Monday, January 20, 2014

Mercurial, Benevolent, Alien

Happy birthday to Tom Baker, my all-time favorite Doctor.

On playing Doctor Who: "it was the only part that really, I didn’t have to strive for. Everything about the character, the mercurial, benevolent, alien quality, that he had, all of those were factors for which I had tremendous sympathy."

The BBC is releasing a series of interviews to mark the occasion.

And I think it was Tom Baker's incarnation of Doctor Who that prompted Harlan Ellison to write in 1979:
"The one and only, the incomparable, the bemusing and bewildering Doctor Who [...] His adventures are sunk to the hips in humanism, decency, solid adventure and simple good reading.  They are not classics, make no mistake.  They can never touch the illuminative level of Dickens or Mark Twain or Kafka.  But they are solid entertainment based on an understanding of Good and Evil in the world. [...] And they do it in the form of all great literature . . . the cracking good, well-plotted adventure yarn"

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