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I have been watching a lot of Syfy recently, that’s the Science Fiction channel, in it’s new moniker. It is one of the few basic cable channels that I watch. I have been dvr-ing Stargate Atlantis, and SG-1, as well as Caprica, since I am such a Battlestar fan, I even liked the ending. And I have been watching Doctor Who on BBC America, and beginning to delve into that strange universe. I remember watching Doctor Who reruns as a kid. I have no idea which incarnation of the Doctor that it was (it was the one with the scarf, unless there’s more than one with that scarf), but I remember being very very confused, and very very interested at the same time; this continues to be a basic component of my interest in scifi.
The new show is like that as well, with some conscious homage to it’s campy roots. I did not watch the show in it’s new form as it came out; I only just started getting into the David Tennant incarnation in the last few months as the series reached it’s end (and I’m an immediate fan). If you can look past the camp, and start to dissect the universe that the Doctor inhabits, then you begin to get the attraction. This creature who wants to be a man, is a fascinating blend of all the aspects of what it means to be human, and yet, he has the responsibility of eternity on his shoulders as well. I find it gleefully fascinating that the Doctor Who phenomenon in Britain is what it is. What does it say about a country that one of their most renknown and beloved modern folk heroes is such a transcendental ball of psychic chaos and wonderful wonderful goofyness? I guess this is not surprising of the country that gifted the world Monty Python. There is an entire wiki site devoted to the TARDIS, that big blue box in the show. There’s a larger page on the show and it’s spin offs of course, but an entire site devoted to the design, construction, history, uses and misuses etc. of the TARDIS itself. Wonderful reading if you’ve a few hours free sometime…