I ran across “Doctor Who: The Time War Was Genius (& Moffat Made It Even Better)” on Screen Rants and was left rather bemused. Maybe because Screen Rants is rather hit and miss with me. But I agree with this one even though I hadn’t thought about it that way before. Put it this way, I’m a big fan of the new Doctor Who but have tried to watch the classic version and just… can’t. Maybe if I skipped to later seasons it would work for me but starting at the very beginning does not.
Nope. No way.
I’d never really thought about how the Time War construct affects that the new version in such a positive way. I guess because the knee-jerk reaction is be to believe the Time War is a negative thing because it makes the newer Doctors so much more moody and broody. Even when they are not being broody there’s that undercurrent of being the last Time Lord because of what happened during the Time War.
But stepping back I realized that this article makes a lot of sense to me, especially this snippet:
The idea of the Time War helped to develop the revamped Doctor Who by achieving three seemingly impossible goals. First, it helped to reestablish The Doctor as a figure of mystery after far too many stories had attempted to pigeon-hole his background and define his history. Second, the Time War helped to level the playing field between fans of the original series and new viewers, creating a new story that paid tribute to the legacy of Doctor Who while still being accessible to those who couldn’t spot the subtle shout-outs to Genesis of the Daleks. Finally, the Time War created a handy excuse for explaining away any stories that seemed to contradict the greater continuity of the series as a side-effect of the Time War and an ever-shifting universe.
Doctor Who: The Time War Was Genius (& Moffat Made It Even Better)
To be honest, the second of those three is probably the most important to me since I have yet to bond with the classic Doctor Who and that’s probably not going to happen unless somebody tells me which Doctor to start with.