Who, What, When...?

"One day I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. But until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties..."

I can't let today's big news pass without comment, so here goes...

To those of you who were there with me in 1989 / 90, you'll be feeling a sense of deja vu. 

The series is very important to the BBC... It will be back bigger and better than ever... We're looking for an independent producer to take it on, and we'll let you now when the right partner is identified... 

All that sort of talk is what we got in the months (then years) following the end of Survival when, for the first time ever, there was no announcement about a new series returning in the Autumn.

At least this time we have actually been given a definitive statement to say that the programme is suspended, whereas back then the BBC simply strung the fans along hoping that they would eventually get the message that the show wasn't coming back and go away. Some hope!

There's some contradictory comments today. RTD2 claims that the 2026 Christmas Special never existed. We were simply told there was one as a placeholder statement until they worked out what they were going to do next. However, Murray Gold, in a recent interview, said that there was more than one version of the script already written...

The one thing we all knew was that Billie Piper would not be playing the new Doctor, though she might be used purely as a bridge to whoever the new one was. Piper was only brought in as RTD2 had to cobble something together when Gatwa quit early.

In recent weeks we had someone claiming that the Special had already been filmed, all in studio in secret, whilst "an insider" claimed that they could not get anyone to play the next Doctor as the role had become a "poisoned chalice" for actors...

We now know that, following criticism from fans and apathy from the general public, accompanied by an unhappy co-producer for whom the promised benefits failed to materialise, Doctor Who has ended for the time being.

When it comes back - and it is 'when' (we just don't know how long) - Bad Wolf and Davies won't have anything to do with it. Looking back at the last two series, most will be glad about that. 

Things started off promisingly enough with the 60th Anniversary Specials, bringing back David Tennant and Catherine Tate; adapting a popular DWW comic strip, and resurrecting a villain from the classic era in the shape of the Toymaker.

Disney pumped quite a few $$$ into the show, and it looked great. And we had also managed to rid ourselves of Chris Chibnall who, let's not forget, was responsible for the show needing rescuing in the first place.

But things went wrong rather quickly, and we could debate for ages what the problems were - and it's interesting to compare them with the things that the independent fan publications like DWB were saying about JNT back in the late 1980's. (Maybe the programme needs to steer clear of producers / showrunners who tend to be known by their initials...).

My criticisms of the series of late are all there in my reviews, and I'll be talking about them again soon as my look at each story in turn is about to finally come to its conclusion in a couple of weeks.

Rather than look back, let's see what the future might hold...

Whoever takes on the series will have a number of options:

1. Carry on from where RTD2 left off.

2. Start with a new Doctor already in place, as with Rose, but have them clearly a new incarnation of the character first portrayed by William Hartnell in 1963, with all the continuity available.

3. Ditto, but simply ignore what has gone before. It's the same character, but keep continuity to the absolute minimum to avoid alienating new viewers (and the fans know it all anyway).

4. Have the Twelfth Doctor wake up in the TARDIS and tell his companion about the horrible nightmare he's just had...

5. Reboot - as in start again from scratch. How many origins stories have Spider-Man and Superman had in the last few years?

6. Prequel series, but certainly not any "Time Lord Academy" YA nonsense - just look at how well Starfleet Academy did, or Class for that matter.

7. Ignore a new TV series all together and look to films. A series could always follow later if successful.

Option 1 would be the least popular, I'm sure. The series has ended in a complete mess and I don't think it's salvageable.

Option 2 is probably most likely, as any new producers would want to access all the old monsters / characters.

Option 3 would be my own favoured choice. I like sitting on fences.

Option 4 - if only...

Option 5 might not be as drastic as one might think. As I've said, everything gets remade these days. It would provide a clean slate for whoever takes the series on, and you could remake some of those classic stories with the technology we now have available. We could simply draw a line under the series which began in 1963, and go right back to basics.

Option 6 - probably too limiting. 

Option 7 is possible, as the partnership with Disney is going to complicate matters when looking for the next partner. Other streamers will have seen how they failed with the series, so may not want to touch the property. There's also the added complication of the BBC. Most companies such as Netflix would want some sort of exclusivity, but the Beeb would want to show it on the telly if licence payer monies are involved.

Going down the movie route might also make the total reboot option more likely.

As of today, I think there are only two things we can take as certainties. We are going to have a long wait before any new Doctor Who is shown, in whatever form it takes - and a bit of a gap would probably do the series some good to be honest; and whoever takes the series on really has to get back to the fundamentals of the series if they want to make it a success. (Look at what Chibnall and RTD2 did - then run in the opposite direction, as fast as you can...).