Tarts and the TARDIS
Once again, our Tart Time Machine is, appropriately, visiting the subject of time travel, as we reminisce about the long-running British series Doctor Who, in honour of this month's sci-fi theme. First, for those of you who may not be familiar with the series, a little explanation. The Doctor is a Gallifreyan, specifically of a sect known as the "Time Lords". He's an alien being who can travel through time and space via a ship known as a TARDIS (which is an acronym for "Time and Relative Dimension[s] in Space"). The Doctor's TARDIS isn't (or at least wasn't until recently) the only one of its kind, but its "chameleon circuit", which is supposed to allow it to blend into the environment it materialises in, is broken, freezing it forever in the shape of a 1950s British police box (a sort of booth from which one could call the police from a phone on the outside, and police could incarcerate people as needed on the inside until back-up arrived). The TARDIS interior is a dimension all its own, allowing it to be impossibly big on the inside, no matter how the outside is shaped. Time Lords are immune to time pardox: that is to say, they can alter time without it affecting them personally, so that they retain all memories of the timeline's previous existence, can sense when time has been altered, and are somehow more cognizant of its flow than mortals. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a time paradox can’t be problematic for them, as it still affects the reality they live in and the people they interact with! They also have some mild telepathic abilities, as do their TARDIS ships. The Doctor loves Earth, and tends to choose humans to accompany him on his journeys; the people who travel with him are known outside the context of the show as "companions". There have been ten official incarnations, or "regenerations", of the Doctor, and they are often referred to in the fandom by their number — Christopher Eccleston being Nine, for example —when being spoken of as the character rather than the actor. Oh, and his name isn’t Doctor Who; the title of the series is more of a play on the fact that he has no other name, so people are always going "Doctor who?" (I like to entertain the notion that maybe his name on Gallifrey was something like Doktah, and when the humans assumed he was saying Doctor, he didn’t bother to correct them. But that's just my pet plot bunny.) Before I go any further, here's our Margaret O'Connell to talk about the beginning of the series and how the novel concept of regeneration effected the storytelling within the series, as well as give us her own take on the franchise in general .... Margaret: I think I was either just starting college or in my final years of high school when Channel 21, the Long Island PBS station which was also available on cable in Manhattan, first began showing Doctor Who. They did this very chronologically, beginning with "An Unearthly Child," the first story arc featuring the original Doctor, William Hartnell. The cast line-up at this point also included the Doctor's disappointingly un-unearthly granddaughter, Susan, and two of Susan's teachers who had followed her home to find out why her guardian never showed up for parent/teacher conferences. The latter wound up trapped in the TARDIS for several story arcs' worth of episodes when the crotchety Doctor impatiently activated the time-and-space-traveling vehicle while they were still on the premises. I don't recall whether the Doctor didn't realize that they were still there, or had actually become sufficiently irritated with the interfering educators' awkward questions about why he and Susan lived in some sort of secret headquarters whose entrance was disguised as a police box, that he took them along on purpose just to prove a point. Frankly, I was not exactly enraptured by this episode, or by Hartnell, whose characterization of the Doctor struck me as pretty much the generic grouchy, intellectual-snob mad scientist to be found in so many old movies and TV shows from the pre-Technicolor era. (Although I do remember being somewhat impressed by the scene in which the Doctor unobtrusively fished for chronologically-pinpointing information by remarking to a local medieval peasant, "It seems like no time at all since the old king died, doesn't it? When was that again?" and successfully extracted the unsuspecting reply, "Last winter.") Of course, the whole concept of the show was a lot less engagingly eccentric when it debuted than it eventually became, although admittedly the average Quatermass-type black-and-white film mad scientist didn't usually turn out to be a time-traveling alien. In a way, Hartnell inadvertently did the show a favor when he abruptly decided to leave after only a season or two, forcing the writers to think outside the box to come up with some way the apparently too-successful-to-cancel series could continue without him. Of course, what they came up with as a result was the concept of regeneration, which enables a departing Doctor to be matter-of-factly replaced by a different—frequently younger—actor, with the show's ever-evolving protagonist often getting a radically reconfigured personality into the bargain. Admittedly, this often stretches longtime audience members' ability to suspend characterizational disbelief to the breaking point. After all, when you think about it, how plausible is it that the whimsical, eye-twinkling Doctor portrayed by Tom Baker could turn into the good-looking, but essentially humorless, Peter Davison? Or that the grumpy old curmudgeon created by Hartnell could at some point evolve into the gentle, rather ineffectual-seeming Doctor of Sylvester McCoy, or even the charismatic, elder-statesmanishly dashing Doctor portrayed by Jon Pertwee during the period when the Doctor & Co. spent much of their time working with the British weird military affairs division U.N.I.T.? Only Colin Baker, whose version of the Doctor was so nasty and obnoxious that he was heartily detested by many fans — although this was probably due to the scripts at least as much as the actor — seemed to have anything significant in common with Hartnell's original character in terms of personality. From a commercial standpoint, this may have been just as well. The innovative regeneration concept had obvious practical advantages in terms of allowing the producers to routinely recast Doctors who quit or even died. But it also had the creative, if sometimes continuity-straining, plus of enabling the writers to reconfigure the show around the strengths and individual personalities of the successive lead actors, sometimes virtually reinventing the series' basic premise as they went. Although the results could be unsettling and occasionally not to many viewers' liking, this mechanism did provide a sort of built-in failsafe against the show's falling inextricably into a rut or going stale creatively. Without the phenomenon of regeneration to ensure that, as with Shakespeare's Cleopatra, neither age nor custom could stale the Doctor's infinite variety, it's unlikely that the show, however good, would have lasted for over thirty years — albeit with one recent prolonged hiatus.
Wolfie: Thanks, Margaret! My own interest in the franchise all started very late at night one summer Sunday, when I was roughly four years old (1979). My folks were flipping through the channels (which didn't take very long back then, as that was B.C. — Before Cable), when my dad noticed a police box on Channel 11, our local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) station. By a stroke of luck, that night we caught a re-run of Tom Baker's first story arc, "Robot". Having watched the series growing up, my dad talked my mom into giving the show a try, even though he himself had never seen Baker. While most of my memories of those early days are understandably fuzzy, I remember being utterly charmed as Four (historically considered the most popular regeneration of the Doctor) tried to find a new "look" for his new body and came out dressed in a clown suit; one of his companions (one of my all-time favourites, in fact), Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen), nixed that idea, and he pouted at her before going off to change again. In addition to Sarah, Four ended up with a new travelling companion in that episode, Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter). He also had a long-time friend in the recurring character of Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Steward (Nicholas Courtney). That first episode began a long-standing tradition in our family of watching Dave Allen At Large, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Doctor Who every Sunday night. I got shivers every time I heard the theme music (which changed slightly from Doctor to Doctor, but always had similar underlying elements). As the original series aired in twenty-five-minute increments in the UK and story arcs varied in the number of episodes it took to tell it, and since Channel 11 usually aired the arcs as one long episode, the length of any given "episode" here varied. I often got to stay up till 1:00 am, sometimes even later —although I commonly drifted off halfway through, then woke up and caught the end. Tom Baker as Four has become something of an icon in my head for my childhood, with his brown fedora (which he frequently used to cover his face while napping), his super-long scarf (my mother made one for my father one Christmas, and he used it as a leash of sorts for me — wherever we went, I was to hold on to one of the ends at all times), and his constant offering of Jelly Babies (when we finally tried them, we were vastly disappointed; maybe we got a bad batch, but the ones we got had a thin Gummie Bear-like shell and grainy sugar-water for insides, Yuck!). Four did get scared, but he was still incredibly brave, often having a sort of lackadaisical attitude toward death, as if it were just another adventure. He was like a child himslef, fascinated by everything, and yet was incredibly intelligent and wise. And he was, as Margaret pointed out, funny. For several years I was terrified of the Doctor's arch-nemeses, the Daleks, killer machines that constantly went about saying "Exterminate" in the same horrible, almost-screeching voice. I liked (well, liked as a villain) their maker, Davros, though, and now that I'm older, I've come to appreciate the Daleks themselves as well. (I have a friend who can do an amazing impersonation of this — without the aid of any sort of voice modulator!) The android Cybermen, though, never did much for me. The Master, a renegade Gallifreyan, was a cool, suave villain — the Doctor's Moriarty, if you will. I'm not going to tell you about every episode now, just the ones I liked the best or which had a massive impact on the series. "The Hand of Fear", in which Sarah was possessed by a spirit via a crawling, disembodied hand, is a creepy, stand-out episode in my mind. And I remember Sarah's goodbye; right after the Doctor leaves, she realised that he'd left her in the wrong place! (I hope it was the right year, at least!) I was really sad to see Sarah go. (Harry had already left the series in "The Android Invasion".) The Doctor had an arc on his own just after that — one of my favourites, in fact, "The Deadly Assasin"! In it, I got to see the Master for the first time, as well as get my first look at the Doctor's home world of Gallifrey! (When I saw The Dark Crystal, I couldn’t help but think that the setting of the castle of the Skeksis reminded me of Gallifrey, especially with the high-backed collars the Skeksis wore!) The following episode, "The Face of Evil", saw the Doctor taking on the savage Leela (Louise Jameson), a strong woman who firmly believed in killing first and asking questions later, as his new companion. I rather liked the story arc "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" from the Leela days, where they solved a mystery involving a Chinese magician with a creepy mask, in Victorian London. In "The Invisible Enemy", the Doctor ended up with a robot dog named K-9, who shot lasers out of his nose! I adored K-9 (voiced mostly by John Leeson), and always dreamed of making a remote-control one! When Leela decided to stay on Gallifrey, in "The Invaders of Time", though, the Doctor left K-9 with her — and promptly pulled K-9 Mark II out of a closet on the TARDIS. I can't say as I cared much for Leela's replacement, the Time Lady Ramonadvoratrelundar, aka Ramona (Mary Tamm), whom the Doctor got saddled with (in "The Ribos operation") by the command of the White Guardian, in order to find the parts of the Key to Time. (My parents say that if I had been born after her first episode, Ramonadvoratrelundar would have been my name. Could you imagine having to write that on my homework??) She ended up regenerating — I liked the second Ramona (Lalla Ward) much better, she had wonderful chemistry with Four (Ward even married Tom Baker for a brief time). She even had good chemistry with K-9, who I think was more likely to obey her than the Doctor! In "Full Circle", the Doctor added Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), annoying boy genius from Alazria, to the TARDIS' roster. (It's funny: years later, I loved Wesley Crusher, who was in many ways a very similar character on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but back then, I couldn't stand Adric!) A couple of arcs later, at the end of "Warrior's Gate", Romana left the Doctor to explore E-Space. The Doctor gave her the second K-9, as the dog was injured in such a way as it could no longer function outside E-Space. I was actually surprised the Doctor didn’t pull out another K-9 out of the closet right after, but I understand that Leeson wanted out of the show at that point. He did, however, reprise his role twice: first as K-9 Mark III, for a short-lived spin-off called K-9 and Company, which also featured Sarah Jane Smith (I've never seen it, alas), and then for a recent episode in the new series. In the next arc, "The Keeper of Traken", the Doctor took Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), girl genius — and another of my all-time fave companions — onboard the TARDIS. In that episode, the Master had regenerated beyond his "allotted" regenerations by stealing Nyssa's father's body! Although ... he looked remarkably like his old self, heh. In the episode after that, "Logopolis", they added Tegan (Janet Fielding), the spunky Aussie flight attendant, whom I liked rather well. Neither of them git to travel with Four very long though; not much later, the unthinkable happened. Oh, we knew it was coming, but it didn’t make it any less hard to take: Four "died", and regenerated into the much younger, very different Five (Peter Davison, whom I later adored as Tristan on reruns of All Creatures Great and Small). Five's first episode was the heart-wrenching "Castrovalva"; in it, Adric went missing (he was kidnapped by the Master), and the Doctor was struggling mentally and physically with the after-effects of his regeneration. I cried when he unraveled the scarf, using the string to help him find his way around the TARDIS. It was a good move, having Five start out so ill, though, at least to me, as I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, allowing me to accept the change much more readily. The commune of Castrovalva was a hoot, too, a sort of Escher-like place; no matter where one went, how straight a line one traveled, one always ended up back at the same courtyard! At any rate, this is one of my all-time very fave eps, and it re-defined the Doctor as a far more serious but no less caring — well, unless you ticked him off, which was actually pretty easy to do — individual. In "Time-Flight," we had the shock of the death of Adric, who sacrificed himself to save the universe. Though I really hadn’t liked his character, I was actually moved by his death, which says a lot for the writing and acting in that episode, I think. It also seemed like Tegan was leaving at the end, but she returned in the next episode. I rather enjoyed "Snakedance," in which Tegan was possessed by an entity known as Maru (for the second time, actually), and has this wicked "living" snake tattoo. In "Mawdryn Undead", the Doctor picked up another companion, Turlough (Mark Strickland), from a boys' school where his old friend the Brigadier had become a teacher. Turlough was a bit of a cowardly, arrogant prick, but then you weren't supposed to like him — at first — as he was actually in the employ of one of the Doctor's enemies, the Black Guardian. Eventually, of course, he sided with the Doctor against the Black Guardian, but that didn’t really change his disposition all that much. Strickland and the writers did a wonderful job of keeping the viewer off-balance with Turlough, swinging back and forth between dislike and sympathy, until his other secret, the one even the viewers didn’t know, was revealed in his final episode. Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. In the "Terminus" arc, another one of my faves, thanks to Turlough the TARDIS materialised on a ship with a sort of space leper colony. Nyssa contracted the disease, but, in a Beauty-and-the-Beast sort of story, was saved by a wolf-headed being called the Garm when he exposed her to radiation. She decided to stay behind and help refine the cure. I was sad to see her go, but I loved the episode tremendously. "The King's Demon" introduces the shape-shifting android Kamelion, who, under the control of the Master, was going to disrupt the signing of the Magna Carta by impersonating King John. The Doctor freed him from the Master's control and took him into the Tardis (though near as I can tell by the various websites — because I honestly can't recall either way — we didn't see him again till a few arcs later). I liked Kamelion: he was sympathetic, his robot-form looked cool, and he had a cool ability! "The Five Doctors" allowed me to finally see One (well, not really One, as William Hartnel had passed away by that point), Two, and Three. Sadly, Tom Baker did not reprise his role; instead, they used a small bit of footage from an unaired episode, "Shada", so the story did not hold as much appeal for me. Eventually PBS aired the old episodes, so I did see Hartnel, Patrick Troughton (Two), and Jon Pertwee (Three) in context — and I was bored silly by all of them. Probably because I was so strongly biased in favor of Baker and Davison at that point; maybe if I watched them now, I might like them better. Although Pertwee's Doctor struck me as the bizarre love-child of James Bond and Liberache. Tegan left a few arcs later, in "Resurrection of the Daleks". Turlough left in the very next arc, another one of my faves, "The Planet of Fire"; in that story, we learned that his first name was Vislor and that he wasn't actually human, bur rather a political exile of the planet Trion. He found his brother on a planet called Sarn and learned that his father had been killed; by the end of the arc, it was established that it was safe for Vislor to return home. This arc solidified Turlough's place as one of my all-time fave companions, which is funny, considering I disliked him so much at the start. (And my renewed interest in the Who franchise, coupled with the interest I've acquired over recent years in slash fiction, has translated into a sudden interest in the non-canon fan-following of Five/Turlough ....) Kamelion made another appearance; he fell under the control of the Master again, and begged the Doctor to destroy him (the Doctor reluctantly obliged). An American woman, Perpugillam (Peri) Brown (played by Nicola Bryant, who is actually British), was introduced at the beginning of the story arc; she became the Doctor's new companion. She was whiny and prissy; I didn't like her very much. And then we lost the last good thing on the show, as the Doctor regenerated again at the end of the very next arc, "The Caves of Androzani"! The last season of Five's run marked a bad thing for me: the end of staying up late on Sunday nights. I started middle school when the third season aired here, and had to go to bed earlier; thankfully, though, we had a VCR by this point, so my mom recorded it for me.
I was a lot more accepting of Six (played by Colin Baker, no relation to Tom) than most people were at first; he seemed playful, and I liked his coat. Maybe it was the name "Baker" that convinced me to give him a chance. But my affection dwindled; he was cowardly and arrogant to an extreme. I started missing episodes due to my school workload. My mother kept me informed, but to be honest, she's a god-awful storyteller: she told me that Peri had been turned into a bird-thing and then the Doctor had left her for dead, but of course this information wasn't quite accurate. Still, taking my mother at her word, I became less inclined than ever to watch. I missed almost all of the season known as "Trial of a Time Lord", in which the Doctor apparently was put on trial by his fellow Time Lords for meddling in human affairs; what little I have seen was in reruns. I do remember a bit of the end, though (and online episode guides help): apparently the Doctor was set up by the Master and a man who was a distillation of the Doctor's own dark side! This arc also brings up an interesting point: they say the distillation was created as a result of the Doctor's twelfth and final regeneration, and it's been stated before that Time Lords only get twelve (thirteen bodies in all). Will they change that if the show gets to a thirteenth Doctor, or will they end it ...? The end of the Trial also saw Peri deciding to settle down, and the Doctor taking on a new companion, a computer programmer named Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford). At the start of the next season, in "Time and the Rani", the Doctor is mortally wounded and regenerates into Seven (Sylvester McCoy). I didn’t see that episode, alas: my first exposure to the new Doctor and Mel was in another of my all-time fave eps, "Paradise Towers". I liked McCoy's charming, witty, and congenial Doctor immediately; the hyper, too-chipper Mel I was a bit less enthusiastic about, but she was all right in this episode at least, save that I hated her blue-and-white-polka-dots outfit. In this particular episode, the Doctor had wanted to take Mel somewhere nice for a little vacation, and Paradise Towers was supposed to be, well, a paradise. Instead they found a run-down derelict of a building. The place wasn’t abandoned, though; there were the Rezzies, cannibalistic old ladies; the Red and Blue Kangs, rival punk gangs of adolescent girls who spread graffiti wherever they went (there were Yellow kangs, but they were killed off by the cleaners); Pex, a slow-witted and cowardly man with a good heart who saw himself as the protector of the towers, but everyone else saw as a joke; and The Chief Caretaker, who sees a strange machine in the basement as a sort of pet, using the cleaning bots to kill the humans within the building and giving them up to said pet. Turns out the machine-thing is actually what remains of the building's designer, Kroagnon, who hated the idea of people cluttering up his beautiful building. He killed and possessed the Caretaker eventually. The Doctor befriended the Kangs, getting them to work together, while Mel befriended Pex (and was nearly eaten by the Rezzies). We learn that these people are all that remain of a society whose adults went off to war, leaving their children and elderly behind; Pex had fled the battle. The story culminated in the joint efforts of all parties in combating Kroagnon. Pex died a hero (and I cried). I have the novelisation of this episode, and liked it so well that I've read it twice. I loved the Kangs and their vernacular. "Ice-hot, Doctor!" "Pex is a cowardly cutlet!" In "Dragonfire", the Doctor traded Mel (who decided to go off with a man named Glitz, an acquaintance of theirs from the Doctor's trial) for the spunky tomboy (and demolitions expert) Ace (Sophie Aldred). I liked her a lot, she's definitely up there with my fave companions! And I especially liked the episodes: "The Happiness Patrol", about a place where unhappiness is illegal, and a robot made of sweets called the Kandy Man who likes to drown lawbreakers in fondant surprise; "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy", in which the performers must perform brilliantly upon pain of death; and "Survival", in which both the Master and Ace are slowly turned into Cheetah People! As a "Fur", you can bet I loved that episode! Alas, originally airing in 1989, that was the last episode of the original run. Apparently there was some big (non-canon) 3-D charity special in 1993; I have never seen it, and didn’t even know about it until I went to research some things for this article! There was also an American-made TV movie in 1996, which, while it had no explanation for the absence of Ace, showed the Doctor regenerate from Seven to Eight (Paul McGann) and is considered canon. Until this point, the Doctor, despite the chemistry of Four and the second Romana, was treated as a rather asexual creature, even while we know that, as he had a grandchild, he must have had sex at some point in his existence. In this film, though, we see him have a romantic encounter and even kiss his object of desire; this upset some fans. So did the Doctor's statement that he was in fact half human, coming from a human mother. Me, I thought these were interesting additions to the concept. I liked the movie pretty well, even if the new Master seemed a big departure from the original. I was so hopeful that it would mean a new series, but it wasn't picked up. But this movie wasn't the only Doctor Who movie: there were two non-canon (though still official), theatrically-released ones in the sixties, starring Peter Cushing as a human man called Dr. Who, and featuring the Daleks. Yeah, I don’t like those films too much. I wish I remembered the original run better than I do. There have been periods of reruns now and then over the years, thankfully, but my poor memory is like swiss-cheese. The latest bout of reruns I caught, about two years ago on a PBS station in Florida, were already on the last couple of Baker's seasons (he did seven) and stopped sometime during the Davison eps, if I remember. For that short run, the folks and I started a new tradition of making chocolate chip cookies to eat during the show. I love tradition! Growing up, I didn’t meet many people who knew what Doctor Who even was, much less watched it, save for a friend I've known for something like 25 years now — and she refuses to even acknowledge the existence of any Doctor other than Tom Baker, not even the ones before him. When I got to art school, though, of course I met more fans. And between conventions and the Internet, being a Who-fan has gone from feeling like an oddity to feeling quite normal, especially with the series relaunch being shown here in the States on The Sci Fi Channel. Part of me is almost ... sad about it, in fact; before, I kind of felt like I was in an exclusive club. I always wondered just how many Americans "got" the two appearances of Four in The Simpsons .... I have a cute parody comic I bought a long time ago, in which Four and Leela cross paths with both the original Star Trek crew and the Next Gen crew. There's also a very hysterical parody film which stars Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor ... and Richard E. Grant, and Jim Broadbent, and even Joanna Lumley! (I'm guessing her appearance in the film is what sparked the rumours I was hearing for a long while that there was going to be a new Doctor Who with a female Doctor. Which I think would have been interesting, actually ....) I have to admit, when I heard they really were doing a new Doctor Who series, I had some trepidation, especially when I heard that the actor they'd chosen to play Nine, Christopher Eccleston, had "quit" right away. Details seem to be very fuzzy, with all sorts of allegations thrown around. Some sources saying he had only ever been slated to do one season, and others saying he decided after doing the first episode that he would not stay beyond the season. The reasons given seem to vary too. The way the media is, I suppose we'll never know for sure. From this point on, there are spoilers for the first new season of Doctor Who; if you have yet to see it, you'll want to stop reading now. If you keep reading, you've either seen Eccleston's season already, or you simply don't care if you're spoiled. Last warning. Okay then. My folks and I couldn’t resist turning in for the premier of the new series (which is actually a continuation of the original, just with a bit of a gap) on The Sci Fi Channel this year. We've stayed raptly attentive to every subsequent episode shown here (the second season). Please check out my review of the The Complete First Series box set if you want to know what I thought of each episode. For here, I'll just say that I liked Eccleston — who has the same infectious glee of Tom Baker but flavoured with angst — almost immediately! (Indeed, I can honestly say he has surpassed Tom Baker in my affections!) I had my qualms about Nine's companion, Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), at first, but she grew on me as the hint of a possible romance between her and Nine became evident. I became such a die-hard shipper of the pair, in fact, I even did a bit of fan-art of the kissing scene in the final episode of the season, "Parting of the Ways" (and this before I’d actually seen the episode! I'm such a spoiler whore, that I checked out the official BBC website to find out if they would hook up, and found a screencap of the kiss to use as a reference). I didn’t like Captain Jack Harkness so much at first either, but he also quickly grew on me, especially when we learned he's bisexual (yay, representation!!), and even more especially when he kissed not just Rose, but the Doctor in the aforementioned episode! After seeing "The Doctor Dances", I was inspired to do another bit of fan-art, this time a parody of sorts of Nine, Rose, and Jack as My Little Ponies. 'Cause I'm weird like that, if you haven't figured that out already. And hey, Jack's getting his own spin-off, called Torchwood! So here I am now, my enthusiasm for the franchise revived, though I'm grieving the loss of Eccleston and the terrific chemistry he had with Piper. But I wish him well as he moves onto other things, and I'm very grateful for the time we did get with him. Some of my sister Tarts seem in much the same state, it seems .... Rebecca Buchanan: My exposure to Doctor Who is minimal. I blame the local PBS station. ;( I very vaguely remember one Tom Baker episode in which they landed on an Earth (or some other planet) that was ruled by women; and I remember that the Doctor had a male and female companion in that episode. Only recently have I begun to appreciate the Doctor and the Who mythology (Who-ology?). My cable package doesn't include The Sci Fi Channel. While on vacation a few months ago, I happened to catch a single episode starring Christopher Eccleston. The Doctor and Rose landed in Blitz-era London, and found themselves trying to stop a strange and horrible plague ("The Empty Child" ~ Wolfie). Unfortunately, I never got to see the second half ("The Doctor Dances" ~ Wolfie) — though I assume the Doctor and Rose escaped unharmed after much menace and derring-do. I'll have to rent the DVD set of Eccleston's single season run. That one episode was great. :) Sheena McNeil: I had heard of Doctor Who at some point — the name definitely sounded familiar. Though I had not seen any of the previous series, I was intrigued by the commercials for the new Sci-Fi Channel take on it. I fell in love with it instantly. Christopher Eccleston is quirky, odd, kinda goofy, yet captures a very dark side to the Doctor — the tragic past with an inner sadness and rage. I couldn't get enough. The first season of this new spin on the series started with basic "introduction" episodes to get you interested in the characters and familiar with the general gist of the plot while still being exciting and pertinent (as we learn later on there were hints all along). My favorite episode was easily the third one ("The Unquiet Dead" ~ Wolfie) where Rose and the Doctor travel back in time to 1869, Victorian era Cardiff, where the dead are rising up and beings from another plane are behind it — plus it has Charles Dickens. The season soon builds to quite the climax, and while I loved that Rose took on all that power to save the Doctor, I was rather disappointed in the change the Doctor had to undergo at the end.
And now our own "britchick" EIC, Marcia Allass, shares her thoughts, and I just know she's gonna have a thing or two to say on Ten's behalf .... (Funny that Ten is played by Tennant, ey? Heheheheh ....) Marcia: I don't remember any point of my childhood that didn't involve watching Doctor Who on a Saturday evening before tea and hiding behind the sofa at appropriate intervals, much to the amusement of my parents. Strangely, it wasn't the Daleks who freaked me out but rather any episode featuring plants coming to life. That really scared the pants off me as a concept. The earliest Doctor I remember is the Jon Pertwee incarnation — in fact, I remember him dying and being replaced by Tom Baker. I was quite unsettled by that initially, because at that point Pertwee was "my Doctor" but I was young and soon succumbed to the undoubted charms of Baker in the role. K-9 certainly helped with the conversion, as did Leela, who was an early kick-ass female icon for me in a time when there were few around! During this time I was also reading Doctor Who novels avidly — and of all incarnations from Hartnell to Baker. I loved them. I stuck around for Peter Davison's incarnation, although I was by then a teen and getting out of the target age group. Having a massive crush on companion Turlough certainly helped, no doubt. After Davison I was lost though — Colin Baker irritated me beyond measure and I prefer to think of Sylvester McCoy's incarnation as just a bad dream. Unlike most longtime Dr Who fans I really did like the Paul McGann movie and steadfastly think of it as in canon, regardless of what anyone else says. I was glad to see a skilled thespian in the role again, and loved the understated nature of the character. I was sad that the series went into hiatus and glad when it emerged again. I was excited to hear that Christopher Eccleston had landed the role being a fan of his from serious drama series in the UK such as Cracker and Our Friends in The North. Sadly, while I didn't get as upset about the writing and the plots as many other adults who have clearly forgotten that the target audience was always primarily kids, Eccleston really didn't do it for me. While his acting talents are undoubted, ne seems to spend the entire series looking faintly embarrassed to be there, which really put me off. I wasn't sad that he quit, and was thrilled to hear that he was to be replaced by David Tennant, whom I had admired in offbeat BBC dramas like Blackpool and Casanova. And yes, okay, I will admit to thinking he's pretty damn HOT as well. I think his previous roles have just convinced me that he's FILTHY, and now that I'm an adult that's kind of nice in a Doctor, and frankly reminiscent of Tom Baker when I look back on his old stuff now with older eyes (I just know that incarnation and his female companions were at it in back of the Tardis)! To my mind Tennant has struck the right balance of childlike wonder, humanity and ruthlessness and I've thoroughly enjoyed the latest series from start to finish because of him and despite one or two ropey plots. Wolfie: Thanks, Marcia! Now I have some spoilery thoughts of my own to share, regarding the end of season two and info about season three. So stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled about season three. We all good? Good. When Rose had taken in the power of the TARDIS in "Parting of the Ways," a number of fans, myself included, hoped it mean that she had perhaps been turned into a Gallifreyan, and that it meant if Piper ever left, she could then regenerate, and the romance between her and the Doctor could be kept going. I even had a nice little theory going that they would re-start the Gallifreyan race, although their grandchildren would be hybrids of course. But I hear that such conjecture did not turn out to be the case at the end of the second season, that Rose's fate is simply in question, and Ten will get a new female companion for the third season. Well I must say that this leaves me even more heart-broken and uncertain about watching season two! (Although the description of Ten breaking down in tears after Rose's disappearance has the angst-fiend in me salivating. And the thought of seeing K-9 again certainly has merit!) Well, I hope he doesn't get romantically entangled with the new girl, and that Rose comes back somehow, somewhen .... But Tart's Doctor Who love doesn't stop here! Also in this month, I've written a Microscope review of the Doctor Who Magazine, Special Edition: The Ninth Doctor Collected Comics, and of course there's that review of the DVD box set that I mentioned! And check out our ongoing column, "Who on Earth", by Kim De Vries, which started just last month!
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