Jacks February Update

 

Hi folks. We're now a month into 2026 and the gears are starting to grind on a few projects. As mentioned previously, a lot of the stuff I'm working on is going to take some time, so expect long quiet periods with not much to report. That being said, I'm still planning on getting out there to promote my stuff. With that in mind, here's what's happening in the next few months.

I have, at present, four confirmed conventions set for this year.

- On 7th March I'll be returning once again to the Whitehaven Mini-Con at the Solway Hall, with a second table selling old graphic novels that I want to get shifted.

- On 28th March I'll be at Carlisle Comic Con at the Richard Rose Centre. I had a really great time last year so I'm hoping once again to meet some great people and share my work.

- On 23rd May I'll be at Newcastle Comic Con at Sports Central. First time giving this one a go, so not sure what to expect but I'll be bringing my A-game as always.

- On 14th June I'll be returning to Newcastle for Newcastle Unleashed at the Vertu Motors Arena, so if you're in Newcastle you have two opportunities to pick up physical copies of my work drop on by.

Additionally, some other stuff to put out there:

The Beacon at Whitehaven is currently showcasing the Famous and Forgotten Comics exhibit. It's a cool little gallery with some original art from iconic stories and historically significant series. Plus the Beacon gift shop has a stock of my Whitehaven Siege comics, just in case you fancy picking one up on the way out.

Last month I put out a column going through my thoughts on a potential Warhammer 40'000 TV show. If you missed it you can read it here. It was pretty well received and got some good conversations going. I'm considering writing up some other columns on similar subjects, so keep your eyes peeled.

With that out of the way, as ever, you can find my work, art, thoughts and whatever over on Bluesky, AO3, Tumblr and Deviantart.

Thanks for reading.

Why That Warhammer 40'000 TV Show Is Probably Never Going To Happen.

 

I know you probably don't want to hear this, but that Henry Cavill Warhammer 40k TV show is probably not going to happen.

Don't feel bad. It was always going to be a long shot.

If you're a Warhammer fan of any stripe chances are you will have fantasised about a 40k movie or TV show at one time or another. This is not unusual. When you have a niche interest then mainstream live-action productions can frequently feel like cultural approval. "You were always right to like this thing."

It's a mostly false assumption, of course. You shouldn't need external validation to like the things you like. Fallout isn't any more a valid fictional work than Halo just because Fallout had a successful TV show while Halo's flopped, but to Halo fans it obviously stings a bit when they hear colleagues around the water cooler talking about Fallout when they could have been talking about Halo.

So when we get titbits of news about a Warhammer TV show or a movie happening we tend to hold onto them like a flotation aid. "It's going to happen," we tell ourselves "Mainstream acceptance at last!" The truth of the matter is, however, that hope alone isn't going to deliver these fantasies, and Warhammer 40k, a fictional setting that is defined frequently by the very absence of hope, has a difficult road to walk before your work colleges will be gushing about Roboute Guilliman around the water cooler.

I've always wanted to see a successful 40k TV show or movie some day, but I know how unlikely a proposition that is, not just from my degree in media and film production, but also just from paying attention to the film and TV landscape of the last fifteen years. Just because, against all odds, we got a successful TV show based on Fallout, doesn't make a 40k TV show any more likely.

In fact, keep Fallout in your mind for now, because that's a good place to weave into the first and primary issue a 40k show is going to have to face.

Part One: Budget.

TV shows are expected to make money. You know this. However, they work a little differently from films because they are not a "one time charge," product like movies are. With films, a studio creates the product (shoots the movie,) makes it available for purchase (puts it in cinemas,) charges for the product (sells tickets,) and then hope their takings outweigh their expenditure (if enough tickets are sold, the cost of the movie is paid for, and everything else is profit.)

With TV, everything is a little more opaque. You don't pay a one time charge for every episode of The Traitors you watch. Instead, TV shows are expected to "contribute," to an overall entertainment and media service. The more viewers the shows get, the more money the company can make, either through advertising (the more viewers you pull in, the more you can charge potential clients,) or through subscriptions (the more viewers you have, the more likely they are to keep paying you month-by-month, and the higher you can charge them.)

(Note: One exception here is state broadcasters like the BBC, which do not work towards a profit and instead is paid for by a licence fee. It's a little more complicated in their regard, but ultimately they still have to justify their existence by pulling in decent viewing numbers.)

All this is to say, TV services do not want to spend a lot of money if they can get away with it. Winning back their costs can be much harder than film. It's why they commission so many reality TV shows. A low budget show failing to find an audience is bad, but an expensive TV show failing to find an audience can be catastrophic. It's the kind of situation people lose their jobs over, or in worse cases can doom entire networks.

"But Jack!" I hear you cry. "What about Fallout? That was a weird risk based on a niche IP that was no doubt very expensive to to pull off, and that made it to air!"

So, the thing is, I get it. Fallout is based around an IP set in a universe of very specific, hyper technical lore and backstory, with a unique aesthetic and involves guys in big suits of power armour shooting guns. Sure. If they can pull off a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin, they can pull off a Space Marine Terminator, right?

See, you're not wrong. We really are living in an era where studios are willing to take a greater chance on more risky projects. In many ways this was thanks to Game of Thrones, which at the time was a very risky proposition that many predicted would be an expensive disaster. Thrones became a massive hit, and a huge earner for HBO. Many of the folks involved would become household names. It's genuinely surprising that a TV show based around the kind of story only my D&D group would have been interested in became a common subject of discussion by my Dad's mates at rugby matches.

But Game of Thrones, and even Fallout, is a galaxy away from something like 40k. Fallout is still, by and large, a setting that you can film mostly with sets and locations. It's going to take place in dusty desert environments, or ruined convenience stores, something that US TV production has an abundance of. Game of Thrones, taking place in a world and time completely separate from ours, could be filmed with locations and props rooted within our real world past.

Take a look at one image from Warhammer 40'000, though. Any one. A codex cover. A video game screenshot. A diorama of the models themselves. What is the first thing that jumps out to you?

These images are BUSY. They are often filled with large groups of people, huge, titanic machines and buildings in the background. Artifacts and livery are emblazoned on nearly every piece of clothing. Purity seals rustle in the breeze. Cyber-cherubs glide through the sky. Servitors cluster around broken vehicles as soldiers, dead in the eye, charge towards their next brush with death.

In 2010, Games Workshop released their very first attempt at at a Warhammer 40'000 cinematic production. It was called Ultramarines. It used state of the art CGI and motion capture technology. It had an all-star cast of venerable British actors and a script penned by Dan Abnett, author of many beloved 40k novels. It flopped spectacularly and was dismissed by almost everybody as a failed experiment.

The film had many problems. The script was bland and unadventurous. The CGI looked simplistic and was compared unfavourably to video game cutscenes. However, the real problem is clear as day to those who think about it. The film just looks too empty. While the Space Marines and their weapons are rendered in loving detail, the sets around them are starkly lacking in anything at all. Open hanger bays and flat desert environments are the stage on which this adventure is set. It were as though the film took place on an empty Garry's Mod server.

For a 40k story this is a big problem! Where are the servitors, clanking to their work? Where are the servo skulls buzzing around? Where are the inconceivably large ruins tangled in colossal pipes and support beams, flanked by titanic statues of warriors and saints?

More than anything else, it is the sheer amount of "stuff," going on that really makes 40k what is is, and that isn't something that you can do on the cheap.

Now I can already hear you typing. "Well why not start small? We don't need to go right into a massive story. Start with something like Gaunt's Ghosts, where all the heroes and antagonists are human, or tell a story about a small war-band investigating a low-tech planet!" I understand that instinct. If budget is the problem then why don't we shrink things down? Why not strip away the bigger stuff at first until the show has a sizeable enough audience that can then coax the studio into giving them a bigger budget?

Here you have two problems. Firstly, budget isn't a matter of "big is expensive, small is cheap." HBO's Deadwood was famously one of the most expensive TV shows ever made at the time it went to air, and that show just took place on one old-time wild-west street. Using CGI and blue-screen can often be MORE expensive than locations or sets. Productions can bleed money in a variety of ways. Writing a story about an Inquisition agent trailing a fugitive in just a single Hive City block sounds like it could be done on the cheap, but it could just as easily become astronomically expensive as it is, putting aside the fact that even a small scale-40k story has to have weapons and armour purpose built for the show. They can't just do what Alien Earth did and get some off-the-shelf helmets and fatigues and slap some Pulse-Rifle looking frames on existing gun props.

Problem number two is the bigger one though. That's not Warhammer 40'000. That's a story SET in Warhammer 40'000. The difference? Well imagine if they did a Fallout TV show and it was set entirely within a vault. Just the characters getting swept up in drama and adventure, but they never actually enter the wasteland. Sure you could do a decent story with that framework. There's no reason why a Fallout story can't be set entirely within a vault, but fans of the games are going to spend the entire viewing experience as Milhouse asking when they are going to get to the fireworks factory. As for the new audiences, they might very well enjoy that show, but it would not be representative of the "Fallout experience." Half the appeal would be lost in adaption.

They didn't do that though did they? They asked "What is the core Fallout experience, in brief?" The answer is, generally, "Naive and inexperienced vault dweller is forced to leave their relative safety and learn to survives in a hostile wasteland, learning about the strange state of the world from both new friends and enemies."

That is exactly what they delivered when the first season went to air.

So what is the core Warhammer 40'000 experience? Fundamentally it is "Massive armies clash in a nightmare future war." Massive armies. Nightmare future. This is WARhammer. In this dark future there is ONLY WAR. You can't justify a WARhammer TV show that is about an Inquisitor or Assassin on a lone mission, or a small squad on a tactical raid. "Massive armies, going to war." That is what will be expected, that is what will be needed, this is what Games Workshop is going to want as a forward facing part of their brand, and anything else, even if good, would be misrepresentative of what 40k is supposed to be about.

You have to ask if it would be even remotely possible to pull that off on a TV budget.

Part 2: Marketability

So lets say we nail it anyway. We get a smart and savvy show-runner that knows how to squeeze every cent out of their budget and a writing team that can make every second of screen time feel like a genuine 40k experience. This is still something you're going to need to get broadcasters, investors, shareholders and distributors behind.

If you're a deep fan of 40k it might be easy to forget just how weird this fictional setting is. A lot of people compare it to Dune, or Alien, and make the argument that Event Horizon is an unofficial prequel (it isn't, and it never will be, stop trying to make that a thing,) but the truth is that 40k is far stranger than all of those by design. The Imperium of Man is supposed to be as off-putting as possible in such a way that it can feel more alien to us than some of the aliens in 40k do.

This is a setting that has a church more perverse than the most oppressive theocracies in history. This is a setting where your average Joe works morning noon and night in lung blackening conditions all to get by long enough for their children to grow up and do an even worse job. That is if they aren't lobotomised and turned into cyborg servitors first, or recruited to die an agonising death in a war on the other side of the galaxy.

This is a setting where a single second's thought of resistance can see you executed in the most heinous way, thanks to the merest possibility that your thoughts for a better life leave you open to demonic possession, and if your fight for a better life did ever get off the ground, there's the very real possibility that it gets co-opted by the aforementioned demons or alien parasites and just ends up making everything worse.

Oh, and also there's a bunch of big green aliens that look and act like cartoon characters and spend their entire lives acting like they are in hyper-violent Buster Keaton routines.

Oh, and the Elves from Lord of the Rings are there basically playing 4-D chess with galactic politics.

Oh and there are a bunch of metal spooky scary skeletons that...

You get the idea.

Point is, the 40k setting is a really difficult fictional world to introduce to an audience going in blind. To compare this to Fallout again, that show simply needed to explain that "Nuclear war happened, there's robots and mutants and future-knights, and a bunch of people living in bunkers, and everything is like the 50s." That's not too much of a hurdle, and given that most people have seen one of the Mad Max films, they're probably already halfway there before the end of the first episode.

40k though? There's so much you need to get through. Sure you can leave out the backstory of the Emperor, servitors, how the warp works, what exactly Space Marines are, etc, but the problem is if you leave too much unexplained it is going to become a problem further down the line. This will especially be a problem when adapting a pre-existing story from one of the books or comics, because those were written under the assumption that the reader already has a familiarity with the setting in the first place.

That isn't to say it can't be done. I think a lot of the video games do a good job of quickly explaining to the player everything they need to know before going into battle, but video games aren't TV. You can get away with over-explaining background lore in games in a way you can't really in live action drama. In playing Darktide, for example, through interactions with the medical and armoury servitors, we immediately understand their role and purpose within the setting without ever having to be sat down and told what they are. A TV show might have a more difficult time applying show-don't-tell to the setting's more weirder aspects, and that's even before a story of bleak, oppressive totalitarianism introduces something wacky and over-the-top like Nurglings or the Orks.

On top of all this, you have to remember, that executives don't like risks. Believe me when I say that the people at the top have no idea what they are doing, so nine times out of ten they just try and copy what is already successful. This is how you end up with every studio trying to start a cinematic universe after the success of the Avengers. This is how you end up with a dozen Game of Thrones spin-offs and knock-offs. These are the kind of people you need to convince a TV show is worth spending money on.

"It's like Dune!" you plead, as they take a look of concept art of a big green monster that almost certainly doesn't come from Denis Villeneuve's beautifully cerebral fever dream. "Uh... with a bit of Lord of the Rings!" you add, as they flip through the script to be confronted with a scene that uses words like "Immaterium," "Astropath," and "Gellar fields," You pull at your collar, sweat running down your brow. "Uhh... you ever see the film Event Horizon?"

The things is, they are not just the ones you have to convince. With any pitch, there are multiple points of failure, from the executives at the top, to the broadcasters that set the budget, scheduling teams who pick the timeslot, to the test audiences that can trap it in development limbo, to the final viewing figures that can doom the project on day one.

This is a difficult proposition for any TV show, but it's going to be a particular uphill struggle for something that is going to use the word "Omnissiah," on a regular basis. A 40k show is going to have to jump through so many hoops from concept to screen, in order to get the support it requires, the budget it needs, and to be able to actually advertise and sell itself to the general public.

And even after all of that, there's no guarantee it'll actually be good.

Part Three: Fan Reaction.

When Star Wars: The Last Jedi came out in 2017 I heard about the reactions first. Fans were abandoning the franchise after years of dedication, online chatter suggested. Star Wars had been ruined beyond repair, I was told. I was left wondering what lore-breaking controversial changes had been made that would cause such an uproar.

Then I went to see the film and it was a normal Star Wars film where normal Star Wars stuff happens.

I'm not going to litigate the reaction to The Last Jedi here, but I think there is no better example of how we now live in a world where fan expectation can blow things completely out of proportion. Thanks to the internet, amongst other culprits, fandom disappointment can now be turned into a world altering event. It would be funny if wasn't for the actual harm that comes from fan backlash. Harassment, stalking, death threats and worse have all manifests from the unhealthy obsession that fandom has festered into in certain corners of society.

40k is no different in this regard, but no other IP is situated to be such a perfect breeding ground for unrealistic expectations and petulant backlash. Given the size of the franchise, and the fact that this is a big universe being adapted, not a linier story, it is going to be almost impossible to please everyone. 40k means different things to different people and what a TV show chooses to prioritise is going to appeal to some and alienate others.

The titular Space Marines, for example, are beloved by many fans but despised by others for their tendency to steal the spotlight from the other factions. A TV show that dedicates an inordinate amount of time to our big boys in big shoulder pads is almost certainly going to bristle against fans who want to see parts of the wider galaxy. A TV show that locks itself purely into the point of view of human protagonists is going to struggle to win over the fans who like to experience the story from the alien and supernatural perspectives.

On top of that there's just the general tendency for fans to bend themselves out of shape over the most trivial of details. Last year Games Workshop famously drew the ire of some fans over the introduction of a female member of the Adeptus Custodes faction, due to them being related to the more traditional Space Marines, who have long been described as an all-male army, an aspect of canon that the fanbase frequently argues over.

Certain fans are going to be willing to write the show off wholesale over minor inaccuracies. More extreme parts of the internet will drive themselves into a frenzy over larger ones. Something as minor as depicting a weapon working differently, or a character acting more or less powerful than usual has the potential to light the tinderbox. Including an element that contradicts a larger part of canon runs the risk of a massive backlash. All this in spite of the fact that Games Workshop have gone on record that 40k is supposed to be a universe of inaccuracies and misinformation, and thus any part of canon is liable to be re-written at any given time.

There's also the uncomfortable fact that a lot of Nazis really like 40k.

This comes to the bemusement of many because 40k is a fictional setting that unambiguously depicts fascism, religious fanaticism and authoritarianism as evil and stupid, but it isn't that surprising. As mentioned earlier, 40k is an IP first and foremost, not a singular story. This primarily leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

There's an entire other article to be written on why the far right will happily latch on to a franchise that is meant to be explicitly anti-fascist, so let me just say that if you buy the models and play the games you are mostly free to pick and choose what you want to pay attention to as far as the background story is concerned. It really isn't that much of a jump to convince yourself that the Imperium is not a nightmare future scenario that must be avoided at all costs, but a blueprint of a society that is justified in its atrocities in the name of survival.

Games Workshop has tried to pry off the fascist portion of the fan base many times but here they still remain, fused to the wood like barnacles, and they'll be the first to hit the message boards the moment a TV show happens to depict something that isn't to their liking, which, you know, probably ought to be something within the first ten seconds if you're writing this correctly.

So, given that a 40k TV show has to contend not only with the expectations of a predictably rabid fanbase, but also the very people it is supposed to be criticising, there's an almost non-zero chance that somebody on the creative team, be it a writer, director, or more than likely, actor, finds themselves in the firing line of fan-ire. Harassment, death threats, you know the deal by now.

An ecosystem like that is going to make one wonder why you'd even want to bother doing an adaption at all.

And that's the million-dollar question here. Even if you can secure that budget, and put together a pilot that can sell 40k to a general audience, how do manage the sprawling masses of fans, many of whom have very different priorities and expectations? How do you make sure it doesn't balloon into an uncontrollable backlash? If the Last Jedi, a, frankly, very safe and normal Star Wars movie, caused a fan schism that derailed careers, what hope is there for a 40k series that has almost no chance of being able to please everybody in the first place?

Conclusion: That Warhammer 40'000 TV show is probably never going to happen

I want to be wrong about this. I really do want to see the 40k universe in live action. TV, movie, whatever, I want to be able to sit down and watch Hollywood actors dressed in extravagant costumes use words like "Ministorum," and "Gargant," with a straight face. I want to see massive armies clash in the mud and the dirt as demons cackle and servo-skulls whizz through the air. I want Henry Cavill to actually get a project that he sees through to the end.

Yet, I think I've made it pretty clear the hurdles the project needs to jump over. 40k isn't another sci-fi property that Amazon or Netflix just needs to throw a decent budget at to get to work. This isn't Foundation, or Halo, and it certainly isn't Fallout. There's no pre-existing example that serves as a route to success.

Unlike the 40k setting, however, hope still exists, in one form or another. There's a spark, a possibility, that this whole thing will come together. I want to believe that. I want to be sitting here in a couple of years time writing "We got a 40k TV show, it was great, and here's how they pulled it off."

That'd be nice right? It's probably never going to happen though, and no amount of news updates every six months saying Henry Cavill is totally getting his shoulder pauldrons measured right now is going to change that.

--------------------

Jack Harvey 2026. Images used under Fair Use. Warhammer 40'000 is (c) Games Workshop.

Jack's December Update

 

Hello all. This blog has been very scant of updates this year, mostly due to a multitude of factors. Don't get the idea that I haven't been working on stuff. I have actually been writing a lot throughout the year, but mostly on projects that I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with yet. I know that getting a comic or story out every couple of months feels more productive, but hey, I try to do what I can.

With that in mind, there's not a great deal of stuff to talk about at the moment, but here's a little rundown of what's been going on.

A handful of copies of Scoundrels, Scumbags and Schemers are on sale at Secret Identity Comics in Chester. If you've been looking for a physical version and you're in the area you can grab a copy there, but no doubt they'll sell out quick. I also highly recommend the place. It's a great comic shop.

In case you missed it I posted a short story this year, Hunting Season, with cover art by Windlass. I've put together a zine sized print edition to sell at conventions, so you'll be seeing those grace my table throughout the year.

Speaking of conventions, I'm still in the process of putting my appearances together this year, but I can confirm that I will once again be at Whitehaven Mini-Con, which is back in its usual slot of 7th March 2026.

And that's about it for now. Hope to have more specific projects to talk about next year, but for now, here's to 2025!

Hunting Season - A Short Fable

It has been a while, but I promised you some new stories were coming with some amazing artwork from Anna Windlass to go with it and I am here to deliver.

Monster Hunter Titus has been summoned to the court of King Elmor with orders to investigate a mysterious cult that is riling up the peasantry and may have it's origins in the occult. Along the way Titus crosses paths with a mysterious vagabond known as Praxis, who claims to come from another world and knows more about the true origins of the cult and it's monstrous abilities.  Unbeknownst to each other, however, Titus and Praxis have their own secrets and agendas, and the real hunting season is about to begin.

Hunting Season is a story that blends elements from both Doctor Who and The Witcher in an attempt to deconstruct and subvert them. While it does not explicitly reference or feature characters from either franchise, you can treat it as a crossover if you squint, but is essentially written as a story "inspired by" these worlds rather than taking place within them. Think of it of a kind of mashup/remix.

Hunting Season is a story that blends elements from both Doctor Who and The Witcher in an attempt to deconstruct, subvert and experiment with elements of those stories and characters. Think of it of a kind of mashup/remix, but it is ultimately an original work in its own right.

You can read the whole thing here.

Thanks again to Windlass for an amazing job on the cover, and thanks to all of you who keep me interested in writing.

Jack's September Update, or Why Things Have Been so Quiet Around Here Lately.

 

Hi folks. It is news to nobody that this blog has been pretty slim on both updates and content recently. In fact it has had the least amount of updates since I started this blog in 2008. There's a reason for that, and I figured I'd go into some of the details here, maybe just for my own benefit than anything else.

Truth is I've kind of been in a depressive spiral since November of last year. 2024 was a hectic year. There was a lot of stuff that I wanted to get done, like the print editions of my work, and multiple significant conventions that I wanted to make the most of. I figured if I just got my head down and kept at it, I could just then relax over the Christmas period and brace myself for the new year.

However, the Christmas period did not relax me. I'd burnt myself out over 2024, so I decided to dial back the amount of events I'd do in 2025 and projects that I wanted to take on. This then had the knock-on effect of demoralising me more, making me feel like I was lacking forward momentum and squandering the year. Combined with some personal stuff just making things worse, I started to feel swamped even with the reduced workload.

Eventually I could feel myself slipping back to the anxiety ridden depressive that I was before I went through therapy in 2016. I knew then that I needed to get myself checked out. I'm currently back in therapy now, and while it's slow going, just admitting to the problem managed to take some of the weight off my mind.

I haven't been completely unproductive. I've been spending a lot of time working on the script for a 16 issue long comic series. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but I'm leaning towards turning it into a webcomic. I've been practising page layouts to get back into the swing of things.

I've also been making plans to try and consolidate my works online. Right now this blog is only getting me so far, and I could really use a proper website that collects all of my most recent work, as well as directs people to where they can buy my books and comics. I think if I want to start taking things seriously I need to focus a lot more on the admin side of things.

So, where do I stand right now? I'll be away travelling for a few weeks in September, which hopefully will let me take my mind of things and release some of the pressure. I've no more conventions planned for this year, but I do have a couple projects on the go that'll be going up some time later this year.

In the meantime I'll still be working on my artwork as normal, and trying to figure out what I'm eventually going to do with this script. As ever, you can find me posting on Bluesky, Tumblr and Deviantart.

I'll leave you with a couple of 40k fan comics that I did for practice.

Thanks for reading!

What's Been Going On with the Pathfinder Comics?

 

Ten years ago I wrote an Obscure Comic of the Month Special Edition about the first three volumes of Dynamite's Pathfinder comic, penned by Jim Zub and illustrated by a rotating selection of artists. I had nothing but glowing praise for the comic, pegging it as maybe the ideal iteration of a party-basted fantasy series.

In the intervening years Jim Zub has moved on to become a mainstay writer for the Dungeons and Dragons comics, Dynamite found itself courting controversy by allegedly supporting creators with less than progressive political viewpoints, Pathfinder saw the release of its second edition, and the Pathfinder setting itself has gone on to have featured in not one but two smash hit isometric RPG video games.

The comic, meanwhile, has continued to be published on and over the course of these years, seeing a couple stops and starts, crossovers and semi-reboots. All this leads us to ask, with Jim Zub's departure, has the comic managed to maintain the quality of its storytelling and the magnetism of its characters?

Well... not really, but let's take a look at each story arc volume by volume and break down what worked, what didn't and where it might go in the future.

Origins (2015)

When we last saw our protagonists they were becoming firmly established as members of the Pathfinder society, Seoni was finding renewed confidence as the group's leader, Ezren was finally fulfilling his ambitions as an adventurer, and Merisiel and Kyra had started a burgeoning romance. What then, was the story to do to further these characters and greater develop their arcs?

To look backwards, of course.

When you slap the name "Origins," on something you generally tend to know what you're in for. It's usually a prequel of some kind, showing how the characters started and foreshadow critical story beats that will become important later.

The framing device for this series involves our six heroes being asked to recount tails of their heroism to a superior at the Pathfinder society, which ultimately leads them to recalling a time before they banded together, and, as the story progresses, discover that all the stories link together in some way and involve stopping an ultimate threat in the final issue.

Curiously, despite the name, the stories told are frequently not origin stories in the strictest sense, and most involve the characters themselves being firmly established as adventurers to begin with. Instead, the stories serve to introduce a new selection of characters to the audience, in order to weave them in and out of future stories as the comic demands.

This is an element that had also been part of the Pathfinder comics from the start. Pathfinder as a tabletop RPG has always marketed itself heavily around it's "Iconics." Pre-made characters through which new players could jump right into the action. Seoni, Ezren and the gang were all created for the game long before the comic ever debuted, and as the story unfolded, other Iconics would cameo here and there, with info in the back of the book for curious readers interested in checking out the game.

During Zub's tenure these cameos were executed pretty seamlessly, weaved naturally into the story, even when it was pretty clear they were also serving as advertisements for the game. Come Origins, however, the format has never looked so blatant. Each issue involves one of our characters recalling a tale from before the party's formation and, like clockwork, cross paths with a new, previously unknown character that is shown to be a big deal.

It's not that great of a deal-breaker, but the noticeable difference from how Zub's tenure dealt with the cameos is just one of the giveaways that the writing team taking over feel like an obvious step down. Origins has three different writers, Eric Mona, James L. Sutter, F. Wesley Schneider, who I am given to understand are writing staff from the tabletop game side of the franchise. While they are no doubt served well with an extensive knowledge of Pathfinder lore, they are noticeably not writers with the same kind of experience Zub had.

That's not to say that Origins is bad, but its stories are, at best, serviceable. The action is exciting, the jokes are funny and the mysteries are fun to uncover, and the artwork is as fantastic as ever (even if it still has the problem of Pathfinder's over-design addiction,) but it is lacking the kind of spark Zub brought to the previous three volumes. Going from City of Secrets to Origins makes you feel like all the chemistry has been sucked out of the characters. Their dialogue feels more stiff and wooden at times. Especially Ezren, who just feels a lot less fun in this series.

Origins was decent enough to avoid killing my interest in Pathfinder stone dead, but it was clear from the outset that the loss of Zub as the main writer was a serious problem that the comics were going to struggle with, and as the series continued into its fifth volume, it's not a problem they were quick to resolve.

Hollow Mountain (2016)

Eric Mona, James L. Sutter and F. Wesley Schneider continue their tenure as writers on the Pathfinder comics and thus the problems that held back Origins continue to persist. Valeros, Seoni and the gang all feel like shadows of their former selves. The romantic chemistry that is really required to sell us on Merisiel and Kyra's relationship is direly missing. The characterisation continues, sadly, to feel somewhat hollow. Pun intended.

Its good thing, then, that Hollow Mountain manages to make up for these shortfalls by just having a solid, banger premise. Hollow Mountain is an ancient fortress built by the Runelords, filled with arcane knowledge, deadly traps, and an ancient artefact that our heroes must locate while clashing with another, less scrupulous band of adventurers.

Its a classic set up for a tabletop adventure, and that is exactly what the story proceeds to do. While the new writing team may have struggled with characterisation, you can really see their background writing for the tabletop RPG come to the fore here. Hollow Mountain becomes probably the most "tabletop campaign," feeling story arc in the series, and that is very much to its benefit. The comic really takes advantage of its six issue length, pulling out a plethora of deadly monsters and devious obstacles.

Additionally, our obligatory "Iconic cameos," this time round are presented as a rival band of adventures that our heroes have to contend with, and as such it feels much less egregious than how it was dealt with in Origins. Characters like Damiel the alchemist would go on to resurface during later story arcs and their reappearances feel much more natural as recurring characters.

All things considered, Hollow Mountain works as a bold, blockbuster experience. Lacking in depth, maybe, but chock to the gills with great action and nail biting thrills. Ending on a cliffhanger, it leads us right into the next main story arc.

Runescars (2018)

The next story arc pulls our heroes into the case of a mysterious killer, which eventually sprawls out into a wider conflict. Sutter and Schneider continue writing duties without any presence of Eric Mona this time around, and I'm happy to say their character writing has improved overall. While still not feeling as smooth as it was in the Zub penned stories, the characters start to feel more like their old selves than the somewhat cardboard versions we had to deal with in the last two arcs.

Runescars is a story that starts to delve more specifically into the world-building of the Pathfinder setting, something that the previous stories used more as set dressing. Here we're given more specifics into global politics and start getting introduced to nations like Korvosa and it's militant Death Knights. It's a welcome change and helps the story feel as though it has its own identity in comparison to Hollow Mountain which, despite being the stronger story, did feel as though it was just dipping into the fantasy kitchen sink.

Runescars also introduces us to Detective Quinn, who would quickly become a recurring character. Quinn is sardonic and charismatic and brings a welcome new perspective to the cast of characters. He's also another example of using the unwritten "Iconic cameo," mandate to good effect. Due to this beginning as a murder mystery, his presence feels like a natural extension of the story and not just an advertisement for another character sheet.

Runescars is somewhat chaotic and meanders at times, but it has some strong twists and character work, like Valeros burgeoning friendship with the stern swords-woman Tanin. There's also plenty of action and excitement to keep the ball rolling, and as the story continues on, it further hints towards future stories that began to be seeded back in Hollow Mountain.

With Sutter and Schneider's writing feeling much stronger, Runescars ends its run on what feels like a positive note, with the comic getting back on track towards something with a stronger foundation after the shaky few years of trying to find its feet after Zub's departure.

Worldscape (2017)

While it started its publication before Runescars, Worldscape chronologically takes place after it, which is why I'm slotting it in here. Marketed as a big crossover event, Worldscape sees the Pathfinder cast cross paths with the plethora of pulp heroes that Dynamite comics had the licence for, from John Carter of Mars, to Tarzan to Red Sonja. All written by Eric Mona which explains his absence on Runescars.

Worldscape is a typical crossover affair. The characters are all pulled into a mysterious dimension where they are free to battle, team up and double-cross each other without any greater consequences to the fictional worlds from which they originate. It's mostly an excuse for a big old team up and to have a bunch of characters be smashed together like action figures.

All in all, the story is fine, serviceable fair, but it does feel like a squandered opportunity. I often find the real appeal of crossovers is to see how the different characters react when coming into contact with different perspectives and philosophies. For example, probably the best scene in the first Batman/Judge Dredd crossover is when Dredd has Batman in a cell and is interrogating him, which is far more interesting than any of the scenes where they team up for an action sequence.

Worldscape, by contrast, mostly just has the characters team up and fight the bad guys. There some distrust and double-crossing along the way, but for the most part we see little of how these characters relate to each other when outside of combat. Which is a shame, especially when you have characters like Red Sonja who could serve as an excellent foil for the more upstanding members of the Pathfinder team.

All things considered, Worldscape could get away with being considered superfluous, if not for the fact that the comic has a subplot concerning Merisiel's backstory that eventually gets elaborated upon further in the main series. While not unwelcome, I did find it's inclusion as a somewhat baffling choice given the otherwise throwaway nature of the crossover itself.

Worldscape's storyline was fully wrapped up in six issues, but it would later see further issues published that feature other Iconics from the Pathfinder world and elaborate what they got up to and who they crossed paths with within the Worldscape. Much like the main series, they are enjoyable but mostly disposable.

Spiral of Bones (2018)

With the conclusion of Runescars and the concurrently running Worldscape, the tenure of Mona, Sutter and Schneider's writing on the series was at an end. I don't know it it was always intended to be a temporary arrangement or if a decision was made from the top, but the next arc, Spiral of Bones, would see Crystal Frasier take over as lead writer. While Frasier was recruited from the Pathfinder writing team, she also had a background in webcomics, and would later go on to work in comic writing full time.

It is no surprise to say then, that with Frasier taking the lead, the quality of the writing shoots back up immediately. Spiral of Bones gets off to a roaring start as a typical questing romp, before swerving into far more interesting and high concept ideas.

Perhaps the story's greatest strength is the decision to focus specifically on Valeros as the point of view character. While far from being one-note, Valeros had previously very much been played as a secondary character. There for some comic relief and action sequences, but he mostly stepped aside to let the other, more nuanced characters get the limelight.

Instead, Frasier decides to dig deep into the character's background and see what makes him tick, all through the framing device of Valeros being put on trail in the afterlife for the fate of his immortal soul. The story makes great use of taking a character that lacks little ambition beyond seeking excitement for the day and a flagon of ale at the end of it, and unfurls a character being crushed under the weight of self esteem and peer pressure.

Not only does this serve as an interesting character piece, but it also allows the story to get more wild and cosmic. We get to dig more into the cosmology of the Pathfinder universe, see how the godly entities lay claim over their subjects and how powerful magic users seek to subvert them, all through a nice, straightforward courtroom adventure with angelic lawyers and demonic judges. On top of it all, Tom Garcia's art brings a wonderful, over the top cartoonishness to the events, which keeps readers invested but the tone staying breezy.

This story arc's obligatory "Iconic cameo," is the flamboyant orc Imrijka, an old flame of Valeros' and a perfect foil for his more vulgar personality. Also returning is a cameo from Tannin, exploring further the chemistry between the two characters. Both flow naturally into the story and neither feel, as some previous cameos have, like simple adverts for pre-made characters.

The whole story wraps up nicely, with one of those great 'beat the evil wizard at his own game' style swicheroos. All things considered, Spiral of Bones turns out to be a rollicking good time, a fine return to form for the series, and a really effective moment in the limelight for a previously underutilised character. With such a bold and exciting execution, it left me with great hope that the comic still had the best ahead of it.

Wake the Dead (2024)

However, like any good arcane pact, there was a price to pay for the increase in quality. Pathfinder wouldn't see another series start for many years, with the next arc, Wake the Dead, not getting a collected edition until 2024, the entire Covid pandemic unfolding in the interim. Naturally, this meant Crystal Frasier had moved on to bigger and better projects, which is a shame, since I'd liked to have seen what she'd have done with the series given the chance to write more storys. Still, she is succeeded by a respectfully blooded comic book writer in Fred Van Lente, and right from the get go we can tell the series is in safe hands.

Wake the Dead serves as somewhat of a soft reboot for the series, which is frankly a fairly understandable direction to take it. The series felt for a while like it had a hard time figuring out what to do with Seoni and co, to the point it was going through the motions, so putting together a brand new team with a brand new set of foibles to get over is fertile ground to get things going again.

Our adventure team this time is made mostly of familiar faces, though you'd be forgiven for forgetting them from their previous "Iconic cameos." Quinn the private eye returns as de-facto leader, as magnetic and sardonic as ever, and is a great choice for our new lead. He's joined by Seelah the deathly serious paladin, Sajan the fiery monk and Lem, the cowardly but cunning bard. Serving as a touchstone back to our former protagonists, the dwarf Harsk returns, and rounding things off as a semi-antagonist and wild card is Nyctessa the necromancer.

They're all bold and strong personalities and work well within the expertly crafted story, which involves the group having to team up to track down a defector from the land of the dead, each for their own often irreconcilable purposes. Along the way they are forced to clash with the various other factions also on the trail of the defector and are often forced to think fast, and creatively, to deal with the threats they come across deep in enemy territory.

When the story works well, it works great, frequently drawing upon its tabletop roots by having the characters have to leaf through their items or abilities to find an outside-the-box solution to the more ridiculously outrageous scrapes they find themselves in. However, holding the series back a little is Eman Casallos' art, which, far from being bad, does happen to look a little stiff in comparison to the fast flowing work of Tom Garcia. I do wonder, however if this is due to being mismatched with colourist Jorge Sutil. Both have done great work on other projects but together their characters can hit the uncanny valley at times. This becomes less and less of a problem as the story goes on, however, so it's possible the two just took some time to acclimatise.

The story ends on a high note though, with Nyctessa coming out on top after all her machinations and leaving her as one of the funnest and most interesting characters so far. After such a bold new opening for the series, I'm left hungry for more of the new band of adventurers and can't wait to see where we go with them next.

But we don't quite go there just yet, because after Wake the Dead's conclusion we get one more story with the classic group, together again. Ezren, Senoi, etc, minus Harsk, have finally made it to the Grand Convocation of Pathfinders. Respect, recognition and majesty at last, only to see them caught up in an escapade with the bumbling but heroic goblin Fumbus.

The story is a fine return to form and a really makes our original characters feel like themselves again after so many years of struggling to distinguish themselves. Likewise, Tom Garcia is back for another round of bold, fluid artwork to lend a sense of mischief to the proceedings. The story is quick, and mostly disposable, but if Pathfinder indeed intends to storm ahead with its new cast of characters it serves as a perfect swansong for our original cast, and a great reminder of why I fell in love with the series in the first place.

Conclusion, and... the future?

So there you have it. After a few rocky roads, it really feels like the Pathfinder comic has found its feet again. If it sounds like I've been too harsh on Mona, Sutter and Schneider's tenure, I haven't meant to be. They did, after all, have the unenviable job of taking over from Jim Zub, who would go on to be one of the hottest writers in fantasy adventure comics, and they did, in the end, manage to keep the comic going, something that IDW failed at with its own first attempt at Dungeons and Dragons comics back in the early 2010s.

All things considered, there's more good than bad within this (so far) eight volume run of comics, and while it buckles at the edges, and maybe doesn't quite live up the expectations set by those first three volumes, there is still great fun to be had, and, as both Spiral of Bones and Wake the Dead prove, fertile ground for more bold and interesting stories.

The question is, then, what does the future hold? At time of writing there has been no announcement by Dynamite of any upcoming Pathfinder projects in the works. This is unsurprising since the previous series was a limited run rather than an ongoing, and Dynamite are famously inconsistent when it comes to promoting their own series. Still, I hope this doesn't mean that the comics are going on hiatus for another number of years again. Wake the Dead was a shot in the arm for the series and feels like it is raring to go from where it left off.

Fundamentally, it depends on the readership. Pathfinder is, famously, a niche spin-off from an niche franchise. It's never going to be in a position where it is flying off store shelves. But I like it, and frankly, Dynamite comics, you should keep making them just for me.

With the last volume feeling like a resurrection of sorts, and with story threads still left to be addressed, it'd be a shame to see the comic bow out now. Only time will tell, but it would be great if I could do a write up, in another ten years time, going over another six volumes. If not, well, like Valeros, you can't say the comic didn't go out swinging.

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Jack Harvey 2025. Images used under free use.

Alright, here's how I would reboot Doctor Who

 

"For crying out loud, it's just a TV show!" - William Shatner, Saturday Night Live, 1986.

Part One: Baggage.

Let me get this out of the way first; I started watching Doctor Who when I was 6 years old. It was the 1993 Planet of the Daleks broadcast specifically. Obviously I wouldn't be writing a thing like this if I didn't immediately fall in love with the show. I spent the next decade of my life experiencing the show in bits and pieces. A recording from UK Gold here, a boxed set rented from the library there. The show formed a core of my being, of that there is no doubt, even though in the grand scheme of things it was just a TV show.

The 1990s and 2000s were a long crawl for the show's cultural irrelevancy. Being into the Doctor Who was genuinely considered weird. "Cult." Conventions were humble and somewhat offbeat affairs. That being said, we were content in our irrelevancy. The wilderness years brought forth some of the best Doctor Who stories we as fans got to experience. The Doctor Who magazine comic strips. The Big Finish audios. The New Adventures and BBC books.

Yet we always hoped against hope that the show would come back one day. Air on TV. New stories week after week, become truly mainstream again, and like a monkey's paw that wish came true.

I'm not going to waste time airing my grievances here. I never particular cared for the 2005 - 2010 years. There was just something about that era that never really gelled for me. That being said, I can't deny that there were moments that I enjoyed, or even loved. Dalek. Blink. Doomsday. Time Crash. Moments where I could be a fan without reservations. Still, it never really clicked.

The Moffat era was a marked improvement for me, though to be honest it still felt compromised by some of the tonal hangovers from the RTD era. It wouldn't be until Peter Capaldi's final season that I felt like Doctor Who was finally starting to resemble what I originally fell in love with, and, ironically, I would enjoy the Chibnall era without reservations at all. I know that isn't a popular opinion, but I genuinely enjoyed that era.

Hence I was sad to see it go in 2022. I was less than pleased to here RTD was being brought back to revitalise the show, but I was willing to give him a fair shake. We'd both changed over the last 20 years. No reason to come at it with any previous baggage.

Well, anyway, turns out the RTD revival era would be turbo-not-to-my-particular-tastes-3000.

Part Two: Throwing out the baggage.

So, what was the point of all that preamble? Well, as Shatner's maxim denotes, only a fool gets so invested in a TV show that it takes over their entire life. My days of fuming over farting aliens and duplicate David Tennants is long over. People love that era, and for good reason. That it didn't work for me is sour grapes at worse.

There's a part of me that wants to go on a week long rant about how bad The Reality War was, how cynical I feel regenerating The Doctor into Billie Piper is, and how deep RTD's head must be in the sand to produce one of the worst hours of TV I have ever seen, but I'm a 37 year old man and I should not be investing this much emotional energy into a cheap TV show about a time travelling space wizard.

All this is to say... why rant when you can channel the energy into something creative? And let me be clear here, much of the below pitch is an idea I've been mulling over for quite a long period. It's not a direct reaction to The Reality War. Nor is it an attempt to resurrect an idealised version of the classic or Chibnall eras. Everything I choose to pitch below is carefully considered. A clean break. A proposal focussed on winning back fans AND appealing to a brand new audience.

With that in mind, we commence.

Part Three: Where are we now?

The decisions made regarding this pitch are done so assuming the following status quo would be present as of its air date:

- The show would have been off the air for several years.

- The Billie Piper casting would have seen some form of resolution, rather than left hanging.

- The BBC would be willing to fund the show with a modest budget. No DisneyPlus involvement.

With the stage set I would need to open with my first distinct proposal; write the show with a more mature perspective in mind. I know the common consensus is that Doctor Who should appeal to children first and foremost, but I don't think giving the show a more grown-up angle would necessarily jeopardize that. I think stories that appeal more to teenagers and young adults would serve the show better than always dumbing things down for six year olds to get in on the ground floor.

I say this as someone who got into the show at age six, but we have to give up on this ideal that the show is going to be a generational constant that kids will get to experience year after year, decade after decade. The entertainment ecosystem just isn't like that any more. Doctor Who has to compete with Roblox and Fortnite, Youtube and TicToc. The opportunity to be that generational constant may already be long gone.

My proposal is that just making a good TV show that finds an audience would be enough.

To whit, I propose a Doctor Who reboot that skews towards an older audience. A Doctor that drinks alcohol. Stories that can delve into darker areas like drug dealing and historical war crimes. Where relationships between companions can be explored on the sexual level. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about Torchwood here, but just allow the show to get a little more adult than it previously was. To no longer hide stuff behind innuendo.

Meanwhile, I also propose a format that that prioritises longer, multi-part stories. This serves two purposes. It gives writers room to actually explore their stories in greater depth, something the show has been in dire need of late, but also works as a budget conscious creative decision. A nine episode season made up of three stories would be significantly cheaper than eight episodes each needing a fresh location, cast and costumes.

So with the stage and tone set, let's introduce our characters.

Part Four: The Doctor. Mysterious. Intense. Frightening.

Indira Varma is The Doctor. Yes, I know she was in Torchwood and Rogue. No, this will never be acknowledged in-show. Indira is an amazing actress. Dedicated and versatile. Sometimes I forget it is her when I'm watching season one of Rome, such as it is she can blend into the role. I don't think I need to convince anyone of this casting choice. If you know her work then you know she would absolutely nail it.

Personality wise, I want a darker, more intense and less friendly Doctor. Think late-era Sylvester McCoy or Peter Capaldi. This is a Doctor who rarely, if ever, smiles. She's aloof, somewhat above it all. Cold, calculating, but likeable. She's Mr Spock, with a little touch of Gandalf and David Bowie in They Hunger. She'll get mistaken for a vampire on numerous occasions, the way she frequently hangs back in the shadows and calculates her next move.

She's also a physically active Doctor. Like Pertwee, she's not afraid to get her hands dirty and will frequently pull out the Venusian Aikido when her back is against the wall, though as with Mr Spock, she will frequently disable her opponents with as little showmanship as possible, and does not relish the use of violence.

The sonic screwdriver's use and utility will be massively decreased. It can unlock doors, and that's about it. It can't hack into computers, and it can't "read" data about the environment or whatever. The psychic paper is nowhere to be seen. This is a Doctor that has to think their way out of a problem, not bypass it with gadgets or space magic.

Part Five: The Companions. Strong, dysfunctional, distinct.

This reboot will introduce three major companions. Yes, you heard me right. Once again, I want to discard common consensus that we have to be introduced through single, common everyman. Note, the actors I have chose are mainly just for the purposes of giving you a feel for the character. I have no idea if they'd be affordable or even available, but they should give you an image of how the character would be.

Bella Ramsey is Ash. A wanderer, a thief, a vagabond. They've been running their whole life. No home. No parents. Just survival on the streets of 21st Century Britain. They're slow to trust, which makes sense, since Britain isn't exactly a trusting place right now. This is why they are drawn to the Doctor. They're alike in some ways. Travellers without a home. Purpose to be found in turning the next corner.

Dakota Beavers is Tommy. A rez kid who just wants a quiet life. He's a good mechanic, which is more than can be said for his weed dealing cousin who keeps bringing the heat down on them both. Tommy otherwise would be of no concern to The Doctor, if it wasn't for that strange sonic wrench handed down from his grandfather, that seems to contain very Gallifreyan looking technology.

Abigail Lawrie is Princess Ssesler. Heir to the throne of New Mars, Ssesler is an Ice Lady who has no interest in ruling the Martian people, and has run away from home to seek adventure, hunting down the artefacts of Old Mars' glory days. Immature, petulant, yet genuinely fascinated and open minded on cultures from the past, Ssesler's collision course with The Doctor may not go smoothly, but their curious natures are a strong complement.

I know three companions might be seen as stacking the cast, and I get that, but I also think that a broader season, that splits stories over three episodes apiece, will allow the leeway to develop them all and give them room to breathe.

Part Six: The Opening Act.

Season One opens in medias res, where Ash is planning to rob a priceless antique from a high-stakes auction. Also on the scene is The Doctor, who is showing a particular interest in an odd, blue diamond. The two are antagonistic at first, but quickly team up against the villainous Count Jackson, who also wants the diamond. The Doctor reveals that this is a Temporal Lodestone, ancient time manipulation tech that should have been long buried. Count Jackson is actually Jugasar, of the Jagaroth, an ancient race who have had their corporal forms shattered across time. Jugasasr wishes to unite three Temporal Lodestone, which would give him the power to reform on ancient earth and prevent the extinction of his race, at the cost of humanity ever existing. Episode 1 ends with Jugasar successfully getting the first Lodestone and blinking away from Britain and our heroes. The Doctor and Ash run to the Tardis and give chase.

Episode 2 begins with Tommy pulling into the local reservation bar, only to find a new state Police Chief introducing himself to the reservation Sheriff. Chief Jackson lectures Tommy on his authority, admitting that he has no intent to respect the reservation's sovereignty if it gets in his way. Tommy then immediately heads out to his cousin's weed farm to warn him that trouble might be on its way. We discover Tommy has a mysterious, sonic screwdriver-like device, and that his grandfather knew about things on a "Cosmic," level. Jackson ambushes Tommy on his way back to town, only for the Tardis to materialise around Tommy's car. The Doctor, now with Ash in tow, reveals that the next Loadstone is somewhere on the reservation, and together they discover that somehow it is buried in Tommy's grandfather's grave. The story ends with both hero and villain having one Lodestone each.

Episode 3 begins in the ancient ruins of Mars. Princess Ssesler is doing a bit of tomb raiding, while an Ice Warrior security squad, lead by Lord Jassskon, approaches the planet to bring the princess home. The Doctor, Tommy and Ash arrive, cross paths with Ssesler and battle the Ice Warrior security squad. We go through some Indiana Jones style tombs and traps, before having a big showdown at an ancient Martian temple where the final lodestone remains. Jugasar succeeds in finding the Loadstone, overpowers the Tardis team for the second time and activates the three, only for his form to disintegrate into the time vortex.. The final Lodestone was a fake, only figured out by Ssesler, who knew that the ancient Martians would never display such a valuable artefact so prominently, and clocked it as a fake.

With the threat neutralised The Doctor departs, with all three of her new companions choosing to accompany her onto adventures in the Tardis, and they depart for worlds unknown.

Part Seven: Pushing the Boat Out.

From here on out I'd want the series to just focus on strong, straight science fiction concepts. A squad of soldiers on an ice planet locked in a stalemate with clone duplicates who have no way of knowing which are the clones and which are the originals. A story set during the English Civil War where a local preacher imbued with the power of an alien artefact is inadvertently using it to rile up the tempers of the Roundheads. A lone Dalek stalks a deep space salvage ship in an Alien-type horror story.

Have a story that explores the Galactic Federation. Have the Tardis team come across a conspiracy to sabotage two warring civilisations that the Federation is attempting to mediate with (Sontarons/Rutans? Dravens/Bannermen? Dominators/Krotons? Two completely new alien races?) and it is a race against time before the two sides detonate a sun in an attempt to cripple the other's fleet.

If UNIT is to reappear, really just try to take them back to square one. They're a small international force of specialists that is being directed from the European Mainland. Dealing with red tape and dismissive authorities is just as much of a problem as alien infiltrators. If Kate is still around, have her butt heads with an antagonistic (though ultimately well intentioned) bean counter officer from Geneva that keeps hamstringing their operations with budget cuts.

Big idea for the finale. The Doctor crosses paths with another renegade time lord, Praxis, that serves as a Magneto to their Professor X. An extremist who isn't afraid to get their hands dirty to do what they feel is right. Have a story on a planet where in 100 years time the robotic subclass will gain sentience and fight for liberation, but Praxis reveals that their sentience manifested much earlier, and wants to liberate the bots now, even if it will result in a more violent uprising. Will The Doctor condemn a persecuted underclass to 100 years of oppression, or could they justify the deaths of thousands of humans in the crossfire if it means their liberation? Really explore the murky reality of such a choice and have Praxis call The Doctor out over their frequent both-sidesisms. A more anti-heroic adversary than a villain like The Master, and an ending where the Doctor has to choose between the lesser of two evils, without giving the audience a clear answer on what that is.

Some other ideas for companions jumping in later on. A revisit of the Leela concept with a big Red-Sonja type barbarian woman from an aquatic world who has gills. Introductory story involves overthrowing the corporation that is exploiting the planet. Have her butt heads with The Doctor on cultural issues. Maybe introduce a 1930's hard boiled detective to hang around in the Tardis for a while and be friends-with-benefits with the barbarian woman. Lend a time-shifted and alien perspective to stories like we used to get with some of the companions in classic who.

Part Eight: The Bit Where I Just Get Self Indulgent

I envision this all as a three season run, and the power will probably go to my head before Season 3. Before said season launches, we do three specials starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. I have no pragmatic reason to do this, and in fact it'd probably be a bad idea to do it in the middle of a era that is trying to be a fresh start, but I really want to see Paul McGann on screen again and if I was showrunner I'd do everything in my power to squeeze that in.

In my defence the three specials would be entirely optional for new audiences, but tie in to the overall third season for those watching. The Three Stories would be adaptions of The Chimes of Midnight, Children of the Revolution and Alien Bodies, with McGann back and India Fisher playing Charley. It will be made clear that The Doctor suspects that has already experienced these stories before, which is why they are both older than they should be, and realising during the climax of Alien Bodies that Charley shouldn't be there. This would be revealed to be due to the machinations of Faction Paradox, the Expanded Universe time travelling cult that draws power from paradoxes. This would lead in to featuring them as the arc villains of season 3.

Obviously we'd take care to introduce them properly and don't leave people feeling like they need to go back and read wilderness years novels to get the jist of them. In the final story the Tardis team come across an auction in some grand futuristic space station, mirroring the antiques auction in the first episode. The Doctor discovers that the auction is being held by Faction Paradox, who are selling artefacts from The Doctor's future. The team then has to find a way to put a stop to the auctions, as these items all need to find their proper place in the Doctor's timeline, but the strain of coming into contact with so many artefacts out of sync with her timeline puts enough stress on her to force a regeneration, leaving the new incumbent Doctor, to finally finish the fight.

Alternatively, my other "glup shitto" idea would be to do a final season dubbed "Doctor Who Must Die!" Where the Doctor gets a bounty put on their head and has to spend an entire season outsmarting intergalactic hitmen. Bring back Vinder, now back under the machinations of the Grand Serpent. Bring in Shayde from the DWM comic strips, now reprogrammed to seek vengeance on behalf of the Time Lords. Resurrect Rogue, older and vengeful after his time in the hell dimension. Make it known to the audience the story will end with the Doctor's regeneration and leave them guessing and debating who, exactly, will be the one to pull the trigger.

Part Nine: Kill your darlings.

“A lot of times when you’re working on IP storytelling your impulse is to open the toybox and start playing with all the toys. You should try to resist that. What you should do is leave more toys in the toybox than were there before you got there” - Tony Gilroy, 2025.

So, upon reading the last part back I realised that all that stuff would be an inherently bad idea. Much as I would like to see McGann back in the role, or live action versions of characters from the comics to show up, this is absolutely not the time for all that. This is meant to be a relaunch. A fresh start. In a world where you're inheriting a Doctor Who era that is flying high, you can get away with talking spin-offs and deep lore cuts, but for an era that is coming after a presumed hiatus, you just have to let all that go. Those who fail to learn the lessons of RTD2 are doomed to repeat it.

Kill your darlings. Forget Faction Paradox and The Grand Serpent. Keep the series on the straight and narrow. Just keep up with good, strong, self-contained science fiction stories. Use UNIT sparingly. Use your time to flesh out more of the newly introduced aspects and characters, like Praxis. Heck, I was maybe even a bit too indulgent for the opening episodes, with the inclusion of the Jagaroth and the Ice Warriors. Maybe Lord Jackson ought to be from a brand new alien race. Maybe Princess Ssesler ought to be too.

Part Ten: In Conclusion.

This was mostly just spitballing ideas amongst all the recent talk of the show going on hiatus. It's not perfect. Either way, I hope it's clear that my attempt with this was to show the numerous ways the show could go without going back to the well of the same old shit. We don't need to have the companion be a bubbly young woman from modern day earth every single time. We don't need the series to be bogged down with myth arcs. We don't need to squeeze a monster of the week story into a 45 minute episode every week. Expand your mind. Think outside of the box.

I also hope it goes to show how it isn't so easy to avoid giving in to your baser impulses. There's a "glup shitto," cavalcade in all of us, waiting to break out at a moment's notice. Always keep that in check.

Maybe this little ramble has given some food for thought, and I encourage each and every one of you to have a hard think about how YOU would do a reboot if you ever had the chance. You never know, someone out there completely new may one day be in the big chair. Doctor Who can't stay in the hands of the same creative team forever.

Or at least, I hope it won't.