A Shot in the Arm

Every year I debate whether or not to get a flu shot, and then winter passes by and no skin has been broken. Fear of needles plays no part, and I understand the science behind it. I have no deep-seeded phobia, or high minded politics. It's apathy really. I just never get around it.

Fever and fatigue are the two nasty little indicators of the flu and this weekend they came knocking with a vengeance. I've been known to wash great piles of dishes during a cold bout, but I can barely raise the remote control this time around. So it is that I settle down with a large glass of orange juice (liberally spiked with Russian vodka) and a hefty roll of toilet paper to watch The Ribos Operation.

The opening credits make me dizzy, so I lay my head to the pillow and wait for the blast of bright light as the White Guardian appears on the scene. When I was 14, the Key to Time season was a major cause for excitement. After drifting away from Doctor Who for several months, I discovered it back on KVOS 12's schedule at midnight on Saturday night. And so began my mythical awakening as devoted fan.

The problem with drinking spiked orange juice through a straw is....well you get that burst of vodka right to the brain. Appropriate as the camera pans up on Romana. It may have been broadcast in 1978, but this icy Time Lady fits right into the 1980s of Joan Collins and Linda Evans.

The Ribos Operation is what I call "lean in and listen carefully" Doctor Who. (I should note that the current television convention of creating complex story arcs laced with clues and viewer loyalty nods is not at all the same thing). This story is all about the pleasures of a witty, cleverly drawn Robert Holmes script. They had me when the White Guardian informed the Doctor that "nothing" would ever happen to him if he didn't take on the quest for the Key to Time. Smart and playful dialogue is the nectar of the gods (which I guess would make the likes of Aaron Sorkin an Archangel). George Spenton-Foster, for his part, stays mostly out of the way allowing Paul Seed to be shouty to his heart's desire (and no offense to him as he seems to have a great sense of humour about it in the accompanying DVD featurette), and the set designer to raid the recent BBC production of Anna Karenina. Unfortunately Spenton-Foster leaves the camera running too long on the Shrivenzale.

Garron and Unstoffe--bloody brilliant! And bless you Binro, I always tear up when you learn you were right. And the Seeker, oh what a worthy addition to the pantheon of loony Doctor Who hags. In my somewhat feverish delirium, I begin to speculate on crossover fan fiction involving the marriage of the Seeker and Richardson (he of the mystical deer antler in the picture above) from the HBO show Deadwood. He would follow her around like a puppy dog, while she would bellow about lost car keys and together they'll start a new age antler cult.

Outside it's snowing unrelentingly (it's been a hellishly long winter), but inside I revel over the joys of onscreen winter and snow. Even when it's polystyrene, I have a bit of a fetish watching people freeze off their tits off (Dr. Zhivago is my favourite film of all time). Oh wait, I love this part: the Doctor, Romana and Garron are all leaning into each other in a rock crevasse. It's so camp and I never get tired of it.

And then as my eyelids start to get heavy, it's time to watch the jethrik transformed into the first segment of the Key to Time. I love gimmicky gadgets and I always loved the sense of accomplishment as they raised it up to behold it's shiny plastic-y-ness. Doctor Who with purpose. We were on our way. To the toilet for the time being...

Original viewing date: September 8, 1984

Spirit: Russian Vodka with orange juice (by my reckoning that's a screwdriver to the eye).

Music: "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart.

The Break Up

You never really see it coming. Everything seems fine, you're going along thinking it will last forever and then suddenly...it's over. Perhaps things weren't quite what they had been. I grew complacent. I stopped paying close attention, while you suddenly stopped splurging on the good effects and the better directors (not that I'd have known a David Maloney from a George Spenton-Foster at the time). The shine had simply gone off (or perhaps the bright lights had just come up)...

The Invasion of Time came right before the breakup. I remember it fondly. We were going home to meet your family. A stuffy lot they were. Smug, arrogant, insular. Were they in for a shock when the barriers started to come down. You'd think they'd never seen tin foil before! It was two and a half hours of fighting and bickering. Suspicion and intrigue. Banishment to the backyard with the crazy cousins. And then the big farewell. Hell, more like an abrupt WTF by-your-leave.

The harbinger of most failed relationships is when they exist inside a bubble. Outside of bribing my sister to sit on the couch with me, no one I knew was watching; no one ever mentioned Doctor Who. Truth be told, I felt a little embarrassed for my commitment. This was the golden age of Return of the Jedi, and The Wrath of Khan or on television: Knight Rider and The A-Team. To be fair we were kinda stuck in the past: 1974 to 1976 to be specific. We had the cultural divide to be sure. Mixed marriages never work is the old adage. But that was the very appeal behind my fascination. Too bad my parents weren't on board. They never could see your charms. "Crazy googled-eyes," my father called you. "Doctor Who-who-who," my mother intoned like an owl.

And when The Invasion of Time ended I tuned in the next week as always, cause that's what I did. Stupid me, I thought we were moving to the next step. And then it was back to Robot. At first it was nice to relive "the way we were". But I was antsy, I wanted to advance to the next phase. Oh the disappointment. Then the disenchantment set in. We had a couple of halfhearted make-ups. And then suddenly one Sunday evening...you just weren't there . A couple of months later we did The Android Invasion on a Sunday afternoon. We chatted. But it was the same old same old. I didn't even recognize you anymore: same face but different somehow. I started seeing someone else. V was much more exciting. Oh the drama. V was so deep with it socio-political undercurrents. And it was nice to be with someone that everyone was talking about. Lizards eating mice! I felt special.

It's strange to look back after all these years together: 28 more or less in total. I've got you under my skin. We've had our ups and downs. Another break up in 1991 - thought that one was permanent. I still regret throwing all your books in the dumpster, I should of at least gotten a couple of bucks for them. But when a mutual friend brought us back together it was like magic. That's when I started writing you all those enlightening love letters.

[The Invasion of Time is such a watchable story, full of incident and great moments. Sure the production values are shite and the last two episodes are a complete runaround, but they're entertaining if not particularly sharply drawn. The buildup to the Vardan's arrival is quite effective and ominous, to bad about the ultimate materialization of the actual Vardans. It's also curious to watch the throwaway scenes of nameless Time Lords' chatting. Whereas comparable scenes in The Deadly Assassin are full of wit and satire, here they're purposeless bits of techno-babble, as if someone observed that the scenes were expected, but had no concept of what made them great. It's also fascinating to observe that absolutely nobody is in charge. There is a massive vacuum of power on Gallifrey and one gets the sense that Borusa is content to wile away his time in his study, making course corrections only when they're necessary. Such a shame that he even bothered to take on the mantle of Lord President later on--it would have been a great experiment to see what would have happened next!]

This week an old friend died. Seems like we've lost quite a few over the past years. He was particularly special, being present at the beginning of all this. Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart was a rock throughout a good chunk of Doctor Who; a steady presence offering a foil to much of the madness. Whether he was cool and steely in The Invasion and Spearhead from Space, or broad and pompous in The Three Doctors and Robot, he was a welcome addition to time and space. Rest soundly old soldier, you will be greatly missed.

Sarah Jane Smith: It's started Brigadier.
The Brigadier: Here we go again.

Dedicated to Nicholas Courtney (1929 - 2011)

Original viewing date: February 11, 1984

Wine: 120, a Sauvignon Blanc, honouring 120 patriots who helped lead Chile to independence. I'll admit that's what we had in the house. After mixing some inadvisable alcoholic choices at Saturday night's retro 80s dance party, I merely sipped from this forgettable wine.

Music: 99 Luftballoons by Nena.

Thou Shalt Not...

Doctor Who should never be boring. Such a commandment ought to be etched in stone.

The program's format is remarkably elastic. Stories can have the most outrageous imagery, characters or plot points (aliens with big bull heads, henchmen made of licorice all-sorts, or the Doctor regaining strength a la Tinker Bell). We might question the wisdom of the production team at times, but we should always feel something: love, anger, fear, exasperation. Contentious yes, dull never. Robert Holmes knew this well when he wrote The Deadly Assassin. The Doctor can't return home and spend 90 minutes amongst God like brethren. He wisely deduced that they needed to be decadent, scheming and vain like...we in the real world.

Underworld was another story I missed back in 1984. Not quite sure how that happened. In fact the first time I saw the story was with my friend Graeme, eight or nine years ago. We made margaritas. I fell asleep half-way through episode one. I have vague memories of Trogs running to and fro, lots of smoke and Tom Baker's hair looking like a bad Photoshop crop.

I've been dreading the re-watch (I even had to buy the blasted DVD), but I was determined to give it an honest try. Episode one was dull and talky with a couple of interesting ideas. The back story with the Time Lords could have been interesting, but nothing was ultimately made of it. I was fascinated by Tala's regeneration. but it did nothing more than reinforce that they'd been on the quest for generations. My first year creative writing prof would have put a big red "x" through the whole sequence.

Episode two introduced the ridiculous looking Trogs, was completely pointless and then the story just crawled to an unsatisfying finish.

So went wrong? Here's my best attempt to figure it out:

1) Uninteresting and unmemorable characters. The only reason I remember any of these bland characters is because they're meant to correspond to their counterparts from Greek mythology. Clever on paper but not much further than that. Herrick has a half-formed personality, but in a good Doctor Who story he'd be 4th string. I'm told that one of the Trog extras actually played the lead in Francois Truffaut's Two English Girls--this advanced her to the front of the line in terms of interest. What this story needed was a Professor Marius (The Invisible Enemy) or a Professor Watson (Hand of Fear). 2) Weak writing: when the scripts aren't densely expositional, they're unwritten. It feels like once Martin and Baker mapped out how they would fit their scripts into the Jason and the Argonauts framework, they brushed there hands together and said "done". I suppose it was a no-brainer that the Oracle of Delphi should become a controlling super computer, but frankly that's just dreadfully predictable in its execution. It would have been much more interesting if the Oracle had been programmed with the actual Greek myth and was forcing everyone to play it out.

3) An over-reliance on CSO. There was no budget for sets, so they pushed the boundaries of CSO. Kudos for trying, but it just doesn't work. Mind you it's not the biggest sin of the story, it just increases it's snooze factor. It's also quite obvious that it provided a sort of black hole of attention that no doubt absorbed the attention of the actors, director Norman Stewart and the rest of the production team. As an actor, how do you improvise or create a genuine moment when you're trying to hit complicated marks all the time. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson have the home court advantage, being seasoned pros in their respective roles.
4) Dull, workmanlike direction. Doctor Who is known for running through corridors, but that's practically all we get here (with the possible exception of running across bridges and floating down vertical corridors. While, I'm sympathetic to first time director Norman Stewart's challenge of working with that much CSO, much of the story feels visually repetitive.

5) The Nostalgia Factor: Colony in Space was the first complete televised story of Doctor Who I ever saw. The sort of story most people would abandon to watch grass grow. Painfully slow and earnest in the best Malcolm Hulke fashion. Love it to tears. Because it was my first. Result: Underworld doesn't stand a chance with me.

Hell, I was so displeased with my viewing experience that I was moved to write a short review on Amazon.ca. I'd much rather watch Mawdryn Undead or The Runaway Bride which both make more of the few intriguing ideas in this story.

Number of times we hear "the quest is the quest": 10 (plus 4 "the quest is over")

Original viewing date: 8 or 9 years ago

Spirit: Margaritas!

Music: The thumping in my head the next morning after too many Margaritas...

The Tequila Sunrise Makers

Generally speaking I go in for nice clean mixed drinks like dry vodka martinis or gin 'n tonics (occasionally I'll make myself a spicy Caesar). I'm mystified by the endless coloured bottles of curacao, galliano and triple sec that my partner mixes together like a mad scientist.

Tequila is a bit of an exception. Every once in a blue moon I love a good margarita or a tequila sunrise. I like the spectacle or perhaps the ritual of preparing them. Pulling the blender out from the back of the cupboard or blowing the dust off the grenadine bottle. Chopping up lemons or limes and frosting the glasses. Works particularly well in the summer. I have fond memories of my friend Graeme and I playing "which Doctor Who story shall we watch" accompanied by an icy margarita on a humid August eve (or sipping these green giants after tackling the formidable freeways in Los Angeles to locate a sought-after Chevys).

Back in the day, The Sun Makers was most likely served up with Old Dutch Zesty Cheese Tortilla Chips and a Hires Root Beer. Or if I was too tired to stay up late on that Sunday night, a bowl of Cheerios the next morning in front of the betamax (with my mother trying to shoo me out the door to school). Over time I developed my little rituals of obtaining various snacks from the corner store for the week's story (movie versions of the stories I should reiterate). Sometimes I would bribe my sister with the snacks to get her to watch a given story with me. I treated no other television program with the same intentionality.

And so it was with much anticipation that I plopped an umbrella into my drink and sat down to watch a very different Robert Holmes story. Smack dab in the middle of season 15 it offers up a bright spot amidst a sea of somewhat disappointing stories. It's like nothing that's come before, belonging more rightfully among later fare like The Pirate Planet and City of Death. Witty scripts full of interesting ideas, wonderful moments and endlessly quotable dialogue.

Right off the bat we have that bizarre and hilarious scene with poor Cordo trying to pay his father's death taxes to a woman in a window 3 feet above him (when I watched Terry Gilliam's Brazil years later it immediately evoked The Sun Makers).

The story is so full of Robert Holmes moments, and sharply drawn characters. And in that typically Holmesian way each are both hilarious and disturbing simultaneously. I mean I really shouldn't derive such pleasure when the pompous Hade is thrown over the side of a building--but anything less would have been a supreme disappointment for his character. Unpleasant human beings like Mandrell and Veet somehow worm their way into our affections because they eventually see that the Doctor is a man with a plan. While most of the stories during the Graham Williams era have middling ineffectual direction, Holmes scripts are so winning that they almost demand that some scenes work. Perhaps most successful is the cliffhanger to episode 3 which is quite effective and tense in the midst of the laughs. I think the story works so well precisely because it still manages to takes certain parts of the plot seriously.

Leela also seems to be back in good form after a couple of meh stories for her character. Her warrior instincts are used well and despite being part of a painfully slow assault in a golf cart, all of her scenes have nice tension. Tom Baker is headed full steam towards his new breezy irreverent interpretation of the role, but there are still hints of his old gravitas.

Ritual has been such an important part of this rewatch. As I've noted before, having a weekly date with classic Doctor Who has made it fresh and exciting. I love perusing the aisles of the Summerhill flag ship LCBO for an interesting wine (or the challenge of finding one that fits thematically). Carving out time from a busy weekend. Reminiscing about my earlier experiences with a story. Closing my eyes and listening to a song that takes me back to those days.

A good tequila sunrise is about anticipation and rediscovery. It's a bit showy, with bright colours and a bit of theatricality. But there's a bit of a kick at the bottom and it creates great memories.

Original viewing date: January 29, 1984

Spirit: Tequila Sunrise -- with duty free tequila!

Music: "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.