Doctorless Who
Jun. 11th, 2007 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI've been reading some reactions to the thing where now there's episodes mostly without the Doctor. Mostly they are not happy reactions. Because you see it is his show, so we wants to know about him.
But I was also thinking
if the Doctor is always around, and then bad things happen, then you can get the Torchwood Institute view that the Doctor is of the bad. But if you have bad things happen more or less without him then you get the idea this is a universe full of bad things and sometimes he turns up to fix them. Which is better.
Also, however clumsily, what we get from the Doctorless eps is a view of the Doctor from a different angle. Not the usual Doctor=center of the universe view, or following companions around. Starting from completely clueless and seeing where it goes. So that's new.
Someone said they couldn't think of many more ways to make the Doctor not be in the story. That to me is a most odd thing to say. Because a whole lot of stories have no Doctor in them, generally.
And it's not like there's a shortage of characters that are not the Doctor. We could see what meeting the Doctor has done to people's lives later. Do they all go off and save the universe a lot? Do they go back to their everyday lives and try and forget it all? Do they turn evil?
We could see a story from the point of view of the Doctor's arch nemesises. Not the actual ones, the ones more like the trio where the Doctor hasn't actually got around to noticing they exist.
Or there could be one like that ep of Babylon 5 that was about the repair guys. God knows there's a lot of repair work to do in the Doctor's wake.
There's bazillions of stories.
And that is why having those stories opens out the 'verse in a good way - it isn't just that being with the Doctor is great, it's being anywhere in the story, getting involved, doing your best with whatever the universe throws at you. RTD said on the confidential that the best bit of Doctor Who was the idea you could walk around the corner and there might be the TARDIS, ready to take you anywhere. Well these stories don't even need the TARDIS - adventure can come to you. Which, you know, somewhat less than reassuring, but since it is part of the purpose of DW to traumatise the younger generations all to the good.
It just makes it a universe full of adventures instead of just the one life full. I like.
... in theory. In practice it takes a lot of work. Even more than regular DW, because you can't depend on the presence of the Doctor to liven things up for you. Everyone has to be built real fast as well as a proper DW plot. Trickier.
Cool.
But I was also thinking
if the Doctor is always around, and then bad things happen, then you can get the Torchwood Institute view that the Doctor is of the bad. But if you have bad things happen more or less without him then you get the idea this is a universe full of bad things and sometimes he turns up to fix them. Which is better.
Also, however clumsily, what we get from the Doctorless eps is a view of the Doctor from a different angle. Not the usual Doctor=center of the universe view, or following companions around. Starting from completely clueless and seeing where it goes. So that's new.
Someone said they couldn't think of many more ways to make the Doctor not be in the story. That to me is a most odd thing to say. Because a whole lot of stories have no Doctor in them, generally.
And it's not like there's a shortage of characters that are not the Doctor. We could see what meeting the Doctor has done to people's lives later. Do they all go off and save the universe a lot? Do they go back to their everyday lives and try and forget it all? Do they turn evil?
We could see a story from the point of view of the Doctor's arch nemesises. Not the actual ones, the ones more like the trio where the Doctor hasn't actually got around to noticing they exist.
Or there could be one like that ep of Babylon 5 that was about the repair guys. God knows there's a lot of repair work to do in the Doctor's wake.
There's bazillions of stories.
And that is why having those stories opens out the 'verse in a good way - it isn't just that being with the Doctor is great, it's being anywhere in the story, getting involved, doing your best with whatever the universe throws at you. RTD said on the confidential that the best bit of Doctor Who was the idea you could walk around the corner and there might be the TARDIS, ready to take you anywhere. Well these stories don't even need the TARDIS - adventure can come to you. Which, you know, somewhat less than reassuring, but since it is part of the purpose of DW to traumatise the younger generations all to the good.
It just makes it a universe full of adventures instead of just the one life full. I like.
... in theory. In practice it takes a lot of work. Even more than regular DW, because you can't depend on the presence of the Doctor to liven things up for you. Everyone has to be built real fast as well as a proper DW plot. Trickier.
Cool.