Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (2 page)

January 1st

ROB:
Last night I had a brilliant idea! The last brilliant idea of 2008. So brilliant is this idea, that by morning, I can still remember it – unlike all the other brilliant ideas the sparkling wine gave me.

I wake my wife and tell her all about it. This, in itself, is
not
a brilliant idea. Indeed, I soon realise that it’s the first really
stupid
idea of 2009. I’m lucky to escape with my life.

I tell Janie I want to embark on a quest. Something mad and impulsive, something insane. Something that’ll be a voyage of discovery. And I want her to be there right by my side. For some reason she thinks that I’m proposing a round-the-world cruise, and she even manages to look quite interested. Then I explain to her – no, I think I’m going to watch every single Doctor Who episode in order. Her enthusiasm wilts somewhat.

“Why?” she asks. “Because it’s there!” I say, with pride. “Are you sure?” she asks. “I
am
sure,” I say, “I’m really, really sure.” I invite her to watch the entire run with me. It’ll be fun, I tell her. And quite an experience! To see a series develop through 45 years right from the start. She tells me she won’t. Thanks. Ever so much. But no. “Last chance,” I say, “are you sure?” “Oh yes,” she says. “I’m really, really,
really
sure.” And just so I’m left in no doubt of her sureness, she informs me to what degree she’d rather have her eyes gouged out with rusty nails.

She might be right. It is something of an intrepid journey. Not for the faint-hearted. But it’s not something I want to do on my own. I need someone brave by my side. Like a sherpah. Or one of those furry dogs with brandy kegs around their necks, St Bernard’s, those are the fellers. Only one person springs to mind.

I text Toby Hadoke. His reply seems a bit abrupt. I check the time, and see it’s not quite seven in the morning. I wonder if I woke him too early.

TOBY:
I work nights, I’m a stand-up comedian. My head rarely hits the pillow before 2 am. My friends know this, and know not to call a) before midday and b) when Doctor Who is on. As it happens, I wasn’t working last night, but that’s
because it was New Year’s Eve
, when even people less curmudgeonly than myself are entitled to be grumpy if texted at half-six the next day.

It’s Rob Shearman, though, and he’s easy to forgive – so even as my outbox pings, I feel a bit guilty for the torrent of abuse I have just unleashed in response. I got to know Rob last year when he came to see my one-man show, Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf, and ever since have exchanged texts (usually at a more civilised hour) and met him for lunch every now and again. Rob has an idea: to watch every Doctor Who story, in order, and accentuate the positive. To rediscover why we love the show at a time when its popularity is at such a height, it’s all too easy to take it for granted. I waver slightly, because I simply don’t anticipate for a minute that we’ll be able to keep it up.

I also have other niggles. I’ve never really wanted to be a part of organised fandom; Doctor Who has always been something I’d enjoyed on my own. The year just gone, however, found me dipping my toes into the world of moderating DVD commentaries and agreeing to appear at conventions. Christmas was a bit sullied when one of our greatest playwrights, Harold Pinter, died on 24th December – and yet, this event reopened the tiresome Internet debate as to whether or not he played Ralpachan in The Abominable Snowmen. (He really didn’t, you know.)

2008 was also the year, however, that I discovered the joy of spending time with other fans. Yes, I’d had chums who loved the show: my good friend Mark had 40 or so videos when I was his roommate, but he wasn’t such an encyclopaedic fan that he’d have been able to play “Name That Obscure Non-Speaking Background Artist” with me, or have been moved to laughter by jokes about signal howl-round or jabolite. But last year, as I toured my show and schlepped from one strange town to another, I enjoyed some wonderful times amongst people I’d never met before, but who proved to be fluent in my language. It turns out that every corner of this fair isle has someone with an opinion about, say, The Androids of Tara, the Cartmel Masterplan and quite what The Eye of Harmony was doing in Paul McGann’s TARDIS. Such people would wait behind after my performance, and we’d have excitably geeky chats over a drink or two.

And yet, I’ve never been to The Tavern – the fabled monthly get-together of Doctor Who pros and fans alike – and have never really hung about at conventions. But I
do
relish the times I spend with Rob. (We once sat in a pub in Liverpool and went through the Pertwee era in order, assessing its merits – I’d
never
done that with anyone before!) We make the effort to get together whenever we’re in the same vicinity, and I even rang him up in-between spots at The Comedy Store after the transmission of Journey’s End. I kept rushing off stage, dialling his number and shouting “and another thing ...!”, to the polite confusion of some of the nation’s most respected funsters.

So I think, yes, that might be a fun thing to do. One day. I text Rob again. And I go back to bed.

R:
Toby’s second text – the one in which he doesn’t swear so much – is heartwarming and affirmative. But it’s also a bit stupid. He seems to miss the point, that this is something we need to start
today
. Because it’s the first of January
now.
He doesn’t reply to my new text. So I’m forced to phone him up and tell him to
read
his text. No, I tell him, I don’t want to chat on the phone – it’s early, I don’t want to wake the household. I’m not entirely inconsiderate.

This is the Gap Year – Doctor Who has been back in regular production since 2005, but for the first time since then, we have no complete series to look forward to at Easter. A few special episodes will appear during the year to prepare us for David Tennant’s departure, and to introduce... well, who? So 2009 is the perfect year to do this undertaking, when filling our each and every day with Doctor Who will seem quite reasonable. And not the obsessive act of thirtysomething mentalists.

I love Doctor Who. So much so, I even wrote an episode of it once! Oh yes. So I think it’s important this quest is a celebratory quest. Toby and I will watch two episodes a day, every day, without fail – and write to each other saying why we
like
them. What there is to admire. Because Doctor Who’s brilliant, isn’t it? Always. Even when it’s being very rubbish too. We’ll watch it to find the bit of magic everyone keeps missing from The Power of Kroll episode three, or Arc of Infinity episode two. We’ll cherish how amazing it can be when it’s on form, and find what there is to adore in it when it isn’t.

We come to praise Doctor Who, not to bury it.

Each and every day. Come on, Toby, I say. Do you have a lot on this year? He writes back and says he hasn’t.

T:
Actually, I write back and tell him I’m getting married this year. Rob doesn’t seem to pick up on this.

But, yes, I’ve always known Doctor Who is brilliant. I’ve always known that despite its faults, it’s a unique and thrilling programme every week. But I’ve oddly never worked out
why –
and why I’ve never never got around to reading Far From the Madding Crowd, and yet have watched, say, The Mutants more than a dozen times.

I remain slightly tentative, though. Rob is a nice person; he’s a cheery optimist. And I know from long conversations with him in the pub that he can find intellectual justification in any old piece of tat. (In other words, he can be very irritating.) Whereas my artistic endeavours tend to revolve around bitterness, disappointment and thwarted ambition. But all right. Yes, then. I’m game. We love this show, now let’s find out what and why we love...

R:
Good. Well, let’s get started.

T:
What, now?

R:
Better had. We’ve got a long way to go.

An Unearthly Child (episode one)

R:
There is so much to goggle at here – aside from the obvious weight on its shoulders by dint of being the Very First Episode, it’s also an extraordinary piece of television. It’s inventive and clever and full of imagination and, because the series hasn’t yet even got the semblance of a house style, Anthony Coburn’s script and Waris Hussein’s direction do things that will, quite simply, never be used on Doctor Who again. But let’s start with the Doctor himself, because he deserves the attention.

At the time of writing, the most recent new episode transmitted was the 2008 Christmas adventure, The Next Doctor. I watched it on the sofa next to Janie, and she tells me she actually felt me quiver with excitement the moment we got a clip sequence of all the previous Doctors. (She rolled her eyes at my reaction, I must admit. But I’m a fanboy. Typically, in the midst of an exciting story set in Victorian London with huge King Kong-size Cybermen, what really sets my heart racing is a three-second excerpt from The Time Meddler.) And there he was, with all the others: William Hartnell! The oldest Doctor, and the one most taken for granted.

Aside from thinking how bemused Hartnell himself would have been, 45 years on, to be part of an adventure told at a pace he wouldn’t have followed, in a style he wouldn’t have recognised, I also was reminded just how little credit we give him and what he achieved. Fan lore will paint him as an unlikeable old git, played by an irascible actor who could barely remember his lines. And it’s simply not true. Hartnell is incredibly good in An Unearthly Child. Whilst the other regulars – William Russell (as Ian), Jacqueline Hill (as Barbara) and Carole Ann Ford (as Susan) – are all sensibly making the effort to give some consistency to their characters within the 25 minutes provided, to give some sort of platform from which they can develop later, Hartnell is brilliantly jumping all over the place. He’ll be distant and superior one moment, amused and eccentric the next – the camera will focus upon him listening with intent suspicion to Ian and Barbara, and then he’ll wander off and be distracted by a dirty painting frame. He can give breezy speeches about the fourth dimension, but his most chilling moment is a simple “No,” turning away from camera, as he dispassionately rejects Susan’s pleas to give the teachers freedom. I especially love the bit where his concern for a broken clock almost has him turning to Ian as a confidant, giving us a wonderful glimpse of the amiable Doctor we’ll come to know – before he realises he doesn’t
like
this intruder yet, and freezes on him.

And then there’s the very real oddness of the way this episode is told, still striking after all this time. A policeman pokes around outside a junkyard, but doesn’t go in. But the gates open magically
for us –
it’s as if in its very first scene, Doctor Who is breaking the fourth wall, making us complicit. There are flashbacks – we very rarely get those – but when we do, the audience
become
the schoolteachers who seem to be hectoring Susan, offering her no sympathy from the mocking laughter of the other children. Waris Hussein actually steers the camera straight at Susan, so that it seems to be stalking her, making her squirm. The best example is the real distress she shows being made to do a maths problem in only three dimensions – and the awed, almost fearful wonder as she identifies the fifth dimension as “space”.

An Unearthly Child deliberately sets itself up as a puzzle, right from the very first moments of the title sequence. (What on
Earth
is it, all that white noise and strobing patterns? We find out before the episode is over, and it’s one of the very few times in the series’ history that the conceit of travel through time and space is given the breathtaking wonder it deserves.) The genius of this episode is that it makes you believe this series can break all rules; it’s only defined by not having any rules at all, next week it could be
anything.
It’s bonkers, and it’s brilliant, and in less than half an hour it’s taken this rather jaded and complacent fan and made him excited all over again. Not a bad piece of work.

T:
Let’s go, then... I slide the DVD into the machine and press Play All, and my expectant relaxation is scuppered approximately two seconds later, as a sound effect in the title sequence reveals that I’ve accidentally chosen the unbroadcast Doctor Who pilot, not the actual first episode. My fiancée, Katherine, is slightly stunned that something so trivial could tell me which episode I’m watching, and I realise that she doesn’t quite understand the depths of my depravity. A quick skip later, a lowering of the lights and a legend, as they say, begins...

Those
titles and
that
music establish the show’s unearthly nature a good 30 seconds before the actual episode title unassumingly burns itself onto the screen. The most modern synth technology and computer wizardry cannot compete with the impact of these fledgling audio and visual techniques as they are bent, bled and morphed into ethereal alien sounds and shapes. You cannot date this episode from the title sequence, or from the use of a defiantly unfuturistic (and thus, undateable) font to form what initially appears to be the legend “Doctor Oho”.