Since 1963, one show has lasted a long time and become one of the world's most loved programs, that show is Britain's BBC's Doctor Who. After 50 years and over hundreds of episodes the science fiction blockbuster is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
The show, which originally aired from 1963-1989 and then cancelled
until it was brought back in 2005, is about a time traveling alien who
calls himself The Doctor" wherever he goes. He travels through space and
time, anywhere and any when, through the use of his TARDIS, or Time And
Relative Dimension In Space, a time machine that, as everyone who goes
inside it say, it's bigger on the inside. The exterior, through the use
of a broken disguise mechanism, is in the shape of a blue British police
public call box. Everywhere he goes there's always a danger he has to
face which he fixes by the end of the episode, whether it's an alien
invasion, mutated super beings, or any other crazy situation. The show
is called Doctor Who, not because it's The Doctor's name, but
because every time he introduces himself as The Doctor, the usual
response is "Doctor Who?".
Doctor Who has had hundreds of great actors appear on the show,
mostly from Britain, over its fifty year run, including Michael Gough,
Eric Roberts, Toby Jones, Diana Rigg, Timothy Dalton, and many other
actors. The Doctor rarely ever travels alone in the TARDIS, always
meeting new people to become his next companion for a while until they
leave and he meets another. He fights the most fascinating of monsters
and enemies, including the Daleks, Cybermen, The Master, the Weeping
Angels, The Silence, and many others. One of the most memorable things
that have kept the show going is that The Doctor, being an alien known
as a Time Lord, is able to change his appearance every time he dies or
is close to death in a process known as regeneration where the cells
regenerate along with his brain cells, and because of that he has been
played by eleven actors so far. Although, there's a limit in that Time
Lords only get 13 lives and after that they die permanently, or if
there's too much damage to regenerate. Although even his brain cells
change he still maintains all of his memories but each regeneration has a
different personality.
The First Doctor, played by William Hartnell from 1963-1966 and then
again in 1973 for the 10th anniversary special and with Richard Hurndall
playing the First Doctor in 1983 for the 20th anniversary special after
Hartnell died, is the one that started it all. Ironically, however,
he's the least recognizable of the Doctors, as he was an old man who was
always grumpy and was just there to provide a plot for each episode as
the show was originally supposed to run for a few weeks as an
educational show on history and science. Being known as a citizen of the
universe, the First Doctor's run were very different from the
succedding Doctors, one being he would immediately talk his way out
instead of running. He first traveled with his granddaughter, Susan
Foreman, after stealing, or as he says borrowing the TARDIS which by
that point was already ancient, trying to find a way back to their home
world. When they first landed in a junkyard in London of 1963, Susan
attended a school there and two of her teachers were surprised at the
level of intellect that she had and decided to follow her one day.
Ending up in the junkyard, they discover the TARDIS, with The Doctor
deciding to kidnap them to prevent them from telling. It's when they
land in the time of the cavemen where The Doctor begins to understand
humans and develop his love and intrigue of them. Traveling to different
places in space and time, The Doctor and his companions encounter the
Daleks, a mutated race of hateful humanoids in a nuclear ravaged planet
who all live inside man size tanks, who have invaded Earth and made
their own time machines, landed in the time of the Aztecs, met Marco
Polo, and fought the Cybermen, humans from an Earth like planet who
replaced everything in their bodies with robotics and which to do the
same to others. It's the first time The Doctor faces the Cybermen that
is when we see the Doctor regenerate for the first time.
Patrick Troughton would succeed Hartnell as The Doctor in his second
regeneration from 1966-1969, and then again in 1973 and 1983 for the
10th and 20th anniversaries, along with a special in 1985. Deciding to
continue the show even after Hartnell left do to illness, the producers
came up with the interesting concept of The Doctor changing after dying
or close to it and having a different actor play the character whenever
the actor playing him couldn't play the role anymore, although at the
time the process was called renewal and the change in personality didn't
come up. After defeating the Cybermen for the first time, The Doctor,
by that point frail and weak, died from old age and was surprisingly
changed by a bright light into Troughton's Second Doctor. Although the
change in personality wasn't established yet, The Doctor was very
different from before, one being is that he was called a space hobo
because he was more scruffy and childlike than his previous
regeneration. Also, instead of trying to find his way home he instead
considers himself a renegade who wants to do nothing but travel. Because
The Doctor was now younger the show became more action packed then
before with The Doctor and his companions running a lot from danger. The
Second Doctor's companions included those who were with him when he
first regenerated as well as one of the longest lasting companions in
the show, Jamie McCrimmon, a young 18th century Scottish piper. In his
new body, The Doctor would face more Daleks, including one story that
was supposed to be their last, Cybermen, the Martian Ice Warriors, the
introduction of one of The Doctor's greatest allies UNIT, or United
Nations Intelligence Taskforce, and the Brigadier; he would gain his
most famous tool the Sonic Screwdriver, battle the Great Intelligence,
and in his last story face another Time Lord, The War Chief. In his last
story, Troughton's Doctor must call upon the other Time Lords to assist
him against The War Chief, which they do, but in the end they also
capture The Doctor and punish him for stealing the TARDIS and
interfering in the history of other planets by sending his companions
back to their time with no memory of their adventures, force The Doctor
to regenerate, banish him to present Earth, and take away most of the
knowledge of how to work the TARDIS.
Appearing for the first time in color, the show introduces Jon Pertwee
as the exiled, fancied dressed Third Doctor, from 1970-1974, where in
his first episode we learn that Time Lords have two hearts. Wanting to
keep the budget low for a while, the Third Doctor's adventures for the
first two or three years were less time and space travel science fiction
and more spy-fiction inspired by The Avengers show, with a lot
of gadgets and vehicles. Being stuck on Earth, The Doctor worked for
UNIT as a scientific advisor and worked alongside The Brigadier who he
had met as the Second Doctor. The Time Lords would occasionally have The
Doctor go on missions for them as a mediator during his exile. Pertwee,
being a former British spy during the second World War, pushed for The
Doctor to have less technological talk and more action scenes, fighting
the bad guys himself, and being interested in gadgets. It was during the
tenth anniversary of the show that the first multi-Doctor story was
shown where Hartnell and Troughton reprised their roles as the First and
Second Doctors to help out the current. This would happen almost every
ten years after the show first aired as a way of remembering the show
and pleasing the fans. It was his exile on Earth that The Doctor became
more and more caring of the human race and started to warm up to them.
The Third Doctor's companions included The Brigadier, who has appeared
with almost all of the Doctors, fellow scientist Liz Shaw, who left the
show as many felt she didn't connect with the audience, Shaw's
replacement assistant Jo Grant, and the most famous companion of the
franchise Sarah Jane Smith, a reporter who tags alongside The Doctor in
his last few adventures as the Third Doctor and when he's allowed to
travel in time and space again. Such things as the return of the Daleks
would plague Pertwee's Doctor, as well as introducing the Autons, an
alien race of living plastic, in his first episode, introducing his
greatest enemy yet The Master, another Time Lord bent on ruling
everything, one of the founder of Time Lord society gone mad Omega, the
clone race Sontarans, Silurians, and Sea Devils, although he never faced
the Cybermen until the 20th anniversary special. One of the most
memorable things about the Third Doctor is that in most situations he
would solve most of it by saying to "reverse the polarity". The Third
Doctor died when after battling giant alien spiders in an alien planet
The Doctor is hit by huge amounts of radiation and returns to UNIT in
the TARDIS where he regenerates.
Playing the most recognized Doctor, Tom Baker played the Fourth Doctor
for seven years, the longest, from 1974-1981, through archive footage
for the 20th anniversary and a small appearance in the 30th. Baker,
unlike the previous actors who had played The Doctor before him, was not
a well known actor in well known movies, shows, or plays, but never the
less he's The Doctor most people recognize. The one thing that makes
him so recognizable is the long scarf he wore with a big coat, how more
of an alien he was than before, and his love of Jelly Babies. After
spending his last regeneration stuck on Earth and working for UNIT, this
Doctor was happy to travel again and no longer be put down by
authority, which is one of the reasons the show became such a huge
success throughout the late '70s and early '80s. With the Fourth Doctor
we learn that the process Time Lords go through to survive is called
regeneration, there is a 13 life limit, and that The Doctor's home
planet is called Gallifrey. Going to such places as Victorian London, a
planet that sees The Doctor as a god, the creation of the Daleks, and
beyond, The Doctor once again became the traveler that he wanted to be.
Traveling with Baker's Doctor included Sarah Jane, the futuristic
robotic dog K-9, Leela- a girl from an alien tribe that saw The Doctor
as a god, a fellow Time Lord Romana, UNIT doctor Harry Sullivan, a young
parallel universe genius named Adric, alien Nyssa, Australian plane
stewardess Tegan Jovanka. Traveling through time and space, The Doctor
faces off against The Master who has wasted all of his regenerations and
is just a walking skeleton who eventually finds a way to take over
bodies to continue living, Davros who created the Daleks- in a mission
by the Time Lords to prevent the Daleks from being made which he fails,
shape-shifting aliens Zygons who controlled The Loch Ness Monster, The
Black Guardian a personification of evil and chaos, an Ancient Egyptian
god, and so much more. When battling The Master to stop him from
controlling another planet, The Doctor stops him but falls from a
satellite they were on from a great height. Surrounded by his friends,
The Doctor has visions of his past companions and states that the moment
has been prepared for, to which he points at a white figure who was a
manifestation of The Doctor's future regeneration and when they become
one The Doctor once again regenerates.
Being the youngest at the time to play The Doctor, Peter Davidson at
29 played the Fifth Doctor as a staunch pacifist with a vulnerable side
from 1981-1984, including the 30th anniversary special and a web special
in 2007 alongside the Tenth Doctor. Unlike Baker, Davidson was well
established in the public eye as he had appeared in the popular BBC show
All Creatures Great and Small. Wanting to have a back to the
basics attitude, the producers wanted the show to have a minimum of
silly humor and horror that the show had throughout Baker's time.
Beginning with a problem after he regenerated, the Fifth Doctor started
to act a lot like his past regenerations until he regained his own
persona and continue traveling, treating his friends more like a team
then past regenerations. This Doctor's wardrobe consisted of an
Edwardian cricketer's outfit, including at times a cricket ball in one
of his pockets, cream-colored frock coat, striped trousers, plimsoll
shoes, glasses that he didn't need but made him look smarter, a Panama
hat, red question marks embroidered onto the collar, and the most famous
feature being a stick of celery taped to his left lapel which, as shown
in his last story, turned purple in the presence of a gas he was
allergic to. In 1983, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show,
another special was made called The Five Doctors, where Troughton
and Pertwee reprised their roles as the Second and Third Doctors, while
another actor took over Hartnell as he died ten years before and
because Baker was too busy to film they used footage from an unaired
episode to explain what had happened to the Fourth. Seeing such things
as 17th century Britain, the extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth, a
desert planet, and much more, the Fifth Doctor traveled with Nyssa,
Tegan, and Adric as he had in his last regeneration a long with alien
and stuck on Earth student of The Brigadier Vislor Turlough who's
actually working for The Black Guardian but becomes fond of The Doctor,
robot companion Kamelion who he had to destroy because of The Master,
and American botany student Peri Brown. As he travels throughout time
and space, the Fifth Doctor fought Daleks and Davros, the seven year
return of the Cybermen where Adric sacrificed himself to stop one of
their plans, the return of Omega who tried to control The Doctor's body,
The Master, the destruction of his Sonic Screwdriver and so much more.
In the Fifth Doctor's last story he and Perri become infected by a toxic
drug and when after finding the cure there's only enough for one which
The Doctor gives to Peri while he at first thinks he won't be able to
regenerate until he sees an image of The Master and is able to once
again regenerate. Davidson's reprisal of the Fifth Doctor in the web
special in 2007 was a charity special that co-starred the Tenth Doctor,
David Tennant, who was a huge fan of Davidson's Doctor.
Being a bit older than Davidson at 40 and with a personality more
closer to the First Doctor then his past regenerations, Colin Baker
played the brash and overbearing Sixth Doctor from 1984 to 1986 and then
again in the 30th anniversary special. Appearing at first to go mad
from a regeneration crisis, the Sixth Doctor almost strangles Peri to
death until he overcomes his crisis and continues on to his travels. The
Sixth Doctor's outfit was as unpredictable as his personality, wearing a
rainbow coat, a white shirt with question marks in the collar, yellow
and striped trousers, green and black ankle boots with orange spats, and
a cat badge along with a multicolored umbrella. This Doctor's
personality was still caring and heroic but when he didn't want to show
it the Sixth Doctor was very unpredictable, an egoist, very confident to
the point he fixed the TARDIS's chameleon circuit but left it as a
police box, and very much loved cats. Because many of his stories were
very violent and much criticized, and with him at first not being very
likable, the show was almost cancelled and was put in hiatus for the
1986-1987 after the 23rd season was an entire serial where The Doctor is
put on trial again by the Time Lords. During Baker's run, the show
started showing less episodes and most of them suffered from not as
great writing and not too sell special effects. After the hiatus, sadly,
Baker was fired and the show started with The Doctor's regenerating
without Baker. In a 1985 serial, Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines
reprised their roles as the Second Doctor and his companion Jamie,
respectively, in The Two Doctors where the current doctor must
save his past self from the Sontarans in Troughton's last time as The
Doctor. At first traveling with Peri in his adventures to a planet whose
people are forced to watch torture as entertainment, Spain, a planet in
the future that resembles Earth, and much more until Peri's mind is
taken over by an alien and The Doctor then meets computer programmer Mel
Bush who has The Doctor exercise a lot. In these adventures, the Sixth
Doctor faces Daleks, Davros, Cybermen, Sontarans, The Master, another
renegade Time Lord The Rani, and the prosecutor of The Doctor's second
trial The Valeyard who turned out to be a future evil manifestation of
The Doctor himself that exists between his 12th and last regeneration.
Even though Baker didn't play the Sixth Doctor when he died, The Doctor
regenerates at the start of the next serial after the hiatus after being
attacked by The Rani.
Playing an unconscious Sixth Doctor with a wig and having his face
turned to reveal another regeneration, Sylvester McCoy would play the
Seventh Doctor in the show's last years from 1987 to 1989 before it
would be cancelled due to low ratings and then at the beginning of the
1996 TV movie that was supposed to bring it back. Although, in between
the 1989 cancellation and '96 movie McCoy and all of the past actors who
played The Doctor, except Hartnell and Troughton who had been dead by
the time they shot it, and past companions and villains reprised their
roles for a 1993 30th anniversary charity special that's not actually
considered canon in the series. In his first episode the Seventh Doctor
was in a state of confusion and amnesia caused by both his regeneration
and The Rani drugging him, but soon he would defeat her again. Starting
out as bumbling and a buffoon, McCoy's Doctor would later show how dark
and manipulative he could be, especially as a chess master. During this
time, the producers of the show wanted to add a new layer to The Doctor,
one with a bigger secret than before that, if the show wasn't
cancelled, would have revealed a lot more about The Doctor. It was this
darkness, such as tricking his enemies into killing themselves, why in
other Doctor Who media and the later revival why his past and
future regenerations aren't too fond of him. Although, like the Second
he would do things to make himself look foolish to trick his enemies and
like the Third opposes violence and likes to use gadgets. The Seventh
Doctor wore mostly normal clothing, like a safari-styled jacket, red
paisley scarf, a plain white shirt, red tie, a pullover adorned with red
question marks, a Panama hat, and an umbrella with a question
mark-shaped handle, although his clothes became darker later on. This
regeneration of The Doctor could also hypnotize opponents better than
before and was very much in love with using magic tricks and props
against his enemies. Traveling with Mel and then picking of
time-stranded teen genius and rebel Ace, who loved making explosives
while carrying a baseball bat which she once used to beat up a Dalek
because it called her small and calling The Doctor "Professor", The
Doctor would travel to the spot he first landed in for the first episode
of the show mere months after he was there, a haunted house in 1983,
and a British naval base during World War 2. In his time, The Seventh
Doctor fought against the Daleks and Davros in a story where The Doctor
tricked Davros into using a Time Lord artifact into destroying the Dalek
homeworld Skaro, Cybermen, The Master, The Rani, intergalactic rogue
Sabalom Glitz, and so much more. After the cancellation, McCoy and his
past actors still played The Doctor in various other media including
audio novels. At the start of the 1996 TV movie, McCoy reprised his role
as the Seventh Doctor to introduce the next Doctor after McCoy's Doctor
crash lands in California during New Years Eve where he's shot by a
gang and the doctor operating on him accidentally kills him because of
his alien physiology.
Appearing only once onscreen in the 1996 TV movie but doing his voice
in various audio novels, Paul McGann played the Eighth Doctor with as
much charm as the rest. After the original series was put in hiatus in
1989 and not aired again, it was official that BBC had cancelled the
show because of all the problems it faced. It wasn't until 1996 when BBC
and 20th Century Fox teamed up to revive the show as a FOX show with a
television film that fans finally heard something new from The Doctor.
Airing in Canada, the US, and Britain at different dates in May the film
was very much praised but due to low ratings a revived show did not
happen, and it would be another nine years before The Doctor returned to
television. In the film, McCoy's Seventh Doctor brings the remains of
his old foe The Master, having been executed by the Daleks, into the
TARDIS to bring to Gallifrey as part of The Master's will. While The
Doctor is reading a book, The Master escapes from the box he was stored
in as a sentient ooze and causes the TARDIS to malfunction. The TARDIS
lands in the very early morning of New Years Eve San Francisco in 1999
just as a gang was shooting at a young Chinese-American teen named Chang
Lee. When The Doctor steps out, the gang shoots him and run away after
for fear of the TARDIS appearing out of nowhere. When The Doctor is
brought to a hospital thanks to Lee, the doctor who operates on him,
Grace Holloway, takes the bullet out but because the X-rays show two
hearts, she uses a prove to inspect his vessels but in doing so damages
his circulatory system and it kills him, and soon after Lee runs away
with The Doctor's things-including the TARDIS key and a new Sonic
Screwdriver. Meanwhile, the oozing form of The Master takes control the
body of the ambulance driver that took The Doctor to the hospital and
gets a new but deteriorating body, played by Eric Roberts, who plans to
steal The Doctor's remaining regenerations. With The Doctor being put in
the morgue, he once again regenerates but slowly because of the
anesthetics into McGann's Eighth Doctor, who gains amnesia because of
the time it took for him to regenerate and the anesthetics. When Lee
finds the TARDIS and enters it he is surprised to see that it's bigger
on the inside, and that the TARDIS's interior have changed looking more
like a steam-punk room. There, Lee finds The Master is tricked by him
into believing that The Doctor is evil and helping with his plans. By
daylight, The Doctor has found new clothes, Edwardian clothes intended
for a party, from the hospital and with some memory being revived finds
Holloway and convinces her that he was the same man as before. With her
help, the Eighth Doctor is able to remember who he is, what had
happened, and realizes that The Master's plan involves opening the Eye
of Harmony, which if left opened would suck the Earth into it. When they
get to the TARDIS, however, The Master traps The Doctor and hypnotizes
Grace to continue his plans. Just as Lee sees through the ploy and
realizes what's really going on, The Master kills him and de-hypnotizes
Grace to open the Eye. When it does open, Grace rearranges the TARDIS
console which causes the process to stop just right before midnight and
frees The Doctor, unfortunately, The Master kills her. Being freed, The
Doctor is able to push The Master into the Eye of Harmony causing time
to revert and bringing Lee and Grace back to life. Arriving moments
before the New Year, Lee departs but is warned by The Doctor, who in
this regeneration can see into people's futures and give out tips, to
not be in San Francisco next New Years, while Grace politely declines
The Doctor's invitation to travel in the TARDIS. Although in the movie
the Eighth Doctor was shown to be youthful and wide-eyed enthusiastic as
the Fifth, various spin-offs showed he had a darker side, especially
since he went through a lot more things than previous regenerations.
Something that caused controversy among fans was how he would say he was
half human and the romantic involvement that The Doctor had with Grace,
which by now wouldn't be such a big deal considering what the Ninth to
Eleventh Doctors dealt with. In a lot of other media inspired by the
film, the Eighth Doctor regularly goes through bouts of amnesia. It's
unknown how the Eighth Doctor died, but it's possible that it happened
some time during or after the Time War that would be discussed in the
revival. On November of 2013, McGann once again played the Eight Doctor
in a mini web episode that ties in to the 50th anniversary special. In
there, The Doctor offers to save the last remaining pilot of a crashing
ship, but when she learns he's a Time Lord she refuses due to the Time
War that's happening. When the ship crashes, The Doctor actually died,
along with the pilot, and are found by a group The Doctor met before in
his fourth regeneration. They revive him for four minutes to tell him
how the war between the Time Lords and Daleks is tearing the universe
apart. After avoiding the war for so long and deciding that he has to
break his own rules, The Doctor decides to finally end it by drinking a
potion made by the group that makes him regenerate into a completely
different form outside of his regeneration cycle known as the War Doctor
who declares that The Doctor is no more and played by John Hurt.
After nine years without anything new, The Doctor returned in a new
revival to the show in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the scarred
and very dark Ninth Doctor. The main difference between the revival and
original show is that instead of serials, each season or series has at
least 13 standalone episodes with two or three-parters and with a lot
multi-season arcs that are referenced in almost all of the episodes of a
particular season, and with a theme that can last just one season or
stretch more. Eccleston played The Doctor for only one season before
deciding to depart due to the schedule of the show, but he played the
Ninth Doctor with such emotion that viewers and fans fell in love with Doctor Who
all over again. In the first episode, The Doctor meets Rose Tyler while
trying to stop the Autons from taking over the Earth and in the end she
joins him in his travels, while her mother and boyfriend Mickey Smith
worry and sometimes join them. Throughout the season, we learn that in
between the film and the revival The Doctor and his people took part in a
war that wiped out all Time Lords but him. Because of that the Ninth
Doctor is more prone to survival's guilt, being very brooding, and at
times was prone to mood swings because of what he witnessed in the Time
War. His clothes reflect it as well as he wears a beat-up leather jacket
showing how the times have changed for him. In his travels with Rose he
has gone to the very last moments of Earth, met Charles Dickens, fought
an alien family wanting to destroy Earth for profit, stopped alien
nano-tech plague during The Blitz, and faced old enemies. We learn
throughout the season that the war the Time Lords fought in were against
the Daleks, and it was The Doctor who was the one that ended it by
killing both his species and what he thought were all of the Daleks.
Besides Rose, The Doctor also picks up a young British genius from 2012
who only lasts one episode as he disobeys The Doctor's rules and 51st
century Time Agent turned con man Jack Harkness who they met during the
Blitz. Throughout the first series, the Ninth Doctor and his companions
find that wherever they go the words "Bad Wolf" appear in some form or
another and it's solved at the end of the season. In the last two
episodes of the season The Doctor, Rose, and Jack, are transported to a
satellite thousands of years in the future that shows game shows where
the players are actually vaporized for real, and the satellite is made
by a company called Bad Wolf. When Jack and The Doctor escape their
games they see Rose get vaporized, but The Doctor learns that the
vaporization is really a transporter. It's with that, that The Doctor
learns that the Dalek Emperor survived the war and made a whole new army
of Daleks from the humans of the game show and ready to invade Earth.
The Doctor saves Rose and without telling her, traps her in the TARDIS
and sends her back to her time with him still on the satellite since the
only way to stop the Daleks is to use a weapon that can kill anything
in its path, including the people of Earth. With Rose stuck in the past
she once again sees Bad Wolf written across the floor and walls and uses
Mickey's truck and a chain to open the TARDIS console, wherein she
absorbs the time vortex. Arriving just as Jack and a few others are
killed, and The Doctor feeling guilty about the possibility of killing
so many innocents and refusing to activate the weapon, Rose arrives and
reveals she is the Bad Wolf, spreading the words across time and space
as a message, reviving Jack, and disintegrating the entire Dalek fleet.
Unfortunately, since she can't handle the power and will die if she
keeps holding it, The Doctor absorbs it all through a kiss and gives it
back to the TARDIS. In there, as they're traveling back to Rose's time,
The Doctor tells her that absorbing the vortex is killing him and tells
Rose that he's changing, which he does when energy bursts from his body
and he once again regenerates to a new man, much to Rose's horror and
confusion, all the while the new Doctor comments on how weird it is to
have new teeth. One thing we learn about The Doctor and the Daleks, is
that they have given The Doctor the title of Oncoming Storm.
Having grown up watching the original show during Tom Baker's and
Davidson's times as a kid and wanting to be an actor just so he can play
The Doctor, David Tennant achieved his dream and more when he played
the light-hearted, talkative, pop culture loving but at times vengeful,
unforgiving, and just as scarred Tenth Doctor who frequently tells
people he's sorry and loves to say Allons-y from 2005 to 2010 and again
in 2013 for the 50th anniversary special. With his first full story
being in the 2005 Christmas special, the Tenth Doctor prevented an alien
invasion-by sword fighting its leader wherein his hand was cut off but
regrown due to his regeneration process and then winning- that finally
revealed the existence of aliens to the world, all the while The Doctor
was in a coma throughout most of the episode because of his
regeneration. At the end of the special, Tennant's Doctor acquired his
outfit which consisted of either a dark brown (with blue pinstripes) or a
blue (with rust red pinstripes) four-buttoned suit, a shirt and a tie, a
light brown faux-suede overcoat, and different colored pairs of
trainers, depending on his suit as well as a pair of glasses that, like
the Fifth Doctor, just made him look smarter. In the end, after having
Harriet Jones, whom The Doctor met in his previous regeneration, be seen
as unfit to be the Prime Minister of England after destroying the
fleeing aliens' ship, The Doctor and Rose continued on to their travels.
In the following season, The Doctor and Rose (and at times Mickey)
would travel to a new Earth billions of years in the future, the Tenth
Doctor reuniting with Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 thus getting their own
spinoffs, travel to a parallel universe to fight a new breed of Cybermen
and Mickey deciding to stay behind, fight a Devil like creature near a
black hole, and other such adventures, all the while the mention of
Torchwood is heard at times. In the season finale, The Doctor, Rose, and
her mother investigate Torchwood, a British institute that acquires and
uses alien technology to protect Earth, and how it relates to ghost
like images appearing throughout the world while also wondering where a
giant sphere that shouldn't exist came from. The ghosts turn out to be
the Cybermen from the other universe trying to get through the other
with some already there having followed the sphere and using Torchwood
to get them here, while the sphere is really a container that opens to
reveal four Daleks who were made to think like the enemy and thus
escaped the Time War. Their plan is to open a Time Lord prison that
since it's bigger on the inside holds millions of Daleks and invade
Earth while also battling the Cybermen. Mickey is there as well since
the breach in the universe allowed him to use a device that lets him
travel between universes, which is actually destroying the other
universe if used repeatedly. In the end, The Doctor and Rose use the
same machine that brought the Cybermen and Daleks into the universe to
put them back into an empty void but not before the four Daleks and a
few Cybermen time travel out of the area and Rose almost gets sucked in
before the alternate version of her dad saves her and takes her to the
other universe wherein she, her mother, and Mickey are stuck in and
presumed dead during the attack and with The Doctor unable to travel
there. Sometime later The Doctor uses a supernova to send a message to
Rose which ends abruptly as they say goodbye. As he prepares to once
again travel, The Doctor sees a woman in a wedding dress appear out of
nowhere in the TARDIS, all without The Doctor knowing how it could be
possible. This leads to the next Christmas special where the woman,
named Donna Noble, demands The Doctor to take her back to her wedding in
England during Christmas. It's there that The Doctor learns of a plot
to conquer Earth by an alien race that hid inside it since it was first
formed, using Donna as a key by having had her coffee laced with
particles that will open the prison in which the rest of the aliens are
hidden, particles that got attracted to the TARDIS hence her appearance.
In the end, The Doctor defeats the aliens by drowning them in the
Thames River and almost staying there had Donna not convinced him to
move, all the while the leader of the aliens is blown out of the sky on
the orders of a Mr. Saxon, a name that will be referenced a lot in the
third season. In the end the Tenth Doctor offers Donna a chance to
travel with him but refuses since she deems him too dangerous but to not
travel alone as he needs to be controlled. At the start of the next
season, The Doctor has to help a hospital he was in that got transported
to the moon by an alien police force looking for an alien criminal with
the help of medical student Martha Jones. In the end, Martha agreed to
travel with him and together they fight the four surviving Daleks in
1930s Manhattan where one of the Daleks survives by once again time
traveling, battle alien witches with Shakespeare, introduce the Weeping
Angels (aliens that only move when not seen and resemble stone statues),
escape from an alien family in pre WWI Britain with The Doctor turning
himself human for fear of what he could do to them, and much more. In
the three part season finale, The Doctor and Martha meet with Jack
Harkness, now working for Torchwood in his own spinoff, who used The
Doctor's severed hand to find him and accidentally travel to the very
end of the universe where they encounter the last people left alive.
There, The Doctor learns that one of the elderly scientists is a Time
Lord like him, although when he steals the TARDIS the Tenth Doctor
realizes that he's actually The Master who escaped the Time War and
turned himself human like The Doctor did. Although The Doctor manages to
lock the TARDIS at only 18 months before they left from, The Master
manages to get away and The Doctor, Jack, and Martha using Jack's vortex
manipulator to get back to when they previously left. There, The Doctor
learns that Mr. Saxon is actually The Master using his powers of
hypnotizing to become a rich man and then the Prime Minister of Britain.
In the end, the three defeat The Master after he turned the TARDIS into
a paradox machine and had the last surviving humans invade Earth for an
entire year until the TARDIS was fixed and the events reset themselves
to when the invasion started without it actually happening. At first,
The Doctor decides to take The Master prisoner until The Master's wife
sees through his insanity and shoots him and he refuses to regenerate as
a way to hurt The Doctor by making him the last Time Lord. Jack is
dropped off back in Torchwood and Martha decides to leave to take care
of her family as they were there throughout the whole ordeal. In between
the finale of this episode and the start of the next Christmas special,
there was a web special in which Tennant's Doctor meets Peter
Davidson's Doctor due to a malfunction in the TARDIS that made the Fifth
Doctor look more aged than before. The Fifth Doctor at first thinks the
Tenth as a fan boy who sneaked into the TARDIS until the Tenth,
remembering when he was the Fifth, manages to fix the problem. When the
problem is fixed, Tennant's Doctor tells Davidson's how of all the
previous regenerations, he was his favorite especially since he copied a
lot of the Fifth Doctor's things-like the glasses and shoes. This was a
dream come true for Tennant as he became an actor because of Davidson
playing The Doctor. The end of the special led to the next Christmas
special where The Doctor had to prevent a giant space liner modeled
after the Titanic from crashing to Earth. In the next and last regular
season in Tennant's time as The Doctor, he reunites with Donna to
investigate a company making diet pills that turns the fat into aliens
and from there they travel to 1920s England where they meet Agatha
Christie, battle Sontarans wanting to invade Earth with the help of
Martha now working for UNIT, travel to a planet where The Doctor is
clones with the clone played by Peter Davidson's daughter and whom
Tennant would later marry, meet a mysterious woman from The Doctor's
future in a planet sized library filled with microscopic creatures who
eat flesh and live in the shadows called the Vashta Nerada, freeing an
alien race known as the Ood from enslavement, and other such things
while also investigating why certain planets are disappearing without a
trace and how it relates to the bees disappearing. In the two part
season finale, The Doctor and Donna find that the Earth has somehow
moved from where it was and learning from the Shadow Proclamation that
over twenty planets have gone missing in the same manner throughout time
and space. Using a computer model, the missing worlds rearrange
themselves into a pattern that the model immediately forms once all the
worlds are put in. When The Doctor is reminded of the bees disappearing
he realizes that a signal only the alien bees recognize is the reason
they left and he uses that signal to trace where the worlds went,
unfortunately once there they find nothing. On Earth, Jack and
Torchwood, Sarah Jane and her son, Martha and UNIT, and Rose who was
able to crossover because of how both universes were breaking apart by
what was going on learn that they were moved by an entire army of Daleks
and have no way of fighting them or contacting The Doctor. Just when
all hope seems lost, Harriet Jones contacts all but Rose about a network
they can use to help contact and get The Doctor to where they are, at
the cost of Jones' life. It works as the worlds and Daleks were hiding
in that same spot just one second out of synch from the rest of the
universe. There, The Doctor learns that Davros has returned thanks to
the one surviving Dalek from Manhattan escaping to the Time War and
bringing him back and making a new race of Daleks with the cost of
making the Dalek precognitive but also insane. When The Doctor lands on
Earth he's hit by a Dalek when running to Rose and as he's regenerating,
Sarah Jane drives right behind two other Daleks who are about to kill
her. As The Doctor is regenerating he transfers most of the energy to
his severed hand thus preventing him from changing and just healing,
while Sarah Jane is saved by Rose's mother and Mickey who also crossed
over. The TARDIS is teleported to the Dalek flagship where The Doctor
learns from Davros that the Daleks plan to use the planets as a reaction
that will destroy every single universe, with the Daleks keeping
themselves safe and the only organisms left. With the TARDIS turned off
and Donna being locked in, The Doctor watches in horror as he sees it
being destroyed by the core of the ship. As the TARDIS is being
destroyed Donna breaks the container containing The Doctor's hand and
her touch causes some of the regeneration energy to bounce onto her and
back causing Donna to have Time Lord knowledge and making a whole new
Doctor out of the hand, albeit half human. As the original Doctor
watches his companions be teleported before activating certain weapons
that either would have destroyed the ship or Earth and just as the
reaction was about to activate, the new Doctor and Donna teleport back
with the TARDIS and help the others defeat the Daleks. The new Doctor,
inspired by the Dalek who brought back Davros since his precognition
made him realize the atrocities the Daleks had done, destroys all of the
Daleks, with Donna teleporting the other planets save the Earth as the
controls are destroyed in the chaos, all the while the original Doctor
gets all of his friends into the TARDIS and offers to save Davros who
refuses. The Doctor, with the help of his friends, use the TARDIS to tow
the Earth back to its location and gets Sarah to her son, Mickey going
with Jack and Martha, and leaving Rose and her mother in the other
dimension with the new one hearted half human Doctor. Because she
couldn't handle the Time Lord knowledge she was hit with, The Doctor had
to wipe out Donna's memory of him and what they did as it would have
burned and killed her. He tells her mother and grandfather about this,
much to their shock, and The Doctor leaves alone and miserable, deciding
that traveling alone is safer. Starting with the 2008 Christmas special
to the start of 2010, the show didn't have a regular season for 2009 as
a new production team and head writer were hired for the fifth series
and they wanted to have more time to prepare for new episodes. From late
2008 to the start of 2010, the show had four specials all leading up to
Tennant's last story as The Doctor. The first special was the 2008
Christmas special where The Doctor lands in London of 1851 at Christmas
Eve. There The Doctor meets what he believes at first to be his next
regeneration but actually an ordinary man who gained the memories of The
Doctor from an infostamps that backfired at him as he was fending off
the Cybermen who escaped the void from when they came as ghosts. With
the help of the man and his friend, Rosita, the Tenth Doctor defeats the
Cybermen and goes on to have Christmas dinner with the two. For the
Easter special in April, The Doctor meets a famous female crook in a
London bus that goes through a wormhole into a desert planet. There, as
the other passengers are working on the bus, The Doctor and his new
friend learn that the planet was turned into a desert by stingray-like
aliens who devoured everything in the planet and through their use of
their metallic exoskeleton plan to enter the wormhole to consume Earth.
With the help of two aliens stuck in the planet and UNIT, The Doctor and
the rest of the passengers get through the wormhole thanks to the bus
being able to fly and close the hole when they get through, able to
destroy a few of the stingray aliens. In the end, after The Doctor helps
the thief escape the police and as he's entering his TARDIS, one of the
passengers has a premonition that his song will soon end and it will
happen when he hears four knocks. In the Fall special that aired
November, The Doctor meets the first human colony of Mars in 2059 which,
as The Doctor realizes, is destined to be destroyed by a nuclear blast,
killing the entire crew and thus a fixed-point in time. It soon shows
that the water the crew was getting from a frozen glacier contains a
virus that makes however touch it have cracks in their mouths and
generate a lot of water, plus making them violent and bloodthirsty. In
the end, as The Doctor leaves, after telling the captain that she and
her crew are meant to die in an event that inspires the rest of Earth to
explore space, he decides that since he's the last of his kind he can
use all of his power to save the captain and the rest of the crew. When
they get back to Earth on the TARDIS, the captain scolds him about what
The Doctor told her about how her death inspired millions and how he's
abusing his powers over time. The Doctor responds that he now sees
himself not just a survivor but, now acting more like The Master,
dubbing himself Time Lord Victorious. Entering her home, the captain
kills herself to maintain the timeline and The Doctor realizes that
nothing changed and that he's gone too far after seeing an image of an
Ood, to which he wonders if this is when he dies. After a nervous
breakdown, The Doctor enters his TARDIS and decides to see the Ood to
know what they want to tell them. The next two specials, that aired on
Christmas and New Years Day 2010, were two-parters that saw the end of
the Tenth Doctor. After visiting the Ood, The Doctor learns that The
Master will be back, to which the Ood see it as "the end of time
itself". On Earth, a cult loyal to The Master use a ring that belonged
to him to resurrect him, to which his ex-wife sabotages. Although The
Master is alive again, the sabotage made him constantly hungry but also
gain super speed and strength and energy projections. With the help of
Wilfred Mott, Donna's grandfather who he talked to about his possible
death and fear of regenerating again, The Doctor finds The Master
feasting on humans to make him get rid of the hunger. Being subdued by
The Master, The Doctor realizes that the four drumbeats in his head
isn't from insanity but an outside force. Soon after, The Master is
captured under the orders of a billionaire who wants The Master to fix
an alien machine he has. Wilf and The Doctor find where The Master is
being kept and find two alien scientists who made the machine as an
unsuccessful medical tool, to which The Master uses to heal himself. He
also uses it to turn almost every other human on Earth into a replica of
himself that look and think like him. Escaping from The Masters, The
Doctor and Wilf hide with the two aliens in their spaceship in space.
There The Doctor learns that The Master's drum beats are really signals
sent by the Time Lord president, Rassilon, during the Time War to the
Master when he was a child, making him go crazy. After The Master
multiplied, Rassilon's signal strengthened and sent a diamond to Earth,
to which The Master recovered. When The Doctor learns from a message
sent by The Master about the diamond, The Doctor learns that Rassilon
plans to use the diamond to not only escape the Time War but bring all
of Gallifrey with it. When The Doctor is back on Earth, The Master's
clones are brought back to normal by Rassilon who reveals that he plans
to destroy all of time and space while the Time Lords become gods. With a
gun given to him by Wilf, The Doctor shoots the diamond, causing the
Time Lords and their planet to return to the Time War, but not before
Rassilon tries to kill The Doctor. Wanting revenge for the drums in his
head, The Master sacrifices himself by attacking the Time Lord president
and then vanishing in a bright white light. Realizing he's still alive,
The Doctor is happy and exited until he hears four continuous knocks
from behind. Seeing Wilf stuck in a Nuclear Vault that only opens when
one enters the other area, which if done will cause the area to fill
with radiation after the events that happened, The Doctor can't use his
Sonic Screwdriver as it will activate the radiation spreading and has a
nervous breakdown since he has enjoyed this regeneration so much that
even if he does regenerate, The Doctor considers it like dying anyway.
Realizing how far he has gone, The Doctor enters the chamber, freeing
Wilf, and absorbs all of the radiation. Knowing that the process will be
slow, he takes Wilf home and proceeds to get his reward by visiting
Sarah Jane and her son, Mickey and Martha who are now engaged, Jack who
he introduces to one of the crew of the space Titanic, and Wilf on
Donna's wedding and getting him winning lottery tickets for her. The
last place he goes is New Year's Day in 2005 and seeing Rose from a
distance and telling her that she's have a great year. Entering the
TARDIS in pain, another image of an Ood appears and tells him that
although his song is ending, the story never ends. Walking around the
TARDIS, the camera closes up on the Tenth Doctor's face as he says that
he doesn't want to go just as his face and hands begin to glow and he
regenerates. As he's regenerating, the energy from it causes most of the
interior of the TARDIS to be destroyed, making it crash onto Earth as
the new Doctor yells out with excitement "Geronimo!" but not before
checking to see if he still has legs, hands, fingers, thinking he's a
girl due to longer hair that he finds sad that it's not ginger,
realizing how big his chin is, and taking a moment to remember that he's
crashing.
Crash landing his damaged TARDIS, the Eleventh Doctor's intro showed
showed audiences how wild and crazy the show will get during his time.
Originally wanting an actor of middle age, Matt Smith is now the
youngest at 26 to play The Doctor, 3 years less than Peter Davidson.
Unlike Tennant, Smith wasn't a fan of the show when he grew up as he
grew up after the original was cancelled. However, when he was
considered Smith watched past episodes and it was watching the Second
Doctor story Tomb of the Cybermen where he saw his inspiration of
his Doctor. From 2010 to now, Smith's Doctor was a lot like the Second
in that he was very childish and acted more like an old man in a very
young body. He was very well aware of his reputation and would use it as
a threat at times against his enemies and at times, like the Seventh,
was very manipulative and secrecy, which, along with many things, gave
him self-loathing for all the things he's done which he hides through a
facade of cheerful arrogance. Unlike Tennant's Doctor, Eleven is
ignorant towards human pop culture and adult activities, as well as
finding things that people find odd, like fezzes, as cool, slow to
realize things, and finding mild curiosity in things that seem
impossible. At times, when things look bleak, the Eleventh Doctor would
act more like his own age by being alone and retiring at one point. Like
the Second Doctor, Eleven was prone to using his hands a lot and would
run most of the time, and he dressed a lot like him. At the end of his
first full episode, after spending most of it with the tattered clothes
of Ten, he starts to wear a brown tweed jacket, bow tie-which he claims
are cool and like the Second, braces, black trousers, and black,
ankle-high boots, while at times wearing a green military coat, fezzes,
stetsons, and a purple-brown cashmere frock coat. After the control room
of the TARDIS is destroyed by the energy from his regeneration, the
Eleventh Doctor crash lands in 1996 on the backyard in the small English
village of Leadworth. There a young girl named Amy Pond sees The Doctor
come out of the crashed TARDIS asking for something to eat. After she
makes him fish custards with custards, Amy asks The Doctor if he could
fix a crack in her room. The Doctor realizes that the crack is actually a
crack in time and space and when he opens it a prison is shown with the
words "Prisoner Zero has escaped" repeated and a giant eyeball appears
before the crack closes. Although the crack closed, The Doctor knows
that Prisoner Zero has escaped through and hiding somewhere. Just before
he can do anything, The Doctor hears the TARDIS's engine and goes down
to fix it, promising Amy that it will only take a moment and he'll come
back to travel with her. When he does come back, however, the still
damaged TARDIS lands 12 years later and meets an older Amy who grew up
seeing The Doctor as an imaginary friend, her Raggedy Doctor. Realizing
that Prisoner Zero is hiding in one of Amy's rooms and that it can shape
shift into whatever people are dreaming of, The Doctor learns that if
the Atraxi, an alien police force, does not find Zero they will burn the
Earth. With the help of Amy and her boyfriend, Rory Williams who's a
nurse, they learn that Zero is using coma patients to disguise himself.
Using his Screwdriver to attract the Atraxi as he's found Zero, The
Doctor overuses it and it blows up, dismissing the Atraxi's attention.
In the hospital, The Doctor's new plan is to use Rory's phone to send
out a signal to the Atraxi that lets them know what the coma patients
look like so as to find Zero better. Zero then knocks out Amy and uses
her dreams of a younger self and The Doctor to hide again, which works.
The Doctor convinces a sleeping Amy to remember what Zero looked like
when it first attacked them, which causes Zero to revert to his true
form and be captured. As he's being imprisoned, Zero gives a cryptic
warning to The Doctor that "the Pandorica will open, and silence will
fall". After Zero is captured, The Doctor calls the Atraxi to see him at
the roof of the hospital, where he reprimands them, as he's choosing
what to wear, for wanting to destroy an innocent planet that never was a
threat to them and asks it if it's protected to which the Atraxi show
holographic images of past monsters who have invaded, and when The
Doctor asks what had happened to them The Atraxi show images of The
Doctor's past regenerations until The Doctor steps in, wearing what he
decided to wear, telling them that he's The Doctor and to run, which
they do. Once they do, The Doctor's key to the TARDIS starts glowing,
signaling that his ship has fixed herself, before disappearing in it
once more. Unknowingly appearing again in Amy's backyard two years
later, Pond readily agreed to travel with him, after being alone for so
long, and showing her the TARDIS's new interior looks. The TARDIS gives
The Doctor a new Sonic Screwdriver and Amy wants The Doctor to get her
back for the next day once they travel, and in the end Amy's room is
shown with, among other things, a wedding dress. For the fifth season of
the revival, and the first for the Eleventh Doctor, he, Amy, and later
on Rory would investigate other similarly shaped cracks that erase
people from existence as they see a giant spaceship carrying all of the
people from the UK, witness the return of pure Daleks during the London
Blitz when Daleks from the previous invasion accidentally escaped the
destruction of their race into WW2 Britain where they pretended to be
inventions to make The Doctor angry enough to say who he is and what
they are which is what they needed to activate a machine that created
new Daleks, fight the Weeping Angels in a maze with the help from the
woman The Doctor met in the planet sized library, River Song, who
travels at different points than he does, fight an evil manifestation of
The Doctor called The Dream Master, prevent an invasion of Silurians in
2020 where Rory is killed but then erased by another crack that makes
Amy forget him, and fight an invisible monster with the help of Vincent
van Gogh. On the two-part season finale, The Doctor, Amy, and River
investigate a van Gogh painting of the TARDIS exploding and the
coordinates of Stonehenge in 102 A.D.. There, they discover the fabled
Pandorica, a prison box said to contain the most powerful and feared
being in the universe. They also discover Rory, dressed as a Roman
soldier, who remembers who he is even though he was killed and erased.
Soon, all of The Doctor's enemies arrive for the Pandorica, as well as
the Roman soldiers who turn out to be Autons, including Rory, but with
human emotions. River takes the TARDIS to Amy's house and discovers
there some things in Amy's room resembling the Pandorica and other
things, and when River tries to go back the TARDIS explodes in a way
that caused the cracks to appear. As this is happening, The Doctor's
enemies reveal to have formed an alliance against him to trap him in the
Pandorica after luring them there from Amy's memory, believing he's the
cause for the cracks, all the while Amy remembers Rory before he tries
and fails to not shoot her as he's an Auton. All this while the first
part ends with everything but Earth being erased from history by the
crack caused by the TARDIS exploding. In the second part, a future
version of The Doctor appears and gives Rory his sonic screwdriver to
open the Pandorica, rescue the present Doctor, and then put Amy in it to
heal her as they wait over one thousand years as the universe is slowly
being destroyed. In 1996, the younger version of Amy opens the
Pandorica and the older version, after being in stasis by the Pandorica,
joins The Doctor-who used River's vortex manipulator- and Rory-being
alive as he's living plastic for over a thousand years- in stopping the
TARDIS from destroying all of time. They discover the sun is actually
the TARDIS exploding very slowly and by now ready to end everything and
inside it is River, being kept alive by the TARDIS putting her in a time
loop, who then is rescued by The Doctor. When one of the Daleks from
the alliance is revived by the Pandorica after being turned to stone due
to the TARDIS's explosion, they avoid it long enough for The Doctor to
enter the Pandorica and set it to go right into the center of the
explosion to stop it and fix the cracks, all this by causing a Big Bang.
However, in order to let the cracks close he has to stay inside them,
that is until when everything is reset and Amy and Rory have their
wedding, she's able to remember him and with that The Doctor and the
TARDIS return. In the end, Amy and Rory join The Doctor as they
investigate who blew up the TARDIS and what the words "silence will
fall" refer to. In the following Christmas special, The Doctor helps an
old man understand the source of why he's so angry in life. In the two
part season six premiere, Amy, Rory, and River meet The Doctor in Utah,
who tells them about the 1969 moon landing, and later they see him
killed by someone in a spacesuit. Meeting a younger version of The
Doctor, the three don't tell him about what they saw but tell him about
1969. Landing in the Oval Office during Nixon's presidency, they
investigate calls he's been getting of a little girl, which The Doctor
traces to a warehouse in Florida. With the help of Secret Service agent
Canton Delaware they investigate the warehouse and find an Apollo
spacesuit with alien modifications, while River and Rory find a control
room in the sewers. When The Doctor and Amy find Canton knocked out, Amy
tells The Doctor that she's pregnant before she sees the figure in a
spacesuit from before. Wanting to prevent The Doctor's death, she grabs
Canton's gun and fires at the figure before she sees that the little
girl is inside it. At the beginning of the second part, three months
have passed and The Doctor is captured by Canton while he chases down
Amy, Rory, and River. This is all a ruse by The Doctor to trick aliens,
that he believes are the Silence, that can make people forget about them
when they turn around and give subliminal messages. Amy and Canton go
to an orphanage where she finds the little girl alive thanks to the suit
but is kidnapped by Silence and a woman with an eye patch, while Canton
is able to shoot one and brings it to The Doctor. Canton uses Amy's
cell phone to record the Silence telling him that they've been on Earth
for so long that they should kill them on sight. After The Doctor works
on the Apollo 11 module, he, Rory, and River trace Amy five days later
to one of the Silence's control rooms where The Doctor offers them to
surrender. When they refuse, he has Canton send the message of the shot
Silence to the middle of Neil Armstrong's famous speech on the moon,
which causes everyone who sees it from then on to kill the Silence once
they see one. After they rescue Amy, they are thanked by Nixon and The
Doctor brings River to the prison she's incarcerated in since she made a
promise and kisses The Doctor, with him not understanding why. Telling
Rory about the pregnancy, Amy believes she was just sick, with The
Doctor checking one of the monitors to find that it couldn't tell if she
was pregnant or not. Before the first half season finale, The Doctor
and his friends faced pirates, an entity that took over the TARDIS and
put it's soul into the body of a dying woman who reveals that she took
The Doctor not where he wants to go but where he needs to go, and
witness the birth of a new species formed by liquid cloning where, in
the end, is revealed Amy is actually a cloned and still being kept by
the woman with eye patch. In the first half of the season's finale, The
Doctor gathers up an army of people he has helped over the years against
the Silence, actually a religious order who wants to kill The Doctor,
to rescue Amy and her baby. Once they infiltrate the Silence's base and
find Amy and her baby Melody, The Doctor learns that the baby is part
Time Lord due to being conceived in the TARDIS and want to use that to
kill The Doctor. The eye patch wearing woman reveals that the baby Amy
has is another clone and that the Silence have the real baby. River
arrives, after she declined The Doctor's help for reasons unknown, and
reveals that she's actually Melody. The second half of the season starts
with The Doctor, Amy, and Rory being held at gunpoint in the TARDIS by
Amy and Rory's childhood friend Mels and they arrive in Nazi Germany in
Hitler's office just as he was going to be killed by shape shifting
robot piloted by miniature people called the Teselecta. When Hitler
shoots wildly at the robot as it gets up, Rory knocks him out and places
him inside a closet, although Mels is hit. It soon shows that Mels is
regenerating and turns into the person that the three come to know as
River Song. River, going by Mels since she doesn't know of her future
self, tries to kill The Doctor since the Silence have trained her to
kill him. She then kisses him, with her revealing that the lipstick she
used is laced with a poison that will slowly kill The Doctor and prevent
his regeneration. The Teselecta recognizes River as the one who kills
The Doctor and instead focuses on her by torturing her and then planning
to kill her. Being in the way of its shrinking beam, Amy and Rory board
the robot and forces its pilot to reveal to The Doctor why the Silence
want him dead. It reveals that the Silence believe that when the oldest
question in the universe is asked silence will fall across the universe,
although the captain doesn't know what the question is. When The Doctor
begs for River's freedom, the captain refuses and just as it is about
to kill River, Amy uses the Sonic Screwdriver to make the robot's
defenses attack the crew, though they teleport out leaving Amy and Rory
inside. Begging River to help them, The Doctor falls unconscious from
the poison and River, remorseful of what she's done and grateful towards
him, rescues Amy and Rory in the TARDIS and uses her last remaining
regenerations to cure The Doctor. After falling unconscious, The Doctor
takes her to a hospital in the future where she will become an
archaeologist. In the TARDIS, The Doctor secretly learns of the date of
his death and where from the records of the Teselecta. After that, The
Doctor and his companions face a boy whose fears become reality, an
alien that feeds on the beliefs on others, and other adventures. In the
season six finale, The Doctor goes around the universe trying to find
answers about the Silence and why they want him dead including from one
of the friends that helped him rescue Amy. When he learns that his old
friend Brigadier Stewart has died in present Earth, The Doctor accepts
his death. When he finds the Teselecta and its crew undercover as a
Silence member it asks the captain for one last favor. After giving the
invitations to Utah from the start of the season to his friends, his
younger self, and an older Canton, The Doctor meets with the figure in
the space suit who turns out to be the River who he had left in the
hospital having been kidnapped by the Silence again to kill The Doctor.
Unable to control the suit, River instead drains the suit's power
causing all of time to happen at once due to the event being a fixed
point in time. Needing to touch each other in order to continue time,
River does whatever she can to keep The Doctor away even if it means the
destruction of the universe. Fighting an army of the aliens from the
beginning of the season with Amy and Rory, The Doctor decides to marry
River in order for them to touch. Accepting that nothing can change,
River accepts to the marriage and The Doctor whispers something in her
ear, which she says is his name and then kiss, thus fixing time and
making sure The Doctor dies. In the end, River visits Amy and tells her
that besides The Doctor telling her his name, he also revealed that The
Doctor in Utah and in the broken time world was actually the Teselecta
with The Doctor inside. When he returns his friend from the beginning of
the episode, The Doctor tells him how his "death" will make people
forget him as he had gotten to big. As he leaves, The Doctor is told of
the prophecy that will happen in the fields of Trenzalore, where the
most important question will be asked, that question being "Doctor
who?". The following Christmas special had The Doctor traveling alone
during Christmas of 1938 in a crashing alien ship. After the ship
explodes and The Doctor successfully escapes thanks to an impact space
suit when landing on Earth, he befriends a woman whose husband is
fighting in WW2. When he visits her and her kids three years later, her
husband has gone missing but she has not told the kids since it was
Christmas. The Doctor helps them out and in the end helps the family
find the missing father before he joins Amy and Rory for Christmas
dinner. At the beginning of the first half of season seven showed in
September of 2012, Matt Smith's last as the Eleventh Doctor, the trio
are kidnapped by the Daleks who ask for The Doctor's help. They want The
Doctor to enter a planet that serves as an asylum for battle scarred
Daleks and deactivate the already weakening force field in order to
destroy it to prevent the insane Daleks from getting out. The Doctor
only agree when he hears of a woman named Oswin Oswald sending
transmissions from the asylum planet after crashing there and causing
the force field to be broken about hiding from the Daleks and making
souffles, which The Doctor wonders how that would be possible. In the
asylum planet, The Doctor is able to contact Oswald who reveals herself
to be a hacker who has been messing with the Daleks' computerized
psychic link as a way of hiding from them. She promises to help him
lower the planet's shield if he can find and rescue her, to which The
Doctor agrees to. When encountering Daleks that have survived in battles
with The Doctor, Oswin erases their memory of him in order for The
Doctor to get through and enter the area in which she is hiding in. When
he does find her, however, it turns out she was already turned into a
Dalek because of her intelligence but kept her humanity and sanity by
making up a fantasy that she was still human. Initially going insane
from the revelation, Oswin regains control of herself and lets the force
field's down in order for him and his friends to escape as she wants
The Doctor to promise her that he remembers her as the human she was.
Escaping the destruction by teleporting back to the TARDIS, The Doctor
appears to the Daleks who no longer remember him, continually asking
"Doctor who?", because Oswin messed not only with the memories of the
Daleks in the asylum, but with all the Daleks. Leaving Amy and Rory back
at home, The Doctor dances around the TARDIS, jovial that the Daleks no
longer remember him. Before the first half season finale, The Doctor,
Amy, and Rory confront an alien cyborg in the Old West, stop an alien
invasion through the use of small, square cubes with the help of the
Brigadier's daughter who now heads UNIT, and much more. In the first
half season finale, The Doctor and his friends visit Manhattan where
they face the Weeping Angels. The Angels are using an old building in
the 1930s wherein whoever enters it will be sent to the past and will
live there for the rest of their lives, with the Angels feeding on the
energy of what their victims could have done. With the help of River
Song, who has been set free from prison due to The Doctor erasing
himself from any database that houses information on him as a way of
hiding, and of a book that details everything that has happened, they
track Rory to the building. In the end, Amy and Rory, after seeing an
older version of him in the 1930s hotel, defeat the Angels by killing
themselves, thus destroying the paradox created by the Angels which
kills them and puts the four back in present-day New York, in a
cemetery. Believing that the Angels have been defeated, and the TARDIS
not allowed to ever be in Manhattan, Rory notices a tombstone with his
name in it. Suddenly, one surviving Angel takes Rory back fifty years
before he was born, with a horrified Amy watching him disappeared. The
Doctor tries to convince Amy to return to the TARDIS, but cannot save
Rory due to many time paradoxes, and so Amy, against The Doctor's wishes
as it would create a fixed point in time, lets the Angel take her to
the same time as Rory, deciding that being with Rory is more important
to her. Back in the TARDIS, The Doctor asks River if she could travel
with him, with her agreeing but not always, and then tells him that
she'll go back in time to write the book they used and have Amy publish
it with an afterword in the end. Finding the afterword in Central Park,
after he ripped it out before reading it at the start of the story since
The Doctor doesn't like endings, Amy wrote that she and Rory both love
him and that they had a good and happy life together. She also tells him
to visit her younger self as she was waiting for The Doctor when they
first met to reassure her about all the things they will go through. The
last thing we see is of the younger Amelia Pond sitting in her
backyard, smiling as she hears the engines of the TARDIS. In between the
first and second half of season seven was another Christmas special,
where the Eleventh Doctor has decided to retire in Victorian England.
When The Doctor meets a young barmaid named Clara, they investigate
snowmen that react to ones thoughts, with The Doctor being helped by
Sontaran Strax, Silurian Madame Vastra, and her human wife Jenny Flint
who had helped The Doctor fight the Silence before. Through their
investigation of the killer snowmen, The Doctor confronts an old enemy,
The Great Intelligence, which is the first time for him meeting The
Doctor and is being helped by a human he befriended fifty years earlier.
Just as The Doctor and Clara escaped The Great Intelligence's forces in
the TARDIS, with an all new interior look, Clara is mortally wounded
and taken to Vastra to be healed. The Great Intelligence takes over the
body of the human he had befriended and almost kills The Doctor before
it soon becomes weak due to his psychic link sensing the family that
hired Clara as a governess crying because she's dying and thus causing
his powers to fade and leave the human's body and disappearing, which
kills the human. When The Doctor sees Clara before she dies, he giver
her a copy of his TARDIS key as a way of remembering her. In her
funeral, The Doctor notices in her tombstone that her full name is Clara
Oswin Oswald, just like the woman he met in the Dalek asylum, which
makes him investigate how someone could die twice and want to find the
real Clara. The last shot is of a contemporary woman, who looks like
Clara from Victorian England, pausing at Clara Oswald's tomb. In the
second half, The Doctor meets present-day Clara and together they find
Ice Warriors in a Soviet submarine, ghosts in 1974, and fight Cybermen.
For the season finale, the Great Intelligence kidnaps The Doctor's
friends from Victorian England and holds them in Trenzalore. Once there,
The Doctor is forced by the Great Intelligence to reveal his real name
to the future TARDIS that's used as his tomb in order to open it. Unable
to do it, the data ghost of River, from when he first met her, speaks
it without anyone being able to see or hear her, and thus opens the
TARDIS. Once inside, it's revealed that instead of a body, the future
TARDIS holds The Doctor's timeline, what he has and will do. Entering
it, The Great Intelligence scatters himself across The Doctor's time to
stop every victory he ever had, killing him and destroying the universe.
Seeing no other alternative and learning of what The Doctor has seen of
her, Clara enters the timeline and spreads across his time and saving
The Doctor each time, and thus creating the Oswalds The Doctor met
earlier. She also went as far back as being the one to tell the First
Doctor which TARDIS to steal, since it's faulty navigation made it more
fun to use. After being revived, and seeing the universe fixed, The
Doctor decides to enter his own timeline to save Clara, but not before
revealing to River that he could always see, hear, and touch her but
couldn't reveal it due to the pain he felt of what happened to her. Once
inside, he finds Clara, who notices an unknown figure that The Doctor
acknowledges as himself but with her saying she saw all his past
regeneration but the figure. The Doctor says it's him but that it's not
The Doctor since he broke a promise so great he no longer calls him The
Doctor, making him his biggest secret. When Clara falls unconscious, the
figure tells The Doctor that what he did he did without choice in the
name of peace and sanity, to which The Doctor says it wasn't in the name
of The Doctor. As he leaves with Clara, the figure turns around to
reveal John Hurt playing the War Doctor from before. The next two
episodes after this will be specials that will see the end of Matt
Smith's reign as the Eleventh Doctor. First, is the 50th anniversary
special where the current Doctor investigates mysterious Time Lord made
paintings after being contacted by Kate Stewart, the Brigadier's
daughter. As he's investigating, the Eleventh Doctor finds a time hole
which takes him to 1562 England where he meets the Tenth Doctor who is
investigating Zygons planning an invasion in the present, and
accidentally gets married to Elizabeth I. Another time hole appears and
John Hurt's War Doctor arrives, and at first mistakes the two other
Doctors as companions. The War Doctor recently stole the device he would
have used to kill both Time Lords and Daleks and end the Time War. The
Moment, the device the War Doctor stole from the Time Lord's forbidden
vault, is a sentient being that only appears to the War Doctor in the
form of Rose Tyler as the Bad Wolf entity. She tries to convince the War
Doctor what exactly is the right choice as the three Doctors and Clara
stop the Zygons from taking over present-day Earth. When the War Doctor
gets back to his own timeline to decide whether to activate The Moment
or not, the other two Doctors follow, getting past the time lock thanks
to the entity of The Moment allowing them to, and at first decide to
help him do it so he doesn't have to do it alone. Clara convinces them
that there has to be another way and after they see images of what will
happen if they do activate it by the entity, they come up with a new
plan. With the help of The Moment's entity, all three Doctors gather all
of their past lives and the future 12th Doctor to help them in using
what the Zygons used to preserve themselves for four hundred years to
preserve Gallifrey and rescue it from destruction of the Time War, which
also makes the Dalek fleet firing at it wind up shooting each other.
Getting back to the museum, all three Doctors wonder if what they did
actually worked, and whether their planet and people were actually
saved. As the War Doctor leaves in his own TARDIS, he tells his future
regenerations that he's proud of what he will become, although due to
the disruption of time streams he and the Tenth Doctor won't remember
what has happened and will only remember what they thought before, that
the War Doctor destroyed his own people. As he's leaving, the War Doctor
starts to regenerate due to his mission in the Time War being over and
doing what he was meant to do. As for the Tenth, who will also not
remember the events, he is told of their future demise in Trenzalore and
that the destination should be different before departing to the events
of his last adventure before he regenerates. As the Eleventh Doctor is
looking at a painting of a Time War battle in Gallifrey, wondering
whether the title of the art is either Gallifrey Falls or No More,
he meets the curator who is played by former Doctor Tom Baker. The
curator tells him that the name of the painting is actually Gallifrey Falls No More,
to which The Doctor believes that it means the plan to save his planet
worked and that somewhere out there he has to find his planet and his
people. In the last shot of the episode, The Doctor describes a dream he
had where he joins all of his past regenerations looking up at the sky
as they all get ready to find Gallifrey and the Time Lords once more.
The second special is the 2013 Christmas special where in the end The
Doctor will once again regenerate into the 12th.
A few months before the 50th anniversary special aired, there was a
live broadcast from the BBC about who the next Doctor will be. In the
end, it was revealed that the Twelfth Doctor will be played by Scottish
actor Peter Capaldi, who previously appeared in a Tenth Doctor story set
during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Capaldi, like McCoy and Tennant
before him, is from Scotland and would tie with Hartnell for the oldest
actor to play The Doctor at 55 and the oldest since the First. Like
Tennant, Capaldi is another example of a big fan playing the character
he has admired since the show's beginnings. Having a huge age difference
from Matt Smith who started at 26 was something that was never
anticipated, but before Matt the producers had wanted to originally get
an actor much older in middle age for the Eleventh. The producers have
also stated that Capaldi's Doctor will be much darker and serious than
Smith's Doctor. Capaldi already made a small cameo in the 50th special
as his Doctor helping his past regenerations in saving their planet,
although only his hands and upper face are shown, and will be shown at
the end of the 2013 Christmas special when the Eleventh Doctor
regenerates. 2014 will see Capaldi playing The Doctor in his first
regular season for the eighth in the revival with Clara continuing on as
his companion, and with the overall plot of the season is to find and
rescue Gallifrey after all the Doctors prevented its destruction in the
Time War.
Like so many great shows, Doctor Who continues to thrive even
after fifty years since it first debuted as a children's educational
program. With great actors like Hartnell to McCoy and McGann to Capaldi,
tremendous stories in the past and future, wonderful settings of alien
worlds, and the best character to ever save the world repeatedly. This
show would no doubt continue to keep going even if The Doctor runs out
of regenerations or he finally defeats the Daleks, Cybermen, The Master,
Zygons, Weeping Angels, and whatever else attacks Earth.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Sunday, July 20, 2014
David Tennant bio
David Tennant, real name David John McDonald, was born on April 18, 1971
in Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland. His father is Alexander McDonald, a
retired minister and former Moderator of the Church of Scotland, and
his mother, who is now dead, was Essdale Helen, and he lived with a
brother and sister. At the age of three, Tennant already knew what he
wanted to be when he grew up. Having watched and become a fan of Doctor Who
and seeing Tom Baker play The Doctor, and then becoming a big fan of
Peter Davison's Doctor decided from then on that he would like to be an
actor so that one day he too could play The Doctor. Although a dream
like that was common throughout Scottish children in the 1970s, Tennant
has said that it was one thing he was absurdly single-minded in
pursuing. His parents supported his decision and at the age of 16 David
made his first onscreen appearance and first acting job in a 1988
episode of a British children's anthology show called Dramarama. Before
becoming an actor he attended the Paisley Grammar school where he wrote
about how much he wanted to play The Doctor. In the weekends, David
attended a youth theatre group run by the Royal Conservatoire of
Scotland, or RCS, which at the time was known as the Royal Scottish
Academy of Music and Drama, or RSAMD. When he auditioned for and won a
place in RSAMD at the age of 16, he was the youngest person to do so,
and at 17 started as a full student. When he joined Equity, an actors'
union, after graduating David had to adopt his stage last name to
Tennant due to the union already having a David McDonald. He chose the
last name Tennant after one of his favorite bands'- the Pet Shop Boys-
lead singer, Neil Tennant. When he joined the American Screen Actors'
Guild Tennant had to legally make it his last name due to strict guild
rules. By the mid-to-late '90s, Tennant would get his brake when he
moved to London by starring in several television shows, movies, and
plays before he would be cast as The Doctor in 2005. For television
David got noticed for his role in the 1994 BBC Scottish serial drama Takin' Over the Asylum and then starring in He Knew He Was Right and Casanova. In theatre, he took comedic roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Rivals and As You Like It, then doing tragedy in Romeo and Juliet. With movies, Tennant starred in the fourth Harry Potter film in the small role of Barty Crouch, Jr., as well as 1996s Jude with his Doctor predecessor Christopher Eccleston and other films. David also lent his voice to various Doctor Who Big Finish audio plays and the animated webcast Scream of the Shalka
before he was cast as the Tenth Doctor in 2005 in the revival show. By
then, Tennant not only achieved his dream but also became one of the
most well loved and popular actors in and out of the United Kingdom.
Like any good actor, Tennant has his own trademarks that makes him
unique from other actors, among these are his big sideburns, his very
thin frame, and constantly raising his eyebrows so much that you can
tell what kind of emotions his having by just looking at them.
In his time on Doctor Who from 2005 to 2010 and then again in 2013, David Tennant became one of the most loved actors to ever play the time traveling alien and with his Doctor being considered one of the bests. Tennant first debuted as The Doctor at the end of the first season finale of the revival on June 9 of 2005 after Eccleston's Doctor regenerated into Tennant's. After that he starred in a Children in Need mini special that then led to his first full episode. His first full episode was in the Christmas special that took place in between the first season finale and the second season premiere where Tennant showed what kind of man his Doctor would be. The second season of the revival, and Tennant's first, had The Doctor traveling outside Earth for the first time since the revival debuted. At one point, Tennant got to work with one of the most famous actors from the original series, Elizabeth Sladen reprising her role of Sarah Jane Smith, whom he was a big fan of when watching the show as a kid, and eventually gaining a spinoff show. Tennant went on to date actress Sophia Myles after she had made an appearance on the show. In his spare time from playing The Doctor he would still act and work on other projects such as a dramatization for television about a well known trial from 1960, signing on to a production of Hamlet with Patrick Stewart, guest-starring on Top Gear, and being the first lead of Doctor Who to appear at Comic-Con in 2009. In between Tennant's second, and the revival's third, season finale and the following Christmas special, he starred in a mini episode that guest starred Peter Davison as his Doctor. In the following season, David got to work with Davison's daughter, Georgia Moffett, in one episode where she played a clone of The Doctor. During shooting they began to date and eventually marrying her and having two children with her, thus becoming one of his favorite Doctor's son-in-law. The 2008 season, which was the fourth for the show and the third for Tennant, was the last one to be shown before 2010 as instead of a regular season in 2009, the show released five specials between the 2008 Christmas special and the 2010 New Years Day special that saw the last regular appearance of Tennant as The Doctor due to the change in crew, such as head writer Russell T. Davies who revived the show. Seeing it as a logical thing to do, David decided that he too should end his time on the show. Although he has said that had he known that Steven Moffat, a regular writer of the show whose episodes are considered the bests, would replace Davies then he would have stayed. David Tennant's last regular appearance was in the 2010 New Years Day special that was the second part of a two-part finale where the first part aired on Christmas. For his last scene where The Doctor is regenerating, Tennant recorded four different takes of the line "I don't want to go", each with different levels of emotion, with the third take being used as the fourth one would feel too sad over something that has kept the show going for years. In 2013, he returned to play The Doctor once again in the multi-Doctor 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor opposite current Doctor and his successor Matt Smith and John Hurt as a mysterious unknown Doctor.
After playing the character he longed to play since he was a kid, David Tennant continued to work in other projects just as hard as he did before he got to play The Doctor. The day after the first part of his final episode of Doctor Who, Tennant starred in a television movie adaptation of Hamlet opposite Patrick Stewart for the BBC and earlier that year, he hosted PBSs anthology series Masterpiece Contemporary. Other aspirations that David had sought for was auditioning for and being rejected from starring in the famous British-Scottish drama Taggart several times, and being considered one of the few great Scottish actors to not appear on the show. He went on to marry Georgia Moffett, Peter Davison's daughter, on December 30 of 2011 and now has two kids with her. In the years following his departure from the show, Tennant was incorrectly rumored to have a role in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit and was set to star in the John Landis comedy Burke and Hare before having to let the role go for other commitments. So far he has starred in a few movies and television shows, including the Fright Night remake, a small role in 2010s How To Train Your Dragon by Dreamworks, voicing Charles Darwin in the stop-motion animated film The Pirates! Band of Misfits, voiced a character in two episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars which is another franchise he is a fan off, given the lead role in the highly regarded BBC crime drama Broadchurch in 2013 and will be appearing in the American remake, and other movies that are currently in development. In 2011, David reunited with his Doctor Who costar Catherine Tate to star in a production of Much Ado About Nothing in London from May to September. In politics, David Tennant is a public supporter of the Labour Party, although he always avoided the subject during his time as The Doctor since he found it improper. During the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, he took part in various interviews for a series of documentaries that aired each month of 2013 where each one dealt with each of the Doctors, their actors, and their time on the show including Tennant's time. Another thing he did for the 50th anniversary of the show is that he played a parody of himself in a web special that was directed by his father-in-law and previous Doctor, Peter Davison, called The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot alongside his wife and other actors who have appeared on the show including fellow Doctors Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Matt Smith, and other actors. When Elizabeth Sladen died in 2011 from cancer, Tennant wrote a foreword to her autobiography that he then read as an eulogy at her funeral. He tried out for the role of Hannibal Lecter in the Hannibal tv series, and even though he didn't get the part the producers have said that they would love to have him play a psychotic serial killer one day. During the 2012 Olympic Games, many people wanted him to run the opening flames due to his Doctor doing exactly that in a 2006 episode. Although he didn't get to do it, Matt Smith, the current Doctor, ran a part of it in Cardiff instead.
In his time on Doctor Who from 2005 to 2010 and then again in 2013, David Tennant became one of the most loved actors to ever play the time traveling alien and with his Doctor being considered one of the bests. Tennant first debuted as The Doctor at the end of the first season finale of the revival on June 9 of 2005 after Eccleston's Doctor regenerated into Tennant's. After that he starred in a Children in Need mini special that then led to his first full episode. His first full episode was in the Christmas special that took place in between the first season finale and the second season premiere where Tennant showed what kind of man his Doctor would be. The second season of the revival, and Tennant's first, had The Doctor traveling outside Earth for the first time since the revival debuted. At one point, Tennant got to work with one of the most famous actors from the original series, Elizabeth Sladen reprising her role of Sarah Jane Smith, whom he was a big fan of when watching the show as a kid, and eventually gaining a spinoff show. Tennant went on to date actress Sophia Myles after she had made an appearance on the show. In his spare time from playing The Doctor he would still act and work on other projects such as a dramatization for television about a well known trial from 1960, signing on to a production of Hamlet with Patrick Stewart, guest-starring on Top Gear, and being the first lead of Doctor Who to appear at Comic-Con in 2009. In between Tennant's second, and the revival's third, season finale and the following Christmas special, he starred in a mini episode that guest starred Peter Davison as his Doctor. In the following season, David got to work with Davison's daughter, Georgia Moffett, in one episode where she played a clone of The Doctor. During shooting they began to date and eventually marrying her and having two children with her, thus becoming one of his favorite Doctor's son-in-law. The 2008 season, which was the fourth for the show and the third for Tennant, was the last one to be shown before 2010 as instead of a regular season in 2009, the show released five specials between the 2008 Christmas special and the 2010 New Years Day special that saw the last regular appearance of Tennant as The Doctor due to the change in crew, such as head writer Russell T. Davies who revived the show. Seeing it as a logical thing to do, David decided that he too should end his time on the show. Although he has said that had he known that Steven Moffat, a regular writer of the show whose episodes are considered the bests, would replace Davies then he would have stayed. David Tennant's last regular appearance was in the 2010 New Years Day special that was the second part of a two-part finale where the first part aired on Christmas. For his last scene where The Doctor is regenerating, Tennant recorded four different takes of the line "I don't want to go", each with different levels of emotion, with the third take being used as the fourth one would feel too sad over something that has kept the show going for years. In 2013, he returned to play The Doctor once again in the multi-Doctor 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor opposite current Doctor and his successor Matt Smith and John Hurt as a mysterious unknown Doctor.
After playing the character he longed to play since he was a kid, David Tennant continued to work in other projects just as hard as he did before he got to play The Doctor. The day after the first part of his final episode of Doctor Who, Tennant starred in a television movie adaptation of Hamlet opposite Patrick Stewart for the BBC and earlier that year, he hosted PBSs anthology series Masterpiece Contemporary. Other aspirations that David had sought for was auditioning for and being rejected from starring in the famous British-Scottish drama Taggart several times, and being considered one of the few great Scottish actors to not appear on the show. He went on to marry Georgia Moffett, Peter Davison's daughter, on December 30 of 2011 and now has two kids with her. In the years following his departure from the show, Tennant was incorrectly rumored to have a role in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit and was set to star in the John Landis comedy Burke and Hare before having to let the role go for other commitments. So far he has starred in a few movies and television shows, including the Fright Night remake, a small role in 2010s How To Train Your Dragon by Dreamworks, voicing Charles Darwin in the stop-motion animated film The Pirates! Band of Misfits, voiced a character in two episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars which is another franchise he is a fan off, given the lead role in the highly regarded BBC crime drama Broadchurch in 2013 and will be appearing in the American remake, and other movies that are currently in development. In 2011, David reunited with his Doctor Who costar Catherine Tate to star in a production of Much Ado About Nothing in London from May to September. In politics, David Tennant is a public supporter of the Labour Party, although he always avoided the subject during his time as The Doctor since he found it improper. During the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, he took part in various interviews for a series of documentaries that aired each month of 2013 where each one dealt with each of the Doctors, their actors, and their time on the show including Tennant's time. Another thing he did for the 50th anniversary of the show is that he played a parody of himself in a web special that was directed by his father-in-law and previous Doctor, Peter Davison, called The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot alongside his wife and other actors who have appeared on the show including fellow Doctors Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Matt Smith, and other actors. When Elizabeth Sladen died in 2011 from cancer, Tennant wrote a foreword to her autobiography that he then read as an eulogy at her funeral. He tried out for the role of Hannibal Lecter in the Hannibal tv series, and even though he didn't get the part the producers have said that they would love to have him play a psychotic serial killer one day. During the 2012 Olympic Games, many people wanted him to run the opening flames due to his Doctor doing exactly that in a 2006 episode. Although he didn't get to do it, Matt Smith, the current Doctor, ran a part of it in Cardiff instead.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
The Prince and the Mob
Daniel Brizuela 9/3/12
The Prince and the Mob.
In the land of Petropoa, at a time when outlaws were considered heroes and it was considered okay to rebel against your own country, a wise king fathered a corrupt and horrible son. The son, the prince, would do anything to become king of Petropoa even if it meant getting help from the most violent and dangerous mob in all of Petropoa, the Hutersias.
The Hutersias were known for their drastic and violent measures towards their enemies and their victims. They were much more ruthless than say the drug cartels in Mexico and Al-Qaida terrorists put together.
Two months before the king’s 30th anniversary of ruling Petropoa, his son decided that he has waited too long for him to be king. He would do anything to get to the thrown instead of waiting for his father to either die of old age or if he chooses to no longer rule.
In order to work with the Hutersias, the prince will promise to weaken the police force in certain areas so that the mob will have nothing to worry about. Once that happens, the prince plans to double cross them as a way of cutting out any loose ends.
The plan is basically to have one of the Hutersias work as one of the king’s bodyguards and have him kill the king in his sleep and make it look like a suicide. Once the king is dead, the prince will inherit the throne and become the new king of Petropoa.
A year has passed and the prince’s plan has gone well. The king has been killed and no one suspected murder instead of suicide, or if his son or the Hutersias were somehow involved.
Having become the new king of Petropoa, the former prince was now the most powerful person in the land. He could do whatever he wanted and no one could stop him, which was not entirely true.
The one problem he faces is that at any moment the Hutersias could reveal to everyone that he was behind his father’s murder. He of course had to make sure that never happens, otherwise his subjects would revolt and the former prince would be put in prison.
Two months have passed and the former prince has successfully gotten rid of the Hutersias. By secretly giving tips to the police the Hutersias were wiped out in just a few months without anyone connecting the former prince to the mob or connecting him to the anonymous tips.
The former prince was once again free from anything that could put him in prison, free to rule with an iron will. He was no longer bound by the fear of anyone learning about his secrets and revealing them to the people.
Now that there was no evidence against him or to prove that he had any ties with the Hutersias the corrupt former prince was now free to rule as he wanted. He could do as he wanted and no one, not his people or the police, can stop him from doing it.
Three years later the former prince has gone insane and mad with power, while also constantly fearing his secret might be revealed and everyone learning of his secret. The former prince now turned ruthless king would do anything to keep his secret hidden, even have random people picked from the streets who he believes know his secret and have them immediately executed.
After so long of being ruled by a ruthless and despotic ruler with some kind of unknown grudge which he has against probably everyone ruled by him, the people of Petropoa decided that it was enough. Countless Petropoans formed a rebel group that was against the former prince’s despotic rule.
The rebels quickly gathered more and more followers all without getting caught or having someone betray them to the authorities. Soon there were more people in the rebellion than there were who still supported the former prince.
Eventually, the rebel group was successful at taking down several of the ruthless king’s military supporters. This was quite easy since there weren’t a lot of people left who actually supported the former prince.
To the new king this was just a nuisance and a huge distraction that was going on that would soon end. He believed that it would soon be destroyed by his royal agents and anyone associated with the rebels will be put in prison for terrorism and betraying the kingdom.
After destroying several of the military’s ammunitions and weapons storages the growing rebellion quickly moved closer towards the king’s palace. The next step was to somehow take over the palace and dethrone the former prince turned king.
For the next two months, the rebel group planned how they would get into and take over the palace. Thanks to the help of a few of the guards who secretly sided with them, along with some of the king’s staff, they made the best plan that will help them take over and defeat the king.
A few weeks have passed and the ruthless king has heard nothing that was related to the rebels. This made him both happy and worried since it either meant that they were gone or they were planning something big.
As he was preparing to eat his dinner, all of a sudden he heard a loud explosion coming from outside. One of his loyal guards entered telling him that they were under attack by the rebel group. The guards outside were taken out quickly without killing any of the rebels before the rebels entered.
The rebels quickly overtook the palace and defeated most of the guards still loyal to the king. With help from some of the king’s staff who sided with the rebels, they found secret passageways that the king would use in case of emergency.
There were many passageways to chose from and many possibilities as to where the king went. The rebels split themselves into teams and each one went into the different passageways to find and defeat the corrupt king.
The king, along with some still loyal guards, was in one passageway that took him to the harbor. In order to open a door that would take him to a secret underground cave that held the king’s emergency escape boat, the guards had to find the keys hidden under some of the rocks that were on the top of the door. One of the guards gave the king his gun in order to climb the door and find the key for them to escape.
As the rebels were getting closer to the king, the former prince became more and more unstable from all that was going on. When they finally spotted the king and his guards the rebels called for them to surrender at once. One of the guards immediately got down from searching for the key and drew his gun at the rebels.
The guard opened fired first without hesitation with the rebels firing back, especially after some of the underground lights were destroyed in the ensuing gunfight. As the one guard who was looking for the key was killed, the king grabbed his gun and realizing that he was outnumbered and would probably be captured and executed for his crimes he blindly fired at anything.
The former prince killed his own guard and after a few shots, the rebels all fired back and killed the king. After no more shots were fired from the opposite side and they were able to find a light source, the rebels see what has happened. Now that the king was killed and his followers either captured or killed the rebels were now able to take over and form a new government for Petropoa. A government that’s fair, and free from any future corruption that would plague the older one.
End.
The Prince and the Mob.
In the land of Petropoa, at a time when outlaws were considered heroes and it was considered okay to rebel against your own country, a wise king fathered a corrupt and horrible son. The son, the prince, would do anything to become king of Petropoa even if it meant getting help from the most violent and dangerous mob in all of Petropoa, the Hutersias.
The Hutersias were known for their drastic and violent measures towards their enemies and their victims. They were much more ruthless than say the drug cartels in Mexico and Al-Qaida terrorists put together.
Two months before the king’s 30th anniversary of ruling Petropoa, his son decided that he has waited too long for him to be king. He would do anything to get to the thrown instead of waiting for his father to either die of old age or if he chooses to no longer rule.
In order to work with the Hutersias, the prince will promise to weaken the police force in certain areas so that the mob will have nothing to worry about. Once that happens, the prince plans to double cross them as a way of cutting out any loose ends.
The plan is basically to have one of the Hutersias work as one of the king’s bodyguards and have him kill the king in his sleep and make it look like a suicide. Once the king is dead, the prince will inherit the throne and become the new king of Petropoa.
A year has passed and the prince’s plan has gone well. The king has been killed and no one suspected murder instead of suicide, or if his son or the Hutersias were somehow involved.
Having become the new king of Petropoa, the former prince was now the most powerful person in the land. He could do whatever he wanted and no one could stop him, which was not entirely true.
The one problem he faces is that at any moment the Hutersias could reveal to everyone that he was behind his father’s murder. He of course had to make sure that never happens, otherwise his subjects would revolt and the former prince would be put in prison.
Two months have passed and the former prince has successfully gotten rid of the Hutersias. By secretly giving tips to the police the Hutersias were wiped out in just a few months without anyone connecting the former prince to the mob or connecting him to the anonymous tips.
The former prince was once again free from anything that could put him in prison, free to rule with an iron will. He was no longer bound by the fear of anyone learning about his secrets and revealing them to the people.
Now that there was no evidence against him or to prove that he had any ties with the Hutersias the corrupt former prince was now free to rule as he wanted. He could do as he wanted and no one, not his people or the police, can stop him from doing it.
Three years later the former prince has gone insane and mad with power, while also constantly fearing his secret might be revealed and everyone learning of his secret. The former prince now turned ruthless king would do anything to keep his secret hidden, even have random people picked from the streets who he believes know his secret and have them immediately executed.
After so long of being ruled by a ruthless and despotic ruler with some kind of unknown grudge which he has against probably everyone ruled by him, the people of Petropoa decided that it was enough. Countless Petropoans formed a rebel group that was against the former prince’s despotic rule.
The rebels quickly gathered more and more followers all without getting caught or having someone betray them to the authorities. Soon there were more people in the rebellion than there were who still supported the former prince.
Eventually, the rebel group was successful at taking down several of the ruthless king’s military supporters. This was quite easy since there weren’t a lot of people left who actually supported the former prince.
To the new king this was just a nuisance and a huge distraction that was going on that would soon end. He believed that it would soon be destroyed by his royal agents and anyone associated with the rebels will be put in prison for terrorism and betraying the kingdom.
After destroying several of the military’s ammunitions and weapons storages the growing rebellion quickly moved closer towards the king’s palace. The next step was to somehow take over the palace and dethrone the former prince turned king.
For the next two months, the rebel group planned how they would get into and take over the palace. Thanks to the help of a few of the guards who secretly sided with them, along with some of the king’s staff, they made the best plan that will help them take over and defeat the king.
A few weeks have passed and the ruthless king has heard nothing that was related to the rebels. This made him both happy and worried since it either meant that they were gone or they were planning something big.
As he was preparing to eat his dinner, all of a sudden he heard a loud explosion coming from outside. One of his loyal guards entered telling him that they were under attack by the rebel group. The guards outside were taken out quickly without killing any of the rebels before the rebels entered.
The rebels quickly overtook the palace and defeated most of the guards still loyal to the king. With help from some of the king’s staff who sided with the rebels, they found secret passageways that the king would use in case of emergency.
There were many passageways to chose from and many possibilities as to where the king went. The rebels split themselves into teams and each one went into the different passageways to find and defeat the corrupt king.
The king, along with some still loyal guards, was in one passageway that took him to the harbor. In order to open a door that would take him to a secret underground cave that held the king’s emergency escape boat, the guards had to find the keys hidden under some of the rocks that were on the top of the door. One of the guards gave the king his gun in order to climb the door and find the key for them to escape.
As the rebels were getting closer to the king, the former prince became more and more unstable from all that was going on. When they finally spotted the king and his guards the rebels called for them to surrender at once. One of the guards immediately got down from searching for the key and drew his gun at the rebels.
The guard opened fired first without hesitation with the rebels firing back, especially after some of the underground lights were destroyed in the ensuing gunfight. As the one guard who was looking for the key was killed, the king grabbed his gun and realizing that he was outnumbered and would probably be captured and executed for his crimes he blindly fired at anything.
The former prince killed his own guard and after a few shots, the rebels all fired back and killed the king. After no more shots were fired from the opposite side and they were able to find a light source, the rebels see what has happened. Now that the king was killed and his followers either captured or killed the rebels were now able to take over and form a new government for Petropoa. A government that’s fair, and free from any future corruption that would plague the older one.
End.
Friday, May 10, 2013
People Don't Care short story
Daniel Brizuela 5/8/11
People Don’t Care.
One fine day in Toronto, Canada, where there was no problem going on or anybody worrying about anything, a giant, fire-breathing mutant turtle rises from the ground and starts destroying the city. At the same time an alien army from another galaxy arrives in rectangular, blue spaceships and uses their weapons to melt everything they hit. Besides those two things something worse was happening: a poor, defenseless kitten was stuck in a very high tree.
And if you thought it couldn’t get any worse for this great Canadian city, the largest in Canada by the way, think again. Street gangs are setting cars on fire, newsmen are mooning on live television, pigs are attempting to fly, more and more people are changing their names to James Cameron. In other words it was absolute chaos.
While all this was going on, the citizens and people of Toronto, Canada did something surprising and hard to believe. They did not pay attention!
They were literally not caring what was going on around them, all the chaos that was happening in the city. There was a man who was eating a bagel while the building in front of him was melting, a mailman driving in a road made of taffy, a woman not noticing that there is an army of bats flying behind her, and all sorts of people not even paying attention.
Not even the local nut was perplexed by this and he was on fire, or the usual end of the world sign guy, he was warning people not to eat the tacos. The same thing was going on with the Canadian government, they were pretty much sleeping and playing poker and betting over how many more alien ships arrived.
When the local news team and the media arrived at the scene of some strange things happening, you would think they’d be covering that. Well. One TV reporter is on the scene for a guy, who hit his toe on a fire hydrant and another is interviewing a woman about her success in breaking the record for the longest hair.
People Don’t Care.
One fine day in Toronto, Canada, where there was no problem going on or anybody worrying about anything, a giant, fire-breathing mutant turtle rises from the ground and starts destroying the city. At the same time an alien army from another galaxy arrives in rectangular, blue spaceships and uses their weapons to melt everything they hit. Besides those two things something worse was happening: a poor, defenseless kitten was stuck in a very high tree.
And if you thought it couldn’t get any worse for this great Canadian city, the largest in Canada by the way, think again. Street gangs are setting cars on fire, newsmen are mooning on live television, pigs are attempting to fly, more and more people are changing their names to James Cameron. In other words it was absolute chaos.
While all this was going on, the citizens and people of Toronto, Canada did something surprising and hard to believe. They did not pay attention!
They were literally not caring what was going on around them, all the chaos that was happening in the city. There was a man who was eating a bagel while the building in front of him was melting, a mailman driving in a road made of taffy, a woman not noticing that there is an army of bats flying behind her, and all sorts of people not even paying attention.
Not even the local nut was perplexed by this and he was on fire, or the usual end of the world sign guy, he was warning people not to eat the tacos. The same thing was going on with the Canadian government, they were pretty much sleeping and playing poker and betting over how many more alien ships arrived.
When the local news team and the media arrived at the scene of some strange things happening, you would think they’d be covering that. Well. One TV reporter is on the scene for a guy, who hit his toe on a fire hydrant and another is interviewing a woman about her success in breaking the record for the longest hair.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
The Best Picture winners
Daniel Brizuela 3/15/12
The Big Prize: Best Picture winners.
1st Academy Awards: 1927s Wings-the only all silent film to win Best Picture.
2nd Academy Awards: 1929s The Broadway Melody-first sound film to win Best Picture.
3rd Academy Awards: 1930s All Quiet on the Western Front-first film to win Best Picture and Best Director.
4th Academy Awards: 1931s Cimarron-first western to win Best Picture.
5th Academy Awards: 1932s Grand Hotel-only Best Picture film to not be nominated for other awards.
6th Academy Awards: 1933s Cavalcade-first FOX film to win Best Picture.
7th Academy Awards: 1934s It Happened One Night-first of only three films to win the top five Oscars of Best Picture, Director, Adapted or Original Screenplay, Actor, and Actress with the other films being One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.
8th Academy Awards: 1935s Mutiny on the Bounty-last film to win Best Picture without winning for anything else.
9th Academy Awards: 1936s The Great Ziegfeld-first musical film to win an acting Oscar.
10th Academy Awards: 1937s The Life of Emile Zola-first Warner Bros. film to win Best Picture.
11th Academy Awards: 1938s You Can’t Take It with You-The first year a foreign language film, 1937 French The Grand Illusion, was nominated for Best Picture.
12th Academy Awards: 1939s Gone with the Wind-first color film to win Best Picture.
13th Academy Awards: 1940s Rebecca-first and only Hitchcock film to win Best Picture.
14th Academy Awards: 1941s How Green Was My Valley-modern film fans and critics think of this as an upset since it beat Citizen Kane.
15th Academy Awards: 1942s Mrs. Miniver-first film to ever have five acting Oscar nominations.
16th Academy Awards: 1942s Casablanca-last Best Picture winner to compete against nine other films before it came back in 2010.
17th Academy Awards: 1944s Going My Way-The only film to ever have one actor be nominated for both Best Leading and Supporting Actor for the same role.
18th Academy Awards: 1945s The Lost Weekend-one of the first films to use a theremin for its musical score.
19th Academy Awards: 1946s The Best Years of Our Lives-Harold Russell, who won a Best Supporting Actor and Honorary Award for bringing hope to WW2 veterans, is one of only two non-actors to win an acting Oscar and the only one to win two for the same role as a war veteran who lost both hands, which is what actually happened to Russell in World War Two.
20th Academy Awards: 1947s Gentleman’s Agreement-controversial at the time it was released, the House Un-American Activities Committee called many of those associated with the film to be called to testify.
21st Academy Awards: 1948s Hamlet-first British film to win Best Picture.
22nd Academy Awards: 1949s All the King’s Men-last year wherein all Best Picture nominations were in black and white.
23rd Academy Awards: 1950s All About Eve-only film to have four actress nominations, two for leading and two for supporting.
24th Academy Awards: 1951s An American in Paris-the first Best Picture film to give the Oscar to the producer instead of the studio.
25th Academy Awards: 1952s The Greatest Show on Earth-considered the worst film to ever win Best Picture.
26th Academy Awards: 1953s From Here to Eternity-so far the last Best Picture winner to be nominated in all four acting categories.
27th Academy Awards: 1954s On the Waterfront-Rear Window's Best Director nomination marks the only time Hitchcock was nominated for a film in color.
28th Academy Awards: 1955s Marty-first film based on a television production to be nominated and win Best Picture.
29th Academy Awards: 1956s Around the World in 80 Days-the first year in which all Best Picture nominees were in color.
30th Academy Awards: 1957s The Bridge on the River Kwai-first time a British director won a Best Director Oscar.
31st Academy Awards: 1958s Gigi-David Niven's Best Actor win marks the only time a host won.
32nd Academy Awards: 1959s Ben-Hur-tied with 1997s Titanic and the third Lord of the Rings with the most Oscars won with eleven.
33rd Academy Awards: 1960s The Apartment-the last all black-and-white film to win Best Picture until The Artist in 2012.
34th Academy Awards: 1961s West Side Story-the first film with two directors to win Best Picture.
35th Academy Awards: 1962s Lawrence of Arabia-the first of eight films in which actor Peter O’Toole is nominated and never wins.
36th Academy Awards: 1963s Tom Jones-the only film to ever have three of its actresses be nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
37th Academy Awards: 1964s My Fair Lady-the first year all four Acting wins were for non-Americans.
38th Academy Awards: 1965s The Sound of Music-the first Oscars broadcast in color.
39th Academy Awards: 1966s A Man for All Seasons-Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf's four acting nominations marks the first time all credited cast members were nominated.
40th Academy Awards: 1967s In the Heat of the Night-the first detective mystery to win Best Picture.
41st Academy Awards: 1968s Oliver!-first, and so far only, G-rated film to win Best Picture.
42nd Academy Awards: 1969s Midnight Cowboy-the only X-rated film to win Best Picture.
43rd Academy Awards: 1970s Patton-George C. Scott’s, who won Best Actor, was the first time someone refused to attend and accept their award.
44th Academy Awards: 1971s The French Connection-the first R-rated film to win Best Picture.
45th Academy Awards: 1972s The Godfather-Marlon Brando became the second refused to accept his second Oscar win because of how Hollywood and the government treated Native Americans.
46th Academy Awards: 1973s The Sting-the first film with a female producer to win an Oscar.
47th Academy Awards: 1974s The Godfather Part II-the first sequel to win Best Picture.
48th Academy Awards: 1975s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-George Burns's Best Supporting Actor win marks the last time an actor born in the 19th century would win an acting Oscar.
49th Academy Awards: 1976s Rocky-the first sports film to win Best Picture.
50th Academy Awards: 1977s Annie Hall-Woody Allen winning Best Director was the first time any director won it after starring in the film itself.
51st Academy Awards: 1978s The Deer Hunter-the first film dealing with the Vietnam War to win Best Picture.
52nd Academy Awards: 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer-Justin Henry's Best Supporting Actor nomination at 8 years old makes him the youngest nominee in any of the acting categories.
53rd Academy Awards: 1980s Ordinary People-Held a day after it was supposed to air due to Ronald Reagan's attempted assassination.
54th Academy Awards: 1981s Chariots of Fire-the first year that the Best Makeup category was awarded, in this case An American Werewolf in London.
55th Academy Awards: 1982s Gandhi-Ben Kingsley, being half-Indian, was the first South Asian to win Best Actor.
56th Academy Awards: 1983s Terms of Endearment-Linda Hunt's Best Supporting Actress win for The Year of Living Dangerously marks the first time an actor won for portraying the opposite sex.
57th Academy Awards: 1984s Amadeus-F. Murray Abraham is the first Arab descended actor to win Best Actor.
58th Academy Awards: 1985s Out of Africa-Kiss of the Spider Woman was the first independent film to be nominated for Best Picture.
59th Academy Awards: 1986s Platoon-Marlee Matlin's Best Actress win for Children of a Lesser God makes her the youngest in the category and the first deaf actor to win an Oscar.
60th Academy Awards: 1987s The Last Emperor-first film where the Chinese government allowed filming in the Forbidden City.
61st Academy Awards: 1988s Rain Man-the first year that the announcement of “and the Oscar goes to…” was told instead of “and the winner is…”
62nd Academy Awards: 1989s Driving Miss Daisy-the first and, so far, only off-Broadway play based film to win Best Picture.
63rd Academy Awards: 1990s Dances with Wolves-The Godfather, Part III's Best Picture nomination marks the first time a trilogy was nominated in the category.
64th Academy Awards: 1991s The Silence of the Lambs-the first horror film to win Best Picture.
65th Academy Awards: 1992s Unforgiven-the last western, so far, to win Best Picture.
66th Academy Awards: 1993s Schindler’s List-Holly Hunter and Emma Thompson being nominated for both Leading and Supporting Oscars marks the first, and so far, only time two actors were double nominated.
67th Academy Awards: 1994s Forrest Gump-Dianne Wiest became the first person to win a second acting Oscar from the same director as the first win.
68th Academy Awards: 1995s Braveheart-the last year, so far, in which all acting wins were for films not nominated for Best Picture.
69th Academy Awards: 1996s The English Patient-Frances McDormand's Best Actress win marks the first time any actor won an Oscar for a movie directed by their spouse.
70th Academy Awards: 1997s Titanic-the highest-grossing film to ever win Best Picture and the first to make over a billion dollars.
71st Academy Awards: 1998s Shakespeare in Love-Judi Dench's Supporting Actress win for Shakespeare in Love and Cate Blanchett's Leading nomination for Elizabeth marks the first time a pair of actors were nominated for portraying the same character in different films.
72nd Academy Awards: 1999s American Beauty-the first DreamWorks film to win Best Picture.
73rd Academy Awards: 2000s Gladiator-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's nomination for Best Picture marks the first martial arts film to be nominated.
74th Academy Awards: 2001s A Beautiful Mind-the first year of the Best Animated Film category, given to Shrek.
75th Academy Awards: 2002s Chicago-at 29, Adrien Brody's Best Actor win for The Pianist makes him the youngest to win in the category.
76th Academy Awards: 2003s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King-the first fantasy film to win Best Picture.
77th Academy Awards: 2004s Million Dollar Baby-Eastwood’s win for Best Director at 74 made him the oldest director to win it.
78th Academy Awards: 2004s Crash-Ang Lee's Best Director win for Brokeback Mountain marks the first time a non-Caucasian won in the category.
79th Academy Awards: 2006s The Departed-the first remake of a foreign film to win Best Picture.
80th Academy Awards: 2007s No Country for Old Men-Javier Bardem’s Best Supporting Actor win marked the first time a Spanish actor won an Oscar.
81st Academy Awards: 2008s Slumdog Millionaire-Heath Ledger’s posthumous Best Supporting Oscar win for the Joker in The Dark Knight, was the first time any actor won an Oscar for a role in a comic book superhero film.
82nd Academy Awards: 2008s The Hurt Locker-the first Best Picture winning film to be directed by a woman.
83rd Academy Awards: 2010s The King’s Speech-the first Australian film to win Best Picture.
84th Academy Awards: 2011s The Artist-Christopher Plummer's Best Supporting Oscar win for Beginners at 82 makes him the oldest winner of any acting category.
85th Academy Awards: 2012s Argo-Seth MacFarlane is the first solo host to be nominated for a song.
86th Academy Awards: 2013s 12 Years A Slave-first film by a black director to win Best Picture.
87th Academy Awards: 2014s Birdman-first year since the expansion of Best Picture nominees in 2010 that all films nominated won an Oscar.
88th Academy Awards: 2015s Spotlight-Ex Machina winning for Best Visual Effects made it the least expensive film to win the award since 1979s Alien.
89th Academy Awards: 2016s Moonlight-Mahershala Ali's win for Best Supporting Actor marks the first win for a Muslim actor.
90th Academy Awards: 2017s The Shape of Water-With Icarus winning for Best Documentary Feature, Netflix has nabbed its first Oscar win.
91st Academy Awards: 2018s Green Book-Black Panther's Best Picture nomination marks the first comic book superhero film to be nominated in that category.
92nd Academy Awards: 2019s Parasite-The first foreign film in a language other than English to win Best Picture.
The Big Prize: Best Picture winners.
1st Academy Awards: 1927s Wings-the only all silent film to win Best Picture.
2nd Academy Awards: 1929s The Broadway Melody-first sound film to win Best Picture.
3rd Academy Awards: 1930s All Quiet on the Western Front-first film to win Best Picture and Best Director.
4th Academy Awards: 1931s Cimarron-first western to win Best Picture.
5th Academy Awards: 1932s Grand Hotel-only Best Picture film to not be nominated for other awards.
6th Academy Awards: 1933s Cavalcade-first FOX film to win Best Picture.
7th Academy Awards: 1934s It Happened One Night-first of only three films to win the top five Oscars of Best Picture, Director, Adapted or Original Screenplay, Actor, and Actress with the other films being One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.
8th Academy Awards: 1935s Mutiny on the Bounty-last film to win Best Picture without winning for anything else.
9th Academy Awards: 1936s The Great Ziegfeld-first musical film to win an acting Oscar.
10th Academy Awards: 1937s The Life of Emile Zola-first Warner Bros. film to win Best Picture.
11th Academy Awards: 1938s You Can’t Take It with You-The first year a foreign language film, 1937 French The Grand Illusion, was nominated for Best Picture.
12th Academy Awards: 1939s Gone with the Wind-first color film to win Best Picture.
13th Academy Awards: 1940s Rebecca-first and only Hitchcock film to win Best Picture.
14th Academy Awards: 1941s How Green Was My Valley-modern film fans and critics think of this as an upset since it beat Citizen Kane.
15th Academy Awards: 1942s Mrs. Miniver-first film to ever have five acting Oscar nominations.
16th Academy Awards: 1942s Casablanca-last Best Picture winner to compete against nine other films before it came back in 2010.
17th Academy Awards: 1944s Going My Way-The only film to ever have one actor be nominated for both Best Leading and Supporting Actor for the same role.
18th Academy Awards: 1945s The Lost Weekend-one of the first films to use a theremin for its musical score.
19th Academy Awards: 1946s The Best Years of Our Lives-Harold Russell, who won a Best Supporting Actor and Honorary Award for bringing hope to WW2 veterans, is one of only two non-actors to win an acting Oscar and the only one to win two for the same role as a war veteran who lost both hands, which is what actually happened to Russell in World War Two.
20th Academy Awards: 1947s Gentleman’s Agreement-controversial at the time it was released, the House Un-American Activities Committee called many of those associated with the film to be called to testify.
21st Academy Awards: 1948s Hamlet-first British film to win Best Picture.
22nd Academy Awards: 1949s All the King’s Men-last year wherein all Best Picture nominations were in black and white.
23rd Academy Awards: 1950s All About Eve-only film to have four actress nominations, two for leading and two for supporting.
24th Academy Awards: 1951s An American in Paris-the first Best Picture film to give the Oscar to the producer instead of the studio.
25th Academy Awards: 1952s The Greatest Show on Earth-considered the worst film to ever win Best Picture.
26th Academy Awards: 1953s From Here to Eternity-so far the last Best Picture winner to be nominated in all four acting categories.
27th Academy Awards: 1954s On the Waterfront-Rear Window's Best Director nomination marks the only time Hitchcock was nominated for a film in color.
28th Academy Awards: 1955s Marty-first film based on a television production to be nominated and win Best Picture.
29th Academy Awards: 1956s Around the World in 80 Days-the first year in which all Best Picture nominees were in color.
30th Academy Awards: 1957s The Bridge on the River Kwai-first time a British director won a Best Director Oscar.
31st Academy Awards: 1958s Gigi-David Niven's Best Actor win marks the only time a host won.
32nd Academy Awards: 1959s Ben-Hur-tied with 1997s Titanic and the third Lord of the Rings with the most Oscars won with eleven.
33rd Academy Awards: 1960s The Apartment-the last all black-and-white film to win Best Picture until The Artist in 2012.
34th Academy Awards: 1961s West Side Story-the first film with two directors to win Best Picture.
35th Academy Awards: 1962s Lawrence of Arabia-the first of eight films in which actor Peter O’Toole is nominated and never wins.
36th Academy Awards: 1963s Tom Jones-the only film to ever have three of its actresses be nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
37th Academy Awards: 1964s My Fair Lady-the first year all four Acting wins were for non-Americans.
38th Academy Awards: 1965s The Sound of Music-the first Oscars broadcast in color.
39th Academy Awards: 1966s A Man for All Seasons-Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf's four acting nominations marks the first time all credited cast members were nominated.
40th Academy Awards: 1967s In the Heat of the Night-the first detective mystery to win Best Picture.
41st Academy Awards: 1968s Oliver!-first, and so far only, G-rated film to win Best Picture.
42nd Academy Awards: 1969s Midnight Cowboy-the only X-rated film to win Best Picture.
43rd Academy Awards: 1970s Patton-George C. Scott’s, who won Best Actor, was the first time someone refused to attend and accept their award.
44th Academy Awards: 1971s The French Connection-the first R-rated film to win Best Picture.
45th Academy Awards: 1972s The Godfather-Marlon Brando became the second refused to accept his second Oscar win because of how Hollywood and the government treated Native Americans.
46th Academy Awards: 1973s The Sting-the first film with a female producer to win an Oscar.
47th Academy Awards: 1974s The Godfather Part II-the first sequel to win Best Picture.
48th Academy Awards: 1975s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-George Burns's Best Supporting Actor win marks the last time an actor born in the 19th century would win an acting Oscar.
49th Academy Awards: 1976s Rocky-the first sports film to win Best Picture.
50th Academy Awards: 1977s Annie Hall-Woody Allen winning Best Director was the first time any director won it after starring in the film itself.
51st Academy Awards: 1978s The Deer Hunter-the first film dealing with the Vietnam War to win Best Picture.
52nd Academy Awards: 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer-Justin Henry's Best Supporting Actor nomination at 8 years old makes him the youngest nominee in any of the acting categories.
53rd Academy Awards: 1980s Ordinary People-Held a day after it was supposed to air due to Ronald Reagan's attempted assassination.
54th Academy Awards: 1981s Chariots of Fire-the first year that the Best Makeup category was awarded, in this case An American Werewolf in London.
55th Academy Awards: 1982s Gandhi-Ben Kingsley, being half-Indian, was the first South Asian to win Best Actor.
56th Academy Awards: 1983s Terms of Endearment-Linda Hunt's Best Supporting Actress win for The Year of Living Dangerously marks the first time an actor won for portraying the opposite sex.
57th Academy Awards: 1984s Amadeus-F. Murray Abraham is the first Arab descended actor to win Best Actor.
58th Academy Awards: 1985s Out of Africa-Kiss of the Spider Woman was the first independent film to be nominated for Best Picture.
59th Academy Awards: 1986s Platoon-Marlee Matlin's Best Actress win for Children of a Lesser God makes her the youngest in the category and the first deaf actor to win an Oscar.
60th Academy Awards: 1987s The Last Emperor-first film where the Chinese government allowed filming in the Forbidden City.
61st Academy Awards: 1988s Rain Man-the first year that the announcement of “and the Oscar goes to…” was told instead of “and the winner is…”
62nd Academy Awards: 1989s Driving Miss Daisy-the first and, so far, only off-Broadway play based film to win Best Picture.
63rd Academy Awards: 1990s Dances with Wolves-The Godfather, Part III's Best Picture nomination marks the first time a trilogy was nominated in the category.
64th Academy Awards: 1991s The Silence of the Lambs-the first horror film to win Best Picture.
65th Academy Awards: 1992s Unforgiven-the last western, so far, to win Best Picture.
66th Academy Awards: 1993s Schindler’s List-Holly Hunter and Emma Thompson being nominated for both Leading and Supporting Oscars marks the first, and so far, only time two actors were double nominated.
67th Academy Awards: 1994s Forrest Gump-Dianne Wiest became the first person to win a second acting Oscar from the same director as the first win.
68th Academy Awards: 1995s Braveheart-the last year, so far, in which all acting wins were for films not nominated for Best Picture.
69th Academy Awards: 1996s The English Patient-Frances McDormand's Best Actress win marks the first time any actor won an Oscar for a movie directed by their spouse.
70th Academy Awards: 1997s Titanic-the highest-grossing film to ever win Best Picture and the first to make over a billion dollars.
71st Academy Awards: 1998s Shakespeare in Love-Judi Dench's Supporting Actress win for Shakespeare in Love and Cate Blanchett's Leading nomination for Elizabeth marks the first time a pair of actors were nominated for portraying the same character in different films.
72nd Academy Awards: 1999s American Beauty-the first DreamWorks film to win Best Picture.
73rd Academy Awards: 2000s Gladiator-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's nomination for Best Picture marks the first martial arts film to be nominated.
74th Academy Awards: 2001s A Beautiful Mind-the first year of the Best Animated Film category, given to Shrek.
75th Academy Awards: 2002s Chicago-at 29, Adrien Brody's Best Actor win for The Pianist makes him the youngest to win in the category.
76th Academy Awards: 2003s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King-the first fantasy film to win Best Picture.
77th Academy Awards: 2004s Million Dollar Baby-Eastwood’s win for Best Director at 74 made him the oldest director to win it.
78th Academy Awards: 2004s Crash-Ang Lee's Best Director win for Brokeback Mountain marks the first time a non-Caucasian won in the category.
79th Academy Awards: 2006s The Departed-the first remake of a foreign film to win Best Picture.
80th Academy Awards: 2007s No Country for Old Men-Javier Bardem’s Best Supporting Actor win marked the first time a Spanish actor won an Oscar.
81st Academy Awards: 2008s Slumdog Millionaire-Heath Ledger’s posthumous Best Supporting Oscar win for the Joker in The Dark Knight, was the first time any actor won an Oscar for a role in a comic book superhero film.
82nd Academy Awards: 2008s The Hurt Locker-the first Best Picture winning film to be directed by a woman.
83rd Academy Awards: 2010s The King’s Speech-the first Australian film to win Best Picture.
84th Academy Awards: 2011s The Artist-Christopher Plummer's Best Supporting Oscar win for Beginners at 82 makes him the oldest winner of any acting category.
85th Academy Awards: 2012s Argo-Seth MacFarlane is the first solo host to be nominated for a song.
86th Academy Awards: 2013s 12 Years A Slave-first film by a black director to win Best Picture.
87th Academy Awards: 2014s Birdman-first year since the expansion of Best Picture nominees in 2010 that all films nominated won an Oscar.
88th Academy Awards: 2015s Spotlight-Ex Machina winning for Best Visual Effects made it the least expensive film to win the award since 1979s Alien.
89th Academy Awards: 2016s Moonlight-Mahershala Ali's win for Best Supporting Actor marks the first win for a Muslim actor.
90th Academy Awards: 2017s The Shape of Water-With Icarus winning for Best Documentary Feature, Netflix has nabbed its first Oscar win.
91st Academy Awards: 2018s Green Book-Black Panther's Best Picture nomination marks the first comic book superhero film to be nominated in that category.
92nd Academy Awards: 2019s Parasite-The first foreign film in a language other than English to win Best Picture.
93rd Academy Awards: 2020s Nomadland-Frances McDormand's wins for Best Actress and as a producer of the film marks the first time anyone in one year won for a performance and producer for the same film.
94th Academy Awards: 2021s CODA-The first movie to be released through a streaming service, that being Apple TV+, to win Best Picture.
95th Academy Awards: 2022s Everything Everywhere All at Once-The first sci-fi film to win Best Picture.
96th Academy Awards: 2023s Oppenheimer-Robert Downey Jr.'s win for Best Supporting Actor marks the first time that someone from Saturday Night Live won any kind of Oscar.
97th Academy Awards: 2024s Anora-Karla SofÃa Gascón's Best Actress nomination for Emilia Pérez marks the first time an openly transgender actor was nominated in any acting category.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
A Different Job screenplay
1 EXT. PARK-AFTERNOON 1
FADE IN
A MAN IN A big sweater is walking outside of a park. He’s wearing sunglasses and gloves.
2 EXT. PARK-NEXT DAY 2
FADE IN
MIKE, LIKE THE DAY before, is wearing a big sweater, sunglasses, and gloves. He’s also holding the same suitcase that his boss left for him yesterday.
FADE IN
A MAN IN A big sweater is walking outside of a park. He’s wearing sunglasses and gloves.
MAN (narrating)
My name? Not important. You can call me Mike Where I’m from? Anywhere. What I do? Death.
Mike enters the small park by a small entrance.
MIKE (narrating)
As for what I do, well that’s tough to explain in any normal dinner conversation.
Mike sees a letter taped underneath one of the benches and sits down on the bench with the taped letter. He opens the letter, removes his sunglasses and reads it.
LETTER
I’ll be there in a few minutes.
After reading the letter, Mike folds it and puts it in his shirt pocket.
MIKE (narrating)
I’m a hired assassin. Although I like to call myself a professional cleaner. I take out the guys my boss doesn’t like. I may not like it, but there’s no other offer coming my way. My biggest wish is to leave this business, but I made a promise to my boss. And there’s only five rules. One is make sure they’re dead. Two is never leave any evidence. The third rule is...
A man in a business suit and carrying a briefcase sits next to Mike.
MIKE (narrating)
Never meet the boss. Somehow I don’t know if I broke the rule or he did.
The man opens the briefcase and takes out a folder and hands it to Mike. Mike opens the folder, checks the contents, and grabs one of the pictures.
MAN
You’re not going to ask?
MIKE
Rule #4: Don’t ask.
The man smiles.
MAN
Were you surprised?
Mike looks at the man who then looks at Mike back.
MIKE
Yeah, boss. Actually I was. Why---
BOSS
Meet now? After this job, you’ll find out.
Mike’s boss takes out a handkerchief and coughs really hard for about ten seconds. He then places the handkerchief back into his pocket.
BOSS
I’ll answer everything once you’ve done this job.
Mike looks at his boss, then at the folder and looks it over again.
MIKE
All right.
Mike’s boss gets up and walks away, leaving Mike all alone with the folder and suitcase next to him.
MIKE (narrating)
Usually, when I get a job, no matter who it is or what they did, It’s all by encoded email messages. I only met him a few times. First, when he got me out of prison because he was interested in my skills. Skills that I can’t really talk about.
Mike puts everything back into the suitcase.
MIKE (naratting)
The other time was on my first hit. He showed me the ropes and how to do it carefully. After that, I didn’t see him for five years and over forty hits he hired me for. Until now.
Mike stands up and starts walking out of the park.
MIKE (naratting)
I’m very much tempted to get information on this person. Especially since the job in this one is pretty clean and quick, the opposite of what I usually do. But then again, that would mean breaking rule number five: Don’t see a name, but a target. I hate this job, I don’t know if my boss does so too, but we all have to make a living somehow.
FADE OUT2 EXT. PARK-NEXT DAY 2
FADE IN
MIKE, LIKE THE DAY before, is wearing a big sweater, sunglasses, and gloves. He’s also holding the same suitcase that his boss left for him yesterday.
MIKE (naratting)
Sometimes when you finish a job, you wonder how it would impact the world. Maybe the guy found the cure for some disease that millions of people were dying from. He could’ve found a planet no one else could find. Or even just be a nobody that no one actually cared about.
Mike enters the park.
MIKE (naratting)
Usually when you kill a target, you don’t get sentimental. But this one felt, different. Enough to make me remember many of the people I killed, something that doesn’t usually happen. Maybe now it’s time to break rule number four.
Just like the day before, Mike finds the bench with another letter taped underneath. He opens the letter.
LETTER
Wait for me here. I might be there in a moment or it might take minutes. Remember, the questions you ask yourselves will be answered.
After finishing reading the letter, Mike continues to look at it for a few more seconds. Mike rips the letter into pieces and throws them into the garbage can that is near him.
MIKE (naratting)
In all the time I’ve known him he’s never been late. Always the first one.
After two minutes, Mike looks at his watch.
MIKE (naratting)
This job last night must have been important. Usually I torture them first, then I kill them. But there was no torture with this one. I know that sounds pretty sadistic, but it’s one of the few things I knew how to do. I may not like it, but what other choice do I have.
Mike spots his boss entering the park. The boss stops for a moment, gets a handkerchief from his pocket and coughs on it.
MIKE (naratting)
Sometimes I wonder of the little time people have. They could die any day. Sometimes after a job is done, I feel like I want to find my boss and kill him and then me for what he had me do.
After Mike’s boss finishes coughing on the handkerchief, he throws it out into a garbage can. He then grabs onto the fence as if he is falling down. Mike is about to stand up until his boss sees him and waves to keep sitting.
BOSS (yelling)
I’ll be right there.
His boss lets go of the fence, stands straight again, and walks to Mike. When he sits down, it sounds like he’s out of breath.
MIKE (worried)
You...
Mike looks at his boss who looks at him back.
MIKE (worried)
...okay?
BOSS (raspy and sickly)
You want to know, don’t you?
MIKE
Rule #4---
BOSS (raspy and sickly)
Right now, there are no more rules.
Mike’s boss coughs on his sleeve.
BOSS
If you’re wondering, yes I am sick. There’s no cure for what I have.
Mike looks at his boss in surprise.
MIKE
You mean---
BOSS
I’m dying? Yes.
MIKE
And the man you had me kill yesterday?
BOSS
Why? Is it eating away at you, wanting to know who he was? What he could have done with his life? Did he do anything wrong?
All Mike does is stare at him in anger and confusion.
BOSS
Let me ask you. Do you enjoy what you do?
MIKE
Not in the slightest.
BOSS
How do you feel about this kill? It seems strange right? Kept you up at night? The mystery surrounding a man who lived in a small house. Not a lot of money. Living alone.
MIKE (in anger)
Get to the point!
The boss coughs once again for ten seconds.
BOSS
The point is this was your last straw. Right?
MIKE
And? It’s not like you could just let me leave all this? Trust me I want to, I really do!
Mike’s boss stares at him and smiles.
BOSS
You really want to leave? How long have you thought about it?
MIKE
From the very beginning!
Mike and his boss just stare at each other for a moment. The boss coughs hard onto his sleeve.
BOSS
I always knew you wanted to leave. I saw it in your eyes when I freed you from that prison. You were hours from being executed, desperate for anything. I met you, knew you had the skills I was looking for, and you worked for me because of your loyalty, no matter what you did.
Mike looks at his boss then at the ground.
MIKE
So, what now?
BOSS
You’re free.
MIKE (surprised)
Free?
BOSS
Free to live the life you want.
MIKE
How? What happened to finally make you realize this?
BOSS
First, the why. When I first got sick, I thought it was nothing. Then, as I learned from my doctor, I had a rare disease, with one of the symptoms being continuous nightmares. I kept seeing the relatives of those I ordered to kill. The pain I caused. My doctor said he had made a cure for what I had. As for the how you can escape from this, well I have a huge fortune, but I have no heir.
MIKE
Heir to what? And what about the cure?
Mike’s boss smiles again.
BOSS
Sadly, as it turns out my doctor was apparently killed last night.
Mike looks at his boss in shock.
BOSS
Anyway, I recently built a corporation specializing in helping victims of violence, anywhere and everywhere.
MIKE
Wait, why did you have me kill the one guy that could have cured you?
BOSS
Two birds. One stone. Your freedom. My punishment.
MIKE
And this organization?
BOSS
I want you to take over when I’m gone.
MIKE
Why me?
BOSS
You have true heart. Something I lacked for so long. Once I’m gone, the business we were both in will no longer exist, and in its place is something new and better.
MIKE
How will they know that I’m your heir?
BOSS
They don’t. I have no real identity anywhere. Basically, I don’t exist. A man who doesn’t exist can’t run an organization. I started it using the identity of someone younger, healthier.
MIKE
Me?
BOSS
That’s right. Instead of taking lives, you help them.
MIKE
So that’s it then?
BOSS
Pretty much.
Mike’s boss gets up.
MIKE
When’s your funeral?
The boss smiles.
BOSS
A man who never existed can’t have a funeral.
FADE OUT
End.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
A Great Story poem
Daniel Brizuela 2/9/12
A Great Story poem.
A Great Story has many things;
A Great Story keeps you going.
When you’re reading this story,
When you’re imagining a story,
You don’t want to stop.
Creating a story is not easy,
Except when it becomes great,
Then it is a Great Story.
A Great Story poem.
A Great Story has many things;
A Great Story keeps you going.
When you’re reading this story,
When you’re imagining a story,
You don’t want to stop.
Creating a story is not easy,
Except when it becomes great,
Then it is a Great Story.
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