“Such a Dazzling Display of Lustrous Legerdemain”:

Representing Victorian Theatricality in Doctor Who

Abstract

Since its inception in 1963, Doctor Who has returned repeatedly to the nineteenth century, particularly to the United Kingdom in the mid-Victorian period. Although the programme presents these travels as the same individual returning to the same historical period, the nature of the Doctor’s character (his constant regenerations) and the longevity of the programme (two discrete but connected series over nearly half a century) means that Doctor Who’s nineteenth century is always in flux. This article considers these fluctuations through a particular focus on the Victorian episodes’ strong theatricality, arguing that this Victorian theatricality is a neo-Victorian interrogation of our nostalgia for the nineteenth century: a nostalgia that, like the Doctor himself, endures but changes shape.