Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
As (jet) says, the theme wasn't created using a Theremin. But it
also wasn't created using any sort of analog or electronic synth
either. It wasn't created by any instrument in fact, so there were
no controls. It was recordings of 'found sound' which might have
included tones produced by sound waves from oscilloscopes (which is
what the output of the earliest synths were based on as well) or a
knock or a bang or a gasp or the wind or the hum of a gnerator; or
scraping an iron key over the strings of a cello in the case of the
Tardis sound. 

All of these individual sounds had to be recorded onto individual
strips of tape, looped and repeated to make notes which were then
lined up in very precise order to build up the arrangement. At one
point they had to lay the strips down the longest corridor at the
BBC at night when everyone had gone home to 'debug' it by eye in
order to find a mistimed note. No one had ever done anything like
this before to produce music with a melody, and thankfully
technology meant no one would have to again.

You can credit the Theremin for defining what a generation of
listeners thought of as 'science fiction music' but it was already a
bit of a cliche by the 1960s. Perhaps the most direct inspiration
for the work of the Radiophonic Workshop was the extraordinary score
Bebe and Louis Barrons produced for Forbidden Planet in 1956, but
that wasn't 'music' in a recognisable sense. Certainly no one tuning
in to the show in 1963 would have heard anything like this before as
no such albums existed.

Brian Eno was just 15 when Delia created the Dr Who arrangement. The
Moog was still in development and not commercially available (not
that the BBC had the budget for anything like it anyway). Wendy
Carlos didn't release her first album, Switched on Bach - one of if
not THE first commercial pieces ever produced on a Moog - until five
years later in 1968. Kraftwerk didn't form as a group until 1970.
And in each and every case I would bet good money that they had
heard the Dr Who theme, and knew of the work of the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop, and were inspired by it in some small part at least.

The impact that sound had on November 23 1963 must have been
extraordinary. And I'm also pretty sure that the show's first
producer, Verity Lambert, knew exactly how it would define the show
and grip viewers by the lapels and refuse to let go. Ron Grainer, on
the other hand, probably never did understand his most famous and
successful work. None of them could have predicted its longevity.
  

    
Popular culture is weird that way.  Most of it does slip beneath the
waves rather promptly.  But things which strike a chord can last a
very long time.
  

    
That's equally true for Doctor Who itself, of course. When the head
of drama at the BBC, Sidney Newman, came up with the basic idea,
they gave it a 13-week order. No one thought it would be renewed and
most fully expected it to be pulled early. Newman himself was
apoplectic when he found out that against his struct instructions,
the second story featured 'bug eyed monsters'. Verity Lambert stood
up for the Daleks and the story got made, but that appeared to be
the end of the road for the show - and for Lambert's nascent career
in TV production.

Ephemeral piece of pop culture, quickly consigned to the wastebasket
of history. Except here we are, over 60 years later, and it remains
an international phenomenon; and Lambert herself went on to become
one of the most successful producers of drama in the history of
British television.

Very weird indeed!
  

    
Hi, I'm not really a Dr Who fanboy but this has been an interesting
read. I watched as a child and found the Cybermen just a bit too
scary. I guess this would have been late 60's early 70's. There was
then a 40 year break and, for reasons unknown, I found myself
watching quite a lot of episodes with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan.
Since then, nothing. I may go take a look at the new guy just to see
the evolution.

Anyway, my point is, I was shocked, shocked I tell you, when you
said in one of the early posts here that the Doctor is an alien.
What!? Now, it's always been clear to me that he had abilities that
are not found in humans but I have honestly never thought of him/her
as anything other than a strange/super human, never as an 'alien'.
Was there an episode where he 'came out' as an alien, you know "Yes,
I'm an alien from the planet Zorg and I've been travelling ever
since the Beebops destroyed our planet. I'm the only one to survive
and I'm looking for [something]"? And if so, which episode was it?
Or was it just left for viewers to come to their own conclusions?

Supplemental question - is he/she looking for something? I mean,
what drives the Doctor to engage in all this gadding about the
universe, what's his/her mission or purpose?

Last question - are the places/planets/worlds they all travel to
deemed to be within our known universe, or there are multiple
universes, or it has never been explained?

Thanks 
  

    
Hmmmmmmmmm. I’m not sure I ever DIDN’T know the Doctor was an alien.
But my aunt and uncle, huge SF fans, were the ones who told me about
the show, so it’s possible they spoiled that fact.
  

    
And in case those questions are too easy for you. Please explain
River Song. She was popping up all over the place in the
Smith/Gillan episodes I watched and there was always a lot of
hinting, nodding and winking that she was really important but I
never quite understood why. Did she continue as a character or not?
How important is she to the whole story of the Doctor?

slipped by <mazz>
  

    
>  Was there an episode where he 'came out' as an alien, you know "Yes,
> I'm an alien from the planet Zorg

Pretty much the very first episode I'm afraid! Which I grant you, neither of
us were around for. In it, the Doctor says "The children of my civilisation
would be insulted" and schoolteacher Ian queries the use of "my civilisation"
to which the Doctor replies:

  Yes, my civilisation. I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it. 
  Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth 
  dimension? Have you? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own 
  planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. 
  Yes, one day. One day.

It's deliberately vague - it could be argued that the Doctor is from the 
far future - but he's clearly disdainful of Earth and doesn't see himself 
as of it. His first regeneration in 1966 is presented as proof that he's 
not human. After that he talks about being on the run from his own people 
for having stolen the Tardis. They are named and appear for the first time 
at the end of "The War Game" when he's captured by them and exiled to 
Earth for his meddling so at this point he's very much Not Human. His 
world is named for the first time as Gallifrey in "The Time Warriors" but 
by then we've visited it in "The Three Doctors".

However he's not the last survivor of the Time Lords until the NuWho era 
when Russell T Davies wanted to clear out all the accumulated continuity 
and start afresh and he did this by having the Time Lords wiped out in a 
massive Time War against the Daleks. That was undone and then redone with 
the Master responsible but that got very messy and so RTD is doing a light 
touch on this by saying they died "of a genocide". 

The recent Chibnall era twisted the continuity further by stating that the 
Doctor is not even a Time Lord but was found by them abandoned on an alien 
world. It restores some of the mystery of the Doctor to the series after 
we found out too much about the Time Lords but it's driven fans berserk 
and is still controversial and unpopular. RTD is happy to lean into it 
though.

I have to run so I'll leave it there for now.
  

    
> Please explain River Song.

No one can do that, not even Steven Moffat!

Also: spoilers, sweetie! I'm woprried about spilling too many beans. She 
was important to the Moffat era. She's someone's daughter and ends up 
being the Doctor's wife so she leaves a pretty big impression on the show. 
And even though she died in her first story, she came back and may not yet 
be done.
  

    
>  Supplemental question - is he/she looking for something? I mean,
> what drives the Doctor to engage in all this gadding about

Well, what do you do if you're the last of your kind with Godlike powers 
and can go anywhere, anytime in the universe? Basically you pick up a 
travelling companion who can see the universe afresh, and see things 
through their eyes. Otherwise you'd suffer from terminal ennui, go mad or 
become suicidal. Some of that is covered by dialogue at the end of "Space 
Babies" incidentally so that's a good reference to look at.

When the show started, the Doctor had no do-gooding instinct or desire to 
meddle. He didn't care about anyone else. But decades of travelling with 
(mainly) humans has given him insight and empathy to become the character 
he is today, fighting for the weak and powerless and those without help to 
overcome evil where he encounters it. He's a hero that's been made by his 
experiences and those he's been with, not born into existence.

> are the places/planets/worlds they all travel to
> deemed to be within our known universe

For the most part, yes. Most stories are in one coherent universe. But 
there have been trips to parallel universes (1970's Inferno for example). 
There have been little pocket universes. And in Flux, the villain tried to 
wipe out this universe and completely overlay it with another.

The recent "Wide Blue Yonder" suggested that there were bigger elemental 
forces beyond the edge of the known universe - basically, if you looked 
into the black void out there, there were forces looking back at and into 
you. Very Nietzsche! And it's these forces that include the Toymaker (from 
"The Giggle" and Maestro (from "The Devil's Chord" which expand the limits 
of what the show can do in terms of justifying stepping outside 
established science fiction continuity.

Phew. Is any of this helpful? Making sense?
  

    
I would love to see River Song come back.
  

    
Me too, I'd be very up for that. The character is great and Alex
Kingston is a wonderful actor. She recently did a solo "dramatised
reading" as I believe it's called of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for
BBC4, and made it totally mesmerising.
  

    
Is that reading available on BBC Sounds? “Alexa, open…” 
  

    
It was actually for the TV channel BBC4 rather than the radio one,
so you'll find it on iPlayer. It was broadcast on March but I
believe it's still available. The series title is "The Read" and the
most recent was Steve Pemberton reading The Remains of the Day. It
looks like they also have Christopher Eccleston performing A Kestrel
for a Knave, the source of the 1970s film Kes.

<https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2024/10/read-frankenstein>
  

    
Excellent and thanks!
  

    
Thank you for the explanations back there, Andrew!

Looking at the enemies; are the Daleks and Cybermen still around?

From all the episodes you've seen (is that ALL of them?), what would
you say the percentages are between..

Enemy killed - dead and no longer a threat
Enemy converted or persuaded to change - alive but no longer a
threat
Doctor & Co escaped - enemy still alive and still a threat
  

    
You're very welcome, thanks for asking the questions! 

The Daleks and Cybermen are very much still around, and the 2022
special "The Power of the Doctor" saw them ream up with The Master,
another enduring adversary. But there's a risk of overuse and
Russell T Davies is working on new foes for the current run rather
than rehashing the same old threats. I think it was Steven Moffat
who said, "How many times can you have the Doctor defeat the Daleks
before they lose their menace and just look like a bunch of
perpetual losers?" so he had stories in which the Daleks succeeded
and the Doctor was lucky to escape and survive, and to save his
companions and other innocents rather than "win".

I couldn't even begin to make a guess about the percentages you
mention. Genuinely wouldn't know where to start. I would say that in
the earliest days of the show - 60s and 70s - it was standard for
the Doctor to win by either killing or disabling the enemies. But
times changed and even before the reboot in 2005 it was becoming
clear that it wasn't right for the character to go around killing
people and aliens and whole species.

The Daleks (and I cant believe we haven't spoken about them more in
this discussion!) are an interesting study. In the very first Dalek
serial in 1963/1964 they were a dying race on the dead planet Skaro
trying to annihilate the peace-loving Thals, and it was an
us-or-them situation in which the Doctor had no qualms about wiping
the Daleks out to save the Thals. It helped that the Daleks were
irredeemable, implacable bad guys from the start.

But of course that wasn't the end of the Daleks. The thing with
travelling in time and space is that you can go back to when they
were still around and an even bigger threat, so the Doctor kept on
bumping into them. Instead of a small group Of survivors on a dying
world they were now the most feared creatures in the galaxy. 

Eventually the Doctor was dispatched back to Skaro by the Time
Lords, this time at the point of the Daleks' creation, and told to
change time and stop them from ever existing or change them to make
them capable of empathy and remorse. There is the famous scene of
Tom Baker holding two wires to set off an explosion that will end
the Daleks for good, and he has his most famous fit of conscience -
"Have I the right?" - and frankly he bottles it. At best he delays
the Daleks' rise by a few hundred years. A fan theory is that this
overt hostile act by the Time Lord is what results in the later Time
War that all-but wipes out both the Daleks and the Time Lords.

So that was a big turning point for the show which became more
moralistic and about doing good rather than defeating and killing
the bad guys, hence the right wing media attacking today's show as
too woke. Certainly there was a period in Moffat's tenure in which
every monster or threat turned out to be someone or something in
need of a hug and a bit of understanding to sort out the situation.
Even the Master was rehabilitated, and we got a "good Dalek" at one
point but it didn't last, and the Master and the Cybermen teaming up
to kill the Time Lords has put them beyond saving or redemption.

RTD is aware that the audience needs the catharsis of a big bad that
is emphatically beaten and/or destroyed, but so far he's stuck to
thwarting their plans and having them banished or imprisoned so they
are no longer a threat. In the case of Spaces Babies the mindless
monster in the basement was just a misunderstood house guest who
didn't mean any harm, and was happy to fit in once everyone else
stopped screaming in abject terror every time he popped up.

It's quite heartening to see the depiction of societal morals and
empathy grow and develop in such a positive way over six decades.
  

    
I'm sorry, I'm talking too much. Again. A brief coda:

> From all the episodes you've seen (is that ALL of them?)

I haven't seen them all, no. All the ones since the 2005 reboot,
yes. Putting aside the 90 or so "lost" 60s episodes from the BBC
archives (they were destroyed to reclaim and reuse expensive video
tape) there's some episodes that I have never got around to
watching, even once they came out on VHS and DVD. Including one very
famous story that I won't ever admit to not having watched as it
would destroy my credibility as a Whovian! It's got to the point now
where it has supernatural significance akin to The Ring: as long as
I still have it on my to-watch list, it means I can't die! I'll keep
it for my death bed in the old people's home in 2077.

I'm very keen to see if there are any more questions or subjects to
cover, but there's also a brand new Doctor Who episode out there,
Steven Moffat's "Boom". It's streaming on Disney+ and BBC iPlayer
right now and broadcast on BBC One in the UK this evening which is
when I'll be watching it. Discussion welcome here, but we'll try and
keep it spoiler-free - there's a whole topic in <whovians.> for more
open chat. Hope to see you there!
  

    
Thanks again and enjoy the new episode!
  

    
Andrew, Kudos you and your cohorts in crime for creating this
topic..your erudition and familiarity with the content is
remarkable..
I esp. like the continuity of your experience with Dr. Who..all in
all,
I enjoy reading y’all’s posts..so rock on wit yor bad self (some of
you will get the reference, others will not)
  

    
I'm really glad you've been enjoying it! It's actually a regular
Inkwell topic, so credit has to go to (jonl) for the idea. But it's
true that's it's been a somewhat unusual entry in the Inkwell annals
as it's not as intellectual and serious as many of the discussions
here tend to be. After all, it's just about a TV show - so we've had
the freedom of being more freeform and creative with the mix of the
discussion.

Normal Inkwell service will resume on Tuesday with a new invited
guest, but John and I will still hang around on the sidelines for
chat about new episodes and to answer any questions people might
still have. And of course the <whovians.> conference will also
continue through to July so there's still plenty to come. (Consider
that fair warning!)
  

    
> rock on wit yor bad self

For me the reference is to the Kermode and Mayo film review podcast.
But I suspect others will have a different idea?
  

    
Let the good times roll...
  

    
Saturday saw the release of the third episode (of eight) of the 2024
season of Doctor Who entitled "Boom", and it was a particularly
highly anticipated one because of who was was writing it: former
showrunner Steven Moffat.

Moffat is probably one of the top five drama writer/producers
working in British television today; Russell T Davies being another,
"Happy Valley"'s Sally Wainwright a definite third. So to see Moffat
and RTD reunited on Doctor Who after so many years was very special
indeed to fans. And even non-fans couldn't have missed the elevation
in tone and style for this episode.

I'm not going into spoilers for "Boom" here (we have a whole topic
in <whovians.> for that, as well as a spoiler topic for a piece of
information that only became clear in the post-show
behind-the-scenes Unleashed) but I'm just going to flat out say it
was excellent. Maybe not the show's (or Moffat's) best of all time
but that's up against very stiff competition. It was certainly
parking in the same vicinity, though.

Moffat has been an arch-Whovian for almost as long as Davies. When
Davies bullied the BBC into reviving Doctor Who in 2005 one of the
first calls he made was to Moffat who had already made his name with
kids shows like "The Press Gang" and comedies like "Coupling".
Davies' big breakthrough project was the original UK version of
"Queer as Folk", in which K-9 plays a key role.

The result of that initial collaboration was "The Empty Child"
two-parter which was one of the highlights of S1, very dark and
scary compared with the rest of that year and especially the
family-friendly stories written by Davies himself. In the second
season Moffat provided the script for "The Girl in the Fireplace"
which many still see as one of the most beautiful, romantic stories
in all of modern Who. And then in S3 came "Blink", often cited as
the best single episode of Doctor Who of all time. There was also
"Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" which introduced the
character of River Song. 

So Moffat was the 'impact player' brought in mid-season to smash it
out of the park, which he did unfailingly. When Davies decided to
leave the show in 2010, he called Moffat to let him know; and said,
quite specifically, that it was Moffat's turn now and he simply had
to take the job and that he mustn't **** it up. Which he managed for
seven years, writing most of the episodes for Smith and Capaldi
including the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor" and
the magnificent "Heaven Sent". Even factoring in Davies and Terry
Nation and Robert Holmes and many others, it's no exaggeration to
call him the finest writer who ever worked on the show.

He's since produced "Sherlock", "Dracula" and "Inside Man" and
always said he would never return to Who. But now he's back! Could
he live up to his reputation with his latest script? There may be a
few quibbles with "Boom" (see the Whovians conference to dig into
those) but for me it was everything I wanted from a Moffat episode.
From a 2024 Who episode. And to also see him and Davies chatting
about what it's like writing for the show in behind the scenes
footage in Unleashed had me in paroxysms of delight, like the first
very first time Superman and Batman ever teamed up, or Poirot and
Marple. It was crossing the time streams in the most marvellous way,
a real pinch-me moment.

Being a Whovian does have its frustrations, but days like yesterday
make it all worthwhile.
  

    
Where do you find the extras? Or rather, where might those of us not
in the UK expect to find the extras? On Disney streaming, I can see
the episodes and the only extras available are trailers.  no mention
of a behind the scenes series.
  

    
There is an official Doctor Who podcast. Hopefully, it will be
accessible worldwide!

<https://youtu.be/xS6ZPI6K8fs?si=O_jcibNs2w3Xkn3U>