On Saturday, November 23, 1963, an unsuspecting and unique science fiction program hit the air on the BBC in Britain. More notorious as the day after Kennedy was assassinated, for us Doctor Who fans, it’s better known as the birth of a legacy. Little could anyone have anticipated what it would become. Today marks the monumental 45th anniversary of Doctor Who. The BBC has taken the opportunity of this occasion to post a special collection of historic documents and items from the history of the series on their web site, here. What started off initially as a children’s television program grew quickly into a series aimed more squarely at the entire family than just children, which was one of the smartest moves ever made for the series. After the initial 26 year run, the show sadly left the airwaves in 1989. It came back to life ever-so-briefly as a TV movie made by both the BBC and the Fox network in the states, but that TV movie wasn’t successful enough to warrant a series pickup, as was hoped. But then in 2003, the series began pre-production to come back as a full on big budget BBC production for a new generation, and would debut in 2005 to a fantastic level of success. As one of the less common fans in the United States, this will be my recollections and tribute to this wonderful series. It’s one of my all-time favorite TV shows, and this 45th anniversary sees the series at the start of an interesting crossroads in it’s history.
I’ve been a Doctor Who fans since I was about 4 years old. My older brother and sister, who were high school age at the time, watched the series back during the hey day of the classic series run. While I know I watched a handful of episodes even earlier, the one I really remember seeing back when I was 4 was the Tom Baker serial The Leisure Hive. Generally speaking, many fans’ favorite actor to play The Doctor is their “first doctor.” That’s not the case for me, though. Not only that, but the majority of classic Who fans cite Tom Baker (who played the role longer than anyone) as their favorite. Frankly, he’s one of my least favorite in the role. For a complete list of my preferences of actors in the role, see this previous post. For us Americans watching the show, pretty much the only option was to watch it on PBS. Unlike the way it ran originally in the UK, PBS ran Doctor Who one serial at a time, rather than individual episodes (most classic Who serials were split into 3-6 half hour episodes, which ran with cliffhangers between airings). So us American fans got to see all the episodes together in a 90 minute or more airing. For me, it was watching on Chicago’s WTTW PBS station on Sunday nights, late at night, which surely contributed to my chronic lifelong habit of being a night owl. The PBS stations typically aired them a year behind or so from their original BBC run in the UK. They would occasionally air other older episodes of the show (often during fund raising telethon weekends), and I’d track down VHS copies of many of them during the 80’s and 90’s to catch up on the older episodes of the show.
Americans have no idea how big a franchise Doctor Who is in the UK (and countries like Canada and Australia). Us American fans are pretty far and few between, sadly. Some of that is changing now that the show has become a new hit in the UK and been getting a good amount of play on The Sci-Fi Channel. But back when I was a kid, there was basically nobody my age that I knew that was a fan. Other than my brother and sister, I didn’t know anyone else who was a fan. Most of the time it made it seem as something like an exclusive little secret treat. The classic series is rather notorious for it’s low-budget and/or dated production qualities. It’s a little bit unfair, as it wasn’t always terrible. But there’s no denying the generally low production quality of the show. But that was half the charm of the series. And when you’re a kid, production quality is less important. But this newly revived incarnation is anything but low budget. One thing is for sure, Doctor Who was and still is a very unique franchise. It’s often cited as one of the most brilliant inventions of the show, but the idea of the main character “regenerating” into another actor playing a new version of the same character really was an act of genius. Yes, it was a move invented out of necessity originally, but it turned out to being not only a creatively fun aspect of the show, but has kept it alive all this time. At this point in time, we are in the era of David Tennant, the tenth actor in the role. But it has been announced that Tennant will be leaving the role after this upcoming year. And this upcoming year is also different in that it’s not being done as an actual season/series, but as 4 separate story specials, to help give the production a bit of a break. And not only that, but show runners Russell T. Davies & Julie Gardner will also be leaving the show, with the genius Steven Moffat taking over the show for the 2010 season. All that is to say that this 45th anniversary sees the show not only enjoying the huge success of coming back in 2005, but also that it is looking at yet another big transition, being handed off from one cast and crew to the next. And it’s that legacy that makes this series so unique and fun. It also makes for one heck of a convoluted mythology and a hit-and-miss sense of continuity. Then again, it’s a story all about time travel, so continuity is something a bit nebulous to begin with.
And when we talk about transitions and the legacy of the show, we have to bring up the “companions.” There have been far more companions in the run of the show than actors as The Doctor. That has been one of the biggest changes between the classic series and the new incarnation. Back in the classic series, the companions were secondary characters. In the new incarnation, they are written as the co-stars. And they have done a fantastic job in casting them. I won’t spend the time going into my favorites in this post, cause I’ve done that in a previous post, which can be found here. Like everything, there are highs and lows in the choices of companions, but more often than not the companions were well cast and a lot of fun. The vibe that made the show so successful over the years was the interactions between The Doctor and his companions.
Well, I wanted to write more for this occasion, but I’m running out of time writing this. I sit here listening to audio commentaries from the Doctor Who Series 4 DVD set that was released last week, getting rather hungry and needing to run out for some dinner. So, to get this published here before this historic 45th anniversary day is over, I’ll just wrap it up here. I also plan to update my episode order list of episodes from the new, revived seasons of the series in order of my preference within the next day or two. And since I didn’t have enough typed up to fill it out as much as I intentioned, here’s a few more graphics I intended to use.
So, to all the cast and crew of Doctor Who, congratulations to a fantastic 45 years. Us fans have been with you from the highs to the lows (otherwise known as 1990-2004, during the long hiatus). We look forward to another 45…
