Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Doctor Who & the Titanic

Since 1963, Doctor Who has thrilled audiences all over the world. The show centers on a time traveller - an alien Time Lord - known only as the Doctor. He voyages throughout time in the TARDIS (perpetually in the form of a 1960s British police box due to a faulty circuit) and fights evil with little more than charm, wit and a sonic screwdriver. When mortally wounded, the Doctor can regenerate himself as a younger man - a Time Lord's little way of cheating death. This has happened eleven times since 1963.

Several stories have involved the RMS Titanic in one capacity or another.

The ship is first mentioned in the series in story number 97, The Invasion of Time. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and a fellow Time Lord, Borusa, came across an article in the Daily Mirror which mentioned the liner's sinking. The Doctor immediately promises that he had nothing to do with Titanic's sinking.

The ship was not mentioned again until the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) encountered in the novel, The Left-Handed Hummingbird. He and his companions were aboard when Titanic struck the iceberg and - as mentioned in a subsequent comic strip - one of them actually caused the ship to go down.

The Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) tried to dissuade people from boarding the liner in the episode Rose. He later commented in The End of the World that he had been aboard a ship "they said was unsinkable." The Doctor then notes how he "ended up clinging to an iceberg. It wasn't half cold."

The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) encountered a starship replica of the Titanic in Voyage of the Damned after it collided with the TARDIS. This incident was also seen in the mini-epsiode Time Crash, which unites the Tenth Doctor with the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and threatens to end the universe.

Will the Doctor meet up with the Titanic again?

Only time will tell.

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