Yes,
there's a new Doctor. Yes it's further proof, as if we needed any,
that Peter Capaldi is a good actor. Yes, the Tardis has had one of
its periodic refits. While the credit sequence has had it's biggest
'Changing Rooms' moment yet...
But
beneath the hood - it's the same old same-old, isn't it?
When
the show first came back, now nine years ago, we knew the most likely
way it could fail. We didn't fear the Daleks or the Cybermen, or any
other monster of the month. We feared it would spend too much time
looking back over the old show, from the observation platform of
hindsight. That it would become too obsessed with continuity. There'd
be episodes which attempted to reconcile all the different theories
as to the Cybermen's origins, and there wouldn't be any general
viewers. After all, that was what the old show had itself started to
slip into, before it was through.
But
we needn't have worried. That never happened. Instead they went back
to the Cybermen and just made a whole new origin up. The show may
well have had other faults. But by leaping over the primary snare it
became something people could actually watch.
Yet
disaster finally befell from another direction. Instead of getting
caught up in the minutiae of its own history, it became mired in its
own cleverness. That whole 'missing Doctor' plotline epitomises
everything from recent years. Rather than obsess over actual
continuity, it chose to make some up and instead obsess over that.
Meanwhile,
general viewers are rewarded by being served the show they didn't
watch but always imagined it was. It's been chopped to fit their
expectations. Take the Daleks. Even the old TV comic strip was called
'Doctor Who and the Daleks', like they were butter
and toast. But that perception was always misconception. The Daleks
were off air for five years of the old show. Through reasons beyond
the show's control, true. But the show still carried on. Now they
have to show up at least once per season. Because
that's all part of the tradition we've just invented for ourselves.
And the new Doctor has to run into them pretty double quick, just to
prove he is the Doctor.
Or
take the Victoriana fixation. There was never any sustained link
between the show and the Victorian era. True, the Doctor himself
could look Edwardian – which is tangentially connected to the
Victorian. But that was to make him stand out from the settings, a
deliberately counter-intuitive move for a science fiction show
designed to make the lead character look - to coin a phrase –
differently strange. Notably the most Edwardian Doctors, the First
and the Third, had the least to do with Victorian times. Yet people
always imagine some such connection. So here it is. The Doctor now
has a bunch of mates, the Paternoster gang, waiting obligingly amid
all that Victoriana for his next re-visit.
Further,
the more the show becomes obsessed with its own faux-lineage, like an
upstart nouveau rich family forging coats of arms, the more it
struggle to intertwine itself with British cultural lineage. And of
course the apex of British history, as far as such stuff is
concerned, is the Victorian era. That's when Britain was at it's most
Brit-tastic. And this reduction of British history to a theme park of
course has a terribly mollifying effect on our perception of history.
Just as if Niall Ferguson was the historical consultant, there turns
out to have been nothing really wrong with any of
it at all. A nation at ease with itself has retconned gay marriage
back over a couple of centuries. Well, provided it was kinky.
But
it does the most violence to the character of the Doctor. He was once
the aristocrat who had chosen to forsake his lineage, and preferred
to hang out with the little people. The first time he went to World
War Two (ironically, in Moffat's first script), he met up with a gang
of orphans and street kids. The very next time he showed up was
because Churchill had him on speed-dial.
Of
course, 'Who' historicals were never terribly...
well, historical. They inevitably said more about the era that
produced them than the one they were set in. But there's something
insidiously post-modern in this theme-park history, where the past is
not only reduced to a dressing-up box but celebrated as such. It
suggests history doesn't really happen after all,
it's relationship to the present is more a kind of variation on a
theme. The way we live is a given. Time is just a production line
where more of it gets made.
And
that seems part of the mindset which has led to things getting so
stuck. I wonder, for example, just who was supposed to be watching
'Into the Dalek'. Though 'Dalek'
was never mentioned by name, there's specific dialogue references to
it which might seem jarring if you didn't have that context. Yet for
those of us who had seen 'Dalek'
the whole thing seemed such a thematic rehash they might as well have
just re-shot it. We might have guessed how 'Dalek'
would end up. And we might have nursed a sneaking sense it wouldn't
be with the big, bad Dalek destroying all life on Earth. But the jolt
of surprise comes from the effects proceeding have on the characters.
We watch the stone and at first we miss the ripples emerging.
This
time round, we sat waiting for it all to happen and then it did.
Whoever you were, old viewer or new, there would have been a feeling
the episode was actually aimed at someone else. But of course that's
not the point. The point is that there's more 'Doctor
Who'. It's the most long-running SF show of all and there
is already more of it.
This
was a show which always prided itself on its ability to revitalise
itself, something epitomised by the lead character reincarnating. Its
secret weapon was a reset button bigger and more powerful than any
other, which could be pressed at any point. Well now that button's
been pressed. With absolutely no difference whatsoever. Unless you
look at the furnishings.
If
I was minded to review this show now, on an episode-by-episode basis,
it would be more as a cultural barometer, as a signifier of modern
Britain. Except Shabogan Jack is
already doing all that, doubtlessly much more ably than me,
so I don't have to. I shall inevitably be sad enough to watch it. If
a particular episode here or there strikes me, I may even be minded
to review it. But a blow-by-blow account? Reviewing this cyclic
series of events as a TV series is starting to feel like a category
error.
The
new series of 'Walking Dead' is here. There's a
fresh Nordic Noir drama in the celebrated BBC4 Saturday night slot.
My recorder's full of stuff I never seem to get a chance to sit down
and watch. I expect yours is too. I have a backlog of books to read
like you wouldn't believe. That's before you even start on the things
I've meant to post here. So do any of us really have to bother with
some more of the same, just because of the trademark at the top of
it?
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