What Writers Can Learn from DOCTOR WHO

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who. Like most Whovians, I don't like every single episode. I have my favorites, just like I have my favorite Doctors and my favorite companions.

So what exactly makes Doctor Who so great? And what exactly is Doctor Who?

Doctor Who is a BBC science-fiction series that has been around for over 50 years--even before I was born--although there was a long break between the late eighties and 2005 when the new series began.

Doctor Who tells the ongoing story of the Doctor: a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and the last of his kind.

The Doctor is hundreds of years old, and he’s seen a lot of terrible things. He has a lot of enemies, like the Daleks and the Cybermen.  He’s lost a lot of friends along the way, which makes him very lonely.

That’s why the Doctor likes to take people along for the ride. These special people are the Doctor’s companions. They get to travel with the Doctor is his time machine, which is called the TARDIS.

TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. On the outside, the TARDIS looks like a blue police call box from England in the 1960s. It’s much bigger on the inside, though. Sometimes bigger than others.

The Doctor’s real name is a secret he must keep, because if it falls into the wrong hands… Actually, I don’t know what would happen, but apparently it’s something really bad.

When the Doctor dies, he regenerates and turns into someone new. So far 13 actors have played the Doctor, and each one has brought something different to the role.

Some people say that this is what makes Doctor Who so great: because the Doctor can become anyone, the show can be anything… Except apparently a woman, but that's something I hope will change. I've even written a first episode for her, and I've entitled it "Madam with a Box," a play on somethin the Doctor sometimes calls himself: a "madman with a box." I'd like to someday create a Kickstarter project so I can turn Madam with a Box into a fanfic graphic novel. Someday... 

Anyway, remember how I said that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside? Well, I think that what makes the show great is that the show itself is bigger on the inside.

The show makes you feel, and it makes you feel BIG time.

For example, I’ve never seen a more romantic couple on TV than the 11^th Doctor’s companions, Amy Pond and Rory Williams.

He dies over and over for her, and as the Last Centurion he waits over a thousand years to guard her in the Pandorica. And when Amy has to choose between Rory and all of time and space, she chooses him. “Together or not at all.” Try to beat that, any other TV couple out there.   

Looking for something scary? Try the episodes entitled “Blink,” “Silence in the Library,” “The Time of Angels,” “Flesh and Stone” and finally “The Angels Take Manhattan.” I don’t know of any other show that’s made thousands of viewers too scared to even blink.

Looking for something funny? Donna Noble probably would win a funniest companion competition, and one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on TV was near the end of companion Donna Noble’s storyline in the episode entitled “Journey’s End.” Of course, it very soon becomes one of the saddest things ever. (Maybe that's a spoiler, although soon after Donna Noble is introduced as a companion we're told that something very sad is going to happen to her. The only spoiler here, really, is that it's true.)

And that’s what makes Doctor Who so great! It makes you feel so much and so deeply.

You fall in love with the characters. You feel their terror and sadness and joy. In a way, everyone who watches Doctor Who BECOMES the Doctor’s companion. We’re all onboard the TARDIS for this wonderful, scary, funny, exciting ride!

So it’s not that the show can be anything; it’s that the show can take your emotions ANYWHERE, and it does.

There's a lesson there for any storyteller: don’t let the audience half feel things. Go as far as you can. Make your story like a TARDIS: bigger on the inside.

And that’s why I love the “Madman in a Box.”   

The best shows you aren't watching: #1 Smash

Geek love is the greatest love of all, because a geek loves something not because others think he should but despite others telling him he shouldn't. I am a geek, and when I love something I GEEKING love something.

Now when it comes to TV shows, most of my loves are pretty standard for geeks. I love Doctor Who, Warehouse 13,  and The Big Bang Theory. (I was even the first person to write a glowing review for The Big Bang Theory on Amazon, I love it so much.) But sometimes I love things that aren't as loved as they should be. So this is going to be my list of shows I think need to stay on the air or brought back from oblivion (yes, Firefly, Eureka, you too), and I'm starting with Smash. 

The story of Smash is weak. What sells it are the awesome songs and performances that are a part of the musicals that are being produced in the story of the show. I'm going to show you two of my favorites here. It's songs like this that make me believe Smash deserves to stay on the air.

So if you like what you see, watch Smash on NBC on Saturday nights until the show ends, perhaps forever, and look up previous episodes on NBC.com.

I geeking love Smash. Weak story, but amazing songs and performances.

Daily Geek Quotient (or GQ)

Shevi’s Geek Q for today: 100 (down and then up to average out)

I was depressed today because my entry in the ABNA contest didn't make it through to the next round. After watching The Big Bang Theory, Parks and Recreation, The Office (with guest Katherine Tate), and Up All Night, and listening to some great songs (including "The Gates" by  Da Vinci's Notebook) on my Funny Music Pandora station, I'm feeling a little better. 

Once Upon a Time, enter the “writer”

Once Upon a Time image from Recultured.com

SPOILER ALERT: This is not about something that will definitely happen in the modern-fairy-tale show, Once Upon a Time, but it's something I think will happen. This is based on scenes from previous episodes, so if you haven't seen them yet, don't read this. If my guess is correct, I have to tip my hat to the writers. It's brilliant.

A new character, a stranger, recently appeared in the little town of Storybrooke. 

Here are the things we know so far about this stranger. 

He rides a motorcycle and carries a weird box. Regina, who is the modern-day version of the evil queen, doesn't know who he is, and she's wary of him. 

When Emma questions the stranger about the box, he says he'll show her the contents if she agrees to let him buy her a drink. She agrees. He opens the box to reveal an old typewriter. She asks him why he's carrying it, and he explains that he's a writer. Earlier he tells Henry the box contains something he needs to take care of the thing he came to Storybrooke to do. 

In the following episode, the storybook that contains all the stories of the fairy-tale characters in Storybrooke is stolen from the place where Henry--Emma's son who was adopted by Regina--had hidden it. We later see it's in the stranger's possession.  

Henry knows the rules that govern the town, and according to Henry, outsiders never come to Storybrooke. This means this stranger isn't an outsider. But he also can't be an ordinary resident of Storybrooke, because Henry also says that "bad things" happen whenever residents of the town try to leave it. 

But maybe there's a loophole. 

The fact that the stranger carries a typewriter is very suspicious.

 He says he's a writer, but he's carrying a typewriter, not a laptop or a tablet computer. He's not so old that he might be the kind of writer who refuses to use technology. The typewriter he has is one that writers haven't used in about 25-30 years. Emma is 28 years old, and we know that the day she was born is the day the storybook characters became frozen in time and were banished to our world and the little town of Storybrooke. Why then does this writer use a typewriter from the time Emma was born and the storybook characters became real world characters who are stuck in time, never aging, never changing, and never able to leave?

Henry's storybook tells all the stories of the characters in Storybrooke--which are different from the stories as we know them. In Henry's book--the one now in the stranger's hands--Rumpelstiltskin kills Cinderella's fairy godmother and then grants Cinderella her wishes for a price. Snow White is an outlaw living in the forest, who meets Prince Charming when she robs his carriage. Prince Charming is forced to marry to King Midas's daughter. Nothing is what it's supposed to be.     

Think about it. Let's say you're a storybook character in Storybrooke, and you're unhappy about the way things are. Let's say you come across this book, and you somehow figure out that you're one of the characters in it. You realize all the other people in the town are also characters in the book, and you see that all of you are somehow stuck in this one place and time. How long does it take you to realize that if you want things to chance, you're going to have to change the original fairy tale? 

So you're sitting there looking at this book, and you're thinking about what edits would serve you best. Should you make yourself rich? Handsome? Happy? Brilliant? All the people who were those things in the fairy-tale world are now under Regina's control. No, the smartest thing you could do, would be to write yourself out of the story.

Now you probably think that if I'm right, the writers are very clever, but not really brilliant. Okay, so the stranger wrote himself out of the story. So what? 

Here's the really brilliant part: if the writer did it once, he could do it again. 

A few edits here and there, and the entire fairy-tale back story has to fit the changes. And what changes in the back story, affects the contemporary story line as well. The last time he edited it, he freed himself from the town and from Regina. What happens the next time he edits it? Does someone else get freed? Does someone die? Does he become imprisoned again? And how will this affect everything else? 

This means that at the very moment you think you know it all, the writer can step in and change everything again.  And that means the story could continue over several seasons, each time with something else changing everything. 

Which is very cool.

I love stories about stories and storytellers. I suppose that's obvious considering I wrote Toren the Teller's Tale, as well a blog post about the role of the storyteller in my favorite movie, The Princess Bride. I was still on the fence about Once Upon a Time, but if this show goes in the direction I think it's going, I'm sold. 

What about you? What do you think of Once Upon a Time? Do you have any theories about where it's heading?