Some thoughts on Doctor Who

Since I deliberately don't have much going on musically at the moment (it's nice to take a break sometimes), my thoughts turn to Doctor Who, only because we've been watching a lot of the classic series recently. And by Doctor Who I mean New Who of course.

I started watching the programme in 1973 when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor (series 10 for those who don't want to know) and pretty much saw all the episodes up to 1989 when the original run finished. After that of course was the long darkness until the series came back in 2005.

That's not true, of course. There was the dreadful 30th anniversary special which mingled with Eastenders. If you've not seen it you're not missing much. Then Paul McGann was the Doctor in the 1996 TV movie. It wasn't great but it wasn't a disaster either. McGann was charming as the Doctor.

During this period Virgin Publishing brought out its range of Doctor Who books from 1991 to 1997 called The New Adventures. All in all they published 61 books from established writers of the TV series and new authors. I must admit I've read very few of them but apparently they were a continuation of the TV series.

In 1997 BBC Books took over the book series launching two series, The Eight Doctor series and the Past Doctor series (featuring Doctors 1 to 7). When the show came back on TV they stopped those two series of books and now only publish books with the concurrent Doctor.

In 1999 Big Finish started producing their audio range featuring the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Doctors (and more recently the 4th and 10th Doctors) and original companions. I've listened to quite a few of these and many are excellent. Being audio they can be more epic since the costs aren't there. I'd highly recommend them (some of them are on Soundcloud and Spotify). They did wonders for the 6th Doctor.

Then in 2004 the BBC announced they were bringing the Doctor back with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor. Hurrah went all the fans. Russell T Davies was the main writer and executive producer and was also a big Doctor Who fan - he'd written a novel for the Virgin range of books called Damaged Goods.

And here we are fourteen years later with a new Doctor arriving in Autumn. The new version started strong but started going down hill in quality of scripts, with a few exceptions, pretty quickly (it's only my opinion of course. There are some who think it's all great, and fair play to them).

The big problem I have with New Who is forty-five minutes isn't enough time to tell a typical Doctor Who story. I swear the people writing for it, many of them having grown up as fans of the classic era, are still writing, in their heads, four-part adventures and then realising they only have forty-five minutes to actually tell the story. So we end up with a convoluted plot, a rushed denouement and plot strands left lazily flapping around in the breeze (I'm looking at you Moffat).

I do have several problems with the new show, to be honest.

The sonic screwdriver - get rid of it. It's become the magic wand to fix all problems (also known as lazy writing). In the classic series the 1st Doctor didn't have it. It was first introduced in the adventure Fury from the Deep in 1968. For the next fourteen years it was barely used until John Nathan-Turner decided to get rid of it in the 1982 adventure The Visitation because he felt it was limiting to the writing. In the 2005 incarnation of the show the bloody thing can do everything (except open wooden doors) and we recently had sonic sunglasses, for fuck's sake. Writers have become to reliant on the Doctor waving it around instead of actually having to think his way out of the problem.

The Doctor is not the most important being in the universe. During the Tennant era and especially in the Smith era the Doctor became the single most important being in all of time and space. In the classic era there were beings in the universe far more powerful than the Doctor and the Timelords - you had the Eternals and the Guardians for instance. The whole thing became ridiculous in the extreme and very tiresome.

If it's not the Doctor being Important then it's the companions. Rose was Bad Wolf (I still can't remember what that actually meant in the end). Clara was the Impossible Girl who rescued the Doctor in all his incarnations. Again, some people liked that and fair enough but I didn't. Clara, especially. She was a plot point rather than a person in her own right and the poor characterisation reflected that. I didn't particularly like Rose but unlike Clara at least she had a personality. Even Amy and Rory were more interesting and they were fairly bland. Donna, Bill and Martha were the best companions of New Who I found. And Wilf - because it's Bernard Cribbins and you can't go wrong with The Cribbins. They felt more like real people. Ordinary people.

Oh, and thinking of Clara. What was her problem when 11 regenerated into 12? It's not like she was unaware that this happened with Timelords. She had seen every incarnation of the Doctor so she knew he was still the same man.

The main problem is the writing. The majority of it has not been very good. A sure sign of a good story well-written is you remember it and would gladly re-watch it. I can barely remember any of the last seven years of Doctor Who with less than a handful of exceptions and I have no desire to see them again. Jesus, I can remember Doctor Who stories I haven''t seen in forty years (that's not to say that all the classic era is great. Far from it. It had plenty of duff stories as well - The Twin Dilemma anyone?) But the difference is the writers had time to develop the plot and characters over several episodes so you'd be more invested in them and their fates.

And whilst I'm thinking of characters and their fates (again looking at you Moffat) when someone dies stop bloody bringing them back from the dead. Clara, Captain Jack, everyone in The Power of Three, Ashild/Me, even Bill (sort of). Clara's death in Face the Raven was very well done only to have none of it mean anything two episodes later when she came back. When Adric was killed (admittedly he wasn't the most popular companion and was pretty irritating most of the time) the 5th Doctor said he couldn't save him even if he wanted to. In Father's Day the 9th Doctor explains to Rose why you can't save people and in fact the episode shows you why. Moffat seems to have forgotten all that.

When Bill was announced as the new companion for Capaldi's last series I must admit I wasn't overly enthused to watch it. Not because of Bill herself but because the show hadn't really been very good for a while. But I was pleasantly surprised that there were more good episodes than bad in that series and that Bill was actually a very likeable and well-rounded character (compared to previous companions) even if she did have to remind people in every episode that she was a lesbian, which grew tiresome.

And then there's the music. I don't like it. Never have. Haven't particularly liked any of the new theme versions and the incidental music has been mostly intrusive, obvious and unimaginative. The music in the classic era, specially the 60s episodes, were often highly experimental/avant-garde and usually electronic. Even Dudley Simpson who penned most of the incidental music from the late 60s to 1980 was more adventurous than Gold. It suited the experimental nature of the programme.

I suppose Gold's music does suit the modern programme. It's not very experimental in either story-telling or style. It likes to think it's being terribly clever and progressive (when it's usually neither). "But we have strong female companions now". Really? What exactly did Clara do except run around alternately arguing and simpering at the Doctor and saying "Run you clever boy"? Nothing. Rose was love-smitten with the Doctor. At least Donna wasn't taking any crap from anyone and was her own, flawed, person. Barbara didn't take any shit from anyone. Zoe would kick arse when she needed to. Leela was a warrior and behaved like it. Romana was more intelligent than the Doctor. Ace beat the shit out of a Dalek with a baseball bat and blew things up - and she had more character development with the 7th Doctor than most modern companions. They were not plot conveniences.

Oh, and can we stop blowing up the TARDIS every time the Doctor regenerates? It's got boring. And the tedious monologues as well. It seems every regeneration story is actually built around the Doctor's regeneration in New Who. In the classic era that wasn't the case - the regeneration was almost incidental to the story. None of these regeneration stories made a fuss about it. In fact didn't even mention it until it happened. Boom, bugger, I'm regenerating. At least the 9th Doctor followed that tradition. 10s was just a long drawn out yawn-fest - "I don't want to go". SHUT UP! GET ON WITH IT! 11's was a bit long-winded but not as bad. 12s was just as dull and overstretched as 10s. Previous Doctor's had just accepted it as part of their life-cycle. 10 complaining that he dies and another man has taken his place. Nope. You're the same person, just a different face. But 10 is still 11. He may have a slightly different personality but its still you. Facets of the same person.

So why watch it? Well for one thing, every so often there'll be a blinder of an episode (Blink for instance. Not perfect but pretty good, or Smile) which makes it worthwhile.

The actors who've played the Doctor have been excellent (even if they've been let down by rubbish scripts, Capaldi especially), even though Tennant is my least favourite Doctor but that isn't Tennant's fault - he can only act with what he's given.

The sets look gorgeous, mostly, and the production is very good. Gone are the wobbly sets and it's nice to see quarries still being used for alien planets.

We could do with a few more creepy/horror stories but that's just personal preference. Also less fairy tale and more science fiction, although Capaldi's last series seemed to address that. I have to admit if last years series hadn't been as good as it was I'd have given up on the Doctor.

So I wonder what the future holds with Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall taking over. I've only seen Whittaker in a couple of things - Attack the Block and a few episodes of Broadchurch (before we got bored with it). I've certainly no problems with a female Doctor. Sydney Newman, who created the show, suggested it decades ago. So did Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker after they left the show. I even quite like the costume they've given her. And let's be honest, the show needs a damn good shake up. It's got stale and safe.

My only worry is Chibnall. Broadchurch was overrated as far as we were concerned. In fact didn't make it to the end before giving up. And as for his Doctor Who episodes? Meh. Nothing to write home about. 42 was ok. The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood was dull. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was just stupid. So for us it's not a great track record.

Still, swings and roundabouts. Some people like the way the new show is going. Not many since the viewing figures have been consistently dropping for several years now from 13 million for The Next Doctor in 2008 to 5.2million for The Doctor Falls in 2017. It's just the same as what happened in the 1980s before cancellation.

I remain curiously optimistic for the new Doctor and series. Got to give things a chance.