It's one of those coincidences I sometimes complain of in the "What's Wrong With..." posts, but when I plotted out 60 Doctor Who moments to consider as we counted down to the anniversary, I didn't know that I'd have been looking at the inspirations behind The Eleventh Hour within the same week or so as this one...
Because this one's about the rare occasions when we have a virtual reboot, with big changes both in front of and behind the cameras.
Some are obvious, but others are more subtle.
When the first ever regular cast change arrived in 1964, Carole Ann Ford dissatisfied with the way her character of Susan was developing (it wasn't), William Russell and Jacqueline Hill were content to stay on as Ian and Barbara. By the time they left, in the next Dalek story, Vicki was there to provide continuity and their final episode overlapped with the first appearance of Steven Taylor - even if he didn't actually join the TARDIS until the following week.
Companions continued to overlap until we arrived at the first Doctor changeover. Rather than take the opportunity to reboot the series, companions Ben and Polly were on hand, and the new Doctor's first monsters were the Daleks. They had been used for the majority of significant changes in the regular cast so far - Susan, Ian, Barbara, Katarina, Sara Kingdom all leaving, and Steven arriving. Now they were seeing in Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor.
Ben and Polly were due to depart after a couple of episodes of Evil of the Daleks (presumably left behind when the Doctor and Jamie get transported to 19th Century Kent), but producer Innes Lloyd elected to release them early. However, a Dalek story once again saw the arrival of a new companion - Victoria.
The Evil of the Daleks was followed by a summer break, and when the series returned it was for a visit to The Tomb of the Cybermen.
Take a look at the opening section and you'll see that we're being given a refresher on what this series is all about. The TARDIS interior is filmed at Ealing, and is the biggest and most impressive we've seen it since the early Hartnell days. Why? There is really no reason to include this scene and go to all this bother. The TARDIS plays no further part once it gets the crew to Telos, so why is this here?
It's an opportunity to remind existing viewers about the basics of the series, and act as an entry point for new viewers. The Doctor tells new girl Victoria all about the ship and what it can do, and speaks of the sort of adventures they will have. He goes further to talk about his own alien nature. Even old hand Jamie is clearly hearing some things for the first time.
It is at the end of the Troughton era that the biggest shake-up until then occurred. Frazer Hines had been due to depart halfway through Season Six, in the story which was ultimately replaced by The Krotons. He would have been replaced by a new male character named Nik, and had this happened then we might have seen at least one of the companions bridge the changeover to the Third Doctor - the argument being that a new arrival might not want to give up a regular role in a long-running series five minutes after winning it. We also know that Wendy Padbury was asked to stay on as Zoe, but she wanted to find other work and decided that leaving alongside Troughton and Hines was the right thing to do. Perhaps had whoever was playing Nik stayed on, she may have agreed to do another season herself.
All of this coincided with the move to colour, and a BBC strike which meant the first story of a new decade being made entirely on film. We also have the longest gap between seasons in the series' history to date.
Despite having the same producer and script editor as The War Games, Spearhead From Space looks and sounds so different to what went before that it can be construed as a reboot of the series. It is all brand new save for the inclusion of the Brigadier and UNIT, but it should be remembered that he and the organisation had only featured together in a single story a whole year before. The changes aren't just cosmetic. The whole format has changed. The Doctor is now confined to contemporary Earth, with no more TARDIS jaunts to alien planets or periods of Earth's past or future (at least not yet).
The programme settled down under Pertwee / Letts and Dicks, with companions coming and going. Sarah Jane Smith was there with the Brigadier to oversee the next regeneration, which took place in the familiar surroundings of the Doctor's lab at UNIT HQ.
The next big change was not down to a Doctor or companion departure /arrival but a new producer.
However, JNT's changes were once again primarily cosmetic. He retained the same Doctor and companions, only replacing them bit by bit over the course of his first season in charge.
As well as new titles, with an updated image of Tom Baker, the theme and incidental music were changed - supposedly to make the stories more contemporary (but simply dated them a lot quicker).
Story-wise, new script editor Christopher H Bidmead did make more significant changes, removing a lot of the humour and "magic" which he felt had crept into the series, especially under Douglas Adams' brief stint as his predecessor.
JNT specifically went out of his way to ensure continuity when Baker left - worried that he had been in the role so long that the audience might resist his replacement. He tried to get either Lis Sladen or Louise Jameson to return, but went with a new Master trilogy instead.
Whilst the turnover in Doctors speeded up, continuity of companions was maintained until the series was brought to an end just before Christmas 1989.
Fans then embarked on the seemingly never-ending quest to see the series make a comeback. Books and audios filled the Wilderness Years. Here was an ideal opportunity to go for a complete change - a new Doctor / companion for new media, but Virgin, Big Finish and BBC Books opted instead to play safe and stick with the Seventh Doctor.
One of the early plans for a revived series, when it did finally get the green light, was a proper reboot - not just starting afresh from where the series had left off, but a root and branch relaunch. The Doctor would be seen to leave Gallifrey for the first time to seek out his missing dad (Ulysses), sent by his grandfather (Borusa), whilst his brother (the Master) tried to get in his way. There was talk of old stories being remade - especially ones with "Web" in their title. It would have been as though the original 26 years had never existed.
Luckily these ideas were dropped, and come May 1996 we simply got a new story picking up where the old series had left off. This ought to have had a new Doctor and new companion from the off, but they decided to establish continuity by having the Seventh Doctor appear - just to show a regeneration. The plan was that this would actually help new viewers understand the basics of the show better - but had the opposite effect.
Luckily RTD was paying attention, even if he didn't think the TV Movie was canon (at least not when he was writing Queer As Folk). He learned from its mistakes and went for a reboot that was clearly a continuation of what had gone before, but had a brand new Doctor and brand new companion from the start.
The Doctor makes a comment to himself when looking in a mirror which implies he has only recently regenerated, and the foe he is up against in Rose is the Nestene Consciousness, seen twice before in the Pertwee era (the first time just happening to be when we last had a soft reboot of the series). The Daleks then turn up later.
Rose would go on to bridge the transition to the next Doctor, and RTD introduced the idea of a cliffhanger ending to each series, to lead into his Christmas Specials - even if the companions came and went. Spin-off series were introduced, and these had links to the parent programme - culminating in The Stolen Earth / Journey's End which saw all three series come together. The End of Time also brought elements of the three series together for Ten's departure.
This last story saw more than just a regeneration take place. It was very much the end of an era as the executive production team all stepped down and were replaced by Steven Moffat's.
He was therefore left to introduce a new Doctor and new companion, with little or no reference to what had preceded him. He also introduced a new TARDIS, both inside and out, and would later attempt, unsuccessfully, to give us a new breed of Daleks. The latter was a change too far.
The Snowmen was an opportunity to offer viewers a new stepping-on point, with a new companion and a new TARDIS interior. Victorian Clara was a false start - the real one wouldn't be along until The Bells of St John - and we'd already been introduced to Jenna Coleman in Asylum of the Daleks.
Clara helped with the transition from Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi - plus a clumsy phone call from the old Doctor to her, as though Moffat doubted that viewers would accept the new one (shades of JNT and Tom Baker's departure).
The Pilot was aptly named, however. Moffat intended this to be another stepping-on point, especially after the ill-judged "same old, same old" publicity campaign for the previous series. Whilst we still had the Capaldi Doctor, Clara had long outstayed her welcome and had mercifully departed, and Bill came in like a breath of fresh air. A lot of the Moffat continuity had also been finally ditched.
We had little reminders that this was the same series, however, with a photo of Susan on the Doctor's desk and a pot full of classic Sonics.
Capaldi only had one more series to go (as did Bill and Moffat) and so the next big change took place with the arrival of the third showrunner of the revived series, Chris Chibnall. Like his predecessors, he wanted to make his mark. The Doctor became female for the first time, we got new companions and another new TARDIS inside and out. Chibnall took things an awful lot further by going back and messing about the very foundations of the programme, creating a whole new pre-1963 life for the Doctor. "Awful" might be an apposite epithet.
What RTD2 will do with this, if anything, we don't know. There's another soft reboot on the way, though it won't be seen until Spring 2024 - new Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS.
Before then we have a new Doctor who just happens to look and act like an older one, the return of a previous companion, and stories which will lean on elements of the past, going back at least as far as 1966.
Change is something we fans have simply learned to take in our stride - but we do like a bit of continuity. Were someone to try to completely reboot the series, ditching everything that had gone before, it just wouldn't be the same programme, and I don't think we'd like it very much.
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