Doctor Who Club of Australia

[Sulp Niar]

What exactly is new? How do you make NEW Doctor Who? I don't mean episodes we haven't seen before and new material, I mean ORIGINAL material, ideas, ways of doing things...

To be honest, and I do love every era of Doctor Who, but I think the concept of "new" died when Hartnell did in The Tenth Planet. Let's recap his stories... historicals, pseudo-historicals, comedy historicals, sci-fi, surreal gaming, a story where they leave in episode 2 and come back many many years later, a story without the Doctor or companions in it that sets up another story two stories down the line, a companion becoming a historical figure, a historical figure becoming a companion, a companion dying, the Doctor (arguably) falling in love, the only truly alien Doctor Who to date, mentions of rape and murder (so the "adult" feel paraded in, say, the Virgin NAs wasn't all that new), soapy angst and relationships in the TARDIS crew, the TARDIS isn't just a machine and communicates, the Doctor contemplates killing someone, a story with no-one other than the TARDIS crew, alien invasions of Earth, contemporary stories, companions from the future and from the past, two of the Doctor's people (though never named), a story that takes the form of a musical, seeing the TARDIS crew's future, time weirdness, a chase through time and space, a story where the Doctor disappears for two entire episodes, a Doctor doppelganger, the Daleks and the Cybermen, the Doctor having prior knowledge about events and planets (this really comes out with the Cybermen) and, to top it off, the final story is a base-under-siege format that would forever set a template for what is generally considered "good" Doctor Who...

But is it? The Hartnell years I feel are actually the truest we've ever had to a realisation of Doctor Who's potential, as good as later years were. The celebrated Troughton years are all base-under-siege (nearly anyway) and actually do feature the Cybermen, the Adams years' humour doesn't manage to beat the silliness of The Gunfighters (and in fact, when watching The Aztecs recently, the line "I drank some cocoa and got engaged" made me think "now there's an Adams line" before realising no, it's the other way around surely!).

So the Hartnell years, I think, are really the NEW, and everything else is nearly always the EXTRAPOLATION. Building on concepts, but rarely coming up with anything completely new. Off the top of my head, Kinda manages to be new because of its scenes in the mind and mind-rape elements (although I realise The Three Doctors had a scene in Omega's mind)...

As brilliant as they are, I don't think even the audios and books (and comics) are very new. I can name The Adventuress of Henrietta Street as being NEW, but only because of its historical text prose. In fact, I think that the 8th Doctor's reign in all media is the closest the series ever got to being NEW since the Hartnell years... the Virgin novels were fantastic too, but in fact were rarely new. The newest I can think of is Who Killed Kennedy which is a fascinating premise...

So what do you think? Just what is NEW WHO?

[charlie]

As you point out, there are only so many stories you can do and my dad always says to me "There are only 7 stories charles" and with DW being so old its hard to get a new idea. I think we can all agree that the new series is a totally different show to classic who but many many things can be pointed out that have been done before (Satan Pit comes to mind) so indeed how can there ever be new who?

I think new who is something that feels different. Watching the show now and in classic era feels different. And reading different novel series gives differing feels and listening to the audios and even reading the novelisations, that just record the show, can be different.
Its like all the ranges of Whotainment are new the first time and then just extrapolate the rest of the time.

Thats what I feel anyway

[Sulp Niar]

Heh, so Doctor Who breakfast cereal could feel new?

More seriously, though, I feel 7 stories is a bit unfair, but perhaps justified when you consider that in comparison nearly every other show in existence only manages 1 or 2 shows.

I don't know about the "new" series... it is undoubtedly new, but is it just an extrapolation of the NAs, the TV Movie and the EDAs in its emotional content? I think it's the shortened format that truly makes it different... having said that, it's evident that a lot of audios and other things now (the new 8th Doctor series and Memory Lane come to mind) can automatically click in my mind as "evoking the New Series", even though this jars with my argument.

You're right though... I've been actually thinking of the new 8th Doctor series as a "new series" even though the 8th Doctor's tenure is officially over (although he's kind of the infinite Doctor anyway, one of the reasons why he's my favourite), so I don't know what the discrepancy is.

You mentioned The Satan Pit, but bizarrely that felt new ground... for the New Series. If that makes sense. Boy, am I running rings here.

I do however think there is still potential for absolutely new Who, though I have no idea what. New ways of telling stories... Love and Monsters and The Girl in the Fireplace I think were easily the "newest" of the New Series last year, because the former was a simplified but more focused Who Killed Kennedy and the latter was wholly new. True, it dealt with the idea of the Doctor in love again, but it did it in a fairytale style and gave us an entire life's worth of romance in one story instead of planning some Sam/Charley arc (Grace's "love" with the Doctor doesn't even come close).

Let's hope that Series Three truly is NEW then. With Daleks set to return (if this is a spoiler, I'm sorry, but I somehow doubt it is) and other elements, I don't know if it will be, but let's hope that, after the promise showed in Love and Monsters and The Girl in the Fireplace, the production team dish out all newness...