"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Happy Doctor Who Day!

 
Obviously, this is the big one.  Half a century of the strange, wonderful story of a universe, a blue box, and an alien with too much life for just one heart.  Even when it went off the air, Doctor Who lived on in novels and audio dramas and comics, and now, back and bigger than ever, today is a celebration of everyone who’s ever loved it.
 
The main event is this afternoon, so expect yet another blog sometime tonight (after I’ve processed, fan-squealed, and sufficiently geeked out on the Internet,) but for now, I wanted to do a quick round-up of the Who-ish festivities from the last week or so.
 
An Adventure in Time and Space
 
This TV drama premiered last night, and it’s gorgeous.  Drop-dead stunning.  It tells of the birth of our weird little show-that-could, the creators who fought for it, and of course, the man who gave the Doctor his first face.  David Bradley is wonderfully affecting as William Hartnell; I adored seeing his journey from Who skeptic to Who champion, and the depiction of his final days with the show is heartbreaking.  Honestly, Two is my favorite classic Doctor, but seeing Hartnell’s grief, I felt like shaking my fist at Patrick Troughton!
 
Learning more about the show’s inception was fascinating.  I’d been aware that Verity Lambert, a female producer, was a rarity in the ‘60s, but I hadn’t realized that she was the BBC’s first female producer, and I’d had no idea that Waris Hussein, the BBC’s first Indian director, directed the show’s initial episodes.
 
There’s all sorts of delightful nuggets for classic series fans.  Seeing/hearing the origin of the TARDIS noise was a lot of fun, and I laughed at Hartnell’s granddaughter cheerfully fanwanking One’s onscreen dialogue flubs.  Early-season costumes and locales are wonderfully and lovingly recreated.
 
Other than Bradley as Hartnell, the other original-cast performances leave something to be desired – Susan is too shrill, Ian is off, and Barbara never quite feels like Barbara.  However, Jessica Raine as Verity and Sasha Dhawan as Waris are both worth their weight in gold.
 
What a beautiful love letter to the show and the fans.  Loved it, loved it, loved it.
 
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(Warning – I won’t go into too much detail, but the following mini-episodes do contain hints about the 50th special, so if you’re bent on seeing it spoiler-free, hold off on these two until after you’ve seen the special.)
 
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This mini-episode was released last week, and even in its sadness, it’s just so warm and wonderful.  It drops us into the Time War, but away from the main action, where the Eighth Doctor is just trying to do what he can to help people.  However, an encounter with a would-be companion and a return to old acquaintances shows him the only unfortunate way he can truly help.
 
I’m so glad I finally finished working my way through the classic Who stories available on DVD, so I could see Paul McGann’s (until now!) sole televised performance as Eight.  The TV movie was rife with problems and ridiculousness, but he was every inch the Doctor, and it’s fantastic to see him truly brought into the fold here.  It’s like he never left (and in a way, that’s true – Eight has a vast, ever-growing reservoir of adventures in audio drama;) though he obviously looks older, and the Time War has forced a lot of darkness upon this especially sweet, joyous Doctor, you can still see the same spark shining through so clearly.
 
I was also really impressed with Moffat’s writing here.  I think he can sometimes (often? increasingly?) be too clever for his own good, but in The Night of the Doctor, he tells a strong, emotional story, pays beautiful tribute to Eight, and reigns in his more flippant tendencies, keeping the humor to bittersweet character-focused moments.  It actually allayed a lot of my worries about the 50th.  If the special gives us the same emphasis on storytelling, the same affection for the show’s long history, then we’re really in for something great.
 
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The other mini-episode, released a couple days ago, is also Time-War-focused.  This one is more of an atmospheric teaser; we watch frightened Gallifreyan soldiers face up to the growing understanding that their enemy may be unstoppable.  It’s intense and a little scary, but the lack of anyone we know detaches the viewer from it a little.  Under ordinary circumstances, it’d be a perfectly serviceable mini-episode, but the perfection of The Night of the Doctor makes it pale in comparison.
 
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(Finally, make sure you get on Google at least once today.  It’s super-fun.)

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