Doctor Who‘s Disney / BBC partnership may have come to an end, but the show’s future direction is still being decided. BBC bosses recently confirmed that Doctor Who‘s future is secure; Zai Bennett, CEO and Chief Creative Officer of BBC Studios Global Content, insisted the BBC is still committed to giving the world’s longest-running sci-fi TV show an even longer life. The problem, though, is that the BBC simply needs time to cook; the Russell T. Davies era didn’t land as well as had been hoped, and it’s a matter of deciding what comes next (which could even still involve Davies, for that matter).
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Speaking on the Half the Picture podcast, Doctor Who composed Murray Gold just dropped something of a bombshell about the upcoming Christmas Special, which will spin out of the Season 15 finale. He revealed that showrunner and writer Russell T. Davies has “written, I think, multiple versions depending on certain outcomes… So that’s all I really know and I’m not sure I’m even supposed to know that.”
Why Would You Write Multiple Scripts For a Single Episode?
The end of Doctor Who Season 15 saw Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor regenerate into a new form, but nobody had really expected the actor who appeared on screen; Billie Piper, best known as the iconic Doctor Who companion Rose Tyler. Piper’s appearance left viewers with so many tantalizing questions, and Whovians continue to discuss whether she’s actually playing the Doctor or whether something a lot more “timey-wimey” has happened. The answers will surely be revealed in this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special, but those are likely to have been decided for sure.
Rather, it’s reasonable to assume the different endings have been prepared to give the BBC maximum flexibility going forward. We know Doctor Who has a future, and we know the BBC want as much time as possible to figure out what that future looks like. The problem is that the Christmas Special’s ending will clearly set up that future, meaning you don’t have to be a Time Lord to realize there’s no time to waste. A sensible approach would be to prepare a handful of likely options and then shoot different end-scenes setting each one up.
Even Doctor Who writers have admitted “something went wrong” during the BBC / Disney+ era. It’s important that decision-makers take the time to figure out what that “something” is and how to put it right, rather than risk continuing to make the same mistakes. It seems likely that Murray Gold has just revealed how the BBC has bought its bosses the time they need.
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