What I Think About When I Think About Doctor Who

Adding comments about the new episode of Doctor Who to the Internet seems highly redundant, but I did think it was wonderful. I thought Matt Smith’s Doctor felt instantly iconic, and that the programme now has that Harry Potter-ish feel about it – world-beating, while still distinctly British. Just the right balance of funny bits and magical bits and scary bits and thrilling bits.

These are hardly unique thoughts, so here’s five things – other art – that the Doctor Who story (‘The Eleventh Hour’) made me think about. Not so common connections, I hope.

1. The Tardis swimming pool being somewhere in the Tardis library. This made me think about the novel ‘The Swimming-Pool Library’. (I imagined the Doctor adding to Amy ‘It’s all gone a bit Alan Hollinghurst in there.’)

swimmingpoollibrary

2. A huge disembodied eyeball. Three other oversized ocular orbs suggested themselves. There’s Odilon Redon’s eyeball-balloon, in his print ‘L’Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini’ (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity). As used on book covers like Ian McEwan’s ‘Enduring Love’.

odilon-redon

3. Another eyeball, this time the sky-bound one in ‘Flan’, the early 90s apocalyptic album and novel by the New York musician Stephen Tunney, aka Dogbowl.

dogbowl-flan

I’m pleased to see that the novel’s just been reprinted. It’s like ‘The Road’, but with more floating eyeballs.

Document 1

4. One more giant eyeball (they’re like buses): the one behind the door in Clive Barker’s story ‘Son Of Celluloid’ (from ‘Books Of Blood’), which quotes ‘Casablanca’ at its victim: ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’. A tale of a cancerous tumour becoming sentient and doing impersonations of Hollywood movie stars in order to kill people. Outrageous, gory and really rather brilliant.

In fact, because I read too many biographies, I’ve just realised I’m sitting a few blocks away from the house where Mr Barker wrote the story – along with much of his 80s output, including the source material for ‘Hellraiser’ and ‘Candyman’- in Hillfield Avenue, Crouch End, London N8. I’m cat-sitting in nearby Middle Lane. Here’s a panel from the comic adaptation of ‘Son Of Celluloid’:

son-of-celluloid

5. Finally, my favourite tale about sinister voices coming from cracks in the walls. ‘Flies On The Ceiling’, by Jaime Hernandez, from the long-running comic book ‘Love & Rockets’. After an abortion and divorce, Izzy Ruebens finds herself in a dingy rented room somewhere in Mexico. There, riddled with guilt and neuroses, the Devil speaks to her through a crack in the wall. Perfect for Easter:
L&R_29_26_edited-1


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