The way Netflix cancels shows at the tip of a hat, their involvement would be anything but “ensuring audiences will enjoy the show for years to come”… Netflix has a big reach, that’s for sure. I just doubt their commitment beyond the next fiscal quarter report.

As for people involved,

• Random youtuber with no TV drama experience — that’ll be a no from me. I know a handful of those have taken the step to directing movies in the past years, but there’s a long stretch from Fallout commentary to taking the reins of a (faltering) classic science fiction show.
• Charlie Brooker (“the guy who does Black Mirror”) — not very likely, he has his own, fairly weighty show to maintain.
• Jordan Peele — this is a man doing multimillion dollar Hollywood movies. I highly doubt he would be a realistic candidate, but if he did join as showrunner or producer, against all odds? I bet some external investor purse strings would loosen right there. Then again, counterpoint: he has worked almost exclusively in the horror genre for the past decade.

This sent me down a rabbit hole, and I’ll freely admit I only went as far down as I could still see the entrance behind me, because man, that is a rickety warren.

IRL there would be mind boggling complexities of calculating an objective system for marking time, when you have starships zipping about at faster than light speed. The subjective time of those crews would diverge from standard observed time, and between ships traveling in different directions, at different warp speeds, and for varying stretches of (subjective?) time.

The above is my dumbed-down understanding of time dilation. But the real real life explanation is that Gene Roddenberry and writer Samuel Peeples got tipsy and drew up their own galactic map with travel itineraries (presumably on napkins and backs of coasters 🙂):

“For the starship captain’s log entry narrations, Roddenberry wanted to devise a futuristic measurement of time reference. He called (Sam) Peeples (whom Roddenberry had contacted early on for help in learning about science fiction, a subject he knew nothing about; it was Peeples who wrote “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the pilot that sold ST). The two men had a few drinks while brainstorming, and soon began chuckling over their imaginative ‘stardate’ computations. ‘We tried to set up a system that would be unidentified unless you knew how we did it,’ Peeples says.”

“They marked off sections on a pictorial depiction of the known universe and extrapolated how much earth time would elapse when traveling between given points, taking into account that the Enterprise’s warp engines would be violating Einstein’s theory that nothing could exceed the speed of light. They concluded that the ‘time continuum’ would therefore vary from place to place, and that earth time may actually be lost in travel. ‘So the stardate on Earth would be one thing, but the stardate on Alpha Centauri would be different,’ Peeples says. ‘We thought this was hilarious, because everyone would say, “How come this date is before that date when this show is after that show?” The answer was because you were in a different sector of the universe.’”

— Joel Engel, Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek, cited in the Memory Alpha entry for “Stardate”.

Oh, that’s supposed to be Ro in the header image? 😳 Hoo boy, they weren’t going for likeness, were they.

Not just pick-up, they’re willing to deliver them apparently 😄

Yeah, the thing to watch now is the BBC opportunities page where their public tenders are announced. Until production of future Doctor Who seasons show up there, interested parties can’t even pitch or submit a preliminary budget. And only then do we have a ballpark idea of the timeframe — assuming it goes like a recent tender for the hospital drama Casualty.

I believe it’s a projection from the latter that has given the guesstimate that Who could be back on screen in 2028 at the earliest? I’m not sure that production will be quite as fast considering the amount of visual effects required for Doctor Who, but I’m optimistic 🙂

That’s more generous than I’m willing to be towards “Flux” 🙂

At least Thasmin (in some form) was spelled large in the specials and “Power of the Doctor”… but it was a bit late in the day.

Onward and upward. I hope.

Yep. The show is a bloody mess right now, but my hope is somebody will turn out a fresh take within the next couple of years. There has to be somebody who can build from here and focus on making fun/scary/weird time travel stories without being bogged down by the history of it all.

No, but a segment of fans were irked that the official season numbering was reset in 2024… There are people who want all of the show numbered consecutively since 1963… You know we can’t have nice things, that’s all I’m saying

And even more, the TV landscape is still changing. Streaming is not a Klondike for companies or viewers anymore. I have no idea what’s going to materialise further down the road, but the stage is definitely being set for a change. That’s why it’s so bad for BBC shows like Who that the broadcaster is stuck in a '90s understanding of viewerships.

As for RTD… I’m sure he was hired to work the same magic as he did in 2005, and I think he tried. But he’s twenty years older now, and at a completely different place in his life and career. It was almost inevitable that this return would have a “How are you doing, fellow kids” feeling both on screen and in his press/social updates. And AFAICT his understanding of modern viewing habits is as poor as the BBC leadership’s.

I would have much preferred if he’d stuck to the 60th anniversary specials and then taken a step back to coach his replacement from an executive or advisory position. But that’s just wistful thinking, and rear view mirror rationalisation.

Probably controversial because it would maintain the Disney season numbering 🙂

“Flux” was better than it had any right to be under Covid filming restrictions. And they did some bold swings, and crammed them into a condensed season, which is gutsy in any normal context.

I wish they’d connected the dots a little better, particularly in the finale, but it’s as bonkers as “Trial of a Time Lord” which I also have a soft spot for.

To be fair, the Chibnall run looked really good to me. I don’t want to stir the “Chibnall bad” pot, but the visual effects were absolutely top notch for a BBC produced show. Same with all of Moffat’s seasons.

What they can afford now vs then is a completely different matter, but the fact that they’re looking to do a solicitation round for external production companies might be telling. AFAICT the BBC’s charter is up for renewal next year, and that may determine their finances going forward?

There are two important points in this article, which I feel often get overlooked in the rush of fan theorising and hot takes:

Gatwa’s run as the Time Lord, though, has seen viewing figures dip to the lowest in the show’s history – although the current streaming landscape makes it difficult to make like-for-like comparisons with previous eras. The highest figures ever obtained by Doctor Who, after all, were in the 1970s, when there were only three channels in the UK and when ITV was on strike.

and

Part of the problem remains that the BBC is unclear as to what it wants the show to be. It is a valuable franchise and a British cultural touchstone, but it lacks the global reach of Star Wars or Marvel, despite having to compete against them for attention. At the same time, the BBC still thinks it can use it on Saturday linear TV to unite a family audience that probably no longer exists. Putting the show out to tender suggests they are looking for somebody else to square those circles.

From an armchair analyst’s point of view, you just can’t make 1:1 comparisons between traditional, “appointment TV” broadcast viewing stats and on-demand, “long tail” streaming audiences. They’re not even apples and oranges.

But of course, that’s what doomers tend to pull out of their bag: “Look how poorly new episodes have done on date of broadcast in 2026, compared to that time there literally was nothing else on, and you didn’t know when you could watch it again”. Fortunately, you can just tune out those people.

It’s more worrying that the BBC still, 20+ years into the streaming era, don’t seem to have understood that “linear TV”, as well as the ritual of communal watching, are pretty much in the past. And they appear to decide the future of shows like Doctor Who on that outdated basis.