Doctor Who & City of Death

How Far You've Come Doctor

Doctor Who has been a favorite show of mine since I was a child. My mother once crocheted a super-crazy long scarf for me as a tribute to the one Doctor Who wore in the mid- to late-1970s. Over time and with the advent into my young life of girls, beer, pot, more girls, more beer, professional wrestling, military, camping, harry potter, sleazy girls and finally married life...I forgot the good Doctor, but he had kept his fight going. Over the past few years I've watched the new Doctor Who emerge from Great Britain. I've always enjoyed British programming. Red Dwarf, Monty Python, Steptoe & Son, Benny Hill, The Young Ones, if it was British I was drawn to it.

Over time, I convinced my wife and now she is a huge fan herself. We watch The Doctor with Rose, Martha, Donna, or Astrid doing what he does best. We watch Captain Jack and the Torchwood team doing their job. But recently I sat her down and we watched City of Death with Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor from 1979. The pace was different. The effects were passable. The whole feel was different. Trying to remember that back then things were different, however I was 9 years old back then. Television and the media was not the huge force in not only American, but Worldwide Culture that it is today. We watched the episode, and it was typical Who...landing in 1979 Paris, The Doctor, with fellow Time Lord, and current female companion, Romana, try to enjoy a vacation...however the workings of an alien who had been imprisoned on Earth for 400 million years...his existence scattered over the centuries into 12 different pieces...a plot to fix himself and become the savior of his people is causing problems with time...The Doctor investigates, is captured, escapes, finds a plot to steal the Mona Lisa only to find that The Count, our evil alien's 1970s human disguise, has six Mona Lisa's...and with the seventh in the Louve a fantastic robbery will allow him to sell the paintings to seven underground art buyers and make millions, in which to spend on a plot to return him to....well, I began to get lost.