Books
chronicling the history of Doctor Who
– both in front of the camera and behind-the-scenes – are ten-a-TARDIS.
Officially-licensed books tend to be rather bland ‘everything’s wonderful’ affairs
which regurgitate familiar anecdotes and making-of trivia efficiently enough
but with little in the way of real heart or passion for the subject. Then there
are the unofficial, independently-published books which can, in the right
hands, prick at the pomposity of the world’s longest-running science-fiction
series whilst simultaneously displaying and demonstrating a warm and palpable
love of this most curious and apparently-indefatigable show. Paul Kirkley’s Space Helmet for a Cow 2 (the first
volume dances merrily through Doctor
Who’s first twenty-six years on television) brings us up to date with the
show’s history in an amiable, often tongue-in-cheek, sometimes outrageous and occasionally
frustrating, look at the show’s fortunes in the years since it originally went
off air in 1989. Picking his way chronologically through key events in the intervening
years, Kirkley reminds us of those bleak, dark when Doctor
Who was an embarrassment the BBC would rather forget, through the brief
1996 Paul McGann resurrection and finally to 2005 and beyond as the series
resumed its place as an enduring and much-loved British cultural icon.
Kirkley’s text is hugely
irreverent in places – no-one is safe from his often-lacerating wit and no Who totem is left untarnished – and some
of his gags and wordplays are laugh out loud funny as he digs away at the
show’s shibboleths with relentless glee whilst also showing due reverence to
the passing of legends such as Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen, Mary Tamm and
Caroline John. More problematic is his approach to commentary on the episodes of
the new series. It’s clear that Kirkley is a shameless Moffat acolyte as he
finds it hard to bring himself to really criticise the work of the Great
Genius. His predecessor Russell T Davies gets much shorter shrift; whilst
acknowledging Davies’s success in reinventing the series for a 21st
century sensibility, he is much less forgiving when passing judgement on his
work on the series. He is happy to tear whole episodes and characters to shreds
and writes off several Christmas episodes as turkeys – yet, worryingly, he
finds much to enjoy in Moffat’s hopelessly-turgid 2011 Christmas special ‘The
Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe’. He even describes last year’s horribly-pointless
Yuletide episode ‘The Husbands of River Song’ as “a sweet little chaser to one of Doctor Who’s most widely-acclaimed
series in some time”, itself a curious observatiion in the light of seasons
nine’s plunging viewing figures and audience appreciaton. Where he does
identify recurring faults on Moffat’s efforts – overuse of the same tropes,
repeated memes, lazy rehashings of old ideas – they’re just dismissed with
comments such as “it’s churlish to criticise”, “but what the Hell…” and “we can
turn a blind eye.” What’s good for Moffat’s gander clearly wasn’t quite good
enough for Davies’s goose. Sadly the book’s fun value diminishes as the text
wears on and Kirkley seeks to climb further up inside his hero’s nether regions
as Doctor Who’s domestic stock
begins to drop as its once-fervent
audience starts to drift away. Moffat’s feeble and tiresome fairytale aesthetic
is repeatedly lauded as “adorable”, “magical” and “quintessential” and his
continual volte faces in outlining
his vision for the show (and its increasingly haphazard scheduling) are
accepted with uncommon good grace as further evidence of his unparalleled
genius. When deeply average season six mid-season finale ‘A Good Man Goes To
War’ is summed up as “45 minutes of confident, positively swaggering adventure
from a writer with the world at its
feet” you might well wonder if you’ve been watching the same programme for the last
few years. If nothing else you’ll be calling Kirkley’s judgment into question
(he’s even able to make excuses for the inexcusable – ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’) and
he brushes many episodes’ faults under the carpet because they look really
nice.
Moffat aggrandisement
aside, Space Helmet For a Cow 2 (the
title is lifted from a line of dialogue from the 1965 William
Hartnell story ‘The Time Meddler’…but you knew that, of course), there’s fun to
be had here and there in the dense, relentless text (it’s an unauthorised
publication so there are no pretty pictures to distract from the constant
fangasming) and Kirkley clearly knows his stuff, has a good turn of phrase and
a handy eye for a gag or a pun. If he’d just turned the Moffat love-in dial
down a bit, Space Helmet For a Cow 2 could
have been an essential commentary on the past twenty-odd years of Doctor Who but sometimes it can’t help
but read like a rather one-sided, starry-eyed, blinkered love-letter to a
tumultuous era in the show’s long history.
SPACE HELMET FOR A COW 2 / AUTHOR: PAUL
KIRKLEY / PUBLISHER: MAD NORWEGIAN PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
