SOURCE: "Doctor Who: Televised Science Fiction as Contemporary Melodrama," in Extrapolation, Vol. 30, No. 2, Summer, 1989, pp. 176-87.

In the following essay, Oglesbee details how conventions of science fiction and literary melodrama are utilized in Dr. Who.

Science fiction television programs have one thing in common with all other genres—more fail than succeed. And, given the comparatively high cost and low audience figures, science fiction is less common than, for example, situation comedies. In 1988, however, the longest running prime-time drama series in the world is Doctor Who, in production since 1963. It has become an international success, whose audience includes as many adults as children. In 1983, ten thousand people attended a twentieth-birthday party for the series in Chicago; forty thousand attended a similar event in England (Tulloch and Alvarado, 5, 11).

The program, successful in itself, has given rise to ancillary elements familiar in popular culture; paperback novelizations, tee shirts, and other...