The recent announcement of a forthcoming Blu-ray release for season 24 of Doctor Who serves as a reminder of how Sylvester McCoy’s first season changed the series. While often chucked on the scrap heap and easily dismissed, his freshman season served as both a rebound for the program following the show's 18-month hiatus and the contentious firing of Colin Baker and an inspiration for what was to come when Doctor Who soft rebooted in 2005 with its "New Who/NuWho" era.
In 1987, Doctor Who was a mess. The BBC, thinking its time had come, did as little as possible to help it regenerate, making McCoy’s first adventures in the Doctor's TARDIS a bumpy ride. Budgets were sliced, ratings were low, and scripts were greenlit without much thought about continuity or structure. Meanwhile, producer John Nathan Turner was anxious to move on, creating a set filled with a mixture of tension and malaise. If that weren't bad enough, the season’s stories were widely panned by critics and generally unpopular with fans.
In danger of being canceled, Doctor Who needed its next season to be entirely different than preceding ones. Coming on the heels of season 23’s massive “Trial of a Time Lord” arc, Sylvester McCoy's inaugural exploits as the Seventh Doctor would usher in some cosmetic changes, including a new logo, new opening credits, and a synthesizer-based theme from composer Keff McCulloch, whose broad range of musical arrangements were featured in three of the season’s stories. Dramatically, the Master, Daleks, and Cybermen were mothballed in favor of adventures that shifted away from the rancor of the two previous seasons in favor of a more whimsical tone. It's impossible to watch the start of the Seventh Doctor era without noticing the impact these and other changes would have decades later.
These changes began with “Time and the Rani,” which builds on the former's past introduction, doing more to make her a female villain that rivaled the Doctor and better paved the way for Missy, arguably the best version of the Master ever, and Madame Kovarion in the modern era. Influenced by Thatcherism and J.G. Ballard, “Paradise Towers,” proved that Doctor Who could explore darker storylines. Next, “Delta and the Bannermen,” a 1950’s romp, tackled genocide with rock n’ roll, big explosions, and fascist mercenaries. The finale “Dragonfire” introduced Ace, a companion who would influence the independently-spirited sidekicks of the future.
Season 24 is often deemed as insignificant, and it's true that McCoy's second season led to even greater shifts, but its bold experimentation helped shape the formation of the new series' soft reboot eighteen years later. In addition to presenting McCoy’s quirkier characterization of the Doctor as a time-traveling antihero, it was also significant in that it featured a strong range of female characters throughout all fourteen episodes. Most importantly, it established the tradition of having a clear change after each Doctor's regeneration, including new incidental music and a visual design makeover for the TARDIS, marking the end of one Doctor’s era to the start of the next one.
After Sylvester McCoy came aboard, BBC Worldwide expanded its worldwide distribution of Doctor Who. The results of this move increased its popularity abroad (particularly in North America) and served as a model for market expansion when the new series became a global phenomenon in 2005. Adapting to increased interest overseas and hoping to restore the faith of fans at home, script editor Andrew Cartmel developed an arc of loosely connected stories that presented a darker, more elusive persona of The Doctor. His radical plan involved investigating the Doctor’s background and motives, a notion that would have a profound effect on future producers Russell T. Davies, Steven Moffat, and newest showrunner Chris Chibnall as they each built on the foundation of Sylvester McCoy’s first season.