A Doctor Who Movie Mistake!
Hello readers, before I start I am assuming you all know what Doctor Who is and have seen/read about it before, if no I would point you at this time to Wikipedia or Google to go find out.
This article is one of mixed feelings for me because in one hand it is about Doctor Who, the show which I love and some would say have been obsessed with since I started watching in late 80’s, yet on the other hand its about the news which has been going around for a couple of days mentioning a Doctor Who movie, which if the comments are true and it comes to fruition then it will feel like they have ripped out my heart, tore it into a thousand pieces, poured acid over it and then finally burned it in a fire of hurt, pain, agony and sorrow leaving the ashes in a big mount of regret.
Before I carry on let me tell you exactly what I am going on about. David Yates who some of you may or may not have heard of is a 47 (soon to be 48) year old English filmmaker who has made a name for himself lately directing the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth Harry Potter movies, before that he directed/wrote/produced a lot of short films and television serials, one of which was the brilliant ‘State of Play’ starring our very own ‘Master’ John Simm along with James McAvoy, Bill Nighy and a few other great actors/actresses.
David made some comment’s this week stating that he is to be working with the BBC to turn the greatest sci-fi show ever made ‘Doctor Who’ into a “Big Screen Franchise”.
He told Daily Variety that he is working on the movie with Jane Tranter, head of L.A.-based BBC Worldwide Prods and is quoted as saying “We’re looking at writers now. We’re going to spend two to three years to get it right,” he said. “It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena.” he also said “The notion of the time-travelling Time Lord is such a strong one, because you can express story and drama in any dimension or time,” and “We want a British sensibility, but having said that, Steve Kloves wrote the Potter films and captured that British sensibility perfectly, so we are looking at American writers too,”.
But the most worrying quote for me is this,
“Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch,”
Doctor Who has been running continuously on our television sets since 1963 apart from a 16 year break between 1989 and 2005 (we call this the barren years) where all we got was a very under rated television movie starring the 8th Doctor played by Paul McGann.
I have been reading a lot in the last day or so how the show was successfully rebooted in 2005 by writer Russell T. Davies and subsequently by Steven Moffat but that is RUBBISH. Reboot means to discard much or even all previous continuity in the series and start anew with fresh ideas which they never did, both CONTINUED ON from where the show left off, yes it was faster paced and slicker, yes it was more modern with a higher budget but deep down at the core it was/is the same show, it is the same doctor now on his 11th regeneration played by the brilliant Matt Smith it was never rebooted by either of them.
What is painful to read for me and I am sure a lot of other fans are how it seems that Mr Yates has said he will not follow on from the current TV series and will start from scratch and I say WHY??????
They have tried this twice before with “Doctor Who and the Daleks” (1965) and “Doctor Who: Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.” (1966), both of which are starring the amazing Peter Cushing who star’s as the Doctor. Ok it’s not really the same thing but these films were meant to take Who to the big screens and where they are good movies they are not canon or indeed part of the ‘main’ Doctor Who’ bubble.
I personally am not happy or comfortable with the whole ‘starting from scratch’ as it would abandon the nearly 50 years of continuity behind the TV series and a massive part of both my child and adult life. I started to watch Doctor Who when I was a nine year old kid, and then when it came back in 2005 I started watching again with MY kids, my daughter being 5 at the time it came back and now as a 10 year old she is a massive fan of Who, Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood not to mention the last two years my son has started to watch it too, as you can see its been a massive part of both my childhood and adult family life.
If the were to start from scratch/reboot or whatever you want to call it there is going to be a whole lot of people feeling that every Doctor Who memory they have is fraudulent and that BBC has ruined so many of there memories as just so many years of attachment will be gone leaving only the name of the show left.
As you can probably tell i am 100% against this if it is true because to be honest it does seem every couple of years a Doctor Who movie is mentioned but I what makes this different is a very famous director giving specifics about what they are working on and with who.
There are only three options in which I would be up for this film and in which I think it would work.
Option 1 – A full length Time War movie to find out what happened between the time lords and Daleks. Get Paul McGann back as the 8th Doctor and give him the regeneration at the end he totally deserves.
Option 2 – A prequel or Origin story about a young Doctor before any regenerations, seeing him running around Gallifrey getting up to mischief or at University with the Master.
Option 3 – A full length film starring the current cast perhaps with the regeneration into the 12th Doctor.
The three options I mentioned would be great movies specifically options 1+2 because I am all for adding to the Who universe lore but absolutely against scratching what has taken nearly 50 years to build and has every other sci-fi program jealous of.
I am finishing now with a tear in my eye and a hope that this news is as fiction as the Cybermen or Silurian’s.
Regards
Muldwych
About the Author
Alex Giles Family man but quite possibly more childish than his two kids, loves Sci-Fi and is a renowned Whovian of over twenty years, collects comics (OCD about having first prints), poet and writer or randomness.
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I’m a fellow Who fan. Big fan of the show, always have been, always will be. However, I also seem to be the only Who fan I know who isn’t deeply upset by this announcement. Now, don’t get me wrong, I would definitely prefer that, if they did a movie, it was one which was set within the continuity of the TV show, the thought of them doing something completely seperate, a la the two Cushing movies, which I do love, doesn’t overly anger me.
Yeah, the circumstances are different. When the Cushing first Cushing film came out, William Hartnell was still the Doctor, and the series didn’t have quite the following, and certainly the history, that it does today, so back then, an alternative version wasn’t quite as big a deal as it is today.
However, that said, if you look at the new version in the same way as, say, Marvel’s Ultimate line of comics, then some positives come along. The Ultimate comics were released to bring in new readers who were put off by the years of continuity with a fresh, alternative version. Many people who started on the Ultimate comics would then move on to the main Marvel line. There’s no reason the same couldn’t happen here, and we couldn’t have two differing versions of Doctor Who co-existing alongside each other.
Of course, I’m still not convinced this is actually happening. These rumours have been around for years, and other names have been attached. We’ll see, I guess.
Oh, and while I’m not opposed to an American writer, the Doctor himself would have to be British.
I think part of the issue for me is kind of like what you said, personally I don’t like the ultimate marvel universe and Miles Morales will NEVER be Spider-man to me but I just don’t like change and perhaps maybe do need to lighten up on the matter.
I’m with PJ on this one but I am coming at it from a slightly different angle. I really only joined in on the Whoniverse with NuWho, I did watch the Sylvester McCoy stuff whilst growing up but didn’t really enjoy it too much, mostly due to McCoy himself. I do not have an attachment to the continuity of the show, although I do like it when they bring it into the episodes and I can then read around it and teach myself Who (thank you wikipedia). From my perspective a movie does not destroy any of that continuity by disregarding it, in fact if you really do not like the idea of the movie then in turn you can disregard it, as long as Dr Who is still the TV then you’re all good. If the lines between the separate continuities were to start to blur, then you could have a problem.
If they take Abrams’ Star Trek reboot as an example of how to do it whilst still being respectful and not disregarding anything that has come before then they could be onto a winner.
What Abrams did to Star Trek was a fantastic movie don’t get me wrong BUT it hadn’t been on TV for over 4 years and decades if we talk about the Original series that he based it on, Doctor Who is still on TV and probably the most popular its ever been, its all very well doing what they are speaking about like Star Trek when its off screens or like Buffy etc when they are finished just not at their peak surely?
Every time these rumours appear my reaction is usually the same: Just because something CAN be done doesn’t mean that it SHOULD be done.
Having said that, it does seem to be a typical knee-jerk reaction for the majority of fans of the show rearing up at any kind of change. For example, much of the anti-Moffatt attitude I find needless and ultimately tiresome and we seem to go through it whenever there’s a change of “flavour” to the show, whether it’s a change of Doctor, writer, or indeed design of Dalek. I, for one, welcome change. It keeps the show fresh and interesting. Obviously not all changes are great ones, but the beauty of the show is that it has the flexibility to recover and grow where it needs to. “Time can be rewritten”!
I have less of an issue with the continuity and more with the attitude that the show needs a drastic overhaul in order to work on the big screen. There are potential movies that we as Whovians would love to see. Alex has mentioned a Time War movie, or an origins movie – they’re a fan’s wet dream – but they’re not commercially viable and Hollywood never makes movies for a limited fanbase. What’s potentially going to hurt is the “overhaul” that will supposedly make the idea palatable for the mass market. If, as in RTD’s case, we have a central love of the programme as it stood, and then it’s treated with a 2015 flavour, then we can all look forward to it. If (And that’s a big if) the film finally appears and we, as fans of the long running show decide that it’s a travesty of the original, we will probably find it easy to ignore, much like a comic fan can ignore a movie adaptation. My only real worry is that the TV series itself will lose focus if attention is drawn away to the cinema and I’m not quite sure how, in these days of heavy multimedia whete TV and film are so closely related, the two can co-exist. We don’t want to lose the programme that we love.
I totally agree about the film hurting the tv show because as for example check the X Files 5 brilliant season then a not so good movie this followed by 4 terrible seasons with really low viewing figures and a second film that pretty much killed the franchise.
The fact of the matter is he has to stay true to the show AS IT IS just now if that’s when the movie is coming out BUT if BBC have plans to stop it in next few years and move it onto movies this may be where it comes into effect and if that is the case i will have an open mind and a worried heart.
That is a fair point about Trek and I should’ve maybe considered that but the point still stands, a reboot be it on TV or movie does not take anything away from what has come before.
We all still have the memories and the continuity stands if you want it to. Its all about your reality, don’t let a movie alter your reality or unreality as it may be.
The answer here is ‘let’s wait and see’.
The 2 previous Who movies didn’t affect the existing TV show and there’s no reason as to why this/these new ones would either. Potentially a successful independant movie could bring more viewing figures to the TV show as people who enjoy the movie seek out the original source material.
It could be awful, but it could also be amazing. Who is a show that romps across time, space and alternate dimensions. Why can’t these movies be viewed and enjoyed as that? An alternate Who?
Thank you so much guys