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!

Bikinis and Ewoks: Happy belated anniversary, Return of the Jedi

Apparently yesterday was the anniversary of Return of the Jedi’s UK release, and as I recently celebrated Star Wars Day, I figured I’d do something similar here.

Jedi gets a lot of stick in fandom; it’s considered to be the weakest of the original trilogy, and I remember film reviewer Mark Kermode calling it “A bunch of Muppets” on Mark Radcliffe’s Radio 1 show back in the day. And to be fair, it does involve a lot of muppets, although they’re infinitely preferable to the characterless CGI of the prequels.

I don’t get the dislike. Yes, it’s the weakest of the originals, partly because it retreads ground already covered by Star Wars (I refuse to call it A New Hope), but there’s still a lot to like (and I’m not necessarily talking about Leia’s bikini. When I was young, Jedi was my favourite. The stuff in Jabba’s palace is fun (including intergalactic badass Boba Fett getting taken out by a disorientated blind guy by accident!), the Speeder Bike chase is cool. And while you can’t help but wish they’d stuck with the original plan and given us the bad guys vs a planet full of Wookies, the Ewoks aren’t that bad; if you have issues with a tribal culture beating an opponent with superior technology and greater resources, well, welcome to Afghanistan.

(I’m never sure if the Endor Holocaust theories are semi-serious attempts to communicate scientific theories or fandom’s revenge fantasy…)

But where Jedi wins out is in its treatment of Vader. Some may dispute its effectiveness, but the whole Star Wars saga is the story of Darth Vader’s fall and redemption, with Jedi scoring because it links the climax of that story with the powerful theme of father/son relationships. Luke has to choose whether or not he follows in his father’s footsteps; Vader has to choose whether he supports that decision and lets Luke florish, or fights it, destroying his only son in the process. He makes the right call, and suddenly Star Wars becomes a story of redemption, not slaying the monster. At its heart, Star Wars is a fairy tale in space, but there aren’t many fairy tales committed to saving the soul of their particular dark lord.

I didn’t think twice about all this when I was a kid; I just liked the comedy robots, got upset when an Ewok mourns his slain comrade, thrilled at the revelation that “It’s a trap!” The deeper stuff passes you by when you’re seven.

And I guess if we could look at things with seven-year-old eyes, there’d be a little less Nerd Rage across the internet.

Fly casual!

Happy Birthday Star Wars! ( #starwars )

And, in addition to Geek Pride Day, today is also the 34th anniversary of Star Wars, so many happy returns to Baron von Vaderhoffen and here’s a gratuitous link to my Star Wars Day post…

Geek Pride Day 2011 (or Towel Day if you’re feeling European)

I am a self-confessed geek. I’m sitting here in an old denim jacket with the arms cut off, and stitched onto the back of this jacket is ‘Lion’. If you don’t know why this is geeky, it’s because Lion was the name of the group who did the metal version of the Transformers theme song for the original animated movie. The fact that I own a jacket like this is geeky. The fact that I’m proud to own a jacket like this is even geekier.

Some history: the word ‘geek’ derives from a Germanic word, ‘geck’, meaning foolish or crazy. This became attached to circus freaks (‘gecken’), before making its way across the Atlantic, whereupon it mutated into ‘geek’ and described a sideshow performer whose, um, speciality was biting the heads of live chickens.

Classy.

Anyway, ‘geek’ entered the high school lexicon, where it became an insult aimed at the weird kids, the ones with lesser social skills. This being high school, it also became attached to the smart kids, or the introverts, or the outsiders, the ones who preferred computers and sci-fi to football.

Of course, many of these kids became successes after high school – cue Bill Gates – so when computer culture took off in the nineties, geek was reclaimed as a self-identifier, a badge of honour. After all, geeks were tge innovators, the puoneers, the ones who took all their smarts and changed the world.

That shouldn’t come as too mich of a surprise, because geeks see the world differently. For instance, look at this picture:

If you’re not a geek, you’ll look at that picture and say “Oh look, plastic cutlery.” A geek looks at that and says “Haha! May the forks be with you!” It’s all a matter of perspective. You have know idea how excited my friends and I were when we discovered a room at work called the Transformer House. You may be thinking that’s just where they keep various electrical infrastructure, and that’s fair enough; we were making jokes about Megatron for weeks. And by “weeks” I mean “still are.”

We also make lists. I once went to a real ale festival, which was an experience considering I don’t drink. I wanted to make myself useful though, so, taking the scores out of ten that everyone was awarding the various ales, I predicted the next one they should try out. I’m confident in my working, and it would have made an excellent contribution to the evening, were it not for the fact that the perfect ale was, in fact, locked in the cellar and everyone was too drunk to ask for it to be unlocked. Epic fail, as we say on the internet; however, the picture below is the end result of an evening’s hard work:

Okay, so I’m aware that this is making geeks look weird, and that’s unfair considering that this should be a day of celebration. I spent a chunk of it (my lunch break, to be precise) doing something that geek culture is famous for – I argued about Star Trek on the internet.

No I didn’t, I embraced the fundamental creativity that comes with being a geek. I’m not being pretentious here – along with the near obsessive love for science fiction shows (and trivia about science fiction shows) comes an urge to play in the same sandbox as George Lucas or Joss Whedon or whoever. Fanfiction is a massive part of geek culture; some of it is terrible, some of it is obscene, some of it is better than the real thing, but it would be crazy to overlook its importance. Especially when you consider just one subsection of geekery – the men and women who were writing Doctor Who fanfic back in the day are now the people making the show. The amateur-turned-pro thing is a big deal for geek culture. Heck, you could even argue that a degree of the Open Source movement is driven by a similar urge – they’re just writing fanfic for code.

Anyway, back to what I did at lunch time – I chonicled the adventures of Indiana Potato-Head:

You could argue that only someone very geeky would do something like that. I would argue that you’re right. I would also argue that I got some cool pictures of Indiana Potato-Head and ultimately that’s what matters.

All that said, it’s only really when thinking about Geek Pride Day that I realised my surroundings are a total giveaway. Following are three pictures from my home and workstation – see if you can spot where they might differ from the average household of a thirty-something urban professional:

But at least I don’t have a Periodic Table shower curtain.

But here’s the thing; I’m geek and I love it. I like the creativity that comes with it. I like the thirst for knowledge, the community, the joy and the internet. I’ve made some great friends just through a shared love of eighties cartoons or comics or whatever, and I have absolutely no problem with being the guy who wikipedias an answer to even the most obscure musings people come up with. When it comes to 21st century archetypes, I’m geek and I’m proud.

Just don’t blame me for the Matrix sequels.

AT-AT for America Follow-up Post #2: A New Hope

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about AT- AT for America, a grassroots movement to celebrate geek culture and American can-do attitudes by building a replica of the AT-AT Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back (my post on it is here if you’re interested). Sadly, Lucasfilm put an end to that particular idea (my follow-up post here), not because of malice but because of all the sticky issues surrounding, well, building a machine of stomping doom. It looked like the plan was dead.

Well, yesterday was Star Wars Day, and fittingly AT-AT for America has made a return. You can click on the link above for the full announcement, but the organiser now wants to network the potential volunteers who offered their time, engineering skill and enthusiasm, the idea being to link people together so they can carry out smaller-scale projects in their local communities. And you know what? I think it’s a great idea. Geek culture has a lot of brains behind it, it could be interesting to see what’s achieved if it got organised.

So I’d encourage anyone stumbling across this to check out the website and get involved if you can. Sounds like it has the potential to be something cool; hopefully next May 4th we’ll be blogging about the fruits of the project. Do or do not; there is no try!