I Will Cure You

Here we are, heading into the final third of the school holidays in Moray; the time of year associated with the sick anticipation of exam results. Certainly for me, if not for my pupils...

Kristen Hersh has a great phrase: "addicted to time-tripping". Last week, I watched The Space Museum on dvd. These episodes are generally held to be a slow-moving and childish space adventure (but then all Doctor Who is a childish space adventure. When it strays too far from that principle, it fails; more on that later ). This is probably the fourth time I've watched it since its release on video in 1999. The first episode builds a spooky atmosphere, climaxing in Hartnell's portentous last line- then it evaporates as the fat, starchy Moroks, with their crimped Space Hair, complain about how boring their posting is. Everyone seems a bit off their game: Hartnell's funniest fluff, given his homophobia, is in calling the governor :" My dear lovely...my dear Lobos". Even the reliable Jacqueline Hill is a bit lost, referring to the Moroks as Daleks.

 Exis auf der Reeperbahn

Fortunately, Vicki holds the story together. With her fashionable Scouse accent and her physical acting (cradling her chin wistfully on the butt of a space weapon!) Maureen O'Brien's performance almost seems like a prototype for Sarah Jane. She leads the baseball-booted boys of Xeros to rebellion with a kind of glee that would come to be called "kooky" in a couple of years. Her acting style is more theatrical than that of Carole Ann Ford, which tends to pull focus from Ian and Barbara. Also, since she's not his granddaughter, she can't be torn in her loyalty to the Doctor and to the teachers in the interesting ways that Susan could. But even as a Future Girl, Vicki is more Mod, more groovy than the Coronation Street teachers.
However, The Space Museum is savaged on the commentary track, most of all by moderator Peter Purves, who isn't even in it. He pours derision on almost every aspect- albeit with all the outrage and vigour that you sometimes glimpse later in his stroppy character, Steven. Meanwhile, writer Glyn Jones complains that Dennis Spooner cut all the comedy. It's hard to imagine where that comedy would fit. The commentary suggests that the script 's intention is to satirise Dr. Who- to treat it as High Camp, in the way that Dougas Adams is perceived to have done; that's why Vicki rubbishes the Dalek and the Doctor hides in its casing. However, nobody is playing the script that way, regardless of how it was edited. True, there's been a more playful tone in the series since The Romans but instances of death and torture in The Web Planet and The Crusade were played absolutely seriously. It's also ridiculous to suggest the production team was poking fun at the tropes of rebels and revolution in this era of Who since they had been used exactly once before, in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. I don't buy this analysis at all but I want to return to knowingness shortly.

Considering that all of time and space is available to even the casual Who fan, I was still shocked by Doctor Who Magazine's reminder that it's thirty years since this issue was published:

I was bowled over. Hit for six. I remember that cover so vividly and the Dave Gibbons strip inside: the 2000 AD-ish End of the Line, in which the glamorous ninja Angel was probably eaten by cannibals.In two issues time, Alan Moore would introduce the Special Executive, who would go on to feature in Captain Britian.
Meanwhile, on Earth-Prime, at the end of July, the wedding of Charles and Di had been a fairytale extravaganza with a global audience.The big radio hits were Shakey's Green Door, Hooked on Classics and Stars on 45 Vol II; Bill Wyman's Si, Si; the overwrought whine of  REO Speedwagon; and Backfired, the prophetically-titled single from Debbie Harry's Giger-covered Koo Koo album. Superman II and Raiders had been released in June (curiously, I saw neither at the time). The Val Lewton season was the mainstay of the Saturday night horror double bill, with Bedlam and The Curse of the Cat People.

And here's what the comic books from the Big Two looked like:

 This was the era of the Marvel diaspora. I'll come back to the JLA next time...

 Spider-Woman received a marketing push in X-Men this month. Hey, Bendis!

 It's almost as if the moody, mystery-books of DC in the Seventies and the kozmic super-heroes of Marvel swapped publishers during the early 80s.
But, as ever, I digress: I was looking forward to Davison's Fifth Doctor with the kind of fervour that only a hardcore fan in his late teens could know. There were legions of us at Longleat two years later.
I think we were ready for a new take on the series.The Oxbridge whimsy of Graham Williams and Douglas Adams had become too silly for us. We'd all grown up with Tom and Lis and Genesis of the Daleks. Most recently we'd had Tom and Lalla, being frightfully posh and clever in increasingly comedic situations. As self-conscious boys (and we were almost exclusively boys, I reckon), we wanted our tv sci-fi to be taken seriously. And the Eighties were a strange, new futuristic world of New Romantic pop stars in eyeshadow bleeping at computers while rioting and looting went on in London and the English cities.
And we got our wish. Doctor Who became serious and self-conscious and popular (maybe even with girls...). It began to acknowledge its own mythos; then ransacked it. By the mid-80s, it was about guns and blood and torture, featuring a shouting, permed man dressed like a portly Andrew Ridgely. It was awful. And it began with Peter.
I want to like The Fifth Doctor; I really do. And since this is The Land of Fiction, I can make him over into the kind of Doctor he should have been. The first step is pin-pointing all the aspects that didn't work and those that did.
Firstly, you have to imagine that the stories aren't overlit, edited choppily or scored with buzzing, shrill electronic music. In other words, a completely different style of  tv story-telling. Next, we have to modify the idea of costume somewhat. One clever touch about the cricketing motif is that it speaks very clearly of the nostalgia into which popular culture had, somewhat understandably, retreated. 1981 was the year of Chariots of Fire and Brideshead Revisited. Staunch, sporting, upper-crust chaps, struggling with their personal demons, were part of the British consciousness. So the cricket flannels and jumper suggest leisure, class and fair play. However, the question marks and celery are bizarre while the trousers are garish and ludicrous. Fortunately, a more restrained alternative is at hand:

Here, the older Davison (from 2003) looks sophisticated, timeless and at ease.
Connected to the "semiotic thickness" of the Doctor's costume is his personality. We never have a clear idea of his bag. Tom is a Boho Aesthete; Sylv is Silent Movie Clown (and puppet-master); Eccleston is thePost-Traumatic War Veteran; Tennant is the Geek Boyfriend. Dr. Five is The Time Lord with No Time to Spare, always Explaining Later. Often hesitant and maladroit, we sometimes glimpse a steeliness but that's usually directed at his companions- whom he doesn't seem to want. But what does he want? Apart from Brainy Specs, one thing he shares with Ten is Identification with Them: he's a Time Lord of Gallifrey and is more at ease there than any other Doctor (apart from Pertwee, who would stroll round that Michael Albarn call-centre like a mum looking for muck in a student flat). We need to find out why he's on the run in that rackety old Tardis.
Also, he spends far too much time being incarcerated and berating himself. Get a sonic and some psychic paper, man!

The next problem is companionship. John Nathan-Turner wanted to return to the four-person Tardis crew last seen in The Chase in 1965, seemingly without considering the storytelling needs and character dynamics that necessitated that line-up. Furthermore, the combination of inexperienced actors and unsympathetic characters makes the situation unworkable. Nyssa, a minor character in The Keeper of Traken, began her stint as a take-charge young lady with a tragic past of cosmic proportions. Certainly Davison's favourite, she's also a little priggish and stuck-up. The shrill, highly-strung Tegan was always an anxious traveller, despite her provocative, androgynous new look; and Janet Fielding never seemed to be capable of playing the character dimensions she subsequently complained were missing. Poor Adric's finest hour was his futile attempt to stop the freighter crash. Otherwise he was an awkward, petulant kid , too fey to be a street urchin prodigy. Turlough had nothing to do after rejecting the Black Guardian and Mark Strickson was too successful at making him shifty. Finally, pneumatic Peri was another tremulous nymphet. Incidentally, I can't countenance her adventures alongside Egyptian naif Erimem on audio- a year or more of extra travels completely undercuts the Fifth Docor's sacrifice in Androzani. His heroism lies entirely in giving up this regeneration for a virtual stranger- not someone he's palled about with for umpteen books and audios.
 I  thought Doctor Five worked best with a more mature companion- like Liver Birds Nerys Hughes and Polly James and since this is the Land of Fiction, I've chosen one from Big Finish. Not child-like and piping artificial super-being Abby (nee Amy) from The Key 2 Time; Sixie's dry Mancunian police ally, Patricia Menzies:

Tricia hasn't been invited aboard the Tardis although she asked in The Raincloud Man. It would be refreshing for Doctor Five to have a companion who actually wanted to see all everything that ever was or will be. Also, her no-nonsense manner would be a good foil for his "feckless charm".

Another problem with 80s Who is its focus on other worlds and times at the expense of the present day. Brief glimpses of the Eighties in Time-Flight, Arc of Infinity and The Awakening give absolutely no sense of the real (which, the considerable charisma of Sophie Aldred aside, allowed for the creation of the outlandish cartoon character of Ace). Tricia, as a twenty-first century character, brings all of our post-modern, debt-ridden, celebrity-culture cyncism allied to police procedural experience.
Finally, the tone of Eighties Who is a barrier to me. Supposedly informed by Bidmead's "hard science not fantasy" ethos but actually enthralled by Saward's dreary machismo, it's posturing and bombastic with far too many shiny Cybermen and not enough plotting Daleks. And it tries very hard not be funny, even when it's teeming with air stewards or when John Savident is taking a posset in a wig.

So what I'm proposing, to paraphrase The Quo, is this: Manchester, 2011  and an encounter with DI Menzies. The Fifth Doctor's era seemed poised to explore "the Dark Places of the Inside" before Earthshock's success took it on a four year Greatest Hits tour. So, maybe IMind: a race of killer phone Apps attacking the human psyche?
Then, a big, silly slice of space opera, The Blathereen Curse, the kind of witty, frothy Hitchhiker's Guide entertainment I so disparaged in 1981 and featuring, of course, the orange Raxicoricofallapatorians.
Lastly, Rendition of the Daleks. Something is abducting Daleks out of time and they turn to their greatest enemy for assistance, planning to exterminate him when no longer required...
Thoughts? Comments? Have I perhaps been prescient about future BF plans?

Next time, I want to respond to recent criticism of Gerry Conway's Justice League, expressed in comments on Jim Shooter's blog.

The Catharsis of Spurious Morality: all images are presumed copyright of their respective owners.