Excerpts from a speech and interview given by Mark Strickson, who played companion Vislor Turlough in the '80s:
The problem with Doctor Who is that it isn’t real acting. It does get very boring actually, because by necessity it is two-dimensional acting. You can’t have a depth of character because it’s a comic strip. […]
When American science fiction fans watch it, they roar with laughter. I suppose it is a comedy. If you try to look logically at Doctor Who you have to look very hard.
I pick these parts out because they line up pretty well (although superficially) with the most recent episode where the Doctor is actually turned into an animated character, but particularly the last sentence feels like a harder jab at the mindset of Who fandom than the depiction of fans in “Lux”.
To be fair, Strickson offers suggestions to add more character depth, following the first quoted paragraph:
You think, why can’t Turlough and Tegan, or Turlough and Nyssa have a relationship of some kind? Indeed, why can’t Turlough have a proper relationship with the Doctor? Why can’t they talk? Why can’t they sit down in the TARDIS to talk about what they’re going to eat that day. I think in a sense it would be an improvement to Doctor Who if you saw a bit of their domestic life on the TARDIS. It might be a bit less action, more humour, and a bit more personal human interest.
Surely, turning Who into a kitchen sink drama in the mid-'80s would have put an end to the show sooner than actually happened 😄 But it is worth noting that a similar sort of base level interaction did sneak into the show in the form of soapier drama from 2005 onward…
Read the transcript, there are loads of entertaining anecdotes from Doctor Who production in the early 1980s!
Interesting perspective, and one that I think is much more applicable to Classic Who, which was made very differently than the '05 iteration. RTD’s first era shook things up with its “companion first” approach and single-episode stories.
Some of the issues weren’t exactly unique to DW, though. Star Trek: The Next Generation started in the late 80s, and its characters are largely cardboard cutouts, especially in the earlier years. Depth of character was very rare before the late 90s.
Oh, for sure this applies more to pre-Wilderness Who, and as you say — it was a convention of the times. I still think this history has some relevance for the current production.
It sort of has a free pass to be ridiculous and riff rather freely on its own lore, because even through the '60s, '70s and '80s writers were making stuff up as they went along. That’s a freedom that Star Trek doesn’t have to the same degree, because there is a more (but not entirely) established continuity.
For example, I’m pretty certain Who could have gotten around the Disco Klingon redesign much easier than Trek did. I mean, how many times have the Cybermen changed their appearance without explanation? Or the Master? 😄
I’m pretty certain Who could have gotten around the Disco Klingon redesign much easier than Trek did.
Why do you have to give me flashbacks like that?
Well, I liked the Klingons in Discovery season 1 🤷 Totally on board with the more alien look!
In terms of the makeup, I prefer the season two refinements. But I really like the cultural depiction of the Klingons in season one.
