Doctor Who story title controversy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Doctor Who story title controversy is a debate amongst fans of the BBC television series Doctor Who as to what certain stories should be called.
The bulk of the debate centres on the titles for most of the stories featuring William Hartnell as the first Doctor; however several later stories also generate a degree of debate as to how the stories should be referred to.
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[edit] "Doctor Who and..."
Throughout the history of the series many stories were referred to in production paperwork, the Radio Times, novelisations and other media as Doctor Who and..., as a form of combining the story title with the series title. However this variant was often used inconsistently. Production paperwork generally stopped using the term following an incident in late 1969 when the opening credits for a story went out as Doctor Who and the Silurians rather than The Silurians. However it was common for novelisations to continue to be titled "Doctor Who and..." until the early 1980s.
There were a few other exceptions. A later 1971 compilation repeat of the story The Dæmons had the title as Doctor Who and the Dæmons, whilst the 1996 radio serial The Ghosts of N-Space was referred to in the opening credits as Doctor Who and the Ghosts of N-Space.
[edit] The William Hartnell stories
When the series began in 1963, each episode had an individual title and no overall story title appeared onscreen. The production office would variously refer to the stories by either a production code (for example the very first story was Serial A) or a title. During the course of a story's production the titles in use could change and even revert. Complicating matters further, not all BBC departments would necessarily pick up on changes in the title and the production office would use additional titles after transmission of the story to refer to previous stories.
Some titles were made known to the public through either the BBC listings magazine Radio Times or the Royal National Institute for the Blind's Synopses For The Deaf and these sources often, but not always, reflected the production office's thinking. In 1966 the decision was taken to abandon the individual episode titles, instead giving all stories an overall on-screen title, starting with The Savages.
When in the 1970s the first programme guides and organised fan lists started to be produced there was much confusion as to what the stories should be called. In 1973 the Radio Times published a special to celebrate the series' 10th anniversary and for all of the stories prior to The Savages the title of the first episode was given as the story title. Meanwhile the early fan clubs were making use of lists supplied to them by either the production office or the overseas sales division, BBC Enterprises. A key document was the 1974 "A Quick Guide to Doctor Who" which Enterprises used to list all the stories to date, giving titles.
Several fanzines used the various lists, combined with titles discovered in old editions of the Radio Times or national media, and by the time of the publication of the 1976 edition of The Making of Doctor Who there was sufficient information available to compile a full list, though in places the titles of the first episodes were adopted when no others were available.
Over subsequent years further research into the story titles yielded more information and a clearer picture of the titles at the time of transmission emerged. Often the newly discovered information would be absorbed into new reference works, but several major discoveries at the end of the 1980s sparked controversy, with different reference works using different sets of titles and many fans fiercely debating which was the "correct" title to use. The debate continues to this day, although most fans usually just use the titles used in the BBC video and DVD releases.
[edit] The Jon Pertwee stories
Although all Doctor Who stories in the early 1970s used overall titles, two still generate controversy:
- The second Pertwee story. Many stories were referred to in production documentation as "Doctor Who and..." but this prefix was usually dropped for transmission. Due to reasons that are not entirely clear, the serial was transmitted with the onscreen title of Doctor Who and the Silurians instead (see Doctor Who and the Silurians - Alternative titles for more information). Several subsequent reference works have opted to give the title as merely The Silurians in line with the standard format for titles.
- The dinosaur story. One of the last Pertwee stories sought to hide the presence of dinosaurs by shortening the title given on the first episode to Invasion. The other episodes gave the title as Invasion of the Dinosaurs. However, a 1968 story featuring Patrick Troughton was already entitled The Invasion so it is rare to see the Invasion title used to refer to the Pertwee serial.
[edit] The Trial of a Time Lord
The twenty-third season of the series in 1986 saw a single, fourteen-part adventure with the overall title The Trial of a Time Lord. However the production was broken into three separate production slots and the season was regarded by many on the production team, and subsequently by both the novelisation writers and some fans, as constituting four separate stories.
The first two segments had the clear final working titles of The Mysterious Planet and Mindwarp respectively on the final recording scripts and both were adopted by the novelisations and fandom. However the remaining episodes carried no individual titles on the scripts. The third segment was commissioned as The Ultimate Foe and the fourth as Time Incorporated but confusingly the latter was novelised as The Ultimate Foe whilst the former was novelised as Terror of the Vervoids. The authors of the third story and some other production team members have consistently referred to it as The Vervoids in subsequent interviews but this title is not known to exist in any contemporary paperwork.
Matters are further confused by fierce debate as to whether the whole Trial should be regarded as one story or four, with many who adopt the former stance merely referring to the whole thing as The Trial of a Time Lord. The BBC Video release of the season was as a boxed set of three VHS tapes with the Trial overall title for the tapes, but labelled on the bottom of the tin as The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp and Terror of the Vervoids/The Ultimate Foe, respectively.
[edit] The Paul McGann television movie
The 1996 television movie starring Paul McGann carried no onscreen title and in production was never referred to as anything other than Doctor Who. Many fans felt that this was too confusing and sought a better way to refer to the story. At one point the executive producer suggested that they could refer to it as Enemy Within, but most fans appear to have taken to referring to it as simply "the TV movie" or "the TVM". The DVD release was titled Doctor Who: The Movie.
In a documentary series "Planet of the Doctor" which was webcast on the CBC Doctor Who website in 2005, a fan who was interviewed in the segment "The Nine Doctors" (who was attributed by the CBC as a representative of the Doctor Who Information Network but had no formal association with the club) referred to the film by the title Out of the Ashes — the header used by Shannon Patrick Sullivan for the section on the television movie at his Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel) production history website.[1]
[edit] Doctor Who: Children in Need
The seven-minute connecting scene that aired for Children in Need in late 2005 was shown without an official title, and to date none has been announced in retrospect. Although the fan community immediately set to work in finding a title for the serial, series producer Russell T. Davies soon suggested, in his regular column in Doctor Who Magazine, the title "Pudsey Cutaway", in reference both to the URL embedded in the upper portion of the broadcast, which directed viewers to the Children in Need website, and to the alternate "Dalek Cutaway" title for the story usually known as Mission to the Unknown. Although Davies offered the title in jest, the fans soon picked up on it as, if nothing else, an affectionate nickname for the episode.
The 2006 Doctor Who Magazine special Series Two Companion revealed that on production papers, the episode was designated Doctor Who: Children in Need.
[edit] References
- By Any Other Name - Article by Andrew Pixley detailing the problems of early Doctor Who story titles.
