With Doctor Who’s future still in the balance thanks to the grotesque mishandling of the last few years, a new potential hat has entered the ring of people interested in taking on the Timelord’s future adventures.
Word is that Dean Devlin, writer of Stargate and Independence Day, and boss of LA-based production company Electric Company, wants to take over the controls of the TARDIS and honestly, a few years ago I would have been aghast, but after the last few years? Pfft! Why not?
The rumour started after Devlin posted an awful AI video on Facebook (below) of him in the TARDIS with previous Doctors and writing: So BBC is putting Doctor Who out to tender. Do you think they should partner with us at Electric Entertainment?
From there, it’s runamok, with rumours persisting that he wants to – sigh – bring back David Tennant again to get the series back on track.
In fairness, as much as I’ve more than had my fill of Tennant, I can see why this would work given that thanks to bi-regeneration, there’s now a Tennant Doctor retired and living on earth (he even has a TARDIS), so it would be possible to bring Tennant back as this Doctor and ignore the last two seasons of the show and pick up with the Doctor on Earth. And then kill Tennant off and regenerate him. Just sayin’.
Devlin, above, even gave a statement to the Radio Times about wantng to bring back Doctor Who, saying: “It is untrue that we have had negotiations with the BBC. Preliminary or otherwise. When the proper time comes when they are prepared to speak with people, we certainly hope to have a discussion with them.”
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Ok, so he hasn’t talked but when the tender for the series goes out, he fully intends on doing so.
The BBC itself has made it clear that it fully intends on winning the tender for the series – I still don’t really understand this – and as of now, no-one else has expressed interest outiside of Devlin.
Tidbit:
Also throwing his hat in the ring, sort of, is legendary comic writer – Arkham Asylum, Doom Patrol, All-Star Superman and much, much more – Grant Morrison revealed that even though they never entertained him on previous attempts, he might approach the BBC about bring Doctor Who back.
On top of that, he has a great idea for how to tie up all the lose ends in the show as of now, including THAT series final regeneration, and he knows how he would restart the series afresh, while still remaining faithful to the show that went before.
Writing on his substack, Morrison said: “I’ve thought about approaching the BBC again about Doctor Who but they’ve never taken me seriously before, so I’m not convinced they’ll start. It’s probably worth a try.
“As far as being saddled with a lot of dangling threads goes, ‘they’ could just reveal that Gatwa’s Doctor was an unstable bi-regeneration who tried to make the most of his brief mayfly existence but just sort of flickered along, barely there. When he glitched out, he reached for a familiar face and got Billie Piper off the telly. She then tracks down David Tennant’s Doctor, going mad with his earthbound ordinary life round at Donna’s. He can’t stop attracting terrifying, vengeful enemies from space so he’s on the run when they meet – and fuse back together with a lovely Rose and the Doctor scene to wrap the whole RTD era in a neat bow, while the Doctor’s understanding family cheer them on – then it all goes wrong – and new-new-Who picks up from there with nary a backward glance.
“You don’t even need to show any of that – but it’s all there for a Big Finish.
“I would open cold as if the show is new. Strange and eccentric young ‘inventor’, amnesiac, with an odd TARDIS machine that can go anywhere and is bigger on the inside. That’s all you need to get started.”
In related news, former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, left, has assured fans that the series “will be back, and it will be good”.
Moffat, who oversaw the show during Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi’s eras, seemed to also be hinting that, moving forward, whover oversees the series needs to remember that their job is not to preach or lecture people (IYKYK) but to entertain: “They never mention the word entertainment, which is the minimum condition of anything you write. Not theme, which some poor sods ask me about, and not subtext. Oh, do me a favour. It’s entertainment. That’s all you’re doing.”
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Driving the point home further, he added that people want to watch Doctor Who to escape the world around them, not continue to have current issues hammered home all the time: “When people come home at night to watch a TV show or go to the cinema to watch a movie or the theatre, that’s all they’re going for. They’re not going there for your thoughts on things. They’re not wanting to decode the inner mystery of it. They want you to provide approximately 90 minutes of entertainment so they can go to a restaurant and have a nice time. That’s it.
“The simple rule is every sentence has to make you want to read the next sentence. All the words should lean forward. That’s what you’re doing. You’re trying not to bore people.”
Truer words were never, as they say, spoken.
As for who will be taking over, Moffat insists he has no insider information but he’s confident it will be a new team and they will have to steep themselves in the lore of that world and then decide what sort of series they want to make: “They need a moment to sit back and say, okay, what’s it going to be this time? Who’s it going to be this time? What sort of show is it going to be?”
He goes on: “You’ve got all of Doctor Who, all of it, on your iPhone. You can sit and watch anything that we haven’t accidentally lost, and you’ll be fine. Just watch it all end to end and give them time to get them going. But it will be back and it will be good.”
So, yeah, that’s the state of Doctor Who. Well done, everyone.
Thoughts? I know you have them and I wanna hear ’em all!
Check out Devlin’s AI video:
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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