Tuesday 21 May 2013

Sarah-Jane, the Doctor and a British institution

One ought not to attempt to analyse popular culture; it is too often vacuous and insubstantial, and yet the BBC "children's" TV series,  'Dr Who', cries out for some kind of analysis, especially in the re-booted version, which resurrected the time-travelling 'Doctor' nearly 25 years after the wake that was the 1989 final and, quite frankly, awful episodes, featuring Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor.

The past twenty or so years have seen a massive upsurge in the making of films for the cinema which have attempted to re-boot or re-imagine past financially lucrative films or franchises with varying degrees of success. In many ways, such films can be seen as merely attempts to extract even more cash from a gullible audience in a wasteland of original ideas. It seems that with each new advance in technology, a 're-imagining' will crawl out of the woodwork to take advantage of it. However, this is much rarer in the field of television, perhaps because it is so much more ephemeral, or at least used to be so before the days of VHS and DVD when every series now is re-cycled onto VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray (and whatever new and even more immersing medium is loitering in the wings - I am just waiting for the 'vitual reality' series of Dr Who to appear*).

I was only eight years old when Dr Who first appeared but, from the early days, it was difficult to know at what audience it was aimed. In its original format, it aired at 5:15 pm on a Saturday, immediately after 4 hours of sport, 'Grandstand', usually horse racing, but sometimes cricket or tennis in the summer and Rugby League in the winter; never live Football which was reserved for 10:00pm and only 'edited' highlights for fear of reducing numbers through the turnstiles on a Saturday afternoon. These were the days when the vast sums paid to the Football League by satellite operators were undreamt of.

Much is made, in nostalgic retrospectives, of the propensity of younger children to hide behind the sofa at the appearance of the various alien 'monsters' which have populated 'Who' through the years. Certainly I cannot remember hiding my eyes or being frightened, children, in my view, are only too aware of what is real and unreal, but it gave the programme an added frisson, and opportunities to the BBC make-up department, to show creatures, the like of which we, as children, had never seen; Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians, Autons to name but the early ones.

The longevity of the programme was ensured when the script writers came upon the most novel approach to an actor's departure after a few series for 'pastures new', regeneration. In general, actors have only spent four of five years playing the part of Dr Who, although why this should necessarily be the case, I cannot exactly fathom; a large number of 'soap' stars do not 'move on', witness William Roache, Ken Barlow in 'Coronation Street, who has been in the 'soap' since it first aired in 1960. Having the 'Doctor' 'regenerate' into a new body not only allowed substantial continuity of character but also allowed script writers the opportunity to explore different facets of what was essentially a well-known and familiar character. While this is perhaps more evident in the current rebooted series, it was evident that Patrick Troughton was more 'mischievous' and somehow less serious than William Hartnell, Jon Pertwee was more of a gentleman (and a dandy) than both and Tom Baker was simply more barking than any of the Doctor's previous reincarnations to cite but the first four incarnations.

By the time of the third incarnation of the 'Doctor', Jon Pertwee***, it was quite evident that the show's producers were chasing the 'Grandstand' audience; fathers, males of a certain age, as the Doctor's companions became almost exclusively young, attractive and female; Katy Manning, Elizabeth Sladen****, Louise Jameson, Nicola Bryant etc etc; the rebooted series have merely continued this practice for all of the efforts of Arthur Darvill, Noel Clarke and John Barrowman to the contrary.

The rebooted series have, perhaps by necessity, seemed to have been pitched at a more mature audience, not necessarily older but mentally more mature, more intelligent, more considerate of the shades of grey inherent in the world. The show airs later and is seldom concerned with the black and white of good versus evil, although such villains do still appear; Saxon (the Master), Max Capricorn, John Lumic et al. Understandably, the pre-1989, pitched at a younger, less 'tech-savvy' audience seldom, if ever, explored the fundamental paradox inherent to the Doctor's existence as a time traveller able to move freely in space and time. This has been much more prevalent in the rebooted series and, especially, in the work of chief writer and now series producer, Stephen Moffat. Satisfyingly, in my view, the paradoxes eventually resolve themselves however incongruous the initial situations may be and, usually, however long they take, in the series time line, to actually provide a resolution.

In the end, science-fiction, in whatever form, seems to garner an audience which is, at best, interested and, at worst, obsessive. Perhaps it says something very fundamental about the nature of that audience.

I was rather hoping that Bonnie Tyler would do better in the 'Eurovision' so I could wax lyrical about my vinyl copy of 'Faster than the speed of night', 'Total eclipse of the heart' and Jim Steinman but she didn't, so I won't.

* Actually, I am just hoping that virtual reality, à la 'Otherland'**, makes an appearance before I shuffle off this mortal coil. A genuine, immersing RPG would make a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon,  I think.
** Tad Williams' tetralogy about a group of virtual reality game-players who stumble on a plot for immortality.
*** A fine comic actor, 'Admiral Burwasher' in the 'Navy Lark' and subsequent to 'Dr Who', an excellent 'Worzel Gummidge'.
**** In the fifty years of the programme, still my 'favourite' companion, Sarah-Jane Smith. She sadly died, aged but 65, on my 56th birthday.



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