Ludic Interaction in Doctor Who - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 164

that has played the role. Indeed, of all the components that attempt idelity to
Doctor Who, only the Daleks are authentic. he model Daleks match reasonably
well their television counterparts, and the voice on the model TARDIS when the
Daleks scream “YOU WILL OBEY” is quite reminiscent of the original.
he actual game play involves unique game-speciic moments that have
little to do with any speciic iteration of the show, but do mirror the particular
components that one might point to as being Doctor Who -esque. As Matt Hills
points out, this “image of 'ideal' Who , a kind of Platonic essence of the series
… may never have been realized fully in any one story” but can be shaped by
multiple components. 22 At the same time, he Interactive Electronic Board Game
represents an adaptive formula for portraying Doctor Who in board game form.
he “plot” of the game is that the TARDIS needs to stop at each of six locations,
but throughout its journey, the ship is being chased by the Daleks. During their
turns, players move both their piece and the Dalek pieces to try to ambush the
other players. In this sense, players are competing against each other, but two
can also work together to use the Daleks as foils against a third. Additionally, the
interaction of the electronic talking TARDIS generates more randomness within
the game. Although the twelve possible instructions that can emerge from the
TARDIS could have been simulated with a 12-sided die (as has been pointed out
in the discussion thread about this game on boardgamegeek), 23 the fact that an
interactive TARDIS generates instructions lends credibility to the nature of the
game (however, whether it is a mistake throughout all the game sets or just in the
one that I own, the fact that the TARDIS light is green, not the traditional white,
counters this somewhat).
Winning the game means not just avoiding the Daleks, but also traveling to
each of the locations to retrieve a card from that particular spot. Players can
trade cards, can ight Daleks using cards, and can travel through time portals to
other parts of the board. Because the game does not mirror a particular episode
of Doctor Who , players can engage in the game play in whatever imaginative
modalities they wish. For Sutton-Smith, this form of imaginative play resides
in the mind as a “rhetoric of the imaginary.” 24 his ludic interaction of he
Interactive Electronic Board Game occurs because it seems to capture the “spirit”
of Doctor Who. While the pieces may not look like the Doctor and the TARDIS's
light may not be the correct color, the generative experience of playing the game
seems to adapt not speciic moments from the text, but the general feeling of the
text. It captures both the experience of being a fan of Doctor Who and the feeling
of being a part of the series.