Ben Paddon

Tag: Russell T Davies

  • Whovie

    An example of exactly the sort of thing that should never, ever happen.

    There has been a lot of talk over the last few years about a potential Doctor Who movie. Rather a lot of people seem to think this is an absolutely terrible idea, and given the track record I don’t particularly blame them.

    Perhaps even worse is that the potential for a Doctor Who movie to be an awful mess is not only a worst-case scenario for fans, but also a very real possibility: Last year Harry Potter director David Yates claimed he was actively working on a Doctor Who movie that would be starting “from scratch,” and the year before that Russell T Davies shot down a rumour that Johnny Depp would be starring in a movie as a version of the Doctor, travelling around the world, curing diseases and fighting Daleks.

    Adding insult to injury, I recall reading somewhere that Davies actually liked the idea proposed by the rumour, though I can’t find anything about that online. If the man responsible for Doctor Who‘s triumphant return truly believes that such an awful, awful idea is actually worthy of consideration, then the good Doctor’s cinematic future does not look especially bright.

    We all know what the fans want – they want something connected to the TV show. They want something that serves connects to the series in much the same way the X-Files movie was a part of the TV show continuity (though X-Files: Fight the Future might not be the best example). They want a movie featuring the current Doctor, whomever that may be at the time, ad his current companions.

    That’s a pretty good list – and we know it’s good, because current showrunner Steven Moffat wants exactly the same thing – but the fans probably wouldn’t stop there. They’d likely want to see some, or all, of the Doctor’s greatest foes – the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master, the Sontarans, the Weeping Angels, the Silurians, the Ice Warriors. They’d probably want to see multiple incarnations of the Doctor. They’d want something rife with canon ejaculate, a celebration of everything Doctor Who is.

    Which is entirely the wrong way to go with it.

    Too many cooks spoil the plot.

    Let’s face it, if fans got everything they wanted we’d probably end up with something not too dissimilar from “The Five Doctors”, which is a fun story but not especially well-written, or something along the lines of “The Stolen Earth”/”Journey’s End,” which is a tangled mess of comic-book style crossover that lacks a good pay-off and isn’t able to properly accommodate all of the characters that have been shoehorned into the narrative.

    So, what’s the logical middle-ground? A Doctor Who movie would need to be big bold, brash and every bit the spectacle of the television series, existing within the continuity of the television series but not necessarily drawing heavily from it so as to serve as a jumping-on point for potential newcomers. It would need to stand alone as a story, basically, complete with a unique villain or threat that hadn’t been seen in the television series before.

    Basically, it would need the same approach that Moffat takes to writing his Christmas specials.

    Steven Moffat has commented on the structure of the Christmas stories; that you have to write for a different audience when writing for a show that’s going out on Christmas day – the core of the Doctor as a man who arrives in the TARDIS and fixes things must be preserved, but beyond that the story needs to work for people who have never seen the show before. Great Christmas television takes precedence over a great episode of Doctor Who, and while some of the best Doctor Who stories include episodes like “The Christmas Invasion” and “The Next Doctor”, one cannot argue that these do not make for especially good Christmas day viewing to anyone who isn’t already a fan of the series.

    This wouldn’t make for a good movie either, to be honest.

    Obviously I’m not suggesting that a Doctor Who movie be a Christmas affair or be devoid of scifi elements, and obviously Moffat’s Christmas offerings so far have been far from feature quality (the only Christmas special I think would make a halfway decent movie is probably “Voyage of the Damned”, which isn’t even the best Christmas special), but I feel Moffat’s approach to the Christmas episodes would be ideal for a feature film. Fuse that with the sort of storytelling we saw in “The Pandorica Opens”/”The Big Bang” or “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead” and I think we’d have a pretty solid Doctor Who movie on our hands.

    Just don’t let David Yates anywhere near it. Please. For the love of Glod.

  • Arrested Development, Arrested

    Try not to dwell on the MSPaint-looking “Closed” sign.

    Next year, Arrested Development returns after having been mercilessly cancelled by Fox back in 2006. Ten brand spanking new episodes are being produced for distribution exclusively via Netflix, which is very exciting news for fans of great comedy.

    My worry, though, is that the new Arrested Development is going to make the same mistake that other similarly revived shows made upon their triumphant returns. Shows brought back from the brink of disaster have a worrying habit of wasting their second chance nodding at their past rather than looking optimistically towards their future.

    Two of my favourite shows, Futurama and Red Dwarf, were revived in recent years, and both fell prey to nostalgia. The first of the straight-to-DVD Futurama movies, “Bender’s Big Score”, seemed to hinge almost entirely on winks to the audience, nostalgic self-referential gags, and “Hey, remember this minor character and/or in-joke?” moments. “Into The Wild Green Yonder”, the fourth and final Futurama movie, also ended on a very forced note that tried to wrap up as many elements of the show as possible very quickly while also providing an opening should the show return for a full season (as it did last year, with somewhat disappointing results).

    Similarly, the 2009 Red Dwarf miniseries “Back to Earth” intentionally recycled and referenced elements of previous episodes rather than making the effort to stand out and be it’s own thing. While in Red Dwarf‘s case this can be forgiven to an extent – the miniseries was an anniversary event intended to celebrate the series – it does unfortunately mean that, as a story, “Back to Earth” struggles to stand on its own two feet.

    Other successful show revivals such as Doctor Who and Family Guy somehow found it within themselves to soldier onward almost as though they’d never been off the air (aside from the opening scene of Family Guy‘s fourth season, which pokes fun at the Fox Network’s predilection for greenlighting and cancelling shows almost in the same breath).

    With Doctor Who, then-showrunner Russell T Davies made a very deliberate choice not to refer heavily to the classic series, despite being a continuation. This made the first episode much more accessible and, more importantly, didn’t bog it down in self-reference and continuity. Anyone can watch “Rose” and enjoy it, but I have a hard time imagining non-Futurama fans getting much out of “Bender’s Big Score”.

    The new Arrested Development ultimately has to make good on the promise that “new” implies – new stories featuring the same characters. No wasting time paying lip-service to the past, just focusing on what’s to come. If they can check that box, if they can get through the ten episodes without relying too heavily on Remember-Whens and in-jokes, then they can’t go wrong.

    Y’know, unless it sucks.

  • No More Two-Parters in Doctor Who? Why I Don’t Think We Can Take Moffat at His Word.

    WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for Doctor Who’s sixth series. You have been warned. I should also point out that, despite my employers’ connections with the BBC, I have zero foreknowledge of Series 7.

    Oh no! Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat rocked the very foundation of the show by announcing way back in December that there probably won’t be any two-part stories in Series 7. This seems rather silly on the surface considering Moffat’s dedication and utter love for the show, but especially considering how vocal he has been about preserving the atmosphere of the show – the very reason he’s touted for deciding to move the series premiere from the traditional March/April start to some time in the Autumn.

    Yet oddly, it’s that very reasoning that has me thinking that perhaps we can’t trust the words that tumbled from Moffat’s mouth last year, especially as he’s already proven himself to be an entirely untrustworthy showrunner. Moffat is very big on keeping secrets from the viewership, going so far as to intentionally mislead the public with announcements of stuff that definitely isn’t happening, which then goes on to happen.

    I find it difficult to believe that Moffat would make a statement that effectively brings an end to part of Doctor Who’s enduring appeal. Although the serialized nature of the show has been toned down since its revival in 2005 the cliffhangers have remained an important part of the show. It’s not without good reason that Russell T Davies opted to include three two-part stories each series, a template Moffat kept for the show’s fifth series. Why, then, would he turn around and decide to abandon such an integral part of the show for its 50th anniversary?

    Of course, looking at the second half of Series 6, it’s easy to see how he may approach the cliffhangers instead. “A Good Man Goes To War” and “Closing Time” are both great examples of stories that are ostensibly standalone, but that end with cliffhangers that either lead into or otherwise tease the next episode of the show. And what is the first fifteen minutes of “The Impossible Astronaut” if not a cliffhanger for the entire series?

    Nevertheless, these cliffhangers are much less overt than in previous stories. Most viewers had more or less figured out that the impossible astronaut was River Song, and so the ending of “Closing Time” lost most of its impact before broadcast.

    A good Doctor Who cliffhanger – a great Doctor Who cliffhanger, in fact – leaves the Doctor and/or his companions in a point of absolute peril, a dangerous scenario from which there appears to be no escape, perhaps best summed up by Moffat himself as “The monsters are coming.” In fact some of the show’s best cliffhangers since its return are Moffat’s own; “The Empty Child”, “Silence in the Library” and “The Pandorica Opens” are some of the most memorable and thrilling cliffhangers in the show’s history.

    Reaching back even further, classic fan favourites like “The Caves of Androzani” and “Genesis of the Daleks” are defined as much by their episode climaxes as they are by the narrative itself, especially in the former story where the show plays with the audience’s expectation that the then-current Doctor, Peter Davison, is to die and regenerate.

    Is Moffat really willing to discard such an important part of the show’s popularity? Or has Doctor Who outgrown the cliffhanger? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t bet money on our intrepid showrunner abandoning this staple just yet. Certainly not when there’s such a major anniversary on the horizon.

  • How to tell if you want to be a writer

    1. Watch The TV Set.
    2. Read “The Writer’s Tale“.
    3. If, after doing both of these things, you still want to be a writer, chances are you probably will be.

  • A Funny Turn – on the subject of Russell T Davies and clunky writing

    I’ve been watching and rewatching a lot of Doctor Who lately, partially because I’m hard at work on three separate Doctor Who related projects (nothing official, o’ course – just some fun fan stuff) but mostly because… well, I love the show. I grew up with it, with Tom Baker and Peter Davison. My earliest Doctor Who memory is of “The Mind Robber”, seeing Jamie McCrimmon’s face being jumbled up. It horrified me as a child. It still sends tingles down my spine, even today.

    The fourth series of the revived show is probably the second-most uneven series of the show to date, right behind the second series, and yet both series contain some of my favourite episodes of the show. One such episode is “Turn Left”, an alternate-history episode that retells some of the events of the third and fourth series in a universe where the Doctor died. It’s a wonderful episode, brilliantly grim, if a bit over-the-top at times. However there’s one moment in the episode that I cannot take seriously:

    Torchwood fans try to pretend Ianto Jones never died. Some Doctor Who fans deem the ’96 TV Movie to be non-canonical. Me? I would happily remove this single shot from the show’s 48-year history without a moment’s hesitation.

    It’s a moment that is simply too over-the-top. It’s too silly, too ridiculous, too much after seeing London get nuked off of the planet. It’s not just the pointing, either. It’s the shaking of the head, the glare, the malice. It doesn’t work. It comes across as ridiculously cheesy, and in an episode as bleak as this it becomes unintentionally hilarious.

    I wanted to know how the scene read on the page, on Russell T Davies’ original shooting script, and fortunately enough it’s one of the many Doctor Who scripts available to download from the promotional site for “The Writer’s Tale”. So I downloaded it and had a look:

    It’s a nice piece of action text, but… well, it still doesn’t work. It tries to hammer home a point from an earlier scene – the Spanish maid can see the space beetle on Donna’s back – it’s too much. Too clunky. Too forced. If it were up to me, I’d remove the Spanish maid from this shot entirely. She’s superfluous, telling the audience something that they already know. No, it’s worse – she’s repeating it, so soon after having already reminded them of it.

    Or, alternatively, can her presence in the scene be amended? Can her contribution to this moment be fixed? I at least thought it was worth having a stab at:

    [CeltX added a line break into the second paragraph during the export process. No idea why.]

    Is this any better? Well, no. I’ve tried to tone down the maid’s reaction, to make it seem more real, more human. But she still feels unnecessary. Her presence muddies the tone of the scene. What is supposed to be a tragedy, a disaster, is then punctuated by something awkward, shoehorned into the scene in an attempt to serve the overall narrative, and backfiring.

    But then, that’s something of a calling card of Russell T Davies’, isn’t it?

  • On death, television, and Ianto Jones

    SPOILER ALERT! This post contains spoilers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer season six, and spoilers throughout the entirety of Torchwood. (more…)

  • Rating the Doctor Who Finales

    Over four years ago, viewers in the UK (and people worldwide who naughtily downloaded stuff from the internet) were treated to the series one finale of Doctor Who. Had the show been unsuccessful that could’ve been the end of it, but no – Doctor Who‘s return to television was nothing short of a triumph. Four years later it is one of the most successful shows on British television, and we’re not far off from seeing David Tennant’s tenure as the Tenth Doctor (the new series’ second) come to an end.

    With that in mind, I thought it might be fun to dissect in the finales in order, from my personal least-favourite to the finale I consider the best of the bunch so far. So here we go, then.

    A word of warning: If you haven’t seen much of Doctor Who and want to avoid spoilers, I would advise you to give this article a miss.

    (more…)