TARDIS Eruditorum - An Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 1: William Hartnell

Product Information

Working with Moore was Oscar Zarate, an Argentinian artist who grew up as a devoted fan of Alex Raymond and Hugo Pratt and worked as an assistant in the Argentinian industry before migrating to advertising and, in 1971, Europe, this latter move to escape the right-wing military government of Argentina. There he sought work and ended up working for the Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, where he worked with writer Richard Appignanesi on Lenin for Beginners and Freud for Beginners, part of the collective’s iconic For Beginners series, which used comics as a medium to explain the thought of prominent philosophers and scientists. He went on to illustrating comics adaptations of Shakespeare and Marlowe before, in 1987, connecting with comedian Alexei Sayle for a graphic novel called Geoffrey the Tube Train and the Fat Comedian.… Is forcibly redeeming the villain by changing his past better than beating the villain in a more conventional way (albeit one which might often result in his death)? It is 5:40 PM on November the 23rd, 1963. American President John F. Kennedy has been dead for less than 24 hours. And everything in the world has changed. Forever. It’s May 19 th, 1973. Between now and June 23 rd, forty-eight will die in a plane crash in India, six will die in a pair of IRA bombings in Coleraine, thirteen will die in Argentina when snipers open fire on protesters in the Ezeiza massacre, and six year old boy in Kingston upon Hull will die in the first fire of Peter Dinsdale’s near decade-long spree of arson. This relatively sparse major death toll masks the steady progression of the world towards the eschaton. Also, The Green Death airs.

This is the only Doctor Who Christmas special I'll willingly watch. It's on the very short list of Christmas specials of any kind I'll willingly watch (this, Invader Zim, Earthworm Jim, Hogfather). I just don't care for Christmas specials as a genre–though admittedly, they're slightly less grating and inescapable than the cesspool of annoyance that is Christmas music. This was a weird era to write about, but it has some of my favorite writing in Eruditorum, especially the Eccleston season, which has multiple mad, gonzo essays, including two that are going to be glorious nightmares to try to format for print. I am thoroughly excited to clean them up and get them into an Official Version, and to finally bring the TARDIS Eruditorum books into the new series. Also, I’ve created a playlist surveying Baez’s career for anyone who’s interested. It’s up on both Spotify and Apple Music. I mentioned this before on the post for The Lodger but I think that in many ways A Christmas Carol is the perfect bellwether episode of the Moffat/Smith Who. I think that if you don't get this episode you're never going to get what they were trying to achieve in this era and I'm afraid the show as it currently is just isn't for you. The timey-wimey plot, fairy-tale aesthetic, jokes and as Phil says, its ability to take "austere and unfathomable circumstances and makes them human", are what sets this era apart for me and they're all present in their purest, most accomplished form in A Christmas Carol.And then it goes wrong. They force themselves past him, into the blue box, and fall out of the world and into another. It is another triumph of design in the show – a stark white of iconic 60s futurism would age gracefully into retro-futurism. And, of course, bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, this wasn’t my introduction to stories about ghosts. But it was my introduction to Ghost Stories. As Phil noted, the timing of this story was essential. To modern eyes, Doctor Who is a show six years in. It is difficult for a modern show to run that long without its audience becoming jaded due to the second law of tele-dynamics (apathy increases). That's why so many shows that reach this stage feel the need to 'jump the shark' just to sustain interest.

I also disagree with the people who have ethical issues with it; old Kazran cannot give consent for his younger self as they are different people (this is why it's possible to change your mind about consenting–the consent you give in one time period is not binding in another)" So in a mad, daft gesture, one that doesn’t make any sense at all, he runs. It is the first moment of depth in the cantankerous grandfather. He runs. And the mysterious swirls of the credits return, and a strange wheezing, groaning noise echoes out, and the TARDIS is somewhere else. Ian and Barbara, helpless, unconscious on the ground, have fallen out of the world, dragged along by a madman with a box. And yes, I know this is magnificently late, but I got pointed to Erudatorum fairly recently and have been catching up. I figured one month out is acceptable to join the comments.)In The Pirate Planet, Doctor Who presents one of the most confused central metaphors of its long and generally confused history. The concept is admittedly ingenious: Zanak, a hollow planet that materializes around other planets and then consumes them in their entirety. On top of that, as is gradually revealed over the course of four episodes, all of this exists to feed power to the elaborate machines keeping the tyrannical Queen Xanxia alive and with a facsimile of her youthful body. So on the one hand we have a brutal metaphor for capitalist/imperialist expansion and the way in which it leads to devastating destruction purely for the benefit of a handful of parasitic elites. Most of the reasons I adore it are explicated with typical finesse in the essay. So I'll just note a few more that weren't mentioned or were brushed past, because I never tire of talking about how damn good this episode is.