Could an American write Doctor Who? - Babylon 5 creator throws hat in the ring

[Necropolitan]

And this has been a fault of the rebooted series from the start. Everything is rushed and paper-thin. Wasn't the case for the classic series.

Exactly.

In Classic Who the locations felt lived-in, even when they were just quarries.

Characters felt like they had lives outside of the scenes they were in.

And The Doctor wasn't the most important person in all of existence who everyone hated, feared, and/or loved, they were just a clever and knowledgeable person who showed up and tried to help.

The last two seasons gave us a soulless patchwork abomination of a vanity project where good storytelling is sacrificed for nonsensical 'twists' that are never properly foreshadowed, failed messaging, endless nostalgia-baiting that ruined Classic characters, and The Doctor getting wins handed to him by luck.

 

[Morrus]

The last two seasons gave us a soulless patchwork abomination of a vanity project where good storytelling is sacrificed for nonsensical 'twists' that are never properly foreshadowed, failed messaging, endless nostalgia-baiting that ruined Classic characters, and The Doctor getting wins handed to him by luck.

Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel!

 

[ART!]

Exactly.

In Classic Who the locations felt lived-in, even when they were just quarries.

Characters felt like they had lives outside of the scenes they were in.

And The Doctor wasn't the most important person in all of existence who everyone hated, feared, and/or loved, they were just a clever and knowledgeable person who showed up and tried to help.

The last two seasons gave us a soulless patchwork abomination of a vanity project where good storytelling is sacrificed for nonsensical 'twists' that are never properly foreshadowed, failed messaging, endless nostalgia-baiting that ruined Classic characters, and The Doctor getting wins handed to him by luck.

I don't feel that strongly about it, but I kind of agree, so I get what your saying and why. I'd love to see a showrunner take a modern bindge-streaming approach to Who, with a single story per season and thus lots of time to explore the characters, time period, alien world, etc. It wouldn't have to stay on one planet or space station or time period the whole season, but the story would be a single 8-episode (or whatever) story.

I'm watching classic Who for the first time, and the 6-10 parters get awfully ropey, but a lot of that is because of the still-prevalent traditions of adventure serials and the like. I'm in Tom Baker's second season now, and the 4-parters are much tighter.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The other benefit of doing one story per season is you only need one lot of sets, one set of costumes, etc. So it’s cheaper than jumping to a new world every episode.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I don't feel that strongly about it, but I kind of agree, so I get what your saying and why. I'd love to see a showrunner take a modern bindge-streaming approach to Who, with a single story per season and thus lots of time to explore the characters, time period, alien world, etc. It wouldn't have to stay on one planet or space station or time period the whole season, but the story would be a single 8-episode (or whatever) story.

I'm watching classic Who for the first time, and the 6-10 parters get awfully ropey, but a lot of that is because of the still-prevalent traditions of adventure serials and the like. I'm in Tom Baker's second season now, and the 4-parters are much tighter.

It's a fairly common Britishism to do two-parters. essentially making movies out of television. IDK if I think that Dr Who is a good fit for single-season arcs, but it absolutely is for two-parters. Perhaps if they extended that to three, or even four-parters, they could do just three stories per series/season, and save on costumes and ideas, and give everything more time to breathe. (And only greenlight the best story pitches from the writers' room).

It's not like the Doctor can't still be high-energy!

And we all know that the BBC likes to save money! (In fact, it seems that they don't want to pay to make the show without a money-partner, and it looks like Disney might have lost interest, which is why the whole thing is up in the air).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Dalek Master Plan ran for 12 episodes.

 

[jian]

Add my vote to “I’d like to see some old-Who multi-parters with more character continuity and not a different planet every episode.”

 

[Staffan]

I don't feel that strongly about it, but I kind of agree, so I get what your saying and why. I'd love to see a showrunner take a modern bindge-streaming approach to Who, with a single story per season and thus lots of time to explore the characters, time period, alien world, etc. It wouldn't have to stay on one planet or space station or time period the whole season, but the story would be a single 8-episode (or whatever) story.

They kind of did that with the 13th Doctor, and the results were... not great. That probably had a lot to do with Covid though.

I have little to no connection to classic Doctor Who, having started with the 2005 reboot, but I like having variety in the stories. I don't mind two-parters (which essentially have as much story as the classic 4-parters) or even three-parters, but I wouldn't want a whole season spent in one place. Particularly not when the "lifespan" of a Doctor is only about three seasons, tops. Do you really want a Doctor that only has three stories?

If I were in charge, I'd go to seasons of about 20-25 episodes, with a mix of one-shots and two-parters, and maybe a three-parter. I don't think I'd build up a season-long mystery or anything like that, but maybe have a thread that shows up in every other or every third story which builds up to something in season 2.

 

[ART!]

I don't mind two-parters (which essentially have as much story as the classic 4-parters) or even three-parters, but I wouldn't want a whole season spent in one place. Particularly not when the "lifespan" of a Doctor is only about three seasons, tops. Do you really want a Doctor that only has three stories?

This is a good point.

I was going to suggest the option of a Sherlock-like approach, with three or four 1.5-hour episodes/movies per season, but that would have the same problem.

 

[Necropolitan]

I'd love to see a showrunner take a modern bindge-streaming approach to Who, with a single story per season and thus lots of time to explore the characters, time period, alien world, etc. It wouldn't have to stay on one planet or space station or time period the whole season, but the story would be a single 8-episode (or whatever) story.

That's what the show The Librarians did.

It was mainly episodic, but each season had an overarching plot and each episode usually contributed ideas/objects to solving the problem in the season finale.

It was a fantasy-science show as opposed to how Doctor Who is usually a science-fantasy show (the past 2 seasons being a major exception), but the principles are the same.

They kind of did that with the 13th Doctor, and the results were... not great. That probably had a lot to do with Covid though.

Chibnall had the right idea in having a universe-destroying threat be an entire season which took numerous steps to defeat instead of a single episode multiples times a season the way RTD did.

You don't even need to threaten the world, The Happiness Patrol came down to The Doctor saving a few dozen people at most and it still felt meaningful.

It managed to make this guy feel legitimately menacing!