All the Doctor Who news that is fit to publish

As you can imagine there has been a lot of Doctor Who news for me to write. Firstly on Saturday night there was a pre-cooked news story that went live just after the episode finished. I watched it in the cinema. On Sunday it was the turn of my regular episode recap. And today one of the most read articles on the Guardian site is my analysis of the most recent era. For a show that lots of people on the internet claim is dead in the water, there’s an awful lot of people reading about it.

I also this morning appeared in a small segment right at the end of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme talking about the show. Quite weird to think I’m usually listening to it to transcribe politicians for the live blogs and then suddenly maybe someone somewhere was transcribing me. The most important thing was I managed to continue my campaign to simply will it into existence that Rose Matafeo eventually gets cast as the Doctor by linking in her name to it at every opportunity. Here’s what I said …

“There’s nothing in production at the minute, so there will definitely be a gap. I think, you know, as you said, the landscape of TV is changing. It’s been running for 20 years, this revival. When it started with Chris Eccleston, here wasn’t even iPlayer. It’s now in a very different sort of global streaming market. I think it will carry on in some format. It’s an irresistible storytelling format.

One thing possibly is it moves, instead of doing series, you do one off specials at Christmas, and you can convince Tamsin Greig or Hugh Grant or Rose Matafeo to take it on for one show, rather than getting people to commit for three years.

It famously used to be made on a shoestring budget in the 1970s and 1980s, I guess if the Disney money disappeared, maybe there would be less CGI. Maybe that might do the show good, because it forces – the lack of money – sometimes forces a bit of invention. Bringing back the Daleks would be good, although, of course, fans were complaining that the Daleks were overused, until they disappeared, and then everyone is upset they’re not there.”