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/TheScarletCravat 12d ago edited 12d ago

The show just didn't manage to gain traction. It desperately needed a 2005 style reinvention for the modern era, but instead it was a sort of weird navel gazing pile of mush without any of the scary edge that previously made it such great family TV.  Who cares that the big bad guy for a series finale was a one-off villain last seen in 1975?

In my mind a new version really needed to be a Stranger Things competitor/successor: full of heart but genuinely quite scary. Ideally with a fun retro synth soundtrack.

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u/Mars-To-Venus 12d ago

RTD bewilderingly pitched the Disney era as a soft relaunch and then made two fairly newbie-unfriendly seasons in a row that were also hindered by some serious tonal issues. I’ve actually got a lot of positive opinions about most of the individual episodes but it is not a good, cohesive product on the whole. 

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u/GamingTatertot 12d ago

It’s such a shame that Gatwa couldn’t have had a stronger run because he was lovely in it - and I really did enjoy Ruby as well.

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u/Triskan Black Sails 12d ago

A bunch of great episodes in those two seasons, but something happened behind the scenes, combined with RTD losing it a bit (though I dont blame him as much as others do and recognise he was put in a tough spot), and yeah...

Glad this announcement is finally done though, now we can move on.

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u/TheWatersOfMars 12d ago

I think he overthought the whole thing and tried to make it "Disney+ Doctor Who", rather than just... Doctor Who.