It's been months since Doctor Who fans watched the latest season finale on The BBC or with their Disney+ subscription, and collectively gasped that one of the wildest rumors ever made about the franchise was actually true. Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor regenerated into a face that resembled Billie Piper's Rose Tyler, and a lot of fans would like to know what that means. Now, while we still don't know what it means, a writer has opened up about the challenge this twist creates, and it's got me wondering if the show's hiatus could be a bigger deal than I thought.
As the world waits to see if Disney and the BBC will renew their partnership as co-producers for Doctor Who, franchise writer Robert Shearman brought up to Doctor Who Magazine how this hiatus also impacts all projects happening outside of the television series (via ScreenRant):
At the moment I'm in a 'pull' phase. It's weird because the show is probably as dead as we've ever known it. After 1989, we had, for years, a current Doctor. Now, everything that is ever going to be produced in Doctor Who terms is going to feel retrogressive. At least with the New Adventures and then the BBC Books [original novels published in the nineties] you thought, 'It's the current Doctor – McCoy or McGann'. No one's going to start writing Doctor Who books with a Billie Piper Doctor, because no one knows what that means. In a funny way, the closing moments of The Reality War seem to put a full stop on things. We didn't have that before.
Robert Shearman noted that the twist put Doctor Who's forward progress at a full stop on all fronts. After all, Billie Piper can't talk about the specifics of the regeneration, and showrunner Russell T. Davies has hinted that there is a chance that this regeneration is not what it seems. After the Doctor "bi-generated" the last time and made two separate parts of himself, I think it's fair to say no one wants to assume outright that Piper is for sure the new Doctor.
While it's a bummer that it feels like we won't be getting new Doctor Who adventures with Billie Piper's character until the television show returns, Robert Shearman had some positivity to pull from it. That's because this twist puts the franchise in a unique situation that allows writers and other creatives to finally focus on the past in a way they hadn't previously:
I don't know that it matters. But it's a strange thing: it's made me want to embrace it, because the whole of Doctor Who feels like it's in its own bubble.
The upside of this development is that the entirety of Doctor Who's past can now exist in its own bubble. Writers can pitch ideas tied to past Doctors and companions, presumably without having to worry about how it impacts the future of the series.
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All this being said, there is an expectation that Doctor Who will return to television eventually. At this point, it's just a matter of who the BBC will be co-producing the new season with, as negotiations with Disney continue after some alleged disappointment surrounding viewership numbers of the last two seasons. For now, Disney is planning on releasing the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea in 2026.
I'm hoping that by the time the spinoff comes out, we will have some answers about when we'll get new episodes of Doctor Who. With 2025 potentially ending with zero updates on the show, we could be looking at a gap year where 2026 will not have new episodes. Let's hope this hiatus doesn't stretch into 2027, and we get more answers sooner rather than later.
My New Year's resolution at this point is to get more answers about Doctor Who's future, if I can, and then share it with the world. In the meantime, I'll continue to enjoy the recently released episodes on Disney+, and hope the older modern seasons have a new streaming home soon so I can revisit the Christmas specials during the holidays.
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