the long and winding road
|
i should have known better
|
brits do it better
more than words
|
this charming man
|
sing your life
|
lost(?)
|
home
|
don't want to be a better man / time may change me... / but I can't trace time "Changes," David Bowie
Gosh, I haven't written on here in a while, and it's just as well I suppose, as the last installment of this series was written in 2005, almost a full
year before I ever stepped on English soil. Note I said English soil and not British soil - I didn't realise that the distinction was
important until I actually made the leap and first went 'cross the pond, which was in May 2006, when I stepped off
the Metrolink at St. Peter's Square in Manchester. But this post isn't about that trip, you can read and see more about that trip here.
No, this entry is about the wanton love for a Time Lord. Yes, the Doctor Who brand of Time Lord. I suppose you've lost the plot by now if you aren't British
or into science fiction telly. In a funny twist of fate, I saw my first episode
of Doctor Who, the new garde, in a Albert Dock (Liverpool) hotel room early on a Saturday night. At the time, I hadn't a clue really why everyone was so goo-goo
ga-ga over the new series. Sure, I'd heard of the old series - it's kind of inescapable when you have an older, computer geek brother. He would tape
the episodes (all invariably appearing on public telly here in the United States at screamingly ridiculous early hours of the morning) and then watch and
rewatch them. My earliest memory of the show
was watching some Fifth Doctor episode it with some curiosity because the doctor had on a light-coloured coat and incongrously had a stalk of celery stuck
in his lapel. That, and oh yeah, being scared to death of Daleks, those metal things that looked armoured steam vacuum cleaners - scared primarily
because there was no explanation from my brother why these things yelled "exterminate!!!" in a tinny voice all the time.
When I was confined to home last summer due to a leg injury, I started watching "All Creatures Great and Small," the BBC serial that was based on the bestselling books
of Yorkshire vet James Herriot. Realising then that public telly here had the episodes on nearly everyday, I started watching them religiously. I have all of them
on tape now, I think, after watching the entire cycle of seven seasons around 4 or 5 times all the way through. I found myself curiously attached to the character of Tristan
Farnon, played by Peter Davison, stretching my mind to just why he reminded me of something. Then it came to me.
He was that doctor with the celery on his suit! The Fifth Doctor. All this time, I had not been able to put two and two together. But now I did. Thanks to YouTube and the now-defunct
Stage 6 (sob!), I was able to piece together what the Doctor in cricketing clothes had gotten up to in his 3 seasons. I realised just how
witty and absorbing the show actually was. It made the time I was off from work go by better because even with my leg propped up on a chair and being otherwise
in pain, I could lose myself in this interesting sci-fi foray. I started watching episodes of the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), again showing up on public telly at the odd
hours - oh how I love K-9 and wish I had a metal dog!); picked up several of the Fifth Doctor DVDs, the ones that were available anyhow; and even started getting interested in the newer two version of the Doctor - the Ninth (Christopher
Eccleston) and Tenth (David Tennant).
Which brings the discussion back to how DW got resurrected. Only in Britain could something like this, previously having a heyday within the last 2 to 3 decades, come back
with more vigour than ever. The Doctor Who saga nearly ended after the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) got killed off,
literally and figuratively, by the BBC. They tried to restart the franchise with the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) in the form of a movie but it fizzled. It
wasn't until Russell T. Davies successfully pitched a new version of DW that went out to British telly screens in 2005 with the Ninth Doctor that the
whole thing started rolling again. Back into a huger phenomenon than it ever was before. It's certainly changed to what it used to be because the '80s and earlier,
the fandom was confined to boffin boys and blokes. And now it's exploded to include girls and women - no small feat achieved by Christopher Eccleston and
David Tennant, arguably the wittiest, most handsome, and some might say most human-like of all of the Doctors.
This post is not meant to cause an argy-bargy between defenders of "Classic Who" (Doctors 1 through 8) vs. "Current Who" (Doctors 9 and 10) and instead of choosing
one over the other, I side with both (Fifth and Tenth Doctors being my favourites). As I've said
in multiple message board posts in various places, it's like comparing apples and oranges. The writers of Classic Who would never have dreamed that Current
Who would have such fancy CGI and technologic advances to draw from to produce such fanciful episodes. At the same time though, there have been changes to the
way Doctor Who is approached now versus the way things were handled in the Classic era. For example, much has been made of the almost for certain fact
that both the Ninth and Tenth version of the Doctor were in love with companion Rose Tyler, whereas it would have been unthinkable in the Classic era for any of the previous
companions (male, female, or otherwise) to have any kind of romantic inclination towards the Doctor. I am still on the fence on this subject, as I think every girl
or gay man in their right mind has to have some sort of attraction to the current Doctor, yet I think it pulls the proper attention due to the sci-fi nature
of the show when romance is brought into the equation. How things will play out will be very interesting, as Rose Tyler's character is set to come back later
in the fourth series of DW and is sure to spark some fireworks!
How does this sci-fi show, one that most Americans wouldn't shake a stick at, become one of the most popular television shows not just in Britain but in much of the world?
I think it lies in the heart of what the Doctor represents - his travels let us, the viewers, to come along for the ride into the great unknown, to explore
uncharted places in space and time, to let our imaginations run away as far as the TARDIS will allow. Although he is from Gallifrey, he has integrity, chivalry,
wit, inner strength, and not until recently, the human ability to truly feel emotion like the rest of us. He may be alien, but what drives him
is what drives all of us when we're at our best. That is why it endures.
And oh my, it endures. It will be 45 years this November since the first broadcast of the First Doctor, William Hartnell, terrorized the British public with its brand
of sci-fi goodness. I have to wonder though, when David Tennant leaves, there will only be three Doctor positions left. You see, the storyline is that the Doctor,
being a Time Lord, can only regenerate 12 times, so there can only be 13 versions of him. One day, yes, David Tennant will have to leave DW and the Eleventh Doctor
will take over. So the show's lifetime is finite. As far as I can see anyway...
In the meantime, however, I plan to enjoy what the good Doctor is up to. A couple nights ago, us stateside DW-deprived folks finally got to see "Voyage of the Damned" (the
2007 Christmas special starring Kylie Minogue and the Tenth Doctor) and the result? I became one big, happy DW-loving puddle. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to only be a couple weeks behind the actual showings in Britain.
|
|
2008 - mlmchang