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"I'm a doctor -- but probably not the one you're expecting."
("The Night of the Doctor") ©BBC |
"The Name of the Doctor" aired in May 2013, and since then fandom had been getting a steady stream of hints about what the 50th anniversary would bring, and as we got closer we got more things: nine missing Troughton episodes were officially returned in October, while Big Finish released their celebration audio story with the first eight (yes, eight!) Doctors,
The Light at the End, a month early in late October. But the best surprise was on 14 November, when the BBC released a 7-minute episode called "The Night of the Doctor", featuring Paul McGann (
Paul McGann!) and chronicling his final moments as the eighth Doctor.
Even now, this episode maintains its power. The sheer thrill of seeing McGann back in the role on screen cannot be understated, and (possibly because he'd been playing the eighth Doctor on audio for the last 12 years) he emphatically
is the Doctor here, incredibly confident and self-assured, with a touch of wry humor ("Where are we going?" Cass asks. "Back of the ship," the Doctor replies. "Why?" Cass wonders. "Because the front crashes first, think it through," the Doctor says). McGann is so incredibly
right in the role that it's little wonder a "bring back the eighth Doctor" campaign began after this was released. And even when he's dying, he's still just as mesmerizing, and frankly better here than he was in the TV Movie.
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The eighth Doctor regenerates. ("The Night of the Doctor")
©BBC |
But because this is meant to tie in to the upcoming 50th anniversary special, we're concerned not so much with the eighth Doctor's life but with his death and rebirth into a "warrior": the War Doctor (as the credits call him). We're shown a Doctor who's been running away from the Time War that's begun -- "It's not my war. I will have no part of it" -- and who ends up dying as a result of his running, only to be brought back to life temporarily by the Sisterhood of Karn (last seen in
The Brain of Morbius -- or "Sisters of the Flame" / "The Vengeance of Morbius", if you're someone who'd been following the McGann audios). It's one of the sisters, Ohila, who convinces him that he must intervene in the War. "I would rather die [than fight in the War]," the Doctor tells Ohila. "You're dead already," she responds. "How many more will you let join you?" And so we see the end of the eighth Doctor and the beginning of the War Doctor, the one who will fight in the Time War. "Physician, heal thyself," McGann says, and then changes into a young John Hurt (a clever move, as it shows just how long the Time War has lasted, given how Hurt looks in "The Day of the Doctor"). And pleasingly for Big Finish fans, as the eighth Doctor dies he recites the names of (some of) his audio companions ("Charley, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly.
250 Friends, companions I've known, I salute you"), thus granting them more official status. (One might say they've become part of the canon, except
Doctor Who doesn't have an official canon -- still, televised works are generally held as more unimpeachably "true" than other works, so this was rather thrilling to those fans.
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It was a thrill just seeing McGann back on screen in the role, and that alone might have been worthwhile. The fact that Steven Moffat gave him such a good script, economical yet bursting with character, makes things better than anyone could have possibly hoped. "The Night of the Doctor" is utterly fabulous.
But before we get to the 50th anniversary special there's that docudrama to view:
An Adventure in Space and Time, which aired on 21 November, two days before "The Day of the Doctor". It's the story of how
Doctor Who came to be, from its beginnings with Sydney Newman to William Hartnell's final episode on the show. Writer/executive producer Mark Gatiss has provided us with a dramatization of that time, so naturally it's not as accurate as a documentary would be (for instance, script editor David Whitaker is completely missing from this version, his contributions having been rolled into
Adventure's rendition of Mervyn Pinfield). So if you're looking for a strictly factual account of
Doctor Who's origins, this probably won't be what you want.
In fact, the story is structured slightly oddly. Ostensibly this is meant to be focused on William Hartnell -- we open on him and appear to be exploring his memories -- but as he wasn't there at the beginning, we shift to the viewpoint of Verity Lambert,
Doctor Who's first producer and the BBC's first female producer. That's not exactly a problem, as Lambert's story is just as interesting as Hartnell's, but there is a sense sometimes that they're unsure which storyline to follow, and there's no obvious moment where they intertwine satisfactorily. This wouldn't necessarily be an issue if it weren't for the fact that Lambert disappears before the end of the story (having left shortly after season 3 began), leaving Hartnell to wrap things up for the last 20 minutes or so, which does lend things an uneven feel.
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Waris Hussein, Verity Lambert, and Sydney Newman butter up
William Hartnell. (An Adventure in Space and Time) ©BBC |
But what
An Adventure in Space and Time excels at is in the portrayal of these people and their relationships. What's impressive is not only how closely many of the people here resemble their real-life counterparts (Jemma Powell is particularly impressive in her resemblance, both in appearance and voice, to Jacqueline Hill), but how they imbue their characters with real energy. David Bradley is incredible as William Hartnell, as he approaches the part initially with reluctance and then with increasing fervour, as he finds a role worth doing -- only for it to be taken away from him. Brian Cox gives us a great performance as Sydney Newman, brought in to the BBC to shake things up, while Jessica Raine and Sacha Dhawan do an excellent job as Lambert and
Doctor Who's first director Waris Hussein, railing against the "old boys' club" atmosphere of the BBC. It's these performances that give you a real sense of what things must have been like, and while the story pulls pretty hard on the "odds stacked against the series" card, their performances anchor things and stop it from getting too silly or twee.
Nevertheless, ultimately it's David Bradley who does the best job here. You really get a feel for how much this meant for Hartnell, and while it does occasionally feel like Bradley sometimes leaned a little too heavily on Hartnell's only surviving TV interview (in which he's just been taken off
Doctor Who and is currently in a pantomime that is by all accounts a disaster), which makes him seem a little more angry and embittered than he perhaps was (you can compare it to the recently recovered portion of
Hartnell's Desert Island Discs interview, when he's far happier), this is balanced by the human qualities he brings to the role: I defy you not to well up a bit as he tells his wife that he's agreed to leave the show, only to break down, declaring that he doesn't want to go. It's a hell of a moment that really makes you feel for Hartnell, and Bradley does an incredible job with it. There's also the moment where he's shooting his final scene, and he pauses, imagining the future of the show, and we get a small cameo from Matt Smith, looking incredibly humbled and honored to be carrying on the tradition that Hartnell began. It's another moving scene that everyone does a great job of selling.
And this is what makes
An Adventure in Space and Time a success; it brings us closer to the people behind
Doctor Who, to show us what it was like then. It also gives us a deeper appreciation for William Hartnell, the original Dr. Who, who is as much a key reason for the show's popularity as the Daleks were. It might not be accurate, but it hardly matters; this is the origin story of
Doctor Who retold in the show's 50th year, and as a celebration of its beginnings you'd be hard-pressed to find a better, more entertaining tale.
250 Here's the Spotter's Guide for the eighth Doctor companions mentioned here:
- Charlotte "Charley" Pollard was an upper-class Edwardian "adventuress" (her term) who traveled with the eighth Doctor for 28 audio stories (plus a Companion Chronicle), from 2001's Storm Warning to 2007's The Girl Who Never Was. (She then went on to become a sixth Doctor companion, but now is not the time to get into that.) She was played by India Fisher.
- C'rizz was an alien Eutermesan from a parallel universe (the Divergent Universe) who could change his skin color (a super-cheap effect on audio!) and traveled with the Doctor and Charley. He lasted for 14 stories, from 2004's The Creed of the Kromon to 2007's Absolution. He was played by Conrad Westmaas.
- Lucie Miller was from 21st-century Blackpool, placed in the care of the eighth Doctor as part of a Time Lord witness protection program (yes, really). She appeared in four series of specially-commissioned-by-the-BBC audio adventures, from 2007's Blood of the Daleks to 2011's To the Death. She was played by Sheridan Smith.
- Tamsin Drew was an actress from Dulwich who auditioned for the role of the Doctor's new companion, appearing in seven stories, from 2010's Situation Vacant to 2011's To the Death. She was played by Niky Wardley.
- Molly O'Sullivan was a nurse stationed in France during World War I, who had unusually dark eyes. She appeared in the four Dark Eyes boxsets, from 2012 to 2015, and was played by Ruth Bradley.
251 So here's a can of worms opened. "The Night of the Doctor" marks the first overt reference to anything from the non-televised material in televised Doctor Who, which led to tedious conversations about whether this meant all of Big Finish counted or just specifically stories involving the characters mentioned here. There were discussions about why he didn't recall other companions (say, Fitz Kreiner from the BBC's Eighth Doctor Adventures novel series or Destrii from Doctor Who Magazine's comic strip), ranging from "he only remembered the ones he let down" (which doesn't actually work if you examine it) to "only the audios count, and he only remembered those companions" (although even this leaves out companions like Mary Shelley, and Samson and Gemma (to name companions who were around at the time of writing "The Night of the Doctor" -- Moffat can be forgiven for not knowing about people like Liv Chenka)). This discussion hinges on one's definition of canon (of which, as already noted, there's no official version for the show), but if you believe it means that the audios count and the other stuff doesn't, you have to deal with 2009's The Company of Friends, which is an eighth Doctor audio anthology that includes a companion from the books (Fitz) and one from the DWM comic (Izzy), and so the whole thing spirals out from there (how do you decide what to count and what to leave out?) and you can see why people should just deal with the stuff they personally think is canon and let everyone else sort it out for themselves.
