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This book explores a new cultural moment in the history of the BBC TV series, Doctor Who: the casting of a female lead. Following the reveal that Jodie Whittaker would be the thirteenth Doctor, the series has been caught up in media and fan controversies – has it become ‘too political’? Has showrunner Chris Chibnall tampered disastrously with long-running continuity? And has the regendered thirteenth Doctor been represented differently from her predecessors? Analysing Whittaker’s era – up to and including Doctor Who’s responses to 2020’s first lockdown – this edited collection addresses how the show has been repositioned as a self-consciously inclusive brand. Featuring brand-new interview material with those working on-screen (series regular Mandip Gill and guest star Julie Hesmondhalgh) and those operating behind the scenes in crucial roles (Segun Akinola, composer of the current theme and incidental music), Doctor Who – New Dawn focuses on how the thirteenth Doctor’s era of spectacular TV has been created, and how it has diversified representations of queerness, race, and family. Moving beyond the television show itself, chapters also address fan responses to the thirteenth Doctor via memes, cosplay, and non-Anglophone translation. Finally, this collection looks at how the new ‘moment’ of Doctor Who has moved into gendered realms of merchandising, the commercial ‘experience economy’, and a paratextual neo-gift economy of Covid-19 lockdown reactions that were created by previous showrunners alongside Chris Chibnall. A vigorous new dawn for Doctor Who calls for rigorous new analysis – and the thirteen chapters gathered together here all respond adventurously to the call.
[G]enerally ‘queer’ means to resist or reject the idea that being ‘normal’ is valuable or ideal, and to seek other ways of existing. (Cáel Keegan, 2019 ) DOCTOR: Why are you calling me madam? YASMIN: Because you’re a woman. DOCTOR: Am I? Does it suit me? (‘The Woman Who Fell to Earth’) So, if Doctor Who is married to River Song and Doctor Who is now a
Until recently, little work had been conducted on television acting per se, let alone the various coalescing factors that underpin and help shape it. This book addresses that lack, utilising a selection of science fiction case studies from the world of BBC television drama to investigate how small screen performance has altered since the days of live production. This then-and-now comparison of performing for British television drama focuses on science fiction case studies to provide a multi-perspectival examination of the historical development of acting in UK television drama. By the mid-1970s, studio realism might be expected to have reached its apotheosis, yet it was by no means all-encompassing as a style of television acting. A new approach was therefore required, with much of the performance preparation now taking place on location rather than being perfected beforehand in a separate rehearsal space: the seeds of location realism. One of the most notable contrasts between early television drama and the modern day is the shift from multi-camera studio to single camera location filming. Comparing the original versions of The Quatermass Experiment, Doctor Who and Survivors with their respective modern-day re-makes, the book unpacks the developments that have resulted from the shift from multi-camera studio to single camera location production. Examining changing acting styles from distinct eras of television production, the book makes a unique contribution to both television and performance studies, unpacking the various determinants that have combined to influence how performers work in the medium.
David Lloyd Roberts MRCS LSA MD FRCP FRS.Edin (1834–1920) was a successful Manchester doctor who made significant contributions to the advancement of gynaecology and obstetrics. His career was closely linked to the Manchester St Mary’s Hospital for Women and Children, 1858–1920. He lectured on midwifery at Owens College and the University of Manchester and was gynaecological surgeon to Manchester Royal Infirmary. He had many interests outside medicine, including a large collection of rare books, paintings and antiques. He produced an edition of Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici (1898) and a paper, The Scientific Knowledge of Dante (1914). He donated his books to the John Rylands Library and the London Royal College of Physician, his paintings to the Manchester Art Gallery, and he left a large endowment to Bangor College, Wales. This article reviews his medical work alongside his legacy to literature, the arts and education.
Since the sixteenth century, artistic anatomy – a branch of medical science subordinated to the Fine Arts – has understood itself as a comparative investigation halfway between forensic dissection and the analysis of classical art and live bodies. Its teaching was first instituted in Italy by the 1802 curriculum of the national Fine Arts academies, but underwent a drastic transformation at the turn of the century, as the rise of photography brought about both a new aesthetics of vision and an increase in the precision of iconographic documentation. In this article I will attempt to provide a history of the teaching of this discipline at the close of the nineteenth century within the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, with a focus on its ties to contemporary French practices. Drawing on archival materials including lesson plans, letters and notes from the classes of the three medical doctors who subsequently held the chair (Gaetano Strambio, Alessandro Lanzillotti-Buonsanti and Carlo Biaggi), I will argue that the deep connections between their teaching of the discipline and their work at the city hospital reveal a hybrid approach, with the modern drive towards live-body study unable to wholly supplant the central role still granted to corpses in the grammar of the visual arts.
you particularly wanted to say either to the public about humanitarianism or maybe to those in the sector itself? Or a reason you specifically thought your story was important to tell more widely at this moment in time? You both hint at this, but I’d be interested in your more explicit reflection on it. TR: The medical world in general can be very critical of doctors who undertake humanitarian work. Accusations of glory seeking, virtue signalling, attention seeking, etc. come thick and fast and continue to this day. Your motives are challenged continuously and
civilians when MSF took the decision to launch cross-border relief operations in the form of direct emergency medical assistance. Working out of Reyhanlı, still in collaboration with UOSSM, MSF entered Syria in May 2012, arriving in the village of Atmeh in the north of Idlib governorate, situated just a few hundred metres from the border. In June 2012, a clandestine hospital was opened, with the help of a doctor who was also the local UOSSM manager. At this point, in order to
& Littlefield ). Fieldnotes ( 2016 ), Fieldnotes Lewis Turner, participant-observation in Za’tari Refugee Camp , Jordan , August . Fieldnotes ( 2018 ), Fieldnotes Heleen Touquet, conversation with a doctor who works with torture survivors in London , April . Goodley
British science fiction television series of the late 1970s and 1980s present dystopian worlds and fatalistic themes. They appear at a tumultuous time in British politics – the seismic shift from the consensus era to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1979, and the ushering in of neoliberal economics. This book begins by discussing the themes of 1970s British science fiction series – collectivism, teleology, technology, scientific progress – and goes on to show that they have been replaced in the Thatcher era by much darker tropes – individualism, Machiavellian behaviour, selfishness, personal wealth accumulation. The optimism of the 1970s series has been superseded by inertia, loss and futility. Characters have moved from hopeful, traditional and rational to duplicitous, ironic and cynical. The book undertakes an analysis of these series to determine if these changes can be read as a response to Britain’s changing political landscape.
This essay connects a study of the commissioning and production processes of the well-known science-fiction drama series Doctor Who with the larger theoretical question of the understandings of ‘quality’ guiding its production and reception. The serial most fully discussed is ‘The Daleks’ (BBC 1963), which ensured Doctor Who’s survival by attracting significant audiences with a futuristic science fiction adventure. 1 As James Chapman has noted ( 2002 :3–4), the evaluation and justification of quality in British television drama has focused on its social