Day 127: The Smugglers Episode 1

New story today, and it's Ben and Polly's first trip in the TARDIS. They react to this in the usual way, not choosing to believe that they have travelled in time, despite the large evidence to the contrary,mgiven that they have gone into a police box that is bigger on the inside and obviously travelled through space, but the time travel seems to be a little too unbelievable for them. This comes across as poor writing, given that these characters just accept these things as they happen. But this shows us one of the mahor problems with having a rotating cast as we have for the past while, it means that we have to tack on scenes to explain the concept of the show every once in a while, for new characters, but rarely new viewers, because it is by now well known enough in the public consciousness for the idea of a man who travels in time to be part of regular life. Also, it means that writers are unable to write for characters, instead writing for roles. If this story featured Steven and Dodo, then it's a fair bet that the only things that would be changed are the disbelief at time travel and the names would go from Ben and Polly to Steven and Dodo. Whilst we will get to see these characters develop (as much as we can for a 1960s adventure serial), it's still going to be a while. It's a disappointing reminder of the differing ways in which television was written in those days.