Old Doctor Who

The series only makes sense if Dr Who is some sort of BDSM fetishist who travels the universe trying to get authoritarian groups to threaten, handcuff, tied-up and imprison him and his companion. If Timelords are aroused by bondage and submission than it all make sense.

Also he must be a 'liberal' because all he does is haughtily suggest peaceful solutions that don't work and then wait for some violent act to resolve it (usually military, sometimes accidental). Sometime it seems like the Doctor is just some multidimensional entity trolling everyone to satisfy his kinks "Yes, that's right. Tie us up. Tighter. Now stick a laser in her face and tell me what I must do to save her life. I must kill off a whole civilization to save her? Alright - but could you say that again but with more sexual menace. "

The media of the future will be people taking all the given matter of pop culture, editing it, adding in CGI, cutting it with other clips and making something new and glorious. Dr Who is great nostalgia, there are some hidden gems in almost every arc, but what it really is a time-capsule of raw material to be used.

How to watch Classic Who (Pertree & Barker era 1971 - 1981)

1) Realize the show is nonsense

If you hear a neat idea, just enjoy it. The second you wonder 'how is that possible?' or what are the implications of it, you are lost. Forever.  Do not attempt to piece together various story arcs, no not even attempt to connect the various episodes within an arc. It is almost zen-training in shutting down your rational faculties, from premise to execution it will not make any sense.

Making SF or fantasy stuff fit into a chronology or encyclopedia is one of the pillars of fandom but this is an absurdist OCD task for the devoted few. Save your rationality for the real world. Here are some of the threads of nonsense that make up the show:

# Time-travel is often paradoxical nonsense at best, Dr Who doesn't even try to make it work.

# Adventure serials are nonsense because you know the hero gets out of every cliff-hanger. The endless threatening of Dr Who is a ritual.

# It is a science fiction show known for its' many gothic horror episodes. Often the core idea is some horror creature with a slight SF twist: Nessie (with a cyber implant), Vampires (in space), dopplegangers (from space), ect.... It is more horror than sci-fi for years at a time.

# It is a 'science' show because magic is shown have a scientific explanation - but the science is such techno-babble ('bafflegab' in the UK) that it makes no difference.

# Dr Who is a kid's show, written by people interested in de-colonization, bureaucratic infighting and Buddhism, directed and acted by people trained in Shakespeare.  

# There are whole arcs where no one involved in the show seems to understand the plot.

# The plots are sillyputty impressions or as one producer said "the show is a magpie" collecting little scraps of stuff to build a nest. The show does not have a continuing plot so it needs to speak in this cultural shorthand.
The roots for a typical show will be something like: biblical Genesis, the fall of the Roman Empire, the lastest James Bond film, a Star Trek episode and allegory for British colonialism. This is not conducive to making sense.

# I actually like the old special effects because there is something about physical effects that CGI cannot match. [An alien worm's head fashioned out of a fox skull is actually pretty terrifying.] But to create arc after arc predicated on the idea that the effects and creature are the big payoffs knowing this only works 1 in 10 times is madness. 

# You have to cheer for the villains because Dr Who is arrogant and incompetent. Dr Who typically wanders into some apocalypse, can never explain his presence and so is arrested, immediately tries to escapes and is re-captured and his companion's life is threatened if tries again, meanwhile a bunch of people die because of his bungling, advice or inaction, eventually he escapes again and something nonsensical stops the villain.

2) Realize Who's nonsense is its virtue

Imagine writers creating 1970s Marvel comic plots, full of wild ideas that are just floating around in the heady 1970s zeitgeist, and handing them over to... the BBC which has small public funding and is focused on domestic and historical dramas. Now imagine actors from the Royal Theater getting roles in that strange series and playing them full-on.

This is a very special nonsense that can only come from many well-trained professionals all doing their best but working at such cross-purposes. And there is a certain earnestness to 1970s nonsense that separates it from modern media garbage. Something dies out in the 1980s with Reagan and Thatcher that no amount of special effects can restore. The art communities were the canaries in the cultural coalmines.

Politically the tepid liberalism of Doctor Who is more a product of the times than any conscious decision. Sure, some writers were Communist Party members in the 1950s (Malcolme Hulke), yes some actors came out of hippie-socialist theater backgrounds (various), even some executive producers still self-describe as 'liberals' (Barry Letts) but this is again a product of the times.  

Working against anything more than a vague liberal tilt were the strongly apolitical nature of most people in media - because politics hurts profits. One of the main script editors of the era, Terrance Dicks, voices this very sentiment repeatedly. Also there police/military backgrounds of writers and directors like main writer Robert Holmes who returned from the counter-insurgency fighting in Burma to join the bobbies in London (similar to Gene Roddenberry's cop background). Don't forget that MI5 itself vetted over 1/3 of the whole BBC staff to prevent subversion (link)! So a vague liberal tilt is the best you can get.

I think the UNIT military presence in Dr Who is emblematic. It is liberal enough to be run by the UN not the British military yet remains a strong military violence-dealing presence that resolves many episodes (sometimes against thin substitutes for the Russians and Chinese). Yet that violence is itself softened by the great likability of the actors (Brigadere, Betton, Yates)....

Much like classic Star Trek, you'll find a weak surface liberalism on top of casual misogyny and hostility to the left. So don't go to Dr Who looking for political inspiration. Come for the nonsense stepped in the anarchic chronological mess of 1970s Britain where punk was meeting Shakespeare, James Bond was exploring Hammer Horror castles, and medieval villages were watching men land on the moon.

Peter Grimwalde - Doctor Who Director wrote:I thought "Oh, first time I direct Who, wonderful!" And then, first day, get the script... I think - everyone does - you think "Oh, God, I've got to make that work. How the hell am I going to make this work?"

Peter Grimwalde's bitter parody of his experience on Doctor Who

Mindwarp wrote:PERI: Do you think this wise, Doctor?
DOCTOR: My dear girl, if I stopped to question the wisdom of my actions, I'd never have left Gallifrey.
PERI: Sometimes I wish you hadn't.
DOCTOR: Oh?

Other titles:

Doctor Brain Injury - For the sheer amount of time he's been seriously struck in the head. [Considering how often he acts like Doctor Troll it's hard not to feel some satisfaction in watching him get hit]

Doctor "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results" - Again and again he teleports to a restricted zone on a planet, can never explain what he is doing there, and then is captured/escapes/re-captured for the rest of the series. Part of the appeal of K9 (...and his laser) and Leela (...and her knives) is that they can break this endless cycle. Doctor Who should just get some non-lethal weapons, or work on a disguise, have a device that teleports him back to the TARDIS

Doctor Bodycount - As the Doctor endless/y satisfies his bondage/submission kink, people are dying off. Most of the time they are dying because of their association with the doctor and his companion (or their inaction). It would be curious see the total bodycount of each episode.

Doctor DeathThreats - From 10 minutes into the 1st episode until the arc concludes the Doctors and companion's life will be under constant threat of execution. Often a laser gun to the head but with much variation (poison, thrown to monster, ejected into space, a rock suspended by rope). It makes for neurotic scripts where villains are endless just about to execute a character who every viewer knows isn't going to die. Half of the time the execution fails because the lethal point-blank shot simply misses! Regeneration also makes nonsense out of death threats - do they just keep killing the new regenerations?

Doctor Troll - Tom Baker might as well put on a Pepe the Frog mask - he is boldly passive-aggressive to everyone. Listening to him tell his companions to 'shut up' or call them a 'silly girl' or just ignoring them are favorite gags. He just travels around messing around with everyone, it is sort of a Marx Brothers anarchism. You get the idea that the Doctor is jerky and this was locked in a positive feedback loop with Tom Baker's egotism.

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I still enjoy watching the show for the sheer lunacy of it all. As a ritualistic show sectioned off from simple logic, it frees the brain in strange ways to go right to the 'camp' center of the universe. Grown adults doing silly things amongst a torrent of weird ideas trying to be realized with a BBC budget.

If you want to dig into the true darkside of Doctor Who:

1) Misogyny: At best the Doctor is paternalistic. Jon Pertree excels at this, and as an actor seemed he insist on companions who were smaller than him - both physically and personality-wise.

Barker's years get sketchier, the that fact Barker used the sets as his pick-up area (eventually marrying an actress playing a companion) compounds this. Real life lovers spats and jealousies are on-stage in some episodes. Those shots were the Doctor is lying atop or hugging his companions to show that his is a 'naive sexless alien' are not good.  

Both eras suffer from the fact that the female companions are increasingly thought of as "something for the dads to objectify" and a general lack of characterization. Tellingly the Sarah Jane companion was brought in as a nod to mid-70s feminism, did one series playing an independent, feminist-minded companion (Time Warrior) and then was forced into the usual mold. Leela and the Romanas are strong enough characters but the scripts keep slotting them into old roles. Leela is a especially self-possessed warrior but the Doctor's parting words are "Goodbye, savage"...

To be a female companion in the golden era of Who meant three constants: 1) implicit threats of gang-rape 2) explicit mind-rape  3) infantilization in characterization and clothes. The actresses who played Liz Shaw, Jo, Sarah Jane, Lelaa, the Romanas deserved better, so did the stories.

Still some great female villains and supporting roles like in the David Fisher scripts Stones of Blood and Creature in the Pit. Fisher was taking 'literary revenge' on his own domineering aunts who had marred his childhood but they make great, strong characters.


2) Sexual Predators: When John Nathan Turner becoming the executive producer as the show moved into the 1980s meant many changes. Unfortunately one of those changes was that John and his far more predatory partner Gary began to use Doctor Who fans as a giant pool of potential sexual exploits. Their victims were young men so it is not the same as Jimmy Savilles' predation on teens and younger, but there is a culture of child sexual exploitation at the BBC that should be recognized. The essay that opened my eyes was
'Light Entertainment - child abuse and the British public'.



3) Liberalism: Dr Who was a 'liberal' this translates into an:
*ambivalent attitude toward imperialism (general against colonialism but the 'natives' don't come off much better),
*anti-religious (but so full of the supernatural and pseudo-science that the show is effectively anti-science),
*anti-unions (the 70s was the period of both a Labour government and public hatred of that government as whipped by the media)  
*anti-left in general - early critiques of environmentalism and governments as bastions of authoritarianism that are now core planks of neo-liberalism today
*mildly but firmly racist (people get upset that white men were cast as Asian characters in this era, but the plots are far more racist. Converting aboriginals into 'mutants' or 'barbarians' does help much).
*pro-globalization: endless backwards planets need integration into multilateral galactic trade agreements

Like FOXNEWS many Doctor Who's strive to be 'fair and balanced' on their nonsensical metaphors for contemporary issues. The Sunmakers is a good example, the show contains show of the strongest leftist statement in the history of Who ("You blood-sucking leech! You won't stop until you own the entire galaxy, will you. Don't you think commercial imperialism is as bad as military conquest?") but the whole story is framed as right-wing 'tax revolt' story. I like the populist feel of that series but it is not a left-wing story, it is a liberal one.

I don't watch Game of Thrones, I watched all of 'Oz' on HBO and I didn't need to see a decade of 'Oz - D&D edition'.

Still, I did like this comment on the season finale by this professional critic (and long-time fan of the series) who penned the following lament:

Laura Hudson wrote:What do you do when they turn to you and ask what it all means, and why you have been doing this for so long? You stumble and gibber and with nothing else to offer, you say: absolute goddamn nonsense.

For all my critique of Dr Who in this thread, I keep watching old episodes because it lightens my soul. The logic is nonsense, the morality is nonsense, but the crazy grab-bag of high SF concepts, workman-like effects, over-the-top acting and just plain silliness leaves Stef and I laughing and smiling.

In the truly great Doctor Who parody, 'Curse of the Fatal Death', where Rowan Atkinson is the The Doctor (an actor no stranger to playing  someone who keeps regenerating throughout English history...), the following lines are said as the Doctor is dying:

http://www.chakoteya.net/Extras/cufd.htm wrote:Doctor, listen to me. You can't die, you're too, You're too nice, too brave, too kind and far, far too silly. You're like Father Christmas, the Wizard of Oz, Scooby Doo. And I love you very much. And we all need you, and you simply cannot die.

Despite the fact it's hard to go an episode without mind-control or threatened execution the show remains "far, far too silly." Perhaps one day the grimdark seriouness of GoT will also be seen as grand campiness.

I understand the appeal of 'Oz - D&D edition' but don't devote your rational circuity to it. Save your reason for science and actual history. Just sit back and enjoy the endless series of betrayals, stabbings, massacres, and torture scenes that GoT has to offer. Let them lighten your soul.