The Oxford University Doctor Who Society Magazine TThhee TTiiddeess ooff TTiimmee Issue 29 Easter Vacation 2004 BUFFY AND THE BRITISH Star Trek The Prisoner The career of Brian Clemens … …and something called Doctor Who , apparently. The Tides of Time 29 • 1 • Easter Vacation 2004 The Tides of Time Shorelines IIIIIIIssssssssuuueee 222999 EEEaaasssstttteeerrrr VVVaaaccccaaattttiiiiiiiooonnn 222000000444 By the Editor Editor Matthew Kilburn Turn of the Tide? [email protected] This issue of The Tides of Time is being published within a few weeks of the SubSubSub-Sub ---EditorEditor Alexandra Cameron cancellation of Angel by the WB Executive Editor Matthew Peacock network in the USA. The situation may Production Associate Linda Tyrrell have moved on by the time that you read this, but in this second week of March, it looks impossible that any other US broadcaster will be willing to Contents commission a new series. The WB have said that they would like to What a Piece of Work is Man 4 commission Angel TV movies to air Sophia Woodley says why she likes Star Trek during the 2004/05 season, but Joss Whedon has pointed out that his cast and crew may all have other, regular A Beginner’s Guide to The Prisoner 6 jobs by then which would prevent Daniel Saunders is not a number. He is a free man! them from taking up any one-off engagements. Thus, after seven years, the universe that Joss Whedon What really happened to Beagle 2 13 unleashed upon the telefantasy-viewing Exclusive visual evidence from Alex Cameron public with Buffy the Vampire Slayer looks as if it is being laid to rest. Joss My Nights with REG 14 himself is concentrating on his feature Paul Dumont examines Scream of the Shalka film, Serenity , a sequel to his short-lived series Firefly – and his experiences with Firefly were enough, by any account, to Slay up, and slay the game! 16 deter anybody from trying to make How Buffy gets Britain, by Matthew Kilburn fantasy television for a major US network. Wiles Thing! 24 A look at John Wiles’s period as producer of Doctor Who Brian Clemens 26 James Davies marks the achievements of this writer-producer How does Doctor Who entertain? 30 Asking the question, Daniel Saunders Grendel of Gracht 34 Matthew Kilburn looks at Tara`s chief villain Joss Joss Whedon Published in March 2004 by the Oxford University Doctor Who Society. Several other fantasy and science fiction PRESIDENT Brian Larkin (Christ Church). SECRETARY Dewi Evans series in recent years dependent upon (Brasenose). TREASURER Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson (Balliol). American finance have had curtailed Copyright in article texts remains with the original contributors. This lives. I know little of Jake 2.0 , but gather magazine is a work of homage and there is no intention to violate the that is an infamous cancellation. I saw copyrights held by BBC Worldwide Ltd, Viacom, Twentieth Century some of Now and Again , now a few years old, late at night on ITV1 – a bit Fox, Mutant Enemy, Canal + Image, ITV plc, or any other copyright flat but promising, and killed off before holders. its time. The most infamous case is Republished online in July 2010 at tidesoftime.wordpress.com Farscape . I didn’t manage to follow The Tides of Time 29 • 2 • Easter Vacation 2004 it, but saw the occasional episode, Doctor Who understood as long circuit. Nowadays every episode has and wished it was screened at a time ago as Verity Lambert’s period at been released on VHS at one point when I wasn’t cooking or addicted to a the helm. The works of Joss or another, the colour serials have news programme. In hindsight, Whedon have provided a missing been repeated endlessly on UK considering its vulnerability as an link, reminding Doctor Who ’s Gold, and the stories are now international co-production, it might makers of what it can do for them appearing in enhanced form on have been a miracle that it lasted as and for us. This is the real thing – DVD. Most of the freshers of long as it did – and if so, it’s a greater let’s look forward to it. 2005 will have been three years one that it’s back in production, even as old or thereabouts when a four-episode miniseries, going it alone Old Management ‘Survival’ aired in 1989 – when I on the sound stages of Sydney, without ‘This is an undergraduate magazine. was that age I was watching ‘The former backers the Sci-Fi Channel. It needs new blood.’ Time Warrior’, and had the Baker-Hinchcliffe-Holmes era to I had wondered if the right moment for I couldn’t agree more with what the resurrection of Doctor Who might look forward to. With the Mat wrote in the last issue, in exception of a warm spring be when the American telefantasy October 2002 – but in the absence evening in 1996, this generation boom ended. I remember watching the of new blood, an older vintage will telefantasy scene change in the mid- have to do. of undergraduates have grown up 1990s, as the partly nostalgia-led covers in a desert for mass audience of TV Zone , with their Doctor Who Long-term readers will notice a few Who . For lots of them, Doctor and Blake’s 7 stars interspersed with changes to The Tides of Time . Who simply isn’t familiar; for those of Star Trek: The Next Firstly, the magazine is now turning some others, it is a piece of Generation , gave way to Mulder and up in pigeonholes or being retro-chic. Scully, to John Sheridan and Londo delivered through letterboxes Mollari. British broadcasters didn’t give unsolicited. With the Society being up entirely on fantasy subjects, but they much smaller than it once was, we struggled to match the genre to the can afford to produce a substantial uniform depressing realism that seemed magazine, if less lavish than in recent to be the hallmark of 1990s British years, and deliver it to members television drama. The only one that I without them having to hand over found to have succeeded was their cash. Secondly, instead of Ultraviolet , with its tight camerawork, being published in A4 size, we are urban locations and dedicated now A5. Very long-term readers performances, combined with a light will remember that Tides was surefootedness. Ultraviolet failed to published in this size for six of the Russell T. Davies continue because its creators had failed first seven issues. to maintain the interest of Channel There has, of course, been plenty of Four’s senior management during a It’s my recollection that when Tides new material. The various lines of period of high executive turnover started its first editor, Louise books and the Big Finish CDs are across all British broadcasters. Dennis, wanted to distribute it free, deserving of credit for making sure funded from the Society bank that new Doctor Who stories Doctor Who looks as if it will not have account, but the idea was vetoed by continued to be told on a this trouble. There seems to be stability the committee. Fourteen years on, professional basis – but they haven’t at BBC ONE and BBC drama at the we live in more enlightened times. been part of mainstream culture in moment, and those who are there Proof of this is that Lorraine the same way as a television series show every sign of commitment to Heggessey made good on the hints can be. The webcasts have acted as making the new series of Doctor Who Mat mentioned on page 27 of the advance raiding parties, reaching a success. The decline in the number of last Tides , and commissioned a new people who might not have bought American productions may mean that series of Doctor Who for BBC the books or CDs, and proving that audiences are more open than they ONE. Funnily enough, one of the there is still an audience out there may have been a few years ago to writers of the new series was for the Doctor. The macro-ecology British-produced telefantasy. British pictured getting married on page 28 of Doctor Who is being programme-makers have had their eyes – congratulations again, Paul transformed by Russell T. Davies, opened, too, by the critical acclaim Cornell. Julie Gardner, Mal Young and their received by Buffy . No longer will we be team. I look forward to seeing what expected to warm to the ponderous Forgive me if I start to ramble. they do (indirectly) to the micro- self-conscious seriousness that dogged Fourteen years ago there were only ecology of DocSoc. Invasion Earth or The Last Train . It’s a handful of Doctor Who stories possible to illustrate themes and tell released on video cassette; part of stories about the hard facts of human the appeal of the Society was access life and enjoy the fun of a fantasy to childhood memories setting – Buffy has demonstrated this to rediscovered through the fan video the sceptical, and it’s something that The Tides of Time 29 • 3 • Easter Vacation 2004 What a Piece of Work is Man The appeal of STAR TREK GROWING UP as a Star Trek fan in A merica, I was at ‘Best of Both Worlds’ ( TNG ), the appeal is the the mercy of the schedule of my local PBS station, and same. I would love Star Trek no matter how it thus had only seen a couple of episodes of Doctor looked. Who . So it was not until I became the girlfriend of a Doctor Who fan that I decided that I had better see 2) Really cool technobabble what it was that I had missed.