Stephen Gallagher has revealed that he actually doesn’t want to return to write a new episode of Doctor Who!
Gallagher wrote two Doctor Who adventures in the 1980s — the Fourth Doctor serial, Warriors’ Gate, and the Fifth Doctor tale, Terminus — but fears that, if he came back for another story, people might not enjoy it, and his connection with Who might be somewhat tainted.
He explained:
“I’ve never really thought about it. When modern Doctor Who came back, it was so different and so self-contained. I didn’t really see anything I could have brought to it.
“Latterly, I’ve looked at Peter Capaldi’s season because Capaldi, I feel, is a link to my era. I looked at it and I thought, it would be quite nice to get re-involved again. But the thing is, you don’t go to them, they come to you. They have an agenda and they have their own plans.
“The classic Who writers don’t really come into it and that’s not unfair. There is a whole new generation out there and those are the voices that probably need to be heard. The worst thing would be to come back, do one, and everybody hated it and it just didn’t measure up to the memories of what you’ve done before.”
He’s not wrong: so far, only one writer from 20th Century Doctor Who has come back for 21st Century Who, Rona Munro, who scripted the last Classic Doctor Who, Survival, then the Twelfth Doctor story, The Eaters of Light.
Still, it would be cool to see some Classic writers come back – and with Russell T Davies in charge again, we could see it happening. He’s enthused about Munro in the past (although she actually returned while Steven Moffat was showrunner), and he’s certainly a massive fan of 20th Century Who. Who knows wat the future holds?
Gallagher has come back to the world of Who too — he’s written an adaptation of his Fourth Doctor story, with extra tales as the new Target novel, Warriors’ Gate and Beyond, out later this month!
