Pop Culture

Master or Apprentice: 10 reasons why Doctor Who is cooler than harry Potter

Limelight, November 2003

1. The Doctor stole his TARDIS and rebelled from his own people, so he would have the freedom to save the universe. Harry Potter passively allows his brutal foster parents to lock him away and order him around. Gee, kids, which one do you find more inspiring?

2. Wizards, phoenixes, ghosts, three-headed dogs... Couldn't JK Rowling imagine any creatures less than a thousand years old? Daleks, Cybermen, Autons, Sontarans... Now they were original!

3. Doctor Who's underpaid but ingenious screenwriters could churn out 10 new adventures in the time Ms Rowling spends writing every new, 34,983-page novel.

4. The Doctor plays cricket, a gentleman's sport. Harry plays quidditch. Even if broom-flying were possible, the rules of that game simply don't make sense.

5. Cornelius Fudge? The Doctor would never be threatened by someone with that name.

6. Even when travelling with geniuses like Zoe and Romana, none of the Doctor's female friends were smarter than himself. (He must be the only such man in history...)

7. One of the good guys dies in the latest Harry Potter novel... as we are constantly reminded. That much-hyped death, however, isn't nearly as shocking as the unexpected (and un-hyped) death of the Doctor's friend Adric. The kids of 1982 knew what it's like to REALLY be shocked...

8. Harry is starting to go through puberty, and everything that goes with it. The Doctor, despite travelling with numerous attractive women, was above all that. (Until the Americans produced him, at least.)

9. "You can't kill me. I'm a genius!" "'Eureka' is Greek for 'This bath is too hot.'" Why can't Harry ever come up with such great lines?

10. Doctor Who shows that you can enchant generations of children with a low budget and no computer graphics. Can the Harry Potter movies do the same? No, didn't think so...

(This story accompanied a larger Doctor Who article, seen here.)