From: duzan@buster.cis.udel.edu (Gary D. Duzan)
Subject: Re: Many Questions About Dr. Who
Organization: Your Organization Could Be Here!
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 01:48:18 GMT

In article <01OCT92.19460128.0063@VM1.MCGILL.CA> 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?
=>
   I think most will agree that _The Web Planet_ is not among the best
of Doctor Who, and some will say it is among the worst. I think
everyone will agree that there are better Hartnells. As for quality in
general, I believe that it is in the eye of the beholder. Its first
peak in viewership was _The Daleks_, that being the second story
shown.  I'd say that the great, good, fair, and bad have been mixed
pretty evenly over the show's history.

=>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?
=>
   I'm not sure of Hartnell's reasons for leaving (though I'm certain
that it is documented somewhere.) He died several years later, but he
did return to reprise his role in _The Three Doctors_. Patrick
Troughton, the second Doctor, was a major change from Hartnell. He was
a good bit younger and a lot more comic. I can only imagine the shock
the British viewers must have experienced when the BBC first pulled the
switch.

=>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.
=>
   I would say more "knowledgable" than "scholarly". Maybe you have had
professors like that, but I haven't. :-) He was on Earth so much because
he was stranded there by the Time Lords as punishment for interfering in
other planets.

=>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.

   After the Hartnell --> Troughton switch, I'd say the Pertwee -->
Baker switch was extremely believable.

=>                                   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 haven't seen it for a while, but as I recall they are
democratically elected. Borusa was made President when the Doctor left
(c.f. the Doctor's meeting with Romana in _The Ribos Operation_.)
Dunno. The answer to that one has been endlessly debated in this
group.  They keep a look out on the Universe and do nothing about it.
There were a few rooms back in the Hartnells, but the size grew during
the Baker years. _The Invasion of Time_ was the first time it was huge
(and hugely important. Note: I don't know about the missing stories.)
Dunno.  Dunno. Not that we have seen.  I think they'd rather not think
about him. Well, supposedly Susan and Andred married Earthlings, but I
think that is about all we know. Dunno.  Concise enough for you? :-)

=>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?
=>
   Personnally, I have decided that that whole season never existed. It
makes me feel much better.

=> [Davison (note spellin and C. Baker stuff deleted]

   There weren't really any questions in there, so I won't really give
any answers.

=>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 think it is safe to say that his first season is crap (mostly due
to poor writing and a poor companion) but the following two are much
better.

=>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?
=>
   The fiendish plot device. Never leave your TARDIS without it.

=>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!)?
=>
   The whole deal with UNIT was Top Secret, so naturally that whole
thing was buried. I imagine the Doctor's role in saving the Earth from
the Daleks was forgetten in the effort to rebuild the planet.  Also,
things tend to be forgotten over long lengths of time.  Deliberately
changing the flow of time is tricky business and not to be taken
lightly.

=>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.)?
=>

Hartnell:  1963 - 1966
Troughton: 1966 - 1969
Pertwee:   1970 - 1974
T. Baker:  1974 - 1981
Davison:   1982 - 1984
C. Baker:  1984 - 1986
McCoy:     1987 - ????

   I don't have the timeline handy.

                                        Gary Duzan
                                        Time  Lord
                                    Third Regeneration



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                             duzan@cis.udel.edu
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