Doctor Who fan feedback helped shape epic Time Lord Victorious

The upcoming Doctor Who multi-platform story Time Lord Victorious is a result of fan surveys and focus groups. To all those who participated: thank you!

Doctor Who fans, aka Whovians, are some of the best fans throughout time and space. They have a great sense of community, excitement and camaraderie that has even carried us through the darkest moments of this global pandemic. The virtual watch parties and new original content are something I won’t soon forget because it came at a time when things felt hopeless.

That’s the beauty of the Doctor Who fandom, which is why I wasn’t surprised to hear that fan surveys and online focus groups were used to create the new multi-platform Doctor Who project, Time Lord Victorious.

In case this is the first time you’re hearing about this, Time Lord Victorious is an epic story that will be told through audio dramas, action figures (yeah, no idea how they’re doing that), comics, books, and more. It’s also roped in former Doctors and companions to lend their voices and talents to the project.

We’ve been hearing about Time Lord Victorious for months now, and anticipation is only growing. Creator and producer James Goss spoke to RadioTimes.com about how it came together.

"One of the quite surprising and lovely things is that this is actually led by the fans. There is a thing BBC Studios run called the Audience Panel – and what Studios have been doing is sneaking a few questions for I think a couple of years into the audience panel. They’d actually used the fans as a way of digitally-focus-grouping the idea of what they wanted to do."

Whoever gave their opinion must feel pretty cool right now.

Leveraging fan interest like this is pretty ingenious. After all, a franchise like this is nothing without its fans, so why not allow them to lend their ideas towards something like Time Lord Victorious? “When I was first called into a meeting, I was sat down by [BBC Compliance Manager Cameron McEwan], and he’d worked through this and they’d actually used the fans as a way of digitally focus-grouping the idea of what they wanted to do,” Goss said. “So he was able to say, if we are going to bring all our licensees together to tell a very important story, here are the things that would really resonate with fans, here are the Doctors that would really resonate with fans. Here are some of the monsters and things we could try.”

"It’s more just an idea that it would be great to do something that brings the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors together, it’d be great to do something with Daleks in because fans really like Daleks, and trying to find an innovative way of using the Daleks, and it would be nice to do something that sort of explores Doctor Who history, but without becoming too exclusive."

My question with all of this is how Doctor Who fans will be able to follow the full story if it’s spread across so many mediums, or even if they can afford it all. I mean, just look at the timeline below. How do we keep up?

Worry not, Whovians. If you’re not able to catch up with every single part of the start, Goss is here to reassure you:

"Absolutely you can enjoy as much of it as you want. It has been designed so that you can just pick up a comic or a book, and you can enjoy that book – it has a beginning, a middle and an end.But hopefully, if we’ve done our job correctly, you’ll get to the end and go “oh, I want to find out more about this.”It’s like a patchwork quilt – the idea is that you can explore any chunk of the quilt and go “this is really cool!” – maybe if you really like the Titan Dalek comic, you might go “oh there are some linked Big Finish audio dramas featuring these same Daleks – I’ll go off and listen to them.”You might get to a point with them and go “but where are they going, why are they trying to go to the Dark Times?”, so you might then pick up a BBC Book that continues it. But that doesn’t mean you should get to the end and feel like you’ve been cheated."

And according to Goss, there will be some Time Lord Victorious content that’s just plain free. There is something for everyone to enjoy and take away from this.

While the Time Lord Victorious team lined up a lot of fan favorite actors for this project, it didn’t get everyone. Christoper Eccleston, who kicked off the 2005 Doctor Who reboot as the Ninth Doctor, won’t be in Time Lord Victorious, but he is reprising his role for 12 Big Finish audio adventures!

Unfortunately, Eccleston finalized his Big Fishing deal after planning had wrapped for Time Lord Victorious, hence his absence from the multi-platform series. But at least he’s back!

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h/t Digital Spy