Posted in: BBC, TV | Tagged: doctor who

Doctor Who, Peter Davison & How Nostalgia Is Killing The Franchise

After Doctor Who star Peter Davison's comments about the show's direction, it's time to discuss how nostalgia has become the show's "Daleks."

In case you hadn't heard, there are a lot of Doctor Who folks out there who are up in arms about the show's future being in limbo, and that's brought a whole lot of finger-pointing. Showrunner Russell T. Davies is at the top of the blame list, with Disney+ being a close second. Want to know who's not on that list? Gate-keeping, close-minded so-called fans who live way too much in the past and really don't want to see the show grow and evolve. Too harsh? Just check out what's going down on social media and then come back and tell us we're being too harsh. However, it took Peter Davison's (Fifth Doctor) comments during an interview with The Lewis Nicholls Show for us to see things more clearly. Doctor Who fans (Davison included) are exactly like fans of NBC's long-running late-night live sketch comedy and music series, Saturday Night Live (SNL).

"They seem terribly worried now about people's attention spans. If something isn't happening every two minutes, they think people are going to turn off, but I don't believe that's true," Davison shared about the most recent series of adventures. "It's like watching a trailer for a 'Doctor Who' show you'd like to watch later. There are huge gaps in the narrative. They're just leaping onto the next bit and hoping your brain fills in the rest," he added. The Fifth Doctor also sees the show leaning too much into the visual effects: "As the special effects got better, there's a danger it becomes just about special effects. They're just sequences of enormously impressive effects with no real story."

There's a lot there to unpack, and we did quite a bit of it already in "Doctor Who Can Easily Be Fixed (But You're Not Going to Like It)" so we're not going to travel old ground. But what Davison did do was convince us that he truly is a fan of the show – and that's not always a good thing. See, for a lot of you, it seems that there's this "nostalgia chip" in your brains that activates once you get past a certain age. It's like "Logan's Run" but the only thing that dies is your ability to appreciate new things. Because when that "chip" kicks in, everything you loved growing up was amazing, and everything now just suuuuuuuucks. How does it do it? By making sure you only remember the good things and none of the mediocre, painfully bad, or godawfully embarrassing things.

With SNL celebrating its 50th season this year, we've seen a ton of examples of this. For SNL fans, seasons they grew up with are always "the best" and the one that came after it sucked. Then, they'll throw out these great examples to make their case, like The Blues Brothers, "Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood," The Church Lady, and others. But what they don't tell you, what that "chip" must keep them from realizing, is that there was also a lot of not-so-great stuff in between those highlights. Sketches that died on air, characters that were just brutally bad, and more. It's the same with Doctor Who, and that includes Davison's run. There is a ton to love and appreciate about Davison's Fifth Doctor, and he still continues to be my favorite all-time Doctor. But before he or anyone else takes another shot at what Davies and his team have been doing, take a second to really look back at his run. There's a whole lot there that wouldn't stand up to what we've seen from Jodie Whittaker's and Ncuti Gatwa's runs.

And just to be clear, Doctor Who fans haven't always viewed Davison as a "NuWho prophet." During a panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2017, Davison and fellow Doctor, Colin Baker, discussed the casting of Whittaker in the iconic role, the first time the show has had a female lead. Davison raised eyebrows when he shared that he "liked the idea" of the show having a male Doctor and that he felt "a bit sad" that the character would most likely not be "a role model for boys." Baker took the opposing position, noting that, "You don't have to be of a gender to be a role model. Can't you be a role model as people?" The Sixth Doctor continued, "They've had 50 years of having a role model. So sorry Peter, you're talking rubbish there – absolute rubbish." Davison would add that maybe "you need to open it up" for the series to continue and that he's "maybe an old-fashioned dinosaur."

During a 2024 interview with The Telegraph, Davison claimed that he was "misquoted" and looked to clarify what his position was at the time. "My point was that the Doctor is a Don Quixote-type figure who rides into situations, and the character who always puts him right is his female companion," he explained. "And if you reverse that, you've got the difficult dynamic of a man telling a woman what she can and cannot do. But I do also think the Doctor is a good role model because he is a hero who isn't beating the s**t out of everyone."

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