Who's Doctor Is He Anyway? - 1

Posted by Colin Harvey Apr 10, 2008

Let's get one thing straight; I'm a fan of the new Doctor Who. I'm an admirer of Russell T. Davies. I haven't yet read any of the spin-off books -although I loved Paul Cornell's vignette for the (london) Daily Telegraph at Christmas, "The Hopes and Fears of All The Years"- although I surely will.

But lately, I've begun to hear another side. Not from the crusty old die-hards who resent any change, but the readers and writers of the last twenty years, some of whom may be the collateral damage of the Who renaissance.

To put this into context. By 1989, Doctor Who was an embarrassment to the BBC. It was self-inflicted in that the budgets never allowed the result to match the writer's vision, and the effects were awful - but who's fault was that, BBC? And the declining viewers were because the BBC themselves had moved the show around so often that it was often pitched against shows it had no hope of competing against.

So the decision to kill the show was in some ways the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What no one at the BBC expected was what happened next.