An article I wrote back in 2013, published in DWM 467.
An article I
wrote back in 2013, published in DWM 467.
THE
WONDER OF WHO
What is so great about Doctor
Who? It seems an oddly elusive quality to define. Indeed, so much so that,
when asked, one common answer is that what is so great about Doctor Who is that it possesses an
‘indefinable magic’, which is no explanation at all. But if we don’t know why we love Doctor Who, what are we all here for? What is it about Doctor Who that makes it worth
celebrating? What sets it above other
television shows? It’s time somebody came along and defined the hell out of
that indefinable magic once and for all.
First of all, let’s get some of the misconceptions out of the way.
It’s nothing to do with nostalgia. Yes, some of us may experience a vestigial the-taste-of-Soda-Stream-Cola
sense memory whenever the Peter Howell theme crashes in, but that’s not why
anyone watches Doctor Who now. It
wasn’t made to be used as a memento, a comfort blanket or a psychic link
between the adult and their forsaken childhood. And that’s not why any of us
became fans, back whenever it was, sitting cross-legged in front of the television
with our Mighty White and Sun Pat sandwiches. Nowadays archive Doctor Who is experienced in a form
hermetically removed from any sort of historical context in vividly remastered
shiny-and-new quality (so much so that the DVDs include bonus features
explaining that these programmes were made during the days of grimy, grey news
footage of tired-looking people wearing thick-rimmed spectacles). Watching an
old Doctor Who now has as much do to
with nostalgia as downloading a Beatles track from iTunes has to do with
remembering the 1960s, or watching a Shakespeare play has to do with reliving
the good old days of the Jacobean era.
It’s also nothing to do with its longevity. Doctor Who’s longevity is a product of its greatness, not its
cause. Nobody became a fan because of the thrill of knowing that the show had
been running for twenty-odd years before they started watching it, or in the
expectation that it would still be going strong twenty-odd years later. Doctor Who’s enduring appeal is not its
reason for enduring.
And let’s knock the whole ‘quintessentially British’ thing on its
head too, shall we? If Doctor Who is
in some way ‘quintessentially British’ that’s an inevitable consequence of it
being made by the quintessentially British Broadcasting Corporation. It’s not
about the trappings of Britishness (which is one of the things the 1996 US TV
movie got wrong, with its fixation on cups of tea and jelly babies; it’s also
the only story where the Doctor is ‘British’), it’s not about the setting –
alien invasions take place within a twenty-mile radius of London or Cardiff out
of necessity, not choice – and it’s not about any sort of attitude or sense of
humour either, as a British mindset (whatever that might be) is hardly unique
to Doctor Who. If anything, Doctor Who – a show created by a
Canadian, initially written by an Australian and directed by an Indian – is a
subversion, if not an outright rejection, of Britishness, the product of 60s
libertarianism and post-colonialism, where anything British – a policeman, a
bowler-hatted civil servant, a telephone box – will invariably turn out to be
an alien, while alien societies will invariably turn out to be British.
But that’s not why anyone becomes a fan of Doctor Who. Almost without exception, we became fans as children, adoring
the show above all others because it was more exciting than anything else,
because it was scarier, and most importantly because it was far more imaginative.
And that’s the key. Without exception, through the last fifty
years, Doctor Who has always been the
most imaginative, the most extraordinary
show on television. It might not have always been the most prestigious, the
most expensive, the most well-made, well-written or well-acted show on television
but it has always been the most remarkable. For two reasons.
First of all, Doctor Who is
different to the rest of television. Every few years, another detective drama
will come along, darker, grittier and even more improbable than the one before,
but nevertheless doing exactly the same thing, telling the same stories, week
after week. The same applies to hospital dramas, costume dramas, domestic
dramas. The grading changes but the story stays the same. They come and they
go, never to be repeated, soon to be forgotten (who now remembers Mogul? Or Public Eye? Or Stay Lucky?) How many other BBC dramas
from 1963 can anyone even name?
What makes Doctor Who so
unusual is that its format dictates that it can only tell stories that only Doctor Who can tell. As soon as a story
starts becoming a story that could be told in any other series, it stops being Doctor Who. Its remit is to always be
different from what the rest of television is doing and never to repeat itself. Once something has been done in Doctor Who once, that’s it, it can never
been done again. So, for instance, the following conversation could take place:
PRESTIGIOUS WRITER:
Steven! I’ve got a great idea for a Doctor Who story. Yetis! In Tibet! But they’re actually ro-
STEVEN MOFFAT:
Yeah, going to have to stop you there. It’s been done.
PRESTIGIOUS WRITER:
When?
STEVEN MOFFAT:
Ah, well, that’s the thing, you see –
PRESITIGIOUS WRITER:
Oh no. Was it a few years ago? Being a very busy prestigious writer, I may have
missed -
STEVEN MOFFAT:
No, no, it was more sort of in... 1967.
PRESTIGIOUS WRITER:
...That’s quite a long time ago.
STEVEN MOFFAT:
Yes, but the thing is... people will notice.
PRESTIGIOUS WRITER:
Why? Is it a particularly highly-regarded story?
STEVEN MOFFAT:
Not as such, no. About average really.
PRESTIGIOUS WRITER:
Oh, has it been repeated a lot? Or released on DVD?
STEVEN MOFFAT:
Er... no. It’s never been repeated or released on DVD, the BBC wiped the tapes
and threw away all the films in the 1970s.
PRESTIGIOUS WRITER:
So what you’re saying is, I can’t tell a Yetis in Tibet story, because of an
‘about average’ story shown nearly fifty years ago, that nobody has ever seen
since?
STEVEN MOFFAT:
Pretty much, yes. Any other ideas?
And the same applies to designers, and everyone involved in a
creative aspect of the show. Doctor Who is
the show that forces you to innovate and avoid what has been doing before. But
it also has the flexibility which means there will always be a way of doing things differently. The strength of its
format is that every element, every bell and every whistle, can be tweaked or
replaced; the setting, the era, the tone, the style, even the lead actor. It’s
an anthology series, telling a different story every week, but with the
advantage of having the same hero and sidekick every week, so you already know
who to care about. And if you don’t like this story, well, never mind, because there’ll
be another one along next week which will be as different as possible.
The flexibility of Doctor
Who’s format also means that it can absorb elements from others shows and
reinvent itself accordingly (like a cross between an Abzobaloff and a
Krillitane). When it started, it was a hodge-podge of the best bits of HG
Wells, Jules Verne and CS Lewis, amongst others. But before long the Doctor Who snowball gathered up Hammer
films and Quatermass and ITC spy serials and Hollywood blockbusters and 80s
comics and so on into today. All of television (and all of culture) is grist to
the Doctor Who mill. It may have the
trappings of science-fiction, but it’s not limited to telling science fiction
stories (any more than Star Wars is);
the stories may feature time-travel and spaceships and robots and monsters but
when it comes down to it they are adventure stories, about good guys vs bad
guys (or, occasionally, unfairly maligned artificial intelligences that happen
to follow their programming in an inordinately sinister manner.)
Doctor Who
also
has to cater to several different audiences at once, from wide-eyed children to
love-struck teenagers to devoted sci-fi nutcases to mocking, cynical adults
tuning in just to laugh at the special effects. As a result, Doctor Who is astonishingly textually
rich, with every story containing literary allusions, references to popular
culture, classical myth, cutting edge science. Anything and everything that
could increase and diversify the show’s appeal. Imagine reading a Fact of Fiction on, say, an episode of New Tricks. It would be about three
lines long. Doctor Who has depth and
it has substance. Every episode is doing half a dozen different things at once,
which is why they bear so much re-watching. (When future academics research the
history of television and British culture, Doctor
Who will be considered as worthy of serious study as the work of Dickens or
Shakespeare are today.)
It also affords viewers a kind of time travel, a (non-nostalgic)
window into the past. The stories, after all, reflect contemporary concerns,
from the optimism of the Apollo programme to the fuel crises of the 70s, from
women’s lib to Margaret Thatcher to The
Weakest Link, Sat-Navs and Wi-fi, the show is a Space-Time Visualizer into
social history. You can probably date any story from the early 1980s just by
how much blusher Janet Fielding is wearing. But it also acts as a window into
the heritage of television, offering a ‘way in’ to archive drama, to
discovering shows like Quatermass, Secret Army and Tenko and appreciating the work of great actors like Bernard Kay
and Kevin Stoney. It’s a bridge between now and then; a tasting menu of the
best the past has to offer.
On that point, it’s a bit of a myth that Doctor Who was a poor relation compared to other shows of its time.
Yes, the sets occasionally wobbled, but that’s just because Doctor Who had more physical action in
its studio scenes than other shows (watch any studio-based show with an action
sequence from the same time and it is wobbly-walls-galore). And yes, sometimes
the CSO (Colour Separation Overlay) isn’t very good, but it’s usually far
better than other shows from the same era (and at least Doctor Who had the excuse that it wasn’t trying to be completely
realistic). The truth is that any Doctor
Who episode is as well-made as, if not better, than any other studio-based
drama made in the same year. In terms of production, it was – and remains – at
the cutting edge of innovation. Indeed, sometimes it got ahead of the cutting
edge and attempted effects before they were technically possible. Whenever the
BBC bought a new visual effects box of tricks, it would be tried out on Doctor Who. And in terms of the work of
the Radiophonic Workship and the Visual Effects Department, Doctor Who was always where the most
interesting work was being done. All born of the urge to be different, to
avoid playing safe and repeating what had been done before.
(Take, for example, the humble Minotaur. Doctor Who has done the Minotaur a few times, but never the same
way twice. First time, it’s a manifestation of a myth in a Land of Fiction.
Next it’s a man transformed into a bull-headed guardian by Kronos. Next it’s a
race of aliens with horns and platform shoes that swarm across the galaxy like
locusts. And most recently it’s an alien imprisoned in a virtual-reality hotel
feeding on faith. Every time, it’s a different take on the same idea.)
Which leads me to the second reason why Doctor Who is so remarkable. That in-built inexhaustible hunger for
fresh ideas meant that Doctor Who has
always been the first rung on the ladder for new talent. The fact that it was
held in low esteem for so long, that it was under-valued and under-funded,
meant that it could be a proving ground for untried writers, directors,
designers, composers and actors. They would all face a vertiginous learning
curve and innumerable challenges, but if they succeeded against those odds, for
so many talents, Doctor Who has been
a place to shine. A place to show what you are capable of, to show that if you
can produce great, ambitious work despite a lack of time and money, you can
produce it anywhere. And as Doctor Who launched
careers, vacancies were created for new writers, directors, designers.
It’s that sense of excitement, of being let loose on the greatest
toy box in television, that is at the heart of the best of Doctor Who. You get a strong sense of it in The Caves of Androzani, where Graeme Harper has been given his
first chance to direct, his first chance to shoot action sequences, and he
grabs the chance with both hands. You get a sense of it in The Crusade, Douglas Camfield’s first (proper) directing job. It’s
evident in the direction of Michael Ferguson, of David Maloney, of Andrew Morgan,
of James Hawes and Toby Haynes, that feeling that a director is delighting in
the chance to set off explosions, to use visual effects, to shoot stunts, to find
ways of making monsters scary. A chance to be more visually daring and
distinctive than would be permitted on Holby
City or The District Nurse.
Watching their work is like being on a rollercoaster ride of unadulterated enthusiasm.
I’m not sure that ‘unadulterated enthusiasm’ is the best way to
describe Ray Cusick, but nevertheless his design work on the show – and that of
Barry Newbery, Roger Murray-Leach, Edward Thomas, amongst others – demonstrates
a level of ingenuity and visual flair that you’d be hard-pressed to find in any
other show. In other shows, designers design kitchens and police interview
rooms; in Doctor Who there’s all of
history, space ships, caves and endless corridors to be created with very
little money and a couple of black drapes. Doctor
Who was an opportunity for people to stretch themselves, even to show their
genius. And the same applies to all the other designers, unsung legends like
Daphne Dare, James Acheson, Ken Trew and Barbara Kidd (costumes and rubber
monster suits), all the make-up designers, special effect experts, Delia
Derbyshire with her painstakingly-spliced tape loops, Dudley Simpson and all
the bleary-eyed-haven’t-seen-daylight-for-weeks Radiophonic boffins. The list
isn’t endless, but it is very long indeed.
Doctor Who
was
also provided a first chance for producers; Verity Lambert and Philip
Hinchcliffe were both in their twenties when they took over the show, while
Graham Williams and John Nathan-Turner were barely into their thirties. Every
single person who produced Doctor Who during
its initial run came to it as their first producing job, viewing it as their
big break (at least at first), a chance to do good work and get noticed. Even
Barry Letts, who came to Doctor Who at
a later point in his career, came to it with a pioneering spirit, eager to
bring his own thoughts about ecology, morality and spirituality to the show,
and even keener to play with the BBC’s CSO machine.
For actors, Doctor Who also
offered a chance to impress. Where else - apart from maybe performing
Shakespeare in the theatre – does an actor have the challenge of trying to
bring reality to outlandish situations and heightened, often quite
unnaturalistic, dialogue? Doctor Who
gave actors who had spent their careers playing policemen and businessmen and
mothers and wives the chance to play alien warlords, insane geniuses, wild-women-of-the-woods,
spaceship captains, figures from history. To play against monsters (some
rubber-suited, some imaginary), to perform action sequences, to try to keep a
straight face in a spandex bodysuit. To play the greatest game of make-believe
there is. In all the greatest acting performances in the show - from the
Doctors, the companions and the roll-call of villains, even down to the
humblest guard – there is a sense of delight in being given the chance to play
a character a world away from everyday life and make them seem real. In being
given the chance to show off.
Most of all, though, Doctor
Who has been an opportunity for writers. Because it demands originality, it
forces writers to be different, but offers them a canvas the size of all of
time and space. It’s a chance to be clever,
to let your imagination fly, to play with ideas, styles, and juxtapose
influences and elements in surprising ways. It’s a chance to create whole
worlds, alien societies, monsters, to write in a more vibrant, more expansive
way, to create larger-than-life characters speaking riper-than-life dialogue.
It’s a chance to draw on every source of inspiration, from science, from
literature, from history, from current affairs, even from the show’s history
itself. It’s a chance to experiment with narrative structure and scare the
little buggers senseless. It’s a chance to go further, madder, wilder than
anywhere else; most of television writing is about writing about realistic
characters in everyday situations, writing naturalistic dialogue, and trying to
make your episode a bit like all the others in the same series. Doctor Who gives writers a chance to
stand out and shout, ‘Look at me!’
And the scripts of the show’s greatest writers revel in that
chance. The Pirate Planet may be
half-brilliant, half-absurd, but every line explodes with Douglas Adams’
delight that he’s not just writing for television but for the best show on
television, somewhere he can – at last – share the extraordinary fruits of his
imagination. The scripts of Bob Baker and Dave Martin are so full of unbridled joy
you’d think they had just won a competition. David Whitaker’s work on the early days of
the show are the work of someone who knows he is shaping a legend with every
tap of his typewriter. Terry Nation is a bundle of Welsh enthusiasm, filling
his scripts with every sci-fi serial cliché but underpinning it with a real
moral anger, writing about the horrors of nuclear war and fascism. Malcolm
Hulke builds scripts around ethical dilemmas, where no-one is right, no-one is
wrong. And the same exhilaration at being allowed to give their imaginations
free reign can be found in the work of all the great writers; Terrance Dicks, David
Fisher, Christopher Bailey, Ben Aaronovitch, Mark Gatiss, Robert Shearman, Paul
Cornell, Gareth Roberts, Chris Chibnall, and far too many others to mention. And
greatest of all, there’s Robert Holmes, Doctor
Who’s virtuoso, having so much fun in creating a Time Lord society, in
mocking civil servants, in indulging his black sense of humour, in
world-building, in creating vivid, eccentric characters and giving them the
richest, most colourful dialogue possible. The
Talons of Weng-Chiang is the work of a man who loves Doctor Who.
(Imagine, if you will, a Turn
Left-style parallel universe where the show Doctor Who was never created. Where all Robert Holmes ever got the
chance to write was Emergency Ward 10,
Doctor Finlay’s Casebook and Juliet Bravo. He’d be just one more
anonymous name on the opening titles, a talent that never got the chance. What
a bleak universe it would be. Never mind the stars going out, they’d never had
a chance to shine in the first place.)
When it comes to writers whose work bristles with excitement about
the imaginative possibilities Doctor Who has
to offer, only two others come close to matching Robert Holmes; Russell T
Davies and Steven Moffat. Both of whom chose to do Doctor Who because there’s nothing else they’d rather do; Davies
putting his career on the line to bring it back, and Moffat hanging up the
phone to Steven Spielberg in order to spend more time in the TARDIS. Watching
Davies’ episodes like The Parting of the
Ways or Partners in Crime is like
watching a script written by a combination of an overexcited eight-year old boy
(‘And then the Daleks attack! And there are millions
of them! And they exterminate everyone!’)
and an adult man who writes the most stomach-wrenching and heart-breaking love
stories imaginable. And watching Moffat’s stories like Blink and The Eleventh Hour
and The Name of the Doctor, it’s easy
to imagine him sitting at his computer, chuckling with delight at his latest
Plot Twist of Evil, endlessly switching between being a hopeless romantic, a
quick-witted sitcom writer and the most inveterate geek-brained Doctor Who fanboy.
Doctor Who
may
not longer be a proving ground for newcomers, but it remains a show made by
people who would rather being working on Doctor
Who than anything else in the world. There’s a buzzword that turns up in
television press releases a lot; ‘passion’, so much so that it’s become
devalued, but that’s what Doctor Who is
all about. It’s about people united in the fact that Doctor Who is what they got into television for, for the chance to direct action sequences with robots and
explosions, or the chance to play a Time Lord from Gallifrey or a villain from
another planet, or the chance to show off their imaginations. To rise to the
challenge.
Of course, not everyone has risen to the challenge. That’s part
and parcel of Doctor Who, to have
glorious successes side-by-side with (equally glorious) misfires. That’s
inevitable on a show with ambition, which is pushing the limits of what is
possible with no time and even less money. As Doctor Who fans we know that every great special effect must be
followed by a terrible one, that every well-judged performance must be matched
by a mis-judged one, that even the best scripts have plot holes and even the worst
scripts have moments of wonder. That’s all part of the fun.
Yes, there have been people who would much rather be doing
something else; directors who had no interest in science fiction and who still
shot productions like it was the 1950s; designers without inspiration; actors
who take the piss; writers with no original ideas and nothing to say who are
happy to tell stories that have been
told before because they have nothing to prove. It’s inevitable that there will
be people who are watching the clock and just paying the bills, for whom Doctor Who might as well be The Pallisers or Rockcliffe’s Folly for all it means to them. And occasionally, as
we all know, the show has had moments where it became a little tired and
derivative and flirted with cancellation as a result. But there’s always been
someone coming in with some innovation to update and regenerate the show’s
format.
Which is, of course, why it has endured to this day. Recently, the
BBC Director of Television, Danny Cohen, delivered a speech outlining the idea
that the BBC’s output should be judged on whether it is ‘fresh and new’. And –
tautologous though that is – that is what Doctor
Who epitomises. It’s a show which has fresh and new built into its format,
where its whole appeal is its novelty, its unpredictability, its variability.
Where its mission statement, if it had one, would be to boldly go where no show
has gone before. Even if - especially if - that show is itself.
As long as Doctor Who
continues to be ‘fresh and new’ its future seems secure. It has certainly never
been more popular than over the last decade. And yet, even at its lowest ebb in
the mid-80s, even when the BBC tried to cancel it, it kept going for four more years.
It’s an interesting paradox that during the 90s, even while Doctor Who was treated as a joke in some
BBC circles, it retained a kind of power. When the BBC attempted to launch
itself as a major international player, it did so with the Doctor Who TV Movie. For years BBC Films used the Doctor Who movie rights to get meetings
in Hollywood. When the BBC started releasing videos, it was with Doctor Who; when it started releasing
DVDs, it was with Doctor Who; when it
started producing online drama, it was with Doctor
Who. Whenever it launched some new venture, Doctor Who was a part of it, a source of iconography with which to
build the BBC brand. For a show no longer in production, Doctor Who was remarkably high-profile, used as the basis for Children in Need and Comic Relief episodes, even gaining a Radio Times cover for its 40th
anniversary when there was no associated programme. And now that Doctor Who has returned it has become
inexorably linked with the BBC’s corporate identity; every BBC innovation is
somehow Doctor Who-related, from
experiments like 2006’s Tardisodes and
the interactive episode Attack of the
Graske, to the online computer games, and the current foray with 3-D. From Doctor Who Confidential to the recent Doctor Who prom and
special programmes covering the casting of a new Doctor and the anniversary
celebrations, Doctor Who is far more
than just a television programme.
But the fans always knew that. Doctor
Who was always the programme that was bigger on the outside, with more
stories to be told than could ever fit in a television screen. From the very
first World Distributors annuals, Doctor
Who has survived and thrived as much off-screen as on, through the Target
novelizations, through the comic strips published by TV Comic, Countdown, Doctor Who Adventures and this magazine,
through the original novels published by Virgin and BBC Books, through the
audios produced by Big Finish, through all the factual guides and toys and
models and computer games and underpants, Doctor
Who has never stopped being fresh and new to its fans. There have always
been more stories to be told and more things to find out and discuss, in
fanzines or on the internet. Even during the 90s when Doctor Who was no longer in production, being a fan was a voyage of
discovery through the videos and repeats on UK Gold. There has never been a
point where a fan could know everything there is to know about Doctor Who (and move on to something
else more worthwhile). It’s been an ever-broadening, ever-deepening, never-ending
phenomenon.
Never-ending? It’s one of those myths that Doctor Who was not expected to last for a long time. When the show
began, William Hartnell told Verity Lambert he thought it would last five years
and the earliest production memos describe the show as running for 52 weeks a
year (if only such a thing was possible now!). And even in those days, the show
was being made with overseas sales in mind, with writers being told to include
convenient moments for ad-breaks at the mid-point of each episodes. Doctor Who was almost meant to be the
international success story it is today, it just took fifty years getting
there, that’s all.
And looking back at those fifty years, it’s not hard to see the
secret of Doctor Who’s success. It’s
because it’s always kept evolving, kept changing with the times. It’s always
been looking forward, not looking back. It’s always been striving to be
different and avoid repeating itself. It’s always been made by people who
relished the chance to prove themselves and be as groundbreaking and
imaginative and extraordinary as possible. It’s always been ‘fresh and new’.
And that’s the definable magic of Doctor Who.
FIFTY
MAGIC MOMENTS
The Daleks (1963) – The Doctor and his companions’ first sight of
the Dalek city, a stunning effect accompanied by the ominous electronic stings
of Tristram Cary.
The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964) – Barbara and Jenny wheel
Dortmun through the deserted streets of London, racing past the Daleks
patrolling in Trafalgar Square.
The Space Museum (1965) – A surreal, disorientating montage to the
frantic strains of World of Plants by
Jack Trombey is followed by the Doctor announcing, ‘We’ve arrived’.
The Ark (1966) – The Doctor, Steven and Dodo return to the ark,
seven centuries after they left, and see the statue has been finished with a
Monoid head.
The Power of the Daleks (1966) – The Doctor attempts to warn the
colonists about the Dalek, as it stares at him through its eyestalk chanting,
‘I am your ser-vant.’
Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) – In a quiet moment, the Doctor
comforts Victoria, mentioning his own family. ‘Our lives are different to
everybody else’s. That’s the amazing thing.’
The Mind Robber (1968) – A sinister alien vibration fills the air.
The Doctor tells Jamie and Zoe to concentrate, when suddenly the TARDIS breaks
up in the void.
The War Games (1969) – The Doctor bids farewell to Jamie and Zoe,
knowing they will lose all memory of their time together. He watches them
returning to their lives without him.
Spearhead From Space (1970) – One grey morning, the shop window
dummies twitch into life and start slaughtering members of the public.
The Claws of Axos (1971) – The Master struggles to get the TARDIS
to work. ‘Overweight, under-powered museum piece! You may as well try to fly a
second-hand gas stove.’
Day of the Daleks (1972) – The Doctor pieces together the
paradoxical plot, telling the guerrillas, ‘Styles didn’t cause that explosion
and start the wars. You did it yourselves!’
Planet of the Daleks (1973) – The Doctor gives Codal a lesson on
bravery. ‘Courage isn’t just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It’s
being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.’
Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974) – Investigating a government
conspiracy, Sarah Jane Smith is knocked unconscious and wakes up - on a
spaceship that left Earth three months ago.
Genesis of the Daleks (1975) – Davros is confronted by the members
of the Elite and uses it as an opportunity to find out who is loyal to him
while waiting for the Daleks to arrive.
The Seeds of Doom (1976) – Tom Baker summons up a whole world of
horror with the line; ‘On planets where the Krynoid gets established, the
vegetation eats the animals...’
The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) – Faced with a homicidal
ventriloquist’s dummy, Leela throws a knife into its throat and gloriously
escapes by jumping out of the window.
The Ribos Operation (1978) – Binro was accused of heresy for
saying the ‘ice crystals’ in the sky were really suns. Unstoffe tells him, ‘in
the future, men will turn to each other and say, Binro was right.’
City of Death (1979) – Tancredi orders his guard to use the thumb
screws on the Doctor. The Doctor cries out in pain. ‘If there’s one thing I
can’t stand, it’s being tortured by someone with cold hands.’
Warrior’s Gate (1980) – The Doctor sees a vision of the decadent
rule of the Tharils before the Gundan robots burst in and he is slammed back
into the present.
Kinda (1981) – Hindle’s paranoia has escalated into a complete
breakdown. The Doctor accidentally crushes one of his cardboard figures and
Hindle turns on him. ‘You can’t mend people!’
Enlightenment (1982) – The combined talents of Barbara Clegg and
Fiona Cumming provide one of Doctor Who’s
most breathtaking, poetic moments, the reveal of the sailing ships in space.
Frontios (1983) – To prevent Tegan being used as spare parts for
the Gravis’ excavating machine, the Doctor explains that she’s an android. ‘I
got it cheap because the walk’s not quite right.’
Vengeance on Varos (1984) – Doctor
Who goes postmodern as the story’s villains watch the Doctor’s apparent
demise from a studio control room, and give the cue for the cliff-hanger.
Revelation of the Daleks (1984) – Amidst all the misanthropic
comedy, there is one moment of pure glorious silliness, as Alexei Sayle’s disc jockey
blasts Daleks with an ultrasonic beam of rock and roll.
The Trial of a Time Lord (1986) – Colin Baker’s finest moment, as
the Doctor finally realizes who the real villains are. ‘Ten million years of
absolute power, that’s what it takes to be really corrupt!’
Paradise Towers (1987) – The Doctor asks to borrow the Caretaker’s
rulebook, and convinces them that it contains a rule about them closing their
eyes so he can make his escape.
The Happiness Patrol (1988) – Helen A remains impervious and
unrepentant until the end, when she discovers that her beloved Fifi has died
and she breaks down in tears.
The Curse of Fenric (1989) – Ace demands that the Doctor tells her
what is going on for once. ‘It’s like some sort of game, and only you know the
rules.’
The TV Movie (1996) – The eighth Doctor remembers who he is,
waxing lyrical about ‘warm Gallifreyan nights’ and remembering watching a
meteor storm with his father.
Rose – (2005) – Clive introduces the sinister, enigmatic Doctor to
Rose and a new generation of viewers. ‘The Doctor is legend woven thoughout
history. When disaster comes, he’s there...’
Dalek – (2005)- The ninth Doctor turns on what he thinks is the
last remaining Dalek. ‘Why don’t you finish the job and make the Daleks
extinct. Rid the universe of your filth. Why don’t you just die?’
The Parting of the Ways (2005) – Rose tells Jackie about meeting
her father just before he died. Jackie runs off, distraught, only to return in
Rodigro’s yellow recovery truck.
School Reunion (2006) – Sarah Jane discovers the TARDIS in a
storeroom, and turns to see the man she realises is the Doctor standing behind
her.
Doomsday (2006) – Amidst the Dalek vs Cybermen carnage, Jackie
bumps into the parallel-universe version of Pete. ‘There was never anyone
else,’ she tells him. Mickey rolls his eyes.
Gridlock (2007) – Sally Calypso – who we later discover is
controlled by the Face of Boe – leads the traffic-bound humans in a recital of
The Old Rugged Cross.
Blink (2007) – Sally Sparrow is reunited with Billy Shipton, who
has been waiting for her over thirty years. He knows he is close to death. ‘I
have till the rain stops.’
Last of the Time Lords (2007) – The Master celebrates having the
aged Doctor at his mercy and his total dominion of Earth by singing along to
the Scissor Sisters.
Partners in Crime (2008) – The inducer is activated and thousands
of Adipose burst into life, sauntering through the streets of London. One even
has a slide down the front of a taxi.
Turn Left (2008) – Rocco and his family are driven away in an army
truck. Wilf salutes him farewell. ‘Labour camps. That’s what they called them
last time... It’s happening again.’
Planet of the Dead (2009) –Doctor Malcolm Taylor, played by Lee
Evans, finally gets to meet his hero, the Doctor. He rushes over to him and hugs
him. ‘I love you!’
The Eleventh Hour (2010) – The Doctor has persuaded Amy to make
him fish fingers and custard. Nothing scares her, except for one thing. ‘Must
be a hell of a scary crack in your wall.’
Vincent and the Doctor (2010) – Vincent Van Gogh visits the Musée
D’Orsay and discovers it is full of his paintings. Doctor Black tells him that
he is regarded as the greatest artist who ever lived.
The Pandorica Opens (2010) – The Doctor stands in the centre of
Stonehenge and addresses the spaceships whizzing above. ‘Look at me! No plan,
no backup, no weapons worth a damn!’
A Christmas Carol (2010) – Having shown him his past, the Doctor
shows Kazran Sardick his future, or rather, he shows the young Sardick the man
he will grow up to be.
The Impossible Astronaut (2011) – The Doctor works out that Amy,
Rory and River Song are keeping a secret from him. ‘Don’t play games with me.
Don’t ever, ever think you’re capable of that.’
The Doctor’s Wife (2011) – The TARDIS finally gets to speak to the
Doctor about the fact that he pushes the doors. ‘Every single time. Seven
hundred years. Police Box doors open the out way.’
The Girl Who Waited (2011) – Rory is forced to leave the older
version of Amy outside the TARDIS. ‘I’d forgotten how much you loved me,’ she
tells him.
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (2012) – The Doctor, Rory and Rory’s dad
Brian ride a triceratops whilst being chased by two punctilious, slow-moving
robots.
The Crimson Horror (2013) – The Doctor warns Gillyflower that in
the wrong hands the leech venom could wipe out all life on Earth. She laughs.
‘Do you know what these are? The wrong hands!’
The Name of the Doctor (2013) – ‘What kind of idiot would steal a faulty TARDIS?’ We see the first Doctor and Susan running away from Gallifrey – and in full colour!