Graham--

Brits, and a few of us Americans, don't necessarily like Doctor Who or other scifi shows because they have good plots or good actors or good effects. They may have that, but even if they don't, we watch because it's fun. One of my friends claims that too much Doctor Who will rot your brain, but watches anyway. Some scifi has to have merit, but some of it also has to be crap. Would you want to read Shakespeare and Byron all the time? Of course not. You'd want to read something less weighty now and then. To paraphrase Longfellow, "The world loves the spice of occasional idiocy."