Is it time to let the doctor die?

When I was growing up in the Eighties, I was an enormous fan of Doctor Who. I was the right age to be watching the Sylvester McCoy era shows, and although they have subsequently not had the best reception either from casual fans or hardcore Whovians — who are many, varied and vocal in number — they were the perfect introduction to the traveller in time and space, then in his seventh incarnation. 

Through the McCoy era, I became interested in the other incarnations of the Doctor, as well. These included William Hartnell’s crotchety, grandfatherly figure; Patrick Troughton’s whimsical and slightly fey hobo; Jon Pertwee’s dashing, David Niven-esque adventurer; whatever the hell Tom Baker was; Peter Davidson’s cricket jumper-wearing English gentleman; and the underwhelming, not especially likeable version that Colin Baker played. 

Yet when the McCoy era drew to an end in 1989, that appeared to be it for the character. Save a perplexing one-off Paul McGann film from 1996, the Doctor would not return to screens until Christopher Eccleston returned as the Ninth Doctor in 2005. This series not only marked the shift from Billie Piper, pop star to Billie Piper, serious actress, but managed to take a character that many had written off and make him seem relevant and fascinating all over again. Thanks to the show’s creator Russell T Davies, then probably best known for the boundary-pushing drama Queer As Folk, Doctor Who had returned in glory. Many might have thought that he was here to last forever. 

This may still be the case, but there have been significant difficulties in the past two decades and five — or, if you want to be pedantic, six — Doctors who have followed Eccleston. The news that the Russell T Davies incarnation has come to an abrupt end after the two-season Ncuti Gatwa incarnation failed to ignite has not been wholly surprising. Despite a vast amount of money pumped into the series thanks to a Disney coproduction deal, ratings were down on previous seasons, Gatwa, although an undeniably likeable and engaging presence on screen, was criticised by many fans for being too emotional (read: he cried a lot) and there was widespread dissatisfaction that the shows were too OTT, too camp and too queer. Following on from earlier criticism of other actors playing the Doctor, such as Peter Capaldi (too disengaged, too actorly) and Jodie Whittaker (a woman), those who had wearied of Doctor Who might have felt that it had had its time. Disney certainly did and withdrew their funding, dooming the future incarnation. 

It did not help that Gatwa’s final episode teased the apparent regeneration of the character into Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler — a development that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, even by the standards of a show that had to come up with some ingenious narrative contortions to explain, for instance, why Capaldi appeared in an earlier episode as an apparently unrelated character — and when a Christmas special, usually the crown jewel in the BBC’s programming, was promised, Davies was bullish about what it would be. He claimed that BBC bosses had been left “with jaws agape, loving it” when he shared plot details, and suggested that it would be written, filmed and broadcast when he finished his responsibilities to the dystopian queer drama Tip Toe. 

On paper, the Beeb were backing him up. Their Director of Drama Lindsay Salt claimed last year that “The BBC remains fully committed to Doctor Who, which continues to be one of our most loved dramas, and we are delighted that Russell T Davies has agreed to write us another spectacular Christmas special for 2026. We can assure fans, the Doctor is not going anywhere, and we will be announcing plans for the next series in due course which will ensure the TARDIS remains at the heart of the BBC.” Whatever happened between then and now, something has gone awry. Davies has departed, as has the production company Bad Wolf, and it will now be put out to tender, for a new creator and producer to see what they can do with it. 

Even admirers of Doctor Who, current or past, might think that now is the time to retire the show

Davies, presumably in demob-happy mode, wrote on social media that “You’ll have to wait a bit longer for new Doctor Who… but you’ll be waiting for MORE Doctor Who than a one-off. So it’s worth it! For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor. You may disagree; fine, sit in that chair and wait to be proved right. You’ll wait a lonnng time. Now I’m as excited as anyone to see what comes next!” All of which means that the series is in disarray, with the man who brought it back twice, once successfully and once less so, gone and absolutely no indication as to what will happen in the future with the character or the show. 

Even admirers of Doctor Who, current or past, might think that now is the time to retire the show. It seems increasingly clear, after the indifferent-to-poor reception to the Gatwa and Whittaker incarnations of the character, that audiences are not interested in seeing what was originally intended as an educational children’s show being used as a Trojan horse to smuggle supposedly progressive but increasingly wild ideas and situations into our living rooms, or onto our streaming devices. 

Just as that other well-known long-running series James Bond is having difficulty in reinventing itself for the 21st century, so it seems increasingly likely that the Doctor is going to have to go in a wildly different direction to the wokery that Gatwa and Davies incarnated. While it might be too far to imagine a MAGA Doctor — and I don’t think Laurence Fox or his agent will be getting a call just yet — it is clear that the show has gone too far in one direction and, if it must survive or succeed, needs an urgent course correction. We shall see if this happens, or if the once-immortal Time Lord has breathed his last.