How Best to Resume Doctor Who

The end of the most recent season of “Doctor Who” left things in a fairly bad place, and coupled with the uncertainty over the Disney deal, there’s a real chance the show will be going on another long hiatus. Even if not, there will definitely be a delay of a couple of years, as they will need to come up with a new cast (or at least part of one), new writers and scripts, and actually make the thing.

But there’s also the debate of how best to go forward with it.

My thinking is that the best way forward depends on whether there’s a short or a long pause before the show returns. But it boils down to three options:

Option One: A short pause, but otherwise everything continues

The best-case scenario, at least for the BBC, is that either Disney continue with their distribution deal or they find a new streaming partner straight away, RTD continues as showrunner, and they proceed into the new season more or less right away.

In that case, I’d recommend picking up where they left off: Gatwa’s Fifteen has regenerated into Piper’s Sixteen, and the fallout from that becomes the centre of the Christmas special in 2026 or 2027. This is then a one-off adventure culminating into another regeneration (as Billie Piper is almost certainly too expensive, and too in-demand, to be the Doctor long-term), before going into the next season.

Not ideal, but it gets them out of the current mess without too much turmoil.

Option Two: A short-ish pause, resuming without a streaming partner

Alternately, the BBC may find themselves without a streaming partner, in which case the show will inevitably face a somewhat longer hiatus and then may return but with a smaller budget. In which case the chances of having Billie Piper return even for a special are slim, and there’s a pretty good chance that they’d want to replace the rest of the team.

In that case, I think I’d advocate for, essentially, a “double regeneration” – the show picks up again from just before the end of the previous season, we see Gatwa regenerate, see Piper appear and say “oh, hello”… and then the regeneration continues straight through into whoever is cast as the “real” Sixteen. The explanation, if one is ever felt needed, is basically the same as for Romana’s regeneration back in the day – the Doctor was “trying on” a new face but it didn’t stick.

And then you go from there.

Option Three: A longer pause

In the event that Doctor Who finds itself without a streaming partner, the BBC may take the view that they want to rest it, to let some time pass under the bridge, let a new generation of writers come to it, and then revive the series – it was highly successful once, so why not again?

In which case, I’d recommend simply picking up with a new Doctor on new adventures, and simply not referencing what went before. At some point, way in the future, they may want to pull another “Day of the Doctor”, and thus fill in the gaps, but unless and until they come up with something really solid, just leave it unanswered. (And, crucially, don’t rush into answering the question, or even hinting at the fact that there is a question to be answered – let any revival get really confident on its feet first before touching it.)

(I was at this point going to talk about a fourth option, which would be a full-blown reboot of the series. But the more I think about it, the more I think that’s a terrible idea. Don’t do that!)

#18: “Tower of Fools”, by Andrzej Sapkowski