And just like that, she’s gone.
Not Liz Truss, who has discovered that although Janet Brown made it look easy during the eighties, it’s a tough job being a Thatcher impersonator. No, I’m referring to the impending (at time of writing) regeneration of yet another Doctor Who.
If I’m honest, I don’t entirely approve of this modern trend of ‘set your watch by them’ regenerations. In the old days things were much more random – a bit like schoolchildren used to memorise the wives of Henry VIII, so the departures of the old-school Doctors take some remembering (“sacked, typecasting, couldn’t get a rise, resigned, car park, Powell never replies”, something like that). Whereas nowadays there’s a definite pattern of three series, a handful of specials, and you’re out.
On the plus side, if you like that sort of thing, any six year olds getting into Doctor Who when it came back in 2005 will already have seen four regenerations, this latest being their fifth. Whereas I was not-quite three and still on Bagpuss and Bod when Jon Pertwee left, meaning I was almost in secondary school before I saw my first change (Tom Baker falling to his death saving the universe) and into puberty for my second.
Since I seem to be in a moaning mood, I don’t really approve of these new-fangled triumphant regenerations either – by which I mean they have all taken place with the Doctor actually looking pretty healthy, stood up and walking around in just the way I imagine people at death’s door don’t tend to, and with plenty of time to make long goodbye speeches (or in the case of David Tennant, what felt like a never-ending farewell tour).
For all my fifty-something grumbling however, I’m still excited, although I have to confess I’ve never yet felt the sadness that apparently a lot of people feel when a Doctor leaves – that has always been far outweighed by the excitement of a new one coming in. My main memory of the night of David Tennant’s finale, as he finally succumbed to his fate and exploded into death saving Bernard Cribbins, is not of reliving in my head the thrilling excitement of that action-packed, fan-pleasing hour-and-a-bit episode – no, it’s of logging on to the BBC website straight afterwards to watch the action-packed, fan-pleasing minute-and-a-bit trailer showing clips of incoming Matt Smith’s ‘Coming Soon’ debut season.
“The old man must die” says a character in Jon Pertwee’s final adventure (in an accent and in make-up which we’d nowadays call questionable, but let’s leave that for now) – “and the new man will discover to his inexpressible joy that he has never existed.” That’s probably why Doctor Who is still around all these years later – not just because of the brilliant idea of being able to ‘in story’ replace and refresh the lead, but because it’s always moving forward. That’s certainly why I maintain that new Doctor Who is always more exciting than old, because every time you sit down to a new episode there’s the possibility it will be the best one they’ve ever done.
So although I’ll no doubt be complaining if a perfectly healthy Jodie fireworks away on Sunday night after giving us her equivalent of an Oscar acceptance speech, I’ll still be watching. Excited for the regeneration and excited to see what’s next.
It’s quite a thing to think that, give or take a day or six, this latest regeneration is going out exactly fifty-six years after the very first one. All these years later it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to watch that at the time – but the impossible effect of turning the face of William Hartnell into that of Patrick Troughton remains one of the most convincing and jaw-dropping sequences the show has ever done. An eerily darkened TARDIS, the sound of the time machine’s engines, a blazing light engulfing the Doctor’s face…
And just like that, he’s gone.
Andrew Curnow's Ramblings 