Sci-fi fans know who's 'Who' on TV

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Publication: Pensacola News Journal
Date: 1982-06-17
Author: Mike Suchcicki
Page: 1D
Language: English

"Doctor Who" airs at 10 p.m. Monday through Friday on Channel 23.

Scene: outer space, somewhere in the universe. Time: may be now, may be the past, may be the future.

Two spaceships — one a massive interstellar passenger transport, the other a freighter — phase out of warp drive as they approach a planet. Suddenly, a navigational error: an outer space collision fuses the ships.

Cut to: a deserted corridor on the passenger ship. With a loud whirring and whooping, a blue British police call box — a special type of telephone booth — suddenly appears.

The door of the police box opens and a tall man with curly brown hair and wide, inquisitive eyes steps out. He wears a long brown coat and a striped scarf that hangs around his neck like a drugged boa constrictor. His poached egg eyes get even wider as he sees the predicament of the two spaceships. "Quite a mish mosh," he says, as he sets off to get involved.

From the police box, his companion, a lovely fair-haired young woman, looks out and frowns. "You aren't going to interfere, are you Doctor?"

"Interfere?" says the tall man, "Why of course I'm going to interfere! You should always do what you're best at, that's what I say." And with a whip of his scarf he is off.

So begins another adventure for the mysterious gentlemen known only as the Doctor, the focal point for the long-running British science fiction series "Doctor Who."

In many ways, the series, produced by BBC, is a phenomenon. First, it is the longest-running science fiction series in the history of television, having premiered in 1963. Second, its popularity in Britain is almost without equal, despite the constant changes in personnel and leading cast members, including five different actors playing the Doctor.

Third, the show's popularity has followed it across the Atlantic. Since 1978, when Time-Life Television made 98 half-hour episodes of the series available to American independent and public television stations. more and more stateside viewers have become diehard "Who fans." In December 1979, the first U.S. Doctor Who convention, held in Los Angeles, drew almost 1,000 attendees.

Just who is Doctor Who? First, he isn't Doctor Who, despite the credits at the end of each show. He is simply "The Doctor," the witty, seemingly absent. minded, inquisitive, stubborn, heroic, swashbuckling, moral, brilliant, often impatient scientist who has witnessed many adventures on many planets in many times.

As regular viewers of the series are aware, the Doctor is a Time Lord, born on the planet Gallifrey. The Time Lords of Gallifrey spend their time (so to speak) observing other civilizations and eras via a special time machine known as TARDIS, an acronym for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. These machines blend in, chameleon-like, with any environment. They are also much larger on the inside than they are on the outside.

Time Lords are allowed only to observe; they may not interfere with any civilization. The Doctor, however, found this not only immoral and unfair, but also boring. So he slipped into a TARDIS repair shop, found a model that had been stuck in the shape of a police call box — a now obsolete method of contacting policemen on the beat — and away he went, helping people (and other creatures) in need of help, and picking up companion after companion.

Viewers in America are seeing only those episodes featuring the fourth actor to portray the Doctor, Toni Baker. Before Baker arrived on the scene with his trademark scarf and floppy felt hat, three actors brought to the character their own traits and embellishments.

The first Doctor, the late William Hartnell, played the character as a crotchety, eccentric scientist dressed in Edwardian clothes, impatient with lesser intelligent beings. The second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, became known as a "cosmic hobo" dressed in baggy pants, and, in times of stress, would sit (or dance) and play his recorder. Following Troughton came Jon Pertwee, who made the Doctor into a flamboyant man of action, dressed in velvet coats, ruffled shirts and flowing opera capes.

English viewers are watching the fifth actor in role of the Doctor, Peter Davison, who plays the Doctor as a physical fitness fanatic with a penchant for a good game of cricket.

The producers of the show explain the Doctor's many forms with an interesting device: Time Lords have the ability to regenerate, to take on a new form when the old form becomes too old or badly damaged.

To Americans, Tom Baker is the definitive Doctor. His wide eyes and curly hair, featured on the hundreds of Doctor Who books, records, games and other items, have invaded the U.S. The Doctor's traveling companions are often as popular as the Doctor himself, and Baker's Doctor has had his share, including journalist Sarah Jane Smith, the savage Earth descendant Leela and fellow Time Lord Romana. One of the Doctor's most popular companions, however, is the robot dog K-9, who serves as the Doctor's mobile computer on many adventures.

Heroes must confront villians, and the Doctor has faced many. including the Cybermen, the Zygons, the Master (a villainous Time Lord) and, nastiest of all, the terrible Daleks. Daleks, rolling machines of evil, are bent on conquering the entire universe. Shaped not unlike large salt shakers, they have no emotions, other than hate, and serve only their creator, the sinister Davros of Skaro. In England, the Daleks were a sensation from their very first appearance during Hartnell's tenure as the Doctor. They appeared on everything from lollypops to lunch pails to pencil boxes. Two feature-length motion pictures featuring the Doctor and the Daleks were made in the mid-'60s, featuring Peter Cushing as the Doctor.

To the many "Doctor Who" devotees, the show's appeal is simple to explain. "What caught me was the combination of science fiction and humor," says Who-fan Robert Neagle, 26, president and founder of the New Orleans-based Companions of Doctor Who, one of a number of "Doctor Who" fan clubs in the U.S.

"I don't think anyone wants serious, serious stuff nowadays," says Neagle, "which is why 'Star Wars' was so popular." While Neagle admits that sometimes the show's special effects are less than admirable, "Baker just carries it off. He wins you over."

From a simple paper sign posted in a New Orleans bookstore in 1981, Neagle amasssed a club of more than 200 members. Chapters of the club, called "Tardises," have been formed in Biloxi, Miss.; Mobile, Ala.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Houston, Texas. In addition to screening episodes of the show at meetings, the club publishes a regular newsletter, "The Unpaid Scientific Adviser," and a magazine, "Time-Log." Anyone interested in joining the Companions of Doctor Who can contact Neagle at P.O. Box 56764, New Orleans, La. 70156.

In Pensacola, "Doctor Who" is seen Monday through. Friday at 10 p.m. on PBS station WSRE Channel 23. According to program director Bill Farrington, the show enjoys "a fairly loyal following ... of mostly high school age," but not as large as when the original batch of 98 shows was aired from February to November of 1979. To help the series gain a broader audience, the show was recently moved from its previous time slot of 5 p.m.

"We get quite a few letters from viewers saying they love the show," says Farrington. "We know the people are out there watching it, because we get a lot of phone calls when we're forced to run the episodes out of sequence."

Caption: The Doctor and Sarah (Elizabeth Sladen) face "The Seeds of Doom."

Caption: Americans love Doctor Tom Baker.

Spelling correction: Elisabeth Sladen

Sci-fi fans know who's 'Who' on TV

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