26 Seasons of Doctor Who

    If you read the blog regularly, you’ll know that I’m quite the Doctor Who fan.  If not, you can believe it's true.  And no, not the Johnny-Come-Lately ‘isn’t David Tennant so awesome,’ 'bow-ties are cool' Doctor Who fan.  I’m not against the new show by any means, though the last few seasons have kind of sucked.  But I’m a classic Who fan through and through, and I have been since watching Robot (Tom Baker’s first) on MPBN Channel 12 in Bangor, ME some time in the early to mid 80s (Bernie Roscetti was a superstar, man).  It’s been a favorite ever since.  As a youth, I would devour every new story every Saturday afternoon (occasionally Sundays).  They would play full stories, so it might be on for 90 minutes or 2 ½ hours, depending.  I loved the Tom Baker years, was confused when Peter Davision came on, and didn’t like that curly haired guy (Colin Baker).  When it started over, going back to the original William Hartnell era, I lost track.  I didn’t respond to his ornery old crank attitude, and the slower pace, but still saw stories here and there, as they showed a handful of Hartnell and then Troughton.  I think I was more into it again when Jon Pertwee came on, but only got excited again when it returned to the Tom Baker years.  On the next cycle through, I saw Sylvester McCoy, and I was shocked and upset to learn the show had been cancelled.  How could this be?

    When I got NetFlix about six years ago, I was enjoying the early episodes of the new series (Christopher Eccleston is still my favorite of the new guys) and thought I’d start watching some of my favorite classic stories, and some I had never seen.  This was when I started to understand the depth of what had happened to Who, with the loss of so many early episodes.  So much of Hartnell and almost all of Troughton seemed to be missing, possibly forever.  I don’t know what prompted me, and I don’t know when I decided.  But about two or maybe three years ago, I started trying to get more systematic about my viewing, organizing the disks by their proper chronological order.  I was off on a multi-year journey to cover as much of Doctor Who’s classic run as I could, with what was on the market and what was available through NetFlix.  Seeing a lot of the stories for the first time in 25 years, and some for the first time (not to mention behind the scenes info and interviews), I came to a new understanding and appreciation of the series.  I found myself responding more to Hartnell and Troughton than ever before.  William Hartnell is still a challenge.  The show was finding its feet.  The character was very different and most of the rules and larger concepts were missing.  And it wasn’t uncommon for stories to become repetitive, awkward, and yes, boring.  But there was plenty to love.  And once Susan left, the companions were less annoying.

    There are so few stories from the Patrick Troughton years, that I hardly feel like I can say much, but I liked Jamie and Victoria a lot as companions, and those stories that do exist seem pretty good.  But the real discovery was with the beginning of Jon Pertwee’s years, where I took an immediate liking to the man in a way I never had before.  He’s more dashing and brazen, more active and willful.  And there's a wistful bitterness that I connect with.  So, while the writers and budget kept the Doctor on Earth for much of this time (erg!), and The Master showed up, I found Pertwee catapulting to the top of my favorites list.  Which reminds me, this re-watching of the series convinced me that I can’t bloody stand The Master.  He doesn’t fit.  His episodes are usually lame.  On occasion, he even shows up in a good story, promptly ruining it.  The mustache twirling villain might have worked once in a great while, but as a regular recurring character, it sucked.  I’d argue that the show didn’t need a recurring villain, but if it was going to have one, it needed to be a better one.  It was also during this time, and serving as a bridge into the Tom Baker years, that Sarah Jane Smith shared adventures with the Doctor.  Having recently seen her guest on the new Who, and then get a successful, youth-aimed, spin-off series that I liked quite a bit (and was overall, much better than Who’s other spin-off, Torchwood), I was psyched to see her in her younger days again.  But while I’d liked her a lot when I was a boy, I found her wanting as a companion, now that I’m an adult.  She’s more screamy and prone to being captured than I remembered, which is jarring when comparing her to the brassy, tough woman she is in The Sarah Jane Adventures.

    Tom Baker is a colossally dominant figure in Doctor Who’s history.  More than any other actor, I think he is the face of the show.  He was my Doctor for the longest time, the man I judged all others by.  His time on the show was its golden age, with many of the most memorable characters and episodes.  The broad appeal and outright madness of the series while he was on can not be overstated.  From 1974 to 1981, his freakish face, wild mop of hair, and eccentric behavior re-wrote the book on a character that had then been on TV for more than 10 years.  He traveled with the best companion of all time, Leela, a warrior woman from a horrible future.  He traveled with two regenerations of a lady Time Lord.  He even found a boy from another reality.  This was the show at its absolute height.  Sure, there were lame stories.  And absolutely, there were great stories from other times.  But this was a glorious time, when the writing and production, the cast and crew all came together.  Upon my re-watching of many Tom Baker stories, I find that I’m not the sycophantic fan I once was.  Some of his mannerisms I find off-putting, and there are choices in some of the episodes that I think haunt the character to this very day (it also gets awkward trying not to look at his poorly covered cold sores).  Still, it was a great time, and more than any other era of the show, the Tom Baker years are probably the best jumping off point to try watching the classic series.  I don’t know that I’d recommend starting with Robot.  I think Genesis of the Daleks, The Face of Evil (introduction of Leela), or The Ribos Operation (beginning of a season long Key to Time arc, a nice sampling of what the show has to offer, while a larger story is told) would work best.

    After Tom Baker, things get weird.  The show takes on a very, very different feel when handsome young Peter Davison shows up in his dandy cricket outfit, putting a shockingly different spin on his interpretation of the character.  I was surprised to find myself enjoying Davison in the role more than ever before, and that I kinda liked the much maligned Adric.  But Davison is also saddled with one of the worst companions of the whole show (rivaled only by Susan, I think), Tegan.  Everything about that woman annoys the ever loving crap out of me, and every time it seems like she’s leaving the show, she doesn’t.  Argh!  Following Davison, you’ve got the most reviled actor to take up the mantle, Colin Baker.  The show was in trouble, the writing was wildly uneven, and the actor was challenging.  But I think Baker reached for something greater.  He picked up on some of Tom Baker’s edgy darkness, but also on some of Jon Pertwee’s daring do.  Possibly the biggest shock I got in this journey was the discovery that I really, really liked Colin Baker as the Doctor.  Unfortunately, his final season is a turd sandwich, and the beginning of the end of the show.

    That brings me to Sylvester McCoy, and profound disappointment.  I hadn’t seen any McCoy episodes in many years, possibly not since they originally aired on Channel 12 circa 1990.  But my memory of them were pleasant.  Alas, my memories did not prove to be accurate.  Suffering through Mel, the perkiest, most aggravating of companions, you quickly notice that the writing is lacking.  Sure, there are a couple stories that ooze with 2000AD’s punk, pitch black humor.  But for the most part, they’re just bad.  And when Ace shows up, it’s a welcome change, but not enough.  I remember her being a take-charge tough girl who didn’t let the baddies get the drop on her.  However, while she doesn’t spend her time screaming, she isn’t nearly as useful and independent as she should be, and the real problem brings us back to the writing.  The Doctor is all over the place, from the dark edge of Tom Baker to the loveable vagabond of Patrick Troughton, and all points between; each episode feels like a whole new character.  Somewhere in these few seasons of the show seeds were planted that wouldn’t germinate for many years.  It is here that the deeper problems with the new series seem to begin.  The over-melodramatic stories, the attempts to raise the stakes so high that they don't mean anything anymore, the deus ex machina cannon being fired off every ten minutes.  And so many episodes that try to cram in far too many disparate things.  With very few exceptions, McCoy’s tenure on the show is painful to watch, and a sad bleeding out of a once great show.  By the last few stories, I was having a hard time going on, and just wanted it to be over.  The final story, Survival didn’t suck, and that’s about the best I can say for it.

    Final disappointments aside, it’s a great show, with years and years of fascinating characters, creatures, worlds, and stories.  From comedy to horror to adventure to mystery, so many different types of plot were explored, it always keeps you guessing.  The confused, jumbled, and less than consistent universe it presents is one of the most impressive sandboxes my mind has ever played in, and along with Star Trek, it will doubtless remain one of my all time favorite shows, a pillar of Science Fiction television.  Seeing the many ups and downs of the series over its long run gives me hope that the recent spate of crappy episodes from the new show are just a phase, and things might get better again.

    I’m glad to see new generations of folks coming to Doctor Who, and I hope some of them explore and appreciate what came before the re-launch.

-Matt

The New Doctor is In

    I guess it wouldn’t make much sense for me to not have some comment on the choice of actor for the newest incarnation (regeneration) of Doctor Who.  I am a long time (1981?) fan of the series, and have talked about it extensively on this blog in the past.  Here’s the thing.  The new series has kind of lost me.  No, I’m not one of those ‘you can’t do anything new; why can’t it be like it was?’ kind of fans.  I like that they really shook things up in style and tone with the relaunch of the series in 2005.  And overall, I’ve liked this new run.  Christopher Eccleston was wonderfully eccentric with a nice balance of child-like wonder and sadness.  David Tennant overstayed things a bit, but was quite good for his first two seasons.  I warmed to Matt Smith shockingly fast.  But the writing.  The writing.  There have been problems from the beginning, with deus ex machinas flying around like skivvies at a college party.  But in the last two seasons, those problems have become far more acute.  The writing has become…well, just lazy.  Very, very lazy.  It’s become a series of impossibly huge problems with absolutely no way to get out of it and the fate of every Human on Earth resting in the balance…only to have the Doctor say a couple of pithy lines, maybe a speech about the wonder of the universe or how much he likes Humans and how special they are, then the sonic screwdriver comes out and he miraculously saves the day.  Forgetting of course, that along the way he’s let lots of other people die or be horribly ruined, even his friends.  When things are only mildly bad, or deadly for one or two people (or more accurately, easy for the writer to use in creating false emotional resonance) the screwdriver only works as a simple tool, but when there’s absolutely no hope, suddenly the screwdriver can do whatever is needed to solve the problem (remember that episode at the beginning of this past season where a third of the people on Earth just died…then he waved his magic wand-I mean sonic screwdriver and everyone just got better?).  It’s become the weekly equivalent of Superman flying around the world so fast he turned back time, one of the all time unforgivable cheats in cinematic history, up there with ‘it was all a dream.’

Expecto Patronum!

    So as far as the casting goes, Peter Capaldi is a great choice.  I was leaning toward Sean Pertwee or Colin Salmon personally, but Peter Capaldi is a fantastic actor.  Going back to his young semi-hippie performance in Lair of the White Worm, through more recent roles on Torchwood (and Doctor Who) and In the Loop.  I’m very happy that they went for someone a bit more mature this go-round.  Having two very young Doctors in a row was weird.  I will chime in on a topic of much contention within internet fan circles, too.  Look, I know gender is a touchy subject these days.  And I think anyone who really knows me knows that I am 100% pro-women when it comes to heroic roles, action leads, etc.  In fact, I’ve frequently complained that the Doctor’s female companions have been too often relegated to the role of love-sick puppies.  Martha is probably my favorite of the new companions, but she spent much of her time pining after the heartbroken Doctor.  Donna was the most independent, but I can’t stand the actress in the role.  Where are companions like Leela, Ace, or Romana (I&2)?  The sad thing is that Rory became one of the most compelling companions in this new run, and he was a monumental sap (Jack was pretty good, but once he moved to Torchwood, he pretty much sucked).  And as far as making the Doctor a woman this time round, that just seems like pandering.  There has never been an indication that Time Lords switch gender, and every indication that they don’t.  And the only reason to do it now would be to appeal to some sort of ill conceived sense of woman empowerment, but which would in fact be nothing but condescension.  It’s like adding the black character for no other reason than producers feel there needs to be a black character (not because the actor who was best for the part happened to be black).  The Doctor has always been a very male figure, and there’s nothing wrong with a male figure.  What there is something wrong with is the lack of compelling and strong female figures to accompany him on his journey.  Or for that matter, strong and compelling characters of any sort.  He needs a Leela or an Ace, an independent, self-motivated woman who doesn’t give a toss about him romantically, but loves the opportunity for adventure and knowledge.  And if romance is in the cards, he needs a Romana, an equally powerful and wise counterpart, not a wide-eyed child wowed by his expensive gifts and aloofness.  And maybe we could finally have a return to weird companions.  No more 20 something girls from today’s London.  Let’s shake it up with an alien, or someone from the future or the past.  A cyborg, a supergenius, or Hun.  What about that Silurian who showed up in the Victorian era?  Something other than another cute little girl.  On that topic, for crying out loud, let’s have a woman, not a girl.

    So, here’s to a new actor and maybe some new life breathed into the show.  But more importantly, here’s to an immediate and massive shift in writing.  Let’s get away from operatic melodrama, and get back into ideas and adventure.  Enough impossible astronauts and bad wolves.  Enough with everything having hidden meaning, but nothing meaning much of anything.  Enough with the human race being on the brink of extinction every other week.  Let’s have some good old fashioned interesting settings, interesting stories, and interesting characters.  Let’s have some fun again.  Take us places.  Show us things.  Make us think and wonder.  Come on Doctor Who.  Be as cool as we all think you are.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (12/9/12-12/15/12)

    Oh, man.  I Doctor Who’ed out for the first two thirds of the week.  Man, I love that show.  I focused mostly on Tom Baker stories.  Otherwise, I was mostly busy with work, which took up a good deal of my time.  Though I did get some reading done.  Two non-fiction books I’ve been picking away at, and Y: The Last Man.


Doctor Who: The Pyramids of Mars:  The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith go back to 1911 to deal with a mummy, possession, and some ancient evil alien action.  With a lot of the Gothic vibe of Hammer, a bit of Universal’s monster movie look, and a dose of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, this is one of the better Earth based stories.  Sarah Jane is a bit less screamy here, too.  That’s nice.  Good actors and good locations help a lot.

    On Sunday, Ben and I decided to sit down and watch the Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy.  It’s a heck of an undertaking, as each movie is well over two hours long.

Batman Begins:  Anyone who has heard me blather on about comic book/superhero movies knows I don’t care much for origin stories.  Look at Iron Man as a prime example.  You can call almost every moment and event before it happens, because it follows the pattern of origin stories so slavishly.  Yet, in spite of that, Batman Begins is still my favorite and I think the best Batman to ever grace the silver screen.  Excellent direction, good script, top notch cast.  And it’s a really good story about the creation of an icon, the purposeful design of an alter-ego and the forging of a will.  It’s a sweeping story, crossing the globe, but centered on Batman’s traditional home, Gotham.

    A break for lunch and the comic shop were in order.  Tried a new pizza place in Vienna.  Not too bad.

The Dark Knight:  This is a good sequel, and a good middle film, taking the hero into a dark place, where he is forced to confront his opposite, The Joker, and his own ideal corrupted, Harvey Dent.  Unfortunately, I don’t think this movie is as strong as it could, and should have been.  Partly, it seems too scattered.  I’d have rather had either The Joker or Two-Face.  Doing both doesn’t work.  And I think, focusing on the Joker, and having Harvey only become Two-Face in the finale would have been more powerful (setting up for some kind of later confrontation).  And, unlike the first or third film, you really feel its runtime.  It’s only about ten minutes longer than the first, but feels much longer.  I think the last 30 to 40 minutes could have been largely cut or altered to move much quicker and be more dramatic.  Still, it has plenty of good stuff.

The Dark Knight Rises:  The final chapter in this masked vigilante epic is pretty darned epic and sweeping.  Here we really get into the idea of the idea.  Batman is more than Bruce Wayne.  He’s bigger than any one man.  Even when that man is broken and exiled, Batman must go on.  With a story that ties deeply into the first film, and takes Bruce, Batman, Gordon, and Gotham itself to the brink and beyond  It is a very worthy ending.

    A really excellent trilogy.  Epic in scope, action packed, and filled with cool characters and crazy plots.  Taken as a whole, it’s a very good story.

Doctor Who: The Face of Evil:  “You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.  They don’t alter their views to fit the facts.  They alter the facts to fit their views…” The Doctor shows up on a primitive world of superstitious savages.  But pieces of technology and hints of something big are strewn about.  And who is this Evil One everyone keeps mistaking the Doctor for?  He teams up with a young savage girl, Leela, who has been questioning the beliefs of her tribe.  Things become even more complicated when the Doctor and Leela cross an energy field to find another group of people, very different from the savages, and an ancient secret connected to the Doctor himself.  It’s a pretty fun story.  And of course, it introduces one of the Doctor’s best companions, Leela.  If I hadn’t already been a fan of the show, the introduction of Leela probably would have hooked me.

Doctor Who: The Horror of Fang Rock:  “Gentlemen, I’ve got news for you.  This lighthouse is under attack, and by morning we might all be dead…heh.”  The Doctor and his deadly companion Leela end up on a lonely island with a lighthouse and an incoming fog.  A falling star, fog, a mysterious death, weird cold, power problems.  What’s it all mean?  Nothing good, to be sure.  Things get more complicated when a bunch of jerks get shipwrecked.  More bodies for the slaughter.  This story has always been among my favorites.  The old time (30s, I think) era and awesome secluded setting, Leela, and a bunch of fun characters.  Man, I wish Leela had stuck around longer.  Her episodes are always a bit cooler.

Doctor Who: Destiny of the Daleks:  “Oh, look!  Rocks.”  The Doctor returns to a planet which seems familiar.  Rocks…radiation…Oh, crap.  It’s Skaro!  The Daleks have come back to their wasted world looking for something.  And some creepy silvery Egyptian looking folks, along with a bunch of cosmic castaways are looking to cause some trouble for our old tin-can friends.  What will the Doctor and Romana II do?  I’ve always kind of liked this story; probably more than it deserves.  I think it’s largely because I like the look of the weird silvery aliens, and I always wanted to see them come back.

Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden:  “W-Work FOR?  I don’t work for anybody.  I’m just having fun.”  Two space shops get locked together, and a crazy German is using way better than 3D tech to capture alien creatures in crystals.  You know, that old story.  Things get complicated when weird creatures start getting out.  Strange monsters.  Killer plants.  Drug dealers.  Fun stuff.  Apparently, this was a very troubled shoot.  But it was a perfectly enjoyable story.

Hitchcock:  “Hold the ‘cock.’”  I’m generally not a fan of bio-pics, but that’s because they’re generally lacking in focus, trying to hit the highlight reel of a person’s life.  Those few good ones typically pick an event and zoom in on it, which is the case here.  By centering on the making of Psycho, the filmmakers are able to look at the artist at the height of his career, with all his skills and flaws well established.  The actors all sink their teeth into playing the various personas, and do a pretty good job.  I think the movie was probably a bit nice to the man, frankly.  He seems to have been something of a monster, in reality.  But, while his quirks and obsessions do play into things, he seems like a pretty good chap at the end of the day.  If I have a complaint about the movie, it’s that they actually spend very little time on the nitty-gritty of filmmaking.  There are a few sequences of filming, but very few.  A bit more of the technical stuff, including a bit more of the editing/post work would have been nice to see; a bit more of the genius actually at work.  But the relationship between Hitchcock and his wife is kind of heartwarming…in a way.

Abraham Lincoln VS Zombies:  “Chamberlain, that’s enough!”  I sometimes wonder if The Asylum instructs their actors to suck more.  But then, I know some folks who made a movie, and the worst actor in the movie was the one professional.  As folks wander around some historic parks, occasional zombies fall before the switchblade-scythe of Honest Abe.  The movie is pretty lame, and while it had a few fun moments, was fairly bland.  The guy playing Lincoln wasn’t bad.  I’d have liked more of him fighting, and less of his band of spec-ops troops.

Doctor Who: Earthshock:  “Even under the threat of death, he has the arrogance of a Time Lord.”  Adric is all depressed and stuff, so he tries to convince the Doctor to return to E-Space.  While trying to plot a course back to that alternate dimension, they stumble across a mystery (shocking!).  Earth’s future, a missing group of archeologists, creepy robot ninjas, some soldiers, lots of caves.  And then a space freighter.  This story has a pretty shocking ending, really.  And a great, memorable exit for a long running character.

Detour:  A dumb schmuck hitchhiking cross country in search of his dame gets picked up by a blabbermouth sexual predator.  When Handsy McGrabby finally stops jawing about the woman he tried to grope, he goes and croaks, and our loogen doesn’t know what to do.  Being as he’s so smart and all, he decides to dump the body and takes the guys jack, duds, and bus.  After all, he doesn’t want anyone to think he did anything wrong.  Everything seems jake when he comes across a wild-eyed, hard drinking, sex hungry dame with a quick tongue and emotions that shoot back and forth faster than a tennis ball at Wimbledon.  She knows what he done, and she’s going to use it to get rich or die trying.  He’s in over his head, and doesn’t have a clue how to swim.  Low budget, and occasionally wonky, this is still a pretty cracking flick with some broken folks doing ugly to each other.

2103: The Deadly Wake:  Look, I love these little sci-fi schlock movies that try to go for something way beyond their budget.  This one has some charm, and Malcolm McDowell gives a solid performance (though the rest of the cast is pretty much crap).  But it’s over long, and several things happen kinda at random.  This is best expressed by the magic fight with the cyborg killing machine (Wait! There’s a cyborg killing machine?  Wait!  There’s magic?).  A better script, a few better supporting actors, and this might have been pretty good.  As is, it’s fairly forgettable.

For Greater Glory:  Holy frickin’ crap, Peter O’Toole is so danged old and crazy looking.  This cloyingly Catholic movie is basically a propaganda film about the evils of secularity and questioning the religious and expecting them to live by the same rules as everyone else.  As is typically the case, the loving and peaceful followers of a ‘religion of peace,’ pick up weapons and start killing their way back to power.  It’s hard to feel bad for an organization responsible for so much death and crimes against humanity, or for those hungry to murder and die in its name.  This movie even tries to gloss over the faithful’s atrocities by making them not really the fault of the men who committed them (he was forced to kill all those people and desecrate bodies; he accidentally burned all those innocent civilians to death on that train; etc.  Oops).  Do I think governments should ban the practice of whatever mumbo-jumbo people believe in?  No.  But theocracy, always the eventual goal of those who mix religion and politics, has only one result, human misery.  Religion as state (Saudi Arabia) or state as religion (North Korea).  It is the same.  So, throughout this movie (which is quite long), I kept thinking about movies like Rambo III or The Living Daylights, where the resistance fighters we’re supposed to feel for will go on to great evil.  Murder, rape, child killing, torture.  It’s all part of God’s plan, or something.  Anything can be justified in the name of a character from an old book, the vaguer the understanding of that character, the more can be justified.  The movie does have a bunch of solid actors, from Andy Garcia to Bruce Greenwood.  It’s well made, but the ultimate message feels dirty; stained with darkness and blood.  That much more when you know what these Christian warriors made of their country.  A good lesson of this movie?  If you’re a woman smuggling ammunition to the underground, stop dropping your bullets all over the place as soon as soldiers show up!

The Outlaw Josey Wales:  “Not a hard man to track.  Leaves dead men wherever he goes.”  Driven mad by the slaying of his family, an old solder goes a’hunting for revenge.  Lots of ugly characters and weird folk populate the post-Civil War world, and Josey doesn’t have much to say to any of ‘em, except maybe with bullets.  This is 70s PG, so it’s not for the kids.  It features, among other things, a very disquieting attempted rape, and plenty of brutal violence.  Lots of classic character actors, including a bunch of western regulars.  Some beautiful scenery, more than a taste of danger, the hope of the frontier, and the sadness of failure.  The stuff of the great westerns.  Heck, you can almost (I stress, almost) see what Eastwood saw in Sondra Locke here, too.  Her creepy huge eyes give her a sweet sort of innocence that makes her almost cute, when she’s not horrifying.

Beyond the Law:  Lee Van Cleef, a staple of the Spaghetti Western sub-genre, is back with his charming laugh and sinister stare.  And he doesn’t like it when rude dudes talk nasty to burlesque dancers.  This is a fun little movie with a few clever plays on genre standards.

Apache Blood:  Shoddy editing, and all the hallmarks of low budget film do nothing to help the uninteresting plot and characters.  It takes inspiration from the same source as the much better Man in the Wilderness.  But it’s plodding, with really bad acting and script.  It has the look of something made for television.

    I read the first hardcover volume of Y: The Last Man, our next graphic novel book club selection.  Dang, it’s good, but brutal.  And the second volume is even more wild.  Rough stuff.  The third volume is more of the same.  Makes for pretty sprawling epic that transcends comic books.

-Matt