Greater than the Sum of the Parts

I've now seen most of the episodes of the second series of the revived DW. There were some pretty dull and ropey ones ("School Reunion", "The Idiot's Lantern" "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit"), but there were a few that either got back more to the traditional virtues that made Who great ("New Earth", "The Girl in the Fireplace" - I wonder what Moffat will make of his Hugo) or tried to do something fresh and interesting ("Love & Monsters" - contrast it with "Boom Town", RTD's previous attempt at a cheap mid-season filler episode - this is the kind of  episode we've been expecting for the last two years - the notion that it is in an insult to DW fandom is absurd, it bears no resemblance to fandom as we know it - imagine an episode that did and certainly RTD missed, as so often, a trick by not tying this episode explicitly to the Doctor conspiracy theorist seen in "Rose", but the episode does benefit from the presence of the gorgeous Shirley Henderson.)

But the point is that DW has always been pretty ropey. The plots are rarely coherent, the science is generally risible and continuity is typically honoured in the breach. And yet... And yet... Many of the parts of DW might not amount to anything much on their own, but the whole is undoubtedly greater than sum of those parts. Here are just a few things about DW that are profoundly great

* The Doctor. Even the name Doctor... Who? Who indeed is the Doctor,. He is many things: once a renegade from his own race, now its sole survivor, a trickster, a defender of the oppressed from the twin evils of anarchy and tyranny, a being of godlike wisdom and knowledge. He is Loki, Merlin, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond. And whoever the Doctor is, the show should be about him, not about his assistant, much less his assistant's mother. 

* The TARDIS. It's a space-time machine and, as we know, any time machine would necessarily also be a space machine. It can go anywhere in space and time. How cool is that?

* It's bigger on the inside than the outside. Little, Big is a well-established trope, but no less powerful for that (see the Encyclopedia of Fantasy). When we enter the TARDIS, we realise that we are no longer in Kensal Green.

* The TARDIS has a chameleon circuit...

*...but it's broken and the TARDIS always looks like a 1960s police box. Of all the things, they could have chosen back in 1963, they chose something that looks exactly right.

* the TARDIS console. It looks right.

* The Daleks. Face it, they are bloody scary. I think it's the face that they don't have faces and don't have legs. They look alien. The fact that they go round exterminating everything in sight  is a factor too.

* The theme music. It still gives me goose bumps.       

* The sound of the TARDIS materialising and dematerialising. Ditto.

TV series go and come, but novel series abide. When the current revival is history, the Missing Adventures and Continuing Adventures will start again. One day, I hope to write Doctor Who: Day Zero, my take on the true origins of the Doctor and the Time Lords.