Curious to hear what people’s thoughts are on how long RTD will stay, any potential sucessors, the Disney farce, etc! Personally, I really don’t want him sticking around any longer than S3 there’s been a huge amount of decisions I still can’t wrap my head around or dislike.
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I think three series (including the one just gone) will be fine.
I’m hoping someone new to Who (or at least televised Who), although I doubt that will happen.
Doctor Who will keep on going, even if Disney stop the deal.
Hopefully…
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I can’t wait for a new showrunner, especially a someone we haven’t had before. This past season really put everything I don’t like about the first RTD era in the forefront and dialled it up to 11. Personally, I’d like someone who isn’t a white man in the role, but that’s unfortunately pretty unlikely…
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At this point I don’t care who is running the show as long as it’s someone new. For all that was said about Chibnall and whatever I think of his era, he was trying to push the show to new places and I can respect that. With RTD2 I feel we’re slipping into all those familiar beats which are fun enough to watch but feel a little stagnant.
It may also be cynical to say, but I’m not sure that the programme would survive without Disney money - at least, it couldn’t go on like it is. I doubt the BBC would enjoy killing it dead but I wouldn’t be surprised to see an extended hiatus in the case of pulling the funding.
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Yeah, my main concern is some new blood. The one thing I feel Doctor Who could really benefit from right now is a new showrunner and some new writers. And I really hope the show isn’t in any sense cancelled, for Gatwa’s sake, but I do wonder if it wouldn’t benefit from a brief break.
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I’m personally tending towards we get maybe 3 series from RTD, including the last one, and then the show gets cancelled, and we’re in the second Wilderness years.
This isn’t me being negative about the show, but the state of modern tv. Shows just don’t last more than a few seasons these days. And I tend to feel like the BBC’s going to have its own problems, and may very well not continue it on their side either.
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I think people know my feelings on RTD2. I really want a much younger showrunner & writing team, one that is much more diverse. I don’t want any old writers or producers returning. The show is in a creative dead-end. Everything feels so familiar.
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I think he will either stay until series 3/4, or he will be here for a long time, to the point of fan backlash.
Who I’d want is someone who is more of an overall idea person, who can herd a group of writers into a cohesive vision. I also want less of a show-“man” than RTD is. More akin to a writers’ writer than a personality in their own right.
A bit of a ramble that I hope gets my point across.
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Well, RTD stays for five years and is replaced by Moffat, obviously!
Joking aside, he’ll probably stay for three or four years and leave at the same time as Ncuti. As for his successor, I’m not sure. It’s difficult to imagine anyone, but some fresh blood would definitely do good. But I understand that it’s a daunting task, and everyone isn’t up for it - Moffat had to extend his tenure because he struggled with finding a replacement, and there were rumours that Chibnall also couldn’t find anyone before RTF offered to come back.
We’ve been told before that even if Disney pulls out, the show will continue under the BBC, either with a smaller budget again or together with another streaming partner. Doctor Who is a lucrative show that makes the BBC a lot of money, so I can’t see it ending any time soon.
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I’m honestly really worried about what will happen to the show after RTD leaves. Just like most everyone in the thread has said, I’m not the biggest fan of RTD coming back to the show, and think the Chibnall era was much more creative. That being said, I think RTD is a much better producer and ‘showman’, with the actual quality of the show increasing dramatically when he came on board. I was really hoping that RTD was just stepping in to stop Who from being cancelled, and that he would basically mentor someone new to take over from him after a few seasons, given that there aren’t a lot of options for the role right now. Hopefully we see someone emerge soon as the obvious choice, but until that happens I wouldn’t be surprised if we get another long hiatus after RTD leaves.
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Someone new is definitely the way to go in a bit, but I do think RTD has gotten some new and old people to watch the show again or start it, which can only help in the long run. Ideally he’ll train some new writers in the next three or so years and then either one of those could take over, or someone new with those writers, so there’s a bit of continuity in between. I think, while Disney has surely provided a lot of money for the new seasons and the effects do look amazing, you could definitely produce Doctor Who much cheaper and have it be good, so I’m not worried about them pulling out
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I am assuming RTD will stay as long as Ncuti stays, which might be 3 Series or even 4, depending on how willing Ncuti is to star for more (especially with the shorter Episode Count). But since his Career is already taking off so much, I don’t think he will be too interested to stay longer or break the 3-Season Rule.
Personally RTD2 was probably the Era of televised Who which didn’t give me much to enjoy in many regards. Some of RTDs Decisions or Decisions relating to this Era are rather baffling, while some others are quite good. As for the Episodes, I don’t think I feel too positive about his Episodes besides a few one. Still, I am hopeful for the second Series, even if my expectations are very trimmed. It’s a shame because I think Gatwa is stellar as the Doctor, and yet I don’t love his Era, which is a shame.
Now what will happen to Doctor Who post RTD? Well who knows. Nobody can say for certain, I will say I don’t think Wilderness 2 Electric Bogaloo will probably not happen after the Gatwa Era. A big Part with the Issues of the Colin/McCoy Era was that the BBC didn’t believe in this Brand at all. Which is not the case here, in Fact Doctor Who is one of the BBCs biggest Brand they have, some may say the most recognizable one across various countries. Even if the Disney Deal doesn’t have a Future, I think the Show will still continue, I mean even Budgetwise they achieved quite a lot in the Chibnall Era, Stories such as Joy to the World couldn’t be produced, but hey sometimes Who is at its best when it’s working with limitations. Limitations makes creative! Of course in this current Landscape you never know, but let’s be honest, Who is such a huge Brand for the BBC. There might be a hiatus, that’s certainly possible, but I doubt this hiatus will be longer than 2–3 years at best, at least I reckon.
Of course as everybody here said I would like to see somebody new, there have been plenty of Writers in the Past who only wrote a bit for a Who but could be great as Showrunners. While I would welcome anybody completely new, I doubt that this will happen. All I just hope is that we get somebody who isn’t another RTD (a Showman) and maybe even somebody who is a bit detached from being such a huge Fan as the previous three Showrunners we had.
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I know lots of fans worry about the future but I’m very much a live in the moment sort of person. I will enjoy what we get now and if it ends when RTD leaves then I know I’ll still have so much Who to watch, listen to and read that Doctor Who is never really going to end. Fans kept it alive in the Wilderness Years and that was when the internet was barely a thing. Doctor Who has become like Sherlock Holmes - it’s an IP which will always generate stories, some high profile and on TV, some in the corners of the internet only fans know about. Of course I’d love the TV series to continue forever but what my heart wants, my head knows will probably not be the reality.
And let’s face it, it doesn’t really matter who takes over because no one has messed it up yet and I don’t think anyone taking it on would mess it up either. For all the ridicuous backlash directed at Chibnall or the inevitable reactions to RTD’s return (fans love to hate, let’s face it) the series is still here and still giving us joy.
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I just really hope RTD has a succession plan, and I think he might do because he came back to ‘save’ Doctor Who, and you can’t do that without having a plan going forwards.
I’d love to see new ideas from new writers, definitely.
The BBC isn’t going to kill Doctor Who. As others have said, it’s their biggest brand. There’s just no way they let it go on hiatus.
And they don’t even need Disney money. Look at the Thirteenth Doctor series - it looked beautiful. We don’t need CGI T-Rexes to tell good stories.
Worst case they make a new deal with Netflix, Amazon, Paramount, etc… I’m sure they had plenty of offers.
Doctor Who will go on forever 
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I’d like to see a move away from the showrunner model or at least away from the personality showrunner as it puts too much of the show on the shoulders of one person. I think this is what Chibnall tried to implement in his first season. He started a writers’ room, but this didn’t stick. While I like that he stepped away from the publicity limelight I felt he did it a bit too much to the extent that we had little to no trailing of what was coming up, even in sources of free publicity like DWM. There’s a happy medium to be struck, and we don’t have to have a head writer/producer/publicist/writer of most episodes and de-facto script editor (even if there are others holding that title, doing a slightly different job to those in the 60s-80s). Can’t the load be spread a little without losing publicity and an overview of the season arc etc? I think the reason the showrunner job is so hard to fill is because it’s an impossible one! Other shows manage under a different structure, so why can’t Doctor Who?
That said, I think the future of the show is reasonably secure, even if it might change format a little. At the very worst, it will continue in a different medium. The demand is still there!
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Agreeing with what people have said here - I don’t think Doctor Who will go until the BBC goes (the future of that however, might be a different question). It’s up there with the likes of Strictly Come Dancing in terms of big reliable shows (fans grumble, but fans grumble all the time. It’s a big name that the public know and often grew up with)
For post-RTD we badly need new ideas and diversity! My hope is Ncuti Gatwa gets BAME creative behind his character, but I don’t know if we’ll get a new showrunner in that time
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As far as not killing Doctor Who or the BBC because it isn’t in the UK’s best interest, I’m just mostly not assuming that the government in the UK is going to do things in its best interest…
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It’s a bit of a misconception that the BBC is run by the UK government.
It is (according to the BBC) “operationally and editorially independent of government”
The only thing the government controls is how they get their money - which is through the license fee paid by all eligible UK citizens.
So the government can’t decide one day to just turn off the lights. Worst thing they could do is force the BBC to have to get money from either advertising (which it currently has none in the UK) or through some kind of subscription service.
And although I am very much in favour of the BBC staying ‘free’ for all UK residents (because of their news output etc), I think it actually might be a good idea to have a subscription fee for their drama output, especially if it means iPlayer becomes available worldwide for a fee!
Imagine if the whole world had access to the Whoniverse content on iPlayer!
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Yes. I want RTD out sooner rather than later. I understand putting it in the hands of someone with experience in running the show to make the transition to Bad Wolf easier, but I’ve not been a fan of what RTD has done writing-wise. When he came back, I was skeptical, but figured he’d have grown and developed as a writer over his time off Who, and was rather disappointed to see him running into the same traps of his previous era. It seems to me like he still has the same vision for the show that he did in 2010 when he left, regardless of how much it has changed over Moffat’s and Chibnall’s times.
I don’t want them to go to a full writers room model though. I think what makes Doctor Who great is its variety of writers, all with their own ideas, and I don’t want to see it just become every episode just being a melting pot of all the writers in the room. What I think Doctor Who needs is someone like an Andrew Cartmel. A young unknown without prior Who experience with all kinds of fresh new ideas for Doctor Who and what it can be. And more non-showrunner writers too, ideally the showrunner writes very few, and maybe works to tie the others into the overall story arc, should they choose to do one (I’d be in favor of more standalone-ness to it, especially with the reduced episode count). Like premiere and finale tops from the showrunner in such a small season size.
Long story short, someone completely new please.
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Should the next showrunner go back to the serialization of Classic Who. Four half-hour episodes per story?
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