Reintroducing Part II

Today’s blog on the reintroductions of original run concepts and monsters to the modern audience starts with

Regeneration.

A whole new generation got the thrill, the fear and the anticipation that all Doctor Who fans feel when there is a regeneration.

We’ll feel ever so briefly at Christmas this year.

But as I have said Regeneration is a fundmental reason why this show is celebrating 50 Years very soon.

Also, Russell T Davies picked a very good successor in the largely unknown David Tennant.

Much like Patrick Troughton, David sold a whole new generation on the idea that this is still the same man only different and made it easier for Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi to follow him.

Series 2 is the series with the Torchwood undercurrent.

But the biggest reintroduction of the series was to happen in School Reunion. The fabulous Doctor Who Legend that Sarah Jane Smith (with K-9) was brought to the fore to remind Rose and the audience that there had been companion before and there will be companions after her.

Another key concept of the show that has to be reintroduced.

Get used to change. This is not a show where you see the same regulars for 6,7,8,9.10 years in a row. Never happen.

Then in Series 2 you have the re-invention, via parallel universe, of the #2 monster of Doctor Who, the Cybermen in Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel.

The horror of the Cybermen and what they are, and what they were is well preserved, if altered a bit for the 21st Century where replacement limbs is not as science fiction scary as it was in the mid-60’s.

But there conversion process is just as nasty as it can be on pre-watershed TV.

Though, personally, I still want to see the Cybus Industries Cybermen come across this universe’s Earthshock Cybermen…But I’m just a fan boy at heart. 🙂

In Series 3, the biggest reintroduction was The Master. The evil Time Lord. Moriarty to The Doctor.

But they subvert it in the first episode, Utopia with the kindly, bumbling Professor Yana  (YOU-ARE-NOT-ALONE, get it:)) played with great skill by Sir Derek Jacobi. The Master’s TARDIS must have had a wicked sense of humor for this one.

They introduced the fab watch from Human Nature and you know what’s coming, just not when.

The character get 3 episodes at the end of the season to terrorize everyone (in the form of John Simm)  and make it look like the Doctor has met his match. Which is what the Master should do, just before he’s defeated.

And Harold Saxon being Prime Minister of England is largely the Doctor’s fault. He opened the gateway for it when he got Harriet Jones temporally and pre-maturely sacked from “Britain’s Golden Age” at the end of the Christmas Invasion.

While I like the “Sound of Drums” idea, the idea that Roger Delgado’s Master heard these drums is a stretch. Peter Pratt, Geoffrey Beavers or Anthony Ainley, not so much.

True, the Macra did come back in Gridlock but I consider that more a re-use of a 40 year old fan boy moment rather than a re-introduction as they have not been used since. It’s more like, “oh Look Macra!”

In Series 4, is Partners in Crime re-introducing Donna Nobel, or just continuing on with her. It surely brought Wilfred Mott back as he was just a side character in The Christmas Invasion.

I would say it’s just a continuation of Donna, much like Tegan being “left” at Heathrow and “picked up again the next story, a season later, in Amsterdam.

But we also get in this Series, the reintroduction of another fan favorite, The Sontarans. Doctor Who’s most military war-like race.

It also brings Back Martha, but more importantly it’s also a big showcase for UNIT. Now called “The Unified Nations Intelligence Taskforce” after the actual United Nations objected to the UNIT website set by the BBC and formally protested.

A copy of which is in the book A History of the Universe in 100 Objects, which i’m currently reading.

UNIT is an integral part of Doctor Who for the last 40+ years. So it was good to see them back.

Then came Davros. The Creator of The Daleks. Played with great Michael Wisher fervor by Julian Bleech.

Davros is important to reintroduce because it shows the Daleks origins and just how bat-shit crazy he is and where they get there own insanity.

Best Scene: Davros: The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun, but this is the truth, Doctor: you take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons… behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor, you made this.
The Doctor: I’m trying to help.
Davros: Already I have seen them sacrificed today, for their beloved Doctor. The Earth woman who fell opening the Sub Wave Network.
The Doctor: Who was that?
Rose Tyler: Harriet Jones. She gave her life to get you here.
[flashback of Harriet Jones]
Davros: How many more? Just think, how many have died in your name?
[more flashbacks of the people who have died helping The Doctor]
Davros: The Doctor, the man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not, out of shame. This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself.

Brilliantly played.

Then there’s the charity 8 minute fangasm known as Time Crash. Not so much a re-introduction as a salute to the older generation and to David Tennant himself as he grew up on Peter Davison’s Doctor and and is now married to his daughter, Georgia. 🙂

Then came the Specials in 2009.

The end of David Tennant’s reign as The Doctor. Where we subvert expectations.

You have The Next Doctor but he isn’t. You got to Mars, but no Ice Warriors.

You re-introduce the The Time Lords, with Rassilon being played by James Bond himself, Timothy Dalton.

But this a war weary, vengeful and very desperate Gallifrey. They are in fact, the bad guys of the piece. Even more than the return of The Master.

The circle started by Robert Holmes in The Deadly Assassin has been completed.

So then we Have Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor with a nod to the past as he steps into talk the Atraxi out of sterilizing the planet.

He had me at “Hello, I’m the Doctor”!

The big Reintroduction this season is The Silurians. And boy have they sprouted a cottage industry of their own in the 21st Century!

Madame Vastra, The Sherlock Holmes of Doctor Who.

And next up was just a mention at the end of the God Complex that the Minotaur was a relative of The Nimon, From The Horns of Nimon — so again not really a reintroduction but it might spur someone to go look it up.

Warning: It’s Theseus & the Minotaur ins Space with Graham Crowden doing a Brian Blessed! 🙂

(I love geek speak sometimes).

Then  finally we get to The Ice Warriors in the last series.

So I guess we’ll just have to see what happens with the Zygons in The Day of The Doctor on November 23rd.

Onward to the Past and Let Zygons be Zygons…. 🙂