We celebrated your twentieth birthday in advance at Longleat, Who and I, with me watching The Dominators in a tent and queueing for a couple of hours for Janet Fielding's autograph. It wasn't exactly an intimate party- there were reputedly 120,000 other guests. Just imagine.
I missed your thirtieth birthday because I was playing Friar Laurence in the last performance of New Stage Theatre Company's Romeo and Juliet in Watermans Arts Centre in Brentford. The glamour of it all! Even though I missed the original transmission, Thirty Years in The Tardis was one of my favourite videos in the late Nineties.
For your fortieth birthday, you got a regeneration and a webcast animation, Scream of the Shalka, just to show that you could move with the times. You were played by Richard E. Grant, the etiolated and acidic actor who'd been your "Lick-the-Mirror-Handsome" incarnation in The Curse of Fatal Death charity spoof. There was a neatness about the casting as one star of "Withnail and I" had succeeded the other.
And make no mistake, this was the honest-to-Borusa Ninth Doctor. BBCI announced him as such: the webcast was even trailed on tv. BBC Books consolidated his authenticity, implying in Sometime Never... that the tragedy that haunted the new Doctor was the death of his adoptive daughter, Miranda.
I am inexplicably fond of the Shalka Doctor. I read Paul Cornell's adaptation of his own story again last week, for the fourth or fifth time. It's almost like The Last Target Novelisation. There is some rather overwrought imagery, and Cornell's Noughties update of the UNIT era is derivative, but this Doctor was stylish and hilarious:
Shalka Prime: What are you?
Ninth Doctor: No. It's how are you. And how are you?
The most controversial element of the plot might be the asthmatic and bibulous Doctor's companion: an android version of the Master, played with silky politesse by Derek Jacobi. Trivia Question: has any other actor played different incarnations of the same Time Lord in two different media?
The Ninth Doctor was also joined by barmaid and student Alison Cheney, played by Sophie Okenedo ( the bloody Queen, mate!). Alison prefigures both Rose and Martha, as an empathetic young woman from a recognisable and contemporary Britain. She's also the first companion of colour, if we can't include Sharon from Doctor Who Weekly.
Of course, with the announcement of Cardiff Who, this Ninth Doctor immediately lost his canonical status. Aside from a cameo in The Tomorrow Windows, he made one final appearance in a short story called The Feast of the Stone, on the BBC Cult website. The story appears in the "Vampire" section and it homages Nigel Kneale's "The Stone Tape.". Feast also gives some insight into the characters of Alison and the Doctor and hints at a fractious relationship with the android Master.
The BBFC cleared all six episodes for release on dvd so maybe Shalka could finally be reassessed as part of
the Fiftieth Anniversary.
Thirty years ago, as part of the repeat season The Five Faces of Doctor Who, The Three Doctors was broadcast Mon 23 - Thu 26 November 1981. I finally bought it on VHS when WH Smith brought out a box set in 2002, entitled The Time Lord Collection ( with The War Games and The Deadly Assassin.). A special edition dvd is coming out next year, between the 48th and 49th anniversaries. Timing is everything...
In tribute to Five Faces, I've been reviewing Dr. Who audios all month on Place. Big Finish productions all too often suffer from Sequelitis, however. The plays have revived the following: The Ice Warriors ( too many times), The Silurians, The Zarbi, The Mechanoids, The Krotons, Omega, Davros, Morbius, The Meddling Monk, The Tractators, The Nimon, The Wirrn, the Metebelis Spiders, Peladon and the Key To Time. I'm sure I've forgotten some. Wouldn't it be a good idea to develop some more original creations too?
Many of these homages have taken place during Nicholas Briggs' watch. Last year, the BF Supremo also wrote Robophobia, a sequel to The Robots of Death and it stars Doctor Number Seven, Sylvester McCoy. Until I undertook a marathon review of every tv Dr. Who episode whether on tape, dvd or cd, Seven was my least favourite Doctor: a Mack Sennet clown in sickly, kiddie fare at the fag end of the 80s. I was unemployed and living in a basement in Hyndland in those days and I missed as many episodes as I saw on transmission.
But in middle age, I found scope, invention and warmth in those stories to which I'd been oblivious. I still don't think McCoy reads well on audio- he sounds lacking in fluency - but he employs intimacy and menace very effectively these days. Robophobia has, I feel, a rather predictable twist but it's the dialogue that took me right out of the story. When one of the victims calls surrogate companion Liv "girlfriend", like a camp Big Brother contestant, I couldn't believe this was the same aristocratic, decadent world from 1977. Dan Starkey, who played the Sonataran nurse in A Good Man Goes to War, is also cast in this play. His use of the Classic Who standby, the Mummerset accent, grated on my patience.I always think of Captain Haddock when I hear commentary host and raconteur Toby Hadoke's name. However, there was nothing fishy about his perform--- yes, maybe not. Anyway, he was probably the most convincing actor in the production.
It wasn't as silly and hokey as last week's Lost Story Mission to Magnus but Briggs has to realise that nostalgia alone won't carry a play. Five out of Ten Talmars.
For Silver and Bronze age comics enthusiasts, one of my very favourite childhood comics was Marvel Superheroes 26, May 1970, reprinting my absolute favourite Lee/Kirby X-Men story. I'm pretty sure it came from East Kilbride and it was contemporary with Barry Smith's Starr the Slayer, the debut of Arkon and the FF/Moon Landing story. It also includes my first sighting of the Blob and the Toad. So, I bought another copy on ebay.
The Xavier subplot, in which he abandons the X-men for a secret mission, a couple of issues after "losing" his powers, reminds me of the multiple attempts to find a direction for the Hulk in his early issues. Speaking of which, there's another Ditko episode which ends on a wonderful cliffhanger as Banner and Talbot plummet into an abyss! Finally, there's a beautiful Wally Wood Daredevil story. Not only did I encounter the Eel and Mr. Fear for the first time, there are also cameos in the wax museum for the Owl, Rama-Tut, the Beetle, Molecule Man, the Hate-Monger, Diablo, the Cobra, the Super-Skrull, the villainous Black Knight and Mr. Doll!
Mysteriously, this blog appeared to have been deleted at the beginning of the week. Subsequently, I quickly put together a new one and I'll have some more posts on Bronze age goodness at http://materioptikon.wordpress.com/
Finally, this month's posts seem to have taken on a melancholy hue: my dad, John Clark, died of heart disease twenty years ago last week, aged sixty-four. I was working in a temp clerical job at the absurdly officious Census Office in Hillington while attempting to direct a non-professional production of Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind" at the former Glasgow Arts Centre. In those pre-interenet, pre-mobile days, my flatmate Neil had to come to the rehearsal to break the news to me. I'm sorry he was put in that position. I also regret that my dad never saw me enter a "proper" profession. I'm not sure how he'd react to the upcoming industrial action, however.
It's absolutely true that you become your father in time. I despise the Labour party now; I think Mark McManus was brilliant in "Taggart"; and I just bought a book from Reader's Digest.
Next: President Babs of the World Federation of Womanhood
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I've got that issue of Marvel Super-Heroes too. Regarding Big Finish, don't you think their CDs are over-produced? I bought the Dalek ones and fall asleep whenever I try to listen to them. They're just far too 'busy' with background noise everywhere - beeps, hums, hisses, buzzes, clicks, pops, music, etc. It's as if they're over-compensating for lack of visuals. I'm sure if one listened to the soundtrack only of an episode of Dr Who (or just about any SF programmme or movie), it would be less over the top with sound. I prefer the more 'natural' sound of a BBC Radio Four play, where background noise is more subtle, and creates a picture in the mind's eye even more effectively than throwing in every sound effect at their disposal.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't mind me saying, too much information in your post to remember and address. If you'd made this two, shorter posts, I could have commented on each salient point. Honest, Dougie - you'd probably get more comments if your posts were shorter and confined to one subject at a time. Type them out at the same time if you must - but keep one in draft form for a later date.
I thought this one was pretty concise! I shall see if I can make the next two or three a shade shorter.Have you ever visited the Tardis Eruditorum blog though? I couldn't get my head round the Pertwee/ William Blake post.
ReplyDeleteAs for BF it's not the production so much as the mass production! Even though I enjoy some of them, there are so many that they tend to bottom out into blandness. Maybe they should scale back to half-a-dozen effective, original plays rather than trying to realise every untelevised script ever submitted.
I haven't visited the Tardis blog - don't think I will. I find that, on your blog, as I read down, I'll be thinking of a comment to make in response to something you've said, then it's on to another subject. By the time I get to the end, I've forgotten most of what I wanted to say. Well-written, thoughtful, and insightful indeed, but just too many topics. I prefer them to be self-contained, whereas you go for the three-in-one (at least) approach. I'm sure that's why such articulately expressed posts aren't getting the comments they deserve. Brilliant blog 'though.
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