Doctor Who Legend Drops Bombshell: The One Change He’d Make If He Returned

Doctor Who is not dead, it is just... between lives. The BBC says the show will carry on, but nobody is ready to circle a return date. While we wait, one of the series most respected former producers has a blunt idea for how to tune it up when it does come back: make the stories longer again.

Philip Hinchcliffe wants the show to breathe

At a BFI Southbank event celebrating the upcoming release of the classic-era box set Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 13, former producer Philip Hinchcliffe laid out what he thinks modern Who is missing. If his name rings a bell, it should: he ran the show from 1974 to 1977, a massively popular run that gave us The Seeds of Doom and Pyramids of Mars. In short, he knows his way around a TARDIS console.

Hinchcliffe, who was very clear he would "never be asked" back as a creative consultant, argued for a return to the old-school structure: each story running about 100 minutes total, either as a movie-length adventure or split into four 25-minute parts.

"100 minutes is a very good time for a movie or a television story to be told. It gives you room to introduce characters, unravel the mystery, invest emotionally, have reversals and suspense... it does not have to be action all the time."

His other point was pretty pointed: trying to tell an interesting, fully formed story in 50 minutes is hard. The extra runtime, he says, lets viewers invest in the supporting characters as well as the Doctor. If you watched his era, you know exactly what he means.

Where things stand right now

• The most recent season wrapped in May with a wild cliffhanger: Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor regenerated into Billie Piper. Whether she is actually the next full incarnation is still up in the air.
• Producer Jane Tranter says Disney, which co-produces Doctor Who with the BBC, does not have to make a call on more seasons until after the spin-off The War Between the Land and the Sea airs in 2026. Inside baseball, but it explains the current limbo.
• The BBC insists the series is safe. Chief content officer Kate Phillips told the Edinburgh TV Festival that Doctor Who is "going nowhere" and will remain on the BBC "with or without Disney."
• In the meantime, BBC Three will rerun Matt Smith's debut season this autumn, which is a solid palate cleanser if you need some bow ties and fish fingers while we all wait.
• For classic fans, Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 13 is up for pre-order now and lands on October 20.

So... should Who go long?

Hinchcliffe's pitch basically boils down to giving the show time to stretch its legs the way it did in the 70s. Given the current appetite for bigger, event-style episodes, a 100-minute template is not the craziest idea. And if the next phase really is a ways off, there is time to rethink the format. At the very least, the man who delivered Seeds of Doom has earned the right to throw out a blueprint.