Time Vortex

Abstract: This paper analyses Steven Moffat’s contributions to the British sf series Doctor Who between 2005 and 2010, both as a screenwriter and as executive producer. This analysis is framed specifically by the Freudian notion of the uncanny, and suggests that Moffat’s work on Doctor Who confronts unconscious perceptions, repressed fears and death itself through storytelling techniques which attempt to connect directly with the audience by deconstructing the distance between material reality and the series’s fantasy space. Doctor Who and the Freudian uncanny The original BBC sf drama series Doctor Who (1963–89) was ‘a show designed for children’ which nevertheless attracted an unexpectedly adult audience (Tulloch and Jenkins 110). It briefly resurfaced in 1996 as a one-off television movie starring Paul McGann and produced by the BBC in collaboration with Universal Studios and the Fox Network. BBC Wales returned the show to Britain’s television screens in 2005, since when it has enjoyed unprecedented levels of popularity. The series concerns the adventures of a heroic, enigmatic and eccentric humanoid alien known as the Doctor, who travels through time and space in a multidimensional machine disguised as a 1920s British police telephone box, usually accompanied by an attractive young female companion. Thanks to his capacity for corporeal regeneration, the programme’s protagonist has been played, thus far, by eleven different actors. At t he end of the second episode of the early Doctor Who story ‘The Moon base’ (11 February–4 March 1967), the lead characters suddenly realise that they are not alone. They are in the sickbay area of a claustrophobic base on the Moon in the year 2070. Previous scenes on the same set have been low on excitement and high on exposition: the sickbay has represented a safe space for the characters to regroup, and for the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) to conduct his scientific experiments, collect his thoughts and pontificate to his companions. Towards the end of the episode, the Doctor notices that there is one body too many in the sickbay beds; the characters turn to look and see a pair of silver boots sticking out from beneath one of the blankets. Suddenly the blanket is thrown aside and