Third and Relative Dimension
Feb. 24th, 2006 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scarfmanI think I've put a finger on, for me, the difference between twentieth-century and twenty-first-century Doctor Who, and it goes back to something I said most recently in a discussion of the Battlestar Galactica revival on another webforum.
People like Giles and Guinan aren't really characters. They're plot devices. They're the Merlin figures of their milieus, the infallible prophets sworn to the hero(in)es' causes whom the hero(in)es in turn trust utterly. Their dramatic purpose is to be infallible: they exist to feed the hero(in)es data that's correct ... even if it's so ambiguous as to be useless until clarification shows up just after the hero(in)es've already puzzled it out. Now, in order to get actors like Anthony Stewart Head or Alec Guiness to play them, you do have to pretend and write them as if they were characters, sometimes. But they aren't, really. And that's why the new BSG doesn't have one.
This is exactly what Tom Baker was talking about when he said that the part is "actor-proof". The Doctor is, or was until now, a plot device with a tv show named after him. Ian and Barbara, and to a lesser extent Susan, were the real characters at the start; the Doctor just outlasted them all by decades. Some companions have been full characters. Ace comes to mind. Grace too (if an unpopular one) - I think it was Kate Orman who observed that Grace is the Campbellian Thousand-Faced Hero of Season 1996. But on the whole twentieth-century Doctor Who was a bunch of plot devices running up and down corridors and across quarries. And that's what I loved about it, too, and not only I.
Today - reflecting the demands of the contemporary television drama viewer - the Doctor is a character. He doesn't get huffy about perceived insults to his intelligence any more (well, not just that), he gets huffy about perceived insults to his ability to relate to people. He's not just a plot device any more. Is it progress? I bet there are people who think not. I like it so far.
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Date: 2006-02-24 03:28 pm (UTC)(It could be that I'm not the best person to dive into this: For me, there's only really one Doctor, and he has curly hair, bad teeth, and a scarf. Everybody else is basically doing a cover tune, even if sometimes it's a really good cover tune.)
Still, development is a good thing. But there is a reason for nostalgia over the old stuff. It was good stuff, darnit. Campy though the old BSG was, it was fun, and had a place in the world. Same for the original Doctor. Plot devices or no, they were fun ones.
Sometimes, those plot devices are my favorite part of a series. I know that I always wanted them to .. y'know.. DO SOMETHING with Giles' character, for instance.
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Date: 2006-02-28 12:15 pm (UTC)(I'm probably not the best person to dive into this either, for the opposite reason. Since Doctor Who was cancelled when I was thirteen, and I'm always more likely to buy a book than a video, "my" Doctor is the one in the novels. So the idea of him being as screwed-up as a regular person isn't new to me...)
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Date: 2006-02-28 06:26 pm (UTC)I'm not unfamiliar with the tie-in novels and I did try to make it clear that I was discussing the screen Doctor.
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Date: 2006-02-28 06:34 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that's any clearer...
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Date: 2006-03-01 01:46 am (UTC)No, you were clear. I was talking for the crowd.