10 Fixes For Doctor Who's Future

For the entirety of NuWho Doctor Who has operated under a showrunner model, whereby one writer has ultimate control.

This has helped give each series a consistent tone and voice. But there have been times during the Disney era where it’s felt a bit too much like it’s just one guy in charge, with the execs merely serving as “yes men” to  RTD (and questionable choices being made as a result).

In a show like Who that requires so much mental bandwidth, it can’t help but feel like a collaborative approach would be more beneficial. Indeed, why not do a US-style writers’ room, where writers work across the whole series rather than on individual episodes?

We’ve has glimpses of this already, with Chris Chibnall running a writers’ room of sorts for Series 11 (though this was essentially just a series of workshops, where writers came together to brainstorm before going away to write their episodes).

Providing you had the right team of writers, going the full hog would potentially produce the strongest series of Doctor Who ever. It would also free up the showrunner to focus on other things like, you know, actually running the show.

Admittedly, there’s less of a precedent for writers’ rooms in the UK. But hey, Doctor Who’s always been a trailblazer…