It sounds as if a Doctor Who spin-off with the Eighth Doctor isn’t going to happen anytime soon, as showrunner Russell T Davies has never spoken to Paul McGann!

This comes as something of a shock, given that McGann is such an extraordinary ambassador for the franchise and Davies is, more than anything, a big Who fan — more so as it appears he’s listened to the Eighth Doctor’s audio adventures produced by Big Finish. India Fisher, who plays audio companion Charley Pollard, revealed that Davies emailed her to thank her for portraying Pollard so brilliantly. After hearing this, McGann said:

“Well, at least you had an email. That’s more contact than I’ve ever had with him! Never met him, never spoken to him, never had an email. I mean, I admire him greatly, but no. I’ve never met him.”

Paul’s a wonderfully kind and thoughtful man, so I’m sure this quote was laced with wit. Nonetheless, it leaves me feeling very sad. Especially when McGann relays the story of when he heard Doctor Who was coming back in 2003:

“So, I thought to myself, ‘Okay, no one has called me yet, but maybe the phone will ring and they’ll ask me to come and do a day on this thing.’ But no! [Laughs] That’s proper ‘sad actor’, isn’t it? When actors aren’t working, they sit in a room, looking out of a window, waiting for the phone to ring. And that was me for all those years. And the phone didn’t ring!”

Frankly, I find the production team having no contact whatsoever with the then-most-recent Doctor utterly bizarre and disrespectful. If this were any other show, there wouldn’t be an onus on appreciating its legacy; still, when a show is revived or relaunched, you often hear about new actors and production teams chatting to past ones to influence the show. Indeed, we have seen this on Doctor Who, including previous companions and Doctors being welcomed onto the set. So why not McGann?

Justice for Paul!

If that justice consists of getting an Eighth Doctor spin-off, then so be it…