Well, you didn’t expect this, did you? Welcome to the WIDWWA Newsletter, a brand-new element of the WIDWWA franchise, to essentially keep everyone updated with all the goings on and to be able to talk about an aspect I very rarely get to share with the community: my actual out-of-universe creative process for the series and just how I use real-life evidence to decide exactly what happens in the WIDWWA seasons and such.
Expect to see plenty of features on certain parts of the WIDWWA universe, as well as lots of updates on the upcoming WIDWWA projects, with the first exclusive sneak-peaks coming here. We may have finished the backlog of the series, but everything else is just beginning now we’ve hit the present day!
I hope you enjoy reading this Newsletter, and if all is successful, I’m all ears about possibly expanding it in some shape or form!
News & Announcements
Adrian Hodges to depart as Showrunner
3 OCTOBER 2021
Season 55 will be showrunner, Adrian Hodges’, final season on Doctor Who. It’s been reported that Hodges was not aware that S55 was going to be his last when it was being written & produced. The next showrunner has been chosen by Mal Young, in conjuction with Jane Espenson, and will take over from Season 56.
It is expected that the new showrunner will be announced following the end of Season 55’s broadcast, possibly at The Official Doctor Who Convention in Glasgow at the end of November.
Alex Jennings & Jayd Johnson leaving Who too!
14 OCTOBER 2021
After a leak from the press, it was announced that both of Ace Bhatti’s companions, played by Alex Jennings & Jayd Johnson, will be leaving the show at the end of Season 55.
It appears this decision was taken before it was decided that Hodges would be leaving, but it does give the new showrunner the advantage of having a “clean slate”, being able to introduce their own new characteers.
Johnson made a humourous remark, implying that her character, Chrissie, was not going to be killed off.
Doctor Who Season 56 begins filming
18 OCTOBER 2021
Doctor Who has begun fiming on it’s 56th full season today. The season will star Ace Bhatti and a yet-unannounced co-star, as well as feature a brand new showrunner, who has is yet-announced. It is expected both of these announcements will happen within the next few months.
Mal Young confirmed that the new showrunner was chosen some time ago, and considering that production has begun, it’s likely to have been a period of at-least 6 months since they begun the job.
Suranne Jones is the new Companion?
21 OCTOBER 2021
Three days into filming on Season 56, a call sheet leaked to the Mirror which listed Ace Bhatti as the Doctor, Suranne Jones as Jean Morgan, Sam Clafin as Gordo Nichols and Togo Igawa as Vaughn Chang.
It is unknown whether Jones, or either of the other two are playing companions, or just guest stars, but many are jumping to the assumption that Jones will be playing the Sixteenth Doctor’s new companion, Jean.
No official announcement has been made.
November Releases!
November sees the end of pretty much continuous WIDWWA releases since about April time. After Episode 8 of Season 55 is released on Saturday 20 November, there will be no new WIDWWA releases until 25 December.
I can now then announce the final few titles for all of November’s releases.
For Mysteriet Doktorn, November will see Episodes 8, 9 and 10 be released. These are Jordprojek & a two-part serial, Kämpa för Tiden.
For Doctor Who, Episodes 6, 7 and 8 will be released. These are To Win Them All & a two-part serial, Journey into the Unknown.
As you can see, Mysteriet Doktorn’s are being released on Fridays – to coincidence with their Swedish releases and Doctor Who is being released on Saturdays – 24 hours before they’re actual in-universe broadcasts, in order to avoid a clash with our real life Doctor Who episodes airing on BBC One, at the moment.
5 November 2021
MYSTERIET DOKTORN SEASON 2 - Episode 8
6 November 2021
DOCTOR WHO SEASON 55 - Episode 6
12 November 2021
MYSTERIET DOKTORN SEASON 2 - Episode 9
13 November 2021
DOCTOR WHO SEASON 55 - Episode 7
19 November 2021
MYSTERIET DOKTORN SEASON 2 - Episode 10
20 November 2021
DOCTOR WHO SEASON 55 - Episode 8
Best of
If you’re not already a member of the WIDWWA server, you’re missing out, as that is the place to be when it comes to the WIDWWA community. You can simply join this server by following the link on the @WIDWWA twitter page.
This section is a showcase of the most intelligent and entertaining contributions on the WIDWWA Discord server over the last month.
On the subject of the best and worst movies...
On the subject of Adrian Hodges leaving Doctor Who...
Your views of the first half of Season 55...
Your views on the first 7 episodes of Mysteriet Doktorn Season 2...
The Hero We All Need!
If the Adjoa Andoh era can be described as having too many different visions, then the Ace Bhatti era can be described as having a lack of vision. Now, I can go into the numerous many in-universe reasons why this is the case, but what you’re hear for is not me simply writing words to put into Jane Espenson, Adrian Hodges, or Mal Young’s mouth, but to actually hear why I came to the conclusion that the Ace Bhatti era would actually be this way, and also how some of the stories did come about, in my own imagination.
Let’s begin with the very tail end of the Adjoa Andoh era – Season 53. This season is important to our story because it’s the first to be ran by Adrian Hodges, who would have gone onto helm Bhatti’s first two seasons. Season 53’s finale, Her Final Stand, especially Part Three, rests on the fact that the Doctor is being judged for where or not she deserves to continue existing, by the Toymaker, because ”he” (who we later find out is God, or rather
the God Keeper’ is “retiring” (we later find out, this is because Eleven wipes him from time). Now, the consistent thread you can see here is, everything’s about ‘The New Renegade’, but ‘The New Renegade’ hadn’t happened yet. Well, just like what would have been happening in-universe with Jane Espenson, Adrian Hodges, and Chris Carter, I planned out the first season of TNR, in rough, before work on ‘Her Final Stand’ begun.
The general idea of what happened in universe was that Chris Carter came up with the storyline of both of the first two seasons of TNR, while Season 53 was beginning to enter production, but also while ‘Her Final Stand’ was only in its early drafts. Essentially, Espenson saw that there were issued with the drafts of ‘Her Final Stand’ being written at the time, as you get with plenty of first and second drafts, and by using her role as Franchise Executive, essentially said “Well, what we’ve come up with in TNR works well
and is interesting, let’s tie Her Final Stand into it”. This then had the knock-on effect of Season 54 having to do a lot of legwork paying this off – not because it needed to tie up plot points from TNR but because it needed to give viewers a bit of payoff from the finale of the previous season. So, why did I do this? Well, we’ll go into why ‘The New Renegade’ has the plot it has, and everything about Chris Carter etc, sometime in the future, but for now, we’ll just establish that ‘The New Renegade’ Season 1 and 2 were planned out both by Chris, in-universe, and me out-of-universe. Now while in-universe it was Jane going “isn’t this cool, let’s do it”, that’s not quite why I decided to do it. I decided to do it, basically for the reason that I suspected that based upon Jane Espenson’s taste in storytelling, tastes in ongoing arcs, and also because she now had free reign as Franchise Executive, and had been encouraged to interconnect the entire franchise, I suspected this is something she might do, for better or for worse. Secondly, I had an ulterior motive, which was for Espenson to essentially lose her job as Franchise Executive because of this. What happened in-universe was that postViacomCBS merger, the bosses there saw all of this on the horizon and thought “Doctor Who’s really bloody confusing now… (and looking at the upcoming season, this is only going to get worse) let’s commission a report, just to assess the state of the franchise”. Now the reason I decided I would get Jane into a position so that this would lead to the end of her time on the show, goes back to the fact that she was a quick replacement, originally, bodged into the position, due to the Moore affair, and she was massively out-of-her-depth. Not only was she suddenly given the keys to the BBC’s most valuable asset, but she was also then told to not do anything she wanted, because her friend of many years, Ronald D. Moore, had been sacked and she instead needed to do what CBS and the BBC wanted with the Franchise. She obliged and did this but then when a few years later, we find Jane able to do what she wants – still off the back of following orders about interconnecting things – this backfires massively and Jane ends up dead in the proverbial RDM ditch. The tragedy of Jane Espenson’s time as Franchise Executive was
her coming in, becoming the “saviour”, then spreading her wings, only for her creativity to alienate and confuse audiences, in the middle of a massive change in the company, which was co-producing the show, which saw its new bosses want her head on a plate, which in turn, damaged the vision she had begun in ‘Her Final Stand’, stampeding over it in Season 54 and making the problem indefinitely worse, before cutting it short entirely and dropping it. One would have to wonder exactly how this would have panned out, had ViacomCBS simply not remerged. But the point of telling this story, is essentially that the Moore sacking was a mess in itself, and because of CBS and Paramount wars, the Franchise was put into a bitter state of disrepair which just made everything worse.
Now, someone we haven’t really spoken about, who would have an extraordinary amount of influence on Seasons 54 and 55, because, well he’s the showrunner, is Adrian Hodges. So, lots of people in the WIDWWA community, when giving their thoughts of Season 54, especially blame Hodges for the fact it was a mess – this really isn’t the case, and was never intended, by me, to be the case. Season 54 was originally being crafted as 6 fairly standalone stories, like Season 53, with just character arcs running through, and the Rogue showing up. Then Espenson came in with what we’ll call “The Espenson Masterplan” and she told Hodges to go off and include all this TNR stuff in it. Hodges said “ok” and did that. It wasn’t originally going to be as full-on as it turned out in the final version, because it was written without COVID getting in the way and truncating things. Originally Season 54 looked like…
• The Screams of Terror – Plot based on arc stuff, but subtle enough
• Vajahnari’s Curse – Fairly arc heavy
• The Age of Discovery – No arc, with a few tiny references
• No Good Deed – No arc, but hints of the Rogue
• Lost and Forgotten – No arc, but a few little references
• For All Their Wisdom – Arc heavy, moreso in Part Three.
In fact, ‘For All Their Wisdom, Part Three’ would be 75% pretty much what we saw as the broadcast ‘No Good Deed’. Essentially, Adrian Hodges really isn’t to blame for how
Season 54 turned out. He was put into an impossible situation whereby he had his boss telling him to do something he wasn’t planning on doing, then his boss’s boss telling to wrap it all up quickly and then COVID and a completely messed up season, structurally… and he was forced to truncate and essentially ruin what was the most popular story of the season. Essentially, all of this meant that Hodges’ vision for Season 54 did not appear.
This was done, by me, for much of the same reason as I explained with Espenson before. Doctor Who had been a mess ever since the Moore affair and all of this was fallout. The irony was, Adrian Hodges was picked by the BBC because he was seen as a very safe pair of hands, yet this was all trodden on by their actions and the actions of Jane Espenson, who they chose to replace Moore. I wrote it as a tragedy, and also because I wanted to test a theory: I wanted to see if the WIDWWA community would see Hodges in the way that I had written the general public in-universe to see Hodges... while completely overlooking Jane Espenson’s part in the events taking place. What I thought was fascinating is that I didn’t see one person blame Espenson for what they disliked about Season 54, even though this was clearly as a result of intershow storylines, which could’ve only really been integrated by the Franchise Executive and would’ve had nothing to do with Hodges himself. My theory was proved correct and the WIDWWA community did react exactly how I believed the in-universe fans would’ve too – always looking to blame the current showrunner.
So, let’s take a look at what Hodges actually contributed himself as showrunner which did make it to screen. Firstly, Ace Bhatti as the Doctor was a casting by Hodges, although the process did receive thorough interest from Jane Espenson as well as executives at the BBC and CBS, as well as casting director Andy Pryor assisting with the decision, but the main point is that Adrian Hodges was the person who wanted Ace Bhatti to play the Sixteenth Doctor and that’s who got the job. I can talk for ages about why I cast Ace Bhatti as the Doctor but essentially Ace Bhatti was exactly who really fit the bill of who the Sixteenth Doctor had to be, ignoring the whole diversity quota element of his casting - which of course had to come into it,
especially from my perspective where I have to literally try and predict castings based on information I know, following a white woman and a black woman with an brown man, made perfect sense – but ignoring that, Ace from all of his performances just exuded a Doctor-ish energy when I saw him on screen, and with by 2019, he was coming to the point in his careers where he was appearing in more and more high profile and leading roles in drama, he really was a very obvious choice and it felt very much like the choice a respected BBC drama writer, like Hodges, would have made. But anyway, if anything is going to be Hodges’ actual legacy on the show, surely it is going to be this – the casting of the Sixteenth Doctor.
Moving onto Season 54, and while ‘The Screams of Terror’ included a lot of arc heavy stuff, the general idea of stuff from the Shakespeare play ‘Macbeth’ coming to life during the real-life events of the Battle of Dunsinane was a core Hodges idea from the beginning, before all the Espenson Masterplan elements came into it. ‘Vajahnari’s Curse’, in its first part, at least, was also pretty much what Hodges had planned for it to be, a political thriller about working class people in the future being tricked into a sorta cult-like quasi-religion by the rich and powerful. This already had the workings of a story which could very easily fit into the Espenson Masterplan, so lots of the actual social commentary of it ended up being undermined and stripped away in the final version – but the core of the idea there, was all in Hodges’ original season breakdown. The Age of Discovery pretty much remained entirely intact from Hodges’ original pitch, and we’ve already talked extensively about ‘No Good Deed’. The fact is, while lots of Hodges’ stuff didn’t quite make it to air in the way he would’ve intended, lots of the core Hodges storylines and ideas are still prevalent in those episodes, and maybe WIDWWA fans (and in-universe Doctor Who fans) should take a look at those elements and see if their view of Hodges as a showrunner looks any different. As I said, the story of Season 54 is the story of a series being forced to integrate into a wider franchise as a whole, and with a pandemic chucked in too, which only made the arc more prevalent and rushed, ended up a colossal failure, which tarnished Hodges’ “safe pair of hands” reputation.
However, despite Season 54’s failings, Hodges was entrusted for another year for Season 55, a season new Franchise Executive, Mal Young, had very clear plans about why it needed to be different. Mal Young came into the job during the mess of Season 54, so essentially looked at the show under Hodges, and like most fans, thought: “Oh f*ck”. He instructed Hodges to do several things for Season 55, including returning to a normal episodic format, lighting up the tone, making self-contained arcs. Now, apart from the show returning to a normal episodic format – as Hodges had championed to Season 53-54 format, with the all-year-round schedule –Hodges essentially agreed with Young about everything else, but Young was now so tired of his show being interfered with and his vision not actually being able to be fulfilled, he resisted this, as anyone would, and essentially made Mal Young confirm his suspicions based on S54 thinking “yeah this guy isn’t very good” and also it just p*ssed him off, as Young was trying to do his job, and someone two rungs down the ladder lower than him, was being a d*ck. Even though, Mal Young and Adrian Hodges actually had very similar ideas about how Doctor Who should be, and probably would’ve gotten on like a house on fire had Young been Franchise Executive from the point where Moore was sacked, the tragedy, once again, with the Hodges story as that because of loads of other elements out of his control, this didn’t come to happen, and eventually lost Hodges his job.
Season 55 eventually made it to air and in a manner which Mal Young approved of, it’s just the journey to getting it to this point was not a pleasant one. It would’ve gotten so that bad that Jane Espenson was being used as the go-between with them, with Hodges and Young stopping talking to each other directly, as they behaved like school children, having to cycle everything through Jane’s office. Technically, according to chain of command, perhaps this is how things should actually be done, and certainly it kept Television’s executive supervisor ‘in-the-loop’ but it would’ve created an especially toxic work environment, which really benefited no-one. So naturally, when Season 55 had finished being written, and while the final block was in production, the meeting which took place between Hodges and Espenson, as they
discussed ideas for the next season, didn’t end up doing this. Espenson would’ve had a conversation earlier that week with Young whereby they discussed keeping Hodges on or not. Young was keen to move onto a new showrunner, primarily for the fact that he just didn’t get along with Hodges – there was no creative differences her, but personal differences – Young was the senior, his contract was watertight, and Young’s three-year contract was up for renewal. Espenson was less sure about this, as she had seen the effects of the Moore firing, but Young explained that Ronald D. Moore was showrunner and Franchise Executive and thus there were major consequences, but in this situation, there’d be the continuity of the two of them at the helm. The other difference with Moore was that he was halfway through a season when he was sacked, whereas Hodges had completed his third season, the last one in his contract, had wrapped up a self-contained arc and had sent off his two companions. Young explained to Espenson that Hodges wasn’t being sacked, but his contract was just not going to be renewed and explained “three seasons is a good run”. It was Espenson who delivered the news to Hodges, and Hodges wasn’t mad, he wasn’t expecting it, but Hodges was planning to negotiate his contract renewal to just be on a year-by-year basis, so he could easily “get-out” if things with Young became too bad, so leaving now, at a time when he’d created a season he was really proud of, and had wrapped up his era well, wasn’t the end of the world.
Looking at Season 55, itself, obviously, as of right now we can only talk about Episodes 1 through 5, as that’s all that, by the time this is published, has been released, but there is still quite a bit to talk about there. Season 53 was not only the beginning of the Hodges era but the beginning of Chapter Four (or pre-report, Chapter Five) and therefore created this whole new era, whole new snapshot of the show, so while Season 55 had to be a clean slate in places, Hodges really wanted to make sure that it continued what Season 53 had started, continued this era of the show, so that you could watch, and only watch, those three seasons as Series 1, 2 and 3 and you’d get full story. Obviously all the Espenson Masterplan stuff was out, but all the stuff he’d established with the story of Bertie and his daughter,
Sam, as well as stuff with Chrissie, could all be brought together and expanded upon for this Season, making that, if nothing else, the through-line that establishes Chapter Four as its own separate part of Who. It’s like how Chapter Three had its own story, while not quite beginning in its first season, it started coming in during its fifth (which in itself built on stuff from the first four) and continued all the way through pretty much the whole chapter. So, Hodges was keen to use Season 55 to bring a rather separate Season 53 and 54 together and establish all three as one story – but one story he himself actually wanted to tell, and because it wasn’t too indulgent, only really requiring you to have watched Chapter Four, which wasn’t too hard given the viewing figures weren’t actually terrible and iPlayer existed, meant that Hodges had free reign to do this.
The season begins with Rebirth, a story, unusually by Jane Espenson and not by Hodges. This comes down to Mal Young interference again. Essentially, Young didn’t think Hodges had done a particularly good job at writing openers. He thought the stories of ‘The Doomsday Cannon’ and ‘The Screams of Terror’ were fine, but the actual scripts lacked that punch and spark that season openers needed to have. So, while Hodges did storyline ‘Rebirth’, it was, by decree, to be actually written by Espenson – who has a particular strength in writing “exciting” episodes and is very well known in the industry for writing stuff which can be seen as very blockbustery – and I’d say Young was probably correct to do this, even if it was interference. It meant that the season opener got the story Hodges wanted, but actually better written from a script point of view, it involved Espenson, who quite rightly as Exec Supervisor for Television, should be involved and could be very easily side-lined in some circumstances, and it gave Hodges more time to work on his four other scripts in the season – originally meant to be three but we’ll get onto that later. The idea for Rebirth by Hodges (and out-of-universe by me) came from a place of wanting, now we have Bertie back, to explore what he says to the Doctor at the end of ‘Her Final Stand’ and just how what she does would make him feel, additionally the fact Sixteenth instantly moves on and meets Chrissie, as well as Bertie’s past.
There’s a big open question mark left in ‘The Doomsday Cannon’ about Bertie’s past, and we’re given a massive bombshell that Bertie has been collaborating with the Gaians, albeit against his will – all of this could be explored in ‘Rebirth’ while setting up a season long arc, and giving us another Meena Patel-like disposable Gaian villain, for window-dressing – while all the while hiding the new main villain of the season, slightly out-of-view. You don’t yet know why Sam is evil here, but if you paid attention to the story so far, across 53 and now what you’ve seen of 55, you may be able to work it out. Sam is another character that could so easily be forgotten about, and if another showrunner had done S55, I doubt she would’ve been brought back, but Hodges in charge allows Sam to continue her story and test the limits of the character of Bertie.
‘The Highland Beast’ is the exploration of Chrissie that ‘Rebirth’ was for Bertie, and gives us another Sarah Dollard script, a writer who was dropped after Hodges took over, but because of her work on ‘Doctor Who: Adventures’ was brought back on board the main show, because Mal Young wanted more ‘Adventures’-like stories, and less ‘Season 54’-like stories. We actually see where Chrissie’s from for the first proper time, which is surprising, but it wasn’t really seen in ‘The Screams of Terror’ as we meet Chrissie after she’d been kidnapped and taken away from her home, and then in ‘Countdown’ we do see it and meet her husband, but it’s only fleeting and is more there for a joke. Here, not only do we explore where Chrissie is from and find out an enormous part of her character, but we always see her face the consequences of her leaving her home and travelling with the Doctor, something that never really has been explored in WIDWWA, although this concept would feel very familiar to you guys, in real life, as it was so famously done by Russell T. Davies in ‘Aliens of London’. The inclusion of an ‘Adventures’ monster was because it’s all very well and good having a character focused episode, but it still needs to have some sort of plot... and it needs to “link” in some shape or form into the season arc – you’ll find out more about this soon.
‘The Diaries of Time’ gives us the first WIDWWA script actually written by Chibnall, however he was supposed to write ‘Lost and Forgotten’ in Season 54, but was forever
unmade due to COVID, and the ViacomCBS report asking Hodges just to junk all of Season 54’s ideas. The episode was originally going to be a pretty non-arc focused episode, which was just a fun runaround throughout a few different time periods, but Chibs couldn’t really get the ending to work, even considering bringing the Rogue in to be masterminding it all. Hodges saw that this was a mess and took over, deciding to give it and ending which was workable, by tying it into the season arc, thus having a knock-on effect to his, yet unwritten, Episode 5. Hodges’ rewrites to the ending ended up becoming so extensive, that he awarded himself a co-writer credit.
Terror of the Daleks’ is the most recent episode you’ve had, so you’re probably still assessing your opinion on it, but essentially it’s a Dalek story set in the 16th Century,
includes some interesting character work, again, with Chrissie and pulls a load of arc related stuff with a fake Doctor, and a very plot convenient orange velvet coat. The most interesting fact bout this from my perspective is that when I first planned it back in June or July it bore the working title ‘The Halloween Massacre’ but I thought it was a bit too silly and changed it to the more generic ‘Terror of the Daleks’, which also had the advantage of being a great title to market the Daleks being back with. But... well, I assume you get the irony here.
So, that’s the Bhatti era so far, certainly an interesting one and one which is nearly as controversial as the Andoh era. What the future holds for the Sixteenth Doctor is still to be seen, but with a Mal Young appointed showrunner coming soon, could this see a turnaround?
WIDWWA
THE COMPANION
BERTIE REYNOLDS
Bertie Reynolds was an attempt to begin a world in which the Hodges era was set. He was a character, who by me, was carefully crafted in order to work to satisfy a whole other set of characters and events to be able to revolve around him and be revisited in the future.
The fact he was in the established setting of the Gaian Empire was merely incidental, only really acting as a solid base from which the new Hodges universe could be built up from.
By universe I don’t mean an alternate reality or some sort of pocket which the Hodges era takes place in, but the characters and story which find their place in it. The centre of gravity in the Hodges era is Bertie, with the recurring themes of The Doomsday Cannon, featuring throughout the era.
I constructed Bertie to have a dark past, from the get go, we see his a collaborator working with the Gaians, who as an audience we know are bad. The only point using the Gaians serves in the Hodges era isn’t just fan
service (although that helps) but it’s literally so the audience can understand that Bertie is working with some pretty bad people, and he’s probably done some bad things – also fan service.
The ability to explore these bad things later on, here in Season 55 was always my intention, and to deal with the fallout of Bertie essentially falling in love with the Doctor, only for him to show up a year later looking like Ace Bhatti – no offence to Ace.
Bertie is honestly one of the most interesting and layered character I’ve written in WIDWWA, and one I hope your enjoying. He was designed as to be a match for Andoh’s Doctor, essentially mirroring her character –an old, tired and watered down scientist with a dark past, and over Season 53, they both bring out the best in each other.
WIDWWA
COMPANION FACTOR
CHRISSIE FINCH
If Bertie was designed to be a match for Andoh’s character, then Chrissie was designed to be a match for Bhatti’s. How do I describe Chrissie? I think there’s three very key scenes that sum up her character, the first is in Countdown whereby this happens:
“It turns into a fight, which becomes a village brawl. Fighting her way off, Chrissie kisses Angus before punching him in the face and leaving.”
The second is in The Highland Beast, whereby this happens:
“They find Chrissie drinking full pints of beer, alongside a lot of drunk and loud Scottish men, as she gets up onto the table and begins singing… Umbrella by Rihanna in the style of a pub drinking song.”
And the third is during Terror of the Daleks, whereby this happens:
“Chrissie rushes over to Mary and gives her a necklace, which she takes off, and says that she’s proud of her, and that the people around ‘here’ know nothing and that she can achieve anything in life. Mary smiles and thanks Chrissie, before the two hug.”
These three examples hopefully show three different things that I built Chrissie up with. There’s the rebellious young woman from 11th Century Scotland, who essentially doesn’t give a damn about society and just wants to live her life how she wants, which is increased only when she sees the future. There’s the fun loving, free spirited, raw Scot in Chrissie who just literally wants to have fun, but can also perform and entertain people, showing her sheer comic potential (as dictated by a certain report). And finally, there’s the compassionate side of Chrissie,
who sees herself in the character of Mary, someone who is trapped in the same cycle that she was.
Chrissie is a character who is really, as I said before, a match for the Bhatti Doctor, and seeing her now be joined by Bertie is certainly a very interesting dynamic.
WIDWWA
How’s the Book Going?
As promised months ago, a book covering Seasons 27 to 34 of What if Doctor Who Wasn’t Axed? is coming and it’s coming early next year. That’s all the information you’ve had so far, so I thought now would be the perfect time to let you know how the progress on the book is going, and exactly what the book will be like.
Firstly, the book won’t exactly be following the format established in The Elysium book. That book was a trial run, to see if this concept at all would work, and so I could see how it worked in practice. The book was very quickly put together, with all the blog posts just stuck into a printed book. I don’t regret doing this, because it has allowed me to see what does and doesn’t work. So, the first book of the main series (for ease, I’ll just call it Book 1 from now on) will be entirely written from scratch. Obviously, even if I still had the scripts used in the Season 27 to 34 videos, these would be unsuitable due to the fact that
firstly, they aren’t even canon anymore due to the ‘retconathon’ and secondly, they’re entirely undetailed about anything, only briefly giving the smallest details. This book is looking to be the opposite of that, with pages of detail about every story coming up.
One aspect I’m especially keen for you to read is Season 27, itself. This is the season we know the most about, and I’ve had a lot of fun researching and writing up the season where it all started, revising, and expanding details – also clearing up one or two misconceptions, that if you’ve ever attended any sort of WIDWWA Q&A I’ve run, you know I’ll have been asked, multiple times.
A big element, lacking from the original videos, which will be a major part of this book, is the executives at the BBC and just what they did for the show throughout this time period. Get used to learning the names, Mark Shivas, Charles Denton, Peter Cregeen, Micahel Weareing, Nick Elliott, Chris Parr and
some bloke called Mal Young, who had an extraordinary amount of influence over the Renwick era but appears in our story during Season 34.
Next to this article, you’ll see a lovely little Radio Times clipping for ‘Earth Aid’. This isn’t just something I’ve put together for aesthetics, although I think you’ll agree it looks pretty nice, but it’s how I’ve settled on giving ‘infobox’ like information for each story in the book. Here you’ll see the story title, writer, synopsis, cast list, key crew etc... even the time slot – and one of these will be in the book for every single episode – not just story, every single episode. If you remember in The Elysium book, I included a cast list page for every season, as a whole, and then for every episode included a list of the writer, director and airdate, well those will be gone and replaced with this. For anyone interested, the actual style of the Radio Times listings isn’t entirely accurate. Over the 8 years in which the book will cover, the look of the Radio Times listings changed several times, and as I wanted to keep these looking fairly consistent in the book as a whole, with them all in the same style, what you’ll see is an amalgamation of three different styles that Radio Times used throughout the 90s, taking the best and most relevant elements of them all.
Additionally, I think you’ll be interested to know that I have commissioned two different people to design a cover for the book. One of these covers will be for the Lulu copy, which will fit more in line with the style of The Elysium book’s look, on the cover, including the three Doctors’ likenesses and maybe a possible appearance of the McCoy logo, while the other will be for the Amazon copy and will be aimed at attracted a general audience, who are interested in the simple question of What if Doctor Who Wasn’t Axed?. This cover will be more stripped back and I’m planning to include some cartoon representations of 7, 8 and 9.
So essentially they’ll be two editions of this book, an exclusive limited edition-esque fan version on Lulu and then the normal standard edition which will be on Amazon. It’s up to you which one you want to get, and nearer to the time of release, I’ll publish a table on the newsletter comparing the two different editions, in not just design, but also the print quality between Lulu and Amazon
Although I had be sure of a release date yet, I can give you the ballpark figure of around February 2022. More updates will follow over the next few months.
WIDWWA
HISTORY OF ODWC
The Official Doctor Who Convention would’ve started in a very similar fashion to how the only officially BBC organised Doctor Who conventions in the real world came about... the 50th Anniversary. In the real world we had ‘The Official 50th Anniversary Celebration’ and very soon after ‘The Doctor Who Festival’. It’s widely believed that the BBC intended to stage a ‘Doctor Who Festival’ every year, but for whatever reason this didn’t come to fruition.
In the WIDWWA universe, the BBC similarly celebrated the event with a convention called ‘The Official Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Convention’, which was held in London over the 50th Anniversary weekend. This was followed up, similar to ‘The Doctor Who Festival’ in our universe with another convention the following year, this time in America to satisfy American fans, with the newly renamed ‘The Official Doctor Who Convention’ coming to Anaheim and earning the subtitle ‘Anaheim 2014’. Although this was the first proper ODWC, this was considered the second convention as the 50th Anniversary Convention was retroactively renamed ‘The Official Doctor Who Convention: London 2013’.
The Anaheim convention was a big hit and led the BBC to take ODWC to Sydney the following year, satisfying Australian fans this time, an arguably more loyal audience than America. Even though this was a success, for one reason or another, as of 2021, ODWC never returned to Australia. The 2016 convention had the unique selling point of being held in Glasgow, the city of Doctor Who’s production, and therefore featured an unprecedented number of current Doctor Who cast and crew members appearing, as they were all currently filming the show and living in the city. The Glasgow convention would generally be considered as the convention which ensured that ODWC would
pretty much continue forever.
ODWC returned to America the next year, coming to New York City, in ‘NYC 2017’. The main reason for it coming to NYC instead of returning to Anaheim was due to the fact that CBS didn’t want East Coast fans missing out, as while in the UK if you lived in London, it wasn’t too difficult to travel up to Scotland, living on the East Coast and travelling to the West Coast... well that’s far more difficult. It was agreed, however, that the next time ODWC came to America, it would return to the West Coast.
ODWC 2018 moved down to Birmingham, which was roughly in the middle of the UK and therefore was considered a very convenient place for fans to travel to. This convention saw both Adjoa Andoh and Samantha Bond headline, as CBS were desperately trying to plug their 55th Anniversary special ‘The Emerald Terror’ in order to divert attention away from ‘Doctor Who: Until the World Ends’. Paterson Joseph was not invited and did not appear.
As agreed, ODWC 2019 returned to the West Coast and to Anaheim, marking the first convention to be held in the same host city as a previous one. Anaheim employed the new Season 53 logo in its branding, due to the logo’s short life, it was the only convention to do so.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, that year’s convention moved online in the ‘Cyberspace 2020’ convention, titled that way in order to tie into the announcement that the Cybermen would be the main villains of ‘Doctor Who: The Upgrade from Tomorrow’. The entire three-day convention was broadcast live from Glasgow at BBC Studios on YouTube.
For 2021, due to a rigorous doublevaccination and testing policy, ODWC is due to return to Glasgow for its 9th year.
WIDWWA
ODWC Schedule
The Official Doctor Who Convention is a three-day event organised by both the BBC and CBS which has taken place since 2013. Coverage of the event will be shared through the WIDWWA Discord server between the 26 and 28 November. The schedule is as follows.
FRIDAY 26TH
9AM - The Three Doctors
10AM - The Bond Era
11AM - Ale & Cordale
12PM - Break
1PM - Doctor Who: The New Renegade
2PM - The Davison Years
3PM - Doctor Who at the Movies
4PM - Doctor Who: Through Time and Space
5PM - Mal Young
6:30PM - Break
7PM - Doctor Who: A Lookback at Season 55
SATURDAY 27TH
9AM - Erin & Kyle
10AM - Politics of Gallifrey
11AM - Alex Jennings
12PM - Break
1PM - Doctor Who
2PM - Tegan & Turlough
3PM - Ace Bhatti
4PM - An Audience with Murray Melvin
5PM - The Franchise Executives
6PM - Break
7PM - Foreign Adaptions, presented by Jamie Blanch
SUNDAY 28TH
9AM - The Writer’s Room
10AM - When 11 Met 14
11AM - Adrian Hodges
12PM - Break
1PM - Doctor Who: Adventures
2PM - The Intendant & Moraes
3PM - Jane Espenson
4PM - Samantha Bond
5PM - Break
6PM - The Eight Doctors
7PM - Closing Ceremony
featuring Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Anthony Head, Samantha Bond, Ace Bhatti, Jamie Blanch & Hanna Śleszyńska
TIME CAPSULE FRIENDS ON A TRAIN
Welcome to Time Capsule, the feature on the Newsletter where I’ll rewind to a past WIDWWA story and explore the creative process behind it’s writing. This time I thought, to tie it into real-world Doctor Who, we’d take a look at the last time in WIDWWA that the Sontarans appeared... in the Season 52 story, ‘Friends on a Train’, which was an episode of all-change.
To give a bit of a refresher to those who do not remember, ‘Friends on a Train’ was the first episode to be produced following the firing of Showrunner, Ronald D. Moore. As soon as this happened, Jane Espenson was appointed Acting Showrunner and permeant Franchise Executive, and a hiatus in production began. The reasons for Moore’s firing in-universe were long and complicated and something I’m sure I’ll end up doing a feature about in the future, but essentially the show was considered to be going down the incorrect path, becoming too dark, too boring and too self-referential, with its finale of the previous season even relying on knowledge of a spinoff’s events for its premise. Jane Espenson was a close friend and collaborator of Moore, and the irony was that it’d be Moore’s 2nd-in-command, who agreed with many of the things he had done, taking over and replacing Moore, being heralded by
the powers that be as the possible saviour of the show.
Due to this view of the Ronald D. Moore era, Espenson was essentially ordered to make Doctor Who fun again, stop using indulgent pieces of lore to base story arcs on, and to make an all-guns-blazing epic Dalek story for the finale – despite the fact that Paramount were doing this with Paterson Joseph on the big screen, but of course CBS did this to try and trip that project up. While Espenson did all this, as he became more and more comfortable in her position as Franchise Executive, her downfall from the position was arguably caused by her doing the same as Moore and breaking these stipulations. She was the one who spearheaded planting Doctor Who: The New Renegade’s (the streaming show with a dark and gritty version of Who) ongoing story arc into the main show, proceeding its premiere by a month with a set-up in the Season 53 finale and then continuing the arc throughout Season 54.
‘Friends on a Train’ was intended to be the absolute opposite of the approach that would end up dominating Espenson’s time as Franchise Executive, but for just 2018, this approach seemed to be the way ahead for the show, and what any Doctor Who fan would expect to see for the next few years, at least
while Espenson was in charge.
The issue was, Espenson didn’t really want to do Doctor Who this way. As I said before, she was a close friend and collaborator of Ronald D. Moore and not only did she not support the decision to remove him from the franchise, but she also liked his vision for Season 52 and wanted to do it herself. She didn’t manage this and instead played nice with the bosses at the BBC and CBS, doing as she was told, but as you know, the reason why Season 54 turned out the way it did may very well be down to Espenson finally doing what she wanted.
The episode itself, I knew (and I suppose Espenson thought the same), had to be something very safe that could fulfil several functions: 1. It had to move the Doctor’s character in a more Doctor-ish direction; 2. It had to reintroduce both Sally and Annie, and make them companions; 3. It had to feature a big-name returning monster. That big-name returning monster was decided to be a lone Sontaran, and due to the fact that this episode had to be rushed out, due to the production and release schedule, it was also decided that it’d all take place in one location, on a train. For the novelty, and also claustrophobia of it, I decided to set it on the Eurostar, travelling through the Eurotunnel. This firstly allowed a joke about Sally and Annie going to Paris for a romantic night away and secondly it also meant that (in-universe) it would be able to be filmed cheaply with the windows only needing black drapes behind them and no CSO-ing of the night landscape needed.
The actual episode itself I think would have been pretty awesome. I mean the concept is: A Sontaran invades the Eurostar, while the Doctor is trying to sort out his domestics with three companions. So not only does this episode provide a cool claustrophobic base-under-siege story, with a Sontaran, who also contributes to some comedy, with its self-aware ridiculousness, but also we get a character drama, dealing with the fallout of the previous seasons’ events and we further explore the character of the Fifteenth Doctor. For a first episode of a new era, this episode certainly hits the marks and I’d argue it’s probably a far better season opener than ‘Chain Reaction’ was, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Annie and Sally were absent in that story, and the following 3 episodes, and I’m
surprised Espenson didn’t just stick this as Episode 1. I mean, it’s still possible she could’ve done this, making the Doctor’s road to forgiveness longer with Sally, seeing her in Episode 1, having a few adventures without her, and then going back to see Sally for the mid-season finale. Alas, this is not what happened, but it’s surely something that may have been considered. Did I considered that when writing Season 52? – Nope, not at all... mainly because I’ve only just come up with that idea now, while writing this.
The other big change in this episode is the Doctor’s costume. The Doctor’s main look, with her t-shirt and leather jacket was scrapped, on order from high, as it was considered to gritty and dark, and according to one ‘problematic’ account “too black”. The Doctor’s costume was therefore redesigned, giving her a brown pinstriped suit, which followed the same general layout of her original costume, with a t-shirt underneath, followed by the brown suit jacket over the top, as the leather jacket had done beforehand. While I’ve never really stated what Andoh thought of the costume change, or any of the behind-the-scenes troubles, I imagine she wouldn’t have been best pleased.
No actual explanation in the episode would be given for the Doctor’s sudden change of outfit, but it is implied, towards the beginning, that the Doctor has dressed up, because she believes she and Pete are tracking down the ‘alien life signs’ on the Orient Express in the 1920s and she’d decided to do her best a period dress, which we see Pete laugh at, as he’s dressed almost perfectly compared to the Doctor. This isn’t explicitly explained but a few lines of dialogue and some very smug acting from Daniel Adegboyega covers most of it. Another line of dialogue from Sally later on: “What on earth are you wearing, Doctor”, saw the reply “Oh, it’s just something I’m trying out”, to which Pete rolled his eyes.
‘Friends on a Train’ is actually one of my favourite recent WIDWWA episodes, as I think not only is it just a lot of fun, but it makes for a really atmospheric and moody piece, helped a lot by the debut of Mick Jackson, as the director, known for his work on plenty of feature films like‘The Bodyguard’ and ‘Denial’. It was Gaynor Holmes who persuaded him to direct the “emergency block”, so thank her.
WIDWWA
THE DOCTOR’S QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Every single time… they take everything away from me. The ones I love, the ones I care for. I can’t let that happen to you, Bertie…”
NEXT ISSUE
BREAKDOWN OF ODWC 2021 AND THE ANNOUNCEMENTS MADE
LOOKING AT THE HISTORY BEHIND THE FOREIGN ADAPTATIONS AND WHY THEY HAPPENED
EXLCUSIVE PREVIEW OF THROUGH TIME AND SPACE XMAS SPECIAL!
JOIN THE COMMUNITy
The WIDWWA community has been based on Discord since May 2021, and is currently a thriving community with over 45 members. But we don’t want to stop there... as long as your a WIDWWA fan and want to contribute a positive non-toxic discussion, and follow all the rules of the server - please come along and join.
Details on how to join the Discord server can be found on the twitter account @WIDWWA. Additionally, there is some information on the YouTube community tab. If you still can’t get on, don’t be afraid to email DDWF at widwwa1989@gmail.com
WIDWWA has a wiki covering all inuniverse content at widwwa.miraheze.org
The blog with new releases can be found at widwwa.wordpress.com
INTERESTED IN PRINT COPIES?
Although this is a digital magazine, if there are people interested in receiving the WIDWWA Newsletter as a physical print magazine, I will look into this possibility.
I would only be able to offer this service in the UK, but the idea would be you’d pay a 3-month, 6-month or 12-month subscription, and I’d then order in bulk lots of copies of that month’s magazine - about a week before publication - and then send each individual one, via post, to those with a subscription. If I timed it right, you’d receive your copy on the same day as digital publication for everyone else.
If this is something you’d like to have, or are interested in and want ask further questions, please let me know on Twitter, Discord or via email at widwwa1989@gmail.com
