I’m of an age where I grew up with a very specific model of Doctor Who - 11 years old when Nu Who first hit our screens, and beyond the occasional Dead Ringers parody, I had not really encountered Classic Who, nor had I particularly cared to. That remains true to this day, although with its (still relatively) recent addition to iPlayer, I do consider it. Nonetheless, I have no attachment to that era. I wouldn’t be particularly interested in a book on the making of it, or the behind the scenes of how and why it was cancelled.
But boy was the idea of this - a book on the behind the scenes machinations of how something once considered to be dead and a joke to many - appealing. Call it the engineer’s mindset, wanting to understand what’s really going on underneath, how the pieces fit together.
It’s really funny that by all accounts, at any given time there did seem to be like seven people trying to make Doctor Who happen again, in whatever form. And based on some of those stories, oh man am I glad it was RTD that got the gig.
A lovely bit of blast-from-the-past nostalgia for the BBC Cult website, the Simpsons page and all of that stuff.
I do kind of think that, whatever happens now, Doctor Who can’t really die? Like, I assume at some point that the current incarnation will stop, the ratings will lull, it won’t be worth continuing etc. But it will come back. Someone who grew up with Nu Who will work their way up the TV ladder, like RTD and Moffat did, and we’ll be back. Fascinating.