SIDRAT: Some Idiosyncratic Diverse Ramblings About TARDIStimes

Quite a lot happened in my life on 30 October 1966: my youngest sibling died in a tragic accident which saw my parents split up and me, temporarily, sent to live with my maternal Grandmother while the adults sorted things out.

The accident happened the day after Tenth Planet finished.

I was almost catatonic with grief – I had lost my brother and the Doctor had died. I remember crying a lot.
My Grandmother  was a very wise woman – imagine Amelia Rumford from Stones of Blood fused with June Whitfield and you are somewhere near the mark. She was a former vaudeville dancer, then Matron at a hospital. Formidable but fun.; kind and understanding.

She had never seen Doctor Who but she had patiently endured me babbling on about  Zarbi and Thals and Aztecs and Time Meddling Monks and Celestial Toymakers and Cybermen (she knew they really scared me).

And she knew how vulnerable I was, at 9 years old, given what happened to our family on 30 October.
She wanted to calm me, to comfort me, to help me through the loss of my brother. She had to – because my parents were not up to it.  And she realised quickly that Doctor Who was the key.

She got me to stop being sad and crying by cajoling me to tell her the story of my favourite Doctor Who story.

So I told her about Dalek Masterplan. It took ages – she made scones and we had a little tea party while she came to grips with the various planets, the trickery of Mavic Chen and the deaths of Katarina, Bret Vyon and Sara Kingdom. She used those deaths to get me to talk about my brother and how I felt and she held my hand while she told me that he was playing with Katarina and Bret Vyon and Sara Kingdom now.

She sat on the roof of her terrace house with me at nightfall and we counted the stars and looked for the TARDIS. She spent hours making me feel okay, and opening an escape door into Doctor Who, a place where I felt entirely safe and where the Doctor would always be there.

Then, after about two days, she asked about the episode that would play on the next Saturday.  I got immediately agitated and explained that “the Doctor has a new face; the Cybermen killed him and he has a new face”. She had no idea what I was talking about but when I asked her when  I would see my brother’s new face, she knew she had work to do.

So, she got me to talk about Tenth Planet and she made a special journey to the shops to buy the Radio Times to see if she could find out anything. She quickly discovered, from the man at the shop, that Patrick Troughton had been cast in the role and would be starting as a new Doctor that week.

So she went to work. She reminded me that she had taken me and my siblings to see three theatre productions – two Peter Pans and one version of Cinderella. She asked me what I remembered and we discussed that. She made lunch and while I was distracted by her perfect toad-in-the-hole, she asked me which Peter Pan I liked the best.

I remember being struck silent by the question and some brown sauce dripped onto my shirt because I had stopped eating, the fork poised in mid-air.

“What do you mean Nanna?” I said.
“Well, we saw two versions of Peter Pan, remember, one with the puppet crocodile and one where we did not see the crocodile” she reminded me.
“The one with the crocodile we didn’t see. That one was scary”
“Yes, it was. But which Peter Pan did you like best?”

I was flummoxed. I did not know what she meant. So, she came and sat next to me and produced the programmes she had kept for the productions.  She showed me that two different young women had played Peter Pan. I was more surprised that there were two of them than they were women!

“You see” my Nanna said very carefully “Peter Pan is a part that people play. He is not real. So anyone can play him really.”
“Can I?” I remember asking, thinking that I really wanted to be able to fly.
“Yes, one day. Sure. And that is what is happening with your Doctor. From this week, someone else is playing him.”
“So, he is a different doctor?”
“No, darling. The same doctor, different actor. Different face. When you are talking about a part in a play or on telly, lots of people can play the part, so the part can have many faces. But your brother, well, he was real and so he only ever has one face. His own face.”

She held me for a very long time then. But that was the point that I accepted my brother was gone and that I accepted that the Doctor was not real and that he could change his face.

Not that anything about what happened was, on any view, lucky, but I think my circumstances meant that I came to Power of the Daleks more ready than many others might have. Thanks to my grandmother.

David Whittaker helped too. His script was magnificent and he attacked the central conundrum head –on:

BEN: Now look, the Doctor always wore this. So if you’re him, it should fit now, shouldn’t it? BEN: There. That settles it.  DOCTOR: I’d like to see a butterfly fit into a chrysalis case after it’s spread its wings.  POLLY: Then you did change!  DOCTOR: Life depends on change and renewal.  BEN: Oh, so that’s it. You’ve been renewed, have you?  DOCTOR: I’ve been renewed, have I? That’s it. I’ve been renewed. It’s part of the Tardis. Without it, I couldn’t survive. Come here.  DOCTOR: Come here.  DOCTOR: The Doctor kept a diary, didn’t he?  POLLY: Yes.  DOCTOR: I thought so. I wonder where. I wonder where.  POLLY: He’s a very different Doctor, Ben.  BEN: Yeah, maybe. Just where do we stand, though?  POLLY: Doctor?  POLLY: Doctor, what’s going to happen to us?  DOCTOR: I think. I think we must have landed for some time. I think it’s time we went for a stroll.  POLLY: But you don’t know where we’ve landed!  BEN: No, you haven’t checked the oxygen or the temperature or anything!  DOCTOR: (reading his diary, not looking up or at Ben or Polly) Oxygen density 172, radiation nil, temperature 86. Strong suggestion of mercury deposits. Satisfied, Ben? Now, are you two coming or are you not?  POLLY: He does know us. He said Ben. Didn’t you hear him?  BEN: Yeah, I heard. But he might just have been copying you though, mightn’t he?

My Nanna held my hand the whole way through the episode. That helped.

I identified with Ben – he was handsome, brave, tough and Polly liked him. Since Smugglers,  I had wanted to grow up to be him.  I quite liked Polly too. So, it was interesting – and involving – that the two reacted differently to the new face of the Doctor. Because that’s how I thought of it – Hartnell’s doctor with a new face.

Ben was wary, thought the new face was possibly an imposter; although, even at 9, I did wonder why Ben was so stupid – he did see the Doctor change.  Polly, obviously smarter, seemed willing to accept the new face. I can vividly remember not wanting to grow up to be Ben during that first episode.

But as the adventure on Vulcan began, I quickly realised that I was wrong. This was not just a new face, but a new Doctor. Entirely. And he did things the old Doctor would not do – he was gentle, eyes always on the move, a thinker more than a speaker and he made points in a quiet calm voice – and he was not afraid to be seen as silly. In fact, he rather liked it.

By the end of that episode, when the Doctor inches forward into the spaceship, brushing aside the cobwebs, and quietly but with a voice suffused with horror and intense fear, introduces Ben and Polly to the Daleks…I was totally convinced by the new face, the new Doctor. Totally.

Indeed, by the time I got to bed that night, I had started forgetting about Hartnell and that didn’t seem fair. But the new face…such excitement. All helped by it being Guy Fawkes night.

We had buried my brother that same day; the day Ben, Polly and the new face went to Vulcan. And my Nanna and I told a photo of him all about what had happened before I went to bed. I felt sure he would have liked the new face too.

Skip forward three years and War Games is approaching its climax. Jamie convinces the Doctor to make a final run for it while the Time Lords are distracted and I remember thinking “Yes! They are going to escape!”.  But, of course, they didn’t.

I always found the fate of Jamie and Zoe especially cruel. To have the most exciting part of their lives wiped out – I cried and cried for them. But there was worse to come: the Time Lords effectively executed Troughton’s Doctor.

Just as I had hated the Cybermen for killing Hartnell, I loathed the Time Lords for killing Troughton.

As his final scene played out, and I could see Troughton pulling faces (just for me, I thought, just to make me feel better about this) as he was regenerated against his will, I was immeasurably sad. So many tears.

I always associate that moment, Troughton’s regeneration, with growing up. Innocent childhood ended there.

It was a masterstroke of the new production team not to show the new face at the end of War Games. I doubt I would have ever forgiven Pertwee if he had set foot on Troughton turf.

As it was, I resisted Pertwee for years. I did not care for him at all, so so different was he from Troughton. This was a new face I didn’t like. But I loved the Brigadier and Liz so I coped. The introduction of the Master helped a lot also.

Then Three Doctors happened – and the reality of regeneration and the fact that the Doctor accepted and coped with the fact that his face would change with his personality made everything better. If Troughton could help Pertwee and accept that he was him, if you like, then who was I to hold a grudge?

Terrance Dicks’ greatest contribution to Doctor Who may well have been ensuring Hartnell said the immortal lines:

“So, you’re my replacements, eh? A Dandy and a Clown!”

Three Doctors was the watershed moment for the concept of regeneration in the programme. From that point on, it was as unremarkable as the fact the TARDIS looked like a Police box.

But personal reactions still mattered. I never adored Pertwee, but I cried when he regenerated. And that glimpse of Tom Baker at the end of Planet of the Spiders told you nothing, echoed Tenth Planet and gave you a real thrill for the promise of new things to come: all at once.

Seven years on and I could not wait for a regeneration. Tom Baker had stayed too long for me – I thought Pertwee’s five year stint was stretching it, but this was ridiculous!

But  what was fresh about Logopolis was that the whole story was really about the regeneration, getting to that point. That had never really happened before. Pertwee’s swansong evoked his era just as Troughton’s had done, but none of the first three regeneration stories was about the regeneration in the way Logopolis was – in tone, sub-text and style. The end was nigh.

Davison’s doctor was a breath of fresh air and I accepted him immediately, just as I had accepted Tom Baker immediately in Robot.

Caves of Androzani was a sensational way for the Davison doctor to go out and I think that story is easily the best of the Davison era and I think he gives his finest performance in it. I cried when he regenerated too.

But my tears soon stopped as anger over took me, the lustre of Caves and the entire Davison era marred by the very final scene, when we are given a taste of the next face, Colin Baker:

PERI: Doctor?

DOCTOR: You’re expecting someone else?

PERI: I, I, I.

DOCTOR: That’s three I’s in one breath. Makes you sound a rather egotistical young lady.

PERI: What’s happened?

DOCTOR: Change, my dear. And it seems not a moment too soon.

I hated Colin Baker from that moment – his disgraceful denunciation of Davison’s doctor (followed up by his claim that Davison was “effete”  in Twin Dilemma) was unforgiveable – and nothing he ever did during his time changed my view.
Davison’s regeneration was the second to anger me, Troughton’s being the first.

We never had a farewell scene for Colin Baker and I always thought it served him right for being such a dreadful “face” of the Doctor.

Poor Sylvester McCoy got a raw deal in so many ways – but he definitely got the worst regeneration sequence of any Doctor to date.

McGann never had one which was fair enough in the circumstances.

I liked the noble way Eccelston died – and I had grown to utterly love his take on the Doctor. So while I was sad to see him go, Tennant’s spectacular arrival boded so well – I could not wait to see what this new face would do. I had not felt so eager about a new Doctor since Tom Baker departed, but for very different reasons.

I hated the long drawn out goodbyes that came with Tennant’s regeneration – I truly wish he had regenerated after the Dalek shot him in Stolen Earth and that Doctor 11 had finished that story surrounded by all of his companions. That would have been something and we would have been spared those specials…

But, for all that, Tennant’s final moment was so desperately sad and he had been a great Doctor– once more tears flowed.

I would be happy for Smith to regenerate now; I know others aren’t but I am quite ready for a different face. Not as ready as I was when Tom Baker turned into Davison, but easily as ready as I was when Colin Baker became Sylvester McCoy.

So, @WhoHar, there you go. For what they are worth, my thoughts about regeneration – the single greatest and unique concept that Doctor Who has going for it.