Yes, it’s a day early. Discussing a British show on Independence Day just felt weird. If you have to ask why, your history teacher failed you.
I initially thought this was going to turn into a three parter give the word count after the previous installment. However, to break this up properly would put this article’s word count at under a thousand, so we’re going over 3000 words, which I usually try to stay under just because I know your time is important, and as cool as this trivia is you’d probably rather watch the show than read about it. Don’t worry, I brought videos to give you a break, though that wasn’t intentional when I put them in originally.
In our last installment we began looking at the next document in our list, the “General Notes on Background and Approach” for the show Dr. Who, so even the spelling would changed by airtime. We got to meet the crew, but in this half we’ll check out the infamous Time And Relative Dimensions In Space machine and learn more about the crazy old man piloting it. At the time, that name didn’t exist. Neither did the police box. Apparently neither did the ship. As for the Doctor himself, the backstory we know today about the renegade from the planet Gallifrey who sought exploration and became a hero did not exist. What did they plan for the old man and his blue box? Let’s jump in and find out.
DR WHO’S “MACHINE”
When we consider what this looks like, we are in danger of either Science Fiction or Fairytale labelling. If it is a transparent plastic bubble we are with all the low-grade space fiction of cartoon strip and soap—opera. If we scotch this by positing something humdrum, say, passing through some common object in street such as a night—watchman’s shelter to arrive inside a marvellous contrivance of quivering electronics, then we simply have a version of the dear old Magic Door.
So much for that plan. Sci-fi Narnia it is, then.
Therefore, we do no see the machine at all; or rather it is visible only as an absence of visibility, a shape of nothingness (Inlaid, into surrounding picture). Dr. Who has achieved this “disappearance” by covering the outside with light—resistant paint (a recognised research project today). Thus our charac1ers can bump into it, run their hands over its shape, partly disappear by partly entering it, and disappear entirely when the door closes behind them.
[Handwritten note from Sydney Newman: “Not visual. How to do? Need tangible symbol”]
I don’t know. It worked for Wonder Woman as far back as the 1940s. What they eventually went with was a machine that hid its external shape to match the surrounding area. Then the budget came into play and I guess trying to find a decent prop each week was considered too much of a hassle. Episode two would take place in caveman days, so what would it be? A rock? Would they have to add a door to every prop that wouldn’t logically have one of his own? At one point the Master disguised his TARDIS as a rocket, and its doors weren’t even the door of the rocket, so I guess so. That’s how it got stuck as the prop they picked for the first episode, a British police box, which turned out to be a blessing for the franchise. Even if you don’t know what a police box is, you know the TARDIS when you see it. I’m guessing the modern versions only exist because of the TARDIS keeping the idea in the British memory.
It can be put into an apparently empty van. Wherever they go some contemporary disguise has to be found for it. Many visual possibilities can be worked out. The discovery of the old man and investigation of his machine would occupy most of the first episode, which would be called:—
“Nothing at the End of the Lane”
[Handwritten note from Sydney Newman: “Don’t like this at all. What do we see?”]
You don’t see anything. That’s what invisible means. Kidding aside, I’m not saying it’s impossible, but Newman has a point. It’s the cheapest way out possible but it also doesn’t exactly wow the audience to pull the “walk behind the matte painting” gag from the Alasdair Beckett-King parody.
No, I don’t need an excuse to show this when I already used it as a Daily Video. Doesn’t mean I won’t take the chance when I have it available to me.
The machine is unreliable, being faulty. A recurrent problem is to find spares. How to get thin gauge platinum wire in B.C.1566? Moreover, Dr. Who has lost his memory, so they have to learn to use it, by a process of trial and error, keeping records of knobs pressed and results (This is the fuel for many a long story). After several near—calamities they institute a safeguard: one of their number is left in the machine when the others go outside, so that at the end of an agreed time, they can be fetched back into their own era. This provides a suspense element in any given danger: can they survive till the moment of recall? Attack on recaller etc.
[Handwritten note from Sydney Newman: “Good stuff here”]
And not really used in the final product. There are times you wonder if the Doctor can pilot his own ship or maybe stealing a TARDIS in for repairs was such a good idea (or you go by Neil Gaiman’s story where the TARDIS purposefully goes wherever she wants half the time–she must hate Benidorm) but outside of the “fast return” switch being jammed in “Edge Of Darkness” or the Doctor faking a leaky fluid link to go see the Dalek city before learning what Daleks are, this doesn’t really come up outside of occasional repairs. Oddly enough, I’ve had a spin-off idea of my own that does kind of use these ideas and that was long before reading this.
Granted this machine, then, we require exciting episodic stories, using surprising visual effects and unusual scenery, about excursions into time, into space, or into any material state we can make feasible. Hardly any time at all is spent in the machine: we are interested in human beings.
I don’t know. I would have loved more stories in the TARDIS just to learn more about the rooms inside. In the first season we only had the console room and a sleeping but as the series went on the sleeping room was replaced proper solo bedrooms, a pool, a back-up console room, the aforementioned giant waterfall, a turkish bath, a library, I think some kind of lab but I could be thinking of a fan production, a wardrobe room, a sensory deprivation room that makes you levitate while in a trance, the power source, a room with a bench for sitting that needed a landscaper, and suggestions of far more. Peter Moffat would give us a story inside a damaged TARDIS, which is where the waterfall came from, but a proper story in the TARDIS could be fascinating and also focus on the crew. Speaking of which, back to the crew.
OVERALL CONTINUITY OF STORY.
Besides the machine we have the relationship of the four characters to each other. They want to help the old man find himself; he doesn’t like them; the sensible hero never trusts Dr. Who; Biddy rather dislikes Miss McGovern; Lola admires Cliff… these attitudes developed and varied as temporary characters are encountered and reacted to. The old man provides continuing elements of Mystery, and Quest.
“Edge Of Destruction” kind of has this but that’s not the relationship we got with the crew. If anything, Susan got along well with both Ian and Barbara. After that episode the Doctor was nicer to them as well, despite initially kidnapping them. And of course the Doctor and Susan got along since they were family, though now I wonder if they still are after that whole Timeless Child thing.
He remains a mystery. From time to time the other three discover things about him, which turn out to be false or inconclusive. (i.e. any writer inventing an interesting explanation must undercut it within his own serial—time, so that others can have a go at the mystery). They think he may be a criminal fleeing from his own time; he evidently fears pursuit through time. Sometimes they doubt his loss of memory, particularly as he does have flashes of memory. But also, he is searching for something which he desires heart—and—soul, but which he can’t define. If, for instance, they were to go back to King Arthur’s time, Dr. Who would be immensely moved by the idea of the quest for the Grail. This is, as regards him, a Quest Story, a Mystery Story, and a Mysterious Stranger Story, overall.
The so-called “Cartmel Master Plan” was intended to add mystery back to the Doctor, thought the novel Lungbarrow went about it the wrong way and didn’t seem to really understand the plan. There comes a time when the Doctor can’t be too much of a mystery. Fans will be curious about his family, the events that made him who he was before we met him all the way back to “An Unearthly Child”, and his people. Apparently even the show creators knew this was going to be important should the show go long enough, and had a plan in mind.
While his mystery may never be solved, or may perhaps be revealed slowly over a very long run of stories, writers will probably like to know an answer. Shall we say:—
The Secret of Dr. Who: In his own day, somewhere in our future, he decided to search for a time or for a society or for a physical condition which is ideal, and having found it, to stay there. He stole the machine and set forth on his quest. He is thus an extension of the scientist who has opted out, but he has opted farther than ours can do, at the moment. And having opted out, he is disintegrating.
[Handwritten note from Sydney Newman: “Don’t like this at all. Dr Who will become a kind of father figure – I don’t want him to be a reactionary.”]
It would later turn out that he did steal a TARDIS because “I was bored”, with a later retcon making the reason he and Susan were on Earth in the first place being to hide the Hand Of Omega, a device that led to the Time Lords becoming masters of time but in the wrong hands, like the Daleks, could be the end of everything. I don’t know if the Doctor was ever a father figure to anyone but Susan’s various replacements. Vicki, Dodo, and Polly being the last before regenerating into the Second Doctor and never being a father figure again. Even the Fifth was a best a big brother to Adric.
One symptom of this is his hatred of scientist, inventors, improvers. He can get into a rare paddy when faced with a cave man trying to invent a wheel. He malignantly tries to stop progress (the future) wherever he finds it, while searching for his ideal (the past). This seems to me to involve slap up—to—date moral problems, and old ones too.
Yeah, I don’t like this one. This “Dr. Who” seems to want to find a place without any kind of science and he’s always been a scientist of some sort, an amateur explorer who also could fix and build things. (The Third Doctor was great at that.) It’s one of his better weapons to use against his enemies, being able to break their toys or fix the things stopping them from harming others. They did come up with another option, but I don’t think Sydney liked that one, either.
In story terms, our characters see the symptoms and guess at the nature of his trouble, without knowing details; and always try to help him find a home in time and space. wherever he goes he tends to make ad hoc enemies; but also there is a mysterious enemy pursuing him implacably every when: someone from his own original time, probably. So, even if the secret is out by the 52nd episode, it
is not the whole truth. Shall we say:—The Second Secret of Dr. Who: The authorities of his own (or some other future) time are not concerned merely with the theft of an obsolete machine; they are seriously concerned to prevent his monkeying with time, because his secret intention, when he finds his ideal past, is to destroy or nullify the future.
[Handwritten note from Sydney Newman: “Nuts”]
So he was a bad guy the whole time? Oh, I hate that one. It sounds more like an anti-Rani or some other Renegade Time Lord than the Doctor we know and love. The bored explorer who tries to avoid altering time but will help people in danger is a better path and I’m glad they went with it. The Doctor even tells Ian and Barbara that he does “tolerate this century but I don’t enjoy it” because his civilization was so far advanced. The Second Doctor would be put on trial for his “interference” in helping others even when he tried to preserve history. The Meddling Monk wanted to “fix” history in the belief he could make things better (ignoring that sometimes good things can come out of bad events) while the War Chief was doing experiments in time with soldiers of different Earth eras as part of a project for someone else. He also told Barbara not to interfere with Aztec culture because history needed to be preserved, despite the history teacher’s protests.
If ever we get thus far into Dr. Who’s secret, we might as well pay a visit to his original time. But this is way ahead for us too. Meanwhile, proliferate stories.
Oh, we’re getting sample stories, too, in the final part of the notes. I wonder if any of them made it to the show? Let’s see.
The first two stories will be on the short side, four episodes each, and will not deal with time travel. [Keyboard typed note from ShadowWing Tronix: wanna bet?] The first may result from the use of a micro—reducer in the machine which makes our characters all become tiny.
There would end up being an episode where the crew ended up action figure sized and caught up in villainous activities, though I don’t remember the full details.
By the third story we could first reveal that it is a time—machine; they witness a great calamity, even possibly the destruction of the earth, and only afterwards realize that they were far ahead in time.
I don’t remember this one in the classic series, since we went right with time travel in episode two. The only problem the Doctor had with the cavemen was not wanting to be caught and not wanting to give them fire early. The Doctor would take Rose to the literal end of the planet in their first adventure, while his next regeneration showed her were everyone moved to because apparently they were smarter than the Kryptonians and knew when to jump a sinking planet.
Or to think about Christmas: which seasonable story shall we take our characters into? Bethlehem?
There was a gag once where there were so many time travelers at Jesus’ birth there wasn’t any room, like how the Ninth Doctor commented on the grassy knoll when Kennedy was shot. I guess there was no second gunman or someone would have seen them. I’m not sure I’d trust this show to do Jesus’ birth properly, especially when Russell T. Davies got involved. Dude hates Christmas so much that Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch would tell him to chill out BEFORE they reformed.
Was it by means of Dr. Who’s machine that Aladdin’s palace sailed through the air? Was Merlin Dr. Who?
Apparently he was, but nobody’s even thought to follow up on that. We know the Seventh Doctor apparently regenerated either while serving as Merlin or returned after regenerating. Sadly, every opening for that was closed when we saw Eight become the War Doctor and the War Doctor become the Ninth. Someone forgot this plot point.
Was Cinderella’s Godmother Dr. Who’s wife chasing him through time? Jacob Marley was Dr. Who slightly tipsy, but what other tricks did he get up to that Yuletide?
[Handwritten note from Sydney Newman: “I don’t like this much – it reads silly and condescending. It doesn’t get across the basis of teaching of educational experience – drama based upon and stemming from factual material and scientific phenomena and actual social history of past and future. Dr. Who – not have a philosophical arty-science mind – he’d take science, applied and theoretical, as being as natural as eating.”]
At least on these last two, and the Aladdin idea, I have to agree with Newman. I’m not sure how the Doctor being drunk would have done Scrooge any benefits or why he would be Jacob Marley, but there’s also the problem of fiction being treated as history. King Arthur and the characters the Seventh Doctor and Ace met were from an alternate reality, not the past. The idea of the Doctor’s wife chasing him through space and time sounds amusing but I’m glad they avoided that, as much as I wouldn’t mind meeting or learning about Susan’s grandmother and parents. Which of the Doctor’s children gave birth to her? Was it a son or a daughter? (You know what I mean. I hope.) There’s still so much about the Doctor that hasn’t been explored that you don’t need “the other time travel creator” or “the Timeless Child” to be part of the Doctor’s history.
And so we finally come to the end of these notes. We still have one more to go, which I’m only doing because it was on the list. It isn’t going to feature the creation of the show but the audience’s response to the first episode. Prepare for the official word on how the first episode did before we prepare to wrap up this series.
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