Another branch of Who storytelling which has overtaken the pure historical is the psuedo historical – essentially introducing an alien into a seemingly historical setting. The Time Meddler which introduced the Meddling Monk in 1965 was the ﬁrst adventure to be acknowledged as a psuedo historical and one in which it is implied the Doctor meets another of his own race, though not acknowledged as such as the Time Lords didn’t appear on screen until 1969’s The War Games. The form was further explored in the classic Troughton tale The Evil Of The Daleks, set initially in a remarkable Antique shop in1966 but with a portal to Victorian times via time-travelling Daleks. My ﬁrst Who, The Time Warrior, is another landmark in this vein – being (aside from a brief sojourn to 1926 in Carnival Of Monsters) the ﬁrst time the Pertwee Doctor had really visited the past. It was also, incidentally, the ﬁrst mention of Gallifrey in the series.

Meetings with famous historical ﬁgures has become a major feature of the current style of psuedo historicals. However, the idea is far from new. Hartnell regularly met historical ﬁgures. Of particular note is the lost serial The Massacre Of St Bartholomew’s Eve, a sumptuous, well mounted drama, in which the Doctor meets no fewer than ﬁve genuine historical ﬁgures: Catherine de Medici and King Charles IX of France amongst them – all in just over ninety minutes. It says much about the “dumbing down” of society that the average person in the street in 2014 would be lucky to have heard of even one of them! Understandably, we don’t teach our children French history, however, back in 1965 this kind of knowledge could be gleaned from the pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica or the worthy educational magazine Look And Learn, a lavishly illustrated weekly which ran for twenty years from 1962 and was aimed at older children both are likely to have been read by the kind of kids at which Doctor Who in the mid 1960s was also aimed. Surely it’s no accident both Hitler and Churchill have both recently appeared in the BBC Wales series? Perhaps in part to reinforce the fact they, along with Romans, are “safe bets” in terms of the History taught in schools in the 21st Century. How long before the Doctor will encounter King Henry VIII I wonder?

When the series was reinvigorated in the early eighties, it revisited the staples: Space Opera of the far future (Four To Doomsday, Earthshock); the contemporary with weird goings-on (Time-Flight); the past with an alien threat (The Visitation) and the pure historical of a cricket match and masked ball (albeit with the threat of a maniac dressed as a Harlequin) in 1925. Many serials seemed fresh in the Davison era simply because they were essentially Hartnell-style adventures except this time in colour with a more frenetic pace. Black Orchid, whilst a genuine departure for the show in 1982, was very much in keeping with the mood of the early eighties in televisual terms. 1981 had seen the popular adaptation of Brideshead Revisited and soon The Jewel In The Crown would sweep all before it, whilst at the cinema there was Chariots Of Fire. History was deﬁnitely in! The nearest thing to a pure historical in the years before this had been a trip to an Edwardian lighthouse but even that saw the Doctor menaced by a Rutan. History it seemed, especially during the Graham Williams era, belonged on other planets. Witness the pomp and ceremony displayed in The Ribos Operation and The Androids Of Tara, both good examples of non-terrestial psuedo historicals.

Mark Gatiss scripted the ﬁrst “past adventure” of the revived series: 2005’s The Unquiet Dead. Set in Victorian Cardiff of 1869, the setting was dressed almost like a Dickensian Christmas card. Television of the noughties, awash with cinematic period drama, virtually demanded the Doctor meet Charles Dickens. Once again the staples were revisited, only this time from a point of view of feeding a internet-savvy public. Keen to promote the new look show, the media knew Dickens’ name would catch the public’s eye – everyone had heard of Dickens. Back in 1966 it would be seen as really obvious but by then Who had gone back in time on several occasions and already met the likes of Robespierre and Nero. Gareth Roberts, Gatiss’ nearest rival in the historical adventures, seems equally determined to mine the great writers – William Shakespeare and Agatha Christie providing cameos in the (equally literary obsessed) Russell T. Davies era. In the Moffat era other professions were considered with politics, art and piracy coming to the fore and now this series we have mediaeval philanthropy. Whether Robin Hood actually counts as a genuine historical ﬁgure is neither here nor there, the historical romp (albeit one with alien technology) is alive and in rude health in the current series.

So, if you’ll forgive the paradox, what is the future of the historical? Is a pure historical actually feasible in this day and age? Would it hold its own in the ratings? The recent overnight ratings (for what they are worth) suggested Doctor Who can expect a steady 5 million viewers, whether it’s showing us Daleks or mediaeval outlaws. If Moffat were to give us the odd pure historical, where in history might the venerable Time Lord end up? Whom might he meet? Vincent Van Gogh in Vincent And The Doctor – without a doubt an episode which would have been so much better served as a pure historical character study, carrying as it did the theme of mental health, is a great example of what can be done. The alien threat felt so tacked to appease Who fans demanding the Doctor encounter a monster each week. There is real potential in the form, if the historical ﬁgure and setting are sufﬁciently interesting.