Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we…
‘That’s what I am: just a traveler. Imagine it: no taxes, no bills, no boss. Just the open sky.’ – Voyage of the Damned (2007)
‘The Tenth Doctor’, Ink/Digital Color, May ’14
In 2005, we got the Doctor Back.
He was dark, edgy, and in a leather jacket. Gone were the question marks (thank god) and the faux – Edwardian kitsch for a more ‘stripped down’ modern version. This Doctor had survived the Time War and come out scarred. He was angry, impatient, did not suffer fools, manic, and always seemed to be turned up to eleven.
… and we only had him for one series.
‘Your wish is my command… but be careful what you wish for.‘ – Father’s Day (2005)
‘The Ninth Doctor’, Ink/Digital Color, March ’14
Yes, I’m putting the War Doctor here because he is the (new) true ninth incarnation of the Doctor, though through a bit of semantics is not actually the ‘Ninth Doctor’ (so the BBC merchandizing department doesn’t have to deal with the Sisyphean task of fixing all of the millions of Doctor Who product to reflect a new numbering system. Nice job, Moffat! A+ thinking!)
So, I’ll try to be brief. The Ninth Incarnation of the Doctor is the Gordian Knot (look at that! Two antiquated references in a little over a paragraph. My college Classical Literature professor must be proud… Now, where was I…) …. The Gordian Knot of Doctor Who continuity… and this was even before the return of the new series.
Of course, all the confusion was made by the BBC during the period between the Eighth Doctor/Fox Pilot and the return of the series. The later ‘Eighth Doctor’ novels even made fun of this fact (in ‘Gallifrey Chronicles’) and how muddled his timeline was. Most of fandom, as a way of explaining all the nonsense, just waved their hands claiming that it was all from the conflicts and rewriting of time from the Last Great Time War (the deus ex machina of explanations…. and that makes it a hat trick of classical references!)
Anyway, here’s what the BBC did…
The Curse of the Fatal Death (1999), written by Steven Moffat (remember him?) Now, yes… this was a comedy skit broadcast on the BBC, but people were really drawn towards the idea of a Rowan Atkinson Ninth Doctor (even if he was on the screen for like 10 minutes.) Is he part of continuity..? Very unlikely, but it does muddy the waters. Then there was also that Richard E. Grant guy, which brings us to..
The Scream of Shalka (2003), written by Paul Cornell. This was an animated webcast produced by the BBC with a new OFFICIAL (at the time) Ninth Doctor, voiced by Richard E. Grant, and kind of based upon Sherlock Holmes funneled through Grant’s Withnail character (from ‘Withnail and I’ [1986]… a brilliant brilliant film… kinda like ‘Fear and Loathing in the Lake District’ with Paul McGann [Doctor #8] as ‘I’) As I said, this was announced by the BBC as the new Doctor, the official continuation of the series… which only lasted one story. Plus, the Doctor’s companion was… The Master (who’s consciousness [after the Fox pilot] was uploaded to an android body and couldn’t leave the TARDIS… how weird is that? He was also voiced by Sir Derek Jacobi, who played the ‘human’ Master in‘Utopia’.) Oh… and there was also that David Tennant guy playing a minor role in the story. Wonder what ever became of him? He has such potential…
… and now we have The War Doctor as the new official Ninth Incarnation of the Doctor. While I really enjoyed ‘The Day of the Doctor’, I wanted more from this incarnation. He obviously had been fighting in the Time War for a long time… what other stories are there? What did he do (other then the obvious thing… that he didn’t even do that in the end) that was so shaming? Will we hear anything else about this? And was he much too dour for jelly babies? (Yes… he was.)
Anyway, here we go….
‘Great mean are forged in fire. It’s the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.’ – The Day of the Doctor (2013)
‘The War Doctor’ Ink/Digital Color, March ’14
The Eighth Doctor… The last of the Classic Doctors, and he pretty much got one night only.
After 7 years, The Doctor was back… and on American TV (which was… odd.) … And to be utterly kind, the Fox back door pilot of ‘Doctor Who’ was a bit of mess. The call backs, the bad acting, the weird attempts at humor, Eric Roberts as The Master (choke!), the idea of a half human Doctor (gah!), the wig… were all fandom with gun to head eye popping nerd-rage bad. The only good thing at the center of it all was Paul McGann playing a more curious Byronic Doctor (plus the new design for the TARDIS interior… which was pretty fantastic.) … and then there was the whole romance thing (which became all too common of late) that left many scratching their heads and looking like a dog shown a card trick.
But the pilot went nowhere (which may have been a good thing)… so Doctor Who sunk back under the waves to sleep again (for another 9 years.)
… and in-between that, (along with the Big Finish audios) we had the BBC novels. Yes, I followed them as well. On first reflection, I would say that I did not enjoy them as much as the Seventh Doctor Virgin novels… but then looking back there was the ideas of Dark Sam, Living TARDISs, The Faction Paradox, The Time War (yes, it was first referenced in the novels, years before the TV show and much more interesting), a ruthless Lord President Romana (in her 3rd incarnation), Compassion, Sabbath, The Remote, all of the Matrix being downloaded into the Doctor’s brain… all brilliant.
And then, with the advent of the new BBC show and a new Doctor, the Eighth Doctor went away… The new show started fresh, so there wasn’t even much of a passing reference to the Eighth or any of the Classic Doctors.
… until ‘The Night of the Doctor’. (and yes, I based this illustration on that version of the Eighth Doctor. I did not want to have to draw that original wig… shudder…)
… and here we go…
“I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren’t there.” – Doctor Who (the Film), 1996
‘The Eighth Doctor‘, Ink Digital Color, March ’14
… and then we got Time’s Champion.
The Seventh Doctor was always one of my favorites. Sure, he started out a bit silly (Time and the Rani, Paradise Towers, etc) and looked like a bad vaudevillian comic (his umbrella, paisley scarf, porkpie hat…), but those were also the same reasons I came to love this Doctor. Underneath the clown was darkness, mystery, and a manipulator pulling all the strings and even using his companions like pawns. He was a throwback to an earlier enigmatic Doctor you may have seen in the 60’s. You could easily believe he was not ‘just another Time Lord.’ This was the Dark Doctor. Plus, there was also Ace.
Sure, his first series was pretty dreadful, but then… we got Remembrance of the Daleks, Happiness Patrol (yeah, I liked that one, but won’t defend the Candy Man. That was just…. off.) Ghost Light, Curse of Fenric… and that’s it. Three seasons in and Doctor Who was cancelled after 26 years. The show had been hanging from a thread for years and the BBC finally just ended it. Of course, for Doctor Who to continue, it kind of went sideways. Sure there were always the comics, but Virgin Publishing took up the New Adventures line which push the story of the Doctor and Ace forward and lasted for six years (and 61 novels.) The novels were broad, deep, and definitely more adult in tone (drugs, cursing, sex, death, etc.) The Doctor got darker and darker and new companions were added (hello, Ms. Summerfield.) Yes… the novels were pretty brilliant, adding ideas and concepts that would have been glossed over in a slick fast paced TV show, and were also the only thing we had for a long time.
This was the Dark Doctor.
Then the BBC stepped in (in 1996), regenerated the Doctor, and took up their own novel series. But that’s another story.
So, here we go…
“Anyone remotely interesting is mad in some way” – The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (1988)
‘The Seventh Doctor‘, Ink/Digital Color, March ’14
Sylvester McCoy and I