I’ve been watching Doctor Who since the beginning of the new series, starting with Chris Eccleston as the 9th Doctor. Although I didn’t start watching on schedule until the fifth season (when Matt Smith started), I’ve been viewing this show for about 2 years now, and after an absurd number of blogs on the subject, I like to consider myself a pretty solid fan. I fell in love with Rose, snapped at Martha for not being Rose, rolled my eyes at Donna, and then fell in love all over again with Amy. I’ve seen Daleks, Cybermen, clones, plastic replicas, weeping angels, and a whole manner of alien monsters. So as the summer passes too slowly while I wait for the second half of season 6, I thought I’d think about where I’d like to see the Doctor go in the future.
Companions
So far, the Doctor has had all female companions, with the very small exception of Rory these past two seasons. But Rory’s still a more supporting role compared to Amy’s position on the TARDIS. And as much as I’ve loved these four brilliant, mad women as the Doctor’s traveling friends, I think it’s time for a few changes.
The other night, I thought to myself, the thing Doctor Who is missing most right now is a really solid bromance. And I’m only partially kidding. After so much estrogen aboard the TARDIS, I think the Doctor needs a change of pace. And what’s more different than having a male traveling companion? I think the dynamic between the Doctor and a young man could be fascinating.
To prepare for his role as the Doctor, Matt Smith wrote some Doctor Who fanfiction about the Doctor’s fictional travels with Albert Einstein, who was something of a womanizer. Now, imagine the Doctor traveling with a womanizing young man while being the generally flummoxed romantic he is, and tell me that wouldn’t be hillarious.
Another idea I think would be interesting is traveling with a much younger companion, or pair of companions. What if the Doctor traveled around with a 12 year old girl and her 10 year old kid brother? How would that change his pace and behavior? Where would/wouldn’t he go?
EDIT: Since the initial writing of this post, it’s been announced that Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) WILL be returning for the 7th season alongside Matt Smith. This furthers my assumption that Rory is going to die by the end of the current season, but it also kind of bothers me a little bit. Amy is a fantastic character, but the Doctor needs to move on to something new. Their dynamic is getting old.
Monsters/ Antagonists
One thing I’d like to see more of is the antagonist of humanity as a whole. The Doctor’s had to fight against humanity in the past- when they allowed themselves to be governed into ignorance by a mass-media alien takeover, when they started creating/watching violent reality TV shows that were anything but voluntary, when they captured and tortured the last of the space whales- and those are always really incredible episodes. They reveal things about humanity that we don’t like to talk about, and there aren’t cut-and-dry solutions like usual, because he has to find a way to completely reverse whatever mess humanity has gotten themselves into with humanity. It’s not like a Dalek or Cyberman invasion, where he can just try to wipe out the aggressive species.
I’d also like to see more big-scale invisible monsters, like House in The Doctor’s Wife. The fact that House could control the TARDIS and could not be seen for the entire episode made him all the more scary as a Who villain, and I think we need more monsters like that.
Finally, I think it would be cool to see an alien threat like the Buggers in Ender’s Game, a race of aliens that communicate differently from humanity and thus don’t realize they’re trying to annihilate an intelligent species. Lack of communication is one of the most dangerous things I can foresee in our actual future with hypothetical extraterrestrial life, and that would be a fascinating twist for Doctor Who- trying to make peace between two species who have absolutely no clear way to communicate- no common written or spoken language.
Settings
Finally, I think it’s high time to get some more nuanced settings than past and present Earth. Like Amy in The Time of Angels, I want a planet. The Doctor’s Wife had the most exciting setting of the recent two seasons, and I think we need more of that. I get that Earth keeps the Doctor pretty busy, but he has a friggen space ship. Let’s go out to space!
Or, better yet, visit another spaceship/space station. Like in series 1’s Bad Wolf, or series 2’s The Girl in the Fireplace, or in series 5’s The Beast Below, spaceships make fantastic settings. They’re isolated, so there’s more chance for danger/corruption, and deep space is always a cool place for stuff to happen.
Finally, I’d like to see more into humanity’s future, where, in fact, all three episodes I just mentioned take place. In the fifth season we spent time in the London blitz, 16th century (I think) Venice, present day (a few times), Vincent Van Gogh’s Paris, and Amy’s childhood past. We jumped to the future a couple times, but only in The Beast Below did we get a good, hardy look at humanity’s future. The past is cool, but we’ve been spending a bit too much time there. If the producers don’t have enough money to keep building planet sets, at least get us into the future a while. Maybe you can borrow Firefly’s Serenity set. Crossover possibility? Oh, God, I hope so.
So those are my thoughts on where the Doctor should go in the future. Thoughts? Companion, enemy, or setting ideas? Let me know!
