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A blue police box, faceless cyborg aliens, and an ever-changing protagonist traveling across space and time are a few of the signature elements of Doctor Who, a BBC television program that has been running in some form since 1963 (albeit with a lengthy hiatus throughout the entire 1990s). Filmmakers Chris Hansen and Ross Ruediger are on a mission to share how Doctor Who has inspired a legion of fans in surprising ways, and to show that despite what you read on the internet—not all fandom is toxic.
The new documentary film InDoctornated is a joyous celebration of how the shared experience of loving a great show can actually help someone find purpose in life.
The film takes three people from different parts of the country—including San Antonio—and shares how Doctor Who inspired each of them along their own personal journey.
“I'm sure we could have done a movie about any number of TV shows, but I do think that Doctor Who has a transformative power,” Ruediger said. “The show is very much concerned with the power of the individual, and what the individual can bring to the situation.”
InDoctornated is showing on Wednesday, July 23 as part of the San Antonio Film Festival. Showtime is 3 p.m. at the Tobin Center’s Carlos Alvarez Studio Theater. Ruediger, Hansen, and editor/producer Lauren Bancroft will be in attendance.
Ruediger recently chatted by phone with me about the movie and his own fandom, and you can listen to our conversation using the audio player at the top of this page, or read along in the (edited for clarity) transcript below.
Nathan Cone: For those who aren't Doctor Who fans, can you give me the nickel version of what it's about?
Ross Ruediger: Well, Doctor Who is about a near immortal time and space wanderer and alien who travels through time and space righting the wrongs they come across. And the show has been running off and on since 1963. I think they've got about 40-something seasons under its belt of Doctor Who at this point. So that's, that's kind of it in a nutshell. It's just a sci fi serial.
Cone: And when was the first episode that you watched, and did you immediately like it, or was it something that grew on you?
Ruediger: I was hooked immediately. I started watching it in 1984. I was 13 at the time, it was summer of ‘84 and I tuned into a story called "Planet of Evil," which was kind of a Doctor Who riff on Jekyll and Hyde. And I was immediately taken, particularly with the design of that episode, because they had put a lot of money into creating an alien jungle… I had never seen one quite like it on television or in film before. So I was really taken with the design of it. I think that was what grabbed me for some reason, although the actors as well, the two leads, I was taken with them as well. But I think the design really grabbed me.
Cone: And who was the Doctor during that season?
Ruediger: That would have been Tom Baker. He kind of was the most famous doctor back in the '70s and '80s. If you were watching Doctor Who on PBS at that time, more than likely Tom Baker would have been the doctor that you would have encountered.
Cone: He's the guy with the curly hair.
Ruediger: He is the guy with the curly hair and the big, long scarf. Yes, absolutely, yes.
Cone: What was it about the actors that you that you dug?
Ruediger: Well, you know, with Tom Baker in particular, I had never really seen a hero anything like him. I mean, that big head of hair and then the big bulging eyes, you know, he almost seemed kind of dangerous at times. He wasn't like Captain Kirk, you know, he wasn't like Luke Skywalker. He really had his own groove going on. And I just had never seen a hero anything like him. And then the other actor, actress would have been Elizabeth Slayton, who played his friend, his companion, Sarah Jane Smith. And I just was immediately smitten with this woman. I had a crush on Sarah Jane Smith. That's the name of the character. I had a crush on her all throughout my childhood, and I still do to this day! She was one of my early TV crushes.
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Cone: Well, speaking of characters, in your documentary InDoctornated, you've got three leads, so to speak. Could you talk about the people that we meet in your movie?
Ruediger: We have a man named Brian Uiga, and Brian is an engineer. He works for a company called Lasergraphics out in California. And Lasergraphics designs machines that aid in film preservation. You'd be amazed at the list of movies that Lasergraphics had a hand in helping to preserve. And then we have Sarah Roberts. She's an environmentalist and a hydrologist. She lives in San Diego, and she was inspired by Doctor Who from a very young age, by one of the other companions on the series and became an environmentalist because of the show, it had that kind of a profound effect on her. And then the third person is much closer to home, and that's Lee Hurtado, who was a freelance writer. He lived here in San Antonio, and he worked for Morgan's Wonderland, writing plays and sketches and things like that for Morgan's. Basically anything that they needed written, you know, they would call up Lee, hey, can you help us write this? Morgan's was a big part of his life.
Cone: Lee was so sweet, too. I mean... [NOTE: Lee Hurtado passed away from cancer in 2018]
Ruediger: Did you know Lee?
Cone: Yes, he would come to our TPR Cinema series and visit with me...
Ruediger: Yeah, so he's kind of the beating heart of the movie. I don't mean to take anything away from Brian and Sarah, whose stories are totally engaging, and they bring so much to it. But when people see InDoctornated, they really, really fall in love with Lee Hurtado in a big way. So I'm really excited for a lot of San Antonians who might have known Lee, or might have known him tangentially, is that the world can get to meet Lee all over again, through InDoctornated. He's a really special person.
Cone: You mentioned one of your leads, Sarah, going off into environmental work, being inspired by something in the show itself. Do you find that the show has these effects on people in surprising ways like that?
Ruediger: I do. And I mean, that was really the whole germ behind InDoctornated in the first place, was, can we find people whose lives were transformed by this television show? I'm sure we could have done a movie about any number of TV shows, but I do think that Doctor Who has a transformative power that is maybe a little different than some other shows, maybe because the show is very much concerned with the power of the individual, and what the individual can bring to the situation. And I do think that Doctor Who offers something a little different that maybe a lot of other shows don't, but I do think that the film InDoctornated, it has a much broader appeal. It was our goal to make a movie about Doctor Who fans that you did not have to be a Doctor Who fan to watch, and our screening here on Wednesday, is going to be a big test of that, because we're going to have people coming in to watch it who maybe have never seen Doctor Who before, so I'm real curious. The only other two screenings we've had of the movie have been at Doctor Who conventions. So we kind of had a very receptive audience, for certain in those places!
Cone: Well, you've been working on the movie for quite a while, so it's obviously a labor of love for you. When did you start production?
Ruediger: I think I came up with the idea in 2013 or 2014 and it took over a year to just find somebody to be [in the movie]. You know, we tried so many different things. At one point we tried to do an online search for fans. That failed miserably. I used to go down to the Alamo, and I would hang out with a big sign that said, “Seeking extraordinary 'Doctor Who' fans.” And I did that because I knew it was the one place in the city where I could meet people who weren't necessarily from San Antonio. I could meet people from all over the country, if I went and hung out in Alamo Plaza. And that was fun, but it didn't yield any results either. It took a whole year until we finally met Brian Uiga at the Doctor Who convention out in Los Angeles. And then I think it was, honestly, Nathan, I can't remember how long it was until we went out and actually shot [footage of] him, you know, I can't remember if it was six months or how long it was, you know, it was just a very little laborious film to make. It just took a long time to make, far longer than I ever expected it to. If somebody had told me at the beginning, “oh, this is going to take a decade of your life,” I would not have done it. But once you kind of got the ball rolling, I knew we were onto something, and I just had to stick with it. And I'm glad I did, because I'm really, really, super proud of the end result.
Cone: Well, I'm glad to hear that. And I guess I also wanted to ask, how did you know when you were done?
Ruediger: Oh boy, that is a loaded question! I think we knew we were done when we set up an extra shoot, I think about a year and a half ago in Los Angeles with Brian and Sarah, like a catch-up interview session. We shot, of course, quite a few years after their initial interviews. And I remember when I did those interviews with them, they were so satisfying, and their lives had changed so much, and they had been through so many different things, including the pandemic… that I knew that, though this is the ending that our movie needed, I knew that that we had it right there. And sure enough, when we started to edit everything together, and we went to that, that ending. It was like, Yeah, this feels so good. And so right, and so final.
Cone: Is there anything I didn't ask you that you that you would want to get out there?
Ruediger: Um, you know, just come and see the movie with an open mind and…
[At this point, former San Antonio Express-News columnist Jeanne Jakle, who is married to Ruediger, spoke up in the background.]
Jakle: It’s a beautiful movie! He got me into Doctor Who but I'm not a fan like a lot of these people. I like it all right. But the movie, it goes way beyond that, and the people are very, very inspirational and uplifting and moving.
Ruediger: There you go, Jeanne Jakle herself!
Jakle: I was scared to watch it at first... what if I didn’t like it? I was not bored at all!
Cone: That there's your pull quote, right there, Ross: “I was not bored at all!” Hahaha!
Ruediger: A gentleman who watched and wrote a preview of the movie just last week said he was riveted for 85 minutes.
Jakle: I was engaged, too!
Ruediger: So, yeah, I do think that the movie is a ride. I think it's a ride. It's a journey. I always describe It's a documentary in three acts. We've got a beginning, we got a middle, we've got an end. And it's, it's a definite journey that I want the people of San Antonio to come and take with me.
DISCLOSURE: After our interview concluded, Ross Ruediger told me my name was in the credits of the film, as one of many who contributed a few dollars some years ago to help crowdfund production. I had forgotten I did that! But I’m happy to see it come to fruition.
