Ian Chesterton: Faculties, Flaws and Follies

Welcome to Companions in Retrospect, where I look back at each companion and sum up their time on the show and relevance today in 500(ish) words.

Originally, Doctor Who’s pitch was to use time travel to teach kids about science and history – and what better way to do this than through two science and history teachers? Designed with the dual purpose of teaching young children about physics and carrying action scenes while the elderly First Doctor stood and watched, Ian Chesterton was born. But was he a good companion?

Telesnaps: What Are They and Why Are They Important?

If you start investigating 60’s Doctor Who, there’s a term you’ll come across fairly quickly: “telesnap”. This odd-sounding word is used to refer to a special type of still image that was captured by taking photos of TV programs as they aired. In the context of early Who these ‘snaps’ are invaluable – but why?

Susan: Faculties, Flaws and Follies

Welcome to Companions in Retrospect, where I look back at each companion and sum up their time on the show and relevance today in 500(ish) words.

In the original concept for Doctor Who, Susan was a superhero-like teenager with telepathic powers. After a lot of back and forth between execs at the BBC she was eventually pared down to a simple, relatable, ‘dumb’ granddaughter of the Doctor, there to ask silly questions on behalf of the audience and scream when something even remotely dramatic happened. In any given story she was either scared, injured, naive, childish, or all of the above. But was she a good companion?

DWM’s 241 Story Ranking – An Analysis

If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s being late to the party.

Seven years ago, in 2013, Doctor Who Magazine ran a poll where they asked readers to rate every Doctor Who story from one to 241 (up to and including the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor). These were compiled into a ranked list and published in the magazine in 2014.

The other day I was thinking about the poll; I had a curious, nerdy moment, and wanted to do some analysis on the results. I wondered if there was a contemporary version that took into account Capaldi and even Whittaker’s episodes, so I did some research. Long story short: there isn’t, so here we are looking at and analysing the results of an old poll and nobody cares about anymore. I expect DWM probably won’t run another one of these until the 60th anniversary in 2023, so this is what we have for now – off we go!

The Magician’s Apprentice: Initial Reactions

Author’s Note: Although I released this incredibly late due to me having ZERO time this week, I wrote it entirely before I saw The Witch’s Familiar. As I type this is still haven’t gotten around to watching the episode. First world problems.

Where is the Doctor? When the skies of Earth are frozen by a mysterious alien force, Clara needs her friend. But where is the Doctor, and what is he hiding from? As past deeds come back to haunt him, old enemies will come face-to-face, and for the Doctor and Clara survival seems impossible.

In the world of Doctor Who, it seems we spend a disproportionate amount of time discussing three particular kinds of episodes: series openers, series finales, Christmas specials. The latter two are somewhat justified, but openers always tend to send the fandom into a flurry of over-analysis about the series to come and impending uphill/downhill (depending on who you ask) direction of the show. Why we can’t give it a few episodes before we come to a proper conclusion is anyone’s guess.

The fact is, this phenomenon has arisen purely in the last ten years; in the twentieth century, not nearly as much emphasis was placed on the first episode of a new series. Way back in the early days, an adjustment in the 1964 broadcasting schedule meant that some of the First Doctor’s least fan-appreciated stories – namely as Planet of Giants, Galaxy 4 and The Smugglers – went out as season openers instead of season finales as originally intended. In the 1970s, as the seasons became shorter and the show forcibly became more conscious of its’ peripheral audience, the openers became a little more organised and set the precedent for being the slot that welcomed new companions and brought back popular enemies. Even so, decisions such as the Fifth Doctor’s mid-series regeneration and Patrick Troughton’s bizarre 1985 appearance showed that the opener still wasn’t always seen as the go-to for marking a major event.

The point is, The Magician’s Apprentice had a feeling of contentment reminiscent of the Classic series. There wasn’t a new companion, the Doctor didn’t die in the first five minutes, and the Daleks didn’t burst through the door before the opening theme. Fans were told a relatively minimal amount about the story, which is a contrast to having half the plot spoiled on just about every possible news source. Sure, it marked the first appearance of Davros since the Russell T Davies era and furthermore looked in on his childhood and the supposed last moments of his life, and brought the team to Skaro in the middle of a group of very angry Daleks, but for a change almost every Whovian was caught by surprise.

And to make up for keeping the lid on all of that, the rock & roll Doctor set out to make a lot of noise. Literally.

The Doctor Who Classics Guide: Series 2

 ← Back to Series One

Welcome to The Doctor Who Classics Guide! This is a special series that aims to take an objective look at each Classic Doctor Who story. If you’re new, please read the introduction first.

I’ve got a friend who specialises in trouble; he dives in and usually finds a way.

— Ian Chesterson, The Romans

In many ways, the underlying theme of Doctor Who‘s second series was something the show has subsequently thrived on for over 50 years: change. The 1964/5 series represents some of the first major changes for Doctor Who, many of which began to push the show in the direction of the series we know and love today. Kicking it off was Susan’s departure and her replacement in the form of a teenager from the 25th century, and later beloved schoolteachers Ian and Barbara choosing to follow a similar course and leaving the TARDIS, replaced by a great looking astronaut from the future. It was the year writers began to really experiment with the show’s style; the TARDIS was no longer simply a vehicle that served to transport the travellers between serious, life-threatening adventures. 1965 was the year we got (among other things) the first timey-wimey plotline, a story that thrived on black comedy, bizarrely comedic Daleks, the first pseudo-historical plot, and a girl with an alien alligator for a pet. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but each success and failure served as precedent for Doctor Who writers to this day. The first series had been about establishing in the show, and now series two was about discovering where it most comfortably sat in the TV world; Doctor Who had found it’s feet, and it seemed like it was really here to stay.

Becoming Whovian: The Eleventh of April 2010

“I’m writing a computer virus. Very clever, super fast, and a tiny bit alive, but don’t let on. And why am I writing it on a phone? Never mind, you’ll find out.”

Very, very occasionally, I look back and think about how I got into all of this – the Doctor Who thing, I mean. I always resolved to write about it, because I’m terrified of the memory fading and – even worse – warping (I’m slightly concerned that it already has). When I realised the 11th April 2015 was upon us, I knew that it was now or never. So, ten years on from the beginning of the New Series and five years on from the beginning of my love for it, it’s time to tell my Whovian story.

The Doctor Who Classics Guide: Series 1

← Back to the Introduction

Welcome to The Doctor Who Classics Guide! This is a special series that aims to take an objective look at each Classic Doctor Who story. If you’re new, please read the introduction first.

“It all started out as a mild curiosity in the junkyard, and now it’s turned out to be quite a great spirit of adventure.”

— The Doctor, The Sensorites

The early 1960s were a turbulent time for the BBC. What was once a comfortable television monopoly was now being challenged by commercial competitor ITV, and trusty, long-running shows were rapidly losing viewers. The BBC decided an organisational restructure and programming overhaul was the solution, which created gaps in many timeslots that needed to be coloured with fresh, new ideas. One particular slot on Saturday afternoon between Grandstand and Juke Box Jury needed to be filled with something appealing to children, teenagers and male and female adults alike, and brand new Head of Drama Sydney Newman had an idea…

Unlike Dick Wolf’s Law & Order or Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, Doctor Who can’t be credited to a single creator. The show had an infamously rocky start, dramatised in 2013’s An Adventure in Space and Time, but managed to hang on and become a hit with viewers. Regardless of who was responsible, what that group of people did became a legacy that would last far longer than anyone imagined.

On the 23rd of November 1963 at 5:17 pm, overshadowed by the untimely assassination of JFK, the show that would change British sci-fi forever saw it’s first moments in the world of television…

Introducing…The Classics Guide

So there’s the thing that I’ve been working on for a long, long time. I didn’t think I’d start publishing it any time soon, and then last night an absurd thought crossed my mind:

Just do it.

And suddenly I’m sitting here, preparing to present something that’s been a whole year in the making – and will probably still be in the making for a long, long time. I’ve started it, but I might not ever finish it; I’m not about to make any promises. But I can say that I’ve already invested countless hours into it, and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved.

It’s a Classic Who guide – but not just any Classic Who guide. It’s the guide I wish I had when I started watching Classic Doctor Who. It’s the guide I hope will help people come to adore 20th century Who the way I do.

Before we get started, there’s a few important things to note. Firstly, I can make no promises regarding the frequency of my guide releases. I’ll publish each part when it’s ready, and not a day sooner. Also, consider the posts and pages ‘volatile’ and prone to change – I’ll be updating them where I see fit.

But enough of my enigmatic ramblings. The proper introduction – the “guide to the guide” – is here. Part one will be posted within a few hours. Please read, share, and enjoy.

Dark Water/Death in Heaven: [Extremely Belated] Initial Reactions

Author’s Note: This post was so, so close to nonexistence. You see, Dark Water and Death in Heaven both aired at a really bad time for me – university exams were the main cause of my anxiety, but some other factors made it hard to find the time to watch the episodes, let alone spend hours writing about them. For this reason, a few weeks ago I resolved not to bother writing a reaction post – but then I realised that it would be a shame if my reactions project had a large gap in it, especially since I want to publish a “summary of reactions” at the end of the year that explore how my opinions evolved over time.

One thing I did manage to do was write the Dark Water section before I saw Death in Heaven – so you can essentially treat it as it’s own contained set of reactions. The Death in Heaven post was written a couple of weeks after the episode, but I tried hard not to let fridge logic and the opinions of others corrupt my points, so I still consider them initial reactions. So anyway, enjoy!

A few episodes back I noticed that Series Eight has a theme, a kind of a moral if you will; everything works out in the end, but not always in the way we wanted it to. It started with Clara getting upset over the Doctor regenerating into someone “old”, and continued with the Doctor never solving his theory about invisible monsters and Danny and Clara’s relationship never quite going the way both of them wanted it to (with awkward conversations and twisted dates and complicated lies). To tie it off, the series eight finale was saturated with this concept; the Master died and humanity was saved, but the Doctor never found Gallifrey; Danny was able to save the child that he killed, but in turn he couldn’t save himself; and Clara wound up safe and got the closure she deserved, but it wasn’t the happy ending she’d hoped for. In a way everything came full circle, with the series beginning and ending with newly-regenerated Doctor and his companion meeting for coffee and ready to start a new chapter; except the events between the two encounters changed everything. Both of them were broken from the things that they’d lost and desperately tried to get back, but they both lied about it in the interest of making each other happy.

In a big way, 2014 quickly became one of Doctor Who‘s most tragic years ever.