When Russell T Davies brought Doctor Who back to our TV screens in 2005 (yes, the best part of 20 years ago now – and they say time travel isn’t possible), he had quite a job on his hands.

Many people, some of them major TV figures, told him that it simply wouldn’t work. Doctor Who was strange, fusty, old sci-fi drama for family audiences, they said. He was warned that people didn’t watch drama as a family any more, and certainly not Saturday teatime sci-fi.

To Davies’ great credit, he stuck to his guns and, against the odds, the revived show proved to be a colossal success. The late noughties were a riot of Doctor Who magazines, comics and spin-offs – plus shamelessly Who-inspired fare like Primeval, Merlin, Robin Hood and Demons – with the shops chock-full of Dalek toys, sonic screwdrivers and anything with David Tennant’s picture. Tennant on.

When Davies, along with Tennant, chose to move on from the show in 2009, you might have forgiven the BBC for putting it back into cold storage. In fact, the broadcaster carried on with a string of new Doctors, overseen by new showrunners (first Steven Moffat, who managed to stamp some of his own identity on the show and keep the quality pretty high, despite running another huge hit TV show, Sherlock, at the same time; and then Chris Chibnall, fresh from the success of Broadchurch, whose stewardship was marked by flat, lazy storytelling – plus, to be fair, a global pandemic).

When Chibnall himself moved on 2022, the darkest rumours suggested that the BBC was considering pulling the plug, the show’s popularity having begun to wane. So it came as a huge surprise when Davies announced that he was returning to the show for a second stint (promptly dubbed ‘RTD2’ by some wag).

Doctor…..Who?

For the 60th anniversary last November, Davies oversaw three Doctor Who specials reuniting David Tennant and Catherine Tate, before a full relaunch of the show, now subject of a lucrative distribution deal with Disney+, with a brand new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, and his companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). In a way, then, Davies found himself right back where he’d started, facing the challenge of revitalising the show against a background of considerable indifference.

With Gatwa’s first full season having finished, it’s now possible to stand back and declare that, yes, Davies was the right man at the right time – again – and Doctor Who stands regenerated and full of fresh appeal. Nevertheless, it’s not exactly been a flawless, knock-it-out-of-the-park success, and it leaves room for further improvement. Ratings figures tend not to matter so much these days (they no longer accurately reflect the way that audiences watch TV) but it’s undeniable that they’ve been low. So, why is that?

Is it a matter of timing? Viewers who’d drifted off from the show had multiple opportunities to jump back in – the anniversary specials, Gatwa’s Christmas Day debut, the new series in May – but none seemed to feel definitively like The One. Wisely, the new series held off on involved continuity references – no Daleks, Cybermen, Time Lords or Master (unless..?). But it did take some unexpected deep dives with mentions of the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan (seen on screen just once since she left on Boxing Day 1964) and the villainous Sutekh (last seen hurtling down a far-reaching time corridor back in 1975). Even the Doctor’s regeneration was caused by the returning Toymaker, previously seen only in a 1966 story that doesn’t even exist in the archives in full any more. Thankfully, Davies has a knack of deploying such call-backs in a way that doesn’t feel like newcomers must first do the required reading.

Another issue might be the reduced episode count. We’re now getting eight per year, plus a Christmas special, down from 13 plus a special during the pre-Jodie Whittaker years. It’s easy to see why – we’ve all been tightening our belts – but it did mean that this series rattled to a climax when we’d only just got used to it being on, and consequently it didn’t carry quite the same weight or feel earned. It didn’t help that Gatwa’s schedule for filming his final episodes of Sex Education overlapped with the start of filming for this series of Doctor Who. These things happen, but it did mean that he was only a minimal presence in a couple of episodes. His Doctor is a character we sorely need to spend more time with.

The Doctor

A deeper problem, though, might be a subtle shift in tone. No, it’s nothing about going ‘woke’. Instead, it’s shifted away from sci-fi – or maybe science fantasy – right towards fantasy. From the Toymaker onwards, the Doctor has been faced with assorted ‘gods’, likely with more to follow. And if you think that Davies believes in such things as gods, well, again, you’ve not been paying attention.

It’s perhaps a curious shift, just as ‘harder’ screen sci-fi is having a real moment with the likes of Dune and The 3-Body Problem. But what’s frustrating is that it leans into one of Davies’ weaknesses. Make no mistake, he’s a remarkable writer. If he’d never done Doctor Who before, we’d still have good reason to punch the air at the mind behind It’s a Sin and Years & Years taking over. But he can be less than thorough about his logical leaps, and the finer detail of how a story is resolved – as though it simply doesn’t interest him as much as getting one up and running.

Once you take science out of the equation, though, even if it’s Doctor Who pseudo-science, it can seem like things are happening for no easily discernible reason. For instance, the character of Maestro, brilliantly brought to life by Jinkx Monsoon, seems to operate in a manner than defies all rules (for instance, as God of Music, Maestro appeared intent on stamping out all music, in a way that you wouldn’t expect, say, a God of Fire to stamp out all fires).

Now, is that deliciously chaotic or is it a kind of cop-out? Your mileage may vary, as they say. But the two-part series finale, so thrillingly set up in The Legend of Ruby Road, fell a bit flat in Empire of Death, precisely because of this ‘wait, what?’ approach to narrative twists and turns.

All of these are mere niggles, though. This series has been tremendous fun, offering up a bold helping of variety (the three-episode run of Boom, 73 Yards and Dot & Bubble was a marvellous thing). For all the consequences of the extra Disney+ money, it’s still anchored in characters, ideas and resourcefulness. Not for nothing did the series’ true climactic moment involve a couple of characters chatting in a quiet coffee shop (and not for the first time in a Russell T Davies script).

Doctor Who was not in good nick when Davies came back to it, and he and his team have been successful in revamping and reinvigorating it. Never mind the show’s 60th anniversary – even ‘new’ Doctor Who has been running for 19 years, and that’s a ripe old age for any TV drama. It could have been on its last legs, but thankfully now its future looks bright again, and the Ncuti Gatwa era looks set to be a great one. The nagging feeling, though, is that the very best may yet be to come.

By Andy Murray

Main image credit and copyright: James Pardon/Bad Wolf/BBC Studios

 

The new series of Doctor Who is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK, alongside almost every surviving episode from the show’s long history (except for the very first one – it’s a long story, but don’t look it up or you’ll probably get annoyed).