Things That Make You Go "Ow."

Growing up in the 90s, it’s fair to say that being a Doctor Who fan was something of an embarrassing stigma. It was looked upon as old, cheap and more than a bit rubbish. We knew, of course, that it wasn’t. We knew how majestic and wonderful the very idea of the programme was and we knew how expansive was its imaginative reach. However, if we looked a little more truthfully at the show, without those fan goggles on (which tend to paper over the flimsy, gaudy visuals and critique plot points nobody in their right mind would worry about) we would perhaps, just perhaps realise that there were moments of our favourite show which didn’t stand up to any scrutiny at all.

I foolishly watched The Trial of a Time Lord with 4 university mates all in one night in 2004. At the end of the marathon, one mate said, “It was unwieldy, it was convoluted, it didn’t hang together at all.” Not once did he mention that Trial looked cheap, rather that it was just completely rubbish. After so many hours of the thing, I reluctantly had to agree. The other mates were too busy poking needles in their eyes to make comment. 

And yet, I can re-watch and re-watch Trial and find some good in it every single time. I love the music, I love Bob Holmes’s dialogue – far richer in Mysterious Planet than anybody gives it credit for. I love Mindwarp. I love the Part 12 cliff-hanger which throws the story on its head. I love the Master’s casual dropping in of the Valeyard’s real name. I love it. And yet, I can still see what a misguided thing it was to do to invite my mates to watch it. Because at its core, hand-on-heart, The Trial of a Time Lord is dreadful. There’s Colin Baker throwing witless insults at the Valeyard that an average four-year old could trump. (“Stackyard?”) There’s Brian Blessed and Nicola Bryant in super slo-mo inside a big, girly pink heart. There’s Pip and Jane Baker’s dialogue. There’s Joan Simms. “Forward I say!”

Moments of similarly toe-curling embarrassment abound in all of Doctor Who. Much has been written about Ingrid Pitt’s karate Myrka action, McCoy’s cliff-hanging icy umbrella antics, Sutekh’s special bottom feeler, the guy who plays Cotton in The Mutants and the entirety of Timelash. So I won’t bore you by making fun of a 30 year old science-fiction thriller made with minimal money in the same way as a soap opera. Instead, I’ll look at the post 2005 series – the BBC’s flagship programme made with a much larger budget, better resources, and the luxury of multiple takes – and see where this modern iteration of our beloved Doctor has stumbled and fallen. Which moments here already make us cringe? Which will be the moments in the future looked back upon as infamously as Ingrid Pitt’s karate Myrka action? Which moments will we and hang our heads in shame in reminiscence of, whilst all the while still loving the bones of our show?

When I think of embarrassing New Series moments, I am instantly reminded of Freema Agyeman’s delivery of her line at the start of The Sontaran Stratagem: “Doctor, it’s Martha and I’m bringing you back to Earth.” From a purely textual level, it’s a bit of a disaster. Who on Earth indeed would open a telephone conversation that way? The Doc’s been off travelling with Donna, Martha’s risen up the UNIT ranks: lots of time has passed. So how might two friends reconnect? What might the first thing they say be? Surely something more like, “Doctor, it’s Martha. How are you are getting on? … Yeah, I’m great thanks, working for UNIT actually, which sort of brings me to what I was ringing about. Can you do us a favour?” What we actually get is a ham-fisted slap-you-round-the-face-with-nothing line which rams home the idea that the Doctor is not spending this episode on a more interesting planet. Well, whoop-de-do. The fact that it’s positioned immediately before the titles is disappointing, as we’d just enjoyed a stellar sequence with a satnav and a death which would have made for far more of a jeopardy-fuelled hook into the episode. Lastly though, and perhaps worst of all, is Freema Agyeman’s delivery. “I’m bringing you back to Earth.” She stresses bringing?! Why would any actor stress bringing? What is it about bringing in the sentence that needs it marking out as important? “I’m bringing you back to Earth!” she positively exclaims. If there is a stronger example of a bad line being made even worse by a lead performance in the New Series, show me! The true gut-punch is that it was used in the Next Time Trailer in Planet of the Ood, and the Previously On Doctor Who at the beginning of The Poison Sky. So if you’re ever marathoning a series, you have to endure it three bloody times.

CGI had undergone a sea-change since 1989 when Doctor Who returned. It was a culture shock to see our nuts-and-bolts, do-it-yourself, sticky-back-plastic show affected by so much CGI. Platform One was particularly beautiful and strange. Satellite 5 was equally spectacular. And Daleks flying across space to attack it was a visual dream come true. But, it has to be said, lots of the CGI in Series One, even at the time, made us wince. My brother recently asked me if a particular piece of CGI was more or less impressive than “that shit wheelie bin in Rose.” He has a definite point. There are moments where the interaction between CGI and live action just doesn’t convince. Chief culprit, of course, is the Slitheen. Their CG running looks woeful, each Slitheen identical and moving far more smoothly than those cumbersome rubber costumes we have to endure the rest of the time. In fact, those chase sequences around Downing Street are so flatly directed it beggars belief. We never, never believe that the costumes match the CGI: they both look cheap and nasty. Elsewhere in the series, we’ve got the cartoony phial of anti-plastic (bad idea?) smashing as it hits the Nestene: it is as if suddenly, we’re in a Pixar movie. And then there’s that cork flying into plastic Mickey’s head…

The following year sees similar CG tragedies: David Tennant’s head is clumsily copied and pasted onto a man who can actually ride a horse through a mirror in The Girl in the Fireplace. But even this looks more convincing than the wig the same guy wears a few shots later. It has always irritated me how the spectacular sequence of the Cyber Controller climbing the zeppelin rope ends with him not being burnt up in the explosion below but vanishing with a little whooshy puff-of-smoke kind of noise. New Earth’s identical green pods for the walking dead look nothing like the respective location. And I wish that shot of the Daleks emerging at the end of Army of Ghosts looked at least a little bit genuine. 

CGI aside though, other embarrassments can be found in guest performers. Forget Cotton from The Mutants; I raise you the cast of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. The brothers here are grim indeed. Mark Oliver as Bram Van Baalen is truly dreadful. He’s not even endearingly dreadful like Christian Cook as Ross in the already-mentioned Sontaran Stratagem. (How is this Sontaran caper so thoroughly enjoyable?) Cook’s delivery of the line “I timed that perfectly,” comes shortly after a joke he has completely failed to deliver at all. Even David Tennant – probably the nicest bloke in showbiz - looks like he’s acting with a mentally retarded fan who’s a bit too eager to please but they’re stuck in a car together and it’s all getting a bit awkward. Mark Oliver though… Jesus. His what-he-thinks-of-as Brando-style cool mumbling belies the fact that all the wrong words are stressed in every single line. He hasn’t a clue what he’s saying. When he dies early, it’s too soon. His brothers are almost as bad. I don’t understand how a story with only three people in its guest cast manages to employ such appallingly poor talent.

There are many examples of inexperienced actors on New Who: even Finlay Robertson as Larry in the otherwise brilliant Blink gives us his awfully staccato reading of “He tricked them. The Doctor tricked them. They’re never gonna move again.” He delivers it like a chid reading from a book for the first time. But then there’s the other fruitier problem: the very, very strong actor who has decided that today is a mess-about end-of-term going-over-the-top-for-the-lads sort of day. I’m looking at you Roger Lloyd Pack. He’s got three successive lines in that first manic scene of Rise of the Cybermen – all start with and. 

And they will refuse me?

And if I don’t?

And how will you do that from beyond the grave?

Lloyd Pack manages to make them sound even clunkier than they already are. He makes questions sound like statements. And gives every line equal weight with that insane vocal choice he’s adopted. Later he also gives us more terrific ands: Monitoring Jackie, he gifts us with, “And… restore!” That’s a personal favourite. Best perhaps is his cackling at the president after his “crashing the party” gag.

Elsewhere in New Who, we find Steven Berkoff, famously hard work on set, ruining the story’s ending for the greater good. We have a delightful scene of the clearly mental and alone Berkoff refusing to look at other actors, laughing under his breath and making no sense of his lines: “The TALLY must be met,” he intones, like a priest who’s forgotten what the words are about. Then there are those Dance BTech hand movements: he is rocking those fingernails, sister.

Mark Costigan as Max Capricorn is an equally treasurable scream. Thrill as he dicks about behind every other actor’s back. Tennant is figuring out the plot whilst Costigan shakes his head, bottom lip quivering. He’s a major gurn. He even manages to detract from The Death of Kylie with his big, open mouth. For those who abhor Voyage of the Damned (nutcases all) tune in for Prime Costigan at the end.

Frankly though, although there is much fun to be had with New-Who, the advancements in technology since the 60s, 70s and 80s mean that fluffs, errors and gaffs are not nearly as pronounced. Just as the 80s show really is incomparable to the as-live 60s episodes. The quality of the series is demonstrably better today. I sometimes ache for the times when a Roger Lloyd Pack barnstormer of a performance could sneak in under the radar. Michelle Gomez is the nearest the Capaldi era has come to the more free-wheeling performance. I wish he’d had a few more big bad villains to face off against.  As we move on into the Chibnall and Whittaker era, I hope that whilst visually what we get is going to be stunning, we can also enjoy one or two mental choices from the guest cast to help the stars align. Doctor Who comes complete with its embarrassments and I’d like a few more to balk at.

JH