- Mark Twain, The Lowest Animal
Writer Chris Boucher was very interested in religion. Not
any specific religion in particular, just religion in general. Since the man
was a devout atheist, he looked at religion from more of a
sociological/anthropological standpoint. It fascinated him that over the years,
across the globe, Earth has had a metric buttload of religions. Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Vodou, Wicca,
Pastafarianism, Jedi, and tons more, and that's not even counting
the various Abrahamic religions. And all the various versions of each Abrahamic
religion.
I mean, look at a term as simple as "Christian." That could mean anything. Lutheran? Baptist? Methodist?
Protestant?
But I'm getting off track.
The point is that there are a lot of religions. And as Mark
Twain noted, there are quite a few contradictory religions out there. Odds are, some of them aren't going to be entirely correct. I mean, I think Thor would have choice words for the people
who say that Zeus is responsible for lightning, you know?
Chris Boucher looked at this phenomenon and thought
"Where does religion come from? What sort of events fuel the creation of a
full-blown system of morals and beliefs? Why are humans compelled to make gods for themselves?" So he began writing a story that would examine the
consequences of a tribe of humans who inadvertently created their own god... in
a pretty literal sense.
 |
| Typing that makes me want to replay Black and White. |
Protip: Don't do that.
See, Disney, Marvel, video game companies, et cetera
generally hate it when you do this, and will try to make it very clear that
they DO NOT READ UNSOLICITED ARTWORK, SCRIPTS, AND/OR PROPOSALS. Long story short, this is so, for example, Disney can legally defend themselves if some guy claims Disney stole the idea he mailed in... even though Disney had already been working on the similar project before they got the letter. Like the case a while back, where Esplanade Pictures sued Disney over Zootopia,
saying that Disney's story about an anthropomorphic animal overcoming prejudice
was a little too similar to a story Gary L. Goldman proposed in 2000 and 2009
about an anthropomorphic animal overcoming prejudice.
So if companies refuse to read unsolicited material, then
any coincidental similarities regarding submitted proposals and
officially-released materials can be defended against in a court of law, should
it come to that.
But a few productions have actually read unsolicited scripts
through an open submissions policy, such as Star Trek: The Next Generation. The
producers would read a script, and if it had a good premise behind it, they
would actually buy the story rights and have an on-staff writer turn it into
something they could film. The spec script that became "Yesterday's
Enterprise," for example, was submitted by Trent Christopher Ganino before
being rewritten by the TNG writing staff.
And since Doctor Who had quite a few phases where they were
looking for fresh talent, producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert
Holmes decided to give this Chris Boucher guy a chance and work with him on a
new idea.
Or rather, a few new ideas. It took him a while to get
going, since most of his previous writing credits were on comedy shows. But he
had a knack for coming up with creative ideas, some of which were even
potentially filmable. But there was one idea Boucher simply kept coming back
to: a civilization develops in some bizarre way over the course of
time because of one strange thing that affected their development.
In the end, Boucher blended together two similar scripts he'd made and wrote "The Tower of Imelo," which was officially commissioned
as "The Prime Directive" in August of 1975. The story would later be
renamed "The Day God Went Mad," which would then be changed again for
being too pretentious a title.
There's actually quite a bit more to this episode's
conception... but it'll be easier to address each point in turn through the
Recaps as they come up.
"The Day God Went Mad" had its final script turned
in during May of 1976.
Filming went pretty smoothly for this show, even though they had to
schedule an extra day to finish up things they hadn't quite been able to film
in time. The earlier story "Planet of Evil" had convinced them that
they could make a very convincing, very alien jungle using a soundstage. For
better and for worse.
The plan was for the serial (now called "The Face of
Evil") to air that November, but issues with the season finale, "The
Talons of Weng-Chiang," led them to postpone the whole season until the
very first day of the next year: January 1st, 1977. Something similar was done
for the sixth season of the Revived Series, which also took a short break
halfway through a season before introducing a new companion.
The main difference is that in 1976, people didn't go
utterly bonkers over the short break. These days, any delay is seen as proof
that showrunners or filmmakers are trying to "salvage" some sort of
disaster. If the internet had existed in 1976, there probably would have been a
bunch of articles examining why such a delay was indicative of the show's
decline, and they would run wildly speculative pieces on Doctor Who's
inevitable cancelation and why the new companion is ruining the season before
it even begins. And maybe some newspapers did run stories like that in 1976. I
don't know.
But I do know that the changes that would be made to the
show ended up being well-received. And as a whole, Season 14 is remembered
fondly, with "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Talons of
Weng-Chiang" often referred to as classics. Which unfortunately means
that "The Face of Evil" sort of gets overlooked, despite it not being
bad at all. If "The Face of Evil" had been the finale of Season 17,
for example, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece next to "The Horns
of Nimon."
But that's enough speculation.
Coming up in Part 1! The Doctor discovers a world where
everybody knows his face! His fourth one, anyway.
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