The BBC is putting out Doctor Who to competitive tender. As production companies prepare their bids, and the BBC prepares to assess them, the most important question they need to address is "what do viewers want from Doctor Who?"
Since the last few years have been so divisive, that question may seem a bit harder to answer than it should be. It may well seem that everybody wants something different, and that some of them are looking for a fight with people who don't want what they want. But hopefully there's one thing we can all agree on.
We want great stories.
We want stories that have space and time to develop, and come to a satisfactory conclusion. We want stories that explore the universe, take us to richly detailed worlds, and invite us to see our own through fresh eyes. We want stories with believable characters, who we can get to know, and who we can see grow and develop. We want stories with strong moral themes, that make us think but never preach, patronise, or court controversy for its own sake. We want a Doctor with strong and consistent values. We want stories that inform and educate, but never forget to entertain.
We want stories that we could be part of. We want them to take place in a universe that's consistent with itself and with ours. To that end, some of the more incoherent elements of recent Doctor Who need to be quietly forgotten about. We may wish to suggest that, like Scream of the Shalka or the Virgin New Adventures, they may have taken place in an alternative timeline, but since we want to reunite a divided fan community, it's wisest to let people make their own minds up about that.
We want stories told by a creative team that shares resposibility for making Doctor Who the best it can be, rather than concentrating all the power in one man's hands.
The story must always come first.
No comments:
Post a Comment