attempt to out geek someone

TV It’s not often I even want to attempt to out geek someone, but when faced with Shaun’s list of reasons the Doctor (as in Who) is a terrible timelord, I can’t help myself. I tend to love Topless Robot, but like any of these sites, when I find something I unfortunately know a bit about I tend to get a bit precious, no matter how funny the material. So, since I’ve no review to post to Behind The Sofa this week (first time in just under a year would you believe), I thought I’d offer a few comments on this here instead. Click here to open his post up in a new tab on your browser and here we go, click, click, click.


9) Fails to Use his All-Powerful Sonic Screwdriver In Every Goddamn Situation

That’s a contentious issue – some argue that he uses it far too much in nu-Who anyway though that is somewhat a necessity given the length of an episode these days. It’s a narrative device and one which was dumped during the Davison era because it was becoming too much of a God wand. But there have to be some limits, otherwise the jeopardy leaks out of the story all over the carpet. The likes of un-unlockable dead lock seals are the Who equivalent of Star Trek characters not being able to transport through shield when the Klingons are on the warpath.

8) Only Hangs Out In the 20th and 21st Centuries on Earth

Again, narrative and budgetary device; he doesn’t have to spend so much time within these decades but a certain story shorthand can be used when he does materialise here, and it’s certainly cheaper, even these days. But if you treat Doctor Who as far more than a television franchise, this couple of decades is only vaguely on his radar. He tends to land here for the same reason that others become regulars at the local pub; the beer’s cheap and the food’s ok and you fancy the barmaid or in his case he likes the culture and the girls aren’t so clever that he can’t enjoy explaining everything to them. There’s a further discussion as to why the timelords decided to strand his third incarnation at the beginning of the seventies, but that would also bring up the UNIT dating controversy and I haven’t the time.

7) Often Has a Difficult Time Fighting Semi-Mobile Trash Cans

Notice how Shaun doesn’t specifically mention stairs, so the world really has changed. The Doctor’s deadliest foe is technically a bit pants, but it’s all in the movement and the voice and the catchphrase and their ability to kill everything in sight (assuming their vision isn't impaired and they can see). Why kids love these guys more than any other is one of those weird examples of how something just works for reasons that are difficult to comprehend, like why ice cream and coca-cola both remain tasty even when you dunk one into the other. But he’s right about the Cybermen – they’re terrible and even worse in the new series because they’re not even the proper ones. Hopefully Moffat will resurrect the Mondas version, the ones with a bit of personality.

6) Is A Death Magnet, Yet Still Travels to Highly Populated Areas

It’s the Jessica Fletcher syndrome, though unlike Murder She Wrote (as far as I know), Doctor Who has discussed this over and over, and the timelord himself is confronted with it in The Family of Blood, where he’s become human and walks the Earth so that he can avoid giving some aliens the wrong end of his gothic nature. People die because the meanies follow him to the 1920s. But it’s relatively easy to rationalise; it’s not the Doctor’s presence which brings death and misery, it would have happened anyway. It’s his presence which means that less people die than might have otherwise (with a few exceptions, Warriors of the Deep). Incidentally, on the subject of Jessica Fletcher, I have a theory that she’s actually the murderer in every case but implicates other people. After all, who’s not going to believe this kindly old author?

5) Is Totally Sexist Regarding His Traveling Companions

River Song. Romana (it’s rumoured). Madam de Pompadour. The Doctor loves women and has often danced with them. But he’s usually the lone hero who tragically can’t get too close to his companions because eventually as he says in The Next Doctor, they always leave and it break his hearts. See also the spin-off love affair with Charley Pollard, the first companion he owned up to loving way back in 2002. Plus this has only really become an issue for some people in recent decades when he’s been a dashing lad. In the 60s, no one questioned the fact that neither Billy or Pat cosied up to Vicki, Zoe or Victoria, because it would be wrong.

4) His TARDIS Is Literally Made of Trash

The TARDIS interior is not a literal expression of its space; almost everything in there is a product of the Doctor’s imagination (I think) which lately has decided that some part of the complex business of shifting through the time vortex can best be accomplished with a bicycle pump. Next it could be a big silver button or another hammer. It’s not made out of trash, it’s made out of the suggestion of trash. The console room and time rotor have changed a few times over the years and my absolute favourite is the steampunk cathedral in a box styling of the TV movie. If your living space is dimensionally transcendental, you might as well make the most of it.

3) He Refuses to Do Laundry

During the 80s, the producers did have it in their heads to put the Doctor and his companions in very definite costumes as though cricket whites and air stewardess uniforms were at all practical in the forests of Deva Loka, decorative vegetable included. But though it seems like the Doctor always wears the same suit, it often varies in colour and probably like me with my white t-shirt and jeans he has many, judging by his wardrobe, several hundred. He also mixes shirts and t-shirts quite a lot too. For further discussion of costume changes and button placement listen to the audio commentary for The Silence In The Library.

2) Turns Into An Attention Whore Every Time He Regenerates

Fair enough, though he was stealthy in the TV movie and simply had a good sleep in The Christmas Invasion. Most of his antics are as a result of his companion’s reactions at having watched their friend entirely change shape and personality, which I know most of us have seen happen to old school friends on Facebook, but this takes place much more quickly than that. The question Shaun should really be asking is why Romana didn’t experience any trauma at all when she simply chose a new body in Destiny of the Daleks (though the Gallifrey audio spin-offs rationalise this as the time lady cleansing her system of some kind of digital tapeworm).

1) Has Not Checked Up On His Granddaughter for Centuries

Why would he need to when five of his incarnations bumped into her during The Five Doctors and clearly had some off screen conversation about it. Plus it’s implied in The Empty Child that she died during the time war. If that sounds unlikely given that she’s stranded on Earth, during the novel Legacy of the Daleks, the Eighth Doctor bumps into her on 22nd century Earth whilst looking for a lost companion in a story which eventually concludes with her causing the Master to experience the disfigurement we see in The Deadly Assassin and then nipping off back into the universe in his TARDIS – so she’s completely free to buy it at the hands of the Daleks. Confusingly, Big Finish are due to release an audio called The Earthly Child in which the Eighth Doctor bumps into her on 22nd century Earth and has a completely unrelated adventure, though I'll leave it someone else to rationalise that inconsistency. Assuming none of this counts, to be fair to the Doctor, when he dropped her off he couldn’t control the TARDIS, and it was only in the mid-seventies that he finally managed to repair the thing.

Did any of that make any sense?