The Doctah!

[tealin]

This picture might possibly have the longest back story ever.



I have never seen Dr Who. Until I hooked up the IV drip of BBC to my brain this fall, all I knew of it was that a portrait hanging in our house looked kind of like him. Then, on BBC7, they started running promos for a Dr Who episode that had been written by Douglas Adams. I like Douglas Adams ... not as much as Terry Pratchett, and not enough to have read all his books yet (I'm saving them ... yes, that's it, saving them), but it was enough of a prod that when I was looking for something to listen to on Monday I clicked on it. And it was good! It was really really good. I don't know if it's the Whoness or the Adamsness (I suspect the latter) but ... I listened to it again yesterday.

Anyway, you're waiting for me to get to the picture. Okay. There's a bit of setup first. [adopts 'dream-narration' tone] There's this villain, right, and he's got this ... this sphere thing, that like sucks your brain out, but not really your brain, just your mind, sort of thing, and it can like fly and stuff. The Doctor went to Cambridge to visit a friend who's a professor and then had to get somewhere so he borrowed a student's bike, and then this shpere thing starts chasing him, and he's trying to get away on the bike, and ends up riding along the river with the sphere behind him. Okay. There's the actual story context. At about this part of the story there's some wonderfully Adamsy dialogue, including a bit where he's fighting traffic and someone objects, and he says 'Sorry, being chased by an alien machine, can't stop!' which, for some reason, really amuses me. (It's probably the affable way in which it's delivered...)

So, having finished my work for the day, I decided to express my affection for this line by doing a drawing. (Finally getting somewhere!) Last summer I'd read Good Omens and got a drawing of Aziraphale that actually wasn't all that bad. Someone commented that it looked like Dr Who, and since I liked the drawing, I figured I'd just use it as the model for this one. The little mind-sucky sphere, which I pictured about the size of a large grapefruit, didn't seem quite dramatic enough for the scene without establishing its eville powah, so I wanted to go for something bigger, and what's the first evil alien sphere anyone thinks of? The Death Star, obviously! So this picture is either an illustration of a scene in the play or Aziraphale trying to escape the Death Star on a bicycle. Take your pick.

If you want to listen to the show, click on SHADA. (dun dun dunnnn!) It's two and a half hours long, be warned; there are episode breaks, though. Requires RealPlayer, and is only around till Saturday (again). This scene can be found at 16:49:20. There's a documentary on the making of Daleks at the end. I think I'm going to listen to it again today, and count how many times the worst possible thing that could happen happens. Cor, good storytelling. : ) And if you listen to it more than once, you pick up all the little foreshadowings of plot twists!

Comments

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who is pure crack cocaine. Trust me. It's not just Douglas Adams, it's the whole mad, whimsical, bent, heartwrenching, terrifying, hilarious, weirdly moving Whoniverse.

And this picture is much better than the Adobe Illustrator paper-doll version of the Doctor being chased by a sphere that they did for the Shada animated webcast. Though the webcasts did have their own quirky low-tech charm, once you got over the sense of disconnection caused by it being neither just an audio drama nor quite a real episode.

Looking at your drawing, I find myself wishing that they'd made the Eighth Doctor look like that. Not only because I love me some scarves and greatcoats, but because then poor Paul McGann would have been able to keep his own hair (http://www.tilneysandtrapdoors.com/images/paulmcg.jpg) instead of wearing the much-hated wig (http://www.enduring-images.co.uk/8thdoc08.jpg).

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Animated ... webcast? 8 |

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they did them for a while back on the BBC website a couple of years ago, before the new Who TV series got the greenlight. I think Shada was the first story they adapted, and it was all done in Flash, up to and including a bonus "music video" of Romana driving a car to a Kylie Minogue dance tune. (Honestly. I am not making this up.)

They got better at the Flash thing as they went along, but it was still more like the mutant offspring of an audio drama and a comic book than a real cartoon...

Oh, wait! The Scream of the Shalka (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shalka/) webcast is still up! So now you can see exactly what I mean.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Whoever did the backgrounds is really good, and I like the design style in general (but prefer my Doctor ... though he is Aziraphale so that would explain it) but there's NO ACTING! They have such fabulous dialogue to work with and even the poses they start with are just totally ... well, monotone. Garh. Dumb Flash. You can act in Flash, it just takes a lot more time... and takes longer to download ... and ... yeah. But it would look so much better! Sigh.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Argh, the fist pic doesn't work. That wig is pretty awful, though.

[smokingguncafe.livejournal.com]

OMG!! *squeals*

This is so weird, because I've been following your art forever and ever, and I just now discovered Doctor Who. It's like a strange synthesis of all my interests on my Friends page or something.

I'm really excited because I'm going to be in London until May, and I think the new episodes with David Tennent might be on then!

So, in easily-excitable conclusion, you've pretty much made my week. :)

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Funny, that often happens to me, too...

The synthesis thing, not the being in London till May. (sigh...)

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

Which Doctor is that supposed to be? He looks like five, almost.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Whichever one looks like my Aziraphale – I've never seen any of them.

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

Any? You need to. There's over twenty-five years of crack there. It's so worth it.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I know ... I'm going to have to check them all out now. New material, whee! I tried watching one of the new episodes when they played them on the CBC, but I don't remember if I just didn't get it, or if I was watching it with my roommate and she was flicking channels nonstop so I missed half of it.

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

Well if you have DSL or some other form of High Speed, you can get the entireity of the Ninth Doctor and many others here, via the wonder and power of BitTorrent.

http://ts.searching.com/search.asp?uid=&h=94A5E6A8F3314692044437493D57BFCDDD5E2AD7E7F9D7A0&query=Doctor+Who&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I'll never be able to watch any of the ones with Tom Baker, as he is forever in my mind the voice of Dead Ringers – even though that's not really him. Sigh, radio.

[inkblot-fiend.livejournal.com]

*collapses into fits of joy*

This episode MUST be made. Doctor Who, on a bike, with the Death Star. Gold, I tell you. They should also cast that man as the Doctor when David Tennant gets afraid of type-casting. His expression rocks.

*more joyful fits*

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

*waves arms* That was me! I said Aziraphale looked like the Doctor! I think I might have been posting anonymously, though.

I've been taking a mental tally of the police boxes I see around Edinburgh. That's how obsessed I am with Doctor Who.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Well – thank you! I probably wouldn't have drawn that picture, if it wasn't for you. Happy unbirthday. ; )

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I have influence! *megalomaniac laughter*

[batz452.livejournal.com]

I love you. Seriously, just...argh. You're so awesome, you get a milion points just for being so cool.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Wow, a million points! Sweet!

[veronikamg.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's actually an attractive Doctor Who! There is s ashow on TV (in Norway) now where he is this older guy.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I think he's supposed to be an older guy ... at least, the portrait in my house was of an older guy. But the guy doing his voice in this play sounds younger, and Aziraphale is kind of ageless, so ... voila.

[infiniteviking]

Depends on which Doctor you're talking about. #1 was this crotchety white-haired dude; #5 was pretty young... he's had black hair, orange hair, curly hair, straight hair, etc. (The scarf's specific to the 4th, Tom Baker's Doctor, and the SHADA voice is Paul McGann, the 8th. If you wanted trivia. *g*) The character himself fluctuates between 900 and 1000 years old, whichever planet's years he's counting in. So this could be a Doctor; you don't have to specify which one.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Okeydoke, I like that explanation.

[arlandria83.livejournal.com]

Just a random point - I pretty sure Douglas Adams WROTE Shada anyways.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Yeess...? This is, um ... kind of a given?

[infiniteviking]

I'd go for 'Aziraphale trying to escape the Death Star on a bicycle'. Because that just sounds so cool. What a great picture! I really like the angle -- it makes the Death Star look so menacing. And the skewed front wheel really adds to the sense of motion.

Shada trivia: Douglas Adams was something like the story editor for a whole bunch of episodes during Tom Baker's tenure (the 4th Doctor). The combination was mad and hilarious. In fact, Shada was originally a Baker story, but it was only partially filmed. A while back they released it with the missing bits narrated by Baker, and it was later recycled for the webcast featuring Paul McGann.

wonderful on both counts!

[eveforward.livejournal.com]

What I really like about this is that there is so much detail that is only implied, but it -works-; the line of typically-British house-backs, the plants by the side of the path, are very clear and detailed in my mental image of the picture, but when I look back at the drawing I see they're only sketches and scribbles... but they're the -right- ones, the essence of the shapes of the scene, and my mind fills in all the rest of the details. And his expression is great, very Doctor-ish; certainly worried, somewhat annoyed... but not panicked, and certainly not surprised; this kind of thing happens to him all the time. And as 'Aziraphale trying to escape the Death Star on a bicycle' it also works, because that sounds like the kind of really strange dream one gets sometimes after eating Stilton and reading Good Omens, and the picture, with the looming Death Star, whirling wind, and no one else around, really captures that sense of surreal yet very frightening, nightmare menace. Excellent!

[legoline.livejournal.com]

Heh, that sphere thingy looks like the unfinished Death Star from Return Of The Jedi ... :O)

[meampotterhead.livejournal.com]

OOOOH Douglas Adams! Well, if you DO decide to read his stuff, you need to read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. best. Adams. book. ever.

[gloryinthunder.livejournal.com]

I've seen your illustration of Aziraphale, and I can certainly see the resemblance.

But... I just keep picturing the poor angel speeding down a big hill on a bicycle with a little bell on it while the officers on the Death Star try to catch him with a laser or something. I need to stop laughing, I'm at work.

[phantom-drummer.livejournal.com]

Pretty cool-he reminds me of a cross between the 4th and 8th Doctors. But then he kinda looks like the 10th as well (I love BC Jr!) Anyway, awesome sketch as always.