Flashback: The Eleven Doctors

I've been meaning to write an article on a Doctor Who fan film series I made a few years back in the summer holidays - and with talk rife at the moment, what better time to talk about my own take on 'Eleven Doctors' - featuring the voices of Matt Smith, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and all the rest?

I'm sure it won't be news to anyone reading this, but 2013 is a particularly special year for Doctor Who - its fiftieth anniversary, to be exact. At the time of writing - with filming due to start next month - speculations are wild for what the upcoming special story will be like. Will any the old actors who played the Doctor turn up - like in previous years? And what about including ones that are dead, or very old? Could there be other old guest stars, companions, monsters? What does Steven Moffat have up his sleeve?

Well, I don't have any answers*. But I do have my take on what such a special could be like...

It was back in the summer of 2010, and Matt Smith had just done his first 13 week run playing the Doctor (and only 13 week run, come to think of it!). Added to that, for the first time, the earlier Doctors were being released in toy form - fans could get a complete set of all eleven! In this era, where all the early years of the show are readily available and embraced, this sparked a lot of imaginations...

At the time, I'd done a few films with action figures. The Doctor versus the Daleks, that kind of thing, normally stop motion. With some of them, I'd put on voices - and because I'm rubbish at impressions, using sound clips from the TV show. If I was going to do a 'meetup' adventure of all of them - which was irresistable! - I'd have to make them talk to each other, and that meant using the original actors.

Yep, even Paul McGann!

It was ambitious. Actually, it started off as a one-off - a fun, short episode where the Doctors found themselves together, and decided to argue, ending on a cliffhanger. (I often end things on a cliffhanger, and then never resolve it!) I knew a website which handily offered soundbites from the show, so I was able to pick and choose a range of dialogue for the characters to say, and then piece things together, like a giant jigsaw puzzle. As the scale of the adventure increased - a very exciting prospect! - I quickly exhausted the list, and had to source my own clips from the DVDs, a few audios, deleted scenes, extra games, practically everything (with big thanks to online transcripts of the episodes, saving me a lot of time when I wanted something specific, like opening a door!).

Some ideas I'd had from the start. Others came to me whilst I was collating possible voices - for the story has to be driven by what the characters are able to say, or else the whole thing feels manufactured. One thing was certain - I wanted to feature all the Doctors, taking an equal share of the lead role (a hard task in itself - that's eleven lead characters!). Although I didn't have much choice when it came to companions, as many weren't released yet - I chose Amy, as she was the current one, though I couldn't resist featuring K-9 and Captain Jack too. However, all the big monsters would feature, like in previous specials - so thanks to the range of toys, we had Daleks, Cybermen, The Master (with a rather hammy voice), Weeping Angels, Sea Devils, Sontarans, Autons... the works!

And whilst the plot was always going to be weaker than most, I tried to make it as much like a proper new series story as possible - whilst nicking the general 'quest' format from The Five Doctors, and with a few blatant homages to old stories along the way.

As it turns out, the series was really popular. About two months elapsed between the first and the last part (including a holiday, hence a slightly rushed editing on Part Two), with the production getting slicker as it went - the first part, with static figures in a dark room talking, is a little quaint now I look back. The whole thing totals an hour - pleasingly, about as long as a 'proper' episode!

Plus a short scene at the end, in the new TARDIS set - which has just come out when recording the final part!

So, if you haven't seen it yet, why not have a watch? It's made out of six-inch-tall plastic toys by a teenager (on his own!), with various cardboard spaceships and a back garden becoming a rainforest. But it's bursting with imagination - and who could resist pitting William Hartnell against the Weeping Angels?



For more videos, before and since (I was going to follow this up with other invidual Doctor stories - but I only got as far as a dark Tom Baker tale!), see my Youtube Channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/Aquatics64

And Babelcolour's 'The Ten Doctors' is highly recommended - like this, but made out of video clips. Highly accomplished!

(*though I'd expect something like the Doctor visiting his past - possibly solving a mystery, like the Silence stuff - and so we have quite a few references and cameos, but an actual storyline. Think Wedding of River Song crossed with a Who convention!)

Flashback: the David Jones comic series

In the first of probably a series of posts, I'll be advertising alerting people to a few choice things I've done creatively. And what better to start off with, than this...

Go on! Click it - it's got words and pictures, what more do you want?

To set the scene - I was making Doctor Who comics, with toy action figures, and posting them onto a Doctor Who figures fan site (still going - just!). It's not an original idea, but I rather liked it - writing a script (or in the early days, making it up as you went along), taking the photos, and editing it together on the computer. But by the end of 2008, I realised these were mostly unconnected, seemingly random stories released as and when. What I needed was a series!

 

Sorry, Doctor and River - a Christmas special in the TARDIS isn't gonna be enough...

I came up with something quite unusual - something with Doctor Who characters in, obviously, but there were just enough humans to allow me to make my own ones up. Instead of travels in space and time, now there was a main character who was an alien in disguise (taking on the bland name of David Jones - better than John Smith!), helping the Earth!

 

C'mon, how can you resist a whopping great picture of a Cyberman?

Well, it's complicated - there's monsters, UNIT, betrayal, a former girlfriend, the works. And there's a lot of things I'd do a lot differently if I was given the chance now - but, as a series of comics, I think they stand up pretty well indeed. An adventure in the Antarctic with Cybermen! Weevils from Torchwood in the sewers! Slitheen! The Doctor popping up! Yes, I had fun doing it. (My favourite's probably The Brethren's Curse... or the 'Christmas' special!)
In a way, it's a personal project - I'm predominantly making something that I'd like to see, and it's something I've invested a lot of ideas in myself. (Perhaps it's also because, unlike Youtube, there's no comments section from strangers - although the attached forum's quite enthusiastic - no like button, no easily accessible view count to watch steadily increase...)

Admittedly, the thing that ultimately has killed it off is the scale. I'm aiming high with this - no idea too small, nothing that cannot be realised with a spot of liberal photoshop editing, from customising figures (Evil Patrick Troughton clone Salamander! Alien hybrids! A masterly Vinvocci!) to creating spaceships or enhancing bits of cardboard. Huge stories cluttered my head, typed out as film-scripts, and photographed with glee. The style is less of a comic and more like a storyboard with speech bubbles - but hey. A turnaround of a comic every month shortly became two months, then six months, then about a year...

Still, ten episodes is a good run so far, considering. But it's not cancelled - it's still alive! In fact, I valiantly shot the remaining episodes I'd written, up to end of the 'series' (in my own made-up rules) back last year. But boy, it's a slog to edit a hundred-odd pages.

And so it goes on the back burner. Whilst my head fills up with new ideas, new plots, new characters. It's a sad life, making these. But it's been a lot of fun.