When I was in college, Sunday nights were the best television nights. Forget Hill Street Blues, Taxi, Night Court and the rest. On Sunday night, I would join my friends in front of the big-screen TV at the Student Union, and we wouldn’t budge for the next three hours.
Sunday night was British TV night on the Chicago area PBS channel. It would start with Monty Python, followed by Benny Hill, The Two Ronnies, and Dave Allen at Large. There was probably another show, but it escapes me. It was over 25 years ago, after all. But the highlight of the evening, the show that kept us in the Union after they were officially closed, was Doctor Who. Doctor Who was the longest-running sci-fi show on British television, with some of the worst FX you could ever hope to see. We all said that it proved the reality that if you have a good story, FX don’t matter as much. You could see the zippers on the monsters, for crying out loud. The Doctor was a Time Lord, the last of his species, who traveled the universe in a shape-changing time-machine called the TARDIS, which due to some unexplained glitch, was forever stuck in the shape of an old London Police Call Box.
Tom Baker was my favorite Doctor. The Doctor of my young adulthood. The first Doctor I’d ever seen. In my mind, he was perfect. The previous Doctor, Jon Pertwee, was OK, but Tom was the best. Wearing a battered fedora, draped in the longest scarf I’d ever seen, he was quirky and adorable all at once.
When his character metamorphosed into Peter Davison (Time Lords don’t die, they metamorphose into a new, younger body), I stopped watching. It wasn’t just because Tom was gone – I was in a different state, and couldn’t find the Doctor on the local PBS station. This was long before the days of 500-channel television, and PBS was the only place one could find the British TV shows.
Fast forward 20+ years. Last fall, I was watching PBS in a hotel room somewhere, and stumbled across a TV show that showed someone fighting some type of space aliens in some type of school in Britain. It was called “School Reunion,” and there was just something about it that made me think “Doctor Who.” And it was. A new, younger Doctor, with a young, modern assistant (or companion). But the “Reunion” title was appropriate – the Doctor was reunited with Sarah Jane Smith, who was one of Tom Baker’s assistants.
As I sat there, drinking in the new doctor, Sarah Jane led him to her car, opened the trunk, and uncovered K-9, the Doctor’s mechanical dog that had been Tom Baker’s other constant companion. I had totally forgotten about K-9, and was delighted to see him again.
So now I had a mission. Obviously, a new Doctor Who was being made, and I knew nothing about it. House-sitting for a friend over Christmas, I was ready to pack up my car and head home when her TIVO announced it was changing the channel I was watching so it could tape Doctor Who. I got home much later than I had planned, because I had to watch the show.
But still nothing in my hometown, and I have just enough cable TV to give me decent TV reception, so I had no way of finding it, other than channel-surfing in hotel rooms during my business trips.
But a few weeks ago, as I was settling in to watch my weekly episode of Red Dwarf on the local PBS channel, it wasn’t Red Dwarf. It was Doctor Who, the new one. David Tennant is the new Doctor, who operates at such a frenetic pace that he makes Tom Baker look sedate. But it works. And I’m in hog heaven, because not only do they air the Doctor on Saturday nights, but they air a new episode on Sunday evenings. The Saturday show is a repeat of the Sunday show, so I get two chances to make sure I catch the show.
UPDATE: I just found out that the Doctor I’m enjoying right now is Chris Eccleston, not David Tennant. David Tennant is the current (10th) Doctor, but the series is on Doctor #9, just now.
This new Doctor Who is set in current times, and has cell phones, the internet, and better FX than the original. In other words, I’ve not yet seen the zippers on the monsters. And next week, the Daleks will be back. “EXTERMINATE.” “EXTERMINATE.”
My Saturday nights are complete – Britcoms followed by the Doctor, just like it was on Sunday nights 25+ years ago. Now, if they would only re-broadcast Dave Allen, or Monty Python, I could pretend I was 19 again.
