Don't fear the Doctor Who movie reboot!
"A television series which embraces both the ideas of parallel universes and the concept of changing time can't have a continuity error—it's impossible for Doctor Who to get it wrong, because we can just say 'he changed time.'”
That quote, from current showrunner Steven Moffat at 2008’s San Diego Comic-Con, probably won’t salve the open wound that is talk of a movie reboot currently tearing Twitter [www.twitter.com/scifinow] apart like the opening of the Eye of Harmony. But it’s certainly worth remembering.
A Doctor Who movie reboot is nothing to be scared of, because appropriately for a series about time travel, it’s already happened twice.
In 1965 we were introduced to a kindly old inventor, Doctor Who, and his family, and they took off to battle the Daleks on their dead planet. It was all very thrilling, and in glorious COLOUR! no less. Then in 1996 the Doctor discovered he liked girls in the yucky way, and that he had a human mother. The former and its sequel are rightly appreciated as a historical curiosity, a testament to grand storytelling chops of Terry Nation, and celebrated for its strong cast – I quite like to pretend that Bernard Cribbins is reprising his role from 1966’s Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD as the avuncular Wilfred Mott, however ridiculous as that is to consider – but the latter gained enormous traction. Paul McGann was the Eighth Doctor; he felt and looked like one, he was magical, serene, passionate and alien, and so future writers of books, comics and audiobooks took that and rationalised away or just discarded the things they didn’t like.
More significantly, though, we’re ostensibly treated to an reboot with every new creative team to take on the series itself as the tone shifts and different priorities come to the fore. As Paul Cornell argued in this piece [http://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who.html], the ad hoc and idiosyncratic nature of Doctor Who has always resulted in inconsistency. Like many other creaky old British institutions, it simply evolved and changed, without anyone setting down the law.
Arguably this freedom is what has given the show such incredible longevity, as producers, writers and assorted other creatives simply advanced tirelessly into bold new territories and media, taking in fantastic highs and pitiable lows. It doffed its cap to the past if it served a story or established a point, and ignored it if it didn’t, treating canon as a toybox rather than a set of yellowing scriptures to be grimly intoned in a dead language.
The nature of the show helps too, as the Moff said way back at the beginning of this piece. If the Earth Cybermen are the Mondasian Cybermen of that universe, why can’t luckless '60s copper Tom Campbell be the Wilfred Mott of a London without Motts? Or Peter Cushing’s doddering old Doctor Who in a world without Time Lords? Or Dimensions In Time have taken place in some sort of meta-fictional world where Doctor Who is merely a TV show produced by the same national broadcaster as a ghastly Cockney soap opera?
The Time War helpfully erased all sins when the 'new series' kicked off in 2005, and who knows what brave new world or great galatic reset Time War II will usher in.
And if you don’t like it, then the things you do like will still be there, along with some things you didn’t like and some things you didn’t care about either way. And how much luckier and richer for that are we when you look at the sort of George Lucas-enforced mandatory drivel Star Wars fans have to put up with?
SciFiNow Issue #60 is out now, check it out at www.scifinow.co.uk.
