When it comes to space travel, the problem with a risk averse culture is risk is subjective. I read an article that said the last shuttle had a 1 in 100 chance of ending in catastrophe. But this is not a crap shoot in Las Vegas, where every role of the dice is essentially the same, and so a random result can bring predictable outcomes over a long enough sequence. Just because two shuttles have been destroyed, didn’t mean the next launch was any more or any less likely to have a catastrophic failure, particularly as following those failures intense scrutiny was given not only to the cause of the failure but to all aspects of the mission. If anything, catastrophic failures drive down the odds of a repeat, because such scrutiny drives precision.

Rocket science is well understood. It’s a complex mix of interdependent systems, admittedly some of these have low tolerances and excessively dangerous consequences, but that’s just as true of air travel. The airlines have used the investigative model for decades to drive down accidents following air disasters. In the same way, the shuttle became safer rather than more risky over time.

The real problem for Columbia was not that NASA didn’t have enough risk averse managers at the time, it was that their aversion was selective. Foam strikes were so frequent they had become common place. What should have been alarming, that something as banal as Styrofoam could damage something as critical as the heat shield, should have demanded attention long before Columbia broke up. And this highlights the problem with a risk averse culture, it is based on hindsight not forward thinking.

It is over simplistic, though, to say risk aversion alone has stifled space exploration by NASA.

As much as I’d like to point the finger at bureaucracy, that’s not to blame either. The reality is, space is really, really big. The distances involved are astounding, beyond everyday recognition.

Consider this…

• Earth to ISS, the International Space Station, is 220 miles
• Earth to the Moon is 238,900 miles, which is over a 1000x as far as ISS
• Earth to Mars is 228 million miles, on average, which is almost a 1000x as far as the moon, and over a million times as far as ISS

Let’s put this in perspective… If a journey from Earth to Mars was scaled down to a flight from New York to Los Angeles, then…

• The International Space Station would orbit just beyond the curb outside your house
• The moon would orbit around New Brunswick, New Jersey, just outside of New York

As much as I’d like to get steamy-eyed about a mission to Mars, operating a manned mission at those distances is simply beyond our capability. Unless there is a paradigm shift in space travel, like the advent of a space elevator, we’re going to be stuck in and around this gravity well we call Earth for quite some time to come.

The astounding success of the Mars rovers hints at the role robotics should play in future exploration. Personally, I’d love nothing more than to see a science rover on Enceladus or Europa, looking for evidence of frozen microbial life in the overturned ice.

What is it about science fiction that gives this particular genre such a broad appeal? If you look at Hollywood you’d be tempted to think it was the visual sensation of blockbusting special effects, but nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the reliance of movies on mind-bending special effects has diluted rather than enhanced great science fiction stories.

Science fiction has such a strong appeal because it is intelligent, it stimulates our thinking. And, often times, this distinction is lost when books morph into movies.

In Who Goes There? John Campbell introduces us to a creature Hollywood immortalized as The Thing. Although the movie is a vivid and faithful rendition of this novella, it misses a significant amount of the reasoning the scientists go through as both they and the readers struggle to comprehend what they’re dealing with. And that is where the brilliance of the story lies, in the exploratory, inquisitive, reasoning nature of man. The essence of the story is, how can reason triumph over a mindless monster, one than can perfectly mimic its target? Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie, but the way the scientists reason through the nature of this alien beast in the novella is brilliant, and it is lost in the screen adaptation. They consider the biological nature of what they’ve run into, they think about how the infection spreads at a cellular level, realizing that the infected cow would have laced their milk with parasitic spores. They discuss why the alien won’t engage in open combat with them, realizing that it has evolved a unique strategy to avoid such confrontations, and they come to the chilling realization that it would sweep unopposed throughout the world if even the smallest biological trace remains. As a reader, you feel like an unnamed member of the ice station, traveling with them on this doomed voyage.

In the same way, I Am Legend, takes an absurd, mythological notion and says, what of it were true? How could vampires exist in a modern world? The protagonist, Neville, talks us through the logic of vampires fearing the cross, but not because of any inherent supernatural power in that shape, it turns out that the shape is a vivid reminder for vampires, causing a physiological revulsion of what they’ve become. In the same way, mirrors allow them to see themselves for what they really are, and they are repulsed by the realization that they are monsters. Neville even notes that vampires of Jewish origin would suffer the same aversion to the Star of David as former Christians would of the cross. Garlic, rather than an old wives’ fable, becomes a biological agent that causes anaphylactic shock. Sunlight, it seems, breaks down the vampiric bacteria, just as UV is known to destroy other types of bacteria. In the course of the story, the question is raised, why do stakes kill vampires and not bullets? Neville, our rational hero, applying science over superstition, learns that the hemorrhaging caused by a stake cannot be contained as easily as the smaller holes caused by a bullet. And the reader finds themselves inhabiting a world where the absurd has suddenly become plausible and rational, at least in a fictitious sense in which disbelief can be suspended for the enjoyment of the adventure.

The Hunger Games is another recent example. The movie is breathtaking, but action and adventure win out over the awe of reason. In the movie, we see Katness attack the supplies of the upper crust contestants, but without the audience really understanding why. In the book, however, we get a sense of the hunger and desperation Katness suffers in the wilderness. Rather than a mindless attack on the stores of the wealthy tributes, we see Katness attack the stores to level the playing field, to square up the fight and ensure that the rich kids also need to scavenge and forage for basic necessities. In this way, they can no longer ruthlessly hunt down the other tributes with such ease. And so the book allows us to explore this fictional world with Katness, and to understand its means and motives in a way that is glossed over in the movie.

As a science fiction author, I appreciate what these authors have done, they’ve started with a simple premise and explored the possibilities latent therein, seeking to build fictional worlds for our enjoyment. It is said that the plot is the character in action. When it comes to science fiction, the plot is the character interacting with science in a way that influences both their actions and the actions of their opponents.

OK, so you’ve seen the movie, but have you read the book? Unlike most movie adaptations, from the Twilight saga to Harry Potter and more recently The Hunger Games, this novel is entirely different to the movie, and that allows both to coexist quite merrily, without comparisons as to which is the better.

I Am Legend is a present day what-if scenario applied to vampires, asking the question, what if Dracula was real and vampires gained the upper hand on modern society? It was written in 1954, but you wouldn’t know it. The depiction of suburbia and the sprawling cityscape of Los Angeles reads like it was written yesterday.

Like most book-turned-movie adaptations, Will Smith’s 2007 film version of I Am Legend is a stunning visual depiction, with several carefully crafted improvements, but it lacks the sense of depth you find in the novel. Although the movie is true to the character of Neville, and his fits of rage and sense of despair, the science portion of this work of science fiction is lost. Sure, Will Smith is a scientist, he has a lab with test-tubes and conducts experiments, but the movie is missing the depth of reasoning you find in the novel. And it’s the scientific rationale, the inquiring mind, the rational thinking that makes I Am Legend a sensational novel. We see some depth of consideration given to all the various facets of the vampire mythology. Why are vampires repelled by garlic? Why does a stake through the chest kill them when bullets don’t. Why are they frightened by the sign of the cross? And we get to watch as Neville exercises his reason to explore the various possibilities in a plausible manner.

The only criticism I have of this novel is the speed with which the conclusion comes about. The tension grows, the sense of interest grows, the curiosity grows, and then suddenly there’s a rush to close out the story. Given Richard Matheson‘s depth of writing and the amount of material he had to explore, I suspect there is much more than could be made of the ending, and yet, there was only ever one way it could end. Matheson knows that and so does the reader.

If you’re looking for some great reading material, I highly recommend I Am Legend, as eBooks go, it is absurdly expensive, so you might want to pick up a second-hand paperback copy from Amazon and save yourself a few bucks. If you’re really brave, try the audio version at night, alone.

PS. If you’ve seen the movie, but haven’t seen the original ending to the movie, it is well worth watching. Personally, I think they spoilt the movie by giving us the sanitized, and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after ending instead of this gritty, real-world ending that differs from the book, but is in much the same spirit.

Reading is a remarkably versatile act. Get the right book, and you can be lost in orbit around a star light years from Earth for days on end.

Although the bulk of our communication is in words, there are subtleties that reach beyond language. We speak volumes with our gestures, facial expressions & posture. In life, touch and smell also come into play when you shake hands, or meet someone wearing perfume, or talk to someone having just finished up at the gym. Movies, at least, capture some of this non-verbal communication, but books don’t, not unless the author deliberately brings these elements into the text. Novels, it seems, are far more limited than movies, or are they?

Ultimately, fiction is about the suspension of disbelief, the willingness of a reader/viewer to ignore reality and inhabit an alternate world, one sculptured by another. The strength of novels comes from their limitation. Being restricted to just words, they can evoke every sense, even taste. Whereas a movie is dependent on camera angles and an actor’s versatility, a novel needs only the imagination of the reader.

Have you ever read a book and been excited about the release of the movie version, only to be disappointed when it finally comes out? Inevitably, you watch the movie and, regardless of the acting, regardless of the cinematography and special effects, you come away with the feeling something was missing. Why? There are three reasons.

Lack of imagination

Movies are passive, they replace rather than stimulate our imagination. The arts department and screenwriters have plenty of imagination. Their imagination arouses our thinking, but fails to stimulate our intellect as much as a book. We are astoundingly intelligent creatures. We need to have our minds exercised, excited. Movies do that to a degree, but no where near as well as a good novel.

Inability to internalise the character

The best movies, like Forrest Gump, allow you to internalise the main character, to identify with them, but this is extremely rare when it comes to science fiction movies. To be fair, science fiction novels generally fall short in this regard as well, but novels are written from a personal point of view. Novels allow you to see through another’s eyes, to hear their thoughts, to experience this pseudo-life in a way a movie cannot duplicate.

Lack of immersion

Ultimately, both of these lead to a lack of immersion. As engrossing as movies are they fail to sustain any depth beyond more than a few hours. A good novel, however, will capture the imagination for an extended period of time, over days or even weeks, allowing you escape to another world.

Growing up in New Zealand, I remember listening to the radio as a child. For several years, there was only one TV on our block, and it wasn’t in our living room, but we had a wall-mounted radio. I remember my mother and I sitting up to listen to War of the Worlds serialised for radio. Sitting there, my imagination was set alight by what was essentially an audio-book. To this day, when writing, I use a program called SpeakPad to listen to what I’ve written, to hear sections read back to me so as to engage my imagination. And so I’ve made sure Text-To-Speech is enabled on each of my novels because it is a variation I enjoy. Sitting there as an eight year old, the thought of an alien creature emerging from a strange, shiny cylinder, its tentacles snaking over the edge of a muddy crater, thrilled my imagination. As enjoyable as the Tom Cruise rendition was, it pales in comparison to the imagery built up in my mind all those years ago. Orson Wells, it seems, had a 70 year jump on the likes of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield for realism in entertainment, scaring thousands in the pre-World War II 1930s.

Will I go and watch Prometheus when it comes out at the movies? Absolutely. Will it have me on the edge of my seat? Undoubtedly. Will I find the effects and storyline dazzling? Sure. But it will be formulaic, it has to be, that’s just the nature of movies. It will be bound and limited, with stilted dialogue, limited character build up and probably no character immersion at all, but I’m sure the action will be heart-stopping. In writing the sequel to Trixie & Me my goal is to engage readers in a manner that will thrill them every bit as much as Prometheus, with some depth of characterisation you just can’t find in the movies (ambitious goal, I know, but you’ve got to shoot for the moon). Keep your eyes peeled for War coming in May/June 2012.

PS. The Orson Wells broadcast of War of the Worlds is well worth listening to. The second half, in particular, is absolutely brilliant.

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INTRODUCTION

This is not a biography in the traditional sense of the word. In this book, you will not learn anything of substance about Darwin’s personal life. If you’d like to know where he was born, what school he went to, or what his favorite toy was as a child, you should put this book back on the shelf and look for another. If you are considering this book wanting to learn more about Darwin’s voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle, or his time in the Galapagos islands, or his marriage to Emma Wedgwood, you should look for a more general biography, as you won’t find that in these pages. This book is concerned with the thinking and reasoning processes of Charles Darwin, and looks at his life through the prism of his personal correspondence. It is primarily focused on the background behind his landmark work, On the Origin of Species.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species and, for the first time, the world had a coherent, comprehensive theory explaining the rich diversity of life we see around us. The recognition of Natural Selection has opened up over a hundred and fifty years of public debate on the origin of diverse species as religious institutions have struggled to reconcile evolution with their traditional creation stories.

During his lifetime, Darwin remained largely on the sidelines of this heated debate, refusing to be drawn into endless, and often meaningless discussions, leaving others, like Thomas Huxley, to champion the scientific cause. But Darwin was not silent. He wrote profusely, writing hundreds of letters to his close friends and supporters, and it is these unguarded moments, captured in private correspondence, never intended to see public light, that provide us with a unique insight into the mind of Charles Darwin. They reveal his personal thinking, his reasoning, his intentions, his doubts, his triumphs and his personal struggles in a candid and honest manner.

All great men are, inevitably, both canonized and demonized after death, treated as both saints and sinners. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “to be great is to be misunderstood,” but the letters of Charles Darwin allow us to avoid any misunderstanding, they allow the man to speak for himself. These private letters show us the real Darwin, the man stripped bare of any scientific adulation on one hand, and without the lies and half-truths spread by his detractors on the other.

Why is this book important?

There is a growing divide between religious fundamentalists and evolutionary science. Whether we consider Christians, Jews, Hindus or Muslims, the issue is the same: literal interpretations of ancient literature grossly contradict modern science, they contradict our modern values, our modern thinking, our modern reasoning. Science has transformed far more than just such areas as medicine, astronomy, biology and engineering. Science has transformed our perspective on life itself. Over the past five hundred years there has been a seismic shift in our point of view. We have learned that decisions in life should be based on clear evidence, not vague ideals, be they religious or otherwise.

For Darwin, science provided answers. In those areas where science was yet to mature, it provided a framework for finding answers.

The undulatory [wave] theory of light has thus been arrived at [by scientific investigation]; and the belief in the revolution of the earth on its own axis was until lately supported by hardly any direct evidence. It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life.

In Darwin’s day, the awareness that light moved in waves had only just become apparent. The concept of the Earth revolving on its axis was accepted, but had little in the way of direct evidence. Darwin realized science was a process of exploration and discovery. Although there is no clear understanding of how life originated on Earth, Darwin understood that this presented an opportunity for science, not an impediment.

Do you believe the Earth spins on its axis, rotating around the pole? Do you believe the Earth turns to face the sun each day? If so, then it is fair to say you didn’t learned this from your own personal experience, or from any religious scripture, or any philosophical ideal, you learned this from science.

Sit out on the porch one morning and watch the path of the sun over the course of a day and think about how extraordinary and revolutionary this concept actually is. Both common sense and the scriptures will tell you that you never moved, that you sat still in your chair as the sun rose high above you over during the day, and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose – Ecclesiastes 1:5

As persistent and convincing as this experience is, we know it is an illusion. The trees in the distance, the table on the patio, the picket fence around your home, they all appeared to stay perfectly still as the sun rose high in the sky before slowly descending into the distance, just as King Solomon described in Ecclesiastes. And yet, in reality, both you, your home and your garden, have spun around in a circle, like a child on a playground ride. You have moved in defiance of both your personal experience and the testimony of the Bible.
Why do we accept the scientific notion of the Earth spinning at thousands of kilometers an hour over the biblical notion that the Earth “cannot be moved?” We accept this counterintuitive view of reality not because of our experience, not because of any holy writ or the uttering of an ancient prophet, we accept this because of the evidence.

In our day, no one would seriously consider teaching Ecclesiastes in our public schools as an alternative to the heliocentric theory of the solar system. Not even the Kansas Board of Education would take these sections of scripture literally, and yet, against reason, when it comes to the topic of evolution, they actively promote a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Think about what science is for a moment. Science is a collection of theories, or ideas about life.
A scientific theory has two components, it is based on evidence and it draws conclusions. And these conclusions give us the ability to test or validate an idea. If the results don’t match expectations, something needs to change. If they’re do, we can use these ideas for leverage, we can use them to build cars, trains, computers, antibiotics, planes, skyscrapers, bridges, mobile phones, traffic lights. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything in modern life that isn’t dependent on science. Even age-old practices like horticulture or making kiln-fired bricks to build a home have been enhanced and refined and taken to new heights by the advent of modern science.

And we trust science, we trust these evidence-based conclusions every time we step on a bus, every time we ride in an airplane, every time we switch on a light, or open a packet of cereal, or swallow a tablet of medicine.
Evidenced-based science is at the very heart of modern life. But when it comes to biology, the notion of evolution offends our religious convictions and for that reason, and that reason alone, it is called into doubt, regardless of the evidence.

Science represents a quandary for those who follow a literal interpretation of the Bible. There’s no doubt science is beneficial, but should it be trusted? After all, as the US dollar states, In God we trust, not man. And so the seeds of doubt are planted. Genesis is God’s Word. Natural Selection is the theory of man. How can it be trusted? And with this one, broad and gross over-simplification, the evidence is simply ignored and swept aside.

Some religious groups will go so far as to promote a semblance of pseudo-science in its place, accepting scientific findings where these agree with their theology, while substituting radical alternatives like Intelligent Design where the evidence does not. Such an approach is flawed from the start as it approaches science backwards. It seeks a means to justify its end, it starts with conclusions and manipulates the evidence to fit with its preconceptions. Intelligent Design is, in a word, dishonest, which is quite ironic given the supposedly high and lofty morals of its proponents.

In the beginning

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth – Genesis 1:1

Genesis uses clear, decisive terms. The language is forceful, with the Almighty commanding creation. On the first day, “God said, Let there be light and there was light.” With such grand, sweeping statements and regal declarations it is no wonder this section of the Bible has been taken literally even though theologians have documented more figures of speech in the first chapter of Genesis than there are verses of scripture!
With the best of intentions, Christian ministers and lay-preachers alike have advanced a literal interpretation of Genesis in defiance of science.

It is not uncommon to hear ministers depicting this conflict as a battle between science and faith, between natural knowledge and spiritual. They portray themselves as protecting “the integrity of the Word.” The reality is, it is not science that has attacked the Bible, it is biblical literalists who have attacked science.
Science is impartial, it does not take sides.

Science nether attacks nor defends, it simply presents the evidence and draws conclusions. In its rawest form, science is the recognition of natural laws. It is the categorization of observations and, based on these observations, science forms a series of rational, logical, consistent conclusions about the natural world. Whether these observations, and their subsequent conclusions, offend someone’s preconceived religious notions or not is irrelevant.

The great book of nature can be read only by those who know the language in which it was written. And this language is mathematics. – Galileo.

Science is an expression, a formula. Whether we like it or not, two plus two equals four. Whether we like it or not, science has something relevant to say about the origin of our world. To rage against that simply highlights our own personal immaturity.

Like Galileo and Copernicus, Darwin sought to understand the scientific laws that govern our world. And like Galileo and Copernicus, Darwin has been vilified by religious leaders, by those ignorant souls who value blind loyalty over honesty and truth. Hopefully, this book goes a little way toward correcting that injustice.

Darwin’s Time Machine

While reviewing the material for this book, I considered two other possible themes to explore in this work, the first being Darwin’s Time Machine.

As you will see throughout the writings of Charles Darwin, from his casual correspondence with friends through to his publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin makes a series of remarkable insights that belie the times in which he lived.

Darwin’s genius was in seeing beyond the moment and realizing the possibilities that lay hidden in the vast array of seemingly contradictory facts surrounding the natural world. From these, Darwin distilled an astoundingly accurate picture of how life has flourished on Earth. His insights into the past, from thousands to millions of years ago, along with his conjecture about future discoveries, makes one wonder if he had a time machine hidden away in his garden shed, perhaps a DeLorean powered by Mr Fusion. Throughout this book, we will journey with Darwin in his Tardis as he elaborates on the progression of life on Earth over hundreds of millions of years.

Darwin the Creationist

Darwin was a creationist. This may surprise some, but it is undeniably true. Darwin was raised in a Christian family, studied divinity at university in preparation to become a clergyman with the Church of England, and, during his epic voyage on the Beagle, searched for what he thought of as “centres of creation,” those places where the Creator must have first breathed life into animals before they spread across the face of the Earth.
In writing On the Origin of Species, Darwin reveals numerous turning points on his decade-long journey from creationist to scientist, outlining in methodical detail the steps he traveled in his own personal journey as his scientific awareness slowly awakened.

Darwin understood how controversial Natural Selection would be and took pains to carefully and methodically confirm his theory before publication. And yet, for all his efforts to the contrary, he has been misrepresented and ridiculed.

My views have often been grossly misrepresented, bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done, as I believe, in good faith.

Darwin, ever the gentleman, understood the opposition his theory received from creationists because he’d personally struggled with the very same issues. He understood the genuine sincerity of his opponents because he’d been there and had once held the same doubts and concerns. And that is something I deeply appreciate when reading his works, as I too once struggled under the weight of the same concerns.

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.

Darwin has been unjustly maligned and his works condemned, and yet few, if any of his detractors have ever read anything he wrote. I know I certainly hadn’t. In some sincere Christian circles, the very mention of his name invokes indignation and comparisons with Adolph Hitler, Karl Marx and even Satan himself. As you will see firsthand in this book, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Science is a funny old thing, often far more imaginative and peculiar than anything a science fiction writer could conceive of in his or her wildest musings. Here’s a list of some of the more unusual scientific observations I’ve come across. If you have any you’d like to add, please let me know.

In no particular order of weirdness…

• Planarians are tiny worm-like creatures. A single planarian can be cut up into thirty odd slices, and, hey, presto, you’ve got thirty planarian worms. But, be careful, their throats also doubles as an anus, so they’re definitely stranger than fiction.
• Bombardier beetles squirt out acids reaching over 100 degrees Celsius, and are capable of firing several times a second with astounding accuracy. Take that you xenomorphic wannabes and alien Predators.
• Sea squirts are worse than any zombie you’ve seen running across the silver screen. These creatures have the bizarre reputation of eating their own brains. Admittedly, their brains are not particularly well developed, but after guiding the young sea squirt to a suitable anchoring point, the sea squirt digests its own cerebral ganglion. Bet you never saw that on The Walking Dead
• You aren’t an individual. We tend to think of ourselves in the singular, as though we were a single organism, but we’re actually a walking, talking ecosystem, with 10x as much bacteria and microbes as there are body cells. It may not be that flattering to think of yourself as a living petri dish, but without these microbes we would die.
• Forget about binge drinking on Earth, there’s a billion, billion, billion liters of alcohol in space, just waiting to make its way into the alien equivalent of Budweiser
• Coal-fired power stations release more radiation than nuclear power stations, contrary to what you may have seen on the Simpsons
• Fleas jump with 20x the acceleration of a Space Shuttle launch
• The oldest living organism on Earth is 8 million year old bacteria revived from beneath a glacier
• The most dangerous animal on Earth, responsible for far more deaths than sharks, lions or tigers, is the malaria parasite carried by the mosquito, killing almost 3,000 children a day.
• Sand tiger sharks endure survival of the fittest in the womb, fighting and devouring each other before they’re born
• Sorry Wolverine, but ounce for ounce, bone is five times stronger than steel

If you know of any other strange and unusual facts, concepts that are more radical than anything dreamed up in Science Fiction, please add a comment below, as I’d love to hear about them.

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2012.02.29 – Professor O. R. Pagan of the West Chester University of Pennsylvania let me know that the record for cutting up a planarian into slices that go on to form other living planarians is 279 times!!! I suspect even that number is only limited by the ability to slice up such a small creature. Remarkable critters! If only it was that easy to clone my work colleagues, it would would make recruitment so much easier.

Although the movie, A Game of Shadows, comes in at a respectable 7.7 within the International Movie Data Base, the TV series eclipses this with a sublime 9.1 rating, and I’d say 9.1 was a bit harsh

With great restraint, I will avoid any spoilers and simply say that episodes like A Scandal in Belgravia will go down historically as being better than some of the original stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

One of the nice things about the BBC is they’re not afraid to take a gamble on proven writers, and so Steven Moffatt, one of the principle writers for Dr Who, and Mark Gatiss, a Dr Who contributor, were given free hand to craft a TV series that is going to be one of the classics in years to come. With only three episodes in a season, and each episode being 90 minutes long, they’ve thrown out the formulaic rule-book that governs so much television, particularly in the US, and come up with a format that allows them to craft some brilliant stories. As tormenting as it is to be limited to only three shows a season, the quality of the writing is superb. Moffatt and Gatiss have avoided the temptation to exploit the name and commercialize the series, staying true to form they have delivered a TV show worthy of representing the works of Doyle, and lending credit to the Sherlock Holmes franchise.

Bravo. Ten stars from me on the IMDB.

PS. Among others, Moffatt wrote the Dr Who episodes The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink.

The Doctor is a Time Lord, a humanoid alien with almost a thousand years under his belt, two hearts, and the ability to regenerate into a new body. His space-time ship is the TARDIS, an acronym for, Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It’s a police box, a relic from a bygone era when police in London would walk a beat, stopping off in small police boxes for a cup of tea or to call in to police HQ to report a crime or an arrest. Both Dr Who and the TARDIS are an example of low-tech science fiction at its best, using elements (that used to be common), and incorporating them into a fantastic escape from reality. Dr Who uses the concept of a hidden world that exists parallel to our own, running in harmony to the every day world, with great effect.

In this post, we’ll explore the Top Ten Dr Who Episodes since the rejuvenated series began in 2005, as voted for by my family. For what it’s worth, here are my thoughts on what makes these episodes great.

SPOILER ALERT

10 Impossible Planet & Satan’s Pit

Like so many Dr Who episodes, it’s the actors surrounding the Doctor that make the story, and in this story the audience seems to take on the role of one more crew member struggling to survive on the impossible planet. The writers of Dr Who have an audacity all of their own, not afraid to experiment and explore ideas, here invoking images of Dante’s inferno and the devil, while somehow avoiding any religious overtones.

09 Impossible Astronaut & Day of the Moon

Dr Who episodes are generally built upon a simple premise, in this case, having an enemy that wipes your mind any time you’re not looking at them, and this sets up a series of dilemmas for the Doctor and his companions. The slow reveal, with the protagonists writing on their arms to capture their fleeting thoughts, is simply brilliant and sets up some spine-tingling scenes. In a moment of dark humour, River Song asks Rory if their adversaries, the Silence, have arrived for battle. Rory, seeing the horde descending upon him, turns back to River, and, loosing sight of the aliens for a second, says, “Nope. Nothing here.“

08 Lodger & Closing Time

Although these two episodes occur a year apart and with entirely different story lines, we grouped them together  as they’re characteristic of the writers avoiding clichés in their scripts, giving someone other than the Doctor and his companions centre-stage. Granted, there is a tendency to dumb down these characters to almost a caricature of a simpleton, which I think is a little insulting to the audience, but somehow they pull it off and you still end up rooting for them. And any child that calls himself “Stormaggedon, Dark Lord of All,” can’t be all that bad.

07 Beast Below

In classic Doctor Who fashion, Beast Below fails to deliver a credible, believable concept while still having a touch of absolute brilliance. In this case, the last remnants of the English are aboard a spaceship travelling on a star whale, but, look past that, and there’s an intriguing sub-plot, with a glimpse of the dark side of a Time Lord. The Doctor commands, “Nobody talk to me. Nobody HUMAN has anything to say to me today.” And in that anger, he loses himself, only to have Amy Pond show him how human he really is, and stop him from making a grave mistake.

06 Vincent

Vincent is one of the rare tragedies in Dr Who. From the start, knowing this story is based on the historical character Vincent Van Gogh, you already sense the impending doom. What follows is a warm, light-hearted, engaging interpretation of Van Gogh’s genius, with the Doctor trying to change history, but even the Doctor has his limits. The sense of sympathy and emotion this episode stirs for Van Gogh’s tortured genius is quite something. It’s one of those episodes that has a surprising amount of depth for 45 minutes of footage.

05 Turn Left

Turn Left is brilliant for what is missing from the episode, the Doctor. Instead, we get to explore the character of Donna Noble and other companions, like Rose Tyler, as the writers explore a what-if scenario reminiscent of the Butterfly Effect. The Doctor, it seems, is a bit of a plot device in his own stories, a form of Deus Ex Machina, an easy escape from the most torturous of prisons. It’s all too easy for the writers to lean upon that crutch when crafting their scripts. Take the Doctor largely out of the picture, though, and some of the best writing emerges, with stories beautifully composed and full of depth. To me, it is no surprise the number one episode in this list is an extension of the same concept, but lets not get too far ahead of ourselves.

04 God Complex

With their usual outlandish penchant for staging the extraordinary in a dull, boring, below-par environment, The God Complex explores complex social themes within a science fiction story (honestly, how scary is that hallway?). Rather than fears, an alien predator feeds on beliefs, in a metaphor for society, which is so largely dominated by unthinking and irrational beliefs. In the midst of this, the Doctor is confronted over his “God complex,” stripping his persona naked before the audience. I would have rated this episode higher, but my kids voted me down.

03 Silence in the Library & Forest of the Dead (Vashna Nerada)

And I can understand why they voted me down, as these last three episodes are sublime. There’s no great social questions, no depth of character being exposed in Silence in the Library, just a heart-pounding story-line that keeps you on the edge of your seat, and a cliff hanger that has you begging for more in The Forest of the Dead. In classic Dr Who fashion, “Stay away from the shadows,” hails back to the low-tech origins of the story fifty years ago, with the alien baddies being nothing more than a shadow on the floor. Not scary enough for you? You haven’t seen the Vashna Nerada in action.

02 Girl in the Fireplace

What’s not to love about a story line that transports 18th century France into the 24th century? How can you not love a story that has a beautiful white horse wandering lost through the decks of a spaceship? The Girl in the Fireplace has it all, a tragedy with so much hope. The concept of stepping from a spaceship into various points in the life of Madame de Pompadore captures the essence of time travel like no other episode of Doctor Who. The characterisation is rich, with unique insights into the Doctor’s background when he reads the young woman’s mind, not realising “A door once opened, can be walked through both ways.” Yes, there’s plot holes in that the Doctor could have intervened later with the TARDIS to see Madame before her death, but this is one of those plot holes your suspension of disbelief is happy to overlook. And all through the episode you’re wondering why? Why her? It’s only in the final seconds of the show that you learn something the Doctor never does…

01 Blink

“Don’t blink. Blink and you’re dead. They’re fast. Faster than you can believe. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And don’t blink. Good luck.” Blink is outrageous, audacious. The story line is entirely improbable, and yet it is woven together with sheer brilliance. Like Turn Left, the Doctor is largely absent from this unlikely contender for first place in Doctor Who episodes, but that seemed to have given the writers some latitude to construct a story that suspends disbelief like no other. It’s a shopkeeper that saves the day. There are messages from the past, woven together so they arrive in the present precisely when needed. It’s the Doctor battling evil over a distance of decades. The Weeping Angels are yet another low-tech common accessory to English life carefully woven into a clever and engaging story, more about the concept of Doctor Who than his persona. For years after seeing this, my youngest daughter would stare carefully at any statues of women in long flowing robes, wondering what would happen if she blinked…

In reality, there are two kinds of Doctor Who episodes, those that get just a wee bit silly, and those that faithfully hark back to the Golden Age of Science Fiction, where sci-fi stories had an unseen twist and accentuated our understanding of humanity. In reality, these ten stories are peers, each as brilliant as the next, each as thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining as the other, with so very little between them.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this reminiscent review of classic Doctor Who episodes. If you have any others you’d like to suggest, please feel free to add a comment.

You can find a full list of Dr Who episodes on Wikipedia.

Sometimes, images speak louder than words, as does this image, comparing the emergence of life over the last four and a half billion years to minutes in a day.

To put this in perspective, on this scale, the reformation happened one second ago. Christ walked the Earth four seconds ago, just a few milliseconds after Aristotle, Plato and Archimedes. The pyramids were built in the last fifteen seconds, so that’s all of human civilisation crammed into roughly the time you’ve spent reading this particular paragraph. At the 11:58:43 noted above, Homo sapiens had probably just emerged in their own right, after having wiped out the Neanderthals. It’s a lot of time to us, but barely 78 seconds on our clock.

British astronomer Fred Hoyle once famously declared that the probability of cellular life evolving was so highly improbable as to be compared to a tornado hitting a junk-yard and randomly forming a fully functional air-plane. For decades, I thought this was a convincing argument, as the appearance of design in nature is compelling, but it is an illusion. We see design because we are designers, but consider other, uncontroversial systems that have an intrinsic beauty and complexity without deliberate design.

Stars may seem simple, just a ball of hydrogen burning in space, but nothing could be further from the truth. Stars are comprised of a variety of convective and radiant layers, with fusion occurring at rate that allows them to shine for billions of years, slowly converting lighter elements into heavier ones, like the fabled alchemist. They have life cycles, analogous to birth, middle-age and death. There are classes of stars, generations of stars. They have complex interactions with their environment, simultaneously forming planets, comets and asteroids during their own fiery birth. From producing solar winds, to pushing up bow waves through deep space, stars are remarkably complex systems, and they’re entirely natural. The same is true of planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, with their beauty and complexity devoid of any design. Life, some would argue, is different to an inanimate system, and that’s a fair point. Life extends the concept far, far more than any inanimate system, but it is an extension, not an entirely different notion. No rational person would content that God created asteroids as disfigured lumps of rock in space, they simply formed that way according to natural laws. In the same way, so did planets, and stars and life, as they all share the same chemical composition, it’s just their arrangement, complexity and ability to replicate that differs.

Going back to Hoyle’s tornado, and looking at our clock, there’s an interesting observation we can make. Look at the vast stretches of time involved in our one day analogy. Life originated in the dark night. By dawn, there’s simple forms of life capable of leaving fossils for us to uncover billions of years later. Not a lot happens from dawn till dusk. Our day seems pretty boring. In reality, evolution is inching forward, slowly accumulating gradual change, and so, after lunch, we’ve got single-celled algae. Do you know how remarkable that is? How astounding something as simple as algae are? They’re the basis of all plant life, applying photosynthesis to transform Earth’s atmosphere into the wonderful, breathable, oxygen-rich environment we enjoy.

By early evening, sexual reproduction is occurring. Apart from the wonderful benefits that has brought to us Homo sapiens roughly a billion years later, there is a very serious side to sex. Sex represents a unique way of distributing genes throughout a population. It’s a significant step forward in evolution, improving the quality of genetic material being passed from one generation to the next.

But, have you noticed something odd? Our junk-yard tornado is moving with the speed of a light breeze blowing against a gate. We’re billions of years along the path to the kind of complex life we see around us today, and yet there’s nothing to write home about yet. If an alien astronaut was to visit Earth at this point, it would be a bland experience. Lots of activity at a microscopic layer, but nothing at the macroscopic layer we consider so important. It’s still hundreds of millions of years before we get life as simple as seaweed!!! Millions of years after that, the invasion of the jellyfish begin, only the jellyfish find there’s not too much in the way of competition for millions of more years. I don’t know about you, but I’d be in bed asleep before dinosaurs arrived on the scene just before 11PM. If it was New Year’s Eve, we’d be popping champagne and singing Auld Lang Syne, getting ready to countdown to midnight when humans finally came to the party.

You see, Fred Hoyle’s Tornado junk-yard 747 analogy is not a reflection of reality. In fact, it ignores reality. Life evolved slowly, gradually, at a pace that, for most of the actual time involved, would have been barely recognisable as progress at all. I can understand why people are sceptical about evolution, because it occurs so slowly it is nigh on impossible to recognize within our lifetimes (although Lenski did). And yet, relative to the last four billion years, it is racing along at the moment. You think evolution is slow now? You should have been here when algae was formed. LMAO.

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3 February 2012 -Edit- To clarify, the rate of evolution actually hasn’t changed at all over billions of years, as is demonstrated by the molecular clock, but as gradual changes have accumulated in various branches or streams of development, the observable effect of evolution compounds over time, and so we have a hockey stick type effect, where a long tail leads over billions of years to a sharp increase over 500 million years, as a “runaway effect” occurs. Only our “runaway effect” is still really, really slow from the perspective of man. In other words, more genetic diversity gives rise to more change across a broader range of species, that rate of change, though, is largely the same. It’s a bit like giving your kid’s soccer team a bag of oranges at half time in a game, lots of oranges will be peeled by the players, but no one player will peel theirs that much faster than anyone else.

The problem was, we can scan the heavens so well and so fast that there simply aren’t enough trained astronomers to categorize all the galaxies that are out there. Galaxies, it seems, are a dime a dozen. In fact, with an estimated two hundred billion to five hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe, they’re a dime a billion. Computers can count them, but their shapes and the angles on which we see them make it nigh on impossible for a computer to categorise them. There clearly aren’t enough astronomers to tackle the task, although, wouldn’t it be nice if there were billions of astronomers, and so the university did what no government department would ever do, it asked the public for help with Galaxy Zoo.

Zoouniverse is an extension of the Galaxy Zoo civilian scientist program, asking for our help with a number of other crowd-source projects:

• Categorizing galaxies
• Exploring the surface of the moon to categorize craters, identify old weathered craters, spot irregular geological features and, perhaps, stumble upon Apollo landing sites
• Assist in understanding how galaxies merge
• Search for supernova in distant galaxies
• Help Kepler in the search for planets around other stars (highly recommended)
• Assist in identifying the formation of new stars in nebula
• Find possible targets in the asteroid belt for the New Horizons probe to explore
• Categorise solar storms raging across the surface of our sun
• Model climate change from records made by the British Royal Navy
• Gather information to assist in the study of ancient Greek ruins
• Categorize whale calls

In short, there’s something in the zoo for the whole family. I sat with my two girls for about an hour tonight, going through galaxies, looking at their subtle differences, pointing out irregular shapes, bars in the core, and two wonderful examples of gravitational lensing.

Crowd-sourcing is an interesting phenomena. Essentially, it says all of us are smarter than any one of us individually. You or I may not be geniuses, but, pool our thinking together and, hey, presto, genius. And there are hundreds of crowd-sourcing projects exploiting this immense resource pool we call humanity.

Got some spare time on your hands? Fancy looking at some photos of the heavens? Instead of surfing the net, why not surf the stars?

Be sure to check out the Galaxy Zoo and the Zooniverse as a whole, and give science in the 21st century a helping hand.