Timeless Adventures (26 page)

Nostalgia, both for
Doctor Who
’s own past and the country’s past glories, is another theme running through the final three years of the show.
Delta and the Bannermen
was a fast-moving, three-episode romp from the middle of season 24, set in and around a 1950s holiday camp that is visited by time-travelling tourists, a runaway princess (the last of her race) and a genocidal general (Don Henderson) intent on her elimination. With lots of period music, anachronistic detail and culture-clash humour, the story could easily fit in with the brash approach of some episodes of the most recent version of
Doctor Who
.

Like the twentieth season before it,
Doctor Who
’s twenty-fifth year on air was an excuse for narrative celebration. Opening with
Remembrance of the Daleks
(nostalgically set in 1963, the year of
Doctor Who
’s debut), the season tackled racism and racial purity through the Daleks and the rise of modern fascism. Nazi ideology recurred in
Silver Nemesis
, a Cybermen adventure broadcast around the show’s actual twenty-fifth anniversary.

Postmodern pastiche found a new, audience-friendly form during this period too, with characters in
Dragonfire
all named after prominent film theorists, while much of the narrative (including the origins of new companion Ace) mirrored
The Wizard
of Oz
. This kind of cultural sampling and remixing was relatively new, but it would go on to become a dominant mode of expression in pop culture. When Ace sees a TV announcer introducing a new programme on British TV in November 1963, only the audience are aware that
Doctor Who
is referring to itself. Self-reflexivity may have reached exhaustion, however, in the cleverly titled
The Greatest Show
in the Galaxy
, which saw the Doctor trapped in a psychic circus, battling the gods of Ragnarok. As well as playing with well-worn imagery like scary clowns, haunted circuses and werewolves, this serial featured a character called Whizzkid, an obsessive fan of the circus who has followed its development and collected the associated merchandise. He complains that the circus ‘is not as good as it used to be’. This portrait, within the narrative of the show, of a
Doctor Who
fan (referred to disparagingly as ‘barkers’ by Nathan-Turner, and ‘ming mongs’ by Russell T Davies) was about as insular as it was possible to get.

Besides new myths, the final episodes also featured new ways of looking at old myths or old stories. Norse mythology was plundered for both
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
and the final season’s
The Curse of Fenric
(set in the Second World War).
The Curse of
Fenric
also featured material drawn from Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
effectively mixed with the development of British computing and the quest of wartime code-breaker Alan Turing to smash German ciphers. Arthurian tales provided a strong narrative backbone for the final season’s opening story,
Battlefield
(nostalgically reviving the Brigadier one last time, and attempting to update UNIT), while female folklore provided a new angle on a traditional good-versus-evil story in
Survival
(written by Rona Munro, the last of a very few female writers for the original series).

Cartmel’s interest in comic books played a large part in his development of
Doctor Who
. The Dalek Emperor (really Davros in disguise) portrayed in
Remembrance of the Daleks
was drawn directly from
Doctor Who
’s own comic-book past in the 1960s TV comic,
TV21
. A lot of the absurdist look and feel of
Doctor Who
in the years 1986– 9 was in tune with successful British comic
2000AD
, especially stories like
Paradise Towers
and
The Happiness Patrol
. Fan input in the series culminated with a fan writing for the show for the first time since Andrew Smith and
Full Circle
in 1980. Fanzine contributor and aspiring TV writer Marc Platt got
Ghost Light
into production, playing with themes of evolution and change, overlaid with a strong dash of Victorian literature. The haunted-house setting and the confrontation with events in the Doctor’s companion Ace’s past gave the complicated notions a strong emotional grounding. They also built on a mini story arc for the character that showed her maturing throughout the final year the show was on air. This more proactive approach to a companion would inform Russell T Davies’s ideas years later.

Cartmel had a bigger plan in mind when it came to developing the Doctor. He and the group of young writers he was working with were drawing on their own memories of
Doctor Who
in refashioning the show. They all recalled a time when the mystery of who the Doctor was featured regularly, so wanted to return that element, which had been diluted with the addition of Gallifrey and the Time Lords to the programme’s growing and increasingly complicated mythology. Cartmel’s answer was to graft a new mythology on top of the old, with hints in various episodes that the Doctor was ‘more than a Time Lord’ pushing the character ever more in the direction of a superhero. Other characters would refer to the Doctor’s mysterious origins or claim privileged knowledge of his secrets. These secrets were never divulged to the viewer, and it was not really clear if Cartmel genuinely had a destination in mind when he started this process. Whatever his intention, he did provide fuel for years of fan speculation that would keep
Doctor Who
stories going in other media throughout the fallow period of the 1990s when the series was mostly off air.

Doctor Who
’s ratings had suffered a terminal collapse from
The
Trial of a Time Lord
season onwards. From average highs of 14.5 million for
City of Death
in 1979, audience figures had collapsed within a decade to 3.6 million for
Battlefield
, a fall of over 75 per cent. The failure of the show to engage with the political and social realities of the 1980s, and the producer’s interest in pleasing minority fan culture, had turned off the popular audience.
Doctor Who
had become a show made for fans, with many creative decisions serving to alienate the wider audience that the show had succeeded in capturing in the 1960s and 1970s. This loss of popular affection (audiences in the 1980s loved the nostalgic idea they had of the show, but not the version on TV starring Baker and McCoy) led directly to a loss of support for the ageing series within the BBC.

Survival
saw out the original series, returning the show to its roots in contemporary London (this time 1989, rather than 1963). This tale of cat people arriving on Earth from their own doomed planet and hunting contemporary teens was full of ambitious ideas (like much of
Cartmel-period Doctor Who
), but was let down by its execution. A final battle between the Master and the Doctor brought
Doctor
Who
to a premature close. There were many ideas yet to be explored and many more worlds to visit, but time had been called on a series that had suffered more than its fair share of missteps through the 1980s. The Doctor’s future would now be in the hands of his fans.

In the 1980s, organised
Doctor Who
fandom became notorious for its involvement in affecting the direction and content of the TV series. Collective, organised fan action has, at different times in its history, both benefited and harmed the show. The twenty-first-century revival of
Doctor Who
may be a popular ratings hit, but it is creatively driven by writers, directors and even actors who grew up as active fans of the original TV series. Writer-producer Russell T Davies was just such an active fan, who went on to write a professional spin-off novel (
Damaged Goods
) while forging a TV scriptwriting career from the early 1990s that led to him reviving the series he loved. Steven Moffat, his replacement after five years, had been just as active in fandom and a regular attendee at London fan pub get-togethers, as well as writer of the affectionate 1999 Red Nose Day
Doctor Who
spoof
The Curse of Fatal Death
. Writers for the new show, like Paul Cornell and Gareth Roberts, cut their creative teeth in
Doctor Who
fandom, while the Tenth Doctor himself, David Tennant, was also a self-proclaimed, knowledgeable fan of the original series whose reason for becoming an actor was to play that role.

These people are the most visible members of a very active and creative group that gathered around
Doctor Who
. More than most media-driven fandoms, the
Doctor Who
fan community has proved to be a creative hotbed that not only provided an outlet for the passions of fans, but kept the series alive when it was off air and created positive new directions for it to move in. While many fans were content to express their own creativity through producing fanzines, fan-made videos or stage productions, and many others were happy simply to participate in the consumption of this material (perhaps contributing through the letter columns), some were driven to pursue professional creative careers, having honed their craft in the worlds of
Doctor Who
fandom. It was a natural conclusion to all this activity that the lunatics should one day take over the asylum, and fans would be in the professional position of producing (and starring in) the show itself.

Doctor Who
fandom had its origins in the 1960s. Two years after the series’ debut the BBC officially sanctioned the William (
Doctor
Who
) Hartnell Fan Club, run by an enthusiastic fan from Stoke-on-Trent. Members would receive signed photos of the cast and an occasional duplicated newsletter. With the change of lead actor to Patrick Troughton in 1966, the organisation became the Official
Doctor Who
Fan Club, but the material it produced continued along the same lines, if slightly more in depth (as would be expected from a growing, more experienced organisation). By 1969, the club was being run by Graham Tattersall, who continued to forge good connections with the
Doctor
Who
production office secretaries and developed the club magazine further, expanding it to include coverage of the new show occupying
Doctor Who
’s Saturday time slot,
Star Trek
. As the 1970s dawned, Tattersall found he could no longer afford to devote the time, energy and expense needed to run the club single-handed.

In 1971, an Edinburgh-based fan, Keith Miller, took over the running of the club, producing a revamped newsletter using equipment at his school. When this became impractical, Miller arranged for the
Doctor
Who
production office itself (now under Barry Letts) to duplicate and mail out the newsletter to his members. The content of the magazine (called
DWFC Mag
by 1973) developed in sophistication and began to include interviews with the series’ cast arranged through the production office. Miller (accompanied by his mother) even visited Television Centre to see the series in production. As the popularity of the show grew, so too did the membership of the club, entering the thousands and spreading worldwide in the wake of the show’s overseas sales. Miller found the growing club difficult to manage, and wound it up by mid-1976, moving on to produce his own paid-for ‘fanzine’ (a ‘fan magazine’ produced by amateurs, usually on a single topic like a TV show, a football club or a pop band) called
Doctor Who
Digest
.

Just as Miller was opting out of his
Doctor Who
activities, the seeds of the
Doctor Who
Appreciation Society (DWAS) were sown in the mid-1970s. The growth of independently produced fanzines (thanks to developments in copying technology) brought together several people who’d previously been part of Miller’s growing network, among them
TARDIS
magazine editor Gordon Blows and Jan Vincent Rudzki. The core of the DWAS effectively grew out of a group of
Doctor Who
fans who attended the University of London’s Westfield College, combined with some of Miller’s most active members. The organisation, officially recognised by the BBC, was founded in October 1975, and was rolled out nationally in May 1976.

Membership grew slowly, with members regularly receiving Society newsletter
Celestial Toyroom
, but the DWAS served as a group around which greater
Doctor Who
fandom could orbit. Independent fanzines flourished in the 1980s (as photocopying and cheap printing made their production even easier, even if circulation only reached a few hundred) and local groups (whether formerly affiliated with the DWAS or not) appeared across the country, holding regular meetings. Being a
Doctor Who
fan moved from being a solitary pursuit to a communal activity, with a growing shared language and set of references.

In 1977, the first
Doctor Who
convention was held in Battersea, London in a church hall, and gave rise to a regular series of events, each growing in size in terms of venue and attendance. Through the years to come, those running the Society (the self-named ‘Executive’) would change when their personal lives or jobs changed, giving opportunities to others (usually involved fans who’d managed to make connections with the people already running things). Thus a readymade chain of succession within organised fandom meant that the DWAS continues to exist today, although it has a far less pivotal role in a much more diffuse, Internet-based fandom.