I’m new to Doctor Who- I’ve watched about 3.5 seasons starting with Eccleston and currently on the adventures of The Doctor and Martha. A few questions that I have though:
The first Doctor was portrayed as somewhat elderly (the actor was in his mid-50s but looked much older), then there was a series of middle aged actors and then Tennant and now Smith, who’s the youngest one yet. Is it part of Who canon that whenever he regenerates he becomes younger than he was before?
Also, he’s mentioned having a brother and a daughter, and while I haven’t seen the first season apparently his granddaughter was a character. Did it ever go into any detail in the series about his wife/wives/partner/partners and child/children? What became of his granddaughter?
Does Doctor Who ever have sex with humans? If he and Rose were having sex then it was at most hinted at and my implication was they didn’t. Was he romantically involved with Sarah Jane?
I haven’t started watching TORCHWOOD yet but I’ve heard it highly recommended. What about The Sarah Jane Adventures? It seems more like a kid’s show but I was wondering if it’s any good.
And feel free to ask your own DW related questions or hijack for other DW purposes.
And, btw, I should like to have a Coke and perhaps some sexual intercourse with David Tennant, so if anybody knows him please give him my number. Thanks.
He goes up and down in age appearance. Peter Davison looked quite young and was followed(2 later) by Sylvester McCoy, who was older looking. Then, back to young again with Paul McGann, and really young with Matt Smith.
It’s… okay. Kinda feels like sometimes they were trying to hard to be the “adult” Doctor Who. However, the third season was just a short miniseries called “Children of Earth” and it was excellent. I recommend watching a few episodes of the first season just to get an idea of the characters and then jumping ahead to Children of Earth.
The Doctor’s appearance after each regeneration seems to be a random thing - though other Time Lords seem to have much more control over their appearance. The First Doctor is apparently the only one who had to regenerate because his body got old - the other regenerations occurred due to more violent situations, by the way.
The Doctor doesn’t have sex with humans (at least on stage - it’s been hinted that he had a serious relationship with Queen Elizabeth the First). “No hanky-panky on the Tardis” is the basic rule. Sarah Jane (and others) obviously adore the Doctor, but there are indications that he doesn’t really understand human sexuality very well.
The Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, left the series the way that a lot of companions do, by going off to get married. There’s been no details provided about his wife and other relations - it’s an awkward subject now that the Time War has killed off virtually the whole species.
Torchwood and TSJA are mixed bags - some good stuff and some bad (particularly true of Torchwood)
Although that was the original intent, and the general thrust of the actors ages (there’s a couple exceptions, where the actors are older or the same age as their predecessors), it’s never been said in-universe.
Nope. It wasn’t until the new series that it was explicitly mentioned that they’d ever existed. For a LONG time, it was a common idea that the Doctor (and possibly Gallifreyans in general) was asexual. Where Susan came from, in light of this produced many theories. None of which are now needed since the Doctor has explicitly said he was a husband and father, now.
She eventually married a human man, and left the TARDIS. It’s not known what happened to her after that.
Not that we know of. See above.
Nope.
Doctor Who was a ‘No Hugging, No Kissing’ show until the new series, at least as concerned the Doctor himself. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward implicitly played the Doctor and Romana as being romantically attracted to each other, but that’s as far as it went. (I THINK it was Ward, anyway, since she was married to Baker - it was Baker and the actress who played one of his Companions, in any case.)
Davison was followed by Colin Baker, who, while he did look older than Davison (and was, in fact, about 10 years older) also looked older than his replacement, McCoy (who was the same age as Baker, give or take a couple months).
I know that David Tennant has many fans, and Tom Baker was super popular, but
Is there a generally acknowledged to be Most popular and the Least popular" Doctor Who? (I would excuse Paul McGann from both since he didn’t have the role long enough to develop much of a fan base.)
How is Matt Smith working out? I haven’t seen any of his yet.
Some Doctor Who fan club- I think Hurricane Who- has offered Baker a fortune to come to the U.S. for the convention but he has declined, citing arthritis and a dislike of flying. They’ve even offered to book him passage on a luxury liner, but apparently he doesn’t have interest or need the money enough to do it.
Colin Baker is probably the least popular, but the blame supposedly lies with the showrunner at the time producing a bad series.
There’s no official “most popular” obviously, but, as you’ve picked up, Tennant and Baker are the main contenders.
Matt Smith’s run has been a bit divisive. He’s a great performer, and his Doctor feels like a sprightly, mercurial elderly genius. I think he makes “The Doctor” real in a way nobody’s yet pulled off. The visual quality of his run has also picked up – the recent seasons look very, very nice. The biggest complaint against his run is that the show has gotten more serialized, and the more classic episodic adventures feel a little more like afterthoughts.
I’ve been watching the newer episodes starting with the 2005 return. I’ll admit I had one problem with Christopher Eccleston - I kept wondering why Al Bundy was talking with an English accent.
Yes, that was Lalla Ward, though there’s an extenuating circumstance there: Romana filled the role of the Doctor’s Companion during the three or so seasons she was on the show…but she was, herself, a Time Lord (well, technically, a Time Lady). Lalla Ward was the second actress to play Romana; she was played by Mary Tamm for one season, but Tamm decided to not return for a second season, and so, Romana regenerated (and Ward took on the role).
Ward and Baker were living together while they worked together on the show, and they married in 1980 (near the end of Baker’s run as The Doctor), but the marriage only lasted about a year and a half.
Tom makes very good money doing voice over work - for example, he did voiceovers for ‘Little Britain’. Last I heard he was living in France and quite settled there. He is known to have terrible arthritis and to be rather a homebody at this point in his life, though apparently at one point he was quite involved on-line to the point of participating in irc chats.
He held the role for so long that he is THE DOCTOR for a lot of folks. His take, at times was just as dark as what NuWho does now - take a look at what Tom’s Doctor does gleefully to Sutekh, the last Osirin, at the end of ‘Pyramids of Mars’. Yowch.
It’s often explored, coming to multiple conclusions. I think the most popular is that the Doctor likes to be “Impressive” and so he needs someone to react against him. However, he also likes to see the wondrous nature of the Universe through others’ eyes.
Not the blood sucking kind. Psychic vampirism. The Doctor feeds off the emotions of people. So he finds somebody who’s looking for adventure, takes them to exciting places, and stands next to them as they experience it all.
Torchwood is nearly all complete crap, with a few flashes of adequacy, like the aforementioned Children of Earth. The Sarah Jane Adventures are OK, but they’re very much aimed at preteens. It’s almost worth watching the entire series just for the thirty minutes or so of David Tenant’s guest appearances…
Hartnell 55
Troughton 46
Pertwee 50
Baker T 40
Davison 29
Baker C 40
McCoy 44
McGann 36
Eccleston 41
Tennant 34
Smith 27
His grandaughter, Susan, was one of the first Doctor (Hartnell’s) companions in the 1960s. We never find out about other family members (at least yet).
Certainly not explicitly in the show. It’s just never mentioned. You could choose to read between the lines and theorize, but we don’t know.
Most will agree Torchwood isn’t very good, but the 5-part Children of Earth mini-series was excellent. Has a few crossovers with Doctor Who so may be worth watching so you know more about some of the characters when they appear in Who. Sarah Jane Adventures is very much for kids; it’s shown on a kid’s channel in the afternoon.
