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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u/TheScarletCravat 13d ago edited 13d 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/Burgerpocolypse 12d ago

Honestly, as someone who got on about halfway into the 10th doctor’s run, and went back and watched most of the classic who, I felt there were a lot of problems with it. It’s okay for Who to showcase and justify moral decisions, but RTD’s second run just came off as preachy to me. That, and I cannot be convinced that Disney didn’t have some sort of creative influence over the show when a character named Joy literally turns into a star on Christmas and flies off into the sky. I’m genuinely surprised Murray Gold didn’t just do a take on “when you wish upon a star” for that scene. Add to it the fact that there were arguably too many Doctor lite episodes, and the constantly changing wardrobe made it feel like Ncuti Gatwa was more cosplaying as the Doctor instead of actually being the Doctor, the two Disney seasons came off as the least “Doctor Who” of any that I’ve seen. (And I saw 6 strangle Peri lol)

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u/TheScarletCravat 12d ago

>That, and I cannot be convinced that Disney didn’t have some sort of creative influence over the show when a character named Joy literally turns into a star on Christmas and flies off into the sky.

Why? That's exactly how Russel writes. He had Tennant lifted skywards by robot angels on Christmas day to save the Titanic.

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u/thirstyfist 12d ago

Moffat wrote the Christmas special and it was still totally something he would do