Fanfiction and fanfilms existed even before the Internet and have become a simple fact of life ever since its inception. Yet not all fan works are apiece. Where a fanfiction, say, of DuckTales, is just that, there are some franchises that have spawned such fandom that fan works based on them have begun a genre of their own, with their recurring themes and their codes, to the extent that you can find people who forego the original completely and are a fan of the fanworks. The incommensurably gigantic Harry Potter fanfiction community is the quintessential example, but Britons don't stop at that; they have a cinematic equivalent too. And that is Doctor Who fanfilm.
Ranging anywhere from children dressing up in their parents' jackets (and being very charming too!) to productions of truly professional quality — and let's not talk about the odd aberration that are fanfilms to whom the official actors contributed, just for the heck of it! — Doctor Who fanfilms are astonishing, frequently awful, and sometimes superior to many televised episodes I could name. I love them dearly and regularly enter ‘Doctor Who fanfilm’ into YouTube's search bar just to see if any new nice ones have popped up.
And just two days ago, well fancy that.
Born Again, the work of Paris Freeman (who also plays the Doctor and directs this first episode; this is very common in fanfilms, for obvious reasons), is the first episode of a new fanfilm series which transparently comes to fill the power vacuum left by the DW2012 series, the ten-year-spanning, four-seasons œuvre of Luke Newman, another fan turned writer-director-Doctor. (If you want proof of Freeman's obvious intention to be the next Newman, look no further than the name of the YouTube channel now hosting his first attempt, TimeLord2016.)
The DW2012 series was not the best fanfilm series by far, not even the best one on YouTube; some of its stories flirted with the downright imbecilic, and it had all the wobbly cardboard sets, tinfoil monsters, barely-pubescent actors and reused sountracks cribbed from the official show that are the hallmarks of cheap YouTube fanfilms everywhere. Yet it had proven to be the most popular, perhaps through sheer tenacity (ten years and four seasons is more than most halfway-competent fanfilmmakers can boast), perhaps also thanks to Newman's extremely likable, hearfelt, original take on the character of the Doctor, far more than the cheap Matt Smith impression you usually get in these things. Not that Newman isn't very Smith-esque, of course.
But we're not here to talk about the DW2012 series; we're here to talk about Born Again. How does it hold up? Averagely, is my cop-out answer. Though it commits the sin of having one of the most boilerplate pilot titles imaginable, it's off to a very strong start as we watch the Doctor regenerate into a still very harried Paris Freeman and frantically try to steer the crashing TARDIS.
But if the companion's a dud, at least the Doctor has to be okay, right? Well, mostly, yeah.
The bad first: past the opening scene where a certain amount of harried slurriness was expected, I slowly came to notice, with not inconsiderable dismay, that Paris Freeman mumbles half his lines instead of saying them. When he does say them he does it well enough, and his American accent isn't nearly as noticeable a 'flaw' as you might think, but this is certainly not a Doctor I'd listen to in Big Finish audios. In totally unrelated matters, I won't speculate on Freeman's exact age, but there is the unavoidable fact that he looks strikingly boyish. Not in itself damning for a Doctor (Matt Smith and Peter Davison were certainly very boyish-looking), except that Freeman doesn't seem to realize quite the extent of his own boyishness. His portrayal seems to befit a considerably more mature Doctor than what we're looking at; it's telling that the feel of his costume, and the music used in his very first scene, are both clearly inspired by Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor.
But those are minor problems. In a world where otherwise-great fanfilms are marred by leads who Just. Can't. Act, Freeman yields a perfectly acceptable, even entertaining performance. He's certainly no worse than Luke Newman was in his Doctorish debut (where Freeman now mumbles, Newman once muttered); he's confident and charismatic in his portrayal, though not as much so as a professional actor might perhaps be in his place. If there is one easily-fixed flaw in the Paris Freeman Doctor, it is more with the writing than the acting, and it is that he hasn't really had a chance to be funny yet. Genial, yes, but I'm still waiting for a moment of outright daffiness for him to call his own.
All in all, Freeman delivers a perfectly serviceable fanfilm Doctor — of the breed who would be a travesty if actually cast as the Doctor on actual television, unlike, say, Bryan McCormack, but who by YouTube amateur standards deserve more encouragement than criticism.
Ranging anywhere from children dressing up in their parents' jackets (and being very charming too!) to productions of truly professional quality — and let's not talk about the odd aberration that are fanfilms to whom the official actors contributed, just for the heck of it! — Doctor Who fanfilms are astonishing, frequently awful, and sometimes superior to many televised episodes I could name. I love them dearly and regularly enter ‘Doctor Who fanfilm’ into YouTube's search bar just to see if any new nice ones have popped up.
And just two days ago, well fancy that.
Born Again, the work of Paris Freeman (who also plays the Doctor and directs this first episode; this is very common in fanfilms, for obvious reasons), is the first episode of a new fanfilm series which transparently comes to fill the power vacuum left by the DW2012 series, the ten-year-spanning, four-seasons œuvre of Luke Newman, another fan turned writer-director-Doctor. (If you want proof of Freeman's obvious intention to be the next Newman, look no further than the name of the YouTube channel now hosting his first attempt, TimeLord2016.)
The DW2012 series was not the best fanfilm series by far, not even the best one on YouTube; some of its stories flirted with the downright imbecilic, and it had all the wobbly cardboard sets, tinfoil monsters, barely-pubescent actors and reused sountracks cribbed from the official show that are the hallmarks of cheap YouTube fanfilms everywhere. Yet it had proven to be the most popular, perhaps through sheer tenacity (ten years and four seasons is more than most halfway-competent fanfilmmakers can boast), perhaps also thanks to Newman's extremely likable, hearfelt, original take on the character of the Doctor, far more than the cheap Matt Smith impression you usually get in these things. Not that Newman isn't very Smith-esque, of course.
But we're not here to talk about the DW2012 series; we're here to talk about Born Again. How does it hold up? Averagely, is my cop-out answer. Though it commits the sin of having one of the most boilerplate pilot titles imaginable, it's off to a very strong start as we watch the Doctor regenerate into a still very harried Paris Freeman and frantically try to steer the crashing TARDIS.
It's a very strong start, full of action and moody lighting and good acting. The effects work, by fanfilm standards, is pretty amazing, and will remain so for the duration of the entire episode (not that it's a feature film, not anywhere close; it's a tight 20 minutes or so). This is, no joke, probably the best regeneration effect and in-flight TARDIS I've ever seen in a fanfilm, and still pictures wouldn't do it justice; whether or not you meant to watch the whole thing, I definitely urge you to follow my earlier link and just watch the first few minutes and the opening credits sequence. And — oh — the opening credits sequence — that too is a thing of beauty. It has nothing to be ashamed of when viewed back-to-back with the intro used in Peter Capaldi's last official season, and I daresay I prefer it to the more understated affair of Series 11, though I'm not quite sold on the creative rearrangement of the iconic opening tune, which is as far removed from Murray Gold's 2010's version as even Gold's 2005 version was from the 1963 Ron Grainer classic, and that is perhaps one step removed too many.
Unfortunately, things rather quickly go downhill from there as Paris Freeman's Doctor crashes into an American girl's back yard, and the girl, though wary of him, ends up cooking for him, and finding herself believing that he is an alien after all, and finding herself drawn in even though she is less than impressed by some of his idiosyncrasies, and… and right about now you're probably realizing that this is just Amy Pond, except without any of the interesting bits. A common ailment in fanfilm companions, sadly. Complain all you like about the blandness and interchangeability of the official onscreen companions, but you ain't seen nothing yet.
But stuck we are with Nicole Williamson (I'll give the film that this is pleasantly sounds like an American name without being a caricature of one). The fact that she is as basic a fanmade companion as they get would be bad enough, but she is portrayed with frigidly wooden acting and a gratingly monotone voice by Gabrielle Wright.
And I realize that it is unfair to pick on fanfilm actors, who are by definition doing a labor of love with an amateur background, but I hope that the TimeLord2016 folks take this as the backhanded compliment that it is: it is only because you got so close to letting me forget this is a fan production that this acting (well, lack thereof) sticks out like a sore thumb.
But if the companion's a dud, at least the Doctor has to be okay, right? Well, mostly, yeah.
The bad first: past the opening scene where a certain amount of harried slurriness was expected, I slowly came to notice, with not inconsiderable dismay, that Paris Freeman mumbles half his lines instead of saying them. When he does say them he does it well enough, and his American accent isn't nearly as noticeable a 'flaw' as you might think, but this is certainly not a Doctor I'd listen to in Big Finish audios. In totally unrelated matters, I won't speculate on Freeman's exact age, but there is the unavoidable fact that he looks strikingly boyish. Not in itself damning for a Doctor (Matt Smith and Peter Davison were certainly very boyish-looking), except that Freeman doesn't seem to realize quite the extent of his own boyishness. His portrayal seems to befit a considerably more mature Doctor than what we're looking at; it's telling that the feel of his costume, and the music used in his very first scene, are both clearly inspired by Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor.
But those are minor problems. In a world where otherwise-great fanfilms are marred by leads who Just. Can't. Act, Freeman yields a perfectly acceptable, even entertaining performance. He's certainly no worse than Luke Newman was in his Doctorish debut (where Freeman now mumbles, Newman once muttered); he's confident and charismatic in his portrayal, though not as much so as a professional actor might perhaps be in his place. If there is one easily-fixed flaw in the Paris Freeman Doctor, it is more with the writing than the acting, and it is that he hasn't really had a chance to be funny yet. Genial, yes, but I'm still waiting for a moment of outright daffiness for him to call his own.
All in all, Freeman delivers a perfectly serviceable fanfilm Doctor — of the breed who would be a travesty if actually cast as the Doctor on actual television, unlike, say, Bryan McCormack, but who by YouTube amateur standards deserve more encouragement than criticism.
Okay, so we've got our Doctor and our companion, what of the villain/monster? Ah, I thought you might ask. Well. Again, it's complicated.
Surprisingly for a fanfilm, where it's usually the opposite, what we have here is a stunningly-realized concept that, as a concept, really doesn't hold much water. Perhaps it might make more snese in a more polished script, but the Stratagem… let me try to sum them up for you: the Stratagem is an alien hive mind remotely controlling a robot body trying to coerce the Doctor into teaching them how to steer a time machine with which they are accidentally opening gaps in the fabric of space-time, which may destroy Earth given time. All this in the space of — well, of ten minutes, really, allowing for the opening and sequences and the half of the actual screentime that is devoted to the tepid spectacle of the Doctor meeting, and bonding with, Nicole.
By contrast, the Daleks are angry dustbins who want to kill people.
But let's not be too hard on the Stratagem; as I said, where the concept is lacking and overconvoluted, the execution is very effective. The robot body is as real-looking and imposing as any pre-2005 Cyberman, that is to say, pretty damn much for something which inescapably looks first and foremost like a chrome-painted costume; Andrew Dillon does a good job of making it move in stilted, economically jittery littlemovements, withou nary any corpsing. Dillon also provides it with a shrill, monotone voice the — the filter used on it sounds a little too much like a Dalek voice, perhaps, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. All in all it does a very good job of making you forget that strictly all it does for all of its screentime is stand around in one place.
Also: next to the Stratagem in all of its shots is a round mechanical energy-wheel-thingy (see above) which serves as its time machine's power source, and it's such a little thing, but the effect on it is really, really good. Doesn't at all feel like tacked-on CGI. The light even seems to reflect on the Stratagem's outer plating. Congratulations.
Speaking of props and effects, I earlier congratulated the CGI, in-flight TARDIS. Well, the physical one ain't no slouch, either. Its control room is made of deep brown, well-polished wood, with a particular clever bit of set design in the panels on the hexagonal console (hexagonal, like the classic hexagonal things on the wall) which can be opened to reveal the switches and buttons and levers. Now, this hexagonal console lacks a moving, vertical column-thing (what true Whovians know to be called a “Time Rotor”), and compared to the official televised ones it is really quite a small thing, like the room itself, for that matter. But it matters not — an actual control room it is, as opposed to some unconvincing greenscreen hocus-pocus such as I have encountered in the past, and quite a delightfully-designed one. And did I mention they have an actual physical TARDIS prop for outside shots? Full props to the props department.
All in all Born Again does not transcend the genre of Doctor Who fanfilms, but it is a very fine example of the form, and if they heed the quibbles earlier outlined, I have very high hopes for TimeLord2016's fanfilm series. Let us hope it will enjoy as much of a bright future as DW2012 did!
And for our Post-Scriptum, appropriately enough, I urge you, if you do watch Born Again for yourself, to watch its end credits too. They, also, are gorgeous.
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