Doctor Who seems to have dematerialised for the forseeable future. The Disney deal fell through, Russel T Davies is no longer involved, and the next Christmas Special has been cancelled - or rather, once the news of RTD's departure came out, he was forced to admit it had never been commissioned in the first place. Worse still, the last few seasons hadn't made the slightest bit of sense, and the last episode wrote the story into a corner that RTD's successor will have great difficulty writing their way out of. (Presumably RTD was not expecting the Disney deal to fail or the BBC to lose patience with him when he wrote that).
It looks like the show will be off air for some considerable time - RTD hinted as much in an interview with
Newsround after the Disney deal fell through, in which he said
The viewers of Newsround will grow up.
It's likely that he already knew he was going at that point (a drama he'd written for Channel 4 came out just before it was announced that he was leaving
Doctor Who, that didn't happen overnight, and he wouldn't have done it if he had other commitments) , and he seems to have been envisioning a gap of at least 5 years before the BBC tried to revive the show again.
But what should
Doctor Who be like when it does return? The last few seasons have been as divisive as they have been incoherent. How can it become a show that matters again? Can it regenerate into a show that people love? What do we want from
Doctor Who?
I've got my own ideas, and over the next week or so I'll be putting them forward in a series of articles. Each will address a different aspect of the making of
Doctor Who, and I'll try to analyse what went wrong with it, how it has been done right in the past, and what I think should happen going forward. I'll be referring a lot to 20th Century
Doctor Who, which I think generally had better stories. The esssays I'm planning are:
- Structure and Pace
- Tone, Morality and Politics
- Worldbuilding
- Visual Effects
- Behind the Scenes
- Conclusions
Together, they will comprise my manifesto for how to recreate
Doctor Who better than ever.
I welcome feedback, as long as it aims to improve my ideas, not shoot them down. As the fan community is so divided at the moment, I can't expect everyone to agree with me, and some of the things I think were mistakes are likely to have vociferous defenders. I'm also aware that the more divisive storylines of recent years have attracted knee-jerk reactions from the more obnoxious elements of the fanbase. However, just because there are people who object to something for stupid reasons, it doesn't mean there are not intelligent reasons for criticising it. If I get sufficient constructive feedback, I'll add a postscript discussing the points raised, but I won't engage with people who accuse me of prejudice, or claim to agree with me for prejudiced reasons.
