It has been attacked for running “woke” storylines and criticised for falling ratings. Its leading actor made a surprise departure at the end of the last series. Yet the BBC has now issued a reassurance to Doctor Who fans worried about the future of the show: “the Tardis is going nowhere”.
Speculation around the show had grown in recent months after Ncuti Gatwa played the eponymous Doctor for only two series before departing in the finale of the programme’s 15th series in May.
Since then, both the BBC and Disney+ – which has co-funded the last two series – have been tight-lipped over the show’s future. However, speaking at the Edinburgh TV festival, the BBC’s content chief, Kate Phillips, told anxious fans it had a future, whether or not Disney stayed onboard.
“Any Whovians out there, rest assured: Doctor Who is going nowhere,” she said. “Disney has been a great partnership and it continues with [Doctor Who spin-off] The War Between the Land and the Sea next year. But going forward, with or without Disney, Doctor Who will still be on the BBC … The Tardis is going nowhere.”
Lindsay Salt, the director of BBC Drama, said while there was no update on the timing of the next series, the corporation would “always stay committed” to it.
The showrunner Russell T Davies had said over the summer that he remained in the dark about the future of the show. He has previously complained about the “online warriors” who claimed the show had become too woke.
Davies, who also wrote Queer As Folk and It’s a Sin, told BBC Radio 2: “What you might call diversity, I just call an open door. Someone always brings up matters of diversity. And there are online warriors accusing us of diversity and wokeness and involving messages and issues.”
Meanwhile, Disney has been caught up in Donald Trump’s drive in the US to challenge diversity policies. The US agency that oversees television said earlier this year it was investigating Disney’s diversity and inclusion practices.
Brendan Carr, who oversees the Federal Communications Commission, said he was acting over concerns Disney was promoting diversity “in a manner that does not comply” with the law.
Should Disney+ opt to not continue co-funding and distributing Doctor Who, the BBC will have to find other ways to produce it. That could mean raising funds from a group of distributors around the world, or producing it in-house on a tighter budget.
Ratings had been falling, though the success of the show has been hard to calculate. While Disney’s involvement has given the Time Lord’s adventures a global audience, the platform does not release viewing figures.
An analysis of the most recent series by Deadline, using seven-day viewing figures for its BBC outing, found it was half a million viewers down on last year’s series. Season 13, which featured Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, secured 1.7 million more viewers.
