Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner

[Richard S. Ta]

Disconcerting… Concerning…

is it just me that doesn’t get overly wound up about television costuming choices?

The Doctor is the Doctor. 3 is no less himself when he’s disguised as a cleaning lady in The Green Death than he is at other points when he’s wearing the iconic velvet in the same story.

Anyone remember similar concerns over Eccleston’s comparative non-costume?

Doctor Who pushing against the established ‘norm’ regarding what the character of the Doctor can do or be is nothing new. Started back in 1966 and went wild from there.

 

[The Wormhole]

Anyone remember similar concerns over Eccleston’s comparative non-costume?

As a matter of fact, I do remember when Eccleston's costume was revealed to the public, DWM printed a lot of angry letters from fans about it, some saying things like "the Doctor doesn't wear a leather jacket, he's not a vampire like Angel or Spike."

 

[The Nth Doctor]

As a matter of fact, I do remember when Eccleston's costume was revealed to the public, DWM printed a lot of angry letters from fans about it, some saying things like "the Doctor doesn't wear a leather jacket, he's not a vampire like Angel or Spike."

Yuuuuup. Now he's greatly missed and people often lament how he only had one series.

Ah, fandom.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Yuuuuup. Now he's greatly missed and people often lament how he only had one series.

Ah, fandom.

Bin-Man Doctor. That's what I remember.

But now it turns out he had lapels so it's all gravy.

I always liked what Eccleston said about the eccentricity of the character coming from the performance. Something about not having to wear 'Billy Connolly banana shoes' in order to convey who the Doctor is.

 

[Nerys Myk]

As a matter of fact, I do remember when Eccleston's costume was revealed to the public, DWM printed a lot of angry letters from fans about it, some saying things like "the Doctor doesn't wear a leather jacket, he's not a vampire like Angel or Spike."

Folks though it was a bit casual

 

[Mr Awe]

As long as the stories are entertaining, I guess I don't really care too much whether there's a consistent look or not. Seems like that's just another character attribute that can vary across regenerations like many others!

Sometimes the Doctor likes to look fancy (3) and sometimes he doesn't seem to care at all (2). Sometimes s/he is more consistent in what s/he wears (5 & 13). Sometimes less consistent (12) and possibly 15.

It's just one of the many changeable facets of regeneration!

 

[jaime]

Ninth Doctor:
Well, he *was* dressed like Angel. Specifically, the Angel action figure. Only… not as posh.

Fundamentally, it was big change, though part of the return — and once people saw the episodes, and the costume was (a) seen in context and (b) given story context, people tended to settle down. Ten’s outfit was seen as closer to tradition, but Eleven was where things seemed most traditional of all.
Five was a bit of a departure back in the day as well, but in *all* cases they were a consistent thing (barring changes within the theme) for their doctor.

People are waiting for the episodes and context here too.

And honestly, this bizarre idea about ‘lapels’ is laughable. I am moving from ‘it’s possible some people don’t understand costuming’ to ‘some people don’t understand clothes either’ which is odd, as I never exactly thought of myself as a dedicated follower of fashion.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

@jaime I'm sorry if I've come over as being confrontational. You are a sound poster and learned in the ways of Doctor Who.

Anyway.

I think for all the pomp and fanfare about being groundbreaking, Series 1 of Ncuti will be relatively restrained. They won't take any major risks. I think the sophomore series will be when RTD really lets rip.

It's really exciting to think about the reach that Disney+ is going to give the show. It really could be on the very edge of a huge popularity surge right now. Ncuti Series 1 will be a primer. Start here, then go back and watch the other stuff.

I love Doctor Who but the last time I was properly excited by it was Series 8. Every week Series 8 was just must-see TV for me. After that, I really waned, to the point of almost non-interest, which as a lifelong fan, has made me sad at times. Not to say there was nothing to enjoy after Series 8. Every subsequent series has had something worthwhile in it. Somehow though it just stopped being my 'special' show.

These days I find I am excited again. More for Ncuti than the return of Tennant, admittedly, but even then... The return of Tennant? Well, what the?

I was one of those hiatus kids. 10 years old in 1989 and did all the NAs then the EDAs and BF and the rest of it and I cried when I saw the first full trailer televised in 2005. Somehow an uneven few series for Capaldi and Chibnall's vision for the show ground me down to the point where my reaction to the knowledge that more Doctor Who was on the way, was "oh, so, they've made some more of that".

This is not a snipe against anybody, or particularly aimed at what any one poster has said, but my feelings about Ncuti's wardrobe pale in comparison to the joy that I feel that the show is going to be written by RTD. I don't care what the Doctor is wearing, because I know he's going to have plenty of clever and surprising things to say.

 

[Starkers]

These aren't variants of the same outfit, both stylistically and aesthetically. You can argue the colour palette pretty much stayed the same I grant you but these are very different looks. For all that the early images show's Capaldi as a sharp dressed, suited and booted Pertwee style Doctor, he spent half his time as a scruffy cosmic hobo more like Troughton.

I think it works on the level of stage magician/street magician but I don't think you can argue there's a consistent style here.

12 by Paul Starkey, on Flickr

 

[jaime]

@jaime I'm sorry if I've come over as being confrontational. You are a sound poster and learned in the ways of Doctor Who.

Anyway.

I think for all the pomp and fanfare about being groundbreaking, Series 1 of Ncuti will be relatively restrained. They won't take any major risks. I think the sophomore series will be when RTD really lets rip.

It's really exciting to think about the reach that Disney+ is going to give the show. It really could be on the very edge of a huge popularity surge right now. Ncuti Series 1 will be a primer. Start here, then go back and watch the other stuff.

I love Doctor Who but the last time I was properly excited by it was Series 8. Every week Series 8 was just must-see TV for me. After that, I really waned, to the point of almost non-interest, which as a lifelong fan, has made me sad at times. Not to say there was nothing to enjoy after Series 8. Every subsequent series has had something worthwhile in it. Somehow though it just stopped being my 'special' show.

These days I find I am excited again. More for Ncuti than the return of Tennant, admittedly, but even then... The return of Tennant? Well, what the?

I was one of those hiatus kids. 10 years old in 1989 and did all the NAs then the EDAs and BF and the rest of it and I cried when I saw the first full trailer televised in 2005. Somehow an uneven few series for Capaldi and Chibnall's vision for the show ground me down to the point where my reaction to the knowledge that more Doctor Who was on the way, was "oh, so, they've made some more of that".

This is not a snipe against anybody, or particularly aimed at what any one poster has said, but my feelings about Ncuti's wardrobe pale in comparison to the joy that I feel that the show is going to be written by RTD. I don't care what the Doctor is wearing, because I know he's going to have plenty of clever and surprising things to say.

I’m one of those hiatus kids too. Truth is, those books raised the *bar* for what Who could do, and the closer the TV series gets to some of those the better. (Seriously… their DNA is hardcoded into every interesting and cool thing in the modern series. Time War. Clara. Trenzalore. The Edge. Admittedly, some of the less cool things may also come from there… Timeless Child was done more or less twice in the books, and was better done there.)

I’m ambivalent on RTDs return, except that he’s really good for getting the show into the public consciousness, and importantly — isn’t Chris Chibnall. I do feel worryingly that this anniversary may *not* be a celebration of the shows history and mythos, so much as him righting the wrongs of his last go round with the benefit of hindsight — Donna, Martha, Timelord Victorious basically. But hey, they probably do need a nip and a tuck. Just… RTD don’t forget what anniversaries are really for, you know?
My only other concern is around how the Ncuti incarnation will be handled. But that’s a normal thing, every time there’s a new Doctor — the only ones that *never* quite lost that uncertainty and went on to succeed were probably Colin (to a lesser degree, and particularly on TV — he had the best Comics run as the incumbent Doctor though) and Jodie, who suffered from an utter dearth of creativity and growth, and felt like they used their courage up casting her in the first place.
A lighthearted way to put that would be to point out that The Doctor wore more skirts when he was a man, and the show was made in the 20th Century. Or to point out Jodie looked better and more Doctorish, and even more feminine when she was wearing Capaldi’s exploded outfit, than she did when she visited a charity shop frequented by Mork from Ork.

The show has more money, is more of an independent production for the first time since McGann, and has a photogenic star who is on the rise before he’s even started. It’s got big international backing, and is squarely in the pantheon of mainstream SF broadcasting. Let’s hope none of that has turned peoples heads though.
(And can you imagine a Doctor’s arse being on display in Vogue with past Doctors! Blimey. JNT would go up in a puff of smoke. Sylv got stick for a stage play during the hiatus… )

I’m looking forward to it being back, but I hope it doesn’t look backwards in the wrong way, and hope that it finds its quality in the writing again.

Oh, and I really hope Moffat gets involved again. He *gets it* even if sometimes he gets it wrong in the finishing.

 

[jaime]

These aren't variants of the same outfit, both stylistically and aesthetically. You can argue the colour palette pretty much stayed the same I grant you but these are very different looks. For all that the early images show's Capaldi as a sharp dressed, suited and booted Pertwee style Doctor, he spent half his time as a scruffy cosmic hobo more like Troughton.

I think it works on the level of stage magician/street magician but I don't think you can argue there's a consistent style here.

12 by Paul Starkey, on Flickr

Think, like the designer of Nines outfit did, in terms of ‘silhouette’. And yes, Capaldi is absolutely a riff on ‘his’ Doctors, and contextually he is the ‘first’ of a new cycle, so his look keyed into that 1-3 look, and at times he slipped more of the Fourth into his performance than any previous Doctor. This is absolutely the same look, at different stages of it.

Think even of Ten talking to Five — ‘you were my Doctor’.

The biggest departure in costuming remains Davison amusingly, though once you contextualise it, and think about it less as ‘Cricket’ and more what it really is (early twentieth century sportswear essentially) and what was on screen at the time (Brideshead Revisted for instance) and you get a better understanding of why it both was and wasn’t a departure.

Ncuti started with an oddly High Fasion look (with lots of texture and patterning — too much possibly, much like the New Tennant look) which was a little… Balenciaga, cleavage heavy… but Doctorish. If the Doctor was in GQ magazine selling me a shirt. That was the announcement, but then more and more we see the look has (a) radically changed and (b) has become increasingly lazy frankly within that high gloss aesthetic.

This is before we have even seen him properly onscreen! So it could go either way.
I just prefer Bond to be the Fashion Time Lord, and the Doctor to be Eccentric Time Lord.
He’s dressing more like the Master ironically, whose chameleon circuit didn’t break as much.

Edit: Just to really try to sum it up — the fundamental point is not ‘A Doctor doesn’t change outfit’ so much as ‘A Doctor doesn’t try to fit in, and whenever he is, he is always slightly out of synch’ and definitely ‘Not every five minutes please’. They need to pick a lane, that includes hair (Doctors don’t tend towards facial furniture either, but hey, I once saw Colin in costume with a tache.) and stick with it. Almost *any* of those looks would *mostly* work, though each has its problems IMHO (modern trainers, fashion crop top thing, too much like a seventies Tenth Doctor suit) and the biker jacket look — whilst absolutely great, I know, that’s me basically every day even in the height of summer, in my twenties right there — is not a Doctor look because it is already attached to other icons. It is fundamentally boring, truth be told. Though maybe he’s just rehearsing between takes. And on the plus side, at least it rehabilitates the look within Who, after someone decided to be lazy with Krasko the space racist as well. Oh — and cosplay becomes easier, if pricey if you want the exact look. That jacket looks expensive as heck.
I know it’s dull for a costume designer if you don’t get to dress your star all the time, but look around — it’s Doctor Who. It’s the biggest costume job going. This week regency, next week the eighties, a months time Victorian, and after that the far future. Plenty of oppurtunity.

 

[Steve Roby]

The Marquis De Carabas, as portrayed by Joseph Paterson was still the best Doctor we never technically got anyway.

Paterson Joseph.

Anyone remember similar concerns over Eccleston’s comparative non-costume?

I'm pretty sure I remember some complaints that the Doctor should be an eccentrically dressed posh but weird professor type with an RP accent, not some Northern working class yob in a leather jacket. What I don't remember, though, was whether that was the reaction from actual British fans, or from North American fans who liked what they thought of as the exotic Britishness of classic Doctor Who. And by British they were thinking more Sherlock Holmes and PBS Masterpiece Theatre costume dramas than the likes of Coronation Street (which RTD actually worked on briefly) or Eastenders.

 

[David cgc]

This relates just to series 8 and 9, you'll note the last time the 12th doctor's 'iconic look' was seen was in Before the Flood, episode 4 of Capaldi's second season, The 'iconic look' didn't even make it to halfway through his tenure. This link is the top five also, 'cos there were others.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. The blog post itself notes the debut costume was essentially revised to what the author judges as Twelve's best look for his last season; "On paper, this really isn’t anything that exciting – it’s just the official costume but with a red coat instead of blue." And that's discounting the element of silhouette, his clothes are always very dark, he's always wearing a coat of roughly the same length... you may as well cite the Tenth Doctor as a precedent since he wore different shirts and ties, and stopped wearing his suit as a "uniform" after his first season, when he started sometimes wearing literally the exact same suit in a different color.

There's nothing wrong with Fifteen wearing different outfits, and unofficial photos of location shooting are giving us a skewed perspective, he could very well have a base costume and just likes to go incognito more than he used to when out and about, but I don't see the merit in pretending going from a near-black dark blue coat to a near-black dark red coat is some wildly erratic character design, where you could see five photos of Peter Capaldi in five different roles he had in the 2010s and you could never guess which one was from Doctor Who based on what he was wearing.

 

[jaime]

Paterson Joseph.



I'm pretty sure I remember some complaints that the Doctor should be an eccentrically dressed posh but weird professor type with an RP accent, not some Northern working class yob in a leather jacket. What I don't remember, though, was whether that was the reaction from actual British fans, or from North American fans who liked what they thought of as the exotic Britishness of classic Doctor Who. And by British they were thinking more Sherlock Holmes and PBS Masterpiece Theatre costume dramas than the likes of Coronation Street (which RTD actually worked on briefly) or Eastenders.

Yup, mind flopped him backwards lol. He was great in the series ome finale, but I knew then he wouldn’t be the Doctor sadly. Mind you, it didn’t stop other guest stars.

 

[Captaindemotion]

If anyone saw the BBC drama Vigil, in which Paterson Joseph played a submarine commander, they might also agree with me that he’d make a good Star Trek captain. When I heard that Captain April was played by a black actor in SNW, I wished they’d cast him (it would also have been in keeping with the depiction of the character as English in various Trek books).

 

[jaime]

I have long been of the opinion that when DW got around to a black Doctor, it should be Paterson Joseph, then Adrian Lester. But, got neither. Fortunately I quite liked Matt Smith in the end, same for Capaldi, so I wasn’t exactly totally disappointed.

 

[Steve Roby]

If anyone saw the BBC drama Vigil, in which Paterson Joseph played a submarine commander, they might also agree with me that he’d make a good Star Trek captain.

Give me a Star Trek or Doctor Who spinoff with Paterson Joseph, Suranne Jones, Rose Leslie, and Anjli Mohindra, and I won't complain.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Throw in Daniel Anthony and you got yourself a deal!

 

[Steve Roby]

I was limiting myself to members of the cast of Vigil, but sure, why not.

 

[matthunter]

Capaldi's outfit was the hair and the eyebrows, anything else is incidental.