Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner

[Steve Roby]

Coincidentally, I read this this morning:

The concept of canonicity, as used by Doctor Who fans at least, is laterally relevant to ‘The Night of the Doctor’s issues of form. Broadly, it is the contested question over the reality or otherwise of fiction: the argument that one fictional story can be more or less real than another fictional story for in-story continuity purposes. It is innately absurd, and derived, albeit at some distance, from Biblical studies12 and (at least in Doctor Who’s case) via the minutiae of Sherlock Holmes fandom13. ‘Canon’ is a noun, not an adjective, and derives ultimately from the ancient Greek ‘Καννα’, a reed used for measuring. To declare something to be part of a canon, whether in the Biblical or Leavisian14 or Holmesian senses, is to count it. Due to its etymological origins a canon can really only be defined from a position of authority15 – something which the authorities behind Doctor Who, e.g. the BBC as an institution or the various people it has placed in charge of Doctor Who, have consistently failed to show any sort of interest in doing, even when prompted.​

Not from an official source, but a good read nonetheless. https://obversebooks.co.uk/product/49-night-of-the-doctor/

 

[matthunter]

I mean, imagine waking up as the sort of person who hopes an incoming authority will erase portions of history they don't like.

And not living in a Southern state of the USA.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Exactly my sentiments. Even if PH intended there to be many more doctors (and I've just looked it up and he admitted they hadn't thought it through properly), you can easily view the Morbius sequence as I do that they were Morbius' past selves and retcon the Timeless Child - Ruth Doctor and all out of existence.
I Mean they were obviously making things up on the fly. I imagine - assuming Susan really was a fellow Timelord/lady, that if they'd come up with regeneration sooner, when Carol-Ann Ford left at the end of the Dalek Invasion of Earth, instead of leaving Susan behind she would have regenerated and they'd have continued with a different actress. Maybe even Maureen O'Brien who played Vikki.

Bingo!.....i have always seen the mind bending battle as Morbius almost beating the doctor by pushing him right back to his first incarnation as Hartnell and to the edge of defeat, then the doctors pushes back and starts winning and pushing Morbious back through all his past regens until the doctor pushes him right back to his first incarnation and over the edge to win the battle, never saw it any other way, and i am more than happy to continue seeing it like that.

 

[Tuskin38]

None of the TC stuff bothered me. I loved it. So if RTD went and erased it from the canon, I'd be upset.

 

[jaime]

I mean, imagine waking up as the sort of person who hopes an incoming authority will erase portions of history they don't like.

And not living in a Southern state of the USA.

Imagine confusing real life for fiction. I mean, Chibnall’s who run is barely even a loved cultural Artifact of the time in which it was made. Unlike say Day of the Doctor. I mean ffs, Jodie’s Doctor was announced in a low production value BBC Ident after the tennis. Which admittedly is probably less cringe inducing that poor Peter’s, but at least his had a sense of ‘this is a thing people care about’ to it.

Or, conversely:
Imagine liking the fact the someone has come in and erased/edited parts of history for likely ideological reasons.
(Which is just as daft an accusation.)

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Bingo!.....i have always seen the mind bending battle as Morbius almost beating the doctor by pushing him right back to his first incarnation as Hartnell and to the edge of defeat, then the doctors pushes back and starts winning and pushing Morbious back through all his past regens until the doctor pushes him right back to his first incarnation and over the edge to win the battle, never saw it any other way, and i am more than happy to continue seeing it like that.

Yeah, when I watched the episode I already knew that the other faces were supposed to be the Doctor's past incarnations, but it still felt to me that they were Morbius's regenerations.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I much rather the show focus on the characters and the stories they're involved with than some silly notions about canon.

And yet, that's the biggest, most essential problem I have with the Chibnall era (besides the consistently awkard and/or awful writing). There are none. No characters to root for, no characterization to fascinate and make me follow them, no charming personalities or interesting people populate this Who iteration, certainly not as companions. The ones that do, are characters already defined in previous eras, and that's Captain Jack and the Brigadier (though Jericho does have potential, I have to admit). At its worst, even OldWho had charming characters to follow on, even forever.

 

[Mr Awe]

And even then, I'm sure even the harshest critics of the TC (and I count myself as a critic of this mess) would agree Jo Martin's Doctor was the best thing out of this whole mess. I would not want her to be retconned out of the show by any means.

Agree about Jo Martin. At one point, I was hoping that Chibnall would reveal that it was actually the Master who was the Timeless Child. That works better in so many ways. Explains how he become corrupted and evil. Why he never really dies. We'd still need to explain Jo Martin, but she can be the 7b Doctor.

Alas, that's not happening.

 

[Mr Awe]

No.

At most, every Showrunner from Williams to Moffat merely ignored the existence of the Morbius Doctors and left them unexplained.

Ignoring parts of a series' established lore is not retconning said lore out of existence or relevance; it's just ignoring it and not choosing to expand on or follow up on it.

Sorry no. The number of regenerations and which Doctor was what number was raised in both The Five Doctors and Mawdryn Undead. They clearly undid any Morbius Doctors.

 

[Mr Awe]

I'm not a big fan of the Timeless Child stuff, but surely being found as a baby on a distant planet under an unexplained portal to an unknown location adds A LITTLE mystery...

I liked it when the Doctor was just some regular Time Lord who got fed up, left Gallifrey, and eventually decided to make the universe a better place. He wasn't an immortal being, instrumental in creating the Time Lords, and recruited/trained by the division as an agent. To me, that gives his struggles more meaning.

Obviously, YMMV about which version you prefer. I think that's what this comes down to. I think today's Marvel dominated fiction tends to prefer more the superhero type of character. That's not my cup of tea but I know others are fine with it.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Did the Doctor being 900 in the RTD era mean that all the Sixth and Seventh Doctor stories where he claimed to be older were “undone,” or did it just mean that the RTD era writers forgot those references existed? Don’t ascribe conscious intention when ignorance and indifference are a more likely motive.

 

[Mr Awe]

Again, Doctor Who has no official canon; it has a vast trove of lore, but no showrunner or writer is explicitly beholden to follow any of it.

Cool, so TC is not canon! Woot! Thanks!

 

[jaime]

Agree about Jo Martin. At one point, I was hoping that Chibnall would reveal that it was actually the Master who was the Timeless Child. That works better in so many ways. Explains how he become corrupted and evil. Why he never really dies. We'd still need to explain Jo Martin, but she can be the 7b Doctor.

Alas, that's not happening.

This was honestly what I was expecting. It would still suck a bit — Missy was amazing by the end — but, it would be perfectly in keeping with plenty of stuff. Including the rather shite ‘I killed all of them when I found out what they did’ nonsense (largely because it’s been done before, twice, as character beats first the ‘I killed all of them’ by the doctor themselves, and secondly when the master goes medieval on Rassilon in justified rage) which hangs around that episode like a stench, and the only reason that (and the doily-men) isn’t a bigger bone of contention is because it’s overshadowed by the PowerPoint presentation cock up that is the TC.
The good news is, The Flux was so awful, that series/season now looks like a masterclass in restrained and careful narrative development.

Can RTD fix it? Will he? I think half the reason he got the job again (and possibly part of the reason he took it) is to smooth over that business and get the show back on track. Because NuWho is his legacy in some respects, and it’s now tainted — both by revelations about his first tenure behind the scenes, but also by the limp whimper it’s going to go out on if *someone* doesn’t do something. Moffat had to clean up Chibnall’s mess before the run even started (doing an extra year in the job, and a Christmas special in order to keep the slot for Who… that worked out well didn’t it.) and now RTD is definitely, in some way, here as damage control.

Possibly with Tennant in tow. (Which, lest we forget the Time Lord Victorious, has already been tried to keep the interest up while the show is in doldrums. Yes, there’s a pandemic on, but Colin Baker did Slipback during the big hiatus of 85, so it’s not like there weren’t ways around that.)

It’s a mess, it’s an obvious mess, and it’s obvious a fix is in progress.
If the rumoured ‘all living classic doctors return for BBC centenary’ thing is true, well that’s likely more of the same. They are throwing everything (possibly who knows, some money) at the problem, because the Chibnall era has basically, by most metrics, been a mortal wound on something that was already beginning to flag a little in the public consciousness under Capaldi.

 

[jaime]

Did the Doctor being 900 in the RTD era mean that all the Sixth and Seventh Doctor stories where he claimed to be older were “undone,” or did it just mean that the RTD era writers forgot those references existed? Don’t ascribe conscious intention when ignorance and indifference are a more likely motive.

Lying about your age (or losing count) is a bit different to being a completely different character — either in terms of being suddenly rather cruel and cowardly, or literally spontaneously growing a new, derivative and useless origin story from out of your Eye of Harmony.

I mean not to be funny, we’ve seen the Doctor literally edit their memories at least twice before, and suddenly the character is shocked, shocked and appalled, that such a thing could be done to them. (It last being done literally in the previous incumbents second to last season, and it being done to humans being literally the ending of the serial in which the time lords first appear.)

Not to mention retconning the Tardis exterior while they were at it. All whimsy, stripped from the shows beginnings, in order to replace it with cookie cutter trauma nonsense. Weapon X Doctor, becoming the A-Team with a pound shop Chewbacca.

 

[DigificWriter]

It doesn’t matter how much time anyone spent pinning down anything. Doctor Who has no official canon. Despite what some fans think, there’s no one correct answer to the many points on which different stories have contradicted each other; different writers and production teams are free to do whatever works for them at the moment. Fans are free to consider or disregard whatever they want in their vision of “true” Doctor Who, but the show itself will continue to be an unruly mess of contradictions.

QFT.

Cool, so TC is not canon! Woot! Thanks!

A property having a Canon only means that all future stories have to take all past stories into consideration.

Even if you personally want to discount the Timeless Child stuff, or even if RTD or a future Showrunner chooses to move away from making it the focus of the Doctor's personal storyline, it will still be part of Doctor Who lore forever and ever, and therefore up for any future showrunner to focus on or ignore as their personal whims dictate.

 

[Mr Awe]

A property having a Canon only means that all future stories have to take all past stories into consideration.

Hey, I'm just going by what you wrote. DW doesn't have a canon. Hence, the TC is not canon.

 

[Steve Roby]

I liked it when the Doctor was just some regular Time Lord who got fed up, left Gallifrey, and eventually decided to make the universe a better place.

Moffat didn't write about that Doctor, at least not when he became showrunner. Hell, Andrew Cartmel didn’t want a show about that Doctor either.

 

[kirk55555]

I apologize i'm jumping into this in mid conversation but if we want RTD to retcon the timeless child stuff shouldn't "The War Doctor" and Ruth doctor be fair game?

Honestly, I think that War Doctor and Ruth can both fit into the pre-Timeless child continuity without messing up any part of The Doctor's history, which is why I give them a pass (plus they were both well done, at least in my opinion, which helps them a lot). The War Doctor was an easy fit between 8 and 9, and since we never saw the 2nd Doctor regenerate Ruth can fit easily between 2 and 3. They also, from what I can tell, just fit into the doctor's regenerations, if we accept that the hand wave regenerations that made 11 the "last" incarnation didn't actually waste a regeneration slot.

I don't have the quote in front of me, but I recall RTD saying he thought the Timeless Child stuff was brilliant. He certainly didn't sound like someone who would throw it away just because he could.

Hopefully he's just saving that to be nice, but it sucks if true. Then again, RTD isn't perfect. He did make Torchwood, which was juvenile shit and probably directly lead to Chibnall getting the showrunner job. Still, I guess that I can stomache the TC stuff to at least watch the new RTD episode if the general writing quality improves. That is what head canons are for, I suppose.

And yet, that's the biggest, most essential problem I have with the Chibnall era (besides the consistently awkard and/or awful writing). There are none. No characters to root for, no characterization to fascinate and make me follow them, no charming personalities or interesting people populate this Who iteration, certainly not as companions. The ones that do, are characters already defined in previous eras, and that's Captain Jack and the Brigadier (though Jericho does have potential, I have to admit). At its worst, even OldWho had charming characters to follow on, even forever.

Yeah, I can struggle through some bad stories if I like the characters. I watched every Capaldi episode because I really liked him as The Doctor. Even in my most hated Classic Who story, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, at least I liked Ace. But there is just no one on the main/recurring cast of the Chibnall era that I can tolerate for long. The closest is Ruth/The Fugitive Doctor, and she appears, what, twice?

 

[jaime]

Moffat didn't write about that Doctor, at least not when he became showrunner. Hell, Andrew Cartmel didn’t want a show about that Doctor either.

The madman with a box era? I don’t know… sounds like that doctor to me.
The Cartmel Masterplan never came to fruition, and even when it sort of did, in the novels, it didn’t overwrite the original concept that had evolved over time. Just sort of added an impetus into the mix.

 

[Steve Roby]

Moffat is also the guy who gave us "I'm the Doctor. Basically, run." He's the guy who gave us the fanwank of all of the Doctor's enemies teaming up to trap him because he's the greatest threat in the universe. He's the guy who gave us the Doctor recreating the whole universe. He's the guy whose Doctor had allies and armies following him when he went to war. And that's all just the Eleventh Doctor, who was rarely if ever that guy just wandering around and having adventures in places he'd never heard of before where no one had heard of him, either.