WRITTEN BY

 'COLIN MEEK'

 (DAN FREEDMAN &

  NEV FOUNTAIN)

 

 DIRECTED BY

 DAN FREEDMAN

 

 RECOMMENDED 

 PURCHASE

 'DEATH COMES TO TIME'

 SPECIAL EDITION MP3-

 CD (ISBN 1-563-52367-

 0) RELEASED IN JUNE

 2004.

 

 

 BLURB

 When a dissident Time

 Lord group caused

 the destruction of A

 civilisation through

 ITS interference, its

 members vowed to

 repent by serving the

 Universe not as gods

 of Time, but as mere

 men.

 

 years later, this

 peaceful resolve

 is tested when two

 of their MEMBERS

 are killed... 

 

 

NEXT   

 

 

12TH JULY 2001 - 30TH MAY 2002

(5 EPISODES)

   

1. AT THE TEMPLE OF THE FOURTH      2. PLANET OF BLOOD

 

3. THE CHILD (AKA 'THE PRISONER')

 

4. NO CHILD OF EARTH      5. DEATH COMES TO TIME

 

 

                                                       

 

 

A mate of mine is a big Batman fan. Comics, movies, graphic novels – you name it, he loves it. Until I listened to him trying to explain the tortuous legacy of Batman, I never realised just how easy we Doctor Who fans have had it when it comes to continuity. To say that the series has endured for nearly forty years in several different formats and still (at least for the most part) maintains a real sense of continuity beggars belief, frankly. The apocryphal Peter Cushing movies and The Curse of Fatal Death aside, everything that has been produced for the Doctor Who universe is capable of being slotted in there somewhere relatively easily. Of course, there may be the odd bit of head-scratching when names like the Master or Davros crop up in the spin-off media, but at the end of the day with just a little bit of imagination a fan can quite easily satisfy himself as to the placement of a story enough to be able to enjoy the damn thing in context.

                                      And then death came to time.

 

Death Comes to Time is not Doctor Who in the same sense that the television series, the radio serials, the books, and the Big Finish audio dramas are Doctor Who. Not only does this story wilfully abandon any sense of continuity within the Whoniverse, but it also alters the fundamental tenets of the Doctor’s character. Now I’m not nitpicking about Death Comes to Time contradicting some niche 1992 paperback; this story effectively wipes out everything that we thought we knew, television included. It completely changes the whole dynamic of the show. In effect, its a page one rewrite.

 

I’m not fan of webcasts - I find them disjointed, fiddly and generally uncomfortable. The audio here is spectacular, but the animation is very rudimentary indeed. Nevertheless, once I was able to get past the limitations of the format and the fact that this is not the Doctor Who that

I know and love – this is Dan Freedman’s bold, new take on Doctor Who – then I found that there was a lot that I liked about Death Comes to Time.

 

 

First off, there is the Doctor’s companion Antimony, superbly played by Kevin Eldon. He’s sort of the Doctor Who version of Star Trek’s Lieutenant Commander Data – a naïve and logical android, though with one key difference. Antimony does not know that he is artificial. What he believes himself to be exactly is unclear, but from his child-like behaviour one can infer that he is relatively young, and that the Doctor built him because he didn’t want another companion that would age and die, or worse leave him. Now this element of the Doctor’s character I liked - it seemed to flow naturally from both Sylvester McCoy’s world-weary port-rayal in the television series, and also from certain ideas sown throughout the Virgin New Adventures in novels like Human Nature. Moreover, it provides without doubt the best (and most emotional) scene in the whole serial when Tannis (the baddie) savagely kills Antimony.

 

Death Comes to Time also has a certain sense of romance about it. The constant changing of location and barrage of place names that elegantly flow off the tongue reminded me very much of JRR Tolkien’s books, but the subject matter is much more Descartes than Tolkien. Much of the action in this story is framed by a comparatively quiet, contemplative sub-plot involving Ace and the Time Lord Casmus, played by Leonard Fenton of EastEnders fame. Casmus, for no apparent reason, is training Ace as to be a Time Lady – following through on the Doctor’s original design for her. Fenton plays Casmus as a strange cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Spider-Man’s Granddad… yet somehow it works. For a minute he almost had me buying in to the Death Comes to Time view of the Whoniverse.

 

“You will be alone and live for the many, and the one. You will possess great power and great responsibility.”

 

Ironically though, whilst these sequences are beautifully written and thought provoking, they are also where it all goes hideously wrong. To put it simply, the Time Lords are quite literally Gods – in this story they even refer to themselves as the ‘Gods of the Fourth.’ They have the power to alter reality however they see fit – they can kill with a thought and heal with a touch. But they do not. At least, they do not often because when they use their power, it damages the very fabric of space and time. This notion allows the writer to fascinatingly explore some interesting philosophical points – my favourite being the story about the painting, the bottom line of which is: “We are in the picture so we cannot see the painter.” Time Lords, however, can see the painter. They see past the rules of the universe, and this gives them the ability to ‘cheat’ their way around them so to speak, hence their great power. However, this also has the side effect of completely and utterly butchering the Doctor’s character.

 

Turning the Doctor (and every other Time Lord) into a god negates every adventure that we have seen him go through. Oh yes, he’s alien; and oh yes, he’s got abilities that we cannot properly understand. But to kill with a thought? It just doesn’t hold up. He’s a meddler - he’d

have used his powers long before the events of this story. Even if I was willing to accept that the Doctor had spent a millennium or so resisting the urge to wield his great powers (and in doing so allowing the Master to destroy nearly half the universe in Logopolis, for example) are we seriously expected to believe that the Master would have ever exercised the same restraint? Or the Rani? Or Mortimus? Or Morbius? Or Tannis for that mater? Even Stephen

Fry’s amiable Minster of Chance eventually succumbs to the temptation to use his powers,

so how come these renegades could resist? This again brings me back to my point – as a stand-alone story, Death Comes to Time works splendidly, but as soon as you let even the tiniest bit of the fan in you bubble to the surface, youve had it.

 

“If you break the rules, you break the world.”

 

And this is why Death Comes to Time is such a divider of opinion. Most fans can forgive the odd conflicting story; heck, they can even forgive the odd conflicting range. But to go against all established principles? To completely re-invent your lead character and his people? Many

were annoyed when the TV Movie Doctor claimed to be half-human, but personally I find that

notion much more palatable and credible than this, which is in effect the complete opposite!

Death Comes to Time is certainly bold, and if I had no prior knowledge of Who, I might even say brilliant, but unless youre able to unlearn everything that you have learned about Doctor Who, then youre in for a rough time Im afraid.

 

Nevertheless, its difficult to be

critical of the eponymous final

episode, which has to be seen

as a triumph in anyone’s book -

if you can ignore of ramifications of it, that is. The plot may well be

pants, but it has such enchanting, epic scope and strikes a perfect

balance between humour and

pathos. Just as I was chuckling

away at Jon Culshaw’s bumbling

George dubya Bush steering the

Earth towards total surrender, I

actually found myself rising out of my chair when Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart flew out from behind the moon in a space shuttle to save the day!

 

 

Unfortunately, elation soon gave way to a sort of numbness as I watched the seventh Doctor die, again… but before. Refuses to let Ace die at Tannis’s hand, the Doctor uses his power. He wouldn’t use it on Davros or the Master or the Daleks or the Cybermen, but along comes another Time Lord renegade and this time he decides to put all his principles aside and use his power as a God of the Fourth to kill both Tannis and himself! Both of them vanish, leaving only a smoking umbrella behind.

 

In the context of the story, it’s one hell of an ending. The Doctor makes the ultimate sacrifice; the Time Lords all leave the universe behind, and a new dawn beckons for the universe with Ace as its new demi-God and Earth looking particularly well-defended. Credits roll in silence over a blank screen, and I can’t play it down – it really is a touching and satisfying ending.

  

“Where’s the Doctor?”

 

But if the BBC wanted to re-launch Who on the internet for a new generation of viewers, then why kill off your lead man in the first serial? On the other hand, if the BBC wanted a nostalgic romp for the hardcore fans, then why alienate them by going against all post-Survival history, eradicating everything – including the eighth Doctor? Even if I could wrap my head around the Beebs warped reasoning, I just cant get past my ‘mental block’ about them ruining the Doctor. Its just not him. He isnt a superhero. He may have thirteen lives and be a dab hand when it comes to a spot of juggling, but at the end of the day he is mortal. When his enemies cut him, he bleeds. When they threaten his friends, he cant just kill them with a thought. This is not the character that the world watched on television for twenty-six years.

 

“If you wipe out all the bad ones, the good ones turn bad.”

 

Most people look at Death Comes to Time as a ‘love it or hate it’ kind of thing. To me, its one big, horrible (but admittedly thought-provoking) mess. I can see that its good, but then again I dont think that its a patch on the Big Finish stuff that manages to break new ground whilst remaining loyal to the traditions of the series, showing loyalty to the character and the basic tenets of the show, which sadly, Death Comes to Time not only ignores but actively seeks to undermine.

 

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

 

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

 

                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                    

 

 

Just how powerful is the Doctor? Is he an ordinary man, albeit one from another planet, who happens to have been involved in universe-rocking events? Or is he some kind of god, walking amongst the peoples of the universe, his human-like form merely a disguise? It’s a question that has been asked again recently in light of the increasingly powerful Doctor

on television (Doctor Who Magazine’s June 2011 issue dedicated a feature to the argument - The Oncoming Storm or Mad Man with a Box? it asked). Ten years ago, Death Comes to Time went for a definite answer: he’s a god. A God of the Fourth.

 

A lot has been written about Death Comes to Time over the years, much of it concerning its questionable place in the canon (if such a thing can be said to exist), which I wont dwell on. Whether a story fits in with the whole ongoing myth isn’t as important as whether it’s a good, entertaining story (although making things fit is a fun game for fans). Who’s Next (Clapham, Robson and Smith) described it as “poetic, mythic and epic;” while I, Who 3 (Lars Pearson) dismissed it as “cheap, trite and downright gut-wrenching at times.” Personally, I feel it lies somewhere between the two extremes; there are moments of excellence, and moments of awfulness.

 

Dan Freedman, the director and main contributor to the pseudonymous writer Colin Meek, decided to take the end of the classic series as his starting point and move on from there. Returning to lives of the Doctor and Ace ten years after Survival, the storyline bypasses

the TV Movie and Paul McGann’s Doctor in order to redevelop the adventures of Sylvester McCoy’s version. Towards the end of the original run, the Doctor was being presented as ever more powerful, posing questions about his very nature. Death Comes to Time runs

with this, making the Doctor very powerful indeed.

 

 

McCoy is at his best here, rarely lapsing into the poorrrrrerrr perrrforrrrmence style of which he is sometimes guilty. He maintains a subtle, restrained take on the Doctor. However, he is comprehensively out-Doctored by Stephen Fry as the Minister of Chance, a young, idealistic Time Lord. Armed with some hilarious bons-mots (“I’m as happy as a simile!”, “It’s the sort of thing the other children were playing with while you were being aggressively potty-trained,” amongst others), the Minister is the sort of posh, verbose character the Doctor sometimes threatens to be. Such a character could easily be insufferable, but is saved by Fry’s charm and likeability. Sadly, fellow Time Lord Casmus, played by Leonard Fenton (forever known as Dr Legg), is a far less successful character. A poor man’s Obi-Wan, he pontificates and philosophises with the minimum of charisma. Death Comes to Time is full to the brim with the sort of cod philosophy that sounds terribly impressive on the surface, but actually doesn’t really mean anything. Removing Casmus’s waffling could have pared this down to a snappy little feature.

 

Casmus is training Ace to become a Time Lord. Why, I couldn’t say. I’ve never understood this idea, reportedly the original plan for Ace’s character. Of all the Doctor’s companions, is she really the best one to be given mastery over time? She’d probably blow the universe up within her first hour on the job. While Ace is supposed to be ten years older and many times wiser here, she’s still presented as the same stroppy sixteen-year-old that she ever was, and the meagre development she undergoes over the course of the story fails to convince. The Doctor’s new companion, the android Antimony, is more effective. In many ways the perfect companion, Antimony enthusiastically asks questions while cheerfully thumping people on the Doctor’s orders. He’s just the sort of blunt instrument the Doctor needs at his side for when words won’t do, and Kevin Eldon makes him sweetly likeable. Britta Gartner is also very good as Sala, the Santinian rebel, who becomes a companion figure for the Minister.

 

 

Death Comes to Time is a mixed bag on the side of the villains, too. General Tannis, secret Time Lord and butchering conqueror of a hundred planets, is the sort of risibly evil, over-the-top baddie that seems doomed to failure. He only works due to the sheer verve displayed by John Sessions, who happily takes him over the top and realises that the only way to play this is by sheer campery. Unfortunately, the Canisians, the aliens who serve as his muscle, are a bunch of incompetent twerps, and it’s a wonder that they manage to hold an empire together even with a Time Lord running the show.

 

There’s something to be said for Freedman’s approach, though; I’m all for reinventing the series. Change is essential to the show’s longevity, and this more mythic approach to the material could have worked beautifully had the writing been consistent. There are moments of true quality, and some excellent dialogue, but interspersed with banal witterings and long, drawn-out periods of nothing much at all. Some of the ideas are fascinating. The Time Lords atoning for past crimes is potentially a very intriguing source of drama, while the Kingmaker - a sort of ancient witch who grants Time Lords their powers - is a fine addition to the mythos. Yet these powers are so inconsistently presented. Time and again we are told that the Time Lords must never use them, except the odd occasions when we’re told that they can in some very special circumstances. We hear Time Lords (fleeting cameos by Tony Head and David Soul) murdered while they refuse to defend themselves with their great powers; yet it never seems to occur to them to, say, hit the assailant, or run away. General Tannis spends years taking the slow path, conquering the galaxy via old-fashioned means, then whips out the big guns with a ‘to hell with it,’ attitude right at the end, while the Doctor and the Kingmaker are both still active. The Minister is defrocked for succumbing to the temptation and abusing his powers, but we’ve already heard evidence that he’s magically cured a planetary population of a deadly plague. There’s no consistency to this new view of the universe.

 

 

However, the overriding problem with Death Comes to Time is that it never seems content to be one thing or the other. It’s most successful episode is the second, Planet of Blood, a riveting murder story that ends with a vampire chase and a powerful confrontation with some truly chilling bloodsuckers (excellent, undersung performances all round here, from Stephen Brody as Sgt Speedwell, Charlotte Palmer as the monstrous Dr Cain, and Dave Hill as the assassin Nessican). It feels like a proper, solid, modern take on Doctor Who that wouldn’t be out of place in the series today. Yet the overall storyline seems uncomfortable when it’s trying to fit into the set-up it’s inherited, and bringing the Brigadier in for a cameo in the final scenes does little to convince that this new take actually fits with the series we remember. What this really needs, if anything, is to be taken further from the parent series. Start with the traditional monster hunt on Earth, and journey outwards from there, or take Doctor Who as inspiration and create something new that doesn’t have to be bound by established history.

 

Which brings me to a final question: what

is the legacy of Death Comes to Time? It

did, after all, start a run of webcasts that, for

a short while, looked as if they were the way

forward for Doctor Who. Yet, in light of the

series’ triumphant return to television, now

in its seventh successful year, this in itself

seems like a mere footnote. However, this

production achieved astonishing ratings in

2001-02, with hundreds of thousands more

tuning in than was expected. The pilot alone

achieved over 1.5 million hits. It seems fair to say that Death Comes to Time helped to convince the BBC of the viability of Doctor Who

as a popular ongoing product for the 21st century. In terms of story elements, there’s little

that has carried over. The Doctor has taken on godlike stature in the new series, and the Time Lords have been wiped out for abusing their powers, but both of these strands have been portrayed in very different ways to here. Tannis can perhaps be seen as the missing link between the über-camp Anthony Ainley Master and the raucous, joyfully evil John Simm version, but no more than Eric Roberts’s flamboyant incarnation from the movie.

 

 

If Death Come to Time has a descendant, then it’s The Minister of Chance. Dan Freedman returns to the character that he created, now missing the pulling power of Stephen Fry but perhaps a better-expressed character, with a companion that’s not unlike Sala, in a universe that is not unlike the one seen in Death Comes to Time. The Minister of Chance, however, succeeds where Death Comes to Time struggled, by throwing off the shackles of its parent series and embracing the mythic, science-magic infused style that was budding here. The Minister’s future remains to be seen (or, rather, heard), but it shows that Death Comes to Time, for all its faults, retains a legacy today.

 

Copyright © Daniel Tessier 2011

 

Daniel Tessier has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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