War of the Worlds: Part 1

The BBC's adaptation of The War of the Worlds is a fantastically produced adaptation, and definitely had some impressive moments - seeing the invasion ships launch from Mars was a brilliant opening. But one major problem became apparent over the course of the episode - the adapter had written more of it than HG Wells.

Peter Harness has previously written for Doctor Who, a show strongly influenced by HG Wells. Unfortunately, his episodes tended to be a bit heavy-handed. Here, he moved the time frame forward from "the last year's of the 19th century" to "the first years of the 20th", and introduced a diplomatic crisis involving Russian attacks on fishing boats that quickly became irrelevant. Most of the episode was taken up with a soapy subplot about the relationships between the protagonist George, his mistress Amy, (not in the original), his estranged wife Lucy (perfectly happily married in the original), and George's brother (another new character). At one point Lucy (who will be conveniently killed off so that George and Amy can live happily ever after once the invasion's over - it has been clumsily foreshadowed) complained that she'd been replaced by someone younger and prettier, despite looking identical to Amy. All of this was based more on Wells' life than his novel. 

There were also confusing scenes of two human figures wandering round what appeared to be Mars. These later turned out to be a flashforward to a Mars-like Earth, some years later. Again, not in the original.

There's a bit of a trend amongst adapters at the moment to take big liberties with the source material. ITV recently adapted Jane Austen's Sanditon, of which she had written so little when she died that it was all used in the first episode. And I gave up on the BBC's adaptation of Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders after a subplot involving Poirot having a shady past turned into a Message From Fred - "He's not Poirot." The overall impression is that adapters are more interested in telling their own stories than those they're working from. But if that's what you want to do, write an original story, not an adaptation.

The War of the Worlds is a classic for good reason. It's a foundational text of Science Fiction, the original alien invasion story, and a principled critique of colonialism. The best bits of the adaptation were those that stuck closest to the original. Peter Harness and the BBC should have had more faith in the source material.

The Trouble With Chris Chibnall

Chris Chibnall's writing for Doctor Who has generally been of poor quality. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was basically silly. It was never explained why The Doctor would want to get together a posse including Nefertiti and a big game hunter (people who kill for pleasure aren't The Doctor's usual choice of friends), nor why Nefertiti would chose to elope with the big game hunter (who seemed the sort of man who'd treat a woman like another trophy) at the end. The Power of Three started with an interesting premise (the Slow Invasion), but ironically the ending was rushed - The Doctor just waved the Sonic Screwdriver at a control panel and everything was all right. 42 revolved around a gimmick and doesn't stick in the mind. Even his best story, The Hungy Earth / Cold Blood was a by the numbers Silurian story (human activity awakes the Silurians, they want to reclaim their planet, The Doctor attempts to broker a peace, negotiations are botched, Silurians forced back into hibernation) with no original ideas in it.

He was even worse as the showrunner on Torchwood, the "adult" (as in very, very childish) spin-off from Doctor Who which followed the misadventures of an alien-hunting squad so top secret that everybody in Cardiff knew who they were, apart from the heroine's boyfriend. Said heroine was granted immunity from character development, as this was a terminal disease in Torchwood. The show never really found a tone that worked. Two episodes written by Chibnall personally made you wish you had a vial of Retcon handy. Countrycide was a nasty cannibal hillbillies story, transferred to Wales. Cyberwoman's premise contained a massive plot hole - Ianto Jones has supposedly smuggled a cyberconversion unit containing his partially-converted girlfriend (this was before Ianto was gay) into the Torchwood Hub without anybody noticing. Even worse, while Doctor Who consistently portrays cyberconversion as a painful and dehumanising process, Torchwood portrayed it as fetish.

WARNING: YOU CANNOT UNSEE THIS

I did warn you.

Chibnall's defenders will say, "But Broadchurch was good." Well, it was if you like relentlessly depressing contemporary crime dramas. But in terms of tone, story, setting and intended audience, Broadchurch has nothing in common with Doctor Who. It seems that what he's best at writing is stuff that's nothing like Doctor Who at all.

More relevant is Camelot, which I don't think was a great success. I only saw one or two episodes, but the writing on it didn't seem that great. One thing I do remember is that one character (I think it was Guinevere) was introduced in a dream sequence in which she was seen dancing naked on a beach for no readily apparent reason.

So, when this second-rate writer, with a history of objectifying women, is made showrunner on Doctor Who, what does he do to make people love him? He resorts to gimmicks, of course, and his chosen gimmick in the unfortunate Josie Whittaker. She faces the prospect of having to carry an impossible burden of expectations while struggling with ropy scripts and misjudged tone, and possibly an inappropriate costume. It seems like the Tardis is taking us back to 1984.

When Colin Baker took the role, he wanted to portray a dark and edgy Doctor, something along the lines of Peter Capaldi's portrayal. However, the writing team at the time weren't up to the job, and interpreted it as brash, unlikable, and prone to dangerous mood swings. The Twin Dilemma is one of the few stories that can claim to be anywhere near as bad as Love & Monsters. Few of Colin Baker's stories were any good, but instead of laying the responsibility for this with John Nathan turner, where it belonged, the BBC made a scapegoat of Colin Baker, and sacked him. It didn't really help, and while some better writers came along later, Doctor Who was cancelled in 1989.

That's why I've started a petition to remove Chris Chibnall. Please sign it.

Conscripts on Doctor Who

As mentioned before, my interests in conlanging and Doctor Who don't overlap as much as I'd like, due to Tardis telepathically translating everything. This apparently goes for writing too - in The Impossible Planet the Doctor realises that they're in a particularly dangerous situation when they encounter a script that the Tardis can't translate.

However, something odd has been going on this season. Amidst the rumours of the Hybrid, the theme of Truth of Consequences, the story of Ashildr, and the build up to the death of Clara, there's been another, more subtle theme in the background. In Under the Lake / Before the Flood, the Fisher King scratches this on the wall of his hearse.

The Doctor can't read it, and has to get Cass to lip-read what the ghosts are saying before he can work out what it means. The reason that the Tardis can't translate it is that the writing is intended to plant a message in the mind of the reader. Also, in that story we have the use of British Sign Language, which the Tardis can't translate because The Doctor's forgotten it.

In The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion we see this where the Zygon rebels have been active.

Neither The Doctor, Clara nor the Tardis is present in these scenes, and whatever the poster says doesn't come into the story.

In Sleep No More, we see this Indo-Japanese script (apparently a hybrid on Kanji and Devanagari) on Le Verrier Space Station.

In this case it's not translated because what we're seeing has been hacked from the visual cortices of those who experienced the events, most of whom could read the script to start with. As in Under the Lake / Before the Flood, Ramussen's broadcast is meant to be a vector for mental malware.

Finally, in Face the Raven, we get this.

This is a bit of an oddity. It's the Aurebesh script from Star Wars, which is simply a cipher for the Roman alphabet (Star Wars never having cared about plausible languages). It says Delorean, which is presumably a Back to the Future reference. It looks like this is just an in-joke.

So, is this leading up to something? Might Doctor Who be about to start using conlangs? And if so, please can I make one?

Why Doctor Who needs a Scientific Advisor

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke

A plot hole isn't something that's not explained. It's something you can't explain.
- Steven Moffat

Where does she get the milk for the soufflés?
- The Doctor Asylum of the Daleks

Kill the Moon was a weak episode. The theme of whether one should be prepared to do evil in the pursuit of a perceived greater good is a favourite one with Doctor Who, explored famously in Genesis of the Daleks, and more recently in The Beast Below and The Day of The Doctor. The Doctor's motives for leaving Clara and Courtney to make the crucial decision could have been better explored - a line to the effect of "I trusted you to do the right thing. I didn't trust myself," would have made far more sense of his actions. But the big problem is that the premisses of the story just didn't make sense.

We have a pretty good idea what the Moon is made of and how it was formed. If it were the egg of a giant space creature, the Apollo astronauts would have noticed. Even if it were, it wouldn't suddenly become heavier when it hatched - conservation of mass is one of the most basic laws of physics, so if something gets heavier, the extra mass has to come from somewhere. Bacteria are the size they are because their simple prokaryotic metabolism won't scale up. An oversized spider has to be a multicellular, eukaryotic organism. Even if a giant dragon could hatch out of the Moon, it couldn't fly away by flapping its wings in space - wings need an atmosphere to work. And if it did fly away, the gravitational effects of such a large thing doing so would seriously perturb the Earth's orbit. And no organism could lay an egg larger than itself immediately after hatching.

OK, this is a show about an alien who travels through time in a ship that's bigger on the inside, but even in that context these errors break suspension of disbelief. There's a difference between asking, "What if time travel were possible?" and just not caring about basic physics. The Doctor Who production team needs someone to consult about the scientific plausibility of a story, someone who could tell writers when something didn't work, and what they could do to improve it. "Either you need another way to set up your ethical dilemma, or we can work out something else that could be wrong with the Moon."

The worst story this century could have been vastly improved by a bit of scientific advice. "The monster could be a giant intelligent slime mould that engulfs its prey, and absorbs their knowledge as it digests them. It adopts the likeness of previous victims as camouflage. After The Doctor notices that it avoids one particular woman, who wears a distinctive perfume, he realises that vanilla contains a hormone that will cause its component cells to disperse harmlessly."

Doctor Who did employ somebody in this capacity once. That was Dr. Kitt Pedlar, co-creator of the cybermen.

Even the most fantastical universe has to make sense.

Ranking Doctor Who stories and writers

What with the 50th Anniversary last year, I thought it would be fun to sort the Doctor Who stories of the 21st Century into my personal order of preference. I wrote a Python script that repeatedly asked me Is Story A better than Story B? and used my answers as the basis of a binary sort that put the stories in order. The following is completely subjective, and I probably wouldn't even get the same result if I did it again, but here it is anyway.

1. Blink by Steven Moffat
2. The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances by Steven Moffat
3. The Girl in the Fireplace by Steven Moffat
4. Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead by Steven Moffat
5. The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon by Steven Moffat
6. The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone by Steven Moffat
7. The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People by Matthew Graham
8. The Crimson Horror by Mark Gatiss
9. The Doctor's Wife by Neil Gaiman
10. The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat
11. Cold War by Mark Gatiss
12. Midnight by Russell T Davies
13. The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood by Chris Chibnall
14. A Town Called Mercy by Toby Whithouse
15. Human Nature / The Family of Blood by Paul Cornell
16. Night Terrors by Mark Gatiss
17. Asylum of the Daleks by Steven Moffat
18. The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit by Matt Jones
19. Hide by Neil Cross
20. The Name of the Doctor by Steven Moffat
21. Nightmare in Silver by Neil Gaiman
22. The Time of the Doctor by Steven Moffat
23. The Bells of Saint John by Steven Moffat
24. The Angels Take Manhattan by Steven Moffat
25. The Wedding of River Song by Steven Moffat
26. The Eleventh Hour by Steven Moffat
27. The Girl Who Waited by Tom MacRae
28. A Good Man Goes to War by Steven Moffat
29. Let's Kill Hitler by Steven Moffat
30. The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang by Steven Moffat
31. The Unquiet Dead by Mark Gatiss
32. 42 by Chris Chibnall
33. The Power of Three by Chris Chibnall
34. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS by Steven Thompson
35. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship by Chris Chibnall
36. The God Complex by Toby Whithouse
37. The Doctor's Daughter by Stephen Greenhorn
38. Planet of the Ood by Keith Temple
39. The Vampires of Venice by Toby Whithouse
40. The End of Time by Russell T Davies
41. The Waters of Mars by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford
42. The Stolen Earth / Journey's End by Russell T Davies
43. The Fires of Pompeii by James Moran
44. Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords by Russell T Davies
45. Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel by Tom MacRae
46. Amy's Choice by Simon Nye
47. The Snowmen by Steven Moffat
48. The Curse of the Black Spot by Stephen Thompson
49. Victory of the Daleks by Mark Gatiss
50. The Rings of Akhaten by Neil Cross
51. The Unicorn and the Wasp by Gareth Roberts
52. The Sontaran Strategem / The Poison Sky by Helen Raynor
53. The Beast Below by Steven Moffat
54. School Reunion by Toby Whithouse
55. Vincent and the Doctor by Richard Curtiss
56. The Lodger by Gareth Roberts
57. Tooth and Claw by Russell T Davies
58. Dalek by Robert Shearman
59. Closing Time by Gareth Roberts
60. The Shakespeare Code by Gareth Roberts
61. Planet of the Dead by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts
62. Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks by Helen Raynor
63. Rose by Russell T Davies
64. Smith and Jones by Russell T Davies
65. Army of Ghosts / Doomsday by Russell T Davies
66. Partners in Crime by Russell T Davies
67. A Christmas Carol by Steven Moffat
68. The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe by Steven Moffat
69. Turn Left by Russell T Davies
70. The Lazarus Experiment by Stephen Greenhorn
71. New Earth by Russell T Davies
72. The Next Doctor by Russell T Davies
73. Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways by Russell T Davies
74. The Idiot's Lantern by Mark Gatiss
75. Gridlock by Russell T Davies
76. Father's Day by Paul Cornell
77. The Runaway Bride by Russell T Davies
78. The Christmas Invasion by Russell T Davies
79. Fear Her by Matthew Graham
80. Aliens of London / World War Three by Russell T Davies
81. The Long Game by Russell T Davies
82. Voyage of the Damned by Russell T Davies
83. The End of the World by Russell T Davies
84. Boom Town by Russell T Davies
85. Love & Monsters by Russell T Davies

As you can see, there's a lot of Steven Moffat stories at the top, and a lot of Russel T Davies at the bottom. Also, many of Steven Moffat's best stories were written before he was showrunner - a showrunner has to write more episodes, so they're not always going to be his absolute best. I also sorted the writers in order or the median rank of their stories, and got the following results.

1. Neil Gaiman

   Stories written

   2

   Best

   The Doctor's Wife (9)

   Worst

   Nightmare in Silver (21)

2. Matt Jones

   Stories written

   The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (18)

3. Steven Moffat

   Stories written

   21

   Best

   Blink (1)

   Worst

   The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (68)

   Typical

   The Bells of Saint John (23)

4. Mark Gatiss

   Stories written

   6

   Best

   The Crimson Horror (8)

   Worst

   The Idiot's Lantern (74)

   Typical

   Night Terrors (16)

   The Unquiet Dead (31)

5. Chris Chibnall

   Stories written

   4

   Best

   The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood (13)

   Worst

   Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (35)

   Typical

   42 (32)

   The Power of Three (33)

6. Steven Thompson

   Stories written

   Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (34)

7. Neil Cross

   Stories written

   2

   Best

   Hide (19)

   Worst

   The Rings of Akhaten (50)

8. Tom MacRae

   Stories written

   2

   Best

   The Girl Who Waited (27)

   Worst

   Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel (45)

9. Toby Whithouse

   Stories written

   4

   Best

   A Town Called Mercy (14)

   Worst

   School Reunion (54)

   Typical

   The God Complex (36)

   The Vampires of Venice (39)

10. Keith Temple

    Stories written

    Planet of the Ood (38)

11. Phil Ford

    Stories written

    The Waters of Mars (41)

12. James Moran

    Stories written

    The Fires of Pompeii (43)

13. Matthew Graham

    Stories written

    2

    Best

    The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People (7)

    Worst

    Fear Her (79)

14. Paul Cornell

    Stories written

    2

    Best

    Human Nature / The Family of Blood (15)

    Worst

    Father's Day (76)

15. Simon Nye

    Stories written

    Amy's Choice (46)

16. Stephen Thompson

    Stories written

    The Curse of the Black Spot (48)

17. Stephen Greenhorn

    Stories written

    2

    Best

    The Doctor's Daughter (37)

    Worst

    The Lazarus Experiment (70)

18. Richard Curtiss

    Stories written

    Vincent and the Doctor (55)

19. Helen Raynor

    Stories written

    2

    Best

    The Sontaran Strategem / The Poison Sky (52)

    Worst

    Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks (62)

20. Robert Shearman

    Stories written

    Dalek (58)

21. Gareth Roberts

    Stories written

    5

    Best

    The Unicorn and the Wasp (51)

    Worst

    Planet of the Dead (61)

    Typical

    Closing Time (59)

22. Russell T Davies

    Stories written

    24

    Best

    Midnight (12)

    Worst

    Love & Monsters (85)

    Typical

    Turn Left (69)

    New Earth (71)

A surprise at the top of the list - despite having written 7 of the top 10 episodes on my list, Steven Moffat only comes third on the writers' list. This is because his season opener and finale episodes from his time as showrunner tend to rank a bit lower (although still respectable). It also shows how difficult it is to make the comparison when the number of episodes written varies so much. RTD fans will no doubt be howling with rage that he comes bottom of the list of writers, but despite everything he did for the show, he just so happens to have written more of the episodes I find weak than anybody else. Midnight was very good though, and narrowly missed out on getting into the top 10. One thing that's not surprising is that Steven Moffat's weakest episode was a Christmas Special - Christmas Specials are generally weak. You're free to debate these lists as much as you like. However, please don't try to convince me that Love & Monsters has any redeeming features at all.

Wherein I Announce my Candidacy

I've spent most of the last two weeks job hunting. There's plenty going in my line of work (artificial intelligence and big data), but I do wonder if it would be a good idea to make a new start and try something completely different. As it, happens, a post's just become available that would be right up my street. Doctor Who There seem to be a lot of reasons why I'd be a good fit for the part. For one thing, I've only ever met one person who loves the show more than me. Second, I've got the right sort of English Eccentric vibe to me, and could pull off what, in honour of the fourth Doctor, I call Tomfoolery like nobody's business. My looks fit as well - nearly good looking but a little odd, with angular features and deep-set, bright blue eyes that give me an intense air. At 39, I'm not too old for the part. I have two children, so I can relate to the younger viewers. With an academic background in physics and experience of artificial intelligence, I can do the best technobabble in the known universe. I can not only reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, I could tell you how to polarize your neutron flow to start with. I even have the title "Doctor". My old college's motto was eadem mutata resurgo, "I rise again, the same but changed", which is very appropriate for The Doctor. Indeed, I can only think of one drawback to me playing The Doctor, and that's that my last acting experience was as Loony Bergonzi in a college production of Bugsy Malone 20 years ago. If you're reading, Mr Moffat, get in touch...

Some Original Reasons for Invading Earth

In some SF shows, it seems that Earth can scarcely get through a week without being invaded by aliens. The trouble is, the aliens are running out of reasons to invade. All the usual ones, enslaving the population, plundering the planet's mineral wealth, fleeing your doomed homeworld, converting the planet into a weapon of cosmic destruction, they've all been done. I'd like to suggest some alternatives for interplanetary despots in search of new reasons to invade.

Bragging rights

The guys back at home will be so jealous when they hear that we conquered Earth.

Turning the planet into a tourist resort

Beautiful scenery, fascinating cultures: Buy a SpaceTimeshare ® on Earth today!

Conceptual Art

This Happening challenges us to explore such themes as: What does it mean to be an alien? and Why do we really invade planets?

Dragées Those little silver coated sugar balls

used for decorating cakes. According to The Doctor, you can only get them on Earth. Have you any idea the price they fetch in Andromeda?

Captain Zeno Goes Faster Than Light!

We humans don't like the word "impossible", which is why, no matter how unlikely it is that the neutrino anomaly will lead to faster-than-light spaceships, I, for one, have my fingers crossed. Let us imagine, for the sake of an SF thought experiment, that Captain Zeno is on the bridge, ready to begin humanity's first voyage to Delta Pavonis. He's plotted his course as accurately as possible, but over 20 light years, the margin of error is pretty vast. Worse than that, when you're going faster than light, you can't see where you're going. How can he steer?

Fortunately, there's an answer. Halfway there, he stops, checks his position and corrects his course. After half the remaining distance, he does it again, and keeps doing it until he's close enough to Delta Parvonis to go the rest of the way at a normal speed.

I call this Zenonian Navigation, after Zeno of Alexandria, who claimed that motion is impossible, because before you can go anywhere, you first have to get halfwat there, and before you can get halfway there... Probably the most obviously wrong idea in the history of maths.