TV is a complicated business. There is no one clear, definitive reason why Doctor Who isn’t made anymore. What follows is merely my perspective on the situation, cobbled together from facts and hearsay that I’ve picked up in my years as a Who fan.
Of course, twenty-six seasons is a good innings for any TV show. But if you’re anything like me, you’re clamoring for new episodes anyway. There’s something about the concept of Doctor Who that suggests it could go on forever. Why should the voyages of a hero, who can go anywhere at any time and do anything, ever end?
However, the movie was not to be. The appearance of Star Wars in 1977 propelled science fiction into a higher budget bracket. No longer would model spaceships on strings and rubber aliens suffice. The public now expected all sci-fi productions to be glossy and expensive like George Lucas’ space opera. Tom Baker took one look at Star Wars, decided that a Doctor Who movie could never compete, and stopped working on his script. Televised Doctor Who was put under enormous pressure to “update” its look in keeping with the raised expectations of its audience, but the show’s small BBC budget only allowed for minor, gradual improvements in production values. By the time The Five Doctors came out in 1983, newspaper critics were wondering why a cheap show like Doctor Who was surviving in an era of huge cinema blockbusters like Star Wars and Alien.
It didn’t survive for that much longer.
Star Wars sounded the death knell not only for Doctor Who, but for intelligent science fiction in general. Nowadays, the thoughtful sci-fi epics of the past, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Forbidden Planet, and Doctor Who have been replaced by mindless special effects extravaganzas like Starship Troopers and Wing Commander that borrow the superficial gloss of Star Wars, but none of its deeper symbolism. I could argue that movies in general, and not just sci-fi films, have suffered an enormous brain drain since Star Wars debuted – but that’s the subject for another essay on another web site! Anyway, Doctor Who, like the trooper that it was, held on until 1989, when the tide of expensive sci-fi finally managed to drown it out.
However, expensive competition was only one cause of the Doctor's downfall...
For Season Nineteen, Nathan-Turner cast the popular young TV star Peter Davison to play the Doctor, and he wisely decided to commission action-oriented scripts like Earthshock to compliment “deeper” stories like Kinda. The show’s ratings made a significant recovery, and remained healthy throughout Davison’s tenure. When Davison departed from the role after three seasons, Nathan-Turner cast Colin Baker as the new, Sixth Doctor. It was a controversial decision. To this day, fans blame Nathan-Turner and Colin Baker for destroying the show’s audience base, but the reality of the situation is somewhat more complicated than this perspective suggests.
Colin Baker’s first season had decent ratings, and a cursory glance at Doctor Who Magazines of the period indicates that fans had an initially positive reaction to his portrayal of the Doctor. Newspaper critics still enjoyed the show, and even though Season 22 was by no means inspired, it was certainly solid entertainment. The real bad guy, the person who was obviously responsible for the downturn in the Doctor’s fortunes at this time, was Michael Grade, not Colin Baker or John Nathan-Turner.
After becoming a BBC Controller in the mid-1980s, Grade quickly targeted programs that he thought couldn’t compete in a modern TV market. Before becoming Controller, he had expressed a dislike for Doctor Who and various other “old” shows that cluttered up the BBC’s schedule. Using complaints that Doctor Who was too violent for kids as an excuse, Grade temporarily yanked the show off the air and delayed the filming of Season 23 for about a year and a half. Entertainment writers in the press roundly blasted Grade, siding with the show’s disappointed fans.
The reason why Grade came under so much fire was because nobody understood his decision. The violence in Doctor Who had been under attack since the ’60s, but such complaints had always been a minority voice (some of Who’s most “violent” adventures, such as The Dalek Invasion of Earth and Pyramids of Mars, were among its most highly rated and most praised episodes). The criticisms were mostly unfounded, in my opinion – you can read my comments about the violence in the show here.
Grade claimed that the show would be extensively re-tooled during its hiatus, but for all his big talk, he actually gave the production team very few instructions for changing the show’s format. Sidney Newman, the creator of Doctor Who, approached Grade with plans for revitalizing the series by bringing it closer to its roots. Newman also requested that he be listed in Doctor Who’s credits as the show’s creator. Grade both ignored Newman’s suggestions about the show and refused to put his name in the credits.
Instead of being revitalized during its absence, Doctor Who had its budget cut (which it really didn’t need!), and had its number of episodes per season sliced nearly in half. Grade forbade the production team from filming episodes with the Daleks, since he associated them with excessively violent stories. Stripped of money and its most famous villains, and stuck in a highly competitive time slot, Doctor Who was poised for a fall.
Did Grade have a point about Doctor Who? Maybe, but I think it’s safe to say that he was a bad Controller who acted more from his own interests than public opinion. He pulled Dallas off the air, which was another unpopular decision, and he tried to cancel Blackadder after one season. He was eventually persuaded to let Blackadder continue, but he hacked apart that show’s budget too, which is why in Blackadder II Rowan Atkinson can spit from one end of Queen Elizabeth’s throne room to the other without even straining his throat. Since Blackadder is the BBC’s most successful program domestically, and Doctor Who has traditionally been its most successful program internationally, I think it’s safe to say that Grade’s decisions were ill-considered.
Eric Saward, the show’s script editor, finished Holmes’ draft of Time Inc., but John Nathan-Turner didn’t like Saward’s grim and ambiguous ending. In a fit of pique, Saward quit and threatened to sue the BBC if they incorporated any aspects of his script into the broadcast episode. Quickly running out of time and money, Nathan-Turner was forced to put the unfinished scripts in a cab and sent them to writers Pip and Jane Baker for an emergency rewrite. The Bakers managed to finish it, but the final result – the denouement of an entire season – wound up being a muddled mess that bore the marks of three frazzled writers with wildly different styles and attitudes.
Thanks to budget cuts, poor scripting, a bad time slot, and the damaging hiatus, Season 23 was a bomb. Colin Baker was blamed, and fired by BBC executives. He was asked to return six months later to film a regeneration scene, but he declined. Colin resented his firing, and he didn’t want to commit to filming a scene six months in advance when he could easily have another, better paying job by then. I can’t blame him, really.
Faced with the task of recasting the Doctor – again – the weary John Nathan-Turner picked a virtually unknown actor, Sylvester McCoy. In retrospect, it was a bad decision. Contemporary newspapers zeroed in on McCoy’s “nobody” status, lampooning him with clever headlines like “Doctor Who?” Since the show was in such serious ratings trouble, Nathan-Turner should have made a bolder casting decision; he could have made the Doctor a woman, or he might’ve recast one of the previous Doctors in order to reel in their departed audiences (Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker would’ve, in my opinion, doubled the show’s ratings overnight).
McCoy wound up being a fan favorite, but his intense, psychological approach to the role was rejected by TV critics and the general public alike. I have a love-hate relationship with McCoy myself; when he discusses his problems with the café counterman in Remembrance of the Daleks I love him; I love him in Ghost Light when he confronts Ace about her fears; but his forced “mysterious” act and his overacting can be downright embarrassing.
To make matters worse, the show’s scripts became highly allegorical and even grotesque during McCoy’s run (1987-1989). Some of his episodes were legitimately deep, but they were also obscure, and they required several re-viewings to be adequately understood. The casual audience base collapsed. Critics rebelled against the excesses of episodes like The Happiness Patrol. They loathed Ace for being too obnoxious (she predated the Cockney revolution in British entertainment by a few years), they blasted McCoy for being too weird, and they attacked the show’s special effects for not updating with the times. Doctor Who had lost its public sympathy.
The show petered out in 1989, after its all-time most confusing season. Citing ratings that, by this point, really were bad, the BBC pulled the plug.
The BBC hoarded their rights to the program, supposedly rejecting all comers who wanted to buy Doctor Who. To keep the flame alive, the Beeb produced a brief 30th anniversary special in 1993 called Dimensions in Time, bringing the Doctor back after a 4-year absence. This mini-adventure was broadcast as part of the Children in Need charity telethon. The ratings, and the charitable donations, were surprisingly high.
Dimensions in Time was resented by fans, however; they saw it as a quick, cheap way for the BBC to keep Doctor Who on life support without really committing to it. Fans had expected a bigger, better anniversary special. In fact, there had been a push within the Beeb to make a $1 million, full-length 30th anniversary episode called The Dark Dimension (a big budget by BBC standards!). Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy were contacted about the project, and were sent scripts. Brian Blessed was to star as the villain Hawkspur (I love these names, don’t you?), and he was all set to command hordes of Daleks and Cybermen. However, the BBC abruptly pulled the plug on The Dark Dimension, and fans had to be content with Dimensions in Time.
The Dark Dimension didn’t fly for a number of reasons. Reason number one was the script. Tom Baker was to dominate the entire episode, so the other Doctors were offended by their meager roles, and rightfully so (I’ve read extracts from the script; it’s no masterpiece, believe me, and everyone but Tom does little more than wave at the camera). Reason number two was that an even bigger, even grander return for Doctor Who was being planned. Philip Segal, a producer who spearheaded some of Steven Spielburg’s TV efforts, had contacted the BBC and proposed a new Doctor Who series to be made with American financial backing. This is how, incidentally, Spielburg’s name got connected with Who during the 1990s. Apparently, he had little personal influence on the project, although he did say that Doctor Who looked silly to him, and suggested that it be made into a comedy. You can’t impress them all, I suppose.
Segal recommended that the BBC cancel The Dark Dimension and focus its attention on his project instead. The Beeb agreed.
Despite the competition on other networks, Doctor Who wound up being one of the highest-rated FOX programs of the week. But that didn’t mean much; FOX is not one of the major three American networks, and aside from The Simpsons and The X-Files its boasts very few popular programs. Doctor Who had a big network budget, and it simply didn’t recoup its cost for the modest FOX. It’s a shame, really, because CBS was also rumored to be interested in the TV Movie, and had the movie been broadcast on that network, it would’ve automatically had millions more viewers.
Doctor Who was, oddly enough, the most widely videotaped program of the week in America, which is a sign that people were interested. Simply put, thousands of people taped the TV Movie while they watched something else, but sadly this didn’t count towards Doctor Who’s ratings and therefore didn’t boost its chart position.
FOX decided not to sponsor a Doctor Who series before the TV movie was ever broadcast in England; the party was over before it had even begun. In Britain as well as in America, the TV Movie was put up against heavy competition on other networks. But Doctor Who actually triumphed in its native country and was the highest-rated drama program of the week, clocking in at #9 on the UK charts (as opposed to #75 in America). Its broadcast was accompanied by a merchandizing bonanza that must’ve made a pretty penny for the BBC. In Britain, Doctor Who’s return was front-page news, an entertainment event. In America, it was so under-publicized that I almost missed it. Yet the Americans – FOX and Universal jointly – paid about 80% of the film’s cost. Something was wrong with this equation.
Though it was highly rated, the TV Movie met with mixed reviews in the UK. Some critics praised it, rejoicing in a “high-tech and adult Doctor Who,” while others lamented that, “the BBC has sold our dear old Time Lord down the Mississippi!” In the final analysis, the film wasn’t that successful, because it produced no real outcry to bring the Doctor back. In fact, the TV Movie might’ve even damaged the show’s future prospects; some Brits hated it so much that they took it as evidence that Doctor Who could never be adapted to a modern, big-budget format.
Print, more than any other medium, has kept the Doctor alive past his television demise. He currently has what is the biggest series of books of all time, or so I’ve heard – I believe he’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for that. He’s also thriving on audio. He still inspires commercials, comedy routines, and endless pop-culture references. But he’s not on the air.
It took a while for the dust to settle after the TV Movie’s failure. Many BBC executives resented being bullied by the American co-producers, and they were unhappy with what they considered an overly dark and violent finished product (on its initial U.K. broadcast, the TV Movie’s violent content was heavily edited). A lot of these executives became convinced that Doctor Who was no longer a viable product, that its golden days had ended with the departure of Tom Baker.
The golden days of British television in general seem to be over. England’s native shows have been buried under the stream of American imports. Gone are the days when Fawlty Towers, Doctor Who, and Blackadder were the most talked-about shows in Britain. Nowadays Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Seinfeld have taken root on the major British networks (Britain’s current top sci-fi show, Red Dwarf, is regularly beaten in the ratings by these programs). The general perception among BBC executives is that Doctor Who can no longer succeed as a “low-budget enterprise” while glossy foreign entertainment rules the market.
Yet, slowly but surely, Doctor Who has started to accumulate posthumous awards and accolades. The TV Movie won the Saturn Award for the best televised sci-fi of the year. Doctor Who was hailed as the best sci-fi show ever made by SFX magazine. Okay, so it’s good science fiction – we all knew that – but more surprisingly, Doctor Who has been recognized as good drama. In a massive phone-in poll, Who was voted the best BBC drama of all time. More recently, the British Film Institute ranked the “seemingly indestructible” Doctor Who as the third greatest British TV show, beating out I, Claudius, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Blackadder, Inspector Morse, Brideshead Revisited, and even the Teletubbies! Clearly, the members of the BFI felt that I, Claudius didn’t have enough Silurians in it…
Doctor Who got a swarm of votes to be placed on a special millenium stamp, beating out every other British TV show for that particular honor. And in yet another recent national poll, the Doctor was ranked among the top 10 TV characters of all time. Great! Now, where the hell is he? All of these awards are nice and shiny, but sadly posthumous.
For months, rumors have circulated that the BBC has finally wised up and decided to make Doctor Who again. For a while, these rumors revolved around a potential movie. I personally emailed the Beeb about a year ago and asked them, very politely, to make more Doctor Who (it was a boring day, I had nothing better to do!). A nice woman wrote me back and assured me that a movie was in the works. This was probably a reference to the ill-fated Laurence Fishburne Doctor Who movie that was proposed by Impact Films. Impact had already made a bloody sci-fi movie called Event Horizon that was obviously patterned after Who, and its executives wanted to actually buy the Doctor Who name for its next project. However, the BBC took one look at Impact’s blood- and action-drenched script and cancelled the project. I’m actually glad; the Beeb respected Doctor Who enough to prevent its exploitation.
Like a lot of fans, I was dismayed by this talk of a movie. I feared that a $75 million Hollywood treatment of the Doctor would distort Doctor Who’s roots in good drama even more than the $5 million TV Movie did (I realize that there are some good, bid-budget science fiction movies – but they all came out twenty years ago! Nowadays they’re all rubbish). What I wanted instead was a new series.
The latest rumors indicate that the BBC has dropped the idea of making a film and is, indeed, exploring the possibility of a small-screen return for the Doctor. At this point, I’ve heard so much gossip that I have little faith in this talk, but it’s a step in the right direction if it’s true. In a recent online survey, the BBC asked whether Doctor Who would thrive in a modern TV environment, or if it would just look silly and dated. Hundreds of people submitted their comments – dwarfing the other surveys that the BBC was conducting – and just about everyone argued that Doctor Who needed to come back.
Doctor Who’s resurrection would be simpler than the BBC thinks. Computer technology has made special effects simpler and cheaper to achieve. Babylon 5 featured space battles and cosmic vistas that put a lot of cinema special effects to shame – and all on a shoestring budget just a few notches above Doctor Who’s own. If the BBC brought Who back, they would only need to marginally increase its 1989 budget to create a far glossier, more modern-looking show.
With a charismatic star and good scripts, the show will always succeed no matter what its budget may be – the original Doctor Who is, after all, one of the most successful TV programs of all time despite its no-frills production values. And I think that the Doctor’s return is almost essential to counteract the tide of rude comedies and mean-spirited game shows that are clogging up the airwaves now. His optimistic worldview and his heroism would make a nice change of pace in today’s cynical atmosphere. As Paul McGann once said, Doctor Who should be on the air “as long as there’s television.” Well said, Paul – and you aren’t even a fan.
The Late ’70s: Blame Star Wars
In order to understand the good Doctor’s present predicament, we have to go back to the time when he was last a popular phenomenon, which is, I’m sad to say, about the time of my birth! Thanks to Tom Baker’s zany charisma, Doctor Who hit the peak of its popularity during the 1970s, eclipsing even its successes of the early ’60s. In 1979, Destiny of the Daleks and City of Death garnered massive ratings in the neighborhood of 15 million viewers. A few years earlier, there had been talk of a Doctor Who movie to be written by Baker himself called Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, which, if you believe the gossip, would’ve starred Vincent Price as Satan and Twiggy as the Doctor’s companion.
The Early and Middle ’80s: Michael Grade and the Hiatus of Death
John Nathan-Turner became the producer of Doctor Who in 1980, shortly after the series hit its ratings peak. Nathan-Turner and script editor Christopher H. Bidmead were distressed with the comical, slapstick approach to the show that had been the hallmark of their predecessors, Graham Williams and Douglas Adams (who wrote the famous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). They decided to make Doctor Who more “serious,” and to that end they filled the scripts with technical jargon and forced Tom Baker to downplay his performance. The result was Season Eighteen, one of the smartest, most dramatic seasons of the show, and a complete ratings failure. Tom Baker ended his seven-year reign as the Doctor on what was arguably his lowest note.
The Late ’80s: Doctor Who?
Doctor Who returned from its 18-month hiatus in 1986 with Colin Baker’s second and final season, a series of linked stories collectively called The Trail of a Time Lord. Because all of the episodes were connected, it must’ve been difficult for casual viewers to follow the thread of the plot, and the ratings suffered accordingly. Doctor Who’s most acclaimed writer, Robert Holmes, was tapped to write the first and last episodes of the season, but sadly he died halfway through writing his scripts for Time Inc. (a.k.a. The Ultimate Foe), the season’s concluding story. No new talents ever emerged to take Holmes’ place as the top Doctor Who scriptwriter. Holmes’ unique vision for the show was lost, and his artful blends of comedy and horror never reappeared. Doctor Who has never recovered from his death.
The Early ’90s: The Dark Dimension and Other Forms of Limbo...
Lots of rumors circulated about Doctor Who after its cancellation. Apparently, Terry Nation and Victor Pemberton both made bids to buy the show from the BBC, claiming to be backed by big American corporations (Disney’s name was even kicked around for a while). Verity Lambert, Doctor Who’s first producer, had her own big-budget production company at this time, Cinema Verity. She made an effort to buy the show, and made some noise about recasting Jon Pertwee in the role. When I think about how great this might’ve been, I get really damn annoyed that the BBC turned her down!
1996: Doctor Who Returns...for about 85 minutes
Segal’s efforts culminated in the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie, a co-production between Universal television, the BBC, and the FOX network. Unfortunately, with three production companies thrown into the mix, the project soon got bogged down in development hell. FOX insisted on casting a U.S.-based actor as the Doctor; Segal and the BBC pushed for Paul McGann. FOX objected to the use of the sonic screwdriver (which sounded too cheesy for them) and even the show’s distinctive theme song; Segal and the BBC resisted. FOX pushed for Eric Roberts to play the Master; Segal and the BBC didn’t want him. FOX actually got its way that time, and Roberts wound up playing the role, beating out some more attractive alternatives like Leonard Nimoy.
Up to the Present: The Undead TV Show
Doctor Who has not died quietly. Before and after the TV Movie, fans took to their camcorders and started making their own thinly-veiled tributes to the show. Within a few years, Colin Baker was appearing as the suspiciously Doctor-like Stranger, and more recently Sylvester McCoy recorded a series of audio adventures as “The Professor.” Fans obtained the rights to some of the show’s villains and started making original adventures starring the Sontarans, the Yeti, and the Rani. Even the companions were tapped to appear in these productions, and new stories were filmed with the Brigadier, Sarah Jane, and Victoria. However, these productions were strictly underground, and they didn’t contain the three hallmarks of televised Doctor Who; the TARDIS, the Daleks, and the Doctor himself.