Confession #10: I Wish the Doctor Wouldn't Lie About His Age

I'm hardly the first person to rant about this, but I have to say it's one of the things that bugs me most about the on-screen revival of the Doctor: he's constantly lying about his age.  Oh, sure, you can hide behind the old saw that he really has no clue - what with all his traipsing through time and space, I've no doubt that he's lost track exactly - but that's really no excuse.

Think on this.  There have been nearly a dozen occasions when the Doctor specified his age (I'm only considering televised episodes here - no spin-off media, since those bring in a whole extra level of complexity and continuity issues).  My research indicates he gave his age in the following episodes with the numbers indicated:

Tomb of the Cybermen:  450
Mind of Evil:  "several thousand years"
DW and the Silurians and Planet of the Spiders:  748
Brain of Morbius and Seeds of Death:  749
Robots of Death:  750
Key to Time (Ribos Operation):  756 759
Revelation of the Daleks and Trial of a Timelord:  "900, more or less"
Time and the Rani:  953

Two of these situations in particular lead me to believe the Time Lords, at least, had ways of keeping track of such things.  For starters, Romana has his exact age (759) on the tip of her tongue when the question of whether or not the Doctor is "old" is raised at the beginning of The Ribos Operation.  He corrects her ("756!"), but she claims he's "lost count somewhere," suggesting his age (or date of birth, even) is part of the "confidential" information to which Romana seems privy (what with details of his Academy record also blithely cascading forth).

My second piece of evidence along these lines is that in his first adventure in his new incarnation, Seven uses his age - 953 - as the door code to the Rani's lab (it's supposed to be her age, too; maybe it's something about those Academy records after all...).  At this stage, he's clearly still got an accurate count - at least by some calendar - on his age, since otherwise the number the Rani used would not have matched.  Somewhere within the next two incarnations, something happens to change that.

Maybe it's something to do with the Last Great Time War (though that seems a bit melodramatic); the loss of his home planet has completely thrown off the Doctor's sense of the relative passage of time.  That at least fits with the idea that other Time Lords knew how old he was - it might have taken their presence to keep him grounded (or honest, depending on how you see it).  Or maybe it's some unknown timey-wimey adventure that regressed his physical age by a couple hundred years, and he's decided that should count toward his overall stated age.  Frankly, any fan can come up with some vaguely plausible explanation to suit her or his own views on canon.

Personally, I think it's just the Time Lord equivalent of "39 and holding."  When he spouted off to Rose about "900 years of time and space," I think he was talking about the time since he'd first stolen the TARDIS.  When she called him on it, he panicked - or, thinking that there was no one left to disabuse her of the notion, decided quite deliberately that there was no harm in claiming it as his age.

From that point on, it's a bit of a different story.  In order not to be caught in a lie, especially now that he's gotten in the practice of popping back and having his various Companions meet each other, I believe he made a conscious decision to start trying to be consistent.  I'm sure he doesn't want his friends comparing notes and finding any more inconsistencies than they already do.  So once he gave the lie to Rose, he's decided to "play it straight" for a while and stick with the spurious personal timeline he gave her.

For those who know he gladly told an earlier Companion he was half a century beyond that age two regenerations before, it's irksome.  It'd be nice if he'd fess up that he shaved off a couple of centuries in there somewhere, even if he doesn't know precisely how old he really is.  He could call it a "new age for a new Age," or some such rot.  I suppose we'll just have to be satisfied that he's trying to be self-consistent with what he's been telling people since the LGTW, since we all know how likely it is that the Doctor will ever admit to that kind of prevarication.

After all, as Four once said, "there's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes!"

Confession #9: I'm Tired of Catchphrases

The Daleks just wouldn't be the Daleks if they didn't trundle around screaming Exterminate!, but before Nu-Who (or "the RTD era," as some would prefer the beginning of the Doctor's on-screen return to be called), they pretty much had the monopoly on catchphrases.  These days, everybody's got one, from the Cybermen (Delete!) to the Sontarans (Sontar-ha!) to the Doctor himself (the repeated use of Geronimo! is the one thing that really rubs me the wrong way about Eleven).  Even the Companions are getting into the act (Spoilers, anyone?).

Since when was having a clearly identifiable catchphrase cool?  Somehow "fantastic!" didn't sound as inane coming from Nine's lips, but perhaps I just wasn't yet inured to the idea of the same word popping out of the Doctor's mouth every other episode.  It gets much worse with Ten, who even goes so far as to consciously cultivate a catchphrase in Army of Ghosts:  "I like that: allons-y! I should say 'allons-y' more often."  And, of course, after that he does.  He even gets to uncork his self-proclaimed ideal catchphrase ("Allons-y, Alonzo!") in Voyage of the Damned.

It's getting out of control.  For a particular example, put yourself in the Doctor's place.  I mean seriously - you're about to sacrifice everything in a last-ditch effort to save the entire universe, you have one last chance to say something to your beloved friends, and you choose... "Geronimo"?!  What sort of shitty "famous last word" is that?  I mean, generally speaking, I dearly love Moffat's writing (The Curse of Fatal Death still puts me in danger of snorting my drink out my nose every time), but c'mon...

In a sense, there were also a few catchphrases Back When, but - when they existed - they were somehow cooler.  (Note a key difference here, too - each catchphrase in question is an actual phrase, rather than a single word.)  They were more like an Easter egg than anything; there was a bit of fan-service thrill to it.  Who didn't love to hear Two say, "when I say 'run,' run!" or, "oh, my giddy aunt"?  Most famous, of course, is Three's "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" (used just twice as the complete phrase, and more often as simply "reverse the polarity").  In its shortened form, it was also later uttered once by Four and twice by Five.  Even Ten claimed to have been out of practice to have taken so long to reverse the polarity of Lazarus' machine in The Lazarus Experiment.  It may, thereby, be the only catchphrase to span multiple Doctors (and the pre-/post-2005 eras).

Why can't there be more of those cool little sayings these days instead of one-word-character-definers?  Granted, there will always be "Exterminate!" but that's pretty firmly in the cool/terrifying camp - a shorthand, if you will, for "now you should be really, really scared!" - rather than the pithy utterances that have been cropping up in scripts everywhere since 2005, like literary daisies.  Eleven's "[insert item of clothing here] are cool" is a great step in the right direction - see, quotable whole phrases can't be that hard to concoct - but there needs to be a simultaneous reduction of the copious single-word memes in the scripts overall.

In other words, I'm really ready for the writers to Pith Off.

Confession #7: I've Learned to Like Six

As I was first learning about the pre-RTD Doctors, I heard a lot of love for Three, Four and Five, and a lot of hate for Six and Seven.  Although I've never understood why Seven was so reviled (perhaps because my first experience with him was Remembrance of the Daleks, which included Ace, who was to become one of my all-time favorite Companions), I must admit that I took an instant dislike to Six, as I'd come to expect I would.

I suppose it was partly a self-fulfilling prophecy, but when you consider my first exposure to Six (not counting the regeneration scene) was in Vengeance on Varos - in which he is exceptionally snotty to Peri (who, granted, kind of deserves it, but not that much...) - perhaps it's not surprising I didn't take to him right away. All I got from him was egomania and disregard for his Companion - not a Doctorly attitude at all. It wasn't till much later that I discerned any sort of affection for Peri underlying the banter.

Since those first few months, though, I've come to appreciate him as a great character in his own right. Mostly, this is due to the brilliance of Rich Morris, artist and web comic writer extraordinaire, who penned the epic fan comic The Ten Doctors (also available in PDF format here). It was through Rich's work that I was finally able to see the beautiful potential of Six, who really had been done a disservice by his writers, in my opinion. (Not to mention the costume designer - what is up with that nasty outfit? Why couldn't they have gone monochrome?) The Six of TTD was extremely clever, yet never out of acerbic character from the televised episodes.  He was somehow simultaneously grumpy and charming. I had a lot of respect for that version of Six, and was able to superimpose the positive qualities exhibited there onto the on-screen Doctor afterward.  (In fact, I learned a lot about Doctor Who as a whole from both TTD and the associated forums, which are populated by some really knowledgeable folks in what is probably the friendliest community on Teh Intarwebs.)

It also helped when I was finally able to watch Trial of a Timelord.  In his second series, Six finally came into his own.  (Getting rid of Peri - my all-time least favorite Companion - was a step in the right direction, too.  ...though Mel wasn't much of an improvement.)  There's finally a real, noticeable warmth between Six and Peri (at least before the brain scrambling incident in the second sub-story), and he radiates confidence without arrogance in the adventures viewed through the Matrix. He's still kind of a prat in the courtroom on Gallifrey, though, faced with the Valeyard's vitriol. It seems that being under fire brings out the worst in him (though having recently taken a couple of hits at work, I can't really blame him); when he can't be the one in charge, he gets huffy. However, when things clearly go awry as the Doctor tries to make his own case, his discomfiture affords him a bit of humility.  Without all that smug self-satisfaction, Six is actually rather engaging. Perhaps it's that it gives him just enough of the "humanity" that the Companion (largely absent in court) usually affords the viewer.  Whatever the case, by the end of Trial, I was much more willing to cut Six some slack, and count him among "Doctors I Like," rather than have him all alone on the other side of that tally sheet.

Sometimes it takes someone else's perspective to make you take another look.  That experience changed my mind.  If you've never had an appreciation for Six, maybe it's time for you to look again, too.

Confession #6: The Fourth Doctor Kind of Bugs Me

If Confession #3 irked a few Neo-Whovians (and yes, I did catch some flak from the Ladies), then this one is sure to incur the wrath of some Old Skool Whovians.  Tom Baker, aka Four (you know the one - "all teeth and curls," perpetually wrapped in a ridiculously long scarf), is one of the best-loved Doctors of all time.  In fact, before David Tennant's stint, he was the most popular Doctor ever.  However, though I do generally enjoy him, a lot of times Four just sort of rubs me the wrong way.

First, there's the way he seems to work so hard on being weird.  Sure, the googly eyes give him a head start, but that's the least of it.  There are so many instances where he'll just repeat! someone else's line enough to startle ("of course!"), and then come down from that vocal high still as confused as ever ("nope - still don't know what you're talking about") that it ceases to either surprise or amuse (a trait Tennant borrowed for Ten, though I don't believe he wielded it as often).  I think it would bug me less if it weren't such an ongoing gag.  It's something that feels like it started as one of Baker's many attempts to make the cast and crew lose their composure and start laughing on set - except that once it worked, he kept inserting it as one of Four's quirks, and it lost its effect (file under: funny once).

What really irritates me, though, is how rude he is to everyone.  He frequently cuts off his Companions mid-sentence, usually when they're trying to tell him something important that he needs to know.  It doesn't matter who it is - Sarah Jane, K-9, even Romana (who's supposed to be as clever as the Doctor) - all suffer the same indignity and implication of insignificance.  Again, every once in a while it can be amusing, but it seems to happen nearly every story.  His self-centeredness in this sense feels very anti-Doctor to me, and makes me wonder:  where's the Doctor who loves and values his Companions?  Oh, I know he does, but as the saying goes, he has a funny way of showing it...

Not all of these annoying traits crop up in every story.  Occasionally, none of them do (like The Invisible Enemy - Nu-View pending).  Yet somehow, the pall of them tends to color my enjoyment.  Maybe I've seen a few too many interviews on DVD extras or something, because Tom Baker and Four seem indelibly intertwined, even outside the studio.  That makes it difficult to know how much of Four's posturing is Tom Baker's larger-than-life personality coming out, and how much is just the way he chooses to play the character.

I've also gotten the impression from various accounts that Baker was very jealous of "his" role, and didn't exactly play well with others at conventions and such, having made Four so iconic during his tenure.  For example, at one convention, he reportedly greeted his fans on an entirely different floor than the other Doctors present.  I suppose my opinion of the character has thus been a bit influenced by what I've learned of the actor.

On the other hand, I'm certainly not going to stop watching him.  He delivered a whole lot of really good stories, and - especially after my recent viewing of Meglos (DVD review sadly scrapped) - I have plenty of respect for his acting chops.  When you can see how distinct the Doctor is from another character Baker is playing, it makes even the over-the-top bits more palatable - Four as caricature rather than alter-ego is somehow less off-putting.  So Four's stories will most definitely stay in my "happy to re-watch it" queue.  I just need to make sure I'm in a properly off-the-wall mood.

Confession #2: I Haven't Seen Them All

Now I may damage my cred with certain parts of The Community by this admission (perhaps especially those Neo-Whovian friends who regard me as a font of knowledge about Classic Who), but the sad truth of the matter is, I haven't seen all the Doctor Who stories out there. Shocking, I know.

This lapse in my own Doctor Who education is the product of one of my general character flaws (or "quirks," depending on who you ask): I'm not only a completist but also very particular about what I choose to collect. When I began my search for Classic stories, I didn't want anything on VHS, dinosaur technology that it is, so I started looking for what was out on DVD. Rather to my surprise, not everything had yet been released. (What had the BBC been doing all these years that I didn't care about Doctor Who? They were supposed to be getting everything ready for me, for when I discovered a new obsession!) Not only that, but each story (often misleadingly labeled as an "episode") was its own DVD, worth anywhere from $10 to $35 ("on up" for boxed sets of related stories) at list price. Yikes!

Much to my chagrin, my local library system failed me. Not only were there no DVDs in the system to check out, there were precious few VHS tapes, either. Fumbling around in the dark on my own, not having found any real link to The Community yet, I didn't even know whether or not to waste my time with what the library had. There had to be a better way...

Then I hit paydirt. Nosing around on eBay, I found a lot of roughly forty-five stories on DVD - every one that had been released in Region 1 (here in the US) up to about 3 months before the auction. Although the asking price was more than I really had to spare, it was a great deal for what was being offered; I couldn't pass it up.

Suddenly, I had an embarrassment of riches. I'd read a few reviews or passing comments by this time, so I had an idea of what was considered "great" (Genesis of the Daleks, for example) and what was considered contemptible (Timelash). Sometimes I agreed, and sometimes I didn't, but I got a feel for all the Doctors and many of the companions, forming my own opinions and preferences among them. (In the meantime, I hemorrhaged cash, trying to catch up on the constantly-growing list of releases.)

Originally, I watched them in broadcast order, starting with the earliest stories and prowling the now-defunct Outpost Gallifrey website for plot synopses of the missing stories - or parts of stories, for One and Two (I tend to refer to the various Doctors by number; another "quirk" of mine). This afforded me an awesome sense of continuity, most especially because that meant I didn't find it weird (as I do on subsequent viewings) to see the Brigadier (going by Bret) working next to One - still military but with a completely different manner (The Daleks' Master Plan), or Romana chatting with herself (The Armageddon Factor). As my collection expanded, I backfilled the viewings, which often led to brief confusion (was Story X before or after Story Y?).

As I did so, I also got a great feel for the uniqueness of a regeneration (don't get me started on the RTD-era "it should always look the same" crap; perhaps that's a rant for another post). The first regeneration is one of the few snippets that remains from One's final story - and what a blessing to fandom that bit of serendipity is. I've seen four (or is it five?) of the other six, including The Movie, and it's always amazing to watch that prone figure morph. (Note to Neo-Whovians unfamiliar with Classic Who: not till the transition from Nine to Ten did the Doctor stand for a regeneration scene.) Having all of these finally in my repertoire made my first "real time" regeneration (Ten to Eleven) simply delicious to anticipate. Now I know how Old Skool fans must have felt.

The upshot of all this is that, while I can proudly say I've watched every Doctor Who story that's been released on DVD in Region 1, plus The Movie (OK, OK... I haven't gotten around to watching The Dominators or Meglos yet; it's been a busy couple of weeks), I've still never seen The Krotons, Planet of the Spiders, Terror of the Zygons, or any of a couple dozen other well-known stories. My education continues.

Maybe I'm due for another chronological viewing bonanza...

Confession #1: I Am a Neo-Whovian

My folks didn't watch a whole lot of tv when I was growing up, and when they did, it was mostly PBS (public broadcasting). I suppose that's why on very rare occasions, I'd come across my dad watching some unknowably ridiculous thing and have to ask what it was. A few times, it would be Star Trek, which - as an American - is a show I learned quite a bit about, eventually becoming a bit of a Trekker myself in college (where we watched new episodes of TNG religiously). On at least one occasion, though, I remember being really taken aback at the absurdity of the two minutes of something-random I watched with my dad. That was my first introduction to Doctor Who.

It wasn't a part of the American psyche the way it was - is - in Britain. I mean, sure, I'd heard of Doctor Who and its slightly... OK, very eccentric fans. For example, the Doctor Who Club in college tended to consist of shady figures who wore long woolen cloaks around campus (come to think of it, many of them were part of the campus Druids, too...), which didn't particularly inspire the uninitiated to jump right in and join the fandom. I didn't really know much of anything about the show, though. I'm a bit embarrassed in retrospect to admit that when my husband commented that the first little house we bought was like a TARDIS, he had to explain to me that he meant it was bigger on the inside.

Not until one of my friends nearly forced the "new series" (aka, Nu-Who) on me by showing me the first four episodes (which I thought were OK, but not exciting; thankfully he persisted) did I really catch the fever. And when I did, I caught it bad. In the course of approximately two weeks, I watched the end of Series 1, the entirety of Series 2 and 3, and caught up to the then-currently-airing Series 4 at about episode 6. I have watched every episode from S04E07 (The Unicorn and the Wasp) onward as they were broadcast.

Perhaps it was the intensity of this experience - 36 episodes in 14 days is nothing to sneeze at - that branded it on my soul and made me want more. Lucky for me, there were another 26 seasons' worth of backlog on which to catch up! Being the obsessive personality that I am, I immediately started looking for a way to get my hands on as much as I could (more on that in my next Confession).

I understand that there are plenty of Neo-Whovians out there (those who, like me, cut their teeth on Nu-Who) who have never warmed to the Classic Doctors. But I don't understand why. It makes the whole Nu-Who experience so much richer when you have that sense of history, of continuity. How can you not love it all the more when you recognize that Ten's drawling "well..." is a holdover from Four, or that Eleven sitting in a chair confronting a baddy with just a jaw-wiggling non-response echoes Three's mannerisms perfectly?

This love of the entire series - Nu-Who and Classic Who alike - has led me to try to share the joy of stories well-told with anyone who will listen. I managed to get several members of my pipe band hooked on Nu-Who, for a start. From there, I've moved on to the Gospel according to Classic Who, and am currently introducing some of those same people to the wonders of Doctors One through Eight.

So in reality, I'm not just a Neo-Whovian, though that's certainly where my roots lie. I'm an evangelical Whovian. C'mon in. Join the choir.