Category: Television

Between 1995 and 1992, Timebase Productions, a fan collective in Eastern England, produced five Doctor Who adventure serials, across twelve episodes. The equivalent of a full season. The serials featured the Rupert Booth Doctor, and constitute a body of work of singular quality, almost indistinguisable from the classic series. The next few reviews will cover these serials.

The Story: An Extradimensional Entity has invaded the Tardis. Forced to make a forced landing on Earth and flee his vehicle, the Doctor ended up in a mental institution. Meanwhile, the entity has been making plans to take over the world. The story starts…. Now!

Review:  Regenesis comes out in 1994. Why 1994? Is there something special about that year?

Because I think it followed on the final failure of Doctor Who. Here’s how it worked. The show was cancelled in 1989. Definitely cancelled. Only the BBC wouldn’t say that. They’d gone through such a gauntlet of fire back in 1985-86 over the last attempted cancellation, that they were gun shy. So they just refused to admit they’d cancelled. They’d get evasive. “The show’s not cancelled, it’s just having a little lie down, that’s all.” “Cancelled? No, it’s just taken a trip out to a farm where it can play with other cats and dogs and telly shows for a while, maybe it will come back.” “Cancelled? What? No of course not… Hey, would you look at that? I think the Space Shuttle just exploded!”

That sort of worked for a while. For the next few years, Doctor Who was off the air, but in some fuzzy nebulous half-life existence, where it might return any day now, there might be a big budget movie, an independent production company was going to buy the rights, anything could happen.

But 1993 was the 30^th Anniversary. If the series was going to be revived, this was going to be it. There was a lot of anticipation. Everyone was excited, there was a palpable sense that the show was returning. There was talk, there were celebrations, nostalgia, there was all sorts of anticipation. There was going to be a major revival – the Dark Dimensions, a full length project which would unite all five surviving Doctors, including Tom Baker. And from there… Who knows? This was going to be it!

Then it fizzled. We got something out of it, the thirteen minute long ‘Dimensions in Time’ special for Children in Need, John Pertwee’s two radio plays, a documentary ‘Thirty Years in the Tardis.’ But the big, eagerly awaited epic – ‘Dark Dimensions’ had fallen apart, and despite amazing ratings for ‘Dimensions in Time,’ there wasn’t going to be a new series. 1993 was the big moment, and …. nothing. It’s hard to carry the torch after that.

So really, in the year following, I can sort of see enthusiastic groups of fans going ‘well this sucks, we’re going to make our own.’ Or maybe they caught the bug, back in 1993, when it seemed like it was going to go big, and in failing to materialize… that was like a permission to do it yourself.

I think a lot of fans came to that point in one way or another, during this peculiar era of uncertainty and disappointment. You had Reeltime Productions, the BBV, the Audio Visuals who became Big Finish, fan made audio series… You had Timebase Productions.

Based in eastern England, Timebase Productions was a uniquely talented, uniquely dedicated group of fans. Led by Rupert Booth and David Ferry, the egalitarian crew consisted of perhaps a dozen people Philip Robinson, Ian Johnson, Lisa Gledhill, Graeme Nattress, Neil Johnson, Deborah Reilley, Christine Potter, Steven Palace and a few others, sharing a multitude of acting and production roles, who collectively between 1994 and 2002, produced a staggering twelve, half hour episodes, divided up into five serials, plus an infamous ‘lost’ serial. This is literally equivalent to an entire season of Doctor Who.

It felt exactly like Doctor Who. In terms of quality of production, performance, writing, you name it, it was on a par with the classic series. They did an amazing job replicating the look, the style of the original series. Whatever intangible quality made Doctor Who, they had it. You could literally slip it in there, and it would fit. It would fit perfectly.

So, Regenesis… Am I ever going to get to the actual review? Well, sure, just bear with me.

When I watch Regenesis, I’m struck by two things. One is the fidelity to the show, this feels so much like BBC Classic Doctor Who it’s surreal. The other is, my gosh, one good decision after another. These guys almost never put a foot wrong – the whole serial, their whole oevre is all about things that seem cunning and well thought out, there’s nothing sloppy or casual.

So bear with me, I’m going to talk about a few of those really sharp decisions that get made and what they add up to:

Format – Regenesis is a two part serial, with a strict 25 minutes per part. That’s the first thing it has going for it – it’s structured just like the classic series. This is something that gets overlooked a lot. But how you structure a story really defines who it feels and flows. That’s why a lot of Hollywood movies feel so uniform – standard three act story structure. The old pulps had a headlong energy – why, short chapters and cliff hangers and plot twists at the end of every chapter. Doctor Who? Serial format – 25 minute episodes, plot twists, cliff hangers, etc.

It’s not just the mechanics of the structure either. As an audience, we get used to it, we incorporate it into our appreciation and expectations. Growing up, we’ve unconsciously imbibed a set of rules and expectations in terms of how long things are the pacing that happens in them – we know and expect the 24 minute television half hour, the 55 minute television hour, the 90 to 120 minute movie length. The thing is, if we watch something that doesn’t fit those formats… Something odd, a 15 or 18 minute short, or a 70 or 75 minute piece… it doesn’t feel right, it’s both too long and too short, the pacing is wrong, the ‘beats’ of the arc happen in the wrong places.

Believe me, it’s real, try it out sometime. But a lot of fan film makers miss that. But the point is, that if you are disciplined enough to work in those formats – if you’re doing your Doctor Who as a serial consisting of 25 minute episodes… that feels right, it feels natural, it feels like authentic Doctor Who, because for the classic series, we’ve incorporated that 25 minute time unit into our basic appreciation or expectations.

Doctor Who did a few two part serials – Hartnell’s ‘Edge of Destruction’, Baker’s ‘Sontaran Experiment’, Davison’s ‘King’s Demons’ and ‘Black Orchid.’ The modern Sarah Jane Adventures were all two part serials. It’s really quite remarkable how much Regenesis and Timebase’s other two-parters really have the feel, the rhythm of these episodes down. A big part is that working in that 25 minute serial, format forces them to use the same kind of pacing and structure, and also because to us as an audience, it feels authentic to Doctor Who.

By the way, I’m sure they worked this out themselves, way back then, because every single episode fits this model.

Opening – We start with a subversive cold open – in media res. There’s no origin story here, no regeneration, no Tardis. We don’t start at the beginning of the story, but rather, the middle.

The beginning of the story is that the Doctor is futzing around in his Tardis, an alien interdimensional entity invades. He has to land on Earth. Then, while looking for help, he ends up in a mental institution…. That’s linear story telling for you. It’s okay. It’s obvious. It’s just there’s other ways to do that.

So instead, what they do is they start off in the mental institution. They start half way through the story. That’s interesting – provocative. How does he end up there, what happened? That’s what we’re asking. From that point on, the story is moving in two directions at once – backwards, explaining what happened, and forwards showing how it gets sorted out. That’s some nice sleight of hand.

The other counterintuitive thing they do is say, with a voice of considerable authority – this is all Tosh! There’s no Gallifrey, there’s no Tardis, no Time Lords, nothing. It both asserts and refutes the familiar Doctor Who universe simultaneously, that creates a dramatic tension that intrigues: ‘What’s going on here?’

That’s where we first see Rupert Booth’s character – clearly a mental patient, pleasantly going along with the ride. No scarf, no attitude.

Then there’s the casting of an older, professorial man in these opening scenes is brilliant. A lot of fan films, the cast is unfortunately young. Sometimes it’s like pre-teen world. That sort of thing, the narrow and often young age range makes it very hard often-times to take it seriously.

So here, right at the start, they’re bringing out an older actor who, by his presence, gives a lot of gravity and credibility to the scene. It makes it feel professional, it sets the tone right at the start, and we won’t really notice that every other character from that point on is twentysomething. That counts. I’ve written previously about how hard it can be to recover, if your first step is a wrong one. But the converse is true, if your first move is brilliant, then really, it sets the tone, it makes it easier to ignore weaker spots, further on.

Now, imagine if the psychologist had been too young to shave…

This is virtuoso storytelling, done by smart people who know what they’re doing, who know how to create tension, to set a tone.

The Great Escape – The next set piece shows Rupert Booth’s character escaping from the mental institution, barefoot in institution drabs no less! He does this by ingeniously collecting a whole bunch of odds and ends, just meaningless bric a brac, and then cunningly using it to subvert the insitution’s security systems. There’s a fascinating, rube goldberg ingeniousness to it.

And not a word of dialogue! It’s all silent, and it lays out the character beautifully. Whoever this guy is, he’s crazy smart. But more than that, he’s a cunning improviser, a planner, he’s clever and adaptable. He stays out of the way, there’s no confrontations, no fights, he’s nonviolent. Without a word of dialogue, we learn a lot about who this guy is, who seems to know all about Gallifrey. When, later on, he finally tells someone he’s the Doctor… we buy it, because he’s shown us the qualities of the Doctor.

See what I mean? These are smart people, and they’re making very smart, very well thought out decisions. They know how to work visual elements as well as dialogue, and they know how to make a story work.

The Companion – Every Doctor needs a companion. At the very least, the Doctor needs someone to ask questions and to explain things to, so he doesn’t look like an idiot talking to himself all the time. The Doctor needs someone to care about, to look out for. He also needs someone to look out for, and someone to do things that he can’t or won’t.

This time around, it’s Leslie, played by Christine Potter. She gets involved when an escaped mental patient stops her car, and somehow, talks her into not only giving him a ride, but getting his clothes for him from a railway station.

Okay, this could have gone so horribly wrong – it could have become just a ridiculously implausible cipher of a character. Personally, if an escaped mental patient steps in front of my car, I’m hitting the gas pedal, I’m sorry, that’s just how I am.

But Leslie sells it – despite this, she comes across as a believable, even an engaging character. We buy that she’s someone that would help the Doctor out, out of fundamental decency, and out of enjoyment because this man in her car who needs her help to get his clothes is a small adventure and she’s entertained, and also someone that the Doctor would develop a fondness for.

The thing with Leslie is that she’s smart, and sweet and has no real sense of her own mortality or vulnerability. She’s glib, she’s got a sort of hipster detachment that she uses to protect herself. Basically, she’s gone through life, and she’s never encountered a situation that she couldn’t get out of with a friendly smile and a smart remark. She’s a person, whose automatic default is not ‘that’s dangerous’ but ‘that’s interesting.’ And in some ways, when she is in a dangerous situation, there’s some part of her that doesn’t quite believe it. Leslie is pitch perfect – here’s an ordinary girl, a complete smart ass, glib and sarcastic – and in short order she meets a man who turns out to be an alien, plus a genuine alien monster – when she’s not actually in danger, you can tell she’s tickled pink by the whole thing.

The Doctor is interesting, he’s entertaining, and that’s why she goes out of her way for him, why she trusts him. That’s why we believe it. So we get a very deftly drawn, very likeable, very pretty character. One who can rescue a stranger who turns out to be the Doctor, or listen patiently and sympathetically while a villain rambles on about a dog he had as a child, or toss off a funny and cutting remark without being hurtful.

I kind of get the impression at points, that as an actress, Potter, may have been somewhat limited. Not a professional. But that’s okay. A good actor is versatile and can work within any character in any script. But if you can’t have that, then the best bet is to recognize what the actor can do, and write for that. They’ve done that here.

She’s not the best companion ever, she doesn’t have physical and verbal chemistry, the back and forth of a really great companion, as with Randy Rogel’s carl in the Benedetti stories, or with Sarah Jane or Romana or Donna from the old or new series. But she’s engaging.

The Monster – Years ago I played a lizard man for a short film. It was hot, stuffy, the mask allowed visibility only through a couple of small pinholes, so I was literally blind. You don’t move much, and you don’t move fast when you’re in a suit like that. Too easy to fall over, or trip, and when you’re grabbing, you can’t really see what you’re attacking. So mostly, you get all looming and lumbering. That’s why so many old movie monsters moved so slowly and carefully – the costumes are difficult to move in, and difficult to see in, and just difficult to wear. So the script of ‘It: Terror From Beyond Space’ might have called for a leopard fast predator, but what it got was a lumbering goon. This is true of Doctor Who, the Myrka and Mandrels are particularly horrible examples, but in fact the Silurians, the Sea Devils, a great many others…. It gets problematic. What you really want is a suit that you can actually see well out of and which can move well.

Which brings us to the Tribus monster. The Tribus monster is conceptually terrific – it’s a transdimensional beings misguided effort to create a human body, but of course, since it’s not used to working in only three dimensions, what it gets is an awful distortion. This is realized brilliantly in an assymetric monstrosity. The face of the Tribus is smeared, recognizeably human, yet distorted and inhuman. There’s a large mishappen claw on one hand, the other is out of sight, but the suggestion is that it’s shrivelled. The body is covered in nondescript robes, but the lurching gait and posture suggests that it’s equally mishappen. In short, a very good concept, very well realized.

Most beautifully, it gives the Tribus one good eyehole. It’s a mask that allows the actor full visibility, and when you’ve worn these things, when you’ve seen these things, that’s so important. Compare that with the Silurian costumes for instance, and you’ll see that the Tribus for all its deformity is far more fluid and expressive. So basically, well thought out, conceptually and practically.

Even in professional productions, there’s a lot of costumes or suits that just don’t come off, that go horribly wrong. Where there’s a gap between what’s on the printed page and what can be achieved in the shop. Or that get handicapped for one reason or another. But here… smart, they thought it through, every step of the process, from imagination, to execution, to actually wearing the thing and moving in it. I keep saying it, smart people making smart decisions.

The Doctor – I’ll be blunt. I think Rupert Booth is the best fan Doctor ever, in terms of really grasping and expressing the essence of the character. Only Benedetti comes close to him, and her body of work is not nearly as large or as good as his.

It’s hard to play the Doctor. Even professional actors struggle with it – look at Peter Cushing’s Doctor in the movies, or Richard E. Grant’s Doctor in Scream of the Shalka. There’s a peculiar mix of brilliance and eccentricity, arrogance and compassion, humour and grandiosity, that runs through all the Doctors. For the Doctor, it’s go big, or go home.

Most fans tend to ape their favourite doctor, dressing up in a long scarf or a cricket outfit. Even really polished fan productions have trouble picking up on the subtle flavour. But Booth gets it, right out of the starting gate.

He’s not derivative. He creates his own persona – a young/old Doctor. Booth appears to have started playing the Doctor in his mid-twenties, at about the same age as Matt Smith, so definitely a young man. There’s interesting overlaps with Smith. The Booth Doctor wears a bow tie, says Geronimo and likes hats, all coincidental, the result of an intersection of a very young man playing someone deeply old and eccentric.

The Booth Doctor’s costume is a tuxedo, just slightly ill fitting, the darkness giving the character gravitas, a certain old fashioned quality, while the slightly off fit conveys a certain eccentricity. Booth doesn’t have the booming presence of a Baker (either) or a Pertwee, or Tenant or Smith. He’s just not a massive guy. Rather, he uses his relative slenderness to disarm his opponents, by refusing to be a threat, he defuses them. His version of the Doctor seems more like Davison or Troughton, more cunning but gentle. Booth’s Doctor is almost gaunt, he’s got very good facial structure, he has striking eyes and eyebrows, which he uses effectively, his face and voice are very expressive. He’s one of those people who can convey their thought processes clearly with a shift of expression.

His character maintains the Doctor’s dry wit, steady composure in the face of monsters, quick mood shifts, and fundamental decency. The second episode of the serial begins with Booth’s Doctor confronting the monster… and having a civil conversation with it – a classic Doctorism. No shock, no panic, no anger or threats, no fear. Just ‘Hello, I see you’re a monster, how are you doing?’

He’s got a really fine comic touch. Later in the episode, after the alien menace has temporarily been defeated, the Doctor and Leslie take a henchman back to her home. The Doctor begins to work on a machine to flush the extradimensional entity out of his Tardis, while Leslie sympathetically listens to the henchman rambling on about his dog. The Doctor ends up constantly interrupting them as he borrows doodads for his machine. It’s sly and funny, just a touch of Marx brothers.

Yet, he’s serious when he needs to be. You can see wariness or dejection, or slyness, when the moment calls for it. None of it seems artificial or staged, he plays it as if he’s feeling it at the moment, that this is the moment it occurs to him to feel it. Rupert Booth is a very capable actor, and he’s got the role down. He’s simply The Doctor.

Bottom line – It’s not perfect, of course. There’s some problems with the sound mix here and there, levels are too low, or there’s too much ambient sound. The voice of the Tribus is over-processed to the point it’s hard to understand.

Paul Ferry’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ inspired performance as Voltere doesn’t quite come off – it’s not bad, on further viewing it was clear that his character was a guy trying to be a badass, and not quite up to it, physically or emotionally, and needs to be both comic and a little sad and dangerous. Hell, that would be tough for anyone to pull off. So…. some technical stuff, some small stuff.

But then again, if you’re going to watch fan films, you need to carry a certain amount of forgiveness. Hell, with Doctor Who, sometimes you have to carry a certain amount of forgiveness.

Regenesis feels like classic Doctor Who. Indeed, it feels like excellent classic Doctor Who. It stands quite well with any of the two parters of the classic series, and better than several of them.

Check it out.

CAST:  Rupert Booth – The Doctor; Christine Potter – Leslie; Paul Ferry – Voltere; Malcolm Herron – Harry; Peter Booth – Consultant; Graeme Nattress – Bev; Chris Allen – Larry; Neil Johnson – Doctor; Jeff Watson – Security Guard; Philip T. Robinson – Tribus Monster;  Tribus Voices – Malcolm Herron, Rupert Booth, Graeme Nattress

CREW:    Paul Ferry – Writer, costumes;     Chris Allen – Production Manager, sound, camera;     Graeme Nattress – Incidental music, lighting, sound, camera, visual effects, costumes, assistant editor, special sound, video effects, title sequence;     Philip T Robinson – director, lighting, camera, visual effects, transport, designer, title sequence;     Rupert Booth – lighting, sound, camera, visual effects, transport, costumes, makeup artist, VT Editor, video effects, producer, title sequence;     Peter Nattress – sound, transport;      John Pattinson – transport;       Peter Booth – catering;     Malcolm Herron – catering, title sequence;     Gavin Chilverss – title sequence

WATCH IT HERE

Part 1 (26 minutes)

Part 2 (21 minutes)