So they want to make a new Doctor Who movie? As a good traditional Doctor Who fan I cried: “No!” when I first heard it. Some time has passed and I thought about the possibilities. There’s a lot possible, all of the possibilities equally exciting and dangerous. Just like most Whovians, I’m scared. David Yates, the man who directed the last four Harry Potter movies, said he wanted to start from scratch. You could hear the teeth gritting and the fist clenching. I must be honest; those sounds might have been my own.
And to keep in the process of being honest, nobody knows yet what that means. Does it mean he wants to reinvent the character the Doctor? Does that mean he wants to reinvent Doctor Who as a franchise? Or does that mean that he doesn’t want….? What!? Either way, it sounds like it’s not going to be canon, or will it? In most of the possibilities listed above, it sounds like it won’t be. Not necessarily a big problem, but I can tell you that I don’t usually enjoy works much which are canon-questionable or not canon at all. It takes the art of letting go of the reason why we, or at least I, love Doctor Who so much. I know why I am a fan and I’m not very likely to let that drift for the sake of a freakin’ movie, which to my ears sounds like ‘cashing in’ anyway.
And even when they decide to make it canon? Now I get even more scared. I can easily disregard a work that isn’t canon, but it’s hard to get over a work that says it is canon, but plays with the canon so much it brings tears to, well, my eyes. I’m still not over Paul McGann claiming he’s half-human, no matter how much I love his portrayal of the Doctor. I know certain aspects that popped up in the TV-show are hard to fit in the canon, but usually they could be filed away as one of the many lies of the Doctor, or time in flux, or some alternative timeline. It can be done, but still hurts a little. Things like the Doctor claiming he’s half-human, on his freakin’ mother’s side, just hurt so bad, nobody wants to even talk about it, but the scar tissue is there.
They could chose to fill in some gaps, like the Doctor’s life before it got well documented. I’m talking about the time before he kidnapped Ian and Barbara. That creates the risk of abandoning the Doctor’s mystery. Right now we don’t know much about the Doctor’s origin. We’re not even sure if he got born in the traditional way, got loomed into life, or even had a life before that. The uncertainty of his origins allowed a lot of writers to play with it. Make suggestions and turn ideas about who the Doctor is on its head. Always exciting, but never more than a tip of what might be. We might even run the risk of finding out what his real name is, though I hope David Yates is at least smart enough not to touch that.
Or, they could try to film the Last Great Time War. How that would work? Probably not very well. The Last Great Time War has grown so mythical and most fans have already envisioned such great scenes and ideas about that war, it can almost only disappoint. On the other hand, they could let Paul McGann come back and let him show what he can do with the character. And maybe, they can also show the regeneration from McGann to Christopher Eccleston. Oooh!!! But still, trying to capture that period of time in the Doctor’s life is very dangerous. Also, it doesn’t sound like that’s what Yates wants to do.
How will the movie be placed within the franchise anyway? The TV-show is still running and doesn’t really need a reboot, does it? And with the movie probably not being canon, I don’t see much of a place for it at all. Just like the Peter Cushing films, the ones made in the ‘60’s, the movie will then be snowed under by the canon Doctor Who stuff. Why would you make a product like that? Even if it is to pull in new audiences, as if that’s really necessary, how would that work? Those new fans then just have to drop in in the middle of the TV-show? Sure it can be done, but with no cooperation between the two, how is that ever going to run smoothly? If anything, the chances of alienating the existing fanbase is incredibly big. Is it worth a leap like that?
What about the casting? Yates said no-one ever involved in the series will be involved in this new project. Or did I understand that wrong? God I hope I did, cause this way it sounds even worse and less likely this movie is going to be about the character I love. It almost sounds like a bad biographical documentary by someone who was looking from the sidelines. Oh hold on, David Yates is looking from the sidelines.
*Hyperventilating*
I’m going to stop now; I don’t want to end up like Davros and be in a constant state of nervous excitement and blood pressure. Though on the other hand, I then could send the Daleks and exterminate the project.
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