10 Fixes For Doctor Who's Future

5. Increase Episode Length – Or Make More!

Like all long-running television shows, Doctor Who’s season and episode lengths have evolved dramatically over the years.

In its early days Doctor Who was basically on all year round. By the start of NuWho it was a quarter of the year.

Gradually this has reduced to 12 weeks, then 10, then 8, leaving recent seasons feeling like they’re over before they’ve begun – especially when you’ve got Doctor-lite episodes every other week and companions who only stick around for a year.

When Doctor Who returned in 2005 it made complete sense for stories to be confined to 45 minutes, but it’s kind of baffling that we’re still sticking to this format 20 years later, rather than letting episodes run to an hour.

In other words, the format needs to change. Eight 45-minute episodes just did not work because there was too much to cram in – a new cast and story every week, series arcs, companion development... it's too much, and you could tell the show was buckling. Ten 45-minute episodes feels much better, or even eight that run for an hour – which is what we all thought we'd be getting when eight-episode seasons were announced in the first place.

Alternatively, a more serialised format could be the right approach. Being able to reuse sets and costumes across the season would certainly be more cost-effective, and could pave the way for longer seasons. We’ve had glimpses of this already with Flux, and aside from the finale that series worked quite well, with the weekly cliffhangers providing a great hook from one episode to the next.

It's obviously quite easy to say "Just give us more Doctor Who", but it really is an important consideration in the modern age. There's so much competition for audience attention that being in the news cycles for ten weeks versus eight weeks can make a big difference.

Not to mention the aforementioned story benefits of having more screen time to work with. Scaling down the spectacle and beefing up the drama definitely feels like the right way to go.