Where Does ‘Doctor Who' Go From Here?
The end of the latest season of Doctor Who would be controversial for a good many reasons beyond its shocking cliffhanger ending—from its confounding narrative choices to its complete character re-writing of its latest companion—but perhaps what has made it reach another level of ire is that, for the foreseeable future, this might be it. Right now, the continuation of Doctor Who on TV is in about as unsure a place as it can be for the first time in 20 years. Of course, the show has contemplated disaster across those two decades, but we mostly learned of those moments well after the fact: on the public front, Doctor Who persisted into the institution it has become, in spite of it all.
But Doctor Who ends its latest run of episodes without that public acknowledgement of its own inevitability. For all the talk of scripts and eventual, possible continuity, right now there is currently no further Doctor Who confirmed beyond a five-episode spinoff series, War Between the Land and the Sea. The show will not air this holiday season; for the first time since it returned, a third season of this Disney-BBC partnership era has not been commissioned. Doctor Who, on-screen at least, is currently standing on the edge of a proverbial cliff.
That does not mean that Doctor Who is necessarily dead. Doctor Who will always live on in some form or another: it did back in 1989 when it was first cancelled, thriving in books, audio dramas, the brief spike of the 1996 TV movie, all before it came roaring back to life again in 2005. It also doesn't mean that there aren't options for the series, either, even in this moment of uncertainty. Let's explore a few of them.
Option 1: Doctor Who Continues As-Is
Of all the options on the table right now, this seems like the least likely. Not because of the perspective of Doctor Who's shaky reputation coming out if its finale, and its wild stunt-casting Hail Mary to close out Ncuti Gatwa's time on the show (it's currently unclear whether or not Billie Piper is going to be a full-fledged 16th incarnation of the Doctor; much like the show's current status, details about that are still up the air), but because at this point it's pretty much logistically impossible for the series to make a return any time soon unless it enters production immediately.
A week out from the finale and with no official statement on the renewal of the BBC's licensing partnership with Disney—with the latter already having made it clear that there was going to be a review of Doctor Who's viewership across the latest season before any decision about the deal—it seems unlikely that we're going to hear anything soon, whether Disney backs out or carries on financially supporting the series. A Christmas special for 2025 is already out of the picture at this point; one was not included in the original agreement. And even if we got news of a deal imminently, the likeliness of a new season of Doctor Who being broadcast before 2027 narrows to the point of impossibility with each passing day.
The question is, however, even if Doctor Who was renewed in the immediate future, should it continue as-is? It's become clear—and it's also clearly part of the reason why an official renewal didn't come with the conclusion of the latest season—that Doctor Who has struggled in the past few years to reclaim a wider audience again. Putting aside right-wing culture war accusations of overt 'wokeness' in the series (it has arguably been an era where Doctor Who's long-standing progressive themes have never been so purely surface-level), a mix of a streaming-first approach that has shaken up broadcast times in Doctor Who's home nation and plotlines that are failing to energize either diehard fans or new audiences has led to the series being on a ratings decline. In a period that was meant to be a new onboarding point for curious global audiences—a new Doctor, a new companion, a distancing for recent and further flung continuity threads—the series has instead wrapped itself in increasing insularity, building its dramatic climaxes on arcane connections to Who's past and season arcs that build towards the return of increasingly obscure old villains, while also paradoxically failing to capitalize on those returning characters.
Even if Doctor Who was greenlit for more seasons, whether or not its current self is working would remain uncertain.
Option 2: Doctor Who Takes a Break
So maybe the show takes a break that's longer than the logistically enforced couple of years it would take to continue on as it has been. Whether that's three years rather than two, whether it's three or four or even five, it would give the show the chance to have a creative reset behind the scenes and return with a renewed plan for its future and a renewed energy with a completely new Doctor and companion. That doesn't necessarily mean that much changes behind the scenes, but it could depending on the length of the break.
We have, at least, the upcoming War Between the Land and the Sea to act as something already made that could be broadcast in the place of a traditional season. But given the current uncertainty as to what Billie Piper's role in this transitional period could be—whether she's the Doctor at all, whether she's a regeneration similar to David Tennant's 14th and won't stick around long, or whether she is indeed a fully-fledged incarnation that will stay as the face of the series for multiple seasons—perhaps we could even see something akin to what happened with Doctor Who in 2009. Then, as the series prepared to transition between the exit of both its main star in David Tennant and its creative leadership in showrunner Russell T Davies, Who went on a quasi-break for the year, instead broadcasting four one-off special episodes throughout 2009, while a new creative team under Steven Moffat began working on getting the next era of the show ready for broadcast in 2010.
Maybe after War Between the Land and the Sea we'll see a similar 'specials' era for Piper, before a return to regular seasons with a new incarnation of the Doctor. Regardless, it would give time for Doctor Who's creative team to take a look at the last couple of years of the show, see what's working and what isn't, and lay out a new plan for what the series could eventually look like upon its return.
Option 3: Doctor Who Dies (But Not Really)
Or maybe, this is it. In not having a deal renewed at all, whether with Disney's help or without it, Doctor Who is effectively cancelled as it was back in 1989. On screen Who goes out with Piper's smiling face cutting to credits, a more open-ended but similar conclusion akin to the Seventh Doctor and Ace walking off into adventures unseen at the end of 'Survival.'
Of course, this means that we know that even if Doctor Who on TV is dead, it really isn't dead at all. Just as was the case nearly 40 years ago, the show's first wandering into 'The Wilderness Years,' as they came to be known in Doctor Who fandom, didn't really mean that Who ceased to exist. Virgin's New Adventures novels carried on the stories of the Doctor and Ace, and yet further beyond, providing a treasure trove of stories pushing the world of Doctor Who beyond the imaginings of its televised self. The Big Finish audio drama series began in 1999 and continues to this day, simultaneously giving Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor from the TV movie a whole life of adventures while also revisiting Doctors past, enriching their own histories with more stories and spinoffs.
In fits and starts, we did still get glimpses of new Doctor Who media, from the cheesy reunions of Dimensions in Time, to the aforementioned attempted revival with the 1996 movie, and then things like the online web animation Scream of the Shalka in 2003. But while Doctor Who wasn't regularly on TV any more, it was far from dormant. We've already seen the series survive one such period, only to come back and change the face of genre television all over again. Who's to say it couldn't do the same again? After all, cheating death is part of the key to Doctor Who's longevity!
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