New New Fandom
New Earth by Peter Nolan
New Earth is many things to many people. I sincerely doubt that it’s ‘Best Story Ever’ to a high percentage of them but, to those to whom it is, I salute you. To most, probably, it’s a fun romp in the manner that became series premiere standard practice for several years. Nothing too sophisticated or sharp, but warm and bright and a welcome back for the kids and the casual viewers, like a start of term half day. For some few, its awfulness, as perceived by them, is the starter pistol for the hand –wringing panic that cancellation was just around the corner. Seven years later, not much has changed in that regard and it’s always 1989 all over again according to someone; so you’ve got to give it to Doctor Who – even its ‘Beginning of the End’ seemingly lasts longer than most other shows’ entire runs.
To me, it’s a personal act of minor betrayal against my childhood self.
It had been one thing to see Doctor Who return to our screens in a blaze of glory in 2005. It was an exhilarating time, to be sure, but I expect a lot of us were confident that it would never be quite as good as our childhood memories. That it would be a fine thing to pass down to our children but that we could sit back by the fire, slippers on our feet and imaginary pipes in our mouths (mine blows bubbles) and wax lyrical about how Christopher Eccleston was all very good, but they should have seen Tom Baker – now there was a Doctor.
And then there was Tennant.
It’s surprising how slowly the Tenth Doctor was revealed, really. He gets a couple of lines at the end of The Parting of the Ways. He gets to play a good hand in post-regenerative mania in Whatever-We’re-Calling-That-Children-in-Need-Thing-Today. He spends most of The Christmas Invasion asleep. And, perversely, he spends quite a bit of New Earth pretending to be Zoë Wannamaker.
So it’s all credit to David Tennant that, unlike many of his predecessors, he has a firm grasp of the role, and what he wants to do with it, right from the off. And, more than that, what he wants to do with it is brilliant. It’s in New Earth that we first see enough of his sparky, lively, motor-mouthed Doctor to really fall in love with him. For me, for one, to begin to push into the background that long running internal dialogue as to whether Tom Baker or Peter Davison was better and suspect I was looking at the unthinkable – a New Favourite Doctor.
Like I said, a total act of treason. My ten year old self would have been appalled.
From New Earth on, too, this Doctor attracted new men and women to the show, mining powerful new seams of potential fandom. Even now, there’s still an active thread on one popular forum, tens of thousands of posts long, dedicated purely to the poor man’s posterior. I’m pretty sure that never happened to Sylvester McCoy (and if I’m wrong about that, I beg you not to set me straight). This is a Doctor that snogs his companion. Yes, sure, she’s possessed and he just kind of stands there in shock but still. I mean, Sarah Jane Smith was possessed, brain-washed, hypnotized or otherwise taken over roughly once every two and a half weeks for over three years but Jon Pertwee never wound up with lipstick on his collar as a result, did he? And, anyway, the Tenth Doctor’s squeaky voice and dazed expression certainly suggest he didn’t find it an entirely terrible experience.
And the idea of a Doctor who’s not only intelligent, witty, funny, brave and heroic but maybe just a tiny little bit attainable is a powerful idea for a large sector of the audience. Besides which, in a post-Buffy world, shipping is an integral part of the language of fandom. Viewers rooted for Buffy and Angel to work things out, and argued over whether Lost’s Kate should wind up with Sawyer or Jack. It’s a natural extension of how we live our lives. We all know wonderful people in our own lives whom deserve every happiness and whom we’d love to see find someone equally wonderful. So when we’re asked to emotionally invest in characters as engaging as the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler it’s a natural, if slightly irrational, impulse to want to see them happy, and happy together.
My wife wouldn’t consider herself a Doctor Who fan, by any stretch; the Fourth Doctor holds a special place in her heart which he won back in the 1970s, and she certainly is happy enough to sit and watch it with me and our son. But New Earth represents the start of a kind of golden age where through Rose, and through the complexities of Ms Tyler and the Doctor’s feelings for each other, she was able to truly feel a connection to the show rarely seen before or since. The heartbreak of Doomsday may have been round the corner, and the joy and surprise at the end of Partners in Crime down the road a bit, and being paired off with an ersatz I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Doctor clone two streets over but, for now, this was a very special time for the Doctor, his companion and we viewers who loved them.
To me, it’s a personal act of minor betrayal against my childhood self.
It had been one thing to see Doctor Who return to our screens in a blaze of glory in 2005. It was an exhilarating time, to be sure, but I expect a lot of us were confident that it would never be quite as good as our childhood memories. That it would be a fine thing to pass down to our children but that we could sit back by the fire, slippers on our feet and imaginary pipes in our mouths (mine blows bubbles) and wax lyrical about how Christopher Eccleston was all very good, but they should have seen Tom Baker – now there was a Doctor.
And then there was Tennant.
It’s surprising how slowly the Tenth Doctor was revealed, really. He gets a couple of lines at the end of The Parting of the Ways. He gets to play a good hand in post-regenerative mania in Whatever-We’re-Calling-That-Children-in-Need-Thing-Today. He spends most of The Christmas Invasion asleep. And, perversely, he spends quite a bit of New Earth pretending to be Zoë Wannamaker.
So it’s all credit to David Tennant that, unlike many of his predecessors, he has a firm grasp of the role, and what he wants to do with it, right from the off. And, more than that, what he wants to do with it is brilliant. It’s in New Earth that we first see enough of his sparky, lively, motor-mouthed Doctor to really fall in love with him. For me, for one, to begin to push into the background that long running internal dialogue as to whether Tom Baker or Peter Davison was better and suspect I was looking at the unthinkable – a New Favourite Doctor.
Like I said, a total act of treason. My ten year old self would have been appalled.
From New Earth on, too, this Doctor attracted new men and women to the show, mining powerful new seams of potential fandom. Even now, there’s still an active thread on one popular forum, tens of thousands of posts long, dedicated purely to the poor man’s posterior. I’m pretty sure that never happened to Sylvester McCoy (and if I’m wrong about that, I beg you not to set me straight). This is a Doctor that snogs his companion. Yes, sure, she’s possessed and he just kind of stands there in shock but still. I mean, Sarah Jane Smith was possessed, brain-washed, hypnotized or otherwise taken over roughly once every two and a half weeks for over three years but Jon Pertwee never wound up with lipstick on his collar as a result, did he? And, anyway, the Tenth Doctor’s squeaky voice and dazed expression certainly suggest he didn’t find it an entirely terrible experience.
And the idea of a Doctor who’s not only intelligent, witty, funny, brave and heroic but maybe just a tiny little bit attainable is a powerful idea for a large sector of the audience. Besides which, in a post-Buffy world, shipping is an integral part of the language of fandom. Viewers rooted for Buffy and Angel to work things out, and argued over whether Lost’s Kate should wind up with Sawyer or Jack. It’s a natural extension of how we live our lives. We all know wonderful people in our own lives whom deserve every happiness and whom we’d love to see find someone equally wonderful. So when we’re asked to emotionally invest in characters as engaging as the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler it’s a natural, if slightly irrational, impulse to want to see them happy, and happy together.
My wife wouldn’t consider herself a Doctor Who fan, by any stretch; the Fourth Doctor holds a special place in her heart which he won back in the 1970s, and she certainly is happy enough to sit and watch it with me and our son. But New Earth represents the start of a kind of golden age where through Rose, and through the complexities of Ms Tyler and the Doctor’s feelings for each other, she was able to truly feel a connection to the show rarely seen before or since. The heartbreak of Doomsday may have been round the corner, and the joy and surprise at the end of Partners in Crime down the road a bit, and being paired off with an ersatz I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Doctor clone two streets over but, for now, this was a very special time for the Doctor, his companion and we viewers who loved them.