Who’s on First: The Doctor’s great moments in sport

Thanks to the performance contributed on the football pitch by the increasingly awesome Matt Smith in this season’s Doctor Who episode “The Lodger,” BuckBokai was inspired enough to delve the ol’ matrix memory banks for other great sporting moments from this frankly mostly cerebral Time Lord.

Some sports in which the Doctor has taken part through his 11 lives and 900-some odd years include the following.

• Football. Right, so the only way James Corden and his mythical King’s Arms squad are ever going to evoke comparison to proper soccer would be to note that the screening of “The Lodger” took place during the 2010 World Cup. Tell you what, though: For a dude who appeared as clueless about the sport as he did, Doctor no. 11’s four or five goals were quite impressive indeed. And he looked even better than his predecessor the Romantic Doctor might have.

(Random thought: Imagine the dream court case of NBA vs. BBC over Matt Smith’s “I love this game” line…)

• Cricket. The honorary Englishman From Space finally regenerated with a love for the quintessential British sport when Doctor no. 5 was pilot of the TARDIS. Everyone naturally thinks of the otherwise forgettable “Black Orchid” in this regard – Peter Davison himself has said that his own personal highlight as the Doctor was knocking down the wicket in one bowl.

But check out the epic comic-book story “The Tides of Time,” in which the universe literally “hinges on a single thrown ball in a game of cricket.”

How obsessed was Doctor no. 5 with this game? Put it to you this way: Within 10 minutes of screen time following his companion Adric’s death, the Doctor has his nose distractedly buried in newspaper, lamenting the state of current British cricket. Then again, that was pretty much everyone’s reaction in 1982.

Also of note here is Doctor no. 10’s mean bowling ability – apparently he kept that from no. 5, along with the glasses and sneakers – to save a life in Human Nature and the aborted Tom Baker-era script by Douglas Adams which revealed that sport itself is actually a metaphor for the bloody Krikkit Wars which ravaged the galaxy for a thousand years. If the story sounds familiar, it’s because Adams recycled it part-and-parcel for Life, the Universe and Everything.

• Fishing. Hey, they show it on ESPN, so it’s a sport. Doctors 4 and 6 were particularly enamored with angling for the elusive gumblejack, but never seemed to have much luck beyond catching a mini minnow which “must weigh very nearly one ounce.” Of course, Doctor 4’s penchant for fishing not only led him to temporarily blow off his mission to search for the Key to Time and also gave us that favored line, “You’ve shot the wrong man’s hat.”

John L. Sullivan: Heavyweight champ, the Doctor's pal

• Boxing. Though never actually seen on screen, Doctor no. 3 warned one would-be assailant by mentioned he’d trained with the great John L. Sullivan. Sometime a bit later, presumably, the Doctor picked up Venusian karate; whether this martial art is practiced as a sport on Venus or elsewhere is unknown.

• Ultimate fighting. Naturally, the pacifistic Doctor would never take part in Kimbo Slice’s sport, but in the slightly deceptively titled novel Match of the Day, the Doctor outdoes the Don Kings of the universe in managing the great fighter Leela in Zone Three. After winning his first duel, Leela steadily gains in reputation and ranking while not going a single round with anyone: Extremely crafty on a planet, where, as the back cover reminds, “*not* to kill is an offence punishable by death.”

• Chess. Doctor no. 1’s game of choice and one at which he was good enough to best the Celestial Toymaker, a being whose existence is devoted to games of chance. He seemed to have lost a bit of the ability by his fourth incarnation, who consistently lost to faithful robotic companion K-9.

What’s that, you say? Chess isn’t a sport? Hey, tell it to the folks of the International Mind Sports Association, a bunch of folks who would surely also enjoy a nice game of…

• 3-D chess. Now, now, BuckBokai knows what you’re thinking: 3-D chess is property of the Star Trek universe – the Doctor never played that! True enough in official Doctor Who canon, but if you’ve never read “The Doctor and the Enterprise” by Jean Airey, surely one of the first full-length fan fiction Doctor Who novels ever written and still the very best, well, what are you still here for? Click this now, i’m telling ya!

This tight, exciting crossover tale was a revelation in 1982 and still reads excellently today. So as not to give too much of the plot away, BuckBokai can tell you that a mind-meld results in a close friendship between good ol’ Doctor no. 4 and Commander Spock. At the 3-D board, a slightly surprising result occurs.

“Check and mate, I believe.”

Spock studied the board. “You have learned the game well.”

“It’s much more challenging than the two-dimensional version I’m used to. I’ll have to teach it to K-9 when I get him fixed.”

“The Doctor and the Enterprise” also reveals the Doctor’s peak performance in perhaps his single best Earth sport:

One of the rec rooms had been turned into what Lt. Kyle explained to Kirk as the site of the Starfleet Yo-Yo Championship.

“Where did all the yo-yos come from, Lieutenant?”

“Oh, the Doctor gave them to us.”

“Did he set up the rules for this … competition?”

“Set them up? No sir. He told us what the rules were – back on Earth.”

“Will he be participating?”

“No sir. He said he’d already won his championship in 1923.”

It should be noted that the Doctor is probably having the Enterprise crew on a bit here, however, as the record shows that one Pedro Flores was credited with making the first modern yo-yo in America in … 1923. Mass production in the ‘States began in 1928, and competitions formally began about that time.

Quite possible, of course, is the chance that the Doctor merely got his dates a bit wrong and/or that he’d actually won his championship in Greece in the sixth century B.C. or perhaps in some obscure British tourney (though if that were the case, wouldn’t the Time Lord naturally refer to the toy as a “quiz”?) in the early 20th.

Whatever the case, there’s no disputing Doctor no. 4’s yo-yo mastery – He was well better than any ol’ Andorian for sure.

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