Yup, Disney+ Is No Longer Financing Doctor Who

This may be the most unsurprising entertainment news of the year, but the BBC in England has at last confirmed what everyone figured out already: the Doctor Who partnership with Disney+ hasn’t worked out, and they’ll be continuing production some other way.

They are down but not out. Everyone was expecting DW to go on one of its extended breaks, but the current plan is to get a Christmas special out in time for next year: “The BBC remains fully committed to Doctor Who, which continues to be one of our most loved dramas, and we are delighted that Russell T Davies has agreed to write us another spectacular Christmas special for 2026. We can assure fans, the Doctor is not going anywhere, and we will be announcing plans for the next series in due course which will ensure the TARDIS remains at the heart of the BBC.”

I’ve never been much of what you’d call a Whovian, but I started following the series regularly once the Disney+ version started. I was immediately impressed with the new Tennant and Tate episodes that opened it. I loved Ruby Sunday and her infectious enthusiasm for traveling time and space. The first “new” season really was churning out winners, but it wasn’t racking up the kind of numbers Disney demands…they don’t want cult hits, they want mega-hits, which begs the question of why they invested so much in Who in the first place.

So if the show didn’t improve its numbers in the second season it’d probably be over. Well, it shouldn’t be an issue as long as they keep up the quality of — WHOA, what happened? The second Disney+ season was a complete mess, with an absolutely incoherent two-part finale. It was a big, expensive pile of garbage. When Gatwa started transforming at the end I thought to myself “you know, you can probably cut it there and no one would complain much; you don’t have to — OH NO.”

It came out afterward that Gatwa leaving the series was a last-minute decision, and that the ending was a replacement for a party scene that was proven to exist when screenshots were discovered. The casting of Billie Piper might have been last minute as well….glad I’m not standing in the corner Davies has painted himself into.

If and when Doctor Who returns, it’ll probably be scaled down to its typical budget, assuming it doesn’t find another deep-pocketed partner. More to develop as 2026 approaches.