Dr Who
November 8, 2011 • Feeling My Age • Comments
Our household are big fans of the post-2005 Dr Who, but I can still remember watching the first ever episode at a mate’s house in November 1963. It was the day after the Kennedy assasination, so a lot of our friends and their parents missed it. But during the following week there was such a buzz about it that the BBC had to bow to to popular demand, change its Saturday night schedule and re-screen Episode One as the first half of a double length feature. And this time everybody, but everybody, watched it.
William Hartnell was born in 1908 and played The Doctor as elderly and irascible with long swept-back silver hair. I was 13 at the time, and what with the Daleks, the police box and the unprecedented all-electronic theme music, Dr Who completely captured the public imagination.
One of our science teachers devoted a whole lesson to musique concrète and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. At the Arts Theatre pantomime in Cambridge that Christmas a Dalek scuttled across the stage just so that Cyril Fletcher (who was playing the Dame) could crack a weak pun about speaking in “a Cambridgeshire Dalek”.
When Russell T Davies first revived the show seven years ago, the biggest change he made was to cast fit, attractive leading men and – for the first time ever – make Dr Who sexy. Combined with improved plots, modern pacing and camerawork, a proper CGI budget and the occasional bisexual frisson, it’s been a perfect show for all the family ever since.
There’s quite a lot more than a frisson in the above video, made by the cast & crew of the show – plus The Proclaimers – as a swansong for outgoing writer/producer Russell T. and tenth doctor David T. My wife – a regular visitor to the David Tennant webite – happened across it a couple of days ago.
I particularly like the dancing Oud – and Dave & Will from the VFX department flaunting their skills as they sing with tiny, tiny heads.