Seattle International Films
Barbara Benedetti as Doctor Who, by Ryan K. Johnson, Cheryl Read, and T. Brian Wagner
So, here's something a little unconventional for a
marathon of this kind. Covering this was not actually a part of my
original marathon scheme, but I was unexpectedly contacted by a friend
and fellow fan about this quartet of fan-made videos last week. So I
figured that as long as I was watching them, I might as well make a
thing of it and analyze what they're doing.
For some background, Seattle International Films is for all intents and
purposes Ryan K. Johnson. A prolific filmmaker, he's actually still
working today. In the 1980s, he, like many American science fiction
fans, started to become aware of Doctor Who for the first time, as the
show was rapidly gaining popularity in the country. This was partly in
response to John Nathan-Turner's vigorous efforts to court the American
audience, but it had already been growing in the Seventies, perhaps just
an inevitable consequence of the lack of a language barrier. (Well,
most of one anyway.)
Motivated by an upcoming fan film competition at the World Science
Fiction Convention in LA (Worldcon), Johnson sought to set his project
apart from the crowd by creating something that had never been done
before: a female Doctor.*
For the lead role, he chose Barbara Benedetti, a Seattle native who was
31 years old at the time and a veteran actor of the stage. She had no
idea what Doctor Who even was when acting in the first film, 1984's The Wrath of Eukor,
which makes it all the more impressive that she seems to inhabit the
part quite easily. She starts off fresh from the Colin Baker Doctor
(seeming to place her as an alternate Seventh Doctor), dealing with a
strained regeneration in 1911 London. There we also meet her companion
Carl Evans, an Edwardian chimney sweep, played by fellow stage performer
Randy Rogel. **
Once she's settled in, she acquits herself quite well. I particularly
think of the moment where, when menaced by wigged-out Vietnam vets in
the forest (the sort of plot you'd only really get in an American
production like this), she fearlessly thwaps one of them on the head
with her umbrella and tells them off, ultimately getting them on side.
Her proud "I am the Doctor" moment toward the end of the story is also
very nice. The bits in between are a bit messy, as the alien threat, the
eponymous Eukor, doesn't leave much of an impression. But aside from
that and some interesting attempts at accents (easily ignored in the
interest of reciprocity, considering what Nicola Bryant was doing on the
actual TV show at the time) I found the first story rather
entertaining.
The crowds at the conventions that The Wrath of Eukor was shown at must have agreed, because this film would spawn three sequels. The next of these is Visions of Otomu
from 1986, which sees the Doctor and Carl on their first off-Earth
adventure. The shift to exclusively on-set filming definitely strains
the capabilities of the production a little, as the quasi-medieval
backdrops look a little dog-eared and end up being distracting. The
characters aren't much to write home about either, with the "reverse
Leela" Princess Aldraina probably being the most memorable.
There are some parts of Visions of Otomu I quite liked however, such as the eponymous villain drawing from a tarot deck and finding the Doctor to be 0 - The Fool,
which is apropos. As she seemingly exists beyond his ability to scry,
he's unable to glean anything useful about her movements. There's also
Carl gaining a penchant for eating junk food and watching TV, as we see
him enjoying Singing in the Rain. Such are the inevitable effects
of modernity on poor, unsuspecting historical companions, so often
unexplored. Later on the Doctor succeeds in hypnotizing him to react to
the words "Gene Kelly" to make him dance and sing. Surprisingly, he ends
up being pretty good at it. "I'm better than I thought!" she remarks in astonishment, earning a good laugh from me.
While both of the first two films are good fun, the productions get
noticeably better and more confident as they go, with the first standout
being the third, 1987's Pentagon West: A Doctor in the House.
This one feels quite different, which is partly because it wasn't
originally a Doctor Who fan film at all. Intended as a pilot for an
unrelated sci-fi series, Johnson ultimately decided to put the Doctor
and Carl into it, albeit in a slightly reduced role that makes this
resemble a "Doctor Lite" story.
Instead we follow a cast of five university students (graduate students
maybe - they seem a bit on the older side) at an unnamed university,
presumably in Seattle, who are curious about their professor's claims to
have discovered a miraculous cure for cancer. As the Doctor noses
around however, they discover that their professor, a man named Dr.
Komar, is being influenced by a mysterious force from another dimension.
The thing is, it actually does work as a cancer cure, and we discover
that Komar desires it because of his own inoperable cancer. This is
heartbreaking in hindsight, for reasons I'll remark on later.
However, as it appears that letting this energy run rampant could risk
destroying the entire universe, the Doctor is compelled to stop Komar.
He dies in the process and the potential cure is lost, leading the
Pentagon West crew to call the Doctor out. Her response is interesting
and, I think, quite Doctor-ish:
The story ends in a bit of a rush, but it genuinely impressed me a good deal. By this point however, opportunities to explore this version of the Doctor were running short, as both Johnson and Benedetti were starting to feel the fatigue. The next story, 1988's Broken Doors, would be her Doctor's swansong.
The first sight that greets us in that film is a quarry. Yay!! Finally! It really was proper Who after all. The Doctor and Carl are lost, but follow a bouncing orange (a running gag with the production) into an abandoned structure where they find an ominous note assuring them that they will find only what they bring with them ahead. After stepping through a door, the pair are separated, with the Doctor in a white room with a grid on the floor and Carl in an open field somewhere.
The Doctor proceeds to repeat the floor game from Death to the Daleks or Pyramids of Mars or The Five Doctors... again. Which I could honestly only interpret as pastiche, and duly laughed at. The proper sequence of letters to step across it safely is "DEATH", natch. As she throws jelly babies to suss out the bad squares, we see Carl dodging matching explosions on his end, suggesting that the two places are somehow connected.
With the grid out of the way, both of them emerge into a darkened room full of suspended mirrors. It's all obviously on the cheap, but the atmosphere and the lighting help to make it feel genuinely eerie and surreal. On Carl's end, he finds a laser pistol and is menaced by an armored knight, while the Doctor encounters a masked figure known as "the Manager" who introduces himself as "the totality of all your hopes, dreams, and fears." He confirms that the Doctor and Carl have ended up in an alternate dimension. The consciousness she speaks with is actually the gestalt or manifestation of this dimension itself, who professes to enjoying setting challenges for its visitors.
It says she has won, and bids her to come and claim her prize. As she steps closer, a mirror turns and reflects the light in a strange way, and we find ourselves in the same room, but now with Carl warning the knight not to come any closer or he will shoot. In one fateful instant, Carl does, and the illusion fades - leaving him to realize that they've both been tricked, and he's just shot the Doctor dead.
With those ominous words, we find the Doctor and Carl back on the TARDIS
again, as if they had never left, while the Manager grins and pulls
down its hood to show Benedetti's own face. A distraught Carl watches as
the Doctor becomes a new man, bringing this adventure to its final end.
I must note that the actor the Doctor regenerates into - Michael Santos -
is the same actor who portrayed the Manager, and Komar in the previous
episode for that matter. I smell a body-snatching conspiracy! Or so I'm
tempted to speculate. We'll never know where the story might have gone
after this, as Broken Doors was the final Who project from Johnson.
The timing is somewhat appropriate, as the project reached its sunset at
about the same time that Classic Who did. And despite clearly being an
amateur production, I think that these films did an excellent job of
capturing the energy and tone of Classic Who, with the latter two
stories in particular being well worth watching.
The presence of a female Doctor is also very noteworthy, as aside from a
couple of wisecracks about hormones in the first story (me too,
sister), it's barely ever made relevant to the story. I think it's quite
forward-thinking that these fans, and the actress of course, were able
to realize all the important aspects of the character in a recognizable
way, thirty years before the actual show tried its own first female
Doctor.
Sadly, Broken Doors would be one of Barbara Benedetti's last
projects. She passed away in 1991 at the tragically young age of 38
after a battle with cancer, and is remembered fondly by those who worked
with her. It's unfortunate that, as most of her roles in her career
were on stage and she did very few recorded performances, it's
impossible to see most of her acting parts today. I think she was a
quite capable actor and would have liked to have seen more from her.
Although these films, and so many other fan projects of the burgeoning
fandom in the Eighties, are more or less a footnote today, I view them
as important to assess and preserve just the same. They are the
precursors of so many other projects today - some of them even official.
This set of four very promising films actually broadcast on Seattle
public access TV several times over the years. They influenced many fans
way back when, and I have to admit, they've had an effect on me today,
forty years after the first one was made.
With that diversion completed, we will now begin our journey through what might have been Season 23 with The Nightmare Fair, coming up next.
* Your mileage may vary on the truth of that. In any case I was not able
to turn up any earlier female Doctors in any media, official or not.
** Rogel ended up having a successful career as a writer for animated TV
shows in the 90s. Among my generation he's most famous for writing the
countries of the world song for WB/Amblin's Animaniacs.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 21 May 2024.)
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