10 Reasons Doctor Who Is Better Than Star Wars

10. Doctor Who's Producers Didn't Scrap All The Stories Written During Its Years Off Air

Star Wars is about to emerge from a sustained period during which there have been no films to advance the overall story. This isn't the first interregnum Star Wars has suffered. After Return of the Jedi faded from the ever-fickle memory of film-goers, the Star Wars franchise subsisted mainly on action figures with fans steadily slipping from the mainstream into cult-dom. Then, in 1991, Timothy Zahn brought a trilogy of novels to the best-sellers list. Unlike the previous novels, such as the film adaptations, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the three Han Solo books and the Lando Calrissian books, these were actual continuations of the Star Wars universe. The Zahn books, which featured the central Imperial character of Thrawn, made such an impression that various elements were incorporated into the later Prequel films: the planet name of Coruscant and the ability for Jedi to catch Force lightning with lightsabres. The idea of the central cast having children also began with his novels. There followed a swathe of books and comics that delved into the future of the Original Trilogy characters and the distant past of the Star Wars galaxy. Since the end of the Prequel films with 2005's Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, these continuations have been fans' main source of Star Wars-related entertainment, along with various animated television Star Wars programmes (with more to come). These continuations form an ongoing exploration of what is termed the "Expanded Universe" (EU) and are produced under license, with Lucasfilm regarding them as either canonical or at least not being dismissive of them. Oh, hang on. Was that "ongoing"? With Disney's purchase of Star Wars and the announcement of the new films, the EU has been scrapped. Although certain elements (there being offspring of Han and Leia) are being retained, these elements are being done over, with all the accumulated history unceremoniously ditched into the void between galaxies. But Doctor Who went through exactly the same period of "wilderness years" from 1989 through 2005 (excepting the exciting year of 1996 when the programme flickered briefly back into existence for a TV film). During this decade and a half, the officially sanctioned continuation of the programme was in print, and then in professional-quality audio stories. Doctor Who accumulated an even more extensive catalogue of spin-off material than Star Wars, with the novels alone accounting for hundreds of stories. When Doctor Who was relaunched on television in 2005, fans were worried all this history might be tossed aside; however, the Doctor Who fans weren't treated with blatant disrespect by the producers. In NuWho, the books' continuity was actually referenced a couple of times, such as when the planet Lucifer was name checked in an episode in Series 1. Not long after, the novel Human Nature was even adapted in a two-part TV story. As it turns out, the spin-off adventures haven't been ignored or contradicted any more than any of the previously televised Doctor Who stories (Doctor Who does tend to exhibit a remarkably short memory when it comes to its own continuity). In many ways, the innovations and ideas spawned in the Doctor Who books have actually informed and, in a few cases, directly inspired events and themes in NuWho. Far from ditching its wilderness years lore, Doctor Who has extracted the best of the rest and used the material to reach new heights. And the producers avoided giving fans a one- or two-fingered salute along the way.