When (under careful media screening and secrecy) the BBC broadcast The Stolen Earth, the penultimate episode of the new Doctor Whos fourth season, the response was far in excess of what showrunner and head writer Russell T. Davies had anticipated. You see, the episodes climax featured the insanely popular Tenth Doctor being fatally shot by a Dalek, and upon being carried back inside the TARDIS, beginning to regenerate. There was no warning of the possibility of a new Doctor being introduced. David Tennant had not indicated a desire to leave, much less announced his departure, and no reports from the set had reached the press. With one episode to go for the year, and the biggest cliffhanger in the shows history having just been unveiled to the public, the fans were agog. Who was the new Doctor going to be? What was happening to their beloved Tenth Doctor?! Of course, it was a fake-out. Ten managed to use the regeneration to heal the injuries hed sustained, and then redirected the remaining regeneration energies into the severed hand that hed lost in The Christmas Invasion which promptly grew another Tenth Doctor. It would be this Doctor that would end up with Rose Tyler, the companion (and original Most Important Girl In The World) that had left two years earlier. Tennant would go on to play the role for another two years. The massive publicity wasnt worth it. The actual season finale, Journeys End, received a decidedly mixed response no one was really sure what to make of Rose and a Doctor ending up together for real. It didnt sit right, as though she was making do with a lookalike: it also reinforced Davies continual insistence on treating the Rose Tyler character as being of central importance in the show, two years and two companions after shed left. Finally, it made Ten seem desperate not to regenerate: wasting one of his few remaining chances at a new, fresh life in order to cling onto his old face and persona. That desperation, that fear, wasnt an attractive character trait. This was the point at which the Tenth Doctor, and Davies himself, began to outstay their welcome. Two years later, when he actually did die, Davies (treating Ten as the Most Important Doctor In The World) wrote an extended death scene in which he visited almost all of his previous companions, and attempted to put off the inevitable for as long as possible. His last words were, I dont want to go: on the contrary, the new showrunner and the new, Eleventh Doctor, couldnt come fast enough.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.