Andrew Gilhooley's Blog

I just finished watching the latest series of Doctor Who on BBC iPlayer. That’s right, nearly two months after the last episode aired, the one with THAT reincarnation sequence. What did I think of it? It was… well… OK I suppose.

To be honest, it has been hard to care about Doctor Who for quite a while now, at least for me. The current, post-2005-era jumped the proverbial shark in my view with 2011’s Series 6 centering on the true identity of River Song, Amy’s pregnancy and all that guff. The plots became more and more convoluted, the reliance on special effects to compensate for the shortfall in writing increasingly obvious. That’s not to say that there weren’t diamonds in the rough, there were still some outstanding episodes, but overall the writing didn’t do justice to the excellent efforts of the leads and their supporting cast.

Matt Smith never gave less than 100% right until the end of his tenure, but had to deal with the aforementioned River Song storyline and the Impossible Girl saga. Peter Capaldi took the role in a completely different direction and gave an outstanding performance but had to work with some woefully weak material, like the Moon being a giant egg. Jodie Whittaker as the first female incarnation of the Doctor, along with her TARDIS crew, changed things again with her warmth and charm, but had the awful Flux and Timeless Child storylines to contend with.

The viewership numbers reflected this decline in quality, so for the 60th Anniversary the BBC brought back original 2005-era show runner Russell T Davies and actors David Tennant and Catherine Tate for three special episodes. It’s telling that the best of these three, The Star Beast, was based on a cartoon strip from 1979.

Most recently, 15th Doctor Ncuti Gatwa has brought an amazing amount of charisma, energy and emotion to the role but has been sadly underserved by the writing. After only two series, he is moving on to pastures new and is being replaced by… well, we don’t know.At the end of his final episode, the Doctor regenerated and former companion Billie Piper appeared on screen. So is she the next Doctor? Only time will tell, but there are no plans for a holiday special this year and Disney have reportedly not renewed their co-production option.

Let’s pause for a minute for me to recap my history with Doctor Who. I have been watching that show for a long time. No, I mean a really long time; the first story I can remember watching was Day of the Daleks, and that aired in 1972. Jon Pertwee was my first Doctor and Katy Manning as Jo Grant was my first assistant.

I remember being absolutely terrified by the giant maggots in The Green Death, shocked by the reveal of Lynx the Sontaran’s face in The Time Warrior and thrilled by the dinosaurs in Invasion of the Dinosaurs. When the Doctor regenerated at the end of Planet of the Spiders, I was undoubtedly not alone in wondering how Tom Baker could possibly fill Jon Pertwee’s shoes.

We all know the answer to that question now, of course – Doctor Who‘s first era enjoyed its peak of popularity . In my opinion, the show enjoyed some of its strongest years between 1974 and 1978, especially seasons 12 to 14 with Philip Hinchcliffe as producer and Robert Holmes as script editor. The series gained a darker tone, with several stories borrowing themes from classic horror tales and Genesis of the Daleks depicting the origins of the classic villains in a Nazi-like regime.

I carried on watching the show all the way until it was cancelled in 1989. John Nathan-Turner took over as producer and decided that Tom Baker, after six years in the role, had run his course as the Doctor. Peter Davison replaced Tom Baker after one more year, bringing Baker’s total tenure to seven years, a record for the show. Davison was in turn replaced by Colin Baker and then Sylvester McCoy.

Nathan-Turner and the BBC made several changes to the show, which was declining in popularity since its peak years. The reasons why were too many to go into in detail here, but the release of several blockbuster sci-fi movies over the years raising the bar for production values and changing viewer tastes all played their part. However, it’s undeniable that some of the changes made to the show were also contributing factors: stunt-casting of celebrities (Ken Dodd, Hale & Pace and Courtney Pine among others), changes to the format and broadcast pattern of the show such as moving it from the Saturday slot, and others. The end result was that after 26 years, Doctor Who was put on indefinite hiatus.

In many ways, it feels to me like we have reached that point again where the show has run its course. In the past few years we have seen similar things: the stunt casting, major rewrites of the show’s mythology, one episode having a song-and-dance number in it, bringing back old stars and producers in an attempt to revitalize the ratings, focussing on style over substance and so on. All of these things indicate to me that it might be time once again to put Doctor Who to rest for a while, ready for someone new in the future to pick it up again and breathe fresh air into the show. Or not, just let it rest, knowing that there was never another show like it. Either way is fine by me.