Professor Enigma

Launched in SY 1963, Professor Enigma holds the distinction of being the galaxy's longest-running science fiction television series. It's also one of the most popular, with vocal fans throughout the known galaxy. It airs Saturdays at 7:30 PM (Galactic Standard Time) on BBC One, the British Broadcasting Corporation's primary station serving the former United Kingdom on Earth and the Crown Colonies of the Rigel, Vega, and Nelson Sectors, and is rebroadcast in numerous other markets, most notably on Thursdays at 8 PM on the Republic of Zeta Cygni's Avalon 17.

History

The complete history of Professor Enigma is much too long and complex for this document. For detailed information, please refer to The Complete Guide to Professor Enigma by science-fiction historian David T. Russell (author of The Complete Guide to Dalek 207 and The Complete Guide to Cyber Force Gold, among others), which is probably available wherever you got the Hitchhiker's Guide.

Briefly, though, Professor Enigma was developed in the early 1960s - nearly four decades before Earth's formal First Contact with the galactic civilization - as a children's entertainment and education program by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The first episode, entitled "A Most Peculiar Sort of Person", aired on November 23, 1963, but was rebroadcast the following weekend, as the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy rather distracted the viewership the first time around.

"A Most Peculiar Sort of Person" introduced viewers to the mysterious time traveler known only as "the Professor". An irascible elderly gentleman played by the irascible and elderly Scottish actor William MacCrofton, the Professor seemed to be a member of an advanced alien civilization. Accompanied by his granddaughter Helen and a couple of nosy Child Welfare officers, he embarked rather by accident on a journey through space and time.

(By a curious coincidence, William MacCrofton was the great-grandfather of 21st-century explorer, adventurer, and television personality Dennis MacCrofton. In 2016 the younger MacCrofton was created the first Earl of Langley-Croft by King Stephen II for his work averting an Earth-Mars war.)

Initially, Professor Enigma made an attempt at being educational by touching on various historical matters, but the science fiction aspect of the show took over fairly early on. Within a few seasons, the program was produced and marketed solely for its entertainment value. It quickly developed a reputation as a well-written show that was suitable for young children and older viewers, so long as you didn't mind giving the younger ones a good scare now and then.

The original show ran until the mid-1980s, when declining production values and some well-publicized clashes within the creative staff finally did what two decades' worth of villainous aliens and monsters had failed to do - put an apparent end to the Professor's wanderings.

Apart from an abortive effort to bring the show to American TV in the mid-1990s, Professor Enigma's first revival came in 2005. By that time, Earth had been welcomed into the galactic community by the Salusian Empire and things were really hopping on the third planet from the Sun. The time seemed ripe to bring back the Professor, whose adventures spanning time and space had a currency that other sci-fi properties lacked. Unlike most of the sci-fi scenarios dreamed up by pre-Contact Earthmen, Professor Enigma still seemed relevant and plausible in Earth culture's new galactic context.

The show ran, with the occasional hiatus of from one to twelve years, through the early 2290s. For a brief period, there were in fact two different Professor Enigma series running at the same time. The 2173 split between the UK and the New Wiltshire colony led to a decade-long period in which the New Wiltshire splinter of the BBC refused to recognize the Earth branch's trademarks and produced its own Professor Enigma series. Wiltshiran actor Victor Holmes, who played the title character in this "rogue series", is known by modern fans as the Avignon Professor.

As with so much of what was fun in the universe, Professor Enigma died out after the fall of the Wedge Defense Force - even though, unlike such productions as Dalek 207, the show was never owned or produced by any organization related to the WDF. During the show's long run, the Professor had become identified as a sometime ally of the WDF, and BBC Controller Gabriel Slope was concerned about the repercussions as GENOM's all-out campaign to wreck the WDF's public image showed itself more and more successful. The show was canceled "for good" in 2291.

The rehabilitation of the WDF's image, starting in 2380, got people at the BBC thinking about bringing back the organization's most famous fictional ally as well. By 2385, Professor Enigma was back on the air, and the show hasn't slowed down since. Production on the 2407 season was disrupted for a few weeks by the BBC's move to new headquarters on Second Westminster following the Earth Alliance's 2406 crackdown in the Solar system, but the season aired only one week late.

Key elements

Professor Enigma is set apart by a number of unique characteristics. These include:

The Professor. Known by no other name ("Professor Enigma" is not the chracter's name), of no fixed abode, the Professor is an outcast from the mythical Time Lords, a race of superintelligent humanoid beings from a planet outside normal space and time. Time Lords regenerate into new bodies at death, which makes for a convenient way to change out the star of the show without losing the lead character. The regeneration process is unpredictable and often involves significant personality change, but in any form, the Professor is always clever, inquisitive, morally upright, and a bit of a crusader. Most incarnations of the Professor have preferred wits to weapons, though some have been more than willing to take the fight to the enemy when provoked.

The TARDIS. The Professor's home and vessel in one, the TARDIS is a Time Lord ship capable of traveling to any point in space and time (within a few loosely defined limits known as the Laws of Time). A dimensionally transcendent construct (invented for TV centuries before such things were possible in real life), the TARDIS is much larger inside than out. Its outer shell is supposed to change shape to blend in with its surroundings, but that mechanism broke in the very first episode, leaving the vehicle stuck in a shape that was inconspicuous in 1960s Glasgow (where "A Most Peculiar Sort of Person" was set) but tends to stand out a bit anywhere else - a red police call box. The TARDIS sometimes appears to be alive, and has some sort of telepathic link with the Professor.

The TARDIS

The Professor's traveling companions. There is almost always at least one person traveling along with the Professor, usually human, sometimes not. (Occasionally there are as many as three, though four-person core casts get a bit unwieldy and the writers generally try to avoid them.) These characters serve a number of dramatic functions - they provide the Professor with someone to talk to, someone to explain things to instead of talking directly to the Audience, and (the clich� goes) someone to rescue. In earlier times, companions tended to be viewed as mostly decorative - they were almost always good-looking young women who could scream or run, but not both at once, and were adept at asking the Professor obvious questions. Since the 2385 revival, however, the companions have been held to a higher dramatic standard, functioning as the Professor's partners and forming deeper, better-explored bonds with the title character and each other.

The monsters. Professor Enigma has a long tradition of frightening monsters, malevolent aliens, and generally unpleasant villainous characters. Some of these creatures have become as famous in their own right as the show that spawned them. Some of the best-known bad guys have been real-life threats fictionalized for the show; over the centuries, the Professor has battled Daleks, Cybermen, a renegade Daemon (from the planet Daemos), agents of the Cardassian Union's dread Obsidian Order, and several different kinds of Martians. Fictional adversaries that have faced the Professor over the years have included the wicked renegade Time Lord called Dominus (something of an arch-nemesis, he has appeared more times than any other villain), the terrible Vervoids, and the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe.

Continued in "Professor Enigma today" >>>

Professor Enigma today

At the midway point of the 2409 season, actor Adam Feldon, the 99th actor to portray the Professor (not counting Victor Holmes), announced that he would step down at the end of the year. In the last scene of the season finale, "Equal and Opposite", the 99th Professor succumbs to verteron radiation poisoning. His final words are, "Oh dear. I think... this may complicate matters somewhat."

Unusually for an outgoing Professor's final episode, "Equal and Opposite" doesn't include a tag scene with the first appearance of the new Professor. Instead, it ends with Feldon collapsing face-down next to the TARDIS control console, his head and hands surrounded by the orange glow that has been associated with the "regeneration" special effect since the 21st century.

Thus, viewers had to wait through the 2409-2410 winter hiatus to find out just how complicated matters became. The BBC clamped an iron lid of secrecy down on the casting process for the Hundredth Professor, not announcing the new choice nor showing the new Professor in any of the 2410 season's promotional materials. Instead, the pre-first-episode promos featured clips of various old friends and enemies of the Professor acting shocked or astonished, along with the tagline, "Professor Enigma: Like No Other".

The reason for all the secrecy became clear on April 17, 2410, when the first episode of the 2410 season, "Weltanschauung", first aired. After a quick recap of the 99th Professor's final moments, viewers were treated to their first sight of the Hundredth climbing to his feet.

Or rather... her feet.

The idea of the Professor being played by a woman had been floated before, but never any too seriously. That the BBC would actually do it, and for such a momentous occasion as the character's hundredth incarnation, was utterly unexpected. Controversy erupted, not only in the fandom, but in the mainstream press throughout the galaxy. Not only had the BBC cast a woman as the Hundredth Professor, they'd cast one no one had ever heard of before - a virtually unknown actress from the Crown Colony of Coalhill, Rose Tyler.

Tyler's main previous claim to fame was a couple of pop albums not many people off Coalhill ever heard, and her pop career ended because she disappeared without a trace for more than a year, then told her agent she just "forgot to phone". As such, the few people who had even heard of her weren't expecting much. [Ed. note: Boy, were we wrong.]

It took her exactly one episode to win over the vast majority of the skeptics. Once the new Professor met up with her first traveling companion, the sparks started flying, the buzz spread across the galaxy at the speed of the Internet, and Enigma Nation was hooked. The chemistry between Tyler and her on-screen partner is palpable, and the scripts' careful treatment of the Professor-companion dynamics involved has cranked the intrigue level through the ceiling.

The current TARDIS crew, as of the midpoint of the 2410 season, is:

The Professor

The Professor (Rose Tyler) in a formal mood

The Professor in her workin'-on-the-TARDIS clothes

Ironically, once you get past the fact that she's very much a woman, the Hundredth Professor isn't really a radical departure from her predecessors - meaning she's everything the Professor should be: courageous, upstanding, smart, and bold. Make no mistake about it, Tyler's version is tough, too; she's no shrinking violet and she doesn't leave the heavy lifting to the chappies she pals around with. She's firmly in the camp of the Professors who have been unafraid to get their hands dirty when it matters.

Tyler's Professor is a creature of contradictions - though she's one of the funniest Professors in recent memory, she also carries an underlying load of anger over the events of "Equal and Opposite", anger that flashes out at odd moments - and guilt, too, which occasionally threatens to crush her before she musters another of her thousand-watt smiles and bucks up for the next crisis. There's a streak of ruthlessness in her that makes her unpredictable, and at the same time she's absolutely dependable. She knows the right thing to do and she does it, regardless of the potential cost.

The Hundredth Professor speaks with a pronounced northern-England accent, very different from her predecessors' modes of speech, and has a distinct fondness for grapes. One of the running jokes in this season is that she is the only person who doesn't seem in some way unsettled by the fact that she's not the man she used to be. If anything, she rather seems to enjoy the change of pace. "When you've worn 99 faces," she remarks in an early episode, "it's nice to have one that you know you'll remember afterward."

John

John Torchman (Jack Harkness)

The Hundredth Professor's first companion also debuted in the 2410 season opener, "Weltanschauung". Played by the irrepressible Jack Harkness (best known for his role as Major Tom Barrows in The Crimson Lizard vs. UNIT), John started out as a boring chap with a boring life in a boring city on a boring planet - but that all changed when he crossed paths with the Professor. Initially a bit hesitant about the whole time-travel thing, John all but exploded into his role in the season's second episode, "Stars' End", becoming a swashbuckling, wisecracking rogue and the Professor's right-hand man.

Cheeky but capable, John more than holds his own as he and the Professor crash from crisis to crisis. His trademarks have become his fondness for 20th-century fashions and the fact that he holds the distinction of being the rare companion who normally carries a weapon. Rumors abound that Harkness and the show's writers based John on the famed interstellar rascal Han Solo - rumors that Harkness, with his customary grin, does nothing to deny.

Since the first, there has been a tension between the Professor and John that has traditionally been absent from previous incarnations' relationships with their companions. Though the show remains cagey about just what is going on there - the Professor is naturally a little flirtatious and John is naturally very much so, so they might just be having each other on constantly... or it might be something else again.

Popular demand

In addition to the TARDIS crew, the 2410 season introduced another supporting character whose popularity with the fans has led to rumors that he might be appearing again - under conditions that can only be described as mysterious.

Christopher T.E. Smith-Chesterfield, the 11th Earl of Eccleston (John W. Smith)

A Victorian gentleman of the old school, Lord Eccleston (played by the completely unknown but quite good John W. Smith) hails from the year 1888 (and the season's fourth episode, "Danse Macabre"), when he, the Professor, and John were the only survivors of a dinner party that went very, very wrong. Though well-bred and well-mannered, Lord E isn't the stuffy stick-in-the-mud of Victorian legend. Under his impeccably tailored suits and his perfectly blocked topper, he's a two-fisted man of action in the Haggardian tradition, and his wit is sharp enough to keep up with the Professor's dry sarcasm and John's half-serious flirting. He so impressed the Professor and John that they invited him to go along with them at episode's end, but he declined, saying that someone had to stay and explain to the police why all the other party guests no longer had any bones.

His parting remark, however, has led to a great deal of fan speculation as to his return. Just before seeing the Professor and John off in the TARDIS, he tips his hat and says, "Well, I suppose this is goodbye, my friends," but then, with a wink, adds just before the door closes, "For now!"

Some fans believe it is possible to spot Lord E in the background in episode 2410-08, "The Infinite Corridor", and indeed there is a man in a top hat visible in one of the crowd scenes, but even with holographic enhancement his face can't be made out. Since that scene is set in the 44th century, it would certainly be odd for an English nobleman from the 1800s to be present without the Professor's help. Regardless, the call to bring him back has grown in volume since "Danse Macabre" first aired, and the producers' continued silence on the matter is perversely taken as confirmation that he will, indeed, return.

The future

The other principal rumor surrounding Professor Enigma today is a less happy one - that, despite the fact that she's seized the role with both hands and made it hers, Rose Tyler will be leaving the show at season's end. Neither she nor the production staff will admit to it, if it's true, but neither will they state unequivocally that she's staying on for 2411 or beyond.

This Guide entry was written by Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1886), Archbishop of Dublin - or so he claimed, and who are we to say otherwise?

Polychrome

i love the little nod to DJ and NXE... great big of background! as always, a lovely blend of current shows, and eyrie's own unique goodness... with a lemon twist :)

-Z

Rabid Crack Turtle 3.14159
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