It was indeed.
Which I think is the problem. Davison's Doctor was already something of a shoddy leaking vessel of a character, prone to being a sentimental emotional cripple, and yet the New Who team decided to make him the template for the Doctors since, only with pixie dust solutions to ensure he actually gets the idealist happy conclusions he always wanted.
Anyhow the quote wasn't from that famous TSV interview, it was an article Moffat had written for some fanzine about why Davison was his favourite Doctor and the other six were rubbish.
Steven Moffat wrote:THE ONE (OUT OF SEVEN)
Steven Moffat, author of the BAFTA and Montreux Award-winning series PRESS GANG and JOKING APART, recalls how Peter Davison brought a new quality to the role of the Doctor — and almost saved a twenty-something fan from embarrassment in the process...
Back when I was in my early twenties, I thought Doctor Who was the scariest programme on television. I had one particular Who-inspired nightmare which haunts me to this day — except it wasn't a nightmare at all, it was something that happened to me on a regular basis. I'd be sitting watching Doctor Who on a Saturday, absolutely as normal... but I'd be in the company of my friends!!
Being a fan is an odd thing, isn't it? I was in little doubt — though I never admitted it, even to myself — that Doctor Who was nowhere near as good as it should have been, but for whatever reason I'd made that mysterious and deadly emotional connection with the show that transforms you into a fan and like a psychotically devoted supporter of a floundering football club, I turned out every Saturday in my scarf, grimly hoping the production team would finally score.
Of course my friends all knew my devotion to the Doctor had unaccountably survived puberty and had long since ceased to deride me for it. I think (I hope) they generally considered me someone of reasonable taste and intelligence and decided to indulge me in this one, stunningly eccentric lapse. And sometimes, on those distant Saturday afternoons before domestic video my nightmare would begin. I'd be stuck out somewhere with those friends and I'd realise in a moment of sweaty panic that I wasn't going to make it home in time for the programme—or worse, they' d be round at my house not taking the hint to leave — so on my infantile insistence we'd all troop to the nearest television and settle down to watch, me clammy with embarrassment at what was to come, my friends tolerant, amused and even open-minded.
And the music would start. And I'd grip the arms of my chair. And I'd pray! Just this once, I begged, make it good. Not great, not fantastic —just good. Don't, I was really saying, show me up.
And sometimes it would start really quite well. There might even be a passable effects shot (there were more of those than you might imagine) and possibly a decent establishing scene where this week's expendable guest actors popped outside to investigate that mysterious clanking/groaning/beeping/slurping sound before being found horribly killed/gibbering mad an episode later.
At this point I might actually relax a little. I might even start breathing and let my hair unclench. And then it would be happen. The star of the show would come rocketing through the door, hit a shuddering halt slap in the middle of the set and stare at the camera like (and let's be honest here) a complete moron.
I'd hear my friends shifting in their chairs. I could hear sniggers tactfully suppressed. Once one of them remarked (with touching gentleness, mindful of my feelings) that this really wasn't terribly good acting.
Of course, as even they would concede, Tom Baker (for it was he) had been good once — even terrific — but he had long since disappeared up his own art in a seven-year-long act of self-destruction that took him from being a dangerous young actor with a future to a sad, mad old ham safely locked away in a voice-over booth.
Which brings us, of course, to Peter Davison (for it was about to be him). I was appalled when he was cast. I announced to my bored and blank-faced friends that Davison was far too young, far too pretty, and far, far too wet to play television's most popular character (as, I deeply regret to say, I described the Doctor). Little did I realise, back in 1982, that after years of anxious waiting on the terraces in my front room, my home team were about to score — or that Davison was about to do something almost never before seen in the role of the Doctor. He was going to act.
Let's get something straight, because if you don't know now it's time you did. Davison was the best of the lot. Number One! It's not a big coincidence or some kind of evil plot, that he's played more above-the-title lead roles on the telly than the rest of the Doctors put together. It's because-get this!-he's the best actor.
You don't believe me? Okay, let's check out the opposition, Doctor-wise (relax, I'll be gentle).
1. William Hartnell. Look, he didn't know his lines! (okay, fairly gentle. It wasn't his fault) and it's sort of a minimum requirement of the lead actor dial he knows marginally more about what's going to happen next than the audience. In truth, being replaceable was his greatest gift to the series. Had the first Doctor delivered a wonderful performance they almost certainly would not have considered a recast and the show would have died back in the sixties.
2. Patrick Troughton. Marvellous! Troughton, far more than the dispensable, misremembered Hartnell, was the template for the Doctors to come and indeed his performance is the most often cited as precedent for his successors. Trouble is, the show in those days was strictly for indulgent ten-year-olds (and therefore hard to judge as an adult). Damn good, though, and Davison's sole competitor.
3. Jon Pertwee. The idea of a sort of Jason King with a sillier frock isn't that seductive, really, is it? In fairness he carried a certain pompous gravitas and was charismatic enough to dominate the proceedings as the Doctor should. Had his notion of the character been less straightforwardly heroic he might have pulled off something a little more interesting. His Worzel Gummidge, after all,is inspired and wonderful.
4. Tom Baker. Thunderingly effective at the start, even if his interpretation did seem to alter entirely to fit this week's script. (Compare, say, THE SEEDS OF DOOM and THE CITY OF DEATH. Is this supposed to be the same person?) I think I've said quite enough already about his sad decline so let's just say that it's nice to see him back on top form in Medics. Well, is was while it lasted.
5. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. Miscast and floundering. Neither made much impression on the role and none at all on the audience. Or at least on me.
So what makes Davison — for me — the best, and his episodes the ones I wouldn't mind watching in the company of my most cynical and sarcastic friends? I'm certainly not claiming the show was suddenly high art or great drama — it was after all, the adventures of space man in a frock coat who lives in a flying telephone box — but for a brief three years it seemed to take the job of being an entertaining, adventure-romp for kids of all
ages with just the right mix of seriousness and vivacity, the way Lois And Clark does so adroitly now and the leading man, bless him. was really delivering.
It's become traditional to say that the Doctor is not an acting part — I think Tom Baker started it and he certainly seemed increasingly determined to prove it true. This is, of course, nonsense. Like any other heroic character in melodrama, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes,Tarzan — he has his motivations and fallibilities. In fact, the Doctor's are rather well defined — perhaps unusually so, for a "Hero'.
We know him to be a sort of academic aristocrat who one day, on a simple moral imperative, erupts from the cloisters and roars through time and space on a mission to end all evil in the universe, unarmed and,if possible, politely.
Consider for a moment — as you would have to if you were casting this part — what kind of man makes a decision like that? He's profoundly emotional (it's a profoundly emotional decision), he's idealistic (unarmed?? Not even a truncheon??), he feels the suffering of others with almost unbearable acuteness (or he'd have stayed at home like we all do when there s a famine or a massacre on the news), he's almost insanely impulsive (I don't think I need explain that one) and he is, above all, an innocent — because only an innocent would try to take on the entire cosmos and hope to persuade it to behave a little better. Now look at the seven Doctors. Which one best fits the picture? Which one could you see acting this way? Be honest — it's number five.
It wouldn't surprise me, given the meticulous actor Davison is known to be, that some of the above was actually thought through and consciously foregrounded in his interpretation. Certainly, he seemed to reject the theatrical eccentricity of his predecessors (leading to the ridiculous criticisms that he's 'bland' and 'wet') in favour of a more visceral, emotional performance, emphasising the Doctor's anxieties and escalating panic in the face of disaster.
Davison's Doctor is beautifully unaware that he is a hero — he simply responds as he feels he must when confronted with evil and injustice, and does so with a very 'human' sense of fluster and outrage. In one of the comparatively few perfect decisions in Doctor Who, Davison is allowed to finally expire saving, not the entire universe, but just one life. This isn't to show, as has been suggested, that he's any less capable or powerful than the other Doctors —just that, for him, saving one life is as great an imperative as saving a galaxy. This, then, is the Doctor as I believe he ought to be — someone who would brave a supernova to rescue a kitten from a tree.
But that's not the whole picture, is it? A terrific central performance — but what about the stories? Astonishingly, they were pretty damn good too. Only Twice in the whole run did the show lapse into the embarrassing (TIME-FLIGHT and WARRIORS OF THE DEEP) which, given my team's previous propensity for own goals, showed amazing restraint and there were whole runs of straight-forward but corkingly well realised yarns (THE VISITATION, FRONTIOS, MAWDRYN UNDEAD, RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS, ENLIGHTENMENT, THE AWAKENING, THE FIVE DOCTORS and quite a few others). And there were some real stand-outs, weren't there? EARTHSHOCK, for instance, while having a story crafted almost entirely out of gaping plot holes had some cracking set pieces, thumping good direction, and some real 'moments' (Davison's first sighting of the Cybermen being my favourite). THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI, while again needing some tightening up on the plot front (I mean just where was the Doc during episode 3) was also superbly directed, had a terrific guest villain (Christopher Gable) and Davison's all time best Doctor performance as his heart-breaking doomed innocent gives his all to save a woman he's only just met.
Best of all, of course, there was KINDA and there was SNAKEDANCE and if you don't know those are the two best Who stories ever you probably stopped reading after I slagged off Tom Baker anyway.
I find it genuinely surprising that Who fans don't routinely consider the Davison era to be their finest hour. It's only serious competition in terms of consistency and quality are the early Tom Baker stories and those, being largely a set of one-note Hammer hand-me-downs, lack the same variety and ambition.
Is it because Davison doesn't fit the established, middle-aged image of the Time Lord — even though, with twelve regenerations the Doctor must be a rather young Gallifreyan with, we know, a definitively youthful, rebellious outlook? Is it that some fans had actually latched on to tackier, more juvenile style of the earlier seasons and actually missed that approach? Whatever the explanation, if it's possible for anyone to watch something like KINDA and not realise the show was suddenly in a whole different class then I find that slightly worrying. Perhaps — no definitely — there's something about being a fan that skews your critical judgements.
Still, never mind all that. Back when the Eighties were young, and I was still one of those fans, all I cared about was that my show was suddenly kicking sci-fi bottom and I was proud and renewed in my faith. And once, on a visit to London, I persuaded my smart and cynical (and now slightly older) friends that Doctor Who really was a new and better show — respectable, intelligent, well made. And I persuaded them, for the first time in a long time, to watch an episode with me. I wasn't forced to, this time — I had a VCR recording at home, I could always see it later — but I wanted to surprise them with just how much better my team was playing.
So after much persuasion from me, we all sat down together and watched the panto horse episode of WARRIORS OF THE DEEP.
Home
