Television Call the Dr., please. by Lloyd Rose The change of cast was announced on the BBC evening news. On Easter Sun­ day 1983, 40,000 people gathered to cel­ ebrate its 20th year on television. No doubt about it: Doctor Who has been a resounding popular success and is now a cult phenomenon. Why? Because this "children's adventure series" taps the same ageless concerns as the Oz and the Alice books, The Wind in the Willows, the fairy stories of George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis. Affirmative in spirit, hu­ mane and unsentimental, it rises above its sci-fi serial cliches to become an off­ beat interstellar fairy tale. Doctor Who has been shown in this country since the mid-Seventies; it now airs on over 80 stations. We are not see­ ing all of it, only the seven seasons dur­ ing which Tom Baker played the Doctor and, in some areas, a couple of seasons of theac.Rjrs who preceded and followed him: Jdhn Pertwee and Peter Davison. It began to catch on around 1979, the Tom Baker as Dr. Who, with K-9. year Barbara Elder founded the North American Doctor Who Appreciation So­ gotten the hang of Dr. Who, in which a The show is in serial form—two to six ciety (NADWAS) here. Marvel Comics at­ Jonathan Miller look-alike in a floppy episodes of 24 minutes each—and its tempted to launch a comic book based hat and anaconda scarf confronts extra­ plotting rarely gets much above cliff- on it in 1981, but it's only recently that terrestrial creatures that look like crawl­ hanger level. The Doctor battles mon­ the program has begun to reach cult ing lasagna carpeted with fuzzy green sters and evil aliens; he helps oppressed status. Time and TV Guide have paid felt." For the casual viewer, Wolcott has peoples free themselves; he periodically attention to it. Lyle Stuart published pretty much summed the show up. It saves Earth from destruction. Before the Doctor Who: A Celebration last year and takes a while to get the hang of it, and to inevitable triumph over evil, he and his is planning to reprint the English noveli- begin to appreciate its odd, compelling companions are regularly hit on the zations of the show. The NADWAS con­ spirit. head, threatened, tied up, mildly tor­ vention last summer drew 6,000 people, Certainly, as far as general format tured (usually by rays of colored light and just recently a serious exegesis, Doc­ goes, the program could hardly be more that conveniently cause no physical tor Who: The Unfolding Text, was insouciantly lowbrow. It is, as a friend of damage) and finally manage a hair-rais­ published in Britain. mine who cares about such distinctions ing escape. The show has always had its Ameri­ remarked, "sci-fi, not science fiction." The Doctor travels through time and can champions. Harlan Ellison, the sci­ Its hero is a Time Lord from the planet space in a machine called a TARDIS (an ence fiction writer, who is not known for Gallifrey with a body temperature of 60 acronym for Time And Relative Dimen­ his generous critical opinion, has called degrees, two hearts, and a lifespan of sions In Space), which is larger on the it "the greatest science-fiction series of roughly a thousand years. In cases of inside than it is on the outside. Its inven­ all time" and considers it superior to critical injury, he can regenerate into a tors sensibly realized that one of the both Star Wars and Close Encounters of new body—primarily because, in 21 great disadvantages of a time machine is the Third Kind. On the other hand, years, the role has gone through five that, particularly on visits to nontechno- James Wolcott, certainly the best mind actors. Although he is listed as Doctor logical cultures, it tends to sit around the in TV criticism today, dismissed the pro­ Who in the end credits, he is called sim­ landscape looking alien and conspic­ gram with one sentence: "I never have ply (and inexplicably) The Doctor. uous. So they equipped it with a "cha- meleon circuit," which enables it to shift Doctor, who routinely saves the uni­ Yet for all its charm, the universe of shape to blend with its environment. verse, can never quite get the TARDIS to Doctor Who is harsh. People die fre­ Unfortunately for the Doctor, the cha­ run properly. quently, and the innocent often suffer. meleon circuit of his TARDIS is jammed, Everyday details pop up in unex­ The program takes for granted that and he is forced to span the eons and the pected places. There's an old-fashioned there is no God. Phis is never stated in cosmos in a contraption resembling an wooden hatrack in the TARDIS' ultra­ so many words, but every god that the English police call box. modern control room, and the Doctor Doctor runs into turns out to be a fake, The show is obviously whimsical, occasionally wears two-tone wingtips. and he himself frankly thinks of religion though in a nicely daffy way. It's what This quirky hominess is reassuring; it as superstitious rubbish. This antireligi- Americans think of as "very English"— makes the future seem a pleasant and ous bias leaves Doctor Who with a mech­ charming, homey, and slightly off-the- familiar place. And it puts the show anistic and rational universe. This is just wall. But unlike the irksomely precious squarely in a certain English tradition: one of several Victorian accents that give Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (whose the call-box TARDIS is first cousin to the show a slightly archaic tone. Faith in author, Douglas Adams, was once script Alice's looking glass and the old wooden technology is another. So is the idea that editor for Doctor Who and wrote a couple wardrobe that led to C. S. Lewis's Nar- a lone individual can make a difference. of strenuously zany episodes), it isn't nia. This last, so simplistic when presented campy. It doesn't wink at its audience. At the show's inception, its creators didn't have any ideas about Time Lords S3ga8Sg8SS883giT!ggggg3gggggE*SPgSc5 or body regeneration or half the things that are now conceptual pillars of Doctor Who. Not surprisingly, it has a patched- together quality. No one's bothered to STAR MYTHS: hide the joins either. It's as if there were Show -Business BlogApl^les oi\ Flln\ a general agreement among everyone involved that, in a program revolving by Robert Milton, Milled around a 750-year-old alien battling rub­ Star Myths is the first comprehensive study ber-suited monsters, a scrupulous con­ of one of the movies' most durable, popular, cern with minor discrepancies is, if not and misunderstood genres—the show busi­ exactly dishonest, beside the point. The ness biography. Hollywood has been actively turning out these films for an obviously oddities are simply added in and left interested and appreciative audience ever exposed. The result is something like an since the dawn of sound, but only scant criti­ architectural folly—awful in any classi­ cal attention and virtually no serious analysis cal sense, but amusing and sometimes has until now been directed at this highly ritualized form of American popular culture. wonderful if you're willing to ignore re­ ceived ideas about style and taste. When critics and scholars do acknowledge the phenomenon of the "show biz bio-film," One gets the impression that the pro­ INCLUDING: they usually do so in a derisive, passing refer­ THE BUSTER KEATON STORY gram was made by men too sophisti­ ence to the genre's supposed wholesale dis­ THE GLENN MILLER STORY cated to be fooled about the trashy tortion of facts and invention of pseudo-his­ torical events. What has been overlooked is VALENTINO nature of their material, but not too the central function of myth in these modern- HARLOW sophisticated to love it. This combina­ day "lives of the saints" set in the no less THE STORY OF VERNON & IRENE CASTLE artificial worlds of Broadway and Hollywood MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES tion of knowingness and affection gives THE JOLSON STORY the show an appealing innocence. It Star Myths closely examines how the show TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY sometimes overdoes the drollery, but it's business biographical film has craftily JEANNE EAGELS not cute and it doesn't condescend to its twisted the truth in order to cater to the ever- W. C. FIELDS AND ME changing tastes of a curious and envious pub­ THE EDDIE CANTOR STORY viewers. Its silly plots are rendered with lic during more than a half-century of cel­ THREE LITTLE WORDS ingenuity and humor. ebrity worship and scandal mongering. Every THE AMAZING HOWARD HUGHES The humor is diffuse and a little film biography of an entertainment figure, ELVIS! ranging from the glory days of The Great dreamy. Although occasionally a writer THE BENNY GOODMAN STORY Ziegfeld to the agonies of Mommie DearestRHAPSOD Y IN BLUE like Robert Banks Stewart will come up is discussed in detail, with individual LENNY with a straight-faced line such as "I un­ chapters devoted to such specialists as bandleaders, comedians, singers, dancers, ac­ BOGEY derestimated his intelligence, but he tors and songwriters. Over 125 bio-films WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING underestimated the power of organic made between 1930 and 1982 are covered, MAE WEST THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY crystallography," Doctor Who isn't high including both theatrical and made-for-tele- vision productions. Extensively illustrated THE DOLLY SISTERS on wit.