Baptism Of Fire

The Doctor Who production team have confirmed that Jenna-Louise Coleman will first be seen as the Doctor’s new companion in the series on Christmas Day. The actress was briefly questioned about her new role when she appeared on This Morning recently, alongside Perdita Weeks, to promote ITV1’s Titanic. Her lips were sealed, however, as she wasn’t giving anything away! It’s still not known what will be the name of her character or if Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond will leave during the same episode or exit during the previous story. I still predict Amy will depart on Christmas Day. There are many examples to back either possibility, of course, littered throughout the programme’s history. Katy Manning’s Jo Grant left at the end of The Green Death to be replaced by Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith in the following story, The Time Warrior, whereas Bonnie Langford’s Mel left in Dragonfire, the same story in which Sophie Aldred’s Ace arrived. We’ll just have to wait and see.

On the scripting front, if you enjoyed the Doctor Who episodes School Reunion, The Vampires Of Venice and The God Complex, in the revival of the series, then you’ll be pleased to learn that, despite his writing commitments on horror comedy Being Human, Toby Whithouse will be returning to everyone’s favourite science fiction series for its Seventh Season. It’s believed he will be penning one of the early episodes so will be writing one of Amy’s final tales. It has also been decided there will be no two-parters this time around which, I think, is a shame. It’s the only real opportunity for a story to develop and allow an audience to get to know some of the peripheral characters, as well as build up to an increasingly rare but all-important cliff-hanger… even if they are not always resolved that convincingly, it’s still fun to include them. So, it only remains to wish you all a very Happy Easter and send Jenna-Louise Coleman best wishes as she is thrown in at the deep end!

Time Lord Pensioned Off

Happy 65th, Sylvester! Today (August 20th, 2008), Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy turns sixty-five and becomes a pensioner!! He played the Time Lord for forty-two episodes, over three seasons, between 1987 and 1989. Each of his series consisted of four three-or-four part stories divided between fourteen episodes making a total of twelve “Doctor Who” adventures in total. Sylvester reprised the role, quite substantially in 1996, in the first third of the American TV movie before handing over the mantle to Eighth Doctor Paul McGann. Bonnie Langford played companion Mel during Sylvester’s first year while Sophie Aldred joined during “Dragonfire” and stayed for the duration under the moniker “Ace”! His stories are a mixed bag but, then, that’s the case for every era of the programme. Percentage wise, the actor does pretty well in the classic stakes! I would claim that, of McCoy’s dozen tales, a third of them should be regarded as “Doctor Who” classics. Best of all is “The Curse of Fenric”, a story steeped in Norse mythology set during the Second World War. “Ghost Light” some fans find overly complex but is a lovely little thesis, disguised as costume drama, supporting the ideology of Richard Dawkins who, recently, made a brief cameo in the new version of the series. “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” is set in a circus, partly filmed in the BBC car park and all the better for it, again inspired by Norse myth, while “Remembrance of the Daleks” opened Sylvester’s Second Season and, following a couple of shaky years, bred new life into the show.

Of the other eight titles, most are worthwhile. From Sylvester’s debut season, I’m quite partial to “Paradise Towers” and “Delta and the Bannermen”. The former is written by Stephen Wyatt who the following year went on to write “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” and whom I consider the most imaginative of the writers of this period of the programme. “Paradise Towers” isn’t to everyone’s taste but at least the domestic element, involving older “Rezzies” (residents) feeding off the youthful female “Kangs” (colour-coded gangs), integrates better into the narrative than any of today’s offerings! “Delta and the Bannermen” is just great fun and anyone who isn’t carried along with this holiday-camp nonsense probably has no joie de vivre! “Silver Nemesis” was the 25th Anniversary story, essentially a reworking of “Remembrance of the Daleks” but with Cybermen. It did include some gritty battle sequences to contrast the humour of the good Doctor showing his usual politeness (in raising his hat) towards the present monarch whilst walking her corgis! My favourite director of the period was Alan Wareing. He was as tough as Graeme Harper, from earlier in the decade, but shied away from showing as much violence on screen. Alan helmed “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy”, which went out as the climax of Sylvester’s Second Season, as well as “Ghost Light” and the Seventh Doctor’s ironically titled swansong “Survival” which reintroduced a much-reinvigorated Master and concluded the era and classic “Doctor Who” on a high.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

I’m surprised that so many “Doctor Who” fans are actually going to stick with Season Four of the new version. Some of the same people who abandoned the series when Bonnie Langford joined, mid-80s, are actually prepared to persevere with the latest, vastly inferior, product that slick marketing insists is marvellous!! Well, it isn’t, in any way, excellent. I’ve stayed loyal to the programme for well over forty years and can highly recommend to those fans, who’ve never actually watched the last couple of seasons of its original run, that they are missing out on at least four of the finest stories in the show’s history.

In 2008, under Russell T. Davies, “Doctor Who” is now only “Doctor Who” in title. It bears absolutely no resemblance to the show I loved between 1963 and 1989, and remembered fondly thereafter. Rusty arrived, 2005, and messed with the format, story structures, characters and changed the entire feel of the programme. “Survival”, episode three, is recognisably the same series as “An Unearthly Child” 26 years earlier. I still regard those three decades as having delivered “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” and, nearly two decades after it finished, I’m still waiting for the return of “Doctor Who”! Yes, I know, I’m going to have a long wait!!

"Doctor Who" - Old and New

In many of the promotional interviews for the new series of "Doctor Who", the potential audience has been told that this version is more domestic than the classic series and will deal with the lead characters’ emotional lives more than it did in the past. Yet, I can remember in "Survival", the very last serial, broadcast sixteen years ago, seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy going into a little corner shop, the proprietors of which were Hale and Pace no less, to buy cat food! Life doesn’t get more domesticated than that.

To say the original series was weak in dealing with emotional issues, in order to promote the new series as being strong in this area, simply isn’t fair. Sometimes the old show was good at it, sometimes it wasn’t, and the new series will probably be the same. No one can forget Sophie Aldred’s Ace coming to terms with the poor relationship she’d had with her mother, when, during "The Curse of Fenric", she admits the truth to herself and cries out, "I love you, Mum", almost hoping she might hear.

The truth is that companions haven’t always run away screaming and to say so does a disservice, especially, to the writers, as well as the actresses portraying the Doctor’s assistants. Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith must have been a pretty gutsy lady to climb the scaffolding of the rocket ship to try and escape her captors in "Genesis of the Daleks". The fear of being recaptured, the possibility of falling to her death would have been uppermost in her mind and enough to make anyone nervous at the very least.

Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler, in the opening story "Rose", is understandably just as scared as any of her predecessors would have been when she is cornered in the shop’s basement by the awakening Autons. But, by the end of the episode, she plucks up enough courage, literally, to swing into action to help the Doctor out of the tight spot he’s gotten himself into. So, my contention is that the arc of character development is the same as it always was, though maybe with less depth this time round, possibly because of the shorter running time?