14.0: Destination: Skaro

Anniversary special!

Look, I wasn’t going to let the anniversary pass without doing *something* was I. Actually, I’ve done two other things: discussed the politics of Doctor Who on The Bunker, with Andrew Harrison, Jenny Colgan and Seth Thévoz; and allowd the show to infect my other, ‘proper’ Substack, by listing my favourite thing from every year since 1963 on the latest edition of the Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything. You should probably check both out.

But since I’ve done the first 60 years’ of material I’m not going to stop now, so: here’s my take on the unnamed Children in Need special.

Broadcast: November 2023

Watched: Would you believe it? Also November 2023

My second thought about this is that you can feel Steven Moffat’s influence all over it, even though he’s nowhere near it. There have been Doctor Who sketches for a long time. There have been Doctor Who mini-episodes for a long time. Moffat, whose first televised Doctor Who was The Curse of Fatal Death of course, was the first writer to realise they could be the same thing: you could write what was, essentially, a sketch rather than a story, within continuity, and release that. The “TARDISodes” and “minisodes” we got during the first RTD era attempted something serious in three minutes or less, but that’s really hard to do: much easier to make some gags. This is RTD running with that model.

Which is why, shortly after I had my first thought about this episode – “Blimey, it’s David Tennant’s Doctor again!” – he was saying “Genesis of the Daleks” out loud, in dialogue, and helping invent his nemesis by providing a sink plunger. As you do. It’s all a bit “First time as tragedy...”

The scene does at least answer the question of whether the 14th Doctor is going to be noticeably different from the 10th. Which isn’t really a question because why would you bring Tennant and one of his companions back and get him to play a completely different character? But nonetheless.

The ~discourse~ surrounding the episode – based on RTD’s statement on Doctor Who Unleashed, that in retrospect it’s a bit off to have disabled villains, so Davros walks now – threw me a bit. Partly because I just assumed this scene was set before whatever accident damaged him in the first place; partly because I’d never really registered that Davros *was* in a wheelchair, I’m just so familiar with him and his look that I see it as half a Dalek. But it’s not for me to say, and if this makes anyone feel better then fair enough, really. Perhaps, given that the last time we saw Davros, he was mucking about with regeneration energy he’ll be able to walk in future, too. 

Other things:

• Julian Bleach is now I think the longest serving Davros? He’s been playing him 15 years.

• The other guest star, Mawaan Rizman, is lovely in this. Also reading his Wikipedia page to find out where I recognised him from (Taskmaster) led me to this: “In 2014, he appeared alongside his mother, Shahnaz, in a YouTube video which resulted in his mother gaining the attention of Bollywood and eventually landing a role in the Indian television series Yeh Hai Mohabbatein (This Is Love).” How great is that? 

• Someone, probably Jim, told me that the claw was actually part of the original design for the Daleks and got cut because it cost too much money. So there you go.

• Jim was definitely responsible for the original title of this post, before I spotted it had a semi-official name, “The Legs of Davros”. Someone else suggested “The Leg-ends of Davros”. 

• “The Klade” were a suspiciously anagrammatical humanoid race in some of Lance Parkin’s Doctor Who novels published during the interregnum.

• “The timelines and the canon are rupturing”. Hmm. I do wonder what that might mean.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. You can listen to the Bunker’s Doctor Who special here. And if you really want to know what my favourite things are in every year of Doctor Who so far you’ll have to check out my other newsletter:

Questionable Statements

(It’s behind the paywall but there’s a special offer on.)

Happy birthday, Doctor.