*The BBC cancels the Christmas special — is this the end of Doctor Who?* The BBC has announced that it won’t go ahead with the episode, while the showrunner Russell T Davies has confirmed his unexpected departure from the show
Ben Dowell, Deputy TV Editor Wednesday June 10 2026, 4.30pm BST, The Times Thirty-seven years ago the BBC1 controller Jonathan Powell broke the hearts of Doctor Who’s fan base by calling time on the show. And now Russell T Davies, the man who triumphantly regenerated the Time Lord in 2005, is finally handing back the keys to the Tardis. Quite possibly for the rest of time (and space). Today the BBC has announced that it won’t go ahead with the Doctor Who Christmas episode and that it will put the show out to competitive tender this year. Meanwhile, Davies has confirmed on Instagram that he will leave the programme. The corporation said of its plans: “This decision was not taken lightly, and we know it will be disappointing for fans, but in order to set the show up for future series, it was decided that rather than bridge the gap with a one-off special, we are choosing to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show.” Davies’s second stint as showrunner of the franchise (he had returned again to oversee it in 2023) was not an entirely happy one. In 2005 he had introduced a popular Doctor in Christopher Eccleston and later an even more popular successor in David Tennant (considered by some to be the best of the “New Who” Time Lords). But his second go at the controls was a disappointment, despite the luxury of a cash injection from its co-producers Disney. Now the BBC is looking for a new leader and production team, as predicted by The Times last week, and the show has an uncertain future. What went wrong? The decision late last year by Disney not to renew the two-series deal rumoured to be worth $100 million was an undeniable hammer blow to the show’s fortunes. It had been struggling with ratings, with the most recent, 15th series rarely topping the three million mark, which were (by most metrics) the lowest in Doctor Who history. The behind-the-scenes turmoil was accompanied by complaints from many fans that Davies was using the show to preach about social issues such as trans rights (one episode made the universe nonbinary). In the final episode of series 15 a year ago, we said goodbye to the Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, after only 19 episodes and he regenerated into Billie Piper, who had previously played the Doctor’s assistant Rose. “Oh hello,” she said in a sequence that baffled many fans and felt a little desperate. A Christmas special — and a darn good explanation — was promised. But now? Not only has Davies called time on the show, so have his long-term producers, the independent company Bad Wolf. “After careful consideration, the BBC, Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf have collectively decided not to go ahead with the previously announced Doctor Who Christmas episode,” the BBC said in its statement, one that Davies told Radio 2 last week was “lumbering through the BBC, which, as you know, is like the Jurassic Period, and 57 people have to sign off on every single word”. These didn’t sound like the words of a particularly happy man content to remain on message. So the search is on for a new production team and a new Doctor, who may or may not be Piper (the good thing about sci-fi is you can make up the rules as you go along). Davies is putting on a brave face, posting on Instagram that while it was “GOODBYE” from him, it was also “HELLO to a big new future for the show”. He also insisted that he had not even written the mooted Christmas special nor cast a new Doctor. In an interview with me in May 2024, he said that he was already writing episodes for the 16th series. These, presumably, will remain on his hard drive. There are some BBC insiders who think that a hiatus could do the show good, however. A new production company and showrunner will bring fresh ideas to the format, which many believe can still work without the high budgets offered by a streaming partner like Disney. Some of the finest episodes, such as Steven Moffat’s Blink in 2007, which introduced the terrifying Weeping Angels, and Boom in 2024 (also by Moffat and which spent most of the time with the Doctor standing on an unexploded landmine), remain the best of recent vintage and they were not high budget. During Davies’s tenure, whizzy special effects failed to elevate episodes such as Space Babies, the childish caper that opened his first series with Disney in May 2024. “The show doesn’t necessarily need money, but it needs a rethink and perhaps an abandonment of the preachiness we have seen recently,” a BBC insider says. “Special effects are not as expensive as they were and that has never been the point of Doctor Who. It’s about story first and foremost.” The new creative forces of the show, beloved by its legacy audience for its terrible effects and rubbery monsters, will also have to think hard about who it is aimed at. Many believe Davies was chasing a young adult audience that wasn’t necessarily attuned to the show, which has steadily accumulated an older fan base. The last time the numbers were crunched — for the ninth series, in 2015 — the average age of a Doctor Who viewer was 45.5 years. Still, there are plenty of people at the BBC who remain grateful for Davies’s energy and ebullience, and there is sadness among many that his reign has come to such a disappointing end. As for the new Doctor and showrunner, well, Who knows? Names in the frame for the former include Michaela Coel, Aimee Lou Wood and Nick Mohammed. And as for the showrunner, some believe that the forgettable Chris Chibnall era between 2018 and 2022 means that they should look to an outsider with a fresh eye. Moffat, who is a devoted Whovian and one who was a success in the job between 2010 and 2017, has ruled himself out. “At some point Russell will leave again, and that will not be me taking over, I can assure you of that,” he told me in December 2024. “But then, quite rightly, I hope a whole flood of new people will come in. And I think that would be slightly weird for me to be bobbing around in my late sixties with a bunch of 20-year-olds making it.” In youth, it seems, we trust. The Doctor will be back. Probably. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CABCcf4fp%2B2Vsrqkak_U8CTRCy6OkaJmgimm_ekY9sh%2BPK37Myw%40mail.gmail.com.
