I still liked the idea of going deeper into the TARDIS and making the TARDIS dangerous—but if you’re going to make the TARDIS dangerous, you have to ask yourself questions. What’s made the TARDIS dangerous? The TARDIS’ soul is no longer the TARDIS’ soul? Okay, so where is the TARDIS’ soul? Well, it’s in somebody. And at that point, that was all I needed to start making a story... We’ve known really since The Edge of Destruction—so William Hartnell’s third story—that the TARDIS was intelligent. In drafts of the script where we needed Idris to say more, one of the lines she actually said, she quoted William Hartnell: “The machine is not intelligent as we think it is intelligent....”71
Gaiman’s approach to Doctor Who’s program mythology72 bears all the hallmarks of the sociology of culture examined by Clarke, who argues that contributors to unfolding texts face the “paradoxical situation”73of needing to “add value” by creating something new, at the same time as fitting into established continuity. Clarke suggests that:
The solution... is to exploit the “unexplored gems” of the series... “filling in the blanks... that they don’t flesh out too much in the TV show”... Tapping the unexplored gem means drawing on elements implied in the on-air series, but not directly addressed... Although the use of unexplored gems solves the paradox of value-added tieins, this practice is predicated precisely upon... forms of research [using or drawing upon detailed fan knowledge].74
The TARDIS can be identified as one such “unexplored gem,” having accompanied the Doctor on his travels through time and space since 1963. Giving it a consciousness and a persona for the first time in “The Doctor’s Wife” enables Gaiman to create synthetic mythology, drawing a new coherence out of disparate eras of the program and its “rickety” hyperdiegesis.75 Gaiman has conceded that his childhood fandom proved insufficient for furnishing hyperdiegetic details about the TARDIS from 1963 to the present day. Interviewed for SFXmagazine, Gaiman was asked: “You’re dealing with the mythology of the show. Did you need to research it or was it all there in your head?”76His response indicated the importance of using fan research in order to create synthetic mythology:
Mainly in my head, but there was definitely some researching. I asked a friend of mine named Steve Manfred... I’d say, “Steve, is there anywhere that I can go for a list of every part of the TARDIS that has ever been named and referenced throughout the entirety of 50 years of Doctor Who?” And he’d just type them all out for me... The funny thing is that almost all of that research wound up in drafts of scripts and then fell out again.77
This again resonates with Clarke’s work on the practices of producer-fandom: “In addition to tapping their own fandom… writers also mine the fandom of others, using fan-created artifacts as shortcuts in their own research processes.”78 Drawing on his own and Manfred’s extensive fan knowledge, Gaiman selectively edits and recombines aspects of established continuity so as to simultaneously add to Doctor Who — giving voice to the TARDIS in an unprecedented manner — and fit his work into gaps, implications and details ranging across the program’s history. Synthetic mythology lends newfound coherence to a fragmented or rickety hyperdiegesis. It shares this reworking-for-consistency with a mode of fan reading or “retconning,” albeit enacting this within an official text rather than in fan reception.79
However, synthetic mythology remains a “limited textual power”80 insofar as it has to avoid contradicting or significantly altering program mythology. Gaps and implications can be developed, but established continuity cannot be transgressed or markedly rewritten. Gaiman has stated that he would have radically reworked Doctor Who were he to have been granted authorial control over it pre-2005:
In my head the Time Lords exist, and are unknowable—primal forces who cannot be named, only described: the Master, the Doctor, and so on. All depictions of the home of the Time Lords are, in my head, utterly non-canonical. The place in which they exist cannot be depicted because it is beyond imagining: a cold place that exists only in black and white. It’s probably a good thing that I’ve never actually got my hands on the Doctor. I would have unhappened so much.81
But when he eventually gets to write for the TV series, Gaiman does not have the situated agency of a show runner; he is unable to “unhappen” major aspects of mythology, though it should be noted that he is on record as broadly approving of Russell T. Davies’ retooling of the program.82 Nevertheless, “The Doctor’s Wife” is restricted to re-happening Doctor Who. Writing in Doctor Who Magazine, David Bailey teases the reader: “it... makes you wonder what world-shaking events will unfold now that [Neil Gaiman]... finally, actually has his hands on our beloved series.”83 The reality is that synthetic mythology, or rereading/rewriting for consistency, does not shake the world of “structural continuity” so much as affectively play with selected aspects of it.
As with his work on Babylon 5 and Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?,Neil Gaiman also incorporates a number of characteristic strategies into his Doctor Who episode. Like Babylon 5, he self-consciously places a boundary around his contribution, making the Junkyard planet not just a referencing of Totter’s Lane from the first ever Doctor Who story in 1963,84 but also part of a “bubble universe” that can therefore function in an even more fairy tale-like and whimsical manner than the standard Whoniverse, as well as playing with fan desires and expectations for a return of the Time Lords. Less exaggeratedly than in “Day of the Dead,” Gaiman nonetheless again ritualistically bounds his contribution, providing a narrative rationale for his own brand of fantasy.
And “The Doctor’s Wife” also echoes Gaiman’s book-ending of The Sandman series by portraying the TARDIS’s humanized form, Idris, in a cyclical, looping manner. She says “goodbye” upon first meeting the Doctor and “hello” as she leaves his life to be restored to her machine form. Again, and also akin to Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, the “process of saying goodbye”230 is picked over and rendered in mythic form; endings and beginnings are relativized, or displaced in time and relative dimensions, perhaps, by virtue of being chronologically muddled. Finally, Gaiman’s subordination to an ongoing story arc under the show-runner’s control—this time, Steven Moffat—is brought home by virtue of the fact that a prophetic message is inserted into his Doctor Who episode. Babylon 5’s “Day of the Dead” included J.M. Stracsynski’s addition of Kosh’s message, whilst “The Doctor’s Wife” includes Moffat’s addition of “the only water in the forest is the river.”85 Otherwise, Gaiman’s contributions to these TV series act as temporary breaks from ongoing story arcs.
In all of Neil Gaiman’s additions to unfolding texts that I’ve considered here—whether deploying ritualized, indeterminate, or synthetic mythology—his work is “tested” on a “rabid... fan” by way of research (Babylon 5), draws on his own professed fandom (Batman), or combines personal fandom with other fan research (Doctor Who). Gaiman’s manipulations of “structural continuity” hence repeatedly draw on and privilege modes of fan reading, either by returning to gaps in the text (e.g., dead characters), recognizing all forms of continuity while playfully offering up outrageously transgressive narrative possibilities (e.g., the helper as lead villain), or seeking to create coherent retroactive continuity (voicing the TARDIS). Mythology and fandom are insistently interconnected in Gaiman’s work as a producer-fan, suggesting that reading unfolding texts as myths is a key part of fan cultural capital and fan interpretation. Blanket descriptions of these texts as “mythic,” or as having mythological dimensions, may thus miss the mark somewhat. Unfolding texts can act as myths; they can be specifically read and activated as mythic by fan cultures and by professional authors making use of their own (and others’) fan affects, knowledge, and identities. Yet the hyperdiegetic universes of contemporary TV and comic books are not objectively given as mythologies. Instead, they are affectively engaged with, and read-as-mythology, by communities of fan readers. Mythology might validate fan investment, and legitimate popular culture, but it is also actively prod
uced through fan (re)interpretations and producer-fan (re)tellings. Mythology is, perhaps, the ultimate fan service.
____________________
1 Rauch, 11-21.
2 Klock, 126.
3 Reynolds, 53.
4 Lundberg, 122.
5 Dowd, 105.
6 Brooker, “The Best Batman Story,” 42.
7 Baker, 21-22.
8 Lancaster, 7.
9 Parkin, “Truths Universally Acknowledged,” 13.
10 Ibid.
11 Brooker, Batman Unmasked.
12 Parkin, “Truths,” 18.
13 Parkin, “Truths,” 22.
14 Reynolds, 41 and 43, my italics.
15 Reynolds, 43.
16 Reynolds, 45.
17 Hills, Fan Cultures, 131.
18 Hills, Fan Cultures, 137.
19 Britton, 21.
20 Hills, Triumph of a Time Lord.
21 Britton, 22.
22 Parkin, “Truths,” 21.
23 Britton, 25.
24 Parkin, “Truths,” 23.
25 Clarke, 434-56.
26 Hills, Fan Cultures.
27 Gaiman, Day of the Dead, 50.
28 Baker, 51-2.
29 Clarke, 450.
30 Lancaster, 8.
31 Gaiman, Day of the Dead, 21.
32 Keane, 15.
33 Johnson-Smith, 216.
34 Johnson-Smith, 215.
35 Lancaster, 24.
36 Britton, 22.
37 Parkin, “Truths,” 13.
38 Uricchio and Pearson, 184-5.
39 Brooker, Batman Unmasked.
40 Gaiman, Batman, no page numbers given.
41 Gaiman, Batman, n.p.
42 Joan Gordon, 84.
43 Jenkins, 21.
44 Rauch, 17-8.
45 Bender, 221.
46 Coupe, Myth: 2nd Edition, 64.
47 Silverstone, 112.
48 Umberto Eco, 117.
49 Klock, 5.
50 Bender, 225.
51 Brooker, Batman Unmasked, 275.
52 Gaiman, Batman, n.p., final panel of issue #686 reprint.
53 Gaiman, Wake, 185.
54 Gaiman, Batman, n.p.
55 Uricchio and Pearson, 192.
56 Gaiman, Batman, n.p.
57 Klock, 126.
58 Clarke, 443.
59 Coupe, 173.
60 Coupe, 173.
61 Klock, 21.
62 Gaiman, “Foreword: The Nature of the Infection,” 7-10.
63 Setchfield, 80-2.
64 Gaiman, “Production Notes,” 4.
65 Marcus Wilson, quoted in Guy Haley, 11.
66 Gaiman, “Foreword: The Nature,” 8.
67 Gaiman, “Foreword: The Nature,” 9.
68 Clarke, 450.
69 David Bailey, “A Boy and His Box,” 32.
71 Hills, “Mythology Makes You Feel Something,”198-215.
72 Clarke, 447.
73 Clarke, 447.
74 Britton, 22.
75 Setchfield, 82.
76 Ibid.
77 Clarke, 444.
78 Britton, 21.
79 Clarke, 450.
80 Gaiman, “Foreword: The Nature,” 9.
81 Bailey, “In Gaiman’s Terms,” 48.
82 Ibid.
83 Setchfield, 80.
84 Gaiman, Wake, 185.
85 Neil Gaiman,The Guardian, TV & Radio Blog: Live Q&A with Neil Gaiman.”
So Long and Thanks for All the Dents! A Guide for the Hitchhiker
Through the Worlds of Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman
Anthony S. Burdge It may be safe to say that if you are currently holding a print or Kindle version of the volume in which this chapter is contained, then you the reader may be from the same version of the Earth where Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams have co-existed. Is this the same Earth destroyed by Vogons, you may ask? There is a chance, along the axis of probability, that this is possible. The stories by Gaiman and Adams have recorded the adventures of various life forms that have entered dreams, alternate realities, and parallel dimensions. With my attempt at humor aside, I believe there are relative questions to ask regarding the comparison of stories by these two beloved authors.
For purposes of expanding entries on Gaiman and Adams for The Guide, (more on that in a moment), we must examine who these two beings are and what instruction they both provide for travelers to other worlds and dimensions—including the effects of this type of travel. By meddling with the minds of their audiences, Gaiman and Adams may have already caused instabilities in the axis of space-time. Or are they themselves complex beings who have caused dimensional probabilities to arise in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash?1 Before we attempt to address the complexity of this probability, the axis of space-time and its effects on the simple human mind, let us see what we need to expand upon regarding Neil Gaiman.
Gaiman, Neil is a descendent of primitive ape life forms that have inhabited an “utterly insignificant little blue green planet,” called “Earth,” for really far too long.2 However, the entry for Neil Gaiman in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy™3 states: “Dreamer. Harmless Writer.” The reader may already know that this particular Harmless Writer, with an unusually large amount of hair on his head, has been known to state that there have been key inspirational role models within his life and his body of work. A few of these key figures have been, yet are not limited to, J.R.R Tolkien, C.S Lewis, and G.K Chesterton4. For the purpose(s) of Mega Dodo Publications5 we will focus on but one of these inspirational figures, that of another carbonbased ape descendent from the same utterly insignificant little blue-green planet who went by the name of Douglas Adams.
Adams, classified as “Hoopy Explainer. Mostly Harmless Writer,” was an editor and primary author of the Earth- based version of The Guide. Now The Guidehas many permutations and variations, constructed by Adams for the purpose of your entertainment via radio, television, cinema, and print. Each of these variations concerns a book about a book. However, this present chapter will be absent of any comic boings, technological bleeps, bloops, and whizzes, or any other audio effects you may have become accustomed to in previous variations and explorations. Throughout the varied versions of these stories by Adams, we are presented with the story of Arthur Dent, who, alongside his traveling companion and contributor for The Guide, Ford Prefect, both routinely consult The Guide.6 Every reader of Hitchhiker’s knows that his or her representative in the fantastical worlds Adams explores is that very ordinary ape man named Arthur Dent. Dent has been the odd and dull Everyman, the person we can relate to, and through whose eyes we have seen all the strange things happening throughout all of the narrative incarnations of Hitchhiker’s.7 The Guide, by Adams, offers insight into the events of Arthur’s adventures in the narrative, which I feel fits the varied samplings I have included in this chapter.
Those who are regular followers of the doings of Arthur Dent may have received an impression of his character and habits which, while it includes the truth and, of course, nothing but the truth, falls somewhat short, in its composition, of the whole truth in all its glorious aspects. And the reasons for this are obvious: editing, selection, the need to balance that which is interesting with that which is relevant and cut out all the tedious happenstance.8
Gaiman’s stories possess numerous memorable everyday characters, neither entirely odd, nor dull, and whom you may recall when having a good time at the pub, but more importantly those who have similarly experienced the strange and alien such as Richard from Neverwhere, Joey Harker of Interworld, and several we shall sample from The Sandmanseries.
Gaiman is quoted as being an “enormous fan”9and after numerous interviews with Adams, wrote DON’T PANIC: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.10 Gaiman states: “As a young man, I wrote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy companion, Don’t Panic, which was enormously fun. Every 25-year-old should get to work with Douglas Adams.”11 After writing DON’T PANIC, Gaiman turned down num
erous offers12 to write about the lives of other celebrities and felt his future did not lie with writing books about other people. Without stating the overly zarqing obvious, Gaiman’s friendship and work with Adams left a “lasting influence”13 on his own life and work. Adams told Gaiman, as recorded in DON’T PANIC, “So my job was to make the fantastical and dreamlike appear to be as real and solid as possible, that was always the crux of Hitchhiker’s.”14 As well received as Adams’ work has been, it appears he succeeded in this accomplishment.
Gaiman stated of Adams: I think that perhaps what Douglas was was probably something we don’t even have a word for yet. A Futurologist, or an Explainer, or something one day they’ll realize that the most important job out there is for someone who can explain the world to itself in ways that the world won’t forget.15
I, your humble narrator, feel what Gaiman shares about Adams is also applicable to Gaiman’s own work. Both writers, in many unforgettable and successful ways, have succeeded in explaining the world, to the world.16 Many of Gaiman’s stories, if not all in some way, illustrate the recordings of characters who have traveled throughout the realms of Dream, crossed into parallel dimensions, met alternative versions of themselves, slipped into the realm of Faerie, explored fantastical Underground cities, and opened doors to darker versions of “normal reality.” As chapters in the present volume discuss, Gaiman’s own work greatly illustrate the reality of the fantastical and dreamlike.
Readers of Gaiman’s work, similar to that of Tolkien’s sub-created world, may feel the worlds they enter via the narrative, are as real as the one you, the reader of this volume, currently inhabit. Tolkien discusses the mechanics of how his story was transmitted to him “from the channels the creator is known to have used already [as] the fundamental function of ‘sub-creation.”17 As an aside, if you are expecting any extensive commentary on a Creator Being, the Almighty Bob,18other assorted gods, minor deities from the Halls of Asgard, or the Great Prophet Zarquon,19 then you are certainly looking in the wrong place. In no fashion whatsoever will these beings stick their pesky faces into any of this chapter; not only do they tend to involve themselves in the daily lives of humans, and make a mess of them, they absolutely cannot be trusted.20 This author feels the same about elves and fairies—none of them now, my precious.
The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman Page 10
