Author Archive
Why is it that some of the best shows ever made are the ones that no one has ever heard of? This isn’t to say that just because no one’s heard of them automatically makes them better shows.
So not too long ago I was at my girlfriend’s house for a little family get together, her mom, dad, sister, sister’s boyfriend, her grandma, her uncle and her cousins were there. Her cousins are teenagers now, the youngest being 13, and whenever I talk to them I can’t help but think about how old I must seem to them. Even at only 24 there’s a huge pop-cultural gap between us. The youngest is the one I seem to spend the whole time with, he’s a burgeoning pop culture aficionado, more hardcore gamer than anything else, but still a love for super heroes, sci-fi, and movies are all there. We have a great time talking about all kinds of movies, TV shows, and comics, but on this one particular night, I was flabbergasted as I had never been before.
Now thickly nestled in November, Thanksgiving right around the bend, it may seem odd to revisit Halloween. But always an important day for geeks (being able to walk the streets freely in your Boba Fett replica armor) I think it would be remiss of me to let All Hallows Eve 2009 go by without giving it a proper Top 10 list from yours truly. Halloween has certainly come and gone, but every year I come back to the same question. A question that follows not just Halloween, but every holiday.
Being a geek, calling oneself a geek, and accepting the counterculture as your own can be, if looked at in a certain perspective, a daunting task. If you look directly at it and what it entails it can seem like a great undertaking to enter this social circle. You must be intelligent, curious, imaginative, technologically competent, and most importantly above all else, well versed in popular culture. What I mean by pop-culture is not “American Idol” or watching season after season of “Rock of Love.” No, pop-culture in terms of being a geek is so much more deep and subversive, it is so much more intricate and perhaps even investigative. As a geek you must dig into the pop-cultures around the globe, watching and listening to things that haven’t yet or will never permeate the American pop-cutlure forward shields. Tragically, that’s only the beginning, because from there you must then move backwards through the decades of television and film discovering all the morsels of science fiction, horror, drama, action, and comedy that await you. I say “tragic” because we all know how little money a geek in their mid-twenties possesses and how many books, and DVDs, and trade paperbacks exist in the world. What is worse is that this penniless predicament hits the teenage geek even harder having to wait for birthdays, Christmases, Hanukah’s and the like for their next hit of the greatest drug any geek can ever get: Pop-Cultre Goodness. But even when you find some Goodness you know it will only open the floodgates. You find more, different Goodness. You find Goodness you never knew existed, brilliant, unique, bright spots of Goodness that you can’t believe existed in this reality and you never even knew. You just sat there for years and years never knowing it existed and then suddenly it hits you, a knockout punch that sends you spiraling into frenzy of obsession. Finding the DVDs, seeing every episode, reading every issue, playing every sequel, waiting patiently for packages to arrive. It never ends. And all the geek can do is hope that there will be some way to take your collections with you at the End. I have fallen into this spiral many times before. “Cable & Deadpool,” “Preacher,” “Sandman,” “Veronica Mars,” “Red vs. Blue,” “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” These are just a few of the titles I have become obsessed with. Never enough to just get one trade or one DVD box set. No. I must have them all. All or nothing. Some might say this is insane, ridiculous, maybe even a psychotic compulsion of some sort. Perhaps, but then, those who would say that are not of our ilk, they don’t understand this relentless pursuit of knowledge. This relentless pursuit of entertainment information is what drives so many geeks. If there is one common thread between every single geek in the world it is the desire, the obsessive need to know. To know, to see, and to be a part of, if this wasn’t true the San Diego Comic-Con would not exist and neither would any of it’s counterparts. Say what you will about geeks, but we don’t do anything half-assed. I have fallen down the rabbit hole of geek love many times before, but only now do I see before me the greatest undertaking I have attempted. A pop-culture well nearly fifty years deep expanding into every format a geek may love. I can only be speaking of the iconic, the seminal, the required DOCTOR WHO. 
The original, British sci-fi series ran from 1963 until it’s cancellation in 1989, reintroduced with a 1996 TV movie, and picked up once again as a full series in 2005 by the BBC. The original series ran for 26 seasons, over 140 complete serials, consisting of (normally) 4 half an hour episodes. Currently ten men have portrayed the title character, with an eleventh on the way for 2010. Doctor Who represents a history of imaginative, intelligent storytelling over four decades long, full of exploration, excitement, wonder, and adventure. From the earliest days of low-budget television to the present hour long episodes of crafted drama, comedy, thrills, and pure emotion. If you’re a geek and you don’t know Doctor Who you seriously need to reexamine your priorities in life. I bring this up today because I have recently realized how much I miss the Doctor. The fourth season ended in 2008 and now I must wait until sometime in 2010 to reunite with the Doctor and the TARDIS and his lovely adventures. It does little good that BBC America finally aired two (out of three) “holiday specials” so now I can see a police box-sized hole in my life left by Doctor Who. Then, suddenly, it dawned on me – there are years upon years of adventures for me to delve into. Here I am waiting to meet a new incarnation of the Doctor when I shamefully could only give you the names of four of the actors to portray the wonderful Time Lord. Why wait another year for new episodes when I have 26 years to catch up on? Alons-y! Thank Krom for the internet. Without this little piece of technological wizardry Doctor Who would be inaccessible. How would I ever watch any episodes, how would I ever be able to research the history of the Doctor, get the number of companions right, or ever even see a single episode passed 2005. It would be impossible. But thanks to my Netflix account I have nearly the entire library of the Doctor Who serials at my disposal. What I am getting at today is just the utter reverence, delight, and love for this multigenerational trove of Pop-Culture Goodness. Not only does this series have a history of intelligence and imagination, but it does so with such energy I have seen in too few number of television shows. The Doctor himself is a geek’s fantasy come true. More so than Indiana Jones, Captain Kirk, Batman, or even Han Solo. Yes certainly these characters all inhabit the qualities any awkward male might fantasize about, the bravado, the quintessential bad ass-ness that so many geeks wish they could have, but the Doctor on the other hand is a man after their own hearts. Brilliant beyond words the Doctor is a pacifist, he doesn’t use weapons and would only harm another living creature in the most dire of circumstances seeing violence as only the most final of options. His only “sidearm” his trusty sonic screwdriver, a device that most usefully opens things that are locked, and not all of his incarnations have even carried one. There have been a few who prefer to go “hands free” as the Doctor himself once put it. The Doctor’s only role and only major purpose is that he explores time and space looking for adventure, for which he always happens upon. He’s kind, thoughtful, caring, and always has the tools for the job. The Doctor is not a fighter, he doesn’t use his fists or his guns, he uses his brain which is by far his most dangerous weapon. He has never, once been portrayed as muscular or in the most impressive physical condition, that is to say he’s never been ripped with muscles or blessed with a toned set of abs. But if it was John McClane versus the Doctor, my money would be on the Doctor every time. Traveling through space with a beautiful companion on your arm, always being the most mind-boggleingly clever one in the room no matter what planet you’re on, living for over 900 years, and having the one piece of tech you’ll ever need. If this isn’t the ultimate geek fantasy, I don’t know what is. But, most importantly I love this series for the ideals it represents, while Batman is punishing the wicked and Captain Kirk is punching a Gorn in the face, the Doctor is trying to figure out a way to convince his mortal nemesis that they can still be friends. Even though “the Master” has nearly destroyed everything the he has ever loved, the Doctor still tries to convince him that he can stop, make it all right, and together they can travel the cosmos together. The Master dies and the Doctor’s heart is broken. This is the essence, this is the soul of this series, the Doctor is full of forgiveness and compassion for every living being in this existence even the ones trying to destroy him. I have never watched a television series that emphasized the importance and virtue of compassion and intelligence as Doctor Who has for nearly 50 years. It is the ultimate geek fantasy, the ultimate geek adventure, with the most heroic geek in the history of pop-culture in this or any country. Everyone remembers their first Doctor, for me it will always be David Tennant, the tenth Doctor, he will always be my Doctor. Just as the eleventh, played by Matt Smith, will surely be someone else’s, and so on and so on. Doctor Who stands to me in the holy trinity of sci-fi geekdom, with Star Trek and Star Wars, as a legacy, a creation that will stand the test of time long after our generation has passed. A timeless series with a timeless hero, whose ideals will endure, Doctor Who represents the best of humanity that lies inside us all.
We live in an amazing time, you have to admit. A time where the number one sitcom on television is a show about a group of brilliant geeks, a time when a comic book convention is a hollywood entertainment trendsetter, and a time in which a comic book movie can gain Academy Award recognition. This is our time, we geeks have the world in the palm of our hands.