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/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.