{"id":576692,"date":"2026-04-10T21:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/576692\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T21:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:42:08","slug":"what-on-earth-is-happening-with-doctor-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/576692\/","title":{"rendered":"What on Earth Is Happening With ‘Doctor Who’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a strange thing to say for a TV show that survived over a decade and a half of hiatus, but there might not have been a weirder time<\/a> to be a\u00a0Doctor Who fan than right now.<\/p>\n

At least when\u00a0Doctor Who was first canceled in 1989, there was something at least largely definitive about it\u2014yes, the Seventh Doctor and Ace wandered off to go have adventures we wouldn\u2019t see on-screen, but in terms of the future of the show, the classic era<\/a> of Doctor Who was dead. Fast forward almost 40 years; the show is in a very different limbo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been almost six months<\/a> since the BBC announced that its co-production deal with Disney on the show had come to a dramatic end, which confirmed at the same time that\u00a0Doctor Who would return\u2014specifically for a 2026 Christmas special penned by Russell T. Davies\u2014and that the corporation \u201cwill be announcing plans for the next series in due course, which will ensure the TARDIS remains at the heart of the BBC.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever the due course is, it\u2019s either been incredibly secretive from prying industry eyes and the general public or very slow going, because we\u2019ve heard practically nothing since about\u00a0Doctor Who\u2018s future<\/a>: either the one coming in eight months\u2019 time or whatever\u2019s going to happen after that.<\/p>\n

What has occasionally come out has been vague at best, with no one willing to even confirm who will actually appear<\/a> in the special\u2014although there have been rumors suggesting that David Tennant could make another comeback<\/a> to co-star alongside Billie Piper in her equally mysterious role<\/a>.\u00a0Doctor Who\u2018s festive specials have typically entered production as some of the first things shot in a seasonal block, with past specials commonly wrapping filming<\/a> as early in the year as May or as late as October (remember, of course, that\u00a0Doctor Who is a show that requires a lot of post-production work on top of that). But with the show\u2019s uncertain future beyond Christmas this year, there\u2019s likely much more flexibility in the production of what will likely be a one-off episode, rather than the kickstarting of a new seasonal production cycle for the show.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the uncertainty of filming that feels weird\u2014it\u2019s that you can\u2019t really talk about any kind of on-screen\u00a0Doctor Who without uncertainty at the moment. In the U.S., Doctor Who\u2018s streaming home outside of Disney\u2019s co-produced episodes has been in limbo since the series\u2019 deal with HBO Max<\/a> expired last year. Even in terms of Disney material, the final piece of that partnership\u2014the (rather dire<\/a>) spinoff miniseries The War Between the Land and the Sea\u2014has yet to release on Disney+, despite it having already broadcast in the UK and being targeted for an \u201cearly 2026\u201d launch<\/a> on the streamer.<\/p>\n

Eight months is still a very long time for things to happen for\u00a0Doctor Who, of course. Whatever happens, we\u2019re going to end this year with at least one episode of the show unless something goes disastrously wrong. But the fact that the show still remains shrouded in this cloak of uncertainty\u2014and it\u2019s definitely that rather than the usual mystery we\u2019ve come to expect from the past 20 years of the show\u2019s return\u2014all this time later can\u2019t help but feel off. There\u2019s an end in sight, but has the moment even been prepared for?<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a strange thing to say for a TV show that survived over a decade and a half…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[8827,3716,127416,88,92],"class_list":["post-576692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bbc","tag-disney","tag-doctor-who","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576692","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=576692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}