I admit, when my Aunt and Uncle suggested we watch an episode of the new Doctor Who series some years back, I was extremely skeptical. Up until that point, for me, Doctor Who had been something extraordinarily strange one found on PBS when you were a little kid staying up way past your bedtime and slumber parties and such things. What I had seen of the series was utterly incomprehensible to me and to be frank, other than knowing what a Dalek was, I was totally baffled by it.
However, when it was brought back to television after a sixteen year hiatus in 2005, I saw some of the new episodes and it was amazing. Suddenly, Doctor Who was accessible, made perfect sense and had somehow become a damn good science fiction television show. The story of the last of the Time Lords- the titular Doctor travels through time and space in his TARDIS (T-ime A-nd R-elative D-imension I-n S-pace) which looks like an old school police call box from 1950s Britain and is bigger on the inside. Along the way, he picks up a rotating selection of companions and friends who travel with him and help him with his adventures.
It's really hard to add more to it than that, but then again, it's even harder when you consider that Doctor Who isn't just a television show, it's become a British cultural icon along the way. The original run of the series lasted from 1963-1989 and a whole generation of people in the UK remember watching the scary episodes of Doctor Who from behind the sofa. The title role is one of the most talked about, important roles on British television and when an old Doctor announces his departure from the show, the British press explodes with speculation about who the next Doctor will be.
His enemies have become cultural icons as well- especially the Daleks, (seen above) with their almost anachronistic looks (their death rays shoot out of what suspiciously resembles a whisk and they can suck your faces off with their other 'arm' which looks a lot like a toilet plunger) and if you go to the UK, walk into a bar and start jerking spasmodically and yelling in a nasal voice: 'EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE' people may look at you funny, but odds are, they are going to know what you're talking about.
11 actors so far have taken on the role of the Doctor- 3 in the contemporary revival of the series and what's interesting about this is that every actor who plays the role does so in a slightly different manner and style, which makes getting a new Doctor a very interesting prospect indeed. The first of the new Doctors, Christopher Eccleston (the bad guy from Gone In 60 Seconds) played him as a hard nosed, implacable, leather coat wearing righter of intergalactic wrongs. Replaced by David Tennant (Barty Crouch Jr. from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)- who wore a trench coat and sneakers and gave the role more of a Sherlock Holmes, time-travelling detective type of feel- he in turn was just replaced by new comer Matt Smith. Matt Smith, being 26 years old, I think made a lot of people nervous, but in the space of his first episode grabbed the role with two hands and made it his own- like Michael Keaton, who brought a certain amount of twitchy insanity to the role of Batman, Matt Smith's bow-tie wearing Doctor brings a dash of 'twitchy, time-travelling mad scientist' to the role of the Doctor, which is a very fresh take on the role and is currently lighting up television screens across Britain and on BBC America over here in the UK.
Although producer Russell T. Davies is to be commended for bringing Doctor Who back to television with such success- I do have some quibbles with this show: first of all, there's usually an over-arching motif/hidden message that becomes pretty obvious as you go through each of the first three seasons. The first couple of times, it is entertaining enough, but by the time you get to the third and fourth seasons, the concept as a whole starts to feel a bit stale. (New producer Steven Moffat is using it a more subtle, direct way- which I like.) The other thing that gets a bit tiresome: the Daleks are trotted out without fail- every single season. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for bad guys for the Doctor to fight, but after the first season (where there's a hysterically funny and terror-inducing scene where it's revealed that unlike the old-school Daleks, these death machines can actually handle stairs) their appearance becomes almost inevitable and repetitive (again, apparently new Boss Steven Moffat wants to shake them up a bit- but we'll see if he can keep them off screen for a season or two and give the Doctor new enemies to fight.)
Despite these very minor quibbles, Doctor Who as a whole is a family friendly show (yeah, the kids may run behind the couch every once in a while at a scary bit, but this isn't a show that should inspire 'Nightmare on Elm Street' type of nightmares) that has incredible re-watch value and consistently in every single season thus far there have been one or two gems of episodes that have plumbed new levels of excellent writing and general creepiness. New producer Steven Moffat is responsible for a lot of these (Season 1's 'The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances' two parter, Season 4's 'The Silence In The Library/'The Forest of the Dead' two parter and Season 3's 'Blink' especially) and with him running things for Season 5 (which he bills as both Season 5 and Season 1- an almost re-set of the entire show) and from what I've seen thus far, Doctor Who is set to rise to new heights and probably be around for many years to come.
Overall: this show isn't just for fans of British television, it's a classic- and even if science fiction isn't your cup of tea, you should give this show a chance. It might surprise you.
P.S. At the top of the post, I've embedded the evolution of the title tracks from 1963 onwards. (It's about ten minutes long because the show has been around for that long) As you can see, this show has been around and evolved with the times- and it looks set to do so for sometime to come.
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