Over the last couple of decades, I've listened habitually to DW on audio ( in the bath) on Christmas Day. In true Whovian completist style, here's a list of those discs
1999 Whispers of Terror
2000 The Mutant Phase
2001 The One Doctor
2002 Real Time
2003 Shada (8th Doctor internet version)
2004 The Next Life (possibly)
2005 Other Lives
2006 No idea!
2007 The Girl Who Never Was
2008 Return to the Web Planet (possibly)
2009 The Nightmare Fair
2010 Broke with tradition!
2011 The Four Doctors
2012 Dark Eyes 1
2013 The Five Companions
2014 Dark Eyes 3
2015 Only The Monstrous ( War Doctor)
2016 Original Sin
2017 Doctor Who Audio Annual
After Hogmanay, perhaps, I'll blog about Marvel annuals of the 70s- which has become something of a tradition- and about the aforesaid Audio Annual.
But today's post is a look at the exit of Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor after what feels like a very brief four years.
The last- I presume- of the original audio readings Rhythm of Destruction by Darren Jones is a comic strip style story, in the vein of Jonathan Morris, Russell T. Davies and Douglas Adams.
The Blitzats Jazz Quartet are also a group of assassins who specialise in planetary destruction. This is a jaunty, slightly surreal adventure read by Dan ( Strax) Starkey. His reading of the Twelfth Doctor has touches of Billy Connolly and he gives various aliens Dutch, Afrikaans and Scouse accents. It's an entertaining listen.
It's seven years to the day since I congratulated a weary-looking Steven Moffat on his first DW Christmas special, outside the Glasgow Film Theatre. Since then, I felt these annual television dates were somehow less effective. I was very frustrated by the lunacy of Matt Smith, especially in his second series.
I think Moffat tried to create a contrast to Matt Smith with an austere, sometimes cruel Twelfth Doctor. I'd suggest that, along with the ghastly "don't burn me"/ Cyber-graves plot, this was quite a misstep. But in time, I grew to love the fervent and furious Capaldi Doctor. The actor's vulnerability and subtle intelligence informed the character and finding kindness important after his initial chilly personality was very touching and necessary. We're living in a very uncertain time, where alarming right-wing sentiments are normalised. Social Media has certainly enabled me to be unkind to total strangers, which as Mark Waid said on Twitter the other day, is not how your family would want to see you.
So, as we all say in 2017, Twice Upon a Time was quite self-indulgent; a valediction for Capaldi, Moffat, Murray Gold and the wondrous Pearl Mackie, who made me want Bill to be the Twelfth Doctor's pal from his very first appearance. But if you can't be self-indulgent at Xmas, when can you be?
The regenerations of the first and the current Doctors were suspended, like the falling snow and the episode felt meandering to me. There were no bad guys aside from a nod to the Doctor's oldest, most defining foe; a left-field revival for Rusty the Dalek. Guest star Mark Gattis was quite restrained in his Siegfied Sassoon turn and he just had to be the Brig's grandfather- nothing else would do.
The recast Ben and Pol were barely seen but this was just as well, given how good Anneke Wills and Elliot Chapman are on audio. David Bradley, however ,was more convincing than Richard Hurndall in 1983's The Five Doctors. But the jokes about the first Doctor's perceived sexism fell flat because they were basically inaccurate.
A lengthy goodbye for the Doctor has become a tradition since David Tennant in January 2010. Capaldi's Doctor has been prone to speechifying but the rather beautiful observation about only children being able to hear the Doctor's name and a paraphrase of Bertrand Russell redeemed this trait. Clara's return was quite sweet although it sounded like the Doctor had erased his memories of her himself. But Moffat never could say goodbye to his darlings and while his Twelfth Doctor could be morbid, the writer is just as schmaltzy as RTD in his own way. An episode about death and humanity ended on a chaotic note after a moment of sheer delight with the first ever female Doctor.
I can't wait until Autumn 2018 to see the escapades of the Thirteenth Doctor. Just before Eccleston's Doctor made his debut, Who author Paul Cornell wrote "This is the time of big shapes moving across the face of the earth" and children "waiting for an ancient magical being to move through their house". Doctor Who makes excited children of us all.
Coming soon: Gil Kane, Moses Magnum and Dracula
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