I find it bizarre that people often describe the original series of Doctor Who as more sophisticated than the new one. For its time, depending on exactly what we’re talking about, perhaps there’s an argument. Yet TV writing has come a long way in the last twenty years, and the new series is right up there. Thematically, in terms of narrative and metanarrative and characterization, the new series is at times some of the most sophisticated stuff currently on TV. Especially Davies’ episodes.
As great as it can be at times and for its time (some of the Hartnell era and season seven in particular), the classic series rarely aspires to more than pulp and generally only transcends that through sheer force of good nature. What themes are there tend to be pretty much on the surface, or else rather clumsy and obvious. (See The Green Death, which is held up as a beacon of subtext.) In varying quantities, and again qualified by the standards of TV writing of the time, you can make some good arguments for parts of the Hartnell, Pertwee, and McCoy eras. I’m really not sure what hidden insights you might find in Fury of the Deep, however.
Not that this is a negative in its own right; something doesn’t have to be great literature to be entertaining, and the original series has charm by the bucketload. Usually. Whenever Philip Martin isn’t involved. Further, it’s senseless to criticize a thing for failing to succeed at that which it never even intends to do, especially if its ambition is respectable enough for its context. Yet, there we are. Different ambitions at play. And on a narrative level, the new series is, broadly speaking, both way more ambitious and far more sophisticated, as in part dictated by the different climate in which it’s being made.
Granted, most of the new series episodes not written by Davies or Moffat are also a bit skint on subtext that’s not so blunt it might as well be supertext. Scrolling, blinking captions, at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes they’re a bit skint on text, even. Even Cornell, as great as his stuff is on first viewing, has very little going on under the surface. I was a bit surprised that I still enjoyed “The Fires of Pompeii” after a couple of further viewings, and found some new things to focus on; it seemed like it might have blown its load (no pun intended) on the first impression, rather like “School Reunion” or “The Shakespeare Code”. Still, Davies forms the template. And Moffat plays along, as he simultaneously does his own thing.
One of the big dividing factors is that the new series has an overarching philosophy and message to it, instantiated, challenged, and developed to varying degrees in at least most “key” episodes — that being a postmodern, essentially atheistic critique of modern cultural tropes, weighed against a devout sense of humanism.
Taken from Wikipedia, Jean-François Lyotard wrote: Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements–narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?
Emphasis added. If there is one overt defining feature of the new series — one that annoys the hell out of some classic series fans (perhaps understandably, since the bulk of the “classic” series, especially in the more popular eras, does little but revel in metanarrative for its own sake, understandable itself for the context in which it was produced) is utter irreverence toward metanarrative, at times bordering on contempt. Thus, the “overuse” of the sonic screwdriver and psychic paper, flippant get-out-of-jail-free plot cheats like the cliffhanger non-resolution at the start of “The Sound of Drums”, and fast-forward exposition as at the start of “Rose”. Plus, you know, the lack of plot — plot being one of the huge metanarrative structures that has, as an institution, gone beyond its functional purpose for organizing the crucial subjective elements of story (themes and character development) into the sort of tool fetishism that makes contemporary videogames so very boring.
What Davies has done that is clever on more than one level is that he has taken the incredulous structure of a postmodern approach, and with all the faith in the world anchored it with the one thing that he feels the most strongly about, and that he clearly feels defines Doctor Who as a narrative: an utter faith in humanity to find its way, at the end of the day, provided just enough of a window to see outside itself and its own petty momentary neuroses.
Of course, people are fragile and imperfect and there will always be a battle. The stupid apes need to be challenged, and that’s what the Doctor is for. (Of course, in this version of the show the Doctor equally well needs to be challenged, and that’s what humanity is for.) Yet given that opportunity, they are full of such potential. All it takes is a bit of insight and a bit of motivation, and you can break out of all the structures and guidelines that you think define your life (the postmodern part), and change the world. Or at least your own personal world.
And for a show fundamentally aimed at kids, this is a pretty amazing message to spin.