Television’s Afterlife: Memory, the Museum and Material Culture

Abstract

The first series of the revived British science-fiction programme Doctor Who features an episode simply entitled ‘Dalek’. Rose (Billie Piper) and the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) encounter a last relic of the Dalek race, the persistent pepper-pot villains believed to have been destroyed in the ‘Time War’, when they are attracted to the underground lair of a billionaire collector of alien artefacts by an anonymous distress signal.¹ It is the opening pre-credit sequence of this episode which is of particular interest as the long-running series self-consciously refers to itself as an object of memory by placing itself in the museum. The opening setting of the episode is an exhibition of alien artefacts housed in large glass cases inside a cavernous hall (see Figure 5.1). Various artefacts from the world of Doctor Who are featured in the mise-en-scène of the museum: something old (a Cyberman’s head, created in 1966), something new (a Slitheen’s claw, 2005 series), something borrowed (a milometer from the Roswell spaceship) and something blue, with the TARDIS similarly placed as an exhibit through the composition of the frame.²