Simon Guerrier's Blog, page 80

James Bond, 1654

Via a tweet from my chum Farah earlier in the year, I learnt of A Firework for Oliver (1964) by John Sanders. Brother Tom tracked down a copy via the wonder that is Abe Books.

It's a thrilling spy story about a top English secret agent, Nicholas Pym, on the trail of a deadly new superweapon that's being developed by an implacable foe.

The trail leads him into the heart of Europe, and into the arms of a tough but beautiful lady with a tragic past... It's James Bond except for being set in the 1650s, Pym an agent of the Protectorate and the plot aimed at killing his boss, Oliver Cromwell.

From the off, there's an enticing line in dry wit and understatement.

"Pym gave the man in the plain dark suit [his boss, Secretary of State John Thurloe] a cold grin. 'You said something about meeting fire with fire. So be it! Let them find me alone. I am an officer on special service who might know something. They won't kill me at once, without trying to find out what that is. Make it easy for them. Let my face be seen!'

Mr Thurloe leaned back as far as his high-backed chair would allow. A bland expression wiped the anxiety from his face. In an impersonal voice he said: 'Two special envoys from the States-General are arriving in Gravesend in connection with the Anglo-Dutch peace treaty. It will be an occasion for public rejoicing. They dock tomorrow afternoon. You will attend as an additional aide to Lord Clayton, the Protector's brother-in-law, who will be there to greet them.' He picked up one of the pile of dispatches on the oak table and began to read it. Without looking up, he said: 'Don't bother to wear a hat.'"
John Sanders, A Firework For Oliver (1964 [76]), pp. 43-4.

It's a neat reversal to set a spy story under the Puritan regime: instead of Bond boring on about fine food and drink, Pym is scathing of glamorous living. That said, he's no prude - enjoying sex out of wedlock and hardly blinking an eye when the mission takes him to a posh Parisian orgy.

Like Bond, this is a thoroughly male world and perspective - woman can be clever, resourceful and beautiful, but they're still largely at the mercy of men. At one point, Pym just happens to call on a beautiful lady while she's having a bath - and fighting off a comrade who won't take no for an answer. When Pym steps in and knocks the man unconscious, she is suitably grateful...

Pym, though, is not a womaniser. It's good that he's only interested in one woman in the whole adventure; it's not quite so good when she's the only major female character in the book. There are few minor ones, too.

Like Bond, Pym is an ordinary but competent agent with lashings of common sense, an able guide through the shady political world in which he deals. If there's a lot of exposition - not all of it subtly done - the book is good at establishing the setting and politics. I love that the superweapon involved is - to us hundreds of years after the event - quite a minor advance but promises to offer an army a distinct advantage.

Like the best of Bond, the book is a series of dramatic encounters, many of them visually arresting. There are last-minute escapes and coincidences, not all of them entirely credible. But the book rattles along at a frenetic pace, and we soon learn that anyone who spends any time near Pym is unlikely to see out the day.

Where it's different from Bond, apart from the period setting, is that it's also very funny. By yet more fiendish contrivances, on several occasions Pym has to thump his baffled superiors if he's to thwart the enemy. And, having set up a Pyrrhic victory that's very like Fleming's Bond, there's then an unexpected, happy ending.

A bit clunky and contrived, this is a thrilling, fun adventure - and I'm delighted to learn just the first of a series.

Doctor Who: 2010

After episode 769: The Sarah Jane Adventures - Death of the Doctor  part 2
First broadcast: 5.15 pm on Tuesday, 26 October 2010
<< back to 2009

Jo wowed by all of time and space
The Death of the Doctor, part 2There's an interview with Katy Manning in a tick, but first some rambling preamble about thinking positive...

I've spoken before about my love for the Doctor Who books produced for grown-up readers in the years there was no TV show. Yet those books sometimes struggled with what "grown-up" might entail. There were bits of sex and drugs and violence, but also the tone of them could sometimes be no fun.

Perhaps this is most obvious in the way the books treated characters from the TV show. Some did very well - Romana got to be president of the Time Lords and UNIT's Benton and Yates lived happily ever after. But Ace fled the Doctor to join the anti-Dalek army (Love And War, 1992) and returned only more cross, Liz Shaw was horrifically killed by a biological agent (Eternity Weeps, 1997), the Brigadier accidentally killed his own wife (The Shadows of Avalon, 2000), and Jo Jones got divorced, then killed a whole alien settlement - we're left unsure whether on purpose or because she panicked (Genocide, 1997).

It's not that I don't see the dramatic potential in awful things happening to the Doctor's friends, but perhaps the books ended up suggesting that travelling in the TARDIS was bad for you. Or perhaps they reflected an aspect of the fandom of the time, as it grew increasingly older and grumpier. Sometimes in all its efforts to be serious and grown up, perhaps these adventures lost the daft, thrilling joy of the series.

I argued last time that there's no such thing as canon in Doctor Who, and that the series is at its best when it shares. I love that so many moments in the TV show - from whole plots to fleeting asides - derive from the books and comics and audio plays. Yet I'm delighted that Russell T Davies struck a line through the companions' miseries and started again, showing that - despite the hardships of travel by TARDIS - the Doctor makes people better.

That's perfectly, beautifully done in a short scene at the start of part two of Death of the Doctor, a story from spin-off show The Sarah Jane Adventures where Matt Smith's Doctor meets Sarah Jane and Jo. Jo - still happily married - dares to ask why she's not seen the Doctor since he walked out of her engagement party at the end of The Green Death (1973).

DOCTOR:
How could I ever find you? You've spent the past forty years living in huts, climbing up trees, tearing down barricades. You've done everything from flying kites on Kilimanjaro to sailing down the Yangtze in a tea chest. Not even the TARIS could pin you down.

JO:
Hold on. I did sail down the Yangtze in a tea chest. How did you know?
Russell T Davies: The Sarah Jane Adventures - The Death of the Doctor, part 2 (2010).

The Doctor and Koquillion
via KOTWGA month before that story was broadcast, I blagged three days' work at Doctor Who Adventures , the magazine aimed at 8-12 year-olds. I've ended up working for them on and off ever since. It's a giddy, fun thing to work on, and I've delighted in smuggling in as much old and obscure Doctor Who knowledge as possible (for example, making "Koquillion" an answer in a wordsearch).

We have to be careful, though: the readership is thrilled by the strange terror of each new episode rather than Doctor Who of old. Earlier this year we had to remind them - yes, fans of Doctor Who - who David Tennant is because many of them would be too young to remember his time as the Doctor.

Since they're less weighed down by Doctor Who's sprawling history, they have fewer hang-ups about it and are less mired in furious discussion of whether a new story breaks "the rules". (Clue: Doctor Who doesn't have any rules.) That only seems to happen as they get older and want to be more "grown up".

And, of course, they're wrong. Doctor Who isn't some angsty, angry documentary to be cross about on the internet. It's a thrilling, scary, ridiculous joy.

Anyway. On 7 October 2010, Doctor Who Adventures editor Moray Laing got me to interview Katy Manning about her imminent return as Jo. Thanks to Moray and Katy for kind permission to post it here.

How was Friday night [and the screening of Death of the Doctor at the BFI]?
It was a long day, because I’d been doing photoshoots and everything. And then we went and they put us in the very front row with all these wonderful children and the people who are producing all this fabulous stuff on CBBC. So I saw the new up-and-coming children’s stuff and it was all very exciting. And then suddenly - in high definition on an enormous screen that I could actually see - it happened! It’s really well done. The production values are fantastic. I’m very impressed with the quality of the actual show. The Sarah Jane Adventures is right up there. It’s almost beyond a children’s show in quality… No, that’s not the right thing to say because everything should be quality. But it is an extremely well put-together, well written, beautifully shot piece of television. The only problem for me was that I’m not a watcher of myself or a listener to myself, because I do something and I move on. If I don’t, there’s nothing I can do to change anything and you waste an awful lot of your life dwelling in the wrong place. I always give it 190 per cent but you’re always looking to what you can do to better yourself. So after I’d got over the shock of myself, everything was fine. I think I look like a massive Muppet! (She laughs.)

A lot of kids watching will be meeting Jo for the first time. So what can you tell us about her?
Something that has got lost in the mists of time is that Jo was 18 when she joined the Doctor, so she was straight out of school and she’d done just under a year with UNIT which trained her in all these different things. In actual fact she finally admitted that she’d not passed the exams in science and so forth. She did escapology, cryptology, all sorts of things. I was asked about what she did yesterday. I know escapology was one, one was like Sanskrit or something weird like that.

Wasn’t she trained in spying?
No, I don’t think she ever said that. That’s something that’s come from the back of Cornflakes packets about a year later. You have to keep correcting these things because everything goes up on the internet as gospel. But I know she never said she did spying. She said she did science when the Doctor asked her a question about science. He said, ‘I thought you took A-level science?’ And she says, ‘I never said I passed.’ So I think science and spying got confused. Jo wasn’t fully trained. She got into UNIT because she had an uncle who worked very high up in UNIT. So she was forced upon the Doctor and he took one look at this little tiny creature and thought, ‘Oh, my Lord!’ But it worked very well because Jo turned out to be bright, courageous and in virtually every story at some point she offered her life for the Doctor’s. She was fiercely loyal to the Doctor and felt truly that his life was more important than hers.

She was very protective of him.
Very protective.

At the end of The Daemons, she offers her life for his – and that’s what stops the monster.
And in a couple of other episodes of other stories she did the same thing. So she really was fiercely loyal and very brave. She was 18 and grew up in front of your very eyes. By the time she left she’s met a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was trying to change our planet. She felt very strongly about doing the same thing and married to him! You actually watched her grow up from a schoolgirl, having just left school, to getting married - which I think’s rather lovely. What got lost in the mists of time was that Jo was also terribly trendy. People remember her as being slightly ditzy and there were moments where she kind of lost the plot. But she was never stupid: she did stupid things for the right reasons. Don’t we all! I thought she was a lovely character. Also, for the children to know: when I was cast as Jo, they were going to change an awful lot of Doctor Who. They had some more money to work with special effects. They wanted the audience to grow from children but to never forget the children. I was there to say, ‘What does that mean? What are you doing?’ And to get into trouble so the Doctor had someone to save, apart from a planet and various other things that were going on. That was rather sweet, too. She was there to make sure that the children never got left out but we also went into a teenage and an adult audience during the Jon Pertwee era. So because she was trendy and of the moment you got a lot of teenagers looking in, saying ‘Wow!’ She was quite groovy and cool, too.

She’s still quite cool. According to these new episodes, she’s off round the world…
Absolutely. How perfect that she continued to do that – stayed with Cliff, had all those children and still continued her work, which says something about what she learned and gained from working with the Doctor.

How much has she changed? Is she still the same character to play?
It was a character I played 40 years ago. I’m the kind of actor who went on to do so many different things. I had a very assorted career, so it wasn’t like I’d stayed with her. But when I looked at Russell’s script it made an awful lot of sense to me, from what we saw on screen for those three years. I then had to put myself into having lived that life and make it absolutely as if this was a continuation of her life 40 years later. Somebody like Jo, who was brave, courageous and adventurous, what would she have done? Well, she did it. Including seven children and 12 grandchildren – 13th on its way. And what a handsome one she brought with her! Named after somewhere where I think they just had the baby at the bottom of the mountain! It was a tremendous script from Russell and followed perfectly. Not that I’d ever thought about where Jo’s life would have gone because, in all honesty, she was a character that I played – not a real person. People used to say, ‘What do you think happened to her?’ And I’d say, ‘I don’t know – she wasn’t real!’ But if you look at somebody’s life, say I look at my own, where I was at that age and where I am now, my life has gone in the direction that it was obviously going to go. So it was an absolute joy to continue, to bring back this character but with all the differences that would have come with it. How life affects you and what you do makes you become who you are. Having worked with the Doctor and gone to all these other planets and seen all the problems, not only in the universe but on this planet, Jo felt very strongly about these things. And is still doing it - fighting for things to be better.

So when you were making this new story, how much has Doctor Who changed? There’s UNIT, the ventilation shafts, monsters and explosions…
And planets that are very cold and with lots of little bits of broken spaceship on them! Those feelings of being in a quarry and things like that, that brought back huge memories. The only difference was that I was a lot warmer because I wasn’t wearing a mini-skirt.

Did you compare notes with Lis Sladen?
Oh yes. Lis and I, obviously having both worked so close together and also being among the first girls to see regeneration as such and to go through what we went through, as actresses, yes. A lot of memories of people and places.

You mentioned regeneration. How does Matt’s Doctor compare to Jon's Doctor? Can you believe he’s the same person?
Yes. The concept to me is so clear that anybody who is purportedly 2,000 years old can look any age. Although for Jo it is a bit of a shock because the only Doctors she’s ever seen have all been rather elderly – certainly to somebody of the age she was then. When we’re 18, we look at anybody over 35 as being terribly old. That changes when you get older! There’s a line she says, when he says he can he regenerate: ‘Yes, but into a baby?’ Jo is now 40 years on with children and had only ever met three Doctors who were all of a certain age. I think it’s wonderful that you can do that with a character. Matt is one of the most sensational Doctors ever. He is the most fabulous actor and the most delightful young man. I rate him as an actor hugely.

People have said you can believe Matt is much older than he really is.
He is an old soul, absolutely. I believed totally that he had lived this long life and been this many people. He’s got that wonderful ethereal, other-worldly quality. He’s done an amazing job. Apart from anything else, even as an old lady, I can stand back and say, ‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ I’ve loved the whole of the new series - right from Chris Eccleston. I think Matt’s just wonderful. People were saying, ‘How are we going to top Tennant?’ You don’t top someone, you try and bring something to the part that is completely different and that is exactly what Matt has done. I’ve never been a Doctor comparer – is that Doctor better than that Doctor? They are all part of one person to me and have all done a superb job. Matt has just come in and blown me away. And he’s so sweet to work with.

What did he do that won you over?
First of all, just watching this boy, this young actor, and how his mind is working, how totally he has immersed himself in this character. And all the very clever little eccentricities that he’s brought, all his physicality. He’s still a very caring Doctor, which is something I loved about Jon Pertwee – he was very caring about everybody and certainly about Jo. Matt has all of that and this extraordinary physicality. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s stunning to watch. You know, when we first meet him and he was all a bit wobbly? It started there and I watched from that point. He’s thinking, thinking, thinking all the time. When you look into his eyes, he’s right with you – absolutely lovely.

So will we see more of Jo after this?
I think we might have had enough of her, don’t you? Are we over her yet? She is a lovely creature. You know what I like about Jo? It was always in the old series as well as in bringing her back. She has no sides to her. She’s very loving and caring, which is nice to see.

She’s got lots of empathy.
For everybody and everything. She always did, even in the old days. She was always concerned, even about the bad guys. That’s a nice part of her nature. Hopefully the children will understand that although she’s now a grandmother she’s a groovy granny! It’s not bad to have a granny that says, ‘No, you don’t have to go to school, we’ll educate you along the way. We’ll go off and save the world.’ When you think of the things she’s done, that’s exactly what she has been doing. She’s never, never stopped. That’s quite a groovy granny. It was so lovely working with Lis, too, who is such a generous and such a good actress. Anjli and Daniel are sensational, I just wanted to eat them up they were so fabulous. That was lovely for me. I just felt tremendous warmth towards them.

Next episode: 2011

Doctor Who: 2009

Episode 754: The Waters of Mars
First broadcast 7 pm on Sunday, 15 November 2009
<< back to 2008

"What do I know?"
The Doctor and Adelaide, The Waters of MarsFirst, a little etymological history.

The word cane - as in sugar cane - gets its name from the Greek kanon, a reed. These reeds grew straight, and one theory is that, in ancient times, they were used to measure stuff. As a result, they were associated with standards or ways of doing things properly. A 'canon' meant a kind of rule.

Nowadays, generally, 'canon' refers to the rules of a religion, and specifically Christian religion. It's used to define the books of the Bible that make up the official scripture, as opposed to the Apocrypha which - according to those that make the rules - don't carry the same weight. In the early Christian Church, there seems to have been a distinction made between canons - the rules of the Church - and legislation enacted by the state. Today, canon law is decided on and enforced by church authorities (here's a handy link to Wikipedia: Canon law (Catholic Church) if you'd like to know more).

How is this relevant to Doctor Who, you ask. Well, it isn't really.

But in 1911, as the Doctor battled Sutekh, the Catholic priest Monsignor Knox gave a paper called "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes", which attempted to devise biographies of Holmes and Watson as if they were real people. In doing so, it sought to explain the inconsistencies in the various Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan-Doyle. Wikipedia says Knox used the word "canon" to differentiate the Holmes stories by Doyle from those written by anyone else, though I can't see that in the text of his paper. But the "canon" came to mean those stories Doyle himself wrote.

This distinction didn't help with the inconsistencies: in the 40 years that Doyle wrote his four novels and 56 stories about Holmes, he forgot Watson's first name, what part of his body was wounded and even the details of who he was married to. There are also a number of Holmes stories by Doyle that are not considered part of the canon - largely, it seems, because they don't take Holmes very seriously.

So the distinction of canon is not about quality so much as agreeing the boundaries for the game of treating the stories as real and dealing with the inconsistencies. But the effect is to suggest that Doyle's stories matter more than anyone else's. It gives him, as creator, authority.

The same value judgement exists in efforts to compile a canon of Western culture - which has often proved controversial because of that question of authority. Who determines which books and artworks matter more than others? It's useful having a reading list for students, but a canon is likely to show the prejudice and preference of whoever compiles it.

Where there is a clear authority to rule on the matter, things ought to be easier. The official Star Trek website explained in 2003:

"As a rule of thumb, the events that take place within the live-action episodes and movies are canon, or official Star Trek facts. Story lines, characters, events, stardates, etc. that take place within the fictional novels, video games, the Animated Series, and the various comic lines have traditionally not been considered part of the canon. But canon is not something set in stone; even events in some of the movies have been called into question as to whether they should be considered canon! Ultimately, the fans, the writers and the producers may all differ on what is considered canon and the very idea of what is canon has become more fluid, especially as there isn't a single voice or arbiter to decide. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was accustomed to making statements about canon, but even he was known to change his mind."
Web archive for StarTrek.com FAQs, 10 July 2003

That's still a lot of wiggle room, but the website has also changed its mind: that answer has been removed, and those in charge of Star Trek seem less keen to dictate what does and doesn't count. That may be something to do with the recent Star Trek movies, which have seemingly rewritten history so that all the previous films and TV shows (except one) never happened. I can understand why fans, devoted to those films and TV shows, might not like that.

Instead, the trend seems to be more and more for what's called, not very elegantly, "head canon" - that everyone's free to decide on their own canon of what does and doesn't count in a franchise. Hmm.

Which brings me to Doctor Who. I have a vested interest here because I write Doctor Who books, comics and audio plays but have not written for the TV show. As a result, I'm haunted by the words that someone's spent an awful lot of time applying throughout Wikipedia:

"As with all spin-off media, the canonical status is debatable".

The thing is, there's never been a canon of Doctor Who. No one in authority has made a definitive statement on what does and doesn't count. It would be hard to work out who would be in authority over Doctor Who anyway - does a current head writer or producer get to dictate the terms of use over previous eras of the show? Does the BBC today get to make a rule that Peter Cushing doesn't count as the Doctor when, in the mid-1960s, it was happy to license those films?

In fact, those in charge of making the show seem keen not to make any rules about what does and doesn't count. As I observed about Rose , the interior doors of the TARDIS since 2005 seem to steal from the Cushing films, just as the TV show has mined the books, audio plays and comics - and vice versa.

There are those who claim this is the TV show superseding the spin-off media, but there are times when what's done in the spin-offs is carried through to the TV show. (I gave the erstwhile Brigadier a knighthood in spin-off story The Coup ; he was still Sir Alistair when he returned to TV.)

I particularly like a moment from the brilliant The Waters of Mars, where outgoing head writer Russell T Davies is careful not to bind the hands of his successor. The story hinges on the Doctor not being able to change the events of a key moment in history - what he calls a "fixed point in time". We're quickly and inexpensively shown history being rewritten as if it were a page on Wikipedia.

But look how, a few scenes before that, the Doctor undercuts his own authority:

"This moment, this precise moment in time, it's like. I mean, it's only a theory, what do I know, but I think certain moments in time are fixed. Tiny, precious moments. Everything else is in flux, anything can happen, but those certain moments, they have to stand. This base on Mars with you, Adelaide Brooke, this is one vital moment. What happens here must always happen."
The Doctor, in The Waters of Mars by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford (2009).

It's what he believes, it's what matters for this story but it isn't necessarily a rule.

I think the same is true of The Day of the Doctor. Steven Moffat reveals that the Doctor never destroyed Gallifrey but, as far as the Ninth and Tenth Doctors are concerned, they did. All the effect on the character, all that emotional punch, remains and yet history is changed.

I'd argue that that is the opposite of what the new Star Trek films have done, and is all the better for it. That ending feels especially clever because it retains the past it rewrites. It's both having the cake and eating it.

If those in charge don't dictate a canon, then there isn't a canon at all. You might want a canon of your own, but you lack the authority to impose it on anyone else - and if that's the case, is there any point in having it in the first place?

Besides, Doctor Who is better when none of us own it - even the people making it do so on trust - and we have to share.

Next episode: 2010

Doctor Who: 2008

Episode 750: The Stolen Earth
First broadcast 7.10 pm on Saturday 28 June 2008
<< back to 2007

"I'm regenerating..."
Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth (2008)These days, most episodes of Doctor Who tell a new story, in a new setting and with new supporting characters. But until 1989, stories took weeks to unfold - a season was made up of a handful of stories, each one made up of episodes.

Some stories went on for many months: The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-6) was a single story that ran for 12 weeks; The War Games (1969) ran for 10 and The Trial of a Time Lord (1986) for 14 - longer than any run of episodes since the series came back in 2005.

Of course, most stories were a lot shorter. The number of episodes varied but for the first 11 years of the series, six episodes was the most common, and then four-episode stories predominated. I think that's important: even back then, stories were getting shorter.

That's partly down to developments in production and some clever organisation: in the 1980s, producer John Nathan-Turner would split a six-episode production block into two stories - a four and a two, or two threes. But why would he want to?

First, ratings tended to dip in the midst of a story. Viewers were more likely to tune in to the first or final episodes. But also, I think we've got more literate as an audience. We're quicker to absorb and process information from the screen.

Watching old TV now, it's surprising how slow and careful it can seem. Even action-packed dramas hold our hand through the plot, spelling out all the details. There are fewer scenes and more exposition. That's not just true of old Doctor Who: other dramas, soaps and even documentaries from the past are all much more sedate.

As a result, modern telly can pack much more into a shorter time. I don't think there's any less plot in a modern, 42-minute episode of Doctor Who than there was in 6x 25-minute episodes in the past. In fact, five of those episodes would have to remind the viewer of the plot and supporting characters. There's a lot of repetition.

But one big element of old Doctor Who that's been lost is the cliffhanger. In a story that unfolded over several weeks, each episode would end on our heroes in deadly peril or some incredible, shocking reveal. The idea of a cliffhanger was to ensure we'd tune in again the following week but, as I argued in my 2002 piece, it also made us active participants in the story. We'd guess what would happen next.

More than that, because a cliffhanger was meant to be thrilling and strange, leaving us with an indelible image for the next seven days as a hook to return for the next installment, some of Doctor Who's most effective and memorable moments are cliffhangers. A helpful fellow on YouTube has even selected his favourites:


Note that, as the video shows, there are cliffhangers in modern Doctor Who - and very good ones. It's just there are fewer of them now.

The new show does offer some compensations for the loss of cliffhangers. Each episode starts with a pre-titles sequences, usually something strange and scary to get us hooked. There are also ongoing 'arc' plots and mysteries to keep us watching the series and get us involved in guessing what might happen next.

But I miss cliffhangers. And the moment I've chosen from 2008 is one of the finest ever done. It's not just down to the emotional rollercoaster set up in the episode, the Doctor finally reunited with Rose only to be shot by a Dalek. It's not just all the things the story itself is doing to enthrall us. It's also how perfectly the secret was kept by the production team.

I had friends working on the series who'd previously dropped hints or accidentally spoilt things. All was silent from them. There was no one on Twitter or Facebook crowing about what they knew. And I spent the week being phoned or emailed by people I'd not spoken to in years - people I'd never even known were into Doctor Who - all desperate to know if I knew anything.

Surely, they all asked, there couldn't be a regeneration we didn't already know about.

(A few weeks before the episode was broadcast, there'd been sneaky pictures from the filming of the Doctor Who Christmas special, showing David Tennant and David Morrissey. Morrissey was dressed in Doctorish clothes. I wondered if in fact the production team had tricked us - and here was Tennant visiting or playing a ghost in his successor's next episode.)

Something similar happened in the last few weeks with The Day of the Doctor, but without there being a cliffhanger. Again, the secrets were kept and the story was much more effective. Paul McGann (in the mini-episode), Tom Baker and Peter Capaldi, and that line-up of the Doctors at the end... Each worked because we didn't expect it. And I love the idea of the episode being shown at the same time in 94 countries, too: a shared experience, where we reach the surprises together.

So it's not the pre-title sequences and arc plots that most compensate for the lost cliffhanger of old. Rather, in a world where filming is followed closely by fan paparazzi and the papers delight in ruining what's to come, there's a delicious thrill in not knowing what's coming next.

"No press previews or Bafta screenings!"
A manifesto from Gary Gillatt, 24 Nov 13
Next episode: 2009

On the appeal of the Escapist

Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) is an extraordinary joy of book, one I shall buy for friends and relations for some time to come.

It's the tale of two teenage boys in the late 1930s, one a fey dreamer who's grown up in New York, the other his cousin who's just escaped the Nazis in Prague. Together, they create a new superhero comic, imbued (though they're not quite aware of it) with their own hopes and fears. "The Escapist" is a huge success, at least in terms of sales, but the boy still have battles to fight - Clay with his whole identity, Kavalier in trying to rescue his family from Europe...

We follow their efforts to produce good work and not be ripped off by the management, and see them fall in love, suffer the most terrible calamities and live through momentous history. It's a huge book - 636 pages, spanning more than a decade, epic in scale and geography but also great on the tiny detail. We're peppered with all sorts of data on the comics scene and New York and culture and world of the time. Stan Lee has a cameo role, as does Orson Welles.

It's funny and moving and utterly absorbing - one of those rare, perfect books that you want to race through and yet don't ever want to reach the end.

Then, in the last section, it pulls an extraordinary trick of making you aware of the themes underlying all that's befallen our heroes. It's the coming-of-age for these two geeky kids but there's something more profound. This is the story not only of the Escapist but the escapist artform.

"Having lost [things he's lost], the usual charge leveled against comic books, that they offered merely an escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually to be a powerful argument on their behalf."
Michael Chabon, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000), p. 575.

The defence of the escapist could have brought the whole thing crashing down, but its expertly done. I thought, as I started it, that it was ironic that a book about trash culture form had won such a serious accolade as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2001. That validation of the form is not only well deserved, it's also the whole point.

Doctor Who: 2007

Episode 733: Blink
First broadcast: 7.10 pm on Saturday 9 June 2007
<< back to 2006

The Doctor explains in BlinkBlink is something special in Doctor Who. For some it's the best ever episode, for others it's the one to show someone who's never seen the show before and ensure they're hooked.

I don't think the latter is quite right. A bit like City of Death (1979), part of the brilliance of Blink is how it plays with expectations and clichés, and the usual form of Doctor Who. If we know Doctor Who, it's more rewarding. That's why it helps that it's some way into the run - it wouldn't work earlier on in Season 3; it wouldn't work in Season 1.

(Much better, I think, for a novice to begin with season opener Smith and Jones, but surely a novice ought to start from Rose .)

The wheeze is to show what happens when the Doctor isn't around to stop the monsters - an idea used again to great effect in the following year's Turn Left. Instead, here it's up to two ordinary people - Sally and Larry - to work their way through the clues.

Since they're not familiar with the format of Doctor Who like we are, we're often a few steps ahead of them. We know to be worried as they walk into danger. We know to shout at the screen. Our own knowledge of the series makes the episode more scary.

But, on first viewing, even we are lost in the intricacies of the plot. A story like this depends on a sort of contract between writer and viewer. We agree to accept the strange, confusing world we've been landed in on the promise that it will be explained. In fact, we're given all the clues we need to solve the mystery - we just don't realise it yet.

The best example of that is right at the end, when it seems the Doctor has abandoned Sally and Larry, the TARDIS dematerialising round them, leaving them to the mercy of the Angels. It's heart-stopping stuff, the Doctor seemingly callous, Sally and Larry with no chance of escape...

But, once the solution is presented, it seems to desperately, wretchedly simple. We realise it's clearly been signposted all the way through the episode. Of course that's how to get out it.

My chum James Goss once described the six episodes (including Blink) that Steven Moffat wrote for Russell T Davies as,

"perfect puzzle boxes, full of heart and drama but also where every single bit of the mystery is in place like clockwork."

That "heart and drama" is exactly right. The Doctor and Martha appear in just three scenes of Blink but we get a great sense of their relationship. I can readily imagine a whole episode - or series - of them stranded in the 1960s, an exasperated Martha forced to take a day-job to support his building contraptions that might help them get home.

Best of all is how concisely the complex plot is spelled out in simple terms. So much of Doctor Who is exposition, building worlds and politics and problems from little more than words. There are tricks to getting through it - the Doctor says it at great speed, or peppers it with odd asides full of jokes and weird mental images, or the companion shares some of the burden.

Blink does a trick with exposition that still utterly thrills me. It's so simple, so quick, so what a real person would say. The Doctor holds up an all-important gadget, vital to him solving the problem at the heart of the episode. And explains:

"It goes ding when there's stuff."

Next episode: 2008 

Doctor Who: 2006

Episode 713: School Reunion
First broadcast 7.20 pm on Saturday 29 April 2006
<< back to 2005

Rose and Sarah Jane
School ReunionSchool Reunion is the only episode of Doctor Who to have made me shed tears. I know a few burly, tough chums who were also left in pieces because of what happens to K-9, but that's not the bit that affected me.

It's a brilliant episode, perfectly playing to two audiences at once. For younger viewers, there's evil teachers, jokes about chips and an awkward kid who becomes a hero by rebelling at school. For older viewers, it's about the awful longing to recapture the past, the fact that we can't go back and that none of us are getting any younger. By bringing back former companion Sarah Jane Smith, the series lets Rose (and us) know that she's not the first girl in the TARDIS - and, implicitly, that she won't be the last, so neatly laying the ground for her departure at the end of this season.

At the time of broadcast, I'd just got back from a holiday and the next big event in my diary was my 30th birthday. That milestone had quite crept up on me. Plus, while I'd been away a member of my family had taken a sudden turn for the worse.

So the following scene, perfectly played by Lis Sladen, seemed harrowingly, bleakly true. I blogged at the time hot it got in my head. Looking back now, with Sladen gone, it is all the more haunting.

FINCH:
Think of it, Doctor. With the Paradigm solved, reality becomes clay in our hands. We can shape the universe and improve it.

DOCTOR:
Oh yeah? The whole of creation with the face of Mister Finch? Call me old fashioned, but I like things as they are.

FINCH:
You act like such a radical, and yet all you want to do is preserve the old order? Think of the changes that could be made if this power was used for good.

DOCTOR:
What, by someone like you?

FINCH:
No, someone like you. The Paradigm gives us power, but you could give us wisdom. Become a God at my side. Imagine what you could do. Think of the civilisations you could save. Perganon, Assinta. Your own people, Doctor, standing tall. The Time Lords reborn.

SARAH:
Doctor, don't listen to him.

FINCH:
And you could be with him throughout eternity. Young, fresh, never wither, never age, never die. Their lives are so fleeting. So many goodbyes. How lonely you must be, Doctor. Join us.

DOCTOR:
I could save everyone.

FINCH:
Yes.

DOCTOR:
I could stop the war.

SARAH:
No. The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship, everything has its time. And everything ends.
Toby Whithouse, Doctor Who: School Reunion (2006).

A very young 10th Doctor,
staring into the abyss.
Next episode: 2007

Doctor Who: 2005

Episode 697: Rose First broadcast 7 pm, Saturday 26 March 2005
<< back to 2004

Rose enters the TARDIS for the first timeIt's a brilliant scene. Rose and her new friend the Doctor are being chased by a monster. They're stuck in a back yard and the gates are locked. But the Doctor doesn't seem worried, he just strides into a tall blue box. Rose, baffled, follows him into the police box and stops short - just inside the doors. We don't see what she's seen. Then she runs back out again, and runs around the outside of the police box, checking it's not a trick. She runs back inside and the camera pulls back, the music swells, and we see the vast interior, the new TARDIS control room.

It's a brilliant scene but totally ruined by the trailers and publicity pictures released the week before broadcast showing the new TARDIS set.

Publicity is tricky: how much do you show to grab an audience but not spoil the surprises? As Gary Gillatt said of Day of the Doctor this weekend:

Wise words from Gary GillattPerhaps that could only work a show that's already established a popular following, and Rose needed all the attention it could get. That original trailer for the return of Doctor Who is amazing, too. But how much better would the experience of watching Rose for the first time have been if we'd not known what the TARDIS interior looked like until Rose did?

I know the answer to that, because I first watched Rose more than two weeks before it was broadcast, before the TARDIS set had been seen. An early cut of the episode had found its way on to the internet, which I had manfully not downloaded (partly due to it being wrong, mostly due to be not knowing how). But then an evil friend I won't name handed me a copy burned onto a disc, and I was too weak to resist. On Wednesday 9 March, the Dr and I watched it together. Here's what I wrote at the time...

"I just loved it ... [The Dr] watched it too (though she was more excited by the prospect of new episodes of 24, and she's keener on Casanova than she is on Droo). She said she'd not hesitate to dump her boyfriend for the bloke with the time machine, so she could go see the Parthenon ...

The TARDIS looks great; a nice mix of stuff. There's a certain Jules Verne-ness to it, but also various Dr Who elements. The time rotor is from the TV movie, the interior doors from the Cushing films, etc. I love the inclusiveness of that. It's all Dr Who....

In fact, the TV movie has several influences: the rollicking TARDIS-in-vortex shots, the swirl of air when the TARDIS dematerialises... More importantly, that sense of the 'epic'. Old Dr Who was often up-close and intimate, with the Radiophonic Workshop famously speaking of 'inner turmoil'. The TV movie was much more 'Da daaa!' and orchestral. The use of human voices is part of that, but there's also the stings as scenes change. Does that make sense?

Talking to [another friend who'd seen it] last night, we agreed the direction is a bit flat. I loved the Doctor shouting 'leg it' to Rose, but when they're racing from the Autons in that first scene together, or across Dalek Bridge in Westminster, you don't really get a sense of urgency. They're running, yes, but not for their lives. Peter Davison is still best at Urgent Running. Also, as has been said, that spotting-the-transmitter needed one less frame...

[In the broadcast episode, there was indeed one less shot of the Doctor's bafflement before recognising the London Eye.]

But there are some nicely iconic moments: the wedding-dressed Autons, Mickey's head coming off, even the wheelie bin. I think it's a really funny idea, a wheelie bin eating someone. And is Billie's line about breast implants a nod to SynthespiansTM? I hope so.

I like the silliness. I really like the silliness. I will not repeat my views on the difference between stupidity and silliness ...

Rose getting into the car with Mickey and not knowing he's an Auton is cool. We know something is up, even though she doesn't. That's suspense. But it also means we believe in the Doctor before she does.

We get a staggering amount on information: the war, the Nestenes, the TARDIS (the disguise!), the Doctor, the sonic screwdriver, time travel, aliens, diplomacy... And Rose has got family and a life! Bloody hell, she's really got a life back home that matters. It means something. It's still boggling just how much of a departure that is.

Shame that Clive's stash of Who stuff didn't include pictures of Other Doctors - even in a spot-them-if-you-can-in-the-background way. I assumed, too, that all those pictures of the Doctor in the past are from his future. (I like the idea, for example, that he and Rose can visit Krakatoa now, and she'll know he washes up on Sumatra.)

The Doctor looking in the mirror is definitely for the first time - he doesn't know what he looks like, and the 'ears' gag (perfect for Eccles) is a steal from Robot. So, is this his regeneration story, but we've just come in mid-way through?

Not too worried about the 'vanillaness' of the episode [a complaint others had made]. It's pretty straightforward a beginning, but with plenty of room to move afterwards. I think J Morris once said that the TV movie didn't feel like a new beginning, but [in my opinion] Rose does. I want desperately to see more."

Next episode: 2006 

Doctor Who: 2004

After episode 696 ( Doctor Who ): the first day of filming on the new series
Sunday, 18 July 2004
<< back to 2003

Eccleston and the Space Pig
My feature for
Doctor Who Adventures #277Hidden away in the archives of the official BBC Doctor Who website, there's a fun video of a press conference with Christopher Eccleston from just before the new series was broadcast. One question is about his first day of filming.

"My first day, I chased a brilliant actor of restricted height called Jimmy Vee dressed as a pig dressed as a spaceman... I had to chase him up and down a corridor."

I adore the space pig. It's brief time in Doctor Who is a perfect example of the show as written by Russell T Davies - daft, funny, exciting, scary and moving all in one quick scene. I badgered the poor then editor of Doctor Who Adventures, Natalie Barnes, to let me run a feature on the space pig and she finally relented. (She also gave kind permission to post it here.)

But I also know exactly where I was when the scene was filmed. On Sunday, 18 July 2004, Big Finish held a party to celebrate five years of new audio adventures for old Doctor Who. I'd written a few short stories for them and was busy writing my first audio play, so got to go along - the first posh drinks I was ever invited to as a writer.

Before I was lost to the miasma of free fizz, I met actors Lisa Bowerman and Stephen Fewell for the first time, who I'd late be boss of on the Benny plays. And a young actor I'd seen on the telly said "Thanks, mate" to me. It was David Tennant.

Next episode: 2005

Doctor Who: 2003

After episode 696 ( Doctor Who ): the announcement that the show was coming back
Friday, 26 September 2003
<< back to 2002
Nicholas Courtney, Mark Gatiss,
David Warner and David Tennant
in Doctor Who in 2003.Imagine: a Doctor we never knew about before, one played by an acting legend, in a story with David Tennant and Lethbridge-Stewart - all to celebrate the show's anniversary.

Sympathy for the Devil was part of Big Finish's effort to mark Doctor Who's 40th birthday. It was recorded on 23 March 2003 and released in June - months before the announcement on 26 September that the show would be returning to TV.

Yet despite the surface similarities to whatever might happen in The Day of the Doctor  this evening, that audio story is from another age. As the whole BBC marks the anniversary this weekend, and crowds fill events round the country, I find myself dwelling on what it was like before the show came back.

Doctor Who was not highly thought of. In April 2002, a studio audience agreed with former BBC boss Michael Grade to consign the series to Room 101. It wasn't just the general public putting the boot in, but sci-fi fans, too:

"In short, Doctor Who exists as science fiction's imbecile, its rudimentary intelligence a somewhat tragic counterpoint to its often brilliant and salient parent."
Peter Wright, “The Shared World of Doctor Who: from the New Adventures to the Regeneration”, Foundation – The International Review of Science Fiction #75 (Spring 1999), pp. 78-96.

Wright's paper was about the Doctor Who books - the ones aimed at adult readers. Even so, and whether or not his views have changed since, I can't imagine an editor today would let that statement go unchallenged.

(I assumed the then features editor would have overseen it, but Farah Mendlesohn assures me it was peer reviewed: "Oh good, not me or Edward! I spent my own childhood glued to the programme. But I've always had low tastes.")

At the time, Foundation's then editor, Edward James, asked me to respond (I'd just completed a Masters in sci-fi under him at the time), and I singled out that "imbecile" statement:

“I've experienced too much terrible sf to be content with that, though maybe it's inevitable, as a fanboy, that I think the differences between sf and Doctor Who less pertinent than their similarities. Sometimes the stories are really, excruciatingly awful. Sometimes they are so startlingly good that people who 'don't normally like that sort of thing' can be wholly captivated. On the whole though, like sf, they are okay enough to keep bothering with. And the thing about unfulfilled potential is that you live in hope.”
Me, letter to Foundation – The International Review of Science Fiction #77 (Autumn 1999), p. 94.

My po-faced response makes me cringe now, not least because my defence is merely that the books were "okay enough", accepting from the outset that the show was not very good before trying to justify why I still liked it.

I spent a lot of time apologising for liking Doctor Who. In the years up to 2005 the Dr would tell people at parties that I was a Doctor Who fan. I'd then spend the rest of the evening stuck in the same spot, defending my position in the face of sheer disbelief and ghoulish interest. When the show came back and it was no longer so weird to like it, the Dr got cross that she couldn't always find me.

I wasn't the only one to feel the need to explain. Last night, a whole special edition of The Culture Show was devoted to celebrating Doctor Who, presented by my chum Matthew Sweet. But on 17 March 2005, just before Doctor Who returned, Matthew was a lot more cagey about his devotion:

“For years now, men like me have been forced to walk in the shadows, to hide our true natures, to lie to our partners about those videos and magazines, to identify each other with secret coded references to The Talons of Weng-Chiang... But all that may be about to change...”
Matthew Sweet, preview of Doctor Who on The Culture Show, 17 March 2005.

It's a funny, insightful piece, worth watching again to see how much things have changed.



Next episode: 2004