Yesterday’s bombshell announcement that the BBC has canceled the previously greenlit Doctor Who Christmas special, and that they had split with Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf Productions, sent the Whovian community spiraling. What does it mean that the property has no showrunner, or even season order, in place? Who will take over such a massive property? The announcement also came with the promise that the Beeb would take bids from production companies to co-partner on Doctor Who. The series is really expensive and the BBC can’t incur the cost on its own. Today, fans get a little more info, and it’s not the kind of time travel we’d hoped for.
In a piece on Deadline, we’ve learned, via two insiders, that the creative breakup between network and production company was mutual. The show needs a creative overhaul that simply a single Christmas special couldn’t hope to fix. Moreover, this overhaul is “expected to take years, potentially keeping the show off TV until 2028 at the earliest, sources said.”
It’s not a particularly optimistic bit of news, but I wouldn’t say it’s all that surprising. Given the turmoil surrounding the second season of Davies’ second tenure with the show, which saw co-producing partner Disney+ throwing less of its heft behind it and ratings tanking, the special would have been more of a Band-Aid than a way forward. At this point, the notion that, without a script (allegedly) or a lead actor, Doctor Who would be ready for Christmas was more than a pipe dream.
The problem with the BBC putting the series out to creative tender—a process by which the State-run broadcaster takes bids from producers on making the series—is that, from the independent production companies’ perspective, there isn’t much of an upside. One such anonymous producer told Deadline, “you would have to be mad” to take on the show. “[It’s a] bit of a nightmare for any producer in this market with the shadow of the Disney fallout,” was the verdict of another highly-regarded producer.
This person added: “It’s hard to see another major U.S. studio replacing Disney. So the budget would be hard to get above £3M ($4M) [per episode] without significant co-pro or insane investment from the distribution arm [BBC Studios], which they will struggle to recoup on sales.”
Doctor Who also badly needs a creative refresh. Since returning in 2005, Doctor Who has not gone a single calendar year without at least one episode. Even during the COVID years. In the 21 years since Davies’ first series, we’ve had 197 episodes. A staggering 123 of those were written or co-written by only three men. Those are the showrunners, Davies, Steven Moffat, and Chris Chibnall. That is an exceedingly small creative pool. I would posit that for any new producers to come on board, they’d want to drastically revamp the show and not merely continue on in the same direction of the past two decades.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.