I spent this weekend catching up on Doctor Who episodes. I’m a whole season ahead of Americans, who are getting theirs off BBC America - I’m getting mine straight from the BBC, thanks to a certain underground element that shall remain nameless.  In Series 4 (as the brits like to call ‘em) The Doctor (David Tennant) drags around Donna Noble (a rather mouthy Catherine Tate, from the Christmas Episode THE RUNAWAY BRIDE) instead of Martha Jones or Rose Tyler, but the effect is the same. Eccentric alien do-gooder joins forces with plucky starstruck Earth girl to maintain galactic stability.

WHO had been retired from TV (dude’s 900 years old, man!) for 15 years when writer Russell T. Davies proposed bringing him back in 2005. Davies has proved to be an excellent choice. In earlier years, the show was known for the cleverness of its scripts and the unbelievable cheapness of its production values. Here he was in an era when digital software would allow undreamed of images for ha’pennies; but the first new episode was about an uprising of mannequins, shambling through London like fashionable plastic zombies. All that power at his disposal and he put it to a concept that they could have done on the very first black and white show in the early sixties.

Indeed, Davies’ greatest trope has been knowing what to limit himself to. A Time-Lord can travel to anywhere in the universe and do anything, and yet he spends all his time in the company of humans, and and implausible amount of it on Earth, and in even more implausible amount of it in Cardiff or London, and a frightfully implausible amount of it in the present day. He could be saving the universe, but for some reason he wants to save Earth. He likes us, he really likes us! He stands between us and the bullies of the universe, saying, “the kid’s with me. Leave the kid alone.” I can’t help but think that somewhere on the outer edge of the Crab Nebula, Daleks have subjugated an entire race of horse-people because the Doctor was here, keeping London safe from a fad diet started by Aliens to steal our life-force.

Dominant themes favored by the Russell T. Davies era:

Zombies. Whether mannequins, hypnotized earthlings, children in gas masks, the show is in love with crowds of insensate humanoids walking toward you with evil intent. I’m not sure why this keeps happening, but you gotta love it.

Homosexuality. The Doctor himself is asexual, or in any event he’s not attracted to humans. But homosexual characters are all over the show. Captain Jack Harkness, played by American John Barrowman, is both immortal and bi-sexual and he got his own series, TORCHWOOD. (That title, by the way, is an anagram. Davies loves anagrams.) Frequently incidental characters are homosexual, for no particular reason except, you know, why not?

Survival guilt. The entire race of Time Lords was destroyed in the Great Time War with the Daleks, who were also all destroyed. Only the Doctor, and hundreds and thousands of Daleks, remains. The Doctor occasionally has very dark moments recalling his former planet, all the Daleks he’s killed, and the Time Lords who no longer exist. It is an interesting accent to an undeniably light show.

Consumer Fads. This is coming up in the forth series a lot: episodes revolve around a combination GPS device/CO2 suppresser that everyone has, a diet pill that everyone is taking. In spinoff series TORCHWOOD, everybody is buying a new kind of meat which turns out to come from… well, no spoilers. In spinoff series THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES everybody is drinking Bubble Shock, a soda which contains aliens. When activated it causes all the consumers to become, yes, zombies. I know, I know, it’s a spoiler - but I don’t see the SARAH JANE ADVENTURES coming to our shores any time soon. By the time it does, you’ll forget I said anything like people forgot the flying saucer slicing through Big Ben. Oh, you don’t remember that? See?

Davies has one more year on the show, but they’re only doing four episodes. Then they hand it off to Steven Moffat, who created and produced COUPLING and wrote a few notable Doctor Who episodes as well. The one with the Zombie Gas Mask Children was his, for example. So it looks good for another twenty-year run before they all stop it again. 

They say the Doctor is only capable of 12 re-generations, in other words 13 actors can play the part before he’s finished. I wouldn’t let that worry you. The race of Daleks has been completely obliterated dozens of times. David Tennant is Doctor Number Ten, so three more actors down the line is shouldn’t be difficult to grab a bunch more lives from the dimensional rift or something. He’s a time lord, man! When we’re gone, he can keep on going. It’s his way.

-Daniel K.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 6:35 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.