HBO’s ‘Watchmen’: Everything You Should Know About Doctor Manhattan ~ Digital Library

HBO’s Watchmen, which comes from the mind of Lost creator Damon Lindelof and is adapted from the late 80s DC Comics Watchmen series authored by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, has, in short, taken pop culture by storm.

For longtime fans of the series (myself included), it’s been a joyride to see how Lindelof has picked up and continued the Watchmen saga. HBO’s Watchmen is set in an alternative present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma, where electric cars and pills full of memories exist alongside masked vigilantes and President Robert Redford. Many familiar faces from the Watchmen comics are present and accounted for, including former vigilantes Laurie Blake, a.k.a. Silk Spectre II (played by Jean Smart) and Adrian Veidt, a.k.a Ozymandias (played by Jeremy Irons).

But there’s one prominent Watchmen character, Doctor Manhattan, who has remained an enigma for a majority of Watchmen’s run. Always shown in his true blue form in murals, photos, new footage and beyond, Doctor Manhattan has functioned more as a legend within the show or, more grimly, as a superhero who has abandoned the people who need him the most. It wasn’t until Episode 7, “An Almost Religious Awe,” that we even found out the bare minimum basics about who Doctor Manhattan is or what had become of him (as envisioned by Lindelof, to be fair).

Doctor Manhattan is a very special kind of Watchmen character and there’s still so much to know about him which could help explain why he’s so important to the comics and the TV show. So, what do you need to know about this big, blue superhero before he officially makes an entrance in the penultimate episode of Watchmen? Keep reading to find out.

He’s the Son of a Clockmaker

Photo Credit: Warner Bros.

Doctor Manhattan was born as Jon Osterman, the son of Josef and Inge Osterman, in 1929 Germany. The Ostermans escaped Nazi Germany, landing in New York City where Josef worked for a clockmaker.

The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima became a defining event in Jon’s life and his father began encouraging to switch from following in his footsteps as a clockmaker to studying atomic science, somehow foreseeing that field would be more important and fruitful as a career.

But Jon’s childhood spent around clocks — studying them, building them, and becoming familiar with all their workings — became almost fundamental in his later perception, understanding, and construction of time both as humans had constructed it and as it really is.

How He Became the World’s Only Real Superhero

Photo Credit: DC Comics

After graduating with a Ph.D. in 1959, Jon secures a job at the Gila Flats research lab out in New Mexico. During this time, he befriends and eventually begins dating Janey Slater, a fellow researcher. While on a trip, the couple goes to an amusement park where Janey’s watchband breaks and someone then steps on it.

Naturally, Jon knows how to fix it. He decides to surprise Janey with the repaired watch while back at Gila Flats. The day he decides to do it, he realizes he left the watch in his lab coat which is inside an intrinsic field test chamber (basically, a big room meant to bounce big ol’ particles around that is not at all hospitable to humans). Pre-schedules testing led to Jon getting locked in the test chamber and the door was unable to be unlocked; it’s a death sentence. Instead, Jon somehow survives the test. Well, “survive” is a loose term considering it changes his body on a subatomic level forever and makes him into this huge blue guy but, still.

Perhaps the trippiest part of Jon’s transition into Doctor Manhattan — which is lifted perfectly from the Watchmen comics in Zack Snyder’s 2009 Watchmen adaptation — occurs a short while after what people believe is his death after being incinerated into nothing by the intrinsic field. Jon’s body begins to reassemble bit by bit, with different phases of his body seen around the research center. First, it’s his circulatory system, then his skeleton, then, finally, he emerges fully-formed for all to see.

His Abilities Are…Unusual

Photo Credit: Warner Bros.

Some strange abilities began to develop following Doctor Manhattan’s accident inside the reactor. It’s not just that he turned into a glowing blue god with black-rimmed eyes instantly; impressive, yes, but not exactly the whole picture. As time went on, it was revealed that Doctor Manhattan was completely impervious to man-made weapons, primarily guns. This was an especially good asset to have when he was sent to Vietnam during the war in the late 60s and 70s to fight for the U.S. Doctor Manhattan didn’t exactly fight, per se, but instead combined that imperviousness with his ability to change his height, becoming a towering blue figure capable of wiping out groups of soldiers and deflecting bullets with a swipe of his hand.

Through the Watchmen comics, it’s become clear the Doctor Manhattan isn’t just human Teflon or the different version of Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards. The new composition of his body allows him to change his body into new forms, clone it, and also construct and deconstruct any matter in the known universe.

He can also do things like explode the head of Moloch, an old foe of both the Minutemen and the Crimebusters, or offer to resolve India’s famine in the 60s by changing the chemical composition of the soil to yield more crops. Doctor Manhattan also perceives time differently and is able to see all events past, present, and future happening at once.

An eerie and occasionally unsettling result of this particular ability is Doctor Manhattan’s utter calm and acceptance of any event around him and a regular dispensing of information to people before they know it themselves. This absolute pragmatism often led to frustratingly opaque conversations between regular humans and the blue man. Doctor Manhattan doesn’t require air, food, water, or sleep, and he doesn’t age. And, as if his skillset wasn’t cool already, Doctor Manhattan also possesses the power of levitation and flight.

His Relationship With Humanity Is Complicated

Photo Credit: DC Comics

Doctor Manhattan’s relationship with the rest of humanity is complicated. Once his full set of abilities was made public, he was regularly called upon to resolve all manner of crises or perform public acts of service through his vigilante work with the rest of the Crimebusters…after years of being called on to be the savior of humanity for any and every occasion, Doctor Manhattan faced controversy and fear-mongering after it was believed his old girlfriend, Janey Slater, had developed cancer following repeated exposure to him over their long-term relationship. Fearing himself to be more of a harm than help, Doctor Manhattan retreated to Mars.

In the HBO Watchmen series, the world believes Doctor Manhattan is still living on Mars. Phone booths functioning as secular confessionals capable of sending messages to him have been erected around the world with people send their requests to him for help. We learn in “An Almost Religious Awe” those messages were received by someone other than Doctor Manhattan. In the world of the show, it’s revealed Doctor Manhattan has been back on Earth for decades.

Watchmen airs every Sunday at 9/8c on HBO.

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