As an American who didn't grow up on the TV series, "Doctor Who," the first episode of the new Dr. Who (new since the 60s and 70s) strikes me as a mashup between Twilight Zone, the X-Files, Star Trek, The Next Generation and just a smidgen of "Back to the Future."
There was a Twilight Zone episode I watched as a kid in the 60s about mannequins coming to life. Each mannequin got to spend a week or maybe it was a month as a human each year but the episode begins with a young woman being chased and closed in on by mannequins and she is terrified (just as I was from what I could see between the fingers covering my eyes).
In the episode, "Rose", Rose Tyler, like the young woman in the Twilight Zone episode, works in a department store. She goes to the basement on an errand and the mannequins start coming to life. Luckily for Rose and me, Rose isn't a an AWOL mannequin at all but is a human who must run from the grabbing mannequins. The Doctor helps her escape the building where the menacing mannequins are still trying to capture her and her strange new friend, the Doctor.
If you don't understand the reference to the X-files I made in the first paragraph, well let's just say that like Fox Mulder, I *want* to believe in the possibility of life on other planets in other worlds. Dr. Who shows Rose that there are indeed a whole plethora of aliens living in strange worlds outside the Solar system.
And finally we come to Star Trek, TNG. The doctor is more than Captain Picard and Data combined but the similarities are that the Doctor is an explorer with a penchant for believing all life forms deserve to thrive. And of course Dr. Who, as we soon learn, can travel through time which he does with impunity though he isn't nearly as careful as Captain Picard about the 'prime directive' which prevents time travellers from changing events in the past. But then the crew of the Enterprise only casually observes the laws of the prime directive which is part of what made the series so much fun. And the same is true of Dr. Who.
The first episode of the new Dr. Who Series I, has the Doctor inviting Rose into the Blue Police box with him, leaving her boyfriend, home and mom behind, when after asking the Doctor if it's always this dangerous and running for the blue box when he answers, "yes." She becomes the Dcotor's companion then, traveling through time and space having adventures.
