Friday is Bring Your Doctor to Work Day

Doctor Who, that is. (Or, as Superbadfriend would sing in tune with the show's theme, "Doctor Whooooooooooooo...")

Today, the fourth incarnation of the venerable British TV character (as played with curly hair, flowing scarf and wide grin by Tom Baker) graces the top of my workplace cabinet, along with his time machine, the TARDIS, and his faithful robot dog, K-9.

I've always been a sci-fi geek, and when I first ran across Doctor Who late on a weekday afternoon in 1978, which PBS stations across the country had just begun airing, I was hooked straight away, despite the low budgets, crappy special effects and abundant overacting. It was fun. (PBS originally aired the Tom Baker episodes in half-hour installments--same as they had aired on the BBC, but now with introductions by actor Howard DeSilva--but later ran the show on Sunday nights after their British comedy block of Dave Allen at Large and Monty Python in an edited movie format.)

There had been three Doctors before Tom Baker, and there have been several since (counting the remainder of the original series, which ran until 1989, the made-for-TV movie in 1996 and the revived BBC-Wales series that runs to this day on both sides of the Atlantic), but for many Americans, Baker, who played the part for more seasons (seven) than any other actor, simply is Doctor Who.