Dr. Who?

]Who is he? Well, he is Who. All the eleven guys in the picture are actually the same guy. It happens that the character they interpret is called The Doctor, an alien that is also a Time Lord of sorts who can "regenerate"when in state of near death. So every time the lead actor is going to become unavailable for some reason the writers of the series called "Dr. Who" simply create a story where the good doctor ends up in great need "to regenerate" and thus a new actor steps in and a new incarnation of The Doctor is with us (the current incarnation is the eleventh). 

Doctor Who is a sci-fi character created by the very British BBC (which explains the Doctor's preference for Britain when visiting Earth) in 1963 and has been out in series, specials and numerous revivals. As I mentioned the Doctor is a Time Lord who in order to travel through time and space uses The Tardis, a spaceship that in the outside looks like a blue Police box but it's much larger in the inside. He travels righting wrongs in the timestream, saving other civilizations and fighting adversaries that are aspowerful as he is and sometimes even more. The Doctor looks different every time and his personality is also different because he is a being with different aspects but his memory and essence remains the same. He loves taking companions, women especially, that help him in his adventures. His stories are sometimes eccentric but never grotesque, always quite imaginative and even impredictable to the point that the Doctor as met his previous or future incarnations and worked together. Also he may have run into past or future versions of his current self where he is trapped and accept the case that there are things that he himself cannot change.

The version I knew first was the Fourth Doctor played by Tom Baker. I remember my fascination for a show that was so obviously different from U.S. shows. In many ways it was educational: in one of his visits to the future the Fourth Doctor and his companion arrived into the distant future of Earth. She is terrified for what she sees, for Earth is destined to be a place devoid of all life, an immense rock whose surface is plagued by deadly storms and lightning. She asks the Doctor what happened to Earth, what mankind could have possibly done to the planet and the Doctor explains it was not us. Earth is to become what is to become not because of destiny but for that rule of the universe that states that everything changes and nothing remains the same.

Who is Doctor Who for real? No one knows, but his series is a must-see for those who love science fiction, a field in which this character is an icon.