Wednesday, 13 November 2013

【Sherry】Doctor Who——The longest drama in the world

Introduction:

Doctor Who, as we know, is a significant part of British popular culture and a long-running science-fiction TV drama. It has been broadcast more than 52 countries of the world during 1963 to 1989, although it has been suspended in 1989, it also got a high reputation for 26 seasons and when the "Doctor" came back in 2005, 7 series have been added to the old one.
The story of this drama is full of image: An adventures of a Time Lord—a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor. He explores the universe in his TARDIS. Along with a succession of companions, the Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilisations, help ordinary people, and right wrongs.
There are 12 actors play the role as the "Doctor", the transition from one to another is shown as "regeneration".

1.Analysis of British Elements:

Doctor Who is totally British, we can easily found plenty of British elements in the drama.
Settings: Most settings are made in British, because actually this drama was designed as an educating one for teenagers at the beginning , it was divided to two parts, some episodes were happened in ancient time and taught the knowledge of history, other episodes were happened in future and taught science.But for years,the science part became more dominant and replaced the history one. But some settings still historied in British.
Symbol:There are the most famous symbol of Doctor Who all over the world——TARDIS——the time machine of the Doctor, which is printed every where on advertisement poster and merchandise even on T-shirts.It is appear like a blue British police box, which is a common site in UK
Actors:The actors of Doctor Who are all British people and some characteristics such as the Prime minister of UK, Queen Victoria are full of British feature.At the same time ,some British famous people and actors are invited to be the guest performer in some episode.
Fashion: It is a wide topic to analyse British fashion elements in the drama, for example, some actress in the drama wear a costumes with British national flag and there are many famous band play the theme music for Doctor Who, some of them are British band.
Moran Caitline, a famous broadcast and TV critic said that"Doctor Who, is a thrilling and as loved as Jolene, or bread and cheese, or honey suckle, or Friday.It's quintessential to being British."


2.Evaluation of Popularity: 

Some critics watched Doctor Who sines they were a little child, it influenced several generations of both culture areas and financial areas."Saturday is the family time for Doctor Who,of course,children watched it behind sofa because some scenes are thrilling but still attractive."One of the critic remembered .
Because of the popularity through the world, some merchandise about Doctor Who have been produced like the mug, wallet, T-shirt with the TARDIS and so on. Many actors of the Doctor also set up the charity career for the children in need.
For the culture areas, it plus living theaters in early time,adds other drama series like K-9 and Trochwood,documentary films about the history of Doctor Who, online games, novel, audios drama series and so on.It also lead the cultural references, for example there are several cities in UK have museums and exhibitions of Doctor Who,Glasgow,Newcastle and of course London."The museum of Moving Image" is the theme.
There is an interesting point that the word "TARDIS" entry into the Oxford English Dictionary as an vocabulary now.
The famous director Steven Spielberg has comment that"The world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who."

3.Assessment of Longevity:

Another important feature of Doctor Who is its longevity,which made a record of the world's longest science-fiction drama in Ginniess book.
It also received as the finest drama in the world especially after 2005.The awards of this drama included many areas such as "the Best Writing(1975),the Best Popular Drama(1996),100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century(2000),and "National Television Awards" (2005-2010),and so on.
I think its longevity is for many reasons.
fund:the drama use the low-budget but creative special effect that donnot need a huge invest and can be produced by the independent production company like BBC and CBC for many years.
audience:both viewing numbers and public perceptions are good, because they designed as the family drama that can be watched by several generations and donnot have the generation gap in it, even when it be suspended in 1989 and came back in 2005, the new stories and characteristics still followed the old one.
stories:most longevity drama have to face this problem that when it broadcast more than 6 or 7 seasons, the stories would become bored and less of dramatic and image. But because Doctor Who's story is happened in future, so it could be more image and fresh to the audience.
The time to broadcast is also important and because Doctor Who has been broadcast for more than 30 years,it is not only a TV drama, but also an important part of British popular culture, even in the world.
 if you are interested in this programm, 
                click :http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/






Thursday, 7 November 2013

Let’s start Question Time - Elise


Let’s start Question Time - Elise

Q1: What is the Question Time?

Question Time is a Political Topical Debate Show on BBC Channel One. Its original Country is United Kingdom and this programme broadcast in English. The Question Time is start from 1979 until now. Each episode runs 60 minutes. All of the shows are filmed around the Britain.

Q2: Who are the people sitting there?


       Basically,they are the presenter,5 panellists and audience.
For the presenter, there are 3 presenters who have presented this show and current one is a gentleman called David Dimblely. Two of them, Peter Sissons and David Dimblely do not have a specific political position.
Moreover, there are used to 4 panellists in the programme and there are 5. 3 of them from each of the three major parties(Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats), another public figure (non-governmental organization), another non-partisan member or leading member of a 4th political party.
In addition, if you want to be an audience for this TV show, you need to experience a really careful selection by the BBC producer. It is simple for you to apply, and what you need to do is just click this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17154440 and fill up a form which will ask you some personal details and political questions. Then you can just wait for the phone call and E-mail.

Q3: What question are they asked? Is the question planned?

Since BBC producers really want find people who are keen to argue and debate with the panel group during show, all the questions are from the audience before the show start. And David Dimblely often emphasize that ‘I swear to God, they do not know what questions are until they’re asked them by audience.’ People who are selected by the producers need to ask questions, they will do a short briefing in the corner.

Q4: Is the programme live? If not, is there any censorship?

This programme is not live but it recorded in front of the audience. Usually the recording will be down in a single take in order to precise it as a live broadcasting. From the BBC website, they said that ‘Some exchanges occasionally have to be edited out for legal or taste/decency reasons.’ It means this TV show got censorship and it has done by the producer.

Q5: Is any other way I can interact with the show?

Of course yes, it has a SMS contribution and twitters. You can send a SMS during the programme and a team of 4 journalists will select 10 of them to put show off the TV.

Q6: Is the programme neutral? Or can be trusted?

My answer is no. According to by Van Zoonen (2005)’s argument, the role television itself has some negative influence on citizenship. TV Programme has destroyed the trust between audience and politicians because there is many politicians’ action do not correspond with their words. In addition, from the a report by Daily Mail, there is a Director from Question Time called Mark Thompson admit that BBC dose have bias, especially on the selection for audience and questions. Moreover, a magazine named New Statement illustrates some statistics about consists of panel group. It is said that there is a wise balanced on them but the study need to be continued. However, from the BBC website, we can know that this programme gets some censorship and it is not live. To exaggerate, the producer can edit out whatever they want, and the producer choses carefully for the audience and questions. It means they can almost control everything.


Q7: What is the role of the Question Time in British Politics?

According to the article from Nick Anstead and Ben O’Loughlin (2011), it is said that the Question time is not only an ‘institution’ which means part of British current affairs broadcasting setup, but also an important political event of note that can attract many political figure to gather together every week. Additionally, it has a wide influence on the Newspaper, Radio, and Social Media on Internet. British like to talk about the panel’s performance or issues they debate on. All the literacy delivered from the show can help to form people’s political identity.

Reference List:
       Study and Research
Nick Ansted , Ben O’Loughlin (2011). ‘The Emerging Viewertariat and BBC     Question Time - Television Debate and Real-Time Commenting Online’, In: The International Journal of Press/Politics. vol. 16, No.4 pp.440-462                   http://hij.sagepub.com.ezproxy.sussex.ac.uk/content/16/4/440.full.pdf+html


       Audience Information:
  Unknown. (2012). ‘Join the Question Time Audience’, Available from:                                               http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ukpolitics-17154440 [Last Accessed 24.2.2012]

  Unknown. (2012). ‘My Question Time Experience’, Available from:                                                    http://www.latentexistence.me.uk/my-question-time-experience[LastAccessed 12.10.2012]

  Unknown. (2010). ‘Was the Question Time audience hand picked by the BBC’,                      Available from:                                                                    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091023081437AADF4yQ[Last Accessed 2010]

  Unknown. (2005). ‘Question Time for Question Time’, Available from:                                              http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4200000/newsid_4202800/4202877.stm
                   [Last Accessed 26.1.2005]

       Experience(Blog, Website, News Site)
 Unknown. (2012). ‘BBC Question Time – Tips for Appearing in the                                                        Audience’, Available from:
      [Last Accessed  6.5.2012]

  Unknown. (2012). ‘A student’s experience on Question Time’, Available from:http://nottspolitics.org/2012/12/05/a-students-experience-on-question-time/[Last Accessed  5.12.2012]

   Unknown. (2010).My‘BBC Question Time' Audience Experience’, Available from:http://guythemac.com/2010/05/02/my-bbc-question-time-audience-experience/
     [Last Accessed  2.5.2010]

       Basic Information

       Peer Review
Goselett, M. (2012). ‘Question Time does have bias, says BBC as it is revealed areas where episodes are filmed are researched’, Available from:                        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193652/Question-Time-does-bias-says-BBCrevealed-areas-episodes-filmed-researched.html[Last Accessed  25.8.2012]

   Phil Burton-Cartledge. (2012). ‘Is there bias on BBC Question Time’, Available from:                  http://www.newstatesman.com/broadcast/2012/11/there-bias-bbc-question-time
       [Last Accessed  26.11.2012]