At least the timeline would support that the Cybermen inspired the Borg. Not the same with Gary Seven and his gizmos.
Turn The Channel On This TOS Episode…
- Thread starter Spock's Barber
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At least the timeline would support that the Cybermen inspired the Borg. Not the same with Gary Seven and his gizmos.
Gary Seven is the kind of suave, sophisticated professional figure which the Doctor would come to resemble in 1970.
If they were lifting from 1968 Doctor Who, Gary Seven would be a bumbling Chaplinesque tramp.
We can draw vague similarities and find causation, but the truth is that what we recognize today as being Doctor Who didn’t really fully emerge until Pertwee came along.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be interesting if there was a possibility of a link but, under scrutiny, there just isn’t.
Did one writing team steal the concept of the magic screwdriver from the other? Or could this be other example of Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development.
- The sonic screwdriver first appeared in the Doctor Who episode titled "Fury from the Deep." which was broadcast (in England) on March 8, 1968.
- TOS Assignment: Earth broadcast on March 29, 1968.
Or it's a complete coincidence as would the makers of Star Trek conversed with Britons actually be sending letters and walkie talkie conversations back and forth saying what not to do because they were doing it?
The original sonic screwdriver was said to have a specific type of function, involving projecting sound waves. Apart from one episode, every instance I recall it being used for between Doctor Who seasons 5-10 lined up fairly well. Not sure how sound waves can reverse a magnetic wall panel's polarity, but that's about it. As that episode was written at breakneck speed, I just rolled with it.
To compare, Assignment Earth has Gary waving it around more often than a maestro during a techno 132BPM rave concert and it was doing all sorts of random things because they thought the audience would think it'd be cool. A literal magic wand to get out of scenes or plot peril without effort.
I recall reading that TOS was aired in the UK in 1969/70. I don't recall when Assignment Earth was aired in the UK, so it might also be coincidence that Pertwee made the Doctor more polished and "a dandy", not related to the TOS story at all.
(On edit: IMDB claims the first UK airing was on July 12, 1969.)
This whole Who speculation reminds me of the speculated Stingray influence on Trek in this thread from 2020. It's just as specious.
Of Americans who didn't travel overseas, the first to see The Doctor were probably those who lived within reception range of CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) stations when it ran 29 Hartnell Who segments in 1965. One such market was Bellingham, WA, which could pick up the CBC on CBUT TV on channel 2 and independent television station CHEK on channel 6, both in Victoria, British Columbia, both of which carried Who as documented in The Bellingham Herald's TV listings (here on newspapers.com but paywalled).
The film Dr. Who and the Daleks (released in the US in July 1966) was probably the first Who any Americans not near Canada saw—the few who saw it, as it didn't set the box office afire or even warm it. That film had no sonic screwdriver or the like, and the premise was very different from the TV series.
Of Americans who didn't travel overseas, the first to see The Doctor were probably those who lived within reception range of CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) stations when it ran 29 Hartnell Who segments in 1965. One such market was Bellingham, WA, which could pick up the CBC on CBUT TV on channel 2 and independent television station CHEK on channel 6, both in Victoria, British Columbia, both of which carried Who as documented in The Bellingham Herald's TV listings (here on newspapers.com but paywalled).
The film Dr. Who and the Daleks (released in the US in July 1966) was probably the first Who any Americans not near Canada saw—the few who saw it, as it didn't set the box office afire or even warm it. That film had no sonic screwdriver or the like, and the premise was very different from the TV series.
The even more direct answer was probably that Paramount had a bunch of old Native American costumes and wigwams, etc, lying around and TOS didn't have two nickels to rub together in season 3. I, too, wish that instead of space-Native Americans, the episode had featured a pre-industrial alien species. But the producers needed to save money where they could. I give them a bit of a pass on this score (as I do with Bele's invisible spaceship and the improbable mock-Enterprise in Mark of Gideon). They were still trying to tell interesting stories, even after they budget had been slashed to ribbons. That requires cutting corners here and there.
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