Love and Liberty

Forty years ago today, the Doctor was facing The Armageddon Factor – the climax of his quest for the Key To Time. It’s one of my favourite and most fun years of Doctor Who, yet this finale tells a grimmer story. A world inexplicably breaks off trade with its closest neighbour, goes to war instead and ends up nearing utter destruction, while its leader* spouts self-deluded nationalist propaganda with Churchillian rhetoric but Hitlerian meaning, promising

“Victory – or death!”

But the Doctor’s trip to neighbouring planet Zeos poses a question that’s never been answered until now: where have all the Zeons gone?


*Meanwhile, the powerless figurehead constitutional monarch offers subtly coded resistance in her speeches.

Enjoying The Key To Time

The Doctor is on a mission from God. Surprisingly, that’s where the fun starts.


I was six when Season Sixteen of Doctor Who began in Autumn 1978, and I adored it. I still adore it now, for all the old reasons and quite a few more besides. For the first time, the whole season has a declared mission statement and story arc: the Doctor must search for the six segments of the Key To Time, to prevent the Universe from being plunged into eternal chaos. Marvellously, the series reacts against this grimdark threat by revelling in being fairy-tale, fluffy and fun. Tom Baker’s enjoying himself as the Doctor, Mary Tamm’s Romana is icily fabulous, and this is the year when K9 really works. The sheer entertainment of the actors and the style is built on some of the best authors ever to write for the Doctor, who include Douglas Adams, Robert Holmes and David Fisher (the most underrated, but who for my money gets the best balance of character and wit here, and is rather grown-up about sex).


Striking out into science fantasy with citadels, evil queens and the Doctor as a wizard on a quest, the most consistent theme underlying the magical journey is that gods aren’t to be trusted. From the very beginning, the Doctor chafes against being told what to do, and through a succession of witty adventures with larger-than-life opponents, despite the warning of impending doom, he and the stories are far more about having fun than following the holy writ. In the first story of the season, The Ribos Operation, the Doctor gets involved in a small-time scam and does his best to ignore the ‘important people’, while the most moving and heroic figure is an alien world’s equivalent of Galileo. The Pirate Planet fizzes with ideas, builds a very serious story seamlessly out of a very silly one, pits the Doctor’s fury against a cyborg Pirate Captain and features the Daily Mail’s worst nightmare – young people today who are gay hoodies. The Stones of Blood follows that with a fabulous lesbian goddess, female Gothic and sausage sandwiches. The Androids of Tara – my favourite in one of my favourite seasons – is almost a summer holiday in gorgeous countryside, playing at swordfighting with a dastardly double-dealing moustache-twirling villain. The Power of Kroll is a bit flatter than the rest, but does have a very big god indeed and a performance by Philip Madoc of a man who knows he could do a better job than his rubbish boss that becomes immeasurably more entertaining if you know the behind-the-scenes casting details. And then there’s The Armageddon Factor.

The Armageddon Factor

“We have the power to do anything we like…”

The Armageddon Factor is a story that almost no-one has a good word for. After six months of the search for the Key To Time, I’ve seen quite a few reviews complain that it’s not a sufficiently epic finale – the money’s clearly run out, the macho space battles are dismissed as a very bad idea, and the conclusion of the whole quest is an anti-climax because it resolutely rejects the self-importantly deterministic apotheosis that messianic sci-fi often marched towards. But those reviews tend to see the whole season as incorrigibly frivolous already. Many fans who enjoyed the rest of it, though, are disappointed by this story because after so much jolly colour in both style and tone, the finale is dark and drab. Writer Gareth Roberts praises Season Sixteen as Doctor Who’s best, but still thinks it tails off: his novel The Well-Mannered War attempts a grand finale for the era, most blatantly going for The Armageddon Factor II, with a ton of reworked plot riffs (even his own version of ‘Where have all the Zeons gone?’) though with characteristically misanthropic overtones.

For me there’s a lot to the story, not least the ending that winds so many people up: I don’t want the Doctor to create Universal order. I can’t think of a more Doctorish answer to absolute power than that no-one should be trusted with god-like supremacy… Not even God. Along the way, John Woodvine’s Marshal is a toweringly watchable dictator, the eerie skull on a stick both fascinated and disturbed me, and its critique of war offers some very black humour. I do have some problems with the plot structure – the ‘comic relief’ comes in too late, when it’s starving for some drama towards the end (but even then, that inspires John Dorney’s brilliant The Trouble With Drax, possibly the most enjoyable of all Big Finish’s modern Tom Baker adventures) while the middle sags a bit and could have done with something more diverting than too many corridors. But it’s in those corridors that you find a question that’s been nagging away at me for years…

Having landed in the midst of an interplanetary war between Atrios and Zeos, the Doctor spends roughly a third of the story each on Atrios, then on Zeos, then in the sinister base of the sinister third force behind the whole sinister plan. The trouble is, there isn’t much there on Zeos: a few beige corridors; a bit of dust; an over-intelligent Weapon of Mass Destruction that K9 exchanges sexts with; and, er, that’s it. This makes a problem for the viewer, as Zeos being so unexciting sometimes gives the impression that the war is less between two planets than between two leisure centres in need of refurbishment. But it also makes a problem for the script: where have all the Zeons gone?

The Missing Planet Vs the Missing People

“The fleet is still trying to locate the target, sir.”
“The target, Major Shapp, is Zeos! The planet. Isn’t that big enough?”

The story’s initial mystery is not the Zeons, but their entire planet: earlier in the story, what remains of the Atrian fleet is unable to find their target, then engaged and hopelessly outfought by the Zeon ships. The Doctor works out the answer to the ‘missing’ planet, which though a bit iffy in terms of spatial understanding gives the clue that there is something else, and someone else, out there; the inhumanly efficient Zeon attacks in turn are a clue as to the nature of the Zeon ‘commander’, not a person but an alien-built super-computer, Mentalis. That revelation is part of the intriguing mirror to that opening question: once you’ve found Zeos, why does it appear deserted?

Whoever wrote the Radio Times teasers for this story certainly considered this a crucial question. For Part Two, it intrigued readers with:

“The Atrian defences are finally exhausted and the Marshal enlists the Doctor’s help in fighting off the Zeon attack. But who are the Zeons? Why has no one ever seen one?”

Which we later find out isn’t strictly true, but pales next to Part Three:

“The Doctor discovers the bizarre truth about the Zeons.”

About Zeos, perhaps – but when Part Three was broadcast on 3rd February 1979, the Doctor’s visit to Zeos asks the question but only gets answers to a different one. The sleight of hand is such, though, that I didn’t notice until long after 1979. It took until The Key To Time was released in a DVD box set for Richard and I to watch The Armageddon Factor together and, chatting after each episode as we often do, discover that we both had diametrically opposed assumptions. I’d always had in the back of my mind that the Zeons had all emigrated to some other system or something of the sort; Richard had always assumed they’re all dead.

Which of those you think is true graphically changes the tone of the story.

Now, there are a lot of clues in the story before we get to Zeos. The Doctor’s bluffing suggestion of a cheap and energy-saving psychological barrier, inducing “Atrophobia”, to keep the Zeon fleet away is really a stab at being able to talk to a Zeon prisoner and get a wider picture of what’s going on – but there are no prisoners. At first, this seems of a piece with the way that the Atrians can’t find Zeos – but if it isn’t there, where are the attacks coming from? The Doctor notes that of course it’s there, but hidden, which suggests some sort of outside interference with Zeos (a much bigger part of the plot in the original storyline). Then the Zeon fleet’s suddenly gone, like ghosts, and the Marshal declaims, “Deliver us from the terrors of war and the evils of pestilence…” Are we supposed to wonder if the Zeons have all been killed by disease? Are people dissolved by disease on Zeos (the Doctor pointedly tells one character that people aren’t dissolved by radiation)? After the Doctor has the idea of going to Zeos to investigate, his odd nagging question en route is why the Marshal, leader of the world at war with Zeos, should have the equivalent of a secret passage straight there – but it’s odder still in retrospect to look at the exchange between the Marshal and the Doctor that leads to the trip:

“There are no Zeons!”
“There are on Zeos.”
“What exactly are you proposing?”

When the Doctor arrives on Zeos, he’s been clobbered by the sinister Shadow’s henchbeings: of course, we assume that the blokes apparently from and on Zeos in black robes and skull masks are Zeons. That mirrors the implications for the first couple of episodes that Zeos is some sort of ghost planet, a planet of the dead (a frequent state in Doctor Who – one that writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin had tried to get in before – and another of many elements that this story would have in common with the following one). Atrios’ Princess Astra calls the war futile and begs for peace, warning, “We shall all be wiped out if we go on, Zeons and Atrians alike.” Is that perhaps another clue that they may all be dead already? And then, of course, what appears to be the clincher, as the Doctor concludes:

“There are no Zeons on Zeos…”

I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a fan consensus, except not to ask the question: The Discontinuity Guide buries a questionable ‘fact’ in its summary that “Atrios and Zeos have been waging nuclear war on each other, despite the fact that for the last five years Zeos has been uninhabited and that its warfare has been prosecuted by Mentalis, a computerised commandant… The Zeons were human, but were possibly wiped out by the Atrions’ attacks” but makes no attempt to think past that ambiguity, while About Time IV states baldly that “they’re all dead now”, and even assumes it’s been for the last five years, since Mentalis was built. So what killed them at the very beginning of the war, or earlier, then?

The Missing Plot

The roots of the problem surely lie in what happened when the Doctor arrived on Zeos in the script as originally planned. This outline, Armageddon, had much the same structure, but once it’s been established that the now near-uninhabitable Atrios is too weak to win, we were to be surprised to meet plenty of Zeons – who are all in much the same radiation-sick, bombed-out state as the Atrians. Thanks to the DVD text notes (or, if you have them, In-Vision and Doctor Who – The Complete and Utter History), you can read quite a bit about the original storyline and the Zeon people – but, by the time the story made it to screen, script editor Anthony Read had decided that the Zeos episodes essentially repeated what the Doctor had already encountered on Atrios and, with the budget already at breaking point, were a prime target for a cut. He deleted the Zeons and added Mentalis the sexy WMD, a “totally invincible” commander whose robot fighters now have the edge against untrained young Atrian pilots after too many casualties. Though fewer speaking parts in the middle episodes are a problem for audience engagement, the change at least comes up with something different – as well as taking the script in a different direction to what seemed at times Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s cover version of the earlier story Genesis of the Daleks (war, radiation, mutants, a dictator in a bunker making familiar speeches and even another Brothers Karamazov moral dilemma; peculiarly, the new additions are in part a satire on Game Theory, something that also crops up in the next story along, Destiny of the Daleks, which is in itself a direct sequel to Genesis of the Daleks). So, in one fell swoop, that’s the behind-the-scenes reason why we don’t meet any Zeons. But that still leaves an unanswered on-screen question – what happened to them? Are they all dead? And if so, how?

In The Armageddon Factor as broadcast, despite the revelation of Mentalis fighting a zombie Zeon war, all the other hints about the dead planet suddenly hit a beige wall. We’ve been given a mystery – but there’s no pay-off. When the Doctor arrives on Zeos, it’s just a load of dusty corridors, and the more weirdly fairground-ride planet of the dead is somewhere else entirely. The revelation that “There are no Zeons on Zeos” should be a shattering twist, like it turning out there are no Russians in Russia for a World War III thriller, but the line’s tossed away and no-one shows any interest in it, as if suddenly none of it matters. We’re left wondering if someone’s going to finish off telling us the plot eventually, but they never do. Mentalis resembles a high-tech version of a dead man’s switch, but we never see the dead men.

I suspect that my understanding that the Zeons had just ‘gone away’ came from the novelisation Doctor Who and the Armageddon Factor. In it, Terrance Dicks does what he often did, zeroing in on a plot hole he’s spotted and explaining it away with the option that will be less disturbing for kids. So, on page 69 of the book, the Doctor finds Mentalis and concludes that “The whole planet is automated. There are no Zeons on this part of Zeos.” Atrian Major Shapp then asks where the Zeons are, prompting the Doctor to guess, “On the other side of the planet, I imagine, somewhere in hiding. But before they went, they set this up.” It’s a stab at an explanation, but on closer examination, surely it doesn’t hold up (planets turn, after all. Emigration might have made sense – but with nothing anywhere to support that theory, you’d just have to make it up). Yet the TV version suddenly falters at the obvious counter-conclusion.

The more disturbing option, the one that seems much more heavily implied by all the signifiers before we actually reach Zeos, is that all the Zeons are dead, but that the Shadow has had Mentalis set up to fight for them from beyond the grave, or that they built Mentalis to ‘win the war’ and as a result didn’t put enough effort into Atrios-like bunkers so were all killed by the radiation or, as Shapp asks, “Could be the result of… biological warfare?” Though it’s worth noting that, as well as being atrociously acted, Major Shapp is atrociously written; he doesn’t seem sure whether Atrios used or even possess biological weapons, despite being second in command of all Atrian forces.

The trouble with this reading is that, while the war’s a little protracted, it can’t be a millennium-long one like Genesis of the Daleks’ Thal-Kaled war that might explain how bodies could have crumbled to dust over centuries while the machinery just continues remorselessly – the only skeletons we see are perambulatory and not local (the Shadow’s robed, skeletal servants, the “Mutes”, are literally represented by the costume designer as having no mouths – the most ‘extra’ of all extras, with even their costumes saying, ‘There’s no way on Earth you’re getting a line’ – but are apparently a leftover from the Zeons being mutated after all the nuclear war, again much like the “Mutos” of Genesis of the Daleks. Yet though the idea of them began as Zeons, on screen they are explicitly not). Bob and Dave pull off ‘walking on crumbled corpses’ very effectively in The Hand of Fear, but those took millions of years to collapse into sand; here, Shapp’s only in early middle age, but he clearly remembers trading with Zeons before the war, and that they looked just like the (humanoid) Atrians, while we hear later from Drax that the war started only just over five years ago.

The clues are all set up, then, for all the Zeons to be dead, until we actually reach Zeos. At that point, not only is there is no real moment of resolution, but every clue suddenly backs away from the grisly ‘truth’: K9 makes no warnings (unlike on Atrios) of high levels of radiation; there appears to be almost no damage; the Doctor even makes a point of pointing out to Shapp, “There’s no sign of your attacks getting through though, is there?” The revelation of Mentalis itself raises another question: its Dr Strangelove parallel is explicit when Marshal Jack D Ripper launches his own mad mission in person and Mentalis is programmed to respond with its ‘If you bomb us we will blow up the entire solar system… Maybe we should have told you this in advance’ Non-Deterring Deterrent Doomsday Device (that apparent oversight in itself a clue to what’s really going on). Yet if all the Zeons are already dead, how did whatever killed them not already trigger such Mutual Assured Destruction? Early in Part Four, Romana notes:

“Well, since there don’t seem to be any Zeons on Zeos, if you know what I mean…”

As established, I’m not sure we do, but the script seems to keep worrying at it like a missing tooth or a distracting thought they can’t quite place. To confuse matters further, as late as Part Five (once the plot’s already left Zeos, and after you’d think all the facts were established) Romana observes that there are only four seconds left in their makeshift time-loop designed to delay the system’s total destruction, and that if it should snap, “millions of people on Zeos and Atrios will die”. So, did she see quite a lot of people on Zeos that we didn’t see, or was she just left reading an earlier version of the script? And, as the black-hearted plan behind the war is to foment chaos and suffering and trap the Doctor in a moral dilemma with millions of lives at stake, why would the Shadow cut short the chaos and suffering for one world, or wipe out half his ‘hostages’?

The mystery of the missing Zeons hurts The Armageddon Factor not just by making it less coherent, but by drawing back from the mood of death and destruction with which the story starts, making it one of the elements that fight against the drama by actively reducing tension as the story goes on. With a heavily rewritten script at the end of a full season’s overarching story, it seems that this was a detail that just fell through the cracks. It may well be that the script hinted at a dead planet, then bottled out of the idea as too frightening when it got there, and there just wasn’t the time to change all the promising details even when they were no longer going to deliver. The Armageddon Factor had two credited writers; many changes were made to it by the outgoing script editor (the equivalent of today’s lead writer); incoming script editor Douglas Adams and producer Graham Williams were concentrating on making the ending to the whole six-month story arc work, rather than the details of the six-episode story. It’s not hard to see how the Zeons got lost down the back of the sofa between drafts.

The Watsonian conclusion that most fits the tone of the story is that all the Zeons are dead, and simply try to ignore everything that pulls against that – or, at the risk of making it even closer to Genesis of the Daleks, to fill in the gap with the sole suspect to hand: single-mindedly programmed to win the war, Mentalis did it, clinically deciding that the Zeon people were a waste of scarce wartime resources. It’s almost a relief that none of the many writers made such an obvious sci-fi cliché explicit, merely leaving it a lurking possibility. But the real, unsatisfyingly Doylist answer lies in the decision to take them out of the script, but leave their planet as their meaningless ghost in the middle of it: by the time The Armageddon Factor went into production, the truth is that the Zeons aren’t all dead – they were never alive.





As well as today being the fortieth anniversary of the Doctor’s trip to Zeos, it was thirteen years ago today that I began this blog. While Love and Liberty was never exactly prolific, I’ve found it incredibly difficult to write as my health has nosedived faster than ever over the past few years. But this has been rattling around my head and various drafts for ages, so today seemed a good day to buckle down to it at last, and rather to my surprise, I have. Will there be more? Who knows.

Labels: Brexit, Doctor Who, The Armageddon Factor, The Golden Dozen, The Key To Time, Tom Baker

This Sunday evening, a new Doctor lands on BBC1. If you’re coming to the Doctor and Doctor Who for the first time, this is the perfect jumping-in point. It should give you everything you need, and the easiest way to find out what the series is about is to watch it. But if you’re thinking, ‘It’s been going more than fifty years. How do I cope with all of that?’ then don’t worry. It’s only as complicated as you want to make it. There’s really very little you need to know about the Doctor – and here’s a simple start…

What Do You Need To Know About Doctor Who?

The Doctor is a traveller in time and space. She goes anywhere she likes, from Earth’s past, present and future to alien worlds and stranger places still. She respects life rather than authority, and obeys no-one else’s rules. She lives by her own joy in exploring new places and times, and by her own moral sense to fight oppression. She prefers to use her intelligence rather than violence, and she takes friends with her to explore the wonders of the Universe.

That’s it.

OK, so that’s the important bit, but if you want answers to a few more questions, take a look at the headlines below and read the bits that you want to know about. Or you could just get on and watch an episode (for several ideas of where to start, skip to The Many Faces of Doctor Who below).

The Doctor – Who Is She? Why Does She Travel?

She’s an alien, from a world whose rigidly authoritarian rulers watched over all of time and space – but without interfering. She found that just watching and keeping everything the same bored her, when she wanted to get out to meet people and experience things for herself. So she took a TARDIS and the name “the Doctor” and left.

The TARDIS – the Doctor’s Time-ship

A TARDIS is a machine (or a place, or an event) for travelling through time and space, the name standing for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It moves seemingly by vanishing from one place, then just appearing in the next, travelling not through ordinary space but a whirling space-time vortex. The Doctor’s TARDIS was a bit old and unreliable back when she borrowed it from her people, and she’s patched it up and customised it many times in the perhaps a couple of thousand years that they’ve been travelling together. Just to make it even less likely it’ll go where she wants it to (but more likely to go where she needs it to), it’s quite literally got a mind of its own, too.

The other big thing about the TARDIS is that its outside gives no sign of what’s inside. It used to disguise itself on landing so it wouldn’t be spotted, but when the Doctor arrived in the 1960s it got stuck on taking the form of a police box, a sort of dedicated phone booth before handy mobile communications. Inside, though, unfolds into many other dimensions and many different rooms. You will notice that it’s bigger inside than outside, then. So do most people who go in (unsurprisingly). And while the old blue exterior is pretty much a constant, from time to time the interior changes its style, colour, shape and tone, while keeping its essential character. Which makes the exterior and interior of the Ship rather like the interior and exterior of its pilot.

The Daleks – and Why the Doctor Fights Them

Once she started travelling, the Doctor found that that the more experience she had of other people and places, the more she wanted to get involved, because the more she saw the urge to dominate others the more she wanted to stand up to it. She’s opposed bullies, tyrants and monsters from many alien races – and from her own, and from ours – but one enemy always comes back.

Those she’s fought most often in their endless campaign to dominate and exterminate without question are the Daleks, alien conquerors in armoured mini-tanks with a hatred for all other races. They’re the ultimate dictators, the opposite of the Doctor’s own desire for freedom.

The Daleks too developed time travel, leading to a cataclysmic Time War with the Doctor’s own people – which is a history so complicated that no-one has a full answer. But by the end of it, the Doctor seemed the only one left, so she just carries on travelling, making the most of life, seeing the sights, toppling empires, that sort of thing. And if that sounds like a dangerous lifestyle, it’s often been fatal…

How the Doctor Changes

The Doctor’s people – the Time Lords – were each remarkably long-lived, but it’s not just that their bodies live for many hundreds of years. When they get too old, or are fatally injured, they’ve got a way of cheating death. At what would be the final moment, their body is reborn into a completely new one, giving them a new lease of life, shaking up their personality while remaining essentially the same person underneath. The Doctor’s had quite an eventful life, and the most recent body she’s been ‘born’ into is – well, it’s easiest to say it’s her thirteenth, and people will generally regard her as the Thirteenth Doctor.

How Old? How Many Bodies?

Some people might tell you that the Doctor is now in her fourteenth, sixteenth or twenty-fourth body, and they’ll all be right, but just as with the Time War, no-one has a precise answer and it makes no difference to the story. Similarly, while the Doctor is as a rule honest, what she says about her precise age tends to be very variable. Perhaps on occasion she’s dropped a few hundred years or so for vanity’s sake (my money’s on the one in the leather jacket having a mid-lives crisis). But like her precise number of bodies, the Doctor’s exact age isn’t something we need to know – just as well, really, as we’re never going to. Just nod sagely and say, ‘Ah, well, things got complicated in the Time War,’ because if time was getting messed up to that extent by rival peoples each with the power to control it, things were bound to, weren’t they?

These disconcerting rebirths also help Doctor Who the series carry on when the actor playing the Doctor decides to leave, making it almost the only TV show that can recast its lead without hoping the audience are watching TV with the picture turned off or pretending it’s something to do with plastic surgery or showers.

The latest actor to play the Doctor is Jodie Whittaker.

She’s the first woman to play the lead, and it brings joy to my weary old heart to see so many women I know and so many more I don’t so excited and enthused and inspired. But the really surprising thing to me is that, after watching Doctor Who almost all my life, how freshly excited and enthused and inspired I am, too. I had no idea it would be like this until she turned out to be what a part of me had been waiting for. And she’s not even fallen to Earth yet.

What’s Special About Doctor Who?

The TV series Doctor Who began broadcast in 1963, starring William Hartnell as the Doctor (the first three stories are available in the DVD box set Doctor Who – The Beginning). It ran continuously for more than a quarter of a century, making it the longest-running science fiction series in the world and inspiring an awful lot of people. Kept alive in books, audio plays and millions of imaginations, the TV version was reborn in 2005 and has again been a popular and critical success thanks to its sheer joy, its unique flexibility and, of course, to monsters like the Daleks. A bonus to the series always reinventing itself is that you don’t need to know any intricate details, ongoing plots or characters to follow it. Even the most involved elements change and get left behind (or even undone); happily, many of the best writers assume that every episode is someone’s first, and even if some are tempted to make no concessions to the viewer, the very variety of the series stops it ever becoming too impenetrable.

There is one bold central idea that runs through now more than half a century of adventures. With Doctor Who, you can go pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything, and always see that people everywhere are worthwhile, whether they’re people like us or green scaly rubber people. The Doctor believes in freedom, and hates ignorance, conformity and insularity. She doesn’t work for anyone, wear a uniform or carry a gun, making the series both very British (an immigrant, like many of the best of British) and very anti-establishment.

Doctor Who encourages people to think, to have fun, and to take a moral stand, but it’s wary of solving problems by shooting them. You don’t have to believe what you’re told, still less do what you’re told. And it’s spent several decades scaring children with nasty monsters, eerie places and even the music, which when you put it all together is what family entertainment is about – a show with enough in it to satisfy all ages, from action to excite the adults to sharp questions to keep the children intrigued. That’s how down the years it’s inspired spin-offs from novels to comics, from Torchwood to The Sarah Jane Adventures and many more.

The best of Doctor Who would include adventures in history and travels in space, a dash of horror, wit to make you smile, diversity of ideas and people and strangeness to make you think, and enough action to get you excited. That’s probably too much to fit into just one piece of television, which takes you right back to the idea that you can go anywhere and do anything, because it’s not about just one piece of television, but different travels. Like the TARDIS, Doctor Who is bigger on the inside. It’s the only show where, if you don’t like where it’s ended up one week, if you want it to be scarier, or funnier, or more thoughtful, or more action-packed, the next week will be in a completely different place and time and probably in a completely different style or even genre, but still recognisably the same programme.

That’s probably why I fell in love with it, anyway.

What Doctor Who People Say About Doctor Who

This is the fourth edition of an article I originally wrote in 2006 to introduce that year’s new series. Version one and version two are pretty much the same as each other; last time and this time it’s been more of a regeneration. And for a change from me, here’s what some of the most important creative talents behind the series in past and present have to say about Doctor Who:

This week, the official Doctor Who Twitter asked the new Doctor and her new companions – Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill – to describe the new series in thirteen words:

“Brilliant”
“Stupendous”
“Entertaining”
“Out-of-this-world”
“Adventurous”
“Thrilling”
“Hilarious”
“Extraordinary”
“Frightening”
“Sensational”
“Inspiring”
“Spine-tingling”
“Thirteen.”

Russell T Davies, Doctor Who lead writer for the 2005 relaunch and through the 2000s:

“Doctor Who is the best idea ever invented in the history of the world.”

Jodie Whittaker, the new Doctor:

“To me, the Doctor is a pillar of hope – and striving for brightness and inclusion.”

Chris Chibnall, the new Doctor Who lead writer:

“It’s very important the Doctor has a sense of humour. It’s very important the Doctor solves things through brains, not through punching or bullets. The Doctor’s still very much the Doctor. Pillar of hope – we need a pillar of hope in these times, and that pillar of hope is Jodie Whittaker. The Doctor.”

Verity Lambert, Doctor Who founding producer from 1963 to the mid-1960s:

“He embodied the utmost complexity – he was sometimes dangerous or unpleasant, sometimes kind, sometimes foolish, but most importantly he was never a member of the establishment. He was always an outsider.”

Peter Capaldi, the previous Doctor:

“You should watch it if you want to nourish your heart and your soul – and if you want to be scared.”

Terrance Dicks, Doctor Who lead writer during the early 1970s and author of more Doctor Who books than anyone else:

“Much has changed about the Doctor over the years but much has remained the same. Despite the superficial differences in appearance, at heart, or rather at hearts (the Doctor has two) her character is remarkably consistent.
“She is still impulsive, idealistic, ready to risk her life for a worthy cause. She still hates tyranny and oppression and anything that is anti-life. She never gives in and she never gives up, however overwhelming the odds against her.
“The Doctor believes in good and fights evil. Though often caught up in violent situations, she is someone of peace. She is never cruel or cowardly.
“In fact, to put it simply, the Doctor is a hero. These days there aren’t so many of them around.”

Robert Holmes, Doctor Who lead writer during the mid-1970s – which makes him the man who got me hooked on the series that changed my life, got me into politics and got me the man I love – gave other writers the crucial idea that explains what hooked me in the first place:

“Let’s frighten the little buggers to death!”

How Can You Find Out More?

There are hundreds of books and thousands of websites and millions of people who’d give you their opinion or the facts (some even true) if you asked them. I used to write a variety of terrifyingly in-depth Doctor Who articles, and though I don’t find it easy to write anything any more, the old ones are still here. I link to just two below. But I wouldn’t just read, if I were you. Doctor Who is probably the best TV programme ever made, so the best way to find about it is just to watch it.

The new series starts on BBC1 and on many other TV channels around the world this Sunday. Tune in every Sunday evening for the next couple of months (or at times of your own choosing on BBC iPlayer) to see more of it unfolding, brand new, that you know as much about as I do, with Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor and whatever friends and foes there are to come.

Or you can choose older stories in a multitude of formats. You can find pretty much every single episode of the TV series on DVD or Blu-ray or broadcasts, downloads and online (some of the latter even free and legal). Right now, every story first broadcast from 2005 onwards is available to UK viewers on BBC iPlayer.

If you do want more than the forthcoming new stories to warm your darkening Autumn nights but the incredible range of choice is bewildering, here are some suggestions that might help in your selection. Ready?

The Many Faces of Doctor Who – my picks of which stories you might start with

One of the most exciting TV events of my childhood was The Five Faces of Doctor Who – repeats of unimaginably ancient (that is, before I was born or started watching) stories that I never thought I’d get to see, shown in Autumn 1981 in the run-up to a new Doctor, just as I turned ten. It’s unimaginably easier to watch them now. Yet a bit of me still wants a special selection with every Doctor and every flavour of Doctor Who – which is, of course, impossible. The series has so many different ways about it that one, or a dozen, or fifty stories couldn’t reflect all of them. But that’s not going to stop me. So I’ve picked one story for each Doctor, and tried to offer some of the diversity Doctor Who has expanded through over the years by making them all different sorts of story. And then suggested more if those don’t take your fancy – I can’t help myself. I hope some of these sound appealing: pick one, press play, and find out.

William Hartnell is the Doctor in The Rescue

“We can travel anywhere and everywhere in that old box, as you call it. Regardless of space and time. And if you like adventure, my dear, I can promise you an abundance of it.”

Short and delightful, introducing ‘new companion’ Vicki and facing off against one of the series’ real monsters. It’s an especially great story for the First Doctor, sparkling with many facets: kindly, stern, vulnerable, intelligent, embarrassed, and often very funny. I love the oldest-youngest Doctor to bits, and I love this story enough that a couple of years ago, I wrote Ten Reasons To Watch The Rescue – but if you’ve never seen it, stop at about number 7, as there are spoilers lower down the list.

Alternatively… An Unearthly Child (the very first story, utterly brilliant but very spiky – and, incidentally, starring two men and two women, produced by a young Jewish woman who was then the BBC’s only woman producer, and directed by a gay Asian man); The Daleks (the very first monsters and an eerie dead planet that remains a design triumph); The Aztecs (history, moral dilemmas and a terrific story for Barbara, possibly still the strongest of all the Doctor’s companions); The Dalek Invasion of Earth (first of all the alien invasion stories, and who else would it be in grim deserted London?); The Time Meddler (the first story about a villainous alien colliding with history – everything’s fun until suddenly it turns serious…).

Patrick Troughton is the Doctor (and…) in The Enemy of the World

“Sad, really, isn’t it? People spend all their time making nice things, and other people come along and break them.”

A political thriller that opens with startling action and then reveals the would-be world dictator as the Doctor’s double. Spanning different continents and with two of the women characters particularly impressive (one black, one white), this story from fifty years ago is set in the exciting future Earth of 2018.

Alternatively… The Tomb of the Cybermen (Troughton’s most spellbinding performance, superb design and atmosphere); The Mind Robber (one of the weirdest, most brilliant Who stories, quite unlike anything else); The War Games (a huge epic that plays around with history and introduces the Time Lords); The Web of Fear (Yeti in the London Underground) and The Invasion (fabulously urbane Bond villain and Cybermen), which together introduce Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and set up UNIT (the very Doctor Who military defined by internationalism instead of jingoism), but which will test your tolerance for recreating a missing bit each.

Jon Pertwee is the Doctor in Carnival of Monsters

“Well, I can assure you that the last time I was here, the air was – like wine!”

The TARDIS lands on a cargo ship crossing the Indian Ocean in 1926… Or does it? A very funny channel-hopping satire of television, with great screaming dragons but nothing serious, nothing political. Just some xenophobic authoritarians creating fear so they can take control, because the bigger the disaster, the better for them.

Alternatively… Spearhead from Space (brilliant companions Dr Liz Shaw and the Brigadier in an action-horror-comedy that looks terrific all on film); Doctor Who and the Silurians (a brilliant concept, strife, tragedy – reading the novelisation as a boy convinced me that green scaly rubber people are people too, and helped made me a Liberal); The Curse of Peladon (lots of aliens, but xenophobia, religion and greed are the enemy – reading this one’s book inspired my internationalism and is a massive kick to Brexit today. Plus Jo puts the Doctor in his place, and the series’ first non-binary alien); The Time Warrior (Sarah Jane Smith grabs her first story and runs with it while the first Sontaran stirs up medieval brigands); Planet of the Spiders (terrific female monsters for once, and this Doctor’s finest moment facing the final enemy).

Tom Baker is the Doctor in The Robots of Death

“You know, you’re a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain.”

A psychological thriller murder mystery where robots are the weapon (but who’s the real murderer?), diversely cast, gorgeously designed and featuring a particularly memorable explanation of the TARDIS which strong and sceptical companion Leela doesn’t believe for a moment.

Or you could just start where Doctor Who grabbed me, aged three, and never let go: the beginning of Tom. Season Twelve was released on Blu-ray this year and sold so surprisingly well it’ll have to be re-released. Robot, The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks and Revenge of the Cybermen share themes of humanity, cold science, survival and rebirth, and star the Doctor in the scarf, intelligent, capable Sarah Jane Smith and adorable, pretty Harry Sullivan. With Daleks, Sontarans and Cybermen, Davros, space horror and, topically, a fascist leader who threatens to blow everything up if she doesn’t get her own way.

Alternatively… The Deadly Assassin (the Doctor and the Master come home to the Time Lords – film noir political satire, gritty surrealism and Gothic horror. My favourite story); Pyramids of Mars (horror a century ago, with stiff upper lips pitted against walking mummies and a dark god who’s probably the series’ most chilling villain); The Hand of Fear (a creepy cliffhanger, a quarry, Sarah Jane on the rampage and something Doctor Who demonstrated about gender before my fifth birthday. It’s not new); The Stones of Blood (horror, comedy, two fabulous women lead guest stars with very different characters and a lesbian subtext); The Androids of Tara and City of Death (both have a gorgeous holiday feel, both star companion Romana, the Doctor’s equal, each has in its own evil Count one of the series’ most marvellous villains, but one has bonus princesses and swordplay while the other has bonus Paris and Douglas Adams); Warriors’ Gate (brilliantly weird visuals, fragmented time and slavery). Tom Baker was the Doctor far longer than anyone else, I love all his changing eras, and I could have picked out many more.

Peter Davison is the Doctor in Enlightenment

“You had no right to do it. They’re real! Living, breathing flesh and blood.”

The first story to be both written and directed by women, with a pirate queen, a disturbingly askew take on a love story and extraordinary visuals. The Doctor intervenes in a race that no-one must win, and the threats to him and his friends are far more complex and dangerous than the barrel of a gun.

Alternatively… Castrovalva (the Master, existential crises, gorgeous music, a city that’s a work of art and two women companions taking the lead); Kinda and Earthshock are the opposing poles of this Doctor so I can’t just pick one (‘arthouse’ vs ‘macho’ despite both having many women, one psychologically complex with a snake demon, the other an action-packed future war story with Cybermen); Snakedance (the snake-demon returns for a festival that some claim has forgotten its true meaning, but no-one’s happy when they find out what it is); The Caves of Androzani (dazzlingly directed, this finally fuses the arthouse and macho in noirishly twisted love and war).

Colin Baker is the Doctor in Revelation of the Daleks

“No, the TARDIS is bound to attract attention. I want to slip in unnoticed.”

A stunning black comedy, with a gurglingly delighted Davros plotting away in its dark heart, great guest stars, tainted love, really rather a lot of death and one nearly-Dalek that you will never forget. The director’s so good he’s the only one to direct Doctor Who in both centuries, too.

Alternatively… Vengeance on Varos (sharp, funny and violent, with an irresistibly horrible villain, presciently swipes at reality TV and a referendum that kills you); The Mark of the Rani (introducing the first female Time Lord villain in a gorgeous Nineteenth Century setting); The Two Doctors (the Sixth Doctor is delightfully interested in everything while the Second becomes disturbing in a black comedy that restrains none of its appetites); The Trial of a Time Lord (the longest story of them all, combining four mini-stories into one, opening with striking visuals and this Doctor at his most charming before he becomes his own worst enemy…).

Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor in Remembrance of the Daleks

“Every great decision creates ripples – like a huge boulder dropped in a lake. The ripples merge, rebound off the banks in unforeseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain the consequences.”

This exploded onto our screens thirty years ago today (if you think Part One has explosions, wait for Part Four). Revisiting London 1963 with a baseball bat to fascism, both metaphorically and literally as the Doctor’s companion Ace defies everything in her way. And watch out for the stairs…

Alternatively… Paradise Towers (thirty-one years ago tonight, still fresh in bringing traditional fascists, robots and ancient evil not to a picture-postcard village but a Richard Briers horror sit-com in a tower block full of women where the old eat the young even more blatantly than Brexit); The Happiness Patrol (high politics, high camp and sweet villain – not the one who’s based on Margaret Thatcher); Ghost Light (Doctor Who takes on Victorian Values in a gloriously macabre horror with a heart, a brain and a bowl of soup); The Curse of Fenric (fantastic Evil From the Dawn of Time and vampires from the future, World War Two and Norse mythology, sex and mothers); Survival (the very last Doctor Who story until all the others, with the Master, urban life, an alien world and a lesbian subtext before a poignant ending).

Paul McGann is the Doctor in Doctor Who – The TV Movie

“This planet is going to be destroyed and I’m stuck in a traffic jam. Excuse me!”

The Doctor regenerates in modern America and faces off against the Master. Difficult to pick an alternative Eighth Doctor story, as this was his only full-length adventure on TV: his much later bookend is the miniature The Night of the Doctor, in which I think uniquely all the characters bar the Doctor are women. He has some rather intriguing adventures on the page or in audio form, but I’ll not go into those right now should you run away screaming.

Christopher Eccleston is the Doctor in Rose

“Nice to meet you Rose. Run for your life!”

Fast, funny and fantastic, Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston burst onto our screens and deadly dummies burst through shop windows in the perfect Doctor Who relaunch, choosing strangeness over ‘normality’, running towards adventure and reinventing British television. And it all looks glorious, not least the never-bettered reveal of the TARDIS. I love this story beyond reason, so a couple of years ago I wrote Ten Reasons To Watch Rose, too (one of my best).

Alternatively… The End of the World (fantastic visuals and dizzying culture shock in the far future, and that’s before your planet explodes); The Unquiet Dead (a Victorian ghost story for Christmas with Charles Dickens), Father’s Day (putting Rose and her past at the centre of the story, with outstanding monsters); Boom Town (rolling from comedy to psychological drama in Cardiff with a villain who knows her way into the Doctor’s conscience and joyously omnisexual companion Captain Jack); Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways (savage TV satire, a brutal Dalek invasion with – at last – a fleet of saucers, as well as another companion becoming a goddess, a goddess and an explosive regeneration).

David Tennant is not the Doctor in Human Nature / The Family of Blood
Or is he?

“Because if there’s one thing you shouldn’t have done, you shouldn’t have let me press all those buttons.”

The Doctor turns human, and his adventures turn into dreams. But the aliens chasing the inner him turn them into nightmares… A gorgeous, moving story in the looming shadow of World War I. John Smith is torn between love and war, his beloved Joan wants to hang onto him but sees the Doctor in a book, his friend Martha has to deal with that, racism and the Doctor being useless as a human, while wild-eyed young Son-of-Mine has super, super fun.

Alternatively… Army of Ghosts / Doomsday (Torchwood rises under a fabulous villain, then falls to the Cybermen before an electrifying cliffhanger unleashes the Daleks. Then a haunting goodbye); Gridlock (a parable of the big city, beautiful diversity, big claws and the Doctor’s loss); Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (the most gripping quarter-hour cliffhanger build-up as the Master awakes, then goes on to win as the Doctor suffers brilliantly and Martha becomes the hero); The Fires of Pompeii (an exploding volcano and flaming great monsters look awesome, but duelling soothsayers grab me – and don’t forget modern art); Midnight (claustrophobic, terrifying inventiveness where human fear and blame is the bitterest thing).

Matt Smith is the Doctor, and so are David Tennant, all the others and in especially large letters at the end Sir John Hurt in The Day of the Doctor

“I’ve had many faces, many lives. I don’t admit to all of them.”

The Fiftieth Anniversary special. Daleks, Zygons, Elizabeth I, Time Lords, Time War, the Tower, science-led, women-led UNIT and all the Doctors having a very bad day (or do they?). Fifty years jumping out of the picture.

Alternatively… The Vampires of Venice (fabulous frocks, big teeth and a delighted Doctor back in history); Amy’s Choice (a superb little sci-fi twister that’s almost the Matt Smith years in miniature, with an extra face); Vincent and the Doctor (art history with a moving life and swirling beauty); The Doctor’s Wife (dark, strange and moving, bringing the TARDIS to life balanced by disturbing horror); The Crimson Horror (enormous fun with fabulous Victorian – or Jurassic – women all round, and lesbians no longer just subtext).

Peter Capaldi is the Doctor in Thin Ice

“Human progress isn’t measured by industry – it’s measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege. The boy who died on the river? That boy’s value is your value. That’s what defines an age. That’s what defines a species.”

It starts off thoroughly entertaining with an elephant, a Regency frost fair and a fabulous hat. But Bill’s outstanding for more than her millinery: she finds – after more than half a century – fresh ways to ask questions and to cope with the answers. Then goes on to confront greed, slavery and racism. Like Bob Holmes’ writing, but kinder, this is so joyously Doctor Who.

Alternatively… Time Heist (doing the Hustle in hugely entertaining style, and when guilt lets the bank kill you, its filthy-rich customers are safe); Kill the Moon (the Doctor's big speech at the end has so much heart to it that it was the latest bit of Who read at our wedding [the earliest being from 1963]. Also bloody great spiders); The Zygon Inversion (gripping, shaking up what the series can do, like Malcolm Hulke with live bullets, and pretty much all the lead parts women); The Husbands of River Song (a screwball comedy in which River Song is playing Cary Grant and the Doctor Katherine Hepburn – this month Richard and I will celebrate our twenty-four-year anniversary, so how about a night on Darillium?); World Enough and Time (horror, tragedy, extraordinary juxtapositions of other selves for our leads – and I recommend watching this then cutting directly to the regeneration, as that’s how it was planned).

And now… It’s about time.

Jodie Whittaker is the Doctor in The Woman Who Fell To Earth

“I’m the Doctor. When people need help, I never refuse.”

I want to watch all the ones I’ve chosen above all over again. All of them.
But I want to watch this one most of all.
Tune in.

“All of this is new to me. New faces. New worlds. New times.”

Sunday 7th October 2018, 6.45pm, BBC1. Simulcast throughout time and space.

Labels: Daleks, Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker, The Golden Dozen, Top Tips, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

Hate. Racism. Now murder.

This cannot stand. Whether you’re In or Out, there are values the great, decent majority of British people agree on.

We’ve all got to take responsibility now. Because Britain is better than this, and we can’t just leave it to somebody else.


Last night I was so appalled, so upset and so angry that I just recorded what I felt.

• What the campaign’s turned into – and why they’re not “all the same.”
  
  

• Racism and very different experiences I remember from growing up.
  
  

• How I contrast Nigel Farage with my Mum.
  
  

• How very British is immigration.
  
  

• Why it’s incredible that people pretend that Britain of all countries can’t cope with coming together with other nations.
  
  

• How disgusted I am by the bullies and cowards who are dragging Britain back to bigotry.
  
  

• And most of all, out of all the hate and dividing people and screams of “Traitors”, knowing that for decent people on both sides of the vote that this is not the Britain we want.

Britain is better than this.

Please listen to my appeal and those of so many other people. And let your voice be heard too. Because it’s gone way too far to sit back, shake your head, and just hope someone else does something.

Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, European Politics, Personal, Referendum, The Golden Dozen

A quick test. Read this paragraph – which other parties is it implicitly opposing?

Government should be about freedom from poverty. Governments shouldn’t protect the interests of the already powerful and wealthy, and sneer at, snatch from and push down people working to make a life for themselves, or those who aren’t able to support themselves. Government should be about freedom from ignorance. Governments shouldn’t assume it can do everything, control everyone, as long as you take what you’re given and don’t ask awkward questions when paternalist leaders claim they always know best and ignore the evidence. Government should be about freedom from conformity. Governments shouldn’t tell you that nation is the only thing that matters about you, exclude ‘outsiders’ and shout ‘traitor’ at anyone who doesn’t want their flag cut smaller, narrower and meaner.

How I Wrote For Agenda 2020

The Liberal Democrats are in the middle of an “Agenda 2020” consultation about the party’s values. As part of this, they ran an essay competition to sum up in one thousand words what it means to be a Liberal Democrat. I entered, as did my husband Richard, and we were both shortlisted from the sixty-odd entrants for the nine finalists put to public vote. Though the vote’s now closed, you can still read all the essays here. There’s another exciting consultation session coming up at the Conference in York in a fortnight.

Anyone familiar with my level of productivity – the length of time it takes me to get anything written, and also the length of text once I’m done – will be unsurprised to learn that I left writing my entry until quite late, then didn’t like what I’d written, then wrote it again from scratch a couple of days later, and then found myself with something I was happier with, but which was also a little over one thousand seven hundred words. On the afternoon of the deadline.

My final entry was in some ways an improvement on the larger draft – less repetitive, and more powerful in combining some ideas – but as I lopped more and more out of it in increasingly desperate haste, it did lose some elements altogether, which inevitably changed its tone and weakened the message. At some point I might write a version that brings some of those bits back in, but for now I’ve simply presented you with one previously deleted paragraph above. The only other person who read my long draft thought it was the best bit. So why did I cut it?

What I Aimed For (and why that paragraph didn’t fit)

I set myself several tasks in writing the essay beyond ‘What the Liberal Democrats should be if I were their god-emperor’. Not least because we don’t, as a rule, believe god-emperors are a good thing. So I wanted a statement of belief that not just fired me up but which I thought most other Liberal Democrats would agree with at least most of, too. And I wanted something that could clearly explain and inspire people outside the Lib Dems to try Liberalism. I’m sick of people saying, ‘Oh, you Liberals, you’re too reasonable, you don’t feel strongly about anything’, or ‘Oh, you’re just about feelings, you don’t live in the real world,’ both of which I will politely refute on the doorstep (rather than swearing at the f***wits in the towering rage they deserve), so I aimed to counter both of those loads of old b****cks, for example. And some of it was a reaction to things other Lib Dems had said we stood for, where I thought, ‘Not me, matey’. But amongst all the other things I wanted to do in a thousand words – possibly why it got to nearly twice that – I told myself, as I always do when I try to express what the Lib Dems stand for, that I had to be positive. We hardly ever get any time to say what Liberal Democrat values positively are, so why on Earth waste time just saying what’s wrong with the others instead?

And that’s why the paragraph above had to go. Although it was a sort of judo-statement, illustrating Lib Dem principles by overthrowing other parties in turn, and even though it didn’t name them, it still stood out as knocking copy in an essay that should have been positively Liberal Democrat.

[By this stage, readers who read all nine of the shortlisted essays will almost certainly be able to deduce which essay was mine, and also which essay I would have given ninth preference to. It’s a shame we didn’t get to vote for them all in order of preference, as there were none of them I was entirely happy with but eight I would be fairly happy with. I did consider fisking each of them, but I thought that might have come over as a ‘vote for me’, which we were asked not to do – though I’d also have fisked mine, having written it and knowing its flaws, and even Richard’s, which I found the most inspiring.]

Which leaves the one last question about that paragraph: which parties did you assume each line was overthrowing in turn? Because I reckon two are pretty unambiguous, but the other… I deliberately wrote it so you could infer more than one ‘enemy’, because it was an attack on a particular sort of philosophy, not on just one party that enslaves people to that philosophy. Even so, one party was flashing like a neon light in my head. But when the only other person who’s read it until now told me that was the best bit, he also named the kicking I gave to a different party as particularly satisfying. So, out of interest, who was it for you?

A Note On Health

Regular readers will have noticed that my blogging has been even worse than usual – especially and embarrassingly as I’d set myself explicit targets, so you can spot each one that goes by. It’s not just a lack of blogging mojo (though that always comes up). On top of all my usual long-term health problems which are permanent and quality-of-life-sapping fixtures, I’ve had a chest infection for two months now that just will not shift. I can cope with my usual asthma, but persistently finding it difficult to breathe makes all sorts of things rather difficult. And because when my physical ill health is especially low I easily pick up bonus problems, suffice to say I’ve been picking up several bonus problems. So at the moment I don’t know if I’ll be able to get to York, nor even if I do so (as with several previous conferences) whether I’ll spend most of it keeled over in our hotel room. But in the hope of minimum functionality, I hope to see some of you there.

Labels: Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, The Golden Dozen, What the Lib Dems Stand For

Introducing Doctor Who – Robot…

The first story in my idiosyncratic fifty-two-week Doctor Who selection… And what a mighty first this story brings! Launching the 1975* season, this stars Tom Baker as the Doctor (and he’s not the only first).

There’s a trail of mysterious break-ins and deaths and only the footprints of a giant robot left behind – what could it be? Well, obviously, yes, but there are more secret weapons and a fascist coup to deal with too. Can the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, Harry and the Brigadier stop them? And how much fun will we have watching?

This Monday, November 23rd, will be Doctor Who’s fifty-second anniversary. My celebration is a story every week. You can read what this Doctor Who 52 is all about here. But I’d just read on, then press Play on the DVD.

Ten Reasons To Watch Robot (warning: spoilers lower down the list)

1 – Tom Baker is the Doctor.

“You may be a doctor, but I am the Doctor. The definite article, you might say.”

He grabs the role with astonishing energy, bewildering his friends and simply sweeping his foes before him, not just physically but with a firecracker intelligence, both mind and body in constant motion. No-one has any idea how to deal with him – except Sarah Jane – but he gets away with it all with simply blazing charisma. And he’s already wearing that scarf and that grin. Nothing will ever be the same again.


2 – The Time Tunnel. The most iconic of all Doctors gets the most iconic of all title sequences, perfected by Bernard Lodge into the TARDIS rushing through a fabulous swirl that’s been the inspiration for most of the post-2005 titles. It’s paired with, for me, still the best version of the Doctor Who Theme, now with looping echoes into the episode and cliffhanger scream out of it.




3 –

“There’s no point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes.”

The coda is gorgeous, the Doctor and Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) making up with each other after the climax, Harry (Ian Marter) endearingly trying to make sense of it all, and finally Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) accepting the inevitable. It’s hard to think of two of the Doctor’s friends more iconic than journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who came back so many years later and starred in her own show, or the Brigadier, who the now liberated Doctor had worked with advising UNIT throughout his time exiled to Earth and whose daughter Kate is a mainstay of the series today. And it’s hard to think of a team that makes me smile so delightedly as the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry. Here those three come together as a proper TARDIS crew, with new recruit (though not militarily; a Surgeon-Lieutenant from UNIT and the Navy) Harry Sullivan taken for a ride, the fourth Doctor offering his first jelly baby, and Sarah Jane standing up to the Doctor when he’s gone too far but then, the grown-up of the three, making a deliberate choice to be child-like and fly off into time and space to have what you know are going to be the scariest, and most fun, and most marvellous adventures anyone could ever imagine. I’ve previously written about it as one of my favourite ever scenes in more detail. It’s adorable.


4 –

“The trouble with computers, of course, is that they’re very sophisticated idiots. They do exactly what you tell them at amazing speed, even if you order them to kill you. So if you do happen to change your mind, it’s very difficult to stop them obeying the original order! But… not impossible.”

Before my failing health stopped me working, I spent some years as an IT tutor. Hardly a day went by without my at some stage reassuring a student with a version of that line. Usually alluding more to saving before you close than impending Armageddon, though.


5 – Surprising thematic consistency. No, no, wake up at the back! Season Twelve of Doctor Who introduced not just Tom Baker, the time tunnel and Harry Sullivan, but awesome new Script Editor (a similar role to today’s lead writer) Robert Holmes and Producer Philip Hinchcliffe. So some people write this story off as the last produced by Barry Letts, and authored by just-going Script Editor Terrance Dicks. But Holmes clearly had a hand in it too, as Robot introduces the fascinating themes that will dominate the season: scientific survival and rebirth by fascistic elites; shattered worlds (before, during and after); alien / machine logic and intelligence against human instinct, free will and compassion… Which isn’t necessarily found among the humans-by-birth. And spot-your-own 1930s horror film motifs.


6 – The Robot. It looks fantastic (at least until Part Four). Probably still my favourite robot design in all of Doctor Who, a towering, powerful but still stylish creation accompanied by a low, grating ‘machine’ sound that makes you think the robot’s like a fork-lift truck. But its character is compelling, too – not just Michael Kilgarriff’s acting, but a creature that is often more human than its masters (the novelisation emphasises its tenderness in unexpected moments). I took that to heart at a very young age; it may even have started me off on empathising with the ‘other’, and is probably at the root of my always flinching at the Doctor being beastly in other stories to patently sentient AIs, especially when they’re having existential crises.




7 – Sarah Jane Smith is magnificent. With a new Doctor, a new companion and so much else to compete with, this is still one of her strongest stories. She’s the intrepid reporter who tracks down the mystery; she’s brave and saves the world facing down the villain when even the Brigadier can’t; then her empathy and compassion even for the unforgivable shines through. And Elisabeth Sladen’s wonderful performance ties all of her character together. She’s a big influence on companions after 2005 in being the Doctor’s heart – but also in doing what has to be done, not ruthlessly, but showing determination when no-one else will.


8 – There’s a brilliant way round the Three Laws of Robotics. Brilliant, but fatal. Reminiscent of all so-called utopian societies, in which the individual is disposable for the greater good (even if that comes to mean most individuals in the world). Terrance Dicks wrote this ten years before Isaac Asimov introduced his ‘Zeroth Law’, and that’s not the end of the cleverness in his writing: watch carefully, and you’ll find that the Robot, Russian doll-like, is only the first of three nested ‘ultimate weapons’… Yes, this is ‘Doctor Who – Age of Ultron’.


9 –

“The thought of Miss Winters in handcuffs gave Sarah considerable pleasure.”

Fascist leader Hilda Winters (Patricia Maynard) is a great villain, calculating in private, demagogue in public, but this infamous sentence from Terrance Dicks’ novelisation underlines how easy it is to be authoritarian just so long as it’s what you’re sure is for everyone’s good… The Brigadier’s retort there to Sarah Jane’s wish to bang up all the baddies because we know they’re baddies is that Britain’s not a military dictatorship. Which on balance, the story suggests, is a good thing.


10 –

“I would wear what you thought was good for me. I see. And think what you thought was good for me, too?”
“It’d be for your own good.”

It’s difficult to work out how much I was instinctively a Liberal and liked Doctor Who because it was the ‘odd one out’ show, and how much I liked Doctor Who and so took its lessons to heart. But though I think of certain other stories as more obvious influences on my politics, there are definite seeds here. Free will versus dictatorship; empathy with the different; Sarah Jane’s first reaction to power being that it might be misused, her second to ask questions, her third compassion; green energy being a really good thing but enforcing it by authoritarianism and viewing people as disposable is a really bad thing. A green Liberal in the making, aged three, thanks to that most Doctor Who of simple homilies, that “the end never justifies the means.” Aged three? Well, yes. The moral here wasn’t the only influence this story had on me…

What Else Should I Tell You About Robot?

“Alexander the Great?”

This isn’t just where Tom started. It’s where I started.

It changed my life and I love it with all my heart. Because it led to me loving Richard with all my heart.

Of course I can have two hearts.

Many more stories than you’d expect are someone’s favourite, but every story is someone’s first. This was designed to be a new start (and so was the next one), and when three-year-old me starting watching half-way through Robot, I was hooked.

Thinking critically, it’s a good story, but it’s not the very best. Its liberal heart is in the right place (opposing the far-right place) but its grasp of international politics is a bit shaky. And though as Robot comes into the final episode it builds several climaxes on top of each other, it’s also where a few things fall down a bit, not least the special effects. Gigantically. Even Sarah Jane has her ups and downs there.

So where many fans, if you asked them where to start on Doctor Who, would pick an action-packed, fun, familiar-but-different story set in more or less our modern world, one that gives a central role to the woman companion while introducing a new Doctor and a hugely successful era, and has the single-word title “Ro—”… It’s probably true that it wouldn’t be this one unless the fan is me (I love that other one too, by the way, but more on that story later).

But none of that matters to me. Because it was my first. And forty years later, I’m still watching Doctor Who because of it. What better recommendation could there be?

*Technically this started in the last week of 1974, but as it was launching a new season for the New Year and the first Saturday after Christmas was when they did that – and as I didn’t start watching until the second week of January – I always say it’s 1975. Because it belongs there. And, anyway, it’s from 1980.

And, if you need one, my score:

Usually this will be a simple mark out of ten, the crudest possible metric of how good I think a story is. Some weeks there will be exceptions.

8/10 says my head…

But 10/10 is not enough for Robot in my heart.

If You Like Robot, Why Not Try…

Everything! I did. But perhaps saying ‘now watch all two-hundred-and-fifty-odd stories before next week’ would be overdoing things.

Then try the whole of Tom Baker as the Doctor? I did. But it did take me the next six years, as they went out on BBC1.

So if you liked Robot, why not try The Ark In Space? Because it was Tom’s second story as the Doctor, and because, though most weeks I’ll probably choose a story that’s quite like the one I’ve just watched, The Ark In Space takes the new but already perfect team of the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry away from the comfort of Earth and throws them into stark outer space horror. It’s a brilliant story, it has another of Tom’s best performances and one of his most iconic speeches, it’s a bold statement of where new producer Philip Hinchcliffe and lead writer Robert Holmes were to take the series, and it became a huge influence – probably on the film Alien, certainly on Doctor Who’s return to TV forty years later, with both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat claiming it as favourites.

But most of all, try The Ark In Space because one of the things I most love about Doctor Who is that, whatever you think of the story you’ve just watched, the next one will probably be completely different.

Meanwhile, On the Other Side…

My beloved husband Richard is watching… Why, look! The Ark In Space.

Next Time…

Always start at the beginning. I have. But Doctor Who has more beginnings than the Doctor has lives…

Labels: Doctor Who, Doctor Who 52, Liberalism, Personal, Robot, Sarah Jane Smith, The Golden Dozen, Tom Baker

Do you want to watch some Doctor Who?

Aliens from the past; wonders from the future; all of time and all of space. It’s the trip of a lifetime…

But how to choose? There are so many stories! Where to start? Which Doctors? What style? Monsters, villains, scary horror? Wit, weirdness, wild ideas? Adventures in history, alien worlds, impossibilities in famous landmarks? Fun? Don’t scream!

Here’s my idea. One story at a time, ten reasons at a time to give you a taste of if you might like it.




November 23rd will be Doctor Who’s fifty-second anniversary, and it’s an important and popular fact that there are fifty-two weeks in a year. That gave me an idea. To celebrate fifty-two years of Doctor Who, the most brilliant television programme and the greatest idea in the history of the world, I’m going to pick one story I love, starting next week, each week for a year. Then every Saturday – because it has to be Saturdays – give you ten reasons why you should give it a go and put on the latest DVD I’ve chosen along with me. They may not be ten good reasons. They may be silly ones, strange ones or ones quite unsuitable for children. But they’ll be my reasons and, I hope, some will tickle your fancy too and make you want to watch some of the stories I’ll be recommending. And my husband will be doing the same! But different.

Oh, and if you’ve never watched an episode, don’t know the show, and want to find out anything about Doctor Who at all…? The best way is just to pick one and watch it. Which I’ll start with next week (or, for UK viewers, tune in to the next adventure on BBC1 tonight, or the Horror Channel on weekdays). But if you want to read something about why first, here’s one I prepared earlier: So Who is The Doctor Anyway? All You Need To Know About Doctor Who. I said there – though obviously I added more that you might want to know – that all you need to know is this:

The Doctor is a traveller in time and space. He goes anywhere he likes, from Earth’s past, present and future to alien worlds and stranger places still. He respects life rather than authority, and obeys no-one else’s rules. He lives by his own joy in exploring new places and times, and by his own moral sense to fight oppression. He prefers to use his intelligence rather than violence, and he takes friends with him to explore the wonders of the Universe.

That’s it.

Here, As I’ve Promised Ten Things, Are Ten Rules I’ve Set Myself For What I’ll Do Each Week

(There’s a more interesting list further down.)

1 – Rules are for breaking.

2 – I’m only picking stories which were on TV, so you can easily pick them up on DVD (and most can be bought in other formats).

3 – These are all stories I love in one way or another, but not quite my ‘Top 52’. I’ll be trying to give more of a mix. So, for example, every Doctor’s going to have about four or five stories. Except when they don’t (see Rule 1).

4 – One of the things I most love about Doctor Who is that if you don’t like one of them, next week’s might be entirely different. So I’m amplifying that effect by not putting these stories in chronological order. I’m not writing a history of Doctor Who, but trying to tempt and divert you with an assortment from all over the place.

5 – Except that sometimes I’ll put several stories with similar themes in a row, to illustrate how different the styles can be. Or just because I like that sort of thing. And also except that most of the stories will have some sort of link to the next one in line. Sometimes it’ll be tenuous, sometimes it’ll be obvious, sometimes it’ll be a link of sorts to the next couple along. And I’ll let you guess each week. I’ve already decided the whole set of stories, and in order, too (see Rule 1).

6 – I’m doing this for fun, so don’t expect all of it to make sense.

7 – Spoiler warning: there won’t be spoilers every time, but where the thing I love best about a story is a giant spoiler, that’ll be towards the bottom of the list so you can read at least some of the ten.

8 – There might be some extras, some weeks. Rule 2 excludes a lot of brilliant books, comics, audio plays and other forms of Doctor Who which may be less accessible, but if I have the energy to post weekly, which on past performance is quite a gamble, I might even find the energy to post some shorter mid-week reasons to read, look at or listen to some of those. Possibly including some 1960s Doctor Who TV stories which, although brilliant, only exist as soundtracks because the BBC burnt a lot of the originals, thinking nobody was interested. I’m likely to choose extras that are in some way in tune with that week’s DVD choice, so you can have a guess at those links too, if you like.

9 – And I’m not going to stick to just ten reasons to watch each story, either. There’ll be a few extra details each time. Including (shh) in the small print, probably, any reasons you might, well, not not want to watch it exactly, but have a tiny warning about something that might make you want to watch it a bit less.

10 – It might seem a bit odd in the day of the box set binge and streaming complete seasons to pick just one story at a time. That’s because the BBC have only released about a third of Doctor Who’s Thirty-four / midway through Thirty-five seasons as DVD box sets (though more might soon be downloadable like that in packages from BBC Store). Most of those are from the series’ return to TV in 2005, where for marketing purposes they started counting again at “Series One,” partly as a relaunch and partly because it would otherwise be embarrassing to admit when people asked, ‘If this is number Twenty-seven, can I get The Complete Season One Box Set?’ that they’d burnt some of those stories so they’re difficult to put on DVD. Though Season One is still one of my favourites, even the bits I can’t see of it. However, let’s say every complete year’s-worth of Doctor Who was collected in its own box, or I just fancied bingeing on seasons rather than individual stories. Counting down in roughly reverse order, here’s another list of ten to gorge on:

Ten Doctor Who Box Sets To Binge On (if they were all in box sets, and if I felt like bingeing)

10 – Season Thirty-four / Series Eight (2014, Peter Capaldi)
A Good Man…? Because Peter Capaldi is brilliant, because so much else about the series feels suddenly refreshed, because it’s by far my favourite season since Steven Moffat took the helm, because I’m always hopeful that Doctor Who will be better. So when’s the next one on? Ah! Tonight! Wonder if that’ll make the 52…?
Stories: Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, Robot of Sherwood, Listen, Time Heist, The Caretaker, Kill the Moon, Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline, In the Forest of the Night, Dark Water / Death In Heaven

9 – Season Thirteen (1975-1976, Tom Baker)
Body Horror – because the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) are such a wonderful team, and because its visceral, colourful horror makes it probably the least suitable thing for children ever, which is why it absolutely thrilled me aged four and I’d heartily recommend it to any child who enjoys nightmares.
Stories: Terror of the Zygons, Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Android Invasion, The Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom

8 – Season Seven (1970, Jon Pertwee)
Exiled To Earth – because every single story is rather brilliant, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) and Dr Elizabeth Shaw (Caroline John) are very brilliant, even though there’s not a lot of TARDIS or playfulness.
Stories: Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno

7 – Season Sixteen (1978-1979, Tom Baker)
The Key to Time – because it’s enormously enjoyable. This is Doctor Who at its most fairy-tale, fluffy and fun, it’s the best place to watch K-9, and the show’s first serious ‘story arc’. Which is rarely serious at all, thanks particularly to some of the best writers ever to work on the show – such as Robert Holmes, David Fisher and Douglas Adams.
Stories: The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll, The Armageddon Factor

6 – Season Twenty-Nine / Series Three (2007, David Tennant)
You Are Not Alone – because the individual stories are mostly very strong, the through-theme of human (or Time Lord) nature is stronger, and David Tennant finds his feet as the Doctor in suffering (and possibly through Freema Agyeman’s fantastic Martha Jones giving him a kick in the arse).
Stories: Smith and Jones, The Shakespeare Code, Gridlock, Daleks In Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks, The Lazarus Experiment, 42, Human Nature / The Family of Blood, Blink, Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords

5 – Season Eighteen (1980-1981, Tom Baker)
Decay and Change – because it’s the ultimate in Who ‘concept albums’ from lead writer Christopher H Bidmead, best watched all the way through, a marvellous mixture of ideas and images for Tom Baker’s long finale. Everything ends, everything changes, but with an irresistible sense of hope.
Stories: The Leisure Hive, Meglos, Full Circle, State of Decay, Warriors’ Gate, The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis

4 – Season Twenty-Six (1989, Sylvester McCoy)
New Games – because Doctor Who went out, for a while, on a high, inspiring New Adventures to come in one of the most intelligent, innovative and impressive years in the history of the series, and where Ace (Sophie Aldred) comes to the fore in a very female-focused set of stories.
Stories: Battlefield, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, Survival

3 – Season Twelve (1975, Tom Baker)
New Birth and Cold Science – because this was the first Doctor Who season I ever saw, and I’ve always loved it. Lead writer Robert Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe come in with an amazing set of stories, still more amazing in their thematic unity, cold, stark visuals reflecting stories of fascistic elites placing survival at all costs over what makes us human, a mixture of sterility and rebirth, but all with the warmth of the Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane.
Stories: Robot, The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen

2 – Season Twenty-seven / Series One (2005, Christopher Eccleston)
The Trip of a Lifetime – because Doctor Who was back on television, and more fantastic than I’d dared to hope. Christopher Eccleston’s war survivor and Billie Piper’s shop assistant journey together and bring out the best in each other in a bright and optimistic series that’s – as lead writer Russell T Davies put it – steeped in death. Still gorgeous to look at, too.
Stories: Rose, The End of the World, The Unquiet Dead, Aliens of London / World War Three, Dalek, The Long Game, Father’s Day, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Boom Town, Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways

1 – Season Fourteen (1976-1977, Tom Baker)
Dark Religion – because Tom Baker, Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes – and Doctor Who – reach their height. Tales of Gothic horror, intelligent science, imagination, black humour, and so much more. Watch them all and find out.
Stories: The Masque of Mandragora, The Hand of Fear, The Deadly Assassin, The Face of Evil, The Robots of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang

You see? Extras. But don’t assume you can work out what’s coming from these imaginary box sets – or even who are my favourite Doctors. For a start, I’m always changing my mind, and on top of that, the Doctor I currently love the most isn’t even in any of those seasons, but he will have several stories in the weekly 52.

Where will I start? Where will it all end (will it end at all)? Tune in next Saturday, and every Saturday for the next year, to find out which Doctor Who story I love that I’m going to give you ten reasons to watch. If you can believe I’ll do it, I might.

Look – look. I think it’s started…

Labels: Doctor Who, Doctor Who 52, Made-up DVD Sets, The Golden Dozen, Trailers