Doctor Who, Abridged: Aussie Comics Perform Every Episode Of The Show In One Convenient Stage Play

By David Wharton | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Doctor Who these days, what with the show celebrating 50 years of existence, with a much-anticipated anniversary special due in November, and with current Doctor Matt Smith about to exit and hand the TARDIS keys to a new guy — Peter Capaldi. So while we’ve still got two months before we can get our next official Doctor Who fix, there are still options out there for those experiencing fierce fits of withdrawal. For instance, if you can get yourself to Australia ASAP, you can watch a group of Who-loving comedians perform “Every Episode of Doctor Who Live on Stage.”

Who

Sadly, I don’t have the cash for an international flight from the States to the other side of the globe, but assuming you’re independently wealthy and feel like taking a crazy, spur-of-the-moment trip, you can see comedian Pat Magee and his compatriots perform their tribute to that wacky time lord and his time-hopping shenanigans both tomorrow and Thursday.

The show is unfolding as part of the 2013 Fringe Comedy festival in and around Sydney, hosted by the Factory Theatre. There are three performances of the show remaining at this point: one tomorrow, Wednesday the 25th, one Thursday the 26th, and one on Friday, October 4th. I doubt any of our readers will be booking an international flight at this late date, but hopefully we’ve got some Australian fans who can check out the show and tell us how it was down in the comments. You can purchase tickets right here.

The idea of performing every single episode of Doctor Who in one show is of course preposterous, and probably impossible without actually owning a TARDIS yourself. So here’s how Magee describes the show on his blog, where we learn that one of his fellow performers sports the very Who-appropriate name of “Nicholas Pond.” Maybe this show is bigger on the inside after all…

I’m doing this show with the help of three other performers – my brother Ciaran, a young man called Nicholas Pond and a young lady called Rubee Sookee, who has never seen an episode of Doctor Who and has a distressing habit of calling the Ninth Doctor “Roy Eccleston”. Rehearsals are fun, they’re always marvellous fun; we don’t have to think about normal things, we’re saving the universe.

But oh lordy, despite my love of all things Who, writing this show has been like birthing a fully-grown Judoon. How do you condense fifty years and seven hundred and ninety eight episodes into an hour? By my calculations, that works out to four and a half seconds per episode – will the audience accept a four-and-a-half second snatch of Episode Five of The Sensorites if it means they have to miss out on the whole of the Pandorica speech?

So we’ve had to be clever. Very clever. Almost indescribably clever. For example, we’re doing the Pertwee era as the Brigadier trying to justify his increasingly ridiculous expenses to the MoD. Our Sixth Doctor is an excessively violent football player with a tendency to push opposing team-members into conveniently placed acid baths. Tom Baker is… well. You’ll have to come and see the show, won’t you?

Well, after that there’s no questioning Magee’s Who fan credentials, and I like the cut of his jib, or at least I would if I could figure out what the hell a jib is. In the meantime I’ll just have to hope some crafty fan sneaks into the performance with a spy cam hidden in his Fifth Doctor decorative celery sprig and posts it on YouTube.

But if Sydney isn’t within realistic commuting distance for you, come huddle next to me and we’ll take comfort with this amusing video of characters in Doctor Who saying the name of the episode they’re in. Is it just me or is David Tennant just saying the word “blink” repeatedly still kind of creepy?