I’ve been watching the original series lately, going all the way back to the 1963 series, and William Hartnell’s performance, misspoken dialogue and all. And while some of the stories would be considered “hokey” by today’s standards, so are some of the new series.
Last year, they did a dramatized recounting of the creation of the series, starring David Bradley as William Hartnell, who really did a wonderful job portraying the actor. This left me thinking: The current series now has the opportunity to cross the current incarnation with his “original” self, with David Bradley portraying the First Doctor. This would allow them to revisit some of the iconic early stories, like the first encounter with the Daleks, or the Keys of Marinus.
Hard to please all the people all the time, I have read articles saying the success of this current series is due to down playing the old one (way too many continuity eras, they almost need a dc style crisis on multiple doctors). Yet they bring back classic villains occasionally, I think Daleks have been done to death, some better then others (sontarians are pretty much a joke now), meanwhile critics say where is the new and the fresh that is the hallmark of the new series. the new series is good for now, though I haven’t seen any of the current Doctor, best criticism I read on the entirety of the dr who universe is to think of it more as a fantasy and not hard sci fi with cause effect time issues (think more lions the witch and the wardrobe and less star trek). I tend to look at each doctor as tied to his own universal time line, each with its own highlights and locked in moments in time, I mean Tom Baker is a very aged curator in the end of that Matt Smith story, no where near the age he was when he regenerated. In this case returning to those old stories etc would be interesting and completely plausible. There was a good Pertwee story where he returned to a planet one hundred years later and Tom Baker spend more time on that space ark then anywhere else and what ever happened to Romana the meddling Monk, the Technician etc etc (truthfully they need to revisit more in the current continuity, some places like Dalek homeworld have been mined to death, where is the doctors daughter or the human doctor in the alternate universe with Rose). I honestly think they shoudln’t write a dr who story for me, I am old time fan, if that style worked it would have never went off the air. The newer stuff comes from a different angle and has freshness and keeps me interested, delving into past continuity can offer an interesting take, I just want to see more different besides I think they mine the past story lines as much as they can. I get where your coming from, but I think you’re getting as much of that as they are willing to do.
Oh and the war doctor needs to come back and do a trilogy of movies.