If you know, you get the reference.
So the rumor mill is active again. According to The Sun, Ncuti Gatwa is ready to leave the show and the BBC is ready to cancel Doctor Who because Disney isn’t going to help bankroll it after the recent ratings disasters. Well, we’re talking about a tabloid with questionable accuracy on these rumors and the BBC has at least said that despite being seriously delayed, the future of the third “Neo Who” season with Disney will be decided by season two. As for Gatwa, nothing’s been officially mentioned yet…but I need an article, so let’s have some fun. Don’t worry, I’m not going to attack Gatwa. I haven’t seen much of his Doctor…though the standout moments discussed and clipped online aren’t exactly winning me over…so I can’t fully judge his take.
Instead I want to try to figure out what I’d like to see in Doctor Who. Realistically, of course. I liked the half-hour serials better but fat chance of that happening and I’m not a slave to that idea. Also, Doctor Who is a British institution and I am an American. So judge that how you will. I would want the show to remain British, including the showrunner. Even the TV movie understood its roots. For me, the original show was something a friend told me about on PBS (for you British chaps and chapettes, imagine the BBC didn’t force you to pay them but it did come out your regular taxes, corporate sponsorships instead of adverts, and begging for what we now call crowdfunding twice a year), but until it was rescheduled away from family suppertime I couldn’t watch it. When that changed I very much enjoyed the show. I even made my own 8th Doctor in a comic my friend and I made long before Fox screwed up the TV movie because Fox and science fiction is almost always a bad combination. My friend came up with the Companion, I came up with the teen Doctor’s outfit…an outdoors vest, t-shirt, baseball cap, slacks, and sneakers. Yes, it’s boring. I was 17! At least I had a set outfit for my Doctor. Did Gatwa have a regular outfit? Every image my non-Disney+ owning eyes saw has him in a different outfit each episode.
So this is less about what I’d do with the Doctor than what I wouldn’t mind seeing come out of the show if a regime change would happen. And yes, it would require a regime change. Fans who were excited for Russell T. Davies returning found that he wasn’t the same guy that originally brought the show back. (I did warn you, and I didn’t even care for his first run as much as other fans.) Yesterday’s Davies was immature, couldn’t let an interracial romance go without hurting or killing the black one, which is a fault shared by Moffat and Chibnall I admit, and gave us the second ugliest TARDIS in the franchise’s history, beaten only by Chibnall’s death trap. In fact, that’s the first thing I’d change.
Should The Marvel Cinematic Universe Be Rebooted Or Destroyed?
Ever since Disney took over Marvel, which they wanted for the movie studio and not the comics since they’ve bungled that up and had other publishers doing some of their properties that weren’t pre-existing contracts, the franchise has gone downhill. The writing and adaptation have fallen apart, the social pandering is more and more obvious, and the lack of interest in the source material that their movies wouldn’t exist without by the people making those movies is all on display and has hurt the very brand they sought to use. Amazing what happens when you look at the popularity of the brand name and ignore why it’s popular in favor of your own biases, isn’t it?
This has led some in the fandom to just call for a reboot. Even Film Theory under both MatPat and current host Lee have suggested it. Supposedly, Marvel Studios are one reboot away from saving Marvel movies…except it won’t. Reboots do nothing to address the actual problems with Marvel Studios, Disney, Marvel Comics, the MCU, or anything else that has led Disney’s Marvel away from what made Marvel Studios so good when they were making movies on their own and distributing through Paramount or Universal. There’s also a call to just stop making MCU material in theaters and Disney+, a similar call being made for the Star Wars franchise that has also suffered under Bob Iger’s continued destruction and desecration of Walt Disney’s legacy.
Let’s go over this idea fairly, though. Superhero fans want to save the movies, but will killing the MCU in favor of a new Marvel movieverse fix things? To properly showcase the frustrations of the superhero movie fans I bring you the following video by commentator and indie filmmaker JesterBell. Watch as she vents her issues currently with the direction the MCU has taken and tries to convince us that a either reboot or total shutdown is the solution, with the upcoming Fantastic Four movie as the best place to do a Flashpoint style remaking of the universe. We agree on the problems, but I’m not convinced this is going to help. It might even make the problem worse.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on February 19, 2025 in Marvel Spotlight, Movie Spotlight and tagged commentary, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios, MCU.
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