From: doctor@somenode.uucp (Daniel Klugh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: Re: Many Questions About Dr. Who
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 92 21:45:07 EDT
Organization: .sdrawkcaB sgnihT gnipyT roF yteicoS ehT

CXMP@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA (CXMP) writes:

> Hi.  I got an email from Iain Robert Asplin inviting me to look at
> rec.arts.drwho.  I have but I couldn't find a FAQL.  Anyway, I'll
> talk about what I know about Dr. Who and ask questions along the way.
> 
> HARTNELL  A few years back, the PBS station from Wattertown started
> showing Dr. Who episodes every evening starting with the original
> Hartnell Dr. Who.  When they showed "The Web Planet", my dad said
> "I used to think this was good" and we went back to watching Jeopardy.
> (I thought it was worth a try but I didn't think it was worth taping
> so that was that.)  I was also told that the first appearance of the
> Daleks wasn't that good either.  My questions:
> 
> Did Dr. Who slowly get better or were these some initial aberations?
> When did Dr. Who reach its first peak in terms of quality?  Was it with
> Pertwee?
> 
> SECOND DR. WHO  My questions:
> 
> What happened to Hartnell?  Did he die?  Did he quit?  Did he want too
> much money?  Was the second Dr. Who chosen to look like Hartnell?
> 

Hartnell was geting sick of some disease.He could barely do "The Three 
Doctors".

> PERTWEE  When TVOntario from Toronto first showed the Pertwee episodes
> they were fairly new.  I thought Pertwee portreyed a very scholarly
> Dr. Who.  I liked the idea that present day Earth was in danger and not
> the Earth from the future or distant past.  Seemed awfully relevant.
> Also, with so many friends in present day Earth, Dr. Who couldn't just
> get up and go when the going got tough.
> 

Well actualy he was trapped there.So he worked for UNTI in exchange for 
support for trying to free the TARDIS.(which he never does)

> BAKER  Fuzzy hair and a crazy look in his eyes?  Baker seemed like a
> departure from the last Dr. Who and it puzzles me to this day how they
> could expect people to believe such a personality change.  These Dr. Who

Well regeneration is like reincarnation except without the memory wipe.
It chagnges the brain as well as the body.

> stories really went over the top.  I remember
> one episode when the President of Galifrey was revealed to be corrupt
> and Dr. Who was made President.  In the end, he just left.  My
> questions:
> 

It wasn't the President that was corupt but Chancellor Goth.The Master 
corupted him.

> How did they choose their President (I didn't catch that)?  Who became
> Prseident after he left?  How many Galifreyans are there?  Are they all
> Time Lords?  Just what do the Time Lords *do*?
> How many rooms are there in the TARDIS?  When was it first
> revealed that there was more than one room and was it important to the
> plot?  Why does he need so many rooms?  Is Dr. Who privaledged to have
> so much space?  Does the Master have anywhere near as much space in his
> TARDIS?  If the Master is evil, why don't Time Lords actively track him
> down?  Do Time Lords ever marry and have children?  What kind of society
> did they have before they mastered time travel?
> 

Borusa became President-elect.The are probably 100's of millions of 
Gallifreyans.(Earth is a severly over crowded planet)
Time Lords are all scientists and/or scholars.They forbid themselves from 
interfering with lesser species.(same reason as the Prime Directive in 
Star Trek)
The TARDIS was huge from the start.
The "Edge of Destruction" had them going near the core/center of the 
TARDIS.TARDISs are made to be scientific outposts/"ships".
The Master's TARDIS is very similar to the Doctor's.
The Time Lords don't care enough to chase him.
Gallifreyans are sterlie.(at least the females are)

> I also seem to recall a story in which Dr. Who learns of a future
> version of himself being evil.  What was the story there?
> 
> DAVIDSON  Is it true that Peter Davidson wasn't a Dr. Who fan when he
> was given the part?  If so, I can picture the following dialogue:
> 
> Peter:   So I'm to play a Doctor.
> Writers: Well, actually, Dr. Who.
> Peter:   Right, a Doctor named Who.
> Writers: Actually, a Time Lord from the planet Galifrey.
> Peter:   So why is he called a Doctor?
> Writers: Because he's a learned individual.
> Peter:   Right, a Doctor.
> 
> This seems to be the way he played Dr. Who: straight!  He really seemed
> to mean it whenever he'd speak technobabble and this made it seem that
> much more funny.  It was like he was playing straight man to a show that
> was (sorry if this is a poor choice of words) a joke.  It was funny when

A lot of the stuff he said made sense.He was usualy obscure because no 
one really knows how it all works.

> he would go into the Earth's past (nice art direction in these episodes)
> and you knew that one of three things would happen: 1) an alien invasion
> 2) the Master would try to kill him or 3) the Master would open a portal
> through which aliens would appear and he would use them in an attempt to
> kill the Doctor.  It always puzzled me how their encounters had a sense
> of order.  Why did the following never occur?
> 
> Doctor: The Master!  How did you escape after we managed to turn the
>         alien invaders against you?
> Master: That hasn't happened to me yet!  Thanks for the info!
> Doctor: opps
> 
> Actually, these episodes had two very pretty companions: Sarah and the
> one from the future.  Of course, there was also that annoying little
> "I'm so smart I know what E=mc^2 means" brat.  Somehow, I found it hard
> to believe they were upset when he died.  (Actually, when he first died,
> I was puzzled as to why they couldn't go back in time to save him but
> I realise now that they would either 1) meet themselves or 2) meet him
> before they orginally met him, right?)
> 

Who's Sarah?The 5th Doctor went around with Tegan,Nyssa and Adric.
Well,Adric WAS smart.He could do complex equations in his head.
Well Adric was a living person like them.Of course they're going to cry 
when their friend dies.How idiotic.
You can't change your own timeline without creating potentialy 
devastating paradoxes.

> C. BAKER  Is anyone willing to defend his portreyal of Dr. Who?  Was it
> bad acting, bad writing, both or am I way out of line here?  OK, I admit
> Peri looked *very* nice but, well, while one might consider that
> entertaining, it doesn't make for solid science fiction, does it?
> 

As much as anyone is going to defend your spelling.(sic)
Well the 6th Doctor was a bit wild but a very entertaining Doctor.
I whish he'd get all angry&maniacal against the bad guys instead of Peri.

Dalek:Exterminate the Doctor.

Doctor:Exterminate me?Oh,I see,you're going to exterminate me.
EXTERMINATE ME?!?!?!?!

DALEK:Yow!

Actualy I'd go for Romana II or Leela for sex apeal.(or just plain sex)
Of course Ace has potential...

> THE LATEST DR. WHO  I've never seen the latest Dr. Who.  (The Burlington
> PBS station shows Dr. Who Saturday nights at 11:00!)  Is he any good?
> The program Dr. Who has staunch supporters so I assume the *program*
> must have gotten better.
> 
I got better.

> Note on time travel: Iain was telling me that in the episode "Pyramids
> of Mars" (which sounds familiar), the Doctor told Sarah and Lawrence
> that time can be "shaped", that there are "alternate" time lines and
> that a being of sufficient power can "destroy the future".  My
> questions:
> 
> OK, so Dr. Who is a learned individual but how can he be sure of the
> history of various worlds when there's always the possibility of the
> future having been changed?  When he appears and saves Earth, doesn't
> he change the future?  How can Earth exist if the normal course of
> events was always to have the Earth destroyed/invaded until the Doctor,
> *coincidentally*, would appear just as the invasion began and before it
> became common knowledge that Earth was being invaded?
> 

I have also argued that point.
Let's take you example.If the Earth gets devastated in the early 20th 
century unless the Doctor stops Sutekh then until he takes care of 
that,any adventure(including all the UNIT adventures)would never of 
happened.So obviously he is probability traveling.(travel to alternate 
realities)
Now while this conincides with real life time travel,it kinda messes up 
the mythos of Doctor Who.Paradoxes come around from everything existing 
in one time line.Now "Inferno" and "Pyramids of Mars" sugest a 
multiversal structure like or reality has.(Inferno:"So free will isn't an 
ilussion")
But the whole buisness about changeing your personal time line only 
creates a paradox in a uni-versal ,er,universe.So we have to invent some 
hybrid of the two theories.

> Another thing that bothers me: if Doctor Who was important during two
> periods in history, namely the period when he worked with the Brigadeer
> and the overthrow of the Daleks, how come when he encounters people in
> Earth's far future and he introduces himself as "The Doctor,
> a Time Lord", *nobody* knows who he is?  Also, how did the Daleks take
> over Earth and what's to stop Dr. Who from travelling to that point in
> time and preventing it (I do recall one episode where Dr. Who has the
> opportunity to prevent the Daleks from ever coming to be but he wimps
> out for no good reason - "the alliances that would never have been
> forged" indeed!)?
> 

UNIT was a top secret orginasation.
He doesn't kill the Daleks for the same reason he didn't let Ace kill 
Adolph Hitler,the resulting future would be totaly different and there's 
no way of telling what it would be like.
Of course the Dalek question is moot as they still got blown up when a 
Dalek ran over the wires.Thus the Daleks had to develop normaly(over 300 
years)instead of artificialy.

> General questions: how long did each actor play Dr. Who?  Does anyone
> have a *current* timeline for Dr. Who (Here I'm assuming that
> time is changing all the time but the Time Lords are so ancient that
> they exist regardless of the changes that are made.)?
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>                                 ! Address as above or use
> Martin Phipps                   ! LOULA@hep.physics.mcgill.ca or simply
>                                 ! MUHEP::LOULA if you're on a VAX
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> Terminal freeze, duplicate posts, lost posts and email-come-posts,
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                The Doctor

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"I'm The Doctor,I know these things"-The Doctor