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Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker Was Asked to Write Doctor Who

Charlie Brooker, creator of the popular Black Mirror TV series, was approached to write for Doctor Who, but had to turn down the “really good gig” due to time restraints.
The writer began his career by mocking television in a blog, which soon landed him a regular satirical job at The Guardian – but he is a big Doctor Who fan regardless and commented on how strong Russell T. Davies’ revival was back in 2005. He revealed:

“I was approached for Doctor Who and I just didn’t have time. It was really annoying. I was really busy and they haven’t asked me again since. It was a bit like the Home Office asking you to do something.”

Of course, we don’t know who approached him, but smart money’s on Steven Moffat.
His most famous creation is Black Mirror, a dark look at the world around us, specifically its technology, which started out on Channel 4, but is now streamed on Netflix as original content. While the new series stars Jurassic World‘s Bryce Dallas Howard and Doctor Who alumni, Faye Marsay (Last Christmas) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Tish Jones), the very first episode of Black Mirror shocked the world by envisioning a hostage situation in which the ‘ransom’ was the Prime Minister of Great Britain (played by Rory Kinnear) having to perform sexual acts with a pig. A few parallels with real life have since been drawn…
His comedy crime drama, A Touch of Cloth also starred Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) as DC Kerry Newblood in its third season, and Charlie says he’d like to work on something in a similar vein:

“I did spend about a year developing a show that was Black Mirror-esque that had an ongoing storyline. It was at the time when American networks were like: “We like Black Mirror but we don’t do anthology shows.” This was before they changed their mind when it actually went on Netflix and started doing well… There’s always things I want to do. I wanna do some more goofy comedy stuff; I really enjoyed doing A Touch of Cloth. Something like that might be good.”

Brooker’s take on Doctor Who would likely be very dark, so would you like to see him adding the show to his list of credits? Have you watched Black Mirror? Might Chris Chibnall be pencilling his name in as we speak?

Philip Bates

Editor and co-founder of the Doctor Who Companion. When he’s not watching television, reading books ‘n’ Marvel comics, listening to The Killers, and obsessing over script ideas, Philip Bates pretends to be a freelance writer. He enjoys collecting everything. Writer of The Black Archive: The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang, The Silver Archive: The Stone Tape, and 100 Objects of Doctor Who.

Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker Was Asked to Write Doctor Who

by Philip Bates time to read: 2 min
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