After all the buffoonery, the f*ck-me-that's-crap Billie Piper cameo, the grandiose claims and promises, and all the liquid bullshit that comes of a franchise and a showrunner who have been finally found out, and are now in full narcissistic injury mode, it turns out we are back where we started.
Doctor Who has been 'put out to tender' (much in the same way Bambi's mother had a sabbatical).
One might say it was 1989 all over again, but the difference here is that Old Who was beginning to get interesting and credible again, when that cnut Michael Grade finally got his way and pulled the plug.
Whereas, Nu Who's twilight of the sods is a shameful morass of bad writing, trashed continuity, garbage PR stunts and the ugly spectacle of vain, superficial white middle aged men confusing noblesse oblige with genuine progressive politics.
The end of the Disney deal finally forces us to face up to the horrible truth. Doctor Who, as is, is a Butlins cover band thinking it can conquer America like The Beatles. Perhaps I am being unfair - Butlins entertainers work for a living, after all.
But the delusion of RTD, the assumption that Doctor Who could somehow be something it was not, has been what has secretly blighted the show from its 2005 resurrection onwards. The 'Whoniverse' idents sum it up perfectly - naff, delusional, tacky and completely and utterly lacking in any self-awareness.
Recriminations, of course, are all very well, yet what do we do next? I'm not sure the show is coming back. It certainly can't keep repeating the same formula it's been rehashing since Bad Wolf chrono-fucked the Daleks back in 2005.
That the show just kept repeating the same narrative arc, the same flourishes, the same plots and dynamics... I'm surprised it took 20 years for people to notice how lame it was, and I fear the reason they have is because the spread of far right politics online have finally given people a reason to say it's crap, rather than it being, well, crap.
What, however, to do? Every man and his K9 are making suggestions about who should run the show (not questioning whether the whole 'showrunner' concept was precisely the problem), how the show should be relaunched, whether some saviour will swan in and save the show from oblivion... In other words, no one has learned anything from the RTD, post-RTD and neo-RTD eras.
Others have lurched into personal abuse and homophobia, not to mention fascism. One of my many complaints about the show was how RTD forgot that the Daleks were meant to represent the full horror of fascism. And it would seem the fanbase have too.
So how would I save the show? My first response is 'does it matter?' I've been slagging Nu Who off (and giving praise where praise was due) since 2005, and has it changed anything?
But I have a duty insofar that I love the show for what it was and could still be. As you will see, that comes with a caveat, but I may as well add my five ways to save Doctor Who. Or not. So...
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This should be self-evident. Fans are the worst thing to happen to any media property. Doctor Who needs to be made for the audience, not the fans. And fans should not be allowed to play any role in the production.
Ideally, the show should be produced by non-fans who treat it as a job rather than an apotheosis. There is even an argument to be made that the show should be made by people who are completely indifferent or even unfavourable to Who.
Why? Fans have been in charge for the last three decades. In fact, the fans were already blighting the show by the 80s, as a teenage Chris Chibnall bitching away on BBC's Open Air in 1986 demonstrates. And the results have not been good. Perhaps detachment or even scepticism is needed.
It's not like the show's enemies could do a worse job.
Doctor Who is about a complex, mysterious and often contradictory character who is at times horribly flawed, but nonetheless dynamic and moral. The show also holds up a mirror to the human condition, particularly its dark side.
The companions are the middle men, that link between the audience and the Time Lord, but the show is not called 'The Companion Du Jour (plus some arsehole called the Doctor).' Any in-depth analysis of the show between 1963 and 1989 demonstrates that the best Doctor Who stories emerge from this dynamic.
The Doctor can be a cantankerous, hubristic weirdo, but he (they?)* needs to be the hero too.
Seriously, do this now. The producer, the lead writer and the executive should be different people. No one should have that much power because it means one person can wreck the show.
As has been demonstrated over the last 20 years. Old Who seperated these powers and spread the responsibility. It seems rather democratic compared to the absolute monarchy of the modern showrunner system.
Magic happened, and it's worth noting the show started hitting the skids the moment JNT became both the overall authority and embodiment of Who in the 1980s. Forcing people to work with people means less nonsense and better television.
Rather than having a clear format or 'over-arching storyline' (sigh), do the opposite. Have 12 episodes, between 45 minutes and an hour long, and let each writer outline their own vision for the show and the Doctor. Some oversight would be needed, but otherwise let slip the writers.
People as varied as Lawrence Miles, Gail Simone and Charlie Jane Anders have their own ideas what the show should be. Excellent. Let them each have their chance.
Alan Moore has already written Doctor Who comics. How might an Afro-Futurist or French bande dessine artist envisage Who? A manga artist or anime producer? Latin American and East European authors? Let's see what works and what doesn't. Again, they couldn't possibly do a worse job.
My boldest suggestion, and one that may shock you. Let it die. Stop trying to bring Doctor Who back. Stop trying to recapture lost glories, both real and imagined. Give up. Move on. Put all that effort into creating something genuinely new and a true reflection of our times.
It's a 63 year old TV show. Would anyone in 1963 really want to watch a rebooted vaudeville act from 1900? This also applies to James Bond and Ghostbusters, and, perhaps, Star Wars, and any number of other Gen-X and Boomer obsessions. (Don't get me started on Harry Fucking Potter.)
They've had their time. Perhaps, then, the boldest action, the one which does true justice to the legacy of Doctor Who, is to just let it rest and be forgotten. Or wait until it enters the public domain, and then everyone can finally have their own personal, ideal Doctor Who.
Perhaps we should have taken the hint in 1989 and just let the Doctor and Ace go off into the sunset. It's worth wondering if that was the true ending of the show, and everything after that point was just necrophilia.
But as the Doctor says, perhaps it is time to 'look to the future' and be done with it. These are dark times; perhaps we need new dreams, new legends and new stories to help us get through them. All of a sudden, 1963, and 2005, seem awfully long ago.
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In short, then, fix it or fuck it.
* All the furore over whether the Doctor should be a black woman misses the main point about the character. They're not human. They're passing. Until Nu Who committed the cardinal error of humanising the character, we never knew if the Doctor even is a male in the human sense, or whether gender is more perfomative and liquid on Gallifrey.
A question mark (fittingly enough) is more progressive than a 'bold casting decision' because it implies nuance and ambivalence, the true natural enemies of both prejudice and fascism. Or to put it another way, would the First Doctor be allowed to use a males-only toilet? A whites-only water fountain? Would any Doctor be accepted in places with no blacks, no Irish, and no dogs?
© Alexander Hay 2022-2026