Time Travel E19: Doctor Who With Rhianna Dhillon
- Dec 17, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 9
The Master of Time Travel.
In this episode of Journey Through Sci-Fi, we take a detour from cinema to explore one of the most influential time-travel stories ever created: Doctor Who.
To help us navigate the Doctor’s long and complicated timeline, we’re joined by film and TV critic Rhianna Dhillon. Together we dive into how this legendary British sci-fi series helped define the way time travel works in modern storytelling.
Since its debut in 1963, Doctor Who has followed the adventures of the Doctor — a mysterious alien Time Lord who travels through time and space in the TARDIS, a time machine disguised as a blue police box.
Across decades of television, the series has introduced audiences to everything from paradoxes and alternate timelines to the famously vague explanation for how time works in the Doctor’s universe: “Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”
Listen to the full episode below:
What We Discuss In This Episode
In this episode we talk about:
• Why Doctor Who is one of the most important time-travel franchises ever created
• How the show uses time travel to explore historical events and futuristic worlds
• The Doctor as a uniquely flexible sci-fi protagonist
• The show’s influence on later time-travel films and TV series
• Why the concept of “timey-wimey” storytelling works so well
The Doctor and the TARDIS
At the centre of Doctor Who is the TARDIS — a time machine capable of travelling anywhere in space and time.
Unlike many time-travel stories that revolve around strict rules and paradoxes, Doctor Who often embraces the chaotic nature of time travel.
The Doctor might visit ancient history in one episode, the far future in the next, and an alternate timeline the week after.
This freedom allows the show to explore a huge range of science-fiction ideas while maintaining the same central premise: an alien traveller wandering through time and space.
Classic Time Travel Episodes
During the episode we highlight several memorable Doctor Who stories that showcase the show’s unique approach to time travel.
These include:
• Father’s Day – a story about the emotional consequences of changing the past
• Blink – one of the show’s most famous episodes, involving the terrifying Weeping Angels and time-displacement paradoxes
• The Girl in the Fireplace – a story linking the Doctor to Madame de Pompadour across different moments in her life
• Angels Take Manhattan – a dramatic encounter with the Weeping Angels in New York
Together these episodes demonstrate how Doctor Who has used time travel to tell everything from emotional character stories to intricate sci-fi puzzles.
The Influence of Doctor Who
Few science-fiction franchises have explored time travel as extensively as Doctor Who.
Over the years the series has helped popularise many of the concepts that appear in later sci-fi films and television:
• paradoxes and fixed points in time
• alternate timelines
• time loops
• non-linear storytelling.
Its playful approach to time travel has influenced countless other stories across film, television and literature.
A Different Kind of Time Travel Story
Unlike many of the films we’ve explored throughout the Journey Through Time Travel series, Doctor Who doesn’t treat time travel as a rare or dangerous technology.
For the Doctor, travelling through time is simply part of everyday life.
This perspective allows the show to focus less on the mechanics of time travel and more on the stories that can be told when history itself becomes an open playground.
Explore more Journey Through Sci-fi series
About Journey Through Sci-Fi
Journey Through Sci-Fi is a podcast exploring the strange, visionary and world-changing history of science-fiction cinema.
Each series focuses on a different sci-fi subgenre, examining the films and ideas that shaped the genre - from classic cinema to modern science-fiction storytelling
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