Menu Close

Marathon in the Works

17 Comments

Recently I've had several conversations in which it seems obvious that it's about time for me to indulge in another marathon viewing of as many of the pre-Hiatus stories as I can get my hands on (out on Region 1 DVD or available as a photonovel at the BBC website). I'd made a plan to do that in the 8 weeks leading up to Gally as a way to get myself refamiliarized with the older stories.

After taking a look at the playlist, I've realized there's no way I can do it in eight weeks; I need more like sixteen. Conveniently enough, if I start tomorrow, I'll have those sixteen weeks (plus a few days for The Movie) before Gally! So, if you'd like to play along, next week I'll be attempting to watch through the following:

  • An Unearthly Child
  • The Daleks
  • The Edge of Destruction
  • The Keys of Marinus
  • The Aztecs
  • The Dalek Invasion of Earth
  • The Rescue
  • The Romans
  • The Web Planet
  • The Crusade [photonovel]

I might skip over The Aztecs – or at least give it only a partial viewing – because it's one I've seen more than once. Regardless, this is going to be a tall order! Feel free to comment on your favorites/least favorites, general impressions of One and his Companions, and/or the idiocy of my plan.

Read more →

Confession #17: I See the Whoniverse Everywhere

3 Comments

When did my life turn into a Doctor Who episode?

I had a big personal loss this past week. Some people – those who’ve never had a close pet – won’t understand this, I suppose, but we had to put our dog down, and my life feels forever changed. Zoë was a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old Rottoyed. That’s what we called her; she was half Rottweiler, half Samoyed, and a sweet a soul as you could wish. She’d been with us since the age of 11 months, and was my first “baby.” I didn’t become a mom to human babies for the better part of a decade after we got Zoë, so she was our fur baby – a real and vital part of the family. And now she’s gone.

I mentioned to my husband that I was having trouble concentrating on my work (as I write, it’s been a mere two days since she passed), and that my grief feels like a physical presence in my skull. When he said that “in a Doctor Who episode, that would be literal,” I had to laugh. And start writing. It’s simultaneously scary and funny that this show I’d barely heard of four years ago has crept so thoroughly into my life.

So now I’m mentally outlining an episode about how certain pets have some alien (or otherwise advanced) genetic component that allows them to make a psycho-physical, trans-dimensional bond with a human (yes… that will do nicely). When successful, a Dog (or Cat, or other Pet – but I’m going to stick to Dogs because Zoë was a dog, and it’s easiest to write without too many caveats) can use that subliminal ley line to control the behavior of her human bondmate.

Read more →

American Torchwood Is Weird

It finally dawned on me, as I watched Episode 6 ("Middle Men" – which, by the way, had (in my opinion) the best cliffhanger of the series to date, even if it wasn't all that suspenseful), that one of the things that's throwing me off about Torchwood: Miracle Day is the fact that it's been produced in the US. It's not the actual presentation of the material, or different "production values" or anything like that, though. It's the actors.

One things that has always made it easy for me to immerse myself in Who is the fact that I am being introduced to characters with faces I've never seen before. I only know these actors in their Who personas (with the exception of a cameo in City of Death by John Cleese and, actually, Five – who I couldn't help thinking of as "Tristan" for the first two stories I watched). That was true with the first three (BBC-produced) series of Torchwood, too. Now in Miracle Day, I'm seeing faces all over the place that I know elsewhere.

I hadn't realized how much of a difference that would make to me. It's jarring, though. It takes me out of the moment, and I start pulling back and thinking in terms of a production instead of getting pulled into the story. "Where have I seen this actor before?" I ask myself. "Oh yeah – it was [as a regular in a sitcom / in that soap opera I used to watch / in one of my favorite films from the '90s / whatever it may be]." Some of the magic seeps out in those moments, especially if I can't figure it out at first – that drives me to distraction.

I have to wonder – is this part of Who for Brits? Is that one reason I'm usually so "easy" when it comes to my enjoyment of post-Hiatus Who compared to those who constantly recognize guest artists in Torchwood's parent show? I'm really curious now, but I don't have any good way to research the question (or even an idea of how to do so without bias), other than the utterly subjective one of asking any of you out there who have an opinion to weigh in. So let's hear your thoughts.

Read more →

Confession #16: I Hate the Non-Regeneration

4 Comments

Warning: profanity ahead
Now anyone who has an opinion about Doctor Who in its post-Hiatus incarnation is almost guaranteed to have a further opinion about one particular moment. Whatever your feelings about the “Bog-Standard-Regeneration-Effect #1” (and you can read mine in Confession #4), its use for the faux climax of Series 4 at the end of The Stolen Earth was a bait-and-switch of epic proportions.

Even putting aside Doctor 10.2 and how that whole storyline played out – which is the part about which most Whovians (whether the neo- or paleo- variety) would be most likely to offer their two cents – the actual Non-Regeneration Event itself was, in my opinion, a travesty against God and man (or against Doctor and Fan, if you will). Why does it put my knickers in such a twist? I’m glad you asked; I was going to tell you anyway.

Here’s the deal. Everybody knows (and by “everybody” I mean anyone who cares enough about Who to get their knickers in a twist about any aspect of the show) that Time Lords only get twelve (count ’em: 12) regenerations (thirteen incarnations). Evidence indicates that (a) regenerations could be stolen (as the Master tried to do at least once) and (b) Time Lords could grant further regenerations to another Time Lord (as offered to the Master in The Five Doctors). To me, that indicates not only that they are discrete units, but also that they are a commodity – not to be discarded haphazardly. Sure, Romana seems to have done just that in Destiny of the Daleks, but she was young, and it was (apparently) her first time; we can forgive her her debatable indiscretion. The Doctor, on the other hand, having already burned through the majority of his share (no, I don’t give any credence to that insult of a toss-off line in The Sarah Jane Adventures!), ought to know better by the time he’s Ten.

Read more →

Confession #15: I Wish Sgt. Benton Had Traveled with the Doctor

3 Comments

I don’t really know, but I’m guessing every fan has at least one character about which they think, “man! – s/he should have been a Companion!” Currently, I’m having such wishful thinking about Mdme. Vastra. (Wouldn’t that be a brilliant change-up for the TARDIS crew? How often has the Doctor had a non-human companion? Kamelion, Romana, K-9 (anyone I’m missing?) – a small fraction of the total, regardless.) When we get back to pre-Hiatus Who, though – something that’s sadly “mists of time” for me rather than “misty nostalgia” – I’ve found that there’s one recurring yet secondary character I’d really have loved to see travel with the Doctor on a regular basis:  Sgt. Benton.

Benton is a generally congenial soul, mellow and pleasant to be around. That all makes him great as a background character, but what makes me think he’d have done well long-term? There are a couple of major reasons, really, and they have to do with his basically unflappable personality.

First, he tends to take everything in stride. What better qualification than that can a Companion have? (Well… I’ll consider that later.) When faced with all sorts of weirdness, Benton pretty much never bats an eyelash – with the exception of reasonable self-preservation instinct. Most famously, he had the best-in-the-history-of-the-franchise reaction to his first view of the inside of the TARDIS. Here’s how it played out.

Read more →

Confession #14: I Rather Like Torchwood

2 Comments

The recent relaunch of Doctor Who spinoff cum anagram Torchwood – this time in its American incarnation – has gotten me thinking again about the series as a whole. The fact that the 30 Day Doctor Who Challenge has a “favorite spinoff” entry coming up has exacerbated the situation, as Torchwood is one of the obvious possibilities. I hear a lot of bad-mouthing of Captain Jack’s little gang and their adventures (even do a little myself, on occasion), but how bad is it, really?

I will admit that I watched the first two series mostly for the completeness of it – there was Who crossover, and I wanted the whole story. There were an awful lot of those stories that I’d rather not see again. I count Cyberwoman, Countrycide (worst. episode. ever.), and From Out of the Rain among those.

On the other hand, there were a few that I found quite engaging:  series opener Everything Changes, They Keep Killing Suzie (loved the premise), Random Shoes (similarly enjoyed this premise), Captain Jack Harkness (it was nice to get a little more background on Our Hero), Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (OK, yeah, I just really like James Marsters), and the rather disturbing Meat (not least because heroine Gwen’s hubby Rhys finally gets let in on the big secret of Torchwood’s existence).

The rest up through the end of 2008 exhibited varying levels of mediocrity, and usually included at least one “yea! we’re post-watershed!” gratuitous sex scene (with about 90% of those being same sex liaisons, or at least that’s how it seemed). Not to say said scenes were absent from any of the aforementioned episodes.

Read more →

Confession #13: I’m Mad at Eccleston

1 Comment

Looking at the title of this Confession, you might be under the mistaken impression that I don’t like Nine. In fact, just the opposite is true. While my affections were eventually transferred firmly to Ten, Nine was the Doctor who brought me into the fold, and he truly was fantastic. I love him to pieces, and was definitely left wanting more.

So why the grumpy face? Simple. Christopher Eccleston, the actor who so brilliantly portrayed the Doctor’s ninth incarnation, never really bought into the whole bonkers culture that surrounds Who. It wasn’t for him. I suppose I can’t really fault him for that (I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea), but if you’re not going to buy in, why put yourself in that position? Why take the role and then bail at the first available opportunity?

I rewatched the BBC Breakfast interview included in the Series One extras the other day, and you can tell he’s trying hard to head the critics off at the pass. He was always very complimentary to the fan base, saying that he appreciated the loyalty to the old show and the encouragement he got from the Whovians he had met while filming. Doing his best to avoid coming out with the biggest spoiler of that series (that he would, in fact regenerate at the end), Eccleston still chose to emphasize how what he’d done (“to date!” I’m sure all the viewer were thinking at the time) was already the equivalent of two series on the old show, when they did 25-minute episodes instead of 45-minute ones. You keep tellin’ yourself that, mate…

Read more →

Confession #12: I Adore Delgado’s Master

5 Comments

When I first started thinking about why the original Master was such a delicious villain, I thought in terms of his characteristic muahaha!!  He seemed like a wonderfully campy nemesis for the Doctor, and though I don’t know that the character ever literally said, “they laughed at me at the Academy!” I really felt he should have.

As I went back over some of the Master’s stories I’ve seen so far (remember that I haven’t seen them all) and watched the DVD extra on Frontier in Space about his career and tragic death, I realized that what Katie Manning (who played Companion Jo Grant) said of him was true: “he never camped it up.” The character itself is something of a caricature, but Delgado always played the Master straight.

His Master was intelligent, polite, charming, sharp-witted, suave, persuasive (even without the hypnosis), and completely evil. He cared not one whit for what damage his plans might do to the universe or any minor players, as long as he got a thrill from it – and showed up the Doctor. With the easy way he could arch his eyebrow with disdain, he had me at “universally.”

Read more →

Confession #11: I Miss the Serial Format

Is it possible to be nostalgic for a time when you weren’t even paying attention? If so, then that’s my situation. I never watched any of the pre-relaunch stories when they were current (not having grown up watching Who), and yet I’ve got a little it-was-better-in-the-old-days-itis.

From the very beginning, when the Doctor reluctantly kidnapped his first Companions to keep them from exposing him, it’s been about a story unfolding gradually over a matter of weeks, with occasional one- or two-episode arcs (though, admittedly, An Unearthly Child had very little to do with the three other episodes that immediately followed). I miss that continuity of episodes, the way one led directly into the next (even the last one of a story often set up the next story, at least very early on) – and the little cliffhangers every half hour. Among other things, the serial format allowed for more extended storytelling.

I think that’s actually a large part of why Torchwood: Children of Earth was so much better than first two Torchwood series, for example. An in-depth plot that doesn’t have to be wrapped up in 45 minutes makes it possible to give the same kind of rise and fall (maybe I’ve been watching too many dance shows lately…) that we find in the best literature. Writers (and cast) can explore the nuances of character relationships and motivations. It can also reduce the necessity for the kind of deus ex machina that has so irritated some fans (go ahead: add your favorite love-to-hate deus ex machina moment to the comments!). There’s time to give a slow buildup to a big reveal, and then yet more time to build tension while the Doctor devises a solution. Time can really be your enemy in a modern episode.

Read more →

Confession #10: I Wish the Doctor Wouldn’t Lie About His Age

I’m hardly the first person to rant about this, but I have to say it’s one of the things that bugs me most about the on-screen revival of the Doctor: he’s constantly lying about his age.  Oh, sure, you can hide behind the old saw that he really has no clue – what with all his traipsing through time and space, I’ve no doubt that he’s lost track exactly – but that’s really no excuse.

Think on this.  There have been nearly a dozen occasions when the Doctor specified his age (I’m only considering televised episodes here – no spin-off media, since those bring in a whole extra level of complexity and continuity issues).  My research indicates he gave his age in the following episodes with the numbers indicated:

Tomb of the Cybermen:  450
Mind of Evil:  “several thousand years”
DW and the Silurians and Planet of the Spiders:  748
Brain of Morbius and Seeds of Death:  749
Robots of Death:  750
Key to Time (Ribos Operation):  756 759
Revelation of the Daleks and Trial of a Timelord:  “900, more or less”
Time and the Rani:  953

Two of these situations in particular lead me to believe the Time Lords, at least, had ways of keeping track of such things.  For starters, Romana has his exact age (759) on the tip of her tongue when the question of whether or not the Doctor is “old” is raised at the beginning of The Ribos Operation.  He corrects her (“756!”), but she claims he’s “lost count somewhere,” suggesting his age (or date of birth, even) is part of the “confidential” information to which Romana seems privy (what with details of his Academy record also blithely cascading forth).

Read more →