After months of speculation, it’s only been relatively recently that we learned that Doctor Who‘s future would go on without the help of Disney, with the BBC setting plans into place for its return with a Christmas special in 2026. While we don’t know who’s going to star in it just yet (we kind of have an idea, at least), we do know who’s bringing it to life, and now we know that he has already started planning.
“I know exactly what happens in it, don’t worry about that,” Russell T Davies recently teased Radio Times of how plans for Doctor Who‘s lengthy return are currently going. We’ve gone from him not knowing things to knowing things, which, while slight, is an important and fundamental step towards actually getting new Doctor Who!
Unfortunately, that’s just about where the good news stops. According to Davies, he won’t actually begin writing or working on the episode until sometime next year. “I’m busy on [The War Between the Land and the Sea],” Davies continued. “I’m also shooting a show in Manchester, so next year my plate clears and we’ll get to work on that.”
It’s perhaps the most Doctor Who fans can expect, more than a year out from the show’s return. Given the already disparate UK and international releases of the last part of the Disney deal, the aforementioned Sea Devils spinoff War Between the Land and the Sea, it’s clear that how the BBC and Disney parted ways was as messy as how the deal progressed in the first place. Plans to get Doctor Who back on screen in any form are likely still in their early stages.
And likely so are plans for its future beyond it. After all, we still don’t know if Davies will continue to showrun the series after the 2026 special or just when and how the BBC will shepherd Doctor Who back to screens. We still don’t even know who’s currently playing the Doctor right now, given the wild mess of the shock-twist regeneration of Ncuti Gatwa into Billie Piper at the end of “The Reality War,” and who will be playing them going forward.
At least someone purportedly now knows. We’ll just have to wait quite a while until that someone becomes us as well.
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