Begin the Begin

Just wanted to make note of something I discovered last week and have watched three or four times since.  I told you I love title sequences! Sadly, this doesn't tell you much about the show, other than it will be kinda trippy, but the theme song is pretty great, if nothing else. (Note: original video was removed, but I located another which is essentially identical).

I should also note that I have never seen an episode of DOCTOR WHO. I've seen a minute or two here or there, and am enough of a geek that I understand the general concept of the show and recognize a good bit of its iconography, but, nope, not a single episode.  No Tom Baker. No David Tennant. Not even the adorable Billie Piper could get me to sit down and watch a Christopher Eccleston episode, nor has the lovely, crimson-tressed Karen Gillan convinced me to partake in the Matt Smith iteration of the character.

It's not that I think I'll dislike the show.  I'm fairly certain I'd enjoy it. But, simply put, when I start something, I prefer to start AT THE BEGINNING. And, in this case, that would require watching dozens and dozens of shows that started airing in 1963.  It lasted 26 years before it was cancelled. There was a failed new version in 1996 intended as a pilot for US television and it was officially brought back in a seemingly new-viewer-friendly form in 2005.  But I'm sure they utilize call-backs and easter eggs aplenty to the original run of the show, otherwise why call it DOCTOR WHO?  If you want to make something newish, then put some contemporary window dressing on it, wipe the slate clean and call it PROFESSOR WHY.

So I'll not be watching DOCTOR WHO for the moment, and I'm actually OK with that.  It's one bit of popcult mythology I've never been compelled to open up and play with.  I actually think it's pretty great that a variety of writers and producers have collaborated over the years to build a lasting sci-fi vehicle that thousands of people have embraced so fully, and the collaborative building or controlled open-sourcing of a specific mythology over decades is not unlike another medium I love, comic books.  It's not like Spider-Man or Batman have had a lone auteur voice guiding them since their inception.

Everything doesn't have to be friendly to people just discovering it.  Most corporate comic books "reboot" or "relaunch" themselves every few years, and DC Comics is about to do it again, but in my opinion that disrespects the work which has come before. If I ever decide to open my brain to DOCTOR WHO, it will be with a respect to what existed before I showed up. And hopefully it will begin with what came before.