Friday, November 22, 2013

Doctor Who: 2002

After episode 696 (Doctor Who): "Screen Test"
First published in Doctor Who Magazine #315 (3 April 2002)
<< back to 2001
Daryl Joyce's artwork for my
Doctor Who Magazine feature
In 2002, I had my first work of Doctor Who fiction published - a short story, "The Switching" in which the Master escapes from prison by swapping bodies with the Doctor. I also had my first article published in Doctor Who Magazine - and it made the cover, no less.

Thanks to current editor Tom Spilsbury for permission to post it in full. Thanks to then editor Clayton Hickman for heroic patience in dealing with this very green hack. And thanks to Daryl Joyce for the amazing artwork.

Screen Test

A new Doctor Who movie! Cor, that'd be good, wouldn't it? In the first of a two-part feature, Simon Guerrier examines the show's previous big screen dabbling. And frets, frankly...

One

Too broad and too deep for the small screen? Hardly! For years, the official statement from the BBC has been the same: Doctor Who is not being made on television because it's 'being developed as a film'. Anthony Hopkins is hotly tipped to be the new Doctor Who! Pamela Anderson will join him in the TARDIS! The script could well be written by Russell T Davies! And the special effects will rival Hollywood!

So, why the fuss? What does a film do, and why would you want to inflict it on a sweet little television programme like Doctor Who?

For one thing, a film is more of an 'event' than a standard television programme. Television channels fill the schedules on public holidays with films as a special treat for viewers, something 'better' than everyday programming. Films are right up there there with new episodes of Only Fools and Horses and extra-length, especially angsty editions of EastEnders as far as Christmas highlights are concerned. Films are something to get excited about. They're more glamorous. They tell a big story and, more often than not, they need a big budget to tell it. Films are, let's face it, still perceived as something rather exciting.

So, if the BBC want to reintroduce Doctor Who in a high-profile way, reminding the general public of what they've been missing all these years, it's only natural that they'd rather bring it back as a film than a television show, right? Even if that film is a 'television movie', it's still more 'exciting', more of a 'special event' than a single installment of a serial. In fact, many television dramas begin with a feature-length pilot to draw in an audience and get them to commit to the continuing series. Making a film version of a television show means money: more money for location filming than a budget for television drama can offer, more money for effects, more money for casting, more money for everything.

DWM #315 (2002)
You'd think, then, that a film would automatically be better and more successful. The TV series write large. But is Doctor Who really suited to the big screen? The show has been there before, of course: there were two films released in the cinema by Aaru in the mid 1960s. There have also been two feature-length special television films: a 90-minute anniversary special, The Five Doctors, in 1983 and a television movie in 1996 starring Paul McGann. The Five Doctors is a special case, though - made by the same production team as produced the television series, in a gap between seasons, and following a season that had been four episodes short. Many fans lump it in with Season Twenty anyway, rather than seeing it as a stand-alone project. They view it as a four-parter that's had its cliffhangers removed.

And that's just four films out of no end of could-have-beens. There had been hopes for a third Dalek movie in the late 1960s; Tom Baker was involved in trying to make Doctor Who Meets Scratchman during the 1970s; and the late 1980s and 1990s seemed rife with aborted projects. So many, in fact, that Jean-Marc Lofficier even wrote a programme guide about them!

But for a show that ran for so many years on TV, four(ish) films isn't that fantastic a track record. And it's a shame, because the television series proved massively successful. It may have been taken off the air in 1989 for low ratings and perceived lack of public interest, yet today it continues to be held in fond regard by the general public. It is featured in the top tens of no end of nostalgia shows and makes front page news whenever a new candidate for the role of the Doctor is proposed. And anyway, you're reading the official magazine, so of course you know the show's super.

But not the films, it's seems. "A lot of people forget that there's been two movies," said Roberta Tovey, the film incarnation of Susan, in a 1993 interview. And "Paul McGann doesn't count" was the decree of Vince, the Doctor Who fan in hit Channel 4 drama Queer as Folk. Published critiques of Doctor Who, both professional and semi-professional, pretty much ignore the films altogether. According to the 2001 Radio Times Guide to Science Fiction, the first Dalek movie lacks the "bite and inventiveness that set the landmark series apart." Why? Why couldn't the Dalek films achieve the same lasting success as the television series? Yes, the films have their fans, but not fans with the same kind of lifetime commitment that the television version managed. Surely there are some lessons that can be learned?

It must be said, adapting any format to film is contentious. And 'adapting' is the important word here. You couldn't just take a successful TV story - Pertwee favourite The Daemons, say - re-film the original script and stick it on at your local multiplex. There would be a million-and-one cuts to make, actors to cast and factors to 're-imagine' (to begrudgingly use modern parlance). Oh, and you'd have to bung the Daleks in it, of course.

Recently, two different series of best-selling novels made the leap to the big screen. There is some argument about whether The Fellowship of the Ring and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone are as dynamic, rich and epic an experience as the books that inspired them. What can't be argued is how successful the films have proven. Adaptation of a story from one format to another is always going to mean things get changed. Sometimes for practical reasons (The Fellowship of the Ring would have been an even longer film if they'd included the character of Tom Bombadil from the book), and sometimes just as a matter of personal judgement (Tom Bombadil's a rubbish character anyway!).

The first two Doctor Who movies, Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966), are adaptations of two of the most influential serials from the early days of the television show. The Daleks secured the longevity of Doctor Who, and they massively influenced the direction the show would take. It soon put away its educational aspirations, and concentrated on the Doctor helping gangs of rebels to fight off invading monsters. The films were released at a time of 'Dalekmania', and were just part of a massive marketing exploitation of the robot monsters' popularity. They remain such an integral part of the show that any Doctor Who film simply has to include them: Terrance Dicks insisted they got a cameo in The Five Doctors, and Philip Segal had them (out-of-shot, admittedly) at the start of the TV Movie. Doctor Who Meets Scratchman was set to be a gripping tale about Vincent Price and an army of killer scarecrows terrorising the English countryside [see DWM 296], but the production team still sought a deal with Terry Nation to get the Daleks in the picture. Perhaps they'd have been running the pub?

Two

The 1960s Dalek films were part of a tradition in British cinema at the time. The British film industry had been losing audiences because of competition from television, and the adaptations of the Dalek stories followed the success of Hammer's The Quatermass X-periment. This, too, was an adaptation of a BBC television serial, and had proved that exploiting the narratives television had to offer was one way to draw the punters back to the big screen. And what the films do is very simple: they take a story that has been very successful on the small screen, and retell it in a way that could never be envisioned on anything but a big screen. From the trailer for Dr Who and the Daleks, you can clearly see how, in the UK at least, the films pushed the idea of better, bigger, more exciting Daleks. "Now you can see them in colour on the big screen - closer than ever before," it proclaims. Indeed, the film's design is far more sumptuous than anything the BBC could have afforded. Skaro is bigger, bolder and brighter, - nothing is left to the viewers' imaginations.

That doesn't necessarily mean that what we see makes sense. For instance, why do the Daleks decorate their city with colourful drapes and lava lamps? They aren't consistent with what we know of their characters. It's that 'bigger is better' attitude again, making everything on screen look as sumptuous as possible. On the flipside, there's no realism - no attempt to lend credibility to what's going on. It's got to be said that big budget effects sequences often get in the way of the sense. Why do the events of the TV Movie happen? Why does the Master do what he does? Chiefly, it's to ensure there's a motorbike chase, plus a lot of time spent in the lavishly redecorated TARDIS. In The Five Doctors, the Cybermen are supposedly banned  from the Death Zone because they 'play too well'. But is there one single shred of evidence of that on screen? No, they're there just as Raston robot-fodder. Not that one could argue that the television series always made sense itself ...

Aaru's license from the Beeb meant the TARDIS could look like a police box and that they could use Ray Cusick's smashing designs for the Daleks; but the license didn't include the use of Peter Brachacki's TARDIS interior. As a result, the controls that Dr Who (that's the name of the character Peter Cushing plays) gets to push are wild and whizzy, but they're just not the same. The console is at the heart of Brachacki's design, the thinking being that one man could operate the controls if they were grouped around a central point. One man could arguably operate Dr Who's movie TARDIS, but he'd likely fall over a three-bar fire, get covered in mercury and throttle himself with wires if he had to do anything complicated! The console is such a recognisable constituent of the TARDIS, that both The Five Doctors and the 1996 TV Movie follow their opening credits by lingering over a newly-refurbished and extra-specially spangley version. And as it happens, from the outset, both these later films also assume we know that the great big console room fits inside the little police box.

The Dalek films, you see, start the story again from scratch, explain everything as if it's entirely new. Doctor Who was less than two years old on television when the first of them was released, so the series had nothing like the established history it does now. The Five Doctors and the TV Movie both feature past television Doctors to underline that they're a continuation of the old show, and Lofficier's The Nth Doctor guide includes notes on how most of the 1990s film proposals attempted to fit into - and expand upon - what had gone before. The Dalek films didn't rely on pre-knowledge of the television series to tell the story, even if they used it to market the films in the UK. The origins of the characters are retold, the adventure begun again. It's been made especially accessible to those who might have missed or never even heard of the programme. And it isn't the television programme. Very consciously, it does things differently.

For a kick-off, the two Dalek films eschew Ron Grainer's legendary theme tune. Both films use orchestral music, which is a much more recognisable and earthly sound than that which introduced the television show. The first film's slow, jazzy rhythm suggests mystery and anticipation, while Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD has a much more upbeat, exciting tempo, suggesting action and adventure. The second film also has a 'comic' but exciting pre-title sequence, which precipitates our involvement in the engaging score. Neither theme tune, however, has the alien and frightening quality of the television version. Interestingly, the TV Movie used Ron Grainer's original, but arranged it using orchestral, recognisable, 'earthly' instruments.

Three

Right from the beginning, the Dalek films positively glory in doing things beyond the TV series' means. Colour television at the time was almost unheard of, but colour here is just one factor in the great sense of the spectacular which the films have. In Dr Who and the Daleks, there are breathtaking establishing shots of the strange landscape of Skaro; special effects allowing us to see alien mountains and alien moons. The second film prominently features a terrific Dalek ship - convincing model effects that outstrip the 'paper plate on a string' offered by the BBC.

But while the films may laud it over television's weaknesses, the authors of the seminal academic work Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text argue that the television medium itself is essential to the early progress of Doctor Who. For one thing, in dialogue from the very first episode, television is used to explain the TARDIS' interior being bigger than its exterior. As the Doctor says, an enormous building fits into a sitting room when that building is shown on television. The Unfolding Text argues that "television's own discourse of the world made intimate and instantaneous" is used to avoid the need for a "plausible scientific explanation."

The films don't use the television model, and bluff a "plausible scientific explanation" instead: "In electro-kinetic theory, space expands to accommodate the time necessary to encompass its dimensions." There is an equally silly explanation for the TARDIS in the second film. None of the explanations - including the television one - are really 'scientific' at all. But while the television series offers a simple parallel to explain away the conceit, the Dalek films legitimise their fantastic prop with technobabble. They use big words they think will wow the audience, just as they use big images and effects. Similarly, the TV Movie refers to the TARDIS 'cloaking device' - a technobabble quotation lifted directly from Star Trek.

But more importantly, reckons The Unfolding Text, when the series began, the television Doctor represented a new age of television drama. He's not a standard hero, whose values and codes are obvious from the start: he's a strange and dangerous man of mystery. In the television episodes, there was time for dialogue, for characters to disagree and argue their course of action. The films do not have that luxury. In the television serials, the Daleks are opposed by a diverse range of characters: the Doctor and his companions, aided by assorted Thal, mutant and human representatives - despite the arguments and differences amongst these allies. In the films, In the films,the few who disagree with Dr Who are usually persuaded or conveniently die. The values he fights for are not discussed or debated on screen. He's not dangerous or mysterious and, as the Sunday Telegraph of the time put it, is "a pale shadow of the TV grouch."

No, he's much more straightforward a hero, like the The Eagle's comic strip pilot of the future, Dan Dare. According to The Unfolding Text, the TV Doctor is "an alien, an outsider". Dare, meanwhile, was "always an insider, with the code of honour and refusal to lie that was the mark of the English ruling 'Public School' culture."

Whereas being an 'outsider' is what often drives the early TV episodes, 'respectability' is crucial to the ethos of the Dalek films. In the second film, Dr Who dutifully aids the policeman, Tom, by taking him back in time to avert a bank robbery we have already witnessed. It's all very amusing and heart-warming, I'm sure, but the television series never used the notion of time travel so glibly. The morality of changing history was always dealt with much more problematically - not least because if the Doctor can later travel back in time and change the way events occurred, there's never going to be any genuine sense of conflict in his adventures. Dr Who ignores such complex issues to assist the police and do his duty as a 'responsible citizen.'

The first film is also about maintaining a 'stiff upper lip'. The Thals must overcome fear of war and of the Daleks. Iam must overcome his cowardice. As Alan Barnes said back in DWM's Spring Special, "it is [Ian's] only act of true bravery which causes the ultimate destruction of the Daleks."

Actor Barrie Ingham, who played Alydon in Dr Who and the Daleks, recalls that The Daily Worker called the first film, "a rather Blimpish and militaristic sort of thing, in which pacifists were actually persuaded to become warlike." The dictionary definition of 'Blimpish' is "stupidly complacent and reactionary." The two films show the same rather naive and simplified attack on the un-British as can be seen in early British World War Two films. In his 1974 book, Films and the Second World War, Roger Manvell identifies films with the "unrealistic tendency to regard Hitler as an absurdity" until the full horrors of war lead to pictures with "a far grimmer sense of actuality." As he goes on, "[The British] were determined, initially at least, to remain cultured and gentlemanly in the face of an enemy whom they despised as uncouth - not in fact a gentleman at all."

Certainly, the Daleks are demonised for their unBritishness. They lack the gentlemanly credentials of Dr Who and his companions: they do not speak 'properly' (with the enunciated accents of the rest of the cast), and lack politeness. Ian's joke, "Excuse me, Mr Dalek, would you care to move on to this cape?" parodies their lack of manners. The Daleks are also voyeurs, watching their human captives and manipulating what they overhear. It's all terribly improper!

Four

If the films change the Doctor's values and character, they also affect the reasons he stands against the Daleks; the oppositions being more clear cut. The Daleks are diametrically opposed to whatever values Dr Who (and his followers) represent: they are intolerant not tolerant, inhuman not human, scientific not natural (or agricultural), hierarchic not communitive, hard not soft, the 'new' not the 'old', unwelcoming not polite, collective not individual, hating not compassionate, paranoid not trusting.

It's worth making the point that one of the main reasons for the success and longevity of the Daleks is their simplicity. Without us getting too clever for ourselves, the academic Jonathan Bignell, in his book Media Studies - An Introduction, argues that "situation comedies exaggerate characters' social codes of behaviour so that they become excessive, inappropriate and therefore comic." The excitement that the Daleks conjure is something similar, except that their exaggerated behaviour make the Daleks frightening, not funny; the identification of these traits connotes horror and fear. And yet, because the exaggerated traits are still recognisable traits, and ones that the audience can identify with, the Daleks' terror is memorable and effective. They may be simplistic, but we know why they do what they do.

On big screen and small, the Daleks are ciphers rather than characters - but in the two Dalek films, so are all the other characters. The television show quickly learned that Daleks are boring conversationalists, so gave other characters interesting lines. Humans working for the Daleks, or with the Daleks, or who created the Daleks in the first place, have the vocal range to argue the ethics of their position. But in the films, everyone's a cipher. None of the characters are interesting, they're all bland stereotypes. We are offered very little as to what Dalek culture and life are actually like, but that's no different from what we can glean about the Thals, or human society in 2150 AD.

There are very simple and basic parameters to the cultures we are shown in the films, and the landscapes are very small. There is occasional reference to other places, but really we see very little of these future worlds, this despite the number of special effects 'glass shots' and other wizardry to show off the alien landscapes. In the first film, we see only Dr Who's contemporary house, and then the area within and surrounding the Dalek City. In the second, we have a contemporary London street, and then London and Bedford of the 22nd Century. It's a very small, unrepresentative area. There is no interest in making the future worlds complex or layered in any way. Rather, the emphasis is on having exciting-looking locations for Dr Who and his friends to have their adventures in.

The only thing the Dalek films do want to tell us something about is Dr Who himself. The first film opens with Dr Who and his family sitting at home, reading quietly. He has a house, a very definite location. This is completely at odds with the perpetually wandering Doctor of the television series. In fact, it goes against the conscious effort to make the 'different' - unfixed and dislocated. This was set up in the very first episode, when Susan's school teachers decide to investigate her home life. Not only does Dr Who have a fixed home in London (well, I'm assuming his house doesn't roll along on wheels), but he is also human. And, just to make him even less 'different' and more familiar, he has a larger family than he did on television: a second granddaughter and a niece. Dr Who is always very kind to his companions, whereas the television Doctor could be difficult and rude. In the TV series, even the Doctor's companions are quick to question his actions. In the films, though, Barbara and Ian no longer serve the purpose of "educating the Doctor to maturity and responsibility" as they do on television. If anything, the film Dr Who is the teacher, encouraging his granddaughter's scientific curiosity, and enabling Ian to overcome his fears. He is, unlike his television predecessor, 'respectable'. He is not difficult and unreadable, but charming and predictable. Alan Barnes summed him perfectly in the aforementioned DWM Special: "He never behaves in a manner befitting anything less than a gentleman."

For all the preaching about good and evil we can identify in television Doctor Who, it is far more obvious in the films. Dr Who shares many of Dan Dare's polemic and assuring qualities. He is a traditional, conservative, human character, who takes us away on entertaining flights of fancy where the un-British are dealt with righteously and decisively. It is telling that our first sight of the film Dr Who has him happily reading The Eagle.

Five

The television viewer is expected and encouraged to be 'active' in watching the Doctor's adventures: problematic and unpredictable characterisation means that he or she is often wrong-footed. The values and characters in the films are simplistic, meanwhile, are simplistic, uncomplicated, black-and-white. We are, therefore, less involved. The television episodes also encourage 'active' viewing in that their cliff-hanger endings affect our anticipation of where the story will go next and how it will be resolved.

A little while ago, this magazine looked closely at the structure of the classic four-part Doctor Who story [see The Adventure Game, DWMs 296 to 302]. A feature film is at least 90 minutes long, so maybe the same structuring applies? Actually, no. Editing four episodes into a 90-minute whole by lopping off the titles (and maybe a scene or two) interferes with the pacing. Watching the omnibus EastEnders on a Sunday, you ride over the week's cliffhangers, but you know full well where they are; every 25 minutes there's a sudden, awkward break in tension and involvement. By the same token, The Five Doctors doesn't break seamlessly into quarters, whatever the repeats schedulers might think. There isn't enough tension and involvement after each 25-minute segment for a suitably dramatic 'break'. The narrative just stops. The stories aren't made for that format. The picaresque nature of the television series, where the Doctor and his companions move from one dilemma to the next, suits the television medium.

For the television series, audiences need to be enthralled for 25 minutes at a time, so a number of sensational moments are required in each episode. This is far too disorderly a structure for the films, where the 'plot' is not seen in segments but as a whole. As a result, in the Dalek movies of the 1960s, many of the digressions from the 'essential' story are absent. The Daleks don't get to destroy London in the films, and there's no rough and tumble round the campfire between Susan and David. The internal duration of the films' adventures as experienced by Peter Cushing's Dr Who is thus both briefer and more orderly; he spends less time in 2150 AD, and fewer things happen to him. Even if part of a longer movie 'series' (as is Harry Potter), films are a single episode long, and losing the television episodes' cliffhanger endings changes Doctor Who hugely. The episodes end at moments of crisis, of narrative peak, so as to secure the audience's return for the next installment of the story. The best examples, as Sophie Aldred once said, leave us begging: "How on earth is the assistant gonna get out of this one?"

You don't just watch Doctor Who on the television like it's eye-candy, you have to get involved. You are encouraged to anticipate resolutions. It's not just the final freeze-frames that stay with you for a week; if you're wondering how the Doctor¹s granddaughter will escape this time, you'll relive the story so far in your mind, looking back for clues in the episode as a whole. She's all alone in a spooky dead forest on an alien world! And something is after her! Will the TARDIS crew escape from the Dalek city to save her? What is she going to do? Whether or not you come up with your own neat solution, you'll still want to find out what happens next and so will tune in to see the solution that gets played out. (The monster in the forest is actually a nice blond man who just wants to ask after Susan¹s health. Ahh!) Although film will have exciting narrative peaks, the resolution must come in the same sitting. In the first Dalek film, we find out that Alydon's both a nice guy and snappy dresser five minutes after Susan ventures into the forest - not a whole week later - which is a lot less enthralling.

As we've seen, the translation from episodic installments to a single-episode film greatly changes the structure of the story being told. The first television Dalek story consisted of seven 25-minute episodes. The Dalek Invasion of Earth ran to six episodes. The introductions of the Doctor and his companions had been taken care of in a previous story, so the central characters and their relationships were already defined. The Dalek films are of 83 and 84 minutes duration respectively. Material from the television screenplays obviously had to be cut. On top of that, while these are ostensibly the same stories, the adaptations aren't slavishly adhering to the style and form of the original. The Dalek films 're-imagine' (sorry, that horrible George Lucas-y word again) the premise of the television series, making significant changes not only to the stories and characters, but also, perhaps as a result of these changes, to the ideologies, the kinds of values, expressed within them.

The films' representation of women is just one way we can reveal inherent ideologies. Only Dr Who's own grandchildren, Susan and Barbara, are active women. No Thal women take part in the offensive on the Daleks, beyond waving mirrors at them from the relative safety of the forest. In the second film, there is no Jenny, an important female character in the television version. The only substantial female characters in Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD are the avaricious old spinsters who betray Susan and Wyler. For future worlds, they are very chauvinistic.

But then Doctor Who has always had problems with its not-entirely-feminist agenda. Just look at how quickly the TV Movie's Grace Holloway moves from strong, independent surgeon to shrieking, wailing mess. In The Five Doctors, what do the girls do? Susan trips over and hurts her ankle. Tegan makes the tea. Sarah falls down a bit of a slope. Somehow it seems doubtful that Twiggy's character in Scratchman would have broken the mould substantially.

Six

The Dalek films have their meanings arranged neatly and their audiences are passive, consuming the narratives without being encouraged to think too deeply about the images, themes and ideologies presented. The films are assuring, nostalgic and easily-digestible escapist entertainment. The plots and monsters may be what was on television (or near enough), and the writers involved may be the same people who brought the Daleks to life for the BBC, but what's been lost in the transition to the big screen is the ongoing drama. The Dalek films are bright and fun and entertaining, but they don't make us want to come back for more. They've crammed the exciting television serial into a one-off adventure, where all the problems are solved within one hour-and-a-half sitting, and where even the enigma of the title character has been answered in the opening scenes of the first film. No wonder the name 'Dr Who' doesn't get a mention in the title of the second film - while in the television show 'Who?' is a question, in the film it's simply the lead character's surname!

And that's why the Dalek films haven't enjoyed ongoing interest like the television series has - they don't actually encourage it. They're stand-alone stories, and all the questions they raise are answered in a single sitting. Moreover, Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD, with a different title sequence, theme music and character line-up to the first film, isn't even sold as a continuation of the 'serial' featured in Dr Who and the Daleks. This is odd, because Doctor Who works best as a series - which is why the format has transcended television to work successfully in a series of comic-strips, books, CDs and webcasts. It's about travel; moving from place to place, and story to story. It's the very antithesis of the 'precinct' show, where the same characters stand around on the same sets each week. Everything about the Doctor Who format - it's lead character, its episodic structure, the TARDIS, time travel - are about not being constrained in any given space. The Dalek films' mistake is to assume they can retell Doctor Who in a single installment.

So how do you make a film that's part of the ongoing adventure, but also a stand-alone episode? That's big and exciting and special, and yet recognisably part of the old? That shares the themes and values and iconography of what's gone before, but dares to do something new?

With great difficulty, as we shall see ...

[I'll post the second part of the feature another time.]

Next episode: 2003

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Doctor Who: 2001

After episode 696 (Doctor Who): Storm Warning
Released January 2001
<< back to 2000

The Big Finish Doctors face The Light at the End
Big Finish Productions Ltd began releasing new audio adventures for old Doctors Who in 1999. To begin with, they were new stories for the fifth, sixth and seventh Doctors. But late in 2000 they announced that Paul McGann's eighth Doctor would be joining them. As this fanzine article I wrote at the time shows, I was quite excited:

Lee Sullivan's preview for
Storm Warning in
Doctor Who Magazine
"During the 1990s, Doctor Who was, essentially, an ongoing series of books. Five TV specials – variously ersatz, variously not quite right – and as many new audio new adventures are nothing to just short of 200 full length, original novels (mostly) doing new and exciting things with the character and range. For Century 21, it looks like the Doctor is more an audio thang. The BBC’s Radio Collection is beefing up the old stuff they can’t put out on video, Radio 4 is promising a heavyweight, star-studded new series [Death Comes To Time] and Big Finish do enough 25 minute instalments of Doctor Who for every week of the year, as well as new Benny and Dalek spin-offs.

And audio Who will dictate to other-media Who. Big Finish’s Season 27 will knock on all the different Doctor-eight’s we’ve come to know; the BBC Books one, the Doctor Who Magazine model, the Mills-and-Boon-rogue who gets his oats in fan fiction. Finally he’s back... and about for more than 65 minutes, of which (as that Lance Parkin pointed out in the fanzine Matrix some years ago) most is the Doctor doing an uncharacteristic, post-regeneration thing.

None of the Doctors can be summed up by their first story, and only Hartnell ever is. And McGann, of course. But then there’s a reason for that. Five bloody years after the TV movie, we’re getting to the point Lance predicted – where the Doctor being written is a construct of McGann’s performance, his strengths and tendencies; rather than of generic Doctor traits and bits of Marwood in Withnail & I.Weirdly, in the last 18 months they’ve cribbed from The Curse of Fatal Death. Having ‘I’ll explain later...’ in the eighth Doctor books (and on several occasions, like it’s McGann’s catchphrase now) is like Jonny Morris fleshing out [fourth Doctor book] Festival of Death with the Doctor wearing celery.

My original artwork for this article.
It’ll take some time – the first books and comic strips in progress from January 2001 will just maybe get odd extra lines, flourishes added so they’re more McGann; tweaks that shoe the star of these crazy space adventures in his direction. It’s the epics we’ll read in the last days of ’01, moving on up to ’02 where the very structures and sorts of stories being told are structured around this essentially new Doctor’s own quirks and peculiarities.

People have been talking a bit about [eighth Doctor novel] The Burning ushering in a new age for the old Doc’. But compare that to the way that Season 26 (and the books that followed it) took Sylvester’s own performance, played to his strengths and thus shaped a Doctor of far more exciting range and scale than Time and the Rani ever dared suggest possible."

I'm not sure my predictions were quite right, but when McGann returned on screen last week, it was his audio companions he namechecked, not those of the books and comics.

Next episode: 2002

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Doctor Who: 2000

After episode 696 (Doctor Who): Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - A Man of Substance
First broadcast: 8.50pm on Saturday, 22 April 2000
<< back to 1999

"I wonder if you could help me?"
Tom Baker in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
In the long years that Doctor Who was off the air, the belief seemed to be that television viewing habits had changed and there was no longer an audience for family entertainment on a Saturday evening.

Instead of TV drama, it seemed, the general population were more interested in light entertainment that put ordinary people on screen, often live to make it more of an event. There was Noel’s House Party, The Generation Game, Stars in Their Eyes and the string of shows presented by Michael Barrymore or Ant and Dec.

Yet the BBC persisted in making shows for a Saturday evening that had a sci-fi / fantasy element: Bugs (1995-8), Crime Traveller (1997), Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (2000-1) and Strange (2002). I’d be tempted to include Jonathan Creek (1997- ) in that list, too.

Like Doctor Who, each of these shows tended to involve a peculiar, even outlandish, mystery and would then build up to a chase. Each had a certain tongue-in-cheek knowingness, a sense that the production teams didn’t expect us to take anything too seriously. (You see the same thing in reviews of sci-fi: a reviewer feels the need to tell us that they know the events depicted weren’t real.)

I really liked the revived Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). It had a good mix of the eerie and daft, with lead actors it was easy to warm to. It's also beautifully shot and directed. The last episode of the first season, A Man of Substance is particularly good - strange and unsettling, funny and sinister, with a ridiculous plot that it plays perfectly straight. It hinges on Marty Hopkirk having to choose between his friends and his every desire, and right to the end we're not sure what he'll decide. At the time, I thought it a perfect template for how Doctor Who might be done - not the plot, just the feel of it.

It's still a brilliant episode, but watching it again I'm surprised by several key elements: the heavy drinking, the sex, the whole blokey attitude. The show is riffing on the style and tone of the original Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), but watching it now it feels like having Gene Hunt in Life On Mars but without the moderating influence of Sam.

I said of 1991 that the New Adventures books were no different from Batman or James Bond at the time in being darker and more violent, and excluding children. This was simply how drama was done. In Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), I think there's a glimpse of what Doctor Who might have been like had anyone else brought it back to TV.

The belief was that there wasn't a family audience for TV drama on a Saturday night. Russell T Davies, though, knew that was wrong.
"Early on in the Doctor Who production process, Davies knew he had the Saturday night 7pm slot, and it informed the feel of the programme he was going to make. 'If you channel-hop on a Saturday night,' he says, 'you're up against the big Light Entertainment shows, like Ant and Dec, with a shiny black floor and a huge audience. With background music behind everything. They're phenomenally loud, those shows, and I believe that's what draws an audience. So we decided to make Doctor Who really noisy.'"
Next episode: 2001 

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Doctor Who: 1999

After episode 696 (Doctor Who): The Curse of Fatal Death
First broadcast: 12 March 1999
<< back to 1998

"How are things?"
Rowan Atkinson meets the Daleks
Dr Who & the Curse of Fatal Death
In June 1999, Doctor Who Magazine #279 spoke to six writers all working in popular telly about how, if asked, they would bring back Doctor Who. It's fascinating to read Gary Gillatt's "We're gonna be bigger than Star Wars" again today. Four of those writers would write for Doctor Who when it returned in 2005 - but not in the way they told DWM.

"'Well, it would have to be made on film,' [Russell T Davies] said, and probably with the Doctor trapped on Earth to save money. 'I don’t think you’d put a 50-minute film series on during Saturday teatime,' he suggested with almost as much prescience as Steve [Moffat]’s 'The core elements are a Police Box, a frock coat and cliffhangers.' On the other hand, who can disagree that 'The key ingredient is death,' and Russell closed with 'God help anyone in charge of bringing it back – what a responsibility!'


In fact, they were already working on getting Doctor Who back on TV. Russell's acclaimed eight-part drama Queer as Folk (first broadcast 23 February to 13 April 1999) included a regular character who was a Doctor Who fan, with clips from old episodes, jokes only fans would get and a cameo by the real prop of K-9.

On 12 March, a new Doctor Who adventure, The Curse of Fatal Death, was broadcast as part of Comic Relief on prime-time BBC One. The script was by Steven Moffat.


On 13 November, Mark Gatiss co-wrote and starred in three more comedy sketches about Doctor Who - one with him as the Doctor in a pastiche of the show from the 60s, another exploring how the show was first commissioned (something Mark explores again this week in An Adventure in Space and Time), and one with Peter Davison gamely playing himself.

All these productions - Russell's, Steven's and Mark's - fondly mocked the conventions of the old show show. For all Steven and Mark created new incarnations of the Doctor, their sketches were more about looking backward at what Doctor Who had once been as it was reviving it anew.

Except...

The Curse of Fatal Death is not a template for a new series. It's certainly not a manifesto for the way Steven runs the show now. It's full of things that worked as jokes because they were so unlike Doctor Who as we knew it.

Yet, they're all things that were central when the show returned: fart jokes, jokes about the sonic screwdriver as a phallus, the companion and Doctor explicitly in love, the companion's confused feelings about that after a regeneration, lots of stuff about the Doctor's mythic place in the universe... Most obviously of all, it embraces the daft fun of Doctor Who as a key part of its appeal.

I think there's something else, too. When the Master brings in an army of Daleks, the Doctor greets them with a pithy line: "How are things?"

The joke is that he's so casual, that his words sound so ordinary. It's not the way the Doctor has ever spoken before. But it will be.

Next episode: 2000

(Ian Stuart Burns has also written about that article in DWM.)

Monday, November 18, 2013

Doctor Who: 1998


After episode 696 (Doctor Who): The Final Chapter, part four
First published in Doctor Who Magazine #265, cover dated 3 June 1998
<< back to 1997
Nicholas Briggs is the Doctor!
DWM #265, 1998
Last week, we finally saw how the eighth Doctor died. About time, too.

When Doctor Who returned to TV in 2005, there were mutterings that Paul McGann had not been asked to film a regeneration, handing over to the new Doctor as Sylvester McCoy had done for him. Head writer Russell T Davies explained why not in an early episode of Doctor Who Confidential: a lesson learnt from the TV movie was that an old Doctor got in the way of establishing the new one.

Despite this sensible reasoning, there were still those who grumbled that without a handover we didn't know that Christopher Eccleston really was the ninth Doctor. We weren't offered proof until The Next Doctor (2008), when the Cybermen played clips of each of the first 10 Doctors in order.

(The Cybermen might not be the most reliable sources, but then Doctor Who has relied on the testimony of monsters before.)

Perhaps it didn't help matters that there had been other ninth Doctors already.

In 2003, the BBC's Doctor Who website announced its own ninth Doctor, with Richard E Grant starring in The Scream of the Shalka. In 1999, Rowan Atkinson played the ninth Doctor for Comic Relief. These two stories, too, did not show a regeneration from McGann, but one story did.

In 1998, Doctor Who Magazine's comic strip saw McGann regenerate into a body that looked a lot like Nicholas Briggs. Now best known as the voice of the Daleks, Nick had starred as the Doctor in a series of fan-made adventures released on audio, and 'his' Doctor had appeared in an earlier DWM comic strip, a future incarnation that the seventh Doctor bumps into.

If this Briggs Doctor was a fan in-joke, he was also never intended as a legitimate addition to the canon: four weeks later, we learnt he was an invention of the still very much alive eighth Doctor, a decoy to fool the villains.

Yet the trick only worked if readers could believe that DWM really was prepared to drop the eighth Doctor as the "current" incarnation. It would only do that, we'd think, if there was no hope we'd ever see McGann in the role again, and little chance of new TV Doctor Who any time soon. For all we'd stuck with the magazine in the years without the show, the gag played on our own lack of faith in Doctor Who's future on screen.

Looking back, I think 1998 was the lowest point in those years Doctor Who wasn't on TV. And then things suddenly changed - in ways we couldn't have known the significance of at the time, but which now clearly lay a path to the show's triumphant return.

Next episode: 1999

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Doctor Who: 1997

After episode 696 (Doctor Who)
31 August 1997
<< back to 1996

Unexpected Spiders on UK Gold
via the Who Gold site
If there was no new Doctor Who on telly for much of the 1990s, there was at least a chance to catch up on old Doctor Who via satellite channel UK Gold. For more than 10 years, it showed a complete story every Sunday morning - and I had a kind friend who would tape them for me. As a result, I saw the majority of Doctor Who from the 60s and 70s for the first time via UK Gold.

The Who Gold site is full of clips and information about that wondrous time, but one particular Sunday morning in 1997 gives an insight into the way the channel was run:
"In the early hours of Sunday 31st August 1997, Princess Diana was tragically killed in a car crash in Paris. On that morning, UK Gold were scheduled to broadcast The Armageddon Factor, the final story of The Key To Time season which featured Princess Astra (played by Lalla Ward) in scenes of great peril."
So, instead of a story in which a space princess is in peril (but isn't in a car chase and doesn't die), UK Gold showed Jon Pertwee's final adventure Planet of Spiders (with a 25-minute chase and the Doctor dying at the end). The story was broadcast with a caption telling viewers to turn over, and anyone who'd been following the Key to Time season for the previous five weeks had to wait more than two years to find out how it ended. (The commercial VHS of the story, released in June 1995, was no longer available to buy.)

Who Gold also boasts an interview with continuity announcer Glen Allen:
"I remember that day very well. Only that week’s editor (four editors were responsible for a week each per month) and I went into work. You got Planet of the Spiders purely and simply because that was the only six-parter we had left in the library. I remember lying on the floor checking under all the shelves in case we had anything else. In retrospect I'm not sure people would have been that offended about a fictional princess in an old sci-fi show.

We had to view every show that was going out that day to make sure it was safe. Two comedies had to go. One was a Jasper Carrott episode that had him talking about fast cars and 'Who wants to go at 100 miles an hour anyway, apart from Princess Anne' ... CUT. The other was an episode of Alas Smith & Jones which had Griff sat in the middle of a crushed car shouting 'Vorsprung Durch Technique'... CUT. Thinking back it was rather bizarre. I was just the voice of the channel, and suddenly I'm viewing and editing programmes and actually choosing what went on air!"
(Glen also has his own website.)

Next episode: 1998

Friday, November 15, 2013

Doctor Who: 1996

Episode 696: Doctor Who
First broadcast: 8.30 pm on Monday, 27 May 1996
<< back to 1995
Doctor Who Magazine
announces the new Doctor
Gosh. Yesterday afternoon, with almost no warning, BBC iPlayer put up a new mini-episode of Doctor Who, The Night of the Doctor – starring Paul McGann.



This is the second screen appearance of McGann's eighth Doctor (not including clips from his first appearance being used in other episodes). Watching it on the Dr's iPad, and then seeing Twitter and Tumblr explode, made me realise what a different age the Doctor Who television movie belongs to.

I first knew about it on 10 January 1996, when the Lancashire Evening Post announced McGann's casting as the Doctor on their front page, in a tiny box-out I just happened to spot. I was 19, living in Preston in my second year at university.

I didn't have a mobile phone – no one I knew did. There wasn't a computer in our house let alone any internet. If I knew anyone with an email address, I didn't know what it was. Instead, a nice friend from home (who was at another university) printed out Doctor Who news pages and sent them to me in the post so I could keep up with the “latest” news on the movie. As a result of that, I tracked down the computer rooms in my department and visited about once a week – which at that time felt like I was following developments closely.

Even then, Doctor Who Magazine was often the first place to learn what was really going as, as opposed to the rumour. It was often ahead of the game – and promised features and interviews from the set! But look at that first cover, with Paul McGann holding a... is that an ashtray? If it isn't, it at least looks like one. I can't see that getting past the brand team now.

These days, new Doctor Who gets broadcast round the world simultaneously. At the time, the news pages suggested that the television movie would be broadcast in the US in May, and then in the UK in the autumn. I remember enviously watching people online discuss their plans to fly to the States so they could watch the new episode. For me, buying the thing on video was going to be an extravagance.

Then the dates were fixed: the TV movie would premiere in the US on 14 May; it would be released on video in the UK the next morning and broadcast on 27 May. I read of shops that would open at midnight on the 15th so that fans could buy it straight away. The HMV in Preston was not one of them, so I went in the morning.

Preston town centre was a half-hour walk from my student house in Plungington. It was a typically grey, cold morning but I remember the itchy, shivery excitement as I made my way there. And the horrible, sinking feeling when there was no obvious display in the window. There was no obvious display inside the shop, either, and no sign of new Doctor Who in the new releases or sci-fi sections. I asked at the counter and they told me I'd got the date wrong.

I trudged to the computer room and found out what had happened. The BBFC had classified the television movie as certificate 15. The BBC chose to edit the offending scenes to get a more commercial 12 certificate, but that meant the video wouldn't be out for another week.

So, on the morning of Wednesday, 22 May I trudged back to HMV and at last picked up the video – there were posters in the window and a special cardbox display stand. I had lectures that morning, too, so couldn't watch it at once. And my friends Darren and Andy were interested enough to follow me back home. I think we watched it once in rapt silence and then again straight away.

I loved the TV movie. What surprised me, a week later when it was broadcast, was that so many other people tuned in, too. My then girlfriend's whole house delayed going out for the evening to watch it – and not out of any deference to me. My landlord rang later in the week about something, and asked if I'd seen it, again without knowing I was in any way a fan.

In fact, the only people I knew who didn't watch it were my parents, who managed five minutes before deciding it wasn't enough like the show they remembered. This I didn't learn for weeks: I think they were a bit sheepish anyway, but also it hadn't occurred to them that, being panel members of BARB, their switching off would affect the ratings.

My chum Joseph Lidster had a different experience:
"In May 1996 I was 18 and coming up to the end of the first year at university. I was a Doctor Who fan in that I bought the books and the magazine every month but it wasn't a huge part of my life. I didn't really know any other fans and, to be truthful, I was far too busy embracing student life (bottles of lager for A POUND!) to think about it a huge amount.

Then, Doctor Who Magazine ran a competition to go and see the TV movie on a big screen in London. I entered partly because I was excited about it coming back but mostly because I never won competitions so it didn't really matter. And then a letter came from Gary Gillatt. I got a letter from the actual editor of the actual Doctor Who Magazine!
And a ticket! To some place called BAFTA?

I couldn't believe it. It really didn't seem real. I'd only been to That London on school trips. It was miles from Carlisle where I was studying. And because I didn't have any friends who were into Doctor Who, and there was only one ticket anyway, it didn't seem feasible to think about going. I also had an exam the next day so I'd have to travel there and back in a day. So I wasn't going to go. Sensibly, I wasn't going to go. But that Doctor Who part of your brain isn't sensible. I had to go.

So I sorted it. I managed to scrape together enough money for the train and off I went. It's all a blur really. I remember loving the movie itself because it just seemed so modern. These days we take for granted Doctor Who being a modern thing but back then, even only seven years after the TV series had finished, it felt like a thing of the past. It looked like a thing of the past. And then I saw the TV movie and, yeah, it was bonkers and to this day I've no idea what happens at the end but then – and now – I still think it's absolutely brilliant. It's just simply so much fun. And that theme tune and title sequence on the big screen was really just amazing. I think I did whatever the 1996 version of squeeing was.

I can't remember much about my visit. I didn't really talk to anyone because I didn't know who they were. I spoke to Gary Gillatt (the actual editor of the actual Doctor Who Magazine!) afterwards and gave him some thoughts which he never used in the magazine. For which I have never forgiven him. I do remember some bloke in the audience asking me what I'd thought about it. He said he hadn't liked it so much because he'd thought the older Doctors were going to be in it. But, mostly, I just remember it being a mad brilliant night. Manic and a blur. Very much like the TV movie itself.

Oh, and I totally aced my exam the next day.

And now, in 2013, I'm 36. AND I HAVE JUST SEEN PAUL McGANN REGNERATE INTO JOHN HURT! As the 18 year olds today say – WTF?!"
(Joe even appears briefly in this BBC news coverage of the premiere. And weirdly, Joe and I are both now on the DVD of the TV movie, wittering on about why we love it.)

But the thing that's most different from now is what happened next: the gradual realisation, month on month, that the pilot wouldn't be picked up, that the BBC had thrown money and publicity at the television movie and it hadn't worked... Doctor Who wouldn't be returning.

Next episode: 1997

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Doctor Who: 1995

After episode 695 (Survival, part 3)
Up Above the Gods, published in Doctor Who Magazine #227 (cover dated 5 July 1995)
<< back to 1994
Up Above the Gods
Art by Lee Sullivan
via TARDIS data core
It's just so majestically wrong: Davros, dad of the Daleks, parked inside the TARDIS, having a chat with the Doctor. That mad juxtaposition - things together that shouldn't be - makes for a brilliant hook into the story, but one aimed squarely at fans.

Up Above The Gods is a single-episode, seven-page comic-strip from Doctor Who Magazine. It a smart, sophisticated story, the Doctor and Davros debating ethics and trying to outwit one another. It's written and drawn superbly, but a big part of the appeal is how much more you get from it if you know your Doctor Who.

Davros isn't just in any part of the TARDIS but the ivy-strewn cloister room last seen in the fourth Doctor story Logopolis. But instead of the fourth Doctor here, it's the sixth. If you know the room, and that the wrong Doctor's in it, there's an extra thrill.

The story itself is a follow-up to a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip from two years previously (Emperor of the Daleks). It sets up events in the TV stories Planet of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks, while it would also help to know the events of Revelation of the Daleks and Logopolis. The title is from a discussion between the Doctor and Davros in Genesis of the Daleks. Yes, all in seven pages.

That's not to say it's impenetrable to more casual fans. All those TV stories had been repeated on BBC Two in 1993 except Remembrance (released on VHS in 1993) and Logopolis (on VHS in 1992). But it rather assumes that the magazine's readers are fully engaged in repeats and releases from two years previously: it assumes a dedicated following.

You can see that, too, in the New Adventures books. Human Nature (published May 1995, and later voted the best of the range) is about the Doctor living as an ordinary human. John Smith is still a kind, brave and clever man, but when aliens attack he can't save the day. The emotional impact of the book hinges on our understanding of what the Doctor is and needs to be - again, knowing Doctor Who makes it more effective.

(That's why it could be adapted for the third series of the TV show, but wouldn't have worked so well in the first.)

Now, it might be argued that it made sense for Doctor Who Magazine to produce comic strips directed at the attentive fan. But it's striking, look back, how inaccessible Doctor Who was in 1995 to newcomers - younger ones, especially. The 1996 television movie was in pre-production at this time, cramming a script full of continuity references that would please the fans. In the first scene after the opening titles, it assumes viewers already know that the huge control room manned by Sylvester McCoy is housed inside the small police box. For a pilot for a new series, there's no concession to those not already in on the secret. (It also features the cloister room.)

But, again in 1995, one clever fellow dared ask if children might yet watch Doctor Who. You can read Gary Gillatt's adventure with Class 4G and the Zygons on his website.
"Today, with Doctor Who a TV powerhouse, we hear young voices much more frequently. But I think Class 4G had some profound things to say about what Doctor Who's priorities should be, and those observations are as true today as they ever were..."
Next episode: 1996

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Poirot's first case

Tonight, ITV shows Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, bringing to an end the series of adaptations starring David Suchet. Until last month I'd never read any Agatha Christie, but – prompted by Lucy's Worsley's history of British murder – I got my wise chum Robert Dick to recommend some. He had me start at the very beginning...

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) was Christie's first published novel and marked the first appearance of Hercule Poirot.
“Poirot was an extraordinary-looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost as incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police. As a detective, his flair had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day.”
Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), p. 23.
For a character Christie would still have appearing in new adventures more than 50 years later, it's striking that in this first appearance he's already “old” (p.59). [By The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Poirot has retired.]

The novel is set during World War One – so our first encounter with Poirot is soon after Sherlock Holmes' last bow. In fact, Poirot is compared to Holmes on page 11. Poirot is a refugee living with other Belgians in a small English village, but the story is narrated by another detective, Captain Hastings.

Hastings is an unreliable narrator, often wrong in judging character or making sense of clues – yet honest in his account about that wrongness. The effect of this dual assessment of each detail – by Hastings and by Poirot – is to encourage us as readers to play along. The text reproduces a map, a fragment of charred paper and a facsimile of the handwriting found on an envelope to help us play detective.

Just as in the Holmes stories, Poirot gives lessons in the deductive arts.
“Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”
Ibid., p. 80. 
“Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory – let the theory go.”
Ibid., p. 82.
“Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined – sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured – so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends.”
Ibid., p. 103. 
He's a strange little man, fussy and fastidious, straightening other people's ties and tie pins. It's this attention to detail – and to tiny incongruities – that makes him so good at nabbing crooks. But Poirot is not entirely in control: as the tension of the case affects him, he builds houses from playing cards to steady his nerves (p. 178). Then, when given a last, essential piece of evidence, he kisses Hastings on the cheeks and rushes off - scandalously “hatless” (p. 179).

Though Hastings often has fun at Poirot's expense and describes him looking ridiculous, he also greatly respects him and his methods. For much of the book he – and we – struggle to keep up with Poirot's “little grey cells”. Poirot can also have fun Hastings' expense, too:
“'Yes, he is intelligent. But we must be more intelligent. We must be so intelligent that he does not suspect us of being intelligent at all.' ...

There had been times when when I hardly thought that Poirot appreciated me at my true worth.

'Yes,' he continued., staring at me thoughtfully, 'you will be invaluable.' This was naturally gratifying...”
Ibid., p. 124.
Towards the end, there's quite a surprise when Poirot becomes the man of action:
“A chair was overturned. Poirot skipped nimbly aside. A quick movement on his part, and his assailant fell with a crash.”
Ibid., p. 190.
Yet there's little depth to Poirot: he's a series of fussy ticks. We learn very little about him or his background other than that he's highly thought of by the police in his own country; we don't even know the names or relationships of the other Belgians he's living with. His mannerisms – his way of slipping into French mid-sentence – make him a caricature.

This is also true of the other characters populating the story – wild young things, maiden aunts and bounders, larking about round a stately home. In fact, with posh, hapless Hastings narrating it reminded me most of all of a Wodehouse farce, only with a murder. There's little sense of reality; the death doesn't seem to affect anyone more than being a interesting puzzle.

In some cases, that light caricature becomes more sinister. One red herring concerns a spy, who Poirot refers to as “a Jew of course” (p.147) – then defends him for being a “patriot”, because, the detective appears to think, though the man in question has been naturalised for 15 years he cannot really be an Englishman. The suggestion is not of one bad Jew; it's all of them.

The ending, neatly, comes as a surprise when the murderer is exposed as someone we thought had been ruled out earlier on. Poirot then delights in explaining how the puzzle fits together, and there's a light-hearted ending as he promises that Hastings might get the better of him next time. The parlour game is over, though the implication is that the murderer will now hang.

It's fun and ingenious but I felt a little unsatisfied – even a little disturbed – that that is all it is.

Robert's next recommendation was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Kaiser Wilhelm vs the Gays

The Dr recommended me Philipp Blom's The Vertigo Years - Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914. It's an excellent, often funny, often harrowing account of the period, each chapter taking a calendar year and using one specific moment to explore broader themes.

Kaiser Wilhelm comes off particularly badly: a comic villain like Dick Dastardly. One chapter covers the scandal of his adviser and friend Philip of Eulenburg turning out to be gay, at a time when that was a serious criminal offence. The ensuing court case and revelations in the papers destroyed Eulenburg.
"While the journalist was mulling over the morality of wrecking a man's life for political gain, Kaiser Wilhelm himself was cruelly reminded of his abandoned friend in 1908, when his boyhood comrade, General Dietrich Hülsen-Haeseler, chief of the military cabinet, was entrusted with cleansing the Prussian officer corps of homosexuals in the wake of the Eulenburg affair. Hülsen-Haeseler appeared before the guests of a hunting party in the Kaiser's honour dressed 'in pink ballet skirts with a rose wreath and began to dance to the music'. Having finished his performance, the Count bowed to the applauding audience, and collapsed. General chaos ensued among the guests. Princess Fürestenberg, the hostess, wept uncontrollably and the agitated Kaiser was seen pacing up and down, but the doctor who had been hastily summoned could do nothing more than declare the performer's death by heart failure. When attention finally turned back to the general, rigor mortis had set in and it proved very difficult to get the late chief of the military cabinet out of his tutu and into more seemly military attire."

Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years - Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914 (2008), p. 178.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Doctor Who: 1994

After episode 695 (Survival, part 3)
Shakedown - Return of the Sontarans, premiered 1 December 1994
<< back to 1993
Susan and Ace?
Shakedown (1994)
Earlier this month, TV Choice gave a special award to Doctor Who for reaching 50. Peter Davison made a short speech:
"When Doctor Who was taken off the air in 1989, it seemed unlikely it would ever return - but we had forgotten about the fans, the people who had grown up watching and being inspired by the show."
A few years ago, I traced one thread of how that happened - starting in 1994.

Five years after the last episode had been broadcast, there was still no prospect of new Doctor Who on TV. Yet there was an audience for books, videos and magazines - a grown-up audience with disposable income. The Dreamwatch convention even produced its own original straight-to-video adventure, Shakedown  - which my friend Jason Haigh-Ellery worked on.
"‘Keith Barnfather had been offering [the convention] Downtime,’ says Haigh-Ellery. The script for this was by Marc Platt, and reunited several of the Doctor’s companions – a major selling point for fans. ‘But it just wasn’t ever going to get off the ground,’ Haigh-Ellery remembers. ‘That was nothing to do with rights but the availability of the actors. Kevin Davies heard about this, and said, “I’ve got this idea for a Sontarans story.”’

... The Sontarans would be just one way of drawing the fans to Shakedown, as the project was christened. The script would be by veteran Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks and the production could also use ‘name’ actors when casting its several human characters. Because these were new roles, actor availability was no longer a problem – if one former Doctor Who star could not make the proposed shooting dates, they could go to another. The new roles also appealed to the actors.

"Directed by Kevin Davies, Shakedown was shot on location at HMS Belfast, a former frigate docked on the south bank of the Thames, in the summer of 1994. The cast was largely culled from Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, and included Ace-actress Sophie Aldred in the role of Mari. The bitchy, cowardly character was specifically written to be a million miles from Ace.

‘It’s always lovely to be given something different to do,’ says Aldred. ‘Ace had been going a long time even then, and there’s only so much you can dig into her past. She’s had everything analysed, every part of her. So actually to play a different part and confound audience expectation is fantastic. I think that’s really a kind of carry-on from the TV series, where people like Sheila Hancock and Dinsdale Landen completely relished play baddies. It’s always more fun to play the baddie, let’s face it.’"

Ibid., p. 56.
"The project got moving quickly. ‘Within a couple of weeks,’ says Haigh-Ellery, ‘everything was signed, sealed and delivered. It was that fast.’ Gary Leigh was executive producer, with director Kevin Davies and composer Mark Ayres also producing. How did Haigh-Ellery get involved? ‘I’d done productions, I was really keen to do it and also I’m a businessman. I’d worked with Gary on his magazine so he trusted me. He said, “Can you help me out?” So I came in as associate producer.’ What is the role of an associate producer? ‘As I discovered on that shoot, it was to stop the executive producer from killing the director! It was quite fraught, as we were all very honest about in the Making of Shakedown video. I think the film is great, don’t get me wrong. We were doing a Terrance Dicks Doctor Who script by any other name!’

The production went over budget, but by this point Haigh-Ellery had got the family business into much healthier shape. ‘I was able to say to Gary Leigh, “Don’t worry, I’ll cover it.” It was good I had the money to do that.’ Yet it had been a long slog to reach this point. ‘That two weeks filming on Shakedown was my first holiday since 1988,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t think it was a holiday, but I did.’

How successful was Shakedown? ‘It made its money back and it’s still earning money today,’ says Haigh-Ellery. He was keen to start work on a follow-up project, but others did not share his enthusiasm. ‘Gary Leigh will say himself that he found Shakedown quite difficult,’ he continues. ‘We talked about Shakedown 2, and Gary was like, “Yeah, but I’m not doing it now.”’"

Ibid., p. 96
So Haigh-Ellery went it alone, commissioning Paul Cornell to write an original science-fiction drama, Phoneix Ryan, that he hoped would star Sophie Aldred. He was in negotiations with the Sci-Fi Channel to co-fund the project (as they had done on the PROBE series written by Mark Gatiss, which also starred characters and actors from Doctor Who).

Phoenix Ryan didn't happen, but as part of the negotiations Haigh-Ellery was required to set up a production company. So, on 21 June 1996 he formally registered company 03217457 - Big Finish Productions Limited.

We will speak more of Big Finish later.

Next episode: 1995

Saturday, November 09, 2013

Doctor Who: 1993

After episode 695 (Survival, part 3)
Thirty Years in the TARDIS, first broadcast 29 November 1993
<< back to 1992
It really is bigger on the inside...
Thirty Years in the TARDIS (1993)
What a joy Thirty Years in the TARDIS was - a celebration of Doctor Who that concentrated not on its worthiness but how it made us feel watching. At the time, it didn't look as if Doctor Who would ever return to our screens. It had been off the air for four years, a special anniversary story had stopped production almost as soon as it started, and Children in Need's Doctor Who / EastEnders crossover didn't exactly convince a mass audience that the show deserved resurrecting.

I love Dimensions in Time, but Thirty Years was something to be proud of as a fan. Director Kevin Davies worked wonders to achieve so much more than just a series of clips and contributors: it's full of monsters and special effects, and a sense of Doctor Who not just as something from the past but a series that could still deliver real thrills.

Best of all is a shot towards the end where a small boy enters the TARDIS. Despite what I've said before about Doctor Who no longer being for children, here's one discovering the main wheeze of the series in exactly the way that the audience did in the very first episode. But this time we follow behind him, moving from the police box exterior into the control room all in one single shot.

That magical effect had never been done on Doctor Who before, and wouldn't be done again (or at all in the series proper) until last year's Christmas special:



I think that's extraordinary: the very idea that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside is at the very heart of the show. It's so wildly ridiculous; yet in this trick shot it's there before our eyes.

I remember being amazed in 1996 that the television movie, with its massive budget, failed to include that effect with the other expensive set pieces. I looked out for it in the 2005 series - and then read in Doctor Who Magazine that Russell T Davies had hoped to feature it. There are good reasons why not: it's a relatively simple trick requiring a pair of locked-off cameras, but it requires a lot of setting up. The time it would eat up in a recording day simply made it impractical. (Last year's Christmas special did the legwork in CGI.)

It occurred to me, reading Russell's explanation, that it would be a simple enough trick to do in an audio. All I needed was enough dialogue in the scene to cover them walking from the door to the console, as the sound effects changed. So, entirely for my own self-indulgence, I wrote it into the play I was writing at the time: The Settling, delivered in October 2005.

The scene is Drogheda in 1649, some time after Oliver Cromwell has massacred the town:
MARY:
All names have meanings. I’ll probably choose something loyal to the king. Charles the second, I mean.

DOCTOR WHO:
Here we are.

HE FISHES FOR THE TARDIS KEY.

MARY:
You keep supplies in this? For our journey?

ACE:
Yeah, sort of. So what names would mean loyalty?

AS DOCTOR WHO SPEAKS, HE OPENS THE DOOR AND – ALL IN THE SAME SCENE – THE WOMEN FOLLOW HIM INTO THE TARDIS. NB: THIS IS THE ‘MCGANN” TARIS INTERIOR FX.

DOCTOR WHO:
"Charles", obviously, for a boy. For a girl… "Elizabeth" would say "monarchy". Though it’s also a favourite of the Puritans. Cromwell’s mother, his wife and his favourite daughter are all called Elizabeth.

DOCTOR WHO WORKS THE CONSOLE.

ACE:
That’d be diplomatic, then. [BEAT] Oh yeah. Mary, should’ve warned you about – [this place.]

DOCTOR WHO:
(KINDLY) It’s all right. You’re safe in here.

ACE:
Yeah, but mind the mess. We’ve been redecorating.

MARY:
(AWED) I can feel it! I can feel it all at peace! It’s like... like a church. You worship here?

DOCTOR WHO:
Not exactly. It’s our home. Ace, this is going to be tricky. I could do with your help…

PRESSING BUTTONS ETC.

ACE:
Right.

PRESSING BUTTONS ETC.

Releasing the handbrake…

THE TARDIS DEMATERIALISES.
Doctor Who: How the 
Doctor Changed my Life
cover by Alex Mallinson
(Director/producer Gary Russell suggested it should be the vast TARDIS interior from the TV movie, this being the point when the Doctor redecorates. I wish I'd thought of it first.)

That shot from Thirty Years was also in my mind when I commissioned Alex Mallinson for the cover of a book of stories by first-time authors: How the Doctor Changed my Life.

Why does that effect so get to me? There's a particular thrill when a companion takes their first step into the TARDIS, and finds that an ordinary-looking police box contains a whole impossible world.

In that trick shot, just once in all 50 years of the series, we get to take that step with them.

Next episode: 1994

Friday, November 08, 2013

Doctor Who: 1992

After episode 695 (Survival, part 3)
Resistance is Useless, first broadcast 3 January 1992
<< back to 1991
Confessions of an anorak
Resistance is Useless (1992)
Who was Doctor Who for?

As I've argued so far, by 1992 it was no longer on telly, no longer for children and - in the New Adventures books - being written for and by fans. I was thrilled by those books for their bold take on Doctor Who and the feeling I got from reading them (and pitching my own paltry efforts to the poor editorial staff) of being part of a community.

But not everyone shared that excitement. Plenty of fans didn't like the books: indeed, editor Peter Darvill-Evans felt moved to defend the range in Doctor Who Magazine #200 (cover dated 9 June 1993):
"I've just received another letter of complaint. 'Why are the New Adventures so awful?' is the opening line..."
In the letters pages of DWM, and in the ever more professional-looking fanzines, there were earnest debates and essays about the relative merits of the range and what constituted proper Doctor Who.

Though new adventures for the Doctor were limited to books and comic strips, he was then suddenly back on TV. On 3 January 1992, BBC Two broadcast Resistance is Useless as a lead-in to a series of repeats of old Doctor Who. Nowadays we're used to clips shows and Doctor Who being repeated but at the time this was very unusual: it was the longest series of repeats in 10 years.

Yet while the Five Faces season of repeats in 1981 - and the Monsters repeats in the 1980s - had been aimed at a mass audience of general viewers, the 1992 repeats seemed to target a more select group.

It's weird watching Resistance is Useless now: the clips themselves are full of excitement: monsters, deaths and strangeness, the Doctor being brave and funny. There's a madcap mix of the scary and daft that makes up much of Doctor Who. The programme does a great job of selling the prospect of full episodes, even if those episodes are nearly 30 years-old and in ropey black and white.

But, undercutting the actual evidence of the thrilling nature of Doctor Who, the clips are presented by a croaky-voiced anorak, imparting nuggets of trivia.
"Everyone knows that TARDIS is an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions [sic] In Space but not many people know why this Type 40 TARDIS, which the Doctor stole from the Time Lords, is shaped like a police telephone box. Well, that's due to a malfunction of the chameleon circuit which enables it to change its shape and blend in with its surroundings. It jammed in London in 1963, the date of the first episode. It's interesting to note that a horse named Call Box won a race at Doncaster on that very day."
The implication is that Doctor Who appealed chiefly to dreary nerds.

That same presumption seems to be there in the BBC Videos of the time. Doctor Who sold well on VHS, often appearing in the top 10 charts, competing well against movies. But who did the people producing the videos think they were selling them too?

In March 1992, The Pertwee Years offered tantalising clips and three episodes from the third Doctor's era - at a time when it seemed impossible that all his episodes would one day be available to buy. It includes an episode from the story Inferno - one of my brother Tom's favourites.

In it, the Doctor steps sideways in time to an England ruled by dictatorship, and meets sinister versions of his friends Liz and the Brigadier. The exterior scenes shot round the Kingsnorth industrial estate have a particular, eerie bleakness. But (as Tom pointed out to me) the episode chosen for the video - episode 7 - shows little of this atmospheric stuff: we glimpse the alternative Liz and are then back to reality.

Why choose this episode? It's the least atmospheric, exciting and strange of the whole story. But, as Jon Pertwee says on the tape, it's of interest because it includes the final appearance of the original TARDIS control console prop. I'm sure the anorak would approve.

I don't mean to criticise the people who produced these videos and programmes: they made judgements based on the perceived market. As we saw last time, the audience for Doctor Who had got older and more niche. If these teens and grown-ups were going to justify time and money spent on a daft old family show, perhaps it's no wonder they took it rather seriously, and mined it for ever more trivia.

At least, that's what I think I was doing at the time. My name first appeared in Doctor Who Magazine in 1992 (alongside Tom Spilsbury who is now editor):
Me and Tom Spilsbury in the letters page of
Doctor Who Magazine #186 (1992)
I glimpse in that letter an oleaginous teen trying to get in with the grown-ups. That painful eagerness to please is also there in the 'stories' I wrote at the time - I still have a box of them, but no, you're not getting a look. They're not exactly stories anyway, as any plot has been squeezed out by all the references to past Doctor Who adventures, grown-up science-fiction and other books I thought of as worthy. I genuinely thought the more clever references I crammed in, the better the story got - but I was being semiotically thick (sorry).

I was so keen to win acceptance and justify my sticking with Doctor Who that I rather lost track of its appeal in the first place. What I wasn't writing, what it never seemed to occur to me to write until years later, was stories that were scary and exciting and fun.

Nightshade
by Mark Gatiss
- via Virgin Territory
But if did occur to Mark Gatiss. His first Doctor Who story, the novel Nightshade, was published in August 1992.
"The book moves at a cracking place, full of drama. It’s built up of dialogue and action sequences, so reads like the novelisation of a TV story. It’s brief compared to many of the later books – only 228 pages – and keeps the reader on tenderhooks right until the end. The fact that it’s set in the days up to Christmas 1968 lends a significant atmosphere of invaded cosiness, as well as establishing a strong sense of time and place."
(Thanks to Jonathan Morris for the scan from DWM.)

Next episode: 1993

Monday, November 04, 2013

Dylan and Doyle


I had a lovely weekend in Swansea as the guest of the Dylan Thomas Centre for their Doctor Who Day on Saturday. Saw lots of chums, my friend Chris arrived with a huge box of tiffin, and I got to meet Annette Woollett - who played Adelaide in Horror of Fang Rock.

As well as getting us to witter on about our typing, event co-ordinator Leslie was keen to find a connection between Dylan (the locals all seem to call him "Dylan", not "Thomas", which I found shockingly over-familiar) and Doctor Who. We managed to argue that the series has plenty of poetic language and a poetic sensibility for seeing the everyday from a new perspective... Then there was pizza and whisky.

Despite knowing better than to attempt trains on a Sunday, I plodded slowly home yesterday via diversions and delays, but had a nice old natter with Matthew Kilburn and got some typing done. Then, because there were more diversions and delays in London, I took a scenic route and so passed the house in Tennison Road where Arthur Conan-Doyle lived at the time he killed Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur-Conan Doyle's house
in Tennison Road, south London
Blue plaque on Arthur Conan-Doyle's house