I Was Unprepared for the Moment

No matter how I'm feeling about its story mechanics, the new companions or even Tom Baker's question-mark infested lapels, Logopolis is always an emotional story. And no more so after this incredible rewatch. It's meant to be epic, and the excitement and dread I felt the first time I watched the story still echoes across the years (not unlike the Watcher himself).

The defining and most effective moment of the story for me has always been that little moment when the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS, having escaped the Master's little recursive trap, to spy the Watcher standing by the fence on the other side of the Barnett bypass. The haunting look on his face is a tour de force on the part of Baker and the lovely little bit of sad incidental music from Paddy Kingsland frames it so well. Brilliantly, because the story was filmed in the fall, you can see the Doctor's breath which is the symbolic icing on the cake.

It also struck me how different the show felt from The Leisure Hive to Logopolis. The domestics between Tegan and Auntie Vanessa is light years away from the otherworldly discourse of the Doctor and Romana.

And to paraphrase Alice I try to believe 6 impossible things after imbibing a bottle of red wine:

• That you can flush out your evil nemesis by materializing your TARDIS under the Thames and opening the door.
• That the Doctor would fall for that phony Light Speed Overdrive trick; I mean couldn't the Master materialize inside the control room and THEN take the damned thing out.
• How exactly were the peoples of the universe suppose to respond to the Master? Was there a 1-800 number? Were they supposed to text STOP or UNCLE?
• Why didn't the Doctor and Tegan just allow Nyssa's rogue arm to strangle Adric. Think of all the grief that could have been avoided!
• Retroactively, was the 4th Doctor particularly fragile when he fell from that telescope? After all the 10th Doctor managed quite the impressive skydive in The End of Time.

And so the "grand tour" comes to an end after a little over 10 months later. And what a fantastic journey it's been. Appointment Doctor Who is always special and adds that extra bit of anticipation to the nostalgia. It's remarkable to experience the changes that came during the fourth Doctor's era. Between 1974 and 1981 Doctor Who changed with the world around it. Robot and Logopolis look like very different programs, with both the Doctor and Tom Baker almost unrecognizable from start to finish. Try and imagine the universe-weary soul who paces around the TARDIS cloister room, jumping rope with Harry Sullivan. It blows my mind thinking about it. Those early stories had an optimism about leaving behind the earth-bound UNIT set-up and strikingly out into the Hinchcliffe/Holmes universe.

Trying to block out viewing time each week was also a challenge. This was a solitary viewing experience and while it became essential viewing, it was just watching the same old, same old Doctor Who to my partner, family and friends. It certainly helped to open that bottle of wine every week, mind you. All good ritual must have its accoutrements. I will certainly miss wandering through the aisles of the Summerhill LCBO, marveling at the hundreds and hundreds of vintages and table wines. I always felt a rush when I found a selection that perfectly complemented a story.

And of course there is always that bittersweet feeling when doing a rewatch that I might be watching a particular story for the last time. I encourage any Doctor Who fan to take the plunge and do a sequential rewatch. Feel free to use my reflections as a jumping off point or better yet, go out and buy yourself a copy of Running Through Corridors by Toby Hadoke and Rob Shearman. Heck, when their second volume comes out I'll probably be tempted to do the whole thing over again.

Viva la 4th Doctor, may he live forever!

Original viewing date: December 31, 1984

Wine: Black Tower Dornfielder Pinot Noir

Music: "Missing You," by John Waite

Spoilers

Warning: This blog entry may contain spoilers for movies and television series that you may not have seen if you've been living in a nuclear fallout shelter the past 30 years.

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A month before Return of the Jedi came to our local theater in Comox, I bought a comic book adaptation of the movie.

Like most kids, the years between Empire and Jedi were pure torture. Endless speculation abounded about what would happen. I remember months after Empire came out, my friends and I acting out possible outcomes with our Star Wars figures. What would Jabba look like? How would they get Han back? Everybody thought Darth Vader must be lying when he told Luke he was his father. Several months before Jedi came out, Fantastic Films magazine put out an issue where which carefully analysed what might happen next (I still have that issue -- it's the only one I kept).

My mom was with me when I bought that Jedi comic book and I placed it in her hands and instructed her not to let me have it under any circumstances. Of course she challenged the logic of even buying it in the first place, but she didn't understand kid or geek logic.

The hunt was on. Not more than a day later, I began searching the house high and low. Kudos to my Mom, she hid it well. Years of elaborate Christmas-present-hiding-fakeouts were on her side.
By I prevailed and eventually found it about a week before Jedi came to town. I would only take one little peek I told myself. A fleeting glance of Bib Fortuna was too much for me. Remorse set in and I carefully returned the comic to its hiding place.

In the end I watched Return of the Jedi spoiler free and thrilled at all the surprises and revelations. When I finally read the comic I was outraged at all the cool bits that were left out (no frame of Darth Vader with his mask off -- how could they!)

Here's the thing though, that same issue of Fantastic Films contained interviews with John Nathan Turner and Peter Davison about some weird British show called Doctor Who. Sprinkled throughout were meaningless little details that would soon come to be my first real introduction to "spoilers." First and foremost, somebody called The Master would take over someone called The Keeper and then "tussle" with the Doctor, causing the latter's death.

Think about that statement, as a Doctor Who fan, and see both the hidden momentousness of it and the flawed inaccuracies inherent in it.

Spoilers are double edged: they can ruin surprise, but the can also create anticipation. Everyone has a different tolerance for them. Some people don't want to know an episode title, others will turn the television off or run from the room before the "next time" trailer. And some will search out the back alleys of the internet to find the smallest scrap of what comes next.

Frankly, it wouldn't have made much different if I'd know the Melkur contained the Master. The character hadn't yet attained his mythical significance for me. But the spoiler imbued him with that quality. The coming of the Master represented the beginning of the end for a Doctor I cherished and loved. The omen was clear: a tussle to the death. And funny thing is, I only knew that the Master would take over the Keeper. As far as I was concerned, that was the withered old guy in the chair, and then Kassia. A little bit of info can sometimes offer a lot of fakeout. Besides the clues were pretty apparent from the get go. Readings that suggested another TARDIS, a withered figure in cloak, etc.

Mind you if I'd learned Adric was going to die, before watching Earthshock, it definitely would have lessened the shock and awe of that viewing experience.

These days I tend to avoid spoilers. The big shocker at the beginning of The Impossible Astronaut were an utter surprise, as was the ending to the The Almost People. And it was good old fashioned clues that pretty much made it obvious that River Song was the daughter of Amy and Rory. A friend, Robert, fled from the television before the next time trailer came up. My partner on the other hand has to know exactly how a story will end before he'll even watch it. He doesn't really get the idea of drama.

Curiously, I was watching Jedi several months back and I couldn't help noting that there isn't really all that much in the surprise department. There's another Death Star that predictably gets blown up at the end. You know the rebels will triumphe over the Empire and the revelation that Princess Leia is Luke's sister is a bit more yucky than any significant revelation.

Human beings struggle with the unknown constantly, and spoilers are just one little geeky line that some people draw in the Tatooine sand. As Mom used to say, "What's your hurry, it will all be over soon enough."

Original viewing date: December 24, 1984

Wine: I had two choices and I went for the less obvious one: "The Stubborn Patriarch" just looked like a better wine than "Union" and I have no regrets, no I tell you, no regrets.

Music: "Give My Regards to Broadstreet" by Paul McCartney

Love Letter to Lalla

Lalla Ward stole my heart within the first 10 minutes of Destiny of the Daleks (I remained unmoved throughout The Armageddon Factor). When Tom pulled the hat off her head, a big goofy grin spread across my face. I suppose, really I was in love with Romana II. The whimsical waif who was the calm head and constant companion to the latter-era Fourth Doctor.

City of Death was probably where I (and thousands of others) became truly smitten. Donning a school girl outfit, she is equal cosmic pixie and your best friend/fag hag from high school. In fact there was a girl, Amanda, in my drama class who looked a lot like the Time Lady. She even dressed in a similar fashion. Amanda had a wicked sense of humour and an artsy sensibility. It was a crush-by-association. Unfortunately, although we got along well, I felt more like Matthew Waterhouse in her presence; slightly awkward and never as good of an actor.

Lalla could make certain daft elements of a script sing. Taking on the "Doctor" role in The Horns of Nimon, she brought gravitas to her investigation of Crinoth that made it seem like a different story altogether. And when Christopher Bidmead decided to enlighten us with his Wikipedia entry for consonantal shift in State of Decay she actually sells it with charm and grace.

And while the scripts for Warrior's Gate seem a bit rushed in terms of her departure, there is something kind of nice about the way Romana rises to her decision on the fly. We've had hints that she was loathe to return to her previous sedate life on Gallifrey. I think it just added to the bittersweet quality of her departure. Where she donned an imitation copy of the Doctor's outfit in Destiny, here she get's her own pocket universe to champion.

Moments of Lalla's performance will always stay with me: "Yum, yum, bouillabaisse," in City of Death or that beaming smile she gives in Full Circle when the Doctor restores her to health. The way she carried off schoolgirl and Edwardian bathing outfits.

And in real life, I love the image of her accompanying Douglas Adams to the London premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. Surely any geek's dream date, gay or straight.

Alas Lalla's career never really went anywhere after Doctor Who. A few bit parts and a Shannon- Doherty length marriage to Tom Baker followed. These days she's more well known as the wife of world famous atheist Richard Dawkins. I still intend to get me an audiobook copy of The God Delusion (which she narrates) just so I can fall asleep to her lovely voice telling me to switch the lights out when I'm done with my mortal coil.

Until then, I'll look fondly back on the time when a blond-haired angel who made techno-babble sing made my hormones dance. She truly was the best Romana of all!

Original viewing date: December 17, 1984

Wine: Henry of Pelham Baco Noir, because it also makes me tingle.

Music: "On the Edge of a Dream" by Joe Cocker.

A State of Excitement

Me thinks I like State of Decay beyond reason. Terrance Dicks crashed the party that is season eighteen bringing blood, peasants and lots of tasty leftovers from season 13. Where to begin? Well, Vampires camping out in a converted spaceship for starters. That's Doctor Who 101. Time Lords and bow ships. Tick. Sumptuous costumes and set design married to dim lighting.

The wasting! What the hell is that anyway? The drops of blood Camilla failed to lick off of Lalla's luscious fingers? Or is it some secret ritual associated with Aukon's man-boy-love aspirations?

There really is something slightly kinky about this whole story, which makes sense considering the undead genre and Hammer Horror under-girding. The selection is really about who is hot and who is not. So the goodies end up being a bunch of bent over old men playing with the features on their Commodore 64s. Hmm what exactly is uncle Terrance implying? Mind you, apparently Adric possesses just enough sex appeal for the lecherous Aukon to cast an eye his way. Perhaps everyone's favourite whipping boy should have kept his gold gilded scarlet get up for the rest of his travels. He could have caught the eye of Seron or the Monitor or been set up in a nice little situation with one of Lady Cranleigh's unwed uncles.

Sadly, the production does kind of let down the story at the end. The giant vampire looks like something you get for a quarter next to the gumball machines (when you really wanted the slime). I do like a nice monster melting, mind you, and this ones a doozy. "Moisturize us, moisturize us."

Thanks Uncle Terrance, for being so damned reliable. See you for the 20th anniversary!

Original viewing date: December 10, 1984

Wine: "Red Splash" a blend of everything.

Music: "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen (oh look Courtney Cox, jeez I feel old).

Behind the Curtain

Growing up, I was always catching hell from my dad for taking things apart. To be fair, my father is a brilliant mechanic who worked as an aero-engine tech for years in the Canadian Armed Forces and lovingly restored a 1967 Mustang to mint condition.

Mostly I got lectured because I never had an inclination to put the dismantled item back together again (his portable bar set, his vise grip, basically anything with screws). Thing is I quickly became disappointed with what I found -- all the mystery of the object dissipated. It's not easy to admit this. You always hear stories of scientists as children, disassembling the family lawnmower or some such thing and then going on to great fame.

Dad was always trying to get me to help him with the car or the washing machine, but it always ended with me doing the wrong thing, him yelling, me being resentful and him feeling disappointed.

Growing up is all about discovering how and why the world works. Whether you become a writer, a plumber or a safe cracker, success largely depends on how well you understand the mechanics of your craft. Many times this can mean incredible liberation. Coming to believe that religious texts are not literal can deeply enrich ones faith, or psychology and sociology classes in university can help people better understand human relationships (or annoy their mother by becoming increasingly obnoxious, as in my case).

And then there are our fantasies that don't stand up too well to reality. My friend Graeme describes Doctor Who as having an "open source" fandom. Essentially this means that it encourages fans to go beyond what's happening onscreen and appreciate the inner workings and dramatic techiniques used to create it. This lead to fans like Steven Moffat and Russell T Davies writing and producing the program. Doctor Who never had that appeal for me. It was purely a narrative experience -- I was looking for escapism.

I can only imagine the bubbles that would have been burst if my 15-year-old self had been privy to the commentary track on Full Circle. For that version of me, the story was exciting and mysterious. To hear Christopher H Bidmead and Andrew Smith talk about behind-the-scenes troubles, or Matthew Waterhouse make his little passive aggressive jibes about Lalla Ward would have been akin to learning that my father was having an affair.

Fast forward to 1999 when Graeme encouraged me to write for Enlightenment, the fanzine he started editing. It was really the first time I stepped back and began examining the inner workings of program. I was given the David Howe/Stephen James Walker tome, Doctor Who: The Television Companion, I started going to the monthly Doctor Who "tavern" get together, and, gasp, conventions. Suddenly I knew the difference between the directing style of David Maloney and Pennant Roberts. At Gallifrey, the legendary annual Doctor Who convention in LA I was privy to gossip and folklore that curled my toes.

Several years ago DWIN brought in John Leeson as its guest for a Who Party and as a contributing member I was afforded the opportunity to sip wine with him at a special gathering. He was so charming, witty, and knowledgeable: the image of him entertaining us from an armchair has stuck with me for many years. Then I began to re-experience the same stories on DVD extras and other places, told with the same cadences and flourishes and it quickly became apparent that this was a "script" he used for dealing with the public. And I completely understand that and it doesn't diminish his craft at all. But it does reinforce the inevitable gulf between fantasy and reality -- even the "reality" behind the fantasy turns out to be something of a fantasy.

While I'm not immune to some of the more lurid gossip, it's the enthusiasm of some recollections that I love the most. On the Meglos extras, watching Andrew McCulloch and John Flanagan wander around London reminiscing about their time penning Meglos is nothing short of delightful, particularly when they stop in on Christopher H Bidmead and he offers them a glass of wine. And as a bit of trivia, Aunt Vanessa's house in Logopolis was in fact the residence of McCulloch at the time.

Ultimately I can still sit back and escape into the fantasy of a starliner being invaded by marshmen without worrying too much about the logic of the script or whether Tom and Lalla were glowering at each from across a sound stage. An thankfully I now live with someone who will put anything back together after I've made a hash of it. I've truly come full circle!

Original viewing date: December 3, 1984

Spirit: An "Alzarian Blast-off" a drink of my own concoction. Take a shot of vodka, a shot of melon liqueur, with marshmallows on a skewer.

Music: "Nobody Told Me" by John Lennon.

"Gangers"

Jacqueline Hill's appearance in Meglos is a bit of an oddity in that never before or since in the program's history has a major cast member returned in a completely different role, with no reference to it made in the script and very little fanfare. And you know, I kinda like it. Lexa is nothing like Barbara, and it's a tribute to Hill that after numerous years of not acting, she's so good and so distinctive (in the DVD tribute to Hill we were treated to a clip of Hill playing mama Capulet in a 1978 television production of Romeo and Juliet and she's equally marvelous).

Ironically, Hill appears in a story where a doppelganger plays a significant part in the plot. Despite the fact that Meglos is a rather mediocre story, Tom Baker does some nice work differentiating his characterization of Meglos from that of the Doctor. Sure there are a few shouty OTT moments, but the modulation he employs with his eyes is brilliant. Meglos is hard and determined. Baker also plays the Doctor's confusion at being accused of cactus's various crimes very authentically.

And if I could heap an extra helping of irony onto my plate, Sunday morning I watched The Almost People (second part of The Rebel Flesh). The two-parter, while being a very traditional story, offered some really interesting insights into identity. With various characters duplicated to perform dangerous mining tasks, the "Gangers" originally seem to be little more than extensions of the original humans (not unlike someone being projected as a hologram). Thanks to a handy dandy solar tsunami the Gangers begin to act independently. What is left extremely ambiguous is the nature of the raw "flesh." It appears to be alive in its own right -- there are discarded Gangers who appear to be in pain (at least Jennifer maintains it is).

Doubles figure prominently in the top 10 of popular sci-fi tropes, whether used superficially as a plot point , or mined for more philosophical purposes in terms of identity ( the movie Moon, the two Will Rikers on ST: TNG or the parallel universe in Fringe) .

Doctor Who has a staggering history of dealing in doubles:

1. William Hartnell took on the role of the Abbot of Amboise (The Massacre) and along with Edmund Warwick portrayed a robot version of himself.
2. The whole TARDIS crew discovered future versions of themselves (The Space Museum)
3. Ben and Polly were duplicated by the Chameleons (The Faceless Ones)
   
4. Patrick Troughton played the baddie Salamander (Enemy of the World)
5. Spearhead from Space concerns an alien race trying duplicate various important figures with Auton doppelgangers
   
6. Nicholas Courtney, Carolyn Johns, John Levene and much of the cast of Inferno play parallel universe versions of themselves
   
7. The third Doctor and Jo briefly encounter future versions of themselves (Day of the Daleks)
8. Ian Marter stepped out as a Zygon impersonator of Harry Sullivan (Terror of the Zygons)
   
9. Tom Baker played an android copy of himself (The Android Invasion), as did John Levene, Ian Marter and Elizabeth Sladen
10. Old Reuben the lighthouse keeper was impersonated by a Rutan in Horror of Fang Rock
    
11. Mary Tamm practiced her needlepoint as the Princess Strella and her jerky-acting chops (The Androids of Tara)
12. Lalla Ward's Romana uses the Princess Astra's likeness as a template (Destiny of the Daleks)
13. The Tachyon Recreation Generator spit out a whole bunch of unstable doubles of the fourth Doctor (The Leisure Hive)
    
14. Sarah Sutton traded one sort of posh for another as Ann Talbot (Black Orchid)
    
15. Peter Davison (Omega duplicated the fifth Doctor's body in Arc of Infinity)
16. Two versions of the Brigadier from different points in time illustrate the Blinovich Limitation Effect (Mawdryn Undead)
17. Can I just say that Kamelion impersonates a bunch of people and leave it at that.
    
18. The Daleks create a variety of duplicates including dormant versions of the fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, as part of machinations (Resurrection of the Daleks)
19. Sharaz Jek's duplicates of the fifth Doctor and Peri don't get to stick around long before being executed by a firing squad, and dear old Salateen's double had us all fooled (The Caves of Androzani)
    
20. The Borad created a dummy double of himself to avoid getting pasted in a very lame twist (Timelash)
21. Davros did the same thing in the next story but to much better effect (Revelation of the Daleks)
    
22. Noel Clarke plays a particularly plasticky Auton duplicate of his character Mickey Jones (Rose)
23. The Slitheen's habit of employing the skin of various full-bodied figures to create skin suit doubles (Aliens of London/World War III, Boomtown)
    
24. The ninth Doctor and Rose briefly encounter past versions of themselves (Father's Day)
25. Camille Coduri, Noel Clarke, and Shaun Dingwall all play parallel universe versions of themselves (Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday)
26. Freema Agyeman empathized with her Sontaran bred clone (The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky)
27. David Tennant's Doctor grew a whole new version of himself from a severed hand (Journey's End)
28. Prisoner Zero uses unconscious humans as forms to hide from the Atraxi (The Eleventh Hour)
    

And I just don't know whether to rule on the following counts: Queen Xanxia's new holographic/corporeal body (The Pirate Planet), the Rani's ridiculous but hilarious impersonation of Mel (The Twin Dilemma), and young Amelia Pond meeting her older self (The Pandorica Opens). I'm pretty sure that Scaroth's fractured selves don't really count. And the twins in The Twin Dilemma merely doubled the bad acting quotient in that story.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go throw my cactus down the garbage chute...

Original viewing date: November 24, 1984

Spirit: A double vodka martini

Music: "Cover Me" by Bruce Springsteen

Brighton Beach Memoirs

For fans of a certain age and ilk, The Leisure Hive was a seminal viewing experience. Not so much for the story (after all it was penned by David Fisher, stalwart of the past two seasons), but for the startling changes in production and tone it brought to our favorite television series.

At 15 I watched in awe as a brand new eye-popping title sequence whizzed by on the screen as if to say, "Try and keep up, burgeoning fanboy!"

Suddenly there seemed to be a gravitas to the program. Which is odd considering the story began with an endless (pointless?) tracking shot of some beach tents capped off by a snoring Doctor. But there was a strange confidence to the scene, a slow burn to acclimatize the viewer.

Between seasons, the Doctor had apparently been visited by Tim Gunn and now donned a striking and less thrown-together outfit (complete with self-conscious question marks). Of course looking back now it was the slow steady costume-ification of the cast. But back then I loved it!

And while I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at the time, the sharp direction was definitely producing a rush. Single camera setup and ceilings! Mind you it never occurred to my adolescent mind that there was less playfulness...less fun. It's kind of how when you're a kid you don't like to be kidded because it makes you feel less grownup.

Years later, when I visited the UK I made a point of nipping down to Brighton to visit this iconic location. Sadly the old pier had long since burned down, but it didn't stop me from trying to position myself at the appropriate points on the beach. And perhaps I even fantasized that I might dig up some long forgotten screw that had dropped off the mechanical mutt. In the end I bought some fish and chips, closed my eyes and listened for ghosts.

The Leisure Hive had fallen out of vogue for me in later years; it was fashionable to mock the po-faced nature of the Bidmead year, and those shots of the earth shuttle docking went on for far too long. I'm happy to report that this week I was able to slip through time and sit down beside an excited 15-year-old acne challenged teenager for 90 minutes. There is still a majesty and confidence to the whole thing, and a real desire to stretch the boundaries of Doctor Who. Adrienne Corri is wonderfully haughty and I'm sure she and Hardin were getting it on during her jaunts to Earth (to supplement her loveless, marriage of convenience with Morix who quite obviously spent most of his time in the gay quarter of Argolis).

I can scarcely believe I've arrived at Tom Baker's final season. Time has marched by like an army of petulant Pangols! Next week it's a talking cactus and Barbara Wright with a long blond ponytail.

Original viewing date: November 24, 1984

Wine: In the spirit of the story I searched the aisles of the LCBO for something new. I found I great Australian Pinor Noir from Barwick Estates.

Music: "I'm So Excited" by the Pointer Sisters