On Keeping Some Perspective

At the moment, we seem to be going through a particularly intense period of people panicking about Doctor Who. Rumours abound online – and even in Private Eye – of behind-the-scenes shenanigans, and indeed Doctor Who Magazine itself has struck rather an odd tone in recent months. They even published the same letter slagging A Good Man Goes To War two issues in a row.

There may or may not be some truth in the mutterings, and the recent changes in the Executive Producer roster certainly contrast with the solidity of the Three-Who-Rule days in the RTD era. Perhaps Danny Cohen doesn’t like Doctor Who (though I’m sure he makes decisions based on the measurable popularity of his shows rather than on personal taste – just like Michael Grade did). It may be even be true that Steven Moffat’s plotting has led to a sharp increase in the number of children who have to explain what’s going on to their parents.

Or perhaps we’re all just being paranoid.

My point, and I do have one, is that none of this matters. Not at all. In the grand scheme of things, where the particular thing is Doctor Who, it makes no difference if it’s all going tits up or if it’s all going swimmingly. Let me explain (now, rather than later).

It was always thus. We all occasionally enjoy playing the Imagine If The Internet Existed During Season X game. “OMG, Verity’s quit and now this latest episode *hasn’t even got the Doctor in*”; “Don’t like this Patrick Troguton bloke”; “OMG it’s in colour – Doctor Who Died Today” and so on. But the truth is, we – and by we I mean DW fandom – love our show’s history, warts and all.

Roughly 99% of us hate Colin Baker’s coat (and I’m including Colin Baker himself in that). But 98% of us love having a laugh about how much we hate Colin Baker’s coat (yeah, including him in that, too). Remember the Pertwee-McCoy Wars? Wouldn’t have happened had we not had both those eras to argue about.

There have always been crises. Look at the legendary first block of the 2005 series. Look at Part Four of Planet Of Giants. Look at how many times RTD or the Moff have said “It’s like an Andrew Pixley archive!”

But really, look at the viewing figures. Even were it to be cancelled, Doctor Who Will Return.

Sherlock Holmes fans, as far as I can tell, are happy enough with the Gatiss-Moffat version. I doubt they’re sitting around in 2011 weeping about the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, any more than we think the JNT-Saward rift led to the end of Doctor Who. Maybe a few fans checked out during Timelash and never came back. But most of us elderly types checked out at some point and then DID come back.

(Biographical digression: I checked out (having started with The Sontaran Experiment) during Mark Of The Rani – more precisely, at the point where the Rani kicked the Master in the nadgers. I’d read my Targets/DWWs/DWMs and I knew Time Lord genitalia had *not* been established in the ‘classic’ series (ie, everything before The Invisible Enemy). This was going too far. To be fair, I was fifteen.

But my departure wasn’t a crisis for the show, hiatus or no hiatus. It just meant that I got to binge on the McCoy era years later. Oh, and I did see Part Thirteen of Trial Of A Time Lord because I saw Robert Holmes had written it. I saw that because my little brother was watching it. There’s a lesson there, isn’t there? Biographical digression ends).

The wilderness years seemed awful at the time, yes, but even then, we had all sorts of treats. The NAs. The MAs. The TV Movie (which, crossed with Survival = a whole lot of Rose, eh?). The EDAs. The Big Finishes. The culture that grew up around fanzines. Jade Pagoda. And those years were the proving ground for many of those who brought the show back. At the very least, we got Human Nature out of it.

We can play with counter-factuals (which are different from pseudo-historicals). What if JNT had found that hole in the Television Centre fence and George Gallaccio had taken over? What if Barry and Terrance’s local picture house hadn’t been showing The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad? But you can’t change history, not one bit. Erase Erato and *poof*, Blink blinks out of existence.

So maybe we *will* spend the late 20teenies weeping “I can’t believe they cancelled it during the 50th anniversary year!” But...

Just as our very lives, with their ups and downs and awful moments and stupid decisions, lead us to a point where we are reasonably happy with who we are (and are at least in a position to read inconsequential blogs on the internet) in time it all becomes simply – gloriously – a part of Doctor Who history.

I’m confident that Doctor Who will always be here, ready for tomorrow’s ups and downs and awful moments and stupid decisions, leading us to...

Who knows where?