This is a must week for Doctor Who fans: The first episode of The Green Death is tonight at 7 :30, with the story winding in the usual weekly cliffhanger fashion to conclusion five weeks from now.
Dr. Who is a phenomenon among science-fiction series, as spectacular in its way as Star Trek. It's a BBC product, but the idea was cooked up in 1962 by a Canadian, Sidney Newman, who was then Head of BBC Drama, later returned to Canada to head up the National Film Board and has recently moved to Toronto. Newman and a BBC colleague wanted to fill a Saturday afternoon scheduling gap and came up with a children's serial with a hero who could move about in time and space and was to be portrayed as "a crotchety old man at least 745 years old."
The show has evolved over the years, through four different actors playing the lead role and dozens of writers supplying new twists. None of the variations has ever managed to dent the ratings. Dr. Who remains as big a success as ever after 14 years on the air. The good doctor is a Time Lord who offended the other Time Lords, and is condemned to travel space and time forever. He's now younger, more attractive, more the sort you'd expect as a television defender of Good against Evil. But unlike Kojak, he never carries a gun. He has Other Powers, which prove equally effective against the Daleks and Cybermen, dastardly creatures of the future, and the likes of Wyatt Earp and Count Dracula when he travels backwards in time.
Those of you who previously resisted the lure of the doctor can catch up: last year's episodes are running Tuesdays at 7 p.m.
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