icon_uk (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} icon_uk) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} scans_daily,@ 2009-04-15 22:59:00 |
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| Entry tags: | char: doctor who, creator: alan moore, creator: john stokes |
When Alan Moore wrote Doctor Who... sort of
Many moons ago (29 years ago to be precise), before he even wrote for 2000AD, an up and coming UK writer wrote for Doctor Who Weekly. Fresh faced and sprightly (Well, actually probably not, but it's a fun mental image) this eager young creator wrote, amongst others, a little trilogy of back up strips detailing some unseen elements of the past of the Doctor's people, the Time Lords of Gallifrey. Even with Maxwell the Magcial Cat under his belt, who knew Alan Moore would go so far! :) The triology also introduced a couple of characters who would go on to bigger, and better, things, but not yet.
At this point in the shows history we had met Omega, the Gallifreyan scientist and solar engineer whose apparent death whilst trying to first utilise the power of a newly formed black hole allowed his people to develop their time technology (he had actually survived in an anti-matter universe and became an insane threat to the entire universe in "The Three Doctors", but that's the way it goes sometimes), and Rassilon had been identified as a semi-mythical figure, who had actually done the developing the technology that allowed them to become the "Time Lords".
This first story went a little further into the events, in a sort of behind the scenes special, which plays, as he would often do, with the concept of what past and present and innovation would mean to a society with time travel capability.
Spot the bad guy.... go on... I dare you
As the years went on, Rassilon had more details revealed about him in the show (though still not many), but various books and lateral references in the show added (or detracted, if you liked mystery) to Rassilon (Who has had so many things named after him that he makes Walt Disney look like a piker at self promotion) and Omega, and the occasional sly reference from the Doctor that he might have been somehow involved too.
I was never a fan of the Time Lords being used too often in the show, as every time they did, a little more mystery and magic was stripped away from them, and "The Deadly Assassin" is primarily responsible for their REAL decline as a concept, revealing the to be a bunch of impotent, hidebound fuddy-duddy's who had almost nothing interesting to say or do, but spent ages saying it anyway.
Once the show finished in 1989, the fanbase started writing novels many of which, IMHO, went too far into fanwank, and I'd sooner eat live scorpions that read sub-Gormenghast claptrap like the DW novel "Lungbarrow" which over-egged the pudding by covering how Time Lords were the sterile products of genetic looms (With the Doctor being an aberration who might be the genetic reincarnation of a mysterious THIRD legendary character of Time Lord legend, known only as "The Other"), living in Houses with sentient furniture, but I know it has it's fans.
Next time, what next for the Time Lords, and why was Fenris even there...
This first story went a little further into the events, in a sort of behind the scenes special, which plays, as he would often do, with the concept of what past and present and innovation would mean to a society with time travel capability.
Spot the bad guy.... go on... I dare you
As the years went on, Rassilon had more details revealed about him in the show (though still not many), but various books and lateral references in the show added (or detracted, if you liked mystery) to Rassilon (Who has had so many things named after him that he makes Walt Disney look like a piker at self promotion) and Omega, and the occasional sly reference from the Doctor that he might have been somehow involved too.
I was never a fan of the Time Lords being used too often in the show, as every time they did, a little more mystery and magic was stripped away from them, and "The Deadly Assassin" is primarily responsible for their REAL decline as a concept, revealing the to be a bunch of impotent, hidebound fuddy-duddy's who had almost nothing interesting to say or do, but spent ages saying it anyway.
Once the show finished in 1989, the fanbase started writing novels many of which, IMHO, went too far into fanwank, and I'd sooner eat live scorpions that read sub-Gormenghast claptrap like the DW novel "Lungbarrow" which over-egged the pudding by covering how Time Lords were the sterile products of genetic looms (With the Doctor being an aberration who might be the genetic reincarnation of a mysterious THIRD legendary character of Time Lord legend, known only as "The Other"), living in Houses with sentient furniture, but I know it has it's fans.
Next time, what next for the Time Lords, and why was Fenris even there...