Dr Who Finale Draws Millions
The wildly popular Dr Who series drew 9.4 million viewers to watch the finale. This meant that BBC One had 50% of the television viewing audience. Most of the show’s fans had decided that after the Time Lord’s injuries inflicted by a Dalek the previous week that he would ‘regenerate’. The storyline of Dr Who is always kept highly confidential. Fans love being left out in the cold because it turns the show into a guessing game. More often than not a Dr Who conclusion is unexpected. This is unlike EastEnders, the soap which continually ‘lets the cat out of the bag’. Lately, viewers of EastEnders have been voicing their disapproval by saying they are ‘fed up’ with knowing what is going to happen.
The spectacular Dr Who finale did not end with ‘regeneration’. But there were more than enough strange events to keep viewers glued to the screen. There was the cloning of the Doctor and then Donna Noble became half-Time Lord (they thankfully refrained from calling her the mini Time Lord). She was able to do this because she had ‘absorbed’ a part of the Doctor’s mind. He had to leave Donna by erasing her mind of all memories of time spent with him. He then went off to the Tardis (the Doctor’s famous vehicle for time travel which stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The Doctor had to separate from his clone that was part human. This meant it would grow old and eventually die. He went to live with Rose Tyler in a different reality.
There’s no doubting that Dr Who is rather weird. This is what makes the show so popular – the stranger the better. But the most weird – perhaps even scary – was when viewing fans tried to contact the Time Lord. In the previous show his phone number was flashed on the screen a number of times. This was so that the Torchwood team, Sarah Jane Smith and Martha Jones could get hold of him. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 2500 fans phoned the number. They did this in the week before the finale. According to disappointed fans there was only a useless network message. It had to be explained that it was not a real number (and that the The Time Lord is in fact a fictional character...)
The Time Lord did go on to save the world and so there will be an episode in time for Christmas and then a further four specials throughout the year. Fans can expect to see another series of Dr Who in 2010. This fifth series will have Steven Moffat in charge of the writing. He will take the place of Russell T Davies. It is not known if David Tennant will be playing his usual role in 2010. The actor is due to also take a different role by playing Hamlet this year for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
