PUBLICATION: Star Trek #31, Gold Key Comics, July 1975
CREATORS: Unknown (writer), Alberto Giolitti (artist)
STARDATE: 20:10.7 - Follows issue #26 (Season 3).
PLOT: Spock attends the ceremonies for Quodar's entry into the Federation, but Kirk doesn't make it in time because his shuttle ferrying the a cat-like admiral crashes on a neighboring planet. Problem is, the inhabitants of that world kicked out all ambassadors some time ago and told the peaceful Quodar they would attack if their territory was violated. As Spock tries to get permission for a rescue, Kirk and his shuttle party are captured and put to work by the religious folk who toil for "the life within", protected by robot guards. Spock slips in to meet Quodar's queen who is in fact Vulcan, the daughter of the former ambassador. But her logic doesn't really move him and he steams a shuttle. Turns out Kirk didn't need his help as he and his crew escape their masters, fight their way back into the alien city and get answers from their leader. The life within is a cosmic egg found at the center of the planet, anyone who encounters it is either absorbed or has his mind opened to the Truth - which happens to the volatile cat-like Tailen Kahn (no relation) - and they feel it must be protected at all costs. Kirk convinces them Starfleet can be trusted to do this and they let him go.
CONTINUITY: The featured planet is strategically important to the Klingons, though they don't appear.
DIVERGENCES: Chekov has lost his Russian accent. Though Manning makes a return appearance (he was in #26), he's no longer bald. Nurse Chapel shows training in advanced computronics AND robot-fighting karate (Uhura too!).
PANEL OF THE DAY - Luthor makes a threat! REVIEW: A rather ambitious story, trying to juggling many pieces, including some political, esoteric and zen-like stuff. Just check out the introductory caption (is that someone's log?). For action fans, there's ninja Uhura and Chapel Robot Fighter. Nice to see the girls be the best fighters (Spock's martial prowess is all in the hand slapping) even if it contradicts the show. Does it succeed? Not on all fronts. It's a bit too talky at times, and there's hardly an resolution beyond Kirk's philosophizing. It works, but since there's no follow-up to the egg story, it falls limp.
Part and parcel of why fans find a change of Doctors exciting and/or terrifying, I think, is that it's usually more than a change of actors. It's a change of approach, and usually a change of producer and/or script editor causing the program to bend and shift according to the vision of all these new people. It's why you'll also find "favorites" discussions in Who fandom divided into "favorite Doctor" and "favorite era", the two questions not always yielding the same result (when asked I might be a Troughton or McCoy man, but still prefer the 4th Doctor's early years to the rest of the program, for example).
Each era has a unique feel that goes beyond its Doctor, but usually informs his performance (though I'm sure the reverse is also true), which builds on the previous era as to not alienate the viewership. And yet, they often do, before they charm your pants off all over again. Maybe looking at the past will allow us the look at the future more open-mindedly?
1st Doctor - The Beginning (1963-1966) Though designed as an educational adventure program, the Daleks' first appearance in the very second story laid the groundwork for most of what was to come. This is the golden age (some might say the only age, and they would be correct) of the pure historical as the Doctor and his companions visited various periods of history, from the stone age to the siege of Troy to the French Revolution. The Doctor was a sort of anti-hero, largely leaving the heroics to the younger cast members, but the format remained quite elastic. They were making it up as they went along, so you have a lot of variety both in length and subject matter - historical strage plays (The Aztecs), monster movie madness (The Daleks), surrealism (The Edge of Destruction), comedy (The Romans), they all jockey for attention and in a sense gave Doctor Who license to go anywhere it wanted to in later years. A good example of the era: The Aztecs
2nd Doctor - Start Running (1966-1969) Admitting to itself that the monster stories were a hell of a lot more popular than the historicals, Who then started making them almost exclusively. With a younger sprightlier Doctor, they had the chance to do a lot more running away from the creatures that took over the show. The Daleks appeared a couple times before being temporarily taken away by their creator and rights-holder, Terry Nation, so the Cybermen became the Big Recurring Bad. The era also introduced the Ice Warriors and Yeti, which both made two appearances. Example: Tomb of the Cybermen
3rd Doctor - The UNIT Era (1970-1975) Then came producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks, oh and colour tv. Stranding the Doctor on Earth in the present day for the largest portion of his time as Jon Pertwee meant better production values, more explosions, more stunts, at the expense of production design. Obviously taking its cue from James Bond's success, this is the superspy era. The Doctor has never been so hands on, driving fast cars and karate chopping his way to victory. He had a Bloefeld-like enemy in the Master and companions were distilled into a single assistant, sparking the Bond-like term "Who girls". Though some contend that having him work with UNIT, which is, after all, a military organization, went against the character's anti-establishment vibe, but he definitely worked outside their hierarchy and butted heads with bureaucrats and military men on a regular basis. Though it may seem like a total departure from the 2nd Doctor's era, UNIT did get its start in 1968 (The Invasion), and of course, Doctor Who would never shake its "monster of the week" format. Example: The Sea Devils
4th Doctor - The Hinchcliffe-Holmes Era (1975-1977) Leaving UNIT behind, producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes (universally acknowledged as the best writer of Classic Who) reformated the series one again. Under their regime, Doctor Who got more atmospheric and took its cues from the Hammer Horror films of the time. The Doctor and his assistant (a format mostly retained for the rest of the 70s despite characters like Harry and K-9 cropping up) met mummies, disembodied hands, cultists, Frankenstein's monster, the Yellow Menace, body snatchers, etc. all with a science fiction twist. Darker and more violent, it was a natural progression from the explosive action of the previous era. Example: The Talons of Weng-Chiang
4th Doctor - Hitchhiker's Guide to Douglas Adams (1977-1981) Tom Baker remained in the role long enough to span two eras, proof that the actor isn't the only element to watch out for. A number of trends are key here. First, the many complaints leveled at the show by "morality watchdogs" like Mary Whitehouse pushed new producer Graham Williams to lighten the mood and brighten the lights. Cue kiddie fodder like K-9, set a lot of stories on white space stations, and get Hitchhiker's Guide mastermind Douglas Adams as your new script editor. Much of this may have been inspired by Tom Baker's own pregressively more cheeky and self-indulgent performance as the Doctor. A "funny" Doctor begat a more comical program, whose greatest weakness was lacking tension. What is there to be scared of when you can laugh everything off as much as the Doctor can? The final year saw uber producer John Nathan-Turner (JNT) take over the show, emphasizing gloss over substance, but Tom Baker had become such an icon by then that one can scarcely talk of a change in eras. Example: City of Death
5th and 6th Doctors - Glitz and Glam (1982-1986) Moving from its weekly Saturday night slot to a twice weekly mid-week presentation made Peter Davison's stint as the Doctor something more akin to soaps, an impression reinforced by the addition of three companions in the increasingly crowded TARDIS. JNT's focus wasn't on story, but rather on look and publicity, which isn't a good thing, though it was probably why the show was kept on the air through the rest of the 80s despite the shoestring budget and diminishing returns. Hallmarks of the JNT period include few-to-no costume changes (the action figure principle), highly publicized companion changes and returns for classic enemies, location shoots to exotic countries (with no real scripted reason), sometimes miscast high profile guest-stars, and trying to start hairstyle trends (poor Janet Fielding). It's easy to criticize, but perhaps the high profile of the show during Tom Baker's turn made the environment ripe for more media attention, and perhaps JNT was desperately trying to keep the show in the public eye even as interest for it waned in the wake of Baker's departure.
I kind of feel bad for script editor Eric Saward actually. From every interview I've seen, this soft-spoken man seems to have been constantly put upon to incorporate JNT's shopping lists of "cool" media stunts, even in the face of logic. Perhaps that's why his own stories were "mercenary" stories with more attention given to guest-starring characters than the regulars (The Visitation, Revelation of the Daleks). In the 6th Doctor, we have the purest JNT vision. The Doctor has a terrible action figure costume, the assistant is American so that the program can be sold to the Yanks (despite Nicola Bryant struggling with the accent), and the sex and violence are on the rise. Examples: Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks
7th Doctor - The Cartmel Plan (1987-1989) But I'm still not keen on lumping all the 80s in some kind of macro-JNT era, because while their production style is the same, the shows scan differently. JNT's lack of interest in story simply means that the era is much more dictated by the script editor. And under Andrew Cartmel, Doctor Who became a very different animal. Yes, the first few stories suffered from being "pants", as the Brits call it, but as Cartmel got into his groove, the Doctor was turned into a temporal mastermind with a definite dark side. He manipulated situations, villains, even companions. Writers were attempting much more intricate stories to fit this vision, some of which border on the incomprehensible to some, like the textured and allusive Ghost Light. Regardless of the upswing in quality, the Doctor's days were numbered since Colin Baker's time and the BBC finally pulled the plug. Cartmel's vision of the Doctor would continue his journeys in the New Adventures series of novels, which would extend the complexity and darkness of the character and stories much further, and provide a forum for writers who would go on to work on New Who, like Mark Gatiss, Paul Cornell and... Russell T Davies. Example: The Curse of Fenric
8th Doctor - Aborted American Era (1996) Well, that didn't work out. What WOULD this era have been like had Fox picked up the series instead of Space Above and Beyond though? American companions, actors and locations, most certainly. The innovation, of course, is the Doctor as a romantic lead, which had never been attempted before (outside a few flirtatious moments in the 1st Doctor's era). And it's something that would carry over in the new series. You can follow Paul McGann's Doctor in a long line of novels and audios, which are a mix of New Adventures and the TV Movie (amnesia is a recurring theme, for example). Example: The TV Movie
9th and 10th Doctors - Rose (2005-2009) It's not that Christopher Eccleston stayed too briefly to have his own era, but rather that New Who up til now has been Russell T Davies' story above all. Starting with "Rose", it's a story that only finds its conclusion in Journey's End, 4 years and 2 Doctors later. RTD reinvents the program for the 2000s as a slick, effects-heavy, fast-paced, emotionally charged show. Whether Eccleston or Tennant, the Doctor is a romantic lead in RTD's mind, which I don't think is due to change, as new producer Steven Moffatt's episodes over the last 4 years have been heavy on romance. The same can be said of the epic nature of the stories, painting the Time Lord as a Time God (so echoes of both the 7th and 8th Doctors). Throughout it all, it remains recognizably Doctor Who. Examples: The Parting of the Ways, Doomsday
11th Doctor - Moffatt's Reign (2010-?) Obviously an extention of New Who to date, with one of its best writers turned producer, the show will no doubt be recognizable, but I hope sufficiently different too. Because that's what Doctor Who is all about, isn't it? Change and resistance to conformity.
It's looking like I'll be doing these pieces all week, so I think I'll be taking questions. Anything Who - themes, trivia, opinions, theories, anything you like. Those not answered over the course of pre-planned essays will be answered in Friday's post. Anything you'd like to know or discuss?
PUBLICATION: Star Trek #30, Gold Key Comics, May 1975
CREATORS: Unknown (writer), Alberto Giolitti (artist)
STARDATE: 33:33.3 - Follows the last issue (#28).
PLOT: Investigating Isis, a star about to go nova, the crew finds life readings on the system's third planet. Hoping to save the poor souls stranded there, the landing party is instead herded by nature to a temple. There, an old woman is resigned to her fate. Spock and Kirk find truly trippy historical records that recount the planet's creation myth. Isis is an eye in a pyramid that seeded itself on the planet and gave birth to a cyclops race. After making them build the temple, she returns to the sky leaving them all blind. These people have been dead and gone for 25 million years, but the old woman remembers them being there only moments ago. That's because she's actually the star made flesh, and before she explodes, she beams the landing party back to the safety of the Enterprise. Kirk promises to have a chat with our own sun one of these days.
CONTINUITY: Nurse Chapel finally gets her blond hair.
DIVERGENCES: The Enterprise-D goes to Isis III after the mind-numbing events of Too Short a Season, but it is clearly destroyed here.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Uhura gets an electric spanking REVIEW: The contention that stars are living organisms is odd, but far from unknown in science fiction (Doctor Who did one of these last year, in fact). Where Death of a Star succeeds, I think, is in its surreal creation myth (misguided pun and all), lending an atmosphere of "important ideas" to the tale. Less interesting are ye olde attacking plants, but bits like Chapel being left with "Isis" and fainting from sunstroke are better uses of the goddess' powers.
Well, you might've heard, the new Doctor Who to follow David Tennant has been announced: Matt Smith.Yes, he's a virtual unknown, but then, so were most Doctors when they were cast, especially out here in the North American steppes. At 26, he's the youngest to ever play the Doctor, and here I thought they were going to step away from Tennant's boyishness and go for someone older. But I shouldn't be surprised, since Steven Moffatt's episodes have tended to be quite romantic and relationshipy. A more fatherly Doctor wasn't really in the cards.
I'm up for it though. Smith shares his last name with the Doctor already, and besides has an interesting face. Here's the extended interview from Doctor Who Confidential:
And with Moffatt at the helm, the writing should be especially good. I don't know what Smith brought to the audition, but it was in line with what Moffatt wants to do. I trust because I love.
Truth be told, the only thing I've ever seen Matt Smith in before is his appearance in Billie Piper's erotic comedy Secret Diary of a Call Girl and he's not really what I was looking at. Speaking of which, for some truly awful coverage of this story, check out the News of the World, who lead with "New Time Lord has already bedded Tardis babe Billie". So yeah, he's already better than Tennant if you look at it like that.
So what do you think of the 11th Doctor's potential?
PUBLICATION: Star Trek #28, Gold Key Comics, January 1975
CREATORS: Unknown (writer), Unknown (artist)
STARDATE: 34:21.7 - Follows the last issue.
PLOT: The Enterprise comes upon an asteroid that houses a giant protein molecule that mimics technology and people. There's a lot of running from one shuttle to its double, and firing at doubles of people (including a doubled Kirk - it's tradition). And then they leave, but warning us that the creature is still alive. Oooooh.
CONTINUITY: None.
DIVERGENCES: Starfleet uses humanoid tv-camera robots to scout ahead.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Starfleet Disco REVIEW: Ok wow. Pretty awful. First, one can appreciate why the art has gone unsigned. The word "drab" comes to mind. The human figures are at best fair, and there are entirely too many "original" Starfleet characters, which gets confusing, especially in a "doubles" story. The backgrounds are on the cheap, basically a barren desert with a central volcano. The creature looks like circles and lines and you never really know what the heck is going on. It's back and forth, shoot this and that, a shuttle surviving a lava flow, a pseudo-explanation that seems clear from the beginning, and a dire warning à la Conspiracy. The worst of it is, I think Voyager stole this idea for Demon/Course: Oblivion.
While I wait for people to come back from Christmas vacation and give them their presents, I still managed to make one hand-out. My friend Mel thus scores a jPod Season 1 DVD, which I hear has some good casting in it (i.e. people that feel like they sprang out of the novel) and some not so good (all her impressions). I'll hopefully be able to borrow it and see for myself.
"Accomplishments"
DVDs:When I utter the words "Doctor Who Christmas", I don't mean it lightly. After a huge serving of New Who last week, this week was largely given over to Classic Who DVDs. First up was Black Orchid, a short 2-parter starring the 5th Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan, which is sort of a 1920s murder mystery written for another series or something. Hey, I quite like it as a charming period piece that doesn't overstay its welcome (despite an outrageous amount of cricketing), but the cast hilariously DESTROYS it on the commentary (and I can't disagree with their problems, really). The DVD also includes deleted scenes, features on locations used, costumes and restoration, a good documentary on the 5th Doctor's comic strip adventures (featuring Dave Gibbons), and a reading of disgruntled letters.
The next one was The Time Meddler, a disappointing release, especially given industry jabber that Patrick Stewart might show up as the Meddling Monk in upcoming stories. The story features the 1st Doctor, Steven and Vicki, and is a really good turn for them, the Doctor finally becoming a hero (as opposed to an anti-hero), with the Monk as the first other Time Lord ever seen. The plot is a bit of nonsense, but fun enough that you don't think about it. And yet, the DVD has few features. The usual commentary, photo gallery, production notes, etc. are there, of course, but no "making of" at all. Verity Lambert's death prompted an obituary essay and photo section (but not a video feature). So we're left with an audio track of 12 missing seconds, a good documentary on the 1st Doctor's comic strips, and a featurette on the restoration of the story. That's comparitively weak.
Next up, The Invisible Enemy starring the 4th Doctor and Leela, and featuring K-9's very first appearance. Please, watch this story with the enhanced CGI effects, they make everything look better. Not only do they fix continuity problems, but instead of invisible blaster shots, we get truly savage laser fights. Without them, this story is as risible as you've heard. Voyage through the Doctor's brain, robot dog, giant shrimp, yep all there. I do like it a lot for Leela though. A second disc has the single episode of K-9 & Company that paired him with Sarah Jane Smith, a train wreck of a story featuring a coven of Satan worshipers and an atrocious theme tune. The commentary tracks on both are good fun (Liz Sladen particularly severe) and as you can imagine, there's a lot of K-9 material on there: A Blue Peter appearance where he gets attacked by a real dog, making ofs for both stories, behind the scenes CSO work, silly interviews with the robot dog, and more. The DVD-ROM portion includes the illustrated K-9 books in which he flies around the universe in a kennel-like spaceship called, yep, K-Nel.
Are all the Classic Who episodes I watched this week kind of crap? I guess they are, because our next story is Destiny of the Daleks, with the 4th Doctor and the first appearance of the 2nd Romana, and featuring the return of Davros (in a terrible mask). The story of the Daleks' war with the Movellans isn't a terrible one, but it does feel sluggish, and the Classic Daleks are screechy affairs, as usual. Enhanced CGI doesn't do much for the story this time. The DVD includes the usual features, plus a bit on the director, a documentary on Terry Nation who created the Daleks, and most beautifully of all, the Australian computer adverts starring the Doctor and Romana as an obviously married couple. Awesome!
Leaving Doctor Who country, I next flipped The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the best (and possibly most underrated) of Terry Gilliam's fantasy films. As usual, Gilliam himself, on both commentary and documentary, has a wonderfully caustic sense of humor about yet another of his troubled productions. I love it when people call each other out in interviews. The DVD also adds deleted scenes, both filmed and junked at the storyboard phase. A lot more fun for us than it seemed to be for the makers.
And though I'd started it before Christmas break, I finally finished Six Feet Under Season 4. All I had left was some of the 7 commentaries (on 12 episodes). The DVD also features deleted scenes, a Bob Costas interview and a look at the season through its editing. It was a very good penultimate season, with both beautiful and lyrical stories (Parallel Play) and shocking ones (That's My Dog). Only one character, maybe two, is ever allowed to be on a high each season (this time it's Claire) while others come crashing down (everyone else). The Lisa storyline finally(?) comes to a close, and more of Claire's art stuff. I think the comedy/tragedy balance is the best it's been since Season 1.
New Unauthorized Doctor Who CCG cards: 8 new cards, starting work on a new 180-card expansion called Infinite Space. The booster pack art is ready and everything. Someone Else's Post of the Week I like regular series on blogs, which I think kinda shows, and so this week's SE'sPotW goes to Rob! at the Aquaman Shrine, who just started a little something called AquaFamous. Just another way to show his love for Aquaman, and other people's love as well!
CREATORS: Written and illustrated by Shane Johnson, "Based upon the engineering logs of Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott"
STARDATE: Just after The Voyage Home.
TOPIC: Straddling the line between fiction and non-fiction, this book takes its material to be true. In addition to discussing the USS Enterprise post-refit (movies I through III) deck by deck and system by system, it also discusses uniforms, insignia, support vessels (shuttles, workbees, lifeboats, etc.), equipment, and the history of the marvel of engineering that is the Enterprise. There are a lot of graphics on show, mostly floor plans and technical drawings, but some black and white pictures and design sketches as well. The just-revealed (at the time) Enterprise-A is discussed briefly in an appendix. Some of this information appeared either in the original 1975 Star Fleet Technical Manual (which I've never seen) or in FASA's role-playing sourcebooks, updated for the movie generation.
CONTINUITY: The book carries an introduction by Mr. Scott where it means to pass itself off as a manual for new engineers coming aboard. Enterprise's M-4 computer is replaced in the refit by an M-6, amusingly (well, if you're a complete nerd) skipping over the dangerous M-5 from The Ultimate Computer. The new self-destruct system charts what happens at the end of ST III. Transwarp drive is attributed to discoveries made during The Tholian Web, when the Defiant was sucked through an interphase (describing it as a hypserspace drive, really). The Enterprise-A was originally named the Ti-Ho, which explains why they jumped on the idea of renaming it.
DIVERGENCES: The dates are based on the FASA role-playing game's timeline and often contradict accepted canon. There are a heck of a lot of references to corporations for a world where money is supposed to be a thing of the past (maybe it isn't yet). The appendix indicates that the Enterprise-A was fitted with transwarp drive.
ILLUSTRATION OF THE WEEK - What's on the menu?
REVIEW: I remember being disappointed with this book when it came out (it was my first "non-fiction" Star Trek book), though it's really not too bad now. Part of the problem, I think, is that the deck plans all tend to run together, and while an actual-size technical drawing of a phaser might be cool (you can make like you're holding it to see the scale), it takes a lot of room for nothing. Worse still are the uniforms, which take 2 pages each (viewed from all sides). The book was also obsolete by the time it came out. It was after Star Trek IV, so the Enterprise as shown had already been destroyed, and the E-A so new that its accompanying text piece was all wrong once you saw it in action. It looks like the Enterprise's destruction kinda shafted Shane Johnson's labor of love. But for all that, it still has a lot to recommend. The text isn't as technical as later Tech Manuals' would be, it's even breezy in places. There are some lovely speculative touches like a micro-medical transporter to send samples to various labs instantaneously, multi-function worshiping altars in VIP quarters, and yes, bathrooms are clearly marked. Johnson seems to have had some fun making the world coherent, his essay on the refit especially interesting, with logical explanations for every cosmetic change. When discussing the new militaristic uniforms, he mentions how controversial the public found them (making the fans part of the world), and design sketches are presented as a contractor's work. So while it's not entirely efficient in its use of the 128 or so allowed, it still creates a nice enough impression that you've somehow come across a book from 200 years in the future.
761. The Final Truth
REVIEW: A rather ambitious story, trying to juggling many pieces, including some political, esoteric and zen-like stuff. Just check out the introductory caption (is that someone's log?).
For action fans, there's ninja Uhura and Chapel Robot Fighter. Nice to see the girls be the best fighters (Spock's martial prowess is all in the hand slapping) even if it contradicts the show. Does it succeed? Not on all fronts. It's a bit too talky at times, and there's hardly an resolution beyond Kirk's philosophizing. It works, but since there's no follow-up to the egg story, it falls limp.
