Captain No-Name

[Captain No-Name]

What a shame mr_h – I hope you have better luck getting into this Friday’s recording.

Unfortunately I’ve just had an e-mail saying my own tickets are cancelled, which is a massive shame as I was looking forward to it.

[Captain No-Name]

thomasevans – yes, I have a question.

What time did you arrive for the recording?

The reason I ask is I’ve got tickets to go and see the 3rd recording. My ticket says “you are GUARANTEED entry until 6.20” but amusingly it also says “this ticket is not a guarantee of entry.”

Obviously I know there’s always a possibility of being turned away from free TV recordings, and I know there’s always a lot of queuing, but I just wondered (from someone who has already seen this show) what the approximate timescale is.

Cheers!

[Captain No-Name]

In Subside, the rock bar in Birmingham, in March of last year. Wasn’t having the greatest evening tbh, and was just thinking of going home (it was about 2AM I think) when the DJ said:

“This is the last song of my set before I hand over to the next guy, and I make no apologies for it…”

Then proceeded to play Tongue Tied in full.

A hilarious gear change after all the roaring hard rock. Absolutely made my night.

Many people in the crowd looked in their early 20s & frankly baffled at this inexplicable cheesy 80s pop number.

Even if I was the only person the DJ amused, it was worth it.

Suffice to say I was the only person who knew the appropriate moves to accompany “huey-huey-huey” and “pom-pom-pom”

[Captain No-Name]

Absolutely. It’s a very clever Get Out of Jail Free card for any of the Master’s inexplicable Classic Series behaviour. All you’ve got to do is imagine Michelle Gomez recounting what happened as a hilarious anecdote, and suddenly it seems to make some kind of twisted sense.

[Captain No-Name]

The Master obviously spent a lot of time doing research before taking over the body of Nyssa’s father. Just finding someone whose name is an anagram of “Master” must have taken years. That nice Mr Semrat on the next planet over had a lucky escape.

One of the things I really like about the RTD/Moffat reimagining of the Master is that they have canonised the fact that the character is an absolute fruitcake and has a bizarre sense of humour. It nicely tidies up some of the stupider details of Classic Master stories. So, thanks to John Simm and Michelle Gomez, I now completely believe that the Ainley Master did extensive research into people whose names were acronyms of Master!

[Captain No-Name]

I’m in the exact same boat, Lily. It’s stupid. And I do wonder whether the whole “limited edition packaging” thing is them hedging their bets, so that *if* they change their mind later, they can release the exact same contents in a not-limited-edition box. Which, to be honest, I hope they do.

Although let’s be honest, *everything* is limited edition really isn’t it? There aren’t infinite quantities of anything.

[Captain No-Name]

I’m in the ‘fucks sake why aren’t the BBC re-pressing any of the already released BluRays’ camp, though.

Agreed. I didn’t pay much attention to Season 12’s release if I’m honest. I stupidly thought it would hang around in the shops, and I could get round to picking one up eventually. You’d think I would’ve learnt, as I made exactly the same mistake with the 50th anniversary limited edition boxset.

I haven’t really got my head around the BBC’s current philosophy for physical media… is a re-pressing of Season 12 even likely? Or is that it now? Or would they do something annoying like re-press it, but only as a vanilla Blu-ray release?

[Captain No-Name]

The Frog could have been so much better even if they’d only CGI’d the mouth to give it the ability to form words. That’s all it needed. A bit of a polish, maybe, but just the mouth would’ve been fine.

I do wonder if it’s just the mouth that spoiled it for some people. A CGI mouth would be one solution, albeit possibly too expensive and time consuming to do well.

If I’d been the director, my inclination would’ve been to film a real frog against green screen, and just have an echoey reverb on the voice, to suggest it was communicating telepathically.

Admittedly, this wouldn’t satisfy the viewers who were upset by the camp silliness of the image of a sentient universe manifesting as a talking frog on a chair… but those people are probably watching the wrong show.

[Captain No-Name]

I quite like Season 18. It’s got Warrior’s Gate in it, which I really enjoy. I’ve never really understood what people see in the Keeper of Traken, but Tom’s distracted gloominess certainly works in favour of Logopolis I think.

The Master, a Time Lord famed for manipulating people via his strong hypnotic ability, persuades Nyssa that he is Tremas while wearing the body of a rejuvenated Tremas. That seems reasonable to me, within the science fantasy world of Doctor Who.

[Captain No-Name]

This thread has just reminded me of this…

(I was half-expecting to find that I had dreamt this, but no, there it is on YouTube in real life)

[Captain No-Name]

Oh good point, Seb. It really ought to have some kind of drawing-based title.

Maybe they watched the rushes back and realised Chloe wasn’t scary enough, so they thought they’d subtly influence the viewer by instructing us on how to respond.

[Captain No-Name]

Perfect suggestion, Dave.

[Captain No-Name]

I thought it was pretty clear that they were both descriptions of Clara, defining her by her relationships to the Doctor and Missy in the two episodes.

That was my conclusion, yes. But I always have to strain to remember those two titles, and I’m not at all sure which way round they go.

It might sound very boring of me, but when a show has lots of episodes I always prefer titles to be memorably attached to the experience of watching the episode. I actually have the same problem with modern Red Dwarf. Early Red Dwarf has memorable titles like Bodyswap and Future Echoes, which are a piece of cake to remember, and easy to mentally assign to plots; latter day Dwarf has titles I find more bothersome like Samsara and Can of Worms for goodness sake.

The Bells of St John is an abysmal title. Yes, the TARDIS phone rings at the beginning. But that story is really about being trapped in the WiFi, meeting modern Clara and driving up the Shard on a motorbike. None of which I find easy to mentally attach to “The Bell’s of St John.”

[Captain No-Name]

Moffat did 6 series to Moffat’s 4

* RTD’s 4.

Bollocks.

[Captain No-Name]

Moffat has done one more series and a couple extra specials compared to RTD, and was showrunner for seven years (holy shit really?!?!) to RTD’s five.

I’m just going to pedantically point out that Moffat did 6 series to Moffat’s 4. Davies did a bonus year of specials in 2009, but Moffat did an extra Christmas special plus the 50th anniversary.

Quite when the showrunner’s job begins and ends is very difficult to pin down, as Moffat seems to have been pointing out in every interview for the last thousand years, but at the very least Moffat did 8 years rather than 7 (Matt Smith debuted on the very first day of 2010, so Moffat would have started work in 2009; Capaldi bowed out towards the end of Dec 2017).

Apart from that, Ben’s maths was spot on.

The thing I find more disappointing is that Moffat era seems to have had more episodes that have been entirely forgettable.

This is a good point Lily. Something I’ve noticed is that I can always summon to mind the name of any given RTD episode. Or, if someone names one, I instantly know which story they are talking about. The only iffy title I find is “Planet of the Dead” which is actually about a double decker bus in a desert.

Moffat’s seasons on the other hand are jam packed with stories that I simply cannot remember the titles of. Sometimes people will say a story title (it’ll be something like “The Time of the Wedding of the Wife of the Doctor’s Husbands”) and I’ll have to scour my brain and/or consult Wikipedia.

That Davros 2-parter was cursed with two annoyingly unmemorable titles. And “The Bells of St John” was just taking the piss.

his Who history isn’t exactly glowing.

My default position whenever Doctor Who has a fresh start is to incline towards optimism. However my critical faculties keep pointing out to me that Chibnall’s contributions to Doctor Who thus far don’t really warrant optimism. So I just keep telling that part of my brain to shut up and stop being a spoil sport. I’m hoping Chibnall will surpass everyone’s expectations. It must be very different, writing a script, to being in charge.

I was very optimistic of Moffat after his excellent contributions 2005-2009, and his debut as showrunner (The Eleventh Hour) was brilliantly strong. But as Series 5 went on, my optimism waned, and I hated Series 6&7. I soon realised I preferred Moffat as a guest writer to being showrunner. It wasn’t until Series 10 that he helmed a series I really really liked.

So I can’t see why Chibnall shouldn’t go in the opposite trajectory in my affections, and turn out to be a way better showrunner than he is guest writer.

[Captain No-Name]

I winced at the short-sightedness of the TV spoofs in Bad Wolf. Obviously TV is always a relic of the time in which it was made, and context is crucial; TV programmes do not exist in a void. But it just seemed too narrowly focussed on the present moment in British TV 2005, and… not that funny really.

My explanation is that the Station is so vast that they have basically resurrected every single TV format ever, from across the history of the medium. Celebrity Love Island, you name it. Don’t Scare the Hare. Naked Attraction will be in there somewhere. But – weirdly – we happened only to see the shows that had resonance in 2005.

Lily, your talk of the wackiness has reminded me: people often seem to cite the burping bin in Rose as the epitome of wackiness, but I was more bothered by wackiness like John Barrowman pulling a gun out of his rectum. And that rather odd moment where the reporter is talking to Margaret Slitheen in the toilet cubicle in Boom Town and she says something like “ooh, sounds like you made it just in time” in response to a fart noise. Because you would say that wouldn’t you? If you were a reporter. And someone was having a shit.

[Captain No-Name]

So, to summarise, Ben – the memory cheats, and there should be no hanky panky in the TARDIS.

Where do you stand on Hawaiian shirts?

[Captain No-Name]

Don’t you think Gridlock is quite like early McCoy though? A world of cat people in everlasting traffic jams seems to me very like the same kind of fictional universe that brought us alien tourist buses visiting 1950s holiday camps and cleaning robots taking over a tower block.

I like both Series 1-4 and the McCoy years (I’m in the seemingly rare camp of thinking Time and the Rani is the only crap McCoy story) but I’d say RTD Who at its worst is Love & Monsters, and I’d rather watch Season 24 over that any day.

[Captain No-Name]

Yeah, the New Adventures suffer a bit in places from seemingly not having someone sensible saying “are you sure that’s a good idea?” A bit like early Torchwood.

The beheading scene is a really interesting example to bring up, Ben. And one I’d forgotten.

Under normal circumstances in 21st century Britain, a beheading is quite a cartoon thing, rather like Bill getting a hole through her torso in Series 10. Yes, both injuries could theoretically happen, but they have an unreality about them. I think of Vyvyan leaning out of the train window in The Young Ones.

You could easily behead someone in, say, an episode of Horrible Histories. The actor would just stagger around with their jumper over their head, while another actor sticks his head through the bottom of a basket. Children would just find that funny.

In an episode like Robot of Sherwood, a beheading fits in perfectly. It’s a recognisable trope of historical fiction, and an opportunity for some slapstick. It wouldn’t normally have upset anyone. Especially as the Sheriff was a robot.

But the unfortunate timing of the episode in relation to specific news stories of the time meant that the production team had to be sensitive to the subject of beheading. For a brief cultural moment, beheading wasn’t a cartoony unreal thing, but something with a topical resonance which could have risked looking distasteful. I think the BBC made the right call in being sensitive on that occasion.

However I don’t think the beheading was a tonal misstep in and of itself. It was just one of those things (like the shootout in the TV Movie) that might not have been wise to broadcast at that specific moment in history. To my mind, it would have been perfectly acceptable to reinstate the beheading for the DVD release (is it included as a special feature?)

[Captain No-Name]

The oscillating nature of Doctor Who is one of its best features. Few shows could make such a positive out of the fact they vary so much from week to week.

[Captain No-Name]

It’s funny, the first Virgin NA has some dreadful business in it. I don’t own a copy of Timewyrm:Genesys, so I can’t check for sure, but from memory the Doctor says something like Ace shouldn’t complain about being sexually objectified by a historical character because he’s from a different era and that makes it okay; and I’m sure I remember a bit where a concubine girl of about 13 (who I think is described as being naked or topless) says something like “shall I pleasure you now sir?”

I was 16 when I read that, and I just sighed a heavy sigh and thought “what the fuck is this?”

Obviously topless/naked underage prostitutes would never have happened on Doctor Who on TV in 1991, but they happened in print. Smaller (older) audience, different medium etc. And eventually, use of the F word in Transit did result in the editors being told to think twice about their audience.

But really, I can’t see what you gain from adding material like that to Doctor Who. Is it pushing boundaries? Or is it just editorial misjudgment?

I like experimental and spooky Doctor Who. The programme scared me as a child. I was terrified of Mr Sin, but in a fun way. I’ve always approved of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes “tea-time terror for tots” concept. But there is nothing in classic Doctor Who comparable to that cremation business from Series 8. It’s in a different order of horror.

Look at it this way: in Series 10, Bill gets a big cartoony hole shot through her torso. She then gets turned into a Cyberman, and experiences a dissonance between her human identity and her mechanical appearance. Ultimately, she has a happy ending. Everything is well judged.

All the Cyber-horror and the drama is couched in quite fantastical terms. But in such a way that if you feel a particular resonance with a plot-point, you can identify with it as a metaphor for your experience. Someone who experiences body dysmorphia (for example) might relate to the experience of seeing a monstrous Cyberman in the mirror that repulses them, like Bill does. Someone who is transgender might appreciate the Master being played by John Simm and Michelle Gomez. Fantasy allows you to play in metaphor in a way that is valuable and profound and meaningful.

Now compare this to the cremation business. The reason I described it as “cheap” darkness is because it doesn’t play in fantasy in any useful or cathartic way. It just points at the cruel reality that people you love get burned to ashes and then says “imagine if they could FEEL the fire?” which just felt spiteful to me.

In 50+ years of TV Doctor Who, this is literally the only time I think it has objectively overstepped a mark. I’m happy to call it a one-off, and maybe you’re right this is the price you pay for being experimental. I approve of experimentation, honestly I do.

I just think you could easily remove the cremation business from the Series 8 finale, and it would play out more or less the same, but without needlessly distressing the thousands of people in your audience who have recently suffered a bereavement.

[Captain No-Name]

Interesting to hear things from your point of view, Ben. Literally just a difference in taste between us as far as Series 8 is concerned.

I’m the kind of adult with a very good memory for how it felt to be a child, and I don’t tend to patronise or over-protect or excessively worry about sensitive audience members, but the cremation detail was wrong for the show. It’s all about context. I love black humour and well-explored but disturbing subjects in TV shows like Inside Number 9 or Black Mirror, but Doctor Who is just not the right forum for that level of psychological nastiness. It’s not even about being a kid, you know. As a 20-something year old it left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

Shortly after watching the series 8 finale, I learnt that a friend of the family who had always watched the show with their parent, had lost that parent to cancer. This was the first time they were watching it on their own, and the death was very recent. It was so needlessly spiteful of the show to do that for the sake of a cheap bit of darkness.

I had already been of the opinion that it was a tonal misstep, but learning the above just reassured me that I was right. The TV show has never been that inconsiderate, before or since. I don’t think it was editorially justified.

Incidentally (and this is absolutely not a dig at you, Ben, or anybody else) I personally find the emphasis on “darkness” as a positive attribute of genre fiction to be a bit… adolescent. Some of my favourite bits of Doctor Who are the brightly coloured knockabout comedic bits. But I accept this is just a matter of taste.

The only thing I would dispute is that “Am I a good man?” is not an interesting question. The answer to the question is obviously yes. We know it, the Doctor knows it. So why are we debating it? The Doctor’s job is to remember he’s a good man without being too much of an arrogant dick about it (Tennant and Pertwee’s Doctors certainly showcase this character trait at points).

[Captain No-Name]

I think Series 5 & 10 are the two best Moffat seasons. And of those, I prefer 10. I’m actually really happy that he ended with what I think was his strongest season.

The “everything and the kitchen sink” approach that Moffat takes seems to cause some viewers to respond “this is complex, and layered, and brilliant” but others to respond “this is incoherent, and messy, and full of dissatisfying underdeveloped bits.”

For me, both Amy and Clara (especially Clara) fell into this latter category. So many ideas! I was praying for a companion who was more… well, straight-forward, clearly defined, self-contained. Bill was everything I wanted.

There were only about 3 elements of Series 10 that threatened to tip into the problems of earlier Moffat seasons, for me…

1. Bill’s backstory was *ever so slightly* over-laden by giving her a dead mother AND a step-mum, when there wasn’t really room for either. But compared to the way Amy and Clara were over-stuffed with ideas that didn’t have room to breathe, Bill’s excess of underdeveloped mothers is a much much smaller problem. (Although, wow, the ending to Lie of the Land really relies on Bill’s mum having a weight she just doesn’t have).

2. in the middle of Series 10, there is this dense block of overcomplicated incoherent nonsense, but it is confined entirely within the 3-part Monk story. Everything before and after the monks was a joy to me.

3. A pointless little gimmick running as a thread through the stories – the vault. RTD also did these, like Bad Wolf and Torchwood etc. But the most intrusive versions of this (the crack in the wall; the Doctor’s name; the Doctor’s impending death) were on Moffat’s watch. Unlike those example, the vault mystery was at least easier to follow and didn’t bend stories out of shape (the worst offender for that is the ending of Closing Time, a lovely episode that has its ending completely robbed by an intrusive story arc to do… well, whatever the hell that is).

But to tell the truth, that’s pretty much all the complaining I can do about Series 10. On the whole, it was great. The list of things I like about it would fill a book.

It intrigues me though, to hear Ben Saunders describe Series 8 in such glowing terms. For me, it has a companion who didn’t work left over from Series 7, and who therefore needs to be significantly reinvented (ultimately for the better, I agree); and a prototype version of the Capaldi Doctor weighed down with all this nastiness and inability to understand humans and inexplicable “Am I good man?” anxiety, while being a prick towards soldiers.

I really wish the Series 10 version of Capaldi’s Doctor had arrived sooner.

One more thing: while Series 8 was the most I’d enjoyed the show since Series 5, it still committed what I consider to be the single most ill-judged and misconceived detail ever to have appeared in the entirety of televised Doctor Who: the nasty and psychologically troubling concept that the deceased can feel cremation. Why would you say that to an audience full of young people?

In a horror film, yeah. But not in Doctor Who. Literally the only time I think modern Doctor Who has got its tone staggeringly wrong.

What d’you reckon, Ben Saunders? Anyone else?

[Captain No-Name]

Excellent work International Debris.

So, if I understand correctly, the BBC absolutely do plan ahead with Doctor Who, but in the business sense of saying “this brand will continue to exist for at least X years; we’ll keep putting X money into it, and (hopefully) earning X money from it,” presumably with financial goals to aim at along the way.

But the actual meat and bones of how the show will function, who will be creatively guiding it, which talent will be involved etc. is a bit more up in the air and adaptable along the way.

[Captain No-Name]

Some actors or all actors?

I admit, I don’t pretend to know what standard operating practices are myself, but my perception (which I’m perfectly happy to have proven wrong) is based on interviews and articles where people give the distinct impression that the production team have got enough on their plate with the next year or so, and haven’t got a concrete plan beyond that.

Certainly compared to the way American TV networks apparently lock people into gargantuan contracts that last for years, Doctor Who never quite seems sure about people’s ongoing availability. I’m not just talking about Ecclestone, Smith and Capaldi, but of people like Jenna Coleman and Catherine Tate.

I thought Clara’s ever-lasting goodbye in Series 8/9 was a result of Jenna not having definitely decided whether to stick around or not. “Last Christmas” gave her a good send-off and then she was back again! As with much of her character, it never felt properly planned out to me at all.

I’m genuinely interested to learn that the BBC commission the show in chunks. This is new to me. I totally thought they did it roughly one series at a time, adjusting things like budget and episode count as they went.

I have to admit, I also thought the Christmas specials were commissioned on a year-by-year basis. I’m sure I remember an old DWM Production Notes column where either RTD or Moffat said we were lucky to have Christmas specials because they are not guaranteed and we shouldn’t take them for granted. If, as you say, The Next Doctor was commissioned way back in 2005 then I’ve fundamentally misunderstood how far in advance Doctor Who is planned!

The 5-year plan thing is similarly new to me. Who does this relate to? Moffat or Chibnall? Surely Chibnall, otherwise why did Moffat seem surprised to be making Series 10?

Incidentally, I much prefer the idea that the Doctor Who production team essentially make everything up as they go along, like they used to in the old days. I’ll be a bit sad if I find out they’ve actually been keeping to a plan all these years.

Actually, it makes me think of that Mark Gatiss sketch “The Pitch of Fear”

[Captain No-Name]

Ooh, I’ve never seen that Moffat interview. I’ll sit down and watch it later. Cheers, International Debris.

I’m pretty sure Moffat spoke a couple of times about the BBC having a five-year plan for the show.

Crikey, I must’ve missed him saying that. I’ve always had the impression that they rarely think more than one series ahead.

I’m waiting for The Life And Scandalous Times of Steven Moffat to come out in 2040 to put this all to rest.

That JNT book was excellent, and I thoroughly recommend it if you haven’t already read it.

[Captain No-Name]

I think it will be quite interesting when, in a few years, the dust settles and people start to feel they can talk more openly about what on Earth was going on behind the scenes. The Moffat era has been rife with rumour, and some developments (like David Yates’s weird confidence that he was going to do a Doctor Who movie; or Moffat’s declaration that there would be more Doctor Who than ever in 2013… which turned out to mean less episodes than normal) have just seemed odd.

[Captain No-Name]

Plastic Percy – I’d be really interested to know if you have a source for the BBC having a contractual obligation to include the Daleks once per series…

I’ve remained sceptical of this rumour because, while I’ve heard it in lots of unofficial places like this, I’ve never heard it from an authoritative source. Plus I don’t think it sounds credible.

I mean, the BBC’s contracts all seem very short term. For example, Ecclestone was only contracted for a single series – by the time they decided to commission a second, he’d already got cold feet. Similarly Matt Smith signed on a year-by-year basis which is why Moffat didn’t even know whether the 11th Doctor would feature in Day of the Doctor when he sat down to write the early drafts. According to some accounts, the BBC expected Doctor Who to wrap up when RTD stepped down, and there wasn’t magnanimous confidence in a Moffat-led Series 5. All of which points at the BBC doing things one year at a time. I mean, Moffat seemingly did Series 10 because if he didn’t then nobody else would!

So, given all this lack of long-term planning, I’d be extremely surprised if they’d brokered some kind of perpetual “the Daleks must feature in every single Doctor Who series from now on, even if it’s just a cameo” type deal. I strongly suspect the Dalek rights situation gets contractually renewed at regular intervals, perhaps annually. And I doubt it’s as dictatorial as the rumour suggests.

I think the Nation estate had a unique bargaining position in 2005, which they’ve since lost. The Daleks were crucial for the relaunch. But not nowadays. If the Nation estate decided to be arses, the BBC would do quite happily without the Daleks for a few years.

[Captain No-Name]

Fair enough, Ben.

Interestingly, I also saw the 2150AD movie long before I saw the original (I imagine this is true of many Who fans) but certain things in the TV serial (especially the “28 Days Later running round London landmarks at dawn” business) really worked for me, meaning I didn’t find it the least bit disappointing after its big screen cousin.

International Debris – the Series 10 finale and The Invasion are my two favourite Cyberman stories. I have enjoyed some of what went between, but those two are great.

[Captain No-Name]

I understand why people grumble about The Chase. Although, to be clear, I think those people are misery guts. The Chase is a ripping good fun piece of 1960s comic book pulp adventure, and I like it.

But what’s naff about The Dalek Invasion of Earth? As a piece of doom-laden post-apocalyptic 1960s TV sci-fi for all the family, it certainly does the job for me.

[Captain No-Name]

You’ve got to remember there were an enormous amount of Dalek episodes in the 1960s. Hartnell alone had about 32 Dalek episodes in less than 3 years. That’s insane. Add to that the two Cushing movies, and about 13 Troughton Dalek episodes, and you can see why a 1960s viewer might suffer Dalek fatigue.

By comparison, we’ve had a mere couple of Dalek cameos since a 2-part Dalek story back in 2015. Hardly an excess. It doesn’t compare to the 1960s Dalek overdose.

It would have been reasonable of the 1960s production team to want to give the Daleks a rest, but I understand that actually it was more a case of Terry Nation withdrawing permission because he was trying to launch a big Dalek TV series on American television, and that’s why Evil of the Daleks appears to depict the “final end” of the Daleks. As we all know, nothing came of that. and the Daleks eventually returned to Doctor Who in the 1970s.

If I was in Chibnall’s shoes I’d be contemplating a Dalek-less first series. And maybe he is, who know? But I think most viewers would agree Jodie really ought to face them eventually.

[Captain No-Name]

I agree RTD’s “all the daleks have been erased from time” idea wrote itself into a bit of a corner. I feel like they should have done a story (around about Series 3) that properly addressed this for good, but instead it’s just been kind of forgotten about, and the Daleks are found throughout time and space again now, just like in the classic series. Which is for the best really.

I’d say the Cybermen have been a bit naff since the 1970s really. I’ve got an affection for Earthshock, I admit, but few of their appearances seem to do justice to the idea of them. The Series 10 finale was a joy to me, because I thought the cybermen were – at last – deployed excellently. (Your Big Finish recommendation of Spare Parts is good for the same reason).

Like yourself I am suspicious of the rumour of contractual obligation. The pattern is there, as you say, but that’s the case with any good conspiracy theory; doesn’t make it true.

I’d rather not choose between cameos or naff Dalek stories. That’s a bit Lose-Lose. Even when I enjoy a story that contains a Dalek cameo (Twice Upon A Time, for example) I kind of wish the Dalek cameo wasn’t in it.

[Captain No-Name]

I seem to have triggered you Ben, I apologise.

Just to be clear, I absolutely do not blame Moffat for the “Ruination of the Daleks” (incidentally, maybe Ben Aaronovitch should have gone for that instead of “Remembrance”…) and my comment does not say that I do.

What I in fact said was “Moffat-era TV Daleks often seem like generic shooty robot monsters who turn up then get blown up,” and in my defence I present to you Series 10, where this perfectly describes the sum total of their contribution.

My actual viewpoint is that most 21st century Dalek stories have missed the mark for me. One thing I will say is that you should never use Daleks for cameos only. I hate them being wheeled on in the background for things like series finales.

Incidentally, I can never agree with people who say the Daleks have outstayed their welcome. I had this conversation with someone recently, who said to me “can’t we go a year without a Dalek story for once” and I pointed out that the last Dalek story was back in 2015.

I wouldn’t mind a series completely sans-Daleks. But what I actually WANT is a stonkingly good Dalek story. And I humbly suggest that the Moffat era did not really feature one.

[Captain No-Name]

Seeing as you’ve asked for recommendations, International Debris, I’ll chip in…

Dalek Empire Series 1 and 2.

Two series of 4 CDs, this is a Doctor-less space opera telling a love story against the backdrop of a vast intergalactic Dalek war. Crucially, this was released before the TV series was revived in 2005, and so it takes its cue from 20th century material. This feels a bit like Nick Briggs doing a modern 15-rated movie-budget version of those wonderful brightly-coloured pulpy 1960s annuals and comic strips, where the Doctor didn’t feature and there were Space Agents and a Dalek Emperor, and the Second World War always seemed a recent influence. The kind of thing the classic TV series hinted at but never had the budget to depict. By comparison, Moffat-era TV Daleks often seem like generic shooty robot monsters who turn up then get blown up. But in Dalek Empire the Daleks are more like heartless metal Nazis, psychologically torturing people, conducting experiments, gunning down labour forces once they are finished with… utter bastards.

They did a third series (which was 6 CDs long, and starred David Tennant before he was cast as the Doctor) but it was only tangentially connected to the original two series, and I didn’t warm to it as much. I never heard the fourth and final series, but I understand it was a 4-CD story with some new characters, which was set within the timeframe of Series One, and so was inessential.

In other words, all you really need is Series 1 and 2.

NOTE: Series 1 & 2 are available on Spotify. Just search “Dalek Empire” and you can listen to all 8 CDs for free (albeit interrupted with occasional annoying adverts, unless you have Premium)

[Captain No-Name]

Also No Name, he generated an entire other living being out of his “bleeding CGI”, that’s got to at least make a dent in his reserves.

Yeah, it wasn’t the most satisfying of plot points. In fact, it was a cheap trick, dramatically speaking. I would also level that accusation (possibly more so actually) at the pseudo-regeneration in The Lie of the Land.

But I see it as being like losing a dangerous amount of blood, nearly dying, but then donating that blood so somebody else might live.

It was stupid, can we just pretend it never happened, as we do with large swathes of the show’s canon already?

I have to admit, I was happily doing this until Moffat raked it up and complicated the regeneration limit by imposing his specific interpretation onto the Stolen Earth cliffhanger.

I personally found this as unwelcome as if the Doctor had suddenly started harping on about the Morbius Doctors, like some boring fan.

I say this as a self-evident boring fan.

[Captain No-Name]

Ben Paddon: yeah, the new Target novelisations are mentioned in the latest DWM.

Steven Moffat said in an interview somewhere that he wanted to be the person to novelise the 50th anniversary story because he had such a rotten time doing the script that he didn’t want some other bugger doing the victory lap.

[Captain No-Name]

As far as I’m concerned, the telltale sign of a regeneration is that the Doctor suddenly looks physically completely different and has a traumatic mental episode where he’s confused/amnesiac. I would say if these 2 criteria are not met then it’s not a regeneration, it’s just the Doctor getting injured and bleeding some gold CGI.

I like to think that a few seconds after Night of the Doctor, a young John Hurt climbs into the TARDIS and says “erm, who am I again..?”

In 2008, my interpretation of the Stolen Earth cliffhanger was that the Doctor was badly injured, but managed to stave off regeneration. Result: he still looked like David Tennant and he wasn’t mentally confused. He did however bleed Artron energy. I don’t see why bleeding Artron energy means you use up a regeneration, any more than a human being losing vast quantities of blood should be considered medically dead if they later recover.

I didn’t even consider that David Tennant might have regenerated into David Tennant. I have to say I *really* don’t like that idea. Instead, I interpreted the “vanity” line as meaning the Doctor was too vain to submit to regeneration in the Stolen Earth (which tallies with the “I don’t want to go” business in End of Time) but that he essentially “lost” an incarnation by syphoning it into the hand and creating a mortal human copy of himself.

I didn’t have a problem with the Doctor almost regenerating (but recovering) in the Stolen Earth. I know it pissed other people off.

But if the Doctor loses an incarnation every time he bleeds gold CGI doesn’t that mean Capaldi has played about 17 Doctors by now..?

[Captain No-Name]

I bet Resurrection wasn’t even mooted (except by Target in the 80s).

[Captain No-Name]

Terry Nation was asking for too much money, basically (which for whatever reason wasn’t a problem with Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis).

This would have been the reason Target didn’t do those books back in the 1980s, but Gareth Roberts has said it was Saward who halted the recent attempt to novelise Revelation.

Nowadays the Terry Nation estate are quite happy for novelisations to feature daleks. We know for a fact that a novelisation of Day of the Doctor is forthcoming, written by Steven Moffat.

Certainly nobody has a name that will help shift units to the extent that DOUGLAS ADAMS must improve sales. But I’m willing to bet a cover design with daleks on it (plus having “Daleks” in the title) would have a positive impact on sales. Especially as a load of old fans would buy it on the basis that it completes their Target library. I reckon you’d sell more copies of Revelation of the Daleks than you would, say, The Wheel of Ice or The Drosten’s Curse or any of those other original novels they’ve printed recently.

[Captain No-Name]

Ha! D’you know what, I’m sure Gareth Roberts would have addressed the Doctor’s non-involvement in the plot. It seems like the kind of thing he would want to fix. The polish he gave to Shada definitely made it work better. I’ve no clue how he would have done it for Revelation, but I imagine it would have been via the fine tradition of Doctor Who novelisers deviating from what was seen on screen.

I have never heard anything officially said about the abandoned Revelation novelisation. I just saw a couple of tweets where Roberts confirmed that he had started work on it, and that the project had been shelved at Saward’s behest.

If I had to guess, this would be my theory: Saward was happy for Earthshock to be novelised by someone else way back in 1983 because he himself was busy as script editor on the show, and Target paid peanuts. I imagine nowadays the publisher pays a proper fee, plus he’s no long up to his eyeballs with script editing. But I bet the publisher wanted an author with a good recent track record to do the writing, and chose Roberts due to the quality of Shada. So maybe Saward initially said yes to the idea, but when they were hammering out the deal he realised he actually wanted to be the one to write it. Especially considering the money would otherwise be split between Saward, Roberts and the Terry Nation estate. Meaning less money for Saward as well as him being deprived of the satisfaction of novelising his own script. This is a complete and total guess though, don’t take my word for it; I might be miles off.

[Captain No-Name]

Presumably the strange clamouring in certain quarters for the Rani to reappear has quietened down now that Michelle Gomez was so outstandingly good as the Master..?

[Captain No-Name]

Makes total sense, International Debris.

Apparently Gareth Roberts did start writing an official Revelation novelisation, but then Eric Saward got cold feet unfortunately.

I think Revelation could make a magnificent novel. Imagine a good writer harnessing all that macabre black comedy in pitch-black prose; expanding the gruesome goings on at Tranquil Repose; giving new tragicomic inner monologues to the mourners or grief-stricken relatives.

Instead of a straight-forward Target retelling, Revelation has the potential to have been something poetic – something morbidly philosophical, witty, poignant… And then a saucer full of Daleks blast their way in at the end!

What a shame it never came to pass.

[Captain No-Name]

Anyway, all this talk of the Valeyard and general fanwankery reminds me of another question I have regarding your novel marathon, International Debris…

If you’re doing unofficial novels like Resurrection/Revelation of the Daleks, does that mean you’re also doing Time’s Champion by Hinton and McKeon?

If so, before or after Spiral Scratch?

[Captain No-Name]

Still baffles me why they didn’t give Capaldi a two-parter Valeyard story with him playing both parts. It would’ve bloody glorious.

Two problems:

1. If you cast Peter Capaldi as “the dark side” of the Doctor, where his morality is brought into question, and he’s a bit of a cold bastard… it would basically be Series 8.

2. The Valeyard was described as deriving from between the Doctor’s 12th and final incarnation. And Moffat ballsed up the numbering of the Doctors. From what I remember of the trainwreck that was Time of the Doctor, it was stated that Matt Smith was playing the 13th and final Doctor.

Apparently David Tennant counts as two Doctors, because at the end of Series 4 he bled regenerative energy into a hand and essentially made a human clone of himself, thereby using up an incarnation. I absolutely hate this reading of that scene, and think it unnecessarily complicates things.

Combined with the fact John Hurt played an extra Doctor in between McGann and Eccleston, that means the Valeyard would hail from between Tennant (the Eleventh/Twelfth Doctor) and Matt Smith (the 13th Doctor).

I know what you’re thinking: “between the 12th and final” doesn’t necessarily mean “between the 12th and 13th”… alas, Time of the Doctor makes a great show of the fact that Matt Smith is the final Doctor. His life is only sustained because the Time Lords magically zap him a whole new cycle of regenerations, essentially re-starting his life.

Peter Capaldi is playing the first Doctor of a new cycle. (The 14th Doctor in-Universe; but only the 12th Doctor if you are counting actors who have played the lead on BBC TV).

Thus Jodie will be the 13th (in real life) and the 15th (in-Universe) Doctor.

Urgh, I despise how complicated Moffat has made things.

[Captain No-Name]

International Debris – I’m in awe of your quest, and your supernatural speed-reading powers. Although maybe if you had been blogging along the way you wouldn’t have made it to 97 books this year!

[Captain No-Name]

From a plot perspective, the entire Hitch-Hiker’s series is really just a series of absurdly improbable coincidences happening in succession.

Yes.

I am a big fan of Douglas Adams. I love his work. Yet strangely, I would say 90% of my enjoyment derives from a peculiar and unplaceable quality which imbues his work. A “Douglas Adams-ness” which I greatly enjoy. It almost feels like being in the company of a friend, whose presence I especially enjoy. He really makes me laugh, and I enjoy the way he fizzes with ideas.

If I set this aside and analyse his work dispassionately, I would say his storytelling is undisciplined, it is chaotically structured and unpolished; his characters are 2-Dimensional; and he hurtles through ideas, veering from one to the next, often without developing them or connecting them in a dramatically satisfying way.

In other words, most of the criticisms I hear of Douglas Adams are, I would say, fair. And yet that doesn’t diminish my enjoyment.

Further up the thread, Ben mentioned that “Destiny of the Daleks” feels a lot like a Douglas Adams script, despite having Terry Nation’s name on it. I completely agree. It has a big dose of Douglas thanks to him being the script editor, and it is somehow imbued with “Douglas Adams-ness” in a way that a similar Terry Nation story like “Death to the Daleks” just isn’t.

When Douglas Adams wrote his first solo Doctor Who script (The Pirate Planet) there is evidence that he actually put a hell of a lot of thought into building its world, and exploring all of its concepts, and writing and rewriting it to hone its structure. There is a very interesting appendix to James Goss’s recent novelisation of the Pirate Planet which details Douglas’s intensive early drafts and revisions.

But when, the following year, he wrote the much-celebrated City of Death, he was forced to do so at breakneck speed (as we discussed further up the thread, he had a delirious coffee and alcohol-fuelled weekend in which to write 4 scripts) and what you end up with is a story with a really lovely Douglas Adamsy feel, but which is technically something of an artistic explosion.

It’s his most celebrated Doctor Who work, beloved of many fans like International Debris. And it is very good, but…

I’ve always had difficulty, for example, with the concept of how a character can be splintered through time (an idea reused by Moffat to similarly perplexing effect with Clara Oswald). And quite what the hell is going on with that guy doing a portrait of Romana with a cracked clock face I’m not sure.

These are just a couple of examples of arresting, vivid ideas, which I would argue haven’t been entirely satisfyingly engineered into the storytelling. At least from my subjective perspective.

So, to answer your question (kind of) I’d say that Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who BENEFITS from having that mysterious quality of Douglas Adams-ness, but that this necessarily brings with it some of the (entirely legitimate) criticisms to which you have alluded.

For example, I gather Douglas Adams wrote the final scenes of The Armageddon Factor, and that is a catastrophic let-down because so much hinges on it providing narrative satisfaction for the Key to Time story arc. And yet here Douglas doesn’t seem to bother with narrative satisfaction. Instead of giving us a good crescendo, he instead writes the Doctor making the philosophical argument that his epic quest (which we’ve been following all season) was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, and thus he resets the status quo, by scattering the Key to Time back through the cosmos, undoing a season-long quest, rendering the whole exercise pointless!

That’s my attempt to summarise things anyway.

As a post-script I would say that paradoxically Douglas Adams didn’t always manage to harness his own Douglas Adams-ness. I found Mostly Harmless to be almost completely devoid of his charm (as was, incidentally, that regrettable posthumous Hitch-hiker movie).

[Captain No-Name]

Well, between the DWM comic strip “Three Steps to the Left” and the Shorty Trip “Storm in a Tikka.”

Obviously.

Ahem.

(This is simultaneously terrifying and impressive, like those Lance Parkin History books)

[Captain No-Name]

Forgive me everyone but, International Debris – news of your quest has thrown up all sorts of questions in my mind. So…

1. Where did you start? Time and Relative?

2. Are you doing Engines of War? If so, presumably it’s between The Gallifrey Chronicles and the forthcoming Rose novelisation? (That’ll be a very weird 3 book sequence!)

3. Where are you placing the 7th Doctor PDAs? Prior to the Virgin NAs, due to the ending of Loving the Alien? Confusingly I seem to recall there is a viewpoint that one of PDAs (Algebra of Ice?) takes place somewhere DURING the early NAs…

4. Have you been stumped as to where any of them belong? The Infinity Doctors for example?

5. What will you do if they release further novels (like The Drosten’s Curse for example) which are set at a point you’ve already overtaken? Just ignore them?

6. Where on Earth is the Dying Days going?

7. It’s weird that (in your marathon) Resurrection and Revelation of the Daleks just won’t happen, due to never having been novelised, isn’t it?

8. Finally – 97 Who books in a year? And it hasn’t sent you insane?

[Captain No-Name]

International Debris – You can read a Target novel in an hour!? And a PDA novel in a single evening!?

My brain and eyes just couldn’t do that.

I am reminded of that moment in “Rose” when the Doctor reads The Lovely Bones.

(“sad ending…”)

[Captain No-Name]

Just Googled Dursley McLinden because the name didn’t ring a bell (turns out he played Mike in Remembrance) and learnt that he died of AIDS in 1995 when he was just 30. How incredibly sad.

[Author]

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