Hi, I'm Chip Sudderth and welcome to episode 480 of the Two-minute Time Lord podcast, concentrated commentary on the world of Doctor Who, newly returned to Disney+. Doctor Who is not science fiction. Now maybe it started out that way. Maybe in 1963 it used a science fiction framework to tell historical stories and teach science facts. Maybe Hammer Horror was layered onto science fiction. Maybe Bidmeadian technobabble brought science
fiction back to the foreground in the 80s. Now you had demons and you had vampires and maybe the Doctor was Merlin himself, but it always came back to science fiction. But this is the year of our Lord 2024 and Russell T Davies is here to tell you that Doctor Who is absolutely not science fiction. I'm going to take some time in a few days to give each individual episode that premiered on Friday its own due, and truth be told, there's a
lot to unpack and consider. For those of us of a certain age, those of us with certain hang-ups, those of us who get nervous about karaoke and are too embarrassed to hit the dance floor, the first two episodes of Doctor Who Series One can be off-putting. It's so big, so campy, so metafictional, and why in the hell are these characters breaking the fourth wall? But I think that's the point.
You see, in addition to the clear creative irrepressibility of RTD, and I mean come on he'll tell you he has an ego too, there's another reason that he pulled out all the stops (music reference!) in "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord."" I think it's because he had to. There's a Disney connection here, and oh boy have my thoughts about Disney changed in the last couple of months. More
to come on that as well. Doctor Who is being reintroduced after having gone commercially fallow in recent years, its buzz having decreased as we got further away from David Tennant and Matt Smith. Doctor Who still had its eccentricities, think about Santa Claus, actual superheroes, and dancing Rasputins, but folks could be forgiven for thinking that Doctor Who is, at its core, basic science fiction, time-traveling Star Trek
with a low budget. And that is a trap, because even with Disney money, Doctor Who will never be a TV show like Star Trek Discovery or Obi-Wan Kenobi, and if Disney+ viewers new to Doctor Who go into it not expecting an ALL-AGES show touching on MULTIPLE genres with a history of SILLINESS, then eventually they may get disappointed, or even feel betrayed when they realize that the show they're watching is not the show they're
seeing. So between "Space Babies," and come on you really need to make a drinking game for whenever the Doctor says "space babies," sorry where was I? Between literal space babies, fart-propelled spaceships, snot monsters, homicidal music gods, unambiguous political commentary, and an honest-to-god closing dance number, RTD has done viewers a favor. He's established, even more so than in the goblin-filled "The Church on Ruby Road", that his Doctor Who is not safe
television. It's avant-garde for a younger audience. Metaphors come alive. Identities become fluid. Characters talk and wink at you. And nothing follows hard science fictional rules. (Not that the show ever really did.) Over the next two podcasts, we'll talk more about whether these individual stories actually held up. They deserve more processing time. But this is absolutely the most gutsy, unapologetic way to start a series that I could have imagined. It's
here. It's Doctor Who. Get used to it. Thanks for listening to the Two-minute Time Lord podcast. I have more episodes from years ago up to the present at twominutetimelord.com. You can find me on Mastodon at ThatChipGuy at Zeppelin.Flights. And I'm on BlueSky. Just look for ThatChipFellow. Thanks. Talk to you in a couple of days.