The Hello, Goodbye Man

Sorry if I got anybody’s hopes up, but this column is not in fact an homage to the now-forgotten, one-series Ian Lavender sitcom vehicle of the early 1980s (written I believe by David Nobbs, whose greatest claim to fame is probably his rising and indeed his falling of Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, and which co-starred one-time Time Lady Mary Tamm). Admittedly, if you were going to look anywhere on the internet for scribblings on that series (I think the MD’s catchphrase was, "When I was a lad…" – and I didn’t get where I am today without recognising a suspiciously similar catchphrase when I hear one) The Vervoid is probably the best place to look, but on this occasion I’m afraid I’ve fallen back into bad habits, and am writing – yes, again! – about that wretched Doctor Who.

A few weeks ago I pinpointed my nervousness about the forthcoming new series, as resting in the ambiguous figure of the Doctor, or rather the new Doctor for the 21st Century, leather-jacketed and short-haired. And it’s probably preaching to the converted to say this here, but it only took about five minutes before Christopher "Hello" Eccleston won me over last Saturday. Following on from last week’s musings, I can also report with some delight that not only did Little Miss watch it with me, but she loved it. Not just in a "yes, Daddy, very nice, now what channel are the cartoons on?" sort of way, but in a wholehearted, swept away sense – and the fact that we watched the repeat on BBC Three (when even the far more cynical Mrs Curnow gave in to the inevitable, and enjoyed it) and last night watched Rose a third time on video, is down to Little Miss’s wish to see it again, rather than mine.

So it's doubly ironic then that having taken to him so completely, so quickly, and (I'll admit it) so unexpectedly, we now learn that Christopher "Lots of planets have a North" Eccleston will not be returning to the role of the Doctor for a second series. This time last week we were all hyped up waiting for Rose, and now we've been plunged back into 'Who is the next Doctor Who?' debate.

Maybe it's a sign of the times, that a big name actor won't want to stay as the Doctor for very long - certainly my initial reaction to hearing that Christopher "It's a disguise" Eccleston had been cast last year was to wonder how long he would stay. Although admittedly an opinion formed without having actually seen any of his work, he always struck me as an actor who was in it not for the fame or the money or the chutzpah, but simply for the acting itself... and given that, I didn't perceive him as the sort who would want to be tied down to an on-going series.

Curiously enough, and perhaps born of seeing one too many episodes of The X-Files and thus seeing conspiracies everywhere, I begin to wonder now just how long the production team of the new series have known that a second new series might require a second new Doctor. On last Saturday's Doctor Who Confidential Russell T Davies actually discussed regeneration, beautifully expressing the fact that you have to feel it - it only has an emotional impact if you know who it is that's 'dying'. The same programme made plentiful references to the previous Doctors, which if nothing else allowed Little Miss to specify number four as her favourite, and allowed me to point out number six as my sister-in-law's least favourite by far. And Chris "He's gay and she's an alien" Eccleston was dutifully billed on the documentaries as 'The Ninth Doctor'.

Curiously, as well as rewatching Rose last night we also rewatched Doctor Who Confidential, and Little Miss did wonder at the time (as a series of clips of frock-coats and wigs now long since gone went by) who the Tenth Doctor would be. This was before any news had started to leak out I might add. She even theorised that maybe he would be in it next year, and I of course corrected her, saying that I was sure they wouldn't change him that quickly. Hmm, maybe she has a mole at the BBC - certainly she seemed to be more in tune with forthcoming events than I was.

Interestingly enough, my main 'concern' on hearing the news was whether it would put Little Miss off watching again, but as it happens, other than an "I told you so" aimed at me, Little Miss has responded to the news that Christopher "I couldn't save any of them" Eccleston is leaving, without ill-effect. Maybe the notion of a generation having their own Doctor is an old-fashioned one, and to be honest even the Doctors in the 1980s went by so quickly that you couldn't really grow up very much alongside one before, blow me, he'd gone and changed again. And as I recently said when wittering on about 1980 elsewhere at TheVervoid.com, it was the prospect of a regeneration that really and truly hooked me as a fan.

As fans we know that the star is never bigger than the show, although Tom came damn close, and so the loss of Christopher "And if we let go..." Eccleston won't be the end of Doctor Who. As long as the people making the show remain the same (and to be honest, I'd feel a lot more unsettled if the news had been that RTD was leaving the show) and as long as the stories have the same quality and excitement, next year's new series with its new Doctor should thrive and flourish, building on the success that, at least on the singular strength of Rose last week, this season appears to have met with.

In fact, now that I've adjusted to the news that Christopher "Fan-tastic" Eccleston is leaving, my only real complaint about all this is that the news is being reported with David Tennant as an almost certain replacement. Where's the fun in that? Part of the fun of a Doctor leaving is the days and weeks of endless speculation about who the new Doctor will be - but we can't very well get into the spirit of that, if we know already who it's going to be, now can we.

Because, after all, the new Doctor could be a woman...