April 16, 2010
When “Doctor Who” Resembled Church Drama
Posted by Michael in : Writing , add a comment
The new season of Doctor Who premieres on BBC America tonight with Matt Smith stepping in to the lead role as the 11th incarnation of the Time Lord who travels the universe in search of adventure. I’ve been a fan of the show since I discovered the classic series on our local PBS station when I was in high school or college. That was when Tom Baker played the eccentric 900-year-old Time Lord. He’s still one of my favorite actors to portray the Doctor.
For those who are unfamiliar with the series, the Doctor is a renegade Time Lord from the planet of Gallifrey. Not content to merely observe events, he explores the universe in a ship that travels through space and time called a TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). His particular TARDIS is stuck in the shape of an old British police box, thanks to a faulty chameleon circuit. The TARDIS is larger on the inside than it is on the outside.
The series premiered in Britain in the 1960s with William Hartnell as the first incarnation of the Doctor. When Hartnell left the series, producers wrote him out by having the Doctor regenerate. They introduced the idea that whenever Time Lords are seriously injured or near death, their bodies heal themselves by regenerating into a new physical form. Therefore, a completely different actor can play the Doctor and add his own mark to the role. The series was canceled in 1989 but resurrected five years ago by Russell T Davies. There was an interesting story about the writing of Doctor Who in the years before its cancellation that made me think that it was a lot like church drama.