Doctor Who's grandiosity creep

Curmudgeon mode activate! 

Back in The Before Time, the Doctor was a misfit rebel who fled a stultifying, conformist society in order to live life travelling through time and space on his own terms. 

Beautiful. Ten out of ten for premise.

This Doctor was almost… ordinary. Sure, he had a blue police box that wheezed about time and space, but otherwise... he was mortal (regeneration wasn't even invented yet). A savvy scientist, to be sure, but frequently out of his depth. Every time the TARDIS doors opened, he was as surprised, curious and discombobulated as his companions. 

The show’s original intent was to explore history and science for the benefit of children. This direction was quickly derailed by the Daleks, who changed the show’s DNA forever. The bug eyed monster of the week, exactly what the show’s creator had sought to avoid, became the new paradigm (from the second serial, so pretty much out of the gate). 

The Doctor was often recognized by his ‘favourite’ villains, but he wasn’t famous across time and space.

Towards the end of the classic run, the Doctor became outlandishly arrogant (Colin) and Machiavellian (McCoy). He was less a traveler exploring the wonders of the universe and more of a strutting, pompous peacock, a companion-strangling jerk, wearing cast off clothes from Jesus and the Technicolour Dreamcoat. 

Or was it a recut quilt? 

The gap between the all-knowing Doctor and his companions grew over time. Liz Shaw was an early equal, but viewers didn’t like her so she got swapped out with the delightfully ditzy Jo Grant. She was fun, but by no means an equal to the Doc. At least Pertwee, for all his sexist condescension, allowed his Doctor's patriarchal pomposity to be regularly punctured: his character flaws were exposed, and punished, repeatedly. 

Wasn't that the point of his final story?

Personally, I disliked Colin and McCoy’s take on the Doctor. Baker’s wardrobe was an aesthetic atrocity, more horrible to behold than Magnus Greel's half-melted face, so obscene it should never have gotten past BBC censors. On top of the tailoring, Baker's prickly pomposity exceeded even Hartnell's; at least Hartnell could be endearing, even kind, at times.

Thankfully, he was still ‘just’ an itinerant Time Lord. 

Then the impossible happened: things took a turn for the worse. Sylvester McCoy became The Doctor. A diminutive tea time reinvention of Batman’s Penguin, this Doctor was no longer a half-bumbling space hobo. Sly was always one step ahead of the villains, plotting their demise in elaborately convoluted ways he’d hint at with fourth wall breaking winks.

That wasn't enough. The showrunners felt he had been stripped of mystery (as if that's why I watched the show). Answers had been given, and that wouldn't do! The Doctor had to be 'more mysterious and god-like'. Because reasons. Stupid reasons, but reasons, nonetheless!

And so The Doctor was made to declare, “I am far more than just a Time Lord.”

That’s right: the Doctor couldn’t be a rebel misfit hobo noncomformist. The show runners planned to reveal him as ‘The Other’ a god-like figure, one of the founders of Time Lord society, along with Rassilon and Omega. 

Instead of being one of the people, our dotty Doc was reinvented as a member of the cosmic elite, because if there’s one thing British society cannot stand, it’s a pleb. The Doctor, like officers of the British Empire, simply must be an aristocrat. Central to the structure of the universe, like Zaphod Beeblebrox. The Chosen One. That's just how it's done. Pip pip and God Save the Queen. Or that Charles guy.

Make. Me. Barf.

The Universe itself was so appalled it cancelled the show before this narrative travesty could be implemented.  A bullet had been dodged, but the reprieve would only be temporary, because that bullet was a a multiple metaphor and also like a bad penny. It kept coming back.

Cue Russell T. Davies and Chilly Chibnuts. 

In the rebooted show, the Doctor was no longer an itinerant smart guy with a blue police box. He was ‘The Oncoming Storm,' who could dissuade aliens from invading earth just by identifying himself. He didn't dotter, he smugly swaggered.

The Doctor and his narcissistic companions (I’m in particular looking at you, Jack, but I bet that makes you happy) would sit around talking about how amazing they were. Like thanksgiving turkeys, just with ego stuffing instead of, you know, dressing.

Back in the real world, Davies endlessly blew smoke up his own show, hailing it (and himself) as brilliant. God’s gift to television. Modesty is not his modus operandi. He's half-salesman. What planet are they from, again?

Scale kept getting dialled up: the Daleks didn’t want to just take over the earth, anymore. Or the solar system, or the Milky Way. No, no, no. They wanted to destroy REALITY ITSELF.

Because anything less than everything isn’t big enough.

The Doctor became a legend in the show’s mind, and this time his companions were included in the scope creep. They got tied into reality itself, made immortal plastic, accomplished super human tasks that defied comprehension. It was like watching the unrestricted imagination of a six year old, realized with a BBC budget. 

We were no longer watching ordinary people flitting about the universe, we were watching demi-gods doing demi-god things. 

Capaldi and Clara was the nadir, for me: both highly unpleasant, disagreeable malignant narcissists, it was hard to decide who I wanted to see die more. 

And lo, Chibnuts saw this and said unto thee: hold my beer! He brought back the McCoy-Merlin god-progenitor with a vengeance in The Timeless Children, which was totally anathema to my idea of who Who is. Rather than just a hobo nonconformist, he’s a mysterious, endlessly reincarnating god-being, the basis on which the Time Lord civilization was built. 

From rebel without a system to system without a rebel. 

Bow down before your God-King Chosen One, unwashed masses, we have a new uber-anointed one! 

Thanks a lot Chilly Chibchunks, you wanker. Did your mother not pay you enough attention as a child?

Could Dr. He/She be more important? 

Well. Just as Blofeld is now James Bond’s long lost brother, yes. Yes it could. Give it time and the writers will make the Doctor God. Remember, every self-absorbed, ego driven scribe wants to outdo and undo the previous set. Just ask me.

Nothing is ever enough if it can be more. 

The inevitable conclusion? The Doctor will be God (but also Merlin), his companions inbred angel siblings, The Master The Devil (and God’s former lover), Davros his long lost son (Evil Jesus), and the Daleks snot from The Divine Schnoz, and everyone in the universe will talk all the time about how WONDERFUL Trump is. Sorry, I mean, The Doctor. The huge egos involved make it hard to tell them apart.

Mark my words: it’s going to happen. 

I mean, they've already got literal snot monsters. 

Then, and only then, will The Great Enshittification of Doctor Who be complete.

Well. Until they decide the Doctor being God isn't mysterious ENOUGH, and they will make the Doctor something more powerful and mysterious THAN God.

Because imbeciles.

Why couldn't they explore The Mystery of Colin Baker's Hideous Blinding Coat? Does no one else want to know how he stole it from Jesus?

Sure, Three and Four (my favourites) could be egotists, too. But that egotism was frequently, and pointedly, punctured, with the Doctor proven disastrously wrong, over and over. Pertwee took that in good humour. The Doctor was flawed, and his flaws were repeatedly punished. 

The companions were grounded, not tiresome look-at-me Mary Sues prancing about in their plot armour. 

Sarah Jane was one of the most can-do characters to ever grace the telly, but she was also wonderfully, fallible human. She got shit done, despite not being tied into the Code of the Universe. She was relatable in ways modern companions never are. 

Elizabeth Sladen herself played a big role in fleshing out Sarah’s personality, and deserves a lot of credit for creating one of the show’s most memorable companions. Her banter with Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter), who was as good natured as he was bumbling and sexist, was frequently hilarious. 

And who could forget Leela? She played off Four to great effect: pairing our favourite nerdy space misfit with a murder-happy savage (‘Shall I kill him, Doctor?’) was the other highlight of Baker’s run.

The modern show leans heavily into hyper-powered protagonists, which play like lead ingots floating in jello. 

Science, admittedly, has never been a particularly strong point of Who. But the rebooted science-fantasy series leans heavily into outright magic, throwing away the fig leaf ‘science’ prefix entirely; but like the statue of David, the show’s more palatable with it. I don't want to look at Who's great big fantasy dong. 

That isn’t Who for me. 

Perhaps it’s Who for you.

Thanfully, like no show in history, Doctor Who reinvents itself. One can only hope.

It's worth noting that the best seasons, the Fabled Golden Age, of Who is… when you were ten. 

Even if Robert Holmes was deliberately writing for fourteen years old and wouldn’t allow younger kids to even watch the show without supervision. 

Sadly we only get one pass.

Damn reality, always raining on my thought parade...

Battlestar Galactica 1978 vs BSG 2003 smackdown: Part III

The ending we ultimately got threw out everything Moore and Eicke had espoused over the course of the show: the survivors unanimously agreed to throw away all their technology, fly their ships into the sun, and settle on what turned out to be the real earth, albeit in the distant past. Eventually, they would evolve into us. First, they would descend into primitivism and thousands of years of ignorance, savagery, disease, and early death. 

This is their righteous, back-to-the-trees happy ending. 

It was pathetic. 

First of all, the fleet always had a criminal element, and the idea that some of these psychopaths wouldn’t hide tech away so they could then take over and dominate the earnest, gullible pro-luddite masses is beyond belief. 

Previously, the show had always emphasized that you can’t get total agreement with large numbers (or even small numbers) of people on anything. Someone is always going to object, game the system, or find an angle that will allow them to dominate.

Second, Moore presents humans giving up all their tech to live off the land as a positive. 

Seriously? 

On an alien planet where they don’t know the plant life, what’s edible and what’s not, with a bunch of people used to living at the top of a complex, interdependent technological ecosystem of specialized workers, is insulting to the intelligence of the audience and an abandonment of the show’s earlier dedication to nuance.

The vast majority of the survivors would soon die from disease, all their knowledge would be lost, and it would take tens of thousands of years before our civilization evolved and even a small fraction of that knowledge would be regained. 

Even if you're anti-technology this seems like a very unrealistic and poorly thought out conclusion.

Rushed, limited by budget, run down by years of running a complex and largely superlative show, probably impacted the finale script. 

Who knows? 

Is Ron D. Moore a genius writer? Absolutely. BSG revitalized sci-fi, made it relevant and exciting and much watch TV. 

That does not mean, however, that his decisions were always flawless.

This was also during the beginning of internet culture, and plenty of viewers speculated on where the show was going. Moore wanted to keep people guessing, and according to some, altered the show's path to thwart their predictions. And yet, a properly set up show progresses logically, so some prediction is inevitably going to be correct. That shouldn’t change the show’s course. True? Not true? Hey, I read it on the internets, so...

Where the original Battlestar shone, for me, was in the big ideas: the lost survivors seeking haven on earth (very melancholic, wistful, and eerie), ruthless machines bent on exterminating organic sapients, and… controversially, the Beings of Light and good ol' Count Ibli-dibli. 

Moore’s BSG cut out the Beings of Light angle, as well as our classy count. This was one of the most fascinating elements of the original series: that higher beings with technology that could easily be mistaken for magic, existed; they even had an evil counterpart, possibly the devil himself, out to deceive and destroy the gullible. 

That really caught my imagination as a child.

Initially, Starbuck’s mysterious return in the re-imagined series hinted towards the Beings of Light, but this hope was dashed, and her return was left largely unexplored. 

The idea that civilization is cyclical was intriguing, and gave the show interesting places to go. 

Alas, it was not to be. 

For all its flaws, the cheesy 1978 version had wilder concepts than the reboot, which was more conservative and focused on verisimilitude. From one of the first pop culture warnings about killer AI to Chariots of the Gods, Holocaust and persecution references and ascended light bulb beings, BSG 1978 had it all. 

Moore's 'The Cylons (don't) have a plan' never panned out (there was no 'there' there), and the vague politicking within the Cylon leadership fell flat. There was some mystery around Starbuck returning, which they then didn't bother exploring because reasons. And that was it, as far as mystery and wonder went. 

On an episode by episode basis, Moore’s version is far superior and easier to rewatch. No question. The acting is phenomenal, the dialogue superb, the characters well rounded. 

But I miss the more intriguing elements of the 1978 version. I loved Count Iblis and his bright light nemeses. Same for the Imperious Leader, too (who had the voice of Count Iblis); he was usually squatting atop a ridiculously high plinth, which made me wonder what the heck he did up there all day, iconic as it was. When Baltar took the chair, I couldn't help but wonder how he got down to go to the bathroom. 

Funnily enough, I mistakenly thought the halo of mesh around the Imperious Leader's head was some kind of external neural net, but as it turns out, it was actually a cape collar. 

Such a disappointment.

Both shows fired my imagination, just in different ways.

Moore’s modernized iteration has influenced shows like The Expanse, and that’s a good thing. 

The Expanse is phenomenal.  

Battlestar Galactica 1978 vs BSG 2003 smackdown: Part II

Ronald D. Moore rebooted BSG in 2003 with a kick-ass pilot movie in two parts. They had some severe budget constraints, and couldn’t afford to even build robot cylon suits. Instead, they had to resort to CGI and using the robots sparingly. Instead, the Cylons were human androids. And rather than being the product of alien reptiles who run pizza parlour pedophilia rings, they were the rebellious product of humanity. 

The betrayal happens, same as before, except this time Baltar’s a computer programmer who undermines the Twelve Colonies defenses by accidentally introducing a virus into the defense systems. It shuts down all their advanced systems. Only the venerable old Battlestar Galactica has old fashioned manual controls, to avoid this exact scenario. It survives the initial Cylon attack, and again leads a rag tag fleet towards… Earth.

This time, Adama throws Earth out as a destination as a trope to inspire hope among the survivors, who are on the brink of despair. 

Moore once worked on an American aircraft carrier, and it shows here in the verisimilitude he conjures with all the military aspects of the show. They also try to portray space in a far more realistic manner than the original iteration, and even explored having no sound in space. Ultimately, they backed off that decision as it robbed scenes of impact, but they did emphasize logistics more than in the original program. 

Infamously, they presented every episode with the tag line, ‘and they have a plan.’ The Cylons, that is. It’s come out since that they didn’t, but David Eicke (co-creator) insisted on it. By the end of the show it was abundantly clear this was a load of horseshit. 

BSG’s first season was intense, gritty, politically nuanced, and a paradigm shifting sci-fi phenomenon. It tackled the War on Terror and other timely issues.

One episode, in which the human survivors tortured a Cylon ('Flesh and Bone'), was described by the show creators as something that will make who question who the good guys are. Seriously? The Cylons just wiped out over 12 billion or so people, and the traumatized survivors torture a Cylon infiltrator, and this is supposed to make them equivalent? I found this truly obnoxious; yes, torture is wrong, but let’s have a little perspective. Did some Holocaust survivors torture some camp guards after liberation? It’s possible, if they had the strength after being deliberately starved, but I don’t think that makes them the equivalent of the Nazis.

This was emblematic of the moral equivalence that lurked behind the show’s flashy sci-fi facade: one mustn’t judge, even in the face of genocidal enemies. It was diametrically opposed to the original show’s binary perspective. 

And yet, Moore and Eicke’s perspective has merit, in that, in politics, it’s all about compromise. There are always those who disagree and object, and you have to bring everyone (or almost everyone) along to move forward. Over the shows multiple seasons, politics were presented as a complex series of negotiations and compromises. And when one group pushed to far, another would rise in rebellion.

The show was very much a repudiation of the restrictive narrative framework that Moore experienced writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Rather than feel good stories of future Utopia, here the hard realities of power politics, resource limits, and suffering were explored without limit. Instead of paragons of professionalism and virtue, the characters were complex, flawed, and deeply human. 

All of that was great. 

Far better than the original, no question.

However, by season 3 Moore had become disenchanted with the original direction and decided to rewrite several characters, turning them into Cylon infiltrators, mostly for shock value. 

I initially hated the change, but then thought, maybe he’ll do something really interesting with it.  

In Moore we trust.

The midseason finale, where they found earth as a burnt out radioactive husk, would have made a fine series finale. 

Unfortunately, they kept going.

Next: The ending