Former Doctor Who writer Robert Shearman has offered a candid take on the current state of the show, calling it “as dead as we’ve ever known it.”
Speaking in Doctor Who Magazine issue 622, Shearman, best known to fans for penning the acclaimed 2005 episode “Dalek”, opened up about his complicated relationship with the show.
“I go through phases, I have a real push/pull thing with the show,” he said. “At the moment I’m in a ‘pull’ phase. It’s weird because the show is probably as dead as we’ve ever known it.”
Shearman went on to explain that, unlike earlier periods of the show’s history, he feels there is now a sense of finality surrounding Doctor Who and its expanded universe.
“After 1989 we had, for years, a current Doctor,” he said. “Now, everything that is ever going to be produced in Doctor Who terms is going to feel retrogressive. At least with the New Adventures and then the BBC Books you thought, ‘It’s the current Doctor – McCoy or McGann’.”
He continued: “No one’s 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 ‘The Reality War’ seem to put a full stop on things. We didn’t have that before.”
Series 15 concluded at the end of May 2025, with Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor regenerating in a surprise scene featuring Billie Piper. Since then, the future of the show has remained in limbo.
A final decision on the show’s co-production deal with Disney is reportedly not expected now until 2026, after the release of the upcoming UNIT spin-off “The War Between the Land and the Sea”.