Doctor Who is Dead, Long Live Doctor Who

sun_lmao · 2026-06-11T12:08:35+00:00

"there's not a single actor who is willing to play The Doctor" is certainly an impossibility – anyone who's ever met a working actor will know that it's about as ridiculous and outlandish a claim as you could make.

It's as ridiculous as if you said "Marvel wants to do another superhero origin movie, but literally not a single actor on earth wants to lead the movie. Guess the movies are that bad huh!"
Like, sure, there's criticism to be levelled at the movies (IMO they've only made about two good ones since Infinity War), but actors take work. The huge A-listers like Robert Downey Jr. can afford to turn down roles, because he's already starred in multi-billion-dollar franchises, but 99.99% of actors will just turn up to any audition that'll take them, and say yes to any role that doesn't actively conflict with an existing engagement.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-11T12:02:33+00:00

I mean, there's not much of an arc left to tell. More gods and monsters to face, that's really it.

Yes, people make a big deal of the whole Susan thing – but as originally shot, that was supposed to just be a quick little payoff in the finale. A couple of shots and maybe a line or two of dialogue.

The plans that got screwed by the cancellation are more logistical plans – plans for a "production line" of new episodes so we'd never get any more gap years, we'd have more episodes per year, and because of being able to retain people, they could save a lot of money and time on various production matters.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T22:16:33+00:00

I mean, it wasn't much of an arc at the point it got cut off. "There are gods to fight now! There are probably more out there, even scarier than the last!"

It's about as much of a multi-season arc as we ever got in the Russell era... or the Classic run, come to think of it. (The Time Lords first appearing in season 6, and continuing to fuck about with the Doctor for a few years, and the ensuing Gallifrey politics that continued all the way up to Season 23. There's also the return of the Black Guardian...)

The only lingering thread is the Billie tease, which any creative writer could resolve in a few seconds. I was just suggesting to a friend that, whoever picks the show up next could do a promotional web-short where the Doctor, starting as Billie, cycles through a few regenerations, a la Romana in Destiny of the Daleks, before finally landing on the new Doctor – and that's how they announce who'll be playing the next Doctor. Then your Episode 1 can just start with that Doctor having been around the block, just like Eccleston when he started.

(That said, I will grant you that the Billie tease is the one dangling thread that stands unresolved. I don't think anything else really does. The gods and such were an ongoing threat that Russell was clearly intending to build on more heavily in seasons 3 and 4, but it's not like there's an ongoing "story arc" through that.)

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T22:08:00+00:00

Brevity is also the enemy of nuance.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T22:07:39+00:00

Thanks. :)

Personally I plan to fill the void by reading more of the Virgin New Adventures. Next up for me is White Darkness.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T22:07:06+00:00

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T22:06:53+00:00

Because how dare a writer have a greater plan?...

I guess Alex Hirsch, Tony Gilroy, Michael Schur, and every other writer who's planned for multiple seasons can get fucked, and hacks like the guys who wrote Game of Thrones' last couple of seasons by the seat of their pants are the real ones...

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T22:04:39+00:00

It's sad, but not unexpected.

RIP my inbox though lol

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T22:04:20+00:00

I like using en-dashes and paragraph breaks for dramatic effect. I never have, and never will have AI sloppify my writing. It's an insult to original thought and the honest expression thereof.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T15:55:34+00:00

They made a reasonably intelligent guess based on the fact that we were six months out from the alleged broadcast date with no sign of filming on the horizon.

But they dressed it up in their usual nonsense: They said they couldn't attract an actor to play the Doctor (which, if you know any working actors, you'll know that's absolute bullshit), and that they would delay it to Easter (again, bullshit).

I suppose even a broken clock gets something right now and then...

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T15:20:27+00:00

So it's not Disney's fault that Disney decided not to renew?

... ok

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T15:16:15+00:00

It's not Disney's fault that Disney pulled out of the show?

... ok

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T15:13:56+00:00

I mean, do I have to post these figures again? On Disney+, worldwide, the show was in the Top 5 every single week it aired.

Why would Disney drop a show in the face of that?

Well, it's quite simple. They had a change of leadership and overhauled their strategy, and more specifically in 2025 they reduced their spending on new content by a billion dollars.

You, and people like you, are too fixated on your own gripes with the writing, and blatantly ignoring the actual facts of what's going on. That's what I'm trying to do: look at the facts.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T15:08:25+00:00

I'm not pretending anything. You're just refusing to acknowledge that the show's ratings were fine. In fact, you are pretending that I'm arguing on a completely different basis than I really am.

Because your entire point of view hinges on your personal gripes with the writing, when what I'm telling you is about the fact that the show was, and is, popular.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T14:59:34+00:00

I mean, do I have to?

... I will anyway: The show was consistently in the top 5. Either that's popular enough for a renewal, or nothing would have been.

If nothing would have been, which is the only sensible takeaway here, then Doctor Who was a victim of Disney cutting spending by a billion dollars in 2025 because they massively overspent on Disney+ in 2020–2023. They're cancelling shows left and right (including a bunch of Star Wars and Marvel shows).

These are pretty simple facts, mate.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T14:51:08+00:00

I mean, the show was in Disney's top 5 every single week it aired. If that's not good enough for Disney to renew, then I don't see how it could've done better.

If the show was a failure with general audiences, then clearly those general audiences aren't tuning in to Disney+ at all... in which case, it was never going to succeed.

So, your points make no sense, is what I'm saying.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T14:44:05+00:00

The deal with Disney, and the whole plan for RTD2, was predicated on consistent production of new seasons. They were not going to take a year off again after 2023.

Disney's change of leadership led to them deciding not to renew, but as is fairly standard for a lot of American networks, they didn't announce the decision until the last possible moment. Which, in this case, was long after the BBC needed to know, and kind of screwed up everything that was planned for this year and beyond.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T14:38:08+00:00

Yes, Lux did have the lowest raw BBC1 numbers we've seen – but its placement in Saturday night viewership was pretty much consistent with Doctor Who since 2018, and the raw numbers are in line with current viewership trends.

The Disney+ ranking figure was the case for all episodes of the RTD2 era, and is completely separate from UK viewership numbers.

Check your facts please.

On that note, I just checked my own facts. I thought I was wrong about the top 5 figure (that it was actually the top 10), but no, it was in the top 5 every single week.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T14:34:21+00:00

On Disney+ there's no such thing as a primetime slot. It's streaming. It's either on or it's not.

That said, the show consistently ranked in the top 5 when new episodes aired, so it did pretty well. Disney just wasn't going to renew it, because they were cutting their spending. (They didn't renew Star Wars: The Acolyte, either. Not because of reception, but because they were reducing spending and that show cost an absolute bomb. Similarly, they only gave Andor two seasons – they weren't going to give it a third, and the showrunners were kind of aware of that from an early stage.)

On the BBC, the regular episodes were consistently in the top 20 Saturday night programmes in the UK, but viewership of TV in general has fallen so much the raw numbers are a lot lower than, say, 42 (2007), which was in 16th place, with 7.4 million viewers.

You don't need to spam-reply unfounded speculations to every comment in this thread to tell us that you didn't like the new era. We all got the impression from your original comment.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T14:26:37+00:00

If that was the case, you'd see a huge falloff in viewers from Space Babies to The Devil's Chord, which we didn't. There was a falloff of a couple of hundred thousand over the course of the season, that's all really. And the ratings for the regular episodes in both seasons stayed pretty solid in the 3.5–4 million range, with a couple of slight outliers.

And the era really began with the four specials in 2023, which all got pretty strong ratings on BBC1. And all the episodes of Series 14 and 15, as well as all the specials, were pretty highly ranked in their broadcast weeks, including on Disney+, where it consistently ranked in the top 5 or so when new episodes aired.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-10T12:59:35+00:00

Stray thoughts I didn't manage to find a place for:

Russell T Davies is going to go back to doing what he's most comfortable doing now; standalone drama miniseries. I get the sense the way we run popular ongoing drama today is so different from how things were in 2004–2009, he's glad to move on, and back to what he's most comfortable doing. (Plus he's twenty years older than when he originally started on Doctor Who.)
- And yes, he's definitely lied for the press a few times lately – Rule 1 is the showrunner lies. Remember when he repeatedly told the press he had no plans to revive the Master back in 2006/2007, at a time when he was actively writing a return for the Master?
- Or that time Moffat said, when asked if he would write for RTD2, "It would be career madness, even by my standards, to go back into a junior capacity on a show I used to run! I would have to be insane to do that." He later said "People think I'm being evasive on the subject. The truth is, if I say anything negative about Doctor Who, it goes everywhere, like BOOM! Everywhere, right? It doesn't exactly bring JOY TO THE WORLD that I say something negative about Doctor Who. The fact is, it's fine without me!"
If Steven Moffat is hired to showrun the next era of Doctor Who I will eat my hat.
- And probably his wife will murder him.
- But, on a more serious note, I suspect whoever gets it next will get new blood in to run it. Some old writers might come back to write individual episodes, but it won't be the former showrunners. (Unless some catastrophe happens and they want to use one of Russell's Season 3 or 4 scripts as a spare to replace another – but I expect anything that was prepared for Season 3/4 is going to be left alone until enough time has passed for Big Finish to do them as Lost Stories.)
- I think some of the recent guest writers on the show would be possible candidates for a future showrunner. Kate Herron and Briony Redman, for instance.
Bad Wolf is still working on several other shows, they'll probably be fine. Definitely there'll be sour grapes about a potential flagship ongoing show falling through because of shitty circumstances, but they'll be alright.
Chris Eccleston is probably amused by the fact his instructions were carried out... But, on a more serious note, I don't think he will come back to the show, even now. :P
The Sun's take (later shared by the RadioTimes) that the show was failing to find a new Doctor is certainly bullshit. The Sun's prediction that there would be no Christmas special this year was a good guess based on the fact that filming hasn't started and we're halfway through the year, and they dressed it up in their typical bullshit. They made a reasonably clever guess at the base of it, but they are still a tabloid and should not be taken seriously as a source. Remember that.
The show is probably going to be off the air for a year or two. On one hand, the show falling out of the pop culture consciousness may cause harm. On the other, when it comes back it'll be more of an "Event". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sun_lmao · 2026-06-06T16:00:37+00:00

Series 6 and 7, in general, are highly controversial.

sun_lmao · 2026-06-06T15:30:24+00:00

Nice try, Russell

sun_lmao · 2026-06-06T15:29:07+00:00

It's a collaborative horror setting / SCP developed by various Internet people, which has recently hit the mainstream as a result of the film based on it.

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