IT'S a university challenge with an intergalactic difference.
Cardiff University is to host the world's first academic conference dedicated to Doctor Who.
Real-life doctors, professors and lecturers from around the globe will materialise in the Welsh capital to present Timelord-themed papers.
The two-day
event – entitled Whoniversal Appeal: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference on Doctor Who – will take place in November to mark the 45th anniversary of the first episode being broadcast.
Scholars will lecture on a wide variety of subjects including sexual identity in the series and technological advances predicted in the programme, while one academic will even claim that the ruthless Cybermen can be seen as a metaphor for the British Empire.
The event is the brainchild of American PhD student Melissa Beattie who started watching the programme only last year.
She said: "A few years back an academic conference which focused on the cult TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, was held in Florida.
"Last year I started my PhD at Cardiff and got into Doctor Who.
"I made an offhand comment to a friend that hosting a Doctor Who conference would be an interesting thing to do and the whole thing snowballed from there."
Beattie, a student of military history, shrugs off claims that academics should not be dedicating themselves to looking at a light-hearted show aimed at youngsters.
"Art and popular culture are reflections of society," she said. "If we don't look at that reflection and try to understand it, how can we know who we are as a society?
"Every culture indoctrinates its young and ours is no different. What message are we sending out? We need to think seriously about that."
Beattie is particularly intrigued by Doctor Who's willingness to examine weighty political issues.
"Doctor Who is progressive, hopeful and left-leaning, values that you don't find on mainstream television in the US.
"There are a lot of discussions about morality. It is never just a case of zapping monsters."
In recent stories, the Doctor shuddered at the prospect of meeting Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and, in an episode set during the Second World War, urged Londoners to help create the welfare state.
The event, on November 14 and 15, will also feature Doctor Who writers Paul Cornell and Rob Shearman.
The full article contains 387 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
