The greatest delight in being a fan of Doctor Who is enjoying some of the best writing on television, and in particular, from the pen of the late, lamented Robert Holmes.
Robert Holmes was Doctor Who's most prolific and most gifted scribe. His secular, humanist, social commentaries were the stuff of legend. Combined with his wit, his love of the gothic, the Victorian, the grotesque, and the Grand Guignol, this elevated him far above the average TV-hack into something special. In short, he was the modern day amalgam of Ben Johnson, Dennis Potter, & William Shakespeare, for the celluloid age.
Over the summer, I've been able to indulge in my video and DVD collection of Doctor Who, and I've been falling in love all over again with Holmes' mastery of word play. His imagination knew no bounds, and he had a great love of names and places that could make any tongue salivate � he was a neologist's wet dream. Just try repeating the names of his countless characters: Graff Vynda-K, Sabalom Glitz, Sutekh the Destroyer, Lynx, Pletrac, Rohm-Dutt, Sharaz Jek, and many more.
In Holmes stories, we meet the sublime and the disgusting in the form of Androgums, Sontarans, Rutans, Usurians, Krotons & Nestenes, on planets ranging from Karn to Solostopus, Ribos to Phaester Osiris, Androzani Major to Gallifrey. We
travel the length of the Mutter's Spiral, journey to the heart of the constellation of Kasterberous, and try over and over again to get to the holiday destination of Metebelis 3.
But alien worlds weren't his only stomping grounds. He loved the foggy corners of Sherlock Holmes' London-by-gaslight, the creepy silences of English forests, and the manor houses of the rich & insanely-powerful (although, in a Holmes story, they were usually the powerfully insane).
Alien planet or Earth setting, it was all just icing on the cake for Holmes, who thrived on examining the human condition, exalting the common man, and deflating the pompous and the self-centred. Writer Gareth Roberts described his thinking as "the deeply felt rationalism of a sceptic", and this plays into his glorious treatises on revolution (The Krotons, The Sun Makers), free will (Carnival of Monsters), politics (The Deadly Assassin), and ultimately, the light and dark of our own beings (The Ultimate Foe). He was also in love with the character of the Doctor, and the dark, biting, coldness of the Jacobean revenge tragedy � into which our hero would be dumped by Holmes on more than one occasion! All of these qualities come to light through some of the sharpest, most sardonic dialogue ever written for TV.
Rossini: "Gentlemen never talk about money."
Doctor: "On the contrary. Gentlemen never talk about anything else."
(Terror of the Autons)
Doctor: "And if I refuse?"
White Guardian: "Nothing."
Doctor: "Nothing? You mean nothing will happen to me?"
Guardian: "Nothing at all....ever."
(The Ribos Operation)
Describing attempted revolt by the lower ranks in Carnival of Monsters:
"Give them a hygiene chamber, and they store fossil fuel in it."
Boursa, the Doctor's Time Lord tutor, scolding him in The Deadly Assassin:
"As I believe I told you long ago, Doctor, you will never amount to anything in the galaxy while you retain your propensity for vulgar facetiousness."
"If heroes don't exist, it is necessary to invent them."
(Another Boursa lesson from The Deadly Assassin)
And the Doctor's brilliant speech in The Ark in Space:
"Homo sapiens! What an inventive, invincible species. It's only a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenceless bipeds. They've survived flood, famine and plague. They've survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to outsit eternity. They're indomitable."
There are many more, as well as some delicious insults, such as "you craven hearted, spineless poltroon," "that base degenerate," and "pallid, devious worms" But I'm just scratching the surface.
Watching a Robert Holmes Doctor Who story means stepping into a universe laid out through the masterful, gorgeous use of language and imagination. Fans of the series know all about Holmes' enduring legacy, and I can only hope that the new series will give us equal amounts of toe-tingling plot pleasures, and triumphant dialogue.
When I look at the wasteland that is today's television landscape, with it's lack of quality, imaginative, well-written stories, I cringe. For every Doctor Who, Buffy, Star Trek DS9, or West Wing that comes along, there are 100 other reality shows or pre-fab sitcoms ready to crowd it out of the marketplace. Mind you, Robert Holmes would be smiling. Doctor Who commented on crap that is modern television years ago...
