I was living in England
with my mother, going to school in Penzance
as a day student. We lived in the end unit of a row house—stone houses, streets,
little gardens—just as you might imagine a British working class neighborhood.
We had just moved out of an artsy Mousehole hotel to less expensive Newlyn, to the
last building on the top of the hill above the harbor. Behind us was a field
with dairy cows and a stubby, well-worn stone circle, through which I walked every
morning, taking the back way over the headland into Penzance and my school.
We rented our telly and paid license fees, like everyone
else on the street, and I began watching my first regular doses of English entertainment.
It was black and white in those days, the content different from what I’d
been used to in the States.
I only saw two shows containing the original Doctor. Although I remember enjoying the
story, it was never completely clear to me what the heck was going on. I
remember being thrilled to realize that this show was not only about history—and
with costumes which were actually period correct (astonishing in and of itself, as this was the early sixties)—but also about
the science fiction notion of time travel. The Doctor and his two companions
eventually escaped from trouble inside a little blue box, the kind I’d seen
standing, dusty and unused, on street corners here and there throughout British
cities.
Well, wow! Stories about history and time travel all
in one show! The main character was not
only mysterious, aged and professorial, but a little sinister, too, as if he
was not entirely to be trusted. As someone who liked fantasy and science
fiction but who had always loved reading about famous characters
in history, I couldn’t help but be intrigued.
Unfortunately, no matter how much I waited for it, I never saw any more than those
two shows. Soon Mom and I pulled up stakes again and headed for Barbados
It was years later that The Doctor and I reconnected. My
kids and I were sitting on the floor together watching PBS on our
Zenith, also parked on the floor. (In those days furniture was something of a
luxury.) An odd British import began.
Lo and behold--there was my time traveler and his blue box! Of course,
the original doctor had gone. The new one was still domineering and mysterious,
but far less of a stuffy old professor. Instead he now appeared to be in his
forties, with a mod head of curly hair and clothes by way
of Carnaby Street
John Pertwee, mortal enemy & friends
Okay, I thought, I’ll go with the flow. My brief, earlier
acquaintance with that absent-minded elderly Doctor was
still lingering in my cranial filing cabinet. This, I realized, would be a
great show for the kids to watch while I made dinner. (In those days 30 Minute
Meals was not a marketable idea, just the way everybody cooked, especially if Mom
worked the day shift.)
Doctor Who has always had rather tacky visuals. I was told
by someone long ago that the Doctor’s eternal enemy, the Daleks, were actually
tarted up shop vacs, hence their distinctive sloping can shape. (However, do
remember that Twilight Zones weren’t all that much better. And what ‘60’s Trekkie
can forget the embarrassing Gorn?) As a childhood watcher of s/f on TV—Captain
Video, anyone?—I knew my imagination would do most of the work. if the concept
was interesting, my brain would take it from there, just as it did when I read.
Good actors and an involving story could carry off almost anything, because, as
Hamlet says “the play’s the thing.” British actors, trained for the job, are,
at least, skilled craftsmen, and adept at making theatrical magic happen with
even the most minimal sets and effects.
After my boys became fans, almost immediately there came a
change in Doctors, as reported to me by my oldest son. He was about equally disturbed and intrigued that
the hero in a series might abruptly become someone else, all while essentially
playing (more or less) the same character. This new Doctor immediately caught
my eye—perhaps because his clothes were no longer Victorian mod, but thrift store
trippy.
Tom Baker
Years went by. The kids grew up and had kids of their own. I
went gray. One night, worn out by the local news, I looked for something else to watch at
5 o’clock and found BBC America.
Christopher Eccelston & intrepid shopgirl, Rose
This new Doctor was different in a lot of ways, at first
shockingly so. For one thing, he was an imposing guy with a buzz cut who wore
black leather. Yikes! He also had a
strong Northern working- class accent, far removed from the mad intellectual elitists
of the past. I always wondered if this Doctor was working on his bike somewhere
among the myriad rooms of the “bigger on the inside” TARDIS…
Romance for the Doctor and his companion was another innovation that was a GOOD THING, adding some spice to the character’s lonely Flying Dutchman persona. (The “Companions” have been shorted in this reminiscence, but they’ve always been an integral part of the Whovian equation.) Rose Tyler and The Doctor shared the series’ first kiss. It was an electric moment.
All too soon, here came a new Doctor—and, I confess, my
favorite. Bring on Doctor #10, the exciting David Tennant, an admitted
“fan-boy” from childhood. Here we had a bi-polar Doctor, a veritable road
runner on speed, wearing a duster, a shiny suit, and Converse sneakers. This Doctor exhibited a ferocious brand of
fey, peppered with world-weariness and pessimism, all of it wrapped up inside
one skinny 900+ year old Time Lord. Gilbert & Sullivan couldn’t write
better patter than Steven Moffat and Russell Davies, and their Doctor—and the
rest of the fine ensemble--delivered the goods.
Doctor Who is quirky, by turns scary or silly, and sometimes it's dark and intellectual. It’s also shamelessly self-referential, and full of puns plus
literary, scientific and topical allusions which I adore. From Pratchett to Monty
Python to comedies like "Doc Martin" & "Shaun of the Dead," from forms as low as Pantomime and high
as Shakespeare, all that’s delightful, witty and wise--in British entertainment is
woven together in
Doctor Who, Greatest
Show in the Galaxy.
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