We hold these truths to be not exactly self-evident

Well, that came out of the blue.

I think everyone was pegging their hopes on the 14th. It made sense for any number of reasons, not least because you’ve got that sweet spot between the FA Cup Final and Eurovision. Where was the song and dance, the flurry of trumpets, the countdown, the slow reveal? Instead we got a random Tweet that had everyone back and forth across the internet like chickens crossing a road for the five minutes we all spent trying to work out if the official Doctor Who account had been compromised. When it emerged that it hadn’t, the BBC website crashed, and the reactions began in earnest.

It wasn’t a bad decision. There is a thing that happens when you build up the anticipation to a fever pitch: the balloon instantly deflates, the disappointment palpable – “What, them?” It happened with Whittaker; it even happened with Capaldi, although no one remembers. At least this was a bit of a surprise. Dropping us on it the way they did there was no chance to feel let down.

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours, on and off, trying to get my thoughts in order. And here they are, in a sort of order. You will not agree with all of them. That’s fine. It’s why we have comments.

1. I’d never heard of Ncuti Gatwa. I don’t watch Sex Education, although I gather it’s very well thought of. That’s fine, although it’s going to take a while to get used to writing out his name. “We say the same about you.”

2. All right, yes, he is a bit young. So was Matt Smith. I was completely wrong about him. I was also wrong about Catherine Tate. I’ve learned, over the years, that I can’t understand the inner workings of the BBC writing team any better than you all can. Sometimes things happen behind closed doors in the heady process that is auditioning and we don’t get to know what they are.

3. At least they had auditions. I think Chibnall said he did for Whittaker’s casting but I also think he’d probably made up his mind before they did the read-throughs. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with casting a mate because he impressed you at a wedding, provided you know what you’re doing, but the fandom is under this irritating misconception that Doctor Who production needs to be some sort of democracy and that they should get a say about how it’s done, so maybe this will shut them up.

4. I like Jodie Whittaker. I always have. I wrote ‘liked’ in the first sentence and then went back and changed it. Anybody else been doing that? It’s very easy to write her off the moment the casting is announced. At least let her finish her arc in peace. We’ve still got Ace and Tegan, remember?

5. I’ve spent years defending Chris Chibnall, and I’m tired of it. The unfortunate truth is that his dialogue stinks. I don’t have an issue with even the more controversial aspects of those story arcs, but he can’t write a believable conversation, and as far as the other week is concerned I can’t defend a turkey. We were in Liverpool when ‘Legend of the Sea Devils’ was broadcast; I managed to watch it but didn’t have a chance to review it until the following week, by which point I realised I had absolutely nothing interesting to say about it, because there was absolutely nothing interesting about the story. Doctor Who shouldn’t be dull, and I shouldn’t be bored. But here we are.

6. When you think about it, casting a male Person of Colour was the most likely and sequentially logical direction for the BBC to take, and frankly none of you should have been surprised. I wasn’t.

7. Be careful, too, of the “Oh but I wanted Idris Elba” trope. Because most of the time that’s shorthand for “He’s the only really famous black actor I can name”. Idris Elba, versatile as he is, would have been a diabolical choice. (He’s quite good in Sonic The Hedgehog, though.)

8. It doesn’t matter that Gatwa is an unknown, or famous for comedy, or younger than you. From what I can gather, the kids love him. And like it or not, they’re the future of the show. Not you. Not me.

9. Here’s the thing. A healthy degree of skepticism is absolutely fine. Honestly. If you’re examining Gatwa and saying “Hmm, wouldn’t have been my choice”, go ahead. I did the same with Smith. I was wrong – he had me within two minutes of stepping out of the TARDIS – but it’s quite natural to shrink in bafflement when you hear about a casting choice. Doesn’t mean it’s racist, except when it is, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

10. There is a famous meme that does the rounds. I include it here for posterity:

Processed all that? Good, now forget about it entirely. It’s bollocks. Well-intended, but still utter bollocks. Some people never get past that first stage (that’s the one on the top left, for those of you who were wondering). We need to allow for that. I have never been a huge fan of Eccleston, but that’s probably my southern middle class privilege talking, and I own that.

11. Speaking of ownership: the outright criticism of Gatwa’s casting on the grounds of box-ticking is bigotry, and I will defy anyone – anyone – to prove me wrong. It’s offensive. It does him a disservice as an experienced actor (and winner of several awards). It also does a disservice to Russell T Davies, who – if you remember – was billed as the Second Coming (no pun intended) when his return was announced last September. And now you’re giving him a hard time because he’s cast a gay Scot with Rwandan heritage? Piss off.

12. If you’re wondering why point number 11 was so emphatically worded, it’s because (and you’ll love this) most white people are at least a little bit racist. It’s not a nice thing to talk about, and if you bring it up they’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks, with the likes of “I DON’T HAVE A RACIST BONE IN MY BODY”. Well, yes you do. I know you do, because I do. We can’t help it. You react differently to people who look different, at least when you don’t know them. There are preconceptions about diets, about religious beliefs, about lifestyle choices. If your son or daughter brought home a girlfriend / boyfriend of a different race, your reaction wouldn’t be the same as if they’d been white. You’d hopefully get used to them, but there would be an adjustment period. It’s partly societal, partly upbringing: we take on the values our parents had. And if you’re really about to tell me I haven’t got a clue about what you believe and how you feel, think about the last time someone told you an off-colour joke. Think very, very hard.

13. The question of whether people of colour can be racist is too long and complicated to address here, but I will go so far as to say this: all people harbour prejudice. You can call it racism, or something else entirely, but I don’t care what your skin colour is – if you’re a functional member of society, you have it, in some capacity or another. About men, women, those who have children, those who don’t, the rich, the poor, the East, the West. Don’t shy away from it. It’s what makes us human.

14. Let’s assume that you’ve read 11 through 13 and are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. How do we move forward from this? Because from one perspective I’ve just said it’s OK to be racist. It isn’t – but it is OK to accept your limitations. Inherent racism is a shackle from which you will never be truly free, but (and here’s the point) it is vital that you recognise it. Recognising it is the first step in tackling it; ask any addict. Ask yourself: where does this come from? Why am I reacting this way to this bit of news? No, really? Why does supposed box-ticking irritate me so much? Why was I really angry at Whittaker giving the brush-off to Graham’s cancer fears? Is it because it was callous? Or is it because I’m socially conditioned to expect women to be caring and empathetic? How would I have felt if it were Capaldi?

Only you can answer that one. But you do have to be prepared to ask the question. And many people won’t. Because it involves getting to know yourself a little better, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned these last two years of trauma, stagnation and poor mental health, it’s that we don’t like digging in the dirt.

15. Darren Grimes can, in general, go and f**k himself. From what I hear, he’s quite good at it.

Doctor Who Myths Debunked

There are certain things you get tired of saying more than once. This is particularly applicable if you happen to be me and if you have a bad habit of not letting matters rest. I spent decades saddled with a “Must win the argument” mindset that I have spent the last year or two trying to destroy. It’s partly a desire to be kind; partly a knowledge that none of us are getting any younger. There are too many other things I could be doing rather than arguing with Karen on Facebook, particularly when it’s about Doctor Who.

But still. When urban legends pop up in my feed, it’s a trigger. Because there is a sense of irritation about oft-repeated tales of supposed improvisation on set, of strange production decisions and the reconciliation of purposely ambiguous plot lines. For one thing it tends to grant Doctor Who a reverence it doesn’t really deserve, a series plucked out of the air or weaved into existence by magic, TV as alchemy – which undermines the months of hard graft, sweat and on-set bitching that is the cold reality of producing the show. For another it proves that people are inclined to believe everything they read on the internet as long as it makes for a nice story. It is important – and this will be said again and again until everyone understands – that people do not love Doctor Who too much, and do not assume that it is some sort of miracle; it is also important that we scrutinise and evaluate the stories we have been told, rather than simply believing them because we want to. That is the reason I burst people’s bubble; at least that’s what I tell myself when I’m frantically pasting links to verified sources and dissecting badly-written Tumblr posts for the third time in as many days.

With that in mind, these particular hornet’s nests have been aggravated for my own convenience as much as anyone else’s, because it’s easier to post a link to your blog than it is to write it all down again. Here’s a trigger warning for the rest of you: this post contains cynicism, sarcasm, sanctimonious self-righteousness, and doesn’t pull any punches. I suggest you approach it with a pinch of salt and refrain from leaving angry responses that tell me how wrong I am about all this. Save that for part two. And yes, there will be a part two. I’m already writing it.

 

 

1. No, the TARDIS doesn’t make that noise because the Doctor leaves the sodding brakes on

This little gem is usually accompanied by the words “I was today years old when…” or “Mind literally blown”. We will circumvent, for the most part, the eye-rolling silliness of those two internet tropes (although seriously, how is it possible to be ‘today’ years old? You’re literally naming the date). Let’s think back instead to that moment in ‘The Time of Angels’ where River parks the TARDIS alongside the wrecked Byzantium, seemingly without a single VWORP, VWORP. When the Doctor protests, River’s response is classic Moffat: “It’s not supposed to make that noise. You leave the brakes on.”

Our great departed showrunner is often accused of a certain misogyny, at least in the way he writes women. I’m not about to get into that, but this is one of those times when the TARDIS is to all intents and purposes a car and women drivers are better. After the early years of broken fluid links, poorly-judged time hops and a general sense that the Doctor didn’t have a clue how to actually fly the thing, we’ve seen a gradual shift in tone as his piloting skills have become more and more accomplished, at least until a moment like this comes along to blow them out of the water. Two possibilities spring to mind. Either River (having achieved a greater sense of understanding vis a vis the workings of time and space capsules) is actually telling the truth, and the Doctor, the Monk, the Rani and also the Master all leave their brakes on – plausible but ridiculous – or she’s somehow dampened the noise, and is simply winding the Doctor up.

But there’s a third option, and that’s that it’s neither, or both, and Moffat simply put it in as a joke, much the same way he did when he mentioned the supposed destruction of the TARDIS manual, or the Doctor’s past as a little girl (a throwaway line that had Chibnall reaching for his notebook). Because Moffat never treated Doctor Who with any more reverence than it deserved, and thus you shouldn’t either. We may make these things real if we choose, or we may discard them. The Doctor is an unreliable narrator, of both his own history and that of others; River is much the same. I’m happy if you choose to take this particular joke seriously. Doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.

 

 

2. Captain Jack isn’t necessarily the Face of Boe

This is the one that always ruffles feathers, and very few people seem to understand the point I’m trying to make with it, but let’s have one more try. In the first instance: yes, Jack does call himself ‘The Face of Boe’ at the end of series 3. And yes, that’s clearly what Russell T. Davies wants you to think, however much he backpedals in the episode commentaries. We’ve never seen the product of a billion years of human evolution but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that, after much toing and froing, a seemingly immortal Jack might find himself morphing into a giant head over the course of many, many millennia. Philip K. Dick had the same idea (see The Infinites, which posits that humanity would basically go this way). Such a physiological change is even more plausible had Moffat gone down the road he supposedly considered for ‘A Good Man Goes To War’, which would see Jack decapitated by the Headless Monks – a plotline he only abandoned after it became clear that Barrowman was, for one reason or another, unavailable during the filming block.

But that word ‘think’ is incredibly important. Let’s look at the evidence, or rather the lack of it. We don’t see him become the Face of Boe. It’s never confirmed onscreen or anywhere in the literature (Davies has, for reasons we’re about to discuss, taken great pains to ensure that it isn’t). The sole basis for this theory – honestly, the only one there is – is a single conversation between Jack and the Doctor in which he jokes about grey hairs and then wraps up by mentioning his childhood nickname, having heard the Doctor and Martha talk about it two episodes back. It’s the power of association; put two unrelated things together with the most tenuous of connections in an emotionally charged situation and people will join the dots, even if they’re the Doctor. So don’t tell me you take Jack seriously. He’s had a year manacled to a metal fence to come up with this ruse.

Having said that, it is fairly obvious that you were supposed to take him seriously, if only for a moment. This was before Children of Earth, before Miracle Day, before…well, I needn’t continue. The problem is that once you establish Jack’s eventual fate you kill off any sense of interest in the character, because you know they’ll walk out of jeopardy at the other end. Davies knew this, and he wasn’t about to strangle a golden goose. He also knew, as I do, that the key to the success of this moment lies not in the revelation that Jack will become the Face of Boe but in the fact that he might; it’s all about what you don’t see. Just for a minute or two, one of the Doctor’s most cryptic supporting characters is given just a little more meat on the bone (not that there’s much bone, beyond the skull), and the hint is ultimately far more powerful than anything they could have shown to definitively link the two, given that the audience is allowed, for once, to fill in the gap.

So this isn’t Davies telling you Jack’s future. This is him giving you options. Nothing upsets TV viewers more than the ambiguous, but personally I’ve always thought it’s more fun not knowing. Barrowman and Tennant say they believe Jack / Boe are one and the same, but neither of them get a vote – I’m sorry, I know you all love hearing what actors think about their characters, but the writer’s opinion is final, and the writer is commitment phobic, at least on this matter. Let me be very clear: having Jack evolve, over the course of millions of years, into the enigmatic sage who gives his life for New Earth is perfectly acceptable headcanon. It is the shortest distance between two points, and it would be a fitting end to Jack’s story line. Nonetheless, headcanon is all it is.

On that subject, I tend to think headcanon ought to actually stay in your head, but seeing as so many people are seemingly determined to voice theirs to anyone who will listen (and more than a few who aren’t really interested), let’s set some ground rules for terminology. It’s fine to say “I think Jack becomes the Face of Boe”. It is wrong to say that he definitely does, and to argue the toss with anyone who believes otherwise. It is also wrong to do the opposite. This is the paradox of the story, because let’s face facts – Davies put this in to keep us all arguing for years, and left it ambiguous for that purpose (“The moment you explain it,” he said, “the joke dies”), and that is why you get people like me on the forums, forever balancing the equation against anyone who states what they ‘know’ to be true. There are no definites in this story; this is an optical illusion rendered on screen. Some of you see the vase, some of you see the faces. That’s absolutely fine, just as long as you acknowledge that they’re both part of the picture.

 

 

3. David Tennant didn’t ad lib his “Are you my mummy?” line in The Poison Sky

This one really gets my hackles up.

Here’s the gist. It’s September 2007, and they’re on set in Pontypool, filming a particularly memorable scene in episode 5. As UNIT prepare to unveil their secret weapon, the Doctor is briefed by Colonel Mace, who is explaining firing stock. The two of them are wearing gas masks, and when the Colonel asks him what he thinks, the Doctor quips “Are you my mummy?” The urban legend that instantly sprang up around this is that Tennant made up the line on the spot, having forgotten what he was supposed to say, and when everyone had finished laughing they elected to leave it in. And lo, Tennant’s legend as a clown and a genius and an uber fan gains further traction.

The problem with that little nugget – as there is with many such stories of this ilk – is that there is not a single citable reference for it. Not one. I’ve looked. It is mentioned in precisely zero commentaries. I cannot find any interviews that confirm it. Let’s be clear: twelve years have elapsed since this episode was first broadcast. That’s over a decade, which is plenty of time to clear things up. If it were true, we’d know about it, because factoids like this take root in convention anecdotes, magazine columns, press releases; we could go on. To the best of my knowledge (which, by no means exhaustive, is not inconsiderable) that’s never actually happened. There are no sources to confirm this story except the entirely anecdotal one that does nothing more than tell you it is true. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told, over the years, that this categorically and undeniably happened on set, only to have the person I’m arguing with crumble like handmade fudge the moment I ask them to prove it (to be fair, they don’t normally crumble; they just block me).

Seriously. They fly up like doped pheasants only to be instantly shot down. “I read it somewhere”, is the usual response. Yes, you did, you read it on Tumblr – in a post that’s now infamous because it’s been quoted so many times people simply assume it is fact. “It’s in the Confidential“, one person said. No, it isn’t; I looked. “It was on a Graham Norton interview just after the episode aired.” Really? In this country? Because I checked the BBC schedules for that night. You’re simply feeling the Mandela effect. There is no evidence at all, unless it’s hidden in a Nigerian shed somewhere. That’s why I haven’t provided any links to corroborate my views, because there are no links to provide.

Written down in the cold light of day, it seems a silly thing to argue about. Faced with a stubborn old mule who refuses to budge, the person I’m arguing with tends to shift the conversation down one of two roads. “You can’t prove that it didn’t happen,” I’m told, which is more or less true, at least within my admittedly limited capabilities – although if I were particularly inclined I could contact Helen Raynor (who, to the best of my knowledge, is not on Twitter). I can’t prove it didn’t happen in the same way I can’t prove a pink elephant with wings didn’t land on the field over the back of our house last night before rustling one of the fir trees and promptly taking off again. When I was at university they used to talk about the Oxford Rabbit. “Imagine a rabbit,” my philosophy tutor said. “The rabbit has no physical presence, no odour, and is blind, mute and makes no noise. Does the rabbit exist?”

A word in your ear about TV production: ad libs and on-set improvisation are less common than you might expect, unless you’re shooting a Woody Allen film. They certainly don’t apply very much to the world of high stakes TV drama where most of it is about deadlines and getting the thing in the can before the union turns out the lights. Tennant flubs his lines and they decide to keep it in because it’s better than the alternative? Don’t be ridiculous. If I were feeling charitable, I might – might – be prepared to believe that it happened at a read-through. But they probably weren’t wearing gas masks at the read-through. Go figure.

This leads me on to my second point, which is “Well, it’s a nice story, so what does it matter?” It matters because it undermines the writer. I’ve no great love for Raynor’s TV work, at least on Who, and I speak from the position of unavoidable bias, but writers work hard. They get very little of the credit when things go well and most of the flak when they don’t. Tennant is a brilliant actor, but that’s what he does: he responds to a set of dialogue, and for the most part sticks to what he’s given. Is it so hard to imagine that one of the most successful (if clumsily rendered) jokes in the episode is actually the work of its designated storyteller? And what does it tell you about the general attitude towards writers – both male and female, present and past – if you find that sort of concept difficult to swallow?

 

We’ll be back with more of these in a week or two. In the meantime I need to go and hide from the mob.

Doctor Who: The Hugh Grant Years

Well, there’s a surprise.

The list of Actors Who Were Considered For Doctor Who And Didn’t Do It is long and impressive, counting among its ranks the likes of Bill Nighy, Richard Griffiths, Rik Mayall, Alan Davies, Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson – and a certain Peter Capaldi. It’s always a quick headline grabber, if only because it gives hacks like me an opportunity to imagine existing stories with new actors, knock off thinkpieces about possible directions and legacies, and crack the occasional joke. But we’re now able to add another name to this particular roster, although in order to explore a little further we must go back to the dim and distant pasts of 2003, when Russell T. Davies was still getting the band back together, but hadn’t quite got Christopher Eccleston.

The Davies / Eccleston not-exactly-feud seems to have gained new traction over the last few months, as the party with nothing left to lose becomes increasingly candid and the other is respectfully silent. But it emerged last week that Russell T. Davies had a number of other heretofore unknown A-list actors on his radar – and that he originally tried to get Hugh Grant, only to find his path blocked by Grant’s agent. It’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t happen now, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and you can’t blame said agent for chucking the script in the bin, any more than you can blame Dick Rowe for not signing the Beatles. Even as late as 2004, the resurrected Doctor Who was generally viewed with the same sceptical eye that was originally cast over the first Star Wars movie – an arguably healthier state of mind than the fanatical reverence that is now accorded to both.

Veterans will know that Grant’s been in the show anyway: he turns up at the end of ‘The Curse of Fatal Death’, in which Steven Moffat trolls the fandom by regenerating giving the Doctor a love interest and then regenerating him into a woman, although not before hinting that he’d have liked to do the same to the Master. He gets through as many regenerations as possible in the space of twenty minutes, and has one of his characters age rapidly by having them hang about in a sewer for the best part of a millennium. The cast are all marvellous (particularly Jonathan Pryce) but it is tempting, when we watch it now, to look at Moffat’s subsequent Doctor Who career as some sort of wish fulfilment bucket list.

Certainly it’s difficult to envisage Eccleston’s Doctor in the hands of Grant. It just doesn’t fit, largely because in the grand scheme of things, Eccleston doesn’t fit either. His Doctor is the only one not to be openly posh. It’s partly the accent, but partly his whole demeanour. Tennant looks as if he could sell you a flat and bung in an optional stake in the communal garden in between his third and fourth cans of Red Bull. Eccleston looks like he’s on his way to a nightclub, and not the decent sort.

I’m not saying this was a bad thing. Eccleston may have never quite convinced me, but he was the Doctor, and the phenomenal success of the revived show is largely down to the gravitas he brought with him (along with a short temper and reputation for being difficult on set). In many ways the revived Doctor Who works precisely because he is so different. There is a scene early in ‘Parting of the Ways’ in which Eccleston is observed sitting in a corridor with Billie Piper, surrounded by bits of wire and circuit boards, randomly building something – and it was that moment when, as far as I’m concerned, he actually became the Doctor for the first time. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the rest of the series, even in the company of a not-quite Doctor. He’s cheery and enthused, he spits righteous (and self-righteous) anger, and when he takes the hand of a frightened shop girl and compels her to run, there is nothing I’d rather do than follow.

Still: you could never imagine Davison suggesting beans on toast. And it’s difficult to imagine any other actor complaining about ‘stupid apes’ without sounding, frankly, a little bit racist (although we might legitimately argue that Eccleston does as well, so let’s not go there). By and large the Ninth Doctor’s dialogue, with its use of colloquialisms and affectations (‘Listen, love’) is written for Eccleston, and it shows. You can imagine the Ninth Doctor quoting dialogue from other Doctors (some fans, indeed, have already done just that) but it’s difficult to imagine the reverse. By and large it simply doesn’t work: the Ninth’s entire manner is different. Even Tennant’s use of ‘fantastic’, in the closing scenes of ‘The Christmas Invasion’, is a one-off.

So there can be little doubt that the Ninth Doctor under the baton of Hugh Grant would have been a very different kettle of fish – perhaps a little posher, a little less earnest and a little less dark. And they’d probably have to change half the dialogue.

And that, dear reader, is exactly what I’ve done.

Doctor Who: the alternative headlines

When you work in the press, in whatever capacity, you’re surrounded by headlines. They’ve always been important, but in the digital age they’re the very lifeblood of what we do. In a world where success is monitored by the hit counter, first impressions are vital. That’s why clickbait is such big business: when a deadline is looming but you have nothing interesting to say, make it look as though you have. This revelation came to me quite recently, but what happened next will astound you.

In all seriousness: there’s nothing wrong (all right, rephrase: there’s nothing particularly new) about sexing up a headline a little bit, so long as you don’t tell any outright lies. Part of the problem stems from expectations – before the birth of the internet you could scan the body text beneath the headline and get an idea of the piece without having to actually read it in full, or at the very least ascertain its length. These days, if you’re being fed a juicy story, chances are it’ll be on social media, where the headline and covering image has been scrupulously prepared for maximum impact so as to grab your attention, with the actual text lurking on another page – and by the time you’ve worked out it wasn’t worth your time, you’ve already clicked.

People react to this with varying degrees of annoyance – personally, I’d say it’s all part of the way that online news has developed, and that the pious “There, I saved you a click” brigade really need to grow a sense of humour. But I would say that, seeing as it’s what passes for a day job. What annoys me is the tedious, over-excited headlines we draw from all those conveniently-worded soundbites that you get at the press screenings, convention appearances and Doctor Who Magazine editorials. Let me give you a few examples from the last year:

• Jenna Coleman thinks Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who casting is “genius”
• The next series of Doctor Who will feel like “the first episode you ever see”
• Is this the greatest scene in modern Doctor Who history?
• A scene in the Doctor Who Christmas special had the Doctors “almost blubbing”
• Steven Moffat drops hints about Jodie Whittaker’s first Doctor Who scenes: “She’s given us the Doctor we’ve always known”

Don’t get me wrong. The BBC wants to sell its own product, and I’m OK with that. You need to be outwardly enthusiastic; any producer who said they thought they had a turkey on their hands would likely be given their cards, and we all know what happens when the stars dare to insult the directors. But still. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told I’ll be stunned, amazed, upset and blown away by what’s going to happen in the next series of Who, or how things were going to be truly fantastic.

Can I plead, perhaps, for a little more honesty? Or if that’s really not something we do (“The truth, Minister? You can’t expect Her Majesty’s Government to start telling the truth!”) then perhaps a little more humility, however false? And with that in mind I’ve come up with a few ideas for headlines that I’d like to see, however unlikely their appearance on the news feeds.

 

 

 

 

—

I am very ‘umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield…

Who saves the day?

DAVROS: Already I have seen them sacrifice today, for their beloved Doctor. The Earth woman who fell opening the Subwave Network.

DOCTOR: Who was that?

ROSE: Harriet Jones. She gave her life to get you here.

DAVROS: How many more? Just think. How many have died in your name? The Doctor. The man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not, out of shame. This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself.

(Davros, ‘Journey’s End’)

Recently, I watched the 2005 Doctor Who series again, from scratch, with Thomas keeping me company. It’s aged surprisingly well. It’s New Who before it got bogged down with needless homages to the past. At the time, Davies’ umbilical snipping annoyed me; it felt as if – through the Time War – he was stomping all over the legacy of the show and then turning it into a soap opera.

These days it’s more apparent than ever that this is exactly what he was doing, but it bothers me less. Instead, I concentrate on the good things: the actually-quite-reasonable special effects, the decently-paced storytelling, some pretty creepy aliens (if you don’t get a chill when that phone rings and Noah Johnson’s voice cries “Muuuummmy….”, or when Richard Wilson grows a gas mask through his face, there’s something wrong with you) and even John Barrowman. I know that ‘Jazz Hands Jack’ wore out his welcome long before the fourth series of Torchwood, yet I still love him. And I always will.

But there’s something about that Ninth Doctor, and it’s a recurring trend. Basically, he’s a bit crap.

Part of the problem is Eccleston’s brief tenure in the leather jacket. Davies’ first series as chief writer establishes the Doctor as a broken, violent figure whose ultimate redemption begins when he refuses to kill one Dalek and ends when he refuses to kill a million of them. It’s ironic that one of the final scenes in this first series features the Doctor not watching television in a London council estate but on the floor of a colossal space station, assembling things out of wires and circuit boards and arguably looking seriously Doctorish for the first time since Paul McGann got out his jelly babies. Had Eccleston not jumped ship when he did, the next series would have undoubtedly seen a more confident, self-assured Time Lord stomping around the universe with Rose and saving the day far more than he actually does in this series.

Not entirely useless, but too little and too late.

That notion of ‘saving the day’ is what drives today’s entry, because for a while now I’ve been compiling a list of every episode in the New Who TV canon, with the intent of determining each Doctor’s relative usefulness. Because if you actually look at Doctor Who in its post-revival years, what you find is a show that’s far less about an ageing Time Lord saving the universe, and far more about his companions doing it for him. There’s far less trickery with wires and exploding shuttles, and far more eleventh hour reprieves, conveniently placed Chekhov’s guns, and more than a few supreme sacrifices.

None of this is new to the show. One of my favourite Classic Who stories, ‘The Ark In Space’, ends with not one but two sacrificial suicides from members of the crew. ‘Earthshock’ saw Adric destroy the Cybermen at the cost of his own life. And then there’s poor old Katarina. But it’s telling that in the ‘Death of a Companion’ section in the companions Wikipedia entry, over half those listed are from New Who. Acts of self-sacrifice – as opposed to pointless deaths, which Classic Who had in abundance – abound in the post-revival era, whether permanent (supporting characters), temporary (Jack) or silly (anything involving Rory). It’s almost as if they’re put in on purpose with the intention of building to one last Montage of Demise, which is precisely what we see while Davros is monologuing during the scene I quoted at the beginning of this post. I could just about believe that, if I also believed that Davies was capable of thinking this far ahead.

But all this got me thinking. Besides the suicides, there are plenty of examples where the Doctor is in a fix and only his companion is able to save him, presumably as part of the now-milked-to-death “companion identification” ethos that the show has tried so hard to promote for decades, but particularly since 2005. We can’t identify with the Doctor, we’re told, so we must therefore identify with his companions. This means making them spirited, independent and likeable (well, one out of three, Martha). Oh, and feisty. Mustn’t forget feisty. They must appeal to the lowest common denominator by being young and pretty because that’s the only way that we’re going to like them. Again, none of this is exactly new (cf. Susan, Leela, Peri, Mel) but it’s fair to say that New Who has over-egged the pudding. It wouldn’t be a problem except that the show now works tremendously hard at building up audience identification for each companion before completely undoing it by turning them into blank-eyed gods, giving them Time Lord mindsets, reincarnating them across the entirety of time and space, or resurrecting them from the dead on a weekly basis. In other words, if you’re a companion and the universe has to revolve around you, it’s going to be hard for people to empathise.

The long and the short of it is that earlier this year, I went through every single story (note: story, not episode) of New Who and I gave each one a point allocation, depending on how the story finished. We may break it down thus:

The Doctor saves the day, more or less on his own – 2 points

The Doctor saves the day with help – 1 point

The Doctor has no real part in saving the day – 0 points

I then tallied up the total points that each Doctor accumulated, and divided that by the number of points they could have accumulated if they’d been on top form throughout the series, and from this we get a final ‘effectiveness rating’. So an unassisted, triumphant Doctor who’d starred in thirty stories would amass sixty points. And so on.

Note that ‘saving the day’ is ambiguous. For one thing, the term itself may refer to the salvation of five or six people (or even fewer), or the entire universe – in each case I put in whatever the thrust of that week’s narrative happened to be. Furthermore, these narrative thrusts only apply to climactic events – cancelling the bomb, appeasing the wrathful deity, or destroying the Daleks. These may be events in which the Doctor plays only a small part, but it would be unfair to say that he is ever actually useless during a story, with the possible exception of ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’. Even in a tale like ‘Midnight’, in which the Doctor spends most of the narrative out of his depth and surrounded by people who fear and distrust him, he is able to use his influence (and another plant and payoff) to convince the steward to do the right thing, and the Doctor’s moral imprint upon events is felt long after she blows Lesley Sharp out of the airlock.

” It’s not like I’m an innocent. I’ve taken lives. I got worse. I got clever. Manipulated people into taking their own. Sometimes I think a Time Lord lives too long.”

(The Doctor, ‘The End of Time’)

It’s not a perfect system. For example, if the Doctor has an idea but gets someone else to do it, because he’s otherwise engaged (cf. ‘The Age of Steel’, below, he gets only one point. Some of you may find this unfair. I call it my system of scoring, and I’m the one who put this together, so tough. And with that in mind, I hope the scoring is at least relatively consistent. Let’s see how we get on, shall we? Ninth first. Oh, and important point: acts of sacrifice, excepting those of the Doctor himself, are highlighted in yellow.

Oh dear. It really doesn’t look good for poor Chris. But as I said earlier, I don’t think it’s his fault. The first series of New Who was very much about bringing the Doctor back from the brink, and I’m sure we’d have seen another side to him if Eccleston had lingered.

On to the Tenth.

Now, this is interesting, particularly when you compare it to the Eleventh (below). He’s a little more effective than his predecessor, but look at how many stories involved sacrifice – fourteen out of thirty-six, which is over a third. This is almost certainly connected to Tennant’s ability to look appalled and shout “NO!” to BAFTA-winning standards, but no wonder Davros was gloating.

Finally. Finally! Mr Smith.

Fewer sacrifices, but lots of ‘null points’. And yes, I’m aware that this will need updating again in December when he goes all golden and Christ-like, in another overt display of religious symbolism. Even with two more sets of full marks (unlikely given that November’s instalment also stars Tennant and will probably end with Hurt doing something redemptive and heroic) he’ll be hard pressed to leave any sort of real distinction.

Perhaps all this is grossly unfair. Part of the problem with nostalgia-craving fans like me is that we tend to misremember the past. I’m looking back at Classic Who under the impression that every story ended like ‘The Masque of Mandragora’, but that’s probably not the case. As much fun as it is to sneer at Davies’ and Moffat’s penchant for slow-motion dives into hot lava, it’s equally plausible that were to examine the ranks of Classic Who we’d find similar trends. Personally I don’t think we will. Nonetheless, the only way to be sure is to compile similar lists for every. Single. Doctor. And then expand them to include comics, novels, Big Finish productions, fan-fiction…

But that can wait. In the meantime I’m off to watch tonight’s episode: ‘Gridlock’, in which the Doctor witnesses the overdue demise of a character with a massive head. And for a change, I’m not talking about the chief writer.

The (Jurassic) Ark In Space

I’m sure Comic Con is great. And I’d love to see San Diego. But I’m glad I wasn’t there for the Q&A I’m going to talk about tonight, because I suspect it would have set my teeth on edge.

A lightly spoiler-ish article on io9 – forwarded to me by Gareth – details the Grand Moffat’s plan for the new series, and on the face of it, the outlook isn’t pretty. As much as I look forward to every new season of Who, hopeful that it’ll in some way eclipse the last in terms of quality – or, perhaps, atone for some of the sins of previous episodes (I’m looking at you, Ms. Raynor) – I think it’s fair to say that this one has me as unexcited about the show’s return in autumn as I’ve ever been.

Let’s start with the trailer.

 

—

To anyone under the age of ten or who happened to love Cowboys Vs. Aliens, this is undoubtedly brilliant. To anyone who was watching TV in 1993, or who happens to have seen TV that was made in 1993, it rips off at least two episodes of Red Dwarf. I was one of the few who thought ‘Gunmen of the Apocalypse’ was overrated in the first instance; I have no wish to see it remade by the Doctor Who team. And that’s before we even get to that shot of a Dalek eyestalk, which is in itself oddly reminiscent of Return of the Jedi.

Yes, those Daleks. Moffat assures us that we’ll see

“more Daleks than you’ve ever seen in one place — and every generation of Dalek.” And it looks fantastic, now that the visual effects are just being completed. “Lots and lots and lots of Daleks. All the things you see when you close your eyes.”

Maybe I’m in a minority here, but when I have nightmares about Who, they don’t involve Daleks. They involve reruns of ‘Fear Her’. I’m not frightened by the Daleks; overexposure has rendered me completely indifferent to them. The Daleks are no longer scary, and thus no longer appealing. And there is a glint of fanboyish glee about Moffat’s desire to get the gang together, as if he were a chubby, bespectacled ten-year-old appearing on Blue Peter or The Antiques Roadshow with his collection.

I didn’t even object to the Power Rangers Daleks, despite the cynical (and rather obvious) collect-the-set marketing ploy. It’s just that I don’t trust anyone at the New Who offices to be able to do anything interesting with the Daleks. And making the Daleks interesting is crucial to their success, and the very reason why so many of the post-2005 Dalek episodes have been second / third-rate: include the Nation’s Finest, and you’ve got a clear ratings winner, so there’s no need to actually come up with a story, just a different setting (Daleks in Churchill’s England / depression-era New York / the Black Forest). Chuck in a couple of cries of ‘Exterminate!’, add some trigger-happy military types who don’t know what they’re dealing with and who are certain to meet early and untimely deaths, and you’ve got yourself an episode. I’m not unremittingly nostalgic for Classic Who, but the unfortunate truth is that Dalek stories are lazy, because the last time they did anything genuinely interesting was back in 1988.

Things don’t improve with the second episode of the series which will, apparently, be called ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’, which calls to mind obvious (and, one would assume, quite intentional) parallels with Snakes on a Plane. No episode with such a title, you may think, could possibly fail on any level. I’d counter thus:

1. The last time Doctor Who did dinosaurs, they were shit. The story wasn’t, but the dinosaurs were. I know they were on a shoestring, but still. Just saying.

2. ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’ is written by Chris Chibnall, who also wrote ’42’ and the season 5 Silurian episodes, all of which were shit.

3. Snakes on a Plane is also shit. It’s not even mindless entertainment, fine-if-you-don’t-take-it-seriously, so-bad-it’s-good shit. It’s just shit. Irredeemable shit.

I think that’s enough shit to be going on with, don’t you?

Meanwhile, at an arc level…

How did Moffat come up with the idea that the Doctor’s name was “the first question?” someone asks. “To be honest, it’s been there from a start. He never gives his name. Other Time Lords do, but he doesn’t. Clearly, his name is very important. Only I know why. We actually find out the truth” about the importance of the Doctor’s name.

That Doctor. His refusal to give his name is indeed unique, and categorically unacceptable. I was just discussing the sheer bloody-mindedness of it only the other evening, in the pub with my mates the Rani and the Master. That was before we were interrupted by the Other and the Meddling Monk, who wanted to borrow 20p for the pool table.

Elsewhere:

Someone brings up the idea that the Doctor leaves the brakes (the “blue boringers”) on when he flies the TARDIS — and Moffat notes that River Song was probably winding the Doctor up about that — because you might notice that when she flies the TARDIS, it still makes that same wheezing, groaning materialization noise.

Yawn, the brake-crunching, pull-to-open, needs-six-people-to-fly-it-TARDIS. But here’s a thought – and I voice it aloud despite the fact that it’s going to stomp all over everything I’ve just written. We might, to be honest, be at the stage where we have to stop taking these throwaway remarks seriously and just accept that the continuity of Who is one big mess. As, of course, one would it expect it to be, with a multitude of writers and guest writers and chief writers and script editors, all with their own ideas as to what the show should be, and that’s not to mention the novelisations and comics and BF productions, with inconsistencies and disputed canonicity. Consider, for example, the Doctor’s regeneration limit – established as twelve in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ and adjusted accordingly thereafter until, in the SJA ‘Death of the Doctor’ story, it was mentioned by the Eleventh Doctor that “there isn’t one”, a story that was promptly picked up by the Guardian and made into a front page web article for a few hours on a Tuesday evening.

Moffat’s consistently making silly jokes, and while the remarks about the TARDIS brakes have no doubt stirred up a hornet’s nest of debate amongst the engineers who post at Outpost Gallifrey or wherever the fans hang out nowadays, there is nonetheless the strong possibility that he just put it in because he thought it was funny (and it could have been, except it came from River, who is irritating). Similarly, Father Christmas is probably not called Jeff (now that was funny) and the Doctor probably didn’t throw the TARDIS manual into a supernova (although I’m sure the story where he did just that exists somewhere). And yes, the pull-to-open thing in ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ was wrong. But that’s the point. Under Moffat’s reign (and, to an extent, Davies’ before it), episode writing is a dialogue, a nod to the fans, an acknowledgement of their presence and – often – a subtle dig at them. Every episode is going to be pulled apart and analysed to death within hours of its transmission, and the writers know it. Such things are thus put in to purposely wind us up, and they succeed.

The truth is that Doctor Who can be whatever the chief writer wants it to be, because it’s transcended continuity. There are certain fundamental ground rules – no true love, no kissing, no beards – but that’s it. The fans have spent years shoehorning and explaining and reconciling continuity, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. For example, Tegan’s appearance in ‘A Fix With Sontarans‘ is non-canon, because the story is non-canon, because it’s a story that occurs within the context of a children’s programme hosted by a chain-smoking northerner in a tracksuit – and the subsequent fanfiction attempts to reconcile Tegan with the Sixth Doctor, while undoubtedly well-meant, were frankly silly.

Besides, the Doctor lies. At least this one does, because that’s how Smith likes to play him and Moffat likes to write him – and ultimately they’re the ones calling the shots. Personally, I’d consider the revelation of the Doctor’s name to be a clear violation of one of the unwritten rules – but they’re myrules, not his. However much I may have whinged this evening, the fact remains that mine is a singular viewpoint, and my own views of what Who ought to be are always going to be different from even the most like-minded friend or colleague or fellow-blogger. Phillip Pullman said that writing isn’t a democracy, and Doctor Who – despite the collective input I mentioned earlier – isn’t really a Jungian collective. It’s whatever the person in charge makes it. The bottom line – and the only question we should really be concerning ourselves with, when all is said and done – is whether or not the creative decisions made at the top make for good television. Because ultimately that’s the only thing that really counts. So perhaps we should be viewing series 7 in that light. Roll on autumn – and bring on the dinosaurs.

The Great Doctor Who Party (ii)

(If you’ve missed out on the earlier bits of this little saga, they’re available here. And here. And, if you’re really bored, here.) Let’s start with the suit, which we bought on Ebay.

That buffet, then.

“HI- I- AM-HERE-TO-FIX-YOUR-TAR-DIS.”

“Why am I handcuffed? Why do you even have handcuffs?”

Oh God. I really should stop with the anagram generator.

Word games are endemic in New Who. There was Doctor Who >> Torchwood, for a start. Then there was Mister Saxon >> Master No. Six, which Davies maintained was a coincidence but which did, in any case, provide a convenient point of explanation for Josh when we got to the culmination of the series 3 story arc. More recently, and on a related note, I worked out that ‘James Moriarty’ is an anagram of ‘Majority Master’, which is funny when you consider the introduction of the Master as a Moriarty to Pertwee’s Holmes (as Terrence Dicks is fond of re-establishing in pretty much every 2 Entertain commentary). I even got an entire Who / Sherlock pastiche out of it.

But it turns out ‘Sonic Screwdriver’ can be rearranged to form ‘Doc screws in River’. Gareth pointed out that ‘Screwdriver’ more or less contains half this as is, so it’s not much of a stretch, but it’s still pretty lurid, and not something I should really be thinking about just before bed…

“I knew I shouldn’t have asked him to use the turbo setting.”

Protected: Taking the p*ss

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The God…complex?

Someone get out the horse tranquilisers; Moffat’s off on a rant again.

An article in today’s Metro quotes his comments to BAFTA Guru, in which he speaks about the “fairly stupid” people who dare to suggest that the shows he creates are too complicated. “They’re both huge international hits,” he allegedly fumed. “We make no apology. Don’t expect to do the ironing; sit down, pay attention and think about it.”

The image of ironing during Doctor Who (something I do when we’re watching the older, simpler stories) reminds me of a review I once read of Johnny Cash’s Unearthed box set – a posthumous compilation of outtakes and unreleased material from his various American Recording sessions with Rick Rubin. “This is not music,” said the review – which may or may not have been in Q magazine – “to have on in the background when you’re washing up, or in the car, or at dinner parties. This is music to be savoured, digested and above all listened to properly”. I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point: there are some things that need to be savoured. It’s too easy to let them gloss over you and ignore what’s going on. In a pleasing nod to the times when people used to really explore the music they acquired, Classic Album listening parties have recently become something of a hit.

It would be tempting to suggest that the stupid people to which Moffat refers are brain-dead, council estate-residing simpletons who think that what you see on The X-Factor is what actually happens, believe everything they read in the Daily Mail, consider Eastenders to be the summit of good drama and whose parents worshipped Diana and were big fans of “that lovely song from Titanic“. It would be tempting, but it would be inaccurate, because it would ignore the work of the hopeless Dan Martin, who obviously thought that Moffat’s complicated writing style warranted a front page Guardian article (OK, front page of the Guardian website, but isn’t that all anyone looks at these days?). Indeed, the web’s awash with debates and blog posts about whether the show is now too complicated for younger viewers – a sentiment that is as needlessly patronising as it is hideously inaccurate, given that most younger viewers can programme the Sky+ box with more adeptness than their parents, as well as outclassing them at video game events and even understanding the plot of Artemis Fowl. What we really mean, I suspect, is that it’s just too complicated for us.

When Russell T. Davies left the TARDIS at the end of the last decade, Doctor Who was still compelling television, even if it had deteriorated into soap. His obsession with grounding the Doctor and giving him a family (completely in opposition, one could argue, with the original spirit of the show) had detracted from some of the very good ideas he’d had, because all too often we were forced to watch the invasion stories through their eyes. Thus when John Simm used his DNA as a template for every human being on the planet, we were treated to three minutes of Catherine Tate crying on her mobile. When the Autons crashed through a shopping centre, we were forced to endure a screaming bout from Camille Coduri. And when the Children of Time (and don’t get me started on how much I detest that terminology) were trying desperately to get hold of the Doctor, the entire sequence was hampered by Billie Piper’s incessant whinging. Frankly the only extended family member on Doctor Who that never outstayed his welcome was Bernard Cribbins, who was never less than great, even when he’s dropped into the middle of a shameless Star Wars rip-off (14 minutes in, if you wanted to look).

Moffat’s response to all this was to tone down the domestic drama and bring in a string of plants and pay-offs, ontological paradoxes and general wibbly-wobbliness. Now, instead of remarks about disappearing bees, we’re given thirteen glimpses of Amy’s crack (Must. Not. Make. Jokes). Instead of the Doctor actually dying at the edge of the lake, we discover that he was hiding inside a robot we’d met earlier in the series (that one was, at least, faintly plausible). And all those random apparent continuity errors in series five were, in fact, an older Doctor who was wandering back through the memories of Amy Pond just before she rebooted the universe.

Which reminds me –

ANDY: Rimmer was a hand-picked special agent for the Space Corps. He had his memory erased and was programmed to behave like a complete twonk so no one would suspect he was on a mission to destroy Red Dwarf in order to guide Lister to his destiny as the creator of the second universe!

LISTER: You what?!

ANDY: Yeah! You know the bit where Lister jump starts the second big bang with jump leads from Starbug?

RIMMER: [Incredulous] Jump starts the second big bang?

ANDY: Well, that’s the final irony, isn’t it? Lister, the ultimate atheist, turns out in fact to be God!

Meanwhile, back on planet Who, the Amy Pond who’s wearing the eye patch is a parallel Amy Pond who’s not married to Rory. She’s not the same Amy Pond as the Amy Pond who visited the Gangers with the Doctor and Rory, or who dressed up as a pirate in ‘Curse of the Black Spot’, because that turned out to be the Ganger version of Amy. Nor is it the future Amy who has (despite no formal training) become highly competent with a sword, even if she’s got the odd wrinkle. The real Amy was in fact in some sort of medical bay about to have a child. But even this Amy is re-imagined from her own memory.

Which reminds me:

[RIMMER sits on the edge of his bunk, thoroughly depressed. What’s about to happen will not alleviate this state.]

RIMMER: [VO, muffled] I don’t want you to panic, Arnold, but I’ve had a jolly good think, and I think I know how to explain this to you.

[He sticks his head above the table. His past self stares at him with a mixture of fear, shock and abject horror.]

RIMMER: Hi.

PAST RIMMER: Hi. I’m staying calm this time.

RIMMER: Good.

[Just then CAT and LISTER enter. The past RIMMER does a double take, looking from the LISTER on the bunk to the one in the doorway.]

LISTER: Yo, Rimmer, there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.

RIMMER: Not now, Lister.

PAST RIMMER: [very tense] TWO Listers? And a strange man with large teeth!

CAT: Hey, I’m a cat!

PAST RIMMER: [not a well man] Oh, of course you’re a cat! Come in, sit down, there’s plenty of room.

[Just then who should drop by but the just-married couple, LISTER and KOCHANSKI.]

FUTURE LISTER: Yo!

PAST RIMMER: [losing it fast] THREE Listers!! Splendid!!! Perhaps Lister here would like to go over to the fridge and open a bottle of wine for Lister and Lister!!!! Rimmer here doesn’t drink, because he’s dead, but I wouldn’t mind a glass!!!!!

RIMMER’S VOICE: I don’t want anyone to get into a flap here, but I’m the RIMMER who’s from the double-double future.

[He rises from the dresser in the corner and steps forward. He is dressed in a tux, and has a thin moustache.]

FUTURE RIMMER: I’m the Rimmer who’s with the Lister who married Kochanski. Now, from this point on, things get a little bit confusing…

PAST RIMMER: Please! Before anyone says anything else, I’d just like to make a little speech. GO AWAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

——

Or, as Kryten might have put it, “Now I have to go back in time so that I can sacrifice myself, so that we can end up in the mess we’re in now. All in all, today’s been a bit of a bummer, hasn’t it sir?”.

The point is that general paradoxes and silliness were fun in Red Dwarf because the pudding was deliberately over-egged. It was television that made you think – the time travel-themed episodes, in particular, were always complicated – but there was never any question of the science being allowed to overshadow the comedy, and you knew that as soon as Robert Llewellyn had finished making one of his complicated expository speeches, Chris Barrie would interject with a snide comment and steal the scene (or Danny John-Jules would just play dumb, which was also amusing, at least for a couple of episodes). Now, you have River Song revealing herself as the long-lost daughter of Amy and Rory, whom they first met in what was (we presume) her second incarnation, before seeing her again towards the end of her life, and then encountering her again as a child, who regenerated into the girl they grew up with who then regenerated into – anyway, the point is that none of this is funny and that at the end of it, we’ve still got River. Nothing has been gained, and much time has been wasted having to endure Alex Kingston admiring her own arse.

Essentially, the ontological wizardry of Doctor Who seems to have become its entire mythos. The show has become a show that is about time travel, rather than an adventure story with time travel as a central element. In the old days, the Doctor would go somewhere and have an adventure, and then disappear. There was no mucking about with history, no sudden appearance of gigantic black bats, no talk of fixed points or time being in flux (well, there was occasionally, but not every sodding week). When the jacketed Doctor in ‘Flesh and Stone’ who tells a blinded Amy that she has to start trusting him is revealed to be the later Doctor who is about to be erased from history, I don’t think “Ooh, how clever”. I think “You smug bastard, Steven”. Because (and I’m sure I’ve said this before) it smacks of showing off. I know that he uses predestination and parallel realities to drive home an emotional point – something that worked particularly well in ‘Blink’ and in ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, and to a certain extent in the first River Song story before she became the irritating hussy she is now – but it feels these days that it’s more about making the programme complex and involved simply to up your game, rather than because it’s the right thing for the Doctor. In other words, our chief writer sticks these things in as ‘rewards’ for fans who deconstruct each episode to oblivion on the blogosphere – while Davies hated internet geeks, his successor seems to relish their work, as long as they’re not revealing spoilers.

But there’s always a danger in pandering too much to one community. The central problem under Davies’ reign was that Doctor Who was trying too much to be lightweight Saturday entertainment, losing something of its original self in the process. With Davies’ departure some of the original spirit has arguably returned – there’s still too much of Amy and Rory working out their marital discord, but at least we don’t have to spend every other episode wandering around Cardiff. Doctor Who has evolved in this manner at the cost of some of its abrasive charm: it’s an overblown, epic drama these days, and perhaps they’re so far down that road they’ll never be able to return, but the narrative would arguably work better if the writers would learn that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and that while most sensible people can follow the intricate dot-to-dot patterns they sketch out, we’re so exhausted by the time the picture is completed that we no longer care what it is. So I don’t think Moffat’s approach to the show is excessively complicated. I just think it’s needlessly complicated. There’s a difference.