genesis of the daleks

I should have finished my script yesterday, but the goddamn sinusitis completely knocked me out. Luckily, used a winning combination of Sudafed, Mucinex, Advil, and sitting on the couch next to a humidifier to prevent this thing from developing into something really nasty, like a Moose Bite.

The best thing about being a geek who makes a living writing about geek stuff is that I get to do the things I love and not feel like I'm goofing off. So even though I was sitting on the couch watching Genesis of the Daleks for the entire afternoon, I felt like I was being productive.

I am aware that it's a gaping hole in my geek cred, and I'm ashamed to admit that I've never watched much Dr. Who. I mean, I'd seen a little bit here and there, but certainly not enough to tell you which Doctor I liked the most, or why the Timelords are cool -- in fact, I still can't -- but when I got about halfway through this DVD, I said, out loud, "Where have you been all my life?"

While I don't think I would have liked Dr. Who as much as I liked The Prisoner when I was a teen (the time I was most likely to have discovered it, because my friend Guy had a knack for introducing me to awesome British television) I'm thrilled that I chose to seriously begin my travels with the Doctor at this time and in this way. Once I get these writing deadlines behind me, I think I'll go back to Robot, which is the first appearance of Tom Baker as the Doctor, and make my way forward a bit.

Questions for Dr. Who fans:

• What do you call yourselves? Whosiers? Timsies? Time-ers?
• I'm sure a series that ran for decades has uneven stories, but did I serendipitously fall into Dr. Who's Best of Both Worlds? Because I loved just about every single frame of Genesis of the Daleks.
• Does Dr. Who -- which appears to me on one viewing to be awesome in the 70s -- suffer the same fate in the 80s as so many things that were awesome in the 70s? (Boston, Grateful Dead, Aerosmith, Rolling Stones, Jefferson Starship -- oh, I'm sorry, I mean Starship -- I'm looking in your direction.)
• Do Dr. Who fans have blood feuds about their favorite Doctors the way Trekkies do about their favorite captains? I imagine they must, because if there's one thing all geeks have in common it's our ability to take something we love and turn it into something to argue about with other people who love it, right?

I'm about 85% of normal today, and not cranky at all, which is quite nice. I'm looking forward to finishing my script, because there's a bottle of 14 year Oban in it for me when I do.

Comments

[nvdaydreamer]

1) Whovians.
2) Yes. Tho' there are several excellent arcs during Tom Baker's run.
3) Yes. Fifth-Seventh Doctors are all very much personal taste issues.
4) Yes.

[Eric Aitala]

Whovians was the old school term - dunno if it still applies, since I've been a fan since the early eighties when it first arrived in the US.

Yes, Genesis and Tom Baker was pretty good in terms of quality. The new series is pretty great too. Early Tom Baker is a little weak. Don't forget that Douglas Adams was script editor for part of the Baker era.

It went into a decline during the Colin Baker / Sylvester McCoy era because the BBC was trying to kill it.

Yes, everyone argues about their favorite Dcotor. It is usually their first Doctor..
Also feuds about the best monsters come up - Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, etc. As well as best companion clashes...

Cheers,
Dr E.

[KCFlatlander]

Wil, I'm not sure on the naming. I know when the media writes about Doctor Who fans, they call them "Whovians", but that sounds more Seussian to me. I think DWASes (Doctor Who Appreciate Society)...Dwazzes sounds better.

As far as arguing over the Doctor, absolutely. I remember the huge arguements that broke out when Tom Baker left and Peter Davison took over. "That guy from All Creatures is now the Doctor?" Yikes. Then they screamed when Colin Baker took over, because he played Cmdr. Maxil in "Arc of Infinity". I always liked John Pertwee a bit, but in my mind, the Doctor will always have a curly 'fro and a 20' scarf.

[nvdaydreamer]

Also, first post! Woot!

By all means, enjoy the grazing through The Doctor's history, but truly the new episodes (with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and David Tennant as the Tenth) are amazingly wonderful.

Happy New Year With Less Congestion,

Bob Portnell, Sparks, NV

[Ellen Fluharty]

"Whovian" is kind of old, but special, like an old jacket...but Doctor Who is so mainstream over in Britain, I wonder if they feel the need to identify as much as Trekkies.

And don't discuss your favorite doctor with anyone you think might be armed.

[chris heer]

1) "Doctor Who fan" is, I think, the most common. Whovians is something created by one of the fan clubs, and it sounds stupid.

2) Yes, Genesis of the Daleks is one of the best all-time stories, rather like Best of Both Worlds. But there are plenty of other good ones.

3) Yes. Most of the fifth Doctor was pretty decent, but then it degenerated into a mess. Skip ahead to the new stuff, is my advice to you.

4) Not quite at the level of Kirk-Picard blood feud, but yes.

Personally, I recommend most of the Tom Baker stuff (though the 16th season, a.k.a. the Key to Time, is weak and the 17th season is not good at all), most of the Davison stuff, and the first few seasons of Pertwee if you want to get into the older stuff.

I also highly recommend the new series. Start with the first season with Eccleston, and give it about 4-5 episodes to grab you.

[McAtilla]

Probably because he was my first I always had fond memories of Tom Baker as the best Doctor. Eccleston was also very cool.

Whovians? That's pitiful, what about Whooters?

The theme tune is my favourite jingle from any tv show. It's superb.

[John Ward]

Hi Wil,

The Key to Time is a great Tom Baker story arc. It's a long one too. Baker was my favorite Doctor.

The new series really is wonderful, but I'd spend some time watching the older series first. Get a feel for each of the Doctors. You don't have to watch every episode. Just get to know them a little. Netflix has a lot of older episodes that you can watch online.

The major reason I'd recommend that anyone new to the series get to know the older Doctors before watching the current stuff is because you will really appreciate what they are doing with the series now. It is different, but the same from the older incarnations. It's difficult to describe. Although, I'm certain you would enjoy the newer series right now; you'll really appreciate it (and what the writer's have achieved) if you have some history. Also there are a lot of really great payoffs if you're familiar with the past storylines (you don't need them to enjoy it, but everything means so much more if you understand some of the origin stuff).

Eccleston was a great Doctor. He was eccentric and everything you'd want a Doctor to be. Tennant is a good Doctor, but Tennant's Doctor is really getting the really great writing and story arcs that they had just begun to set up during Eccleston's tenure.

Okay, I've deviated too much from your original post... so, I'll stop. Enjoy the show.

[JohnF]

I recently discovered Dr Who due to the new series and have been wondering some of the same questions.

I'll be watching this comment thread to get recommendations on which of the old series to rent.

[Steve Sutton]

The thing about Doctor Who is that it's able to keep up with the times and stay fresh, which keeps it from falling into traps that other shows can't seem to avoid.

I'm glad you're feeling better, Wil. Get well soon.

[MILibrarian]

Dr Who was a staple of my childhood, and the new series have just been activating all kinds of great memories for me. Glad to hear you are discovering it. The aforementioned Key to Time arc is a great introduction (especially the Stones of Blood). I am in the Tom Baker camp but I just love the entire concept of the show. Happy discoveries.

[Tom]

1. I've heard Whovians quite a bit, but I'd agree with Chris, I think its a fan club creation.

2. Tom Baker, Tom Baker, Tom Baker. I loved the Key to Time series. I also loved The Five Doctors, which I believe is a Peter Davidson series.

3. Yeah, I'd say after Tom Baker and a few Peter Davidson series, the next ones I liked were really the new ones with Eccleston.

4. I guess so, but no need to fight, anyone who is sound of mind and body picks Tom Baker. ;-)

I would definitely recommend watching the older series before the newer ones, as you will be able to pick out the connections to the older series (the reappearance of Sarah Jane Smith and K9 comes to mind).

Enjoy Doctor Who Wil - for the record, the TARDIS and the Doctor are infinitely cool!

[elmegil]

When I got into the Doctor, also in the early 80's Whovian was the term. No clue what the new generation calls themselves (get off of my lawn!).

I've always liked Pertwee as well as Baker, and not had much interest in the others. I would add that in addition to some of the early Baker episodes being weak, in the latter part of his run (an exhausting one, no doubt) he started phoning it in too. But in his prime, he's my fave.

[tangentier]

Wil, I'm so glad you've discovered Doctor Who. It's been my favorite sci-fi for a long time.

I agree with the idea of getting a feel for each of the Doctors. I'd recommend the following episodes (for which, by the laws of the Internet, I shall surely be flamed):

• 1st (Wm Hartnell): The Keys of Marinus, The War Machines
• 2nd (Patrick Troughton): Tomb of the Cybermen
• 3rd (Jon Pertwee): The Sea Devils or The Claws of Axos
• 4th (Tom Baker): Robot, Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Invasion of Time, City of Death
• 5th (Peter Davison): Black Orchid, Arc of Infinity, Caves of Androzani
• 6th (Colin Baker, who IMHO is the victim of bad scripts and MUCH better in the new audio dramas by Big Finish): The Mark of the Rani
• 7th (Sylvester McCoy): Remembrance of the Daleks, The Curse of Fenric
• 8th (Paul McGann): (none), because I think his only on-screen appearance, the TV Movie, was a failed experiment. I'd recommend instead the novel "Vampire Science".
• 9th (Christopher Eccelston, start of the new Series): Dalek, The Empty Child + The Doctor Dances
• 10th (David Tennant, the current Doctor): School Reunion, The Girl in the Fireplace, 42

I think the episodes above give a good overview of at least some of the mythology of the show, as well as being good romps in their own right. I also tried to pick stories that show how Doctor Who has utilized a variety of genres to great effect. Lastly, it's not necessary to watch them in order. Please enjoy!

[Kerrith]

I agree with a lot of the recomendations above. Getting a taste of the old Doctors will make you appreciate the new series more.

I also believe that among the hard core fans it is a faux pas to shorten the word Doctor into Dr. It isn't so much a title as the name of the character.

Anyway, enjoy experiencing for the first time, the wonderful world of the longest running science fiction series in history.

[Nadia]

Eccleston was awesome. Refreshing. Tennant's doing a great job too. The new series is really good.

[Chuck]

I was in a Dr. Who club in high school. I always liked the term "Whovians" myself. Dr. Who did unfortunately go downhill in the 80's, and I really don't follow it anymore. Definitely peaked in the 70's.

[Ellie]

I wonder if the "best" doctor is your first doctor? I have a soft spot for the 80s episodes with Peter Davison, as they were on when I was small. (Therefore I loved the Children in Need special, filling in the gap between the end of the last series and the start of the Christmas special, with Peter Davison and the wonderful David Tennant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn_NDKNlUa8)

@Ellen Fluharty - Doctor Who is definitely mainstream in the UK, with 13.8 million watching this year's Christmas Day episode (just under a quarter of the population). I've heard Whovian being used, but really only to describe conventions etc when it was off the air in the 90s. The current series is very mainstream, so I think people would just say "I love Doctor Who", rather than "I'm a Whovian"

[zenspinner]

I'm a Doctor Who-fan rarity in that I really like Colin Baker, but that was more based on meeting him at a convention than his actual turn as the Doctor. With those I agree that the audio dramas are better, because he was the victim of an active attempt to kill the show with bad writing (and his outfit was totally not his fault!) He had a vision for the Doctor that he wasn't allowed to complete, but it would have been fantastic if he had.

My faves beyond that are Eccleston, the other Baker and Troughton. I wouldn't overlook Patrick Troughton.

The moment that had me with Doctor Who was right in the first episode. The teachers have found their way to the call box and are looking around going OMGWTFBBQ and the Doctor is trying to explain things. He says "It's not quite clear, is it? I can see by your face that you're not quite certain; you don't understand." Then, just when you're getting set up for a pedantic technobabble explanation, he laughs and says "I knew you wouldn't. Never mind!" And turns away to mess with the TARDIS console. To me that was the defining moment - that's what made me fall in love with the Doctor. (There's a clip of it on the BBC site http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/unearthlychild/ - "Just an Illusion")

[slackferno]

Your questions have all been answered above, so I give you a homework assignment as a new admirer of the Doctor. Tom Baker has never lent his voice to the Simpsons, but they've drawn him Waldo-like into countless episodes. Good rule of thumb: if CBG is in the episode, Baker is probably in the background somewhere. How many Tom Bakers can you find?

[yndygo]

Since the Whovians have already weighed in to answer your questions, it would be redundant to answer.

But I will note that I think you started with the right Doctor to get hooked.

Tom Baker has a lot more accessibility as the Doctor than most of the others... and as the first Doctor so many of us Americans were exposed to, he tends to hold a dear spot in our hearts.

He was my favorite doctor until David Tennant took over the role. I have to admit that I'm now enchanted by DT's version.

[Steven E. McDonald]

God, I feel old all over again. I first saw Doctor Who when the first episode was broadcast in 1963.

I rather like "Whovians" as a fan name, but my mind keeps wanting to go to "Whoovers" because I'm perverse.

As people have noted, the entire series is extremely variable -- partly because of writing, partly because the production was done with five bob and goodwill for most of the run. Also, what constitutes the great and what represents the suck varies from fan to fan.

Basically, though, surviving Hartnell is generally good, with the MAJOR exception of "The Gunfighters." Pat Troughton's era had some good stories, of which "The Krotons" wasn't one, finishing with the huge "The War Games," which established the Time Lords and Gallifrey once and for all.

Pertwee had some wonderful elements -- using the Brigadier and UNIT fully, for example, and introducing Sarah Jane Smith (I did have a soft spot for Jo, however; she was cute and sexy and unfortunately dense.)

Tom Baker went from high to low to high, depending on the producer and the writer, and the rule of thumb seems to be that if it has Lalla Ward in it, the episode's likely to be lame (it didn't help that Baker was shagging her throughout.) Davison went from high to low over a period of time.

By this point John Nathan-Turner was well involved, which didn't help, as he was a pretty naff bloke when it came to the production end.

Colin Baker's run can be pretty much avoided -- see the Big Finish audio plays for much better. "Trial Of A Timelord" was horrible, and introduced shrieky little Mel. Mel remained with the show through the first bit of McCoy's run -- she was phased out in "Dragonfire" and replaced by Ace, although it was a couple more stories until McCoy's Doctor suddenly turned interesting -- that was when the Cartmell Plan took effect, and the doctor became "more than just a Timelord."

Unortunatwly that's when the Beeb killed the show dead. The Cartmell Plan played out in the Virgin New Adventures books, expanding quite impressively -- one of those books was turned into the Tenth Doctor story "Human Nature/Family Of Blood" that ran this past season. Another book, Lungbarrow, is the original version of "Ghost Light," a McCoy story.

The 1996 TV movie was a failed rebirth attempt, notable mainly for great TARDIS interior design. The subsequent novels were much better, although skipping the first dozen or so of them is a good idea, as there wasn't as clear an idea on what they wanted to do with the line when the BBC Books crew first took over. The Big Finish audio dramas are interesting.

The Ninth and Tenth Doctor series are a forward from the old series, although a lot of people think that Russell Davies has lost the essence of Who while getting a larger budget and flashy toys. I mostly like it -- RTD has some issues when it comes to story and his twitches, and there's way too much Dalek involvement for my taste -- and it can be great fun to watch.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

1. Whovians is a popular term, although some fans dislike it immensely.

2. Yes, you lucked upon one of the best Who serials of all time. If you like Dalek serials, their first serial in 1963, "The Daleks", and its 1964 follow-up, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", are both excellent examples of British science fiction television of that vintage, plus have the wonderful William Hartnell as the First Doctor.

3. There was certainly a decline in the 1980s under producer John Nathan-Turner, and the final serial aired before cancelation, "Survival", was painful in its awfulness.

4. Not only do we have blood feuds about our favorite Doctors, sometimes we even have blood feuds about our favorite showrunners!

[Alden Bates]

The newsgroup rec.arts.drwho had a long and bloody feud between the Jon Pertwee and the Sylvester McCoy fans for an inexplicably long time. Ahhh, fans...

[Julie]

1, As far as I knew we Dr Who fans called ourselves "British". (It was utterly inescapable growing up in Britain. Saturday tea-time was Dr Who. Everyone joked about Daleks and the TARDIS and losing those references was one of the most jarring things about moving to the US! Or am I just a huge geek?).

2 and 3, The Tom Baker years featured some great and popular stories along with the uneven gift of Douglas Adams as script editor, which explains much of the love. Don't neglect the other doctors though. The first doctor is hard to get into at this remove, but worth a look. Troughton is a great doctor with good companions. Pertwee was everyone's favourite when I was growing up, the youngest in the family, and the stories are more serious and sci fi than a lot of the Tom Baker ones. I loved Peter Davidson as the doctor, and Sylvester McCoy too, although their stories were hobbled by the Powers That Be, who fretted about the body count. Poor Colin Baker got a raw deal with TV politics and annoying assitants. New Who has no such restrictions and if you're not watching it, you're missing some of the best TV out there (except with too much soppy stuff. And I'm a girl!). Especially look out for episodes by Steven Moffat - spiritual child of Douglas Adams!

From the older ones, anything written by Robert Holmes is awesome and worth watching.

4, Blood feuds? Possibly among the US converts but as for the rest of us, as I said, we're British. Most people love their first doctor the best: the one they remember from when they were still young enough that, no matter how bad the special effects, Dr Who scared the pants off you.

Glad you're coming over to the Who-niverse.

PS The Who convention scene seems even more warm and fuzzy than the Trek one.