Tag Archives | Science Fiction

Tom Baker as the Doctor

Until recently, apart from a single 1996 tv-movie I hadn’t watched Doctor Who since the 1970s, back when Tom Baker played the main role.

[Aside to readers unfamiliar with the show (there’s probably at least one): Doctor Who is a British science-fiction series that initially ran from 1963 to 1989, then suffered a lengthy hiatus (interrupted only by the aforementioned 1996 tv-movie, pilot for a failed revival) before being brought back in 2005. The eponymous protagonist, a quirky and enigmatic traveller through space and time, maintains his immortality by periodically regenerating, a process that leaves him with not only a new appearance but also, to some extent, a new personality – thus both allowing the show to survive the periodic loss of its lead actor, and allowing each new actor to put his own spin on the character (there’ve been eleven main actors so far).]

I had some reasons to watch the revived show: I’d liked the original; Steven Moffat of Coupling was now one of the writers; and Catherine Tate of The Catherine Tate Show was now one of the lead actors.

David Tennant as the Doctor

But I had reasons not to watch, too: the few times I’d spun past the new Who and seen a minute or two it hadn’t grabbed me; Tom Baker’s image was too ingrained in my mind as the Doctor for David Tennant to dislodge it easily; with three decades of continuity, plus all the recent interconnected spinoffs like Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, it seemed like a lot to jump into and get caught up on; and with my busy schedule I tend to be wary of getting hooked on another show (I haven’t even watched Caprica yet). Plus what I primarily liked Tate for was her skill in playing a dizzying variety of characters on her own show, so seeing her play just one character wasn’t as strong a draw. So I ended up not watching it.

Recently I’d found a couple more reasons to start watching. Moffat was moving up from a writer to head writer; and a new Doctor, Matt Smith, had just been cast (thanks to a recent regeneration), which meant to some degree a new start, making it seem like a convenient time to pick up the show. (Though on the downside, Tate had left.) Still, I didn’t make a point of watching it.

But then the other day I came across the new season’s second episode, “The Beast Below,” by accident, and found it rather charming; so I hunted down the first episode, “The Eleventh Hour,” and liked that too. So now I was kinda-sorta committed to watching more.

Matt Smith as the Doctor

Then I read a bit about the show and discovered that two of the upcoming episodes, “The Time of Angels” and “Flesh and Stone,” would make more sense to me if I’d watched three earlier episodes, from the Tennant era: “Blink,” “Silence in the Library,” and “Forest of the Dead” (all written by Moffat, incidentally). So I found those online and watched them – and now I’m much more hooked on the Tennant series than on the new Smith one. (This isn’t a judgment about the two actors specifically; it’s about overall story.)

However, I’m about to watch the new season’s “Victory of the Daleks,” on BBC America, so we’ll see.

The newly restored version of Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis, with 25 more minutes of footage than any previously available version, will be out on dvd in the fall; but in the meantime, here’s a trailer.

A lot of Babylon 5 fans aren’t crazy about the spinoff series Crusade, but I really liked it; I think it’s visually more beautiful than B5 (the effects technology had improved), plus it has two of my favourite characters, the cryptic, melancholy Galen and the lovably obnoxious Max Eilerson.

Galen and Eilerson

Frustratingly, Crusade was marred by intrusive network micromanagement, and then cancelled halfway through its first season. Here are some of TNT’s actual requests:

Can we lose the makeup on Dureena … and make her an alien by her attitude [instead]?

We’d like to have one of the characters include a sexual explorer, so when they make contact with a new race, his or her job is to go and have sex with them.

We want to see more fist-fights on the bridge.

We’d like to see an episode worked around a wrestler, since wrestling is hot right now.

We think you should give the captain a dog for a pet. [Note: as if any science-fiction show would do that!]

Rather than have the characters work their way out of the problem as depicted, we think it would be better if Captain Gideon arranges to have Dureena compromised so the antagonist will rape her, and Gideon will catch him in the act, and use this as blackmail to get the character to back off his demands.

When show-runner J. Michael Straczynski proved strangely unenthusiastic about these suggestions, the network pulled the plug. (There’s some evidence that these requests were not entirely sincere but were instead simply a way of finding an excuse for cancelling the show; if true, that makes TNT look better in one respect but worse in another.)

Sadly, there is no correct viewing order for the episodes that were produced; the network interfered so much that they completely screwed up the continuity. For example, you’ll see someone use a device in one episode and then invent the device in a later episode, or see two characters as lovers in one episode who suddenly just barely know each other in a later episode.

Because the show had already had a pilot (the Babylon 5 tv-movie A Call to Arms, which ought to be on the Crusade dvd but isn’t), Straczynski didn’t write an introductory episode but just led straight off with “Racing the Night.” When you see it, it’s obvious that it was intended to be the first episode; the characters all say introductory, expositiony things and tell each other stuff they all already know, like “When Interplanetary Expeditions heard that we needed a crack archeologist and linguist, they gave us you.”

Starship Excalibur

But then the network said they wanted some earlier episodes to introduce the characters and break the viewers into the show more gradually. So Straczynski had to go back and make some earlier episodes (including a new first episode, “War Zone,” which begins – at TNT’s insistence – with a fist fight, and in which one of the characters says “we had to make some compromises to get this show on the road,” a coded message that TNT evidently didn’t pick up on).

But the network had also mandated a uniform change for the crew halfway through; so now the supposedly earlier episodes had the characters wearing the supposedly later uniforms. The result is a complete tangle of continuity.

After the show’s cancellation, Straczynski briefly posted three unproduced Crusade scripts – “To the Ends of the Earth,” “Value Judgments,” and “End of the Line” – that revealed where the show had been headed; maddeningly, it was about to get especially good, as well as tying in more closely with two of the main plot threads from B5. When the supposedly uncopyable format in which Straczynski had posted the scripts proved all too copyable, Straczynski yanked them down, but it’s easy enough to find “pirated” versions online. (Hint.)

At any rate – and, at last, the occasion for this post – Straczysnki is finally releasing, via the Babylon 5 CafePress store, first a book titled Crusade: Behind the Scenes (available now) and later, a three-volume set ambiguously titled Crusade: What the Hell Happened (available at some time in the future). These four books together promise to fill in a lot of detail about how the show would have gone (including, but definitely not limited to, those three unproduced scripts).