Fan service? FAN SERVICE! Turning the Master into a woman who wanted to shag the Doctor, the Brigadier into a Cyberman, William Hartnell into a sexist, sexual braggard, botching the return of the Time Lords to be about Clara, and finishing it by turning the Doctor into Bubble from Ab Fab/Victoria Wood is not any fan's idea of a great era.
On the contrary, it's the ultimate in fanfiction. No detached writer would come up with any of that. They'd just coast along with good adventure stories like all the classic writers did. The Doctor Who formula isn't rocket science. Hell, Troughton era writers arguably did the same thing over and over. It's much easier to get Doctor Who right than wrong.
Well I understand to some extent, but I think people go too much in the other direction of don't let fans write it, get in detached writers.
Yes it IS true that fanboys can let their prejudices get in the way of telling a good story, which can lead to them not bothering as professionals when it's a character they don't like. The best genuine example of that is Sam Raimi who didn't bother with Venom properly in Spider-Man 3 because he hadn't grown up with the character and wanted to recreate his childhood Spider-Man stories. As a result he completely botched Venom almost spitefully for not being allowed to include his childhood favourite (the Vulture a throwaway villain almost no one gave a shit about, whilst Venom was like the Spider-Man version of The Master), which was a damn shame not only because Venom is an amazing character, but because ironically (and annoyingly) he is a f*cking perfect fit for Sam Raimi's style! Raimi could have done an amazing version of Venom and Carnage. FFS the majority of the villains and stories he's done throughout his career are tailor made for Venom and Carnage, horror, possession, villain who is a bit tragic and seeks redemption LOL. The deadites, his version of Doc Ock and Callisto all have shades of Venom and Carnage, hell the f*cking theme from Ash vs Evil Dead sounds like the Symbiote theme from Spider-Man tas, and Raimi unknowingly in the first f*cking episode of Ash Vs Evil Dead recreates a classic scene with Carnage from Spider-Man tas, by sheer coincidence because his tastes line up that well with the character!
However because of his stupid snobby fanboy prejudices, he didn't even bother to look at Venom and Carnage and f*cked up a great opportunity.
Still that said at the end of the day I think the important thing is whether or not you know the character and story you are adapting. All of the best adaptations, even those that do shake things up a bit are made by people who know the source material. That can either be because they are fans, or because they are professionals or both.
Wrath of Khan was written by someone who wasn't a Trekkie, but who did go and watch all episodes of the series after getting the gig to understand it, and he zeroed in on Khan for that very reason.
Batman TAS was written by people who were fans, but unlike the Fitzroy Crowd, they were actual fans. IE they had massive collections of comic books and returned to them.
Spider-Man TAS was produced by John Semper JR who as I said before had been a fan when he was younger and wanted to recreate his era, but unlike Raimi was also a professional in that respect, and therefore went back an read as many old comics as he could to get the gist of it, and a result produced a f*cking amazing version of Venom of Carnage, with considerably more restrictions than Raimi had.
The Hammer Dracula at least starred one person who was a fan like Christopher Lee, and another who was just a professional, who went away and read the book, Peter Cushing.
In all cases the expert knowledge was useful, not just in being able to adapt stories for other mediums, but in knowing what the fundamentals of the characters were. That meant all of these writers and actors knew what they could change, and what they couldn't. For instance with Van Helsing, they knew they could make him a bit younger and a bit of a match for Dracula, as long as they still kept him as the professorial mr exposition, ordinary man fighting a vampire, as those were at the heart of the character. Similarly Bruce Timm knew he could add a character like Harley Quinn to the Joker, who was always a rampant egotist and a manipulative sociopath and had a history of colourful sidekicks.
The worst adaptations however come from people who have 0 knowledge of what they are adapting and don't care.
Revenge of the Cybermen, Bob Holmes as we know was a terrible snob who looked down on all returning monsters and felt the Cybermen were boring, stupid and childish. As a result he didn't even bother, wrote them out of character and undermined them in the show itself. Much like Raimi and Venom what was even more infuriating about this was that his style actually worked brilliantly with the Cybermen! Body horror, old gothic horror tropes, pastiche of old horror films, villain who was once powerful who is trying to rebuild their power, devious human villain who wants to help them. Am I talking about Tomb of the Cybermen or Talons of Weng Chiang here? (Hell both even have accusations of racism hurled at them LMAO.)
The 1998 Godzilla is another example. Roland Emmerich openly despised the original Godzilla movies, saying he thought they were stupid and well as a result, look at what he made? To be clear I do actually like that movie and it is far from the worst to bare the name Godzilla, but obviously it is an in name only adaptation.
Honestly I think New Who falls into that category. As we have explored in previous threads, I don't think any of these guys are die hard fans like they claim to be. I think all of them watched it when they were kids, and haven't looked back, barring the odd exception since. Certainly Missy is comparable to Bob Holmes Cybermen, Raimi's Venom in terms of a writer not even doing the basic research, or even attempting to find anything interesting in the character. Moff himself more or less said this that he never liked the character until Michelle Gomez came along, which btw is why people who claim to like the Master, but praise Missy as a wonderful, faithful version are more full of shit than a constipated Blue Whale that's just been fed an ocean of laxatives but still can't shift it.
New Who's problem is NOT fanboys. It's faux fanboys. If we got a Bruce Timm type (before his obsession with Bat sex, which I'll admit IS him being a fanboy over a writer and bringing in characters he wants to see regardless of whether they are right for each other.) Or a John Semper or the guy who wrote Wrath of Khan, someone who actually knew the history of DW, f*ck me would you see a difference.
Said writer would have to pretty much junk all of new who for starters.
