Tag: Doctor Who

On Sunday Drinking, Or, Has Satan Been Rendered Irrelevant?

I know better than to go drinking on Sundays, but it’s just been one of those weeks, and I figured I’d grab a few beers, no big deal, and then head hone and get some real work done.

Of course, the reason I don’t drink on Sundays is because that’s when Satan likes to go hang out at my favorite bar – and to be real honest with you, lately Satan’s getting to be a real drag to hang out with once he gets drinking.

I mean, it’s depressing: he’s always talking about how he gets blamed for the economy, even though he claims he has no control over Wall Street, and atheism is a bit of a sore subject – and he’s forever complaining about how all his best customers have been outsourcing more and more work to Varsavarti.

But if you think all that’s a drag to have to deal with…you should hear him complain about Republican Presidential Politics.

Good Bye, Sarah Jane Smith 20110423

Most of you that read my posts know that I am an avid fan of Doctor Who.  I am not ashamed of that at all, and like the new ones very much, but they are not anything like the classic ones that ran from 1963 to around 1980 or so.  Those ones had the classic Doctors, Hartnell, Throughtan, Pertwee, and especially Baker.

They all had companions.  I liked lots of them, Jamie, Granddaughter (Susan, and they still have not explained that companion, his first, from 1963!).  But the most wonderful companion was Sarah Jane Smith, an investigative journalist.  She way played by the extremely attractive Elisabeth Sladen, who just departed from us this week.  Not only was she a companion for over three and one half years, she, unique of all others, returned many times to reprise the same character.  She was 65 years old, and had been married to the same man since 1968.

The New Doctor Who is Fantastic! 20090627

BBC America just ran the new installment of Doctor Who.  It has surpassed my expectations, let alone hopes.  David Tennent is so well suited to the role of The Doctor (and to think that I did not like him very much at first, since Eccleston was so good) that one actually believes that he believes that he is The Doctor.

For those of you not hip to this series, I can not even begin to begin to explain.  It started as a children’s television program on BBC in 1963, starring William Hartnell as a very aged Doctor, traveling with his first companion.  She was, in the story, his granddaughter, and this has never been resolved in the years of the series.

Out of Time


The complete cartoon can be read at salon.com.

In itself, referencing the BBC television show Doctor Who in a political cartoon isn’t unusual. For example, it isn’t uncommon in Britain for editorial cartoonists to depict politicians, such as Tony Blair, as Daleks. But when the show makes an appearance in an American publication, it is something unusual and oddly out-of-place.

In this week’s This Modern World, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow has the Doctor and his TARDIS make a cameo appearance. As you can see, The Doctor travels back to 2003 to bring news to Sparky the Wonder Penguin about Barack Obama being the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Tom chose not just any Doctor, but the 10th Doctor currently being portrayed by David Tennant. Usually when Doctor Who is referenced in America, Tom Baker’s Doctor is depicted.

Doctor Who comics have a history of penguins. In the 1980s, the comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine had Frobisher, a shape-changing extraterrestrial whose preferred form was that of a penguin.

I wonder if he knows something of Doctor Who’s comic strip past? Or was this just an odd, happy coincidence?