We suppose it was inevitable given the success of the recent US-based series of Torchwood *coughs loudly in a sarcastic fashion* but it seems Doctor Who is about to get the Hollywood treatment, thanks to Harry Potter director David Yates and the L.A. wing of BBC Worldwide. DON’TLETTHEMGIVEITTOROBERTPATTINSON DON’TLETTHEMGIVEITTOROBERTPATTINSONDON’TLETTHEMGIVEITTOROBERTPATTINSONDON’TLETTHEMGI…

Nothing’s actually happened yet, so Whovians have time to prepare their spluttering outrage. Yates told Variety: 

"We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right. It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena.

"Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch.”

Ah screw it, let’s pick these statements apart anyway. Does it need “quite a radical transformation”? Surely it just needs to be longer and have more expensive sets. And a bit where Rory and Amy do it.

And then he uses that word “transformation” again. It’s troubling. Because for Russell and Steven that meant drawing on the existing history and allowing that to take the Doctor’s character to darker, sadder places while asking bigger questions about what a man who possesses power over time can really allow himself to do, in the pursuit of his own moral agenda. And also make some excellent and silly jokes.

What we fear is that, in this case, it will mean fighting, stunts, explosions, a six pack, implausible romance, the invention of a new supervillain hellbent on the destruction of earth and a cgi TARDIS. And will the “transformed” Doctor be a new regeneration or will the audience be expected to accept that it’s a different actor playing Matt Smith’s Doctor? (Or whoever is in the fez at the time).

And anyway, it won’t have Roy Castle in it so it won’t be as good as this*

*This was not very good.