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    What if Doctor Who Wasn't Axed?
    What if Doctor Who Wasn't Axed?
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    Real World Articles, Doctor Who seasons

    The following article is written from an Out of Universe perspective.

    Season 53 of Doctor Who, also known as Series 1 premiered in January 2019 and continued right through to December with its serials interspersed throughout the year. It featured Adjoa Andoh as The Doctor and Alex Jennings as Bertie Reynolds.

    This was the first to have Adrian Hodges as showrunner of Doctor Who.

    This was the last season to feature Adjoa Andoh as The Doctor.

    Overview

    Production Team

    Executive Producer Adrian Hodges stepped in as new showrunner, to whom the BBC had entrusted this season of Doctor Who to. Jane Espenson, who was made acting showrunner following Ronald D. Moore's firing, remained on solely as an executive producer alongside Hodges and Gaynor Holmes.

    There was a complete change in co-executive producers under Hodges' new regime and following the firing of some of those during production of Season 52. The four new co-execs were Douglas Aarniokoski who had worked on various Star Trek series, Stephen McDonogh who previously worked with Hodges on The Musketeers, Simon Tyrrell, a recurring writer of the 2008 adaptation of Survivors and Carissa Hope Lynch, script editor of Stan Lee's Lucky Man and Cold Feet. For the first time, the vast majority of the Co-Execs didn't write a single episode of the season and instead were there to devise the creative overall vision for the series with Hodges.

    New Format

    Together with the BBC, Hodges came up with an action plan to get the viewing figures for Doctor Who back up, and they decided to try and make Doctor Who proper event television. This meant Season 53 had some of the most experimental scheduling ever seen on the show.

    The idea was for each serial to air throughout the entire calendar year. With most serials being two-parters, this meant that Doctor Who was on for just two weeks every couple of months, which each serial being promoted with its own poster, trailer etc, as kind of its own mini-series, in order to make each serial seem like its own event, and so more people tune in, instead of just 12 continuous weeks of Doctor Who.

    The BBC commissioned 13 episodes of Doctor Who to be produced, with the first 10 being split into 5 different two-part serials, and the final three making up the final three-part serial, which was to air over the Christmas period and be Adjoa Andoh’s regeneration story. The episode running time was down from 60 minutes to 50 minutes to accommodate the format change and behind the scenes issues.

    In addition, the show moved from 60-minute episodes to a shorter, and more cost-effective, 50-minute episode format, placing the season at 650 minutes, as opposed to 780 minutes.

    A New Chapter

    The biggest change for the season was that it wasn’t Series 5 but rather Series 1, this time of Chapter Five, as Espenson and Hodges made the decision to begin Chapter Five, in an attempt to, not just, shake off the sour image of Chapter Four’s last two series, but also to refresh the series and rebrand. However, this decision was quite rushed, only being made about a month before the broadcast of the Doomsday Cannon, and only announcement a fortnight before. 

    Therefore, things like the title sequence stayed the same, with only minor changes. One of those such changes was the new Chapter Five logo, which was only revealed during the broadcast of the episode – and all the promotion, trailers and posters used the Chapter Four logo. In addition, the footage in the title sequence, which had previously been from old Doctor Who episodes, was swapped out for new footage featured in the first three stories from Season 53. Bear McCreary left the show and was replaced by Jeff Russo, who arranged a new version of the Doctor Who theme.

    Teasing the New Doctor

    In order to build up hype, and to accommodate the new schedule, whereby Season 54 would begin airing 1 week after the end of Season 53, for the first time since 2000, the BBC announced who the new Doctor would be beforehand, in a live show following the conclusion of the fourth serial, on 7 September.

    New Companions

    Obviously, a new companion was created for this season, as all three of the Fifteenth Doctor’s previous companions departed in the Season 52 finale. Hodges cast Shakesperian actor, Alex Jennings, to play Bertie Reynolds. In addition, Sophie Rundle was cast in a recurring capacity as Bertie’s daughter, Sam. 

    Big Changes

    Other changes included, for a start, the way Doctor Who was referred to. The Doctor Who marketing team decided calling it, publicly, ‘Chapter Five’ would be confusing to the public, so they decided to just have the season referred to as ‘Doctor Who: Series 1’ (with it’s full title being ‘Chapter Five: Series 1’. Therefore, the show was listed on BBC iPlayer for example as five separate shows and the seasons would have been in the style of ‘Doctor Who – Chapter One: Series 1’ etc, through to ‘Doctor Who – Chapter Four: Series 4’, essentially abolishing the long-held larger numbers of Doctor Who seasons. However, Doctor Who – Chapter Five was just listed on iPlayer as simply ‘Doctor Who’, with Season 53 as it’s first season.

    The final large change to the show was the addition of a new TARDIS interior and exterior design, replacing the exterior which had been in use in 2010 and the interior since 2013. The new interior was far larger and more cathedral-like, while also using a state-of-the-art way of building sets out of 3D printed sculpted metal.

    The exterior of the set, upon Hodges' request, returned far more to the look of the original Met Box, including the fact that it was thinned down to its original size, from the last few designs more ‘fat’ versions. 

    Cast

    Regular

    Recurring

    Guest

    Television Stories

    Main Season

    Serial # Title Writer Director Air Date
    1 1 The Doomsday Cannon Adrian Hodges Andy Hay 1 January 2019
    2 6 January 2019
    2 3 Homeland David Hare Mick Jackson 21 April 2019
    4 28 April 2019
    3 5 The Long Struggle Simon Tyrrell Aisling Walsh 26 May 2019
    6 2 June 2019
    4 7 Praxeus Pete McTighe Jamie Magnus Stone 25 August 2019
    8 Pete McTighe & Adrian Hodges 1 September 2019
    5 9 The March of Evil Simon Allen Anthony Byrne 3 November 2019
    10 10 November 2019
    6 11 Her Final Stand Adrian Hodges Lee Haven Jones 15 December 2019
    12 22 December 2019
    13 25 December 2019

    Production

    Crew

    To be added.

    Shooting Blocks

    Block Serial Director Producer DOP Editor
    1 1/A Andy Hay Ella Kelly Vanessa Whyte Colin Monie
    2 1/B Mick Jackson Ivan Strasburg Justine Wright
    3 1/C Aisling Walsh Colin Wratten Lukas Strebel Alex Mackie
    4 1/D Jamie Magnus Stone Catherine Goldschmidt Rebecca Trotman
    5 1/E Anthony Byrne Matthew Bird Si Bell Paul Knight
    6 1/F Lee Haven Jones Luke Bryant Joel Skinner

    Filming

    To be added.

    Aliens and Enemies

    Viewing Figures

    No. Title Official BARB Figures (7-day) Official BARB Figures (28-day)
    Consolidated (m) Weekly Rank Consolidated (m) Weekly Rank
    1 The Doomsday Cannon, Part One 7.51 11 8.05 8
    2 The Doomsday Cannon, Part Two 7.12 15 7.71 11
    3 Homeland, Part One 7.86 3 8.33 3
    4 Homeland, Part Two 7.02 4 7.59 4
    5 The Long Struggle, Part One 6.41 6 6.92 3
    6 The Long Struggle, Part Two 6.16 16 6.70 13
    7 Praxeus, Part One 6.56 2 7.14 2
    8 Praxeus, Part Two 6.31 5 6.77 6
    9 The March of Evil, Part One 5.98 22 6.50 22
    10 The March of Evil, Part Two 5.42 25 6.03 22
    11 Her Final Stand, Part One 5.55 17 6.16 10
    12 Her Final Stand, Part Two 6.51 8 7.18 4
    13 Her Final Stand, Part Three 7.02 7 7.79 4
    Series Average 6.14 7.14

    Physical Media

    To be added.

    Retrieved from "https://wiki.widwwa.co.uk/wiki/Season_53_(Doctor_Who)?oldid=21632"
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