12 Days of Christmas – Day 11
And a very merry Christmas to all of you at home!
We’ve one day left after today to tease apart the last five years of Doctor Who‘s triumphant return, and the reign of two men who have ensured its success to date – David Tennant and Russell T Davies. Today of course the Tenth Doctor begins his last story proper – his song is reaching its closing bars.
So on this subject of history and history-making, a question about historicals…
Question 11: Pure historicals have long ceased to be a feature of the New Series. What are your thoughts on this? Do we need historicals to ‘teach’ us history any more? And should this be a function of Doctor Who in an age of Wikipedia and Google?
That’s some heavy Christmas pud to digest, so let’s leave it there. Happy feasting!
December 25th, 2009 at 8:35 am
(w)Ho! (w)Ho! (w)Ho!
And a Merry (professor) Xmas to you all.
The new series has embraced historical settings for its science fiction quite happily, so maybe a purely historical adventure wouldn’t be too much to expect. I for one would love to see it.
My only reservation as to thelikelyhood would be the need to satisfy the elements of the spectacular that seem to have become a fixed element of nu-who and real history can be rather mundane. So it would have to be some fantastical part of history… like say the Chinese Great Fleet, or a post 300 take on the seige of Thermopale, or…. I dunno – any other takers?
December 25th, 2009 at 8:36 am
I’d like to see a proper historical. Do we need it for educational reasons? And, do we really need to believe that EVERY time the Doctor lands in history, there are aliens attacking?
What’s wrong with a nice historical runaround? Big Finish have done plenty of enjoyable ones.
Although the concept does conflict with the RTD “Humans are wonderful and never to blame” agenda, which has been slipping. Who knows? Maybe next year we’ll get actual proper episodes in space as well as in past time!