With Doctor Who launching its own Marvel-style Whoniverse, it MUST avoid some of the biggest mistakes the MCU has made.
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00:00Hello everybody, Ellie here with Who Culture yet again and we are another day closer to
00:05the Star Beast and I'm getting very excited. We are being spoiled by all the Doctor Who
00:10content that's coming our way at the moment. Very exciting times. Having said that, what
00:15I want to discuss today is us hoping that things aren't going to take a nosedive. And
00:21what I mean by that is, obviously the new Who-niverse has now been confirmed and we
00:26have this kind of wider franchise acknowledgement. But what we would like to discuss is the mistakes
00:32and the pitfalls of other such franchises that we hope that the BBC are going to avoid
00:38making or would encourage them to avoid making with regards to the Doctor Who franchise.
00:44Now I probably should say before we get too far into this, I mean, are we getting ahead
00:48of ourselves by making this comparison between the Who-niverse and the MCU? On the one hand,
00:54yes, absolutely. I mean, the MCU, it started in 2008, their movies make hundreds of thousands
01:01and millions of dollars and they've already released a gazillion TV shows in quite a short
01:06period of time. But on the other hand, no we're not because Russell T. Davis himself
01:12has literally cited the MCU as part of his inspiration with the Doctor Who franchise.
01:18I mean, just eight months before he was announced and confirmed to be returning as showrunner,
01:23this is what he said.
01:24There should be a Doctor Who channel now. You look at those Disney announcements, all
01:28of those new Star Wars and Marvel shows, you think we should be sitting here announcing
01:32the Nyssa adventures or the return of Donna Noble and you should have the 10th and 11th
01:37Doctors together in a 10 part series.
01:39So basically, straight from the horse's mouth as it were, Russell has said that Disney and
01:45the MCU were the baseline for his inspiration for where he thought Doctor Who should be
01:50moving. I mean, honestly, look, you can't look at the Whoniverse ident that was released
01:54and not make comparisons between that and the one for the MCU. It's very clearly been
01:59inspired by that.
02:01Now for this discussion, I'm going to structure it slightly differently to how I usually would
02:06structure a discussion like this. I'm going to do something that we are quite good at
02:11here at WhoCulture. I'm going to form a list. I'm going to make a list. So let's start with
02:15point number one. Don't stretch RTD too thin.
02:19So one of the reasons that the MCU was so successful to begin with is because Kevin
02:24Feige was directly involved in every single one of those projects. I mean, he is a lifelong
02:31fan of Marvel and the comics and things like that. And he even had a hand in producing
02:36some of those earlier Marvel productions such as Spider-Man and X-Men and Hulk and things
02:41like that.
02:42And so when he came into the MCU, he was already a massive fan of what was going on and had
02:48a clear idea of where he wanted all these stories to go. But the issue now is that the
02:53MCU is just pumping out so much content that it's not possible for Kevin Feige to be involved
03:00in every single aspect of it. I mean, we went from three movies being released in 2019 to
03:06four movies and five TV series in 2021.
03:10It's just impossible for one person to be able to oversee all of those things to the
03:17degree that they would like to in order to make sure that the quality doesn't slip,
03:22which unfortunately, that does seem to be the case with the MCU so far. Please don't
03:28do that, BBC, Doctor Who. Keep it small and simple and allow our great overlord Russell
03:36T. Davis to be as involved with each of these projects as he possibly can so that they come
03:42out at the best quality they can possibly be.
03:45Quality over quantity is very much a thing that we need to reiterate here. Don't make
03:49the same mistake that has happened with the MCU.
03:52The thing is with Doctor Who in particular and the MCU is that everything is so connected
03:56and so if you don't have at least one person who's involved with everything and has a clear
04:00vision of how everything is going to connect and how things are going to merge into the
04:04next story, you could end up with a complete and utter mess. I mean, if you think about
04:09the River Song story arc, Stephen Moffat would not allow the other writers to write
04:16for that character so that he had all the control over how that story developed. And
04:21as much as people like me would get frustrated that River wasn't in it as much as I would
04:25have liked, I very much respect that the direction that that storyline was going to go was so
04:33definitive in Stephen Moffat's mind that he didn't want anyone else to come in and ruin
04:37it. And I feel like that's something we need to consider here. You need the man with the
04:42vision to be involved with everything so that it all fits together well and doesn't become
04:48a jumbled mess that makes no sense.
04:50So point number two, less is more. I mean, we've mentioned this already a little bit
04:54but the MCU just releases so much content now that I don't know about anybody else but
04:59it's hard to keep up with it all. I personally have given up with the MCU because there's
05:04just so much to keep up with and because there's so much of it, it doesn't feel special
05:09anymore. I mean, every new film was like a pop culture significant major moment. Everyone
05:14would go to the cinema. I used to go to the cinema and watch them all. I remember going
05:17to the midnight screening of Infinity War. It was a big deal. And there weren't that
05:22many of them so you'd build up, you'd watch one and then you'd build up to the next one
05:25whereas now there's so many coming out that I can't keep up with it. And if you miss one,
05:31then you're screwed because they rely on you having watched all of it now for everything
05:37to make sense and some people like to dip in and out.
05:39So ideally what you want to see with Doctor Who is you want the main series to come out,
05:44you know, let's just say around April time and then perhaps a spin-off kind of midway
05:48through the year and then you'll have the Christmas specials and maybe a few specials
05:52dotted here and there. At the most I would say three different series in a year but any
05:57more than that and there's just too much going on. Give the audience time to discuss
06:03what's happening and speculate about what's going to come. I mean obviously we have not
06:08made it a secret that we haven't enjoyed these massive gap years and we know that Russell
06:12T. Davis is abolishing the gap years so that's great. But don't go too far the other way
06:17and bombard us with content just because you feel the need to make sure that we remain
06:22interested.
06:23The thing with less content is you revisit characters quicker. I mean if you look at
06:29the MCU there are so many unanswered questions and big cliffhangers that have been left dangling
06:35and you're going to have to wait probably years to get answers to those if at all. What
06:40the hell was Harry Styles doing at the ending of Eternals or has everyone forgotten about
06:44that big celestial that's just popped up out the middle of the sea? Shang-Chi for example
06:48or White Vision. You know these characters that popped up and seemed so significant and
06:52are significant with regards to the comics but we're going to have to wait years to find
06:57the answers to that because in the meantime we've got another 10 movies and TV shows to
07:02get through that introduce a whole other load of characters before we even get back to these
07:05ones and by the time they come back you've forgotten their relevance or you've completely
07:10forgotten that they even exist and you go oh yeah that happened. And as I said one of
07:15the biggest issues I think, I mean I don't think this will be the case with Doctor Who,
07:18it's very much a series, there's no movies necessarily involved but one of the biggest
07:23issues with the MCU now is that it spreads so much across TV shows and movies that it
07:28relies on you having watched all of those TV series in order to understand what's going
07:32to happen in the next movie and not everybody has access to that, not everybody has the
07:35time to do that, not everyone is interested enough to watch every single thing which I
07:39guess kind of I've covered slightly then my next point, point number three, connected
07:44but not too connected. As I said this has been a big issue with the MCU, it used to
07:48be that if you hadn't seen, if you hadn't read any of the comics the film still made
07:52sense, if you missed one film it didn't matter if you watched the next one, there would be
07:57references but it wouldn't matter to you if you hadn't seen it. Now there's so much reliance
08:02on you having seen everything that you miss one tiny thing and it doesn't make sense.
08:06I mean think for example if you hadn't have watched WandaVision, Doctor Strange and the
08:10Multiverse of Madness would have made absolutely no sense to you, why the hell is Wanda all
08:13of a sudden evil, why has she got kids all of a sudden, what the hell happened there?
08:17No it never used to be like that and I think that's what I used to love about the MCU is
08:21that you could watch things individually or you could watch everything together and it
08:24would make more significant sense but it didn't matter either way and this is what we don't
08:30want to see happen with regards to Doctor Who. By all means have spin-offs but if you
08:34think about the spin-offs that we've had before Torchwood made sense and stood on its own
08:39and there were references to the Doctor but it actually didn't matter if you hadn't seen
08:42Doctor Who at all because this was a new story, new characters and it didn't really
08:47matter and likewise with the Sarah Jane adventures. If you did know that backstory then it gave
08:51you this extra level of understanding but you didn't need it. And for example when they
08:56then crossed over with the main show itself again it didn't matter, you didn't watch Captain
09:01Jack running towards the TARDIS and suddenly think what? They didn't change him in any
09:06way, he doesn't suddenly have a wooden leg and an eye patch and all these things that
09:09had happened to him in Torchwood that then suddenly when he reappears in Doctor Who it
09:12didn't make sense because you hadn't seen Torchwood, it just kind of went oh here's Torchwood
09:17here tells you what's happened to Jack in the meantime but it actually doesn't matter
09:21and likewise further on in that story he then says to the Doctor I've rebuilt Torchwood.
09:27You don't need to have seen Torchwood to understand what that means. They're connected but not
09:31too connected and that's what we would hope in the future for Doctor Who, you don't want
09:35anything to be so connected that if you miss one thing you completely don't understand
09:40what's going on.
09:41And I guess the final point being don't skimp on the episode counts and the run times. When
09:45the MCU first announced that they were going to be releasing TV shows they were advertised
09:49to be movie level blockbuster level TV shows. We were promised big budgets and massive events
09:57and basically to feel like each episode was like watching a feature film. They have clearly
10:02spent a lot of money on these projects, the storytelling seems to be lacking. You know
10:05a lot of them they feel very underdeveloped and rushed to the point where some of them
10:10are only coming out at 30-35 minutes long. I mean if you're waiting weekly to see the
10:15next episode and then what you actually end up is a 30 minute episode that doesn't really
10:19develop anything very much and at least 5 minutes of that is credits, you're gonna feel
10:25really disappointed and just like what did I just, why have I invested my time in this?
10:31Secret Invasion, the total run time for all of those episodes was 3 hours and 43 minutes.
10:36She Hulk was 3 hours and 53 minutes and Ms Marvel was 3 hours and 57 minutes. I mean
10:42at this point really what are you doing? You've basically got a really long film or a really
10:49naff TV series and really what you should be doing if this is the case is making some
10:54cuts and creating a film. And then by comparison you've got things like House of the Dragon
10:58or The Last of Us or The Rings of Power which were all coming out at you know between an
11:04hour or even an hour and a half. Now obviously we're not saying that Doctor Who needs to
11:07have 90 minute episodes in order to be great but what we are saying is that each episode
11:14needs to feel like it's a really strong story and that every element of it is really vital
11:21and important. We don't want any of this 6 episodes at 35 minutes and it's just utter
11:26nonsense and rubbish. Now if you're going to have a reduced number of episodes then
11:30those episodes need to be really really jam packed with everything that makes the episodes
11:36so powerful and dramatic. And then following on from that with spin-offs you want them
11:41to feel like they've been given just as much love and attention as the main show itself.
11:45You don't want to switch on a spin-off like Torchwood or the Sarah Jane Adventures for
11:49example and go oh well there's the cheap version. You know you want everything to feel like
11:53it's been given just as much attention. If you then compare that to the Doomsday material
11:58that we did have over the last year it had been criticised for its very low budget feel,
12:02the kind of really iffy acting. Everything about it just felt like no one was really
12:07giving it that much attention and that's not what we want to happen with the spin-offs
12:11going forward in this new Whoniverse. Everything needs to be given as much attention as it
12:16possibly can in order to feel like it's a major event. And as I've said many many times
12:22already in this video, the mantra for Doctor Who going forward should be quality over quantity.
12:28If there is any takeaway from this entire discussion, quality over quantity all the
12:34way. Please and thank you RTD, our one true Doctor Who God.
12:39And that's everything for this discussion but make sure you check out our latest editorial
12:43about why the Whoniverse might not be available in your country. In the meantime I've been
12:49Ellie with Who Culture and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye sweeties.