As 2002 dawns, it has been over five and a half years since the Doctor Who television movie starring Paul McGann - intended as a backdoor pilot for a full series - was aired. That full series was never picked up owing to disappointing ratings in the US, and it seems like the show may have missed its chance for its big comeback.
But fans aren't catered to too badly. There are not one but two monthly ranges of novels - one chronicling the continuing adventures of the Eighth Doctor after he departed San Francisco, and another featuring the previously unchronicled adventures of his seven predecessors. Big Finish Productions were producing fully-dramatised audio stories featuring four of the five surviving Doctors and their companions, and their second series of adventures starring McGann were about to kick off. And there's still a monthly magazine, which in January 2002, kicked off the new year with an extensive article asking 50 big questions about the show's future, answered by people in the know. 17 years on, how on the nose did it turn out to be?
4. Would we still have cliffhangers?
Mark Gatiss suggests the original 25-minute serial format would still be workable today, citing the popularity of soap operas, but Andrew Pixley and article writer Jonathan Blum disagree, suggesting that any new series would consist of "largely stand-alone one-hour episodes". Although occasional multi-part stories are still a big part of the new series (although they were rested in Series 7 for an ill-conceived "mini-movie" format, and have not yet featured in Chris Chibnall's vision of the show), meaning cliffhangers would still exist, apart from Gatiss' insistence that he doesn't think 50-minute episodes would suit the show at all this section is remarkably prescient.
6. How big an audience would it need?
I continue my resolution not to ask Mark Gatiss for the lottery numbers any time soon, as he reckons old-series style ratings of "ten million" can "only be dreamed of now by broadcasters", but others suggest "five million" would be acceptable.
7. How much Doctor Who would we get in one go?
"Probably a lot less than we used to," begins this remarkably inaccurate forecast, which suggests the BBC "would likely insist on producing a single pilot; if we're lucky, this would be one complete story, rather than a single episode" (comparing it to the old serials, or Death Comes to Time). DWM reckons this would later be followed up by a series of 6 or 7 hour-long episodes, which is a fairly reasonable assumption but not what actually happened.
15. In order to be an international success today, what qualities would a new series of Doctor Who need?
Director of Television Distribution Anthony Utley offers two suggestions here, and oddly enough what actually happened falls somewhere between the two: "four movie-length adventures, or six to eight hour-long episodes", or alternatively "a 13-part series pitched specifically at the children's/family market, more in the style of The Demon Headmaster".
27. Aren't the audios just a stopgap while Doctor Who is off the air?
Moving on to the fate of Big Finish, executive producer Jason Haigh-Ellery suggests that any new TV series would likely only feature "two or three feature-length episodes each year"; let's be generous and say this is foresight of the 2009 'gap year' (which RTD intended to become a regular feature, with the show having a cycle of four years as a full series and then one as specials, but things didn't quite work out as planned). JHE does, however, strongly insist that there would still be a place for Big Finish should the show return to our screens, and although there was a small but noticeable decline in BF's sales when the new series started (which it recovered later) he has been proven right on that.
35. What's the deal with Tom?
Tom Baker was, at the time, the only living Doctor not reprising the role for Big Finish; it would be another decade before the first BF stories with him were released. JHE does note that there is a policy not to recast the three late Doctors, and these days BF have substitutes for all three: David Bradley, William Russell, Peter Purves, Frazer Hines and Tim Treloar have all performed as the Doctor for the company.
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