SERIOUS DRAMA? Recent Criticisms of Doctor Who

The media has made much of recent reports of conflict over the dramatic credentials of Doctor Who. Stephen Fry (16th June 2010 www.bbc.co.uk/news/1032676) is reported as having described the British output of adult programmes as ‘infantilised’ when they should ‘surprise and astonish’.

In his Bafta Annual Television lecture he stated (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/16/stephen-fry-doctor-who):

‘But if you are an adult you want something surprising, savoury, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong.

"You want to try those things, because that's what being adult means."’

Doctor Who and Merlin are explicitly mentioned as being ‘wonderfully written but not for adults’ and Doctor Who even being compared to a chicken nugget – tasty but not satisfying (Stephen Moffat giving the fast food comparison a curt rebuff in his response to Fry’s comments). Whilst Terry Pratchett (3rd May 2010 www.sfx.co.uk/2010/05/03/guest-blog-terry-pratchett-on-doctor-who) Doctor Who as not science fiction. So what to make of these stories? Is Doctor Who bad drama? Is Doctor Who losing its touch? Both articles are, in my view, making headlines without any substance. In each case Doctor Who is the headline tag but the real stories and issues lie elsewhere.

Stephen Fry is attacking, as he sees it, the poor state of adult British drama. He makes an implicit distinction between dramas such as Doctor Who that are family orientated (as noted in the response by Stephen Moffat) and explicitly adult drama.
The ‘chicken nugget’ reference is a bit of a swipe but the real target is not Doctor Who but the policy of the BBC in wheeling it out as a successful example of their drama output. Fry’s comments may be well placed. Comparing the output of British television with that of the most watched series over the last couple of years, the US produced House, dominated by Fry’s old sparring partner Hugh Laurie, and the CSI franchise (http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/csi-catches-the-most-international-tvwatching-eyeballs--1319), it could be argued that claiming Doctor Who as the British alternative to these mega-shows is a little lame. Btu I don’t think this is Fry’s point. He is bemoaning the lack of any plan or ambition to compete, any desire to take a risk to commit to developing adult orientated drama by British television that matches the quality (writing, acting, etc.) not to mention funding of these US series.

It could be argued that good drama is good drama be it aimed at adults or children or the family, but the complexity and sophistication of plots and character that Fry appears to be yearning for is probably something beyond the scope of a family orientated programme. Doctor Who can address big themes; the end of the universe and humanity, noble sacrifice, the meaning of humanity, redemption have all been played out since the show returned in 2005, but, of necessity, these themes need to be presented in a certain way to appeal and not repel a family audience. An illustration of how these themes could be dealt with within a more ‘adult’ drama is the development of Being Human, a BBC 3 programme that migrated to BBC2 after a successful first series, involving a flat sharing ghost, werewolf and vampire – no-one said adult drama had to be realistic! So Fry is not necessarily arguing that Doctor Who is not good drama but that this form of drama can not address serious themes in an adult manner, a form of drama he wants and that he feels British television is no longer tkaing the risk to provide. Odd really given that the BBC took a huge risk back in 2005 re-commissioning the old, tired format of a strange man flying around in a blue box to fill a family audience slot that many media commentators stated no longer existed on a Saturday night.

Terry Pratchett’s article is not really a harsh criticism, it is more a whimsical remembrance of the old series coupled with an annoyance of the use of deus ex machina as the explanatory mode in the drama – a criticism that I feel may be a little harsh on some episodes under Russell T Davies’s tenure and certainly harsh on Stephen Moffat’s tenure as producer. Anyone who starts an article stating – ‘I wish I could hate Doctor Who.’, but can’t bring themselves to and then later states ‘It’s no good, I’ll go with the Doctor, even if those Ood look as if they should have been confronted by Tom Baker.’ You can pretty much assume he is a fan, albeit a reluctant one.

Pratchett is highly critical of classifying Doctor Who as science fiction. He has great trouble reconciling the plausibility of the science with the fast talking gobbledegok that explains fantastical acts such as transporting a hospital to the moon or human fat transmuting into cute little creature blobs. Although I could ask how close does fiction have to be to reality to count as science and how do we know if it is close to reality, this would be a pointless attempt at a debate as Doctor Who is science fantasy, or pure fantasy if you want, rather than science fiction. It is science only in the loosest sense that the laws of the physical realm are often called upon to do impossible things to provide an explanation; it is fantasy in the sense that we all know it is all impossible anyway. There is a veneer of physical explanation, the pixel thin science that Pratchett comments on, but it is almost irrelevant. Doctor Who is about story, it is about character, and it is about the suspension of belief, including a belief in science as we know it in this universe. If calling it science fiction immediately means it has to conform to a set of rules then the format will collapse, the enjoyment of the audience evaporates. Doctor Who is about the ride rather than the rules.

The criticism of the deus ex machina is succinctly put:

‘It’s a law – well at least a guideline – in writing plays that if somebody is going to be killed with an axe in the third act, then the axe should be visible hanging on the wall in the first act, and, for the hard of thinking, should be the subject of a line of dialogue that would go something like “you shouldn’t leave that around, it could do someone a mischief.”’

Couldn’t agree more and if Doctor Who was meant to be a long-running detective drama I would add my criticism. Yes, I did feel a little cheated at the end of Series 1 in 2005 when the whole thing was wrapped up by Rose metamorphosing into an all powerful being and the end of Series 3 with the deity-like form of David Tennant hovering over a cowering Master wasn’t much better if you were looking for meaningful and logically coherent narratives. Then again there was ‘Girl in the Fireplace’, The Empty Child’, scary enough even for Practhett and the already classic ‘Blink’. Aside from the commonality of being written by Stephen Moffat, they also stuck (more or less) to the narrative ‘laws’ mentioned by Practhett. But does this make them better than the two-part space opera that closed Series 1? On an emotional level, despite the ending, that two parter was an incredible television event, a real emotion ride, but that is what Russell T Davies intended the story to do. Sticking to guidelines wasn’t in the script, heightening emotions was. Different scripts, different writers, different intentions, the success of Doctor Who depends on varying the format, varying the type of narrative that will hold the attention of a varied audience, from the old timers steeped in Whovian lore to the wide-eyed youngsters who hide behind the sofa from the Weeping Angles but laugh at the Daleks. As Practhett notes:

‘After all, when you’ve had your moan you have to admit that it is very, very entertaining, with its heart in the right place, even if its head is often in orbit around Jupiter.’

‘And yet, I will watch again next week because it is pure professionally-written entertainment, even if it helps sometimes if you leave your brain on a hook by the door. It’s funny, light-hearted, knows when to use pathos and capable of wonderful moments:’

In the end Doctor Who is about well-crafted entertainment whatever the narrative, whatever rules it breaks and whatever impossible universe it inhabits. We are all just along for the fun of the ride.