Friday, January 21, 2011

The Good Old Days

Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child

Talk about beginnings.

Talk about the way things start, when you have no idea what they will mean someday. Talk about how Star Trek came to be - about how they had no idea, just none, what it would become.

Then talk about a blue box, three years before. Talk about a school where a teacher named Barbara and another named Ian can't decide what to do with one of their students.

And so it begins.

It's the same, I am beginning to realize, as Star Trek. The same, but different, with different accents and a different message, but it's the same too. I am always amazed that when Roddenberry was creating Star Trek, on the other side of an ocean there was another beginning, just as importand and not remotely as well publicized but far crazier - and with a protagonist that  is far more sinister, oddly.

Doctor Who.

Kind of a stupid name, really, but what isn't a stupid name at some point? At what point was Star Trek a good name? When was Heroes about Heroes - other than when Claire wanted to be one? When was Alias ever just about fake identities?

There's so much that's not said in a name.

It begins, then with a cute little story about cavemen and obsessions. And that is when the TARDIS breaks, which is why it's always a police box. Now we know.

What's amazing is how different he is from David Tennant - I mean, I loved David Tennant. He was pretty. William Hartnell isn't pretty and he isn't particulary compassionate toward his companions - who he didn't even want along to begin with. But this Doctor knows love - he loves his granddaughter. He is angry, like 10. He is about as personable as 9. Thankfully, unlike 2, he does not play the recorder.

Really the first few shows are about the true beginning. They are about two teachers - Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright - who follow a rather mysterious student home one day and learn that she lives in a police box that is bigger on the inside. A big fight, lots of yelling and they wind up in the past battling cavemen with fire problems and locked in a cave full of skulls.

At least they're all locked up in a nice cave and someone lets them out, and then promptly gets conked on her head for her trouble by the head caveman, Za. The Doctor, contrary to plenty of fanfiction, is not a medical doctor, he says. Sure spent plenty of time healing Rose Tyler, the jeopardy-friendly blonde.

But that came later. Now there is just Susan, and Ian, and Barbara, and the Doctor, and they didn't know what they had. They didn't know they had the secret - if you kill it, just regenerate it. It will come back to you. It will always come back.

Easier than Star Trek, but with fewer rules.

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