The time of arising is at hand

That's a hand in that picture. It's kind of hard to see.

Anyway, TONIGHT Doctor Who returns to BBC One! I'm wearing my hipster-store-bought Doctor Who t-shirt in celebration, which even a few years ago would have been met with the utmost derision and a lot of "What does that mean?" Now Matt Smith stares back at me from the side of New York City buses! Sometimes I have moments when I forget that new Doctor Who is being made and then I remember and it's awesome all over again. We in the Rest of the World will have to wait a short while until someone posts it on YouTube (though if you have access you should watch it again when it's on BBC America or whatever station is showing it in a couple of weeks). Until then, here is a recently-released clip from what will be Episode Six of the new season, "Vampires of Venice" (31.6). Okay, before you ask why it's 31.6 and not N5.6, Moffat was apparently advised that Series 5 sounds like an aging brand, and so has said that this season should be referred to either as Series 1 ("exciting") or 31 ("awe-inspiring"). I have my doubts about this (if the fifth season is an aging brand, what is the thirty-first?), and hope everyone will just call it the 2010 season. But for the purposes of the blog numerals, I'll use 31. Because, let's be honest, it's true. If you disagree, let's argue about it in the comments like good little fanboys. Anyway, for some reason, Blogger won't show the clip if I put a break in, so you'll have to see it "after the jump" as they say.

This is not the first time our fanged friends have appeared in Doctor Who. Fourth Doctor story State of Decay (18.4), revealed that in the days Rassilon, the Time Lords fought a long and brutal war against, and killed almost all of the, vampires, who were huge, space-faring, planet-sucking creatures capable of "vampirising" other life forms. The last Great Vampire escaped to a pocket universe and vampirised some humans to feed him barrels of blood until he could rise again (pictured above). The question is, how will all that relate to the young ladies in the YouTube clip above? The Doctor's reaction and past experience both tell me that the answer is not at all. Doctor Who has never cared much about continuity. In this age of Wikipedia and home video, writers (arguably) can't contradict previous stories in the way that they used to when no one had seen or could really remember those stories, but it remains very unwise to assume that viewers have seen previous stories, especially if they were long, long ago.

Or is it? Partly as an antidote to Wilderness Years novels, which never did anything without referring to past TV stories, Russell made damn sure there were never any references that could alienate anyone who was watching for the first time, at least until Season 4, which was littered with in-jokes about his previous episodes. So it was apparently alright to refer to the post-2005 series, but not the pre-1989. The whole 5/1/31 debate suggests that Moffat is keen to see Doctor Who as one big awesome series, not divided into "New" and "Classic" as it has been. I applaud this point of view, but would like to point out that Doctor Who was, in a way, not created as a series (especially not as we think of series post-Buffy and Lost), but as a format for monthly serials. A 1974 Cybermen story didn't have to refer to a 1966 one any more than a report on Nine O'Clock News had to refer to a report eight years previously. This, more than anything else, is why Doctor Who has survived for 47 years - because it doesn't give a Dalek's fart about its own history, new viewers have always been able to jump on. In this way, the Russell-era in-jokery is more dangerous than having a story that refers to State of Decay, because a reference can be explained, while an in-joke just makes people feel left out and not sure why. And a series will inevitably get caught up in its own continuity, lose viewers without gaining more, "run out of ideas," and die; a format or loose premise can be used forever.

It is possible that Steven Moffat understands all this. In which case, perhaps he has allowed/encouraged Toby Whithouse, who wrote the episode, to use the previous vampire story without being bound by it. Then again, Toby Whithouse is the creator of Being Human, a series about a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost who all live together, and as such he appears more interested in vampires as sexy flatmates (humanoid) than as ancient, evil hands. It doesn't really matter if May's Venetian adventure contradicts 1980's E-Space one - fans will get over the inconsistencies as we always have - and I suppose that's why Russell was so against references: if it contradicts it doesn't matter, but the dangers of linking it up are significant. The Wilderness Years novels, predictably, went to town on the vampires-as-the-Time-Lords'-ancient-enemies concept, and some of the results were continuity-filling nonsense, but some were interesting. The fact that almost all of Doctor Who can now be seen very easily means that it is more of a series than it used to be. I think that my disappointment that, for instance, "The Waters of Mars" (N4.16) only name-checked the Ice Warriors (not the best example; I'll try and think one where there's actual contradiction), was more than just fan-hurt; it's also disappointment at a missed opportunity. One can build on past stories without shooting oneself in the foot if one can see past stories as sources of usable ideas, not rigid mythology. A story that attempts to sort out the tangle of Cybermen history will fail (it exists: Attack of the Cybermen (22.1)), but there is an exciting story that has yet to be told about what happened to the Cybermen of the Doctor's normal universe. Steven Moffat wants Doctor Who to be seen as one series, which is good, because it is. Doctor Who has always been a powerhouse of brilliant ideas, and I hope that he finds a way to use some of them in a way that's not alienating, just awesome.

There's always the Silurians.