Sorry, RTD, But Doctor Who’s Failure IS Part Of Your Legacy

In case you’re new to this site, I’m a Doctor Who fan. I recently completed a look at the early pitches for the original 1960s program, or programme if you’re British, among many other articles. I have almost every issue of the Marvel US run, including the four Marvel Premiere issues, edited from the UK magazine. I have a handful of novels, most of which are novelizations, a few videos, a TARDIS cookie jar a friend gave me currently holding candy instead (my friend is a bigger Whovian than I am, by the way), a Matt Smith era Sonic Screwdriver, and I’ve posted episodes on Saturday Night Showcase to share with my readers, including a current three-part set of crossover episodes. I even made two of my own fancomics as a teen. With the aforementioned friend we did a couple of 8th Doctor stories before Fox gave us an 8th Doctor and after the seventh’s run, with my friend creating an original Companion that admittedly only works for Americans. (Which we both are, though he also has ties to Canada.) On my own I made a K-9 comic where Mark II left E-Space on his own and served aboard an Earth exploring vessel in search of the Doctor. I did “Doctor Who meets Star Trek” before IDW.

A mutual friend told us about the show on PBS but I didn’t get to see it until the TV schedule changed to allow it because it was airing at suppertime. Once I finally got to see it I really liked it. I didn’t care about the lower quality that came with the budget. I just really enjoyed the serialized adventures of a time traveler and his rotating cast of comrades as they traversed time and space in whatever the heck a Police Box was. (American, remember.) Later, I got to see the Peter Cushing movies, read the aforementioned comics and novels, and just enjoyed the world of Doctor Who.

So when the relaunch came out I was interested. Then the BBC’s animated relaunch was cancelled by a new show in the original live-action format and was still on board. While I had my issues, I thought it was okay. Then it started going downhill, then got good again, then totally fell apart under Chris Chibnall. The BBC was convinced only the man who brought the show back could save the show, as well as allying with Disney+, itself denouncing its own entertainment legacy in favor of agendas and Bob Iger’s ego. Still, if Russel T. Davies could bring back the magic, the show would be saved.

Russel T. Davies could not bring back the magic.

There are a lot of reasons why, but before I get into my thoughts, I have a video by an actual British person, Disparu, and another by Harbo Wholmes, going over just why the show has lost it’s place. Since the show is a British institution that just happened to find international success before the BBC hired a controller who put his snobbery above their biggest export since the musical British Invasion, I want to get their thoughts in, as two people whose Who reviews I follow on the regular.

It should be noted that Disparu is a cultural commentator where it comes to media. He was also a big Whovian until Chris Chibnall took the show in a bad direction, one Davies was not going to change. In his video, he talks about Davies’ legacy returning to the show.

I’m still convinced the only reason Davies brought Doctor Who back to TV, taking away Richard E. Grant’s chance to voice the Doctor, was because he wanted to get Torchwood, his more adult show, out into the world and figured bringing back Doctor Who would convince the BBC that there was still a market for that kind of science fiction. I wrote when he returned that I wasn’t really happy with a lot of his original run. From the ugly console room redesign (his Disney Who console was an improvement but way too large and empty), there was a lot of childishness, an open hostility to Christmas, an obsession with Rose Tyler, proven further when Billie Piper ended his run just as she started it, and there are a few reasons I refer to the Tenth as the God Doctor. As the next video will point out, an similar obsession seems to exist with David Tennant, as there are three incarnations of that Doctor, one of which is human, in the multiverse. I also missed the serialized format.

Probably Davies’ biggest blunder, among things like undoing Davros’ mutation out of a false belief that people would see wheelchair bound people as evil instead of seeing evil people who happen to be handicapped as evil, not ot mention hiring an actor who wanted his Doctor to twerk for the Daleks, was not undoing much of what Chris Chibnall did that annoyed the fans. This was supposedly out of friendship with Chibnall, but he was guilty of the same blunders. Davies already killed off the Time Lords, so killing them off again he was all behind, which I am not. The Timeless Child also fits Davies’ “God Doctor” viewpoint, that the Doctor must be the most special being in the universe because title character. The “magic man in a travelling box who helped people he came across no matter how small the problem seemed” was replaced by the savior of everything. Those two missteps hurt the show more than the testosterone/estrogen inversion that cause 13 to be a female regeneration and the next two lacking many manly traits (also because Davies isn’t a manly type, either). Also, Chibnall actually created an uglier–and potentially more dangerous to walk around–console room that Davies’ first run, the closest thing to a positive change Davies did. It is admittedly the first brightly lit console room in New/Neo Who.

If you think it’s only “right wing commentators” unhappy with what Davies did, Harbo Wholmes is hardly conservative, had no issue with the gay characters, the female regeneration, or much of Chibnall’s run. And he still got so disappointed in Davies’ return that he has been slowly shifting to Pokémon and Scooby-Doo, which for a channel that was exclusively Doctor Who related, shows how far the show has fallen. He explains why in this video about the Reality War story.

There’s also something both videos didn’t get into: the idea that between Chibnall and Davies 2.0 has killed Doctor Who as a kids show. That’s how the franchise, and it seems that between stories that I see as boring for kids, the political pandering of both runs, the LGBT+ themes dominating over telling a good story, and other adult themes, it’s just not something kids would want to watch, nevermind their parents letting them. Davies snuck adult themes into his show, with the farting space nudists who hollow out fat people to use as a skin suit being one example. It’s like what I was saying earlier about how some kids shows seem to be more made for adults. Davies doesn’t want to make a kids or even family-friendly show. Torchwood was tied to New Who, and that show is most definitely not for adults, like how James Gunn is doing not-kid-friendly stories like Creature Commandos and Peacemaker while insisting his Superman take is the actual cornerstone of his DC Universe.

“Wait a minute, Tronix, Davies made The Sarah Jane Adventures, a show for kids featuring a Companion their parents really liked.”

Davies wrote one episode, probably his chance to get to write a Matt Smith Eleventh Doctor tale. Most of the others were written by Gareth Roberts and Davies was just show creator. I haven’t watched more than a few episodes I managed to catch on TV so I can’t judge it beyond Davies of course bringing in the aforementioned farting space nudists and maybe the first story. The Australian K-9 show was an actual kids show that Davies had nothing to do with, and due to rights issues was only barely tied to Doctor Who nostalgically. However, the parent show used to be for kids and now is not. And I don’t know how many kids will listen to the kids Sarah Jane worked with in Big Finish stories. Davies just really liked Sarah Jane Smith. He didn’t seem to really care about it the way he did Doctor Who and Torchwood.

As Disparu pointed out, Russell T. Davies isn’t going to decide his legacy. None of us do. Between him and Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who, a British cultural icon that also did well in other countries like the US, fell under Disney because the show did so bad under Chibnall that the BBC was desperate not to repeat their past mistake of ending a show that was a huge part of pop culture. Instead the show got worse under the guy who was supposed to save it. Like J.J. Abrams and Star Wars, Davies thought he could use the past to make it work, but he also was more interested in his world than the Doctor’s. So it stopped reflecting the Doctor’s world and started reflecting his, because all he cares about now is the stuff he owns. I would say that means he no longer has respect for what came before, but I’m not convinced he ever did when you really examine his first run. The end result is many people consider Doctor Who to be a dead franchise, joining the graveyard of other formerly great franchises that fell into the hands of people who don’t care about what their making or the fans that made it popular enough for them to make it. Davies may not WANT his failure to be part of his legacy, but that’s not his choice. That’s the viewers, history, and his own actions…and it doesn’t look good for his legacy.