ABSTRACT
The emergence of Cultural Legal Studies has meant the theoretical expansion of the concept of law, with methodologies drawn from the humanities used to recognise and examine law taking place and given meaning in the broader realms of social life. On the basis of its dominance as a culturally consumed product, cinema has been a popular site for this research, and cinema studies has provided much necessary theory and method. Ideas about law pervade the cinematic; as central narratives, plot devices, points of reference, incidental allusions, or underlying logics that help hold together the aural and visual fragments constituting screen-based texts. While signifiers held in image, dialogue and narrative render the Doctor a fantasy version of the British Crown in Parliament at a cognitively registered level, there is also a convergence of legal philosophy and bodily sensation at play in the conceptualisation of British sovereignty in the two episodes of Doctor Who.
