Doctor Who Series 1: “Lots of planets have a north”

While it seemed that no one at the BBC cared about Doctor Who during the ‘90s, there were some committed souls out there who wanted to see the show come back. It took a change at the top in early part of the century for that to finally come to fruition. A lot of the credit has to go to Russell T. Davies, the Queer as Folk creator and lifelong fan who spearheaded the 2005 revival.

Nearly 10 years on, it’s a lot easier to look back with clear eyes on the Davies era. Doing that reveals that – like most of the show’s 51-year run – it’s a mix of the great, the good and the “what the?”

It’s also interesting to look at Christopher Eccleston’s performance from a distance. As good as the actor is at his craft, he rarely seems entirely comfortable in the role. I don’t know how much of this has to do with his issues on the show (to their credit, Eccleston and Davies have never talked about what caused the actor to leave after one season) or just never getting under the skin of his character.

Rose

One thing the new series has done is rehab the role of the companion. Billie Piper’s Rose finishes the work started in the 1980s by Ace, and provides the Doctor with a far more realistic partner than in the past. That’s all on display in the dynamic new series opener, which avoids the mistakes of the TV movie. We see all of this from Rose’s perspective, as she moves from intended victim of the Autons (Yay! Robert Holmes in the house) to a scrappy investigator to someone who saves the Doctor at a moment in need. Her reward? Travels in time and space, of course. We also get Mickey, Jackie and a lower-class British vibe that is light years from most of the show’s history.

The End of the World

First off, Rose and the Doctor head into the far future (like 5 billion years into the future) and meet up with some oddball aliens (including a bunch of sentient trees) and uncovers a plot by the very last human (Cassandra, a hunk of flat skin and a brain that is voiced by Zoe Wanamaker) to fry everyone up in the death throes of the Solar System. It’s silly stuff, but does have goofy charms – and the revelation that the Doctor is alone in the Universe, as all of the other time lords are dead.

The Unquiet Dead

Mark Gatiss joins in the new Who fun for the first time with a largely entertaining trip to 19th-century Cardiff. It’s Christmas and Charles Dickens (Simon Callow; the new show is getting some heavy hitters right out of the gate) is in the house. Of course, that means we’ve got a haunting – in this case by an gaseous alien life form called the Gelf. The Doctor is all together too trusting, and that leads to near disaster. We get typical Gatiss humor, and typical Gatiss loose plotting that makes the ride a bit uneven. Still, the chemistry between Eccleston and crew is great, especially with Callow and Eve Myles, who so impressed the producers that she got cast in a lead role in spin-off show Torchwood (I may take a look at this in the future, though I may not be able to sit through the terrible, terrible final season).

Aliens of London/World War Three

Well, good things come to an end – like the strong start to the revival season. These episodes were uneven when first broadcast and have just gotten worse as time has gone on. Davies mistakes children’s show for juvenile, leaving us with the literal stink of a bunch of farting aliens. There’s also a pig alien that is just… oh, just so bad. (On the upside, future Torchwood cast member Naoko Mori shows up as well). Eccleston ricochets around the whole piece, unable to convincingly link up the manic and serious sides of his character. Mickey and Jackie are back, and provide some fun, as does Penelope Wilton, making her first appearance as Harriet Jones (M.P. for Fly dale North, of course). Still, usually when I make a pass through the episodes of this season, I give these two a pass.

Dalek

I don’t give this one a pass, ever. The first classic episode of the new series, it features a story Robert Shearman adapted from a Big Finish audio he had written, Jubilee (it was this fact that first got me interested in the Big Finish world). Set in the far future of 2012, the story involves an ultra rich collector and his prize possession: a Dalek. It turns out to be the last Dalek in creation, as they were thought to be all destroyed in the Time War. The first scene between the Doctor and the Dalek is brilliant, as the anger that has bubbled under the surface of our hero finally gets to come out and he makes the decision to kill it on the spot (after learning that it’s gun is not working).

Rose mucks it all up, of course. She not only bonds with the Dalek, but also touches it. That bit of time-travel energy is enough for the creature to regenerate, sucker his torturer to death and go on a killing rampage. Despite murdering hundreds of people, Rose somehow bonds with the pepper pot (really the main flaw here), but the story moves along so quickly – and the final confrontation is so loaded with emotion – that is easy to overlook that.

At story’s end, they take young Brit Adam with him. It won’t turn out well.

The Long Game

This is a pretty murky episode, with a lot of ideas and action presented, but lacking a real cohesive reason to exist. What’s good? Simon Pegg shows up as The Editor, a slimy collaborator with the aliens who have subjugated humanity. New companion Adam turns out to be a dud, and is stranded at home with a doorway thingy in his brain. The other elements are interesting – like how the aliens are manipulating the news to keep humanity docile – but aren’t explored nearly enough to really make them interesting.

Father’s Day

Here’s the emotional heart of the season, as Rose travels back to the day in 1987 when her father was killed. She never knew him, and just wants to have someone there when he dies. Of course she interferes, which wrecks absolute havoc with reality. The Tardis is gone. Rose, the Doctor and the survivors of a wedding (including Rose in baby form) are trapped in a church. Rose and her father – wonderfully underplayed by Shaun Dingwall – get a few short hours to meet and bond, before Pete makes the decision to set things right by sacrificing himself. All in all, a gorgeous episode from Paul Cornell, who would be back to write more.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

Hmm, Steven Moffat. I wonder whatever happened to him? Yes, the future showrunner makes his first appearance as a writer in these Hugo winning episodes. It has all the hallmarks – creepiness created by the everyday (in this case, a child in a gas mask; well, that would be everyday in World War II), dollops of sharp humor, and a twisty plot that doesn’t fully come together until the end. We also get another future Torchwood star this time out – in this case, it’s Captain Jack Harkness. John Barrowman was made to be on this show, and his omnisexual creation provides a much needed breath of fresh air near the tail end of the season.

Boom Town

“What are you captain of, the innuendo squad?” Mickey asks Capt. Jack at the beginning of this episode. That’s about as good as it gets here, in this flabby piece that tries to dig into the morality of the Doctor’s actions and his habit of leaving things before the clean-up starts. Sadly, this means we get a returning Slitheen, who has somehow managed to rise up to be mayor of the city. Anyway, they capture her (OK, the chase is pretty funny) and before bringing her to justice on her home world, the Doctor gives her a chance for dinner and to plead her case. She wonders if the Doctor can morally send her to her doom (her planet has the death penalty). An interesting idea, but there’s not a lot of depth or logic to her arguments. It only gets worse as she turns on them (well, duh) and is only defeated by a literal deus ex machina – as the heart of the Tardis opens and regresses her back to the egg.

Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

You know what I hate more than farting aliens? Game shows fought to the death. I especially hate game shows fought to the death centered on programs from the early 2000s, which now look horribly, horribly dated. So the first two-thirds of this episode are pretty hard to watch, but once we get beyond that, the intrigue really starts up. There are a few mysteries at play, as the Doctor tries to uncover what is controlling the Earth via the games. And then there’s the title of the episode. Those words have been haunting the duo throughout the season – what could they mean?

The first answer comes at the tail end of the episode. We think Rose has been killed in a deadly game of the Weakest Link. Instead, she has been transported to… a Dalek fleet.

The second answer comes in the second part of the episode. After a daring rescue and a meeting with a barking bad (even for a Dalek) Emperor, the Doctor goes to work in an effort to stop the massive invasion fleet. The few remaining souls on the game station make a stand, dying to the implacable advance of the Daleks. We see the end of Lynda with a “Y,” who is a companion who could have been; and then Capt. Jack.

The Doctor forces Rose back to Earth, but she is able to get into the heart of the Tardis, absorb it all and save the Doctor, destroy the Daleks, bring Jack back to life (more on that in Torchwood) and is ready to burn up before the Doctor (finally!) kisses her and absorbs it back. Along the way, Rose sends the "Bad Wolf" message back through time (you couldn't have just sent a note?) so, I guess that's answered and done. Though it will provide one of the best moments of the later David Tennant years, but more of that when it comes.

Anyway, all the energy in the Doctor triggers a regeneration, as our Doctor with the big ears and angular face turns into David Tennant.

Doctor Who The Lost Years: Here's a great idea, let's make the Doctor half human

Doctor Who left the air in 1989, not to return until 2005. During those years, there were occasional blips – rumors of a movie here and there – but little official action.

I was 20 when the show went off the air and 36 when it returned. There was a lot of time in between as I started on my career, moved house several times, and basically got on with my life.

I never lost my love during those years, though the interaction was not like it had been in the 1980s. The show was harder to find on TV, so it came down to the occasional video purchased (I had a copy of The Tomb of the Cybermen when it was finally made available), or spin off novel read. It wasn’t until the new show was announced in 2003 that my interest started to spike again.

So, apart from videos, novels and Big Finish (if they knew about it), what did fans have that was new and official during these years? Not much

1993: Dimensions in Time

For the 30^th anniversary, all viewers got (and in those pre Youtube days, it was basically those in Britain) was a 15-minute special broadcast during the annual Child in Need fundraiser on the BBC. It’s pretty awful. A bevy of old Doctors – the five survivors and the disembodied heads of Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell – teamed up with some companions on the Eastenders set to do battle with the Rani (oh no!) and some folks stuffed into classic monster costumes. None of this makes any sense, and the need to stuff so many people into a short time span means no one really gets a moment to be themselves. But hey, it originally was in 3D.

1996: Doctor Who: The Movie

There’s a pretty tortured history behind the making of this TV film/backdoor pilot, but the end result is a frustrating mess. As this was an American (Fox) coproduction, it was filmed in Vancouver, with a cast made up mainly of American/Canadian actors.

A key problem? Fans on both sides of the Atlantic tuned into the show because of its essential British vibe. Putting the Tardis in (faux) San Francisco just feels wrong. Also, that means we get Eric Roberts as the Master. Roberts can be a good actor. He isn’t here. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but he made me miss Anthony Ainley.

Beyond that, the show was far too steeped in Doctor Who lore for a new audience. Within the first ten minutes, there was more backstory than the opening of Dune. There are Time Lords, Daleks, the Master and Sylvester McCoy sipping tea (and not wearing the question-mark sweater; yes!) tossed at the audience all at once. Then Sylvester gets shot and transforms into Paul McGann. So our lead actor has been switched out in the first act. No wonder American audiences didn’t latch onto this reboot. In fact, one reason the new series started without a regeneration was because of the bad vibes from here. Best to start the show fresh and bring in the backstory as you go along. (The missing regenerations would finally be seen during  the 50^th anniversary episodes.)

McGann is the best thing going on here. He has a classic fussiness that fits in well with the history of the Doctors. His character – a bit pompous, but also loaded with potential of fun – is only hinted at here. It would take Big Finish’s audio plays to finally bring the character into his own. And when you listen, you don’t have to see the Lord Byron wig McGann was saddled with in the TV movie

2003: Scream of the Shalka

While McGann only had one official outing on the show, he is at least part of continuity. Richard E. Grant’s animated time on the Tardis in this web series has been relegated to a side story; an official alternative history if you will. At one time, the hope was that these Flash animations could turn into a new Doctor Who series. Instead, it is just a footnote.

Again, there’s some good here. Grant (who had played a version of the Doctor in the spoof Curse of the Fatal Death, scripted by future showrunner Steven Moffat) struggles for a time with his character, which fits in well with the back story – an isolated Doctor doing the bidding of the Time Lords with only a robot version of the Master (voiced by Derek Jacobi; now that’s a good idea for someone to play the character…) as company. As the story develops, the Doctor loosens up, as so does Grant. By the end, there’s a new companion, the hordes of evil have been defeated and the future looks bright.

Mind you, before the show was ever broadcast, the announcement came that Doctor Who was coming back for real to TV. For the creators of this – longtime fans all – that was a beautifully horrible announcement. Their efforts had been truncated, but the Doctor would live on where he belonged…

Next: it’s the Chris and Billie show

Doctor Who Season 26: Ace for the win

The darker Doctor Who under Sylvester McCoy continues through his final season – he even changes jackets from white to brown (alas, he is still stuck with the question-mark sweater). The season also points to some intriguing directions the show could have taken if there had been a season 27. Some of these ideas did finally come to fruition – but not until 2005.

Battlefield

Here’s a rousing start to the season, with the Doctor as Merlin, Ace as the Lady of the Lake, and the Brig coming back for one last go on Doctor Who. (Nicholas Courtney would never appear on the revised series, though his character is mentioned a few times. He would show up on the spin-off Sarah Jane Adventures.) The plot involves cross-dimensional baddies invading a small part of the English countryside, bent on destruction. There’s also a nuclear weapon for fun (and to make some less-than-subtle political points). Oh, and Bessie – the Third Doctor’s beloved roadster – makes an appearance. Yay!

Ghost Light

The rest of the year is given over to a loosely connected trilogy of “Ace” stories, allowing us to dig pretty deep into one of the Doctor’s companions. Hey, it only took 26 years to get to this point. Ghost Light travels to Victorian England and to a haunted house that frightened the young Ace so much she burned it down. 

What follows is an absolutely confounding story that involves aliens, evolution, and a lot of mucking about inside the house. The patience is paid off somewhat in interesting performances and some startling moments, but it still makes my head hurt everything I watch it and try to work out exactly what’s happening.

The Curse of Fenric

And here we get the template for the modern Doctor Who. Don’t believe me? A companion with a troubled relationship with her mother travels back in time, and meets the infant version of that mother (similar to Rose meeting her self in Father’s Day). The plot involves the time-traveling future of humanity mucking about in the past (the Master trilogy in David Tennant’s second season) trying to claim the Earth as their own. We even get a troubled historical figure, though in this case they’ve disguised that a bit. The brilliant Dr. Judson is an analog of Alan Turing, with the real scientist’s sexual orientation transformed into a crippling injury. Some things were too hot to handle in the 1980s.

Underneath the story – time traveling future humans attacking a community in World War II Britain – is Ace, who confronts not only her own past and relationship with her mother, but her very faith in the Doctor. To eventually defeat the baddies, the Doctor has to break Ace’s faith in him. It’s a terrifying, heartbreaking moment – but one that allows Ace to be stronger on the other side. There’s even a final, cleansing swim to wrap it all up.

Survival

And here’s the end that, like so many stories in this era, is a collection of good ideas shortchanged by execution. Let’s take care of the troubles first. This is a story about alien cat predators kidnapping youth in Ace’s hometown for a hunt. They aren’t frightening. Instead, the faux fur costumes make them look like rejects from a Puss in Boots convention. Then there’s an animatronic cat that is convincing for a millisecond. Sadly, it’s on screen for long stretches of time (the real cats hired for the series turned out to be too finicky and refused to cooperate on camera).

If you can look past all of that, there’s plenty to like. The script, by playwright Nona Munro, shows a sophistication, reality and depth rarely seen in the original run of the program (another way this season presages the revival). Ace’s journey wraps up back in her dull London home, and she is able to not just cope but help her surviving friends escape their cat trouble. There are good guest performances throughout. And the Master shows up for the first time in years, in a new muted costume and a performance that was a bit less than over the top from Anthony Ainley.

Knowing that the show was unlikely to return, the producers were able to slip a final speech for Sylvester as a voice over at the end, giving him better final lines than poor Colin Baker (“carrot juice”):

There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke, and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace — we’ve got work to do!

Next time: the 16-year wait, or “why is Eric Roberts playing the Master?”

Doctor Who Season 25: "I've even got your socks"

Doctor Who may have died a slow death at the tail end of the 1980s, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t folks working their tails off to make the best show they could under extreme circumstances. This included writers will to take chances, directors pushing the limitations of 1980s British TV, and the two regulars (Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred) willing to examine the depths of their characters.

A key cog to all of this was script editor Andrew Cartmel, a young turk who was interested in both returning the Doctor to his roots and pushing the show forward. A lot of the trapping that had marked the last decade of the show disappeared. The Time Lords were never seen during these years. Most of the stories introduced new villains and monsters. The Doctor took a decided turn to the dark side.

Not all of it worked, but the last two seasons are certainly the most intriguing of the entire decade.

Remembrance of the Daleks

A lot of the innovations “introduced” in the revised series can trace their roots these McCoy episodes, including several moments here. The most iconic – well, it would be if anyone would bloody well remember it – is the levitating Dalek finally working its way up a flight of stairs in pursuit of the Doctor.

This a glorious story from beginning to end. The Doctor is seriously bad ass (he essentially destroys Skaro at the end; hope the Thalls have moved to a better neighborhood), as is Ace, who takes out a pepperpot with a turbocharged baseball bat.

It’s also an anniversary episode, with the action taking place a few weeks after the events of An Unearthly Child. We return to the Coal Hill School (with a book about the French Revolution sitting there in the chemistry lab) and even the original junkyard (though misspelled here; oops).

Beyond that, the story of competing Dalek forces – and fascists on the ground – returns us to the themes that Terry Nation brought forward in the very first Dalek episode. Even the unnecessary presence of Davros doesn’t ruin it.

The Happiness Patrol

This is probably the most controversial serial in the classic series, mainly down to the strange brightly-colored robot, The Kandy Man, and the not-all-that-veiled references to Margaret Thatcher and late 1980s politics.

In a nutshell, Terra Alpha is a place where being sad is illegal. Lovers of walks in the rain and the blues are carted off to be re-educated or worse. The Doctor and Ace arrive in this surreal situation and proceed to muck it up, tearing down the government over the course of a long night.

The story and acting are fine, but the design eventually lets down its side of the bargain. This is a show that screams for a completely surreal look (Terry Gilliam’s Brazil has been mentioned as an inspiration) that just doesn’t come to life.  It’s a shame, as it is a perfect example of McCoy’s Doctor otherwise, quietly manipulating people to do his bidding and to come out with the solution he wanted all the while.

Silver Nemesis

While the Time Lords are thankfully absent in the Sylvester McCoy era, Time Lord lore is not. In fact, there was an extensive back story that made the Doctor the third leg of the society, along with Rassilon and Omega. Little of this came through in Silver Nemesis (though it did play a part in later Virgin New Adventure novels), but the sense of the Doctor as a very powerful being did. In fact, author Kevin Clarke worked with the unsaid assumption that our hero was actually God.

Now, I don’t think this is a good way to go for any adventure story – an all-powerful creature isn’t really all that dramatic – but it does play into the worker-behind-the-scenes vibe of this season. Here, he has a troupe of Cybermen, some neo-Nazis, and a time-traveling witch that he can play off each other. It ends with more mass destruction, as an entire Cyber fleet gets offed in a particularly bad special effect. The whole thing falls apart in the final episode, but it had been a good ride up until that point.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

This doesn’t get off to a good start, as we have the Ringmaster of the Psychic Circus doing a little tap dance – and then rapping. Rapping was never good on TV in the 1980s (or really that much since) and especially not on British TV.

The story does get better, but there are moments when the ambition of the story can’t match the limitations of the time. In a series always one step from the abyss, this serial was particularly fraught. After location filming was done, their studio was shut down because of asbestos. The production team improvised, hired a tent and shot the rest of it in a parking lot. That stress shows through, but there are some strong bits here, from delving deeper into Ace’s background to an on-screen fanboy who proudly declares that he even has a pair of Psychic Circus socks (note: I have three pairs of Doctor Who socks).

It also gives McCoy a chance to show off his clowning skills. In the finale, he faces off with the Gods of Ragnarok, ancient deities who thirst for continual entertainment. He holds them off long enough for his plan to come to fruition, saved by Ace, a werewolf girl and the remaining circus denizens.

Disaster averted once again, the series was ready to head off for a new season. Everyone was unaware this would be the last.

Doctor Who Season 24: Our hero, the fool

The Sylvester McCoy era gives us a new version of the title theme and a new, computer-aided credit sequence. It’s the best we’re going to get from the show for a bit. Why, because the season opens with…

Time and the Rani

Pip and Jane Baker finish their trilogy of terror with a particularly pointless adventure centered on kidnapping brilliant minds from across the galaxy for a nefarious plot so uninteresting that I don’t even remember the details a short time after seeing the episode. Mel screams a lot (I mean, a lot; she could break glass) and we have some rather noble looking guest actors forced to be extremely silly as the sad-sack aliens (really, the Rani should dominate these losers).

And then there’s McCoy. He has far from an auspicious start, as the fired Colin Baker (rightfully so) refused to return for a regeneration episode. So… Syl puts on a curly wig and slips into the Technicolor vomit coat and plays Doctor #6 for a few moments, regenerating after apparently falling down in the Tardis (concussions are a danger, but still…)

It doesn’t get much better as the show develops. McCoy spends the first series – much of the first season really – finding the balance for his character. What eventually comes from this – a comedic surface that hides a real darkness – is brilliant. It isn’t there yet. Instead, we get lots of maliprops, the first appearance of the spoons, and just a lot of clowning. It’s enough to make you want to scream – but not like Mel, never like Mel.

Paradise Towers

The second outing is better, in part because author Steven Wyatt used a J.G. Ballard novel (High Rise) as inspiration. The decaying housing tower is full of plenty of oddities, from the young women who have arranged themselves into gangs (“Red Kangs, Red Kangs, Red Kangs are best!), to the elderly “rezzies” who are looking for a good meal – which would include Mel on the dinner plate.

This gets let down in key areas. First, the props and effects are definitely not “special,” with a stunningly feeble monster robot thing that wouldn’t scare the world’s most skittish mouse. Then there is Richard Briers, who turns in truly one of the worst guest turns ever on Doctor Who, stripping really any kind of menace from the script.

McCoy improves here, toning down the performance a bit (just a bit) and showing some Troughton-like tendencies. And his tipping his hat to a water-pump-like thing with a quick “you never know” still makes me laugh.

Delta and the Bannermen

Nothing makes me laugh in this tone deaf disaster, loaded with bad versions of ‘50s rock tunes, badly done American secret-service agents, bad intergalactic tourists, and a bunch of heroes who all go green by the end (not in a recycling or Hulk kind of way either). Basically, space tourists land on Earth in the 1950s. Spend time at a Welsh holiday camp. Bad guys arrive, kill all the tourists and eventually get defeated by the Doctor and the green brigade. Did I mention this is played for fun? Yep, a show where dozens of innocents are disintegrated is mostly played as a farce. Gah.

Dragonfire

Two significant things happen here. First, we lose Mel (hurray!) and we gain Ace (double hurray!). There are some things of interest in Mel’s backstory (she was a computer programmer, you know), but Bonnie Langford was never particularly convincing and her chemistry with McCoy was nil. There was the screaming, too, but I just don’t want to think about that anymore.

Ace was everything Mel was not. Cool. Modern. Tough. Angry. Ace never met a problem that couldn’t be solved with explosives. Her first outing showcases all of that, as she gets ensnared with the Doctor, Glitz (back for one more go), and a search for an ancient treasure.

The episode also has – uniquely among the 24^th-season episodes – a convincing villain. As Kane, Edward Peel plays the role as cold as the subzero environment the character needs to survive. His temptation of Ace makes for a compelling early scene, while his backstory has enough pathos in it to make the character truly compelling.

At story’s end, Mel goes off with Glitz (for no reason really, except they needed to get the character out of the way) and Ace joins the crew. We’re ready for an anniversary season – and the best one the show has seen for quite some time.