10 Reasons RTD's Doctor Who Return Failed

2. He Was Obsessed With The Show’s Past

While RTD2 had some truly original episodes, like 73 Yards, Dot and Bubble, Lucky Day and The Story & the Engine, overall it felt like it was never able to escape the shadow of Doctor Who’s past.

This is hardly surprising when you consider that it began with three anniversary specials, which brought back David Tennant, Catherine Tate, the Toymaker, and adapted a 1980 Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.

And while the Fifteenth Doctor’s first season began by forging its own path, it was undermined by a finale that brought back to a villain previously seen forty-nine years ago and involved scenes of our leads literally watching his first story.

Then, every Season Two episode had some sort of callback to a previous story – from The Well inexplicably being a Midnight sequel, to a cameo from the Fugitive Doctor, to basically every second of the finale.

The final shot of the era being Billie Piper is the epitome of this. They thought fans would automatically care because it’s an old face. Instead, we saw it for the creatively bankrupt decision it was.

It’s so bizarre when you consider how safe RTD played it with references and returns when he first brought the show back in 2005.

Clearly this time he wanted to try a different approach. But the fact is, some parts of the show’s past should just be left in the past.