Dr Who When Or If
the life, death, rebirth and death again of a British institution
I can’t say I have always been a massive fan of the latest incarnation of the “Dr Who” tv show, nor of the more recent regenerative incarnations of the lead character, the Doctor, him (and her) self. But there are a great many people who consider themselves to be huge fans of the show. And this week, those people are not at all happy.
To misquote Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor immediately prior to his regeneration (that’s Dr-Who-Speak for “just before he left the show”) - "It's the end. But the moment has not been prepared for."
A few days ago an announcement was made by the BBC concerning the show. It read, in part, as follows -
Today we’re announcing an update on plans for the future of Doctor Who.
As part of securing the next phase of the show for future generations… the BBC will put Doctor Who out to competitive tender this year...
After careful consideration, the BBC, Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf have collectively decided not to go ahead with the previously announced Doctor Who Christmas episode… but in order to set the show up for future series, it was decided that rather than bridge the gap with a one off special, we are choosing to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show which ensures that when the TARDIS lands once more, it does so in all its glory...”
For some, this announcement was not entirely dissimilar to the one made by the BBC years before, when the original version of the show had a ‘rest’ which lasted far longer than many imagined - and which, in the minds of some, signalled the death of the show. And a death it was, as it turned out. 1989 is the year inscribed on the tombstone. The ‘classic’ series truly ended at that point.
But - much like the Doctor him (and her) self - death was not the end, but simply a moment of transformation. Several years later a television movie appeared on our screen, but this was very much a stand-alone incarnation of the character and not a return of the show itself.
Onwards, then, some years and the arrival of a man called Russell T Davies in 2005 and his hugely-anticipated resurrection - and it was truly a resurrection as opposed to a mere regeneration - of the show and the character.
This version of the show was entirely different to the classic era.
While the initial TV run from 1963 onward was aimed squarely at children, the universally acknowledged reality is that adults watched it (and loved it) every bit as much as their younger counterparts.
But for the new version of Dr Who, it was aimed very much at an adult audience while remaining entirely accessible to a younger audience - of whom there were many. The time-format of the show changed from a model with a range of episodes per story (usually four but often up to six) to a full-story-in-a-single-episode model, normally running to an hour.
Between 2022 and 2025, there was a production partnership for the show between the BBC and Disney. But for a variety of reasons, this partnership was not renewed after its initial contract. Potential reasons for this which have been put forward range from the diversity of the cast and characters, to the absence of saleable intellectual property on the part of the American part of the deal.
Russell Davies had stepped back in 2009 before coming back in 2023, and remaining there till a few days ago.
Once lauded as the man who brought back Dr Who from the interstellar clouds of the televisual void, he is now being cursed broadly by the fanbase of the show.
There had been much made of a Christmas 2026 special ending the off-screen period following the break with Disney. In October 2025 the BBC confirmed that “the next instalment will be a festive special written by returning show-runner Russell T Davies.. We are delighted that Russell T Davies has agreed to write us another spectacular Christmas special for 2026. We can assure fans, the Doctor is not going anywhere.”
And this proved to be astonishingly and quite literally accurate - the show did ‘not go anywhere’.
Very shortly after The BBC announcement several days ago, Russell Davies published a statement of his own -
“And so GOODBYE from me to Doctor Who but HELLO to a big new future for the show, as the BBC announces it’s putting the show out to tender. As a result, there won’t be a Christmas Special - we only cooked that up to guarantee a future when no one knew what would happen, but now we do know, there’s no need for it. … For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor..”
Well, that didn’t go down so well with the fans, who - not surprisingly - felt just a little bit betrayed. To be promised a Christmas special in October, only to find out in June there is not even a script - well, you can see how this was received not entirely with good grace. It certainly appeared to cast more than a little doubt on statements already made publicly by a number of people, about the Christmas episode. It was all becoming a bit of a mess.
I listened to one podcast and the hosts were not exactly thrilled at the situation as it had unfolded so very quickly. Scouring the interweb, it became apparent that their views were being echoed faster than Silurians out of the reanimation unit.
Amongst the particular points of critique being levelled at Mr Davies, there was a belief that in more recent episodes, his story-telling had become less than original; it was viewed as being formulaic and ‘safe’, unlike his earlier endeavours.
Amongst fans - and especially amongst non-fans and former-fans - there was a quite different particular criticism. The show had become just too preachy.
As someone who once loved the show, I have to say I can identify with that view. Indeed, it was the reason I stopped watching the show some time ago.
There are ways of putting forward viewpoints which allow the viewer of a tv show to at least consider them, even if they ultimately reject them; but with the Davies version of the show, there was no subtlety whatsoever in the messaging.
The ideological sub-text was very clear indeed. It was the very same as the messaging in every other show ever written by Russell Davies. And I suspect that while that may have fitted well with the ideological overview of the management of the BBC - I don’t think it sat anywhere near as well with those in power across the Pond at Disney. I have a very clear interior moral compass - I don’t need explicit direction from a science fiction show in order to align my cardinal points.
Perhaps the point is this.
Dr Who began life as a science-fiction half hour, during which the viewer was enabled to suspend reality and travel to distant times and places in the company of a hero who would initially seem to be losing, but who would ultimately reverse the polarity and save the day. The daft aliens and the creaky sets did nothing to erode that wonderful escapism, in the same way that many of us continue to believe that somewhere in the Midlands, the Crossroads Motel is still open for business.
Latterly, however, Dr Who has become unbelievably sophisticated, to the point that each story required a lengthy monologue from the title character to explain the last hour of viewing, which was often impenetrable even to those watching from the laboratory at CERN. And of course, they were indeed watching - well, where else do you suppose they get all their ideas?
It had become all about the effects, the constant rotation of companions (each with an ever-more intricate back-story) and the frequent guessing game of who would be the next Doctor and which ‘Classic Era’ alien would be brought back next. Personally, I haven’t forgotten that the Autons - a personal favourite - made only the briefest appearance in the first episode of the new version of the show and have not been seen since.
And so here we are.
Once again, Dr Who fans are wondering not so much ‘when’ the Doctor and his TARDIS will return - but rather, ‘if’ they will return.
We’ve been here before. So we are sort of used to it.
The BBC are clear that the show is of huge and enduring importance to the Corporation. Much as they attested in 1996.
We shall wait and see what - if anything - develops, and what truth was in those words.
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