The BBC has announced this year’s planned Doctor Who Christmas special has been canceled, and that the show will be sent out “to competitive tender this year,” with showrunner Russell T Davies and production company Bad Wolf officially departing the long-running sci-fi series. The BBC will continue to own the rights, with BBC Studios continuing to run global distribution, licensing, and more.
The broadcaster says, “This decision was not taken lightly, and we know it will be disappointing for fans, but in order to set the show up for future series, it was decided that rather than bridge the gap with a one off special, we are choosing to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show which ensures that when the TARDIS lands once more, it does so in all its glory.”
Davies, who oversaw the show from its revival in 2005 until 2010, and again from 2023 until now, said on Instagram, “We only cooked [the special] up to guarantee a future when no one knew what would happen, but now we do know, there’s no need for it. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for new Doctor Who… but you’ll be waiting for MORE Doctor Who than a one-off. So it’s worth it!”
He adds, “For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor. You may disagree; fine, sit in that chair and wait to be proved right. You’ll wait a lonnng [sic] time [empty chair emote] Now I’m as excited as anyone to see what comes next!”
An illustration posted with Russell T Davies’s farewell
The last two seasons of Doctor Who, starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, were co-produced by Disney, who carried the show outside the UK on Disney+. The American giant also co-financed the spin-off miniseries The War Between the Land and the Sea, which aired in the UK last year, but still hasn’t been released on the streamer yet. The 2025 season finale ended on a cliffhanger, with Gatwa’s Doctor regenerating into an incarnation played by former Rose Tyler actress Billie Piper.
Longtime series writer Rob Shearman commented the decision was problematic for the expanded Whoniverse, comparing it to when the show went on hiatus before in 1989, with Sylvester McCoy as the incumbent Doctor. “No one’s going to start writing Doctor Who books with a Billie Piper Doctor,” he said, “because no one knows what that means. In a funny way, the closing moments of [the season finale] seem to put a full stop on things. We didn’t have that before.”
Still, in the meantime, Doctor Who Magazine continues to run monthly with a comic strip featuring new adventures for Gatwa’s Doctor, and a multimedia project, Circuit Breaker, starring Jo Martin‘s Fugitive Doctor, will begin this month. An animated series for the BBC’s preschool channel CBeebies is also now in production.
As the press release promises, “Doctor Who remains an important part of the BBC, and this tender underpins the BBC’s continued commitment to Doctor Who, ensuring audiences will enjoy the show for years to come.”
