Here's an idea.
The Doctor is not a character, but a set of signs.
Get your fezzes and sonics ready,
because on November 23rd, it is the 50th anniversary
of "Doctor Who."
Having started in 1963, "Doctor Who"
is the longest running sci-fi television show of all time.
Incidentally, the longest-running TV show period
is the Academy Awards.
The longest-running American TV series is "Meet the Press,"
but the longest-running dramatic series
is-- get your guesses ready, but you're not
going to get it-- "Guiding Light," which
was canceled or, um, burnt out in 2009.
Also, I'm just going to take this off now.
Anyway, "Doctor Who" is the quote, "centerpiece"
of BBC One, and has a massive fan
base of Whovians, some of whom might
have a spiritual connection to the Doctor.
So of course, it makes sense that they're all very excited
that it has a birthday coming up.
In the universe of the show, the Doctor travels around time
and space, usually with a companion of some kind,
in a blue police-call-box-looking
spaceship called the Tardis.
And though he looks human, he's actually a race
of alien called Time Lord.
He has two hearts.
And in most situations, save for the ones where the stakes need
to be raised significantly, the Doctor cannot die.
He just regenerates.
Practically, in our universe that
means that there have been a good number of dudes
who have walked a mile in the Doctor's shoes or scarf or bow
tie.
And though they've all been different in their own way,
they're all still somehow the Doctor.
Starting out, the first Doctor was Mr. William Hartnell.
And though at that time the show was expressly aimed at kids,
Hartnell's doctor was a bit of a grouch.
He played the Doctor as a maybe lonely,
maybe self-exiled curmudgeon who only occasionally
let bits of warmth and sincerity fly free.
By 1966, after only three years, a collusion of events,
including Hartnell's own health, led to his premature departure
from the role.
But in their infinite wisdom, the producers realized, wait.
This is a TV show about aliens and time travel.
We just make stuff up.
Let's just make up a way to replace this guy.
Hartnell recommended Patrick Troughton as his replacement.
And in the fourth part of the 10th planet,
Hartnell's doctor rejuvenates-- it was not yet regeneration--
into Troughton's second Doctor.
And in that instant, the Doctor became not just an actor,
and much more than a character.
The Doctor is very different from Batman or James
Bond, who only happened to be played by different people.
Arguably the central feature of the Doctor
is his unstable existence.
The name of the show is "Doctor Who."
His transformation into another person
with different preferences and opinions, his mystery
is canonized.
It is part of the story.
And, well, depending upon how you count it,
it's happened 11 times.
That's a lot of different people and a lot of different Doctors.
According to the BBC, Troughton's Doctor
was eccentric and a little bumbling.
John Pertwee's was bold, dramatic,
and action-hero-esque, Tom Baker's a deadpan kidder,
or as we call it in the United States, English.
Peter Davison's was youthful and inquisitive, yet vulnerable.
Colin Baker's was egomaniacal.
Sylvester McCoy's was quiet and inquisitive.
Paul McGann's was romantic and sincere.
Eccleston's was intense, Tennant's jubilant and manic,
Smith's astute, intuitive, and chin-tastic.
I'm sorry.
I couldn't help myself.
So being that they're all so different,
it makes sense that the regeneration of the Doctor
is a big deal.
What are they going to bring to the role?
How are they going to respond to the universe?
How are they going to be and be different from all
of the previous instances of the Doctor?
What, for instance, does Peter Capaldi
have in store for us as number 12?
Because however different each Doctor actor is,
they still have to embody and draw from and interact
with that set of things that makes the Doctor the Doctor.
And of course, there's the easy stuff.
Two hearts, time travel, Tardis, Gallifrey.
Yup.
Sounds about right.
But there's also a more elusive set of characteristics
that when embodied turn some guy into the Doctor.
You might call these hallmarks symbols, signs within the show
itself that signify to you the man you are watching
is the Doctor.
And though between the different Doctors
those signs are always encoded within the performance
of the actor, I think they're still there.
Like, I always expect the Doctor to be a problem solver,
even if the solution is generally psychic paper
or a sonic screwdriver.
It doesn't do wood.
I expect that the Doctor revel in being different,
in being an alien amongst aliens,
and that he have a deep, if occasionally begrudging,
compassion for humanity.
And to go one step further, I always expect
that the Doctor and "Doctor Who" as a piece of media
are going to reflect ideas about our world,
like how being an outsider and being helpful
are not mutually exclusive, and sometimes
might even be intimately linked, that being an expert
doesn't mean having all of the answers all of the time,
and that being in control sometimes means being
able to give control to others.
Of course, there are also the accidental reflections
of our world, like how it would appear that the universe's most
powerful and frequent savior can only be a white dude, who
mostly whisks attractive women away
from their dull or stressful lives
to show them the universe.
But I have high hopes for a Doctor
Who of the future that embraces the diversity of the universe
it so clearly operates within, both in the show and in life.
But even this raises the same question.
Would a female Doctor be the Doctor?
Would a Southeast Asian Doctor be the Doctor?
For some people, certainly not.
And for other people, sure, why not?
Which really indicates the amazing and exciting and rare
thing about the Doctor.
People have a sense, we have differing personal senses
of who the Doctor is, of what constitutes and signifies
Doctor-ness.
Spiderman and James Bond, for instance,
are monoliths, characters with looks and qualities
and catchphrases that telegraph directly to audiences.
Doctor Who, on the other hand, is different things
to different people.
And not because he's an empty mold into which you
pour an actor, but because so many amazing actors
and directors and writers and prop makers
and costume designers and fans have
contributed to his meaning over the last 50 years.
What do you guys think?
What does the Doctor mean to you?
Let us know in the comments.
And click on my Fez to subscribe.
It's actually-- it's very soft.
It's very nice.
I might just wear this around.
Isn't lord a royal title?
Let's see what you guys had to say about pop music.
BraveMenDieHard says that pop music is about the people who
are singing it and how much money
has been invested into making it sound really good.
And I wonder whether or not this suggests
that you could have a really popular song that
is just complete jibberish.
"What Does the Fox Say?"
bertrand esperou seems to be responding
to all of the comments left by people saying that pop music is
just across the board junk, and wonders
about the cool factor of listening
to lots of unknown music.
And I think, yeah, this is a thing-- I certainly
went through this when I was younger,
that it's a way to define yourself,
right, that you listen to things that are harder to find,
that are not as popular, and that it's
easy to say, like, oh, the popular thing is just bad,
because it's popular.
But I'm totally on board with bertrand's desire.
You know, like what's not cool about listening to pop music?
I like some pop music.
fragmattic's comment reminds me of a distinction
that I like to make between popular music and common music.
And I think of Radiohead as common music but not pop music,
and like Tom Waits as common music but not pop music,
because you don't usually hear them on the radio,
but lots of people listen to them.
And I think that this is a useful distinction.
I don't know.
Maybe you think it's useful too.
Tim Mazzola takes issue with basically the whole episode
and makes some really good points.
But I'm going to respond to one specifically,
which is that I don't think it's that we think
that everybody who listens to the radio
listens to only the top 40.
But I think it is that the people who
do listen to the top 40 is the group of people
who tends to move the music market significantly,
so they are a significant factor, even if they are not
a huge group.
John Ohno says that our relationship to popular music
is not like Stockholm syndrome, but more like insider trading.
And this is a really interesting comment,
so I'm just going to pause here so you can read it.
To add to Ryan Sample's comment, I
would say I always think of pop not as a descriptor
but as a genre designation, like the reality in reality TV
doesn't describe that it is real,
it just describes a genre of television.
So yeah.
In response to last week's episode,
Alex Bermann brings in the more critical theory side of things,
citing Adorno and Horkheimer, which, yeah, this is
another angle of the same idea.
Christopher Jackson says that popular music might not
be getting its meaning from something like the Stockholm
syndrome but from something called the mere exposure
effect, which I'd never heard of and is super-interesting,
so you should go Google around for that.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these faithful companions.
Next week, we are going to have a shorter episode, because, you
know, it's Thanksgiving.
And then the week after that, we're
going to do something that we should
have done a long time ago and answer
your questions about Idea Channel and me
and how it's made and [INAUDIBLE] around and PBS
and whatever you guys want to know, within reason.
But first, you need to ask us some questions,
so we'll put some links to a thread in the subreddit
in the description and also to a Google Moderator where
you can submit questions that need to be in by December 2nd.
And then I'll answer them.
And we'll put that up on December 4th.
And in light of a tweet of the week,
you should make sure to check out
all of the videos that are featured in the end card that
is going to happen right now.
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