daibhidc | If Doctor Who isn't the same any more, when *was* it the same?

Reading

jblum's recent entry about Doctor Who fans complaining that a solid old-fashioned UNIT story with classic monsters is a betrayal of the old series, mostly because of things that were in the old series, but they hadn't noticed at the time, I was reminded of a letter I almost sent to Doctor Who Magazine, back in 2005.

During the Ecclestone series, someone wrote to DWM, saying that while they were excited about the new series of Doctor Who, they'd recently discovered a new series about a girl who travelled in a time machine. There was also a secondary character, an alien who piloted the ship, was rude to her, and didn't seem to like humans much. They thought it was called Rose's Adventures in Time And Space. (I think, it was something along those lines, anyway)

The letter I drafted out, but never got round to writing, would have said that I had also enjoyed Rose's Adventures In Time And Space; it reminded me of an old sixties series I'd seen repeats of, which had likewise been about ordinary people being taken through time by a rude alien. It might have been called The Adventures of Ian & Barbara. I also recalled many similar series had been made through my lifetime, usually broadcast in the Doctor Who slot, ranging from The Sarah Jane Adventures to Ace! (although the aliens in those weren't quite as arrogant and overbearing as the one in Ian & Barbara, or indeed the one in the seventies series U.N.I.T.) and ended with the conclusion that, while the original writer was wondering when the new series of Doctor Who was going to start, I was still trying to work out when the old one did.