228. Recent News
Why haven’t I been writing? Transcriptions. Laziness. Sickness. The usual excuses.

I’m like the most terrible husband this blog could ever have; I come back really late and just barely contribute anything to the household.

In recent news: girl-from-work knows about my bizarre little crush (I use the word “little” with a self-deprecating and depressing sense of irony) on you-know-who (no, not from Harry Po... actually, you know what? Yes, I’m going to pretend it is. Voldemort is sexy. Terrible, yes... but sexy); Steven Moffat has taken over Doctor Who, and bugger me if Lawrence Miles hasn’t made a bit of controversy (and a script, actually, which is rather fun and clever); I’m determined to getting around to doing three new themed-entries, which are WOO: Wondering the Origin Of, Cast of Characters, and 50 (or however many there are) Reasons why Doctor Who is the Best Thing Ever. Yes indeed, I will get around to doing all of them at some stage; I’ve done a load of transcriptions, finally, and yet have three sorta-new ones to do as well which I should finish but won’t, not yet anyway; Jack Bz has posted his most comprehensive and interesting blog yet.

I’m sorta going to talk about that first (and yeah, here, rather than commenting on his blog... mainly because he rose some pertinent points). First off, he refers to me as being one of his best friends or something, meaning he’s a huge faggot.

(Note for the future: this is obviously a joke)

Mr Bz wrote a very fashionable review of the Radiohead album Amnesiac, which I basically agree with. Later though, after I said something about ‘Pyramid Song’ being a deathly and ghostly song – *cuts self off*

229. *Comes Back Later*
Yep, I found something more interesting to do.

Man, I really sound like I hate you now, don’t I?

...and Liam just posted a picture on Ugmo of me in The Matrix. Wurrrrrgghghghg. It’s amazing, and also creepy.

I picked up some new films by the way; The Color Purple, Amadeus (which I’ve seen before), The War of the Worlds (original), Poltergeist, The Wicker Man, Once Upon a Time in China and an anime film by Studio Ghibli called Tales from Earthsea. So that’s two Spielberg films, one with a Spielberg link, and an anime that stars Timothy Dalton and Willem Dafoe, of all people; JB and JC in the same film. Sweet.

(Hmm, I wonder who’ll be able to decipher that?)

I’ve also recently acquired – hang on, I’ll check my downloads folder (yes, more illegality. I’m not sure why I’m even referencing that ironically, considering that everyone does and downloading is so ridiculously widespread that even middle-aged parents do it now*). Okay, Hitchcock-wise, we have Rope and Frenzy (watched the latter), we have Lynch’s Eraserhead, we have My Boy Jack (Carey Mulligan and Daniel Radcliffe. Isn’t that just amazing?), and we have Picnic at Hanging Rock. Come to think of it, that’s three well-regarded 70s films at once.

Okay, so I shouldn’t be thinking about it like that, but that’s how archaic it now feels. Were I to say, “Wow, I downloaded 28 Days Later and I Am Legend yesterday; 2002 and 2007, the same decade, isn’t that amazing?” people would look at me as if I were mad (and as if I wanted to see the same film basically over and over and over). But of course, the further away from a time we get, the larger and vaguer it is. 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, 20s... no-one really says “10s”, so we then get into Victorian, Elizabethan, which is one ruler each... and if we stretch back a fair while, Ancient Rome encompasses a multitude of rulers. Pre-history, we’re talking probably millions of tribal leaders.

*Actually, my mum is apparently going to start using MSN now, thanks to Nina. Be scared. Be incredibly scared.

230. Pre-History Pedantry
Pedant time; why’s it called “pre-history” when we actually date the time of dinosaurs? “350 million years ago...” Obviously I’m taking the cock-definition of “history” to mean “dates”, when dates are – particularly, as I pointed out above – the least important things the further way you get in order to understand history, but... dating is still a part of history, as a study. Surely.

It does amuse me, with all this talk of time, when in the transcriptions I’m listening to, my aunt says that there’s trees found in the Blue Mountains – specifically, the Wollemi pine – that dates back to the time of the dinosaurs, millions of years ago. Maybe I’m being sceptical and cynical, but I couldn’t help but grin at the interviewees’ always semi-interested “oh” reactions. Had my aunt said, “it dates back to Ancient Roman times”, I genuinely think she would’ve gotten a more immediate and awed reaction. Millions of years ago simply isn’t even a context for us.

Oh, maybe that’s why it’s “pre-history”; because no-one truly gives a stuff if it’s misrepresented. It’s almost more a fantasy for us than part of history, despite the science involved behind it. And that’s why, if a historian complains about Rabbit-Proof Fence misrepresenting history, they have a point; if a palaeontologist stood up during a screening of Ice Age and started ranting on about misrepresentation, he’d be met by a fit of sniggers.

(And not just because it’s a kids’ film)

Hmm, I was originally going to use a different series for that semi-joke... a kids’ film series about dinosaurs, an animated one that starred a baby brachiosaur as the main character, from memory. I can’t at all remember what it was. But looking for it, I’ve stumbled upon this:

http://listverse.com/nature/top-10-myths-about-dinosaurs/

Some of them are astonishingly stupid – Myth 7, that the dinosaurs were slow and sluggish, isn’t just weird in itself, it’s weird because we’ve been exposed to numerous fast dinosaurs in films like Jurassic Park over the years, so to not get that at all, you’d have to be really dumb. I mean, said fast dinosaurs in that film are actually called velociraptors, for god’s sake.

...hmm, my spell-check isn’t happy with “velociraptors”, and offers up “velocitators” instead.

But...

Oh wait, found it; The Land Before Time. Finally! I would have also accepted “Doug McClure”.

...thing is, Myth 9 and 10 slightly stumped me. Mainly because... well, every text I’ve seen/read – and yes, I’m referring to “fictional” here, so that extends from Animorphs to Torchwood – has at least declared that pterodactyls are dinosaurs. But even Walking with Dinosaurs... I mean, probably it said at one point that the water-based creatures weren’t dinosaurs, but as a kid I must’ve missed that vital bit of information. They were in the water, and on a show called Walking with Dinosaurs. It’s a bit more clear-cut than Walking with Beasts, don’t you think?

Mind you, it’s pretty much my fault for not working it out before; after all, we don’t actually refer to... oh hang on, according to Wikipedia, my example is void anyway. “There is some debate about whether Homo heidelbergensis or Homo neanderthalensis should in fact be classified as Homo sapiens”. Okay, so I’m presuming that, with that amount of indecisiveness in what is considered a transitionary stage, the same could be true of pterodactyls. So the idea of them being “bird dinosaurs” isn’t totally wrong.

But basically; any time a pterodactyl is referred to in any programme as a dinosaur, it’s effectively wrong. Man, that’s amazing. I’ve been thrown already by that. I mean, it does make sense, ala lions being related to cats but obviously not actually being big cats, but... hmm, I wonder what it must be like for a scientist who cares about these details, seeing them misrepresented all the time. They must go insane.

I’m just waiting for what insane thing like this I’ll be told next; like, being told that dragonflies aren’t insects, or that kd lang isn’t a human being.

(Yep, that’s my cue for a well-timed “oh wait...” right there)

231. Death, and all the little bits beforehand
Oh, OH, yes. Jack Bz. So yes, ‘Pyramid Song’ as a deathly and ghostly song. Well, Bz said that it was always a very happy song for him – okay, not very happy, but happy – and he went on to eloquently explain why. To quote a section from his blog:

“I think the reason why I see it as one of the happiest songs of all time is because, as I mentioned in great deal in a previous blog, death is by far my biggest fear. I believe that once you die, it’s the end; you will never experience any type of thought or emotion ever again. What does this have to do with anything? Well, Pyramid Song, to me, is describing the journey of dying and going to heaven. The line “nothing to fear, nothing to doubt” is exactly what I want, I don’t want to fear death or doubt that I go to heaven, but I do in a significant manner. The song fills me with a sort of emotion that I want but am never going to really feel.”

I don’t actually disagree with him here – though it’s ironic in a way, as it sounds like an atheist reaching out for a hope they disbelieve in. Like Richard Dawkins suddenly lamenting the fact that he can’t reach nirvana.

(Alright, alright, Bz probably isn’t technically an atheist for all I know, and Dawkins is hardly like Bz anyway. It was a cheap joke, leave me alone)

See, juggling with terms... well, Bz’s assertion here is that death is oblivion. Were I to have written that, I would have said that death isn’t my biggest fear, but oblivion is. That just doesn’t refer to the lack of being able to think, which is of course one of the scariest things ever (whether in life or after life), but even down to the fact that I’m, selfishly perhaps, afraid of not being remembered. Okay, everyone is remembered on some level, and the internet means that everyone will be remembered in some minor form (Myspace is more important than people think... and geez, I should stop mentioning it. It’s Myspace, for fuck’s sake), but... history, legacy, all those things I keep bleating about at 20 years old so-I-really-just-shouldn’t. Either way, oblivion after death does scare me hugely (and man, isn’t Bz bloody mature for a 15 year old? I’m arguing with him over terminology, for god’s sake. His philosophy is definitely sound). I don’t mind not being able to affect anything after death, but hell, the world is so interesting that eternity wouldn’t be a problem. The universe would be interesting. My upcoming-when-I-bloody-well-write-it novella ‘These Storeys’ postulates the opposite in a sense (or rather, has a more negative view of eternity), but give me eternity and boredom over oblivion and lack-of-thought any day.

Hmm, this suddenly means that I am on the polar opposite of The Amber Spyglass, to a degree. I should clarify; my personal view of a “heaven”, or my personal hope, would be a place that you could forever watch over the universe from. I don’t want those bloody clouds obscuring my vision, thanks.

(Amberz Spyglass... yep, I’m sinking that low!)

Another thing that interests me; the fact that it’s a happy song for him. I mean, fair enough, that’s Bz’s interpretation, or rather his reaction to what the song is postulating. But considering it’s a song that takes in an Egyptian spiritual feel (without actually being about it at all; it’s interesting how the rowboat imagery is more obviously Greek/River Styx than Egyptian. The Egyptians wanted to be banged up in great pyramids, not float down a river. Thom also refers to Roman armies in ‘You and Whose Army’, with an opening production that reminds me far more of a WWII-era radio, so Amnesiac is really rather strange like that*), that’s bizarre, mainly because the Egyptians were obsessed with death. They were obsessed with death in a sense that they wanted a very good life after death... yet did that by building monuments during their life. This seems like a contradiction in terms, like they were more obsessed with their lives being recognised than their deaths, but being the Egyptians, it isn’t. That’s probably the key difference between them and the Aztecs, ironically enough; the Aztecs were obsessed with life, and with making sure that the sun continued moving across the sky to facilitate life. Both built pyramids, but for different reasons.

Yet there’s an irony in itself; the Aztecs were more into life than death, yet were responsible for at least thousands of sacrifices. The Egyptians were nice enough to just die and let live.

*Come to think of it, Kid A does this too; ‘Idioteque’ refers to bunkers, yet is a song that also appears to be about discotheque. I’ve no idea where this is coming from. Ok Computer is more overtly a sci-fi parable, but Kid A and Amnesiac seem all over the place. Which isn’t a criticism, just a point of interest; I did read once that Thom was sort of out of ideas at the time, so that’d explain it. But hey, it still works for me.

What else can I talk about...? Oh, um, Michael Sandford is going to star in a film with exploding helicopters that chop off his limbs... and he’ll bleed brown water.

That’s right, all of my blog challenges rolled up into ONE SENTENCE.

(Yes, I’m cheating)

Oh, yes, getting back to Bz’s blog; his latest blog refers to his dissatisfaction with art at the moment, how “pure” art (not his word, mind you, mine), in terms of painting and canvas, is far less marketable, and creative control in that area is therefore a certainty, but recognition isn’t. A lot of artists recognised today are collaborators. I feel strongly that art has still progressed and not stagnated, but... today’s painters are directors. It’s basically just the medium that’s changed. And yes, that sounds all well and good, but obviously it’s not entirely a good thing for those who just enjoy painting. And anyway, it takes some of the soul out of things, as the internet inevitably does anyway; Aboriginal web-comics sounds nowhere near as interesting as Aboriginal wall-painting.

232. 12 Reasons Why...
Aaand... I feel like rambling on more, but I’m stumped about what to talk about. I can’t really do WOO on my blog (and yes, I am writing this to blog standards rather than Journal standards. What are you gonna do about that, huh? Huh? I’m a classic wife-beater, seriously). In fact, come to think of it, I can’t “woo” in real life either. But I can make self-deprecating crappy jokes, it seems.

Sorry, wait; I can do WOO, just not at the moment because I’m lost for examples. I’d need a comprehensive list first. It’s Cast of Characters that I can’t do. Anyway, half of that would have to be... er... fairly private. If only because people could take things the wrong way. No, honest. I won’t go out of my way to be offensive or anything.

That leaves... the Doctor Who thing! Well, you asked for it (actually, you didn’t, but I am your male – yes, note that word – lord and master*).

Oh yeah, I started up a new blog, Not-Tds4a, and got rid of Tds4a Tardis. There’s an irony for you, since I’m about to talk about this Doctor Who thing.

SO; in no particular order, just as they come to me:

233. The Core Concept
It’s pretty given, really, but it’s never really extrapolated on enough. The Doctor often says that the TARDIS travels in “space and time”, but that still – and here’s the “unfathomable” thing I was referring to previously with “prehistory” – doesn’t quite sell it. The TARDIS is the box that can do anything... and in that sense, Doctor Who is the show that can do anything. Want an episode set in Ancient Rome that’s a slapstick comedy? Want a Wild Western spoof narrated by a ballad? Want a story set on a planet of leisure that had a war that lasted about 20 minutes? Want a story where the main characters are shrunk like in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but without needing to endure the one-note Rick Moranis? Want a story where the world is destroyed? Want a story set in a featureless void? Doctor Who has done ‘em all, and it’s covering new ground all the time. The thing I dislike most about the occasional off Doctor Who episodes is said episode’s inability to come up with anything new/fresh/interesting, and it’s always true that Doctor Who, regardless of occasionally slowing down, is always better at this than any other show on the planet.

(I’m being harsh actually; Rick Moranis is fun to laugh at, but he’s hardly the most versatile of actors)

Why is change good? Well, I’ve rabbited on about this before, so you can just find me talking about that and, you know, read it. Find something, anyway. I’ve covered this ground before, so naturally I don’t feel like doing it again. That’s right, because of change. *smiles*

234. The Doctor
The Doctor is one of the greatest fictional characters ever, and I mean that honestly. He’s iconic, yet only in the sense that each regeneration is iconic. For a different example, Sherlock Holmes is iconic, but were you to do a televisual adaptation of the character, you’d have to stick pretty closely to the ideal. Now, there is such a thing as “Doctorish”, a standard/convention which centres around an eccentric fop in Victorian clothes... yet that’s been riffed upon so differently every single time that, well... although appreciating the differences in different Bonds is fine, doing so in different Doctors is just like nothing else. Each Doctor is just so radically different; the idea of regeneration, of the Doctor changing his face, his body, his speech patterns, and his entire persona, when he dies and is reborn, just means anything is possible.

He’s also a mystery. The name Doctor Who sounds silly to some, but it’s essentially the main driving point of the series. The Doctor saves planets and peoples, and we know that he does it, but we don’t know why he does it. And in itself, that’s the best thing about him. If we were to know, not only would it spoil the mystery, but it would also show up his morality as being linked to a certain event in his life. Which is cloying. Give me a hero that’s heroic because he simply sees it’s the right thing to do, thanks. And I don’t care how lame that may sound.

So you’ve got the most interchangeable fictional character ever in the most versatile spaceship ever. This is a guy that’s a pacifist, yet one who resorts to guns. And yes, a lot of characters do that, but rarely as interestingly.

And yep, this guy travels around in...

235. The TARDIS
It can travel anywhere in space and time, so as I said, endless ideas for stories. Furthermore, its outer dimensions are a big part of it too. For a start, talking in the real world for a moment, its police box imagery is just so iconic, that changing it... well, it’d be interesting, but it wouldn’t have a point. For a start, the appeal is that it looks so bizarre, that it looks so distinctive, and yet is a box that can fit in just about any place (something most spaceships can’t do; I’ve written Doctor Who fanfiction and later tried to convert it into something else, and realised that the TARDIS is the biggest problem in that since it’s so simply small). But more importantly, whilst the outer image is iconic, the real reason why it shouldn’t be changed is that there’s no need to. The TARDIS exterior is a door, it’s a suggestion. It’s what’s inside that’s fascinating.

Bigger on the inside, most definitely. This is true of the series as a whole (which I’ll get to in a moment), and it’s true of the Doctor – who has immeasurable amounts of surprises and variations in his body structure, not to mention his fascinating backstory/lack thereof – but it’s most true of the TARDIS. Generally speaking, a Doctor Who story – particularly on TV – will only show off the console room. We’ve only really seen one other room in the New Series so far, the wardrobe room. But here’s the truth; it’s endless. We don’t know exactly how the TARDIS functions, exactly how it fits its interior into its exterior and the link between them, but again, the mystery is what sustains it. It doesn’t matter, because the idea is fascinating. And when the series does use the TARDIS, it becomes perhaps the most fascinating and interesting thing in it. It’s not just impossible, it’s not just mysterious, it’s alive, and it’s endless.

So. Sturdy foundations. The series that can do anything, the series that will attempt everything. So every story is some killer awesomely realised bit of production, right?

236. The Production
Well... no. Guaranteed, apart from “the companions were useless screamers”, the general criticism you’ll hear of Doctor Who – in fact, it’s not so much a criticism as a sneer-fest – is that it had terrible effects (you’ll also hear it had wobbly walls, which is actually untrue, for the record!). And yep, that’s very true, it did. And even today, the New Series, for all its CGI-mongering, can hardly stand up to a lot of sci-fis out there now.

That’s never been the issue, though. Doctor Who was started as an educational programme anyway (I’ll get to that in a bit), and whilst that’s obviously changed over the years, the budget has remained basically on par – which is to say, it’s never been enough. You’ll always hear complaints about it from the production team. Yet, whilst a little bit of money might have been nice... no. It’s not the quality of the piece that matters. It’s the competence.

And this is why the series still matters, why it’s still going; because it’s always been the quality of the drama, the quality of the scripts, and the quality of the ideas. I’m not against things looking good, but as a concept, “looking good” is one of the fastest things to date (huh, that’s a bit of a double-meaning there...). I mean, you could argue that 2001’s ending sequence, with the many light flashes and surrealism, is actually fairly dated now, and looks rather crap. You know what? It probably does. And you know what? That doesn’t matter. It’s the context of the image rather than the image itself that counts; television is obviously a visual medium, but you can’t disregard sound. Even when sound wasn’t an option, film used text, so the visual component is never the biggest point.

And if we do go down the path of visuals mattering... they only ever matter in terms of direction, and that’s why, even if the ending sequence of 2001 doesn’t look brilliant, or James Stewart’s dream in Vertigo looks hugely dated (and, curiously, a bit like the Doctor Who titles), it doesn’t matter because the direction is selling the story in an excellent way. Narrative is important in film, and imagery is connected to that, but imagery isn’t quality of image, it’s meaning of image, or context of image. For a rather bizarre example; pretend you’ve never seen it before, and watch the last scene of Life of Brian without sound. In fact, don’t even watch it, just pause on a shot of them on crosses. A bit disturbing, isn’t it? But of course, the whole filmic experience is what makes that scene work, comically as it happens.

So basically... if there’s ever any grounds to criticise Doctor Who in its visuals, it’s only ever for direction. Not for quality. And here’s the thing; even when they failed, they failed enthusiastically. They still tried for it. They accepted all of these crazily ambitious scripts and just went for it, and to hell with it if it doesn’t look “professional” or like “high art”. To hell with it if pretentious arty types look down on it, or mainstream like-totally-ironic sneerers look down on it. Indeed, that may have been the reason why Doctor Who goes for ideas more than anything else; the production team knew the budget was crappy, and so knew that they couldn’t rely on it. Simple.

237. It’s for the Family
Doctor Who is often wrongly accused of being a kids’ programme, which it completely isn’t. Famously, it’s sent kids scurrying “behind the sofa” in fear at the monsters, which is a bit of an urban legend to be honest. It is resolutely a family programme; it cuts back on swearing and gore and such, quite obviously (or at least, the TV series does, and I’ll get back to this in a sec), but it doesn’t shy away from dealing with, or even just simply presenting, how things are. Ergo, the New Series has many instances of homosexual relationships, but of course the restriction is that they aren’t investigated in sexual terms. But then... neither are heterosexual relationships! Similarly, in stories such as ‘Kinda’, mental illness is very much a theme that’s touched upon, but it never gets too real to scare kids shiteless. In other words, there’s stuff in there for the adults too.

Yet I wouldn’t put down the “kids” element so quickly, either. The kids are usually referred to as being purely scared by Doctor Who, and though that’s obviously a part of it, it’s hardly the only thing. A kids’ show... it’s hard to say this without looking like an idiot, but the childish involvement in the audience actually makes the series even better. To cast our line out to something else again for a bit, look at the 70s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film. It’s resolutely a kids’ film, and yet... adults love it (possibly because it’s based on an already existing book that they grew up with, but we won’t go there). And in fact, the scene where the kids travel on the boat has made its way onto online scariest-scenes lists, along with scenes from films like The Exorcist and The Shining. Yes, honestly! So get any prejudice you may have had about “kids’ stuff” out of the way; this is a breed of kids’ stuff that doesn’t talk down to kids at all, that encourages them to think.

And in a way, that’s what makes this so special; it’s a show that encourages thinking, that encourages imagination. Dare I say it, but a lot of adult programmes... don’t. Oh, a show that incorporates psychology generally will – Cracker or Wire in the Blood, for instance – but a lot of “adult” shows now revolve around relationships and nothing else. I don’t just mean relationships in the sense of “someone loves someone else”, I also just mean social interaction. You know, saying “hi” to your boss and stuff. And whilst investigating that can be fascinating, in an off-kilter documentary-style psychological way... it can’t be every single day. So a series set in an office – yes, in case you were wondering, even a comedy! – is going to be restricted right from the off. We like to think that adults have more freedom, and yet, barring obvious censorship, we actually lose out. The kids get the more imaginative, the more thought-provoking, the more... well, the stuff that tries the hardest. In a sense, the moment when you can legitimately see an M15+ isn’t amazingly free, it’s depressingly incorporating. You’re suddenly a part of society, whereas as a kid you were so free.

That’s where the imagination of the show comes from. The kids are in mind. And kids are smarter than people often think, so having bits that would normally constitute “adult” – such as, yes, mental illness – isn’t a problem. It’s not lying to children, but furthermore, it’s also presenting them with something that isn’t our world, that isn’t the dull and the mundane. It’s escapism and imagination in its essence.

And here’s an irony; when the series went off air in 1989, spinoff books that were aimed at an older fanbase began. And although it’s fair to say the series “grew up” then... it’s also fair to say that there were books that were just “adult” for the sake of it. Stories that just include rape for no real reason whatsoever, or swear all the time for the hell of it. And it’s being in love with a family show that starts that in the first place.

238. Diversity
Before, I touched upon the fact that the format of the show is infinite, that anything can happen. Linked into this is the fact that, story-by-story, there’s always something different, something to get your teeth into that may not have been there in the previous story. It’s a diversity that means the show has many different tones, many different feels, many different extrapolations. I can’t stress this enough, so I had to make it a separate point.

And yet, ironically...

239. Eras
...you can divide the show up into “eras”. Not definitively, because there’ll always be oddballs in each season. But it’s fair to say that, for instance, Seasons 13 and 14 are the gothic horror seasons, and Season 18 is the science-based season, and Season 17 is the comedy season, and Seasons 19-21 are the fathomable-Doctor seasons, and Season 2 is the “bigger and better” (that’s down to personal opinion, of course) season.

This isn’t a bad thing either. It means that you can find a particular tone that, as a fan, you can enjoy more than others, one that appeals to you hugely. Want mystery galore? Check out Seasons 25 and 26! Want a bleak and depressing universe? Hey, there’s Season 21! Oh, want a laugh, but a clever laugh, instead? Seasons 16 and 17 are right up your alley! So while story-by-story the content, setting and ideas are different, the tone is quite consistent. This is excellent in itself, because it means that each era has a separate vision.

Were this not the case... well, imagine Season 1, back in 1963-4, doing absolutely everything; having a story set in a void, having a story that had the Doctor lose in a depressing universe, had a jokey and silly story where the Doctor blows into the monster’s penis (okay, this doesn’t actually happen in a story, but the innuendo is very funny)... okay, the original 60s series were quite diverse, but not that diverse. Were that to happen... well, there’d be no point in watching them, because the 80s series would be the same, but with better effects. Come to think of it, there probably wouldn’t even be an 80s series; it would have sunk in the water.

And that’s the thing; it’s diverse, but there’s a vision that drives where the series is going, always. There are many different paths that the series has gone down, but the fact is that there are paths to begin with.

240. Historical Perspective
This is less to do with the show itself, and more to do with its place in history. I don’t even mean its importance, though that’s interesting in itself (particularly at how wrong the public usually are about how the series was pre-2005, but never mind, let them suffer in their ignorance); I mean the fact that it, very simply, spans the early 60s – 1963, to be precise – until today. This means you can, quite effectively, look at cultural impacts of the time. You can note how the series changed after the release of Star Wars in 1977, and how direction became the most important thing in the 80s; you can note how the first episode was screened on the day that JFK was shot, and knowing that the public wouldn’t have paid it any attention, the BBC screened it again later (something which wouldn’t happen now); you can note how the Daleks, creatures that are conceptually Nazis-on-wheels at heart, captured the minds of 60s Britain, a country still struggling its way back into importance post-WWII (and how WWII itself never actually appeared in a genuine form in the show until twenty years later). And even noting how the BBC itself worked; from the 60s, as a sci-fi embracing (well, sorta), educational powerhouse with nonetheless restricted class values in its acting (i.e. the actors all had very posh voices), to the late 80s, where it was much more socially real, but the flipside is that the BBC hated sci-fi and were determined to run Doctor Who into the ground.

Oh; and a bit more about its importance. Did you know that the theme tune was actually a little bit of inspiration for the Beatles? Yep, after electronically realising the theme in such a startlingly original way (there was nothing else like it on TV at the time) at the BBC, Delia Derbyshire was visited by a very-impressed bunch of Beatles. I’m not going to claim that Doctor Who was responsible for their experimentation with electronics, mainly cos that’s a big claim that’s rather arrogant, but the link is there, and that’s fascinating in itself.

241. The Wilderness Years
That’s the term given to the years when Doctor Who was off-air – 1989 to 2005, barring a 1996 TV movie – and for a lot of people, particularly the non-obsessed public, it ceased to exist. Which is why they’re called the wilderness years. Years of nothing.

Wrong.

I already referred to the series growing up during this period through the books, and here’s the thing; though many other series have tie-in books that can be regarded as spinoffs (Buffy, The X-Files, Star Wars, etc, etc), Doctor Who is, to my knowledge, the only series where some fans (the ones who give a shit) will lump the “spinoffs” in as being as official and as important as the TV series. Naturally the TV series is Doctor Who’s original and medium, but due to the format, stretching out to the other mediums – comics, books, audio plays – is really just a natural move. And thus it can all be part of the same freakin’ thing, part of the one big giant story about this guy called the Doctor and the universe he roams in. Thousands of stories. Millions of ideas.

A lot of these productions are genuinely excellent, some of the most cracking things I’ve ever read/heard... and then there are the genuine spinoffs.

242. Spinoffs
In this case, the term refers to, “things set in the Doctor Who universe which don’t really feature the Doctor”. Where he’s not the main character, basically. This extends to Professor Bernice Summerfield, Dalek Empire, Sarah Jane Smith, I, Davros, UNIT... in fact, Big Finish productions, who do the audios, have done a lot of quality spinoffs.

Oh, and then on TV there’s the Sarah Jane Adventures... which has always actually felt like a kiddy show in the negative sense of the word (“dumbed down”, basically); a Doctor Who-lite.

But the two most important/amazing spinoffs, in my opinion, are:

Torchwood. Or, “The Crap One”. Really, this series is given a plethora of shtick, and to be fair some of the criticisms stick. Yup, it can be pretty melodramatic... though actually, that’s not really a bad thing (and it’s never epic in the sense that the New Series can be, which is potentially worse). And yep, it can be gratuitous... though even those bits are exaggerated. For some, Torchwood is just that-show-where-aliens-cop-off-with-humans.

This is bullshit. For a start, the one episode where this happened frequently – the one that everyone thinks of – actually made that thematically relevant. So yes, it’s not the nicest of things, and its placement in the first series was obviously there to shock and make a statement (but then, so was A Clockwork Orange, wasn’t it...?), but it works on its own terms. I’m much more concerned about faux-lesbianism that’s brought into it to up the ratings; for instance, I’m far more offended by The OC than Torchwood. Yup, honestly! The OC introduced a lesbian plotline for the ratings, let’s be honest; the character and the show threw it away once it had got those. Simple. And also crap.

Back to Torchwood (thank god); it’s a series that’s obviously nowhere near as diverse as Doctor Who, because it’s set in Cardiff and is about people fighting aliens... and yet, even that is a lie. They don’t actually fight aliens week-in, week-out. There’s episodes with just an alien bit of equipment that brings people back to life, or makes them feel emotions/see the future/past; there’s an episode that deals with a character’s death, and another that does that in an entirely different way; oh, I don’t know, I don’t want to spoil it. Just watch it with an open mind and you’ll see what I mean.

And anyway, the cast is superb. Gotta love Burn Gorman.

And the best spinoff, meanwhile, is:

Faction Paradox. Lawrence Miles, the creator of Faction Paradox, gets a lot of shtick these days for being open, vocal and frank about Doctor Who as of late and certain people he works with, but that doesn’t impact a jot on Faction Paradox. It’s a series that is endlessly fascinating. I can’t even really explain it succinctly, apart from to say it’s about a time-space war between two opposing forces, with Faction Paradox caught in between. The war is the backdrop. The stories are whatever the authors want them to be. And with an excellent run of books, and an excellent run of audios too, it’s a bit of niche, cult entertainment that’s nonetheless brilliant.

And Miles himself really is a fantastic writer. ‘This Town Will Never Let Us Go’ is still one of the best things I’ve ever read.

243. Dark/Light
The series is about death. It’s also about life.

Yup! That sounds like a contradiction in terms – though, not so much, now that I’ve blabbed on just before about Egyptians and Aztecs for a bit – but yeah, basically, it isn’t. It is a series that investigates life and death with equal aplomb, that holds life in high regard yet kills off many of its characters. It doesn’t bullshit around, and yet it reaches for a higher, more peaceful ideal. This makes it both tragic, and ultimately humanistic and very-much wholesome. I read Mike Morris (a fan and reviewer of Doctor Who) say once that he derived his morality from Doctor Who, and I can fully understand this. It’s not like a religion or anything, don’t get me wrong; it’s not a new set of Jedi Knights. It’s just an outlook on life.

And the dark/light divide ties into that. “Dark” is the order of the day for a lot of things now. This is probably very ironic, because when Doctor Who first began it was in black-and-white (which is in itself fascinating to watch; Doctor Who helped me fall in love with black-and-white, I kid you not), and yet dark is the order of the day now. And yet... this is a series that knows that light and dark can be the same thing. It’s the series that knows that love isn’t just a wonderful thing, it’s something that can tear you apart. And it’s the series that knows that villains don’t just kill people, they could even listen to pop music.

That sounds insane, but that’s part of it; it’s both light and dark at the same time, often in a completely original and weird way. At its best, the tone of Doctor Who is like nothing else. This comes from the family programming aspect too, but yes, also from the light/dark merge.

244. Fandom
Such is the differences in the series itself, that fandom is full of different factions. You’ll have the 70s fans, and the New Series fans; the squeers and the behind-the-sofa-s and all manner of things...

...and then you’ll have the fans who embrace it all, who criticise episodes in terms of individual quality, not in terms of “Is it like that period of the show I liked as a kid?” or “Does it have lots of moments where the Doctor and Rose are all lovey-dovey?”. I’m willing to admit that there’s definitely members of fandom who get on my nerves and conform to every nerd stereotype ever... and yet there’s many that just don’t.

And there’s some... some utterly, utterly brilliant ones... who are the most amazing people on the planet. There’s a website called the Doctor Who Ratings Guide, and it’s got these blokes called Finn Clark, Joe Ford, Rob Matthews, Mike Morris – and Robert Smith? and Terrance Keenan and Graham Pilato and heaps more, to be honest – and they’re fantastic. In fact, those four, I’ve compiled Word documents just full of their reviews, because I adore them. They stop becoming reviews and start becoming discussions in general. It’s bloody fascinating stuff.

And then there’s Lawrence Miles. Controversial and insane... but always fascinating, whether he’s right or wrong. The worst you can do is find him objectionable, and that’s not really just nothing on his quality as a writer and commentator on the series. Seriously, this blog is based on Lawrence Miles. In a lot of ways, he is just my hero. And that is probably going to disturb a hell of a lot of people, ahaha.

...I can’t really think of anything else at the moment, and I’m sure I’ll have missed something vital. But then again, that’s probably enough, isn’t it? If you aren’t already interested on some level, then you’re a total toss – er I mean, you just won’t be. Ever. :)

So this is me, ending this blog in a clunky way.

*Should I stop talking of my blog/Journal as being my wife? Yes? No? Vote now.

245. *Ruins It*
The second Calum is an imp, and again I’m responsible. Sorry dudes (wonder how long it’ll take you to see this, though? There’s a point – if you see this, but not everyone else knows, it’d be fun seeing how long they take to find out. Or... maybe not).