Postcard from Bishkek

Every now and again I sitting working, or in a meeting, and the peace and quiet is disturbed by a sudden noise as someone’s mobile telephone bursts into life.

If it happens to be in a meeting, then a set frowns usually erupt on the faces of the participants – so I always try to remember to switch my phone into “silent mode” whenever I go into a meeting.  It’s amazing how many different ringtones there are.  Some people don’t seem to alter the ringtone from the factory preset and that can mean that people rush to find their handset and see if it is there phone ringing.

One of my friends, however, has one of a cock crowing … loudly … very loudly! … so loudly, in fact, that it normally sends me jumping out of my skin.  I suppose it means he can hear it even in the melee of a rowdy bar when watching a sporting event like the Rugby World Cup.

Another friend has set his to the anthem of the Soviet Union, (but I think he’s changed it now … he is a civil servant and I think it brought his loyalty to Kyrgyzstan into question – especially since Russia has readopted the tune as their national anthem.)

When I was looking for a distinctive ringtone to use, I looked at several alternatives … I ruled out the James Bond theme and Mission Impossible as I thought they might give people the wrong idea.  Several classical tunes were already in use and sometimes difficult to hear – such as The Rite of Spring or Carmen Burana.  In the end, I settled on:

Da-da-dum da-da dum da-da-dum dum-di-dum,
Da-da-dum da-da dum da-da-dum dum-di-dum,
Diddy-da-dum diddy-da-dum diddy-da-dum,
Dum- dum
Diddy-da-dum diddy-da-dum diddy-da-dum
Dum- dum
Wa-haaaaa wa-haaaaa

As a result, I always know if it is my phone that’s ringing, no-one else has this ring tone.  It has another advantage in that it starts off softly and takes a while to build up the crescendo to get the Wa-haaaaa’s, so no-one is sent jumping out of their skin.  When I am with another Englishman, however, it normally causes a halt in the conversation as they try to place it and then say, with a bemused look on their face, “Dr. Who”.

That’s right, it’s the theme tune to the television series Dr. Who:

 http://youtu.be/8NPJ6GMXM3E 

Another friend of mine, a local person, was intrigued by this choice.  One day he had the chance to see an episode, dubbed into Russian, and made a point of watching.  He decided that it was nonsense and wondered why I liked it.  I tried to explain that it was part of my youth – and had a profound effect on people of my age when the first episodes were broadcast back in the 1960’s.

Tomorrow, incidentally, marks the anniversary of the first episode back in 1963.

It was almost totally overlooked – overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy the day before, (November 22nd, 1963), and the BBC decided to run the opening episode the following week just before the second episode was due to be broadcast.

We had never seen anything quite like this before.

The strange character of the Doctor, a grumpy Time Lord over nine hundred years old, who travels through space and time in a ship called the TARDIS – Time and Relative Dimensions in Space –  which was disguised as a police telephone box and was bigger, vastly bigger on the inside than the outside, captured our imaginations.  Susan, his teenager granddaughter went to school and presented the teachers with lots of conundrums, saying things like “… but it wasn’t like that”, and two of them, (one, conveniently named Ian, automatically caught my attention), decided to investigate only to find themselves kidnapped and catapulted back into the stone age.

To be honest, the next few episodes struck me as tedious and tiresome.  These days they would strike me even more so as there was lots of talk and very little action and I was ready to give up … but then came the masterpiece which was to create a legend.

The TARDIS transported its motley crew across time and space to the planet of Skaro where there were two intelligent life forms – the humanoid Thaals and their nemesis, the Kaleds, a lifeform that had once been humanoid but had evolved so that they could not move around except in what looked like individual mobile tanks made out of egg boxes: The Daleks.  These were a ruthless, technologically advanced, race, (apparently meant to be an analogy with the Nazis of World War II), and their cries of “Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate”, delivered with an electronic mechanical voice that we had never heard before with the screen flashing between negative and normal as the actors fell to ground screaming in their death throes sent lots of children hiding behind their settees, (divan or couch), in terror.  I actually remember that … it’s not an urban myth!

The storyline at the end of one episode called for one of the actors to get into the “individual tank” of a Dalek that had been disabled.  They opened the tank and lifted the creature out covered in a blanket and placed it on the floor before opening a sliding door and moving off.  As the music started and credits rolled by the camera scanned the bundle on the floor and a terrifying tentacle started to emerge from underneath the blanket.  Hitchcock couldn’t have done it better!

Terry Nation, the scriptwriter had performed a miracle and had created a sensation which would sweep the country by storm and led to a franchise which would last well into the next century.  Schoolkids would run around the school playground with their arms held out like the sucker and gun on a Dalek crying “Exterminate, exterminate …” and the joke emerged that it was easy to escape them, all you had to do was run upstairs … but in later episodes we discovered that these “individual tanks” could fly.

It soon became a “national institution” in the UK although it took some time for it to become accepted in the American market.  Many famous actors wanted to be involved, and were given roles.  The programme evolved into what the Guinness Book of Records says is the longest running Science Fiction television show and the “most successful” science fiction series of all time with spin off books, DVD’s, radio programmes and other franchised merchandise.

Like most forms of good storytelling, (whether in literature, theatre, films, poetry, song …), it works on several levels.  Superficially one can take the stories at face value, as entertainment, but there are other more significant levels for those who care to look for them.

On the whole, the productions don’t attempt to ascribe to realism. Unlike Star Trek, Star Wars and the comic book super heroes, Doctor Who, the low cost special effects don’t detract from the essential storyline.  (At one point a scandal almost erupted as a helicopter was crashed in the plot the first episode of one series and aficionados wondered what was happening to their beloved programme.)

The character of the Doctor and his companions evolved to quite complex levels and he now assumes a godlike character saving humanity, the earth if not the universe.  Despite the imaginative storylines, some of the plots are, to be frank, escapist nonsense, especially when taking at face value.  However, they are able to explore quite complex scientific, philosophical and metaphysical ideas.  It may require us to cast aside our preconceptions but, if we are prepared to do so, they help us to challenge our understanding of the world and ourselves.

 

Tags: Expat, Me, Reminiscences