It's a DVD of the Doctor Who Xmas special from a few years ago, The Runaway Bride". This is the story that introduced Catherine Tate as Donna, who became a Doctor's assistant. Poor Donna, her wedding day didn't work out the way she expected. Instead of a honeymoon with her new husband she's been whisked off to the beginnings of the solar system by a quirky alien guy. You can watch for yourself here; head to about the two minute mark.
It's for the brief look at the beginnings of the solar system that I carried this DVD to a class. It's really well done. I think it might really have looked like that, with lots of lumps of icy rock of all sizes, banging into one another, sticking together, breaking up again, and a new Sun in the middle. The Doctor's words about this too are spot on. It's done so well I feel I can let people watch it for a minute and say, "that's probably what it would have looked like" (well, up to the point where the alien spaceship appears). From there we only need a few wee steps to start discussing questions like, "why are the gas giant planets further from the Sun?"
Science done well in TV science fiction, doesn't always happen and other Doctor Who episodes have been, let's be honest, dire.
I wanted to sing the BBC's praises for their solar system origin depiction. Other ingredients of this story really wind me up. It makes me so cross that they decided to show the Tardis flying around in full view with people hanging out of it. That's not how it works! It dematerialises and then materialises again in a different time and place. It doesn't fly around, or not in our conventional spacetime anyway. It's not a helicopter! Grrrr!
(I left the sweary words out)
It's funny, a lot of Doctor Who is so far from any sort of science that it's just fantasy. There's little need to worry about consistency. If the people who make the programme now want to change the rules a bit from those I imbibed as a kid, because they think it'll make it more amusing or visually appealing or something, it shouldn't really matter. But it does.
So, BBC, please, no more TARDIS flying around. Not clever, not funny.
