BookTube: The books that introduced me to Doctor Who

 

Who is this Doctor Who?

Gee whiz, it took 13 years after Star Trek premiered before Star Trek movies began being produced, but Doctor Who got a theatrical film just 2 years after it began airing on television--and this happened while the series was still being produced.

The good Doctor began his television adventures in November 1963. Its second story arc introduced his greatest enemy--the evil Daleks. In 1965, this particular storyline was adapted into a movie.

Peter Cushing was cast as Doctor Who--and, yes, in this version, he's literally named "Who." This Doctor isn't an alien. Instead he's an entirely human and absent-minded inventor who had built his own time machine. The movie simplifies his origin considerably in this regard, which also simplifies the exposition necessary to get the story started. The original serial ran for for seven half-hour episodes for a run time of just under three hours. The movie runs 82 minutes, so had less time to introduce us to the characters and get to the actual adventure. 

So the Doctor becomes a human being. His three companions are still Susan, Ian and Barbara. But Susan--a fifteen-year-old in the series--becomes a 12-year-old in the movie. Barbara morphs into another granddaughter and Ian becomes Barbara's clumsy boyfriend. (In the series, they were Susan's school teachers--and Ian was more straightlaced hero rather than bumbling comic relief.)

The Doctor is showing Ian his TARDIS (that's a picture of the TARDIS interior above) when Ian stumbles into a lever and sends them to another planet. Here, they soon meet the Daleks.

What follows is a fun adventure, with the humans getting captured by the Daleks, escaping, befriending the humanoid Thals outside the Dalek city, then working with the Thals to prevent the Daleks from setting off a huge nuke and wiping out the Thals.

It's all good stuff, with Cushing's performance as the Doctor being the highlight of the film. No one does absent-minded brilliance as effectively and with as much a sense of fun as did Peter Cushing. Yes, he could also play evil characters better than nearly anyone else (see his Frankenstein movies or Star Wars for examples of that), but when he wanted to be lovable, then he was pretty darn lovable. And even detractors of his two Doctor Who films will concede that he's the best part of the movie. No matter how much you might love your real-life grandfathers, you'll find yourself wishing Cushing's Doctor was your granddad as well.

The adventure stuff is fun as well, though some scenes in which the Daleks discuss things among themselves to provide us with exposition do drag. The budget was obviously limited, but the production design gives us some pretty nice looking alien landscapes and the Daleks themselves are always great villains.

In the end, the humans and the Thals team up in a battle to stop the Daleks from firing their nuke. Getting to that scene, though, involved some dialogue that actually adds an interesting level of depth to the story. The Thals once had had a great civilization, but this was destroyed in a nuclear war years ago when they fought the race that would eventually mutate into the Daleks. So now they are complete pacifists. They will not fight.

But if they don't fight, they will die. The Doctor as to convince a people who have a perfectly understandable reason for being pacifists that they are going to have to re-learn how to fight a war. Though the movie clearly favors the "You have to fight!" side of this argument, the sincere struggle the Thals have with this concept adds a nice thematic backbone to the story.

Not all Doctor Who fans care for these movies. That it has its own seperate continuity from the TV series apparently isn't an issue. Many simply do not think its a very good film. It also has its fans, though, and I count myself among them. Despite its flaws, its a varient of the Doctor that I'm glad exists.

By the way, there are two theories out there for how to fit this movie and its sequel into the regular Doctor's continuity. Peter Cushing said that he thought of his Doctor as a future incarnation of the Doctor that had been mind-wiped of his knowledge that he was a Time Lord by the Celestial Toymaker, a villain from the classic series. I kind of like this idea, but that means he had to have had an adventure almost identical to one he had already had with three companions who just happened to have the same names as his original companions.

The novelization of the Doctor's 50th Anniversary special suggests that the Doctor was a friend of Peter Cushing and gave Cushing permission to adapt several of his early adventures into movies. Since I love the idea of Peter Cushing hanging out with a Time Lord, I am tempted to lean towards this theory. But this would also mean that the Cushing Doctor never really existed and what fun is that?

So I think we need to stick with the idea that there is a parallel universe out there in which Doctor Who is a human who looks like Peter Cushing and makes you wish he were your grandfather.

Daleks Changing History

The original version of Doctor Who ran for a quarter century. The quality of individual episodes during that time varied wildly, with episodes from late in the run featuring the Sixth and Seventh Doctors probably having the highest percentage of poor stories (though those incarnations of the Doctors themselves were excellent).

But the show was good more often than not, which adds up to an awful lot of well-told tales. So the nice thing about its long run is that there always seems to be yet one more four-part or six-part serial that I haven't yet gotten around to watching.

I've just watched "The Day of the Daleks," a four-parter from 1971 featuring John Pertwee as the Third Doctor. I wasn't unfamiliar with the story--as is the case with many of the classic series stories, I had read the novelization. But it was still nice to watch the original episodes.

At this point in the series, the Doctor was stuck on Earth--stranded there by the Time Lords with his Tardis out of order. He's working as the scientific advisor to UNIT, the military organization that's assigned to handle alien invasions, mad scientists and other dangers the regular military isn't generally equipped to handle. Since a lot of the threats they face are annoyingly immune to bullets, having the Doctor around to figure out how to beat the bad guys is advantageous.

This time around, the threat is an unusual one. International tensions are high; nuclear war is a real possibility; and the only person who seems to have a chance to negotiate a peace is a British diplomat named Sir Reginald Styles. So when Styles claims a ghost tried to shoot him, there is reason to be worried. The Doctor is sent to investigate.

What follows is a well-constructed science fiction tale with lots of action and a plot that makes clever use of time travel and time paradox. The would-be assassin comes from a future where Earth, devastated by centuries of war, had been conquered by the Daleks. 

Most humans (those few who survive and haven't sold out to the Daleks) are kept as slave labor, put to work stripping the Earth of its mineral resources. But a resistance group has formed, gathering arms and even stealing plans for a Dalek-designed time machine. 

Well, this gives the resistance an idea. According to their history, Sir Reginald Styles betrayed the other diplomats at a peace conference and blew them up. Though he accidentally blew himself up as well, the mass assassination ended any chance of peace, leaving the Earth easy pickings for the Daleks. So why not go back in time and kill Sir Reginald before he has a chance to put his own evil plan into effect? Won't that prevent war and, in turn, prevent the Daleks from ever taking over in the first place?

The trouble is that the time travel technology they are using is a little wonky, causing the first assassin to blink back to the future before he has a chance to shoot Sir Reginald. Also, the resistance's understanding of history may not be accurate, so killing Sir Reginald might not be a good idea. 

The Doctor and his current companion Jo (not my favorite companion--but you can't have everything) investigate. The Doctor, being the Doctor, soon has an inkling of what is happening. Jo, being Jo, accidentally teleports herself into the Dalek-ruled future. The Doctor ends up there himself before long, where he has to multi-task between escaping from the Daleks and their soldiers (brutal aliens called Ogrons) and convincing the resistance to help fix history properly. 

Various plot points and character arcs are neatly tied together by the end. As I mentioned above, this story is superbly constructed, merging various elements into a satisfying whole.

Special mention should to Aubrey Woods as the Controller, a human who supervises slave-operated factories for the Daleks. He's convinced that the Daleks can't ever be beaten, so helps them while trying to convince himself that he's also helping humanity in the only way possible. His interactions with the Doctor are fascinating and his eventual fate is simultaneously tragic and noble. 

I watched "Day of the Daleks" via a streaming service that shows a version with modernized CGI special effects, so the clip I'm posting below reflects this. I'm in the camp that feels as long as the original story is respected and left unchanged (I'm glaring at you, Mr. "Han no longer shoots first" Lucas), then improved special effects can be a nice addition. I feel the same way about the enhanced TOS Star Trek episodes that were released a few years ago. But an argument that the original special effects should be left intact is a fair one in its own right. I think you can make a case that the technological and budgetary limits on visual effects from that era forced viewers to fill in the gaps in visual realism with their own imagination. On the other hand, a cheesy visual effect might take you out of the story and detract from our enjoyment of it. It is actually a very personal thing that changes from one fan to another.  

"You’ll get a new head, Morbius. The crowning irony."

I've been listening to the recently produced Big Finish audio productions starring Tom Baker as Doctor Who. Baker has returned to the role after nearly four decades for a series of superbly written new adventures. He's in his eighties now, but darn it if he doesn't sound as energetic and fun as ever.

So that has put me in a Whovian frame-of-mind, causing me to pretty much randomly pluck a Doctor Who novelization off my shelf. I used to own quite a few of them, but bookshelf space limitations eventually forced me to pare them down to those novelizations of the Tom Baker years. He will always be my Doctor.

My Dr Who novels are faithfully guarded by Kirk, Spock,
McCoy and the Fellowship of the Ring!

Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius was published in 1977, based on a 4-part serial that was broadcast in 1976. The novel was written by Terrance Dicks, a writer and script editor for the series who was also the usual go-to guy for the novelizations. He was really good at that. The novelizations did include an occasional clunker, but if Dicks' name was on the cover, you could be certain you'd have fun reading it.

Dicks wrote the original script for the serial as well. His idea was for a Time Lord war criminal--reduced to a disembodied brain--having a new body built for him by a robot servant. The body would be a mish-mash of parts from different species because the robot had no aesthetic sensibilities. 

But the idea proved to be too expensive and had to be re-written to drop the robot. Dicks' was out of the country at the time and someone else did the re-write. Dicks asked that his name be taken off the finished script, which is why the novel's title page tells us that it is "based on the BBC television serial by Robin Bland."

Well, however unhappy Dicks may have been with the script, he did his usual excellent job on the novel. The Time Lord criminal is still there--Morbius had rebelled against the other Time Lords and launched a campaign of conquest and destruction across the galaxy, gathering up an army of fanatical followers from various planets.

One of those fanatics is a brilliant surgeon named Solon. When Morbius is caught and executed by the Time Lords, Solon manages to secretly save the brain and keep it alive. Now Solon lives on the desolate planet of Karn. He's used bits and pieces from different alien bodies to build a bizarre new body for Morbius, but has yet to find a suitable head for brain.

So when the Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane Smith arrive on Karn, Solon figures he's hit the jackpot. A Time Lord head is the perfect receptacle for Morbius's Time Lord brain.

What follows is a story that is deliberately modeled off of Frankenstein, gothic horror and Hammer horror films. Solon even has a deformed assistant--Condo is the big and nearly super-strong survivor of a spaceship crash. His left arm has been replaced by a metal one with a hook at the end. Solon keeps Condo under his sway by promising to eventually give him a new arm--not telling the poor guy that his original arm is now part of Morbius' body.

There's another faction on Karn as well. The Sisterhood live there as well, using the naturally occuring "Flame of Life" to produce the Elixir that grants them immortality. They were also enemies of Morbius (though they have no idea what Solon is up to), but initially think that the Doctor has been sent by the Time Lords to steal the Elixir. Telekinetic powers make them dangerous adversaries.

All these elements are mixed together to tell a suspenseful and often very creepy horror/sci-fi/adventure tale, with the plot continually twisting and turning.. The Doctor, as always, remains awesome throughout it all. Sarah Jane--always my favorite companion--gets her share of awesome moments as well--including a few even after she's been struck temporarily blind by the Sisterhood. Solon is over-the-top hammy, but that's just the right note to hit for his Mad Scientist role. 

By the way, if you ever go into the Mad Scientist field, don't abuse your deformed assistant. Solon isn't very nice to Condo and that comes back to bite him in the end. As for Morbius--who fulfills the role of Frankenstein's Monster in the story--when he finally gets the new body he's so desperately wanted, he tragically discovers that it isn't necessarily the blessing he thought it would be. 

The TV serial is a good one, with strong acting and pure imagination helping to make up for some of the low-budget special effects. The novel expands on some of the characterizations and Morbius' backstory and, of course, doesn't have to worry about a special effects budget. It's a faithful and entertaining version of the tale, well-worth finding and reading.

Unfrozen and ill-tempered Martians

I was first introduced to Doctor Who through novelizations of the television episodes. The first one I read was a Tom Baker story--Genesis of the Daleks--which I bought at a Stars and Stripes bookstore in Subic Bay.

When I got back to the States, Doctor Who was being broadcast in the U.S. on various PBS station. I'm pretty sure the first episodes I saw were from The Ark in Space, also a Tom Baker story.

Baker will always be my Doctor, but all the various Doctors (from both the old-school and new-school episodes) have brought something entertaining to the part. And I was introduced to many of the early Doctors through the novelizations, which were available in the States long before the actual episodes were.

So when some of those novelizations recently became available in electronic reprints, I snatched them up. With very few exceptions, the prose versions of the stories are well-written, fast-paced science fiction adventures that provide you with a perfect way to spend the 90 minutes to 2 hours it takes you to read one.

Take Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors, for example. Written by Brian Hayles in 1975, it was based on a 1967 story arc that starred Patrick Troughton as the Doctor.  Gee whiz, it's a lot of fun.

(By the way, I believe the broadcast version is one of a number of Troughton stories that are missing some episodes--all the more reason for appreciating the novelization.)

The wandering Time Lord is, at this time, travelling with Jamie (a hotheaded young Scotsman from the 18th Century) and Victoria (a very pretty gal from the 19th Century who does tend to scream and faint a little too often for my tastes).

The TARDIS plops them down near a scientific base in futuristic England, where that base is one of many using "Ionisers" to stave off a new Ice Age. Outside the base, England is now a snow- and ice-covered wilderness, with the glaciers slowly advancing despite the best efforts of Earth's scientists.

But that's not their only problem. It turns out that 5,000 years or so earlier, a Martian ship crashed on Earth and was frozen during the original Ice Age. Now the crew of Martian Ice Warriors have thawed out and have decided that an unplanned delay of five millennia is no reason not to continue their efforts to conquer our world.

This sets up the sort of "Last Stand" situation that Doctor Who has used any number of times, in which humans trapped in an isolated location are threatened by aliens. This time, it's a scientific base surrounded by glaciers. In other story arcs, the location has been a space station or a giant mobile mining complex or an undersea base.

Well, this time around the aliens need to raid the base to replace their deteriorated fuel supply. The humans need to keep the Ioniser running, but doing so might cause the reactor on the alien ship to explode. The guy in charge of the humans is intelligent enough, but unwilling to make a decision unless the master computer approves a specific course of action. His best scientist has thrown a snit and gone to live in the wilderness with other "scavengers," which includes a guy who thinks he can negotiate with the Ice Warriors because he hates scientists. (Don't try to follow his logic in this--he's pretty much just nuts.) And Victoria has soon gotten herself captured by the Ice Warriors, because next to screaming and fainting, being kidnapped is what Victoria does best.

This leaves the Doctor in a situation where, aside from rescuing Victoria, he has to gain the trust of the humans, help them get the Ioniser online before the base is crushed by glaciers and figure out how to stop apparently indestructible aliens. He manages to slap together a few scientific Macguffins that just might help him do the job.

It's a great little novel. I just re-read it in one sitting and had a ball. I admit I never cared for Victoria as a companion, but she does manage to stop screaming long enough to be useful a few times, so I'll be forgiving.

All other aspects of the story come together nicely--the danger generated by the Ice Warriors plays nicely off the tension that comes from the shortcomings of the various humans. As was usual for the original run of Doctor Who stories, you know that a few of the supporting characters are going to get killed, but you never know for sure which ones that will be. There aren't any obvious Red Shirts. In fact, one character death actually surprised me--it was someone I thought was being set up to play a larger part in the story.

This was, by the way, the first appearance of the Ice Warriors. I always thought these guys were good visual designs and effective villains, but they seem to have largely faded away--overshadowed, perhaps, by Daleks and Cybermen. Well, one never knows. They may make a comeback someday.

Tom Baker will always be my favorite Doctor, but I'd happily step into the TARDIS with pretty much any of them.