Posted in: BBC, Disney+, Doctor Who, Opinion, TV, TV | Tagged: bbc, disney, doctor who, Millie Gibson, Ncuti Gatwa, russell t davies

Doctor Who: How RTD Is Unlocking The Show's True Hidden Heart(s)

Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies is focusing on the show's secret heart(s) - a riff on Peter Pan and the story of a lonely orphan.

There are many reasons Doctor Who has been popular with not just die-hard fans but also ordinary viewers for sixty years, but there are two that were lurking all along in plain sight that showrunner Russell T. Davies has finally unlocked for the first time. Yes, there's the appeal of time travel and space adventures, fighting aliens as The Doctor and their companion have done, a basic premise that can run as long as the writers have ideas. What makes a TV series endure and loved is the emotional appeal of the characters on top of the premise, but Davies has at least said a quiet part out loud for why the characters have resonated: The Doctor and companion were a version of Peter Pan and Wendy all along.

Doctor Who: From Kindly Wizard to Peter Pan

Doctor Who has always drawn from multiple different sources. It is a prototypical television show in the way it magpies elements from books, movies, and other television shows throughout its history. When the series debuted in 1963, it drew on traditional English children's adventure fantasy with the then-elderly Doctor, played by William Hartnell, as the crotchety but reassuring grandfather figure leading the adventures they stumbled into one after another.

Subsequent Doctors were played by younger actors, but they were still old enough to be father figures. Patrick Troughton played The Doctor as a playful cosmic hobo inspired by Charlie Chaplin, Jon Pertwee played it as a dandyish swashbuckling adventurer, Tom Baker played it as an eccentric bohemian, Peter Davison was the first Doctor as an older brother figure, Colin Baker as a rage-filled, oddball uncle, Sylvester McCoy as a mad professor, Paul McGann as a dashing Byronic romantic figure, and when Davies revived the series in 2005, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Matt Smith played the Doctor as a surrogate Space Boyfriend with Peter Capaldi updating the grandfather figure.

Through it all, the Doctor was the archetype of the kindly wizard with his sonic screwdriver as a magic wand. The TARDIS was always a takeoff of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" (which Steven Moffat acknowledged in the title of his Christmas Special  "The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe").  It's the youthful, joyful energy of Ncuti Gatwa that seems to have prompted Davies to bring out the Peter Pan vibe of The Doctor, though it was been there all along.

The Timeless Child Reveals the Peter Pan Part of the Series

Think about it: Peter Pan is the boy who never grew up, who shows up to whisk Wendy and her siblings to adventures in Never-Neverland. That's what The Doctor has done from the beginning. Jodie Whittaker's Doctor was the first to hint at the Peter Pan nature of the Doctor, but nobody noticed at the time. Chris Chibnall introduced the Timeless Child thread to the Doctor's story, and Davies decided to run with it. He has decided to lean into the show being on Disney+ to bring out this thene with Gatwa and Millie Gibson as a riff o Peter Pan and Wendy in the new series.

The Timeless Child can be read as a variation on Peter Pan as a kid who never grew up. This was already in Jodie Whittaker's often childlike performance as The Doctor. Many fans might hate the Timeless Child thread as a gratuitous retcon to Doctor Who lore, but Davies has found its emotional heart: the Doctor is an orphan and a foundling, and from that, he is weaving the central theme and thread of the new series.

The Series' Secret Heart, Unlocked

Davies has identified the common thread that has run in Doctor Who for sixty years, but no one has noticed. None of the previous writers and producers were conscious of it even as they wrote it all the time: The hero is a wandering orphan constantly finding other orphans and families to love and be with and is always losing them to time, since only The Doctor is immortal. There's never-ending heartbreak in that story that keeps it going forever with endless possibilities and meditations on family, love and loss that has been the common thread of the show for sixty years. The biggest fear of every child of every age is loneliness, and the Doctor is the loneliest hero of them all, one that everyone can't help but identify with. This is the most enduring theme of them all.

Doctor Who returns on May 10th and will be streaming worldwide on Disney+.

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