Understanding Strange Places, Making New Worlds by Mike Morris 24/7/02
Christopher Hamilton Bidmead is a strangely influential figure where Doctor Who is concerned. Script editor for just one year, and contributor of only three televised stories, he shouldn't by numbers be as important as he is. He's every bit as important to Doctor Who's eighties evolution as Eric Saward or Andrew Cartmel, and seems to divide opinion as much as the other two. He caused Doctor Who's descent from popular drama / he brought seriousness back to what had become a pantomime production; he introduced a new discipline to Doctor Who / he fatally refocused the programme's attention away from simple storytelling. As with all opinions, all the above have foundation. But, even in though I accept that his approach had many flaws, I would still class him as a damn good script editor and a damn good writer too. I only wish he had stayed another year, as a single season isn't really enough to fully understand what his thoughts were on the programme, and exactly what his influence on the output was.
So to help, here's a quote from a really wonderful and revealing interview with Bidmead, contained in DWM #257 - 259.
"I saw possibilities for Doctor Who, not as a format, but as an engine for generating ideas and stories using the unique character of the Doctor within a disciplined landscape. (...) My feeling then, as now, is that there was some kind of serious quest there. Science provided the landscape and the Doctor and his conflicts provided the morality play element, and you had the job of pulling it together into a unified whole so that you were within the disciplines of drama and storytelling."
I think that's a rather beautiful aim. Given that we've had a fair few script editors who didn't really have a "vision" for Doctor Who, or at least let that vision drift as they stayed on, if nothing else one has to admire the strength of Bidmead's ambition. He has shipped a lot of criticism, particularly from Williams-era lovers, for being some horrible schoolteacher-type who stopped the brilliant classroom fun of Season 17 because he wanted to start a science lesson. That's not completely true, since many Season 18 stories have some very funny bits indeed, and give or take the odd burgundy coat and talk of tachyons The Leisure Hive, Meglos and State of Decay could all have been broadcast in the previous season without raising an eyebrow. What's more, the elements Bidmead refers to in the above quote are ones Graham Williams would have approved of - "generating ideas", "the unique character of the Doctor", "morality play", "drama and storytelling".
The two seasons are, of course, vastly different. It's the biggest revamp in Doctor Who's history, with the exception of Season Seven. It's also a very proud revamp; by giving The Leisure Hive such a striking visual style, as well as the new synthesised music and title sequence, Season Eighteen screams about the fact that "no, I'm not like that any more!" A lot of these elements, though, are superficial JNT gimmicks which have become the subject of too much focus. The actual difference in terms of scripts is more subtle, and more important.
The talk of the stories being about "concepts and ideas" is partly true, but not fully. Stories like The Pirate Planet and Nightmare of Eden are all about their ideas anyway, as are most Williams-era stories; it's just that those ideas are revealed in a different way. To understand what changed it's necessary to look at the Williams era for a moment.
I've argued on these pages before that the Williams era isn't all about plotting, as is sometimes supposed. Rather, it's about characters, and here's where the difference lies. It's about people doing things. When one thinks of, say, The Ribos Operation the things that come to mind are Binro, Garron and Unstoffe, and the Graf Vynda-K. All these people are carrying out - or have carried out - very specific actions, and the story springs from that. The environment of Ribos is only really fleshed out by the character of Binro and the things he has done, and the Doctor isn't really interested in Ribos as a place. The Ribos Operation is, therefore, perfect character-based drama.
Most of Season Eighteen, by contrast, is about what places are like. Three things to remember about Full Circle are Mistfall, the evolution concept, and the Teradonians/Alzarians and how they live. Whereas the drama of The Ribos Operation is about what people are doing right now, the narrative of Full Circle is a process of the Doctor discovering, bit by bit, how things have been for generations - and this is true for most stories in the season. This gives tales a new discipline. Both seasons are about ideas. In the world of Season Sixteen and Seventeen pretty much anything can happen provided it makes sense for a character to want it to happen. The idea of a planet being hollow, for example, is just ludicrous (it would kind of wreck the gravity for one thing) but what's important is why it's hollow, not how. In Season Eighteen, meanwhile, we want to know how something is possible rather than why it's happened. We're more interested in how the Marshmen evolve than in why they want to smash in the Starliner.
This is what makes The Leisure Hive so odd. Pitched at Douglas Adams and developed by Bidmead, it shows the two approaches jarring together. The Hive, the Generator, the time experiments and the life of the Argolins is pure Bidmead (and most of these thread are actually written by him). Meanwhile, the lizard-mafia buy out and Pangol's march to war are very much Graham Williams ideas. The two things just don't go together, and The Leisure Hive falls apart in Part Four as ideas are left unexplained, while at the same time the logic of the plot breaks down. And Meglos is bizarre, a weird throwback to the previous season (jokey monster, silly planet, gaudy characters) which might have been better-rated had it been broadcast then, with more Bidmead ideas popping up every now and then - notably the chronic hysteresis. State of Decay is similarly out of place - the Hammer Horror pastiche is rather undermined by stubborn Bidmead attempts at introducing elements of logic and science, such as the tower-as-spaceship and the "technocotheca". Er, what?
Full Circle, meanwhile, is the perfect Christopher H. Bidmead story. It's fundamentally based on the environment where it takes place. The characters aren't the things that drive the plot, rather they're functions of the environment. There aren't any villains, and the monsters are also products of the life cycle which the story is about. All the events take place because of the nature of Alzarius, and in a wonderfully seamless way the ideas become the story. Warriors' Gate, the great story of the season, is similar in that it is fundamentally about the E-Space/N-Space landscape (albeit in a very oblique way), and pretty much everything else springs from that.
The Keeper of Traken is slightly different. It's about Traken, sure, but it's also about the Master. It's based on the Melkur and what it does, and hence is much more about a single person's plan than any other story. At the same time, though, it's still not quite Graham Williams-type stuff. The Melkur and the Master aren't really characters, just a sort of nameless evil which wishes to take control of Traken. Melkur provides the drama to keep us entertained, but ideas such as the Source, the Consuls and the Traken society are what really carries the story.
The Keeper of Traken is also my Exhibit A in another argument. Christopher H. Bidmead supposedly goes hand-in-hand with the idea of science. His stories are all about scientific concepts, apparently. Hmm, hum. The Keeper of Traken seems to blow this theory out of the water, because it's incredibly unscientific. Goodness is so strong on Traken that any evil will shrivel up and die? Please. If that's scientific, I'm a banana. State of Decay ain't really kosher science either, and various events during the season - such as the Doctor and Romana's escape from the chronic hysteresis - are, scientifically at least, rubbish. And, in his own stories, there's a similar lack of any scientific sense. Anyone who knows anything about physics will be aware that the basis for Logopolis is absolute garbage (entropy isn't some magical green force that disintegrates things, folks) and quite what a "gravity beam" is I have no idea.
It's not really about science, it's about rules. Traken is a fairytale world, but it's a world with a clearly-defined logic to it, as is Alzarius, as is the Vampire's planet, as is Logopolis itself and the universe it inhabits. Often in Season Eighteen the Doctor takes twenty minutes or so to arrive, and the first episode is concerned with clearly setting up the things the Doctor as to deal with. This is why the Doctor is often so withdrawn during the season, as he really has to understand everything about the planet he's on before he can act, and he can't just solve things by inverting the gravity field into a hyperspatial force-field around the planet and dropping the shrunken planets into the hollow centre of Zanak.
The chronic hysteresis is a very good example of this. It's about the idea of a time loop rather than the science of a time loop. The way the Doctor and Romana escape is very real and well thought out and visible on-screen, a solution according to the rules even if the rules are a load of crap. It's an escape that really makes the viewer think about what a time loop is. It's a sharp contrast to The Claws of Axos, where a time loop is a magical thing that makes everything better, and the Doctor can escape by "boosting the circuits and breaking free." Not a scientific idea, just a disciplined one.
It's odd then, given all this talk of "discipline", just how undisciplined Logopolis and Castrovalva are.
Undisciplined in a sense, that is. There have never been two stories with such a lack of structure. And yet their (lack of) structure is very similar; an early TARDIS-based subplot, a lull as the Doctor travels to the eponymous destination, a discovery of a secret behind the nature of the place, and finally a struggle with the Master. But compared to the usual economical narrative of Doctor Who, having the Doctor muck about with a wholly inconsequential gravity bubble is bizarre. The first episode of Logopolis is almost completely unnecessary to the plot. This was, and still is, unheard of in Doctor Who's history. When people talk about the loose plotting, the reliance on set-pieces and the more restrained Doctor that pervades Season Eighteen, it's really this story they're talking about. Fair enough; it's reasonable to assume that, as Bidmead wrote this, it's where he wanted the programme to go. That said, it's a "special" story, a regeneration story, and it's possible that he wouldn't have written a mid-season tale this way. As a one-off Logopolis is a fine regeneration story, but it isn't a formula that could be too often repeated and one suspects that Bidmead would know this. Still, it does tell us a lot about Bidmead's idea of storytelling.
Logopolis is incredibly consistent in so far as it is about a single, clear idea; dissolution, decay, entropy, call it what you like. In this story the Doctor, the TARDIS and the universe itself are all at the point of death, and all seek regeneration. The theme of entropy is carefully chosen - it's important that the universe isn't endangered by a mega-bomb or anything like that, but that it passed the point of total collapse long ago. The universe is re-invigorated by a block transfer computation, as is the TARDIS; and the TARDIS is regenerated by receiving a new exterior, as is the Doctor. Amid the rather unconnected events of gravity bubbles, shrinking TARDISes and accidental materialisations in dry dock this thematic consistency gives a funeral atmosphere that makes Logopolis work. Try showing this to someone and not telling them it's a regeneration story; they'll have guessed by the end of episode one.
So Logopolis is about a single idea, and the energy of the story is in establishing that idea at multiple levels. To do this it rewrites physics. "Entropy" (in reality just a shorthand for things falling apart) is portrayed as a sort of negative energy that can be generated and drained away. "Entropy increases," says the Doctor, making it seem as though he's fighting against something real and tangible. In a very real way, Logopolis sees the Doctor battling against decay, and this is what makes it so emotive - the science is rubbish, but the concept isn't.
Also obvious in Logopolis is Bidmead's fascination with the TARDIS, which continues on to the next story, Castrovalva. These two stories are very much a pair, with one a mirror-image of the other. Logopolis is about dissolution, Castrovalva is about birth. At the start of Logopolis the Doctor contemplates death in the Cloister Room; in Castrovalva he prepares for his new life in the Zero Room. Logopolis shows us the death of the universe, Castrovalva its birth; and while Logopolis shows us a city falling apart, Castrovalva creates a city from nowhere. Logopolis has, as I said, a funeral atmosphere, and using the same techniques Castrovalva establishes a freshness that overruns the utter lack of any plot.
Put the two together and you have a perfect but extreme template for the Christopher H. Bidmead story. They are about creating universes; about understanding ideas; about the Doctor reacting to the environment he's in. During most of Season Eighteen the Doctor Who staples of setting, plotting and characterisation remain present, but Logopolis and Castrovalva show that this wasn't really where Bidmead's interest was.
Frontios, Bidmead's last script, is very different to anything else he ever did. This is possibly because Bidmead is a few years older, but more likely because he's working under a different script editor with different concerns. And yet the same elements crop up; the fascination with the TARDIS being the most obvious, especially as it's rather shoehorned in this time.
The same old concern with creating a self-sustaining environment remains, however. By projecting the TARDIS beyond the confines of Time Lord knowledge the story effectively isolates itself from the rest of Doctor Who continuity, giving us instead a barren world where people struggle for survival. A big reason Frontios is so popular is the planet itself, which is such a perfectly evoked planet.
And, despite the rather corny and uninteresting "things-beneath-the-sand" plot, Frontios is about a concept - or rather, two. This time the concepts aren't remotely scientific, but sociological. And, as ever, they appear in multiple layers. One concept is about things concealed and hidden away; the contents of the colony ship, deaths unaccountable, Turlough's race memories and the Tractators themselves are all uncomfortable truths, suppressed and concealed, which resurface with varying results.
The other concept is very much about society. The story is about leaders, and how energies remain unfocused without them. This is an unusually authoritarian stance for Doctor Who (and one I find uncomfortable), but it makes its case well. Life on the colony ship is difficult, but the Retrogrades are savage by comparison - until, that is, they elect a leader. Similarly, Captain Revere is convinced the colony will fall apart should Plantagenet die. The Tractators are the ultimate embellishment of this view, a mass of senseless animals once their leader is gone. This idea repeats itself in other, abstract areas. Leaders focus the power of the many; also, the machine focuses the disparate energy of the mind, the tunnels focus the gravity beams of the Tractators, and the Tractators focus gravity itself into something powerful. Bidmead's most disciplined script is actually about discipline. Given Who's traditionally anarchic stance this is odd, and yet supremely realistic. Bidmead doesn't portray the leader-led society as perfect, in fact it's deeply flawed and repressive. He just says that anarchy is worse, an easy alternative that will never work in practise, an excuse not to face difficult realities. And while I'd like to think otherwise he's probably right.
Frontios is uniformly popular (even Joe Ford likes it!), in spite of the fact that it's not particularly special in any obvious way. It's a perfectly routine story, in fact; what lifts it above others is the consistency of its realisation. In this respect it is Christopher H. Bidmead's magnum opus. Giant woodlice making tunnels beneath the ground isn't the stuff of greatness. But by containing the carefully-conceived environment and conceptual rigour that Bidmead felt to be so important, it becomes one of the best stories of the Davison years.
Also worth a quick mention; Frontios, like Castrovalva, like Logopolis, is incredibly witty with good characters. I've not focused on these elements, because I don't think they're what Bidmead primarily concentrated on. That doesn't mean he wasn't good at these things, though. He consistently wrote well for the Doctor (Frontios is the Fifth Doctor's most energetic appearance), and also had a good handle on the companions - he's the only writer to really capture the friendship between Nyssa and Tegan. His dialogue is always sharp and often very funny. In fact, he seems to find these things so easy that he didn't bother focusing on them that much, a testament to his ability.
And so, Christopher Hamilton Bidmead; what did he contribute to Doctor Who? A hell of a lot, I'd argue. A fine season, and three fine stories. But more, he contributed a vision, an ideal of what Doctor Who should be about. That vision was strong, beautiful, and unique to Doctor Who. Compared to, say, Terrance Dicks, his output wasn't that high, but I would still suggest he bears comparison with people like Terrance and Robert Holmes. It's time that Christopher Bidmead started getting the credit he deserves as one of the best and most influential writers ever to have worked on the programme.
A Review by Allen Reese 4/8/08
Hello Whovians,
A hearty 'thank you' to all those who make this Ratings Guide possible for those with an ongoing love of the programme.
As a fan in the US of A, I as brought the adventures of the good Doctor as a wee lad over the Public Broadcasting System and Lionheart distribution. Tom Baker was my first Doctor, though I eagerly enjoyed the Jon Pertwee, followed by Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell incarnations. (I know this is a reverse order, but it was the way they were distributed back then.)
With the new series getting so mauch attention, I became hooked again, and wanted to revisit some fond memories. I've begun to view some of the classic Doctor stories as they have been released on DVD.
I just finished Logopolis and went to Yahoo to tap into whatever discussion I could find on that era of the programme, so ended up here.
What prompted my interest in logging on was the documentary featured on the DVD. It was an interview with Tom Baker, Christopher Bidmead, and others about the making of the series.
I was appalled at what I was hearing come out of Bidmead's mouth, and further irate when discovering the lone review of his time as writer/editor posted here.
So here we go... One is given the impression that Bidmead thinks the story behind Logopolis makes some sort of sense. It is a terrible example of muddled storytelling, wherein it is at times nearly impossible to make out any sort of logical flow of the action.
He has taken it upon himself to disreguard the history of regenerations up to that time, and seems proud of it. If it was such a brilliant idea, why has no one else taken up the idea of a 'Watcher'? Perhaps because it was an embarrassment to the series as a whole.
Bidmead further bemoans the fact that Tom Baker used to have the nerve to change his carefully crafted words while filming. First of all, I see absolutely no evidence of any sort of craftsmanship in any of the dialogue aside from Baker. Secondly, it is precisely the Bakeresque humor that made the programme so internationally successful during that actor's tenure. If you set out to 'curtail' what was arguably the most popular part of the production, and make it lifeless and boring, then you could not do a better job.
It seems evident that Baker, seeing the 'writing on the wall' and the mediocrity of those put in charge of the programme, felt he had to leave so as not to be dragged into the mud with the likes of Bidmead and John Nathan-Turner.
It says at the end of the DVD that Bidmead is still writing somewhere in England. My advice is that he give it up.
Thank you for letting me vent.
Really, a Whovian who only want what is best for the amazing programme...