Doctor My Eyes

The trouble with writing anything set in a consistent universe is the weight of what has gone on before.

I’m experiencing this with my Recursion universe. There are so many things established in previous stories that could be used in the next. Explaining them to new readers becomes a drag on the action. This is why the real world is often easier to write than the SF world: there’s no need to explain what a microwave oven is, the protagonist can just go ahead and use one.

Which is not to excuse the final episode of the thirteenth Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor.

You might have enjoyed it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a pleasure in watching all the ends of series coming together. I really enjoyed seeing the old companions, particularly spotting Ian Chesterton at the end.

But don’t pretend that was a well written episode. It was atrocious.

Not because it was a mosaic made up of fragments stolen from other stories (if I know anything about spaceship repair it’s that you take a pipe out of one socket and plug it into another socket).

It was bad writing because it was a mess. It definitely wasn’t SF. Good SF is taking an idea and extrapolating. Exploring how that idea will touch peoples lives, the big and the small things. Examining that idea from all sides and bringing forth something new, something perhaps quite unexpected but when you look at it you say, yes, that’s right.

What was the idea behind this story?

Well first it had the Doctor, who uses her time machine to help people. It also had the Daleks. The Cybermen came along for the ride, invading a space train to kidnap a powerful child. The Master was there too. He was stealing paintings. And kidnapping seismologists, which he then shrank for some reason. There were two planets fighting each other at one point. I think this was after Moriarty got himself arrested and put in Hannibal Lecter’s prison so he could then escape and trap the Doctor in a Dalek suit so she could be converted into the Master or possibly another Cyberman, just like the head of UNIT.

There was also an exploding volcano with Daleks flying out of it. I think this was in 1916, but it might have been the present day. I do know the stolen paintings turned up in the present day with beards drawn on them, because the Master was Rasputin.

If you’ve not seen the episode you might think I’m making this up. I’m not.

The point is, just one of those ideas should be enough for an exciting story. If the Daleks aren’t enough for a writer then it’s a real failure of their imagination. Don’t excuse what you saw, you’re doing the program a disservice if you do. It can and should be better than this.

Apparently some people used to be upset by the fact that Doctor Who was a woman. I can only assume the writer was one of them. This was Jodie Whittaker being put on a glass cliff and pushed.

This was the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen the Rings of Power.

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Edit: I’ve just got my daughter to confirm that this was all in the show and I didn’t just dream it. She also pointed out that the all powerful child was actually sentient energy in the form of a laser squid.