{"id":227885,"date":"2025-10-16T01:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T01:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/227885\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T01:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T01:38:08","slug":"veteran-doctor-who-writer-reveals-why-he-believes-the-franchise-is-now-as-dead-as-weve-ever-known-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/227885\/","title":{"rendered":"Veteran DOCTOR WHO Writer Reveals Why He Believes The Franchise Is Now “As Dead As We’ve Ever Known It”"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the BBC announced a partnership with\u00a0Disney+ in October 2022, the idea\u00a0was to bring\u00a0Doctor Who\u00a0to a larger global audience than ever before. In exchange for the show’s streaming rights, the House of Mouse gave the long-running sci-fi series a cash injection, leading\u00a0to a long-overdue\u00a0big-budget overhaul.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, even with better effects and bigger-name guest stars like\u00a0Frozen’s Jonathan Groff,\u00a0Doctor Who\u00a0didn’t prove itself a ratings hit on either television ot streaming. Reviews for both seasons and the seasonal specials were mixed, and many fans rejected returning showrunner Russell T Davies’ “woke” take on the Time Lord.<\/p>\n

Netflix and HBO Max are supposedly\u00a0in the mix to replace Disney+ should the streamer decide to step out of the TARDIS. We’ve also heard that, if needs be, the BBC will continue to produce\u00a0Doctor Who\u00a0without a partner, even if it means fewer episodes per year and a smaller budget.<\/p>\n

It’s been months since we’ve had a definitive update on the show’s future. As we first reported on SFFGazette.com<\/a>,\u00a0Doctor Who Magazine spoke with\u00a0Robert Shearman, a writer who has worked on both the TV series\u2014including the classic 2005 “Dalek” episode\u2014and several novels and audio adventures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Addressing the current state of the Doctor Who franchise, he said, “I go through phases. I have a real push\/pull thing with the show. At the moment, I\u2019m in a ‘pull’\u00a0phase. It\u2019s weird because the show is probably as dead as we\u2019ve ever known it.”<\/p>\n

Shearman elaborated on the show being “dead”\u00a0by saying, “After 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. At least with the New Adventures and then the BBC Books [original novels published in the nineties] you thought, ‘It\u2019s the current Doctor \u2013 McCoy or McGann.'”<\/p>\n

“No one\u2019s going to start writing Doctor Who books with a Billie Piper Doctor, because no one knows what that means,” the writer added.\u00a0“In a funny way, the closing moments of The Reality War seem to put a full stop on things. We didn\u2019t have that before. I don\u2019t know that it matters, but it\u2019s a strange thing: it\u2019s made me want to embrace it, because the whole of Doctor Who feels like it\u2019s in its own bubble.”<\/p>\n

Davies has indeed left Doctor Who in a tough\u00a0spot. When the series was taken off the air in 1989 (before eventually returning in 2005), it left\u00a0plenty of room for new stories to be told with the then-current status quo of the\u00a0Sylvester McCoy or\u00a0Paul McGann Doctors.<\/p>\n

However, with so much ambiguity surrounding who, or what, Piper is playing\u2014she wasn’t even introduced as the new Doctor\u2014the Doctor Who franchise remains stuck in limbo, in more ways than one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keep checking back here\u00a0for updates on\u00a0Doctor Who’s future as we have them.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the BBC announced a partnership with\u00a0Disney+ in October 2022, the idea\u00a0was to bring\u00a0Doctor Who\u00a0to a larger global…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[127416,88,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-227885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-doctor-who","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}