There Were Better Ways To End 'Doctor Who'

‘Everything must end. Otherwise nothing would ever get started.’

The Doctor Who revival era has officially ended. The new series debuted in 2005 under the direction of showrunner Russell T Davies and sputtered to an unsatisfying conclusion with Davies once again at the helm in 2025. Of course, you might have assumed otherwise, considering the final season’s absurd cliffhanger that had Ncuti Gatwa’s brief tenure as the Doctor ending with his regeneration into Billie Piper, who’d played companion Rose Tyler during better days for the series.

The BBC lowered the boom last week in a press release that the TARDIS would need to translate from corporate speak into English: “After careful consideration, the BBC, Russell T Davies and [production company] Bad Wolf have collectively decided not to go ahead with the previously announced Doctor Who Christmas episode. 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 which ensures that when the TARDIS lands once more, it does so in all its glory.”

Davies confirmed his exit from the show in an Instagram post and admitted that the previously promised Christmas special was all fantasy: “For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor.” This would also confirm what everyone assumed — Billie Piper was never intended to be the next Doctor. It was just a stunt.

Reportedly, Gatwa’s final episode required extensive — and mostly nonsensical — rewrites when it was clear that he wouldn’t return for a third season. Gatwa had appeared in just 19 episodes over 18 months, so a grand finale seems overwrought, especially when tacked on last minute. (Watch below.)

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Doctor Who's 'Dot And Bubble' Holds Up A Black Mirror To Modern White Supremacy

Doctor Who’s decline has been blamed entirely on what the Elon Musk set calls the “DEI casting” of Gatwa (the first official Black Doctor) and previously Jodie Whittaker (the first official woman Doctor). This is more bigoted dogma than actual reality. The series had peaked more than 15 years ago during David Tennant’s (first) run, when the average viewership was 8.36 million. Tennant is brilliant but almost every long-running TV series, no matter how popular, peaks relatively early into its overall run, and Tennant originally left after Season 4 and a year of specials.

Russell T Davies and David Tennant both departed Doctor Who in 2010, but their replacements, Steven Moffat and Matt Smith, maintained the show’s momentum, even outperforming Tennant’s first two seasons. The ratings took a turn under Peter Capaldi, my personal favorite Doctor. This has been perhaps unfairly attributed to his age (he’s 24 years older than Smith), but the series was almost 10 years old at that point and had only made superficial changes to its format, unlike the classic series that had a complete overhaul after Patrick Troughton left at the end of its sixth season. Also, Capaldi’s run coincided with the rise of streaming television, which fundamentally altered how people view programs.

Doctor Who’s ratings rebounded slightly during Jodie Whittaker’s first season, but her final two seasons had ratings lower than most of Capaldi’s run. That’s not because of “woke backlash,” as Whittaker was a woman the whole time. Covid hit in the middle of her second season, and delayed filming for her third, which had a reduced episode count. I had my issues with showrunner Chris Chibnall’s take on the series, but Whittaker was always the standout.

When Chibnall and Whittaker left in 2022, it was assumed that Russell T Davies’s triumphant return would restore the show’s status as a cultural phenomenon. That was perhaps naive in hindsight. The 60th anniversary specials starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate performed relatively well, but viewer interest never materialized for RTD’s second run, despite the Disney+ partnership. The ratings drop off from Ncuti Gatwa’s first full appearance as the Doctor in the 2023 Christmas special to his first season premiere was almost 40 percent, a shocking figure. The second RTD era wasn’t just lower rated compared to his first or Moffatt’s era. It was consistently lower rated than Chibnall and Whittaker’s.

Gatwa’s run had problems that were entirely unrelated to his race and sexuality. There were only eight episodes per season, and, due to scheduling issues, there were more “Doctor lite” episodes than ideal. (Though, ironically, two of them — “73 Yards” and “Dot and Bubble” — were perhaps the best of Gatwa’s run.) It was hard to get to know this Doctor. I won’t speculate on the behind-the-scenes drama that had new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) leaving the show after one season, but her replacement, Belinda (Varada Sethu), clearly felt like a last-minute addition who was playing out an arc better suited for Ruby, who made key guest appearances in what became the show’s final season.

I’ve written elsewhere about my high hopes for this new era, but they soon vanished, perhaps because the era wasn’t all that new. RTD simply added a coat of paint to a 20-year-old vehicle.

It’s frustrating that RTD ended his second run with a shark-leaping cliffhanger that will remain unresolved. Doctor Who has ventured into the television wilderness before but in a far more satisfying and dare I say poetic fashion. The production team figured that 1989’s “Survival” might be the last story for a while, so the final scene treats viewers to a moving voice over from Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor.

“There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea is asleep and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do.” (Watch below.)

Although the 1996 movie wasn’t picked up for a series, it established Paul McGann as the official Doctor for new stories in expanded media. This tided over fans like myself until RTD was able to reboot the series nine years later. Unfortunately, RTD has left the series without an incumbent Doctor, so there’s no opportunity for new stories in any media for however long Doctor Who remains in the wilderness.

Even during the Capaldi run, when the series was in no immediate danger of cancellation, Moffatt offered two perfect exit ramps. In 2015’s “Hell Bent,” the Doctor returns triumphantly to the TARDIS and prepares to head off for new adventures, just like the Doctor in “Survival” and the TV movie. (Watch below.)

The Doctor is silent in this epic scene, but in the 2016 Christmas special, “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” he leaves viewers with these final words: “Things end. That’s all. Everything ends, and it’s always sad. But everything begins again too, and that’s always happy. Be happy. I’ll look after everything else.”

Until we meet again, Doctor.