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Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

The Masque of Mandragora

Tonight’s soundtrack: Mos Def, “Supermagic”

There’s a question we Doctor Who fans ask each other.

Comic book writer Joshua Dysart once said to me (no fooling, this time), “I don’t care who you are; if you’re an American of a certain age, it’s all about Tom Baker.” That’s tough to argue with. Check this, from outta nowhere on yesterday’s Back to Work podcast  (approx. 23:15) - 

Merlin Mann: My Doctor Who’s always been the guy with the scarf. I don’t understand all these young guys…

Dan Benjamin: You’re talking about Tom Baker.

MM: Yes! All these young guys, they look like they work in a Starbucks. I don’t understand how they can be Doctor Who.

Now, you can chalk it up to ignorance. A lot of kids in the late seventies caught a bit of PBS here and there, what little Who they glimpsed had Tom Baker in, they didn’t bother to find out more. Boom. “The guy with the scarf.” Or maybe they became fans, but succumbed to First Doctor Syndrome1 because, well, he was the first we could have possibly seen. There. “It’s all about Tom Baker.”

For me, I know I used to say Jon Pertwee was my Doctor, just to be clever2 and seem the sort of person who had bought the Programme Guide.

That was a lie.

Tom Baker played the Doctor for seven years and captured a generation’s hearts because he’s really fucking good at the job. He’s funny and he’s majestic and he’s barmy and he’s never, ever dull. This man did amazing, unpredictable things and if he’s the only memory of Who you cherish, that’s more than fine.

My answers are more nuanced these days, but the truth is still that Tom Baker’s performance is mad electric poetry from the heart of the sun. So he ranks third.

1 That’s where you imprint on the first Doctor whose adventures you actually watch. From then on, every other Doctor, no matter how good, just isn’t doing it right.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

The Sun Makers

Tonight’s soundtrack: Aesop Rock, “Bring Back Pluto”

Just so you know, I’m actually not writing about what I’m thinking about. The Sun Makers is all wrapped up with this other thing in my head, and I’m not ready to write about that. So I’m not. But that thing keeps hovering into view like a goddamn giant ghost bat every time I try to think of what I have to say, getting between me and the keyboard for the better part of an hour now. So I’m writing that I’m not writing about it, just to get my fingers moving on the keys.

I love K-9. He’s a smart-arse mobile computer with a laser gun! How can you not love that? Of course, growing up, I loved all the snarky robot sidekicks. R2-D2, Twiki, KITT, V.I.N.CENT, Bubo the Owl, Hervé Villechaize… K-9 is still better than all those guys, because in addition to the funny voice, the super-intelligence, and the ability to save the day, he’s also a dog. He’s Snoopy with a laser gun! Have I mentioned the laser gun?

I know we’re supposed to find these robot pals annoying, now that we’re all grown up and having inappropriate thoughts about George Clooney. We should talk about how they’re really not very funny now that we’ve met their older brothers Crow and Servo. Let’s sniff about the way they ruin the tension with all their gadgets and solutions. Let’s be really adult and take a big knife to our chests, cut out our hearts, and make sure we never, ever admit affection for something a jerk might laugh at or call silly.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

Underworld

Tonight’s soundtrack: Manorexia, “Cosmos Brutile”

If this copy of The Doctor Who Programme Guide, Volume 1 (reprinted 1984) by Jean-Marc Lofficier with a foreword by Barry Letts is to be believed (and it is; this is a Genuine Artifact from the First Age of my love for Doctor Who), when I was 13, I thought that making a reference to the legend of Persephone by naming your spaceship the P7E was pretty cool.

Cool, or at least significant. Maybe funny? It’s tough, at this remove, to interpret everything that my younger self intended when he marked up this paperback. There are at least four differently-colored markers at work1; “P7E” has been highlighted, exactly once, in orange2.

Other phrases highlighted in orange throughout the guide include:

“the Master, who escapes”

“(Doc Holliday)”3

“5G The Creature from the Pit (4 episodes)”

“Captain Yates has been converted to their cause and is working against UNIT.”

“The Beatles (Themselves)”

“(Seth)”

Young me left no actual notes in these books. No words. No arrows, no doodles in the margins. It’s all about calling attention to the facts, the words, the elements that seem important to him. Things he wanted to see, or remembered enjoying. I think he treated these books like maps. The highlights are plotting out a course, discovering and marking the story of how Doctor Who works, where it turns, what it’s built on.

It’s a kid working out the best way to break into a fiction.

1 And, intriguingly, a pencil that is only put to use on one entry: Colony in Space.

2P7E is not highlighted in its entry in Volume 2. Volume 2, however, has only two ink colors throughout. The entire entry for Rassilon is highlighted in pink.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

Destiny of the Daleks

Tonight’s soundtrack: KMFDM, “Megalomaniac”

Daleks versus Silver Disco Rick Jamesbots? Not terribly gripping. We’re told of their galactic conflict and subsequent stalemate, never shown it. 

Daleks versus human armies? A joke. It’s like watching the grass get mown. You’re gonna care about an individual blade? 

Daleks versus Cybermen? Even worse. Grass in combat boots getting mown. 

Daleks versus Time Lords? Philosophically interesting, but again it takes place off-screen. Plus, it’s just realities getting overwritten by exterminating increasingly primitive butterfly ancestors. You’d only see a flickering screen.

Daleks versus Daleks? Another stalemate. And loud. Everyone in the universe would be living downstairs from an internet forum read aloud by an amplified Speak ’n’ Spell.

No. Here’s the trick I think they missed:

Daleks versus Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee’s philosophy, his flexibility of technique and rejection of authority, combined with his focus on—hang up, sorry, no. I was going to make a big thing about Lee and the Daleks being perfect opposites and yet containing each other when I realized I just want to see some eyestalks getting kicked off heids.

You might think that would be a bit of an action let down, given that Daleks know very little plunger-to-hand combat. Thing is, Game of Death-style, Lee will have already faced Robo-men, Ogrons, the Master, and a little school girl before he gets to actual Daleks. By the time he’s ripping them out of their domes and squeezing their little squid bodies with one fist, it’s pure catharsis, baby.

* * * 

“The tools, your natural weapons, have a double purpose:

1. To destroy the opponent in front of you - annihilation of things that stand in the way of peace, justice and humanity.

2. To destroy your own impulses caused by the instincts of self-preservation. To destroy anything bothering your mind. Not to hurt anyone, but to overcome your own greed, anger and folly. Jeet Kune Do is directed toward oneself.”

-Tao of Jeet Kune Do,

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

City of Death

Tonight’s soundtrack: Cop Shoot Cop, “All The Clocks Are Broken”

I don’t know if this is typical of me or of Douglas Adams, but the first thing I read of his was the second Hitchhiker’s book. As a result, I thought Zaphod Beeblebrox was the main character, which suited me right down to the rocky New Hampshire ground. As a burgeoning young egomaniac myself, I was well pleased to discover such a charming self-absorbed hero. He was funny, he was confident, he was everything I knew myself to be.

I don’t know if this is typical of me or of Tom Baker, but he was my first Doctor. As a result—well, I think you can see where I’m going with this. The Fourth Doctor and Zaphod both think themselves the center of the universe, and, wonderfully, it turns out they’re both right. Oh sure, it’s because one of them is in an artificial universe and the other is a fictional character, but things are tough all over. I think a little arrogance is justified, don’t you?

So anyway: City of Death, where we have the man who created the dumbest arrogant bastard in the galaxy writing for the smartest arrogant bastard in the galaxy. The result: a perfect double-bluff. Or as Count Scarlioni muses, “My dear, nobody could be as stupid as he seems.”

Tom Baker blazes out of the screen in this one. The plot is appropriately clever and silly. The cast (Lalla Ward! Julian Glover!) is superb. The location is Paris. The genius at the heart of all, the synthesizer of this demented grand poetry, Mr. Douglas Adams, takes a bow. 

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

The Horns of Nimon

Tonight’s Soundtrack: David Bowie, “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)”

Here’s where I get a reputation. 

I am 100% without a doubt certain that I will watch The Horns of Nimon again, multiple times, before I ever get around to watching any Firefly again. This is with complete and open acknowledgement that any given episode of Firefly is objectively better on any technical or aesthetic criteria you wish to compare. They’re going to be gathering (more) dust while perhaps not a month will go by in-between murmurs of “Tonight… tonight… yeah. Nimon.”

Here’s the thing: I know what’ll happen if I try to watch Firefly. First, there will be a tremendous amount of tutting and sighing. There will be head shaking. An occasional growl. And, and, here’s the thing: I like the show. Well, I don’t find it offensive. It’s competent. But it’s so goddamn frustrating to watch. Limited in scope and incoherent in world-building, it misses opportunities like the Minnesota Wild misses shots on goal1.

Meanwhile, should I watch Nimon, I know I’ll laugh. Sometimes at the jokes. But the point is, I’ll enjoy myself.  I’ll smile the whole time. It’s just silly. Silly’s all right. I’m not worried about the reputation of my favorite show. I’m not angry that the network started screwing with the schedule and cancelled it just when it was finding an audience. It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m free from any embarrassment. I care not for the concerns of others.

I’m a leaf floating on the wind.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

Meglos

Tonight’s soundtrack: Laibach, “Sympathy For The Devil (Time For A Change)”

Yes, yes, fine. This is the one where Tom Baker gets possessed by an alien cactus and you can tell because his face turns into a spiny Durian fruit. As of today, no word yet from Lalla Ward on how he smelled. Meglos also anagrams to Golems and Slog Me. That’s not something you can say about every Doctor Who story, no sir. Kinda doesn’t even have any of the letters! Ha! Silly Kinda.

I do like the Chronic Hysteresis scene in Meglos. That’s where the evil alien cactus has possessed an accountant so he can use the fingers to tap on a Tandy Pocket Calculator. This sends the TARDIS into a fold of space-time, because there’s no way the Lords of Time would have installed a firewall in their semi-sentient, near-infinite time travel capsules to prevent remote control by succulents. Inside the TARDIS, time is now on a loop, the same events playing out over and over. Not stasis, but infinite repeat without variation.

That’s right. Meglos has managed to turn Doctor Who into a regular TV program.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

Kinda

Or as it’s known ‘round these parts: “The One I Mispronounced Until I Saw It”

So there’s a spirit of hatred and evil from the dark places of the inside that can borrow people’s bodies and make them do terrible things. It’s also a demon of self-loathing and hates mirrors. There are women who speak prophecy, and men who say nothing. Dream worlds can be opened to let you talk to metaphors and riddles. Authority figures are going mad, or catatonic with denial. Our fresh-faced hero arrives with his long coat and eccentric ways. Something in the forest is stirring.

Listen: Kinda is one murder away from Twin Peaks.

“Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song and there’s always music in the air.”

Not for nothing do David Lynch and Christopher Bailey share a meditation practice. That’s where the real stuff is, the gold of Ideaspace. Trouble is, most of us never get to the gold because we’re not practiced in going that deep. Even if we do sometimes luck out, we don’t know how to preserve the essence of that gold; when we reach the surface all we’re carrying is lead. Sure, we can still pound that lead into dull knives or senseless bullets, but you know it’s not the same. There’s no power left; there’s no mystery.

I don’t know. I’m certainly no Buddhist. I just see patterns. Black and White. White and Black.

“The old couple playing chess wore the same design.”

“They would.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re the same.”

“As what?”

“Each other.”

__________________________________

Black Orchid

Tonight’s soundtrack: Jeremy Northam, “The Land of Might Have Been”

Or as it’s known ‘round these parts, “Adric Snacks.”

In the 2010 story The Lodger, there’s a scene where Matt Smith’s Doctor turns out to be fantastically good at football. (That’s the—you know what, why am I even pretending to write this for the general audience? You know which football I mean, and why you write this scene for Matt Smith. Lulz.) And I’ll tell you: the scene didn’t sit well with me on first viewing. I got the humor of the ungainly, unearthly, uncool Doctor suddenly discovering an undeniable great talent for sport, sure. And I don’t have the cultural baggage to feel betrayed by football skills outing the Doctor as part of an oppressive Other Tribe. It didn’t work for me because of the way the Doctor exulted.

Man, he loved scoring goals. He thrilled at the attention he got. He was the best man on the field, unstoppable. Cheering on his own successes. Raising his arms in self-congratulatory victory. And that bugged me.

That bugged me because it seemed like something David Tennant would have done.

This isn’t the place where I get into Doctor Debates. I just want to say, at the time, it felt wrong for the Doctor as I’d been seeing Smith play him. I couldn’t see the precedent.

CUT TO: Peter Davison exulting at his amazing talents and cheering on his own successes with arms raised over and over again in during Black Orchid’s Cricket Match scene. Camera pulls back to reveal me shaking my head while carefully lettering I AM AN IDIOT onto my notepad.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (Originally published June 2012)

Earthshock

Tonight’s soundtrack: Don McLean, “American Pie”

Were I ever, I don’t know, say, trapped on a spaceship plummeting simultaneously toward a really sturdy-looking planet and backward through time, and the only way to escape involved making a dour space emperor laugh and realize life could also contain joy, I’d say, “No problem. Get me the DVD of Earthshock.  We’ll show Emperor Melancholialien the bits in the documentary where Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss imitate Adric and the Cyber Leader.”

I don’t know if you’ve seen the performances in my escape plan, but they are gold. This is pre-2005, and neither Gatiss nor Moffat likely know they’ll ever be working on Doctor Who, much less running the show and launching internationally successful mystery programs together. At this point they’re television professionals who can talk about Doctor Who memories with genuine affection to a camera without drooling or causing seizures. Being known for comedies, they play to their strengths and go for laughs. Easy targets, and hardly original observations, but when intercut with the original footage, Moffat and Gatiss… man, that’s the stuff.

It’s the accuracy that makes it genuinely funny and not just “Remember when that guy did a thing like this?” The timing and the body language reveal that “ACTOR & AUTHOR” and  “TV & FILM SCRIPTWRITER” are super super huge nerds. 

These aren’t guys who just saw Earthshock once and got some prompts from the documentary producer. They didn’t just watch Earthshock dozens of times on home-recorded tapes. No, what these keenly observed little recreations from Moffat and Gatiss tell us is this: these are guys who have done this before. This is practiced. They act out moments from Doctor Who, on their own and for no pay, and now the world knows it.

Snakedance

Tonight’s soundtrack: Big Lazy, “Meditation (For A Pair of Wire Cutters)”

I adore Snakedance. If memory serves, and it’ll have to, because I’m not getting out of this chair, it was the Target novelization of this story that Janet Fielding signed for me at a convention in the mid-80s. Doctor Who, as I said in an essay I mean to write someday, has always seemed to attract an audience that enjoys reading for reading’s sake. In any case, it never struck me as odd that I didn’t have the pretty actress sign a photo of herself, but instead a book in which the character she played is pretty important.

It’s the variety of influences it draws from and the richness of the world it builds that make Snakedance so enjoyable—even though it turns out the title refers to neither Blade Runner nor Satanico Pandemonium. That’s a bit of a missed trick. Granted, Salma Hayek was only 16 at the time and attending a Catholic High School, so…. I’m gonna stop myself right there.

Here’s a limb I will go out on: there’s a lot of Bruce Lee in Snakedance. Specifically, Enter the Dragon and the art of fighting without fighting. Even if the fun house mirrors (of the endgame) and the Doctor’s meditation pose (echoing Lee in the pit with the nunchuks around his neck) weren’t enough, well, actually that will have to be enough without me rewatching the thing. Point is, this story provides emotional content without anger; it’s like a small play, but played seriously.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

The King’s Demons

Tonight’s soundtrack: Crime & The City Solution, “The Adversary”

The logic is obvious, right? My middle name is Anthony. I’m a Masterson. I’m forever seeing patterns and synchronicities, because how my head works. So when the greatest enemy of my favorite character is called the Master and he’s played by a guy named Anthony, I decide that means something.

The Master, I know, is another character that’s largely of my own creation. But come on. Dressing in all black, grooming a goatee, mouth always one twitch away from a smirk or a devilish smile… who could resist that kind of iconography? You can call it camp and obvious all you want today, for me back then, that was just Proper Evil. That’s how a Gentleman Antagonizes. You show up, you look good, you have fun, and you pretend to die at the end so the hero feels good about himself. It’s a Rivalry, not a Death Match. Oh sure, you talk big about “ending his miserable existence, that wretched fool!” But that’s just pillow-talk, baby. It’s all in the game, yo.

I love that guy.

So: Chicken or Bad Egg? Was I already on the path to Evil Facial Hair and unmatched black suit coordinates and therefor drawn to Ainley’s Ham Sandwich, or did Space Moriarty hit me at a young enough age that I can claim to be led on by the treachery of others?

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

The Awakening

Tonight’s soundtrack: Pete Townshend, “Rough Boys”

Turlough’s gay, right? Okay. Let’s move on.

I hope it’s clear that even when I say a Doctor Who story doesn’t quite work, or shouldn’t have been attempted at the time, or is the feverish dream product of electric hellfire nutjobs so short on nuts they’re hiring squirrels for the season, it doesn’t mean I don’t also genuinely enjoy watching the damn things.

Truth is, it’s easier to be funny by pointing out flaws. Because you point away from yourself, right? You point out there, toward the absurdity you’ve noticed is entertaining. By being negative, the object of your rhetorical attention does the heavy lifting. You’re the huckster at the freak show. “Roll up! Roll up! Come see the Tone-Deaf Script! Cringe at the Poorly-Realized Monster! No Women or Children may be admitted to the Cave of Ugly Subtext!”

The trickier bit—one I’ve been quite happy to idle past lately—is to talk about things that are just cool and likable. Nothing spectacular. No world-beaters. Maybe just the little things that make a story not-unwatchable. Do that with an entertaining voice for 250 words, writer-boy. See how many Likes you can muster then.

Challenge accepted. Sorry if the DB posts aren’t funny for a bit, folks1. I’m going to try Reversing the Polarity.

Two Things I Remember I Like About The Awakening (without a rewatch): 

1) That Malus homunculus on the TARDIS wall is pretty creepy. 

2) You had me at The Wicker Man meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 

Short thoughts on Doctor Who disc by disc (Originally published June 2012)

Frontios

Tonight’s soundtrack: Godspeed You Black Emperor!, “The Dead Flag Blues”

Frontios should be a horror story. Turlough certainly screams his head off as though he’s the second girl gonna get kilt. You’ve got a desperate band of survivors getting picked off piecemeal in a remote location. Our heroes are cut off from their escape route pretty damned effectively. Every five minutes we’re reminded that this is fundamentally wrong and we shouldn’t be here. Plus, y’know, it turns out the bad guys aren’t hiding way out in space, but are in fact, alien insects living just below your feet. (“Miss, you need to get out now. THE TRACTATORS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE PLANET.”) Oh! And there are human corpses decorating the mining equipment.

Frontios is built to be terrifying. On paper, it’s Aliens meets Sunshine meets The Hills Have Eyes, with a gravity fetish.

Here’s the thing: you get a vibe to do a horror story like that? That’s fantastic. Save it in your Hollywood drawer. I don’t think you should try to make it into family hour entertainment on a BBC budget.

Look at those Tractators. Aren’t the cuddly-wuddliest giant pill bug world destroyers you ever saw? And they’re so well lit! Why, it’s almost as if someone thought it might not be a good idea to punch the whole audience in the face with free nightmares for life and sabotaged your scenario.

Maybe Jesus H. Bidmead1 knew that his slasher-doomsday-horror film would get toned down by the realities of production and was fine with it looking a bit silly and over-acted. Me, I think scary is just okay. Aim for scary and you might hit Blink.

___________________________________

Short thoughts on Doctor Who disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

The Twin Dilemma

Tonight’s soundtrack: The Damned, “I Think I’m Wonderful”

Okay, as the script editor said to the actress, this is the big one.

If a self-selected survey of Doctor Who specialists is to be believed (and it is not), out of the first 200 stories, this is the worst. Not only that! The same survey champions the story which ran just one week previous as the very best Doctor Who to date.

Who could’ve imagined? #1 in quality followed by #200! What the are the odds? Well, let me tell you… if you had run The Eleventh Hour only a week after The End of Time, Part 2, the wreckage of Upper Boat Studios in Cardiff would still be smoldering now, and in 2013 the BBC would air a retrospective mentioning that the final Doctor Who was a former footballer you might remember from the movie Clone.

People understand that Doctors come and go. They even sometimes accept that change is what the show does. That doesn’t mean they don’t need time to mourn.

The Twin Dilemma’s greatest sin is timing. Sure, it lacks acting, story, coherence, and special effects. But let’s be honest here: in a Doctor Who context, most of us will give those things a pass so long as it’s not also breaking our hearts and calling us babies for being sad a week after we saw our best friend give his life for his best friend.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who, disc by disc (Originally published June 2012)

Attack of the Cybermen

Tonight’s soundtrack: Dethklok, “Bloodtrocuted”

I think I’ve figured it out: the reason I’ve always liked the Cybermen as villains (and indeed, often cited them as my favorite recurring “monster”) is that out of all the adventures that feature Cybermen, I hadn’t actually seen very many1.

That means Cybermen are largely creatures of the mind for me. They are a false memory marching around in borrowed imagery. Characters stripped of their actual drama, having it replaced with projections and conflations and mistakes. I can admit this now. I know that I created the Cybermen.

I created the Cybermen out of my love for the Tin Woodman of Oz and my erroneous belief that they had killed the Doctor and caused his first regeneration. That made them more dangerous and mythically important than the Daleks, yet also more relatable and tragic than most companions. Terrifying and magnetic, the perfect menace. Cybermen. They had done the unthinkable. I still identified with them and their lost hearts.

So how did I literally miss the plot? Simple. Cybermen were something I read about. I knew of them through overwhelming episode guides and quickly-scanned novelizations2. So the Cybermen get thrown into the Literary Hopper, where it’s so much easier to mingle with other dark twins and mislay the inconvenient details. There they gained power that they never would have gotten in the sterile divisions of my AV Ports.

I’m okay with that. I can admit that the televised Cybermen are a bit crap; it doesn’t take away the ones I keep near to the heart that the Wizard gave me.

_____________________________

1 I think there are three Cyber-stories that I could have possibly seen when I was first watching on PBS and the only one I remember for sure is The Five Doctors.

Short thoughts on Doctor Who disc by disc (originally published June 2012)

Vengeance on Varos

Tonight’s soundtrack: Modest Mouse, “Dark Center Of The Universe”

Colin Baker, eh? Talk about your poster boy for the Monkey’s Paw Society For The Strict Management Of Wishes. Seeing Colin there in his gaudy parody of a costume, knowing the reputation his era will receive, contemplating the forces both creative and managerial that were to blindly crush his ambitions between them, I can say that it would not surprise me to learn Colin Baker had danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight.

It’s a classic Satanic pact, right? “Hullo Colin, fancy meeting you at these crossroads.”

“Hello, er, you. Have you got the time?”

“Yeah, it’s midnight. What’ll you have, then?”

“Gosh, can I be Doctor Who? It’s the greatest role on television.”

“Sure you wouldn’t like some money? Maybe immortality?”

“Ha! None of your tricks, Old Scratch. I’ll get the money by staying in the role as long as I like, and the immortality from the love of children as I play the Doctor as a true alien.”

“You’re too clever for me, Colin Baker. Sign here and the part’s yours.”

CUT TO: Colin Baker stress eating as he stares at the morning paper. The date is one year later. His tasteless Doctor coat hangs behind him, just out of focus. Around and under his many plates are script pages, full of corrections and cross-outs. “Why,” he mumbles, dead-eyed. “Why didn’t I tell them it was whippet shit?”