Ten Days to a Tenth Anniversary, 7 and 8: Favourite Character and Favourite Theme
Whoops - missed a day due to unforeseen circumstances! So I'm going to do two today to catch up with our countdown to the tenth anniversary of NuWho in the form of the New Who Anniversary Celebration Countdown Challenge posted to the comm by ibishtar:
March 23rd: Favourite Character
Next question?
No, this is another really difficult one that I would be very hard-pressed to whittle down to a single choice. I'm assuming, for no particular reason, that the Doctor (all of him) doesn't count for the purposes of this question (because that would be a boring answer, wouldn't it?), and that the same probably goes for "proper" companions, however you choose to define that.
Except, Wilf's practically a proper companion, isn't he? He's certainly the closest thing Ten has to one in The End of Time, anyway. And I'm strongly tempted to pick Wilf, if I can only have one choice, because I think he's a great character, and a different sort of character, perhaps, than we normally get playing that sort of pseudo-companion role. Mind you, to completely ignore my remarks about "proper" companions above, I think Donna herself has one of the more interesting Doctor-companion relationships in the new series; the jokiness aside she seems more equal to Ten in some ways and less prone to let his Doctorly nonsense go unexamined, although the way their association ends still doesn't sit right with me. One of the things I hold against Journey's End.
While we're picking obvious choices, Captain Jack Harkness, certainly in his Who appearances, is something special indeed, especially way back in Series 1 with Nine and Rose.
And then there are Vastra, Jenny and Strax, who like a lot of fans I find extremely entertaining, more so as their relationships and interactions develop on subsequent appearances. I do worry, somewhat, that overfamiliarity could eventually take the shine off them, though, and they do seem to have popped up a lot over the course of the past couple of seasons. Ditto with Kate Stewart and NuNuNIT, who I'm still not convinced are necessarily being very well-used on any of their appearances in spite of liking the idea of the dynasty continuing in such a fashion.
So, I guess it's down to one-off characters, and if there's one I'm still a little bit obsessed with some four years after his sole appearance, it's 60s ex-G-man Canton Everett Delaware III, (mostly) played by heroic "hey, it's that bloke!" Mark Sheppard (and his dad), who has been in...well, a lot of things over the years, good and bad. He's a great character, anyway - oozes cool, even when he's temporarily (not really) a baddie, and is one of the things that makes me like The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon more than I probably should, all things considered. I always fondly imagine that we may get some sort of reappearance should the Doctor ever find himself in 1960s America, as unlikely as it may seem.
March 24th: Favourite Theme
I assume we're talking theme music here, because if it's the other sort of theme I'd have to go away and have a very hard think and I'd probably come up with something about the semiotic thickness of a performed text varying according to the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes...
Speaking of that kind of thing, I've been trying to avoid mentioning the classic series too much in the course of these posts, because, well, after all this is about celebrating the anniversary of the new series and it's too easy for an old fanboy like me to fall into comparing the two in a perhaps not entirely constructive way. Having said that, I'm going have to go back to the original series to illustrate my thinking on the whole issue of the Doctor Who opening theme tune.
First there was Derbyshire, Delia that is, and her arrangement of the original Who-theme back in 1963, that strange, eerie wail that can't have been like most things its initial audience had ever heard before, a landmark in the whole history of electronic music as well as television. And the years went by, and different versions came along, and none of them perhaps lived up to the original in terms of otherworldliness and innovation. Still, they were recognisably following in its footsteps in their synthy 80s sort of way. I think my favourite of the classic series themes, while recognising that the original is the superior piece of work, is the early 80s version from Season 18 on, because I associate that on an almost subliminal level with my very first memories of seeing the Doctor (Davison!) on the telly.
And then came 1996 and the TV Movie With No Name and...that is recognisably the same tune as the "proper" Doctor Who themes, but it's all bombastic and orchestral and generally ends up sounding as pompous and dull as the theme tunes to the 1990s Star Trek series, both of which used to put me to sleep before the episode had even got underway.
To cut to the chase, I prefer NuWho themes that sound more like Delia Derbyshire and less like the Deep Space Nine Philharmonic Orchestra. And that's something that's come to be more the case progressively, over time. I don't want a Doctor Who theme that sounds like it's come out of a musical instrument wielded by human hands, if at all possible. I want something spooky and stripped-down and weird.
So, it's not quite there yet, but it's getting there. If pressed to choose, I'd say right now it's a straight toss-up between the version in The Day of the Doctor and the one recently used for Series 8, but Day of the Doctor edges it because it gives pride of place to the famous middle eight, and the early 80s Casio Keyboard "guitar" version of that is engraved indelibly upon my mind's ear. Gives me goose-bumps.
Oh, and while I'm over-sharing, I quite like that demented tango-y theme they had for Eleven's action bits, just in case you thought I'd stopped being obsessed with Eleven. ;)
So, er, those are my thoughts. What do you say?
March 23rd: Favourite Character
Next question?
No, this is another really difficult one that I would be very hard-pressed to whittle down to a single choice. I'm assuming, for no particular reason, that the Doctor (all of him) doesn't count for the purposes of this question (because that would be a boring answer, wouldn't it?), and that the same probably goes for "proper" companions, however you choose to define that.
Except, Wilf's practically a proper companion, isn't he? He's certainly the closest thing Ten has to one in The End of Time, anyway. And I'm strongly tempted to pick Wilf, if I can only have one choice, because I think he's a great character, and a different sort of character, perhaps, than we normally get playing that sort of pseudo-companion role. Mind you, to completely ignore my remarks about "proper" companions above, I think Donna herself has one of the more interesting Doctor-companion relationships in the new series; the jokiness aside she seems more equal to Ten in some ways and less prone to let his Doctorly nonsense go unexamined, although the way their association ends still doesn't sit right with me. One of the things I hold against Journey's End.
While we're picking obvious choices, Captain Jack Harkness, certainly in his Who appearances, is something special indeed, especially way back in Series 1 with Nine and Rose.
And then there are Vastra, Jenny and Strax, who like a lot of fans I find extremely entertaining, more so as their relationships and interactions develop on subsequent appearances. I do worry, somewhat, that overfamiliarity could eventually take the shine off them, though, and they do seem to have popped up a lot over the course of the past couple of seasons. Ditto with Kate Stewart and NuNuNIT, who I'm still not convinced are necessarily being very well-used on any of their appearances in spite of liking the idea of the dynasty continuing in such a fashion.
So, I guess it's down to one-off characters, and if there's one I'm still a little bit obsessed with some four years after his sole appearance, it's 60s ex-G-man Canton Everett Delaware III, (mostly) played by heroic "hey, it's that bloke!" Mark Sheppard (and his dad), who has been in...well, a lot of things over the years, good and bad. He's a great character, anyway - oozes cool, even when he's temporarily (not really) a baddie, and is one of the things that makes me like The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon more than I probably should, all things considered. I always fondly imagine that we may get some sort of reappearance should the Doctor ever find himself in 1960s America, as unlikely as it may seem.
March 24th: Favourite Theme
I assume we're talking theme music here, because if it's the other sort of theme I'd have to go away and have a very hard think and I'd probably come up with something about the semiotic thickness of a performed text varying according to the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes...
Speaking of that kind of thing, I've been trying to avoid mentioning the classic series too much in the course of these posts, because, well, after all this is about celebrating the anniversary of the new series and it's too easy for an old fanboy like me to fall into comparing the two in a perhaps not entirely constructive way. Having said that, I'm going have to go back to the original series to illustrate my thinking on the whole issue of the Doctor Who opening theme tune.
First there was Derbyshire, Delia that is, and her arrangement of the original Who-theme back in 1963, that strange, eerie wail that can't have been like most things its initial audience had ever heard before, a landmark in the whole history of electronic music as well as television. And the years went by, and different versions came along, and none of them perhaps lived up to the original in terms of otherworldliness and innovation. Still, they were recognisably following in its footsteps in their synthy 80s sort of way. I think my favourite of the classic series themes, while recognising that the original is the superior piece of work, is the early 80s version from Season 18 on, because I associate that on an almost subliminal level with my very first memories of seeing the Doctor (Davison!) on the telly.
And then came 1996 and the TV Movie With No Name and...that is recognisably the same tune as the "proper" Doctor Who themes, but it's all bombastic and orchestral and generally ends up sounding as pompous and dull as the theme tunes to the 1990s Star Trek series, both of which used to put me to sleep before the episode had even got underway.
To cut to the chase, I prefer NuWho themes that sound more like Delia Derbyshire and less like the Deep Space Nine Philharmonic Orchestra. And that's something that's come to be more the case progressively, over time. I don't want a Doctor Who theme that sounds like it's come out of a musical instrument wielded by human hands, if at all possible. I want something spooky and stripped-down and weird.
So, it's not quite there yet, but it's getting there. If pressed to choose, I'd say right now it's a straight toss-up between the version in The Day of the Doctor and the one recently used for Series 8, but Day of the Doctor edges it because it gives pride of place to the famous middle eight, and the early 80s Casio Keyboard "guitar" version of that is engraved indelibly upon my mind's ear. Gives me goose-bumps.
Oh, and while I'm over-sharing, I quite like that demented tango-y theme they had for Eleven's action bits, just in case you thought I'd stopped being obsessed with Eleven. ;)
So, er, those are my thoughts. What do you say?