Last month was the 16th anniversary of ‘Rose’, of the show returning to TV (26th March 2005). A time before the iPhone or iPad, before streaming services or smart TV’s. When broadband and wifi were just starting to be widespread and the sound of modems firing up could still be heard in some quarters. Way back when, assuming that you could afford a widescreen TV, it weighed a ton and took 2 people to shift. When VHS was giving way to DVD and hard drive recorders. Britain was slowly emerging from 5 channel TV – BBC 3 and 4 were just a couple of years old. Pre-digital switchover, Freeview was relatively new and many people were still watching via analogue TV tuners. iPlayer was still a couple of years away. Whilst across the TV landscape, soaps and reality TV ruled the roost.
In some ways, it wasn’t a very promising time for the show to return. In other ways it absolutely, resoundingly was. You see, ‘Doctor Who’ fandom had cunningly sent sleeper agents into the UK’s media sphere. We knew about some of them – Russell T Davies, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and some of them where in deeper cover – Jane Tranter for example. Now we had a woman on the inside and bosses who were up for the idea – the likes of Lorraine Heggessy and Mal Young. People determined enough to unravel the rights issues and even withstand the return of that old enemy of the show and all-round pantomime villain – Michael Grade. Attempts were made to quietly kill off the revival at its re-birth in the wake of his return – thankfully they were fought and overcome. Meanwhile critics and cultural commentators, who generally loved the drama heavyweights behind the relaunch – Russell T Davies and Christopher Eccleston, were also of the right age – a heady mix of their own childhood nostalgia and also looking for something else to write about instead of ‘Big Brother’ or the latest talent show. It shouldn’t be underestimated how important the reputations of Russell and Chris were in the acceptance of the new version of the show – reputations are there to lose, but these were about as fireproof, as cast iron, as you could get in the mid 2000’s.
But what of the audience? Well it turned out that people had simply forgotten how much they loved the series – and many of those people now had young children, a new generation who were free of the burden of the baggage of the final years of the show. They were ripe for a homegrown sci-fi adventure series, for them it was all brand new and British TV was offering them very little in this space. Audience research had showed that there was no real appetite for the show returning – guess what, that audience research was wrong – people wanted it in their lives, they just didn’t know it yet. Luckily the production team quietly buried these negative responses. The rumours of the death of shared family programming were also exaggerated (they are probably much truer now). Russell and the team were in the right place, at the right time – and had just the right writers and right production techniques (CGI, prosthetics, single camera filming, post-production grading etc.) available to re-launch the show.
The timeline for all of this was somewhat convoluted and protracted. There seemed to be such a long time between the rumours and then the announcement of the show’s return (23rd September 2003) and the eventual screening of ‘Rose’ (March 2005) or the Canadian leak of the early cut if that was the way you chose to watch it. We had the casting of Billie Piper (May 2004) to mass consternation, although I’d recently seen her in ‘Canterbury Tales’, so at least I knew she could act. Her casting had been rumoured as far back as September 2003. And then I remember the announcement of the casting of Chris Eccleston as the Doctor – it was on Saturday the 20th March 2004 – a year before we would get to see him in action.
I remember I‘d been working away from home and my partner woke me up early to tell me the news I was so happy, Chris was one of my favourite actors, I could barely have picked anyone I would have wanted more. for the role. And you’ll hopefully see why as I review these stories, I’ll also include some thoughts on his other work – including extraordinary ‘The Second Coming’ which he worked on with Russell. Well I will if all goes to plan, which things very rarely do in a marathon! Hopefully this one is short enough to get through – if only he doesn’t do something mad and return to the role unexpectedly and record a whole load of audio episodes in the meantime…
A Journal of Impossible Things 