Is David Tennant’s return enough to save Doctor Who? | Binge Watch
It’s been 60 years since Dr Who first premiered on BBC One, and to mark the occasion, a few familiar faces are returning to the TARDIS.Join Independent TV’s Isobel Lewis and Jacob Stolworthy as they discuss the diamond anniversary of the seminal sci-fi show, David Tennant’s return, and whether bringing back the old fan favourite is enough to save the show, or if it’s just feeding into nostalgic obsession.Get the latest film and TV news and reviews with Binge Watch on Independent TV.
Transcript
00:00 Welcome to Binge Watch, giving you our picks of what's happening in the world of film
00:16 and TV.
00:17 It's been 60 years since Doc 2 first premiered on our screens and to mark the occasion, an
00:22 old favourite is returning to the TARDIS.
00:24 What?
00:25 Mary Talon is back with a trio of new specials from returning showrunner Russell T Davies.
00:31 So Izzy, as our resident Doctor Who expert, are you excited about this new iteration of
00:37 the series?
00:38 Yeah, I think it is really exciting.
00:39 I think, you know, Doctor Who has maybe been in a bit of a limbo stage for a few years.
00:44 You know, the viewership has been declining.
00:48 Some, maybe myself, would say that the quality of the writing has been declining.
00:51 The BBC is kind of putting everything back behind Doctor Who.
00:54 They are really excited about it.
00:56 Obviously, 60 years is such an exciting anniversary for the show to reach.
01:01 It's nice to see that there's a lot of investment in the show and Russell T Davies was obviously
01:05 so integral in that 2005 reboot.
01:08 The enduring appeal of Doctor Who, I mean, 60 years, has gone through a lot of changes.
01:12 I mean, I've only really ever seen the reboot.
01:14 I've not visited the old series.
01:16 But what do you think it is about Doctor Who that gives it this kind of, that it can evolve
01:22 and kind of change shape over the years?
01:25 What is it about the show that people keep coming back to?
01:29 I mean, the most obvious thing is like regenerating.
01:31 The fact that the Doctor changes his or her, in this case, or the last case.
01:36 But the fact that you can change the actor who plays the Doctor means that the show can
01:39 always be regenerating itself.
01:43 It kind of moves with the times.
01:44 Obviously, it's a show about time travel, but the show can incorporate pop culture,
01:49 whatever the pop culture is at the time.
01:51 You've got the most exciting actors playing the role.
01:54 And obviously, in recent years, we've seen, you know, we've had a woman playing the Doctor.
01:57 We've got a black actor playing Shushi Gatwa.
02:00 So yeah, the show, in some ways, it will always feel a little bit old-fashioned, just because
02:07 of BBC budgets and special effects and what it can do.
02:10 And obviously, when people talk about those classic Doctor Who's, you know, people were
02:14 hiding behind the sofa, or kids were hiding behind the sofa.
02:16 But also, like, the effects were pretty ropey.
02:18 It was a man in a Dalek costume, and it wasn't quite believable.
02:23 The Earth creatures are to be exterminated.
02:26 Fire at my command.
02:28 Wait a minute.
02:29 Wait.
02:30 You can't.
02:31 Total extermination.
02:32 Fire, fire, fire.
02:33 But it's still, that's part of the charm of Doctor Who.
02:36 It's such a British institution.
02:37 In 60 years, it's like a crazy amount of time for a show to be on TV.
02:40 But it just means when the show has so many core staples that people remember since the
02:44 60s, it means that you can still introduce new aspects as well.
02:48 Yeah, so that's the thing.
02:49 It's got such a storied lore to draw upon, and like you say, all these villains come
02:54 back and all these characters come back, and I'm sure long-time fans of the show who've
02:58 watched every series dating back to 1963 will be excited to see nods and Easter eggs.
03:05 But how easy is it for someone who's new to Doctor Who to just dip in or pick it up who
03:14 doesn't know it on that level?
03:16 I think it still works on a base level without the lore.
03:19 The best Doctor Who episodes, I think, are the ones where it has enough of a story that
03:24 goes throughout it, but not getting too bogged down in the Easter eggs and the very, very
03:29 complex timey-wimey stuff.
03:33 I think you could jump in now, and I think there definitely are some episodes that would
03:37 be worth re-watching, especially for these anniversary ones, which is David Tennant coming
03:41 back because he was last in the show in 2010.
03:45 He's being joined by Catherine Tate as Donna Novel again, who was his last companion, and
03:49 I think that a lot of what is going to happen in this series is going to be playing with
03:54 that and with their last relationship and what happened when she left and when they
03:59 both left the show.
04:00 Oh, Donna Novel, I am so sorry.
04:01 But we had the best of times.
04:07 These anniversary episodes are there in many ways to bring back, I would say, to bring
04:12 back previous viewers to the show.
04:14 You know, people who have maybe fallen off, maybe they were kids when it was last on.
04:17 I was a teenage Doctor Who fan, but for a lot of my friends, they were really young
04:22 when those first episodes were on, or the first rebooted episodes were on.
04:26 So I do think that you can come back.
04:28 You can definitely come into it now for the first time.
04:30 In some ways, I think these are a bit of a leveller, but I have watched episodes of every
04:36 iteration of The Doctor, and there's definitely stuff of value in all of them.
04:39 I do think if you are going straight, if you haven't watched for a few years, I don't think
04:44 you do need to watch all of Matt Smith, all of Peter Cavaldi, all of Jodie's stuff.
04:48 And Russell T Davies is back, bringing things back to basics, maybe.
04:52 And he's got David Tennant with him.
04:54 Now cynical part of me is wondering, I love David Tennant as the Doctor, by the way, but
04:58 cynical part of me is wondering, is it a, I don't want to say desperate, but is it a
05:04 ploy to bring back viewers who might have switched off?
05:10 Yes.
05:11 Yeah, it is, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
05:16 David Tennant, for so many people, is the Doctor.
05:20 I think Christopher Eccleston is my favourite, but I think for a lot of people, he only did
05:26 one season at the beginning, and then it kind of went into David Tennant.
05:29 And David Tennant had, you know, he had Billy Piper with him, he had Freema Agyeman, and
05:33 he also had Catherine Tate.
05:35 So I think for lots of people, especially if you were younger when those ones were on,
05:39 that was probably the person that you associated with, and he had lots of different stories
05:43 that went through the show.
05:45 He also brought a fun to the Doctor that I think was probably the perfect balance between
05:52 fun and serious.
05:53 Like Christopher Eccleston had playful moments, but he was definitely the more serious one.
05:57 And Matt Smith afterwards with, you know, his quirky bow tie was kind of, I would say,
06:02 the very silly side of it.
06:04 And I do think the writing kind of goes a bit haywire once you get into Matt Smith's
06:07 stuff as well.
06:08 That's when it lost me, by the way.
06:10 Yeah, I think-
06:11 It got too complex.
06:12 Yeah, it's when you've got all that really long, like Rory being the last Centurion and
06:17 all the Amy Pond stuff and the River Song stuff.
06:19 It was very, very into the lore.
06:23 And I think for a lot of people, yeah, if you missed an episode, you kind of didn't
06:27 really know what was going on.
06:28 Or like a second, I found.
06:30 I'd go out and come back and be like, I'm totally lost.
06:34 Yeah, definitely.
06:35 Yeah, so I think for a lot of people, and also David Tennant since then, he's probably
06:38 of all the actors who've played the Doctor, I would say, who has done the most other stuff
06:43 since.
06:44 For a lot of people, it will be the thing that they always remember him for.
06:47 But he has done a lot of other stuff and he's obviously an amazing theatre actor as well.
06:52 He's really struck that balance.
06:54 If anything, it's quite surprising, I think, that he did want to come back to it.
06:59 Because it is the thing that you will be asked about in interviews forever.
07:02 It is the thing that fans will associate you with forever.
07:07 And some people want to move away from that.
07:10 But I think there is, he probably is very aware of what it did for his career, I think
07:13 is a big thing.
07:14 I don't want to go.
07:16 I think there are legitimate reasons why people fell off watching it.
07:19 There are also less legitimate reasons.
07:20 Like, lots of people stopped watching it because the Doctor was a woman.
07:23 And I think that is something that you can't really ignore.
07:28 It's a shame, I really felt in Jodie's season, that she was really let down by the writing
07:33 of it.
07:34 And you wanted it to be better than it was.
07:37 And I think that the people who did stick around and who did keep watching Jodie's season,
07:42 they feel that more so than anyone that it is quite a cynical way of getting people back
07:48 watching it.
07:49 Because I don't think it feels like they're sweeping it under the carpet.
07:52 I think they wouldn't say that.
07:53 And I don't know if I would say it either.
07:57 But it does feel a bit like, "Oh, over here.
08:00 Remember when it was good in 2010?"
08:02 And it's going to work.
08:03 Something that's really interesting as well is the Disney partnership.
08:08 Yeah, so this is another reason why it's such a big reset, right?
08:11 Because it's now global in a way that it's never been.
08:13 Yeah, so basically Doctor Who used to air on BBC America and now it's going to be distributed
08:18 by Disney Plus.
08:19 And that's a really big deal as well because, as I kind of mentioned, we associate Doctor
08:25 Who with quite bad special effects.
08:27 And having a bit of Disney dollar coming in is going to make a really big difference.
08:30 But will it lose a bit of charm that it once had, or that it always had?
08:35 Yeah, I honestly think it will a bit.
08:39 I just think that people need to temper their expectations of it.
08:42 It is Doctor Who.
08:44 It's not going to be...
08:48 I don't want to say it's not going to be radical, but it is not going to be radical.
08:52 I hear what you're saying.
08:53 I think with the money coming in, people are probably expecting something that's going
09:00 to be not what it is.
09:02 And I think the thing is, like you say about it not being scary, but also it's like a family
09:06 show.
09:07 The best Doctor Who episodes were the scary ones because they would only come around once
09:12 every spin of the moon.
09:13 Like the harsh one.
09:14 It was just like, it stands out.
09:15 So if you're making every episode like that, it will kind of lessen the impact.
09:19 Yeah, and I think also if you think about those classic episodes that were actually
09:24 scary, like the one that everyone always talks about is...
09:26 Yeah, was it the Weeping Angels one?
09:28 Where the statues and you close your eyes and they're there.
09:30 Yeah, I think that's because that was the first time that that happened.
09:33 That's an episode that David Tennant is basically not in.
09:36 Interesting.
09:37 It's obviously a very young Carey Mulligan in it.
09:40 It's basically just her in a house and she's scared that these Weeping Angels are coming
09:43 at her.
09:44 I think that what happened there is that was such a brilliant episode.
09:48 I remember being absolutely terrified.
09:50 Yeah, same.
09:51 I remember being on a school trip to the local church and it was like a week after it happened
09:56 and everyone was scared to look at the statues.
09:59 But then, maybe in the Stephen Moffat era, because the Weeping Angels were his invention,
10:06 he was the showrunner for most of Matt Smith's time and they went really hard on the Weeping
10:12 Angels and then they would overuse them and then they had all these time powers.
10:18 And I think that's what Dot Two in the past has often done, which is to go, "Oh, this
10:26 thing does well.
10:27 We should fixate on that."
10:28 Don't turn your back.
10:29 Don't look away and don't blink.
10:30 The reason why I think it kind of works is because, like you say, David Tennant and Russell
10:37 T Davies are so established away from the show that it feels like a cynical ploy, sure,
10:43 for the BBC to kind of get viewers back who might have lost along the way.
10:47 But because these people, like David and Russell, they don't need Doctor Who.
10:52 They're there because of the love of the thing.
10:56 That in itself, I think, hopefully, I've not seen the episodes, will bleed through and
11:02 the cynicism will disintegrate because of how charming it is and how much they clearly
11:07 love the show.
11:08 Yeah.
11:09 And there is interesting stuff also happening in these as well.
11:11 We've got Neil Patrick Harris is coming.
11:13 He's going to be playing the Toymaker.
11:15 Looking for a new audience, going for an American audience, definitely.
11:18 People who are not as steeped in Doctor Who lore.
11:21 It doesn't mean as much to them as it does to British audiences.
11:26 We've also got national treasure Miriam Margulies is voicing the Meep in the first episode.
11:32 Miriam's version of the Meep is going to be good, I think.
11:36 Probably less sweary than she is on this morning.
11:39 But again, it's a good way to get people interested in the show again.
11:43 And also we've got Yasmin Finney from Heartstopper, who's obviously a trans actress and she's
11:46 playing Donna's daughter, who's called Rose, which is obviously a nod towards Rose Tyler
11:54 back in the day.
11:55 So yeah, there is interesting stuff definitely happening in it too.
11:59 It's easy to be like, "Oh, we're in the age of peak nostalgia."
12:02 And when you hear that they're coming back, it does, I think, trigger a bit of a response
12:06 of being like, it's a bit of a ploy to get people interested.
12:09 But there is really interesting stuff too.
12:10 And if you look at It's a Sin and the other stuff that Russell has done in recent years,
12:15 he's gone from strength to strength.
12:17 And Doctor Who obviously has more constraints on it in many ways just because of what the
12:21 show is.
12:22 But I do think he will bring what he's done since to it as well.
12:26 Yeah, yeah.
12:27 And like you say, the nostalgia, it's okay to have a bit of nostalgia.
12:31 But for me, what I don't want them to do, now it's being Disneyfied, is spin-off, spin-off,
12:37 spin-off, spin-off.
12:38 This character's a success, so let's do a spin-off of this character.
12:40 These villains aren't going to be in the new series, but hey, let's give them their own
12:43 show.
12:44 That's when it will kill the whole thing dead.
12:45 Yeah, I think they probably won't do that.
12:47 I think also because it's easy to forget that Doctor Who has done that in the past.
12:52 Like we had the Sarah Jane adventures, was the CBBC series.
12:55 I did read an interview recently where Russell was kind of hinting at maybe a return for
13:00 Torchwood, which was a spin-off as well.
13:02 Really?
13:03 Yeah.
13:04 Oh wow.
13:05 But that was also, again, that had a really big following.
13:06 It was like a big BBC Wales production in particular.
13:09 I think they won't be doing too much of that.
13:11 I think putting the money into Doctor Who is the most important thing.
13:16 It's getting a lot of the old team back together, but I do think they know what they're doing
13:20 and I think they know also that fans, if it was all nostalgia and it was all like, baity
13:25 like that, I think people wouldn't really stand for it.
13:27 I don't know if I can save your life this time.
13:32 I for one can't wait to see how it all turns out.
13:35 Doctor Who returns on the BBC and Disney+ overseas on Saturday 25th November with episodes
13:41 airing the next two weeks.
13:43 Thanks so much for watching Binge Watch.
13:44 We'll see you again next time.
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