When will Doctor Who start taking itself seriously?

[davejames]

The storylines of the old series were like watching a long Flash Gordon serial, but with a stagey play-like vibe to it. It was punctuated equilibrium in which lots of standing around and talking was interrupted with some action now and then. This allowed you to immerse yourself into the world enough to give it a sort of faux-epic-sweep to it before you're yanked out and into the next plot-line. These days it's wham-bam-thank-you-mam which is just a byproduct of people's shorter attention-spans.

Unfortunately there was rarely anything terribly interesting that was said during all that extra talking and standing around on Classic Who. I'm a huge fan of that era, but I think it's a stretch to say that the plots were any deeper or more complex than those in New Who.

Frankly I'd rather have the slightly more rushed storytelling of today over the incredibly padded and stretched out storytelling of the classic show, where they took 30 minutes of plot and stretched it over 4 or 6 episodes.

 

[The Doctor]

When will Doctor Who start taking itself seriously?

Never, hopefully. Doctor Who has been a sensation: the oddly alchemical combination of childlike whimsy and dramatic weight that has transported me back to my childhood every Saturday evening for the past nine years. I love the show dearly.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Both Blink and Human Nature-cited as examples of different episodes by Davejames-are actually based on Who's "expanded Universe, oddly enough. They have the same writers as their print forms though-Moffat and Cornell.

"Blink" is based on an annual story (when those were relaunched soon after the show returned), while "Human Nature" on the 90s New Adventures novels. Both featured different Doctors than their transmitted versions-Ninth on the first, Seventh in the second. There's actually-in retrospect-a funny scene where an alien (From what eventually becomes The Family Of Blood in the episode) pretends to be a future incarnation of the Doctor. The number of the incarnation? Tenth!

 

[Starkers]

The Lodger was also based on an annual story as well, with Ten staying with Mickey I believe?

 

[Sindatur]

The Lodger was also based on an annual story as well, with Ten staying with Mickey I believe?

10 and Mickey? That could be pretty fun, if it's still Klutzy Mickey. Hero-Stud Mickey, though, would be too equal, IMHO.

 

[The Wormhole]

The Lodger was also based on an annual story as well, with Ten staying with Mickey I believe?

I thought it was a DWM comic story?

 

[I am not Spock]

Not every show can be Game of Thrones. Doctor Who has always been for a family audience. When they tried to make the Who universe adult, with Torchwood, the results were very mixed. Only Children of Earth, I think, is actually that good (of the spin off).

 

[Lance]

Ultimately, I long ago realized that the Doctor Who universe is happy to run by its own rules, and it isn't afraid to contradict itself completely from one story to the next. Doctor Who doesn't really "do" coherent believable 'verse-building in the same sense as many other sci-fi franchises out there. It just isn't in the spirit of the show and its format (and I can vouch, as a long time fan from the old days, that it has always been like that). It isn't like Star Trek, which establishes a set of narrative rules and then tries to live within them..... no, Doctor Who instead creates its own rules on an episode-by-episode basis.

I used to obsess over every little continuity problem or every ridiculous nuance ("But Science Doesn't WORK That Way!"), but I've long since come to the conclusion that this is what Doctor Who is like. The moment one realizes that we aren't going to get 'realism' out of this show is the moment one can finally accept it *all*, completely and unconditionally. I know that's how it worked for me.

Every Doctor Who story exists within it's own bubble, and follows on it's own fractured logic, not related to real-life or even necessarily with other Doctor Who stories. The only thing that matters to Doctor Who is the story being told in the current episode. It's almost more like an anthology series, in a way.

 

[Ovation]

In answer to the original question: I hope never. Its lack of taking itself too seriously is what I most love about the show.

 

[mos6507]

Unfortunately there was rarely anything terribly interesting that was said during all that extra talking and standing around on Classic Who.

That's kind of a sweeping statement. I'd like to see a fan take one of those classic who episodes and recut it to remove what he or she feels is all the extraneous standing around and talking. A lot of the charm of it is the languid pace, which allowed for sort of the musical rhythm of the dialogue going back and forth. No, it wasn't Shakespeare, but it did give the actors more room to chew the scenery, even when it barely advanced the plot, and I found that entertaining to watch.

Remember that there are youtube clips like this out there that attempt to "cut to the chase" with stories. All story can be reduced to a tiny montage of the major plot-points. But the enjoyment of watching something isn't just to find out what happens. It's to watch how it unfolds, beat by beat.

Also, when viewed back-to-back, a classic who story might lag, but as first-run, when you had to wait around to catch the next 30 minute chunk, it had a totally different feel to it. Delayed gratification is something people today simply can't comprehend.

 

[Lance]

Unfortunately there was rarely anything terribly interesting that was said during all that extra talking and standing around on Classic Who.

That's kind of a sweeping statement. I'd like to see a fan take one of those classic who episodes and recut it to remove what he or she feels is all the extraneous standing around and talking. A lot of the charm of it is the languid pace, which allowed for sort of the musical rhythm of the dialogue going back and forth. No, it wasn't Shakespeare, but it did give the actors more room to chew the scenery, even when it barely advanced the plot, and I found that entertaining to watch.

Absolutely right. The way things were done back then, Doctor Who was shot more like a multi-camera studio sitcom, so in essence it's more like watching a theater performance that just happens to have been shot with cameras. Unless they were shooting on location (on film), the camera was far less 'involved in the action', so to speak. The actors were instructed to hit their marks and whole scenes would be recorded in a series of single takes, with cameras switching between different angles in real-time, so there's much more "immediacy" to the performances. Because they're instantaneous. This contrasts with a lot of shows produced with single camera (like Star Trek), because on those shows each individual angle of a scene would be shot separately, and then be cut together in the editing room afterwards. So, unless it was a single camera move with no cuts, then what you're seeing is essentially more 'fabricated'. You might be seeing a dozen different performances from a dozen different takes, all spliced together. So it feels less like a live performance, but it is (arguably) a lot more polished in the final product.

when viewed back-to-back, a classic who story might lag, but as first-run, when you had to wait around to catch the next 30 minute chunk, it had a totally different feel to it. Delayed gratification is something people today simply can't comprehend.

Also true. We tend to forget in this day and age, when we can all watch a Doctor Who in one sitting, that the intended format was only meant to entertain for half an hour per week, and it could take anything between four and twelve weeks for a single 'serial' to play out. Watching them on DVD actually magnifies the faults, because plot holes appear between episodes which were never evident on their original broadcast (nobody was expected to remember every detail about last week's episode).

 

[Starkers]

There are plenty of classic serials that drag, plenty filled with a lot of padding, but one thing the classic show did well was create a sense of foreboding, an eerie atmosphere. The new show has found that much harder to do, aside from rare exceptions like Blink and Midnight). Sometimes in the new series the reveal of the monster etc. comes too quickly because they’ve got a more limited time frame to work with.

Horses for courses, I think there are plenty of classic serials that could do with having some of the fat trimmed, but by the same token more than a few new series episodes could do with having their runtime extended to let the story breathe more.

 

[The Wormhole]

Also, when viewed back-to-back, a classic who story might lag, but as first-run, when you had to wait around to catch the next 30 minute chunk, it had a totally different feel to it. Delayed gratification is something people today simply can't comprehend.

To an extent, yes, they can be better when watched through "delayed viewing." For example, Trial of a Time Lord worked better for me the first time I watched it and could only watch one or two episodes a day than it did later when I was able to watch each of its individual stories in one sitting. But usually its story dependant. There are some stories I did watch all in one sitting and really loved and others I watched one episode per day and grew bored. And there even some (like The Talons of Weng-Chiang) where I watched half the serial, took a break, and when I came back to watch the rest it felt like I ruined the flow of the storyline. I've discovered there is no "correct way" to watch classic Who, just whatever is convenient.

 

[Ubik]

There have been a lot of good, interesting answers here. There seems to be a consensus, though, that I honestly have trouble understanding, and that is that Doctor Who NOT really changing or ever taking itself seriously is a good thing. That kind of begs the question, doesn't it, as if I asked, "Why won't it change?" to which the answer is, "Why should it?" Well, clearly that's not an answer, but an indication that one finds the question irrelevant or not worth engaging with. But that is precisely my question - why do fans believe the idea of the show taking itself more seriously (not TOO seriously, thank-you, just MORE seriously), is a bad idea? Why the resistance to the idea? By all accounts, when the show DOES do that, they occasionally create a masterpiece.

Look - Doctor Who fans are not unintelligent fans. They are, in some ways, more perceptive and honest about what they see than many Star Trek fans, fans of a show, arguably, that has much more serious intentions. And Doctor Who fans are aware of when they see something truly brilliant and exceptional - Earthshock, Caves of Androzani, The Doctor Dances, Blink, Midnight - so, clearly, these fans are not without critical faculties. They give credit where credit is due. They recognize that some episodes are clearly far and above other episodes in quality.

And yet, and yet - Robot of Sherwood gets 5-star reviews all over the internet. "Brilliant!" they say. "Witty!" "Absolutely engaging!" they say. 5 Stars! 5 Stars! 5 Stars!

But wait a minute - if Robot of Sherwood is 5 stars, what is City of Death, or The Romans? If Into the Dalek is 5 Stars, then what is Genesis of the Daleks? Isn't there a curve here? How can we give Into the Dalek and Robot of Sherwood 5-Star reviews, when we know the show is capable of City of Death and Genesis of the Daleks?

So, here's what I see happening: Doctor Who fans tend to be extremely perceptive and generous when the show creates brilliance, but they CHOOSE to put aside their critical faculties whenever an episode doesn't hit those incredible highs. It's an intellectual decision, I think. It's like trying to find the good bits in your annoying brother-in-law. They know that the show rarely hits those highs, so they choose to pretend that the rest of the time, it's hitting very close to those highs anyway. (Robot of Sherwood, 5 Stars? Really? Really?) How else can we explain 4 and 5-star reviews on episodes that come NOWHERE CLOSE to being as good as Doctor Who can be? This is part of what I mean when I say that the show doesn't take itself seriously enough, most of the time. The fans don't seem to, either. They seem perfectly happy when a show that has created Blink and Midnight and Girl in the Fireplace can so very often not even bother getting out of bed in the morning.

But can't we expect and hope for episodes at least closer in quality to episodes like those classics more often? Shouldn't we hold the show to those high standards, the way, say, Deep Space Nine fans tended to? (There's a fanbase that expected great things from its show, and had no trouble calling a turkey a turkey, let me tell you.) Why the laissez-faire attitude? Why is good enough good enough?

 

[MacLeod]

Well if the formula works, why change it? Don't get me wrong ts good to mix it up a little every now and then but if you stray too far too often from what works you might lose audiance.

Star Trek is largely formulaing, the Bond films followed the same formula more or less.

 

[The Wormhole]

There have been a lot of good, interesting answers here. There seems to be a consensus, though, that I honestly have trouble understanding, and that is that Doctor Who NOT really changing or ever taking itself seriously is a good thing. That kind of begs the question, doesn't it, as if I asked, "Why won't it change?" to which the answer is, "Why should it?" Well, clearly that's not an answer, but an indication that one finds the question irrelevant or not worth engaging with. But that is precisely my question - why do fans believe the idea of the show taking itself more seriously (not TOO seriously, thank-you, just MORE seriously), is a bad idea? Why the resistance to the idea? By all accounts, when the show DOES do that, they occasionally create a masterpiece.

The format of Doctor Who is what drew many of us to it, and has worked to make the show one of the leading sci-fi franchises and a pop culture icon for fifty years. The format works, why should it change. What could possibly motivate the BBC to fix that which ain't broke?

Look - Doctor Who fans are not unintelligent fans. They are, in some ways, more perceptive and honest about what they see than many Star Trek fans, fans of a show, arguably, that has much more serious intentions. And Doctor Who fans are aware of when they see something truly brilliant and exceptional - Earthshock, Caves of Androzani, The Doctor Dances, Blink, Midnight - so, clearly, these fans are not without critical faculties. They give credit where credit is due. They recognize that some episodes are clearly far and above other episodes in quality.

Some episodes are better than others, but those that aren't Caves of Androzani or Blink or whatever aren't crap either. Not every episode can be a masterpiece, and there's nothing wrong with the "average fare." Indeed, in many ways it is kind of necessary.

And yet, and yet - Robot of Sherwood gets 5-star reviews all over the internet. "Brilliant!" they say. "Witty!" "Absolutely engaging!" they say. 5 Stars! 5 Stars! 5 Stars!

But wait a minute - if Robot of Sherwood is 5 stars, what is City of Death, a truly brilliant and unforgettable comedy episode? If Into the Dalek is 5 Stars, then what is Genesis of the Daleks, one of the best televised works of science fiction I've ever seen? Isn't there a curve here? Howe can we give Into the Dalek and Robot of Sherwood 5-Star reviews, when we know the show is capable of City of Death and Genesis of the Daleks?

I certainly don't think Robot of Sherwood is five stars, maybe three and a half. But just because people are saying it is five stars doesn't mean they lack an appreciation for the other episodes which truly are five stars. They're just saying they really enjoyed the most recently aired episode. That's all these weekly episode discussions fandom engages in are, do we like the show this week, yes we do. The ones people give five stars, or even no stars to when the episodes are "fresh" is hardly an indication of that episode's place in the overall Doctor Who lore, just a reflection that we enjoyed ourselves (or didn't) this week and that we like (or don't) the direction the show overall is taking. Within a few years, people will re-evaluate the episodes and give them a more honest appraisal.

So, here's what I see happening: Doctor Who fans tend to be extremely perceptive and generous when the show creates brilliance, but they CHOOSE to put aside their critical faculties whenever an episode doesn't hit those incredible highs. It's an intellectual decision. It's like trying to find the good bits in your annoying brother-in-law. They know that the show rarely hits those highs, so they choose to pretend that the rest of the time, it's hitting very close to those highs anyway. (Robot of Sherwood, 5 Stars? Really? Really?) How else can we explain 4 and 5-star reviews on episodes that come NOWHERE CLOSE to being as good as Doctor Who can be? This is part of what I mean when I say that the show doesn't take itself seriously enough, most of the time. The fans don't seem to, either.

But can't we expect and hope for episodes at least closer in quality to episodes like those classics more often? Shouldn't we hold the show to those high standards, the way, say, Deep Space Nine fans tended to? (There's a fanbase that called a turkey a turkey, let me tell you.)

Or maybe some of just like the show as it is and don't expect something profound or artistic or whatever on a constant basis. Sure, it's not every week the show really does deliver five star entertainment, and that's fine. Just because an episode isn't an award winning statement filmed in a pretentious artsy-fartsy manner doesn't automatically make it worthless crap. In fact, always trying to unnecessarily be a pretentious artsy-fartsy statement hoping to get an award could actually be damaging and end up resulting in the episode being crap.

 

[Lance]

I touched on this over in the "Nature of the TARDIS" thread a few months ago, but I think the format of Doctor Who belies attempts to straightjacket or categorize it, in quite the same way that we are able to do so with something like Star Trek or Star Wars. Unlike those shows, which at least begin from a standpoint of reality and a logical projection from where we are now to where we will be in the future, Doctor Who exists within a universe where the narrative rules are basically only there to be broken, and even something like the TARDIS isn't really an understandable 'machine' like the Enterprise is, but is more a sort of mystical alien concept that is far more broadly defined in what it "can" and it "can't" do.

All of which ties in with a format that is, simply, willing not to be taken seriously. That's fundamental to Doctor Who. Suspension of disbelief. The day I finally realized this, was the day that I began to appreciate Doctor Who, fully and completely. The ability to enjoy the show is completely relative to how much one is willing to suspend that part of our mind which tells us "But that's silly!"

 

[Marsden]

I enjoy this discussion, but I need more clarification on your definition of "taking itself more seriously"

...something truly brilliant and exceptional - Earthshock, Caves of Androzani, The Doctor Dances, Blink, Midnight,... Blink and Midnight and Girl in the Fireplace, ...Think about The Aztecs or The War Games. Think about The Caves of Androzani. Think about Blink.

How are these ^ not part of this:

What is it that fans seem to expect from any given Doctor Who episode? The expectations are actually extremely stringent, and the episodes, as a result, are written from what I would consider to be an extremely formulaic mindset. We, the audience, expect: a) a monster, b) some thrills, c) a few laughs, d) some witty repartee between the Doctor and his companion, e) some extremely basic morality playing, almost always surrounding the question of whether it's ever right to kill someone, and f) a happy ending, usually stemming from the Doctor defeating the monster. Most of all, there is a deliberate and consistent refusal to ever go too in-depth into the questions posed by the episode. Regardless of what the episode evokes, the impetus to keep watching always stems from the question, "How will the good guys beat the bad guys?" There are always good guys, and there are always bad guys, and the question is always pragmatic - how the good guys will win.

By your own examples, I see no increase of seriousness in those cited episodes. I would add as some examples of my own, The Pyramids of Mars, Silence in the Library, The Impossible Astronaut and it's parts, The Empty Child, The Face of Evil, City of Death, and probably Robots of Death and The Invasion of Time, and that one with Moebius. I think these are really good, and probably I've left out many, I haven't seen many of these since the 80s. But I find no more "seriousness" in these than in some others. I don't think quality is seriousness driven, but I may be missing your point.

 

[Ubik]

Marsden,

My feeling is that those episodes that stand out as exceptional almost always stand out and become exceptional precisely because they attempt to break the formula. There IS a greater attempt to try something (to quote a post a bit higher up) "profound" and "artistic" in those episodes, and those great ones are the ones that succeeded. Nobody remembers the episodes that merely dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's formulaically and predictably. We remember the ones that DON'T do that. We remember the ones with higher ambitions, unpredictable storytelling, a shake to the formula, and, of course, when it all works.

And yes, it is my contention that those great episodes do not fit the formula I laid out, and that you re-quoted. In Earthshock, for example, there is no happy ending, not really. That in itself makes it stand out. There is also NO witty repartee or comic moments during that episode. No wackiness. The entire thing is done absolutely straight, which I admire. More significantly, the entire first half hour deals with a real and actually unsolvable character conflict between the Doctor and his companion, another utter break from formula. That conflict can only really be resolved by the man's death. No, that episode is a rarity, even over 50 years of episodes. In Caves of Androzani, there is an almost complete break from formula - there is not even a monster as the big bad guy. The Doctor succeeds at nothing. He cannot defeat any of the "bad guys" in the episode, because there are too many, and they all work for different teams, and in fact the biggest threat to their lives is the masked character that ends up being one of the most sympathetic characters the franchise has ever seen. In the end, the Doctor fails, and everyone in the episode dies, except Perri. This is not the formula we expect.

Doctor Dances? No monster. A different kind of problem - the `scary`thing is actually a lost little kid. Blink is unlike any Doctor Who episode in both tone and structure before and since.

My point is just this: people keep saying, why should we change something that works. Well, my answer is that it only REALLY works, at its best, when it DOES do something different. Those attempts at uniqueness and surprise and change have in fact given us the very best episodes.

 

[The Wormhole]

And yes, it is my contention that those great episodes do not fit the formula I laid out, and that you re-quoted. In Earthshock, for example, there is no happy ending, not really. That in itself makes it stand out. There is also NO witty repartee or comic moments during that episode. No wackiness. The entire thing is done absolutely straight, which I admire.

Seriously? Aside from being the one where Adric died, Earthshock is remembered primarily for the out of character attitude displayed by the Cybermen, which adds so much unintentional humour to it, I laugh my ass off watching it until we get all sombre for Adric's death.

My point is just this: people keep saying, why should we change something that works. Well, my answer is that it only REALLY works, at its best, when it DOES do something different. Those attempts at uniqueness and surprise and change have in fact given us the very best episodes.

In your opinion that's when it really works, obviously the formula as is is fine for the rest of fandom, otherwise they wouldn't have stuck with it for 50 years. Sure, we all love the occasional story which goes against the grain, but that is why we love them, because they are different. They wouldn't stand out if the show did those kind of stories on a regular basis. Then things like Blink or Androzani or whatever would end up being "more of the same."