Ben Goodridge puts
the case in defence of Fox and new directions for Doctor Who. Italics
indicate my replies to his comments.
Howard.
This is in response to the essay
that appears on your website; I hope you
can find room for what will probably
become a rather long pro-Paul McGann
rant in your files or that at least
I have the ear of someone who's
interested.
First of all, I'd like to say how
much I enjoy the Floor Ten Dr. Who audio
dramas. I've been meaning to say
that since the first time I heard
Regeneration of the Daleks Part 1 a
few weeks ago and it really needs to be
said loudly. As someone interested
in producing audio dramas I have to
admit that you've gone far above and
beyond anything the average bear could
produce, just in terms of being able
to present an atmosphere by sound. (My
own stuff probably would best have
consisted of a couple of idiots standing
around a tape recorder, with a few
echo effects thrown in.) It sounds like
you have the advantage of a studio.
And the acting is well up to par. If
it's any indication of how good the
acting is, I couldn't tell that Davros
and the Chancellor were being played
by the same person until it was
mentioned in the end credits.
Thanks! We don't really have much of a studio - more a PC with a couple of microphones and a synthesiser. Still, it does the job!
I understand you didn't like the Doctor Who movie.
Well, yes, I don't really like the TVM - it's pretty poor, all in all, IMHO. Though most of my comments were directed more at the NA culture that has sprung up since the series' demise. But more about that later...
That's well within your
prerogative. It was either a good film or a bad
film and whether you liked it or
didn't like it is yours to choose.
However, I'm one of those people who
gets "up in arms whenever anybody
suggests the Fox movie was
crap," and I think this bears debate.
Fan reaction to the Dr. Who movie
bewildered me. Criticisms ranged from the
tepid to the outraged. Having
recently had the opportunity to re-view the
movie (a friend of mine has the Fox
broadcast on video) I have to admit
that they have a point. It was not
the best made-for-TV venture ever
broadcast. That doesn't mean it
wasn't good, or that it couldn't have been
either better or worse.
Some of the arguments I put forth
in the movie's favour were, "Well, what
do YOU think Dr. Who would look like
after seven years? You can't sell a
1996 movie to an American audience
using 1989 British production values."
Well that's fair enough, if the American audience was the target. I however was under the impression that our TV-licence fees went to the BBC so they could produce quality drama for British audiences, not farm out the contracts to the highest bidder to make the most cash or make drama primarily directed at foreign audiences. The chap at the Who-Shop (East Ham) said that the BBC wasn't supposed to make money anyway, being a public-sevice broadcaster, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. (Anyone know for sure?) Doctor Who was the BBCs biggest export long before Fox came along, so it was only greed that made them try and sell out to an American market.
A few people were willing to
grudgingly admit that I had a point there. The
number of people I corresponded with
who loathed the movie because the sets
didn't wobble was outrageous. This
suggests something a little small-minded
in American fandom--that people were
laughing AT the show instead of WITH
it. That plus the number of people
who think Dr. Who begins and ends with
Tom Baker also puzzled me.
Tom Baker was unique, it must be said, but I like all the Doctors, including Colin! As for the sets wobbling, I can understand the concern in some way. The Fox set was highly slick, and to me felt more like a Batman film than Doctor Who. Wobbly sets would definately not have been a good idea though!
I began to understand when I
wrote an essay on fandom for a popular
cultures class. A while ago, I was
observing a friend who watches the Star
Trek series Voyager. A confirmed
Star Trek fan, he watches Next Generation
on every station that's syndicated,
never misses a movie, never misses a
convention, and I can't imagine how
much money he's spent on Trek-related
merchandise. But he says he doesn't
like Voyager. It just doesn't fit his
personal image of what Star Trek is
all about.
He, too, has a point. (A lot of
people will have points before this letter
is done.) Voyager isn't the best
science fiction series I've ever seen. I
don't like Voyager and I'm a Star
Trek fan.
Does he ever miss an episode of Voyager? No.
So I've been priveleged to
observe the interesting phenomenon of watching a
grown man sitting down every
Wednesday night at 8 PM Eastern to watch the
show he hates most in the whole
world, and give it a barrage of criticism
the whole time.
Now, it would be simplicity
itself to suggest that if he doesn't like the
show all that much, why doesn't he
just go and find some more productive
way of passing the time? It's this
sort of blindness that I ran into time
and time again, coupled with an
eerie protectiveness--he used to groan if I
was in the room, watching with him,
because I'd match him complaint for
complaint. It was as if I had no
right to complain about anything Star Trek
related, but he did. He'd set
himself up as sole judge, jury, and
executioner for all things Trek.
Yes, fans do have a tendency to behave this way. I guess the guy in question kept watching Voyager in the vain hope that one day he would grow to like it, but it's difficult when your heart tells you otherwise. The difference here between Trek and Who though is that Trekkies get the choice. If you like Voyager, then fine - if you don't there's always TNG and DS9. Something to cater for every taste - and they're all recognisably different products. The trouble with Who is that there's only one product (currently in limbo) and no one can agree which way it should go - should it be old style BBC, new style slick American Sci-Fi, should it be in the style of the NAs... ? My point was just "if in doubt, stick with the original format, because it brought many people a lot of enjoyment"
This is the sort of eerie
protectiveness I keep running into. "I know it's
crap but I watch it anyway."
With no really conclusive answer as to "Why."
I didn't care for Voyager so I
stopped watching it. It's people who
approach their various shows with
this sort of obsession
that worry me.
As I say, I had an opportunity to
re-view the movie recently, and I was
forced to admit that those people
who criticized it had a point. It wasn't
a four-star movie by anyone's
standard, whether you were a fan of the old
show or not. A paper thin plot, some
ludicrous moments of dialogue, and a
few additions to the Canon that
would certainly outrage even the most
dedicated Dr. Who fan. But that
wasn't why I watched, and that wasn't why I
liked it.
Well, I'm the most dedicated Dr Who fan, and personally didn't give a shit about the canon being changed. It all seemed to fit in reasonably well enough, and I wasn't bothered by the kiss either. It was just as you say - "paper thin plot" plus poor screenplay, tacky direction, gratuitous violence, and a vital "something" missing - that magic that shined at moments in the BBC series, which just wasn't evident in the Fox TVM. That last bit's not just my imagination either, friends of mine have remarked the same - anyone want to have a go at quantifying the original magic of Who???
I don't know if you know how Dr.
Who is received in the U.S., a country,
ostensibly, with more Doctor Who
fans than the UK has PEOPLE. The film
wasn't a bomb; but it didn't rank
high on the Nielsens and it got clobbered
by mainstay Roseanne, but on the
whole people who watched it stayed with it
until the end, and people who joined
in the middle also stayed with it
until the end. The original British
series is broadcast only on Public
television, a network with a general
reputation of showing dull-as-sand
British period pieces and silly
children's television, interrupted every
four months by whining pleas for
private donations.
Sounds like ITV...
When it's broadcast, it's
broadcast all of a lump; someone edits out the
opening and closing themes and the
bits at the end that are repeated at the
beginning of the next episode. So a
four-episode Dr. Who serial is watched
as one big chunk of ninety-minute
movie. One of these per week and one runs
quickly through all the Tom Baker
episodes in less than a year, and all the
episodes together in a little over
two years. All twenty-six years. Then
the shows are re-run, which means
one has the culture shock of watching
"Survival" one week and
"Unearthly Child" the next (or, more commonly,
"Robot;" Tom Baker is more
popular than all other Doctors put together, and
most stations know which side their
bread's buttered on.)
So the American point of view of
Doctor Who is quite different. I don't
know anyone willing to take their
Doctor Who in the bite-sized lumps
British fans have been fed; I once
commented on how "intrusive" it seemed
once, when watching Planet of
Spiders on video with a like-minded friend,
to interrupt what seemed a smooth
flow of action with sudden closing
credits, followed immediately by
opening credits and the words "Part
Three."
Yes, I never considered that. I personally find Dr Who tedious when watched all in one lump - a lot of the excitement comes from the suspense inbetween episodes.
People have debated what's kept
Doctor Who alive for so long; for my money
it comes down to the idea of
"change." Doctor Who survived, simply because
it continually turned its weaknesses
into strengths. If they blew half
their budget building the TARDIS,
they'd keep using the same TARDIS prop
and tell the audience that the ship
was stuck like that. The lead character
becomes too old and forgetful to
continue playing the role, so they hire a
younger, perkier actor, and tell the
audience that the character has
renewed itself. In what other show
could the producers get away with
something like that? Not Babylon 5;
nobody said that what's-his-name had
"regenerated" into the
likeness of Bruce Boxleitner. Not "Star Trek: the
Next Generation," where there
seems to be a limitless budget for
foam-rubber faces and overdesigned
sets. You assert that Doctor Who had a
format--I assert that Doctor Who has
survived precisely because it has no
such thing. They're not always
taking a hatchet to the rules, but they're
not above bending them a little.
That's just being flexible. With such a small budget you'd have to be - I mean Red Dwarf was getting far more than Who in its early years for a series of six episodes and Who was expected to make four whole stories out of less. There still was a format and ethos to the programme which was not upheld in the movie. Who essentially remained unchanged from the Hartnell years. Yes, there were small changes in temperament, direction, production values, the Doctor's character, the TARDIS interior, new monsters and so on, but this wasn't "change" - it was just natural evolution of television. The same evolution was occurring to all TV programmes over the years - no one actually seriously decided to dramatically alter the format of the show. Its ethos remained constant throughout - family entertainment with a sci-fi twist. Now this was consciously changed in the Fox film. It had to be quite badly cut just to receive a 15 certificate in England - all other Dr Who previously had been U or PG. This indicates Fox were targetting an adult-only audience, which puts a whole new light on the programme - one that I personally dislike. This change was the only real one in Doctor Who history, which is why the Fox film outraged so many of the fans.
I'm never too surprised that a
lot of die-hard Who fans find John
Nathan-Turner's tenure as producer
an abomination; Nathan-Turner didn't
revamp the show from the ground up
overnight, but he was flexible to new
ideas and new directions to take the
stories. Tom Baker couldn't play the
role forever and even UK audiences
would have gotten bored with an endless
progression of Dalek episodes, Ice
Warriors, Cybermen, and Sontarans. The
series HAS to change, or it dies.
(Also a little raw are assertions that
Nathan-Turner "killed" the
show--wasn't he producer for longer than any
other Dr. Who producer in history?)
Eventually one has to ask
oneself--how much criticism of Dr. Who in the
eighties is easily explained because
the Doctor simply wasn't Tom Baker?
We all like the JNT years the best actually, so I'm not going to join in this discussion! He was responsible for some awful crap too though, I won't deny it. But even Delta and the Bannermen was more entertaining than the Fox film (oooh, harsh!)
Even when the movie was broadcast
nearly two years ago (my, how time does
one in), I knew I wasn't watching it
because it was a particularly sterling
piece of entertainment. That wasn't
to say I didn't have a capacity to be
impressed by it; I think that given
half the chance Paul McGann would have
been a quite acceptable, even
exceptional Doctor. The producers seemed to
be taking the opportunity to combine
the ideas of the X-Files with the
production values of Babylon 5 and
setting the whole thing in the
tried-and-trusted cloisters of the
TARDIS. It would have made a hell of a
series and I think that's what's
most outrageous of all. Despite the
occasionally rabid criticisms of the
movie, 96% of 1000 people polled said
they wanted to see the film turned
into a series. We seem to have come back
to my friend Voyager-fan again.
"I hated it but I want more."
But of course they wanted to see it turned into a series. Seven years of it being off screen has made all the fans desparate for any new Who. I don't think such poll results can be used to justify the opinion that the majority of the public thought the Fox movie was good.
This might seem like a lot of
goings-on, but...One person who hated the
movie was someone who talked to a
friend of mine in a rage about the idea
of there being a chase scene in
Doctor Who. How dare they put a chase-scene
in Doctor Who? Doctor Who has never
relied on such cheap dramatic elements.
There's never been a chase scene in
Dr. Who.
Friend of mine replied that there
was quite an extended chase scene in
Planet of Spiders, a chase-scene on
foot in Arc of Infinity, a chase scene
on bicycles in Shada, numerous chase
scenes during the Jon Pertwee years,
not to mention an episode called
"The Chase," which was, in essence, a
six-episode chase scene.
Quite agree - chase scenes have always been an integral part of Dr Who. As Dicky Howett said once :"Corridors - what would episodes two and three be without them!" The trouble is when the chase scene is just action for action's sake and doesn't really contribute anything to the plot.
Guy who wrote blinked a couple of
times (figuratively), scratched his head
(figuratively), and said, "Oh.
Well then. I liked it. I thought it was
great."
Now, this is from rabid hatred to
total support in about five seconds. I
thought the poor guy was going to
get whiplash.
On the whole, I understand what
you're complaining about. On the one side I
talked to people who would basically
swallow anything with Dr. Who stamped
on the front. On the other side I've
talked to people who won't accept
anything that wasn't written by
Douglas Adams, produced by Philip
Hinchcliffe, and starred Tom Baker.
There seems to be no middle of the
road. In re-watching the movie I
have to admit that the only reason I took
it straight and swallowed it whole
was because I was supportive of the idea
of there being a new series. This
was the first new Doctor Who in SEVEN
YEARS. I like the show a lot but
even I get sick of seeing the same 154
episodes over and over again (as
opposed to what probably amounts to over a
thousand episodes in the UK).
I have sometimes said that Doctor
Who's greatest fans are its worst
enemies. The greater a fan of Doctor
Who one seems to be, the less likely
one is going to accept anything new
that's produced. The brain becomes
spot-welded to a very fixed idea in
a show where, let's face it, there are
no fixed ideas.
You have additional comments that
imply (demand, really) that Doctor Who
avoid any and all contemporary
practical social issues. Is there any
particular reason for this? Surely
the subjects the author chooses to write
about are the prerogatives of the
author.
True, but it's the producer's job to ensure that the stories are generally in keeping with one another, and Doctor Who has never really seriously dealt directly with any contemporary issues - it just skates around the subject. Such issues were generally left to EastEnders, which was in a similar time-slot.
You can't make every episode out
of some power-mad conspirator hell-bent on
taking over the
world/galaxy/universe. Every once in a while it's a good
idea to have such an essentially
alien character (if he's half human I've
got antlers) explore essentially
human issues from the outside.
You might be talking about the
New Adventures, in which case ignore what
comes up and go to the next bit. The
NAs aren't terribly accessible in the
US and I don't think they sell very
well. I've read a few of them but not
been impressed enough to buy the
lot. (So much for my being one of those
drooling fanboys who goes ape over
everything with Dr. Who printed on it.)
If it's the series, Doctor Who has
never really shied from social issues;
they just weren't the sorts of
things people wrote about for the show. They
weren't the emphasis; they were
something to do while we were waiting for
the monster of the week to show up.
They wrote about the Zargon warships
invading or what have you. It's all
well and good to leave social criticism
to Star Trek, but Dr. Who has
occasionally played into the hands of social
commentary. Drug abuse and addiction
was taken on in "Nightmare from Eden."
Giving the Doctor a love-interest
was taken on in "the Aztecs." The way
people with diseases are stigmatized
was tackled in "Terminus." And
interracial conflict has been a
popular subject for Dalek stories,
including "The Daleks,"
"Genesis of the Daleks," and "Remembrance of the
Daleks." The Doctor has always
taken a firm stance on many political
issues--against war, against guns,
against unneccesary violence and nearly
every episode has at least one idiot
who flat-out refuses to think his way
through a problem as opposed to
shooting his way out of it.
True all these issues have been dealt with, but they were never really confronted, that's my point. Dr Who preferred to skate around the subject with metaphor and allegory than directly show a heroin addict, a Nazi, sexual attraction to the Doctor, or whatever. The NAs violate this tradition, and so does the Fox movie to some extent.
"Keep reality out of my
Doctor Who" is all well and good as a battle cry
but the fact is that many people
like the Doctor because he's so
essentially real. He's not a perfect
hero; in any incarnation--he gets
cranky, he gets flippant, he gets
angry, he gets stupid, and he even
sometimes gets violent. We can, in
some way, relate to each and every one
of the Doctor's incarnations. If not
to the Doctors, then surely to their
companions. A lot of people have
commented that they keep having daydreams
about hearing that marvelously
evocative trumpeting in their own backyard
and the Doctor would step out of the
TARDIS to whisk them away. Doctor Who
has never worried too hard about
putting Mr. and Mrs. Norman Normal into
exceptional situations and seeing
how they react--from Ian and Barbara's
stepping into the TARDIS at the
beginning of Unearthy Child to Dr. Grace
Holloway stepping out of it at the
end of the film.
Yes, I agree the Doctor is reasonably real enough because he's been the focus of the programme for so long, but most everything else isn't. Squeaky-clean characters who never swear, arrays of stereotypes repeating cliched lines, roughly man-shaped monsters who want to take over the world, time travel in an old metropolitan police box, computers that have to beep every time someone touches them - no one seriously believes these things exist in reality!
You say the "sad fans"
are the ones killing Doctor Who; I have more of a
feeling that its the outraged voices
of twenty million Who fans who felt
their little universe had been
violated by the movie. Why would someone who
adores the show at all costs despite
what it may contain be a danger to it?
It's exactly that sort of audience
being targeted. How exactly are they
keeping Dr. Who OFF the air? How are
twenty million simultaneous cries of
"Bring back our favorite
show" hurting it?
While I don't see how the fanboys
like the Voyager fan are hurting Dr. Who,
I CAN see how people who react to
anything new in Doctor Who would be
hurting it. As a converse question
to the last paragraph, how exactly is
complaining to the point of minutiae
about anything new going to help?
Sylvester McCoy said it at a
convention shortly after he became the Doctor:
"You're knocking the show so
much you're driving nails into its coffin!
You're KILLING it!"
Well you must admit the early McCoys were on the whole rather poor, so it wasn't unfair to knock them. As for it killing the show, that decision had been made years ago if I'm any judge. The BBC just didn't have the guts to axe it in one go, they had to run it down first and try and justify it by this. I mean, honestly, placing it against Coronation Street - what chance did it have?
My brother-in-law is a
tried-and-tested Doctor Who fan, and I told him
about the movie over the holidays in
1994.
Christmas 1994.
A YEAR AND A HALF before the movie was to be broadcast.
He listened while I explained
some relevant details I'd heard from the
pages of those few Dr. Who magazines
I'd been able to find, and at the end
chewed on his lip, looked
thoughtful, and said, slowly, deliberately: "It's
gonna SUCK."
This was another reaction I got a
lot and found puzzling. People who hated
and condemned the movie not just
prior to its broadcast, but MONTHS prior
to its broadcast. Why are these
people passing judgment on a show they
haven't seen yet and won't see for
over a year? How many people who hated
the movie hated it long before they
even saw it? How many people marched
into this thing with a die-hard
preconceived notion? My brother-in-law
didn't just hate the movie eighteen
months prior to its broadcast, he had
eighteen months to continue hating
it before it showed up, and, not to my
inconsiderable surprise, hated it
while he was watching it and hated it
after he had seen it. Were you,
Howard, critical of the movie before you
saw it?
Nope! One of my friends was, though, and I recall trying to persuade him that the movie was going to be great, that it would still be true to the spirit of the BBC's Doctor Who, that the special effects wouldn't be at the expense of a plot, that an American actor could play a decent Master etc .etc .. all the worries you would expect. Unfortunately my optimism wasn't born out. I've watched the TVM again and again, almost forcing myself to like it, but I just can't, because I know that it was essentially very poor.
So we have a number of different
approaches to those that hated the movie.
We have those that hated it because
it wasn't BAD enough; the sets didn't
wobble, the boom mikes weren't
visible in every other mirror, and the foam
stuffing wasn't coming out the back
of the costumes. We have those that
hated it because it wasn't GOOD
enough--the plot was thin, the story weak,
and it played hell with the Canon.
We have those that hated it years before
they even saw it. We have those who
hated it because it contained elements
that they thought (and were more
often than not wrong about) weren't in
previously broadcast episodes of the
series.
Not one of these opinions really
answers the question of whether or not it
was a good movie. NOT ONE of these
approaches takes the film on its own
merits, good or bad, for what it
was--as much a potential pilot for a new
series of Doctor Who as it was a
continuation of the old series. Both
opinions--it was a good film because
I'm a drooling fanboy and I'll cling
to whatever has the name on it / It
was a horrible film because the TARDIS
console looked funny--are shot from
the same gun, that of the unquestioning
fanboy, marching boldly into the
film with a fistful of preconceived
notions that have absolutely nothing
to do with the film itself.
Howard's essay is thin because
there are so few actual criticisms of the
film itself. I have found few-to-no
criticisms of the film at all in the
responses I'd received. Every
critique I read compared Doctor Who, for
better or for worse, with what came
before.
My comments weren't
specifically directed at the Fox movie - they were actually more
aimed at the NA culture. However I can offer the following:...
Firstly, it is quite fair to
criticise the Fox movie on the values of the series, because it
is feeding off the name of the series for its audience base. If
the BBC and Fox want to attract viewers to their film on the
premise that it is new "Doctor Who" then they must
answer to its established reputation. Had the film been called
"The Enemy Within" and not featured a time-travelling
half-human TimeLord named The Doctor, then it would be
unreasonable to unfavourably compare it with any other show, but
this wasn't the case.
However, purely on its own
merits, I felt the film was poor. Had I have been watching a
non-Dr Who "Enemy Within" film I would have most likely
turned off after the first hour because it was just typical
nonsensical American trash. I don't have anything personal
against Americans, I merely use the term to denote a certain
style and set of production values, which is substantially
different to how things are done over here (in the UK).
The plot was non-existant. Poor
plots are excusable if they have content - there's certainly been
many poor plots over the years in Doctor Who - but the plot of
the Fox film was so thin it could be summed up in fifty
words! The rest was just fillers - chase scenes,
inconsequential dialogue, special effects, horror-film shock
tactics... Their contribution to the plot was nothing that
couldn't have been better included in another way.
For example, there was no need to
pump Sylvester full of lead just so he could regenerate. That was
just a cheap shock-tactic and an excuse for including violence
(always pulls the audiences!). The Doctor could have better been
forced to regenerate through trying to do some good deed and
falling foul of some villain's trap etc.
The same goes for the gore - the
Master pulling off his fingernails, the woman's neck snapping,
the surgery scene, the ectoplasm... All just cheap thrills - the
BBC never needed to resort to such tactics to pull audiences.
Secondly, the direction and
screenplay were abysmal. There was little inventive camerawork,
just stock shots and a catalogue of bad visual cliches (worst
offender was the Frankenstein movie accompianying the
regeneration, but there are many others. I'd list them for you if
I had the movie with me, but I've left it over at a friend's!)
Before anyone writes and says that I supported cliches in my
"essay", let me just point out the difference between
using cliches in a self-referential tongue-in-cheek way as Bob
Holmes often does, and just including them because you couldn't
be bothered to invent anything decent to do the same job. The
direction wasn't varied enough either. The whole film is taken
under a "Gotham City"-esque twilight with little
variation in mood or tone. Too much emphasis was put on the music
for dramatic effect rather than the dialogue, and this also had
the side-effect of making many of the lines very difficult to
hear... Oh, I could go on, but it's depressing....
Believe me, I have READ some of
the ideas from "The Nth Doctor;" you would
NOT have been happy with some of the
ideas they came up with by burning
down the whole series and starting
over from the word boo.
There's a REASON I get up in arms
whenever someone says that the Dr. Who
film was crap. A lot of the people
who say that the Dr. Who film was crap
can't seem to agree why it was crap.
Half the outrages on the websites
claim that it's because the movie
was TOO MUCH like the show, and the other
half claim that it was not enough.
The rest, insofar as there is a "rest,"
complain that they don't like the
"direction" the show is going in, at
least insofar as there is a
"direction." It would have just made a
refreshing change for people to have
given a new series a chance, a shot at
life, to have given the idea a
chance to develop and improve, to choose a
direction.
And since that's apparently too
much to ask, I can guarantee you that there
will never again be Doctor Who on
television. Ever.
Nope! You're quite wrong!
There will be Doctor Who on television, I shall personally see to
it!
It may take me many many years
but believe me it's not dead yet.. As for it being sad that Fox
never took up the series, I'm on the side of the fanatics on this
point. Fox would have just produced trash, if the TVM was
anything to go by, and from that there would be no going back. At
least as the situation stands there's still the possibility of a
decent British production company taking up Who and doing a
decent job of it, albeit not particularly likely for the
forseeable future.
That's the really sad part.
If you've got any ideas for a
reply--I realize on rereading that I probably
haven't cleared up very much--feel
entirely free to send me a response. I'd
love to hear from you.
Thanks for your comments, Ben... Let's keep these discussions rolling! Anyone can feel free to join in! Ben Goodridge WhoUnited bgoodri1@maine.rr.com