As of 2026, Doctor Who is going through a bit of a tough stretch. For the first time since the show came back in 2005, fans don’t have a new season to look forward to. While 2026 promises a holiday special that will hopefully explain why Billie Piper showed up on the TARDIS, there have been no announcements of a new Doctor or even a hint of the series continuing in 2027 and beyond.

But the show’s been off the air before, and hope will always spring eternal that it regenerates again in the future. And while fans wait anxiously for news of the TARDIS’ next voyage, I can’t help but glance backward at the last time the series went off the air. Classic Doctor Who might be known mostly for its low budget effects and outlandish costumes, but it has many elements that I enjoyed and which I would love to see come back in the modern era.

Slower-Paced Stories

A typical episode of modern Doctor Who presents a complex challenge for the Doctor that needs to get resolved in 45 to 90 minutes of screentime. This means that there’s a lot of technobabble, tons of running, and usually a shiny button or string of pseudo-scientific terms that nearly solves the problem in the last five minutes of the episode. This storytelling method got explicitly called out in “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS,” where the day is saved by the Doctor actually throwing a device labeled “Big Friendly Button” to his past self.

The thing is, “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS” aired in 2013, and the modern Doctor Who story structure was so cliché by that point that the show offered meta commentary on it. That would have been a nice time to retire that style of tale for a while, but instead the show has continued to lean on it even more.

That structure happens largely because every episode is big and ambitious but has a tight time constraint that prevents letting things pause to breathe a bit. By comparison, the classic series had shorter episodes but were filmed in a serial format that allowed for longer stories. Each story typically ran between two and six episodes, with some exceptions like the absolutely mammoth “War Games,” which served as the Second Doctor’s swan song and “The Daleks’ Master Plan,” which at twelve episodes serves as the longest single tale in the series.

The serial format had some of its own problems, and sometimes stories suffered from too much padding. But it also gave more opportunities for character moments so we could explore who the Doctor and their companions were. “Doctor Who and the Silurians,” for example, was definitely a bit too long at seven episodes but really cemented the Third Doctor as someone who would go to great lengths to preserve peace, even against impossible odds.

I don’t want every Doctor Who story to be a long meditation on the necessity of peace, but I wouldn’t mind laying off the big friendly button for something more deliberately paced.

Less Sonic Screwdriver

The sonic screwdriver is a nice little accessory that reminds audiences that the Doctor is both a traveler from the future and a tinkerer. Unfortunately, its use has been expanded so much over the years that it’s basically just a plot device.

The sonic was introduced in the Second Doctor’s era and used three times during Patrick Troughton’s run on the show–twice as an actual screwdriver.

By the Fifth Doctor’s era, the sonic had become sued for so many other things that the creative team decided to get rid of it. The Fifth Doctor’s screwdriver got destroyed in “The Visitation” and didn’t appear for the rest of the classic show’s run.

The multitude of uses that got the sonic screwdriver destroyed in the 80s was nothing compared to how it gets used in the revival era, though. Since 2005, the sonic has been used to reverse teleportation technology, read atmosphere levels, scan DNA, knock guns out of people’s hands from across the room, create bulletproof barriers, reformat computers, and more. The Thirteenth Doctor waved it around like a magic wand whenever she stepped out of the TARDIS. When someone asked the Fifteenth Doctor how he restored computer files by plugging his sonic into a computer system, he simply answered, “Magic.”

But the modern sonic screwdriver is worse than magic, because magic in fiction often has rules. As time has gone on, the sonic has evolved past its own limitations. It used to not work on wood, but now it can. The Ninth Doctor spent hours trying to figure out how the screwdriver could resonate concrete to break out of a building, but the Fourteenth Doctor manages that in only a few seconds. With no more rules limiting it, the sonic is basically something writers use to hit fast forward on the plot…which brings me back to my pacing problem.

I do think the sonic screwdriver is too iconic to get rid of, but I’d like to see some limitations come back. Ideally, it shouldn’t be able to do anything that can’t reasonably be explained as relating to sound waves. I’d like to return to the days when the Doctor had to use multiple tools or come up with clever plans that didn’t involve him waving his magic wand around.

A Less Functional TARDIS

One of the things I liked about the First and Second Doctor stories is that the Doctor couldn’t control where the TARDIS went. The controls got damaged in the first Doctor Who story and didn’t get fully repaired for a decade, when the Time Lords finally allowed the Third Doctor to travel again following the events of “The Three Doctors.”

The TARDIS has never worked 100% properly, but after “The Three Doctors” it became much more reliable, with malfunctions only occurring when the plot demanded it.

The damaged TARDIS added two things to the early series that I liked a lot. First, it made traveling with the Doctor risky for the companions. Barbara and Ian didn’t know if they were ever going to return home, and when they finally did it was two years after they had disappeared. Second, it meant that the TARDIS couldn’t be used to magically resolve the story as the plot demanded. The Doctor couldn’t make a move like in “Legend of the Sea Devils” where they pop back in time to get answers about the current plot and then land perfectly again in the proper era to solve the adventure.

Between the sonic screwdriver and the TARDIS, I’d like to see some tools taken away from the Doctor and force them to solve problems without the magic of technobabble.

The Doctor as “Just a Traveler”

The showrunners on modern Doctor Who (Russell Davies, Stephen Moffat, and Chris Chibnall) all grew up on the classic show and hold a degree of hero worship for the main character. That translates into the scripts, where it’s become increasingly common for characters to spend a good portion of the narrative talking about how great and heroic the Doctor is or, in the case of Moffat’s tenure especially, have the Doctor use his reputation to chase their enemies away without a confrontation.

The idea of the Doctor as this fearsome figure that villains run away from is okay to trot out once in a while, but it long ago veered toward the cardinal sin of telling rather than showing. What was a great moment in “Silence in the Library” has turned into a cheap way for writers to get the character out of a jam without having to script out a dramatic confrontation. Used too often, the Doctor’s reputation makes them less of a resourceful genius and more of a bully.

I guess this is probably my love of shows like Quantum Leap and The Incredible Hulk showing through. I like the idea of someone who shows up at a location, solves a problem, and disappears with only a few people knowing what they’ve done. Or, to borrow from the Sixth Doctor’s Big Finish story “The Last Adventure,” I like a Doctor whose steps are “light, but apposite.”

Now, there are exceptions on this front. The Doctor has a few mortal enemies who should know (and fear) them well. Seeing murderous, unstoppable creature like the Daleks and the Cybermen show fear when the Doctor makes an appearance will never get old. But for everybody else, I’d love it if the Doctor could stop giving long-winded rants about how fearsome they are. And I’d really enjoy the show more if we didn’t occasionally stop the narrative so a companion can talk about how the Doctor is the greatest person they’ve ever met.

The Doctor as Inspiration, not Force of Nature

One of my favorite classic stories is “The Space Museum,” when the TARDIS crew views a moment in their near future where they are killed and made into exhibits in the titular space museum. The crew spends three episodes trying to avert their fate, but then find themselves locked in a room and unable to control their fates by the end.

Vicki and the Doctor then remind the despairing Barbara and Ian that, while they cannot change their future, they have spoken with people, influenced them, and potentially set in motion events that might save them. Their words prove true, as revolutionaries overthrow the people who would have turned the crew into exhibits.

I really like stories where the Doctor doesn’t save the day by finding a magic button but rather helps other people become better than they used to be. The modern series does this very well when it comes to companions, with everyone who travels aboard the TARDIS going back to their lives changed for the better (usually). I think it would be cool if we could see it more on a smaller scale, where the Doctor doesn’t necessarily solve every crisis themself but gives other people the tools and inspiration they need to be better.

I don’t mean to say that I prefer classic Doctor Who over its modern incarnation; I think both have their pros and cons. But as the show sits in limbo waiting for its next direction, I hope the creative team behind it looks to some things that worked very well in the older era and are due for a return.

_{Images: BBC}