Where does Doctor Who end for you?

We can almost all unanimously agree that the show is pretty much dead to us, but what's your preferred, imagined head-canon endpoint for the show and why?

I’m going with To the Death myself- I would have gone for Survival, but I don’t feel obliged to exclude McGann, and the story itself is appropriately crushing, depressing, evocative and thought-provoking enough to serve as a pertinent end to the canon of Doctor Who. If I wasn’t considering McGann, it’d be Survival.

As much as I like Smith’s Doctor and series 5, I can’t end it there as New Who isn’t even the same series to me (though I’d probably keep series 5 within my own head canon, and envision that McGann regenerated into Smith afterwards).

To The Death was a powerful finale for McGann, I agree. Or at least it seemed at the time that was intended to be the last adventure for him (with all the pieces put in place for the Time War to follow).

I voted The Five Doctors. Seemed the best compromise overall.

A member on my friends list that votes for a story before Survival can feel free to remove themselves from it.

.....perhaps I overestimated the whole 'best compromise' thing there.....

To be honest, I’m fine with the Classic series as it is and wouldn’t want it to end prior to its conclusion. It occasionally took its terrible turns, but I have my affections for each era of the original programme and wouldn’t personally leave out any era, though quite a few here will disagree. Each era has its own identity and still retains the inherent DNA of Doctor Who, whereas New Who had reshaped the very essence of the programme entirely into a superficial 21st century soap opera featuring Who iconography, so it makes it much easier for me to leave it all out compared to any era of Classic.

The McGann movie.

I don't tend to include the BF plays in my own personal canon even though I like McGann's Doctor.

It seems odd to me to dismiss whole sections of the classic tv series from canon just because one doesnt like a particular set of stories - e.g., the McCoy era in my case. Its still Dr Who even though I am not too keen on it. Likewise I would dismiss Williams' era in the same way. But I don't.

NuWho seems different to me. It seems to be led by a select few who are extremely condescending, indifferent and even outright hostile to the classic series. In his first season RTD seemed to want to consciously distance his work from classic Who. That counts for sthg imho and so colours my attitude to it.

But i have no great theory to support all of this. Just a mild preference.

stengos wrote:The McGann movie.

I don't tend to include the BF plays in my own personal canon even though I like McGann's Doctor.

It seems odd to me to dismiss whole sections of the classic tv series from canon just because one doesnt like a particular set of stories - e.g., the McCoy era in my case. Its still Dr Who even though I am not too keen on it. Likewise I would dismiss Williams' era in the same way. But I don't.

NuWho seems different to me. It seems to be led by a select few who are extremely condescending, indifferent and even outright hostile to the classic series. In his first season RTD seemed to want to consciously distance his work from classic Who. That counts for sthg imho and so colours my attitude to it.

But i have no great theory to support all of this. Just a mild preference.

My thoughts exactly. Even at its worst, the original series always possessed a sense of earnestness and didn’t come across as exceedingly smug. New Who has always been the contrary, and doesn’t feel anything like the same programme as a result.

stengos wrote:It seems odd to me to dismiss whole sections of the classic tv series from canon just because one doesnt like a particular set of stories - e.g., the McCoy era in my case. Its still Dr Who even though I am not too keen on it. Likewise I would dismiss Williams' era in the same way. But I don't.

NuWho seems different to me. It seems to be led by a select few who are extremely condescending, indifferent and even outright hostile to the classic series. In his first season RTD seemed to want to consciously distance his work from classic Who. That counts for sthg imho and so colours my attitude to it.

Well I think that's it.

The issue as you pinpoint is that the authorship of the show changed fundamentally in a way that distorted the show or got it wrong, or just projected an unappealing attitude through the show and tainted what had made it appealing.

Well I think I feel maybe something different but similar gradually did happen with classic Who as JNT, Saward and Levine came to vie (sometimes against each other) to control the reigns more. The show's attitude seemed to become one of defeatist misanthropy and poor interpretations of the show and its hero.

It wasn't total (unlike under RTD/Moffat), but it was there enough and taken sometimes to enough of an extreme where it became difficult to reconcile the Doctor of Pyramids of Mars who could be counted on to stop at nothing to save the day, or who had valuable words of wisdom back in Pertwee's time, with the negligent, misanthropic, passive-aggressive Season 21 version of the character.

And it begins to feel more tempting to prefer a scenario whereby the show and its hero could still be remembered well as still standing for something worth rooting for.

Tanmann wrote:

stengos wrote:It seems odd to me to dismiss whole sections of the classic tv series from canon just because one doesnt like a particular set of stories - e.g., the McCoy era in my case. Its still Dr Who even though I am not too keen on it. Likewise I would dismiss Williams' era in the same way. But I don't.

NuWho seems different to me. It seems to be led by a select few who are extremely condescending, indifferent and even outright hostile to the classic series. In his first season RTD seemed to want to consciously distance his work from classic Who. That counts for sthg imho and so colours my attitude to it.

Well I think that's it.

The issue as you pinpoint is that the authorship of the show changed fundamentally in a way that distorted the show or got it wrong, or just projected an unappealing attitude through the show and tainted what had made it appealing.

Well I think I feel maybe something different but similar gradually did happen with classic Who as JNT, Saward and Levine came to vie to control the reigns more (including from each other). The show's attitude seemed to become one of defeatist misanthropy and poor interpretations of the show and its hero, where it became difficult to reconcile the Doctor of Pyramids of Mars who could be counted on to stop at nothing to save the day, or who had valuable words of wisdom back in Pertwee's time, with the negligent, misanthropic, passive-aggressive Season 21 version of the character.

And it begins to feel more tempting to prefer a scenario whereby the show and its hero could still be remembered well as still standing for something worth rooting for.

Fair enough. I didnt think there was such a stark contrast between JNT's reign and what came before.

Also - i didn't fully appreciate my comments applied to you. Pls don't feel I was trying to single you out. I was just replying to what i thought was an abstract question. I do read your posts - i regard them a highly as i do those of Burrunjor and Bernard - but, colour me stupid if you like, I just didn't link my comments above to you.

But, when all is said and done, i think we can agree that Resurrection of the Daleks is brilliant ....

... or not.

Yeah, it's Survival really. The TV Movie is the pilot for New Who. I really, really like (most of) the Smith era, but its difficult to see it as canon when it's preceded by the Tennant lothario Doctor and followed up by the genderbending bollocks.
Best thing is to separate them. They're two different shows at a fundamental level. Classic ends at Survival, and New ends at World. Works for me.

I'd say the McGann TV movie - I could just about accept that this was a bona fide continuation of the classic series as at least as it started out with Sylvester playing the same title character. I prefer to pretend that the newly regenerated Doctor as played by McGann ends this adventure by setting out on a whole new series of adventures that we simply never got to see. I just can't endorse that what came next was the BBC's 21st Century series called Doctor Who. So it's really the end (whether the moment had been prepared for or not!) at that point as far as I'm concerned.

stengos wrote:Fair enough. I didnt think there was such a stark contrast between JNT's reign and what came before.

I suppose it's down to individual perception, or whether the change was incremental enough to pass unnoticed. I think there was certainly the intent to be faithful to the past (sometimes in a way that IMO could sometimes over-zealously miss the original point), but I often doubted Saward's or Byrne's heart was really in it.

Maybe it's not so much that there was a stark change as that something of the old (or something of their creative enthusiasm) was slowly eaten away at.

Also - i didn't fully appreciate my comments applied to you. Pls don't feel I was trying to single you out. I was just replying to what i thought was an abstract question. I do read your posts - i regard them a highly as i do those of Burrunjor and Robert - but, colour me stupid if you like, I just didn't link my comments above to you.

Oh okay. It's fine. I appreciate that.

I felt it was best to make the poll as broad as possible as I know some fans have attachments to particular eras or Doctors where they might've drifted after (though even as I included options for The War Games and Planet of the Spiders, I sorely doubted they would get a single vote).

I understand now your comment wasn't directed so much at me. I didn't feel so much singled out by it, but it did give me pause to consider why I feel as strongly as I did, and how I could best explain my thinking. But I suppose it's neither here nor there.

But, when all is said and done, i think we can agree that Resurrection of the Daleks is brilliant ....

... or not.

Eh....

I suppose it has its moments.

I just wanted to clarify that I too did not intent to direct my earlier comment about my affections concerning all eras of Classic Who at you, Tanmann. It was more of a general frustration over certain subsections of fandom who refuse to accept that certain eras of the original series actually count as canon purely due to personally disliking them (akin to those who’d write off everything post 1977- an attitude I’ve always found personally bizarre, though understandable at times). I’m also with Stengos when it comes to JNT’s era, really- the core facets of the programme are still inherently intact, and there is some brilliant content to be found in the era too, which seems to get overlooked by most subsections of fandom in favour of declaring JNT as the worst thing to happen to Doctor Who (his era actually has some points of intellectual merit for starters, as I’ve gone over a few times on other threads, as does every era of the original programme in contrast to the staid and comparatively illiterate New Who which rarely relies on influence or pastiche so much as offensive parody). I accept that your criticisms of Warriors of the Deep are absolutely true, and we’ve already dissected for a whole page why Resurrection doesn’t function as a script (sorry, Stengos- it has its entertaining moments, though), although I wouldn’t declare JNT’s era to be anywhere near the cesspit of modern Who due to the fact that such moments of unwarranted pacifism in the Doctor don’t last to anywhere near the extent of New Who in terms of consecutive stories (if we’ll go by your example, season 21 is merely one season when compared to over a decade), and that the era doesn’t constantly patronise its audience, just as Doctor Who shouldn’t.

This poll is ultimately one that discusses one’s subjective head canon, so I don’t see any issue whatsoever with including stories that proceed the 1980s, in case that was the impression you got of me as well. I tend to ramble incoherently by this stage, so I’ll stop now.

Bernard Marx wrote:I just wanted to clarify that I too did not intent to direct my earlier comment about my affections concerning all eras of Classic Who at you, Tanmann.

Fair dos.

It was more of a general frustration over certain subsections of fandom who refuse to accept that certain eras of the original series actually count as canon purely due to personally disliking them (akin to those who’d write off everything post 1977- an attitude I’ve always found personally bizarre, though understandable at times).

Well, I can certainly understand the impulse of Star Wars fans to feel and declare that the original trilogy is all that matters as canon, and anything else should just be considered an optional extra. If they don't like the prequels

So I can understand similarly feeling that post-1977/post-1980, the show was no longer as rewarding of their investment, or was just getting plain messy, and wanting to divide Classic Who between its prime and everything else. Love for one can sometimes feel like it demands hate for any association with the other.

The problem of course is it's difficult to make that stick with Classic Who. To decide what's important enough to keep when the important stories are sporadic and throughout anyway.

Whilst there's certainly some redundant follow-ons in the 1980's, it's still difficult to find an earlier point where Classic Who could be said to have reached a conclusion in the same way as Return of the Jedi did (or Terminator 2 did), which allows for disregarding everything after. Invasion of Time is probably the closest thing and even that's not a satisfying finale. Maybe City of Death, I don't know. But as you get at, there's so much of the baby you can end up throwing out with the bathwater. It requires a certain cold ruthlessness and, yes, arrogance that even I struggle with. It also requires anger, but anger nearly always fades.

Then again, I suppose for some of them, or myself some days, having a dividing line could feel like the only alternative to chucking out the whole series with the bathwater just for the need to lose a particular nadir.

I’m also with Stengos when it comes to JNT’s era, really- the core facets of the programme are still inherently intact, and there is some brilliant content to be found in the era too, which seems to get overlooked by most subsections of fandom in favour of declaring JNT as the worst thing to happen to Doctor Who

Well, unfortunately I felt there was often a dedication to imitating the letter of the show but often not the spirit.

I used to be very staunchly anti-JNT (at least as a producer rather than as a person). I found myself frustrated with a lot of the spin and completely bought into Saward's account that JNT was too controlling and drove the show to regress, crash and burn.

But the more I've read up on Saward's deficiencies the more I hold him to blame, and I don't believe it was so one-sided anymore. And I think the problems with the era were down to a bad set-up as much as JNT's bad choices (his worst being bringing Ian Levine onboard, who I still say was as toxic to the show then as the SJW's are to it now).

There are always going to be producers and directors with mad and daft ideas, and that's even true of the greats like Lucas and Carpenter. And usually they benefit from a team that's willing to say no and veto some of those bad ideas, in order to filter the best from them.

Unfortunately JNT and Saward seemed to instead frustrate each other into willfully doubling down on each other's worst ideas. And the longer that set-up remained, the worse and more bitter things got.

Perhaps it was actually Saward who was the worst thing to happen to the show. And yet in a cruel way, simultaneously the show seemed to be the worst thing that happened to him.

(his era actually has some points of intellectual merit for starters, as I’ve gone over a few times on other threads, as does every era of the original programme in contrast to the staid and comparatively illiterate New Who which rarely relies on influence or pastiche so much as offensive parody).

I suppose it might be a question of properly weighing up the punishments and rewards of the era. As you say some of the rewards (Warrior's Gate, Enlightenment, Revelation) can be real golden jewels. The punishments however can be brutal and defeating, and make you long for when the series was made of sterner stuff that got you triumphantly through it.

I wouldn’t declare JNT’s era to be anywhere near the cesspit of modern Who due to the fact that such moments of unwarranted pacifism in the Doctor don’t last to anywhere near the extent of New Who in terms of consecutive stories (if we’ll go by your example, season 21 is merely one season when compared to over a decade)

I dunno. Season 21, or specifically Warriors might be a one-off, or maybe the precedent, permission slip, or seed from which New Who's own "man/woman who never would" all stemmed from (I dunno though, there were certainly other occasions in Davison's era where he seemed to lack the gumption when it came to the need to vanquish the Master).

The difference is, as long as the New Who Doctor existed in a show of magic easy-outs, usually ensuring that 'everybody lives', I could usually accept the indulgence of his snap idiotic beliefs that things could magically turn out right and something would save them before the countdown. Sure it could be insulting and frustrating to watch. But it didn't quite make him seem hopeless. Whereas Season 21, by taking place in a much more blatantly violent, material universe, makes the Doctor's cultish, willfull blindness all the more hopeless and offensive. Though I guess that can be put down to clumsy, last-minute rewrites jarring with the action at hand.

But even as a one off portrayal, by drawing on those Pertwee stories it does a lot of ret-conning to the Doctor's attitudes, it's as perniciously thought-terminating as New Who at its worst (it doesn't so much make the case for the Doctor's ideals as contrive to kill off everyone who's sane enough to be in disagreement), and moreover it seems furiously inimical to any other portrayal of him, past or present, that wasn't determined to be this much of a pacifist suicide-cult leader, or indeed, any version of him that was ever friends with Jamie, Leela or the Brigadier.

And the more I think of it, the more I feel like that's down to Saward being very slippery and projecting his own passive-aggressiveness onto the character.

It's like it does erase who the Doctor was, and turn a show about human endeavor and reading between the lines into a tirade against human survival itself or ever questioning pacifist dogma. And unfortunately it seemed defining enough that a fair few fans I've spoken to over the years hold the Doctor's stance there as cultish gospel. And evidently it seems, so did several of the NA writers, and so does Chibnall.

There is a case I suppose to be made for regarding it as a blip before we saw the Doctor restored to his darker roots in Remembrance of the Daleks. And certainly Cartmel felt there was a need to correct things to make the Doctor formidable and effective again. But it does for me make the show's progression from that feel like constantly uphill work against a black hole.

For me either survival or the tv movie work as good endings! Also kinda liked the ending for death comes to time.

Tanmann wrote:

Bernard Marx wrote:I just wanted to clarify that I too did not intent to direct my earlier comment about my affections concerning all eras of Classic Who at you, Tanmann.

Fair dos.

It was more of a general frustration over certain subsections of fandom who refuse to accept that certain eras of the original series actually count as canon purely due to personally disliking them (akin to those who’d write off everything post 1977- an attitude I’ve always found personally bizarre, though understandable at times).

Well, I can certainly understand the impulse of Star Wars fans to feel and declare that the original trilogy is all that matters as canon, and anything else should just be considered an optional extra. If they don't like the prequels

So I can understand similarly feeling that post-1977/post-1980, the show was no longer as rewarding of their investment, or was just getting plain messy, and wanting to divide Classic Who between its prime and everything else. Love for one can sometimes feel like it demands hate for any association with the other.

The problem of course is it's difficult to make that stick with Classic Who. To decide what's important enough to keep when the important stories are sporadic and throughout anyway.

Whilst there's certainly some redundant follow-ons in the 1980's, it's still difficult to find an earlier point where Classic Who could be said to have reached a conclusion in the same way as Return of the Jedi did (or Terminator 2 did), which allows for disregarding everything after. Invasion of Time is probably the closest thing and even that's not a satisfying finale. Maybe City of Death, I don't know. But as you get at, there's so much of the baby you can end up throwing out with the bathwater. It requires a certain cold ruthlessness and, yes, arrogance that even I struggle with. It also requires anger, but anger nearly always fades.

Then again, I suppose for some of them, or myself some days, having a dividing line could feel like the only alternative to chucking out the whole series with the bathwater just for the need to lose a particular nadir.

I’m also with Stengos when it comes to JNT’s era, really- the core facets of the programme are still inherently intact, and there is some brilliant content to be found in the era too, which seems to get overlooked by most subsections of fandom in favour of declaring JNT as the worst thing to happen to Doctor Who

Well, unfortunately I felt there was often a dedication to imitating the letter of the show but often not the spirit.

I used to be very staunchly anti-JNT (at least as a producer rather than as a person). I found myself frustrated with a lot of the spin and completely bought into Saward's account that JNT was too controlling and drove the show to regress, crash and burn.

But the more I've read up on Saward's deficiencies the more I hold him to blame, and I don't believe it was so one-sided anymore. And I think the problems with the era were down to a bad set-up as much as JNT's bad choices (his worst being bringing Ian Levine onboard, who I still say was as toxic to the show then as the SJW's are to it now).

There are always going to be producers and directors with mad and daft ideas, and that's even true of the greats like Lucas and Carpenter. And usually they benefit from a team that's willing to say no and veto some of those bad ideas, in order to filter the best from them.

Unfortunately JNT and Saward seemed to instead frustrate each other into willfully doubling down on each other's worst ideas. And the longer that set-up remained, the worse and more bitter things got.

Perhaps it was actually Saward who was the worst thing to happen to the show. And yet in a cruel way, simultaneously the show seemed to be the worst thing that happened to him.

(his era actually has some points of intellectual merit for starters, as I’ve gone over a few times on other threads, as does every era of the original programme in contrast to the staid and comparatively illiterate New Who which rarely relies on influence or pastiche so much as offensive parody).

I suppose it might be a question of properly weighing up the punishments and rewards of the era. As you say some of the rewards (Warrior's Gate, Enlightenment, Revelation) can be real golden jewels. The punishments however can be brutal and defeating, and make you long for when the series was made of sterner stuff that got you triumphantly through it.

I wouldn’t declare JNT’s era to be anywhere near the cesspit of modern Who due to the fact that such moments of unwarranted pacifism in the Doctor don’t last to anywhere near the extent of New Who in terms of consecutive stories (if we’ll go by your example, season 21 is merely one season when compared to over a decade)

I dunno. Season 21, or specifically Warriors might be a one-off, or maybe the precedent, permission slip, or seed from which New Who's own "man/woman who never would" all stemmed from (I dunno though, there were certainly other occasions in Davison's era where he seemed to lack the gumption when it came to the need to vanquish the Master).

The difference is, as long as the New Who Doctor existed in a show of magic easy-outs, usually ensuring that 'everybody lives', I could usually accept the indulgence of his snap idiotic beliefs that things could magically turn out right and something would save them before the countdown. Sure it could be insulting and frustrating to watch. But it didn't quite make him seem hopeless. Whereas Season 21, by taking place in a much more blatantly violent, material universe, makes the Doctor's cultish, willfull blindness all the more hopeless and offensive. Though I guess that can be put down to clumsy, last-minute rewrites jarring with the action at hand.

But even as a one off portrayal, by drawing on those Pertwee stories it does a lot of ret-conning to the Doctor's attitudes, it's as perniciously thought-terminating as New Who at its worst (it doesn't so much make the case for the Doctor's ideals as contrive to kill off everyone who's sane enough to be in disagreement), and moreover it seems furiously inimical to any other portrayal of him, past or present, that wasn't determined to be this much of a pacifist suicide-cult leader, or indeed, any version of him that was ever friends with Jamie, Leela or the Brigadier.

And the more I think of it, the more I feel like that's down to Saward being very slippery and projecting his own passive-aggressiveness onto the character.

It's like it does erase who the Doctor was, and turn a show about human endeavor and reading between the lines into a tirade against human survival itself or ever questioning pacifist dogma. And unfortunately it seemed defining enough that a fair few fans I've spoken to over the years hold the Doctor's stance there as cultish gospel. And evidently it seems, so did several of the NA writers, and so does Chibnall.

There is a case I suppose to be made for regarding it as a blip before we saw the Doctor restored to his darker roots in Remembrance of the Daleks. And certainly Cartmel felt there was a need to correct things to make the Doctor formidable and effective again. But it does for me make the show's progression from that feel like constantly uphill work against a black hole.

You mention that New Who used Davison’s pacifist qualities as a key point of inspiration for their characterisation of the Doctor. Here’s something else I’ve always found rather suspect: RTD is renowned for saying that the programme died at Horror of Fang Rock, and that everything afterwards is crap (if I recall correctly). So why would he take inspiration from an era he doesn’t like? Or is he just being disingenuous there?

Your point about Star Wars is fair indeed- I think I see it differently to Doctor Who for the reasons you mention. Post Return of the Jedi, there isn’t much of any merit to speak of as the films are consistently crap past that period- though I have a soft spot for the Old Republic canon myself (and the prequels look like fucking Bergman films when compared to The Last Jedi). In Classic Who’s case, there’s a more sporadic range in the quality of stories, and I wouldn’t want to eradicate them from canon by any stretch. I guess it’s easier to dismiss New Who in my case due to both the rather consistent lack of quality (odd exception aside) and the fact that it essentially re-writes the DNA of the programme completely beyond any nuanced recognition, which comes across as the biggest reason to disregard it.

I do like that one what if if Matt smith came after paul mcgann ! I really do like him he had the eccentricity to the role ! Which I felt eccleston and even tennant to a extant lacked !

Bernard Marx wrote:You mention that New Who used Davison’s pacifist qualities as a key point of inspiration for their characterisation of the Doctor.

Well Davison's Doctor seems to be the model the New Who Doctors were most closely based on. Or perhaps an awkward amalgamation of Davison and McCoy. Youthful, sentimental idealist with a penchant for trainers and ever desiring there to be 'another way' (and because it's a fan-made show, the writers feel obliged to give him that happy 'everybody lives' ending via pixie dust that Davison was denied).

Certainly I found it hard to see Arachnids in the UK as anything but the chickens coming home to roost for what happens when the show's written by fans who grew up on the nonsense of Warriors of the Deep.

Funnily enough though, for the first two seasons of New Who, I actually did think that pacifist element to him had been thankfully jettisoned, or you could say overcorrected (that if this was them going by the Davison model, it seemed to be more Earthshock's Davison than Warriors' Davison). For the first two seasons, this was a Doctor who'd fought in war, stood back and let Cassandra (and Simon Pegg) die, almost stopped at nothing to destroy the last Dalek, seemed prepared to go along with taking Margaret Slitheen to her execution.

With Eccleston that pacifist element seemed to have gone.... right until the last ten minutes of Parting of the Ways, and then he seemed to revert to Davison's worst again.

But even then a big deal seemed to be made of Tennant being the correction to this. The 'no second chances' Doctor. And again, for his first season, that seemed to hold up, given the way he dispatched the Cybermen, the devil, the Krillatines and the Racnoss. When he told Anthony Head "I'm so old now. I used to have so much mercy.", I was left thinking... maybe this is a Doctor who *would've* left Delgado's Master to suffer Kronos' fate, and maybe it's about time.

Obviously as we saw in Series 3's finale that turned out to be wrong (and actually some have made the case to me that Human Nature was a just as bad it not far worse example than Warriors, regarding the Doctor deciding to be so merciful to an enemy he could easily destroy, that a lot of innocent humans end up senselessly paying the price for him letting that enemy live), and if anything the first two seasons of ruthlessness seemed to be written off as a mistake, or mitigated as Time War trauma that he's now determined to make amends for.

My theory is that RTD (and I know this might sound odd) thought there might be a credibility problem to a character like the Doctor in the modern world, if you're to go with the Davison do-gooder portrayal of him. And so spent the first two seasons trying to build Eccleston and then Tennant up as a tough guy who could go onto a council estate and no-one would try to mess with or think him soft enough to have a go at.

Then come Series Three, that's when he gradually brought in his fannish pacifist notions of the Doctor, when he thought his audience was secure enough.

Here’s something else I’ve always found rather suspect: RTD is renowned for saying that the programme died at Horror of Fang Rock, and that everything afterwards is crap (if I recall correctly).

Did he say that?

I know it's something Kim Newman said in his BFI book. That the show largely lost him when K9 arrived and Mary Whitehouse got her way, and that from then on, everything seemed to go ever more wrong (although he did single out City of Death, Kinda and Black Orchid as diamonds in the rough). And he seemed taken with Eccleston's revival since it seemed to almost cater to his stance, and wipe that slate clean and continuity-wise might as well pick up where 1977 left off (no more renegade Time Lords, no Davros).

RTD probably has given contrary accounts to various sources. I think he did say on one talking heads program (prior to the revival) that Tom Baker was as good as it ever got and they probably should've ended it when he left. But then there's parts of Richard Marson's JNT book where RTD is among the commentators and describes watching Davison's era at the time, and he heavily praises Earthshock. He even seemed fonder of Adric than I expected (given The Long Game seemed to be just an exercise in Adric-bashing by proxy).

That said, he was critical of Time-Flight botching the aftermath of Adric's death (he said it was the first time he felt the makers had genuinely got it wrong) and expressed disappointment with Tegan's goodbye in Resurrection. But it sounds like he was a fan who hung in there throughout Davison's time. And he was certainly dismayed that the show was finally cancelled when it was.

So why would he take inspiration from an era he doesn’t like? Or is he just being disingenuous there?

Well, I would say he was also an avid fan of the New Adventures novels, and the Big Finish audios, and there were certainly times when that same pacifist element crept into them. Blood Heat by Jim Mortimer being the worst example I've come across. And even the audio Davros has a moment where the Doctor refuses to take out Davros despite him holding an innocent girl hostage, which really left as nasty a taste in my mouth.

So I suppose that ended up becoming incorporated into the New Who Doctor. Maybe the more RTD wrote the show, the more he rediscovered a love for the character and a desire to make even Davison's naivest wishes possible.

Maybe it's about then ratings, and he thinks if the Davison era had gone right (if they'd utilized Davison's heart-throb image, not gone the alienating grim-dark route of Season 21, and didn't just forget the emotional ramifications of Adric the next story), then its opening ratings boost would've lasted. And it seems that's the kind of program we got with Tennant.

Tanmann wrote:

Bernard Marx wrote:You mention that New Who used Davison’s pacifist qualities as a key point of inspiration for their characterisation of the Doctor.

Well Davison's Doctor seems to be the model the New Who Doctors were most closely based on. Or perhaps an awkward amalgamation of Davison and McCoy. Youthful, sentimental idealist with a penchant for trainers and ever desiring there to be 'another way' (and because it's a fan-made show, the writers feel obliged to give him that happy 'everybody lives' ending via pixie dust that Davison was denied).

Certainly I found it hard to see Arachnids in the UK as anything but the chickens coming home to roost for what happens when the show's written by fans who grew up on the nonsense of Warriors of the Deep.

Funnily enough though, for the first two seasons of New Who, I actually did think that pacifist element to him had been thankfully jettisoned, or you could say overcorrected (that if this was them going by the Davison model, it seemed to be more Earthshock's Davison than Warriors' Davison). For the first two seasons, this was a Doctor who'd fought in war, stood back and let Cassandra (and Simon Pegg) die, almost stopped at nothing to destroy the last Dalek, seemed prepared to go along with taking Margaret Slitheen to her execution.

With Eccleston that pacifist element seemed to have gone.... right until the last ten minutes of Parting of the Ways, and then he seemed to revert to Davison's worst again.

But even then a big deal seemed to be made of Tennant being the correction to this. The 'no second chances' Doctor. And again, for his first season, that seemed to hold up, given the way he dispatched the Cybermen, the devil, the Krillatines and the Racnoss. When he told Anthony Head "I'm so old now. I used to have so much mercy.", I was left thinking... maybe this is a Doctor who *would've* left Delgado's Master to suffer Kronos' fate, and maybe it's about time.

Obviously as we saw in Series 3's finale that turned out to be wrong (and actually some have made the case to me that Human Nature was a just as bad it not far worse example than Warriors, regarding the Doctor deciding to be so merciful to an enemy he could easily destroy, that a lot of innocent humans end up senselessly paying the price for him letting that enemy live), and if anything the first two seasons of ruthlessness seemed to be written off as a mistake, or mitigated as Time War trauma that he's now determined to make amends for.

My theory is that RTD (and I know this might sound odd) thought there might be a credibility problem to a character like the Doctor in the modern world, if you're to go with the Davison do-gooder portrayal of him. And so spent the first two seasons trying to build Eccleston and then Tennant up as a tough guy who could go onto a council estate and no-one would try to mess with or think him soft enough to have a go at.

Then come Series Three, that's when he gradually brought in his fannish pacifist notions of the Doctor, when he thought his audience was secure enough.

Here’s something else I’ve always found rather suspect: RTD is renowned for saying that the programme died at Horror of Fang Rock, and that everything afterwards is crap (if I recall correctly).

Did he say that?

I know it's something Kim Newman said in his BFI book. That the show largely lost him when K9 arrived and Mary Whitehouse got her way, and that from then on, everything seemed to go ever more wrong (although he did single out City of Death, Kinda and Black Orchid as diamonds in the rough). And he seemed taken with Eccleston's revival since it seemed to almost cater to his stance, and wipe that slate clean and continuity-wise might as well pick up where 1977 left off (no more renegade Time Lords, no Davros).

RTD probably has given contrary accounts to various sources. I think he did say on one talking heads program (prior to the revival) that Tom Baker was as good as it ever got and they probably should've ended it when he left. But then there's parts of Richard Marson's JNT book where RTD is among the commentators and describes watching Davison's era at the time, and he heavily praises Earthshock. He even seemed fonder of Adric than I expected (given The Long Game seemed to be just an exercise in Adric-bashing by proxy).

That said, he was critical of Time-Flight botching the aftermath of Adric's death (he said it was the first time he felt the makers had genuinely got it wrong) and expressed disappointment with Tegan's goodbye in Resurrection. But it sounds like he was a fan who hung in there throughout Davison's time. And he was certainly dismayed that the show was finally cancelled when it was.

So why would he take inspiration from an era he doesn’t like? Or is he just being disingenuous there?

Well, I would say he was also an avid fan of the New Adventures novels, and the Big Finish audios, and there were certainly times when that same pacifist element crept into them. Blood Heat by Jim Mortimer being the worst example I've come across. And even the audio Davros has a moment where the Doctor refuses to take out Davros despite him holding an innocent girl hostage, which really left as nasty a taste in my mouth.

So I suppose that ended up becoming incorporated into the New Who Doctor. Maybe the more RTD wrote the show, the more he rediscovered a love for the character and a desire to make even Davison's naivest wishes possible.

Maybe it's about then ratings, and he thinks if the Davison era had gone right (if they'd utilized Davison's heart-throb image, not gone the alienating grim-dark route of Season 21, and didn't just forget the emotional ramifications of Adric the next story), then its opening ratings boost would've lasted. And it seems that's the kind of program we got with Tennant.

I think I recall RTD endorsing Kim Newman’s comments in an article from the mid 2000s on the programme, although having looking back, I might be wrong. He does give contrary sources all the time- on the Inferno commentary, Letts mentioned that Davies contacted him and told him that his era would echo the same vibe as the Pertwee era, only to then tell Verity Lambert in 2006 that he’d ‘taken it back to the 60s’.

Also, did Newman not like The Caves Of Androzani? It would surprise me considerably if he didn’t.

Bernard Marx wrote:Also, did Newman not like The Caves Of Androzani? It would surprise me considerably if he didn’t.

No he didn't. Or at least he seemed to consider it average at best.

He used to have a website where he put some of his extra notes on stories that he couldn't fit into that particular pocket book, and he did talk about Androzani and why he wasn't as sold on it, but I forget what his reasons were, and the site has gone.

I think he was just bummed out to the Davison era overall by then.

I’d be intrigued to see that, given how highly I rate Caves. Although I suspect his argument won’t be high on credibility if he thinks that any of Eccleston’s stories are in any way of higher quality than Caves. Harper’s direction and Holmes’ dialogue piss all over anything New Who has ever conceived as far as I’m concerned.

I'll try and see if the Wayback machine has any luck reviving it, if I can find the link to the piece.

I'm surprised he didn't like it myself. I know his main problems with the Davison era (which I do sympathize with) were the annoying companions and the derivative focus on old enemies and continuity (or as he put it 'the show sinking to doing its own fanfiction'), but none of that is true of Caves, really, so I would've hoped he'd make similar exception for that as he did for Kinda.

In response to your post (which seems to have disappeared) about why RTD gets a pass for his indulgent fanwank in a way JNT doesn't.... well I suppose the fan spin would be about how Doomsday's Dalek/Cyberman battle, although fannish was still something involving monsters the casual viewers would understand and had been brought up to speed on by recent episodes, in a way maybe they wouldn't concerning the decade old continuity backstory to Warriors or Attack. And that the battle was a side feature to the emotional story of the Doctor and Rose's separation which the non-fan audience would be able to invest in.

But all the same, it does seem to be a double standard that you get with cults that allow a pass for privileged members and figureheads whilst despising the same in outsiders.

For me, the big example of this was the Long Game. Even as a fan it took me many years to make sense of the Doctor's animosity to Adam, until I realized that the only reason for it was that RTD was indulging some of the most sordid Adric-bashing by proxy to make a big statement about how 'his' Doctor wouldn't tolerate an Adric.

But that's a clear case of RTD thinking fans like him would get it, and despise Adam on principle for having the reminders of Adric (even if they meant nothing to first-time viewers) and not caring if no-one else did. Because if I didn't get why the Doctor was acting that bullying way, how was the casual audience who didn't even know Adric's name, supposed to get it?

Sorry- it disappeared due to me accidentally backing out of the page and pressing the delete button whilst assuming I was re-sending a message that had already gone (I’m using a phone to post here- it’s a pain in the arse, but allows for more prompt responses).

I agree that JNT’s stories did rely more specifically on past adventures, though they at least attempted to justify their involvement through expository dialogue (sometimes in vain). What purpose does the meeting between both the Daleks and Cybermen serve beyond mere fanwank, exactly? You could argue the same for JNT’s stories, but they at least established that said confrontations were founded off prior stories and so come across as more naturalistic to fans (if not the general audience), and the Cybermen’s presence in Attack is a key aspect to the story’s structure and script. If the Daleks and Cybermen hadn’t fought each other, would the script fundamentally alter in any way, given that it mainly revolves around Rose’s family dynamics and her departure? If anything, I’d argue that it deserves more of an indictment due to how superfluous it is.

I never saw that in The Long Game until you mentioned it, and it does actually seem rather apparent from a certain perspective. RTD would indulge in such things elsewhere in Love and Monsters too, where the LINDA gang are basically the closet fringes of Who fandom, and the Absorbaloff is allegedly Ian Levine (although I can’t say I know this for certain).