The Gunfighters is in TV Club this week and posting my review made me remember I’d written a fair bit about how historically inaccurate that story is.
Fans often opine the loss of ‘pure historicals’ in Doctor Who often wishing for them to return to TV. The books and audios have done a number of them, some very successfully, so it is still a story type that can be written and enjoyed.
But how historical do you prefer your historicals.
In the early days of the show historicals were quite diligent (for the time) in what they depicted. But as time went on, particularly in Season 3, historicals became more about emulating fiction such as Doctor Syn and Hollywood westerns than it did historical accuracy.
With the advent of what we like to call ‘pseudo-historicals’ all bets were off.
Pure historicals tend to be the best. Stories like the Massacre, or the multiple pures in the Main Range (especially for the TARDIS team of 5 peri erimem) give a deeper insight into the actual historical setting.
Pseudo-historicals annoy me because they are earth-centric and yet always shoehorn in an alien even when it would make more sense to have the main threat be from the time itself. Because of this they reinforce the idea of the ‘other’ being the villain while the people already from a location (earth) are portrayed as more inherently sympathetic. That’s why Demons of the Punjab is one of my favourte new who historicals.
As someone who’s not watched all that much classic, let alone all that much BW classic, I have to say, I never really understood the facination with the pure historicals.
I think it works well for An Unearthly Child (or rather 100,000 BC), because you’re introducing the cast and the dynamic, as well as the idea of the show, without having to introduce sci-fi concepts. It’s a world separate from our own, but it’s a world the viewing audience can understand. But how well could it really work in other time periods or when you’ve got a well established TARDIS Team already?
Then I listened to The Marian Conspiracy, and yeah, I take it all back, I get it now.
I love the pseudo historicals that’re so common nowdays, but I do think a pure historical every so often, even just one every few years, would be really nice to have.
My problem with “pure historicals” is that with no external threat, what usually happens is:
The Doctor turns up and accidentally gets mixed up in some battle or something
Sometimes the Doctor or a companion is mistaken for someone else because they happen to look exactly like them (I absolutely hate this trope)
Someone inevitably gets kidnapped which is why they can’t just leave. Cue escape shenanigans
Either the Doctor causes history to be as it should be (making him a bit too important imo) or he almost causes it to go wrong because of their presence and so must “fix” it
I just don’t really enjoy those sort of stories because they all play out the same.
The Doctor should be too intelligent to go blundering around history and messing it up all the time.
For me it only really works when the TARDIS is out of control and so he has a real reason why they went there in the first place.
Will also say I’d love to see the villians of that story in another episode. I think the idea of 15 meeting them, knowing that they’re extremely deadly at the time they’re in now, but knowing the people that they’ll soon become, could be a really interesting story
Oh also adding onto this, I’d love if we got more ‘Sci-Fi Historicals’ as it were
Stories about a fixed point in time that The Doctor can’t change, but instead of it being a moment in Earth’s past, it’s a moment in our future (e.g. Waters of Mars), or a moment in the past of another alien race
I think as a whole that it is a good thing that we don’t get pure historicals anymore but if someone has a good idea for it I would not mind for them to try it.
I love pure historicals, but I don’t want them back unless they’ve got a good idea for them. They do tend to be a bit samey in story content, as mentioned by @shauny above, so the idea should be really good for it to truly work. That being said, we’ve had historicals in the Revival that could’ve worked as pure historicals, such as Rosa.
I’d like to see more historicals, period, no matter how pure or unpure.
I think that Moffat’s original vision for Vincent and the Doctor was to make it a pure historical. But he was not allowed to do that. That is when he did an invisible enemy.
I do prefer my Historicals usually as pure ones. Why? Well for starters while not every pure one is a Winner, there are Stories such as The Massacre, Peterloo Massacre, The Aztecs and so on, which are just outright amazing. A lot of those challenge our Characters in Ways, which I simply don’t think would feel the same Way if it was done in a Sci-Fi or pseudo-historical Story.
Of course, I do like a pseudo-historical, but I think the Novelty of it has been lost and at times I feel like we are just retreading similar Grounds.
I don’t think the Show has to do a pure one as much as they did back in the Hartnell Era, but I think it would be a shame if the revived Shows never made an attempt with one.
Not only would it be lovely to go a bit back to the roots for a Story or two, but also offers a lot of Opportunity.
There is just something, and I am not sure how to properly put it, that is quite special about pure historical as a Story Type and especially when it comes to being a Character Piece.
I also simply think it would give us a nice Change of Pace, because again it’s different to a pseudo-historical and one or two wouldn’t hurt surely?
(Then again I am maybe a bit of bias, since it’s one of my favorite Story Type because it’s usually just works for me and even when it doesn’t, I appreciate the Attempt of Exploring a different Time Period ).
Also, Absolutely, visually stunning and very rich. It’s just so good, probably my favorite Story of the whole Whittaker Run if I am being honest.
That is really sad. It is as if there is a set of rules governing new who, making it all uniform and repetitive, like the unspoken law that there always has to be a companion from 21st century earth. New who could do with more variety, which in my opinion includes pure historicals.
While I think that there is a varietyin New Who as well but I think that it would be nice to give the creative freedom to experiment.
That said the thing about Moffat wanting VatD to be a pure historical might be fake. But I heard it some time and it makes sense given Moffat’s love for classic who.
The thing is, I think there are unwritten rules. Such as with the companions and with the historicals (the same way there was an unwritten rule that Daleks had to show up once a year—that’s not the case anymore, fortunately). The BBC has some sort of mandate here, where they want ro maximize audience interest and engagement.
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