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...

Who's The Doctor's Best Companion Ever?

Best Companion of The Doctor… Evah.

This is it: Companion Smack Down. The top contenders go in, only one comes out.

I’m going to rate the best of the best.

Romana

A fellow Time Lord assigned to work with The Doctor in order to find The Key to Time by a guy with a pigeon stuck to his forehead, she adopted the appearance of a princess after her first season, and went on to marry Tom Baker. Briefly. Sharp witted and resourceful, Romana’s an equal in every way to The Doctor. You’d think he’d prefer to shack up with her as opposed to a former chips shop worker he’s 47 times older than, but no. What’s the age of consent on Gallifrey, anyway?
Score: 8

Captain Jack Harkness

Rogue time cop and pansexual omnivore, Jack’s always the most interesting person in a room. A preening narcissist who makes Captain Kirk look modest and self-effacing, Jack was less a companion than a competitor. He’s better off with his ego on another show.
Score: 3

Leela

Leela grew up on a planet that was royally messed up by The Doctor’s earlier (off screen) meddling, which resulted in a kind of extreme social experiment. A savage warrior, foxy lady, and indomitable spirit, Leela was the perfect foil for the pacifist Doctor. Raw animal sexuality combined with predator instincts were an inversion of The Doctor’s detached, sophisticated, peaceful personality, as her first answer to every problem was to kill it. Based on a Palestinian resistance fighter Leila Khaled.
Score: 9.5

Rose Tyler

A young Londoner who ran into The Doctor during an invasion by killer shop mannequins. Rose was Russell T. Davies’ obvious favorite and likely stand-in (R.T. and R.T.D.). An uneducated former gymnast who worked in a chips shop, it has to be said that she was a real go-getter and kept The Doctor on his toes, but she had the depth of a shallow puddle and was a little on the young side for him.
Score: 6.5

Sarah Jane Smith

Blessed with insatiable curiosity, Sarah Jane was always getting herself in trouble in pursuit of the truth. A journalist by trade, and a born revolutionary, Sarah Jane stirred shit up wherever she went in time and space. By the end of her run, she’d led more rebellions than Princess Leia, Che, and Lenin put together. We never met her family, but thanks to Elisabeth Sladen’s portrayal, she felt more real and had more depth than any companion in New Who, with one exception. Also a crack shot with a rifle. Because Sarah Jane!
Score: 9.4

Amy Pond

A sexy-gram delivery girl who grew up with a rift in time beside her bed, she’s had a life long connection to The Doctor and witnessed his… tenth(?) regeneration. Got stranded in New York in the 1930’s, and apparently could never interact with The Doctor again, even though she’d naturally travel out of the Thirties into the Forties and presumably the Fifties and Sixties, in which The Doctor was rather active. Whatever. Her life was intertwined with The Doctor’s in novel and clever Moffat-esque ways, but her personality was a lacuna. Unlike Rose, I can’t think of anything to even complain about with her. She’s just relentlessly bland.
Score: 6.5

Ace

A young explosives expert and punker from the… You know, I have no idea. She was an over-the-top, wish fulfillment cartoon character who grated on the nerves. Walking, talking sandpaper armed with a baseball bat and explosives. Her idiosyncratic colloquialisms fell flat with mind boggling relentlessness. Small wonder the show was cancelled.
Score: 5

Donna Noble

A mouthy lady whose wedding The Doctor interrupted, Donna had more personality and sass than ten other companions combined, but was unfortunately saddled with a dreadful end to a wonderful character arc. In her last episode, her brain was overstimulated, necessitating a mind wipe. Her personality was reset, undoing everything she’d learned, which was a particularly sad end for a such great, standout character. She deserved better. Someone should write her in again.
Score: 9.1

River Song

First appearing as the leader of an expedition to a library planet, she was later revealed to be much more (and thus less) than that. Initially interesting, she became a mugging, one-note ’Spoilers!' cliché. I think of her like an irritating grain of sand in an oyster that forms over time into a pearl, only instead she just becomes more irritating. A psychopath grown and groomed by a secret organization to be the perfect assassin and meant to kill The Doctor, he went and married her. Yeah. That’s messed up.
Score: 6

Martha Jones

Jones is an actual doctor, as in a physician, and she pined away unsuccessfully for The Doctor. The man was blind. Martha was smart, educated, beautiful and competent. Alas, she was never terribly popular with audiences, or The Doctor for that matter (who preferred younger, less educated and less intelligent chip shop workers), but had more substance and was less superficial than the overrated Rose. Did I mention the BBC shielded prominent pedophiles from prosecution and covered up their crimes for decades? Just saying.
Score: 7.6

Jo Grant

Assigned to be the assistant of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor by The Brigadier, she replaced the less popular but highly intelligent scientist The Doc had been hanging with earlier. A sweet heart who looked great in short shorts but was unfortunately a bit on the dense side. Thoroughly lovable nonetheless, Jo was a great stand in for little kids, who could always identify with her. At least I could. She was pretty awesome. I’ll not stand anything negative being said about her. So there.
Score: 7.2

Peri Brown

An American who got sucked into The Doctor’s TARDIS while wearing a bikini, Peri was a stunningly beautiful brunette with a figure that just wouldn’t quit. She frequently dressed in said bikini (see above), or similar nothing. What’s not to like? Her voice was a high pitched whine and she lacked much in the way of personality that wasn’t annoying. The only companion The Doctor ever tried to literally strangle. I’m not sure what that says and probably don’t want to.
Score: 36 24 36

The winner: Leela.

Why?

Because drama.

What is the source of drama? Conflict.

What drives conflict? Character.

Which companion offered the most in-built conflict with The Doctor? Hands down, bar none, Leela. He's a hyper-educated, sophisticated Time Lord and moralizing pacifist. She's a savage warrior woman who's always ready and eager to employ lethal force. Leela had an alternate way of doing things, and wasn’t afraid to say, or do, so.

It was like The Odd Couple, only with time travel, deadly Janus thorns and a gender switch.

And yet Leela was intelligent, always learning, and willing to be essentially tutored by The Doctor. That offered room for growth, for a clash of values that could ultimately change them both. So much the show runners could have done here and ultimately didn’t. They achieved a lot, but certainly could have taken it much further. Why they've never revisited this sort of combination I'm not sure, but I imagine it would be seen as too extreme. Too controversial for safe spaces.

The only other character to push the envelope as much as Leela is Donna Noble. An argument could be made that Jack Harkness pushes it as well, but he’s just malignant narcissism with a mouth and a mirror shagging himself.

So there you go: Leela is the best companion in Doctor Who.

QED.

Interested in Classic Doctor Who? Here's what to watch, and what to avoid…

Doctor Who is one of the oddest programs out there. Seriously: it's about an eccentric, two-hearted alien who travels around time and space in a blue police box, generally accompanied by a foxy young lady, fighting monsters and saving the universe with a sonic screwdriver that can do almost anything.

Did I mention he's over 900 years old and dates teenagers?

It's the BBC.

Anyway.

The concept has been flexible enough to keep the program going for over fifty years, albeit with a dead zone in the nineties, when books and fanfic kept it alive.

Doctor Who has always varied wildly in quality. It's like a manic depressive TV show, and to be perfectly honest, of the original series, there's really only four seasons that are superb. The rest? Mostly unwatchable. But that's part of the program's genius, because there are people out there who feel the exact opposite I do: they laud the dreadful seasons and hate the really good ones.

Go figure.

I put it down to the slow collapse of human civilization into barbarism and poor taste.

The program lives by the maxim 'get them when they're young' and I'm a case in point. I have vague memories of watching Jon Pertwee episodes, but not understanding what was going on. I was too little. I just knew that it was crazy scary stuff unlike anything else.

If you're thinking of getting into the show, however, you have to ask yourself a question: Do you have trouble accepting lame special effects? Not-so-special effects, that is, often done live, at time of broadcast?

If so, your trip through Classic Who will be a short one. Of the core set of episodes, you'd best stick with just four (and even these have dodgy bits):

The Time Warrior
Genesis of the Daleks
Terror of the Zygons (look away when the Loch Ness Monster shows up or your eyeballs will burn)
The Caves of Androzani

Because there are no good effects in Classic Doctor Who, just absent ones.

But if you like lots of cardboard in your sci-fi, well then, you've hit the jackpot, my friend!

Much of the show was filmed in a BBC closet using janitorial gear. That's an advantage: you get to watch serious, Shakespearean-trained actors emote to a bucket. Or bubble wrap. And they make it work.

Is that not the most awesome display of dedication to craft imaginable?

So for the curious and the eccentric, here's my nostalgia-heavy, second-childhood guide to enjoying Classic Doctor Who:

Level One: Bystander

Short and sweet. The initial list covers just a (baker's) dozen stories, almost all of them from the gothic-horror era (as much as a children's show can do gothic-horror… you'll be surprised):

Third Doctor:

The Time Warrior
Story: The Doctor, with the help of a feisty young female reporter, must stop a time traveling alien from abducting human scientists into the past. Rather clever really.
 
Dodgy SFX: Time travel effects.

Why watch it?: Humpty Dumpty as an alien. The villainous tag team of Irongron and Lynx is like an evil odd-couple. Seriously, they could have had their own TV sitcom. Also, Sarah Jane Smith's debut on the program. Everywhere she goes, she foments revolution within the first couple of episodes. Just how she rolls. Jon Pertwee's more of an action-Jackson Doctor, and puts his Venusian karate to good use. You'll never see another kung-fu action Doctor after his tenure…

Fourth Doctor:

Robot
Story: King Kong, basically, only with a robot and a bunch of Fascist robotocists. Over this backdrop, The Doctor regenerates into Tom Baker.

Dodgy SFX: The robot.  Especially when he grows to giant size.

Why watch it?: Tom Baker's performance. You can't take your eyes off him. He imbues his performance with electric eccentricity, and flips from comedy to deadly seriousness in the blink of an eye. And you'll be introduced to recurring characters such as The Brigadier, Harry Sullivan and the original UNIT crew. The program at its most grounded.

The Ark in Space
Story: Cryogenically frozen humans of a long destroyed earth find themselves being used as incubators for an invasive alien species aboard a space station. Sounds familiar, no?

Dodgy SFX: The aliens can hardly move.

Why watch it?: The bubble wrap. And the space station. It's what passes for hard-core seventies sci-fi. The first episode is mysterious and quiet in a way most programs wouldn't dare even try today. The sets are superb though, as far as this show usually goes. Doctor Who has the props, effects, and sets of a stage play, generally speaking.

Genesis of the Daleks
Story: The Doctor is sent back in time to stop the development of the Daleks, his deadliest plunger-armed enemy.

Dodgy SFX: The killer clams. 

Why watch it?: Davros. Michael Wisher's performance is one of the best in the entire series, and he's every bit a match for Tom Baker. They have a relatively sophisticated debate about ethics, too. Parallels to the Nazis are pretty on the nose (Nyder even wears a Knight's Cross), but it's well done, and incredibly bleak to boot. The Daleks themselves… they're one note. Great design, but they never change, never evolve. That's why they need a Davros. Someone or thing with more dimension.

Terror of the Zygons
Story: Something horrific is stalking oil rigs and dragging them down into the sea…

Dodgy SFX: The Loch Ness Monster is a hand puppet.

Why watch it?: For everything else. The Zygon alien design is a wonderful cross between a fetus and an octopus. The episode has a wonderfully creepy atmosphere and great Scottish bit players.

Pyramids of Mars
Story: Sutekh the Destroyer, Egyptian god, is about to escape his prison on Mars and destroy the universe, and the only thing in his way is… oh, you know who: The Doctor. Hmm. Egyptian gods as aliens? Sounds familiar in a decade or two…

Dodgy SFX: The mummies.

Why watch it?: Sutekh is supreme! Pre-Stargate Doctor Who does Hammer Films. The fellow who plays Set, or Sutekh, is superb, despite being immobile for much of the story; he imbues his character with nuanced menace using only his superbly modulated voice.

The Seeds of Doom
Story: The Thing meets The Doctor. Only I mean the vegetable-carrot Thing, not the shape shifting one. And this vegetable grows much, MUCH bigger. I'm talking King Kong big. Best of all, people get fed into a plant-mulcher, Fargo style. Did I mention this was a kids show?

Dodgy SFX: The snow.

Why watch it?: The plant creature. And Harrison Chase, the eccentric millionaire, who's an equally fun, if completely insane, creation.


The Deadly Assassin
Story: The Doctor returns to Gallifrey, his home world, to deal with a plot to assassinate the president. Of course, he gets framed for it and has to prove his innocence by going in to The Matrix, an artificial reality where memories of Time Lords are stored… which sounds strangely familiar. How odd.

Dodgy SFX: The tiny train… of dooooom. 

Why watch it?: The Matrix, twenty years early. And you see a lot of Gallifrey, the home planet of the Time Lords. Basically, they're a bunch of pompous. upper-crust, bureaucracy loving Brits. Figures they'd run the universe.

The Face of Evil
Story: The Doctor must fight a rogue AI that has divided the people it rules into two tribes: one savage, the other psychic. It's all easy-breezy until The Doctor realizes he's been here before…

Dodgy SFX: The sets.

Why watch it?: Leela, the sexy savage companion who's always wanting to kill people. It's her first answer to every problem: 'Shall I kill him, Doctor?'

That's her catchphrase.

I love Leela; she's such a perfect contrast to our sophisticated pacifist doctor.

She's the doctor's most unique and different companion, the only one with a polar opposite view point. These days he flies with interchangeable young ladies, with the notable exception of Donna, who, honestly, would give Leela a run for her money. The show has never tried something as daring (or an outfit quite as risque) since.

And Leela would kick Seven of Nine's latex clad butt.

Also in this episode, the Doctor threaten to kill a man with a jelly-baby.

What's not to like?

The Robots of Death
Story: The Doctor and Leela arrive aboard a sandminer and must find a killer who's using robots as his weapon of choice.

Dodgy SFX: Exterior shots of the sandminer.

Why watch it?: It's sci-fi Agatha Christie, and the actors don't seem to realize they're on a kid's show. Still part of the gothic-horror meets 'hard' sci-fi mash-up that typified the Hinchecliffe era.

The design of the robots is really inspired, like Chinese Terracotta Warrior robots.

The Horror of Fang Rock
Story: The Doctor and Leela arrive at a Victorian age light house which is being preyed upon by a monster.

Dodgy SFX: The glowing killer cabbage.

Why watch it?: The Masterpiece Theatre atmosphere. More freaky-scary Hammer Films style stuff. The supporting cast are great.

Of course Leela wants to kill them.

Oh, Leela…!

The Invasion of Time
Story: The Doctor must return to Gallifrey to assume the Presidency and make way for an alien invasion. Wait, what?

Dodgy SFX: Crackling tinfoil aliens.

Why watch it?: Baker's mad performance. The plot meanders and the story's overly long, but still lots of fun. Baker's last episode with any dramatic tension. Leela departs at the end. It is sad. No more Janis thorns. But rather a perfunctory departure.

The best companion exit was that of Jo Grant in the story with the giant maggots. They gave me nightmares.

Fifth Doctor:

The Caves of Androzani 
Story: Drugs, caves and androids.

Dodgy SFX: The dragon beast creature thing. Whatever it is supposed to be.

Why watch it?: The villains, the pacing, the androids. The visceral hatred and revenge theme mixed with deceit and Machiavellian maneuvering. It's dark and hazard filled, which is how I like my Who. Peter Davison goes out on a high. The episode that follows is one of the worst in the history of the program, so stop with this one. You've been warned.

And that’s it.

Just over a dozen stories, all but one from between the start of season 11 (1973-74) and the end of season 15 (1977-78). All you need to see of the original to get a grip on the program's conceits: he regenerates, he has a time traveling box, and there are monsters everywhere.

What's that, you say?

Not enough?

If, like Oliver, you want more, proceed on to… Level Two.

I should note that the program reinvents itself, particularly in tone, from time to time. Douglas Adams wrote for the show late in Tom Baker's era, and while I love Hitchhikers, I don't like hitchhikers in my Who. Two different tones, two different franchises. Without dramatic tension (and Adams denuded the show of it), there's just no point to Who. It ain't scary.

The next level of stories… next week.