Doctor Who: Audience and Industry blog tasks

 Audience and Industry: blog tasks

Audience

1) Who is the target audience for Doctor Who? Do you think it has changed since 1963?

The target audience for doctor who is family audiences and dedicated fans who are passionate about the series and about the science fiction genre.

2) What audience pleasures are offered by Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child? Apply Blumler and Katz's Uses and Gratifications theory to the episode. Make sure you provide specific examples from the episode to support your ideas.

Personal Identity: Susan relates to and represents a typical 1960s teenager due to the first scene with her appearance, showing of her 1960s style hair, makeup, costume and the music and dancing. Additionally, the teachers(Ian and Barbara) showcase a parental role, relating to parents watching the show with their families.

Personal Relationships: There are many personal relationships created, such as with Ian and Barbara, the audience would question their existence and what might happen to them after they transported to a different world and they might wonder is Susan would be a typical and normal teenager in her abnormal life, by helping the teachers (treat them as her parents) or go along with her grandfather, who is suggested to be the villain in this episode.

Diversion (Escapism): There is a lot of diversion shown with the aspect of entertainment due to the terrible acting and camera movement, which makes it more funny and the cliff-hanger at the end creates tension and suspense along with a visceral pleasure provided for the audience drawing them along to wonder what might happen next and to want to keep watching. 

Surveillance (Information / Facts): The different subjects taught in the school that the exposition of the episode is based on, give the audience an understanding of Britain during the 1960s and links to the events that happened during the time such and the space race and space travel relating to the subject of science, which Susan is so smart at as it is a part 0f her world.

 

3) What additional Uses and Gratifications would this episode provide to a modern 2020s audience?

Diversion because it would be funny as of how different those days were to now and the bad acting and poor quality camera movement creates a sense of humour for them.

4) Thinking of the 3 Vs audience pleasures (Visceral, Vicarious and Voyeuristic pleasures), which of these can be applied to An Unearthly Child?

Visceral pleasure because you get a rush of adrenaline from the suspense created with the cliff-hanger at the end and also voyeuristic pleasure as the world you see in Doctor Who is not ideal and is very unrealistic.

5) What kind of online fan culture does Doctor Who have? Give examples.

They have a fan base called the "Whovians" and they have an international online fan culture of events, trailers and merchandise produced from the BBC to sell to their audience.

Industries

1) What was the television industry like in 1963? How many channels were there?

There were only 2 channels in the UK in 1963: BBC and ITV and they only used videotape to create these TV series as of technology.

2) How does An Unearthly Child reflect the level of technology in the TV industry in 1963?

It shows that they didn't have big budgets and high quality cameras and technology to create these movies and series so it was badly made with poor quality.

3) Why is Doctor Who such an important franchise for the BBC? 

Because it is one of BBC's most iconic franchises as it is the main public service broadcaster in the UK.

4) What other programmes/spin-offs are part of the wider Doctor Who franchise?

Class and Sarah-Jane adventures and Torchwood.

5) Why does the Doctor Who franchise have so much merchandise available? Give examples. 

They have so much merchandise available because BBC produces merchandise for their audiences since they have such a large fan base.