Who? Doctor Who!

Hi guys!

Today's blog entry is going to be about a TV show! (again)

This TV show is part of the British culture and has celebrated its 50^th anniversary in December 2013. Yep, it's pretty old already, has TONS of episodes and an always changing main character. Can you guess this? No? It's Doctor Who!

 

Doctor Who TARDIS and the alien Dalek in London's airport. It's THAT popular.

So what is this “Doctor Who” show about? It's about a Time Lord, an alien race from the planet Gallifrey, who can travel through time and space and experiences lots of adventures with his, mostly human, companions. No one knows the name of this Time Lord, he just calls himself the “Doctor”. Unlike most science fiction shows and films, Doctor Who is not about making war and fight other creatures. Although it can be quite violent from time to time, it's not the purpose of the Doctor and the show.

The Doctor choose to take this “name” because while he is travelling and exploring new places, he is constantly helping others. His companions are lending him a hand and are very clever and funny most of the time. The Doctor doesn't have any weapons, he just has a sonic screwdriver, which is handy in many situations. He is a very odd person, always funny, mad and adventurous, but also extremely intelligent and sad at heart. His home planet, Gallifrey, was destroyed in a war from which he fled and therefore he is the last Time Lord alive. He travels in a time machine, called TARDIS (abbreviation for Time And Relative Dimensions in Space), which he stole on the day he fled from his planet. Yep, he is a mad man!

One huge part of the Doctor Who experience is his dying process. Time Lords live for a huge amount of time. The Doctor is approximately 900 years old, which isn't even too old for Time Lords. But the most interesting thing about this race is first: they've got two hearts, and second: they 're able to regenerate. Every time a Time Lord dies, he regenerates. His appearance and character traits change and only his past and memories remain the same.

The 11 Doctors and the 12th one, Peter Capaldi, coming November

To this day, there are 11 doctors, the 12^th is coming in the new season starting November 2014. The Doctors are counted after their regenerations, so if the first Doctor regenerates, the moment there is the "new" Doctor, it is the second Doctor. The regeneration is one of the most dramatic, sad and touching moments in the whole series. The show itself is VERY sad, but also extremely funny and thrilling. It combines every good aspect of movies and shows you could imagine (except it's not erotic, thank god). Today it also has very good special effects and every single episode feels like a beautiful film, making you want to watch more.

Doctor Who was the first science fiction show on British TV. No one actually expected it to be so successful and so extremely long. The makers had few resources and the actors weren't actually the best but people loved it and were thrilled to see the new episodes. In the first stage of the show, the episodes were 20 minutes long and ended with a cliffhanger. The first episode was aired in 1963, which makes it almost 10 years older than Star Trek. There were few special effects, or almost even none. But the series evolved over time, forming a HUGE fanbase. 

The most popular Doctors of all time: 10th (David Tennant) and 11th (Matt Smith)

The show aired from 1963 to 1989 with a short pause in 1984. After 1989 there were no episodes until 2005, where new episodes were produced and the show gained a whole new generation of whovians. From 2005, there is a clear line between the new and old Doctor Who style. The old episodes are called “Classic Who” and many episodes are “lost” now, because the BBC didn't record or save them. The “New Who” is extremely popular throughout the whole world and never disappoints the fans.

I would like to go on writing about the Doctor and the story of the show, but then the entry would never ever end.

So I hope you enjoyed reading about this show and if I managed to make you interested in it, you should definitely check it out! It's really worth watching.

Thanks for reading!!

Bye~