The Doctor with timeless appeal
- Publication: The Times
- Date: 2006-06-19
- Author: Caitlin Moran
- Page: Times2, p. 27
- Language: English
"Do you still have anything left to say about Doctor who?" my editor asked, with mild disbelief. "You have now written about this series four times in the past six weeks." Do I still have anything left to say about Doctor Who (Sat, BBC One)? He might just as well have asked if I have anything left to say about the changing seasons, or the night sky. or my children or, frankly, myself
When something is as good as Doctor Who - and, currently, it's one of the best things about Britain in the 21st century — there's always something to say about it. It's like having a conversation about the Beatles. Theoretically, a conversation about the Beatles could span every aspect of humanity, theology, morality, art, sociology, fashion, and continue on up to the point where we die
In fact, now I come to think of it, we're all just continuing conversations about the Beatles handed down to us by our parents, and which we will, in turn, pass on to our children. Conversation about the Beatles is eternal - and the Beatles were just four kids from Liverpool. One of whom was Ringo.
Doctor Who, on the other hand. has the bonus of being about a goddamn Time Lord — with a Tardis! mincing about the universe with a hot assistant: an assistant with whom the Doctor is locked in a situation of intensifying and possibly critical sexual tension. And that's before we consider its other conversation-starting elements — such as its predilection for dealing with all the big issues of emotion and morality. Or the way the show was resurrected 20 years after its death by the wittiest, most postmodern fan a programme could hope to have: Russell T. Davies.
All that said, this week's episode was essentially ephemeral. It was a bit of slapstick with Peter Kaye as a vile Absorbaluff — a lascivious green blob of what appeared to be the expanding foam that you inject into cavity walls, which was sporadically sprinkled with tufts of disturbing black hair, much in the manner of greasy spoon macaroni. Kaye, fairly understandably, appeared to be having a ball—licking his lips, rolling his eyes and brandishing his hoofy fingers with a well-observed delicacy..
After Absorbaluffing one of the episode's heroines, Ursula, he commented, "She tastes like chicken," in the same way people do when they're at a novelty bistro, trying crocodile meat, or snake.
In the event, the Doctor and Rose appeared merely as guest-stars in their own show --- a small, humorous scrap with a cameo alien, and then materialising in the Tardis for a one-liner. The whole thing was clearly a mica-season intermission. A hint of light relief from the gathering clouds of the story-arc of the series - which, we gather from hints dropped in previous episodes. will centre on how and why the Doctor ended up killing all the other Time Lords cannot tell you how excited I am about this prospect. I was less thrilled and terrified about the impending birth of my first child.
However, as the episode was written by Davies, it was an exercise in the scale of the confidence and whimsy, an artist can have in his or her Imperial Phase. An entirely digressionary treatise on the joys of ELO. a one-second clip of Elton John, the careless joy of the Doctor and Rose, trying to kill a non-essential alien in the style of the Two Stooges --and then cutting it all dead with an unexpected. chilling line of dialogue, "Anyone getting close to the Doctor is eventually destroyed - Even when playing with the loveliest toy a scriptwriter ever had, Davies is hard as nails.
Spelling correction: Abzorbaloff
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- APA 6th ed.: Moran, Caitlin (2006-06-19). The Doctor with timeless appeal. The Times p. Times2, p. 27.
- MLA 7th ed.: Moran, Caitlin. "The Doctor with timeless appeal." The Times [add city] 2006-06-19, Times2, p. 27. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Moran, Caitlin. "The Doctor with timeless appeal." The Times, edition, sec., 2006-06-19
- Turabian: Moran, Caitlin. "The Doctor with timeless appeal." The Times, 2006-06-19, section, Times2, p. 27 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=The Doctor with timeless appeal | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/The_Doctor_with_timeless_appeal | work=The Times | pages=Times2, p. 27 | date=2006-06-19 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=21 May 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=The Doctor with timeless appeal | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/The_Doctor_with_timeless_appeal | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=21 May 2025}}</ref>
