Who could replace Steven Moffat as DOCTOR WHO showrunner?

Doctor Who has just begun filming the eighth season since its return from the dead in 2005, with Peter Capaldi firmly ensconced in the role of the Twelfth Doctor and due to start transmission in August or September. However, there is mounting speculation that Steven Moffat, the show's chief producer and showrunner since 2011, will be moving on from the show either this year or by the end of 2015.

Steven 'Okay, the Last Few Seasons Have Been a Bit Ropey, But Remember Blink?' Moffat

Moffat has indicated in interviews he is closer to the end of his tenure than the start, and there are some widespread rumours that the plan was originally for Matt Smith to stay on for an extra year with both Smith and Moffat bowing out together allowing a completely new team to take over. Smith's departure was actually a relatively late decision (backed up by interviews where he confirmed he'd be back for Series 8 just a few weeks before announcing his departure), forcing Moffat to remain on board to handle the transition. This would also explain why the recent Christmas special, The Time of the Doctor, was horribly rushed in how it patched up Smith's remaining plot threads, because it originally was not designed for that purpose.

Speculation is now mounting as to who will take over the role. Doctor Who is one of the most demanding shows on British television, filming for nine or ten months of the year and requiring substantial amounts of writing work and rewrites, without having a massive writing budget (one of the reasons recent showrunners have written a large number of scripts themselves). The BBC would also presumably prefer someone with showrunning experience who can cope with the show's arduous schedule and demands.

Here's a run-down of some of the candidates believed to be in the running, together with maybe a couple of bonkers choices.

The Most Likely Choice

Toby 'Gave Unto the World Aidan Turner' Whithouse

Doctor Who experience: Wrote the episodes School Reunion, The Vampires of Venice, The God Complex and A Town Called Mercy, as well as the Torchwood episode Greeks Bearing Gifts.

Other experience: Created and produced No Angels for Channel 4 which ran for three successful seasons before creating Being Human for BBC3. A major hit smash for the channel, it ran for five seasons and spawned a popular American remake, itself in its fourth season. My girlfriend informs me it must be mentioned that Whithouse is thus responsible for the rise to fame of Aidan 'Human Perfection' Turner (not my words), for which we must all be eternally grateful. Whithouse has written and produced The Game, a spy thriller for the BBC due to air later in 2014.

Pros: Whithouse has significant writing and showrunning experience and his episodes are (mostly) well-regarded. Whithouse has also - provisionally and cautiously - said he'd be interested in the role if offered.

Cons: Whithouse's new project, The Game, might be a big hit and he might prefer to concentrate on that. Beyond that, there's not too many problems.

Likelihood: Pretty high.

The Experienced Choice

Mark 'I Have Actually Played the Doctor (sort of)' Gatiss

Doctor Who experience: Gatiss has written four Doctor Who novels, starting with Nightshade in 1992. He has also contributed multiple short stories to anthologies. His scripts for the new series are The Unquiet Dead, The Idiot's Lantern, Victory of the Daleks, Night Terrors, Cold War and The Crimson Horror. He has appeared twice in the programme as an actor, playing Professor Lazarus in The Lazarus Experiment and Gantok in The Wedding of River Song. He wrote and produced An Adventure in Space and Time, the extremely well-regarded drama about the creation of Doctor Who. Gatiss has also played the Doctor in various comedy sketches.

Other experience: Gatiss was one of the co-creators and co-producers (as well as writer and actor) of the League of Gentlemen comedy franchise, incorporating three seasons of a successful TV series, a feature film and radio shows. He co-created the international smash hit show Sherlock with Steven Moffat and co-showruns it.

Pros: An extraordinary amount of Doctor Who experience and passion for the programme. An Adventure in Space and Time is widely-regarded as the highlight of the show's 50th anniversary celebrations.

Cons: His script work on the show itself has drawn a mixed reception, though his recent episodes have been better-received. Gatiss was recently cast in the role of Tycho Nestoris on the HBO series Game of Thrones. Although a small role, it is one that is expected to recur regularly over the next 2-3 years. However, the show has shown an ability for recasting minor (and even larger) roles when needed.

Likelihood: Reasonable.

The Fresh Blood Choice

Howard 'I Created Misfits, People' Overman

Doctor Who experience: None whatsoever.

Other experience: Overman has written for shows including New Tricks and Merlin, but is best-known as the creator of the BAFTA-winning Misfits for Channel 4 and the Dirk Gently TV series for the BBC (based on the novels of Douglas Adams). He also created the police comedy Vexed and, most recently, is the co-creator of the BBC drama Atlantis.

Pros: Misfits is one of the most well-received and critically-acclaimed UK SF shows of the past decade and is a cult success in the United States. Dirk Gently was also well-received. Overman's familiarity with the SFF genre and his experience combined with a lack of working on Doctor Who previously gives him a good, fresh perspective which the BBC might find attractive.

Cons: Vexed and Atlantis have not exactly been setting the world on fire. The BBC has renewed Atlantis for a second season, which may take up too much of Overman's time.

Likelihood: Possible.

The Writing Plaudits Choice

Neil 'Has Del Toro On Speed Dial' Cross

Doctor Who experience: Wrote the episodes The Ring of Akhaten and Hide for the previous season of Doctor Who and will be contributing two scripts to the next.

Other experience: Neil Cross is the creator and executive producer of Luther, which, alongside Doctor Who and Sherlock, has been the BBC's most successful drama production of the last few years. He is also an experienced scriptwriter on movie projects, penning the recently successful horror film Mama. He is a frequent collaborator of Guillermo Del Toro, penning the script for his on-hold Lovecraft adaptation (At the Mountains of Madness) and the forthcoming Midnight Delivery. He also performed rewrites on Pacific Rim. Cross is also an experienced novelist and has been longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Pros: Cross is a formidable writing talent, with a number of varied projects in different genres under his belt. His telephone contacts list is also interesting: could we imagine a Doctor Who episode directed by Del Toro and featuring Idris Elba? His relatively limited Who experience but clear genre savviness could give the show a jolt of fresh blood and a fresh perspective. Hide was a pretty good episode.

Cons: Cross is based in New Zealand and prefers not to travel abroad for long periods (along with bduget issues, presumably one of the reasons Luther's seasons were only three episodes long). Becoming a Doctor Who showrunner would require a permanant relocation to the UK for several years. This would also require Cross to put his lucrative Hollywood scripting career on hold, or at least reduce it substantially for several years, which he may not be keen to do. Also, The Rings of Akhaten was embarrassingly bad, despite some good ideas.

Likelihood: Not impossible.

The Oh God No Please No Choice

Chris 'I Promise To Never Write Anything As Bad As Cyberwoman Again' Chibnall

Doctor Who experience: Chibnall has written five episodes of Doctor Who (42, The Hungry Earth, Cold Blood, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and The Power of Three) and eight episodes of Torchwood. His Torchwood script, Cyberwoman, is regarded as possibly the writing nadir of the entire combined Doctor Who-and-its-spinoffs franchise to date.

Other experience: Chibnall has also written two episodes of Life on Mars, multiple episodes of Law and Order: UK (on which he has also served as a producer) was the prime creative driving force on the badly-received 2011 historical fantasy series Camelot (interestingly, Chibnall had pitched this show to the BBC years earlier which eventually saw the light as the - far superior - Merlin, without Chibnall's involvement). In 2013 Chibnall penned the extraordinarily well-received series Broadchurch (starring Doctor Who's David Tennant), which will be both getting a sequel series and also an American remake.

Pros: Chibnall has a tremendous amount of writing experience on Doctor Who and Torchwood. Broadchurch has - somewhat unexpectedly - given Chibnall a renewed cachet and a stronger reputation on the UK drama scene.

Cons: Chibnall is really unpopular with Doctor Who fans. His episodes are widely-regarded as being among the new show's weakest, and his Torchwood work was, at best, risible. Broadchurch Season 2 and its forthcoming US remake also make it unlikely he'd have the time to work full-time on Who.

Likelihood: Pretty unlikely.

The Fans Will Love It But Would Be Almost Impossible Choice

Neil 'Makes Death Palatable' Gaiman

Doctor Who experience: Neil Gaiman is the writer of the extremely well-regarded episode The Doctor's Wife (which won a Hugo Award in 2013) and the somewhat less-well-regarded (even by its writer) Nightmare in Silver.

Other experience: Gaiman is the writer of the highly critically-acclaimed graphic novel series Sandman, regarded as one of the most important comic series ever written. He's also written well-regarded novels including American Gods, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book and the recent The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Several of his books have been adapted as successful films, including Coraline and Stardust. He was also the only person other than J. Michael Straczynski to write an episode of Babylon 5 in its last three seasons. He is also the creator of the TV mini-series Neverwhere, which he later adapted into a bestselling novel. He has been working on a TV version of American Gods for the best couple of years, formerly at HBO but now for an unidentified network. As well as being a major fan of Doctor Who, Gaiman is also a fan of the works of Douglas Adams and has penned a book about the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels and radio play.

Pros: Gaiman is highly-regarded for The Doctor's Wife and his many other works. He has an almost unassailable level of 'geek-cred' amongst SFF fans. He is extremely well-known in both the UK and USA, and would likely broaden the show's appeal further in the USA.

Cons: Gaiman prefers to work on several projects simultaneously rather than one for very long periods of time. He is also based in the United States and would likely prefer not to have to return to the UK to work on the series. Most notably, although a very fine writer he does not have much day-to-day showrunning experience. The American Gods TV project also seems to be a time-consuming project moving forwards, and it is possible that a new attempt to make a Sandman movie (by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) may also require his attention.

Likelihood: Highly improbable.

The Will Never Happen But Hey Let's Take a Punt Choice

J. Michael 'JMS' Straczynski

Doctor Who experience: J. Michael Straczynski was a fan of the orginal Doctor Who in the 1970s and 1980s. He has cited it - along with The Prisoner and Blake's 7 - as an influence on the writing of his TV show Babylon 5. Specifically, he has cited the season-long story arcs (such as the Key to Time season) as being influential on his development of Babylon 5's story structure.

Other experience: Straczynski was a script-editor and producer on shows like Murder, She Wrote and Captain Power whilst also writing for animated series including He-Man and Ghostbusters. He is best-known for being the co-showrunner and primary writer of Babylon 5, which ran for five seasons in the late 1990s and is credited with the boom in 'story arc' storytelling in television (which Doctor Who itself has latterly employed). Straczynski later went on to become the primary showrunner on Jeremiah before writing the script for the Clint Eastwood move Changeling. He is also extremely active in comics, writing for everything from Spider-Man to the recent Before Watchmen project.

Pros: JMS is a highly experienced writer and showrunner. He is famed for bringing in shows under-budget and on time (a notably different situation to the Moffat era of Doctor Who). He is, generally speaking, well-regarded as a writer, though his extremely prolific output (he wrote some episodes of Babylon 5 in less than a day) does mean there's a fair amount of mixed material as well.

Cons: JMS is American, based in LA and is working on the TV series Sense8 for Netflix, based on an idea from the Wachowskis. This would presumably tie him up for some years to come, and it's unlikely he'd be willing to relocate to London, despite occasionally-voiced ambitions to retire to the UK to write novels. JMS is also well-known for having many fingers in many pies and it's unclear if he would be willing to give up his comics work and other projects to commit to Who for such a long time.

Likelihood: Non-existent. If they ever do a US-based remake or reboot of the series, however, don't be surprised if his name came up.

Warner Brothers considering HD update for BABYLON 5

George Feltenstein, Senior Vice-President for Theatrical Catalogue Marketing at Warner Brothers (translation: he's one of the guys in charge of the DVD and Blu-Ray department) has recently confirmed that the company are actively looking into the possibility of re-releasing Babylon 5 on Blu-Ray. Feltenstein acknowledged that this would be expensive and possibly impractical, but that the B5 fanbase is large enough to warrant making the effort.

Babylon 5 aired 110 episodes (and seven TV movies, including the pilot) between 1993 and 1998, with additional TV movies being made in 2001 and 2007, as well as a short-lived spin-off series called Crusade which ran for 13 episodes in 1999. Though it enjoyed solid ratings for most of its run, Babylon 5 was never the ratings juggernaut that the various Star Trek shows were. However, its critical acclaim was immense, often eclipsing that of its contemporary Star Trek shows. It won two back-to-back Hugo Awards in 1996 and 1997, as well as various Emmies for its cutting-edge CGI effects work. The original series was released on DVD in 2003 and 2004 and according to some sources has made over $500 million in worldwide sales for Warner Brothers.

Like most US TV shows of the time, Babylon 5 was recorded on film but mastered - having special effects, music and sound effects added - on video tape. Video tape cannot be upscaled to high-definition resolution, preventing the show from being upscaled as-is and released on Blu-Ray. Instead, the only way to upscale the entire show is to go back to the original film elements, extract a HD image and then re-edit each episode from scratch. Whilst the original audio tracks can be re-used, the special effects would also all have to be remade from scratch and edited back in. In the case of Babylon 5, which sometimes had 100 CGI shots per episode, this would be extremely expensive and time-consuming.

However, last year CBS began re-releasing Star Trek: The Next Generation on Blu-Ray and put the show through this extremely laborious process. Each season takes over four months (and closer to six for the first couple) and $9 million to bring up to scratch. The Blu-Ray re-releases have been extremely successful and wildly acclaimed, and some of the same personnel are now allegedly working on a similar Blu-Ray re-release for The X-Files for next year, whilst the ST:TNG team is rumoured to be moving straight onto Deep Space Nine (which has many more CGI shots) once TNG is completed early next year. Warner Brothers have certainly been monitoring the situation and the sales to judge whether it is worthwhile to pursue a similar process for Babylon 5.

The viability of this plan would depend on the original film stock having been stored in good conditions. According to rumour, the Babylon 5 pilot episode's film has been damaged in storage, initially by flooding and later by rats getting into the facility. The status of the rest of the show is not known. If it has all been stored, then upgrading the show's live action scenes to HD will be relatively quick and easy. More complex are the CGI scenes and composite scenes (scenes mixing live action and CGI, including every time a PPG weapon is fired), which would need to be completely redone from scratch. The cost of this may be too much to be practical. Still, it's encouraging to know that WB are at least looking into the matter.

J. Michael Straczynski reveals why Michael O'Hare left BABYLON 5

Back in 1994, with production of Season 1 of Babylon 5 completed, it was announced that the show's lead actor, Michael O'Hare, would be departing his role as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair. He would be replaced by Bruce Boxleitner, who would play the rather different role of Captain John Sheridan.

At the time the show's creator and executive producer J. Michael Straczynski said that the reason for the departure was creative: it was straining credulity that, having established Sinclair having backstory connections to the Minbari in the first season, he would also have a connection to the Shadows in Season 2 (a story point given to Sheridan instead). It was also indicated that O'Hare was missing his life acting in theatre in New York and was finding working on a weekly television series in Los Angeles onerous.

Later years saw more depressing reasons suggested: fellow actors from the show suggested that O'Hare seemed distracted or unprofessional, possibly on drugs of some kind during filming.

Michael O'Hare attended occasional Babylon 5 conventions but had not made any public appearances for some time before he passed away in September 2012 after a heart attack.

At a convention in Phoenix, Arizona, Straczynski fulfilled a nineteen-year-old promise by revealing the real reason O'Hare left the show. O'Hare had been suffering a debilitating psychiatric condition during the filming of the first season. He had good days and bad days, but getting the full medical treatment he needed would take much longer than the relatively brief hiatus between seasons. Straczynski offered to shut down production of the series so O'Hare could get the treatment he needed, but O'Hare refused to put the jobs of the hundreds of people involved in the making of the series at risk. Instead, O'Hare chose to leave and return when his treatment permitted to conclude his character arc. Ultimately, he reappeared in one episode of Season 2 and two of Season 3 to round off his storyline. Straczynski promised O'Hare to keep the reason for his departure to his grave, but O'Hare only asked him to keep it until he reached his grave.

At the convention, Straczynski also spoke of the other actors from the show who have passed away: Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin) was almost deaf and had to learn everyone else's lines so he could effectively lip-read his cues. Despite his disability, he was continuously enthusiastic and fired up about the show. Andreas Katsulas (Ambassador G'Kar) was diagnosed with lung cancer but refused to get depressed about it. One night, a few months before his death in 2006, he invited Straczynski to a 'last supper' and got him to 'fess up about all the behind-the-scenes dirt the actors never got to hear about. He remained jovial and convivial up until his passing.

An audio recording of the appearance where Straczynski spoke about O'Hare can be found here.

Happy 20th Birthday to BABYLON 5

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the American SF TV show Babylon 5. Its pilot episode, The Gathering, aired on 22 February 1993, with the first season proper following eleven months later. Never a mass break-out hit, Babylon 5 remained on-air for five seasons and 110 episodes (plus 4 TV movies and a straight-to-DVD movie), not to mention generating a spin-off called Crusade that lasted half a season before being cancelled and a pilot for a second spin-off that never went to series. Not too bad for a show that, even today, most people have never even heard of.

Some of the regular cast of Babylon 5 in its first season: Jerry Doyle as Security Chief Michael Garibaldi, Peter Jurasik as Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari (with the hair), Claudia Christian as Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova, Mira Furlan as Minbari Ambassador Delenn, Andrea Thompson as Talia Winters, Andreas Katsulas as Narn Ambassador G'Kar and Richard Biggs as Dr. Stephen Franklin, with Michael O'Hare as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (seated).

Babylon 5 is noted for its structure. The series is arranged like a series of books, with each season having its own name (Signs and Portents, The Coming of Shadows, Point of No Return, No Surrender, No Retreat and The Wheel of Fire), title sequence and musical score. Each season acts as a movement in the traditional five-act structure of a story: introduction, rising action, climax, resolution, aftermath. This gives the entire series a sense of tremendous narrative momentum. Creator/showrunner/head writer Joe Michael Straczynski also layered a number of mysteries into the backstory of the series, giving fans something to discuss and theorise about online (B5 was easily the first show to make significant use of the Internet in building its fan community). However, he also explained and resolved these mysteries long before the end of the show, avoiding the problem of overloading the series resolution with too many elements to support (and in doing so avoided the pitfalls which made the endings to later serialised shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica so problematic).

The show is also notable for its case of extremely well-drawn characters, all of whom have significant backstories, and how they evolve over the course of the series. Babylon 5 was very much the TV equivalent of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones in that regard (and, interestingly, Straczynski namechecks George R.R. Martin as an inspiration in an article for Foundation magazine in early 1995, though this was for his earlier work as A Game of Thrones didn't come out until Babylon 5's third season was already over), though Straczynski was moderately less ruthless with his characters. The casting was excellent, and in particular gave long-standing Hollywood supporting actors like Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas some meaty, solid roles to get their teeth into. The show was also praised for its still-impressive (if rather low-res by today's standards) CGI graphics, which allowed the show to have the most visually impressive space battles since the Star Wars trilogy on a tiny budget.

In terms of overall quality, Babylon 5 was conceptually bold and, at its best, was complex and satisfying, with multiple character arcs interweaving around one another and the main storylines of the series in a manner that was occasionally awesome. This was all accomplished at the same time that Straczynski also pursued a number of important thematic elements, as well as bringing in elements of realism to the setting (which was considerably more dystopian than Star Trek's). Babylon 5 was the first space-based SF show to comprehensively explore such issues as religious fundamentalism, substance abuse, alcoholism and political censorship. Other elements were not so lucky, with an examination of gender identification (via a male character - played by a woman in makeup - who would have become female in the second season and then pursued a relationship with the lead character of the show) torpedoed by the technology not being up to the job. A planned lesbian relationship between two lead characters was also ditched when one of the actresses involved left the show.

Unfortunately, whilst Babylon 5 at its best was easily the finest show on TV at the time, at its worst it stunk like weeks-old cheese. Unusually, the fans and writers were in agreement over the weakest shows of the series, and in several cases Straczynski even warned fans that that week's episode might be a bit sub-par ahead of time. This unusual honesty was refreshing, though notably it lessened as the series went along (with the near-unwatchable first half of the fifth season being defended to the hilt by the production team). The show certainly took a while to build its reputation, with the first season being 'variable' in quality and only becoming reliably good in its second year. Even then, good episodes could be let down by the odd jarring line or recycled plot element (the 'assassin/bomber loose on the station' storyline got a bit old after a while), whilst the show's production values were always only a bit above 'acceptable' (though what B5 achieved on a tiny budget was always impressive). Also, the show had a major problem with doing funny comedy episodes, with the show always falling flat on its face when it attempted it (the fact that the two funniest episodes were written by Peter David, not Straczynski, is rather telling).

Babylon 5 was flawed then, but somehow it's strengths shine all the more brightly because of its flaws. It hasn't aged brilliantly, but it's still a show that's worth watching now for its great performances (especially from Andreas Katsulas, Peter Jurasik and Mira Furlan), still-impressively-constructed central story arc and its formidable worldbuilding, not to mention some of the best spacecraft designs and space battles ever seen in the genre.

A Narn heavy cruiser parked alongside Babylon 5 in the episode Walkabout.

Conception and Genesis

Babylon 5 was conceived as a 'novel for television', a pre-planned story with a beginning, middle and end. That story was the creation of Joe Michael Straczynski, an experienced Hollywood scriptwriter who'd worked on series such as He-Man, The Real Ghostbusters, The Twilight Zone, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future and Murder, She Wrote before becoming executive producer and co-showrunner on B5.

Straczynski conceived of the show in 1987. A huge fan of authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert and TV shows like Star Trek, Blake's 7, Doctor Who and The Prisoner, he'd previously been working on two separate SF projects. The first was a small-scale, personal show set on a space station and focusing on characters. The second was a big, epic story told on a huge canvas. One day - whilst in the shower according to Straczynski - he hit on the idea of combining the two into a single show, with the potentially ruinously expensive big story told through the (much more affordable) lens of the space station setting. Originally he planned two five-year shows, Babylon 5 and its immediate sequel, Babylon Prime, but whilst working on the show's first season realised this was over-ambitious and conflated the two into a single, five-year storyline.

Straczynski's pre-planning and recruitment of respected producer Douglas Netter allowed Babylon 5 to be presented to studio execs with detailed costings, which suggested the show could be made for not much more than half of the budget of the then-on-air Star Trek: The Next Generation. Key to this plan was for the show's special effects to be completely computer-generated, eschewing the then-standard expensive and time-consuming use of motion-controlled cameras and models. Early CGI pioneer Ron Thornton (himself a veteran of British series such as Blake's 7, for which he built spaceship models in the final season) used a Commodore Amiga computer equipped with a Video Toaster plug-in card to produce an impressive image of the Babylon 5 space station orbiting a planet which wowed execs. However, most were still wary of the show, believing that there was only room for one space opera franchise on TV and that was Star Trek. Paramount themselves turned down the project in 1989 (the source of Straczynski's later grumbles when the superficially-similar Deep Space Nine was announced two years later).

In 1991, Warner Brothers agreed to develop Babylon 5 as a TV pilot. Straczynski was surprised: during the pitching session, he shattered one of his teeth and got through the rest of the session slightly spaced out on painkillers and ice. But Warner Brothers liked the idea and got behind the show with enthusiasm. SFF magazines, keen to see a non-Star Trek show on the air, also gave the project plenty of early coverage. Even computer magazines leap aboard, thrilled at seeing affordable home computers (the Amiga was huge around 1989-94, especially in Europe) being used to generate special effects for a Hollywood production. All of this enthusiasm was nearly wasted when Warner Brothers wobbled upon hearing that Deep Space Nine was in development, but they held the course and got the pilot onto the screens.

Their faith was rewarded: Babylon 5's pilot pulled in impressive ratings, got favourable reviews and sold gangbusters when it was released on VHS and LaserDisc for rental and sale a few months later. A first season was commissioned, which started airing in January 1994, with some modest cast changes (and impressive upgrades in CGI hardware). The final episode aired on 25 November 1998.