The real story
February 12th, 2009 | by Ben Hoare |My wife and I share a conflict of opinion about Doctor Who.
She doesn’t like it, because in every episode the monsters nearly kill the humans but they get away in the end.
I like it, because in spite of that it tells me a believable story about a lonely man.
Which of us is right? Perhaps both (they’re just opinions, after all). But reading The Writer’s Tale recently, I was interested to see the show’s current head writer, Russell T Davies, describe precisely this conflict.
He explains how, as a new episode begins to take shape, two stories converge and start to fight for space. One of the stories is about the monsters, while the other is about the people:
“I’m glad to have started, though worried by what’s to come. I had a fair bit of Cybermen-in-Victoriana worked out, but this two Doctors story, the real story, is so strong that it’s sort of knocking out everything else.”
I’ve stuck with the show because, in spite of the hackneyed formula of the key characters nearly dying in every episode, the overarching examination of human nature continues to engage me. Davies’ comment above, about 2008’s Christmas Special, plays out this conflict between formulaic monster plots and emotionally engaging human storylines.
I’m intrigued by his notion that the second storyline, about the relationship between two people, is “the real story” - as though the other story, about the Cybermen (the monsters) is just a means to an end.
When I was putting together the page about my story, ‘A Cadence‘, I toyed with various ways of describing the tale.
One obvious way would be to describe its elements - it’s a story about two princes and a mermaid. This conveys something of what the story contains.
Another way is to outline its themes - in this version, it’s a “not-so-fairy tale about stupidity, beauty, grief and revenge.”
Which is better? Perhaps neither. But I might verbalise this as Davies does his own stories. I might say: “It seems to be about fabulous creatures like mermaids, but really it’s about human qualities like stupidity and vanity.”
But in the end, I realise that the storyteller’s tools are part of the story he’s telling. I can’t deny that Doctor Who is, on some level, about formulaic monster chases. You can’t pluck out the essence of a story without in some way destroying that story. The story is the whole thing - the monsters and the emotions.
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