Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text PDF
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DOCTOR WHO: THE UNFOLDING TEXT Doctor Who The Unfolding Text John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado Macmillan Education ISBN 978-0-333-34848-2 ISBN 978-1-349-17289-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17289-4 ©John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado 1983 Reprint of the original edition 1983 All rights reserved. For information, write: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Printed in Hong Kong Published in the United Kingdom by The Macmillan Press Ltd. First published in the United States of America in 1983 ISBN 978-0-312-21488-3 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tulloch, John. Doctor Who. Includes index. 1. Doctor Who (Television program) I. Alvarado, Manuel. II. Title. PN1992.77.D6273T84 1983 791.45'72 83-16143 ISBN 978-0-312-21488-3(pbk.) Contents Acknowledgements Vll Terms IX In traduction 1 1 Mystery: Television Discourse and Institution 13 2 Regeneration: Narrative Similarity and Difference 61 3 Establishment: Science Fiction and Fantasy 99 4 Send-up: Authorship and Organisation 145 5 Cliffhanger: Circulating Stars and Satellites 193 6 'Kinda': Conditions of Production and Performance 24 7 Appendix I The People who made Doctor Who 305 Appendix II Further Reading on Doctor Who 315 Notes and References 316 Index 336 The interior of the Tardis (BBC photograph) The interior of the Tardis during the Fourteenth Season (BBC photograph) Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Drama Department of the BBC for allowing initial access to production of Doctor Who, and in particular John Nathan-Turner for his unfailing help, cour tesy and openness in the months that followed. For giving their precious time to often lengthy interviews we should like to thank Verity Lambert, Barry Letts, Philip Hinchcliffe, Graham Williams, John Nathan-Turner, Terrance Dicks, Douglas Adams, Eric Saward, Peter Grimwade, Christopher Bailey, Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, Richard Todd, Nerys Hughes, Simon Rouse, Adrian Mills, Lee Cornes, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Matthew Waterhouse, Peter Logan, Peter Howell, Dick Mills, Malcolm Thornton,] eremy Bentham, Ian Levine, David Saunders, Gary Russell, Deanne Holding; and for taking the trouble to explain personally why he did not want to be interviewed, Patrick Troughton. Although the subject of audience reception is only touched on in this book, we should also like to thank the many audience groups of television professionals, performers, school, college and uni versity students, Doctor Who Appreciation Society (London, Liverpool and Sydney), science fiction fans, young mothers and many others whose incredibly varied appreciations, inter pretations and discussions of identical Doctor Who episodes constitute an (almost) hidden background to some of our thinking and discussion here, but which we hope will be properly articulated later. We are very grateful to all of them for giving up as much as three hours of their time, even though there is no space to mention the hundreds of names here. In that context we should also like to thank Anne Davies and Elizabeth Stone, our untiringly efficient research assistants on the audience project, and Maureen Kelleher for the huge Acknowledgements Vlll task (always cheerfully performed) of transcribing audience tapes and typing the manuscript. We would also like to thank the Audience Research section (especially Dennis List) of the Australian Broadcasting Commission for access to their qualitative 'Television Program Appreciation' research, and valuable time given to discussing it. Finally, we would like to say a very special thank you to Jeremy Bentham who compiled Appendices I and II. Jeremy Bentham was among the two million children to have watched the very first episode of Doctor Who in November 1963 and, as such, was a pioneer of behind-the-sofa viewing. He co founded the Doctor Who Appreciation Society in 1976 and later spent three and a half years as Associate Editor and writer for the commercial publication Doctor Who Monthly. Sydney and London J. T. May 1983 M.A. The publisher wishes to thank the BBC for kindly providing the cover photograph of the BBC Television Centre and for providing all the photographs which appear in the text. Terms I. In/on television there are considered to be three predom inant forms of fiction -the single play, the series and the serial. The single play is an obvious category and one that is derived from the theatre and cinema. The distinction series/ serial is, however, more complex and thus far has generally been handled with a certain imprecision in media analysis. Because of Doctor Who's uneasy overlapping of both areas of television production we briefly offer a suggested typology to be of use in future media research: 1. Continuous serial 2. Episodic serial 3. Sequential series 4. Episodic series 1. The continuous serial is characterised by the fact that it can run infinitely and that it possesses multiple narrative strands which are introduced and concluded in different temporal periods. There are therefore multi-layered nar rative overlaps; the programmes Coronation Street, Cross roads, Emmerdale Farm, Brookside are examples of this format. 2. The episodic serial is the category to which Doctor Who belongs. It is characterised by there being narrative contin uity, but for a limited and specified number of tpisodes. The viewer has to see all the episodes encompassed within one title to understand fully the narrative structure and closure. It is not a very common form but includes programmes such as Out and The Prisoner (GB). It is ques tionable as to whether a continuous serial which 'fails', for example The Cres, becomes, through its failure, an episodic serial! Terms X 3. The sequential series is close to the episodic serial but does nevertheless constitute a separate category. It is character ised by the fact that while each episode constitutes a complete narrative structure and experience there will invariably be an enigma posed at the end of each episode. Dallas is the classic example but there are a number of others, for example Fox, Dynasty, Knott's Landing. 4. The episodic series is television's most common and endur ing fictional format and is perhaps the one fictional mode it can claim to have invented (with cinema now beginning to copy it with series like the Superman films). Each episode consists of complete and discrete· narratives with only the main protagonists and main locations (offices/ homes) providing continuity between episodes. Examples of episodic series abound in the television productions of many countries of the world, for example Starsky and Hutch, Minder, etc., etc. The first three categories all require the posing of an enigma at the end of most episodes (with a consequent lack of nar rative closure), thereby using narrative structure to draw an audience back for the next episode - the fourth uses audience identification with protagonists/stars to maintain high viewing ratings. II. Throughout this book we have generally used the term 'cliffhanger' to describe those moments of narrative break that occur at the end of an episode of a serial and which are designed to keep the audience in a position of suspense until the next episode- 'How will the protagonist escape?' is the question one is left asking. It is a term that would seem to date from the period when serials were a common cinematic form and where each episode ended with the hero in mortal danger. However, while the term 'cliffhanger' has entered the com mon parlance of the television professionals who worked on Doctor Who, we find the term somewhat crude, particularly when applied to those narrative breaks which don't hold the life of the hero in balance. In some of the adventure stories of Doctor Who this is the case, but there are also stories which
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