home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!news.UVic.CA!spang.Camosun.BC.CA!dbarker
- From: dbarker@spang.Camosun.BC.CA (Deryk Barker)
- Subject: Re: "I'm going out now and may be some time"
- Message-ID: <1992Nov22.195925.16059@spang.Camosun.BC.CA>
- Organization: Camosun College, Victoria B.C, Canada
- References: <792@nate.UUCP> <1992Nov22.194736.15919@spang.Camosun.BC.CA>
- Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 19:59:25 GMT
- Lines: 59
-
- Sorry about the previous quote-only posting - I'm having lost of
- trouble with noise on the line from home.
-
- In article <792@nate.UUCP> nate!loring@cs.rit.edu writes:
- >In the last few weeks of watching Dr. Who I've seen the following quote
- >(and variations of it) used in several Dr. Who stories:
- >
- > "I'm going out now and may be some time"
- >
- >This was said by an explorer before leaving his group on his own and
- >getting to be the first person to either the north or south poles, right?
- >(pardon my ignorance, I'm US educated :-) ).
-
- I make no comment on your education....
-
- According to Robert Falcon Scott, leader of the British Antarctic
- Expedition, the last words of Captain Lawrence Edward Grace "Titus"
- Oates were "I am just going outside and may be some time". These words
- were - according to Scott's diary - uttered by Oates as he left the
- tent in which the remaining 4 men of the polar party were stranded
- with little food or fuel. Oates was suffering from a more advanced
- form of scurvy than the other 3 (one, PO Evans had already died) and
- left to wander off into the Antarctic wilderness and die, in order
- that the others might have a better chance of living.
-
- In the end, all the party died. Scott's diary was eventually
- discovered and - suitably bowdlerised - published. In fact through his
- {almost total arrogance and incompetence Scott had managed not only to
- fail to get to the South Pole first (Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian
- explorer, beat him to it by a couple of weeks - *and* brought all his
- men back safe) but also to lose the lives of himself and 4 others.
-
- Scott's Last Journey has been glamorised as something heroic and noble
- - see the movie Scott of the Antarctic for example - whereas it was
- probably "nasty brutish and short". For a healthy counterblast to all
- the Jingoistic tub-thumping read "The Last Place on Earth" by Roland
- Huntford. In the TV dramatisation Oates's farewell words are "Just
- going out for a leak Birdie" addressed to Henry Robertson "Birdie"
- Bowers, another member of the ill-fated party. This caused a
- tremendous stir in England, where Scott's son, Sir Peter the
- naturalist, was still alive. Nevertheless, as Huntford points out,
- there is *no* independent evidence that Oates actually uttered the
- words ascribed to him by Scott. Dr. Edward "Uncle Bill" Wilson, who
- also ket a journal and wrote final letters home to his wife - also
- discovered in the tent together with the corpses - makes no mention of
- them, and he was not - unlike Scott - writing with the intention of
- posthumous publication.
-
- The whole point of the Doctor's frequently reference to these words is
- that they are some of the most famous in the English language, and no
- Englishman or woman brought up in the first 6 or 7 decades of thie
- century would fail to recognise them. They have a mighty resonance,
- and - total jerk though Scott may have been - they do summarise the
- phlegmatic Englishness at its best, the complete understatement of a
- man about to walk to certain death in order to help his friends.
-
- And people seriously suggest casting an American as the Doctor!
-
- Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept., Camosun College, Victoria B.C.
-