Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat keep insisting Doctor Who is fine. One of their closest collaborators just said the quiet part out loud.
Mark Gatiss, who wrote nine episodes of the modern series and co-created Sherlock with Moffat, predicts the BBC’s tender process may end the same way the last one did: with nothing.
Speaking with Radio Times while promoting the return of his detective series Bookish, Gatiss said he thinks it’s simply time for the show to go away for a while.
‘All good things come to an end’
Asked about his hopes for the future of the series, Gatiss invoked F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line about there being no second acts in American lives, arguing the same often applies to showbiz.
“I think the fact that Doctor Who had a second act of 21 years is absolutely amazing,” he said. “But I think maybe it’s just time for a break, because all good things come to an end.”
Gatiss knows the franchise from every angle. Along with his nine scripts, he appeared on screen five times and wrote An Adventure in Space and Time, the BBC’s acclaimed drama about the show’s creation.
Gatiss says the tender flopped once before
The doomy part is the history lesson. Gatiss pointed out that the BBC has run this exact play before, and it didn’t work.
“I think the BBC putting it out to tender is a perfectly great idea, but we’ve been here before,” he said. “When it was cancelled in 1989 the BBC made a big statement saying ‘We’re committed to taking Doctor Who through the ’90s.’ They put it out to tender then, and then it just quietly didn’t happen, and I have a feeling maybe that’s what’s going to happen.”
He’s not wrong about the history. After the classic series ended in 1989, the BBC talked up the show’s future, went looking for an outside producer, and Doctor Who stayed off the air for 16 years, with only the 1996 TV movie to show for it.
That lines up with what industry insiders told Deadline earlier this year, that the show may be shelved until 2028 at the earliest after multiple UK producers balked at bidding.
‘You want people to miss it’
Gatiss did stop short of writing the obituary.
“I feel very doomy, but it’s true. It’s fine,” he said. “I think the fact it’s come back so successfully means it will come back again. But I think maybe it’s just time for a proper break, because you want people to miss it and have fresh ideas.”
He added the next era should probably be run by “someone who grew up with David Tennant as the Doctor, rather than Tom Baker,” effectively telling his own generation of fans-turned-showrunners, himself included, to hand over the keys.
Funny enough, Tennant keeps coming up. Stargate producer Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment has confirmed it wants to bid amid reports Devlin would bring Tennant back as the Doctor.
The optimists vs. the doomers
Gatiss’s prediction puts him directly at odds with his old collaborators. Davies and Moffat have spent the summer insisting the show isn’t cancelled, with Davies calling the headlines “literally wrong” and Moffat promising the show will return “very, very definitely.”
New BBC director-general Matt Brittin is on their side, saying last month the show has regenerated multiple times in its 60-plus years and will do so again.
So is Tennant, who looks at the same 1989 gap Gatiss cites and reaches the opposite conclusion, saying the fire “certainly never went out” and fans should treat the tender as a positive.
But the facts on the ground favor Gatiss for now. Davies and Bad Wolf are gone, the 2026 Christmas special is canceled, the tender still hasn’t opened, and the only new Doctor Who in production is a preschool cartoon.
The BBC promised fans the TARDIS would land again. Gatiss just reminded everyone it made the same promise in 1989. For the full picture of the tender, the timeline, and everything at stake, here’s what’s next for Doctor Who.
