I wanted to like it

Really I did

I saw the pilot episode of the new Doctor Who during the week.

I've been a fan of Dr. Who since the mid 70's. Some of my earliest English reading material was Dr. Who related. When it was good, the show was very very good. But when it was bad, it was AWFUL.

The BBC, never one to pay good money for things like, oh, special fx or acting classes, churned out some truly awful muck sometimes. Those who wrote some real gems of episodes rose above the paltry limitations of the BBC medium. They wrote for love of the material, love of the characters, or love of the craft of writing. It was no surprise really that once those writers moved on, and were not replaced, that the show was on the road to crapness and cancellation.

This led to a period, much like Trek is heading to now, where the only new Doctor Who was being written by fans. Virgin Publishing took to printing the "New Adventures", and for a while at least, some proper SF writers took the Doctor and his TARDIS to strange worlds never imagined by any sane BBC F/X budget analyst.

Some of the better fan writers got their break writing novels under the Virgin agreement. Paul Cornell, Kate Orman and others, showed how it was possible (if you had real talent) to cross the barrier from fan-writing to published writing.

When the Dr. Who movie aired some years ago, the sticky hands of corporate ignorance were clearly in evidence on the script. Demanding broader accessibility to an unproven American market, the money-men lobbied for "changes". The Doctor would be half-human. His companion would be a love interest. There would be "smooches". And the list went on.

The American market wasn't interested. Neither were the fans, truthfully, though there will always be diehard fans who support a franchise regardless of quality.

The new series, when the rumours began, seemed too good to be true. The series was in the hands of a FAN. Someone who "got it". Someone who knew one of the largest most vocal subsets of Whovian fandom was not just the geek, but the male-gay geek. The Doctors asexual nature, and his studious ignorance of heaving companions buxoms allowed this segment to project their teenage fantasies onto this male heroic figure.

So Russell T Davies, the guy who developed and wrote Queer as Folk, a self confessed fan, was going to take the series back to the BBC. And make it RIGHT. Make it with the love and attention that a FAN should have for his beloved show. And some of Britain's finest writers signed on to write for it too. People like the funny and talented (and gay) Mark Gatiss from the League of Gentlemen.

Truly, this was going to be GOOD. This was going to be WHO as it was meant to be.

Casting Christopher Eccleston was an enormous coup. He's an excellent actor, who gave the new show instant credibility.

Casting Billie Piper was, seemingly, an enourmous mistake. The teen-pop-queen had even less acting credibility than her ginger husband.

I'll say now, Billie was better than I could have hoped for. In acting terms, she fell right into the role, and I thought she was great. Bravo Billie.

No. The problem, crazy as it might sound, was in the writing.

How could that be? We know Russel can write. We know he's a fan. What's the problem?

The problem is, this was a super-fannish script. Too full of in-references for the long term fans, too full of unanswered questions mixed with bad exposition for the new viewers.

You never get a sense for who or what the Doctor is. Instead, we get more running around than an episode of 24, replete with loads of "We're running out of time" and "There's no time". Truly, the writers of the Southpark movie said it best when they pointed out that you don't have to have anything actually happen, if you just keep the characters looking like they're under pressure, running against the clock.

The writer treated the Doctor with kids gloves. This looked like a synopsis of a larger story, condensed unmercifully into 45 minutes. And the pace and music cranked artificially high to give a semblance of "action" when really, very little happens, there's very little action, and the plot is rice-paper thin.

As a first time viewer, I would feel absolutely NO inclination to watch the next episode. As a fan, I will watch it. Because yeah, I'm one of those... "Any WHO is better than no WHO" fans. Maybe the writing will be better next time. And the editing less choppy. And maybe the incidental music won't be so gratingly loud and intrusive and CONSTANT. Maybe.

WHO knows?
posted by Manchild at 12:00 PM