Doctor Who and Who Else?

 

Was the Lone Ranger really alone? No, he had Tonto. Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first consulting detective, had Dr. Watson. The revived Doctor Who has his traveling companion, Rose, Martha, or Donna, depending on what season you’re watching. And who was Superman’s sidekick? Think about that; it’s a trick question.

This topic lodged itself in the front of my brain after I watched an interview with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, the stars of the hit BBC Wales programme, “Doctor Who.” (That’s the British spelling of “program.” I strive for inclusiveness.) The interviewer questioned Tennant and Tate on why the doctor needed a companion.

The interviewer will remain nameless to save him embarrassment (and because I don’t feel like going back on YouTube and looking it up).The question betrayed a lack of knowledge, both of the Doctor Who canon and dramatic structure.

For the uninitiated, the Doctor is more than 900 years old and the last member of the race of Time Lords. He travels through time and space in the TARDIS, his time machine/spaceship, which happens to be in the form of a London police call box. The Doctor seems to have a soft spot for the British Isles, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. (You want details, watch the show.) From a character standpoint, the Doctor needs a companion because he’s lonely.

From the story telling standpoint, it’s a different, well, story. Dialogue has two overarching functions in fiction and nonfiction: reveal character and advance the plot. In movie and TV fiction, there has seldom been a truly lone hero. If he were alone, who would he talk to?

I teach classes on both fiction writing and memoir writing, and I always make it a point to distinguish between writing for the page and writing for the screen. One of the telling differences is the way we learn what a character is thinking.

The first time I noticed the difference was when I was a teenager and read a paperback novel based on the TV series “The Wild, Wild West.”

(This was the late 60s, when paperbacks had cigarette ads on heavy stock glued to the spine right in the middle of the book. Remember that? Hated it. End of nostalgia break. Onward.)

On the show, when Jim West and his partner, Artemus Gordon, were trying to figure out the problem of the week, they talked to each other. But in the book, the author could explain what a solitary Jim or Artemus was thinking in the narrative, without the need for a sounding board. That was quite an a-ha moment for me.

On the page, the hero can think to himself. On the screen, he has to do it out loud.

Until then, I was used to people on TV incessantly chattering to each other. The Lone Ranger talked to Tonto and formulated a plan, which usually involved Tonto going somewhere by himself and getting the snot kicked out of him. Then the Ranger would come to his rescue and dispatch the baddies. But the point is, the Lone Ranger talked to someone. He had to. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know what he was thinking.

In “The Adventures of Superman” TV series of my youth, the sidekickless Man of Steel hardly ever figured things out aloud because he hardly ever talked to anyone. But Clark Kent did. He figured things out while talking to either Lois Lane or Jimmy Olson. Then he ran to the storeroom, stripped down to his longjohns, flew out the window, and rescued either Jimmy Olson or Lois Lane.

Part of Dr. Watson’s function in the Sherlock Holmes stories (in print) was to be the viewpoint character, thereby representing us, the readers. A viewpoint character should not know everything. Rather she or he should learn things as the story unfolds. The problem with Holmes as a viewpoint character was that he saw too much too soon. That makes for a brilliant and an fascinating detective, but it lessens the drama. Through conversations with Watson, however, we learned what he was thinking in a more dramatic way.

Solitary characters did talk to themselves in the early days of theater. Just think of Hamlet’s soliloquy. That was a necessary theatrical device because we had to know that Hamlet was contemplating suicide, and that’s not a topic you chat to your buddies about. But the actor can’t just wander the stage looking pensive. He must voice his thoughts for the benefit of the audience. Monologue or dialogue, they both do the same thing.

Dialogue is both necessary and desirable. Many fiction writers make sure they have quotation marks on page one of their books. Those little marks mean people are talking to each other, and that might mean something juicy on which to eavesdrop. That serves to pull the readers in and get them to page two.

Dialogue is an essential ingredient in the recipe for a well told story. After all, without dialogue how would the Doctor’s sidekick know what a sonic screwdriver is?

(Look it up.)


Jay Speyerer has been a writer, a speaker, and an educator for more than 30 years, successfully helping people achieve their communication goals in memoir writing, e-mail, cross-cultural communication, and presentation skills. Want to communicate better? Find out how at his web site here.

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