The Doctor is a Woman!!

I did not start as early as I could have watching Doctor Who, but I through myself into it when I had matured enough to find the stories appealing.  We are talking Doctor Who that started in black and white and had long plot lines that lasted half a year, sometimes less, but on the whole it was made with a small budget and had many unforgettable villains in campy costumes. 

Doctor Who, simply known in the series as The Doctor, the 'Who' part is referring to the mystery surrounding him in the initial series, he is never referred to as Doctor Who.  He is a Time Lord, that is a race that lived on distant Galfrey, a world like any other, except the inhabitants had time travelling technology.  The TARDIS which is an acronym for Time And Relative Demensions In Space, because it was a time machine and a space ship rolled into one AND it was bigger on the inside than the outside.  The outside occupied about two or three square meters and was in the shape of a Police Box that was common back in the 60s when the show premiered.  The Tardis has a cameleon circuit that allows it to assume the shape of any object, so that it appeared as part of the local landscape, but it was always broken and so the ship always appeared as the same thing, a police box.  

When ever the doctor appeared there was always adventure and there was always death.  Lots of death.  There was a lot of conflict too and there was also bad guys and good guys and a lot of regular people fighting to do what was right, and The Doctor and his companions would drop into this setting and stir the pot and disrupt the evil plans and set things back to where they needed to go.  The series was inexpensive to produce and filled in a time slot consistently for decades, 1963-1987 and it had a following of devoted fans.  

One of the main problems with the series was encountered early in its life, when the actor who played The Doctor decided to leave the series.  *Choke*  The show was SciFi, so they came up with a SciFi answer, Timelords can regenerate themselves when they reach the end of their natural lifespan or die of trauma.  Boom, there was new life for the series.  This also allowed the series to go in different directions, just by changing the actor who played him; and it was always a man.  There was an injoke that every time they regenerated they hoped that they were Ginger — never happened yet. 

When the series ended it was a loss I keenly felt; I religiously followed the series  and I was heart broken when it was over.  There was a sense that many of e episodes were lost, as when the BBC produced the show they sent the series to North America and they did not archive the episode, so when they sent it across the Ocean it was gone.  There was an attempt to reboot the series, or atleast interest in the series with a movie, but they tried to market it to everyone and not just to the core fan base the movie was not a success.

In 2005, they rebooted the series with a new format.  Hour long complete episodes, that concentrated on character development and not on SciFi ideas and plotlines.  It was still SciFi, just not the main focus.  They focused on more important things, like love and relationships and the companions recieved equal billing to the person who played the Doctor.  This was a better format, it had wider appeal and the following was much stronger.  The budget was also greater too and the technology was better too.  

But there were some problems.  Notably the search for new Actors playing the role of the doctor was not as smooth as the first series, when an actor decided to leave there was a mad scramble to find someone that would take tthe role and atleast on two occasions the actor left without there being a clear successor and we. Issd a season.  The writers calibre also was an issue, the episodes were more based on fantasy than on science fiction and it showed.  There was a few episodes that resembled Jumping the Shark.  There was an episode where the moon hatched into a dragon and one where lighter than air sharks lived in the sky, there was actually a large number of those.  There was great writing in that time, but it had become silly too.  It's not like that was not good science fiction out there to make and it was not like ere are less SciFi writers out there; their are more.  

But then they did something controversial.  The longtime super villian of the Doctor regenerated and came back as a woman, the Master became Missy.  It worked, it showed the writers that viewers would not react poorly to a female casting of a non companion.  Then the rumours.  The new Doctor would be a woman.  And about, roughly, half of the fans refused to continue watching they said.  They said this was a ratings stunt and that it would not work.  The first episode was weired.  Very odd.  But it could be explained as moving from one regeneration to a new role.  The old doctor was, eccentric and the new doctor played an eccentric loopy individual.  The second episode she played a more fliuid character.  The third episode and the fourth.  Then I noticed it.  The writing had improved.  The focus was more on the old series, where there was not always a happy ending for the people of the setting the doctor appeared in.  People died, people that seemed to be good people died; just like in the first series.  The writing was good too, and varied, seven episodes in, the cast is diverse and so are the writers.  The subject matter is also diverse and there is a tension, just because you are a strong character and are likeable and on the doctor's side, does not mean you are immortal.  The first episode through to the most recent good people die.  

The settings are great too.  They actually went to shoot in South Africa and other locals besides England and the settings look exotic and alien too.  I can't wait for the next episode, I might even rewatch some of them again.