Christian Cawley's Blog, page 89
July 13, 2015
Peter Capaldi Engages with Passionate Doctor Who Fans at Comic-Con 2015
Josh Maxton is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
G’day, chaps! I’m eating my weight in fish fingers and custard at the moment, so I thought I’d give you some news while I’m at it!
It’s been an exciting week for Doctor Who. A full length trailer, a Series 9 premiere date (19 September), a trailer for LEGO Dimensions (which features components from the Doctor Who universe), and all the wonders of the San Diego Comic-Con. Our man Capaldi has sure been a busy one.
Peter Capaldi was in San Diego for Comic Con, where he greeted several fans outside while they were waiting in-line.
Dr who checks in @HallHLine #sdcc pic.twitter.com/Ocx5qUzblP
— Jon Hotchkiss (@hotchkiss_jon) July 9, 2015
OMG, I was waiting in the Dr Who wristband line at #SDCC and THIS happened!!! #DrWho #HallH #PeterCapaldi pic.twitter.com/UKNXt9v6Ta
— TwiloveSue (@TwiloveSue) July 9, 2015
@SD_Comic_Con @Comic_Con @HallHLine JUST SPOTTED DOCTOR WHO! #petercapaldi #SDCC15 #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/F3FBoZYtRr
— SASSY-JESS (@jessi2184bones) July 9, 2015
Meanwhile at the Doctor Who Fan Event, Capaldi stayed extra late to sign posters for eager fans.
A photo posted by Doctor Who (@doctorwho_bbca) on Jul 11, 2015 at 8:20pm PDT
A video posted by Doctor Who (@doctorwho_bbca) on Jul 11, 2015 at 4:31pm PDT
How classy is that?
Peter was the mystery guest on Conan.
A photo posted by Doctor Who (@doctorwho_bbca) on Jul 11, 2015 at 3:55pm PDT
As you can see, Capaldi’s had a tight schedule. All of this just goes to show how great of an ambassador of the show he is.
The BBC truly has a classy gentleman in the lead role of the show.
Allons-y!
And happy day, everyone!
The post Peter Capaldi Engages with Passionate Doctor Who Fans at Comic-Con 2015 appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
July 12, 2015
Reviewed: Titan Comics’ Eleventh Doctor #7
Drew Boynton is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
Issue #7 of Titan’s Eleventh Doctor comic book kicks off a new story arc (no pun intended) of sorts as the creative team gets a shake up and two new possibly-recurring alien races are introduced.
Let’s get to the guys behind the scenes first. Writer Rob Williams is still intact, but the artist and colorist positions have changed. Veteran artist Warren Pleece takes over for Simon Fraser on the line art, while the mysteriously named Hi-Fi has replaced Gary Caldwell on the coloristic stylings. Pleece is a British artist who has worked on Vertigo titles like Hellblazer and The Invisibles. I actually prefer his almost old-fashioned, straightforward artwork to Fraser’s work, which often made Matt Smith’s “likeness” into a bizarre cartoon. I do think Pleece could use a little more excitement in his work, as the two new alien races unimaginatively resemble birds and ’30s-style robots, and the “space dogfight” ships look like World War 2-era airplanes. Something more original and unique in the character and ship designs could have really upped the ante on the story.
After the innovative sixth issue (with its countdown-style page numbering), the beginning of issue #7’s story (The Eternal Dogfight) finds the Eleventh Doctor travelling with more companions than the TARDIS has roundels. There’s Jones, a shape-changer who dresses like a bad ’80s stand-up comedian. Then there’s ARC, an alien who often says his own name (of course) and looks like something Vin Diesel would fight in a Ridley Scott movie. And last but not least, there’s Alice Obiefune, the only companion around since issue #1 and the only true human on the team. She’s also the most depressed companion ever— well, unless you count the time Mel forgot to stock up on carrot juice.
Not to get into too many spoilers, sweeties, The Eternal Dogfight deals with the whole Earth and the TARDIS team being caught up in an age-old space war between the Amstrons (the fish-bowl-headed roboty guys) and the J’arrodic Federation (the birds… sigh). They have promised not to harm Earth, as long as we don’t interfere in their war. Of course, this soon leads the Doctor and crew to do exactly that. Along the way, the B-story dealing with the death of Alice’s mother progresses along, and there is a nice commentary on the dangers of war being viewed as entertainment.
Writer Rob Williams’ strongest area, for me, is his dialogue. I can often hear Matt Smith’s voice in the Doctor’s word balloons, which probably isn’t as easy to achieve as it seems. Williams also wrote an inspired sequence in this issue involving the Doctor and Co. jet-packing their way around the Amstrons’ spaceship. It’s kind of like The Rocketeer in space. If Williams is going to make the Eleventh Doctor series truly memorable, though, he needs to touch on more of the meaningful themes (such as wars vs. entertainment) and, somehow at the same time, up the sense of adventure.
Geronimo!
The post Reviewed: Titan Comics’ Eleventh Doctor #7 appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
Steven Moffat calls Twitter “worst possible form of audience research”
Richard Forbes is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
‘I think Twitter is a useful tool for promoting a show, but I think it is the worst possible form of audience research, it really is,’ says Steven Moffat, Doctor Who executive producer, while in San Diego for Comic-Con International.
Moffat, or Steven, as he prefers to be called (reminding every fan as they asked ‘Moffat’ a question during the Comic-Con panel), notes that in the past he had been mistaken in equating the reactions of those on the popular social network with the opinion of a show’s general audience. Instead, Twitter, the Doctor Who showrunner argues is a place where people draw attention to themselves and get a rise from others – a social environment, not a proper test screening.
‘People on Twitter are having fun, they’re making gags,’ he adds. ‘It’s like overhearing a pub conversation, when you’re at a pub do you tell the truth, or do you try and get attention?’
It’s not the first time that the Grand Moff has mused about the pitfalls of judging an episode based on the opinions of those online – noting in a 2010 interview with his son, Joshua Moffat, that fandom sites represented ‘the voice of a very atypical, tiny sliver of the audience.’ Earlier this year, (Mister) Moffat also did an interview with another, younger Moffat, where he explained his departure from Twitter in 2012, noting that fellow writers and colleagues had been contacting him through Twitter as opposed to email (although there does appear to be a spoof Steven Moffat on Twitter, who has trouble with his very tall, Welsh cleaning lady and missing Hugo awards).
However, that departure from Twitter was lambasted as a retreat from scornful criticism. Adding fuel to the fire, jokes soon followed in the show itself bashing Twitter, like the Doctor saying ‘Twitter’ with disgust in Series 7’s The Power of Three (reflecting Matt Smith’s own personal decision to stay off Twitter) – leaving others to question the showrunner’s relationship with the social network.
Personally, I’d say Steven has a point and it stresses the age-old tension between designing a show for fans and designing a show for a mass audience, plus his criticism here of Twitter likely applies to most of the internet. However, just as Twitter and the rest of social media (and sites like Kasterborous, let’s be clear here) can contribute to an echo chamber of undeserved hysteria, the mad echo chamber echoes on, truth or no truth. Thus, running a television show in the Digital age, whether an Executive Producer likes it or not, means managing a show’s image online before the chattering mouths of the virtual ‘pub’ come to define a show to the public before they can. Critics on sites like Twitter may not be serious, but that doesn’t mean that their followers, a mass audience in and of itself, don’t take their remarks as genuine.
To Tweet or not to Tweet? That is the question! What do you, dear Kasterbourites, think? (Incidentally, you can follow @KasterborousDW on Twitter for the latest Doctor Who news and retweets!)
The post Steven Moffat calls Twitter “worst possible form of audience research” appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
July 11, 2015
Doctor Who Team Discuss Persistent Movie Rumours
Jeremy Remy is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
There have been several failed attempts to move forward a Doctor Who film over the years—including Daleks vs. Mechons, Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, and The Last of the Time Lords. Yet, other than the Peter Cushing films (which were simply retellings of First Doctor stories), the furthest the TARDIS has ventured toward a film release was the cinematic broadcast of the 50th anniversary’s The Day of the Doctor.
Nevertheless, since the leaked Sony email hinted at an eight year plan toward such an end, the rumors of a Doctor Who film have done nothing but spread.
In a recent interview by MTV News Steven Moffat attempts to temper some of the excitement (or fear) over the rumor, noting that BBC owns Doctor Who, and any decisions regarding a film are up to the BBC. He goes on to add that any additions to the series must also add to the artistic value of Doctor Who.
Costars Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi seem to fall on different sides of the fence regarding the need for a film. Coleman is concerned that any step toward focusing on a film would simply take away from the quality of the televised production or, at the very least, require fewer episodes to be produced each year. Capaldi, on the other hand, is somewhat more optimistic, claiming the current quality of the televised program screams for an eventual translation to the big-screen. Still, he did caution that any movie must strive to fit in with the history and cannon of the series.
Do you think Doctor Who will—or should—be made into a feature film? If it ever is, should it remain closely tied to the series, as Capaldi suggests? Or, would you prefer a separation between the big and little screens? What Doctor Who story would you like to see reach cinemas?
The post Doctor Who Team Discuss Persistent Movie Rumours appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
If Blake’s 7 Was a BBC Comedy: Are You Being Subjugated?
Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
There’s little we can say about this, a spoof closing titles for Blake’s 7 in the style of a 1970’s BBC comedy, complete with the “You have been watching” caption and amusing or out of character camera clips.
It really is chortle-inducing, but it isn’t really for an international or young audience unless you happen to be familiar with Blake’s 7 and Are You Being Served?. I admit that for some of you that’s a long shot, but for a good chunk of our readers, I’m sure this will raise a smile.
Click play above to enjoy – I particularly enjoyed the Servalan and Travis clips…
The post If Blake’s 7 Was a BBC Comedy: Are You Being Subjugated? appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
Are We Worrying Too Much About Doctor Who Spoilers?
James Baldock is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
I still remember the Sun headline. It was a Thursday, and I never could get the hang of Thursdays. The news page listed an indexed article entitled “ROSE TO BE KILLED OFF”, or words to that effect. It wasn’t even a link to a story that contained a spoiler warning – which I could have thus avoided (thus having only myself to blame if I subsequently read it). This was a feature title visible from their main news page (weeks before the story was due to air, I might add) that ostensibly gave away the ending of Doomsday without you even having to look at it.
She didn’t die, of course, but that was hardly the point. I vividly recall that sense of outrage (an appropriate post-2010 response is “I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS!”) and it’s funny how things have changed. These days my reaction is far more ambivalent – and that’s because I wonder whether the Whoniverse as a whole (the writers, the fandom, the general approach) has cultivated an unhealthy obsession with spoilers. I wonder whether, in the quest to provide the shock of the new, we’ve wound up with a programme that’s become more about surprise than it has about story.
Spoilers do count; it would be foolish to say otherwise. I went to great lengths to keep the ending of The Stolen Earth – and its abhorrent, anti-climactic denouement – from all of my children, simply because I knew there would be a period when they’d obsess over the resolution of that cliffhanger in much the same way that their father once did. I have embarked upon a media blackout for Game of Thrones, because I anticipate watching it all one day and I’d like to know as little as possible. Sometimes the best way to squeeze the maximum amount of pleasure from something is to go into it as cold as possible: the less you know, the lower your expectations and the happier you’ll be.
But it’s not as black and white as all that. For instance, I watched the early series of 24 slightly out of order, and thus went through the very first armed with the foreknowledge that a certain person – whom we’d previously deemed more or less untouchable – would turn out to be dodgy. Conversely, when the mastermind of series five was revealed some years later, their identity came as a complete surprise. But did the knowledge that the CTU mole was <spoiler> mean that I enjoyed that first series less than the one in which I didn’t know that <spoiler> was responsible for the murder of <spoiler>? Honestly, the answer has to be no. It just makes for a different viewing experience, particularly when you don’t tell your wife. You get to grin like a satisfied idiot while she’s pacing around the room after that penultimate episode, shouting “I can’t believe it was <spoiler>!”.
Besides, the issue here isn’t about the twist itself, or even knowing about it – it’s when the twist is inserted as a substitute for anything we might ordinarily refer to as ‘substance’. For example, The Wedding of River Song is an episode that solves a puzzle. That is its function: to get the Doctor out of the desert, and to get Alex Kingston out of that spacesuit (stop sniggering at the back there, or I’ll make you stay behind). Once you have resolved that particular enigma, there’s nothing left. Aside from the two major revelations (the Doctor’s hiding in the robot / The First Question is mind-numbingly inane) it serves absolutely no purpose. It has no real story, nothing important to say, and the dialogue is shockingly poor. It is forty-five minutes of inconsequential drivel, surpassed only by Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS in the queue of Stories I Wish I Could Unsee.
I went to great lengths to keep the ending of The Stolen Earth – and its abhorrent, anti-climactic denouement – from all of my children.
This is a series finale. This is supposed to be the big finish (excuse pun). Other tales fare equally badly: see, for example, A Good Man Goes To War and Let’s Kill Hitler (both of which get away with it, by the skin of their teeth, simply by being utterly outrageous), and also Utopia (minimally redeemed by the presence of Derek Jacobi). The Name of the Doctor cocks so many things up during its run time that by the time the New Doctor shows his bearded, weathered face I’m already wondering why I still care. This is event television at its worst: plot twists stretched to three quarters of an hour, padded out by nonsense. Doctor Who is not the only contemporary show guilty of this, but it’s a shame it’s apparently had to follow the herd in order to adapt to the supposed demands of a twenty-first century audience.
I read a comment on a neighbouring article the other day that suggested – I’m paraphrasing – that the wibbly-wobbliness is subsiding under the reign of the Twelfth Doctor. That’s all well and good, but the arcs in themselves remain, and they have not improved. The series eight antagonist only became interesting the moment we learned her identity; the rest was a tedious riddle.
How would the creative team have coped if it had leaked – unambiguously and irrevocably – that Missy was the Master? Would the finale have been reshot, scenes where she talks about being the Rani hastily scribbled / reinserted? To what extent does the integrity of the spoiler usurp the credibility of the script? Is it more important that a thing remains secret than the content of the secret itself? Perhaps not. Perhaps you’re laughing at such a notion. Or perhaps it’s the glimpse of the future, in which mobile technology improves to the extent that showrunners decide to use whatever ending hasn’t already leaked, and just make the best of that.
Rewind thirty-three years, and consider this: it is possible to watch Earthshock knowing that the Cybermen are about to turn up and still enjoy it, because their presence – while a surprise for the uninitiated – is not in itself a game-changer. Conversely, it is much harder to enjoy Army of Ghosts once you know that the silly glowing Watcher wannabes are actually Cybermen, or that the thing in the basement contains four Daleks, because the story has nothing else going for it. That’s the sort of comparison that makes me sound like a nostalgia freak, but I don’t want to turn this into an Old / NuWho thing if I can help it. There were plenty of mistakes when the sets still wobbled. By way of example, it’s difficult to enjoy Time-Flight whether or not you know the eccentric alien mystic in the cave is actually Anthony Ainley, underneath prosthetics. It’s still better than Arc of Infinity, anyway.
(One of the most catastrophically silly reveals occurs at the end of the first episode of a Pertwee story. The Doctor removes the cloak of invisibility from a thing that is obviously a Dalek, having already encountered a race who are universally associated with the Daleks, and having had a conversation in which Daleks are mentioned, in a story called Planet of the Daleks. And then he cries out “Daleks!”)
Perhaps certain things are untouchable. I’m still not speaking to Eddie Izzard, for example, over his revelation about The Mousetrap. The Sixth Sense is never the same again on a repeat viewing, as once you know about The Twist, you spend the entire running time looking for clues. (I was going to suggest that perhaps M Night Shyamalan could have improved The Last Airbender by introducing a final reel twist, but having reflected, I suspect the best way to improve The Last Airbender is to erase all copies from existence.)
But Moffat himself has described his approach to writing both Who and Sherlock as (more paraphrasing from yours truly) ‘television you’re supposed to watch more than once’. We’re the generation that doesn’t watch Doctor Who live: that is why God invented iPlayer. Digital drama that can be scrutinised and analysed – frame by frame – has opened up a world of possibilities, but it’s come at a price, and that price is occasionally manifest in excruciatingly bad television. (I’m aware, throughout the process of articles like this one, that I come across as something of a Moffat-hater, but the way I approach the situation is this: the man’s getting paid a reasonable sum of money by the BBC to oversee and write one of their flagship programmes, and while I’ve never subscribed to the notion held by many that paying an annual license fee grants you the same democratic rights as a majority shareholder, if I can see an obvious way for him to be doing his job better, I’m damn well going to say so.
I am probably risking bad karma if I quote Lawrence Miles, but he it was that suggested the most promising solution I’ve ever heard to this particular problem. “Possibly,” he says, “just possibly, the best way to deal with ‘spoilers’ is to make stories that remain watchable even if you know what’s going to happen. Rather than, say, stories that depend on relentless story-arc twists and idiotic clues as to what’s going to be at the end of the season. Y’know. Just a thought. From someone who knew the ending of Genesis of the Daleks several years before he actually saw it.”
As is customary, Miles overstates his case, but in essence he’s absolutely right. Perhaps, on some levels, that’s why Moffat gets so cross about spoilers. Divulging them exposes the vacuum, like exposing the head of Omega or peeling back the faces of the Whisper Men, and reveals absolutely nothing of any substance. And why watch then? Once you know what’s coming, what else is there?
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Cavan Scott, George Mann & Rachael Stott discuss Titan Comics
David Power is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
On his latest edition of his podcast Panel to Panel Jeremy Bement firstly speaks to Cavan Scott, writer of AudioGO’s Night of the Whisper, about his return to writing for the Ninth Doctor in Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor miniseries, and about his upcoming projects, writing his new Sherlock Holmes novel The Patchwork Devil and co-writing the San Diego Comic Con exclusive comic.
He then speaks to George Mann, the other co-writer of the SDCC exclusive, about his history of contributing to the Doctor Who universe through short stories and audios, the challenges involved in writing the truly ambitious War Doctor epic, Engines of War, and his upcoming projects including his ongoing steampunk series Newbury and Hobbes.
Lastly he speaks to Rachael Stott, artist of the SDCC exclusive, about her experiences with drawing comic books which includes the crossover series Star Trek/ Planet of the Apes, her relationship with Doctor Who, her artistic influences, and teases about her future projects.
If you’d like to listen to the podcast yourself it’s over here.
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July 10, 2015
Last Man on Earth: Cancer Research Sci-fi Seeks Funding for Manchester Shoot
Richard Forbes is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
Only a week remains for the Last Man on Earth crowdsourcing campaign as it approaches £8,000 raised, still shy of its £10,000 target, with over 120 supporters so far. Funds raised through Indiegogo will go towards the Mancunian sci-fi short film starring Doctor Who’s own Colin Baker, in addition to supporting cancer research through The Christie and Cancer Research UK.
Kasterborous has followed the Last Man on Earth since its crowdsourcing campaign began, noting the film’s clever take on the apocalyptic genre as it centers around two virologists searching for a cure for cancer leading up to the end of the world.
Darren Langlands, the project’s director and producer, spoke about the project’s recent success:
We’re getting ever closer to our target! So thanks so much for all the love. And we just surpassed 400 likes over at www.facebook.com/lastmanonearth
We’re gearing up for the shoot in July and you just might get a sneak peak at rehearsals before the campaign draws to a close.
That and we’ve unveiled three new perks specifically for small businesses looking to make their mark on the big screen.
Various gifts and offers are available for supporters of the crowdfunding campaign, including t-shirts and memorabilia – plus digital and print copies of the shooting script (some signed by Colin Baker himself!), original concept art, opportunities to meet and contact Colin Baker, and an associate producer credit for those dishing out £750 too. Likewise if you’re trying to get into film production, there’s also an offer for donors to join the film’s crew on a two hour skype session to pick their brains and industry experience.
What do you, dear readers, think of the project? Personally, I get I Am Legend vibes from hearing the story’s synopsis; but to be fair, although both stories may involve a cure for cancer, Last Man on Earth takes place before the end of civilization, not after.
Shooting for Last Man on Earth is expected to begin later this month in Manchester.
The post Last Man on Earth: Cancer Research Sci-fi Seeks Funding for Manchester Shoot appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
How Did the Comic-Con Crowd React to the Doctor Who Series 9 Trailer?
Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
Comic-Con Reacts to Series 9 – Doctor Who: The Fan Show Comic-Con is open for business!
Those crazy cats at DW:TFS took to the floor at Comic-Con to find out how fans feel about the new Doctor Who Series 9 trailer, and as you can see people are pretty enthused by it. After all, they’re at the San Diego Comic Con, they’re enthused about EVERYTHING, MAN!
Seriously though, it’s good to see the trailer getting a good reputation, just as it’s nice to see the BBC letting the rest of the world see the trailer. You know, the complete opposite of 2013 (no, we haven’t, and never will, get over that).
What did you think of it? Let us know in the comments below.
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059 The Daemons
Steven B is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
In one sentence: the Doctor and UNIT must stop the Master, who plans on summoning the Devil by the means of black magic in the crypt under the church of an English country village.
That’s it, right there; that’s the story.
Whereas, in life, actions tend to speak louder than words, in television – at least to the public consciousness – images remain far more powerful than the story they tell. And so, if you are telling – or rather, transmitting in the late spring/early summer of 1971 into the homes of millions of children, whose memory will prove unreliable, and their families, who are watching it almost in passing as they may Top of the Pops – a story that counts amongst its ingredients such powerful images as a much-loved Hero and all his friends, a Villain and some country folk with a dark communal secret, a white witch and Satan himself, all as set amidst the familiar tranquillity of a quaintly/sinisterly-named town, why would you expect anything less than a reputation that far exceeds the sum of its iconic parts?
Because, to be fair, and by which I mean to be distantly objective and even cruelly critical, The Dæmons isn’t the story that an older cousin of yours so hyperbolically told you it was. Neither is it the one you allowed yourself to conjure in your imagination when reading that one-paragraph summary in The Making of Doctor Who. In being less than what it should be, however, it proves itself to have transcended its form and becomes an example of what Doctor Who can be at its very best; a modern myth.
The Dæmons is a moment when British Television through Doctor Who unintentionally and again placed its own entry alongside fairy tales inherited via Victorian literature or more ancient oral traditions. Consequently, our favourite show can be seen to rightfully stand alongside any other immortal form of stories to entrance and frighten children. This is the real strength of The Dæmons; that it is an absolutely compelling piece of television, despite and/or because of its hotchpotch plot.
Let’s look, as ever, at some of the serial’s elements. The Doctor, as the central character, is as imperious as he ever has been in his third incarnation. Despite Pertwee’s harshness towards his friends, most notably Jo – whom he reproaches for speaking ill of the Brigadier on account of his default setting of ‘blow it up’, despite doing exactly the same thing himself both here and elsewhere – he is believably and typically positioned as the spokesperson for science in a story steeped in superstition.
In the Doctor’s interactions with Miss Hawthorne, the white witch of Devil’s End played so expertly by Damaris Hayman (and whose character is perhaps named after the central antagonist of the Salem witch trials?), Doctor Who again enters the reason-versus-religion argument. Interestingly, it here treats the debate with suitable ambiguity, which is actually something that we will later come to expect of end-of-season scripts by Robert Sloman and Barry Letts.
Turning up as a Devil-worshipping vicar who talks backwards and is basically Aliester Crowley, the Master in turn leads a village of pagans who have abandoned Christianity, is very 1973’s The Wicker Man (so The Dæmons did it first – ha!)
The scene in the wonderfully-named Cloven Hoof pub in which Miss Hawthorne and the Doctor discuss what exactly bashed Benton up is perhaps the best example of how this ambivalence is presented. On the one hand, Miss Hawthorne insists that Benton was attacked by supernatural forces of the occult, while the Doctor immediately counters that it was nothing more than a psionic forcefield. We’re presented with a epistemological deadlock: “Science”, the Doctor insists; “Magic!” Miss Hawthorne retorts.
So which one is it? Well, that all rather depends on where you’re standing. If you’re starting point is that of an unearthly lord of time, you might too easily call to mind everything that is to be known about the physical laws of the universe and insist that you are correct. To Sloman and Letts’ credit, the character of Miss Hawthorne’s, however, doesn’t represent a standpoint that might be expected of a stereotypical country yokel (and to hers, Damaris Hayman’s performance makes that clear).
Instead, Miss Hawthorne’s viewpoint suggests that if it quacks like a duck, it’s entirely fair to say that it is, indeed, a duck, even if the Doctor may otherwise call it an anas platyrhynchos. In essence, her perspective is at the other end of the Doctor’s stance in the debate between magic and science as provided by Clarke’s oft-quoted law, whereby, essentially, the highest science is indistinguishable from what may otherwise be mistaken as magic, particularly to the untrained or inexperienced mind.
Surprisingly maturely, a television show for kids doesn’t reduce the science versus magic debate to a right/wrong binary, but calls into question not just the terms of the argument but the audience’s own preconceptions – it’s strong stuff, and it’s good stuff, and it’s stuff we will come to expect of the Sloman/Letts partnership, though here operating under the nom de plume of Guy Leopold, that will serve up the season finale for the rest of the Pertwee era. It invites the viewer to actively question and participate in the debate, rather than to blindly accept that science is right because it’s, well, science, and that’s that – because then you’re just replacing one form of historically lazy, unthinking doctrinal suspension of criticality for another (insofar as the lazy mind only need to point to science as the only justification required as opposed to the scientific method of enquiry, at least).
Another strong element in the success of The Dæmons is what has come to be known as ‘the UNIT family’, incorporating the Brigadier, Jo Grant, Captain Yates, Sergeant Benton, and, of course, the Master, all alongside the Doctor. Yates and Benton play an important role in driving the narrative, albeit at the Doctor’s instructions, as they are stuck on the inside of the heat barrier that blocks Devil’s End from the rest of the world. Fashion choices aside – it was the ‘70s, after all – it’s just, well, so nice to see these two lesser lights being given more of a part to play alongside the larger-than-life Doctor as played by Pertwee, even in so far as arriving via an actual, real helicopter. (I wonder what Jon Pertwee had to say about that!)
With the Brigadier unable to get into the village until later on in the serial, there’s a clever narrative trick that keeps him and the rest of the UNIT crew part of the action by getting the put-upon irregular, Sergeant Osgood (related in many people’s head-canon to the Osgood we see during the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors’ reigns) to build the Doctor’s impressively technobabble-y named EHF wideband width-variable phase oscillator. We satisfyingly get the band together again later on when UNIT roll in to Devil’s End with enough time for Nicholas Courtney to deliver the line of his life in the face of an advancing gargoyle, before they are able to apprehend the Master, who is led away to the sound of children cheering. Job done, then. The touch of the May pole dancers on the village green as the adventure ends is another little flourish that adds to the memory banks, and the overall impression is of a good day out for the whole family.
Of the Master, Roger Delgado is brilliantly villainous, as ever. Turning up as a Devil-worshipping vicar who talks backwards and is basically Aliester Crowley, and who in turn leads a village of pagans who have abandoned Christianity, is very 1973’s The Wicker Man (so The Dæmons did it first – ha!), while the image of the Devil appearing in a village is obviously drawn from Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that we get the see the face of the very Devil himself – and it isn’t the Master that we’re metaphorically talking about in this instance, but the actual, real, literal Devil. Azal, the Dæmon, is the physical embodiment of everything associated with the Devil. Fanged teeth protrude from a grotesque, inhuman face that is crowned with a set of horns. His body is a demonic mix of man and goat, and he has the capacity to shift his form, in this case from little to large and back again (and back again, and…). As a member of the Dæmon race from the planet Dæmos, though, he clearly isn’t the Devil, and is instead a scientist who – rather faux-biblically – has arisen to judge his creation. (But, if it looks like a half-man, half-goat… which again calls to mind the Doctor’s and Miss Hawthorne’s difference in discourse concerning magic and science.)
In being less than what it should be, however, it proves itself to have transcended its form and becomes an example of what Doctor Who can be at its very best; a modern myth.
Having been responsible for pushing man along evolutionarily, and having also been responsible for scientific advances up to and including, according to the Doctor, even the Industrial Age, Azal will now disinterestedly hold the power of life or death over humanity and the entire planet. It reads very much like an alien conspiracy on some levels, which were popular at the time, as well as being couched in amidst an Armageddon-esque narrative that persists in common story concerns up to and including the present day, and so the idea alone is obviously powerful enough to be worth doing in Doctor Who.
In many ways, The Dæmons foreshadows the Gothic elements of the early Tom Baker years under Philip Hinchcliffe, with such recognisable elements as the virginal maiden (Jo), the old woman (Miss Hawthorne), the stupid servant (Garvin the Verger), a faceless, easily-led mob (the villagers), an evil member of the clergy (Mr Magister, aka the Master), and the rational outsider Hero (the Doctor, of course), all set amongst and around the crypt of the local church where terrible things are happening in secret, before the whole place is memorably blown up. Back to The Making of Doctor Who for a moment, just to say that this ‘realistic’ special effect – it was the ‘70s, after all – has long-since entered legend for causing letters of complaint to be written in to the BBC from the public at the destruction of a centuries-old church all for the sake of a television show. Reviewing it now, I suppose all that we can say is that they were simpler times back then, I suppose.
And maybe that’s why The Dæmons persists in our memory. We know that it doesn’t quite add up, and that once the Master summons the Devil there is nothing left for the story to do other than wait for the Doctor to put him back in his bottle. Instead, we get some padded fluff and set pieces that make up for some evocative, extended, external filming interspersed with images of the Master in a dark, red-lit cavern doing Very Evil Things. The truth is, though, put on the telly when we’re all sat around together, and I think that most people might be inclined to not turn it over to the other side.
The post 059 The Daemons appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
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