Most fan talk about this year’s series of Doctor Who has tended to concentrate on how many episodes it will consist of and when they’ll be shown, as well as ill-informed rumblings about falling ratings and a perception that certain elements in the BBC are no longer as committed to it as they have been in recent years (hello, Private Eye).

As a result, excited chatter about the actual content has been thin on the ground so CultBox is going to go out on a limb to make some requests, like the demanding types that we are…

1. Darker nights, darker tone

Among the many reasons behind Series 6’s “split” was the idea that it would help move the series away from the summer slot it’s held since 2005. This slot has meant that a lovely, sunny day can have disastrous effects on the ratings and on the enjoyment of people trying to watch, say, Blink.

Since Series 7 will go out when the skies are darker, we’d like to see less in the way of knockabout comedy and endings where everyone is saved by the power of love, and more in the way of spookiness and atmosphere. Which leads us to our second point…

2. Pick a time slot and stay there

The uncertain timeslot of Doctor Who has become a running joke among its audience, seemingly scheduled each week with the help of a random number generator.

While the 7-day ratings show that Who’s audience are clearly comfortable with iPlayer, it’d be brilliant to enter the show’s anniversary year as event TV that’s watched by fans simultaneously across the country.

3. Some new writers, please

Doctor Who Magazine recently announced that Toby Whithouse (Being Human) and Chris Chibnall (Camelot) will be returning to write new episodes. Since Whithouse was the writer of last year’s The God Complex, this isn’t a huge problem (though the less said about Chibnall’s Silurian two-parter in Series 5 the better), but it would be nice to see some names who weren’t drawn from the same small pool of writers.

Some of the most popular episodes of Moffat’s era have been written by first-time guest writers – Simon Nye (Amy’s Choice), Richard Curtis (Vincent and the Doctor) and Neil Gaiman (The Doctor’s Wife) – which is a fact that shouldn’t be ignored.

Also, while we’re here, surely some women are interested in writing for Doctor Who? Since the show’s return in 2005 only one woman has written a story, former script editor Helen Raynor, and even then she was working to “shopping lists” provided by Russell T Davies. It’s time to lose the “old boys’ club” image and maybe recruit some writers from the novel range, such as Jacqueline Rayner.

4. Change the Doctor/companion dynamic

In the 1980s, then-producer of Doctor Who, John Nathan-Turner thought of the role of the Doctor’s “assistant” as to act as “something for the dads” – a sexy girl to get older men watching. In these enlightened days, of course, the role of companion is exactly the same.

There has been a bit of variation but largely the eccentric-man-and-hot-young-woman vibe has remained intact. Given Matt Smith’s youth, he could be teamed up with an older male companion (think Bernard Cribbins as Wilf, but over a whole series) who everyone would assume was the authority figure of the two, for instance.

Admittedly this idea is basically spun out of our desire to see William Russell return as First Doctor companion Ian Chesterton (we know that The Sarah Jane Adventures’ Death of the Doctor claimed that he hadn’t aged since the 1960s, but it was only a rumour.)

5. Lose the baby-talk

After The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe’s “humany-wumany”, a sentiment that actually looked deliberately barrel-scraping, it appeared as though the Doctor himself was getting bored of such language.

If he is, then he’s not the only one. The classic series rarely passed genuine scientific muster but at least it used language that sounded plausibly scientific to the layperson and as such would cement the idea of the Doctor as a clever man indeed, something which “sciencey-wiencey” largely fails to convey.

6. Bring back the Raston Warrior Robot

As we noted in our hopes for the 50th anniversary, we love Raston Warrior Robots.

Created by Terrance Dicks as a very cheap enemy to feature in 20th anniversary story The Five Doctors, they are sleek, silver robots with a built-in weapons array and the ability to move faster than the eye can see. In the 80s, this was realised by having a man in a silver leotard leap in the air and then vanish in a smash cut. It’s so exciting to think what could be done with the concept now, it makes our fanboy hearts leap with excitement (but thankfully not vanish in a smash cut).

Forget Daleks vs Cybermen, pit the Raston Robots against the similarly rapid Weeping Angels and it could result in the best battle you never saw.

What are your hopes for Series 7? Let us know below…

> Buy the Series 6 DVD boxset on Amazon.

Watch the trailer for The Wedding of River Song…