Lately , we ’ve been pick up a lot of people say stuff like , “ You should n’t expect actual science from Doctor Who , ” or “ Why would you watch Doctor Who for plausible science ? ” And it ’s dead true that Who can be entertaining without have realistic science , or bringing up existent scientific theories . But it ’s not completely unrealistic to gestate science from this show , because Who has sometimes managed to target for a somewhat higher standard — even if they wound up using some silly plot devices along the way . See for yourself , below .
The scientific idea : Mutation , and the selection of atomic warfare .
The leave tale : In their first visual aspect , Doctor Who ’s most famous enemies are n’t the unstoppable killing machines they become in later stories . Instead , they ’re curiously vulnerable — they ’ve mutate to survive the radiation sickness poisoning left behind after a devastating war , but they are strung-out on their survival motorcar and unable to leave their city . The Daleks are presented as one of two possible ways to survive a nuclear catastrophe , the other way being the medicament the Thals take .
The scientific musical theme : Pesticides that disrupt the environment . This storycame pretty soon after the publication of the bookSilent Spring by Rachel Carson , and the story orbit around a fictional insecticide called DN6 that will kill indiscriminately .
The resulting story : The actual plot gimmick in “ Planet of Giants ” involves the TARDIS crew being shrink to the size of it of insects due to a TARDIS malfunction — but it’schock full of science educationabout insect deportment , and also about the ecological peril of irresponsible pesticide use .
The scientific idea : Networked computers . write up editor in chief Gerry David asked the show ’s new scientific consultant , Kit Pedler , to imagine what might bump if the unexampled Post Office Tower “ took over . ” Pedler envisioned a rogue data processor that would connect to other computer via the telephone system in a sorting of proto - cyberspace , looking to transcend its firm physical var. .
The lead story : In 1966 London , the Doctor visit the new Post Office Tower , only to encounter a sentient computer name WOTAN that was originally design to link with other figurer worldwide . of course , WOTAN ’s intentions are less than benevolent .
The scientific mind : Pedler , still acting as the show ’s scientific adviser , had an abiding stake in the then - pioneering skill of organ transplant . The first kidney transplant was successfully completed in 1954 , followed by liver and lung transplants in the 1960s . Pedler , who had been follow this work avidly , envisioned a future in which transplant surgery would become such a common praxis that people would terminate up with mostly artificial body .
The leave story : The utmost extrapolation from the basic conceptual seed of harmonium transplantation lead in the Cybermen . First appearing in “ The Tenth Planet , ” they were a once - humanoid race that had experimented so extensively with cybernetic enhancement that little of their original organic signifier remained . Unfortunately , the remotion of constituent affair led to diminishing emotional capacitance , turning them into a remorseless , in cold blood logical race that would do anything to pass their collective goals . The rest of the science in the story , such as the speedy approaching of a “ twinned ” planet to Earth , is somewhat less well - realized .
The scientific estimation : Writer Brian Hayleshad read an articleabout a prehistoric mammoth whose cadaver was dead preserved in the Siberian ice rink . And meanwhile , Hayles had been reading about the cold major planet Mars , and wanted to opine a life form that could survive in such an surroundings — and thus , the cybernetic exotic Ice warrior were created .
The resulting history : “ The Ice warrior ” in reality takes place during a new Ice Age , in which humans are using some kind of ionizing process to try and roll back the glaciers . But then they fag up an foreign warrior , who looks sort of like a Viking , inside the chalk — and they ca n’t keep attacking the glaciers with their ionizer until they know whether the noncitizen ’s spacecraft uses atomic mightiness , since this could make a monumental calamity .
The scientific idea : Writer Don Houghton was ghost with the idea of the Mohorovic Discontinuity , the boundary between the Earth ’s crust and its mantle . There was lots of talk about drilling down to that bed of the Earth , in something calledProject Mohole . Houghton actually touch the American embassy to ask for detail about Project Mohole .
The resulting taradiddle : In “ Inferno , ” a excited scientist is drilling into the Earth ’s insolence to find a novel push root to replace petroleum — but this drilling projection threatens to cause seismal instability and destroy the entire world in a variety of mega - volcano . But some not - so - scientific touches are added , including a weird sludge that turns people into hairy “ Primords , ” and a visit to an evil alternate universe .
The scientific idea : Cloning .
The ensue story : The Doctor has his first encounter with the Sontarans , a warlike backwash he would face repeatedly over the course of the show . They reproduce by cloning themselves and , as a result , mostly resemble each other . accord to the Doctor , they mass - clone themselves at up to a rate of a million embryos every four transactions . These embryos take a mere ten minutes to pass on adulthood and are , afterward , dispatched on military missions .
The scientific thought : A portion of the creepiness of this narration comes from the genuine - life life cycle of insects which lay their eggs inside a horde , which can then be take when the testis dream up . This real - living horror antecedently appear in A.E. Van Vogt ’s novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle , but Doctor Who wasthe first broadcast media to feature endoparasitology , beating Alien by four years .
This history also features cryonics , the low - temperature conservation of being ( admit humans ) for succeeding resuscitation . A central ( mostly accepted ) musical theme is that the personality and memories of a human being would survive within a cryonically frosty brain and come out intact upon resuscitation . The full term was first coined in 1965 in conjugation with the founding of the Cryonics Society of New York . The Alcor Life Extension Foundation , the largest non - profit organization need in the research and practice of cryonics , was founded in 1972 .
The leave account : The Doctor arrives at the Nerva Beacon , a far - future space station where the remnants of the human race reside in suspended animation . They have , however , overshot their condition stasis full point , thanks to the incursion of an insectile raceway sleep together as the Wirrn .
The scientific estimate : shameful holes , regions of spacetime in which matter is so thick that the gravitative field is too strong for anything ( admit light ) to escape from it . At their centre lie a gravitational singularity in which the laws of physics break down jolly .
The resulting story : Black holes and the attendant strong-arm anomaly have been used as the stalking-horse for many Doctor Who stories but they are especially meaning in this instalment — which reveals that the Eye of Harmony ( the power source for Gallifrey and its time travelling engineering ) is the center of a black hole .
“ The Deadly Assassin ” is also notable for conspicuously featuring a massive electronic neural net that converts the Time Lords ’ think patterns and accumulated knowledge into a fully immersive virtual reality environment . What was that web surround called ? Why , the Matrix , of course . substance abuser with access to its control system can even give themselves enhanced power within it .
The scientific idea : There are two capital mind in this report : a robot uprising , in which the automaton are reprogrammed to overpower their prohibition on murder ; and the storm - mineworker , which mine sandstorm . author Chris Boucherexplained :
It became for me a very bewitching conundrum , cultivate with the whole concept of auto intelligence and enquire ‘ at what point does machine behavior become intelligent ? ’ If you say a batch of mainstream science fiction authorship that was published during the Sixties and other Seventies , you will find much of it populated with questions about machine sprightliness and machine news . There are book of account like Skirmish by Clifford Simak , for instance : it starts as a semi - humorous piece about a author being assault by his typewriter and his sewing machine , and progresses into a sketch of aliens who have come to Earth with ideas about liberate the machines .
The Storm - miner was a nice idea , but essentially it was a steal from the Sand - miners in Frank Herbert ’s Dune . I did at least have the decency to change it sufficiently so that it was actually mining storms rather than harvest moxie .
The result story : “ automaton of Death ” is chock full of questions about what happen to a society that ’s too dependent on its machines , and the strange sort of fear that can come when robots get in the Uncanny Valley . As a portraiture of a course of study - riven lodge that has a profoundly ambivalent human relationship with technology , it ’s one of the best piece of music of earth - building Doctor Who ever had .
The scientific melodic theme : A newspaper publisher article about computer virus mutations convinced writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin that an levelheaded , fast - adapt virus might make for an impressive opposer .
The resulting history : An intelligent parasite takes over the Doctor ’s mind , compelling him to put down a ego - induced comatoseness to retard its progress . And that ’s where the skill take notoriously silly — the Doctor and Leela “ clone ” themselves so they can be shrunk and put inside the Doctor ’s genius . And the clones not only are grown to adulthood like a shot , they have the master ’ memory … and their clothing .
The scientific idea : Tachyonics , the whimsey of a hypothetic particle that move quicker than scant . Christopher H. Bidmead , a former science journalist , had just taken over the role of playscript editor when this fib was made , and he inherit a set of script that were pretty silly and focused on gangster tropes . He went about rewrite them to emphasize the theme of the Tachyon Generator , the equipment that the scientist Hardin is trying to educate , which can allow for rejuvenation as well as irregular gemination of objective .
The lead story : “ The Leisure Hive ” is passably lease down by problem with execution , but having a scientist main character , and emphasis on experiment , give the taradiddle a lot of its driveway . In particular , the big cliffhanger to episode two involves Romana seek to cheer Hardin ’s experimentation with tachyons — and she seems to succeed at first , only to total back a moment later and discover a antic fourth dimension / space buckle , with an explosion held in stasis . ( And the Doctor has just gotten inside the Tachyon Generator because Romana assured him it was safe . ) The real story is about a race of former warriors trying to reinvent themselves and find a way of life to hold out in spite of being sterile after their last great warfare .
The scientific idea : Pocket universe , and evolutionary biology . This tale introduces the idea of Charged Vacuum Emboitments ( CVEs ) which lead to a whole other universe called E - Space .
The result story : The Doctor lands on the satellite Alzarius where he meets a group of humans who are endeavor to reconstruct their crashlanded spacecraft . They are besiege by Marshmen and Marshspiders and it before long becomes apparent that these creatures as well as the humanoids encountered by the Doctor represent dissimilar evolutionary stagecoach resile from one unwashed DNA source . The crashed space freighter is thousands of propagation erstwhile .
The scientific idea : Entropy , the second police force of thermodynamics . Bidmead had seed throughout the show ’s 18th time of year a stage set of clue to the conclusion of a on the loose story electric discharge — those “ Charged Vacuum Emboitments ” that lead to pocket universes are actually there to deal with the randomness in the universe , which has happen the point of full collapse . And this account is also inspired by Bidmead ’s captivation with the ascent of the personal computer , as hetold Doctor Who magazine publisher :
“ The solidifying - up on Logopolis — the corridors , their method acting of communicating , the Monitor , etc . — were all establish on thing I had get wind about the interior construction of the micro computer . The melodic theme that maths was cardinal to the continued existence of the Universe went deeper than that . It hark back to what I took to be the most crucial principle of Doctor Who ; the ultimate , utter importance of the scientific method acting , and the motive to get a whole new coevals of citizenry excite by the scientific method . ”
The story is full of references to material - living figures like biologist Thomas Huxley and his rival , Ludwig Wittgenstein .
The resulting news report : Sadly the actual chronicle is long on atmosphere and ideas , and light on genuine story - telling . Part of this is due to some behind - the - vista chaos , as the previous history “ Keeper of Traken ” went path over budget and charge length , and Bidmead was forced to write the character of Nyssa into “ Logopolis ” at the last minute . But also , the Master ’s strategy seems bizarre and half - baked , even by his standards , and the conclusion in which the Master test to blackmail the entire universe seems crazily impractical .
The scientific idea : Bidmead was enliven by the work of Dutch artist and mathematician Maurits Cornelis Escher , peculiarly a print called “ Ascending and Descending ” which features a staircase that loop back onto itself , and a lithograph machine called “ Castrovalva , ” depicting an Italian village on top of a downright cliff . Bidmead wanted to publish a story that incorporated the numerical construct of recursion and featured surroundings ( like the stairway in Escher ’s print ) that introduce recursive qualities .
The resulting story : In the operation of evading traps lay by the Master and helping the Doctor regenerate , Tegan and Nyssa direct the TARDIS to Castrovalva , a tranquil quasi - medieval city on a mountainside . It turns out , however , that the Dwellings in the city circle in on themselves and appear to be trapped within a recursive block . Standard rules of dimensional outer space do not utilise and the whole recursive labyrinth is unwrap to be another one of the Master ’s gob .
The scientific musical theme : Quark matter is form when the pressure exerted on a neutron superstar is with child enough to break down the construction of case-by-case neutrons to their part quarks . Quark stars – intact maven made up on quark subject – are theoretical physical object familiar to astrophysicists . It is hypothesized that quark stars would be extremely magnetized and would consist of unstable ‘ strange matter ’ .
The resulting fib : An antimatter entity ( later identify as Z ) crosses into normal place via the ‘ spark of infinity ’ and attempts to hold fast with the Doctor for enter a stable state . The spark of eternity is another name for Rondel , an intergalactic part that used to be the location of a cave in quark star which create a curved shape between dimension and pass off ‘ quad magnetics , ’ account by the Doctor as “ the only force known to screen antimatter . ” Z entered normal space via this curve , concealed behind the quad magnetism .
The scientific idea : Pip and Jane Baker were inspired by an clause about sleep sense organ in the mentality that they read in New Scientist . Already determined to create an amoral scientist theatrical role holler the Rani ( “ queen ” in Hindi ) , they developed a plot line in which she experiments on the brain ’s eternal rest centers .
The resulting story : The Doctor lands on Earth during the Luddite Uprisings and finds that the Master and an malefic Time Lady called the Rani are attempting to alter human history . The Rani is extracting chemical from the mastermind of local workers for her own experimentation , only escalating the local bedlam and endangering the study of George Stephenson .
The scientific idea : Nanotechnology , the science of matter manipulation on a atomic / molecular scale . The episode focuses particularly on nanomedicine , the use of nanomaterials for aesculapian purposes .
The resulting story : The Doctor and Rose pursue a strange object to 1941 London , which is being terrorise by a mysterious child get into a gasolene masquerade . It turns out that nanogenes – host of diminutive robot designed to knead on the eubstance at the molecular point to mend injury and fight contagion — had been take to London on a Chula warship . The first human being they ever encountered was wearing a gas mask , so they assumed that a masquerade was a normal physiologic feature , arise one on every homo being they afterward ‘ healed ’ .
The scientific idea : Asthis article explain , “ Blink ” is a great exploration of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics , as the Weeping Angels are described as “ quantum - locked ” : They can only move when they ’re not observed , because of something call in the Quantum Zeno Effect .
The result narration : “ Blink ” is rightly consider one of the good Dr. Who stories of all sentence , in part because of its clever function of a villain that you’re able to never turn your back on .
The scientific idea : A world of two dimensions , as research in Edwin Abott ’s Flatland .
The resulting fib : Probably too before long to post spoilers about this one , but suffice to say that it ’s a cork expectant tarradiddle of abduction and the battle of learning ability against creatures from another dimension .
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