I know it… I was a Douglas Adams fan before I even knew his name, way before I read Hitchhiker’s. sigh You’re missed, Mr. Adams. Deeply.
And yes, Tom Baker was my favorite Doctor. I agree with Semp that there was an earnest heart to the best episodes, and the humor should not be overplayed. However, the humor of the Tom Baker episodes highlighted the seriousness of them by way of contrast. I think the humor is an essential element.
What I would do with a restart of DOCTOR WHO. is start off with the evenutal comanion. She would have something strange happen and wander into what she things is an ordinary police box and she (and we the audience) would meet this stranger person known only as the Doctor. We would slowley and eventually discover the rest of the back story as needed.
I’d agree with some of the comments here, and disagree strongly with others.
Yes, humour is an important part of the show, but it’s absolutely not self-mocking, post-modern “camp” humour. The early shows, with limited visual effects technology and tiny budgets, may look cheap and wobbly now, but they were taken desperately seriously by everybody involved; the writers were seriously trying to think up challenging concepts, and the cast and crew worked to their limits trying to realise those concepts.
It doesn’t matter what villains you use. In fact, familiarity breeds contempt with Who villains, so it’s important not to over-use familiar elements.
It’s a BBC show! It doesn’t have commercial breaks!
Any really successful Who story starts out with a strong WTF factor. It takes something recognizable, and makes it unfamiliar, so the ground shifts under the viewers’ feet. Take the opening episode of The War Games, for example - it starts out looking like a straight historical piece about World War One, and then, in the middle of episode one, a perfectly ordinary British General opens a perfectly ordinary cupboard, and starts to operate a futuristic electronic communicator… WTF? It’s that unsettling aspect that made the show so effective. (And that’s another argument, in my mind, against re-using familiar villains.)
The Doctor is, basically, non-violent, but the theme can be explored… witness Tom Baker’s agonizing over whether or not to trigger the bomb in Genesis of the Daleks - or some of the conflicts between the Doctor and the Brigadier. The Brigadier (at his best) was a perfect foil for the Doctor, because he’s not a “military idiot”, he’s a man with a high degree of pragmatic intelligence, who doesn’t automatically reject violence as a solution. Or take City of Death, where the character Duggan is routinely mocked for his violent approach - right up to the point where he throws the most important punch in human history.
Oh, yeah. The sonic screwdriver was introduced in the Patrick Troughton era (I think in Fury from the Deep) and was destroyed by the Terileptil leader in the Peter Davison story The Visitation. And, no, I don’t need to get a life, it would only cut down on my TV viewing time.
All in all, I’d have to agre with the sentiments of just about every poster here. If only this could become a reality!
Regarding the list of essential villains, there are several I’d like to see included:
Ice Warriors
Sea Devils
Omega
Zygons
Autons
The Master should also be played by a Brit in my opinion.
I’d also like to see a bit of the Brigadier on occasion - I always enjoyed the interaction between the Brigadier and whoever played the Doctor at the time.
<slight hijack>Any thoughts on a female Doctor?</slight hijack>
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Enzyme *
**<slight hijack>Any thoughts on a female Doctor?</slight hijack>
[QUOTE]
No. No. No.
Bugger.
I agree with the “element of the unknown” but I think the Daleks, Cybermen, and Master (at the least) are essential, which is what I’m trying to find. I think without Daleks in the universe, you don’t have the complete world.
I also agree with rebooting it from the beginning. I think there’s no easy way to fill in 25 years of backstory.
As for it being a BBC production with no commercials, well, the BBC seems perfectly content to let it rot. Sure, they’ll okay all the books and audio dramas and tea cozies and finger puppets and coasters and all this other stuff, but as for actually producing the show, they’ve shown zero interest, so I’m assuming this hypothetical production is a non-BBC one. Also, while I give the BBC credit for keeping the show on for 25 years, I don’t like the fact that the entire time they treated it like an unwanted bastard child, insisting it was an unpopular children’s show until the very end. So don’t be surprised if I don’t factor the BBC into the production. I’m assuming someone who WANTS to do the show is doing it.
As for the Douglas Adams humor, I love “Hitch-Hiker’s” and I love Tom Baker, but Adams’ season as sript editor has some awful clunkers in there (and the wonderful ‘City of Death’, which he wrote.) Adams was funny, but he also was more interested in being funny than in making the show good, and hence, ‘Creature From the Pit’. I agree there’s an element of humor, but it’s more like whistling in the dark than anything else.
I never personally got into the purely historical dramas, but I can see something of a place for them. I think that even without forays into Earth history you could have interesting time travel elements, it’s just that the show never really opted to use them. (For example, each time the Doctor revisits a foe, it’s a revisitation for the foe as well. What if the Doctor’s first encounter with a villain is the second encounter for the villan? You get two stories, one in which everyone but the Doctor know what’s going on, and one the opposite. I also like the idea of a story where the Doctor is working against an unknown enemy who turns out to be himself at a different time. There are possibilities out there.)
A female Doctor wouldn’t really do it for me, but I’m not sure why. I suppose for me an essential element is that the Doctor is male. I know in my heart that there’s no reason the main character couldn’t be female, but for me it just doesn’t synch correctly.
I’d ditch a lot of the later aspects of the Doctor’s character introduced towards the end of the show. I think the show works best when the Doctor isn’t an all-powerful being among Time Lords and didn’t leave Gallifrey with the entire Time Lord arsenal in tow. Speaking of Gallifrey, I’d show a little more of their society other than the non-stop corrupt officials, to illustrate his background and why he left.
Let me start off by saying I’m a huge, HUGE Who fan. I’ve seen all the surviving stories, own nearly all the Target novelizations (as well as the Virgin and BBC original novels), have Who action figures, a TARDIS model, and a genuine copy of Tom Baker’s scarf (first version). I can quote big chunks of dialog, I can answer all sorts of silly trivia questions, and I moderate the Doctor Who nitpickers board over at http://www.nitcentral.com/discus.
So, in my opinion, I think it would be a travesty to even consider remaking or restarting Who. It’s over, people! The starship has sailed, the TARDIS has left the building. Please don’t try to wreck a great thing by attempting to fix what wasn’t broken. Didn’t we learn any lessons from “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Enterprise”?
Time Travel itself never seemed to be a major part of Dr. Who. Yes, he travelled through time and space at will but 95% of the time it didn’t matter when he was. For all we knew he was travelling back to major events in some other planet’s history. It’s a big universe after all and having the Doctor keep coming back to earth at key moments just wasn’t very plausible.
Perhaps more storylines that revolve around time travel would work without having the Doctor visit the old west (I wonder if that episode was made to take advantage of standing sets 
) or Imperial Rome.
Don’t get too hung up about the humor factor. Mostly it was the kind of humor you see in action/adventure movies. It just gives the characters a little depth, and sometimes adds to the starngeness of The Doctor by having quircky things come out.
The Doctor that seemed most comedic (opinion) was # 4. But that Doctor had some of the darkest show themes. Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Horror of Fang Rock are some examples that come to mind.
And some of the other Doctors had some purposefully funny shows. Like Doctor # 6 in The Two Doctors.
But, it was a serious sci-fi series and should be written as one. Remember, even real life has some humor in it
As for a female Doctor, well… I don’t know. Seems like it needs to be male. But throwing in a female Time Lord every now and then, like Romana, would be nice.
oh yeah, The Master must live. As long as there is a Doctor…
Here’s something I consider essential:
-It must be low budget. Much of the charm (for me, anyways) of Who was the crappy sets and laughable special effects that sometimes consisted only of the TARDIS dangling on a string in front of an obviously-painted starscape.
So, when do we pitch to the Sci Fi Channel? If they can do Farscape, they can afford a Doctor Who revival. One hour episodes, once a week. Cliffhanger endings every time. Four or five story arcs per season. If you do it right you’ll have a smallish but guaranteed audience in the states and you can sell it back to England, too.
The TARDIS must be a police box (for the very fact that it’s so outdated and sticks out like a sore thumb wherever/whenever he travels). It also must make that horrible sound.
And I whole-heartedly agree that a goofy, striped scarf is a necessity. Out of all the doctors, visually I always remember the scarf as being an inherent aspect of Dr. Who and always wished it had been carried through with the other incarnations of the Doctor, not just Tom Baker.
No K-9, no Adric. Yes, Daleks. The Master - ok.
And the theme music must be the familiar tune.
Bingo. That’s my take on the humor aspect exactly. A serious show, with some humorous moments… just like life.
And… can we have Leela back? Please? <duh-rool, duh-rool>
On a related tangent, is there some way to get the old episodes on DVD? I remember I used to watch Dr. Who all the time as a kid (especially the Tom Baker one) and wouldn’t mind having some of them around.
Guy Propski, rebooting DW in not the same as ST:Voyager or Enterprise. They are examples of trying to continue carrying on a show with an established history and failing. ST:NG on the other hand did many things right in that area.
I just feel that starting fresh while keeping with the the handfull of essentials noted in this tread would make for a great show. Again to compare it to Marvel’s Ultimate line of comics, it would be great to see retellings of some of the classic stories with a wink given to fans who expect a plot twist occur but it’s taken somewhere else.
As great as this all is to imagine, could it ever happen?
~t
Isn’t it all a matter of the Beeb giving permission? I thought during the whole Baker-McCoy hiatus, they pretty much said enough was enough: they weren’t interesting in producing Who any more and wouldn’t allow anyone else to, either. Anyone have more info on that?
When he was a guest on Room 101, Michael Grade submitted Dr Who for inclusion and said that the decision to scrap the program was his. He may have been overstating his role, but if not it is possible that the BBC could allow someone to remake it.
Netflix has them. We have been watching them lately.
This is where I disagree. I loved Doctor Who despite the poor special effects, not because of them. I think the show deserves to look good. I’m not interested in a “ho ho check out the pantomime alien” camp-fest, I want a quality show out of it.
Currently they are releasing old episodes on DVD. They just released a box set of the “Key to Time” season, and several others are available as well.
Here’s a question. Let’s say it’s an American company that somehow gets the rights to it. Do you feel the actors should still have British accents? The monsters? The Doctor?
Guy Propski, let me turn this around a little. I’ve read several of the New Adventures and Missing Adventures and didn’t like them. I felt they were completely out of the spirit of the show in many cases, and often were simply glorified fan-fiction. I don’t read them anymore. The fact that I don’t care for them and don’t see them as part of what I consider “Doctor Who” doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of the original show at all. If such a reboot were to exist, and you didn’t like it, how would this harm the original show you love?
As long as I’m on the subject, I don’t get ‘Doctor Who Magazine’ but I would like to read the comic strips in it, as I always thought those were pretty interesting. Are there any plans to collect them in a trade paperback or something?
[Comic Book Guy]
Need to have the 100 tacos, which I purchased from the taco hut for $100 and took home in a wheelbarrow.
[/CBG]
The obbligatory Simpsons reference is about all I can contribute. But like Legomancer, I have seen several DVD box sets available from a BBC catalog.