Was Ncuti Gatwa sacked from Doctor Who?

 

The short answer is no, but that's not going to put me off a clickbait title.  However, I do feel emotionally as though he has been.  

The official explanation is that the BBC is waiting on Disney to decide if it wants to invest in a "Season 3" of  BBCDisney Doctor Who. 

 Apparently Ncuti Gatwa said there was to be such a season (with him in it) when interviewed by Graham Norton but this was edited out pre-broadcast due to changing plans.  All this may be true but his regeneration at the end of the last season was an obviously clunky rewrite that was a sad end to a very enjoyable era of Doctor Who (even if according to the ratings only I and a few diehards were watching).  Ratings for the last series were to say the least dissappointing with at least two episodes dropping below the 3 million mark.  Still, it's doing better than Blue Peter which apparently after it was hived off to CBBC managed to generate some episodes that literally not one person watched (yes, really).  

Although it's not literally true that Ncuti Gatwa was sacked whenever I suggest in any way that the treatment of the first black Dr Who is not a good look for the BBC it amazes me how quickly and vociferously people jump in to correct me.  But here's the thing.  Ncuti Gatwa wasn't fired in the very public way that befell Colin Baker but  ... 

If we think of Doctor Who as a factory that produces Dr Who episodes... if that factory stops making episodes then it has effectively laid off it's workers and that includes both Russell T Davies and Ncuti Gatwa.  That, to me, is very very close to being sacked...?  But not quite.  Let's be polite and call it something else.  Being laid off?

Being laid off can be different to being sacked but it kind of feels like splitting hairs to explain the difference... A company lays someone off [it's happened to me a couple of times] when they want to continue employing them but don't actually have any work and don't want to spend any money so they say "we're not going to pay you but we still want you on our payroll" (usually because looking as though you have staff helps to get new projects in).  

The last Doctor Who to be laid off was Sylvester McCoy who was officially Doctor Who for 9 years - although since production stopped in 1989 and didn't resume until 1996 so spent 7 years working on other projects.  

Now strictly speaking McCoy was not fired from Doctor Who but since they stopped making it ... he kind of was.  It's a bit like saying Timothy Dalton wasn't fired as James Bond ... perhaps not but since the film series ceased in 1989 and didn't resume until 1995 he spent 6 years not ordering vodka martinis after which it seemed his enthusiam for the role had waned... 

Anyway, however the cookie crumbles it seems to me that Ncuti Gatwa has been, to say the least, treated rather shabbily.  Then again sacking Doctor Whos is something that has happened more times than most people care to remember.  Sometimes it's not a straight line between fired and not-fired... sometimes people resign because they kind of feel the gig is up.   That's not being fired but if , for example, we were to take Christopher Ecclestone's version of events at face value (rather than with a pinch of salt) it does sound a bit like constructive dismissal...?

So ... Jodie Whittaker's decision to leave alongside Chris Chibnall seemed a bit premature.  And William Hartnell said that he "did not willingly give up the role" although he was clearly too ill to continue...   

Tom Baker said that he offered his resignation every year (as a negotiating ploy?) and he was surprised when the management said "okay then" ... he also said that he reached a point where he felt he couldn't in all concience go on disagreeing with the management when they were the ones with the right to make decisions...  Christopher Ecclestone definitively said relationships "broke down".  Colin Baker was put on haitus once and then fired after his next series which is kind of like being fired twiceover... 

Anyway, before I end this blog I must move onto my other great heresy - Doctor Who is cancelled.  Yes, it is.  That is what it means when a show is not in production and there are no concrete plans to bring it back.  The BBC blame Disney but ultimately that's blame shifting.  Doctor Who is their property.  Where there's a will there's a way.  There doesn't appear at the moment to be much evidence of will.  I expect the licence fee money is needed for something else...

As to the last two series.  Well, I did enjoy them.  

I enjoyed Ncuti Gatwa particularly but ... whilst I see what Russell T Davies was doing with his pantheon of Gods it did seem to me that it's hard to sustain a sense of genuine threat in entirely fantasy enviroments.  

I rewatched "Genesis of the Daleks" recently and its very hard science fiction based in what has historically happened and what could happen and that makes it very scarey.  All the best horror is psychological, isn't it?  Is it?  But in the words of Ted Bovis "You've got to have reality!"  

That's my 50p.