophet, Quick Return and Don't Shoot the Pianist, then frankly anything goes, which clears World War Three, The Doctor Dances and The Parting of the Ways.
Incidentally, if the last of these had been a story title, I don't think it would have belonged in the classic series, despite fitting the above formula. So that's another reason for ignoring it.
So, what can we make of the ten remaining titles? Firstly, there are, I think, four titles that clearly consistent with the classic series. There's little to be said about these:
The Unquiet Dead (Probably the most consistent of all. I really can't see any argument against it).
Aliens of London (Okay, lots of stories in the classic series were about aliens attacking London, and none had this title. It would probably only have worked if it had been used in the early days. It wasn't, but it could have been. Since these are the second early days, it gets in.)
The Empty Child ("The Empty Children" sounds a little more classic series-ish, but not much more).
Bad Wolf (A bit like Ghost Light: not exactly a conventional title, but not out of place either. Some classic series titles came a little out of left-field, and I don't see what's wrong with this one).
(I've just realised that three of these are the two-parter titles. I wonder if that tells us anything.)
So, what of the remaining six? Can a case be made for them?
Rose, on the face of it, hasn't a hope. No classic series story title so much as contained a companion's name. There are, however, two things that can be said in its defence. Firstly, the classic series episode it most closely resembles, in some respects at least, is the other Doctor Who Part One: An Unearthly Child. The title was at least about a companion. It wasn't called "Susan", but it could have been. Secondly, for reasons I hope to go into in greater depth elsewhere, Rose can be considered a part two, and hence enjoy the greater freedom enjoyed by part twos.
So, not very classic series-ish at all, but it's got an excuse.
The End of the World nearly made it into the "obviously okay" list. I just couldn't quite see it alongside the classic series titles, not even The Enemy of the World, which is obviously the most similar. Still, I suspect that's just me being a little odd. Objectively, I can't see why I don't think it fits, so I will conclude that it does, and I'm the one with the problem.
Dalek has been specifically criticised on these pages for what the new series titles represent. In response to that, I invite you to consider this plot idea:
A machine creature poses a grievous threat to mankind. Though dangerous, it is at the same time pitiable, and the Doctor's companion shows it kindness. The Doctor resolves to destroy the creature, but will the companion's sympathy be a more effective weapon?
Sound familiar? Of course. But enough about Robot. Isn't it interesting, though, how much the titles of Dalek and the classic series story it most resembles also closely resemble each other? For that reason, Dalek gets the benefit of the doubt.
The Long Game is the first title that I really can't see in the classic series. As has been said elsewhere, the title is incomprehensible until you see Bad Wolf. Therein lies the reason it wouldn't fit: the title is dependent on a season-long story arc that didn't exist in the classic series, at least not in the form it took here.
Father's Day is, to my mind, the least classic series-ish title of all, and not just because it's only the third to contain an apostrophe. Whereas The Long Game is at least a plot-related title, this says nothing about the Reapers, or time being torn apart. It's totally a character-based title, which really does not fit the classic series at all.
Boom Town can be defended, but I don't think the defence works. Compare it with Paradise Towers: there's a certain similarity there. Except that Boom Town means just that: Cardiff is on the up. Paradise Towers, on the other hand, is supposed to describe how the place it depicts should have been, in order to highlight the dystopian nightmare that actually existed. In the classic series, location-based titles (unless written by Mr Bidmead) tend to do more than describe the setting (and Mr Bidmead's do less), and certainly don't talk it up. As I say, there is a similarity but I don't think it's close enough.
So, that leaves three titles out of thirteen that don't fit with the classic series titles, or that at least have justifications that go back to the classic series. Indeed, to the charge that the new titles reflect the soapishness of the new series, only Father's Day is guilty. Overall, then, I conclude that the charge that the new series' titles don't fit with the classic series has been badly overstated.
An article dicussing the regenerative process by Lance Bayliss 27/1/06
We know as Doctor Who fans just how important the concept of regeneration actually was (and still is) to the survival of our programme. It is without a doubt up there with the Daleks as one of the primary reasons that the series stayed the course, and a contributing factor for why it was able to reinvent itself. Each time the lead actors change, we're arguably watching a whole new series of Doctor Who. It was why the children of the children of the kids who first watched in 1963 are watching it in 2005.
Sure, TV series had recast lead actors in the same role before (early Quatermass and Sherlock Holmes teleplays being case examples), but Doctor Who was the first to give it a mythology within the framework of the series itself. Where a character like James Bond will change actors between films, the Doctor changes before our very eyes, blending from one actor to another. It's magic, of the most old-fashioned kind. But rather than focusing on the production side of the changes, I thought the time might be right (given the start of a whole new regenerative cycle in David Tennant) to explore the concept from a fictional point-of-view.
So, what is regeneration? It's the buddist-like concept of a new life springing from the death of an old one. A pheonix rising from the ashes. Reincarnation. An ability natural to Time Lords like the Doctor, it also has several little quirks which make for some interesting analysis. What we know about it is that it's a very painful process, or at least it seems to be for the Doctor himself (more on that later). It results in a rapid metamorphosis: the body's height changes, hair grows or shortens, and we must imagine that several changes are made internally as well, such as the Doctor's skeletal structure changing shape too. This would be very painful, and it's no real surprise that he traditionally needs a rest afterwards. Time Lords are also only able to do this twelve times, giving them thirteen incarnations, after which they tend to fade away once and for all.
Regeneration also appears to give the Doctor "special powers", or at least a certain number of abilities within a certain period after the regeneration itself. The Christmas Invasion has been heavily lauded for introducing this concept, with the Doctor being able to regrow parts of his body after amputation. But it is worth noting that Robot also makes a big deal out of the Doctor's temporary super strength - he is able to chop a brick in half with a single swift chop, and his conversation with Harry Sullivan ("Both a bit fast are they?") indicates that immediately after the process it takes a while for the body to calm down again. When he tries to chop a brick in half at the end of that story, he comes away with a hurt wrist (clearly the process has calmed down by this point).
However, the opposite is often true. The Doctor's brain is left in a state of flux, leading to temporary amnesia and sometimes even a breakdown of cognitive fuctions. He refers to himself in the third person after his first changeover, he initially doesn't recognise Sarah or the Brigadier after the third, and the various permutations in Castrovalva, The Twin Dilemma, The TV Movie and The Christmas Invasion lead to him not "stabilising" until reasonably late in each story. In the case of the sixth Doctor, a good case can be made that he didn't stabalise until his second season, and due to the helter skelter nature of stories like Mindwarp we don't even see too much change in that.
Interestingly, the seventh Doctor seems to be an exception to the rule. He awakens in the Rani's lab in Time and the Rani with no apparent amnesia and in control of his faculties, it isn't until the Rani drugs him and dresses up as his companion that he loses his memory. Given that we don't actually see what caused the regeneration in that story, it's almost impossible to glean any answers as to why this might be so. Likewise, while Rose is open-ended enough to enable any interpretation of whether the ninth Doctor has recently regenerated or not, the fact that we simply join his seemingly first adventure halfway through makes it hard to call. The characterisation of this incarnation is ever so slightly out of sync with what we become familiar with in the following 12 episodes that I tend to fall on the side of it being a recent change, and not necessarily one linked with the Time War.
The process of regeneration seems to be one which causes the Doctor some pain, although it's possible that this might be because unlike other Time Lords he tends to only lose a life after a fatal accident. Yet it seems unusual that Romana can pick and choose her next incarnation in Destiny of the Daleks with ease, even making adjustments as she goes along. Is this some kind of intermediate phase? If so, why does the Doctor never display the ability to actually choose what he looks like? The only time this happens is when he is offered a choice of bodies by the Time Lords at the end of The War Games, and in that case he chooses none of them. Even the Master never seems to have trouble with regeneration, continuing to live on long after his thirteenth body has given way in The Deadly Assassin. So why does the Doctor have such trouble, even within the safety of the TARDIS? Is it because of his human DNA, mentioned in the TV Movie, which has been causing the hang-ups for all these years?
Whatever the case he clearly has to go through some agony each time. In Power of the Daleks he has to focus his mind on the task at hand ("Concentrate on one thing ..." he mutters to himself), in Robot he wakes up and starts to babble a number of phrases used by the third Doctor in his final few stories (trying to retain something of 'himself'?), and Castrovalva sees him using the Zero Room to regroup his thoughts. However, the Zero Room is jettisoned from the TARDIS in that story, and his turbulent sixth incarnation seems to be a result of not having this resource to call upon - he seems confused throughout The Twin Dilemma, as though he can't quite jog his mind back into gear. In The TV Movie the residual memories of the operation theatre are what anchors his eighth incarnation. And in Parting of the Ways he concentrates on the phrase (and the planet) Barcelona. His first instinct in Spearhead and Robot is to get back to the TARDIS as soon as possible. Again, this appears to be a need to find the comfort of the Zero Room.
For all this need to keep some link to his previous incarnation, the Doctor always seems eager to shed that persona through a change in clothes. He takes great delight in choosing his costume in Spearhead from Space, trying on different capes and hats until he finds just the right mixture. He tends to prefer taking bits and pieces of different ensembles and making them into something new. The fifth Doctor tends to clutch onto his cricketing whites as though they're the key to him somehow 'finding himself'. The sixth Doctor's costume itself is a visual indication of his state of mind. The fact that he never ditches these clothes leads to us never quite trusting that he's properly stabalised. The seventh, on the other hand, tries on all his predecessors costumes before finally finding his own feet. The eighth Doctor chooses a fancy dress outfit to go with his more stylised persona, and the ninth wears clothing with an intention of blending in. It seems as though after the trauma of the Time War he just feels a need to sink into the background and not be noticed. Blowing up a department store in the middle of London seems to be the worst way to achieve this anyway.
So, what can we expect from the tenth Doctor? Like the others, I expect that by the end of Series Two we will have a very different, (and vastly better) tenth Doctor than we begin with. Certain elements that we seen in The Christmas Invasion will likely be retained, but others might never rear their head again. Like the second Doctor's perchant for strange and exotic hats (not seen again after his first handful of episodes), I can certainly imagine David Tennant taking the groundwork of his debut and making it altogether darker. It is a rare case for a Doctor to remain the same as his first serial all the way through his era - although Tom Baker's fourth Doctor certainly still retained elements of his scatterbrained Robot portrayal to his very final season ("Arrest the scarf, then!").
One core element that seems to run through all ten Doctors is a darker undertone, a kind of deep emotional trauma that lies beneath a harmless exterior. It will be interesting, as ever, to see how this develops...
An Everyday Story of Time-Travelling Folk by Daniel Saunders 7/3/06
Much of the criticism of the new series has focused on its supposed "soap opera" nature. In my review of it, I argued that this is based to some extent on a fallacy and that just because a story concentrates on the emotions of the regular characters it is not necessarily trying to be a soap. Instead, I tried to draw the distinction between those stories where the characters respond primarily and directly to the unknown or incredible (the domain of non-mimetic fiction such as science fiction, fantasy and horror) and those which dwell on the mundane and domestic aspects of their life (the subject matter of realistic fiction, including soap opera). I think the new series has largely remained in the first of these two categories, although at times it has drifted into the second, most notably with the ongoing subplot of Rose and Mickey's relationship. This should not automatically feel like a criticism. Soap operas do not interest me, but I can see the function that they fulfil and can (just about) understand why people watch them. Why then do many fans have a dislike of this aspect of the new series and feel that at the very least it is the biggest difference between the new and the old and at worst a "betrayal" of everything the old series stood for?
Answering this question involves first asking a different one, namely what exactly is Doctor Who? What has the new series "betrayed"? The answer is "nothing". There simply is no single idea of what the series is and there never has been. For the first four seasons there was no clearly identifiable house style at all, with historical swashbucklers sitting next to outright fantasy. Science fiction usually predominated, if only by a slight margin, but even that ranged from worthy (if sometimes dull) attempts at hard SF to enjoyably (or childishly) pulpy sci fi. The early outline for the series written by C E Webber stated that the series was neither pure science fiction nor pure fantasy but that writers should "avoid the limitations of any label and use the best in any style and category as it suits us." In many ways Doctor Who was a strange sort of anthology series. A variety of different stories were serialised under the same collective series title, but were also linked by a handful of recurring characters, initially just the TARDIS crew. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that before 1963 most British TV science fiction not aimed exclusively at children had been in the form of one-off plays or short serials sometimes leading to sequels, but not regular series.
Over time the format began to establish itself, with certain key plots appearing frequently and a consistent style developing, but both of these were subject to frequent change, especially the latter. For example, the basic plots of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Sun Makers and Vengeance on Varos are the same: the Doctor helps a small band of rebels overthrow their oppressors. However, the tones are very different, ranging from the humour of The Sun Makers to the bleak world-view of Varos. Similarly, the themes are individualised to fit the period when they were made. Dalek Invasion reflects the residual fear of Nazi invasion still existing only twenty years after World War II, as well as hinting at fears of nuclear armageddon. The Sun Makers is the product of a society with a high inflation rate, heavy taxation and industrial unrest while Varos reflects the eighties' anxiety about video nasties. Varos' "Greek chorus" of characters commenting on the action without being directly involved in it also demonstrates the degree of stylistic variation that is possible. This is almost certainly the series' greatest strength. It allowed the show to play to the strengths of a particular production team for a while, producing a run of stories similar enough to each other for the audience to have some idea of what they were going to get, while at the same time introducing enough change to prevent the show becoming repetitive or outdated. However, it is also its greatest weakness. Every time the show changed direction it ran the risk of alienating viewers. And the most vocal viewers, the ones who care most about the series, who want it to fit an ideal (usually a childhood ideal) most carefully and who spend the time writing reviews stating why they think the series has gone wrong, are the fans. This explains why the main fan activity often seems to be complaining about the show.
However, there does seem to be something slightly different about the soap opera criticism. Usually the aspect of an era that provokes the greatest criticism from its detractors also leads to the most praise from its supporters, whether the humour of the Williams era or the "dark" seventh Doctor. The soap opera criticism seems to have crossed the divide, with some people who adore the new series seeing it as the main or even sole flaw. In short, if Doctor Who can be science fiction, horror, fantasy, action, comedy and allegory why does the very idea of associating it with the word "soap" scream "WRONG!!" to so many people? Part of the problem is undoubtedly the novelty of the situation. No doubt once we are used to the style of the new series, it will seem less unusual. However, I think there is a deeper reason. In an attempt to get an impartial view of soap opera, I looked up the term in several dictionaries to get a working definition free of my subjective impressions. Two adjectives that kept recurring were "domestic" and "sentimental" and I think this is the key.
Domesticity is not necessarily a problem. As far back as the first episode, Doctor Who established a recognisable, often domestic setting and subverted it. This provided many of the series' most iconic moments: the TARDIS' huge interior inside the police box shell, the Yeti in the London Underground, the many everyday objects that turned out to be Autons, the Slitheen spaceship crashing in London. The alien is more shocking when intruding into the mundane than when seen by itself. The danger is that the series could come to focus purely on the domestic at the expense of the extraordinary. After all, this is primarily an escapist science fiction/science fantasy programme. On the whole I don't think that this has happened so far, but Boom Town saw the show put Rose and Mickey's relationship on an equal footing, in terms of plot emphasis, as Margaret's escape attempts. This is not a problem in one episode, but if it became part of a trend across the whole season, then there would be a real danger of the show changing more drastically than at any time in its history, becoming primarily about the everyday relationship problems of the main characters.
Even if this does not happen, there is still the potential for such a series partly based on present-day Earth to become very cosy. While the alien can appear more frightening against a mundane backdrop, eventually diminishing returns will set in as the audience starts to think "what everyday object will turn out to be lethal this week?" and no longer be shocked. With the Doctor having a base on Earth in Rose's flat and a cast of recurring characters to help him, including contacts in the government and UNIT, the series could lose its sense of travelling into unknown and inherently dangerous environments. Many people would argue that this is what happened during the Pertwee era. I tend to agree with this interpretation (although I think it is overstressed sometimes), but at least the UNIT stories were told against a background of diplomatic crises, dangerous scientific projects, corrupt governments and ruthless industrialists, providing a large and at times surprisingly bleak canvas for the show to paint on. This has of course happened in Aliens of London/World War III and The Christmas Invasion, but overall the series gives the impression on being focused almost entirely on the effects of these things at a personal level, narrowing the possible number of stories.
The second problem is with the "sentimentality". Doctor Who has successfully introduced character-based scenes or stories before, but these tend to be low-key and reflective, such as the Doctor talking about his family in The Tomb of the Cybermen. This is far from the strong emotions endemic in sentimental soap operas. It is difficult to believe that characters who are presented as audience identification figures would not be psychologically scarred by the death and danger with which the average companion is faced, yet this can not be shown realistically in a family series. In the past, the audience has simply suspended their disbelief for the purposes of accepting the events of the series, yet this is not possible if the stories themselves draw attention to the emotional wellbeing of the companions.
The other tactic used by the old series to deal with realistic emotional responses was to introduce supporting characters specifically for this purpose, Fewsham and Poul being good examples. The fact that they did not have to finish the story sane or even alive allowed the writers greater freedom. In addition, the high stakes of the average Doctor Who story can make the problems of the individual characters seem irrelevant, even silly. The conclusion of World War Three sees Jackie worrying about Rose's possible death in stopping the Slitheen, yet as she will die anyway, along with everyone else in the world, if they aren't stopped, the entire subplot can't help but seem illogical and grafted on from an entirely different format.
It is worth noting that this problem has appeared before. The spin-offs have tried to examine the characters' emotions in more depth, but being intended for an older audience have had more freedom to show realistic responses (which doesn't mean they always succeeded!). On TV, the early eighties saw an attempt to move in this direction within a similar timeslot to that of the new series. This provides some hints as to how such a quasi-soap opera format could succeed. The main reason it failed in the eighties was that emotional storylines were introduced but not dealt with beyond the opening minutes of the next episode. Events such as the death of Adric and Tegan's possession by the Mara were presented as if they would have major long-term consequences, yet were rarely alluded to again, except as fan-pleasing continuity references. When Tegan leaves the TARDIS saying "it's stopped being fun" anyone seeing the programme as an ongoing narrative, as the production team are signalling them to do, wonders if the events of stories like Logopolis, Kinda and Earthshock could really have been described by Tegan as "fun".
Where the show did succeed in the early eighties was that even if the focus of the stories was the emotions of the regulars, these emotions were provoked at least some of the time by events that could not occur in mainstream soap opera, such as Tegan arriving on one of the last Earth colonies in Frontios. This is not something that the new series has neglected entirely, with The End of the World and Father's Day in particular standing out for the way they marry the science fiction to the emotions. I see no reason for the series to fail if it concentrates on examining the effect of events like these on its characters, rather than the more mundane aspects of their relationships. However, this aspect of the show should usually remain subsidiary to the science fiction elements, to satisfy the audience's desire for scary, escapist, science fantasy adventures. Skilful writing will also be required to put the characters through extreme stress without permanent damage, while keeping a reasonable degree of internal consistency in the presentation of a universe which has been created by taking very traditional, even cliched, Doctor Who plots and keeping them fresh by adding more realistic characters.
An article discussing politics in the new Doctor Who by Thomas Cookson 19/4/06
I've been having various random thoughts about the politics of the new Doctor Who for a while now, and have now put them together in a long essay in which I shall run through the thematic content of the new Doctor Who series, episode by episode.
Rose is a pretty apolitical story, of course, beyond some rather blatant allegories to compensation culture. Though even that bears some thought about modern feelings of either insecurity over being 'liable' or a sense of grievances being redressed easily with money.
End of the World, of course, is much more heavily about classism. In this environment of the haves and the have mores, the character of Rose is literally spat on, referred to as a common whore (Jabe's line about Rose being a prostitute for me was a crucial line about the perserverence of class exploitation well into the future) and is then condemned to death by the rich gangster Cassandra, who incidentally also killed the other working-class characters who were the only ones kind enough to spend their time and company with Rose.
Rose shows herself to be far removed from the council estate chav stereotype in her rather dignified talk with Cassandra about her snobbery and dehumanisation. She also is the voice of mercy when the Doctor proscribes to let Cassandra die. She is always trying to communicate a wide range of emotions of awe and horror and homesickness but she is talked down constantly by the very calloused and pretentious voice of both the higher classes and the Doctor, who is putting on his act to hide his own suffering.
The Doctor's dialogue with Cassandra about her ways of using her money and influence to escape justice is read as an extreme, exaggerated image of upper-class corruption but possibly made plausible by its futuristic setting. His final decision to, in effect, pull the plug on her because legal justice would fail does suggest a more radical attitude that the corruptions of society must be fought and purged ruthlessly. The end of the episode returns the story to contemporary London and in showing the sight of rich men in suits sharing a street with Big Issue sellers, it emphasises the current relevance of its themes.
The Unquiet Dead is rather explicitly about Charles Dickens and his devotion to raising awareness of the class issues of his day. Not only that but it ties into how being a radical artist can be a very strict discipline: Dickens refuses to be drawn into the Doctor's talk of the supernatural because he is concentrated on 'real' issues and will not let anything distract him from that. In some ways it suggests that being a radical can be hard and fruitless work.
It has been suggested that there is an anti-immigration issue at work here in how the Gelth prove to be deceitful in their appeal for sanctuary and ultimately have to be vanquished. However, despite that, the Doctor's trust and dedication to helping the Gelth is presented as commendable and really does give food for thought; he points out how our values system of selective entitlement is really crass in the face of refugees who are actually in danger, his line on how the Gelth reusing our bodies is like recycling wasted material reminds me somewhat about Bob Geldof describing the cruel irony of people in the Third World "dying of want in a world of surplus". To me the story shows the desperation of the Gelth just as much as their duplicity, and I find myself sparing a sad thought for the Gelth when they remain trapped in the rift and left to die out.
The episode also comments on modern attitudes. Rose represents the modern naive optimism of youth that is all-embracing and thinks that life has never been sweeter and that her values of liberal sexuality and irrepressible outspokenness, open-mindedness, recognition of a woman's voice and extroversion are values to spread and encourage in all people. But for all that this episode shows her and us to be quite arrogant (as does the conclusion of Dalek where she hopes that the Dalek will be converted). Whilst Rose always seems to have her heart in the right place and shows a boundless compassion that the Doctor sometimes lacks (and certainly disproves most critics who have labelled her character a 'chav'), her conversation with Gwyneth show up her cultural ignorance in trampling Gwyneth's more modest patriarchal values as though they need to be cast aside, as though the knowledge of freedom must be brought here.
The scene where Gwyneth reads Rose's mind belies any notion that people from more repressed backgrounds would really like our country if they were able to share in it and understand it. What the scene shows instead is an unexpected culture shock that can only see our modern society as something horrifying and degraded. This I feel is a direct criticism of our Western influence in other cultures and our belief in 'spreading freedom' and how we dismiss patriarchal and religious cultures as outdated and in need of shaking up. We believe it is the right thing to go and fight and get rid of the Taliban and liberate the women of Afghanistan. What this episode shows us is that we are deeply arrogant for assuming that our heavy-handed and self-righteous influence is wanted by those people when we go and fight the War on Terror 'for them'. Maybe our values system is wrong and degraded, maybe it is right, but it's something that the rest of the world isn't ready for and until then we should keep out of everyone else's back yard.
Aliens of London/World War Three is the most explicitly political of the Doctor Who stories so far. I have bemoaned the unsubtle way in which the politics are handled, I described it as witless to rely on dialogue like "These massive weapons of destruction" but I suppose the point is this is the kind of blatant lies that we did swallow whole, and that actually the consequences have involved a lot of deaths and the prospect of worse wars to come. I described it as bad taste for the references to 9/11 with the American newscaster saying "watch the skies" but in a way this has a potency for the way the American News tries to maintain memories and fears of 9/11 with its exploitative repeated images of the attacks and manipulative use of words. I described it as inconsistent for the Doctor to not anticipate that soldiers might shoot first and ask questions later when the pig goes on the run, and fail to shout out a 'don't shoot' warning. But the scene is aiming to start from scratch in terms of the Doctor's moral outrage, so that the audience can share in it, so he has to be surprised and shocked at the event, rather than cynically expecting it. In much the same way as we weren't expecting the Iraqi prisoners of war to be subjected to degrading treatment by our soldiers and were horrified by the events, the series is aware that our faith in the military to be responsible and keep the peace and treat all people with respect to win our favour with the rest of the world, is still high enough to be shattered.
In The End of the World, the sense of public frustration was based on being subject to snobbery and belittling degradation by people higher up in authority or prestige. Here the frustration, which is mainly voiced by the impatient Doctor, is based on a sense of incompetence and patronising from the people in power who seem to talk down to us and fail to take the country's issues seriously. The result appears to be a very frustrated people who feel they are getting nothing from the country or their input in it and are more prone to go with the government with a sense of relief when they finally do something drastic, like declare war or gamble with lives.
The opening moments of Dalek give credit to a vast number of America-centric conspiracy theories about Area 51 and the hidden man behind the presidential figurehead. Most importantly, it can be seen as an allegory for Guantanamo Bay, and in how within a secret base the most horrific of tortures and inhumane acts are being committed by the US Government. The use of the Dalek as the victim of this torture is important to this allegory, since the Daleks, much like al Qaeda, represent the evil enemy that some people believe are deserving of the torture.
The Doctor perhaps represents the rage and pain of someone who lost family in the 9/11 attacks. By this point we had gathered that the Doctor was damaged goods, his behaviour and mannerisms often described as chavvish: he was clearly more prone to feel quick contempt and a standoffish attitude to those he met. He seemed more impatient than previous Doctors: seemed to have little time for laboured talking and he always seemed to need to let off steam, whether by tackling Autons violently or kicking around littered cans. His mannerisms of robustly tight folded arms suggested he was defensive and pent up. Some could have seen him as representing a generation of men from broken homes, deprived and without a place in society to belong or participate in. In this episode he explodes into rage and yet the rage he feels is directionless and sporadic, even though for the first time since the time war, he has actually found a focus for his rage in the Dalek. One moment he is gloating over the destruction of the Dalek race, next he is horrified with himself and trying to explain to the surviving Dalek that he 'had no choice', and then changing again and throwing the switch on the Dalek. His emotions don't go in a straight line, that's how strong his trauma is, and he is a Doctor who has given up on anything other than the most violent of solutions. This is the trauma of war.
In Genesis of the Daleks, the Daleks didn't just represent evil, but they represented an enduring militancy that voices our frustrations with the state of the world. The image of war-torn Skaro was so chaotic and brutal that you understood the decision for drastic and eliminating action, the impulse to send the Daleks in and kill off all the madness. The same is true here in how the Dalek exacts its revenge on those who tortured it and scatters the guards who are trying to keep it trapped. DeMaggio tries to reason with the Dalek and commands it to return to its cage, making promises of negotiation, but only because it has been slaughtering its way out does the Dalek gain any respect or recognition and the promise of fair treatment. We champion the Dalek to not only gain its freedom but let the world know what was done to it behind closed doors.
In Rose, the Doctor described the modern British public as one that is living in a plastic paradise of TV, gossip magazines, the work routine, money and amenities, all blissfully ignorant of "the war", which to my mind couldn't be more true to modern life, because I don't think a people have ever been this immune and desensitised and perhaps self-deceiving about a real ongoing war that their country is involved in; it's like it never happened. Dalek is about the nature of perpetual war when a war, which has already left civilisations destroyed, is still being fought for the sake of vengeance and how victory is not possible when a vengeful people are so full of hate that they are never satisfied, no matter how much they punish their defeated enemy. As the episode goes on, the Doctor unwisely lets his incensed rage get the better of him when he tells the Dalek to kill itself, when he could have ordered the Dalek to stand down and cease fire instead. He must learn that the Time War is over and that a war against evil is never won when you commit the same atrocities as your enemy, because even if you defeat them, their 'evil' now lives on within you.
Rather like The Unquiet Dead, the episode shows up the compassionate qualities of the Doctor and Rose as being admirable far more than simply misguided and prone to manipulation; the final moments where Rose's hopes that the humanisation of the Dalek will be something wonderful only for the Dalek to turn suicidal, not because it is deviating from its own ideas of racial purity, but because it is having a culture shock: absorbing human thoughts that shatter the stable state of mind that the Dalek once had as it succumbs to a state of hopelessness at no longer knowing its direction or beliefs from the wide spectrum of emotions and ideas, which perhaps represents why our secularist society is so heavily resisted by fundamentalist religious cultures.
The Long Game is pretty blatant in its portrayal of media influence: where journalists have a job description that emphasises simplicity over analysis and exploration, where people are driven by ambition and promises of higher living, and where the media encourages hostility to aliens that are considered illegal. The scene where Suki ventures into the corpse-littered frost of Floor 500 is a garish image of the familiar brightness of the floors below being twisted to reveal the true ugliness behind the dazzling lights and distracting colours. But more than that it does in a way comment on the modern information age as knowledge is something that is easily read and then forgotten about, and facts don't quite stick - and that's why common important facts about the world today are reduced to jokes and stripped of their gravity (if I've ever described The Long Game as washout viewing, perhaps I missed the point that it was supposed to be), but an environment of conformity suggests to people like Adam that without this information highway technology, you are somehow deprived and below speed.
Both Father's Day and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances are nostalgic views of the working-class community of yesteryear, but at the same time it's not so rose-tinted as to say that the working class were entirely the 'salt of the Earth' that they were often described as. On the contrary the people in this community are particularly kept in their place. Jackie represents, for the first time, the internal snobbery of the working class as she belittles the big-money dreams of her husband Pete, as well as his parenting skills and frequently grills him every time she suspects he's been unfaithful to him. The Doctor is surprised to learn that in the face of destruction, that these people don't value themselves as important. Which is similar to the times of war in The Empty Child where the runaway children can be seen as army deserters and the masses of zombies led by the empty child can represent the conformity of society which expects people to serve in the army and fight and die for their country, regardless of their emotional baggage.
Boomtown is the episode which I see as hoping to come to terms with the Doctor's cavalier actions in The End of the World. By doing so, I feel it loses the sharpness of his radicalism that he exhibited there. For the record I considered this story to be something of a guilty pleasure as one of Russell's more entertaining juvenile comedies, but I think that admiration will probably not last. It has been suggested that this is an equally tedious revisit of Trial of a Time Lord's material of analysing and challenging the Doctor's actions.
What it unfortunately shows up for me though is that as relevant as Russell's themes are, he is pretty terrible at turning them into dialogue, particularly when he labours his points in this way. So the question of whether the Doctor can carry out the delivery of Margaret's execution quickly becomes a pretentious talk about the Doctor being like a god. And unfortunately it's heavily reminiscent of how the Emperor Dalek suggests "If I am the creator of all things then what does that make you Doctor?", or Harriet Jones suggesting that the Doctor is "Just another alien threat." And he's really overdoing the "All I do is eat chips" moment when Rose is reunited with her family but worrying about the Doctor trapped on the gamestation, up against the Daleks. As I've said before it is the worst category of fan fiction and just completely belies the realism and importance of it. This is a shame because, as I said, the topics of Russell's story do often deserve serious consideration. The Doctor never really has been placed in a situation where his enemy is alive but harmless and in his custody, and where he adheres to very draconian judicial systems for the sake of washing his hands of the criminal. But ultimately that decisive radical edge to the Doctor is lost here when he is suddenly having to verbally justify himself, in much the same way as fan dogma turned the Doctor in the 80's into someone so loathe to violence that he became inactive and incapable of heroism and moral courage, whilst evil ran amok because he couldn't betray his principles.
Well now we get to Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways and I have heard plenty of discussion of whether it is a satire on Reality TV. Well I suppose Russell has stressed that this isn't a satire and that he actually enjoys Reality TV and so he is probably reluctant to mock it, let alone to suggest that it is the root of all evil; he even gratuitously writes in a line of dialogue that has the Doctor describing his love of the series Bear with Me in a manner that was clearly designed to irritate the fans as much as possible, and nothing more. So, to me, I find that if Russell has an angle at all, it is that Reality TV may pay lip service to people's judgemental and sadistic qualities with its public voting system and degrading content, but that doesn't mean it causes these attitudes. I believe what Russell was trying to do here is show how Reality TV reflects our unsavoury attitudes. So far Rose has been subject to a huge degree of snobbery throughout The End of the World and Father's Day, and her inability to quickly adapt to exotic situations makes people rash to judge Rose as therefore being stupid and soft (I am a firm believer that young people are judged to harsh standards from an early age, and aren't really given a chance by people; perhaps that's why they've turned so rogue). This is what happens here when Rose is on The Weakest Link and fails to answer all the questions about futuristic general knowledge. It seems fitting then that Rose should be the one to have the moral courage to save the day and the opponents who belittled her to be concerned only with their prize money and eventually end up exterminated on the bottom floor (once again the Daleks providing a few killings that we are all gladder for).
This is of course a wrap up of the themes so far. Contrasting the Tyler estate with the future hanging in the balance is reminiscent of how Aliens of London and World War Three showed our modern times to be deprived and dull, yet as politically and historically important as any other era: a time when big decisions would be made that would shape our future. The problem being that most people fail to notice any of this. "You lot, all you do is eat chips, go to bed and watch telly, whilst all the time, underneath you there's a war going on." The Doctor throughout the series has represented mobility in a world where people are stuck in unchanging locations - sometimes literally trapped, in the conventions of the base-under-siege formula. Wherever people are stuck in a rut, they become petty, competitive, jealous, suspicious, greedy, and territorial; if Rose touches her younger self, the empty child or the Dalek, all chaos breaks loose, and anything or anyone else she places her hands on that doesn't belong to her, might see her get sued by its owner. People like the Doctor and Rose are different because they live without money and can see the big picture, and they know that it's ugly and something must be done about it, and in this case the future is a brutal fascist place but with enough similarities to our own world that we know we can't just consider it abstract; we know this future is the result of progress and gradual change from our times onward.
I do take issue with Russell's suggestion that the Doctor would not know that the consequences of his media blackout in The Long Game would be so devastating to such a media-driven society. It seemed in retrospect an insult to the character for him to leave so quickly without making sure the society could get by once he left. Russell laboured the point that the Doctor frequently leaves without looking back, but it just came off as forced and artificial, and to me I find that this is actually wildly out of synch with the old Doctor, who even when he left quckly didn't leave in such ignorance. But nonetheless the Doctor has a chance to redeem himself here.
The Doctor's radicalism shows again here. To be fair, the moment where the Doctor holds the gamestation controllers hostage should have been far more seriously handled than it was. The fact that the Doctor tossed away his weapon without a conscious decision makes the moment look crassly manipulative, designed simply to surprise and fool the viewer without saying all about the Doctor's character that it should have. Similarly the controller awkwardly putting down the gun was played for comedy when it should have been a moment where the Doctor won him over with fearless willing martyrdom - "All right, shoot me then!" - and that would have really displayed the Doctor as a radical crusader, but one who doesn't live by violence but is somehow more courageous than those who do.
Then there is the issue of the Delta Wave, and I really admire this. Whilst in the points above I bemoaned the way that the Doctor has become dogmatically passive since the 80's, the fact that the episode builds up the Doctor as being willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate demonstration of pragmatic necessary evil - to be the one to kill off millions who are as good as dead, to destroy the Daleks before they get the chance. As viewers we get a kick out of this display of moral courage, of violent actions committed for a greater good that we can justify intellectually. It is, in all honesty, intellectual masturbation of the most perverse and amoral kind; the problem is that it feels clean and sexy. So, to me, it is a wonderful sight to see those expectations turned on their head when the Doctor refuses to do it.
It seems like the summation of the series' themes about cultural arrogance in The Unquiet Dead, of militaristic self-righteousness in World War Three and the value of individual lives, no matter how meagre in Father's Day. The Doctor has declared that it is better for the people of Earth to die as humans than live as Daleks, and yet by the end, perhaps he has realised just how amorally arrogant it is to assume that they would be better off dead. To assume that those people on Earth who are out of sight would willingly welcome being sacrificed for what he sees as the greater good. The reason perhaps that this moment works is because for once Russell knows what needs to be said and what doesn't. It says a lot to me about the current War on Terror in which the American and British military is quick to dismiss the loss of innocent lives as collateral and give them a poetic lament to boost our self-righteousness, and still expects to win favour with the people of these countries that we have "liberated" without asking the people if they were prepared for the human cost. (For me it therefore makes sense that the deux et machine ending comes the way it does, as the Doctor's prayers for another way to destroy the Daleks without hurting the humans are answered.)
Of course we have only helped other countries when it has suited us. The rest of the time we have barred asylum seekers as unwelcome parasites. The series has commented on the asylum issue in The Long Game. To me there is a subtly-stated link to that here. The Emperor doesn't give too many specific details of how it used the Jagrafess to manipulate the media. I imagine that it involved downplaying the educational media's coverage of the history of humanity's encounters with the Daleks so that the Daleks could emerge on the scene with a faux benevolence and be believed. The Emperor also mentioned its ability to prey on the humans who were marginalised by the Earth empire, presumably in how the media played up right wing attitudes and draconian laws which left common people on the wrong side of those laws or economics and being unable to seek home or sanctuary due to immigration laws. It seems that the allegory is that the Daleks represent al Qaeda, with their own religious fanaticism central to their hearts, and with no distinction made between soldiers, governments and civilians when they kill. The point is however that if we close the doors to those seeking sanctuary, if we don't have them, then al Qaeda will have them, and will suck them into their evil belief system with its promises of hope to the hopeless and its anti-West propaganda that we have encouraged with our double standards - fighting wars of liberation when it suits us, but not wanting to know when individuals want our protection.
I have already looked at the politics of The Christmas Invasion in my review of it. To discuss it more would leave this article open to being edited for spoilers about an episode that is not yet a year old. But to summarise, I am aware of Russell's reputation as someone who loves generating controversy, but then takes flight when it gets too hot for him. Certainly this is reflected in his writing style that makes random points and then quickly retracts them, unwilling to argue them further. A classic example being the Bear With Me moment in Bad Wolf. So any issues seem to be paddled in briefly, but I am okay with that for various reasons. Firstly because the overall themes are, to me, stretched long enough over the season to hold water; secondly because having watched Hotel Rwanda, I've become quite disillusioned with the idea of building firm arguments in matters of politics if you're merely going to spend your discussion having to argue over whether the mass slaughtering of Tutsis warrants the use of the term "genocide" or not; and thirdly because when I was a young eleven year old, before I discovered by love for Doctor Who, I was drawn into an Australian children's sci-fi TV series called "The Girl from Tomorrow", and I see the modern Doctor Who as providing a similar role to young children as that show did for me when I was young.
It was made as part of Film Australia's educational shows aimed at teaching children about story narrative, and in this case to teach them about the science fiction genre and social issues. It was basically various elements grafted on, settings reminiscent of the cyberpunk landscape of William Gibson's novels and Robocop, a few borrowed paradox elements from Back to the Future, and a lot of material from Doctor Who; a time traveller trying to pass herself off as a modern schoolgirl (with the premise being, what if Susan and Ace had met and become the best of friends?), a future run by a fascist regime turning humans into robomen, and with its own Time Lords in the utopia of future Earth, and its own Master in the form of the bitter fugitive Silverthorne from the war-torn 26th century with similar pathos, moral ambiguity and love-hate relationship with the heroes, and the sonic screwdriver replaced by the transducer. To me it is very much what Doctor Who might have looked like, had it continued on TV into the 90s. Within all that grafting of generic homages, was plenty of topical material, which for me defines the period the show was made in: with the promise of multicultural civilisation, including school exchange programs, the horrors of Saddam's Iraq represented by the war-torn future, there were elements of witchcraft (the art of levitation) and other wiccan elements, particularly the eco-warriors, there were images of corporations with global rule that reflected the yuppie era and many more which made the show so of its time and so easy to reflect on my worldview back then whenever I rewatch it; perhaps it also played a part in breaking me into Doctor Who.
But what I'm saying is that the new series delves into topical content, and whether it does this with random statements, paddles in them for a second or grafts season-long themes around them, whether with subtlety or a sledgehammer, it is something that hopefully lingers with the youth as a reflection of the times we live in, and even for the older viewers I feel that Doctor Who's domestic aspect appeals as being closer to Ken Loach than to Eastenders, for it raises issues of class rather than degrades them to tabloid level. About how distracted we all are, but how important things are happening in higher positions that will shape our future, about how frustrated we all are and why. And that is why despite all the things about the new series that annoy me, when all is said and done, I feel compelled to bunch it up and love it for warts and all in words I can't express.
So there you have it: Doctor Who in 2005 is as relevant as it's always been.
Why the Doctor should be involved with a companion by Charles Phipps 24/4/06
This is essentially a statement to go against the grain and address an age-old issue with a bit more strength than normal. It's an issue that won't be resolved any time soon and certainly not by my article but I think it's important to address the thematic issues seriously that are on both sides. I shall address the pro-argument, the con-argument, and the middle ground honestly before moving onto my conclusions.
The Pro-Argument for being the Doctor involved is one where essentially the possibility is not being ruled out. The fans have their own 'shipping' with the constant flirting of the Ninth Doctor, the Third Doctor's attraction to Jo Grant (the writers flat out say it to be the case on the DVD so it's pretty much confirmed there), the Fourth Doctor's constant flirtation, and the grand-daughter of the First Doctor whom there is no implication that she is NOT his biological child.
The Pro-Argument implies that there is a great deal of un-mined story potential for dealing with past elements of the Doctor's life. If he was married, was it on Gallifrey and was it a mistake? Does he have a greater romance existing in his past that he wants to look beyond? The assumption of stories being limited to pure thinking with libido is a rather curious one. There also exists potential for an excellent foil as the Doctor has some individual who holds a form of power over him that is equal to the Master's former friendship or even exceeding it. What sort of character would the Doctor be willing to fall in love with and perhaps desire to spend the entirety of his existence with? These kind of stories are often written tritely and with no resemblance to actual world relationships.
Just as the Time War gains more power from the destruction of his personal family than just his world, so does the implication the Doctor could be a widower from even earlier make a stronger impression on the story. The very fact the issue is untouched only means that the storylines have not yet felt the need to deal with the issue but it does not mean that it might never be dealt with in the future.
The Con-Argument is based on a not-unfounded principle that the Doctor is somewhat unique from other characters in that he remains separate from other individuals in society. Plenty of shows have been ruined by the constant focus on sexuality or romantic asides when the principle of Doctor Who has been the pure love of adventure. There's also history backing up the storyline with the fact that there are no "direct" romances with any companions that exist outside of fan imagination. Aside from fan-fic there's no implication that Romana and the Doctor were anything more than good friends while the same could certainly be said for Nyssa/the Fifth Doctor and any other pairings that you might want to include.
Jo Grant and the Third Doctor never consummated their relationship emotionally let alone physically. Part of the issue though is that there's little textual evidence to support the implication that the Doctor could not find emotional satisfaction in a relationship (certainly the Doctor has never been portrayed as "too alien" for human emotions since he constantly shows he has those sort of feelings). Many fans also tend to confuse the implication of the inclusion of a romance with the main character with a romance being written BADLY. Arguments the Doctor is a sort of mechanistic figure above personal relationships do not wash either. The Doctor is occasionally vengeful, judgmental, needlessly rash, ALWAYS arrogant, controlling, and actually a bigot on occasion (Androgum scum!). These qualities do not overwhelm the heroic aspects to the Doctor and they add to his personality as a whole.
There is a middle ground that might be explored in this storyline. The Doctor does not necessarily have to be involved with a companion but it might be alluded to in order to accomplish as much as an active ongoing screen romance. Even were the production staff interested in pursuing a full-scale romance in the story, it would not necessarily need to occupy the screen time at all.
Honestly speaking, were it revealed that the Doctor had been involved with [insert X companion] that happened to have been living with him on the TARDIS then what real change would have actually been made in the storyline? The audience is left to the imagination of how the Doctor and she (or he for your interpretation) might have involved themselves. One could simply say that they exist in their bliss and that their storyline will end off screen in some manner between regenerations if you so desire to handle it. Timelords forbid, let's say the Doctor chose to involve himself with Rose. The Eleventh Doctor could well open with the implication he lived out his entire incarnation's end with her before moving onwards with no besmirchment on his character or the fans of said romance. The same could be that she was unable to deal with the personality changes or similiar matters. It certainly doesn't turn it into a story of Who-enders.
In conclusion, it is my belief it is a needless waste of storyline potential to avoid the possibility simply out of hand by suggesting "it is not that sort of story." Star Wars is not a romance in the traditional sense and it certainly contains the implications of such. Doctor Who is not necessarily 'lessened' by the lack of romance but the storyline could certainly be enhanced by it.
Why Rorvik And His Crew Had To Die by Tim McCree 16/5/06
When I first saw Warriors' Gate, many years ago, the ending left me kind of disappointed. I wondered why the characters of Rorvik and his whole crew were killed off like that. After all, they weren't evil, they were just a fun bunch of average guys, so they didn't deserve to die. I felt that the writer of this episode made a mistake in that regard.
However, the passage of time has made me realize that I was the one who was wrong. Rorvik and his crew WERE evil. True they were often funny at times, but they were still evil. The reason being is their treatment of the Tharils. As those of you who saw this story know, the Tharils were time sensitive beings who could navigate the time lines. It was for this reason that they were hunted and enslaved. Well, Rorvik and his crew were some of those hunters, this is how they earned a living. They couldn't care less that the Tharils were sentient beings, with a history and culture of their own. To Rorvik and the crew, the Tharils were just products, something to be used and discarded when worn out.
Even Aldo and Royce, the two crewmen who are the most comedic, show their true colours when they attempt to revive another Tharil, Lazlo. Lazlo is lying there, suffering and in agony, yet Aldo and Royce couldn't give a rip. They stand there cracking jokes and complaining about their own lives. While they are doing this, Lazlo writhes and screams in sheer pain. This is one of the story's most sadistic moments. Later, when Sagan tries to revive more Tharils, he fries one after another, not caring that he is killing them in the process. Ironically, Sagan gets his just desserts when Lazlo electrocutes him with the revival gear, before liberating the rest of the captive Tharils.
Basically, when you break it down, is there any real difference between Rorvik and his crew enslaving the Tharils and, say, the Daleks enslaving them? I say no. The big difference to the fans would be is that you would expect something like that from the Daleks. To them, they are the supreme race of the universe, while all others are to be exterminated or enslaved. So if the story had the Daleks being the slave masters, the fans would have not been surprised. Also, I don't think I would have been disappointed when the Daleks bought the farm at the end. They are evil, they deserve to be wiped out.
Well, Rorvik and his crew were just as guilty. They helped enslave and brutalize another race. For this crime, they had to pay the ultimate price. True they may have looked and acted like regular average joes, but I suppose that if you met a Nazi, without his swastika and black uniform, you would think the same thing about him. Evil comes in many guises, it seems, both in our real world and in the Doctor Who Universe.
Jumping the Shark: 1979 Was a Good Time To End It by Thomas Cookson 19/5/06
Inconsistency is something of a bedfellow of Doctor Who. Most Doctor Who seasons have the odd turkey, much of the continuity of the show doesn't line up... both of which makes it hard to retrospectively sort out the series into a nice form.
There's times when I wonder how much better Doctor Who would have been if it had only featured the best stories and if they had been in the right order: if City of Death had been the pilot episode, if Evil of the Daleks had been after Genesis of the Daleks rather than before, etc. Would Doctor Who have then been a leaner, meaner package?
But generally there's something about Doctor Who that makes me largely willing to accept the way it is (at least during its formative period) and to not give that much of a toss about bad episodes or continuity errors. In the long run those things aren't important really. Besides I've been known to enjoy the odd guilty pleasure of the show, such as Revenge of the Cybermen, The Three Doctors and even The Dominators.
But still the question remains of what would have happened if Doctor Who had ended its run earlier on, allowing Doctor Who to be a more defineable series by its brevity, with less accumulated blemishes. Following on from that line of thought, I have deduced that there are really only four other points in the show's history where it could have ended on a satisfactory note.
Firstly there is The Chase, which could have been a nice ending note. After all, up until that point the whole plot of Doctor Who had centred around the situation of Ian and Barbara. With them now returned home that was a perfect resolution to their story.
Secondly there is Inferno. The thought had crossed my mind previously that The War Games could have been a good closing story for Doctor Who, with his companions returned home safely and the Doctor's travels put to a stop, as well as his background being explained, and by this point the Daleks are finished off. But then the question still lingers of what will happen to the Doctor when he is exiled on Earth. Season 7 answers that question and avoids leaving the same amount of cliffhangers, by setting the Doctor nicely up with UNIT, and also allows for stories like The Silurians and Inferno that really convey the challenging aspect of Doctor Who, where lead characters turn shady and where we see a day where the Doctor fails to save the Earth (the Pertwee era has plenty of detractors and they might have preferred the era to have ended at its height).
Thirdly there is The Horns of Nimon, or rather Season 17. For me Season 17 did a good job. City of Death made an effective summing up of the human adventure that had been seen in the series from the pilot episode through to The Silurians and The Ark in Space. Destiny of the Daleks settled the Dalek threat by introducing the stalemate war with the Movellans, which contained their threat and suggested that the prediction made by the Time Lords of the Daleks conquering the universe would not be likely to come true after all. The Master - as seen in The Deadly Assassin - has not yet been vanquished, but the suggestion can be taken that he is perhaps still on his last days.
Fourthly and finally, we have The Caves of Androzani, which I'm sure a lot of fans would have happily accepted as a closing story, to spare us from the three mostly awful seasons following on (okay that's me involking a fan generalisation; I actually haven't seen Timelash or anything from Season 24). The Caves of Androzani actually works as a closing story, as it is preceeded by two stories which effectively settle the threat of the Daleks, Davros and the Master once and for all (only for them to be resurrected a year later).
Now, of the choices above: number one would be a terribly short-sighted truncation; number two has its appeal for writing out the bothersome Master, but I could never be happy with losing the Tom Baker era; number four has good potential; but the one that appeals to me the most is number three: making Season 17 the last season of Doctor Who. The thing is, up until that point, there are no such stories I've seen that are so bad that I wish they hadn't been made. Coming into the 1980's and that changes because now you start to get stories that are poor but which are simultaneously important to the Doctor Who canon in terms of continuity and setting up characterisation of the Doctor, and to me that's when it all started to go rather wrong.
If Doctor Who had run from 1963 till 1979, I think it would have told a good story of its lead character developing from incarnation to incarnation. The Doctor begins as a curmudgeonly character who is selfish and reluctant to get involved in any kind of dilemmas. Then he changes into being more of a crusader against the 'evils of the universe'. Then in his third incarnation he has become perhaps more compassionate and understanding of these supposed 'enemies of mankind', realising that understanding and negotiation is often the better response than the hostile action of his predecessor.
Then finally in Tom Baker, the character has reached perhaps his full development from incarnations past. He has Patrick Troughton's sense of heroic duty, but in Genesis of the Daleks he shows that he is aware that even evil has its place in the universe and decides not to do what Patrick Troughton's Doctor would have done. But he is a lot more cynical than Jon Pertwee and knows that faith and trust in peace is something that can be abused by nasty races, and he is less squeamish about taking violent action to stop them. Something he exhibits when he traps Sutekh in the time tunnel, ignoring the evil god's pleas for release as he is aged to death, or when he blows up the Zygons, or throws Magnus Greel into his own distillation chamber; all things that Jon Pertwee's Doctor would never have done.
He was in many ways the most violent of Doctors and is probably the only Doctor who would have killed Davros or the Master, and ended their reign of terror once and for all. Watch the scene where he taunts Davros before blowing up the bomb with his sonic screwdriver, or where the Doctor leaves Gallifrey declaring how relieved he is that the Master is supposedly dead "and there's no-one in the universe I'd say that about." But it fit with the hostile environment that the Doctor was in, showing how the Doctor had adapted to his circumstances.
And that is basically why I have such a problem with most of the Doctors since him. They basically set this development into complete reverse.
The Peter Davison era is probably seen as the problematic area of Doctor Who by some fans because of two reasons: one reason is that the Doctor is either superfluous to the plot or incapable of taking the violent action he should to save the day, and the other is that the era is swamped by the Master and other recurring villains. All things considered, the two problems were inexorably linked: the Doctor Who universe was littered with recurring enemies because the Doctor himself lacked the moral guts to finish any of them off.
The thing is, I actually like the idea of the Fifth Doctor as the 'new-age sensitive man' which was stressed in his relationships with his companions and his dealings with his enemies - and perhaps a nice change from the Fourth Doctor, who was quite violent. There was something effortlessly likeable and relateable to his outlook on the universe: he basically wanted the universe to be a nice, happy and understanding place where races could share peace and harmony with one another and where even the nastiest villains could redeem themselves, and he was clearly upset that the universe clearly wasn't such a nice place. To me he was the beginnings of stripping away the program's stiff upper lip and turning Doctor Who towards the new-age direction that welcomed writers like Paul Cornell. Had they pushed the envelope even further and had the Fifth Doctor actually shedding tears at the cruel state of the universe and I think we might have had the most defining scene in Doctor Who, ever.
So all that considered, what is my problem with the 'wet' Doctor?
Basically the approach was all wrong. I feel that if they were to emphasise the new Doctor as a more empathising character, they shouldn't have pitted him most of the time with old foes about whom he should have known better. To emphasise the qualities of the new Doctor, it would have worked better to have more stories where the Doctor was up against new foes: against something he'd never come across before, which made him eager to try and learn about and empathise with his new enemy, like in The Visitation or The Caves of Androzani, and from there it could show whether his attempts to empathise were wise or naive and at least make it seem like he was capable of learning from experience; or should I say, at least it wouldn't make him seem like it was impossible for him to learn from experience. But because the stories kept revisiting old enemies that the Doctor should have been shrewder towards, it made him look like an idiot and a hopeless cause as a hero, and to add insult to injury because the Master and Davros kept coming back over the years and killing people, it made me especially hate the Doctor for not finshing them off earlier.
Yes I said it: the Doctor became someone I sometimes hated; certainly in Warriors of the Deep I hated him for not stopping the Sea Devils from killing all the crew of the seabase because of his pascifist principles, and contrary to the opinions for the defence, I don't think that story is a good questioning of the Doctor's methods, because I see it as a poor handling of the character. Yes in The Silurians and The Sea Devils, the Doctor is trying to appeal for peace towards the reptilian aggressors, but there his appeals for peace made sense and furthermore his concern seemed to largely be for the civilians of the Silurian or Sea Devil race and that to destroy them would have been an act of genocide. This isn't the case in Warriors of the Deep, and I don't think Pertwee would have thought twice about wiping out an army of Sea Devil soldiers (and soldiers is the key word here) if they were all engaged in savage violence towards humans in a way that made them no better than Cybermen.
For that matter Pertwee eventually did seem to learn from his failure to make peace with the Sea Devils, and again for the Doctor to retread similar moralising a third time was something of a step back for the character. Now I'm sure plenty of people are asking why, all this considered, I don't therefore have a problem with Genesis of the Daleks for what the Doctor allows to happen in that story. Well, that's because Genesis of the Daleks was intelligent in its approach; in fact it is my favourite Doctor Who story. It showed the Doctor's attitude towards the Daleks developing. Throughout the episode, his methods are very hands-on in trying to bring down the Dalek project - even going so far as to shut down Davros' life support systems. The Doctor assaulting a cripple; that must be un-Doctorly behaviour in someone's view. But in the moment of truth he hesitates over destroying the Daleks, giving an intelligent justification of his decision to hold back, and then towards the end of the episode he is finally moved by the sight of violence committed by the Daleks and then realises what he must do and blows up the incubator room. This however changes little of the Dalek threat. But it wasn't something he thoughtlessly allowed to happen.
In the same way we can see how the Doctor's attitude towards the Master
in The Deadly Assassin has changed since The Time Monster. Whilst in the previous story he
still regarded the Master as a friend and couldn't kill him, by Okay a few things granted. I think Peter Davison had plenty of
outstanding stories that I'd be sad to see lost. I don't think the Fifth
Doctor always had an absence of shrewdity against old foes, and certainly
high tension stories like Earthshock and Planet of Fire, where the Doctor takes the violent
action he needs to in order to vanquish evil and save the day, are
glorious examples of what his character was capable of if he were released
from restrictive character dogma more often, and even in some of the
stories, such as The Five Doctors and Resurrection of the Daleks, the failings of the Fifth
Doctor are well woven into stories that are centrally about moral courage
and which allow us to understand the Doctor's fallibility and for the day
to still be saved by the Doctor's allies.
For another thing I am not trying to argue that the Doctor should be
Rambo and blow away every threat he comes across; for instance I wasn't
that comfortable with the Doctor destroying the Zygons when he could
easily have incarcerated them, or the sight of him blowing away Sontarans
on Gallifrey, but at least he was doing something about a dangerous
threat, and to then see him unwilling to violently settle with one villain
who has caused so much destruction and genocide is frankly depressing. In
a strangely ironic paradoxical way, when the Doctor doesn't kill Davros or
the Master, it makes him look callous to me, as though he doesn't care for
the lives that will be taken by these monsters if they're allowed to live.
And that to me just doesn't jive with the Doctor's attitude in Pyramids of Mars or even in The
Dominators, where he does everything short of and beyond killing to
save the innocents from a grave threat.
To me the Doctor is a wonderful hero who combats evil but occasionally
lets his better angels show, which often makes him endearing and
inspiring. In Seeds of Doom, at the climax to the
fistfight in the compost pulveriser between the Doctor and Chase, the
Doctor escapes and then tries to pull his enemy out of danger too. Which
to me speaks as many volumes as seeing the Doctor save the controller in
The Mind Robber, or bars Tyler from shooting dead a
Roboman, or his leap of faith as he ventures down in the diving bell to
meet the Sea Devils to negotiate for peace, or when he refuses to kill Sir
Reginald Styles simply on the word of the resistance fighters of the
future. He reads between the lines and proves them wrong.
To me the quote "I never carry weapons. If people see you mean them no
harm, they never hurt you... nine times out of ten" best sums up the
Doctor's attitude, one that's positive and trusting and optimistic that
common goodness is within all and will win out, but is also cynical and
prepared for the worst of people. But to me when the Doctor lost his
empowering edge of being capable of dealing with evil, it was no longer a
hero's series, it was no longer about the inspiration of moral courage.
And fundamentally it made the series pointless: if the Doctor doesn't take
the threat of the Master or Davros that seriously as to actually ever get
pushed to do something drastic about them, then why should we care either,
if he doesn't think the story events are that important? Funny that often
fan criticisms of the Master as a villain tend to work on a reversal of my
point.
Actually I'd say as much that in the Fifth Doctor's era, the Doctor's
pacifism was at least an explored, debated and fleshed-out characteristic.
In many ways his character couldn't be accused of not taking the violence
seriously or of being callous to its victims, because, on the contrary, he
cared too much and often cared blindly. But unfortunately it allowed the
writers a good clause for allowing recurring villains to return by
stressing the Doctor's unwillingness to eliminate them. So from then on we
were stuck with this Doctor's characteristic as stagnated dogma that no
longer required analysis, because all we needed to know was that it suited
the writers that the Doctor never kills their best and most
frequently-used villain.
That's the problem with the Fifth Doctor era for me. Maybe in and of
itself I like the era more than I've admitted here, but in the end it came
to stand for more than just its own era, but the franchise as a whole. It
set up the Doctor's character for restrictive dogma in a way that would
exist and dominate long past Davison's reign. When the Doctor stepped out
of this dogma and became violent, as he frequently did in the Colin Baker
era, the fans suddenly hated it and branded it a blasphemy on the series'
morality (whereas to me it was a wide character inconsistency for someone
who could never kill the Master, being somehow able to poison to death as
trivial a villain as Shockeye), and then Trial of a Time
Lord showed up as a heavy analysis, indictment and redemption of the
Sixth Doctor to quite brutally put the Doctor back in his place. From then
on the Doctor's paralysing pscifism had become unbreakable throughout the
books and audios (I'm thinking particularly of War of the
Daleks, Blood Heat, Davros, The Juggernauts
and Terror Firma when I say this), the legacy
of a has-been hero, now tied to his own principles and often unable to
save the innocent because of them.
So therefore, perhaps we could have done without the Peter Davison era
for the dogma that it left Doctor Who with. And we could have done
without the three seasons of awfulness that followed the end of Peter
Davison's era, and the belated success of the final two seasons that found
the show's feet once more. Hell while we're at it, we could cut out Tom
Baker's last season that had kick-started the elements of Peter Davison's
long-running continuity in setting up the new companions and the revived
Master. Of course I would feel bad about a lot of the losses that this
would entail, but somehow it would make me feel more comfortable about the
show if that stretch of the show was purged.
Of course the main problem with purging the 80's is that in many ways,
Earthshock, Attack of the
Cybermen, Resurrection of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks are nostalgic homages to the
1960's Dalek and Cybermen stories, and since many of those 60's Doctor
Who stories have been destroyed, those 80's stories are in many ways
the best substitute for that lost visual dynamic of the 60's stories. But
if those 60's stories weren't missing, then I could happily see the 80's
go.
Imagine it. Doctor Who runs from November 1963 to January 1980. 17
seasons and as many years, and then it ends, but ends on a relative high.
As the years go by it gets repeated often enough to attract new viewers.
The video releases are in chronological order, allowing newcomers to more
easily traverse the line of serials. Ending on the Tom Baker era allows
potentially resistant people to come round to the series, with it in mind
that whatever common criticisms could have been thrown at the earlier
stories for their slower pacing or coziness and lack of gravitas, the Tom
Baker years distinctly showed how the series had improved itself over time
and might have been on the way to getting a whole lot better. There'd be
far less of the alienating didactic continuity in the series, with perhaps
The Web of Fear, The Sea Devils,
The Invasion of Time, the Key
to Time story arc and Destiny of the Daleks being
the only continuity-heavy moments.
Okay we wouldn't have The Caves of Androzani, Revelation of the Daleks or The Curse
of Fenric (and I venture that whilst Vengeance on
Varos is pretty plotless, its topical content of TV sadism is majorly
ahead of its time), but to my mind stories like Horror of
Fang Rock, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, Robots of
Death and Pyramids of Mars fulfil their absence
in portrayals of dehumanising and corrupt regimes, supernatural elements,
psychological undercurrents and Robots of Death
even covers the same kind of greed, callousness and social isolation as Androzani.
Maybe there would be novels, and hopefully less dogmatic or
continuity-heavy ones based on the more sensible example set by the
series, though audios would be rare, given that Doctors 5, 6, 7 and 8
never made it (personally I could do without the baggage of either novels
or audios). Feasibly the 2005 revival could have still happened in this
case, with Christopher Eccleston playing the Fifth Doctor. In many ways I
think the 2005 series could have worked better as a follow-on to Season 17
than Season 26.
In Season 17, the Doctor was with Romana and K9. Since we are told that
a lot of the unseen action between the old and new series centred heavily
around Gallifrey, it would make sense that Doctor and Romana parted ways
for reasons that probably revolved around Gallifrey, whereas to follow-on
from Season 26, the absence of Ace leaves a worrying gap for those who
don't consider the NA books as canon. Season 26 ends with the Daleks
pretty much finished, which seems slightly at odds with how the Daleks
appear in the new series, and for me Season 17 fits the plug far better
with the Daleks clearly very much alive, if a little hurdled by the
Movellans.
But then follows the urge to edit the revival series down to only its
first ten episodes and call it a short revival. Now why on Earth would I
want that? Why on Earth would I even say something so ludicrous and
controversial?
Because basically I can already see the new series repeating the
mistakes of the past. Once we get to Boom Town,
the rot of the 80's begins to be revived here as arch villains return to
make the Doctor look like a useless bleeding heart once again. Not only
that but they begin to force the Doctor to analyse and question himself
and turn him once more into a character who can't commit drastic action
without having a conscience crisis about it for an episode's length. A
shame really because I think the series had done well before then to make
the Doctor a lot more radical and into something of a
vigilante-bordering-on-terrorist, blowing up buildings, pulling the plug
on dying criminals and hacking into computers and setting missiles off,
which I really admired.
But then after Boom Town his behaviour is no
longer able to go down this radical or even competent line of action. In
the same way that New Earth completely negates
and renders pointless some of the Doctor's more cavalier actions of Season
1 by resurrecting Cassandra - fans were up in arms about the way the
Doctor let her die. Whilst that sequence has come under heavy fire by
fans, I think it was very much a Doctorish moment. He actually spoke to
Cassandra and charged her with being a murderer and it is likely that even
after the death of Jabe, the Doctor would have rather seen proper justice
done with Cassandra imprisoned. But when she points out how she'd simply
use her money and fame to escape sentencing, the Doctor realises that if
he saved her life, she'd only go on to kill more people.
It seems that Russell T. Davis resurrected her simply to exonerate the
Doctor from his actions ("look! she's alive! He didn't kill her really"),
which is a poor way of rescinding the envelope once it's been pushed
(which is becoming a classic RTDism), and allows for another sympathetic
villain story where character sentimentality takes over from character
plausibility in a big way.
Then there's Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways, and no I'm not going to go
into a criticism over the Doctor's non-violence in that story, because
generally that aspect is well handled. But the premise of the story is to
basically show up the faults of the Doctor. To revisit a place that he
left behind in a hurry and show him the consequences of what he did. To me
it unfortunately shows up why such stories that challenge the Doctor's
methods are not all they're cracked up to be, because they tend to base
their material on exaggerating aspects of the Doctor's character, and
perform a biased and degrading exercise in making their criticisms fit the
character. Just like I can't take Warriors of the
Deep seriously as a criticism of the principled Doctor's inactiveness,
because I know from watching Terror of the Zygons,
Pyramids of Mars and The
Dominators that the Doctor is capable of killing to preserve innocent
lives, but the writer of Warriors of the Deep forces
the Doctor to be useless in order to make its point about the character.
Similarly the Doctor in The Long Game, who is
in such a hurry to leave, doesn't at all strike me as being true to
character. It certainly doesn't seem true to the character of the Doctor
in Genesis of the Daleks or Remembrance of the Daleks who weighed up the potential
consequences of his actions and watched events unfold to the very end.
Even staying around for the funeral, which he did again in Black Orchid. For me, the old Doctor would have pondered
the consequences of disrupting the media communication system of Earth and
its allies, and would at least have got to know the people and trusted in
someone to handle events in his absence. But even if the Doctor did always
leave without looking back, the Doctor seems far too deliberately
impatient and dismissive at the end of The Long
Game, it doesn't read as being characteristic to him, it reads as
forced.
To me the Doctor should be a character of inspiration and empowerment,
who shows us the ways of being brave, but also compassionate and
understanding and open-minded. I don't like the idea of making the Doctor
someone to be subject to criticism within stories, because that is just
belittling and degrading to his role model status, and after which he
ceases to be a worthy role model of anything if his courage is gone and
his devotion to peace is always naive and stupid and yet rigidly
unbreakable.
To me, making the new Doctor Who into a series of 10 stories
only would fit best. I think from Rose to The Doctor Dances is a good all-round season,
showing a perfect collection of various motions to go through. As the
Doctor and Rose adjust to each other through the first few episodes,
midway they both have an explored background and are given a chance to
grieve over their personal losses, and then The
Doctor Dances is the perfect uplifting experience for them both. It's
a perfect development, just like William Hartnell to Tom Baker is a
perfect development.
Of course there would be imponderables from the series if it ended in
1980. Would the Movellans really contain the Dalek threat forever? Have we
really seen the end of the Master? The events of the series would allow us
to take the optimistic 'yes' as the answer to both questions. But the
revival series would make certain of it. The new series pretty much would
show us what happens to the Daleks after Destiny of the
Daleks, and settles their threat, and by all accounts the new series
suggests strongly, if indirectly, that the Master and Davros are dead by
now, either of old age or because they might have been executed.
So the new series further settles the issues of the old, but also
contains within it some more imponderables if the series is truncated by
making The Doctor Dances the official ending.
The 'ten seconds' goodbye scene at the end of World
War Three nicely severs ties with Rose and her family and leaves an
air of mystery in the air; i.e. will something happen to Rose in her
travels that will make it impossible for her to return - a strong
suggestion that has sadly been lost by repeated revisitation to the Powell
Estate. The Bad Wolf mystery is allowed to be a subtle enigma and a treat
for those who have been watching carefully. No one openly notices it, and
for those who choose to, they can put it down to a great number of things:
something to do with the temporal fallout mentioned in The Unquiet Dead, possibly based on some kind of race
memory amongst the humans akin to that seen in The
Silurians; in fact, I kinda thought it'd be great if the Doctor
omnipotently knew what it meant all along and didn't see the point in
commenting on it.
Besides, I like imponderables in Doctor Who. From the first time
I saw Genesis of the Daleks, I was hooked to the
imponderables of that closing episode, where the fate of entire galaxies
lay unresolved. It made the galaxies of Doctor Who so much more
riveting and magical and worth caring about.
I just feel that beyond a certain point Doctor Who, if allowed
to carry on, begins shooting itself in the foot. It accumulates baggage of
continuity and recurring foes, it tramples its own imponderables in a
short-sighted way, it stops being about new possibilities and begins
looking inwards and belittles its own main character, it sets its own
rules and is unable to break them. I think the same is true of other
continuity heavy, dogmatic, long running shows, such as Buffy: The Vampire
Slayer and the later incarnations of Star Trek.
Of course, what I'm writing now is what allows me to see what seems
like a better, more comfortable version of Doctor Who at the
moment. It is more than likely that in tthe weeks ahead I will reconsider
my view and decide that actually Peter Davison's first season was good. I
might rewatch some old Peter Davison stories, or Sylvester McCoys, or see
some David Tennant stories that will totally impress me (Tooth and Claw was one Tennant story that really
made me warm to the series again after Eccleston's departure) and I'll be
adamant that those stories were worth making, and completely changing my
mind on everything I've said here. But at the moment what I've just
written sounds like a far more promising setup than the one we've got.
The role of London in the Who mythos by Steve
Cassidy
25/5/06
While watching The Doctor Dances the other
day, I was pondering on how much of the episode's success depends on its
location. The darkness, nervous populaton and constant peril of the bombs
reigning down really adds something to this much-acclaimed serial. I got
to thinking how much the British capital city has been used in Who.
Granted, it is shot in the western districts around a well known planetary
body called Shepherd's Bush but the city has been called to be the
protagonist or conduit for a story more times then I can remember. It's
been invaded by everything from the Sycorax to Pteradons, it's been
blasted and bombed, lasered by Daleks, and set on fire by someone who
should have learnt his lesson with Nero. In short, London has been the
perfect location for Doctor Who.
A lot of this has to do with atmosphere. You can set happy beach movies
on the beaches of Los Angeles, Miami and Sydney but those cities are
unconvincing for a dark gothic tale. London has atmosphere in abundance;
maybe it's that weight of history, maybe it's the climate, maybe it's the
sheer ramshackle nature of the place - but it is a great place to tell
stories. The feel of the place can build up menace: the narrow alleys, the
mixture of peoples, the broody weather, the great icons still there after
hundreds of years. The same can be said for Paris, Vienna, Venice,
Istanbul and New York. When you have a moody location, half your
storytelling is done for you.
So I'm going to talk about London in Who. How it, and the
programme, have changed over the decades. How different parts of the city
suit different eras and are used to enhance certain adventures. What is
certain is that the Doctor keeps coming back to 'The Big Smoke'. He must
like it here...
It all starts with the first episode of the William Hartnell era. From
the first shot we see decrepit London: the junkyard at Totters Lane.
Immediately we get the scene. There were still a lot of pockets of poverty
around in the early sixties and in places the city looked very ramshackle
with leftover bombsites and buildings due to be demolished. Here the
mystery is built up: why are they in a junkyard? What is a police box
doing there? Add darkness and fog and you have the mysterious beginning
you are looking for.
Of course most of the Hartnell years was spent getting two Londoners
back to 1964 London. When they think they are home in series two they have
an enormous shock: a London destroyed and taken over by Daleks. The Dalek Invasion of Earth gives us an alternate
London, an allegory for the Nazi occupation of the city. The sixties were
not that far away from the end of the Second World War. Every European
capital provided a template for what would have happened to London if the
Nazis had got through in 1941. The population under the Daleks reflects
the fragmentation of the population: the resistance fighters, the
collaborators, the black marketeers, the looters, the daily grim aim of
survival. London in TDIOE is a deserted, battered
place wher