Thoughts on 45 years in Time and Space

Had my second piece in io9 today - a news story on the recently released BBC documents detailing the creation of Doctor Who, 45 years ago. You can check it out here: The BBC Tried To Ruin Doctor Who - Before It Even Began.

45 years ago this Sunday, the first episode of Doctor Who was transmitted in Great Britain. This was the day after the Kennedy assassination - which is to say, by some measures, the first day of modernity. The beginning of The Present Day. Death of innocence and all that jazz - and no doubt the tendency of public school editions of history textbooks to cut off right around the Kennedy assassination has something to do with this as well.

For me, though, the dividing line is not about the socio-political implications of 1963. It's just the dividing line, that's how it is. Before 1963 is the past. After 1963 is the real world. And Doctor Who, fittingly enough, straddles that hazy line between yesterday and today.

Watching "An Unearthly Child" for the first time as strictly a 2005 revival fan, it's not immediately apparent that this is the same show we love and obsess over now. Sure, there's a police box in a junkyard, and a young girl is calling an older white dude "Doctor." But the control room is unrecognizably groovy, and William Hartnell bears little resemblance to our modern Doctors in both appearance and performance.

And more importantly, it just feels different - the pacing, the direction, the slightly horrifying moment when you realize that this Doctor prefers to kidnap his companions, rather than politely ask them aboard. It's old and creaky and dreadfully British. It is, essentially, alien.

But then this man called the Doctor hits the dematerialization circuit. And the moment you hear that unmistakable, unchanged groan of ancient engines - the familiar and fantastic thrill of the TARDIS, our TARDIS, in this program broadcast half a century ago - it feels just a little bit like time travel.