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Doctor Who Comeback
ElGuapoGolf writes "According to the Daily Telegraph, Doctor Who is set to return to the airwaves. According to the article, it's going to be written by the same guy who created the series 'Queer As Folk'. Not sure if we'll get to see it in the US, but I guess it's a good time to start bugging your cable company to carry BBC America if they don't already."
Funny, my post to Slashdot was rejected...grrr :(
Anyway, now that the show is coming back, it might be worthwhile reminding fans that the history of the show is incomplete, so while Dr.Who's future is assured, its past is very patchy.
Theres an initiative to find lost UK TV treasures: have a look
here
My web domain.
It's pretty funny to see it put that way: for geeks outside the US, grabbing TV shows on the net is pretty much de rigeur.
But you should hear the laughing fits us non-USians go into when we see discussions about region-code-free DVD players for a north american audience...
On topic: Russell T. Davies (the "guy" referred to in the article) is also a great big fan and an author of Doctor Who fiction. Queer As Folk gives a pretty good indication of his talent when it comes to putting "non-standard" content in a po-mo TV context, which is why Who fans are getting pretty excited about this.
And that would be Tom Baker. 'Nuff said.
I guess I like this iteration of The Doctor the most since he's the first one I ever saw.
I get BBCAmerica. Unfortunately, Doctor Who airs while I'm at work, and its in the digital band so I can't use my PC to "tivo" it. Using the VCR to record it is so "90s".
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Actually, I'm much more of a fan now than I was then. Don't get me wrong - I used to really enjoy it. It's just that I don't think I was old enough to really understand some of it.
I started watching the reruns on UK Gold and, courtesy of Tivo, I watched from the beginning of the Pertwee era right through to the (merciful) end. Changed my views too - as a kid I remember Tom Baker being the best, but I personally prefer Pertwee and Davison now.
Oh, and real life definitely caught up with me. I'm now working, married, have one kid and expecting another any day now, mortgage, two hungry cars to feed...all we need is a dog and we'd be the perfect TV advert family. I'm pretty hopeful about this - recent TV sci-fi has been very same'ish, and I'm looking forward to the different direction that Doctor Who took.
Cheers,
Ian
No - Alan Rickman for Dr Who!!
This is great news, as it gives us the chance to have some science fiction on TV that doesn't have to be Yet Another T&A Star Trek Series (TM).
Anyways, good writing will make or break this show. If they're smart (and since it's the BBC instead of some American marketing firm, they might be!) they'll continue the tradition of having DIFFERENT WRITERS do episodes, rather than locking in a team for a whole season and ending up with another Pip and Jane Baker travesty.
Heh, I can't forgive them for what they did to my favorite Doctor (Colin Baker), who is quite a good actor, but had to work with things like "The Happiness Patrol". Perhaps they can go to work writing for Brenan and Braga's new series... Star Trek: Teen Bikini Force!
I would rather not see all the "classic" monsters recycled. These were very much a product of their times, exaggerations of then-current fears. Nuclear war/radiation/mutation --> Daleks. The new field of cybernetics and artificial limbs/organs --> Cybermen. And so on.
... again.
I'd much prefer to see *new* stories with inventive new villians. It doesn't have to be "mystery science bogeyman" *every* week, but there are certainly some more topical lurking fears that could be put to good use. Quantum mechanics, nanomachines, genetic engineering, viruses, various forms of computing and communication technology taken to pathological extremes, and so on.
Let's *really* scare the living crap out of people, eh? A pepper-pot with a plunger just won't cut it any more.
I also think that if you take away the crutch of recycling old monsters and plots, you will get *much* better stories.
As for the truth of the "return", I'll believe it when I see it. I've seen this kind of story turn out to be false too many times. I want it to be true, I really do, but the cynical side of me fears that the BBC just want to drive up DVD sales
People have rarely appreciated the intellectual hero. Isaac Asimov had a great essay on the subject of pulp heroes, where he pointed out the hero was usually physically powerful but mentally dense, while the villain was usually brilliant but physically weak, and the stories typically ended with the musclebound idiot beating up on the brilliant weakling. He thought it was an ugly idea, and arose from an intense anti-intellectualism in this country based on agrarian philosophies about where the worth of a man lay. I don't think the current time is much worse than the past in that regard; it's probably a little better now than it used to be.