Well, that’s it. Almost 3 years after finally starting to
watch (or, in the case of missing episodes, of which in Troughton’s case there
are far, far too many, listen to)
every episode of the original series in order, today, I have finally completed
that task with Survival, Part Three. And, to be honest, I’m feeling a little
sad about that. Oh, I know I’ve got the entire new series to re-watch (of which
I’ve done a considerable number of times already), but the ending of Survival
is a harsh reminder of the age I grew up in: the age without Doctor Who.
Oddly enough, despite watching some repeats of Pertwee's Doctor beforehand, it wasn’t until the TV movie was shown on
television 7 years later that I really noticed it, so in some ways, I’m rather
lucky, but having discovered a show with such beautiful and brilliant ideas as
that of an alien who travels through time and space in a magic box that was
bigger on the inside than the outside, a man who dies and is reborn in a
completely different body, a man who was once old but is now young, a man who fights
against monsters, gods and demons with nothing but his wit, his intelligence
and his friends, that it was harsh as hell, growing up as a child knowing how
brilliant this show was but never having an era that I could truly call my own.
There were novels and audios, of course, but the novels
always seemed to be aimed at a more ‘mature’ audience than I was, including
graphic violence and sex that wouldn’t have likely been included in the
tea-time tv series (perhaps understandable, given that the tv series itself was
26 years old by the time it had finished and it was assumed that most of the
main fandom by then were adults anyway. Whether that assumption was correct or
not, it was what Virgin and BBC novels tended to aim for). The audios weren’t
necessarily been a bad option, (although even they tended to go for the
‘mature’ angle, but not too often, certainly not recently), but costing £14
each was a little out of my high school price range back then, especially with
a story released every single month. I partially regret not aiming for releases
that featured ‘my’ Doctor though, Paul McGann, as he was not only the current
Doctor at the time, but it would’ve been the closest to growing up with ‘new’
Who that I would’ve gotten as a child. I did get Neverland, the finale to the 2nd
season of the Eighth Doctor audios, to prepare myself for the 40th
anniversary’s 3 cd epic Zagreus. I loved Neverland. I was disappointed by
Zagreus, but that whole discussion should be saved for another blog. Let’s just
say that, after listening to that story and realising that it didn’t quite
match my expectations for it, I decided not to invest any time or money in Big
Finish for quite some time.
It wasn’t until 2005 that I could finally watch Doctor Who
on the television and have it be brand
new for the first time since 1996. At which point, I was 16, so it had just
missed my childhood, unfortunately. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like a big kid when watching it,
the best thing that truly great
Doctor Who can do, in my opinion. But, like discussion on the 8th
Doctor audios, that’s something that should be saved for a later blog, really.
The key discussion of this one is the original series, why it ended, and how I
really feel about that.
I really enjoyed watching the series in order, seeing how it
had such humble beginnings as a children’s show that was designed to entertain
while possibly teaching children about science and history (with the help of
the two school teachers that were stuck with the Doctor), to one of the longest
and greatest science-fiction shows in the world. Throughout the 60s and 70s,
the show went through multiple Doctors, all who played the part brilliantly,
numerous companions, and just as importantly, a huge range of monsters! The
longer the show went on, the more the producers realised that, while it did
purely historical stories (ie stories set in the past where the only science
fiction element where the main characters themselves) brilliantly, the scifi
stories, particularly the ones where the Doctor would fight some scary
monsters, were more popular with the kids, particularly the recurring enemy
introduced in the show’s second ever serial, the Daleks.
Of the first two decades, the series continued to adapt and
grow. Sure, it followed the basic formula of the Doctor fighting monsters all
the time, but it always did it so
damn well. Arguably the best period for the show were the first three years of
the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, and not primarily for Baker (although he was
absolutely brilliant throughout). No, it was the fantastic production team of
Philip Hinchcliffe as Producer and Robert Holmes as Script Editor that gave
Doctor Who an edge like never before. Suddenly, a lot of the stories weren’t
just about monsters - they were scary,
they were gothic, and they were violent. That last point did perhaps go
a little too far in some stories, but just a little, just enough for the little children to get a good taste of
how fantastic truly great horror could be without making them run away from it.
It was also filled with such excellent, one-off characters: the cold and
distant Vira who slowly opens up in The
Ark in Space; Davros and his completely devoted assistant Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks; the mad Dr. Solon
in The Brain of Morbius; Henry-Gordon
Jago and Professor George Litefoot, two characters so wonderfully written that
more than 30 years after their first and only appearance in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, they got
their own audio spinoff, and a truly brilliant and fantastic spinoff it is that
truly evokes the greatness of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. Close to everything
about seasons 12 to 14 – the casting, the writing, the directing, hell, even
the fucking lighting (there are a
considerable number of times where the horror of a situation in another era was
more than slightly dampened by how keen the lighting technicians were to do
their job and make the sets as BRIGHT as possible) – was consistently
excellent. To be honest, I’m almost tempted to dig those seasons out right now.
So where did it start to go wrong? Certainly not in the rest
of the Tom Baker era – true, its significantly reduced horror and increased
humour wasn’t always something I was keen on (although City of Death is one of
the greatest stories ever because of
how beautifully witty it is), and, to my surprise, not even the early 80s – Tom
Baker’s last season, while a little too serious about its science sometimes,
really was terrific to watch, and I did enjoy a lot about Peter Davison’s first
year, particularly the wonderful Kinda
– but, the longer the show went on, the more you got the feeling that the BBC
started to care less and less about their once favourite science fiction show. The
production started looking cheaper, exterior shots that were once shot on film
were instead shot on video, and even the production team struggled to find an
identity.
This is perhaps most clear during season 22, with the
production team trying to make the show more appealing to the ‘adult’ fans
while still potentially aiming for the family audience and simultaneously
trying to remind long-term fans that it is the same show. The violence was
increased while generally lacking horror, there were continuity references in a
lot of episodes, sometimes at the expense of a truly great and original plot,
and the Doctor was more difficult to like than ever, with the great idea of
making the 6th Doctor totally unlikeable at first, with a more
arrogant and alien attitude than before, not exactly handled well. Don’t get me
wrong, I love Colin’s Doctor now, but at first, especially in his first story,
the attempt at making him unlikeable was, perhaps, too successful, as the Doctor not only comes across as a pompous
git but attacks his companion Peri, continually acts like a coward and, worst
of all, gets the worst taste in fashion of any
incarnation ever.
Now there’s ‘unlikeable’ and then there’s seriously fucking
unlikeable. The first is where the character is presented as someone you’d hate
to meet in real life, but on television or film is just brilliant to watch.
Classic examples are Fitz in Cracker, who acts like a total arsehole and sees
the worst in everyone, and more importantly, turns it into a skill; Randall in Clerks, who’s pretty much
an asshole to every customer and yet somehow gets away with it because he’s
hysterical to watch; and finally Withnail in Withnail & I, who arguably has less redeeming features than
Randall and yet, again, is at times both hilarious and tragic to watch.
The other kind of unlikeable is the kind where a character’s
so difficult to watch that you feel compelled to switch off the TV. That was an
impulse I strongly felt when watching Colin’s Doctor in the Twin Dilemma i.e.
his opening story. As a result, it’s probably not much of a surprise that
perhaps the viewers or the BBC were less interested in the show in his next
season.
Which is a shame, as after watching season 22, despite the
problems I have with it, Colin Baker was one of the best things about it, as
his character was still arrogant and boisterous but more recognisably the
Doctor than in his first serial. The season wasn’t even terrible; it just had
its problems that made it difficult for the show to connect to the wide ranging
family audience that it had once been so popular with. Both Vengeance on Varos
and Revelation of the Daleks were brilliant original stories, particularly the
latter, but not ideal family storytelling, and I think that Who is consistently
at its best when it knows exactly how to appeal to both children and adults, a
skill that very few television shows have achieved but which Doctor Who has
often excelled at, both past and present.
However, perhaps the final nail in the show’s coffin was
made two years later, with McCoy’s first season, by going too far in the opposite direction. I said that season
22 has its faults but isn’t terrible, at least. I definitely cannot say the
same of season 24. The show seemed to aim for the children’s demographic far,
far too hard in a truly terrible way. It was almost pantomime in its execution
at times, with characters coming across less as people you can believe in and
more like clichés, especially in the first two stories. The production design
looked tacky and terrible, and it was just hard to take seriously as a truly
great show anymore. Things started to improve with its final story, Dragonfire, with the introduction of
Ace, a more juvenile but ultimately more interesting and developed character
than many of the 80s ones, but even then, it’s a fairly average story overall.
With a season as bad as season 24, it’s no wonder the BBC were so keen to get
rid of it.
So why, upon finishing the series, was I left feeling a
mixture of sadness and frustration? Because something happened in the final two
seasons. Something which no one expected and, sadly, not many other than the
remaining faithful fans paid attention to. The series didn’t just improve, it
wasn’t even “pretty good”. It was brilliant.
Kicking off with Remembrance of the Daleks, there were just
so many things the series started to get right. First: the balance in storytelling is finally restored to be enjoyable for
both children and adults in equal measures i.e. it’s a family show again, and a family show done right. For those looking for easy entertainment, there’s truly
awesome sights like Daleks vs. Daleks and exploding all over the place
(seriously, how did they get the budget for that stuff?), epic fights involving
Arthurian knights and modern day soldiers, scary monsters and villains like the
Chief Clown in the Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the husks in Ghost Light and the
vampires in the Curse of Fenric. Doctor Who was truly great entertainment
again, appealing not just to children but to the child in all of us, and that’s
when Doctor Who is, for me personally, at its very best.
But even better than that is that there’s plenty for the
viewers who wanted more. There were themes like racism in Remembrance and
political correctness gone extremely
mad in The Happiness Patrol, all explored perfectly and in a realistic way,
avoiding feeling tacked on as a transparently clear moral lesson as a lot of
children’s programmes tend to do and instead being a natural part of the story.
Another of my favourite stories, The Curse of Fenric, has a large number of
themes – facing up to your past, the importance of faith, war, what is and isn’t
worth fighting for, all wrapped up in a story about the Doctor battling
vampires and an ancient evil god.
Ah, the Doctor. Another reason why it really does well and
truly suck that the series ended when it did – the Doctor had finally got his
mystery back. For a long time, we thought we knew everything about him – that he’s
a Time Lord from Gallifrey, that he ran away from his own people, that he’s an
alien hero who loves Earth etc. But then two things happened. The first was
that Ace came along, and with it, a whole new Doctor/companion dynamic. Ace
wasn’t just the Doctor’s assistant, she wasn’t his intellectual equal, and she
certainly wasn’t a damsel in distress, as whacking a Dalek with a baseball bat
proved. No, the relationship the Doctor had with Ace was more interesting than
any of those. At times, it was almost like he was tutoring her, helping her…other
times, well…he still continued to ‘help’ her, but in a very cold and alien way.
The best example of this was in Ghost Light, when the Doctor takes Ace on a
surprise visit to a Victorian mansion. Then Ace realises that she was there
before, in her time, back when she was a child. She told the Doctor about it
once, about how terrified she was of it, of how she sensed something evil there.
The Doctor’s reaction? Take her straight to it to not only investigate the
evil, but have Ace face up to her fear, to try and make her emotionally
stronger. It’s a twisted way of doing it, with almost a complete lack of
sympathy and compassion on the Doctor’s part, but it’s also a solid reminder
that the Doctor, while he may be a hero, is never a human being.
This leads me to the second thing that changed how we saw
the Doctor in these final two seasons – himself. Oh, not in a physical,
regenerative way, but how he started to act, how he wasn’t just arriving
somewhere by accident and getting mixed up in events like he used to. This
time, he starts taking a much more pro-active role, actually aiming to arrive
somewhere if he hears something odd or dangerous is happening, always working
to his own agenda, and this could very well be because of Ace, as he reveals
later that he knows it was no accident that they met, and that she was
ultimately just a pawn in a much larger game. This is a crucial point about the
Doctor, that as much regeneration changes him, his companions affect who he is
even more. They can bring out his humanity and his compassion, they can bring
out his happiness and his love, they can even bring out the hero and the
fighter in him. What does Ace bring out? Not just a hero anymore, but something
else, something greater, if perhaps not as ‘good’. She brings out a side more
alien and more mysterious than we’ve ever seen before, but more importantly,
she also brings out his past. Because just as Ace represents a mystery for the
Doctor to solve at times, so too does the Doctor become a mystery to his young
companion, and to us.
Suddenly, he’s no longer just another Time Lord but “far more”.
There are subtle hints that there’s far more to his past than he’s been letting
on, that maybe there’s a part of him that’s more ancient and greater than
perhaps even he knows. This is a man who fought with not just monsters but gods
as well. For the first time, we are forced to ask: who is this man?
Not that I wanted an answer, of course. I’m not interested
in the answers when it comes to the Doctor, I’m interested in the questions. Not too many that it threatens
to overwhelm the show, but just enough to remind us the second word in the
title. I love the hero and the mystery, and the show at this point had finally
found the right balance to it. So of course, just as it had barely started to
become as great as it once had…they cancelled it. If they had cancelled it in
1985, after Colin Baker’s first season, I honestly wouldn’t have blamed them.
It wasn’t completely awful, but it wasn’t the show it once was. At that point,
I think it needed a few years rest at least to fully recover. Instead, they put
it on hiatus for 18 months before bringing it back, little better than the
previous season.
As I finished watching the series, listening to the Doctor’s
final words, I wondered why I was feeling as sad and frustrated about it as I
was. After all, I live in an age where there’s now a ton of Doctor Who, on TV, books and audio, where it’s never been
more popular, especially in America where it’s really getting a lot of
attention. And when I had originally planned to finish Survival, my next plan
was just to stick on the TV Movie (especially since it’s now August, the 8th
month of the year – perfect month for the perfect Doctor) and then start
watching the whole of the new series before the 23rd November comes
along.
But I don’t think I can do that, not now, at least. When the
series ended, it hadn’t just been great – the worst thing was, it had barely
even started. The series was like new again, and there were so many directions
it could go in – where will the Doctor go from here? Who was he? And, now that
he’s more focused on the greater scale than possibly the well-being of his
companions, what will he become? When the show came back – both times, really –
it kind of moved away from that aspect, of the Doctor walking down a darker,
mysterious path. Both kind of returned him to a lighter, more heroic character,
although in the case of the new series, a hero who has been affected by War.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom in the 90s, though. Virgin at
least started publishing their own series of books: Doctor Who: The New
Adventures. I am eager to read these, but the sad part about these novels is,
as I mentioned earlier, that they were no longer aimed at both children and
adults – with mentions of sex, graphic violence and swearing, this range firmly
belonged to the latter group. I will get round to these in time, but not quite
yet. So what else is there to do? The answer’s simple: Big Finish.
While Big Finish also sometimes aimed more for the ‘adult’
audience than the family one, mostly, it goes for just the right sort of tone.
More than that, though: unlike the novels, I get the performance. While McCoy
isn’t my favourite actor to have played the Doctor – sometimes, watching the
show, I was never that convinced when he tried to express rage or hate – but he
is great at the more low-key stuff,
at playing the alien who likes to keep secrets to himself. When he’s given that
kind of material, he’s brilliant to watch and listen to. And I’ve heard many
Big Finish stories with him, and enjoyed many. But not in chronological order,
unsurprisingly – Big Finish tend to do a mix between the 7th Doctor
who travels with his companions, and others where he’s alone and much closer to
his end in the TV movie. Still, I’m eager to listen to the 7th
Doctor’s journey, and see how much he changes and how far he goes.
As I finish this blog to dig out Big Finish’s excellent
audio production of the originally planned season 27, I’ll finish this on one
of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite stories ever that, like many of the 7th Doctor’s audios, I’m so eager to re-listen to, concerning a
companion’s thoughts upon seeing the 7th Doctor’s future:
“That other Doctor. The older one. Was he really trying to
make us happy, do you think, or…was it all just part of some massive scheme? Was
he better than our Doctor in the end, or a million times worse?”
It’s time to start finding out.
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