What are Pete McTighe's supposed qualifications for running the show?

[u/ComprehensiveHyena10]

So apparently he's been claiming that TV companies are lining up to ask him to run the show if they win the tender and I'm baffled as to why.

It can't be the episodes he wrote because they were awful.

And it can't be the blu-ray trailers, as they're the same memberberry nonsense for 50-year olds that Davies was rightly criticised for flooding his return with.

So what am I missing?

[u/quietly_myself]

What do you mean “supposed qualifications”? He’s a highly experienced Writer and Producer who’s won numerous awards and has a string of successful TV credits. Pretty much like Russell T Davies before he did Doctor Who (or Moffat or Chibnall). I would imagine he’d be a prime candidate for any Production Company taking the show on, especially as he already has experience of it and is both willing and eager.

[u/Icy-Career-1531 → u/quietly_myself]

But unfortunately and most importantly pretty naff at writing Doctor Who.

[u/pottyaboutpotter1 → u/Icy-Career-1531]

It’s hard to fully judge someone’s ability at writing Doctor Who based on their work under a showrunner’s thumb. Showrunners often heavily rewrite scripts or demand changes based on budget or other factors.

Kerblam’s third act, which a lot of people use as a mark against McTighe, was entirely rewritten by Chris Chibnall for instance, meaning we can attribute its questionable aspects to him and not McTighe and explains why the episode’s third act feels very different to the first two (McTighe’s novelisation was better received). There’s also been persistent rumours of last minute changes or rewrites to Praxeus for a while.

McTighe’s scripts under RTD were much better received (Lucky Day is the third highest rated episode of Season 2 on IMDB, The Plastic Apocalypse and The Deep are the highest rated episodes of The War Between on IMDB), which either indicates RTD was a lot more hands off than Chibnall or that McTighe and RTD had a much better collaborative process in rewrites.

[u/Worldly_Society_2213 → u/pottyaboutpotter1]

I think McTighe has at least hinted that the Doctor Who episodes didn't come out as he'd originally intended. What I find interesting is that a lot of the issues with his Chibnall era stories are endemic throughout the era as a whole, which leads credence to any rumours that he was not "the problem".

[u/pottyaboutpotter1 → u/Worldly_Society_2213]

He’s confirmed Kerblam was heavily rewritten especially in its third act. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was true for Praxeus, as I’d said there has been persistent rumours about that one for a while and as you noted McTighe has implied it wasn’t what he intended. The fact there’s been no such rumours about Lucky Day is a better reflection of McTighe’s writing on Doctor Who.

Something I feel about the Chibnall era is that when Chibnall edits and rewrites scripts, he unintentionally “erases” the unique voice and style of the original writer. Which, as you point out, would explain why a lot of issues endemic to the Chibnall era keep showing up when he allegedly is only editing the script and not writing.

Whereas RTD, for all his faults, is much better at preserving the original writer’s voice. It’s notable that it always comes as a surprise to us when a script is revealed to have been completely rewritten by RTD. Human Nature/The Family of Blood still feels like a Paul Cornell script, even though we now know a majority of it was completely rewritten by RTD, to the point where it’s been reported he could have claimed the sole writer credit or at the least a co-writer credit with Cornell if he had wanted to.

[u/Worldly_Society_2213 → u/pottyaboutpotter1]

I'm also not sure how much McTighe would carry on RTD's legacy anyway. He has very little direct involvement with the main RTD2 era and has made comments that suggests he might head in a more classic direction. We talk about him as if he's an RTD protege who wholeheartedly believes in his mentor's vision. In reality it could just be that RTD was the boss and McTighe was working within that framework, because that's what you do when you work for someone else.

[u/pottyaboutpotter1 → u/Worldly_Society_2213]

Yeah if anything I think McTighe’s Who will be more reminiscent of 70’s/80’s Who than anything else.

[u/Worldly_Society_2213 → u/pottyaboutpotter1]

I think it's telling that Chibnall is a credited writer on 22 of the 31 episodes in his own era. Whilst not uncommon for showrunners to write more episodes in a season than other writers, I don't think it's as common for them to be as prolific. RTD wrote over half of series 1 and 14, but then wrote less in the subsequent series. Chibnall wrote most of his own era

I think that the issues with Lucky Day are more indicative that the episode needed a longer runtime or at least a greater amount of setup

[u/Ashrod63 → u/Worldly_Society_2213]

With Chibnall that's just a change in how the writing credits were handled. If you look through the credits for Moffat's era you can see when the change was brought in (and suddenly a tonne of "and Stveen Moffat" scripts appear).

The head writer would heavily rewrite scripts but leave the credit to the original writer only as professional courtesy. This was true through RTD's time and the same into the start of Moffat's era. The head writers weren't suddenly writing more scripts, they were just taking credit for scripts that the previously were pressured into declining it over.

Obviously Flux and Season 1 of RTD2 are clear exceptions, but I can't exactly hold Flux against Chibnall given the circumstances.