Doctor Who

He’s apologised, he’s said he was drunk and trying to wind up Andy Lane, but c1995, Steven Moffat had a few things to say about Doctor Who. Choice comments include:

…when I look back at Doctor Who now. I laugh at it, fondly. As a television professional, I think how did these guys get a paycheck every week? Dear god, it’s bad! Nothing I’ve seen of the black and white stuff – with the exception of the pilot, the first episode – should have got out of the building. They should have been clubbing those guys to death! You’ve got an old guy in the lead who can’t remember his lines; you’ve got Patrick Troughton, who was a good actor, but his companions – how did they get their Equity card? Explain that! They’re unimaginably bad. Once you get to the colour stuff some of it’s watchable, but it’s laughable.

If you look at other stuff from the Sixties they weren’t crap – it was just Doctor Who. The first episode of Doctor Who betrays the lie that it’s just the Sixties, because the first episode is really good – the rest of it’s shit.

Peter Davison is a better actor than all the other ones, that’s the simple reason why he works more than all the other ones. There is no sophisticated, complicated reason to explain why Peter Davison carried on working and all the other Doctors disappeared into a retirement home for lardies. He’s better and I think he’s extremely good as the Doctor

What do you think? Was he telling the truth? Do you even agree with him?

There was, of course, a British TV show that ran for 26 years from 1963 to 1989 called Doctor Who. There was a TV movie that followed it, along with books, comics and audio plays.

Now on TV there’s a TV show called Doctor Who. It has many similarities to the original, ranging from TARDISes to Time Lords, the Doctor through to actors from the first series playing the same roles in the second series.

But are they the same?

On the one hand, obviously they are since they’re so similar and the production teams say they are. But they still refer to their show as being series one to five, rather than series 27 to 31. There are contradictions and a gap of 16 years or so between series. 

So despite the same name, is the new Doctor Who to the original Doctor Who what Star Trek II/Star Trek: The Next Generation was to Star Trek or what the remake of Battlestar Galactica was to the original series?

And is it, any sense at all, important? (You may have guessed this started as a discussion on a mailing list…)

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.