Restoring Wonder: Could Doctor Who benefit from a Break?
Guest contributor Nicolò Bicego thinks the show could use a gap to heighten mystery & wonder.
Recent rumours suggest that Doctor Who might not air a full series in 2016. Despite fan concerns, I think a potential pause, whatever form it takes, could give the series a chance for something of a restart (not a reboot, as I’ll explain later). Why would that be a good idea? Let’s find out…
The First ‘New’ Doctor
It had nothing to do with the quality of the episodes or the stories themselves: it was about the Doctor and the atmosphere that surrounded him. Who is this man? What is he capable of? What will he do in the next episode? What did he do in his past that still haunts him? The Doctor was shrouded with mystery, even as the episodes went on, I still didn’t know who this man really was. True, this feeling of mystery is partially due to the fact that I didn’t watch Classic Who, but I think that even classic era fans found this new Doctor as something foreign to them. Partially, because of the time lapse: Series 1 didn’t start from where the McGann TV movie left off, so there was a large gap in between his friendly Doctor that we got to know for barely 90 minutes and the new Doctor.
Also, this gap wasn’t a hollow one. We know that something terrible happened in between, something that made the Time Lords a piece of history: the Time War. We barely get any information about it during the first series, but we do know that the Doctor did something terrible, something that changed him into this distant and cold man, something that causes his outburst in “Dalek”. This mysterious atmosphere was beautifully underpinned by Murray Gold’s theme for the Ninth Doctor, which I still hold as my favourite theme for the Doctor. Listening to that piece of score, I can’t help but picture an unknown place or an unknown face. The feeling of curiosity, the need to know more lurking inside me, the same thing that Rose must have felt when she first met the Doctor.
Your friendly neighbourhood Doctors
Once Eccleston left the series, David Tennant stepped in as the new Doctor. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Tenth Doctor, and I love the series he stars in, but the feeling of wonder and surprise was gone. Gone was the feeling of having a mysterious character who could do literally anything in the next episode. With each passing story we got to know the Doctor better and better, until he was a familiar, friendly face and not a mysterious alien being.
This carried on during Smith’s tenure. Even if his Doctor was more alien and wacky than his predecessor to many degrees, he was almost always a friendly face. Someone you could trust, who would never let you down. True, he did hold some secrets, but I never felt he was a mysterious alien. To me he was just an odd friend with some secrets, no matter how big.
I don’t know who I am: the Twelfth Doctor
Then we got Peter Capaldi. With the Twelfth Doctor we bid goodbye to our friendly neighbourhood Doctors (at least for Series 8), as he was replaced by a cold, surly man that didn’t even know if he could trust himself to be a good man. One should think that this new Doctor would bring back that sense of wonder that came with Nine, yet that’s not the case. Even if his personality has changed a lot, we still know who the Doctor his.
Unlike Clara, we were prepared for what happened in “The Time of the Doctor”. We saw the transition from the Eleventh, friendly Doctor to this new man. So even if he still doesn’t know who he is or whether he’s a good man, we still know he is. We know that since the very first moments his face appears on the screen. He’s still the same man he was, even if it doesn’t know about it, and we know that because we were with him all the time.
What could bring back the sense of wonder?
As many may know, the first attempt to bring back the mystery surrounding the Doctor happened with the Seventh Doctor. The writers hinted that the Doctor was something more than what he pretended to be, something he didn’t want anyone to know. Unfortunately, that plan was never carried out fully as Doctor Who was cancelled in 1989, and no real trace of it was to be found in the TV movie.
Still, when Doctor Who came back in 2005, the Doctor was all again a mysterious figure, bringing back with him a sense of wonder no other subsequent Doctor brought. Why that is, I already said: the time skip made it so. We didn’t know how much he changed in the pause. We didn’t know how he would act in certain situations, we didn’t know anything about this new man.
This was enforced by the fact that there were no other familiar (friendly) faces around him for the first series: Rose knew less about him than we did, the same goes for Captain Jack. The Twelfth Doctor, even with his new unexpected short-tempered personality, had no tone, but four companions around him in his first episode. They all knew him, and despite Clara’s doubts, they all knew who he was, easing us in the translation from Matt Smith (along with a phone call from Eleven himself reassuringly Clara and fans).
In conclusion
In my opinion, a time skip and a brand new start (that means no returning companions, recurring characters or story arcs) could help to bring back Doctor Who’s feeling of mystery and wonder. Even if it’s highly unlikely since we have some story arcs still going on (the search for Gallifrey above all), it would be nice if, after Moffat and Capaldi’s departure, we got a fresh start with a new Doctor that has something unknown to us. Whether it’s something that happened during the new time gap like the Time War or something that goes back to the Doctor’s origins. This would also be a chance to finally close all of Moffat’s loose story arcs and start new ones, another thing which I think would do good to the series.
But what do you think about it? Do you think Doctor Who could benefit from a restart? If so, what form should it take?
