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Yeah I donāt love the idea of a larger corporate partner gaining any creative controlā¦
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This baffles me. If the show had been a success with the RTD2 approach we wouldnāt be in this position.
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Yeah I think that it is great that RTD and BBC are trying to keep that.
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Obviously we have no way of knowing if this is true or not, but I agree about being wary of ceding any creative control to a potential new partner. That being said, I actually also agree that the show should be targeting an older, slightly more mature audience - I think camp has its place in Doctor Who, and I would never want a version of the show with no camp at all, but I do personally feel the last two series significantly overegged this element (which IMO is likely a turnoff for the wider audience). When you look at the eras which are the most historically popular (1, 3, 4, 9, 10 and 11), the campy elements are usually pretty limited. I think something very similar to the Hinchcliffe era in tone would be the best bet to catapult the show back into the wider zeitgeist, from my armchair analyst perspective.
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Is it controversial to say maybe it is time to bring in more creative input from outside the BBC?
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Outside of the Beeb: Yes, IMO - I think any degree of another corporate entity gaining control is a bit dangerous
Outside of the current creative team: Definitely not, Iām right there with you
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Something that would be cool if it became a public service show and a collab between BBC SVT and some other PS broadcasters.
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Of course this is just a rumour but given the current status the BBC donāt appear to want to bring in any new creative voices. This appears to be a problem across the industry.
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The idea of camp and fun VS dark and scary is so silly to me. Why canāt Doctor Who be both camp and dark? Itās almost always been in the past!
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It is a public service show, the BBC is a public service broadcaster. But that limits what it can do in terms of overseas deals.
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I mean if they can do Eurovision with other broadcasters in the EBU why not do the same for drama? SVT is also a PS broadcaster.
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Iām not sure but I think its a funding issue? Eurovision is a yearly event, Who is a bit more complex? Apparently āThe Eurovision Song Contest is a co-production between the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and its Member Broadcasters. all public service broadcasters in their respective countries.ā I donāt see that model working for Who.
I know when Doctor Who came back there was some initial funding from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) which gave them broadcasting rights. They even had Ecccelston & Billie filimng special inserts for the Canadian broadcast, some for ad break sections.
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I think Iām the token person who signs up for Disney+ just to watch Doctor Who, but Disney is probably looking for people to sign up to watch it and then keep it, and not drop it when the season ends (like I do). Itās not just a me thing; in this current era of a billion streaming services, people will sign up to watch a show exclusive to that service and drop it when that season is done.
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A lot of people do that, & these streamimg services want subsriber retention. Given the current economic climate for a lot of us that just isnāt going to happen. I only have Prime, & I think that is out of habit more than anything.
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I agree that Doctor Who should be a mix of both (and almost always has been historically, as you point out), I just think itās a tightrope that needs to be walked very carefully. I wouldnāt want Doctor Who to be serious and dark every week, because that would take a lot of the joy out, but I also think having too much camp can risk dampening the stakes and the seriousness with which viewers treat the show. The opening trio of The Church on Ruby Road, Space Babies and The Devilās Chord is a great illustration of this for me - those three episodes push the dial too far in favour of camp and we get three back-to-back stories featuring singing goblins, talking babies, snot monsters, and musical numbers. Thatās really not what I think of when I think of Doctor Who, and I suspect it isnāt what the wider audience thinks of either - when you have something like that for three episodes one after another, I suspect people will start to think theyāve got this eraās number and switch off, and theyāll miss great stories like Boom, 73 Yards, Dot and Bubble and Rogue. Contrast all that with, say, the Barry Letts era - there are undoubtedly camp elements running through it, but they never overwhelm things, and the campier stories (such as Carnival of Monsters) are mixed in with more serious ones (such as The Three Doctors and Frontier in Space), so thereās a nice threading of the needle.
At the end of the day, itās all down to personal preference, and I think the definition of camp is different for different people. I suspect I have a lower tolerance for it than others on the forum, and thatās fine - weāre all free to like different things. I just find myself a bit baffled when, for example, we get a Eurovision episode, because Iāve never even remotely equated Eurovision with Doctor Who in my own head, and I think doing so speaks to an unusual view of āwhat Doctor Who is likeā on the part of the production team.
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I just want to be clear; I donāt think this would happen. But it would be cool to have this epic European sci-fi drama collab.
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This rumour, if true, further supports the idea that RTD is out of touch with the modern streaming era and that he is kind of doing his own thing and doesnāt want others to prevent his visionāwhich is both good and bad. But I think that itās going to hurt the show in the long run.
I donāt want to see my favourite reduced to annual specials for multiple years!
Itās not ideal, but if no one is willing to help out otherwise, Iāll take that over annual specials!
Part of DWās charm is the campiness of it, but it has to be correctly balanced. It seems that more serious sci-fi is what people want these days, though, so if DW wants to remain successful, it should be able to follow that trend while keeping the campy elements at a level that doesnāt make audiences automatically think of it as camp and therefore not want to watch it.
With budget cuts affecting pretty much all public broadcasters, I donāt think SVT would be willing to do this. The same for our YLE. And how would that even work?! How could SVT justify funding a show made entirely in the UK with a UK cast and crew?
Itās not the same. Eurovision is funded every year primarily by the host broadcaster. The competing countries pay a membership and participation fee to the EBU, which is also used to fund parts of the event and the EBUās processes. But itās still mainly the host broadcaster who pays for the event, which is why itās often feared by many of the poorer countries, because itās so expensive. SVT publicly said that if Sweden had won this year, they would have produced a budget version of Eurovision next year because they just hosted last year.
Iām the same. We used to have D+ from 2019 to 2023, but then we dropped it because they kept increasing the price, and it wasnāt justifiable anymore. I now only have it to watch DW.
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Basically exactly what I think, but a lot more succinctly put! Too far in either direction is a problem, but there is definitely wiggle room to shift the serious/camp balance - I think the 2005 - 2009 era did this pretty well, the 2023 - 2025 era not so much, IMO
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I do think camp has its place in Who but, as some here have said, I think itās just become the default tone for the most part. Iām kind of fed up with camp villains, it just reduces the stakes & makes everything feel inconsequential. It can often feel like everyoneās having fun at the expense of real drama. Of course this is a personal taste issue, but variety is key I think to the showās longevity.
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