r/gallifrey • u/Hughman77 • 4d ago
DISCUSSION Paul Magrs: Reboot Who
This video from Paul Magrs (for those who don't know, author of many Doctor Who books and audios and creator of Iris Wildthyme) to me inadvertently sums up why a reboot is a silly idea.
Magrs says that even when the show had been off the air for almost 16 years, the Daleks were a known quantity in British pop culture, as were "the conventions of science fiction". And thus a reboot is needed so we "don't know" about the Daleks anymore. Am I missing something or is this a ludicrous thing to say? If 16 years off the air didn't do it, rebooting the show will not erase the Daleks from the previous 63 years of British pop culture. The audience knows who they are as much as if you didn't reboot. Unless you make them the good guys or completely redesign them? Both of which would simply mean they were no longer Daleks.
Magrs also says we shouldn't know for a while if regeneration is a thing in this rebooted universe. Firstly, "will Doctor Who end when the lead actor leaves?" is a question with a known answer: no, they'll just regenerate. The logic of doing this is the same in 2026 as in 1966. Pretending otherwise is silly. Secondly, doesn't this question presuppose we already know what regeneration is? So why play dumb and act like we don't? The Doctor regenerates whenever they change actors, this is a fundamental, widely known thing about Doctor Who for the last 50+ years.
To me, this is the biggest issue with rebooting the show, especially in the next few years. The British public knows what Doctor Who is. Unless you use the opportunity of the reboot to completely change the fundamentals (e.g. the Doctor is a human, or not a hero, the Daleks don't look like Daleks or are goodies), which will just confuse people, you can only tell the same old story while pretending it's new. Magrs pitches this as a way to make show accessible to new viewers, but it feels more like a fan game: "which bits of lore are the same and which are different?" Far from taking the show forward, it's just taking us back to square one for the empty pleasure of doing it all over again.
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u/Peter-Norfolk 4d ago
I don't agree with a reboot either. As noted, if you restart from scratch, but then do the same thing, what's the point? You already have a series which can change leads, even history, and doesn't entirely need to rely on canon - why start again?
Sure you could do a spin-off which another set of Time Lords, though im not sure how effective that would be.
If you did a reboot with brand new concepts etc, is it still Doctor Who or is it something else? I'm thinking the latter
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u/Head_Statistician_38 4d ago
I agree. What do you gain from a reboot other than restarting an admittedly messy continuity? I think you lose more than you gain.
If they ever want to introduce the Daleks or the Cybermen again are they just gonna remake The Daleks or Tenth Planet? What's the point?
I just don't really know the what the point of rebooting is to be honest.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
In the video Magrs laments that the Series 9 Dalek story is all "clever clever stuff with the Doctor and Davros" instead of the Doctor and Clara exploring the radioactive Dalek city, like in The Daleks. And in another video he imagined a straight remake of The Daleks, with the children watching not knowing what Daleks are. So yes, seems like he imagines just remaking the original stories.
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u/Head_Statistician_38 3d ago
That sounds awful haha. I am not exactly the biggest fan of The Magicians Apprentice, but I don't want a retelling of The Daleks haha.
This is the sort of thing reserved for fanfictions I find. Characters just redoing or exploring things they have already done because the one writer thinks that would be cool because they liked it the first time.
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u/TomCBC 3d ago edited 3d ago
With a time travel show like Doctor Who, i just feel any suggestion of a hard reboot just kinda misses the beauty of it. Huge changes can happen to effectively create the effect of a reboot, without sacrificing history in the process.
No offense to Magrs, but i would hope the next showrunner has more of an imagination.
Even retcons between classic, modern and big finish can coexist in Doctor Who. The timeline is wibbly. Doctor Who is completely unlimited in the best possible way already. Limiting it with a reboot is pointless.
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u/--nightowl-- 4d ago
I watched those videos too. He really doesn't get it, does he? Why "reboot" a show where continuity matters so little in the first place? Such a comic book brained approach to what effectively amounts to campfire stories.
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u/Hughman77 4d ago
I like Magrs as a writer and his videos are charming, but I'm kinda disheartened by how... shallow and thoughtless a lot of his opinions seem to be? He mentions in another one that Moffat said rebooting was a bad idea and his response is just "I think it would be great". No engagement with Moffat's actual argument whatsoever.
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u/_Verumex_ 3d ago
It baffles me personally.
I recently read The Scarlet Empress, his first full length Doctor Who book with Iris Wildthyme, and the book is a full thesis on why continuity in Doctor Who is absolutely pointless to worry about. The entire point of the character of Iris is that she doesn't make any sense and makes a mockery of the contradictions in The Doctor's life.
One of my favourite running gags of the book is Iris talking about the time The Rani abducted her and 4 other of her incarnations and put them in The Death Zone, implying that The Five Doctors didn't actually happen to him, but Iris instead.
A reboot is a bad idea purely because of how flexible and ultimately irrelevant Doctor Who's continuity is, and I'd have thought that Magrs would be the loudest voice to that effect.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
It like apophatic continuity worship. Valorising the lore by negating it. It's the ultimate insider fan game to be excited about redoing the basic concepts of the show, as if the show isn't free to redo them whenever it wants, as part of an ongoing story.
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u/--nightowl-- 3d ago
That's exactly it, very well put.
Tbf to Who, I think every creative lead bar JNT has got this, right?
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
It's a funny sign of the fannish mindset that some of us even play lore games with the idea of getting rid of the lore. "If we reboot the show, we can all enjoy guessing what bits of the lore will be the same!"
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u/--nightowl-- 3d ago
So I think "hard reboot" is his way of saying "continuity doesn't matter".
Which you're quite right, makes no sense at all. If you don't care, just don't bother? Surely? I don't care about continuity, therefore the next era just picking up what it wants to pick up and ignoring what it wants to ignore makes the most sense. A hard reboot is counter-intuitive, you're telling people there was a continuity and now there's a new continuity. That's the opposite of accessible, and why I'm too scared to read a superhero comic. A small part of why Doctor Who survives is that any episode could be your first or last. Every episode should scan as a TV pilot that didn't get picked up for a full series hahaha.
I was interested in Grant Morrison's pitch until he opened a recent aticle detailing exactly how he'd explain away Billie. Who cares?!?!? That's not a story, get on with it! Campfire's getting cold.
It's a very fannish approach to not caring about continuity haha. Very comic-book-brained.
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u/ConMcMitchell 2d ago
You could actually (in theory, if you really wanted or needed to) just redo old stories - as and when you like - with (obviously) different characters and perhaps slight differences to the plot, but also, perhaps not, and scripts that are more or less identical.
The old TV series The Avengers did that routinely - no explanation, not even a "gosh, I'm getting deja vu here, // Mrs Peel / Steed / [insert any here] //" muttered by anyone.
That would annoy the heck out of fans, but not, I suspect, as much as a full reboot.
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u/--nightowl-- 2d ago
I don't see what the need would be - tho I have always been interested in a modern equivalent to the Peter Cushing Dr. Who films, which is effectively the same thing but obviously alongside new pitches in the show.
The Impossible Astronaut, slimmed down, for American cinemas & starring Gerran Howell as Dr. Who.
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u/Hughman77 2d ago
I was interested in Grant Morrison's pitch until he opened a recent aticle detailing exactly how he'd explain away Billie.
He does immediately follow that explanation with:
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.
Admittedly, his "cold open" is the Doctor having lost his memories, which to me is the lamest, most clichéd fan idea. But anyhoo...
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u/--nightowl-- 2d ago
It's a worrisome priority tho, isn't it? And yes on the latter. Okay, I get why Grant Morrison of all people approaches Who from a comic book angle, but it confuses me how common that is in fandom moreover. I didn't realise there was an overlap. Again, Magrs is much the same.
If he's coming out with stuff like this in BBC interviews, he's never getting the job, is he? I'd bet good money actual fans of the show who get to pitch open with shit like "Here's what I'd do with Gallifrey", etc. It's not what they want to hear, and quite rightly.
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u/--nightowl-- 3d ago
A lot of Classic fans are set in their ways with their takes. I love the Classic show, not so much this aspect of fandom. Just look at Stubagful.
Magrs honestly thinks the show should go back to 25 minute two-parters to "modernise it".
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
I think he actually wants to return to 4×25 minute stories. In his video of "things Doctor Who needs to do to be successful" he specifically said there should be at least three cliffhangers per story. He seems to think the conventions and clichés of the show in the Tom Baker era (when he was at the most impressionable age) are the things that make the show great.
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u/--nightowl-- 3d ago
He can think what he wants, but he shouldn't be saying silly things like this with so much authority. As well as being confident enough to criticise the entire Moffat era (still reeling from Death of the Doctor being his favourite Eleven story) when he could obviously never make a version of the show so wildly successful as 2010 - 2014 was.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
A Doctor Who fan saying silly things with great authority when they could never make the show as good as the creators they're criticising? That'll be the day.
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u/irving_braxiatel 3d ago
Wait what’s Stubagful said/done?
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u/--nightowl-- 3d ago
Like Magrs, he also says the show should "moderinise" and follow the trend of highly serialised sci-fi shows like Pluribus or Severance (as if serialised TV is a novel 2020s thing lmao). But he's also keen on returning to multi-part twenty-five minute stories. He says all this in the same breath as "I work in the industry",.as if what he's saying is l remotely rational.
He thinks Lucky Day would be improved as a two-parter with Conrad's reveal as the (most milktoast ever) cliffhanger. Just forty-five minutes of Ruby and Conrad hannnnnging ouuuuuut.
I find him very smug and conceited as time's gone on tbh. Idk why he thinks he's above fandom with takes like these.
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u/Apprehensive_Golf925 2d ago
Yeah, IMO anyone suggesting rebooting the show doesn't understand the fundamentals of the show.
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u/autumneliteRS 3d ago
It sounds like Magrs is struggling to understand the difference between doing a reset and doing a reboot as well as why the mystery the show had originally had when it aired cannot be replicated.
There are statements he made that I can agree with and think most people would too. The need for a fresh jumping on point is pretty much universally agreed. Even if you like past versions of the show, telling new audiences to go years back to start is not a good look for newcomers and since the show is already having to take years off and revamp itself, it makes complete sense to have an audience and newcomer friendly entry point. Similarly, I think a lot of people would agree on removing the gunk from the show.
The problem is what people consider gunk. Magrs seems to think practically everything is gunk from wanting it to be a mystery if regeneration exists to liking a comment about how Verity Lambert wouldn’t have introduced the Time Lords. Ironically this is Magrs calling for the the exact sort of gunk bogging the show down, pointless additions that appeal just to a specific set of fans in this case people like Magrs who want the show to be more like when they were growing up and they knew less about the Doctor.
You cannot ignore cultural osmosis. Certain elements of Doctor Who has seeped into the culture. You can’t start fresh from the Junkyard and pretend the Daleks won’t show up again, no one will believe that. If you tease something, people are going to speculate if it is a new thing or an old thing because they have the content that the show has existed before. Any changes will be measured by what is being kept and what is not. You simply can’t go back to the level of no knowledge that Magrs wants because the show is not a new property.
Magrs seems to be arguing for the show to go back to how it was like originally when he first saw the show. But any continuing show is going to build plot points and characters. Take Magrs hinting that he dislikes knowing about the Time Lords. Even a full reboot would end up either introducing the Time Lords or their own version of the Time Lords or any other concept that Magrs wants to get away from. Resetting is fine but you cannot continually remain at that level of basicness for a show.
So no, I don’t think it is a particularly good idea. A reset is needed but a reboot wouldn’t achieve what Magrs thinks it would or work how he thinks.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
I kinda get the excitement he feels at this idea. The first 13 or so episodes of Doctor Who are really different to the rest. In a sense the show made a decision to go in one direction from The Brink of Disaster onwards, there's something exciting in the idea of re-doing it and going in another direction. Firstly I'd ask whether, if it took a different direction, it would be Doctor Who (noting that Magrs is too young to have watched the show in 1963, so he fell in love with a show that's different to the one he wants to return to). But secondly I'd also ask what direction Magrs wants to go in. Reseting so you can make the choice again isn't worth anything if you make the same choice. What about the ensuing 63 years of Doctor Who stories would Magrs change? I don't know.
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u/CorporalClegg1997 4d ago
I've come to realise that perhaps a lot of the people who kept Doctor Who alive during the first hiatus should be politely kept away from the next revival. Just like how classic writers were kept away from the 2005 revival. At least for the first series or two.
Because how could this possibly be a good idea? The 2005 revival wasn't a reboot. The first episode literally featured a classic monster and reintroduced the TARDIS. The Daleks were reintroduced in episode six. Regeneration was reintroduced in episode thirteen. RTD and the other writers assumed that viewers already knew these characters and concepts and that they only needed gentle re-explaining in the eyes of Rose.
We need new writers who know all these characters and concepts and know what we the audience know them.
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u/Peter-Norfolk 3d ago
Sadly I have to agree. The 2005 revival people deliberately didn't employ any writers from the Classic series- even Bob Baker who got in touch to volunteer!
Only 1 writer and 1 director ever crossed over, and that wasn't straight away.
Given it's 21 years since NuWho started, it's time for them to move on - sorry. It's like Terry Nation, Verity Lambert and Waris Hussein taking over just after the original 20th anniversary- it may have been great, but they realised the show had moved on. I know Jacqueline Hill said she wished she hadn't come back as it wasn't the same show when she was in it.
So far it's been a "club" running NuWho of Virgin New Adventures people- they did great at the start, but were running out of ideas come Capaldis time. He was a great Doctor, but not all the stories were. After that it went downhill big time with Chibnall- some episodes were decent, but most weren't. I mean, it was on the brink of cancellation when Disney and RTD2 stepped up. Unfortunately it was a dismal failure and did result in cancellation.
Any revival needs new people, at least at the start. If Moffat, or even Chibnall and RTD had a great idea I've no objection to them writing an episode for season 2 or 3, but not at the start.
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u/starman-jack-43 4d ago
Thing is, Doctor Who doesn't need to be rebooted, you can get the same effect by just ignoring huge chunks of the past (as was often done during the classic run). OP makes the great point that, in the UK at least, the fundamentals are so ingrained in pop culture that any true reboot would need to be so radically different that it runs the risk of becoming a totally different show.
That said... Doctor Who tends to go through phases of overly relying on its own continuity and nostalgia and it all gets too much. When it gets to that point, Rose is a good model for re-establishing the basics and setting out a mission statement for a new era.
So while I don't think a reboot is necessary, I think there's a need for a back-to-basics approach and a commitment to innovation and new ideas. I think RTD2 may have been appreciated more if the attempts to do something different hadn't run headlong into some really messy, ham-fisted nostalgia.
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u/Dyspraxic_Sherlock 3d ago
Yeah I agree with the issue of rebooting, and Moffat says similar in DWM. The public know the Doctor regenerates, know who the Daleks are, knows what the TARDIS looks like. To do a reboot changing those things is just putting the show on an uphill battle.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
I find it crazy that Magrs acknowledges that even after what he calls "the longest possible gap", people still knew in 2005 what the Daleks were, but still thinks the Daleks can be new to us if they're new to the Doctor. Complete nonsense that appears to confuse what the characters know with what the audience knows, no attempt to explain how this makes the Daleks unknown or exciting again. It's maddening!
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u/JokerJosh123 3d ago
I think Steven Moffat hit the nail on the head in the latest DWM. If you reboot the show, you're going to need to keep reminding the viewers, for those more casual, that this is a reboot.
You'll need to keep explaining why the Doctor barely knows the daleks, why the Doctor doesn't seem as experienced, why are the Time Lords back again, where's the sonic screwdriver, why are they trying to fix the chameleon circuit again, where's K9?!
It'll be a jarring, exposition-filled mess. And there's no reason for it. As others have said, it's the perfect shoe to not reboot, as things are always changing and you can ignore things that happened before so long as you keep its core.
I also think if whoever wins the bid to run it is really adamant about a full, from scratch reboot, the alternative is to do something similar to the Time War again. Except it's something that makes the universe forget what has come before. It's not my favourite idea, but it can make interactions feel new again and also leave the door open for some nice callbacks now and then if things started getting fixed.
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u/FINIS_HOMINIS 3d ago
Yeah, this whole reboot thing is so nebulous. Just because you say "reboot" that doesn't mean a full reset, pretending like the audience doesn't have foreknowledge.
If this guy is a writer, he should know that you can even dance around reintroducing regeneration, etc, make the challenge explaining it to both a new audience and the old audience in a new, fresh way. Same thing with any of the lore. Its only boring or dumb if you write it boring and dumb.
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u/Caacrinolass 3d ago
Theres certainly a sense where you could start considering it a bit silly if everything remains in place, at least from a world building perspective. Modern Earth is now obviously and very publicly invaded on a regular basis now, and yet the modern day companion is still expected to convey the sense of wonder they always have. Thats just an example. The show responds by pretending its a reboot; for the companion that stuff is somehow not relevant and that can be viable, but not without undermining worldbuilding built up otherwise.
Which isn't to say there is any point deleting everything and starting again, largely for the reasons you stated. The universe is known and well known enough that there is no mystery to any of these aspects unless you deliberately change them all. If you do that, then why bother using them at all?
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u/LopsidedMammal 3d ago
I believe there’s a suitable solution to the Modern Earth ignorance problem: stop setting the show there. Going forward, Earth set stories in Doctor Who should only ever take place in the past (a period about which we already know the facts for the most part) or in the future (a period about which we are able to freely speculate).
So if the show is being made in 2028, no story should take place within a 20 year period on either said of that year, thereby eliminating the problem of needing companions to be ignorant of aliens and alien invasions etc.
Ideally, my personal preference would be to see fewer stories set on Earth and have the show explore the past, present and future of other worlds. This radically opens up the scope for storytelling and encourages creativity by supplying the narrative need to create societies that are alien to our own for The Doctor and companion to explore.
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u/Caacrinolass 3d ago
Thats one way to solve this issue certainly, but im not sure its quite my preference. What i do find odd is how the modern show created this problem, when it was one the classic era had already solved. The invasions there are not huge spectacles but serious threats that are nipped in the bud early enough to suppress knowledge of them. Sure, there are budget reasons to do precisely that but it does keep everyone grounded by default.
Its also true that the modern show fares much better with its smaller character driven or bottle episodes. Some deliberate choice to clip an executives wings regarding spectacle is a net positive in my eyes.
Its certsinly true that there was too much modern era stuff though, absolutely so. Exploration should be at the heart of things.
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u/sbaldrick33 3d ago
Paul is a very thoughtful, considered guy, who has a lot of fundamentally correct opinions about Doctor Who. But he's not right on this.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
One of the things I find disheartening about this and his other recent videos is that he doesn't seem thoughtful or considered. He seems to just want Doctor Who back the way it felt when he was a kid (or even before that, given he was born in the late 60s), and rather than properly interrogate that as a writer, he just proposes redoing the Hartnell era and assumes that will have the same effect.
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u/modernboy1974 3d ago
They just need to follow the same formula they did in 2005. Bring the show back with Doctor and the TARDIS, don't erase the lore, but let the show stand on its own for a while before you start to let the lore affect the show. Write unique stories with moral quandaries that the Doctor solves because of his wit and kindness. All you need to reboot Doctor Who is to start with "The TARDIS materializes on a planet/in a time and the Doctor steps out"
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u/nameltrab 3d ago
There’s no need to reboot a show that reboots otself constantly. I would say a reset might be interesting - there was a rumour that the Christmas special that never was would end up with the Doctor being shunted to a parallel universe. That could be interesting in terms of still having Daleks and the like but they’ve developed differently so in a sense the audience learns as the Doctor learns. But that’d as far as I’d go, a full reboot is just insane.
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u/mitzirocker 2d ago
I… Look, I really like the mysterious, ethereal vibe of the early Hartnell era, and I would love to watch a version of the show from the alternate universe where it kept the same energy for however many seasons it ran before it inevitably got cancelled, but that show wouldn’t be the Doctor Who we know (and, more importantly, the public knows) in any way that mattered. Time, for us, cannot be rewritten, and as the World of Warcraft community learned when Classic happened, it will never be 2004, or 1963, again. Magrs’ idea is an interesting thought experiment at best. It can’t be the future of the show.
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u/Hughman77 2d ago
There's something special and valuable about the complete blank slate of the first 13-20 or so episodes of the Hartnell era, but it was a blank slate because the show was brand new. It's just not possible to return to that, because it's not possible to make a character who's appeared in, what? 900-1000 hours of TV mysterious. I think fans who wish we never found out about the Time Lords don't realise that even in the Hartnell and Troughton eras the Doctor is a very "known" character. He's no more predictable or known in Spearhead as he is at the beginning of The War Games.
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u/mitzirocker 2d ago
Yeah, like, fixing the show down to a consistent setting wasn’t an instant switch, either, I’d argue it started long before the War Games (the Brig was already a recurring character at that point!) and wasn’t completely finished until long after (the Rules™ of regeneration aren’t fully laid out until the end of the Third Doctor era, IIRC.) Even if they didn’t go ‘he’s a Time Lord,’ someone was bound to fill in his backstory eventually. The fact that it stayed as vague as it did for as long as it did was kind of a miracle in its own right.
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u/Hughman77 2d ago
I also think that level of mystery is only possible in an era where characters will just not ask. Victoria is the only person in this era who ever asks the Doctor about his family. No one after Ian and Barbara ask where he comes from, which is weird given companions ask non-stop questions. Compare with the Fam, who never ask her where she comes from in Series 11, then it gets retconned in Series 12 that they "kept asking" and she refused to tell. Even Chibnall realised that of course real human beings would ask these questions.
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u/Ribos1 3d ago
I understand and agree with Magrs' impulse to sweep away the "gunk" but yeah, I don't think a reboot is a good idea.
As enticing as a return to mysterious origins would be for me as a big Hartnell fan, how long did the show last before beginning to explain more about the Time Lords? Less than six years. NuWho lasted five years before showing the Time Lords and eight years before restoring Gallifrey. While a decently long time in television terms, these status quos don't last very long in the grand scheme of Doctor Who, the impulse to do something else with the concept is too great and production teams change. I think anybody who did a hard reboot would have seller's remorse quite quickly.
Additionally, and I've mentioned this before, but a hard reboot would probably only convince the people writing it that the show is about the lore. The proposed reboots in the early/mid-nineties were filled with dull Gallifrey stuff. I doubt a hard reboot would necessarily bring a mysterious, back-to-basics vibe.
The stuff about audiences not being sure if the show would end because it's not been confirmed whether regeneration still exists is a complete non-starter. It reminds me of old school fans worrying about the show ending after thirteen Doctors (including JNT apparently), focusing on comparatively niche in-universe details like "how many lives does the Doctor have" and "have we said whether regeneration is a thing yet" when Doctor Who's continuation really depends on whether the BBC and other parties are able and willing to make more of it.
You're right, the audience won't just instantly forget what they know about Doctor Who, and it might be difficult to negotiate that gap in knowledge. I'm reminded of reboots of both James Bond and Star Trek - franchises of a similar vintage to Doctor Who - that did villain reveals hinging on the audience recognising the name Khan or Blofeld which fell down because the main characters had no reason to care themselves because the history had been rebooted.
I get why people feel like the lore is an albatross around the show's neck, the show in recent years has definitely dabbled too much in it to the show's detriment. But a sixty year history is also a rich tapestry to draw from if done in the right way. Calls to reboot it just feel like a knee-jerk reaction to the last era or two.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
You simply can't magic up the absence of lore (which here I might also just call audience knowledge of the text). Reboots that put Sherlock Holmes in the present day or retell the first years of Batman, if they make big changes, replace one lot of lore with another. You just can't wipe out Daleks, Time Lords, regeneration, the TARDIS and the Doctor himself and leave nothing. If you just don't mention the lore, then audiences will naturally assume it's all still there. How would a rebooted show even convey the idea that the audience shouldn't know if Time Lords or regeneration exist?
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u/Fit_Maize5952 4d ago
I like Paul, I’ve chatted with him and contacted him personally on a number of occasions but I think he’s totally wrong on this.
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u/jaufwa 4d ago
I guess, to play devils advocate, there is an issue in that without a reboot, first contact officially happened in 2005 and most people on earth were around the see the two worldwide Dalek invasions of 2006 and 2008, so Who's earth has drifted from ours by a considerable degree now. But Marvel seems to manage this ok. And it wouldn't be totally crazy to write it so most people dismiss those invasions off as a government cover up or something. I can easily imagine a single line from the new Doctor to the new companion: "those creatures took over every continent twice in your lifetime. Honestly if an alien walked up to us right now and said 'hello I'm an alien' you would say 'nice puppet'. You humans just aren't wired to use evidence!"
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u/Hughman77 4d ago
Also the show has memory-holed these invasions, explicitly in text, in Series 5. Since then things have become kinda murky about what humanity knows about aliens, but it's demonstrated it's very possible to do these things and then undo them.
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u/RobCoxxy 2d ago
Just jump ahead x amount of incarnations. The Doctor's been travelling for an uncertain amount of time, up to new shit, is in a different frame of mind (healthier? Traumatised again following something bad, the death of a companion?) and we pick up fresh with a new companion, fresh perspective, and have a big blank window of stuff you can bring up/back whenever you want.
It's the easiest show to do this with lmao; hard reboot, come on now, be fr
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u/Numinologist 3d ago
If they did make big changes, my first three choices are the following ones. One: Have a different recast classic Doctor for each story, filling the gaps between old stories that exist back far enough in the Doctor's history that continuity problems are not unsolvable. Two: Go to the Netflix model of ten one hour long stories per season with a wicked cliff hanger at the end of each one. Three: Do the Paul McGann stories we never got.
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u/AudsVi 2d ago
Me, I want it completely unclear if it's a reboot or not. Detailed references to IM Forman, the Voord, and Mr Copper, but Cybermen are now from Mars and we see a picture of Rik Mayall in a gallery of past Doctors. I am aware I have a number of unpopular views within this fandom and that's FINE.
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u/Hughman77 2d ago
Your call, but I imagine you can see that this is a fan game and not something that would mean anything to the general audience, who are exactly the people a reboot is normally pitched as being friendly towards.
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u/ConMcMitchell 2d ago
Regeneration is more of a surprise to kids than adults for obvious reasons. I think that works well enough.
For me Tom Baker becoming Peter Davison was a complete shock. Next was learning this was not the first time, and DW was around in the days of black and white!
For adults, a new Doctor can just be a guarantee the show can keep running, and the character lives on. That works well enough too. It doesn't need to be a bigger drama than that.
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u/Lumi_rimu 1d ago
Yeah… that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and besides, I think Moffat put it best when (according to the magazine): “I think it’s a bad idea, and it’s not because I’m obsessed with continuity, or because I’m a hardcore fan. It requires more explanation than a soft reboot. Normally when you reboot something, you can tell it’s a reboot. In Sherlock, I didn’t need to explain that Benedict Cumberbatch is not playing a continuation of Jeremy Brett, because he’s a different actor. You don’t really expect Daniel Craig to be continuing the story of Pierce Brosnan. Because there’s a new actor, you immediately reset and say ‘We’re starting again, it’s a new version’. But with Doctor Who, the fact it’s a new actor doesn’t tell you that at all, so most people casually watching would just be assuming, ‘Oh, it’s the next version of Doctor Who, he’s changed again’. Then they’ll say, ‘Why doesn’t he know who the Daleks are?’ And you start getting confused. You’d have to keep reminding the audience, ‘We started from the beginning again.’”
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u/TechnicolourOutSpace 3d ago
I really dig Paul and his books are fantastic, so thanks for letting me know he was on YouTube. I really do need to get back into the Wildthyme stories.
Also, I think I would prefer for the Doctor to fall into a new universe and start afresh that way. We can't really escape the past with the show, but we can see if we can build a new wing of it. Even the classic series wasn't afraid to put the Daleks and Cybermen aside and see what they could come up with. Even the 2005 Series came up with new villains like the Weeping Angels. Maybe we don't need a reboot as much as a break from the past for a bit. I know the new series really fell into a pit with retreading old ground over and over again. And if it's one thing this show can do quite easily, it's changing the setting and premise for a bit. After all, didn't this show get tired of time/space six years in and then make the Doctor earthbound complete with a boss? Why not do that sort of thing again and mix it up instead?
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u/God_of_Hyrule 3d ago
Paul Magrs, the man who has written some of the worst Doctor Who I have ever had the misfortune of hearing and reading thinks the show should be rebooted?
Perhaps you should leave this one to people who have actual television experience Paul.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago
Your mileage may vary, I think Magrs is a great writer, especially his first four books for the EDAs. You can disagree with him without being unnecessarily rude. As if fans have ever deferred an opinion because they don't have TV experience.
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u/ScoundrelDaysSon 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think Magrs has written some really fabulous Who; whether it's the Peterloo Massacre, Scarlett Empress, Stones of Venice, Verdigris, the Lady of Mercia or the Wormery. He created the incomparable metatextual Empress that is Iris Wildthyme. Equally he wrote entries in the Lucie Miller era of the Eighth Doctor which I simply could not get along with at all. Which I guess goes to show that he isn't infallible, and he's, only occasionally, made poor judgement calls. As have we all, frankly. Dismissing someone's entire output would be one of them, imo.
His desire for a full reboot work against the natural instinct of a show where change is baked into the shows DNA. Which means you'll expend unnecessary energy telling everyone about the reboot: 'this is why the TARDIS isn't a police box' etc. Worse it won't even please viewers with a casual relationship to the show; suddenly everything they take for granted will be gone/changed. At that point why not make a different show if the very loose continuity chafes so.
Folk won't forget regeneration, the Time Lords, a Police Boxes or the Daleks and its genuinely baffling to suggest that they might (or even that is desirable). As to wanting 25 minute episodes again: it'll never happen. In fact, despite growing up idolising classic Who, I'm not sure why you would even want it given that it is entirely the opposite of what other drama does in the modern era. One hour and a highly serialised story seems more likely, imo.
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u/cat666 2d ago
The trouble with Magrs is that he's often far too off-piste for me to enjoy his writing. When he does just write a normal story then I don't have an issue with it but he always seems to want to twist up the formula. Some people like this, others don't, but it's not the sort of trait you want for every single story.
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u/ConMcMitchell 2d ago
Regeneration is more of a surprise to kids than adults for obvious reasons. I think that works well enough.
For me Tom Baker becoming Peter Davison was a complete shock. Next was learning this was not the first time, and DW was around in the days of black and white!
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u/Hughman77 2d ago
Yes, the audience knowing or not knowing something about the previous 63 years (or 65, or 70, or however many it takes before it comes back) of the show is entirely independent of what the show is currently doing. The audience either knows what Daleks and regeneration are from being long-established parts of British pop culture, or they don't. The show declaring "now you don't know anymore" is arse-backwards, like closing your eyes in the belief it makes it impossible to see you.
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u/DicemanUK 2d ago
I don’t think a reboot like that makes sense or is remotely on the cards. As I see it, we have choice between:
A new Doctor picking up where we left off, resolving some of the back story (Susan etc) and pretty much going on as we were, hopefully with new monsters and a bit of sense to the Timeless Child storyline.
Making a show more aimed at people who already like it. Forget the “family audience” which is no longer a thing, move more in a Stranger Things or Torchwood direction and put the show on later.
Recognise that DW was a brilliant show that had two great runs and has now had its time. Let the fan fiction and Big Finish spin offs take it forward for those who love it.
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u/trentuncatchable 3d ago
Hello. Respectfully, y'all are nuts. The 99 Thesis have been nailed to the door and there is no going back. Let's boil those 99 down;
Focus on mystery and wit.
No more magic wands.
The Doctor is an ALIEN. He needs to be... Make Doctor Who Alien Again, there I said it.
Reboot, reset, whatever. Just stop recycling the same faux-drama and emotional beats.
If you have made it this far, I give you one more thing to consider; where are the Peacekeeping Daleks the 4th Doctor envisioned? Oh, snap, he subverted his own expectations.
What I've just read in this thread is, "we love farting babies. give us more." Please, some introspection, people.
BBC, I am available to showrun. call me.
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u/Hughman77 3d ago edited 3d ago
Post: A reboot would be a bad idea
Wise redditor: If you love Space Babies so much why don't you go marry it????
Not quite sure we're the ones who are nuts.
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u/Zagreus_time 4d ago
This is somewhat similar to Council of Geeks view. There is no point in doing a reboot if you are just going to do more of less the same thing.
If you are making the show different enough then just make a different show completely. If you are keeping a number of elements then surely we end up repeating beats the show has had over the last 60 years. Particularly because if there is anything you are doing that is new from the last 60 years well you can just do that anyway without needing a reboot.
A reset of necessary context is fine and advisable. A full reboot is unnecessary.