By Edward Kelly
As a kid, I always had a thing for sidekicks. I favored Robin over Batman, Impulse over The Flash, The Genie over Aladdin, Thud Butt over Rufio (from “Hook” and, if you got that reference, any chance you want to be BFFs, like, right away?).
It made playing backyard games with the neighborhood kids really simple. While everyone argued over who got to be Leonardo or Raphael, I was happily off to the side as Michelangelo, swinging my very-much-DIY, cardboard-toilet-paper-rolls-held-together-with-string nunchucks.
To me, sidekicks are often far more fascinating than main characters. They can be funnier, smarter, flawed, and oftentimes more believable. While the hero had to be the strong go-getter who was constantly in danger, the sidekick got to be the guy who commented on the action and sometimes even saved the day.
The best sidekick of all and an inspiration throughout my childhood was Emmett L. “Doc” Brown of “Back to the Future“ fame. It was Doc who made the trilogy for me. He was the ultimate nerd: knew everything and, if he didn’t, he could figure it out pretty quickly. He got to drive the flying car and built not one but two time machines (also he got some play from Ted Danson’s wife, thus marking the only time Jules Verne got anyone laid).
In the eyes of 10-year-old me, Doc had no competition.
As I grew up though, I started to realize that while being a sidekick is great, there’s always the sense that you’re on the outside looking in.
And then another doctor came along. This one, however, had no name.
In the long-running BBC series “Doctor Who”, we have, again, a time traveling doctor, but this one isn’t an eccentric Hill Valley citizen. He’s The Doctor, the man of a million (or at least 11 at this point) faces, the last of the Time Lords, and the guy who pops in with his time-and-relative-dimensions-in-space (or TARDIS) Police Box to save the day.
So, two time-traveling doctors. One’s a sidekick and other has sidekicks (or “companions” as the show calls them). The Doctor’s companions are usually nowhere near as interesting as he is, mainly because, y’know, he’s basically a god and all that. Sidekicks generally have to add to the story (offer some techno-speak or a brief moment of levity or sometimes just a summary of the hero’s goals) and The Doctor’s companions are there most of the time to humanize him a bit (tangent: the necessity of The Doctor to stay connected to humanity was a theme played out expertly in the episode of “The Waters of Mars” when The Doctor decided he was no longer a god and actually simply God and therefore the rules of time travel no longer applied to him).
Throughout the “Back to the Future” trilogy, Doc Brown often steps into his role as explainer first and character second, with Christopher Lloyd seemingly relishing every last word of convoluted sci-fi babble. Marty, meanwhile, stares on dumbly.
I say this with no disrespect to the character of Marty McFly—he’s a great protagonist, no doubt. He was headstrong and wholly relatable, the average kid who lucked out when the crazy, wild-eyed scientist invited him to a mall parking lot late one night and showed him his time machine. But, let’s face it, he’s pretty much the last guy you want time traveling. He’s a total klutz. Many of the major plot points throughout all three movies are caused by his complete ineptitude: saving his dad’s life and causing his mom to crush on him; buying the Almanac that allows Biff to create alternate 1985; not being able to back down from a fight and thus almost dying at the hands of Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen.
Contrast this with The Doctor who is so smart that the show doesn’t even bother introducing plot-solving dues ex machinas. Most of the time, when The Doctor and his companion are in a tight spot, the writers solve it by The Doctor telling people to shut up so he can think.
Honestly: thinking. That’s the go-to plot device. Even when it almost gets him vaporized (as it does in the transcendently good season four episode “Midnight”), The Doctor’s cleverness provides him with an answer, because while Doc Brown seems to know everything, The Doctor literally knows everything.
In the States, “Doctor Who” is still pretty firmly lodged as a “cult show.” That’s fair enough—sometimes its cheapness and camp can be a turn-off to viewers. What’s even more interesting, though, is that in the UK, “Doctor Who” is a legitimate hit—spawning legions of devoted fans, magazines, books, comics, and, of course, a pantheon of toys.
It says quite a bit about the cultures of the US and the UK that the face most associated with time traveling in the US is Marty McFly: a know-nothing kid who lucks into this adventure. Meanwhile, the smartest man in the room, The Doctor, is the representative of time travel across the pond.
As Americans, we tend to romanticize the idea of the lone cowboy, the brave frontiersman, the rugged individual, the guy who bucks the system and gets away with it. Marty is that guy. He’s a bucker of the greatest system of all—time itself.
The Doctor meanwhile is basically just a really smart dude. He pays attention, he learns things along the way, and he figures stuff out by, yeah, simply thinking really hard.
In a way, this kind of explains the show’s standing among American viewers—Americans don’t like eggheads, they don’t like knowing that someone out there is smarter than they are and, a lot of the time, they don’t like to entertain the idea that they might be wrong. It also explains why smart people like The Doctor so much. He doesn’t need to slow down and cow-tow to anyone else. To a certain extent he’s inspirational: he’s the sidekick and the hero, the explainer and the bucker, the scientist and the adventurer.
As a kid, Doc Brown was one of my idols, but as an adult, I’d put The Doctor pretty high on the list of people I often emulate. There’s nothing wrong with being the sidekick, no, not at all, but there’s something fulfilling about seeing yourself as The Guy rather than The Guy Behind The Guy.
Although, I must say, making a homemade Sonic Screwdriver is proving pretty difficult.
