Doctor Who (27 page)

As always with
Doctor Who,
some wondered if episodes like “Dalek” would frighten children more than was necessary. In his
BBC Breakfast
interview, Christopher Eccleston said: “It's the psychology that's frightening, particularly for instance when the Doctor confronts the Daleks. . . . Is the Doctor actually as bad as the Daleks because he's prepared to exterminate them willy-nilly? So the psychology's very well-drawn, and the children will listen to that as well as look, you know? If you make good television for children, the adults will come. That's the way I think about it.”

New Companions

“Dalek” included Rose recommending a new traveling companion, a young genius named Adam Mitchell, played by Bruno Langley. Rose is drawn to
Adam, perhaps because of similarities he shares with the Doctor, but the young man proves too reckless with time travel, and his attempts to profit from the future have disastrous consequences. In “The Long Game,” Adam Mitchell becomes the first companion actually kicked off the TARDIS.

Rose also attempts to profit from time travel, but in her case it is to regain her lost father. “Father's Day” showed just how dangerous paradoxes could be if too many accrued in the same arc of space and time. The Time Lords could have fixed such matters in the past, but not so now. But the heart of the story was the understandably selfish wish many of us might make if we found ourselves in a time machine, to bring back a loved one we'd lost. In Rose's case, it was also a chance to really meet the father she'd never known. “Father's Day,” written by Paul Cornell, attracted more than eight million viewers and was nominated for the 2006 Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation. It lost to another
Doctor Who
story that year.

Not counting his comedy sketch for Red Nose Day, Steven Moffat finally got the chance to write an on-screen
Doctor Who
adventure with a two-part tale in the episodes “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances.” For the first time in years the Doctor references having been a grandfather, and finally adds that he was a parent, too. He also later implies that he had indeed known romance, with Moffat deliberately using the word “dance” as a euphemism.

The novel
Lungbarrow
had established that Time Lords were produced asexually. But Moffat and Davies agreed that this actually made the Doctor
less
interesting. It was more intriguing, Moffat argued, to give the Doctor the capacity and even the desire for romance but then choose not to engage in it for reasons the audience could debate.

Moffat's story also brought back the Time Agency, first mentioned in the Fourth Doctor TV story “The Talons of Weng-Chiang,” and introduced actor John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, named after the Marvel Comics character Agatha Harkness (often seen in
Avengers
and
Fantastic Four
comics). Jack hailed from the fifty-first century, a rogue Time Agent who couldn't remember two years of his life. RTD wanted Jack to start as a coward who didn't consider the consequences of his actions and be molded into a hero by the influence of Rose and the Doctor. Davies also needed Jack to arm troops and rally them into an army for the season finale, which
RTD didn't want the Doctor to do directly. He was a counterpart to the Doctor; overtly sexual, shallow, and reliant on typical science fiction gadgets.

But what really brought people to attention was Jack's omnisexuality. By the fifty-first century, labels of sexual orientation evidently had become passé. RTD thought it was high time that bisexuals enter mainstream television and liked that Jack made for a heroic figure whom both men and women could admire instead of just serving as the butt of a few jokes. Rather than immediately broadcasting Jack's sexuality and possibly imply that he was a token character, it was a full episode and a half before the revelation was made, letting viewers decide beforehand whether or not they liked him. After writing Jack's introduction, Moffat commented that the character's sexuality seemed perfectly natural, adding that Jack was just a James Bond of the fifty-first century, one willing to “bed anyone.”

Expanding Whoniverse

When his first season of
Doctor Who
went into production, Davies contacted
Doctor Who Magazine
and offered it the chance to show the official regeneration scene, leading into the episode “Rose.” Though initially excited, the staff worried that the scene wouldn't work. In the Eighth Doctor comic strips, the hero had recently recruited a new companion named Destrii, a young woman with a somewhat corrupt idea of the universe and morality. The Doctor hoped to change her through their adventures together.

Three possibilities presented themselves as to what to do before the comic strip shifted to the Ninth Doctor and Rose: Destrii could die just before the Doctor's regeneration, which seemed unnecessary and a waste; Destrii could leave the Doctor's side before he regenerated, which again seemed a loss of potential; or the final story could show the Eighth Doctor and Destrii walking into the sunset, implying that they had many adventures before the Doctor began his ninth life. The magazine went with this final option, thanking RTD for the offer.

This wasn't the only time the modern program reached out to the tie-in materials. In
Doctor Who Annual 2006,
Russell T. Davies wrote about the events leading up to the Time War and referenced not only TV stories such as “Genesis of the Daleks” and the TV movie, but also the Big Finish audio
drama
The Apocalypse Element.
In the episode “Boom Town,” Rose Tyler mentions an alien pyramid that she encountered in one of the BBC Books tie-in novels.

“Have a Good Life”

The Ninth Doctor grew over his single year on-screen. He learned to be more patient, more careful, and to let his guard down just a little. In his second episode, he coldly watched as an enemy died in front of him. By his last few stories, he no longer seemed to be the kind of man who would do that. Rose, Jack, Mickey and others had reminded him who he had been before the Time War.

The thirteenth and final episode of the season, “The Parting of the Ways,” has the Doctor face the same choice he'd had during the war: to end things by wiping out both sides. But this time, he chooses to accept defeat if he has to rather than kill allies and innocents to ensure victory. It provides closure to the Last Great Time War (for the moment anyway), making it a fitting end to the incarnation characterized as a damaged war survivor. After the battle, Rose is in danger and in saving her the Doctor forces his own regeneration. But he has enough time to say goodbye, telling Rose that she was fantastic . . . and so was he.

Eccleston's role on the program won him the SFX Award for Best TV Actor, the TV Quick Award for Best Actor, and the National Television Award for Most Popular Actor. Billie Piper won the SFX Award for Best TV Actress and the National Television Award for Most Popular Actress. Both were nominated for BAFTA Cymru Awards, and, though it didn't win, the first season did win the BAFTA TV Audience Award and the BAFTA TV Award for Best Drama Series.

Christopher Eccleston made his decision to leave prior to the season airing. With several episodes left to film, Russell T. Davies had enough time to properly write a regeneration scene into the season finale, and it bore some resemblance to the Eighth Doctor's finale comic strip adventure in
Doctor Who Magazine.
RTD also had enough time to properly cast the next Doctor. But many fans wondered, why did Eccleston leave after one year?

When asked, the actor pointed out, as he did before, that his one year of
Doctor Who
was similar to two years of other UK dramas and he'd
thought he'd had a good run. He also mentioned that he often disliked staying in a role for too long, not wishing to repeat the same basic steps over and over again. In her own interviews, Billie Piper touched on this same point, saying how frustrating the role of the Doctor could be for an actor as it didn't allow for much dramatic growth or change because of the nature of the franchise and the need to keep the hero alien and mysterious.

After leaving, Eccleston said in interviews that he had no interest in his Doctor returning to the show either in flashback or for a team-up, joking it was not a good idea to “bathe in the same river twice.” In more recent interviews, however, he implied that he wouldn't be averse to returning under the right circumstances.

In discussing the modern program with
Doctor Who Magazine
in 2009, Tom Baker said: “I was amazed that they didn't have Christopher Eccleston—who's a very powerful actor—on a contract for two seasons because he was such a hit!”

On July 20, 2011, Eccleston spoke at an acting master class at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and
Doctor Who
came up. The podcast BadWilf later provided a transcript of his response.

 

I left
Doctor Who
because I could not get along with the senior people. I left because of politics. I did not see eye-to-eye with them . . . So I left, I felt, over a principle. I thought to remain, which would have made me a lot of money and given me huge visibility, the price I would have had to pay was to eat a lot of shit. I'm not being funny about that. I didn't want to do that and it comes to the art of it, in a way . . .

We are vulnerable as actors and we are constantly humiliating ourselves auditioning. But if you allow that to go on, on a grand scale you will lose whatever it is about you and it will be present in your work . . .

My face didn't fit and I'm sure they were glad to see the back of me. The important thing is that I succeeded. It was a great part. I loved playing him. I loved connecting with that audience. Because I've always acted for adults and then suddenly you're
acting for children, who are far more tasteful . . . It's either good, or it's bad.

 

Even during his final weeks of filming, the actor had felt that the experience was worthwhile. In the TV special
A New Dimension,
aired just before his first episode premiered, Christopher Eccleston said: “I've loved playing him [the Doctor], and I love taking part in the basic essence and message of the series, which is: It's a short life. Seize it, and live it as fully as you can; care for others; be respectful of all other life forms, regardless of color or creed. And to be part of that has been . . . fantastic.”

New TARDIS, New Screwdriver

“Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks: ‘Ooh, this could be a little more sonic'?”

—Jack Harkness, from “The Doctor Dances” (2005)

 

One morning at 3:30, Chistopher Eccleston was on a London street with Billie Piper. It was the first day that the two were shooting with the TARDIS, in a scene in which the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler had traced the alien Nestene Consciousness to a spot near the Eye of London. “I came round this corner, and I just glanced around to my left, and there was the TARDIS,” Eccleston told
Doctor Who Confidential.
“That's when it dawned on me kind of what I was doing, and I also realized how much the TARDIS is part of our cultural lives. I didn't say ‘police telephone box,' which is basically what it is. I thought,
TARDIS. There's the TARDIS.
”

With the exception of Tom Baker's alternate control room and the TV movie console room, the TARDIS interior had remained largely unchanged since 1963. But the modern-day production team wanted to give the old girl a complete makeover. The idea was to embrace a more obviously alien atmosphere, with pillars that seemed to grow between the ceiling and the floor. As the Doctor revealed in “The Impossible Planet,” TARDISes aren't built, they're grown, with equipment installed later. The 2013 episode “Journey to the Heart of the TARDIS” also revealed the ship had a tree within that grew new technology.

Production designer Edward Thomas explained to
Doctor Who Confidential,
“We looked mostly to nature, to organic structures. Things like coral were quite a nice idea. . . . We've got some Gallifreyan text [on the scanner screen] which spells out all the different information that's relevant for flying the TARDIS.”

The Gallifreyan text and symbols created for the scanner screen have become a staple of the program, the one language that the TARDIS doesn't translate for travelers. With no set formula, the language has inspired many fans to create their own Gallifreyan translations online.
Some even have the Time Lord equivalents of their names tattooed on their bodies.

The console itself changed as well. Although the controls remained divided into six sections, the shape of the console went from hexagon to circle. From the classic buttons and clean switches that had adorned previous models, the TARDIS had become a mix of alien tech, loose cords, and recovered items, including a bicycle pump, bell, hand brake, and many knobs and levers added on haphazardly. A mallet on a string stood at the ready for whenever the Doctor needed to perform “percussive maintenance.” The idea was that, due to the Time War, the Doctor now had limited resources. Even before the destruction of Gallifrey, he had relied on found parts to make repairs. Another reflection that this was the last living TARDIS.

Davies also at last confirmed what many fans believed, and had been said in different tie-in media: A crew of six was meant to pilot the TARDIS, hence the hexagonal controls. It also explains why the Doctor often has such a hard time with the ship.

The reworking of the ship led to a new design for the sonic screwdriver, which now resembled part of the console itself. In the early 1980s, producer John Nathan-Turner and writer Christopher Bidmead agreed that the sonic screwdriver was a “plot-killer” and cure-all that had to go, hence its destruction, after which it was not seen again in the classic series.

The TV movie brought the sonic screwdriver back, however, and the Eighth Doctor used it in his audio dramas for Big Finish and in the comic strip adventures for
Doctor Who Magazine.
Davies could have dismissed this detail, having the Doctor lose the device during the Time War, but he liked it. RTD wanted kids to be able to play with their own sonic screwdrivers at home, whether a licensed toy or a pen accompanied by a
whrrr
sound. If the Doctor was, at his core, a bit of a wizard (as Hartnell had often said), it made sense for him to have a magic wand.

Davies also thought the sonic screwdriver now made sense as a multipurpose device. If humans in the twenty-first century had progressed enough that they carried mobile technology that could access the Internet, transmit messages, record video, play music, and more,
then surely the advanced science of the Time Lords could come up with an equivalent device with more practical applications for the Doctor's adventures. Furthermore, with the Doctor's adventures now averaging just under fifty minutes, rather than roughly two hours, the sonic screwdriver cut through certain scenes in which our hero would have had to find equipment, pick a lock, or cobble together a scanner.

We also first see psychic paper, which the Doctor used to get past guards and other wary people by reflecting their own ideas of impressive identification back at them. In the novel
World Game,
it was revealed that psychic paper was an invention of Gallifrey's Celestial Intervention Agency.

While some criticize these items as cure-alls for many problems, it's important to note that the Doctor still finds himself in situations where his tools don't help. “School Reunion” revealed that a device known as a “deadlock seal” blocks the effects of a sonic screwdriver, as do certain substances such as wood. Psychic paper doesn't fool highly intelligent people or those with proper training. In one case, the Doctor's attempt at using psychic paper failed because the lie he wanted it to tell was too big—namely that he was a “responsible adult.”

The sonic screwdriver has become more symbolic of the Doctor himself in the new show. That the time traveler River Song possesses one is strange and significant, despite that Romana had one during the classic series and the Doctor had entrusted Sarah Jane with “sonic lipstick” (as revealed in the pilot of
The Sarah Jane Adventures
).

In 2010, the Eleventh Doctor's regeneration forced his TARDIS to rebuild itself. Under Steven Moffat's direction, the control room became a brighter place with multiple halls and stairwells leading in different directions, implying just how vast the ship is. Moffat stuck with the idea that the controls would include parts and devices from different sources, but otherwise the console differed significantly, regaining its old hexagonal design. The TARDIS control panels now each dealt with a specific area of operation (mapped out for Matt Smith to learn so he could operate the ship consistently on-screen).

In the “Amy's Choice” episode, viewers with fast eyes or thumbs spotted an interesting inscription on the tool box housed beneath the
control console. It reads: “TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Build Site: Gallifrey Blackhole Shipyard. Type 40. Build date: 1963. Authorised for use by qualified Time Lords only by the Shadow Proclamation. Misuse or theft of any TARDIS will result in extreme penalties and permanent exile.”

In the 2012 Christmas special, “The Snowmen,” the Doctor unveils a new TARDIS interior. Although it incorporates some of the modern cobbled-together bits and the modern Gallifreyan text, the general style resembles the classic TARDIS interiors. A fitting design considering that the show's fiftieth anniversary year began less than a week later.