The Black Archive Blog: Why Rose?

With the launch of the first four Black Archive titles imminent a blog about my entry on Rose; to explain why I chose it and the thinking behind my approach.  None of the actual analysis though, you'll have to give the frankly sexy and beautiful Obverse Books your cash to get that...  

Originally I was thinking in terms of my favourite stories; a fair number of them being those that congregate around the top of the polls along with more idiosyncratic choices (I pretty much considered every McCoy era story aside from Time and the Rani).  I soon realised that it was the wrong angle to approach such a choice from; it’s not your affection for a story but how much you have to say about it that counts. In that sense a lot of the most interesting stories aren’t the most successfully realised but ones where ambition has clearly exceeded grasp.  So I scrapped my original train of thought and cast around for ideas.

The final choice of Rose was partly a question of timing and partly a question of what the story meant to me personally.  The first solicitations for The Black Archive series took place in early 2015 and the early part of the year naturally saw a lot of material about the tenth anniversary of the new series with Rose being a particular focus. Most articles swerved between nostalgic and adulatory but few really analysed just *why* Rose had been so successful.   It’s the start of the mythologizing of the RTD era; it’s distant enough for the details to blur and it to become part of the show’s history. Rightly so too, in Doctor Who production terms ten years is forever; there are vast differences between An Unearthly Child and The Time Warrior or The Horns of Nimon and Survival. We’ve had four season of RTD and five of Steven Moffat plus numerous specials since that first episode. Much of the analysis had a narrow focus too; on the episode itself rather than the wider context of the TV landscape or why creative decisions made by Russell T Davies and those involved in the production of the show ended up being spectacularly validated.  I was looking  to put what was achieved with Rose into the context of the show’s own history and the popular culture of 2005.

On the personal front the episode meant everything to me as a fan too.  It catapulted the show back to the heart of British popular culture to the point of it being a default reference when talking about SF; to add to the excitement the production of the show was based five minutes from where I was living at the time. I passed the studio every day on my way to and from work and even saw Eccleston and Piper rehearsing outdoors in late summer.  For a long-term Who fan the combined thrill of proximity and success was something it was difficult to put into words.  The pinch yourself wonder of having Who back; not only having it back but having it back on Saturday night and achieving ridiculous ratings.  I wanted to capture that thrill in the book; the essence of success that we’re all quite blasé about in the wake of the show’s subsequent success.  I said earlier that much of what’s interesting about Doctor Who are the heroic failures but Rose is an exception; in terms of what it sets out to achieve it’s unarguably the most successful episode in the show’s history.* Not only in terms of the initial impact in its own country but it’s the most frequently bought drama of the past 40 years for BBC Worldwide. More successful on that front than Eastenders, Howard’s Way, House of Cards, Dennis Potter’s most acclaimed works, State of Play, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Call the Midwife, Happy Valley, This Life, Casualty, Our Friends In the North… It appealed on a national and international basis.  What was fascinating about it was why it had such universal appeal; why the revival of a 42 year old series struck such a chord.

With that overarching theme of the rebirth of the series in mind I sent Phil a proposal for the structure of the book; what seemed the most fascinating aspects of the rebirth.    He agreed them with minor modifications and some excellent suggestions for further investigation.  In keeping with the tone of the new series I was aiming to blend my analysis with a relatively light tone; reflecting the story it examined.  

Fast forward to December and just before Christmas and after some excellent feedback from beta readers (thanks, in particular to Geoff Wessel for a couple of excellent points), a some thoughtful notes from the editor which added clarity to certain areas, depth to others and generally tightened the manuscript it was ready to be sent to the publisher.  Fast forward another couple of months and you’ll see an author bouncing happily up and down after having seen the gorgeous cover artwork from Blair Bidmead and Cody Schell and having read through the beautifully put together ebook.

At the time of writing the first four volumes in the Black Archive series are at the printers and on target for their early March release date.  It’s been a privilege to be part of the launch of a series I’d be delighted to read even if I wasn’t involved; quite aside from my own title I've read an early draft of Dark Water/Death in Heaven (a breathtakingly fine set of essays) and I can’t wait to read The Massacre and The Ambassadors of Death both for the stories chosen and the authors.  Similarly the remainder of the year promises a strong selection of writers and stories which I’ll be pre-ordering. You can give Obverse your money for the first four titles here,

Now all that’s left is the always nervous wait to see what everyone makes of it.  Time to see if fingernails can be gnawed down to the bone then…

* Not necessarily in terms of the actual episode but in successfully relaunching Doctor Who.  There's a decade's worth of TV, spin-offs and foreign sales on my side here.

D'yer wanna come with me?

It's a decade ago tonight that this aired...

It's not the episode itself, it's the trailer.  We all knew the show was coming back and roughly when, but we hadn't seen a frame yet (unless you'd been impatient enough to download the early copy leaked on those naughty torrent sites).

This made it all real.

There was the new Doctor - Christopher Eccleston.  Christopher. Bloody. Eccleston, a proper heavyweight actor.  The new TARDIS.  The new companion.  And an irresistible invitation.  It's still pretty much as excited as anything on TV has ever got me.  This was Doctor Who, my favourite show since childhood, back with the budget to make it look as magnificent as it had always deserved to, back as a proper flagship show.  I could even forget that I knew the tunnel where Eccleston was filmed running from a fireball so well and lose myself in the excitement.  

Everything about this trailer is long gone.  Eccleston only lasted a year, the TARDIS set departed with David Tennant.  Billie Piper's performance was so good no-one mentioned that brief pop career by the end of the first season, she's matured into a fine award winning actor but happy to return to celebrate special occasions for the show.  The show's moved studios twice, the one I used to walk past on the way to work having been a warehouse and now offices.  Even the underpass is long gone, blocked up and filled in as part of a redevelopment of the area around the station. Only the show is still here, and that's as it should be.  Change and development's always been part of Doctor Who's DNA and ten years on we're five Doctors (yes the War Doctor counts!), two showrunners, three TARDIS sets and a daft number of title sequences and rearrangements of the theme down.  Only Murray Gold's music remains after ten years.  Younger generations have their Doctors, their memories and all the monsters they can handle.  It's the natural reference point for when anyone in Britain talks about SF and it's bigger around the world than it's ever been.  And all thanks to Russell T Davies, Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper.  Back then we were grateful beyond words, delighted that we'd have one last season to reward our patience over a decade and a half with just one new episode (but shitloads of books and audios).  Despite the talent we weren't sure whether it'd be any good.  The trailer was the first sign that not only would it be good, it'd be good beyond our wildest dreams.  Did I want to go with him? More than ever.  I still do.  And when they promised the trip of a lifetime?It's been all that and more.

2005? Tell you what.  I bet we're going to have a really great year.

Oh, and spoilers... we got all this next...

Digging Your Scene - Chicks Dig Time Lords ed Lynne M Thomas and Tara O'Shea

Frankly Doctor Who publishing's been dominated by the fanboys for far too long. And I say that as one who's (admittedly only of late) been part of that. We grew up with it, stole it back and made our own stories up when the BBC stopped making it, researched it to within a millimetre of its existence (I wouldn't be surprised to find a fanboy had designed a time machine simply to be in on those early meetings), snarked, analysed, debated and, in the end, played a major part in the revival. One of us even got to live the dream and be the Doctor. We've said a hell of a lot down the years. And given the old show had - still has - an overwhelmingly male fandom (in the UK at least) we've said plenty.

And then, to paraphrase a related show, everything changed. Eccleston and Piper played out the first Doctor-companion relationship with an openly emotional charge (there are moments in the old series, most obviously The Green Death Episode 6, but they never get in the way of Exciting Adventures). And then we got the first overtly Sexy Doctor in David Tennant. All of a sudden there were a hell of a lot more women around, particularly at cons and online. It might be a temporary shift, but fandom changed. And naturally some of the old guard weren't happy, abhorring the cosplaying, slashing and squeeing and generally being like Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen (which they could probably quote verbatim) about it all. They wanted fandom on their terms, the new breed of fans barely even recognised that those terms existed. Me? I love it, new blood and new, different ways of being a fan are essential if your fandom's going to survive. Vive la difference, baby. There is no right way to be a fan, you can love and celebrate the show however you want (well, within legal boundaries...). Chicks Dig Time Lords is a celebration of all that.

There's so much adorable about the book that it's difficult to know where to start. The broadness of subject matter and approach is breathtaking. You've got academic approaches jostling with reminiscences, interviews and even an original comic strip from the creators of Torchwood Babies (the penultimate panel on page 89 has the most sublime Rob Shearman gag). Contributors aren't always singing from the same hymn sheet (the best example being the two essays which largely deal with Martha), so unlike s lot of the Doctor Who literature of the 80s and 90s there's never a sense that these are rigidly proscribed views. And while there might be passionate disagreements, which there will be when you have intelligent people with emotional investiture in topics, you get the impression that these are people you could arrive at a consensus with. It's certainly not the usual entrenched close minded rock-throwing that passes for internet debate. And like Shooty Dog Thing it's broad minded about what constitutes Doctor Who. Quite wonderfully, there's no consideration of the ever anal (and mainly male driven) canon debate and space is devoted to books, audios and spin-offs. You may not be a fan in the way these women (and one man) are, but read with an open mind and you'll understand the way they enjoy the show (and fandom) better, whether it be cosplaying, socialising, slashing, making fan films, fanzine writing, fan fic-ing, squeeing, affectionately mocking or coming up with a genius comic strip that the production crew of the show love. Or any combination of the above.

This is a series of snapshots from the smarter, creative end of Doctor Who fandom. You might not love all of it, given the breadth of subject matter, it's unlikely. But, equally, it hugely unlikely that you won't find a lot here to interest you, and maybe even broaden your mind. Chicks is exuberant, refreshing, stimulating and never dull. There's a good reason for it being so popular at Gallifrey One that the entire stock Mad Norwegian brought sold out quickly. It celebrates all the things I love about fans and being a fan. And yeah, I'll cop to having at least socialised with a fair few of the contributors here (hell, I'm namechecked once), but that's mostly down to their sharing a similar mindset. These chicks are the sort of people who make it great to be a fan. And this book will let you in on the reasons why, which is why it should be on every Who fan's required reading list. Or preferably beamed directly into their brains, thereby bringing miraculous world peace to fandom.