We’ve been waiting seven months, but finally, the time has come.
Doctor Who starts again tonight on SciFi in the US, with the 2006 Christmas special “The Runaway Bride.” This is immediately followed with the first official episode of the new season, “Smith and Jones.”
Some of you may have Vulcan ears in your bedrooms, or Star Wars action figures tucked away in your nightstands where nobody will notice them (or maybe even on your desk so people will notice them).
I have a Dalek (piggy bank) in my kitchen (actually it belongs to the kids), and a “working” sonic screwdriver in my backpack. My phone plays the Doctor Who theme for most people who call, and makes Tardis noises when it’s my boss.
And they’re going to have to do a lot to wow me this year. After all… well, I can’t tell you what has happened. Some of you might convert, and then you’d be mad because I spoiled it.
Can I just ask one favor? Can I get British web sites (like the BBC) to stop printing the gist of rumors (sorry, “rumours”) about the show on their sidebars? I go there frequently because I’m clicking through to read science articles and the like, and while I’m reading about archaeological finds, I glance over and suddenly find out who’s playing the next companion and that sort of thing. Please, please, please, just stop that.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled apologetics and weird YouTube videos.
127 Comments
Did the Dalek cookie kit arrive yet?
I’m glad I didn’t get the sonic screwdriver. I thought about it!
Nooooo! Not you, too, Amber! Et tu, Ambre? Have you fallen under the spell of Doctor Who, too? Boo hoo!
(Actually, I’ve been trying to resist, but so far resistance has proven…futile.
)
I just wanted to make sure, it is Doctor Who and never Dr. Who, yeah? How about Doc Who? Would that ever fly? I hope I’m not in danger of being zapped into a million little pieces for these suggestions!
I don’t know if we’ve gotten it or not, Tracey?
Patrick. Ahem. Doctor Who. And his name is not Doctor Who, it is the Doctor. Despite what it sometime says on the credits.
Wait, does this mean there’s a new companion? Or can there be more than one? Okay, wait again, don’t answer any of those questions!
Ah, gotcha.
BTW, can I say stuff like, what’s up Doc? (I’m probably walking a fine line right now…)
I can say that historically there have been multiple companions at once. The most famous combinations would be Patrick Troughton’s Doctor with Jamie and Zoe, Tom Baker with Harry Sullivan and Sarah Jane Smith, and Peter Davison with Nyssa, Adric, and Tegan.
And the Seventh Doctor’s second (and last) companion, Ace, had a very funny habit of calling him “Professor” instead of “Doctor.”
They were one of the best teams the show fielded until Christopher Eccleston and Rose Tyler came along.
No, we haven’t gotten it yet, Amber. I’ll let you know when they show up. Maybe we’ll have to post some pics of the finished product!
Cool, thanks Charlie.
BTW, speaking of scifi shows, have you ever seen Firefly (which, for better or for worse, was short-lived) and Serenity? I think that’s gotta be one of my all-time faves. But of course I haven’t seen Doctor Who…yet!
I just saw the first episode! Terrific fun!
I quite liked this quote: “I’ve got no A-levels, no job, no future. But I’ll tell you what I have got — Gaolford Street Junior High School Under 7’s Gymnastics Team, I got the bronze!”
Although I was (am) probably as confused as Rose was! I have so many questions. From the probably insignificant “What precisely is that sonic screwdriver and what is it capable of and not capable of?” to the more significant “What did the Doctor mean when he said he’s the guy who can feel the Earth spinning and hurtling through space?” And so on.
But I’m sure they’ll be answered in due course.
On to the next episode!
The second episode was even better than the first! Quite a touching ending, too. And, maybe I’m heartless here, but I’m glad the Doctor allowed what he allowed to happen to *ahem* the last one of its kind.
BTW, any Doctor Who websites which review and rate the shows along the lines of, say, Trek Nation’s Episode Guide?
Whoa, did you know the Ninth Doctor currently plays Claude (the invisible man) in Heroes?! In fact, one of the best Heroes episodes was “Company Man.” Pretty cool.
Possible (minor) spoilers in this comment! Do not read unless you’ve seen Doctor Who!
“I saw the fall of Troy. World War Five. I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party. Now I’m going to die in a dungeon. In Cardiff!”
Good episode. I’m glad Dickens was incorporated into the plot more or less seamlessly as a major character and that he was used in a fairly significant way to the storyline. Sometimes having a historical person appear in a scifi show can come off cheesy or lame, I think, but it worked pretty well here. I also liked the several Dickens allusions spread throughout the story. Which I guess is to be expected, but again sometimes these sorts of things can be mangled; I’m glad they were integrated into the dialogue pretty seamlessly, too.
I didn’t initially care much for the 19th century spiritualism, but then again I’m glad it didn’t turn out to be a ghost story!
BTW, have you guys seen Torchwood?
Possible spoilers from here on out for those who haven’t watched the new Doctor Who!
At this point, I’m also really curious why a being like the Doctor is so interested in helping humans in the first place? Why he has so much of himself invested in humanity? I believe he did sort of mention, albeit obliquely or perhaps vaguely, that there was some importance attached to the Earth and its inhabitants in the grander scheme of things. Or that there would be. And of course that a time war raged across many other worlds. But I’ve still no clue as to what he’s getting at. Not that I expect full answers or anything, since for all I know this mystery is integral to the show.
I wonder if time travel is only possible for the Doctor because of the TARDIS (i.e. via technology) or if it’s possible time travel is also somehow intrinsic to who he is given that he’s a Time Lord?
By the way, if the Doctor can travel through time, and if all time is something which is ever changing, ever fluctuating in past, present and future, liable to be re-written in an instant, why can’t he rewrite it so that he isn’t the last of the Time Lords? But I guess this is a fairly obvious, fairly typical sort of question when time travel is involved and nothing to be concerned about.
I tend to think scifi TV shows would be better off if they didn’t incorporate time travel in more than, say, a couple of episodes. Let alone as a major device to move the series forward. In my opinion TV shows based on time travel sometimes don’t tend to fare too well story-wise. Maybe they’ll be fine initially, but eventually time travel can lead to some pretty knotty issues, I think, which the show might be at odds to unravel and resolve.
Well, unless it’s like Quantum Leap and time travel is a jumping off point for other things. Hm, did I just end up contradicting myself with this example? Maybe so. Doh! I guess I’ll try and excuse it if possible by saying I’m mainly thinking this through for myself, thinking aloud, rather than trying to make a sensible argument against time travel in TV programs. That’s my excuse for why my thoughts on the topic are obviously still unfocused anyway!
Granted I’ve only seen the first three episodes. But surprisingly Doctor Who — which of course involves a Time Lord, a TARDIS, and a time war, thus having time travel as a major part of the storyline, to say the least — has so far not only seemed to have incorporated time travel quite well into the storyline, but moreover made it possible so that anything a viewer like me might anticipate to be a problem won’t necessarily be.
In any case, even with only three episodes under my belt, Doctor Who has already done far better than ST: ENT has in its incorporation of time travel into the show. Witness ST: ENT’s “Temporal Cold War” with the Suliban by comparison. I mean, I’ve nearly seen the entire first two seasons of ST: ENT, and I gotta say, their “time war” has been pretty pathetic. It started off well enough in the very first episodes, but it has gone downhill from there. Ugh.
On the other hand, from its inception Star Trek has never had time travel as something central, but only as something peripheral, something to bring in now and again, whereas from what I gather Doctor Who has always had time travel as something central?
Moving on, I’m curious why the Doctor looks human or humanoid? I am glad they’ve addressed why Rose hears everyone else in modern English though.
Well, I guess all this and more will be revealed in varying degrees as the series unfolds. Just jotting down some impressions as I watch the show.
I’ve never seen Doctor Who. Nor do I plan to. I’m not into Sci-fi at *all*.
I just love my nieces so I sent them a Dalek cookie kit since you can’t get that stuff over there!
Wow, had a busy morning and then come back to all this.
I’ll answer most of these questions, if I can, but for the moment I would suggest not reading Wikipedia about this, at least until you’re caught up (and the fact is, there is only ever a 1-2 week window where everybody could be caught up, since new seasons start in January and end in July in Britain and they start in July here. The best we can do is the last two weeks of the year… I should say, the last two weeks before Christmas, because of the Christmas specials they have every year now.
That said, though, Wikipedia is a surprisingly good place for information on individual things related to the Doctor, the problem is that they don’t always clearly state what are spoilers, and for whom they would be spoilers.
Spoilers ahoy! Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Just saw the next episode, and boy, did it end with a…shock!
Hilarious quote of the episode:
This has got to be one of the best “first contacts” ever made in a scifi show! Really well done.
Also, I really enjoy the more absurdly comic elements: e.g. the ridiculous “pig in a spacesuit” crash landing in the Thames; the cute yet sinister (not to mention flatulent) E.T.-shaped monster aliens; and the silly lines and dialogue employed throughout. The outlandish humor reminds me of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Speaking of which, the humor doesn’t appear to be limited to this episode, at least judging by what I’ve seen thus far.
I love how the Doctor literally laughs in the face of danger. When something crazy happens, or Rose or whoever gets worried over what’s to come, the Doctor will have this almost maniacal grin as well as glean in his eyes, then he’ll let loose his laugh, and straightaway dive right into whatever awaits him. “Fantastic!”
And, similarly, I love his (dare I say it) ruthlessnes in dealing with evil, which Charlie has pointed out in the past, and which I now think I’m beginning to see (although I don’t necessarily know if Charlie would describe it as “ruthlessness”?). It really is a breath of fresh air, though, after watching, say, Star Trek’s moral naivety in confronting the bad. I’m thinking of things like the Doctor allowing “the last human” to die.
Star Trek merely plays at seriousness and depth, although now and again it does have several fine episodes, but overall the show is essentially a vehicle for humanism and secularism and so on. So, even when serious issues are tackled, you pretty much always know what the answer is going to be. You know where Star Trek is coming from each time. The characters and situations may shift, but the perspective and resolution stays the same. The underlying secular morality is echoed time and time again. Which sort of grows tiresome.
By contrast, BSG provides viewers with some sort of “insight into the human condition” in nearly every episode. It’s hard-hitting, nonstop drama through and through. But it’s overkill, in my opinion. It’s way too heavy. And thus imbalanced. You feel as if you’ve been beaten down after every episode. And I suppose it’ll only get more and more like this now that this upcoming season is their last season.
Yet, even with its heavy tone and weighty themes, there sometimes seems to be too much emphasis on various characters’ inner moral conflicts in BSG. Not that inner moral conflict is to be avoided. It can’t be avoided, I don’t think. But the problem I have here is that the inner moral conflict itself is seen as an inherent good when it should rather lead to good, to doing the right thing. That is, humans are morally conflicted because we are fallen sinners. So the inner moral conflict is itself not “good,” per se, but more a result of our sinful, rebellious state. It’s fine to show moral conflict in making this or that decision, but I sometimes think BSG has taken it too far and made the conflict itself a good. What we instead need is a character who, along with his moral conflict, dispenses with pomo contortions over whether if he were Cylon he’d see things differently or whatever, and instead simply does what’s morally right, to the best of his knowledge and ability at the time. Kind of the like the Doctor, I guess.
As for Doctor Who, it is far less heavy in its tone and themes than BSG, which I personally think is good. I don’t mean it’s light or sloppy or dumb. Not at all. I mean, thematically, stylistically, etc., it seems to almost move along in a carefree or breezy sort of way, as opposed to feeling like you’re wearing metal boots and plodding through thick mud. Plus, again in my opinion, this approach generally makes for better entertainment than constant heavy drama anyway. At the least it better bears repeat viewing. And since Doctor Who is thus far witty and intelligent as well, it’s not like we’re losing anything either. The stories are well-scripted, smart, and pretty exciting. The dialogue really sparkles. The acting is uniformly solid (although that may be due to my unfortunate tendency to associate a British accent with good acting — if only Apollo used his real accent!
).
So, yeah, I really dig Doctor Who so far.
BTW, Firefly has a lot of the same or similar elements, I think. That’s why I love Firefly. Although Firefly may have a slightly darker edge to it than Doctor Who. We’ll see, I guess. But both shows are clever in a mischievous sort of way.
BTW, do we ever find out what the Doctor is a doctor of?
I’ve seen neither Firefly nor Serenity.
At the very least, it can act as a multi-purpose tool. It can open any lock (except “deadlocks,” we learn in the new Series Two, and certain other exceptions). It is defined by most other aliens he meets as a “sonic probe” rather than a sonic screwdriver. He can apparently use it to track transmissions on various wavelengths, he can pulse a computer with high energy radio transmissions to destroy it or incapacitate it, and he can jam or break certain signals with it. Certain Doctors use it frequently (mostly the last two), some have entirely eschewed it (late five, six, seven don’t see it much at all). I’m speaking about the TV shows, I have no idea about the books.
Apparently Timelords have an intrinsic sense of the stretching and moving of space and time. This isn’t well-defined.
They’ve had a lot of practice. This was supposed to be an educational program.
Nope. It will start on BBC America later this year, I think, and we don’t get that channel. If I wanted to pay for a more expensive cable package, we could see it. My understanding is that it’s a bit more, shall we say, adult, than Doctor Who. Maybe we’ll rent the DVDs if/when they show up on Netflix.
Earth seems to be central to the history of the universe in some way (he hints at this in “The End of the World,” second episode, ninth Doctor). He has some sort of fondness for humans in the earlier series, although it sounds like the Time War may have beaten some of that sentimentality out of him by the time we see the Ninth Doctor. He alternates wildly between loving and hating them, but he doesn’t often go long without contact with them, either through his adventures or through having an Earthling for a companion. (more to come)
The recent series (from Nine on) have developed this a little bit. Apparently it’s a kind of symbiosis between Timelords and their TARDISes. The TARDIS needs the Timelord to survive, and the Timelord needs the TARDIS to travel. The TARDIS appears to be an interface between the Timelord and the Time Vortex (which is the current series’ name for the way time travel is possible). Certain beings can work outside of that framework, like Guardians (see “The Key to Time,” a fourth-Doctor miniseries) or beings that somehow become one with the Vortex (can’t say more right now). There’s a lot more about this if you look into Gallifreyan lore, which came up a lot in earlier Doctors (particularly four, five, six, and seven). The Timelords’ past is littered with great power being misused and so forth.
Some things are Very Bad Ideas, and some things are impossible. The Doctor Who scriptwriters have very much taken a “make it up as you go along” approach to paradox and changing history. But the Doctor has nearly always been a firm believer in not using time travel to mess with your own history, and the episode “Father’s Day” gets into that in some detail, with some hitherto-unmentioned reasons as to why one can’t do that.
One nice limiting factor for the Doctor Who Time War is the enemy. If you don’t know who the enemy was in the Time War, then that might help you understand why it was a very black-and-white thing, which didn’t have repercussions that destabilized the whole plot and ruined everything as far as cause-and-effect goes. In short, the enemy of the Timelords was not somebody who had a great deal of personal creativity or imagination, or even ambition for that matter. If the enemies had been more canny, more (dare I say it) human-like, then there could have been a Time War that would have destroyed the Universe in four dimensions.
But the very nature of a war in which time travel itself is wielded as a weapon, almost demands that it will close itself off from the rest of history. If you leave anybody in any time or place alive and able to effect change when it’s over, then that person could try to change things again. And that is a theme of the series, for the first new season. (I think I can say that without spoiling anything.)
In the old series, it seems to have been because Timelords themselves were humanoid (mostly). In the new series, there are hints that it doesn’t have to be that way. (more to come)
That is one of the best things about the Doctors since the Time War. They seem to be more heroic, more swashbuckling, than ever. In the episode “Rose,” when Rose asks, “is it always this dangerous?” the Doctor just half-smiles with that almost ridiculous face of Eccleston’s and says, without qualification, “Yeah.” No apologies for his life and the way he lives it. All of this is revisited throughout the new series, though. Should a man (or a Timelord) live this way? Should somebody else live this way to be with him? But it’s great, after all these years, to see the Doctor, in both his new regenerations, being a man.
He explains himself later. The Time War has changed him, and age has changed him. He was only in his 400s during Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) programs; now he’s over 900 years old. Good and evil are not completely separated in his mind, but he’s not nearly as morally ambiguous as he used to be. It helps that he finally has a companion again, and it’s somebody who makes him care. Rose changes the Doctor fully as much as the Doctor changes Rose. Just wait until you see episode “Dalek.” Justice and mercy temper each other in him, but the moral ambiguity is gone.
And that is the saving grace of the series in so many ways. “X-Files” is dark and mysterious, and always a little suffocating with the weight of what’s going on behind the scenes. BSG is just survival, combined with the worst aspects of human nature in a lifeboat scenario. Yes, this sometimes squeezes out the best personal moments (particularly in a character that has a lot of moral anchor, like Bill Adama, or even a Tigh), and they shine through the mud and the blood. Star Trek has all the problems of the world solved, and ends up with a great big melting pot of people who have lost the will and ability to have a civilization. The Federation is really the end of Rome in so many ways; if it weren’t for Deus Ex Machina moments a ruthless enemy like the Borg would certainly destroy them.
But Doctor Who is about a wanderer. It’s Kung-Fu with a sense of humor. The Doctor isn’t a Byronic hero, or if he is, he keeps it under the persona of a man who actually enjoys danger and mystery and a sense of wonder. Actually the Doctor is addicted to it. If there wasn’t both evil and chaos in the universe then he wouldn’t have a reason to live; he flits from place to place, and explores mostly the last territory left for him to grasp: the mind and heart of a human being. Does he need to see the sights of the universe again? No, but Rose hasn’t seen them yet. There are dark moments. He leaves people in his wake (just wait until the “School Reunion” episode in the second series, although it won’t affect you as much as it does me), people who have been changed forever and can then never return to his life. Companions have died in the past (the one name that brings a lump to every Who fan’s throat: “Adric”).
And the contrast between the usual fun of the series and its hero, and the dark moments (and boy, are there dark moments in this series), are what make those dark moments even more poignant. Because this is the twenty-first century Doctor Who series. Adric’s death isn’t the worst thing that ever happened anymore. Heck, the sense of history in this series is almost heavier than the real events of the last one; I feel almost as bad about the fall of Arcadia (which is only mentioned once) as I do about Adric.
All in all, I still think, and now with a lot more justification than before, that Doctor Who is the best series on television. It almost makes it worth having one.
Almost forgot this one. The only thing we are sure of is, he’s not a doctor of medicine.
I can’t remember if I sent you this link before Charlie, but I think it’s pretty funny. There’s a show called the Catherine Tate show, it’s one woman who plays several different characters in a series of short skits. One of her characters is called Lauren, a stereotypical teenage chav.
For some background, here are a couple of skits with Lauren:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu8xzo-lk84
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPz13Xikd0o (LOVE this one)
And the one I think you might find funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9uugVWW_XE
(And, just for laughs, this one was great too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sluVp4oknJw)
You did send me the link, but I haven’t watched it yet. (I’ve got thirty things in my inbox that I haven’t dealt with yet, going back for months. Sorry.)
Catherine Tate was the companion, for lack of a better word, in the Christmas special last year (which we just saw on Friday), “The Runaway Bride.” Definitely different from what we were used to. Almost as if… but I can’t say more, Patrick is reading. She seems funny.
Boy, I wish that either every TV show would find a way to broadcast cheaply (a la iTunes) on the internet, or that cable would decide to let us pay per channel for what we’re watching.
I think I’ve heard about this segment, but I was looking forward to finding it on YouTube sometime. I will try to watch these soon.
(And another thing: if it hadn’t been for Doctor Who, I wouldn’t even know what a chav was. The episode “New Earth” uses the term and if it hadn’t been for Television Without Pity I would have been clueless.)
(Speaking of which, hello? TWoP? How many weeks before Jacob starts with the commentary? I mean, it’s been four days, after all, and you’re still listing the show as “On Hiatus.”)
Well, the clips are pretty short. Take a break sometime and watch, they’re worth it!
We always said cable should have an a la carte menu.
I figured if you didn’t know what a chav was, you’d ask! It’s kind of hard to define without seeing anyway.
(And by the way, if any of those 30 unanswered e-mails are mine, just go ahead and delete them. I don’t mind, really. I have to do the same myself at times.)
Can I watch these Tate clips without them spoiling anything for Doctor Who?
Amber, I miss the UK! Charlie, Doctor Who isn’t helping!
Ditto with any of my emails.
If they’re what I think they are, then yes. I believe there’s only one that connects to the Doctor anyway.
These are hilarious!
Nice sneaking in “Thierry Henry” in the French lesson one. And I’m glad I’ve seen enough of Doctor Who to get the one with David Tennant. I think that was the best one. I didn’t know Tony Blair could be so funny. 
Patrick, you’re more than welcome to come and visit us you know.
And I mean that!
Even *I*, the defiant anti-Sci-fi person, got the one with David Tennant.
P.S. Do you know, I’ve also never seen any of the Star Wars flicks?
Wow, that’s a super kind offer. Thanks Amber. I may have to take you up on that someday!
I’ve never been to Scotland either, so it’d be great to visit. Maybe if Charlie, Tracey, and the kids can make it out there someday, we can all go together?
Although I’ve never been to Scotland, I have met Scots. Like, back when I was in the UK, I remember staying in a hostel in Paris with a group of nine (I think) Scottish students who were (perhaps surprisingly, given contemporary Scotland’s religious climate) Christians. At the time, they were some of the kindest people I’d ever met. I kept in touch with a couple of them, too, for about a year after I got back, but unfortunately we did end up drifting apart.
Sorry, I forget, you’re near Glasgow, yeah?
Wow. That is crazy! I don’t know what to say.
Hm, actually, maybe this gives us the opportunity to try an experiment (which I’ve read others have tried with kids but as far as I know never with adults)? We could have you watch Star Wars from The Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi and see if you notice any inconsistencies or whatever? I mean, you’re one of the very few people I know who is actually in a position to do this! Then again, the last thing you’d probably want to do is endure 12+ hours of scifi when you’re not all that crazy about it in the first place. Ah, well.
Well, we’re certainly hoping that sometime in the near(ish) future, the other Sebold’s will come and visit. I can’t wait for someone to come and visit so I can show them what Britain is like, after spending so long in America.
And I’ve actually been surprised at how many Christians there are up here. There are lots of very active churches. It seems that for some reason people don’t talk about their faith as much here, I mean, it’s not so obvious. For example, when we visited Peterhead Baptist Church I saw many people that I knew casually whom I had no inkling were Christians. Business owners, old schoolmates, acquaintances - although I suppose they would have said the same of me.
Oh, and we’re nowhere near Glasgow. Possibly as far away from Glasgow as you can get. Check it out on Google Maps or Wikipedia.
I think if I had to sit down and watch all those movies I would probably never recover, to be perfectly honest with you. I might consider it if some University researcher paid me good money “all in the name of science”, but otherwise, I don’t think there’s any chance of me ever remotely considering entertaining the idea!
(The only Sci Fi I consider palatable is Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and possibly Futurama.)
Yeesh. I hope this isn’t the most commented on entry in this blog…
Um, nope.
Wow, I see what you mean now! Glasgow is literally on the other side of Scotland. And Peterhead Baptist Church (which I googled for) doesn’t even appear to be very near Aberdeen, which I presume is the biggest city in your vicinity?
Hm, H2G2 and Futurama are hilarious, but I gotta admit, Doctor Who is often right up there, too!
Although Doctor Who doesn’t seem to strictly play it for laughs like H2G2 and Futurama do. Still I think you’d like it! 
BTW, is this a pretty good deal? I’m really tempted to buy Doctor Who on DVD so I don’t have to wait around. But lest you think my impatience is my sole motivator (I don’t deny it is a motivator…), also because I already get the feeling it’s something I could enjoy re-watching. But maybe it’d be an impetuous move. Plus, $125 is a lot of money. Hm.
Aaron, just wondering, do you watch Doctor Who too?
Peterhead is about the same distance from Aberdeen as we are, but yeah, that’s our nearest big city. That’s where we have to go for bigger shops, although we can get almost all we need right here in Fraserburgh.
Maybe I would like Doctor Who! It’s just never sounded appealing. And anyhow, we are TV-less by choice now.
That is a good deal for those 2 DVD sets, but ouch, seems like a lot of money! However each set is £40-50 here.
Amber
No. No. No. No. No.
I watch “The Simpsons”. If I had cable again, I would be watching “Forensic Files”, too.
No Scifi in there… Well, except the aliens from the Simpsons.
For the US that’s not a bad deal. I think right after they came out we paid $79 for the first set and $99 for the second set. I’m not sure where my limit would have been, though. There aren’t many things I’m that hardcore about.
The more I watch Star Wars (one episode at a time, mind you, and I don’t own any of them, although I used to have Eps. IV-VI on VHS), the more convinced I am that it’s a good barometer for the stupidity of our culture. Honestly, except for a couple of moments, that might be the worst series of all time. It’s like Ishtar in space, to the sixth power. I think philosophically “The Evil Dead Trilogy” is more enlightening. I am so sick of that wanna-be Buddhist philosophy — I could even respect real Buddhism more than Lucas’ pop variety. When are people going to realize that there wasn’t a good choice in those movies: the Jedi are evil too. Han Solo’s materialistic world was the best, and most consistently ethical, even though the ethical foundation was shaky, outlook on life in that Godless realm that is the Star Wars universe.
I actually think that Lego Star Wars (the console games) was a better story. It was certainly more entertaining.
I continue to be surprised that my immediate family like Doctor Who so much. I mean, there was always a chance that Tracey would like it, because of her Britcom-oriented Anglophilia (she knew Red Dwarf and Blackadder before I met her, after all), but I seriously doubted that the kids would enjoy it. But the kids are the ones who clamor to watch it, more often than I do. They don’t really get the old ones, I will say that, but they seem to get sucked into the chemistry, particularly in Rose’s life. And there are far worse male role models than the last two Doctors.
Anyone with the last name “Skywalker,” for example.
When I consider the television alternatives — “Smallville,” or non-sci-fi stuff like “The OC” or more children-oriented programming like “That’s So Raven” or even less blatantly worldly fare like “7th Heaven” — believe me, I’ll take the Doctor anyday. A sniffle when Rose needs rescuing speaks volumes to me about somebody’s heart.
Yes, this is all assuming that television is in there at all. But adopting children in mid-childhood makes you have to change the approach you wanted to take, sometimes. Would I prefer not to have a television, or at least not to have broadcast television? Sure. But we weren’t there to start with. My influence has had to be subtle sometimes; the kids rebel against wholesale change. Well, who doesn’t?
Oh, and Patrick: if you came to live with us, you (a) could plan with us to visit them when it is possible, and (b) wouldn’t have to buy the DVDs right away. You could also watch BSG when it comes out again, without buying it on iTunes. <dangle fruit=”carrot”>
I know what you mean Charlie. That’s why we haven’t let the kids watch TV. It’s a slippery slope, in my opinion. They get too used to watching TV on a regular basis and not entertaining themselves in other ways. So we figured, just stop it from the get go!
I thought you were a Star Wars fan? It does sound like a pretty good measure of culture. It’s so cool to be enlightened and open-minded, and people aren’t evil - they just make mistakes (or have mental illnesses that are responsible for their wrongdoings). And besides, who decides what’s right and wrong anyway? Moral relativity.. gotta love it.
You forgot to end the block. It should be:
<dangle fruit=”carrot” />
Weeeeelllll… I was, when I was a kid. Teenager. Early adulthood. Early part of the marriage. I mean, I had objections to Lucas’s beliefs, but it’s amazing just how bad he got when he attained absolute power over his work. Hey, Lucas: practically unlimited budget, unlimited power over the creative direction. Go crazy with Eps. I-III. And this is what we get? Talk about opening a nice-looking apple and finding the worm. I enjoyed the special effects; who wouldn’t? Real lightsaber fights that didn’t look like David Prowse and Alec Guinness having to be very careful not to break their rotoscoping guides? Yoda walking around without Frank Oz underneath him? What’s not to like?
But wow, the very fact that I wasn’t sympathetic to anybody at the end of that series — not Padme, not Anakin, not Yoda, not Obi-Wan, not even the droids — but I felt like I’d just been put through a Michael Moore documentary about another planet… well, who needs that? I say, kill ‘em all, and let the Force sort ‘em out.
I don’t think that was the point of those movies. But what other choice did you have in that nihilistic, rarefied atmosphere, where Anakin and Obi-Wan sound like droids and C-3PO sounds like Everyman?
Nothing like the Last of the Timelords in a battered old TARDIS with a sonic screwdriver and a tin dog to get you back on your feet again and feeling like maybe the culture isn’t completely batty.
And you know, I actually agonized over that for a second after I hit “Post Comment.” And then I thought, nobody will care, not worth going back in and editing it. *sighs*
I just googled for Fraserburgh. Cool. It seems like a cozy little fishing town?
Oh, do you like Futurama (like Amber) or maybe not? I’ve heard they’re like creating new ones, but I’m not sure when they’re supposed to be released or anything else.
and
and
If only everyone living in the OC had a lifestyle like the TV show, I wouldn’t even hesitate to buy them. Or, actually, I’d settle just for my family having a similar lifestyle!
Man, this is super tempting!
Oh, and I’ve been meaning to ask, how much does it cost for broadband out there? (For my own record to compare later, here are prices for our area.)
Possible Doctor Who spoilers begin here.
I saw the next episodes last night, ending with the Dalek one. Wow. So that’s what a Dalek is!
Of course, I didn’t understand all the history behind the Timelords and the Daleks and so on. Which made me wonder about a couple of things, but I guess I’ll probably find out more and more as the series progresses.
But based on the episode, the Dalek didn’t seem as bad of a creature as I’d originally anticipated it to be. It was just “following orders.” Not that “following orders” is an excuse for doing evil as we see with the Nazis post-WWII. But then again, unlike human beings, the Daleks have been re-engineered to have no other feelings or I suppose moral inclinations other than hatred and obedience, so I don’t know if I can entirely blame this one for wanting to follow orders and kill the Doctor.
Of course I don’t want to excuse the creature for murdering (perhaps implying that morality is or should be different for the Daleks than for the Doctor), nor not applaud the Doctor for wanting to kill it to save himself and others, but at the same time I don’t know if evil is as evil when it cannot choose otherwise, when it cannot do anything else but obey its directive to EXTERMINATE!?
Obviously the Doctor was hellbent on destroying the Dalek, but, although I think I understand his reasons, I actually was a bit sympathetic to Rose’s view.
At the same time, maybe I’m more sympathetic, too, because the first time I see a Dalek, it’s not “really” a Dalek, since it has Rose’s genome fused into its own.
But depending on their histories, which I don’t really know anything about other than what was revealed in this episode, obviously my opinion could change.
Hm, yeah, I guess I’m still thinking this one through…
Spoilers end.
Physically, the Dalek did look kind of silly and non-threatening to me. Kinda like R2D2 or another Star Wars droid with a plunger.
Not much time tonight to comment, but I’ll try to be fast.
Broadband here is as cheap as $20-25/month or as expensive in some places as c. $50. Where we live it hovers around $45-50 for 3-4 Mbps download.
Yeah, Daleks look goofy to post-Star-Wars people. It has been difficult for them, I think, to maintain the ideal of the Dalek as the ultimate killing machine, given what it looks like. I think that the last generation were terrified of the whole idea of a machine (or machine-looking thing, in this case) just being that out of control, and that non-humanoid. The other side of the coin, then, is the Cybermen, which factored into the old series quite a bit (and further I will not say), who were essentially metal soldiers.
I think that’s why, from Tom Baker on, Dalek episodes focused more on the evil that they represented, and on their creator (Davros, evil genius who genetically engineered his own humanoid people into Daleks). The racial cleansing, post-Nazi thing was a big deal. The great thing was how ruthless that single Dalek was, in that episode; it was a genius who could destroy pretty much anything if it could get out and do it. But the real terror of the episode had to be carried, single-handedly, by the Doctor, since nobody else (not Rose, even after she found out what it was) knew just how terrifying it was.
At the stage you’re at, nobody knows anything about the Time War beyond what you have learned. More details come as the show goes on. The Time War was invented for the new series.
Can you blame a Dalek? Maybe not. But what about people who have grown up with hatred sunk deep within them? For example, Palestinians under Arafat? Can you blame them? I think, to some extent, you can. Because we, unlike the BBC, aren’t social Darwinists.
Are we the only ones here that knew this? If so, I should have kept my big mouth shut.
That’s not a quote you hear every day.
I didn’t catch this.
Doh! Sorry.
But I did just take your quiz!
But I scored only 20.
But I thought the object was to miss as many questions as possible!
But that’s really just a cover for such a pitiful performance, isn’t it?
But pity can sometimes be good!
And now I’m stretching things, aren’t I?
Does it cost anything to obtain a license to watch TV? I think I sorta recall this, but it’s obviously very vague.
Doctor Who spoilers ahead!
By the way, cool that there’s a new companion, Adam. Well, sort of. I mean, I didn’t quite understand why the Doctor allowed him to come aboard the TARDIS other than he’s Rose’s “boyfriend” (which she denies)? Maybe ‘cos he’s a boy genius? Although that was messed up that he didn’t try to go back and save Rose when the doors or gates were closing. Mickey would’ve done so!
Personally, I really like Mickey. Hopefully he’ll change his mind someday and come aboard.
Spoilers, I command you to end here and now!
When do we see the tin dog? Okay, okay, I’ll try to be more patient…
And, if it doesn’t spoil anything to say, has the Doctor always been “the Last of the Timelords,” even in the original series? I mean, in his first through eighth incarnations or whatever they’re called?
Wouldn’t Hugh Laurie make a fantastic Doctor?
That’s OK, I’ll forgive you this one time.
£135.50/year for a colour TV!
He already is one.
And with that, I believe that Aaron wins.
I think it was just because they had to leave, he was already aware of the whole alien thing, and Rose did seem to want him to come along. Just wait until the next episode (”The Long Game”).
No. The Time War destroyed the Timelords, and in the Doctor’s personal chronology, that happened between the beginning of the Eighth Doctor (the TV movie) and the beginning of the Ninth Doctor (”Rose”). People suspect that Eight (Paul McGann) was the Doctor of the Time War, because Nine (Eccleston) seems not to know what he looks like in “Rose.” He may have regenerated shortly prior to the beginning of the new series, then.
In the old series, there were always Timelords mucking around (or complaining about the Doctor’s always mucking around). There were several seasons when he traveled with one (Romana, who according to the novels ended up being the president of Gallifrey during the Time War, and who in her second regeneration was played by Lalla Ward, married for eighteen months to Tom Baker and after that married to Richard Dawkins, yes that Dawkins. Douglas Adams introduced all three of these people to each other, apparently). At one point they sentenced him to exile on Earth and removed his ability to travel in time by disabling both that part of his brain, and that part of his TARDIS. (That’s the first season of Three, Jon Pertwee.)
And the Master, the Doctor’s nemesis who used up all his regenerations and since has been stealing bodies instead, is a Timelord. He appeared to have died at the beginning of the TV movie, and again at the end. I guess we’ll see…
Mickey has a very hard time during Nine’s tenure. He comes into his own in Ten’s, though. Sometimes he’s my favorite non-Doctor character of the new series.
Speaking of Hugh Laurie being a Doctor… you know, there’s a pretty famous clip of Rowan Atkinson taking a turn for a comic charity event, and it strikes me that he’d make a pretty good Doctor, if he could do it without becoming a Blackadder in a TARDIS. (Queue the “Blackadder Back and Forth” theme.)
That same clip has Hugh Grant doing it for a minute, too, though. Ugh. No. That would be my “Tom Cruise can’t be Lestat” moment.
If Patrick Troughton’s portrayal of the Doctor ever suffered extreme brain damage and put on one of those jackets with elbow patches, though, I almost think you could have Doctor Bean.
Actually, that last comment could be a demonstration that I have brain damage.
Wow, that’s crazy. Is that the standard cost throughout the UK or only in the region where you live?
Hm, out of curiosity, do all the Timelords have names like “The Doctor” and “The Master”?
(If I were a Timelord, I would want a name like “The Enforcer”!)
Oh, cool, that’s probably gotta be pretty fun to watch.
I googled for “doctor who rowan atkinson” (without the quotation marks) and the first thing that popped up was a Wikipedia article called Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death (which sorta sounds like an Indiana Jones movie to me). Is this it by any chance? I don’t want to read it in case there are spoilers. Well, there probably aren’t, but still, I figured it’d be better to ask here first.
Um, I hope it’s not anathema for me to ask what I’m about to ask: what about having a non-British “Doctor”?
Certainly not! There’s also the Monk and the Rani. *smiles*
Actually, the vast majority have real names — in fact the Doctor has a real name, but we don’t know it. In school he was called “Sigma Theta” if I remember right.
And there’s Romana, which is short for Romanadvoratrelundar. And Susan Foreman, although that is likely a pseudonym. She’s the Doctor’s granddaughter.
Yeah, that’s the one.
Consider your hopes dashed, it is anathema. Well, maybe one from Australia or New Zealand would be acceptable; we’ve had a couple of Scots, I believe. But no Americans. Just… no.
I think a Doctor of another skin color would be acceptable (I’d love to see a black British actor take it on, for example). I am definitely, er, complementarian, when it comes to his gender, though.
Aw, man! C’mon, the Doctor and his companion(s) could be the next Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid! Smokey and the Bandit! It could be like the Dukes of Hazzard all over again, with Luke, Bo, and Daisy in tow! Or at least Indiana Jones and Short Round! (Yeah, this is a ploy on my part to be cast as the Doctor’s “Short Round.”)
Actually, I’m pushing for a Canadian “Doctor.” That’d be fantastic, eh?
I would love to see an Asian British “Doctor.” Or an Asian with an impeccable British accent as the next Doctor. I nominate myself. “Chinese people, old people.”
Maybe having a non-British Doctor would sorta be like having a non-Australian Crocodile Dundee? It just doesn’t sit quite right.
Okay, I bit the bullet and ordered the Doctor Who DVDs today.
It looks like YouTube has the Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor show.
Patrick, you’re hilarious. When you visit I want to make you speak in your impeccable British accent to everyone you meet, and see what happens!
And the TV licence cost is the same all over the UK. It is crazy, isn’t it? Basically it amounts to a subscription fee for the very few publicly funded channels that many people don’t even watch.
If there was an American Doctor trying to do a British accent it’d be like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. That was painful! No, I think this is like Cary Elwes in Robin Hood Men in Tights.
I bet it’d be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Actually, shouldn’t I go with a Scottish accent? Just like, um, Mike Meyers in So I Married an Axe Murderer, or Austin Powers, or Shrek, or actually, now that I come to think about it, in all his movies!
Oh, and I thought Dick Van Dyke was terrific in Mary Poppins! Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-ee! Hey, I can speak Brit-tish, now listen to me!
In some ways I would argue that the first eight Doctors might as well have been Canadian. *smiles*
But seriously… the Doctor is a part of British culture; it’s only right that British culture be a part of him.
An Oriental doctor who was still obviously from London would be just fine.
I’d like to say more about the color barrier on Doctor Who, but I’ll wait until Patrick has seen more.
Wow. Well, that will make this easier. I definitely want to hear about your reactions to the different episodes. Maybe we should open up a metapage about this… although, the automatic comment closing code is apparently going to leave this discussion open for a year. (Bug?)
That is very interesting, and very funny. I’ll have to work it into my “Kevin Costner is a black hole for talent” theory (ask Patrick).
This LOLcat made me think of you. It must be the spelling.
Oh, and why the Australia fixation all of a sudden? Oh.