Doctor Who showrunner on falling in love with the world’s longest-running sci-fi show

Doctor Who is about to return for a series of 60th anniversary specials starring David Tennant, one of the most popular actors to play the Doctor since the show was rebooted in 2005. After that, Tennant will turn things over to Ncuti Gatwa, who will play the Fifteenth Doctor starting in 2024.

All of this is to be expected; ever since Doctor Who aired its first episode back in 1963, the lead character — an ancient, time-traveling alien who zips around the universe solving mysteries and having adventures — has regenerated with a new face every few seasons, reinvigorating the show for yet another new audiences. But something feels different this time. There’s more excitement in the air than usual. Fans are paying closer attention. I’m a fair weather fan who dips in and out of Doctor Who as the wind blows, and I’m more excited about it than I’ve been in a very long while.

I chock a lot of that excitement up to the return of showrunner Russell T Davies, who brought the show back with Christopher Eccleston in 2005, left along with David Tennant in 2009, and is now returning after over a decade away. It’s a compelling Cinderella story, especially as the show seems to be losing some of its cultural cache. Can the original dream team revive it? Right now, it feels like it’s possible, which is kind of exhilerating.

Doctor Who showrunner on the link between his queerness and his fandom

Also, Davies is a great pitch man. Take this essay he wrote in The Guardian, where he writes movingly about his love for the show, which started when he was a young lad watching William Hartnell — who played the First Doctor — regenerate into Patrick Troughton back in 1966. “Did that moment shape my entire life?” he asks. “Well, here I am.”

"I had a keen sense of people on the same wavelength. When I was 10, we had a student teacher at Sketty primary school in Swansea who couldn’t resist telling us the solution to the cliffhanger of Death to the Daleks, Part One. He correctly predicted the Dalek guns wouldn’t work because all power was being drained by the mysterious Exxilon City. That was an amazing moment for me, to see a teacher so thrilled by a piece of TV. I felt that connection, a thrill, a kinship, a hum and a buzz between us. I wonder who he was. Still watching, sir?The turning point came at the age of 11 – a huge change for me and for the show. I went to comprehensive school; the Doctor became Tom Baker. I have a crucial memory of TV Comic’s weekly Doctor Who strip printing a gorgeous piece of artwork (drawn, I now know, by Gerry Haylock) showing Tom Baker in full hat, scarf and toothy grin. And something clicked in my head. Something clicked and has stayed clicked ever since. A simple thought which said: I love you."

I think a lot of people can connect with this story, with the idea of watching something that made you a fan. When I was a kid, I remember watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and getting into it beyond the confines of the usual TV show-viewer paradigm. I didn’t just watch an episode and go about my day. I thought about it, got invested in it. I don’t remember exactly the moment it happened, but I became a fan. And once I started engaging with that show on a more serious level, I started engaging with other movies and TV shows that way. And here I am.

I also like what Davies has to say about how his identity as a gay man interacted with his fandom. “[A]s those teenage years advanced, two things synced up,” he writes. “I was gay and went silent, watching all the parties and fancying boys at a remove instead of getting drunk on cider, scared of giving myself away. At exactly the same time, I watched TV fiercely. Both things became closeted. Doctor Who became the other love that dares not speak its name.”

"I found my way to that job by opening both closet doors at once. I wrote Queer As Folk, and at the same time, I made one of the lead characters a Doctor Who fan. The climax to the series was Vince trying to decide between two men by asking them to name as many Doctors as possible. In order. It hadn’t been my actual plan, but that show linked my name with Doctor Who in the industry, so when Jane Tranter decided to bring it back in 2002, her eye fell on me. And it turns out, she’d been in the closet, too. She’d become controller of drama at the BBC while secretly harbouring a desire to bring back the one show she’d truly loved since childhood."

Of course, you don’t have to be in the queer community to love Doctor Who. The central character has a rambling charm that’s appealed to people from all walks of life for over half a century. “Some of the secret exists in what the Doctor is not,” Davies writes. “He/she/they have never had a job or a boss or even parents, they never pay tax, never do homework. They never have to go home at night. Maybe you fall in love with the show when you’re a kid because the Doctor’s a big kid, too. I could never love Star Trek in the same way because they’re the navy; when I survive to the year 2266, they won’t allow me on board. I’ll be scrubbing the floor below decks, at best. But Doctor Who’s greatest idea is that the Tardis can land anywhere. I’d walk home from school wishing I could turn the corner and see that blue box and run inside to escape everything. I don’t think that wish has quite gone.”

"I’ve been very lucky with Doctor Who. I have loved something and it has loved me back. And somewhere out there, some kid is watching. In 40 years’ time, it will belong to them, just in time for the 100th anniversary."

Davies clearly has a strong sense of community around Doctor Who, which is exactly the kind of thing that gets fans excited. We’ll see how many of them turn out when the new Doctor Who specials start airing on November 25.

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