‘I so much wanted to be a great writer, Philip – an artist, a genius. It’s what geniuses do. Wagner, Picasso, Dickens, had affairs, treated their wives, their children like ¤¤¤¤. They had the right. I wanted to be like them, rise above the right and wrong. Only the art mattered. But the thing is, I was wrong. I wasn’t a genius. I didn’t produce the Sistine Chapel, I produced 14 episodes of Juliet Bravo. I gambled my family away on a dream of posterity when it turns out I was a hack all the time. I could have had a family, could have had a grandson, all these years.’
“I’m a nice man, Dad. I could be really worth knowing.”
“You kill guinea pigs.”
“It was only a little one.”
‘If you wanted to see me, you could have called! You didn’t need to set rodents alight!’
‘A universe without the Doctor, it scarcely bares thinking about…’
So, from a story where the Doctor never left Gallifrey (‘Auld Mortality’) – to a story where the pilot script was never filmed. Imagine that, where would we be, what would we be doing? Maybe reading the official ‘Juliet Bravo Magazine’ and marathoning all 6 series from the very beginning – in order of course, so you can properly experience it how it is meant to be seen and chart its every progression, apart from a few of us who like to watch them all jumbled up like crazy paving. Arguing about which incarnation of Juliet we liked best – Stephanie Turner or Anna Carteret and whether re-casting her as a man for the new series is a good idea or not.
We would still be writing in praise of the classic Robert Holmes episode – ‘A Breach Of The Peace’ (with Bernard Horsfall and Alan Lake) or his prodigy Chris Boucher ‘Where There’s Muck…’. And stories directed by Christopher Barry, Pennant Roberts, David Maloney, Graeme Harper, Tristan DeVere Cole, Peter Moffat or the great Ron Jones. The latter would probably make one of the great directors of a ‘scientific romance’ in my view – if only he’d had the chance. Martin Bannister though, whatever happened to him? Maybe Benjamin Cook can track him down for an interview after all these years?
Derek Jacobi is the Doctor
Oh the possibilities again. What if Doctor Who was played by Derek Jacobi, or written by Martin Bannister (author of 14 of the worst episodes of ‘Juliet Bravo’) or was never commissioned at all? Well after the glories of Hannibal and the Alps and the infinite possibilities stretching out before us – the ¤¤¤¤e of real life descends and crushes them all under its boot – thanks Rob! This play (it is a play – it could easily have aired on BBC Radio 4) is a black comedy, ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’ written by Pinter or Ayckborn or possibly Rob Shearman. All misunderstandings, loss, a longing for something better and people just missing each other and left alone and unhappy and slightly bitter.
Martin is based on 3 people I think – Robert Holmes, who wrote for ‘Juliet Bravo’ (like Rob Shearman I have a hard time believing that he wrote ‘normal’ stuff as well), Christopher Bailey – the ‘Holy Grail’ of Doctor Who interviewees, who Benjamin Cook tracked down to interview for DWM (issue 327 in March 2003) which is mirrored in one of the scenes here, where Martin is disastrously interviewed for ‘Juliet Bravo Magazine’ and Rob Shearman himself – a playwright and winner of the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, and his plays ‘Breaking Bread and ‘Easy Laughter’ are referenced as Martin’s work here. Martin isn’t very nice though – a misanthrope, who has let down his family in the hope of creating great art, misjudged everything in his life and achieved little in return – ultimately ‘Juliet Bravo’ was the pinnacle. The comedian Dylan Moran once talked about ‘releasing your potential’, he said ‘stay away from your potential, it is potential leave it alone – it’s like your bank balance you never have as much as you think’. Every writer must have that moment surely? Or every actor who ends up in a corporate video or advertising a treatment for vaginal dryness, incontinence pads or funeral insurance (never watch the ‘Drama’ or ‘Yesterday’ channels in the UK – the adverts will slowly send you insane). While your potential is locked away in a room untapped you can always pretend that it exists, or like some other things in life it is larger than it actually is – if only you’d had the breaks. To those who try by the way, I have every respect – at least you give it a go.
So, it is 2003 and Derek Jacobi is playing Doctor Who (well almost) – any idea how thrilling this was? We hadn’t had Doctor Who on TV for 14 years and when we had, well lets just say that no matter how much you loved them, the last couple of incumbents (McGann excepted) weren’t really at the highly regarded end of the acting profession spectrum, never mind the pinnacle. To hear Derek Jacobi say ‘Close the doors Susan’ or ask whether you have thought about ‘building castles out of alien sand?’ was and still is utterly thrilling.
As thrilling as was the announcement months after this that Christopher Eccleston had been cast as the new Doctor. I had seen Jacobi on stage a few times before this and he was never less than mesmerising. Years later I think the best performance of his, at least that I saw was as Lear in Michael Grandage’s 2010 production at the Donmar Warehouse. He speaks very highly of Doctor Who as well – along with Coronation Street it was always something he wanted to be in. I saw him interviewed a few years ago at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, he was a very engaging and rather humble person and very happy to talk in amongst all that he has achieved, about playing The Master. This was all before or of that – and before his excellent performances of the War Master for Big Finish, if only it had also been opposite John Hurt as the Doctor – I think at that point you could just cancel the programme and I would be happy.
Jacobi is superb here as Martin, from raging misanthrope, disappointed and bitter – a failure as a writer, husband and father to a lost, confused old man, hoping for a new beginning with his newly found grand child to TV’s Doctor Who, travelling with Susan, Barbara and Ian back in history or off to alien worlds. Those opening scenes with Jacobi as Martin interjecting authorial notes (almost in the manner of Sydney Newman) over re-worked scenes of the Doctor meeting Ian and Barbara for the first time are superb (‘lets just assume that unless I say otherwise he says everything mysteriously’). They bleed into a nurse waking Bannister at a care home (‘you really are a mucky pup aren’t you?’), switching effortlessly back to fantasy with a mysterious green stain in his room (alien intervention or just a sad inevitability of life in a care home?) ! Or the visitor to the home – is it Ian Chesterton or Philip, Martin’s estranged son?
All of this bleeds together so that we are never sure which is fantasy and which if anything is real. Doctor Who is Martin’s escape from reality, the programme that got away – Ian Chesterton is blurred with his son, Barbara Wright his nurse and his wardrobe leads out into other worlds – back to the time of Hannibal (a nice link to ‘Auld Mortality’, along with musings on the life and imagination of writers , which was a few releases before this one) or a the dead planet of the Supreme One (a play on The Perfect One from ‘The Masters of Luxor’ possibly combined with the Zarbi Supremo from the first annual?). Or possibly it is just a wardrobe, in a care home where a fallible, lonely, slightly bitter old man lies in bed?
‘The horrors of isolation’
‘I am a good husband, a good father, I work really hard at it, I’m better than you. I decided I’d do everything better than you – for me it would work, I’d do everything different. Whatever you did, I’d do the opposite. A good husband – I’m good at it – I won’t find it funny when my wife dies. I won’t make stupid jokes. And if my son ever told me he hated me, because I do, Dad, I really hate you, if my son ever felt about me the way I feel about you, I’d die of shame.’
The scenes as Philip, Martin’s son visits him are a mixture of the really uncomfortable and absurd. Martin left his mother and him when they were young, after a string of affairs and to concentrate on his writing. This all makes quite painful listening. At first Philip tells us that the hates his father and has grown up to be everything his wasn’t – that he has a great relationship with his own wife and son. This façade crumbles as it becomes clear that Philip’s wife has left him and his ‘every other Saturday’ relationship with his teenage son isn’t all that great. We then have the absurdity of Philip pretending that his Mum has died, as an excuse to see his father again – the ashes of a dead Guinea Pig taking her place.
‘You were crap and I’m crap too!’
When Martin does meet his grandson Tom, the teenager spends all of his time playing computer games and is sick of people (like his Dad) trying too hard to be friends with him. All of this mundanity – the basic daily grind of being in a family, relationships that fray or fall apart, things said that should have remained unsaid that aim to hurt. In the end, maybe Martin just prefers ‘the horrors of isolation’ of his plays and the home he lives in and his fantasy world of TARDIS’s and time travel to all of this? I would suspect that we’ve all done this before – used the programme as an escape route? Whenever life is crap – well ‘City of Death’ works quite well to cheer you up, no matter how crap life life gets we’ll always have Paris.. or Vortis or Devil’s End, take your pick.
‘We are so alike, we write, we have bladder control…. We’re kindred spirits’!
The other main cast member here is Jacqueline King (years before Sylvia Noble) as Barbara Wright – who is either the nursing home carer or a history teacher who travels with Doctor Who. She is very good in this – playing the loneliness and bitterness of ‘real-life’ Barbara. When she finds out that Martin is a writer she subjects him to her poetry (we’ve all been there), even here he misreads her signals and loneliness – her desire for friendship for something more and manages to make a mess out of this too. The whole play is basically about missed connections and opportunities – between people and also in the case of a lost TV series and a life for Martin that never was.
‘That’s just bonzer!’
One of my favourite parts of the play is when Sydney Newman suddenly appears to Martin – who can’t remember if he was Australian, Canadian or American – so his accent wanders all over the place ‘bonzer!’ He’s going to bring back Doctor Who on the 40th anniversary of it not being made! No bug-eyed monsters though. And this is where I think Deadline is very clever – this is our creation myth – Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson, Verity Lambert, David Whittaker, Mervyn Pinfield, Waris Hussein, Anthony Coburn – and all of the others – the cast (present and absent) of ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’. ‘Deadline’ subverts that – reduces it to a possibility – Sydney Newman and Martin Bannister – with a mention of Verity, the vagaries of memory or the flights of fancy of an old and dying man.
Hiding in a wardrobe
‘Deadline’ is itself a clever title referencing the fears of an author and the time of life that Martin Bannister finds himself in – shuffling slowly towards the exit. Unfulfilled potential or potential that never existed. Is it all a fantasy, is Martin a fantasist, deluded, losing his sanity or dying or just a lonely old writer filled with regret and self-loathing? Whichever way, it is bleakly funny, unnerving, sometimes uncomfortable, awkward, absurd and sad, a bit like life really. Doctor Who as a fantasy escape from the bleakness of reality – surely that applies to all of us to some extent doesn’t it? As it is, we are left at the end of ‘Deadline’ with an old man hiding in a wardrobe in a care home, exploring the universe with the grand daughter that he never had.
‘Deadline’ seems to be quite a divisive play, unusually I had a scan of the reviews of this story out of interest and I think that is pretty much borne out by them. Some seem to absolutely revile it – even going as far as calling it disgusting and some love it, I’m not sure if there is a middle ground with this one. I am in the latter camp, as a one off piece I think it is beautifully performed, absurd, dark, uncomfortable and very clever, but I wouldn’t want to revisit it that often as with that pathos is a sort of self-loathing and bitterness – an edge that you don’t often find with Doctor Who. It works for me – I could imagine why it wouldn’t for everyone. For me it is clever and interesting, rather than necessarily something to completely love and cherish – for that we now have ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’. If the new series hadn’t been announced just as ‘Deadline‘ was released and we’d never had John Hurt or Christopher Eccleston or Michael Gambon or David Suchet or Claire Bloom or Simon Callow or Carey Mulligan or Bill Nighy or Lesley Sharp or David Morrissey or any of those other amazing performances – at least for one moment in 2003, we had Derek Jacobi playing the Doctor and he was fantastic!
A Journal of Impossible Things 