Inspired by the approaching finale of
Supernatural, this idea has been rattling around inside my head:
I was halfway through the third episode of the WB’s
Tarzan when my wife walked in and asked for a recap. Having just read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ pulp classic
Tarzan of the Apes, I was eager to explain all the ingenious ways this new series handles the source material—how cool it was that the cabin his dead father built has become a Park Avenue apartment wing—but I had already lost her attention. “God, he’s hot,” she said, looking at
Tarzan’s star, former Calvin Klein underwear model Travis Fimmel. “You should see if he’s in
Tiger Beat yet. There’s a lot of 11-year-old girls who are going to love this show.”
"Brad Turrell, the network's corporate spokesman, brandished charts that tried to play down the declines. The charts indicated that the wild swings among young viewers this fall -- including sizable drop-offs in overall viewing among WB's core audience of younger women, which got much less attention than the even bigger slide among younger men -- called into question Nielsen's measurements."
The WB's core demographic -- female, ages 12 to 24 — failed to deliver the network sufficient profits to stay afloat in this brave new world of reality television. So, it sought to attract a broader demographic. Women
and men. People between the ages of 24 and 36 — you know, the eldery! This effort would ultimately fail, leading to massive layoffs in late 2005 and a merger with a fellow struggling network, UPN, to form The CW in 2006.
In an omen for modern Hollywood's remake fever, executives at The WB concluded that known IPs were the secret to success. The 2001 pilot for Superman prequel series
Smallville attracted 8.4 million viewers, a record for The WB. A sitcom vehicle for country music singer Reba McEntire would be the network's lone successful comedy series and a ratings smash hit, often landing The WB ahead of UPN and even Fox in the rankings for its time slot. The WB's other successes in this period were relative ones. Original content like
Gilmore Girls attracted critical acclaim but not big ratings. So it seemed obvious to conclude that audiences craved the familiar. Which probably explains why The WB greenlit a modernized
Tarzan.
Except, as Hollywood has also demonstrated time and again lately, just because audiences are familiar with an IP doesn't mean they necessarily want to see more of it.
Tarzan flopped hard, cancelled after eight episodes. Its showrunner, Eric Kripke, wasn't blamed for the failure given the general decline in fortunes affecting The WB's lineup. He was even asked to pitch another show.
Kripke pitched two different shows to network executives, and both ideas could be summarized as "The X-Files meets Route 66." The first pitch was about a female photojournalist criss-crossing the country, investigating demons infiltrating society. The WB passed. Too played out, they said. The second pitch was about two brothers driving the backroads of Middle America, hunting the things that go bump in the dark. The WB was intrigued, but ultimately passed on that pitch as well.
In fact, the suits at The WB weren't actually interested in
any of Kripke's pitches. They already had a new project in mind for him, and Kripke's fixation on monsters only cemented their belief that he was the right man for the job of updating another old IP for modern audiences. Before a desperate Kripke could improvise a third pitch, the Senior Vice President of Drama Development, Susan Rovner, leaned forward. "We love the idea of you doing a horror show for us, but want something with firmer footing. Have you ever heard of an old PBS series called
Doctor Who?"
- Extract from the SF Debris special "Rebooted!" 2014
People often think that the BBC gave up on
Doctor Who. That absolutely isn't true. I adore the Doctor, and there are others here who feel the same. He's scary and fantastic and more than a little funny. We tried to get him back on the screen with different proposals, but there were profound issues of money and ego at play. A negative energy became associated with the show.
Doctor Who had been shopped around America for years and years, and all the stops and starts were enough to frankly drive people mad. It wasn't a jolly day when word came down that a deal had been inked. We were blasé. We felt it would fall apart yet again.
- Excerpt from an interview with Russell T Davies, 2007 [1]
The cult classic returns! After Ian and Babs (Jensen Ackles [2], Alona Tal [3] ) check in on a troubled friend, they are transported back to 1963 and become embroiled in the JFK assassination. Susan: Leighton Meester [4]. The Doctor: John Slattery [5].
- TV Guide description for Doctor Who: 1x01 "Pilot" (September 13th, 2005) [6]
[1] The POD. I'm still ironing out the details, but the gist is that the Fox TV Movie dies in Development Hell. Without the TV Movie
flopping in the United States, BBC Worldwide is slower to give back Doctor Who to the BBC's television people. Without the TV Movie
doing well in Britain, the BBC underestimates popular support for a Doctor Who revival.
[2] [3] [4] The WB had (and its successor The CW has) a tendency to rotate actors between various projects. Jensen Ackles had a recurring supporting role on
Smallville before he jumped ship to
Supernatural in OTL
. Alona Tal had a recurring supporting role on
Veronica Mars, and was the runner up for the role of Veronica Mars. Leighton Meester is only minor actor at this point OTL and ITTL, as she hasn't enjoyed her OTL breakout role as Blair Waldorf on
Gossip Girl. Meester was, however, one of the main characters on
Tarzan, so it isn't a stretch that Kripke would think of her for the role.
[5] While he later rose to fame with his role as Roger Sterling in
Mad Men, actor John Slattery was still a relatively obscure actor at this point OTL. He had just starred in 21 episodes of The WB's Kennedy nostalgia piece
Jack & Bobby, a drama about two young brothers, one of whom eventually grows up to become president. Circa the early 2000s, Slattery was one of the few older white men in The WB's youth-focused roster. It seems natural he'd get asked to audition, especially since The WB wasn't financially healthy enough (or that prestigious) to attract known talent at this point in its lifespan. That, and the
Doctor Who reboot isn't being helmed by an award-winner like Russell T Davies. Eric Kripke is a nobody at a dying, wannabe minor network. The project isn't one that screams surefire success.
[6] As of 2020, Eric Kripke's three original TV series in OTL —
Supernatural,
Revolution, and
Timeless — all feature a heavy emphasis on family drama and parent-child relationships. I imagine that his ITTL version of
Doctor Who would be in that mold. Luckily, the Doctor has an OTL relative in the form of Susan Foreman. Also, in OTL, Kripke has commented that
The X-Files is a cautionary tale for writers about how burdensome a show's mythology can become over time. Combine those two facts and I think he'd be inclined to just take
Doctor Who back to square one, if modernized in many ways.