THE DUMPLING DECOUPLING: SHELDON AND DOCTOR WHO

In “The Dumpling Decoupling,” Season 1, Episode 7, Sheldon exposes his infatuation with The Doctor.

“Calling all monsters, I’ve come here to stop ya,

Err, excuse me who are you? I’m the Doctor! . . . Who?

The one that exterminates Daleks,

And travels through time and space in a TARDIS,

What? My Grand-daughter gave it the name,

It’s a Time And Relative Dimension In Space!

And you might be amazed if you come on a ride,

Because it looks little but its bigger on the inside!

—Jon Chase a.k.a. Oort Kuiper, The Doctor Rap, YouTube (2013)

“So let’s start with a quick introduction/To the longest running science fiction show on television

First up, let me dispense with one main assumption/The Doctor’s the man and Doctor Who’s the production

Doctor Who came in sixty three/When the program was aired by the BBC

And as everybody huddled around the TV/They never thought it would last for half a century

An old man in a Police box, slightly off key/The classic mad doctor, with a lot to see

And soon we would learn about his mysteries/As he traversed the universes histories”

—Jon Chase a.k.a. Oort Kuiper, The Doctor Rap, YouTube (2013)

Doctor Who

As someone who has toured in Europe with a Science of Doctor Who roadshow, I’d say Sheldon’s Doctor Who obsession is understandable. We (my colleague Jon Chase and I) used to start our show with this fascinating question: why is it that a fifty-year-old British science fiction television program about a thousands-years-old alien with two hearts, who hails from a fictional planet called Gallifrey and travels through time and space in a wooden box, tells us more than most things today about what it’s like to be human in the early twenty-first century? It’s a good question, and one worth pondering over, through the eyes of Sheldon.

Sheldon is no doubt aware that, as superhero lists go, The Doctor is often neglected. Consider his credentials: a humanoid Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who’s able to navigate through time and space using an internally vast time machine. He also famously has two hearts, a mega-intellect, is able to go without air, is telepathic, and occasionally shows a superhero level of stamina (at least when played by younger actors)!

But what really makes The Doctor perhaps perfect for someone like Sheldon is encapsulated in this quote from Steven Moffat, previous writer and producer of Doctor Who: “A lot of our heroes depress me. But you know, when they made this particular hero, they didn’t give him a gun, they gave him a screwdriver to fix things. They didn’t give him a tank or a warship or an X-wing fighter, they gave him a call box from which you can call for help. And they didn’t give him a superpower or pointy ears or a heat ray . . . they gave him two hearts. And that’s an extraordinary thing. There will never come a time when we don’t need a hero like The Doctor.”

Google a definition of superhero, and you’ll get a reply something like: a superhero is a character with extraordinary or superhuman powers and is dedicated to protecting the public. The reply may also specify that the definition of superhero embraces any kind of fiction or fantasy crime-fighting character.

Based on such working definitions, The Doctor certainly fits the bill. He compares well with “natural” superheroes like Superman, another humanoid-alien with a huge intellect, though Superman is a lot more modest about his brainpower than The Doctor. Superman also travels at great speeds, though he admittedly does so without the tech of the TARDIS. The Doctor also compares favorably with tech-enhanced superheroes such as Batman and Iron Man. Both of these billionaires are equipped with pricey, state-of-the-art tech, often made in-house, with the tech making up an important part of their superhero status. It’s a similar set-up with The Doctor. Though he may not be included on the Forbes Rich List, he’s often found in the depths of the TARDIS (the ultimate piece of AI/spacetime-traveling hardware) tinkering away with tech, such as the sonic screwdriver, or tweaking the mercurial fluid links and the Artron energy residues of the TARDIS engines themselves.

Respawn

Like many of the characters in video games these days, The Doctor can regenerate, or respawn. In video games, respawning is the recreation of a character after its death or destruction, perhaps after losing one of its lives. The idea goes back to the game Doom, made in the early 1990s. And yet, the idea of The Doctor respawning was first used by the BBC in 1966. Since then, as The Doctor Rap puts it, “He made many enemies, and saved many nations, To brave space-time with his faithful companions, And if it seems death is his next destination, He makes like a phoenix with a regeneration.” Here’s the kind of question Sheldon might pose at a Who Con: “What do all these things have in common: you’re wearing a bit thin; you’re forced to change the way you look by court order; you’ve been poisoned by radiation; you fell from a great height; you absorbed time vortex energy; or you simply got to old age.” Yep, that’s right, Sheldon would reply: they’re all reasons why The Doctor regenerated.

The ability to regenerate was a stroke of genius from the BBC, back in 1966. They decided that The Doctor, like other Time Lords, can delay his death. Regeneration allows him to rejuvenate every cell in his body and totally change the way he/she looks from time to time. It’s an ingenious idea for a TV program, and it’s probably the most important reason that Doctor Who has kept going for over fifty years. After all, how else would you be able to keep the same central character over all those decades?

(By the way, Sheldon is no doubt aware that science has only recently discovered that humans do their own miniregeneration. Whatever your age, your body is actually many years younger. In fact, even if you’re middle-aged like Sheldon, most of your body may be just ten years old, or less. Most bodily tissue is under constant renewal. Sheldon knows that this way of thinking about the age of human cells has been invented by Swedish Professor Jonas Frisén, who believes the average age of all the cells in an adult’s body may turn out to be as young as seven to ten years. We’re regenerating! Professor Frisén’s research suggests that cells from the muscles of the ribs, taken from people in their late thirties, have an average age of fifteen years. And his method is down to estimating how long cells actually last. The average age of the cells in the main body of the human gut is about sixteen years. The red blood cells last only 120 days. And an adult liver probably has a turnover time of between 300 and 500 days. In fact, 98 percent of atoms in the human body are replaced yearly, and the entire human skeleton is thought to be replaced every ten years or so in adults!)

That Problem with the Couples Costumes Venn Diagram

However, some commentators have called into question Sheldon’s true knowledge of The Doctor, especially in light of scenes from the episode “The Holographic Excitation.” In the episode, Raj helps Stuart with the usual Halloween party at the comic book store, as Sheldon and Amy debate their couples Halloween costumes. At first, Sheldon surprises Amy by agreeing to go in a couples costume at all, because that is one of the great advantages of being in a relationship. Then, and in typical nerdy fashion so as to aid clarity of discussion, Sheldon makes a couples costume Venn diagram on the apartment whiteboard. The diagram include one set titled “Couples I Like,” meaning Sheldon’s preference, and another set titled “Couples You Like,” listing Amy’s favorites.

Amy’s list is suitably romantic, including Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and even Cinderella and Prince Charming. Meanwhile, Sheldon’s preference list is something of a nerdfest, with R2-D2 and C-3PO, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect (from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and Batman and Robin. But the crunch comes with Sheldon’s mysterious coupling of “The Doctor and a Dalek.” Given the rest of the couples list clearly conveys dynamic duos and perfect partnerships, what exactly is Sheldon up to when he includes a Dalek as The Doctor’s companion on his list?

You merely have to consider a single quote from the Tenth Doctor, from the Doctor Who episode “Daleks in Manhattan,” to know how The Doctor feels about Daleks: “It’s called a Dalek. And it’s not just metal, it’s alive. . . . Inside that shell is a creature born to hate, whose only thought is to destroy everything and everyone that isn’t a Dalek, too. It won’t stop until it’s killed every human being alive.” Or consider this quote from Dalek supremo Davros, from the storyline Genesis of the Daleks: “Today, the Kaled race is ended, consumed in a fire of war. But from its ashes will rise a new race. The supreme creature, the ultimate conqueror of the universe, the Dalek! You [Doctor] have a weakness that I have totally eliminated from the minds of the Daleks so they will always be superior. A weakness that will make you give me the knowledge to change the future. You are afflicted with a conscience.”

So, given it’s clear the Daleks are Nazis living inside a robot shell, the only solution that makes any sense is that Sheldon knows The Doctor’s perfect companion is not a Dalek, but that these hysterical and annihilating cyborgs are a perfect choice for Halloween!