{"id":83662,"date":"2025-10-17T05:10:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T05:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/83662\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T05:10:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T05:10:06","slug":"former-doctor-who-writer-bleakly-proclaims-the-shows-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/83662\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Doctor Who Writer Bleakly Proclaims the Show’s Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Shearman, it\u2019s not just the lack of a season 16 renewal, but an established successor to Gatwa\u2019s Doctor that makes the franchise feel so directionless. Not just in terms of the flagship series but also the ancillary materials that surround it, such as the novels and audio dramas that expand the world of the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter 1989, we had, for years, a current Doctor. Now, everything that is ever going to be produced in Doctor Who terms is going to feel retrogressive,\u201d he said \u201cAt least with the New Adventures and then the BBC Books, you thought, \u2018It\u2019s the current Doctor \u2013 McCoy or McGann\u2019. No one\u2019s going to start writing Doctor Who books with a Billie Piper Doctor, because no one knows what that means. In a funny way, the closing moments of \u2018The Reality War\u2019 seem to put a full stop on things. We didn\u2019t have that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be fair, Shearman\u2019s view regarding the show\u2019s future is certainly one of the most negative we\u2019ve seen since the finale aired earlier this year. And the BBC itself has pushed back against such catastrophizing, insisting that the broadcaster is firmly committed to the series<\/a>, with or without Disney\u2019s involvement. But it\u2019s definitely uncomfortable for fans to read such dire predictions, many of which insist we\u2019re about to endure another indeterminate hiatus like that which followed the Seventh Doctor episode \u201cSurvival\u201d rather than the outright cancellation that followed the poorly received Eighth Doctor movie. <\/p>\n

And while we still don\u2019t know any actual facts about the series\u2019s status \u2014 or plan to return \u2014 it\u2019s hard to fully ignore such worries. But since its inception, Doctor Who has always been a franchise grounded in hope. It seems a mistake to abandon that philosophy now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Shearman, it\u2019s not just the lack of a season 16 renewal, but an established successor to Gatwa\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-83662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}