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Doctor Who Night |
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Doctor Who Night |
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| Synopsis: November 13th 1999 saw a whole night of Doctor Who on BBC2. |
A whole night of Doctor Who! by Tim Roll-Pickering 12/2/03
After a number of false starts and outings on other television formats, 1999 finally saw the UK's first ever terrestrial Doctor Who Night (I guess it's similar to a US pledge night). A whole evening devoted to the series is something that fans had been hoping for for years, but was it any good?
The material on offer including a short documentary called 'Adventures in Space and Time' that sprinted through the series' history covering the main points and featuring a number of interviews including actors such as Colin Baker, Anneke Wills and Sylvester McCoy to production staff like Verity Lambert, Terrance Dicks, Dick Mills and David Maloney as well as historian David J. Howe. Although containing a few slight misremembered moments, in general this served to sum up the series quite well and also discussed briefly some interesting points, such as John Nathan-Turner commenting on the casting of high profile actors, pointing out that many such as Ken Dodd are skilful actors who have done far more than just their famous comedy work and that many wanted to do Doctor Who. The other documentary on offer is 'Carnival of Monsters', looking at the many monsters, with a number of actors and stuntmen inside them describing what it was like to perform the roles.
There were also two mini features 'How to Live for Ever', looking at the science behind regeneration and 'How to Build a TARDIS' which looks at how a time machine might be created. Neither are especially thrilling and feel very much as though they were been inserted on outside orders. The other short features are short three comedy sketches by Mark Gatiss. The first shows Sidney Newman pitching the original series to 'Mr Borusa' and suddenly spurting out the entire twenty-six years all in one go. There's a hilarious bit where Borusa comes up with the 'Knock knock... Doctor WHO?' joke and Newman completely fails to get it. Generally this sketch is okay until it gets to the point where it seems as though a deliberate dig is being made at John Nathan-Turner's period as producer for the sheer heck of it. 'The Web of Caves' is a send up of the Doctor encountering cheap and ineffective monsters in a quarry and works perfectly for it, especially as it is screened in black and white. The third sends up fans by showing what happens when Peter Davison is kidnapped and dragged to two fans' bedroom. This is absolutely hilarious.
Two actual episodes were screened. The first was the final episode of the first Dalek story The Rescue. This was slightly extended to include the scenes leading up to the previous cliffhanger but for some strange reason it was cut badly, removing some vital scenes in the middle of the episode and so jumping from Ian's party moving down a corridor to being trapped under an intersection along with Alydon with no explanation for the change in events. Screening an early episode, preferably with Daleks, makes sense but it would have been arguably better to go for the climaxes to either The Dalek Invasion of Earth or The Chase. The other episode is Enemy Within, this time screening the unedited US version with the gun battle and longer operating table sequences. Before the DVD was released this was the first time most UK fans had had a chance to see this outside of the pirate video network and given that by this point in the evening it was nearly midnight it was good to see the full version at last.
Although there was some good material shown that evening, including the links by Tom Baker and the CGI animation of Daleks (especially the BBC2 Dalek logo) looking at again some years on the whole thing feels as though it could have been improved on. The comedy sketches in particular are clearly aimed at fans but other elements are more obviously targeted at the 'general public' and the whole night feels less than completely coherent. Whilst it shows the series at its strengths, it is now difficult to avoid the feeling that it could have been done so much better. Still it was better that it happened than it didn't. 6/10