You can save yourself a fair crack of time by scrolling to the bottom of this and play the clip what's there. Because that's what all these hideously arranged words are leading to.
If you are reading this, then you are in for the long haul.
When a show has gone on so long that it becomes intergenerational it starts to have problems. The show changes with the times to keep up with the target audience. The show doesn't want fans to grow old alongside it. It wants leave those behind. Yet it still wants to celebrate it's history.
Older fans get nostalgic. Fans as they age start to talk openly in terms of eras or of people which they felt affiliated to in the show. The ones which perhaps heralded a maturing eye by giving them strange new feelings. They think announcing what era they were in the demographic for marks them as veterans who are to be revered as wise hipsters when instead, for the new generation, it simply casts them in amber like the mosquito in Jurassic Park. "I was hanging with the T-Rex before it got cool"
The new generation of fans - 21st Century fans - want less home made craft and wobbly sets. They want more adventure, things done at high speed and a rat-tat-tat script which relates to them, less back story and talking about things which happened before they tuned in. They don't have time for that. Does Twitter have time for context and back story? No.
Now I think we all know what long running, iconic BBC show I am talking about. And, for my sins, Yvette Fielding is my presenter. Yes, kids. Gets no hipster than that.
Nah, I'm only kidding. I'm not talking about Blue Peter! I am talking about Doctor Who, of course!
I don't kid about Yvette, though. I'd watch her sticky back plastic a kitchen roll any late afternoon of the week.
Now, before I start getting a whole lot of weird hate mail delivered in fezzes from fans of Doctor Who, I am not saying Doctor Who was the worst thing on TV.
Doctor Who is doing just fine as a show. It has a hard job too. It needs to work on many levels. Engaging enough to keep new fans to the show, reverent enough to keep the older fans with their Rolodex of Who continuity fact cards happy and mainstream enough to have the casual viewer not turnover to Splash! on ITV.
If I had to make a complaint about Doctor Who is that I don't believe any drama has been more known for it's writer since Shakespeare. Whether it was Russell T Davies or now Steven Moffat, the show is rarely talked about without mentioning them. It makes it hard to suspend belief about a time travelling universe saving super alien when you hear every line as a keyboard stroke in an office of a middle aged man, chucking at his own intelligence.
2013 was a big year in Doctor Who. And to show how big a year it was, the BBC did everything about Doctor Who bigger.
In 2013 the Doctor character regenerated into a new actor.
Remember when, before 2013, regenerations were nothing more than two men in the same clothes and sometimes just one man in a wig?
Well, in 2013, this was how the Doctor regenerated:
2013 was the 50th year of Doctor Who you see, and the BBC clung onto it for dear life in what has been troubled waters for the broadcaster in terms of nostalgia.
The BBC produced a number of big special programmes to mark the occasion and I will briefly go through some of them now.
There was Doctor Who: The Ultimate Guide. Which it wasn't. The ultimate guide would have taken 3 days to broadcast and be chock-a-block of what some might describe as "Who Nerds" citing things from novels and listing the music being used in the background of the The Ultimate Guide for reference purposes for later reference. This was more Doctor Who: The Crash Course. Concentrating on the more modern episodes and, given the talking heads brought on to talk about Who-lore, it could have been even more accurately called, Doctor Who: For Dummies. At least that would have prepared the viewer from getting ultimately guided by members of super-group McBusted. Interestingly Konnie Huq was in this - if I had only been a few years older, she would have been my "Bluey".
There was An Adventure in Space and Time. A wonderful drama written by the equally Moffat-like omnipotent Mark Gatiss about the very first actor who played the Doctor, William Hartnell, and the production behind the first shows. It was meant to be a children's historical edu-tainment show, you know, back in the day. There were some lovely touches and it certainly didn't need much prior Who interest to be hugely entertaining for the viewer.
The BBC also showed the first 4 episodes of Doctor Who. I was surprised just how much of a dislikeable character he started out as. A curmudgeon, not exactly quick of wit, he appeared completely unheroic and at one stage tried to kill a wounded caveman by bashing his head in with a stone. Not only a mean thing to do but with a total disregard of the consequences of changing the future of time and space.
There was a documentary explaining that, in recommissioning Doctor Who after a 10 year or so hiatus, the people in charge of the production were now the true fans of show who would write and perform and record on cassettes their own audio plays when they were young. Which is why instead of the companions being responsible teachers and the Doctor's granddaughter, or eye-candy just for the dads, the companions are these days exclusively hotties who all end up kissing the geekiest and brainiest character in the show (the Doctor). Just exactly as in real like. On those real life cassette tapes. Of the geek boy's made up audio plays. Where they were basically the Doctor.
 |
| Honestly, literally any excuse - I'd even concoct a poorly written blog about Doctor Who for a chance to put this in it. |
The BBC also, of course, had the 50th Anniversary episode. A romp. With multiple doctors, naturally. It shouldn't be taken any more seriously than that.
For me, it was the Five(ish) Doctors which was most enjoyable. A rather more true account than people might want to admit involving previous actors who played the Doctor trying to get into the 50th anniversary episode. The decrepit, eccentrically embittered "doctors" failing at every turn to convince Steven Moffat (depicted coming up with story lines by playing with Who action figures) they deserve to be in the episode, rang very honest and was all the better for the of it.
So far, so good.
But then, just at the end, there was Doctor Who: The Afterparty.
Doctor Who: The Afterparty. A show so directionless it couldn't even cope with one direction (more of that later). A programme which showed in horrifying clarity just how well the Doctor Who series wire-walks over the populist, fan and casual viewer ravine.
It didn't seem like the sort of Who party, Who fans would ever attend. It was cruelly shambolic.
The main problem was those producing it and anchoring it clearly had no idea what the fuss was all about for Doctor Who other than somehow saying you are well into Doctor Who is hip now, and hip is what you want to be.
It was Going Live with adults. Adults on the Ood juice (the set actually had a bar with Ood bar staff, serving Ood cocktails). Hosted by Zoe Ball and someone from T4, neither of whom I particularly associate with either Doctor Who or good presenting skills. All the main players were there as well as a load of companions which T4 guy and Zoe knew that they should be excited about on behalf of the viewers, but just didn't know in quite what way. It made for TARDIS crash television.
 |
| A TARDRESS |
Moffat actually had a go at the BBC during this live afterparty show - saying something along the lines: "See BBC? You could have had John Hurt as the War Doctor for 10 years if you'd not cancelled it!" wholly and worryingly missing the point that John Hurt would not have done it in the 90's and, basically, the kids would not have enjoyed John Hurt if his cameo in 2013 was anything to go by.
Slightly tipsy old companions jeering and cackling at the bloke from T4 and a strange bit where an animated K9 gives selected statistics from Doctor Who were the highlights. The highlights!
If only Doctor Who had brained the caveman right at the beginning then this arc could have been changed and the future of Doctor Who would never have culminated in this vomit of tripe.
Steven Moffat would like that. He's into story arcs which tie-up every loose-end and reset mythology so much that he is effectively denying the joy of new fans setting up their own recordings of Doctor Who stories which he and his production team had.
At one stage you can see Moffat actually seeing how he has been complicit in all... this.. and reaching out for the Big Friendly Button. But is isn't there. Because real life sci-fi doesn't work like that.
So! For all those reasons, and particularly the one below which interestingly for a celebration about a time traveller displays an astonishing lack of the concept of time delay, it is my 2013 TV lowight. In fact if you can get through this clip, then, well you're a better person than me 'cos I switched over on the night it aired. It might be still in an infinite feedback loop on BBC3 for all I know. Or care.
No comments:
Post a Comment