Transcript
0:00:05 - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I run the centre, but I'm also an author and I'm getting very excited because shortly, in November, we have the return of David Tennant as Dr Who for a brief stint as the Doctor again, and bringing back Catherine Tate, who was one of the funnier of the companions, in her role of Donna. So David Tennant is holding the role until Shuti Gatwa is taking over to be the next Doctor. I don't know that much about Dr Who other than being just a very keen watcher of the program, so I have brought along to the podcast two experts and are going to ask them to introduce themselves. So, starting first with MG, would you like to say a little bit about you and Dr Who?
0:01:07 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I'm MG Harris. I'm a mostly children's author and I've written a time-travelling adventure series called the Joshua Files, which was definitely partly inspired by my love for Dr Who, and another action adventure series based on a sort of idea by Gerry Anderson which is called Gemma my Force One. And my first contact with Dr Who was probably when I moved to Manchester when I was a little girl and started watching Dr Who, not really understanding it at first, but because I wasn't speaking I didn't know English. But then when I did learn English, it was my favourite show from straight away. John Pertwee was probably the Doctor at the time and it very quickly became my favourite program.
And when I was about eight years old, a neighbour who used to write for the Daily Express she managed to get a letter I wrote published in the paper and it was about Dr Who. I was complaining that Mary Whitehouse should not be basically telling people that Dr Who was too scary. I was only eight and I loved it, even though I had to watch behind the sofa sometimes. Most recently I've written and published Dr Who book called Doomsday, extraction Point, and Doomsday is a whole kind of side series that just has come out over this last summer and we'll talk about that later, but I've authored that book.
0:02:23 - Speaker 1
And we're also joined by Steve Cole. Steve, tell us a little bit about yourself.
0:02:28 - Speaker 3
Hello, I'm Steve children's book author also, and editor as well, and back in the late 1990s I was the editor in charge of BBC Books Dr Who Outputs, and since 2017 I find myself as consultant editor to the BBC Books range of Dr Who Output. So I get to work with everyone putting out all sorts of titles, whether it's the Big Coffee Table Books or the Target Novelisations or brand new novels or indeed novels written by stars of Dr Who as well. My relationship with it goes back right to the start of my existence. I think my first memory is of watching Dr Who in 1975 as a little three-year-old, and I've watched it ever since. For some reason, I didn't grow out of it. I understood that people were supposed to do that, but I stayed with it right to its final episodes in 1989 and, yes, then helped it through those alternate years in print, looking at the video and audio as well, and finally writing novels for Christopher Eccleston's Doctor when it Came Back, and Onward Since.
0:03:45 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's actually that sort of the break from 89 until it came back. There was a Paul McGann film wasn't there, and then it came back again with Christopher Eccleston, and I think the timing there for our generation is that it came back when we a lot of us had kids. So there was the thing sitting down again with the next generation to watch it together, which was, I certainly remember, but my doctor, I think I do remember John Potwee, just, but I think I really started to understand the program with Tom Baker.
0:04:16 - Speaker 3
Yes, me too.
0:04:17 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so he was sort of my doctor. I do remember one absolutely terrifying experience as a child that I went to a Christmas party. My dad was in the police and there was a police family's Christmas party big thing in some London venue and they thought to entertain the kids. They had a Dalek at the bottom of the stairs.
0:04:38 - Speaker 2
That was scary and I was absolutely terrified.
0:04:41 - Speaker 1
I didn't want to go in the hall. I just the whole party was just I thought it's going to come in an attack, because at three or four, whatever I was, the idea of the Dalek is like a fun thing. That you walk past was just, you know, terrifying. So that's one of my abiding memories. So it certainly had the power to scare, definitely. So it's fascinating that the series has spawned a sort of world around it of books and what have you, because I know that's happened for other outputs like Star Trek and Star Wars and other things, rather than being an IP that then gets turned into a TV program. So should we just have a quick look, because I know the books follow different doctors, but should we have a quick look at all the different doctors? If you count David Tennant again, I think there are now 15 roughly.
0:05:33 - Speaker 3
That's right. And he isn't a 14th doctor, so you have to count.
0:05:36 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so going back to the past, who was the very first?
0:05:41 - Speaker 3
for those who are a bit William, Hart was the very first Dr Who, way back in 1963. What's interesting about Dr Who is that we got this reputation as being very patrician and very you know the prevailing sort of like dominance of what. They actually started off very differently with. The very first female producer at the BBC was in charge of it and the first director who helped translate onto the screen was Anglo-Indian, so it's very, very young, because none of the Fuddy Daddies at the BBC really wanted to have anything to do with this. So it became the brainchild and there's a gravitation point for a lot of young, energetic zeitgeist busting people and I think that infuses Dr Who with an energy right from the start.
The Daleks came along in the very second story so at the end of the fifth episode ever made you've got Daleks suck a stick, string into shot and they kind of became synonymous ever since. Probably without the Daleks it would never have taken off. But the producers didn't want Dr Who to be about bug-eyed monsters and aliens and so they were desperately against the Daleks storyline, which they thought was everything iffy and you know bad about science fiction, whereas in fact it was the success of the Daleks, literally overnight, that made the shows fortunes and made fortunes for the BBC in terms of merchandise sales. So they left Dr Who to Verity Lambert and her team pretty early on and it kind of blazed its own way ever since.
0:07:22 - Speaker 1
And William Hartnell played it like a grandfather. He was a grandfather in it, wasn't he?
0:07:27 - Speaker 3
so he was yes, again, people say, oh doctor, who's you know, is this sexless, ageless man? But he's very clearly set up as having a granddaughter right from the start. We know that it's from another planet, but we don't know anything else about him. All the stuff about time lords and his own planet of Gallifrey didn't come along until right at the end of the 1960s, 1969, with Patrick Trouton's last story, patrick Trouton being, of course, the second Dr Who a rejuvenated version of the first, with a completely different personality.
0:07:58 - Speaker 1
So I've heard him referred to as like a clownish doctor. Who is that? Would that be fair?
0:08:04 - Speaker 3
yes, yes, william.
0:08:05 - Speaker 1
Hartnell, who returns later in one of the first joint Dr Who episodes in the early 70s, says that John Perkway's the dandy and Patrick Trouton's the clown.
0:08:15 - Speaker 3
So exactly, yes, he was, and he had a much more that sort of softer approach and William Hartnell good sort of, like you know, stare and bluster and be very gruff, but Trouton's doctor was much more kind of playful and basically lulled his enemies into completely underestimating his powers. So he was very comedic but also very fierce in his mission to defeat the terrors of the universe. You know, because the doctor goes from being someone who doesn't really want to get involved in in the events of things and is very worried about changing history, to basically being someone who stirs things up and changes status quo is all over the universe, which is why eventually the time laws catch up with him and exile him to earth and turn him into John Perkway the dandy, as you mentioned yeah, and there's a sign of the Mr Toad about John Perkway.
0:09:07 - Speaker 1
Isn't there even down to driving a little car? There's a sort of slightly zany aspect to him. Mg, you said he was your doctor. So how would you characterize John Perkway?
0:09:19 - Speaker 2
Well, I would say it was the first one I started watching, but I don't think I really understood Dr Hoove because I was very young until sort of the last season of John Perkway, probably I remember the one that had the green death. Is that the last year?
0:09:31 - Speaker 3
Oh, it's the end of his penultimate season, but yes, it was.
0:09:34 - Speaker 2
So that's when I was starting to pay attention and, if you remember, because he was exiled to Earth, all of those early adventures took place on Earth, so they were just, you know, earth based. And so when it started to be about sort of you know, going to outer space and stuff, and I mean that really surprised me because that, you know, that wasn't the concept that I had of the show. That's really interesting, isn't it? They?
0:09:56 - Speaker 3
did it to save money on that Exactly.
0:09:58 - Speaker 2
Yeah.
0:09:58 - Speaker 3
And when.
0:10:01 - Speaker 2
But I just thought it was set on Earth and it was. You know, I thought he was part of Earth, I thought it was basically a show about you.
So I do remember really liking Joe. When I go back and watch those episodes they're not quite as good as I remember. So I think probably I more got into Dr Who properly when I was really understanding. You know who he was. He was a time traveler who wasn't actually trapped on Earth anymore. Yeah, although I was quite cross about, you know, when Planet of the Spiders happened and he regenerated, because, again, I didn't know that he regenerated. So I was like what's happening? What's happening now? And then there's this new guy with a weird scarf and you know, yeah, I think it was good that Sarah Jane was when you know.
Joe, that's happening.
0:10:37 - Speaker 3
No, because Sarah Jane was there as continuity, wasn't she? Did you like, sarah Jane?
0:10:41 - Speaker 2
I loved Sarah Jane. Who doesn't love Sarah Jane? Well, exactly yeah.
0:10:46 - Speaker 3
I think she really must have helped a lot of people cope with that trauma of.
0:10:48 - Speaker 2
John Paltz?
Yes, I mean, he definitely did yeah, I'm quite upset when Joe wasn't in it anymore, didn't you know? So when these things are not something that you expect they are In your child, they're a bit of a shock, but they are. So there's less writing in Dr Who comes in the John Paltz season 12, 12 and 13 with the Philip Hinchcliffe period when you've got that, so just absolutely brilliant on reading. And of course David Maloney, who then went on to produce Blake Seven. He's got a big hand in that. So I kind of like Ontario Nation is still writing. So you know.
0:11:20 - Speaker 3
Yeah, there's a lot of personnel crossing over from there's a lot of yeah.
0:11:24 - Speaker 2
So Blake Seven kind of came out of that era of Doctor.
0:11:26 - Speaker 1
Who.
0:11:27 - Speaker 3
Yeah.
0:11:28 - Speaker 1
And he's going because he's only reached number three and we've got a long way to go. So we've got Tom Baker who in a sense combines an element of the dandyism of John Pertwee with his long coat and his scarf, but with the sort of In fact actually he's like an amalgamation of all of them, because he's got a sort of clownish, dangerous zany zany rather than a clown, I think energy to him. But he also has an element of sort of gruff roughness to him.
I think he's less safe as a person than say that Tom Pertwee.
0:12:01 - Speaker 3
That's a good call. I think Tom Baker kind of wanted to emphasise the alien qualities of the doctor and that he wouldn't always respond as a human would respond to something. So, if someone died being crushed by a robotic Egyptian mummy. Well, sarah Cheney is there feeling terribly sorry for the poor chat. There's a doctor saying well, I told him it was no good. I told him that this would happen. And she says sometimes you're not. He says human because of course he's not.
He's seeing the wider picture that the entire world is going to die unless, in this case, sutech is not stopped. So he's always got his eye on the greater picture. Although he defends humanity, the collateral damage is something that perhaps seems to matter less to him as long as he gets the job done and saves the planet. And he sends himself up a lot. And it's basically this bohemian, the other tenti, running around having a wonderful time saving planets and answering to nobody. So he was a great anarchic presence and hugely inspiring.
0:13:01 - Speaker 1
Definitely anarchic is perfect for him. I have the impression I didn't check before we came on the call but he did serve quite a long time as Dr Who, didn't he?
0:13:10 - Speaker 3
Seven years. Yeah, he was the one who was having it.
0:13:12 - Speaker 1
Is that the record? Is he the longest serving? Yeah, so that fits in my impression. And then, of course, he hands over to Peter Davidson of course.
Yes, how could we forget Peter Davidson? And that was the shock of choosing a much younger. It was a rejuvenation, literally, of the Dr Who and I do remember there being quite a lot of controversy at the time, similar to what happens when Matt Smith took over from David Tennant that they went young. And when you think of what had come before, it was even a bigger shock, because they've come from quite an old grandfather to being a quite dashing young man. In fact I remember he was being very attracted to him, a bit of an idol for us little girls. So what kind of qualities I think of him as young, caring, sort of more soft.
0:14:08 - Speaker 3
Yeah, he kind of went around. It felt like events were getting away from him the whole time. Tom Baker always felt like he was kind of in charge.
0:14:15 - Speaker 2
I think Davidson's Doctor seemed a lot more vulnerable and I think that was really I think that period goes through a whole kind of ensemble, a bit like with Thirteen Jodie.
0:14:26 - Speaker 1
Wicks again.
0:14:29 - Speaker 2
Yeah, most of the time he's with a quite bigger group. He's got three assistants or three companions, and so you've got more of a kind of family feel to the show at that point and I think he relies on some of the others.
0:14:41 - Speaker 3
Yeah, and of course it went twice weekly. At that point it was almost and within the soap opera slot there was to come. I think they were using Dr Who to trial drama in a twice a week slot because eventually of course EastEnders would take over that positioning. But it was a big shock to move Dr Who from a Saturday and sort of like stick it on twice a week midweek. It meant that Dr Who was only on for three months of the year. So that was a big loss to someone like me who was like used to having it on once a week for six months. I thought I was losing a lot of Dr Who, even though it was about as much it was just over so much more quickly.
You had to wait. You had to wait in those days for these things to come back.
0:15:19 - Speaker 1
Yeah, well, we do now, don't we? We do lots, though everything is always available at all times. And then we go to the next baker, who is Colin Baker, if I'm getting this right. To correct me if I get this wrong. And I don't think he was a Doctor for that long, was he A couple of seasons?
0:15:38 - Speaker 3
Yes, it was a difficult time for the show because Michael Grade, as controller of BBC One, postponed it, put it on hiatus for 18 months, so, and you know, cited too much violence and there was rumors of some personal antipathy towards the production team and to Colin Baker as the Doctor. Colin had a plan to make his Doctor, who was quite again very irascible and alien at first, to sort of soften him up over several years, which unfortunately didn't come about because, as you say, he only did the two seasons and at the end of it was basically told he had to go and make way for a new Doctor. So it was not amicable in any way and so Best of Me Calley came along in 1987 and there was no real regeneration scene for the first time in the show's history because Colin Baker quite rightly felt I'm not coming back just for a couple of episodes to be killed off, I need to find new work. So it felt like Dr Who was becoming a bit mired in too much real world stuff around that time.
The fantasy had worn off and it had become. It seemed like it was less popular or not being watched for the right reasons, I don't know. It just felt like it was dwindling a bit. It was a sad time, I felt.
0:16:59 - Speaker 2
I don't think I watch very much of the Silverstone McCoy season because I particularly the whole trial of a time Lloyd season. I just did not like that at all which was the last Colin Baker. I just thought oh for goodness sake. So after that I was only watching it sort of sporadically. I really liked Ace. I have to say I did like her, but I was kind of checking out my man.
0:17:22 - Speaker 3
Yes, I think it's difficult because I remember when Sylvester McCoy came along I think I was 16 and discovering girls and for the first time, I think that season I very nearly forgot to tune in which I found a very shocking event which rocked me philosophically to my core.
0:17:40 - Speaker 2
So it only happened to me then and one time later, when I'll tell you about it later, if we get to it, but that was the only time I stopped. It's time for Dr Who, let's watch it, or taping it, or something. I was just like, if I see it, I see it.
0:17:54 - Speaker 3
I think it seemed less essential perhaps, and it was scheduled by that point opposite Coronation Street, which is kind of the kiss of death because Coronation Street was the time.
0:18:03 - Speaker 2
So you watch Coronation Street in those days.
0:18:06 - Speaker 3
Well, yeah, so more people did than Dr Who, sadly. So it went back down to sort of like four, three, five million people watching and it just wasn't enough to justify continued production. And by then there was only four stories a year. It was about 14 episodes a year. So it was very much a shadow of its form of self. Creatively it was doing new things, it was just there wasn't the audience wanting to watch, so it was kind of a sad mismatch really. As the 80s play out, it does, it does go into a pattern, not a creative decline, but certainly of popularity loss.
0:18:42 - Speaker 1
And Sylvester McCoy. I think we're back with a more clownish Doctor again, a bit like Patrick Troughton, yes, speaking of which, that's where it became easier to get into the story. People probably know Sebastian McCoy from when he appeared in the Hobbit. No, was it the Hobbit? Yeah.
0:18:58 - Speaker 3
I think he was in the Hobbit films, wasn't he?
0:19:00 - Speaker 1
Yes, as Radagast, one of the wizards, and he's very good at physical comedy and a charming sort of performer. But it was definitely taking the Doctor away from a figure of authority to something much more fey, and I think that drifted quite far from the original premise, I think.
0:19:24 - Speaker 3
Yes, it did go overtly comedic at times. Ironically, Sebastian McCoy's Doctor becomes quite dark in his last season in terms of being like an archman.
0:19:35 - Speaker 2
Yeah, he's very pessimistic, doesn't he? Yeah?
0:19:39 - Speaker 3
But I actually heard Colin Baker and Sebastian McCoy recently. He refers themselves and we can trust that their performance is to Peter Davison's and Colin Baker said I was a custard tart and McCoy said I was a custard pie. Compared to that was he was just quite a sweet summing up their different approaches.
0:19:59 - Speaker 1
So we've just touched very lightly on. There's a Paul McGahn film and Paul McGahn Hansen Doctor, the Hansen Doctor.
0:20:08 - Speaker 3
The Hansen-Slogging Doctor I mean that caused some shockwaves that day.
0:20:12 - Speaker 2
The Hansen-Slogging Doctor, bironic Doctor.
0:20:15 - Speaker 3
Yeah, he was very much so yeah.
0:20:17 - Speaker 1
I have never seen the film, so I'm not sure what I'm missing.
0:20:20 - Speaker 3
Oh, I think it's fascinating really. I mean it was made in America, it was a co-production with the BBC, so it feels it does feel more American, definitely because all the cast are American. Well, those who aren't Canadian pretending to be American.
0:20:35 - Speaker 2
And that's when they break with the set design as well for the TARDIS, isn't it? That's where they kind of have a movie and you're like whoa they're dark.
0:20:41 - Speaker 3
It goes a lot more at Jules Verne. I mean it's kind of tragic they didn't get to go to a full series. I know that. I mean I came to Dr Who professionally in the wake of the Paul McGahn movie because, you know, in 1997, the year after, it still wasn't certain that Dr Who wouldn't come back. So we were BBC Books, took over the publishing of the original novels at that point and I became their editor and we were hoping that it would come back and be a huge hit all over again. But, as it was, there was longer to wait until Dr Who did come back, led by Vasanthi Davis and launching in April 2005.
0:21:21 - Speaker 1
Yes, so let's pick up there. So this is probably where many of the people listening to this they probably have seen most of these we're going to talk about now, so I've lost count of which number Doctor we are on.
0:21:33 - Speaker 3
Number nine.
0:21:34 - Speaker 1
Thank you. Number nine, so the choice of Russell T Davis. I don't know what he had done before. What had he been writing before? There was folk?
0:21:43 - Speaker 3
in which there's a massive light-to-dove character. Yeah, he'd done all sorts, yeah.
0:21:47 - Speaker 1
But not known for science fiction, horatian Street as well.
0:21:51 - Speaker 3
He wasn't known for science fiction, and this was the amazing thing, because people were saying why would you want to go to something like Dr Who, which was lovely, languishing?
0:21:58 - Speaker 2
He was a fanboy. He'd been a massive fan when he was a kid. I think he'd even read fanfiction. So he was a fanboy.
0:22:03 - Speaker 3
He wrote one of the original Dr Who novels for Virgin Publishing as well. So he was yeah he'd always been a fan, but I think professionally it was like well, you know, if anyone can bring Dr Who back as a kind of like a way to reinvigorate the Saturday Night Schedules and get all the family watching again which of course Dr Who's purpose used to be.
It was there to bring all the family together ready for the rest of the lineup on BBC One. You know, when you go into the Generation Game or the two Ronnies or the Duchess of Duke Street or all these old shows.
0:22:33 - Speaker 1
Oh, crikey, these are blasts from the past.
0:22:35 - Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, but we hadn't had anything like that for a time because Dr Who had dotted around all over the schedules so when it was back on a Saturday and then it would run into the National Lottery or to strictly or whatever else was going to come on, it became very quickly a very strong part of that and I think parents rediscovered the joy of being able to sit down and watch something with their kids and everyone being glued to the screen. You know it was a lovely time.
0:22:58 - Speaker 1
But the Eccleston Doctor, number nine, as I now know, I think he really did take a step away from the other doctors in that it's the first modern one. All the others had an element of retro about them, their clothing referring to different periods longer line, sort of Victorian, frock, coat type dresses, you know, edwardian gentlemen, victorian they had the sort of air of the past about them, whereas the night Doctor comes in with his leather jacket and sort of modern, skinny, outlook, northern accent, and suddenly you feel, oh yeah, well, of course the Doctor can regenerate as somebody who's a contemporary and not from the Southeast.
0:23:43 - Speaker 3
Exactly which was, or Scotland which was the other place. I think that was part of Russell's genius in that was to take. It's an absolutely modern take on it. There's no, even though he's using, like past monsters, uses the autons who launched John Pertwee's first story, but there's no knowledge of that required. All you find out in that story is that there's this mysterious alien who can travel in time and space.
He tells it all through the point of view of Billy Piper's Rose, so it's a very modern character presenting her outlook, and he was drawn into the story, just like the audience is so and soon discovers you know how dangerous it is and how exciting it is, and the audience, you know, discover that with her. So he, by making it so accessible and by absolutely positing the Doctor as a no-frills northern force of super nature really powering through adventures, you know, in just a leather jacket and a t-shirt and jeans. You know he doesn't need a frock coat, he doesn't need. You know, so many of the trappings that he acquired over the years were kind of like cut away and I think that that helps the program resonate with the brand new audience.
0:24:55 - Speaker 1
And we must sort of do a nod here to Billy Piper. I think she was so excellent in the relaunch because she felt like a person who you might know, whereas the other companions had been. I suppose Sarah Jane was a bit like that as well, but there had been quite a few singular choices in yes higher concept companions yes, high concept.
0:25:18 - Speaker 3
thank you.
0:25:21 - Speaker 1
But she worked in a shop and just seemed like an ordinary girl. She had her family.
0:25:27 - Speaker 3
Yes.
0:25:28 - Speaker 1
And Vince's family had a boyfriend, so it all felt like this could happen to you and that Exactly. You know, going through the wardrobe as a kid, it felt like that you could be the Doctor's companion.
0:25:42 - Speaker 3
Yeah and nothing. By seeing the effects on her family and by sticking with those human points of view, it made it so much more relatable to a wider cross-section of the public than ever before. With Russell's era it's, you'll notice that humans feature in pretty much every story, so there's always a human point of view. And also you don't or very rarely do you cut away to shots of monsters talking to each other, explaining the plot to each other. You don't get piles of walking latex hogging the camera, as generally told through a human perspective, which again just makes it that much more relatable and believable, I think.
0:26:24 - Speaker 1
I don't know if it was the first series or when she's with David Tennant, but I remember a very powerful storyline about her and Grief trying to change history because of her father.
0:26:35 - Speaker 3
Yes, that was, with a constant father's day. Written by Paul Connell.
0:26:39 - Speaker 1
It's an amazing story and it's so profound. I just Don't often go to. I think this is where Dr Who changed for me. I remember it scaring me before and I think in the 2000s it started moving me. There are several episodes I can say yeah, I found that really moving. You know the tears well up and actually getting that emotional response from the audience is amazing, I think.
0:27:06 - Speaker 3
Yeah well, I was upset when the Dalek was to kill itself in the first great episode of the Dalek yeah Bob. Sheehan wrote Dalek and it's an absolutely beautiful episode. And who would think? I remember Eccleston going on Jonathan Ross's chat show and saying you know you will. It's a tearjerker and I'm making fun of him saying well, how can Daleks be a tearjerker? If you watch that episode, it's beautifully done and it is very sad the tragedy of this Dalek. It makes you realise that you know For the night.
0:27:37 - Speaker 1
For the night of feelings too.
0:27:39 - Speaker 3
Exactly. Villains aren't villains to themselves. They have their own purpose and their own mission, but they see themselves. Every villain sees themselves as the hero in their own narrative, and if you can't do what it is a Dalek does, then that's a tragedy you're going to feel. If you've been touched by Billy Piper, as that poor Dalek was, there are clearly consequences.
