Paul Magrs is wrong!
A few weeks ago my friend, the marvellous writer Paul Magrs,
did a video blog proposing that when (If? No! When!) Doctor Who returns,
it should be as a reboot. You can watch it here.
But, of course, I disagree. Apologies in advance to Paul if I mischaracterise any of his arguments. I’ve watched his video once, I’m not going to watch it again. But basically, the idea is that Doctor Who needs a fresh start. A clean sweep, a new slate. The Etch-a-Sketch requires a vigorous shake. Why? Because it’s got bogged down in what we fans like to call ‘continuity’ but which others might call ‘lore’ or ‘baggage’. It’s a combination of ‘stories which are just about bringing back stuff’ and ‘all the stuff you need to know in order to understand them’. Or, indeed, ‘playing to the gallery’, with the gallery being the existing fanbase. In much the same way that you are expected to have watched other films and TV series in order to fully comprehend the latest superhero films or Star Wars instalments. It kind of turns a hobby into homework and is the sort of thing that means you’re not going to be getting new, young fans jumping on board because, quite frankly, they have better things to do.
And, yes, Doctor Who has got itself bogged down. It’s
mostly an age thing. Star Trek is similarly enmired. But it’s more of a
symptom than a cause. A symptom of creative exhaustion. You can certainly look
at Strange New Worlds, or the Ncuti Gatwa years of Doctor Who,
and get a sense that the people making it want to get away from telling stories
in the existing format. Rather than telling Star Trek stories or Doctor
Who stories, you get stories based around gimmicks, combined with the ‘action
figure’ approach of bringing characters and monsters back as a quick and cheap
way to score fan points – but as Doctor Who has already used all the good
action figures, it’s now having to resort to the Dapol playset.
But, of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. About a
third of the Gatwa episodes did really cool and original and interesting
things, you know, 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble (the episode with
least Gatwa presence, which may or may not be a correlation). Just because a
show is old, it doesn’t have to be bogged down in ‘continuity’, it doesn’t have
to rely on past knowledge or be a roll-call of familiar faces. And you may have
spotted that these episodes were by Russell T Davies, which brings me to
another point. The fan writer paradox.
The paradox is this; that, actually, it is usually the writers
that are most familiar with Doctor Who that are the least beholden to ‘continuity’.
They are, usually, and yes there are exceptions to this rule, more interested
in doing new stuff precisely because they know what’s been done before and don’t
wish to repeat it. While, paradoxically, it’s writers that aren’t ‘fans’ that
tend to draw upon continuity the most; mentioning past Doctors, referring to
previous stories. I’m not sure why this is, but I think it might be that they
are trying to demonstrate that they have done their homework and think it is the
sort of thing that makes fans happy. When, of course, we all know that nothing
will make fans happy.
At which point I’m sure some readers will go, 'hang on Jonny, you great steaming hypocrite, half the stories you write for Big Finish are full of continuity! Like insane amounts. Didn’t you write a sequel to The Keys Of Marinus? Didn’t you write a prequel to The Invisible Enemy? Didn’t you write a three-hour story just to explain why the Abbot of Amboise in The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve looks like the First Doctor?' And so on and so on, the list of my glories is extensive. So, yes, it’s a fair cop, I’m banged to rights, but firstly, that’s writing specifically for the fan market, where the more familiar faces there are on the cover – whether they be the faces of Doctors, companions, monsters or foes – the more reasons you are giving someone has to buy it. They are selling points. You know, River Song, Nyssa and the return of Pangol from The Leisure Hive, who could resist a line-up like that. Take my money, as they say. But that’s a product which is catering to pre-existing fans – not what the television series should do. And secondly, I’d point out the other half of my stories don’t do that, they might feature an old Doctor and companion or two but that’s it, the rest of the story is all-new, freshly forged from my all-too-fevered imagination. So there’s nothing about being a fan writer that means you have to – or even desire to – tell stories steeped in continuity.
But, to go back to the paradox, it is the case that if you
look at all the stories that fans love – and which were most popular with the
general audience – you’re looking at a list of stories mainly written by die-hard
fans like Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, people who knew the show inside-out
and knew how to make the format sing, and if you look at the bottom of the list
you’re looking at a load of stories by writers who had little previous interest
in the programme and who were trying to blag it. It does tend to be the case that
writers who love Doctor Who create the best Doctor Who stories. It
feels like that should be a statement of the obvious but it’s not.
Anyway, I have wandered far away from doing what I set out to
do, which was to rebut Paul Magrs’ foolish notions, so let’s get back
to that. So, yes, I can understand the appeal of wanting to reboot Doctor
Who. After all, imagine all the stories you could tell! The Doctor’s first
meeting with the Daleks. The Doctor’s first meeting with the Cybermen. The
Doctor’s first meeting with the Ice Warriors. And so on. But... that’s about
it. Apart from that, there aren’t really any stories you can tell that you
couldn’t tell without it being a reboot.
And there are two problems with doing ‘the Doctor’s first
meeting with the Daleks’ again. Firstly, once you’ve told that story, you’re
back to where you were with the Daleks being familiar foes with a whole load of
new continuity building up – back to square one, basically. And secondly, that
story is still going to be defined by continuity because it’ll be informed by
what it does the same or differently from the original first Dalek story; it’ll
still be playing the ‘fan service’ game, and if anything it’ll be even more
steeped in continuity because it’ll be reprising (to some extent) what has gone
before. Like a cover version, it becomes an exercise in reproduction and reinterpretation.
And thirdly – I know I said there were two problems but I
have no respect for continuity – a lot of viewers watching it are gonna go, ‘Hang
on, why doesn’t the Doctor know who the Daleks are, he’s met them loads of
times before, did he get kicked in the head by a Zygon?’ so you have that
getting in the way too.
But mainly the problem with reboots is, well, you can see it
with Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. Every ten years, they start
again, telling the origin story, usually in an even darker and more child-unfriendly
way than before. Which is of understandable if you’re a multi-billion-dollar business
trying to make a risk-free consumer product but creatively it is death. Why
tell new stories when you can tell the old ones again, but with a fresh lick of paint?
I can sort-of see the appeal of going, ‘hey, Genesis of
the Daleks was terrific, why don’t we do that story again for a modern audience?’
But, really, what made Genesis of the Daleks great was that it was made
in 1975, with Tom Baker, Lis Sladen and Ian Marter, with Michael Wisher as
Davros and so on. It could be done again with more expensive sets, better
special effects, and maybe slightly less of the giant clam, but it wouldn’t be as good. It
would just be an exercise in frustration, at all the things it changed – ‘got
wrong’ – and all of the things it accurately recreated but to lesser effect.
(I can also sort-of see the appeal of going ‘Let’s give the
Doctor a sense of mystery again’. But... even with a reboot, everyone’s still
gonna know he’s a Time Lord from Gallifrey, and has the ability to regenerate.
Unless you intend to contradict it, you’re stuck with the baggage, whether you’re
starting from scratch or not.)
But the great thing about Doctor Who, and surely a large
part of its appeal to audiences and prospective producers, is that it can tell
new stories. It is a story-generating machine. A machine that can
definitely get gummed up with continuity, it gets into the workings and slows
it down and makes it creak and sputter, but that just means you need to keep it
well-oiled, well-fuelled with new ideas, and keep the amount of continuity to an
absolute minimum.
So, with that pleasingly sustained metaphor, I’ll move on to
what I think they should do. Because the baggage is a problem, I agree, it
really bloody is. Never mind Gallifrey, we have all the Timeless Child and Fugitive
Doctor stuff as well, and bloody UNIT and at least two spare David Tennant
Doctors hanging around making the multiverse look untidy.
So what I’d do is – scene 1 – the Doctor wakes up on the floor of the TARDIS. He doesn’t know who he is beyond the fact that he’s called the Doctor. He doesn’t know about Time Lords or Gallifrey or that he’s got two hearts. He can remember the TARDIS and vaguely how to operate it – inaccurately a lot of the time. But that’s it. He doesn’t remember the Daleks or Cybermen or any of his other foes or friends. So if he encounters them again, as far as he’s concerned it’s the first time.
This gives you all the benefits of a clean-slate, while also
being a continuation. And, yes, it’s more-or-less exactly what Justin Richards
did in the books with the Eighth Doctor, for the same reason. It was good idea and
it worked (okay, it could have been clearer what exactly the Doctor did and
didn’t remember, but apart from that). I realise ‘amnesia’ has a bad reputation,
because the books did it a lot and it’s been done a lot elsewhere to diminishing
effect, but right now, for the television show, it would solve a lot of
problems. If the problem is that the Doctor is Mr Know-all... take that away.
And, of course, it gives you a story. The Doctor will want
to know more about himself. He has a reason to explore – to find himself, as
the cliché goes. And the viewer will want to know what it was that caused the
Doctor to lose his memories, what was this terrible cataclysm that befell him,
and they will want to see him finally getting them back, in the season finale
in four years’ time. So you have something to build towards. But on the way you
can have so much fun. Imagine if the Doctor started regenerating and didn’t
know what was happening to him! Imagine him meeting the Daleks and
thinking they’re the good guys, and they, of course, play along with it. You
have new stories you can tell! With the added bonus that you can still tell the
old stories too. And you have the sense of mystery back too – if the Doctor doesn’t
know who he is, we don’t know who he is either.
So, yes, Doctor wakes up, floor of TARDIS, sees console, lots
of tempting buttons, what does this do, it lands somewhere, present day Earth
maybe, and he’s out into a brave new world, a new man. He doesn’t know anything
apart from one thing. He needs to find a friend.
That’s what I’d do.
