Todorov & Propp

DOCTORS, Series 10 - 206 Amends

Scheduling details: BBC-iplayer

Duration: 30 minutes

Categories: Drama, Medical

Brief Summary,
Daniel is called to help an asthmatic bride on her wedding day, but he is soon drawn into a tense family reunion. Meanwhile, Jimmi becomes emotionally involved when he meets a father who is struggling to cope.

Applying Propp's theory

Propp found out that there are 8 character roles that conveys how inseparable they are in dramas e.g. Doctors, which are:

The Hero: Dr Daniel

The villain: the bride's father

The Donor: Dr Jimmi & The receptionist

The Helper: the bride's mum as she tries to keep her daughter away from the villain which is the bride's father.
Dr Clay

The False Hero- David’s father

The Princess: Becky - the bride

The father: Becky's mother

Also followed some of propp’s functions of narrative such as:
The preparation where everything started off fine, then the bride's father returned on the wedding day.
Complication/Problem- when the mother sees the father she knew that he's after something and she warns her daughter, then the bride finds out that he did not change when she saw him leaving with no reason when she wanted him to stay for her wedding day.
Struggle- when the bride & the mother struggles to cope with the father, and facing problems.

Applying Todorov's theory

There are 5 transformations that took place in this drama:
equilibrium, disequilibrium, awareness of problem, repairing the problem and at the end returning back to equilibrium.
Everything started off normal, preparing the bride for the wedding, then a problem occurs when the father returns and the awareness of the problem when the bride's mother sees the father and asks him to leave, then later on we see that the problem is slightly solved where the father tries apologising to his daughter (the bride) then it returns back to normal (equilibrium).