So here it is. This will be exciting to some! For the few of you out there who care, the folks at the BBC have decided to make the new Doctor have some “Geek Chic” (their words). I imagine this is the retro sneaker bit.
(I found this article in today’s Guardian and cheekily snapped the photo out for you to see.)
The producer that was interviewed says “I think we’ve come up with something distinctive that’s both timeless and modern, with a bit of geek chic and of course, a dash of Time Lord”. I guess this (and the scary-looking sidekick in the background) is a package meant to appeal to the younger generation while still keeping the adults interested. Yay!
(For those of you not following: The Doctor is a “Time Lord” from another planet who travels in that thing behind him. The box thing that says “Police Box”. It’s huge inside and only a box on the outside. Some trick with extra dimensions and such. He goes in and does a bunch of computations and pulls a lever and then he’s elsewhere and elsewhen. He’s basically a practical String Theorist…. Look, this is prime time British TV, ok?)
In addition to the style improvements (now he’s too well-dressed to be a String Theorist) we are promised new villians. Rather than just resurrect the Cybermen, there’s going to be “an evil race of Cat Women”. Double yay! Now we’re talking! (Were there ever any good races of Cat Women by the way?)
I don’t know if this show (”Dr. Who”) ever gets to screens in the USA (or anywhere else outside the UK), so it might all be meaningless to several of you. Sorry. Its a bit meaningless to me too, but I keep hoping that one day the BBC will be truly creative and one day when the doctor regenerates and comes back (as his people do….and he does this a lot; this is the tenth doctor since 1970), he’ll be a woman. That would be a really fun scenario to play with, don’t you think?
-cvj
July 26th, 2005 at 9:48 pm
Basically a practical string theorist eh? No wonder he has so many problems.
July 27th, 2005 at 12:08 am
Hi!
I thought the last season (with Eccelston) was very entertaining. I hope the new doctor and the series continues in similar fashion.
Cheers,
Naresh.
July 27th, 2005 at 4:09 am
Thank god for Netflix.
July 27th, 2005 at 4:50 am
tmccort: Yes! Good point. But he solves them, like a good physicist should. Naresh, it was good? ok. I’ve never seen any of the modern stuff. Maybe it will show up on my screen sometime. Hah, yes, Netflix is a good idea, agm.
-cvj
July 27th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Have you seen “Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death”? It was done for Comic Relief, and features Joanna Lumley as The Doctor (among others; I thought Rowan Atkinson was the best.)
July 27th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
Oh really?…excellent. Joanna Lumley is an excellent choice too. Never saw it. -cvj
July 27th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
The very last episode of the Sylvester McCoy series had the Doctor winding up on a planet where those who stayed too long were turned into Cheetah People.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/episodeguide/survival/index.shtml
Be a nice kitty and don’t play with that human femur…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/gallery/monsters2/survival.shtml
July 27th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
Wow, they really went to town on those special effects (second link) didn’t they? I do love the BBC! -cvj
July 27th, 2005 at 7:34 pm
Clifford, did you notice the ratty running shoes?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/gallery/tennant/1024/t4.jpg
July 27th, 2005 at 10:31 pm
I watched the entire season of the new Doctor via BitTorrent. I’d rather have watched the eppies on my TV and not my computer, but I didn’t want to wait for the DVD’s.
I loved the new season. Rose is an excellent companion and Christopher Ecclestone was superb as the cheeky Northern lad Doctor. I watch the last two episodes of the season (”Bad Wolf” and “Parting of the Ways”) all the time. I baffle my friends when I use a Dalek voice and say “Do not blaspheme! Do not blaspheme!” when they say something I don’t like. Geek? Me? Yep. I love the Emperor of the Daleks (”I want to see you become like me. Hail the Doctor! The Great Exterminator!”); the last 10 minutes of POTW is amazing. All bow before The Bad Wolf! I want to be able to say something like this and mean it:
“You are tiny! I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence and I divide them!”
I also liked, as a gay man, that FINALLY, in my experience, a sci-fi series acknowledges that same-sex attraction survives the 21st century (I’m not up on current stuff; maybe it’s a given now on other shows, but my gay sci-fi geek friends don’t seem to think so); Captain Jack was a fine character and kicked some ass, but he matter-of-factly loves him some men (and women. and androids. and, well, anything living and attractive). I loved the Doctor’s explanation when Jack kisses a guy and Rose looks shocked: “He’s a 51st century guy. He has a more open idea of who he wants to dance with”.
I think David Tennant is going to be a brilliant Doctor. I was afraid that they were going to keep using Ecclestone’s leather jacket/black pants outfit, but I’m glad they’re not. “Where was I? Oh, that’s right. Barcelona!”. Excellent.
I can’t wait for the “Christmas Invasion”.
July 27th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Look at his hair! They cut off all his hair!!! *pout*
“Were there ever any good races of Cat Women by the way?”
If I recall correctly, Cat Woman from Batman was more ambiguously moral than straight-up evil…
July 28th, 2005 at 7:04 am
I recall that as a youngster, way back when, I was extremely uninterested in the actual business of the Doctor saving the day, or battling with some evil bad special effect or other. The only thing that really caught my attention was when they would focus occasionally on the workings of the TARDIS (the time machine, for those not familiar) and when he would mention having to compute (or whatever) how they would have to get to where/when they were going. I was very frustrated by there not being much of that at all, since they would focus on the (mostly really awful I recall) plotlines and characters. So I’m pleased to hear that in the new material maybe things have improved on the plotting side of things, but was there any more of the psuedo-physics babble that warmed my young future string theorist’s heart so much?
-cvj
July 28th, 2005 at 11:52 am
“but was there any more of the psuedo-physics babble that warmed my young future string theorist’s heart so much?”
No comment.
July 29th, 2005 at 9:07 am
Alien catwomen in a science fiction setting? Sounds like Space Pirate Alien Ninja Catgirls… (http://www.sjgames.com/spanc/). Not a game I’ve actually played, but a suitably goofy setup.
Reply to Jim’s comment: Babylon 5, at least, had same-sex attraction (and relationships, or the hint of them) in its future setting, and even gay marriages. The latter were presented as being normal enough that a pair of undercover male operatives could be booked into a hotel’s honeymoon suite, their cover being that they were newlyweds.
July 29th, 2005 at 10:09 am
Clifford:
“The only thing that really caught my attention was when they would focus occasionally on the workings of the TARDIS (the time machine, for those not familiar) and when he would mention having to compute (or whatever) how they would have to get to where/when they were going. ”
I know this is a physics-oriented space, but are you _sure_ you want to be admitting this to the world at large? However, I’ve never seen a single episode of Dr. Who, so perhaps I should stay out of the fray
July 29th, 2005 at 11:24 am
Hi erc, I’m missing something here. What potentially embarrassing thing am I admitting to? A childhood interest in physics? *Busted!* Ok, you got me. I’ll never be able to show my face in public again. How could I have been so rash?
cheers,
-cvj
July 29th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
The Dr Who episode that most fascinated me as a kid featured a planet of mathematicians whose calculations directly manipulated the structure of space-time, and who were incidentally responsible for stabilizing the collapse of the universe, which otherwise would have happened long ago. I wanted to learn how to do that!
Kris
P.S. Sorry I missed you while you were visiting PI, I was out of the country for a few weeks.
July 29th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Kris! Good to hear from you! Welcome! That sounds like a great episode, by the way. -cvj
July 29th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
Peter Erwin, thanks for the info. I’ll have to find a B5 eppie guide and look for the relevant episodes.
Physics in the new series? Well, it’s mostly of the “we can travel from one end of the universe to the other in 8 seconds” variety. Lots of pretty standard sci-fi stuff about time rifts, beings of energy trying to find corporeal bodies to carry on with and so forth. To be honest, it’s a given that the average viewer will just take it on faith that The Doctor can travel through time and space; the particulars of *how* aren’t really gone in to and, to be honest, I think the series is better for it.
In fact, the main thrust of this season has been showing The Doctor facing up to the fact that, as one alien says to him (paraphrasing here) “You pop up in these places, bringing Death with you, and when it gets sticky, you just leave, while the people that are left behind have to deal with the consequences of YOUR actions”.
Oh, and the Dalek Emperor is really, seriously, cool. I love the electronic voice they use for him.
July 30th, 2005 at 1:09 am
What potentially embarrassing thing am I admitting to? A childhood interest in physics? *Busted!* Ok, you got me. I’ll never be able to show my face in public again. How could I have been so rash?
I should have seen that coming… My answer: you looked for it in a TV show! A TV show where the most terrifying beings consist of an upside-down dustbin with a sink plunger attached and no ability to deal with stairs! The show might have made you wonder about the possibility of time travel etc. but surely you didn’t seriously think they were going to tell you anything about how one could do it?!
July 30th, 2005 at 3:09 am
Hi erc, the answer can easily be found in my original question: “was there any more of the psuedo-physics babble that warmed my young future string theorist’s heart so much?”
Cheers,
-cvj
July 30th, 2005 at 3:43 am
erc,
In the new Dr Who the daleks can levitate! I always found the original Dr Who to have a very creepy atmosphere to it. What was always disturbing about all the alien beings encountered in the Dr Who universe , especially the daleks, was that they were all utterly devoid of any compassion, not that they have a sink plunger stuck on them.
I believe TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Designed by the “temporal engineers” on Gallifrey (whom I am sure were applied string theorists:)