Through Time: An Unauthorised and Unofficial History of Doctor Who

by Andrew Cartmel

The quirky British television series Doctor Who is a classic both of science fiction and television drama. First broadcast in 1963, it has remained an influential TV presence ever since, with an eagerly anticipated new series airing in 2005. As a vehicle for satire, social commentary, or sheer fantasy adventure, Doctor Who is unparalleled. It was a show created for children, but it was immediately usurped by adults. Arriving at a time of upheaval in the popular arts in Britain, Doctor Who was born into a television tradition influenced by the TV plays of Dennis Potter, the cult television drama The Prisoner, the James Bond films and Stanley Kubrick's science fiction triptych ― Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. A British fantasy adventure that has unfolded across television screens over decades in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Conan Doyle and HG Wells, the strength of Doctor Who has always been its writers and the ideas they nurtured. In this new history of the show, Andrew Cartmel (who was the script editor on Doctor Who from 1987 to 1990) looks into its social and cultural impact - providing a fascinating read for committed and casual fans alike.

Genres: Doctor Who, Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

Reviews

[Alex Sarll]

Pitched as "a useful, entertaining, and engaging introduction to Doctor Who for those who are intrigued or curious but don't have time to catch up with twenty-five years' worth of episodes", the attraction for those of us who aren't fucking lightweights is the author: Andrew Cartmel, architect of Doctor Who's 1988-97 golden age. This would make a very strange introduction to the classic series for anyone who'd only seen Eccleston (which was all of the revival that there'd been when this came out, and I'd love to read a sequel or expanded edition covering his successors); Cartmel's opinions are not always consonant either with my own or mainstream fan sentiment, if indeed the latter is still a thing. He finds the Cybermen in general and Tomb in particular overrated, for instance, while considering The War Games "dangerously close to being the greatest Doctor Who story of all time" – and that despite his suspicion of the Time Lords as a concept, when for me they're one of the few bits I like in that interminable slog. His whistlestop tour of selected stories skips straight past The Three Doctors in order to extol the charms of Carnival Of Monsters; he doesn't much rate Androzani or City Of Death. But that's all fine, because I'm not reading this to agree with it, I'm reading it to find out what Andrew Cartmel thinks, how the hyperobject that is Who appears to one of the acolytes who served it best. Inevitably, as a former script editor himself, he's particularly good on the practicalities, the times a dud episode, subplot or effect can be attributed to the shoestring of time and resources on which it was invariably made. Not that this should be mistaken for special pleading – he's unforgiving where such excuses don't apply, and has particular bees in his bonnet when it comes to things like rubbish McGuffins, generic science fiction names, and the capture/escape/recapture cycle which pads out so many of the old stories. Although one of his bugbears with which I don't agree is the idea that the leads should always get the best material, with only the scraps going to the guest stars; the pivot to a more powerful and ultimately messianic Doctor begins with Cartmel ("I once suggested to John Nathan-Turner that we could trump the whole process by suggesting that the Doctor is God, but he somewhat blanched at the notion"), and heavens know he did it well, but for me part of the show's appeal versus more conventional adventure series was precisely how often the Doctor would help rather than necessarily lead, or even just wander through a story which wasn't necessarily about him. Of course, there were times last season which took that too far, with the Thirteenth serving more as a sort of mildly unimpressed centrist Greek chorus than any impediment to the forces of evil – but even then, you can find precursors to that in the Hartnell historicals.

Not that an appeal to Hartnell would necessarily cut much ice with Cartmel. One of the snarkiest lines in a book that's never afraid of being salty is when, summarising The Web Planet (on which, correctly, he is keen), we get "Outside on the planet's surface the Doctor chuckles like a tedious old fool". Which is harsh but hardly unfair, and there's a lot like that in here – the sort of thing that's familiar from fanzines or the Internet, but still somehow feels much naughtier between hard covers. He does know his stuff, though; early on he says it's very much a script editor's take, with an emphasis on the writing, but I've seldom seen an account so keen to give credit where it's due to the designer of a set or costume - sometimes with genuine enthusiasm, and not just for the obvious candidate (Raymond Cusick, the Rosalind Franklin of the Daleks) but also for the likes of Barry Newbery, a name I'm not sure I even knew before. The attention to detail on this sort of thing makes it all the more of a shame that in other respects the book feels like it was hammered out in a rush and barely proofread. For saying Cartmel opens with a reference to a radio interview where he got Skaro and Gallifrey confused, he then goes on to refer to the likes of 'Peter Davidson' and 'Sergeant Benson'. He criticises Douglas Adams for messing up the age of the Earth and Zoe for a fluffed sum in The Mind Robber, but then describes Venus as a "giant superhot runaway greenhouse planet". There's also an unfortunate degree of repetition, which if I'm charitable could be so that the entry for any given story or period can be read independently; still, especially early on, there's a risk that Cartmel's understandable ire at stories which needlessly split the TARDIS crew could, by its fifth appearance, become almost as wearying as the trope itself. Although undoubtedly the worst mistake is on the flap, and so almost certainly not Cartmel's fault but the publisher's: it describes Who as "Britain's answer to Star Trek", which is certainly one way of looking at it; if some arsehole were to stumble in two hours late to a Stewart Lee show, and then start bellowing "U! S! A! U! S! A!', I'm not sure we'd normally consider the preceding 120-minute blend of wit and tedium an 'answer' per se. But I suppose Doctor Who does have time travel, and we Brits are notoriously sneaky like that.

Still, these are the sort of errors an edit could have caught. One wonders more at things like his underwhelm at Peter Davison and Colin Baker which, while on the whole grounded in a legitimate thesis, does occasionally lead him to go a little far. One knows what he means when he says of the Fifth Doctor that "Physically, and in his dress, he is also very normal...an ordinary guy", but it's still a bold claim to say that a character who wanders the universe in cricket whites with a stick of celery on his lapel is dressed normally. More unfortunate still are the moments which remind one that 15 years is quite a long time, and not just because he refers to Enemy Of The World and Web Of Fear as missing, or American interest in the new series as an unknown quantity. Even in 2005, I think the various references to "a lady journalist", "lady scientist" and "lady surgeon" would have felt awkward, as too the tendency to rate female companions and their outfits on attractiveness. In fairness, he is much better on race, and the degree to which black actors in particular haven't always been well served by the series.

For all these infelicities, though, it's still considerably better reading than most reference works on Who, and I say that as the sort of faintly aspie fan (tautology?) who used to happily read the Programme Guide back when there was no realistic prospect of seeing most of the stories it summarised. Even at its least exciting, Through Time always has at least that same soothing, catechism quality, and at its best it's funny, informative, sly, wise. Sometimes that's from the benefits of an insider's perspective, for instance JN-T's insistence on adding monsters even to stories which really didn't need them, thinking that it didn't feel like Who otherwise – thank goodness subsequent showrunners haven't been similarly afflicted ha ha ha oh no. Other times it's just being observant, as with the note on how even the creepiest synthetic voice effect can become grating if the monster in question talks too much or you get several of them in conversation; or the way he points out the debt Talons of Weng-Chiang owes to Michael Moorcock. And in places it's just about putting the pieces together. Doubtless, had I trawled IMDB or Wikipedia, I could have learned that the great Inferno's writer, Don Houghton, was also responsible for the somewhat less fondly remembered The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires, not to mention that one ropey Sapphire & Steel that wasn't by PJ Hammond. Or that the also great Seeds of Doom shares an originator with Bergerac (which, as a fan of the fabulous, inexplicable Dream Themes, inevitably set me thinking that they should their sexxxy version of the Bergerac theme while dressed as Krynoids, and if you think that's a stretch then you must have missed the show where they did the Who theme while dressed as Abba). But the point is, I didn't think to look for these unknown unknowns, and to Cartmel they were known knowns, and he's presented them to me, and that makes me happy.

Inevitably, a slight awkwardness is unavoidable once Cartmel gets to his own tenure, though mercifully he's not fool enough to pretend Remembrance, Fenric and Ghost Light are anything but excellent (even if he oddly underplays the impact of the Dalek ascending a staircase in Remembrance, and is way too harsh on the edit and the Haemovore costumes in Fenric). Conversely, it might be either commercial considerations or sheer joy that the fallow years have passed which make him too soft on some of the Eccleston stories; still, given he does seem sincere in his fondness for Carnival Of Monsters, I suppose genuinely loving The Long Game would be no stranger. And it is neat that just as it began with that wonderful first episode of An Unearthly Child, the book's selection ends with The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, the first truly great nu-Who story.

[Jazza1971 · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read, but one which has issues.
Cartmel lays out his aims for the book in the introduction - "we'll be looking here at the writers, script editors, and storytelling."
Which would have been fine, but he doesn't keep to his own brief, instead he rates stories down because of the visual effects.
He also doesn't mind bending the facts to suit his own narrative. For example, in his mention of Carole Ann Ford leaving the show he states "With Ford's departure Susan is written out, along with any notion of the Doctor having family". Now I'm sure many people are familiar with the Doctor speaking about his family with Victoria in "Tomb of the Cybermen". It's quite a famous scene. Yet when Cartmel recounts this scene he leaves out any mention of family, reporting it thus - "There is an unusual, intimate scene where the Doctor has a heart-to-heart with Victoria, and he describes what it's like wandering through time and space in the Tardis [sic]."
He bemoans the fact that many stories are missing from the archives and states this limits which stories from the 60s he can focus on. Oddly he doesn't seem to be aware that soundtracks of all stories are available, which is a shame as he could have done some of these audios and focus just on the story and script rather than the visual effects.
At the end of the book there is a rather large bibliography which rather surprised me as he only ever refers to the works of David Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker in the actual text.
He also seems to rate his own works less critically than other stories, allowing them the pitfalls he is so critical of elsewhere.
So a fun but flawed book.

[Sheryl Croix · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book. I do not recall what made me search it out. It is written by former script editor for Doctor Who and the early background information is wonderful. And horrible. For example, the reason there are few surviving intact stories from the early doctors is because, to save money, the BBC erased and reused the video tape. The reviews of the performers and the shows are droll and entertaining. He definitely has his favorite interpretations but I think makes his case for what is Doctorish and what not so much.

The book covers the beginning in 1963 to the return in 2005.

This book is not for someone who puts Doctor Who on a pedestal. Cartmel is not afraid to call a floppy rubber claw a floppy rubber claw. But how can you not like someone who recognizes, “It’s unfortunate that whenever some weird substance is required is a science fiction story that the design team thinks it should be a bright luminous green. As an enervating cliché, this ranks with silver zip suits and characters calls Zarb.” McGuffins are exposed indiscriminately. As is the reoccurring motif of doctor and/or companion being captured/escaping/running back into captors again. He references Modesty Blaise, James Bond, and The Avengers at various points. Plus a couple of British series, Sapphire and Steel and Quartermas, that I am now yearn to see.

For the earlier regenerations first appearances Cartmel begins the chapter with a list of what is occurring concurrent historically. Something I wish he had done throughout. There are, sadly, no pictures at all, perhaps because this is an unofficial history. A single picture of the incarnation of the Doctor being discussed would have been a nice addition. Particularly for those who came late to the party.

My first doctor was Tom Baker and admittedly the book become much more interesting to me once we reach the Fourth Doctor. While I am familiar with the earlier doctors, now Cartmel is talking about episodes I have seen and can remember. And can remember my reactions at the time. The show captured my imagination. Even when the “special effect” consisted of a man being slowly enveloped by green (there is the alien green again) bubble wrap.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the ultimate guide to Doctor Who: Hartnell through the first half of Eccleston. I thoroughly enjoyed becoming acquainted with the history of the show, and I found Cartmel's sharp eye for detail (even down to the music!) and his humor (not one funny line overlooked) very entertaining.
This guide got down to the smallest detail and up to the largest detail of Doctor Who. There was not one detail overlooked in the selected episodes/episode series that Cartmel wrote about. I appreciated the significant amount of research he must have done to complete this massive history volume. His writing style is unique and descriptive, and tunes you in to every little detail that he writes about.
Cartmel gave backgrounds of the stories, comparisons, and wrote Doctor Who on paper. His critiquing was intriguing and completely thrilling as I read more and more about the classic Doctor Who.
His appendixes in the back were also interesting, from a recommended episodes guide, to a write-your-own classic episode guide, to a very large bibliography (again, noting the significant amount of research Cartmel put in to writing this book).
This book is excellent for anyone who is looking for a way to get acquainted with Doctor Who, enjoys reading the histories of shows, enjoys history in general, wants to know more about classic Doctor Who, or simply enjoys Doctor Who! This ultimate Doctor Who guide is a great read, for Whovians and non-Whovians alike!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cartmel comes from an enthusiast's POV without being a fanboy. He is happy to identify legitimate weaknesses in old stories (including those he worked on) but gives plenty of credit where it's due. Quite a cute read at times.