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Doctor Who and the Martin of Doom - or is it the other way round?
Life influencing/imitating Art in Doctor Who Unbound: Deadline

Introduction

The idea of using the events and stimuli of lived experiences as a basis for writing and narrative is not a new one. The most shoplifted book in the world, the Bible, consists of the writings of many holy figures and the lives connected to them through centuries of lived experiences of those figures and those lives. Narratives of the Grunge fiction movement in the 1990s focused heavily on first person narration, and often possess aspects based on the lived experiences of the author. Similarly, the work of Robert Gray, as we saw in class two weeks ago, uses the author’s feelings towards and his experiences and relationship with his father in the creation of some of his works. Such writing differs from pure autobiography, as it is not a chronicle of one’s life, rather the treatment of the subject in a more creative way. In terms of Structuralist theory, whereas autobiography tells the life story in concrete language – hard, fast, immutable but by its own admission, and therefore closed to interpretation – poems and works such as Gray’s tell of a life in poetic language – soft, ponderous, fluidic, & therefore open to interpretation (Mukarovsky, 17). This in turn lends itself to the Queer theory idea of “polymorphous identifications” (Evans and Gammon, 218)- the reading, interpreting, decoding and experiencing of a text in a diverse number of equally valid ways.

In the spirit of these ideas, I will be examining the original Doctor Who Unbound audio play, Deadline. The Doctor Who Unbound plays, released in 2003, revolve around “What if?” scenarios that modify the accepted continuity and canon of Doctor Who. Deadline works around the idea, “What if Doctor Who was never made?”. Martin Bannister, failed television writer and nursing home resident, starts to think more of his great series creation that never got off the ground- Doctor Who. The 70-minute play follows him slipping between the worlds of his day to day life (including a strangely alluring yet patronizing nurse, an estranged son and grandson and an annoying fan) and of Doctor Who’s travels (with his faithful companions, including granddaughter Susan who sides with him always). When the two worlds start to merge, Martin finds himself unable to be accepted in either because of the other, and so leaves with Susan, writing his son, grandson and nurse “out of the story” (Shearman, Track 12). This paper will look at the idea of the author’s life influencing the writing from both sides- both as Martin influencing Doctor Who’s and Doctor Who influencing Martin’s. This is because, as presented, the story never definitively answers which character is “real”- Martin, or Doctor Who.

Breakdown and Similarities

Martin Bannister, once the Times’ seventh Most Promising Writer To Watch Out For, writer for stage and television, and husband and father, is now residing in a nursing home. He is unable to take care of himself, still writes, and mourns the loss of his cancelled-before-it-even-began science fiction series, Doctor Who. Recently a glowing green stain has appeared, shaped like a footprint and leading into his wardrobe. His son, Philip, visits to tell him that one of his second wife and Philip’s mother, Amy, has died. Martin merely mirthfully observes that his ex-wives are dying in the wrong order, and is jubilant to discover he has a grandson. He’s given up writing, one time his most important passion- much to the consternation of one of his fans. However, he discovers that his nurse shares the same name of one of his dreamt up Doctor Who characters. In fact, Doctor Who, his friends and his travels have been invading his dreams. The story opens with Susan’s teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright finding their way into Doctor Who’s as yet unnamed ship (Martin has yet to think of a name for it, only that it is an acronym that Doctor Who’s granddaughter Susan has invented). Martin continues to offer an extra-diegetic writing commentary on the characterisation of the Doctor, a creator looking down upon his work. However, it becomes clear this is not him writing, but a dream as Nurse Barbara wakes him, and he later confirms in Track 3 that he no longer writes. It is clear here that his real world experience of once writing for Doctor Who is, in essence, “writing back” to its creator by insinuating itself in his dreams. However, Martin’s life is soon again an influence that of the Doctor. When Doctor Who, Susan, Barbara and Ian share their first adventure in a petrified forest, Susan discovers glowing green footprints like the ones in Martin’s room, to which both Nurse Barbara and Traveling Barbara have the same response- “You mucky pup, that will take ages to clean up” (Shearman, Tracks 2/4). While this is another dream interrupted by a representative of the official Juliet Bravo magazine (a successful series for which Martin wrote the lowest rated 14 episodes), Martin does start writing Doctor Who again based on his dreams. His final trigger comes as Nurse Barbara mentions the word TARDIS – the missing name of Doctor Who’s ship – and sees more footsteps:

MARTIN: It comes out of the wardrobe, and it wants to kill me.

BARBARA: What does?

MARTIN: How should I know? I haven’t named it yet.

Deadline, Track 6.

Until this point, Martin’s new Doctor Who “writing”, while in his mind, is influenced by his life. Doctor Who, like Martin, possesses knowledge, skills and an outlook on life that are not shared by those around him. Both, while surrounded by people, feel they are alone and misunderstood. However, it is here that the line between Martin’s “factual” and Doctor Who’s “fictional” realities begin to blur, as Barbara sees not only the footprints and violent damage to Martin’s headboard, but also that his wardrobe is bigger inside than out, just like Doctor Who’s ship. Determined to gain protection from the wardrobe, his efforts to trap the creature inside yield only Doctor Who’s granddaughter Susan. This is Martin’s first “real” world shift in character, as he first rejects Susan, but then accepts both her and the idea of traveling in the TARDIS (Time And Random Destinations In Space). On this adventure, as Ian, Barbara and Susan lay dying from radiation poisoning, Doctor Who pledges to stop the evil Supreme One. The Supreme One chides him, stating he is only evil because he’s easier to write that way. More “reality” invades the fiction as Ian take on attributes of Philip, demanding to know why Doctor Who abandoned Philip and his mother. First, we had Martin subconsciously working his real world experiences into the “scripts” of Doctor Who in his minds, but now the scripts are writing back, and commenting on Martin’s life. Events in both worlds then force Martin to face his main problem as a writer- he doesn’t understand how people work. He left Philip and his wife Amy because they were boring, not exciting like the characters he wanted to produce; he misrecognises Nurse Barbara’s feeling for romantic rather than platonic; and finally, his grandson Tom rejects both Martin and Doctor Who. Martin cannot save any of his relationships in real life, and as such, Doctor Who cannot save his companions from the Supreme One when he does start writing again. In this way, he realises he needs a bit of reality. This is why he chooses Tom over Susan, as he “has the chance to develop.” However, as stated above, Tom rejects him because he tries to pull him with his friendly Doctor Who persona, and Tom tells him he “tries too hard to be his friend” (Shearman, Track 11). Fed up with misreading and hurting people, Martin retreats to the safety of his wardrobe/TARDIS, where he finds Susan, alive and well. Susan explains that the choice of his existence is now his. He can return to the world outside, where Phillip and Nurse Barbara can’t get into the wardrobe and are ordering him to come out, and where the wardrobe will simply become a wardrobe again. Alternatively, he can find and explore new worlds with Susan Who, his granddaughter. Philip and Barbara’s voices die down, and Martin/Doctor Who reveal that they have been written out of the story. The TARDIS takes off, leading Doctor and Susan Who to adventures that always have happy endings. So, the question is- W/who’s leading W/who?

Martin Bannister is real

Martin has roots in his world. A career that stretches back to the 1950s, three wives and a son in his wake, his Juliet Bravo legacy that is outside his original realm of experience and the fact that no one has heard of his scrapped series Doctor Who. All of these are verified by a voice of authority in the world. In Martin’s dreams and later writings of Doctor Who, he has clearly based the character of Doctor Who on himself- they sound alike, and in times of trouble act alike, such as Doctor Who’s indecision in the face of the Supreme One (who, in turn, sounds like Juliet Bravo journalist Sydney). There is no doubt that Doctor Who’s companions are based in real life. Barbara Wright is Martin’s nurse, Ian Chesterton comes from Martin’s son, Phillip (Ian looks like him, and at one point cries, “Why did you abandon my mother and me?… Doctor Who, you utter bastard!”(Shearman, Track 7)), and we later hear Martin’s scripted farewell to Susan mirrors his final conversation as he left his wife, Amy. In addition, the imaginary Susan is sure he is her grandfather, Doctor Who, and not Martin Bannister. As seen here, Martin is a real person, and Doctor Who his fictional alter ego. Taking this to its logical conclusion, Martin is delusional as Nurse Barbara reveals, the TARDIS really is just a wardrobe, and Martin ends the story having completely abandoned the real world.

Doctor Who is real

Doctor Who has a fractured past, buried in Martin’s memory. He’s possibly from Venus circa the 49th Century, though it’s more likely his specific origins are shrouded in mystery. He travels through the universe, righting wrongs and saving planets, with his granddaughter by his side, and sometimes with others. While it appears that Martin is the creator of Doctor Who, it could be that Martin is a fiction of Doctor Who. It is a focus of my thesis that the Doctor is apart from humans and doesn’t fully understand them, as Martin doesn’t. Martin could be Doctor Who trying to live in a stable world, but finding himself drawn back to exploring as he cannot function in the human world. In this case, however, he seems unaware that he is Doctor Who, so for Doctor Who to be real, Martin must be held here under duress- possibly by the Supreme one. Another alternative is that Martin is an expression of Doctor Who’s doubts of his own ability, as typified by his uncertainty when confronted by the Supreme One in Track 7. Whichever, his original personality works through his subconscious. As a result, his adventures come to him in his sleep (Tracks 1/4), and also encroach on Martin’s waking world. Whenever Susan is in the nursing home, she is trying to entice Doctor Who into his home, back to his reality. Most glaringly, Doctor Who seems to have some power over this land of fiction.1 When he takes his final trip into the wardrobe, it first seems he was wrong and it’s not the TARDIS after all. However, it does open up into the TARDIS, and it becomes his choice as to the life he wants to lead- his ultimate choice. He has only to will it in order to break free, or to stay in the more stable world of the nursing home. His Martin persona is frightened, but as Doctor Who comes to the fore, he writes Martin’s life out of his story, and elects to travel on as Doctor Who, with his granddaughter Susan.

Conclusion

In one reality, Martin is a failed voice of authority, an Other trying to write back to the Center. His writing fails in characterisation as he failed in his understanding of people. As Rhodes would put it, “The Word [Centre] recognises but wants to control queertext’s [the Other’s] voice” (389)- and the Centre succeeds.

In the other, Doctor Who is an authority figure who works, literally brought (back) into being through an act of performative speech. Doctor Who is the Otherly authority figure that does stand up against the Centre. In literary terms, he recognises the voice of the Centre, and wants no harm to come to it (Rhodes, 389; Shearman, Track 12). He knows that he create a new centre, which is still an Other, still distinct and just as valid as the Centre he left behind.

I don’t have a definitive answer for who is real out of Martin Bannister and Doctor Who. While it may seem Martin to be the real and for Doctor Who to be the imagined, I personally feel that Martin is a product of Doctor Who’s mind, either chosen or forced. The final scene is of Martin escaping and blocking out the (illusory) world of the nursing home, not just of Martin toiling in the claustrophobic wardrobe. He has a new vigour only seen in Doctor Who’s persona, as he becomes Doctor Who once more. This does, however, beggar a question for another paper- is it this Land of Fiction that Doctor Who is an outcast from, or is this escape from the nursing home part of series of ongoing adventures? But, as I say, that is for another time…

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Bibliography

Evans, C. and L. Gamman (2004). “Reviewing Queer Viewing”. Queer Cinema, The Film Reader. H. Benshoff and S. Griffin, eds. New York, Routledge: 209-224.

Mukarovsky, J. (1964). Standard Language and Poetic Language. Garvin, ed.

Rhodes, J. (2004). “Homo origo: The queertext manifesto.” Computers and Composition 21: 387-390.

Shearman, R. (2003) Doctor Who Unbound: Deadline. Berks: Big Finish Productions. [Audio Drama on CD]

Doctor Who (1963). Television series. London: BBC. Episodes:

The War Games (1969). Written by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks. Directed by David Maloney.

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