Fresh pension war
actually recall 1963. We remember the concerned teachers who wondered at Susan Foreman’s strange view of the world in the episode An Unearthly Child. She takes them to see her grandfather in his police box in a junkyard. In later episodes, the Doctor often tells companions he was a father and grandfather who lost his family – for example, while talking to his companion Rose in 2005 in the episode The Empty Child. He repeats that he was a father in the episodes Fear Her in 2006 and Doctor’s daughter in 2008.
We were also reassured often that the Time Lord could only regenerate 12 times. Indeed, he might never have regenerated had the first doctor, William Hartnell, not been so ill.
On his desk in the study of St Luke’s University in the last series, the Doctor has photos of his granddaughter and his wife, River Song. And yet all the time he was a woman – he kept that a secret. Many feminists have said the programme desperately needed a strong woman. If they actually watched it they would know of Rose (Billie Piper), Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) ,Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) and River Song (Alex Kingston).
In truth it was not that the BBC needed a woman, they wanted a younger Doctor Who. The main enemy was X Factor, not the Daleks.
Therein lies the BBC predicament. Having betrayed their core audience,will they garner enough new viewers from those celebrating?
I give it one year, tops. ● John V Lloyd is an author. He lives in Inverkeithing, Fife.