Should there be a Doctor Who movie?

Yesterday afternoon, Twitter lit up with news and/or rumours that a Doctor Who movie is in production. The accuracy of this seems in doubt – an article in Variety seems fairly definite, but Doctor Who Magazine, easily the most trustworthy DW news source, says it’s just the same rumours that have been doing the rounds for years. I’m really none the wiser, although the kurfuffle did drive traffic towards a non-movie-related DW post I wrote, so that was helpful.

Putting aside the accuracy of the reports, should there be a Doctor Who movie? The smart alec answer is that there’ve already been two, back in the sixties, remakes of the first two Dalek stories starring Peter Cushing. Big screen adventures out of continuity with the TV show are nothing new. And yet…

And yet I’m not convinced that film is the best medium for Doctor Who. One of the show’s strengths is that it has an incredibly flexible format – one week it can be about a comedy encounter with Agatha Christie, the next week it can be about the horrors of World War I. By picking one type of story to focus on, a movie, by necessity, loses that flexibility – what story would they go for? A big space opera conflict with the Daleks? A funny alien meeting a girl from contemporary Britain? A story set during a well-known historical event? All of these are representative of Doctor Who – picking just one could have a Schrodinger’s Cat-like effect on the flexibility, the fluidity of the concept. That’s why Doctor Who‘s natural home is serialised television.

(It also doesn’t help that film’s tend to be about the key moment in their lead character’s life – taking the TV series as a guide, this would be the Doctor leaving his home planet in the first place or specific details about the apocalyptic Time War… And yet we don’t need to see these. They’re the motivation behind the Doctor’s every action, but the mystery surrounding specifics is compelling. Again, the flexibility to imagine your own answer to these questions is a powerful aspect of the show. Indeed, fan engagement is one of the main reasons it’s lasted so long.)

Of course, over the last few weeks I’ve been influenced by the book/blog TARDIS Eruditorum, which makes the point that the serialised nature of Doctor Who is one of its key strengths – that’s why, for much of its history, the show was based around an episodic structure, complete with cliffhangers – you get to imagine your own continuation of the story for a week before seeing how that marries up with what the writers came up with – even the relaunched series is based around plot arcs. Film lacks this, unless you take the risky move of doing a trilogy.

But, and here I’ve nicked another idea from the Eruditorum, one of the themes of Doctor Who is running and escape: “I ran,” the 10th Doctor once said, “In some ways I’ve been running ever since.” The ever changing setting, bouncing around galaxies and history, adds to this – never stand still, never hang around, never go home. A one-off story doesn’t give you this. A film series could, but it wouldn’t really do anything that couldn’t be done more effectively on TV.

And don’t cite film’s ability to get big name actors and huge special effects, because Doctor Who has produced great stuff on a budget of five quid and a bag of crisps, and one look at the guest cast since 2005 reveals plenty of acting talent, thank you very much.

Anyway, the film looks like just a rumour at the moment. I’m not going to worry about it or channel the Geek Rage. Doctor Who remains, at its heart, a TV show that goes out on a Saturday evening and lets your imagination run riot between episodes. Even if it makes it to the big screen again, or is holographically projected into our living rooms, that’s what it will always be. Long may it continue.

 

Happy Binary Day!

11/10/11

There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t

Happy Binary Day!

Doctor Who – Some thoughts on ‘Closing Time’

Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who, entitled ‘Closing Time’, has apparently received a bit of a beating online. This doesn’t altogether surprise me – every episode of Doctor Who gets trashed online, apart from three episodes that were broadcast in 1975 and starred Tom Baker. However, I’m the guy who likes to find something positive to say, so here goes…

Some background: The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) is fated to die, and so is going on a farewell tour throughout the universe. One of his final stops is a visit to old friend Craig (James Corden), a new and struggling father. Mysterious power outages lead them to a plot by alien cyborgs the Cyberman and hilarity ensues.

Now, I’m the sort of sci-fi fan who isn’t particularly bothered about sci-fi plots; I just like the characters that tend to inhabit them. And despite it being played as something of a comedy episode, Closing Time is really about one character – the Doctor, and how he’s facing up to impending doom.

(This isn’t really a surprise, as Doctor Who’s always been a show that embraces the fact that its lead character should be funny and charismatic. I tend to like shows like this – Fringe and Stargate: SG1 being two examples, and I stand by the idea that the most meaningful episodes of The X-Files were the one off comedy episodes.)

The Doctor’s death immediately encourages us to draw parallels with the last time this happened, back when David Tennant left and the Tenth Doctor died. The Tenth Doctor was a dashing, romantic lead, a man who’d finally been incarnated with good looks and social skills and who had therefore discovered he liked kissing. This meant that, when he discovered he was going to die (and regenerate into another body/actor) he railed against it, throwing petulant abuse at the man he would ultimately sacrifice himself to save. This was a shock, an out of character display from a character who’d started to believe his own galactic legend. His last words were “I don’t want to go”, and while the sentiment is fair enough, it came from a man who had become touched by arrogance and hubris. His fate paralleled that of his people, the Time Lords, and so the Tenth Doctor had to die to himself in order to put aside those flaws and become a new man.

That new man was the Eleventh Doctor, a bumbling professor, clumsy and lacking understanding of basic human interactions. It’s interesting that when he tries to deliver a big, epic, Tennant-style speech to his enemies, it blows up in his face and he drops the mic beforehand. It’s humbling, but also makes the Eleventh Doctor endearing and lovable, as well as bring him down to Earth. In ‘Closing Time’ he finds himself working in a shop, something to which the Tenth Doctor wouldn’t stoop (he sent his friend out to work back in the episode ‘Blink’).

(Incidentally, I don’t want anyone to see this as Tennant-bashing. David Tennant did a fantastic job and deserves all the kudos he gets as an actor and as an ambassador for the show. This is about the Tenth Doctor’s character flaws and how they’re tackled by Smith’s Doctor, who’s also fantastic.)

In contrast, the Eleventh Doctor seems to really enjoy working in the shop. Part of this is because he’s working in the toy department. Well, of course he is; the Eleventh Doctor has a rapport with children (all the Doctors have been able to speak pretty much any language under the suns, but only the Eleventh admits he can speak Baby). This is important – Doctor Who is a children’s programme that has been adopted by adults, and it’s at its best when it embraces this bit of its DNA, a dark children’s fairytale about a kindly wizard who fights the monsters, all dressed up in sci-fi robes. That’s why criticisms of this episode being childish may be missing the point – it’s interesting that the two main guest actors in this are regulars on the children’s channel CBeebies – James Corden is the voice of Little Charley Bear, and Lynda Baron played Auntie Mabel in Come Outside. A pseudo-romance has got the Doctor into his current mess, but I suspect a child will be key to saving him.

The Doctor also loves his name badge, bizarrely enough. I guess it’s understandable – it reads ‘The Doctor’, Here to Help’. That doesn’t just relate to the toy department, it’s his job role, his mission statement. The Tenth Doctor started to run away from this; the Eleventh embraces it, showing off his badge at every opportunity. Even at the start of the episode, when he just wants to leave and not get involved, his protests are completely undermined by the fact that he’s investigating even while telling himself not to investigate. The name badge just sums this up for a man who’s taken a lot of knocks lately – good people dying, friends put at risk, terrible choices being made. On the eve of oblivion, the Doctor gets to be the man who he always was, before he got a little too legendary.

(It’s worth noting that, in one of his Doctor Who novels, comic book writer and novelist Paul Cornell rewrote the writing on the TARDIS door to read “Call here to help”, which is pretty much a mission statement for the series as a whole.)

In the end, the world is saved and the Doctor goes to meet his destiny. It’s inescapable, we’ve already been told that – no tricks, no trapdoors, no regenerating into Hugh Grant. The Doctor is doomed and he goes to his death regretfully, yes, but also with humility and with the knowledge that he lived his life well. That’s in stark contrast with the last time he was in this situation – back then he pretty much had to die – but this time he’s going to face oblivion with dignity, an old man in a young body who accepts that his time is up. He’s learned his lessons.

And maybe that fact, the idea that this Doctor may have escaped the hubris of his predecessor, means there may yet be hope…

Tune in next Saturday!

My Favourite Muppet (Thanks Jim Henson)

Had he not sadly passed away in 1990, Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, would have turned 75 today. Given the impact the Muppets and their colleagues over on Sesame Street have had on generations of childten, it’s worth taking a moment to remember Jim and his legacy, so here’s a tribute to my favourite Muppet.

Step forward Beaker.

Back in the day, I’d've probably chosen Animal as my favourite, or maybe Gonzo. Over the years though, I’ve come to appreciate characters I can relate to, and while I struggle to say I can relate to Animal’s heavy metal anarchism or Gonzo’s chicken obsession, Beaker’s a different story.

For a start, the poor guy’s accident prone – he gets mutilated, savaged, electrocuted, and when things get really bad his head gets squashed into his neck. I can relate – maybe not with the head-squashing thing, but if there’s an opportunity to fall over, smack my head off a low beam, get stuck in a lift or be on a German plane when the pilot delivers an announcement including the word ‘kaput’, you can bet I’ll end up sacrificing my dignity in public. Same as poor old Beaker.

 

Then there’s music. Some people, like Pavarotti, can sing. Other people, like Bob Dylan, can’t sing but get hailed as a musical genius anyway. And then there are those of us, like myself and Beaker are doomed to have our musical talents forever forcibly hidden under a bushel. I do a unique version of Born to Run, Beaker participates in a singular rendition of Danny Boy, and maybe both of us will be recognised as legendary in a couple of hundred years or so. Until then, we remain unappreciated, outsider stars in the musical firmanent.

And then there’s communication. This is an area in which Beaker struggles, pretty much being limited to “meep”. I have a greater vocabulary than that, by at least fifteen words, but sometimes the words just don’t come out. I say “thingy” and “doohickey” more than the holder of an English degree should, and I’ll confess I’ve made the classic election/erection mix-up. Sometimes I think it would be easier if all I could say was meep.

So Beaker, you and I are brothers from another mother. But let’s not forget the man who brought you to a wider audience – you and Kermit and Fozzy and Big Bird; Bert and Ernie, Fraggles and Doozers, decades of fun, learning and frog-led anarchy.

Thank you Jim.

Inconceivable! Some Thoughts On Why The Princess Bride Is Awesome

Before you read any further, if you’re one of the many people who get directed here trying to find out if Robbie Coltrane is in The Princess Bride, IMDB says he isn’t. But now you’re here, I hope you enjoy the rest of the post.

Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I couldn’t think of much to write about it, other than linking to news of the Pirate Party winning local elections in Berlin (and a short but magnificent joke). I realise now that I was blind, for one of my favourite films involves a pirate and it is truly worthy of a thousand blogs. I am, of course, talking about The Princess Bride.

To briefly recap the plot: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy becomes a pirate, boy fights rats, boy rescues girl with the help of a vengeful swordsman and a giant. It’s not particularly complicated but it doesn’t need to be – it’s a fairytale, albeit a slighly snarky and subversive fairytale.

It follows a lot of fairytale traditions, of course, and acknowledges that from the start: the framing device involves a grandfather reading The Princess Bride to his sick grandson. The boy is outaged – he thinks it’s a ‘kissing book’ – but he relents and becomes both audience and commentator to the action. And that’s fair enough, because stories are meant to be interactive, at least to a degree.

(The novel, like the film written by William Goldman, plays with this idea a lot more – the narrator discovers that the original story of The Princess Bride was a political satire and that his own grandfather used to cut out the boring bits when reading it to him. Assume the film as an adaptation of the novel and so many people, both real and fictional, get in on the storytelling action that we never actually get to see the real story. Which is probably for the best, as what we get sounds way better than the original by S. Morganstern.)

The characters are as slippery as the narrative – that’s fair enough, this is a fairytale and its inhabitants are meant to be liminal. A shy, quiet farmboy becomes the biggest badass in town, enemies become allies, disguises are key to the plot, and even the gulf between life and death can be bridged by the semantic difference between the words ‘all dead’ and ‘mostly dead’. After all, this is about storytelling and so language is important: “As you wish” becomes code for “I love you”, we’re reminded that ‘concerned’ isn’t the same as ‘nervous’, and one of the best lines is all about using words you don’t really understand:

“Inconceivable!”
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

The only thing we can be clear on is True Love, which is eternal and unbreakable, which is the whole point of the movie. You know it’s heading for a happy ending, but that predictability doesn’t matter when the journey’s so much fun.

Because despite my lit-crit wibblings above, The Princess Bride is a really funny film. The casting is spot on (when Harry Potter needed to cast a giant, they called Robbie Coltrane. When The Princess Bride needed to do the same, they got, well, Andre the Giant), and the script is amazing, full of quotable one-liners and punch-the-air declarations if love and revenge. For instance:

“You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.”

“This is true love – you think this happens every day?”

“Do you want me to send you back to where you were? Unemployed, in Greenland?!”

“I’m not left-handed.”

“Never go against a Sicillian when death is on the line!”

“Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons!”

“Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…”

“I fight gangs for local charities and stuff.”

“Please consider me as an alternative to suicide.”

“Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work, but I’ve got my country’s 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it; I’m swamped.”

(The problem with quoting The Princess Bride is that, like Pringles, once you stop, you can’t stop.)

But despite its subversive attitude, the film works because it has heart; declarations of true love may be over-the-top but they’re sincere (that’s why the movie topped the Top Ten Romantic Movies for Geeks list at Funk’s House of Geekery), and the climactic swordfight between Inigo and the Six Fingered Man features the legendary line “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”. Apparently actor Mandy Patinkin spat that line at the cancer that killed his father and it shows – he means it. That’s what makes The Princess Bride a classic, towering over other films that go for a similar vibe (like, say, Pirates of the Caribbean). And that’s why people love it.

“Grandpa, maybe you could come round and read it to me again tomorrow.”
“As you wish.”