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May 27, 2005 Who flies through a worm hole in an old, British style police box? The Doctor, of course! “Doctor who?”, you might ask. Exactly, Dr. Who! Dr. Who is the longest running scifi series on TV, and one of the longest series overall – I think some soap operas beat it by a bit. It's been off the air for a few years, but it's back. This is the last of my articles about recent and current scifi. The first was about the Treks, the second about Farscape, the third about Firefly, and the fourth about Battlestar Galactica. First, a few notes about Firefly thanks to several email tips. Firefly will be shown on the Sci-Fi channel – check listings and watch it; a good way to prepare for the movie, “Serenity”, when it comes to the big screen in September. I also mistakingly said that Earth was in the Alliance – actually, Earth is referred to several times in the show as, “Earth that was”. We aren't sure what happened, but it doesn't seem good. Thanks again for those email tips/corrections. Dr. Who is a very different kind of scifi. It definitely feels non-American and indeed it isn't, it's a British show. The main character, called simply the Doctor, is a Time Lord – not human, although he looks human. He is from an advanced alien race that's mastered time travel. His race regenerates, and this is one reason the show has essentially the same character for its long history – many different actors filled that role, of course. Perhaps the most famous and popular was Tom Baker. Watching Dr. Who as a child, he was certainly my favorite. The Doctor travels through space and time in his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). It's bigger on the inside than the outside. On the outside, it looks like an old British phone booth. Normally, the TARDIS vehicles can change their outward appearance to match their surroundings, but his TARDIS no longer has that ability, and indeed, his TARDIS never works quite right anyway. Dr. Who has a very odd feeling, a bit cheesy, a bit like the Twilight Zone, and a bit like a b-rated horror flick. For example, many episodes revolve around evil aliens – and often, they will walk slowly and clumsily, like zombies, with eerie music playing. It's a difficult feeling to describe in words. Older episodes were two hours, and although the action was often slow, it just sort of moved you along – it was an enjoyable way to watch scifi. The new show is just an hour, and this is my first gripe. The shows are too rushed, it seems. The first season isn't over yet, and already there have been several two-part episodes, still, by and large, I preferred the two hour shows. The new Doctor is great – he fits the persona like a glove: witty, odd, sometimes with seemingly human ambitions, but often, quite different. Sex, for example – the Doctors aren't interested in sex, even if they have cute companions. The Doctor's have always had companions, and they switch as well – this time, he has a 19 year old female character from London; very cute and perfect for the role. As far casting, I think they got it just right. They also updated their special effects, which is a good thing. Dr. Who was known for lousy special effects done on the cheap. Wrapping objects in foil and then shining bright lights against it, for example, or flashing the whole scene to its photographic negative, where everything black becomes white, and vice versa. This time, the show seems to have a real budget, and it uses CGI like all current scifi. The writing is mixed. When I watched the first episode, I was entranced – it was going really well and then it hit me – like stepping on a rake. It seems that Dr. Who is doing what I hate most about modern writers of scifi – an attempt to get a wider audience by doing stupid humor. An alien force which able to control plastic was the bad guy, and at one point, it saw fit to control a trash can, which saw fit to eat one of the characters. They made the can CGI, and had it bend like silly-putty. That was kind of stupid, but to really top it off, it burped after eating him. Of course, we burp for specific reasons related to our stomachs, gas, etc. This trash can wasn't alive, not even within the context of the show, and it had no stomach. The person it swallowed wasn't digested, merely captured, and so forth. This scene might make my daughter giggle, but it was a worthless waste of computer graphics; it did nothing for the show except to insult the audience. And it got worse from there. The ending was anti-climactic, to say the least. Older Dr. Who villains let us into their souls, as they plotted and schemed for two hours. This villain we meet moments before it's vanquished – we learn only the most shallow of it's motivations. One villain in the old Dr. Who was a creature who had waited a thousand years to complete it's task – we knew it and felt for it – it was really something when the Dr. finally beat it! The second show was slightly better, but, again, featured a lame attempt at comedy. In the far future, a human who had so much plastic surgery, that she was nothing but a flat piece of skin. Her vain 21st century comments about beauty were out of place and silly. Nevertheless, that episode was better. Several more episodes, and we tap back into the horror-show like aspect of Dr. Who. The comedic elements seem to be getting fewer – the show is growing on me. I think they did a fairly good job of remaining true to the old series, while modernizing it where required. It's still better than 90% of what's on TV, and I give the show a B-. Apart from the lame-comedy, the writing is rather clever at times, and it manages to move some emotions. Note that although I kept calling it scifi above, it's actually more sci-fantasy. Of interest to fans of the old series, one new episode featured a Dalek, a long time foe of Dr. Who. It's what my email address is based on. That extra H in there is supposed to give the A a British inflection. The Daleks are a cool bit of fiction, and deserve some time in this article. There was a planet named Skaro which had two warring faction that went at it for generations. Their top scientist, Davros, figured out that the effect of the various chemicals and pollution was going to mutate them. He accelerated this in the lab to see what would happen to his race, and got a small, ugly beast, looking nothing like a human. To keep his society functioning, he designed a housing – sort of a mobile life support and wheelchair system for these creatures. He had the go-ahead to make a batch for demonstration and testing purposes, but purposely designed them without the ability to tell right from wrong and with an extreme superiority complex. His people are called the Kaleds, so he named his creation the Daleks – an anagram. He had basically made himself a mini army, which he used to get control for a short time until the Daleks turned on him and took over. Thus was born a Borg like race that wasn't big on negotiation but rather conquering. The Daleks look a bit like salt and pepper shakers, with an eye on a stalk, and two appendages, sometimes one will have a suction cup at the end, while the other is a gun. Davros himself was disabled and in a wheelchair, and the base of the Daleks look like the base of his wheelchair. The new episode that deals with the Daleks is very well done, deep and profound. It's probably the best thus far, out of the 10 that have aired. I'll keep watching – it's growing on me and I look forward to the next episode. To see the show, you either need some Internet skills or watch it on satellite if you live in the US. I believe that it airs in Canada as well as England of course. If anyone knows another outlet, please let me know and I will mention it in a future article. ------------ About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys. Email: dahlek65@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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