From: CXMP@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA (CXMP)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: Many Questions About Dr. Who
Date: 1 Oct 92 23:01:07 GMT
Organization: McGill University

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?

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.

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
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:

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?

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
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?)

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?

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.

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?

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!)?

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.)?

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Martin Phipps                   ! LOULA@hep.physics.mcgill.ca or simply
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Terminal freeze, duplicate posts, lost posts and email-come-posts,
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho