On the Series 10 debacle

So there have been rumours hovering around for some time now that there will not be a full series of Doctor Who in 2016, initially reported by the magazine Private Eye. The Mirror (whose track record on Doctor Who rumours is infamously deplorable) recently caused considerable hubbub among the fandom with its report that the number of episodes in Series 10 will be “halved”, supposedly because Peter Capaldi wanted to work on other projects.

These rumours appear to have been laid to rest with Steven Moffat’s confirmation that Series 10 will, indeed, be a full 12-episode run. This has been taken in many quarters to mean that, yes, 2016 will feature a full 12-episode Series 10, same as this year and last year. That may well yet turn out to be the case, but I have reasons to doubt that a full-length Series 10 in 2016 is guaranteed, at least at this point.

Reading Steven Moffat’s “confirmation”, it seems like he’s chosen his words very carefully. He didn’t say “there will be 12 episodes in 2016”. What he actually said was, yes, Series 10 will be 12 episodes, but “I don’t know when it goes out. That’s up to someone else. And even if I did know – which I genuinely don’t – I wouldn’t be allowed to say so as I have absolutely no say in it whatsoever.”

So Series 10 will be 12 episodes, but when it airs, and over what time frame, we don’t know—not even Moffat knows yet.

That Moffat has — finally — spoken up about the Series 10 situation, when these rumours have been circulating for approximately three months now, since the original Private Eye article was published, is curious. Why allow the rumours circulate for so long?

My hunch is that the situation of Doctor Who for at least the next two years is up in the air at the moment, that the BBC or whoever be the relevant powers that be have not yet decided what is happening with Doctor Who in 2016. Moffat’s “confirmation” of a full Series 10 has only come now to hastily cover Doctor Who’s (and Peter Capaldi’s) back after the damaging Mirror report.

I talk about hasty back-covering without resentment. If a full series of Doctor Who isn’t possible in 2016 for whatever reason, that’s fine. I just wish that the BBC had put out a statement earlier making the nature of the situation clear, so the rumours wouldn’t have been allowed to get out of hand, as they did. So no undignified covering of backs was necessary.

For my part, although a full Series 10 next year would be fab, I wouldn’t mind too much if we got, say, a split series (à la Series 7), or a year of specials before a full Series 10 in 2017. If we don’t get a full series next year, my preference would actually be for the latter, a succession of 3-6 Sherlock-esque feature-length specials spaced evenly throughout the year. It would make for a very different kind of Doctor Who than we’re used to, and I’d be very interested to see what Steven Moffat does with the 90-minute time-frame in Doctor Who.

Even a split-series might be an interesting experiment, if Moffat has learnt his lessons from Series 7 (i.e. “blockbuster of the week” is no substitute for quality narratives). Six regular episodes a year should, one would think, allow more time and effort to be put into writing and production of those episodes, making for better stories.

But we’ll see.

Who’s Next: Faye Marsay

The next actress we might feasibly see in the companion role come Series 10 is one of the names more often bandied about, ever since her much-acclaimed appearance in the 2014 Christmas special, Last Christmas. It’s Faye Marsay.

Faye Marsay seems to fit the profile of a prospective Doctor Who companion actress: she’s young and obviously talented, but, for now, relatively unknown—or up-and-coming, depending on how you want to look at it. A stint as a Doctor Who companion has often been a springboard for talented up-and-coming young actresses to rise to greater prominence in the film and television industry, à la Billie Piper, Karen Gillan and now Jenna Coleman, who’s now going off to play the high-profile eponymous role in Victoria on ITV.

Faye Marsay’s appeal lies in the fact that she already has an established character in Doctor Who, the quirky, endearing Shona McCullough, a “would-be” companion if there ever was one. Shona made an impressive impact upon the fandom, and Marsay built up literally overnight her own sizable faction of Shona fans who want to see Shona travel with the Doctor. That’s not just a testament to the wonderful character created by Steven Moffat, it’s a credit to Marsay herself, who’s clearly an exceptional actress, having brought vividly to life her character and captured the audience’s affections within moments of her appearing onscreen.

There’s so much that’s right in bringing Shona back as a companion. She’s a genuinely engaging and lovable character. She’s very different from Clara, in the way she approaches the challenges she’s confronted with. She’s brave, like Clara, but she’s also, compared to Clara, refreshingly human. Clara has always displayed extraordinary qualities that make her, at times, almost as alien as the Doctor. Compared to Clara, Shona seems a much more relatable character — just an ordinary girl — and, in that way, recalls Rose.

An ordinary girl. That would be a big change in itself from The Impossible Girl, and The Girl Who Waited. But she’s also unordinary. She hasn’t got the enviable, photogenic life of Amy or Clara or Martha, and she hasn’t got the super-stunning looks of pretty much every female Doctor Who companion ever (don’t get me wrong, though, she’s still pretty). Shona is quirky and eccentric, and not a generic “Mary-Sue” by any means. She has an off-kilter sense of humour. She looks like she has a very mundane and unfulfilling life, as though she’s just crying out to be whisked away in the Tardis. In these respects, she’d be much like the Moffat era’s Donna, or even an unconventional Ace-like companion. This is good. A change from stunning, sweet-natured girls-next-door would be very welcome.

But there’s one pretty big reason I don’t want Shona to be the next companion. In almost any other set of circumstances, I’d love to see Shona board the Tardis. It’s just that, as refreshing a change as she would be, she’s still not different enough from literally all her predecessors since 2005 to make a real difference. She’d be another “ordinary” British girl from the 21st Century. In any other circumstance, Shona would be an exciting change, but, after five 21st Century British girls in 10 years, Shona would feel tedious and repetitive. To the casual audience, she’d be difficult to distinguish from the five characters with strikingly similar profiles that preceded her. The casual audience might reasonably conclude that it’s all more of the same and that they’ve seen all this before. And, frankly, I’d be bored, too.

It’s for these reasons that, as much as I love Shona’s character, I don’t want her to be the next companion.

This show really does need to get away from the standard companion archetype, at least for a while. I’ve loved all the modern Doctor Who companions, each in their own way, but repetitive and unoriginal is the one thing Doctor Who shouldn’t be. The show should even avoid the appearance of repetitiveness, as the traumatic experience of the late 1980s should have taught us.

The show did successfully break the mould of young Doctors in the fantastic Peter Capaldi, so there’s no reason it couldn’t break the mould of young, ordinary, British and 21st Century (YOB21’s?), too. The classic series always managed to mix it up fairly consistently, plucking its companions from the past, present and future, from alien worlds, and even, shock horror, from the male sex—that is, as proper companions rather than attached to main female companions.

If Doctor Who wants to keep the 21st Century British girl formula, it needs to do something radically different in respect of the profile of the next companion: Lady Christina de Souza was a superb example, and, personally, I’d have loved to have seen Lady Christina travel with Ten as a proper companion. But part of Lady Christina’s appeal was that, even with the same gender, nationality and time period as Rose, Martha and Donna, she was so different from what we were used to in a companion, and she brought such distinctive qualities to the role because of her unique profile.

Something to think about.

Who’s Next: Maisie Williams

Introducing… a new regular feature of this blog, “Who’s Next”, in which I consider and speculate about potential future incumbents of the Doctor and Companion roles. With the companion position coming up for grabs after Jenna Coleman leaves at the end of Series 9, speculation about the next impressionable young lady the Doctor will take under his wing is particularly timely, so potential companion candidates will be the focus of this series at first.

I’m beginning this series with probably the most unlikely name, Maisie Williams, only because her character is making her (first) appearance in this week’s episode, The Girl Who Died. Whether her character will ultimately prove to be companion material, and providing she doesn’t get killed off, will, of course, become clear over the next two weeks.

It goes without saying that Maisie is a wonderful teen actress. She plays my favourite character in Game of Thrones, the badass tomboy Arya, and her talents as displayed in Thrones and her other work have seen her receive voluminous critical acclaim, not least from the great Peter Capaldi himself, whom she has described as an “idol” of hers. Apart from Game of Thrones, I’ve seen Maisie in one other production, the made-for-TV docu-drama Cyberbully, practically a one-hander, in which she was a captivating and magnetic presence for 60 minutes. It was Cyberbully that prompted executive producer Brian Minchin to consider Maisie for Doctor Who, after all, and I can’t argue with that reasoning.

The opportunities with Maisie’s character consist in whatever extraordinary quality her character is revealed to possess. I realise I’m engaging in what will most likely prove a futile exercise in second-guessing the Maisie mystery here, but Maisie’s character seems to carry some kind of celestial importance. At the very least she’s not just an “ordinary girl”, given she appears in two completely different time periods. My tentative wager is that she’s a Time Lady/Girl, evidently one known to the Doctor. One thing I’m hoping for in the next companion is a departure from the familiar, i.e. someone who isn’t an “ordinary” 21st Century British girl. Even an unordinary 21st Century British girl would be nice. But a Time Lady would make for an exciting change and a whole new dynamic. I can see an interesting master-apprentice dynamic between Capaldi’s Doctor and Time Maisie as the Doctor imparts his vast accumulated experience to the young, unformed Time Lady.

The snag, of course, is that Maisie plays an important main role in Game of Thrones, and her commitment to what I’m sure is the demanding filming schedule of Game of Thrones would surely preclude her from taking on a main job in Doctor Who. And there’s no question of her giving up Game of Thrones for Doctor Who; honestly, as much as I’d love to see Maisie as a Doctor Who companion, I’d much prefer her to continue playing Arya. For this reason Maisie is an unlikely candidate.

But there’s still a possibility. If the rumours about a full series of Doctor Who not being produced in 2016 are true (and it’s increasingly looking like they are), then here lies an opportunity for a Maisie companion. Whether it’s a split-series like Series 7, or a miniseries like Children of Earth, or a handful of Sherlock-esque feature-length episodes, the reduced filming commitments may well accommodate Maisie’s Thrones schedule. And if whatever happens in 2016 is successful, Maisie may well want to come back for 2017 (presumably a full series), especially given that production of Game of Thrones may be stalled at that point due to the need for George R. R. Martin to actually write the material for forthcoming series (although I don’t know much about this situation; correct me if I’m wrong).

Who nose.