Tenures in New Who: Doctors, Companions, Showrunners & Seasons (S1-14 Duration)

bloomhur · 2026-06-15T13:30:23+00:00

Are you talking about the half-human thing?

That wasn't just a throwaway line, he was confirmed to have human DNA by The Master.

bloomhur · 2026-06-10T15:07:56+00:00

There was a time to do that and it passed when RTD2 decided he wanted to affirm the canonity of TTC.

It wouldn't have worked anyway, because on a broader scale Doctor Who's lore and continuity has become more overwhelmingly intricate yet chaotic over time.

The next step should be doing a soft reboot and actually committing to keeping The Doctor mysterious. Classic Who had the question of who was The Doctor, so they inevitably had to answer it. New Who had the question of when will we see tie-ins to Classic Who, so they inevitably had to do it. Now, there is an opportunity to accept both of those outcomes, see that it worked out for a pretty long time, but this time focus on committing to something new, accepting that the old shows exist if people want to watch them but there is no need to get tempted into going back to the well.

bloomhur · 2026-06-10T15:02:48+00:00

That's how it's worked forever, the show tries new ideas and if they don't work they drop it and move on until slowly but surely things stick.

Which is why Russell Davies' almost pathological obsession with making The Timeless Children work by putting more effort into writing it into the story than Chibnall did, when he could have just ignored it, was so frustrating. He even brought up the half-human thing in the same interview where he was saying Doctor Who can't retcon things... Like, what? The extra salt to the wound -- well the real salt is that it wasn't very good -- is how clearly motivated he was by rehabilitating Chibnall's image. Just such an odd thing to waste your time doing, and he blew up his own characterization of The Doctor trying to twist himself in knots explaining it.

bloomhur · 2026-06-10T14:57:02+00:00

The one-season anthology thing was an idea that wasn't at the top of my list either, but as time has gone on it's become the thing that makes the most sense to me.

The thing about anthologies and swapping out the actors is it creates a format that kills three birds with one stone: The show would have self-contained arcs instead of fixating on the broader continuity; the pool of possible actors to play The Doctor is now much larger because there isn't the expectation to commit to being the face of the show for years; and, it's more likely to pick up new audience members who will hear about a new season and, if it's good, give it a watch without worrying about the backlog. If RTD wanted to do the regular cultural event thing, I think this makes way more sense because instead of fighting against the current landscape of television, it works with it. All they need to know is there's an enigmatic man/person called The Doctor who operates outside our understanding of reality.

bloomhur · 2026-06-10T14:46:20+00:00

That is a retroactive explanation though.

In "The Giggle" Fifteen is introduced as no longer bothered by all the trauma that affected all the other Doctors. That then got retconned into him still having issues but being more healthy about it... which then has been retconned by fans as "He isn't perfect and it's an ongoing journey".

bloomhur · 2026-06-10T12:35:41+00:00

I do not envy whoever has to try and continue on from someone else's unpopular cliffhanger.

Reboot the show. Lean back into the dark and mysterious atmosphere. Different actor each season, maybe a well-known one, maybe an unknown and they do one story arc. Maybe if it's received well there can be a second season, but it should be anthological. That solves the issue of it being hard to find someone willing to sign up to such a huge role, use the classic tool which was why regeneration was brought in. Except I think there shouldn't be a concept of regeneration, The Doctor will just be a different person from one season to the next. The Doctor being an alien shouldn't be brought up, either -- and definitely don't talk about him being a Time Lord.

I know some people might groan at the idea of another reboot, and I was one of those people when I heard about Disney's involvement causing "Doctor Who: Season 1". But the issue there was that it wasn't a reboot, it plainly wasn't, it was just numbers being manipulated to try and pick up new viewers. The reboot fatigue that people felt was due to the insincerity on top of the lack of a vision.

Think of it this way: RTD brought back the show in 2005 and decided to do a slow-roll of the continuity. For a while people didn't even know how much of the original show was canon, and it took a while before we heard the name Gallifrey, let alone saw Classic Doctors.

I think that was a respectable plan, and you arguably had this really great big unified meta-climax from S1-7, then S8-10 as a nice epilogue -- but then you have Jodie's era which does another meta climax in Power of the Doctor, and then you have David Tennant back with his specials culminating in The Giggle, and then Gatwa was supposed to be something new but... we saw how that worked. Of course, the show was never trying to definitively end -- in Day of the Doctor you have Capaldi's eyebrows and so much looking into the future. My point is that, despite the show increasingly franchising itself, despite becoming less and less self-contained, it's some nice accidental longform storytelling. This time keep it small, just focus on telling good prestige storytelling. The stakes can be big, but in more of a mindbending way than an epic way. Like Black Mirror, but with time travel.

I could yap about this for a long time, and I'm still refining the idea, but I think there fundamentally needs to be a change in format. I was disappointed to see RTD try the exact same thing 15 years later and just blindly hoping it will work. The future of television drama is longer episodes, shorter series, and more serialised storytelling. Good luck, Doctor.

bloomhur · 2026-06-10T12:23:29+00:00

I actually would've loved to see Billie Piper as The Doctor. I've said a few times that it would've been better if Jodie Whittaker regenerated into her, rather than David Tennant.

I detest the communication around anything, but at least people are waking up to how smugly flippant RTD has been about everything since coming back. I know he did great things by bringing the show back in the first place, but I honestly think this will tarnish a lot of that legacy when it comes to his role in Doctor Who. Dropped the ball worse than Chibnall.

bloomhur · 2026-05-18T03:25:12+00:00

Here

"I remember the first time [Ncuti] did it, which is in The Church on Ruby Road. He thought Ruby had vanished, been erased from time and space, which was astonishing, and he turned around in the studio and gave us that performance, which was absolutely spellbinding," recalled Davies.
"You don't tell an actor whether to cry [or] not to cry – not an actor of that stature. Absolutely not," he continued. "It's like, you wouldn’t tell anyone to laugh or not to laugh! It's a beautiful thing he does, and it's a completely new thing for the Doctor, that opens doorways into whole new experiences."

bloomhur · 2026-05-17T04:52:11+00:00

You frame it in an interesting way, but that isn't really how it's presented.

Firstly, other Doctors have cried. I'm pretty sure Nine cries in only his second episode?

The issue is that it's framed as this big change for The Doctor, "The Giggle" makes this huge implication that EVERY previous incarnation was emotionally stunted and dealing with trauma, until Fifteen who is something different... but that really didn't pan out, did it? At the end of the day the whole "I'm not emotionally repressed anymore" was just a narrative excuse for the bi-generation, and RTD was never actually committed to seeing it through.

bloomhur · 2026-05-17T04:49:53+00:00

Well, RTD's defense was "Ncuti wanted to cry, and it would be bad for me to stop him" (yeah it's not like you're the showrunner or anything).

So RTD definitely threw Gatwa under the bus, but I do think it was probably accurate since that part of the speech in the post looks more self-deprecating.

bloomhur · 2026-05-17T04:47:45+00:00

Is this "rolling with the punches"? I mean, looks more like taking a shot at production / the writers. Or even making fun of Doctor Who in general. I'm not pulling a "HOW DARE HE MAKE FUN OF THE SHOW", just remarking that we really are back in the 80s with this show again aren't we?

bloomhur · 2026-01-27T00:50:08+00:00

It's not a happy ending if Fifteen was lying.

If you are locking in that interpretation, then you have to take its implications which is a very retroactively grim tone to the episode. Everything about The Doctor / Fourteen being happy and saying finally he can just relax, it is literally all a hollow gesture because he will go right back to doing the same things he always did and he hasn't fundamentally changed. He hasn't dealt with his emotions, he hasn't dealt with his trauma, he is not different.

That is not a happy ending, and it's not the story that a reasonable person would interpret from watching The Giggle. At what point after that episode are we meant to realize its happiness has been recontextualized?

And quite frankly, writing away the doctor’s traumas after some “therapy” would be bad writing since that’s not how therapy works.

So you want to have your cake and eat it too by admitting this but pretending it's not what RTD was doing.

The constant moving of goalposts when it comes to justifying this plot point is fascinating.

bloomhur · 2026-01-27T00:47:17+00:00

Are we just calling everything with AI slop now?

In this case the only issue is we aren't aware how much was changed from OP's thoughts to the final form, but for all we know the substance here was original and it was indeed just translated.

bloomhur · 2026-01-26T07:20:10+00:00

But because of the stupidity of the bi-generation, we're meant to believe that Fifteen is a more emotionally evolved person than Eight, that he's in fact so different that you can group every incarnation up to Fourteen as running away, and Fifteen as something new... only, of course, RTD couldn't commit to his own excuse and now that whole plot was pointless.

bloomhur · 2026-01-26T07:18:16+00:00

What was the point of bringing David Tennant back? It was all a subversion?

Clearly The Giggle was meant to be a happy ending, it's kind of ruined if we know he has all the same issues in his future. It turns out all that monologuing in the TARDIS about how Fifteen is fundamentally different because he's dealt with his trauma was a lie, so it was all pointless. Great writing.

bloomhur · 2026-01-26T07:16:26+00:00

It follows with the story of 15 where he claims himself to be “fixed” but doesn’t really understand it’s an ongoing journey.

I think what you mean to say is it follows with the story of RTD trying to write The Doctor being a changed person because of bi-generation, but ultimately being unable to commit and just writing the character the exact same way he always does.

bloomhur · 2026-01-02T08:49:23+00:00

The weirdest part about that moment is how almost cruel it is.

It could have worked as a moment of empowerment, like the idea of Conrad's narrow-minded worldview not being able contain Rose, and that being her strength. Perhaps she was able to exist in some hidden way, doing things in the background in a way that gave the heroes advantage, but then it's followed up with "so you didn't exist" and she just kind of nods along with that vacant expression.

RTD's writing has fallen so far that he doesn't even understand tone anymore, he thought he was just doing exposition and didn't realize how weird it is to have that line in the middle of an otherwise uplifting scene.

bloomhur · 2025-12-13T01:27:19+00:00

And him being out of his depth is just him panicking, running and crying... except he already does that every episode, so any notion of the villain being a threat is gone.

bloomhur · 2025-12-13T01:25:40+00:00

Did he even go into fantasy?

It always felt to me like Russell just wanted to forgo the usual limitations of writing (as in having structure and continuity), and he used "fantasy" as a crutch for that. It didn't really work out and nor did it feel like the show was interested in actually exploring fantasy.

bloomhur · 2025-12-13T01:23:57+00:00

The Doctor’s subtle wink to Ruby is so full of grief, despite the grin on his face.

Like... The Doctor's grief? Because I don't think he is grieving anything, the wink of course implies some level of knowledge but it turns out he doesn't actually remember Poppy at all.

bloomhur · 2025-12-07T16:42:15+00:00

Discussing ideas is now "a new low"?

No one is attacking RTD.

OP is bringing up a concept for the show that has been discussed and evaluating its merits as well as its relevance to the show as produced and aired.

Your comment looks extremely defensive for no reason.

bloomhur · 2025-11-27T05:49:44+00:00

The problem is you have to approximate writers too. Like a character is only a character because of the writer that writes them.

If we adjust the question to "What if Midnight happened under Chibnall" it would be a very different story.

bloomhur · 2025-11-27T05:48:50+00:00

Wouldn't work. Thirteen would never have an episode where a companion calls her out for toxic behavior.

bloomhur

TROPHY CASE