Doctor Who Views & Reviews
Notes on The Vestibule’s upcoming trip into TARDIS territory.
1. A Little Who History
Now that The Vestibule is up and running, here’s a not-so-brief explanation about this publication’s first ongoing project: chronicling my love of Doctor Who.
Although I’ve followed this series ever since my callow youth during the 1970s and 1980s, eagerly watching out-of-order episodes of Classic Doctor Who (1963-1989) on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations at odd hours of the day and night (mostly late, late, late night), my fascination with the extensive (and ever-growing) Who franchise began during the era that Whovians (yes, I’m a card-carrying member) call “the Wilderness Years,” that fallow period between the original series’s 1989 cancellation and New Who’s 2005 revival.
“The Wilderness Years” is a misnomer in that Doctor Who never truly went away, but, as a term, it acknowledges that the program best exists on television and that its most committed admirers kept the Who fires burning by writing articles, reviews, and fiction for endless fanzines (remember them?), even as these aficionados’ imprecations that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) return the show to our screens resulted in producer Philip Segal spearheading the production of a 1996 television movie (titled, simply, Doctor Who) that the BBC co-financed with the Fox Broadcasting Company, Rupert Murdoch’s then-decade-old fourth American television network, as a possible backdoor pilot for a new weekly series.
Despite introducing Paul McGann’s terrific Eighth Doctor to the franchise (after bringing back Sylvester McCoy’s wonderful Seventh Doctor to hand the TARDIS keys to McGann), this telefilm didn’t achieve high-enough ratings for Fox to greenlight a new season of Doctor Who (although it achieved respectable ratings when broadcast on the BBC). Yet five years before this movie premiered on Fox on 14 May 1996, Virgin Books—now an imprint of Random House, but then a division of Richard Branson’s media empire—had launched “The New Doctor Who Adventures,” a series of original Doctor Who novels, some of which were authored by Classic Who writers (including Terrance Dicks) and others by newcomers (including Paul Cornell, Russell T. Davies, and Steven Moffat) who would become crucial contributors to New Who’s 2005 televisual regeneration.
Big Finish Productions then got into the Who action by inaugurating, in 1998, a series of Doctor Who audio dramas that adapted some of these New Adventures novels. One year later, Big Finish succeeded in obtaining a license from the BBC to begin creating brand-new Who stories starring actors from the classic television series, who began enthusiastically re-creating their characters for this different medium. Indeed, Big Finish’s first original audio drama, The Sirens of Time, released on 19 July 1999, was a multi-Doctor story that found the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker), and McCoy’s Seventh Doctor enlisted by the Time Lords to save their home planet of Gallifrey from a mysterious invasion fleet (spoiler alert: they succeed!).
As longtime watchers know, some of New Who’s best episodes are adaptations of Big Finish’s audio dramas and Virgin’s New Adventures novels, with Robert Shearman refashioning his evocative 2003 Sixth Doctor audio drama Jubilee into Series 1’s sublime 2005 Ninth Doctor episode “Dalek” and Paul Cornell transforming his excellent 1995 Seventh Doctor novel Human Nature into Series 3’s two-part, 2007 Tenth Doctor masterpiece “Human Nature / The Family of Blood.”
As such, the fact that New Who remains in production, sixteen years after “Rose” premiered in 2005, testifies to this franchise’s vigor, health, and longevity. Bringing us to…
2. My Life in Print (or, “Hey Vest, Are You Ever Gonna Write Those Doctor Who Television Reviews?”)
I asked myself this question so many times during the past decade that, as 2021 concludes, I’m astonished it took so long to answer. The smart, fun, and enjoyable television reviews that Nancy Franklin published in The New Yorker a decade (and more) ago inspired me to follow in her footsteps, even if life kept getting in the way, or, more accurately, even if I told myself that life got in the way as a convenient excuse for my own lassitude in not essaying Doctor Who reviews.
It’s not as if my writing life was dormant (far from it), but, happily, events began conspiring to push me toward the point where I now find myself: officially launching The Vestibule’s project of reviewing Doctor Who.
But first, a short(ish) recap…
In 2011, the website Fantasy Matters began publishing a series of Doctor Who articles titled “The Keys to the TARDIS.” Fantasy Matters’s Editor in Chief, the marvelous Dr. Jennifer Miller (then working at Valparaiso University), asked me to contribute a brief note about any episode that I considered crucial to New Who’s success. Without a moment’s thought, I chose Paul Cornell’s magnificent Series 1 episode “Father’s Day,” dutifully wrote and revised the piece, and was happy to see this long article posted to Fantasy Matters on 2 December 2011. Jennifer, so kind in her comments about this behemoth, chose to run it in full rather than trimming it to a shorter (and, I’m certain, more appropriate) length.
You can still read my “Father’s Day” review on the Fantasy Matters website. I stand behind every word apart from calling the 1996 television movie “abortive" and “misguided.” Neither adjective properly describes this intriguing effort, which not only gave the franchise Paul McGann’s fantastic Eighth Doctor but also serves as a significant bridge between Classic Who and New Who, as McGann himself has correctly noted over the years.
The trials and tribulations of life as a literature professor at a struggling public university (the University of Guam, to be exact, which has been a fun place to work) interfered with my intentions to continue reviewing Doctor Who; Star Trek; and other SFF novels, films, and television series for Fantasy Matters. Authoring four scholarly monographs alongside academic articles and book reviews will do that to a person. Even so, I remain indebted to Fantasy Matters and to Jennifer Miller for launching my “career” as a television reviewer, even if it has been an accidental avocation.
During this time, I was also a regular contributor to Belles Lettres, a literary review that, in fact, didn’t confine itself to literature (or even Literature, the capital-L variety that college undergraduates across the land regard as intellectual anesthesia), but instead blossomed into a publication devoted to “fine” writing about books, films, television programs, comics, songs, and just about anything else in the cultural firmament. Belles Lettres was founded by my dissertation advisor, the redoubtable Dr. Gerald Early, and published by my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis (specifically, Wash U’s Center for the Humanities, which had begun its institutional life as the International Writers Center, founded by one of Wash U’s—and the nation’s—greatest critics, novelists, and polymaths, the late William H. Gass).
Gerald was then, as he is now, a gracious-but-tough editor who kept inviting me back to write articles about many different topics, among them Mark Cotta Vaz’s 2005 book Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of “King Kong” in tandem with Peter Jackson’s 2005 cinematic remake of Cooper’s famous 1933 movie; Dorothy and Thomas Hooblers’ fascinating 2006 book The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein; and Richard Wolffe’s jaunty-but-problematic 2009 autopsy of Barack Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 campaign for the American presidency, Renegade: The Making of a President. Still, I wasn’t reviewing Doctor Who despite faithfully watching it and despite toying with the notion of starting my own website or blog to do just that. Yes, friends, I kept delaying this project, always telling myself, “Don’t fret, you’ll get to it someday.”
That day never came, but, in late 2012, Dr. Early stepped down from his dual role as Director of Wash U’s Center for the Humanities and as Editor of Belles Lettres to start a brand-new publication titled The Common Reader: A Journal of the Essay, which launched its first issue in 2013. Gerald invited me, as he did so many other Belles Lettres contributors, to write pieces for TCR and, once I found the time, I happily obliged. TCR, in my nakedly biased opinion, is one of the best cultural reviews out there, on par with Bookforum, the Literary Review, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement as a place to read thoughtful, stimulating, and hard-hitting essays about books, movies, television, politics, history, religion, and everything in between.
This quality results from Gerald’s watchful editorial eye, of course, but TCR’s success is equally due to the indefatigable efforts of its managing editor, the impressive Ben Fulton, who is, simply, one of the best editors in the business and, to boot, one of the nicest people working in today’s publishing industry, which, as anyone who’s been around this particular block knows, isn’t always the case. So, imagine my delight when Gerald and Ben accepted my proposal to review all eleven episodes of Doctor Who’s Series 11, which just happened to coincide with a momentous development in Who history: Jodie Whittaker’s casting as the Thirteenth Doctor, the first woman to play the role.
Oh, happy day! Bringing us to…
3. The Vestibule Reviews Doctor Who (or, “Finally!”)
This excursion into my circuitous history as a television reviewer, beginning as a volunteer contributor to Fantasy Matters and graduating to paid writer for TCR, has taken the long way round to reach this moment, when The Vestibule will take up where TCR leaves off.
According to Ben Fulton, my Series 11 Doctor Who reviews were successful, and I’m always pleased to receive (every other week or so) email messages from people who locate, read, and enjoy them. Some people agree, some disagree, but I’m always grateful for their smart comments and for their willingness to reach out to me.
Even so, TCR has decided to pause publishing Doctor Who reviews, which makes now the perfect time for The Vestibule to pick up (and run with) this particular ball.
Yet, in a non-linear fashion that’s curiously appropriate for television’s longest-running time-travel series, my Doctor Who reviews will follow an out-of-sequence schedule.
First, as previously mentioned, my Series 11 reviews are available on The Common Reader’s website.
Series 11’s individual episode reviews are:
“I’m in Love with Her and I Feel Fine”: Review of 11.1_“The Woman Who Fell Earth”
“Off to the Races”: Review of 11.2_“The Ghost Monument”
“Marvelous Mrs. Parks, The”: Review of 11.3_“Rosa”
“Spider Night”: Review of 11.4_“Arachnids in the UK”
“Births and Rebirths”: Review of 11.5_“The Tsuranga Conundrum”
“Brexit By Any Other Name”: Review of 11.6_“Demons of the Punjab”
“Special Delivery?”: Review of 11.7_“Kerblam!”
“Witchy Women”: Review of 11.8_“The Witchfinders”
“When Worlds Elide”: Review of 11.9_“It Takes You Away”
“Last Battle, The”: Review of 11.10_“The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos”
“Best of Enemies”: Review of 11.X_“Resolution” (2019 New Year’s Day Special)
While it might seem natural for The Vestibule to begin its Who reviews with Series 12, I shall instead start with Series 13, the six-part serial subtitled Flux. Having recently concluded (on 5 December 2021), Flux remains fresher in everyone’s minds than does Series 12.
Next will come my review of “Eve of the Daleks”—the first of three 2022 special episodes that will (sadly) conclude Jodie Whittaker’s tenure as the Thirteenth Doctor—in the weeks following its 1 January 2022 broadcast.
Then, at long last, I’ll circle back to Series 12, posting reviews of its eleven episodes (including the 2020 New Year’s Day Special, “Revolution of the Daleks”).
That’s the plan, anyway.
To answer a question I’ve already been asked: Yes, I may well go back to the beginning of New Who and review every installment, beginning with 2005’s “Rose,” but this longer-term mission will be sporadic, fitful, and intermittent. Why? Principally because I don’t intend The Vestibule to be a publication solely (or even mainly) devoted to Doctor Who, love Who as I do.
Once all Series 12 reviews are complete, I’ll take a break from Who to publish other television reviews (such as Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard), as well as discuss movies, stage plays, books, songs, graphic novels, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
And, to the committed Whovians in my audience, do not fret. I’ll never leave Doctor Who entirely behind. Indeed, I’m drafting a long essay, tentatively titled “16 Years Later,” that will discuss my longstanding admiration of Doctor Who in granular detail.
I intend this piece to see the light of day in early 2022, which will miss the 16th anniversary of New Who’s premiere in March 2005 by nearly one year, but, hey, that also seems fitting given Doctor Who’s erratic production history, to say nothing of the Doctor’s habit of missing significant dates.
All right, friends, this update is much longer than intended, but at least it lays out the whys, whens, and wherefores of The Vestibule’s forthcoming project to view and review Doctor Who.
I hope it will be as fun for you to read as it will be for me to write.
Happy holidays to all and best wishes for 2022.
—Jason P. Vest
japaves@yahoo.com
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