THE NINTH DOCTOR
Sean Patrick Flanery
(2003 – 2007)
"
Who?"
That was the first question, one frequently (and forthrightly) asked in the letters pages of
Doctor Who Monthly for several months after the casting announcement. Sean Patrick Flanery was 38 when he took on the role of the Ninth Doctor, but had been on producer Philip Segal's radar since before Anthony Stewart Head had even started to contemplate his departure from the role. Flanery had previously starred in the cult fantasy drama film
Powder and later the controversial crime drama
The Boondock Saints (which notoriously bombed after receiving an inopportune release which coincided with the Columbine school shooting) but was best known for playing a teenage Henry Jones, Jr. in
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (a series which Segal had previously had a hand in producing as Vice-President of Amblin Television). [1] He may have been a risk, but he was one Segal was confident could excel with the right material.
"
Him?"
That was the second question, and one purportedly asked by Verity Lambert (reports on the tone in which she asked it are inconclusive). To many British fans, quietly sceptical of the American dimension of the reboot, Flanery represented everything they had feared for the fate of their beloved series. Denunciations of the actor as a "pretty boy with floppy hair" and a "lightweight who looks like a twelve-year old" (a curious critique given Christopher Neame had been a full decade younger when he was cast) were among the more pleasant invectives that had come his way from less open-minded sections of the
Doctor Who fanbase. That he was not a fan of the series was a further black mark against him. Anthony Head had at least been a recognised British actor with an established reputation, but Sean Patrick Flanery (at least as far as audiences outside the USA were concerned) was in comparison a less well-known quantity; despite the international success of his Indiana Jones role, that character had almost mattered more than the actor who played him. In many regards, the same was true of the Doctor.
For his own part, Flanery repeatedly made clear that although he had little awareness of the series, he was fascinated by the concept of regeneration in particular and had made an effort to watch as many classic serials as possible. In general, the actor was upbeat about his role after the announcement of his casting, acknowledging fan concerns, remarking that he had stepped into the shoes of an iconic character before and resolving that he would "give [the part] 110%". A wide-ranging interview for DWM with the magazine's editor Clayton Hickman is widely credited with helping to warm sceptical audiences to the actor; Hickman would later explain his experience of interviewing the new Doctor: "I remember I went into [the interview] wanting to dislike him, and I left thinking that if he could charm Britain as easily as he'd charmed me, Sean could easily be playing the Doctor for the rest of his life." [2]
While Flanery had been Philip Segal's instinctive first choice, as a concession to the less convinced Lambert, he was not the first actor canvassed as a prospective Ninth Doctor. At least nominally in the running was 1980s teen comedy star and former
Saturday Night Live cast member Anthony Michael Hall (already committed to a series based on Stephen King's
'Salem's Lot created by former
Star Trek producer Michael Piller). Canadian actor Michael Shanks was named as an option (like Hall, already locked in to appear in another series, in this case the first Stargate spin-off in 2004), as were veteran actor Hector Elizondo (deemed too old for the part), hot property young gun Adrian Pasdar (star of the ground-breaking Fox drama
Profit, recently concluded after a successful multi-season run, but in talks with Bad Robot to star in a much-discussed series called
Lost, which would debut in the following year), 1990s drama mainstay Jimmy Smits (who was too expensive for Sci-Fi's taste) and Noah "Dr John Carter" Wyle (who was by then pulling down $1 million per episode in
E.R. and was understandably reluctant to leave). [3] In the end, the persistent Philip Segal had his way, and with Verity Lambert eventually won over, Sean Patrick Flanery was officially the new Doctor and the first American actor to take the role.
Faced with the first "American" Doctor, the production staff were initially unsure how to approach the character. Segal suggested relying on the actor's previous role in
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and approaching him as, essentially, "a space-faring, time-travelling Indiana Jones; a swashbuckling archaeologist in deep space"; having opened up during his travels with Grace, this Doctor once more travelled the universe out of sheer curiosity (interfering in "interesting" situations he encounter along the way) and possessed a tremendous respect for the pursuit of knowledge. At the same time, he could be a headstrong and wilful figure, whose strong sense of right and wrong would never let him ignore a possible unjust situation. Another aspect of the character revived directly from the classic series was the Doctor's readiness to immobilise enemies with a well-placed Venusian aikido strike (something Flanery, an avid amateur martial artist since childhood, would later describe having a great deal of fun with). "I wanted him to be a man who could be very serious, always had a plan, who only reminded you he was the smartest guy in the room and you should maybe be a little scared of him when he absolutely needed to," explained Flanery, "But most of the time I hoped that the Doctor to just a fun guy to be around. I mean, this dude has a time machine! Who
wouldn't have great stories to tell if they could visit the past and future?"
Having previously appeared for just under a minute at the end of "Cyberworld" (Anthony Stewart Head's final turn as the Eighth Doctor), [4] the Ninth Doctor made his full debut in the first episode (entitled simply "The New Doctor") of season four, scripted by returning veteran Paul Cornell. [5] The writer had been given a mandate to reintroduce Gallifrey to the series, following its noticeable absence throughout Anthony Head's tenure: as the Doctor's new regeneration begins to experience unforeseen complications, he instructs Grace to activate the TARDIS's emergency autopilot system and announces that he needs to go home to find the technology he needs to stabilise his genetic structure. Much of the episode concentrated on the concept of regeneration and how it affected the Doctor's ability to truly relate to human beings. [6] Further, it introduced a new complication to the Doctor's relationship with Grace, who had always appreciated his alien nature but realised she had failed to grasp
how far Time Lords exceeded humanity until she visited his home planet.
This would tie into a recurring plot thread which wove throughout the Ninth Doctor's first season, specifically the seemingly innocuous question of why he had regenerated with an American accent. Initially explaining that, because he had been with Grace when he went through his regeneration, he had "imprinted" on her and duplicated her accent, the Doctor would soon be forced to admit that he had started to reciprocate her romantic interest in him and had consciously chosen his more outwardly "American" persona in an attempt to become closer to her. However, Grace struggled to reconcile to herself that the "tea and biscuits" Englishman she had befriended and travelled with could be the same person as this brash, confident adventurer. At the close of the season, Grace asked to be taken home in a sad parting with the Doctor as Yancy Butler left the series. [7] While this seemingly excessive focus on "relationship drama" was decried in some quarters, it helped to establish Flanery's take as something new and distinctive and was well-received by many fans, both in North American and at home in Britain.
From the beginning of the reboot's fifth season through to Sean Patrick Flanery's own exit from
Doctor Who in after 2007 (which would prove to be a highly tumultuous time for the series), the Ninth Doctor would be accompanied on his travels by two companions; the first time the TARDIS would have a crew of more than two since the heyday of the Colin Baker era 20 years earlier.
Joining the series first was Canadian actress Rachel Skarsten (who arrived immediately from the short-lived Action Comics adaptation
Birds of Prey) as history student Emma Sinclair. Her initial meeting with the Doctor was down to a misunderstanding, as she stumbled into his TARDIS after mistaking it for a genuine police call box while on holiday to visit her boyfriend in London. Emma initially travelled with the Ninth Doctor by herself for the programme's fifth season, with an arc focused on the dangers inherent in a normal human accompanying the Doctor on his adventures in time and space.
When he realised that Emma had become smitten with him, the Doctor returned to contemporary Earth and collected her long-distance British boyfriend, computer specialist Danny Price, played by British actor Reggie Yates, who remained with the series for the duration of the Ninth Doctor era. [8] Although the relationship between Danny and the Doctor was initially fractious (mainly over Emma), the duo soon proved themselves as valuable friends and allies to the Doctor, forming a team which remains one of the most popular regular cast line-ups of the reboot era. The introduction of the couple proved fortuitous, allowing the writing staff to cut down on the Doctor / companion romance plot while maintaining that element, culminating in a much-loved comedic wedding episode in the reboot's seventh season.
Other highlights of Flanery's tenure included encounters with the Daleks (with their evil creator Davros this time portrayed by American character actor Ron Perlman, albeit with a distinctive English accent, making his first reappearance on television since the reboot of the series) re-emerging to challenge the Doctor in season five. The Sontarans returned for the sixth season, while the primary story arc explored in the eighth (Flanery's last) saw the Doctor instructed by the Time Lords to resolve their often-mentioned but never seen ancient war with the Rutans, granting that old nugget of the classic series its televised portrayal at long last. New enemies would be introduced, some successful enough to become recurring menaces (the Jovian Collective, an alien hive mind introduced in one of the final Yancy Butler episodes which actually went on to serve as the chief antagonists for the sixth season) and others perhaps best left forgotten (the lurching pollution metaphor known as the Ooze). "Pure historical" adventures made a welcome return to the programme's oeuvre as well, often acting as winking nods to the lead actor's past as Indiana Jones.
Despite the misgivings that had accompanied him to the role, Sean Patrick Flanery turned out to be a popular Doctor on the whole, enough at least for the producers to deem their so-called "American experiment" successful. Flanery would continue in the role for five years and 65 episodes, the longest continuous tenure since Colin Baker in the early 1980s (with whom he had shared the second-longest occupancy of the TARDIS after Christopher Neame). Nonetheless, all goods things must come to an end, and with his place in the history books of
Doctor Who secure, Flanery informed Philip Segal that he wished to leave the series at the end of its eighth season.
Unfortunately, by mid-2007, the behind-the-scenes situation was beginning to run into the problems. Some were typical of any long-running show, as
Doctor Who now was (that it had continued for eight seasons and showed no signs of stopping was nothing short of remarkable; the ability of the series to rotate its cast and effectively reboot itself every few years – largely unprecedented in serial drama outside soaps – was undoubtedly the most factor in this regard). Others were circumstantial and tragically unavoidable. Verity Lambert's role in the production of the series had progressively reduced as the Ninth Doctor's run wore on as she fought a tough battle with cancer.
Doctor Who's very first producer resigned for the second and final time at the end of the seventh season, leaving the 2007 season to be handled by Philip Segal alone, and would eventually succumb to her illness in late 2007 at the age of 71. For his own part, Segal had now been involved with the franchise for 10 years; he had helped to guide it to a new level of international success unparalleled in its 44-year history but now decided he had done all he could for the series. New blood was necessary to prevent the pervasive risk of stagnancy, and Segal and Lambert had already identified some strong candidates to replace them; experiences writers who had already begun seeding ideas to set the stage for their first season into Flanery's last.
Unfortunately, in a near-disaster, the Sci-Fi Channel did not see things that way. Despite the unqualified success and popularity of
Doctor Who (and other original programming on the channel in the same period, particularly Ronald D. Moore's own reboot of
Battlestar Galactica starring David Strathairn as Admiral Adama), some factions within the company appeared to resent that success. In 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel had come under new ownership following a merger involving its parent company to create the media giant NBCUniversal, the direct practical consequence being the arrival of new management determined to make major changes to the channel in the interest of broadening its appeal. Before long, strange listings began to creep into the Sci-Fi schedule.
Law & Order reruns, extreme sports and professional wrestling were all strange fits for an ostensible science-fiction channel but that was what advertising executives said would sell, and so that was what Sci-Fi began to prioritise.
Verity Lambert's resignation and Philip Segal's report that he intended to stand down from
Doctor Who with a recommended replacement, coincident with Sean Patrick Flanery and his co-stars making clear that they also wished to leave, sounded to Sci-Fi (its owners no longer concerned with the history of the series) like a coded request for an honourable cancellation for a series that had run its course. Despite the best efforts of the producer and the star to renew the series and after all the hard work undertaken to bring the series back,
Doctor Who seemed to be on course for yet
another premature ending at the hands of forces beyond its control.
Fortunately, this would not be the case. By now,
Doctor Who was a hot property, and if Sci-Fi were too myopic or too ignorant to kill one of the geese that laid their golden eggs then other stations were resolved not to be so cavalier. The announcement soon went out that
Doctor Who would
not be returning to the Sci-Fi Channel in 2008. Instead, its new home was to be a young channel, then only a year old but with the weight of two major media groups – CBS and Warner Bros. Entertainment – at its back, from which it had inherited a number of popular shows which fit broadly the same creative mould as
Doctor Who;
Doctor Who was going to join series such as Action Comics adaptation
Metropolis [9],
Supernatural and Joss Whedon's
Spike & Faith on the CW, and it would do so with a new lead actor, a new direction and new faces at the head of the production team.
In Sean Patrick Flanery's final appearance as the Ninth Doctor, Emma and Danny would be written out of the series in accordance with the plans of the new showrunners, retiring from their adventures with the Doctor after he was forced to erase their memories of their travels with him to protect them from the wrath of a powerful enemy. This mystery menace would subsequently prove to be none other than his old foe, the Great Intelligence (now played by Richard E. Grant), who surprises the Doctor by announcing that has come as an ally and not as an adversary.
The Intelligence reveals that he had need of the Doctor's assistance in respect of a very particular task with the fate of time itself at stake. To that end, he had manipulated him into finishing the war between the Rutans and Sontarnas, tricked him into leaving his closest friends, and now delivered his coup de grace by producing a device which forced the Doctor's regeneration.
"Your greatest challenges yet lie ahead of you, Doctor," intones the villain, "And if you are to overcome them, you must meet them with a new face…"
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[1] Remembered for being one of the most expensive television series ever produced at the time, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles ran for four seasons between 1992 and 1996. Primarily an historical series (although later episodes in its run adopted some of the pulp adventure and supernatural trappings of the Indiana Jones film series), the series jumped back and forth between the childhood, teenage and young adult years of the title character's life and chronicled his meetings with famous historical figures as portrayed by guest stars, running the gamut from the Russian "mad monk" Grigori Rasputin (played by Tom Baker) to the controversial British soldier Percy Toplis (played by Paul McGann).
[2] Even unfriendly fans grudgingly gave the actor credit for making an appearance at NYCC (Doctor Who having earned a regular and popular panel at most of the major American conventions almost from the moment Anthony Stewart Head was announced as the Eighth Doctor) and giving a good account of himself before a hostile audience.
[3] Rumours abound that Dan Aykroyd was approached on the basis of his involvement in the Canadian X-Files copycat series Psi-Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal; it should be noted that the chief source of the aforesaid rumours is Dan Aykroyd himself, whose bizarre proclamations no one has been able to understand since approximately 1981.
[4] The short exchange between Yancy Butler and the newly-regenerated Sean Patrick Flanery managed to embed itself in fandom consciousness and no doubt contributed to the majority opinion turning at least cautiously in the new lead's favour: as the Eighth Doctor crumples to the ground in exhaustion, Grace rushes to his side; struggling to speak, he tells his horrified companion that he is dying, but encourages her to take heart, for this is a new beginning as much as an ending; Grace does not understand and tries to confess her feelings to her dying friend when he warns her to stay away until "the change" is complete; as she watches, his features begin to warp and reshape as he jerks about, seemingly in a state of agony; when he recovers and turns to face her, a new face is looking back at her. "Who the hell are you?" Grace demands, "And what the hell have you done with my friend?" The new face smiles disarmingly as her replies, "Who am I? Oh, surely you must recognise me, Grace? I'm the Doctor!"
[5] Cornell had previously written episodes during Anthony Stewart Head's tenure on the series (his first work for American television) on the recommendation of his friend, Neil Gaiman, and his stories had become favourites of both fans and TV critics. He was one of several British writers who received opportunities to write for the rebooted show throughout its run although his career as a novelist and comic book writer would constrain him to make further contributions past the fourth season.
[6] This was a favourite subject of Cornell's, who would revisit the concept in a season five Flanery episode (his last work as a writer for the series to date) loosely adapting his own 1995 Further Adventures novel Human Nature.
[7] Butler had been experiencing increasingly pronounced substance abuse problems during her time on the series which had made her difficult to work with. She had expressed a desire to move on from the series, and the producers were admittedly relieved to oblige.
[8] Yates, a fan of the show, had previously been a member of the ensemble cast of the long-running children's drama Grange Hill and had been presenting the Sunday morning programme Smile alongside Fearne Cotton when he was cast in Doctor Who, turning down an opportunity to present the iconic music series Top of the Pops to do so.
[9] Metropolis was a continuation / sequel / rebranding of an earlier series, Smallville, which chronicled the early adventures of a young Clark Kent in the years before he was Superman and starred Michael Rosenbaum in the lead role. Smallville had run for five seasons on the WB between 2001 and 2006, then rebooted as Metropolis following its jump to the newly-inaugurated CW channel. The "new" series moved the action to Superman's famous home city, with Rosenbaum adopting the Man of Steel's famous red and blue costume (the promise of which he regularly claimed was the entire reason he signed on in the first place) to bring the character back to television for the first time in 20 years.
