If I Were Davros…

It’s no secret that under Russell T. Davies I’ve found “Doctor Who” to be severely lacking! Whereas “Fury from the Deep”, a six-part story from the late Sixties, carries an inspiring ecological subtext about the dangers of not replenishing the Earth’s natural resources upon bleeding them dry, modern “Doctor Who” appears to be about nothing in particular except sitting on your arse all day watching the telly on a council estate! No wonder I feel cheated!! If I wanted to watch the latter, I could tune into crap like “EastEnders” or open the back door. I want to watch the former served up as a metaphor featuring weed creatures rising up out of the sea to take their revenge with the aid of poison gas exhaling humans. I want terror not soap. So, if I was about to inherit the mantle of show runner instead of Steven Moffat, how would I go about correcting the numerous mistakes made over the last four series? How would I make “Doctor Who”? What would I do if I had the power, if I were Davros…

The first change I would make to “Doctor Who” is in doing away with the single episode story. They do not give enough time for character or plot development and have all but removed the all-important cliff-hanger from the programme. At present, each season gives the viewer ten stories over thirteen episodes. Keeping the thirteen forty-five minute episode format, I would reduce the number of stories to six, five two-parters would be followed by a concluding three-part season finale. This would also be more cost effective in that you are reducing the number of opening nights by four. Jon Pertwee’s producer Barry Letts was very aware of how best to utilise the budget over a full season.

My next major change would be to do away with the season arc. Under Russell, we’ve had Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Saxon and, most recently, the return of Rose. Without exception, all failures. Each of my six stories would be self-contained, with no linking devices. Trying to keep your audience hooked Russell’s way is doomed to failure if the final episode fails to deliver. Give your public half-a-dozen strongly written, well executed, stories, excitingly concluded, so they’ll want to return for more instead of trying to twist their arm into staying with the programme only to receive a smack in the face like the Doctor at the hands of the parody Master in “Last of the Time Lords”!

Another important change would be to do away with companion’s families. I’m sick to death of the Doctor touching base every other week, at his latest travelling partner’s domicile. It’s alright to start off with an assistant’s familial attachments, such as when Peri was introduced in “Planet of Fire”, but to keep revisiting home turf is way too safe for a series originally steeped in fear and terror. What a shame they didn’t lop off the final fifteen minutes of the concluding episode, this year, and keep it to forty-five minutes, rather than allowing the writer’s excessive over-indulgence. Reign it in, edit, do away with superfluous material. Get rid of the baggage!

One Doctor, one companion. Throughout. No regenerations unless the lead is moving on. If you promise a death, deliver! Russell promised in Season’s Two and Four and went back on his word. Rose didn’t die in battle, unfortunately, and Donna had her memory all-too-conveniently wiped! Absolutely no reset buttons, in any way, shape or form!! I would choose a different writer for each story and, if possible, none would have written for the series before. I wouldn’t insist on writing the finale myself but would like to have a stab at one of the adventures! I’ve no objection to returning monsters, the Ice Warriors - as depicted in their black and white episodes - would be welcome, and wouldn’t insist on naming new ones myself, as Russell did the Ood. I’m pretty certain Verity Lambert didn’t insist Terry Nation call his creations the Daleks!! I think the writer came up with the name all on his lonesome.

So, there you have it. My six-story plan for the next season of “Doctor Who”! I fear it may be too late to give me the job!!

Telly Visions: Deborah Watling

I’ve decided to start up a brand new strand, on this blog, profiling some of my favourite actresses who have appeared on both the small and large screens over the decades. I’ll attempt to give it a personal slant in that each post will concentrate on the productions in which I’ve most enjoyed their performances. I make no apologies for the fact that this, hopefully, regular series of pieces is picture-inspired. I’m the one who has to look at this blog most often, therefore I will try and accompany each small article with a rarely seen image of each vision of loveliness! I suppose I could’ve called the series “Favourite Actresses” but thought it a dull and uninspired title. After a little more thought, I came up with “Telly Visions” instead! So, turn on, tune in and open up your eyes as first off the starting block is the gorgeous Deborah Watling!! But, then, they’re all beautiful…

Deborah is the daughter of actor Jack Watling. She first came to my attention, naturally enough, in “Doctor Who” during the late-Sixties. I’m beginning with her because she played the female companion throughout what is my favourite year of the science fiction series. Deborah joined the show, playing Victoria Waterfield, at the end of the Fourth Season, in the second episode of “The Evil of the Daleks”. Her father in the story is exterminated by the Daleks and so the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, takes her under his wing, essentially adopting her by inviting her to join him and Jamie aboard the TARDIS. There is a rather touching scene in “The Tomb of the Cybermen”, the opening story of the following season, in which the Doctor tries to comfort and reassure her after her tragic loss. It isn’t dwelt on interminably and is the perfect example of how to deal with such issues in an essentially escapist series such as this. Her real dad joined the cast as Professor Travers, during her run, for the two Yeti stories and, in her final tale, it is her amplified scream that defeats the seaweed creature in my all-time favourite “Doctor Who” story, “Fury from the Deep”. It wasn’t only Jamie who was sorry to see her leave the programme at the end of this adventure!

Debbie had already appeared in a long running series at the tender age of eleven. She played Sally Brady in nine episodes of “H. G. Wells’ Invisible Man”, broadcast during 1959. Six years later, she appeared on the cover of the Radio Times to promote her starring role in Dennis Potter’s “Wednesday Play”, entitled “Alice”, which also featured future “Wexford” actor George Baker. Since moving on from “Doctor Who”, after a magnificent forty episodes over exactly eleven months, I suppose it’s fair to say television appearances have been thin on the ground. We saw a lot more of her as Sandra, alongside David Essex, in rock ‘n’ roll flick “That’ll Be the Day”. Whilst Ringo (Starr) is off doing his business elsewhere, our man from Essex attempts to get inside Miss Watling’s undergarments, lucky geezer, in one of the holiday camp chalets where he’s clearly gainfully employed! Back on the small screen, Deborah played Lorna in “Hello Young Lovers”, an episode of “Rising Damp”, in which her ample bosom is certainly thrust to the fore!! And, coming full circle, she appeared in the recurring role of “Naughty” Norma Baker, opposite Anthony Andrews, in seven episodes of “Danger UXB”, a series co-created by non other than Verity Lambert, the original Producer of Watling’s best-remembered gig, “Doctor Who”!

The Triumph of The Daleks

It’s impossible not to see the irony that while the present Executive Producer of “Doctor Who”, Russell T Davies, criticises the 6.20pm time slot allotted the new series’ first episode, on BBC One on April 5, the original Terry Nation serial introducing “The Daleks”, starring William Hartnell in the second-ever “Doctor Who” story, will begin a very rare repeat run on BBC Four later the same evening, as part of the “Verity Lambert Tribute Night”, at the more sensible time of 8.30pm! I can understand how RTD feels about the earlier transmission of “Partners in Crime” and agree with him that the show may possibly lose many viewers as a result. Shop assistants, for example, of which Rose was one, don’t finish work until 5.30pm and it seems very unlikely they’ll be able to immediately head for home. Had “Doctor Who” retained the 7pm position in the schedules, of recent years, there can be no doubt there would definitely be more bums in front of the telly. Having said that, the later showing of the 1963/4 serial does actually represent a minor victory for the classic series. All seven episodes were originally broadcast on BBC One at the even earlier start time of 5.15pm and the show somehow managed to survive rather well in spite of it! In fact, it was during the transmission of the first four episodes of “The Daleks” that “Doctor Who” really entered the public consciousness. The last three are slightly disappointing, insomuch as they are padded out to fit the running time, but only in comparison to the brilliance of the first half. Had Rusty’s opening gambit been on later, as he hoped, with the possibility of a clash between new and old “Doctor Who”, I know which story I would choose! Call me cynical but maybe Russell knows the new series is rubbish and is already trying to shift the blame before the whole Catherine Tate casting travesty comes crashing down on his head!! “Daleks conquer and destroy”, indeed!!!

The Early Life of Verity Lambert

Such is the way of life that having just celebrated the origins of “Doctor Who” in my previous post, I am saddened to report the death of the show’s original Producer, Verity Lambert, on Thursday, 22nd November, 2007. She died on the eve of her most famous creation’s forty-fourth anniversary and just five days before she would’ve turned seventy-two. Verity’s numerous achievements beyond our much-cherished, then-fledgling, Saturday teatime series are well-documented elsewhere so, as you might expect of this author, I am going to focus on her enormous contribution to the success of my favourite programme. Back in 1963, having moved to the BBC from ITV, at the request of Sydney Newman, she was given charge of producing a new, semi-educational, family-orientated science fiction serial at the tender age of twenty-seven. Not only did she become the youngest person to hold such an important position at the Corporation but she was also the only woman which, at that time, was unheard of! Sydney’s faith in her was well-founded though, as borne out in her realisation of his concept. There was minor disagreement over the introduction of those bug-eyed monsters the Daleks but, on realising their popularity, Canadian Newman acquiesced that Verity obviously knew the series better than he did!

Verity Lambert stayed with “Doctor Who” for two years producing a total of seventy-eight episodes (each approximately twenty-five minutes in length) transmitted between Saturday, 23rd November, 1963 and Saturday, 9th October, 1965. “An Unearthly Child”, the opening episode, introduced us to the Doctor, as played by William Hartnell, and his three companions: science teacher Ian Chesterton (William Russell), history teacher Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford). Central to the story is the teachers’ discovery, in a scrap yard of all places, of the Doctor’s TARDIS; a ship which can travel through space and time disguised from the outside as a Police Box! Ironically, Verity’s final broadcast episode, “Mission to the Unknown”, featured none of the regular cast but was used by way of an introduction to the massive twelve-part “Daleks’ Master Plan” epic which would follow the four-part historical “The Myth Makers”. Between her first and last episodes she oversaw three full Dalek serials, the first two of which, “The Daleks” and “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, are undoubted classics while the latter, “The Chase”, exploded into an all-out battle between the Daleks and the Mechonoids. As her time on the series drew to a close, Verity introduced us to the Zarbi on “The Web Planet” and the Meddling Monk (Peter Butterworth), the original renegade with a TARDIS of his own, in “The Time Meddler”. Perhaps because this was a time when everything seemed fresh and new, the sheer volume of creativity that the original Producer of “Doctor Who” brought to the programme has never been surpassed and is never likely to be.