Tardis lands on the wrong day
- Publication: The Guardian
- Date: 1982-01-04
- Author:
- Page: 10
- Language: English
In his long and battered career, as chronicled by the BBC over more than 20 years, Dr Who has nude a habit of bringing down his Tardis in unlikely and inhospitable terrains, but he has rarely blundered as badly as he is likely to do today, when he is due to come to earth on a Monday. The BBC allegedly intends from now on to install Dr Who in an early evening slot on Mondays (as if it were no more than a replacement for the agreeable but lacklustre Blake's Seven, which is now sunk, apparently with the loss of all hands) and on Tuesdays, instead of restoring it to the hallowed place it has always occupied before in the nation's Saturday nights.
Quite apart from denying Dr Who to all those who at this time on a Monday and Tuesday night are still homeward bound in their chauffeur-driven Jaguars or such commuter trains as Mr Buckton is currently permitting to run, this decision displays an extraordinary failure somewhere in the BBC hierarchy to understand the essential Saturdayishness of the whole operation.
Indeed, it can only have been taken by people who are incapable of sensing what it is that makes Saturday so different, and so much more glorious, than your ordinary run-of-the-mill day of the week. It is doubtful whether people whose senses are so deficient in so important a matter ought ever to have been entrusted with the running of a public broadcasting medium.
All those who have grown up or grown old, with Dr Who (for some who watched it in the early days, tremblingly, from around the safe cover of a friendly armchair are now men of destiny and captains of what industry this country still has left) know it to be essential a part of a winter Saturday as coming in cold from heath, forest, or football, warm crumpets (or pikelets, if preferred) before the fire, the signature tune of Sports Report, and that sense of liberation and escapist surrender which can only come when tomorrow is a day off too. These conditions cannot be created on Mondays and Tuesdays. Saturday will be smitten by the destruction of an essential ingredient, and Dr Who will be destroyed by this violent wrenching from its natural context. If Mr Alastair Milne is not to forfeit the hope that has been riding on him since his recent appointment to the Director-General. ship, he must intervene now and order that this sacrilege be stopped.
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- APA 6th ed.: (1982-01-04). Tardis lands on the wrong day. The Guardian p. 10.
- MLA 7th ed.: "Tardis lands on the wrong day." The Guardian [add city] 1982-01-04, 10. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: "Tardis lands on the wrong day." The Guardian, edition, sec., 1982-01-04
- Turabian: "Tardis lands on the wrong day." The Guardian, 1982-01-04, section, 10 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Tardis lands on the wrong day | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Tardis_lands_on_the_wrong_day | work=The Guardian | pages=10 | date=1982-01-04 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=24 March 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Tardis lands on the wrong day | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Tardis_lands_on_the_wrong_day | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=24 March 2025}}</ref>
