Knock, Knock

We live in an age where, thanks to a combination of the increasing pentration of nerd culture into the mainstream and the rise of computer-controlled special effects, science fiction and fantasy TV serials have become not only more common but, in general, rather better than their predecessors were. So it’s perhaps surprising that I watch very, very few of them. Mostly this is because of length: I just cannot commit myself to the sort of long-running series that US TV networks favour not only because of the total time involved but because of a nagging suspicion that writers tend to spin these things out for season after season more from commercial than creative considerations.

So inevitably my favourite geeky TV shows are those that don’t fit this pattern. For a long time Star Trek and Star Trek: TNG were top of my list. Not only were most of the episodes of these shows stand-alone whilst fitting in to a pleasing and evolving continuity but I loved the very human relationships that were at the heart of most of the stories, something that a lot of science-fiction and fantasy, and indeed all of the later Star Trek serials, gets wrong in favour of big special effects and scary monsters. The old British series Dr. Who languished a distant third in my affections.

That was until it got a modern makeover and a relaunch. After one episode of that, featuring Christopher Ecclestone as the Doctor, it shot up to the top spot right away.

It pretty much blew me away. Here was a fantastically imaginative science fiction programme which had clearly not only learned a great deal from the recent resurgence of quality genre TV but built on it and done so in a way that made it not only feel totally sympathetic and natural to fans of the old Doctor Who but simultaneously fresh, new and exciting. It also offered me the chance to watch it in digestible one or two episode chunks but offered the more committed viewer an overall story arc that built to a climax - which instantly made me into a committed viewer. The idea of a single-series story arc is what really did it: longer running US-style programmes often set up initial mysteries in the very first episode and then spin them out series after series after series until the show starts to loose money. With modern Doctor Who everything is wrapped up in about 15 relatively neat episodes, or you can dip in and out or you can get in it for the long run. Genius.

Doctor Who is a concept that absolutely should not work. First and foremost it breaks what I regard as one of the fundamental rules of fiction about time travel: that given the immense possibility of confusion and paradox that could arise from making time travel a reality, the writer should establish early what “laws” of time travel apply in their version of the universe and stick to them religiously. The Time Lords have not, as far as I’m aware, not only never set down completely what those laws should be but the good Doctor himself has gone on to break virtually every one of those that have been specified. It’s a continuity nightmare, yet no one seems to care: the sheer energy and imagination of the stories carries it through.

Another problem area and another continuity nightmare waiting to happen is the concept of regeneration. This means that our heroic Time Lords has a fixed number of “lives”: if he is killed, or seriously injured then his body can regenerate a number of time to restore him to full health. The catch is that it not only restores his health but changes his appearance and personality too. This concept was originally introduced as a creative idea to allow the series to continue after the main actor bowed out and again, it absolutely should not work. Most series that have suffered the loss of a main character never recover properly. But in Doctor Who regeneration not only solved that problem but actually made a virtue of it: by regenerating his personality each time, but keeping a general sense of what the Doctor is all about, writers have managed to keep the show fresh and the fans guessing for a span of decades. It really is a work of genius.

Of course the regenerating actors have been of variable quality. I feel a bit sorry for the current incumbent, Matt Smith, because he had to follow on from David Tennant who was unequivocally the best Doctor ever, brilliantly combining the largely irreconcilable action-hero, alien and academic sides of the character into one glorious whole. Smith is further hampered by his and the current writing teams new conception of the character as an extra-terrestrial boffin which is a nice idea and might have worked twenty years ago but which I find sits badly with the high action elements that the resurrection of the series has bought into the mix. He’s slowly growing into the role but he’s not helped that his companion, Karen Gillan, is going the other way as she demonstrates a rather limited ability to act beyond doing an excellent job of looking surprised and emoting wildly. I remain disappointed that the first actor to take on the mantle of the new Doctor, Christopher Ecclestone, ditched out after just one series, citing a desire not to get typecast. Almost uniquely amongst serving Doctors he seemed to bring something entirely new to the role - a genuine sense of something dangerous, mysterious, even slightly sinister that really evoked the alien qualities of the character whilst remaining recognisably well-intentioned. Fat lot of good it did him too - he’s not been in any major TV or film drama since. Going back to the old series there are a couple of really terribly Doctors at the end of its lifespan - Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker - whose dreadful mugging certainly helped to kill the original incarnation, and a couple more - Patrick Troughton and, inevitably, Tom Baker - who could stand toe-to-toe with the trio who’ve done the updated series.

There’s no doubt in my mind that what’s kept the series going through bad actors, bad writers and various budget cuts is the sheer imagination that drives it. A lot of this was introduced early on: the first Doctor made the most of the historical angles of a series about time travel, while the second introduced many of the recurring alien foes that have made the series so memorable and writers for the fourth and later Doctors made a fantastic job of mixing these two streams together to create compelling story lines, a fashion that continues to the present day. While some of the concepts - Cybermen and Sea Devils for example - are obvious takes on common science fiction tropes others are totally unique to Doctor Who such as the Rutans, the various villanous of misguided Time Lords and, of course, the Daleks. One of the greatest triumphs of the modern version of the series is the rebirth of the Daleks from something that scared children but was frequently mocked by adult fans (they couldn’t possibly invade any planet with stairs) into an implacable and virtually unstoppable foe that evoked apparently genuine terror in those that encountered them. The masterclass in this was the ninth Doctor episode that re-introduced them, in which a single Dalek completely terrorizes a high tech intuition that includes a platoon of heavily armed guards. Another great moment is that the current show has managed to introduce another highly memorable, highly unique foe for the Doctor in the form of the creepy Weeping Angels.

The immense and wholly deserved acclaim and popularity that the latest Doctor Who serials have generated lead to a spin-off show, Torchwood, which was kind of an X-files take on the Doctor who universe in which government agents face up to similar alien horrors without the benefits of the Doctor’s skills and knowledge. It was billed as an “adult” alternative to the show which I initially imagined would mean darker storyline and more violence. In point of fact with the early series at least it seemed to actually translate as frequent and totally pointless sexual references and innuendo. I’ve nothing again lots of sex in a TV show so long as it has some relevance to the plot or themes of the programme but there didn’t seem to be any reasoning behind the sex in Torchwood. Why was I supposed to care, particularly, one way or the other that two of the main characters were gay and talked about it the whole time? What was far more important was that two said main characters eventually fell in love, at which point they stopped talking about being gay constantly and just got on like any two people in love and the show improved immeasurably. At the same time the series hit its highpoint with “Children of Earth”, a five-episode story broadcast over each night of a single week which finally gave us the “adult” themes I’d been looking for. In addition to the already mentioned emotional depth the series featured a truly disturbing alien foe and explored some really meaty plot territory around trust in politicians, eugenics, and the morality of sacrificing the few for the good of the many. It’s absolutely brilliant stuff and totally worth tracking down if you’ve not seen it - but the earlier runs of Torchwood are totally worth missing.

This being a gaming site, I can’t wind up without at least mentioning the various Doctor Who games of which I, personally, have played only one (the old Games Workshop game of the licence by Warrior Knights designer Derek Carver) but which are by general consensus, universally awful. It’s a real shame that this is so, as I’m convinced the gaming world would leap on a decent strategy game based on the Doctor like a facehugger onto John Hurt. I suspect its been plagued by the twin evils of being a popular licence that encourages the production of mass-market children’s game and the problem of everyone wanting to play the central character. But I live in hope.

I was inspired to write this piece and stick it into this time slot because it’s the first Monday before the series returns to our screens this Easter weekend. We’re promised a darker, more violent version of the universe with the promise that one of the central characters is going to die. Some have speculated it’ll be the Doctor himself but I don’t buy that - the BBC isn’t about to kill off one of the jewels in its crown when they’ve still got a regeneration up their sleeve. I hope it’ll be Amy Pond, who is makes good eye candy but is really getting on my nerves. Either way I’ll be hoping it lives up to the almost impossibly high bar set by its predecessor series, and I’ll be quietly gloating that finally we’ve got a hotly anticipated sci-fi TV property that we get to enjoy in the UK before you lot get it in the states. I’ll let you know what you’ve been missing next week.