TV As you know it's been a difficult few weeks, but today I'm beaming, absolutely beaming. There are certain pop culture moments which seem so unlikely that the world, or at least your Twitter timeline seems to stop because it can't quite grasp what just happened (unless the server's gone down again). "I'm a doctor, but probably not the one you were expecting" is pretty high on the list Doctor Who wise but taking a break in the middle of watching The Green Knight* and discovering that Russell T Davies, Russell T Davies for goodnesss sake, is returning as showrunner for the 60th year and beyond is pretty high up there.
The BBC press release is here. There's scant information about anything much, as you might expect, other than that it's to be a co-production between BBC Studios and Bad Wolf, the production company set up by Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter, who's about page spends a whole paragraph comparing the revival's season one story arc to the Welsh TV production industry sending its work out into the world. They're putting the band back together and given Phil Collinson and Murray Gold both worked on It's A Sin, there's every chance they'll be returning too. It's Saturday tea time 2005 all over again. Again.
The press release is very careful to remind readers that there's another series and bit of Thirteenth Doctor stories to come (or however many Doctors there were before Jodie) and it is unfortunate that some extent this will overshadow the next year or so as people speculate about what the new RTD 2.0 will look like. But twas forever thus. Even back in the interdimensional non-space of the time vortex, when the general viewership didn't even know who was writing the show, the shift from one actor to another in the lead role was filled with fear and anticipation.
We await the Doctor Who Magazine interview within which Russell explains how he was persuaded to return, given the finality with which he communicated his desperation to leave to Ben Cook in their book The Writer's Tale. A very large cheque was possibly involved, or the fear of cancellation because no one else wanted to do it (called by no one the JNT manoeuvre) and the enticement of being able to make it in conjunction with his old friends. The previous workload seemed to break him last time so it is surprising that he'd want to do it all over again. Or perhaps he just watched The Timeless Child and wanted to take one for the team.
Not to chill your mellow, but there are a couple of issues. As we've retrospectively discovered, the production process on his previous tenure was not an altogether happy one, what with the harassment claims against Noel Clarke and John Barrowman getting his todger out in the workplace much to the amusement of cast and crewmembers who's livelihood depended on them finding it funny. Plus Christopher Eccleston still isn't happy with the BBC or indeed Davies and co because of things he saw during the process so don't expect to see him back for the 60th. Hopefully, as they say, lessons have been learned.
But what does this mean in the long term? Given how enamoured Russell is about the whole business surrounding Doctor Who, Big Finish is safe, Doctor Who Magazine will be taken care of (and include a few set visits again) and we might even get Doctor Who Confidential back. In the wider context, given that he's a collector himself and knows the pain of spines which don't match, the current logo might stay at least long enough for it to appear on all the BD boxsets. However flimsy it seemed at first, its grown on me, although I imagine the next one'll simply be the title of the series written in lowercase BBC Reith.
Before this is posted, some wild speculation. The next Doctor will be played by Lydia West assuming Romola's busy again. It'll return to Saturday nights but in an old old school twenty-five minute format with story lengths of up to four episodes returning the show to twenty-odd episodes a year without much of a change in production time and some added flexibility when it comes to "double banking" and providing more cliffhangers overall. Christmas Day episodes return although with longer seasons, they'll be woven into the fabric of those rather than standing alone.
Nevertheless this is brilliant news and I'm cracking out all of my prop words to celebrate. Including gap years, the revival's been running for over fifteen years which is a long time for any show, especially in this genre and the fact that it's receiving a new impetuous rather than suffering through the kind of managed decline some grandees who should know better predicted (he's well pleased now the cretin) is all to the good. That this show still has an imminent future on television and in such good hands is brilliant news and just what I needed to hear right now. I might even start writing reviews again.
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