A Doctor Who Writer’s Game of Telephone…

Or something like that. The writers of Doctor Who Series 9 were asked to finish each other’s Doctor Who stories, and predictably, things got a little… weird.

Series Nine was definitely an interesting season of Doctor Who, to say the least. Whether you loved or despised the oddball plot twists, and loved or despised Clara’s whiplash personality and mood changes, there is no arguing that Series Nine seemed to be a season of a different breed.

While Doctor Who has always been written by several different people, the job of the showrunner is to ensure that each season and overall plot and character arc remain consistent and cohesive as a whole. Theoretically, television shows have meetings among the showrunner and various hired writers every now and then to discuss the direction of the show and to iron out the objective of the season and where each character should end up by the final episode. That way everyone is always on the same page.

So what happens if you take the season’s main writers and let them write a story about our favorite Doctor in a round-table fashion, without such preparation and discussion, and while only getting to read the sentence before their own for direction? Apparently, some very strange things!

While pretty hilarious, this exercise is not a new idea. As an author myself, I have been to several writing workshops where this game is played for fun and to help get the creative juices flowing. Similar to the game of repeated gossip, Telephone, it is an interesting way to see what kind of bizarre story can be created from the brains of multiple writers when none of them have any idea where the others are going. Quite often, the story at the end is not at all what the original person who started the tale intended at all. And that is the fun of it!

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Watching the current writers of Doctor Who come up with this kind of impromptu story for the Doctor is rather eye-opening. It shows us, indeed, how differently they all interpret an individual line of story, and how those interpretations can veer off in entirely unrelated directions.

It also shows us the kind of disjointed, nonsensical story that can result when there is not enough communication between the various writers, or when the showrunner perhaps does not communicate (or define) a season-long direction or goal well enough. It gives us just a tiny glimpse into what may have been behind Series Nine’s extreme highs and plummeting lows.

Or maybe I am reading too much into it. (It would explain a lot, though.)

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Next: Doctor Who: Torchwood House's Website Is Quite Convincing, but Fictional

Regardless, if you feel so inclined, you can venture over to Doctor Who’s Facebook page and read the conclusion to this bizarre story… as written by the fans, of course.