I distinctly remember a class discussion about how television shows need to surprise us constantly—especially for an established show like Doctor Who. We have some “clichés” set up for us in the show: the Ron Grainer & Delia Derbyshire-composed theme tune that plays over the opening billboard with the TARDIS travelling through the Time Vortex, our watching behavior itself (for us: Thursday mornings, 2 episodes each), and then the Doctor and his companion themselves. However, we’ve also had our share of subtle surprises in our experience of the show, some of them regarding genre hybridity; we talk about Doctor Who as a British cult science fiction show, and then get a lot of different forms of horror and a dash of romance. Love & Monsters surprises rather in a pleasantly disconcerting way: it’s Doctor-lite, so to speak, and it’s told in the first person.

When the titular character is out of the picture, it interrupts our comfort, jolts us to confront this rather pleasant surprise. British media scholar Roger Silverstone (2002) talked about the safety in the cliché in the context of crisis news reporting, but allow me to borrow the term liberally, exaggeratingly and out of context—just to show what the impact of “surprises” in the media can be, “Interruption… itself is catastrophic for those whose ontological security in some small measure requires them to be engaged in the continuous narratives of daily mediation.” Consider how formulas work for television. I had a conversation once with a local television director, and he told me about how risks are hard to pull off here in the country, because the audience is used to formulas. Thus, a bit of formula remains in this episode, but at least not the one we’re used to in Doctor Who

Love & Monsters is a feel-good episode, despite the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO)-loving, The Lion King composer-named, Elton Pope in the limelight. I’ve personally have only watched showrunner Russell T. Davies’ writing in Doctor Who, so I find it surprising that an episode of this kind would come from him. It’s distinctly British rom-com and almost feels like Love Actually or Bridget Jones’ Diary, but with an allegory to cult fandom through LINDA—and quite possibly, the show’s Whovian fan base itself.

Chameleon Circuit or just a band of fans covering ELO music?

The first time I watched this, it was just okay; but I appreciate it now with a new perspective as a part of the fan community. First, on the subject of how “names are very important,” I see parallels between the “Whovians” and “LINDA” There’s the meetups, though we personally do this in cyberspace (i.e. Facebook). Fan art and fan fiction will always be there—with all the loopiness and imagination. There’s a little equivalent to a Trock (Time Lord Rock) band when Elton and the rest of LINDA play some ELO. There’s also a bit of intimate relationships going on, especially between Elton and Ursula, (It’s Shirley Henderson, who played Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter films and Jude from Bridget Jones’s Diary!) and to an extent, between Elton and Jackie Tyler (Il Divo’s cover of “Unbreak My Heart,” “Regresa a Mi,” is also downright funny). The episode itself is an instance of participatory fandom, with the Abzorbaloff being a submission to Blue Peter (I find the fact that the creature is a relative of the Raxacoricofallapatorians, who come from the planet Clom hilarious).

Such details point to the idea that fandom is also about community and not just a stringent obsession to textual details. Though discourse among the community members is central, it is not only about that, and this is why I find Victor Kennedy’s intervention unnerving, “You’ve forgotten your purpose in life. You, with your band… and your cakes… and your blubbing and all the while he still exists—the Doctor.” This kind of ties up with a theme in the previous episode: its treatment of faith and reason. Fandom is a sort of belief, and it requires us to jump in first in order to rationalize. Imagination is the basis of faith, and so is the case with fandom: love is its basis—not necessarily of the text itself only, but also among the community.