Just Sayin'--This Year's DOCTOR WHO Series 6 (So Far)

It takes a lot for me, who soldiered through the entirety of Colin Baker's run on the show (as recounted in this series) on multiple occasions and various other lowlights in the nearly fifty-year run of this show, to piss me off with regards to Doctor Who.

This year, the minds behind Doctor Who currently have managed to do in seven episodes. I honestly think that this series of Who so far has been one of the most dire viewing experiences I have made my way through, shot through as it is with various problematic elements that have conspired to make my feelings about the show fall from "Oh wow! I can't wait for Saturday" to "Just get it the fuck over with already." And as no major Who anoraks read the Prattle save for the schmuck who writes it, I am free to detail exactly why this isn't doing it for me.

Those of you who couldn't care less are advised to sit today out--we'll be back to the Iron Man reviews tomorrow, I promise.

So we started this season with "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon," which existed less as a story on its own merits than a two-hour teaser for the rest of the season, shot through with Steven Moffat's signature trick--lots of stuff that won't make sense now, but only makes sense later. Well, that and his other signature trick--shoving the utterly loathsome River Song down everyone's fucking throats.

I think I've figured out something regarding River Song: She's Captain Jack for everyone who always felt really awkward about the notion that Captain Jack and the Doctor might fuck. So here's the same character and she's female so it's not icky anymore and oh she's so good at everything, in fact we will tell you she's so awesome at everything until you can't stand to hear it, and then we will tell you even more until you don't care about her mysterious link to the Doctor or her futzed-up timeline or anything: you'll just want her to go away and never fucking come back.

[Additional aside: Now that we know, apparently the answer to that question is that the Doctor is her creepy uncle, and frankly--fucking ick. Also, when your Big Reveal is a knockoff of fucking Cable's origin, double ick.]

OK, that digression is over, let's tackle the central mystery of the two-parter and the series: The Doctor is killed ten minutes in. Who did it, why, and why did the Doctor let it happen? A better question is--really? Really?

Did the TV movie not teach us the lesson that killing your main character early on in the story isn't clever at all? I'm sure we did--I've seen people who know better discussing why it was a terribly silly thing to do: It devalues your main character and distances the audience from them completely because on a gut level a viewer's like "well, so much for them." or "Well, since it's the title character they're gonna walk it back somehow, so if we just sit tight I'm sure it'll all be worked out."

And yet this has been teased out for this half-season as a very boring and obvious mystery for the ming-mongs to chew over. And while the remaining five episodes have been running, the Doctor has been pushed into the background and been generally marginalised, we've been busy with other allegedly interesting mysteries.

Namely, Amy Pond (who, if you watch the American version of the show, seems to be all but the title character, now, which is something even Rose Tyler never fucking managed) and her quantum pregnancy. That's all been sorted, kinda, but at what a cost--Amy Pond, who during the last series had a functional character arc where she grew as a person has now been rolled back to being slightly bratty/bitchy girl whom the entire universe revolves around. Yes, fucking well again. While I commend Doctor Who's commitment to recycling, I sorta feel like I'm getting fed leftovers from Season 5 over and over again here, and like the fifth day after Thanksgiving, one can't help but wonder "Do we have to eat this shit again?!"

So, we've negated the Doctor (mostly) in his own show, and Amy's suffering (somewhat passively, and in a rather Avengers #200 way, rather creepily now that I think about it) who's left? Rory? Well, kill him off every episode and fake out the audience because that never gets old. Oh, and have him angst about whether Amy loves him or the Doctor even though we settled all that last series and definitively answered that question once and for all so why are we doing this again? No, seriously, that isn't a rhetorical question, I want to know why it's so damn important we beat this dead horse again and again?

Because there wasn't much else to sink my teeth into as the season ground on. The pirate episode was dull and lifeless and features several bits recycled from the old bag of tricks, Neil Gaiman's episode was . . .pretty good, but troubling for reasons I'll get to in the next paragraph, and the two parter with the Flesh was . . .basically the two-parter with the Silurians from last season with the serial numbers filed off. Was there no way to tease the larger plot and still give us worthwhile weekly stories that stood on their own even with the larger points running through them. I mean, that's what they did last series, and the same people are fucking well in charge now as were then.

I guess it's because of all the recycled content that I begin to feel that Doctor Who has now primarily decided to occupy itself with writing stories about Doctor Who. You may remember that the last time this became a systemic problem 22 years ago, the programme was canceled. That we're doing this again, and it's being done by people who should know better, is kind of disappointing and certainly troubling.

In fact, it makes me think of the other big bit of news lately--the DC reboot (has anyone heard about their offer of free tacos with it? I could give less than a fuck about discounted digital prices--god dammit, free tacos make everything better) For at least the past 10 years (longer sure, but the problem became acute in the last decade) The big two have been positively obsessed with the notion of re-examining and regurgitating their older stories over and over again it verges on a self-cannibalism, and one of them decided that the only way out of this Ouroboros was to just try to restart everything (sorta-kinda)

I begin to wonder if this is the fate of everything--that there a set number of good stories and everything else is just contemplating one's own navel, and really, that's a rather bleak thought.

For now, though, I think that I was so positive on Doctor Who after last season, which had avoided all the pitfalls of the Russell T. Davies years and ended on an upbeat, positive, note, managed to piss on all that accumulated goodwill in seven weeks. And I'm not even really angry so much as really, really, disappointed. When the kind of creeping malaise that pretty much suffocated my enjoyment of comics has now infiltrated other things, this to me is a bad sign.

DOCTOR WHO--PART 11

Last time we covered, among other things, Russell T Davies' method for ending series--to constantly escalate the threat beyond all logic and credibility only to neatly yank the rug out from under it with some dopey deus ex machina.

So when the time came for Steven Moffat (he who wrote the most well-regarded episodes of the various series through Davies' tenure as showrunner) to take over, there was plenty of interest in what he would do with things. For all that Davies stuff was a bit slapdash, it had been successful, so there was some wisdom in not straying too far from what worked.

Here's how Steven Moffat solves problems: In a eight-minute short, the Doctor, who has pulled a past incarnation of himself forward in time solves a universe destroying problem because he remembers his past self watching him fix the problem, so he retroactively knew how to do it.

Read that sentence until you go insane. That's the kind of methodology we're dealing with here.

OK, so that was the approach, and after the regeneration set up the appearance of the new Doctor, anticipation ran high. This was, in itself a bit of a farce, as when Matt Smith had been announced, Who fans had done such wailing and gnashing of teeth about how young he was, how he came from nowhere, and how the closest role he'd had to anything on Doctor Who previously was banging Billie Piper in that Secret Diary of a Call Girl show.

So everyone was braced for this to land with a thud, and there was much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth as everyone prepared for Matt Smith to be the worst Doctor since the Sixth.

On the way to his premiere episode (setting side the teaser from "The End of Time," of course) a funny thing happened. With every promo, with every tantalizing bit of seeing him in action, opinions began to change. He was certainly different to the Tenth Doctor--he certainly gurned less--and he seemed to be a bit less manic, a lot more mysterious, and a lot more upbeat, generally, than the Tenth had been.

And then, this happened: At the climax of his opening episode, "The Eleventh Hour," The Doctor, having returned Prisoner Zero to this week's aliens what were threatening the Earth, he summons them back to give them a jolly telling off for daring to threaten a world he's rather put a lot of work into. The aliens flash a picture of the Doctor's enemies, followed by an image of the previous ten Doctors, the last of which Eleven walks through and declares himself the Doctor. It's a great "punch your fist in the air" moment for the long-term fans and at the same time it's a declaration of purpose--yes, this is the new Doctor, and this is the direction we're going in now.

Eleven is generally a bit more laid back than the Tenth. When he does his big "don't screw with the Doctor" speeches, they tend to be delivered more terse and quietly than Ten's, and while he has a great affection for humans, he's also not above coming down on them like a ton of bricks when they fail to live up to his expectations. He's in to noticing everything (as he often entreats people to do, despite being forgetful at critical moments) and he definitely has an alien sense to him, as if he's watching humanity at a remove. He also loved bowties and fezzes and reminds one in bits of Bucklaroo Banzai, which is, of course, just fine with me.

Not that it was a complete departure from what had gone before. Once again, the Doctor's story is told primarily through his interaction with a Companion, in this case, Amy (nee Amelia) Pond, who meets the Doctor at the age of eight (in 1996, for those of you who collect metatextuality in Doctor Who), and thanks to his inability to steer the TARDIS all that well, he comes back twelve years later, after the bitterness at being abandoned has made her bitter and cynical (and a gorgeous redhead, but those are my biases at play) and hung up on the Doctor to what could best be termed an unhealthy degree (she is, in fact, the first in-canon example of a Companion doing her own Doctor Who fanfic . . .and heaven knows what else, but I try to avoid speculation in that direction as much as possible. Ahem.) Meanwhile, the Doctor mostly keeps her at arm's length (when it's possible) and tries to steer her more in the direction of her fiancee, Rory.

While Rory isn't as sexy and mysterious as the Doctor, he is reliable and devoted to her (as he proves in the season finale in the most literal way possible) and she to him (as the first series develops, she's holds tighter to Rory than the Doctor) which is a Good Thing, as it means when they get their Happy Ending in the season finale, they've more than earned it, having dodged monsters, death, undeath, and sticky questions of existence and retroactive non-existence that would tie your damn brain in a knot.

This is, on its face, the Rose/Doctor?Mickey triangle, only it's not because this version 1) knows that a Doctor/Companion relationship isn't sustainable without having to do a whole lot of plot contortions (which we'd already seen) and 2) It's not afraid to actually have Rory win this one, instead of dragging Mickey out every now and again so we could laugh at what a sad sack he was and how he'd never pry sweet Rose from the hot angsty Doctor lovin', and eventually he gets slotted off to marry the only other recurring person of colour on the show, because . . .I am way drifting off point and fighting old battles.

The good news is, this series is mostly strong. There are bits I can do without (and in the case of River Song whole characters I can do without) Moffat goes to the well a bit once too often on the elastic potential of time travel and stories then to spin out of his grasp from time to time and this year's big reintroduction--The Silurians--ends up being a big pile of nothing.

But let's accentuate the positive. We get an episode that mostly everyone hated (except me) "Victory of the Daleks" features a horrible redesign of the Daleks which succeeds only in failing on every conceivable level, and a plot wrap-up wherein unrequited love defuses bombs. It doesn't hold together terribly well, if I'm objective.

And yet, it's got a great hook to it, because the damn Daleks actually win, for once. Thankfully, because the stakes aren't "Doctor wins or entire universe dies" the Daleks are actually allowed to successfully put one over on him and get away with it, which is the kind of thing that, as has been said to me recently and I have taken to heart, really helps the credibility of an arch-nemesis. If it's a total shut-out, who really gives a toss?

A similar thing happens with a lone Cyberman, who manages to be way more creepy and threatening than legions of them had been previous, and for the first time in about thirty years, doesn't go out like a bitch. Again--when doing continuing series, it helps immensely to have credible antagonists. Sure, the Doctor will eventually always win because his name's on the title, but it helps if the outcome can be credibly thrown into question as the plot plays itself out, knowhutImean?

But the best thing of all is the ending. For what seemed like forever, and I think I mentioned this last time--Ten always seemed to end every series with the Companion leaving or being taken from him, staring into the middle distance with a mopey look on his face, the music swells, he starts the TARDIS, and something inexplicable happens to set up the next Christmas special. It really made for a down ending after about the third time.

That is so not what we get at the end of Eleventh's first series. We've earned one hell of a happy ending, enduring as we have the slow collapse of time and the universe restarting at the cost of erasing the Doctor, and we definitely get it. Thanks to the fact that nothing can truly pass away if we can hold on to the memory of it (still collecting metatextuality? Add that to the pile) the gang returns and they're off to the next adventure. Together. Happy. Eager to see what's to come. The optimism in them saying, gleefully "we're on our way!" and it doesn't sound mopey or emo or anything. We're moving forward, we don't have to fear or dread what's to come, and it's damn cool.

Like bowties. And fezzes.

As it stands now, we've got a strong first series and a lot to look forward to, I hope, from Eleven. For us, though, and for now, we come to a stopping point. We've gone over nearly fifty years of history, one score and ten of my own in relation to this, and eleven periods in the evolution of this concept.

And depending on when Twelve gets here, I guess we'll pick this back up, won't we?

DOCTOR WHO--PART 10

The Ninth Doctor lasted all of one season, and then we were on to the Tenth. David Tennant turned out to be an ideal candidate for the role, as he was a fan way back (specifically the Fifth Doctor, who he would later team up with in a short episode that was as much fanservice as it was a story of a complicated time paradox) and perhaps it was that affinity that made Russell T. Davies steer the direction of the show more in a classic Who direction, or at least a classic who direction as he saw it.

This naturally led to a change in the show, as Davies tended to take things in more adventurous directions than he had done previously, as Who was a big enough hit that they had the money and clout to do a bit more. Ultimately, the Tenth Doctor's tenure runs four series plus an entire year of specials, which is quite an impressive run, and may very well be the longest run a Doctor will have in the new-model show.

Tonally what we ended up with in his tenure (the longest serving Doctor in the revived series so far) was a little from column A and a little from column B. When it worked, it worked well, whether due to Davies bringing his "A"-game and Tennant the same or one holding up the other or letting them down.

While there are very effective episodes in Tenth's tenure ("School Reunion," "The Girl In The Fireplace," "Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel," "Blink," "Midnight," and a few others) more than a few are marred by elements that Davies can't quite ever manage to sell, or if he does, he undoes any goodwill done by never leaving it alone.

Consider, if you will, the case of Rose Tyler. In the Ninth Doctor's run, the romantic tension between the Doctor and Rose had been a bit more on the platonic side of things--the Doctor functioned more as a symbol of escaping from your surroundings, wanting and getting more out of life, that sort of thing. A Nine gives way to Ten, the implicit becomes explicit and Rose and the Doctor all but become a couple. Except for the fact that this makes Rose a bit bratty in spots, it's not a problem, and it pays off splendidly at the end of "Doomsday"--at the end of it Rose has everything she wanted ideally: her boyfriend, her family intact again, but at the same time she's cut off from what she really wanted, and she can never go back.

Had Davies just left it there, things would have been grand--it's a rather dark and poignant ending. But lacking the presence of mind to leave a tender moment alone, Rose returns in "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End," (despite the plot of "Doomsday" making it clear that was impossible) Rose ends up with a happy ending and a life spent a clone made from the Doctor's severed hand.

Yeah, it's best not to dwell on that too much.

This "OK, that's it, no more--oh wait, just kidding!" thing ends up defining Davies, most especially when the time comes to ending a series. The Daleks are probably the worst offenders--they get completely and utterly destroyed at least three times, no possible way they could escape (bar I think two instances where a logical trapdoor was put in place) and then they're back in force over and over again.

What's worse, the constant inflation of these end of season threats (and Davies' resolve not to plan ahead all that much or gleefully chuck things if he gets a better idea) means the deus ex machina endings come fast and furious because there's no way out of the corner he's written himself into. It turns out that Davies best work (the aforementioned "Midnight") comes off so well primarily because the stakes aren't ridiculously high.

And then there's The Master. Ideally, the Master is the Doctor's opposite number (though at the shows worst, he's earned the label of "the camp one" as mentioned in The Curse of the Fatal Death) but when you have a manic, overcaffinated Doctor in Davin Tennant and you have pit him against a Master in John Simm who plays it like he thought Jim Carrey as the Riddler was a model of restraint, and the resultant signal to noise ratio is enough to make one's brain haemorrhage. That this is not even the most annoying part of the multi-part episode featuring the Master's return (never mind that I will happily watch any Who episodes in reruns except for those) should tell you a lot right there.

Anyways, with Rose out of the way, Martha Jones is wheeled out as the latest Companion, but with all the goodwill in the world and frequent returns after her tenure as companion, she was basically treated like shit--she silently pines for the Doctor the whole time she travels with him, yet he's still hung up on Rose and yet she behaves really passive-aggressive the whole time. That this is one of the shortest paragraph in this whole write-up should tell you something.

Thankfully, third time round, they get things right, although you'd never know it from first impressions. Donna Noble initially comes off as shrill and obnoxious (not that the show really needed one more screechy, obnoxious, character) in her initial appearance, but when the time comes in Series 4 for her to become a full-fledged companion, she's a much more evolved character in that she doesn't moon over the Doctor constantly, she will challenge him and deflate his ego from time to time (and oh lord was that ever needed) and one that actually brings us back to Davies' initial paradigm for the Ninth Doctor/Rose relationship--the Doctor inspires people to be better people, to find strength of character they don't necessarily know they have.

The arc of Donna's story, wherein someone who always thought she was completely worthless becomes the most important person in the universe, saves said universe, but has to pay an awful price--she has to become the rather sorry person she was again because the alternative is that she'll die. It's . . .well, one the one hand, it's bullshit, but on the other hand, tragic memory wiping of companions does have a precedent in Doctor Who, and for all that there are bits of it that don't work very well, that is sold with honesty and a very powerful punch (which is then betrayed by Davies in Tennant's final episode, but we're getting ahead of ourselves)

This seems like as good a time as any to mention another cliche that grew to bug me over Tennant's run. Every series, it seemed like the following happened: The Doctor, alone and looking very glum, fires up the TARDIS and slowly flies off, only for something inexplicable to happen to set up the Christmas Special which is forthcoming. Lord, that got old after what felt like the first 9 million times.

Now, I've done a lot of bitching about this tenure and I don't want you to think I hated it, because frankly, I loved it. There were enough high points to balance out the bits that don't work: the Cybermen are re-imagined as terrifying and powerful (threads not continued, but they are very effective in that first go-round) the Dalek arc comes up with a rather clever throughline which ultimately brings back Davros, who is realised better than he has been since his initial story, The Tenth and Fifth Doctors meet in eight wonderful minutes which balance perfectly appreciating the show's past and looking ahead to the future, the Weeping Angels are introduced and become an iconic monster off the bat because they're imaginative and utterly sinister, and the Doctor overstepping himself and declaring that he'll make the rules of time bend to him and the consequences of his hubris, and three little bits at the very end that I think are just fantastic .

"The End Of Time" is a big hot tranny mess of a finale, but it contains several bits of utter gold, I think. They don't redeem the two-parter at all, but stand out because they're incredibly well-written and excellent use of plot bits and bobs that were lying around. The first is a conversation with Donna's grandfather, wherein the Doctor confesses his fear about his upcoming death. He'll still live, of course, but as someone different, and he fears and frankly resents it. It's an excellent moment (helped immeasurably by the two actors, who sell it so well) that actually works to explain why whenever multiple Doctors team up, there always sniping at one another--each of them in turn feels his successor stole his life.

The next moment involves the big hook of the episode--the Time Lords return, and it's squeaky bum time for the universe. Because the Time War (and the subsequent Time Lock put on it to keep people from going back to it) was meant to equally lock the Daleks and the Time Lords inside, because in fighting the Daleks, the Time Lords, driven to survive, had become just as dangerous, and schemed to evolve to the next level of consciousness by destroying the universe entirely.

It's a great twist, and really the ultimate extent of the Time Lords' arc. Getting rid of them was one of the smartest things Davies ever did--as there was really only two Time Lord stories to be done--they're corrupt or meddlers, or both. But giving an apt explanation for it makes it all the more satisfying.

The final bit that works so well is the moment when everything's done, more or less. The Time Lords and the Master have been dealt with, and Earth has been saved once again, and he's crowing because, according to him, he's beaten the prophecy--he's still here.

And then he has to give it up to save one man, and loses his shit. He rails against it, curses the man, curses fate, and comes so dangerously close to that arrogance that caused him to proclaim himself the Time Lord Victorious.

Then he stops. He realises how close he is to being the Master and the Time Lords at that moment, gathers himself, and makes the sacrifice. While I could have done without the extended epilogue wherein he visited every Companion and whined about how "He didn't want to go" before he regenerated (which sounded so much like Howard Moon's "I've got so much to give!" lament) that scene was played perfectly, and it's so good in fact you wish it was in a better goddamned episode.

But things change. They always do, and things sure do change starting now. Exit Ten, Enter the Eleventh. Join us next time for a little fairytale about an actor who everyone doubted and assumed was going to tank the show all over again comes in and becomes one of the best Doctors of all time. Join us next time for Villain Rehabilitation, bowties, fezzes, sexy Scottish gingers, cracks in the universe, love, marriage, memory, and a madman with a box in the concluding (for now) chapter of our retrospective on a certain madman with a box.

DOCTOR WHO--PART 9

So, when last we left off, Doctor Who had been resurrected for one movie that, as it turned out wasn't very good. That opportunity missed, things went back to where they had been after the original series had been canceled--lots of tie-in books radio dramas, etc. and it looked like the chances of a return to TV (or films, which they spent the 90s trying to do again) seemed utterly remote.

Enter Russel T. Davies. Davies had recently come off of Queer As Folk, Second Coming and a few other projects and had the clout to do whatever he wanted, and as it happened, what he wanted to do more than anything was revive Doctor Who, and in 2005--nearly 15 years since the TV series ended and ten since the TV movie--he got his chance, bolstered quite a lot by the fact that the BBC was actually willing to spend some money on it this time.

For all I would disagree with Davies' approach as his tenure wore on, he had the perfect approach to bring this back, summed up in a quote excerpted here and one I mentioned in a previous post:

"But the people who loved the original series [of Doctor Who] when they were young are now in their 40s, and I’m not remotely interested in making a show just for them. That would be tragic. It’s too good an idea to be pigeonholed away with that small of a demographic . . . If they’d wanted a cult "Doctor Who" for the cult audience, I would have made that. I equally know how to do that. And when the BBC first asked me to bring back "Doctor Who," the first thing I did was make sure it wasn’t for a nostalgic cult audience, and it was going to be for everyone. "

In a perfect world, the pack of nabobs who create supehero comics at the moment would have that quote tattooed on the inside of their god damned eyelids.

Anyways, this was going to be a fresh start, that would use the history of the series but not demand that you knew the ins and outs of Doctor Who's history. Davies approach was to make the story more about following the Companion, Rose Tyler--we would meet the Doctor at the outset and be our entry point into the world of Doctor Who and gently introduce everything people loved about the series.

To draw a line under things, but to keep things handy to be brought back later, Davies came up with the Time War, a handy little deck-clearing exercise that was designed to sweep away things which had really never worked all that well (the Time Lords, for one, and good bloody riddance) and keep everything else on the table until the time was right--the reasoning being once they liked the show, then Davies could start building continuity taken from the past without having to painfully footnote how we got from 1989 (or 1996) to the present.

So the Ninth Doctor appears on the scene, and he's rather different from most the previous Doctors, and not just because he's not wearing a costume, or because he's seen at a certain distance, but because he's a lot edgier than Doctors have been. He's cranky and shows little patience for stupid humans, but also shows great affection for humans who show the will to be a bit more than they are, and it's his only his interaction with Rose that ultimately begins to soften him and gradually, over the 13 episodes he did, he gradually becomes the Doctor we all know and love.

Along the way we get some great episodes (most of which were written by folks who cut their teeth on the Doctor Who novels of the Nineties--"Dalek," "Father's Day," "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" 2-parter) and some not-so-great ones (The ones with the Farting Aliens are really rather silly, as it's impossible to take them seriously as a threat--as almost parodies of the standard Doctor Who monsters, but even then, we didn't need three of them) but on the whole, it was a very strong season, and just what was needed to get the program back on its feet, and it become one of the most-watched programs on British TV. After a decade and change, Doctor Who was back, and back in a way that people who'd seen the original's slow decay could possibly imagine.

But things being what they are, even in the best of times, there's upheaval. Ultimately, the Ninth Doctor lasted one season, the actor involved deciding he had better things to do, I guess. Ordinarily, this would be the kiss of death for a show just finding its feet, but what was to come with the advent of the Tenth Doctor was the moment Doctor Who's resurrection completes itself and captures the imagination of two coasts and I can think of no better teaser for it than "it was the best of times and the worst of times." Join us, won't you?

DOCTOR WHO: PART 8

Continuing our seemingly never-ending retrospective person history of Doctor Who . . .uh, thing, we look at what happened during the 1990s.

When last we passed by, the show had been canceled and that, obviously, would have been that. But there's something so right about the idea that the Doctor Who timeline is just as confused in real life as it is in its fiction. It would be fairly tempting to say that up until the movie hit in 1996 "for a long time, nothing happened." (We'll just pretend Dimensions in Time never happened, shall we?) Suffice it to say Doctor Who continued on with a few fan films (marketed under "The Stranger") and a whole lot of novels (some of which were written by people who would get their chance to write for the show proper a few years down the road) which, depending on who you ask are either "wonderful" or "utterly diabolical."

Meanwhile, the BBC tried mightily to get a Who movie mooted, and in 1996, they finally got a TV movie for their trouble (as an unwieldy three-studio collaboration that's probably far too much of a legal headache to ever see an official release in America, sad to say) that was a backdoor pilot for a relaunch of the series on American TV.

And, well . . .when I first saw it in 1996, I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. Honestly, I did. There was plenty to like--they had Sylvester McCoy along to transition to the new Doctor, they spent more on it than the last three seasons of the television show combined, I bet, Paul McGann made an excellent Eighth Doctor, and . . .well . . .

Uhm . . .

. . .no, that's pretty much it, I'm afraid. It's not very good. The main plot is an utterly confusing mess, there's a lot of puddering about before the real plot starts up, character behave in ways that no person ever would even after consuming several peyote buttons, and Eric Roberts was so damn bad as the Master, Batman dropped him off a fire escape.

For a long time, I could never quite twig on to why it didn't work for me. And then I saw a documentary on the various regenerations in Doctor Who on the DVD of "The War Games" (Bless you, BBC, for all these little extra goodies you put on Who DVDs) and they articulated it--because the story is so obsessed with the prospect of regenerating from Seventh to Eighth, we never get much of a sense of the new Doctor because he's either some other guy or wandering around confused and by the time he finally becomes the Doctor, one hardly gives a damn. One of the things the 2005 revival does right is that there's a new Doctor at the start of the story, full stop. This seems to say--"We're doing something new now, and while we acknowledge the history before us, we're not going to look back until we've got a good running start."

It's really kind of a shame that McGann doesn't get more screen time as the Doctor, and it's always a lingering hope of mine that he gets to come back for a Doctor team-up before it's too late, because he's very good as the Doctor--he's less cerebral and more of a dashing and romantic figure (this was mildly controversial at the time--after all, the Doctor never has romantic intentions towards his companions, and this was considered an immutable rule) and really makes it his own, once the regeneration stuff is out of the way.

But it's not enough to save the movie, and the proposed series never makes it out of the gate (Remember the Generation X movie? The other alleged success story of 1996? Yeah, seems like they ran over that summer and failed with an intensity and tenacity ordinarily only seen in successes) and the Eighth Doctor had to be content with novels and, starting near the turn of the century, audio dramas from Big Finish, who has damn near become the Doctor Who Actors' Welfare Program at this point.

For the rest of the 90's Doctor Who remained for the most part a fondly-remembered footnote, not least by one Steven Moffat, who pens "The Curse of the Fatal Death" as a comedy special in 1999. It's absolutely hilarious (and available on Youtube on DVD) and features the most obvious and simultaneously convoluted use of time-travel ever, the true explanation of what "Dalek bumps" are, forever paints the Master as camp caricature, and features Rowan Atkinson regenerating (eventually) into Joanna Lumley. No, really.

It also makes reference at the climax about why it's worth keeping Doctor Who alive, which I will paraphrase here--The Doctor is too brave, wonderful, and altogether too silly to ever completely die.

Good advice, that--and bless him for it. That Moffat fellow was pretty clever. Wonder whatever became of him?

What become of Who, however, is something we'll take up next time. Join us next time for the Ninth Doctor's brief tenure, which features the show returning in force, with most all the problems that strangled previous revivals of the show in the crib . . .not to say we won't find newer ones along the way. It's the long-awaited return to glory next time--join us, won't you?

DOCTOR WHO: PART 7

In which the show finally gets canceled after a long illness just as it was finding its way and incidentally running prototypes of the plot elements that would eventually resurface successfully when the show is revived 16 years later.

When last we trudged along this path, Doctor Who the show was in bad, bad shape. It had come back after being effectively canceled (so the BBC could mount EastEnders) in a truncated, rather shaky season that ended with most of the talent behind the scenes leaving in a huff and the Sixth Doctor being told rather unceremoniously to hit the bricks.

Not exactly the best way to start the season, but ultimately just as well. The story structure that characterised the Sixth Doctor ultimately hadn't worked, and a smug asshole Doctor constantly bickering with his companion as they wander through a succession of grimmer and grittier (yet at the same time goofily campy) adventures did nothing but rack up complaints for the violence level for the programme and generally make the whole thing seem like a dreary slog.

So it seems the plan was to go in a lighter direction, with a new Doctor with a passion for gurning, a more chipper companion who suffered from being Bonnie Langford, and a new team of writers then proceeded to drag them through a rather forgettable season wherein the Doctor was nearly killed by being dipped in sugar. Oh yes, and the intro is almost painfully 80's and features, to paraphrase TachyonTV, "Sylvester McCoy's sex wink."

It's not an auspicious start, for certain. The debut episode is as bad a start as it is possible to make without several people dying of internal hemorrhaging, a schoolbus full of children falling off a cliff, and something ending up on fire at the end of it. And yet, soon enough, things turn around in a big way. For one thing, the more clownish elements of the Seventh Doctor's character begin to fade, and the Doctor becomes a subtler, more mysterious character who seems to be constantly playing a long game (in some cases, multiple long games--he was running the Xanatos Gambit before Xanatos existed) and began expertly outmaneuvering his adversaries no matter who had had to manipulate

Which included even his newer companion, Ace. Ace is a bit different than most companions have been as she's very working-class, full of anger (one suspects she ended up the receptacle for the show's creative teams anger at Thatcher-era Britain--yes, them and everyone else, I hear you saying) and an explosives expert (as you do when you grow up in a council estate) paired up with a more enigmatic Seventh Doctor, they make an interesting pair, and there's actually a subtle story arc through their episodes together that the Doctor is subtly allowing Ace to confront her past in preparation for . . .something. But I'll get to that in a bit.

Because rather than try to cover all of the Seventh Doctor's tenure in general, I'll recount some bits from my favourite episode from the run as an exemplar of what Seventh Doctor stories were like at their height. And I'm going to spoil the hell out of it, so be warned.

"Remembrance of the Daleks" is a rather cleverly disguised anniversary episode that is rather better (and rather similar) to the actual anniversary episode. It consists of the Doctor and Ace, in early 60's London getting caught in the crossfire of a Dalek civil war. Turns out they're both here for the Hand of Omega a Time Lord device (so named because "Time Lords have an infinite capacity for pretension") the Doctor, as it turns out, knows where it is (he was the one who hid it on Earth after all) and weirdly enough seems to want the Daleks to have it, provided he can keep the well-meaning but utterly powerless human beings caught in the middle from interfering too much and getting themselves killed.

While all that's going on we get Daleks going up stairs for the first time (not that anyone was watching the programme at the time to see it, so when the revived series did it again it was treated as new) a huge (considering what period of time we're talking here and the hopelessly limited budget) and we get the brand-new, utterly cool and what I suspect is what Rob Liefeld dreamt of continually from 1988-1995, the Special Weapons Dalek:



Half Dalek, more Dakka.

Oh, and this is just a teensy thing that I add for the four--wait, five!--readers so they have a frame of reference for this. The following scene commemorates the moment when a callow 14 year old who would one day become a little-regarded comics blogger who rarely blogged about comics had his first crush on a fictional character. Yes, this is the legendary scene wherein Ace destroys a Dalek with a baseball bat. Because it called her small:



This is after she shot one in the face with a rifle grenade, I should add. Ace was no shrinking violet, that's for damn sure.

Finally, the whole scheme is laid bare--The Doctor goads the Daleks into using the Hand of Omega, and as they're bloviating about becoming the new lords of time, the Hand blows up their home planet, and then wipes out the ship that launched it. In the name of mopping up, the Doctor deals with the remaining Dalek faction rather ruthlessly, taunting him that with his entire race destroyed, he no longer serves any purpose, and the last Dalek (yeah, right) self-destructs and the Doctor is suddenly bad-ass as all hell, and kinda scary bad-ass at that.

This sets the tone for the rest of the series rather well, and sets up a very interesting dynamic. The Doctor becomes more secretive, which usually means he's hatching some great plot, but this also causes tension between the Doctor and Ace, who resents that he's keeping things from her, and is very likely (OK, OK, is) manipulating her as well by making her confront her past, both her hatred for her mother, and her lingering fear of a certain building in her neighborhood.

This all comes to a head in "The Curse of Fenric," wherein long game #23 which has been running for a few shows now, reveals his opponent as an ancient evil known as Fenric (It's right there in the title) Worse yet, Ace has a genetic connection to Fenric and has inadvertently been on his side the whole time, and the only way to set things right is for the Doctor to destroy her faith in him by tearing her down in front of Fenric himself.

It's a very effective scene--heck, the whole story's pretty good. That Ace ends up being manipulated into saving the mother she so despised as an infant and ends up by the end of the episode and fundamentally changed character (having suffered through the Doctor's abuse and learning that most all the misery in her life had been due to Fenric's manipulations) makes for a very effective moment and some actual drama in a show that hadn't really attempted that kind of honestly-felt moment for a long time.

Pity no one was watching the damn show during this time, huh?

So, after one last perfunctory battle with the Master and some people in rubbish fursuits, Doctor Who ends after 25 years. And again, probably just as well--plans were afoot to enact some kind of Masterplan that was supposed to make the Doctor a much more mysterious character . . .by revealing a lot of rubbish that Geoff Johns would toss in the bin that did little but tie up little fiddly bits of continuity.

It's a shame that the show dies so ignominiously--despite being starved for money and time and being watched almost exclusively by anoraks like me by now, it was actually clawing its way out of the mid-80s doldrums and getting better. But even with things ending on such a thwarted feeling, the seeds have been planted for a successful revival.

Because making the Doctor more mysterious and maybe a little scary worked. Framing an extended series of stories into a story arc worked. Centering the story on the companion and developing their character in a way that defines role of companion again as an identifying figure for the audience worked very well.

Theoretically, you could build a much stronger series around those points--all they needed was a chance to try again.

And that's what we get next time. In which we run the clock ahead to 1996, and we attempt to resurrect Doctor Who with a Doctor who makes a very successful impression, even if the movie he's in is absolutely rubbish, and nothing ultimately comes of it, which is a slight shame. Join us next time for what is sure to the the shortest entry in this series as the Eighth Doctor makes the scene and sadly, not much else.

DOCTOR WHO: PART 6

Oh dear. This was the one I dreaded.

OK, so when last we passed this way, the Fifth Doctor had passed on and in his place we had another bloke named Baker in the top spot. And you know what? Even if I come to completely hate a Doctor's tenure in the role (and I really don't) there's always a rush of excitement when a new Doctor takes over, because you know a page is turning and there's bound to be a change of approach and you get to basically watch the program evolve.

So it was with the Sixth Doctor. Considering the recipe of angst and creeping darkness that has characterised the Fifth Doctor's stories, it was imagined a change of tack was needed. Perhaps a lighter approach, maybe a funnier Doctor, that sort of thing.

That uh, didn't happen. The Sixth Doctor is portrayed as a raging asshole, constantly ranting about how damn great he is when he's not trying to strangle Peri (although really, who wouldn't?) and generally being more obnoxious than one should be allowed to be.

Oh, and he has the worst costume in the history of eyes. Seriously, look at that damned thing.

By and large, the episodes take a turn for the dark, the campy, and the utterly awful. The Doctor can barely be bothered to do stuff and when he does it seems to involve killing the hell out of people, Peri screams a lot, shows her cleavage, and gets captured and everything is garish and very 80's.

Some would say that it wasn't all bad--recurring nemesis the Rani gets introduced during this time, after all--but these people are wrong because the Rani is the most utterly rubbish nemesis in all of Doctor Who and I'm including the farting aliens from the new series in that (the idea that people want the Rani brought back mystifies me, as no good could come of it, and yet, people do.) Things reach their nadir in "The Two Doctors," which I will say here and now is as borderline unwatchable as Doctor Who ever got, as it manages to piss off the audience at every turn, waste a multiple-Doctor team-up, and basically be a great big ol' didactic piece of tosh about how we should all be vegetarians. I'm taking no position one way or another on that, but dear God, this story is so awful it would make the greenest of any human being eat an antelope raw in hot, seething, wendigo-like rage.

However, it's not all bad. For two reasons. One, The Sixth Doctor's run contains an episode wherein Alexei Sayle destroys a Dalek with a concentrated beam of rock and roll. That such a thing can happen on television and not require any further explanation than that is exactly why I love Doctor Who.

But it's not good enough, and Doctor Who is canceled shortly after Alexei kills the Dalek, so I guess they went out on a high note, at least. The end.


. . .OK, well, it wasn't. It's a testament to the accumulated goodwill that Doctor Who had engendered lo these many years it had been on (Because sure as hell no one was clamoring for things to continue on the way they were) that people went ballistic and raised all sorts of hell to get it back on the air. While the show stayed off the air for a year and a half, the powers that be struggled mightily to get their shit together and bring their A-game, as they'd only narrowly received that reprieve from cancellation, and the next time they were probably gone for good.

And so, in what must be the most extended bit of metatextuality ever let loose on British television, the Doctor was put on trial, said trial to consist of watching Doctor Who for fourteen weeks, or if you're a little-regarded comics blogger, one grueling afternoon. This was Big Time Stuff, of course, as Doctor Who hadn't done an extended epic in quite a long time (usually they tended to consist of story arcs that covered multiple stories) and, well, a lot was riding on this for the show.

So, the basic plot is thus--the Doctor gets pulled back by the Time Lords (here being meddlesome and corrupt again, though the Doctor at least calls them on their bullshit this time) mysteriously without Peri and rather foggy on the details of how he got there in the first place. The case against him (and his fashion sense) is prosecuted by the mysterious Valeyard, who we later learn is a prospective distillation of the evil side of the Doctor, who wants to . . .I think he wants to get the Doctor's remaining regenerations and make his existence a certainty but honestly--this thing is fourteen parts long, and the damn plot ends up going all over the place.

Oh, and we get introduced to Mel. For all I talked about how rubbish Peri is as a companion, Mel outdoes her in the race to the bottom in every possible way. There is a rather clever bit that we actually meet her out of sequence--we never see how she and the Doctor meet, we just join in medias res---but beyond that, we're not given much reason to notice her, as she's unrelentingly chipper, can scream louder than a dog whistle (or Geddy Lee, whichever allusion you prefer) and generally doesn't distinguish herself any further, which, seeing as how she first appears in an episode where the Doctor fights giant vagina aliens, is quite a feat.

But it's not all bad. For one thing--the Doctor's a bit less of an asshole now, and makes genuine steps towards likability, and is actually quite funny in spots. The constant screeching and bickering between him and Peri is toned down quite a lot and it makes you wonder what might have been, since they could have made a real effort to make the Sixth Doctor thing work and for various reasons, they seemed unable or unwilling to until the eleventh hour (no, not that one) and it's quite a shame.

I should also lay my other card on the table here and go ahead and tell you that this season contains my other favourite moment in Doctor Who, and for reasons above and beyond the obvious.

The middle part of our little drama, "Mindwarp," chiefly is distinguished by the fact that Brian Blessed (or more accurately--BRIAN BLESSED!!!!!!!!!!!!) is in it. Blessed cuts a magnificent figure, resplendent in eyeliner and funny samurai hat, and he spends most of the episode running at people, shouting at people, and karate chopping people. One begins to get the idea that they may not have told Brian Blessed that he was being filmed, and just decided to follow him around over the course of a typical day and reasoned they'd build the story around it later.

Now that alone would have been enough, but "Mindwarp" also contains one of the most bizarre moment in the entirety of Doctor Who, and spoilers ahoy. Peri gets killed, and worse yet, she gets killed off-camera. One minute she's strapped to a table, the next minute they've popped her brain out and she's gone. Just like that. We're not even given that much of a chance for things to sink in, as Blessed then rampages in and shoots everyone (oh sure they buy it back later and explain that she's actually happily married to Brian Blessed) but . . .yeah, that's just . . .cold.

Anyways, the upshot of the whole trial thing was that Doctor Who was brought back. The fella playing the Sixth Doctor wasn't, and the resulting acrimony meant that he was on his way out the very moment that the show was coming back on and getting its sea legs.

And it's with that oddly fitting perfunctory finish that we'll leave it there for now. Join us next time when the Sixth Doctor is replaced by a fella with gurning skills that some might consider superhuman, until a change of mind causes the writers to flip the Seventh Doctor from figure of fun to master manipulator, and his newest companion kills a Dalek with a rocket launcher and a baseball bat and causes a young boy to crush so very very hard. The Seventh Doctor! Ace! Daleks! Xanatos Gambits! Cancellation! Again! Next!

DOCTOR WHO: PART 5

It's weird, but I've always had the impression that I should really like the Fifth Doctor's run on the show more than I do. It's universally acknowledged to be a high point of the show, especially considering things crash, burn, crash again, and burn some more immediately after.

But there's always something that holds me back. Is it the short-lived flirtation with writing stories that rotated around hard science (hard science fiction having as much to do with Doctor Who as I do with the actor who played Perfect Tommy in Buckaroo Banzai) maybe it was the fact that four people in the TARDIS was at least three too many, especially when two are constantly complaining about one thing or another, maybe it was the continuous presence of Adric, The Master pretending to be Chinese in a way that even Mickey Rooney would say "C'mon, man--that's a little insensitive," or worst of all, that episode where the Doctor played cricket for TWENTY DAMN MINUTES BLEARGH.

But I think the biggest problem I had, especially when I first watched them, all young and unsophisticated was that he plain just wasn't the Fourth Doctor (you have to admit--following a guy who pretty much defined the role is probably one of the shittiest jobs it's possible to have. But now that I'm older, and can take it on its own terms . . .well . . .it's not bad. Certainly ended up being a metacommentary of sorts on where things were trending in British SF. But more on that later.

But in the midst of all that, you have The Five Doctors, which, even though it doesn't really deliver exactly what it says on the tin , it's about as epic as the first Who series ever managed to get. You have multiple Doctors bickering at each other, multiple companions, all top three arch-nemeses, a new monster who blew everyone's mind and then they never used him again, Time Lord plots one and two (they're meddling assholes and totally corrupt!) and two lines at the end of the show that make any Who fan of long standing stand up and cheer. The plot's utter bananas and it's not all it could be, but it's always had the curious power over me that any time I watch it, it strips the cynicism right out of me and I can just enjoy the show with the same energy as when I was eight.

Anyways, this is pretty rambling so far. The plan was, I suppose, was that the Fifth Doctor would, being the youngest man at the time to play the role, was that he'd bring a certain immediacy and sense of action to things (and, I'm sure, the All Creatures Great and Small audience) and generally be a more passionate character than the sometimes detached Fourth Doctor tended to be. And they mostly succeed at that., because this Doctor suffers a lot of bad reversals and dutifully angsts like an X-Man over them.

What do I mean? Well . . .the Doctor ends up with a bunch of folks who don't really want to be there, they gradually come to like each other and get along, only to be separated by death, departure, and one leaving only to return, and then have to leave again when things just become too much. What's worse, at least two of his companions are secretly there to kill him, an attempt to negotiate with the Silurians and make up for what happened the last time they met ends in an even worse massacre, the Daleks and Cybermen return more ruthless and evil than ever, and worst of all, at the end of the day, he's stuck with Peri as his last Companion, but more on that next time.

It's a really grim run of episodes, ultimately, and I've always wondered if there wasn't some kind of sociological trend in Britain towards darker well, everything, during the early and mid-80's, but especially in SF with the early British Invasion writers (and 2000AD) leading the charge. While none of them wrote for Doctor Who (unless the comics count towards that) Thatcher-era Britain is obviously not a happy time for most folks (he said, in the understatement of all time) and the show very vaguely reflects that, but will grow to reflect it more blatantly in the next Doctor's tenure.

The darkening of the Fifth Doctor's mise-en-scene (if not the character himself) comes to a head in his final story, "The Caves of Androzani." Rightly hailed as being one of the best of the later Doctor Who stories, it's impressive to me chiefly because of the very deft storytelling trick that happens in it--there's a fully functional and typical Doctor Who story to be had and enjoyed, but the Doctor strolls through the whole story not really giving two shits what's going on--he's trying to preserve the life of his companion and single-mindedly focuses on that goal to the exclusion of all else. In the end, he goes out a hero, dedicating himself utterly to save one life.

It's quite a story.

And as alluded to before, it's also the story wherein the Fifth Doctor's tenure finally draws to a close (well, save for a one-shot where he meets up with a future incarnation, which is well worth the eight minutes it'll take you to watch the ep at this link . . .) . His mission to save his companion saved her, but he couldn't save himself, and he "dies," or would, but for convenient change . . .and it would seem not a moment too soon.

Be here next time for what is sure to be the most difficult installment of this series to write, wherein a new approach is tried, utterly fails to do anything except make audiences flee in droves, gets the programme canceled altogether and is what must unquestionably be the nadir of Doctor Who.

And yet two of my favourite bits ever happen within it. Explain that one to me. Or, wait until next time and wait for me to tell you.

DOCTOR WHO: PART 4

Sorry I let this thread drop, y'all--things got busy. Plus, when consider that the subject of this entry in the Doctor Who epic is the longest-tenured Doctor, pretty much the most memorable (OK, David Tennant comes close, but when the Doctor shows up on The Simspons, f'rsintance, he always looks like Baker) and pretty much everything that can be said has been said about him, so . . .yeah. Made it hard to build an essay around it.

So, let us consider the case of Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor. Tom Baker, like Brian Blessed, is a favourite actor of mine, and for much the same reason, actually--they both seem like right madmen that the directors may or may not have told them they're acting, and as such they don't so much act in movies, as they are let loose upon them like an invading horde of barbarians. Or Hottentots.

Tom Baker came to the role after playing Rasputin (played as Tom Baker being leery and drunk and not really all that Russian) and a wizard in a Sinbad film (wherein he portrayed it as Tom Baker in a turban) Baker's great moves include: bugging out his eyes, grinning manically, and being generally unpredictable--manic one minute, gravely serious the next.

And so, as the Third Doctor was on his way out, the Fourth Doctor came on the scene, armed with manic energy and a big long scarf. This would dispose one to think that his stories would be wacky, adventurous romps, full of great humour and absurdity, and while they ultimately would become that, at first . . .no.

The Tom Baker years divide up into two eras. The first half era is characterised mostly by gothic horror stories and a generally dark tone. And while Baker would occasionally take the piss out of the threat du jour, he could also flip and confront the threat with the appropriate amount of gravitas (which, considering Doctor Who's rather penurious special effects budget often needed all the help it could get) and really sell that the Fate Of The Universe balanced on the resolution of the conflict with the monster of the week.

This era reaches its apogee in "The Deadly Assassin," wherein the Doctor, flying solo for once, goes to Gallifrey, deals with more Time Lord stuff (as this period in the show's history will graphically illustrate, there are two Time Lord stories, and only two--either they're meddling busybodies trying to get the Doctor to do their dirty work or they're totally corrupt and planning some hellish scheme) the Master returns as a rotting corpse (considering how the original ended up, I'm not sure that's all that good an idea in retrospect) and a very grim story wherein the Doctor is nearly murdered several times.

And I should add that this kind of stuff came on in the afternoon, right after Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which may or may not have warped my 7-year-old brain in some unforeseen direction and sown the seeds for me to grow up and be some kind of sociopathic murderer, demagogue, or worst of all--comics blogger. Thank God none of those worst-case scenarios came to pass, eh?

Things gradually shift after this point--the Doctor picks up a new companion, Leela (not, not that one) who was the first girl I didn't find icky (I was seven, remember?) I doubt it was because of the fact she always ran around in a jungle-girl type outfit as much as when she killed a Sontaran from across the room by throwing a knife at it, which is bad ass. The initial dynamic of the Doctor playing Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle (assuming Ms. Doolittle had spent most of My Fair Lady trying to kill the hell out of people, in which case I would have actually made it through the damn thing) helps to drive things along at this point in their era.

Oh, and he gets a robot dog named K9 who shoots lasers. Kids (yeah, me too) love the robot dog. Love him.

But another shift takes place, and the humour elements being to take precedence, and Leela gets sent away to Gallifrey (geez, what did she do to deserve that?) and the Doctor takes up with Romana. This is a rather big deal, as Romana is a Time Lady herself, which puts her on slightly more equal footing with the Doctor than Companions usually get to be.

The show gets more humourous, not least of which because the dynamic between the Doctor and Romana gets to be much like that of a happily married couple (possibly because they were in real life) breezily hopping from place to place in the TARDIS and having all sorts of adventures that when you get right down to it weren't really treated as that much of a threat, but it's cool, as Douglas Adams--yes, that one--was penning a couple of these and when you combine his wit with the amount of goodwill Baker had built up keeps things from degenerating too much into camp.

By the time his last season rolled around, Tom Baker was rounding his seventh year as the Doctor, and change was in the air. For his final season, the look of the show changed dramatically, Romana and K9 get written out of the show, the Master returns as something other than a rotting corpse, and we get Adric (geez, what did we do to deserve that?) and a small army of other companions in preparation for changing times.

That change, of course, is that the Doctor is going to be replaced by hotshot Yorkshire vet Tristan Farnum.

No, that's not right. Be here next time when Peter Davison takes over as the Fifth Doctor, the show celebrates its 20th anniversary with an epic story that succeeds in being epic even though it features 3 1/2 Doctors and a bloke in a wig, and the wheels begin to come off the wagon a bit as the show takes a darker turn. Join us, won't you?

DOCTOR WHO: PART 3

(Hey y'all. Sorry for the delay, moving house, living out of boxes, you know how it is.)

One of the definitive moments for me in John Pertwee's tenure on Doctor Who occurs near the end of "Inferno." After being shunted to a parallel universe where everyone is a fascist (no, not that one) and on which a project running parallel to the one on the Doctor's earth has advanced to critical stage, the Doctor finds out they've inadvertently caused the planet to break apart. Everyone on this earth will die unless they can leave quickly and the Doctor, not really having the TARDIS as a resource, kind of glumly says "I'm sorry, I'm afraid you're all going to die" and then leaves them behind.

Nowadays, these little "Holy shit, the Doctor just got hardcore on these guys" is a pretty standard trope (the new series, especially during David Tennant's "lonely god" era, positively loves it) but at this point in the series' evolution, there really wasn't a moment where the Doctor was faced with an insoluble situation. Oh sure, there's always a body count on Doctor Who, but never something where a whole planet died.

There's little bits like that all through the Third Doctor's tenure, though. Because a lot of underlying Doctor Who mythos got sorted in this period, which when you consider how the whole thing started as a mad scrabble to shore up falling ratings is even more amazing.

At the conclusion of the Second Doctor's run, a few decisions were set in motion, partially because the programme wasn't drawing in the ratings necessary to justify the current approach any longer and Patrick Troughton was on his way out, and so a number of decisions were set in motion.

One, the show would now be in colour. Two, the Doctor would be stranded on Earth. No more hopping in the blue box and buggering off (except when he did) One imagines this was a budgetary decision, accepted in a desire to keep the show going more than it seemed a creatively challenging approach. In fact, they said, rightly, that it limited them two two stories--alien invasion or mad scientist.

Third, and most importantly, the Doctor would be played by Worzel Gummidge, who would play him as a debonair man of action who enjoys old cars, crushed velvet jackets, and karate-chopping people

So they had to try a bit harder to get around all that, and ultimately they succeeded. The Doctor, stranded on Earth, becomes UNIT's (an occasionally-glimpsed cannon fodder squad) scientific advisor and thus, is on hand for the threat du jour, who has plenty of UNIT cannon fodder to wade through whilst the Doctor tries to work it all out.

This bit should have really wrecked the show--one of the Doctor's most appealing traits is that of being an outsider (and more often than not a force for anarchy) and the idea of sticking him in some kind of bureaucracy should have killed the whole thing dead. However, the Doctor is barely an employee and is really just marking time until he can get the TARDIS fixed and blow this Popsicle stand first chance he gets. He frequently finds himself at odds with the Brigadier, most notably when, in the midst of trying to broker a peace deal with the Silurians, the Brigadier says "the hell with them threatening us" and kills every last one of them. The rotating cast of bureaucrats that pop up to meddle with things don't fare much better--in fact, this period of Doctor Who becomes a very anti-establishment establishment show.

That tension carries the show through some ropey and all-too-soon cliche bits. It seems almost inevitable that the latest government science project or space mission or new power plant is bound to either contain a Terrible Secret or tampering in things Man Was Not Meant To Meddle In, and after awhile that gets a bit old. One begins to fear imminent catastrophe every time someone digs a hole in the ground.

Thankfully, this is where The Master comes in.

It wasn't like they hadn't done evil Time Lords before--the First Doctor had The Monk and the Second Doctor had the War Chief, but they were either comedic figures or one-shot baddies. The Master in a whole different class. He's basically The Doctor, only evil (and a bit camp, not that you need me to tell you that) Their interplay disguises a lot of the samey bits and evil corporations and alien invasions that sometimes threaten to weigh the damn show down at times, and it injects a lot of joie de vivre into the proceedings.

Witness this clip from "The Sea Devils." It's pretty much everything awesome about the Third Doctor in two minutes:



I have no idea why they locked The Master up with a bunch of swords and guns and shit, but these are the little lapses you just learn to go along with when it comes to Doctor Who.

Oh yeah, and to celebrate the shows first decade, all three Doctors unite to battle another rogue Time Lord (well, actually Two and Three do everything, One just kinda sits in a triangle and points them in the right direction from time to time) in one of those great dream stories that kinda falls short but you don't care because holy shit all three Doctors together (It's kind of a standard thing--whenever you see characters who never mix usually, there's a certain rush that strikes you--fans of Ultraman and Kamen Rider have an idea of what this is like, and if comics hadn't so neutered the idea of crossover, you'd get that feeling in comics too) It also establishes the trope that whenever the Doctors get together, they tend to bicker a lot (we'll bring that up seven parts from now) the episode is a bit slight, but you're not really watching it for the plot as much as you are the event.

Another bit they kinda picked up and dropped was the Third Doctor having romantic feelings (no, RTD, didn't pull this out of his ass when the show returned in 2005) for his second companion, Jo Grant. To be fair, this really doesn't come to a head until her final story, "The Green Death" (subtlety has nothing to do with Doctor Who titles) wherein she runs off an marries the head of some damn hippie commune "who seems very much like the Doctor" and the Doctor gets all sombre and leaves it's underplayed and just as well, because it's kinda . . .icky. I mean, he's several orders of magnitude her age.

Anyways, by the time of the Third Doctor's final season, he's back traveling through time and space again, and he's picked up Sarah Jane Smith, who becomes one of the most enduring companions in the shows history (seriously, she got her own spinoff twice over, for God's sake) the Daleks have returned ("final end," my arse) and the Doctor is tooling around in a rather sharp-looking flying saucer.

And it's about here things change once again, as Number Three has a run-in with some spiders (they are very big spiders, in his defence) and, as the Brigadier says, "here we go again."

Join us next time when the Doctor goes all "teeth & curls" and the running of Doctor Who after Mister Rogers' Neighborhood warps a young child/future blog writer in a small North Carolina town for all time. Tons have been said about Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, so please stay tuned for even more of that. I would totally be your best friend if you did.

DOCTOR WHO: PART 2

Continuing our discussion of all things Doctor Who from last time . . .

Or rather we will, but first, I gotta say, Matt Smith's debut was one of the strongest debuts of a new Doctor ever. While the episode's plot wasn't amazing (well, the parts that didn't focus on the Doctor's rather peculiar relationship with and effect on Amy) Number Eleven seems like such a natural as the Doctor I'm really looking forward to his tenure and seeing where he goes with it. Oh yes, and the roll call moment was a real "punch your fist into the air" moment, wasn't it?

Now, on to the main attraction--when last we talked, the First Doctor was on the way out and the Second Doctor was on the way in. The show had become popular enough to continue, but the actor who played the main part, William Hartnell couldn't really continue the role due to health reasons. Ordinarily, replacing the title character's actor is suicide for the show, but there was no way forward, so metaphorical dice were rolled, and it was decided that since the Doctor was an alien, why couldn't he change completely when necessary?

And thus, the concept of Regeneration was born. And the Doctor changed into that guy from The Omen who gets killed with the falling steeple.

Again, as with the First Doctor, not many of the early Second Doctor stories really exist anymore, so it's hard to tell just how much fidelity the Second Doctor had to the original's remit in the early days, but whatever the notion, he soon became his own character, who was quite different from the First's.

The most obvious difference was he predilection for comedy. Whereas the First Doctor was cranky and unctuous, the Second was more personable and prone to slapstick in moments. But at the same time, he was willing to be devious, when he has to be--the cliche of the Doctor playing dumb only for it to be revealed in the final episode that he's been playing a long game all the time really starts here, and that dynamic of "what exactly is he up to" is one of the driving forces of the show.

Another, of course, is relationship with his companions, or rather, the companions which stuck with him the longest. Jamie is a well-meaning dunderhead picked up from the Highlands who basically is there to do some of the action bits, play off the Doctor, and (as the actor once said) "Give the girls a reason to put down their knitting." Zoe is there to handle the technobabble, be a charming naif, wear sparkly jumpsuits and be something for the dads watching. It's a very sturdy chemistry, and the three of them play off each other so well, that this is another element that moves the show forward.

The last, and the most characteristic of this era, are the monsters. The Daleks seemed to be the thing that really made people tune in, so for awhile there, every writer of the show seemed determined to create the new marketable monster. The Cybermen were an early success (and appeared fairly frequently in the course of the Second Doctor's tenure) but there were others that may not have endured but are fondly remembered, like the Ice Warriors and the not-quite-as-threatening-as-advertised Yeti. Some, like the Krotons and the Quarks, never made the grade. The change towards monster-centric stories is helped immensely in places by the black and white photography, which creates some very evocative moments, like the Cybermen's march on London in "The Invasion."

In addition, there are a few threads that go through his tenure, specifically the advent of one Lethbridge-Stewart, who recurs through several stories and plays a major role in the next era and in the Second Doctor's last series, he fights an evil Time Lord (yes again--but not played for comedy this time)

One more major thing to mention is the Second Doctor's last serial, "The War Games" is the last of the "epic" Doctor Who serials, clocking in at 10 episodes. From now on, when the show takes on "epic" stories, they'll usually be broken down into arcs of related serials, more than one long story. Oh, and it also introduces and names for real and proper the Time Lords, but really, who remembers them?

It's not all good for the show, of course. For one, the effects budget is still laughable and sometimes, things fall short of the mark. The aforementioned Yeti (who look like a shaggier version of Grimace from McDonaldland and whose roar is the sound of a toilet flushing) are one example. The (sadly) mostly-lost story "The Underwater Menace" is another:



. . .really looks wet, doesn't it?

There's also (also lost) "The Evil Of The Daleks," which takes mighty and determined leaps to show and let us no in uncertain terms that the Daleks have reached their end, their final end, and any Dalek serials you may have seen after that are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

Also, dear God are there a lot of bases under siege in this era. And heaven help you if the serial you're watching runs six episodes, because you are doomed to some very obvious padding. The one that springs most readily to mind is "Tomb of the Cybermen," wherein the Doctor and the baddie fight over a damn switch for an entire episode and the Cybermen pop out of the tomb . . .and back in . . .and back out . . .

But sometimes, it works out in spite of things. Perhaps it's because the principals are so good at creating a lighter touch and acting like they're in on the joke. Most wonderfully (for me, anyways) is (also mostly lost--dammit) is "The Enemy of the World," wherein Patrick Troughton does double duty as the Doctor and Salamander, ruler of the world and in possession of an accent that starts as Spanish, meanders around the globe a bit, and settles on "generic foreign." It's an utterly silly episode full of Salamander chewing scenery so bloody hard it's a wonder Troughton didn't get polystyrene poisoning. Even intact, it would never be a good episode, but it sure as hell was a fun one.

It's definitely an intriguing era, as the balance between the more childlike (in moments) Doctor and the harder-edged monster-heavy stories shouldn't work, but sure enough it works, and while Doctor Who is no longer an educational show (well, it might be, but heaven knows what lessons you'd learn from it--how to shove Daleks around?) and has changed into something else in an effort to stay relevant and survive.

Which, to no one's surprise, is what happens at the end of the Second Doctor's tenure. In the wake of "The War Games," the Doctor is forced to regenerate and stranded on Earth. While this is a rather big risk (as it trips up one of the main strengths of the concept--that one can hop in the TARDIS and go somewhere else just in time for next week) and, as mentioned by the newer folks coming in, it limits one to stories involving alien invasions or mad scientists pretty exclusively.

However, believe it or not, it's going to work, as we'll see next time, when the Third Doctor stumbles out of the TARDIS and the show changes yet again. Karate chops for everyone!