[Ed: with, of course, a new Doctor: Jodie Whittaker]

 

Nick Ware

“Doctor Who” – well OK great, but why is it not 16×9? My tellies are all 16×9.

Is yours? Yeah, I thought so.

Is anyone’s not 16×9?  No, I thought not.

So what does slitty-vision bring to the party?

Daft, I call it.

 

Geoff Fletcher

Never mind all that  – did tha like her Yorkshire accent lad?

 

Nick Ware

I did. I never thought I’d want to cuddle a Doctor Who until today!

My Mum was Yorkshire, so I’m on home ground with that.

Don’t know what William Hartnell would have made of all that CGI and bally-hoo though. Doctor Who has evolved somewhat, but he would know that of course, because he’s seen the future.

Great pictures too, and superb sound with music not too loud for a change.

 

Roger Bunce

NOOOO!  The Doctor is supposed to be an Alien – from another planet – she would have learned English-as-a-Foreign-Language, i.e. Received English. (or American English, which would be completely unacceptable!  Can’t have the Doctor talking about "Train Stations", even if BBC Journos do.)

If she’d crash-landed in Yorkshire, completely lost her memory and had to relearn her whole language – that might have been acceptable. But this is the second Northern Doctor. Why? The line about, "A lot of planets have a North", was too pathetic when Christopher Eccleston said it. You can’t get away with it again – particularly since we’ve had two Scottish Doctors, who must be even more Northern than Northern. So, why no Irish, Welsh, West Country, East Anglian or Cockney Doctors? It’s discrimination, I tell you! A completely Alien accent, never heard on Earth before, would be clever, but probably too difficult. So please can the Doctor act like a proper Alien, and stop being so identifiably and parochially terrestrial.

And as for the moment when she said, "Would of" AAAAAGH!

And wasn’t the plot nicked from "Predator"?

 

John Howell

I’m guessing "coo-mon" replaces "allons y"

 

Dave Buckley

“Quotes of the week” in last Sundays “Mail on Sunday” carried the following…..

“…I’m from Hoodezfield…”. Jodie wrongfoots a US chat show subtitle writer with her Yorkshire accent!

 

Nick Ware

Doesn‘t that not quite into the lens picture look as if it wasn‘t the camera the photographer just exposed? She looks startled.

 

Dave Plowman

You might too if just having had an unexpected gender re-orientation?

 

Roger Bunce

Not sure if this is Politically Correct, or not – The Doctor Who Barbie Doll!

 

Graeme Wall

Putting my anorak on for a moment, anyone know if the train sequence was filmed on the Barry Tourist Railway?

 

Bernie Newnham

With mine on- when I saw them fiddling with the door handles I asked my wife if she’d noticed what date it was set.

 

Alec Bray

I’m sure that some of you will have already seen this – but if you haven’t, you may find it interesting.

The question comes from a Instructor and Flight Controller at NASA.

*Doctor Who had a Rosa Parks episode. Has Doctor Who always been political?*

Answered Oct 22

“… Only in America would a depiction of a sixty-three year old event in which a woman demanded to be treated like a human being be perceived as political. Silly me, I thought we’d reached the point where we all agreed that people should be treated as equals. I didn’t know that was a bold political stance.

The purpose of science fiction is to speculate on how science could impact the human experience. It is a creative means to examine the human condition. Science fiction that occurs in the realm of space and alien worlds is used for allegory. It examines ideas that may be uncomfortable to discuss in their native context by giving them distance. We view aliens facing choices that parallel our own and that makes us assess our choices.

“Star Trek” was well known for this. As a small child, I remember watching the episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, in which two aliens had great racial animus towards each other but the only difference between them was that one was white on the left side of their face and black on the right side and the other was white on the right side and black on the left side. Kirk and crew found their bigotry astonishing and so did my young self. That story imprinted the idea that racial bigotry is stupid and ignorant onto my brain.

“Doctor Who” is even more suited to this type of storytelling because the Doctor is very judgmental. The Doctor flies around the universe in the TARDIS disrupting the status quo, chastising authority, and setting wrongs right. Part of the original BBC charter for the show is that it was to be educational for children – a way to teach them history.

The second “Doctor Who” story, back in 1963, introduced the Daleks. The Daleks were a militaristic alien race obsessed with racial purity. They were based upon the Nazis. They were commentary. Now, I always thought that opposing Nazis was no longer political – something everyone agreed upon, but in August 2017, I learned that isn’t really true.

The following year, 1964, the story “The Planet of Giants” provided a pro-environmentalism message. In 1967, in “The Ice Warriors”, Doctor Who was ahead of its time – get it, ahead of its /time/ – in doing a story about anthropogenic climate change.

Doctor Who stories like “The Savages” and “The Power of Kroll” indirectly criticized Britain’s past colonial efforts.

During the time the Third Doctor, in 1972, the show had a story called “The Curse of Peladon” that paralleled the discussions happening in Britain about joining the European Union (which happened the following year).

There are many, many other examples. The show is all about questioning ideas. Fiction that questions ideas shouldn’t be described as political, it should be described as intelligent….”

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There are many more answers here:

Has Doctor Who always been political?

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As a corollary to this, last week we had to look after grandsons Sam (8) and Harry (5). They had recorded the Rosa Parks episode – and watched it over and over and over again during the week – about 6 times if I recall correctly.  Each time there were questions, so there are now at least two children fully versed in the anti-segregation movement in America. "…There’s Martin Luther King!…"

Hurrah for Doctor Who !!