Love and Monsters

Doctor Who fans can be pretty stupid. Not just because they often object to their own show, a show that has been so different over forty years that it verges on blind stupidity to claim that it somehow isn't enough like itself as it should be. Not just because they object violently and abusively and snap at the very hand that feeds them, seemingly being of the belief that their show actually being off the air is preferable to it being seen by millions but not being made to their exact specifications. But mainly because they often hate it for the wrong reasons.

I suppose in deciding that those fans that pulled apart "Love and Monsters" last night are wrong, first I should look at the Doctor Who I dislike myself, and question why I don't like it. Okay, there is badly made Doctor Who. I LOVE lots of this, but I guess THAT would be a good reason not to like it. Doctor Who that tries to create an alien world using four large green sheets and a photo of some rocks. "Love & Monsters" isn't badly made - it tosses off a superb, Star Wars quality monster in it's opening five minutes, a monster that any classic series episode (hell, any episode of anything, ever... it's that good!) would kill for, and we never see it again. As usual with this series, the effects, camera work and script are all as tight as Elton's pert bottom as he leans over to repair Jackie's washing machine. Why else would you hate Doctor who? Perhaps if it ripped the wee out of YOU, and insulted you as a viewer. "Love & Monsters" was all about, essentially, a Doctor Who fan group. It wasn't even a euphemism - L.I.N.D.A literally met to talk about the Doctor, and they were all slightly odd, shy people who Elton later suggested didn't have much of a life outside of their search for the Doctor. And yet they were a GOOD THING. They were everything good about fans. They are kind, caring, loving people and after meeting a few times they found they were just as adept at enjoying other shared interests as Doctor Who. What Elton tried to tell us at the end, if anyone was listening in their haste to jump onto OG and slag off the writer for penning this "crap", was that life isn't predictable. It isn't all babies, and mortgages and living happily ever after - it's harder than that, colder but ultimately it's BETTER. You won't turn into characters from "Friends", and thus real life is about people like Ursula and Mr Skinner. And you know what, they are BETTER people. We ought to have been proud of the characters in this episode.

So why else might fans hate this episode of "Doctor Who"? Well perhaps because of that oft-mentioned objection that it's becoming too "soapy", too much about Earth and Rose's family. To hate "Love & Monsters" for anything close to this reason tends to suggest an odd aversion to drama itself; you know, people who actually feel and have emotions. Because Doctor Who shouldn't actually stimulate the emotions should it? We're scared of someone actually daring to FEEL! It should be about a bloke who bumps into monsters and gets locked up and lives to fight another day. Again, and again, and again. These fans are relentless and unforgiving. They get their monsters, and their running around, and their sonic screwdriver in spades. But when we got the odd occasion when we have a story that is about something a little bit different, then they're up in arms. Jackie Tyler was the best thing about "Love and Monsters". Jackie's that rare thing, a living, breathing character. Like Steve Coogan's wonderful Alan Partridge, you somehow believe she is still living her life somewhere even on the weeks when we don't get to see her. Partially thanks to episodes like this one which show RTD's Doctor Who exists in a world where if we could just linger a while on Earth after the TARDIS has dematerialised, we'd see that life is still going on. Jackie is washing her socks and waiting patiently for the telephone to ring. Camille used her few minutes last night to give us the understated performance of the series, hilariously trying to seduce Elton with her wine trick and slutty skirt (a fit young man repairing the washing machine; who wouldn't?). The script then effortlessly guides us through various emotions from making us mentally cheer when Elton decides like many before him that, you know what, stuff what other people have told him he should be doing, he likes this girl so he's going to go for it! For him! To making us shout "Oh no!" when it all goes wrong and then sad when Jackie gets her heart broken. Because she doesn't get a chance of happiness that often, and just for once she thought someone was interested in her. Now, who doesn't want a Doctor Who that's that can be this sad, funny and heart wrenching in the space of a few scenes?

However, there were a few, understandable reasons why you could dislike "Love & Monsters". Peter Kay's not-really-trying performance as Victor Kennedy skated the right side of parody, but only just. He seemed to get away with it in this episode because it was all a re-telling anyway, and seemed suited to the kind of style that might have seen some events replayed twice slightly differently, with Elton interrupting the telling every now and again to correct his misremembered anecdotes (perhaps accompanied by the comedy sound of a gramophone stylus being ripped away from its turntable), it was that kind of a story. Even so, one felt taking the monster more seriously (and not giving him a Bolton accent) wouldn't have hindered the story. You could understand people not liking it because the Doctor wasn't in it much - even though you'd have to be an intolerant runt to say the least, if you can't go 45 minutes in ten weeks without spending every moment of a story with your beloved hero. Possibly the ending, with Elton's Mum, was a little too transparent in its attempt at tugging our heartstrings. And... no, I can't think of any other reason why anyone could hate "Love & Monsters". Why hate any episode of Doctor Who at all, unless it was boring, shoddily made or insulting to the viewer, none of which applied to this very unique slice of Who.

So why was it so hated in certain corners? Glimpsing through the comments, it's not completely obvious because very few people failed to give reasons (which you'd surely have to do if you were slating someone who'd brought back your favourite series after fifteen years and made it the biggest thing on telly... unless you were an ignorant idiot, that is). One person said the "style" didn't suit the series (see earlier, forty years worth of varying styles and not room for one more?), one person didn't like it because his parents gave him funny looks (give me strength!) and most people on OG, a festering pit of people who seem to gang together to rid the world of the most respected supporter of "their" series in the TV Industry, just said it was "crap", "twaddle" and the like, without giving reasons. People who are berated for scorning those that hate the new series (and it's safe to say I'm now off the Christmas Card lists of most of them) might like to remind their accusers that approximately half of those polled thought this was one of the worst episodes ever, but as ever very few of them said why. The prosecution box is empty, and you can hear a pin drop in court as the case for the defence rests.

The reason is that "Love & Monsters" is hated for all the wrong reasons. It's hated because it dared to be different, because it featured a main character who people didn't bother to stop and try and understand before branding him an insult to themselves, no better than Whizzkid from "Greatest Show", as somebody said (yet Elton was well dressed, not unattractive, popular and kind). But most of all it's hated because it was written by the man they love to hate, simply for the crime of stamping his own "agenda" (the word now feels like an insult because they have used it as one so often, like it's a bad thing...) on the series, a ploy, by the way, which has hauled in seven million more regular viewers than any script written by any of these supposed "fans". People decided they'd hate this last week, and couldn't wait to be proven right. I doubt they ever stopped to think that perhaps the series needs to be different to thrive, that it might be better to have something never done before than another base-under-siege story, even though Russell gave you two weeks of exactly that last time. That if you paid attention, you might actually be enriched by a Doctor Who as funny, thought provoking and heart-warming as "Love & Monsters". If it had been written as a New Adventure by Paul Cornell in 1994, everyone would have loved it.

Oh, and an emotionally-based RTD script about Doctor Who fans, and not a single person in it was gay. So much for that agenda.