Who is Doctor Who? Dr Who explained
Jul 16 '03 (Updated Jul 20 '05)
The Bottom Line Doctor Who rocks, I suppose that is the bottom line!
As a precursor to series of reviews of the Doctor Who science fiction television programs, I decided that to save time for myself and everybody else, I would write a primer on the good Doctor, then I can link to it from any of my reviews for the edification of anyone who wants to be brought up to speed before reading individual reviews.
Doctor Who is one of Britain’s longest running television shows, certainly the longest running science fiction show that the British Broadcasting Company ever produced.
Beginning its run in 1963 and continuing for some 27 years, Doctor who delighted generations through its original broadcast runs.
The protagonist in Doctor Who is a character known only as “The Doctor”. The Doctor is a time traveler. He comes from the planet Gallifrey, where upper echelons of ruling elite are all time travelers, also known as time lords. The Doctor is, however, a bit of a loner, and a bit of a renegade, refusing to accept the discipline of his fellow Time Lords, and so he went off gallivanting around the cosmos beyond their control.
The Doctor travels in a remarkable vehicle called a TARDIS (standing for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The TARDIS is a very very large craft, capable of traversing both space, and time. Despite its enormous size, through cunning manipulation of physics, the TARDIS is capable of occupying drastically smaller areas of space in the worlds to which it travels. Upon arrival on a planet, the TARDIS is programmed to disguise itself as any everyday object that will blend nicely into the surroundings. Unfortunately for the Doctor, his TARDIS is faulty, and has gotten stuck in the shape of an early twentieth century police call box. Still, it serves his purpose.
Thus, on the outside, the TARDIS occupies a few square feet, but on the inside it is palatial, containing many rooms and labyrinths.
Each story was broadcast over the course of four to six weeks in twenty-five minute episodes. It was the highlight of Saturday afternoon for generations of Brits. The stories are now available on VHS and DVD, as well as a massive series of books, often by the same writers as of the original screenplays.
The Doctor, whilst not immortal, is, as Douglas Adams coined the phrase, “infinitely prolonged”. The Doctor and his Time Lord chums are all able to reincarnate themselves when they have used up a body. Over the years, this fortunate happenstance has permitted the BBC to bring new actors into the role of the Doctor. The Doctor has currently been played by nine actors, each with his own peculiar following. Each was excellent in his own style, but as we shall see, each was also terrible in his aspect!
Doctor Who is repertory science fiction drama. Originally conceived as a children’s show, the writing and costuming (though, alas, not always the acting) turned out to be of such a good quality that the show ran and ran. It caught the publics’ imagination, and, in true British repertory style, the audience became accustomed to turning a blind eye to the occasionally appalling piece of prop, or badly timed delivery in the spirit of getting into the flow of the story.
Here is your basic scenario for a typical Doctor Who story:
Doctor and current companion, who has hopped aboard and stayed for a few years, arrive on some randomly selected planet the Doctor finds his malfunctioning TARDIS in the mood to take him to. Upon his arrival he meets up with some natives and discovers that his ingenuity and technological savvy can help them with some pressing emergency that they or their culture has found itself in. The natives will often be distrustful or downright hostile to the Doc, but he will overcome this with charm and skill. The Doctor often goes on to discover that this emergency has been caused by an evil alien, or an evil robot, or indeed, an evil alien robot. He then uses his guile and boundless knowledge of everything ever to trick said baddy into defeat, save the day, accept the thanks of the natives humbly, then hop back in the TARDIS and go do it all somewhere else.
Phew! What a ride!
A few of the finer values of the Doctor we can look up to, and give a “pass” grade on for our kids to view with us:
The Doctor is not a liar
The Doctor does not use brute force or weapons to solve problems.
The Doctor is self-sacrificing.
The idea here is get hooked into the story, and the Doctors clever solution. You are likewise supposed to laugh at the props when you first see them, sure, we all know that the spray-on silver paint is still probably wet on that space-atomic thingummy-whatsit, but once we’ve had our laugh, we all knuckle down and enthusiastically get into the story!
If you are the kind of person who finds good special effects important, ‘d say move right along. If however you love a good story, and some clever characters, and a bit of fun adventure, stay with us!
My love of Doctor Who is boundless, typically I watch the videos first time through with my nine year old boy, and then again in bed on lazy nights in when I cant sleep.
My Reviews of Doctor Who:
Logopolis
The Brain of Morbius
The Pyramids of Mars
The armageddon Factor
The Ark in Space
The Ribos Operation
The Revenge of The Cybermen
The Stones of Blood
The Sontaran Experiment
The Genesis of The Daleks
The Destiny of the Daleks
The Pirate Planet
The City of Death
The Androids of Tara
The Talons of Weng Chiang
The Robots of Death
The Power of Kroll
The Leisure Hive
Terror of the Zygons
The Horror of Fang Rock
The Invasion of Time
The Seeds of Doom
Full Circle
State of Decay
The Hand of Fear
The Planet of Evil
Warrior's Gate
Image of the Fendahl
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