And then you open the newspaper. The BBC are announcing their new autumn season with the news that the Steven Spielberg drama they spent £7 million acquiring is being shown on BBC2. The fanboy that lurks in all of us comes racing to the surface: "They can spend £7 million on that?!! That?!! And put it on BBC2?!!" But then last week they were spending £3 million reviving Only Fools and Horses and it was: "They can spend £3 million on that?!! That?!!" And about a month before that they announced they were co-producing a Buffy spin-off featuring Giles: "They've got money for that?!! That?!!" Well yes they have actually, and on that latter one I'm afraid to say I was one of those jumping up and down spouting exclamation marks. If you still believe that Doctor Who is just a TV series then it's pretty hard going keeping the flame burning in these days of four nightly soaps, 40xCasualties and fifty hours of Holby City every year. If you still believe in the TV series above all else then you are well and truly deep in the heart of no-WHO land.

We still want a TV series. The books and the audios are just waiting for the chance to jump into the bed of continuity in order to seamlessly link it all together should they announce a TV series or movie. Peter Darvill-Evans at Virgin books hated the TV Movie, but he still allowed the NAs to link directly into and back out of it. It proves that at the end of the day it's still all about the TV series. Which is a pity, partly because there's so much good stuff about it doesn't need the TV series, but mostly because the BBC haven't made a series in twelve years. And as Alan Barnes declared in DWM earlier this year: "…the truth is Doctor Who isn't returning in the foreseeable future."

Yes twelve years … it does seem a long time doesn't it? Well there's a simple but depressingly obvious answer: IT IS a long long time. Nearly half the series life-span in fact. I had three more years at school to run when the series ended and my school-days seem a very long time ago now.

So why is it the BBC won't make Doctor Who? Are they embarrassed by it? Do they even hate it? Or worse do they just not care? I believe the answer to all of these is no, no and no. That is because there is another question: why does the series refuse to go away? Why have there been so many attempts to revive it? Why does it remain an item for discussion within the Beeb to this very day when other series that ended two months ago are already totally forgotten?

Well believe it or not the BBC do want new Doctor Who. But (I write with a wagging finger) what you have to remember here is that there is no such thing as the BBC! When we say BBC as a collective term it is meaningless because there is no single person or body of persons that is the BBC. No one is ultimately in charge. Paul Cornell once referred to WHO fans as a "squabbling pit." Well touche because this also happens to sum up the BBC, a squabbling pit of people with their own agendas, conflicting ideas and beliefs about what the BBC should be doing. The producer of the radio/webcast serial Death Comes To Time Dan Freedman said that as far as the fans were concerned "I am the BBC." Meaning that the rest of the corporation hadn't a clue what he was doing.

So if you look at the BBC as a group of individuals then the attempts to bring back Doctor Who back since 1989 have been very consistent:

• 1989-94 the Greenlight people were trying to get their film off the ground.
• Summer '89 Philip Segal eventually assisted by Verity Lambert starts negotiations with Columbia to license the series over to the CBS American network for an autumn 1991 premiere.
• 1992 Darklight Productions spearheaded by Graeme Harper try to pitch for the series.
• 1992 Philip Segal re-enters the fray for good this time and starts work on what will eventually become the TV Movie.
• 1993 The Dark Dimension: The commercial wing of the BBC attempt to produce a special film directed by Graeme Harper for the 30th anniversary.
• 1994-96: development on new co-produced American series eventually scaled down to a single TV Movie.
• 1997: Universal extends its co-production deal with the BBC but nothing comes of it. Film and TV rights have lapsed back to a pre-Greenlight situation.
• 1998: Alan Yentob alerts Segal to the Cushing Dalek Movie rights availability. Segal declines, not interested in producing a remake of a remake.
• 1998: Discussions with Hal Films and distributor Miramax. Nothing comes of it.
• Summer 1999: Controller of BBC1 Peter Salmon approaches Russell T. Davies to see if he would be interested in developing a new TV series. Before Davies can start work BBC Films reveal they are talking with Impact Films. Rights issues are cited and the potential TV series is put on ice.
• 1999: Extended discussions with Impact Films' Jeremy Bolt and the distributor Artisan. Autumn 1999 the BBC inexplicably pull the plug.
• Summer 2000 Russell T. Davies comments in an article in Cult Times that he is still in contact with BBC Drama every few months about Doctor Who in case things suddenly become clearer.

Since 1989 out of that lot I'd say about eight were serious attempts to get Doctor Who back into production. In terms of development since '89 the series has never really left the BBC, there's always been meetings and discussions about it somewhere in the corporation. You can hardly say the individuals behind all these failed projects were reluctant, or unenthusiastic. Individuals as successful and acclaimed as Lambert, Spielberg, Segal, Harper, Bolt, Davies, Salmon and Yentob have all been involved or tried to sanction getting new material produced. So in light of this hive of activity it's all the more surprising that the last twelve years have seen just one 85 minute TV Movie. What's going on here?

Well if there is one thing that has characterised the BBC since its inception it is its historical split mind. We know the reason for this: the BBC receives state funding via the license fee and is therefore expected to provide the very best entertainment, to be the eyes and ears of the nation, to promote everything that is good about the arts. I doubt there has or ever will be another broadcaster quite like it. It has to serve everyone but at the same time be above it all. The BBC is a public service balancing act.

I would suggest there are two BBC's: the Reithian BBC model based on the first Director General who embodies the Radio Three, the BBC2 costume dramas and The Proms. And there is the Newman BBC based on Sydney Newman which embodies Casualty, light entertainment and Radio Two. These two are roughly the two BBC mind-sets. And remember the BBC is vast in capacity and ambition, it wants to be everything to everyone. It is the BBC who show both The Proms and Jim Davidson's Big Break. It is the BBC who provide The Tweenies and Walking With Dinosaurs. BBC Local Radio Humberside is ultimately the same organisation that gave us the USA FOX Network Doctor Who Movie.

Unfortunately for Doctor Who it has always fallen between the Reithian and Newman stools of what the BBC thinks it should or shouldn't be doing. Back in 1963 its very inception caused controversy within the Beeb. Firstly it was dreamt up by an ITV man. It was produced by the drama department when many executives felt it was more suited to the children's department. And its producer was a woman, and worse a woman of only twenty-seven also from ITV. Coming in an age when the BBC was renown for television that owed more to the theatre Doctor Who appeared shockingly lowbrow.

And sadly this stigma never really went away. As early as Troughton's era just after Newman left serious thought was given to ending the series. Luckily season seven and Jon Pertwee were judged a success. Ten years later and with networked opposition on ITV and a mature Doctor in Tom Baker only Peter Davison's arrival injected some fresh impetus for a few years to keep the nay-sayers at bay. And by 1985 not only was Doctor Who considered lowbrow it was considered old-hat, a relic of the sixties. Sooner or later a major nay-sayer would get a powerful position in the BBC. By the end of the eighties the prevailing thought that this wasn't the kind of thing they should be doing had prevailed. The nay-sayers had won … for now. As an add-on it should be noted that by '89 Doctor Who was the only fantasy show left not produced by the children's department. Genre fantasy programming as a whole was not seen as something the BBC should be doing. In the late eighties BBC sci-fi/fantasy programming meant a Star Trek movie once a year and another re-run of bloody Battlestar Galactica.

Only in the 1970s under Ronnie Marsh (major Newman model man) was the series truly safe as the yea-WHO-camp ruled all they surveyed. "Good and popular" was how Marsh termed the series and indeed he was also describing a BBC more confident in itself, a golden age of BBC/ITV polarisation. Such was the BBC's success that the Reithian and Newman models sat in almost perfect equilibrium. It was a time when Doctor Who was just one of many successful series, not to mention being part of the legendarily hallowed Saturday night schedule from Basil Brush through to Parky and Starsky & Hutch. Off the back of Pertwee's success and consolidated by Baker the series would sail almost effortlessly into the '80s.

So where and why did the BBC lose confidence in the series? How did the lurking Reithian camp finally silence the Newman camp?

Well firstly there was the advent of Star Wars. Great film though it was its impact on television was disastrous. Everything became a derivative of the film. Everything had to be effects, effects, effects. The damage was so bad the genre was effectively dead on TV in the U.S. until Star Trek TNG reintroduced story content as the spine of a sci-fi series a whole decade later. For the nay-sayers of Doctor Who the Star Wars film, its sequels and would-be copies were a godsend. In their minds there were now clear aesthetic arguments as to why the series was failing, reasons why it wasn't the sort of thing the BBC should be making. It was suddenly expensive to deliver the effects, the BBC didn't want to be laughed at. By the late-eighties it had become a conviction as Michael Grade makes clear speaking in 1991: "It was as dull as ditch water, full of leftover effects from the 70s. With a lot more money spent on it and a firebrand producer the format may not be dead." The notion of effects and big budgets had arrived. The BBC suddenly felt they and the series were aesthetically behind the times and they had to compete. This was even reflected on screen with the star-field title sequences and a greater emphasis on sci-fi instead of escapist fantasy.

Ironically Star Wars had been a low-budget picture.

Secondly the series own longevity was counting against it. Within the BBC there was no personal kudos to be gained in continuing a long running in-house series like Doctor Who. The kudos was to be found in Eastenders genesis, Edge Of Darkness or Casualty. That the Doctor had no copyrighted creator, no Gene Roddenberry or JMS or Joss Whedon around which to centralise Doctor Who didn't help. It was tethered to a corporation. Effectively Doctor Who was an orphan, there was only ever the state.

In the end the effects, old, dated and too sixties argument left the series facing a hiatus as soon as the BBC faced some financial belt-tightening. It resulted in a subsequent ratings collapse and a yea-camp depleted, marginalised, without a leg to stand on, most of whom had already moved on from the BBC anyway. The series spent its last few years forgotten in exile opposite Corrie.

The Reithian mind-set bought into the aesthetic Star Wars argument and through bad scheduling, lack of repeats, promotion and preventing a new producer team from taking over the series was effectively run into the ground.

The BBC of the eighties is characterised by the pressure put upon it from successive Tory governments to acquiesce to the Reithian BBC model. The criticism against their purchasing of The Thorn Birds was not seen as the kind of thing they were supposed to be doing according to the government. That the series managed to continue to 1989 is nothing short of remarkable. Indeed it should be remembered that in December '89 there were serious plans for the series to continue with Columbia as early as 1991. Amongst all this political pressure it was impossible for the BBC to find one voice with which to take such a commercial entity as Doctor Who forward. And yet no one within the BBC (perhaps realistically) seemed prepared to countenance it continuing in-house on a BBC budget.

And yet through the second half of the decade other parties saw this squandered potential and desperately wanted to make something of it. The reason Greenlight Films pursued the film rights was because they couldn't believe no one was tapping the cinema potential. Even Michael Grade above implied he wanted more Doctor Who but with a far larger budget. People could see the potential, but the structures and political climate simply weren't there to make anything possible. In the end the effects argument had prevailed. The BBC no longer believed they had the resources to budget science fiction or fantasy. By the late-eighties the BBC just didn't know what to with it.

In the end it was left for people outside the BBC to show the way. For commercial minds to try and enter the BBC mindset. Admittedly it was difficult for BBC Enterprises to have much idea what to do when JNT was still producing his fourteen episodes every year. However the result (eventually) was the TV Movie.

So why did Doctor Who come back? Well whatever bad attitudes existed towards the series there was a group within who were more open to the BBC's commercial behaviour, who recognised Doctor Who's potential as a commercial franchise was dynamite. It's interesting that as soon as the huge Hollywood studio Columbia made its interest known via Philip Segal in 1989 that the in-house fourteen episode series format was put on ice and McCoy's contract terminated. For both anti and pro-Doctor Who people could see the potential of a USA series over their current BBC series. And even the anti-WHO brigade could see the kudos in bringing a BBC series to Network American television. Even the pro-WHO people such as Peter Cregreen knew there wasn't much future in a BBC series playing opposite Corrie for a few months every year with this offer on the table. They realised that the whole thing had to be taken to the next level. They just needed the right people to come along and suggest plans that fitted their vision. Enter Philip Segal and the inevitability of WHO being revived via the Beeb's commercial wing starts to become a reality. Newman was from commercial television, his brainchild now lay in the hands of the Beeb's commercial wing. It was here that Segal had his first discussions on the subject.

There was the potential of Doctor Who acting as a platform for the BBC a platform in the biggest market of all. The BBC (whichever mind-set) are obsessed with America. The BBC currently have a massive multi-million many times over co-production deal with The Discovery Channel (Walking With Dinosaurs). For example in the initial 1989/90 discussions with Columbia from the word go BBC Enterprises' Roger Laughton and BBC Drama's Mark Shivas wanted to co-produce. They wanted the kudos such a series would bring to come directly rather than from indirectly just licensing the series lock, stock and barrel to Columbia. It is this insistence that the BBC be involved as co-producers with a financial stake that has led to the endless prevarication and lack of new screen Doctor Who. Effectively for a corporation limited in its budget the BBC wanted to have their cake and eat it as they own the copyright to the series. And really you can't blame them, but it means any company has to work with the BBC, not just license out the concept. Where Doctor Who is concerned the BBC are never a sleeping partner.

And there's the rub! For all the WHO supporters at the BBC wanted it back they also want to co-produce. They want to remain in control as well as hold onto the original series rights to exploit (note that the TV Movie logo was splashed over everything to do the series). To say this causes problems with the USA companies is an understatement as the TV Movie development in the Regeneration book shows. One of the major contributory reasons the McGann series never materialised anywhere is that Universal only owned 50% of the rights. While for the BBC this was very lucrative Universal were only too aware there was nowhere near as much profit to be made for them.

So yes there are those in the BBC who would happily see the series disappear forever, who simply don't get it. But for every one of them there are far more individuals who see the potential in Doctor Who as a smash hit television series and a run of cinema movies. So we have to wait and hear the whispers of these titanic struggles between the Reithian BBC and the Newman model. Their hearts are in the right place, they just seem totally hamstrung by the political structure that is neither wholly commercial nor public service, but somewhere in between.

The latest struggle is happening right now as you read this. The latest attempt to revive the TV series is being spearheaded by Dan Freedman pitching "a new take" with an unnamed but "top" producer. Are they co-producing? Who knows. If they aren't it flies in the face of twelve years received wisdom and will surely be crushed by BBC Films and whichever Hollywood giant is currently preparing to sign the movie license. Sadly that is the likely outcome as that is what history shows. The political opportunity seen by the very senior executives to put the BBC logo on a major American Network or movie screen seems to always outweigh the concerns of a domestic revival. Make no mistake it is political. Last time around it was Peter Salmon BBC1 Controller and Russell T. Davies who saw the potential in the series and were told rights issues precluded them from developing the series because of Jeremy Bolt's efforts to produce a movie. We were then told that these projects were not in competition. But this was nothing new. In '92 it was a fellow named Jonns and Graeme Harper in a company called Darklight who pitched when others were secretly discussing Segal's Amblin series. In '93 it was Harper and BBC Enterprises and their 30th Anniversary TV Special, but in face of Segal's Leekly series. If in '99 Salmon and a highly acclaimed contemporary producer such as Davies can be so easily swatted aside then what chance a radio producer such as Freedman? History gives a clear answer: not much.

Maybe there is a black-hole in the BBC structure which prevents something so commercial as Doctor Who escaping its maw?

What the BBC still needs to find with Doctor Who is ONE voice. One strategy and see it through. Sadly this is impossible. Communication between BBC Television and BBC Worldwide is as limited as ever as BBC TV still see its commercial wing as something to serve them rather than work with them. So BBC TV still don't look at Doctor Who as a commercial property because they are not a commercial organisation. Whereas Worldwide can only put the series profits back into TV's general melting pot.

We are left with the situation much like it was back in '89: our hopes lie with others with deeper pockets, little political baggage and a franchise vision to come along much like Segal did and kick-start discussions. And then you will be left with the vagaries all American television and movie have to deal with on top of a cumbersome co-production deal with the BBC people insisting on a British Doctor (pointing to their licence agreement) and various other strictures that will not devalue their back-catalogue. The BBC forced the TV Movie through endless rewrites exasperating Universal and FOX and even handing it over to a BBC script editor to give it a polish before finally okaying it, and in the end Segal had to tell them time had run out. The American money-men are left strong-armed and peeved by the comparative minnow that is the BBC having the copyright weight to call the shots.

Not for nothing did Philip Segal at Manopticon '96 refer to the BBC as a "quagmire."

Maybe Dan Freedman will succeed. We hope he will but then Doctor Who is far more than a TV series now. It sells half a million books every year and a series of audio-plays that are beyond the production capacity of BBC Radio. TV or movie Doctor Who isn't the be-all and end-all and we can afford to follow the hopes and fears of whichever brave/foolhardy producer dares to take on Auntie. It's almost become like a sporting fixture. Like every two years there is an Olympics somewhere, roughly every two years we watch predictably bemused as the latest producer starts to believe it's really going to happen. We can't help but want to point him or her in direction of Segal's Regeneration book … but too late as they are spewed by Auntie back out into the cold world. Their hopes dashed, all innocence gone. Never dear old Auntie Beeb again. The sight of a kitchen plunger makes them shake.

The last twelve years are awash with individuals burned by the series. The Greenlight people threw themselves into a major lawsuit, Segal described it as a "big bad dream," and Jeremy Bolt simply said, "I don't want to talk about it anymore." You could forgive anyone for not wanting to take the series (and the BBC) on. The BBC guard Doctor Who like a jealous lover, if they can't have her then no one else can. But like any spurned lover they can't resist telephoning and saying they'll take you back but only on strictly defined terms and conditions.

But then the optimist in us all thinks that maybe, just maybe things have finally changed. Maybe there is one voice? The new Director General is a fellow called Greg Dyke, a man like Sydney Newman who is commercially minded through and through. He is a business man, he must see the same potential in Doctor Who that Philip Segal and Alan Yentob did. But unlike Segal and Yentob Grey Dyke is inside the BBC and at the very top of the BBC. His commercial instincts will be far stronger than all his predecessors combined. Maybe the Yea-camp have returned? At the Edinburgh Television Festival of 2000 Dyke even mentioned the series in a glowing list of what the BBC does best: innovative and popular quality programming. So there is hope, lets not overstate it after twelve years of muddle and confusion but there are two men at the Beeb in Dyke and Yentob who like the series. Time will tell.

But what we can say unreservedly positively is that there are many acclaimed individuals out there who believe in the series. And it is on individual's shoulders that Doctor Who rests. Since the series went off air it was the personal efforts of Peter Darvill-Evans that brought us the NAs and launched modern Doctor Who. It was the personal efforts of Philip Segal that brought us the TV Movie, not Amblin, not FOX, not Universal. It was the efforts of Jason Haigh Ellery and Gary Russell that brought us the audio-dramas. It is the personal efforts of Dan Freedman that brought DCTT and on who current TV hopes rest. While there are such people both outside and within BBC structures there is always a chance that one of them will find that elusive common ground between the Reithian and Newman BBCs. What is that common ground? Well only the one who finally succeeds in producing a regular series will be able to tell us. And that answer will have to wait several years into a successful new series.

We can be assured that if it isn't going to be Dan Freedman then (as history also shows) it will certainly be someone else.

As the BBC press release of May 2000 says: "Nothing is cut and dried where this series is concerned."