Timeless Adventures (32 page)

The uses of, and satirising of, the media has become an intrinsic part of the audience’s experience of new
Doctor Who
. With the media forming such a large part of most viewers’ lives, its reflection within the narratives of the show and the use of tricks and techniques seen in other media is further evidence of how the series has been successfully updated to appeal to a new mass audience.

In the 1980s (in response to tabloid speculation), John Nathan-Turner had declared that there would be ‘no hanky-panky’ in the TARDIS. With an attractive and young cast, and the tendency in the 1980s to dress the female companions in revealing outfits (a situation that reached its climax with Peri’s introduction in a bikini and her regular outfit of tight-fitting leotards), it was no surprise that some observers wondered about the Doctor’s relationship with his young, female travelling companions.

One of the most radical changes that Russell T Davies brought to the revitalisation of the show was to explore the emotions of the Doctor in relation to his companions. Both the Ninth and Tenth Doctors have enjoyed grand romances, primarily with Rose Tyler, but also with Madame de Pompadour (
The Girl in the Fireplace
) and (when the Doctor is in the guise of human, John Smith) Joan Redfern (
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
). Despite these events, Davies was always keen to return the character to the status of ‘the lonely Doctor’, as seen at the conclusion of
Journey’s End
. He may be interested in his companions and others he meets along the way (dating back to Cameca in
The Aztecs
), but being a long-lived Time Lord (the last remaining, so excluding relationships with one of his own species), he can never sustain a conventional relationship.

Sex has a much more prominent role in the new
Doctor Who
than it ever had in the old show, reflecting the era in which the show is now made. Beyond some sudden and very chaste romances (like those between Susan and David Campbell, and Leela and Andred, concocted as exit strategies for both companions), the original series’ approach to sex was simply in the guise of the glamorous assistant or
‘Doctor Who
girl’ of tabloid fame. Katy Manning (who played Jo Grant) infamously took this one step further by posing naked with a Dalek for men’s magazine
Girl Illustrated
, but only after she’d left the show.

Steven Moffat (who took over from Russell T Davies as showrunner for the 2010 fifth season) has paid close attention to the Doctor’s love life. The two-part story
The Empty Child
and
The Doctor Dances
introduced both the omni-sexual Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), a time agent from the fifty-first century, and the metaphorical concept of ‘dancing’ as a family-friendly euphemism for sex. He wrote
The Girl in the Fireplace
, giving the Doctor his first romance other than that seemingly being enjoyed with Rose. Moffat was also the writer of
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
, the fourth-season, two-part story that introduced River Song (Alex Kingston), seemingly a future romantic interest for the Tenth Doctor (strongly hinted at as ‘the Doctor’s wife’, itself a spoof episode title written on an office noticeboard by John Nathan-Turner in the 1980s in an attempt to track down the source of information leaking to fans). The casting of the young (under 40) and photogenic David Tennant helped build the growing female audience for new Doctor Who (the perception being that the audience for the original series was largely male, while the core of organised fandom was largely gay). For his Doctor to be played asexually, as most others had been, would simply not have been possible in a modern television environment. Giving the Doctor an emotional life ensured a higher level of engagement with the series among the casual, especially female, audience that had abandoned the show in the late-1980s. It was the casting of the ‘young and dashing’ Peter Davison as the Doctor in 1981 that led to the ‘hanky-panky-in-the-TARDIS’ tabloid speculation. However, Davison’s Doctor was never invested with the same emotional range as Eccleston’s and Tennant’s characters. Casting a young, attractive Doctor showed that, in many ways, Russell T Davies had learned the right lessons from the misguided 1980s when John Nathan-Turner was producer. Like Nathan-Turner, Davies is a firm believer in event television as part of a strategy to grab a larger-than-usual audience. Likewise, as a longstanding Doctor Who fan, Davies was keen on maintaining the series’ internal continuity and in refreshing successful elements and characters from the show’s past. The new production, however, took a lot more care in reintroducing key things from the past, communicating clearly to an audience who perhaps didn’t recognise them why they were important and worth bringing back. Davies’ opening episode had used the Autons, mainly for the recognisable moment of showroom dummies breaking through a shopgiving the Doctor his first romance other than that seemingly being enjoyed with Rose. Moffat was also the writer of
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
, the fourth-season, two-part story that introduced River Song (Alex Kingston), seemingly a future romantic interest for the Tenth Doctor (strongly hinted at as ‘the Doctor’s wife’, itself a spoof episode title written on an office noticeboard by John Nathan-Turner in the 1980s in an attempt to track down the source of information leaking to fans).

The casting of the young (under 40) and photogenic David Tennant helped build the growing female audience for new
Doctor Who
(the perception being that the audience for the original series was largely male, while the core of organised fandom was largely gay). For his Doctor to be played asexually, as most others had been, would simply not have been possible in a modern television environment. Giving the Doctor an emotional life ensured a higher level of engagement with the series among the casual, especially female, audience that had abandoned the show in the late-1980s. It was the casting of the ‘young and dashing’ Peter Davison as the Doctor in 1981 that led to the ‘hanky-panky-in-the-TARDIS’ tabloid speculation. However, Davison’s Doctor was never invested with the same emotional range as Eccleston’s and Tennant’s characters.

Casting a young, attractive Doctor showed that, in many ways, Russell T Davies had learned the right lessons from the misguided 1980s when John Nathan-Turner was producer. Like Nathan-Turner, Davies is a firm believer in event television as part of a strategy to grab a larger-than-usual audience. Likewise, as a longstanding
Doctor Who
fan, Davies was keen on maintaining the series’ internal continuity and in refreshing successful elements and characters from the show’s past. The new production, however, took a lot more care in reintroducing key things from the past, communicating clearly to an audience who perhaps didn’t recognise them why they were important and worth bringing back.

Davies’ opening episode had used the Autons, mainly for the recognisable moment of showroom dummies breaking through a shop window (a well-remembered incident from
Spearhead from Space
that was not actually seen on screen, instead being simply heard as a sound effect, an oversight
Rose
rectified).

The big question, in the run-up to the series’ debut, was whether the show would feature the Daleks, following a protracted negotiation with Terry Nation’s estate. With the rights to the Daleks secured, Davies took a cautious approach to their reintroduction, aware that the Doctor’s biggest foes had become the butt of many jokes in the years when the show was off air. Although Daleks had been seen to fly (or hover) twice towards the end of the original series (in
Revelation of the Daleks
and
Remembrance of the Daleks
), they were still considered by comedians and the popular press to be creatures who could be foiled by simply running up a set of stairs. Drawing on a Big Finish audio by Robert Shearman (
Jubilee
, in which a captured solo Dalek is tortured), the episode
Dalek
saw Rose become sympathetic to a chained and abused lone Dalek. The episode goes on to unleash the creature, showing the deadly power it is capable of. The significant ‘media moment’ the episode builds up to is when the Dalek announces its intention to ‘elevate’, and is then seen hovering up stairs in relentless pursuit of its quarry.

Audience (and fan) nostalgia also played a major role in
School Reunion
, the episode that saw the return of Elisabeth Sladen as Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker companion Sarah Jane Smith and the robot dog K-9. This was a direct appeal to viewers who remembered the show at its 1970s peak, although Sladen and K-9 were never teamed up on the regular show, only in the 1981 spin-off special
K-9 and Company
(and briefly in
The Five Doctors
). The return of these characters was part of a publicity boost for the series, especially K-9. Davies strongly believed that K-9 would appeal beyond fans and older audiences who remembered him to the new younger audience attracted to the revitalised version of the series. The gambit was so successful that the characters returned again to
Doctor Who
(in
Journey’s End
). Elisabeth Sladen went on to star in her own amazingly successful children’s spin-off series called
The Sarah Jane Adventures
, 30 years after she first boarded the TARDIS. The spin-off series is even structured like the original
Doctor Who
, in 25-minute episodes, with each two-part story enjoying an end-of-episode cliff-hanger. The character of Captain Jack Harkness also enjoyed a spin-off series of his own.
Torchwood
saw Jack heading up a team of Cardiff-based investigators who confront alien incursions and other odd occurrences. Both spin-offs would be reunited with the parent show in the two-part, season-four finale
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End
.

Having successfully revived the Daleks, the return of other popular monsters was inevitable. Each season would see at least one prominent monster reinvented for the new show. Season two had the parallel universe Cybermen in
Rise of the Cybermen /The Age of Steel
(again drawing on a Big Finish audio-drama precedent: Marc Platt’s
Spare Parts
), with further reappearances in
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
and the 2008 Christmas special
The Next Doctor
. Season three saw a dramatic reinvention of the Master (John Simm) in
Utopia
. Unexpectedly (for most viewers), Derek Jacobi’s mysterious ‘Professor Yana’ regenerated (in a similar style to the Eccleston/ Tennant regeneration in
The Parting of the Ways
, a gambit adopted so viewers would recognise the change that was happening) into Simm’s new, younger, more dynamic Master. This led into the two-part season finale
The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords
, which saw the Doctor and Master fighting for the future of mankind.

Season four’s returning monsters were the 1970s clone warriors the Sontarans in
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
(the Sontarans had also recently reappeared in the long-running
Doctor Who
comic strip, another influence on the new TV series). The creatures had a dramatic redesign and their behaviour had changed significantly, with this supposed warrior race attempting to take over Earth by stealth using a front company run by a teenage genius. The end of season four saw the return of Dalek creator Davros (introduced in 1975’s
Genesis of the Daleks
) in another two-part season finale, the epic
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End
.

Each of these returns was carefully stage-managed, with publicity stills of the reinvented monsters released to the media long in advance of the episodes, and often accompanied by
Radio Times
covers priming the viewing audience for the episode during the week of transmission. The huge interest in the new
Doctor Who
by tabloid newspapers, once it had proved to be a hit, resulted in several key storylines and character returns leaking (itself sometimes a useful publicity strategy).
The Sun
had reported the Cybermen/Dalek battle almost a full year before the episodes aired, while the returns of both the Master and Davros proved to be open secrets in the world of online fandom long before the characters actually appeared.

The new series also saw dramatic changes in fandom. Printed fanzines were few and far between, as most comment had migrated online in the form of authored blogs or forum postings. Fans participating in
Doctor Who’
s online culture were just as likely to be female now (partly down to the casting of Tennant, but also due to the show’s new emotional intelligence). Creating work like music videos illustrated with clips from the new series was far easier than it had been back in the 1980s, and the audiences for such YouTube postings was far larger than local fan groups or conventions. Exhibitions up and down the land attracted families, while a brand-new young audience bought the merchandise (or more likely had it bought for them). The Internet had also created a new fan hierarchy, illustrated by the growing spoiler culture (as wittily addressed by Steven Moffat in his script for
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
). Fans in possession of advance story details, or who were in a position to spread leaked information, became notorious (in both positive and negative senses), while misinformation and rumour was easier to spread than ever before.

The new nature of ‘NuWho’ fandom, however, had not removed strong fan criticism. In fact, the Internet provided a venue that made such criticism easier (and easier for those who criticise unthinkingly). Accused by fans of recreating
Doctor Who
in the image of a soap opera (by including the companion’s families and allowing the Doctor to have emotional involvements), Russell T Davies countered by claiming such things were simply the basis of good modern TV drama. However, Davies set out deliberately to create a new mythology for his version of
Doctor Who
, one that would culminate in
Journey’s End
.

Eccleston’s Doctor is revealed to be the last of the Time Lords, the sole survivor of a grand ‘Time War’ that has wiped out his home planet Gallifrey and the Daleks. He’s suffering survivor’s guilt, and the four years from 2005 to 2008 play out the consequences of his (unseen, offscreen) actions as the Time War is woven into the unfolding narrative of the series. The arrival of each new companion (after Rose there was Captain Jack, Martha Jones and Donna Noble) allowed for the basic set-up to be restated to the audience in a natural and engaging way (a simple trick that the writers and producers of 1986’s
The Trial of a Time Lord
totally failed to understand).