Farewell, Fellow Nerds.

It's been good seeing you.

Now, this might seem a bit out of the blue, seeing as the marketing campaign for the new series of Doctor Who kicked off but a matter of days ago, but I have made the decision to hang up my sonic screwdriver, and step away from creating content on YouTube.

YouTube will forever think I still have hair.

Since the 60th Anniversary trilogy and Christmas special aired late last year, the future has been on my mind. Not only for the show itself, but also for what I'm going to do about it. It's absolutely no secret that, while I do have a bunch of scripts and ideas for supplemental non-review YouTube content lurking around my Google Docs, I'm not exactly the most motivated to actually do any of it. The beauty of the time pressure of getting an episode review out to capitalise on the demand for such content is that I'll actually do it. Whereas, if I'm left to my own devices, YouTube takes a back seat in my mind and I boot up Counter-Strike 2 for another night in with the boys.

If you're reading this, it's more than likely that you'll know me from my 6-odd years of full-time content creation for the likes of WhatCulture and the late Traxion.GG. My current full-time work doesn't actually involve YouTube any more, at least not with me directly. I'm still in video production (I make game trailers and the like for Frontier Developments), but the content creation/journalism chapter of my life has pretty much closed at this point. The only lingering essence of that still present today is my sporadically active YouTube channel. That then brings up the main question:

"Why am I doing this?"

I've had this particular YouTube channel active for well over a decade at this point, trying everything from vlogging to gaming let’s plays. When I left WhatCulture back in 2021, one of the biggest questions upon my departure announcement was whether WhoCulture would continue without me. Channels being left out to die wasn’t exactly unknown to my previous employer, but it was refreshing to see that it wasn’t left to rot. The channel is still going strong today, with a fantastic team behind it to boot.

That being said, by the time ‘The Halloween Apocalypse’ was set to air, I was considering doing a review for my own channel. Not only because I felt like it’d be fun to have YouTube as a solo project again, but predominantly because I knew there’d be an audience for it, since I’d left about 50k subs behind. Low and behold, upon the release of Ups & Downs for the first chapter of Series 13, viewers were rather puzzled by the lack of my face on the video, and instead were greeted by the immensely talented and ever-dashing Seán Ferrick. I, however, was lurking in the sidebar with my own video. I definitely didn’t put a bunch of ‘WhoCulture’ tags on my video in hopes of ending up there, no.

Back to the point, I began my solo Doctor Who YouTube journey because I knew there would be people willing to watch it, and I was right. Even though I’d worked on channels with millions of subscribers, and have even had videos with my face/voice on them surpassing a million views, there’s nothing like seeing 20-30k views on a video of my own. Seeing my own channel with 10,000+ subscribers is just as incredible to me too.

But then that raises the question of what my goal actually is with YouTube in a solo capacity. Reaching 100,000 subscribers to receive a silver plaque with my name emblazoned upon it has always been something on my bucket list, but actually putting the time and effort in to achieve that is very much a different story. So if not that, what? Am I doing this to further myself as a content creator and pave the way to doing sponsorship deals, official Doctor Who events, more coverage in the future and even some hosting gigs or something? No.

I did YouTube for fun, not to reach any particular goal. That being the case very much does leave motivation on the cutting room floor. There were times when I sorely needed a creative outlet, something that I was able to sink my teeth into whilst being stifled elsewhere. Twitch was that vice for a good period of time, but we know how that ended. Even when I came back to Twitch, and moved on to Motorsport Games/TraxionGG, that need for something beyond my full-time work fell to the wayside, and my Twitch channels lay dormant to this day.

As of 2024, this creative situation still rings true. I could write thousands of words as to how much I love the job I have right now. How creatively fulfilling it is, and how I’m still pinching myself after over a year in the role- but the fact I don’t feel I need YouTube in my life anymore already speaks volumes enough.

Yet, this isn’t the whole story. As you can see, I’m still writing. Just to add to this already heavy pile of reasoning, I already mentioned the fact we’re in the mix of the ‘Season 1’ marketing, and the way the BBC, Disney, and BadWolf Studios are going about this just makes things a whole lot more funky for me, and very much swung my decision to hang up my hat.

The new (and assumedly future) series of Doctor Who will be releasing on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ wherever applicable at the same time, midnight on a Friday night/Saturday morning. Also, they’re adopting the more streaming-centric approach of dropping the first two episodes together, then going weekly from episode 3 onwards. Exciting stuff for fans, absolutely. A pain in the arse for reviewers without any kind of official advance viewing privileges.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, having that relevancy time pressure from an episode really does push me to get shit done. However, two episodes at once at midnight is just taking the piss. What do I do about reviewing for YouTube in that situation?

The obvious choice would be to do a two-fer review, bundle the first two episodes into one video, right? Any YouTuber with even a smidge of knowledge of the platform is punching their desk in disbelief of that suggestion. ‘What do you mean I’m giving up half the potential traffic and revenue by merging what could be two videos into one?!’ Yeah, while I did say that growth isn’t my end goal, even that doesn’t feel like the right thing to do in my eyes.

So then do I watch the first episode, write the review, watch the second, write that review, shoot them back to back, then edit for the rest of the early hours without going to sleep? Yeah, that sounds awful. Okay then, why don’t I give myself at least a little breathing room? Split up the duties? Surely getting a review out within the following 48 hours would suffice, right? Yes, it probably would, but then we loop back to the time pressure being relaxed, and my motivation to actually do anything starts to slip.

Take my most recent (and now final) video review, ‘The Church on Ruby Road.’ As it was Christmas, I was at home with my family. While I did force everyone to shut up whilst we watched Ncuti’s first outing in the TARDIS, I wasn’t about to then bugger off for the rest of the evening to write, record, and edit the video on my laptop. I had to leave it for a couple of days since I then had plans with the in-laws on Boxing Day, I felt like horrendous crap the day after that, then it came time to actually write and-

…there was just nothing hitting the page. Not because I didn’t have any thoughts on the episode, of course I did, I just debated the whole point of doing something because I felt like I was so late to the party since it’s been a few days.

As I stated very clearly in the video above, if I hadn’t just started recording and ad-libbed the fleshing-out of a bunch of bullet points to camera, I would have never got the video out at all. This is the position I feel I’d perpetually be in if I were to attempt to review this new era of the show, to accommodate this new release/broadcast schedule. Yes, I could save myself the hassle of scripting by doing everything to camera in a more improvised fashion, but I really don’t feel like that’s my style.

Those who have worked with me know that I’m very deliberate in what I do. I take a hell of a lot of care in my work, and if I produce something that even has the faintest taste of being ‘phoned in’, I’m not going to be happy with it. I still am not happy with my review of ‘The Church on Ruby Road’, and this is perhaps the catalyst of what pushed me down this road of doubting my desire to actually do this any more.

That does sound pretty doom and gloom, but really my mindset is far from it. If anything, this feels like a release from personal expectations, the ability to enjoy Doctor Who as a mere viewer again. Any evening or weekend where I don’t have any plans, the constant drone of “you should probably be working on a YouTube video” plays on loop in my head. Now I can put that irritating voice to bed.

So that is that. I really do hope you understand this decision, and I know it’s not news some would have wanted to hear. I appreciate all the support my YouTube audience have given me over the last few years of it being a solo project, and over the years of me doing it under a bigger brand.

As to whether those video ideas end up somewhere in some other format, or even the reviews continue in some way, I don’t want to commit to anything. Mainly because I’ll probably not stick to it. However, I have started a Substack for the sake of this post, so you never know. Perhaps I’ll want to write something come the dawn of Series 14. Maybe I’ll write about things that aren’t Doctor Who related, like video games. At least here I can create more varied content without the algorithm kicking my dick in.

So if you want to live out the neverending sporadic cycle of content bearing my name, you can subscribe here on Substack to get any new mumblings straight into your email inbox. While the platform does allow for paywalled content, I’m not doing anything like that here. Every word I write will be free to read- provided you want to. God knows why.

Take care, and thank you for everything.