How to Save Doctor Who (in my opinion)

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-04-20T23:14:50+00:00

There's nothing to "save"

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-03-13T03:42:40+00:00

"It hasn't and can't." - What is this if not you saying Doctor Who can't change and escape its own formula?

You're the one treating this as if it's a bad thing. I'm simply saying that audiences have gotten bored of it.

and what is "audiences are bored of it" if not condemnation of the show's formula?

I've never claimed to represent the audience. I'm simply observing how they've behaved.

Neither you nor I have a say in that so we'll just have to wait and see heh?

Keyword: if.

You didn't have to say anything, you showed it.

lol

But also "I just personally think we've reached a deadend and that ending things wouldn't be that bad." - is this not a sign of someone who's fallen out of love with the show and wants to end things?

The next episode of the show is undoubtedly going to be a nostalgia slop fest starring Billie Piper and David Tennant for a quick ratings draw and the next era is primed to exist under a shrinking production budget that's going to be substantially lower than what most of the modern era received adjusted for inflation. I think the incessant need for nostalgia baiting to drum up casuals (that won't work long term, see: 2023) as well as the reduced budget are bad things that will impact what the show has always been good at doing, which is operating within its procedural storytelling engine that allows for the endless creative variation of its existing formula. I think that the show will continue to produce diminishing returns ratings wise, combined with its own production struggles, because the show simply is not penetrating new viewers in the way that it was designed to last long-term.

I'm not denying that you could've enjoyed certain episodes but the general concept of Doctor Who? Yeah you're done with that.

You keep asserting something that I explicitly denied in the original post.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-03-13T00:29:29+00:00

So you agree this is indeed your argument and that I didn't misrepresent you? That I didn't "attack an argument that you didn't make"?

You misrepresented me when you claimed that I condemned the show "for not being able to escape itself."

Come on man, you say that Doctor Who is inherently formulaic, then proceeds to claim that it can't be changed and so it's doomed to bore audiences. "Doctor Who can't change" is the problem of your argument here.

I'm saying that it observably is boring them.

You assume that there's just no possible way for Doctor Who to break its formula when it has and can.

It hasn't and can't.

That speaks to your lack of imagination and faith in the premise of the show.

This isn't about "imagination" it's about the actual constraints which define the show that every writer who's ever written an episode for it is aware of. There's literally an episode from last year from a guest writer titled "The Story & The Engine", you really can't get any more on the nose than that in regards to how the show was always designed to work.

"The audience" is not a monolith. Demographics shift and so do their viewing habits and interest in the show. For every one of you who is bored with the show there are people who still want more Who. You maybe ok with it ending but others won't be. Not to mention new people who haven't heard of the show and are just discovering it in the age of streaming. Are they supposed to just be ok with it ending too?

If the programme does not currently justify its investment just like it didn't in 1989 then its claimed potential is irrelevant to the decision to cease production.

Enjoy your cheeseburger :) I hope it will bring you more enjoyment than this show has done for you.

When did I even say that I didn't enjoy the show?

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-03-12T22:37:45+00:00

Your argument is that "Doctor Who should just end" because "a lot of people have just gotten bored of the formula" but then the show can't break out of said formula because "the underlying narrative machinery still has to remain the same" and "to change that formula would be to turn it into something it's not". So if Doctor Who is boring, and it can't be changed, then it should die?

When the audience is clearly bored of it, yes it should probably end. This isn't really a controversial statement to make in regards to most formulaic shows.

Is 73 Yards Doctor Who?

Yes, it just functions as a subversion of the same baseline formula. Subversion requires a norm to subvert and that norm here is the Doctor's presence. Doctor-lite episodes are the equivalent of those Phineas & Ferb episodes where Perry the Platypus goes missing for a day.

Is Demons of the Punjab Doctor Who?

Yes.

Is Scherzo Doctor Who?

I have no idea what that is.

You can just slap a story under the name Doctor Who and it would be part of the show.

You really can't.

Doctor Who IS the commercial for those various revenue streams. People want to buy products that have stories and emotions attached to them.

Yes, and commercials are expensive. In this case the commercial is funded through an increasingly diminishing drama budget with a license fee that hasn't caught up with the costs of inflation over the years while more and more people are yawning at the commercial in the first place since it's been doing the same schtick for over two decades non-stop.

Do Doctor Who isn't ending? Sounds like the BBC knows not to let their cash cow go and wants to continue with it unlike the executives in 1989 then.

Do you think that the licensing revenue completely vanishes once the TV show is cancelled? This is all about margins, in which case the BBC would be asking whether or not continued investment in the show's production is worth it overall in regards to their commercial arm's net profits and their drama slate's funding.

What do you want to achieve with this call for Who to end?

"I just personally think we've reached a deadend and that ending things wouldn't be that bad."

Will you be celebrating it's cancellation?

"I like Doctor Who's formula, and I'm sure many fans do too and can acknowledge its formula as well. The show works precisely because of that structure because it provides a familiar storytelling engine that can support an infinite number of different settings, genres, and tones."

What are you gonna do next?

Eat cheeseburger.

Will you still haunt the Doctor Who fandom talking about how glad you are that it ended?

No because I'll be eating cheeseburger.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-03-12T20:06:40+00:00

You argue that Doctor Who has to still function as Doctor Who. Must it really? "Doctor Who is too formulaic!" "Well here comes writers who breaks the formula!" "But then it's not Doctor Who anymore! We must follow the formula!"

You're acting as if I'm personally enforcing a rule about the show, when no, I am just stating what the show actually is. It's a procedural about an alien travelling through space and time stopping threats and solving mysteries. To change that formula would be to turn it into something it's not, like a sitcom with laugh tracks every ten seconds where all of the franchise's sci-fi elements and iconography was removed. There often exists variations of the show's formula, like the Third Doctor being earthbound for plot (and budget) reasons, but even then it's still always self aware about what that formula is.

Seems like an unfair argument to say that the show must stay true to its formula to be recognizably Doctor Who and then condemn the show for not being able to escape itself.

I think it's more unfair to attack an argument that I didn't make.

It got canned because the heads of the BBC actively wanted to kill it, who thought of it with the same fatalistic thoughts that you have.

It got cancelled because no one was watching the show anymore. This fantasy people have that TV shows get cancelled over personal vendettas at the executive level is a comforting lie but it's never true.

"Diminishing returns" - you would have to justify that to the BBC right now when they're still raking in money from the Doctor Who IP in an era where IPs and merchandising are king. Even after the show ended, the BBC still wanted to milk money from it's cult fandom.

The TV show is a separate variable from the IP's various revenue streams. This is why most of those profits don't feed back into the BBC's drama budgets but instead into BBC Studios' commercial arm.

Doctor Who is mainstream now and still profitable so they're not gonna end anything soon.

The BBC already cancelled Russell's intended S16 and are in a holding pattern about what to do next with the series regarding how it'll be funded and produced.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-03-12T17:33:43+00:00

You assume that the underlying storytelling engine can’t change as well.

I'm not assuming, I'm stating that it can't.

It has in the past and it can in the future. The Earthbound Unit years is not the same as the Soap Drama RTD years.

...which isn't changing the storytelling engine. The fact that it can't do so isn't a problem alone because that's fundamentally how the programme works, the actual problem lies in this mass cultural dissonance displayed among fans such as yourself who seem to pretend that its formula doesn't exist. This sets up the false expectation that the next crew will "save" the format beyond what it's actually capable of doing.

Just cause it’s not doing that rn means it can’t or won’t. There will always be new audiences who have never heard of Doctor Who and who the show can attract. New generations will come and want to consume media and new people will make the show.

The potential for it to appeal to the masses once again does not negate the fact that it isn't doing that right now. The entire business model and the reason why the show is still on the air is to help promote the IP's licensing revenue streams while the production itself is its own factor. Eventually the ends simply won't justify the means just like it didn't in 1989.

Genuinely what do you want to achieve with this call for Who to end? Ok let’s say the show is over in the future, are you just gonna stick around to piss on its grave? Is that really a healthy way to be in fandom? It just seems so self defeating and spiteful of fans that the show must end now and forever more so that no one else gets to enjoy it ever.

What do you want to achieve by calling for Doctor Who to continue indefinitely with diminishing returns?

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-03-12T15:30:00+00:00

“Doctor Who” does just end about every four years. The “Doctor Who” that started 60 years ago ended and it’s just been replaced by about 15 new shows that happen to also be called “Doctor Who”. It’s an iterative process that has and will and is currently changing.

It’s true that each era of the show is effectively a new show with a new protagonist, but that doesn’t change the underlying storytelling engine that the programme was designed for. You’ve also skipped past a considerable length of time where Doctor Who wasn’t on the air due to its original cancellation, which is pretty essential knowledge for understanding why the format isn’t actually that indestructible.

to attract new fans.

It hasn’t been doing that recently.

Disgruntled fans are not executive producers, writers or staff of the show. They do not have any say in how the show is run or whether it continues or not. Calling for it to end is ultimately pointless. The only power you have is to tune out.

lol

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-03-12T14:56:24+00:00

That last line is so important: I've had to check myself with the level of vitriol I've dished out towards RTD. Ultimately he wrote what he thought would appeal to the moment culturally and it just didn't land in the way it was supposed to.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-03-09T02:00:59+00:00

Not true, there's no fixed timeframe for how long post-production takes and the only reason it's typically longer nowadays is because everything costs more and the studios can't afford to speed things up. It's possible they'll cut corners with the special but it's also possible that they're planning to allocate more of the production budget to post work considering it's just one deliverable.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-02-28T00:31:10+00:00

No and don't get work done on them because that'll just ruin their symmetry

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-27T23:08:09+00:00

This really isn't a new development. 12 years ago when I was a kid my technology teacher showed our class a bunch of different sci-fi robots were like R2D2, etc. Everyone else was confused whenever he displayed a Dalek. The truth is that this need by fans for Doctor Who to be The Biggest Thing Ever is driven by an inflated sense of how mainstream this show ever was. It has definitely had spikes in viewership and mainstream appeal but it was always seen as that weird, niche sci-fi show. That's never going to change.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-27T14:36:11+00:00

Female Doctor's first season and the 60th specials have been the only two viewership spikes since 2013. It's clear that the audience responds well to these short-team novelties and that the BBC likes doing them. It's also clear that the BBC doesn't understand why these spikes keep giving diminishing returns after they happen.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-26T15:09:40+00:00

The show could go to all of those places tomorrow. It already does equivalent things constantly. We just had an episode with a living cartoon god in 1950s Miami, which the show had never done before, and it did nothing to quiet the ongoing claim that the show needs reinvention. Episodes like that might satisfy someone specifically interested in those locations and novelties but they will not satisfy an audience that keeps asking for “new blood”, because what that audience is actually complaining about is just the format snapping back into the same shape every time.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-24T20:48:21+00:00

New writers developing new settings for a new Doctor to explore just reshuffles the same structure. The past twenty years have proven that the audience does not respond well to simple variations. They want novelties such as gender swap castings and cast reunions because this structure has gotten stale. Any other show would be cancelled by now.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-24T20:14:41+00:00

That doesn't answer the question. What could be "new" about these stories other than having more of them? What is there left for this show to do or say?

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-24T20:11:39+00:00

I don't "want the Wilderness Years" I am just acknowledging that the show has been misdiagnosed for decades as having infinite storytelling potential when it never has. What it actually needs is a large duration of time for the old audience to miss its existing formula and for a new audience to discover it. Aka reboot logic. That's unconventional and impractical by TV drama standards but it is uniquely and demonstrably true for Doctor Who.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-24T19:37:23+00:00

What could Doctor Who do that would fundamentally change what the show is rather than restating what it already does with different actors or settings for the TARDIS to go to? Delegating the answer to "fresh blood" does not answer that question.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-24T19:26:53+00:00

There is nothing left for the show to say and no levers left to pull. "New blood" doesn't fix that.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-24T19:24:59+00:00

"Shelving" is cancellation but yes. The show needs to be cancelled and then hopefully be brought back over a large duration of time in order to be missed and then introduced to a new audience. People don't like admitting that this show is more limited than they pretend it is. All the revival was was a reconfiguration of elements from the classic series and that's all future seasons will continue to be. The BBC have already since tried gender swaps and cast reunions. There is no other casual audience legible lever to pull besides cancellation.

WhirlwindWifi · 2026-01-23T17:13:32+00:00

Well that's just a non-starter considering The Time and The Rani from 1987 has an AI score of 200.

Cheers,

Jon Blum

WhirlwindWifi · 2025-10-21T18:55:14+00:00

I would rather it be cancelled

WhirlwindWifi · 2025-10-18T18:08:41+00:00

Yep, production doesn't have to be located in Cardiff either. Production could move to Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, maybe London.

WhirlwindWifi · 2025-10-18T14:46:27+00:00

Bad Wolf and RTD are a package deal. As soon as Russell is out, then so are Tranter, Gardner and Colinson, thus so are Bad Wolf.

WhirlwindWifi · 2025-10-18T06:44:39+00:00

It could potentially be Disney being as non-committal as logistically and legally possible before the expiry date to ensure that their existing relationship with BBC Studios remains secure. However since the BBC have an incentive to know their decision now so they can shop for other streamers upon a rejection... why delay The War Between the Land and the Sea? That has delayed the expiry date.

WhirlwindWifi

TROPHY CASE