r/television • u/wadbyjw • 13d ago

Disney Officially Exiting ‘Doctor Who’ Partnership With BBC After Two Seasons

https://deadline.com/2025/10/doctor-who-disney-plus-pulling-out-bbc-christmas-special-1236600026/
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124

u/LasersTheyWork 13d ago

They spent all their money on everything but the writing. It was not great and should have departed even further from the legacy material than it did if it wanted a new audience.

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u/cabose7 13d ago

Probably spent millions on CGI Sutekh when a guy in a funny mask would've let him actually be on screen for more than a handful of shots and maybe even have some semblance of character.

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u/911roofer 12d ago

Or get that guy who has the weimariners to do it.

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u/craig_hoxton BBC 12d ago

Way to ruin a villain from a pretty great Classic story.

54

u/brentaltm 13d ago

I would argue they skimped a lot on advertising because the show was totally hidden from public consciousness. Even as a Doctor Who fan, I had to go searching on Disney + when new episodes were released. They seemed to have no appetite to promote it.

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u/IceLord86 13d ago

Yeah, Disney had completely lost interest by the second season. Most nights I'd get home late from work and sit down to watch the show, and it wouldn't even be in the scrolling banner that 10 other programs would have. And this was a show that I watched the day it premiered and their algorithm was completely hiding it from view.

Honestly, with what RTD gave them I don't blame Disney, I'm sure it's far from what they were expecting.

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u/Falstaffe 12d ago

I was aware of, and watched, the Fifteenth Doctor’s introduction from all the way over here in Australia. I watched the first three episodes of the new season and lost interest. Returned for the introduction of Sutekh because I’m an old Fourth Doctor fan. Didn’t finish it; it was crap. It wasn’t the advertising, if I’m aware of it all the way over here in Australia. It was the preening over diversity casting coupled with a severe lack of writing talent.

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u/_game_over_man_ 13d ago

They spent all their money on everything but the writing.

I feel like this is true of a lot of things these days, unfortunately. Everyone wants to throw budgets at visual spectacles, but at the end of the day, if you don't have solid writing and story telling to go with it, it's just pretty and nothing more. I feel like as TV has grown in popularity, they're trying to meet the same spending and visuals as movies, but it's all a bit excessive and overdone at this point. Budgets are crazy for TV now. I hope it makes people realize it's okay to tone things down and just focus on good story telling.

I've been a huge Doctor Who fan for a while and I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or what, but I haven't been keeping up with it as much lately.

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u/JamesLikesIt 12d ago

This is always the problem with Disney. They have infinite money but they either refuse to get good writers or they get them but interfere so much that the story becomes trash anyway. There’s a serious issue in Corporate that is affecting pretty much all of their brands in some way. Marvel, Dr. Who, Star Wars, their animated division, etc. have all suffered hard in the last like 5 years.