Monday, May 30, 2005

Just watched last night's Dr Who and I have to agree with Tom that not only is Dr Who is a bit of a tart, but he's also a bit free and easy with gender/species/group sex distinctions. Good for him, I say. Bit jealous really. I never get to dance, let alone set up an interesting threesome with aliens.
Last night I had a dream. Yes, another one. I was on a boat, with Christopher Ecclestone. We were on a river, which was all well and good, but it ran along the edge of a cliff… which was at least a mile high. The water slopped over the edge in a 'your boat would go straight over' manner which scared the crap out of me. But it was ok, because Christopher Ecclestone was there to keep me safe and sound.
But anyway, moving on. I was talking to my mate Ewan about this, and more now than ever I think his take is right. Dr Who is is the last survivor of the Time Wars. The Daleks are all dead. The Time Lords are all dead. Dr Who suffers horrendous survivor guilt and that colours everything he does.
This episode, more than any other, exemplifies survivor guilt. “Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives,” says the Doctor as the victims of the poorly adapted nanogenes are finally cured of their ills. The joy in his face is unparalleled by anything else we have seen in this series – he is for the first time truly delighted that he has been able to act as saviour, in however an indirect way.
Consider Father's Day, the episode in which Rose goes back in time to try to save her father's life. The Doctor knows exactly what she has done, he knows the disaster she has caused, and he knows what needs to be done to put it all right, but he can't bring himself to engineer Rose's father's death. He wants him to live, because he feels he can't be responsible for even one more life lost. He's willing to sacrifice the unknown masses in order to safe the known individual – a logic that previous Doctors would never have followed.
For ages with the new series of Dr Who I was really puzzled by the way that the Doctor seemed so passive – very much unlike past Doctors. In the episode The Long Game, with the astonishingly sexy Simon Pegg as The Editor, (why did no one tell me Simon was narrating the Dr Who Confidential series on BBC3? I would have watched them, dammit!), both the Doctor and Rose are helpless and at the mercy of the Editor and his Boss, and they rely upon a secondary character to free them.
This goes totally contrary to our expectations of the Doctor as the Mr Know It All who can fix anything. In fact, I can't think of a single episode in this series where Dr Who has actually taken charge and been directly responsible for the rescue of anyone. Dammit, even the Dalek he tries to rescue, (before he realises it's a Dalek) ends up committing suicide because Rose's DNA has infected it. Damn you, Russell T Davies. Damn your ability to make me cry over a Dalek!
But as soon as you look at this helplessness in terms of survivor guilt, it all makes sense. The Doctor is haunted by memories of the Time Wars. He can't understand why he is still live when everyone else is dead. He has no one left. Nothing left. Just him and his Tardis. Is he a traitor for not dying with the rest? Should he have done thing differently? Sacrificed his life? To what end? Time Lords were always survivors and to die a meaningless death would never have been acceptable.
So instead he is left alone, trying to make sense of what happened, and trying not to repeat what he sees as tragic mistakes. Just how responsible was the Doctor for the death of all those Time Lords, all those Daleks? We heard him crying “It's not my fault!” to the last remaining Dalek. Is that truth, or guilt? Was it his fault? How will Rose react when the truth comes out?
The Doctor is obviously in love with Rose, it's clear as day, and has been for episodes. Will he lose her when all this comes to a head*? It surely must – all the episodes are building up to a climax in which we find out what really happened in the Doctor's past. What were the Time Wars? What happened to the Daleks? The Time Lords? And where was The Master in all this? What part did he have to play? Davros? Is he still kicking about? (Or should that be 'levitating about'?)
I wasn't a Dr Who fan until this series. The old stuff I could take or leave and really not care about, but this series has been fantastic. Russell T Davies has put together a through line that has totally hooked me. He's done something truly different with the Doctor – he's made him human, fallible, vulnerable. For once, the Doctor is not there to save us poor apes, but is instead saved by us. We are going on his personal journey, instead of a journey through space and time that he happens to be taking us on.
As a scriptwriter, I find all this fascinating, and I have to admit to a bit of jealousy. What I wouldn't give to have the opportunity to take a character like the Doctor and turn him on his head, do something really cool and interesting with him. Dr Who is, without doubt, up there with Battlestar Galactica as my all-time favourite scifi.
Anyway, it's 1.20am now – how the hell did that happen? – and whilst I could easily wax lyrical for another hour or so, I shan't. Time for bed. Christopher, are you coming?
* OK, I know Ecclestone leaves at the end of this series, which means a regeneration, which means the relationship is doomed. I was just trying not to think about it, ok?

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