Modern Man, a short film what I wrote

I've written a new short film, Modern Man. Watch it, like it, share it with everyone you ever met - and use the hashtag #VMShortsvote.

But how did it all come about?

I can still taste the cocktails. In November last year, I attended the glamorous Virgin Media Shorts awards 2012, where my film, The Plotters, was shortlisted but did not quite win. There was a lot of free fizz and then cocktails, and I danced with – or at – Hannah from S Club 7. It's a tough old life, showbiz.

Six months later, I had an email from Sebastian Solberg, director of photography on The Plotters. He wanted to enter the 2013 VMS competition, this time as a director, and had an idea for a short. Would I be willing to write it? I thought, nobly, of free fizz and terrible dancing and said yes.

It helped that Seb's idea was a good one, full of comedy potential and easy to shoot all in one room. He came to visit me the next day, we sat out in the garden in the sunshine and I pitched how I'd ruin his idea. 

Looking back at the one-paragraph brief he sent me, the finished film sticks pretty closely to his original idea. That first meeting, I made three major suggestions:

1. The title, Modern Man.

 2. That it should have no dialogue. I'd met Neil Brand a few weeks before and we'd talked about silent comedy (he suggested that Mr Tumble on Cbeebies owed more to Chaplin than Oliver Hardy.) That had got me thinking about writing a film without dialogue. Also, the first cut of The Plotters had been much too long – the VMS competition has a maximum run time of just 2 minutes 20 seconds – and we'd struggled to cut it down, losing lots of great jokes and performances. A silent comedy would allow for more easy fiddling.

3. That it should have an impressive establishing shot, like the CGI 17th-century London we'd had to open The Plotters. It's important to grab the audience's attention from the start and an expensive-looking shot helps the film to stand out. I'd also been talking to my brother about the famous cut between a prehistoric bone and a spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. So, we'd steal that cut and begin our film in the year 100,000 BC.

Seb didn't hate my ideas and later that day he went location scouting and found somewhere five minutes' walk from his home. He emailed me pictures the next day. “I've attached the original version and the final version (which as a bit of movie magic applied to me.)”

Putney, 2013
Location scouting for Modern Man

Putney, 100,00 BC
CGI test for Modern Man

Suddenly it was all looking doable and real, and there was even a filming date (22 June, which I couldn't do as I'd be at a family thing). I sent Seb the first draft of the script later that evening. He sent lots of notes back – on character, on beats in the script, on the whole thing. He also wanted “Clive” to be “Rupert”. I sent a second draft to him the next day.

I also sent that second draft to my brother Thomas Guerrier and actor/writer/warlock Adrian Mackinder – with whom I cowrote The Plotters – and Eddie Robson, whose Welcome to our Village, Please Invade Carefully is so annoyingly good. They provided good notes, honing jokes and emphasis.

On 13 June, Seb sent me emails with designs for one of the props and some notes on the main action sequence following a meeting with the film's stunt co-ordinator. Yes, I had to read that again, too: the film's stunt co-ordinator. Lorks.

The next day Seb was rehearsing with Romy Ahluwalia, one of our actresses. Emails started to come thick and fast, with confirmed names of cast and crew. The messages stopped coming from Seb and came from production manager Katya Rogers and producer Jassa Ahluwalia. It was all fast gathering pace. On 16 June I responded to lots of comments with a new version of the script. We swapped ideas for the lead actor, and on 18 June, Katya sent round a complete list of cast and crew – with Sean Knopp playing Rupert. Excitingly, he was in Doctor Who.

On 20 June, I trekked across south London to a house in Festing Road in Putney where the film would be shot two days later. I went through into the kitchen where three young children were playing. No, wait, it was Jassa, Katya and Seb and I am just quite old. It was a baking hot day and I made the mistake of asking for a mug of tea, so sweated handsomely through the deliberations. Seb went through each shot with director of photography Dale McCready. Excitingly, he'd worked on Doctor Who.

Meanwhile, I chatted to Jassa and Katya and stunt co-ordinator Dani Biernat. Excitingly... well, guess what show she might have worked on.

Once Seb was finished with Dale, we read through the script one last time and picked over some final details. I headed home feeling good, passing an important cultural landmark just a few doors down from our location.

Simon Guerrier @0tralala 20 Jun
This afternoon I walked past Mr Benn's house. The costume shop at the end of the road has gone. #brokenbritain
Mr Benn @therealmrbenn 20 Jun
@0tralala And as if by magic, you get tweet from Mr Benn to say hello! Festing Road? There was a fancy dress shop on Lacey Road, long gone!

I delivered a final, locked script that evening and found myself redundant.

A flurry of emails followed – the callsheet with a starting time of 08:00, shooting script, unit list, movement order, general risk assessment, details of which bits of public transport would not be working. None of it was for me. While the cast and crew made the film, I spent my Saturday on a bouncy castle.

I got to see a rough cut of the short last week, but am thrilled to see the final thing. Well done to Seb and the team. It looks *amazing*. And bloody hell, a mammoth!

Doctor Who: 1984

Episode 614: Resurrection of the Daleks, part two
First broadcast: 6.50 pm, Wednesday 15 February 1984
<< back to 1983

The Doctor and Tegan part company
Resurrection of the Daleks, part two

When Tegan - one of the longest-serving companions in Doctor Who - finally leaves the TARDIS, she says it's because something's changed.

TEGAN:
A lot of good people have died today. I think I'm sick of it.

DOCTOR:
You think I wanted it this way?

TEGAN:
No. It's just that I don't think I can go on.

DOCTOR:
You want to stay on Earth.

TEGAN:
My Aunt Vanessa said, when I became an air stewardess, if you stop enjoying it, give it up.

DOCTOR:
Tegan

TEGAN:
It's stopped being fun, Doctor.

Two things strike me about this. First, something was changing in Doctor Who at the time. After the fun of The Five Doctors, the new season began with Warriors from the Deep, where the Doctor is unable to stop a massacre. The next story, The Awakening, is fun but there's something unusually bleak about the human colony in Frontios, the last of humanity dwindling away on some distant backwater. And then there's the bloodbath of Resurrection - by some margin the highest bodycount of any Doctor Who story.

I've read quite a few theories about what's going on: that the Fifth Doctor was a feminised version of our hero, or it's the influence of Blake's 7, or the production team (and audience) were more keen on grislier stories (perhaps after the perceived success of Earthshock). The trend certainly continues after the Fifth Doctor's gone; the Sixth Doctor sometimes seen peripheral to the grotesque events on screen.

But the Doctor wasn't alone. In 1986, Alan Moore wrote an introduction to a grisly version of another children's hero:

"Whatever changes may have been wrought in the comics themselves, the image of Batman most permanently fixed in the mind of the of the general populace is that of Adam West delivering outrageously straight-faced camp dialogue while walking up a wall thanks to the benefit of stupendous special effects and a camera turned on its side."

Alan Moore, "The Mark of Batman", introduction to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, p. ii.

Moore doesn't mention Doctor Who, but cites criticism of other men - Tarzan, Alan Quartermain and James Bond - whose simplistic heroism no longer seemed quite to satisfy. He makes his own case for why that might be:

"The world about us has changed at and ever-accelerating pace. So have we. With the increase in media coverage and information technology, we see more of the world, comprehend its workings a little more clearly, and as a result our perception of ourselves and the society surrounding us has been modified. Consequently, we begin to make different demands upon the art and culture that is meant to reflect the constantly shifting landscape we find ourselves in. We demand new themes, new insights, new dramatic situations.
We demand new heroes."

Ibid., pp. i-ii.

I don't think that's right. Quartermain first appeared in 1885, so why should he suddenly be found wanting 100 years later? Yes, I know, there'd been criticism of figures like this before then, but in the mid 80s there seems to have been a major shift in how we related to heroes.

I wonder how much it was history: how much did Vietnam and Watergate create anxieties about the traditional hero? (I'm thinking less of Rambo here as The A-Team). And how much was there also a crisis going on in the grand ideological narratives of the 20th Century once the East started cosying up to the West? The James Bond films were well ahead of the game in dealing with detente, but for all Bond is recast and redefined with a harder edge in The Living Daylights (1987), there's a sense that real-world politics are leaving him behind...

But there's another possible reason. Note that all these heroes are white men. So is this discomfort with traditional heroism the result of decades of agitation about sexual and racial politics slowing filtering through into the mainstream?

Adam West isn't necessarily the public's fixed image of Batman. We're now used to - indeed, expect - a psychologically complex Bond and Batman and Doctor, tortured by self-doubt and age and the loss of loved ones.

And if that's the case, how much was Bond and the Doctor both losing their broad appeal in the late 1980s less the fault of particular production decisions as a sign of the times?

Secondly, hang on: Tegan, of all the companions, who spent three years in Doctor Who complaining, is the one to say it's stopped being fun?

Next episode: 1985

Don Quixote by Cervantes/Davis

A page from Don Quixote vol 2
Cervantes/Davis (2013)

As a belated birthday present, I bought myself Don Quixote volume 2, adapted by Rob Davis from the 1615 novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

Like the first volume, it's the funny, strange and moving tale of a deluded old man who thinks he's a knight, and the idiot "squire" who follows after him in the hope the delusions prove true. They traipse the countryside looking for chances to be brave and virtuous and generally get beaten up for their trouble.

In this second volume, they must contend with people who've read the first one, as well as characters set on revenge and those just taking the piss. It's a sadder story - as much because of those who take advantage of Quixote as because of his failing health. And yet there are still plenty of laughs.

I've been fascinated by Quixote since an A-level art trip to see lots of paintings in London. We'd done the National Gallery and what's now Tate Britain and were hitting sensory overload as we reached the Courtauld. And there, not on our syllabus, was a portrait by Daumier that's haunted me ever since.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
Honoré Daumier c. 1870
Courtauld Gallery, London

I can think of no higher praise for Rob's adaptation than that its reminiscent of Daumier, the same simple colours and skeletal silhouettes, the same skinny bleakness. He packs character and feeling into simple, quick sketches - Rob's own How to adapt Don Quixote into a graphic novel in seven easy steps gives a fascinating, detailed account of his working methods and the alarming speed at which he had to write it.

I know Rob's work from the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and the Horrible Histories books, and met him very briefly when he signed my copy of Nelson. But as I read the book - and his post on adapting it - I found I had nagging questions. It's a huge undertaking and he did it alone. Quixote has defeated adapters before: Orson Welles failed to complete his movie version; it's eluded Terry Gilliam twice.

(Cervantes also suffered: he based Quixote on his own failures, having been a quartermaster to the doomed Spanish Armada, he was jailed for confiscating grain belonging to the church and then spent 10 years in debtors' prison. After the first volume of Don Quixote was published in 1604, there were bootleg copies and a a fake sequel. He work that into his own volume 2, but died soon after its publication.)

There are inevitable allusions to be drawn: how quixotic is adapting Quixote? Rob very kindly answered my questions:

How much did volume 2 depend on sales / the success of volume 1? 
Rob Davis: The contract was for two books so volume 2 was never dependent on sales. The thinking behind splitting the book back into its original form gave me the chance to get a book out each year, gave the the project greater shelf life and crucially made real the gap between the two halves of the story.

How much is the style influenced by previous depictions of Quixote? I was thinking especially of Daumier.
RD: Very little if I'm honest. I used previous interpretations for reference, but stylistically it's more about my ideas for drawing comics.

You mention in your seven easy steps piece that you used different editions of Quixote, but how much research did you do into Cervantes and the book?
RD: Hard to quantify. I usually make the point that my adaptation is my reading of the book and most of my referencing came from reading different translations or abridged versions. I read a few accounts of Cervantes' life, but the character of Cervantes in my books is really the authorial character he creates in his narration.

Cervantes seems to have ended up mad and penniless after writing the book(s). How's it going for you? :) 
RD: Yep, I'm flat broke and berserk now. Between the two volumes I split from my wife, left my home and children, lost several months in the bottom of a whisky bottle and ran up insurmountable debts. It was a mad book to adapt and therefore my own sanity must be questionable. But I take some pride from the fact that I finished it (unlike Gilliam and Welles). Glad you enjoyed the book, knowing that people are getting something from it humbles me and makes me happy.

Visit Rob's website: Dinlos and Skilldos

The Plotters - the shooting script

By popular demand (well, Dawn Christoffersen on Twitter asked), here's the shooting script for our short film The Plotters - which got shortlisted in the 2012 Virgin Media Shorts competition, and which you can watch here:

(Full cast and crew for The Plotters at IMDB.)

ETA: and here's the first rough cut of the film:

The Plotters - First Cut from Thomas Guerrier on Vimeo.

THE PLOTTERS 

by Adrian Mackinder and Simon Guerrier 

Based on an idea by 

Adrian Mackinder and Hannah George 

(c) Adrian Mackinder and Simon Guerrier 2012


1 EXT. LONDON, 1605 - NIGHT 

Heroic CGI. The old Palace of Westminster in the background. CAPTION: London, November 1605.

2 EXT. THE TAVERN - NIGHT 

GUY FAWKES - in beard, hat with buckle, cape - hurries to the door, checks he’s not been followed, goes in. 

3 INT. THE TAVERN - NIGHT 

GUY joins a group of other PLOTTERS – all in beards, hats with buckles, capes – at a table. 

GUY FAWKES:
Gentlemen. We are in accord. Thirtysix barrels of gunpowder now sit beneath the House of Lords. When the heretic king is there tomorrow, Robert lights the powder and foom! We ignite a new world! 

The men clank tankards. GUY turns to THOMAS WINTOUR. 

GUY FAWKES (CONT’D):
Robert, did you want to say a few words? 

THOMAS WINTOUR:
Er, Guy... I’m Thomas. He’s Robert. 

He nods at ROBERT CATESBY.

GUY FAWKES:
Oh, er, yes. Robert. Our explosives expert.

ROBERT CATESBY:
What? I’m Robert Catesby. You mean that Robert.

He points at ROBERT WINTOUR. GUY embarrassed.

GUY FAWKES:
Oh yes, we’ve got two Roberts.

ROBERT KEYES:
Er, three.

GUY FAWKES:
Who are you?

ROBERT KEYES:
Robert Keyes. Hi.

GUY FAWKES:
And you’re the explosives expert?

ROBERT KEYES:
Lord no. Horrible stuff, gun powder. Go off in your face! Very nasty.

GUY struggling to make sense of this.

GUY FAWKES:
So we’ve got three Roberts.

ROBERT CATESBY:
It is a bit confusing. Doesn’t help that we all look a bit alike. 

The plotters all glance at one another. He’s right!

ROBERT WINTOUR:
I could pop home, get another hat.

ROBERT KEYES:
You don’t have another hat.

GUY FAWKES:
We just need to know which one’s the explosives expert.

The three ROBERTS all point at one another.

GUY FAWKES (CONT’D):
(sigh) All we want is someone to light the powder. (BEAT) And obviously run away quick. Surely You’re not scared? 

The plotters all gruffly shake their heads. Of course not. 

ROBERT CATESBY:
I’d do it. But they know me from Devereux’s rebellion. I’d never slip past the guards.

ROBERT KEYES:
Bad knee, can’t run. It would be suicide. And that’s a mortal sin.

ROBERT WINTOUR:
Gunpowder makes me sneeze. 

GUY FAWKES:
Well, then. Someone else. Thomas? Are you man enough?

Beat. 

THOMAS WINTOUR:
Sorry, which Thomas?

GUY FAWKES:
What? 

THOMAS WINTOUR:
Thomas Bates, Thomas Wintour or Thomas Percy? 

GUY FAWKES:
Oh, now really. We’ve got three Roberts and three Thomases?

JOHN WRIGHT:
And two Johns. I’d do it, but I’m driving the getaway carriage. Sorry. 

The plotters bicker. 

GUY FAWKES:
Is there anyone who doesn’t have the same name as anyone else? 

ROBERT CATESBY:
There’s Ambrose. And Everard. 

The men snigger.

EVERARD DIGBY:
Shut up! Anyway, isn’t Ambrose a girl’s name? 

More sniggering. AMBROSE is rather burly.

AMBROSE ROOKWOOD:
I’m known from Devereux’s rebellion, too. Why can’t Robert do it? 

ROBERT CATESBY:
Which Robert? 

They all start bickering again.

GUY FAWKES:
(fighting for calm) It only needs one of you. Really! I’ll do it myself if I have to!

They all fall silent, stare at him.

GUY FAWKES (CONT’D):
Fine. If you want a job doing properly... 

FADE OUT. 

4 INT. TORTURE CHAMBER 

GUY is chained up, looking miserable. POLICEMEN – in beards, hats with buckles, capes – come in, carrying instruments of torture. An INTERROGATER stands by.

INTERROGATOR:
He’s given us a description of the other conspirators.

He hands the POLICEMEN a paper. It shows a crude drawing of a man in a beard, hat with buckle.

POLICEMAN:
I see. Did he tell you their names? 

The INTERROGATOR turns the page over. There’s a list: Robert, Robert, Robert, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, John, John, Ambrose, Everard. 

GUY FAWKES:
(weak) It’s a funny sort of coincidence, but really... 

POLICEMAN:
We’ll get the truth somehow. Fetch the thumb screws. 

GUY FAWKES:
Bother.

Doctor Who: 1983

Episode 602: The Five Doctors
First broadcast: 10.30 pm on Wednesday 23 November 1983 (US); 7.20 pm on Friday 25 November 1983 (UK)
<< back to 1982

The Raston warrior robot decapitates a Cyberman -
for Doctor Who's birthday.
The Five Doctors

A lot of our response to Doctor Who is informed as much by how we first see it - who we're with at the time, the mood we (and they) are in, the stuff going on in our lives - as the programme itself. A wise chum told me he'd realised this about a recent season: his least favourite episodes were all the ones he'd watched on his own.

So a lot of the warm, cosy love I have for The Five Doctors is personal and from context. That first evening it was shown was a big event. I was allowed to stay up late to watch it with my siblings, and they drew the curtains and turned off the lights to make the experience more like a cinema. It was the last Doctor Who story we all watched together as it went out.

When I watch it again now, I still feel a thrill of memory for that long-ago evening, that particular, personal circumstance. But it's not just that. As I've grown up, become a writer and tried typing my own Doctor Who stories, I am ever more in awe of the script.

First, consider the brief given to the poor writer. Imagine you're the one that script editor Eric Saward came to.

You have to write a 90-minute TV movie extravaganza, with five leading actors all playing the main hero - so they get 18 minutes each. They all need to drive the plot, be heroic and have the best lines, and you'll need to consider the potential clash of egos on set. Oh, and the fact that one of those actors is dead.

In addition, the story should feature lots of old monsters and companions. The production team can't confirm availability of some of those companions until very late in the day, but each Doctor will need pairing up with a companion from their time on the show. And lastly, it needs to thrill a broad, general audience tuning in for the special event, as well attempting to satisfy fans. (PS the script editor especially likes the Cybermen.)

Bloody hell, that's a lot to cram in - once you've assembled the cast there's hardly room for a story. In fact, it seems to have defeated Robert Holmes, generally regarded as one of Doctor Who's best writers - if not the best. "The brief was too heavy," Saward later admitted of Holmes' involvement. "He didn't think it would work."

Saward is speaking on Terrance Dicks: Fact & Fiction, a 2005 DVD extra on Horror of Fang Rock. The documentary covers Terrance's time on Doctor Who but especially his ability to step in when things went wrong. When two stories collapsed in 1969, he co-wrote the 10-episode The War Games and saw the Second Doctor off in grand style. He then script-edited the next five years of the show - all the Third Doctor's adventures - taking a series facing cancellation and returning it to rude health. In 1977, when the BBC objected to his Doctor-Who-meets-vampires story (because it would look like it was mocking their big adaptation of Count Dracula), he quickly knocked out one of my favourite stories, Horror of Fang Rock. Basically, he's a good man in a crisis.

Terrance himself is modest about his contribution. He says on the Fact & Fiction documentary that he's often asked:

"'Were you aware you were making classic television?' Our main plan was not to have have to show the test card."

He's rightly proud of this unshowy professionalism and recalls a moment from his time as script-editor. A director called from the rehearsal hall to say there was some problem with the scripts. Terrance called back and spoke to the director's PA.

"I said, 'Tell him to ring me when he's free. And tell him not to worry because whatever it is I will fix it.' ... That just came out and I thought that sounds bloody conceited. But I thought after five years, having hit most of the problems on Doctor Who, I'm fairly confident that I can fix it."

When given the brief for The Five Doctors, Terrance's solution was simple, effective and brilliant. He treats the problem as a sort of game, and makes that game the plot. Just as he has to gather Doctors, companions and old enemies, so does the villain in the story.

I've been discussing this with my chum Jim Smith, who says that "Terrance talked once about a game where you have to take objects out of box and extemporise a story around them. The story does that, with all ingredients brought out like the prestige in a magic trick. He also (perhaps unconsciously) works that image into the story, with Borusa's gloved hands pulling the figurines of the characters out of the box and putting them on the board."

But - without disagreeing with Jim - it's far more clever than that simple game supposes. The Doctors all have their own plots to follow and don't meet up until the final scenes (and a single day's filming) which provides a neat structure for the story but also avoided potential spats between the leading men. There are even separate entrances to the Dark Tower so the Doctors don't bump into one another early.

More from Jim: "I love how the Third Doctor recounts an establishment view of Rassilon, the Dark Times and so on ('old Rassilon put a stop to it') while the Second, a more anarchic and less establishment figure, regales the Brigadier with conspiracy theories of how Rassilon invented and played the game before he banned it and how he may still be alive inside his own Tomb. At least some of which turn out to be true."

The Five Doctors is packed with brilliant moments: the Doctors being chased by black triangles; the fizzing insides of a Dalek; the Doctor running away from his own people at the end. There are nice continuity fixes, too: the fact that a Time Lord can be given a new regenerative cycle when his first one is used up; the Third Doctor meeting the Cybermen (the only Doctor at that point not to have done so). And so much of the dialogue sparkles: I particularly love “I am the Master – and your loyal servant”.

Jim says: "I love that the Master takes his mission seriously. When he rages at the end that 'I came here to help you Doctor, a little unwillingly but I came. My offers were scorned! My help refused!' he's actually telling the truth and no one - not even the audience - believes him."

"Then," Jim goes on, "there's Terrance's use of imagery from Browning's Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came - see from versus XXXI. This seems like a stretch until you remember Fang Rock's indebtedness to The Ballad of Flannen Isle."

Terrance dodges round one of the Doctors being dead by having an actor stand in for William Hartnell - but also, tastefully, starts the story with a perfectly chosen clip of the man himself. Midway into the story, the replacement First Doctor is paired up with the current Doctor which again works structurally as well as practically (there's less of a potential clash with a for-one-night-only Doctor). All the Doctors have great moments of wit, intelligence and courage and get some brilliant lines.

Then, after a draft of the script had been completed, one of the Doctors decided not to be involved. That should have spelt disaster but Terrance fixes things deftly, again using archive footage to fill the gap and also reworking the other Doctors' roles. Watching it that first time, I wished Tom Baker had been in it more but never suspected he'd not been there at all.

If the Doctors get the best bits, the companions are less well served, just tagging along in his wake, asking questions that prod the plot along. I wonder how much that's due to them still being swapped round at the last minute, or to the constraints of squeezing in so many people.

There's an effort to mark out their characters but it's all a bit sketched in and glib. Susan sprains her ankle as if that's something she always did (it isn't; she did it once in The Dalek Invasion of Earth). Jim: "Which was, of course, one of only two First Doctor stories Dicks had novelised. Did he flick through it for research? Or just remember novelising that moment?"

Poor old Turlough fares worst, getting very little to do: he draws a picture, worries in the TARDIS then has to stand still not talking. Jim: "I like his 'Die, it seems' gag. And 'Big, isn't it?' about the bomb. Black humour is key to Turlough, I think. So we get that if nothing else."

There's no mention at all of Kamelion, the robot companion introduced in the previous story.

Other things niggle. It's a shame that the Eye of Orion is clearly the same location as the Death Zone (though that's not an issue with the script). A thrilling scene where the Third Doctor rescued Sarah from the Autons was changed to a cheaper one where she falls down a steep slope; a good fix on paper but the way its shot doesn't make it look very perilous (and again not an issue with the script).

Jim drew my attention to one odd script thing in the scene at UNIT HQ: the sergeant doesn't know who the Doctor is and won't let him in, whereas Colonel Crichton tried to have the Doctor invited to the reunion and failed. So he certainly knows of the Doctor. When the Doctor gets into the office, the colonel dismisses the sergeant and lets the Doctor stay because either he knows who this Doctor is by sight (they've never met, but he may have seen pictures or whatever) or he accepts Lethbridge-Stewart's recognition of him as reason enough. Then at the end of the scene the colonel says:

CHRICTON:
What the blazers is going on? Who was that strange little man?

SERGEANT NOT-BENTON:
The Doctor?

CHRICTON:
Who?

Which, as Jim said, completely reverses their positions/knowledge. On the DVD commentary at this point, Terrance says the joke wasn't his but Saward's. And it's not in Terrance's novelisation of the story, either.

Whatever the case in that scene, Saward clearly helped improve the story overall. He suggested that it was too obvious if the villain turned out to be the Master. He also thought the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane needed to face one more obstacle before reaching the Dark Tower. To answer that, Terrance came up with the one new monster in the story, in a scene that typifies what makes The Five Doctors so brilliant.

The Raston warrior robot is a budget-conscious creation - a non-speaking actor in a simple costume. Its sensors are primed to detect any movement, on which it fires arrows and bladed discs. Again, it's making a game of the problem: the Doctor and Sarah Jane end up playing Blind Man's Bluff.

DOCTOR:
Freeze, Sarah Jane. If you move, we're dead.

And then a troop of Cybermen arrive...

Cor. No wonder this scene was most often used to promote the story. Simple, cheap and thrilling, it is perfect Doctor Who.

Next episode: 1984

Short breaks in Elizabethan England

I loved Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England when it was on the telly a few weeks ago and have finally made an effort to read the book, which I got for my birthday almost exactly a year ago.

Mortimer's idea is brilliantly simple: to present the past as if we can walk round it, scouring sources for details on food, accommodation, manners and everything else. He's good at detailing the smells and textures of the period as well as the dry facts, and writing it in the present tense really helps to breath new life into an age that's been well covered before.

This vivid conjuring has a slow-burn effect: you notice it long after reading the words on the page. On Sunday morning, as I wandered round my old home-town of Winchester, I found myself picking out details I'd never seen before - Tudor beams and windows above the shops in the high street, the plan of the backstreets, the medieval buildings that would have seemed old even to the Elizabethans.

A lot of the book is devoted to ordinary life - the limited flavours and colours, the wealth of ripe odours. But he's also good at making sense of the politics, too. Why, for example, did Elizabeth have such a long and successful reign?

Mortimer makes the case that, unlike her predecessors in the Middle Ages, Elizabeth had few relatives - siblings, cousins, those related by marriage - in contention for the throne. She was the last of Henry VIII's children and he was the only surviving son of Henry VII. Even so, Elizabeth had Mary, Queen of Scots, executed and Lady Catherine Grey imprisoned.

But Elizabeth was also careful to establish and underline her authority. Mortimer details her "mannish" behaviour, her progresses round the country so her subjects could see her, and the ways she dominated parliament. Parliament was, for example, banned from discussing the question of who would succeed her, and she called only 10 parliaments anyway in the 45 years of her reign (rather than the customary one a year).

"Like her grandfather Henry VII, Elizabeth has a policy of not creating any new earls, marquesses or viscounts, and she creates very few barons. The reason is to limit the power of her subjects and thus strengthen the authority of her government." 

Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (2012), p. 46.

What's more, a traditional rival to the English monarchy had been done away with by Elizabeth's father: bishops no longer served the Roman Catholic Church but answered directly to her.

"Elizabethan England is thus devoid of private armies, royal dukes and political bishops. Those considering revolt against Elizabeth have no one to turn to for leadership ... After the execution of the duke of Norfolk [in June 1572], the highest rank in the peerage is that of marquess. Never a common title, there is just one in 1600 (the marquess of Winchester), plus a dowager marchioness (the widow of the last marquess of Northampton, William Parr, who dies in 1571). Third-highest in rank are the earls; there are eighteen of these in 1600. Next come the two viscounts, Lord Montagu and Lord Howard of Bindon. The lowest rank is the baronage: there are thirty-seven barons in all. In total, just fifty-seven peers are summoned to parliament at the start of the reign and fifty-five at the end (underage heirs are not summoned)." 

Ibid., p. 47.

Given my day job, it was interesting, too, to learn that peers could not be imprisoned for debt, and other privileges included "the right to be judged by his peers, paying very little tax and freedom from torture" (p. 48) - though Mortimer explains Henry VIII got round that last one by having peers summarily executed and Elizabeth locked up some nobles for years in the Tower without trial.

Doctor Who: 1982

Episode 572: Earthshock, part 1
First broadcast: 6.55 pm, Monday 8 March 1982
<< back to 1981

"Ah! We're not the only ones to have a facelift!"
Earthshock, part 1

The return of the Cybermen for the first time in seven years! The producer of Doctor Who would surely want to shout about that. Their return would thrill fans and entice more casual viewers to tune in, ensuring a bumper audience. Wouldn't it?

Yet in 1982, producer John Nathan-Turner declined an offer to put the Cybermen on the cover of Radio Times so as to maintain the surprise when they showed up at the end of part one. That might seem an odd thing to do: rewarding the fans already watching instead of trying to draw more punters in front of the telly. But rewarding your audience isn't a bad thing, and I suppose there's an argument that they will generate excitement, so more punters will tune in to see what they're missing - in time for the shock ending of the story as a whole.

(At least in theory. The audience dropped slightly from 9.1 million for part one to 8.8 million for part two.)

Teasers and spoilers are a tricky business. There are those who try to avoid all details of any forthcoming episode; their are those who devote every spare moment to deducing what's to come. Even when we don't try to find things out, details get out anyway.

Unless we've been extremely diligent, we already know some of the guest cast of the 50th anniversary Doctor Who which won't be on for another five months. We probably know the name of a monster that will be in it, might have seen pictures - even video - from the filming. The darker regions of the internet can probably furnish us with elements of the plot of whole lines of dialogue. There are leaks, errors... and even carefully mounted publicity.

The producers of the show walk a difficult line in wanting to keep the surprises secret but knowing that a tantalising hint of what's to come will build interest in this creaky, long-lived series and ensure people tune in. They have to assume scenes shot on location will get papped and put on the net. But they also need to think about what to reveal in publicity and trailers - and how close to transmission to show them.

Even now, with the internet and what seems a whole industry devoted to ruining surprises, there are still some brilliant shocks. For a week in 2009 it seemed the whole nation was thrilled by the ending of The Stolen Earth - when nobody seemed to know if the Doctor was going to regenerate (and those who knew kept silent). For that week, there seemed no distinction between "fans" and ordinary people who watched the show.

Things were different in the early 1980s. There was no internet to share insider gossip quickly, while the producers of the show were only starting to get their heads round an organised fandom that was getting much better at finding things out. I wondered how much the return of the Cybermen was a surprise to those who were very involved in fandom at the time.

So I asked three of my friends.

Nicholas Briggs:

Ah, well, you see, the surprise got spoiled by the fact that the Cybermen were featured in a small comic strip thingy at the back of the Radio Times, which came out in the week before the episode was aired. I didn't know before that, though.

Cyber-spoilers in the Radio Times

Even so, not everyone knew. Peter Anghelides says:

I saw that episode in a university student hall of residence. Much grumbling from the non-fan student audience (still watching it, of course) about how the show wasn't as good as they remembered it. Me sitting quietly watching, not making a fuss but slightly aggrieved that they were TALKING DURING THE BROADCAST!! And then the big surprise at the end. The next day in the hall dining room, the non-fan conversation was all about "the Cybermen are back!"

I may have heard a rumour in fan circles that the Cybermen were returning some time in that season. But I certainly wasn't expecting them in that particular story. So it was a delightful surprise for me as a viewer, and as a fan seeing the reaction from others watching the show.

Gary Russell:

I knew but for a while thought the silly Androids were the Cybermen while watching that first ep. I was therefore very pleased by the cliffhanger, simply cos I realised that was the new Cybermen!

That night I went to my drama school and everyone was talking about it. That was the point I realised how disappointing being an in-the-know fan could be. The Sontarans in Invasion of Time and Davros in Destiny had been such brilliant surprises for me, and although I knew about the Master in Traken, I had assumed he was Tremas (not just the anagrammatic name but because I knew Ainley was him in Logopolis). So the Melkur thing was a surprise. But Earthshock was my first experience of seeing a group of peers genuinely shocked and excited, and me realising I wasn't – that I was missing out on that thrill because I was "in the know". This year's 50th anniversary special will be the first time since Season 17 where I'll be completely unaware of what the story is beforehand.

Next episode: 1983 

Telegraph Avenue

I was spellbound by Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon but find it difficult to say exactly why. It seems effortless, even breezy – I suspect because it's so carefully, expertly wrought.

Two friends struggle to keep their record shop going despite mounting debts and the threat that a new mall will be built nearby with a lavish music store inside. Meanwhile their wives face a crisis in their midwifing business because the medical establishment doesn't take them seriously. At the same time, their sons dream of working with Tarantino.

There are lots of other characters and stories – we learn one old man's tragedy in a single sentence shortly before he dies. It's a rich tapestry of human life, comingling and complex, funny and sad, full of telling detail and characters we feel we know; sort of west coast Dickensian.

Threads run through the disparate lives. Many characters hanker for the past – music, traditions, the way it looks in old films. The book is full of references to pop culture, used as analogies to explain behaviour or events. Things from Star Trek or Star Wars illuminate the every day. (I recommend Matthew Sweet interviewing Michael Chabon on Night Waves last year, where they discuss Chabon's fascination with Doctor Who and the illness of nostalgia.)

There's a compelling sense of the benefits of change: racial politics and empowerment better than the old days, an acceptance of fluid sexualities. Set in 2004, there's a surprise cameo from Barack Obama, offering the hope of change – rather than change to be scared of.

But again, it's more complex than that: characters aren't set free by letting go of the past, rather forms warp and shift and people just sort of deal. Decisions are made, battles fought, there are moments of sudden violence... and life rolls ever on.

It's this good-natured languidity that makes the book so appealing. The setting and laid-back feel reminded me a lot of Philip K Dick’s Mary and the Giant. There are clever lines and observations, and in the middle of the book a single sentence lasts 12 pages. It's clever – and deserving of a second read to pick up on more of the tricks. But the lasting impression is one of ease. A great, smart, feel-good book perfect for lazy-day reading.

Doctor Who: 1981

Episode 553: Logopolis, part 4
First broadcast: 5.10 pm, Saturday 21 March 1981
<< back to 1980

The death of Doctor Who
Logopolis, part 4

I was four when Logopolis was first on TV, five when it was repeated. I didn't see it again for a decade and yet this story, in which Tom Baker's Doctor dies, haunted me for years.

Watching it again, I'm struck by how complicated it is. Logopolis is all about the heat-death of the universe being held back by pure mathematics - numbers so powerful that they warp reality and can't be processed in a computer. It's about as high concept as you get, and I'm still not entirely sure how much it makes sense (I struggle with physics at the best of times).

But that never bothered me as a child. I never expected to understand Doctor Who anyway. It was a grown-up show, watched by my elder brother and sister (who seemed part of that grown-up world though they weren't yet in their teens) that I was allowed to sit in on so long as I didn't speak. If it presented a strange and dangerous universe, governed by unfathomable rules, that was how the world seemed to a child anyway.

Then again, what do you actually need to know to follow the story? That the Master is a baddie and up to something bad, and the Doctor is trying to stop him. Everything else, all the natter about block transfer computation and the properties of bubble memory, were - to this child, anyway - so much hand-waving between the running around.

Yet it was still compelling. Doctor Who rarely addresses the TARDIS itself in any great detail, and Logopolis makes the experience deeply unsettling. It is full of extraordinary moments that linger long in the memory: the TARDIS landing inside itself, with the police box prop stood inside the control room; the ivy-shrouded cloister room where the Doctor can brood; the TARDIS shrinking with the Doctor trapped inside; the radio telescope looming over an alien town. The TARDIS's cloister bell, warning of disaster, works so well it's still used in the series today.

My chum Matthew Michael has written intelligent things about Logopolis and points out the best of cliffhangers is a striking visual moment: the Doctor shaking hands with the Master. The Doctor siding with his mortal enemy is all the more disturbing because the Master here is a monster, not the softly spoken charmer as played by Roger Delgado. His monstrousness is underlined by him killing close relatives of two companions (Nyssa's dad Tremas and Tegan's auntie Vanessa). He chuckles to himself as the Doctor falls to his death.

There are oddly silly bits, too, like the plan to open the doors of the TARDIS while it's under water, or Tegan's getting lost in the ship being played for laughs. But the general tone is muted, and that's largely down to Tom Baker. For all the apparent hard science in the script, the story packs a punch because of how it feels. The Doctor's weary resignation as events unfold is so out of character, it feels so wrong, that it utterly enthralled this small boy.

Next episode: 1982

Doctor Who: 1980

Episode 534: Full Circle, part 1
First broadcast: 5.40 pm, Saturday, 25 October 1980
<< back to 1979

My earliest memory of anything:
K-9 and the Doctor, Full Circle part 1

This is where I come in. My earliest memory of anything at all is the Doctor crouched with K-9 in the reeds, watching the Marshmen emerge from the swamp – and then the scream of the closing credits.

It's still a brilliant moment, beautifully shot and directed. Years later, when the Haemovores rose up from the sea in The Curse of Fenric (1989), I assumed it was a homage. Then, as I watched my way through all of old-skool Doctor Who, I assumed both were nicked from The Sea Devils (1972).

But – as this blog has been making quite evident – what do I know about anything? So I asked Full Circle's writer Andrew Smith whether that was intentional, and also about how he came to write Doctor Who on TV while still in his teens...

SG: Hullo Andy. So, as I've told you, that scene is my first memory of anything ever.

AS: Wowza.

How much of it was nicked from The Sea Devils?

None it it! (Laughs) The cliffhanger of them coming out of the marsh was one of the first things I thought about when I was writing the story. That was the standard at the time, which people have forgotten now. The usual thing was that your main monster would turn up as the cliffhanger of episode one. It's kind of what I did with [2012 audio story] The First Sontarans, too. People complained that you don't hear a Sontaran in that until the end of the first episode – but that's classic, godammit!

A lot of old stories would start with what I like to call a “Stuart Fell sequence”, which is some hapless person being killed by something we don't see. And then we see what it was at the end of the first episode.

Yeah, and in Full Circle it was actually Stuart Fell! He gets dragged underwater by a wire. Yeah, the whole thing is set up for the monsters and then there they'd be at the end. Of course [director] Peter [Grimwade] and [film cameraman] Max Samett just did it fantastically well. It's quite a daring way to film it, all in silhouette, really. I was so glad to see Max Samett interviewed on the DVD. I meant to mention him on the commentary because I remember him very clearly on location. The stuff that he did was incredible. We were lucky with the weather and everything else as well. I was really impressed with it when I saw it broadcast, even having been there.

[Andy's kindly provided me with this scan of a polaroid photo taken by Continuity when the Marshmen were being filmed emerging from the lake. “I scanned it to send it to you, so it's previously unseen,” he says. Yes! An exclusive!]

Continuity shot from the filming of Full Circle
Care of Andrew Smith

How old were you at the time?

That was filmed four days before my 18th birthday, so I was 17 when I wrote it.

It's quite a thing to have written Doctor Who in your teens.

Yeah.

You talked to Toby Hadoke in his podcast about writing to the production team and being a fan, but did you know other people who were writing and sending stuff in? Was there a gang of you?

No. I wasn't a member of anything. I don't think I even knew local groups existed. I was in the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, which I joined after I'd been to the Doctor Who Exhibition in Blackpool in I think October '75 – Planet of Evil was on, so whenever that was – where I discovered the Target novels. That was when the fandom stepped up a gear. It would have been fairly soon after that that I joined the Appreciation Society. I think their details were in the novels at the time and that's when I found out about them. But I wasn't aware of any groups. I was still at school – and then university, later in the year. But I wasn't associated with anyone else who was writing, I was just getting on with it and not really aware of my age.

It's funny, I was interviewed by Radio Free Skaro and they asked if I ever mentioned my age when I wrote in. I'd never been asked that before. I thought about it and no, I didn't, but then I can't think why I would have. If you were 22 or 38 or 52, would you mention your age? I didn't. I think I was 14 or 15 when I sent the first one in. I didn't mention my age because you just wouldn't. At what point do you say, 'Oh, by the way, I'm 14' or whatever? You want to write, you've written something and you want to see if people like it so you send it in. The mental process is... Well, I never thought I'd be too young to do it.

So when did they realise how old you were?

I really don't know. (Laughs!) I came down to see Douglas Adams and they were filming The Creature from the Pit – so whenever that was, sometime in early '79, I think. He'd have met me and realised but whether we sat down and discussed my actual age I don't know. It was never an issue really.

After Full Circle I did a play for television. We were in production when the series it was part of was previewed in TV Times and they talked about me and the other writers. It said 'Andrew Smith, 23, blah blah blah'. I spoke to Robert Love, who was the Head of Drama at Scottish Television at the time and who'd given the interview with my age in it. I said, 'Where did you get the idea that I was 23?' He said, 'Oh they asked your age and I said that was about right. Was it?' I said, 'Actually, I'm 18.' He went: 'Oh!' As I said, we were in production at the time – and from that point on I was patronised by the director. Not by Robert; he was really good. But the director, no question, patronised me, didn't buy me another drink (laughs) and wasn't sure about letting me in the bar. It was really odd.

So Doctor Who wasn't the only show you had pitched to? 

Yeah, because I pitched to things like Shoestring and other shows and even got some feedback. I remember feedback from Robert Banks Stewart where he talked about stuff he'd done on Doctor Who and other programmes he'd written. I remember he was quite impressed that I knew about a daytime series he'd written called Rooms. So there was that and there would have been a couple of other things. I wanted to write, it wasn't just writing for Doctor Who. Doctor Who was always there.

The first thing I had on telly wasn't Doctor Who, it was a quickie on Not The Nine O'Clock News. I'd written comedy sketches for Week Ending before that. I was 15 or 16, I think, when I had my first sketch performed on Week Ending. So yeah, I was pitching around a few places. It took about three years, I think, to get to the point on Doctor Who where they said, 'Okay, we'll ask you to write a script and see what we think'. Whereas of course on other programmes they'd have finished their run before you got to that point.

You've talked elsewhere about writing more Doctor Who and one of your unused stories became The First Sontarans last year. But at what point did you decide to stop writing and join the police?

It was about four years into it. I was always really interested in joining the police and wanted a bit of excitement: it was that positive thing of wanting to do it. With the writing as well, there were a few things: the insecurity of it worried me, especially projecting very far ahead and knowing it would be a constant gamble. I knew other writers, older than me, and saw what they went through. And I just liked the idea of the excitement and the security of the police.

It's a mug's game being a writer, that's what you're saying.

Well, no, it was great. But it would have been a real leap in the dark and I recognised that if I carried on doing it, I'd probably have a feast or famine existence. It would have been a gamble with no guarantees of anything. I'd really enjoyed it but what I also found was that there was almost no time off. That thing of holiday? No chance. I'd think, 'I'll go on holiday but I'll take the typewriter with me anyway'.

In those four years I always had a commission for something until I had to begin turning things down as I approached the start date with the police. There was always that constant pressure of not having a working day. I just felt guilty. Again, sometimes I do now. I've decided to stop, sit down and watch TV with the family or whatever and I think, 'Should I be back there continuing?' You'll know this: sometimes you can't stop. Sometimes it's a little like pushing a bus. It takes a bit of effort to work up momentum but once it's going it's difficult to stop the bugger.

Last thing: Full Circle is all about evolution. Lalla Ward (Romana) has since married Richard Dawkins. Is it right that he's seen it? What does he make of it?

I have no idea! In fact, we didn't discuss it, I don't think, when she recorded The Invasion of E-Space (2010). We chatted about a lot of things but I don't think we talked about Full Circle. We never did a thing of 'Oh, do you remember when...' It was more just a chit-chat and what have you.

Do you think the story would stand up to his scrutiny?

(Long pause) To be honest, I don't really know. I'm aware of him but I've not read his books. I don't think I've ever seen an interview with him. About the only time I've ever seen him speak was when he had that cameo in Doctor Who. (Laughs).

Well, that's no help at all, is it? Andrew Smith, thank you very much!

(Postscript: when Dawkins was interviewed by Benjamin Cook for Doctor Who Magazine in 2008, he mentioned his wife being in the series:

“I didn’t watch it at the time, but I’ve loved seeing many of her episodes on DVD...”

But which episodes?!? I must know!)

Next episode: 1981

Who are you calling clever-clever?

Due to a holiday plus some regular commuting in the last few weeks, I have read a few books for fun and not solely to steal from for work (I've also done that, too). To remind myself in ages to come and to break up my ongoing Doctor Who project I shall endeavour to blog my thoughts on these books. First off:

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
I’d meant to read this for some time but Steven’s accolade as one of Granta’s Young Writers To Stalk (sort of like Springwatch for typing) prompted me to get on with it. It’s exciting, smart and ridiculous (as I tweeted him), taking the high-concept wheeze of a man who’s memories are being eaten by the abstract idea of a shark, and then seeing what happens next.

“'This is so crazy I'm not even going to ask.'

'Probably for the best,' the doctor said. 'It's easier if you just accept it.' 

Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts (2007), p. 317.

Mark Haddon calls the book “The bastard love-child of The Matrix, Jaws and The da Vinci Code” - on a genuine post-it note stuck rather than printed on the title page, itself an achingly trendy conceit. The book ought to so drip with its own clever-cleverness that I’d have given up early on. The 52-page interruption in the prose where the image of a shark composed of individual letters heads towards us as in a flickbook ought to take us right out of the adventure – as similar textual gimmickry did, I felt, with Philip Palmer's Debateable Space. I want – I love – to be lost in a story and resent the author waving from the margins.

But Steven contrives to make this sequence and the book as a whole enthralling, with twists and characters and digressions on the nature of language that kept me reading on. Bother him, I found it very difficult to put down, right to the last page. I look forward with feverish anticipation to his next one. (There's an excerpt from it in Granta #123; and also he's written some knock-off Doctor Who.)

Doctor Who: 1979

Episode 516: The Creature from the Pit, part 3
First broadcast: 6pm on Saturday, 10 November 1979
<< back to 1978

The Doctor, er, greets Erato
The Creature from the Pit, part 3

Most DVDs of old-skool Doctor Who include a documentary about how the story was made. Not all stories have a making-of, and The Creature from the Pit has something a little bit different. "Team Erato" is a rather good 15-minute analysis of what went wrong with the design and construction of the monster.

It's got plenty of insightful detail on the way BBC Visual Effects operated at the time, and the problems of translating ambitious scripts with only limited time and resources. It's essentially about why the monster in the story, Erato, was not realised especially well. The implication, if only because there's no making-of to address the rest of the production, seems to be that the silly-looking monster ruins the whole story.

I don't mean to criticise either the documentary or the story. I like The Creature from the Pit, in part because it is silly and fun. But I also wonder how much a Doctor Who story lives or dies on the quality of its monster.

Many of Doctor Who's most acclaimed old stories have shonky-looking monsters: giant clams in Genesis of the Daleks, a fluffy giant rat in Talons of Weng-Chiang, the smiley dragon in The Caves of Androzani. So what makes The Creature from the Pit different? In those stories, the monsters only play a minimal role, while the real villains - Davros and the Daleks, Li H'seng Chang and Magnus Greel, and Sharaz Jek - are terrifying, grotesque creations that linger in the memory. In The Creature from the Pit, Lady Adastra is a perfectly serviceable tyrant. So it isn't that.

The Wirrn in The Ark in Space are also not entirely brilliantly realised - and for a lot of the time, the only evident villain is a man wearing bits of green bubblewrap. And yet that story is a chilling classic while The Creature from the Pit is not.

It's not as if Erato is indicative of a general lack of visual pizzazz in the story. The scenes of jungle and tunnels shot on film at Ealing really impress, the stakes raised by this being one of the few times we see the Doctor ever break a sweat. This is a dirty, grimy planet - bearing the influence of Star Wars in its grubby realism.

It's not just that the stuff shot in TV Centre on video looks a bit flat. (Again that's not unusual for Doctor Who - and I'm told a general audience usually couldn't tell the difference between video and film, though I've never met anyone that was true of.)

And it's not as if David Fisher's script isn't full of real jeopardy or doesn't tackle sophisticated ideas:

"To revise his climax, Fisher sought the assistance of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University -- a process made easier when it was discovered that some of the faculty were fans of Doctor Who. They offered a neutron star as a potent weapon, and suggested that one way to avert the threat would be to encase it in aluminium."

Shannon Sullivan, A Brief History of Time Travel - The Creature from the Pit

But there's something about the tone of the story that suggests we not take it too seriously - a silly monster in part 3 only compounds that feeling.

This won't come as much surprise to many old-skool Doctor Who fans. In 1993, Douglas Adams was interviewed about his time as script-editor on the show, which include The Creature from the Pit.

"Cause when I was working on Doctor Who, inevitably quite a lot of humour was in the programme and some people liked this and some people didn't. I have to say that in fact the way the humour went into the programme wasn't exactly the way that I intended it to ... A danger one runs, and I kept on running into this problem, is that the moment you have anything in the script that's clearly meant to be funny in some way, everybody thinks, 'Oh, well we can do silly voices and silly walks' and so on. And I think that's exactly the wrong way to do it ... I think that Doctor Who is at its best when the humour and the drama work together and that however absurd a situation may be it is actually very, very real and has very real consequences. That's the moment at which something that's inherently absurd actually becomes frightening." 

Douglas Adams, speaking on More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS

What he's talking about is tone, and I think tone is the secret of successful Doctor Who. This is something I've a personal stake in and I think about it a lot, so here's my current thesis:

The most successful of the Doctor Who spin-off stories I've written have each had a recognisble tone: Home Truths is a BBC Ghost Story for Christmas; Shadow of Death apes the TV Doctor Who story The Seeds of Death; The Pirate Loop is a manic, free-wheeling comedy from the first sentence. They work, I think, because they create a definite tone in the first scene and maintain it to the end. That helps an audience immerse themselves in the world of the story, and gives them cues as to how to respond. Other stories, despite great performances or plot twists, despite the best or worst structural tricks or special effects, seem not to satisfy to the same degree because the tone is inconsistent.

Sometimes Doctor Who on TV uses inconsistency to achieve a dramatic effect. The first half of the very first episode, An Unearthly Child is a kitchen-sink drama about a school girl who behaves oddly; then her teachers push their way onto the TARDIS and it becomes something completely else.

In fact, I think the TARDIS travels less in time as it does in genre. One week it might land in a slightly knowing Midsomer Murder, the next it arrives in the midst of the movie Outland, the next a classic serial with the best in BBC facial hair. Two stories set in the same calendar year can be completely different because they have different tones.

The problem, I think, with The Creature from the Pit, is that the tone is inconsistent. It ought to be dirty, sweaty space opera in the style of Star Wars, and sometimes - especially early on - that's exactly what it is. Or, it ought to be a light entertainment comedy, like the previous (and far more effective) story, City of Death. Being both, we never know quite how to respond to what we're shown, and that takes us out of the story. That's when we start to notice problems with the design or the way the story's been shot.

The Doctor's first meeting with the vast, uncommunicative Erato, played for laughs rather than as high-concept SF, is the worst moment of this mismatch of styles. So I'd argue that it's not the monster that's at fault, but the inconsistent way that he's spoken to.

Next episode: 1980

Doctor Who: 1978

After episode 491 (The Stones of Blood, part 4)
22 November 1978
<< back to 1977

Frank Bough interviews Tom Baker
Nationwide, BBC1, 22 November 1978

In the early evening of 22 November 1978, the BBC's live news magazine Nationwide (basically, The One Show but without the view out the window) celebrated the 15th birthday of Doctor Who. It was, in the best traditions of a show about a rackety time machine, a day early.

Nationwide spoke first to the show's original producer, Verity Lambert, and then to actress Carole Ann Ford, who'd played the Doctor's first companion (and granddaughter), Susan. Then presenter Frank Bough spoke to Mary Tamm - the Doctor's current companion, Romana. Finally, he turned to Tom Baker, who sat brooding beside him.

What happens next is fascinating. You can watch it as an extra on The Stones of Blood DVD or, ahem, on YouTube. Tom seems in a garrulous mood, or bored, and his answers brusque, even combative.

Frank:
Of course, you are Doctor Who aren't you?

Tom:
Well, yes I am. I am.

Frank:
I mean, all the time - aren't you?

Tom:
Well, I mean I'm not as benevolent as... Doctor Who is not really an acting part but I mean I'm not as benevolent as the character and as kind as the character and even-tempered as the character. But yes, it's just me. That's all I suppose.

Frank:
But you have to be Doctor Who all the time, I'm told. People regard you totally where they see you as Doctor Who and nothing else. Do you see that?

Tom:
Well I don't have to be Doctor Who any more than you have to be Frank Bough!

Frank:
Yes, but I am Frank Bough!

Tom:
Yeah, I know you are. I'm Doctor Who because I only have a fictional image.

Frank:
But I don't have a fictional image. I am me.

Tom:
Of course you do. People don't really believe you exist. They only see you on the television. I mean, I see you at cricket games and things like that. But it's true, people have a televisual impression of you as they have of me. In my case, of course, I play a heroic figure whereas you're associated with rather terrifying -

Frank:
They want to talk to me about sport but they want to regard you as Doctor Who. Now, can't you stop being Doctor Who and become Tom Baker occasionally?

Tom:
Well, of course I can. I do that at home or I do it in the bar with Mary Tamm or somebody like that. But the point is when I meet anybody who's interested in Doctor Who there's no point in presenting Tom Baker because they find Tom Baker very dreary.

Frank:
Tell me a bit about how people regard you and the effect you have on the audience, who are convinced you are Doctor Who. What sort of way do people behave when they see you?

Tom:
Well, I mean mostly the reaction is one of cheerfulness and happiness because they associate me with the children being vastly amused by me or interested in what I do as the character of the Doctor. And they also ascribe to me - such is the gullibility of the public and the potency of television – they ascribe to me all the virtues of Doctor Who. For example, I don't need anything boring like a bank card, for example. I don't even need money now because people make the assumption because I play this benevolent fictional character that I am, you know, that my probity is totally beyond question.

Frank:
So you have to work very hard – if you're not very nice as Tom Baker then you have to be very nice as Doctor Who when the occasion demands it.

Tom:
Ah ha! Yeah, it's not difficult. I get on all right with people – superficially.

Bough failing to appreciate the difference between his real self and his televisual image would ultimately cost him his career. Wikipedia quotes Paul Connew, formerly of The News of the World, saying that the 1988 sex and drugs scandal,

"caused a sensation at the time, given Bough's public image as the squeaky clean frontman of breakfast and sports television."

It's fascinating to see Tom address the power that television gives him over members of the public in the light of the awful revelations about other TV stars of the time. Television was much more influential back then - with fewer channels, fewer alternatives to telly, and bigger, less media savvy audiences. Tom clearly saw the impact of that influence in his daily dealings with the public - and he took his responsibilities to them seriously.

He was certainly no angel - his autobiography is candid about booze and sex and being difficult on set - and yet he tried not to let children see him with a cigarette or beer, or being ordinary and dreary. Even when adults spotted "the Doctor", he tried not to disappoint them by merely being himself. It's striking that Bough seems amazed he'd make that effort.

Playing the Doctor is more than just an acting job, it also involves a public-facing role: you're expected to charm and entertain children off-screen as well as on, there are conventions, signings, charity things. Even years after you leave the role, it's the first thing people will mention. There are all the many people who, thrilled by your adventures, feel kinship, ownership, entitlement (look at how I blithely refer to my childhood hero as "Tom", when I've met him fleetingly a handful of times...).

Is it different from other leading roles? I suspect the presenters and stars of children's TV are the ones most likely to cause offence by not appearing as they seem on screen. But I'd love to know from David Tennant, for example, how much his dad's job as Moderator of the Church of Scotland, served as a model for how to conduct himself as the Doctor. Tom, after all, was once a monk...

Next episode: 1979