A New Executive Producer. New Writers. New Blood?
Episodes of Doctor Who every Saturday for a year? Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann back on the sh0w? Multiple special episodes that put the 'Tennant specials' to shame? More David Tennant? More Christopher Eccleston? The BBC to devote a year's worth of budget to the one show and every single missing episode to be discovered from the archives? I think that's what the fans had in mind when they thought of the 50th anniversary year. Well, we certainly will have Tennant back. And we got 11 missing episodes back from the ether (more on that to follow). But the BBC was never going to deliver what the expectations of fans demanded. It's certainly not what the 50th year will be remembered for. I consider the 5oth year to be a year where we saw change to the show in front of and behind the scenes. For a start, we had the announcement of the third executive producer on the show during Moffat's tenure, Brian Michin. Why Caroline Skinner left after just one series gave rise to much speculation (a theme I'll continue to touch upon in this article)...it sure raised the question of whether there was turmoil behind the scenes. After all, Phil Collinson was around for the majority of RTD's run. Even if it's a simple case of Caroline Skinner (and Piers Wenger before her) just 'not fitting' or moving on to other opportunities, it showed that the show was continuing to make changes behind of the camera as well as in front. And in terms of the episodes shown this year, we had another injection of new writing blood among Moffat's staples (Gatiss, Chibnall) in the form of Neil Cross, creator and writer of the brilliant Luther. His first story, 'The Rings of Akhaten' might have left audiences divided (personally I loved it), but there was no denying there were moments of greatness in his follow up ghost story / alien love affair that was 'Hide'. And now he's apparently in talks to return for series 8. And talking of those two episodes, that leads on to my next point...