Has Doctor Who made time travel unimportant?

Tardis-in-Space-tardis-6289810-1280-768By Will Barber- Taylor

Time travel. It is amazing, dangerous and for the moment definitely in the realms of science fiction. It is the subject that caused most of the comedy in Back To The Future, the vehicle that helped Captain Kirk save the Whales in the bizarre Star Trek: The Voyage Home. It is also the idea that is meant to be the heart of the television show Doctor Who. Or it was. In recent years, the executive producers have decided that it isn’t. Once upon a time, travelling with The Doctor was a once in a lifetime experience which may never happen again. Quiet often companions didn’t intend to go travelling with the Time Lord. In fact, the first two companions, Ian and Barbara spent most of their time in the TARDIS trying to get back to 60s London.

Now however, it isn’t. Slowly the specialness of the magic box has decreased. It appears to have become a bit un special. Take for example, Rory’s first step into the TARDIS in The Vampires of Venice. Not even a wow. Since he has read a few magazines about psychics, he now is completely unimpressed by a time space machine bigger on the inside than the outside. If that is not bad enough the situation with current companion, Clara Oswald seems to be that time travel is just something ordinary she does every Wednesday.

 Even her irritating wards aren’t that impressed with the Time Machine when they enter it, as seen in Nightmare in Silver. Moffat’s era undermines the charm and excitement of going off on an adventure and not knowing when you will get back. Clara doesn’t want time travel to interrupt her social life and her time “Facebooking” or whatever she does.  It makes the experience less unique and more factory made which must surely impact on the way we watch and enjoy the show.

4 responses to “Has Doctor Who made time travel unimportant?

  1. You hit the nail on the head with what has been bugging me recently. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but it is the whole Doctor actually being in control of the TARDIS as opposed to the TARDIS ‘taking him where he needs to be’ (The Doctor’s Wife).
    Rory being unimpressed always struck me as being otherwise as he felt the Doctor was competition for Amy’s affection.
    However, everyone else is seeming a bit underwhelmed by the awesomeness of the TARDIS and how just by stepping into it you are in another Dimension, is a good deal with what is wrong with the current episodes.

  2. Pingback: A Timeless Mystery – Hypercalculia·

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.