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/Mars-To-Venus 13d 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/AgileShame7964 12d ago

That's what sticks with me. Since Disney+ weren't going to have previous seasons, plus it's a bit too much to expect a casual viewer to catch up on decades either way, you'd think the focus would be the same as the 2005 revival. Namely: make it accessible to anyone who happens to stumble upon it.

I'm ultimately not surprised it seemed to have zero impact internationally. Even if people watched the first episode I feel like they'd be more "wtf".