A Purely Personal Top Ten Doctor Who Stories (Classic)

I thought that the time had come for a Patient Centurion Top Ten Doctor Who stories. This is, of course, a temporary Top Ten. Ask me again in a month and it will probably change but nevertheless here goes...

Oh, and they are in no particular order of Top Ten-ness. I've chosen them on the basis of...well...I'll explain...

The Web Planet: I know. I can hear all your whinging now. It's so slow. Its direction is so slipshod. But you know I don't bloody care. I love it's vaulting ambition. It's an attempt to show an utterly alien world on a budget that can barely cover the cost of a single moth costume. I love this period in the Hartnell era when the Doctor Who production team kept trying everything. Some things work. Some things don't. And I still maintain that there's a couple of moments in it that are among the most horrible and heart-breaking in the series history. Honestly, it's a magnificent effort. It doesn't all work but I love it anyway.

The Gunfighters: Once the head of the cavalcade of the unloved in Doctor Who terms this is actually rather wonderful. William Hartnell is great in it. There are some comedy accents. Its tone shifts rather dramatically when Johnny Ringo arrives. It is historically inaccurate and it has a song. A chorus rising above the action. That I suspect is because the writer had recently seen 'The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral'. It is a fine parody of television and film Westerns. But really it is worth watching for as a demonstration of William Hartnell's brilliant comic timing. Dodo also gets something to do, which is nice.

The War Games: Ten episodes long. Ten. It shouldn't keep us glued to our seats but it does. Yes, it features lots of escaping, getting captured and escaping again but it is done with such panache. How can you not love it? Really. It is majestic. Patrick Troughton ends his time as The Doctor on the highest of high notes. Jamie and Zoe get possibly the saddest departure of any companions ever. We finally meet the Time Lords. And the scene where the Doctor and The War Chief set eyes on each other for the first time - and immediately recognize each other - is rather brilliant. The Patrick Troughton era suffers from a lot of missing stories, which is a shame for a lot of reasons but mostly because it deprives us of Patrick Troughton himself.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs: If you can ignore the rather dodgy T-Rex - which is the worst of the dinosaurs by miles - this is all rather brilliant, even if the whole thing seems to be a massive grandfather paradox waiting to happen. It has a deserted London, it has got U.N.I.T, it's got Sarah Jane, it has Pertwee at his most majestic and it's got Captain Yates, whose story is perhaps the most complicated of any 'companion' in the series history. It is a story arc before Doctor Who was supposed to do story arcs. It manages to feel epic despite the short-comings of both budget and effects.

Horror of Fang Rock: I could pick lots of Tom Baker but this is the first one I remember with absolute clarity as a child. It is the first one that I can remember being genuinely frightened of and it is still rather wonderful now. It is claustrophobic, relentless and dark. Everyone - almost - dies. It has Louise Jameson as Leela looking rather fetching in a wooly jumper*. Tom is brilliant. It has some fine lines in it and it is still rather creepy. Age has not withered it. Definitely a story for cold winter's evenings.

The Horns of Nimon: This is where I will lose a lot of people that might still be with me after The Web Planet. I can hear the tutting from here. But I don't care a jot. This is my comfort Doctor Who story. The story I reach for to cheer me up on those horrible days when nothing seems to go right. I'll admit now that I have a soft spot for all of Season Seventeen. That might be nostalgia but I love the Fourth Doctor and Romana combination, even if they are dangerously close to being too smart-arsey for their own good. I like K9. I like Graham Crowden's mad, mad Soldeed. I find it utterly joyful to watch from the first 'weakling scum' to the very end. How any Nimon have you seen today?

Kinda: Utterly unlike most other Doctor Who stories, this is all a little weird. Too weird for some people but I love it. I love the fact that it has layers. I like the fact that Janet Fielding gets to be more than just a walking Aussie whinge. I like Simon Rouse's performance. I love Nerys Hughes understated Todd. I love Richard Todd's appearance as a sort of representative of an England lost in the mist and is the perfect casting for the bumbling colonial chap**. It's a story you can watch over and over again. A story to get lost inside. Just be careful you don't find the Mara inside there with you.

Vengeance on Varos: The Colin Baker era gets a constant kicking. It's usually the butt of jokes. And yes, it has its problems. The Sixth Doctor's costume is ridiculous, he stays dark and unsympathetic for too long and there's just not enough joy to out-weigh the death and bleakness in some of the stories. This story has moments where the Doctor isn't behaving as the Doctor should - or the version of the Doctor in our heads - but it is still rather well-written and directed. Writer Philip Martin wrote the marvelous Gangsters, which I also recommend to your perusal - and plays with the fourth wall here a little too. Add Nabil Shaban's memorable Sil and you've got a winner.

Remembrance of the Daleks: Anyone who thinks Sylvester McCoy isn't a good Doctor should be strapped to a seat and made to watch this. Over and over again. This is a real tour-de-force and I remember this as the story that restored my shaken faith in Doctor Who after Season Twenty-Four (which in retrospect has more positive moments than I felt it did at the time.) It is well-acted, well-directed and well-written. This is the moment Ace and the Seventh Doctor establish themselves up there with Leela and the Fourth Doctor and Romana II and the Fourth Doctor as my favorite Doctor/Companion pairings*** It really is better than it probably had any right to be at this point. If you've not seen it you really should stop reading this immediately and go and watch it. Go on.

The Happiness Patrol: I love this story. For similar reasons to why I love The Web Planet. Only Doctor Who could - or would - do this kind of thing. Only Doctor Who would make such a wonderful parable on the wonders of melancholy and what it means to be a minority in a tiny studio with pink wigs and a villain that looks not unlike a certain Bertie Bassett. People get rather sniffy about this story. It's too obviously sets. Of course, it is. Terra Alpha is a Potemkin Village writ large. It looks artificial because it is artificial. Terra Alpha is an illusion. It's the creation of a woman who tried to do the right thing but couldn't understand why her people weren't happy with this right thing. It's pink and fluffy and all rather lovely.

There you go. That's my ten.

I'm sure you'll viciously disagree with some - or all - of my choices. You'd be wrong of course. My life in Doctor Who fandom has taught me that however bad a story is seen to be by fan consensus it is always someone's favorite. And however brilliant a story is there's always someone out there that hates it. Sometimes to a baffling degree of rage.

That's another of the fun bits of being a Doctor Who fan.

Be seeing you.


*I may have become obsessed with Louise Jameson in knitwear since watching The Omega Factor
**Richard Todd is also the focus of one of my favorite acting stories. During World War Two Captain Richard Todd was part of the second wave of British troops at Pegasus Bridge. When the film 'The Longest Day' was made Todd was cast as Major John Howard, who led the attack on Pegasus Bridge. Another actor played Captain Richard Todd. 
**Companion-Doctor favorites is a blog for another day.

The Fun Stuff

Picture From Dorkly's 12 Types of Doctor Who Fan

I've been a Doctor Who fan for a long time and there has never been a better time to be a Doctor Who fan. The show is popular, possibly more popular than it has ever been, and it has a genuinely global reach. There's enough merchandise out there to sink a battleship. You can watch it any time you like in a myriad of formats. There are websites and podcasts. You can interact with fellow fans on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even in the real world. Being a Doctor Who fan is acceptable. We're fans of one of the most popular shows on British television. The Doctor is one of the few genuinely mythological characters created by television whose existence passes beyond just television.

It's great.

And I have to remind myself of this periodically because I remember being a Doctor Who fan in the dark days. When watching Doctor Who was like raging against the dying of the light. When 'it's not as good as it used to be' was regularly repeated like a mantra by Doctor Who fans and non-Doctor Who fans alike. When being a Doctor Who fan made you an acceptable target not just for ridicule but actual bullying at school. [As an example of how this worked watch the conversation between Paul Cornell and Dr. Matthew Sweet in the latter's excellent Culture Show Doctor Who Special. If you can find it. That, my friends, is what it could be like at its worst]. 

Mostly, of course, it was mockery or bafflement that you were on the receiving end of, which are still quite common even today. If I had a pound for every time someone said "Yeah, but it's a kids show", I'd have £3,966. 

I was lucky. I never cared about how people felt about my Doctor Who obsessions to the point of being belligerently upfront about it. But I can understand why some Classic Doctor Who fans can come across as overly defensive and angry at new fans. The atmosphere in the tale end of Classic Doctor Who within fandom could be poisonousness. We learned our debating styles when things were ugly (and very, very male). That doesn't excuse shitty behavior but it does explain it a little.

Me, I always hung on to the joy that Doctor Who bought (and brings) me. It is still one of the few things that can make me deliriously and childishly happy. I watch every episode as two versions of me. The one is the now me. The bitter, cynical 43-year-old git who is archly critical and capable of spotting a continuity error at a thousand yards. The other is the 11-year-old me. Fresh-faced, excited and just in it for the FUN. He's the one that doesn't care about dodgy special effects, gaping plot holes, UNIT dating controversies or any of that kind of stuff. He just wants to escape. Sometimes the 43-year-old me wins but mostly the 11-year-old me does. 

And I try to hang on to that feeling because it is easily lost in all the criticism and cynicism and sheer bloody smart-arsery of the modern 24/7 online culture.  We sometimes forget amongst all the words and noise to just have fun.

Doctor Who has never been more popular. It's never been more accessible in either Classic or New Who form (and I'm not going to rant on here about how much I hate the artificial separation of Classic and New Who, even though I've fallen into the trap of using them myself all the bloody time).

It's fun being a Doctor Who fan now more than ever. Let's not lose that.

  

Telling Different Stories

So, I've been thinking about the 'Great White Saviour' that is the Doctor, although I usually don't think of him quite like that. There's a couple of reasons for that. Firstly Doctor Who is just a television programme so why would I think that deeply about the central character. [Yes, I know but imagine I am writing this as someone else who doesn't actually do that kind of thing.] Secondly it is embarrassing to admit that as a white, middle-class, straight man of a certain age I try to avoid thinking about the more 'old-school' aspects of the Doctor. Thirdly - and I apologize for coming over all Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition here - the Doctor's alienness seems to provide an excuse for excluding him from tedious Earth-bound questions about gender and race. He's from Gallifrey after all.

I blame the Verity Podcast for getting me thinking about this again. Having a voice outside my own head with experiences unlike my own and therefore perceptions of a different kind make you think. And I hate questioning my own ways of privileges. 

Anyway...let's put a line of thought together. Let's assume Gallifreyans have a flexible approach to skin colour and sex. Let's assume that a Time Lord can be male in one incarnation and female in the next. Let's not get too hung up for the moment on how that affects sexual relationships.* And let us assume that your first incarnation is pretty much a lottery, although with a tendency towards the Caucasian - if stories set on Gallifrey are anything to go by.**

Tilda Swinton - Perfect for The Doctor?

So The Doctor's first incarnation is - by fluke - a white male. He ends up spending a lot of time on Earth. He likes it and it so happens that being a white man seems to be a pretty safe thing to be in most periods of Earth's history. So when he regenerates he sticks with the white male outfit. After all, being white and male avoids a lot of tricky questions most of the time. (Lewis CK, the American comedian has an amusing routine along a similar line). Therefore the Doctor is a white male most of the time out of convenience.

There. I have provided a semi-logical reason for the Doctor's perpetual white maleness.

Now, let's step back into the real world - or what passes for the real world. What if we were to cast a black actor as the Doctor or a woman? I have no strong opinions on this anymore. I did once. I think I might have got over it. But let's assume they do. 

We immediately have a potentially very different television series. Not just because we've got a different Doctor but because we now have a political issue to deal with. Does the production team ignore the change - except to make one or two jokes about it - or do we confront a genuine issue: power and who has it. In any Earth-based story set in either the present or past does the production team behave as people are colour or gender blind to the Doctor's appearance (as they kind of did with Martha in the Shakespeare Code) or do we confront this head-on?

What if a Black Doctor found himself in the US during the Civil War? How would the powerful of - most - eras of Earth history react to female Doctor? Would the silencing of the non-white and the non-male be reflected in the stories? The Doctor's opinions dismissed because of his colour or her sex? Does every story require the new Doctor to do something impressive to emphasize his or her credentials in order to get over this problem or does it become a running issue? Does Doctor Who confront these things or gloss over them?

It's a big question. 

The 13th Doctor?

Personally, I'd love Doctor Who to get its teeth into these issues if we still have time for tea-time adventure. These issues can be tackled without being tediously politically correct or dull. The key is always the power of the story. And I'd prefer that to ignoring it altogether.

I don't know whether these things will ever happen. It does seem more likely we'll get a black or asian Doctor before we get a female Doctor. But even that step - as I hope I've outlined - brings with it political decisions. It's wouldn't - couldn't? - be business as usual. The world doesn't give an equal hearing to people of colour or women (without a fight) and to pretend otherwise might be a grievous fault.  

It would though be an interesting choice. And a chance perhaps to tell some different stories. 

*For theories on the sex lives of Gallifreyans I think another blog would be required. Well, not required as such. 

**Although perhaps this all white male thing is a phase Gallifreyans are going through at the time, like a fashion. Even it does appear to have lasted a bloody long time.