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
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.
- Doctor Who
- Blakes 7 (Where the heck are those DVDs in North America?)
- Star Trek
- Wild Wild West
- The Avengers
Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who
Great post! There’s a lot in here, and I entirely agree with your analysis.
Some thoughts, not to dispute your argument, but just (perhaps as Devil’s advocate) to maybe challenge one or two points:
There were always two or three companions (iirc) before Pertwee, and that didn’t stop there being some great stories. They were multi-threaded, with the companions splitting off and becoming involved in different subplots, and it worked well, and didn’t diminish the Doctor.
During Pertwee and most of Baker there was one companion. That worked great too.
In the new series, there has been one main companion, with other “minor” companions joining for a few episodes. This has been an excellent device: Captain Jack’s arrival in the Tardis after Father’s Day enabled a complete change of dynamic when the everything interesting in the Doctor-Rose relationship (“just another stupid ape!”) had been done and before it became boring.
Some of the more memorable companions have enjoyed a slightly abrasive relationship with the Doctor. Leela, Romana and Ace have disapproved of, or been disapproved of by, the Doctor. For me, this makes for an interesting relationship, in the way John Steed’s relationship with Cathy Gale was more interesting than that with Tara King because Mrs Gale not only disapproved of some of the decisions and choices he made but because she disapproved of his vocation and his lifestyle (while Tara spent her time gazing at him adoringly). Interesting Who stories often involve a moral dilemma: the classic example is in Genesis where the Doctor questions whether his means justify the end. It’s great when the companion and the Doctor can disagree.
The better companions have had a more mature relationship with the Doctor. Just as you knew both Steed and Mrs Gale would lay down their own life for one another, you understand that ultimately the differences the Doctor had with those companions didn’t matter. The problem with Teagan, say, or Peri, was the differences manifested themselves in bickering. But with, for example, the Doctor and Leela, you can see them question their own convictions; the Doctor sometimes seems almost to turn a blind eye to Leela’s blood-thirst if it suits him: a fascinatingly flawed moral position!
The constraints of the new series format has perhaps imposed a necessary discipline on the writing and the editing. We’ve certainly had some great one-offs (The Unquiet Dead and Tooth and Claw for example) although I will admit I have felt many stories were rushed, and would like to see more multi-parters. All the same, I feel the old format encouraged padding and laziness, and whilst all Who fans love cliffhangers, for every “You will perish under maximum deletion” there is too often an Age of Steel let-down to follow.
The quality of the writing during the ’60s and ’70s was, generally, higher than during the ’80s.
The problem with some of the Davison and Baker serials was a sense that you needed to tick all these boxes for a serial to be exciting. You had to cram it all in, because the quality of the writing was such that it could not stand by that alone.
Although I’ve commented after your reviews of Resurrection, Revalation and Fenric that the stories have too much going on, I don’t mean I don’t like complex stories.L
Stories need to be cohesive; to take Fenric as an example, some of the subplots worked: because we had codebreaking, the Enigma machine, deciphering the runes and Ace deconstructing her fears were all part of the same story, in the way that a time-travelling manipulative wolf wasn’t, quite.
For me, The Girl in the Fireplace is the perfect example of a well structured, multi-threaded multi-companion story told within the constraints of a 45 minute episode. But then, as you say, Steven Moffat is a brillliant writer, in the way that Eric Saward, say, is not.
I’ll leave my reasons why The Avengers deserves to be at the top of that list of greatest ever TV series for another time.
Great post! There’s a lot in here, and I entirely agree with your analysis.
Some thoughts, not to dispute your argument, but just (perhaps as Devil’s advocate) to maybe challenge one or two points:
There were always two or three companions (iirc) before Pertwee, and that didn’t stop there being some great stories. They were multi-threaded, with the companions splitting off and becoming involved in different subplots, and it worked well, and didn’t diminish the Doctor.
During Pertwee and most of Baker there was one companion. That worked great too.
In the new series, there has been one main companion, with other “minor” companions joining for a few episodes. This has been an excellent device: Captain Jack’s arrival in the Tardis after Father’s Day enabled a complete change of dynamic when the everything interesting in the Doctor-Rose relationship (“just another stupid ape!”) had been done and before it became boring.
Some of the more memorable companions have enjoyed a slightly abrasive relationship with the Doctor. Leela, Romana and Ace have disapproved of, or been disapproved of by, the Doctor. For me, this makes for an interesting relationship, in the way John Steed’s relationship with Cathy Gale was more interesting than that with Tara King because Mrs Gale not only disapproved of some of the decisions and choices he made but because she disapproved of his vocation and his lifestyle (while Tara spent her time gazing at him adoringly). Interesting Who stories often involve a moral dilemma: the classic example is in Genesis where the Doctor questions whether his means justify the end. It’s great when the companion and the Doctor can disagree.
The better companions have had a more mature relationship with the Doctor. Just as you knew both Steed and Mrs Gale would lay down their own life for one another, you understand that ultimately the differences the Doctor had with those companions didn’t matter. The problem with Teagan, say, or Peri, was the differences manifested themselves in bickering. But with, for example, the Doctor and Leela, you can see them question their own convictions; the Doctor sometimes seems almost to turn a blind eye to Leela’s blood-thirst if it suits him: a fascinatingly flawed moral position!
The constraints of the new series format has perhaps imposed a necessary discipline on the writing and the editing. We’ve certainly had some great one-offs (The Unquiet Dead and Tooth and Claw for example) although I will admit I have felt many stories were rushed, and would like to see more multi-parters. All the same, I feel the old format encouraged padding and laziness, and whilst all Who fans love cliffhangers, for every “You will perish under maximum deletion” there is too often an Age of Steel let-down to follow.
The quality of the writing during the ’60s and ’70s was, generally, higher than during the ’80s.
The problem with some of the Davison and Baker serials was a sense that you needed to tick all these boxes for a serial to be exciting. You had to cram it all in, because the quality of the writing was such that it could not stand by that alone.
Although I’ve commented after your reviews of Resurrection, Revalation and Fenric that the stories have too much going on, I don’t mean I don’t like complex stories.L
Stories need to be cohesive; to take Fenric as an example, some of the subplots worked: because we had codebreaking, the Enigma machine, deciphering the runes and Ace deconstructing her fears were all part of the same story, in the way that a time-travelling manipulative wolf wasn’t, quite.
For me, The Girl in the Fireplace is the perfect example of a well structured, multi-threaded multi-companion story told within the constraints of a 45 minute episode. But then, as you say, Steven Moffat is a brillliant writer, in the way that Eric Saward, say, is not.
I’ll leave my reasons why The Avengers deserves to be at the top of that list of greatest ever TV series for another time.
The Devil’s advocate has good points there. 🙂
I’ve got some further thoughts on the subject (deep or otherwise), but I’ll post them as main entries after I’ve had a chance to edit them for a while.