The Longbox: An Awful Lot of Running To Do.

Hey there, Faithful readers, long time no post, right?

Yeah, I know my bad. Long story short, lots of crap got into the way of my time to write, and now that’s out of the way, I’m back and back with a vengeance. I’m probably going to post at least 2 or three other columns in the next few days as I’m going to be stranded in a hotel room with not much to do during the day except write.

One small note however, is that My Laptop is broken, so there aren’t going to be any banners for these, I’ll still include some pictures here and there, but not to the degree that I would have before. I’m bashing these out on a friends Lappy since mine took a crap on me. well not on me.. but.. well you get the point.

So.. I think that is enough preamble time to turn your attention to the title..  and what this column is going to be about. Well.. to those that know that quote, they would have known in an instant. Those of you who don’t know, today our topic will be…

The Oncoming Storm…

The Doctor.

The LongBox

Yeah, once my machine comes back I’m totally, making banners for these I can’t stand not having banners.

Anyway.. yes.. onto.. THE DOCTOR!

 

There are some among our number (even here among the ‘teers…yes, I’m eyeballin’ you scummnik) that are unfamiliar with the adventures of The Doctor, so I’m going to give you a bit of a brief rundown of the history of the show Doctor Who, of which the aforementioned Doctor is the main Protagonist.

The First episode of Who, showed first in 1963 and ran until 1989, and then was relaunched (which was a lot of peoples first exposure to the show) in 2005. The Main character is known as the Doctor and he is an alien from a planet called Gallifrey, he is a Time Lord which makes him.. well a Lord of  Time.  His ship that lets him travel in time is called the TARDIS which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It;s bigger on the inside (nearly infinite) and can camouflage itself as anything in any timeframe. However, The doctors Chameleon Circuit is stuck and his TARDIS looks like a blue 1950’s English Police Box.

Get it? Got it? Good. For more info hit up wiki, and no I’m not posting a link, lazy!

okay so I can already hear those among us that are un-inititated, “This show has been on the air for 45 years, how in the the name of Shatner, have they kept the same main character?”. Good Question. You see the creators of the show created a very good way of getting around it, they wrote in that the Time Lords have the ability to regenerate their physiology if they are killed. So if one actor wants to leave the show, they simply have the Time lord re-write his own DNA to be an all new Person, same knowledge, same skills, different face and personality, it was a brilliant move.

To date on TV, the Doctor has officially been portrayed by 10 different actors, and the 11th has been announced since the current actor will be moving on at the end of this year. Now this, of course, has prompted much debate among Whovians (as Who fans are called) as to who their own personal favorite Doctor is.

There is another piece of the Puzzle, the Doctor very rarely travels alone he usually has one (and sometimes as many as 4) Companion. No not the kind in Firefly you dirty dirty people… The companions are usually (but not always) Humans that the Doctor takes to the stars to show them the universe and make them realise that the amazing does happen.

I know sounds like a fairly average show, however I assure you that the Sum outweighs the Parts by great amounts.

You see that is the point here, the idea of an alien that travels through time in a small blue box could be absurd, but it is amazing how easily the show gets you into it’s universe, it’s mix of horror and scifi and the amount of Funny that it brings, all add up to an insane level of something, I’m just not sure how these ingredients mix, but they do.

A Lot of the older episodes of the show do show their age a little, even though at the time they were cutting edge technologies. But since the relaunch the stories, the writing, the effects have all been better than ever. There is an edge t o the character now, there is a darkness to him that comes from intergalactic war and the extermination of 2 species.

It’s really hard to talk about what makes the show so excellent without massive massive spoilers and unlike other columns, I’m not going to put spoilers here, because I think that the first time this show is witness, it should be done so with no spoilers.

Okay so time to answer my own question, who is my favorite Doctor. This one is easy for me, My favorite is the Tenth Doctor, portrayed by David Tennant. His Doctor, is a brilliant portrayal, sure he’s had some major obstacles to overcome (and I’m not talking enemies) some of his episodes weren’t the best written, he had to pull some truly poor actors through episodes making them look good (which tennant does brilliantly) And most of all he’s had the weight of an entire TV channel on his shoulders. The Doctors appeal has lead him to be front and center of the BBC’s Television line up and has influenced many other shows that the Channel runs now from it’s direct spin off  Torchwood, to Primeval, to many others.

The other thing about the show, is that it takes people out of their elements and still makes them shine, the greatest example of which to me was the Companion in the most recent season of the show Donna Noble, she was portrayed by Catherine Tate, now Ms Tate was primarily known as a comedienne prior to her time on the show and she rose a lot of questions prior to her return. Donna was a character that was created for one of the Christmas specials, and her character was a very loud boisterous, Woman who worked on that one note for  a single episode,  and when it was announced that they were bringing her back for an entire season, fans (Myself included) and critics alike were weary. Tate however proved everyone wrong, after the first episode which due to it’s very nature brought the Funny in a major way, The next 2 episodes she turned her performances to “11″ and her dramatic performances were heartbreaking at times.  and that was just the beginning. There are times in the latest season of who, where Donna literally does the impossible, she steals the show from the Doctor, making me forget that Tennant is even on the screen, and that is a major fit as, lets be honest I want to be the Man-Momma to Tennants babies. Okay that was a Bit far, but the point is I am a major sucker for all of Tennants performances, but Tate, the comedienne, blows him away at times.

I could talk all day about this show I could froth and hyperbole all night long, and very nearly did sometimes.

A quick word about the title. “An Awful lot of running” is the title of a song off of the worlds first “Trock” album. What is trockyou ask? If you are familiar with the concept of Wizard Rock (or Wrock) then Trock is Time Lord Rock. The Band is called Chameleon Circuit and I stumbled upon them one day on youtube, and then they went on to record an album, that is available on june 1st, for a sneak peek head over to their myspace page http://www.myspace.com/chameleoncircuitmusic 

So Until next time guys,

Check out this amazing show, and leave some comments on what things you’s like me to look into in the future, I am nothing, if not the kind of person that panders to my fans.

LATER!

Bob “Lord of Time” TGoldfish