My Only Problem With The New Doctor Who

I love Doctor Who. I watched the show when I was growing up and fell in love with the concept of the Timelord going about universe in his antiquated time machine called the Tardis. Through reruns on our local station in Oklahoma, I saw most of the fourth doctor twice and everything from the third doctor through the sixth. We also taped most of those onto VHS and rewatched them, so I know a lot of Doctor Who. At the end of the sixth Doctor, OETA stopped running Doctor Who for awhile. I never saw any of the seventh Doctor and I also missed the movie in 1996. In fact, I was completely absent from the Doctor Who scene until last year, when I found the new Doctor Who episodes (from the series revival in 2005) on Netflix and decided to introduce my family to it.

We immediately loved it. We burned through all 5 series along with the specials on Netflix and got the first half of series 6 and watched it all before the second half ran late last year. Once we got through the new series, I took everyone back to the beginning and we've been watching all of the classic episodes beginning with the first Doctor (many of the first and second Doctor episodes I had never seen either). In fact, we only recently reached the classic season 10, which is where my parents' VHS records begin.

The two series are quite different. The original was written as long serial stories, and while they have clever plots and such, many of them move very slowly through the story. The new series keeps the action moving constantly, probably in order to cater to the faster paced MTV generation who can't sit still while the Doctor waxes philosophical. I still enjoy the originals and still find them engrossing in many ways, and the new one, with its superior special effects, speedier pacing, and long story arcs that tie multiple stories together serves the give the original a run for its money while acknowledging it as part of its history.

To put the two series into a sort of perspective on where we are, timewise: we just completed series 6 on the new series. The classic series ran for 26 seasons and the end of the 6th season saw the regeneration of the 2nd Doctor into the third. So while we're going into the 3rd series of the 3rd actor to play the Doctor in the new series, the classic had just started into its 1st season of its 3rd Doctor. Overall, the series is on its 11th Doctor, and the character acknowledges himself as such. This character also acknowledges bow ties and fezes as cool, so you can take that with a grain of salt.

However, there is one point in the new series that the original rarely had a problem with. We're dealing with a time traveler. This is someone who can go anywhere and anytime, and his only (personally imposed) limitation is not to cross his own time stream (though he has had occasion to break this rule). He does also meet other races, such as the Daleks, who also possess the technology to travel through time, and it is with the Daleks, among some other races, that the major breakdown occurs. In the original series, these guys were really the only offenders where the Doctor managed to always meet the Daleks (regardless of when he met them) after his previous adventure with them. While it seems reasonable for this to happen occasionally, you are dealing with meeting a race either before or after you met them before. You meet them multiple times that chances of always coming across them after the last time you met them seems more and more unlikely, yet it always happened that way.

The new series takes this one fault and multiplies it a hundredfold. In the new series, the Doctor has met exactly one character out of order, and that is just their individual plot to do so. EVERYONE ELSE has met the Doctor in his personal chronology, no matter what year he meets them, and there are races he runs into across many different times. But no matter when he meets them, they always know about the last adventure or conversation. This apexed, as it were, when all the Doctor's enemies banded together and in around 100AD (who knows why that date, but ok), they catch him. This means that all of those races would have to have a) possessed time travel and b) communicated together to meet at the same time and place. These races would have different present times, so having them all communicate and then meet at a time in their far distant pasts seems bizarre.

The point where this idea hit rock bottom was when the Doctor desired to visit Brigadier (ret.) Lethbridge Stewart, who is considered a companion of the third Doctor (along with the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th) despite having never traveled with him in the Tardis. The Doctor calls the place where he is staying and is informed that he died 3 months prior. Granted, actor Nicolas Courtney had actually died a few months prior to this episode, but within the "Whoniverse," the Doctor can simply set the controls back three months and visit his friend prior to his death.

I understand the need for continuity, but the point of bending time would be to create a sort of discontinuity. The one story that makes the most sense in context is River Song's who manages to meet the Doctor completely out of order to the point that he knows her future and she knows his...well, some parts of her know his, depending on which point in her life they meet.

Don't get me wrong, now. I love the show, and I'll keep watching it. Just felt like talking about that one thing.

Follow Up to the Xbox vs. Wii post

Well, I did get an Xbox for Christmas. I have since completed the first Assassin's Creed on it and play Skylanders on it (yes, I have at least one figure from each element, but I only bought them in stores for the retail; none of that scalping nonsense). I have since also completed Dead Space Extraction on the Wii, and I'm presently playing Zelda: Skyward Sword (27 hours in, I'm getting close to the end...I think). Having experienced the Xbox, has my previous opinion changed?

Not at all. They are both commendable systems that play different games in different ways. Zelda with the Xbox controls would be like Twilight Princess on the Gamecube. Sure, it'd have impressive visuals, but it would not be as interactive as it is on the Wii. It's a rather amazing game in how you play it. The Wii Remote controls the sword one to one, and you have to make some big swings to get the desired results; a flick of the wrist doesn't do it.

With the Xbox, I've decided to do some low level aerobics while playing since it involves sitting there with a controller, playing old-school style. Now, we do have the Kinect, and I have to move furniture to play that one, but for the majority of the nearly 2 dozen games I have (it's been out awhile and many of the classics are really cheap), I'll be physically idle with only my fingers getting a workout.

However, I will say I like both systems. The Xbox has some great games that I'm really looking forward to, and the graphics are amazing on my 1080p HDTV. The Wii remains the king of motion control and no fun is lost between them.