Reasons to Love: Doctor Who

Confession time: I have been watching this show since the early 1970's, so I'm more than a little biased. I've also witnessed "Classic Who", "New Who", and what I'm tentatively calling "Disney Who". Each and every one of these has different brands of executive meddling. Sometimes, multiples thereof.

Want vintage sci-fi? Doctor Who has been going since 1964. Some stories are definitely products of their era, others have achieved immortality for their relevance.

Want humour in your sci-fi? There's always at least one episode somewhere that will make you laugh in Doctor Who. Be it accidentally or on purpose.

Want production values? Eeeeeehhh... better look towards New Who and Disney Who for that. Let's be honest. The Classic Who era sometimes had the budget for a piece of string and half a gum wrapper, but they made it work. It's easy to enrapture an audience with shiny graphics. It's harder to make a convincing alien out of three garbage bags and maybe two puppeteers.

Want a series that can visit a new concept every week? Doctor Who.

Want a show that's got a bullet-proof mechanic against Actor Existence Failure? Doctor Who.

Want a show where the props are marketable icons that are instantly recognisable everywhere they go? Doctor Who.

Want the uncontested king of Lost Media? Doctor Who.

Want a show that terrifies your smol child but is still fun to watch? Hell yeah. There's entire generations of children who hid behind the couch from the monster of the week. Me? I was a teeny tiny 3YO huddling on my Mum's lap as plastic maggots with cat's jaws menaced Jon Pertwee. Yes, that was a real puppet they had for one of their series.

I remember giving plastic daffodils the hairy eyeball because of that show.

The magic is in the TARDIS [Time And Relative Dimensions In Space] - a magic box that takes our protagonists anywhere. It's a quirky machine with its own personality and, depending on the writer, can be a character on its own. As the acronym suggests, it can go all over the universe in space and time. Which allows the writers and the audience explore any given concept that might happen to mind.

If you can think it up, Doctor Who's probably been there. Or at least mentioned it.

And still it never gets old.

It's also the show where the theme music is the first known piece of Experimental Music. The original theme was literally patched together from odd sounds thanks to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. They even included some things that were played backwards. Yeah. Backwards masking is older than you think.

There's also the single oldest, continually-used sound effect. The TARDIS' trademark wheezing thump as it appears on the scene. Originally made by dragging a house key up and down a piano wire. Which, I might add, is something I reference -ha!- from time to time. Whenever temporal shenanigans are part of a tale... I use that.

Doctor Who has infinite potential. Especially when there's a multitude of Sci-Fi authors working on its episodes. This is my only grievance with New and Disney Who. They only have a few authors working on the scripts. Having more writers means more ideas and more variety.

Give it a try. Even if you don't know anything, you can pick it up on the fly.