10 HUGE Revelations About Disney Doctor Who In Russell T Davies' New Memoir

10. RTD Wanted Doctor Who To Be More Like Stranger Things

RTD has previously spoken openly about his Doctor Who influences, like how his 2005 reinvention of the show took cues from Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

More recently, Ruby’s Season 1 arc was a reaction to Rey’s arc in the Star Wars sequels. And UNIT literally got its own Avengers Tower!

But what inspired the show’s recent move into fantasy and the supernatural? As it turns out, Stranger Things, which he’d been watching around the same time he was approached to return to Who. He said:

"[I was] envious of the way [Stranger Things] used fantasy more than hard science-fiction, wishing that Doctor Who could stretch more into the fantastic and make up the rules a bit more. So all of these thoughts were spinning away when they said: will you come back and run it?"

It’s a nice thought but what RTD missed is that the fantasy in Stranger Things still had a really dark edge, like the gruesome Vecna and Demogorgons creatures.

And rather poetically, both Stranger Things and RTD2 culminated with incredibly polarising finales, so in the end I guess Russell got his wish!