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Patrick Troughton, the second actor to play Dr. Who, poses with a crew from the New Jersey Network at Grover's Mill in West Windsor in an undated photo.
(courtesy photo)
TRENTON — One night in early August, Brian Kelley walked into a pizza shop in Hamilton wearing a "Doctor Who" shirt.
It was the night that the Scottish actor, Peter Capaldi, was named as the 12th actor to play the role of the time-traveling Doctor in the seminal British sci-fi series, “Doctor Who,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary today.
“I have my ‘Doctor Who’ shirt on and this teenager, maybe 18, 19 — he’s probably a driver — says ‘Oh man, you like “Doctor Who”? Did you hear they announced the next Doctor?’” Kelley said, recalling the conversation.
A Whovian since the ’80s, Kelley said he’s a huge fan of the show. But the sci-fi epic — known for its elaborate aliens, quirky characters and tomes upon tomes of lore and plot lines stretching across time and space — was always sort of a fringe thing, until a reboot of the series picked up steam with the younger crowd over the past few years.
Its second-half season premiere brought in about 1.5 million viewers on BBC America. Now, ahead of the anniversary episode’s broadcast tonight, the show is more mainstream than ever.
But standing there in that pizza shop, talking to the teenager, Kelley felt vindicated.
“As a kid, he was the last person that I thought would be a ‘Doctor Who’ fan. He looked cool. He was cool,” Kelley said. “I was onboard when it wasn’t cool to like ‘Doctor Who’ and now it’s cool and I feel like everyone else has caught up with me. I think all ‘Doctor Who’ fans feel that way, we were ahead of the curve.”
Today countless “Doctor Who” fans across Mercer County, the state, country and world will be tuning in to the show’s 50th anniversary special. Some will dress up in suits, wear bow ties, fezes and long scarves, and carry around the Doctor’s signature tool, the sonic screwdriver. Others, like Kelley, have just blocked out time at 7 p.m. to sit down and enjoy something they’ve been waiting for, for months.
On Monday Kelly will go watch it again at AMC 24 Theaters in Hamilton, where the special will be shown in 3-D.
“There is such a demand to see this in the theaters; it’s really weird to someone who grew up watching this really odd, dramatic series that was told in a serial format with the time lords and their weird hats and gowns,” Kelley said. “And now fast forward and we have people coming out of the woodwork. It’s amazing.”
Kim Neighbor, one of the original members of the Prydonians of Prynceton, one of the oldest “Doctor Who” fan clubs in the nation, said the club, which is still active today, had its celebration for the 50th anniversary earlier this month. Today, she said, she’ll be watching the 50th anniversary episode with her goddaughter, who just got into the show via Netflix.
“I think it’s just awesome. We are so fortunate we have a show that has been around for 50 years and there is still new stuff,” she said.
First broadcast on Nov. 23, 1963, “Doctor Who” is a worldly and timeless sort of show. Episodes have taken place in ancient Rome, Victorian England, in France, during Vincent van Gogh’s era, and hundreds of years in the future, but somehow in an episode first broadcast in 1978, a reference to Trenton was made.
Introducing the Doctor’s robotic dog companion, K-9, to another character, Tom Baker (who played the fourth incarnation of the doctor), said “They’re all the rage in Trenton, New Jersey.” The episode was filmed before the show was even shown stateside.
How and why Trenton got a reference befuddles Kelley, who discovered it while watching “Doctor Who: Tales from the TARDIS,” a retrospective feature produced for the 50th anniversary.
Neighbor said she knew of the reference as well, but never got to ask the show’s script writers at various conferences about its inclusion. It is a rather cool nugget of trivia though, she said.
A fairly obscure name drop isn’t the only connection the show has to Mercer County.
Originally broadcast on public television networks, the now-defunct New Jersey Network brought a lot of the show’s stars and writers to the area for pledge drives, promotions and talks.
Eric Luskin, once a program director for NJN, hosted many of the pledge drives and even produced and hosted an NJN documentary about the show made during the mid-’80s, getting to travel to the United Kingdom and interview people involved in the show.
He remembers when Patrick Troughton, the second actor to play the Doctor, visited Trenton about 30 years ago. He appeared in a couple promo spots for NJN, and visited Grover’s Mill in West Windsor with the crew and a mockup of the TARDIS — the Doctor’s time-traveling spaceship in the form of a blue police call box — and spoke at the Battle Monument.
Peter Davison, the fifth Doctor, visited the city as well and stayed in the area.
“I was living in Newtown at the time and Peter stayed with us. I have photos of him sitting on my couch reading my daughter a bedtime story,” Luskin said.
Now out of the state and working for an independent company that provides programming to public television outlets, Luskin said “Doctor Who” has been out of his life for some time.
“It’s a part of my life that’s so long ago, but it’s weird how these things will pop up from time to time,” he said. “I still sometimes get recognized in the shopping mall by Whovians.”
Though he hasn’t been up to date on the series since its reboot, Luskin said, he was happy to see it make such a strong comeback.
“I think it’s great when you have any kind of concept that resonates with people, and it was really smart of the BBC to take it back up again,” he said.
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