Finally, the religion for me!

I like the Calvin and Hobbes reference with the cereal.

I fully support this religion and intend to use fan-fic line at some point in my life. :)

"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."

The Face of Evil 1:01

(Where do I join?)

NEW RELIGION? I've been worshipping at that altar for YEARS now. One of the happiest days of my life was being in the presence of His Sixth Incarnation at a convention convocation in Rochester, NY. He even shook my hand!

Alas that I've been denied his presence and seen nothing since the time he conquered in the Satan Pit...

Love it.
I was lucky growing up in Australia, they had His Worship on every night for decades. Between that and 'The Goodies', they made me the person I am today.
A cool nerd girl.

If you're following the new series, he is, after all, "the lonely angel" or "the lonely god" - as well as the last of his kind. For that matter, in 'Human Nature' (this week's episode - haven't seen it yet), he apparently becomes human in some sense... some interesting parallels there.

Definitely a formative influence on my childhood too... nice mention of 'The Goodies', above, too - still funny after so many years... and, in honour of Orac, I'll add 'Blake's 7'...

Funny you should mention the most recent episode. I managed to download and watch it last night. Without giving away any spoilers, I can say that, in order to hide from mysterious pursuers known as The Family of Blood, in the year 1913 the Doctor does indeed become "fully human," so much so that he loses his memory of ever having been a Time Lord. In flashbacks, we learn that he even had gone so far as to alter his physiology such that he no longer has two hearts. Taking a job as a schoolmaster at a boys' boarding school less than a year before the start of World War I, before his change, he entrusted Martha, who takes a job as a maidservant in the school, to watch over him and a pocketwatch that apparently holds the key to his reverting to being a Time Lord when the danger is passed or the time is right. The Doctor even finds a love interest in the form of a widow who works as a librarian at the school and has frequent nightmares about his "real" life as a Time Lord.

All in all, a pretty good (and fairly unconventional, episode.

Not surprisingly, the Family does eventually show up looking for the Doctor, using servants or automatons in the guise of scarecrows to terrorize and capture humans and somehow taking over the minds of various other faculty and students at the school, leading to a typical Who cliffhanger ending. That's about all I can say without giving away too much. I guess mysteries such as who the Family is and why it's looking for the Doctor will be answered in the conclusion next week.

Wonderful cartoon. I think I may have been converted!

Happy to make the suggestion, Orac. I had a feeling it would be well recievved.

What, the next ep is "Human Nature"? Oh, I do hope they didn't try to adapt the New Adventure of the same title (which I suspect was really a retcon for the "half human" thing in the Fox telefilm). Not only was it way too maudlin for my tastes, but it would be virtually impossible to squeeze it into 45 minutes.

Ah well. It'll be Who regardless. ;-) I too am a blissful follower of the Doctor. Heck, my online nick was, er, adapted from the Dalek expansion pack for the Dr Who Role Playing Game. I am obsessed, and it is good.

Loved the "fanfic" riff. :-P I've even read a Dr Who/Bible crossover fanfic. (Was passable, but I liked the MST3Ked version better.)

BTW, just reread the comic and realized that one sign of a really pathetic Whovian is whether or not you get annoyed that the alleged "Whovian" in the strip keeps calling the protagonist of the series "Doctor Who".

Any *REAL* Whovian knows that's not his name. ;-) He's never called that, even once, in the series. It's the question typically asked when he introduces himself. "I'm the Doctor." "Doctor who?"

He's the Doctor. Not Doctor Who (unless one is referring to the spinoff films featuring Peter Cushing in the title role, where he's not even a Time Lord).

So there. :-P

Oh, just read your note above, Orac, with the episode spoilers. I guess "Human Nature" really is an adaptation of the New Adventure novel of the same title. That sounds very much like the book, only with Martha taking Benny's role. Hmmm. I will watch that with interest.

I'm just pleased to know that I'm not the only one who spends his week-end carefully watching over his precious download / decompression / disc-burning cycle. And yes, just in case someone out there is wondering, I also buy the BBC releases when they come out. Covering my bases, as it were.

Especially after watching DW Confidential after the episode, I was struck by how good the 'Human Nature' was. I *haven't* read Cornell's original book (I didn't obsessively read the New Adventures... at least, not all of them, and the Beeb took it off their site just after this series began), and I only vaguely knew the idea of the original (thanks to Wikipedia), so it's all coming out as a beautiful surprise.

I guess that makes the point of the comic, after all. Personally, I'd love to go back through the canon and list *all* of the threats from which the Doctor has saved us over the years... Personally, I don't worship at any altars (unless you count bookshops), but I know that how I'd rather spend my Saturday or Sunday... and it's *not* bent prostrate at the altar of the last of the belligerent sky-gods.

Has anyone here seen Russell Davies' religion drama, 'The Second Coming'? Highly recommended, partly for the entertaining way the subject is dealt with, and partly because it stars Christopher Eccleston.

And, finally, on people saying "Doctor Who" versus "the Doctor" - don't get me started.

Here's to waiting eagerly for "The Family of Blood"...

Fans of Spaced will be pleased to see Jessica Stevenson playing the Doctor's love interest. Personally speaking, this has been the standout episode of the series so far.

And RE: The Doctor/Doctor Who - of course, there are the silly Peter Cushing films in which he horribly, horribly introduces himself with "Hello, I'm Dr Who.". Ugh... but they don't really count do they?

I've been enjoying the 2005-present revival, myself. Anyone know where I can watch the older series?

Only other things I recall from before:

This one movie dealing with the Daleks versus a bunch of elves, which I think was more of a non-canonical thing.

The end of a relatively recent movie where he was pointing to some distant nebula or something, "That's a good five minutes in this old thing" followed by my dad commenting on just how fast that would be, and how it'd put the Enterprise (any of them) to shame.

Once, long, long ago, of being at my grandparent's place and watching an episode of the long-scarf-Doctor on a planet where it's illegal to be sad, and featured a candy bot.

Bronze Dog, if you're in the US, I understand that a few PBS markets still carry the classic series (mine doesn't, but they *will* be showing Jonathan Miller's 'Brief History of Atheism' in June, so I can't be too unpleasant about them). Otherwise, surprisingly, I've found that my local, middle-western public library system has a number of the episodes available to check out. Alternately, you can spring for the (overpriced, but packed with extras and nicely remastered) DVDs - lots of them coming out, about five or six per year, or pick up the VHS versions.

Now, to reveal the level to which I'm a Doctor Who geek...

* the Daleks versus elves? Are you thinking of a colour film, with Peter Cushing as the Doctor? The would be the "Doctor Who and the Daleks" travesty. The Thals in that story (which is a moderate butchering of the first ever Dalek serial, more often known as "The Survivors"), do look a bit elvish.

* I seem to recall the line about "five minutes in this old thing" being in the Paul McGann tele-film (sometimes called "The Enemy Within") from 1996, the one that was on Fox in the US. It has some truly dreadful bits, but McGann's devotion to Big Finish audio projects and his appearance in "Human Nature" (in sketchbook form) seem to cement him relatively firmly in the canon. As far as I know, TEW has never been released commercially in the US. In Britain, it's part of the BBC Doctor Who DVD range.

* the candy bot features in "The Happiness Patrol", which is a Sylvester McCoy era story. Not one of my favourites, but I probably need to see his episodes again just to be certain (except for "Delta and the Bannermen" - *never* again). THP bears, to my mind, a passing resemblance to the Tom Baker (the Doctor with the scarf, of course)- era story "The Sunmakers", so maybe they've melded together in your mind to produce "The Sunmakers of Happiness"? Would probably have been a better story...

Happy hunting...

I liked "The Sunmakers" much better than "Happiness Patrol", but yes, there were some similar themes there.

The Fox telefilm is not on DVD in the US mainly because Fox is stupid. They have exclusive rights to broadcast or otherwise distribute it in the US, until whatever the date is at which the rights expire. For whatever reason, they are stubbornly clinging to that by refusing to make any money whatsoever off of it. I haven't the foggiest idea why. Meanwhile, some American Whovians have purchased region-free DVD players and are buying the BBC release....

It occurred to me after writing my posts above that there actually *was* one instance on the TV series when the protagonist was called "Doctor Who". In the William Hartnell serial "The War Machines", the evil computer WOTAN said, "Bring me Doctor Who," earning itself a lasting reputation among continuity-obsessed fans. :-P (It's right up there with UNIT dating in terms of continuity flubs.)

(Oh, and the first Dalek serial was *not* titled "The Survivors". Episode One of the serial was titled "The Survivors". In the first season, the serials did not actually have titles of their own.)

Excellent catches, Calli - I meant "sometimes", not "often" on the title of the first Dalek story. I want to say that the VHS release called the story "the Survivors / the Dead Planet", but that would mean digging in boxes to find my copy, so it's entirely possible that I am making things up at this point. The US DVD release simply calls it "The Daleks". I love the old individually-titled stories quite unreasonably - there's nothing quite like them.

I'd forgotten the line in "the War Machines" (probably only seen it once or twice), but I'll add to the count: the infamous opening credits from the Pertwee era story, which call it "Doctor Who and the Silurians". Not strictly spoken within the show, but a glaring one nonetheless. And, of course, there are the end credits throughout much of the show's history...

As to Fox being stupid... well, er, yes. And once the pound comes down against the dollar (if it ever does), I'll pick up the telemovie just to keep my money out of their coffers.

You know, looking at the above, the religion joke that started this may not have been too wide of the mark after all...

I believe you are correct about the VHS releases. I've given mine away (in favor of the DVD release, naturally) but that rings a bell.

There have been quite a few amusingly long-winded arguments about what the serials should *really* be called. Some people insist on calling "An Unearthly Child" "100,000 BC", which wasn't even the title of any of its episodes. ("An Unearthly Child" was the title of the first episode of the serial, and also the title of the Target novelization, the "omnibus" version of the story aired primarily in the US and a few other markets, and the various VHS and DVD releases of it.) So that's why I had to respond. ;-)

Yes, you're probably right that there's something to the "religion" argument. Funny, considering that the series was always basically agnostic and had some great thoughts on the subject of religion, especially religion gone wrong. One of my favorites along those lines was "The Face of Evil", Leela's first story. The FX are a bit silly at times, but the story itself is quite good.

I can see all sorts of sects developing since, personally, I only believe in Tom Baker as the Doctor. The others? Only poor imitations and obviously false prophets.