Who is The Doctor

Who is The Doctor?

Every British citizen knows Doctor Who. Even if they don’t watch Doctor Who, they know it. It’s like how every American knows the Simpsons. Yes, it is that big. Most British people under the age of seventy grew up watching Doctor Who when they were children.

We’re talking about 60 million people on the Island of Great Brittan (not to mention the Kiwis or the Aussies). My father-in-law built a Tardis in his back yard. So why don’t Americans know Doctor Who? The change starts now.

Today, Doctor Who is a big-budget British television show with worldwide acclaim. Some of you may have seen the advertisements on SyFy or BBC America. Maybe you recognize the face of David Tennant or Matt Smith looking all geeky. Doctor Who is more popular now than it ever was, but the show has a long history. Let’s travel back through time a little, (if you will.)

1963: Sydney Newman, the head of BBC drama, imagines this character: A crotchety old man piloting a stolen time machine, on the run from his own far-off future world. William Hartnell, who was in his late-fifties when he took the role, first played The Doctor. And yes, he was a grouchy old man. But after only three years of playing the part, Hartnell’s health was failing him. The Doctor needed a makeover.

You see, the Doctor is a Time Lord (an ancient alien race) and Time Lords have a remarkable ability to cheat death. Now don't get me wrong, Time Lords can die. They can be shot in the head or blown up or eaten by a space beast, just like us humans. But there are some things they can survive better than us humans, when Time Lords are seriously injured and they have just a moment to prepare themselves their bodies can heal. The only problem is that every cell must change. The Doctor must change into an entirely new person: New face, new personality, same memories, but new quirks.

The second man to play the doctor was Patrick Troughton. Since the actor was in his forties, the second Doctor was less grumpy and more of an adventurer. He was witty and silly and almost entirely different from the first Doctor. And here lies the greatest formula for the success of Doctor Who- the show can change. The man can change.

These are big concepts for television at that time. Americans were busy watching Andy Griffith and Mr. Ed and the closest thing they had to Sci-Fi on their tubes was The Jetsons. How could a show with such a big concept work with a small TV budget? Answer: Tardis.

Time And Relative Dimensions in Space (TARDIS). The Tardis is The Doctor’s time machine. On the outside it looks like a little blue phone booth (or a police box to lock criminals into), but on the inside it’s, well, bigger- huge even. There are endless corridors, a library, a swimming pool -oh, it's big. But 99% of the time all the audience sees is the Console Room. Ah, yes. The room with all the moving parts and controls that makes The Doctor jump from one place and time to another.

Let’s travel to 100,000 BC or meet Marco Polo or the see the Aztecs. Let’s go to a planet of mutants or to the Sea of Death or maybe climb aboard an Alien spaceship. Let’s see the French Revolution- All this in just the first season of the 1963 show.

One man and his little blue box- for twenty-six seasons, seven actors took their turn playing The Doctor. The show grew and evolved: sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. By 1989 the show had lost many viewers. It’s low-budget sci-fi cheesiness of the last-eighties finally wore too thin and BBC cancelled the show.

Doctor Who was as good as dead. Throughout the nineties, the adventures of The Doctor would be restricted to comic books and audio adventures- with the exception of one made-for-TV film produced by Fox for American audiences (see previous post). It seemed like all hope was lost that Doctor Who fans would ever see the show revived. But remember that a time lord can always regenerate. Let’s take another time jump.

2005: March 26th. Millions of fans eagerly await the transmission of the first Doctor Who episode in 15 years. This isn’t a brand new television show, but a continuation of a forty-year-old series. The new Doctor is played by Chris Eccleston- a man in his forties. He is the Ninth incarnation of the Doctor. The opening credits are rolling and he is about to be Brilliant!

This is where our journey begins. Two weeks from today we will watch "Rose", the first Doctor Who episode of the 21st Century. We will then watch the second episode entitled "The End of the World". Download the first season of the 2005 series and watch along with us!

Upcoming Marathon

Here it is folks. We are ready for our Doctor Who Marathon. It is going to be many months of Timey-Wimy-Awesomeness. Chances are you fall into one of these categories...

1) You've seen the entire new series (maybe even the old series) of the show and you want to rewatch it. Remember what the show was like before Moffat took over.

2) You've never seen the series. Your American, you have no idea what it's all about. You think you might want to know.

Here's some background. Doctor Who was a low-budget Sci-Fi British television show in the 60's, 70's and 80's until it was cancelled. The Doctor is a time traveler who gets a new body every time he dies and therefore an new actor plays him every few years.

The series came back on in 2005 and has a nice budget now. It's also freaking-awesome!

Now here are the ground-rules. We will not watch every episode. This is going to be "Doctor Who Abridged" meaning we will leave out some of the lamer episodes or some that don't fit in with the overall story arc. We will watch two episodes a night every Sunday night. Here is the schedule for the next few weeks

The Ninth Doctor

Week One – October 16^th 2011

1. Rose

2. The End of the World

Week Two – October 23rd 2011

3. Dalek

4. Father’s Day

Week Three – October 30th 2011

5. The Empty Child (1)

6. The Doctor Dances (2)

Week Four – November 6^th 2011

7. Bad Wolf (1)

8. The Parting of Ways (2)

As you can see we are only watching about half of the first season. I left some of the cornball episodes out (Yes, the Siltheens) to spare new viewers. We will be getting back to these episodes at a later time, but for now let's have fun with the better of the season's episodes.

So that's it. Everyone who wants to can follow the basic schedule and we watch Doctor Who. Some of us are in China, some of us are in the U.S. and some are somewhere else, but what better way to enjoy a Time Travel show than across Space and Time

See you in October!

~Brock

The Eighth Doctor

Have you ever watched something that was so bad that it physically hurt you to watch it? The Star Wars prequels are a good example of this. Doctor Who: The Made for TV Movie that Fox produced in the nineties is another.

I don’t remember it being this bad. Maybe my threshold for pain was greater while I was still in college, but everything about the film is so damn bad.

Let’s start with the writing. Matthew Jacobs certainly has no claim to fame other than this and the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Part of the reason this doesn’t work is a British man is trying to write American characters interacting with a British man, and then making jokes about the fact he is British. It feels quite campy.

Let’s face it. The writing sucks. It doesn’t make a lick of sense and it alienates both new viewers and longtime fans. The creators of this thing are British. They should know that The Doctor can’t read people’s futures just by looking at them. Why would they make The Doctor half human? Why is the Eye of Harmony inside of Tardis and why can’t The Doctor look at it? It doesn’t make sense.

Onto characters: The character, Chang Lee, is ridiculous. His motives are ridiculous (He wants a paper bag from some dead guy? Really?) and he is gullible to a degree of utter stupidity. At the end of the film he runs off with two bags of gold. Come on!

The Master, who I don’t like at the best of times, is also easy to hate in this film. Since when do time lords have green eyes and can turn into Snake-Goo-Monsters? It surprises me that this film came out only a decade after Eric Roberts was nominated for an Oscar. Of course Roberts is in everything. This is one of his thirteen films in the year 1996.

Now let’s get to the good guys. Grace Holloway is not my least favorite companion in the history of this television show, but she is close. The actress herself is charming enough, but from her opening scene to her closing scene, you just can’t find a way to like her. Sort of like the actress from Temple of Doom.

The movie hurts the brain for the first hour, but the headache really ramps up in the last twenty minutes. It’s unwatchable. It is so far over the top that you want to hunt down the people responsible for this mess. It makes Russel T. Davis look subtle! Seriously!

Enough with what is horrible. Let’s talk about what’s good about it. First of all, Paul McGann somehow turns his lines into something enjoyable. His Doctor is charming and youthful. There are parts that totally fit with Matt Smith. I want to see more of Paul in Doctor Who. The Eighth Doctor needs another shot! Say it with me folks “Time War”

The special effects are also pretty good. Not sure what the budget was for this catastrophe, but the CGI is awesome for a 90’s made-for-tv film. Think of what Moffet could do with this kind of budget.

There are little things that make this film ok. This is the first time we ever see The Doctor kiss a companion (paving the way for Rose). It's the first time we see the Tardis in the time vortex. It’s the first time we see The Doctor emit time-energy from his mouth while regenerating (also seen in Christmas Invasion). The moment where The Doctor tries to save The Master seemed to be an echo of things to come (what’s a reverse echo? A revecho?) I think that RTD took note of this film and saw some things that went right before re-launching the series (At the very least, looking at what went wrong).

The bottom line? Throughout its history, Doctor Who has never been perfect. Low budget monsters can make the show seem cheesy. But the majority of the cheesiness in the show came from low budget monster costumes, not from the writing or the acting. And at least there were monsters and planets and robots in the show. This film took a big budget and added it up to… mindless noise.

Of the three viewers of the film my wife, Cathy, liked this movie the least (She’s British, what can I say). My friend Kyle and I couldn’t help but laughing the whole way through. I would not recommend this film to someone who has never seen Who. If you are a big fan and have never seen it… tread carefully.

Until next time, fellow Whovians!