The New Series of Doctor Who Is Ripping Up the Rules

Doctor Who is finally returning with Russel T. Davies coming back to run and write for the series and he’s not planning on falling back on old ideas. In fact, he’s ripping up the rule book.

During a press conference featuring Davies, Ncuti Gatwa (the Fifteenth Doctor), and Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday) one thing was repeatedly emphasized by Davies: Doctor Who is looking towards the future, not the past. As noted in our review of the new series, this is incredibly obvious in how weird and different this new series seems to be, going as far as to break the fourth wall and completely rewrite reality. That’s something Davies really wanted to do with his return to the franchise.

“It’s 2024. It’s time to rip up the rules a bit. It’s time to throw things out the window,” Davies said when I asked him about the direction the series was taking based on the episodes we got to see. “We all watch so many dramas now. We all know when the third act’s coming … drama is ingrained in us. It’s time to kind of rip that up a bit and make it a bit freer, a bit wilder, a bit madder so you don’t actually know what’s happening. So I hope that continues happening.”

“We do have more traditional episodes,” Davies went on to say, describing a future episode that plays a bit more traditionally. “It’s slightly more traditional sometimes, but as a rule I think the whole things ripping up [the norm].”

Whether or not fans will agree that ripping everything up is a good idea is yet to be seen. But one thing is clear: with the introduction of the show to a wider audience on Disney+, the series is looking to restablish itself in a whole new way to a larger audience. With that seems to be the idea that reality itself can bend and even break in Doctor Who, a tradition that Davies later pointed out goes as far back as the first Doctor with his adventures with the Celestial Toymaker.

Of course, a lot has happened since then for the Doctor, and people care a lot more about continuity and fictional rules about a fictional universe. Hopefully, ripping up the rules means even more fun for the Doctor.

Doctor Who will premiere on May 10, 2024 on Disney+.