Famous in the realms of the GFFA for turning down the chance to write for Lucasfilm on Star Wars Underworld (indeed, for refusing to even meet with George Lucas), writer Russell T. Davies – here looking back at the end of his tenure on venerable British sci-fi series Doctor Who – discusses the current state of not only Who fandom, but the broader state of science-fiction fandom (including Star Wars), a space that he feels has been adversely affected by how ‘hatred can be monetised on YouTube‘.
Bear with me for a little tangent here. When it comes to science fiction, the problem of leaking online is now so vast and so pernicious it threatens to ruin everything. And it’s more ferocious than ever with Doctor Who. Every decision we ever made, every single plot twist, every single moment, all the way up to the appearance of Billie in the very last seconds of the last series finale, was leaked. It’s absolutely extraordinary, and I swear it did a lot to destroy the profile of the show. It introduces a cynicism among fans, because they’re not surprised by anything any more. Their response to a leak is weariness, an instant assumption that whatever has been leaked won’t work. They instantly imagine the worst version of it, and then, when they eventually see it, it inevitably confirms their bias. So we had to work for two years knowing that leaks were happening, and yet we were powerless.
To this day, we don’t know who the leaker was, which made us suspicious of every single person we worked with. There were some tricky conversations at work. But somewhere down the line, all these episodes go through a hundred technical processes in a hundred different suites, and I’m quite sure it’s just some random person sitting in the back of a room – not the person in charge, but the person whose job it is just to press play on every single thing we ever did, who’d then tell his mate, who’d then post it online. That person is still out there. They might be reading this and frothing with glee. But we were powerless, absolutely powerless, to do anything. I think this small element of science-fiction fandom is actually beginning to affect the whole genre, especially now hatred can be monetised on YouTube. Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, they’re all being brought down by contempt. You can even see it happening outside sci-fi, where any second series is furiously at war online with fans of its first series. Look at it happening with The Pitt.