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.
* * *
(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.)
* * *
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.
* * *
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.
* * *
(Finally,
make sure you get on Google at least once today. It’s super-fun.)
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