Why I Nominate Being Human’s Toby Whithouse For Doctor Who Showrunner

Simon Mills is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

First off, I’m a big, big fan of Being Human – Mr Whithouse’s cult hit featuring a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf co-habiting and just trying to survive in this crazy world of ours. He did a splendid job turning this schlocky premise into an emotional roller coaster with added blood, guts and a little bit of nudity. This was a hit right from the start taking the one-off drama to a full series after hugely positive feedback and an online petition, such was its appeal.

Of course, Mr Whithouse isn’t just known for his creation of Being Human (which spawned a US remake that ran for 4 years, by the way) – he also created a show for Channel 4 called No Angels, a comedy-drama centred on four nurses in Leeds which ran for 3 years.

There is also now The Game – a spy drama set in the 70s due to begin airing on BBC America on November 5th. Whithouse was approached by Danny Cohen and Ben Stephenson (controllers of BBC One and BBC Drama Commissioning respectively) to create and write this spy drama back in 2012 and we’re about to see the fruits of that labour. I can’t wait – the trailer’s well worth checking out.

So, not only has he created several popular TV shows, but he has also written for Doctor Who, dontchaknow? Starting with the Series 2 story School Reunion which saw the return of one of Doctor Who‘s best loved companions – Sarah Jane Smith. Oh, and the “tin dog”, K9! His other writing credits include The Vampires of Venice, The God Complex and A Town Called Mercy – more on those later.

Now, on to the matter at hand. Why would he make a good show runner for Doctor Who? Well, he already has the fantasy genre experience with Being Human and has proven that he can run a show as well as write for it and has a great talent for comedy and darkness in equal measure. Who would have thought that a grown man, such as I, would be brought to tears by the self sacrifice of a vampire responsible for such mass slaughter as that perpetrated by Mitchell?

He also has history as an actor, putting in the hours and hard graft, appearing in episodes of the TV shows House of Eliott and Holby City, as well as several other roles on the big screen, such as Alistair in Bridget Jones’ Diary – I won’t list them all here, you can look them up if you want a filmography. Not only has he experience of acting in film and TV, but he has also trod the boards in the West End until he became frustrated at the lack of quality in the scripts he was being shown and decided he could do better himself. So he did. Writing in his spare time between acting gigs he wrote an award winning play, Jump Mr. Malinoff, Jump which lead to his first TV writing credit on Where The Heart Is.

Whithouse is also a stand up comic, so is perfectly capable of throwing out the witty one-liners and crushing put-downs that comics use on hecklers. A useful skill for someone who would be in charge of the Doctor Who Juggernaut!

Let’s take a closer look at Whithouse’s first script for Doctor Who, School Reunion – when RTD decided that he wanted to bring Sarah Jane Smith into the show for a guest appearance there was much debate over whether or not this would be tacky and be viewed as just an attempt to please fanboys. However, with RTD’s guidance and Toby’s skill we ended up with a great story that expanded on what we knew about Sarah Jane and gave her a whole new heart-felt depth. An unrequited love that stayed with her for all those years and those scenes with David Tennant’s 10th Doctor… Pure magic! Especially, the final farewell.

Like most other writers on nuWho, Whithouse’s scripts do tend to split opinion at times. I am not a particular fan of either Vampires of Venice or The God Complex, but Vampires was written very early on in the Eleventh Doctor’s run and does have some very funny scenes. We should also note that this was a replacement story for The God Complex which got bumped to the next series for being similar in tone to other stories in series 5. Speaking of God, this story explored the Doctor’s personality to an extent, questioning his habit of making people believe in him more than themselves. This story also piqued our curiosity; just WHAT did the Doctor see in that room that represented his greatest fear??? My theory is that he saw himself – all alone.

What about A Town Called Mercy? This is a great tale exploring morality and vengeance in a western setting via the device of a cyborg gunslinger and a morally dubious alien Doctor – not OUR alien Doctor but another alien Doctor. The western setting is one not attempted since… ahem… The Gunfighters in 1966 – widely regarded as one of Doctor Who’s lowest points. However, sparkling dialogue, great performances and fantastic scenery elevate this story many orders of magnitude over and above The Gunfighters. We also see the Doctor seeming to act out of character by wielding a gun and appearing to condemn someone to certain death. Whithouse certainly seems to enjoy exploring the outer limits of the Doctor’s personality. Surely, a good thing for the future showrunner to do?

Shall we talk about his Torchwood episode? It would be remiss of me not to include it here, so “Greeks Bearing Gifts” was the 7th episode of the first season and featured a member of an alien species that communicates by telepathy through the use of pendants. Tosh is given one of these pendants and what follows is a slick tale about the consequences of being able to read people’s minds and how overwhelming that can be, not to mention all the stuff you DON’T want to know about the people you care for. This again touches on what it means to have power and what you would do with it. Tosh wisely decides in the end to destroy the artefact.

So, we can see that Whithouse clearly has the right pedigree of running a successful genre show, Being Human with the experience as an actor so he knows what it’s like on both sides of the camera. He has the consummate skill of being able to write comedy, horror and drama and the ability to blend them to great effect. He’s an award winner. He loves Doctor Who, but isn’t a fanboy like Davies and Moffat – which I see as “a good thing”

One final little nugget of goodness I’ll leave you with. When asked in March 2013 (about taking over from Moffatt, he noted that he’s currently busy now and for the foreseeable future with his new drama, The Game, but… ‘I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued by the idea, but also it would be terrifying.‘It’s definitely something I’d be really tempted by but I’m genuinely not in any hurry to do it.’

So, maybe in a year or two when The Game is established and is up and running, he could take a back seat on that and take a lead on running Doctor Who? Or maybe we could see him as a creative consultant – a sort of voice of reason with some great ideas who could turn around to whoever runs the the show and tells them not to be so stupid when they come up with laughable notions such as “paving slab sexual innuendo” or “wasps in human form that actually say ‘buzz’”. You get the idea.

So, let’s hear it for the multi-talented comic-playwright-actor-showrunner and future Doctor Who supremo, King Toby the First!

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