Last week, the Doctor Who fandom was rocked by shocking news: the Christmas Special was cancelled, and the BBC was putting the show up for tender. Google searches of “competitive tender” went through the roof as Whovians struggled to figure out what was going on, and some newspapers didn’t help by saying Doctor Who was cancelled. In reality, the BBC Charter required the public service broadcaster to put 100% of relevant shows up for tender by the end of 2027 – including Doctor Who. The BBC has held its biggest brands back until now, explaining why the idea shocked so many commentators.
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Speaking on his The Rest is Entertainment podcast, BBC insider Richard Osman has explained what’s going on. According to Osman, the BBC originally intended to put Doctor Who out to tender in 2028/2029, with the Christmas Special envisioned as a way of filling the gap. Organisational churn meant key decision-makers changed, and execs decided to accelerate the tender process. “The whole point of putting it out for tender,” Osman explained, “is, this is a big deal for us. This show is a big deal for us. It’s the opposite of saying we’re going to rest it, it’s the opposite of saying we’re putting it out for pasture… We want to give it multi-series, we need to find production companies.”
Why Are Doctor Who Fans So Worried About the Show’s Future?
The last few years have been pretty rough for Doctor Who, with declining viewership leading to the end of the BBC-Disney partnership. Doctor Who was cancelled once before, in 1989, and Whovians are understandably terrified the show could suffer the same fate once again. The BBC didn’t help matters by putting out a corporate press release that didn’t really flesh out what was going on; I confess that even I initially feared the worst, believing nobody at the BBC quite knew what to do with Doctor Who. It took a few days for the truth about the BBC Charter to come to light.
For the record, “competitive tender” refers to a formal, structured process where production companies are invited to make bids to make Doctor Who. The BBC is yet to announce the terms of this process, but it is surely going to be a multi-season offer, and it’s worth noting I’ve been unable to find any case where a BBC tendering process has not been completed successfully. Osman’s account matches up well with the BBC Charter; the BBC already put over 70% of their productions up for tender, and Doctor Who is simply the first of the biggest brands to go out. Strictly Come Dancing and EastEnders will no doubt follow over the next years.
With the show going out for tender, there was simply no way for the BBC to make that Christmas Special. It would have locked the future down a little too much, dropping a bomb into the pitching process at the worst possible time. This certainly explains former showrunner Russell T. Davies’ ebullient denials that the show has been cancelled, and his apparent confusion over the way the press statement has been received. This attitude hasn’t massively helped matters, though, because it came with rather odd denials that he’d even written scripts for the Special (even though he’d even teased them in Doctor Who Magazine).
We do seem to be entering a new era for Doctor Who, although the tendering process means it will be some time before we know more about it. What we can say for sure, though, is that Davies ended Doctor Who in a worse place than 1989; he went for a shock regeneration, clearly intending to wrap it up in the Christmas Special, but that now has to be navigated by whoever takes over. That may not be easy to do, and it’s entirely possible Davies’ cliffhanger will either be summarily ignored (perhaps dealt with in other mediums), or else he’ll have unintentionally forced a full-on reboot. Only time will tell; it always does.
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