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ls in space: Earth in the 30th Century and Earth in the 40th Century are both just a futuristic Earth.
Following on from this line of thought, how many stories actually depend on the idea of time travel for their plot? The Ark, certainly, where halfway through the story the Doctor and companions travel forwards in time by two hundred years and see what has become of the civilization and the people they were trying to help. Mawdryn Undead, where the idea of meeting the same character at two points during his life is critical to what happens. Apart from that... I'm at a loss. Take the time travel out of Doctor Who, treat the TARDIS as a superior kind of spacecraft, and what so you lose? Precious little.
Thinking about this recently, I decided that the key to Doctor Who is indeed the TARDIS, but not because of its time travel capabilities. What the TARDIS does is to allow the series to straddle two very different styles of television programme. Consider, if you will, that TV programmes can be divided into two sorts: there's the ones where the heroes stay in one place, a familiar and comfortable location, and solve problems from there (popping out every now and then to somewhere not too far away in terms of travelling time), and there's the ones where the heroes are somewhere different every week, moving on to a new location.
On American television the former list would include things like The Rockford Files (rememberthat ?), Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Law and Order, Smallville and many other shows (including most comedies). Anything with a standing set, basically. The existence of the standing set permits a level of comfort for the audience - something they're familiar with, somewhere like home. The latter list contains series such as The Incredible Hulk and The Fugitive (remember them?), Jeremiah, The X-Files and The Pretender. The continual moving provides an edgy, intriguing quality to the series - the scenery and the people are always different, week on week. In the
