It constantly surprises me how few people love Black Orchid. Yes, the plot is thin, and it relies on some very problematic disability/racial/colonialist/gender tropes from the time period it is set in. But – oh. It’s Doctor Who in the 1920’s! It’s a tiny slice of a murder mystery romp with cricket on the village green, cocktails and the Charleston.

And, I’ll admit, a big part of the reason I have an affection for it is because the TARDIS crew gets to dress up. I really am that shallow.

The opening is one of my favourites – in a clever bit of timing, the TARDIS arrives on the railway platform a moment after a train has come through. As the crew wander around the station, they are met by a chauffeur who has come to bring ‘the Doctor’ to play cricket on the village green. It’s one of those odd coincidences that the TARDIS does rather enjoy, doesn’t she?

Thanks to the Doctor’s topping performance on the cricket pitch, and Nyssa’s odd similarity to the daughter of the house, Ann Talbot, they are all invited back into the home of the Cranleighs, only to become enmeshed in a costume ball and a sinister mystery…

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A visual round up of the second decade of my Doctor Who blogging project. The 1970′s was the era of Pertwee and Baker, of mini-skirts and go-go boots, frilly skirts and long, trippable scarves.

(The 1960′s round up is here)

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Logopolis is one of my all time favourites. I used to watch it over and over as a child. Yes, really. The most melancholy, gloomy Doctor Who story of all time. I adored it.

Rewatching it recently with my family I was struck by the first episode in particular – how familiar all its beats were to me despite it being so unlike almost any other Doctor Who story ever.

There are three stories going in parallel. Firstly, the dark, irritable Fourth Doctor teaching Adric about block transfer computation (or alien maths as I explained it to my eight year old, don’t judge me!) and deciding to Move On With His Life After Romana. Never mind that Romana left him a whole serial ago, this is the story where we see the Doctor dealing with his loss, gazing mournfully into her room and muttering about how he always meant to fix the chameleon circuit with her (not to mention that when he needs to jettison a room, he chooses hers APPARENTLY AT RANDOM YEAH RIGHT).

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I’ve always been kind of fascinated by the history of costume design at the BBC – especially, let’s face it, where Doctor Who is concerned. In particular, the question of where borrowed costumes came from. Which is why when I knew Deb from Verity! would have an opportunity to interview June Hudson at the recent Gallifrey One convention, I begged her to ask for me – how exactly did that work? Was there a magic BBC wardrobe somewhere that all the old costumes went to die, until being recycled in new productions?

You have to listen to next week’s Verity! Extra to find out her answer… I am hoping for lots of good costumey gossip! In the mean time, the new Verity! episode has Erika, Deb, Lynne and Liz discussing The Curse of Fenric with great glee, gusto, distaste, and gasps of “YOU’RE WRONG!” Great stuff.

A little while back, while doing some research on June Hudson who was a costume designer for Blake’s 7 as well as Doctor Who, I found out two major reveals that blew my mind: Romana I’s frosted white fur hooded cloak from The Ribos Operation (Doctor Who) was also worn by Servalan in Project: Avalon. Also, Servalan’s black feathered number was later worn by Stellar’s mother in Dragonfire – notably in a scene where Ace poured a strawberry milkshake over her.

This little double anecdote of recycled Doctor Who fashion goodness has always pleased me, but then very recently I discovered an even more joyous source of such tidbits: an entire website devoted to costumes spotted in more than one production!
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Shada is the best known and more deeply beloved of any Doctor Who story that no one has ever actually watched.

Intended to screen as the final story of Season 17 (which had begun with the introduction of Lalla Ward as Romana II in Destiny of the Daleks), Shada’s production was cancelled partway through filming because of a strike at the BBC.

Perhaps under other circumstances it might have been forgotten, a footnote in the show’s history. But there were many elements which came together to form a kind of mythology about how magical this story was, and what a terrible loss it was to Doctor Who fans, that it continues to enjoy a kind of semi-canonical status.

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The regeneration of Romana at the beginning of Destiny of the Daleks was always something of an oddity. Mary Tamm had already left the show, and so the production team decided to go for humour rather than angst in the exchange of actresses.

Lalla Ward emerges, still wearing her Princess Astra dress (that’s quite a lot of trouble to go to for a sight gag, Romana, actual cosplay) and manages to bemuse the Doctor with her presence before mentioning quite casually that she is regenerating.

He is cross at her for blatantly copying the princess’s form, and her cavalier attitude that they’re not going back to Atrios so what does it matter?

(do all Time Lords borrow patterns from other existing people in the universe? Is that why Romana I looked so suspiciously like Princess Strella on Tara, has she done this before?? Does this explain the similarity between the First Doctor and the Abbott of Amboise, the Second Doctor and Salamander?)

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I have a couple of appearances scheduled this month, along with my GLITTERING BOOK LAUNCH for the first Livia Day novel, A Trifle Dead, on March 28th at the Hobart Bookshop.

This Sunday, I am presenting a paper (or, apparently, a SYMPOSIUM) at the Stranger With My Face Film Festival.

Sunday March 10 2013

MONSTERS AND MAD SCIENTISTS:
Female Villains and Monsters in 30 Years of Dr Who

WITH TANSY RAYNER ROBERTS

It’s the 50th anniversary of a TV show famous for debonair villains, invading aliens and all manner of scary (or slightly wobbly) monsters. But what about the women? Do Daleks or Cybermen become less intimidating if they’re female? Why did the Silurians change gender in the 21st century? Is it as simple as… the ugly monsters are male and the pretty ones are female? What are the secrets to creating complex, original monsters that aren’t played or voiced by male actors?

Tansy Rayner Roberts has a PhD in Classics and writes fantasy novels for a living. She also writes (and talks) a lot about Doctor Who.

SUNDAY 10 MARCH, 12.00 PM – 1.00 PM

Peacock Theatre, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart

Free but please book to ensure a seat and so we have an idea of numbers.

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Kate Elliott writes about strength, and writing “strong” characters, and how that ties into our societal preconceptions about the definitions of female vs. male strength. It’s a great post, and I highly recommend it.

There have been many additions in the last year to the conversation about strong female characters in SF/comics/movies and the problematic idea that ‘strong, female’ is so often defined as ‘acts in a traditionally masculine way while having a great rack.’ It’s a good conversation, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it, even though it feels like there isn’t a LOT left to say once you’ve read Kate Beaton’s take on the trope.

Kate raises a really interesting question, though, of the perceived strength of male characters. How far can we get from traditional masculine behaviour before our (male) hero starts to feel, well, not heroic enough? Why is it that so many beloved, ‘romantic’ male lead characters actually behave like arseholes?

What kind of role models are these heroes?

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1978 is not only the year in which I was born, but it also produced one of my all time favourite eras of Doctor Who. Having left Leela behind on Gallifrey to indulge in her gratuitously discreet romance with the guard Andred (in one of the most derided leaving scenes of all time), the Doctor was happy to put his feet up, but the universe had other ideas.

The White Guardian, one half of the two greatest powers in the galaxy, has given him a quest, to assemble the crystalline, transformative segments of the Key to Time. He also provides the Doctor with a new ‘assistant,’ the glamorous and snooty Romana (Mary Tamm).

We’ve had intelligent companions before, and companions who are close to being the Doctor’s intellectual peer (Zoe and Liz being the main examples), but this is the first time that a companion was set up as being the Doctor’s superior in most things.

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“For the dads” is a phrase that Doctor Who fans of a certain age tend to hear repeated over and over by production crew, actors and fans alike when talking about the 1977 introduction of Leela (Louise Jamieson), the ‘primitive’ companion who wore strips of leather, hunted Sontarans with a throw knife, and was generally as a rare example (along with Peri and her leotards) of the show actually intending glimpses of sexuality to peep through the family-friendly curtain.

Actually, as we discussed recently on the Verity! Podcast, Leela’s leather outfit might look kinky but is far more practical than most of the mini-skirts that were such a regular feature of the show from 1966 through to… well, the mid 1980’s. (the 1980′s, in fact, seemed to have way more restrictive and uncomfortable looking miniskirts than the 1960′s – what’s with that, fashion?)

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