POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Give Doctor Who A Rest
By Dan Brown I haven’t watched Doctor Who on the regular in a long time. And I don’t believe there should be any new episodes of the venerable BBC series for a long time, either. That’s to help guarantee the viability of the program far into the future. Why am I saying this? You may have heard Doctor Who is at a crossroads. Showrunner Russell T. Davies has exited the series, and the rights to produce the show have been put out to tender. My feeling is, for the Doctor to survive, the character needs to go away for several years. Maybe even decades. It last aired on Disney+ in May, 2025. Although it was a staple of my childhood pop-culture diet, I haven’t been a regular viewer for ages. I think the BBC needs to send a message to fans: You’ve been taking the long-running show and its title character for granted. In a world with seemingly unlimited sci-fi content, Doctor Who has been getting, with its built-in generational audience, the short end of the proverbial stick. It needs to go fallow. Doctor Who aired for the first time in 1963, and made a generation of British children jump behind their living-room couches with its weird mix of rubber monsters, cliffhanger endings, and bargain-basement special effects. It eventually came to North America, where kids like me – watching on public broadcaster TVOntario – were enchanted, many of us becoming fans for decades. And yes, it has gone on hiatus before – notably from 1989 to 2005. Then it got a new lease on life with Davies at the helm. But lately, it feels more like background noise than compelling appointment viewing, whatever that might mean in the age of streaming services. I admit, I’m one of those boring, middle-age fogies whose first Doctor was played by Tom Baker. And in my view, he’s never been surpassed. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you who the last couple Doctors were, and I’m a Disney+ subscriber! (That’s the conceit of the show, that the Doctor regenerates every so often into a new body.) So let’s put it on the shelf for, say, a decade, and give fans a chance to miss the ever-quipping Time Lord. The character has stood the test of time before, I’m not worried Doctor Who will be forgotten. Besides, in our streaming reality, many programs take years between seasons to come back into our living rooms anyway. As smarter people than me -- like science-fiction writer Mark Shainblum -- have pointed out, the premise of the show is “inherently self-refreshing,” meaning each new actor who takes on the role represents an opportunity for the production team to set off in a new direction anywhere in this or any other universe. I think this was true in the show’s early days, but the Doctor isn’t in an environment anymore where his competition is other network productions. Now his competition is TikTok and YouTube. Besides, there are plenty of precedents for franchises that went on hiatus (imposed or voluntary) and came back stronger, built for the long run: Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica. Even Marvel Studios is producing fewer superhero movies and shows now. Speaking of Marvel, the worst thing the BBC could do is go on making Doctor Who content just for the sake of making Doctor Who content. I am open to one slight variation on the hiatus though: I hear an animated Doctor Who series may be in the works. If true, I could get behind that – so long as Tom Baker returns as the voice of the character! He’s still kickin, so The Fourth Doctor: The Animated Series sounds good to me! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
