An international fan's view on the state of Doctor Who

Argh, why is it so hard to blog during my vacation? Here I sit, rested and content, with oceans of time at my disposal, but will the inspiration come to write that exposé on different kinds of villain-loving (that don't always align with mine)? Will it heck. Therefore, after much deliberation, I will have to go nerdy.

Because if it's one subject that it should be easy to have an opinion on, for a worried fan, it's the current state of Doctor Who. Even the most loyal admirers of the show have been up in arms after the Christmas special that was promised was cancelled – with Russell T Davies commenting defensively that he hadn't written anything of the script anyway, which directly contradicts previous statements from him and others – and BBC has announced that the series has been "put out to tender". 

Since the announcement, commentators have fallen over themselves to explain to us, the ignorant public, that putting a show out to tender does not mean putting it out to pasture. In fact it means the complete opposite, as the show is auctioned off, as it were, to the studio who has the best pitch for it going forward. Shows don't go through this process unless BBC expects it to run for years and years; it wouldn't make sense to invite pitches for a last hurrah. 

If BBC wanted to cancel the show, the commentators suggest, it would have done so outright. Instead, a new studio is needed anyway as Davies and his production company Bad Wolf is leaving the field, so putting the show out to tender makes perfect sense. Moreover, the cancellation of the Christmas special means the process of determining a new, shining future for the show can start sooner. Davies had frankly written himself into a corner by having Ncuti Gatwa regenerate into Billie Piper (whom we know as former Doctor companion and love interest Rose), and a future studio wouldn't want further messy lore on their hands.

All this sounds perfectly plausible as far as it goes. However, Doctor Who fans who have been in the trenches have pointed out that last time the series went off air, the BBC didn't outright cancel it either. The execs may just be trying to let a vocal fanbase down gently. For my part, I'm prepared to buy that the Beeb is acting in good faith and wants the show to continue. But as a foreign Who fan, I have two big concerns: will anyone bid for Doctor Who? And will anyone stream it?

Granted that the BBC wants to find the best studio for Doctor Who. But what good will that be if no studio wants it? The BBC has its own studio, separate from the rest of the organisation, and they've shown interest in Who. But it would look odd if they didn't, and if BBC Studios ends up producing the show, then why put it out to tender in the first place? Putting something up for auction is all very well, but the occasion turns into a disaster if no-one's buying.

The Doctor Who brand isn't strong right now. Whovians who were full of anticipation over Davies's second stint as showrunner have been struggling to defend the RTD 2 run. However much the more positive Who forums have tried to distance themselves from "toxic" fans, they've had to concede that the RTD 2 seasons of the series have overall not been very good. I'm not the only one who has gone from initial unease, to increasing bewilderment, to being close to giving up on the series altogether. To paraphrase Charlotte Brontë, whether it is right or advisable to create things like "Dot and Bubble", I do not know: I scarcely think it is.

What's potentially more dangerous for the series than griping fans – though, lest we forget, we're the ones supposed to be boosting the viewing figures – is the falling-out with Disney Plus. What with the streaming service dropping the series after two seasons and still not airing the spin-off series The War between the Land and the Sea (not that I blame them – it sounds eco-dreary), Doctor Who has been branded, in the eyes of the world, as bad business. Why would a streaming platform such as Netflix want to take on a show that's already failed on Disney Plus?

To a British viewer, this might not be a great cause for concern. YouTube channels such as Who Culture have waxed lyrical about the possibility of Doctor Who going back to its BBC roots of modest budgets and grounded stories and characterisation. But the most important thing about the Disney Plus deal was not the budget, it was the world-wide airing of the series. I don't need big-budget spectacles either, but I want to be able to actually watch the show. 

My foreign blood has been boiling while listening to burbling fantasies about how great it would be if BBC could do the series all in-house and not have to defer to those pesky international streaming services for anything. Yes, I expect it would be great for nostalgic Brits. But what about the rest of us? Do the limeys have any idea of what being an international Who fan was like, before the Disney Plus deal? 

In Sweden, Swedish television aired New Who's first series with Christopher Eccleston. For a while, some series (not the most recent ones) were briefly available on Prime. But apart from that, nothing. I had to wait for the DVDs, and meanwhile have salient plot developments spoiled for me. Some dunce spoiled the plot twist in "Amy's Choice" in a review, a move I have yet to get over. BBC itself put up a video on YouTube with the Sacha Dhawan Master reveal the day after the episode was aired in the UK. Of course, it made its way unbidden into my list of recommended videos because of the algorithm, and there was nothing I could do about it. Christmas specials were released on DVD in the spring, if one was lucky.

The RTD 2 run at least had this to recommend it: I could watch the new episodes the same day they aired if I wanted to. Granted, many of them were bad, but they were available. I don't want to have to go back to buying the DVDs once the whole series has already been aired in the UK, and unless I can be sure that a new incarnation of Doctor Who is better than RTD 2, I'm not sure the investment is actually worth my while.

Everything has its time, and everything ends. Still I cling on to the hope that out of all this upheaval, Doctor Who will rise like a phoenix and be watchable once more. But what will I call this hypothetical new version of the series? I shouldn't have blown the label New New Who on the short-lived Disney Plus era. Surely New New New Who is too much?

Hats off to Pixar: somehow, they pulled off Toy Story 5

There were many reasons why I was sceptical (much like the rest of the world) about the very idea of a Toy Story 5 film. The franchise already had two endings: it was clear both from the way Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4 ended that they were, at the time, expected to close out the story. That made Toy Story 5 an obvious cash grab from a studio spooked by the modest box office numbers of its films based on original ideas. 

What's more, I've never been sold on the original premise of the Toy Story films. Even at their peak – perhaps especially at their peak – I thought their messaging peculiar, bordering on downright harmful. What does Pixar think it's doing, guilt-tripping kids (and nostalgic adults) for abandoning their toys? When in the future the Toy Story characters enter the public domain (by a process I don't fully understand), a horror film version will not be far off. For example, the notion that toys in storage stay sentient while being packed up in the dark is creepy in the extreme.

But would you know it, the creators of Toy Story 5 made a virtue of necessity. It turned out to be a good, solid Pixar flick, better than a lot of nostalgia bait out there and a lot better than it needed to be to draw the crowds. These past months, I've watched more films on the big screen than I usually do, among them Super Mario Galaxy, The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Mandalorian and Grogu. I had a good time with all three of them, not least Mandalorian and Grogu (yes, it's like a couple of episodes of the TV show squished together, but I like the TV show). They had one thing in common, though: they weren't big on plot. They were clearly "hey, don't you just want to hang out for a time in this world with these characters?" kind of films.

Toy Story 5 could have settled for the same experience, but Pixar chose to aim higher. Maybe the studio has learned something after traumatising a whole generation with the plight of toys neglected by callous youngsters. In the latest two "cash grab" instalments (let's not deny this is why they were made) the Toy Story franchise has tiptoed away from the toys' more selfish motivations (basically "play with me or I'll diiiieee") and instead focuses on their mission to make their kid happy. 

In Toy Story 4, Woody unselfishly struggled to keep Bonnie's favourite toy Forky at her side; in Toy Story 5, Bonnie's remaining toys are more worried by her lack of friends than by the possibility that she could get tired of playing with them. When she gets an iPad-like device called Lilypad, they do feel threatened ("Extinction! Not again" Rex the dinosaur laments), but mostly they're worried about its effect on Bonnie. Jessie, the clear leader of the toys now that Woody's gone away, sees it as her task to find at least one suitable friend for Bonnie, someone she can really connect with. Lilypad blithely gets Bonnie three "friends" online, but they don't seem to be doing her much good.

The whole "tech vs toys" question that's emphasised in the trailers is actually the least interesting part of the film, at least until the message is nuanced by Jessie's reluctant team-up with another girl's "old-tech" toys ("the AA team") and Lilypad's earnest desire to be of use to Bonnie. The best takeaway message-wise from the film, in my view, was its argument for how playing with actual toys stimulates children's imagination. The sequences where Bonnie's or Blaze's (the other girl's) play-time is animated in a particular, colourful manner are a delight. Toy Story 5 acknowledges that playing a simple game on a device can be fun too, though.

For long-time Toy Story viewers, it's a relief when Jessie's old trauma of being given away by her first owner, Emily, is finally overcome by a moving realisation that she did make a difference to Emily. It leads her to a conclusion I wish the Toy Story films could have articulated long ago. When faced with the possibility of Bonnie outgrowing her, post-epiphany Jessie is chill: what's important is that she was there for Bonnie "when it mattered".

It's not a perfect film by any means: what with a few new toys being added to the roster each film, the Toy Story franchise now has bit player overload. Even when the focus is on the children's happiness rather than the toys', the supposed bond between toy and kid can still come across as a little eerie. When Lilypad suspects she does Bonnie more harm than good, she flings herself in a donation box: sweet or a kamikaze move? There are a lot of subplots going on, neither Buzz nor Woody is in any way essential to the plot, and the whole thing's a bit messy, albeit in a fun way.

For my part, I enjoyed this film more than Toy Story 4, and I especially appreciated how we get to become invested in Bonnie and Blaze and root for them to become friends. It was hard to warm to Bonnie in Toy Story 4: sure, she has no obligation to Woody (he's a toy!), but forgetting about him so soon after Andy gave him to her, and after Andy was so reluctant to let him go, did come across as a bit ungrateful. Here, Bonnie is allowed to be a sweet, if insecure, kid, and you're left hoping that the association with the more confident, quirky Blaze will do her all the good in the world. Another film with Bonnie as the toys' owner would give a certain symmetry to the franchise, which could then be divided into two trilogies. I can hardly believe I'm writing this, but I'm ready for Toy Story 6.