Tag Archives: Doctor

Death and the Maiden

22 Sunday Feb 2015

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So, yesterday there was an announcement that Michelle Gomez would be reprising her role as Missy (AKA The gender switched Master) in the upcoming series of Doctor Who.

The announcement is here for those who wish to read it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/6a78885d-e0b1-49a0-b7e8-cecba867a99f

Now, do not get me wrong I am in a way pleased by this announcement as I did enjoy seeing the Master reimagined as a woman and I think it is good to get the character back. However, I  have one very  huge misgiving about it… the character has really been killed far too many times now.

The Master was originally on his last (13th) regeneration in the Tom Baker episode The Deadly Assassin, the story which in fact established the canon that there are only 12 regenerations a Time Lord can have before they are finally and completely dead. Later stories in the Tom Baker/Peter Davison crossover point (Logopolis and Keeper of Traken) established a plausible means for keeping him alive a little longer using the possession of another character who looked remarkably like his original goatee bearded form (to the extent it probably is not a spoiler to tell you which character would get possessed…) as a reasonable excuse. This, however, did not give him any more regenerations – once that body (which was not a Time Lord body) died that was it so his quest from that point was to gain more regenerations. This was a fact the Time Lords themselves used as a bribe to get him to perform a task for them in the Five Doctors – the promise of a whole new regeneration cycle*. His appearances since then (some Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy episodes, the Paul McGann movie) were all aimed at that goal – for example trying to steal the Doctor’s remaining regenerations.**

Then at some point he finally did get given the new regeneration cycle because of his promises to help during the Time War and that leads us to Uptopia and the wonderful portrayal by Derek Jocobi who I would have liked to have seen more of before his regeneration to John Simms but the fact he did regenerate shows he had been paid in full by the Time Lords before legging it all the way to the end of the universe and activating his Chameleon arch.

So far so good. John Simm was a good Master and managed to give across the right level of insane evil coupled with that empathic bond with Tennant’s Doctor which rightly portrayed the Xavier/Magneto relationship inherent in their associations – two people who were as close as brothers driven apart by wildly different ideologies.

Then Simm’s Master died. Not in a ‘it’s ok, I will regenerate’ way and merely be played by yet another actor but in a ‘no, there is no way I will regenerate’ way.

Then he came back… in a way that was a little unrealistic and far fetched even for Who.

Then he died again… this time also in a way that seemed to preclude regeneration.

And then with very little explanation as to how it happened, ‘he’ came back as ‘she’. Perfectly fine if it had been a regeneration – oh how much we have wanted to see a regeneration from male to female – but again that was apparently not an option. He was dead and gone, no coming back. Yet suddenly she is back… did they give a reasonable reason why? Not that I noticed…

Finally, at the end of the last series, she is also killed and again regeneration seems unlikely… yet here she is, back and ready for more.

Now, to be fair, that last death may be more than it appears. I am willing to accept that since that episode’s final moments were all about lies (the Doctor’s lies to Clara about Gallifrey, her lies to him about being happy) its possible that her death was an elaborate illusion and she was merely teleported somewhere else with the appearance of being totally vaporised. It’s a trick used before in Who (the Big Brother episode in the Ecclestone series, for example) so I am willing to accept it is possible. However, it does not detract from the fundamental issue. Death should not be cheap.

Some characters are famous only for being killed…

Killing a character should have an emotional impact. Equally so should bringing them back from death. Having grown to love or hate them over the course of your reading or viewing of them, to have that character suddenly be taken from you should be a vicious and painful experience. As a reader or viewer you should feel that pain. However, the more you kill them and the more you bring them back the more you stretch the suspension of belief and the more you dilute the emotional impact. Recurring villains are great, a much loved staple of fantasy and SF and even less fantasy based stories such as the Three Musketeers, and used right they can be wonderful creations. However you can push it too far and using the ‘they’re finally dead for good and this time we mean it. Oh no, we totally didn’t mean it’ card too many times (or more than once, really) is not good storytelling. If you have a popular character who you think may be worth a reappearance it is better planning to not kill them off. Have them escape from being captured (the Master has done this a few times too) or simply slip out the back door while the heroes are battling the convenient distraction they arranged for them. This applies doubly to Time Lord enemies. After all, you already have a convenient and perfectly plausible method for them to come back from the dead (regeneration). Why have to go to all the effort of making up some new ways to bring them back after managing to eliminate that as an option? Fans would rather the enemy were still alive – so they and the heroes know they are still a threat – or able to come back in a way which does not seem too ridiculous and fits in with previous observed metaphysics of the way the universe works.

OK, yeah, in some universes (Marvel and DC I’m looking at you) the afterlife has a revolving door and characters pop in for a brief break between adventures only to pop back when sales of the comic drop. And let us not forget poor old Kenny in South Park. However, in most fictional universes, it is better to stick to a more realistic means of death in order to keep the audience with you. Less South Park, more Game of Thrones, make every death meaningful not a cheap joke or marketing ploy.

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D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.

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*Which incidentally also set up the canon that they can do that leaving the way clear for Moffat to have it happen to Matt Smith’s Doctor.

** May have been interesting at some point in all this to have seen a episode where he was trying to keep the Doctor alive out of enlightened self interest. After all, the more the Doctor dies and regenerates the less there is to steal…

Who will it be?

03 Monday Jun 2013

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So, over the weekend Matt Smith announced that he was going to leave Doctor Who after the Christmas Special. Of course, speculation about this has been ripe for most of the past series with rumours going about that he was leaving long before it started (which were largely denied) and a rather strange speculation (that was hotly denied) about this being the last ever series of Doctor Who. Now that the cat of out of the bag regarding WHEN Matt Smith will be leaving, thoughts inevitably turn to WHO will take over as the eponymous Time Lord.

Now, I have lived through a number of time lord regenerations (I have vague memories of Tom Baker regenerating into Peter Davison at the end of Logopolis when I was very young) and have been through the media and fan speculations about the next actor to take on the role. It used to be a big event on Blue Peter when I was at school where they would bring on the new actor, complete with costume, and talk with him about how he intended to portray the character. Generally there would also be lavish tabloid reports of various famous people taking on the role – people who had claimed to have been approached or even just people who may have just happened to have been talking to the current showrunner for a completely seperate reason. Usually, these are just cases of wishful thinking. Sean Connery and John Cleese have been among those tagged in these articles, despite neither of them being likely to have the time or interest with the fairly big Hollywood careers they both had at the time of being suggested.

Often, it tends to be someone relatively unknown at the time of casting. They may have done some previous acting for which they got recognition (Tom Baker was Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexander in 1971 and Koura in The Golden Vioyage of Sinbad in 1973, before he became the Doctor,and David Tennant was in Casanova) but by and large the first time you hear their name as a child who watches Doctor Who is when the casting is announced. There have been exceptions to this, of course. Christopher Ecclestone had been in a couple of things (I think he’d done some films somewhere in Hollywood you might have heard of 🙂 ) and William Hartnell had a  remarkably robust film career (including several Carry On films) but by and large unknowns have taken the part over well known actors. So, perhaps the speculation needs to be looking not at well known actors but at those on the fringes – the up and coming talent rather than the established names? A couple of names that have popped up in this mould include Andrew Scott (who played Moriarty in Moffat’s Sherlock – not a bad choice as he fits the model of the relative unknown who has also happened to have worked with the current showrunner before) and Ben Whishaw whose main claim to fame is the role of ‘New Q’ in Bond.

One thing I will say about this time, however, is that something is different. As Colin Baker said in his first appearance as the Doctor at the end of The Caves of Androzani: ‘Change, my dear, and not a moment too soon.’ Amongst the fairly predictable speculations for the role – the typical white middle class male archetype that the Doctor is often portrayed as – there are calls for some variety. There has long been interest in the Doctor being a woman, of course. I even commented on an article which speculated on who would play the role in all 11 incarnations if the Doctor had begun as female. This time, however, it seems to have become more urgent, with calls for Helen Mirren, Miranda Hart or Joanna Lumley to be appointed to the part. There is also another interesting request – that for the Doctor to change his ethnicity. One barrier in the way of this has been the simple fact that, so far, it has not happened – Time Lords by and large kept the same baisc gender and ethnicity. Though this has not stopped some considering the series to be racist because it has never changed the ethnicity of the lead character. However, that changed dramatically in ‘let’s Kill Hitler’ when River Song showed that it is perfectly possible for a young, black Time Lord to regenerate into a middle aged, white woman and has led me to wonder if Moffat was not setting things up for just such a change. Suggestions in this vein  have included Patterson Joseph (famous for Neverwhere and Hyperdrive), Chiwetel Ejiofor (famous for being the Operative in Serenity), Richard Ayoade (Moss from IT Crowd) and Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel. It seems that Geekdom may actually be ready for a gender or ethnically diverse character to step into the TARDIS. After all, Christopher Ecclestone has already transcended the North/South and class divides in the character and was seen to dabble in sexuality a little with his flirtations with Captain Jack. Can we break even more barriers with number 12*?

Of course, there could also be potential for a double whammy. Change the ethnicity AND the gender in one fell swoop… A name that has been cropping up in a few places is Lenora Crichlow, Annie from Being Human. Not only has she the geek credentials, she has also been in Doctor Who before (a fact which never stopped Colin Baker taking the part). There are even facebook pages dedicated to this.

I think it will certainly be interesting to see how this pans out. Internet and tabloid speculations have a habit of being wrong, especially when you consider the aforementioned tendency for a relative unknown to be given the job – that generally precludes anyone the media considers unless they are keeping a very careful eye on up and coming talent. Personally, I am unfortunately predicting a situation of no change – a white male. It may be a white male with some interesting other feature – an accent. an eccentricity, some new approach to the character – but it will be, by and large, the same basic character. I do not think that those involved in the series yet have the impetus to make such a radical change as to colour the Doctor’s skin or give him ladyparts save in jest (as happened in Curse of the Fatal Death which was interestingly written by Moffat indicating that he has at least considered a woman in the part). However, I do consider it a welcome sight that a large number of fans are seriously considering ethnic or gender diversity in a positive light. It is, I feel, a sign of the times, evidence that we do indeed live in an enlightened age where considerations such as race, gender and sexuality are less of an issue. Well, at least for those of us who are not hard core conservatives…

As for my own preference… if Patterson Joseph, Richard Ayoade or Lenora Chrichlow are not options then I would like to see Moffat’s old pal from Coupling, Richard Coyle, take up the role. I don’t think I have a lot of popular support in this one, I’ve not even seen anyone else mention him and I have been pushing for him ever since David Tennant left the role. However, for all that it is probably a lost cause, I think it would be nice to see him on TV again.

*Or is that number 13 if John Hurt as the forgotten Doctor is actually Doctor number 9, pushing all the subsequent ones up a number?