[RonPrice @replies]

WHO ARE YOU, DR WHO?

I never got caught-up in the Dr. Who frenzy even though Dr. Who has been the longest running science-fiction television show in the world.  It first screened on 23 November 1963 in the UK, the day after President Kennedy was shot in Dallas.   On 22 November 1963 I re-enrolled at McMaster University in a first year arts course as I was coming out of my first serious depression in my first experience of bipolar disorder, an illness which has had an incapacitating effect on me periodically since that autumn of 1963.

Dr. Who was not screened in Canada until January 1965, three months before I graduated from that university arts course with a B.A.  This fictional time-traveller has been popping up in my visual field off and on for the last thirty years since my only child, Daniel, was born in 1977 and since I finally bought a television set due to the enthusiasms as well as the gentle and not-so-gentle pressures of my wife and two step-daughters. They would often watch programs at the homes of friends and neighbours since we did not have a TV and were not able to “amuse themselves to death,” as Neil Postman argued in his 1985 book by the same name.

And so it was that when David Tennant, time-traveller and latest incarnation of Dr. Who, appeared on a BBC program: Who Do You Think You Are? which my wife taped for me here in Tasmania on 12 October 2008 at 7:30 p.m. on SBS TV, I had the funny feeling I had seen this chap before.  And I had as I had wandered through the lounge-room on the way to or from my study in recent months as Dr. Who was being screened on Saturday evenings here in Tasmania Australia.

This now famous and popular program has provided over the last several decades an experience to millions of viewers that is now part of  “the quintessence of being British,” or so wrote Caitlan Moran the TV reviewer for The Times.  Steven Spielberg even went so far to say that: “the world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who.” –Ron Price with thanks to “Doctor Who,” Wikipedia, 17 October 2008.

Your story, David,  like mine, like the Baha’i story I have been part of since 1953, is long, so very complex. Fathers, grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers, back and back to the year 1819, 1 mirabile dictu, 2 the birth of the Báb and the beginning of new cycles, ages, epochs, stages, phases, plans and programs that would and did change your world and ours……

There were several milestones in this story of yours: 1832, 1912, 1916, 1968, 1972 and they were milestones in the story I’ve been writing to figure out who I think I am.  I hope you had some luck, David, figuring out your identity.

1 David Tennant’s great-great grandfather was Donald McLeod was born in 1819 in rural Scotland where his family had been for centuries.  1819 was the same year as the birth of the Báb, the Forerunner of Baha’u’llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i Faith.  By 1900 the MacLeod family were based on Scotland’s industrial heartland, cities like Glasgow, and the administrative centre of gravity of the Baha’i Faith was beginning to make its shift to the United States.   David Tennant’s story also became an intimate part of the story of Ireland in the 20th century.

2 A Latin expression meaning ‘marvellous to relate.’ It is like annus mirabilus meaning ‘wonderful year, year of wonders.’

Ron Price

17 October 2008

[RonPrice @replies]

DR WHO AND ME

Part 1:

Last night ABC1 TV screened the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special “An Adventure in Space and Time,” immediately following the primetime screening of “The Day of the Doctor.”  It aired on Sunday November 24 at 8.45pm on ABC1 following “The Day of the Doctor” at 7:30pm. I watched “a few snippets.”

This historic special, which attracted many millions of viewers, stared David Bradley as William Hartnell; Jessica Raine as Verity Lambert; Brian Cox as Sydney Newman and Sacha Dhawan as Waris Hussein. It was written by Mark Gatiss, and executive produced by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and Caroline Skinner.

This special one-off drama travelled back in time to 1963 to see how the beloved “Doctor Who” was first brought to the screen.  Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles in his acting career. Wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry’s glass ceiling limiting her creative energies and potential.  Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama, time travel and monsters!  Allied with a team of brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever, celebrating its 50th anniversary this evening.

Part 2:

I have never been ‘into’ the Doctor Who phenomenon, although occasionally since 1963, when it opened on BBC1 TV,  I have found myself watching one of the 800 episodes, and one of the several incarnations of this time-travelling chap, this Time-Lord, this doctor Who.  Back on 23 November 1963 I was 18 when the first episode was aired. I was in my first year of an arts degree in Ontario Canada, and it was the day after JFK was assassinated.  Since then, in the 50 years since 1963, I have studied and taught history.  I retired from FT teaching more than a decade ago in 1999 but,  if I was back in the classroom and teaching history,  I would certainly draw on some of the conceptual material from this most popular of sci-fi TV programs. I would also have found it useful when teaching literature and creative writing, as I did for decades.

Many students both now, and in the decades gone by, have a great deal of trouble making imaginative and creative connections with the major events of history as taught in school curricula across the planet.  As Henry Ford once said: “history is bunk”, and millions have found this to be the case.-Ron Price with thanks to “Doctor Who” ABC1 TV, 7:30 to 10:15 pm, 24/11/’13 and Wikipedia.

You1 faced a variety of foes while working to save civilisations, help ordinary people, and right wrongs.

The longest-running science fiction television show in the world, & the “most successful” of science fiction series for all time based on its over-all broadcast ratings, book-sales, as well as DVD, and iTunes traffic; the largest ever simulcast of a TV drama” with The Day of the Doctor last night.

Like some kind of background music popping-up in the last five decades of my life from my late teens to my late sixties turning millions on….even if I was only part of the audience on rare occasions as my life-narrative dealt with the return, the incarnation, of a type of Doctor which was, arguably, the most charismatic Person in a very different sense, and was also part of a fully routinized and institutionalized Force which may be the most precious Soul ever to have drawn breath on this planet: The Day of the Unifier of all the children of men at last with a power and an authority that has and would travel from the beginning that hath no beginning to the end that hath no end, eternal in the past, and eternal in the future, world without end, amen!

1 The Doctor, the Time-Lord and his several incarnations Ron Price

25/11/’13.

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