Chap_with_wings

If I had been running "Doctor Who"...

2012-02-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

Do you ever play the “If I ran Doctor Who” game? Yes, you probably do. But do you play my preferred version – the “If I had been running Doctor Who” game?

It involves imagining yourself as the showrunner of a particular season/era of the show and deciding how you would have been better. So, maybe you helm season 15 and write out K9...or maybe you fiddle the running order of season 20 to ensure it’s Arc of Infinity, rather than The Return, that gets hit by a strike.

Today, I’d like to take you with me in a journey through TRIAL OF A TIME LORD. The story so far: Doctor Who has been taking an unprecedented 18-month hiatus, owing to being hated by the management and (let’s be honest) having recently not been as good as it used to be. It was make-or-break time and, being objective, it broke. The legacy of this season was a sacked lead actor, declining ratings and Bonnie Langford. So let’s see if the same basic material could have been improved.

EPISODES ONE TO FOUR: TERROR OF THE VERVOIDS

Firstly, let’s deal with that courtroom set. See how much more trouble the Doctor looks like he’s in back in The War Games episode 10. Why does season 23 put him on a cheaper version of the set from Clown Court, watched over by 12 mannequins? Let’s take some visual cues from The Deadly Assassin or, indeed, from the Matrix scenes in the final two episodes of Trial as transmitted. Darker lighting (the regular cry during the eighties), moody shadows, a hint of an ancient tradition – and let’s ditch that opening shot, too. Set the trial on Gallifrey itself and use the money for something more important.

So, in the Valeyard’s first piece of evidence, the Doctor and Peri arrive on the Hyperion III. (I have good reasons for switching the broadcast order.) This has always been my favourite Pip & Jane Baker script and with a little more judicious script editing it could even be wonderful. I still don’t think the Vervoids look that stupid. Episode 4 ends with the Doctor crowing about saving the people of Earth and the Valeyard accusing him of genocide. Sorted. Next.

EPISODES FIVE TO EIGHT: MINDWARP

This could go ahead largely as broadcast, with a few significant changes. Casting, for starters. I love Brian Blessed as much as anyone and am very glad he has been in Doctor Who. But maybe not in a role that required the female lead to fall in love with him. Could he not have played Rudge? Or Gavrok? Or Light? Also, it might perhaps be good if the viewer could discern a moment when the Doctor regains his senses after the wobbling-machine cliffhanger to episode 5. I still don’t know which scenes are mad-Doctor, which are faking-Doctor and which are Matrix-lying-Doctor.

Anyway, it ends with Peri dead. The prosecution rests. She has to die – I’m working on the basis that Nicola Bryant (no relation) was only hired for 8 episodes’ worth of filming. It’s from here on that I get really different.

EPISODES NINE TO TWELVE: THE MYSTERIOUS PLANET

Begins with a downcast Doctor introducing his defence. However, here’s the radical change. Don’t bizarrely dip into his future...instead, he should show an adventure from further back in his past. On comes the screen – to reveal Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines. Well, why not? We know Troughton wanted to return to the series after The Five Doctors, and if this had been planned for season 23 it means we could all have been spared the horror that is The Two Doctors in season 22!

So the sixth Doctor narrates a second Doctor adventure as his defence. Wouldn’t that just be brilliant? And during this defence, we witness Sabalom Glitz (who I would make a rather more likeable figure – I’ve never understood why the 7^th Doctor and Mel are so happy to hang out with a conman, slaver and ally of the Master) being bleeped out when he talks about the sleepers.

Because the whole “messing with the Matrix” plotline makes no sense when presented as part of the Valeyard’s evidence – and using this moment from the opening instalment as a plot point in episode 13 is just optimistic. So instead, the discovery of the bleep will lead fairly swiftly into the closing two-parter’s revelations.

EPISODES THIRTEEN TO FOURTEEN: THE ULTIMATE FOE

Much of this would stay the same – the Master, Glitz (not Mel), the revelation of the Valeyard’s true identity, the dash into the Matrix – but my major change would be the Doctor’s motivation. I would be getting Colin Baker to play him subdued and downcast ever since Peri’s death and the realisation that the Time Lords were behind the Ravalox incident would push him further downhill. So we should actually believe he is willing to surrender himself to JJ Chambers/the Valeyard.

A lot of episode 14 would need to be jettisoned (although not the wonderful screen-within-a-screen moment) because in the Matrix, in the Valeyard’s domain, he would stumble into – Thoros Beta! He finds himself observing the events of Part 8, but how they actually happened!

This would require extra scenes to be shot during the filming of the earlier episode, of course. Or rather, alternative versions of existing scenes. Instead of being told abruptly that Peri survives to marry Yrcanos, we should get to see her survive and see the true ending of that story: perhaps ending when Peri sees the Doctor whisked away in the TARDIS and says goodbye to the vanishing police box? When he realises she’s still alive, the Doctor’s revitalised and uses his new strength to defeat the Valeyard. He is pardoned and leaves in the TARDIS. With Glitz. Carrot juice is not mentioned.

SEASON 24

Of course, it’s never possible to leave it there. What happens next? With Colin Baker being unexpectedly sacked between seasons and Sylvester McCoy replacing him, the production team decided to shoot a bodged regeneration as the opening to Time and the Rani. Poor decision. How about this – we first encounter the Doctor on Iceworld, solo, having a cup of tea. He meets Ace and they begin their adventures. No explanation for the regeneration, or for Glitz’s absence...maybe until later in the season...

I’ll stop there. So, that’ll be a glimpse into what I think about in my downtime. I hope you’re the same.

“There’s got to be monsters."

2012-01-22T04:09:00.000-08:00

Liking Doctor Who is normal now. Isn’t that weird? Since 2005, it’s socially acceptable to admit to liking the show and even to discuss it in public. I can wear my “Calm Down And Don’t Blink” t-shirt without fear. It’s probably a bad idea to make a habit of loudly cataloguing one’s DAPOL collection as a form of polite dinner conversation – not everything has changed – but being a Doctor Who fan is no longer as socially catastrophic as joining the BNP.

In 2001, this sea-change had yet to happen. There were no rumblings from Cardiff. We were on our own. This was when I met my wife. She wasn’t my wife then. That would have been odd. She was this fantastic, wonderful woman who was, for some reason, allowing me to orbit her. I certainly didn’t want anything to ruin it.

We’ve all done it at some point, I expect. Nervously ushering a loved one in the direction of some classic eps in the hope they will abandon the Not-we and throw in their lot with the Time Lord. It’s certainly better than adopting the missionary position: “No, honestly, it’s really good and the sets don’t really wobble, and some bits are really scary and Douglas Adams wrote for it once...” That never works. So, in 2001, I began the process of indoctrinating my wife-to-be.

I’d had practice. Not with a girlfriend, but the principle was the same. I met Simon at university and we discovered a number of shared interests, including science fiction. He was a Blake’s 7 fan; I was a Doctor Who fan. We agreed to exchange. He showed me The Way Back and Pressure Point and The Harvest of Kairos; I showed him Spearhead From Space and The Brain of Morbius and Shada.

The conversion worked (both ways). A few years later, Simon and I ended up sharing a London flat – just me, him and my video collection, now bursting at the seams thanks to UK Gold. Many an evening ended up with me selecting a four-parter for us to watch. Some happy Doctor Who memories there – Simon saying how good it would be if the Ice Warriors weren’t the villains of The Curse of Peladon; Simon’s disdain for The Greatest Show In The Galaxy; most of all, the moment when, shortly after midnight, episode five of The War Games came to a halt and Simon turned to me and said, “Go on, put the other tape on!”

Perhaps I should have realised that this was different. After all, Simon was already a sci-fi fan. It’s no great leap to go from Blake’s Seven to Doctor Who. This time, I would be working from scratch. She’d agreed to watch one. I had to choose carefully.

Pyramids of Mars. Atmospheric opening. TARDIS scene. A-list Doctor-companion team. Pseudo-historical lusciousness. Scary Mummies. Great first cliffhanger. I’d always thought it was a perfect story to be someone’s first time. In went the video and we snuggled up to watch as Ron Grainer pumped through the room.

She fell asleep. Part way through episode 2, I realised I was watching by myself. She was bored. Undaunted, I upped my game for the second onslaught. City of Death. Probably the best story ever. Another A-list team. Funny, imaginative, charming. This time, she didn’t even make it to the first cliffhanger.

When would you give up? I gave it one last try, inspired by her admission that she’d been under the impression he fought the Daleks every week. Remembrance. Granted, Sylvester McCoy isn’t exactly your go-to when selling the show, but this was the most recent Dalek adventure. Explosions, excitement, Dalek-on-Dalek action. A bit of doomed romance and political commentary to wash it down with.

Whaddaya know, she liked it. Ben Aaronovitch, you are a hit. Thus we came up with a formula for watching Doctor Who from now on. “There’s got to be monsters,” she insisted. So, there were – she met the Autons, the Haemovores and the Cybermen. She also enjoyed The Five Doctors, although she decided Patrick Troughton was annoying.

Over-confidence brought me down. One day I discovered that, while I was out, she’d voluntarily polished off the remaining episodes of The Ark In Space, which we’d started the day before. Euphoric, I spun it off into a Season 12 marathon. She was horrified by the sadism in The Sontaran Experiment and couldn’t believe I hadn’t shown her Genesis before. Then we hit Revenge of the Cybermen, a personal favourite of mine. By episode 3, she was in the other room, tidying. I’d lost her. (Not as a fiancée, you understand. Just as a fan.)

When the series returned in 2005, the goalposts shifted. She enjoyed the first couple of episodes, but it was Father’s Day that blew her away. She sat there with tears streaming down her face and, to my surprise, so did I. Doctor Who had never had this effect on me before. The Parting Of The Ways sealed the deal. Nina liked Doctor Who.

She still won’t watch the old stuff, mind you. We may describe Doctor Who as a 48-year old programme, but the other viewpoint – that it’s only been on for 7 years, inspired by an old series that ended in 1989 – holds water. After all, I love Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but find it hard to sit through an old episode of Shatner’s shenanigans. The difference is no less stark.

Simon, incidentally, got married to a sceptic and also used the Eccleston/Tennant years to turn his wife into a Doctor Who fan, but my own conversion attempt was less successful. My wife was the Craig Owens to my Cyber-wimp. It took a higher power to convince her – and not just her. Now, at school (I’m a teacher) I hear children discussing old Jon Pertwee episodes. They’d never even have heard of Pertwee if they hadn’t seen Tennant and Smith. RTD was trying to convert the entire world at once and he couldn’t have been better at it if he’d had the big plot-device-gate thingy from The End of Time. He remade the nation’s viewing habits in his own image.

You – Will – Be – Like – Us.

"How long have you been into Doctor Who?”

2012-01-08T04:57:00.000-08:00

“How long have you been into Doctor Who?”

The question startled me, and I took refuge in imprecision: “Ages.”

My mumbled response was misunderstood and let to a triumphant retort. “Eight years? Right. Then why do you like it, because Doctor Who’s been shit for the last eight years!”

It was a rhetorical question and my interrogator had no interest in eliciting an actual response from me, which was good as I didn’t have one ready. I was 13, he was older (probably around 18, but I would have guessed somewhere in his 20s at the time) and I was finding the situation rather intimidating.

This was a fairly typical meeting of the Cardiff local group of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society.

My name is Chris, and this is my blog. I’m going to talk quite a lot about Doctor Who on here, though I may digress from time to time. If you’re reading this, I’m going to hazard that you’re interested in Doctor Who. Unless you know me personally. In which case, thanks for coming and try not to get too bored.

If, however, you’re not familiar with Doctor Who fandom, you might be surprised to hear such sentiments voiced at a DWAS meeting. Why would a fan say that a whole eight years of Doctor Who was “shit”? An adult (or thereabouts) who was making a special effort to hang out in the YMCA on a Saturday afternoon purely out of affection for this TV show?

This was 1989 (ish). My fellow fan was condemning all Doctor Who made with Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, something which many newspapers and media commentators have also done. Received wisdom has it that the show was fantastic with Tom Baker, then terrible in the 1980s (like so many other things), then revived in 2005 to be fantastic again. But that doesn’t explain people like me, does it?

It’s been about 23 years, but I finally feel ready to answer his question.

“Eight years? Right. Then why do you like it, because Doctor Who’s been shit for the last eight years!”

“Has it? Really? Everything from Castrovalva onwards? That’s astonishing. And yet you’re still watching it? I have to admit, if I’d enjoyed a programme when I was 10 years old, then throughout my teenage years it was shit, I doubt I’d still be watching it at 18, let alone attending fan club meetings. Might I suggest that actually some part of you must still be enjoying it?

“Secondly, are you sure everything’s been awful since 1981? Did you really hate Earthshock, Enlightenment, Caves of Androzani, Vengeance on Varos, Remembrance of the Daleks and The Curse of Fenric? Or are you tarring 40 individual stories with the same brush because you don’t like aspects of the production style?

“Thirdly, let’s put your own beloved eras under the microscope, shall we? For every Tomb of the Cybermen there’s a Wheel in Space; for every Genesis of the Daleks there’s a Destiny of the Daleks; and The Mind of Evil is quickly followed by Colony in Space. I’m not trying to claim that the 80s Doctors were better than their 60s or 70s equivalents – they probably weren’t. But the nature of Doctor Who has always been that it’s patchy. And even if the last 8 years have been patchier than others, that still leaves many patches of greatness.

“Fourthly, I was five years old in 1981. I knew little of your UNIT Family or Classic Holmesian Double-Acts. I’d never read Doctor Who Magazine and had no idea who Sydney Newman was. I didn’t even know about the Daleks. I started watching this show because I enjoyed Full Circle. After five stories, Tom Baker was replaced by the bloke from All Creatures Great And Small, and this was even more exciting. When they started releasing old episodes on VHS, I started watching them, but this didn’t stop me enjoying the new output.

“You see, it’s all about context. To you, seasons 19-26 were a disappointment compared with the previous 18 seasons. (Well...maybe the first 16. I reckon you didn’t like 17 or 18 either.) To me, they were something new and exciting I’d discovered. And they still are.”

Is that too long-winded for an answer? Maybe I’d have been better with “Piss off.” But the fact is, I turned 18 five years later. Then 28 and, before too long, 38. And I can still see good stuff in that era, and every other era. Which is why I watch it, read about it, talk about it, think about it and – finally – write about it.

In 2012, I will be contributing to fanzines – my first attempt at this has just been published in issue 13 of The Terrible Zodin. I’ve also got a contribution in a book called You And Who, which should be published any day now. So I thought I’d better have a blog too.

My name is Chap With Wings and this is my blog. I have been into Doctor Who for over 30 years. I hope you enjoy what you read. If not, please feel free to read other things.