The Disney era of Doctor Who is barely up and running, yet showrunner Russell T Davies already wants to push the sci-fi franchise even further. Indeed, Davies has his sights set on no less than an MCU-sized Doctor Who shared universe.
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Davies first hyped a beefed-up Whoniverse years before returning as Doctor Who‘s showrunner. “There should be a Doctor Who channel now,” Davies told Doctor Who Magazine’s Paul Kirkley in January 2021. “You look at those Disney announcements, of all those new Star Wars and Marvel shows [and] you think, we should be sitting here announcing ‘The Nyssa Adventures’ or ‘The Return of Donna Noble,’ and you should have the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors together in a 10-part series.” He’s since confirmed in a February 2023 GQ interview that multiple spinoffs are now in the works.
Davies’ impulse to build out Doctor Who is logical – but should also set off the fanbase’s collective, danger-sensing Cloister Bell. Yes, the series’ rich mythology could easily spawn a bevy of interlinked sub-properties in the MCU mold. Yet doing so risks sacrificing one of Doctor Who‘s greatest strengths: accessibility.
Doctor Who Has Done Spinoffs (And Big Canon) Before
Of course, Doctor Who is no stranger to spinoffs. Since Davies spearheaded the show’s revival in 2005, we’ve had Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, K-9, Class, and Tales of the TARDIS. Of these, Torchwood was a particularly big deal. Its titular alien-hunting institute’s name and origin were seeded throughout Doctor Who Series 1 and 2, and its core members – including fan-favorite rogue Jack Harkness – occasionally showed up in the main show.
Torchwood also filled some gaps in Doctor Who‘s narrative, such as the lead-in to Captain Jack’s reunion with the Tenth Doctor in Series 3, Episode 11, “Utopia.” So, there were definite benefits to watching Torchwood for “full picture” Whovians. Yet crucially, more casual viewers who didn’t want to stay on top of two shows could ignore Torchwood altogether and still follow along with Doctor Who proper. Speaking from experience, I’d never watched a single episode of Torchwood the first time I encountered the wider team in Series 4’s two-part finale and kept up just fine.
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The same goes for Doctor Who‘s 61-year canon: it should make coming in late impossible, only it doesn’t. That’s because Davies and his successors worked overtime to keep the lore digestible. Will fans up-to-speed on the entirety of the Doctor’s time-and-spacefaring career get more of the show? Absolutely. But for the most part, the only homework “Nu Who” has typically required of its audience is that they’re au fait with the current Doctor’s tenure.
Even big fan service-y flourishes, such as the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special’s big “All Thirteen Doctors” moment, weren’t newbie-exclusionary. So long as you understood that the Doctor periodically regenerates into new incarnations – and that’s pretty fundamental to the franchise – you appreciated the general gist of this scene. As a rule, you’re rewarded for what you do know about Doctor Who, not penalized for what you don’t.
An MCU Whoniverse is the Antithesis of Accessibility
Unfortunately, this “opt-in” mentality will be harder to maintain in an MCU-inspired Whoniverse. After all, shared universes involve an overarching narrative that unfolds across several different movies and/or TV shows. Yes, the MCU has shown that some of these installments can be more standalone than others, but you can’t go into the likes of Avengers: Endgame having watched zero Marvel Studios’ titles and expect to keep up. In short: you either watch everything or fully enjoy nothing.
And that’s fine – especially when an uber-franchise is on a hot streak of must-see material. However, as Marvel Studios recently discovered, when a shared universe like the MCU hits a rough patch, folks get pickier. They decide what is and isn’t essential viewing, which can cause problems down the road for a production company’s grand master plan.
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Take Marvel Studios’ current “Multiverse Saga” – the average person probably couldn’t tell you what all that business with Kang and alternate worlds and timelines really amounts to. It’s all a bit much to keep track of, especially when you’re not keen on most of the MCU’s latest offerings. And the knock-on effect is that the whole brand has suffered. What was fun and easy (seeing a couple of easy-to-follow superhero flicks every year) suddenly became too damn hard.
The same fate could befall our favorite Time Lord if his exploits take on an MCU bent – and nobody wants to see that happen.
How Doctor Who Can Make an MCU Approach Work
I’ll admit, this has all skewed very negatively so far, even though, for the record, I still believe in the MCU. Doctor Who challenges us to be optimistic. So, in that spirit, what can Davies, the BBC, and Disney do to make an MCU-style Whoniverse work? Two things – both designed to preserve the franchise’s accessibility.
First, they need to keep the number of Doctor Who spinoffs contained. As Marvel Studios learned the hard way, the number of side projects you green light (and by extension, the amount of audience commitment you demand) is inversely proportionate to their overall level of quality. Fair enough, too; cranking out one decent show is hard enough! So, despite Davies’ insistence to the contrary, let’s not have 10 or more Doctor Who spinoffs on the go at any one time.
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Second, the expanded Whoniverse shouldn’t aim to tie everything together all the time. Admittedly, this is harder than it sounds. You can’t just serve up lame lip service between Doctor Who and its spinoffs, without any meaningful cross-show interplay – otherwise, what’s the point of even having a shared continuity? The trick lies in striking a balance between building an overlapping lattice of characters and events and having each show feel satisfying on its own terms.
Get both these things right and an MCU-esque Doctor Who could be a lot like the TARDIS: bigger than it seems on first blush, with room for everyone – casual and hardcore Whovian alike – inside.
Doctor Who Season 1/Series 14 is currently streaming on Disney+, with new episodes dropping Fridays.
Published: May 31, 2024 02:00 pm