I love Doctor Who. Hardly an shocking statement but it’s
true. There are so many reasons to love the show; the fantastic cast of
characters, the vast engine of diverse storytelling, the multitude of locations,
the great monsters, the performances, the music…so many reasons. But I think
the reason why Doctor Who inches out my other favourites (Star Trek DS9, The
West Wing, any number of BBC comedies) is its sheer balls. It’s ability to go one step further than any other show, to
take an absurd idea and make it work or to take an absurd idea and make it flop in spectacular style. Doctor Who
has more brio, more confidence than any other show on television and here are
just a number of reasons why…
Hartnell’s stuff is where it all begins so this is where the
ground rules are set and yet this is one of the most diverse and experimental
periods in the shows history. Look at the basic ideas driving the series – a
police box that travels through time and space – what other show would dare
take something so profoundly absurd and make it work this well? The Web Planet
pits a race of giant ants against a race of giant moths. The Daleks’ Masterplan
is a 12 part epic that mixes alien planets, Earth in the future, Z Cars, a
cricket match, a confrontation with Peter Butterworth, lots of Daleks and the
death of two companions…there was no end to the ambition. Who else would
attempt a studio bound western (The Gunfighters) and make it a hilariously
funny singalong comedy? It doesn’t get any less mad with Troughton. Daleks
glide through a Victorian house (Evil of the Daleks), Yetis menace the London
Underground (The Web of Fear) and the Doctor leaps into a world of fiction, a
world of giant toy soldiers, Gulliver and Rapunzel (The Mind Robber). Not only
do these three stories pull off these blatantly insane concepts but they
produce some stunning drama in the bargain. Go figure.
Who else but Doctor Who would take such a malleable concept
and suddenly change the entire direction of their show and exile their main
character to one planet? Or spend four
episodes indulging in Star Trek style Mirror Mirror fascist duplicates of the
regular characters and flesh them out into likeable creations and then blow
their world up and show their horrific deaths (Inferno?). Making the ultimate
evil a representative of God (The Daemons)? Show the destruction of Atlantis
just four years after it had already been depicted, somehow making it even more goofy than the first attempt (The
Time Monster). Who else would dare to poke fun at themselves so hilariously
than Carnival of Monsters with great lines such as ‘They’re great favourites
with the children!’ when talking about the monsters. No other show would build
an entire story around evacuating London due to a plague of dinosaurs popping
into existence and fudge the special effects so spectacularly (Invasion of the
Dinosaurs).
Doctor Who indulged in arcs long before it ever became
famous to do so, seasons twelve and sixteen sees a 24 and 26 episode epic
respectively. The Key to Time season brilliantly flaunts its premise in the
first story and spends the next four stories quietly pretending to forget its
quest story and wrapping up its contribution in a couple of minutes at the
beginning (Androids of Tara) or end (The Stones of Blood) of each story. Who
else but Doctor Who would spend three seasons so shamelessly pillaging from the
horror genre, telling a pastiche of everything from Frankenstein (The Brain of
Morbius) to Day of the Triffids (The Seeds of Doom) with a touch of The
Manchurian Candidate (The Deadly Assassin) and Asimov (The Robots of Death) and
somehow pulling them off more entertainingly than the originals. Only Doctor Who would spend
two hours setting up the main plot of a story, the Sonatarans storming
Gallifrey at the end of episode four of The Invasion of Time. Or have an alien
being push the creation of the human race on so he can have several Mona Lisa’s
painted and make a fortune selling them secretly so he can make time travel
equipment and head back in time and save his race and wipe out the human race
in the bargain (City of Death)! No other show would have the audacity to write
out a team as glorious as the fourth Doctor, Romana and K.9 and replace them
with Peter Davison, Adric, Tegan and Nyssa…and increase its audience figures.
Imagine facing the daunting task of having to kill off the
most annoying companion of all time…only Doctor Who would have him trapped on a
cyber-enhanced spaceship heading towards prehistoric Earth and have him wipe
out the dinosaurs (Earthshock). Imagine attempting to visualise a Concorde
landing in prehistoric Earth on the budget of a soap opera (Time-Flight)!
Constantly innovating, season 20 introduced a homicidal companion, always trying to murder the Doctor as soon as his back
is turned. What other show would wipe out its entire guest cast in a massacre
that makes Reservoir Dogs look coy in comparison (Resurrection of the Daleks).
What about the horror moments in season 22, the acid bath scene, Lytton having
his hands crushed, the Doctor being pursued by a slavering cannibal through the
Seville countryside, Davros having his hand shot off. No other show in such
creative and reputable strive would produce Trial of a Timelord,
confused mess of a story that somehow, somehow
manages to be utterly wonderful at the same time.
What other show could schedule something as deliriously
embarrassing as Time and the Rani and not
lose all of its audience? Who else would proudly display the Kandyman during
its biggest audience crisis? Which other show could pull
such a surprising rabbit out of their hat and produce such a wonderful last
season, full of genuine character development and delicious horror? What about
sending Paul McGann to the US get him to snog a woman and wander about looking
for a plot for over an hour and somehow not
make it suck (The TV Movie)?
Who else could humanise the ultimate villain and win over a whole new audience (Dalek)? Captain
Jack Harkness was introduced as the first openly gay character in the show,
somehow beating Star Trek to the idea despite that shows liberal pretension (The
Empty Child). What about having an entire episode where your regulars only make
a cameo (Love and Monsters). Or taking hold of a novel and committing it to celluloid (Human Nature) with such passion?
Telling a story with the twisted humour and scale of Utopia-Last of the Time
Lords. Taking one of Britain’s most famous comedy actresses and getting her to
emote heartbreakingly in the destruction of Pompeii. Producing the ultimate
fanwank (The Stolen Earth) and making it the most exciting thing to ever hit
our screens.
What other show would dare to have the central character kill off his wife before he has even met her for the first time? Or play a four year arc that is ultimately leading to a few scant explanations around a table? What other show would stage the death of its central character and shrug its shoulders when it comes to offering a decent explanation. Or to give a spaceship, 50 years old in conception, a whole new lease of life when it becomes a woman for a day? What other show would bring to together all thirteen protagonists in one spectacular experience? Is there any other show that has had episodes aired in cinemas?
What other show has such a rich and varied number of spin
offs of such quality? The Big Finish range manages to produce authentic classic
Doctor Who stories without images to
an astonishing quality. How about taking the reviled 6th Doctor,
teaming him up cuddly academic Evelyn Smythe and making him the most wonderful,
colourful, charming Doctor ever. Letting
Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford rip the piss out of their characters in the
gloriously funny The One Doctor. The range produced The Chimes of Midnight
which shows what a well written Paul McGann could have achieved and manages to
be perhaps the most perfect Doctor Who story in the bargain. The series
performs the quantum leap of having companion Charley Pollard abandoned by the
8th Doctor and rescued by the 6th, a truly naff concept
pulled off with real verve and style. Big Finish gave us the Bernice
Summerfield range, now in its umpteenth season with a wealth of fantastic stories
to be proud of.
What other show could produce over 250 original novels, transcending the shows entertainment roots and
producing something far more adult and wonderful. Timewyrm: Revelation takes us
into the Doctor’s mind and shows how truly fucked
up he is. Just War devastatingly has companion Bernice Summerfield tortured by
the Nazi’s. Alien Bodies dares to kill off the Doctor and have him bury his own
future corpse. With The Burning, the 8th Doctor range wiped away all
the mistakes of the previous 3 years and transformed his character into
something far more interesting, aggressive and hilarious. Adventuress on
Henrietta Street tells its story in the style of a historical document. The
Crooked World takes place in a world of cartoons and tells an astonishingly
poignant coming of age story. The Tomorrow Windows pastiches Douglas Adams and
manages to have more laughs per page than any Pratchett novel. Festival of Death
tells its story backwards. Combat
Rock nestles the 2nd Doctor into a story of blood soaked cannibals
and makes him utterly authentic. The Indestructible Man steals from Gerry
Anderson whilst telling a gripping war on terror story.
And how about the spin offs on the telly? Who would have
ever thought hiring Elisabeth Sladen to take on alien monsters with a bunch of
pre-pubescents would have been the best thing ever? Who could have foreseen the
series producing something as profound and heartbreaking as Whatever Happened
to Sarah Jane? What about Torchwood? After Russell T Davies’ mature and
gripping Damaged Goods nobody guessed his take on adult Who would flop so spectacularly in its first year. And
then in true Doctor Who style, who saw it producing such a glorious, emotion
fuelled epic in Children of the Earth this year?
What else but Doctor Who could do all these things? Now tell me why this isn't the greatest TV/book/audio/comic/etc series in the world...
Well, Captain Jack certainly isn't gay.
ReplyDelete