Isn't it terrible was the reaction of a small boy of seven who watched he return of Doctor Who, B.B-C. 1 on Saturday. With others he had sat spellbound as the Doctor, with his accolytes Jamie and Victoria, searched the empty tomb of the Cybermen for any sign of its former inhabitants.
Doctor Who has a time machine that allows him to voyage back and forth across the universe intervening, on instructions from Lime Grove, in the events of both the past and future. I was told that Jamie. a Scots youth who has taken the kilt into outer space. was rescued by the Doctor from the Highlands after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie. While Victoria was the daughter of a 19th-centory scientist who had come to a had bad. She was, not surprisingly, anxious about the length of her skirt.
Doctor Who is the most succcesful of children's programmes because it has matched its science fiction setting with good story telling, and the most ingenious array of props. and electronic sound effects. The children can identify, too, with Doctor Who's child companions. But most important of all Doctor, Who's infallibility is a device that allows even a nervous child to believe that in spite of the most alarming experiences all will be well in the end. It is reality, or what passes for it, that children find truly terrifying.
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