The latest BBC/MCA film certainly stimulated a fair amount of discussion at the last meeting. There was a general consensus that the film was naff: a Disneyfied Doctor, repackaged for the American Market. Having summarily dealt with that, our conversation turned to the different Doctors in the TV series, to the characters of the Doctor and the Master, and to key episodes. So here goes for a few Phoenicians' points of view.
August 1996
I don't like Dr. Who, although in the past I've watched it, and if it's revived I'll probably watch it again. But this is more out of a sense of duty than anything else. I keep watching SF on TV -even the bad stuff- in the hope that TV executives will realise that there is an audience out there for SF. So what's wrong with Dr. Who?
The character of Who himself is too much of a magician for my taste. He seems to delight in keeping important facts to himself - like his ability to regenerate. He always has some piece of valuable knowledge that he can only reveal at the last moment. I know this is a trick to maintain narrative suspense, but it's a cheap one. It's like the kind of detective novels where the hero keeps all the essential facts to himself, thereby cheating the reader.
The problem with this is that it turns the Doctor into a modern-day Gandalf. Magicians keep their power and prestige by keeping any knowledge they have to themselves. Secretive and distrusting, they are more like the clergy than real scholars.
By way of a contrast, the characters in Star Trek are always willing to share information, and they discover new secrets right along with the viewer.
I find the whole idea of a demi-god to be undemocratic and firmly rooted in the past - some sort of a hang-over from a time when those in the know liked to keep everyone else in the dark.
Where does the character stand on the question of killing? In Genesis of the Daleks he was quite willing to destroy the entire species. He didn't in the end, and his reasons for stopping were highly dubious. At times he seems entirely willing to kill, and yet will chastise others for doing the same. Perhaps this is an attempt to show that the Doctor is a very complex, even "human" character. However, it doesn't quite come off. To me it seems a rather high-handed attitude to take. For example, in The Green Death he was perfectly willing to kill the intelligent computer that ran the mining company. If you cold-bloodedly destroy an intelligent being, it's murder.
The Doctor, like the rest of his race, isn't supposed to meddle in human affairs. But he does. When he was caught at it, his punishment was to be exiled to Earth where he could meddle in our affairs some more. Good plan: that'll teach him.
The Doctor is always accompanied by a number of sidekicks. One of them is usually a human female. Her rôle seems to be to run about in tight or skimpy clothing and get menaced by the aliens. More often than not the sidekicks play the dumb child to whom the Doctor has to explain the plot, some piece of magic or any knowledge he had but wouldn't share. Of course, explaining the plot seems to be a preoccupation of TV SF, as in those 1940's space operas where the action would stop so the heroes could explain points of science to each other.
I don't like the sidekicks. They are always wandering off on strange planets, despite dire warnings. Are they stupid?
But the very worst things about Doctor Who are his enemies. They're all evil. None of them seems to have any motive other than the perpetration of evil. The Daleks, the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors - what do they ever want out of life except to kill?
The Kaleds must have been the stupidest race in the galaxy. I bet other races visited Skaro just for the laughs. Here they are in Genesis of the Daleks fighting a war against the Thal. On one side we have the Kaleds with their high technology, domed city and the engineering know-how to create the Daleks, yet they've been fought to a standstill by the Thals who seem to be using bolt-action rifles. Come on; if the Kaleds are so incredibly evil, why didn't they just nuke the Thals out of existence?
While I'm on the subject of the Daleks, there wasn't much subtlety in pointing out that the Kaleds were just like the Nazis. What's the hidden message: technology turns us into Nazis? But where are the real Nazis? The Thals were all blond-haired and blue-eyed...
Why are the Daleks so evil? It seems to be because they have no emotions. For the Doctor this means no pity, no empathy. But it would also mean no anger, no bitterness. In Star Trek, Data has no emotions; but far from being a monster he is the most human of the characters. Just being evil isn't enough. The Romulans and the Cardassians at least have their motives, and as intelligent beings they are able sometimes to work with their enemies for their mutual benefit. Even the Borg have a motive, and in their own eyes they are the good guys. The Daleks remind me of the 1950's American view of Communist Russia: there are these mindless hordes who just want to destroy us because we're different.
The Cybermen are again without emotion, and that makes them bad. It also seems to make them stupid. Their only vulnerability is to gold; but they don't seem to be doing anything about it. Even stupid humans were able to develop the Kevlar Jacket. But no, the Cybermen are just too stupid.
When something does come along that isn't totally evil - well, they get it in the neck as well. The Daemons made the mistake of giving humans technology - whereas the Doctor would prefer to keep it to himself. For this they have become devils and are suitably punished.
From watching Doctor Who we must assume that there is some vast conspiracy of the kind that would only appear in Agent Mulder's worst nightmare. The Earth has been invaded, time and time again, by the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Autons and a whole bunch of other aliens. Despite this, no-one seems to have woken up to the fact that the human race isn't alone. The only thing that seems to have happened is the establishment of UNIT. This seems to be a strangely muted response to something so huge as the existence of hostile aliens. Think of the havoc caused by the Martians in War of the Worlds. In contrasts, most Doctor Who aliens seem content just to visit London and see the sights. Perhaps the tourist board should consider setting up a branch on Skaro.
I know it's easy to pick fault with things; but I have some strong disagreements with the central ideas behind Doctor Who. I find the character extremely irritating, the enemies poorly thought-out and most of the sidekicks to have no function other than to make the Doctor look good.
You'll notice that throughout this I've steered clear of attacking Doctor Who for its cheap BBC effects. That isn't the point: a good story and interesting characters should be able to make up for any lack of cash on the BBC's part.
October 1996
Okay. Dr Who is clichéd, tired and half-baked. It has an outmoded and sexist viewpoint, and it has sets which any two-year-old can see as the remains of the last Blue Peter show.
Hmm... so what's good about it? Well today, with three or four good sci-fi shows arriving each season, absolutely nothing. But at the time Doctor Who was shown, it was synonymous with the BBC and good family entertainment. With Star Trek New Generation you have to have a scientific degree in temporal mechanics to understand the gobbledeygook spouted. Picture the scene: Picard turns to Data with a sudden thought:
-Data, can you create a static warp bubble to shield us from the anomalous anti-time effects? -Sorry, sir, I don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Okay: accepting the definition of a magician as someone who keeps knowledge to himself - then so are Q, and Kosh, and Mr. X, smoking man etc. When Q chucked the Enterprise into the deep end with the Borg, 18 crew members died before he revealed the plot, namely that Picard had to be humbled. Sure, space isn't for little boys, but the lost crewmembers were faceless names.
The Doctor lost companions: Sarah-Jane went off to Croydon, Adric died trying to save Earth from the Cybermen, Romana went into the alternative dimensions like some Diana-style care worker.
As for keeping the facts to oneself - Columbo did exactly the opposite: we knew the murderer, usually the motive and the murder weapon: and were it not for Peter Falk's faultless characterisation, the series would have gone pretty downhill.
Demi-gods are out of fashion, eh? Tell that to Q.
Now on to ethics. In Genesis of the Daleks the Doctor doesn't destroy them because he knows a greater good will prevail - Earth and Draconia, for instance, will join to see off the Dalek threat. Nothing dubious in that. So the Doctor killed Boss in The Green Death. Dave Bowman killed HAL in 2001, and all he got were cheers from the audience. Is an intelligent machine alive? Jason is right - killing a species in cold blood is murder. The Doctor killed the Vervoids as they went to destroy Earth, and was charged with genocide by the Time Lords, although he was prosecuting himself...
Companions are not always stupid. Ian and Barbara were both qualified teachers (although Phil might say "teachers" is stretching it a bit); Zoe was a mathematical genius, as was Adric. Liz Shaw was a brilliant scientist; K-9 was, um, well, K-9; Romana was another Time Lord; and Ace was mad. But yes, they were all stupid.
Enemies having no motives? The Daleks want to rule the universe, to bring their system of justice (as eventually seen in the new Doctor Who. Nice). The Cybermen are the original Borg: their goal too is to assimilate - and if not, to destroy. Okay, the Ice Warriors were similar to Klingons - if you watch the Jon Pertwee episodes - but I think they were just plain thick. The Ogrons were too stupid to do anything but fight. The Kaleds weren't incredibly evil - they were on the same level as the Thals, and looking at Dalek history the Thals used their nuke first. (In the first Dalek story, the Daleks did nuke the Thals.)
The Daleks do have emotions - they are driven by a hatred of the unlike ("monsters... from the it!" makes more sense). Terry Nation always envisaged the Daleks (and therefore the Kaleds) as Nazi-stereotypes to terrify the kiddies - at least, that's his story.
November 1996
It seems to me that Jason wandered off the point a bit and Paul, upset or otherwise, followed him down a rocky path to nowhere. It's very easy, with our current sophistry and intelligence, to criticise Dr. Who on many grounds, but it seems to me that those criticism centre around, largely, criticising the show for things that either (a) it just couldn't do, and (b) never pretended to do.
The point here is this: the show was meant for kids, and it was as kids that most of us first encountered it. The other major criticisms of the show are equally unfair since they all point to inherent limitations. The show looked crap - but then so was the budget. The suspense was drawn out - but the show was episodic (and following in the footsteps of precursors like Quatermass, and before that certain radio serials.) The script was facile - but then it was for kids: and so on.
What is the harder task is trying to explain why we ever watched it, and in some cases still do. For me it comes down to two things, and the best Doctor to illustrate them is my favourite, Jon Pertwee.
Firstly I think the appeal lies in the moral simplicity (which Jason quite rightly criticises as an adult) which is appealing to kids. Good Guys are good guys, and Bad Guys are bad. For the most part you stop them by any and all means available, including killing if necessary (something which was missing from most comics of the time, with the stupid superhero code against killing). The Doctor never ruled out killing as an option, merely stated his preference not to resort to that if possible. At least, that's the way I remember it. How much easier to have Robocop-style villains or, if it comes to it, Space Invaders, where the villains are so clearly evil (to use Jason's word) that there's no moral ambiguity - shoot to kill, that's what I say. Hartnell dithered, Troughton was often confused, Baker et al came in at the time where moral ambiguities were being introduced; but Pertwee was always certain, always morally sure.
Far from hiding his knowledge, he was always ready to update UNIT, at least on a Who's Who (pun intended) in the Galaxy basis. UNIT and the Brigadier were, for me, the other reason why this Doctor was my favourite. That and the "different monster every week" style, in the footsteps of The Outer Limits. And the Doctor's solutions were always based on his intelligence and scientific knowledge, at least on the face of it - which is to say that I'd accept adult criticism of "science like magic", even though I'd just quote Clarke's Law and dismiss them.
The second reason the show had a personal appeal is based around the Doctor's eccentricity. Eccentricity on Earth, that is. Because what became most apparent to me during Pertwee's run - poorly examined before, though it became better with successive incarnations - was his rebelliousness. And kids love rebels (at least this kid did/does). Pertwee's Doctor took on the whole Time Lords, who were the real "let's-take-the-moral-high-ground" crowd, and basically told them to **** off! Now that's appealing. The hero-as-loner is a very powerful archetype, not least for the reason stated above, i.e. lack of moral ambiguity. Your code is your code, and so long as you stick to it you're honourable. But to defeat your enemies time and again (ooh look, another pun), thereby proving that your arrogant attitude of being right all the time is no fluke, and to stay ahead of the establishment by your own ingenuity is something worth admiring.
Now guess who was an arrogant, highly intelligent loner as a kid...
February 1997
A small follow-up, just to wind up people even more. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you hate people jumping on bandwagons) I agree with Tony's view of Dr Who. The joy of Dr Who - quite rightly so - is in the imagination. Who cares if the Daleks wobbled about on cobbled streets or if that alien dinosaur looked like a papier mache Gerry Anderson model? As kids they were scary, not rubbish. Watching the old shows takes me back to my childhood, whilst the (admittedly small) part of me that is adult enjoys the acting of the various Doctors. And then there was Leela... Rather than go over old ground, I'd like to figure out what was wrong with the abortive attempt to bring the good Doctor back. The first mistake, people think, was the BBC dropping Doctor Who. This was very good marketing on their behalf. Or, with the ratings starting to flag, they pulled it out. The drama Dept was not keen on has been ideas, so Who was left for an independent company. As fans up and down the country became more agitated, a bloke called Phillip Segal started the ball rolling. To take a case in point - the Children In Need extravaganza - Dimensions in Time. Okay, it was rubbish - but it contained the elements of the series that were lacking in the film. The sense of fun... The jokes in the movie were engineered, and they did seem gimmicky American humour: the cop going into the TARDIS, the attendant passing out in the mortuary. It was probably me, but the Doctors always had a slight self-indulgent smile on their faces when with the enemy. Paul McGann played him pretty much straight - then again he is the New Doctor, plus they do change character. The Master, always the gentleman of evil, now is a caricature of Dick Dastardly, hissing at people. The Master was always cool and calculating - this one was positively ticked off with the Doctor. Then again, having your body turned into Ghostbuster Goo probably would leave you unhinged. In the movie it was the Doctor and the Master (okay - the Daleks, but I didn't see them). The movie was more a thriller - a made for TV American movie - than a straightforward Doctor Who episode. Maybe itÌs Doctor Who in the 90's, the next step for Who to compete with the X files, etc. But if this is a grown-up Doctor Who then I'm all for watching childish Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee.
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