Everybody lives! A transcendent Chris Eccleston moment
in the revived Doctor Who.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Who's First--What's in it for Trek?
by William S. Kowinski
The first season of the revived BBC series Doctor Who has recently finished its first run in the U.S., on the SCI FI channel (and will be on DVD here this month.) In the last episode, the ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, transformed into the tenth, played by David Tennant. So how did this revival do, and are there any lessons in it for Star Trek's return?
After an absence of about 15 years, the new Doctor Who was an immediate smash hit in England. With several related series and at least one spin-off, plus a pretty sophisticated web site (at least in terms of marketing), Doctor Who has quickly become a major part of the BBC TV presence. In the U.S., Doctor Who boosted Sci Fi Channel’s Friday night ratings by about 50%.
How did they do it? It appears that its creators recognized that over the years, Doctor Who has become an icon transcending its roots as a children’s show, despite its children’s-prime-time 7pm Saturday slot in England, and it could find a niche in the broad international science fiction and fantasy television market. But as an icon, it couldn’t stray too far from its known nature, nor the mythology it built over a quarter century on the air, plus another 15 years of re-runs, novels, conventions and so on.
So the new series uses digital technology for better visual effects, though at times they seem to be a bit childish and tongue-in-cheek, like the aliens with big blue doll-like eyes who take over Downing Street. (They're concealed inside the bodies of large people—perhaps suggesting that, as in the U.S. the average person in England has doubled in size.)
But the updated Daleks were meant to be menacing in today's terms (and were revealed more than ever as a direct ancestor of Star Trek's Borg Collective). Though in appearance the Dalek itself has not changed much from its essentially silly original, the Dalek armada was played for awe. By now, so many generations of British children have been delightfully frightened by Daleks that they qualify as the modern bogeyman.
That each episode is now 50 minutes or so allows for more complex stories, and principal writer Russell T. Davis has taken advantage of those possibilities. The strong individual episodes and deft two-parters also fed the forward momentum of a season that seemed designed as a unit.
Another essential achievement of this first season was to maintain the mood, the élan, of the best Doctor Who seasons (such as the Tom Baker/Douglas Adams period) while adding greater depth and dimension. A lot of the credit for that has to go to Christopher Eccelston as the ninth Doctor.
by William S. Kowinski
The first season of the revived BBC series Doctor Who has recently finished its first run in the U.S., on the SCI FI channel (and will be on DVD here this month.) In the last episode, the ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, transformed into the tenth, played by David Tennant. So how did this revival do, and are there any lessons in it for Star Trek's return?
After an absence of about 15 years, the new Doctor Who was an immediate smash hit in England. With several related series and at least one spin-off, plus a pretty sophisticated web site (at least in terms of marketing), Doctor Who has quickly become a major part of the BBC TV presence. In the U.S., Doctor Who boosted Sci Fi Channel’s Friday night ratings by about 50%.
How did they do it? It appears that its creators recognized that over the years, Doctor Who has become an icon transcending its roots as a children’s show, despite its children’s-prime-time 7pm Saturday slot in England, and it could find a niche in the broad international science fiction and fantasy television market. But as an icon, it couldn’t stray too far from its known nature, nor the mythology it built over a quarter century on the air, plus another 15 years of re-runs, novels, conventions and so on.
So the new series uses digital technology for better visual effects, though at times they seem to be a bit childish and tongue-in-cheek, like the aliens with big blue doll-like eyes who take over Downing Street. (They're concealed inside the bodies of large people—perhaps suggesting that, as in the U.S. the average person in England has doubled in size.)
But the updated Daleks were meant to be menacing in today's terms (and were revealed more than ever as a direct ancestor of Star Trek's Borg Collective). Though in appearance the Dalek itself has not changed much from its essentially silly original, the Dalek armada was played for awe. By now, so many generations of British children have been delightfully frightened by Daleks that they qualify as the modern bogeyman.
That each episode is now 50 minutes or so allows for more complex stories, and principal writer Russell T. Davis has taken advantage of those possibilities. The strong individual episodes and deft two-parters also fed the forward momentum of a season that seemed designed as a unit.
Another essential achievement of this first season was to maintain the mood, the élan, of the best Doctor Who seasons (such as the Tom Baker/Douglas Adams period) while adding greater depth and dimension. A lot of the credit for that has to go to Christopher Eccelston as the ninth Doctor.
Eccelston is a skilled contemporary actor, who played the Doctor as emotionally present. His Doctor was quirky, moving from morose and moody to larky and a bit daft in an instant. We saw his anger and glimpsed internal conflicts and violence, and we saw him paralyzed with grief. There was a manic-depressive quality that got very edgy at times, and it was riveting to watch. But besides Eccelston’s masterful acting,what made all this work was portraying this Doctor as "northern" (from northern UK industrial areas like Liverpool and Birmingham and working class. ( These apparently were Eccelston’s own roots.)
The BBC code for this is “real,” but for Americans, it’s a blow to the stereotype of the aristocratic or high middle class Britisher. This Doctor seems the son of the 1950’s playwright John Osborne “Angry Young Men” era, a close cousin to the 1980s punks, the Joe Orton/Sex Pistols era. He had the look, the attitude, the edge of darkness. He still had the old Time Lord arrogance (plus a hint of a Time Lord's torment), but in his first encounter with a Dalek, you could see his panic, and his vengefulness. And a bit of the working class inferiority feeling that often gets expressed as aggression and machismo, but can change instantly to a glowering self-doubt.
But the working class element wasn't all Eccleston did: he played the alienness of the Doctor and his sense of power and authority, as other actors have in the part, but in his own way. He was especially mesmerizing in the decisive moments when the Doctor's confidence seems total. When he tells the Daleks that he’s going to rescue Rose, save the earth and destroy them, it may be tactical but it’s also exuberant.
The working class theme was extended in Rose, his companion (played by Billie Piper.) She escaped her working class life and by the season's final episode, found she couldn’t go back. (After leaving the Tardis, she’s seen eating with her mother and boyfriend, who are talking about a new pizza place. “What do they have?” “Pizza.”) It wasn’t going to all the amazing places in the universe, she said, but that the Doctor did things that meant something, and he never gave up. This extra layer of social context and character refreshed the Doctor Who ethos. Yet the Doctor was still the Doctor, with the same values. He was for justice, for life, and in the end, could not kill the innocent for an arguably greater good (reminding us perhaps that an earlier Doctor had the chance to destroy the Dalek race but couldn’t bring himself to commit genocide. Some standards have apparently changed.)
The working class affect, the emotional complexity, wouldn’t be enough to make this a convincing Doctor Who. It needed the his excitement, his love of life and love of lives. What really made this Doctor work was Eccleston’s otherworldly smile, his joy. “Everybody lives! Just this once, everybody lives!” he exulted, with his whole body, and you suddenly got another window into the mind and heart of a time traveler who sees so much death and destruction.
Thanks largely to Eccleston (though Billie Piper and the other actors were generally first rate as well), the producers and writers were able to establish the character of the new Doctor Who series. They wrote some subtle social commentary and fairly outrageous satire (especially in the game shows and reality programs as a Dalek plot to keep the earth in bondage), that the impatience of Eccleston’s Doctor helped to sell. But they could also experiment with various emotional colors (and sexual tensions), which Eccleston could play convincingly.
Fearing being typecast, Eccleston apparently insisted on a one-year only deal from the start, which the BBC erroneously announced just as the series started airing. We only had a moment of David Tennant so far, but judging from publicity stills and his own statements, he’s going to be closer to the Oxbridge-madcap Tom Baker mold. I can imagine that working, too. In the midst of its second season in England, Doctor Who has already begun work on a third.
The BBC code for this is “real,” but for Americans, it’s a blow to the stereotype of the aristocratic or high middle class Britisher. This Doctor seems the son of the 1950’s playwright John Osborne “Angry Young Men” era, a close cousin to the 1980s punks, the Joe Orton/Sex Pistols era. He had the look, the attitude, the edge of darkness. He still had the old Time Lord arrogance (plus a hint of a Time Lord's torment), but in his first encounter with a Dalek, you could see his panic, and his vengefulness. And a bit of the working class inferiority feeling that often gets expressed as aggression and machismo, but can change instantly to a glowering self-doubt.
But the working class element wasn't all Eccleston did: he played the alienness of the Doctor and his sense of power and authority, as other actors have in the part, but in his own way. He was especially mesmerizing in the decisive moments when the Doctor's confidence seems total. When he tells the Daleks that he’s going to rescue Rose, save the earth and destroy them, it may be tactical but it’s also exuberant.
The working class theme was extended in Rose, his companion (played by Billie Piper.) She escaped her working class life and by the season's final episode, found she couldn’t go back. (After leaving the Tardis, she’s seen eating with her mother and boyfriend, who are talking about a new pizza place. “What do they have?” “Pizza.”) It wasn’t going to all the amazing places in the universe, she said, but that the Doctor did things that meant something, and he never gave up. This extra layer of social context and character refreshed the Doctor Who ethos. Yet the Doctor was still the Doctor, with the same values. He was for justice, for life, and in the end, could not kill the innocent for an arguably greater good (reminding us perhaps that an earlier Doctor had the chance to destroy the Dalek race but couldn’t bring himself to commit genocide. Some standards have apparently changed.)
The working class affect, the emotional complexity, wouldn’t be enough to make this a convincing Doctor Who. It needed the his excitement, his love of life and love of lives. What really made this Doctor work was Eccleston’s otherworldly smile, his joy. “Everybody lives! Just this once, everybody lives!” he exulted, with his whole body, and you suddenly got another window into the mind and heart of a time traveler who sees so much death and destruction.
Thanks largely to Eccleston (though Billie Piper and the other actors were generally first rate as well), the producers and writers were able to establish the character of the new Doctor Who series. They wrote some subtle social commentary and fairly outrageous satire (especially in the game shows and reality programs as a Dalek plot to keep the earth in bondage), that the impatience of Eccleston’s Doctor helped to sell. But they could also experiment with various emotional colors (and sexual tensions), which Eccleston could play convincingly.
Fearing being typecast, Eccleston apparently insisted on a one-year only deal from the start, which the BBC erroneously announced just as the series started airing. We only had a moment of David Tennant so far, but judging from publicity stills and his own statements, he’s going to be closer to the Oxbridge-madcap Tom Baker mold. I can imagine that working, too. In the midst of its second season in England, Doctor Who has already begun work on a third.
So what lessons might there be in this for Trek? Some may be tempted to do the “more like Galactica” mantra about a grittier series. But there’s really very little that’s transferable from this Doctor Who in terms of the Doctor’s character: the U.S. class system is too different, and the established Star Trek universe provides different opportunities, and different constraints. The sense of commitment to something larger is very Star Trek, though, and characters coming to realize it might be worth pursuing in a prequel. In any case, Eccleston does open some eyes to what a single actor can do, in conjunction with superior and sympathetic writing. But again, there are substantial differences: there were eight Doctors before him, but there has been only one Kirk, one Spock (at least with lines)-- one of all Trek's iconic characters. Everyone expects each Doctor to be different.
The actual lessons for a Star Trek revival, on the big screen or small, might be more like this: do it right. Give it the resources it needs, both for the show itself and for its marketing. If Paramount and whoever else is involved (like a TV network) isn’t fully committed, and is just trying to test the waters a bit, it probably won’t work.
In fact this Doctor Who revival’s success owes more than a little to the example of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They established the new people, in a new ship (the new Tardis), and then re-connected to the established universe (first, with the Daleks, and next season with other old heroes and villains.)
In terms of Star Trek XI, if indeed it is to be a prequel featuring younger versions of original series characters, this Doctor Who series may have provided an actor to play a young Kirk: John Barrowman, whose Captain Jack became a Kirkian hero. Captain Jack has his own BBC series now, but Barrowman could probably find the time.
The actual lessons for a Star Trek revival, on the big screen or small, might be more like this: do it right. Give it the resources it needs, both for the show itself and for its marketing. If Paramount and whoever else is involved (like a TV network) isn’t fully committed, and is just trying to test the waters a bit, it probably won’t work.
In fact this Doctor Who revival’s success owes more than a little to the example of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They established the new people, in a new ship (the new Tardis), and then re-connected to the established universe (first, with the Daleks, and next season with other old heroes and villains.)
In terms of Star Trek XI, if indeed it is to be a prequel featuring younger versions of original series characters, this Doctor Who series may have provided an actor to play a young Kirk: John Barrowman, whose Captain Jack became a Kirkian hero. Captain Jack has his own BBC series now, but Barrowman could probably find the time.
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