On WhoCulture’s Response To The Current Doctor Who Status

I’m not necessarily celebrating the end of Doctor Who. It was once one of my favorite fictions due to how vast the Whoniverse, is with a diverse group of races both friendly and enemy. Also the potential of other Time Lords having their own adventured, along the same lines as other starships or starbases in Star Trek’s Federation to play with (both of which fan productions and official material have done well and ill with). The only other franchise in my favorites that matches it is Transformers, even if you stick to the “G1” 1980s continuity with or without the Japanese animes. Throw in the multiverse and you have yourself near unlimited potential for expansion. Star Wars has tried but it always comes back to original trilogy cast in some form.

What I am happy about is that time will be taken for Doctor Who to find itself…and without Russell T. Davies. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of his first run and had my concerns going into his second, he at least displayed an attempt to want to make good adventures with the Doctor and a love for the show in that first run. I just disagreed with some of his ideas, but still overall enjoyed it, even if Steven Moffatt hit more of my happiness buttons than missed. So the only person who’s probably happier to see Davies and Bad Wolf Productions leave Doctor Who is Christopher Eccleston.

What does this have to do with Doctor Who news and theory channel WhoCulture of the WhatCulture network?

Back when the cancellation of the show entirely and the Christmas Special specifically were just rumors I put together an article response to main contributor Ellie Littlechild counterpointing her claims that everything was fine and we just had to wait. We had some disagreements. When the news dropped I was able to get on it with my thoughts, but Ellie was on vacation (or “holiday” as they say in the UK) and couldn’t respond herself to the news. Because I used her previous comments on the rumor as a basis for my own thoughts, I thought it fair to go over her updated comments. To her credit she’s not backpedaling or drowning herself in cope, and there were a few things we did agree upon even in the rumor video.

So in fairness and credit where it’s due, and totally not for being a cute redhead with an alluring accent that will benefit readership and totally no other reason because…I think I killed this joke, here is Ellie Littlechild’s post-vacation thoughts on the cancellation of the Christmas special and “tendering” (aka “shopping around for a new production team rather than just going back to BBC Wales) of the series as a whole. Then my thoughts.

Okay, her source wiffed this one, but nobody’s perfect. I don’t know who her source is but I don’t have one. If he or she is accurate more often than not, it’s not a bad source. I guess they have a good track record. No shade. A lot of people were caught by surprise. As Ellie notes, Davies and Murry Gold both acted like they were totally ready to go. My initial comments debating her on having a Doctor or wanting a big name instead of a smaller or unknown name in times past still stands from the previous commentary.

I hadn’t heard that one of the rumors went all Stranger Things on us and stated a “secret bonus episode” was already done and waiting. That’s almost as stupid as the “true end” of Stranger Things, and I’m not even interested in that show.

I also didn’t hear that Bad Wolf Productions’ departure was inevitable. Disney+? Sure. Davies and his team, many of whom he snagged from BBC Wales? That I didn’t hear about, but covering Doctor Who specifically is her job while going over all of storytelling is me honing my craft in a personal but public blog I don’t make money from while pulling my life together. Nobody’s bringing me on a podcast or talk show. Yet. I don’t blame Ellie for erring on the side of optimism, and I didn’t attack her for it in the previous article. I did heavily disagree with her based on what I did hear from others who followed events more closely than I did.

Speaking of disagreements, the problem is that Doctor Who does have some serious baggage, which started back with Chris Chibnall. Sociopolitical stuff aside, Chibnall did play heavily with the lore for his own ego. Davies enforced that, as he killed the Time Lords previously himself, only for Steven Moffatt to restore them and Chibnall to definitively kill them off in the same story that gave us The Timeless Child. The addition of the Child to the lore of regeneration was never the issue, but making the Child the Doctor messed with the lore, the already screwed up numbering system of Doctors, and kicking William Hartnell from first canonical Doctor to the first one we see. No, I don’t care about “The Brain Of Morbius”. Even one of the videos from Saturday’s fan film fest, JumpMan Production’s “Dimensions In Jeopardy”, shut that down rather easily.

Davies didn’t fix any of that because he’s all about making the Doctor the most important being in the universe. In a prior response to WhoCulture on the show (I swear I’m on picking on you, Ellie…though we do disagree on River Song by a lot) I mentioned how he made 10 the “God Doctor”, and kept finding ways to duplicate him, from the Metacrisis Doctor to 14 and “bigeneration”. I have to wonder if Davies is obsessed with David Tennant as much as he is Rose Tyler and Billie Piper or if he’s just sticking it to Eccleston. “This could have been you, Chris!” In fact, the video I just put up there because I didn’t want to break such a great image position kind of helps make that case.

It was one of my pet peeves with his early run. While he went too far as the “Time Lord Victorious”, him chastising 11 for forgetting the Time War (my theory is that 11 saw what he became as 10 and knew part of getting himself back was letting go of Mr. Idontwannago’s baggage, which bigenerated 14 is at least addressing) seems a bit off when his next story was just to go on vacation and joke with an Ood trying to warn him his time was coming.

That’s why I have no trouble believing that BBC and Davies are that incompetent. As it is I’m convinced Davies only brought back Doctor Who, killing the official website’s own plans after “Scream Of The Shalka” and its own mystery box (which hopefully had something in it for a change), to push for Torchwood. Davies insists that his legacy won’t be attached to ruining Doctor Who because he doesn’t own it, and in the post “parting ways” interviews has said all he knows how to do now is write gay and queer characters, ala Captain Jack Harkness (which became an issue after John Barrowman’s antics on set were revealed and even Big Finish has dropped the character). In short he’s not the same creator who brought the show back. His perspective and attitude has changed while he was away. Also, the BBC is a government agency paid for by a forced TV license that is losing income in the days of cord cutting. That should explain their incompetence. Moffatt had gay characters, too, but they just happened to be gay rather than it being a focal point…though I didn’t follow Bill’s time in the TARDIS due to personal events.

Davies not doing the Christmas special does make me happy. As stated in probably at least one of the articles from me linked to in this one, Davies hated Christmas and kept warping Christmas symbols into the enemy or a burning fat woman. Not sure which is worse. (Also funny that she bloopered “rushed Christmas special” from rushing through it. 😀 ) I’m willing to believe Davies and Gold were lying, as part of Davies post-announcements comments was that he faked it to keep the show’s future looking positive. Davies still doesn’t want damaging this long running British cultural icon on his record and thinks it won’t be. Good luck with that, Russ.

My “Rose Doctor” solution happened once in the show itself and the IDW miniseries “The Forgotten“, which this scene comes from.

Where Ellie and I totally agree is that a fresh perspective, and maybe some time off, can only benefit the franchise. I can think of a few others who should take that route, but that’s another conversation. You can acknowledge nostalgia and past history without being so steeped in it only long-time fans can follow. We do that all the time. It’s call “life”. The writers suck at times but it’s worked for a few centuries or so. That’s why shared universes and continuity isn’t a bad thing, which I’ve stated multiple times on this site. That’s even how I’d fix the “Rose Doctor” scenario.

When one of the writers proclaimed nobody wanted to touch that, I took it as a challenge. TL;DR it’s not really Rose just as that really wasn’t Susan popping up all last season. It’s the Doctor’s mind trying to finally get past the Time War, the isolation, the testosterone/estrogen inversion that led to a female regeneration and two gay Doctors after being a straight man forever, the Timeless Child (spend some moments the next season proving that isn’t the pre-Doctor or Fugitive Doctor or whatever while still being where the Gallifreyan scientist created regeneration for her people and you’ll win a lot of love back), the second elimination of the Time Lords, and trying to pull himself back together. All I have is a plot but if Big Finish or whoever takes over the show wants to use it, I’m open to discussion even if they have a British writer finish it off. That’s provided the BBC doesn’t find a way to muck around with it. Plus you’d have a lot of clips and cameos to get new viewers up to speed without hopefully bogging it down in boring nostalgia when there are options to watch most of the old shows legally. It saves even more money as a bottle episode, and can introduce a new, hopefully ginger at last, Doctor.

I’d also request a TARDIS that looked more like the classic ship (bring back the round things) but with a modern look. Do a search for the “Interocitor TARDIS” (good luck, as Google didn’t want to try to find it because it doesn’t know how references works–not This Island Earth, you stupid AI!), find the fan who made it (he’s done CG for the magazine I think, so it would easy to find him), and just make that since you want oversized console rooms these days. It was an awesome fan design and looked like an old space/time vessel upgraded.

Is Doctor Who cancelled? At the very least, Deadline is reporting producers don’t want to touch it right now, so expect a very long hiatus if it isn’t the same as classic Who’s ending. Time will tell (no pun intended), but like my “Rose Doctor” plot and the Doctor, the show and its rights holders really need to take time to find themselves, learn why the show worked and had a large collection of fans to be irritated, and fix what’s wrong with the show, either on their own or with a production company who knows what they’re doing and cares about the show, or at least making the audience happy while charming a new generation. Can Doctor Who be saved? In the immortal words of K-9 himself, “affirmative”.

(Okay, that one was picking on Ellie, but in fun.)