When the BBC announced a partnership with Disney+ in October 2022, the idea was to bring Doctor Who to a larger global audience than ever before. In exchange for the show's streaming rights, the House of Mouse gave the long-running sci-fi series a cash injection, leading to a long-overdue big-budget overhaul.
Unfortunately, even with better effects and bigger-name guest stars like Frozen's Jonathan Groff, Doctor Who didn't prove itself a ratings hit on either television ot streaming. Reviews for both seasons and the seasonal specials were mixed, and many fans rejected returning showrunner Russell T Davies' "woke" take on the Time Lord.
Netflix and HBO Max are supposedly in the mix to replace Disney+ should the streamer decide to step out of the TARDIS. We've also heard that, if needs be, the BBC will continue to produce Doctor Who without a partner, even if it means fewer episodes per year and a smaller budget.
It's been months since we've had a definitive update on the show's future. As we first reported on SFFGazette.com, Doctor Who Magazine spoke with Robert Shearman, a writer who has worked on both the TV series—including the classic 2005 "Dalek" episode—and several novels and audio adventures.
Addressing the current state of the Doctor Who franchise, he said, "I go through phases. I have a real push/pull thing with the show. At the moment, I’m in a 'pull' phase. It’s weird because the show is probably as dead as we’ve ever known it."
Shearman elaborated on the show being "dead" by saying, "After 1989, we had, for years, a current Doctor. Now, everything that is ever going to be produced in Doctor Who terms is going to feel retrogressive. At least with the New Adventures and then the BBC Books [original novels published in the nineties] you thought, 'It’s the current Doctor – McCoy or McGann.'"
"No one’s going to start writing Doctor Who books with a Billie Piper Doctor, because no one knows what that means," the writer added. "In a funny way, the closing moments of The Reality War seem to put a full stop on things. We didn’t have that before. I don’t know that it matters, but it’s a strange thing: it’s made me want to embrace it, because the whole of Doctor Who feels like it’s in its own bubble."
Davies has indeed left Doctor Who in a tough spot. When the series was taken off the air in 1989 (before eventually returning in 2005), it left plenty of room for new stories to be told with the then-current status quo of the Sylvester McCoy or Paul McGann Doctors.
However, with so much ambiguity surrounding who, or what, Piper is playing—she wasn't even introduced as the new Doctor—the Doctor Who franchise remains stuck in limbo, in more ways than one.
Keep checking back here for updates on Doctor Who's future as we have them.