Peter Capaldi is to be the new Doctor and I couldn't be more delighted. Apart from the fact I consider 'The Thick Of It' to be a television comedy so accomplished is resembles high art, Capaldi just has the face and demeanour of a Time Lord. Yes, I know all the Doctors look utterly different from one another, but the best ones (Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee, Christopher Ecclestone) just had the necessary oddness and eccentricity - and I see the same in Peter C.
Inevitably, alongside the new incarnation, the subject of a Doctor Who movie has reared its head, like a Sea Devil looking for pilchards. Then again, there’s always talk of a Doctor Who movie, but it never materialises. Apart from the inevitable struggle to finance a cinematic project, I suspect arriving at a suitable screenplay is also a bit of a nightmare. Doctor Who doesn’t fit comfortably into a Hollywood script, it’s not built that way.
Before hordes of Whovians storm this site to point out there are already two Who movies, I know. They starred Peter Cushing in the lead role, with Bernard Cribbins as a companion in one and Roy Castle in the other. The Daleks were the adversaries in both. These films worked because they were made when there was still a British movie industry. They were shot in the UK, had very modest budgets and a British cast. And although he’s from Gallifery and has two hearts, The Doctor is the most British of time travellers.
Conceived as an educational show and first screened on the day of JFK’s death in 1963, the Doctor’s adventures were intended to introduce families to key moments in history using time travel as a device. Amusingly, the original production team had a no ‘bug-eyed monsters’ policy which was only abandoned when Terry Nation sold in a script called ‘The Mutants’ about two races – the Thrals and the Daleks. Enter an almost ceaseless parade of bug-eyed monsters without rival in television drama.
To understand why Doctor Who has never succeeded in the transition to box office blockbuster, it’s useful to examine a show produced by American TV in the mid 1960s: Star Trek.
Setting sail three years after the Tardis, the voyages of the USS Enterprise couldn’t have been more different. For the U.S.A., the optimism which followed the austerity of the 1950s was embodied in square-jawed men, piloting a huge vessel to new worlds in matching uniforms. In spite of the scripted platitudes about ‘coming in peace’, there were lots of phasers, lasers and rucks with the Klingons. These men and women were a military unit by any other name.
Of course, this is a story close to the American heart. Their land is filled with people whose recent forefathers made journeys of daring exploration and fought for independence. Their literature is awash with stories of wagon trains and nomadic trips to better lives. And in 1966, their greatest minds were starting to plan for actual manned, stellar expeditions.
Across the Atlantic, our desire to reach into the unexplored was a more cerebral affair. To us, a much older nation, new knowledge was more exotic and enticing than new territories. We had already established, owned and lost an empire and were in no position to fantasize about another. So you’ll notice The Tardis doesn’t roar away into the galaxy on a conquering quest, rather it melts (albeit noisily) into the future or past. Travelling on the Enterprise is akin to being aboard a vast US Navy aircraft carrier, patrolling the waters off Cuba. A ride in the Tardis is similar to falling into a sleep, packed with vivid, exciting dreams.
Although space-going heroes from the same era, Kirk and The Doctor spring from highly contrasting traditions. James T is a senior officer, a leader of men, highly conventional and commanding, with a weakness for beautiful women. The Time Lord is eccentric, non-conformist, rebellious and is awkward around the opposite sex. Each hero takes on the characteristics of his homeland, both exploring, both pioneering, both utterly different.
The closest The Doctor has ever come to a full-blown U.S. production was a TV movie shot by Fox / Universal in 1996. It starred Paul McGann in the lead and climaxed with him racing through Los Angeles on a motorcycle and playing tongue hockey with Daphne Ashbrook. Although McGann was a fine Doctor (and continues to play the character on UK radio), the American audiences gave the film a frosty reception and the rights to the show were stuck in limbo until 2005. It was a brave attempt – but the temporal tramp was just too British to be shoehorned into an action hero’s boots.
The accessories and people which surround The Doctor have always been indicators of his Britishness too. William Hartnell was very much the grouchy, Victorian school master, impatiently snapping at his charges over his pince-nez. Troughton was the busking tinker, his only ‘weapon’ a small whistle. Pertwee, the dandy seconded to the British Army, drove a vintage car and Tom Baker, the scruffy curiosity, challenged galactic evil fortified by jelly babies. Even though the re-booted episodes, from Eccleston’s intense and troubled wanderer to Matt Smith’s preppy graduate thinker, have been considerably more bombastic and sexy, the essence of the character and his sagas continues to resist the obviousness and swashbuckling of Tinsel Town phantasmagoria.
For one thing, The Doctor carries no sidearm (just a posh screwdriver) and Hollywood action flicks tend to be pretty big on guns. But more than this however, the solutions to the complex conspiracies the Time Lord encounters never depend on his musculature, always his intellect. He is so much closer to Steven Hawking than Steven Segal. Indeed, sometimes he doesn’t find a solution at all. Like James Bond, Bulldog Drummond, Morse and Van Helsing, The Doctor is a British hero, which means he’s a flawed hero. He can save the Solar System but he can just as easily hurt his friends. That’s a very Shakesperean trait and therefore intractably British.
Some have suggested the Tardis is actually the star of Doctor Who. The machine is certainly the constant feature and the vehicle which allows many of the storylines to unfurl, so perhaps it is. And maybe it’s also the generator of the Britishness ingrained in every episode. After all, that spinning police box is a little old-fashioned, generally unpredictable, often out of place and never quite works properly. As a Hollywood producer might observe ‘That’s just too darn British for a blockbuster movie’.
Magnus Shaw is a writer, blogger and consultant
