Chat: Splendid Chaps live podcats

Splendid Chaps: A year of Doctor Who

Ben McKenzie and John Richards  like Doctor Who, so they've decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the telly show by being Splendid Chaps and hosting a year-long performance and podcast project.

Starting this Sunday, 13 January, they're recording a live podcast each month until November. Each month is dedicated to a specific doctor, has a new theme and is at a different venue. This month is about the First Doctor, William Hartnell, explores authority and is at Trades Hall (The Annex, Bella Union). You can book here.

Each visit, hosts Ben (Dungeon Crawl, Pop Up Playground) and John (Boxcutters podcast, Outland – really ABC, why hasn't this been repeated and where is Series 2?) and companion Petra Elliott will be joined by special guests. First up are Lee Zachariah (The Bazura Project, Hell Is For Hyphenates podcast), Nerida Haycock (3RRR), Alexandra Tynan (Sandra Reid) who designed the original Cybermen, and musical guest Geraldine Quinn with an updated version of her "Doctor Who's Assistant".

More info and episode zero of the podcast is at splendidchaps.com.

(Before anyone, including me, has a hissy: "We realise chaps is a gendered term, but with a podcast titled Splendid Chaps, we don’t imagine we’d get away with calling ourselves anything else." And the Brigadier said it.)

Meanwhile, Ben answers some questions.

Who’s your doctor?
If I had to pick a top three, it’d be Troughton, Davison and Smith. But I really do like them all.

What episode do you watch any time you get a chance?

Not an episode, but a story: The Caves of Androzani. Still my favourite, though some have come close in recent years. The first episode of The Talons of Weng-Chiang is pretty great too. A Christmas Carol is probably my favourite from new Who.

Can you remember the first episode you saw?

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t watching Doctor Who, so no! Probably middle period Tom Baker, that seems to be what was on the ABC around the time I would have started. The first book was Terror of the Autons. Frightening cover! The first video I obsessed over was The Five Doctors. I know it off by heart.

How many Doctor Who toys do you own?

I have a few Dapol action figures and a TARDIS from back in the day, and a couple of sonic screwdrivers and pocket watches; not that many toys! It’s the books I collected. I have hundreds of them!

If the TARDIS landed in your living room, where/when would you ask to go?

Dinosaurs. And space. And aliens. The future, to learn how we answer the questions and solve the problems of today (spoilers!). Oh, just everywhere, I reckon. But mostly dinosaurs.

Photo by Robert Young

Kissing and crying in Doctor Who. Discuss.

I don’t think there should be a taboo against the Doctor doing either, but when you make him a romantic lead, you lose the unique position the show used to occupy in not having one. It made him much more anyone’s hero; a character any of us could be. Now he likes pretty young girls just like every TV hero. Hardly ground breaking stuff there! I thought it was sweet the way Paul McGann did it; Ecclestone’s made no sense to me; nearly everything since seems a bit gratuitous.

Torchwood or The Sarah Jane Adventures?

The Sarah Jane Adventures. It's everything her appearance in new Who should have been and more. I loved it. Though special mention to Torchwood: Children of Earth for being quite brilliant, in sharp contrast to the other series of Torchwood.

What other TV shows are you obsessed by?

Doctor Who was my gateway into UK television, and I still love Press Gang, Monkey, Sapphire and Steel, The Prisoner, Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, and Blackadder, of course. The Goodies   was hugely influential on me, it was far superior to Flying Circus in my book – I wish they’d release the whole series, not just bits and pieces. Hmmm…not much new on that list! I do love Lexx, but that’s a bit of a guilty pleasure. It’s delightfully weird. I am very keen on Game of Thrones, though I question it in some respects. The modern Sherlock is good, I’m a Holmes fan too from way back, so I’m also interested in Elementary. I was a huge Red Dwarf fan back in the day and I was incredibly (if pleasantly) surprised to find that the latest series is actually pretty good! The only show that has engendered anything like Doctor Who level devotion from me, though, is Community. Love every second.

Russell or Steven?

Steven, but only when he’s got his eye on the ball (and not working on twenty different things at once). I’m really interested to find out who’ll be next and what they’ll do, since we’ve seen several years of both these guys now.

Cyberman or Dalek?

I think they’re both equally interesting – when writers choose to make something of them. They’ve not been terribly exciting in recent history, with the notable exception of Rob Shearman’s Dalek.

Why should SM readers come to the live recording of Splendid Chaps?

Doctor Who is a show with a vibrant and wonderful fan community, and we’d love to share that with an audience. Plus, the live show will be around 90 minutes (with a break), but the podcast will be under an hour – so you’ll get bits you won’t hear on the podcast!

FRINGE review: Who, Me

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2011
Who, Me
Vicious Fish and MILKE
23 September 2011
Fringe Hub, Meeting Room
to 8 October 2011

In 1999, Rob Lloyd saw THAT Star Wars film more than once. This kind of honesty deserves admiration, but can I still respect him? (Even if he does look like David Tennant.)

David Tennant is MY Doctor. Jon Pertwee is Rob's. Who, Me is about Rob's obsession with sci fi, particularly Doctor Who (which is the name of the TV show; never the name of the character – except that once).

Directed and co-created by Scott Gooding (still going with Peter Davison?), it takes us into the-bigger-on-the inside mind of a passionate obsessive as his alter ego fracks with the wibbly wobbly and forces Rob to put his love on trial. Would Rob have a better life had he not donned a velvet jacket in the 90s and put his devious-and-too-honest VHS-stealing plans to more a more productive purpose?

The uber-meta time-travel/brain/trial story is the structure, but the double-heart of the night is Rob's story.  His confessions of his fan behaviour create wonderful squirming recognition, including a moment when you can pick how many people in the audience had their first kiss when they were well out of high school.

Still, by trying to find a balance between in-jokes and references for the fans and still making it fun for the non-fans (although I don't understand how anyone could NOT love Doctor Who*), the show’s spending some time in the void between the 'verses.

I'd love to see the references turned up to 11. Name those companions, show us the tower of Target books, throw in the really obscure stuff and go as close to the copyright breach as you dare. At the same time, the less-nerdy viewers need a clearer peek into the uber-nerd world they don't understand. The description of the Trek V Wars 90s is as good as stealing a vortex manipulator and mixing at a 90's sci fi party with your theory that Starbuck would have been much better as a woman.  But pics from a convention are not enough to even hint at the jaw-dropping nerdiness of these events**.

But fan or not, it's impossible not to adore Rob as he unzips his normal suit and lets his nerd out to frolic with an atrocious stand up routine and a final vignette that hurts to watch (it makes Wesley's unaired dance in "Waiting in the Wings" – I know you have the DVDs and have watched the extras – seem cool), but it hurts even more to realise that you understand it.

For all its meta wankiness and TARDIS/penis jokes, Who, Me is a love story.  The genuine passion and embarrassingly affectionate love we have for these fictional creations has got so many of us through bad times. And, like all loves, it's so much better when it's shared.

Rob and Scott share their passion to assure us that there's nothing wrong with knowing more about a tv show than our own family. And would Rob's life have been better with the Doctor? I'll leave that answer to a TARDIS birthday cake.

Doctor Who fans, don’t you dare miss Who, Me. Non-fans – what’s wrong with you!? See it anyway and you can catch up with the box sets after the Fringe.


* On Sundays, I gather in a secret location with a group of people old enough to have watched it on the ABC every week night and old enough to not be embarrassed when someone brings along a new dolly for show and tell. The tiny Jammie Dodger with the first Matt Smith doctor action figure was my favourite.

** Of course I know that from experience.  I went a Buffy etc convention. There was a Firefly preview leaflet, I saw Spike and Giles and discovered that my fandom barely rated on the geek scale. Mixing with these nerds, I felt cooler than Pinky Tuscadero when she was dating Fonzie.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

More FRINGE profiles

Keep an eye on AussieTheatre.com for a week of Melbourne Fringe artist profiles. Including:

Miles O'Neil is one of The Suitcase Royale trio, who are another one of my absolute favourites.  I first encountered their junkyard theatre when they made an awesome monster out of stuff they found at the MIAF Kid's Club in 2005.  World Around Us was Miles's first solo show and was so unexpected and just so gorgeous. This year he's found some more films for World Around Us II.  He'd love to be in Tarantino's next Western and I can see it so clearly that it has to happen.

Musician Miranda Hill creates art with classical musicians who don't fit in and film makers. She says that Moving Scores is for anyone who is curious about experimental music and wants to make new art accessible, transparent and fun to a new audience. As she's addicted to Dr Who, would love to be at the first performance of The Rites of Spring and to have John Cage see her work, I'm convinced that it's a show worth seeing.

Jennifer Williams is Australian and living in Ieland, but that's not stopping her from doing a show. No Matter Where You Go, There You Are is a collaboration with Cathie Clinton (who's from Ireland, but living here) that combines live performance and video. She's organised it from her laptop, when she wasn't thinking about kissing the likes of Alan Rickman, Colin Firth and Viggo Mortensen; so she's got good taste. The show's on at Richmond, which means it will miss the spontaneous audiences of the hubs, but that's no excuse for us in the know to not see it.

Rob Lloyd is nerdier than me!  I only watch each new episode of Dr Who twice in the firs tweek, only have one theory about what's going to happen to River Song and don't own any Dalek toys. But Russell T Davies is my favourite TV writer and Seven Moffat is a pretty close second. And in 1982 I wrote "Adric lives" on my wooden school ruler. That was before I discovered Avon. And, yes Rob is still far nerdier than me.  Last Fringe, Rob and co-creator/director/uber-nerd Scott Gooding gave us A Study in Scarlet (A Study of) about Rob's obsession with Sherlock Holmes and how we long to be fictional people. Rob loves our Time Lord more!

PS. I really did think his Fringe pic was David T.

MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 2: Shows for Nerds

Or: I fancy people who watch Dr Who and can spell

Grammar Don't Matter on a First Date

Mark Butler

Melbourne writer and fellow word nerd Narrelle M Harris told me that I have to see this show. She saw it during the comedy festival.

Without any details, I know that it's for me, because a misplaced apostrophe can ruin a relationship for me. I forgive typos and hurried tweets (and make many myself), but if you don't know the difference between its and it's, I have to wonder what other basics you don't know.

Who, Me
Vicious Fish, Milke

I'm one of those very cool people who watches Dr Who*, so my not-so-inner-nerd can't wait to see what Rob Lloyd and Scott Gooding do with their Doctor obsessions; obsessions that make my love of our Time Lord seem like a vague interest.

These men were obsessed since they were teenagers. That's a long time before Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat re-created the series.  These are men who had VHS tapes of old episodes, bookshelves full of Dr Who paperbacks, can list companions in order of sexiness without having to think too hard and have favourite doctor outfits in their wardrobes.

They also create terrific theatre about their obsessions with popular culture and fictional charcters. Last year saw an exploration of Sherlock Homes in A Study in Scarlet (A Study of) and there was a re-imagining of The Goodies in A Record or an OBE with Shaolin Punk in 2007.

*  a Who tragic

Let's Kill Hitler is on the ABC this weekend!

Fringe Hints 1: Brand New

Fringe Hints 3: Families are the Best Material

Fringe Hints 4: But I'm Poor

Fringe Hints 5: Cartwheel to the Circus

Fringe Hints 6: Musicals

Fringe Hints 7: Well Made Plays

Fringe Hints 8: Puppets and Letters

Fringe Hints 9: Music and Film

Fringe Hints 10: Church or Laundromat

Melbourne Fringe Launch

You have 19 days to see 230 shows.

Hayley Butcher and Telia Nevile at the Fringe Program Launch 

(pic courtesy Melbourne Fringe)

I think we should have a reality TV show that challenges contestants to see everything in a Fringe program.

I'd watch it.

The Melbourne Fringe program is launched. The guide's on the streets, the web page is live and the app is downloadable.

This year's feast of independent arts runs from 21 September to 9 October, which means that there's less than a month to choose what you're going to see or to get your show ready.

I haven't chosen my shows yet*, so suggestions are welcome.

*Except for FUGLY, cos I am beautiful and Who Me, cos I'm a nerd.

FUGLY: Sixxters Grimm will make you beautiful, if it kills you.

Who, Me.  

Fringe 2010 reviews

Fringe 2009 reviews

Fringe 2008 reviews

Fringe 2007 reviews

Fringe 2006 reviews

Fab TV Show Needs Fab People

 Wanna be on a brilliant telly show?

On Friday 26 November Princess Pictures and ABC TV need a crowd of people for the new series Outland.

Outland is written by Melbourne's John Richards, who (among other awesome things) has been a guest reviewer on here. He also blogs at The Outland Institute, which became a JOYFM radio show last year.

Princess Pictures have produced amazing shows like Summer Heights High, We Can Be Heroes and John Safran's Race Relations.

The show will be broadcast on the ABC in 2011 and is already being described as “The best gay and lesbian science fiction fan club themed comedy series ever." Yes, there are Dr Who jokes.

And you can be part of it! 

Volunteers will be the crowd for a re-creation of the Pride march.

To get all the info you need, email outlandpride@gmail.com

or go to this Facebook page and RSVP.

It's a great chance to spend a day seeing how a show is made and you might get your gorgeous face or elbow on the show

Outland is based on the only short film to play the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and the World Science Fiction Convention. It stars Christine Anu, Ben Gerrard , Paul Ireland, Adam Richard, Toby Truslove, is written by John Richards (Boxcutters) and Adam Richard, directed by Kevin Carlin (Newstopia, BoyTown, The Extra) and produced by Princess Pictures (Summer Heights High, We Can Be Heroes, John Safran's Race Relations, I Love You Too).

Terrific writing tips # 3a: The Writers Tale

The Writers Tale: The Final chapter

Sleeping, watching Dr Who and uploading holiday pics to Facebook weren't serving as adequate procrastination activities today, so it was off to the beach before summer runs out – and I took The Writers Tale:The Final Chapter with me, so that I could justify the lazing on the sand time as kind of work.

The Writers Tale began as an exchange of emails between journalist Benjamin Cook and writer Russell T Davies, as Benjamin thought he might put together a good magazine story about RTD's creation and writing of series 4 of Dr Who. He ended up with a book – and an extended version of the same book, which has just been released and takes us through to the end of series 4.

(For Australian readers, RTD and David Tennant's final episodes are on the ABC over the next two weekends.

And here is the cheapest way to get a copy of the book in Australia - and it will only take a week to arrive.)

I discovered RTD in 2003. A Scottish aerialist and actor was staying in my spare room (now the writing room) and came back from Out Video with Tales of the City (and a copy of the book), Will and Grace, Queer as Folk and Bob and Rose. Spot the theme?

Not only did I discover Armistead Mauphin and an American sit com that I loved, but I found the television writing of RTD.

It's not like RTD and I had similar lives. He spent his youth drinking too much and dancing with pretty boys in gay night clubs in Manchester. I spent my youth drinking too much and dancing with pretty boys in gay night clubs in Adelaide. Totally different accents.

We have different lives, but in his stories I saw someone who created a world that I believed. A world where the people and their lives were so recogniseable, even if I'd never experienced anything they had, I never doubted them and was drawn into their fictional lives like they were my own.

"I consider that I've something to say when I've thought of a person, a moment, a single beat of the heart, that I think is true and interesting, and therefore should be seen."                            The Writers Tale: The Final Chapter,  p 57

Needless to say, having watched Dr Who most weekdays of my childhood, I was bit too excited when he took on the challenge of bringing our Time Lord back to the BBC.




And rightly so. Fans don't need me to rave about the Dr Who. They know it's brilliant.

And so is The Writers Tale:The Final Chapter.


On opening the book at the beach, my procrastinating self was ironically confronted with RTD discussing procrastination, the fear of being crap, the excuses made not to write, not seeing family and friends because you're 'writing' (meaning NOT writing and hating yourself for not writing) and wanting to be more like Jeanette Winterson. He once read an interview with Jeanette (another one of my favourite writers) where she said writing was like flying. I'm googling around for it now, but glad I never read it, as I too feel the fear, fear not having the fear and will do anything to avoid the writing, even though its the one thing I want to do. I'm more comforted knowing that writers need a bit of temporary self-loathing.

I'm only 90-odd pages in (it's a mighty tome at 700 pages), but I can't imagine reading a better book about the process of writing. And I've read a lot of them.

As writers, artists or people, we have constant chatter in our heads. Even as I do the dishes (on those rare occassions) I'm over analysing everything I've seen or heard that day (and my whole life), there's a few different stories trying to make sense in my head, a handful of characters trying to come to life, I'm writing and re-writing blogs and reviews, planning what I'm having for dinner, thinking who I could invite over for dinner and replaying everything past, present and future in dozens of different ways.

Our brains are never still and (luckily) we only ever let a tiny bit of that chatter leak out to the world.

The Writers Tale is a door to Russell's inner chatter. Reading his long, detailed emails is like hearing his brain at work.  You can see the seeds of wonderful scenes appearing as chat and minor ideas. You see episodes (and companions) that never were - and why they were scrapped.You see the doubt and the confidence and the craft and the skill.  He talks about the need to suffer and the total bollocks of the suffering artist.

As a writer, he talks to other writers about how they can write. Isn't that what we want to hear? That we can do it.

RTD is only part of the book. As a worthy companion  Benjamin Cook asks the questions. Every writer should have a Benjamin to question them. Writers could  just read Benjamin's questions to Russell and see how they answer them.

Amazing writing is meant to inspire new (and old) writers, but sometimes it just scares the bejesus out of me. As I watch or read something that is so far out of my reach as a writer, I'm more likely to head to the couch than the computer. Russell is one of those writers for me. His work scares me.

Reading this book is already taking away some of that fear and self-doubt. Seeing how he works and recognising so much of it, takes the halo off his head and brings him back down to the pub having a beer. And it is sending me to the computer (when I'm not on the couch watching his writing or reading this wonderful book).

If you are a Dr Who fan, there is no question of not owning this book. Like your K9 mouse mat and Dalek keychain, your life won't be complete without it.

If you don't dream of travelling in the TARDIS, but love television or just love writing, give this a go. The knowledge of the telly series helps, but not having it doesn't hinder.

However, you will then be compelled to watch all of Dr Who and Queer as Folk (UK version then US version) and Bob and Rose (still my favourite telly series) and The Second Coming and everything else Russell has touched, but you may also be inspired to get to the keyboard and see what stories are lurking in the chatter in your head.

Series 4 of Dr Who says farewell to RTD, but the new head writer is the equally marvellous Steven Moffat, who wrote my favourite episode of  Dr Who, 'Blink,' and he wrote the wonderful sitcom Coupling (that I love as much as Will and Grace).

So RTD, we will miss you, but we have no fear that Dr Who is going to be just as addictive. And I've just read that Neil Gaimen (yes, Neil Gaimen!) will be writing an episode of Series 6. Again, I'm a bit too excited.
 
 

PS - My Scottish actor friend is living in London and he would be a wonderful alien, companion or evil genius for Series 6.

Terrific writing tips # 3: Doctor Who

Doctor Who: The End of Time

It's a slow theatre month (and we all need some time away from analysing the meta significance of everything on a stage), we're getting bored of watching Seinfeld reruns on Go! and the leftovers are running out, so, according to Facebook updates over the last day, most theatre nerds have turned to the interweb to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special: Doctor Who: The End of Time. Aside from the fact that the My Friends:Theatre Nerd: Dr Who Fan  ratio is about 10:9:8, the passion about this episode is as oozy and complex as an Ood's face.

I've formed alliances with strangers and scoffed at friends because they didn't blub as the hot doctor said his last farwells and turned into a school boy (whom I just want to make a sandwich for and send off to a G rated movie).

This special episode is also the farewell to writer Russell T Davies and, to my joy, much FB comment has been about the writing of RTD (or Saint RTD, as I like to call him).  More than one person said that they didn't like the writing, but still cried at the end. You keep watching and end up in tears - I know many writers who would be very happy with that result.

Us who loved Queer as Folk, Bob and Rose (which may be my favourite telly series) and The Second Coming knew that Russell could tell a very fine story, but his recreation of the Doctor has reset the bar for Sci-Fi story telling for the telly.

I try and watch his shows to understand the craft and always end up being so engrossed with the story and the characters that I forget to take notes. But hopefully this book will help me out a bit as RTD writes about his writing of Doctor Who. The hardback version is favoured by many a geek, but this new paperback edition takes us through to the end. I'm sure I'll be quoting it in furture reviews - and reviewing the book itself (my copy is in the post).

Please read what Justin Hamilton (who penned and performed my fav comedy show of 09) thought about The End of Time and RTD. May I say 'ditto' and it's also kind of nice to know that we would have been reaching for the tissues at the same time as we witnessed the deaths of Henry Blake, ThirtySomething Gary, and everyone in Six Feet Under.