TLIAFD: The Doctor Is Who?
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Heavy
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I'm afraid Brax wasn't created until 1994, and while I've taken a few liberties in that regard, it's too far into the wilderness years to show up on TV.
I have, of course, referred to Audio Visuals as the producers of a popular range of audio dramas...
Heavy
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I was thinking I could probably get some sort of James Bond spin-off out of this. There'll be a hint at how that's gone differently when I get around to Part Two.
7.2. Back to the TARDIS: The Wilderness Years and the Return of Doctor Who
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BACK TO THE TARDIS
The Wildness Years and the Return of Doctor Who
The Wildness Years and the Return of Doctor Who
Doctor Who was down but it was not out. Almost as soon as the BBC made clear it had no intention of resuming production, Verity Lambert began pitching heavily for the rights to produce the series for the Corporation independently. In the meantime, the Seventh Doctor and Benny's adventures continued in regular comic strip appearances in the pages of Doctor Who Monthly while a thriving cottage industry of Seventh Doctor continuation novels (the "Further Adventures" line published by Virgin Books) sprang up.
Written primarily by former regular series writers including Cartmel, Aaronovitch and Cornell alongside series veterans like Terrance Dicks, "celebrity fan" authors such as Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and Kim Newman and even a few newcomers, including Mark Gatiss, Russell Davies and Steven Moffat, these stories expanded on plots left unresolved when the TV run concluded and introduced new concepts and characters. [1] A line of tie-in novels involving past Doctors were added before long [2] and soon afterwards a small company founded by dedicated fans called Audio Visuals (named for an earlier company operated by many of the same personnel, which had produced unofficial audiobook adaptations of episode novelisations published by Target Books) began to produce full-cast original audio dramas – featuring the return of classic Doctors Wyngarde and Baker [3] – after receiving a full licence to do so from the BBC in 1996.
Unbeknownst to Lambert, she was not alone in her efforts to revive the series; on the other side of the Atlantic, a major figure in American television – British expatriate Philip Segal – had his eyes on the series as well. The United States of America had long been a tough nut to crack for Doctor Who. While episodes had been broadcast in America since the Christopher Neame years, there was always far less money in the series than even many low-budget American equivalents and the uniquely British character of the programme made it a hard sell in the states.
One key exception was the Dalekmania craze of the 1960s, centred on Patrick Troughton's trilogy of Amicus films (Dr Who and the Daleks, Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD and Dr Who and the Time Chase), which enjoyed some cult success in the decade of the "three B's". [4] The brightly-coloured Daleks remained recognisable relics of kitschy mid-sixties camp, and the movies planted deeply the roots of a small but intensely dedicated fanbase who would follow the series doggedly through crackly PBS broadcasts of decidedly dubious quality for years to come. Patrick Troughton enjoyed a career as a character actor in Hollywood until his death, even receiving an Academy Award nomination, but his role as "Dr Who" was seen as little more than a footnote in his filmography. [5]
However, although Doctor Who never quite managed to become a mainstream success in America in its original run (though not for want of trying, particularly on the part of John Nathan-Turner), the programme's prospects at least seemed like they were beginning to look more favourable during the tenure of the Seventh Doctor. Unlike most of his predecessors in the role, Art Malik was not unrecognised in America, where both The Jewel in the Crown and A Passage to India had enjoyed a high level of popularity, and his casting in an obscure, low-budget British science-fiction programme with a reputation for high camp and obsessive fans was a matter of some curiosity. [6]
Nonetheless, the casting attracted some attention in America even outside the small hard core of dedicated Doctor Who fans; ratings on PBS improved noticeably and there was even talk (or at least some serious speculation) of a formal co-production arrangement to film occasional episodes in America, although nothing ever came of it. Michael Grade's instincts had evidently served him well – although much of the nuance and subtext in the series, rooted as it was in British politics, was lost on American audiences, the 13-episode season, 45-minute episode structure was well-suited to North American broadcast schedules and television preferences in general. When the series ceased production in 1991, several PBS affiliates registered the receipt of many letters from viewers expressing disappointment. Although Doctor Who may not have broken America, it had at least paved the way for a future attempt.
Determined to make that attempt was the aforementioned Philip Segal (born, as alluded, in Essex, and resident in America since his mid-teens). Segal was a long-time fan of Doctor Who and had harboured ambitions to produce the series himself for many years; around the time sets were being struck back at the BBC, he had risen to become Vice-President of Amblin Television (a division of Steven Spielberg's production company Amblin Entertainment) and in the ensuing years enjoyed success overseeing production of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and seaQuest DSV. [7] His attempts to lobby the BBC for the rights to produce Doctor Who coincided and conflicted with those of Verity Lambert and her own Cinema Verity, and after several years of competitive pitching characterised in equal parts by deadlock and back-and-forth, neither party appeared to be making any headway in their negotiations.
Eventually, in 1997, Segal and Lambert were encouraged to reach out to one another with the BBC acting as a mediator. Recognising their common interest in bringing Doctor Who back to television, after several meetings in London and New York and extensive discussion with an array of lawyers on both sides of the pond, both parties agreed to enter into a unique arrangement whereby they would co-produce a new series. The direct result was the incorporation in Britain and America of a joint-venture company, Gallifrey Pictures, to which the BBC licensed the production rights to the series and entered into a separate contract confirming its own involvement in the production.
A prospective American home for the series was additionally sought and eventually found in the Sci-Fi Channel, which had been active for only five years at that time, and was mainly known for broadcasts of science-fiction movies, classic horror films and Japanese anime. [8] The channel had plans to establish its credentials as the premier network for science-fiction by buying and broadcasting original series; their intent was that Doctor Who would form part of their prime time line-up alongside another new programme being brought in from outside, Rockne S. O'Brien's practical effects-driven space adventure series Farscape. Furthermoer, they were keen to capture the same audience as Joss Whedon's supernatural drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which had debuted on the WB the year before.
In 1998, the deal was finalised and it was announced – with advertisements promising "a hero for a new millennium" – that Doctor Who would be returning to television after nine years with a projected premiere of the spring season in 2000. Filming for the premiere would take place, almost inevitably, in Vancouver, standing in for San Francisco. Lambert and Segal would be credited as co-producers and it was anticipated that the writing and directing staff would likely be drawn from both British and North American talent (Segal had already tipped Matthew Jacobs, a US-based British writer with whom he had worked on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to begin work on the premiere, with mooted input from UK screenwriters to be arranged via Lambert).
The news received a mixed reaction in the Doctor Who fan community. An American co-production of Doctor Who? To many British fans (perhaps unaware of the programme's budding popularity on the other side of the Atlantic) it seemed ominous, perhaps even sacrilegious, that such a uniquely British series as Doctor Who should be produced outside its native country. That Verity Lambert – who had produced William Hartnell 30 years earlier – and the BBC would be involved (the new series would return to its traditional Saturday evening slot on BBC1, broadcasting one week after the American debut episode) was not enough to assuage the fears of many fans that "Hollywood" production would have a deleterious impact on their favourite series. Rumours that the series would be renamed "Doctor Who 2000", that it would be a straight remake rather than a reboot and that an American actor would be playing the Doctor did little to assuage concerns. Nonetheless, production pressed ahead. [9]
For the most part, all of the pieces were in place. All the pieces, that is, except for the one most critical component of all.
Doctor who?
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[1] Among the most memorable was Newman's vampire companion, Genevieve Dieudonne, carried over from his late 1980s Warhammer tie-in work and his original novel Anno Dracula, published in 1992.
[2] A trend commenced with the publication in 1994 of a memorably tongue-in-cheek book written by former series star Peter Wyngarde detailing a "lost adventure" of his Third Doctor.
[3] Colin Baker – who in the interim had played several roles in television including Richard Bucket in the popular BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances – had long missed the Fifth Doctor role and jumped at the chance to reprise it, quickly establishing himself as the pre-eminent star of Audio Visuals' productions. Wyngarde was likewise keen, feeling that he still had "unfinished business" after the abrupt end to his tenure as Third Doctor. Hampered by his term as an MP and the subsequent resumption of his film career (playing the antagonist Don Rafael Montero in The Mask of Zorro in 1998 opposite Antonio Banderas and former Master actor Anthony Hopkins), Malik would not reprise his role until 2002. As an in-joke, the first Audio Visuals production with the Third, Fifth and Seventh Doctors was given the self-referential Against All Odds. James Hazeldine was more reluctant owing to his bad experiences with the series, but eventually relented with Baker's encouragement and his Sixth Doctor enjoyed a renaissance; he would play the character in 25 stories until his tragic death in 2002. Christopher Neame would not reprise his Fourth Doctor role until the mid-2000s.
[4] Said "three B's" were the Beatles, Bond (starring Roger Moore) and Batman (starring William Shatner).
[5] The theme of time travel would recur throughout Troughton's career; two years before his death, he had been approached by Robert Zemeckis (who had directed the actor in Romancing the Stone) with an offer to play the role of mad scientist Emmett "Doc" Brown, inventor of the time travelling DeLorean in Back to the Future. Although keen to take the part, Troughton regretfully declined; he was by then 65, frequently experienced heart problems attributed to stress and overwork, and may have felt too old to play the part (Christopher Lloyd would be cast instead). He would die in 1987.
[6] Among the less frequently-discussed reasons (aside from those discussed elsewhere) behind Malik's decision to take on the role of the Seventh Doctor were his persistent financial difficulties stemming from the huge immediate success he had enjoyed after A Passage to India; while Doctor Who was much reduced from its heyday when he joined in 1987, it nonetheless offered a consistent salary.
[7] Conceived and created by Rockne S. O'Brien, seaQuest DSV combined deep-sea exploration, educational and environmentalist content and some science-fiction elemnts, and ran for four seasons between 1993 and 1997. Its cast included Doctor Who alumnus Stephanie Beacham in a starring role as the titular submarine's commander, Captain Natasha Bridger, alongside Roy Scheider as chief scientist Dr Kristopher Westphalen. Scheider would leave at the end of the first season, to be replaced by future mainstay Doctor Who director Peter DeLuise as Dr Anthony Dagwood.
[8] Philip Segal lobbied hard with the Fox network in an attempt to secure backing for the mooted reboot; although the network seemed receptive and indicated a willingness to stump up capital in addition to that already allocated by the BBC, Segal reluctantly pulled out when it became clear that Fox was only interested in a television movie which would function as a pilot for a prospective series. Unwilling – after all the work it had taken to get to production at all – to entire into an agreement for anything less than a full series order, Segal sought a less materially generous option which would nonetheless provide the latitude he and Lambert sought.
[9] A complete clean reboot was encouraged by both the BBC and the Sci-Fi Channel and Verity Lambert was said to be at least moderately receptive to the idea, but Segal was hostile to the suggestion. It was eventually agreed that the programme would get a fresh start relying on the broad strokes of the classic series. Contrary to the claims of some more bitter fans, the decision that the rebooted and classic series were one and the same was not reached "after the fact" when it became clear that the new show was a hit; it was always the same series, but it was agreed ahead of time that elements such as recurring villains and other classic show concepts would be phased over time in as it progressed.
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Heavy
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I haven't yet decided definitively: my first impulse is to do another Christopher Neame (because I got a real kick out of going for someone I imagine most of my readers have never heard of) and pick someone you'll have no clue about but at the same time there's a really well-known pick I think would be fun to suggest.
I will say only that it will not be an American actor.
Not yet, anyway.
I will say only that it will not be an American actor.
Not yet, anyway.
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Cornell had the misfortune of being a little bit young. He was 22 or so when the series ended so he just missed his chance to work on it - I imagine that if the programme had continued into the 1990s, he'd have written a script or two for it before long. There's every possibility that RTD, Moffat and Gatiss might have had a shot as well. The former two, more so, since they'd done acclaimed work for CITV and CBBC.
Here there's a complete fresh start in 1987 and Cornell manages to get a foot in the door early; the writers room structure creates an opportunity and he goes from contributing ideas to co-writing with older writers to writing a few solo scripts before it ends in 1991.
Alex Richards
Donor
Hmm, Dr Who returning earlier as a cross-Atlantic collaboration.
I wonder if Hugh Laurie would work...
I wonder if Hugh Laurie would work...
Rowan Atkinson? Or really anyone who ended up playing the doctor on The Curse of Fatal Death.
I don't suppose a The Curse of Fatal Death analogue will be produced in TTL?
I don't suppose a The Curse of Fatal Death analogue will be produced in TTL?
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It's entirely possible. I think that was the first time Steven Moffat wrote the Doctor professionally. He (and RTD and others) have already done so here, except as paperback novelists. Whether he still comes up with "Fatal Death" remains to be seen.
I think I have reached a decision, in any event, so the first update for Doctor Who 2000 (alternatively [@Thande] Time Lord 2000: The Doctor) could potentially appear sooner than I had hoped.
My 2 cents for what it's worth would be do a reverse of OTL and cast Sean Pertwee he wasn't doing anything major in 95 and the man can do rough around the edges as well as humor to downright terror that the role needs also if nothing else it would stop the running gag of all his characters dying on screen horribly somehow.