Doctor Why: Falling Out of Like with a Series

My relationship with Doctor Who has never been a steady one. When the rebooted series with Christopher Eccleston first premiered on Sci Fi Channel--back when it was Sci Fi Channel--I caught an episode here or there, often times the same episode in which the Doctor combats farty aliens who--gasp!--have taken over the government. Or something. The production quality seemed dodgy as BBC shows sometimes do, especially circa 2005, but the performances were oddly solid, especially from Eccleston himself. But the show never became habitual for me, only filler until something else came on.

Enter David Tennant, the Tenth Doctor, and my interest in the series waned further. He seemed too excited and playful compared to the brooding veteran who had proverbially "seen some shit." Then, down the road, I caught the last half of The End of Time and I reconsidered my assessment. Even though some silly pulp sci-fi crap goes down (population of earth turned into clones of the Big Bad Evil Guy), the performers are all in top form and the themes are oddly mature. First, this happens:


Later, the Tenth Doctor faces death with reluctance even though this was no true death since he would just be regenerated. Though I hadn't watched enough episodes to feel an attachment, Tennant's performance made me sorry for the Doctor. But regeneration means new actor, and new actor means new personality for the 900-plus-year-old time-and-space traveler.

I picked up right at the start of the Matt Smith-Eleventh Doctor-Stephen Moffat era, having just enough context to know what's going down. I sped through it, watching two or three episodes at a time. Lunch time? Doctor Who. Dinner time? Doctor Who. Bedtime? Fall asleep on the futon while Doctor Who is on. When I was through with what was available of the Eleventh Doctor's adventures on Netflix, I started at the back catalog with Tennant himself. And I grew to like Tennant's Doctor. The Tenth had a vengeful, angry streak that made him profoundly human. A few of his episodes got dark, borderline kid-unfriendly. He was a Doctor I could appreciate. While Matt Smith's Doctor is entertaining if not goofy, he wasn't a Doctor I could invest in.

At a conference I went to in 2012, a presenter argued that the new era of Doctor Who, this post-David Tennant, post-Russell T Davies period was a shift towards not only more kid-friendly but child-geared television show. The Eleventh Doctor was himself profoundly childlike. Once it was pointed out, I couldn't not notice it. When we're first introduced to our new Doctor, he hankers for a paring of fish sticks and custard, something you would expect a child to do or at least laugh at. Endearing at first, but exhausting as the series carries on.

Also, the story arcs of the Moffat-ran Doctor Who are outrageously convoluted to the point of contrived. The "Death of the Doctor" arc is one of the more unpalatable story arcs I can recall in a TV show with a lackluster resolution that is all too clever for its own good. Moffat's Sherlock also suffers from a similar malady: hyper-cleverness that points and laughs at the viewer for both not figuring it out and trying to figure it out. It's all entertaining, but it takes the heart out of a good program.

Now, after a long absence of Doctor Who on my TV screen with the exceptions of the occasional Tom Baker serials available on Netflix, I've returned to the show with the new Matt Smith episodes. The departure of companions Amy and Rory took a significant part of my investment out of the show already, and the mystery surrounding his new sort-of companion Clara is not engaging. Maybe it's because I slipped out of routine, or that I've seen more engaging television since the last time I watched Doctor Who on the regular, but this most recent series feels meandering. I hope there's a pay off, though. I need to watch something and it's a few months before Sleepy Hollow comes back on.

Demystifying the Realistic Female Character

As a writer, I struggle with writing realistic female characters. I've never received explicit criticism for writing an unrealistic female character, but as soon as I write a character with ladyparts, I am immediately self-conscious. Is she promoting a stereotype I failed to recognize or didn't even know about? One of the oldest rules in writing is "Write what you know," and I don't know the female experience.

But I also I don' t know what that authentic female experience is supposed to be. It's comforting to know that many of the big writers don't, either. Steven Moffat, the current showrunner for Doctor Who and creator of the new Sherlock, has been largely criticized for his female characters. The popular episode "Blink" in which countless viewers can never look at weeping angel statues the same way again (or look away for that matter) is frequently lauded for its low-budget (even by Doctor Who standards) attempt at horror through simplicity and tricky editing. But the main character--not the Doctor or his companion--catches flak for zero development. Nivair H. Gabriel describes the character as "Moffat's embarrassingly flat narrator . . . whose lack of complexity has earned her a place of honor in the annals of Mary Sue." The author then points out another symptom of Moffat's writing broadly across other Who episodes, "It's the way women are written as if they have absolutely no control over what happens in their life at all--and they're fine with that." I don't mean to place Doctor Who on a pedestal of high quality writing, though there are some strong episodes for sure, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Moffat is a consummate misogynist. He remains a successful and popular writer, regardless. But the shortcomings of male authors don't stop there.

A fantasy novel I just began called Gardens of the Moon, part of the Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson, has its share of criticism for female believability. In a review for Fantasy & Science Fiction, Charles de Lint gives credit where credit is due: "Mind you, there are a lot of characters, each with a fascinating history and story, and it takes some time getting to know them all and keeping them straight." The series is no Martin-esque feat of character birthing, but approaches the sheer volume of speaking bodies without sacrificing characterization. But then de Lint calls Erikson out on "the lack of any believable female characters." Indeed, the book is rife with female "stoic warriors, assassins, and mages . . . , courtesans, or in one case, a young girl possessed by gods and turned into a killing machine." While I've only made it about 150 pages in, I've encountered only a handful of female characters, including the one female character de Lint does praise: "Except for one strong female lead, the mage Tattersail, there's no distinct female perspective to set the female characters apart from their male counterparts." And I agree, Tattersail does outshine the other female characters. But I find it difficult to describe her perspective as distinctly female. She is female and her perspective is distinct, but I wonder if that's all the author meant or if he desired a perspective unique to the female experience.

George R. R. Martin, the man behind HBO's Game of Thrones and the books that inspired them, has been complimented from several sources for his ability to write realistic female characters. In an interview with The Telegraph, Jessica Salter argues that "the secret to his appeal" is that the book series A Song of Ice and Fire--on which Game of Thrones is based-- "has an army of female fans clamouring for his next installment." Salter writes, "Martin's women are more three dimensional," and offers up five distinct female characters who are strongly characterized in the books. He admits that he's "never been an eight year old girl," but nor has he "been an exiled princess, or a dwarf or bastard." Tapping into his own humanity is what makes his characters believable: "I just write human characters."

But is that sound enough advice? I want to believe it, but I'm still leery about my ability to write a female character. Truthfully, I've only written two as protagonists. The first was in a short story that could use plenty of TLC, but the latter was in a screenplay I penned as part of an independent study. Originally, the protagonist had started out as a male character, "Murphy." But at one point, I asked myself, "Why is Murphy male?" I then proceeded to change the character to female because I had no compelling argument to support Murphy's maleness. I had about 30 pages of a post-apocalyptic road movie written up and then went in to perform a sex change on Murphy. I changed pronouns. I described her as having long hair. Her named remained Murphy. I even toyed with her first name being "Charlotte" but that she was called "Charlie" by those who knew her, but then I remembered Eddie Murphy's brother's name is Charlie. I think I did okay. She was a hard-ass and I did nothing to sexualize her. My instructor for the independent study course made no critique of Murphy being unrealistic, but I still worried that Murphy was little more than a man in women's clothing. I worried that Murphy was not distinctly female. I still worry.

But then, should that be my goal? Should I go for the distinct female? Or should I go for the distinctly female? Or should I divorce myself from gender at the basic level and go for the human? Writers, what are your experiences? My fellow male writers, do you struggle? Or do you think you have it?

The Madness in Adaptation

Recently, I saw a production of the musical Wicked. I'm not a huge musical person, but Sam was really excited about seeing it so I figured, sure, why not. The extent of my knowledge of the musical came from my high school's show choir taking a trip and seeing a production of it, as well as performing the song "Popular" for their routine. I also knew it was based on a book that two of my classmates in high school were obsessed with. Both musical and novel deal with the life of the Wicked Witch of the West before, during, and after the events of the film The Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed what I saw, but this isn't a review of the production. This is an exploration of adaptation and intertextuality and why I find it so difficult to reconcile adaptations with their source works.

The original novel by Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, is a parallel novel of the classic Judy Garland picture The Wizard of Oz and the book on which it was based, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. We see the events of The Wizard of Oz play out from a different perspective. In this case, our point-of-view is centered on the film's antagonist, the Wicked Witch of the West. The film does not name her, unlike the Maguire novel which gives her not only a name but a voice, at least one beyond threatening young girls' dogs. To my understanding, Maguire's work focuses on elements mainly from the film but employs some elements from Baum's series as well. It's likely, however, that Maguire's audience would be comprised of those who have seen the 1939 film and might not have known it was an adaptation. Indeed, the film is such an iconic American work that it overshadows the literary foundation on which it was built. But I digress.

I haven't read Maguire's novel, nor Baum's work, but I've seen the film and it seemed enough to keep me afloat during the musical adaptation of the novel. I knew the characters and was able to make connections to the film, and it was fascinating to see happy-go-lucky meditation on morality put to music. But then it got me thinking, do we read this as an alternative universe or the same place and events from a different vantage point? In-jokes are spread throughout the musical that would only be caught if the audience had prior knowledge of the film. At one point, the witch utters, "There's no place like home," the memorable line opined by the film's protagonist. Do we take this as coincidence that the Witch says this? Or in this retelling of the story, is it the Witch who solely says this?

Without the film, the musical may work, but for an ideal experience it appears that one must know the film to read and appreciate the musical's intertextuality. A viewer unversed in the movie would not know that the dog's name is Toto, not Dodo as a character mistakenly refers to it. That same viewer would not know the significance of house that fell out of the twister or who the hell this girl is that stole a pair of shoes. So much of the musical demands a prerequisite knowledge of an early 20th century children's movie.

This is a time for adaptations and "re-imaginings." The media is awash with content that for every new piece of content there are three reworkings of old content. This is not necessarily bad--adaptation has long been in practice. Some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were borrowed from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron and so on and so forth. There are successful re-imaginings. 2003's Battlestar Galactica comes to mind, arguably usurping its predecessor in terms of character depth and cultural relevance. Even the recent Spider-man adaptation was a hit with critics even though the previous Spider-man franchise came out only five years before. But ours is a remix culture, trimming usable elements and combining them with others.

A re-imagining that I enjoy but still struggle with is BBC's Sherlock, created by Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat. The drama presents itself as a modern day retelling of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective stories centered around detective Sherlock Holmes and his partner-in-crimefighting Dr. John Watson. Characters and events are updated to suit the current time period; Watson served during the War on Terror in Afghanistan, and Sherlock's work is proudly advertised through an online blog. The show's first season earned an 85 on Metacritic, proving that the modernization of a classic film and literary character makes for good television. And I have to agree, it makes for damn entertaining TV. But this is where I struggle: are we in an alternative timeline where Sherlock Holmes exists only in the present as a real human being?

In discussing the program with a friend, I was informed that there was a clue that Sherlock's world and the world of Doyle's work were one in the same due to a literal tip of the iconic hat most associated with the deducing detective. But was it a nod to the audience who presumably knows the significance of that hat in particular? Is Moffat's Sherlock a world in which there was a Sherlock in the Victorian age who existed in flesh and blood or ink and paper? Everything else about the new Sherlock appears to be our world its share of issues, except for these two characters whose very names displace them in time.

We even have the US adaptation of The Office. For the most part, the elements are the same--goofy boss, will-they-won't-they sexual tension between two coworkers, neurotic awkward nerd--and due to it being a sitcom, I didn't think much about them being in unified or separate universes. But then in Season 7, Ricky Gervais makes an appearance as his character from the UK version of The Office, David Brent. In a later episode, Brent appears again, seeking work and Dunder Mifflin. This could be just an random nod to the original series, but then it makes me wonder if the two shows are parallel to one another? Are Tim and Dawn still a thing across the pond as Jim and Pam are getting together here in the States? Has David Brent irritated the whole of UK to the point of being banished to the US?

It's things like this that keep me up at night.