It was with a deep and abiding joy that I greeted the BBC's recent announcement that they were bringing back Doctor Who. The programme's artificial, engineered descent into unpopularity and eventual cancellation was a travesty that should have cost Auntie her royal charter. The 1996 TV movie was a half-hearted mish-mash of a revival, predictably disastrous in its attempt to transplant a uniquely British character into a dodgy American adventure show.
The new controller of BBC1, Lorraine Heggessey has done the decent thing and ordered a full series of the real Doctor Who, even restoring it to its spiritual home of early Saturday evening. A cabal of high profile Who fans will be overseeing the project, led by Queer as Folk's Russell T. Davies, but probably also including other luminaries such as Mark Gatiss (League of Gentlemen) and Steve Moffatt (Coupling). All in all it's the best news in British Sci-Fi since Terry Nation created Blake's 7.
However, before we all get too excited, there is still plenty of scope for the whole project to be totally screwed up. The all important title role is not cast, and until
Heroically, McGann has survived the experience of appearing opposite Eric Roberts' portayal of The Master, and continues to be involved with Doctor Who through his Big Finish audio adventures, not to mention the recent BBCi remake of Shada. As the Eighth Doctor developed in new "radio" adventures it became obvious just how good he could be if given the chance to do it properly. In all honesty, McGann is the best actor ever to play the role and with the correct structure he could still transcend even Tom Baker's definitive interpretation.
Sadly, it is unlikely that we will ever see Paul McGann in the TARDIS again. Perhaps correctly, Russell Davies does not consider the TV movie as an offical part of the Doctor Who mythos and he's apparently unwilling to legitimise it by retaining the title actor. Besides, with total control over the new series he can have anybody he likes, so there's no need to go back to a previous incarnation. With this in mind his friend and collaborator Alan Davies has been heavily tipped for the role. Another "comedy" Doctor like Sylvester McCoy may not be the best way forward, so this appointment would not be universally popular.
An actor who would undoubtedly make a brilliant TV time-traveller is Richard E Grant, and he has even been announced as the Ninth Doctor, albeit for an upcoming BBCi/Cosgrove Hall animated adventure. The Beeb have made it very clear, though, that the cartoon is completely separate from the live action show. Besides, Grant appears out of sympathy with Doctor Who,
professing to have never seen it, and would probably not accept a part that would turn him into a Sci-Fi icon. His namesake Hugh Grant could if anything make an even better Doctor, but he is too famous for TV and there's no prospect of a Peter Cushing style big screen outing.
The current favourite is Bill Nighy, a competent enough performer and said to be first choice. Yet he's not really all that likeable and I doubt whether fans would warm to him, even if kids might find his aloofness amusing. My personal choice would be David Warner, a superlative actor and someone else who has skirted around the fringes of the programme,
making a wonderful "alternative" Doctor in Big Finish's Sympathy for the Devil.
It could be argued that time has moved on and that the traditional depiction of the Doctor as a white male is out of date. Well, this has a certain validity since its the character's Britishness that's important rather than his skin pigmentation. A black or Asian Doctor would be fine, particularly one played by Hugh Quarshie or Art Malik.
Beyond that, though, the programme starts to become unrecogniseable. The nightmare would be if Davies loses control of his sanity gets persuaded by the argument that to modernise the show the Doctor should be female. Most fans response to this would be "Die Davies Die Die" and not because we're sexist reactionaries but the character is male and that's an end to it.
Chris Denton.
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