Articles by year:
2012 [1]
2011 [10]
2010 [11]
2009 [7]
2008 [5]
2007 [12]
2006 [6]
2005 [11]
2004 [1]
Articles by baby:
bushido baby [2]
bach baby [2]
bago baby [2]
boogle baby [1]
boo boo baby [1]
bunji baby [8]
buppy-sugar baby [8]
brianmay baby [2]
booby baby [1]
badly-drawn baby [1]
beef baby [8]
badminton baby [2]
bad baby [5]
banks.j baby [2]
billy baby [1]
bam baby [1]
bumble baby [1]
jelly baby [1]
bombshell baby [1]
Dr Who
By BAGO BABY
01 July 2010
You would have to be from another planet not to know what Dr Who is: Dr who is a British sci-fi series which began in 1963 and has in its time featured various different Doctors. The newer generation or Doctors and storylines, have been (on and off) appealing to me, and the newest Doctor and companion have been particularly pleasing. Matt Smith inhabits the role from the moment he pops up asking young Amelia (new companion) for an apple – and as fun as the kitchen scene is, the story wisely doesn't waste too much time with an unstable regeneration of the Doctor. There’s a crack in the wall that needs dealing with right away, and with 20 minutes to save the world, the Doctor has just as long to work out who he is. Although Smith is the youngest person to play the Doctor, his age turns out not to be something of a non-issue, as the Doctor has a stage age of 900. He can't have any idea how old he is, as he's a Timelord and these things are a bit wibbly-wobbly. And Smith carries off the youthful vigour of a new body combined with the ancient professorial wisdom with easy panache. The much-heralded 'recklessness' is there as well and he looks perfectly dashing in his tweed and bow-tie.
Recently in a lecture a tutor made a comment likening a philosophical debate to the daleks. Most of the room giggled, but an American friend sitting next to me leaned in and asked me to explain. It struck me that though we share language, food types, and many other cultural similarities, the national phenomena that is Dr Who goes completely over most Americans’ heads.
From this realisation I was interested to know what our counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic have to say about it. Bargain-basement BBC production values? Alien monsters made from trash cans and toilet plungers? Anachronistic kibitzing with Shakespeare and Dickens? It’s the sort of thing that’s hard to find on the other side of the pond.
True, Dr Who does take a little adjusting to. Like room-temperature Guinness and universal health care, it’s an acquired taste. But in 2005, writer-producer Russell T. Davies (creator of Queer as Folk) relaunched the show — which had been more or less on ice for 15 years — as a zippy, cheeky, Buffy-esque melodrama, which grasped the essences of the initial series of the 60s. It was TV’s first real post-imperial science fiction, devised in a time of scarcity, dispossession, and massive social deflation — but also great hope for the future. This, along with the changing of the times and the eccentricity of the Doctors, is a contributing factor to its charm.
Thanks to BBC America and the Dr Who spinoff Torchwood, the Doctor’s growing popularity in the States may signal a dawning recognition that size, might and flash aren’t everything, that there are less bombastic futures to contemplate, and that sci-fi can be elegiac without the boom and bust of dystopia.
Doesn’t sound like your cup of Tetley? Fair enough. Americans can enjoy Transformers and the baby-faced club kids of the new Enterprise. Sci-fi may not be your thing, but then again I’m not into sci-fi particularly. There is just a certain charm to Dr Who with its eccentric characters and the freedom to place a storyline in any point in time or space.