The Uncertainty Division - Uncertainty ... And So On: A better Doctor Who

May 27, 2005

A better Doctor Who

We've seen a fair amount of the new series of Doctor Who, and while it's pretty good, it needs to get better for the second series. Here are some of the things that seem obvious to me.

Write three times as much plot in every episode. There have been several episodes - even the Dalek episode, which was generally very good - where special effects, or protracted sequences of people doing nothing in blind panic, have been used instead of having more going on. Even the best episodes take a while to get going, and they all seem to have this appalling bit about thirty minutes in where everyone is about to die, and the camera cuts back and forth between all of them until someone remembers to press the "don't die" switch. Write much more plot and this won't need to happen.

When writing an episode, don't assume you're smarter than the audience. The two-part aliens-invading-earth story had a lot of painful hints that the female MP was going to go on to be Prime Minister - really, only one was needed. Get lots of ideas going, and trust the audience to keep up.

Learn the difference between comedy and humour, and don't try to do comedy. There's a bit in the first episode that is presumably supposed to be farcical, where the Doctor keeps on failing to notice the London Eye as the big circular thing he's looking for. The joke isn't bad, but the execution was terrible. (Actually, perhaps it was so protracted because they thought the audience needed time to get what was going on, in which case: see above.) Humour is a vibe that helps relieve tension and allows drama to be darker; comedy is something light and frothy that people forget by the morning. We don't want people to forget Doctor Who.

Have a single person who oversees everything from story inception to post-production - Russell T Davies has made it obvious he doesn't see this as his job as lead writer, but it's a job that needs doing. This is what Doctor Who producers used to do, before we went all pseudo-American with executive producers. Interestingly, this is exactly what executive producers do on the best shows. The job of the creative mind behind an episode, or the series, is not done on delivery of the script.

Drop the minor characters and let Rose carry the weight of the human factor. Billie (and presumably her successor) is more than capable of carrying the human perspective in stories (indeed, The End Of The World had only one real human - Rose - but considerably more humanity than the episodes set on Earth have managed). Instead of half an hour of soap-style bickering and moaning to get the point that Rose isn't sure whether running around with the Doctor is the right thing to do, one ten-second shot of her looking at a photo of her mother would be more effective. Trust in the actors.

And while I'm here, a technical niggle:

There's something wrong with the process used to make the digital footage look like film - it looks stretched, and the colours are weird. I don't know what actually needs doing here, but there's something not right, and it needs fixing.

Posted by James Aylett at May 27, 2005 05:10 PM

Comments

Yes but yes but yes but...

"The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" were the best we've seen so far. It had enough plot, it looked fabulous, it was properly scary and it had genuinely, unsentimentally beautiful ending. Rose worked the best she has ever worked because she was finally allowed to be properly stupid - that is what companions are for. And the humour was the most funny and subtle yet.

It is almost as if Steven Moffat leapt into a TARDIS to read Mr Aylett's criticisms before writing his episodes of the series.

(On that subject...I think that we need more writers. Whatever Mr T Davies is doing to oversee it all, his scripts have been pretty inconsistant, like he had to write a lot in quite a short space of time - funny, that...)

Posted by: James Lark at May 29, 2005 08:37 PM

True, they're strong episodes, and certainly the best so far. If all of the second season are as strong, we're in for a fun time. And yes, the humour was great - some really nice understated lines.

However ... companions aren't there just to be stupid, and Rose has been incredibly stupid, one way or another. She had an excuse in The Empty Child, but even so she came across as utterly daft. I notice that Rose's character development has been in terms of putting her in different situations - her character doesn't change that much. (I'm basing this, admittedly, on the assumption that if the character changed radically then Billie's characterisation would change radically - which it hasn't.)

Also, the dialogue wasn't very good - often quite clunky, which I found strange. Not quite sure what the relationship of different writers to the script editor is on Doctor Who these days, but it struck me as something that could have been tidied up quite a lot. Also, there were still some bits where the point was driven home (particularly by the Doctor, although perhaps that's because the character is actually quite nasty and superior - which I don't like either).

Agree that they need more writers. Perhaps, with RTD only doing five episodes next season, that's what we'll get.

Posted by: James Aylett at May 29, 2005 08:56 PM

I think you're exaggerating Rose's stupidity. Yes, she is stupid, but in the stupidity stakes, if 10 is genius and 1 is incredibly stupid, she's still quite high in the league table...

Romana 10

Sarah Jane Smith 7

Nyssa 6

Ace 4

Rose 3

Mel 1
Tegan 1
Jamie 1
Victoria 1
Vicki 1
Peri 1
........etc

Adric "gold star for mathematical brilliance" 0

Posted by: James Lark at May 29, 2005 10:02 PM

Only Romana I warrants 10; Romana II is around 8, losing a couple of points on account of being flouncy.

Zoe 7
Liz 7
Ian 5 (higher in Planet of Giants and when he got made a knight)
Barbara 5 (except with the whole Aztec thing)
Susan 4 or 8 (depending on her mood)

Victoria and Jamie should probably get bonus points because they predate ... well, most things (also, Victoria isn't actually stupid, just useless). I'm still not convinced that the purpose of a companion is to be stupid - and I think if we listed all of them, more than half would be smarter than Rose.

However it's certainly the job of companions to get into trouble. I actually prefer it when there's more than one companion, because it gives more options than just "both together" and "both apart".

Posted by: James Aylett at May 29, 2005 11:03 PM

Well, in terms of the two companions thing, we now seem to have gained Captain Jack in the new series. And he's prettier than Rose.

Do you think that Rose is more or less intelligent than the Brigadier?

Posted by: James Lark at May 30, 2005 01:54 PM

These temporary characters don't really count as companions, though - they're the modern equivalent of Katarina. We've had Mickey, and the bloke from the Dalek story whatever his name was - Captain Jack seems more credible as a companion than previous ones, and has the advantage that he has some clue what's going on, though.

Rose is less intelligent than the Brigadier, but he had the military complex to enable some phenomenally dumb mistakes. But anyone who can face down The Destroyer in such style has to count as a very good companion. He was prettier than Rose, too.

Posted by: James Aylett at May 30, 2005 03:13 PM

I'd have considered Capt. Jack more in the Sara Kingdom mould.

Which beautifully segues into Battlefield, of course, and yes, the Brig versus the Destroyer was a great scene.

Posted by: James Casey at May 30, 2005 06:16 PM

Captain Jack knows things about the future which perhaps he shouldn't, which has some Katarina resonance for me. But yes, he's more in the jumping, dancing, shooting things mould of Sara Kingdom.

That's one hell of a segue. You could almost as easily say it segues into The Invasion (which of course is the first "the Brig" story, as it were). It's slightly better than Battlefield, too.

Posted by: James Aylett at May 30, 2005 10:38 PM

Um...I'm not sure I recall Sara Kingdom dancing ever. Lots of silly running around in the Christmas episode, but no dancing as far as one can tell from the audio that remains of the episode.

I thought James Casey's segue was beautiful. Obscure but logical. Like a segue from, say, "The Chase" to "Meglos".

But I also wonder what any other members of the public who have bothered to read all this think we are talking about.

Posted by: James Lark at May 31, 2005 04:10 PM