Table Of ContentDOCTOR 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
