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The Doctor Who Disney era is over. So why didn't it work? Let's explore the biggest failures of the last several years.
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00:00The Disney era of Doctor Who ended not with a bang, but with an awkward, muffled goodbye,
00:06with Disney not even putting out its own statement to acknowledge the relationship was over.
00:11It tells you all you need to know about the success of an era that was sold as a new
00:15dawn,
00:16a rebirth for the show.
00:18After what we saw from Russell T. Davis in 2005,
00:21you'd be forgiven for expecting New New Who to become a revitalised global juggernaut.
00:26What we got instead was a string of baffling decisions and a show that,
00:30in spite of some moments of brilliance, felt directionless and undercooked.
00:35So what went wrong?
00:36Well, quite a lot, as most Doctor Who corners of the internet will tell you.
00:40Some were creative, some were logistical, some were down to Disney and others the BBC and Bad Wolf.
00:46This video isn't meant to point the finger at anyone in particular,
00:49merely to honestly assess where the last few years have gone wrong,
00:53with the hope that the future can be better.
00:55I'm Ellie for Who Culture, and these are the 10 biggest mistakes of the Doctor Who Disney era.
01:01Number 10. Casting a Doctor Who Could Not Fully Commit
01:05Shooty Gatwa is electric as an actor, and none of this criticism applies to him personally.
01:11But the harsh truth remains, if your brand new Doctor cannot appear in every episode of only an 8 episode
01:18season,
01:19then you need to delay the shoot, or you cast someone else.
01:21This is the danger of gunning for an up-and-coming star, especially one with a prior filming commitment to
01:27one of the biggest shows on Netflix.
01:28The result of this high-profile casting is that we got multiple Doctor Light episodes,
01:33at a point when the audience was still trying to understand who this Doctor even was.
01:37Bafflingly, production also opted to air 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble back-to-back,
01:42which only made that Doctor-shaped hole feel even bigger.
01:45And unfortunately for Gatwa, these two episodes also comprised half of season 1's non-duds,
01:51leaving only Boom and Rogue for us to see the 15th Doctor in action with solid writing.
01:56Season 2 was an improvement, but even then we got a third Doctor Light story in Lucky Day.
02:01Then there's the whole figurehead issue.
02:03When a new actor takes on the role, they become the custodian of a legacy.
02:07There's the press cycle and the cons, yes, but even in the off-season, prior actors have represented the show
02:13off-screen.
02:14Capaldi was an outspoken mega-fan, Whittaker was sensational, producing in-character videos during lockdown,
02:21and Tennant? Well, Tennant didn't really ever leave.
02:23But Gatwa never felt like he had the same level of commitment to the show.
02:27Granted, his run didn't even last two years, and it's not really up to him to arrange the Children in
02:32Need sketches and other public appearances.
02:34But the net result is that the 15th Doctor just feels fleeting.
02:37Nowhere is this scene clearer than in this year's debacle, and his rumoured reasons for leaving the show.
02:42The moment production was up in the air, he had no reason to stick around.
02:46If he did, we'd have one of the UK's most promising young talents putting his career on hold and squandering
02:52his momentum.
02:53Not to mention turning down other acting jobs.
02:55Hell of an ask.
02:56It's this lack of foresight in casting that ultimately landed us with those last-minute changes to the reality war's
03:02ending.
03:03And while the show's next episode has now been confirmed,
03:06most of the drama of the last year could have been avoided if the issues in casting Gatwa had been
03:11more deeply considered at the start.
03:13Whoever plays the next Doctor, getting them to sign a more concrete, long-term deal is essential.
03:19Number 9. Abandoning sci-fi roots.
03:22Doctor Who is almost entirely unique in its flexibility when it comes to genre.
03:28Frankly, I doubt we'd still be getting new ideas almost 900 episodes in without its ability to regenerate week on
03:35week.
03:35It's a show that, while asking you to suspend your disbelief on occasion, has always stuck to some ground rules.
03:41At its heart, it's sci-fi. And this means that the more fantastical episodes have always at least attempted to
03:47justify themselves with sciency-winesy techno-babble.
03:51Two mixed results.
03:52There's a reason that the, it was aliens all along trope has become such a recognisable cliche on the show.
03:59Vampires? Aliens.
04:00Werewolf? Alien.
04:02It's a tried and tested trick. Ghosts, mummies, witches, zombies, demons, sirens, even bloody bees are aliens.
04:09It might be tiring, but without these rules, the show loses its identity along with any sense of grounding or
04:15internal consistency.
04:16And that can sometimes be in short supply as it is.
04:19But the Disney era drifted into full-blown fantasy territory without the usual veneer of pseudo-science to hold things
04:25together.
04:25The big-time villains of Gatwa's era were the pantheon of discord. Cosmic gods that can bend reality to their
04:32will.
04:32There's no science here. Not even a flimsy justification.
04:36This time around, it really is just magic. And it's extremely prevalent across the era.
04:41A whopping 10 out of 19 Gatwa episodes feature a threat that is magical in nature.
04:47It's hard to call it sci-fi at this point.
04:49Playing with the rules was fun as a one-off in The Giggle with The Return of the Toymaker.
04:54But with the context of the era to come, that outing has lost some of its charm.
04:58For some, this may be a non-issue.
05:01But for others, suspension of disbelief finally snapped during The Devil's Chord,
05:06with its fourth wall breaking, floating musical notes and that questionable musical number.
05:11Lux shredded any benefit of the doubt that remained by having the Doctor literally climb out of the telly and
05:15interact with his fans.
05:17After 20 years scoffing at folks who claimed the show had jumped the shark,
05:21that claim became more true than it ever had been before.
05:23If the Doctor can run into a reality-bending god every few weeks,
05:27why should we believe in any permanent consequences?
05:30The bad things can be wished away with a magic baby,
05:33or miraculously fixed as part of the Toymaker's game.
05:36Even nonsense needs internal consistency.
05:38Without it, the universe starts to feel weightless.
05:428. Commissioning a spin-off too early
05:44The Disney era saw the launch of the Hooniverse,
05:48the show's attempt at doing a marvel.
05:51Fundamentally, fans know the show has the potential to pull this off.
05:54Russell T. Davis did Infinity War before it was cool back in 2008 with The Stolen Earth,
05:59and both Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures took off in their own right.
06:03There was no reason why a second attempt at this by Russell T. Davis,
06:07with both the benefit of hindsight and a glowing proof of concept in the MCU,
06:11couldn't be a smash hit.
06:13Except they got cocky and rushed it.
06:15Before the main show had even re-earned its stars,
06:18a unit spin-off was pushed into development.
06:20Sure, this is something we've wanted for years,
06:22inclusion of the Sea Devils notwithstanding.
06:25But Torchwood was commissioned only once the main show had become a big hit,
06:29and it's far from that at the moment.
06:31The result is a spin-off that nobody really cares for,
06:34and one that seems to lack a vote of confidence from even the team that made it.
06:38It feels like the BBC wants to just dump it out so that it can move on from the Disney
06:42deal,
06:43while Disney clearly doesn't care about it in the slightest,
06:46bizarrely delaying it to 2026 and barely even acknowledging that it exists.
06:51The War Between the Land and the Sea also seems to have caused problems for Doctor Who,
06:55with its mere existence delaying Disney's decision about whether to continue with the Hooniverse.
07:00If the spin-off didn't exist, we might have heard about the future of Doctor Who much sooner,
07:04and as a result, it just feels like a holiday with your recently divorced parents
07:07that you still got to go on because they booked it two years ago and it wasn't cheap.
07:11The War Between the Land and the Sea could end up being the best bit of Who in years,
07:15granted, we'll give them that,
07:16but to give oxygen to this project before the main show had re-established itself was clearly a mistake.
07:22Number 7. The Degeneration of Regeneration
07:25This era has made a mess of regeneration from start to finish.
07:31First, we had Jodie Whittaker regenerating into David Tennant,
07:34with magical regenerating clothes.
07:36Having 14 be a returning actor was the first non-standard regeneration in an era of non-standard
07:42regenerations, and perhaps the earliest sign of the desperation of this run.
07:4714 then lasted, as far as we can tell, barely a day,
07:51before getting laser-beamed to death for the second time in quick succession.
07:55Truly the unluckiest week in the Doctor's life,
07:57and this was the catalyst for the real problems to begin.
08:00Bi-Generation was flashy in the moment and at the time seemed fairly justifiable,
08:05giving the Doctor a way to work through his trauma.
08:08Sadly, we now know that was not to be,
08:10and that the long-term implications were catastrophic for the show's lore.
08:15We now have a David Tennant walking around,
08:17putting his feet up while the world nearly ends multiple times,
08:20not to mention the bi-generation of every former Doctor,
08:23if we're to take Russell T. Davis' ramblings on the giggles commentary as canon.
08:27This totally undercuts the emotional finality of regeneration,
08:31and opens up the mother of all plot holes.
08:34It was meant to be a one-off, a result of the toy maker's state of play.
08:38But of course, the Rani went and did it too, for some reason.
08:42There wasn't even much point to doing this,
08:44as the new Rani was killed off unceremoniously soon after,
08:48following two seasons of build-up.
08:49And then to top it all off,
08:5115 goes and turns into Billy Piper.
08:54Opinion on this will be decided based on how well Russell T. Davis writes himself
08:57out of the monumental corner he's written himself into.
09:00But right now, it reeks of desperation and further entangles the messy web that regeneration has become.
09:07It's also damaged the hype surrounding new Doctors,
09:10given that they may just be faces we already know.
09:12What was once the key to the show's longevity now feels like the antithesis of that.
09:21One of the big questions of the Disney era was how it would adapt for the modern media landscape.
09:27And that's sadly where we fell apart a little.
09:30In the modern era of streaming, with a plethora of shows available to most households,
09:34what really cuts through the noise is prestige, quality, and a unique premise.
09:39With an improved budget, Doctor Who could manage the former no problem,
09:42and it already had the latter on lock.
09:44Unfortunately, the entire era was designed around outdated notions of going viral.
09:49We're all familiar with how much Russell loves the word content by now,
09:53but that seems to be the foundation on which his second era was built.
09:57You might have got away with hollow mystery boxes in 2005,
10:00but 20 years later, they are exhausting and audiences expect more.
10:04Ultimately, the huge mysteries of RTD2 that we were all meant to be super excited about
10:09were old lady cameos that went nowhere.
10:12And to be fair, we did all have fun speculating in the build-up,
10:15but none of the payoffs lived up to the hype.
10:17There clearly wasn't a plan for Mrs. Flood,
10:19as evidenced by some of her bizarre dialogue in Season 1 about storming down the gates of gold.
10:25And apparently the Rani somehow knows about Sutek too, for some reason.
10:29And the identity of Ruby's mother, while a sweet and emotional resolution,
10:33was pure clickbait.
10:34The mystery of Ruby was clearly and blatantly teased with supernatural clues,
10:39like falling snow and a mysterious hooded figure acting mysteriously.
10:43So for the solution to be an ordinary single mother leaving her baby outside a church just made no sense.
10:49In the end, in spite of all the shocking twists of the Disney era,
10:52what moment was it that actually went a little bit viral?
10:55It was Mr. Ringedding.
10:56As it turns out, the era's boldest departure from its own formula
11:00and its most unique and original creation in years
11:03was in fact the moment that captured the audience's imagination.
11:06Fancy that?
11:08Number 5. Flaky character work
11:10Doctor Who has never looked slicker.
11:13That I will not debate.
11:14The problem is that, in all that style, we've lost more than a little substance.
11:19The emotional foundation, as well as the Doctor companion dynamic,
11:22i.e. the core of the show,
11:24has often felt as thin as toilet paper.
11:27Ruby was charismatic, but hollow,
11:29as if waiting for character development that never quite materialised.
11:32Interestingly, she actually seems far more like an interesting human being
11:35in her solo outing in Lucky Day.
11:38The Doctor himself had moments of brilliance here and there,
11:41but sadly ended up feeling slightly more flat than previous incarnations
11:45due to a lack of moral complexity.
11:47That's without even touching on the criminal character assassination of poor Belinda
11:51after an extremely promising first outing.
11:54The unfortunate truth is that all three of these characters
11:56ended up feeling like rough outlines drawn from an amalgamation of past characters.
12:01But by far the biggest crime, in terms of narrative,
12:03was the fact that these characters did not enhance each other in any way.
12:07We seemed to skip over the companions settling into TARDIS life,
12:11instead just jumping to them being besties with the Doctor.
12:14There was no intrigue, no challenging of the Doctor,
12:16and 15 himself was lacking in any sort of arc.
12:19At first, he was clearly being set up to be the self-love incarnation,
12:23going on a journey of emotional healing.
12:25This didn't happen.
12:26Instead, we just watched him being sad a lot.
12:29What's frustrating is that RTD1 excelled in this area.
12:33The deeper nature of the core characters really resonated with 2005 audiences,
12:38and made the revival what it is.
12:40So it's baffling to me that this time around, this was skipped over.
12:43Sure, the reduced episode count was always going to impact on this a little,
12:48but the fact that audiences are expected to fill the gaps in character development
12:51is subpar writing for a primetime drama.
12:54I guess this is what happens when your lead actor isn't around a lot during your first season.
13:03Let's talk about the corporate elephant in the room.
13:06Disney did almost nothing to push Doctor Who to a new global audience.
13:10Minimal trailers, a handful of social media posts,
13:14zero merchandising, and Disney loves its merch, we all know that.
13:18Not even a visible spotlight on Disney+.
13:20One of the biggest upsides of a partnership with Disney
13:23was its potential as a platform for marketing the show.
13:26But this didn't happen.
13:27It's all good putting the show on a huge global streaming service,
13:30but you've got to tell people it's there.
13:32It often felt like Disney had no idea what it was sitting on.
13:35And if rumours are to be believed,
13:36it's actually Bluey they wanted off the BBC,
13:39and Doctor Who came as a package deal.
13:41They had a 60-year-old franchise with a built-in fan base,
13:45iconic branding, and unlimited storytelling potential.
13:49Instead of shouting about it from the rooftops,
13:51they mumbled its name into a cushion
13:53and kept milking Marvel and Star Wars
13:55for every last scrap of intellectual property.
13:57Even something as basic as how the show was labelled on Disney+,
14:01was fumbled.
14:02The Church on Ruby Road was called both Special 4
14:04and Season 1, Episode 1.
14:06There have been a shocking amount of comments and Reddit posts
14:09from people who actually aren't sure
14:11which episodes they're supposed to watch in what order.
14:14How do you mess this up?
14:15The show deserved a platform that actually recognised its value.
14:18What it got instead was apparent disinterest.
14:21There was a huge audience out there ready for the taking,
14:23but Disney didn't seem all that bothered about trying to reach them.
14:27Number 3.
14:28Too much deep-cut lore in a relaunch.
14:31Adjacent to the previous point
14:33is the fact that this era was marketed as a new entry point,
14:37a fresh slate after 20 years of lore and baggage.
14:40They restarted the series' numbering,
14:42which is even more frustrating with hindsight,
14:44split our Doctor from the existing Doctor,
14:46and promised he was headed in a new direction.
14:48In theory, this meant you could go in
14:51with no foreknowledge of the show whatsoever.
14:53That is, if you'd watched the celestial toy maker,
14:56Pyramids of Mars, The Mark of the Rani, and Midnight.
14:58That's Doctors 1, 4, 6, and 10,
15:01just to make sure they hit the widest spread of eras possible
15:04so that everyone has a chance to feel left out.
15:06Bringing back classic villains is a time-honoured trick,
15:09and most of the time it works.
15:11The issue here is in the execution.
15:13Previous monster revivals have offhandedly alluded to classic adventures,
15:17but reintroduced and redefined the monsters for a new era,
15:21as if they were appearing for the first time.
15:23When the Cybermen first crashed Pete Tyler's mansion party,
15:26we didn't get 10 having flashbacks to the 10th planet,
15:28because it wasn't needed.
15:30They were cool and scary, and that's what mattered.
15:32When Cold War brought back the Ice Warriors,
15:34it wasn't made into a big deal,
15:36because the show understood that most viewers didn't know who they were.
15:39Contrast that with Sutek.
15:40A huge tease, and a massive reaction from the Doctor,
15:44complete with flashbacks to Tom Baker.
15:46But in all likelihood, less than 5% of the audience knew who Sutek was.
15:50The show literally had to release a special bonus episode
15:54of 15, Ruby, and Mel watching Pyramids of Mars,
15:58just to lend some context.
15:59Meanwhile, Omega and the Rani were revealed so unceremoniously
16:03that it's baffling nobody said anything behind the scenes.
16:06This era was supposed to be for newcomers.
16:09Are you expecting them to sit and clap
16:10while these obscure classic villains are name-dropped like iconic rock stars?
16:14All this approach does is alienate audiences,
16:16who feel like they're missing out on some huge reveal,
16:19or aren't invited to a private party.
16:21You can either have the big shock reaction
16:23and do the proper legwork, on screen, to make it work,
16:27or you can underplay the reveal
16:28and have it as an easter egg for hardcore fans.
16:31What you can't do is take a one-off villain from 1975
16:34and hinge your entire series arc around it
16:37while simultaneously calling it Season 1.
16:402. Starting with Space Babies
16:43For any show, your pilot is a make or break.
16:46For a new era of Doctor Who, especially one with as much pressure as this,
16:50this is no exception.
16:51If you're trying to reassure fans that the show is back and better than ever,
16:55then you want to hit the ground running.
16:57The 11th Hour, Partners in Crime, The Impossible Astronaut, Deep Breath.
17:01These are standout episodes that brilliantly introduce the show
17:04and its characters while setting up interesting mysteries to come.
17:07We had the 60th anniversary specials and The Church on Ruby Road,
17:11which were all pretty good episodes.
17:13But Space Babies was the true jumping-on point.
17:16It was the big relaunch, the main event, the start of the era.
17:20Russell T. Davis had even commented
17:22how Disney only really started pushing the show from the start of Season 1.
17:26So what did new and returning viewers get?
17:28They got Space Babies,
17:29one of the few episodes of the show
17:31that can be considered genuinely embarrassing and painful to watch.
17:35It was annoyingly, deliberately juvenile
17:38with its CGI deepfake babies,
17:40literal bogey monster and nappy-fuelled spaceship.
17:43It would be childish even for CBBC standards.
17:46It wasn't morally complex or dramatic.
17:49There was no fantastic hook.
17:51It was what it was.
17:52This was a make-or-break moment
17:54and the era could not have got off to a more catastrophic start.
17:58You've got to seriously question
17:59who signed off on this being the first episode
18:02and who allowed it to be written in the first place, quite honestly.
18:04When your viewers can flick to a different channel
18:06and watch the likes of Severance, Slow Horses, Shogun, The Bear and Succession,
18:11it's no surprise that many bailed before the era even began.
18:151. Failing to secure the future of the show
18:18By far the biggest mistake of the Doctor Who Disney era
18:23is the fact that everyone involved allowed Doctor Who
18:25to once again slide into a state of limbo.
18:28Before Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall departed in 2022,
18:31there was a period of time where there wasn't actually a plan for Doctor Who
18:35and the power of the Doctor would have concluded with an open-ended regeneration.
18:39This was the first time in the 2005 revival that the show didn't have a clear future,
18:45which is why it was so thrilling when news came of Russell T. Davis' return
18:49and Disney's involvement.
18:50Not only did Doctor Who now have a big, bright future,
18:53but that future would never again be in doubt.
18:56We were promised annual seasons, endless content,
18:59and the backing of a huge company under which Doctor Who would thrive.
19:02Many, including us here at Who Culture,
19:05anticipated that this was the start of a new golden era for the show.
19:09A fresh start where nothing could possibly go wrong,
19:11elevating Doctor Who to a pop culture juggernaut,
19:14the likes of which we haven't seen since the Tennant and Smith years.
19:17But less than two years later, we're right back where we started.
19:20And that is unacceptable.
19:22To squander such a huge opportunity and to make promises that were never delivered
19:26is incredibly frustrating.
19:28Not to mention the fact that this was seemingly never even considered as a possibility by the BBC.
19:33The frequent mentions by Russell T. Davis that he was working on episodes for seasons 3 and 4,
19:38coupled with a delay in filming on that third season,
19:41a delay that resulted in the departure of Shuti Gatwa,
19:44indicates that it never even crossed the BBC's mind that Disney wouldn't renew.
19:48To enter such a deal, seemingly without any thought given to securing the show's future
19:53should that deal fall apart, was a baffling decision,
19:56and frankly, Doctor Who deserves better.
19:58On the plus side, another new future for the show is now in the works,
20:02although we're having to wait way longer for it than anyone expected,
20:05meaning that Doctor Who is now suffering yet another infrequent release pattern,
20:09which is something else that's damaged the show over the last 10 years.
20:12Let's just hope that this next big restart is more successful than the last,
20:16and that whatever happens next, the future of Doctor Who is given more careful consideration
20:21than it has for the last few years.
20:24And that concludes our list, but rather than dwelling on the past,
20:27let's look to the future and how things can be fixed.
20:30You should check out 10 things that must happen in Doctor Who's upcoming special.
20:34Just a few suggestions on how things could be made better.
20:37In the meantime, I've been Ellie for WhoCulture,
20:39and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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