it feels like it was purely introduced for a cheap gag, and has stayed as a lazy storytelling device.
A lot of what RTD has introduced into Doctor Who is the sort of thing he might have thought was really clever when he was eight. At the start, the psychic paper seemed like an affectionate tribute to a particular strand of Doctor Who beloved of a lot of the old fan elite, the late 1970s Doctor of endless resourcefulness and superhuman powers, explicitly described in the writers' guide as a 'superman'. This was changed in the 1980 writers' guide by Chris Bidmead to 'not a superman', and it's this version we see in Black Orchid, in some ways for the better.
Showing people the interior of the TARDIS as a way of gaining their trust, or just getting them out of a difficult situation in a manner which had once been against Doctor Who's rules of storytelling, became an over-used feature after Black Orchid - though it was prefigured by the capture of the TARDIS by the Outlers in Full Circle.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-17 06:54 pm (UTC)A lot of what RTD has introduced into Doctor Who is the sort of thing he might have thought was really clever when he was eight. At the start, the psychic paper seemed like an affectionate tribute to a particular strand of Doctor Who beloved of a lot of the old fan elite, the late 1970s Doctor of endless resourcefulness and superhuman powers, explicitly described in the writers' guide as a 'superman'. This was changed in the 1980 writers' guide by Chris Bidmead to 'not a superman', and it's this version we see in Black Orchid, in some ways for the better.
Showing people the interior of the TARDIS as a way of gaining their trust, or just getting them out of a difficult situation in a manner which had once been against Doctor Who's rules of storytelling, became an over-used feature after Black Orchid - though it was prefigured by the capture of the TARDIS by the Outlers in Full Circle.