A short clip from the longer presentation, “Doctor Who Regenerated”
Dr. Rosanne Welch, Cal Poly Pomona Faculty from the Department of Interdisciplinary General Education is back by popular demand with a new lecture on Doctor Who and Television!
This time, the Doctor will focus on a deeper look of the themes of the writers behind “Doctor Who.” Above and beyond race and gender, they include social justice and the power of childhood.
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Transcript:
I think the deepest theme you find in Russell T Davies work is his anti-war theme. I think that if you look at the first episodes, especially with Eccleston, and as they are later repeated with David Tennant, and we are going to see a little clip from each of those, you find an amazingly deep anti-war strain, because of what war does to human beings — what it turns them into. And that is something that an artist, a writer, dislikes. Because an artist wants to see someone succeed through their creativity and through bringing something important and positive into the world. One of the things I said last time was that I do believe the reason I do believe Who succeeds now at such a level is because its a positive view of our future. As much as y’all like to see zombies eating people and getting shot in barns and all that sort of thing, those are very depressing looks at our potential future. In Doctor Who, the Doctor generally wins and his goal is generally to save humanity. I like that. I would rather live in a future where I get saved than where I turn into a zombie.
“Natalie Lopez at the CalPoly University Library invited me to do a presentation for National Libraries Week on Doctor Who and Culture so that’s why a group of Whovians from both CalPoly and CSUF gathered in the Special Events room on April 16th. It was wonderful to look out over a sea of t-shirts and other Doctor paraphernalia present among the crowd as I pontificated about what makes Who great – mostly giving me a chance to present a case for the fact that writers make Doctor Who and therefore writers make culture.”