Geek Syndicate Issue 7 | Page 40

Geek Syndicate THE BLUFFER’S GUIDE TO ... Doctor Who Ever wondered what all those geeks in the corner were talking about? Sick of missing out of the sly references and obscure injokes? Never Fear! The Bluffers Guide is here to help! collection of “Assistants” (later “Companions”) and the TARDIS - Time and Relative Dimension in Space - a time machine / space ship disguised as a 1960s era Police Box. I’m impressed you know what TARDIS stands for. Every geek should know what TARDIS stands for, just like they should be able to make a Lightsaber noise and do that hand-salute that Spock does on Star Trek. Image © BBC Worldwide, 2013 Well, they change the actor who plays the title role, but more importantly they also change the character. It’s not a soap opera; where someone goes off to college and comes back looking totally different. To get around the problem of William Hartnell (the first actor to play the Doctor), getting older and less able to keep up with the part, the production team of the time invented the process of “Regeneration”. Which is different from going to college and coming back a brunette? Yes. Well, mostly. The writers introduced the idea that the Doctor was a Time Lord, a renegade member of an ancient and powerful race. One of the abilities of Time Lords was that when faced with death they could regenerate themselves into a new body, with a new personality. Out went Hartnell and in came Patrick Troughton, who for many really Image © BBC, 1973 You know, I was thinking I should probably watch some Doctor Who. Really? What brought that on? Well it’s everywhere, it seems. Even the Guardian ran an article revealing that the Daleks where going to be in it. I didn’t even know that they weren’t in it! No, the Daleks have always been it. It’s just that they’re confirming they will be in the fiftieth Anniversary Special. Along with nearly everything else, it seems. Fiftieth...anniversary? It means the show is fifty years old. I know what it means. But that’s a really long time for a TV show. Yes it is. And a long, strange journey it’s been too. Doctor Who was first broadcast on 23rd November, 1963. It began with the core format of “The Doctor”, a If you say so. I take it from all the fuss around casting that they change the actors all the time then? No-one has done fifty years in the job? The first three Doctors, together for the tenth anniversary special: The Three Doctors 40