What would he have made of it all?
I guess the nearest we will ever get are the following quotes from people who knew him, taken from the JNT biography by Richard Marson......
JNT ON THE 1996 TV MOVIE:
"He'd managed to get hold of a preview copy of the film. He hated the story and, more than anything else, the whole idea of the Doctor being half-human. He loved Paul McGann's Doctor and the production values, but he was very pissed off too, saying, "But they've got money and time." He always felt that he'd been left to go on with it and that nobody really cared. But he said, "You know what, Gray? If this fails, at least I will not be known as the man who killed off Doctor Who."
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ON THE NEW SERIES:
MARK JONES: Gary
(who thought it was great) told me that John would have said "That's no different to what I was doing!" I said, "Come on now, it does look a bit more expensive" and he replied "That's just technology today!"
LYNDA BARON: He knew it would happen and be a success again. He said "They'll live to regret it. It's ridiculous - a no-brainer." Television seems to have fallen off the rails a bit. It lacks JNT's. You can't have a world full of proles - you need mavericks like him. It's all gone corporate, led by clones and accountants.
SYLVESTER MCCOY: He would have been dead jealous of the money. So he would have been frustrated in one way, but also incredibly pleased that, in many ways, a lot of what we were putting into effect has carried on. You can still see the connection between 20th Century Doctors and 21st Century Doctors because of him.
SOPHIE ALDRED: If you watch SURVIVAL or GHOST LIGHT there are shades of what's happening now. The dark, mysterious Doctor who wasn't just the Doctor, not just a Time Lord or a hobo in space - that's his legacy too. He would have loved David and Matt and Karen - and all the gay references.
MATTHEW WATERHOUSE: It's interesting how many of the things they do now were initiated in his era - the attempts to have Doctor Who companions slightly more complex in terms of character. Less overt on the new series, but it is there. There are episodes I've seen that have reminded me of something John might have commissioned in the Sylvester McCoy era - really quite strange and dreamy. I think in fact in some ways his influence on the new programme is much deeper than people might assume. I think he would have loved that it had come back and was really, really successful.
MARK STRICKSON: I don't think he would have been surprised at all. You get an amazing product if you have that kind of money. Okay, you have to be creative as well, but you can't drive a mini and beat a Formula One car.
ANDREW CARTMEL: It would gut him really. He would have said "We could have done that, if they'd given us half a chance", and, in a sense, we could have, had he stood back and allowed the correct talented people to do the creative stuff. He would never have stood for Catherine Tate - he would have said "Get rid of that old trout and get some totty on there!"
SARAH LEE: I look at it and I think he would have loved the casting. Look at the performances of the current couple of Doctors
(David and Matt). They are so John, aren't they? It's definitely going in the direction that he would liked to have taken it. He would probably loved to have knocked on a few front doors and said, "There you go, you see, you were wrong." I suppose there would always be a hint of sadness for him because Doctor Who is going on and doing things that he would have loved to have done. It might have haunted him a bit. He did love the show.
GRAEME HARPER: I think he would have loved the new Doctor Who. i think he would have said "That's exactly what I wanted to do, but nobody ever gave me the money!" When I was invited by Russell and Phil Colinson, by the time I had done the first block, they were the same as him and he was the same as them - exactly the same - the difference was they did it 20 years later.
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