“The one whose already had his big weepy goodbye scene with me?”
Er, yes, I’m phoning from Trenzalore…it hasn’t happened for me yet”
“Oh yes it has pal, it seriously already has”
“Are you with him…the new me…?”
“Well what the fuck’s it got to do with you?”
“Because he’ll need your help, Clara…is he old…don’t tell me I got old…”
“Oh for crying out loud, you narcissistic, floppy haired plonker, yes he’s older than you, so fucking what? Don’t you remember what it was like being most your earlier selves?”
“Please help him, Clara”
“What, because he’s got grey hair? Shall I help him get some hair dye? He can fucking WALK you know, he’s not in a fucking WHEELCHAIR! He can jump about actually, ride a horse, all kinds of shit, just like used to do you patronising little twerp”
“You need to hold his poor old hand and…er, eh?”
“He’s fine, he’s great, he’s standing here now looking embarrassed because he’s just realised making this call back in the past was a seriously stupid idea”
“But I thought…”
“Yeah, YOU thought, YOU decided, its all about YOU really isn’t it?”
“Oh dear, this wasn’t such a good idea, was it?”
“Nope”
“Shall I ring off then?”
“Yep”
“Goodbye Clara, I…
“Look, just fuck off!”
“Shit…”
“Yes, really shit idea of yours, bye!”
(she hangs up)
“Christ, I’m glad you’ve stopped being such a prick”
There are venerable traditions to uphold this time of year, none more-so than coming away from the Doctor Who Christmas Special with a warm glow of contentment at another very decent episode to find that most fans really bloody hated it. I for one wouldn’t miss this annual nerd-quake for the world.
Yes, The Time of the Doctor had its problems – was it me or was the (double) depositing of Clara back in front of of a block of flats a straight steal from Rose getting “saved” by the TARDIS in The Parting of the Ways? And those massed ranks of favorite monsters’ spaceships? That’s just The Big Bang all over again with slightly less impact. Oh, and the siege of Tranzalore was a good example of why the show should avoid attempting Hollywood-style mayhem on a Holby City budget. But none of this disabled the thing for me because I suffered through the Tennant finale and still have the scars; I know how badly wrong these things can go…
As a regeneration episode with lots of boxes to tick, this took The End of Time Part 2 round the back by the bins and beat it to a bloody, gibbering, over-emotional pulp. The dialogue was some of the sparkiest yet, especially the opening with Smith in the TARDIS with his Cyber-head (loved the Cyber-head!); the use of the ageing Doctor evoked, very effectively, an excellent episode of Star Trek: TNG called The Inner Light where Picard lives a lifetime on a planet that needs him to do a very similar heal/protect /get extremely old job of work. Matt Smith was superb in his last dash/dodder through the role, the Cyber-head was great (bring him back!) and the regeneration into Capaldi was a deliberate, comedic wrong-footing of expectations that harked back to the quick-flash Pertwee/Baker change without being crap (no mean feat). I even didn’t mind seeing Amy Pond again – it felt right and hit me exactly where it was supposed to (damn you Moffat, you manipulative git). Oh, and bring back the Cyber-head. And for those who see the over-engineered complexity of Moffat’s best work as just a reflection of a writer who is just too pleased with himself for his own good then here is another prime example of that but here’s six words for you….just six little words….
You’ll miss him when he’s gone.
But please let this be an end to all this “the question that should never be asked!” (insert awed gasp) codswallop. Because guess what? It really SHOULDN’T be asked. The Doctor’s name is NO BIG DEAL and Moffat’s constant, irksome, fetishistic obsession with it has been one of the biggest irritants in an otherwise massively enjoyable, progressive era. For a bloke who grew up on the classic era’s inherent mystification of the series title, he really misses the pan and floods the floor every time he pees out this bladderful of thematic pointlessness. Give it up, mate, no one’s interested apart from you and really, even you’re not interested really so just stop it.
It’s not exactly a JFK moment but tarry awhile and indulge me. You see, I remember exactly where I was when I found out Doctor Who was coming back …
I was watching rubbish TV.
It was 7:15am on the 26th September 2003, a Friday, and my usual dose of breakfast TV was mildly distracting me from waking up. Ian Lee, a comedian apparently, was flicking through that day’s newspapers when something caught my eye. The show was RI:SE, an easy-going post Big Breakfast effort from Channel 4 that was notable for being shot in a makeshift studio inside Whiteleys shopping arcade in West London, just around the corner from where I was working at the time. I don’t really know why it was my wakeup experience of choice, I guess it was just the least demanding… (Dear God in the trees, you know the lying’s getting out of hand when you start lying to yourself…)
Being the presenter of a show aimed at the happening young professional segment of the TV spectrum, Lee was fairly dismissive of that day’s Telegraph, but did accidently hold the front page up before the camera long enough for me to see something he didn’t – the words “Doctor” and “Who” in a small box-out near the bottom of the page pointing to a larger article within. I made a mental note to check out whatever that story was on my way to work that morning. Because lets face it, by 2003 the profile of the show had slipped so low that a cheapo interweb Flash animation starring a tragically miscast Richard E Grant was being touted around as an “official” continuation of the TV series and nobody seemed to give much of shit. Doctor Who had become a great cultural shug of the shoulders.
To me, in that faraway wasteland of stunted possibility and over-earnest fan projects blowing all about the margins like stale farts, any kind of news that might point to a brighter, more fragrant future was worth checking out…just in case.
So…(and by the way, if you really want the full effect of this tale, this is the point to cue up I Am The Doctorby Murray Gold and leave it running till the end, Murray certainly would)… imagine by slack-jawed shock as I walked into a branch of WHSmith half an hour to find myself brutally force-abducted by a band of randy space vixens who proceeded to rip my shirt open and lasciviously….No, eh?? no…as I pick up that newspaper to read that the BBC were actually going to make Doctor Who again; real Doctor Who, on Saturday nights, with a top writer at the helm. Not some bogus BBCi webcast thing, not some ludicrous Hollywood hybrid with all flash and no bollocks…not some charity skit…the real thing.
If you were a fan, it was just the best time ever, because you had the anticipation and the drip-feed of information, bit-by-bit, building up expectation that this, finally, was going to be a proper go-around for ourshow. Oh yes, this was the real deal. The media buzz was amazing actually; that little boxed-out announcement morphed into pages of tabloid guff exploiting any and every tidbit of information they could glean about the new show. A great hail of fact, fantasy and bullshit kept us at a pitch of such kinetic geek-citement it was almost dangerous to touch us in case we squealed loudly and exploded. And while the geeks sweated and fretted, the press had a field day. They still do, as it goes, and perhaps that’s the greatest legacy Russell T Davies left behind. All that glitz and glamour meant front pages, popular awards, spin-offs and massive audiences both here and across the pond. Its a wonderful success story that just keeps going. Did you see the live annoncement show for the Twelfth?
Modern “Who” coverage – all publicity is good publicity! Oh, hang on…
10 years its been. And we’re about to get the fourth new Doctor since the show came back. That’s as far as Tom Baker in the old money. And that milestone has not been reached because new Doctors are coming and going with late-80s-style haste and indecision; quite the contrary, we’ve had so many new episodes to add to our Excel spreadsheets its indecent. And, in Ecclestone, Tennant and Smith we’ve had an opening salvo to match Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee. And with the casting of the towering Peter Capald casting almost daring the production team to up their game even further, that Tom Baker analogy is even more on-the-nose. The best is surely still to come.
Its not all great of course, but it mostly is, and that’s great in itself. There are things that get my goat: the obsession with “love conquers all” stories, too much contrived snogging, too many 42-minute stories with trite resolutions and under-blown peril (bring back the 2-parters!), the repeated use of Chris Chibnell and too much of Murray Gold walloping us with unsubtle musical signposts to the emotional beats, just in case we’ve missed them. But then I see my daughter has gone and left an excited YouTube comment about how she thinks Murray Gold’s stuff is “soooooo awwwwsome!!!” and I relax, no problem, really, none at all. She loves Doctor Who, she’s grown up with it. She knows quality when she sees it.
The best bit of all? Its really isn’t the same show after all.
The Man in the Elegant Room 
