News J Michael Straczynski is interested in Doctor Who showrunner
- Thread starter Romulan_spy
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Dee and Riker actually do it, but then they find out that they are brother and sister?
JMS running Doctor Who? No, please and thank you.
I'm curious what makes people think he could do a good job with Doctor Who. What kind of Doctor Who do you think he'd create? What has he done in the last twenty years that gives you confidence in his ability to deliver? What makes you think he'd be able to work in a system like the BBC?
Season three and some of season four of Babylon 5 made for an amazing TV experience, but I haven't encountered anything by him since the end of B5 that did anything for me. And even B5 showed weaknesses, with some pretty bad dialogue, blatant borrowings from other things (you like Lord of the Rings, JMS, we get it), and allowing others to write really bad standalone episodes. To say nothing of Roddenberry Syndrome, the idea that unoriginal observations were deep and philosophical.
EDITED TO ADD... Well, that came off as more harsh than I originally intended. But for JMS to put himself forward to the BBC privately would be weird enough. For him to tell the world about it is... I don't even know where to start. Neither Moffat nor Chibnall publicly jumped up and down yelling pick me! Pick me! And both of them had experience with the show, and with running their own shows in the UK. I just don't know what the hell JMS was thinking with all this.
I'm curious what makes people think he could do a good job with Doctor Who. What kind of Doctor Who do you think he'd create? What has he done in the last twenty years that gives you confidence in his ability to deliver? What makes you think he'd be able to work in a system like the BBC?
Season three and some of season four of Babylon 5 made for an amazing TV experience, but I haven't encountered anything by him since the end of B5 that did anything for me. And even B5 showed weaknesses, with some pretty bad dialogue, blatant borrowings from other things (you like Lord of the Rings, JMS, we get it), and allowing others to write really bad standalone episodes. To say nothing of Roddenberry Syndrome, the idea that unoriginal observations were deep and philosophical.
EDITED TO ADD... Well, that came off as more harsh than I originally intended. But for JMS to put himself forward to the BBC privately would be weird enough. For him to tell the world about it is... I don't even know where to start. Neither Moffat nor Chibnall publicly jumped up and down yelling pick me! Pick me! And both of them had experience with the show, and with running their own shows in the UK. I just don't know what the hell JMS was thinking with all this.
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To judge by the way he's posting on Twitter, Ian Levine would die of happiness if the BBC were to hire JMS -- and then, being dead, he'd never see an episode.
Win-win.
Leave it to Levine. I didn't think it was possible for him to embarrass himself more than he has in the past, but looking over his Twitter over the idea of JMS running Doctor Who sure proves I was hella wrong about that.
The self-appointed Guardian of the Franchise. He trolled the BBC offices back in the 70s or 80s trying to become a continuity consultant on the show or something. Just to humor him, someone let him ransack the BBC dumpster where he ended up finding a hoard of missing episodes, including An Unearthly Child. This has since given him an exaggerated sense of importance and the belief that he owns Doctor Who or something.
A funny story, one time at a press event during the RTD era, Levine kept trying to hog the spotlight, resulting in RTD saying quite publicly "Ian, this is for journalists. You're not a journalist. Fuck off."
Well I got one laughing today…
No.
Oh, damn, I hadn't heard that story before!
I'd love to see that footage if it exists.
The most recent thing he's done was Sense8 with The Wachowskis which finished in 2018. I've never seen it myself but I know people who have who really enjoyed it.
As for the point you made about Moffat and Chibnall not having to jump up and down yelling pick me! You kinda answer your own question there. Neither of them had to do this precisely because they already had experience of the show, the BBC knew who they were and what they could do.
I don't know I kinda like JMS' enthusiasm, sure makes a change from Chibnall who always seems to give the impression he had to be coaxed into taking the job!
They're not going to give JMS the job though.
As would I.
What Wormhole said.
He's a musician and wrote the 1985 charity song Doctor in Distress, plus the theme tune to the attempted 1980s K-9 and Company spinoff. He's co-produced a few other spin-off bits and bobs like Downtime (featuring the original actors for the Brigadier, Sarah-Jane and Victoria). But his main claim to fame is indeed finding several of the missing TV stories.
The character of Victor Kennedy - who turns out to be the Absorbaloff - in the Tenth Doctor ep Love and Monsters is based heavily on Levine - the guy who comes in to the happy little fan group and demands they start taking it all seriously and enjoying it his way. And is listened to because he has some insider information.
Like I said before, there's lmost certainly a showrunner under contract and gagging order, and even if not, JMS just excluded himself from the running by doing that, so... WGAF?
One of the signs that Straczynski might not be the right person to capture the British idiom of Doctor Who is that he seems to think that if you offer your services, and a British person replies with, "Well, we have our own process, but we'll keep you in mind if that doesn't work out," that means he's still got a chance, and not that he's just been told in no uncertain terms to fuck off.
I wish...
Honestly, that's American idiom, too. I've used it, and I've heard it from potential employers over the years. It's a way of being polite. Certainly better than an outright ghosting.
