Don’t You Think It Looks Tired?

Or 5 Ways to Reinvigorate Doctor Who. Let’s begin with what this article is not. This is not another article bemoaning how “woke” politics and a female protagonist has destroyed our favourite show about a shape-shifting alien do-gooder. This is not one of those But The Writing! articles in which someone halfway through a bachelor’s degree with no industry experience picks apart the work of someone more qualified than they are. I promise that it’ll also take less than five hours to read.

It seems that the current discourse and analysis around modern Doctor Who is as tired and predictable as the show itself. So, this article is going to attempt to do something radical. It’s going to be positive and hopeful about the future of the show. It’s a familiar refrain but Doctor Who has limitless potential and frustratingly, it often gets stuck in one particular shape.

Maybe it’s time for a change? After all, the show has remained in a very similar format, albeit with a few subtle and not-so-subtle changes, since it returned in 2005. So, what better way to pitch some ideas on how to reinvigorate a tired and worn-out Doctor Who than via the tired and worn-out format of an online listicle? 

1. Focus on the Current Doctor!

In promoting his return to the Doctor Who fold, Christopher Eccleston recently suggested that the show has been a bit of a boy’s club, historically. It’s hard to disagree when looking at the show’s social media channels, as they promote a seemingly never-ending stream of (male) past-Doctor adventures. I’m not even going to begin to pretend to be privy to the marketing and branding vision for the show, but it seems bonkers that the promotion for what, once upon a time, would be unofficial fan productions outweighs the promotion for the show itself.  

It also doesn’t help that Big Finish churns out three or four different releases each month, with different combinations of past-Doctors, monsters and returning characters. Personally, if I was the license holder, I’d be reigning Big Finish in a little to reduce the over-saturation of past-Doctors. It’s not just audio either – the recent Time Fracture show is trumpeting appearances by the likes of David Bradley and Jo Martin with just a passing mention of our incumbent Doctor. 

With so much new Doctor Who being released each month in audio, novel, theatrical and comic book form, a paltry eight new TV episodes featuring our current Doctor do pale in comparison. But sadly, that message comes through loud and clear in the show’s marketing. It shouldn’t be this way, the TV show is about driving the programme forward, the spin-off media is about languishing in the past.

It also doesn’t have to be this way – Share on-set images! Engage with fans! Appear in DWM! I’m not asking for spoilers or tidbits, just give us the impression that there is a current era in production about which we should all be very excited. This appears to have been addressed by this month’s DWM, so here’s hoping for lots more as we head into Series 13.

2. Give Us Something to be Excited About!

I’m not talking big revelations that change everything, or the return of everyone’s favourite time-hopping, trouser dropping Torchwood operative Captain Jack. It remains to be seen how much of an impact the Timeless Children revelation will have on the show going forward, but Jack’s return felt like a hollow mid-season stunt rather than the character naturally slotting into events. Even if it did give us the best iteration of the running ‘Graham gets mistaken for the Doctor’ gag. 

In that same episode, Jo Martin’s fugitive Doctor storyline felt very exciting for about five minutes when it briefly appeared that we might be getting a Doctor from a parallel universe. A universe where Gallifrey was a bit more gun-toting and the Doctor was a bit more of a devious secret agent figure. Instead, she’s just turned out to be an earlier incarnation ala, John Hurt. It’s disappointingly linear for a show all about time travel and infinite worlds. 

What would be exciting would be a bit of formal invention, a rethink of what the show is or could be.  For good or ill, Steven Moffat was constantly tinkering with the show’s format and in so doing, gave us some of the finest episodes of the show’s 56-year history. This current era feels stuck on the 21st Century default setting – a few historicals, a few space adventures, a couple of contemporary Earth-based stories. We’ve had 16 years of that, Moffaty detours aside. Isn’t it time for us to try something a bit different? A series-long story perhaps? The Doctor being separated from the TARDIS for more than one episode maybe?  

The first 16 years of Classic Doctor Who didn’t feel nearly as formulaic as the modern stuff does now and it had a lot more screen time to fill! 

3. Get Weird With It!

People will constantly say that Doctor Who can be anything. I’ve said it myself when describing the appeal of it to sceptical friends. And yet, as I’ve just pointed out, it tends to be one of three distinct things. Why not get weird with it? We live in a post-WandaVision, post-Rick and Morty world and whilst Doctor Who doesn’t have nearly the amount of money that a Marvel production does or the wider creative scope of an animated series, it could afford to be a bit weirder.

After all, anyone who saw Jon Pertwee pop up on Noel’s House Party, Happy Families, or Surprise Surprise in the 1990s could very easily imagine Doctor Who doing a light entertainment version of WandaVision. Watch the Third Doctor crank up some grannies, perhaps at the behest of Sil, below…

Meanwhile, Rick and Morty is known for it’s high concepts, multiverse shenanigans and alien worlds and mainstream audiences take all that largely in their stride. It’s obviously a budgetary thing, but Doctor Who very rarely goes to truly alien worlds. Marinus, Vortis, Akhaten all stand out but they’re rare forays. Whilst I generally tend to agree with Russell T Davies that truly alien societies can be utterly baffling to general audiences, I do think you can make a virtue out of that. 

Imagine an episode where, rather than liberate an alien world from some tyrannical regime or an invading force, the Doctor and their friends fall foul of some cultural misunderstanding. There’s loads of scope for this in a science fiction show. Also, if Doctor Who truly is “woke” nowadays then isn’t it the perfect time for a story about how the Doctor’s more ‘superior’ view of the universe is challenged by an encounter with an alien world?  

4. Into the Doctorverse

Thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, audiences are about to become very familiar with the concept of the multiverse via the upcoming Doctor Strange movie and ongoing Disney+ series Loki. Indeed, Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse was a financially successful, creatively dazzling, high concept family movie. Imagine a 60th anniversary Doctor Who version – Jodie Whittaker teaming up with Richard E. Grant’s Scream of the Shalka Doctor, Joanna Lumley’s Curse of the Fatal Death Doctor and the Peter Cushing Doctor (played by Guy Henry perhaps?) to take on the Black Guardian or Omega or some other universe threatening baddie. Big Finish already experimented with the multiverse with last year’s terrific Palindrome by John Dorney. Let’s see the show itself tackle it!  

Prior to that, there was their Unbound range, a series of What Ifs? Whilst I wouldn’t want to see that every week, such a thing could also shine a light on the character of the Doctor themself (an ongoing obsession since the Steven Moffat era) by presenting us with alternate versions. Jo Martin’s gun-toting action hero version would have been a perfect way to introduce this idea but instead, it just turns out the Doctor used to be a gun-toting action hero and forgot about it for 57 years.  

5. “Stories too deep and too broad for the small screen”

Maybe Doctor Who is creatively hampered by being on BBC1 on a Sunday night? Maybe it’s even outgrown television as a format? What about finally making the transition to the big screen? It currently looks the most cinematic than ever lord knows there have been multiple attempts over the years to make a movie, detailed in Charles Norton’s 2013 book. I honestly believe that in the right hands, a Doctor Who movie could be huge, the sort of tentpole British blockbuster that the Tories want the British film industry to be making. It’s far more suited to the big screen treatment than Downton Abbey for Christ’s sake! 

So what would it look like? I’m not sure, and I’m certain the budget wouldn’t be anywhere near comparable to a Marvel movie. Weirdly, however, the answers may lie in the script for Johnny Byrne’s abandoned Doctor Who movie, which was in development during the late 80s and early 90s. You can read it here if you’re interested. In some ways, it’s not aged particularly well but I was surprised by how modern it felt. It concerns a race across time and space to stop an evil Timelord (not that one) from acquiring powerful gemstones which could wield a great deal of destruction and dominance. Sound familiar?  

The Doctor and his rag-tag group of companions (a snooty Time Lady, an action hero warrior and an American exchange student) aren’t too far removed from Peter Quill and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s funny too and doesn’t for a second lose sight of Doctor Who’s more unique eccentric charms.  

That being said, the idea of Doctor Who fans waiting patiently for a mere 90-120 minutes of new material every two years is more fantastical than anything you could put in a movie. Which is a shame, look at the hype and excitement around Avengers: Endgame. It was a proper event that was years in the making. A Doctor Who movie series could be that thing that makes the show feel vital and exciting again. 

Because I don’t know about you, but I think it needs that. The eight episodes we have later this year are the continuing adventures of the Doctor and their friends. Let’s stop crowding them out with ephemera, let’s let them explore strange new worlds and civilisations, enter a multiverse of madness or appear NOW ON THE BIG SCREEN! We’re approaching the 60th anniversary, it’s time to change things up and embrace infinite possibilities. Isn’t that what the show has been telling us to do this whole time?  

Here’s to the future.