Fifth Doctor actor, Peter Davison, has criticised the current iteration of Doctor Who, calling its speedy pace “trailer television” with “huge gaps in the narrative.”

Davison said:

“They’re terribly worried now about people’s attention spans. If something isn’t happening every two minutes, they think people are going to turn off, which I don’t believe is true.

“For some reason, in science fiction, they feel like they need to go at 100 miles per hour and that makes it, to me, like trailer television. There are huge gaps in the narrative because they’re just leaping onto the next bit and your brain is meant to fill in the [gaps].

“Maybe if you’re young and healthy, you can do that, I don’t know. I just find it almost like you’re watching a trailer for a Doctor Who show you’d like to watch later.”

Davison has hit headlines again for these opinions, shortly after also expressing the (probably spot-on) assumption that Billie Piper’s return to the show, this time apparently as the next Doctor, is merely “a hand grenade thrown into the final episode”, i.e. a ploy to grab audience attention. Arguably, that’s worked, though not for a good reason.

While I don’t mind a faster pace, it does feel that Davison has hit the nail on the head again.

The Doctor Who Series 15 finale, Wish World/ The Reality War, is particularly guilty of what Davison is talking about, though this is due to it apparently needing last minute rewrites and editing. Nonetheless, much of the narrative leaps about without much hesitation or explanation and then forgotten about, at least by the writer, Russell T Davies.

It’s brave of Davison to make a stand, but heck, he’s the Doctor, so maybe he can get away with anything. Still, we wouldn’t hold our breaths for the Fifth Doctor showing up in Doctor Who anytime soon. That is, if it returns…