In recent weeks, Doctor Who fans have taken to dancing in the streets while celebrating the news that Russell T. Davies will be returning to the showrunner position for their beloved program. My first reaction, however, was… well, let’s just say, not so positive.
Initially, I thought it was because my head was quickly filled with images of Skeletor Masters eating chicken like greased lightning and flying off like Superman, and everyone in the world going all flippy-floppy and turning into John Simm duplicates—essentially the last image with which our heads were filled prior to RTD leaving the show, and a distinctly silly one. Towards the end of RTD’s era, I was very ready for him to leave, for a variety of reasons.
But, in retrospect, that’s not the really problem. The quality of scripts or production was never really the problem. Specific tastes and preferences are not the problem either. There have always been and always will be eras of the show that some fans like and some don’t.
The problem in essence is that ultimately this will be looked upon as a corrective measure. At first glance, it will seem like a ‘no-brainer’ to bring RTD back. After all, he was the man who regenerated the show and made it a huge international success for the BBC. It’s easy to see why the BBC might have thought this way. Whoever you are, whatever your specific tastes are, you’re highly likely to feel that something has been off about the show for at least several seasons. Of this, there is little doubt. After all, clearly, the BBC has no doubt. But, in the end, is it really any different from any other troubled era of the show?
To me, it feels like the mid-eighties. There was nothing wrong with Peter Davison or Colin Baker’s portrayals of the Doctor—they were both fine Doctors, just as Jody Whittaker’s portrayal is—but most fans of the show at that time felt that something was curiously wrong with the show, whether it was the scripts, the ideas, the characters, or… sometimes it was something they couldn’t quite put their finger on. Sound familiar?
The point I’m making is one that might be lost on newer fans—those who weren’t around during the classic era and who may have only joined the fandom after 2005—and that is that the show has always been about “change and renewal,” right from the very first regeneration when Patrick Troughton uttered those words. Waiting out what one perceived as “bad Doctor Who” was like waiting out bad weather. Wait long enough, and it would change. They would get a new producer, new writers, new companions, new music, or even a new Doctor, and suddenly it was a new show with fresh ideas again.
And that’s what worries me.
Newer fans may not be aware that John Nathan-Turner produced the show for seven years in the 1980s. Towards the end of his long reign, fans were clamoring for change and desperately wanted him to leave and let someone else take over. For years, fans thought that JNT was just being stubborn, that he was willful, that he saw Doctor Who as his personal pet project and cash cow and didn’t want to let it go. In fact, the truth was the opposite. He had been trying to get away from the show for years. He had initially wanted to leave along with Peter Davison, but the BBC wouldn’t let him. They said they couldn’t find anyone else willing to do the job, and thus JNT was stuck with it.
In the end, the show ended because in the eyes of BBC execs it was “tired.” They could see the problem but weren’t willing to put any effort into a solution. Putting aside the fact that creatively the classic show was in a minor renaissance during its final two seasons, its ratings were rapidly diving and it was started to look cheap again (in the post-Star Wars era, the decision to shoot it entirely on analog videotape had not done it any favors). Oh, JNT and bright new script editor Andrew Cartmel made a valiant effort, of course, resuscitating the show with perhaps something more like dialysis than fresh blood, but perhaps it was tired because the new ideas had not come fast enough. The BBC had waited too long and the fans had already departed in droves.
Back in the present day, that’s precisely where we are now. The show is on a precipice with a rapidly growing number of toxic fans and declining ratings. As for fresh blood, New Who has had only three showrunners over 16 years: RTD, Steven Moffat, and Chris Chibnall. It worries me that out of all the vast talent out there in the world, in the eyes of the BBC, there are only three men who are capable of running the show and willing to produce it. Correct the show, yes, but in the same way it was always corrected in the past, not by returning to the days of yesteryear, but instead by moving forward.