Tuesday, September 14, 2010

This changes everything. Again. (Doctor Who, Season 2)

Like the iPhone 4, Doctor Who's second season was not without its problems. However, 1965 saw the series' popularity reach even greater heights than the previous year. Even the Beatles wanted to be on Doctor Who, and they sort of were. I think Doctor Who handled its success rather well - pushing the boundaries of what stories it could tell, while not straying from the formula that everyone loved. (Really, Season 2's only big failure was that it couldn't produce a monster to come close to the Daleks' popularity.) But things had to change, if only because of personnel changes. On screen there was, of course, the replacement of Susan with Vicki, and then the departure of Ian and Barbara. Off screen the biggest change was Dennis Spooner taking over from David Whitaker as Story Editor. And there were other decisions, which might have seemed quite minor at the time, that were as responsible for the Doctor Who we know today as anything that happened in Season 1.