Education in the Fourth Dimension: Time Travel and Teachers in the TARDIS

Abstract

Doctor Who began in a school and now after more than 50 years has ended up back in one. The first scenes of the long-running science fiction series Doctor Who were set in a science lab and a history classroom in an East End secondary modern. From that opening, the program has returned again and again to educational themes and to power relationships in which the educated instruct the “ignorant.” The Doctor’s first companions were teachers, and since then he has travelled with astrophysicists, mathematicians, school students and dropouts, doctors, university students, scientists and yet more teachers. Similarly, his deadliest foes have included villains appearing in guises as headmasters, school nurses, and professors. This chapter considers the recurring preoccupation with education that runs through the 50 years of the show, assessing the program’s origin and continuing importance as an educational endeavor by a public broadcaster. It traces the shifting, sometimes implicit but enduring emphasis on learning, and suggests that its narratives based on pedagogy are often problematic and ambiguous. While the educational goal (as part of a Public Service mission to inform, educate and entertain) that was part of the earliest development of Doctor Who arguably came to very little, the program does make contributions to understanding the way education can be perceived and portrayed.