Happy Birthday Paul McGann: A Tribute to the Eighth Doctor

The nineties were a liminal period for Doctor Who. The TV series had been cancelled in 1989, ending a twenty-six year run of stories that formed the bedrock of the show’s mythos. The heart of the Doctor Who shifted – from being something produced by the BBC to something over which fans had an unprecedented ownership; from a TV series to a series of novels, comics, fan videos, audio adventures… Doctor Who didn’t die in 1989, it exploded into a hundred facets. It’s up to fans to put those facets together in a way that suits them.

All of which means that the Eighth Doctor is, appropriately, a liminal Doctor. Unlike all the others, he appeared on TV only once – in a 1996 TV movie co-produced by the BBC and Fox TV in the States. And it’s odd viewing – the plot’s a mess, but it has production values that the original series would have killed for; it passes the baton from Sylvester McCoy to Paul McGann but never quite feels like it’s part of the same series. McGann’s the official Eighth Doctor, but his one TV adventure introduces stuff that everyone now feels free to ignore.

So let’s focus on what the TV Movie gets right – it cast Paul McGann. Of all the Doctors, with the possible exceptions of Smith and Tennant, McGann is the one who nails it from the start. Say what you want about the rest of the Movie, there are at least two scenes where McGann shows he can line up with the other Doctors.

The first is a scene where he’s describing Gallifrey, an alien planet with a beautiful sky, an image out of a fantasy novel, but then he stops…

…To announce that his shoes fit.

It’s the sort of moment Doctor Who does well – contrasting the extraordinary and mundane and finding the value in both. It’s a key aspect of the show – the universe is an amazing place, but so is an Earth full of shoes and chips if you look at it from the right perspective.

The other scene is a typical escape-from-the-cops moment. The TV Movie gets accused of being too ‘American’ at times, which always seems to be a strange criticism to me, but given the chance to take a gun and escape from the police, the Doctor somehow manages to escape by taking himself hostage. It’s a funny moment, shows the Doctor’s uniqueness and humanity and gives him a place in a world of cookie cutter action heroes.

Ultimately, the TV Movie didn’t lead to an ongoing series as hoped. It would be easy to see it as a false start, but that’s not fair to McGann – he’s continued to play the role, and play it well, in Big Finish audio adventures, and the Eighth Doctor continued in books and comics. It gives us a Schrodinger’s Continuity explanation of how the dashing, enthusiastic, joyful Eighth Doctor became the broken, PTSD Ninth, a story that hasn’t been nailed down yet and probably never will. The Eighth Doctor is now an emblem for the sixteen years the Doctor Who wasn’t a regular BBC TV production – maybe it’s appropriate that Eighth Doctor spin-off media keep playing with the concepts of amnesia and alternate timelines and reinvention (check out Paul’s costume in both the pictures in this post – both are official. Or maybe ‘official’).

And so thank you Paul McGann; for creating a great Doctor straight off the bat, and for continuing to support the series as your take on the character continues to evolve. Because that’s what Doctor Who is all about.

Happy Birthday Colin Baker: A Tribute to the Sixth Doctor

Colin Baker is the only Doctor I’ve met.

It would have been way back in 1989, when the Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure stage play came to the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton. Colin did an autograph session after the performance, both embracing his character’s persona (“Back, hordes!”) and being a genuinely nice and accommodating person.

This was… Well, I can’t say it was a surprise exactly, as I was old enough to know that actors aren’t the same people they play on TV. But the Sixth Doctor was always something of an abrasive character. Would Colin turn out to be the same?

Colin’s era was possibly the most traumatic periods in the show’s history, a perfect storm of BBC politics, behind the scenes tensions and external pressures. Add to that some strangely unwise creative decisions and you’ve got an era that often feels problematic at least and, at times, Colin Baker has been the scapegoat for that. This is one of the show’s greatest injustices.

The concept behind the Sixth Doctor is a good one – follow the gentle, kind Fifth Doctor with a far more acerbic, less user-friendly character, someone who wore his alien-ness on his multi-coloured sleeve. It’s just unfortunate that this wasn’t always handled well – having tensions between the Sixth Doctor and Peri (who the Fifth Doctor sacrificed himself to save) makes sense, but having the newly regenerated Doctor regenerated try to strangle her sets you against the character immediately.

And so that shadow, of good ideas not executed as well as they could have been, hung over the era. This is a shame, as the Sixth Doctor has some great qualities – he’s erudite, with a terrifying vocabulary, and while that can make him (intentionally) pompous, he’s also capable of great charm and, of course, his rage at injustice can be awesome to behold. All of this sometimes gets lost amid garish costumes and angry interviews with script editors.

But fortunately Doctor Who has always been about reinvention, reappraisal, regeneration, and so, when Big Finish started producing CD episodes featuring the past Doctors, it was the Sixth Doctor who benefited the most. Taking the core of the character but knocking off some of his sharper edges, letting Colin’s warmth and charm shine through while pairing him with assistants who can compete on a more equal footing, has breathed new life into the era. It addresses the injustice of the eighties, and has made Colin one of the most popular Doctors. It’s been great to see.

So back to the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton. I got my autographed poster and it was on my bedroom wall for years. That’s not the point of the story. See, my sister also got an autograph, even though she’d only accompanied my parents to pick me up – my dad was an autograph hunter, so I guess he put her up to it.

“Did you enjoy the show?” Colin asks, and because she was about 9 at the time she doesn’t think to make something up, she just tells him that she hasn’t seen it.

The twelve-year-old me braces himself. I’m not sure why – maybe I was expecting the TV Sixth Doctor to emerge and be scathing. And sure he makes a joke about it all, but it’s in a friendly way. Everyone goes away happy. And I see the Sixth Doctor we could have had, the Sixth Doctor who is now in renaissance.

Happy birthday Mr. Baker.

Happy Birthday, David Tennant: A tribute to the Tenth Doctor

If there’s been one stand-out success story of the relaunched Doctor Who, it’s the career trajectory of David Tennant, a respected Shakespearean actor who took on the role of the Tenth Doctor and found himself catapulted to stardom. And, as it’s Mr. Tennant’s birthday, here’s my tribute to his Doctor…

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. David Tennant was fantastic at playing this – a bit skinny, a bit geeky, but also loveable and a bit cool. And it worked – among a general audience, I’d be willing to bet that Tennant is the most popular Doctor, and much of that is down to the actor, who always comes across as a really nice guy in interviews and who was a huge fan of the show. Talent, charm and enthusiasm count for a lot.

I guess it doesn’t hurt that he’s a good looking guy as well.

And yet, while people remember the Tenth Doctor as being funny and attractive and romantic, there’s another side to the character, one that’s a lot darker than people tend to give the era credit for. The Tenth Doctor could be arrogant and hubristic. And it was those qualities that contributed to his downfall.

Look at his back story – the Tenth Doctor was born out of the ashes of the Ninth, who was a battle-scarred survivor wracked with guilt. His dying act was to engineer a win out of a no-win situation that paralleled his greatest sin. Maybe that’s why the Tenth Doctor could be over-confident – he was guy who could always find a way to win, because he was the Doctor, the man who beats the monsters. He started to believe his own publicity. He could backchat royalty and snog beautiful women throughout history.

This meant that, when he discovered he was going to die 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 had 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, one less likely to lose the core of his being.

That was the Tenth Doctor’s last act of heroism for the universe – not following the path of his people and becoming a monster, but identifying that darkness within and not succumbing. The legend willingly dies to save an old man, because everyone is valuable and because it’s the right thing to do. He becomes someone less cool, less dashing in the process, and maybe that was his penance,

Tennant’s Doctor was hugely popular and deservedly so – for all some would like Doctor Who to be a cult show, providing hard science fiction stories to a select group of aficionados, the fact is it’s meant to be a big, popular Saturday night highlight that resonates with a general audience while maintaining its geek roots. The Tenth Doctor was great at achieving that, and Tennant was a fantastic ambassador for the show. Even before he started in the role, pictures of him wearing t-shirt reading “Trust me, I’m a doctor” made me think he was going to be good. And he was.

Happy birthday David!

Remembering the Fifth Doctor: Happy Birthday Peter Davison

My earliest Doctor Who memory is of a Fifth Doctor story. Ironically it doesn’t feature Peter Davison – it’s a scene from ‘The Five Doctors’ featuring Jon Pertwee getting kidnapped by a black proto-CGI triangle and it freaked me out.

Of all the Doctors, Davison, along with Patrick Troughton, probably had the toughest job. For seven years, Tom Baker had been the be all and end all of Doctor Who, a towering intimidating presence on-screen and off. For many viewers, Baker had been the only Doctor they knew. Peter Davison had the mammoth task of following that.

The Fifth Doctor was a recognisable figure, at least – my dad knew who he was because he liked cricket and All Creatures Great and Small. But more than that, Davison had the acting chops to create a new character that could follow Tom Baker but not emulate him. It was a ‘smaller’ performance than Baker’s, but that was needed. Baker’s Doctor died saving the universe; when it was time for Davison to move on, his Doctor died saving just one person. It’s a significant difference. Maybe it’s appropriate as well – Davison was one of two Doctors to have a companion die on screen, so it’s fitting that he should sacrifice himself to save another. Maybe his regeneration is an act of absolution.

Anyway, given Big Tom’s massive shadow, it’s interesting that many of the current Doctor Who production team name Davison as their favourite, including David Tennant and Steven Moffat.

Maybe that’s not really a surprise – the Fifth Doctor is something of a prototype for the relaunched version of the show, playing up the idea of an incredibly old man in a young man’s body. The contrast is a potent one. The mini-episode ‘Time Crash’ draws attention to this: “You know, I loved being you.” says the Tenth Doctor, “Back when I first started at the very beginning, I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important like you do when you’re young, and then I was you. And I was all dashing about and playing cricket and my voice going all squeaky when I shout and I still do that! The voice thing, I got that from you… Because you know what, Doctor? You were my Doctor.”

It’s a beautiful moment, a love letter to an era. Some will point to Chris Eccleston and Billie Piper as the moment Doctor Who was reborn, but the seeds were there way back in the eighties, a young-old man wearing a cricket jumper and some celery.

Happy birthday, Peter.

All About The Bazinga: Why I love the Big Bang Theory

I am a geek.

I always have been, even before I self-identified as such. I like sci-fi, I have a comic collection, I’m socially awkward at times. With the exception of having great knowledge of science, engineering and computing, I tick most of the geek boxes. And that, my friends, is why I love The Big Bang Theory.

See, too many shows try to portray geekdom and they get it wrong. They have scenes with a computer hacker, and while they get the stereotype down pat, they get the details wrong; either that or the hackers are really cool and spend most of their day skateboarding. They rush a scientist character into frame and he spouts some technobabble that is utterly incomprehensible, but that’s considered appropriate exposition. Or they focus on what was geeky when the writer or director was 16, and therefore they’re attacking stuff that hasn’t been realistic for twenty years.

And so this is one of the reasons TBBT rules – attention to detail. Look at the comic books on display; they’re all fairly up to date. And because the characters seem to prefer DC over Marvel, you’ll notice that Sheldon’s bookcase is full of DC collected editions. I can’t see them well enough to swear to this, but I’m willing to bet they’re shelved in a logical order as well. And while I’m not smart enough to be able to comment on the science used in the show, the fact that they use a consultant who’s worked on the Large Hadron Collider makes me think that it’s fairly watertight (there’s an interview with the consultant, David Saltzberg, over at Wired).

The reason they put this effort in is, I think, their audience. The producers, writers and actors know full well that a significant chunk of the viewers will relate to the characters, and that means it’s an audience that will spot this sort of thing. Get a detail about Battlestar Galactica wrong and you can bet there are letters or, more realistically, emails. Probably Tweets.

But those Tweets are probably good natured, because the show is a celebration of geekiness, not an attack on it. Most of us could probably find something to relate to in underdog Leonard, cripplingly shy Raj or eternal adolescent Howard. I recognise these people; I am these people, at least some of the time. I’m laughing with them, not at them – they know settling things through a game of ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock’ is needlessly complicated but they don’t care. It’s fun.

That said, I’m not a geek all the time. I like to think that I’m not totally a stereotype. That’s where Penny comes in – the one who’s not as intellectual as her neighbours, but who’s the voice of common sense. The core group may be making her just a little nerdier, but she’s helping them become a little more… I dunno, social. The fact that they’re now a pretty tight group of friends is important – it’s not about a bunch of nerds and a ‘normal’ person who mocks them. It’s more affectionate than that.

Then, of course, there’s Sheldon. He fills a particular role, the traditional sitcom monster. In some ways he’s Basil Fawlty or Homer Simpson, the character who’s exaggerated enough to make him the outrageously funny one, the one that defies social conventions. Sheldon is annoying, arrogant and rude. We should hate him.

And yet… Well, maybe it’s because Jim Parsons plays him with just enough vulnerability. Maybe it’s because his OCD and other traits make him sympathetic. Maybe it’s because we know that deep down he doesn’t mean to upset anyone, he just doesn’t work to the same social conventions as everyone else. Whatever it is, it works in the show’s favour – the almost-sibling relationship he has with Penny isn’t unbelievable, it’s sweet.

But this is over-analysing the whole thing. You know the main reason I love The Big Bang Theory?

It’s because it’s funny.

Sure, that’s a prerequisite for a sitcom. But TBBT really makes me laugh. It has one of my favourite TV moments of the last few years, which moves within a couple of minutes from a joke about cloning Leonard Nimoy to a perfect moment of visual comedy. I howled. My neighbours probably thought I was being murdered, but they didn’t bother to make sure so I could watch the rest of the episode uninterupted.

Heck, it also doesn’t hurt that you can learn something by singing along to the theme song. A lot of shows don’t even have theme songs any more. I want them back, darnnit!

And so kudos to all involved in my favourite comedy show. You do a fantastic job, and I hope you continue to do so for a good while yet. May you continue to get your geek on, and may there be many more bright bazingas in your future.