6 Reasons Why An American Doctor Who Would Be Terrible

5. They€™d Need Too Many Characters

There are two factors in the production of American TV drama that results in the drama in question needing a huge raft of characters. The first is the number of episodes produced (usually around twenty-four per year), and the second is the desire to produce a new season as quickly as possible. As a result of these two factors, large amounts of characters and multiple storylines that run simultaneously are written in so that multiple scenes can be shot at the same time, thus drastically trimming down the time needed to shoot the show and reducing the time between production and broadcast. So, if the Americans were to remake Doctor Who, the main cast would need to be around seven or eight at least. Which is simply too many main characters for a Doctor Who remake. Even four was too many during the 1980s which (mercifully) led to the decision to kill off Adric. So many main characters would clutter up the stories too much and give the Doctor less screentime and prominence. Not to mention that, on average, an episode tends to have three or four prominent supporting characters. 2008€™s episodes The Stolen Earth and Journey€™s End showed why it€™s a bad idea to use so many main characters at once. You need to find something for each character to do and, in the end, it just becomes a big confusing mess as the writers and director try to give equal coverage to all the characters while telling a coherent story. Something like Heroes or Ugly Betty can get away with that as they have heroes, antiheroes, and outright villains who are either in completely different locations and stories, or are thrown together out of necessity, allowing for varied character relationships and character-based stories. With Doctor Who, that€™s never the case as the Doctor and his companions travel together by choice and are pretty much always together.