Skip to main content

Time and Space



10 years ago today saw the revival of my favorite television show of all-time.

Doctor Who has been a part of my life since, well.... since I was in short pants. A staple of PBS viewing, I watched it seven times a week (Monday through Friday at 10pm, and on Saturdays at 6:00pm and 6:30pm). There was a Doctor Who convention here in Champaign, in February 1985, where Sixth Doctor Colin Baker came to town. Charming man.

After 26 years on the air, Doctor Who was cancelled in 1989 after waning quality and audience numbers. An American-made TV movie in 1996 did nothing to revive the program, and it looked like Doctor Who was gone for good, relegated to reruns, DVDs, books and the occasional radio show featuring the old actors trotted-out to re-create their roles.

Thankfully, the BBC (original producers of the program) decided to bring it back in 2005 and, on March 26th, it debuted to good ratings and positive word-of-mouth. With show runner Russell T. Davies at the helm, Doctor Who enjoyed a popularity it hadn't had since the late 1970s. David Tennant starred as The Doctor from 2005-2009, and solidified its future.

The revived version of my favorite show has sometimes proved to be a mixed-bag. For every great story such as Blink, where statues come to life and chase people, there's a Love & Monsters, where a woman is turned into a concrete slab and insinuates that she's still able to perform oral sex on her boyfriend. The classic series never would have gone there.

Still, Doctor Who is back. I'm happy it's here, and have mostly enjoyed the adventures of the past 10 years. It will be interesting to see what the next decade brings.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday's Restaurants

The local newspaper has a feature from one of Champaign-Urbana's most legendary restaurateur's, John Katsinas, on what his favorite area restaurants were that have now since closed (or will soon be closing).  It's a nice little read, and has made me stop and think about the restaurants that have come and gone that have left an indelible (and edible) impression on me throughout the years. Here we go....
Post a Comment
Read more

Watching The Hours

A Twitter friend named Paula has asked for folks to submit ideas for a blog-a-thon about what we think will be the classic films of the future. In other words, what relatively recent movies (namely, from the 21st century), do we think will be considered classics in the decades to come, possibly airing on such venerable stations as Turner Classic Movies ? While a number of films come to mind for such a category, one in particular stood out from the rest, and thus is my entry for Paula's blog-a-thon.
5 comments
Read more

She's Madonna

Today we're going to talk about something very important. We're going to talk about Madonna. "Madge," as she's affectionately known around the gay scene, has been making music for over thirty years. I grew up with her songs, many of them pop classics. In recent years, it can be arguably said that her popularity has waned a bit. During the past decade, Madonna has put out seventeen singles. Of those, three have charted in the US Top 40. Ten Failed to chart at all on the Billboard Hot 100. We now have at least one possibility offered as to why Madge's chart power is waning: Ageism. At least, that's what Diplo (just, Diplo), a producer of some of the tracks off her latest album, thinks . I know it's difficult to be objective about something you've worked on -- whether you were the producer or the artist -- but, as a listener/fan, I have to say that Madonna's most recent work has simply not been that good. Still, we'll hear what ...
Post a Comment
Read more