Could the show have done anything to survive or escape the cancellation?

It seems there's two very divided consensuses to be found on the 1985 suspension that culminated in the 1989 cancellation.

Some fans believe it was everything to do with the quality of the show and the ratings it was getting at the time, and that the show was essentially punished for making itself unlovable or inaccessible to the casual audience.

Some believe the ratings and story quality had nothing to do with it at all, and that even if you'd had the Letts or Hinchcliffe golden age happening at the time Grade became controller, he would've treated it just the same and the show would've been just as doomed.

My position is a mixture of the two. I thought the show's quality had been, in the main, pretty awful from Time-Flight onward. I don't think the ratings were bad enough to justify Grade's decision, but I think they were down enough on the ratings it got in Tom Baker's prime to suggest the show was doing something wrong to fail to capitalize on its 1970's success.

But I think that was entirely incidental to Grade's decision which would've probably been made regardless, and was probably in the cards since the late 1970's, and even had the show been doing better in the ratings, his post hoc justifications would've probably been pointed to something else. A strange coincidence perhaps, but it can happen.

I've also made no secret of my opinion that JNT and Saward's response to Grade's actions was kind of shameful, as they continued to demonstrate the same unpardonable cynicism, power-play bickering, paranoia and pettiness that had driven the quality down the pan and seen needed talents become locked out (the fact we lost PJ Hammond's script 'Paradise 5' to such pettiness is the most shameful testament of this).

By Remembrance of the Daleks it seemed like the makers were finally on the right track, but the BBC had other plans and another agenda. They regarded the show as strictly a kids' show, and probably were not interested in the show's greater aspirations under Cartmel. Almost as if the more the show tried, the less interested they were.

But was there anything the makers could've done? Was there any earlier preventative measures they could've taken or an escape route they missed? Could anything have saved the show in hindsight? What would you have tried if you'd been heading the show?

For the production team, no. They had the best Doctor/companion team since Tom and Lalla, were doing great things on a limited budget and entering a new creative golden age. What else could they do? With season 25 having done as well it did in the ratings - even well over six million a couple of times - if the BBC had any interest in it they would have rewarded the following season with a friendlier time slot and plenty of promotion. Instead, after the most successful season in three years, they axed the thing before the next season even started.
The BBC just didn't give a fuck.

Tanmann wrote:It seems there's two very divided consensuses to be found on the 1985 suspension that culminated in the 1989 cancellation.

Some fans believe it was everything to do with the quality of the show and the ratings it was getting at the time, and that the show was essentially punished for making itself unlovable or inaccessible to the casual audience.

They're not fans, they're Michael Grade sympathisers like that utter cunt Chibnall is.

At the time when Grade struck, ratings had climbed again from Season 20 and the show was at it's peak of the JNT-era, less dull than the Bidmead years and not as infantile as the Williams-era pantomimes which came before.

Sure, there were some teething problems with pacing the new 45 minute format, but that would've been fully adapted to by the next season.

Colins Season 22 smashed Tom Baker's Season 18 out of the ballpark ratings-wise AND faced fierce cross channel competition from the heavily hyped and promoted "A-Team"

Once Grade struck it all went to shit, ratings and quality-wise. "Remembrance" was just a flash in the pan. The last 4 years of the programme were subsequently that of a neutered limping donkey being slowly led to the mercies of slaughterhouse.

Personally I think as soon as Grade struck with the 18 month hiatus and conditions were being imposed upon the creative decisions made on the programme both JNT and Saward should've told him to "fuck off" and resigned. It's tragic they weren't united on the event.

Had they been so I feel the BBC would've soon come crawling back to them to sheepishly to ask them to pick up tools again after the public/media backlash without all of the heavy-handed interference on the creative decision making, particularly once they found that no other cunt wanted to make it. 

The fact that Grade & Powell dragged Robert Holmes who was a terminally ill man at the time into his office for a severe dressing down over scripts is utterly shameful and disgusting.

Small wonder Saward thought "fuck this" and walked out, it's such a tragedy that JNT couldn't follow suite and tell the BBC what a bunch of cunts they were.

Of course it could have been saved!

Grade and the BBC were just determined to run the whole thing into the ground though.

Someone with vision and determination could have made some brilliant Who.

Personally, I would have told them the budget was fine - if they wanted half the episodes at the quality required to bring the audience back in. I'd have done a short season of 'super' Doctor Who, hiring the very best writing talent, set designers and FX team money could buy. I'd have banged out a line of merchandise for Christmas after showing the series in November as four, one hour specials. Each story would have followed classic formats: base under siege, space opera, alien invasion, and Hinchcliffe-style horror.

I'd have done a deal with the beeb stating that if the show and merchandise flopped, they could can the show forever, but if it succeeded, they'd have had to commission 3 more, full seasons.

iank wrote:For the production team, no. They had the best Doctor/companion team since Tom and Lalla, were doing great things on a limited budget and entering a new creative golden age. What else could they do? With season 25 having done as well it did in the ratings - even well over six million a couple of times - if the BBC had any interest in it they would have rewarded the following season with a friendlier time slot and plenty of promotion. Instead, after the most successful season in three years, they axed the thing before the next season even started.
The BBC just didn't give a fuck.

Completely agreed with this. You can argue about the quality of late 80s Who, and there are some very valid criticisms, but even then the facts show that it had everything against it from the BBC.

PS even if you do still hold JNT responsible, he wanted to leave, but the BBC made him stay an extra at least 4 years.

Rob Filth wrote:

Tanmann wrote:It seems there's two very divided consensuses to be found on the 1985 suspension that culminated in the 1989 cancellation.

Some fans believe it was everything to do with the quality of the show and the ratings it was getting at the time, and that the show was essentially punished for making itself unlovable or inaccessible to the casual audience.

They're not fans, they're Michael Grade sympathisers like that utter cunt Chibnall is.

They're fans Rob.

They're no less fans than you or I.

They'd obviously loved the show at some point. They just didn't love JNT and Saward's version.

I have a few different solutions/escape routes in mind.

Option A)
Simplest escape route (though not without risks) would probably have been to transition the show from TV to cinema, and continue the franchise as a film series. If the franchise could get some independence from the BBC with another film company, then it would pretty much be beyond Grade's control.

The Five Doctors was probably the rightest time to do it, and the rightest starting point. It could've made Doctor Who an event again. The budget would've been better, it would've had the time and development to make each film as good as it could be, and would probably incentivise the makers to junk anything that wasn't their best script for the sake of their best one-shots.

The success would be measured by accumulative cinema tickets of audiences watching at their leisure, rather than having to choose between Doctor Who or the A-Team or Corrie.

It probably would've hit big in America given the fan scene there, and the American figures would count in a way they sadly didn't to Grade or Powell. Any hiatuses inbetween each film would also be more survivable.

Ideally I would hope Remembrance of the Daleks would've gotten a big screen treatment too.

Option B) I think they could've possibly maximized the ratings they were already getting.

According to the figures, the makers were mostly on the right track for Season 19. There was the occasional fan treat in there, but mostly it was stories that were accessible to non-fans. The dip happened with Season 20, which was a much more fan-aimed and frankly humourless season (though there might've been other factors). It might also be that Time-Flight was a disappointing blow.

So I'd want to avoid both and just emulate the best part of Season 19 for the seasons after. Mostly concentrate on standalone adventures that the casual audience don't have to read a guide book to understand or agree with the politics of. I'd probably favour more stories like Vengeance on Varos and The Awakening for Season 20, and avoid anything Ian Levine was suggesting like the plague. Maybe also do the Space Whale story, Barbara Clegg's The Elite, and have Enlightenment without the Guardians involved.

From that, more curious young viewers might be more likely to stick around with the show without feeling they have to know decade old stories to get it. If it had remained an easy show to become a fan of, rather than become a chore to. Maybe this would mean there'd be a groundswell of increasing interest each season, and by Season 22 the ratings would be back to Hinchcliffe levels.

This might've made it harder for Grade to justify the cancellation.

Option C) Tapping into the zeitgeist.

This is of course something JNT and Saward tried to do. JNT did try to bring Blackpool Pleasure Beach into the show. Saward did jarringly and clumsily try to make the stories emulate the more violent, downbeat direction of cinema at the time. But they either missed the mark or were too late.

My understanding of the zeitgeist at the time was that the big two popular phenomenons were Star Wars and Computer Games.

It was difficult for the show to compete with Star Wars of course, but not impossible. If they'd been doing stories like Genesis of the Daleks and Planet of Evil at the time, I think it could've offered the same sense of stakes as Star Wars, but on a smaller budget and with a hero who had wiser, intriguingly different methods to Han Solo's which maintained the tension of how he'd win. Sadly this was rarely apparent in the early to mid-80's as only Barbara Clegg or Robert Holmes seemed to have any imagination when writing the Doctor.

Tapping into the gaming zeitgeist however might've been a lot easier though. There were UK game developers like Ocean Software who were looking to make games out of the licences of popular franchises and were very successful at it. A few Doctor Who games did appear.

I was thinking though, if the makers and the game developers had worked together, then maybe they could've come up with more direct game tie-in's to stories they were about to show on TV. Lets say a game version of Earthshock, Remembrance of the Daleks or Silver Nemesis comes out around the same time as it's about to air.

It would be some extra free promotion for the show, it would give the gamer-savvy youth some interest in the show, and a new way to engage with it, and possibly turn those episodes into must-see's.

Maybe enough to produce impressive enough ratings to outsit the BBC's contempt.

Tanmann wrote:

Rob Filth wrote:

Tanmann wrote:It seems there's two very divided consensuses to be found on the 1985 suspension that culminated in the 1989 cancellation.

Some fans believe it was everything to do with the quality of the show and the ratings it was getting at the time, and that the show was essentially punished for making itself unlovable or inaccessible to the casual audience.

They're not fans, they're Michael Grade sympathisers like that utter cunt Chibnall is.

They're fans Rob.

They're no less fans than you or I.

They'd obviously loved the show at some point. They just didn't love JNT and Saward's version.

Whatever deficiencies the show was going through at the time, fans do not side with the axeman if they're fans.

Grades faux-criticisms were specious.

Rob Filth wrote:Whatever deficiencies the show was going through at the time, fans do not side with the axeman if they're fans.

You mean if they're of the opinion that the show's gone bad, they have to be dishonest and pretend it's not their opinion just incase it might coincide with Grade's opinion?

Besides, if there was an axeman against the show right now, you'd side with them. You've been practically begging for there to be one.

Tanmann wrote:

Rob Filth wrote:Whatever deficiencies the show was going through at the time, fans do not side with the axeman if they're fans.

You mean if they're of the opinion that the show's gone bad, they have to be dishonest and pretend it's not their opinion just incase it might coincide with Grade's opinion?

Besides, if there was an axeman against the show right now, you'd side with them. You've been practically begging for there to be one.

The show was bad right slap bang middle of the Tom Baker era by Grades reckoning, he NEVER liked the show to begin with and anyone falling for his specious disingenuous reasons for axing the show is evidently fucking thick as two short planks.

Whether NuWho is axed or not I'm simply past caring, I couldn't give a shit one way or the other.

Rob Filth wrote:The show was bad right slap bang middle of the Tom Baker era by Grades reckoning

Yeah, but you think the later Tom Baker era was shit too, don't you?

Rob Filth wrote:Whether NuWho is axed or not I'm simply past caring, I couldn't give a shit one way or the other.

Then by your own metric, you're not a fan then, are you?

Tanmann wrote:Yeah, but you think the later Tom Baker era was shit too, don't you?

No I don't.

Toms last season was his best since Season 14. Then again JNT made the programme "Doctor Who" again instead of "The Tom Baker Show" where the lead star could act a cunt for 25 minutes each week.

Tanmann wrote:Then by your own metric, you're not a fan then, are you?

Not of NuWho I'm not, no.

I've never claimed to be.

Rob Filth wrote:

Tanmann wrote:Yeah, but you think the later Tom Baker era was shit too, don't you?

No I don't.

Toms last season was his best since Season 14. Then again JNT made the programme "Doctor Who" again instead of "The Tom Baker Show" where the lead star could act a cunt for 25 minutes each week.

Tanmann wrote:Then by your own metric, you're not a fan then, are you?

Not of NuWho I'm not, no.

I've never claimed to be.

But you said earlier, that whatever deficiencies the show's going through, the fans should remain loyal fans to the program.

Therefore you're not a fan.

Tanmann wrote:

Rob Filth wrote:Not of NuWho I'm not, no.

I've never claimed to be.

But you said earlier, that whatever deficiencies the show's going through, the fans should remain loyal fans to the program.

Therefore you're not a fan.

Not of NuWho, no.

Never have been, never have claimed to be.