urban@trwspp.UUCP (04/02/84)
(nil) Well, the robots of the Dr. Whoniverse are being catalogued very nicely. The Los Angeles public television station is currently up to the second Tom Baker season (I guess the Brits call them "series," not "season") and I've noticed another "gimmick" that seems to occur regularly in the series: the Doppelganger plot in which one or more characters are replaced by sinister doubles. There was "Invasion of the Androids" as well as the Loch Ness thingy whose name I can't recall at the beginning of the second Baker season (gotta keep the Dr. Who Celebration book at work, I guess). It's a pretty common theme in science-fiction (I can think of a couple of Star Trek episodes without even thinking about it); over twenty years, how many times was this gimmick used in Dr. Who? Thematically related, of course, are "parallel world" stories like "Inferno" (the only Pertwee story I seem to remember pretty well) with characters like the eyepatched Brigadier -- they *look* like the originals (sort of) but definitely are NOT. In fact, an encounter with some kind of "parallel world" Doctor might make for an entertaining story, if it hasn't been done already. Of course, the Five Doctors idea has some elements of this. Mike