10 Reasons Doctor Who Is Better Than Star Wars

When the first Star Wars film was released in 1977, the Doctor Who production team were thrown for the proverbial loop. Producer Graham Williams, who had just taken over from Philip Hinchcliffe, looked at the ground-breaking effects in the film and was concerned his own programme might no longer be able to compete. The audience expectations of what constituted a convincing alien environment had changed massively thanks to the new techniques in the blockbuster film. Although Star Wars came out during May 1977 in the United States, the theatrical release in the UK occurred in December, meaning that film goers were thrilling to the exploits of Luke Skywalker at roughly the same time the Doctor was battling an alien tax collector in The Sun Makers and was wandering around exceptionally dodgy tunnels in Underworld. By February 1978, matters had hardly improved with Sontarans wearing unusually poor masks invading Gallifrey in The Invasion of Time. A certain degree of embarrassment over Doctor Who was creeping in, not only amongst the programme's creators but also in playgrounds across the UK where the old games of pretending to be the Doctor offering an enemy a jelly baby or stalking friends whilst crying "Exterminate!" were being replaced with new games of Luke fighting Darth Vader. Producers now felt they had to at least try to measure up the new standard set by the film. Matters only got more desperate with the 1980 release of the even more technically impressive The Empire Strikes Back, which managed to make stop-motion animation cool again. Over the next few years, the full and ultimately fatal impact of the "Star Wars effect" was felt in the form of falling viewing audience figures for Doctor Who, even as the programme struggled valiantly to improve its visual effects. This sustained effort to improve the visual side of the programme's storytelling culminated in the sequence from Trial of a Time Lord where the TARDIS is pulled into a reasonably convincing space station. Doctor Who fans watched in amazement as effects that didn't actually suck filled their television screens. However, the damage to Doctor Who's credibility had been done and, following a short attempt to inject fresh energy into the programme with the changeover to the Seventh Doctor, the inevitable axe fell in 1989. The debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation only two short years before Doctor Who's cancellation didn't help, either, and it took sixteen long years for a revival of Doctor Who to stick. But now nearly four decades have passed since the release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, fans can see that Doctor Who has nothing to worry about - in fact, fans can now see that Doctor Who is even far superior to Star Wars in many ways. With the passage of time, the glossy appeal of Star Wars-level effects has waned (doesn't every blockbuster movie boast that level of effects now?) and the deficiencies of the Star Wars universe are plainer than ever to see. Fans are now more willing to appreciate the depth of storytelling offered by Doctor Who and each year that goes by serves to cement the programme ever more firmly within the hearts of a swelling fandom around the world. Time has shown that Doctor Who is the franchise with staying power. Even with the upcoming trilogy of new Star Wars films due begin Star Wars mania all over again in December 2015, it isn't hard to imagine SF fans in 2050 saying, "Star What? You mean that thing my grandparents watched? Excuse me, I'm trying to watch the latest series of Doctor Who." Doctor Who isn't dependent on special effects for its appeal; rather, it has qualities that can easily sustain any number of reboots and comebacks, whilst Star Wars - which is utterly reliant on effects because no one truly cares about the characters - is a franchise doomed to eventually sputter and die. Of course, there's nothing to stop a fan from adoring both Star Wars and Doctor Who, and from being fully aware of the flaws of both, but Doctor Who will continue to endure long after Star Wars has faded into obscurity. Here are 10 reasons why Doctor Who will always trump Star Wars, though, regardless of the amount of money Disney throws in its direction.