This entry serves to represent all those moments in which the audience have gasped out loud, "Oh, come on! Are you serious?!", and no other recent point was that feeling more in evidence than when Danny Pink performed his miraculous, superhuman feat in an episode from Series 8, The Caretaker. In case you have since blotted this unforgivably over-the-top moment out of your memory, here's a reminder: Danny Pink is standing face to face with the Skovox Blitzer in Coal Hill School. He draws the robot's fire by acting as a decoy, but then finds he needs to get past the killer robot. So he takes a run up and... jumps clear over the top of it, doing a midair flip in the process. As filmed, the unassisted jump is clearly beyond his ability and possibly beyond the ability of any human. As such, the thin veneer of the audience's willing suspension of disbelief is immediately torn to shreds. Saying that, there is fierce competition for the prize of worst "As if!" moment in Series 8. The moon being a giant space chicken egg in Kill the Moon was a step way too far for many fans. The moon being an egg is also something guaranteed to never be mentioned in the show again, which is somewhat of a relief anyway. For a science fiction/fantasy series, Doctor Who has a lot of wriggle room in the realm of "willing suspension of disbelief". The premise of the show is fantastical for a start and the tone of the show deliberately shifts with each episode (and sometimes within an episode), meaning the viewers are often happy to forgive enormously unlikely events that would never pass muster in another programme. When the storytelling rules established at the beginning of an episode are broken within that episode, however, the audience is justified in objecting. And that's what happened with Danny Pink's gravity-defying jump, and the space chicken egg, and... oh, this could be a long list. Let's move on.
Mike has lived in the UK, Japan and the USA. Currently, he is based in Iowa with his wife and 2 young children. After working for many years as a writer and editor for a large corporation, he is now a freelancer. He has been fortunate enough to contribute to many books on Doctor Who over the last 20 years and is now concentrating on original sci-fi & fantasy short stories, with recent sales including Flame Tree, Uffda, and The Martian Wave. Also, look for his contribution on Blake's 7 to "You and Who Else", a charity anthology to be released later this year.
You can find him on Tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/culttvmike
