You’ve probably seen this everywhere already: The new Doctor Who companion has been announced. I don’t know anything about the actress yet, but I’m not surprised by her look. Do you suppose that Stephan Moffatt would ever hire a woman who looked like, say, Catherine Tate? Nah, didn’t think so.
I once made a (not quite so solemn) vow that I would never set foot in a comic book shop again. No, I don’t remember why. But I do have an idea of the reason I’ll soon have for breaking that vow, maybe.
Oh man, this is exciting: Two old Doctor Who episodes previously thought lost forever have been found. That’s the good news. The bad news is that one of the episodes from The Underwater Menace. (“Nothing in ze vorld can stop me now!”)
Well, that’s it. We get one more Doctor Who episode at Christmas, and then it’s a nine month slog before the 2012 season starts. Even if I’m not exactly thrilled about it, it’s not like we haven’t had to abide the Doctor’s return before–Who fans are, after all, The Fans That Waited. But even though this upcoming wait will be a relatively short one, we’ve still got a fair amount of time to kill until our favorite TV show comes back. What are we supposed to do in the meantime?
During the wilderness years, the spirit of Doctor Who was kept alive by its fans–some of whom went on to produce an officially licensed series of novels, intended as a continuation of the seventh Doctor’s story. Published by Virgin under the name “The New Adventures,” these books were a big part of Who fandom, as important to them as the Expanded Universe is to Star Wars geeks. The New Adventures would eventually give way to other venues for Doctor Who stories, but their significance can not be overstated. They are as close to scripture as fandom fiction can get.
I suppose that it is now embarrassing confession time: Though I was certainly around during the era that the New Adventures were published, I haven’t actually read them.
Wait! Let me tell you my excuses! Then you can excommunicate me.
You have to remember that this was before the Internet was a consumer product. When Doctor Who disappeared from the rotation of my local PBS station, all contact that I had with the show was completely cut off. I was too young to join the local Whovians, I had no idea that the Doctor Who Appreciation Society existed, and wouldn’t have known how to join up even if I did. Doctor Who Magazine was something only rarely encountered in the dealers’ room at the occasional Star Trek convention–not even my local comic book shop carried it. As a lone nerd in the American wilderness, the whole franchise just seemed to disappear over night.
What’s more, I’m not even sure how many copies of the New Adventures made it to the States. Even if it was more than a few of them, it’s not like I had a local bookstore to check, if had even known to be checking in the first place. I first found out about the damn things around the time of the TV movie, when I got a copy of DWM that mentioned them, as a Christmas present. And by that time, it was too late. That interstellar cruse-liner had sailed.
Sadly, I did what a lot of other fans did during the interregnum. I mourned for a little while, and then got on with it. I slowly learned to accept the loss of something that had been a huge part of my life, and eventually came to accept that the whole thing was well and truly dead.
In 2002 though, something seemed to change. They started releasing the old stories on DVD; I found a comic book shop that stocked DWM; And, most important of all, a new range of Doctor Who novels started appearing at the bookstore in the neighborhood that I had moved to. I had toyed with the fandom a little bit after the Internet had come along, of course, but I wasn’t that interested in the fans. I wanted product. And here it was, at last.
I stopped being embarrassed about my Who-loving past. I rediscovered my deep and abiding love for all things Doctor-related. It was a joyful time. I had been a big fan, before. I was suddenly a big fan all over again.
But I still hadn’t read the New Adventures.
And that, but for a few exceptions, remains true today. I read a couple of them when they were published for free on the BBC’s Doctor Who page. (They seem to have been removed, now.) I ran across a couple of volumes at a few far-flung used book stores. But for the most part, I remain almost completely unexposed to the New Adventures.
Of course I want to read them–but then again, I also kind of don’t. For one thing, what little I’ve read tends to exemplify the worst of the tics that science fiction writing is prone to. At best it’s sort of clunky, and at worst it makes even the most amateurish fanfic look beautifully poetic. But mostly it kind of bothers me that it’s the fact that I haven’t read the New Adventures that bothers me.
I mean, back when they were all we had, and we had to support them if we wanted the weak flame of the franchise to continue to burn, then yes, it might have been worth it. But there’s just no reason to read them now, is there? Unless there’s a massive aesthetic disparity between the stuff that I have read and the stuff that I haven’t, of course. And the books are only conditionally canon at this point–they stand up only as long as the TV show doesn’t directly contradict them. (And I kind of hope Lungbarrow gets wiped from the DW universe, thank you very much.)
But maybe it’s time to put all that aside. Maybe it’s time to dig in, to let it just wash over me, and to see what all the fuss was about.
So that’s what I’ll be doing, while I wait for the next series of Doctor Who to arrive. I hesitate to call this a reading project, since I can’t be sure that I’ll be able to get a hold of every New Adventure that was published, or that I’ll truly be able to get through some of the really dodgy writing that no doubt litters the series. But, as a savage warrior named Leela once said: I will try.
* * *
Incidentally: You could probably say much of the same things about the Eight Doctor Adventures as what I’ve said about the New Adventures. But, lord help me, that’s just not a task I feel up to at the moment. Maybe next year.
Punt!
In jest, I once said to a friend that Doctor Who had come to replace religion in my life. I did not know that such a thing was literally possible.
They say that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, and others say that plot isn’t everything, but: With regards to tonight’s episode of Doctor Who, I think it’s worth bringing up a point or two that might draw attention to my tiny brain. I found the hand-waving explanation of the purpose of the hotel very unsatisfying. As with many fictional stories, the setting here existed only as an excuse for the writer to manipulate the emotions of the audience–in this case, to invoke fear and tension. But, I prefer it when a scenario is presented in a way that the whole thing hangs together. The whole, “Oh, it makes you afraid so that you’ll fall back on your faith, which it then converts and eats somehow,” explanation doesn’t actually explain anything.
I know, I know. “Well, did the story scare you a little bit?” Well yes, but–”So, why are you complaining? C’mon, relax a little!” All righty then, but I still say: Plots that rely heavily on writerly convenience may as well be broadcast with the words “YOU ARE WATCHING TELEVISION” constantly flashing on the screen.
This story mentions a fellow who happens to own the world’s largest collection of toy Daleks, but who also happens to hate Doctor Who. Fair enough. It turns out that I am a big fan of Doctor Who, but not much of a fan of the Daleks.
Well, I don’t hate them, exactly; it’s just that I think they’re a little over-used as baddies go, and after seeing them take a pounding so often throughout the series’ history, I’d be perfectly happy to give them a good, long rest. I appreciate that New-Who tried to make them scary again in “Dalek,” but they went from only having one show up, to having a million billion kajillion show up in the season finale, and just like that they lost any impact they might have had.
Some video posting weirdness going on today, so you get a link instead: The Most Terrifying Cat in the Whoniverse. Creepy weeping angel action, only it’s with, you know, a cat.
Good news: There’s a Doctor Who-themed bar! Bad news: It’s in Brooklyn. Not that there’s anything wrong with Brooklyn (I mean, how would I know?)–it’s just that I’m more than three thousand miles away from there, which means I’m as likely to get to see this place as I am the Fitzroy Tavern. That is, very, very unlikely.
