Doctor Who's Future Visions
- Publication: Focus
- Date: December 2013
- Author: Stephen Baxter
- Page: 56
- Language: English
The show's storylines have always been a product of the age in which it was born
OVER FIFTY YEARS of Doctor Who, an added pleasure has been background glimpses of the future of human and alien civilisations. And it's remarkable to reflect that the show has depicted pretty much the same future for mankind consistently since 1963.
Well, almost. Who's creators have always been primarily focussed on telling the next story, rather than on overall continuity. But if you think back even over recent seasons, you'll know the kind of future I mean. After a past and present plagued by alien incursions, criminality and war, humans will unite and go on to explore planets like Mars and the worlds of other stars, wage war against races like the Daleks, and found interstellar empires.
Consider the fifth season (1967-8) - I remember it well as a 10-year-old. In 1963, thanks to UFO scares and the radio search for alien signals, the notion that aliens existed, and maybe were here already, was in the air. Thus in 'The Abominable Snowmen', set in the 1930s, a Tibetan monastery has been taken over by the Great Intelligence (who would return in the 2012 Christmas special). In 'The Web of Fear' set 40 years later, the Intelligence's robot Yeti rampage in the London Underground. In the near future, science and engineering would advance. 'Fury from the Deep' features North Sea gas extraction, and in 'The Enemy of the World', sunlight is harvested to feed a hungry world: a typical 1960s ambition.
More fifth-season stories illustrate future ages. Set a century later, when interplanetary travel is routine, 'The Wheel in Space' is about a Cyberman attack on a deep-space station. Later still, 'The Tomb of the Cybermen' is set in an age of interstellar colonisation. On the longest of timescales, exotic possibilities arise. In 'The Ice Warriors', the Earth has slumped into a new Ice Age.
That rough future framework was a product of the age in which Doctor Who was first created. The world had just seen a mighty global struggle, the Second World War, followed by the emergence of multinational agencies like the UN and the EEC. So in the future, it was thought we might face a fresh war, maybe nuclear, that would lead to a world government. Then, united, we would move out into space. Doctor Who has striven to maintain continuity with its past, so the same kind of future is portrayed today. Who season 33, broadcast in 2012, featured two stories of aliens troubling humanity in the past, a cyborg in the Old West in 'A Town Called Mercy', and the Weeping Angels in 1938 New York in 'The Angels Take Manhattan'. 'The Power of Three' is a modern-day alien invasion story, complete with UNIT, a UN military arm involved in Who stories since the 1960s. Finally, the season close 'Asylum Of The Daleks' is a far future story set in deep space. The stories from the two series, produced as far apart as 1968 and 2012, fit into the same kind of future history, of alien incursion, technological growth and expansion into space.
Projected from today, our assumed future might include eco-crash and resource wars, perhaps resulting in poverty and social division, such as featured in The Hunger Games or Elysium. But the very different future as seen from 1963 is still embedded in Doctor Who. Over 50 years Doctor Who has become a kind of ark bearing the hopes and fears of its creators into an age they could probably barely have imagined. Even the future has a past.
STEPHEN BAXTER is a science fiction Even the future writer. His latest novel is Proxima published by Gollancz.
Caption: The Weeping Angels - statues that chase you when you're not looking - terrorised human civilisation in New York
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- APA 6th ed.: Baxter, Stephen (December 2013). Doctor Who's Future Visions. Focus p. 56.
- MLA 7th ed.: Baxter, Stephen. "Doctor Who's Future Visions." Focus [add city] December 2013, 56. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Baxter, Stephen. "Doctor Who's Future Visions." Focus, edition, sec., December 2013
- Turabian: Baxter, Stephen. "Doctor Who's Future Visions." Focus, December 2013, section, 56 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Doctor Who's Future Visions | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Doctor_Who%27s_Future_Visions | work=Focus | pages=56 | date=December 2013 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=28 March 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Doctor Who's Future Visions | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Doctor_Who%27s_Future_Visions | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=28 March 2025}}</ref>
