Let’s face it, Doctor Who and Disney were odd bedfellows.
The venerable British institution — the longest-running science fiction show in history — never fell solidly into any recognizable categories. It started off as a kids’ show, but had pirouetted from that framework a long time ago. It is not quite science fiction, and neither is it quite fantasy. The fourteen-plus, all unique from each other, different faces to play the title character shunt the show’s core iconography away from actors and onto an often rickety prop designed to look like one of England’s odder solutions to police under-staffing — a relic that even many Brits no longer recognize: a blue Police Box.
This is all to say, sixty-year-old Doctor Who has always seemed a pretty slippery property for the Disney Corporation to wrangle, and one has to wonder if Disney+ has thrown in the towel. The company has not renewed its contract for a third season of the show.
Let’s be clear, we don’t know whether or not Disney will re-sign with the BBC and Bad Wolf Productions to keep the Time Lord nestled in with The Mouse, but given the company’s recent moves away from anything that might stir any more controversy than that which they’ve endured the last few years, and the show’s lackluster overnight broadcast ratings in England (which are the only indications we have of actual viewing figures as Disney+ doesn’t release theirs), Doctor Who does not seem like a golden child for the streamer. And it was hard not to notice how this season’s finale had the show seemingly taking a victory lap back to the revival’s beginnings in 2005.
These signs are not promising.
Which is a shame because Ncuti Gatwa’s second season ended on a joyous high note. While it may not have included any stone-cold masterpieces at the level of the previous season’s 73 Yards or Dot and Bubble, it certainly had a lot to offer, and the closing two episodes played out as one of the giddier romps that the show has had in the modern era.
(Slight Spoilers here.)
Lumping together characters from all along the previous two seasons, as well as a peppering of a few from the previous six decades of the show’s history (including a delightful appearance from Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor), Wish World and The Reality War seemed to be showrunner Russell T Davies’ ultimate fantasy version of Doctor Who. The episodes hang together on a tenuous thread of logic, to be sure, but from the Loki/Wandavision-esque mid-century science fiction puzzle of the Wish World to the UNIT tower becoming a giant laser cannon in order to fight skeleton dinosaurs while The Doctor flies a jet board towards the Big Bads — a scene lifted straight out of the DeLaurentis Flash Gordon (1980) — it was easy to let inconsistencies flit by.
It is not only the gloriously silly plot that makes this two-part story so successful. After about a feature film’s worth of playfulness, the show takes a remarkable turn, one which encapsulates the ethical beauty of Doctor Who as a whole. The Doctor sacrifices himself not only to save a child, but to save an IMAGINARY child.
It is a breathtakingly moral stance for any show to take and a beautiful summation of why fans have admired this hero for so long. The idea of stretching one’s morality to encompass a person that no one but your friend remembers as being a part of existence puts any Star-Trek-fought-for-a-sentient-android posturing to shame.
This is empathy unbounded.
Davies, then, seems to pull the show to a close. His new star, the exquisite Ncuti Gatwa, and his co-stars exit. Those moving on to the spin-off (and almost assuredly one-off) miniseries, The War Between the Land and the Sea (2025), are set in their places for that. The three foes — one who first appeared in 1973 (Omega), another from 1985 (The Rani), and the final one from this year, 2025 (Conrad Clark) — have been vanquished. Then, as if this train is pulling back into its station of origin, the last face the viewer sees — perhaps she’s the Doctor’s new regeneration, perhaps she’s the personification of the TARDIS itself — is Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). The end is the beginning. She is the first character that Russell T Davies introduced in his first story (Rose) as showrunner of Doctor Who in 2005.
The finale has a tidy sense of rolling up the rug after twenty years.
Rumors abound as to why the show ended the way it ended. Why did Ncuti Gatwa leave after only two seasons? Was Billie Piper added late in the game after Gatwa decided to leave? Why has no one — the BBC or Disney — announced what the future of the show will be? Was Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) always intended to play The Rani, or was this decided on the fly? While Disney is remaining mum, the BBC has indicated they could produce the show without the extra Disney Dollars if need be, but how much of an overhaul would that be?
Ultimately, we cannot know what is really going on behind the scenes, but there is no production of Doctor Who going on right now. Once Disney gives the show a thumbs-up or down, it would be at least a year of work, likely longer, to get another season out. Without the certainty of a production schedule, much of the cast and production staff will begin to wander away to other work, likely the reason that Ncuti Gatwa cut bait and left.
If Disney deals with the show in the way that they’ve dealt with some other slightly controversial shows — Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023) comes to mind as a show that was never told that it was cancelled — they may not inform Doctor Who’s production partners at all, which will add even more time.
Russell T Davies is a talented, award-winning, successful writer and producer of television. It is hard to imagine him staying on for a process that may not be resolved for several years. And if Davies goes, the 2005 revival of Doctor Who is very likely over.
Those of us who are older have been here before, and if this is the end of the television show proper, Who fans, don’t despair. You are in for a treat. Fans will keep the show aloft. They may, as happened after the 1989 cancellation, take it over.
Expect books, audio drama, comics, fan films, plays; the BBC licensing deals have always been looser that American shows and fans are very good at working around the fringes and making wonderful Doctor Who. You may find that you like it even better than you did the show.
Fan gatherings and clubs will become less corporate again. The market for handmade Osgood costumes will explode.
And Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor will remain The Doctor of record. He will be our Time Lord until someone comes and picks the show up again.
The period between 1989 and 2005 is colloquially known as “The Wilderness Years.” It was a wonderful time for Who-fandom. We would all love the show to continue, but if it doesn’t, welcome back to the Wilderness.
It is wonderful here.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times
