I really did some soul-searching in preparation for my recent review of Doctor Who – Inferno.
Most of the recent DVDs I’ve watched and reviewed were later episodes of the classic series and I’ve felt like I was raking them over the coals. (I also genuinely feel like they should have been raked over the coals.) Doctor Who is one of my 5 top favorite shows of all time* and after you watch a few clinkers you have to wonder, “why?” “Why do I like Doctor Who?”
Was I looking at the older episodes through a haze of nostalgia? Was I forgiving them their mistakes while mercilessly picking on the others?
In watching Inferno again, I remember why. Doctor Who was a great show, with a limitless, brilliant format**.
The question then becomes, “where did it go wrong? What changed?”
I sat down the other night with a friend of mine who is also a long-time Who fan and we started with Pertwee and went through the episode guide all the way through McCoy and we tried to recall our recollections of each story. We thought about our overall impression, things that were right, or wrong and tried to come up with some pattern.
Generally, the Pertwee and early Baker (Tom) years held firm, going from strength to strength. It was only after Horror of Fang Rock and the new production crew at that time that the stories began to get somewhat silly. This is not to say that there hasn’t always been light-hearted material in Who, but the basic stories were generally serious, if far-fetched. There was still some great stuff, but the tide had begun to turn.
With Baker’s final season (and the arrival of John Nathan-Turner as producer) the show took a turn back towards serious, but it also got more convoluted and there were longer backstories. Then we spotted the trend, and we were able to follow it to the bitter end. It even fit with interviews we’d both seen with Nathan-Turner.
When Peter Davison took over, JNT had already set him up with 3 companions. According to interviews, JNT felt that having only one companion left room for only 1 or perhaps 2 story-lines. With 4 people onboard, you could always have 2 or more story-lines.
And there’s the problem: You don’t need 2 or more story-lines! You need one good solid story. That story should be about the Doctor and his efforts. Right up to the last few stories, Davison’s Doctor was saddled with too many companions. His stories suffered from a lack of focus and his screen time as the Doctor was greatly diminished. The other flawed concept was that the companions should be more abrasive to create more dramatic situations. This failed because rather than create drama, they annoyed the audience.
But it was these same concepts that made the stories for Baker (Colin) and McCoy even worse. Once they paired down to a 2-person TARDIS crew, they didn’t pair the story-lines down accordingly. These stories continued their multi-thread mode without the benefit of a regular character being involved in all the story-lines. This even further distanced the Doctor and his companion from the audience.
Rather than being setup like a melodrama, the stories were executed like soap operas. When you’ve got a finite time to tell a story, it takes a gifted writer indeed to weave several plots into one story successfully.***
Add to that some just genuinely awful story ideas and the Doctor’s fate was sealed.
*For the record: Top 5 shows, no particular order:
- Doctor Who
- Blakes 7 (Where the heck are those DVDs in North America?)
- Star Trek
- Wild Wild West
- The Avengers
**I am referring strictly to “classic” Who, 1963-1989
***Probably the best example of a finite length story that needs to tie up perfectly would be a farce. A good farce brings all the comedic elements that have been laid on the table together for one great laugh at the end. I can think of no better farce writer at this time than Steven Moffat. His setups and payoffs for his series Coupling were brilliant, and his new Doctor Who work has been equally well executed, just for dramatic purposes rather than comedic.
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