The Doctors Who's Who (39 page)

‘The Robots of Death’ is not a brilliant allegory or, for that matter, a radical script. It’s a good script with its Art Deco robots and a supporting cast you actually care for – well, some of them anyway.

Louise Jameson is terrific as Leela and really comes into her own in this story, which has the obligatory mad man wanting to take over the world. A murder is committed and the Doctor and Leela turn up just in time to be the prime suspects. It’s a tried and tested Agatha Christie pathway, but every time there’s a subtle difference and the Doctor’s way of remedying the evil in the story is both amusing and ingenious.

Doctor Who
does sometimes have its poignant moments but stories that pull at the heartstrings are rare, especially those done exceptionally well. Stories such as ‘Father’s Day’, ‘Human Nature/Family of Blood’ show off this theme tremendously well. In ‘Father’s Day’, Rose Tyler (the Doctor’s companion) wants to travel back in time and see her father when he was alive. But instead of just observing him, she saves his life in a road accident and releases creatures into the world that need to repair the break in time. One of the creatures eats the Doctor and it is left to Rose to right the wrong she has created. The way in which the story builds into a credible basis for Rose’s parents to understand that the Doctor’s Rose is actually the grown up counterpart to their babe-in-arms is nothing short of quality scriptwriting, and the poignancy evoked by the end of the episode is both tender and moving.

In the double bill ‘Human Nature/Family of Blood’, the Doctor toys with the mortality of being human and the horror humans bestow upon each other (the backdrop being the Great War). One of the most memorable scenes in the history of the show is Martha Jones pinning a poppy to the Doctor’s lapel as the Great War veteran looks on. What brings home the underlying message are the words of the great poem ‘For the Fallen’, which begins, ‘They will not grow old…’ and indeed the time travellers haven’t aged a day since they last saw the veteran as a boy about to go to war; they’ve simply
jumped forward seconds in time, but the veteran has taken 90 Earth years to get to that moment. He sees them and is humbled by their respect, in a wonderfully poignant scene. The waste of human lives through war is also brought home, but one thing more: the Doctor’s longing for true companionship. His love of human females but despair that they just don’t live long enough is painfully clear. In ‘Human Nature’, he becomes human, falls in love and in an amazing visual projection, has children and then dies. There is something very
Highlander
about this part of the story, extremely sad but telling.

The one thing the new-millennium
Doctor Who
gives us is a sense of love captured and lost, a true sense of loneliness. The Doctor’s home planet has been destroyed, there is only his adopted planet – Earth – left; but there he is nothing more than a stranger in a strange land, a Robert Heinlein exile harking back to Jon Pertwee’s Doctor driving Bessie away from his beloved Jo Grant. But the reverse happens too. In ‘School Reunion’, we witness how a companion has to readjust to normal life after successfully leaving the TARDIS. Sarah Jane Smith never had children, she secretly longed for the return of the most remarkable man she had ever known. When he did return, it was too late for her to love him the way she longed, but she could still have more thrilling adventures with him. She forgives him and says a final goodbye, turning her back and leaving with her beloved K9 to continue her own adventures.

There’s an enigma surrounding the Doctor. Will he marry and have children? In a safe way, he has – i.e. he has been when there is not the risk of commitment from the programme maker. In ‘Human Nature/Family of Blood’ he does so in a future mental projection of himself as a human. Of course it
doesn’t happen. In the story ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, he is the metaphorical husband of the TARDIS. Although the story is still a slight cop-out, it is a dark masterpiece with Neil Gaiman’s name all over it. The world of patchwork-people and a Time Lord doom-world is excellently constructed in a one-off story that, unlike many new millennium stories, doesn’t appear contrived or rushed. It has depth, menace, classic scenes (a manic Ood stalking Amy and Rory deep within the TARDIS); it is full of quality thrills and chills.

In ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’, it is a DNA-extracted daughter that emerges as his kin. Is this an on-screen science-fiction rape scene? How can it be when he quickly comes to terms with his daughter and shows great love for her? He instantly bonds with her, even though she is his opposite: she has a love affair with weapons.

The theme of the horrors of war is clear in ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ and ultimately, there is the loss of a loved one. So the Doctor loses another piece of himself as he gives himself to the goodness in the cosmos, a Christ-figure surrounded by his disciples (was Peter Davison’s companion Turlough Judas?).

What is strange is we never learn more about the Doctor when he meets his other selves. He tends to squabble with them like a spoilt sibling. There is no reminiscence in the character’s make-up. He is forward looking, which is a positive image for children. He battles terrible odds in ‘The Two Doctors’ and especially ‘The Three Doctors’, and this is where he overcomes petty squabbles with his other selves in order to get the job done. It is this very point that makes ‘The Five Doctors’ a lesser story. Each Doctor has an individual quest to reach the tower, so a mini
Lord of the Rings
in that respect. The Doctor doesn’t pull his many selves together until the end. One could argue that the very fact that he is torn from time, in a hostile manner,
prevents a fellowship occurring. Maybe it would have been too contrived, but only when the tower is reached, the quest over, do all the leaders (Doctors) and their close companions come together to provide closure – the fellowship encapsulated.

A significant flaw in ‘The Five Doctors’ was the absence of the fourth Doctor. He makes a cameo appearance through some previously unused (at that time) footage from the incomplete story ‘Shada’ (and a waxwork figure in publicity stills), but his absence is a massive disappointment to the overall story: would he have solved the final riddle rather than the first Doctor? Surely the egos of the first and fourth Doctor are the largest and would probably cause more dramatic moments than the second and third Doctors? It’s an interesting concept, but sadly one we will never witness…

The first Doctor is the father figure to the other Doctors in ‘The Five Doctors’, and his story arcs appear to emanate that too. ‘Human Nature’ recalls the very first
Doctor Who
story, or an early draft of the script (‘An Unearthly Child’), where Suzanne (Susan Foreman) and the Doctor explain that a race of creatures is after them to kill them and steal the TARDIS, so they must hide. The only reason the Doctor became human was to hide from terrifying creatures who want to use him and his TARDIS. In a way it is history repeating itself. In fact, could this be the race of creatures that wanted to kill the Doctor and Susan all those years ago? Nobody knows, but maybe time will tell. If Suzanne became human, that would explain a lot about her motives and calling the Doctor her grandfather. So will the Doctor have to return to the human Suzanne before she dies of human old age? Again, an interesting concept from an unfulfilled story arc within the series.

Androids are a constant in
Doctor Who
. They range from the placid, such as the unaffected VOCs in ‘Robots of Death’, to the
totally scary androids, e.g. ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ and ‘The Visitation’. But one thing most have in common – indeed all of the above have in common – is that
something
or
somebody
made them do wrong. They are only scary because the person who programmed them made them dangerous.

In ‘The Visitation’ Nyssa refers to her deadly android assailant as a beautiful creation. And indeed he was, but the android is just an aside in one of the finest historical
Doctor Who
stories ever, a story that blended history so beautifully with alien invasion, and supporting actors as fantastically believable characters (such as Michael Robbins as Richard Mace and the delightful family at the beginning of Episode One).

Another good example of this wonderful blend of history and alien invasion is ‘The Time Warrior’. This is the first time we meet the once-mighty (see new millennium
Doctor Who
) Sontarans and companion Sarah Jane Smith. The contradiction to this is the android in ‘The Time Warrior’, which is the most primitive looking in the show’s history (early visual effects to one side).

The Autons are not really androids, but once they possess inanimate objects, they behave like the most ruthless androids the Doctor has ever encountered. Crashing through shop windows to shoot innocent bystanders in the first ever colour story ‘Spearhead From Space’, gave them a memorable scene that begged for their return when the show was re-launched in the new millennium (and a rare
Doctor Who
Blu-ray DVD). The problem with the re-launch story ‘Rose’ was that the story had too many similarities, it was just a higher budget version, and I can argue that the scare factor – not wow factor – was greater in the first Auton story.

One could stretch the android theme and suggest that the original Cybermen – those scary automatons from ‘The Tenth
Planet’ – are an extension of the sophistication of alien races. In a way, they are the product of a self-wounding race at odds with their own bodies and emotions and therefore turned themselves into emotionless androids. Their human hands stuck on the end of robotic arms give them a sinister look not seen in other versions of the deadly enemy. This mixture of flesh and machinery was explored further in ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’.

I still believe the Cyberman have been underused in the programme; witness ‘Nightmare in Silver’ Cybermen, not just ‘The Tenth Planet’ Cybermen. And shouldn’t a story to rival ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ be made to embrace the original concept of this self-wounding race? The same could be said of the original and utterly ruthless Sontarans. The new potato-head butler is a mockery of a savage and noble race and is more comic than dangerous.

Humour has its place in
Doctor Who
, from the Doctor’s return from a Jacobean wild party to thwart the clockwork men in ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, to the theatrical – and slightly pitiful – antics of Richard Mace in ‘The Visitation’. Humour has always been there to counterbalance the scary bits and that certainly happened in ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ and even ‘The Sound of Drums’ (where the Master gasses all of the British Cabinet but first puts on a gas mask and gives a choking man the thumbs-up when he tells him he’s mad).

The humour shared between the Second Doctor and an alien chef in a restaurant (‘The Two Doctors’) while craving human flesh is of particular note, especially as it defuses a stabbing scene seconds later, but even that degenerates into a comic chase scene. Comedy is so important to
Doctor Who
. When overplayed it highlights its worst scenes; done well, it’s magical.

Douglas Adams was a writer renowned for his humour, and
‘The City of Death’ is a masterwork, blending quality science fiction themes with historical insight and an extremely scary foe that had more than one child hiding from the terrifying alien face.

‘The City of Death’ used da Vinci and his Mona Lisa in a way Dan Brown wouldn’t dare, and every now and then the art world crops up in the Doctor’s travels. ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ is a great example of this. Van Gogh marvelling at the beautiful colour of Amy Pond’s hair and clearly showing the curse of his lust for life is beautifully counterbalanced by the wonderfully poignant scene at the end, where van Gogh is brought forward in time to see how much he truly is appreciated. Again, another tear-jerking scene from the new millennium
Doctor Who
and allowing genius to at last see the just rewards of its pain. Now let’s have John Lennon please, with David Bowie working out the spaceman direction of his work from the Doctor; yes David, there is a Starman waiting in the sky.

There has been a wealth of emotion and incident in
Doctor Who
over the years, but there is a recurring theme of death. From the natural – the Fourth Doctor falling from a great height and smashing his body (‘Logopolis’) – to the macabre – the Master taking over a person’s body at the end of ‘The Keeper of Traken’, death is everywhere in
Doctor Who
. In ‘The Last of the Time Lords’, we look back at the Doctor’s dead race, we see into the madness of the Master and see him will himself to death while the Doctor grieves over his body. In fact, in all of the stories I have discussed in this section, someone dies or, more accurately, someone is killed. It’s as though someone always has to pay for the Doctor’s – and his companions’ – thrills. But in legend, isn’t it true that any time the Grim Reaper is called up he must take a soul away with him? Is the Doctor the Grim Reaper, is he a Jesus-like figure with disciples, or is he the more
sinister Pied Piper leading the children away? Evidence points to the latter more than the former.

In ‘The Curse of the Black Spot,’ a mysterical siren strips a pirate ship of its crew; but has the Doctor been doing that throughout his travels?

The Doctor is aware of his profound influence on people’s lives and has sacrificed himself to save others many times (making him a possible Jesus-allegory), and this is part of the reason why he regenerates so quickly. At the end of ‘The Planet of the Spiders’ he knew that entering The Great One’s cave would mean certain death, but he is not afraid to die. Like a gallant warrior he walks into trouble, to confront evil. In ‘Terror of the Zygons’ the Doctor might be called foolish for entering the organic spaceship of the Zygons, but he is simply saving time. The enemy has to be faced – evil must always be faced – and there is a logical reason behind his cavalier behaviour. Sometimes he uses his intellect only to thwart his opponent. A great example of this was in ‘The Celestial Toymaker’, where we truly respect his ability to outwit his nemesis. And perhaps it is from things like this that we acquire our deep respect for the First Doctor. He surprises us with his strength. Not his physical strength, but his inner strength: his power of mind over matter and sharp brain. And that’s why he solves the puzzle at the end of ‘The Five Doctors’ – he is geared to solving impossible puzzles, just as he did against the dangerous and mysterious celestial toymaker.