I can’t help myself. I’ve loved every moment of the rebooted Doctor Who on Disney+, but it appears to have hit a bit of a pause while Disney considers whether to renew its co-production. With its future unclear (although I’m certain it’s coming back before too long), I’ve been thinking about what I’d do if I was show-runner. (To be clear, I think about what I’d do if I was show-runner … a lot. Whovian first, everything else second. I make no apologies.)

Like I said, I loved every moment. But if I have any quibble at all with the last two seasons, with their extended budget provided by Disney, it’s that they used that budget to make the finales bombastic. Who is a show about people, first and foremost; as I wrote recently while justifying my opinion that it’s the best show ever made:

Doctor Who doesn’t promise us a perfect future — it promises us people who will fight for one. It shows us a universe where the best tool you can carry is your mind, your heart, and your ability to listen. Where change is baked into the story, and where survival requires transformation.

These are quiet, small, human ideas. The second episode of modern Who, back in 2005, was mostly spent in the far future examining the future of the human race, but ended on a normal British city street getting chips. That quiet moment was everything. The best Doctor Who stories are small in scale, terrifying in scope, and, like the Doctor themselves, work more with heart and intelligence than they do with the high-octane weaponry of special effects and epic monsters.

As a show, Doctor Who gets to play with the toolbox of time travel, but it rarely uses that power to investigate the past, present, and future of a single story. There’s so much power in this: history provides context to our present, while speculative fiction does the same in a different way, by taking ideas from our present and extrapolating them into possible futures that shed light on our lives in new ways.

My fantasy Doctor Who season would lean on this in a big way.

It would center around a single mystery — not as a slight thread that’s lightly mentioned, in the style of Buffy or Bad Wolf, but truly centered on it. Every story in the season would illuminate the mystery in a new way, like picking up an object and examining it from a new angle. You’ll think you’ll know the dynamics of the situation in the present, and then the next episode the Doctor will go back in time and you’ll see what led people to act the way they did in a whole new light.

So, just for fun, using the eight-story format of the Disney co-production, here’s what my fantasy Doctor Who season would look like.

I’m deliberately leaving the casting of the Doctor and their companion unspecified. In my head, I’m still imagining Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor and Verada Sethu as Belinda Chandra, who were wonderful, but I’m leaving name and gender unfilled for both. That’s not because they don’t matter, but what matters most to the story is that the companion is contemporary and highly independent. The Doctor, of course, is always just a little bit alien: an outsider who doesn’t care how different they seem.

The Shadow and the Loom

The Doctor lands in 19th century Nottingham after detecting an anomalous signal on the TARDIS console. Textile workers are dying, murdered at the hands of an unseen force lurking in the dark of the factories. The Doctor and companion discover the missing workers are Luddites: textile artisans who’ve been smashing the new, wider looms because automation threatens to subjugate them to the factory owners. Scanning, the Doctor finds some weird dimensional phase harmonics, like there’s been a breach in the universe.

The factory owners have struck a secret deal with an unseen person known only as The Director to harness an alien force that will kill the perpetrators and preserve their profits. Ultimately, the Doctor destroys the control device for the alien force, tucking away a critical component in order to figure out where and why it was created. As the TARDIS dematerializes, the alien has been defeated, but the Luddites’ battle continues — and The Director is still out there, still unseen, and still up to something.

The Lovely City

The Doctor traces the component to a floating city in the 25th century, surrounded by pristine clouds. Here, everyone has everything they need, for which they pay almost nothing; each person is served by a personal magic mirror that promises to reveal the complete truth about everything, with no secrets left untold.

Again, the sonic screwdriver reveals weird dimensional phase harmonics. The Doctor’s companion notices that everyone is subservient to a higher class of people, the Best of Us, who treat them like underlings — and nobody has any inclination to do anything about it. One person who begins to resist is swarmed by the others and disappeared; when the companion asks what they did, they say they were a “threat to all of us”.

When the Doctor and companion try to get close to the Palace of the Best of Us at the center of the city, the mirrors begin to lie. The population turns on them, believing them to be murderers who will kill them if they aren’t killed first, and the quest to get to the Palace becomes a race to get out of the maze-like city alive.

While making their escape back to the TARDIS, they come across a vast loading bay that seems to be receiving bulk goods that are materializing from across time and space: clothing from the 19th century looms, crates of alien technology, and more, all unloaded to be sold at low cost. The episode ends on a cliffhanger reveal of who is overseeing them all: the Daleks.

The Cloud Machines

The Daleks nearly exterminate the Doctor and companion; to flee, they escape into an elevator that hurtles them onto the ground below.

Here, they find that the clouds are thicker: the ground is covered in a foggy haze. There are factories as far as the eye can see, their chimneys creating the clouds that surrounded the lovely city. Daleks patrol the streets, exterminating anyone who is not in their right place. Posters extol obedience, purity of purpose, and the glory of sacrifice: a grim echo of history’s worst ideologies. The outputs from the factories are loaded into crates and sent up to the city via transmat.

They find that the workers are just as docile as the people in the city above. “This is just our way of life,” one of them says. “We love to build and make.” But when questioned further, they add, “Mustn’t grumble. The Director is watching.” Every morning, they gather in the squares for the Daily Affirmation: a broadcast that reminds them they’re the backbone of progress, the heroes of production. Even in the fog, they cheer.

The Doctor encounters a small group that is planning a riot to disrupt the central power station, stop the factories, and clear the sky: a whole underground network that has been distributing pamphlets, putting up alternative posters, and finding ways to destroy the Daleks. “Even on the darkest day, there is always someone helping.” They theorize that that if the gleaming city above is revealed, the workers will realize their plight and rise up. The Doctor thinks that this will also force the Director to show themselves, and finds a way to help the group, ultimately reversing the polarity of the neutron flow (why not?) to bring back the sky. The clouds part, the workers look up, and begin to take to the streets to reassess their world.

And then the Daleks begin trying to exterminate them en masse — but it isn’t enough to quell the uprising. The Doctor and companion escape back up the elevator as the planet below coalesces into a full-blown riot.

There’s more to discover. Who is the Director? Why are the Daleks a part of this scheme? They’re never subservient — what do they want?

The Imagined Planet

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor is troubled: someone is using time travel to build a network of exploitation across time and space, in conjunction with the Daleks. The cultures being exploited have no chance to rebel against the whole system because they don’t have time travel themselves.

The Doctor traces the artron energy from the crates of goods to a planet that seems to exist outside of time itself, tucked away in a corner of the time vortex. It seems impossible. And perhaps it is the home of the Director.

But as the Doctor and companion leave the TARDIS and explore, they discover a utopia: a gleaming city of stained glass surrounded by nature, where diverse people make art, play music, and are free to be themselves. It’s not what they expected at all.

The companion makes friends and discovers that this is a hiding place: the only way to escape from the Director’s web is to exist outside of time. But the Doctor is skeptical: why did the artron energy from the cloud city lead them here? The companion also begins to ask questions: is it truly a utopia if they know people are being exploited elsewhere? Shouldn’t they be helping? And why do some members of the community seem to have technology they shouldn’t?

As it becomes clear that key members of this utopian society have been not brainwashed but bribed by some unseen force, the truth begins to dawn. The artron energy was in the planet’s future, and the Director is just beginning to take hold here. The Doctor scans, and the unusual dimensional phase harmonics here are off the charts.

And then, in the lush green of the city, the Director materializes. In a TARDIS. Locked into the form of a police box. Just like the Doctor’s.

Because, somehow, the Director is the Doctor. Who begins directing the Daleks to subjugate the people of the planet while our Doctor looks on, horrified, terrified, shaken to their core.

Small Island

The Doctor is reeling and their companion doesn’t know who to trust. Some future of the Doctor — not a future regeneration but apparently this incarnation — is using the TARDIS to build a network of exploitation across time, in conjunction with their arch enemies the Daleks.

The companion demands to be taken home and the Doctor complies, landing in present day London. It seems safer here: life carries on as it always did. They make a cup of tea and sit down on the sofa to watch TV as the Doctor makes their way back to the TARDIS alone.

But the news broadcast on TV is not reassuring. The Prime Minister makes a statement outside Downing Street, but includes all of the phrases that hung on the walls of the buildings in The Cloud Machines. The companion realizes that all is not well, and rushes to get the Doctor before they dematerialize for good. “You have to fix this.”

The two of them materialize into Downing Street and demand an audience with the Prime Minister, who we find alone, sitting at a table signing papers. He explains that Britain has lost its way, and that he has chosen to enter into an agreement with the Director in order to secure its future. He’s not subjugated in any forceful sense: he’s willingly complicit. He sees it as a path to stability.

But Parliament must first agree via a vote. The Doctor and their companion meet with the Leader of the Opposition and frantically try to convince him that this is a dark bargain. Their pleas fall on deaf ears. When they appeal to individual Members of Parliament, they ask for things in return. Some agree to vote against the agreement. But then, finally, when the MPs line up one by one to vote, they all vote in favor of it, regardless of what they said.

As the final vote is made and the votes are tallied, the Daleks descend on Parliament. We zoom out and see that all the democratic countries in the world are passing similar votes, with the Daleks are descending. UNIT joins them to stand side by side with them. Everywhere. Worldwide.

Everywhere, that is, except for a small island nation in the middle of the Pacific.

Big Island

In a sweep across the capital city of the small island nation of Tuvati, we see that they’re a mutualistic society with a gift economy; children learn in circles from adults; music and art are practiced much as they were in The Imagined Planet; it feels like a fully-functioning society.

We zoom in on its leaders, who watch the world hand itself over to the Director in horror. They take a quick vote around the circle, each one raising their hand in turn, and switch on a defense system that raises a visible blue ring around the island. We see the Daleks attempt to descend, but they cannot.

The Doctor and companion dematerialize and announce themselves: “we’re here to help if we can.” But the leaders don’t want their help. They’re way ahead of them and see the Doctor’s interference in particular as paternalistic colonialism. They’ve been establishing a network of resistance across the globe — not led by them, but running in co-operation. They’re not a safe haven; they work in deep collaboration with resistance movements everywhere.

One member of the leadership council, however, is out for himself. He imagines a life where he reaps the benefits of enormous profit in collaboration with the Director as vanguard leaders, in contrast to feeling like his ideas are constantly thwarted by having to be approved by the council. The council’s slow decision-making once threatened the island itself as the waters rose around it. We see him build a small cadre of followers who seek to take down the protective ring and rat out the resistance movements across the world.

The companion sees this in action, and warns the Doctor. They plot to spring a trap and reveal the rebels to the council — but just as it’s almost sprung, it turns out that the council was already wise to it and had been using them to learn more about the Director. They are imprisoned.

The council is irritated at the Doctor and companion for getting involved despite their requests not to. “If you want to help,” they say, “go find the Director and confront him. Leave us be.”

Never Cruel

Now locking on to the dimensional phase harmonics, the time travelers land in a future version of the utopian city from The Imagined Planet. The beautiful stained glass towers are replaced with concrete, smoke once again fills the air, and the DirectorDoctor’s face hangs on great posters from the buildings. Daleks patrol the streets. The companion is horrified. She had friends here. She’s lost faith in the Doctor’s ability to help. “We came here to save them, and now … now it’s your face on the banners.”

Citizens murmur that “The Director is here,” and “They’ve given us order.” They love them because they gave them safety, just like the Doctor always tries to do. The Doctor is desperate to stop it. They must reach the central control tower, now repurposed as the Director’s fortress — which looks eerily similar to the Palace of the Best of Us.

Once there, the Director explains that they are, indeed, the Doctor. They realized the universe needed order to survive. Tired of patching holes in the universe over and over again, they decided to build something stable.

“Look at them,” the Director says, gesturing to the subjugated society. “They’re alive, aren’t they? They’re safe. They’re well. No Auton invasions. No Weeping Angels feeding on them in the dark. I gave them that. I made the hard choices you never would.”

The Director reveals their final plan: a “Final Affirmation” broadcast that will integrate all the planets in their network into a single locked timeline: no more wars, no more flux, but no more freedom either. A universe without chaos, but also without change. They have set up the broadcast technology, connected to every world across a single, unified timeline. Slowly, they begin to speak.

Affirmation

It’s weeks later. The affirmation has been broadcast. As we hear its words, we see every world — the 19th century, contemporary London, the Imagined Planet — subjugated to the Director’s rule. The same posters, the same patrolling Daleks, the same smoke and fog clouding the sky.

The Director has established a system where the people of the worlds are either engaged in making — down on the ground in the factories — or they’re using the products of the makers, buying with docile abandon, placated by their mirrors, sending resources back to the makers to continue the cycle.

The Doctor and companion are locked up in parallel temporal cells, unable to leave their solitary confinement. The Doctor knocks on the door again and again, seemingly out of boredom. As robot guards walk in from time to time to provide food and water, the Doctor whistles strange tunes.

The Director, meanwhile, is making deals with the Daleks. If they continue to enforce the norms of the Director’s network, the Director will allow them to rule. The Director makes it explicit that a “strong hand” is needed to keep it on track, to ensure everything sticks to the template.

The Doctor has been knocking on the door at its harmonic frequency. Finally, it gives in, and they walk out and free their companion. As they emerge, they have one question they’ve been pondering for all this time: “Doctor, if the Director is you, where’s the companion?”

The Doctor strides into the Director’s chamber alone. This — the Director’s whole plan, the subjugation of worlds in the name of stability — is not what the Doctor wants. It’s never what they want. As they spar, the penny drops: the Director is from another universe where the Doctor never had a companion. They’ve been alone the whole time, with no community, no friendship, no-one to teach them empathy and kindness. Ultimately, their world disintegrated, and they found their way through a crack in the universe to establish something better.

“It’s too late, Doctor,” the Director says, finally. “I own this universe. I have provided order. It bends to me.”

“I don’t know if everyone agrees,” the Doctor says.

“Correct,” a Dalek announces. “We do not need you. It bends to us. The Doctor is an enemy of the Daleks. The Director is an enemy of the Daleks.” They, of course, have been double-crossing him the whole time. They hold both Time Lords at gunpoint, ready to exterminate. The Director tried to make a partnership with extremists, and it did not work out. They’re both about to die.

But then we realize: the companion isn’t here. The Doctor hadn’t just been whistling at the robot guards; they were being slowly reprogrammed to carry a message. The companion has been using the TARDIS to amplify it and further it across time and space. Because everywhere, no matter how bad things get, “even on the darkest day, there is always someone helping.”

The Doctor has established strong communication channels that cross the stars — a network that even extends to the magic mirrors. We see networks of resistance everywhere, facilitated by the Tuvati people and the companion, making links across time and space. Those same networks of cargo that transmitted goods between their worlds and the Lovely City are used to transmit weapons, materials, pamphlets. They rise up.

We see them swarm the Director’s Palace. The Director’s lack of humanity also made them underestimate the power of people, together. The collaborative masses defeat the Daleks with explosives and baseball bats in the Palace, across the streets, across every world. The factories are halted and the skies clear of clouds. The Director themselves, however, seems to have vanished.

There’s no going back. As an epilogue, we discover that the formerly subjugated people now own the factories and the transport carriers together. They do the work in a way that works for them, and create a peaceful order through collaboration, taught by the Tuvati. They achieve everything the Director set out to do but without subjugation, without fear, without authority.

Finally, the Doctor and companion slip out unnoticed, off to get a well-earned cup of tea.