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capri0mniOkay, in preparation for the trip to the Gallifrey One convention a little more than a month from now, I'm taking my sadfan self out of storage and dusting it off, with a little mind experiment, that I play around with sometimes (generally late at night, and I can't sleep because of real-world stresses -- this is how I amuse myself in the dark):
Imagine that the Doctor is real, somewhere out in the universe, and that when the various writers were "coming up with" the ideas of the Doctor through the course of the the series' evolution, their subconsciouses were actually "picking up on" events that were really happening out there in space time, without their realizing it (I did warn you that this was sadsadsadsadfan territory). So here's the question: Which aspects of the Doctor and his world did they "get right," and which aspects are what they are simply because the BBC is a terrestrial tv station with a limited budget, and even more limited space-time travel technology?
Here's my list. Naturally, YMMV -- feel free to argue with, or augment, it:
The TARDIS, as a ship that travels through both space and time is accurate.
The fact that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside is also probably accurate, as there are so many other ways to do spaceship-on-a-tight-budget that this detail does not spring to mind as the "oh of course!" solution.
However, the fact that the TARDIS's chamelion circuit is both a) stuck, and b) just happens to be stuck in a form that the audiences of the time would recognize at a glance is most likely inaccurate, and most likely a concession to to logistics and budget.
The fact that the Doctor likes Earth best is also likely to be inaccurate, and there for convenience's sake... In this chatagory, you can also put in the fact that he speaks with a refined English accent (well, until the Seventh).
The fact that he regenerates is probably accurate, again, because along with the TARDIS being bigger on the inside than the outside, it's far from your obvious solution to the problem of having to fire the star.
But the idea that his appearance changes radically from on regeneration to the next* is most likely inaccurate, and is dictated by the actor the BBC wanted to hire next for the role. Likewise, having Timelord able to choose their appearance was clearly written into the story because the BBC wanted to hire Lalla Ward, and had to explain why she looked "just like that princess we just saw"...
Having a Timelord be indistinguishible from a human until you happen to hear his double heartbeat is also probably innaccurate, simply because the BBC is limited to human actors. I conced that Timelords are probably bipedal, with vertical reflective symmatry to their body plan (one eye, arm, leg, etc. on one side of the body and one on the other), so that if you see them from a distance, in a crowd, or somesuch, your brain would not scream: "Alien!" But get up close, and you'd notice the skin tone would be different, maybe body temperature, and odor, too... little things like that, that when they add up, are not so little...
Okay, I'm getting hungry, and starting to yawn, So I will leave you for now. More to follow in parts two through ????
*though I have a theory as to how and why a Timelord's appearance must change some, during a regeneration, which I will go into in one of my later sadfan rants...
Imagine that the Doctor is real, somewhere out in the universe, and that when the various writers were "coming up with" the ideas of the Doctor through the course of the the series' evolution, their subconsciouses were actually "picking up on" events that were really happening out there in space time, without their realizing it (I did warn you that this was sadsadsadsadfan territory). So here's the question: Which aspects of the Doctor and his world did they "get right," and which aspects are what they are simply because the BBC is a terrestrial tv station with a limited budget, and even more limited space-time travel technology?
Here's my list. Naturally, YMMV -- feel free to argue with, or augment, it:
The TARDIS, as a ship that travels through both space and time is accurate.
The fact that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside is also probably accurate, as there are so many other ways to do spaceship-on-a-tight-budget that this detail does not spring to mind as the "oh of course!" solution.
However, the fact that the TARDIS's chamelion circuit is both a) stuck, and b) just happens to be stuck in a form that the audiences of the time would recognize at a glance is most likely inaccurate, and most likely a concession to to logistics and budget.
The fact that the Doctor likes Earth best is also likely to be inaccurate, and there for convenience's sake... In this chatagory, you can also put in the fact that he speaks with a refined English accent (well, until the Seventh).
The fact that he regenerates is probably accurate, again, because along with the TARDIS being bigger on the inside than the outside, it's far from your obvious solution to the problem of having to fire the star.
But the idea that his appearance changes radically from on regeneration to the next* is most likely inaccurate, and is dictated by the actor the BBC wanted to hire next for the role. Likewise, having Timelord able to choose their appearance was clearly written into the story because the BBC wanted to hire Lalla Ward, and had to explain why she looked "just like that princess we just saw"...
Having a Timelord be indistinguishible from a human until you happen to hear his double heartbeat is also probably innaccurate, simply because the BBC is limited to human actors. I conced that Timelords are probably bipedal, with vertical reflective symmatry to their body plan (one eye, arm, leg, etc. on one side of the body and one on the other), so that if you see them from a distance, in a crowd, or somesuch, your brain would not scream: "Alien!" But get up close, and you'd notice the skin tone would be different, maybe body temperature, and odor, too... little things like that, that when they add up, are not so little...
Okay, I'm getting hungry, and starting to yawn, So I will leave you for now. More to follow in parts two through ????
*though I have a theory as to how and why a Timelord's appearance must change some, during a regeneration, which I will go into in one of my later sadfan rants...
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-05 01:57 am (UTC):)
Okay, good to know
Date: 2004-01-05 05:20 am (UTC)But I haven't read any of the books (no philosophical stance on what is 'cannon' or not, or anything, just haven't got around to it), so I'm going entirely by what I've seen on TV, including The Movie.
I guess the big difference between books and TV is that in the former, you can shape the reality based solely on the ideas, not budget or logistics or the limits of time...