Dr Who And The Credit He Deserves.

[BIAD]

I'm a new who'er. Didn't watch the old ones, but watched the 05 reboot "live"(as in weekly when aired). I loved it and it was hands down best thing on tv. 

I'm a big fan up until matts dr. After that, it's hot garbage. 

Still love rewatching the first 3 "new" doctors though.

It must be forty years ago that I stopped being an avid watcher of Dr Who, merely because of other commitments
that we all have. Don't get me wrong, I still believe the series was part of the 'British culture' and because of its
poor budget, reflected the realities of that time.

Other BBC 'sci-fi' programmes also endured the flimsy walls, bouncing polystyrene rocks and questionable fashion
sense! Plot lines may fluctuate as actors came and went and the 'origins' of a character wasn't really important to a viewer,
the programme was.
In Wikipedia, it states:
"...The Doctor was originally known as the Timeless Child, as revealed in "The Timeless Children" (2020)"

What the hell? I don't recall William Hartnell's character stating this. From my memories, he was a grouchy guy from another
world who was smarter than humans. That was it! There was no continuity concerns until Hartnell became too ill to perform
and only then did they come up with the idea of 'regeneration' with Patrick Troughton. The second Doctor never mentioned
he was 'the Timeless Child' either and the idea of canon was obviously way ahead in the future.
(In fact, apart from the name 'Gallifrey', I'd suggest the majority of the Doctors never went into this own personal history.)
...................

Steptoe and Son -a weekly comedy about a father and son rag-and-bone (scrapyard) business, brought in around twenty
million viewers for one its episodes in 1964 and the Royal Variety Performance captured 24.2 million a year later It seems
the adult viewership level was accepted considering the 'Swinging Sixties' was supposedly happening, which rarely involved
sitting in front of a TV set!

Steptoe and Son was the BBC's offering to the working-class, where as Dr Who catered for young minds of all social levels.
Ironically, the two Steptoes lived in a hovel filled with unwanted junk and the son wanted a better life that the middle-class had.
It's another insight to how the BBC saw their diverse audiences.

But dumping the Dr Who series  in 1990 -with a paltry audience of 4.5 million, might seem a wise decision when dealing with
ratings, but couldn't it be also argued as a means of escape in a time of high inflation and high unemployment?

In my humble opinion, Dr Who was the vanguard of youngster-interested programmes, but then -as now, the public's
influence and desires were never taken into consideration and I believe the decision to drop the series in 1990 had more
to do with in-house wrangling at the BBC, rather than taking into consideration the country's political and economic situation.

There's more to this than meets the eye.