Doctor Triumphant
You know this already: Doctor Who is a triumph. It’s a really grown-up collision of ideas and drama in a primetime TV slot. In the three series since the Doctor’s return to TV in 2005, classical science fiction devices have mixed it up with classy pop TV plotting in a way you very rarely see. A handful of brilliant movies have done this. Can’t think of any right now, though. Kubrick? Not really. Tarkovsky? No. Alien? Hardly. Blade Runner? Getting there. It’s just very unusual for left- and right-brain to get it together quite so freely. The giant sci-fi anthologies of your youth were empty of emotion. Or emotion was reduced to a kind of vector, a weightless 2D plot element slithering through space-time (or something).
Anyway, the new Doctor - the creation of Russell T Davies, telly drama genius - is a man and a universal natural phenomenon in one. He cries over lost love and rescues an entire species in every episode. He resolves quite convincing space-time anomalies, closes rifts, reverses chain reactions and collapses exploding stars. The whole while properly engaging with the emotional sub-plot, breaking two or three hearts, reconciling parted lovers and acknowledging the yearning for freedom of an enslaved species. We, the audience, all cry and then, afterwards, twitter and blog and email about it like the pre-pubescent fanboys we’ve all been reduced to.
Meanwhile, in each highly-compressed one- or two-episode story, new characters have to be brought up to speed within the show’s first three minutes. “So. Hold on. You’re an omnipotent time Lord. A creature with other-worldly powers and a time machine. The spiny things are a species from the future who want to harvest our planet’s psychic energy. And my boyfriend’s just been vapourised. Well, let’s get on with it, then!” Ordinary people are accelerated along story arcs that would leave you or I dribbling in a corner. Humble characters are promoted to planet saving superpeople. And the whole thing hangs together beautifully.
David Tennant, The current Doctor, is an authentic heart-throb and a perfect, self-deprecating superbeing. Under Davies’ tenure the Doctor’s been translated from a remote and eccentric visitor from another world to a complex, near-human saviour figure, a man who carries the weight of humanity’s woes like a loving surrogate father or a benign secular God-figure. We love him because he offers himself in our place. This is potent stuff, pressing all sorts of primal narrative buttons. We all love the Doctor. We wind up crying inexplicably. I suspect that Davies has essentially hypnotised us by the canny re-use of Oedipal devices that pull our heart strings and leave us wondering why we’re so moved. He’s a clever man. No wonder he’s so sought-after. I anticipate a great future in Hollywood if the man can ever be torn away from Cardiff, the show’s hometown.
There are sceptics, of course, people who just can’t bear the introjection of sci-fi material into Saturday night drama (or vice versa) and there are people of a certain age for whom the earlier Doctors will never be bettered. Everyone has their own Doctor (mine was John Pertwee who took the job when I was seven and stayed till I was 11) but Tennant is the best yet. Around the world the geeks have certainly taken him to their hearts. Watching the Who chit-chat on twitter and in the ’sphere on Saturday evening it’s evident that techies wherever they gather are downloading the show’s torrent minutes after it’s finished. In San Francisco, after a weekend-long developer event called Foo Camp a couple of weeks ago, British hackers convened an ironic ‘Who Camp’ to watch a freshly downloaded episode.
So Doctor Who’s alive and well: a sophisticated and humane (but not human) character, comprehensively updated for the networked era. I really don’t know how I’m going to wait six months for the next series. I need some kind of paradox machine.
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Jason, check your PBS stations. Several around the country have been playing the Chris Eccleston season. He's also great, but it's hard to beat Tennant. I assume they'll play his eps as well. SciFi should be starting Tennant's third season soon.
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The current series can be seen on BBC America as well as the Sci-Fi channel, and individual episodes are available on line at all the usual Bittorrent sites. I'm one of those who has been eagerly awaiting each new episode and getting it that way [BT]. Hopefully, we can get DVDs soon!
This show makes me feel like a 12-year old again, in all the best possible ways!