The Gween-Eyed Monster

Jealousy, or Envy, is apparently one of the seven deadly sins, taking its place alongside Gluttony, Pestilence, John, Paul, George and Ringo. With the news slowly trickling out about next year's brand spanking new series of our favourite TV show, I have felt a variety of things. Pride, delight, boyish excitement... Giddy as a schoolboy, to quote from the third Indiana Jones film. But I have also felt, shame on me, just a touch of envy.

In last month's DWM we found out the names of the writers for the new series. RTD we already knew of course, and to be honest there weren't any real surprises in the remainder of the line-up. It was very exciting, for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, there was the fan's delight in just knowing something new - for fourteen years and more, something 'new' has generally meant facts unearthed about the series' past, such as what people really thought of William Hartnell, and where Tom Baker got his jelly-babies from. But now something new really is something NEW and it perhaps reminds us of just how exciting it used to be when the show was on air each and every year.

Secondly, there was legitimate fan pride, the swelling of the Whovian bosom (as it were) at how seriously the new series is being taken by all concerned. Am I the only one to have noted how many different awards the various writers have amassed between them during their careers? And quite part from all that, it was also rather nice to finally find out what Stephen Moffat (the man who wrote a children's programme that genuinely was too good for children, namely "Press Gang") actually looks like. But, was it just me who felt a little twinge of jealousy as my eye slid down that page, adding a sense of, "I wish it was me..." to the proceedings? Maybe it was, maybe nobody else thinks such dark thoughts. If that is the case, dear reader, then by now you will probably be like Romana in the narrative from the "Shada" video release - that is to say, appalled!!!

Maybe it's a feature of getting old (he typed one-handed, while reaching for his violin with the other) that not only do you start to notice how young the police seem to be these days, but you also start to see fame and adulation being awarded to people younger than you. As a child it never seems (or at least, speaking personally, it never seemed) to be an issue, as the gulf between 'normality' and 'fame' is no greater than that of 'child' and 'adult'. Plus of course at that age you have the comfort blanket of "when I grow up I'm going to be..." But when you are grown up (well, age-wise at least - who was it that said there's no point being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?) and you haven't become a train-driver (an ambition I shared at the age of 8 with the Doctor) or, more to the point, a world-famous author/actor/director, it starts to dawn on you that maybe you never will be.

It's alright, I'm not having a moan as such, more a confessional if anything. Forgive me father, I have had impure thoughts about a TV show... It's just that occasionally something comes along that makes you stop and think, and perhaps remember, as it were, what you wanted to be when you grew up. What has brought me up short on this occasion, I think, is the fact that some at least of the current writing team for "Doctor Who" are for the first time (TV-wise) of 'my' generation. Paul Cornell was still watching Doctor Who, just as I was, when the McCoy era aired; Mark Gatiss is a few years older, but is by no means old enough to be my father.

It's not just the new series, although I think that has perhaps heightened my awareness of the issue recently. Last night I finished the EDA "The Space Age" (yes, I know it was published in May 2000 and that makes me just under 4 years late - so I'm a slow reader, what can I say) and I find from the 'About the Author' section that Steve Lyons is 35 this year. By a simple effort of mental calculation (and the aid of this calculator here) I can work out that when his first NA was published (the nifty "Conundrum" which led to the even more nifty "Head Games" which is just a thing of wonder, and not only because of the cover) he was 24. Nearly 9 years younger than I am now. "The Space Age" is his ninth book, one of his others being the finest Hartnell PDA, "Salvation", so he's certainly been a busy boy.

An even more galling statistic (if you're in the mood to be galled) is that Peter Davison was 29 when he became the fifth Doctor Who - to me at least he seemed old enough for it at the time, because I was only 11. But now I am actually older than he was then, and I have to confess, somewhat selfishly perhaps, that I wouldn't object to a job that offered such ample opportunities to wear celery in my lapel and save the universe. And that's before we even get onto the fringe benefit of sharing a police box with the mini-skirted Janet Fielding...

But before I appal you any further-- Or even worse, before I make you all smote your foreheads and curse, "He's right!" before then descending into a spiralling cycle of depression... Where was I? Oh yes, before things go any further along these lines, let me just clarify that I'm really not doing an Arnold, Arnold, Arnold, Rimmer from "Red Dwarf" where in one classic episode (season 3 I think) he bemoans the fact that he never got the chance to fulfil his potential, and so became a snivelling little weed (ie, the Rimmer we all know and, er, well the Rimmer we all know) rather than the heroic Space Commander Rimmer (ie, smoke me a kipper, skipper, I'll be back for breakfast). For one thing, I'm a lazy git ("know thy character flaws - admirable advice" as the Doctor didn't quite say in "Pyramids of Mars") so I could never finish a whole book. I mean to say, I've only just finished reading one that came out four years ago; how long would it take me to write one???

For another thing, you have to admire the application yes, but also the talent in the writers of the new Who - I'm not going to enumerate each and every one and their individual achievements, because if you're that interested you can go back and consult last month's DWM. Suffice it to say though that if they wanted to show off all their awards at the same time you would need a very long and very sturdy mantlepiece. But let's take Paul Cornell as an example, not now to do an, "I coulda been a contender" envy routine, but to sing his praises a bit instead. His first NA "Revelation" literally was a turning point in what you could do with a Doctor Who novel, and in many ways what you could do with Doctor Who. His subsequent books are among the best Doctor Who fiction around - "Love & War", "Human Nature", "Happy Endings"... They all push the boundaries of what you can do with the show, and with the character, but still somehow manage to keep it recognisably our show. Above all they make us love the Doctor, not because he is the perfect hero, but because he isn't. Read the last few pages of any of those books (better still, read the whole book) and you will find them really very moving. Now, laziness aside, I could sit in front of a blank sheet of paper for a whole year, and never come up with anything of that calibre or depth.

My daughter tells me this week, in that serious way that children sometimes employ when delivering absurd dialogue (a talent shortly to be practised by Christopher Ecclestone I'm sure) that she thinks she'll be a dancer when she grows up. Or a vet. Maybe she will, maybe she won't, but there comes a time (in the life of man...) when we perhaps all have to face up to, if not our limitations, at least to our restrictions. I never wanted to be an office manager-cum-accounts clerk-cum-salesman-cum-purchaser-cum-packer & shipper; but that is what I am (although goodness knows how I'll ever fit that on my CV if and when the time comes). It's not a bad job, and I'm very lucky to work with familiar faces and a nice boss (I have to say that in case he's reading this). But - and this is going to be terribly vain I think but it's a bit late to turn back now - but just occasionally the realisation that it isn't the sort of work that gets eagerly speculated about in the popular press or in fan circles, gets you down: "Old Bert is retiring... And the new shipping clerk could be a woman!" "Sales Order Confirmations, the Further Advice Notes - Orders too broad and too deep for the small PC screen." Maybe in a sense it harks back to our good friend Mr Perrin, although I don't want you to think I'm starting to link my columns, when he bemoans what will be carved on his tombstone: "Here lies Reginald Iolanthe Perrin; he didn't know the names of the flowers and the trees, but he knew the rhubarb crumble sales for Schleswig-Holstein."

A curious twist in the tale... Even while thinking about the content of this column, and for 'thinking' please read whingeing on and on (oh! - and on and on and on, my wife has just suggested. Hmm...) about this, a further thought has struck me. Having spent this time bemoaning my anonymity, and the fairly minimal degree to which I am being consulted on the new series of Doctor Who (have they spoken one word to me about the costume design or the lighting rigs? - they have not!) it suddenly occurs to me that perhaps I am the lucky one after all.

Think about it. When the new series hits the screens in early 2005 (and for what it's worth I think it'll be January/February time rather than September/October) it will be, for us fans, the beginning of a brand new adventure. But by that time, for Messrs Davies, Cornell, Moffat, Gatiss, and Shearman, fans all by their own admission, it will surely be the end of it. For the next nine-twelve months it is their time, and I'm quite sure that during it they will do wonders with what we think of as "Doctor Who" - but after that, when it finally airs, it will belong for evermore to us fans. They will surely always see it as a series of scenes which evoke memories of the production - they might remember filming such and such a scene, or arguing furiously over a particular line of dialogue, or the fun they had persuading Ecclestone to wear a frock coat and have his hair permed. On the other hand, the rest of us will see, first and foremost, a new Doctor emerging from the TARDIS into a brand new adventure.

And maybe that is an opportunity in itself.

P.S. I don't like to write Doctor Who columns as a rule - for one thing, Si Hunt is already doing an amazing job of somehow shedding a new and refreshing light on every story, at a website not that far away... However, given that this one clearly is an exception to the rule, any non-fans (aka philistines) reading the above may be baffled by some of the abbreviations used. If there's one thing we Doctor Who fans love it's a good acronym, and many's the battle of wits that has taken place until the man or woman who can reel of the full definitions of TOMTIT, SIDRAT and IDBI, has proven themselves the winner. With that in mind, it may assist the reading of the above if I elaborate as follows: RTD is short for Russell T Davies, executive producer and writer for the new series (and general all round wit, if his columns in DWM are anything to go by); DWM is Doctor Who Magazine; NA is New Adventure, a series of books featuring the seventh Doctor; EDA is Eighth Doctor Adventure, a series of books featuring... well, you can probably work that much out for yourself can't you; PDA is Past Doctor Adventure, a series of books featuring any Doctor other than the eighth.

Oh and, yes, TOMTIT, SIDRAT and IDBI are all genuine abbreviations.

And finally, TARDIS is a blue box which is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and which can travel anywhere in the universe of time and space, taking its occupants to new and dazzling adventures on a myriad of worlds. No honest, it's true!! Just wait and see...