In today’s Observer [via Hak]:
On Tuesday the BBC launches the return of Doctor Who after an absence of nine years. The first episode of the new series, by Russell T Davies, writer of Queer as Folk and Doctor Who’s new creative director, will be screened at the end of this month… …this time the Doctor is to be Christopher Eccleston, an actor still best remembered for his role in Our Friends in the North. His assistant, Rose, is played by Billie Piper.
What the new series resolutely avoids is irony. ‘If we had tried to be ironic we would have died a death,’ says Davies, who is deeply in love with his baby, and thinks it as good a programme as the BBC could possibly have produced. ‘It is made for 2005. We have learnt the lessons of modern fantasy drama. This series is all set on planet Earth in the present day. We wanted to stay away from doing three moons and a man in a cape until we had learnt what we were doing.
Fine, but if the new Doctor Who is so modern and realistic, how do the Daleks – whose devilish plans could always be stymied by a flight of stairs – fit in? He cackles. ‘Our daleks fly like bastards. That’s all I’ll say.’
[The Doctor and his assistant Rosie are slumped on the sofa sharing a spliff in front of a DVD of the remake of The Magic Roundabout. The living room door bursts open in an explosion of wood and plaster. Three wheeled robots enter through a cloud of smoke.]
Dr Who: Fook me! Daleks!
Rosie: It’d just got to the good bit en’ all.
Dalek 1: WASTE THE SQUEAKY ONE.
[Dalek 2 shoots Rosie and she is reduced to a charred carcass next to the Doctor. Millions of viewers cheer.]
Dr Who: In’t yer supposed to capture us and put us in a cell secured only by a force-field, leaving me with my sonic screwdriver so I can apply it to the service panel and escape into the many corridors of your secret base?
Dalek 1: DO I LOOK STUPID? NOW WHERE’S THE DOCTOR?
Dr Who: Who?
Dalek 2: TALL, FOPPISH, UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS, PROBABLY DRESSED IN A TWEEDY LONGCOAT OR CRICKET SWEATER. MAYBE A SCARF AND A STUPID HAT
Dr Who: Ee. I doon’t know what yer talking aboot. I’m joost a simple Northern lad, watchin’ t’telly, like.
Dalek 1: FAIR ENOUGH. DO HIM TOO.
[Dalek 2 shoots Doctor Who. He dies. The Daleks pocket his stash and fly out into the cobbled street to the bangin’ accompaniment of the remixed theme tune.]
I hadn’t heard of the person playing the new assistant, so I googled her. Not pleased by what I saw. Bring back Tegan or Leela!
Flying daleks, nearly as bad as a flying Artoo!
The daleks have flown before, haven’t they? In a Peter Davison episode? Or did I dream it?
It was in the Sylvester McCoy episode “Remembrance of the Daleks,” so no-one saw it. The Doctor was trapped at the top of some stairs and the Dalek started jetting up them, much to the Doctor’s surprise as a few years previously when he was all teeth and curls he’d laughed at their inability to conquer the Universe having been foiled by a staircase.
I’ll go back to my collection of plastic Mechanoids now…