RTD - The Return

 

So, yesterday the BBC announced that Russell T Davies (hereafter RTD) would be returning to Doctor Who as showrunner. To quote the official Press Release: "Russell T Davies will make an explosive return to screens to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who in 2023, and series beyond." This deal isn't just RTD. The BBC are working with Bad Wolf to produce these new episodes, which means the return of Julie Gardner and Jane Trantor too. 

This news set Twitter alight. It seemed to mostly be received with happiness. I did see one or two concerns about bringing back an old showrunner, but I think the BBC would certainly have wanted a safe pair of hands in place for the 60th Anniversary. 

The Chibnall era of Doctor Who has been...divisive. As with all eras of Doctor Who to some degree or another. Someone always loves the Doctor Who you don't love and someone always dislikes the Doctor Who you love. It's an unwritten rule of Doctor Who fandom. Some of that dislike of Chibnall's era is based on the casting of a female Doctor. Not all of it. But a chunk of it. 

My personal view of Chibnall's era is that I won't really know how I feel about it as a whole until it is over and in the past. I have, mostly, enjoyed it. I have said before you have to work very hard to make a Doctor Who story I don't like. But it isn't without its flaws. There's a little too much telling not showing. The Doctor is often a passive figure: The Timeless Children being particularly guilty of this. Not always, but perhaps a little too often. 

I don't have a particular issue with the idea of pre-Hartnell Doctors. I've written elsewhere about how the Doctor we know now is not the Doctor played by William Hartnell. Change is a core part of the series. But the problem is that whenever you introduce a new element of mystery to the Doctor's origins you set yourself up to fail. Because either you have to leave it in the background to keep it mysterious or you have to close it down and then it is no longer a mystery. You make a rod for your own back.

I also think Chris Chibnall made a tactical error getting rid of the Christmas Day Specials. They kept Doctor Who front and centre in the British cultural calendar. I suspect Christmas Day Specials will return under RTD.

Now, I can never know what happens behind the scenes at the BBC - I'm sure some people out there do - but I also think Chibnall made an error by being too secretive. A new season of Doctor Who would come and go then we'd hear almost nothing until a little before hand. I think to keep Doctor Who front of mind - and particularly if you are going to be forced to have longer gaps between seasons - you need to drip information out there. I don't know Chris Chibnall but I got the impression that he wasn't entirely comfortable with being the public face of Doctor Who. But in 2021 a showrunner of Doctor Who has to be out there selling Doctor Who.

Which brings me to one of RTD's key strengths. We all know he is one of the great writer's of modern TV, but his love for Doctor Who shines and his personality - or the one he presents publicly* - helps sell Doctor Who. I suspect that will be one of the key differences we see. And who better to be out there front and centre for the 60th Anniversary? 

The other thing is that I think RTD's Doctor Who of 2023 is not going to be a cut and paste version of his 2005 Doctor Who. TV has changed since then, Doctor Who has changed since then, British society has changed since then and RTD has changed since then. RTD is smart enough to know that. I suspect the two eras will have some things in common, but I think they will have differences too. I enjoyed RTD's era of Doctor Who a lot, but I think - to steal a joke from elsewhere - RTD2 will be different. I'm pretty confident it'll be good.

And, if nothing else, it was nice to see Doctor Who fandom having fun for a day. 

*I have no idea what RTD is like in private. I've never met him. It's just that some people are good at projecting a personality in public that isn't what they're like in private. 

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And You May Find Yourself....

 

So, how did I become a Doctor Who fan and how did I end up writing - roughly - 400,000 words about Doctor Who? As you can see from the photo above I'm old enough to have been born in black and white, although Doctor Who itself was in colour. Jon Pertwee was battling The Autons for the second time when I was born. I missed all that. Obviously.

However, my first memories of Doctor Who start in 1975, when I was 4. I have scattered memories of Season 13: the nurse turning into a Zygon; bits of Planet of Evil and a couple of memories of The Seeds of Doom.* I was scared a lot. I do sometimes question my Mum and Dad's decision to let me watch some of these things. 

Season 14 I remember more of, particularly The Robots of Death and The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Leela is the first companion I have clear memories of. By this point I had developed a technique for dealing with fear. When Doctor Who reached a moment that I was too scared to watch I didn't hide behind the sofa. I pretended I needed to go to the toilet. Then I would stand outside and watch through the crack in the door. Everyone knew this was what I was doing and it became a standing joke.

Seasons 15 and 16 I remember a lot. I was 7/8 by this point. I loved Doctor Who at this point. Season 17 is the moment I remember everything. Season 17 is much maligned, but it is - and probably always will be - my favourite season of Doctor Who. I loved the fourth Doctor and Romana. They seemed to be having fun. Fun at the expense of the bad people. At that point I couldn't see the budget problems. Doctor Who was still scary. My Mum used to tell me, at moments of peak far, "it's only a television programme." But in the heat of the moment it never felt like that. I suspect 1979/1980 might be the most fun years of my childhood. We were living in Newquay, Cornwall. The sun always seemed to be shining, even when it obviously couldn't have been. Memory is a funny thing. We were outside a lot. School was fun. Yes, I said it. 

Then in 1981 Tom Baker stopped being Doctor Who. Now, I vaguely knew there were other Doctors but Tom Baker had been Doctor Who for all of my life. (Or at least as far as I could remember.) Logopolis was a shock. I remember being sad that the Fourth Doctor had gone. I don't remember if I really liked the Fifth. I kept watching Doctor Who, but not quite with the same zeal as I had before. Or at least that's how I remember it. But, as John Nathan-Turner once said, "the memory cheats."

If there was ever a time I came close to not watching Doctor Who it was 1983/1984. I was 12/13. There were other things to occupy my attention. I still watched most of the time, but not all of the time and I was certainly not in fandom. We moved to Buckinghamshire and I went from a mixed Cornish comprehensive to an all boys Buckinghamshire Grammar School. I didn't like it. But because we'd moved to Buckinghamshire a year after I would have taken the 11+ when I got into Grammar School they had a class specifically for the kids that arrived a year late. There I met Rick. Rick was my conduit back into Doctor Who. He told me there was a new Doctor Who coming. Now, I must have still been talking about Doctor Who enough at this point for Rick and I to end up discussing it. 

Enter the Sixth Doctor. Colin Baker's era is when I became a Doctor Who fan. If there is another era of Doctor Who coloured by nostalgia for me, it is Colin Baker's era. I loved it. Now, I can see lots of flaws in it. Then I didn't. I loved Colin's brash version of the Doctor. And gradually I fell back in love with Doctor Who. 

So, I started reading DWM and then DWB. It was DWB that made me realise that, weirdly, there were Doctor Who fans that didn't like Doctor Who very much. It was at this point I also started buying - or getting for Christmas - Doctor Who VHS and books. I remember a trip to a bookshop around Christmas when my Nan told me to pick out some Target Books I'd not got and she'd take them away and wrap them up to give me on Christmas Day. I think Galaxy 4 was one of them. 

This was all part of my exploration of Doctor Who's past. It is at this point that it is easy to turn into one of those grumpy old men that goes on about how young people today with access to downloads don't know they're born. The past is a different world. Official Doctor Who VHS releases were dripping out of the BBC but to watch older stories you usually had to dip into a world of unofficial VHS or C-90 cassette tapes. Sometimes these were fine. Sometimes they were sixth or seventh generation copies that you could barely watch. I have particularly fond memories of Rick and I watching a copy of The Mind of Evil where the audio was pretty good but the picture was awful. My Uncle walked in, watched for a couple of minutes and asked 'what the hell is this?' Or listening to cassette copies of William Hartnell stories where the sound was washed away through hiss and distortion. But it was exciting. All these new discoveries. 

When Sylvester McCoy came along I was ready. I recorded them all on VHS so I could watch them over and over again. By the time I was off to University at Lancaster in 1989 Doctor Who fan was the most obvious part of my identity. I was writing off for autographs by this point so when I went off to University I took some of those and stuck them on my wall. I took my Target books and VHS. Not that I had anything to watch them on in my first year. Unless you rented a TV and video recorder from the Visual Tech department. 

I remember doing that once to watch Terror of the Zygons and ending up with six or seven people in my room gathering to watch it. Most of whom I didn't know that well. The Skarasen got some good natured ribbing but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

By this point though Doctor Who was on its last legs. I loved the McCoy era but the BBC seemed to have given up on it and putting it on against Coronation Street was the kiss of death. I had good natured battles in the TV Room trying to watch it, but I always lost. 

I put an ad in DWM at this point trying to gather a Lancaster and Morecambe Doctor Who society together. It worked. We had a few meetings. One of which, at the John O'Gaunt, the then editor of DWM John Freeman came along to and bought us some pages of the comic strip from the forthcoming Doctor Who Annual to look at. I suppose this is the point that I entered fandom proper. I have grown to love the social part of Doctor Who fandom, even when I'm failing once more to persuade a fellow fan that The Web Planet is absolutely brilliant. 

By this point I also owned far too much Doctor Who stuff. I still do. 

So time moves on. VHS is replaced by DVD and Blu-Ray. Then streaming and downloads. Paul McGann comes and goes. Then in 2005 they bring Doctor Who back. And it is brilliant. I felt that all my attempts to get my friends to love Doctor Who during its long absence were vindicated. Mainly because by that point a lot of them had kids who loved Doctor Who. I even had an ex-workmate on Facebook tell me I'd been right about Doctor Who all along. 

I had reached a point by 2010 where I'd watched pretty much every episode of Doctor Who that then existed and for some reason I thought the time had come to do a full watch from An Unearthly Child to, well, wherever we were in 2010.

I watched Hartnell and Troughton. I was surprised by how much I loved the William Hartnell era. Watching it in order helped you get used to the rhythms and styles of 60s TV. Plus William Hartnell has some of Doctor Who most fabulous companions. Then I watched the first season of Jon Pertwee. And thought I'd blog about the whole season. 

Then I decided I'd blog each story, which I did. Then I had to watch William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton all over again to add them to the blog, which is one of the reasons if you look at this blog it is so strangely ordered. 

And so we arrive at the present day and Across Time and Space, which is my 800 page companion to Doctor Who - which you can support here - Unbound

I hope you enjoyed my wonder through memory lane. There's lots I've missed out. Obviously. But I'd love to know your stories. 

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*All this time as a Doctor Who fan but I still have to spend time remembering whether the title of the Tom Baker story is The Seeds of Doom or The Seeds of Death. And the other way round. Why is that?

My Purely Personal Top 10 New Doctor Who Stories

This was an interesting exercise. Partly because I realised that it screwed with my perceptions. I often think that the David Tennant era is my least favourite of New Doctor Who and yet three of my Top Ten come from that era. 

I'm not sure my choices here as unusual - if that's the right word - as those of my Purely Personal Top Ten Classic Doctor Who stories. This is probably because I am not as immersed in New Doctor Who as Classic Doctor Who. The number of times I've re-watched New Doctor Who stories is usually a lot less than the number of times I've watched Classic Doctor Who. 

These are not in broadcast order not 'worst to best' btw. 

Dalek - by the time we reached this story Russell T Davies had already re-established Doctor Who as a TV hit. What Rob Shearman does with Dalek is make Daleks terrifying again. That on its own would probably have given it a place in this Top 10. What Dalek also does though is establish how damaged The Doctor has been by The Time War. There's a lot of talk about wanting to see what happened in the Time War, but we didn't need to because Dalek shows us all we need to know. It also plays to Christopher Eccleston's strengths.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances - One of my favourite things about Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who is how it manages to balance fear and humour. I think one of the most divisive elements of Doctor Who is humour. Or, should I say, how seriously things are being taken, especially performances. It is one of the criticisms of my favourite ever season of Classic Doctor Who, Season 17. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances manages to be scary and funny. "Are you my Mummy?" becomes the new series' first catch phrase and the moment with the tape recorder genuinely freaked me out. Packed with great performances and with a proper happy ending. Plus it introduces us to Captain Jack. Fantastic!

Gridlock - This I love because it is basically a brilliant tribute to The Doctor as a character and a TV series. The Doctor's refusal to give up when all seems lost is wonderful. Whether the fundamental premise makes sense or not I don't know but there's something majestic about the whole thing. The singing of Abide with Me makes me cry every time. The story also manages to nudge that season's arc along in a subtle way.  

Human Nature/Family of Blood - This is probably the Doctor Who story that made me cry the most. I cry a lot but there is more than one scene in this story that reduces me to tears. I'd read Paul Cornell's New Adventure that this story is based on, but he managed to take that foundation and build on it. Packed with great guest performances and great speeches. It's creepy. It gives Freema Agyeman a chance to shine. David Tennant is astonishingly good as is Jessica Hynes. This is a story that shows you the downside of the Doctor's life. It's a story about love, loss and grief. The battle for the school foreshadows the horror of the real War that is on the horizon. 

Midnight - I was listening to Emmy Award winning actor and comedian Brett Goldstein's podcast Films to Be Buried With. He was talking to Russell T. Davies and Brett Goldstein talks about how fantastic Midnight is. You should listen to it. A story without much in the way of special effects it manages to be terrifying. Not just because of the monster that we never see but experience but what is shows us of human nature. Packed full of superb performances but kudos must go to Lesley Sharp. If you want proof of how brilliant a writer Russell T. Davies is - and if you don't know that by now anyway where have you been - this is the story to watch.

The Day of the Doctor - Weirdly though I love Matt Smith's take on the Doctor this was the only Matt Smith era story to make my Top 10 and even then it is a multi-Doctor story. There's a lot hovering near the Top 10. I might work out why that is one day. But back to The Day of the Doctor. This was an excellent way of marking the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who without getting swamped by all the elements that Steven Moffat was trying to juggle. It managed to pay tribute to what had gone before whilst adding to The War Doctor to the mythos. It's not without some flaws. But what isn't? Matt Smith manages to hold everything together but the whole thing is a joy. Plus when the Caretaker appeared I might have cried. 

Robot of Sherwood - Here's the first story I've chosen that people reading this will be thinking: What!? What!!? I enjoyed Robot of Sherwood immensely. It was fun and it was funny. Yet it still managed to make a couple of interesting points about heroes and heroism. Yes, it isn't the most subtle of stories, but I loved it. And I've probably re-watched this more than almost any other New Doctor Who story because it brings me joy. And if that isn't the best reason to love a Doctor Who story I don't know what is. Plus Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman are great in it. 

The Husbands of River Song - A lot of why I enjoy this story is similar to why I like Robot of Sherwood. It's fun. Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston are glorious in it. It's the perfect ending to the story of River Song. That last speech Peter Capaldi makes is brilliant and Capaldi plays it perfectly. I cried. It has the best "Hello Sweetie" of the entire series. We get introduced to Nardole for the first time. It's fun. For a while this was my favourite Doctor Who story of all time. Even thinking about it now makes me smile. I might even watch it tonight. 

Heaven Sent - A glorious piece of Doctor Who and a glorious piece of television full stop. Clever, creepy, moving and centred on a great performance by Peter Capaldi I watched this on broadcast, waited a short while and then watched it again on BBC iPlayer. Tom Baker is - and probably always will be - my favourite Doctor because there is a part of me that is always that 6 year-old kid but Capaldi is (possibly) his closest rival. This seems to be Steven Moffat's meditation on grief, which as you'll see when you read some of my other blogs is something Doctor Who often avoids talking about despite death being absolutely central to almost every single episode of Doctor Who.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati - This is almost a Doctor Who story made purely to my specifications. I am a massive Mary Shelley fanboy.* I've been fascinated by that stay at the Villa Diodati ever since I first heard about it. I love Byron and Shelley's work even as I know that they were problematic men. Add a genuinely terrifying Cyberman - and I've been wanting that for years and years - we have a story that I adore. Jodie Whittaker is great. I've watched this a couple of times since. It even has Polidori in it, who often gets forgotten about in stories about the Villa Diodati. 

So, there you have it. My Purely Personal Top 10 New Doctor Who stories. These lists have a habit of changing over time, but I think there's a few of these that will always be there or thereabouts. Who agrees? 

*I recommend Fiona Sampson's "In Search of Mary Shelley" if you want a good introduction to her life and the many, many men who behave badly to her and around her.