The future of Doctor Who is not looking too bright. The longest-running sci-fi show in history, Doctor Who follows The Doctor and his companions as they travel throughout time and space. The series has long since been considered a cornerstone of British culture, right along with fish and chips, the fine art of queueing, and Wallace and Gromit. It’s because of the sci-fi juggernaut’s prestige that the BBC’s cancellation of the Doctor Who 2026 Christmas special (and the departure of Bad Wolf Productions and its showrunner, Russell T. Davies) feels like such a crushing blow.
With so much speculation flying around, there’s a general acceptance from fans that we won’t be seeing Doctor Who for quite a while. And while it breaks my heart to see a franchise with as rich a history as this one get put on the shelf (even temporarily), this may end up being the best thing for Doctor Who.
If you ask a group of Whovians what went wrong with Doctor Who, you’re bound to get a variety of answers. Some will point towards the return of Russell T. Davies, who was the showrunner behind the 2005 revival, as well as the man who took on the job of wrangling Disney’s acquisition of the franchise during Ncuti Gatwa’s era into something that could certainly be called a TV show. It’s fitting then that Davies’s tenure both started and ended with a camera shot of Billie Piper, though how you should feel about that fact depends on who you ask. What once was the return of a showrunner who fans thought “would save Doctor Who” from extinction now has Whovians saying the exact opposite.
[EMBED TRAILER]
Other fans may point the blame at Disney and the corporation’s mishandling of the sci-fi series, leaving cast and crew alike in the lurch. With no plan in sight and rumors indicating the House of Mouse dropped the series due to internal politics, is it any wonder that Gatwa’s regeneration after just a measly 18 episodes has turned some fans sour?
Regardless of who is to blame, a clean break has proven to be the correct course of action in the past. Doctor Who was also axed by the BBC in 1989. This was largely because senior leadership felt the show had run its course, but budget constraints, production demands, and rising concern about violence on TV also played a key role. Granted, the series also ended on a suitable, and not so controversial place, with the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and his companion Ace moving onto new horizons elsewhere. For a show whose living heart was adventure, it was a rather poetic finale for the series.
Eventually, the Doctor would attempt a return seven years later, in 1996, with a TV movie starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, but it was poorly received and ended the idea of Doctor Who returning before it had even begun. About 10 years later, Davies’s 2005 revival introduced Christopher Eccleston and Piper as the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler, and brought fans into a new, glorious age of adventures across time and space.
What made the 2005 era feel so revolutionary was a combination of the series being away for so long and a team willing to shake things up. Alongside the return of age-old villains like the Cybermen and the Daleks, there were also brand-new monsters and storylines that were as imaginative as they were bold. There seemed to be no limits to exploration, and it made each episode feel exciting and memorable. Fast forward to 2025, and Davies’s handling of Gatwa’s era feels like a painful, desperate gasp to relive the glory days of 2005.
While the franchise’s reputation has garnered some valid criticism over the years, it has also faced the hurdle of trying to grow in a time when social media seems dominated by hate-mongering against minorities, which seems particularly ironic coming from fans of a TV show with a genderfluid alien as its protagonist. With a rise in hate and, keeping the Disney rumors of internal concerns about the franchise being “too woke” in mind, perhaps it really was best for the BBC to shelve the series for now. As in 1989, it seems clear that neither the powers that be nor Davies were willing to take a risk on something new.
So let Doctor Who rest and regroup until the BBC finds someone willing to take risks rather than play it safe. As history shows, the Doctor and their companions’ adventures will always attract an audience — they just need to offer something worth watching. A new team will, hopefully, do just that. Even if it takes another 10 years of waiting. There’s plenty of non-TV material, such as novels and Big Finish audio dramas, to keep Whovians satisfied until then.
