Detonate the Reality Field!
Aug 3rd, 2008 | By Rick | Category: Analysis and Comment, Reviews
Current Doctor David Tennant
Aliens on motorized wheelchairs! Call boxes on wires! Electric screwdrivers that hold the key to the universe! The universe I say! Can it be anyone other than Doctor Who? Of course not … and as far as I’m concerned, it takes a real curmudgeon not to love the doctor. As I write this, we’re watching the latest season finale, which my wife has TIVO’d so we can savor every moment.
And because it’s a two-part, two-and-a-half-hour, season-ending, bang-up special, they’ve pulled out all the stops and brought back the Daleks, everybody’s favorite garbage-cans on wheels. Seems like they’re not all dead like we thought, they’ve just been hiding out in a parallel universe, or something. And while they were gone, they built up a UNIVERSE-CONQUERING FORCE! And you know that the old eyeless guy who talks suspiciously like a Nazi and who created all the Daleks in the first place? The one who died in the same episode that the Daleks did? Well — get this! — he’s alive too! Who would have thunk it?
Actually, anyone who’s ever watched the BBC’s Doctor Who, that’s . . . who. The fourth series in the modern verision of the showseries has just wrapped up on SciFi Channel, and it came awfully close to being a classic, in my mind. We ended up with two doctors. Well, one and a half — don’t ask. Sometimes not asking is for the best . . . logical consistency isn’t what we’re after for when we tune into the doctor.
Doctor number four Tom Baker
According to Guinness, Doctor Who is the longest running science fiction television show in the world. The original ran for twenty six years, from 1963 to 1989. In that time, it ran through some eight doctors, each one the same man, regenerated into a new form — and actor. Of that original batch, the most popular was doubtless Tom Baker, who ruled the TARDIS (that’s Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space for you newbies) from 1974 to 1981.
After a false start in the 90s, the series was relaunched In 2005 with a brand new doctor, Christopher Eccleston, and some nifty new special effects. But not too many . . . one of the series’ continuing features is the balance it strikes between the cheesy props and effects of its original runs with the high-tech digital offerings of today. Other shows — Battlestar Galactica and the Stargates, for example, go whole-hog with their CGI, but Doctor Who has retained a canny mix. Thus, many of the backdrops and long-distance effects — like the planet-moving scenes of the latest episode — are computer generated, while the monsters and villains and other assorted aliens keep their quaint rubber-masked, zipper-suited charm.
And that’s the key to the series’ continuing popularity — nostalgia. Over its twenty-six year run, Doctor Who inveigled its way into the British culture and, after it started broadcasting on PBS, the American one as well. The resurrected version walks a fine line between modern sensibilities that demand ever-increasing “realism” and the hokey, duct-tape-and-spray-paint zietgeist that ruled the original. And the cool thing about it is that it works: we wink in knowing complicity at the Daleks’ bathroom-plunger arms and are at the same time invested in the plight of the Doctor and his various, comely companions.
A Dalek. Yes, that's really a plunger.
I don’t mean to get all post-911 or anything, but I don’t think it’s an accident that it took until 2005 to resurrect the good Doctor. Part of this popularity is no doubt the proverbial — but no less true — yearning for simpler times, when good was good and evil evil. When you could safely rub out an entire race (but not the Doctor directly, because he doesn’t kill) because they were pure evil, and alien to boot. We only wish we could solve our problems that simply, that we could identify our “enemies” that cleanly.
Of course, all this has a darker side, and it’s not just the xenophobia that has lurked beneath the science fiction surface since the dawn of the genre. The Doctor’s companion is always female, she’s always pretty, and she’s always ready to sublimate her wants and needs — and occasionally, her life — to the Doctor’s own ends. Might the popularity of Doctor Who be turning on a little feminist back-lashing as well?
But science fiction — like most popular literature — has always been about reinforcing dominant cultural narratives, and the good Doctor is no different. All portentous cultural analysis aside, it’s an entertaining show that doesn’t take itself — or its message of good versus evil — too seriously. It serves up an entertaining mix of adventure and nostalgia, leavened with a large dose of humor, that resonates with a large audience. So much so that after a lay-off for 2009 (although there’ll be four specials to keep the addicts in line), Doctor Who will return with a new series in 2010.
I can’t wait. Long live the Doctor!
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Watched the finale yesterday. Woah.
Don’t want to give anything away, but by the end of it all, I was in shock. Argh, no spoilers. Well, you know what happened!
Yeah, it was quite a touching way to end the series. I like it that the doctor isn’t uniformly beloved, i.e., by the mother of Donna. It provides a touch of humanity and all.
I wonder who the new companion will be?
Awesome season finale! Doctor Who is one of the most emotionally wrenching shows on television; exciting and depressing, full of life and camaraderie yet so lonely at the same time. To use the Doctor’s phrase of choice “It’s Brilliant”
I saw a sneak peek of the 2008 Christmas special at ComicCon and all I gotta say is, oh yeah!
I did think the season finale was pretty good, even though it used the old Superman gambit of erasing Donna’s memory. You know, when Lois would learn about Supe’s secret identity and then he’d grab onto her head and erase her memory of him?
Wouldn’t do to have a female Doctor.
hey my name is Monique O. my friends an i are planing on making a site for doctor who fans and i was wondering if you could give me permission to use your pictures that you have on your site.
you can contact me by email on monsqueak@live.com.au
thank you so much