Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

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hoi.polloi
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Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

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DOCTOR WHO: 50 YEARS OF INEFFECTUALLY QUESTIONING AUTHORITY
Is Doctor Who a Live Display of an Internal BBC Propaganda War that Those Interested in Justice are Losing?

Doctor Who is a unique show in the pantheon of television. It is difficult to pin down its ultimate philosophy and its ultimate effect on the world consciousness. This document will attempt to assess the phenomenon of Doctor Who and its importance in modern myth making. This writing will incorporate the latest researches of the historical revisionists of 2012, who claim that much of our history is a lie and therefore our science history actually supports bad science taught to hapless students in a variety of settings. This writing will also incorporate much of my personal opinion about what does or does not capture my imagination. Since little more can be said of such opinions but that they must be taken as the product of the shameless and seedy occupation known as media criticism, I hope that the reader will read this work in two ways: the first, as a historical document of a subjective perspective itself and secondly, as the author's subjective approach to that coveted and never achieved objective truth. All my errors are my own, all my assumptions I take responsibility for, and if I offend anyone it is purely accidental and unintentional.


Part 1. Propaganda: The Eternal Values of the Story

On its surface, Doctor Who is the very representation of the liberal Western mindset. The liberal Western mindset can be broken down into at least six key points that the central character pins its philosophy upon and represents in the show's construction.

One is the presumed moral good of human behavior. This involves specifically the modern human pursuit of knowledge in key areas of science and philosophy, which come with their own cultural assumptions. The presumed moral good of knowledge, and that knowledge results in a moral righteousness, is a key point of the show Doctor Who. In fact, the liberal mindset of Western civilization also assumes that one who achieves knowledge comes to a place of liberal thought because of the liberal and giving nature of the universe. Knowledge of scientific and philosophical truths actually improve the morality of human character, even if those truths do not hold up in our universe. The concept of truth being morally just and righteous is itself the question up for debate, and I would argue it is embodied in the vague titular question "Doctor Who?". Therefore, the invasion of the character of the Doctor into any situation brings with it the moral righteousness of his acting for liberal political interests in order to repeatedly, obsessively ask this question: the question, Am I good? Do I fully and completely represent an infinite moral goodness?

Knowledge is pursued for the sake of potentially disproving the question -- which, as the premise of the show would have it, is both completely impossible and paradoxically done every episode through some moral compromise the Doctor must make in order to continue asking the question. Therefore, the circular logic and self-perpetuation of the show is a behavioral loop for humanity to follow the liberal political pursuit of knowledge, application of that knowledge towards liberal values, and preemptive assumption that all knowledge will prove universally true and good, and so will acting on that knowledge -- no matter the consequences of those actions. In order for the suspense of the show to function, a fictional knowledge of fictional facts that may or may not be true in our world must constantly present themselves as the foil of humanity, and the Doctor must deliver the knowledge with a certainty that betrays the laws of our real, natural world but which uphold the stability of the fictional world of Doctor Who's multiverse. Often unknown to the audience, is the mysterious knowledge the Doctor claims to have, which justifies both its morality and the existence of the liberal political mindset. On the other hand, because the show constantly questions and attacks the knowledge and assumptions of our physical laws, it also represents the wise idea that humanity does not, in fact, know everything about anything at all -- and that, so far, is the philosophy in the 'Doctor Who' media which seems to hold up as universally true in our universe.

Two is the concept of all life being a single family. It isn't just that wildlife and the ecosystem share importance with humanity, but that other species from other planets, other universes, other dimensions or intertwined in our world incomprehensibly all exist and they all too belong to the universal family. This family must be protected as a human mother or father might protect their young, as long as the creatures most resembling humanity receive first preference. All lifeforms who do not act in accordance with the Doctor's values are corrected, modified or eradicated by the character of the Doctor or its actions. The Doctor uses the implied moral good of human behavior to defend certain nurturing and parenting qualities of humanity. Those include, anger, hate, resentment, violence, war, espionage, genocide, genetic modification and any and all technologies available to humanity that do not include the use of rape, sexuality, torture or prolonged death as forces, except in cases of sexual seduction, flattery, temporary manipulation or extremely desperate measures. That is to say, the Doctor prefers instant death of his enemies to prolonged death, and prefers slightly torturous situations to his enemies than to extremely extended extremely painful torture. He will do his best to avoid the former and only enact the latter if conversion to his philosophy and protection of his family cannot be achieved. Again, the priority of his praise and love go to those members of his family that are most human, most parental and nurturing to what the Doctor considers its family.

Three is the inherent spirituality of life, the technical and spiritual difference between the superiority of life and the inferiority of the imitation of life created by humankind or species with the intelligence to create. Although the doctor does not view diseases, viruses, nanotechnology, robots, computers or androids as having inherently spiritual value, he/she/it does make an exception when said things closely resemble the qualities of its family: that is, if it first pursues knowledge and second belongs within the Doctor's chosen family members.

Fourth is the inherent goodness of power, the limit of power to those who are not good, and the Doctor's relentless pursuit of more power. The Doctor has guilt, regret, shame and buried self-loathing for all his/her/its failures to convert lifeforms to its family. Because the Doctor does not enjoy torturing or killing and/or actively works to dissuade itself from torturing and killing in apparently malicious or cruel ways, and hates all those who apparently enjoy torturing and killing, the Doctor carries with it a great deal of sadness and mourning for all the times it has been forced to use extreme measures to protect its family values, and the Doctor feels the constant burden of one doomed to continually improve its methods in order to reach greater and greater challenges to continually prove its methods. Nobody has yet presented the Doctor with a choice between the murder of one trillion creatures the Doctor values and the murder of one trillion and one creatures the Doctor values, but it seems nobody is capable of presenting this problem to the Doctor because power is directly associated with how much good one has done in the Doctor's multiverse. So all attempts to ask the Doctor questions that challenge its legitimacy have backfired on the questioner as if to de-legitimize their right to ask the question until they have done as much moral good as the Doctor has. In other words, the Doctor's three first values and unending string of successes to uphold those values give the Doctor a balanced set of problems that cannot be upset by a random challenge. All problems the Doctor encounters can be solved with the cultural habits of the liberal Western mindset, and the inefficiencies of the Doctor are filled in with good luck, chance, happenstance and good fortune - earned by the Doctor's inherently good mission.

Fifth is the resemblance of the modern dialogue to the dialogue of the show. In fact, liberal scientific thought that optimistically believes in modern myth as fact is the very world the hero of Doctor Who inhabits. Even as technologies are publicized in scientific journals or tabloids, so do they suddenly become fodder for Doctor Who as fact or fiction or both. The one type of fiction that exists in our world and which we acknowledge as fiction, but which rarely appears as such within the Doctor Who universe, is the Doctor Who fiction itself. While hints have been made that indicate a recursive 'Doctor Who' show is a phenomenon within the fictional universe of Doctor Who, all direct references are avoided for the sake of keeping the appearance of the show as deliberate fiction. That is, the absence of the lie's influence and existence from the lie itself helps to indicate that what is being told to us through television, movies and the other media of Doctor Who is a lie. On the other hand, the extraordinary coincidences behind the meta-fictional editions of Doctor Who within the show, such as 'Dr. Who' (starring Peter Cushing) and 'Professor Spacetime' in the episode "The End of Time", indicate that the show's premise could easily withstand a self-reference to the invented "facts" of Doctor Who's universe and still survive as a premise under the guise of "real knowledge" compared to the "fake knowledge" of Doctor Who's behind-the-scenes activities.

Sixth, the show uses the first five writing techniques to present itself as an authentic and relevant quest for truth that supersedes other philosophies and quests for truth in the real world. Since the show's initial broadcasts in 1963 through its run as a series of television shows, comic books, fantasy books, movies, audio recordings and the revival of its television show in 2005, to its present form in 2012. Not only has the Doctor character consistently attempted to maintain a dialogue about hidden knowledge through the borrowing of the latest science, pseudoscience and philosophical musings of the "present day", but references hidden and not-so-hidden have made their way into the show that indicate a real attempt to share factual secrets - or the subject of currently relevant questions. That is, the show's production teams have made a cultural habit of providing answers for difficult questions with jokes, return questions, nods to the wisdom of the question, reflection of the question or wise-ass remarks to indicate that the current questions of the day are heard, if they cannot be directly answered for the necessarily false and fictional qualities of the answers that would be given by a production team that doesn't actually know the answers. That is, those who write for the character of the Doctor not only present the Doctor's conundrum as real, but they take a firm 'unreliable narrator' position from the perspective of writing for 'Doctor Who', such that attempts to doubt the knowledge of the Doctor can be refuted with the sarcasm and mirrored questions written into the show. We are somewhat meant to question the writers more than we are meant to question the Doctor himself. The Doctor is a fictional, superior "superman" character who represents the ideals of intellectual righteous morality greater than the people who make the show. In that sense, Doctor Who is a kind of religion like Christianity, who also presents the story of a "superman" with superior moral virtue to those who profess "knowledge" of "him".

As such, from now on, and because the Doctor is most typically depicted as a human-like man (or man-like human), I will refer to the character with the pronouns he, him and his.


Part 2. On Real History and Fake History and Which of The Two the 'Doctor Who' Media Endorses

It seems that 'Doctor Who' has been written by a large spectrum of philosophers, from conservative to libertarian to socialist and liberal. As such, the collective knowledge the Doctor professes to know can be an endorsement or condemnation of any given political party. But it is almost always strictly separated from the time the show is written, such that both a character like Barack Obama can be President in one episode, and then a completely unheard of fictional character can be President in the next. Royalty can be abolished in one future, and in another future, it still exists and is taken into outer space. In one future the Earth is destroyed, and in another it is remade.

While the Doctor generally expresses distaste for human politics, he finds plenty to do in the middle of alien systems that - on the surface - resemble human politics transposed to vaguely described settings. The liberals are replaced with one type of alien costume and the conservatives are replaced with another type of alien costume (or both wear the same costume because of cheap production values) but the character dynamics remain unabashedly human.

In real history, the first episode of Doctor Who was aired on BBC on November 23rd, 1963, the day after American President Kennedy was allegedly murdered in broad daylight and this murder was allegedly captured on video and film. The story was part of a serial, and it was called 'An Unearthly Child'. The premise is that a star student, representing the knowledge of her teacher The Doctor, was becoming a nuisance in her British classroom because she would argue against the science as it was written in text books. Her two teachers Barbara and Ian decided to follow her one day and figure out more about her. It turns out she has somehow gamed the system and joined their school despite the fact that she had not been registered the previous year, and her teacher is an old man living in the junk yard that they followed her to. As it turns out, this man is known as 'The Doctor' or sometimes 'Doctor Who' or 'Doctor John Smith' and he claims to be from another world. Susan Foreman, the star student, is actually his granddaughter and she was permitted to explore Earthling knowledge through joining the school. The Doctor constantly repairs his old Police Box of the 1960's era in which he landed, and it turns out it is not a Police Box at all but a very large space ship which appears much smaller on the outside. (Or more famously, much "bigger on the inside".) It resembles a Police Box because of its ability to disguise itself as something that would belong in its immediate surroundings.

Barbara represents the wise motherly woman stereotype. But also knowledgeable and less petty than most people. Ian represents a standard 1960's adventure hero - dashing and quick to anger. Yet, reasonable and practical, and mostly angry with the Doctor's crabbiness.

As another interesting parallel to Kennedy, Ian actually resembles the style (though not the face) of the dashing President Kennedy in a "typical groomed 1960's man" sort of way. And Barbara partially resembles Jackie Kennedy in style and appearance (though not the face). The character of Ian's last name is Chesterton, which is funny because Kennedy was allegedly shot at least once in the chest. The character of Barbara Wright was played by a "Jacky" - Jacqueline Hill - and the characters both taught at the fictional Coal Hill School - all amusing because of the infamous hill near where Kennedy was removed from the world stage. (Not to mention 'Hill' being a common name in Psy-Ops perhaps because of its ubiquity)

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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With wife Jackie Kennedy

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"Ian Chesterton"
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"Barbara Wright" (Jacqueline Hill)

If these are not coincidences (and it seems likely they are), it would indicate some kind of incredible foreknowledge, given the first episode aired merely 24 hours after the assassination. So we may presume for the sake of credibility that it is just some minor coincidences. Given the show's remarkable escapism from reality - going so far as to deny conventional science text books because of their lack of knowledge of the Doctor's magical science of "time and space" - it has the slight feeling to it of a mass distraction from the normal news, for those who cannot find truth and who cannot face the depressing fear-mongering fiction. In other words, a story of an escape from convention to serve as a metaphorical, mental escape (but which, unfortunately, too often places the viewer back in the same problem of not knowing any better once the episode is over - the very definition of 'limited hangout'?)

In the first story, the teachers go with the Doctor and Susan into the Police Box space ship. The Doctor has finished repairing the ship after an unknown problem, and they begin to "take off" which is indicated by shaky camera movements and the characters flailing about melodramatically. Very cheap and ineffectual special effects do not compare well to the expert effects employed by propaganda technicians at NASA or other government offices of this time. Thus the series is born, and the Doctor proceeds to change everything they know about history and the universe by taking them to different alien planets, different periods in the Earth's past and future, and basically anywhere "in time or space" imaginable - as long as it does not remotely resemble the depressing world we know. The name of his ship was called TARDIS, which stood for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. The acronym may as well have been BRAINS: Blatantly Representing Any Imagined New Science. Indeed, the space ship constantly representing a Police Box with a glowing pyramid top (Hamarabi's fictional all-seeing eye invented in Mesopotamia to scare people into obedience?) is a symbol of the trickster nature of the character - is it authority, or is it merely disguised as authority? Is it authority disguised as non-authority disguised as authority? Or populism disguised as such? (And so forth).

Over the course of the first few seasons of the show, the Doctor brings his various (multiple, changing) companions to various officially possible times in our own history or future. These include several thousand years "before modern man appeared", to the journey of Marco Polo, to the pre-Spanish Aztec empire and to several hundred years into a future NASA-like space program that develops safe interplanetary travel via rocket ship. Naturally, much of the show's charm comes from both its simple acceptance and simple overturning of natural premises of our recorded history. That is, some questionable events - such as the origin of mankind - or the highly suspicious NASA program and its science are taken as scientific fact, and demonstrated as such by humans traveling in time to those periods or using NASA's "science" to travel safely in space. Yet, at every moment the Doctor scoffs at humanity's naivete, ignorance and primitiveness. And the results of his explorations of time tend to reveal a good variety of human (or human-like) characters that regularly question their governments and their surroundings and cause revolutions, which the Doctor frequently celebrates. So on the one hand, it accepts all stories as fact, and with the other hand declares it merely a factor of a much larger unknown.

As the seasons progress through the 1960's, however, and the actor who plays the Doctor changes, the character and his companions become more and more embroiled in facing the science written by his creators, and he stands out as explicitly failing to incorporate the astonishing claims of "non-fiction" 1960's television. As such, by 1971, the show comes to face the alleged science of NASA or the Russian space program without blinking an eye. The third actor who played the Doctor was John Pertwee, and he was the first actor to be in a full color version of the Doctor Who television show. In his opening season, his character encounters nuclear power facilities, incredible human-made satellites, discussion of nuclear weapons and other suspicious science promoted by official government propaganda - and he never questions any of it. He even forgoes his magical time-space ship to take a ride in a conventional rocket to meet astronauts held captive by an alien race in orbit around the Earth.

Yet the Doctor is not unredeemable for this failure. Let me go over some ways in which the Doctor actually remains a modern day champion for truth, even as his writers continue to show their failings at the same.

For one, this magical figure is the very same character who has repeatedly told his companions that he does not give them certain life-altering information that would change their lives, depress them or make them change history too much. It is a truth of historical research that any change in understanding of history changes history itself - for history is nothing but a current perception of the past (and present). In fact, while the Doctor uses and doesn't criticize the laughably implausible science of rocketry, he still maintains a shrewd interest in whatever perceived problem exists in the human drama of the situation. So instead of overturning everything with the TARDIS's incredible powers - which he has more than once demonstrated can do so - he carefully sabotages, nudges and carefully renders the situation to his liking with widely varying uses of overt power. In the same way that 'Star Trek' and other space travel shows both acknowledge and dance around the inevitable failings of scientists by replacing them with their own fictional ones, so 'Doctor Who' acknowledges and dances around the Doctor's immeasurable powers to alter our world. One could probably go into lengthy explanations and excuses of why this might be the case for this character (and it's likely that too many have so I probably never will), besides his frequently simple errors in judgment, but suffice to say: Just as his failure to provide the world with a true account of history is part of his attempt to maintain a captive audience of his companions, so the writers that work for BBC attempt to maintain relevance to their superiors and to their audience.

Secondly, the 'Doctor Who' media has contradicted itself and back-tracked on a number of facts taken for granted in one show or vehemently denied in another. In the early season of 1970-1971, the actor John Pertwee portrays the hero as a loud-mouthed irritable braggart of science, but one who subtly changes his mind to suit his needs and immediate interactions with others. He goes to a nuclear mining facility and suspects the mine is unearthing something awful and insane, but at the same time he doesn't inform everyone in the mine that they are operating everything on the questionable theory of relativity that may not sustain a physical enterprise like the very mine they are allegedly operating. On the other hand, the same character claims in at least two separate incarnations to have been at 'the grassy knoll' during JFK's departure from the world scene. He has also made off hand comments denying the reliability of historic information - usually not clarifying matters but rather muddying them and claiming he was somehow involved. One of his famous catch-phrases is the bit of technojargon "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" which became regularly used in the series for its 50 year history. In one instance, he even claims the phrase (after being used for several seasons) is meaningless.

So while the Doctor claims in many instances that the TARDIS is incapable of inter-multiverse travel without considerable strain or even destruction, he doesn't show conscious awareness (or his writers have not made him show it) of the possibility that everything is constantly in flux everywhere, as "facts" in *our* present day are discovered, maintained, invented or discarded to create the Doctor's "true hidden knowledge" of real events. As such, the Doctor may always represent some the most deluded and strange common beliefs of the masses while simultaneously denying others of the same variety. He also claims some fictional books are real in some way, and some non-fiction books may be fiction. Thus, the Doctor escapes the trap of being responsible with true knowledge of reality. He is excused, once again, through his overarching philosophy of the goodness of his present understanding and his acting on it - even callously - as long as he does so within the limits of his power. Genocide allowed occasionally.

Unfortunately, he doesn't preach to the audience about what real injustice needs to be overthrown, but on the other hand, thank goodness he doesn't or the BBC would paint Palestine, Iran and North Korea as even more cartoonishly villainous inhuman monsters than they already do. Perhaps 'Doctor Who' demonstrates their ability to hold their accusations and self-righteousness in neutral gear.


Part 3. Do Some Of The BBC Writers Parallel the Doctor's Mission To Embarrass Would-be Deceivers and Tyrants?

Some of the stories run precariously close to making fun of the major hoaxes of our time. Being the Trickster character the Doctor is, it could be propaganda or the key to millions of viewers changing their minds and wondering about the questions brought up by the show. In one episode, a spacecraft crashes in the Thames live on television, but the doctor dismisses it as being "too convenient." In a book written in 2010 called Apollo 23, astronauts are transposed from the moon to Texas, completely in their astronaut gear. In the highly billed (heavily advertised) two-part episode of the 2011 season opener, "The Impossible Astronaut / Day Of The Moon", an astronaut in full outer space gear emerges from a lake in Utah with the intent of destroying the Doctor. The title of the story is never explained, and given the extraordinarily time-bending plot line, there was ample room to do so. Instead, the question is left hanging in the viewer's mind: "Impossible Astronaut? Why is the astronaut in somewhat of a desert in Utah?" It could be, without blatantly being so, that the writers are aware of the power of television to craft symbols and by establishing the symbol of the impossibility of "an astronaut", they are consciously creating a memory imprint on millions of viewers that questions the word "astronaut."

On the other hand, if these writers are being sly and they are questioned by BBC authorities, they can always excuse the matter as being perfectly in line with the BBC's role of mind-control. After all, the title "impossible astronaut" (despite the captivating imagery) also implies the impossibility of an astronaut being anywhere but outer space, thereby subliminally enforcing the doctrine of faked Apollo Mission history. And indeed a fictional "Area 51" (fitting the real life theme of many areas of the Nevada-New Mexico-Arizona desert that Bill Kaysing alleges may be staging grounds for multiple "moon walks" faked Hollywood-style) is also featured in the episode as a cover-up for the real Area 51 - which of course few people have actually seen. One of the clumsy companions of the Doctor, when encountering stone-faced agents of the United States government, picks up a slight model shuttle from an office desk and breaks it apparently on accident. He then grins innocently and exits quickly. Is this an indication that the writers are playfully admitting that they are undermining the United States' moon hoax while casually demonstrating that the hoax is difficult not to destroy whenever one touches it or goes near it? The fragile castle of sand that the moon landings are can be easily disrupted by the power of these questions, and 'Doctor Who' has a simply enormous fan base to justify its perpetual existence on BBC. Are the writers enforcing answers to the big questions, or creating them? The vagueness is important.

Steven Moffat is the present executive producer and one of the lead writers of Doctor Who. He is behind the creation and direction of the latest season. His writing has been both heralded and hated by the show's long time fan base for a variety of reasons that need not be explored in this essay. But it is worth noting that he was the writer of a 'Doctor Who' parody that was aired during the show's hiatus in the 1990's, in which most every trope and hang-up of the show was mocked and hung out to dry by a relentless farce of its concepts. Time travel and its (im)possibilities were mocked, sex jokes (normally taboo for the Doctor) were rife and the Doctor's nemesis was wagged at the end as a potential sadomasochistic sex partner. If anyone should be writing the show, it's someone who is capable of indicating directly what its faults are and writing to them or around them in a wily way. As such, it is doubtful that Moffat is very unaware of Doctor Who's place in culture, and its relevance and power in questioning established authority. It is a power he is familiar with himself. So it's interesting to note that he was also the writer of a recent episode (called 'Asylum of the Daleks') in which the relentless fascist cyborg enemy known as "the Daleks" have kidnapped and converted a human named Oswin Oswald into a Dalek.

Much has been made of the official use of symbols, signs and indexes to reinforce belief systems and trigger programmed stories, via the television. Countless such symbols undoubtedly appear across the 50 year spectrum of Doctor Who media, but one such famous audio symbol, "Oz"/"As"/"Aus" depending on its context, is also famous for being in the Kennedy drama as one official patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. The character name in the 2012 Doctor Who episode could be a reference to this, or it could be a riff on the famous musician Ozzy Osbourne. Or, amusingly, a curiously close rendition of the pretend-insane "no-planer" Ozzy bin Oswald. In any case, the name is rife with conventional symbolism but what it is actually meant to signify is unclear. Does it mean something to London's masonic police force? Could it be an unconscious regurgitation or musing on the official propaganda that the show's production team is undoubtedly surrounded (and overseen) by? In the story, Oswin Oswald (a girl) represents a human captured by evil, but who refuses to submit to evil influence, and sacrifices themselves to help the hero (the Doctor). Can this be said to be the story of any of the aforementioned notorious characters? Not really. But it does most famously strike one as a timely reminder of the 'Doctor Who' show's coming 50-year anniversary (in 2013) on the day after the JFK "death". And once again, it subtly calls into question the big symbols of our modern fables: could there be a "good" Oswald rather than an "evil" Oswald? Was Oswald "framed" as evil while inside being a good person and not a monster? Subliminal, but present.

The show has a long history of the Doctor being a kind of wild card "cowboy" trickster, entering a situation, upturning all the norms and righting wrongs, then leaving never (or extremely rarely) to return for thanks or adulations. He is the Western Liberal Mindset as peaceful revolutionary, whose friends include all the highest military commanders whom he chastises if they even think of using force before he decides it's necessary. It sounds like the arrogant attitude of a London authority figure, or the Robin Hood that is their bane. This wavering between convention and unconvention is what gives the 'Doctor Who' media its unique bizarreness. The writers themselves may have had a history of trickster-like pranks that were handled more clumsily than the Doctor himself might have done it, and it may have ultimately gotten the show canceled in the late 1980's.

According to a report on Sylvester McCoy, the reclusive actor who played the seventh and final 'Doctor' before it was canceled and revived in 2005, the BBC writers of 'Doctor Who' hated Margaret Thatcher and said she "was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered. Those who wanted to see the messages saw them; others, including one producer, didn't." The show's script editor (reported by conservative paper Sunday Times) said, "My exact words were: 'I'd like to overthrow the government.' I was a young firebrand and I wanted to answer honestly. I was very angry about the social injustice in Britain under Thatcher and I'm delighted that came into the show." On the other hand, the "angry young writers" too often took the bait left for them by divide-and-conquer groups. According to this same article, "Cartmel [the script editor] wrote an emotive speech for the Doctor about the evils of nuclear weapons. It borrowed heavily from material obtained from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was a persistent thorn in the side of the government."

And similarly, the BBC denies to this day any awareness or oversight of these apparently revolutionary actions, with this quote from the end of the article: "We're baffled by these claims. The BBC's impartiality rules applied just as strongly then as they do to programmes now."

Like the trickster character, Doctor Who and its habit of questioning the slightest show of authority (however official and nonplussing that authority may actually be) has proven difficult to erase. Perhaps the audience of the 1980's had wizened up and was no longer interested in subtle parody of such an evil government. Perhaps they were even captivated by that government and turned the channel to more steady propaganda. Perhaps, we can hope, many people just turned the television off altogether. In any case, the show "ran into budget concerns" and was stifled.

Yet, Doctor Who is always a compelling money-maker for the BBC in that it constantly succeeds in selling plastic knick-knacks, books, videos and Doctor Who-themed snacks and toys. So it's no surprise the end of televised 'Doctor Who' didn't kill the trickster but made him stronger in a less overt fashion: a series of new novels continuing Sylvester McCoy's characterization of the Doctor were regularly released, even until 1996, when an official 'Doctor Who' movie was finally created, featuring actor Paul McGann as the Doctor. This movie was allowed by the BBC as a kind of attempt at porting the show to an American audience. It was presented by Fox Television, and it featured the Doctor facing a threat associated with the coming "Millennium" (i.e.; the Y2K fear-mongering) as it would arrive when another technologically magical clock struck midnight. It was set in the year 2000, and is notable for being a departure from the typical show - with modifications from plot elements that the writer hoped would keep it going as a franchise.

The movie failed, and 'Doctor Who' resorted back to its standby of more books, comics, toys and audio-plays. In 2005, the show was revived by an ambitious fan who was established in show business (Russel Davies) and moved it into a modern incarnation with somewhat modern (if still obviously fake) special effects, with three more actors (two of them big names Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant) playing the titular hero. Now, with Moffat at the helm, the show can (once again) barely keep a regular season. It produces a handful of episodes at a time, releases them sporadically, and always concludes/begins a season with a single Christmas Special to break the silence. This Christmas Special is associated with the 'Children in Need' group of the BBC - an arguably liberal but arguably depressing call for the average person to pay for the sorry state of health of the UK's children. I can only guess what kind of corruption may exist in any large enterprise like it. But that is mere cynicism. I have no idea what it is.

Similarly, I don't know what Doctor Who actually is. Is it just gobbledygook made by well-intentioned writers failing to hint strong enough about important messages? Is it pure BBC propaganda, complete with excuses for genocide that the hero frequently commits or enables, while occasionally making an impassioned speech about peace? Is it just a money-making bonanza? Or something between all of those? All I know is the new series, which struggles so hard to continue and yet undermine the old series, is definitely not as refreshing as the good old feeling of turning off the television, kicking back with some friends and telling each other tales that really happened. Tales of our true encounters with the real systems of oppression that we are all working hard to dismantle. And with nary an evil monster to knock on the head or explode in gruesome or comical fashion, it's looking much more promising to be a human being on Earth than to be a 'trickster god' defeating non-threats on a channel that propagandizes its audience faster than it gives them truth or justice. On the other hand, it's amusing to know that there is a show out there that questions every injustice it can; if it can't question real injustices because it's caught up in the fake ones, and conceptually the pacifist hero would be with us if they weren't being used as a tool of sheer propaganda to uphold the systems it claims to be against.

If there really is an attempt to expose the self-proclaimed elite's symbols of oppression through the use of remixed/remastered symbols presented on the show, we can hope that it remains as ineffectual as it appears. For under its present guise, it may be no threat at all to our runaway governments. And thus it will be perpetuated as a constant question mark - never meant to be answered or even very consciously heard. But some admittance on the part of the BBC that some of the human systems that they are maintaining may not be all they are cracked up to be.

Happy holidays, y'all.
brianv
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by brianv »

"In real history, the first episode of Doctor Who was aired on BBC on December 23rd, 1963, the day after American President Kennedy was allegedly murdered in broad daylight and this murder was allegedly captured on video and film."

You can delete this a minute hoi, but Kennedy was "deaded" on November 22, not December 22.

[ADMIN: Oh yeah, that's when the episode aired. November 23. Typo corrected. Thanks! -hp]
hoi.polloi
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

The first episode of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who features some interesting visuals and themes.

The episode focuses somewhat on the new companion's investigation into the Doctor (whom she encountered in person), over the Internet, and she meets a "Internet conspiracy nutter" who has been documenting the Doctor's meddling through time. There are some blatantly fabricated photos the "nutter" produces, which he claims shows the Doctor present at JFK's assassination and getting ready to go on the Titanic. Hence, we have the new producers nodding to the show's original role on television semi-endorsing and semi-questioning false history - particularly in regards to the original show "Dr. Who" debuting one day before the JFK disappearance act. Now the new show is indicating its awareness of this and saying the main character was also there in Dallas on the same day.

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This episode aired in March of that year, before the July 7th "bombings" (performance art piece). Yet, in this episode there appears to be foreknowledge of the plan to air that "terrorist" story. A car driven by the Doctor's new friends has this license plate - indicating a bit of 7/7 there.

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And at the end of the episode, after an alien attack, the show leaves viewers with this imagery of death and destruction:

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Complete with giant "G" (Masonic sign?), and primers for the tube and bus bombings. Was the new Doctor Who filming used as a cover for filming the 7/7 hoax?
hoi.polloi
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

When the third doctor meets his second self, the second Doctor comments - as part of a plot to foil an evil scheme - that he must generate a great deal of useless information quickly and jokes that he just needs to find a television set. This is the Doctor which makes it to 1973, where an episode depicts children's drawings in the background of none other than airplanes flying into city centers. There even appear to be two evenly tall towers in one drawing.

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In the first season of the Fourth Doctor's existence, he namedrops the Titanic and its alleged fate, radiation dangers and nuclear weapons - and brings up holocaust and genocide on a number of occasions. At least twice, stock footage of a NASA rocket launch is used in place of a missile. The graininess of the launch compared to the sharpness of the bad special effects in the show itself make the launch appear more genuine and less faked than the terrible special effects of 'Doctor Who' but this appears to be a Psy-Op.

However, in the episode the Android Invasion, a background sign subtly indicates 'ASSES SHOWN' (parts of the full sign reading 'All Passes Must Be Shown' are blocked by the hero characters) and later the plot is revealed: aliens have simulated the planet Earth with robot android copies of existing people in order to stage an invasion before it happens - to assure it goes off without a hitch.

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A missing astronaut is found in space and re-pieced together by aliens and he joins the aliens in helping them take over Earth. They have lost an eye, however, and so this villain gives the appearance of a one-eyed observer of Earth, like the infamous cyclopse pyramid. He claims his re-entry craft will appear in the logical spot in the sky and nobody will be the wiser as to where he's really been. The Doctor realizes it's a "hoax" and calls it such. When the astronaut claims the invasion will be compassionate, the Doctor replies that the astronaut has been "brainwashed", reflecting the brainwashing suspected of NASA astronauts who are conditioned for public speaking.

When the heroes plan to fly into Earth in space pods, the Doctor's companion guesses that they could burn up on re-entry and the Doctor replies that she's identified "the one flaw" in their plan. The show's context is a joke but the text itself points to the absurdity of anyone surviving re-entry. Another character shortly after wonders, "Don't meteorites normally burn up on re-entry?" and a control panel operator replies that there is something "funny" about them, while the astronaut's vessel apparently flies in at 650 meters per second. The Doctor requires the operator make "11 circuits" for his pseudo-scientific solution to "jam" the evil android circuits - similar to weaponry that we've speculated the military might really use to jam circuitry. The control room has 3 Mickey Mouse hat shapes in the background. Hollywood/Disney/NASA comparisons have been rife in other media - why not on BBC?

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"How could we ever have been fooled?" wonders his companion when the episode is over, deciding that they are really back on Earth. The Doctor replies, "Huh? Are you sure?"

In numerous other ways, this episode (and others like it) violently straddle a border between total inanity and a health skepticism of the audacity of those behind simulations and bad science in our news. Could the juxtaposition of the news footage's rocket launch to the bad special effects of 'Doctor Who' be subtly creating a link in the viewers' minds on purpose? Over all, is this ambiguity meant to make the discussion of the NASA hoaxes tied in with ridiculous alien conspiracies, or is it meant to subtly expose the NASA hoaxes to the subconscious?

Much of episode 87 takes place in a nuclear facility with a number of strange threats about nuclear disaster, that don't seem to make sense except by the conventional myths of the danger of nuclear technology. "The Atomic Energy Commission are not going to believe this," states a character comically, when an alien emerges from the radiation energy. Missiles are fired upon the nuclear facility but they don't hit. The missiles simply vanish inexplicably - magically absorbed by a physics-defying being. This episode also introduces the concept of silicon-based human-like beings to the show. This myth has been frequently promoted by NASA and other spokespeople for pop science as an imagining of extra-terrestrial beings.

In episode 88, in which an organization known as the CIA is involved in an assassination attempt, the Doctor saves the day and the leadership decides they have to change the story, stating, "If heroes don't exist, we must invent them" adding that it's "good for public morale." Could more meta words be spoken on the BBC? The Doctor rhetorically questions if all of his planet's history is as fabricated for public consumption and quotes a friend, "Only in mathematics do we find truth."


In episode 89, he advises to his superstitious companion, "Never be certain of anything; it's a sign of weakness."

In episode 95, he thwarts an evil corporation run by alien beings known as Uzurians (beings of usury) and insults them as being listed in records as "poisonous fungi", but he also incites and aids the worker revolution using a fake news broadcast, which announces that the rebellion has won. It is not explained why fake news broadcasts are necessary at all, except to fix "the odds" against the corporation. It seems to be a sly endorsement of the use of public relations (aka propaganda) for causing revolution - a destabilizing tactic of governments that employ television for mind control. It doesn't seem to be a very far-reaching plot on the part of the Doctor and the entire episode begins to feel like a dubious newspaper-scripted lie of how governments rise and fall. Calling out the taxmen as parasites at this point feels like a kind of broad brown-nosing of the public at the height of the show's popularity. The city worker slaves also wear a bronze shield badge on their hearts. Oddly, the show seems to be poking a bit of fun at the House of Rothschild, since the entire episode takes place on a future Pluto surrounded by six artificial suns. The mark of Rothschild being synonymous with the six-pointed star, the nasty economic villains seem to be a rather casual and blatant reference to the City of London banks' usury habits and a meta incitement to British revolution. But would it be bait under the turbulent late 1970's when Thatcher was just coming to power?

In an unfinished episode slated for airing in the fourth doctor's later season - one written by the science fiction comedy writer Douglas Adams, the Doctor visits Cambridge and encounters another time traveler. A student tags along during this episode and the Doctor's recorded line from the production - instructing the student in response to his exclamation that faster-than-light travel is impossible - goes, "You understand Einstein? What, and quantum theory? What and Planck? What and Newton? What and Schoenberg?" "Yes yes of course," replies the student. "You've got a lot to unlearn," replies the Doctor. This is the same adventure in which the Doctor reminisces for at least the second or third time about personally knowing Isaac Newton (continuing the joke that it was the 'Doctor who' made an apple fall upon him and inspired his thinking about gravity.) The line about unlearning Einstein and quantum physics is a bold one in the 70's - when every science student at Cambridge, and every other science department, is busy stuffing young scientists' brains with those very theories - often by rote. But was the line bold enough to get the episode cancelled during production? Is this why only a reconstruction exists? Undoubtedly the real reason that motivated a halt in production was more to do with the show's notorious budget issues (despite high popularity). Yet, why does a show as this suffer so highly from budget issues? Food for thought when examining the reasons behind the canceled episodes. According to an insider story, "the industrial action [leading to BBC's not completing the episode] occurred due to conflict over which union had jurisdiction over the operation of an elaborate clock that was featured on the BBC children's programme Play School."

Sounds like a grand metaphor for a power struggle over the direction of how BBC would address pop science, but perhaps it truly was just a random manifestation of the usual human power struggle and not connected to 'Doctor Who'. After all, 'Doctor Who' had by this time already addressed the official theories about planet and sun formation, explored the official understanding of gravity and black holes (the Doctor and friends having barely escaped being turned into a "singularity" at least once.) In other words, 'Doctor Who' had done an incredible job at promoting every basic pop science aspect of public education or miseducation meant to form our understanding of how the world works, even as it hammered bizarre and possibly disruptive questions into the veneer. It served as a means of causing curiosity and wonder in the official tales of future human space travel.

In "The Pirate Planet" written by science fiction comedian Douglas Adams, the Doctor makes the ill-famed illuminati sign of an eye within the top of a triangle when trying to 'frame' a picturesque situation.

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The reclusive actor, Tom Baker, on his own web site, making some more "fun" hand signs. Perhaps he has been forced to do so to protect himself. He claims not to watch television or movies any longer in his semi-retirement.

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- http://www.tom-baker.co.uk/

When Tom Baker (who played the Doctor) was replaced in 1981, one character, from his final adventure where they go to an alien city that logically upholds the universe with pure 'mathematics' (creatively named 'Logopolis' - a metaphor for the masonic beliefs of PsyOp departments of our government(s)?), makes the masonic hand signal frequently. Perhaps it was just her way of playing the character.

"People escape from gravity all the time! What we need is ... rocket thrust!" blurts her friend when the Doctor and company are sent back in time to the "formation of the universe" which the show posits was a giant influx of hydrogen. (episode 117)
More official physics, however much stock you want to put in those.

But New Age mysticism is also present throughout the show, and increasing through the 1980's, as the weird science of 'space (and time) travel' is no longer covered from just about every angle, and instead a new kind of liberalism begins to weave through the writing. In episode 128, the single all-seeing eye makes an appearance in a weapon used in another dimension. Here, the Doctor battles for 'enlightenment' awarded by dualistic figures, and the eye weapon, depicted within the 'globe' symbol ends up being a way for a lesser being to channel the power of the "dark" side of this dualism.

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Granted, this is fairly mundane symbolism, and could be such or disguised as such.

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In episode 133, the Doctor fights an alien force, which has captured a man in another cage-like globe, and the alien force announces that they have devised an economic system that will take over their planet, but it must be controlled by a human mind. Could this be the appearance of skepticism in the capitalistic wordsmithery of economics? "It is important that you understand," prefaces the alien before explaining the plan for human slavery, perhaps to get the audience's special attention at that time? In a later scene, the globe is revealed to rest on the top of a pyramid. Just average set decoration, no doubt, but still notable.

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By the 1980's, the show had become more and more like conventional television. (Or conventional television caught up with the oddness of 'Doctor Who'.) Messages become a little muddied, even as blatant propagandistic elements make their subtle (and not so subtle) appearances. The Doctor's consistent friend wears a NASA patch on her jacket, flashing into people's subconscious show after show until its cancellation. The NASA patch was seen constantly for about ten episodes because of this main character's role in the show. Convention or a little something more?

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A "911" appears incongruously (coincidentally?) on the shoulder of a traitorous military leader in the midst of a battle for Earth during World War II. A 6-pointed star appears on a dark-haired mother's arm. Russians and British join forces against the alien threat.

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Was this a case of production slipping in symbolism, or just some odd accidents? They certainly seem to like patches and sewings on the show as a means of distributing iconography.

This was the time of Sylvester McCoy and his "liberal punk" writers, who claim now to have been in a deliberate effort to cause revolution using their television scripts. It is interesting to note how much of the official storyline of history (sputnick, space travel, world wars and so on) is now mocked in the show as much as its flaunted, and intertwined with the "libertarian" ideals which might fight against such public disasters and/or wastes of public energy. "War - a game played by politicians. We were just pawns in the game," concludes a Russian ally in episode 157, "But the pawns are fighting together now. Eh, comrade?" The episode finishes with a comment on its own subtext -- or perhaps it's just artistic license:

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:lol:

The show aired just one more adventure before cancellation went into effect. There are different stories and opinions about why, the most recent comment being by Sylvester McCoy saying there was a liberal bent to the writings. Perhaps the conservative BBC took issue with that?

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CONCLUSION:

If you wanted to be cynical, you could argue that none of the producers show enough awareness and guile to really effectively throw out the premise of our false science, the show makes a mockery of peaceful idealism. And in the end, the show serves as little more than totally useless fantasy that stands against truth and 'Enlightenment' ideals, while brainwashing millions of viewers around the world with false tips on how to question their reality. Yet, after all, it's just the usual role of television and it shouldn't come as a surprise.

If you wanted to be generous and/or optimistic, you could argue that 'Doctor Who' has a series of liberal writers and producers behind it, who are both aware of and resisting the necessary element of propaganda imposed on their show. They go through the motions of sprinkling their show with dubious symbols (7/7, 9/11, Jewish Holocaust, Titanic, JFK Assassination) because it satisfies their power-hungry masters' use of television as propaganda. Yet, as they satisfy their masters they also fight them and resist them and try to inject as many libertarian messages as possible to serve their souls rather than their hides, and to empower people to question and wonder at the world around them. "Impossible astronaut" indeed.
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Another bizarre Doctor Who (BBC character) - JFK (American character) connection.
Who_Killed_Kennedy.jpg
Who_Killed_Kennedy.jpg (37.8 KiB) Viewed 25491 times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_Kennedy

This bizarre book, written in 1996, covers the era of the JFK assassination and how aliens (the main character "Doctor Who" and his arch enemy "The Master" who are aliens) are supposed to have been involved. The title itself resembles more subliminal oddness.

[It was] Doctor Who [that] Killed Kennedy.
~or~
[It was] Doctor Who [a stand-in for hypnotic TV news], Who Killed Kennedy['s public image, and helped him escape public life]?

It seems odd that the show actually initiated the day after JFK's disappearance (also known as his "assassination") and contained some of the more distracting fantasy fiction available on TV at the time. Perhaps second to America's Twilight Zone and attempts to copy it like Outer Limits (which itself began only a couple months before the JFK "disappearing act", whatever it was).

Just why did Kennedy feel the need to exit the world stage in such a fashion? Could it be the success of Apollo's radio and television play at communicating fantasy information proved the obsolescence of Presidents? Could it be that the power of radio and television are, in fact, our world leaders since that figurehead position "President" started getting led by a wealthy committee of media owners?

If so, then fantasy shows like War of the Worlds, Twilight Zone, Doctor Who, Star Trek and the like in some way did contribute to a sort of replacement of thought and democracy. A replacement of the exercise of intelligence in seeking the ideal. Most of the thought experiments shown on these fantasy shows were things that average people were thought of as not being capable of coming up with on their own. The people behind these creative efforts arrogantly decided, without input, that television was doing a better job at philosophizing and controlling mentalities (even spiritual and Religious beliefs) than political pulpit orators.

Or perhaps that's just what they wanted.

Apollo "succeeded" while the Viet Nam war was tanking. Fantasy was waging war on reality, throwing every distraction imaginable at the problem of people's dissatisfaction and anger at the military powers for an irresponsible and atrocious abuse of power. The death (or "death") of the President was a signal that the fantasy was not going to stop. It was only going to be more rabidly employed and pumped up until people were positively smothered in it. Encased in it. Running their lives around fake characters, fake politicians, fake companies and everything else that kept the power-obsessed military in charge of affairs.

To this day, we have seen that terrible mission become a success in many ways; but we are also witnessing a changing paradigm where the call for the real and authentic is gaining power again. A kind of idealist ignorance (fantasy) and a harsh cynicism (science) continue their struggle for dominion in our lives.

It was probably Kennedy himself who "killed" Kennedy and escaped to a different life. And his autopsy doctor that was told to confirm the story. In which case the doctor "who killed Kennedy" remains as enigmatic as the people all around us caught up in the fantasy. Who have given up on science and reason, and are just hoping to keep the collective delusion that has won out from harming their own lives.

"Who" is us, our obsessive idealism we see in the almost outdated cowboy hero character of "the Doctor" (or any other fantasy story) and our failure to seek the truth instead of rely on simulacrum (TV, Hollywood, etc.) to tell us about the possibilities and definitions of this world.

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In closing, here are the opening and closing words of the show The Outer Limits, where people were first being "tested" on their ability to separate from their disbelief — just two months before JFK disappeared from public life:
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to — The Outer Limits.
We now return control of your television set to you. Until next week at the same time, when the control voice will take you to — The Outer Limits.
The joke, of course, is that the television set was never returned to us. It has remained in the Outer Limits since its inception.
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by fbenario »

An amazing job of research and writing, Hoi. How many hours/days did you work on these posts?
hoi.polloi
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Many recent months.

However, you could say years since I always felt strange when I was young and these science fiction shows would come on the same channel as supposedly legitimate science shows. It almost felt to me like a "team" was deliberately airing them together to control and limit our imaginations by making them look very different in style, appearance and budget.

Kind of like the "red state - blue state" left/right/left/right false dichotomy that continually marches us in the same technofascist direction.
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by simonshack »

hoi.polloi wrote: Apollo "succeeded" while the Viet Nam war was tanking. Fantasy was waging war on reality, throwing every distraction imaginable at the problem of people's dissatisfaction and anger at the military powers for an irresponsible and atrocious abuse of power. The death (or "death") of the President was a signal that the fantasy was not going to stop. It was only going to be more rabidly employed and pumped up until people were positively smothered in it. Encased in it. Running their lives around fake characters, fake politicians, fake companies and everything else that kept the power-obsessed military in charge of affairs.
What a great overview of the "swinging sixties", Hoi... my warmest compliments for a superb essay.

How very ironic that most people on this planet remember the sicksties as the innocent age of "flower power" (with peaceniks protesting the war-mongering scumbags of this planet - smoking pot and doing hypnotic drugs) while a hypnotic, fake world was being woven around us all - fake Nukes, fake Apollo moon missions, fake Cold War, fake Gulf of Tonkin incident and all. And how obvious it now appears to me that the "JFK assassination" was just another part of a concerted scheme by the goons in power to rule this planet by staging wholly fictitious world events.

What most people remember as the enlightened years of "flower power" and the era of awakening to the evil antics of the "powers that be" - were instead the most flourishing times of the current jungle of fakery in which we are all enmeshed in today.
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Verity Lambert is known as the first producer of the show in its primal 1963 stage, Dr. Who, as the lead up to the mind-bending, hypnotic, live broadcast that would take place the day after JFK was removed from the world stage. Is Verity Lambert the BBC agent partially responsible for the JFK synchronicity? If so, her US intelligence connection was probably David Susskind.

A bit about Susskind and his connection to the hypnotic era of the 1960's, from Wickedpeddler:
Susskind was born in Manhattan. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison and then Harvard University, graduating with honors in 1942, and then headed off to World War II. A communications officer on an attack transport, he saw action at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
One may note, Iwo Jima is one of the most widely publicized and infamous Japanese locales in all of World War II, thanks to the propaganda about it. And he was a communications officer, eh? It just so happens that Verity Lambert (BBC) worked under this "former" communications officer-cum-TV big shot in the United States.
His first job was as a press agent for Warner Brothers. Next he was a talent agent for Century Artists, ultimately ending up in the powerhouse Music Corporation of America's newly-minted television programming department, managing Dinah Shore, Jerry Lewis, and others. In New York, Susskind formed Talent Associates, representing creators of material rather than performers. Ultimately, Susskind produced movies, stage plays and television programs.
As a manager of huge names, and a loyal servant of the US military, one can imagine what attraction he would have had as a confidant for a psychological operation involving the use of television. (The coming removal of JFK via airwaves). Allegedly, both of his marriages ended in divorce. (As investigators of liars like "astronauts" and their lot in life, we can gather why this might be the case.) My question is about the possibility that Susskind was one of the informed and chosen to introduce TV audiences to the whirlwind of bullshit about to be unleashed on them in the form of assassinations, coups, wars, NASA nonsense and so on. As someone specifically dealing with the relationship between names, casting, publicity management and public perception of such, it seems to me a man with his own show focusing on the chosen hot-button issues of the time would be highly, knowledgeably involved in said nonsense and propaganda:
[Susskind's} program, Open End began in 1958 [...] The show was retitled The David Susskind Show for its telecast on Sunday night, October 2, 1966. In the 1960s it was the first nationally broadcast television talk show to feature people speaking out against American involvement in the Vietnam War. In the 1970s it was the first nationally broadcast television talk show to feature people speaking out for gay rights. [...] Susskind's interview of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, which aired in October 1960, during the height of the cold war, generated national attention. It is one of the very few talk show telecasts from that long ago that was preserved and can be viewed today.

In 1961, Susskind conducted a series of interviews with former President Harry Truman in Truman's hometown of Independence, Missouri. After picking Truman up at his home to take him to the Truman Presidential Library for the interviews over a number of days, Susskind asked Truman why he hadn't been invited into the home. According to presidential historian Michael Beschloss, Truman flatly told Susskind, "This is Bess's house" and that there had never been nor would there ever be a Jewish guest in there.
So this is the character of Susskind, with whom Varity Lambert was associated during her time in America. But can we prove that an influenced Lambert could possibly have any influence, in turn, on the casting of the characters for Doctor Who to resemble a science fiction parallel universe version of JFK and his wife?

Indeed, according to a history of the time Dr. Who was being formed (http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2013/07/an ... nd_31.html) :
Jacqueline Hill was friends with Doctor Who producer Verity Lambert, who suggested she should go forward for the role of Barbara.


And of the dashing hero and partner to our Jacky-O-like friend? Yes, he too was a selection of Verity Lambert (http://guide.doctorwhonews.net/person.php?code=41)
Born in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, his big break was the title role in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot on ITV in 1956.

He was cast by producer Verity Lambert as one of the four original cast members of Doctor Who in 1963, starring opposite William Hartnell as the Doctor, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright, Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman.
What they don't mention much is a small role Russell had in the World War II propaganda movie The Great Escape in that same year, which likely matched Verity's assigned criteria for a "loyal"-type and cemented Russell as a hapless face to exploit, even if on the surface everything looked very clean, bright, hopeful and like innocent fun.

Naturally, all of this 'Russell and Hill look like JFK and Jacky' is likely a coincidence and the coincidental appearances all merely part of the zeitgeist of that era's world of hype, publicity, fashion and psychology. And it's as certain to me that Verity's friends were not strongly aware of how their images may have been used to copycat and piggy-back on the images of JFK.

Yet, a series of fortunes strung together is just what "the invisible hand" might look like to the historian unprepared to ask the "paranoid" questions they need to ask in light of the truth of TV fakery. My first suggestion would be: was Verity Lambert an agent for Her Majesty's Intelligence, just as her one-time mentor Susskind was an element of U.S. government communications, which forever cemented and entrenched this far-out sci-fi show as a tool of propaganda and public relations services of the City of London, Washington D.C. and related Statist governments using television as a mind weapon?
Verity Lambert is a twenty-seven year old girl who has done a lot of commercial TV over here and has worked in the USA for David Susskind. She has been put on programme contract for a year to handle this new serial.
A young woman put in charge of a new serial, for one year, sounds like a test for her to show loyalty to all the big players and ensure Doctor Who is forever threatened with cancellation if the creativity of its creators is not exploited to please the attitudes and likes of their masters. Isn't that always how television has worked, anyway? It is, if you believe the interview with Rod Serling, the creator and main writer of a parallel sci-fi show in the USA known as The Twilight Zone.

Impress your masters with your boot-licking sycophancy or you are relieved of duties. Perhaps Verity even received a lot of talk about the "liberal" JFK during her stint in America, and so was subconsciously moved to introduce an element like it in her show, regardless of intent to catch attention on it. Something tells me a lot of these Hollywood and BBC people don't fully live in reality and their own delusions/fantasies would (and do) emanate from everything they produce.
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

As a very brief addendum, the producer credited with pitching, producing and creating the whole premise and possibility for the Doctor Who show in the BBC in the first place is Sydney Newman, a Russian Jewish fellow working for Canadian Broadcasting who made outright propaganda films and was controversial later in his life for suppressing politically "sensitive" films. He was also, allegedly, the one who demanded the show feature applied and theoretical science as we know it today and that the show feature an inexperienced character who makes mistakes because of their misunderstanding of said science. Hmmm. Sounds to me a bit like the "internal war" I suggested may have always existed behind the scenes of the show started with its inception.
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by ProperGander »

I'm still reading through it all, This is excellent work. I never thought to look for a critique of Doctor Who on CLUESFORUM.
There is allot to work with here. When I posted about the Deadly Assassin episode I had no idea you already had the JFK angle covered. Really nice work.

You mentioned Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. I think both of productions are something to be looked into further. The cancellation of the original Start Trek and how it was bumped around on the TV schedule is a story in itself, considering the Apollo missions were also televised at the time. Then there are the other NASA connections to the Enterprise. Gene Roddenberry also has an interesting background with Pan Am, which was apparently a CIA front of sorts.

see here for an article about the cancellation of Star Trek:
"The truth of the matter is that NBC took a show that was winning its timeslot and messed with it until it couldn’t possibly survive. "
http://whatculture.com/tv/star-trek-rea ... vealed.php

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"Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American television screenwriter, producer, populistic philosopher, and futurist. He is best remembered for creating the original Star Trek television series. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father worked as a police officer.Roddenberry flew eighty-nine combat missions in the Army Air Forces during World War II, and worked as a commercial pilot after the war. Later he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Los Angeles Police Department and also began to focus on writing scripts for television."

"He was subsequently began to fly for Pan American World Airways, including routes from New York to Johannesburg or Calcutta, the two longest Pan Am routes at the time. A further crash occurred while he was on the Clipper Eclipse on June 18, 1947. The plane landed in the Syrian desert, and Roddenberry dragged wounded passengers out of the burning plane and led the group to get help. Fourteen people died in the crash; eleven passengers needed hospital treatment, eight were unharmed.[15] He resigned from Pan-Am on May 15, 1948, and decided to pursue his dream of writing particularly for the new medium of television."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry

"As a result, many Pan Am station managers actually worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Their airline job was a perfect cover for them. Stewardesses and other crew members were also infiltrated by intelligence agencies, as seen in the attached slide show and video clip which accompany this report.

Although a publicly traded company owned by investors, Pan American World Airways, was the closest the U.S. has ever had in the way of a national flag carrier. Over half of the airline's traffic were humanitarian flights, secret air lifts, diplomatic missions, or special charters, carried out at the request of the United States government. As a result, the airline was an early target of terrorism, long before airport security screenings. The first Boeing 707 ever hijacked was Pan Am Flight 93 (N752PA), taken over on September 6, 1970 at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS), and blown up at Cairo International Airport (CAI) five days later on September 11."

Pan Am was a short lived ABC TV series a few years back. At the time I thought the premise absurd and I still do.
"According to a segment on the NPR radio program The World, broadcast on Thursday, September 22, 2011, the host, Marco Werman, interviewed the Executive Producer of Pan Am, Nancy Hult Ganis, who herself was a former Pan Am stewardess, and another flight attendant for that carrier, Karen Fiedler. Both discussed their experiences flying for the airline, which sometimes included covert assignments for the CIA and other government intelligence agencies."


http://www.examiner.com/article/pan-am- ... ar-secrets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_(TV_series)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1826805/
http://www.examiner.com/article/pan-am- ... ar-secrets
Last edited by ProperGander on Mon Oct 12, 2015 3:45 pm, edited 5 times in total.
ProperGander
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by ProperGander »

Doctor Who and the JFK assassination:

Not only is JFK referenced, but there are CIA and Vatican analogies also present in the script. Please note the Doctor's origin as a Time Lord was revealed in a series entitled "War Games" which marked the end of the second Doctor's era.


Image

This series introduces the concept of the MATRIX.

The Deadly Assassin

"The Fourth Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey after receiving a mysterious summons from the Time Lords and having a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being murdered.

As soon as the TARDIS materialises within the Citadel, it is surrounded by the Chancellery Guard. Commander Hilred reports to Castellan Spandrell, noting the TARDIS is a Type 40 time capsule, which is no longer in service. The soldiers are ordered to impound the TARDIS and arrest the occupant. The Doctor realises that the Time Lords did not summon him.

Spandrell goes to see Coordinator Engin in the Archives Section. Hilred and his troops enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor sneaks out and makes his way to a service lift that leads to the main tower. A soldier who threatens to place the Doctor under arrest is killed by a phantom-like figure who disappears. All of this has been observed by the Doctor's old adversary, the Master.

Chancellor Goth arrives outside the TARDIS. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is watching a news broadcast by a reporter he recognises as Runcible, a classmate from his days at the Academy. The President is set to retire and to name a successor. Runcible is talking to Cardinal Borusa, one of the Doctor's former teachers.

The TARDIS is transducted to the museum within the Capitol, and the Doctor borrows Gallifreyan robes. Several floors beneath the archive tower, the Master, severely emaciated, confers with an unseen accomplice. He says the trap has been set and they must make sure the Doctor dies quickly.

At the Panopticon, a Gallifreyan quasi-ceremonial chamber, the disguised Doctor converses with Runcible before the outgoing President appears. The Doctor notes a camera stationed on an unguarded catwalk. He also spots a sniper rifle next to the camera. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, warning that the President is about to be killed. Unbeknownst to the Doctor, the assassin is among the delegates and shoots the President dead. However, the crowd sees the Doctor on the catwalk with the rifle and assumes he is the killer.

Under interrogation, the Doctor maintains that he has been framed. Eventually, Spandrell starts to believe him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. To delay his possible execution, the Doctor invokes Article 17: he will run for President, which guarantees liberty for those running for office during the course of an election.

The Doctor returns to the scene of the crime with Spandrell. They discover that the sight on the sniper rifle was distorted, making it virtually impossible for this weapon to have killed the President. They decide to check the recorded proceedings of the event stored in the camera. The Master, hastening to extract the record himself, kills Runcible's technician using his TCE (Tissue Compression Eliminator). Runcible attempts to take the tape to the archives for review, but he is killed."

The War Games
"The War Games is the seventh and final serial of the sixth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which originally aired in ten weekly parts from 19 April to 21 June 1969. It was the last regular appearance of Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor and it is the last serial to be recorded in black and white. It is also the last regular to feature Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines as companions Zoe Heriot and Jamie McCrimmon. It was also the story where the Doctor's race, the Time Lords, was revealed."

"On an alien planet the Doctor uncovers a diabolical plot to conquer the galaxy, with brainwashed soldiers abducted from Earth forced to fight in simulated environments, reflecting the periods in history whence they were taken. The aliens' aim is to produce a super army from the survivors; to this end, they have been aided by a renegade from the Doctor's own race of the Time Lords, calling himself the War Chief.

Joining forces with rebel soldiers, who have broken their conditioning, the Doctor and his companions foil the plan and stop the fighting. The War Chief is apparently killed when the War Lord realises he has been plotting against him. But the Doctor admits he needs the help of the Time Lords to return the soldiers to their own times, but in asking, risks capture for his own past crimes, including the theft of the TARDIS. After sending the message he and his companions attempt to evade capture, but are caught.

Having returned the soldiers to Earth, the Time Lords place the War Lord on trial and dematerialise him. They erase Zoe and Jamie's memories of travelling with the Doctor, and return them to the point in time just as they entered the TARDIS. They then place the Doctor on trial for stealing the TARDIS and breaking the rule of non-interference. The Doctor presents a spirited defence, citing his many battles against the evils of the universe. Accepting this defence, the Time Lords announce that his punishment is exile to Earth. The operation of the TARDIS is wiped from his memory and his next regeneration is imposed as the Second Doctor complains defiantly."

"The Celestial Intervention Agency or CIA was a secretive Time Lord organisation with whom the Doctor and Lord President Romana occasionally had dealings. Its motto — "the story changes, the ending stays the same" — was also a modus operandi. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deadly_Assassin
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Matrix_Revisited
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Games
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Celestial_ ... ion_Agency
Last edited by ProperGander on Mon Oct 12, 2015 12:29 am, edited 7 times in total.
hoi.polloi
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Thanks for transferring/copying your thoughts from "Reviewing Hollywood Snakery" here.

I hadn't noticed my broken links above before. I must get them repaired. Sorry about that.
ProperGander
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by ProperGander »

I want to develop this further. In fact I am watching the latest episode now, and funny enough the beginning has the Doctor explaining how he created Beethoven. He travels to the past and finds no trace of the man, so he writes down all the music himself, and has it published under the the famous man's name. This reminds me of the "City of Death" episode by Douglas Adams.

"While leisurely enjoying the city of Paris with Romana, the Doctor feels the effects of time distortion. At the Louvre while admiring the Mona Lisa, he encounters the Countess Scarlioni wearing an alien bracelet used to scan security systems. The Doctor and Romana meet Inspector Duggan, who has been tailing Count Scarlioni for some time; Scarlioni has placed a large number of lost art treasures on the market, and Duggan fears the Scarlionis are looking to steal the Mona Lisa. Though the three are briefly captured by the Countess, the Doctor helps them to escape and explore the Count's mansion, where they discover equipment by Dr. Kerensky to experiment with time, the source of the Doctor's time distortions. They also discover, behind a wall, six exact copies of the Mona Lisa, each painted by Leonardo da Vinci himself."

Doctor Who is a goldmine. There is allot here to get into, along with the Twilight Zone and Star Trek and the rest of the science fiction genre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Death


By the way the Doctor's line at the end of the episode I watched when I wrote this:

"I was reverse engineering the narrative."
Last edited by ProperGander on Mon Oct 12, 2015 1:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
hoi.polloi
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Re: Doctor Who: 50 years of Ineffectual Heroism

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

You're right! Not to mention the reiterative propaganda "sitcom" Big Bang Theory!

If you are a regular watcher of 'Doctor Who', I am sure you will notice many problems with the show's premise that the character who is supposed to be "smarter than everyone in the room" is actually a mouthpiece for the idiots in charge who genuinely believe that about themselves.

Please post what suspicious things you notice in the show, and keep going with the excellent citation and keeping it digestible for average readership.
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