Do ‘pure’ historical stories deserve a comeback?

OPINION | Historical stories still play an important part in Doctor Who, say our readers.

PureHistorical
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

For the first in a series of opinion features in which PureHistorical puts questions to our readers, we’ve started by attempting to find out if there is still a demand for historical stories in Doctor Who, or whether they have become an unwanted necessity for the time-travelling show. (We’re not even going to try to hide what we at PureHistorical think..!)

Our first question —

The response to this was, for us at PureHistorical, not surprising. It seems that the educational side of this genre, combined with the thrill of a more realistic danger, is still incredible popular.

It’s very clear that, for some, historical Doctor Who stories are still much-loved, with the ‘pure’ historicals being the stories which fans rememeber msot vividly — in particular, The Aztecs.

The Aztecs — a very popular historical story.

We then asked another, more specific, question of our followers —

Vincent and the Doctor — a fine example of a ‘pseudo-historical’.

It seems that some prefer a mix of the two ‘brands’ of Doctor Who historical story:


But why are historical stories important to Doctor Who?

Your responses made it clear that historical stories add variety to the show, and, of course, were part of the original vision of the show.

There are still historical Doctor Who adventures, but they’re not as frequent as other styles of story.

Conclusion: we want more history!

Overall, fans appear to want a good mixture of story styles in Doctor Who, including plenty of historical stories. Whilst in the 21st century we still get a one or two historical stories per season, these are always the ‘pseudo’ variety — but, as we’ve seen above, the ‘pure historicals’ of the 1960s are still popular to this day, so perhaps they deserve a comeback at some poitn in the next few years?


Opinions collected and analysed by Joshua N Stevens for PureHistorical.

PureHistorical

Written by

World History as explored by Doctor Who. PureHistorical is a publication of serious essays, opinion pieces and features. www.purehistorical.com

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