Now that David Cassidy is leaving the new producer of Dr Who should be looking fo a new, older actor to return the show to its great historic glory.

Dr Who should be:

1) Older
2) Have gravitas
3) Be avuncular (uncle - like)
4) Dignity

I fail to see how casting younger actors like Davidson and Tennant has fitted into the imne.

Dr Who MUST stop being YOUTH orientated and get back to irs roots.

So who is available? Here are 4 older actors - each one would make a great, traditional Dr Who:

Robert Hardy
Nigel Havers
Kevin Wheatley
Derek Thompson

I think the first one would be too expensive as he has a film carer going but he was great and eccentric as Seigrind.

Before the re-launch I would have agreed, but the show now trades on being 'cool' and appealing to the younger generation, which an older, Hartnell style, Doctor just wouldn't do in this day and age.

And if the show doesn't manage to do this, well, we won't have a show at all. No interpretation is going to appeal to everyone, but the new series has more hits than misses and the fact that it's still so popular in 2007 is wonderful.

What you mean like a childrens/family entertainment show on a Sataurday evening...

I knew from the title this would be a 'dervish'

Stop harking back, we need to move with the times. If we move the series back in that direction instread of moving with current trends, the series will disappear from the schedules again.

I for one did not enjoy much of earlier output, but it depends when and what age you are, Tom baker and Peter davison were my doctors and now tennant is my sons, i for one think Tennant has moved on my image of the show and it is the better for him.

Why do fans of this series constantly deride it wanting to hark back all the time, the show has a vintage history which not many other shows can boast, but it seems to me no matter what happens there are some fans who will never be satisfied.

This is clearly a wind up post. At least, I hope it is

Awesome grammar, awesome thread. Has to be a dervish. You really are an enormous prat aren't you?

Tom Baker was only 39 when he got the role. Not exactly old.

Funnily enough, so did I.

And as another poster quite eloquently put it - This is clearly a wind up post.

is David Tennant supposed to look like him or am i missing something? i can't see any resemblance.

and who is Kevin Wheately?

i think you'll find thats dervish's 'humour'. apparently.

Kevin Wheately was John Thaws sidekick in Morse.

i take he's the same guy who used to be Kevin Whately then!

Except of course, it was actually Kevin Whately, not as dervish wrote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Whately


And Robert Hardy played a character called Siegfried, not Seigrind as dervish wrote.


Good old dervish ........

and isn't it great that he's got a film CARER going!

When you say "historic glory", do you mean back when it was nowhere near as popular as it is these days?


I like the way that you explain what "avuncular" means. You are, of course, wrong about this, though. Let's go through the list.

You specify "older" but not older than what. I assume you mean older than Ten-inch. Well, he's now older than he was, so it's a step in the right direction, at least.

Gravitas is one for sure, and you're right that Tennant struggles with this (although not always. He can be great when he's got someone good to bounce off. He's magnificent at the end of "The Family Of Blood" with Jessica Hynes, for example). But it should be noted that you can have age without gravitas, and you can have gravitas without age.

William Hartnell was in no way avuncular. Agranfatherular, sure, but not avuncular.

As for dignity, how much dignity did Troughton have, exactly?


Davison was a magnificent Doctor. If you can't figure out how he works, then perhaps the programme left you behind more than 20 years ago?


It's a kid's programme. Its roots are more youth orientated than today. Have you ever actually seen the first serial? Skewed much younger than it is now.

I too thought it would be a Dervish thread! lol!

Dervish is probably just bored and trying to wind us all up...

Alright, let's have a teenager as the Doctor then .

Seriously though, the next Doctor should be a contrast to Tennant. He should be older than Tennant, although not necessarily an old man. As with all things it's about striking a balance.

Personally, I feel Tennant has been a little TOO lightweight and I although still enjoy the programme I'm not going to be too sorry to see Tennant go.

I felt that Eccelestone's Doctor had been a far more interesting portrayal of the character. He was grittier. Still think that Season 1 as an entirety is still better than what's gone since.

It's interesting that you say this, because he's still the darkest portrayal of the character apart from Eccleston's. And I don't think we could have had the "survivour's guilt" Doctor forever.


Honestly? Even the production team would heartily disagree with you there.

The first series of the revived programme is clearly trying to find its feet and work out what tone to use. I don't think anything as crass as a burping wheelie bin would make it onto the current incarnation of the programme, and it's all the better for it. The age has been skewed a bit upwards, the tone has darkened a little, and the programme as a whole has just become more sophisticated.

Why the heck is anyone even bothering to respond to dervish's pointless ramblings such as this?

Every direct response to this increasingly silly little man and his increasingly pointless comments,
is simply "feeding the troll". The best thing to do, is to simply ignore the irritant, he'll eventually
get bored and go elsewhere to spread his nonsense ramblings.

It's clear that dervish is stuck in the past, and favours "Classic" Doctor Who, and would rather
that the newly updated version of Doctor Who should be a close to the old series as possible.

But, Doctor Who has moved with the times. It's no longer the cheesy low budget, and mostly
studio based show that it once was. It's now a fresh, modern, high budget show, complete
with a combination of a new audience that had never even heard of Doctor Who before
along with many viewers that enjoyed the "Classic" 1963-89 series.

It is time that foolish little people like dervish moved with the times as well.


I would say though, that if Doctor Who hadn't been axed in 1989, and continued throughout
the 1990's, to the present day, it would have gradually evolved into what it is now anyway.
There's no way it would've got halfway through the 90's with it's original format.

Sure it would've had still it's rough patches, with a fair share of crap episodes, and plenty
of (mostly tabloid) speculation and gossip on whether it would end up being axed or not.
But eitherway, we would still have ended up with an evolved version of Doctor Who
that wouldn't be too dissimilar to what we have now.

1) Older - How about someone who's been in the business over 35 years?...
2) Have gravitas - was in a classic BBC drama, say I Claudius...
3) Be avuncular (uncle - like) - very kind and genial...
4) Dignity - King like, in fact recently crowned...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the next Doctor Who...

It's a Sunday, and I thought it'd be interesting to.


Tell you what, if you find dervish so irritating, then why don't you ignore him/her? You can even put him/her on your ignore list, if you want. And then you can let the rest of us decide for ourselves what we want to do with our time and everybody's happy.

A spectacularly BRILLIANT suggestion. And I guess filming for DW would not interfere with the panto season either.

I'm not so sure about that. For some reason, when I think of Tennant his sometimes shouty and OTT dialogue comes to mind (e.g during the whole of the Runaway Bride) and also some of that stuff about "timey-wimey wibbly wobbly"), seen in Time Crash.

He's had his dark moments of course, I suppose. Of course you have to have humour in Doctor Who, because it's a combination of humour and drama that works best.

I don't know. I just can't put my finger on it - but for some reason though, Tennant has never really clicked for me, I'm afraid. He's a fine actor but there's been something missing. Of course I do talk with having watched a lot of the old DW. Maybe that's influencing my judgement in some way.

Do you know the production team?

All I can is that I just really loved the Eccelston/Piper combination of Season 1 and it had me gripped for the full run.

In contrast, with other things going on in life, I missed almost every episode of Season 3 this time around and had to download it to watch it, and only relatively recently. The Doctor's pairing with Martha left me even colder.

I hope Season 4 can turn things around. I'd agree with those who've said that in a few years everyone will be ready for a new Doctor.

That may be how you remember him, but that doesn't change the facts that no Doctor, Eccleston aside, has had a scene as dark as, say, the death of the Racnoss children.


No, but I can read.

Yup, same here:yawn::yawn::yawn: Nothing else to do while Catherine Tate is on the show as Derv wont be watching Maybe just line up the older cast of Casualty!