He remained at Berkeley until he became professor emeritus in 1991. After serving in the Army for three and a half years, he completed his doctorate in 1948 at the University of Pittsburgh, following which he served on the faculties of Johns Hopkins University (from 1948 to 1953) and Clark University (from 1953 to 1957), joining the faculty at Berkeley in 1957. As it is, I'll have to file it away under "Wish-craft".Richard Lazarus, a distinguished scholar, researcher and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, died on November 24, 2002, following a fall in his home.īorn Main New York City, Professor Lazarus graduated from the City College of New York in 1942. Had it not been for the discrepancy in age (and Professor Lazarus was sharp enough to know how old he really was), I could have sold this theory. Here he had saved the world back in 1941 by saving this little boy's life, only to find himself having to save the world yet again by taking Lazarus' life now when he was an old man.Ĭlick here to see both ends of that spectrum.Īh well. Having Professor Lazarus turn out to the young child saved by the Doctor back in 1941 would have added even more depth to the quandary faced by the Doctor when trying to find the means to defeat him. But as he got older, Professor Lazarus would have cast aside the childish nickname to present himself more seriously with his proper name. As a matter of fact, nothing prevents his name from being Richard James Lazarus, and it just so happened that his mother took to calling him by a pet name based on his middle name. After all, Jamie had come back from the dead once the nanogenes were able to sort out the true construct of human physiology.Īnd as for the difference in the first name, perhaps his full name was James Richard Lazarus. It would have been an appropriate name for them. In the chaos after the War as they rebuilt their lives, Nancy might have decided to give herself and her son a fresh start, a new beginning, by dropping ties to their old identities and marching into the future with the last name of Lazarus. (Perhaps her name was McGill, but she called herself Lil? Okay, maybe not.)Īnd it would not have mattered if it turned out that their surname was not Lazarus. We never learned the last name of Jamie nor of his mother, Nancy. If only his age had not been stated, we might have been able to fudge things a bit so that Jamie and Richard Lazarus were one and the same. Wouldn't it have been a great story if it turned out that 70 year old Professor Lazarus had in fact been "The Empty Child", whose life was saved by the previous incarnation of the Doctor? ![]() ![]() ![]() (The story takes place in March of 2007, according to the timeline I've seen.) In 1940, when he was about nine years old, Lazarus survived the Blitz while hiding out in a cathedral.īut what if they had portrayed him as having been born in 1937, so that he was four years old in 1941? And what if his first name had not been Richard, but James?Īs a four year old, his "Mummy" would take to calling him Jamie.Ĭlick here to see what might have been if Jamie of "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" and Richard were the same person. Professor Richard Lazarus was 76 years of age, meaning that he was born in 1931. What a great story! And Mark Gatiss added yet another fantastic villain to the Doctor's Rogues Gallery, in the grand tradition of the misguided scientists.Īnd yet, on the long subway ride home later, I realized that the story could have had an extra jolt if only the character of Richard Lazarus had been tweaked just a bit, to tie this story in with a previous 'Doctor Who' storyline for an earlier incarnation of the Doctor. So Wednesay night after we were all blown away by the latest installment of 'Lost', I saw "The Lazarus Experiment". But at least I'm still months ahead of muh fellow Americans in getting that opportunity! It takes me a couple of days to see the latest episode of 'Doctor Who' shown on the BBC, as I depend upon my friends Mark & Michael to.
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