Is Doctor Who stuck in the past?

Doctor Who is in an odd position. Nearly four years ago now it was announced that British TV super-producer Russell T Davies, then still in the midst of his victory lap following the success of his acclaimed series It’s a Sin, which focused on the 1980s AIDS epidemic, would be returning to show-run the iconic BBC sci-fi series. Davies was no stranger to the series. Not only being a lifelong fan, having watched the series religiously almost since it began back in 1963 when he was a child, but also being the person who show ran the series when it was revived back in 2005 following a 16-year absence from TV schedules.

Since Davies’ decision to leave the programme alongside Tennant in 2009, following a period of immense popularity for the series, Doctor Who continued to enjoy success with multiple different lead actors and showrunners as one of the BBC’s strongest television shows. However, its cultural footprint certainly waned towards the end of the 2010s, a result of the changing landscape of television as streaming became more prominent and also a sense of creative stagnation within the series, with the pandemic in particular inflicting significant damage on the series and its ambitions.

As such, the announcement of Davies’ return to the position of showrunner was met with overwhelming excitement and optimism, both by the British TV press but also by Doctor Who’s famously passionate fan base. Additionally, it was announced that the BBC would be partnering with streaming giant Disney+ to produce this new incarnation of the series, with Disney providing additional funding in exchange for the international distribution rights to the series. This meant that while Doctor Who would still be free to viewers in the UK on the BBC, it would now be available to a massive international audience by being distributed on Disney+ everywhere else, opening Doctor Who up to the kind of global prominence the series has always reached for and but never fully attained.

Doctor Who’s position appears to be as precarious as it was before

In the summer of 2022, it was announced that Rwandan-Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa, known for his role as Eric Effiong in Netflix’s Sex Education and one of the many Kens in Barbie, would be cast as the next Doctor in the new series debuting in 2024. All these decisions, particularly the partnership with Disney+, represented a massive vote of confidence in Doctor Who from the BBC. This was an obvious effort to revive the series’ popularity and make it a serious competitor within the streaming age of television which presented a danger of making the series obsolete.

However, nearly two years on from the beginning of this new era of Doctor Who, the prominence and security supposedly ensured by the presence of Davies and Disney+ has not materialised. Instead, Doctor Who’s position appears to be as precarious as it was before with the most recent episode, ‘The Reality War’ broadcast at the end of May, concluding with a shock “regeneration” (the fictional process by which the actor and personality of the Doctor changes) by Gatwa into Billie Piper. Piper is famous for her role as Doctor Who companion Rose, when the series was under Davies 20 years ago.

Decisions such as this one form the crux of the issue: Davies, despite his reputation as the arch-populist able to cultivate mass audience and cultural engagement in his projects, seems to have badly misjudged what kind of programme Doctor Who needs to be to capture an audience in the streaming era. Many of the new series’ storylines relied too much upon deep knowledge of the series’ expansive lore, resurrecting characters not seen in the series in over 50 to 60 years, alienating new viewers and antagonising older ones with its lack of innovation.

Gatwa was an inspired choice to play the Doctor

All of this said, I don’t want to give the impression that Davies or this era of Doctor Who was a complete failure or has no value. Speaking strictly for myself (opinions within the broader fan community vary too wildly to deliver a fair consensus), this is the most I have consistently enjoyed Doctor Who in around a decade. Gatwa was an inspired choice to play the Doctor and represented a new and exciting take on the eponymous character. While many of Davies’ bigger decisions across this new era were questionable, his micro-decisions, the individual episodes outside of the broader series-wide storylines, were among the best the series has seen in many years.

All of which makes the fact that this great relaunch of the series hasn’t quite worked even more frustrating. The series hasn’t found the audience it was so obviously grasping for. Several fans have placed the blame on Davies and it’s easy to see why; many of his techniques, which excelled in the mid-2000s, feel dated and antiquated in the modern TV landscape, resulting in a series which feels frustratingly unable to be innovative despite clear efforts to do so.

Current rumours indicate that while Doctor Who has not been cancelled, as many fans feared, the series will not return for a number of years and when it does, Disney+ will probably no longer be involved, though Davies has indicated he will still be attached. Hopefully this rest will allow the series to focus on its strengths, which very much still exist, instead of continuing to engage with its own past. Doctor Who’s greatest gift is that it can always do something new – a trick it must pull once again if it is to survive.

Doctor Who is available to watch on BBC iPlayer and Disney+.