Doctor Who

Today I’ve decided to write about a British series I really like called “Doctor Who”. I’ll divide it in four “itens”, to make it easier to understand. They are: General Information; The main reasons that make me love Doctor Who; An adventure in London; and The Doctor Who’s spin offs.

1) General information

Doctor Who is a British series made by BBC. It started in 1963, stopped in 1989 and started again in 2005. According to the Guiness Book, it is the longest British fiction series ever made. I found it watching a YouTube British videologer called Charlie. In many of his videologs he talked so and so much about it that I wanted to watch Doctor Who as well.

The series is about a time traveler known as “The Doctor”. Nowadays, he’s 905 years old. He isn’t human, of course. He’s from an alien race called the “Time Lords”. The main characteristic of that race is not to have only one heart, but two hearts. The Doctor uses to travel with a companion, a beautiful and intelligent girl that helps him when he needs it. His worst enemy is, without doubt, an alien race called “Daleks”. They look like octopus, but they have just one eye. They protect themselves in robots armors. Since the Doctor’s first adventures, we can see that the Daleks want to exterminate everyone that is not a Dalek.

The Doctor travels in a spaceship called TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions in Space), that can travel to anywhere, anywhen. The TARDIS is supposed to change its appearance according to the place it landed but, since the first episodes, the Circuit that is responsible to do the changes had broken and the ship does not change its appearance anymore. It always stays looking like a police box from the 60’s. And, the best of all, the TARDIS is alive!

In the new series, the Daleks started a war called the Time War against the Time Lords. They wanted to exterminate the people of Gallifrey, Doctor Who kind. In this war, they killed all the Time Lords, except the Doctor, that ran away and, apparently, betrayed his people.

But how do you think that the Doctor series survived all this time? I mean, Doctor Who first actor didn’t have the eternal life, did he? In fact, Doctor Who producers found a good way to explain the main actor changes: as all the Time Lords, The Doctor can regenerate. All the times he is almost dyeing, a new Doctor appears. Now, in 2010 series, we are watching the eleventh Doctor, interpreted by Matt Smith.

It’s funny to see how The Doctor changed throw time. The first Doctor was an old and boring man that used to leave people at their own. He traveled with his granddaughter, Susan and hers teachers, Barbara and Ian. All that the girls wanted to do were scream at every moment and cry a lot. Ian looked more like the actual Doctor: intelligent, strong, brave. The ninety and tenth Doctor’s, my favorites ones were the opposite of the first. Mysterious, cleavers, helping people and saving the world. Theirs companions use to be strong girls, always ready to help. They considered the opportunity to travel to other planets and epochs a good escape from the trouble in theirs families.

2) The main reasons that make me love Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a wonderful series in many aspects. The stories are always brilliant! When you think you’ve seen all, there’s always more to see. The pictures sometimes are so beautiful that they can take the breath away. The music involves you in a way you can’t notice. But, topping this all, watch Doctor Who can be sometimes better to improve your knowledge than watch a class. The episodes don’t show just fiction, but true history and humanity knowledge. Watching it I’ve learned a lot about history, painting, society, literature, geography and, of course, English. The Doctor had already met the Queen Victoria, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Van Gogh, Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie and a lot of others.

There’re moral concepts in everything The Doctor do. He can’t forgive the cheaters, liars and dishonest. He always does everything he can and can’t to save people and the world, even if it means that he’ll die.

3) And adventure in London

Watch Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane’s Adventures is, in a way, funny because sometimes they shows places in London I’ve ever seen like the two floors bus, the telephone boxes, the houses and parks. For example, there’s one a Sarah Jane episode when Luke, Clyde and Rani went to the Museum to see Mona Lisa for the first time and there were a lot of school tours. When I watched it, I remembered when I was in the Museum’s hall searching for a wheelchair to my brother because he hurt his heel jumping in the stairs and because of the pain the museum was too big for him to visit it just walking! Or, especial Doctor Who episode that shows a thief called Lady Christina invading the National Gallery in order to still one diamond. It made me remember when I was there and stopped to hear a teacher ask for little children “Who do you think owns this paint? And this museum and these artworks? The Queen? Me? The girl just there? No, it’s yours. Every single portrait there belongs to you. You can come here every time you want and see these beautiful paints. If you’re sad, or happy, or just want to think, you can come here see what people thought about it.” It was so lovely! I wonder if some day Brazil will have something like that. Art for people, not just for the ones that can pay for it.

4) Doctor Who’s Spin Offs

The series produced two spin-offs (series that are based in the main series): Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. The first one is about the Torchwood Institute, founded by the Queen Victoria to protect earth from alien’s attacks. It’s survived until our days, and it’s commanded by Captain Jack Harkness. Full off blood, sex, unnecessary violence and nothing but that, it is not different from any of the American series. I really didn’t like it.

The second one is about the adventures of an ex companion of the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and her son, Luke. Luke is in fact a perfect human being created by aliens called the Bane. They called him “The Archetype”. He’s more intelligent, stronger and good-looking than most of the humans. With theirs friends Clyde, Rani and Maria, they protect Earth from bad aliens and help the good ones. In many aspects, Sarah Jane is similar to Doctor Who. First of all, in both of them the main good characters don’t use guns. Together, Sarah Jane and Luke are a kind of Doctor: cleaver, brilliant, saving the world; Clyde with his jokes looks like Mickey, an old boyfriend of Rose and Rani or Maria are like the Doctor’s companions.

Whatever, Doctor Who is a wonderful series to see if you want something intelligent and beautiful. Give it a try. ;)

Take a look at this:

Doctor Who BBC’s official site (in English) www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw

To see news and download the episodes of Doctor Who (in Portuguese) www.universowho.wordpress.com

The Doctor’s Wikia (in English) www.tardis.wikia.com/

Watch Charlie’s videos (in English) http://www.youtube.com/user/charlieissocoollike?blend=1&ob=4