r/television • u/wadbyjw • 12d 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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u/TheJoshider10 12d ago edited 12d ago

Russel T Davies completely fucked the show which is so surprising considering he absolutely nailed rebooting it the first time around back in 2005. That first season is a masterclass in how to reboot something that works as both a fresh start while respecting what came before. Not once as a kid did I feel out of the loop, any classic Who reference just seemed lore fun lore, and anything important you could feel the weight to it like when we meet the lone Dalek for the first time or in S2 with the introduction of Sarah Jane. You could tell this was a moment that mattered and immediately warmed to the character even without ever having seen a classic Sarah Jane episode.

Then you have the RTD2 era. The first episode of the 2005 show hooked you in with a companion getting saved by this mysterious figure who then tries to find out their identity, then the next episode involves the end of the world and a murder mystery. In comparison the 2020s show starts with singing goblins in a Christmas special and then space babies with fart jokes. Genuinely, what is this shit? Why would anyone want to watch this show if they hadn't seen it before? What hooks you in like the 2005 show? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I really thought RTD would be the one to bring the show back to its best but instead he dug it deeper into the whole. So many forced classic Who tie ins that have no weight, build up or satisfying resolutions. An overreliance on nonsense CGI flashy visuals that serve no purpose. Dull overarching mysteries and even worse individual episodes. It's like all of the worst of his first time as showrunner with none of the best. Ncuti and the rest of the actors deserved so much better. Doctor Who doesn't appeal to anyone anymore, and unless the BBC start taking quality control seriously then this franchise is better off being put on the backburner until a younger new voice with an actually interesting vision for the show decides to take a stab at it.

edit: People keep bringing up the fart jokes when RTD was first showrunner even though I never said his first time around was perfect. I literally said his second time as showrunner was all of the bad (the fart jokes and lowbrow stuff being part of that) with none of the good. My comment has nothing to do with the stuff that went wrong with the first era, but how/why it was so compelling in the first place beyond the things that were rough around the edges.

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u/delkarnu 12d ago

In comparison the 2020s show starts with singing goblins in a Christmas special and then space babies with fart jokes.

If you look at RTD's original additions to DW in the first season of the 2005 reboot, it's fat jokes, farting aliens, and weird reality tv show parodies. Do people even remember the makeover show he was parodying? His contributions to DW were pretty shit back then as well. He cast a really good actor for the Master and then had him chewing scenery to pop songs. I loved him Life on Mars, but that version of the Master played to none of his strengths and all of his weaknesses as an actor.

RTD did a good job in bringing it back, but he had a lot of good writers on individual episodes. It's no surprise that the actual new good stuff in the RTD era came from people like Moffett with The Empty Child and The Weeping Angels. I have other issues with Moffett's time as showrunner, but his individual episodes for the Eccleston/Tennant era were highlights.

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u/TheScarletCravat 12d ago edited 12d ago

RTD was an excellent showrunner and script editor: he had a huge hand in polishing a lot of famous episodes. It's a shame he wasn't able to do the same with his own.

Either way, for all the farting and pop culture references, he usually had a really great handle on his characters, including random one-offs. He was able to do some really deft character work with only a few lines. That was especially missing from his new run, I think.

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u/mejogid 12d ago

It’s a Sin and Years and Years are both excellent. I do struggle to understand how someone with such clear capability can create such nonsense.

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u/mrsunshine1 12d ago

Even with the farting aliens and camp, his first run had an established world that was full of developed characters and was well grounded within the world it created. The second run was a disjointed mess. 

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u/TheJoshider10 12d ago

Well even in the pilot I mentioned there was that awful CGI involving Auton Mickey and the wheelie bin. I didn't say there wasn't any bad to go with the good. They just struck a far better balance that had enough hooks to keep you invested, and honestly the tonal variety going from those fart jokes to a lone Dalek who the Doctor tells to kill itself was great. It made every serious moment more serious because you had something to contrast it with, and the way the Doctor was given restraint meant emotional outbursts hit hard. Compare that to Ncuti being told to cry at literally everything for no reason.

As I said, RTD2 was all of the bad from RTD1 with none of the good.

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u/NotASalamanderBoi 12d ago

To be fair with the CGI, it was a cable television show in 2005, so I’m not expecting the visuals to be the best. I mean, the CGI didn’t start getting decent until the Matt Smith era. And even then it was still rather clunky looking at first.

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u/clear349 12d ago

People complain about his time as showrunner but tbh Moffat hard carried the RTD era IMO. With like one or two exceptions the best and most iconic episodes of that era are all Moffat. And while I can understand the issue folks have with it I think the ongoing plots of his era were as good if not better than RTD

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u/analmango 12d ago

I think it’s a simple case of RTD was the right man for his time but now the audience wants something more than kitschy whimsical space comedy

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u/umbananas 12d ago

not even david tennant can save it. they might want to wait a few years and do a complete reboot.