Doctor....Who??

So all my life I've heard reference to this Doctor Who.... To be honest for most of my life I had assumed him, for some unknown reason, to be a Bond Villain...  Funny right? Over 30 some odd years of these obscure references I had somehow never caught on it was a show. In my own defense when I had heard it mentioned it was in passing, or with an assumption the audience already knew who it was.The Doctor I mean. I had never seen an episode nor ever heard anyone talk about it in any detail...until recently....

Turns out some of my Co-workers are die hard Doctor Who fans, and recently I had overheard some in depth discussions about the show, and I started figuring out he wasn't, in fact, it seems, a Bond Villain after all.  Imagine my surprise to discover he was a time and space traveling mad man....and I had missed this somehow all this time!!!! As soon as I had figured it out, off to my trusty DVR I went, and guess what got added to my list!?!?

Of the revived series I've managed to catch most of Season 4, all of season 5, and now they have started playing Season 1 again from the beginning. I still have yet to see any of Original Seasons 1-26 with the exception of the very fist one from 1963, the black and white "The Unearthly Child". That's not from lack of trying, just a lack of finding. I wasn't too impressed with the acting nor the story, but I suppose if it lasted for 26 more years that it got better.

The revived series is kinda like "The Next Generation" was for Star Trek. The Original Doctor Who ended in 1989, and was revived for a single movie in 1996, then revived for regular serial play again in 2005. The  revived show will be on it's sixth season starting this spring. And I've got to say, it's just about the best show I've seen on TV. It is kind of an acquired taste, the special effects sometimes are a little on the strange side, mostly it seems to me as homage to the original series, but slowly it also seems they are updating, at least they came up with some new more modern Dalek's! LOL Course they still are aliens you would still mostly expect to find in a museum of Science Fiction before finding them on a modern TV show. From what I've seen in pictures of past episodes, most of the humanoid races look much more real in the new series, but the robots...well.... they just don't scream "today" in any way. But that is also a part of the series charm. You do get the feel they are trying to pay homage to a past long gone in television history. A time of bad, BAD special effects! LOL

Ok, to be fair, at times the acting of new characters seem a bit...off. There are a few exceptions (River Song for example), but you kind of notice the actors seem to make the role theirs over a few episodes. It's like at first they are trying to be what the writers are trying to make them, then they find their pace and then the writers start writing the roles FOR them, the way they see themselves. It starts out like they are wearing someone else's clothes, but are getting a new outfit tailor made as they move along. I've read this is in fact how it's done on set, to a point. There are some general character outlines, but the actors seem to flesh it out as they find the character. None more so then the Doctor himself.

There have to date been 11 Doctors. Really it's quit brilliant, when an actor needs to leave the show, you just simply kill him off, and he "regenerates" into a whole new Doctor, with new body and new personality but all the memories from the previous Doctor's. How better to be able to make a TV show last 31 years and counting??? If the actor for the Doctor leaves, no problem, we can make a new one! If the "companions" of the doctor need to leave...no problem there either. The doctors companions come and go about every 1-2 seasons anyway. So in this way the show is always reinventing itself, but keeping the same overall Idea in place. Brilliant! Just brilliant! Would The Next Generation have been the same if Patrick Stewart had left?? I think not, there have only been two captains in Star Trek, well I guess three now if you count the movie, but he's a alternate reality Kirk, so not really new as different. But I guess Star Trek itself is taking a page out of the Doctor Who book and figuring out ways to keep the story going as actors come and go, and as they age as well.

Oh, and the stores....well I can only vouch for the ones I've seen, and I will admit it seems they get better as the series runs, the first ones were a little....off, really. I do like the new doctor though, he's a very interesting doctor. Doctor 9 that is (Season 1). I really liked doctor 10  also, he was the doctor for 3 seasons (seasons 2-4) and left manly to do other things and because he felt "it was time". I also like 11, the current doctor (season 5-?), he is the youngest doctor to date (actor wise). It's not a "true" trend, but overall as the Doctor gets older (character) the actors get younger. It's not 100%, but is a general trend. Wonder if it's on purpose or not?

But back to the stories.... some just really have lesson to teach sometime, like a modern day parable. Now it's nothing new mind you! Nothing we haven't heard before in one way or another. But it IS interesting in some respects, seeing that the main focus of the series is an alien himself, and even though he has a great love for humans, he will sacrifice them for the greater good, or a higher good, if needed. Except for "My favorite Martian",  "Mork & Mindy" , "Alf" and "3rd Rock from the Sun" I can't think of any other series where the focus is mostly on an alien. And those others are all comedy's, while Doctor Who is much more serious even while it is funny. Also the other shows were about aliens stranded on earth, while Doctor Who happens all through time and space.

However it just seems to me somehow, maybe because of being an hour show, or maybe because of something else, it just drives home the moral lesson much stronger and harder then other shows I've watched. Some of the Doctor Who episodes REALLY made me think. I mean REALLY think, sometimes for days. When you really come down too it, we are one hunk of rock, one of 9 at that, spinning around a common yellow sun. In a common galaxy, in a common universe. There are billions and billions and billions of suns, just like ours. And billions of galaxy's just like ours. We are a speck of dust in a unending desert. The only beings that find our existence even the tiniest bit interesting is ourselves. The rest of the entire whole of everything could care less. I guess it's just fun to see what the one being, who knows all the rest of everything, thinks and does when he's chosen to be our champion in the universe. Even if his perspective is written by one of us anyway. LOL

It's fun to think about, and it's fun to watch, and Hell, it's fun to jump around in time too. All these things have been done before, but no one does them quite like the Doctor.