[RonPrice (RonPrice)]

Since Dr Who has continued to occupy the enthusiasms of folks at this thread, I'll add another personal reflection on this popular TV series.-Ron Price, Tasmania
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Part 1:

Last night ABC1 TV screened the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special “An Adventure in Space and Time,” immediately following the prime-time screening of “The Day of the Doctor.” It aired on Sunday November 24 at 8.45pm on ABC1 following “The Day of the Doctor” at 7:30pm. I watched "a few snippets." I have never been a Dr Who enthusiast right from its start back in the 1960s.

This historic special, which attracted many millions of viewers, stared David Bradley as William Hartnell; Jessica Raine as Verity Lambert; Brian Cox as Sydney Newman and Sacha Dhawan as Waris Hussein. It was written by Mark Gatiss, and executive produced by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and Caroline Skinner.

This special one-off drama traveled back in time to 1963 to see how the beloved “Doctor Who” was first brought to the screen. Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles in his acting career. Wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry’s glass ceiling limiting her creative energies and potential. Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama, time travel and monsters! Allied with a team of brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever, celebrating its 50th anniversary this evening.

Part 2:

I have never been, as I say above, 'into' the Doctor Who phenomenon, although occasionally since 1963, when it opened on BBC1 TV, I have found myself watching one of the 800 episodes, and one of the several incarnations of this time-travelling chap, this Time-Lord, this doctor Who.

Back on 23 November 1963 I was 18 when the first episode was aired. I was in my first year of an arts degree in Ontario Canada, and it was the day after JFK was assassinated. Since then, in the 50 years since 1963, I have studied and taught history. I retired from FT teaching more than a decade ago in 1999 but, if I was back in the classroom and teaching history, I would certainly draw on some of the conceptual material from this most popular of sci-fi TV programs. I would also have found it useful when teaching literature and creative writing, as I did for decades.

Many students both now, and in the decades gone by, have a great deal of trouble making imaginative and creative connections with the major events of history as taught in school curricula across the planet. As Henry Ford once said: "history is bunk", & millions have found this to be the case.-Ron Price with thanks to "Doctor Who" ABC1 TV, 7:30 to 10:15 pm, 24/11/'13 and Wikipedia.

You faced a variety of foes while(1)
working to save civilisations, help
ordinary people, and right wrongs.

The longest-running science fiction
television show in the world, & the
"most successful" of science fiction
series for all time based on its over-
all broadcast ratings, book-sales, as
well as DVD, and iTunes traffic; the
largest ever simulcast of a TV drama"
with The Day of the Doctor last night.

Like some kind of background music
popping-up in the last five decades of
my life from my late teens to my late
sixties turning millions on....even if I
was only part of the audience on rare
occasions as my life-narrative dealt
with the return, the incarnation, of a
type of Doctor which was, arguably,
the most popular charismatic person
in the universe of the television-set.

Then there were other Doctors in the
world in very different senses: one of
Them was part of this fully routinized
and fully institutionalized Force which
may be the most precious Soul ever to
have drawn breath on this planet: The
Day of the Unifier of all the children of
men at last with a power and authority
that has and would travel from these
beginnings that hath no beginning to
the ends that hath no end, eternal in
the past, and eternal in the future, &
world without end, amen!...amen!!!!

1 The Doctor, the Time-Lord and his several incarnations

Ron Price
25/11/'13 to 21/1/'15.