Among the twilight and stars, Like a rocket to Mars…
You may have seen reports of the upcoming brand new
Knowing what fans they are of David Bowie over at Doctor Who, (08.29.2007 NEWS: KNOCK KNOCK. WHO’S THERE? DOCTOR. DOCTOR WHO?) I guessed that the inspiration for Bowie Base One was our man, as opposed to Jim.
However, after fruitless attempts to glean more information from Doctor Who’s PR company, I decided to enlist the help of one of the Doctor’s deadliest enemies, Nicholas Pegg.
I’m sure you’ll remember that not only is Nick the author of The Complete David Bowie, but he is also an actor, and has made several appearances in Doctor Who himself, inside the shell of a Dalek. (See above)
Anyway, Nick didn’t disappoint. Using his Doctor Who contacts he came up with the following snippets…
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Hi Blam, As promised, I’ve made some enquiries, and I have news for you…
This Sunday’s episode, The Waters of Mars, is co-written by Phil Ford and Russell T Davies. I dropped a line earlier to Phil Ford (a veteran scriptwriter of, among other things, Bad Girls, Waterloo Road and Coronation Street), who tells me that the name “Bowie Base One” was his idea. Phil says:
“Yes, I’m a Bowie fan, so how could I miss an opportunity like that? I think the name of the base was probably the first thing I thought of. Life on Mars. What else would you call it? So cool.”
So there you go – straight from the horse’s mouth. By the way, this isn’t quite the first Bowie reference there’s been since Doctor Who made its big comeback: in the 2005 Christopher Eccleston episode Aliens of London, the familiar strains of ‘Starman’ could be heard in the background at one point…
Hope this helps! Nick.
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As if that wasn’t enough, Nick kindly came straight back to me with the following…
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Hi Blam, Further to my earlier email – I don’t know if this is of interest, but it has just occurred to me that there’s another little Bowie connection regarding Sunday’s episode ‘The Waters of Mars’.
It is directed by the brilliant Graeme Harper, who is a bit of a Doctor Who legend and a really smashing chap to boot (I’ve had the good fortune to work with him on several of the Dalek episodes). Graeme’s earliest directing credit on Doctor Who was back in the 1980s, when he directed Peter Davison’s final adventure as the Doctor, ‘The Caves of Androzani’. To play the role of the story’s central character, a masked and disfigured ‘Phantom of the Opera’ figure called Sharaz Jek, Graeme later revealed that the name at the top of his wish-list was David Bowie. With our hero busy on the Serious Moonlight tour at the time of the production in late 1983, it would never have been possible, but it goes to show that there’s more than one admirer of Mr Bowie’s talents involved in this Sunday’s episode…
To wander even further off-topic, you may be interested to know that the role of Sharaz Jek was eventually played, quite superbly, by the ballet principal Christopher Gable, and that earlier this year ‘The Caves of Androzani’ was voted the greatest ever episode of Doctor Who by the readers of ‘Doctor Who Magazine’…
Best wishes, Nick
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Thanks so much for that Nick, very informative.
For those of you wondering about the handsome chap above, it’s how David Bowie may have looked as Sharaz Jek in 1983. I’ve also thrown in an approximation of a far scarier version from 1995 with vicious new teeth!