Doctor Who Season 8: 10 Ways They Could Screw It Up

2. Can The Same Production Team Reinvent Itself?

One reason the transition between Tennant and Smith worked so well was because the style and tone of their stories was markedly different. The danger that Moffat would be negatively compared to Russell T Davies was largely neutralised because Moffat wasn€™t trying to copy Davies. But now that Moffat is presiding over a change in leading man, he faces a difficult problem. If he tries to change things up, he€™ll be going against his natural instincts as a writer- which rarely leads to happy results. But if he keeps things the same, he€™ll be running up against the need for Doctor Who to periodically reboot itself. What we might end up with is something a little like the bad old days of the Colin Baker era. The major problem there was that the same creative hands- John Nathan Turner and Eric Saward- who had been responsible for the Davison years were attempting to rewrite their own blueprint. This led to some spectacularly half-formed decisions, like Baker€™s jacket, the sort of thing designed to scream €˜change€™- if only for change€™s sake. These masked a lack of fresh ideas, giving the era an essentially moribund feel. All the mistakes of the Davison year were repeated, even exacerbated. What was needed was a completely new production team who could objectively judge what worked and what didn€™t. Twenty years on, Doctor Who finds itself in a worryingly similar position.