Web of Fear

While I wait with trembling anticipation to watch Waters of Mars...

It feels like Doctor Who has always provoked its most favorable reactions when it's been at its most scary. The phrase "behind the sofa" has become part of everyday language: I don't think anyone ever actually hides behind furniture to watch the show, but it's a pleasant urban myth that sometimes things get so scary that you might have to. The Troughton "base under siege" era has always been regarded as all-time classic Who, despite the episodes quite often not standing up to modern scrutiny, because it was pretty much all monsters lumbering about in the shadows all the time. Holmes and Hinchcliffe ratcheted up the horror levels after the "cosy" Pertwee era, much to Mary Whitehouse's disgust: result, classic status. Graham Williams and Douglas Adams made it lighter and funnier again: result, suspicion and disdain from the fans.

In the mid-80s Eric Saward managed to get it sadly wrong - he must have thought he was onto a surefire winner with Season 22, but violence and gore are not the same thing as the sophisticated, suspenseful thrills and chills which first made the show's name. Andrew Cartmel, replacing him, was a much more imaginative and innovative script editor, but sadly fell foul of the fans by not being scary enough, until it was too late.

New Who has treated scariness as something to be wheeled out for special occasions, normally in the context of a Steven Moffat script (though The Impossible Planet was no slouch in the creepiness department). But it's no coincidence that ostentatiously scary pieces like Blink and The Empty Child regularly top the fan favorite polls, and I think eventually RTD decided he wanted to get in on some of that action: Midnight in Season 4 was easily his most disturbing, and arguably one of his most successful scripts yet. Early indications are though that he might be trying to top it with The Waters of Mars.

It'll be interesting to see how scary post-2009 Who ends up being, whether Moffat just can't help increasing the fear factor of everything he touches, or whether he'll keep the formula of doing "a scary one" once or twice per season. Generally speaking, I don't think Doctor Who can go wrong by making it as scary as possible (while staying firmly within its PG limits) as much as possible, and I hope Moffat does edge it further towards the shadowy and Gothic.

A final anecdote: in 1988 I was combining watching the last episode of Remembrance of the Daleks with babysitting my young (six or seven year old) cousin. All was going well until a Dalek shell slid open to reveal the cadaverous figure of Davros. This was just too much for little Alice, who began to scream and scream, before rushing sobbing upstairs to her bedroom, pleading for me to come upstairs and protect her. Twenty years later, I don't believe there have been any lasting scars: I believe she's a fan of the new show, or at least considers David Tennant to be rather dishy. The point is, I wonder if this is the secret of Doctor Who's enduring success: whether it's black-and-white Daleks, or Yeti in the Underground, or giant maggots, or the horrible sight of Davros, everyone ideally needs something to scare the bejeezus out of them at an impressionable age, so they can say "Doctor Who? I was terrified of that show when I was small." Here's hoping for many more traumatized infants in the months and years to come. It's how the journey of a lifetime begins.