RACY LINE OF THOUGHT....

 

FANFICCER'S FRIEND - C.S. LEWIS

 

'Doctor Who' started out as a way to introduce an audience of children to the major events of History.  But it wasn't long before space aliens were added to the mix and eventually, History showcases seemed to be swept under the rug to make way for pure sci fi adventures.

Since the series returned in 2005, History often has been showcased again, but often with some kind of peril to it remaining intact due to those space bugaboos and/or other Time Lords.  

We've seen the London Blitz, the coronation of Elizabeth the Second, the invention of television, the construction of the Empire State Building, the destruction of Pompeii, and the 2012 Summer Olympics.

We also saw the Doctor interact with Rosa Parks, Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill, Queen Victoria, Madame du Pompadour, and most affecting of all, Vincent van Gogh.

These historical interludes were not confined to just the Doctor's adventures in Toobworld.  They also can be found in the other metafictional universes of 'Doctor Who' - novels, comics, and audio plays.

That quote above from the Curator about C.S. Lewis is a good example of how History can still be included, even changed, without making it into some big, showy piece of interstellar derring-do.  

Here's the TARDIS Wiki entry about Lewis:

• C. S. Lewis was a writer. He was a friend of the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.
• One well-known work by Lewis was "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe". (AUDIO: Lost Property)
• Lewis belonged to a group called the Inklings, as did his friend John. They met at a pub called the Eagle and Child. He read a fantasy story inspired by the Doctor's adventures. It had fictional versions of Amy and Rory as its heroes, alongside "the Professor". The Doctor suggested that the story should include a wardrobe. (COMIC: 'The Professor, the Queen and the Bookshop')
  

• The Curator, a retired incarnation of the Doctor, remembered Lewis as "dear old Jack". He remarked that Jack, as he was known to friends, always disliked being called Clive. (AUDIO: Lost Property)
• Sarah Jane Smith told Clyde Langer that C. S. Lewis' children's books could be enjoyed at every age. (AUDIO: Wraith World)

Behind the scenes:

• The story in which he appears implies that C.S. Lewis rewrote his tale about a bookshop into the Narnia books "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and "The Magician's Nephew".
• C.S. Lewis wrote the Narnia books for children. He also wrote a "space fiction" trilogy, which, like early 'Doctor Who' involved ordinary people visiting alien planets. Many commenters have compared the TARDIS to the magical wardrobe in Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", the first-written of the Narnia books. The 'Doctor Who' story "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" borrows the form of its title, some visual imagery and plot elements from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".
• Lewis died on the same day as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 22 November 1963, which was also coincidentally the day before the very first broadcast of 'Doctor Who'.
• Matteusz Andrzejewski refers to the author that created books about the land of Narnia and the character Susan in the 'Class episode' "Detained", but does not identify him as Lewis.
  

When Russell T. Davies first took over the 'Doctor Who' series and reignited it, there were several episodes in which the Doctor and his Companions met famous writers throughout History - Dickens, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie.  (H.G. Wells was on an adventure with an earlier incarnation.)

Maybe C.S. Lewis might get a spotlight in the TV Universe.  For my own preference, there was that friend of his, John - I'm certain that could be J.R.R. Tolkien.  I have imagined that he could travel with the Doctor (perhaps during the front line battles in World War I?) and meet denizens from the Forest of Cheem (like Jabe in "End of the World".)  They, in nturn, could be the inspiration for his future creation of the Ents.

As for C.S. Lewis, perhaps while in the company of the Curator, he happened to cross paths with a Daemon from Daemos (and not necessarily an evil one.)  After a successful conclusion to that adventure, Lewis might have been inspired to create Mr. Tumnus.  

(Having suggested that the Daemon didn't have to be evil, I'm thinking now that maybe he should be.  Being so devout a Christian, Lewis would likely remake the Daemon to be gentle faun in order to reclaim - at least in his writings - salvation for their species....

THE TARDIS JUKEBOX - "PRISENCOLINENSINAINCIUSOL"?

There are now two TARDISes out there in the TV Universe of Earth Prime-Time – one belonging to the 15th Incarnation and the other, newer, incarnation which the 14th Incarnation of the Doctor has at his disposal.  That is, if I’m figuring aright, the being used by Tennant’s third version of the Doctor is the new model.  (And hopefully Gatwa’s Doctor did not create a split personality by dividing up the soul of the TARDIS between the two blue boxes.  Then again, I’m sure there’s a future scriptwriter for the show out there who is already preparing his pitch that each TARDIS has a mind of its own.)

Both of them have the same screensaver running to project the holographic interior (at least for the control room.)  And – looking at the show from an outsider’s point of view as a producer keeping an eye on the purse strings – they will probably stay the same in order to cut down costs.  (Should Tennant ever return to the role of Fourteen, all they have to do is wheel that jukebox off the set and bob’s your uncle.)

Within days of the reveal of the jukebox inside the TARDIS, fans were speculating as to what music should be heard emanating from its speakers.  (Not that I had anything against some of the songs heard elsewhere in the series, but I hope they’re not all going to be in the same vein as the Britney Spears/Spice Girls/Boney M./Rogue Trader selections which we heard in the past.)

To that end, I have a song to recommend for inclusion in the Doctor’s playlist….

"PRISENCOLINENSINAINCIUSOL"

From Wikipedia:
"Prisencolinensinainciusol" is a song composed by the Italian singer Adriano Celentano, and performed by Celentano and his wife Claudia Mori. It was released as a single in 1972. Both the name of the song and its lyrics are gibberish but are intended to sound like English in an American accent.

By the 1960s, Celentano was already one of the most popular rock musicians in Italy, in large part due to his appearance at the Sanremo Music Festival in 1960 and the subsequent success of his song "24.000 baci". "Prisencolinensinainciusol" was released in 1972 and remained popular throughout the 1970s.

"Prisencolinensinainciusol" has been described as varying music genres including Europop, house music, disco, hip hop and funk. Celentano, however, did not have these styles in mind when writing the song. He composed "Prisencolinensinainciusol" by creating a loop of four drumbeats and improvising lyrics over the top of the loop in his recording studio. The song is characterised by an E flat groove in the drum and bass guitar and riff in the horn section. Between the drum loop and the looped horns, not to mention the conversational improvisational "freestyle" flow of the lyrics and the chanting chorus, the song has many elements that predate hip hop, elements later found in hip hop in the mid 1980s and 1990s, respectively.

The song is intended to sound to its Italian audience as if it is sung in English spoken with an American accent, however the lyrics are deliberately unintelligible gibberish with the exception of the words "all right". Andrew Khan, writing in The Guardian, later described the sound as reminiscent of Bob Dylan's output from the 1980s.

Celentano's intention with the song was not to create a humorous novelty song but to explore communication barriers. The intent was to demonstrate how English sounds to people who do not understand the language proficiently. "Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did. So at a certain point, because I like American slang—which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian—I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything."

"Prisencolinensinainciusol" wouldn’t just have to add flavor to a scene, an opportunity for the Master to let loose with his funky self.  It could even be integrated into a plot-line for the show.  How?  What if some alien race visited Italy at some point in 1970 or ’71 and implanted that song – its tune and its lyrics – into the mind of Celentano, with the long-range goal of it triggering something dire for the world once the recorded song began to be heard throughout the world?

In recent years, "Prisencolinensinainciusol" has had a resurgence, thanks to YouTube, streaming services, and being used in the soundtracks for episodes of ‘Fargo’ and ‘Ted Lasso’.  So why not in an episode of another show ending with the letter “O”?

One thing I like about this idea is that the backdrop for the story would be Italy.  It gives me the opportunity to do a bit of research as to why aliens would have been in Italy circa 1970-71.

From Wikipedia:
The Reggio revolt occurred in Reggio Calabria, Italy, from July 1970 to February 1971. The cause of the protests was a government decision to make Catanzaro, not Reggio, regional capital of Calabria. The nomination of a regional capital was the result of a decentralization programme of the Italian government, under which 15 governmental regions were concretized and given their own administrative councils and a measure of local autonomy.

Protest in Reggio Calabria exploded in July 1970 when the much smaller town of Catanzaro (with a population of 82,000 against 160,000 in Reggio) was chosen as the regional capital of Calabria. The people of Reggio blamed their rivals' success to "the Red Barons" in Rome, a group of influential centre-left Calabrian politicians from Cosenza and Catanzaro.

Doesn’t sound like something worthy of a sci-fi show, but the genre can adapt to any event in history.

At any rate, here’s the song I want to be included on the TARDIS jukebox….

GRAVITY? SCHMAVITY!

DOCTOR WHO
WILD BLUE YONDER

When the Doctor and Donna met Isaac Newton in 1666, Donna made a joke about “the gravity of the situation”.  After they left, however, Newton couldn’t quite remember what that strange word was that they used.  He eventually settled on using “mavity”.  

As the episode continued, the Doctor and Donna both used that new word, probably not realizing that they had changed History.  (Remember, they were not in his presence when he came up with it.)  In that new timeline, they, like everybody else in the world since Newton published his findings in 1687, had been using “mavity” instead of “gravity”.

EXAMPLE 01

The Doctor:
We could take a look.
Donna Noble:
Or we could stay here, wait for the TARDIS to mend itself so I can get back home. My family is waiting for me!
The Doctor:
Yeah, all right. Yeah!
Donna:
Still, wherever we are, could be worse. We've got air; we've got light; we've got mavity.
Doctor:
Yeah.

EXAMPLE 02
Donna:
But... if we're in space... There's no stars. Where are the stars?
The Doctor:
We could be inside a dust cloud or a... mavity well, or....

EXAMPLE 03
The Doctor:
What is making that noise?
(An alien body comes into view)
There.
(CLANG!)
The captain of the ship. Circling round and round forever. Caught in the gravity field.
DONNA:
Caught in the what?
THE DOCTOR:
Mavity field.

As seen/heard in that instance, the Doctor’s mind can straddle realities and remember the original timeline, as well as the various alternate pathways.  Probably.  (I’m not sure, but I think that has been established in the Past.)

What disturbed me at first was that I assumed the word “gravity” existed long before 1666.

I, as usual, was wrong.

As he was English, I think Newton coined the term based on the Latin roots, not the Old French.  So that would buttress the late 17th Century claim.

Stanford University looked at the etymology and the cultural history of gravity.  Click here if you’re interested in reading it.

Will RTD eventually address the situation to correct the word’s history?  Time travel is O’Bviously well-established in the series’ corner of the TV Universe, so this could be handled in a small patch, a scene even shorter than the one which caused the timeline shift to “mavity”.

But then again, as expansive as his vision has been in the past (and this episode “Wild Blue Yonder” fits that bill!), RTD can get sloppy with details that jar with real science.  So he might just leave it as is and forget about it.

(Remember how a mass shower in the topical application of all medicines blended together was able to cure everybody in that New Earth hospital?)

But until then, wouldn't it be great if other TV shows which should be sharing the same TV Universe as 'Doctor Who' started using the word "mavity" instead of "gravity"?

All the uses of "gravity" in past TV episodes would be locked into the old timeline before the "mavity" revision.

We shall see what we shall view….

UPDATE:
With both "The Giggle" and "The Church On Ruby Road," the word "mavity" was used.  RTD has been known to sprinkle the episodes in a season with a phrase which pays off by the season finale.  First it was "Bad Wolf" and a couple years later it was "Mister Saxon".

So it could be that the use of "mavity" will pay off with a big climactic reveal to cap off Davies' return to the series....

FANFICCER'S FRIEND - THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE CURATOR

 

Fairly recent pictures of Tom Baker living his good life can also work as pictures of the Curator in everyday situations.

And every so often one comes along which can be given a fantastical twist to make it a possibility for your head-canon, including crossovers and reunions with old friends.

Take this picture of Baker with a clowder of kittens. 

Who’s to say that Thomas Kincaide Brannigan isn’t among them as a toddler, somehow plucked out of his proper time-stream?  Sure, several of the Doctor’s past incarnations didn’t like cats, but with each regeneration, they get new personality quirks which differ from their past lives.  And we did see that the Eleventh Incarnation established a rapport with a cat in “The Lodger”….

Or based on this double page magazine photo of several actors who played the Time Lord – from left to right, Colin Baker, Paul McGann, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, and Sylvester McCoy….  What if the Curator summoned a few past incarnations to help on an investigation into the Dark Archives? 

The special short “Time Crash” had some splainin to do as to how those past Doctors would look different because of their close proximity to each other.  So none of the others might question how different the Sixth Incarnation looked from when he was alive.  But what if he wasn’t the Sixth Incarnation?

I’ve always wanted to see Colin Baker return to the series, but since Time had marched on, why not bring him back at a character he played in an earlier adventure?

Commander Maxil.  Colin Baker could have had a steady gig in a recurring capacity as a nemesis to the Curator.  But with the assistance of some of his past selves, the Curator could have foiled whatever Maxil had in mind for the contents of the Under Gallery.

Just an idea….

COLUMBO MEETS THE DOCTOR - AI STYLE

 

I haven't found many, but there are a few good photoshops out there of Lieutenant Columbo meeting the Doctor.  But greedy bastid that I am, I wanted more.

So I turned to AI.  It's not a perfect system, but I've made a few good examples... as well as a few howlers....

Enjoy....

Columbo and the TARDIS

Columbo meets Himself
Thanks to a temporal glitch?

Suggestive of the Seventh Incarnation,
But is that Columbo or a Goodfella?

Suggestive of the Fourth Incarnation,
But is Paul Reiser playing Columbo?

Columbo & the Twelfth Incarnation?

Not sure....

Columbo with the Tenth & Twelfth Incarnations

What if Anthony Hopkins had been the Doctor?

I suppose it suggests Tom Baker,
But he looks like Lyle Lovett.

What if Ian McShane was the Doctor?
Or is it Christopher Walken?

Another Tom Baker possibility,
But I think he looks like Tom Jones.

Maybe inspired by Rowan Atkinson in
"The Curse Of Fatal Death"?

I think David Tennant inspired both.

Columbo and some alien, perhaps?

I have since moved on to a much better AI program and maybe I'll make up a few examples before this blog-A-thon is over....

WILL WE EVER SEE THE INCARNATIONS BEFORE DELGADO?

When Roger Delgado joined ‘Doctor Who’ on a recurring basis as the Master, he was in the last incarnation provided him by the built-in restrictions of regeneration.  After that, his mummified yet living self took over a humanoid alien named Tremas and eventually exterminated by the Daleks.  The Doctor was able to secure the Master’s ashes and was bringing them back to Gallifrey, but the spirit of the Master was still powerful, mostly fueled by hate and anger.  It took over the body of a human in San Francisco before eventually being defeated by the Doctor yet again.  (That time by the Eighth Incarnation.

So desperate to triumph was the Ruling Council of Gallifrey in the Time War with the Daleks, that they granted a new cycle of regenerations to the Master in order to secure his alliance.  Instead, he fled to the farthest distance of Time and Space to hide.  There he took the name Yana.  He eventually remembered who he was, but was only able to revel in his villainy for about five minutes before he was forced to regenerate.  That time as Prime Minister Harold Saxon back in the 21st Century.

Although he finally did die, his followers resurrected him to once again attempt to take over the Earth.  Eventually he became a she and “Missy” could have found something of a rehabilitation, but once again the “Saxon Master” resurfaced, which led to both their deaths.

I like to think that when Sacha Dhawan arrived on the scene as the Master, he was one of the original incarnations who preceded Delgado.  That would still leave ten incarnations we need to see.      

If the show wants to live up to the standard set by Steven Moffat in its depiction of Time as being a wibbly-wobbly ball instead of always being linear, we need to see past incarnations of the Master appear in the current timeline for the Doctor (now in his fifteenth incarnation.

So I’m putting this out to you – who would you like to see playing those former incarnations of the Master?  Send me your casting suggestions!*

Here are a few whom I would like to see as the Master:

• Adrian Lester
• Judi Dench
• Billy Boyd
• Benedict Cumberbatch
• James Lance
• Nonso Anozie
• Cillian Murphy
• Laurence Fox
• Emma Thompson

As you can see, for the most part, I favor the cold, calculating and reserved villain type.  I’ve had enough of maniacal madman supplied by Sacha Dhawan and John Simm.
So let me know whom you would like to see!

*Treat it as though you really were casting the part of the Master; don’t send me theoretical suggestions which could never have happened because the actor you’re espousing is pushing up daisies!  So no Laurence Olivier or Peter O’Toole or Ronnie Corbett! 

ROSE TYLER, UCONN FAN?

During an appearance on ‘The Graham Norton Show’, Billie Piper once said that her appearances in commercials for Smash Hits magazine led to her earliest acting gigs. 

It’s nice to see that UConn has even a tenuous connection to ‘Doctor Who’….

WHO GOTTA BE KITTEN ME!*

 

Or....

* Regarding the title of this post....

SOFA, SO GOOD

 

(That quote is from the episode “Amy’s Choice”.)

It’s a tossed-off line which could have been a major exaggeration on the part of the Doctor.  We never do get a “splainin” if there is a planet out there which is populated with literate sofas.  Was that a specific evolution of natural or bio-engineered design?  Or was it a form of artificial intelligence?

The one good thing about such trivial snippets of dialogue is that some future writer of a ‘Doctor Who’ script might come up with a plausible storyline about sofas who can read.

I’ve dealt with a wild idea for an adventure for the Time Lord – specifically, the Sixth Incarnation – which involved a sofa.  

It would be a case of matter transformation in which some alien of superior scientific ability* is able to disassemble the Doctor and reassemble him as a sofa.  And of course, it would be O’Bvious – even in a warehouse full of sofas – which sofa HAD to be the Doctor as played by (and dressed as) Colin Baker….

* Someone even more of a genius than the Rani.

WHAT IF?.... THE EIGHTH DOCTOR AND COLUMBO

 

I’ve always liked the idea of seeing the Time Lord interact with the rumpled Lieutenant; that is evident from one of the posts in this blog-A-thon.  But I never gave much thought to the Lieutenant meeting the Eighth Incarnation.  (That is in no way a reflection on Paul McGann’s contribution to the mythos.  I liked what he has been able to contribute so far, and I hope there will be more to come.)

But at least if his version of the Doctor was to cross over into a ‘Columbo’ episode, it would be almost half an hour before Peter Falk showed up in that role….

THE WHONICORNS

 

Well, the Doctor does travel through Time.  And it's always a possibility that he speaks Unicorn.  So he probably knows something about them, which means we should take his advice.  

But they do look so forlorn as they beg near the bank downtown and rummaging through trash cans for cans and bottles now that the return deposit has gone up as of today to 10 cents from a nickel....

COMING SOON! THE 5 TENTH DOCTORS!

 

To which I say:

"No more, please; I think we have quite enough as it is!"

In fact, forget the Valeyard and let's skip making Tennant the Curator while we're at it.  We already have a plethora of unshared adventures for the Actual Tenth Incarnation which Future writers will discover; over in some parallel TV Universe, the Meta-Crisis Doctor is probably raising a family with the original Rose; and now the Fourteenth Incarnation will be puttering underfoot in Donna's life.

If anything, take the TARDIS II away from the Fourteenth.  It's a crutch.  If anybody must go back to the well to do a story about him post-Bigeneration, have him investigate local mysteries for Kate Stewart at UNIT in the London area.  Bring in Donna sometimes, but also call upon Mel, and Shirley, and Malcolm, maybe even Martha and Mickey.  But leave Time and Space to Fifteen.

Just my two quatloos....

P.L. TRAVERS' TIME LORD

I've got no argument with that. 

Had I known about this argument back in the mid-1970s, maybe I would have asked P.L. Travers about this when she spoke to my Children's Literature class at UConn....

 

THE MEDDLING MONK... IN OIL

 

This painting is "A Good Drink", by Eduard von Grützner (Oil on panel) from 1897–1897.

But could it be that the Galifreyan trickster known as the Meddling Monk posed for this a few years before the dawn of the 20th Century?

Why would the Monk have been whiling away the time in Germany by posing for the artist in 1897?  We know he enjoyed disrupting the timeline of the Earth, marking him as a renegade Time Lord. (In his own mind, I believe that he truly thought he was doing so for the greater good.)

Maybe his own Tardis was acting wonky and he arrived too early for the event which he planned to alter in History.  So he was biding his time until the right moment to strike by amusing himself as a model for Mr. von Grützner.

I've looked through the events of the German timeline for 1897, and one jumped out at me as being an interesting choice for a 'Doctor Who' timeline.

October 29 - The birth of Joseph Goebbels. 

Maybe the Monk thought that by causing Goebbels' death as a newborn infant, he could prevent much of the carnage to come.  Perhaps Goebbels would have been the first such victim, with Hitler on his hit list as well.

This possible plot line is reminiscent of the 'Doctor Who' episode "The Fires of Pompeii", in which he sadly had to stop the Pyroviles' plan to prevent the eruption of Mount Vesuvius so that History could play out as intended.

In this case, the Doctor and his Companion would have to make it possible for the Baby Goebbels to survive and eventually grow up to become the chief propagandist for the Nazis in control of Germany, until his scheduled death in May of 1945, as abhorrent as that was to their sense of justice.

As depicted in the painting, the subject doesn't look like the actor who portrayed the Monk, Peter Butterworth.  But in his own personal timeline, he could have sat for von Grützner centuries after we last saw him sparring with the Doctor.  As such, the years had not been kind....

Or maybe he had regenerated.  I expect - and hope - that soon the 'Doctor Who' series will bring back the Monk to be an adversary for the Doctor.

My dream casting for the choice of actor?  Kris Marshall.

Or the difference in appearance could just be artistic license.