The BBC’s plan to put Doctor Who out to competitive tender is already running into a problem: nobody seems to want it.
Deadline reports it contacted four respected UK drama producers about their appetite for taking on the show following Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf’s exit, and all four had serious reservations. One top producer put it bluntly: “you would have to be mad” to take on the show.
Why producers don’t want Doctor Who
Per the report, the producers’ concerns stack up fast.
The tender winner wouldn’t own the rights to the show — the BBC retains all IP — making Doctor Who a massive drain on resources and creative energy for a series the producer has no stake in.
There are also major funding worries in the wake of Disney’s exit: per Deadline‘s sourcing, no other major U.S. studio is seen as likely to replace Disney, which would leave episode budgets capped at around £3 million ($4 million) unless BBC Studios makes an investment it would struggle to recoup.
Some producers reportedly went further, questioning whether the Time Lord is even still relevant to young audiences at all.
That tracks with what we reported back in March 2025, when rumors claimed the BBC had no plans to fund Doctor Who on its own if Disney walked away.
Bad Wolf is unlikely to bid
Don’t expect the outgoing producers to ride to the rescue, either.
Deadline reports it’s unlikely Sony Pictures Television — which owns Bad Wolf — would sign off on the company spending more time on a show it has no ownership stake in.
The unusual 2021 Bad Wolf deal existed largely as the mechanism to bring Davies back as showrunner; with Davies gone, the rationale goes with him.
No new Doctor Who until 2028 — at the earliest
As for the timeline, industry insiders tell Deadline the show won’t return until 2028 at the very earliest, and even that is considered an outside bet, with one producer predicting Doctor Who could be rested for as long as five years.
That matches our breakdown of what’s next for Doctor Who, where we projected a 2028 return as the realistic best case once the tender process, showrunner hire, casting, writing, and production are stacked end to end.
The BBC hasn’t even announced when the tender will open, and the recent tender for the BBC’s long-running medical drama Casualty — which BBC Studios retained — took around six months to complete. Doctor Who is the highest-profile BBC series ever to go through the process.
The Christmas special was announced ‘in hope’
The report also sheds light on the canceled Christmas special.
Per Deadline‘s sources, the special was announced last October more out of hope than expectation, a move to calm fears that Doctor Who was being scrapped after Disney+ walked away.
Davies essentially admitted as much in his goodbye post, saying the special was only cooked up to guarantee a future when nobody knew what would happen.
Interestingly, while Davies claimed there was never a script, Deadline notes there are conflicting accounts about exactly how much he had written, which keeps alive the contradiction we flagged between Davies’ denial and composer Murray Gold’s claim that multiple script versions existed.
Insiders blame the creative direction
The report doesn’t sugarcoat why the show is in this position.
Per Deadline, there’s a feeling within the industry that the series lost its way creatively, with Ncuti Gatwa never fully embracing the role and concerns that Davies took a heavy-handed approach to diversity and inclusion themes, issues the show has historically handled as a celebrated part of its DNA.
Ratings collapsed on his watch, with Gatwa himself joking that only about 12 people watched his run.
Still, not everyone is writing the obituary. One person close to the show told Deadline the franchise should be viewed like Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek — a generational commodity the BBC is lucky to own — and that this should be nothing more than a bump in the road if handled properly.
For the full picture of the tender process, the unresolved Billie Piper cliffhanger, and what fans actually get during the gap, check out what’s next for Doctor Who.
