So, not the best of Doctor Who news, huh?
Now before I start, the absence of a horrible, almost certainly AI generated, cover or thumbnail should tell you that no, this isn't going to be one of those articles playing armchair TV executive trying to analyse the reasons why this decision was made, and it's DEFINITELY not going to say it's because of "woke". (Erg! What's really galling about all of those is the fact it's clear that the makers have no idea what woke is meant to mean, it's just a noise of disapproval for them!) Also, even though these are the thoughts of someone who went through what I guess we now have to call "The Original Wilderness Years", this isn't going to be me dictating how you should feel about the whole thing, no "MAN UP"s here. It's a shock to many of us, a time of confusion, of scary uncertainty, I get that entirely, it's something to take in. What this is going to be is just my tuppence worth, what lessons we could learn from the last time the series entered a hiatus, and where to find hope for the future. Let's dig in, shall we...
However, we also shouldn't take that to mean "Oh in a few weeks time we'll get the new showrunner then"; a project like Who is a different kettle of Krynoids to a hospital drama like Casualty (despite both involving Doctors). A new start will be tricky, as there's a lot of decide in terms of budget, style, getting a writing team together, and perhaps the hardest one, how do we carry on from where we left off? Do we try to work with Billie Piper's filming schedule with Netflix and Wednesday to resolve what happened at the end of The Reality War, or do we say some time has passed since then and jump to a new full time Doctor? Are we going to bring back Kate Stewart, UNIT etc. or are we making a clean break and fresh start? What sort of stories do we tell; still mostly one per episode or shall we do more two-parters (not least because that's at least one way to make a budget stretch further)? Even if someone does actually pick it up and start by tomorrow (which unless Mark Gatiss has had some very long term plans he's been sitting on isn't likely), realistically we're looking at a couple of years at minimum (and that's me being very optimistic) until it's on screen again. So whilst it's not an absolute end, we need to accept that it's going to be quite a while before the return. And unlike what a certain notorious charity single that did so badly it never made any money for charity says, no, 18 months isn't too long to wait.
So that's the reality of things, which leads us to a new question; what to do in the meantime? Well in many ways, this is where this new Wilderness Years has the edge over the old one. Looking back, the most interesting thing about the previous hiatus is the way that during that time, Doctor Who kind of was everywhere except showing as a new TV series. During the whole period Doctor Who magazine kept going and there was still plenty to talk about in its pages, plus its comic strip was a fun way to keep the story going. Barely a year after the last episode of Survival, we had the start of The New Adventures novels, which was where quite a few writers on New Who got their first official start, and that spun off into the Missing Adventures line, and both segued into BBC Books' own lines of The Eighth Doctor Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures. In fact, during that period Doctor Who got a Guinness World Record for the Longest Series of Books Based on a Single Character; yeah, those records aren't exactly true arbiters of absolute facts etc, but it's still an achievement when you see how many. And in the latter half of course we got Big Finish, which I definitely look at as the main proving ground for many ideas that truly shaped New Who, although I have an idea for a future article where I'll go into a bit more detail on that.
That was last time, this time around we're in a better shape as whilst all that took a while to get going, here things are already well set up, with obviously the strongest one being Big Finish. Now their Doctor Who content, as of last August having done the maths, has actually lasted longer than the Classic Series ran, that's quite a back catalogue of stuff to go through. What's more, it's been confirmed that their current licence runs until the 31st of March 2030, so at least four years to go (and given what a solid cash cow it is for the Beeb, making them a tidy amount in licencing without having to do much themselves, its very likely to continue past then). So that's one thing to do in the meantime, and even if you don't keep up with all of it (and I'm certainly not expecting you all to be as mad as me and actually try that!), you can still get plenty from just following one strand. Just from what's coming up, you have various Classic Doctor stories, new ones featuring The Ninth Doctor and Rose (because getting Billie into a recording studio is way more time effective than on set), The Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz, a new wave of Tenth Doctor stories starring Tennant starts next year, more adventures for River Song, and that's just scratching the surface.
As for other media, well with the latest multimedia event, Circuit Breaker, that's a good chance to try out some of the other ranges, the comics, books etc, and get a taster. On that note, I do think that in many ways, if we are having a default Doctor for this period, I say we think of this as the Jo Martin era. Her getting involved directly with this series shows her enthusiasm for the part, the status of her as this lost incarnation means in a way you can avoid a lot of continuity faffing about, and dammit she looks sharp in the role. (Check out that new hat alone!) In many ways, if the show was to get started again very quickly and soon, all the ground work for at least some specials or a season following the Fugitive Doctor's adventures have already been done, and it can be a great starting point for a new viewer too, with a Doctor unburdened by the history and lore.
One big way that this era is easier than the last Wilderness though is in terms of access to the show's past. We had to wait so long for all the VHS and later DVD releases to get a good collection, and now almost all the show's history (grumble mutter thanks Stef Coburn seethe grumble) is available online at the click of a button, and discs exist aplenty. So if you jumped on board with New Who and haven't explored much of classic yet, perhaps this is the opportunity you've been waiting for. There's a lot to discover, and just recently more was added to that with the return of the lost Daleks Masterplan episodes. (Hmm, I wonder if this hiatus is some sort of cosmic balance or Monkey's Paw thing, a price for getting those back?).
Never thought I would see the day we could watch a full uninterrupted quarter of this serial.
Above all though, the big difference between this and the dreaded 90s is the level of communication; fans of the show can reach out and connect with each other far easier than we ever could before. We can discuss a lot the problems with the social media age, and believe me there's a tonne to unpack, but one good thing is the power to find our people, our communities. Doctor Who was kept alive in the 90s through its fandom, even managing to rope in new fans along the way without the show being back, and it was their power, voices within that space which shaped the New series. So let's use all the lessons we learned from there to keep our heads held high. Yes, being without the show can be sad, and it's not great we have this level of uncertainty, but we have each other, we have its 63 years' worth of history, we have new stuff in other media guaranteed on the way, so however long this ends up being, be it a couple of years or a decade and a half like before, we'll get through it together. Think of it as just another form of regeneration, one we've seen through before, and remember these words...
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