10 Times War Broke Out Within The Doctor Who Fandom

6. No Classic Doctors!?

Back to 2013 now for yet more controversy surrounding Doctor Who's 50th anniversary and it was a year that involved its fair share of Whovian disputes when you consider the fact that everyone should've really been focusing their efforts on celebrating instead. As this list has already proven, though, the followers of this particular show are nothing if not passionate, particularly those who have accompanied the Time Lord on his adventures since the "good old days". Classic fans are constantly voicing the fact that they're always put out by NuWho's total disregard of the show's origins and in 2013 this was only heightened when it was revealed that no Doctors pre-2005 would be featured in the landmark festivities. Well, you can only imagine what happened next. You guessed it! The fandoms of Classic and NuWho collided with the rest of us who are just as devoted to both (or generally just don't really care) caught in the middle of the crossfire. How could an episode of a series claiming to commiserate half a century on TV only include Doctors from the last 10 years? It's a valid point and it eventually transpired that it had all been somewhat of a smokescreen when Tom Baker made a unannounced appearance in the final moments of The Day of the Doctor. Thank God for that! Still, the fans weren't the only ones left riled by the general lack of Classic Series awareness. Fifth Doctor Peter Davison was pretty peeved, too, and took the matter into his own hands as he enlisted the help of his fellow forgotten Time Lord brethren for the lighthearted parody The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. It's not canon of course (let's not get into that argument today) but it was nice to see them getting involved nonetheless. It also helped to satisfy the legion of fans who had been disheartened by their exclusion and the film proved to be just as popular as The Day of the Doctor itself so no harm was done in the end. Still, things all got a little heated for a minute there.
Doctor Who Editor
Doctor Who Editor

Dan Butler is the Doctor Who Editor at WhatCulture.com. When he isn't writing his own articles or editing other people's, he can be found trawling the internet for gifs of Steven Moffat laughing. Contact him via dan.butler@whatculture.co.uk.