Split Screen: Terrible time and again

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Split Screen: Terrible time and again
April 29, 2011
James “DexX” Dominguez
smh.com.au

Doctor Who has undergone a weird transformation since it returned to our screens six years ago.

One of the world’s longest-running TV shows, Doctor Who began almost 50 years ago as an attempt to mix history and science fiction, targeted at a tea-time family audience. It wasn’t long, though, before it became a slightly camp monster-of-the-week romp, ridiculed and adored in equal measure for its flimsy sets, florid over-acting, and cheesy special effects.

As a Doctor Who tragic since the age of five or so, with my fandom continuing to this day, I can point to Doctor Who’s true strengths when it was at its best - brilliant science fiction ideas, witty scripts, charismatic lead actors, and pioneering use of visual effects and models within an incredibly tight budget and schedule. Even so, despite these laudable elements, classic Who is remembered more for rubber monster suits and wobbly sets.
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After a decade and a half on extended hiatus (it was never technically cancelled, you see) the Russell T. Davies helmed revival in 2005 was slick, expensive, sexy, and respectable. Green-painted bubble wrap and plastic spaceships on strings were nowhere to be seen. Suddenly you could tell your co-workers on Monday morning that you watched the new Doctor Who over the weekend, and they would not make fun of you for it.

Of course, with surging audience numbers and DVDs flying off retail shelves, licensed tie-in products were inevitable, but video games have been oddly thin on the ground. Three whole years after the show’s re-launch, the first game hit shelves: a trump card game, and legions of fans shouted “Is that it?”

Sadly, this was a return to form for licensed Doctor Who video games. Doctor Who Top Trumps marked the end of an 11-year drought that began after the 1997 release of Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors, a boring Myst wannabe notable only for being the final appearance of Anthony Ainley as recurring nemesis The Master.

Destiny of the Doctors was fairly poor, infuriating to fans because of its departure from canon while also being baffling for non-fan gamers, but it’s a masterpiece compared to last year’s Doctor Who: Return to Earth, an incredibly bad Wii exclusive. Return to Earth’s only redeeming features were that it made its bland sister product, Evacuation Earth on the Nintendo DS, look good by comparison, and it was sold alongside a rather cool Wii remote in the shape of the Doctor’s signature tool, the Sonic Screwdriver.

Damien Christie, contributor to Doctor Who newsletter Sonic Screwdriver and long-time editor of the now-defunct fanzine Black Light, admits that he barely played any Doctor Who games because of their poor reviews.

“The general consensus about the early Doctor Who games was that they were poorly conceived, confusing, or not particularly challenging for gamers,” said Christie. “Destiny of the Doctors was in many ways obsolete at the time of its release, certainly in comparison to other games on the market at that time. BBC Worldwide simply did not invest enough money in the game to make it work.”

Sue-Ann Barber, former president of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club, gave Return to Earth a try on the Wii and found it lacking. “I found the movement to be clunky and the game play to not be intuitive,” said Barber.

Christie also spoke to me about the BBC’s own line of tie-ins, Doctor Who: The Adventure Games. These four episodic adventure games were available for free to UK residents, but non-British fans had to pay a small fee to buy them from Direct2Drive. These games were released for PC and Mac last year, to promote Matt Smith’s first series in the role of the Eleventh Doctor.

They were certainly made with Who fans in mind. “The BBC tried to create value-added interactive experiences for Doctor Who fans,” said Christie. “These were interactive stories more than games, intended to be additional adventures in series 5. They were scripted by writers of the current TV series, including [new executive producer] Steven Moffat.”

I downloaded these games and struggled through them. They are certainly nicely written, with strong, authentic dialogue delivered by the show’s actual cast members, but as games they are exercises in tedium. The bulk of each short episode is made up of stealth, avoiding the gaze of patrolling monsters - Daleks, Cybermen, the usual suspects - mixed with simple fetch quests and repetitive puzzles. As freebies they would have been tolerable time-wasters, but paying even a few dollars for them now seems like a waste.

Is there something about Doctor Who that just makes all of its licensed games come out badly? Sure, The Doctor is a pacifist who abhors guns, which hardly makes him an ideal game hero, but surely he could star in a less-violent style of game, perhaps based around exploration and puzzle solving?

“I think Doctor Who would be very suited to a 3D platform game,” said Barber. “Bypass a series of obstacles, solve a puzzle or two, and defeat the boss at the end of the round. Doctor Who does Mario - I’d be keen on that!”

Christie suggested an alternative: “I think you can get around the fact that the Doctor's a pacifist and doesn't use guns quite easily by employing other characters to provide that kind of action.” While it might seem counterintuitive, perhaps giving the players control of an action-oriented companion like Captain Jack Harkness and relegating The Doctor to a support role would make for a better game.

The culprit in all of this seems to be the BBC itself. My research suggests that BBC Worldwide is unwilling to invest the kind of money and time required to produce a polished and enjoyable gaming experience, choosing instead to rush out garbage like Return to Earth.

One man who has seen this process from the inside is Melbourne gaming icon Paul Callaghan, co-director of the annual FreePlay independent games festival. Callaghan was working at Melbourne game studio IR Gurus (later Transmission Games, and now sadly closed down) when they were developing a new game to coincide with the first series of the revived Doctor Who, then starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper.

After half a year of development and substantial government subsidies, the project was cancelled for reasons Callaghan would not detail beyond “It’s complicated”.

“I'd wanted to work on a Doctor Who game since I was about 11 years old, so this was kind of a dream project for me,” said Callaghan. “When it was cancelled, I had to take a step back to work out whether or not this was the career I wanted to pursue.”

Despite the heartache caused by the game’s cancellation, Callaghan is circumspect today. “Ultimately, I wouldn't change any of it. It was a unique experience and I learned a huge amount,” he told me. “It gave me the chance to follow the dreams of an 11-year-old me, and how many people can say they were paid to work on a Doctor Who game?”

Callaghan also answered the question of how a good Who game could work, citing the Doctor’s companion as the weak point. “The trick is to find a way to make them a bit more active,” said Callaghan. He conceived a plot around aliens modifying the human race with airborne nanobots, allowing companion Rose Tyler to undergo some changes: “We could give her some cool alien powers!”

With the new Doctor Who going more strongly than ever, what is the future of licensed games for the show? Unusually, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon in the form of Doctor Who: Worlds in Time. This new free-to-play online game is being developed by Three Rings Design, who made the extremely successful Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, also online free-to-play. Worlds in Time is due for release late this year.

Other than that, things are not so great. Last year Nintendo paid £10 million for exclusive rights to the property on console, resulting in the passable Evacuation Earth and the terrible Return to Earth. With the latter reaching #11 on the Wii sales charts in its week of release despite extremely negative reviews, we are unlikely to see any changes in the formula, and more shovelware is almost certainly imminent.

How sad that a show with such a long and proud history cannot look forward to more high-quality tie-in products.