Just how important is the Saturday night timeslot to Doctor Who? To both the audience and the very format of the show, quite a lot.
David Hill wrote an article recently about how Doctor Who may be moved from its Saturday night timeslot. Which would be a huge mistake, as Saturday nights have been a big part of Doctor Who itself since its very beginning, and quite possibly one of the key reasons why the show is so unique compared to many other science fiction series.
First, a little bit of background to those not in the UK. Saturday nights on TV over here are big. If there’s one night guaranteed to be perfect for the whole family, it’s Saturday night. This is when most people aren’t exhausted from work or school and can watch the television together. And virtually all programmes by leading channels BBC One and ITV are built around this fact, and present us with the biggest entertainment they can give.
As such, every programme has to appeal and entertain to as large an audience as possible. Usually, this would be in the form of game shows, variety shows or talent competitions, with shows such as The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, and Strictly Come Dancing broadcast during this programming block.
While times and tastes have changed over the decades, Saturday nights have been a big night for family entertainment for over 50 years. One of the core reasons that Doctor Who was made in the first place was to add an entertaining mix of adventure and drama to the Saturday night schedule, although no one could have predicted the national institution which it would eventually become.
With the exception of Peter Davison’s seasons in the eighties, in which the show was broadcast on Monday and Tuesday nights, Doctor Who has, for most of the classic and the new series, been an essential part of Saturday nights. And looking back, it’s easy to see how the programme has reflected that.
One of the key reasons for Doctor Who’s longevity, even during the long years when it was completely off the screen and yet still survived in other media, is that it’s unlike any other science fiction programme or story out there, mostly because it’s never really been pure science fiction.
It’s been a great deal of other things along the way, including horror, comedy, tragedy, and even borderline fantasy at times (stories like “The Celestial Toymaker” and “The Mind Robber” are classic examples of this).
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The key part about how it’s handled a lot of these genres? It’s usually done in such a way that allows a story to be either more fun or thrilling. Even in the earliest days of the show, while also providing a chance to be educational for children, purely historical stories like “Marco Polo” and “The Aztecs” were mainly designed as adventures for the Doctor and his companions, facing a great deal of death and danger, while occasionally throwing in a fight scene for Ian Chesterton. (Because even in the 60s, Doctor Who had a strong sense of going for what would’ve looked totally awesome, even on little-to-no budget.)
The reason it’s usually gone for the more adventurous rather than grounded type of science-fiction? The Saturday night audience. Science-fiction, by itself, can have a limited appeal, even when done really well. I adore shows like Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, but unlike Doctor Who, they’re not shows I can just get the whole family to watch together.
If Doctor Who were moved from Saturdays to weeknights — while it did happen in the Eighties — I’m still not convinced that it would be good for the show. For better or for worse, I think that Saturday nights are a big part of what makes Doctor Who what it is.
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A sense of energy, a sense of madness (or at least bizarreness), and a show that’s always been encouraging at bringing the whole family to watch. I’m not saying the show itself will change if moved from a Saturday night, but honestly, after a hard day at work or even school, it’s going to be even harder to bring the family to join together for such a show.