Doctor Who and the Daleks - how the novelizations got started

All this writing about the early years of Doctor Who made me decide to go back and reread Doctor Who and the Daleks, a slender little book that I read and reread more than a few times back when Target books were a big part of my Doctor Who experience.

It’s an interesting book to revisit. It’s more than just a novelization of the first story with the Daleks, a key part of Doctor Who’s history and Doctor Who’s success. It was published originally in 1964 but the success of its republication in 1973 helped the novelization of just about every Doctor Who serial from the original run.

The latest edition has an introduction by Neil Gaimon, which makes an interesting point. Back in the day (and that includes when I got into Doctor Who), those Target books were the only access folks had to so many of these stories. And Doctor Who and the Daleks got that started.

There were two things that really struck me about the book. First of all, since it was written as a standalone product, not meant to be an exact copy of the serial, it took some liberties with the story, particularly the beginning. Second, it is interesting to look at how the Daleks started out.

Doctor Who and the Daleks replaced all of An Unearthly Child with an alternate origin for how Ian and Barbara ended up with the Doctor and Susan. Instead of them being two schoolteachers checking out a weird student, they are strangers who meet due to a car accident.

Of course, with no other books and no Internet and VCRs, there was no reason to imagine that 1964 readers actually knew how Ian and Barbara ended up in the TARDIS. Doctor Who and the Daleks was not written to be part of the greater Doctor Who mythology. It was written as a standalone book. Sure, anyone who bought it was going to know who the characters were (why else would they have bought it?) but referring to a story that wasn’t a book would have been bad storytelling.

I will admit that I found it confusing when I first read it but now I think that its an interesting look at something that was written before there was even a second Doctor or that Doctor Who was something that would be going for decades.

Second of all, the first appearance of the Daleks was a far cry from the intergalactic conquerors that they would become. (Honestly, like by their second appearance when they took over the Earth)

They were confined to one city on a radioactive planet. Literally confined. If they lost contact with the metal floors that supplied them with the static electricity they needed to move, shoot and even damn well breathe, they died. Man, and the Cybermen’s vulnerability to gold seemed kind of extreme.

None of this is that unreasonable. They started off as a one-off alien monster (and I do love the fact that they aren’t robots but xenophobic blobs of hate. It adds a visceral level of impact to them) when the show was supposed to be educational. They needed a weakness that would serve as a science lesson and defeating them meant killing them all.

Not that killing them off is that shocking. How many times in the history of Doctor Who did the Daleks get wiped out? As long as Daleks get high viewer numbers, they will come crawling back to do some more exterminating.

Still, it is so strange to see them as such fragile and isolated creatures, more obsessed with desperate survival than war. Someone wrote that the original Daleks were little old scientists. They became a race of nightmare warriors pretty darn quickly but they had humble beginnings.

I don’t feel the urge to read any more of the old Target books. But this one, holding such a key position in Doctor Who publishing, was interesting to go back and look at again.

Gotham... what makes it work?

Setting aside Doctor Who for the moment, I want to take a look at a new television show that we have been enjoying far more than we expected to. Gotham.

Honestly, Gotham is a concept that shouldn’t work. Gotham City before Bruce Wayne became Batman. In fact, while he is still a kid. So, basically Batman without Batman.

According to an article in Crack, there was once a plan to make a Gotham High cartoon, about Batman when he was in high school and every single one of his enemies going to the same school. Unless the main character was the school guidance counselor instead of Batman, the idea sounds horrible.

Gotham sounds like it takes that same idea, only placing it before Bruce Wayne goes to high school. If you take away the costume, the utility belt, the cave full of cool cars and the training from Hell, Bruce Wayne becomes one of the Hardy boys with a more prissy wardrobe.

So, how on Earth does Gotham work, let alone be enjoyable?

From where I’m sitting, Gotham takes some key ideas from two different pieces of the Batman mythos. The Nolan films and Batman: Year One, Frank Miller’s story from the 80s.

The Nolan Batman films made a lot of smart, interesting choices. One of them was to make the story more gritty and realistic. Grounded closer to reality than your average comic book movie at any rate. It had a gritty sensibility without being too dark or full of self pity.

Gotham definitely takes a similar path. While Batman has usually been more grounded than, say, the Green Lantern or the Flash, almost all of the gaudy or fantastic elements have been stripped away. There aren’t flash costumes or gimmicky. The bad guys are either mobsters or really emotionally messed up.

The second element that makes Gotham work is that Bruce Wayne is not the main character. In fact, there have been episodes where he hasn’t even shown up. The murder of the Waynes is a key event that sets up the events that create the story but young Bruce is a supporting character.

In Batman: Year One, Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne both arrive in Gotham. Gordon has been transferred there in the police force and Bruce is coming back from years of training to become a vigilante. One of them is cynical bad ass and the other is naïve without a real idea of what they are getting into. Hint. Gordon isn’t the naïve one.

The hero of Gotham is Jim Gordon. He is the honest cop who is out to make a difference. He doesn’t have a costume or a secret cave or such. He’s a normal guy in a city that’s not just corrupt but starting to have the crazies come out.

But there are times when we are convinced that Gordon is not the protagonist of Gotham. Right now, it seems like that role is Oswald Cobblepot, the Penguin. If he’s the protagonist, he’s definitely an anti-hero at best. He is a slimy, nasty little monster who does some really horrible things. His veneer of charm and sophistication hides a vicious, petty killer.

And he is so fascinating. He is so compelling. I never thought you could make the Penguin so nasty and so interesting and they did both in Gotham. Bruce’s tragedy got the ball rolling. Gordon is the hero. But Oswald Cobblepot drives the story.

There is one question that Gotham leaves me with. With all of the changes that they made to make it work, all of the traditional elements of Batman removed, why is it Gotham? Why not, I don’t know, Detroit? I know, the answer is name recognition. And I do enjoy it when I recognize a name. But, still, it seems like what makes Gotham work is by having it not be Batman.

William Hartnell - the Doctor who began it all

As everyone who is reading this already knows, William 'Bill' Hartnell was the first actor who played the Doctor. Seriously, if you're not interested in Doctor Who, why are you reading this? Of course, you might just as well ask what does this guy have to say about Bill Hartnell that hasn't been said before?

I have a strange relationship with both Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. I haven't seen a lot of their serials. However, I have read every last adaptation of them. Heck, I'm pretty sure I've read every single Target book back when I was in middle school and high school.

Looking back, it was definitely a second rate way of experiencing the serials. Most of the books were basically just the scripts in book format. More than that, a lot of the earlier written ones simplified the scripts. Or, in a couple cases, flat out were different. They didn't give me a real appreciation or understanding for the craft or work of the actors. And, let's be honest, that is a huge gap.

Still, the Target books let me get a taste of the history of Doctor Who and some insight into the early years of the show.

Let's get back to Hartnell.

No matter how you look at it, it all got started with Hartnell. No Hartnell, you got no Doctor Who. And many of the elements that define Doctor Who were introduced from the beginning. Time Travel, the TARDIS, the Daleks, all sorts of the things that are a part of the Doctor Who mythology.

At the same time, Doctor Who was still being invented. A lot of ideas that are now part of the bedrock of the franchise didn’t even exist back then. After all, the BBC had no idea that they were creating a multi-generational dynasty.

Gallifrey, Time Lords, regeneration, the whole idea of the Doctor definitely not being human, none of that had been dreamed up yet. In fact, instead of being a renegade or happy-go-luck rambler, there was more of a sense that the Doctor was a refuge from some sort of catastrophic disaster that had killed his entire family except his granddaughter.

(Come to think of it, the Time War of the second Doctor Who series that seemingly destroyed Gallifrey and all the Time Lords is exactly that kind of disaster. I guess some ideas will come around again if you give them enough time.)

Compared to later eras of Doctor Who, the Hartnell serials definitely have their own feel. Many of the fundamental ideas just hadn’t gotten around to being thought up yet. The idea that the Doctor was the hero and protagonist took a while to catch on. The two humans he shanghaied were the ones doing the heroics at the start. The Unearthly Child practically had the Doctor as a villain.

The idea that Doctor Who was going to be an educational show, by golly, was struggling against it becoming a science fiction action show. While the Doctor has never stopped visiting the past and messing around with historical figures, the Hartnell era had the historical stories, where the only fantastic element was the TARDIS and company. Honestly, that’s an idea that has never been revisited. (Yes, Black Orchid from Peter Davidson’s time didn’t have any fantastic elements but it also wasn’t trying to teach any history lessons)

The idea of the historical stories is neat and part of me wonders what it would have been like if the BBC had explored them more. On the other hand, the Daleks being a smash hit from the get go really pointed at how the real future of the show was in the fantastic.

Since the show was still defining itself, the Hartnell era was also surprisingly experimental. Stories like the Web Planet or the Feast of Stephen or the Gunfighters or the Celestial Toymaker pushed the boundaries of what the series could do in ways that later eras wouldn’t. (Clearly, not always successfully but they tried.) I’m not sure if Doctor Who got so far out of its comfort zone again until Delta and the Bannermen. (After decades of pondering, I still can’t decide if that one was brilliant or just insane)

Bill Hartnell isn’t my favorite doctor. His era isn’t what I think about when I think about Doctor Who. But it was the cornerstone of something that ended up being so much bigger than anyone in 1963 could have ever guessed.