Day 693: Survival Part 1

To say that this story is set in Perivale in the 1980's would be a lie. It is, in actual fact, set in a suburb of Newcastle in 2015, where a young man is sitting in front of an old CRT TV and beginning to watch an old Doctor Who episode. He's watching and enjoying this story, but there's a sense of finality of proceedings. For you see, as this Doctor Who story begins, another story is coming to an end...

The Doctor Who story is known as Survival. It's a story set in the modern day, where young people are going missing in the town where Ace grew up. It's odd to watch this story though because it feels as if it's a return to the world of the mundane. It's been a long time since we've been back in such a normal environment, and it feels weird to not see alien races or strange designs behind every corner. But that, in turn, makes the aliens feel all the more exciting and frightening. Take, for example, the scene where Ace is kidnapped and sent to an alien world, where she is hunted by a Cheetah person. In another Doctor Who story, we would take that alien world in our stride, because it's fairly obviously a quarry, but to the eyes of someone who has instead been wandering around a town, it feels extraordinary, and truly alien. It all feels as if it's a return to what is one of the great concepts that can be covered in Doctor Who, the juxtaposition of normal things with strange and otherworldly concepts, creating an unforgettable series.

The other story began, I suppose, in 2003. Fresh off discovering the programme with Frontier in Space, I'd raced through other videos that we had in the downstairs cupboard, in preparation for watching the entire repeat season of Doctor Who, broadcast 6pm, Monday-Thursday on ABC. I sat down in front of the first episode, and loved it, and I continued to watch the series as the repeat season continued. But then, out of nowhere, I noticed that they skipped Marco Polo. I asked my parents, and we discovered that it was skipped because they'd lost it. Later, I noticed that the Dalek serials weren't being broadcast, which was because of legal problems. All of this kind of took the magic away of watching Doctor Who, knowing that I wouldn't be experiencing the full adventure, but instead an edited version. Combined with other factors seeking my attention, like The Simpsons or Age of Mythology, I suppose that it was inevitable that I would drift away from the programme. I still watched it though, but this was mainly through watching DVDs. It was a potted and selective viewing of Doctor Who, entirely devoid of context, and the ability to watch concepts and characters grow over time. It wasn't the ideal way to watch the programme, but it was the way I watched it for the next 10 years. Until, that is, I had an idea...