Doctor Who, redux.


There are three great scifi genres that came out of the twntieth century: Star Trek, Star Wars and Doctor Who. There are, to be sure many minor players: Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and so on, but the dominant three seem to be the most well known and popular.

Each one started off with high hopes and not much else and only Star Wars was successful right out of the gate and even it stalled. But each one came back, and came back with a vengence; the usual question for these sort of things is "will they last? even M*A*S*H wasn't as good at the end of the series" but as time goes on the movies get better and there's something about these three that has endeared them onto the culture worldwide.

For my own self, I saw Star Trek when it was first broadcast on television, Star Wars about a year after it came out. But it wasn't until fifty years after the first Doctor Who was broadcast that I started watching it.

There's a certain detached newness when you're learning about something, that interstitial period between "never heard of it" and "I know a bit about it" when you're in a position to uniquely understand what the important bits to know are when you're first finding out about something.

So, only days after I began watching Doctor Who I wrote this up. Consider it an introduction or a Dr. Who redux - either way it's the same thing.

rjs 30 mar 2012


OLD

1963 - 1989

The Doctor doesn't die easily; upon death he regenerates into a new Doctor (which conveniently explains how a series that started 50 years ago with a 60 year old actor currently has a 27 year old version of The Doctor). The current one is the eleventh. Owing to a 16 year hiatus in the show it's useful to divide the series into old and new


NEW

2005 - current

These ones were actually in color.