Why Doctor Who Is Good For Science Fiction
Science fiction has a reputation to being difficult to digest. It is considered maybe more than any other fiction genre to be something that can only be enjoyed by a specific audience. And yet a decidedly science-fiction show, airing at BBC primetime on Saturdays, regularly enjoys viewing figures of over 6 million.
I'm not going into why (or whether) Doctor Who is good science fiction (I think that it is more often than it isn't) but rather why Doctor Who is good for the science fiction genre.
Almost entirely this is because it gets people who don't usually enjoy science fiction watching a science fiction show. There are a lot of people who claim that they don't like science fiction - possibly due to the stigma that's become attached to the genre over the years - but will still watch and enjoy Doctor Who.
Purists might argue that this is because the show is targeted towards the mainstream, and in many ways it is - but this is no bad thing, and remember, we're not going into discussions about the quality of the fiction.
The fact that the show is so easily digestible makes it a great stepping-off point for those who may wish to delve into the science fiction genre - one of the most difficult to penetrate genres of fiction. I know that Doctor Who, along with the first Star Wars films, were what I watched at a young age and certainly must have fuelled my later forays into science fiction.
Doctor Who is good for the genre because it's the only science fiction show on TV that has such a widespread and diverse audience. A lot of viewers won't even realise that they are watching often fairly dense sci-fi - to them, Doctor Who is like a genre unto itself.
It's a similar effect the way audiences took to the film Inception. Inception is a fairly dense (it could be argue too dense) fairly complex science fiction film, and yet it was presented in such a way that people who would never dream of going to watch a sci-fi film watched it and were completely blown away.
This is when science fiction works at its best; when it's not so absorbed in its own genre trappings to become impenetrable to new viewers. When science fiction works well, it's not a question of genre at all; it's a question of good fiction.
Science fiction can be complex and absorbing whilst still being accessible and digestible, and Doctor Who's viewing figures make a good argument for this case. Whether the fiction is good or not is only half the issue - the other is to get audiences watching science fiction in the first place, and its at this that the show excels.
