Is Doctor Who pulp?

[Curufea]

I'm wondering.
It has all the hallmarks of a pulp genre - perilous situations, dastardly villains, maidens in distress and unlikely problem solving.

[pinecone]

Could be...especially the Doctors that stayed close to earth.....not really differant from Capt. Nemo...

[Curufea]

Exactly. At most he has a vehicle that gives him a safe place to retreat to on occasion - although it does now and then provide technobabble gimmicks and tools to help save the day.

[ChaosDrgn]

The TARDIS also gets him into as many problems as it gets him out of.

In all honesty, I'd have to ask which Doctor are we talk about? The first was supposed to be educational, which didn't last. The second I honestly haven't seen much of so I can't judge.

The third Doctor had a pulp/james bond type feel to him. stuck on Earth and playing around with UNTIL. About the time Sarah Jane came along it seemed to get more sci-fi and less james bond.

Baker and Davidson...well they just seemed over the top sci-fi comedy. Some tragic moments but overall it semed to be one-liners along with saving the day.

I haven't seen any of the Doctors after that, well I've watched 4-5 episodes of the current series thanks to a friend who's over there :) They seem to have a lil more dark/edgy style to them mixed with one-liner sarcasam. Rose brings new meaning to Companion though, in the first episode she pretty much saved the day, though she tends to screw up as much as the other compainions did.

Oh, and let's not forget the Mater. He screams pulp to me. Deathtraps, on the Heroes equal...used rarely so when he shows up you know it's going to be something.

[BigJackBrass]

The short answer: No.

But then the short answer really doesn't explain much.

Doctor Who features, at different times, a good many pulp elements (such as the recurring villains, cliffhanger endings - a feature sadly neglected in the latest incarnation - and often execrable dialogue) but the character of The Doctor himself does not match the typical pulp hero. Rarely is he very physical - exceptions including Pertwee-era Venusian martial arts and the very first Tom Baker episode - and very often he is arrogant and selfish. The seventh Doctor was notorious for manipulating his companions, using them as unknowing pawns in a larger game, which is hardly something of which Doc Savage or the Avenger would approve. The first Doctor was a grumpy, vainglorious old man; the second a temperamental meddler; the sixth an arrogant bully.

Although the series has gunfights, explosions, naive and resourceful companions, chases (usually down rather similar corridors) and grand megolamaniac schemes I can't help but feel that it lacks an emotional sympathy with classic pulp. The Doctor does not always do what is "right" and indeed often questions what "right" means. He commits genocide at least once. On many occasions, especially visible during the McCoy era, he actively opposes the violence and easy solutions central to the pulp way of doing things. He's an alien, with alien ways of getting the job done, and he generally (smugly) tries to outthink rather than outfight.

As I say, the elements are often there but I don't think in this case they add up to the pulp experience.

And yes, I have spent altogether too much of my life watching the show.

[TheQuestionMan]

Doctor Who - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who#The_Doctor

Cheers

QM

[ThothAmon]

Pulp-ish but not really as the main man is an anti-hero. Certain elements are shared with pulp genre e.g. cliffhangers, assistants, recurring villains. The series uses pulp memes as do most soap operas e.g. Star Dreck.

[BobGreenwade]

BigJackBrass and ThothAmon captured my thoughts pretty exactly. Doctor Who has had some pulp elements, particularly during the Tom Baker and Peter Davison years (I can't speak re: Eccleston), but it's really sci-fi.

[pinecone]

Yeah ..like I said it Could be pulp...but you do need to change the flava a little...personally I don't think pulp requires total moral clairity. And the "big name" dosen't need to be a PC.....like Capt Nemo the Doctor need not be the focus of the story.....I mean he might be cool and all, but we're telling storys about the Brigadeer over here.......he could be religated to the docktor Huer role Buck is the Hero, along with the others, the doc's there to pull scientific rabbits out of his hat (or Tardis).....:)

[austenandrews]

Doctor Who was (is?) definitely inspired by the serials, which are generally included in the "pulp" category. But instead of an adventure hero, the Doctor is more like an old-school detective - Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, et al. - who arguably occupy the fringes of "pulp" as well.

[GestaltBennie]

Certain eras of the Doctor take on different characteristics. I think the Barry Letts era was very pulpy, particularly when Robert Holmes was story editor. You don't get much pulpier than a season that gives us "Pyramids of Mars", "Brain of Morbius" and "Seeds of Doom".

The current run of the doctor is largely a hybrid of science fiction and soap opera.

[Blue]

It's whatever you want it to be.
It's however you'd choose to run it, were you running a Dr. Who campaign.

It's the cop-out answer, but it's true.

[st barbara]

I don't see why it couldn't be used in a pulp setting. Hell "Star Trek :The Next Generation" had some Pulp elements ! (Remember those Holodeck adventures when Captain Picard played a Noirish detective ?)

[Michael Hopcroft]

There are a lot of Doctor Who episodes that have the pulp feel. A lot of the good ones are also riffs on classic hooks from earlier stories, rewqorked and given new life. Try and figure out where Robert Homes got the idea for The Caves of Androzani sometime -- it's obvious when you think about but there are so many other riffs that the source is somewhat ob scrued.

Of the new series, The Empty Chilld/The Doctor Dances strikes me as a sort of "pulp with a brain" story of the sort Asimov would have come up with had the technical concepts existed. Of course, it's a little spicier than 1940s sensibilities would have permitted. (And I won't tell you why because it would be a couple of major spoilers).

[KawangaKid]

The TARDIS also gets him into as many problems as it gets him out of.

In all honesty, I'd have to ask which Doctor are we talk about? The first was supposed to be educational, which didn't last. The second I honestly haven't seen much of so I can't judge.

The third Doctor had a pulp/james bond type feel to him. stuck on Earth and playing around with UNTIL. <snip>


Wasn't it UNIT? United Nations Intelligence Task Force... ooh - I wonder about all these United Nations orgs...

[Michael Hopcroft]

Wasn't it UNIT? United Nations Intelligence Task Force... ooh - I wonder about all these United Nations orgs...
Yep. UNIT, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stweart commanding. One of the few intelligent professional soldiers you see in this subgenre. He and the Doctor had a very interesting dynamic -- they respected each other, they got on each other's nerves, they sometimes violently disagreed, and sometimes one would do something the other would bitterly regret.

And then there was the entire season that was taken up by a prologned duel between the Doctor and his nemesis the Master (as played by the incomparble ROger Delgado). Now there's pulpy goodness for you! Every time the Doctor would foil the plot, only to have his adversary blithely slip through his grasp.... (And, like many actors who specialized in villians, Roger Delgado was a true gentleman, one of Jon Pertwee's best friends in real life, and a man who had a fatal attraction to fast cars which led to his premature demise).