Thursday, June 20, 2013

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Trailer



I fully confess to coming late to the game. I started my relationship with Doctor Who when the reboot happen and I met Rose Tyler. Since then it's just been me going along with occasional diversions to the excellent 'Torchwood' spin-off shows. I remember hating Doctor Who as a teen because it came on before Star Trek which played at Midnight on the PBS station we could pick up from North Dakota.

Too many times did Doctor Who put me to sleep and I would wake only as Star Trek was finishing. But much like my feud with LEGO I give the current incarnation of Doctor Who the benefit of the doubt for consistently being a source of fun entertainment. I hope the next Doctor is a fresh twist but it will no doubt be a skinny British guy with impossibly perfect for styling hair. Either way I will still watch because how important can his name really be?

4 comments:

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

I love how they incorporated that line from the very first episode into the theme of this montage. "If we only knew his name..." It fits so perfectly.

My mom and dad both watched Tom Baker's Doctor Who when they were in college on PBS. When I was born he tried to get us on board with it as well, but as it was no longer airing and there was no Internet yet, the best we could do was VHS copies of "The Five Doctors" and the Paul McGann movie that Dad borrowed from some guy he met at a conference.

The memorable name packed a punch as during my senior year in high school I was watching CBC (Go Canada!) who were heavily advertising the revival series. This marshaled enough attention from the young folk who liked the cool aesthetics and the grown ups who remembered the classic series that we all gathered around the set to watch the premiere of "Rose". We were all hooked, and all gathered around to watch the Christopher Eccelston season week after week, each one of us invested in it. It was probably the last time we had a real family activity before I left for college.

Sadly it didn't last. After I moved away, CBC made no plans to pick up the next season, (that and our cable package replaced it with BET) and the SciFi wouldn't get it for at least another year. Fortunately this new fangled thing called "YouTube" came in at the right time to provide foreign entertainment, but alas, I was the only one still onboard.

Though that was a plus for me, as my friend Chema was an big fan of the new series, which I didn't know at the time while I was in the company of a number of friends were I said; "I don't know if I can stay at this party for long, I've got the latest episode of Doctor Who waiting on my laptop." Not long after that she came clean about her feelings for me. We became an official couple and she was my first girlfriend.

My Dad has got me some of the "Best of Tom Baker" DVD set for Christmas some years back and I've sought out a number of the Patrick Troughton episodes on my own, and liked them quite a bit, but I've dipped a bit in keeping up with new episodes since graduating as I've been busier. Its days like this I was I had a time machine.

Kal said...

Wow, you have some very cool and very specific memories around Doctor Who.

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

I have a zoetropic memory. Its the unique ability to recall anything so long as it is associated with film or television.

D.I. Felipe González said...

Bring on the eleventh!