Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Doctor Who

Ok, I seem to have officially gone Doctor Who crazy! I grew up watching Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor Who on PBS back when we only had like channels, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 17, 23, 29, 33, 39, 51. And most signed off at night with the national anthem, long time ago, getting old lol. But in those days there wasn't a whole lot to watch that was actually intellectually stimulating and not just mindless dribble like Hee-Haw or Lawrence Welk. At night when the cartoons and muppet style shows were over it was either go to sleep, watch news, or PBS. And it was there I watched Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, the original Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, Dark Shadows, Monty Python and Benny Hill. That right there should explain a lot about how I grew up to have the personality I have, where I think too much and find a joke in everything.

Anyhow, somewhere in the 80's Doctor Who kinda faded away. With the success of Star Wars movies, E.T., Close Encounters, and a million others from Starman to TRON; Doctor Who kinda fell by the wayside. I remember in the '90s, I believe 1996, there was a Doctor Who TV movie with a lot of hype. I believe it was a Sci-Fi channel special or some network maybe. Lots of hype, was excited, thought it was going to make a huge comeback. Sadly though, the movie pretty much sucked. I remember nothing but bits and pieces of it now and will watch it again but that kinda killed Doctor Who for me in my mind it was gone. Hadn't seen it in years and years on TV and all they came back with was a crappy movie, kinda like what happened to Lost in Space.

I knew there was a new series that had started in 2005 but I didn't pay it much mind or intend to watch it. Had no idea if it was even on any of the stations I had at that time. In the last two years I've seen Doctor Who everywhere! Tons of places both online and real life. From stuff sold online at ThinkGeek or Entertainment Earth to real life WalMart or Toys R Us. T-shirts on most of the big shirt sites like JINX. I started to get kinda curious but was like, 777 episodes, 48 years, too much. Seemed kinda overwhelming to even try to check it out now. I know most of the other huge Sci-Fi and Fantasy franchises have, in considerably less time than 48 years, grown to be huge and complicated and involved. I kept thinking about Star Wars or Star Trek or even Lord of the Rings or Stargate. And how many years and all the sub-stories and how involved they've become and figured I'd just skip Doctor Who like I did the new Battlestar Galactica and Firefly and some of the other newer and fairly popular franchises.

Then, Comcast finally pushed our last button so-to-speak and we ditched them. When we switched to DirecTV the stations I was most excited about were Cartoon Network, Disney XD (cause of the new TRON Uprising coming soon), and BBC America. I found myself watching BBCA like nonstop. And then one day I wandered onto an eleventh Doctor episode with Matt Smith. He was popping up and down the stairs through time telling himself what he was doing and giving things to people in the past and taking them out of their pockets in the present and then he saw himself die and fall down the stairs before he even reached the top and I was like whoa OMG this is awesome. Very rarely, in fact, next to never does a time travel type of show or anything like that confuse me. I mean things like the Matrix or Inception or many of the Trek episodes, heck even Back to the Future, none of those kind of things were ever remotely confusing. The what's real what isn't, what happened in what order, and how did this happen back then based on what hasn't happened yet, all that kinda stuff always been easy for me to understand usually before it's ever fully explained. This however was one of the first times I sat there like WTH just happened? Still I think about that episode and it makes no sense. He doesn't know what he's doing until he tells himself to do it and the only way he knows to tell himself what to do is because he's left himself a note that he hasn't even written yet but how'd he know what to write to tell himself what to do if he hasn't done it yet? There's no start. It's the chicken and the egg times infinity. I was hooked immediately.

Since then I went back and started with the new series, season 1 , episode 1, the ninth Doctor and one of my favorites despite him only having like 12 or 14 episodes. I've since watched all the ninth Doctor episodes, about 2/3 of the tenth Doctor and a few random eleventh Doctor episodes and I can say for fact that this show is AMAZING! The stories are so well written. Especially the ones by Russel T. Davies. I think I like Doctor 9 the best than 11 than 10, despite the popularity of the tenth doctor and the amount of episodes he's been in, I just like 9 and 11 more. And it's not the special effects or any of that that makes the show good. The effects are mostly lame with a few CGI backdrops here and there. But the stories are really, really, well written. I've cried through probably 3/4 of them at least. They're so emotional. You really come to realize how alone the Doctor is and every time you start to really like one of his companions or even him, they die, or move on, or he regenerates into a new incarnation, or something happens. The whole point being that time keeps going no matter how good or bad everything else around you gets, time and the universe keep going.

I'd guarantee that anyone I know that likes Sci-Fi, no matter how little or how much, watches the first three episodes with the ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and you'll be hooked. That's 2005, series 1, episode 1 "Rose", episode 2 "The End of the World, episode 3 "Unquiet Dead". Watch those and tell me you don't LOVE the show at that point.


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