Honestly, I won't miss it.

The show overall has been so badly written and executed recently that this feels like a mercy killing. It could've recovered from Chibnall's reign of errors and there were ways to work through or around the Timeless Child but RTD came back thinking he was the great messiah only to balls it up further and then as he reflected on where the show was and surrounded by the burning wreckage of his own incompetence he walks off as if he were David Cameron after the Brexit vote. Twat.

I think its a shame, but understandable. I enjoyed a number of Gatwa episodes (Boom, 73 Yards, Dot and Bubble, Lux, The Well and Lucky Day), but the finales and arcs weren't really the best. It felt like RTD was trying for the big Moffatt arcs, but they just became overly messy.

It would've been good had the show not been left on a Billie Piper cliffhanger though and either just had Gatwa go to regenerate and it end, or it did something like Survival back in 1989 - the Doctor going off for new adventures. But I guess they didn't know when they made Series 2 that things would get so messy.

Fingers crossed another production company takes it up and a new producer comes along with a new vision.

It's a mixed bag of news, what's frustrated me more is some of the misunderstandings online and the claims of the show being cancelled - couldn't be further from the truth!

Losing the Christmas special is a shame I think. It would've tied up the loose ends from RTD2's era and addressed the Billie cliffhanger and then left the show in a better position for someone to take over. However, putting the show out to tender is just fine and shows the BBC's commitment to making new Doctor Who - they wouldn't have done this otherwise. New blood is exactly what the show needs and it will be really positive in the long run I think.

This is the only way the show gets a "break" too - any other active decision to put it on rest would be basically cancelling the show with absolutely no guarantee of the show returning. This way, we'll get a new series probably no earlier than late 2028, by which point we'll have had some positive news hopefully about the next showrunner, Doctor, companion, and an idea of what the next vision of the show may be.

It'll bear fruit in a couple of years minimum but for now it's just more of a waiting game, but I do think this is a good sign for the show and I'm really hoping they look at 2005 as a blueprint of what to do next - recapture some of that gritty realism that feels like it could be happening around any corner in the UK, and sprinkle in the magic of adventure with as little reliance on past lore as possible (beyond hopefully some Daleks etc).

So basically confirming what we already knew that they completely mucked the revival up, it hasn't proven as profitable and they have zero idea of what to do with it now that Disney aren't taking it forward, frankly I had very little enthusiasm for a blatant fan-bait cliffhanger and I don't believe RTD had any ideas for it either so I can do with that just being slipped under the rug, though it is a disappointingly messy end for a Doctor that deserved better.

I think this is overall for the best really, Out to tender doesn't mean gone, and I'm sure there will be a production company willing to invest in it eventually as it's still one of the most recognisable brands out there which hopefully gives it more time and attention. It'll give time for people to miss it and in this era of constant nostalgia being revived, it won't stay dormant too long.

Casualty went out to tender last year - it took 7 months and BBC Studios won the bid https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/bbc-studios-wins-contract-to-produce-casualty

One data point obviously isn't something we can use to predict from but going out to tender isn't about resting a show or anything, it's an active effort to continue the show, it just means Doctor Who in this case will happen to be dormant in the interim.

I can't blame RTD for the reshoots and the Billie cliffhanger as I do see how that could have kept the door open more than an open-ended regeneration - that to me almost feels like tempting fate to cancel it. Thankfully I'd say the BBC are showing their commitment regardless with this, given there's a 99.99% chance of Billie being swept under the rug when the show eventually returns. Ironically, the original unaired ending of The Reality War would actually have been the best option after all it seems...!

Probably best to rest it. I did like some of RTD2’s era-some very good episodes! But he couldn’t land the plane for the finales and just thought chucking loads of characters at it would make to weak resolutions acceptable. Taking ideas from the sequel Star Wars trilogy and giving in to fan speculation because he hadn’t planned anything weren’t RTD’s best moves.

His first run is still exceptional to this day. I do think he lost sight of why that run has been so special and couldn’t replicate it. The template was great, a series long thread that you could try and follow that would seem obvious when revealed. Just having obvious mysteries to get people talking isn’t enough. It should have been planned better with the audience being able to say ‘of course’ rather than ‘what?’ At the reveal. Again, see Disney Star Wars for examples how not to do this well.

It’s annoying Billie has been left hanging but I wasn’t bowled over with the reveal at the time. There was clearly no plan to resolve it unless they’d signed Billie up for a series and that’s so unlikely.

It had a twenty year run. A couple of years break is just what’s needed.

When it returns I’d love to see some classic villains again as well as new stuff. I’d like to see the Doctor not be falling in love or have any companions fall in love with him/her/them. Fun is what we need and good stories.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DZZqSzANqIK/?igsh=MWE1M3RiOXJob25jcQ==

Erm when hes basically admitted there was no christmas episoded ever planned and he never wrote a script but continuously teased it I very much doubt that RTD has zero accountability here