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.
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
The Seventh Doctor, Ink/Digital Color, March '14
No comments:
Post a Comment