As Doctor Who's future remains unclear, former Doctor Christopher Eccleston has weighed in, suggesting that a female showrunner is needed to breathe life back into the sci-fi series.
Currently at the helm of the long-running BBC show is writer Russell T Davies, who was responsible for reviving the show in 2005. However, with the show off air until the end of the year following the end of the Disney+'s lucrative co-production deal, there has been call for a shake-up on Doctor Who.
Speaking at Chicago comic convention C2E2, Eccleston, who played the time-travelling alien for one series in 2005, admitted that he would not return with the “people who are running it now” in charge.
“Here’s the thing: Doctor Who’s written for boys. There has never been a female showrunner of Doctor Who,” the 62-year-old said, as reported by The Pop Verse.
“So my dream is this: there was a little girl who was, I don’t know, six, seven, eight, in 2005 when my series went out, and she gets the job, and she asked me back? I’d go back like a shot.”
While Eccleston has revived the character for the show's audio dramas, he has kept away from the show when actors like David Tennant, Billie Piper and Catherine Tate have all returned.
Eccleston has long spoken about his problems with the team behind Doctor Who, saying that their relationship “broke down irreparably during the first block of filming” in 2005.
Despite this, Davies has remained positive about Eccleston and his Ninth Doctor. Speaking to Doctor Who Magazine at the 20th anniversary of the show's reboot last year, he said: “I mean, the man is a master. You get to work with a genius – someone who's still at the top of his game all these years later. That's what we were lucky to get.”
The question of who will run Doctor Who next has been a topic of conversation since Ncuti Gatwa's surprise departure from the show in May, as his Fifteenth Doctor regenerated into Rose Tyler (played by Billie Piper) in the final of series 15.
His exit came amid rumours that Disney+, who came on board as a co-producer and international distributor in 2022, was pulling the plug on its deal with the BBC after the show failed to bring in the desired viewership and show potential to become the “global franchise” it intended.
In October, Disney confirmed that it was ending its partnership with the BBC on Doctor Who. And while the BBC confirmed that Doctor Who was not getting the axe, as tabloid reports had suggested, the show will remain off screens until December 2026, when it will return for a Christmas special not starring Gatwa.
