ARTICLE: How DWM Predicted Doctor Who Could Come Back in 2002 - Were They Right?

Cast your mind back (if you're old enough!) to a time before Doctor Who was brought back to life by Russell T Davies, after a 16-year hiatus, in 2005. That period has since become known by fans as The Wilderness Years, that wedge of time between Season 26 ending in December 1989 and Rose debuting in March 2005. It was a time packed with Doctor Who books, comics, audios, toys and even a 90-minute TV movie... but no new series proper.

In its Christmas 2001 issue, Doctor Who Magazine decided to ask some pertinent questions about the practicalities and probabilities of our beloved programme ever getting back onto TV. In an article called "When's He Coming Back?" (hindsight makes that pronoun stick out!), writer Jonathan Blum asked 50 questions of a panel of pundits who worked in TV and media, to find out whether Doctor Who really could still cut it in the year 2002. Looking back, some of the panel's answers are amusingly wide of the mark, as well as fascinatingly prescient. So let's look back at what was asked, what was said, and whether anybody got it right...

So What Really Are the Chances of Doctor Who Coming Back to TV?

Jonathan Blum

Blum said that there were more positive voices in the industry than in previous years when it came to pondering the Doctor's return. Dan Freedman, who in 2001 had recently produced BBC Online's Death Comes to Time webcast, saw it as almost a "necessity that it come back to the BBC now". Freedman believed that with the recent success of American genre shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Farscape, it was only a matter of time until Britain produced its own successful sci-fi series.

However, beating down Freedman's positivity with a shitty stick was Matt Jones, known at the time as script editor on Russell T Davies' Queer As Folk, and a future Doctor Who writer himself (The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit). Jones didn't see the BBC commissioning anything as adventurous as sci-fi: "I don't think the BBC see Doctor Who as comparable with, say, Pride and Prejudice, and therefore are very unlikely to spend that much money on it."

Gareth Roberts and Mark Gatiss, both future Doctor Who writers themselves, believed that if Doctor Who was ever to return, it would have to be packaged as a brand new product, rather than a continuation of the old. "It's not a matter of Doctor Who coming back into production, but rather selling it to the BBC and the audience from scratch," said Roberts, with Gatiss adding: "It's much healthier to think of Doctor Who as a new programme rather than 'coming back'."

In the end, Rose was a soft reboot of the series as we knew it, not contradicting the past but not continuing where it left off either. It would be foolish of the BBC not to use the fondness the British public had for the series in trying to reintroduce it to new viewers, so Roberts and Gatiss were a little wide of the mark when they believed the slate would have to be wiped clean. Gatiss was right, however, when he said "it would take a sympathetic ear. There seems to be a general sympathy at the BBC towards bringing it back, but also a lot of fear of the baggage that they assume comes with it."

How Much Would It Cost?

When Doctor Who came back in 2005, it was strongly believed it cost an average of £1 million per episode to make, with the overall season budget distributed according to each episode's needs (eg, The End of the World, which was CGI and prosthetics heavy, cost more to make than Boom Town, which had minimal effects and reused another story's monster). TV execs are notoriously circumspect when it comes to how much money they're given. Back in 2001, Dan Freedman estimated that a story like 1977's Horror of Fang Rock - studio-bound, few sets, period props from stock, and a small cast - would still cost "at least £250,000 per half-hour" (around £750,000 for the 90-minute story).

Matt Jones

Matt Jones stated that, in 2001, an hour of Earthbound mainstream drama cost around £700,000 to make, while a more elaborate drama involving period pieces or alien worlds might cost up to £900,000. So even if something as small-scale as Horror of Fang Rock would be a major expense, was there any hope of more elaborate stories than that? It was suggested that reusing sets, and filming more on location so the building of new sets was restricted, may be a way forward (it had proven a success for series such as Star Trek). And that's exactly what Russell T Davies did with Series 1, reusing locations in and around South Wales, and built sets such as Platform 1 and monsters such as the Slitheen to maximise value for money (classic Who also did this occasionally, in Seasons 12, 23 and 24).

One of the biggest expenses for modern-day sci-fi shows is CGI, and Doctor Who would need to compete with the big boys, using computer graphics, if it was going to get noticed and survive. But Gareth Roberts disagreed: "You don't need CGI, that's a silly myth. You could take a deliberate decision to do Doctor Who as an atmospheric, character-led series with creepy moments rather than spectacular ones, which would bring the costs right down. Better scripts than Doctor Who ever had are what you really need."

This from the man who wrote stories for the new series featuring giant CGI wasps, alien hordes swirling around Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and a swathe of metallic stingrays soaring over a desert planet!

What Kind of Stories Would We Get?

Russell T Davies wanted to showcase the breadth of what the Doctor Who format could offer, and in Series 1 established the template of modern-day, futuristic and period, as adopted way back in 1963 by the very first production team. Jonathan Blum suggested that stories in the vein of 1976's The Seeds of Doom would be "decent budget-savers", in that studio sets could be restricted to a few specialised rooms, and other interiors could be shot on location. He did add that the night filming might be an issue, as cast and crew are paid 50% more to work at night, but that didn't stop Series 1 filming after dark for stories such as The Empty Child and The Christmas Invasion.

As mentioned earlier, one way to cut costs would be to reuse standing sets (as Season 12 did with Nerva Beacon, for example), and this is something the new series did adopt. Despite this, Matt Jones (a member of the panel turning out to be much more pessimistic than most!) said the recycling of sets would be "unlikely, and very tacky". Blum also mentions the recycling of monsters in that once an alien is built individually, it's easy to "cut-and-paste them repeatedly into a scene". I'm sure CGI isn't quite that straightforward, but the new series did employ this idea by reusing the Slitheen across the first series.

Would We Still Have Cliffhangers?

Andrew Pixley

"The shape of TV will no longer accept a half-hour serial format," stated Doctor Who researcher Andrew Pixley. "It doesn't exist." And to be fair, he wasn't wrong, because while half-hour drama has continued to get made, it's rarely serialised. Anthology series such as Inside No 9 have bucked the trend, as did the BBC's serialisation of Bleak House in 2005, but as a rule, it's hard to find half-hour drama for adults anywhere on terrestrial or streamed TV.

Doctor Who would come back as 45-minute stand-alone episodes in 2005, but in 2001 Mark Gatiss was dead against this format: "I find it incredible that no-one has noticed that the half-hour serial format is more popular than ever! They're called soaps, and they almost always end in a cliffhanger of sorts. Doctor Who shouldn't be looked at as a rolling soap format obviously, but in terms of a serial spreading over six months of the year in half-hour episodes it's still entirely viable. I really don't think 50-minute episodes suit it."

This strong opinion hasn't aged well, but even at the time it was obvious that the serialised soap format only worked because it had the same finite amount of characters appearing in the same location with ongoing storylines stripped across episodes several times a week. Gatiss was still thinking of Doctor Who as an adventure series across different times and places, with different characters and storylines, shown once a week for 30 minutes. That simply would not have worked.

However, fans still to this day rue the loss of the regular cliffhanger, but it was made up for in some ways by the use of cold open cliffhangers, and continuing to use multi-part stories in two, and sometimes more, episodes (Aliens of London/ World War Three, or The Long Game/ Bad Wolf/ The Parting of the Ways).

How Much Time Would It Take?

A production relying on location filming takes longer to make than one shooting principally on indoor sets, as it takes more time to get cast and crew from A to B out in the wild than it does on enclosed studio floors. Script writer Paul Cornell revealed that in 2001, it took 12 days to make a location-heavy hour of medical drama Casualty. Back in 1989, it took 17 days to film the four-part The Curse of Fenric entirely on location, and 13 days to film the three-parter Survival.

Overall, it took exactly four months to film Season 26's 14x25-minute episodes (equating to just shy of six hours of footage). In 2004/05 it took nine months to shoot Series 1's 13x45-minute episodes (equating to almost 10 hours of footage). This shows that it takes longer to make modern Doctor Who, or maybe they're just given more time to do it in than poor old John Nathan-Turner was back in the 1980s!

In 2004/05 it took nine months to make Series 1 of Doctor Who (13 episodes). In 2017/18 it took just over nine months to make Series 11 plus the festive special (11 episodes). It looks like things are getting harder...

How Big an Audience Would It Need?

Mark Gatiss

Mark Gatiss's rose-tinted glasses cast him back to the 1970s, when "the series' old ratings could only be dreamed of now by broadcasters. Ten million! Just imagine!"

He really had no idea, did he? Although to be fair, nobody expected Doctor Who to reach the dizzying heights of popularity that it did in the Noughties. The very first episode of the relaunch, Rose, was seen by 10.8m people, with the rest of the series floating between 7m-9m, and Audience Appreciation figures as high as 89. I doubt anybody was expecting figures like that! A figure of 89 would be closer to the programme's chart position than its AI score in the 1980s.

Average ratings of 9m were seen as a significant success for drama in 2001, while ratings of around 5m would still get your series renewed. In terms of audience share, Matt Jones said the BBC aimed for at least 33% of the audience. "Get 35% and the champagne flows!" he said. Rose scored an audience share of 44.8%, while the rest of Series 1 never scored lower than 35.7%, which in Matt Jones's terms was a champagne supernova. In fact, the first time the new series ever dipped below Jones's industry target of one-third was Silence in the Library (27.7%), but that had an excuse as it was scheduled up against the final of ITV1's Britain's Got Talent.

It was clear that popular success such as this was inconceivable to the panel of pundits in 2001, with Andrew Pixley saying: "The trouble with Doctor Who is that the UK public perceives it as an old property, and are unlikely to tune in repeatedly unless it is something very special." It was removing the stigma of being an "old property" that was key to a relaunch, added Gareth Roberts: "It must be made to seem fresh and understandable to as broad an audience as possible." And that's exactly what Russell T Davies did!

How Much Doctor Who Would We Get in One Go?

Probably a lot less than we used to, opined Blum, who suggested the BBC would commission a one-off pilot (in the vein of the TV movie and Death Comes to Time) before an entire series. "Once they've got the go-ahead," he added, "most series these days consist of just six or seven hour-long episodes."

Mark Gatiss was once again vociferous in his demands, claiming that a late-80s style season length would be pointless: "Long seasons were key to Doctor Who's success. I really think that if you were only talking about 14 weeks a year again you might as well not bother. People need to get used to characters in order to love them." The audience pretty much fell in love with Eccleston and Piper after one week, it might be argued! And we did end up with 14 episodes a year; just not how Gatiss was imagining them!

In Order to be an International Success Today, What Qualities Would a New Series Need?

Anthony
Utley

Answering this question was Anthony Utley, director of television distribution for BBC Worldwide at the time. He claimed it would have to be four movie-length adventures, or six to eight hour-long episodes, with at least two series in the can before overseas sales could start to take off. "A continuing series, where we can count on a number of hours per year, is most desirable," he added. And that's exactly what the BBC did for four solid years, producing a 13-part series and a festive special in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. By 2009, Doctor Who was big enough to sell any number it chose.

"Self-contained stories would work best," added Utley. "Perhaps using the traditional cliffhanger as a teaser for the next story, rather than breaking up the narrative into shorter episodes. As long as the plots and characters were strong and accessible to a mainstream audience, it could succeed. Either that, or have a 13-part series pitched specifically at the children's/ family market, more in the style of The Demon Headmaster."

Utley knew exactly what would work, and Russell T Davies knew exactly what to deliver, it seems. I imagine Utley might have been involved in negotiations to bring Doctor Who back, as he was with the BBC until 2005, after which he moved on to Cosgrove Hall.

Big Finish

Jason Haigh-Ellery and Gary Russell

The DWM article moved on to talk about merchandising, including videos (ha ha!), books and audios, and one of the more interesting responses at the time was from Big Finish, who seemed quite wilful when it came to their output. Asked if listeners would ever hear companions from the 1960s and 70s return, co-producer Gary Russell was firm: "I don't like out-of-time companions. They do it in the novels every now and again, but it just doesn't sit right with me. Why should the Doctor bump into somebody whom he travelled with 30-odd years ago? 'Hello Jamie! Fancy bumping into you! And here comes Ian Chesterton! Isn't that a coincidence?'. We can get away with Romana or Leela, who are both on Gallifrey, but I'd much prefer to cast earlier companion actors in other roles."

Oh how times change, hey? At the time of this interview, Big Finish had released around 25 audio adventures, featuring the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors only. In the end they decided to create a separate audio adventure stream called The Companion Chronicles to serve the actors of the Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and Tom Baker eras, starting in 2007 with four stories narrated by Maureen O'Brien, Wendy Padbury, Caroline John and Lalla Ward. This series would expand to include almost all of the classic series companions, and is still going more than 15 years later...

Big Finish co-producer Jason Haigh-Ellery also had strong views, stating that he had a policy not to use any villains employed by rival audio producers BBV. "That's why we haven't done any Sontaran or Zygon adventures," he said. Gary Russell added that they wouldn't use the Wirrn or Krynoid either (with a sarcastic inference that they don't work on audio), but that he would bring back the Rani if it was written by Pip and Jane Baker and played by Kate O'Mara.

As ever, policies and opinions can change, especially when personnel move on. Gary Russell left Big Finish in 2006, and it only took a couple of years for a Zygon to turn up in a BF audio (2008's The Zygon Who Fell to Earth). The Wirrn followed suit in 2009's Wirrn Dawn, the Krynoid in 2009's Hothouse, and the Sontarans in 2011's Heroes of Sontar. The Rani, as played by O'Mara and written by the Bakers, never came to pass for Big Finish, although they did regenerate the character in 2014 (played by Siobhan Redmond and written by Justin Richards and Marc Platt).

Haigh-Ellery also insisted that he would not recast the three late Doctors. "What's the point? It'd be fake! It's been mooted that we should ask Sean Pertwee and David Troughton, but they wouldn't want to step into their fathers' boots. It'd be disrespectful... It just wouldn't be right to pass somebody else off as the Doctor."

Well, it might have taken a while, but this policy has since been blown out of the water by the use of Stephen Noonan as the First Doctor, Michael Troughton as the Second Doctor, and Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor. They've also recast Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Dodo Chaplet, Liz Shaw, Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan and the Brigadier. How disrespectful can you get!?

The cast of the 2024 audio Deathworld, including
Stephen Noonan and Tim Treloar as the First and
Third Doctors, Dianne Pilkington as the President,
actual real Katy Manning as actual Jo Grant, and,
looming behind them, Joe Shire, ironically as Death.