Hi, I'm Chip Sudderth and welcome to episode 480
of the Two-minute Time Lord podcast,
concentrated commentary on the world of Doctor
Who, newly returned to Disney+.
Doctor Who is not science fiction. Now maybe it
started out that way. Maybe in
1963 it used a science fiction framework to tell
historical stories and teach science facts. Maybe
Hammer Horror was layered onto science fiction.
Maybe Bidmeadian technobabble brought science
fiction back to the foreground in the 80s. Now
you had demons and you had vampires and maybe
the Doctor was Merlin himself, but it always came
back to science fiction. But this is the year of
our Lord 2024 and Russell T Davies is here to
tell you that Doctor Who is absolutely not
science
fiction. I'm going to take some time in a few
days to give each individual episode that premiered
on
Friday its own due, and truth be told, there's a
lot to unpack and consider. For those of us of
a certain age, those of us with certain hang-ups,
those of us who get nervous about karaoke and are
too embarrassed to hit the dance floor, the first
two episodes of Doctor Who Series One can be
off-putting. It's so big, so campy, so metafictional,
and why in the hell are these characters breaking
the fourth wall? But I think that's the point.
You see, in addition to the clear creative
irrepressibility of RTD, and I mean come on he'll
tell you he has an ego too, there's another
reason
that he pulled out all the stops (music reference!)
in "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord.""
I think it's because he had to. There's a Disney
connection here, and oh boy have my thoughts
about
Disney changed in the last couple of months. More
to come on that as well. Doctor Who is being
reintroduced after having gone commercially fallow
in recent years, its buzz having decreased as we
got further away from David Tennant and Matt
Smith. Doctor Who still had its eccentricities,
think about Santa Claus, actual superheroes, and
dancing Rasputins, but folks could be forgiven
for thinking that Doctor Who is, at its core,
basic science fiction, time-traveling Star Trek
with a low budget. And that is a trap, because
even with Disney money, Doctor Who will never be
a TV show like Star Trek Discovery or Obi-Wan Kenobi,
and if Disney+ viewers new to Doctor Who
go into it not expecting an ALL-AGES show
touching on MULTIPLE genres with a history of
SILLINESS,
then eventually they may get disappointed, or
even feel betrayed when they realize that the
show they're watching is not the show they're
seeing. So between "Space Babies," and come on you
really need to make a drinking game for whenever
the Doctor says "space babies," sorry where was I?
Between literal space babies, fart-propelled
spaceships, snot monsters, homicidal music gods,
unambiguous political commentary, and an honest-to-god
closing dance number,
RTD has done viewers a favor. He's established,
even more so than in the goblin-filled "The Church
on Ruby Road", that his Doctor Who is not safe
television. It's avant-garde for a younger
audience. Metaphors come alive. Identities become
fluid. Characters talk and wink at you.
And nothing follows hard science fictional rules.
(Not that the show ever really did.)
Over the next two podcasts, we'll talk more about
whether these individual stories actually held up.
They deserve more processing time. But this is
absolutely the most gutsy, unapologetic way to
start a series that I could have imagined. It's
here. It's Doctor Who. Get used to it.
Thanks for listening to the Two-minute Time Lord
podcast. I have more episodes
from years ago up to the present at twominutetimelord.com.
You can find me on
Mastodon at ThatChipGuy at Zeppelin.Flights. And
I'm on BlueSky. Just look for ThatChipFellow.
Thanks. Talk to you in a couple of days.