Doctor Who Confirms Major Change To 60-Year Tradition After Disney Deal (& It’s Great)
After making a deal with Disney, Doctor Who's 60th-anniversary special confirms a major change to tradition that will positively impact the series.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary special, episode 1, “The Star Beast.”
The Doctor Who 60th anniversary special involves a major change to a 60-year tradition after the Disney deal, benefiting the show in the long run. Since its inception in 1963, Doctor Who has been a mainstay of sci-fi TV, alongside Star Trek. The BBC series takes on an adventure-of-the-week format as a Gallifreyan Time Lord called the Doctor travels through time and space with companions. While the series became popular immediately, it was mostly confined to the UK until Russell T. Davies rebooted Doctor Who in 2005. Since then, the series has become popular worldwide, with fans having a favorite of the actors who played the Doctor in Doctor Who.
Despite its popularity, Doctor Who hasn’t always been easy to access outside the UK. When the show was available in the US, it bounced from streaming platform to streaming platform, never quite settling in one place. Luckily, that will change soon. In October 2022, Disney+ made a deal with Doctor Who, acquiring the rights to stream future series episodes exclusively starting in November 2023. Fans were left wondering how this would impact the actual series, and the answer is finally evident in the Doctor Who 60th anniversary special, “The Star Beast.”
Doctor Who Has Never Looked Better – The 60th Anniversary Special Proves It
Doctor Who always looked slightly campy, even as the technology progressed, due to the small budget. However, the Disney deal has changed that entirely. The Doctor Who 60th-anniversary special ending uses its increased budget to enhance the sets and visual effects. During the street battle, the effects look more modern, colorful, and realistic. The series maintains the whimsical traditional appearance of Doctor Who while bringing it into a new age.
Russell T. Davies’ original era looked more like sci-fi from the 80s, with unrealistic and cheap visuals. An example of this can be found in Doctor Who season 1, episode 7, “Dalek.” The gunshots look like flashes of light, and the electrocutions are blue CGI on top of the actors. While it’s a great episode narratively, the effects aren’t particularly remarkable.
Additionally, Beep the Meep shows the kind of aliens Doctor Who will incorporate going forward. The creature is a combination of CGI and puppetry. Between the realistic-looking fur and movement, the Meep looks like an animal that could appear in the wild. Future aliens introduced in the show will undoubtedly integrate these same kinds of visuals, making them easier to invest in as characters.
Doctor Who Bigger Budget Poses A Story Challenge
Even though the sci-fi series only had one recurring set, Doctor Who never seemed to have enough money in the budget for everything the showrunners and writers wanted to do. According to Steven Moffat’s interview with Times Radio, this budget constraint forced the production team to get highly creative with their ideas. The showrunners and writers created battle sequences and scary aliens in Doctor Who that they could sustain cheaply but would still entertain viewers. Unfortunately, the risk of giving Doctor Who a bigger budget is that there isn’t as much need for creativity.
With the Disney budget, the production team will be able to afford most new ideas. They could CGI creatures and create new sets on a whim. While this does increase the ability to execute less conventional concepts, it doesn’t provide much incentive to think outside the box. The Doctor Who team no longer needs to evaluate each decision as closely to see whether it’s worth the money.
