Doctor Who - Independant Study

For my independent study I am planning on writing about Doctor and audience pleasures. As Doctor Who has been going for nearly 60 years, there will be a lot of similarities and differences to mention. All of the editing is a lot better and actually uses computer animation now in the newer series. The representation of the women would have changed since the 1970’s. I will also be able to mention the stereotypical aspects and characters that are linked with Doctor Who alone, like the various enemies of the doctor and the continuous companions.

I am studying two recent episodes from the new series two, which both have an obvious connection with older episodes, the first episode included a special appearance from one of the doctors oldest companions Sarah Jane Smith and his old Robot dog K9. The second episode includes appearances from the two oldest, most famous Doctor Who enemies, the Daleks and the Cybermen. I am going to study the different audience pleasures, in terms of representation and I am going to use the older episodes to compare separate aspects and explain how the BBC has used this to appeal to a wider audience for the recent series. I am also going to mention the representation of the different doctors and link them also to audience pleasures. The doctors have always changed as time went by, but in the 2000’s the audience’s needs changed. The doctor used to be older 40 – 60 year old men, but recently they have been using actors in their 30’s, who may appeal to a younger audience.

The audience age has changed since the 1960’s, Doctor Who used to be aimed at older teenagers and adults whereas now, Doctor Who is aimed at younger children from ages 8 to 12, as children have become less scared of things, and then has a further audiences up to about age 40. Most adults still watch Doctor Who, because of the intertexuality of the older Doctor Who series. Staying with the ages of characters and episodes, I am going to talk about the representation of ages by talking about countertypes and stereotypes of the actors and the characters they play and match them to the public demands and wants. The doctor as I said is always played by an older actor aged 30 – 60, whereas the companions are always played by younger characters, which is done to appeal to a wider audience. In the new series the first companion was Rose Tyler who was a shop working girl in her late teens, who still lived with her mum, she was represented as a chav as she also lived in a block of flats. The newest companion, is once again a lot younger than the doctor, but this time is Martha Jones and medical student. To appeal to an even wider audience, the BBC have casted Kylie Minogue for the newest Christmas episode.

To compare the newer episodes to the older episodes I am going to also get one older episodes, with the typical enemies and characters of Doctor Who in. I am going to find an episode with the Daleks and Sarah Jane. The two recent episodes I am going to analyse are “School reunion” which is a new episode with K9 and Sarah Jane and then “Doomsday”, which is the series 2 finale with both the Cybermen and the Daleks. This will give me a lot to compare in terms of content and audience pleasures.

Finally, with for my independent study I am going to mention the similar programmes, spin offs and programmes linked with Doctor Who, to add more about audience pleasures. I will compare the audience of the other programmes to the audience of Doctor Who and see if there is a link between programmes of the same genre, programmes like Buffy the vampire slayer or Angel, or whether it’s all based on when and where the programmes were made.

Overall I am basing my Independent Study on audience, audience pleasures and representation, linking with audience pleasures. I will mention the typical aspects and compare old and new episodes with each other to create a fair comparison.