Byron Lafayette
Shadow & Substance is a bi-weekly column that explores the world of film and TV, especially in the genres of sci-fi and horror. Asking the questions and exploring the answers that lie in the middle ground between light and shadow.
Why is Doctor Who rejecting horror in favor of whimsy?
Doctor Who is an iconic TV show, first started in 1963, featuring the adventures of a time-traveling “Time Lord” and his many human companions. It continued for many years until ending in 1989. It briefly returned in 1996 for a TV movie meant to reboot the show, but it failed, and the program quietly faded into the night.
Doctor Who returned in 2005 under showrunner Russell T Davies and became a commercial and critical smash hit globally. I still remember the show at its height, packing Hall H at Comic-Con, and everyone buying sonic screwdriver toys to carry.
The modern reboot went through a few showrunners, and the writing began to decline, leading to plummeting ratings. By 2022, the main reboot series was announced to end, and a new “soft reboot” was planned, featuring a brand-new Doctor and the return of original showrunner Russell T Davies, along with a deal with Disney that boosted the budget. However, this new series has been beset with many of the same issues as the previous one—mostly lackluster writing and plots deemed silly and clownish. This has led to ratings going down and rumors of actor Ncuti Gatwa being unsure who he will continue in the role.
When asked if Doctor Who would be canceled if Disney pulled out of the deal after its two-season contract concluded, Davies said:
If Disney collapsed tomorrow and we had to go back to making Doctor Who on a normal BBC budget, you know what? We’d all rally round and make it, and suddenly the stories would become claustrophobic ghost stories,” he says. “A lot of people would like that very much.
Modern Doctor Who captured audiences’ attention back in 2005 by being a darker version of the show that came before, with its Doctor claiming to have killed all the Time Lords. With this darker tone came a lot of horror episodes. In fact, some of the most well-regarded “Nu-Who” stories are those with horror elements—stories such as The Satan Pit, The Waters of Mars, The Empty Child, The Impossible Planet, Silence in the Library, and many more.
Yet as the new series went on, it began to lean more and more into “whimsy” and silly fantasy. Now, I’m not saying that Doctor Who can’t be silly or have light stories, but it started to feel like the BBC had lost the script. When Who returned for the soft reboot, we were all excited for Davies to right the ship, but sadly, he continued to dive headfirst into whimsical and silly stories—starting with a comedic romp through London featuring pop-song-singing goblins and then the critically reviled episode Space Babies.
So the question must be asked: if Doctor Who’s success was partially due to an embrace of darker, more horror-tinged stories, and Davies himself has said that if the Disney deal falls through, they would go back to horror and ghost stories—why aren’t they doing that now?
The fans have been speaking out, saying they don’t like the constant silly and whimsical episodes and want a return to the darker and scarier Doctor Who—the Doctor Who that released the iconic Fury of the Time Lord, which saw The Doctor unleashing judgment on evil, or The Satan Pit, which depicted a demonic plot at the edge of the universe.
I love Doctor Who, and I hope that with the upcoming second season of the reboot, Davies will return to Who’s horror roots—before he’s forced to do so if Disney cancels it.
