Who is Doctor Who?
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
Before I begin this article, I should probably tell you that until very recently, I didn’t have a clue as to who Doctor Who is. I have never seen a single episode of the television series, and though I have heard of the show from others, that’s as far as my experience with it goes.
During Doctor Who’s US heyday of the eighties and nineties, I was living in a rain forest on the Big Island of Hawaii, only a few miles from the volcanoes that surrounded me. There was no cable television, no city water supply, and no electric power, unless you had a generator and AC/DC inverter system, like I did. The only television we had were the regular stations like ABC, CBS and NBC. Therefore, I would have had no access to the BBC at all, let alone PBS where it aired here in the States, even if I had wanted it. Previous to that time, when I lived on the mainland, I had little time for television, I worked at night and really didn’t watch it much.
Big Island rainforest
This is why I was oblivious to Doctor Who, and still am to this day. So when it was announced that this iconic television show was coming into Home, I decided to educate myself a bit about it. I am willing to wager that many of the people reading this are as clueless as I am about the series, especially those as old as I am or those much younger. For those reading this who fit into either category, this article is for you, and while it would take pages upon pages to understand just how big the scope of Doctor Who – it is, after all, the most successful sci-fi series of all time – I’ll just give you the basic facts here, so that you aren’t a complete Who-noob.
Doctor Who is celebrating its fiftieth birthday this year. It has been around since November of 1963, and has become one of the most awarded television shows on the British Broadcasting Company since its beginnings. It has become a big part of British pop culture, kind of like Star Trek did here in the USA. There are even many here that are cult followers of the show. Doctor Who has spawned quite a few spin offs; Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures, to name a few.
Eleven Dr. Who’s
The show ran for all of the years between 1963 and 1989, then because of declining interest it went dormant for many years, returning in 2003 and has been in production ever since. There have been eleven different actors who have portrayed Doctor Who since its start.
The show itself revolves around a mysterious figure who is simply referred to as the Doctor. He is what is called a Time Lord, an extraterrestrial being from Gallifrey, who can travel at will through time and space in his time machine called the TARDIS, an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. To the layman, the exterior of ship looks like a blue British Police phone booth and is apparently much larger on the inside than the outside. When a Time Lord is near death, he can regenerate himself, this is the vehicle that the writers used whenever an actor portraying the character moved on to explain the complete change.
The show was originally created to be educational for children and their families to learn about history through Doctor Who’s travels. He almost always has traveling companions who go along for the ride to add to the storyline and the adventures they encounter. Thirty-five different characters have accompanied the Doctor in his travels so far.
There are enemies of course, for every story needs an antagonist in order to be interesting. In the case of Doctor Who, there are three reoccurring enemies. The Daleks, an entirely alien race that resemble octopuses; the Cybermen, a race of humanoids who seem to be very like the Borg of Star Trek fame, and another Time Lord who wants to rule the universe and calls himself The Master. The entire list of Doctor Who villans, including such memorable creatures as the Silence and the Weeping Angels, quite extensive and would take so long to go through, we’d both need a TARDIS in order to retain the time it would consume to list and read them all.
Doctor Who has created an entire sub-culture with a lot of merchandise appearing over the years. You can find everything from trading cards to action figures, computer games and board games. And now it’s coming to Home, complete with a personal space/clubhouse that looks like the TARDIS and a variety of costumes.
When this hits Home it will have quite an impact. Many people who have seen the You Tube video have already said they might need to buy a PS3 and check this out. There are a lot of Dr. Who lovers out there, and anything to do with the series is bound to be a big hit. Now that LOOT has teamed up with the BBC to bring this to Home, it will be a very interesting ride in the next few weeks. Those of us who don’t know much about TARDIS and Dr. Who are going to get an education, and those who do will be flocking to buy all of the costumes and the personal space.
I also think that many new users will be coming into Home in the next few months because of this, and once they are there they will explore and discover Home, a fantastic internet world with amazing places to visit and things to do and see. It will almost make them feel like they have stepped into the TARDIS and been whizzed away to another dimension; they should feel right at Home.
March 26th, 2013 by Burbie52 | 8 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
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Heh, heh. When I was a 4 or 5 year old, just the first weird note (made by some strange, new fangled electronic music-making machine) of the intro tune would be enough to send me running behind the couch as soon as it came on the telly! Davros was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen on TV at the time; Davros is the leader of the Daleks, a sort of melted half person, half robot fused to the base of a Dalek by the way. Not a pretty sight for a 5 YO in those days lol.
I’ll be very interested to see exactly how they do the Tardis as a personal space. I hope they have an inside/outside to it. Oh! And I expect to see some serious “scarfness” going on too! lol For those of you who thought I just made up a new word, well, you’d be kinda right but you’ll (hopefully) see what I mean…
The “It’s bigger on the inside” is pretty vital to the whole Who experience IMO. I just don’t know if Home is technically capable of doing such a thing.
And… Here’s hoping for a K-9 companion.
Gosh I am so flippen excited -when I was a youth in Australia we would run around and play all day until Dr. Who came on. They would would be glued to the Tele. I had such a crush on Tom Baker -curly hair, bad teeth, and still I wanted him LOL! I think it was his never ending scarf and trench coat. Still to this day there is something about silly men that quite appeals to me. Welcome aboard Doctor.
I also have a serious crush on Tom Baker’s Doctor. He reminds me of two of my other filmic crushes, Harpo Marx and Gene Wilder. I wonder if future Home content will bring us the earlier Doctors?
oooo Gene Wilder- me too!
This will be very good for us and Home in general. I started watching Dr. Who in the Tom Baker period, and was totally unaware there was ever a different Doctor before him! Would be cool if they had an sonic screwdriver!
They do, Ted.
Thanks Burbie for the run down. I had no idea who Dr. Who was either. At first, I thought they were talking about Mr. Ed….lmao.