Fetch me a TARDIS-shaped cake and lots of candles! Doctor Who turns 50

The 50th birthday celebrations for venerable BBC show Doctor Who will be epic and global in scale as befitting a show of its influence (image via bbc.co.uk)
The 50th birthday celebrations for venerable BBC show Doctor Who will be epic and global in scale as befitting a show of its influence (image via bbc.co.uk)

 

2013 is a big year if you’re a Whovian, a fan of the great Time Lord himself, Doctor Who, who marks 50 years on our TV screens on November 23, just  over one short week away.

Of course if you’re Doctor Who himself, a Gallyfreyan who’s over 900 years old and has regenerated countless times, chalking up a half century of anything is likely no big deal.

After all, when you’re as old as he is and can pretty much zip where you like in the universe and through time in your bright, blue Police Box-shaped T.A.R.D.I.S., then what is such a small amount of years?

It is of little consequence most likely … ah but what if you’re a human?

Well, if you’re a member of the finite-lived human race, with whom the Doctor has had a great deal of contact, whether as companions or in the course of saving them over and over from enemies cruel and numerous from the Daleks to the Zygons to the Cybermen and beyond, it is an monumental deal, and one worthy of great celebration.

And so with that in mind, the BBC, who put the first episode of Doctor Who“An Unearthly Child” aka “100,000 BC”, to air on 23 November 1963 with William Hartnell as the first Doctor and Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright and William Russell as Ian Chesterton as his initial set of companions, is making an understandably big deal of the event.

 

The official poster for the anniversary episode Day of the Doctor (image via blogtorwho.blogspot.com)
The official poster for the anniversary episode Day of the Doctor (image via blogtorwho.blogspot.com)

 

First up is the movie-length anniversary episode “The Day of the Doctor” which features not one but three incarnations of the Doctor – David Tennant (#10), Matt Smith (#11) and the mysterious War Doctor (John Hurt) along with two companions, one former one Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and one serving, the mysterious, almost eternal Clara (Jenna Coleman).

While little is known of the plot itself, apart from the fact that it is epic, features classic Doctor Who villains the Daleks and the Zygons, a visit with Elizabeth 1 (played by Joanna Page, Gavin and Stacey) and paintings as a recurring motif, it is being billed as the biggest, most expansive Doctor Who episode ever.

“I fought for peace in a universe at war. Now the time has come to face the choices that I’ve made in the name of The Doctor. Our future depends on one single moment of one impossible day, the day I’ve been running from all my life.”
(Intro to the general trailer, below, voiced by the current Doctor, Matt Smith)

 

 

And here’s the two latest trailers, the second only just released on 11 November …

 

 

 

Screenings will take place all over the world, reasonably simultaneously, with Australia hosting screenings at cinemas across the country (along with the UK, Ireland, Germany, Canada, USA and Russia) ahead of the episode’s television premiere at 7.50pm on 23 November in UK and approximately 6.50 am AU time on 24 November.

The simultaneous screenings worldwide, which will happen in 75 countries, are an attempt to foster a sense of occasion of course but also to stop pirating of this major event, according to gizmodo.com.au:

“The ABC has today promised to air the episode live on ABC1 with the rest of the world on Sunday 24 November. The time is yet to be confirmed, but we’ll be watching at the same time as 75 other countries around the world. Take that, pirates!”

I will be getting up nice and early naturally for this once in a lifetime event, happily joining a multitude of fans from all over the world.

But wait that’s not all.

 

One of two strikingly original posters produced by the BBC for An Adventure in Space and Time (image via blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk)
One of two strikingly original posters produced by the BBC for An Adventure in Space and Time (image via blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk)

 

The BBC has also produced a dramatisation of the very beginnings of Doctor Who in 1963.

Written by long time Doctor Who scribe and actor Mark Gatiss and starring David Bradley as the first Doctor, William Hartnell and Jessica Raine as Verity Lambert, “An Adventure in Space and Time” is a specially commissioned 90 minute drama that recreates the genesis of this most epoch-defining of TV shows:

“This special one-off drama travels back in time to 1963 to see how the beloved “Doctor Who” was first brought to the screen. Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles. Wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry’s glass ceiling. Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama, time travel and monsters! Allied with a team of brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever, now celebrating its 50th anniversary.” (source: ABC press release via mumbrella.com.au)

It will screen in Australia at 8.45pm on Sunday 24 November, following the encore screening of “Day of the Doctor” at 7.30pm.

 

 

I am excited on all kinds of levels by all the thoroughly justified hype and brouhaha over Doctor Who‘s 50th Anniversary.

I grew up watching the show like so many members of generation, and while I spent large slabs of many episodes crouching behind my Blanket o’ Comfort and Safety as I termed it, scared by the Doctor’s many villains – in the cold, hard light of adulthood, those baddies and the scary situations they plunged the Doctor and his companions seem tame and un-troubling – I found myself drawn to the enigmatic Time Lord and his nail-bitingly epic adventures.

I can still recall refusing to touch plants for years afterwards after the terrifying “Seeds of Doom” (which I saw recently on cable and appreciated anew as some very fine storytelling; I still don’t like touching plants though), or hating spiders with even more vigour after “Planet of the Spiders” and fearing a pandemic after all of London succumbed to a virulent alien borne disease (title of the episode unknown but I remember people toppling over rather dramatically on a pedestrian bridge).

No matter how scary things got though I always knew the Doctor, and yes my favourite Doctor is Tom Baker (although David Tennant is a very close second), would save the day and that made everything all right.

So marking this anniversary, even in a small way, is enormously important to me, which is why I will be getting up crazy early on a Sunday morning, mere hours after my birthday party has concluded, to watch the Doctor #savetheday once again.

 

All 11 Doctors all in a row in a n special commemorative image released by the BBC (image via tvline.com)
All 11 Doctors all in a row in a n special commemorative image released by the BBC (image via tvline.com)

 

* Check out these interviews courtesy of the BBC with Steven Moffat (current executive producer of Doctor Who), Matt Smith (the current Doctor who departs in this year’s Christmas special), David Tennant (the 10th Doctor who preceded Matt Smith’s incarnation), Jenna Coleman (who plays the current companion Clara) and Joanna Page (who plays Elizabeth 1 in “The Day of the Doctor” episode).

You can read transcripts of the interviews at doctorwhonews.net.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2 thoughts on “Fetch me a TARDIS-shaped cake and lots of candles! Doctor Who turns 50

  1. My daughter is so unhappy with me. We are traveling to Alabama that day and will miss celebrations. On top of that it is a One Direction promotion as well.
    Oh parenting in the digital age
    Great research and background thanks for all the links

  2. Oh no! LOL Thank goodness for PVRs I guess. She can make her own hopefully 🙂

    You’re more than welcome. It’s fun pulling it all together!

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