Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
Just to give you an update, I’m hoping to do my in-depth reviews on Series 14 of ‘Doctor Who’ with Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson very soon. Before that happens though, I have a couple of 62nd anniversary celebration ‘Doctor Who’ reviews I want to share on my blog in November and I’m hoping to work my upcoming ‘Nyssa Challenge’ mini-review season for December 2025 leading into January 2026.
In the meantime, here’s a brand-new video containing my quick reactions to Series 14 of ‘Doctor Who’, originally recorded from December 2023 to June 2024. This includes my quick reactions to the 2023 Christmas Special called ‘The Church on Ruby Road’ (which I’ve done my in-depth review on already as well as on the Target novelization/audiobook by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, read by Angela Wynter). There are also my quick reactions on ‘Space Babies’, ‘The Devil’s Chord’, ‘Boom’, ’73 Yards’, ‘Dot and Bubble’, ‘Rogue’ and the two-part finale ‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’/’Empire of Death’.
Enjoy!
Stay tuned for my in-depth reviews on Series 14 of ‘Doctor Who’, which I hope to share sometime in early 2026.
Thanks for watching and reading!
Bye for now!
Tim 🙂
Bradley's Basement 
Some of my own favorite reactions to Series 14 of Doctor Who were Ruby’s temporary transformation into a butterfly girl, her dance-fight with Emily, how she bravely defeated Gwilliam, and the quite cliffhanger return of Sutekh.
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Hi scifimike,
Thanks for sharing your favourite moments of Series 14 of ‘Doctor Who’. My quick video reactions to Series 14 are very brief compared to the ones I did for Series 15. I’m looking forward to doing my in-depth reviews on Series 14 and 15 once my 62nd anniversary reviews and my upcoming ‘Nyssa Challenge’ reviews are sorted. And with my Series 14 Blu-ray box set and Series 15 DVD box set signed by Millie Gibson recently, the experience of revisiting these episodes will be worthwhile.
Many thanks for your comments.
Tim 🙂
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You’re welcome. I don’t think that Millie as Ruby has been treated very fairly by most reviewers. I liked her for how she could take the companion elements back to basics which, and certainly for Doctor Who, can be nicely refreshing. When she’s given her most challenging stories with 73 Yards and Lucky Day, it was reassuring that Russell T. Davies could still work some of his best magic despite some of the creative issues for fans that he has faced upon his return.
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Hi scifimike,
I’ve not come across many bad reviews on Millie as Ruby in ‘Doctor Who’, as I assumed she was highly praised. So, it’s interesting for you to mention that. Despite my issues with RTD’s writing in his neo-era, that does not go out to cast members like Millie Gibson and Ncuti Gatwa, as they’re very talented people doing their best with the material they’ve been given and I find them easy to enjoy compared to how certain story and character development elements are turned out.
’73 Yards’ and ‘Lucky Day’ are stories I have issues with, but it doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of Millie Gibson taking the lead in those episodes, as I find her very captivating when watching her in those episodes. I’m sure she considers those episodes to be her favourites and I wouldn’t want to take that away from her, especially as she’s shared how much she’s enjoyed being in ‘Doctor Who’ quite recently at the ‘Film & Comic Con Cardiff’, which I’ve attended and will be sharing a convention report on soon this week. I’m quite saddened Millie hasn’t been able to do a 1920s flapper episode in the TV series, as I know that’s what she would have liked to have done when playing Ruby. I think it would have been lovely to have had another ‘Black Orchid.2’ featuring Ruby in the new TV series.
On a side note, I’ve enjoyed seeing Millie Gibson in the first episode of ‘The Forsytes’ on Channel 5 in the UK recently. Looking forward to seeing more before I share my review on the series in November.
Many thanks and Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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I think Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson had the closest dynamic to Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning since, maybe, Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford. The actors themselves were marvellous.
The ‘mystery box’ companion element… wasn’t.
I think, broadly speaking, we’re genuinely sick of a season’s hook relying on a mystery companion. It’s hard to familiarise — or even contextualise — a character when their entire background is kept trapped in a steel box. We saw this with Turlough back in the ’80s. We didn’t learn much about Trion, directly, until Planet of Fire (although we got a little by proxy in Frontios).
Part of the success of the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble was how much the series swerved away from the ‘mystery box’ template. We knew Donna. We’d already done The Runaway Bride. Her past was writ large and she had a familiarity with the Doctor that pushed away from keeping her aloof. We actually got to know her.
I’d say this was the first time this was true, but actually… The series even did it with Martha Jones. True, she had to carry the baggage of Rose Tyler’s departure — which hasn’t aged particularly well in some areas — but the season’s hook was instead around ‘Saxon’. Not her. She was allowed to be her own character, too.
And then… Amy Pond happened. And Clara Oswald (again, and again, and again). And even then, Bill Potts swerved away from that after her first story (to her benefit, I liked her character a lot).
And then the same pitfall was fallen into with the Thirteenth Doctor herself after a season of rejecting the whole template altogether. The end result being one of the most divisive lore dumps in recent Who history. I think we are tired of it. We are tired of a ‘mystery box’ being used in favour of actual characterisation and exploration.
Doctor Who has strong mystery roots — comes from long-time writers who dabbled in spy fiction and thrillers — but there’s more than one mystery that can be explored.
Original Doctor Who survived for 26 years without repeatedly resorting to it. Even the Seventh Doctor and Ace — their focus on Ace’s past — was a way to flesh out her character, not lock it away.
The ‘mystery box’ companion of the 2006(!) revival series’ format really needs to be put to bed now. It hurt Ruby’s character. A lot. To no fault of the actress. We’re not dazzled any more and there are, definitely, other alternatives.
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The mystery box companion phase may have had its day. I remember how well most companions got by well enough without that much in the classic series. At least before Turlough and Ace. I must say that Graham, Ryan and Yaz were most refreshing in the back-to-basics sense. Companions who can be exciting just for being themselves are always special and both Sarah Jane and Leela were the first to win my respect for that.
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Hi Wolfie, Hi scifimike,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the ‘mystery box’ element in recent ‘Doctor Who’ companions. This is something I’ll be addressing in my in-depth reviews on Series 14 and 15 of new ‘Doctor Who’, but it’s one of the reasons why I feel the Doctor and companion relationship storyline should have been spread across two seasons as opposed to one season. That way we can have more of Ncuti and Millie as the Doctor and Ruby, as telling their relationship in 8 episodes (9 if you count ‘The Church on Ruby Road’) isn’t really enough and you risk losing a lot of missed opportunities to tell stories that explored their characters.
A running theme in the neo-Russell T. Davies era is him repeating things from his original era in his new era where he ends every season with a regular character leaving like he did with the Ninth Doctor leaving in Series 1, Rose leaving in Series 2, Martha leaving in Series 3 and Donna leaving in Series 4. I would have liked it if Ruby had stayed on for the entire run of Ncuti’s era, as it would have allowed more of her character to be developed and the revelation of her parentage wouldn’t have been so poorly executed on screen, because, quite frankly, Ruby sorted-of ended up being another Rey from ‘Star Wars’ where her parents turned out to be nobodies in ‘The Last Jedi’ (which is considered a divisive ‘Star Wars’ movie and maybe RTD should have been careful when it came to taking inspiration from that kind of film for developing Ruby’s character).
Again, all these things I’ll be unveiling and expanding upon in my in-depth reviews of Series 14 and 15, but it’s fascinating how so much hype for the neo-RTD era isn’t really reflected in the actual seasons that are considered very divisive by many audiences, critics and fans. It’s a real shame, as I’ve enjoyed the actors playing their roles, especially Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson in Series 14.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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Doctor Who has always had the most unique ability to make the ordinary feel extraordinary in its own right. Ncuti’s Doctor giving universal importance to a spoon is a good example. So in all fairness, I think that Ruby meeting her mother being spared anything overwhelming like all that we went through between the Ponds worked just fine. We can each have our opinions of course. But I’ve always had a facility to see elements of value in TV episodes and movies, and most easily from Doctor Who, that may otherwise not be at their best. Even if I’m not sure at this point how long I will stay with Doctor Who (at least with the modern series), how this TV legacy has influenced me since childhood has kept me curious as to what the powers that be can still do with it. And now with Billie Piper’s most specific return, the curiosity is fair at best.
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This era definitely has the feel of being messed about with. It has all the hallmarks of executive meddling that hurt stories like The Trial of a Time Lord. I genuinely thought we were gearing up for a story about a new pantheon of Gallifrey-like entities taking control. New gods, old gods, in fisticuffs for a bit of mythological rock and rule.
The Rey-style revelation about Ruby could have worked fairly smoothly for one change. Tapping us, as the audience, on the shoulder and reminding us that we’ve been looking at Ruby’s past. What if the source of the snow, her ‘wrongness’ (according to Maestro), all of it was a product of something from her future?
That would’ve left a nice sting in the tail. Not something that Ruby has done, but something that she’s going to do. Something that the Doctor should be able to see on a historical scale, but can’t. A hidden temporal nexus point. And he has to trust that she’ll act to help, not harm, the universe.
Instead, we got the last minute swerve… And no apparent elaboration. Enough that it threw me out of the story with a solid: Sutekh’s paranoia is legendary. His power, terrifying. He wouldn’t be that foolish. This isn’t him.
The developments with Mrs Flood was the same. Rewatching those early episodes… There’s a strange disconnect somewhere. Cause and effect don’t mesh like they should and RTD has typically been quite good at that. The standalone episodes have been broadly excellent. It’s these finales where — again, I suspect the meddling hands of executives — it all falls apart.
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How far a long-enduring sci-fi franchise should creatively go can certainly be reflected in its most specifically new villains like the Valeyard, Maestro and Lux. Bringing back a particular villain after the longest time, whether it’s Sutekh or the Rani for Doctor Who or Trelane for Star Trek, has been affected similarly because of all the controversies for sci-fi TV storytelling today. The companions may fatefully earn their place when their moments to help feel quite timely. Just like Jo saving the world in The Daemons and Rose/Bad Wolf defeating the Daleks. Some fans may get used to this after a while. I can agree that consequently the point of no return inevitably makes itself known.
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The Valeyard is an interesting mention because, in the context of Doctor Who, he’s the personification of the series’ threat of termination. The Ghost of Christmas Cancelled. The series’ worst critics, worst aggressors, worst hatemongers. In the 1980s, he was quite striking. In the 2020s, he’d be almost impossible to put to screen without someone claiming he was modelled after an online personality.
However, the Valeyard’s motivations are really interesting in the context of what the program had been doing at the time.
The Valeyard wants all of the Sixth Doctor’s future regenerations. In that sense, the Valeyard is a cannibal. He’s self-cannibalising his own past to extend his future.
In the aftermath of 1989, what was JNT-era Doctor Who often criticised for since the success of Earthshock? Ding. Right. Self-cannibalising its own past.
That’s really interesting to me.
I’m a firm believer that any long running series should be pulling from outside its own sphere. Always. Consistently. Wherever it can. If you become trapped in your own bubble of lore, unable to move, you drown creatively.
Billie Piper is a great actor. I’ve seen her in Penny Dreadful and Wednesday. She has wonderful range and could definitely pull off a new incarnation of the Doctor. But her association with Rose Tyler — a role she also played well — makes it very hard to put that feeling of self-cannibalisation to one side.
Someone made the comparison that her appearance feels like if the Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor regenerated into Wendy Padbury. Wendy Padbury is a great actor, through and through… But the audience has to get over the fact that she’s Zoe Heriot, first.
And here’s the deeply weird part for me… I love Iris Wildthyme. I think Katy Manning’s incarnation is grand. A perfect counterpoint to the Doctor. Especially, the Sixth Doctor. When I hear her, I don’t think: Oh, that’s Jo Grant. It’s 100% Iris. It’s always a joy to see hear her show up.
For me, I don’t think it’s Billie Piper that I find a deal-breaker. It’s what her appearance represents. After so many throwbacks, callbacks and a genuine sense of magpie picking from the past for the Fourteenth/Fifteenth Doctor — it feels like the culmination of what (I suspect) Disney have been trying to do all along. Trade on past good faith.
I don’t think it would be nearly as egregious, as a viewer, if not for the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate for the 60th anniversary specials. Again, great actors. Phenomenal in their craft. But that decision really bookends where Doctor Who has been with these new rights holders.
A cameo from Jodie Whittaker or Jo Martin? Joy. Genuinely feels in good faith. The treatment of Ncuti Gatwa and the Fifteenth Doctor via his regeneration coming in and going out? A splinter of Tennant’s Doctor? Regenerating (maybe) into a former companion? Feels bad…
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Hi scifimike, Hi Wolfie,
Thanks again for sharing more of your thoughts. With regards to Billie Piper’s surprise casting at the end of ‘The Reality War’, I honestly don’t have a problem with her possibly becoming the Sixteenth Doctor. I’ve chatted to people left and right on how they feel about this revelation. Some said this was something that will save the TV show when it was first transmitted back at the end of May this year. Others have been sceptical about it. I know Sarah Sutton, Peter Davison and Colin Baker have expressed their views about Billie Piper not being the Doctor, especially considering she was Rose Tyler beforehand. Honestly, the idea of Billie Piper being the Doctor is something I wouldn’t entirely dismiss, because that would be an interesting new angle for the TV show to go in.
What gets me about this surprise casting is the fact that it was last minute and it seems that Russell T. Davies didn’t think this through. I’m basing this on a statement he made when people asked him if Billie Piper really is the Sixteenth Doctor and his answer was, “I have no idea”. That’s a ridiculous statement as far as I’m concerned, as surely a creative mind like RTD’s would have had some notion of what the narrative reasoning behind Billie Piper’s surprise appearance at the end of ‘The Reality War’ was all about. If Ncuti Gatwa regenerating into Billie Piper doesn’t mean that she is the new Doctor, what else is it suppose to mean? Had RTD said, “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”, that would have okay to put up with and it would have stirred a lot of speculation and theories going on as to what the surprise reveal is all about. As is, it feels like a stunt surprise that probably won’t amount to anything. I hope I’m wrong about this, but at present, and with the TV show’s future uncertain, I don’t know how this is going to be followed up on, if at all, if RTD doesn’t return as showrunner for the TV series’ continuation, whether it’d be with Disney or not.
Quite frankly, what should have happened, in the narrative sense, is that Ncuti Gatwa should have regenerated into Richard E. Grant instead of Billie Piper. At least it would have given Richard E. Grant’s cameo in ‘Rogue’ some meaning and at least wouldn’t be considered ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ or pointless. It matches to Susan’s cameos in Series 15 and Rogue’s surprise cameo in ‘Wish World’ being rather pointless, which is a shame, as I know there was going to be another cameo of Susan’s in ‘The Reality War’ where she’s interacting with Poppy during the U.N.I.T. party scene, but it didn’t happen and reshoots for the story’s ending were done instead.
Again, I’ll be addressing these things in my in-depth reviews of Series 14 and 15, but there’s no denying that the neo-RTD era has been incredibly flawed. And it’s so astonishing since it’s from the guy who I thought could do no wrong in ‘Doctor Who’, especially when he brought it back in 2005. My opinion of RTD has been coloured from his writing in ‘Farewell, Sarah Jane’, but I hoped it wouldn’t get in the way of my enjoyment of his neo-era, as I and many others assumed he would deliver something that would match to his original era. Sadly not, it seems. Poetic, isn’t it?
Many thanks again for your comments,
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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‘I have no idea,’ feels a lot like: It’s out of my hands and, if that’s the case, it’s not a particular surprise. Given that we were supposed to have a solid idea of where all this was going by the end of Series 15… I do have a sinking feeling that those climactic episodes fell apart in the writing process. RTD’s return to writing the series feels odd given that this is the man who wrote Years and Years and It’s a Sin. 73 Yards felt much more like his usual fare than, say, Space Babies.
Doctor Who has suffered from some excessive goofiness for some years. Part of that is the success of the Marvel films. Their need to slap in a bizarrely timed joke has become legendary. The Moffat era suffered from likewise. One of the nadirs is a perfectly executed: ‘Time can be rewritten,’ scene on the beach at the end of Time of the Angels followed up by a companion sexually assaulting the Doctor. It wasn’t good at the time and it’s just as bad now.
The Chibnall era, inheriting much from its predecessors, suffered from excessive gags as well. It excelled in drama. Particularly historical drama. The Witchfinders, Rosa, Demons of the Punjab, The Haunting of Villa Diodati, etc. But we still ran afoul of kidding yogis and gun-shoes. Badly crowbarred into otherwise compelling storytelling. I’m reminded of Season 24. The genuinely heartwarming final look between Mel and Pex in Paradise Towers before he dies — as Sylvester McCoy is being thrashed against a wall in the background. It’s comical. Parodic. And genuinely not what the scene is trying to do.
Thing was… Season 24 could’ve been the end of Doctor Who quite easily. But it wasn’t. From Season 25, we ended up with Remembrance of the Daleks and two more years of quite solid storytelling. After two years of gasping from the ’86 hiatus, drowned by BBC mismanagement, the programme had found its footing. By Battlefield, it found the balance of wit, humour and drama. It could have range without compromising its dramatic integrity. Their stories were even about pretty heady topics. Racism, fascism, nuclear war, toxic positivity, etc.
The programme has done fine enough on its individual fare. The Story and the Engine was the first episode from a Nigerian-born writer and poet. That’s significant. That’s laudable. But the margin for error is so thin with only eight episodes a season, it needs to stick the landing. Not retread The Avengers: Endgame with a returning adversary. Especially when the lead actor isn’t always available for those first eight episodes.
The sad thing is… All the components are already there. I wish we could’ve had as long a tenure with Gatwa as we did with David Tennant’s first run. Three series and a spate of specials. With Tennant, it felt as though he stayed just long enough. Now, it seems we’ll only really experience the Fifteenth Doctor in hindsight. And just like the ‘recap’ to Time and the Rani, it already feels like we missed out on a whole era because of real-world instability. Clowning around on Lakertya/UNIT HQ, than what this incarnation really deserved. A missed opportunity.
Sad though it is (and it is tragic, this)… I do take some comfort in the fact that we’re longing for more with the Fifteenth Doctor, rather than celebrating that he’s gone. That meant something was done right. Entirely wishful thinking, but I’d have liked it to go something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcisF4Ql4ao
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Hi Wolfie,
Thanks for sharing the video of Jodie Whittaker regenerating into Ncuti Gatwa instead of David Tennant. I would have preferred that compared to what we had at the end of ‘The Power of the Doctor’. Ncuti’s appearance in the 60th anniversary specials could have gone on the lines of ‘The Eight Doctors’ where he was recalling his past lives before gaining a sense of who he is in his current incarnation. It also would have saved the bi-generation concept used in ‘The Giggle’.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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Having another female Doctor would be nice. Perhaps Billie can add something significant to the role which will hopefully get the best writing despite previous problems with the show. It may be awkward in regards to the relationship between the Doctor and Rose, given how fans often have their strange imaginations. For the time being I’m willing to give her a chance. In all fairness she’s a very good actress and I’ve always liked her.
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I remember a rumor somewhere that Sheridan Smith, who played one of the 8th Doctor’s Big Finish companions Lucie Miller, was being considered for the 13th Doctor.
There have been serious concerns about how all these returns of familiar faces are becoming something of a downtrend for Doctor Who. I always enjoyed moving onto new faces in the classic series. It was the Wilderness Years that made the returns of Doctor and companion actors most interesting. And Jon Pertwee’s final reprisal of the 3rd Doctor for Devious the year before his passing is always quite special.
As for the current state of the show, self-cannibalizing may be an extreme term. But it can be accurate for how desperate things have become to hopefully keep the fans satisfied in some sense.
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Hi scifimike, Hi Wolfie,
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. I’m open to the idea of a ‘Doctor Who’ movie featuring David Tennant and Billie Piper, following on from ‘The Reality War’. Maybe that’s the direction the TV show is going in. That we’ll get a movie first before the TV show returns in some form. It would explain why we’ve had the cinematic releases of ‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’/’Empire of Death’ and ‘Wish World’/’The Reality War’ (in the UK at least).
Many thanks and Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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Hi scifimike,
Interesting rumour you’ve shared about Sheridan Smith possibly being a contender for the Thirteenth Doctor. I’ve not come across that before and I need to catch up on some Eighth Doctor/Lucie Millier audios I’ve yet to review on my blog. 😆
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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There’s a wonderful irony to long-term fandom. We’re drawn into things because we love seeing our favourite concepts put to screen, paper or disc. Cybermen! Future stories! Charlotte Pollard! Benny Summerfield! Sontarans! UNIT! We are infatuated with it and take it as it comes.
Then, as that infatuation settles down… A fan starts to cherry pick their experiences. Certain stories are sought out. Certain incarnations. Certain eras. Certain writers. It becomes a much more heavily-curated experience that appeals to a particular deep-time focus (pun intended). It becomes Mondasian-era Cybermen. The 22nd-century Space Age. The Sixth Doctor and Charley. Benny and Braxiatel. Dan Starkey’s Sontarans. 90s UNIT with an older Brigadier.
And then, after a certain period again… We start wanting, not the familiar friends and foes, but wholly original stories. Cut from whole-cloth. Without any of the pre-existing baggage of continuity or lore. An escape from the escapism. The novelty of total originality.
I would say current Doctor Who has been rather good at catering to that third stage of fandom. Discounting the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna (which was a romp through RTD’s old playground), the Fifteenth Doctor has only really leant on big recurring elements for finales. The rest of the season has operated on its own merits (and not without success, people latched onto Rogue almost instantly).
It’s the sheer brevity of these new seasons that really brings those recurring elements to the fore. If we go back to Series 2, David Tennant’s first season, it’s thirteen episodes and… Half of that season has returning elements. Cassandra in New Earth, Sarah Jane in School Reunion, the Cybermen two-parter, and the Daleks vs. Cybermen finale. But because we had the breathing room to explore stand-alone concepts — especially in that second-half of the season — we don’t feel like we’re being bombarded by them.
It reminds me quite a bit of the latter days of The X-Files. The show was still very much thriving on the individual merits of its Monster of the Week episodes, but the Myth-arc was starting to noticeably outstay its welcome. Enough that it wasn’t uncommon for fans to divide the series into two continuities — the conspiracy and the day-to-day investigations. Now, most of NuWho’s mythology has been jettisoned by this point (in retcon after retcon), but what’s in its place hasn’t really had the time to breathe like its predecessors did.
This isn’t even necessarily a critique solely of the neo-RTD era. The Flux, much like the entropy wave in Logopolis, set up this fantastic toy-box for writers to dig into and develop. A Universe devastated on a cataclysmic and cosmic level… And that hasn’t really been tapped into yet. Not on streaming, at least. We’ve kind of just… forgotten about it for now.
It feels like things have been so dire in the real-world, there hasn’t really been the room to explore these concepts as effectively as they could’ve been.
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What we might potentially forget about it from the storytelling histories of our long-enduring shows may be a blessing for what we’d understandably like to forget. Jodie’s Doctor had some very good Flux moments and this keeps it on the map for me. The direness of the real world may challenge how we enjoy our favourite shows and movies (both new and old) and yet encourage us enough to grasp some relevant parallels through the sense of goodness somehow prevailing. It quite often worked for Doctor Who’s adventures over the years and of course Star Trek’s too. So in any reality where danger is an unavoidable fact, it helps to remember our stories for the right reasons. Most specifically the messages which might feel a lot easier for the much older stories.
Having reminisced with many of my old favourite sci-fi classics, at a time when even the Whoniverse could have its dangerous adventures in much simpler ways, I can certainly appreciate even more the allowances for the realities to be processed better.
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Hi scifimike, Hi Wolfie,
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. There’s always a risk when it comes to seeing various incarnations of a TV show or a movie series we’ve enjoyed, especially when different creative approaches from various creative minds are handled. I know it’s often frustrating to share thoughts on what we like, dislike and how things can be improved on when it comes to seeing ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Star Trek’, ‘Star Wars’ and the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’, but I do find myself enjoying those shows/movie series in their various incarnations to find out what can be considered very entertaining and worthwhile to check out as well as what spin-off media, including audios, books and comics there are to accompany them and enhance the viewing experiences even more. It’s not always going to be perfect and there are going to be clashes of opinions at times, but that somehow makes it even more exciting and wonderful, right?
Many thanks and Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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Now, that’s an interesting thought. Personally, I think perfection’s a fool’s errand. We strive for it as creatives, but it’s not something we can ever achieve. Perfection is one of those states where, once accomplished, there’s nowhere to go but down. You can’t out-perfect perfection.
In storytelling, in particular, perfection is a killer. Stories have to exist in a space where they can grow, evolve and breathe. If it’s frozen, then the story doesn’t evolve with its audiences. It becomes — rather tragically — an obsolete relic of no relevance to anyone. The perpetual risk of a subgenre like hard science-fiction (which Doctor Who has successfully dodged). You cover the tree in concrete, you maybe preserve the tree’s outline, but murder the tree itself.
Flux is an interesting example because it’s almost a one-for-one analogy for COVID and the Global Pandemic. It took 20 years to start talking about the Second World War in any depth in Europe. I think it’s a subject matter that — speaking globally — we aren’t prepared to talk about yet. Any more than Doctor Who was prepared to talk explicitly about Cold War politics until the ’90s. I think Flux and the Thirteenth Doctor will have their day (and its due), but it will take time for people to get there.
It’s just like the Silurians. As a mainstay of Doctor Who, their presence didn’t really make any sort of mark until Jurassic Park and early-to-mid ’90s Dinomania. 20 years after they made their initial debut. Doctor Who and the Silurians has one of the most visceral depictions of mass death via plague on the programme. 1970 predicting 2020? Now, they couldn’t possibly have known that at the time, but reality eventually caught up with fiction.
One can only imagine the parallels we’re going to see in the next 20 years to the stories made right now. For instance, the Doctor is explicitly a transgender character. In a world really, really hostile to transgender people. It will be interesting to see how these developments are viewed in hindsight. Whether the world learns more empathy in 20 years or if this continues to be a blind-spot.
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Hi Wolfie,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’m saddened that Chris Chibnall didn’t get to do more with the Timeless Child storyline in his era of ‘Doctor Who’. Had he continued beyond ‘Flux’, maybe we could have had more insight into what went on with that storyline, especially considering the Doctor hid the fob watch containing memories of the time spent in the Division in the TARDIS console in ‘The Vanquishers’. Even Russell T. Davies hasn’t followed up on that, as the fob watch is still hidden deep inside the TARDIS console as far as I’m concerned. Maybe that storyline will resurface one day. Who knows?
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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Hi Tim,
Looks like we might get a chance to find out. Doctor Who will be coming back in a 2026 special without Disney’s involvement. It will be solely a BBC and Bad Wolf co-production. A further season has been announced from there. No news on anything else yet, but that’s certainly a lot more hopeful than things have been previously.
Best,
Wolfie
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Without Disney involvement is for the better. It’s sad to think about how Disney has faltered since its glory days. Especially since some of its best sci-fi like The Black Hole and TRON (two childhood favorites of mine).
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I think so too, sadly. It may have been a clash of intent more than anything else. My introduction to Doctor Who were reruns of the First Doctor and I’ve never thought of it as close to — essentially what Disney is — an American fairy-tale. When I think ‘fairy-tale’ for Who, I actually think of someone like Paul Magrs. His penchant for European folk tales that feel as though they draw both whimsey and dark fantasy from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen or Jean Cocteau. That has a very different tinge and tone to the candy-floss tones of Disneyworld.
It’s the terror of a Brand with a capital ‘B’. It must be a Disney castle with a Disney princess in a Disney amusement park filled by Disney mascots. It reminds me of a line from Malcolm Hulke’s description of the villain in The Doomsday Weapon: ‘As Dent sat there, touching the controls of the IMC spaceship, he felt happy and secure in the fact that he was an IMC man, with an IMC wife, IMC children, with a beautiful four room IMC home. His present and his future were as secure as IMC, and IMC would go on for ever.’
It’s hard to picture the Disney of today attempting something like the original TRON. The film makes quite a point between separating the technical genius from the corporate executive. One is the downtrodden, exiled and ostracised rebel protagonist. The other is the ambitious, esurient and greedy villain in a grey suit. It’s hard not to draw comparisons with the recent pilot for Knights of Guinevere. Parallels… Parallels…
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Hi Wolfie, Hi scifimike,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the latest ‘Doctor Who’ news. I’ll be sharing a blog post and a video containing my thoughts on the upcoming ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas Special tomorrow.
Stay tuned!
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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