16. Timey Wimey Spacey Wacey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvnKXOGYKM8 From Robots of Death: 29 January 1977 I must admit that I lean a bit towards pedantry. People like me will argue that Doctor Who is Science Fantasy and not Science Fiction, but most people don't care. What's good about this moment is that we get a humorous, tongue-in-cheek explanation that doesn't really explain anything. Best of all, the dialogue cleverly makes an arch comment about the differences between science and magic. Leela is playing with her yo-yo. The primitive from a backwater planet believes implicitly in magic and thinks that she has to keep the thing going in order to keep 'the magic' on-stream. The Doctor then gives us an explanation of relative dimensions using two boxes and if you listen carefully you realise that it's no better an explanation than Leela's about the yo-yo. That, right there, is the difference between Sci-Fi and Sci-Fantasy. It isn't Sci-Fi. The Doctor's explanation should at least sound plausible technologically, no matter how fantastic it ends up being as a concept. This is a moment that has always stood out in my mind ever since I first saw it, because it is such an anarchic, beautifully constructed trashing of any pretence that Doctor Who is remotely Sci-Fi.
Paul Hammans
Hello, I'm Paul Hammans, terminal 'Who' obsessive, F1 fan, reader of arcane literature about ideas and generalist scribbler. To paraphrase someone much better at aphorisms than I: I strive to write something worth reading and when I cannot do that I try to do something worth writing. I have my own Dr Who oriented blog at http://www.exanima.co.uk
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