Red, White & 'Who'

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Red, White & 'Who'
April 16, 2011
By Stephen Lynch
New York Post

He’s been around longer than Captain Kirk, has met more robots than Will Robinson and has a ship at least as cool as the Millennium Falcon.

Yet many Americans — even sci-fi fans — might still be asking: Doctor who?

To which he’d answer: Exactly.

“Doctor Who” is the longest-running science-fiction series in the world, and a phenomenon in the UK, where about 8 million people watch the show weekly, and his various toys — the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver — are as iconic as lightsabers and X-Wings here.

That’s starting to change, though, thanks to BBC America, which enjoyed a channel ratings record of 1.2 million viewers during the show’s last season.

Now, for the first time in “Doctor Who’s” history, the new season premieres the same day here — Saturday, April 23 — as it does in the UK. That episode, “The Impossible Astronaut,” is also the first shot on location in the US — in Utah’s Monument Valley.

So, first things first. Don’t be intimidated by the fact that “Doctor Who” has been on since 1963 (albeit with an absence that lasted most of the 1990s). Though there are references to previous adventures and recurring villains, you can pick it up with the premiere knowing only a few basics:

The Doctor is an alien called a Time Lord, about 900 years old, similar in appearance to a human except he has two hearts. He’s the last of his race, as his people were destroyed in a long war with their greatest enemy, the Daleks (robots with suction cups and high-pitched voices that yell “exterminate!”). He has a real name, but never reveals it — and everyone asks, the first time they meet him, “Doctor who?”

When the original actor to play The Doctor, William Hartnell, became too ill to carry on, the writers came up with an inventive way to keep the show going — since he’s an alien, he can regenerate his appearance and personality (though retain his memories). Eleven actors have played The Doctor — the current one, Matt Smith, is, at 28, the youngest. In an interview with The Post, Smith describes the revolving door as “kind of like Hamlet, but on the telly. You give your version of The Doctor. In essence, the bits of the story, the narrative is the same, but we interpret it in different ways.”

Because The Doctor gets lonely, he enlists human companions, primarily attractive young women with whom he never gets involved. The current travelers are Scottish redhead Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillan) and her dorky but dedicated husband Rory (Arthur Darvill).

The Doctor and his friends wander history in a ship called a TARDIS (“time and relative dimensions in space”) which can land in any time and any place, though it always looks like blue British police box when it gets there. They thwart alien plots, usually by a feat of engineering or brilliant speech, since The Doctor doesn’t carry weapons. His one tool, the sonic screwdriver, is used primarily to open locks.