Forum Replies Created
-
Tom Baker was my Doctor in this reality, but in the realm of imagination Alec Guiness scored big time. Growing up in the 70s we didn’t have the merchandising frenzy we have today. It was all a bit more sedate, until a little film called “Star Wars” came along. Those figures, released before the film had even been released were a sensation just by word of mouth. Of course I collected them, and played with them. Imaginative stories, I’m sure you would be in awe of.
Sir Alec made a fine Doctor in my UniverseThe figure of Ben Kenobi became my Doctor. Poking his light sabre out slightly made him look like he was holding a sonic. He navigated the Universe in his lashed up Tardis constructed of lego and micronaut parts. Aided by his kind and wise Time Lord assistant
LeiaRomana. Toys left, right and centre would be conscripted to my imaginary worlds. The Micronauts themselves (with a few modifications) became my Cybermen. It was a world of invention limited by my own imagination. While my fellows may have been doing something more mundane like pretending that Alec was some sort of Jedi Knight or something, I knew he was the Doctor.
Non canonical cybermenWhy am I writing this drivel? Well – a time came when I sold my toys for beer tokens. I knew they would be fine, they went to good homes. I changed, grew up and forgot Alec as the Doctor as we all do.
Speed forward 26 years. I’m sitting in Morrisons Café, Catcliffe, off Parkway (Sheffield), enjoying Scrambled egg on toast, a foamy coffee and talking convivial bullshit with a colleague. A habit we’ve picked up and taken to professional level. He’s just moved into a hovel of an office and wants a heater. Next door is Woolworths, which has just gone into administration. He wants to explore the possibilities of heating his new office space, and I’m in the mood to indulge him.
We enter, and it is true pandemonium – a scrum as people just dive in to rip the store apart. I can’t remember the last time I was in a Woolworth. Harassed assistants are being barracked by people who want a good buy. My friend disappears in the scrum of the electrical section. My youngest nieces birthday is coming up, so I held back staring at the various toys parading in the colour that can only be described as vibrant pink.
Walking along the line I came upon a Doctor Who rack. I was aware of Doctor Who toys. I kind of envied my successors that freedom of choice. My Denys Fisher K1 Robot was a bit battered and sad. I paused and mused on the ultimate question – what kind of kid would want destroyed Cassandra (an empty frame)?
Smiling I started to turn. And then stopped.
I was staring at a VOC robot. A Dumb. Next to him was a Super Voc. Next to him was Tom Baker (with a replaceable head!), Peter Davison, a Zygon, a Sea Devil! Magnus Greel AND MR SIN in a double pack!
I think I giggled.
My internal monologue went along these lines:
“Shit. Look at those! Aren’t those fine and dandy!”
“Yes – aren’t they glorious reconstructions. I hope the recipients of that purchase understand how powerful those stories were”.
“We could buy those”
“Of course we could. I have a couple of crisp twenties in my pocket. I could purchase all those toys at their remarkably lowered price of £1.99. “
“BUY THEM…you want to!”
“I think you underestimate me. I am a adult. This is marketing. I will not submit to these glorious creations. “
“I’d buy them. I’m your inner seven year old. I would have sold my left testicle to own those.”
“We were a clearer thinker – we’d sell somebody else’s testicle to own those.”
“So you’ll buy them”
“Of course”
I found myself at a till with a handful of toys babbling at an uninterested till girl about how my non existent son would just love these. I returned to home base and joyfully unwrapped them. It really made me feel young. My inner 7 year old cried, while nursing a bottle of alcohol. I really would have killed for those toys at that age. Why run away from it?
There is always a problem. A sting in the tale. In each of the packs was a part to construct another figure. A K-1 Robot. I was missing a part. A Figure was missing with that part.
F**king Colin Baker had spoiled my fun again!
I spent six months hunting that little fecker down! What a git. The times Ms Phaseshift sat in my car while I explored out of town “Toys R Us” actually seeking Colin Baker. I hated the git! I got the bugger in the end in an ASDA, ripped the packaging apart, cast the hateful form of the sixth Doctor aside and finished my K1 Robot.
What did I do with them? They patrol my book shelves of course. Don’t worry. I realise this was a sort of temporary insanity. I’d never make that mistake again. Just be careful around my Iain Banks section. A First Doctor and a Tenth Planet Cybermen guard them. If you stop at the Pratchett section, shucks – is that the Cybercontroller and a couple of Tomb Cybermen? Mind the fleet of classic Daleks there! If you topple that eighth Doctor, I may have to kill you.
I am a fanboy. And my inner seven year old has a sack full of other people’s testicles and grinning like an idiot. We are happy.
Be what you are – Do what you feel is right. Embrace your nerd.
This is really good advice.
To go off on an immediate tangent, one of the early Confidential series showed clips of a brief interview with Christopher Eccleston on why he wanted to play the Doctor.
“I wanted to play Charming. People told me I couldn’t do it, and I wanted to prove them wrong”.
I nodded at that. Not that I don’t think Eccleston has never played charming before, or couldn’t, but that he clearly identified a necessary trait for the Doctor. Let’s face it; the character has an arrogant side. A know-it-all superiority at times. He can be a bit of an egoist. Charm and humour can be used to undercut that, and also give the Doctor self awareness that show he realises these traits are within him, and he deliberately “knee caps” them with people he knows. What kind of monster would he be without charm?
Welcome to Colin Baker. The charmless Doctor.
I was a bit bemused by the casting of him as the Doctor. It had only been a short while since he was playing Commander Maxell in Davison’s “Arc of Infinity” as an unlikeable Gallifreyan guard who threw the switch in an attempt to execute the Fifth Doctor. He really didn’t seem a great choice to me, but what did I know? So at the end of “Caves of Androzani” the Doctor regenerates. In an otherwise excellent show, his immediate words and cutting attitude towards Peri seemed a little, well – “off”. Regeneration, though, has always been a tricky thing, so I went with it. The end of that series saw his first adventure, “The Twin Dilemma”. It was mind-bogglingly awful. The Doctor trying to stangle Peri. A pair of young actors so cringeworthy they made Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) look like Sir John Gielgood. The Doctor picking a costume that self-respecting professional clowns would reject as “taking the piss”. A plot so laughable it defied belief. Just f**king awful. “Never mind”, I thought at the end of the show, “Difficult regeneration episode over. A break until the new series. Time to start afresh.”
GhastlySeries 22 came along. Oh Gods. “Attack of the Cybermen”. A story trying to resolve plot points from two Cybermen adventures that only fanboys such as myself even had a casual interest in. In which a Cyberman is killed by “a lucky shot” from a revolver. “Vengeance on Varos” had an entertaining turn by Nabil Shaban as Sil and some prescient points about reality TV that were ahead of its time, but sees the Doctor behaving like an intergalactic hooligan. “The Mark of the Rani” introduced The Rani (a fun enough turn in a campy way by Kate O’Mara). Just consider that the Time Lords had pursued the Doctor over time and space because he’d borrowed a TARDIS and interfered. Now we were to believe they would banish one of their own from Gallifrey with a TARDIS to continue her experiments on other species. Just crass. “The Two Doctors” does its best to piss on the characters of the Second Doctor and Jamie. “Timelash”?! Jesus wept. We ended on “Revelation of the Daleks”. Pantomime Davros and support cast. The best thing about it is the shot of a partly converted human encased in a transparent Dalek. For variety, add in Alexi Sayle’s DJ character and his really over the top death scene.
Throughout this we had poor Nicola Bryant as Peri, poured into ever tighter costumes, Her character was supposed to be a botany student, but they made her progressively dumber and dumber. I suppose it was all supposed to be “meant for the dads” but even my loathsome 15 year old self could dredge up enough empathy to feel sorry for her. Ultimately though – bestriding this carnival of horrors like a colossal ill-dressed arsehole stood Baker Mk II.
I wasn’t surprised by the announcement that the show would be put on hiatus for a while. I’d really lost patience. Something was fundamentally wrong with all this. I did consider if this was part of being a teenager. Most of my acquaintances who had watched the show had drifted away during the Davison era. Maybe I was the problem?
Spin forward and a new series was announced. The publicity machine kicked in. What delights had we in store, I wondered? Bonnie f**king Langford that’s who. For my generation she meant one thing. Violet Elizabeth in Just William. Thsqueaming and thsqueaming until she was sick.
Oh – the irony!And so “The Trial of a Time Lord” began. Four adventures (Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids, The Ultimate Foe) interlinked throughout by scenes in which the Time Lords put the Doctor on trial yet again.
- Gasp! At the opening CGI scene of the TARDIS being snared by a space station.
- Weep! When you realise that was most of the budget for he series.
- Sob! With laughter as Peri is first thought dead, and then shown to be happily married. To Brian Blessed.
- Scream! As Bonnie Langford turns up as “Mel” and starts screaming herself.
- Laugh! At the scenes where Colin tries to be all serious.
In the final story the prosecutor, The Valeyard is revealed to be a dark future incarnation of the Doctor. The problem for me with this scenario is that Michael Jayston seemed actually preferable to me than Colin Baker!
If, as fans would have it, this series was a metaphor for the show being put on trial, then I think the verdict could only be a guilty one. In the dock, the BBC who really couldn’t be arsed to make a verdict on the future of the show one way or another. They preferred to let the show starve of resources and become the personal plaything of one producer who really had no idea where to go. Aided by a man who was spectacularly miscast and who didn’t really understand the appeal of the show. His desire to “return” to some notional version of Hartnell was nonsensical, and shows he had no idea of how the First Doctor was really played. These factors really conspired to create a toxin for the show much more powerful than the Spectrox Toxaemia that had heralded the reign of the Sixth Doctor.
All should have been found guilty – but only one paid the price. As the “Face of the Doctor”, Colin Baker was the first actor to be sacked from the role. His fans (and he has them) were upset to be sure, but for me I treated it with some relief. The problem was, John Nathan Turner was still there as Producer, and I couldn’t see things changing much.
Taking the MichaelI have gone back to rewatch the entire run with a true Colin devotee. He’s explained many things some of which seem feasible and some that don’t. The notion that he had a four year plan to turn this charmless Doctor into something more familiar is the one I have most difficulty with. Listening to his Who audio work, and having seem him interviewed and in other productions, I don’t actually think he would have been capable of such a transition.
I realise that I’ve written a lot about a Doctor and a period of the show I really couldn’t get along with. This is because simply putting a picture of the actor and putting “TOSSER” beneath it is bad form. For me, this is a dark period for the show and one that I can’t really defend. If you are to dip into old Who, please do not start with any of the serials above. It may put you off for life.
It’s nearly June, and in a case of life imitating art I’m shoving the Sixth Doctor into the end of the Fifth Doctor period. Your thoughts on this chap are welcome.
The AI Report on the end of the fifth Doctor and beginning of the sixth reveals:
The arrival of Colin Baker as Dr. Who rather late in the series produced a rather cool response from sample members. Less than half were impressed by his portrayal so far; however, one or two of those who had found his performance convincing expressed the view that Mr. Baker had potential to become an excellent Dr. Who because his face was ‘not associated with so many other roles and he seems less wishy-washy than others who have played the part’. Respondents who were dissatisfied with Colin Baker’s interpretation of Dr. Who (a quarter of the sample) expressed the reasons for their disapproval quite clearly. The new Doctor was felt to be so totally different in character from others who had gone before him that he seemed ‘unreal’. In the opinion of his critics, he lacked amiability and was not a very likeable character. In the words of two respondents: ‘I find him too aggressive and just not as pleasant as other Doctors’; ‘The new Doctor is too stern and doesn’t have enough humour’.
Ahhhh…. loooong afternoon. I could do with a drink. A virtual bar? How convenient!
In Fact…
“I want the finest wines available to humanity. I want them here, and I want them now…. with a bit of downloaded humanity to nibble on as bar snacks”.
PS – Great post @pedant and a good idea with this space @craig. May be good to vent every now and again.
