Dr Who: Similarity and Difference

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Publication: Australian Journal of Screen Theory
Date: 1982-11-15
Author: John Tulloch
Page: 8-26
Language: English
Abstract: This paper presents an initial work-in-progress report of an on-going children's television drama project, which is concerned at this stage with the long-running programme Dr Who. This series of television texts was chosen because it clearly, in the liberal discourse, 'works at several levels', is consciously designed by its producers to draw on quite different target groups, and hence opens up the possibility, via the attempt to inscribe different audiences in the text, of a splintering of textual meanings. This possibility is augmented not only by the format - discrete serials located within a long-running series - but also by the replacement of the lead actor of Dr Who four times, each one the site of intersection of different codes, and each one encouraged to foreground the rhetoric of 'difference' (the Victorian grandfather, the clown with recorder and baggy pants, the stylish dresser and wine connoisseur, the boyish bohemian with hat and long trailing scarf), even while, like the daily news, fundamentally working for similarity and continuity to establish programme identity, orderliness and stability.

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