Why doesn’t Doctor Who travel far from Britain? 

If I could go back in time, I’d watch Doctor Who from the very first episode. I wasn’t born in Britain, and with the 50th anniversary of the series hurtling towards us like an Earth-bound Tardis, I’m wondering if I might understand this cultural touchstone better if I’d grown up in the country, along with the show. But Doctor Who neophytes are in luck, because there’s a tiny loop in the time-space continuum whereby we can quickly catch up on Time Lord lore. To celebrate the 50th, the BBC has commissioned a host of programmes, many setting out to explain Doctor Who’s place as a British icon. This week there’s An Adventure in Space and Time (BBC2, Thursday) and The Ultimate Guide to Doctor Who (BBC3, Monday). Whoosh! Off we go then.

Adventure is a movie about the origins of the series, and the BBC executives and actors involved in its creation in 1963. It has the time machine itself as part of its to-and-fro plotting (a cheap trick, using time travel as a conceit for anything Doctor Who-related, I think, don’t you?). What the BBC conveyed through this well-produced film, which also starred Jessica Raine and David Bradley, was ‘Doctor Who as the Little TV Show That Could’. The odds were against it — low budget, a terrible set, lack of faith from BBC top brass. There is a sense of the Beeb retreading its past and fashioning an underdog legend about one of its most popular series, but I suppose the basic premise is true, though I can’t actually go back in history to say for sure. My own interpretation is that Doctor Who was also a product of post-colonial Britain, a time when the country was looking for its place in the world.