On the eve of Doctor Who's latest wonderful evolution hitting our screens, Showrunner Russell T Davies is here to talk about change...

Come here.

Gather round.

All of us, c’mon.

Yes, you too.

Let’s huddle. Yes, I know this issue of DWM is designed to welcome in new viewers - good, good, pull up a chair, hello - but this time, more than ever, let us gather. The old guard. Whether you’ve been here since the Cave of Skulls, or Rose Tyler going down to the basement with the lottery money, or Peter Capaldi punching a diamond wall for all eternity… We’ve seen a lot. And now here it comes again, change.

Let’s sit and consider, faithful viewers. I usually write these letters at home, but today, I’m in my office at Bad Wolf. On my desk, a script for 2025 containing the words ‘radiation’, ‘moth’ and ‘skiffle.’ Down the corridor, rehearsals with Ncuti and Special Guest Star for our 13th episode. Below me, the six studios hum. We’re building a Hotel. And a Chamber. And a Hospital. But up here… I’ll close the door, and let us pause.

Look at Doctor Who. This show is nuts! It goes through the most seismic tectonic-plate-shifting changes while we cling on for dear life (when I lived in Los Angeles, we’d be told to keep a wheelie bin stacked full of tinned food, in case of earthquakes. Now, dear reader, might be the time to buy pilchards and beans). But this year could be different. Because it has an added component. More than ever before, now we have the raging voices of online. We have culture wars! I wonder what that would have been like in times gone past..?

The First Great Seismic Shift in Doctor Who was 1966, when the lead character slumped to the floor and… what? He did what?! He changed into a different actor? For good?! Can you imagine that happening unannounced now? In 1966, there seems to be comparatively little record of the reaction. Did we question less, then? Did we just… watch?

I’ve got clearer memories of Seismic Shift 2, 1970, the move into colour. Though that didn’t mean much; we didn’t buy colour TVs overnight, I was still watching in black and white until, ooh, Planet of the Daleks…? But crucially, 1970 halved the number of episodes. Axed! Brutal! But again, we didn’t really have the terminology for TV processes - I didn’t use words like ‘seasons’, back then, I just said ‘It’s on less than it used to be.’ And again, we just accepted changes with a shrug. Things happened, and we simply kept on watching. We might complain about today’s online world, but aren’t we wiser now? Less passive, more engaged?

The biggest change in Shift 2 was the fact that the Doctor was trapped on Earth. And in some episodes, our hero drove through London in a silver hovercraft! Which could fly! My God, this programme can change. But in those cheesecloth, flared, deely-bopping 1970s, we didn’t need the internet to seethe and grumble, I had my neighbour, Ceri. (Still friends now!) ‘It’s not as good as it used to be,’ he would mutter. ‘In the old days, the Doctor could travel in space and time!’ And bear in mind, we had no archives, no books, no History of Doctor Who - absolutely none whatsoever, seriously, imagine it, no references other than memory - so Ceri would tell tales of the faraway Zarbi as if they were ancient myths. And his opinion became the received wisdom of our Swansea street. Though secretly, I rebelled, loving every single second of Jo and the Brigadier and monsters in nuclear power stations.

Seismic Shift 3 was more of a shift in my own life, moving to comprehensive school just as Jon Pertwee became Tom Baker. Those events feel profoundly entwined. And that, I think, is when I became a fan. At 11 years old, I made the decision to keep watching, while other boys turned to girls and football and cider. I spent the next 10 years thinking those boys had more fun than me, until realising that the fun I was having was mine, and different, and wonderful. And then -

No, no, don’t eat the pilchards now. Stop it. Sigh. Where was I?

The Seismic Shifts lurched onwards! Peter Davison’s episodes moved to weeknights (this was nothing to those of us watching on BBC Wales, who’d often had episodes shifted to Sundays and Mondays so that Welsh language programmes could have the Saturday night slot). Colin Baker’s episodes became 45 minutes long (a fine innovation) and then we had a hiatus - and fans were waking up then! Mobilising! Campaigns, protests, a charity single. Yes, I said charity single, except sales were so poor, not a penny went to charity, bless them. But the shifts went on! Including the biggest shift of all, cancellation, in 1989.

And then. Stand by. Seismic Shift Extraordinaire. Doctor Who returned in 1996 as a movie set in America, and we discover that the Doctor’s mother is human! He’s only half-Gallifreyan! Gosh!

I think about that a lot. We absorb shocks, as fans, we cope, we strategise, we satirise, we write our own personal canon. And some things exist in a perpetual state of mystery. 1963, the Doctor has a granddaughter called Susan? Okay. 1983, the Fifth Doctor meets Susan and says hello and… doesn’t even hug her, or say how are you? Why?! And then in 1996, the Master is amazed to discover that the Doctor’s mother is human - what, the Master, his old friend, his Academy pal, didn’t know? And what do the viewers do? We go on. We simply go on. We absorb, or ignore, or laugh, or adore, and most of all, we look forward to the next episode.

You probably know the later Seismic Shifts. The return, in 2005. Steven Moffat’s astonishing, brilliant, glittering Doctors from 2010 onwards, with the Master becoming Missy. And with a slinky Seismic Shuffle, the Eigth Doctor, who’d disappeared off screen in 1996, finally got to regenerate in 2013 but only on the BBC Red Button! And then Jodie Whitaker fell through the roof of a Sheffield-bound train with an impact so great, it bumped the entire show on to Sunday night, and then she stood up in the wreckage and smiled a smile so bright, it changed the Time Lord and television drama and the whole bloody culture for good and for better.

It really is the most fascinating show because it changes, changes, changes… and yet, it stays the same. ‘Doctor Who is all about change!’ say the fans, but I sit here planning the next story in which a police box lands and the Doctor steps out and foils an invasion of Earth thinking to myself, well, is it?! But I know what you mean. The feel of the show changes, the essence. Jo and the Doctor and that silver car are a different world, a different style, almost a different genre to Clara facing a Raven on Trap Street.

And now, in 2023, that high-wire-tension of approaching change is in the air. The Doctor mysteriously has a face he’s had before. And by the time December rolls around, he’ll have yet another new face, in a show that now drops worldwide on a vast streaming platform - new and old at the same time, as it still stays cradled in its Saturday night home of the good old BBC.

But as I said. Voices are louder this year. Shouting and rage and horror sometimes circle around Doctor Who. And often, that’s not about Doctor Who itself, it’s expressing anger and fear about life, about love, about self. And I get that! These discussions are us, growing up. In the old days, we’d sit in our bedroom and work out the world all on our own. We could only sing along to pop songs to express our lovely, lonely hearts. Now, we type it out, and that’s always going to be clumsy. Because expressing yourself isn’t easy. Even birthday cards are hard work! So trying to say what you think about life and love and sex and telly in the form of words typed on a page and read by strangers, oh, nightmare! No wonder it goes wrong. But now…

I think there is only one way to meet the changes to come.

With joy.

I’m not asking for good reviews (I’ve got myself for that, I think these episodes are FABULOUS!) But if you don’t like something, don’t exhaust yourself. Just smile and be glad that some people are happy and wait for the next Seismic Shift to come.

Because this programme has trained us well! We have embraced flying cars and the Red Button and the Watcher and the Garm and hey, maybe ‘granddaughter’ is Gallifreyan for ‘friend’ (though I don’t think so) which means we can delight in anything. And right now, the TARIDS is heading for Skaro, and a wounded spaceship is heading for London, and Shaun is taking an extra shift in his taxi cos he’s short of money, and Sylvia is delivering a curry and Donna Noble’s daughter needs to go shopping for eyes - for eyes?! - and as all these things converge, hold on tight, clutch those tins of beans, cos the next earthquake is rumbling away on the horizon.

Here we go again!