Some of them have been more scientifically-minded than others, though, even if you don’t count Dr Kit Pedlar.

But yes, when not being written by a minority of writers like Gerry Davies and Chris Bidmead, Doctor Who has always been like this. And as far as I’m concerned that’s fine, as long as, like Pterry says, it’s consistant nonsense, and the writers don’t think that, because they’ve made up something to set up the plot, they can just make up something else to resolve it.

But as far as the “New Who” Doctor becoming an infallible deus ex machina goes, the Moffet series seems to be shifting away from that – we’ve seen the Doctor come up with a horrible solution because he can’t see what Amy sees, and we’ve seen him fall straight into the Daleks’ trap and stay there. The Eleventh Doctor doesn’t always know what’s going on – he may not even have a better idea what’s going on than anyone else – but he’s confident enough to have a go regardless. Which is much more interesting.

Both have wikipedia entries but basically hard sci-fi is interested in how things work and making things be at least internally logical, whereas soft sci-fi has the trappings of sci-fi (spaceships, time travel etc) but just uses those as toys to tell a story.

My problem with ‘science fantasy’ is that some people seem to think that its something different from science fiction – that if something comes under that banner that it stops being Scifi… I just find that idea to be gibberish and elitist crap. Take any science fiction no matter how ‘hard’ the science and its possible to rip it to pieces because at the end of the day no matter how hard the science underlying it its still fiction, its still an author/writer/creators vision of what might be possible and the more advanced the time period/alien race/whatever the more speculative its going to be, so by definition the more ‘science fantasy’ its going to be.

In Dr Who the main protagonist is an alien from a civilisation that has near god like powers, they can travel in time and space as easily as we can hop in car and drive to the nearest city. Of course their technology is going to look like magic to us… To dismiss it as science fiction because of that is ludicrous…. As for the show itself I do think it covers huge amounts of different genres and that does confuse the issue, but at the heart of the show its an alien in a time travelling space ship, and if that doesn’t make it scifi I am lost as to what scifi means….

Problem: Warp Engines would cause people to be crushed
Solution: Inertial Dampers

Problem: Transporter can’t work due to Heisenberger’s uncertainty principle
Solution: Heisenberger Compensators

All TV sciece fiction makes it up as they go along. The difference is that generations of Doctor Who fans haven’t felt the need to write books on how it may or may not be scientific.

As for the whole concept of science fantasy in this debate – sorry but that is so snooty and arrogant that polite words fail me. Science fiction is FICTION, by very definition of calling something science fiction you are admitting its not science fact. No Dr Who isn’t hard sci fi but to say its not scifi is just ridiculous. It features aliens, space ships, alien technology, other planets, the future and a host of other tropes that are firmly within the remit of scifi.

I still think that Dr Who is actually above genre in any but the loosest guise, its a fiction show that takes its initial premise from scifi.

Science fiction, in this narrower sense, is not just “fiction about science” but it’s fiction in which the science is on the whole believably derived from what we know now. Thus, warp drives are out, time travel is out, truly sentient robots are out, and so on. Aliens are okay if they’re handled very carefully, but they’d better not just be humans with bumpy foreheads. Sir Terry’s example of Star Cops was a good one–humanity in the near future, pottering around in the near vicinity of Earth much the same way real-world astronauts had been doing. Personally, I find this kind of stuff good in small doses, but after a while I just find it duddly dell. I mean, diddly doll. Er, doddly dill. Or in other words, bitefully froring. Science fantasy covers pretty much everything else where there’s a scientific or technological element, as opposed to a magical one.

Pushing the planet out of orbit without too much violence is not science fiction, or science fantasy. It could not happen. The gravitational effects would be cataclysmic, and the further Earth got from its sun the colder it would grow until the air froze solid and everybody died. The only way around this is either magic, or some sort of technology so off-the-scale advanced that any words you make up for are only another way of saying “magic.” Towing Earth to another solar system and back again, and having it arrive with a single building standing or a single human living, is fantasy pure and simple.

But the point I tried to make about classic Who, which I think Sir Terry overlooked when he was making his very droll teapot joke, was that however fantastic the things that happened in the programme, however silly the aliens got, however magical the technology, the Doctor and his companions and friends always showed us the universe as a place where the rational explanation was the right one. If the TARDIS travelled in time, it didn’t do it because a friendly genie picked it up and carried it, it was science. Back then the sonic screwdriver did things which sound could be expected to do–the “mend barbed wire” setting was unheard of, as was “psychic paper” and all the other lazy shortcuts we’ve seen lately. It was fantasy, but it was definitely science fantasy. And that was important to me at least.

The Sonic Screwdriver is AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN a magic wand. The Tardis is constructed of the same stuff as C.S. Lewis’ eponymous wardrobe. The Master is to the Doctor what Saruman is to Gandalf.

Not one of Doctor Who’s writers in the last 50 years has been known for their background in the sciences. That would be Futurama’s USP.

But if the Adipose don’t make you sit and grin as you watch them wave bye-bye, you have no soul.

No, it’s coming from a guy who writes about a flat world riding on the back of a giant turtle, doesn’t call it science fiction and doesn’t expect it to be treated like science fiction.

Pratchett’s core argument is that New Who should not be called science fiction because it too often relies on fantasy explanations and resolutions. To be honest, he has a strong argument, but then I’ve always ranked DOCTOR WHO alongside the likes of STAR TREK and STAR WARS as ‘science fantasy’. Doesn’t stop them being entertaining.

It’s sci-fi, and fantasy, and horror, and comedy, and tragedy, and romance all rolled into one. It can tell any story in any time and any place.

The world would be a better place if we stopped trying to pigeonhole things!

Another problem is the expansion of usage of both the Tardis and the sonic screwdriver – if one is strictly a time travel device and the other pretty much a cool screwdriver then its science fiction – we may not understand how they work but we understand the idea. When you start saying – ok the tardis can tow planets and the screwdriver can it turns into a macguffin and you lose the science.

Completely agree with Terry about all the deus ex machina. Cordas was totally right about the walking with her eyes closed bit making me want to throw something through the tv. Another thing that really annoyed me with that episode was that it did something Star Trek used to do a lot – 2 really bad things happen (Angels and Time rip), either would kill them, but the fact both happens means that one can be used to fix the other and everyone lives.

Really, this is just a repeat of the argument that’s been going on for ages – “Why can’t the general public recognise REAL sci-fi when they see it?” The science fiction that gets mass popularity does tend to be sci-fi adventure, and does tend to have a somewhat loose attitude to the laws of physics (Witness the recent Star Trek film, which went down a storm and made a ton of money, despite having a plot that made my brain start leaking out of my ears at one point). Star Wars is the same – that’s essentially a fairy tale in space. There are very few examples I can think of of genuine hard sci-fi since the seventies that have achieved anything more than cult success (the point that sapere_aude makes about Dollhouse is very good). Doctor Who is fast-paced, inventively odd space adventure that can be frustratingly ridiculous at times, but is also capable of being truly awesome.

Yes, the criticisms of the Deux Ex Machina and the Doctor-as-Jesus/Tinkerbell are completely justified, but a lot of those were thanks to Russell T. Davies’ habit for emotional overload, and to anyone who’s watched the show for the past five years, it’s hardly news. Frankly, I was more boggled by the fact that Pratchett prefers Torchwood, which committed far worse crimes against storytelling than the majority of New Who (and turned its lead character into just as much of a suffering Christ figure). And bringing up Star Cops… well, let’s just say that Star Cops does have some very good moments, but it hasn’t aged very well at all (and was quite capable of bending the laws of physics in order to, say, cut down on the amount of annoying zero-g effects they were having to do).

Sorry, but the whole thing did feel a bit like a Grumpy Old Man grumble, and does feel like Pratchett has a very narrow idea of what sci-fi is. And the whole “Oh yes, wasn’t old Doctor Who hilariously cheap with its invading teapots ha ha ha” was, to be honest, rather mean-spirited and not worthy of him. (I grew up with Classic Who, and still have an extreme soft spot for the level of insane imagination that went into that show – it has its dreadful moments, but it also has plenty of points where it produces some wonderful stuff.) And it shouldn’t be forgotten that Who can also be a fantastic gateway drug to science fiction in general – it certainly was for me. It’s always been a rollercoaster of quality and sense, but I can forgive its excesses for the moments where it gets it truly right.

Huh, our planet is moving through space at huge speed as it orbits the sun, our solar system is moving even faster as it orbits the galactic center and we seem to be doing just fine. ‘All’ that needs to be done is to find a way to push it out of orbit without to much violence and then take it gently where ever you want to go, the theory has been around for millennia Archimedes understood and talked about the principles and a couple of centuries ago Newton gave us the maths.

Just out of interest does this mean that all the scifi novels that mention races re-ordering solar systems, creating and moving planets aren’t scifi?

Arthur C. Clarke – “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Profiles of The Future 1961

Do people that make that distinction interpret sci-fi as “fiction about science” as opposed to “fictional science”? Because personally I go by the latter definition.

There’s a difference between merely impossible and nonsensical. Planets being towed around may be possible one day. Planets being towed around without hideous consequences for all life on their surfaces…that’s nonsensical. It could not ever be done, no matter what technological wizardry you might come up with. And that’s the difference between science fiction and science fantasy. It’s not a hard and fast line–Star Trek tends to be closer to the sf end than the fantasy end, but even that isn’t true hard sf–but Who has always been definitely science fantasy.

In the old days, of course, the approach, the attitude, was always fairly rationalist. Whatever fantastic events were going on, the Doctor always regarded the universe as ultimately logical and explicable, and would never do anything really nonsensical. Nowadays that’s out of the window and anything goes.

A truer sentence has never been spoken! I have issues with New Who but it always comes down to this in the end. It’s entertainment, pure and simple, and it’s got heart.

As for the whole argument about well the sonic screw driver is a magic wand, no it isn’t, its a technological device that is as Arthur C Clarke says ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’, the same applies to the Tardis, I find the idea that its a time travelling magic carpet (with a roof, walls and doors that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside) is just laughable. Yes planets being towed around being might seem impossible to us, but it was impossible to carry a box the size of a pack of cards in your pocket 20 years ago that could do everything a smart phone can do now, roll the clock back 50 years and even the concept would have been beyond most people, go back a couple of hundred and you would likely find yourself because accused of lunacy or witchcraft.

I will agree that Dr Who has a rather fantastical approach to scifi at times, but that is very different to it being in the fantasy genre.

Doctor Who is about as much sci fi as Star Wars is. But, honestly, what does it matter? Part of the beauty of this show is that its format allows it to be all sorts of things any given week in a similar way that The X Files could. One week it might be a pretty decent sci fi show about an alien life form in the water of a Mars base. The next week it might be a scary ‘horror’ show about evil stone statues or werewolves in Scotland. And then the next a ridiculous star spanning romp with Daleks, Davros and towing stolen planets around. Like Steven Mofatt I have always viewed Who as primarily a crazy fairytale with the various companions falling down a rabbit hole ala Alice and then meeting this mad geezer in a silly costume to be whisked around on crazy adventures where imagination not science is the only limit. And hooray for that. Mofatt gets it. It’s a mad nonsense fairytale. And that’s why kids love it. And why I, being a big kid, also love it.

Unlike Sir Terry (all respect to you, sir) I don’t really care about the plot mechanics of showing the axe in act one before its used in act three. I understand that is an accepted rule of narrative fiction. I write myself and mostly obey the same rule. But in a nonsense tale, as I view Who to be, then all bets are off. Damn the rules. As long as the tale is fun, engaging and above all imaginative, then that’s all that really matters to me. Just my two-penneth worth.

I don’t think that fictional science has to come anywhere near the realm of believability. It is, after all, fictional.

Doctor Who involves travel in time and space and aliens and weird technologies… it is, therefore, sci-fi. And brilliant, at that.

Though I will agree that it uses the ‘deus ex machina’ far too often, and RTD in particular took it to extremes.

And as someone with absolutely no interest in science, but still loves reading and watching science fiction, I think that sci-fi is a genre that involves so much more than just fake science. Otherwise why would I love it so much?

Dr Who is just fiction, its probably fiction at its purest in that it can and does use pretty much every genre of fiction going, this weekend episode even drifted into ‘PG porn’ at the end. Yes the original premise of Alien in time travelling space ship is pure scifi, but its just a hook that is used to allow the show to genre hop at need,

Personally I couldn’t care less about the science or lack of it in the show. What really annoys me is when they break narrative and the fact that ‘Deus Ex Machina’ seems to have become the stock ending for each episode. Last weeks episode exhibited both of these flaws classically for me –

The whole premise of the Angels was that if they were being observed then they were stone, when they weren’t being observed they could move (sort of like a Schroedinger cat gone hunting), but for purely ‘dramatic’ reasons that was thrown out the window on Sat, when all Amy had to do was pretend (badly) to be able to see the Angels for them to be stone. This was only in the show to ‘add drama’ and for small children and idiots I am sure it did, but anyone who is capable of rational thought this means switching off the brain or throwing objects at the telly. (I won’t even question as to why the Angels who fled ages ago were still lurking in the woods so an eyes closed stumbling Amy could catch up and then over take them)

Then there was the highly dramatic ending of the gravity failing (would far rather than Dr had turned it off, rather than it failing at just the right moment after he makes his humorous farewell speech) and the not very time complex Angels have just enough ‘special time thingy’ to close the rift. All very convenient, and all something that with a bit of rigour and tightening up could have dispensed with the need for DEM to step in.

I have to say I prefer a story like ‘Voyage of the Damned,’ which takes a totally, unashamedly fantastic view of space travel, to one like ’42,’ which tries to look like proper science fiction but gets everything completely wrong.

I have to agree with the esteemed Mr Pratchett. It’s tremendous fun, which lets it get away with some shocking lapses in narrative and logic.

Like Terry said, it’s entertainment and to be honest I never much cared that it was billed as SF to me it’s all about the Doctor.

I’d class the latest Who as Fantasy though, I mean Star Whale???!?!!?

Ack, who cares? It’s really good fun, and magical.

Nice article though Terry! Cheers!

If anything, I think it’s drifted into Science Fantasy.