The Science of Doctor Who (2013) - full transcript

Blowing your mind,
that's what Doctor Who's all about.

What makes it all so fun is that

while all this crazy
science fiction is going on,

there's actual facts.

You've got space travel,
you've got time travel,

you've got regeneration.

These are all the powerful themes
of Doctor Who.

And they're also the things that
drive science forward.

What is that?
Is that a mask?

Watching Doctor Who made me
the space scientist I am today.

It opened up possibilities.



You must be exterminated!

My understanding of time travel
is pretty much restricted

to the idea that some telephone boxes
are a lot more useful than others.

Some of the science
on the show is real.

Some of the time-travel stuff
makes a little bit of sense.

We drove through this.

I sometimes get asked the question,

how much of the science fiction
in Doctor Who is science fact?

I believe that, given enough time,

almost all of Doctor Who
could become science fact.

- So, what now, Doctor?
- Well, time to get cracking, Doctor.

The TARDIS stands for Time And
Relative Dimensions In Space.

And it's a good name.
It borrows a lot from science.

The TARDIS is very British.
It's sort of a policeman's phone box.



It's the most common,
ordinary object-- at the time,

this was in 1963, so police boxes
were all over London.

Unfortunately,
the chameleon circuit got stuck,

and it ended up being
a police box forever.

It's not aerodynamic at all.

Although it doesn't look pretty
from the outside,

the potential is almost unlimited.

I mean, it has the power to go
through time and space like that.

Watching science fiction,
we have a certain prejudice

that rocketships are huge, they're beautiful,
they're streamlined and they're gigantic.

Wrong!

First of all, they don't have to be streamlined,
because in outer space, there's no air.

We have nanotechnology.

in the future, we're going to have the
ability to manipulate individual atoms.

Rocketships could be paper-thin.

So why not a telephone booth?

I think if there's
one enormous draw

for every child and every adult
that's ever watched Doctor Who,

it's one simple sentence: "It's bigger
on the inside than it is on the outside."

I've seen a number of companions
sort of going up to the TARDIS,

looking inside, coming out, looking round
the back, wondering where the rest of it is.

I think it's fairly infinite on the inside.

You could walk around forever.
I believe that there are probably

characters that are wandering the hallways
from hundreds of years ago.

Well? Anything you want to say?

Any passing remarks?
I've heard them all.

Many people are fascinated
by the fact that

inside the TARDIS it's quite roomy,
it's huge,

but outside it's just a phone booth.

But you see, people forget that the
phone booth is not the TARDIS at all,

it's the door.

On the other side of the door,
there could be an entire universe.

So you're okay, then?

'Cause this place, sometimes it can
make people feel a bit, you know.

I'm fine, fine. It's just...

there's a whole world in here,
just like you said.

Going through the TARDIS entrance

actually transports you to another
part of the Universe entirely.

So it doesn't have to
cram itself into this phone box,

it can be as big as it likes,
because it's somewhere else.

Think of a bubble. Our universe
is a soap bubble of some sort.

According to Einstein,
the soap bubble is expanding.

But let's say there's a baby soap bubble,

a baby soap bubble connected to
the larger soap bubble,

and there's a gateway that
connects two bubbles, two soap bubbles.

Well, is the gateway the rocketship?

No, it is just a door.

On the other side of the door
could be an entire universe.

So the TARDIS has this ability

to become whatever
you want it to look like

in order to blend in
with its surroundings.

Putting the outer shell on invisible.

Haven't done this for a while.
Big drain on the power.

- You can turn the TARDIS invisible?
- Yeah.

It just appears in the Oval Office
and no-one there sees it.

Oh, look, this is the Oval Office.

I was looking for the,
uh, Oblong Room.

I'll just be off, then, shall I?

Always does that when it's cloaked--
Ow, no, stop that.

- He said the scanner wouldn't work.
- I know!

This locked in invisibility mode...

- Sir, you have to go with them now!
- River, make her blue again!

What the hell is that?

We will have invisibility
within the coming decades.

We've already demonstrated
the basic physics in the laboratory.

So yeah, Doctor Who
has got his TARDIS,

and apparently he's got
his chameleon circuit in there,

the thing that allows them to hide
when they arrive somewhere.

We've got a laser here
that we built ourselves,

and it produces very,
very intense pulses of light.

And what we discovered is
that we shine

those pulses of light on tiny,
tiny crystals, nanostructures...

It can make them vanish.

They're still there physically--

All the atoms that make them up
are still there--

but you just can't see them.

This is the stuff we use
for the experiment.

It's an indium gallium arsenide
multiple quantum well.

Okay, well, it's in there.

It's absorbing the light,
and we shine the other laser at it,

and that stops the little
electrons in there moving,

and it goes transparent.

The reason we know it's vanished
is that the light goes through it

and we see the spike
on the oscilloscope.

When I was a kid,
you used to be able to get specs

that you were supposed to be able to put on
and you'd be able to see through things.

What we've said,
if you want to think of it in those terms,

you could say, well,
if these specs had this little laser

that did what this one does,
then it could be real.

You could have your laser, you turn it on
and it makes things vanish.

If I were to give the TARDIS a rating,

1 to 5, where 5 is definitely feasible
and 1 is impossible,

I'd probably give it a 2.

I would love it if one day
we could have a TARDIS,

but looking at where we are
scientifically today

I don't think it's very likely,
and I might even put it as low as a 1.

I have tried to read up on it.

At one point, about a year after
I started running Doctor Who,

I thought, "I'll try and read up about this,"

and oh my goodness, it's difficult.

According to Einstein's
Special Theory of Relativity,

the faster you move, the slower
time beats inside your rocketship.

That means travel into the
future is possible.

In fact, every time our astronauts
blast off into outer space,

they actually go into the future
just by a tiny fraction of a second.

If you could approach the speed of light,
then time would slow down dramatically.

Eventually, time would stop altogether.

Doctor Who has a technology centuries,
maybe millennia, more advanced than ours,

in which case, going right up
to the speed of light is child's play.

When that happens,
time slows down inside your rocketship.

So if he wants to go to a nearby star,
for example,

it takes four years for
a light beam to reach that star,

but in his TARDIS, it
may take four seconds.

In the opening sequence
for Doctor Who,

you see the TARDIS
tumbling through a tunnel.

Now, to my mind, that tunnel
could represent a wormhole,

and it's taking the TARDIS
from normal space

through this wormhole, which is
basically curved space and time,

to somewhere else.

To travel from one part of space-time
to another part of space-time,

you can take the linear route,
which is what we do--

We travel through our lives,
sort of progressing through time--

but at the same time, sometimes
we can consider distorting space-time.

So rather than having your flat sheet,
you can distort space-time,

and having two events, which might be
quite far away from each other,

brought together closer, and then you can
travel between them with a wormhole.

Hold on tight.
Everyone, hold on!

The voices!

For instance,
there's one case where

there's a London bus
travelling along,

the Doctor's on board
with a number of other people...

They go through a tunnel in London
and end up in the desert on another planet.

Look, look, if you must know,

I was tracking a hole
in the fabric of reality.

Call it a hobby.

But it was a tiny little hole,
no danger to anyone.

Suddenly it gets big
and we drive right through it.

And wormholes
could work this way.

We drove through this.

You could travel from
one planet to another planet

in a matter of seconds
by travelling through a wormhole.

- And that's...?
- A door.

A door in space.

And no matter how
fantastic these ideas are,

we measure them in the laboratory.

This is not science fiction,
it's science fact. Get used to it.

History.

Time travel into the future,
that's a snap.

Time travel into the past,
that's hard. That's real hard.

As a scientist, we have
difficulties with time travel

because of what we call paradoxes.

And the difficulty comes if you
start travelling backwards in time.

For instance, if I go back in time to,
let's say the 1950s,

and I sort of meet my father
and by accident I kill him,

that means, if I kill him before
he's met my mother and had me,

what happens to me?

All the things that you could
mess up in the past

that would make the present
from which you travelled impossible,

therefore you could never have
made the journey,

therefore you couldn't have
messed up the past.

I mean, all that's just glorious stuff.

What do you want?
Who let you in here?

Do not call for help.

This room has been sound-screened.

You have been found guilty.

Our best theory of the nature of Time
is Einstein's Theory of Relativity,

and that says it could be possible
to travel back in time,

provided you don't change things
and make them turn out any differently.

Hello, sorry, is this your office?

Had a sort of collision with my vehicle.

Faults on both sides,
let's say no more about...

it.

The Doctor could go
back into the past

and have a conversation
with Adolf Hitler,

but provided he doesn't make things
turn out any differently and doesn't

allow history to change,
then that's a possible solution.

It's when he messes with it and makes

the outcome of the Second
World War turn out differently,

that's a paradox, because
that's not the way things are.

Thank you, whoever you are.

I think you have just
saved my life.

Believe me... it was an accident.

All he really does is shove Hitler
in a cupboard, and we never really

face the dilemma of what would
happen if you killed Hitler.

Of course, what would happen
if you killed Hitler

is somebody else would have
taken over the Third Reich

and history might
have been even worse

if they were a bit less mad
than Adolf, so who knows?

There's only one version of
history in our universe.

You see, you see? Time travel.
It never goes to plan.

Imagine our universe is
like a page in a book,

and we're the words on the page.
We're stuck to that page.

We're confined to our universe.

But there may be many
other pages in the book,

parallel universes running
alongside our own

that we might be able to access

if we had something that could
travel through space and time.

It's another beautiful day
in London.

There are reports of sunspot activity
and solar flares causing interference

across all radio signals...

The Wedding of River Song begins with
all of time happening at once.

You have modern-day London,

but you have ancient Romans
riding around on chariots.

In Buckingham Palace,
you've got Winston Churchill,

and he is acting as Caesar.

Had an argument with Cleopatra.
Dreadful woman.

You have pterodactyls flying about...

Lots of different things
are happening all at once,

so scientifically what
could be going on there?

The only way we can try and understand this
from the modern, scientific perspective,

is if this were a parallel universe.

However crazy it is,

if parallel universes exist,
there will be a universe somewhere

where this scenario is acted out.

So on a scale of 1 to 5,
is time travel possible?

I'd say give it a 4.

I'd put that at probably a 2 or 3.

I would give it somewhere
between a 3 and a 4.

Hello.
I'm the Doctor.

We sort of try and think our way
into the process of,

what would it be like if suddenly,
explosively, you turned into somebody else?

You imagine it would be sort of traumatic.
It would alter you.

All those things are,
I think, tricky.

But, you know,
we use, I suppose,

things that feel right
and seem right

to try and sell what is
a fantastically clever way

of substituting your lead actor.

Arms, hands, ooh!

Must be sort of interesting
to be reborn that way

into a different body and
feel the same but look different.

Eyes, two.
Nose, I've had worse. Chin...

He was, like, checking to
make sure he's okay.

He's got all of his body parts;
Okay, good, good.

Oh, and still not ginger!

Is he ginger?
Nope, still not ginger.

I'm a girl!
No, no... I'm not a girl.

He thinks he's a girl
because he has long hair,

but it's just awesome,
crazy Matt Smith hair.

Geronimo!!

Watching Doctor Who
regenerate from cells,

you say to yourself,
"Ha, impossible."

But actually,
we do it in the laboratory already.

We're starting to understand there are
certain types of cells in the body,

called stem cells,
which can grow and evolve

into different kinds of cells.

Today you're in a car accident,
you get a new door,

you get a new fender.
You just call the body shop.

We will have a human body shop.

One day in the not-too-distant future,

we will be able to grow whole organs:
hearts, lungs, kidneys.

So you can extrapolate that
thought and say, well, one day

we might be able to grow,
artificially, a whole human.

Is regeneration possible?
I'd put it at a 4.5.

I'm fairly optimistic with regeneration.

The fact that we're
understanding the genome now,

I think,
gives us a lot more possibilities,

so I put it at a fairly optimistic 3.

Given enough advances in technology,

I don't see any reason why
that couldn't be possible,

so I'd give that a 4 or a 5.

I forget who said this--Stephen Hawking?
Might have been Stephen Hawking--

Saying, there are two possibilities,
both of which are awesome:

Either there is other intelligent life
out there or there isn't,

and both of them are just
extraordinary thoughts.

At the heart of Doctor Who,

the idea is that the universe
is full of exotic life forms.

Prisoner Zero
will vacate the human residence

or the human residence
will be incinerated.

Repeat: Prisoner Zero
will vacate the human residence

or the human residence
will be incinerated.

When you're watching Doctor Who,
the aliens are pretty much,

I like to call "haters."

Prisoner Zero will vacate
the human residence

or the human residence
will be incinerated.

20 minutes to the end of the world.

Well, the Earth is invaded
almost constantly on Doctor Who,

and he's always there to save us.

You will tell the Doctor.

Tell him what?

What he must know,
and what he must never know.

In terms of storytelling,
you gotta have nasty monsters.

It's no good if Doctor Who
didn't have adversities,

because this is the stuff of storytelling.

Doctor Who, at its core, is scary.

I mean, it's a lot of things
that are really quite cool

when it comes to scaring children.

Traumatise a generation,
that's what it's all about.

In science fiction,
there's that moment

when the flying saucer
lands on the White House lawn

and he comes out, and we're all
right there on the edge of our seats

wondering,
what do the aliens look like?

I don't think that it's life

that is necessarily walking
on two legs with eyeballs

and breathing oxygen
and needing water to survive.

We don't know whether
they would have eyes, even.

Why should they be sensitive to
electromagnetic radiation or light?

Why would they communicate by
exchanging sound waves?

My colleague Stephen Hawking
has stated that

we should not advertise
our existence to aliens in outer space

because we don't know
their intentions.

For example, look what happened
to the great Aztec empire

when they met the conquistadors
and Cortez.

Cortez wiped out the Aztec civilisation
in a matter of months.

The dominant civilisation, or intelligent one,
tends to be the one that's going to take over.

But we're basing all of these ideas
on our own experience.

I mean, this is the danger
with science fiction.

Personally, I think that if
they're that advanced

that they can reach us from distant stars,

they can choose what planet to plunder.

They don't have to exploit the Earth.

There are plenty of uninhabited planets with
minerals and resources that they can plunder.

Why bother to mess with the restive natives
we have here on the planet Earth?

If it's a question of whether life
exists elsewhere, I'd give it a 5.

I'd give it a 4.9.

I'm going to give life
elsewhere in the galaxy...

4?

State your identity!

- You will identify first.
- Identify!

It's like Stephen Hawking
meets the speaking clock.

Illogical.
You will modify.

Daleks do not take orders!

You have identified as Daleks.

One of his great nemeses,
the greatest nemesis, the Daleks--

and the Cybermen, of course--
are cyborgs.

A cyborg is a being made up of both
biological and mechanical parts.

The Doctor is coming!

They're usually not very happy.
They're usually very angry.

Repeat: All Cybermen to Torchwood.

The ultimate cyborg on
Doctor Who is the Cyberman.

And they are a tragic race
who tried to improve themselves

and eventually replaced
everything in their bodies,

leaving themselves with no soul.

The Cybermen were born out of a
sort of horror of spare-part surgery or...

the fact that you might have machine
augmentation to a decaying body.

Now, part of me wants to say,
well, what would be wrong with that?

That's good,
that's what science does.

But there is, I suppose, a sort of primal
bit of you as a human being saying,

"You're interfering with nature."

What happens in there?

What's upgrading mean,
what do they do?

I think they remove the brain
and they put it in a suit of armour.

That's what these things are.
They're us.

Next.

This is your fault!

I think what I find most scary
about the Cybermen

is that they are us,

but we have been
converted into something else,

converted into sort of a
destructive killing machine.

In one episode, it started off
sort of fairly innocuously enough,

with James Corden and the Doctor
sort of working in a department store,

and people keep on disappearing.

Aah! No, I'm not intelligent,
you don't want me!

Do not fear.
We will take your fear from you.

You will be like us.

Eventually, they work out that
it's the Cybermen stealing people

and creating more Cybermen.

James Corden is actually
captured by a Cyberman,

and he's sort of drawn in,
and the process of conversion, I think is

is very, very painful, from the
screams of terror you hear coming out.

Make it stop, please,
make it stop!

And you realise that he is one step away
from losing his humanity

and becoming a Cyberman.

Craig!!

And the only thing that stops
that process from happening is

he hears his baby crying.

And suddenly he fights back.

- What is happening?
- What's happening, you metal moron?

A baby is crying!

And you'd better watch out,
because guess what?

Daddy's coming home!

Alfie!

The Daleks, of course,
are cyborgs, this idea of

part biology, part technology.

And that's something that
resonates deeply with people.

Lord and creator of the Dalek
race.

Death is coming.
Oh, I can see it.

Everlasting death
for the most faithful companion?

As a hardcore Doctor Who fan,
I would always say

my favourite monster are the Daleks.
Of course, they just are.

And really, has there been a more successful
sci-fi monster in all of sci-fi?

I mean, I know they look like trundling bits
of '60s pop art,

but my god, they work.

And they work for
the new kids and the old kids.

Everybody loves the Daleks.
It's amazing.

The resurrection of the master race!

There is something about the Daleks
that is inherently evil.

All hail the new Daleks!
All hail the new Daleks!

They don't have hands,
they don't have eyes,

there's nothing to--
It's like insects.

You look at them and they're creepy
because you don't identify with them at all.

And also, it was in the sound
of their voice.

Scan reveals nothing!

TARDIS self-destruct device
non-existent!

This kind of voice
that was relentless,

it would not stop,
there was no intonation in the tone,

and it would grow
and it would grow!

You are the Doctor!
You must be exterminated!

They are so angry.
They just want to destroy everything.

I like his single-mindedness.

Blimey, what do you do to the
ones who mess up?

It's a robot that rants.
It's a tank that hates you.

It's a highly emotional
piece of machinery.

It's got a slug inside.

Question is,
what do we do now?

Either you turn off
your clever machine

or I'll blow you and
your new paradigm into eternity.

- And yourself.
- Occupational hazard!

Scan reveals nothing!

TARDIS self-destruct device
non-existent.

All right, it's a Jammie Dodger.
But I was promised tea.

I think the process of us
becoming cyborgs has already begun.

Already we have prosthetic limbs
because of people with injuries and diseases.

Also we have cochlear implants.

We can actually give back the gift
of hearing to people that are deaf.

And so we already have senses
that can be augmented by implants.

And it's real, because
they're putting chips into people,

there's chips in people to identify--

They're putting stuff
in your eyes where,

you know, when you go to work,
something can recognise your eyes.

You can already see
limbs being controlled by

electrical signals in the brain.

Now they have arms that move,
that actually move liked

they can pick things up.
It's not like before,

the prosthetic, it wouldn't even move.
Now it's, like, it's actually moving.

For the cyborg experiment,

what I had was this little device.
It's actually 100 pins

fired into my nervous system,

and it linked my nervous system
to different pieces of technology.

So one experiment we did

was that when I opened my hand
and closed my hand,

my brain signals were also
sent out to the robot hand

to open and close that.

As long as the implant is
in the right place in the brain,

there's all sorts of different ways
and things you can be thinking about

that could operate technology,
that could switch on devices,

that could do anything you want.
Control a vehicle, perhaps,

directly from your brain.

These little robots,
these have computers for a brain.

It has a goal in life: move forward
and don't bump into anything.

But it has to figure out what to do
with its wheels in order to achieve that.

But what's really exciting now

is that we've replaced the computers
as the brains of the robot

with biological brains.

We actually take brain cells--
These are living brain cells

from rat embryos--
And then place them in this dish.

We will then link it
to its physical robot body.

I don't know that we were initially
ourselves trying to create a Dalek,

but this is a cyborg of a type.
It's part technology, part biology.

The show kind of warns against that,

and... allowing that technology
into our bodies.

It's a warning in the show.

Cybermen now occupy every
land mass on this planet.

But you need not fear.
Cybermen will remove fear.

Cybermen will remove sex
and class and colour and creed.

The idea of implanting things into us,
to sort of improve--

it's a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it could be really great,

it can improve functionality
of the human body,

our frail human bodies.

But on the other hand,
the idea of implants,

it has sinister overtones.

Will we end up being controlled

by people who
we don't want to control us?

You will become identical.

You will become like us.

The potential for implants is huge.

We think of sort of
mechanical things--

We think of sort of implants
for arms and legs--

But if you start having implants
for intelligence,

you could end up with a situation

where you have almost two races:

The race with the superior intelligence,
the superior bodies, able to do a lot more,

and then us everyday people,
just the organics, who sort of...

And in a situation like that,
how will the world be divided?

I think the probability of
cyborgs is 4.9.

You Know, I'll give it a 5, because it's already
happening, it's being done.

The technology is there.

The question is
how far we'll take it.

Scientifically, I think we could probably--
The probability's a 4 or a 5,

but ethically, I think that's hopefully
what's going to hold us back,

and we will use it wisely.

I can't speak to whatever
wondrous day--

I think it was in Fury from the Deep
that the Doctor first produced

a sonic screwdriver from his pocket.

But what a moment of genius,
'cause it sort of sums him up.

It's inherently absurd,
and it's not aggressive.

The Doctor will open the Ark!

The Doctor will not.

You have no way of resisting!

Well, you got me there.
Although... There is always this.

- A sonic probe?
- That's screwdriver.

You get to a door.
Ah! It can unlock the door.

It can perform medical scans,

in case you want to check yourself out.
Very, very useful.

It just rises to the occasion.

- It is harmless.
- Oh, yes.

Harmless is just the word.
That's why I like it.

Doesn't kill, doesn't wound,
doesn't maim.

But I tell you what it does do:
It is very good at opening doors.

I'd like to see the user manual,
myself.

Because I think with every
new series of Doctor Who, it grows.

I have a sonic screwdriver
from the Tom Baker era,

which has moving parts and looks just like it,
and is in my drawer right now.

Oh, a new one!

He's really just got the world's best penknife,
but being the Doctor,

he'd never carry something that
had the word "knife" in it.

Well, this is being referred to
by some people as a sonic screwdriver.

What does sonic mean?
It means sound,

and we are here using sound waves
to apply forces to objects,

and we are levitating things with sound.

Every time I do this experiment,
I'm amazed that there are these things there.

They're hovering in free space.

In principle, we could lift much bigger things
with this kind of technology.

We could easily lift humans' houses.

Quite why you'd want to do that
is a mystery to me.

In the research we're doing here,
we're actually interested in

moving smaller objects,
like cells and nanoparticles.

The ability to create
synthetic organs that could be

readily transplantable would
revolutionise human health.

So we're catching up with the Doctor,

but some of his capabilities
are well out of our reach.

So, yeah, I do have a bit of
sonic screwdriver envy.

- Good dog.
- Affirmative.

K9!
K... 9.

Which is, you know,
short for canine, like a dog.

It's like a robotic dog

that's sort of his friend that gives him
advice, that warns him.

No alternative possible, Master.

K9 looks like a parallelogram.

It walks around, it can wag its tail,
and it's got two satellites for ears.

One is a DirectTV satellite,
and another's a Whisper 2000

so he doesn't have to ask people
to speak up at crowded restaurants.

There was an episode in a school,
where I think the creatures,

bat-like creatures, or they
turned into bat-like creatures--

I think they were called Krillitanes.

They're flapping around the room,
and the companions

and some other people
are trapped within the room,

and suddenly K9 has a laser in his nose
and starts zapping.

K9!

- Suggest you engage running mode, Mistress.
- Come on!

They fall down and
people are able to escape.

Affirmative, Master.

Maximum defence mode!

Come on!

Most of the things we see in Doctor Who
seem like sort of the future--

They seem a long,
long way away--

Whereas K9 I think is
the exception to this.

He's got a bit of computer interface,
but he does trundle along on coasters.

As a space scientist,
I work on projects where we're

making autonomous machines
to travel over the Martian surface.

They can climb over rocks,
they can work out their own route.

They're just so much
more advanced than K9.

So I think this is one example
where the science fiction

is actually gazumped by
the science fact.

The little dog with a nasty bite.

Ssh!

Don't say we surpassed K9!
He's from the year 5000!

I suppose from the moment
they've said that was possible,

we've all sat and quaked and thought,
"And what if they make another me?"

People are always saying, when I'm
getting riotously behind in my deadlines,

"It'd be great if we could clone you."
And I always think, yeah?

Would it?
Not so great for me.

I wouldn't like there to be two of me.
What if the other one's better?

- Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
- Inevitably.

- See, I'm glad we're on the same--
- Wavelength?

- See, great minds.
- Exactly.

In a recent program,
the Doctor was cloned.

- So, what now, Doctor?
- Well, time to get cracking, Doctor.

And so, you know, you talk about the real,
original Doctor and the clone Doctor.

In my mind,
they are both the real Doctor.

- How can you both be real?
- Well, because... we are.

- I'm the Doctor.
- Yeah, and so am I.

We both contain the knowledge of
over 900 years of memory and experience.

We both wear the same bowtie,
which is cool.

- Because bowties are.
- And always will be.

Neither one is any more
original than the other.

The cloned Doctor isn't a cheaper,
rough copy of the original.

What?

Interesting. You definitely feel
more affection for him than me.

No, no, I--

Look, you're fine and everything,
but he's the Doctor.

Either one of them has equal rights
of claiming to be the real Doctor.

This acid is so dangerous we were
losing a worker every week.

So now we mine the acid using
these doppelgangers, or Gangers.

- If these bodies get burned or fall in the acid--
- Then who the hell cares, right, Jen?

There is one episode where
there are people who have,

I think, "Gangers," and these are
effectively clones of themselves.

Motor functions...

Online.

Plumbing in.

These clones aren't generated
in the usual sort of ways.

They actually come together
out of goo.

And they have the senses,
they have the memories,

of the person
they've been cloned from.

And they use them as
sort of disposable people.

They go into sort of dangerous places.

If they get zapped, it's a bit unfortunate,
but you can always make another one.

Oh!

And it must be that horrible
feeling when you realise,

"I'm the copy,
I'm not the real entity."

Twins are clones,
but they're still different.

So it doesn't guarantee that
if I make a clone of myself

that it's going to act like me or be like me
or even necessarily look like me.

It could look just slightly like me.

You hear of people who have
loved ones who've passed away.

Perhaps you want to
recreate that person.

But for that, cloning isn't enough.

When you clone someone,
you recreate a genetic model,

like an identical twin.

But if that twin lives in
very different circumstances,

then it won't have the same experiences
that shaped the person you've lost.

What is that?

So they could turn out to be
a very different person,

similar characteristics, maybe,
but still a very different person.

Discarded Flesh.
Faulty, probably.

Just thrown away.
Look at them.

One of my old Gangers.

We can clone most farm animals.

Most pets can be cloned.
We can clone horses, dogs, cats.

But primates,
that's where the dividing line is.

At the present time,
we have not been able to clone a primate,

let alone a human.

I don't think that's going to happen,

and if it does happen, I don't think
it's going to happen for many years,

because of the ethical issues.

Who is that person?

Are they an entity
in their own right?

Can they have voting rights?

Who are they?

The issue, of course,
is whether we'd ever want to clone,

and I think that's something
that has to be in place.

Not all science, just because
something is possible, is a good idea.

Just because we
could build atom bombs

doesn't mean we
should have built atom bombs.

So having the scientific
knowledge is one thing.

What you do with it
is the really important issue.

Leaving all the
horrendous ethical issues aside,

on a scale of 1 to 5,
is cloning possible? Yes, 5.

Well, it's 5,
because we can clone.

It's there. In fact, I am a clone.
The real Dallas isn't here at all.

The real Dallas is having a lot of fun--
He's in the pub downstairs.

I say to myself,
when will we have this technology?

When will we have cloning,
immortality, cyborgs, invisibility?

And I say, yeah, in a few centuries,
we'll have almost all these technologies.

I don't think we could ever
become Time Lords.

But I think the places he visits,
the futures he sees and shows us,

are very plausible and possible and likely.

There was a time where
science fiction seemed like it was so far away, like

lthis was a world that
we would never be able to reach.

But it's almost parallel to
what's going on nowadays.

So, all of time and space,
everything that ever happened or ever will...

Where do you want to start?

If I had one trip in the TARDIS
and I could go anywhere in Time,

I think I'd like to go
1,000 years into the future.

To me, the future looks bright
and the future looks technological,

and I'd like to see where all our
technological advances get us.

I think it'd be great to be his companion
if we were just going to go to leisure planets

or go visit, like, a Beatles concert.

But I don't know if I could--
After the first torture,

I think I might say,
"I'm going to skip this next one."

When I was young,
that's all I ever thought about,

but I think running the show
is probably enough time travel for me.

But, yes, you would.
You would.

If he offered to you, said,
"Come and see all of time and space,"

of course you'd go.
Of course you would.

You'd spend the rest of your life
regretting it if you didn't.

But I would specify, only safe planets.