Media Studies - Textual Analysis of Dr Who. In this episode of Dr.Who, the Doctor and Amy go to a museum, to a Van Gogh exhibition where they see an evil face in the window of a church Van Gogh painted.

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Natasha Greeff

Analyse the first five minutes of an episode of a TV programme and discuss how they programme appeals to its target audience

In this episode of Dr.Who, the Doctor and Amy go to a museum, to a Van Gogh exhibition where they see an evil face in the window of a church Van Gogh painted. They then go back in time, to speak to Van Gogh himself, to interrogate him about his painting.

  The episode starts in a field full of wheat – and this isn’t usually a setting associated with a sci-fi series. This shows the audience that there is no trouble going on but that the programme starts in equilibrium. The programme then cuts to a scene in a museum, which still is not a scene the audience expects this keeps the audience interested. The scene starts with a museum guide giving background information about Van Gogh, and of his life and at the bottom of the screen the written text tells the audience exactly where they are, in the ‘Musée d’Orsay – Paris’. This written text is also seen in the beginning of Independence Day, and this is a convention of sci-fi to anchor the meaning of the image. This convention appeals to the audience, and makes them want to watch Doctor Who because they like the science fiction element to it. At the beginning of the episode a narrative enigma is set up because the cornfields are recognized by some members of the audience as an element of a Van Gogh painting. This is not how a sci-fi traditionally starts but if the episodes of Doctor Who were always the same, the audience would get bored with it.

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 As the episode progresses The Doctor and Amy start to take a look around the paintings, and Amy asks a question. This question gets the Doctor agitated and to what may seem like a harmless question to the audience, it annoys the Doctor, this shows the audience that the Doctor knows something Amy does not. This is very interesting for the audience because they want to find out what it is that the Doctor has just realised, because the audience know from previous episodes that when the Doctor notices something, there is trouble ahead.

The audience then witness the ...

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