Doctor Who: Ziggy TARDIS

Ground Control to Christopher Morley, take your protein pills and put your helmet on...

In the weeks since the death of one David Robert Jones, later known as Bowie, much has been said of his influence on several walks of popular culture. Even Doctor Who - apt given both he & the Doctor have shown themselves as being able to change personality at the drop of a hat.

Indeed, the soul-boy Bowie - as he was during his Let's Dance phase - was offered a role in The Caves Of Androzani, but had to turn it down as filming clashed with his own Serious Moonlight tour.

While we may never have seen him as Sharaz Jek opposite the first of the Peter Doctors, the current incumbent of the TARDIS is a fan! Mr Capaldi reportedly decided to base the look of his Doctor on the man who was Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack and countless others at different junctures. And so you could say that the Thin White Duke gave a grey stick insect fashion tips. Insert Thin White Doc headline here...

...as the Daily Express did! As they noted, the Duke had appeared both on the cover of Station To Station and in The Man Who Fell To Earth. In Nic Roeg's film, the man some dubbed the Dame was of course playing Thomas Jerome Newton, a displaced & disaffected alien. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that the man who had been such a devoted follower that "he attended three out of four Bowie concerts as a young fan in Glasgow, missing the last one only because he couldn’t afford it" had taken a few pointers in performance as much as wardrobe!

Bowie's music itself has also of course featured in New-Who, the Ninth Doctor aptly hearing Starman during Aliens Of London.



One incarnation later, we got proof that there was definitely life on Mars at Bowie Base One, in the Tenth Doctor adventure Waters of Mars.

The same incarnation of the Time Lord also met The Woman Who Sold The World in a comic story, included in the Crimson Hand anthology.

No prizes for guessing where the inspiration for that one came from...



Perhaps both Bowie's & the Doctor's greatest legacy is to remind us all that we can be heroes – the cover of which is among Titan Comics' album variant art - and love the alien.

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
He told me

So it proved once the Time Lord was back on our screens, Starman the herald. And as Eruditorium observed presciently of his early years-

"Bowie’s Mod and R&B singles coincide with William Hartnell’s term; Bowie’s sudden turn to Anthony Newley-infused psychedelia begins directly upon the arrival of Patrick Troughton, and “Space Oddity,” the culmination of this era, debuts mere weeks after the end of  The War Games.

Bowie’s floundering in the mid-‘80s coincides with Who’s hiatus (during which Bowie recorded ''Dancing In The Street'') and the ugly desperation of the Colin Baker years; the 1996 “modernized” TV movie appears just as Bowie’s dyed his hair copper and is attempting drum ‘n’ bass. And Bowie’s public career ends precisely at the start of Who’s successful revival: “Rose” was being filmed in Cardiff in early summer 2004."

Wibbly wobbly Bowie-wowie, perhaps!