In the words of the immortal Meatloaf from his classic song “Paradise by The Dashboard Light,”   ”I’m praying for the end of time. It’s all that I can do;
praying for the end of time, so I can end my time with you.”  That’s what I was singing to myself while watching part of Russell T. Davies’s awful swan song.

Under Davies’s guidance Doctor Who has become what I always feared it would.  A series that is all style and very little substance, especially in terms of science fiction plots.  I think Davies has taken the series from a genre science fantasy label to a full frontal fantasy show.   The sad thing is in terms of production values the show has never looked better, in terms of stories I feel that the show, has almost never been worse [You know, the time the late John Nathan Turner was purposely trying to run the series into the ground, so he could leave and do something else].   

The return of the Time Lords would have created great dramatic world building possibilities for the future of series, but that hope is now dashed as the Doctor, with the help of the Master banished them all back to the nether realm from whence they came.    

After surviving a several mile fall, exposure to lethal radiation, I waited anxiously for the Doctor to regenerate, but what resulted was the longest regeneration sequence ever, and Tennent revisits and perhaps in some cases brings a sense of closure to all past story elements from his reign as The Doctor.  Dramatically it was very contrived and hackneyed which pretty much sums up Davies’s vision for the Doctor Who series.  

Unfortunately, the most enjoyable part of the new Doctor Who series has been the next time trailers, because they give me hope for the future.  I am hoping that Steve Moffat will get it, but of course I am doubtful.  The British have discovered youth culture fifty years later, the new Doctor doesn’t even look old enough to be enrolled in graduate school.   Here’s to the future, it’s better than dwelling on the past anyway.

I saw “End of Time” on BBC America this time.  It looks like they are finally getting a clue in the UK and pushing the American air dates closer to the British rather than trying to put the kibosh on You Tube uploads.

Anyway the main event is the Time Lords are back, for good I hope, although they were going on about the “end of time.”  That doesn’t sound good.  There was one Time Lord hiding his face behind Timothy Dalton.  I wonder what that is all about.

The episode wasted a lot of time with the Master’s resurrection and the Doctor chasing around a newly arrived Master kind of pointlessly.

The plot seems to share elements with a never filmed Star Trek Phase II episode written by Norman Spinrad entitled “To Attain All”  I read about  it in the November 1988 issue Starlog Magazine (pages 60 to 61).  You can  see a detailed synopsis online here:   http://www.ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/phase2_4.php

 Star Trek Phase II was a proposed TV series sequel to the original Star Trek that was allegedly scrapped when network executives saw the high gloss Space 1999 series from Gerry Anderson.  The Star Trek motion picture was made instead.  Basically, the plot was about a space alien wanting to assume the identity of the human race, much like The Master did in the end of Part 1.

Overall not a great episode but it was quite diverting.  I am glad to see the Time Lords back and I hope they stay.

Neil Gaiman is an obvious choice since he has stated that he is fan of Dr. Who and he is a great writer.

Terry Pratchett would be an obvious choice but the poor fellow has Alzheimer’s so this will most likely never come to pass.

Diana Gabaldon became wealthy from a piece of Dr. Who fan-fic that she turned into the very succesful Outlander romance novel series, I think she owes us a Dr. Who novel, but not with too much kissing or other romantic activities that shall go nameless. 

Harlan Ellison, who wrote a nice introduction about Dr. Who for the original American import of the Target novelizations of Dr. Who episodes, would be a good choice for at least a short story, but he is getting on in years as well.

 Stephen Baxter perhaps but his writing is a little on the dry side.

Orson Scott Card who won’t admit to being a Dr. Who fan himself, but has said his son likes Dr. Who would be a good choice.

I’m avoiding saying JK Rowling, because Russell T. Davies allegedly approached her to do a Dr. Who script while she in the midst of finishing up the Harry Potter series which I thought was really audacious on his part.  But now that she has finished the Harry Potter books (at least for now)…

China Miéville would do a good job, but   I imagine his novel would be kind of dark though.  

Some authors who I have never read that might be good candidates:

CJ Cherryh who has been quoted as being a Dr. Who fan.

M. John Harrison and Justina Robson are both British writers who have (individually) come up with some funky sounding novels that I’m sorry I have never got around to reading.  I am sure they would do a good job.

Did I miss anybody?

Patrick Stewart taken from Wikimedia Commons

First in the Next Generation, there was Patrick Stewart and Marina Sirtis.  Stewart was supposedly considered for the role of Data, but other producers convinced Roddenberry to cast him as Captain Picard.  Picard was supposed to be more of a fatherly advisor figure and less of a man of action like the young Captain Kirk. This description of him which is much less accurate in later seasons is reminiscent of the first Doctor in Doctor Who, a mature grandfather type who left all the action to his younger companions.  I believe the original Picard character was devised with Dr. Who in mind. 

Marina Sirtis taken from Wikimedia Commons

Although Marina Sirtis portrayed Betazoid, counselor Troi with a sort-of Greek accent she actually has a very distinct British accent in real life.  I wonder if when they cast Stewart and Sirtis, they were thinking Doctor and companion. 

Alexander Siddig taken from Wikimedia Commons

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine had British actor Alexander Siddig portraying Doctor Julian Bashir.  He was discovered for this role when playing Aladdin in a British children’s Christmas pantomime.  I tried to  find out if this was same performance that starred Sylvester McCoy (the seventh Doctor from Dr. Who) and Sophie Aldred (Ace from Dr. Who).  Both were in a production of Aladdin at around the same time as Siddig.  I think the Star Trek producer that discovered Siddig for Deep Space Nine went purposely to that Christmas pantomime because it featured Dr. Who actors, and Siddig just happened to be a the right place at the right time [Totally my speculation, if you look at the comments it probably is not even remotely true.]

Star Trek: Voyager has been the only series since the original one to have an all American cast.  However I think the role of the Emergency Medical Hologram “The Doctor” might have been intended for a British character actor since it is a very smug character which could be easily construed as British. 

Dominic Keating taken form Wikimedia Commons

And finally, Dominic Keating playing Lieutenant Malcom Reed on Star Trek: Enterprise.  This was a very lackluster character that could have easily been portrayed by an American actor, but for some reason the powers that be decided that they needed a Brit to fill this role. 

Well there you have it three different Treks with four different British actors.  I know that Star Fleet was supposed to be an international as well as interplanetary effort, but the only two nationalities represented on Star Trek TV series are really only British and American.  And I think the British were included due to the popularity of Doctor Who during the 21 year hiatus between the original series and Next Generation.

Thanks again to You Tube posters I got see Waters of Mars the day after it aired in the UK. 

This was a slightly different from the typical Dr. Who story as the Doctor is somewhat familiar with the events that are happening in the story before they happen and tries to be only an observer of the events as not to mess about with time and the way he knows events are supposed to happen.  In the end he sort of develops a God complex and decides to start attacking the problems at hand in typical manic 10th Doctor fashion.

It really bothers me that it took the Doctor four and a half seasons to  realize that the Time Lords are gone and he can now do anything he wants.  I hope that this is foreshadowing for the return of the Time Lords in the next season. 

Again I would really like to see someone go over Dr. Who scripts for scientific accuracy.  In one scene the Doctor says the water zombies actually create water, which is impossible since matter cannot be created or destroyed.  He could have said something like they are teleporting water from the frozen glacier using their bodies as a conduit, but I guess it is just easier to say they create water.

Aside from that the cringe moments were minimal.  I think the way that  Adalaide Brooke decides to off herself in the end was just too dramatic, if they showed her doing that a couple of months later I think it would have been more believable.

Overall I think the production was great, another almost movie quality production shows that BBC has come a long way since the video tape and cardboard sets era.

So I thought it was about three out five stars.

I   can’t wait until ”The End of Time,”  I’m looking forward to saying good-bye to Tennent and Davies once and for all.

I believe that Davies ripped off the idea of killing off the Time Lords from a previouly discarded proposed series TV revival by another producer reported in Doctor Who Magazine about 18 years ago and a script treatment by Johnny Byrne for a movie called “Doctor Who:  The Last of the Time Lords” described in the book Nth Doctor by Jean-Marc Lofficier. 

The killing off of the Time Lords destroyed on a world building opportunity for Doctor Who, and let Davies mire the series in his silly contrivances like the “Shadow Proclamation,” whatever that was.   

I would like a producer that would build on the world created by the previous series and not destroy it like Davies did.  Hopefully, Steven Moffat will push the who in the right direction.

 The Tritovores were fly-like aliens that ate poop.  Typical Davies silliness that didn’t add anything to the story.

The upcoming episode/special “Waters of Mars” looks a little more interesting and scary.  Some have speculated that the Ice Warriors will be involved, but it doesn’t look like it from the trailer.  It would be neat though. 

Someone on YouTube explained that the Waters of Mars is an anagram of Master of Wars, pointing to the return of The Master in the final two films to feature David Tennant.  It might also have to do with the “Time War”.  One of the British tabloids had a picture of guest star Timothy Dalton in Time Lord garb. 

Here’s to the future.

The original Star Trek was really the first truly serious adult science fiction series.  I believe that it is first and perhaps only genre series to really try to be a serious adult drama.  No pandering to children or appealing to lowest common denominator like in many of Irwin Allen’s series which aired around the same time such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space.

Doctor Who on the other hand was a British science fiction series created for children and was to contain some educational content that would teach history and science.  This never really came to fruition as funky aliens like the Daleks and Cybermen won the show its biggest acclaim.  It moved away from science to emphasise elements of horror and the fantastic, and it managed to have an appeal for all ages.

These original series developed completely independently of each other.  Star Trek, the original series ran from 1966 to 1969, a three season run on American television.  The original Doctor Who series ran in the UK from 1963 through 1989 with a brief hiatus in 1986 it had an almost continuous twenty-six year run.

With only three season under its belt Star Trek managed to develop a huge cult following as its original run of shows were re-ran over and over again in syndication throughout the seventies and eighties.

Thanks to a little movie released in 1977 called Star Wars a huge resurgence in the media’s interest in science fiction occurred, and in 1978 Doctor Who was first syndicated to air regularly in American markets.   In 1979 also thanks to Star Wars, Star Trek made a comeback as a feature film series.

Doctor Who helped fill a void in the United States as many other science fiction television programs in the United States were very short lived and failed to capture the American imagination as Star Trek did.

American media science fiction conventions in the late seventies and early eighties often featured guests from both Star Trek and Dr. Who.  The popularity of Dr. Who was apparent if not wholly understood by Star Trek fans.

I believe that Dr. Who’s popularity was influential in the revival of the Star Trek franchise in 1987 with the launch of the series Star Trek:  The Next Generation.  In the producers’ choice in actors, characters and scripts for this and later franchise series, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise one can see the impact that Doctor Who has had.

In the following posts in this category we will take a roll call of the British actors playing in the later Trek series, examine characters that may have been inspired by Doctor Who and another British series called Red Dwarf, and look at episodes that may have borrowed plot elements from Doctor Who.

Crispin Glover (related to Matt Smith?)

Matt Smith

Well, the eleventh Doctor was announced, and I had no idea.  When I first saw him I though he looked like a refugee from a boy band.  I can’t believe that ”The Doctor” keeps getting younger and younger.  This one is just out of diapers. 

 They are obviously not trying to appeal to the forty-something  nerdy Doctor Who fan.   But if they’re trying to appeal to the fans of Stephanie Meyers’ “Twilight” as someone in the media suggested, you would think they would get someone who was a little better looking.

I’ve also noticed that Matt Smith has a striking resemblance to American actor Crispin Glover.  Watching them on You Tube even some of their mannerisms are the same. Scary.  Smith is much younger than Glover of course and has a  deeper less nasal voice.  

I wonder if Billie Piper had her hand in his casting as the 11thDoctor, because she starred in two different shows with him, ITV’s “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” and the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s “The Ruby in the Smoke.” 

I also wonder if Davies was involved in the casting.  He might be trying to sabotage the show, because I’m sure he wants to be remembered as the most successful producer in the program’s 45 year history.  

I knew from the beginning that I wouldn’t like Stephen Moffat’s vision of the show, because I was not wild about his script contributions for the show, even though he seems to win awards for them. 

I guees the Beeb cares more about the show’s commercial success as apposed to making something for the old time Dr. Who fan.